ARTHUR BERGER
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approaches that fascinated me then as they do now. Without draw–
ing upon Schenker, in considering larger structural issues, she
would reduce local chromatic inflections almost to the point of
extinction, much as he would. When I'd argue that they might have
structural significance, she would deplore the fact that my musician–
ship, which she granted, was "spoiled" by my intellect.
Coppock:
You refer to deviant analytical approaches. Would you
elaborate on them?
Berger:
Although she approached analysis from a very different van–
tage point from Schenker's, like him, Boulanger would place a limit
on the properties of a local event that could be considered globally
significant. This can be very illuminating in separating out at least
one aspect of total structure. But there are other aspects, it seems to
me. And because music is so complex, with relations on different
levels presented to our attention simultaneously, it has to be ap–
proached from different angles at different times to be sufficiently
understood. The emphasis on unity, on the hierarchy, is a remedy
against the old additive approach: the chord-labelling and key–
labelling that ignore relationship. But I think we tend to throw the
baby out with the bath water. Viewing a composition as if the whole
work is spread out before us at once may be necessary and important,
but it does not take into account some of the things we experience at
a given moment. We have to have all the information in if we are to
assess the totality. But having this information,
knowing it,
is
obviously quite different from experiencing, feeling events, quali–
ties, or relations embodied in sensuous auditory matter and un–
folding in our presence in time.
If
this were not so, a musical
composition would be like a problem with one solution-once we
had the solution it would be pointless to listen again. What I'm
driving at here is related to something that puzzled a few readers of
my birthday tribute to Irving Babbitt in
Perspectives
(1976). I made a
distinction between
knowing
music, on the one hand, and
hearing
it
with appreciation and/ or apprehension, on the other. To apprehend
or appreciate it you do not necessarily have
to
know
it.
That's why T.S. Eliot could say, after reading Dante, "Genuine
poetry can communicate before it is understood," and at another
time, "There's a logic of the imagination as well as a logic of
concepts." I think it comes back to a matter of feeling, though I
know it's not good form these days to bring this into an intelligent
discussion of music. There is knowing conceptually what a piece is
about, and there is feeling what it is about. Often we have no doubt
about the way we "hear" or "feel" a given chord. But we are obliged
