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Figure 1. Igor Kopystiansky,RestoredPainting, 1992. Oil on canvas, 783/4"X 59". Collection of the artist. Reproduced by permission of the artist.
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RENDERING
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his name up front, citing dual authorship, and compares his role to that
of an art restorer:
with its dual authorship is intended as a restorationof these
Rendering
sketches, it is not a completion nor a reconstruction.This restorationis
made along the lines of the modern restorationof frescoes that aims at
revivingthe old colourswithouthowevertryingto disguisethe damagethat
time has caused,often leavinginevitableemptypatchesin the composition
(for instance as in the case of Giotto in Assisi).12
In the case of Schubert in Vienna, restoration comes across as a
curious approach to take. After all, the symphony, unlike the frescoes,
has never existed, or been complete, meaning that there is nothing to
restore. However, Berio's analogy leans toward the evocative and
ironic. Restoration, for instance, calls to mind collapsed buildings and
chipped sculptures, images that reinforce the fragmentary state of the
sketches. It is this element of disintegration that appeals to the composer. His remarks dwell not on the promise of recovery but on
'damage' and 'empty patches', features he finds to be 'very expressive'
and intrinsic to the frescoes, rather than elements that need to be
erased.13
It is not surprising that Berio has focused on an incomplete and scattered piece. What is surprising, however, is that he breaks apart that
work even more. This fragmentation, old and new, creates two different visions of Schubert's symphony. On one hand, the thematic splinters remind us that the work is only a sketch. On the other hand, the
fractures also suggest deterioration, a work from the past crumbling
into pieces. This latter impression especially comes across in the more
complete sections, which, cracked and dissolved by Berio, suggest the
disintegration and 'empty patches' of the aging frescoes. In Rendering,
Schubert's symphony exists simultaneously in states of incipience and
decay.
This doubleness is part of Berio's 'rendering', a teasing choice of title
that suggests, among other things, his interpretation of the drafts. That
interpretation can be better appreciated by discussing the materials
with which he works. Schubert's sketches provide a foundation, constituting nearly two thirds of the composition.14 Berio orchestrates the
drafts and has them proceed unaltered for extended stretches of time,
a continuity creating the momentary impression of experiencing a
12 Franz Schubert-Luciano
Berio, Rendering(Vienna, 1989), preface. In the interview with
Theo Muller cited above, Berio offered a more offhand description of the piece: 'Renderingisboth
orchestration and a restoration, like the reparation of a painting damaged by time. When you go
to Assisi, you will find beautiful Giotto paintings, some of which are damaged. Now instead of
having them repaired by some stupid painter who pretends to be Giotto and fills in what is missing,
they decided to leave the white, the concrete as it was, which is very expressive too. I did the same
thing with Schubert. I orchestrated, completed some parts, but where the sketches stop I created
a kind of musical concrete, a plaster made of many different things, with a totally different sound.
Then you go back to the next Schubert sketch.' Muller, "'Music is not a solitary act"', 19.
13 Ibid.
14 In the recording by Christoph Eschenbach and the Houston
Symphony (Koch 3-7382-2 H1),
Berio's interpolations make up around 11 minutes of the total 35' 7" performance time.
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Schubert symphony.15 The sketches, however, are obviously not complete, and the symphony falters where gaps emerge. Berio neither
erases those spaces nor plugs them in with stylisticallyappropriate filler,
as may be done in a completion, but instead leaves them intact and
adds his own material. Alluding once again to the frescoes, he has
referred to these interpolations as 'cement work'.16 'Cement' captures
the neutral quality of his contribution, which comes across as grey and
lifeless next to the revived Schubert, an effect achieved by this music,
often consisting of thin static sonorities, being played without expression, quasi senzasuono, lontanoand, in terms of dynamics, ranging from
p to ppp.17
Instead of filling in the manuscript gaps, these hollow-sounding passages call attention to the emptiness of those spaces. A few melodies,
though, emerge in that vacuum, as quotations of both late Schubert
works and just-heard symphonic themes murmur throughout the interpolations.18 These shadowy reminiscences, however, only add to the
sense of emptiness and decay, suggesting some sort of void full of
shards of the past. This suggestion is enhanced by the prominent use
of the celesta, an instrument with strong associations of the mysterious
and other-worldly. Perhaps this is the realm from which the sketches
have been recovered and, as heard in the distorted quotations, where
they, along with the other Schubert works, will eventually return. In
that space, the two - the completed and uncompleted, the heard and
never heard - have equally deteriorated into fragments, the crumbling
bits of larger works.
