On 'Density 21.5': A Response to Nattiez
Jonathan W. Bernard · Music Analysis · 1986
Titles are often misleading, so perhaps I had better begin by saying that this one is intended to reflect, at least approximately, the relative emphasis that I have given to the two aspects of my essay, which is as much a vehicle for presenting my analytical ideas about Varese's piece for solo flute as it is a critique of the approach that Jean-Jacques Nattiez, in an article that recently appeared in this journal, has taken to the work.1 Certainly the following pages are not meant as a protest to the editors' decision to bring Nattiez's work before their readership. In the course of its brief and admirable career to date, Music Analysis has been a forum for a vast variety of ideas about analysis, and there is no reason why the semiological approach should not have been included among them. Nevertheless, the spectacular re-publication of Nattiez's essay in translation taking up all but 23 pages of a 121-page issue is, to put it mildly, an event of some significance; and it deserves a significant response. I do not wish here to engage in a full-scale discussion of Nattiez's theories. Such an undertaking would require more space than I have at my disposal; and, in any event, other critics have already exposed the essential workings of Nattiez's method and have drawn attention to its advantages and its limitations.2 However, to deal with the relevance of Nattiez's work to the analysis of Varese's music in particular is also, inevitably, to raise questions concerning the validity of the basic premises underlying his work in general. This is so not just because Nattiez has attempted to devise a methodology that, rather than being tailored to the work of certain composers or to music in particular styles, is at least potentially pan-musical. Quite aside from the ambition implicit in this attempt, and the grandiosity of the claims accompanying it, it would seem that Nattiez must somehow come to terms with the mighty obstacle posed by Varese's music, which has long been believed to embody structural principles that are radically different from anything in previous or contemporaneous compositional practice.