The connection between music and narrative is a much-debated subject in writings from various disciplines. From a narratological viewpoint, there are many models that are applicable to music and point out music’s capacity to express a story. For example, Eero Tarasti considers Proppian functions in symphonic poems by Franz Liszt, Peter Rabinowitz discusses narratorship in Georges Bizet’s Carmen, or Byron Almén uses Northrop Frye’s literary archetypes in his analysis of mostly Romantic compositions. Generally speaking, the most popular narrative models are structuralist and these are often applied to eighteenth- or nineteenth-century music. Compositions of this time period seem to be the most compatible with such narratological models. One of the reasons is the listener’s familiarity with the musical materials. Research has shown that recognizability of a certain music style drives narrative engagement with the music (see e.g., Hellmuth Margulis; McAuley et al.). Because of their long history of having been listened to, analyzed, or talked about, the Classical and Romantic music styles have gradually become part and parcel of Western culture and thus sound familiar. In addition, extramusical meanings have tied themselves to such compositions, which also opens them up further to narrative interpretation. This is particularly true for Romantic music, which was often accompanied by reviews or analyses in floral and metaphorical language.
The premise of this book is that all music has a potential to be narrative. Admittedly, there are gradations to the aptness of narrative as a framework for understanding music. Scholars in intermedial studies quite agree that a verbal medium is the medium of preference when it comes to expressing a narrative (see e.g., Bernaerts 69–70; Nattiez 241; Ryan 13). For example, Werner Wolf specifically considers literary output as preferential for expressing a story (“Lyric Poetry and Narrativity” 145). However, it would be a false assumption to conclude that music per definition is incapable of evoking stories. In fact, there are several common threads running through discussions of music’s potential for narrativity. For the sake of brevity, two of those focal points are covered in what follows, namely (1) that music moves in time, and (2) that music exhibits points of reference that follow a certain logical path.
First, music has a basic quality of moving in time (see e.g., Almén 38; Boykan esp. 30; Wolf, “Transmedial Narratology” 272). Jean-Jacques Nattiez, for example, considers the “unfolding of music in time” as a fundamental principle that makes for music’s capacity to express a story (241). Other researchers speak of a sense of sequentiality to musical pieces (see e.g., Boykan 98). Sequentiality is grounded in music’s moving in time but goes beyond that. It implicitly points out that music does not merely move in time. Rather, there is a certain logic or evolution to the sequence of musical elements. Often, that logic is attributed to a narrating instance. The explicit presence of a narrator has in the past often been seen as the prerogative of literary narratives and as impossible in music. The lack of a clearly identifiable narrating agent has also been a reason for some studies to conclude that music cannot be narrative (see e.g., Abbate). More recent studies with an intermedial outlook on narrative have displaced the presence of a narrator as paramount to narratives. The same trend is discernible in music analysis with a focus on narrative. Fred Everett Maus, for example, considers sequentiality rather than a narratorial presence as a narrative quality of music. He says: “there is always the possibility of understanding the music […] as the sequential presentation of a world in which the events of the story are perceived directly: in which case, there may be no sense of a narrator at all” (34).
Second, music is not only sequential. It has the possibility to introduce a certain logic to the sequence of musical units that can be evocative of storyness. Nattiez calls this the “syntactical […] dimension of music”. It is possible to create through a specifically composed succession of musical materials amongst other things “repetitions, returns, preparations, expectations, resolutions, and […] continuity” (Nattiez 244). Even experimental composers, like Arnold Schoenberg, mention the importance of logic for the meaningfulness of music. He says: “The chief requirements for the creation of a comprehensible form are logic and coherence. The presentation, development and interconnexion of ideas must be based on relationship” (1, emphasis in original).1
Certain studies, like Nattiez’s, consider a logic – plain and simple – to music, while others are more specific. For example, a hierarchy to distinct musical units and the sequence of those units is a type of logic that is frequently mentioned, such as in Robert Hatten’s treatment of Ludwig van Beethoven’s oeuvre; or as in Almén’s A Theory of Musical Narrative in which he complements Hatten’s hierarchical model of markedness with Frye’s literary archetypes (see also above). Another specific sequence of musical units that is foregrounded in several analyses of musical narrative is the harmonic development in a succession of chords or a structural form (e.g., the sonata form) that constitute “stability – instability – stability” (as in e.g., Maus 19; Schoenberg 3; Wolf, “Transmedial Narratology” 272). This recurring sequence of distinct units can and is often subsequently interpretated narratively as the following sequence: “stable starting situation – crisis situation – new situation of stability”.
