ORGELPARK RESEARCH REPORT #2

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[14] Last year, the artist John Perreault introduced the so-called Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) Syndrome on his weblog ‘Artopia’. He described it as “that sinking feeling of disappointment when you see a work of art, which you previously knew only from reproductions, in real life”.1

[15] Perreault went on to pose the question to the Facebook followers of Artopia of whether they were familiar with the syndrome. One of the group’s members, Manon Cleary, answered with an anecdote: ‘Escorting a group of undergraduate students through the Phillips Collection in DC, I was very surprised when one of my brightest students asked, “are these real paintings?” ’2

[16] A good question indeed. Have we seen a work of art if we only know it from a reproduction? Is there really an ‘original’ at all? Trying to answer such questions means, to put it philosophically, trying to establish the presence of the work of art. When considering both the use and necessity of Organ Musicology, this would appear to be a central issue. The discussion will of course focus on ‘establishing the presence’ of music, ‘Orgelkunde’ being a musicological discipline.

Situationality

[17] Theodor Adorno is one of two philosophers whom I would like to cite by means of introduction. In his 1949 publication Philosophie der neuen Musik3, Adorno quotes, with the warning of his friend Eduard Steuermann (with the latter’s blessing), that we are in danger of entirely forgetting ‘the experience of music’.4 This is equally true for the ‘lay’ listener who, as Adorno puts it, ‘only desires music which babbles on as an incidental accompaniment to his work’, as for the expert, whose knowledge is in danger of becoming seasoned pedantry. Adorno: ‘While he can manipulate every piece of counterpoint, he has long since lost sight of that counterpoint’s purpose’.5 Adorno’s remedy is that we as listeners focus on the ‘individual work of art’6, accepting the fact that, in doing so, our knowledge of general music theory or music history fails to serve us adequately. He realises that his proposition departs drastically from the normal tools used to understand ‘die Sache, wie sie an und für sich selbst ist’ for ‘die Sache’ (‘the matter’) contains much more than analysis, commentary and criticism.7 Nevertheless, Adorno dismisses the idea that ‘general, tacitly accepted’ conditions can be placed on the compositional process.

[18] While Adorno looks for the presence of a piece of music in the ‘object’, to use the word he himself chose, Peter Sloterdijk chooses another point of departure. Avoiding a specific discussion of the presence of music, he takes a more indirect route via a variation of Hannah Ahrendt’s question ‘Where are we, when we think?’ Sloterdijk asks: ‘Where are we, when we hear music?’8 His idea is that we hear music before we are even born: the heartbeat and the voice of our mothers. As a foetus we anticipate life as a ‘sound world’, but once we are born we experience it as a ‘crash world’. This has the result of our ear’s longing to return to the womb. Music thus establishes a link between two aspirations: to move towards the world and to escape it. Sloterdijk links this idea with two classes of music, one which turns its back on the world and one which embraces it.9 An answer to the question of where we are when we hear music is only possible, says Sloterdijk, ‘when music as a whole might be traced back to an unmistakeable basic experience’. He then formulates a reply to the question of the presence of music: ‘Musik ist nur im hörenden Subjekt’ (‘Music exists only in the one who listens’). This does not mean to say that music itself could be of limited importance, for the reverse is also true: ‘Das hörende Subjekt ist nur in der Musik.’ (‘The one who listens exists only in the music’).10

[19] Adorno and Sloterdijk are, of course, only two of many philosophers who are relevant to our thoughts about music. To say that their contributions don’t add up to a single musical philosophy, even regarding establishing the presence of music, would be the understatement of the century. In fact, all we seem to be able to say for certain is that works of art are ‘situational’, to use the rather inelegant but clear neologism introduced by management experts Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in 1969.11

When a work of art is present, this postulates a situation in which the work may be named present. To elaborate on Adorno, we know that the music in such a situation plays an important role and, to elaborate on Sloterdijk, we know that the listener also plays an essential part.

[20] Reality seems to confirm the idea that works of art are situational. Strictly speaking, art works like this: someone invites somebody else by saying ‘listen to this’. Or ‘look at this’. You listen, you look. Your senses are open, in the case of music not just your ears, in the case of visual art not just your eyes. Inevitably, art establishes itself differently on each occasion: we cannot step in the same river twice, to cite Heraclites.