The evocation of a void is one way, and a rather fanciful way, in which
Berio's interpolations comment upon Schubert's drafts. That commentary elaborates on a sense of loss, that is, of unrealized musical
wealth.19Renderingpresents a symphony on the threshold of existence,
never able to take final form, continually breaking apart and always
remaining in fragments. Through that disintegration the work repeatedly draws the listener's attention to what has been lost with the incompleteness of the sketches and the passage of time.20
15 Berio's restoration involves not only orchestration but often filling in the drafts harmonically and contrapuntally.
16 Schubert-Berio,
Rendering,preface.
17 Ibid.
following two. Most of the quotations are drawn from the B6 Piano Sonata (D. 960), the B6 Piano
Trio (D. 898) and Winterreise(GuteNacht, GefrorneTrdnen,Wasserflut,Einsamkeit,Die Post and Der
Leiermann). For discussions of the quotations, see Wilfried Gruhn, 'Schubert spielen Berios
sinfonische Erginzungen zu Schuberts Sinfonie-Fragment D 936A', Musica,44 (1990), 290-6 (pp.
292-3), and Thomas Gartmann, '... dafi nichts an sich jemals vollendetist' Untersuchungenzum
von Luciano Berio(Berne, 1995), 133-5.
Instrumentalschaffen
19 Wilfried Gruhn also discusses the sense of loss in Rendering('Schubert spielen Berios sinfonische Ergfinzungen', 294). David Osmond-Smith has described how the work creates a sense of
distance between the present day and Schubert's time ('La mesure de la distance: Renderingde
Berio', Inharmoniques,7 (1991), 147-52).
20 A similar fascination with loss and incompleteness emerges in Alfred Schnittke's Concerto
GrossoNo. 4-SymphonyNo. 5, the second movement of which draws upon a piano quartet left unfinished by the young 16-year-old Mahler (as opposed to the dying 31-year-old Schubert). Schnittke
ends the movement with four musicians from the orchestra playing the original and leaving off
where Mahler did.
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TABLE1
RECONSTRUCTIONOF SCHUBERT,SYMPHONYNO. 10, THIRD MOVEMENT
refrain
episode
refrain
episode
refrain
coda
D major
B6major
D major
D minor
F major
A minor
D major
D major
chorale-liketheme
rondo theme with counterpointinverted
Hungariandance
fugato
A New Perspective(London,
Adapted from Brian Newbould, Schubertand theSymphony:
1992),270.
Those losses appear especially great in the drafts for the third movement, which are full of contrapuntal intricacies and possibilities largely
unbroached in previous works. So committed was Schubert to that new
path that he arranged to take lessons from the Viennese fugue master
Simon Sechter, completing only one, however, before his death. The
contrapuntal emphasis appears out of character with Schubert's designation of the movement as a Scherzo, being instead more appropriate
for a Finale. Indeed, confusion arises over whether the movement is a
Finale or a Scherzo, or possibly some new conflation of the two.21The
duple metre and loose rondo design suggest the former, whereas the
character of the spirited opening theme accords with a Scherzo. These
ambiguities extend to the form of the movement. Although a recurring
refrain points to a rondo design, the exact structure remains unclear
owing to the clutter of revisions and fragments in the sketch. Nevertheless, an approximation of the intended form can be made, as shown
in Table 1, which presents Brian Newbould's realization.
Berio, however, does not care so much about the form that may have
been as the form that exists, that of the sketches themselves. His presentation works within that design, not the conjectured one of a reconstruction. To summarize briefly, the drafts for this movement consist of
six pages.22 The first two are worksheets made up of scattered ideas,
including the initial conception of prominent themes, reworkings of
those themes, and material that was later discarded. The remaining four
pages present the more polished version of the movement. However,
even this section lacks continuity, and realizing Newbould's interpretation requires cross-stitching together sections from separate pages.
Rendering incorporates both the more complete final pages and the
21 For a discussion of the formal
problems surrounding this movement, see Newbould, Schubert
and the Symphony:A New Perspective(London, 1992), 269-75, and Schubert, Symphonyno. 10, realization by Newbould, iii-iv. In his preface to Rendering,Berio states: 'These sketches alternatively
present the character of a Scherzo and a Finale. This ambiguity (which Schubert would have
solved or exasperated in some new way) was of particular interest ...'.
22 Brian Newbould, 'A Working Sketch by Schubert (D. 936a)', CurrentMusicology,43 (1987),
26-32.
