Goeyvaerts Heidegger

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"Absolute Purity Projected into Sound": Goeyvaerts, Heidegger and Early Serialism Author(s): Jan Christiaens Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter, 2003), pp. 168-178Published by: Perspectives of New MusicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25164510Accessed: 05-03-2015 11:20 UTC

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"Absolute Purity Projected Into Sound": Goeyvaerts,

Heidegger and Early Serialism

Jan Christiaens

Research Fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research? Flanders (Belgium)

1. Introduction

At

the Darmstadt summer courses of 1951, Karel Goeyvaerts and Karlheinz Stockhausen played the second part of Goeyvaerts's

Nr. I, the sonata for two pianos. Immediately after the performance, Adorno, who had taken the place of Schoenberg as the leader of the

composition seminar, discussed the disproportion between the scoring and the economical use of the musical material: "Why did you compose this for two pianos?" Goeyvaerts's legitimation of his choice made clear that a composition seminar anno 1951 could not abstain from aesthetic and philosophical issues. Confronted with Goeyvaerts's and


Absolute Purity Projected into Sound 169

Stockhausen's analysis of the sonata, some participants of the seminar

pointed out the strong similarity between Goeyvaerts's aesthetic views and the philosophy of Being of Martin Heidegger. At that time, Goeyvaerts apparently wasn't familiar with Heidegger's philosophy in

general, let alone his ontological aesthetics.1 In the correspondence between Goeyvaerts and Stockhausen, which started after the summer courses and is an important source of knowledge concerning the aes thetic and technical aspects of early serialism, the name of Martin

Heidegger is mentioned several times. In a letter of August 10th, 1951,2 Stockhausen makes mention of Heidegger's Holzwege, a volume of essays published in 1950, which contains, among others, the lecture "Der

Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" ("The Origin of the Work of Art").3 Although this lecture, originally given in 1936, was widely known

among philosophers and artists, it is not clear whether Goeyvaerts effec

tively read it. On the one hand, Christoph von Blumr?der states that Herman Sabbe's mention of "an intensive occupation of both composers [Stockhausen and Goeyvaerts] with Heidegger" must be strongly quali fied.4 On the other hand, it seems to me that it is a risky step to conclude, as does Eduardo Marx in his book Heidegger und der Ort der Musik, that there exists a "principal incompatibility" between Heidegger's aesthetics and the new music, and that all parallels are due to a "superficial recep tion" of Heidegger's philosophy.5 At the risk of being myself a superficial reader of Heidegger, I will try to shed some light on this aspect by inves

tigating whether and how certain key concepts of Heidegger's aesthetics can be philosophically corroborating for Goeyvaerts's aesthetic views.

In his preparations for the course on music history he was teaching from September 1950 onwards, Goeyvaerts wrote down some notes con

taining his aesthetic views on music of that time.6 Before submitting these to a Heideggerian interpretation, I must for the sake of clarity point to the following: Goeyvaerts's aesthetics are delivered to us not in the form of an elaborated theory, but as a relatively small collection of stray notes which aren't supported by a strong philosophical argument. Never theless these notes have to be taken seriously for their historical value as

much as for their contents for the following reasons. The notes were

probably written down from September or October 1950 onwards, i.e., just after Goeyvaerts had completed his three years of study at the Paris Conservatoire with Messiaen and Milhaud. It is to be expected that the ideas Goeyvaerts developed in Paris under the influence of Milhaud's and

especially Messiaen's teachings and in the exchange of ideas with, among others, Pierre Boulez and Jean Barraqu? can be found in these notes in their purest form. Above all, the notes are of importance as far as they reveal the deeper-lying aesthetic motives for the development of total


170 Perspectives of New Music

serialism. In this respect, their fragmentary character doesn't detract from their value as a key to the deeper sense of Goeyvaerts's serial procedures. On the contrary, in their reduction to the essential, these notes form the best imaginable introduction to Goeyvaerts's serial works.7