[21] Reality also allows us to see that, as soon as the experiencing of music becomes a group activity, the various power relationships at play become strongly influenced by other aspects. These include social aspects, especially evident in the conversation which follows the music, in the foyer, in the newspaper or on the radio. The main theme of this conversation is judgement. What have we experienced, what did we think of it, how do our opinions relate to each other’s?

[22] Following judgement one can expect correction. This third phase is the domain of a special sort of listener: the musician. Correction is not only to be expected in the context of the work’s next performance but also in its recordings. This is especially true with today’s advances in technology; its seductive powers prove impossible to resist. Just as magazines like to publish ‘photoshopped’ pictures, and just as Facebook consists of carefully constructed and carefully guarded profiles, so recorded music presents a corrected world. The consequence is a variant of the Droste effect: think of the story of the world famous organist crushed by nerves before his concerts because he believes that his concerts must sound as perfect and accurate as his CDs and, therefore, his CDs just as perfect and accurate as his concerts. A truly vicious circle.

Four-stroke engine

[23] Experience, judge, correct. Thereafter study again in order to facilitate the next experience. Our musical life seems to be driven by a four-stroke engine. This apparatus is provided by fuel from various sources. The first source is the result of the fact that the MOMA syndrome cannot be applied to music. While, in the context of visual art, we can reach out and, in theory, physically grasp the ‘thing’, whether a painting or a sculpture, with music this is impossible. We have, therefore, no option but to accept, time after time, that we have not really encountered the ‘true’ work of art at all, even if we thought we had. This is a conclusion reminiscent of a lecture given by conductor Sergiu Celibidache in Munich in 1985.12 Celibidache stated that only one Fifth Symphony of Beethoven truly exists and that as a conductor one is obliged to go in search of it via trial and error: not like that, not like that and also not like that. A frustrating position to take, for even Celibidache would not have been able to repeat his ideal performance of Beethoven ‘5’, had he succeeded in discovering it, and was thus doomed to exclaim ‘not like that!’ for the rest of his days...

[24] A second source of fuel for the endlessly active four-stroke motor of our musical culture is the importance placed on ‘informed performance’ by significant groups of professional musicians; the idea that one can achieve a more or less ideal performance on the basis of knowledge of the composer, score, instrument, style, attitude etc. Much has been published about this concept for which Stan Godlovitch coined the term the ‘subordination view’.13 According to him, musicians who subscribe to this perspective, over-estimate the status of ‘fixed works’ and under-estimate the degree of ‘underdetermined’ (as Godlovitch articulates it) elements in scores. Peter Kivy’s critical texts about authenticity are, in this context, equally relevant. Kivy differentiates between four kinds of authenticity: faithfulness to the performing intentions of the composer, faithfulness to the performance practices common in the time of the composer, faithfulness to how a performance in the time of the composer really sounded and faithfulness to one’s self as the performer. The first three varieties of authenticity are described by Kivy as examples of ‘historic authenticity’. Especially interesting for us, however, is the fourth type of authenticity which, nevertheless, can be nuanced and related to the first three types by, for example, recognising that the authenticity of the musician is related to the authenticity of the instrument.14 Godlovitch and Kivy were not the first to question the tendency, especially common in the early music sector, to set historic knowledge as a condition for convincing music-making. John Cage stated as early as 1955 that ‘no knowing action is commensurate, since the character of the knowledge acted upon prohibits all but some eventualities.’ And: ‘An experimental action [by which Cage means music-making] does not move in terms of approximations and errors as “informed” action, by its nature, must, for no mental images of what would happen were set up beforehand”.15

[25] Characteristic for this ‘informed’ action is a reliance on what I would like to call ‘circumstantial evidence’. The supposed knowledge refers in fact to knowledge ‘round’ the music rather than knowledge of what is presented on the stage in a concrete situation. The risk of Adorno’s ‘seasoned pedantry’ is here great, for this is a type of knowledge which can stop attentive and open listening.