While we have shown that there is certainly narrative potential to musical compositions, there are two main issues with existing research that this volume wishes to address. This is in line with current trends in recent research in musical narrative as well. First, there is a clear tendency to focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century compositions in particular. This is unsurprising given that music from the Classical and Romantic periods sounds familiar to the Western ear. Because the forms, structures, melodies, or other musical techniques sound comparatively more recognizable than contemporary music, it is easier to identify a narrative evoked in such music (see also above). There are several ways of creating recognizability, however. There is indeed the use of known strategies, as composers did in a highly formalized way in the Classical period, and as composers did by attaching strict extramusical meanings to their music by means of programs in the Romantic period for example. But there is also the repetition of musical units within the same piece that could create recognizability – apart from implementing traditional structures.2 In other words, there are ways of familiarizing the audience with the music in such a way that there is also the potential to evoke a narrative in contemporary pieces.
Second, a considerable number of studies of musical narratives subscribe to a structuralist way of narrative analysis. Models such as those developed by Algirdas Greimas, Vladimir Propp, or Gérard Genette are used most often in musical analysis. While structuralist models for narrative analysis prove quite useful for certain output of music, it reduces or negates other compositions’ potential for expressing stories. This is in part due to the fact that structuralist analysis has a long history of taking into account literary narratives exclusively. This creates a false idea that novels, short stories, and other literary forms are the only media in which narrativity is possible. This is exactly why this book subscribes to the usefulness of such structuralist and/or literary models but shows also the potential of more recent studies that highlight the possibilities of evoking narratives in intermedial ways.
This volume is structured along two major lines of thought as a counterclaim to the issues presented above. First, we offer an insight into the narrative potential of late twentieth-century and twenty-first-century music – a category of music that still constitutes a blind spot in the field of musical narrativity. This book features important contributions that concern music subscribing to traditional Western composition strategies and techniques, such as music written by Beethoven, Alexander Scriabin, Pjotr Iljitsj Tsjaikovski, Richard Wagner, or Ralph Vaughan Williams. However, to complement these works, the larger part of this book concerns contemporary music. Case studies presented here include compositions by John S. Beckett, Luciano Berio, John Cage, Philip Glass, Tom Johnson, Steve Reich, or Max Richter. This book also goes beyond classical music with a chapter on the genre of the musical, with music by Michael R. Jackson, as well as a chapter on an eclectic group of musical genres, including also jazz with composers such as Bix Beiderbecke, or Cole Porter.
Second, the approaches towards musical narratives or narrativity move firmly away from the well-known structuralist models. Viewpoints on music’s capacity to evoke stories stem from current trends in the field of narratology, such as intermedial studies, audionarratology, or cognitive narratology. In addition, this book goes even further to also include applications of narrative theories in disciplines other than literary studies or narratology. For example, concepts from cultural studies, philosophy, gender studies, or musicology are given prominence in several chapters.
The first section of this book provides a diverse set of answers to the question of whether music indeed has the capacity to express a narrative. A poignant example is chosen in each of these first four chapters, which are mostly geared towards theory. In chapter 1, Peter Dayan places the possibility to create a narrative with music in extramusical expressions of meaning, namely in autobiography. Better would be to speak of autobiographies since Dayan’s argument is multifaceted. Different narratives surrounding music are considered, including those of the composer and his peers, of performers of music, or of music pieces themselves. Taking The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams as his example, Dayan considers versions of autobiographies that express the narrative of how music is encountered. He deals with writings or other expressions about music by both Ralph and by his wife Urusula Vaughan Williams; by George Meredith, whose poem provides the inspiration to the musical piece; as well as by different performers of Vaughan Williams’ music, such as violinists Frederick Grinke, Hilary Hahn, and Marie Hall. One can also distinguish Dayan’s own encounters with The Lark Ascending in this chapter. As R. Vaughan Williams did before him, Dayan concludes that the narrative of music cannot be captured through words. Instead, the quest to understand what music means, remains autobiographical, as meaningful as it may be.