2. Heidegger/Goeyvaerts: Philosophical Aspects of Early Serialism

The core of Goeyvaerts's aesthetics is formed by the thesis that music is the objectification in sound matter of a spiritual or mental issue. How

ever, the notes do not make clear in a univocal way what is meant by "spiritual" or "mental issue." This can be interpreted as the spiritual and

mental background of a composition, which bears the traces of the per sonality of the composer as well as of the socio-cultural context of the

composition?an aspect Goeyvaerts calls the "spirit of the age." Accord

ing to Goeyvaerts, the artist can claim merit to himself for penetrating this spirit of the age more deeply than the rest of humanity, and for

materialising his insights into a work of art. Elsewhere in his notes, how

ever, Goeyvaerts is much more explicit concerning the meaning of the

concept "mental issue." In a note of October 23rd, 1952 he writes that it is the task of music "to present 'Being' in time and in sound matter." This view is on a par with another note, in which Goeyvaerts makes a hierarchical distinction between three fundamental levels of a composi tion. At the top of this scheme Goeyvaerts places: "absolute 'Being': immobile." At the second level is the general structure of the composi tion, and at the lowest level he places the concrete composition as it exists in time and space. In this sense, only the upper level, absolute

Being, has absolute existence for Goeyvaerts?the composition is seen as a phenomenological appearance in time and space of this absolute

Being.8 This distinction between various levels, and the view of the work of art

as a phenomenological appearance of Being, is strongly related to

Heidegger's aesthetics. In his lecture "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes," the work of art is considered as the place where "die Wahrheit des Seienden [sich] ins Werk setzt" (UdK 30).9 According to Heidegger, the content of the work of art (he uses examples from painting) is high lighted in its ontological quality by the simple fact that in the work of art this content is brought to steadfastness, to "St?ndigkeit": "... was im

Werk am Werk ist: die Er?ffnung des Seienden in seinem Sein: das Geschehnis der Wahrheit." (UdK 33) In that way the work of art is a dis tinctive way in which the truth, in the Heideggerian sense of "Unverbor

genheit des Seins"?"unconcealment" of Being?becomes operative.



Goeyvaerts's aesthetics are a radicalisation of this aspect insofar as not the content of the work of art (in this case sound matter) in its ontological quality but this ontological quality itself, that is absolute Being itself, is

proclaimed as the proper "content" of the work of art. This process of "unconcealment" of Being in the work of art is described by Heidegger as the "struggle" (Streit) between two fundamental aspects of each work of art: the struggle between Welt (World) and Erde (Earth). Heidegger writes about the first aspect, the Welt-dimension: "Indem eine Welt sich

?ffnet, bekommen alle Dinge ihre Weile und Eile, ihre Ferne und N?he, ihre Weite und Enge." (UdK 41) The Welt-concept, which in Sein und

Zeit designates the spiritual design of one's living climate and living space, points in this context to the spiritual dimension of the work of art, i.e., the mental or spiritual openness created by the work of art in which the process of "unconcealment" of Being can take place.10 This open space ("das Offene der Welt") has in a certain sense to be occupied by the work of art in its Erde-dimension, its material dimension. The Erde,

which Heidegger also calls Werkstoff or the material out of which the work of art is made, is described as "das wohin das Werk sich zur?ckstellt und was es in diesem Sich-Zur?ckstellen hervorkommen l??t" (UdK 43). Heidegger takes a strong position by localizing the ontological quality of the work of art not in its spiritual dimension, but in the unique relation between the spiritual and the material dimension. This position is not, as it might seem at first sight, a reassertion of the old mind-matter dualism.

