Centrepiece

The mad cacophonist

Colin Welch

what was recently and interminably bursting forth from France Musique, the often admirable French Third Pro- gramme, was, alas, neither French nor Music. Gallic ears were bashed with the sounds, hideously amplified, of cattle Markets and abattoirs, of bulls and cows roaring, bellowing and shrieking in rage, 'ear and agony; of men marching in stud- ded boots over metal grilles and falling clown iron steps onto piles of galvanised dustbins; of tocsins, burglar alarms, den- tists' drills, coffee-grinders and circular saws; of trumpets blasted wildly off key, of tubas groaning and farting in the depths; of rainstorms thundering on corrugated iron roofs; of marshalling yards, engine whistles and milk trains arriving, churns crashing; 3f Yells and Winch-style screams; of artil- lery' barrages, with 88s and Nebelwerfers; in are moments of relative calm, of popping corks, dripping taps, woodpeckers pecking and windbells mindlessly jangling; of Uanken gamelan orchestras tuning up and

ndreds of uninstructed children mer-

eilesslY thumping pianos with their fists; of :410se tropical birds whose raucous, rattling, nalf-strangulated cries used to give local eniour to Somerset Maugham's clipped Malayan melodramas. All this cacophony was part of a pro- tracted festival of modern German 'music'. Tatinhauser Rossini remarked that it was Very important and interesting, far too !Nell so to be appreciated in a single hear- he did not propose to give it a second. !Nietzsche characterised Bayreuth as 'an insurrection against good taste': Both, I ha�exposed to this tohu-bohu, would a,ve begged Wagner to return, all forgiven. The chief cacophonist was one Bernard

an Zimmermann. Mishearing the

t"Cnouncement, I thought at first we were to ear Lortzing's genial and life-enhancing u was swi nd Zimmermann. No such luck: Et'silluson

s ft and complete. If this

co A. Zimmermann has a message for us, ktild he not haven followed the example of 'lots namesake and the advice of Sam tr91,1c1wYn, and sent a telegram? His con-

luntions were to be sure followed by what

reared to be applause; but who knows el:t this was not itself produced by some electronic device?

e d Throughout the uproar, to which I listen-

eicilnesmerised, I was very mindful of those sche,rs and betters reared on Schubert, in my and Mendelssohn, whom I had of Mahler Proselytising youth exposed to hours ra, ahler and Strauss on a wooden-needled

,0gram of loud but incoherent utter-

r What a noise,' they had mildly Nonstrated. 'Couldn't you turn it down a

bit?' Have I now in my turn sunk into that inaccessible dotage which can find no beau- ty or meaning in the new? Doubtless I have, to some extent; and to that extent, how sad. But there is surely more to be said.

In the announcements the word 'alea- tory' often cropped up, not necessarily ap- plied to Zimmermann. It means, I take it, that the musicians, if such they can be call- ed, are free to improvise, to 'ad lib', to play at will and random. Now, whatever Mahler's faults, he left nothing whatever to chance. His directions are unprecedentedly precise and detailed. If the result is disagreeable, it is none the less exactly what he intended. He thus passes the first, the necessary if not sufficient test of a com- poser, namely to ensure that what he has in his head is what is heard in the hall. Can anyone satisfied with less (cadenzas excepted) be classed as a composer at all? I had earlier seen a television programme about the American 'composer' John Cage, in whose productions whim, hazard, im- promptu fun and unforeseen combinations of unpredictable noises clearly play a predominant part. They obviously gave' great pleasure to the affable, 'laid back' and epicene Mr Cage, who appeared a sort of J. K. Galbraith of cacophony, as they also did to Miss Nancy Banks-Smith of the Guardian, who found him a scream and thought it would be necessary, did he not exist, to invent him.

Was any of this pleasure musical? And how can the unexpected repeatedly produce its effects, whether comic or tragic, in the absence of any context of expectation? Nearly all great composers venture at moments out of key. The resultant drama is produced by the shattering of expectations aroused by the tonality which precedes and underlies it. No expectations, no drama; no norm, no dramatic departure from it; no rules, no laughter or tears. Is Mr Cage's 'humour' that of the basically humourless, for whom nothing can be genuinely comic because nothing is serious: mere playfulness, fooling about, a giggle?

We shall be told that Zimmermann is a difficult composer: be patient, listen carefully and the wax will drop from our ears, his meaning and beauty will be reveal- ed in time. At the risk of appearing naive, may I suggest that Zimmermann isn't dif- ficult at all, not anyway in the sense that Beethoven is difficult? On Beethoven we have to concentrate, following in our own humble way the musical processes by which the miraculous was achieved. By confron- ting and overcoming prodigious difficulties Beethoven has made our path easier, to be sure; but till we are aware of those dif- ficulties and have ourselves wrestled with them with his help, we haven't begun to ap- preciate him. Even old Lortzing is 'dif- ficult' in his way: it can't have been easy to clap a busy sextet on top of the overture's most beautiful tune.

Zimmermann's difficulties, if any, are by contrast inaudible to me. I hear what he says. He paints for me a clear and simple picture of the city of dreadful night, of a world run mad, our own world in a way, yet unconvincing because portrayed without any sort of order, balance or reason, without beauty or meaning, a world from which half of reality, the better half, has been sentimentally expunged. If this was his intention, is it profitable patiently to await the arrival of what he has deliberately ex- cluded?

And for me another picture lurks behind the one perhaps intended, a picture of the cacophonist himself, of whom I know almost nothing save what his 'music' tells me. If it has led me into error about him, I am sorry: but perhaps I am not wholly to blame. This picture is of a man safe, weak, protected and dependent, who finds release from his cocooned impotence in prodigious displays of violence, uproar and affront, of discord, shock and insult. And to what pur- pose, with what result?

Every one of Zimmermann's spectacular sound effects might, in other contexts, pro- duce electrifying results. Think how we shudder in dread when Bruckner screws that distorted theme from the Ring onto the sublime upper reaches of the 8th Sym- phony's adagio! But jam all Zimmermann's effects together, as he does, in no context except each other's, and the results are not cumulative but diminishing and self- defeating. Do we find in him, as Wagner found in Meyerbeer, effects without causes? Is it that his stuff, so far from being too difficult, is not difficult enough, not difficult enough either to create or to follow?

I used to take great pleasure in the com- pany and unfashionable pronouncements of an elderly American of German descent, a retired professor of art at the University of Indiana. His loose amiable mouth, bent wire specs, teak-like lined features, super- naturally white hair and slow speech recall- ed Guy Kibbee, who used to whittle sticks, chew tobacco, rock on porches and emit cracker-barrel wisdom in homely old Hollywood films. Confronted with the gubu manifestations of modern art, his jaw would drop and he would deliver, in a voice quavering with horror, his verdict: 'O-o-o- o-oh, Colin, socialism has done this ... democracy has done this .... O-o-o-o- oh.'

Applied, as it memorably was, to Hockney boys sporting against some cerulean background, it seemed perhaps debatable. Yet the more widely it is applied to modern art, to Zimmermann for exam- ple, the more sense does it seem to make. If you will bear with me, I would like to say why next week.