Twelve-tone game

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The twelve-tone playing is a philosophical and musical oeuvre that was developed by Josef Matthias Hauer from the late 1930s. The last creative period in Hauer's work is marked by it.

definition

The "twelve-tone game" is a spiritual musical worldview system in which all the sciences, philosophies and religions around "twelve-tone music" are perfectly harmonized. The term "twelve-tone music" appears to be exaggerated here and becomes both a metaphor and the purest manifestation for cosmic harmonic laws (in the sense of Pythagoreanism and Neoplatonism ) which regulate the structure of the world. In the same way, “twelve-tone music” is also understood as a spiritual practice of human beings to restore their own inner harmony with the orderly world structure. In this sense, the "twelve-tone game" can be seen as a modern form of the Boethian modelMusica Mundana - Musica Humana - Musica Instrumentalis .

Twelve-tone music is the greatest art, music is the highest science, mathematics.
Twelve-tone music is the eternal, unchangeable script and language of the universe.
Twelve-tone music is the revelation of the world order, the harmony of the spheres
Twelve-tone music is truth, reality, perfection.

The twelve -tone piece of music, also called twelve -tone play, appears as a real-sounding image of this philosophical view of absolute music , whose strict construction rules give no room for artistic design ideas , but only allow certain musical development impulses. The spiritual background for the piece of music twelve-tone play lies in tracing the “cosmic laws” that can come into play in it. Writing or playing a twelve-tone game thus ideally becomes an eminently meditative , even almost theurgic practice.

The twelve-tone playing was developed without any influence on the part of theosophy and anthroposophy . However, students of Hauer, such as Arnold Keyserling , subsequently made references and emphasized the spiritual proximity of twelve-tone playing to these disciplines. Similarly striking is the proximity of the twelve-tone game to the idea of ​​the Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse , so that it was speculated whether Hauer could not have been a model for the Joculator Basiliensis in Hesse's novel.

Historical development

In the course of his philosophical development, which was strongly influenced by the philosophy of Taoism , Hauer increasingly went over in the course of his second creative period (1919-1940) to fundamentally rejecting the compositional design of music by a composer, since he considered the musical form he perceived as transpersonal and cosmic Attached a higher value to regularities than the creative will of every composer. The sacred laws of music, which - in the sense of the Pythagorean harmony  - also reveal the laws behind the physical structure of the world and the entire world order, can only be represented in all clarity and made tangible for the listener, if the "will" is completely eliminated . This radical rejection of even the slightest approach to Expressionism , along with the indexing of Hauer's music as " degenerate " by National Socialism, contributed greatly to Hauer's artistic isolation. From 1937 onwards, Hauer began to write down his philosophical ideas in the form of “Manifestos” and “Cosmic Testaments” in a highly compressed form. To this day, these texts, some of which are difficult to understand, are the main source of Hauer's twelve-tone playing philosophy, alongside student notes and largely unprinted letters from the estate.

The twelve-tone game sees itself as much more than a piece of music, which itself is only an external means. Rather, it corresponds to a universal worldview system and a mystical- meta-religious practice. A distinction must therefore be made between a twelve-tone game as a piece of music and a twelve-tone game as a universalistic system of worldview. Hauer attached such great importance to the twelve-tone playing that in his eyes all his previous compositions became meaningless:

“ I reject all of my modern musicians' ideas, compositions that have arisen on the way to knowledge, because I only want great, perfect, cosmic, eternally immutable absolute music, the real harmony of the spheres, the most sacred, spiritual, most valuable in the world, the heart and Understanding satisfactory revelation of the world order as religion, the original language, the direct word of God that appeals to reason, touches the mind, the art of all arts, the science of all sciences, in short, because I only recognize twelve-tone playing. "

In contrast to the great importance that twelve-tone playing had for Hauer, there is the relative indifference with which he treated his musical pieces twelve-tone playing . Accordingly, he initially numbered them and later only added the date. Contrary to the popular assumption that Hauer wrote several thousand twelve-tone plays between 1940 and 1959 , only around 400 twelve-tone plays have survived. After Hauer's death (1959), twelve-tone playing was continued by some students, such as Johannes Schwieger and Nikolaus Fheodoroff . Above all, however, Victor Sokolowski endeavored his entire life to work up the twelve-tone game in order to make it easier to teach and learn. So he set up a "Hauer-Studio" and from 1976 to 1982 directed courses in twelve-tone playing and tropical studies at the Vienna University of Music . After Sokolowski's death, his student Robert Michael Weiss took over the management of the "Hauer Studio".

regulate

“Twelve-tone music is a harmless game with the twelve tempered tones of the chromatic scale. There are also “rules of the game”. They depend on the matter itself. When the twelve tones sound one after the other, in any order, each of the same length and strength, they result in a melodic and harmoniously closed circle. [...] This music makes music entirely by itself, without any special or violent involvement of the "composer". The process is as follows: First the twelve notes of the rows are brought into harmony (preferably four-part), and only then do the melodies with their varied rhythms and polyphonic juxtapositions unfold. "

Example: Schematic harmonization of a twelve-tone row

The construction rules for a piece of music twelve-tone play are so strict that, starting from a twelve-tone row, there are only certain "possible solutions". The row, which is expanded into a " harmonic band " according to a strict procedure , is only given slight impulses for development and movement, after which the piece of music develops almost automatically. Accordingly, in this context, Hauer no longer speaks of “composing”, but of “playing” and “putting together”.

The basically quite simple construction scheme in twelve-tone playing is based on any twelve-tone row that is harmonized in four parts using a schematic process ([3-3-3-3]) (see example). The main melodic line is then created by uniformly controlling the row tones only via the individual chord tones and with constant time values ​​for each row chord: In the example for the melody line, each chord is assigned a half measure. During this time, the melody line moves in even note values ​​(half, quarter, quarter triplet or eighth note) into the pitch in which the next row note is. Only the notes present in the current chord will sound.