According to Heidegger, the work of art is not mute matter which only comes to speak when bestowed upon a meaning or a sense by human kind. It is on the contrary the twofold activity immanently at work in the work of art which generates meaning: as Welt it opens a spiritual space in which the material, the Erde, comes to its true being and meaning. As Welt the work of art wants to break out of its material limits; as Erde, it holds its spiritual dimension contained within itself. In this very relation the ontological quality of the work of art is brought to light. As

Heidegger writes: "Aufstellend eine Welt und herstellend die Erde ist das Werk die Bestreitung jenes Streites, in dem die Unverborgenheit des Seienden im Ganzen, die Wahrheit, erstritten wird." (UdK 54)

This bipolar aesthetic model offers an apt philosophical framework to

grasp the full bearing of Goeyvaerts's stringent aesthetical principles.11 As it appears from Goeyvaerts's notes as well as the correspondence with Stockhausen and others, early serialism was as much concerned with spir itual and philosophical as with technical issues. In a letter to his cousin

Mia Greeve, Goeyvaerts describes how at Darmstadt 1951 all his fellow

composers wanted to know the technical details of the new method he had applied in his Nr. 1. Goeyvaerts wrote: "I don't tell them everything



about it, because the application of my method by composers who do not possess the spiritual background which gave rise to it, would lead to an academism."12

In Goeyvaerts's aesthetics, the Heideggerian open space (das Offene der Welt) coincides with absolute Being. It goes without saying that the

metaphysical task Goeyvaerts sets to his music makes high demands on the musical material and its shaping. It has become clear that music can

only succeed in fulfilling this task if the shaping of sound matter is per fectly attuned to the spiritual dimension, i.e., to absolute Being, or, to use Heidegger's words, if the Erde-dimcnsion and the W?/?-dimension cover each other seamlessly. Consequently, Goeyvaerts's shaping of his

musical material was to a large extent dictated by the requirements of a

perfect congruence between the material and the spiritual dimension.13 There are two main properties of absolute Being by which Goeyvaerts wanted his sound matter to be determined: (structural) purity and immo

bility. From 1950 onwards, structural purity was one of the main solici tudes of Goeyvaerts, as it appears repeatedly from the correspondence

with Stockhausen.14 This purity became most evident from Goeyvaerts's striving for an absolute control of all properties of the sounds he used.15 It is however especially by the application of the second property of abso lute Being, immobility, that Goeyvaerts's serial works reveal themselves as the most strict and uncompromising form of serialism. In this aspect in

particular, Goeyvaerts succeeded in shaping his sound material perfectly according to the demands of his spiritual "program" (forgive the word). Yet, the problem this aspect poses to the composer is not to be disre

garded: how to shape the immobility of Being in a artform which is pre eminently spatio-temporal? Goeyvaerts tackled this problem by banishing the traditional concept of dynamic development out of his music, down to the smallest details. His serial technique aims at neutralising the tem

poral dimension as completely as possible and, by so doing, sublimating it in a static situation of absolute equilibrium. As a result of this rigid compositorial ethic, Goeyvaerts arrived at the cross-structure as the ideal incarnation of absolute balance, as convincingly shown by the analyses of

Herman Sabbe and Mark Delaere.16 The causal relation which Goeyvaerts installs between the structural

purity and the ontological qualities of a composition can also be found in

Heidegger's lecture. Although Heidegger states that every work of art is in a certain sense a revelation of Being, he still recognizes that the struc tural purity of artworks, their simplicity, their limitation to the essential is the hallmark of the truth (here to be understood as "unconcealment" of

Being). He writes: "Je einfacher und wesentlicher das Schuhzeug [Heidegger refers to the painting A Peasant's Shoes of Van Gogh], urn so



unmittelbarer und einnehmender wird mit ihnen alles Seiende seiender.

Dergestalt ist das sichverbergende Sein gelichtet." (UdK 55) In this con

text, the traditional aesthetic category of beauty is given a new definition.

According to Heidegger, a work of art can only truly be called beautiful when the treatment of its matter (the material dimension) fits the uncon cealment of Being as seamlessly as possible: "Sch?nheit ist eine Weise, wie Wahrheit als Unverborgenheit west." (UdK 55)

Taking into account that this unconcealment of Being requires such a

precarious handling and shaping of the musical material, and that

Heidegger describes the relation between the material and the spiritual dimension, not without reason, as a "struggle," why ever do Heidegger and Goeyvaerts consider the work of art as a privileged locus for this pro cess of truth, and not, as in Hegel's philosophy, as an imperfect and

(hence) temporary phase in the development of absolute spirit? In their answers to this question, Heidegger and Goeyvaerts seem to attach

importance to similar aspects of the work of art. According to Heidegger, the spiritual openness of the work of art can only exist by the grace of its

material, which so to speak keeps this openness open, materialises it, and

by so doing lends steadfastness to it. It belongs to the essence of Being to install itself in a particular and historically determined work of art?