A third, closely related, source of fuel is that constant judgement and correction may lead to ‘closed morals’, as Henri Bergson expressed it, a system geared to the preservation of social traditions.16 Peer-group pressure is an important influence on the ‘game of correction’ played by both musicians and listeners whether in the context of Celibidache’s striving for the ‘correct’ interpretation, the discussions surrounding ‘informed performance practices’ or of Adorno’s ‘pedantry’.

[26] Bearing the ideas of Adorno and Sloterdijk in mind and augmenting them with our brief contact with the ideas of Celibidache, Cage and Bergson, it would seem highly advisable to re-double our efforts “to put the music back into musicology”, as Nicholas Cook put it in 1999.17 In other words, and to recycle a previous metaphor: perhaps we could try to let our musical four-stroke motor run a little smoother. The ‘judgement’ stage in particular could benefit from being ‘lubricated’ and, logically, the correction stage as well.

New Musicology

[27] The background to Cook’s plea was the emergence of ‘New Musicology’ since the 1980s. Within this movement, special attention was paid to musical experience, a tendency which gained a significant foothold. It is especially fortuitous to be able to illustrate the situation today by mentioning a number of present Dutch examples. Sander van Maas’ inaugural speech at the University of Utrecht in 2009, for example, was entitled ‘What is a Listener?’18 It referred, among other things, to Elmer Schönberger’s concept of ‘Het Grote Luisteren’ (i.e. ‘Grand Listening’).19 Another example is the work of Henkjan Honing, whose inaugural speech at the University of Amsterdam in 2010 was entitled ‘The illiterate Listener’.20 Vincent Meelberg, of the Radboud University in Nijmegen, states in his 2010 book Kernthema’s in het muziekonderzoek (‘Key themes in musical research’) that, as far as he is concerned, the ‘listening experience’ is the central theme in musical research.21 Other projects, in which music’s situationality is problematised as a whole (i.e. addressing many more factors than just the listener’s role therein) are the research into ‘The Field of Musical Improvisation’, a concept of Marcel Cobussen, teacher and researcher at the ‘Academie der Kunsten van de Universiteit Leiden’ (Academy of Arts at Leiden University) and the initiative supported, among others, by the University itself known as ‘docARTES’, a doctoral programme in the arts.22

[28] That these forms of musicology demand a much broader and, of course, inter-disciplinary domain than ‘traditional musicology’ is, understandably, also discernible in the international literature. In his 2010 book Entangled, Chris Salter draws interesting parallels between performance practice and philosophical, scientific and sociological research.23 As far as this last form of research is concerned, Salter cites Lucy Suchman, who, in 1987, coined the phrase ‘situated action’. She proposed that the coherence of a situated action is tied in essential ways not to individual predispositions or conventional rules but to local interactions contingent on the actor’s particular circumstances’.24 Also of interest in this context is the musical phenomenology of Bruce Ellis Benson who assigns improvisation a central function in his discussion of Western music. In his book, ‘The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue’, published in 2003, Benson tries to find an alternative to the idea which, according to him, is broadly accepted within classical music and its associated theory, of ‘Werktreue’ (faithfulness to the original) and the related concept of the composer as the ultimate creator. Benson refers to Stan Godlovitch and concurs with Gadamer, who sees music as a dialogue with a ‘logical structure of openness’. He comes to the conclusion that improvisation is an element of all forms of music-making: according to Benson, no-one can claim to be the ‘owner’ of the music, neither the composer, nor the musician, nor the listener. They are all partners in an extraordinary game – the making of music – which he describes as an improvisatory process. Improvisation can be seen in this context as the DNA which binds the various actors in a musical situation together and lends the situation its unique character.25

Installation Art

[29] Dear Listeners: Organ Musicology is, more than any other musicological discipline, driven by the situationality of music-making. If there is one form of music which is explicitly situational, certainly within our Western culture, then it is organ music. The organ art offers us, therefore, a promising platform for contributions towards research into music’s situationality. That’s the second part of my lecture here today. I would like to begin by quoting philosopher Bert van der Schoot26, who, during one of his visits to the Orgelpark here in Amsterdam summed it up succinctly by declaring that organ music was, in fact, installation art: art, which is designed for a specific room and which, after the exhibition is finished, can never exist again in the same way.