In chapter 2, Marlies De Munck also considers the narratives that take shape when listening to music. She takes a philosophical stance in bringing to light a paradigm shift in listening to music. Post-classical music’s extensive popularity is symptomatic of that paradigm shift, namely what De Munck, after Alessandro Baricco, calls horizontalization. De Munck discusses pivotal examples of that change, composed in the last few decades: Cage’s 4”33’ and Richter’s Sleep. In the reception of both pieces, De Munck points out that it is not music’s potential to express a narrative that is in question, it is the relationship between the music and the listener that has changed directions. A “vertical” listening mode, where the audience is encouraged to interpret actively, is being replaced by a “horizontal” approach, where the creation of an aural landscape invites listeners to reside in, or experience the music, rather than actively listen to it. De Munck links this phenomenon to, amongst other things, the advancement of digital technologies and the resulting hyper-individualization of society.
Werner Wolf appraises the importance of repetition for music to exhibit some degree of narrativity in chapter 3. He holds that music has a very limited capacity to express a story, and this only in very specific cases when certain conditions are met. While he shows that music is not typically narrative, it is clear that there are still certain degrees of narrativity possible in music. This chapter zooms in on one of music’s more common strategies – large-scale, form-motivated repetition – as an inhibitor to the expression of narrative. Wolf analyzes Wagner’s overture to Tannhäuser as an example of music with formal repetition strategies with a very weak degree of narrativity. As such, Wolf underscores his hypothesis that music is not typically narrative, but instead it can be weakly narrativity-inducing. In these specific cases as with the overture to Tannhäuser, Wolf shows that it would be deficient to speak about the music in strictly formal or analytical terms. Rather, Wolf’s analysis of Wagner’s music is supportive of a general tendency in human meaning-making to revert to narrative structures. Indeed, to speak of music in terms of narrativity in such cases of weakly narrativity-inducing music ameliorates understanding the pieces.
A final chapter in the first section turns to Gilles Deleuze’s cinema studies for its theoretical basis. In chapter 4, Jimmie LeBlanc relates avant-garde music of the 1960s to modern French cinema in the sense that both exhibit qualities that cause listeners to receive them as “non-narrative”. By forwarding Deleuze’s concepts of the sensori-motor schema, time-image and falsifying narration, LeBlanc posits that minimalist music is not non-narrative; rather it has an alternative narrative potential. In first instance, LeBlanc lays the foundations of an archetypal narrative model and shows how this model relies on musical functionality. Next, he shows how the rupture of the sensori-motor schema in cinema is comparable to the rupture of musical functionality in minimalist music, which leads to the “false” sense that it is non-narrative. By choosing Glass’ Two Pages as an example, chapter 4 truly builds a bridge between the first section of mainly theoretical considerations and the second section of this book, which advances contemporary music as examples of various degrees of narrativity in music.
Indeed, in the second section, this book turns to music in practice, namely to music written for stage works. As mentioned, it is a collection of chapters that focus on contemporary pieces only – as is also the case for section 4 of this book. The peculiar appeal of a large amount of contemporary (classical) music pieces as experiences or as non-narrative works that require little mental effort to be understood, has already been signaled by De Munck and LeBlanc in section 1. This second section, then, is a continuation of an ongoing discussion of musical pieces that are not, as Wolf would say, “typically narrative”. Opera compositions by Johnson, Glass, and Berio, as well as a musical by Jackson are offered as examples of musical art works that, in spite of often being labelled as “non-narrative”, offer alternative types of narrative content or narrativity. Chapters 5 and 8 center on metareference with musical pieces that self-refer to their own narrative strategies or traditions. Chapter 6 focuses on the impact of the source text on music’s degree of narrativity in postminimalist opera, while chapter 7 foregrounds the relationships between different media in theatre in creating a disruptive narrative.