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TABLE 2
THIRD MOVEMENT
RENDERING,
'fanfare'introduction(Berio)
page 1 of sketch (worksheet)
interpolation
pages 5-6 of sketch (laterversion)
interpolation
page 2 of sketch (worksheet)
interpolation
page 4 of sketch (laterversion)with brief interpolationsat the end
preliminary worksheets. The basic plan of the movement is to juxtapose the two, so as to contrast earlier and later versions of the same
material.23Berio separates these two sections with an interpolation. As
shown in Table 2, there are two large units in this movement, each built
around the pairing of early and later drafts. The initial unit contrasts
ideas from the first page with their revision, and the following block
similarly places material from the second worksheet side by side with
its reworking.
A discussion of the first block will illustrate how these different components interact. After a brief fanfare-like introduction played in the
style of an interpolation, the movement begins with material from the
first page of the draft, which consists of a series of brief, discrete exercises: an early form of the refrain in the D major tonic, a later discarded
episode theme in B6 major and a D minor statement of the refrain
melody in rhythmic augmentation with two contrapuntal lines, one of
which is discontinued.24 Although not intended for performance or to
be linked together, these modules are presented in the order in which
they occur in the draft, with little or no transition between them. This
succession of fragments conveys to the listener that this is not a wellstructured symphonic movement but rather a patchwork of ideas.
The following interpolation enhances this sense of fragmentation. As
Berio describes, these passages bridge 'the gaps that exist between one
sketch and another', which, in this case, is the space separating the
early and later drafts.25That gap, however, is not a blank spot on the
page where Schubert left off but rather a space created by Berio shuffling around fragments, placing side by side materials on the first and
fifth pages. Beginning on the latter page, Berio presents an extensive
stretch of the revised section that more or less parallels Newbould's
rondo formulation from the opening refrain to the Hungarian dance
passage (Table 1). That incipient rondo design, however, is subsumed
into Berio's larger two-part formal pattern based on the pairing of early
and later drafts. The progression from one to the other underscores
23 A similar idea is used in the first movement. Berio contrasts Schubert's two different sketches
of the exposition, separating them with an interpolation.
24 Newbould, 'A
Working Sketch', 26-31.
25 Schubert-Berio, Rendering,preface.
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TABLE 3
SCHUBERT,SKETCHFOR SYMPHONYNO. 10, SECONDMOVEMENT
A
a
theme 1
B minor
A'
a'
theme 1
B minor
theme 2
b
theme 1
F# minor
theme 2
b'
theme 1
E minor
theme 3
F# major
theme 2
F# minor
coda
theme 2
B minor
B minor
early draft -> later draft -> restoration -> Schubert's Tenth Symphony
The last step, of course, is unattainable, but the emphasis on completion
raised by Berio's sequence of materials places that goal more tantalizingly in sight. Any attempt to claim it, however, will get only as far as an
intermediary stage, be it a Berio-like restoration or a reconstruction. Yet
both reveal how close the symphony is to coming to life. Rendering,
however, differs from a reconstruction by pointing out that the sketches
will never rise from their archival slumber. The work repeatedly calls
attention to the draft status of the desired symphony, even going so far
as to manipulate the sketches - the forced pairings and imposed interpolations - to emphasize the unavoidable breaks and holes.
But what if there were no discontinuities, if Schubert's drafts were
more or less intact? Such is the case with the second movement, which,
except for one slight break, is continuous. This movement spins out a
B minor Andante that recaptures the searching melancholy of the
'Unfinished' Symphony. For Berio, the 'stunning' 'expressive climate'
also looks forward, at times 'inhabited by Mahler's spirit'.26 Whether or
not the draft presents the final form that the Andante would have taken
remains unclear. The structure of the movement is ambiguous,
suggesting double variation, modified strophic and sonata-allegro
designs.27 Taking it on its own terms, the movement breaks down into
two sections: the opening A and its varied repetition (see Table 3).
26 Ibid.
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TABLE4
RENDERING, SECOND MOVEMENT
Introduction A
a
theme 1+2
B minor
A'
a'
theme 1+2
B minor
Interpolation
Interpolation b
theme 1 theme 3
F#minor F#major
b'
theme 1
E minor
Interpolation/Close
Each further divides into a and b units, both of which contain themes
1 and 2. In the first b section, Schubert introduces a new theme (theme
3), which appears only once. He conceived of this melody after drafting the Andante and wrote it down in the sketch of the third movement, directing that it be moved 'zum Andante'. This later insertion
produces the one gap in the sketch.