[30] The point here is that every organ is different from every other organ. This obliges the organist to constantly revise and adapt the music to the specific situation. Should an organist find a successful way of performing a Preludium by Bach on the famous organ in Haarlem and assumes that an identical approach, even if it were possible, should work on the beautiful organ in Kampen, he would certainly be sorely disappointed. This is true even though the instruments in question were built within five years of each other and both date from Bach’s lifetime. I do not mean to infer here that pianists or violinists are not capable of recognising a specific instrument from a collection of thousands of others, but simply that the blueprint of the violin or piano is more uniform than that of the organ. A composer of piano music can, therefore, prescribe more precise instructions for what the pianist must do than a composer for the organ. Should the latter compose for a specific instrument, he either restricts the performer to the organ he himself has in mind or must accept the unavoidable loss of artistic control as soon as the score finds itself on the music desk of another organ. Benson’s idea that music-making is an improvisatory process is one of the keys to understanding what organists really do when performing. It is important to consider that organists during the mid 19th century, uniquely among musicians, did not stop practicing the art of making music without a score. This was undoubtedly the result of the necessity of filling silent moments of unpredictable duration during the liturgy with music. Organists also realised, however, that organs sounded most convincing when their best features were highlighted and their weaknesses avoided. Improvisation was, of course, the most effective way to achieve this.

[31] It is interesting to consider the way in which the position of the musician seems to move closer to the centre of the listener’s attention from this perspective on musical situationality than one is used to from the perspective of judgement and correction according to the principles of ‘informed performance practice’ and its associated ‘subordination’. To illustrate this, I would like to present a sketch of the organist of today playing Bach in Haarlem:

[32] Bach’s intentions in this sketch are seen as a spotlight and his score as a round shape; a shape which focuses the beam of the spotlight in such a way that a circle of light appears on the flat surface behind. This circle represents all possible performances of the score. The organist chooses his position in this domain through knowledge of the composer on the one hand, his ideas, the style of his time etc and, on the other, knowledge of the instrument on which he shall perform the music. In this manner the organist finds a route through the beam of light between the ideas of the composer and the score on the one side and, by extension, between the score and the performance domain on the other:

[33] The link which then becomes apparent between the intention of the composer and the performance itself invalidates the Platonic idea of a ‘correct’ performance: many performances are possible. This is precisely what we encounter in reality:

[34] I would like to adstruct all this by inviting you to listen to three preformances of the first bars of Max Reger’s Toccata in d minor. Let’s first listen to Ewald Kooiman. He plays the organ in the Jacobikirche at Lübeck, built in 1504, reconstructed in 1984 by organ builder Schuke. The recording was made in 1986.

[35] The second recording dates from 2005: Jos van der Kooy plays the famous Müller organ in St Bavo, Haarlem, built in 1736 and restored by the Danish organ builder Marcussen in 1961. The voicing has been reconsidered time and again in the past few decades by organ builder Flentrop.27

[36] The third performance I would like to show you was made in 2010, by Henrico Stewen. He plays the Sauer organ in the Thomaskirche at Leipzig, built in 1889, enlarged by Sauer in 1902 and 1908 and restored by Orgelwerkstatt Scheffler in 1989.28

[37] An enlarged version of this model demonstrates that recordings can function as scores. Listening to Bach in Haarlem on your iPod in the train can render the music, to give just one example, akin to a sort of film score. As soon as the organist preserves his chosen position in the performance domain through the medium of a recording, this position will re-appear later on, namely when the recording is listened to. At that moment, the position on the performance domain chosen by the organist and corrected by the recording engineer functions as a new intention, comparable with the intention of the composer when he composed the score:

[38] In fact, the recording now functions as a score in itself: the recording has become a shape which, in turn, restricts the boundaries of the domain in which the music now appears, since the recording now not only identifies the music as the music of Bach but also as a specific performance of it. The responsibility of establishing a position in the performance domain has shifted once again: having already moved from the composer to the musician, the creation of Performance Domain 2.0 has put the listener in charge, for example through his choice of equipment and through all kinds of other peripheral circumstances.