Heidegger calls this der Zug zum Werk. We can find a very similar view in

Goeyvaerts's aesthetics. Although he supports the primacy of the spiritual dimension, he still states that it is of primordial importance that these mental or spiritual issues become materialised in a concrete sound struc ture: "We speak of music only when the spiritual issues step out of the individual and become a sounding reality."17 Yet this strain on objectifica tion implies that the work of art, that a composition, always bears the traces of its era. Heidegger uses the term "Gestalt" to indicate the way in

which truth becomes tangible in a specific material and historical constel lation. In Heidegger's aesthetics this aspect has no further implications,

whereas in Goeyvaerts's notes it functions as a criterion for a judgment of value. The composer not only has to penetrate the spirit of the age, he also has to translate his insights in a musical language which is in keeping with its inherent historical evolution (cf. Adorno's concept of "musical

material").18

3. Conclusion

The starting point of this article was an interesting disagreement in the

secondary literature about the putative (in)compatibility between

Heidegger's aesthetics in Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes and Goeyvaerts's



serial music or new music in general. Let me review the points in which

Goeyvaerts and Heidegger take up strikingly similar attitudes towards the work of art and music. First, it is obvious that both views recognize the

primacy of the spiritual, even ontological level, which, it is true, they con ceive of as intricably bound to the material dimension of art. But in

Heidegger's view it is the ontological quality of the particular work of art which is aimed at (e.g., A Peasant's Shoes of Van Gogh), whereas in

Goeyvaerts's notes the focus is directed immediately and directly to abso lute Being itself. A second point concerns the relation between the spiri tual and the material dimension in art. I think Heidegger's concept of

"struggle" between Welt and Erde forms an apt framework within which to interpret the implications of Goeyvaerts's aesthetics for the material dimension of his music, the more so as it transcends any interpretation in terms of a mind-matter dualism.

But there are important differences too. Firstly, the utterances about the historical component of the work of art are a mere statement in

Heidegger's theory, which they are not in Goeyvaerts's notes. Secondly, Goeyvaerts tries to capture absolute Being in sound structures which are immobile and atemporal; for Heidegger, on the contrary, temporality is a fundamental feature of absolute Being, as he made clear in Sein und Zeit.

Finally, I want to point out a remarkable similarity as far as the position of Heidegger and Goeyvaerts in a broader aesthetic context is concerned. In his lecture Heidegger denounces any approach to the work of art as a

mere thing or object (Vorhandenes/Dingliches), because according to

Heidegger this is an unjustified attack on the real essence of art. Instead, he points to the unique position of art as a privileged way in which truth

(unconcealment of Being) becomes historical and tangible. Something similar can be said about Goeyvaerts's position within the evolution of

musical aesthetics. Generally speaking, musical aesthetics in the first half of the twentieth century was dominated by positivistic tendencies, which

approached music as a factual, analysable object, as etwas Vorhandenes. Formalism may have been one of the most influential of these tendencies, but other approaches such as biologistic or energetic theories also cut the romantic thread with the absolute. In his serial works Goeyvaerts took up this thread again by coupling his search for an absolute structural purity

with an absolute spiritual purity, with absolute Being, which is the ulti mate foundation of what Herman Sabbe has called "Goeyvaerts's abso lutism of purity." It is a remarkable peculiarity of music history to see how Goeyvaerts's ideology of purity, which is implicitly a critique of the romantic expressionistic heritage, reverts to a pre-eminently romantic

paradigm, namely the view of music as a privileged revelation of the Absolute. The enemy is fought with its own weapons.



