Musical Morphology

Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Frank Cox, and Wolfram Schurig (eds)

Hofheim: Wolke Verlag, 2004

Reviewed by Thomas Reiner

Musical Morphology is the 2nd volume in the series New Music Aesthetics in the 21st Century.  It comprises 13 chapters by 12 composers from Europe and the United States and is edited by Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Frank Cox, and Wolfram Schurig.  As one would expect with a multi-authored book, the topic of musical morphology is addressed from a range of different perspectives, but there are two things that most contributions have in common. Firstly, there is a clear understanding that the morphology of sound, that is, the study of musical shapes, has become a major compositional concern—a concern that has subsumed (or in some cases replaced) the preoccupation with pitch and pitch structure in Western art music. Secondly, the authors have approached the topic through their own compositional work, which means that many of the chapters provide a deep analytical insight into actual compositions.

In the first chapter, which could have served the purpose of an introduction to musical morphology, and which could have alerted the reader of the diversity of approaches covered in the text, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf presents instead an introduction to musical deconstruction. He argues that musical deconstruction (“something that simultaneously destroys and constructs”), rather than being associated with postmodern music, allows for the return of authentic modern composition. Mahnkopf’s second chapter addresses the issue of musical morphology more directly in that he identifies deconstructive approaches to musical morphology, for example the use of performance gestures that are more significant visually than sonically. He also makes the interesting point that musical morphology is “the legacy of motivic-thematic thinking.”

Sidney Corbett, who has probably written the book’s most lucid chapter, begins with a brief discussion of amorphous (formless) music in the work of John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Giacinto Scelsi. He relates morphology to the formation of objects and systems before he arrives at a more personal and composition-related understanding in which musical morphology is concerned with “the process of reduction to that which is essential and with the incumbent wrestling with the unnameable and ungraspable.” For the remainder of the chapter, Corbett presents a number of very instructive approaches to text in his vocal music, demonstrating how different text sources are suggestive of distinct compositional techniques, resulting in different positions on the scale between amorphous music and “music with clearly defined morphological contours.”

Chris Mercer’s well-researched chapter discusses musically meaningful sonic events with reference to Cage’s bridge between the appreciation of naturally occurring sounds and composed or improvised sounds. He also appropriately mentions the work of spectro-morphologists Denis Smalley and Trevor Wishart, as well as Pierre Schaeffer’s objets sonores, and Helmut Lachemann’s musique concrète instrumentale.

Frank Cox explores rhythmic morphology in relation to his composition Doubles—a work that like many of the other works discussed in this book seems primarily concerned with formal approaches to music composition (strict serial counterpoint, taleas (rhythmic cycles), and proportional temporal relationships). In his analysis, however, Cox also takes into account the aesthetic experience, including a reference to structural elements of the work that will only be revealed to what he calls “the ideal listener.” Although Cox refers to himself as a “hard-line high-Modernist,” it is pleasing to see that he nevertheless acknowledges the work of Jonathan Kramer, who not only conceived of himself as a postmodern composer, but has also written some of the most defining theoretical work on the topic of postmodernism in music.

Steven Kazuo Takasugi’s approach is informed by the observation that the morphology of sounds is governed to some extend by the space in which sonic events occur. He discusses how he combines samples of sounds of musical instruments that were recorded in venues with different acoustics to give the sonic illusion of what he calls a multi-chambered container. In a similar fashion, Aaron Cassidy argues that a morphological unit in music is not just defined by its sound but also by a performer’s physical gesture. In other words, the body movement with which a sound is created largely determines that sound’s morphological identity. These ideas are also reflected in Wieland Hoban’s chapter, which considers not only the shape of a sound, but also its production—“its shape-ing.”

Overall, the book provides challenging reading for composition students at postgraduate levels and would be particularly useful for composers with an interest in the complexity movement and in formalist approaches to composition. However, the inclusion of a CD with recordings of the works discussed would have made the text much more accessible. One minor caution: under the surface of the book lingers a paradoxical argument, namely that musical modernism has been able to survive (or to return) by adopting some of the major findings of postmodern thought.

Music Forum Vol 11 No 4