In his 'rendering', Berio frames the movement with his own sections
and then internally interrupts it twice (see Table 4). These four interpolations are the same number as in the third movement, a surprise
given that this is the most continuous section of the draft. That continuity, however, is never attained. The music strives to wind its way
through the unusual form, but it cannot make it, falling apart on three
different occasions. With one exception, these breaks are not the result
of gaps in the manuscript; rather, they appear to be the result of decay.
The Andante, embryonic yet almost 200 years old, collapses with age,
pieces of its lyrical lines falling into the void along with fragments of
other aging works by the composer.
Decay sets in early. The initial break occurs during the brief transition section between the first a and b sections. Nothing at this juncture suggests an interstice - no blank spaces, no juxtaposition of
different sketches. Berio instead pushes aside Schubert's linking
passage to make room for his own material, which, however, does not
completely cut off the musical flow. Presenting amorphous premonitions of a semiquaver accompanimental figure used in the b section,
the interpolation serves as a shadowy transition, thus commenting on
the passage it supplants.
In contrast to this disruption, the second internal break does result
from a gap, the one made by the insertion of theme 3. Schubert's
music, however, gives no impression of a hole, so seamlessly did the
composer later weave in that melody. In that spirit, Berio gradually
works in his own material, slowly overlaying the interpolation onto the
sketches to produce a stylistic suspension in which Schubert's melodies
dissolve. Anxious again to check continuity, the interpolation does not
even wait for the new theme to finish before overtaking it. After that
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melody has dwindled down to a solo flute line amid the harmonic void,
Berio's passage severs the rest of the b section, not even allowing the
concluding theme 2 to sound.
Besides breaking up the sketch, Berio frames the movement with his
own sections. This phantom periphery further enhances the perception of the interpolations as a void, suggesting a space from which the
Andante has emerged and to which it will return. Among the sounds
encountered there are Schubert's marginalia, a brief two-voice counterpoint exercise that Berio incorporates into his opening section. This
music that never existed, or never was meant to be performed, is just
one of the melodic shades walking around the void. In that realm it
sounds no different from the scraps of the sketches or completed compositions, declaring that all melodies, including those of jottings and
masterpieces, are 'rendered' equally lifeless and disjointed in this
netherworld.
Having momentarily lifted the Andante from that void by restoring
it, Berio then forces it back into that space. The last interpolation
abruptly cuts off the movement before it reaches the coda. Again, no
perceptible gap prompts this disruption; rather it apparently results
from the desire to obstruct the musical flow.28Nowhere in Renderingis
that obstruction more invasive than here. Instead of the overlay used
previously, this interpolation swiftly blocks the sketches. Moreover, it
not only arrests the movement at an especially expressive moment but
also prevents it from returning to the tonic, forcing it to end in the subsidiary key of E minor. Left tonally bereft, the Andante immediately
disintegrates into the temporal void - all that can be heard in Berio's
closing passage are diffused fragments.
A conventional restoration would obviously vanquish that void rather
than have it reclaim a past work. Moreover, it would never break that
work apart. However, Berio, unlike the art restorers he admires, has
used restoration not as a means of attaining historical fidelity but rather
as a creative act, one that evokes loss and disintegration. Once orchestrated, the drafts are manipulated and splintered even more so as to
bring out the incompleteness and decay of the symphony. In this way,
the sketches have been restored - restored to the fragmentary state of
the past, not the artificial reconstructions of the present.
EUROPERA
5
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Musicage:CageMuses on Words,Art, and Music, ed. Joan Retallack (Hanover, NH, 1996), 226.
30 On Europeras1 & 2, see Laura D. Kuhn, 'Synergetic Dynamics in John Cage's Europeras1 &
2', Musical Quarterly,78 (1994), 131-48, and Herbert Lindenberger, Opera in History:From
Monteverdito Cage (Stanford, 1998), 240-64. A discussion of all the Europerascan be found in
William Fetterman, John Cage'sTheatrePieces(London, 1996), 167-87.
31 The directions for the work list 'one antique mechanical horn phonograph (His Master's
Voice Victrola)'. They also state that a jazz station is 'preferable'. Sections of the score can be
found in Musicage,333-9.
32 Musicage,300, 335.
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33 Ibid., 226.
34 'Shadow playing' also serves as another means of reducing the obstruction produced by the
three live musicians performing simultaneously.
35 Europera5, Durational Chart and List, The John Cage Collection, Research Library for the
Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, New York Public Library, New York.
