Conceiving Musical Transdialection

Abstract

While it may not surprise you to learn that the first bit of music above is the opening of a chorale prelude by Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach, who would guess that the second bit is a transcription of it? But it is—it is a transcription by the contemporary British composer Michael Finnissy.1 The two passages look very different from one another, even to those of us who do not read music. And hearing the pieces will do little to dispel the shock, for here we have bits of music that seem worlds apart in their melodic makeup, harmonic content, and rhythmic complexity. It is a far cry from Bach's steady tonality to Finnissy's floating, tangled lines—a sonic texture in which, as one critic put it, real music is “mostly thrown into a seething undigested, unimagined heap of dyslexic clusters of multiple key and timeproportions, as intricately enmeshed in the fetishism of the written notation as those with notes derived from numbermagic.”2 We are more sympathetic to Finnissy's music. But still, how can one maintain that his music transcribes Bach's? What conceptual undertaking and what arthistorical trajectory can produce such a relationship without straining the term ‘transcription’ past its useful limits? In this article, we illuminate the wandering notion of musical transcription by reflecting on the various ways ‘transcription’ and its cognates have been used in musical discourse (Section I). At root, musical transcription aims at preservation, though as we bring out, exactly which musical ingredients are preserved across which transformations varies from transcriptional project to transcriptional project. In fact, our primary goal is to uncover, articulate, and endorse one very interesting such project—we call it “transdialection”—in which a transcriber reexpresses a work in a different musical dialect. We sketch the emergence of this fruitful musical undertaking by examining some notable twentiethcentury Bach transcriptions, including Finnissy's, which became increasingly loose through the decades (Section II). We sharpen our understanding of this new species of transcription by exploring an analogy with poetic translation (Section III) and by responding to several objections (Section IV). We conclude, among other things, that Finnissy's transcription is justifiably and usefully so called. And we suggest ways in which our notion of transdialection might be extended to illuminate other artistic practices (Section V). The word ‘transcription’ is used in several ways in musical discourse. It is worth introducing some terminology so that we can set apart the notion—“musical transcription”—that we aim to illuminate as well as to show how, at root, transcriptions in all senses aim at preservation. “Notational transcription” is the process of renotating a musical work—that is, of notating in a new form a previously notated work, as when a piece written in tablature is transcribed to staff notation, or when a trumpet part in C is transcribed to be played on a trumpet in Bflat. Notational transcription aims to preserve a musical work across some difference in notational form, and it can be carried off without actually listening to the work itself. “Ethnomusicological transcription” is the process of writing down or notating music that is heard in live performance or on a recording. This might be done in an effort to preserve the music of some culture or musician for enthnomusicological study; but it might also be done for musical education, as when an aspiring jazz musician transcribes an improvised solo from a recording.3 While notational transcription aims to preserve music across differences in notation, and ethnomusicological transcription aims to preserve music in a notated form, what we call “musical transcription” aims to preserve the expressive content of a musical work across some difference in musical context. Determining just what differences can legitimately engage a project of musical transcription is the central concern of this article. But the paradigm case is the attempt to preserve a musical work across a difference in performancemeans, as when Ferruccio Busoni reset for the piano certain chorale preludes that Bach composed for the church organ. (We discuss this very example in the next section.) ‘Musical transcription’ is an apt term for a distinct and distinguished musical undertaking that has engaged many composers and arrangers. But the label should not imply, of course, that notational and ethnomusicological transcriptions have nothing musical about them. And it should not imply that all musical transcriptions go by this label. The musical undertaking we have in mind can go by other names—‘arrangement,’‘setting,’‘orchestration,’ and ‘reduction’ being the most common in English.4 Musical transcription is a highly circumscribed form of musical borrowing—a sort of limit case, in fact. J. Peter Burkholder usefully defines musical borrowing as the taking of “something from an existing piece of music and using it in a new piece.” And he adds that this “something may be anything, from a melody to a structural plan. But it must be sufficiently individual to be identifiable as coming from this particular work, rather than from a repertoire in general.”5 The musical transcriber can be regarded as a musical borrower who treats a specific, preexisting work (or a clearly delimited section of it, such as a movement) in its entirety and unembedded in a longer work.6 In order to count as a transcription, this treatment must satisfy two additional constraints. First, the transcriber aims, in ways we will explore, to preserve this work's expressive content across some musical difference, and not merely to use it as material in some new, derivative work. Second, she succeeds in carrying out this preservation.7 Musical transcription has the conservative goal of reexpressing the content of the target work in a new musical context. And indeed, the phrase ‘reexpression’ suggests how musical transcription is, paradoxically, a sort of maximal form of musical borrowing, and thereby nearly not a case at all. In musical transcription the original work is not “borrowed” in the way one might borrow a hammer and some nails in order to build a shed or a theme in order to compose a set of variations upon it. The musical transcriber aims not to create an entirely new (even if derivative) musical work, but rather, as it were, to redeploy or revoice the original work in a new context.8 This explains some of our uneven descriptive tendencies. We do not know, for example, whether to count a transcription as a new (even if maximally