Karolina Dąbek

The Ideas of Determinism and Indeterminism in Works of Iannis Xenakis and György Ligeti on an Example of Pithoprakta and Clocks and Clouds

The issue of determinism and indeterminism became essential in the music of the second half of the 20th century. It occupied a special place in artistic output of two avant-garde composers: Iannis Xenakis and György Ligeti. In both cases, the ideas of determinism and indeterminism are connected with their music: with Pithoprakta (written by Xenakis in 1955–1956) and with Clocks and Clouds (written by Ligeti in 1972). The following article presents some aspects of their artistic approach as well as an analysis and interpretation of the compositions. Xenakis proposed his own way of thinking about indeterminism in music linked to the “stochastic music”, and Pithoprakta is the first example of this compositional technique. Meanwhile, Ligeti’s main inspiration when composing Clocks and Clouds was the essay Of Clouds and Clocks written in 1965 by Karl Popper and published in 1972 (in his book Objective Knowledge). The Austrian-British philosopher used this metaphor to describe different physical phenomena which are  more or less predictable. Pithoprakta as well as Clocks and Clouds represent specific kind of music called “sound-mass music”. In both of them some distinctive textural and timbral structures may be pointed out: in the first work, they can be described as figures (“galaxy” and “beam”), and in the second one – as bands (“clocks” and “clouds”).

The Metaphor of Movement and Its Materialisation in the Spatial Music of the 20th Century

The 8th Sonnet by William Shakespeare in Songs of Kabalevsky, Stravinsky and Mykietyn

The 8th Sonnet Music to hear by William Shakespeare belongs to so-called “procreation sonnets”, where the poet insists on a young man to marry and have children. It should grant immortality to him and his youthful beauty to the world. The poem, written in iambic pentameter, reveals the structure of an Elizabethan sonnet. The main emphasis is laid on the last stanza which does not serve anymore as a protective advice, but as a warning. The syndrome of the 8th Sonnet, understood after Mieczysław Tomaszewski as a “group of constitutive features” is formed here by the following categories: musicality, metaphorism, oxymoronity, rhetoric and erotic ambivalence. The poem has found its musical interpretations in the output of the 20th century composers: Dmitry Kabalevsky, Igor Stravinsky and Paweł Mykietyn. All songs are both musically and expressively distant from each other, nevertheless each of them reflects an element of the Sonnet’s character. Metaphorism and oxymoronity appear in music of every composer in a very individualized way, which is proved by the analysis of relations between text and music. The sphere of erotic ambivalence is present only in Mykietyn’s song, intended for a male soprano. In a lyrical song by Kabalevsky the musicality and rhetoric of the poem are especially underlined. In a constructivist approach of Stravinsky (dodecaphony) and Mykietyn (circle canon) analogies to an intellectual game and a net of complex literary metaphors in the poem can be found.

(tłum. Iwona Sowińska-Fruhtrunk)

Sonnet VIII Music to hear by William Shakespeare belongs to so-called “procreation sonnets”, where the poet insists on a young man to marry and have children. It should grant immortality to him and his youthful beauty to the world. The poem, written in iambic pentameter, reveals the structure of an Elizabethan sonnet. The main emphasis is laid on the last stanza which does not serve anymore as a protective advice, but as a warning. The syndrome of Sonnet VIII, understood after Mieczysław Tomaszewski as a “group of constitutive features” is formed here by the following categories: musicality, metaphorism, oxymoronity, rhetoric and erotic ambivalence. The poem has found its musical interpretations in the output of the 20th century composers: Dmitry Kabalevsky, Igor Stravinsky and Paweł Mykietyn. All songs are both musically and expressively distant from each other, nevertheless each of them reflects an element of the Sonnet’s character. Metaphorism and oxymoronity appear in music of every composer in a very individualized way, which is proved by the analysis of relations between text and music. The sphere of erotic ambivalence is present only in Mykietyn’s song, intended for a male soprano. In a lyrical song by Kabalevsky the musicality and rhetoric of the poem are especially underlined. In a constructivist approach of Stravinsky (dodecaphony) and Mykietyn

The article concerns the issue of experiencing spatial music. While discussing movement and space in music, Bohdan Pociej draws attention to two types of spatiality in a music work: the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ spatiality. The former derives from the nature of the sound material and the interaction of elements; it remains in the sphere of impressions and metaphors. The latter involves the physical parameters and actual performance of the piece. I demonstrate that the works of twentieth-century composers tend to break through from the internal space, transforming it into the external one. The issue of the body as a centre is present in the works of Edmund Husserl, Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Hall, and others. The metaphor of movement in language and music has become the subject of research in cognitive science. In the context of spatial music, the metaphorical level coexists with the physical level. During the performance of a composition, listeners may enter into various relations with sound sources but always locate them with reference to their own bodies, which they treat as the centre. The two basic types of external spatiality – the perspective of the observer and the perspective of the participant – correspond to the two ways of understanding the metaphor of movement in music (internal spatiality) proposed by Steve Larson and Mark Johnson.

The Sketch on the Issue of Determinism and Indeterminism in Music of the 2nd Half of the 20th Century in the Context of Transformation of the Academic and Philosophical Thought

In the second half of the 20th century, integral serialism and rational way of thinking were considered as an indicate of determinism in music. At the same time, indeterminism was associated with the music composed with the use of chance operations, classified like that by Henri Pousseur in his reading entitled Theorie und Praxis in der neusten Musik, delivered in Darmstadt in 1958. However, certain music pieces show that the demarcation between determinism and indeterminism in music remains unclear. The author attempts to outline the problem of determinism and indeterminism in avant-garde music of the second half of the 20th century, taking into consideration selected crucial compositions and the context of development in science and philosophy of that time.