Silvia Álvarez Baamonde, in chapter 5, uncovers the metareferential narrative layer in Johnson’s minimalist operas. She first shows how the opera’s libretto and characters as well as the music’s minimalist repetition and self-reflexivity make it hard for the listener to conceive of a narrative plot. Next, she offers three alternative ways in which Johnson succeeds to tell a story by highlighting musical strategies that, at first hearing them, might seem like impediments to the music’s narrativity. Instead, they are strategies that ultimately circumvent the sense of non-narrativity in Johnson’s operas. First, Álvarez Baamonde considers Johnson’s establishment of sound as an independent narrative vector that trumps the language of the libretto. Second, she forwards Johnson’s paradigms that draw attention to the self-referential character of music as potentially narrative. Third, Johnson’s mathematical methods are shown to counterbalance the “hindrance” that minimalist composition techniques pose on the potential expression of narratives.
Moving to another composer of minimalist operas, chapter 6 deals with operas composed by Glass. In this chapter, Carolien Van Nerom foregrounds degrees of narrativity in Glass’ The Juniper Tree and Waiting for the Barbarians. Similarly to the previous chapter, minimalist music is exposed as carrying some degree of narrativity. There is, however, clearly a strain on narrativity because of the specific strategies implemented throughout minimalist music, such as heavily enforced repetition, use of minimal materials, and partial renunciation of classical music traditions. Van Nerom considers two factors that have an impact on the degree of narrativity of the music. First, the complexity of the literary source text plays a part in the perceived narrativity of these operas. The Juniper Tree is based on a more straightforward text – a fairy tale – that complies more with existing mental schema of narrative. Thus it is more narrative when related to Waiting for the Barbarians – a postcolonial allegory. Second, postminimalist techniques, including a return to more traditional and thus also more recognizable composition techniques, as well as quoting from existing classical music styles, lead to a higher degree of narrativity than purely minimalist composition strategies. Concerning Van Nerom’s case study, this means that The Juniper Tree is more explicitly postminimalist than Waiting for the Barbarians, which also leads to its higher degree of narrativity.
In chapter 7, Ruben Marzà uncovers narrativity in Berio’s music for theatre. Berio’s pieces of the late twentieth century are shown to be disruptive in terms of traditional narrativity, but nonetheless narrative to some degree. Specifically, Marzà looks at Outis in this chapter, which is considered as an example of “musical action” – a combination of musical, literary, and theatrical experimentalism that balances disruptive techniques with recognizability. Marzà looks at how Outis came to be, with inclusion of the most influential sources of its “musical action”. Most notably, he focuses on the essays by Propp (on the folk tale), and Umberto Eco (on the “open work”). The previous chapter took into consideration the musical structures of Glass’ operas themselves and listeners’ implicit views on these pieces’ narrativity. Instead, Marzà takes a different approach here and predominantly looks at the composer’s own writings related to narrativity. He also considers essays on Berio’s music that feature aspects of narrative or narrativity.
Moving away from classical music for the stage, chapter 8 shows an interesting case of narrativity in more popular music, namely the musical theatre play A Strange Loop by Jackson. As with Johnson’s operas (see chapter 5), this musical highlights and comments on its own narrative structures through metareferentiality. Jade Thomas clarifies, however, that A Strange Loop’s focus on narrative itself is of a different kind than in Johnson’s operas. Rather, Jackson’s musical is a contribution to queering the musical theater traditions and combines this particular angle with a comment on musical’s politics, particularly with regard to Black queerness. Thomas thus foregoes traditional views on lyric time as performative breaches of plot development, as is often the case in antinarrative or antiformalist approaches to experimental art works. Instead, Thomas relies on Tyler Bradway’s queer narrative theory to expose A Strange Loop’s lyric time in terms of its gradation in explicitness of metareference – specifically mise en abymes. These dramaturgical effects of narrative forms are seen by Thomas as communicating ideological messages. In particular, A Strange Loop comments on racial doubling and exposes the open-endedness of discussions about heteronormativity by means of narrative metareferentiality.
