374
PARTISAN REVIEW
to
fall back upon the qualifier "ambiguous" because of the problem
of naming it. For example, when you arrive at a certain chord, it may
have the character of a dominant seventh, but it may function as an
augmented sixth in terms of what follows, for example, the allegro of
the
Dissonance
Quartet, measures 116 to 120. At the end of the
movement you know it has been an augmented sixth in the light of
the totality. At the same time, it seems to me that even at that point it
is valid information-part of the piece's totality-that in the course
of the passage you experienced it in
both
ways: as a dominant in
relation to what preceded, as an augmented sixth in relation to what
followed. Now is it necessary to name a chord, to reify it? The chord
is not a thing.
It
is a term of a relationship. It is in one relation to
what precedes, and in another to what follows. That should not be
too difficult a concept for students to grasp, who are well past the
Piagetian preteenage developmental stage when they first learned to
be at ease with abstractions .
Coppock:
So, you're complaining only about the abuse of verbal
activity?
Berger:
Yes, the substitution of verbal activity for direct, completely
absorbed listening. We may find it useful to murmur to ourselves in
the learning process, as when we learn
to
drive. But contrary
to
a
widespread view, it is the naive listener who tells himself what the
music is all about as he listens, as if he were still in the classroom.
Nothing could be more pedantic than John Cage's notorious silence
piece, since you cannot know a piece is in progress unless you are
instructed it is, and you then convince yourself it is . And the
woefully simplistic, repetitive music currently enjoying a vogue
commends itself to listeners because not even the most tone-deaf
could fail
to
notice and label the slightest change from one note or
chord to another-there being so few of these. In this connection, I
might also mention those pieces that start with material that has no
other significance and appeal beyond the fact that something is
going to happen
to
it later in the piece. When I question such
material in works my students bring me, and they inform me I will
understand it later, I tell them I shall 'very likely have tuned out
through boredom by the time the explanation is vouchsafed .
If
some
people wish to have "conceptual art" it is their prerogative. But it
would be well for them to realize that for the sake of novelty they
have sacrificed the very essence of the genre. The change is not one of
progress within the art, but rather a radical shift on the order of
switching, say, from music to dance or even, perhaps, from music to
engineering.