Example: creating a melody line

A homophonic accompaniment can now be added to this melody line by playing the chords evenly, or polyphonic lines can be created that are based on the shape of this first melody: for example by reversing the direction of movement or by "filling in" the musical event with those chord tones that the main line has so far left out. The rules of the game are fundamentally variable, but the requirement of automatism and the derivation of the musical course from what is already there, which itself is derived from the series, remains in principle unalterable.

An increase in the available material can be achieved in that, for example, the lowest notes of the twelve chords are octaved upwards. This also changes the shape of the melody. On the other hand, after re-octaving the lowest notes twice, it would be conceivable to reverse the chord progression. The chord cancer (also: "Wendetonreihe") does not result in melodic cancer guidance, but in a completely different melody. Then one could again undertake an octave three times, this time perhaps from top to bottom. Finally, one could let the piece end in its opening tone , the major major seventh chord that Hauer felt was stable .

Original quotes

"Twelve-tone music is not art in the classical, romantic or modern sense, but a cosmic game with the twelve tempered semitones."

“The world builder has composed absolute music once and for all from eternity, perfectly perfected it. We human beings strive to learn this divine language in the course of a cultural eon. The twelve-tone playing regulates the physiological requirements of pure intuition, which alone makes it possible to hear the eternal, unchangeable absolute music as a revelation of the world order. The absolute, the cosmic music allows the deepest insight into world events. The tones with their overtones are suns with their planets. The solar systems 'temper' each other, their tensions are inevitably arranged in harmony with the spheres . The language of the Creator is the art of arts, the science of sciences, the most sacred, most spiritual, most valuable in the world, the music, but is to be distinguished from mere musicians ideas of tone painting and symphonic poem. "

“'Understanding' the music is real 'reason', 'listening' to the eternal laws, commandments, 'listening' to the ethical sense, as it is in the ancient Chinese wisdom book of changes, I Ching , in the circuit of the practical , dramatic life is interpreted into it. [...] The musical-symbolic, the purely intuitive, must have the highest rank in the spiritual life of man because it lives in closest contact with truth and reality, with the 'spiritual realities', with the 'totality' in order to recognize the Necessary leads to the mastery of the possibilities, to an all-round worldview and grasp of life, while the conceptual-verbal, the ideological conceives one-sided ideas, ideals that necessarily diverge with the reality of world events, and therefore only too easily 'tendentious' in gossip, lies , Hypocrisy degenerates. Music cannot lie, cannot pretend, and it will redeem people from the forced 'authority of the word'. "

“In order to bring the people on the right path, unchanging music is the most important thing. To explore the root and to recognize the changeable is the task of music. [...] Twelve-tone rows are grains of seeds from which the precisely determined music of the spheres, predetermined by nature, grows. "

literature

  • Nikolaus Fheodoroff u. a .: Josef Matthias Hauer: Writings, manifestos, documents . DVD-ROM, Lafite, Vienna 2007.
  • Johann Sengstschmid: Between trope and twelve-tone play. JM Hauer's twelve-tone technique in selected examples . Gustav Bosse, Regensburg 1980.
  • Othmar Steinbauer: Josef Matthias Hauer's twelve-tone playing . In: Österreichische Musikzeitschrift , 3/1963.
  • Robert Michael Weiß: The twelve-tone play by Josef Matthias Hauer . Housework at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, 1980.
  • Robert Michael Weiß (Ed.): 80 years of twelve-tone music . Exhibition catalog. Wiener Neustadt 1999.
  • Robert Michael Weiß: From composing to playing: Josef Matthias Hauer . In: Christian Meyer (Ed.): Arnold Schönbergs Schachzüge. Dodecaphony and game constructions . In: Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center , 7/2005, pp. 231-262.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Josef Matthias Hauer: Manifesto for his op.74 (1937)
  2. ↑ Keyserlings on Hauer in his school of the wheel : "Music is the philosophical primal knowledge" (external) and "History of the styles of thinking" (external).
  3. ↑ Joachim Diederichs : Das Glasperlenspiel - With open cards. Universalism from “Castalia” or from Vienna? In: Österreichische Musikzeitschrift , 6/2004, pp. 26–29.
  4. ↑ Hauer's estate is in the music collection of the Austrian National Library, Vienna
  5. ↑ This is also the reason why Hauer assigned such a minor role to his own twelve-tone music pieces.
  6. ↑ To make it easier to distinguish between them, the different spellings twelve-tone play (complete work, worldview system) and twelve-tone play (piece of music) are used consistently in this article .
  7. ↑ Josef Matthias Hauer: Manifesto of March 16, 1947.
  8. ↑ Nikolaus Fheodoroff u. a .: Josef Matthias Hauer: Writings, manifestos, documents , DVD-ROM, Lafite, Vienna 2007, p. 495.
  9. ↑ Josef Matthias Hauer: Manifesto "For a concert program for explanation" in the appendix to op. 75, 1938.
  10. ^ "Putting together a twelve-tone game is fun for children." Josef Matthias Hauer: Manifesto of March 25, 1956.
  11. ↑ In fact, even Hauer has deliberately deviated from the regularity again and again and deliberately scattered "errors" at certain points.
  12. ↑ Josef Matthias Hauer: Manifesto of December 24, 1946.
  13. ^ Josef Matthias Hauer: Manifesto of May 18, 1950.
  14. ^ Josef Matthias Hauer: Testament of noble art and science . Manuscript, 1941.
  15. ^ Josef Matthias Hauer: printed manifesto of July 8, 1957.