[39] A Sloterdijk-like phrase would seem appropriate here: we have discovered a powerful immune system29 against the frustrations of the Moma syndrome. The answer to the question ‘is this real?’ changes from a constant ‘no’, as we saw in the case of Celibidache, to a constant ‘yes’. As a consequence neither the intention of the composer, nor that of the musician, can be seen as the ‘ideal’ point of reference when judging or correcting. The ideal reference point has become the perception of the listener who has literally witnessed the musical situation.

Organ Musicology

[40] To summarise: Nicholas Cook’s desire to return the music to musicology is relevant both to music and musicology but simplifies the practice of neither. Organ musicology is exceptionally well geared to help, however. Just as the organ obliges organists constantly to reflect on how their music sounds in different environments, Organ Musicology also obliges musicologists to take each individual situation in which music is made as the starting point for their musicological research. The organ art also has an inherently practical advantage: research into organ music is relatively simple because its situationality is characterised by its clarity as a result both of the single instrument and musician involved.

[41] It will be of no surprise to learn that research into listening will play an important role here at the VU. In 1940, Adorno carried out comparable research at Princeton University. However, where Adorno saw a problem in the variety of contrasting reactions from a group of listeners to a particular musical situation, this could also be seen in the context of a ‘situation’; a factor which is recognised and considered a self-evident and even essential element of the experience. Adorno’s problem was the result of his focusing primarily on the object (the music) and, as a result, his position underestimated the importance of other aspects.30 Within the context of the Orgelpark Research Programme, launched in 2008 and now closely linked to the study of Organ Musicology here at the VU, the necessary preparations to facilitate research into listening have now been made. For example, within the Improvisation Project, the concept of Real Time Analysis has been investigated and, following considerable discussion, re-Christened as ‘Witnessing Music in Real Time’. During a number of intensive sessions conducted in co-operation with the ‘Forschungstelle Basel für Improvisation’ and the ‘Academie der Kunsten’ in Leiden, the parameters have been established for evaluating how music is experienced and perceived, at the moment of its performance, both by listener and musician. The intention is to develop research via a number of different routes: through discussions with the public at live concerts and ‘sub-live’ concerts, which will become possible at the Orgelpark following the installation, this coming summer, of equipment which will allow one of the organs, via a digital memory system, to ‘re-perform’ a concert precisely as it occurred.31 Another route will be to investigate the discussions which take place ‘after the music’ such as music journalism and the conversations during jury meetings at competitions. Research will also be carried out into old recordings. Yet another line of investigation will involve discussions with organ voicers and advisors: when do they believe that the stationary sound is convincing and why? At this point, Organ Musicology will come into contact with Sonic Studies, a new discipline focusing on sound rather than on music.

[42] Closely related to this form of Witnessing Music in Real Time is a second point of departure within the Improvisation Project, namely the problematising of the concept ‘improvisation’. When the musician does not use a score, neither do the (other) listeners, so no-one involved is bound to a score’s references to previous performances and recordings. In this context, improvisatory music-making means, in fact, ‘improvisatory listening’.

[43] A completely different question is whether our use of the concept of improvisation in fact colonises the musical heritage of our past. When Bach and Buxtehude played the organ, they normally did so without a score. The way in which they made music contrast, therefore, with those who improvise at the organ today.

[44] In this way, the history of organ music (just as the history of organbuilding) reflects the development of music and music-making in the West in general, as well as how the situationality of music functioned differently in other times. This line of enquiry is one of the reasons that the Orgelpark will next year conclude the reconstruction of the organ built for the Klaaskerk in Utrecht in 1479.32 The project is an initiative of the Dutch Monuments Service (‘Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed’). Which musical situations led to this organ’s construction and what can it teach us about the sound of the organ and music-making at the time as well as about making music on a comparable organ today? The research into heritage and into ‘Improvisational Musicking’ will go hand in hand with, but will not by any means be limited to, research into listening.