This book offers another perspective on music and its potential for narrative expression in section 3, namely of the listener/reader in reception. Often, the word “narrativize” is used in different ways in these chapters to reflect on how narrative structures are formed and/or projected by and/or on a text. Specifically, this section takes into consideration texted multimedia. Respectively, the chapters deal with classical music program leaflets and booklets, art exhibition audio guides, and radio plays. In one way or another, music always plays a big part in these art works’ emanation of narrativity or potential to trigger narrative readings.
Ivan Delazari, in chapter 9, sheds light on verbal texts and their contribution to the narrative potential of untexted music. Furthering his own theory of stimulacra, Delazari considers program notes as stimulating listeners’ interest in the music and simulating the compositions mentally. Specifically, he analyzes samples of program notes from the St. Petersburg Philharmonia library collection. The chapter shows how these act as prompts of narrativity in the sense that they direct the way in which listeners make sense of the music towards narrative structures of meaning-making. As such, program notes often help listeners to be heard and remembered in more detail. Delazari’s insightful analysis offers a look into the narrative strategies implemented by annotators. He concludes that the most common means of creating program notes that are stimulacra, are the usage of the narratives about both the composer’s life and the work itself, as well as presenting tonal musical techniques as narrative entities.
From textual program notes in chapter 9, section 3 turns to the intermedial genre of art exhibition audio guides in chapter 10. Jarmila Mildorf here displays what narrative functions the music itself has in these texts. She looks at the audio guide texts underscored by music for the exhibition “Beckmann & Amerika” (published in catalogue format with audio by Hatje Cantz). Mildorf shows that, even though music does not play a predominant role, it is purposefully deployed in intriguing narrative functions. In particular, the music frames, or thematically introduces the narrative expressed through the audio guide text. In addition, the music often serves as amplifier of the textual narrative or as a segue between different narrative parts. Mildorf thus concludes that, even though art exhibition audio guides are often considered to be pragmatic, the intricate layers of narrative functions taken up by artistic music ultimately reveal the narrative genre of audio guide texts to be aesthetically rooted as well.
In the final chapter of the third section, Pim Verhulst looks at radio plays, specifically Words and Music by Samuel Beckett. His analysis offers an entirely different stance as what has come before in the other chapters. Namely, chapter 11 illustrates how music can disrupt the narrativity expressed in the text of intermedial art works such as the radio play. Words and Music has been scored by several composers. One score in particular is the focus of Verhulst’s analysis, namely the one by S. Beckett’s cousin John Beckett. This score is of particular interest because S. Beckett himself was involved in the composition process of the music. Verhulst shows that the music is a parody on program music and its expression of narrative themes. In addition, the music is shown to “denarrativize” the text. This contribution to the book might seem like the odd one out because it focuses on the “non-narrativity” of music. However, this aspect of music ties in with the gradable character of narrativity – a characteristic foregrounded in every chapter in some way. Indeed, some musical pieces have a very low degree of narrativity to the point that they are “non-narrative” or even “denarrativizing”, whilst other have a very high degree of narrativity. In addition, the idea that music has the capacity to render the narrativity of a text moot in intermedial art works creates or even underlines the hypothesis that music can heighten the narrativity of a text as well.
Finally, section 4 explores the limits of music’s narrative potential by considering narrativity in compositions by minimalist composer Reich. The sense that minimalist music is “non-narrative” has been touched upon already in chapters 4, 5, and 6.3 In these cases, however, it has also become clear that minimalist music is not necessarily “non-narrative”. Rather, narrative elements are obscured, stretched, structural, or highly implicit. In short, Reich’s music, as well as many other minimalist compositions or experimental compositions of the late twentieth century, expresses narrative in unconventional or inconvenient ways. As such, the potential of Reich’s music to express a narrative is present, but it is situated at the outer limit of the scale of narrativity, verging on the absence of narrativity.