derivative) work, and we do not know whether to count the transcriber as a cocomposer of the result. This seems to us to be largely a conventional matter of labeling: whether we give the transcriber primary billing or list him more secondarily as the “arranger” is largely a matter of marketing. This conventionalism would follow from the view that the individuation of musical works is subject to indeterminacy.9 However, our treatment of musical transcription does not depend upon this or any other view about the contested individuation of musical works. We rely instead upon a sufficiently robust notion of expressive content, which we will defend in Section IV. Sameness of expressive content is clearly necessary for work identity, but we are agnostic here about whether it is also sufficient. Musical transcription is not an automatic or merely technical process. Transcriptions can be highly creative, as we will show in the next section, though the transcriber's creativity is balanced against—or better, played out within—a guiding and constraining fidelity to the original work. In negotiating this tension between authenticity and originality, the transcriber is, as Stephen Davies notes, like the performer: a good transcription, like a good performance, is faithful to the parent work while also providing the audience with something original. And like an interesting performance, what a good transcription often provides is some sort of insight into the parent work: A transcription cannot help but comment on the original in representing the musical contents of the original, so a transcription invites reconsideration of and comparison with the original. Rather than being valued merely for making the musical contents of their models more accessible, transcriptions are also valued for enriching our understanding and appreciation of the merits (and demerits) of their models.10 Expanding on Davies's observation, Paul Thom has recently argued that, in this capacity, transcription can be viewed as a form of noncritical interpretation: while the music critic might say something about a work's meaning or content, the transcriber (and also the performer and the composer of variations on a theme) can show it.11 This interpretative function has, we submit, become more prominent as the invention and wide distribution of musical recordings have increasingly obviated the transcriber's traditional task of simply making a work more widely accessible, by transcribing it for performance on the living room piano, for example.12 (A similar shift occurred in a in with the of This shift in function the in the of a new, form of We discuss in some twentiethcentury transcriptions of works by transcriptions, which the what we as a emergence of musical from a more traditional form of musical In Busoni to the original music of Bach's to the transcription a of more or piano transcriptions that well and widely by the But even in his transcription, Busoni some of his In his Bach the to is, to use a of the his transcription with that are not in Bach's the of the piano in an effort to the of the organ. Bach's original the to read of music at one for the one for the and one for the by the It would have been an matter for Busoni to the of the music into a for piano written on two However, the of the original, a with a for the a for the and a that in Busoni the of Bach's chorale and of the on which it is though Busoni has not the harmonic or melodic content of Bach's original, he has to some musical in order to preserve across the of and hearing Bach's work. transcription of Bach's from The Musical from more traditional conceptual is not to Bach's notes or are all it is to Bach's into melody among several different is or example, a would the first notes of Bach's But in transcription, the first notes are played by the the next two by the two by the two by the with into by the and so transcription is Bach's original are all and but is by an and many that are not heard as such in the of Bach's original. of music is of similar his transcription is a of while and often twentiethcentury seem to into those with works will the as a faithful of Bach's work, though its the way transcriptions that are even transcription of Bach's variations on an from the faithful transcriptions all of Bach's notes and but adds some that are all his additional notes are not to Bach's original work but also to Bach's musical In fact, create that are The example in of Bach's adds notes that Bach's chorale but at an above and that a to Bach's original. The form new harmonic such as that are from Bach's the do not to the harmonic of Bach's original. The by the are longer but create a of the and which are of as In this the are to but on not here the transcriber's traditional goal of as faithful as to the musical notes and of the original while to differences in performance instead to preserve the work's expressive content across a difference in musical he in his But as we it, does in his work, build an entirely new musical upon music he has from he provides a musical of harmonic and which he to Bach's original music. does not say something he in his way what Bach previously in of the original in the process. The we just the The original chorale melody in Bach's work is written as an above and by other of transcription Bach's part in two he the for which he to the chorale melody in This is it is the that and an of Bach's original we transcription as a example of what we call transcription” more The goal in this species of transcription is to revoice or the original not (or not across a difference in performance but across a difference in musical dialect. in the as the piano to to an original work by for solo piano of the from Bach's in for the original on two texture and adds a to Bach's original which and as a texture is in or his of can be to the texture of Bach's original. transcription by to Bach's a of the theme into a that is to Bach's this twentiethcentury harmonic on Bach's one might whether treatment is a transcription of Bach or whether it into a of musical borrowing composers and jazz often borrow a melody from a preexisting piece and it without the of reexpressing the work. In such the melody is merely a But treatment a a it the of Bach's original. It does so by an that is in with musical all of his reexpresses Bach's original in an twentiethcentury We to the example that our article, Michael Finnissy's transcription of Bach's so Bach may have the piece to a his of and a conceptual at by that and a good for good in Finnissy's transcription the Bach original is increasingly to and the many Finnissy's piece a through that Bach's from to but in all the