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WHAT IS A NARRATIVE?
ALTHOUGH MUSIC SCHOLARS HAVE PUT NARRATIVE THEORY TO many innovative uses, when it comes to defining what a narrative is, we have largely left the task to our colleagues in literary theory. Based on their stipulations about the necessary components of narratives, some, such as Carolyn Abbate, have even come to doubt that the category has much applicability to music. Others, such as Byron AlmĂ©n, have resisted the hegemony of literature in narratology, proposing new ways of conceptualizing narrative that include not only operas and musicals but also most works of instrumental music. Despite their differences, both camps understand narratives as merely the products of composersâ labors (sound structures, in the case of instrumental works). Thus, narrative status depends primarily on the structural features of those products, such as contrast and discontinuity. In this chapter, I argue that works are better conceived as processes than as products alone, and I explore the consequences of this view for our definition of narrative.
Narrative in Music Scholarship
The first wave of work on narrative in music scholarship largely took their definitions from structuralist narratology, particularly GĂ©rard Genetteâs Narrative Discourse (1983; 1972 in the original French) and Seymour Chatmanâs Story and Discourse (1978). Genette and Chatman argue that a narrative is not a mere sequence of events; it requires a narrator and the ability to distinguish the workâs story, the events of which it is comprised, from its discourse, the way in which the events are told by the narrator.
Applying this definition to music in Unsung Voices (1991), Carolyn Abbate observes the difficulty of making a similar sort of distinction, even in an opera. Most operas convey stories, but in few cases are we invited to imagine that there is a fictional entity responsible for presenting the entire story to us. Abbate concludes that operas are not narratives, but they may contain âmoments of narrationâ where the story-discourse distinction can be perceived through discontinuities within the score or between the score and the libretto.1 The narrator of musical narratives remains unclear in Abbateâs account, however. As she repeatedly informs her readers, the voices of which she speaks are not those of the historical persons who created the work, nor the implied author, nor even the singers who make the work perceptually accessible.2 Through a process of elimination, these voices must refer to features of the workâs structure.
This suspicion is borne out in the evidence Abbate presents for or against a work being a narrative. Her argument that the epilogue to Paul Dukasâs symphonic poem Lâapprenti sorcier (1897) constitutes a moment of narration rests on the appearance of the main theme in rhythmic augmentation. Abbate argues that the epilogue serves an analogous function to the quotation marks encasing the sorcererâs words at the end of the poem on which Dukasâs work is based, Goetheâs Der Zauberlehrling (1797). Both imply the presence of a âthird person narratorâ who recounts the events to us.3 This storyteller is internal to the workâs structure. Absent from Abbateâs discussion is any consideration of the workâs context of performance: what its storyteller (Dukas) was attempting to accomplish with Lâapprenti sorcier, whether he was successful, and how his audiences interpreted his work. Did they imagine an apprentice sorcererâs futile attempts to put a stop to his spell, or did they regard the work as a purely abstract composition?
In the wake of Unsung Voices and other high-profile rejections of the possibility that musical works could constitute narratives, music scholars treaded more cautiously with regard to the narrative-definitional question, typically avoiding it altogether.4 An exception is Byron AlmĂ©n, a music theorist who is not merely content to say that musical works are like narratives or that we may gain insights about them by regarding them as such. In A Theory of Musical Narrative (2008), he argues that musical works are narratives and presents a new âmedium-independentâ definition to support this claim. For AlmĂ©n, a narrative consists of a hierarchy, established within a system of signs, that is subject to change over timeâchange that a listener interprets as a change in a cultural hierarchy of some sort.5
AlmĂ©n outlines a method for interpreting virtually any musical work as a narrative. The first step is to identify the salient features of the music (pitches, keys, themes, instruments) that are brought into conflict. One observes the hierarchy in which they are found at the beginning and tracks changes to that hierarchy throughout the composition. Next, one classifies oneâs findings according to the narrative archetypes that the literary theorist Northrop Frye proposed in his Anatomy of Criticism (1957): romance, tragedy, comedy, and irony (resulting from the permutations of order/transgression and victory/defeat). Finally, the analyst interprets these musical conflicts as representing conflicts taking place within a single agent, between agents or groups thereof, or between an individual and a group.
To highlight how his theory builds on existing practices in music theory and musicology, AlmĂ©n illustrates it with discussions of preexisting analyses representing a variety of interpretive approaches. One such example is Susan McClaryâs interpretation of the first movement of Bachâs Brandenburg Concerto no. 5 (1721). McClary focuses on the relationship between the harpsichord and the rest of the players (the ripieno, or large ensemble, as well as the other soloists). Bachâs concerto initially appears to be for flute and violin, with the harpsichord performing its customary âservice roleâ as part of the continuo. Before long, the harpsichord begins to assert itself beyond its station, eventually âhijackingâ the piece by inserting an inordinately long solo capriccio in which it âunleashes elements of chaos, irrationality, and noise until finally it blurs almost entirely the sense of key, meter, and form upon which eighteenth-century style depends.â6 Only then does it deign to allow the ripieno to reenter and restore order with its performance of the final ritornello.