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36 Cage's droll direction that each of the vocalists at one non-singing moment in the work wear
'a head and shoulders animal mask' also effaces the performer's presence, besides adding some
levity to the work.
37 Before Europera5, Cage had discussed the idea of replacing singers with phonographs. David
Revill, TheRoaringSilence:John Cage,A Life (London, 1992), 293.
38 Baudrillard, Simulations,83-159.
39 Walter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', Illuminations,
trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1968), 220-2.
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uninterrupted, un-'shadowed' and featuring full orchestral accompaniments - are the most complete operatic experiences in the work. If
opera is to be found in the shadow-world of Europera5, then it is to be
found in recordings.
Opera is altogether absent from the radio and television in the work,
two media that belong to Baudrillard's third order: the hyperreal.40 It
is not just that the two ignore the genre but that, according to Baudrillard, they have freed themselves from it and all originals, attaining a
state of pure simulation based on abstract codes and models. Along
these lines it is important to remember that watching over Europera5,
determining the timing and placement of the individual parts, is a computer simulation of the I Ching,a program that replaces the tossing of
coins with various commands and sub-commands. Television, as Baudrillard has discussed, similarly creates its own reality, transmuting originals - sports, cooking, arts - into new media-based forms.41 For those
who find the hyperreal to be theoretical hyperbole, the matter can be
approached from a different perspective by simply considering what
makes the unreality and emptiness of television more clear than watching it in a theatrical context, especially with the volume off.42
With each link of Cage's historical chain, there is less opera: the loss
of voice and theatricality in the piano fantasies, the elimination of the
body and dimming of the aura by the Victrola, and the disappearance
of the genre with the television and radio. One other simulation,
though, needs to be mentioned: Europera5 itself. Consisting of operatic scraps and reproductions, as well as indifferent media, the work is
nothing more than a simulation. But of what kind? With all the operatic flotsam, it never achieves the autonomy of the television or radio.
Neither are there many similarities with the mechanical reproduction
of the Victrola. Europera5, notwithstanding its standardized title, does
not roll down an assembly line; rather, each production of the aleatoric
work is unique, thus playfully adding to its aura a layer of uniqueness
unforeseen by Benjamin. Ironically, recordings prove more than
usually inadequate in capturing the work, being unable to accommodate not only the infinite versions of the piece but also all the simulations involved, namely the silent television and the barely audible
Truckera.43 Perhaps even more ironically, Europera 5, despite its
technological verve, most resembles the nineteenth-century piano fantasies. The work is essentially an individually conceived reproduction
of opera dependent on live performers, although a virtuoso may not
be necessary to turn the television on and off. Both indulge in operatic moments: Liszt's works embellishing them in pianistic filigree,
Cage's piece casting them in shadows.
40 Baudrillard, Simulations,103-52.
41 Jean Baudrillard, Seduction,trans. Brian
Singer (Montreal, 1990), 159-63.
42 A different sort of simulacrum
autonomy is attained by Truckera, which remains beholden
to opera but transforms the fragments of the genre into its own distinct sound, a noise unknown
on the opera stage.
43 Although well produced, the CD on the Mode label (Mode 36) testifies to the inadequacies
of recordings in capturing the piece.
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44 Fetterman also discusses the feelings of nostalgia and wistfulness evoked by the work. John
Cage'sTheatrePieces,186-7.
45 Musicage,333.
46 Revill, TheRoaringSilence,293.
47 Quoted in Fetterman, John Cage'sTheatrePieces,169.
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48 Musicage,339. Accounts of the 1992 performances at the Museum of Modern Art in NewYork
City, however, make clear that Truckera went well beyond 'bare audibility'. Fetterman, John Cage's
TheatrePieces,186.
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on""
Figure 2.
?e
Mike and Doug Starn, Crucifixion, 1985-8. Toned silver print, wire, ribbon,
and the
wood, tape, 120" X 120".CourtesyLeo Castelli,PaceWildensteinMacGill,
artists.
49 A similar gesture occurs in the RestoredPainting, No. 5. A reproduction of that work can be
found in Art News, 88 (March 1989), 143.
50 In their recent work, the Starns have focused on images of the sun, often incorporating
digital shots taken by a NASA satellite. These works have appeared in a variety of media, including
video.