Minimalist music is known for its idiosyncratic interpretation of time. In chapter 12, Pwyll ap Siôn foregrounds a heretofore underdeveloped field of inquiry, namely narrative space in minimalist and postminimalist music. He specifically analyzes and compares tropes of narrative space in postminimal works by Michael Torke, Reich, and Glass. Music-analytical parameters, such as layers, textures, and structures are forwarded as useful tools to discuss narrative space in music. Specifically, three different case studies are presented to illustrate these concepts. In Adjustable Wrench, Torke is revealed to use a layering technique that creates gradual transitions between sections. In Reich’s Proverb, textural space controls composition techniques such as repetition and augmentation, which leads to an intensification of the music’s expression of a sense of perspective. Lastly, “Etude no. 20” by Glass carries out narrative space through music-structural aspects, namely through a network of interrelated paradigmatic sections.
In chapter 13, John Pymm answers Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s question to Reich as to how his “music tells stories”. Reich composed music for the experimental film Plastic Haircut. The composition is one of his earliest compositions and, of Reich’s well-known oeuvre, one of the lesser-known pieces that has been scarcely written about. In this chapter, Pymm explores the origins of Reich’s sound collage. It is also deconstructed – Pymm provides a transcript of the audio snippets Reich uses in the collage – and analyzed in terms of its narrativity. This chapter is thus a strong contribution to what the limits of musical narrativity might be as it shows the way Reich “inconveniently” tells stories through his music, even though Reich himself proclaims that his music “does not tell stories”. By focusing on a little-known, early piece, Pymm here reveals the foundations of Reich’s seminal composition technique, namely the use of speech snippets, which is increasingly used in later works.
The final chapter (14) truly explores the limits of narrativity in a purely rhythmic piece by Reich, Music for Pieces of Wood. Martin Ross employs indexical processes in his narrative interpretation of Reich’s piece with a strong focus on pattern development. He uncovers the musical gestures created by structuring the musical patterns in such a way that the former directs the listener to the latter. As such, a narrative trajectory can be discerned where each section reaches its ultimate built-up pattern, which Ross calls plentitude. Considering narrative as functioning on a fulfillment-based teleology, Ross argues that these musical gestures can be seen as dialogic interactions. As such, formal markers of plentitude can be distinguished when the claves in Music for Pieces of Wood exhaust their pattern functions. Ross adds a metonymical narrative layer by drawing attention to Reich’s use of African compositional techniques. Reich’s music is thus shown to incite different cultural perspectives in the listener, which also affects the musical gestures in Reich’s music and how they are interpreted.
References
Maus, Fred Everett. “Music as Narrative.” Indiana Theory Review, vol. 12, 1991, pp. 1–34, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24045349.
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. “Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?” Translated by Katharine Ellis, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, vol. 115, no. 2, 1990, pp. 240–257, https://www.jstor.org/stable/766438.
Wolf, Werner. “Lyric Poetry and Narrativity: A Critical Evaluation, and the Need for “Lyrology”.” Narrative, vol. 28, no. 2, 2020, pp. 143–173, https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2020.0008.
Wolf, Werner. “Transmedial Narratology: Theoretical Foundations and Some Applications (Fiction, Single Pictures, Instrumental Music.” Narrative, vol. 25, no. 3, Oct. 2017, pp. 256–285, https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2017.0015.
Schoenberg’s attention to a certain logic to a sequence of musical blocks is of particular importance to this volume. His dodecaphonic compositions after all eschewed the existing (narrative) structures of the Romantic period as well as the Classical period. This goes to show that even music that is composed with the intent of being non-narrative or non-extra-referential, has at least the potential to evoke meaning – even narrative meaning.
This is an issue that Werner Wolf, amongst others, particularly attends to in his chapter (3).
Note that Berio’s music is also considered to have a strained relationship with narrative in chapter 7. His music, however, is not minimalist, but does fall under the overarching category of experimental, late-twentieth-century music.