McClary interprets the conflict between the harpsichord and the rest of the instrumentalists as representing the conflict between the growing individualism of the bourgeoisie in Bachâs time and European society, which was still largely under absolute rule. As AlmĂ©n observes, a more typical concerto from this period would represent individualism and social stability as co-realizable through either âthe appropriate submission of individual aspiration for the good of societyâ or âthe reconciliation of the apparently contradictory aims of the individual and society.â7 Bachâs concerto, McClary argues, represents individualism that exceeds social acceptability. That the harpsichord eventually yields to the ripieno may appear to represent the individual submitting to the greater good of society, as in AlmĂ©nâs first scenario. Nevertheless, McClary observes that âthe subversive elements of the piece seem far too powerful to be contained in so conventional a manner.â8
Since the narrative resulting from AlmĂ©nâs method is largely the listenerâs confection, many different narratives may result from the same conflict. âAnother analyst,â he speculates, âmight have viewed the intrusive harpsichord music as a threat that is ultimately excised by the final ritornelloâa romance narrative of the successful quest, if you will, rather than a comic narrative of a blocked society renewed or an ironic narrative of a fractured society.â9
AlmĂ©nâs stipulation that the work must establish a hierarchy that undergoes change specifies some structural features the music must possess in order to be considered a narrative. But unlike Abbateâs definition, AlmĂ©nâs may not be solely dependent on the workâs structure. Although he rejects Abbateâs requirement of a storyteller, he affirms the importance of a listener who interprets the work as a narrative.10 Precisely what role listeners play in determining a workâs narrative status remains unclear, however. It may be that McClary, by interpreting Brandenburg Concerto no. 5 in the way she did, makes it a narrative. If that is correct, the work is a narrative for McClary, but it would not have been a narrative for Peter Kivy, who rejected the validity of such interpretations.11 Alternatively, AlmĂ©n may be arguing that the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto is a narrative, even if certain listeners refuse to regard it as such, because it is a work to which it is appropriate to adopt a method like the one he outlines. Given AlmĂ©nâs lack of interest in authorial intentions or historical practices of music listening, what makes this approach appropriate appears to be structural features capable of supporting such interpretations.
Texts and Works
To understand what separates the foregoing definitions from the one I will put forth in the following section, it will be necessary to expose some of the assumptions about the nature of musical works underlying these definitions. Inspired by French literary theory, particularly the work of Roland Barthes, New Musicologists such as Abbate and McClary moved away from regarding their subjects of study as works and began to think of them as texts. This is not to say that opera scholars abandoned the study of scores and focused instead on libretti. What Barthes seems to have meant by the work-text opposition was the difference between interpreting what one is reading or listening to in light of the historical circumstances of its production and approaching it as a mere sequence of words or sounds, which could be interpreted in any way one pleased.12
Another way of understanding the opposition between texts and works is through the contrast between products and processes. As a text or product, a work of instrumental music is merely a sound structure.13 As a process, by contrast, it also includes all factors that contributed to its production, such as the performers, instruments, and performing circumstances for which it was written, and influences both artistic and nonartistic (e.g., religious or philosophical beliefs or events in the composerâs private life).
Barthes preferred texts to works because of his interest in maximizing interpretive freedom. Reducing works to mere texts licensed musicologists to put forth interpretations that were implausible accounts of composersâ intentions. It is unlikely that Bachâs compositional choices were guided by the values of freedom and individualism underpinning McClaryâs interpretation of Brandenburg Concerto no. 5.14 For those interested in understanding works in light of the actual historical circumstances of their creation, one is better off regarding them as processesâor at least as contextualized productsârather than as mere texts.15 If a work is a process, determining whether it is a narrative involves not only analyzing its structural features but also investigating how and why it was created, including whether its author intended it to tell or present a story.
The relevance of the composerâs intentions to interpretation remains a contentious topic in musicology and music theory. One of the larger aims of this study is to rehabilitate the figure of the author in music scholarship; depending on the object of appreciation, that may be the composer, librettist, director, or performer. As I have argued in more depth elsewhere, commitments to the âintentional fallacyâ and the âdeath of the authorâ fostered the kind of interpretive freedom musicologists of the 1980s and 1990s were seeking but failed to align with the disciplineâs renewed interest in history in the past two decades.16
One of the reasons for this incongruity between theory and practice is a lack of awareness of more sophisticated forms of intentionalism that have been proposed in response to the criticisms of Barthes and the authors of âThe Intentional Fallacy,â William K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley. The most robust of these accounts have come from philosophers working in the analytic philosophical tradition. Paisley Livingstonâs Art and Intention (2005) provides a clear and comprehensive discussion of what intentions are and the roles they play in the creation and interpretation of art. He defines an intention as an attitude one takes toward a plan of action. In contrast to desiring or wanting, intending involves being âsettled upon executing that plan, or upon trying to execute it.â17 Even so, it is possible to be unaware of or mistaken about some of the...