It has become clear that?even if there was an intensive occupation of

Goeyvaerts with Heidegger's philosophy?the similarity between

Heidegger's and Goeyvaerts's aesthetic views is limited to some general aesthetic attitudes and categories, and that the differences are not to be overlooked. Since Heidegger's lecture offers no specific theory of musical

structures, but only impulses to a general aesthetic reflection, I've tried not to let it say more than it says. This means that the vagueness of the indicated similarities is a conscious option on my part.



Notes

1. "War es Zufall, da? pl?tzlich der Schatten Heideggers auftauchte? Der junge Belgier [Goeyvaerts] wu?te sicher nichts von

Fundamental-Ontologie und vom Begriff der Wahrheit als 'Offen

heit,' vom 'Sein' das 'redet.' Einige der deutschen Teilnehmer schienen den Zusammenhang zu ahnen." W. Friedl?nder, "Musikalische Alchimie," Frankfurter Hefte 7, no. 4 (1952): 263.

2. Cf. H. Sabbe, "Karlheinz Stockhausen: . . . wie die Zeit verging . . .",

Musik-Konzepte 19 ( M?nchen: Edition Text + Kritik, 1981), 82. The complete letters of Stockhausen to Goeyvaerts are being pre served in the New Music Research Center Karel Goeyvaerts of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) (University Archives, Artistic Estate of Karel Goeyvaerts, II, no. 5).

3. Martin Heidegger, Holzwege, (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1950). The lecture "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" is also edited

separately: Martin Heidegger, Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes

(Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1960) (henceforth UdK). In 2002

Cambridge University Press published the first English translation to

bring together the texts originally published under the title Holzwege: Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, trans, by J. Young and K.

Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

4. Sabbe, "Karlheinz Stockhausen," 70, n. 39; C. Von Blumr?der, Die

Grundlegung der Musik Karlheinz Stockhausens, (Stuttgart: Franz

Steiner, 1993), 23: "Wenn Stockhausen in diesen Zusammenhang Hesses Glasperlenspiel nun unter die 'Schlu?steine' rechnet, so bedeutet das keine Abwertung, ebensowenig wie die Erw?hnung der

Holzwege Martin Heideggers als Dokument des Neubeginns ?berbe wertet werden darf. . . . Stockhausens daraufhin gefa?ter Vorsatz einer gr?ndlichen Lekt?re der Schriften Heideggers blieb allerdings unausgef?hrt, und in den folgenden Briefen an Goeyvaerts ist von

Heidegger nicht mehr die Rede."

5. Eduardo Marx, Heidegger und der Ort der Musik (Epistemata: Reihe

Philosophie, Bd. 237) (W?rzburg: K?nigshausen & Neumann, 1998), 13.

6. University Archives of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Artistic Estate of Karel Goeyvaerts, I, no. 4.



7. For a thorough introduction to Goeyvaerts's oeuvre (including analyses, an excerpt of his autobiography, and a complete list of

works), see Mark Delaere, "The Artistic Legacy of Karel Goeyvaerts: A Collection of Essays," thematic issue of the Revue Belge de Musicol

ogie 48(1994). 8. The same train of thought can be seen in a letter of Goeyvaerts to

Stockhausen (dated September 9, 1953): "Als Prinzip [of electronic

music] scheint mir aber nur das g?ltig zu sein, was mit der Bewe

gungslosigkeit des Seins ?bereinstimmt. . . . Das Prinzip ist bewe

gungslos wie der absolute Geist." (Artistic Estate of Karel Goeyvaerts II, no. 5); see also H. Sabbe, "Das Musikdenken von Karel

Goeyvaerts in Bezug auf das Schaffen von Karlheinz Stockhausen: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der fr?hseriellen und elektronischen Musik 1950-1956" in Interface 2, no. 1 (August 1973): 104.

9. It is a remarkable fact that Heidegger does not make any distinction

(as do Kant and Hegel in their idealistic aesthetics) between the dif ferent artforms as far as their character as revelation of "Truth" is concerned. This (positive) indifference of the truth-process towards the material dimension of the artwork entails that music is in the same measure as the other artforms capable of revealing the truth.