and of the are adds some including other from Bach's original, and from Finnissy's use of Bach's chorale prelude seems a to the traditional notion of But should we to Finnissy's project as It seems to us that, the musical Finnissy's aim is to faithful to Bach's original in Finnissy's twentiethcentury musical And this can be though so more than a listening (or a at the We will of and complexity. Bach's or performance the piece is its is any or shift in The can be of Finnissy's his very while his above the of Bach's and their maintain a of The Bach and the also musical a of that to a works its way to to In the of various the of any Finnissy's transcription a similar with to his contemporary musical as Bach's to Bach's is a work of written in this chorale prelude at the of a that out of It such as of the chorale of certain in and a of is by an of But at the of been by a by composers such as Bach's Johann Bach in which a melody with a the The of Finnissy's multiple and of one as in just the way that Bach's chorale prelude might have his a of composers music with Finnissy's of rhythmic complexity. And the and from the and more musical of and works. The work's opening has common and a of not often of or in the musical the musical differences we at the But to out what we as an expressive the piece at of Bach's but is as a context. The of the original are through of any of Finnissy's goal of tonality and might seem to with the of the But how of his of from an transcription by the harmonic the original a of of the in the from a at harmonic as an attempt to the original and more as a way of the original in Finnissy's musical The to is that Finnissy's musical in the the and the of expressive not entirely to contemporary the of the music not some but rather the of the musical which to Bach's work. Finnissy's treatment of Bach is so of the insight it into Bach's original. The in Finnissy's transcription Bach's but Finnissy's us to the of the we are in the as we have Finnissy's attempt to and the of Bach's original, in seems to us to be a more of the new form of the transcription in and by and we are a new musical to from a more form of musical are several this may have when it is the increasingly for new artistic But is also the shift in function in Section we can a of the original with a of the the simply to the work longer of a for This would to with different transformations as a way of carrying out the function of providing new interpretative But the shift also a different of transdialection can to the original work to an audience musical has different expressive we may have recordings to us and our of musical may be just as as any of the expressive content of Bach's works may be for us to of a difference in the way musical expressive this an analogy with poetic analogy the word on its to music that is very to us will be we to the different musical in which it is and However, we can at some central expressive of most music that our those by music can to Bach with a of musical in most the musical we have is usefully of as musical not the is, of course, and It is for this that we have a term that has been used to to the translation of In fact, the term is as as the it And for good we it sufficiently and to learn of a different so that we can read an original work as we often learn a in the very process of to a written it. But this is not in it might be to the original to those who cannot or will not a and we might also that so on the original. And so are for example, the and even But musical transdialection also in fidelity to notes and for of a And translation of any is certain have the goal of reexpressing a piece of not merely in the of a different but in the of a different the many a to is one of is the translation to simply to the original to who cannot the original or might it also to the original some other A translation which on the original by to the one of its or by reexpressing it contemporary is more to the when the target audience at some of the original Peter notes in the to his of the to to have as their target other and of who the original and who would the aim for such who his of he on the that is of a piece with and that if he and an are such as he would have the in the he a of he has that the the meaning but the and that in is of have been with and to the often this has been a for the is something that will more or to and have to and to do what might have done if writing their and in course, and just one that might a project of poetic We might the of such on a for a it is of this that will be of any while other may call for a more In any case, we it useful to musical transdialection as an and musical to the of translation in which and have We sharpen the notion of transdialection by responding to a of about its and a second about its The first is the notion of transdialection that is something that can be or But what is this It is of course, the of notes and that are it is that the transcriber The for the in the original We have any about work and have instead about the of a work's But what is this And how is it music like a we might to some sort of for But our of musical and is to the and conventional of and musical culture that a piece of music to its expressive This and most to is that this to any notion of transcription, including the more traditional do most of traditional transcription about expressive content and its but the traditional transcriber is also clearly in his by a of something more we than the notes of the original. the first our notion of transdialection as it the of the of transcription it would be to say we do not have a of expressive content to But in fact, we do not we one for our We are sympathetic to the that this term (and this its with the aims and of our musical and discourse. And the notion of expressive content may not at entirely this is of a work's content from (and is a sort of that and music and engage it is like our of with And live to it may be that this is it to at something and while it is actually in a more and way by clusters of a work's this is might be in and this would such as that of a musical transcription that are upon it. In the case of musical the is that the transcriber has a musical function that a musical in the of the original and a musical in the new that to the expressive In of course, the not to the individuation of musical of expressive indeed, of musical is through with and And this among other things, the we have in whether certain musical count as or as some sort of form of musical borrowing on the way to musical or But even if the notion of expressive conten

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