MUSICAL
DECAY
111
Photography and other reproduction technologies, though, are supposed to give art a partial reprieve from time, at least allowing a secondary version of a work to survive. However, as in Europera5, reproduction
serves as the agent of decay rather than of preservation. The photographs disintegrate Champaigne's image just as the historical chain of
simulations effaces opera. Moreover, the promise of infinite reproducibility, the means by which reproductions stay one step ahead of
decay, is not fulfilled. Five Christ figures appear, no two looking the
same, none of them complete.
51 If the Starn twins had wanted to incorporate a true crucifixion
image, they could have used
Champaigne's own painting of that scene.
52 Quoted in Andy Grunberg, Mikeand Doug Starn (New York, 1990), 38.
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The Starns' yellowed Christs and the three other works discussed
above extend a tradition of aestheticizing decay. Predecessors in that
tradition include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paintings of the
Roman Forum and Chateaubriand's musings upon the 'poetics of the
dead' overheard in sacred ruins.53Such evocations often peer back at
a distant and faint past, like the Roman and Gothic ruins which speak
of their time in mysteries and fragments. The late twentieth-century
progeny of that tradition, on the other hand, usually draw on a voluble
past - operas that still ring in halls and paintings that hang in museums.
They treat these familiar pieces with a high degree of artificiality and
irony, hallmarks of so much recent art. In that vein, the above four
works do not depict actual dilapidated objects but appropriate intact
works (or, with the Schubert sketches, an intact incomplete symphony)
and subject those secondary versions to decay.
If the decay is artificial, so is the means of borrowing. Each of the four
works draws upon past originals under the claim of restoration and
reproduction. That conceit facilitates the wholesale borrowing of earlier
pieces. In their respective modes of presentation those two approaches
focus on entire works and aim to minimize any alterations to them.
Appropriating those practices, the four works, especially Renderingand
Restored
Painting, can drawupon complete originals and downplay transformation to achieve a close likeness to the originals, while all the time
making room for differences, specifically the signs of decay and fragmentation. The presentation of a whole original deepens the illusion of
disintegration. We see or hear what seems to be an entire, possibly even
familiar, work having succumbed to age, its expansive surface scarred
and faded, its bulk breaking apart into shards.
That illusion is part of the chronological outlook of dissolution shared
by these four works. In this view of time, nothing lasts. The past, be it
Ingres, Champaigne, opera, or even an incipient symphony, fades away
into nothingness. The process of disintegration is irreversible. Attempts
at restoration and reproduction, the four works make clear, only exacerbate it. The present is also a site of loss. In Europera5 and Rendering,that
period emerges as either a void depleted of the creative wealth sought
in earlier centuries or a technological realm oblivious to those riches.
Both pieces draw on works and traditions that are disappearing, if not
entirely lost, and do not offer any new styles to replace them. The two
instead lead into emptiness, the blank stretches that abound in each,
like the voids opened up in the symphonic sketches or the extended
silences and media ethereality of Europera5. The artworksfollow similar
paths, this time leading to white walls and black canvases.
This bleak view appears to portend an aesthetic crisis or, as one critic
recently said of postmodern musical styles in general, a descent into 'the
black hole of nihilism'.54 Before sliding into that hole, it is important to
remember that twentieth-century arts, including postmodern styles,
53 FranCoisAuguste-Rene de Chateaubriand, Le ginie du christianisme(Paris, 1904), 426.
54 Robin Hartwell, 'Postmodernism and Art Music', The Last Post: Music afterModernism,ed.
Simon Miller (Manchester and New York, 1993), 27-51 (p. 50).
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DECAY
have offered myriad ways of viewing the past - some bleak, some not.55
Two other works by Berio, for instance, see the past and the present
quite differently from Rendering. In Recital I (for Cathy) the past similarly
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DAVIDMETZER
ABSTRACT
Restoration and reproduction have served as two of the primary means by
which the present has approached the past. These practices are the focus of
Luciano Berio's Renderingand John Cage's Europera5, two recent works that
draw upon earlier compositions. In Rendering,Berio 'restores' the drafts for
what would have been Schubert's Tenth Symphony. Contrary to conventional
restorations, Berio not only builds up the sketch materials but also fragments
them, having Schubert's themes disappear into musical voids. Europera5 looks
back at eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opera, which is presented in a
collage of live performance and reproductions. During the course of the work,
opera gradually disappears into a world of reproductions, losing its vocality
and presence. In both compositions, restoration and reproduction ultimately
make the past more distant and inaccessible. A similar use of these two practices occurs in recent visual artworks by Igor Kopystianskyand Mike and Doug
Starn. Both the musical and visual artworks create scenes of decay, in which
the past appears as crumbling and the present as an emptiness.