[45] In parallel with these research activities, a number of doctoral dissertations are already underway. Understanding music as a situational phenomenon and applying this to organ music means for them, among other things, affording considerable attention to combinations of organ and music which are not self-evidently ideal, such as Bach on the Couperin organ behind me33 so well played by University organist Henk Verhoef a moment ago. One of the doctoral candidates, for example, is researching the remarkable organ music culture in the ‘Re-Reformed’ (orthodox Protestant) denominations in the early 20th century. What was music-making like in the time of Abraham Kuyper, how did it relate to its surrounding culture and what were the key musical situations? The study of scores and literature are important parts of this research, although less important than research into old recordings.

Epilogue

[46] What I am trying to say this afternoon is this: One of the main characteristics of our musical culture has become our judgement reflex. Just as in other areas of our lives, we subject each other to critical analysis. Far be it from me to criticise this habit but it does seem objectionable if the music (i.e. what we hear and, therefore, what causes us to find music important) is overlooked in such ‘judgement discussions’. This is a real danger, since music, and art in general, stands apart from the world of words.34 The question, therefore, is: how do we propagate a musical culture in which music gains a central place? The answer is both simple and complex at the same time: by listening to music, by paying attention to our experiences and considering seriously the situations in which music occurs. Thereafter, the situation must also play a serious role in the conversation ‘after the music’. Of course, this doesn’t rule out a discussion of the difference between the tempo chosen by the musicians and that desired by the composer, or indeed a discussion about this or that organ or even about this or that composer. However, this is only of secondary relevance. In the first instance, the key theme in discussions about music should be just that: music. Research into organ music presents a unique possibility for these revised priorities, in the context of the conversation ‘after the music’. Organ music is not at all geared to fulfilling the judgement criteria of its listeners because, to put it simply, the musician must make new choices (immediately recognisable as such) at every concert due to the individuality of the organ in general and, as such, creates on each occasion a work of installation art. In short: it may be useful to consider music as installation art, to apply this consideration within the context of research into organ music, and, by doing so, to articulate the situationality of music in general as an important theme within ‘New Musicology’.35

[47] I would like to conclude by expressing my gratitude. Firstly to the University’s Board who realised immediately after the sudden death of my predecessor Ewald Kooiman in January 2009 that the Professorship of Organ Musicology should be continued. Thanks also to Loek Dijkman, Chairman of the Orgelpark Foundation whose support ensured that the Professorship could indeed be re-established. In addition, I would like to thank Dean Douwe Yntema of the Faculty of Letters as well as Ginette Verstraete and Wouter Davidts of the Department of General Cultural Research for their considerable and stimulating interest.

[48] The greeting extended to this initiative by the musicological working groups at the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht was also heart-warming and I would especially like to thank Rokus de Groot, Henkjan Honing, Sander van Maas, Emile Wennekes, Karl Kügle, Jaap den Hertog and, of course, Bert van der Schoot. Co-operation has also been established between a pleasing number of universities at which organ music and related research is taken seriously. Valued colleagues in this respect include Joris Verdin of the Catholic University in Leuven, Jan Luth of the Rijksuniversiteit in Groningen, Peter Peters at the University of Maastricht, Vincent Meelberg of the Radboud University in Nijmegen, Albert Clement at the Roosevelt Academy in Middelburg and Marcel Cobussen, of the Academie der Kunsten (Arts Academy) at the Rijksuniversiteit in Leiden. Their interest and friendship were of great significance during the thought processes about what the Chair of Organ Musicology can and should achieve.

[49] At the same time I feel somewhat lonely. My own doctoral advisor Ewald Kooiman has passed away as has my co-advisor Hermann Busch, just six months ago. Hermann Busch was, in Germany, the ‘Autorität’ in the area of organ-related research. From 1987 onwards, when Ewald was promoted to the position of Professor of Organ Musicology, Busch was an outspoken supporter of Ewald’s activities here at the VU. Finally I would like to pay special thanks to Mirjam Kooiman, her mother Truus and her brother Peter, who have entrusted me with their father’s doctoral robes. Thank you for this deeply touching gesture. It is for me an honour to be able to continue Ewald’s work at the VU University.