10. Cf. Gabriel Liiceanu, "Zu Heideggers 'Welt'-Begriff in 'Der

Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,'" in Walter Biemel and Friedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann, eds. Kunst und Technik: Ged?chtnisschrift zum 100. Geburtstag von Martin Heidegger (Frankfurt am Main,: V.

Klostermann, 1989), 205-15.

11. Hartmut Flechsig has already pointed to the value of this aspect of

Heidegger's aesthetics for a deeper understanding of musical struc tures. Cf. Hartmut Flechsig, "Anst??e Heideggers zum Selbstver st?ndnis in der Musikwissenschaft," Die Musikforschung 30 (1977): 29.

12. Artistic Estate of Karel Goeyvaerts, II, no. 5

13. As an example of this, Herman Sabbe mentions Goeyvaerts's remark able attitude towards electronic music. See Sabbe, "Karlheinz

Stockhausen," 58: "F?r Goeyvaerts gilt das Primat des Gedachten, die Volkommenheit der Struktur, die in die Welt zu stellen ist; die

Realisierung aber kann warten, bis die M?glichkeiten der Appara turen dieser gerecht geworden sind."

14. Cf. Stockhausen's letter of January 25, 1954 to Goeyvaerts (Artistic Estate of Karel Goeyvaerts, II, no. 5); cf. also Sabbe, "Karlheinz



Stockhausen," 58, where the author uses the following epitheta to describe Goeyvaerts's serial music: Reinheits-Absolutismus, the

hypostasis of a tranzendente Wahrheit, music as pures Raum

Zeitgeflecht.

15. For an account of the influence of Goeyvaerts's teacher Messiaen on the former's development of serialism, see Mark Delaere, "Olivier

Messiaen's Analysis Seminar and the Development of Post-War Serial

Music," Music Analysis 21, no. 1 (March 2002): 35-51.

16. Sabbe, "Karlheinz Stockhausen," 7-16; idem, Het muzikale serial isme als techniek en denkmethode (Doctoral dissertation, Ghent

University, 1977), 43-87; M. Delaere, "Auf der Suche nach serieller

Stimmigkeit: Goeyvaerts Weg zur Komposition Nr. 2 (1951)," in Orm Finnendahl, ed., Die Anf?nge der seriellen Musik (Kontexte: Beitr?ge zur zeitgen?ssischen Musik 1) (Hofheim: Wolke, 1999), 13 36.

17. Text to be found in Goeyvaerts's notebooks, Artistic Estate of Karel

Goeyvaerts, I, no. 4.

18. Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), 38-41 ("Tendenz des Materials"). However, as far as the concrete filling in of the notion "musical material" is con

cerned, Goeyvaerts and Adorno had totally different opinions, as

appears from the latter's harsh critique of serial music in "Vom Altern der neuen Musik" (1954). Later on, Adorno adopted a more moderate critical approach, as for instance in "Vers une musique informelle" (1961).


Article Contentsp. [168]p. 169p. 170p. 171p. 172p. 173p. 174p. 175p. 176p. 177p. 178

Issue Table of ContentsPerspectives of New Music, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter, 2003) pp. 1-248Front MatterIn Memoriam Iannis Xenakis (Part Three)Xenakis:... Tireless Renewal at Every Instant, at Every Death... [pp. 4-64]Toward an Interpretation of Xenakis's "Nomos alpha" [pp. 66-118]Xenakis in Miniature: Style and Structure in " r. (Hommage Ravel)" for Piano (1987) [pp. 120-153]The Writings of Iannis Xenakis (Starting with "Formalized Music") [pp. 154-166]

"Absolute Purity Projected into Sound": Goeyvaerts, Heidegger and Early Serialism [pp. 168-178]Field Notes: A Study of Fixed-Pitch Formations [pp. 180-239]Editorial Notes [pp. 240-242]Correspondence [pp. 244-246]Back Matter

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Goeyvaerts Heidegger