The Fortissimo-Misunderstanding

The ‘School’

The practice of what would later be called the ‘Haagse School’ (The Hague School) ceased to exist by the time the name was coined and branded sometime around the 1990s. ‘Schools’ are primarily musicological inventions, useful for shaping historical narratives in manageable, comprehensible ways. But Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven certainly never thought, at any point in their music and composition practices, that they were part of the ‘Viennese School’. As a result, it later became appealing for composers to be associated with a “School”; it works as a slogan, helping to create an image that makes their work more marketable. To define a “School,” especially external characteristics are needed. For the “Haagse School,” this primarily involves the terms “fortissimo” and “minimal music.” Peter Schat unintentionally contributed to this when he spoke about the fortissimo radikalinsky’s. In an earlier text (from 2007), I wrote the following:

The intense dynamics in pieces from the late 1970s and early 1980s, such as De Staat, Hoketus, Tam Tam, Bint, or Montage, were not based on an aesthetic choice; they were the result of an underlying form. At that time, the focus was on reinventing the strong and weak beats, and thereby the progression of music over time. If anything defines the passage of time, it’s the difference between strong and weak in the rhythm of music. This rhythm of strong and weak, incidentally, is not a matter of dynamics in itself. It’s a harmonic issue, an issue that raised the matter of the decline of voice leading. The thousand-year reign of voice leading had been buried in the 20th century. This was seen as a problem and demanded our attention. The works from this period may not have provided

The external characteristics used to define a ‘School’ primarily reflect an articulation of ‘personal taste’; they often overlook what I call the ‘underlying form’ in the above quote, which is part of what I would call the ‘pure artistic judgment.’

Judgments of Taste

The distinction between personal taste and pure artistic judgment I take from Kant. In his Critique of Judgment, Kant differentiates between three kinds of judgments of taste: those concerning the ‘beautiful,’ the ‘good,’ and the ‘pleasant.’ A significant distinction is the criterion of interest, which I have adopted. Only the beautiful is free from interest, whereas the other two judgments are tied to it. A judgment of beauty is impersonal, timeless, and thus universal. For example, I can say, ‘I find chocolate delicious,’ but not ‘Chocolate is delicious,’ because when it comes to what I find pleasant or unpleasant, I cannot speak for the world. Similarly, I may say, ‘This rose is beautiful,’ and not ‘I find this rose beautiful,’ as I must now refrain from speaking for myself; this is a general statement. Although Kant initially speaks of beauty primarily in terms of nature, he ultimately extends his conclusions, with some adaptations, to art as well. The interest criterion applies there too. The great advantage of this criterion is that I can regard a certain composition as being of high artistic quality while also finding it unattractive. If I have heard the piece countless times and all surprises have vanished, its attractiveness—primarily an external aspect—becomes exhausted; at the same time, I can still appreciate its internal structure (or underlying form) for its worth. In contrast to artistic quality judgment, personal taste is subject to wear. Artistic quality judgment stands apart from personal taste and is detached from any desire. Personal taste, or the taste for the pleasant, is what is meant when we say, ‘There’s no accounting for taste.’ Even the beautiful rose can be used to serve an interest, for instance, to charm a lovely lady. But this interest is not connected to its beauty, only to its attractiveness—at least, that’s what the suitor may hope. Incidentally, Kant notes somewhere in a footnote that, although a judgment of taste may be disinterested, this does not mean it is of no importance.

The Underlying Form

To clarify what I mean by ‘underlying form,’ let’s examine the first part of the composition Hoketus by Louis Andriessen. This section consists of 10 ‘blocks’ that gradually ‘fill up.’ Each block is repeated an indeterminate number of times. A block consists of a certain number of ‘attack moments,’ i.e., moments when a sound can be heard, but doesn’t necessarily have to be. Block [1] has 10 attack moments, of which only the first two are actually played, divided between the two parts. There are two playing groups, each consistently one attack moment apart; thus, the groups never play simultaneously. As a result, each group has 5 attack moments at its disposal. In Block [10], all attack moments are eventually sounded; this marks the end of the first section. In this final block of the section, we hear a continuous sequence of attacks, making it so that the block itself is no longer perceived as distinct — it is, in a way, ‘dissolved.’

Attack

Our focus here is not on analyzing this piece itself but on the concept of ‘attack’ and ‘attack moment.’ An ‘attack’ is not the same as a ‘beat’ in a time signature. The score does use time signatures, such as 5/4 at the beginning and 5/8 at the end of the first part, but this is purely a practical matter to aid the performer, who is accustomed to conventional musical notation. However, this ‘5/4’ is not a conventional 5/4 measure. The ‘beat’ in this measure will never be subdivided; at no point (in this part) do we encounter a subdivision of the beat, like a sixteenth note or a triplet. This is simply not the case here. Therefore, I use the term ‘attack’ instead of ‘beat.’ There are only ‘ones’ in this ‘measure,’ so it is not a ‘measure’ in the conventional sense; it is an ‘attack block’ (or simply ‘block’). Each block consists solely of ‘downbeats’; there is no internal distinction within a block between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ beats—at least, not within each group individually. The distinction between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ has shifted to the interaction between the two groups. The first two attacks set up the question: is this a matter of ‘light’ versus ‘heavy’? If so, is the first attack of the first group an ‘upbeat’? The notation might suggest this, but when listening to the piece, you don’t hear an ‘upbeat’ followed by a ‘downbeat’; instead, you hear two consecutive ‘strong beats.’ This is the essence of the ‘attack’—the fact that there are only ‘ones.’ This creates a play with the conventions of meter. An ‘attack’ is comparable to the number ‘1’ in the numerical system: it is the unit of the system, functioning differently from the other numbers. (This is partly why ‘1’ is not considered a prime number.) In an attack sequence, we hear only a succession of units, never leading to an actual time signature.

Fortissimo

Bringing an ‘attack’ into focus, ‘carving time,’ calls for fortissimo. You carve with a steel chisel, not with a silk scarf. The use of fortissimo in certain pieces of the so-called ‘Haagse School’ therefore has a structural, substantive reason and does not stem from a matter of taste; it is not an expression of emotion, decoration, or color. This fortissimo is thus not a characteristic of the ‘Haagse School’ itself; rather, it results from something that could be considered a defining characteristic: in this case, the exploration of rhythm and meter, the interplay of strong and weak beats, and the relationship between notation and performance, as well as between composer and musician. This relationship is relevant not only musically but also politically—in the broadest sense of the word, derived from polis, referring to the public sphere. But that is another topic.

— Cornelis de Bondt, 6 juni 2021