关于“新音乐”作曲新技法不断更替的问题——西方20世纪“新音乐”创新问题局限性分析之二

The Issue of the Constant Replacement of New Composing Techniques for the "New Music":An Analysis of the Limitation of the 20th-Century "New Music" Compositions in the West(Part II)

The period from the 1910’s or 1920’s to 1950’s or 1960’s has seen rapid development of various new composing techniques for the ″new music″ in the West. The ″new music″ composers, full of passion and impulse, with an aim to seek originality and uniqueness, forced themselves to realize too many missions and duties, regardless of their own expanding self-consciousness. However, their music activities, which represented their ideals and pursuits, reflect somehow the road of the development of Western schools and styles of arts. In the positive sense, musical compositions were freed from the ″barriers″ of traditional composing technique theories and established systems of values. On the other hand, as the replacing process for new techniques was too rapid, it brought about a severe break of history in the ″new music″ structure by creating a certain kind of ″rationality″ risk. Therefore, with the deepening of ″new music″ researches, the limitation caused by the rapid transformation of new composing techniques graduated emerged. Nevertheless, a study on this limitation does not mean an overall denial of all the various composing techniques for the ″new music″, but rather a dialectical critique of them. This article intends to discuss, from the historical perspective, the issue of the limitation arising from the rapid transformation of new composing techniques for the 20th-century ″new music″. The author believes that works of the ″new music″ lack a value system of ultimate significance which is shared by the contemporary composers, and thus turn the ″new music″ into a series of modern musical forms with varied techniques, but more loose and unstrained, making the ″new music″ face the risk of losing itself and most of the works ″survive for short time″. One may easily find that the new composing techniques for the new music tend to focus more on ″conflicting developments″ among the composers ?穴namely, dodecaphony, cluster, microtone music and tone colour music that are used in the new techniques develop in a way of mutual rejection and incompatibility?雪. This mere focus on ″conflicting developments″ rather than ″gradual development″ ?穴namely, the overall development of music techniques should be compatible and gradual?雪 is not in conformity with the universal principle of human social development in two compatible ways, and is therefore harmful to the maturity of the new composing techniques. The 20th century saw the social changes in such varied forms that were beyond the control of the natural sciences. Whether it is philosophy, aesthetics, literature or fine art, perception of each science is becoming more and more ambiguous, with no recognized standing-points, so as to cause breaks in their innate continuation. It is thus unavoidable that in this process of co-existence and replacement of various new composing techniques exists the weakness of the so-called ″seeing no forest but trees″. Just as critic Sun Shaozhen remarks, ″each of the schools comes out of fixed accumulation of one’s aesthetic experiences and each attempts to exceed the others. But whether they can accomplish their mission or not mainly depends on to what extent their aesthetic experiences have reached, both in terms of what they have inherited and what they have developed. Schools opposing to each other may develop healthily by infiltrating into each other. Both the opposing and the infiltrating are inseparable from each other. Unhealthy growth in either aspect may become obstacle in the emergence of music giants that would exceed their predecessors....Sometimes it is unfavourable to the accumulation of aesthetic experience when only a few comrades stand under the same banner.″ This statement well explains the feature of short life in all those ″new music″ phenomena. These fast going music forms break too soon the process of aesthetic experience accumulation in the music art, and therefore it is only natural to have this feeling that history will be constantly repeated somehow. However, in the history of Western music, it always happens that whenever a new composing technique appeared, there was always somebody who would oppose to it, but eventually this new technique was accepted by all. The author points out that no matter how the new techniques developed in the history of Western music, they all followed the same principle, i.e. ″gradual development″ and ″conflicting development″ always infiltrate into each other, and stimulate, promote and restrict each other. Every mature composing technique is unexceptionally developed following contradictions and conflicts. Each conflicting party, such as homophony versus polyphony, major versus minor, harmonious versus inharmonious, ultimately results in fusion rather than extreme opposition. ″Fusion is a process of accepting and eradicating two opposing styles, and finally expel them. When two opposing parties approach each other, a new structure composed of two extremes, or the third style, emerges quietly.″ Most of the ″new music″ composing techniques focus on ″conflicting developments″ among the composers. This mere focus on ″conflicting developments″ rather than ″gradual development″ is not in conformity with the universal principle of human social development in two compatible ways, and is therefore harmful to the maturity of composing techniques. Moreover, when the process of new composition technique transformation is too rapid, the feature of slow changes in the masses’ aesthetic experience is often neglected and the living perception of human life is deprived, so that music becomes more and more ambiguous and obscure, far away from the expectation of composers and audience. Culturally speaking, ″there will be no school without exclusivity″, but when the new composing techniques for the ″new music″ despise or terminate the ″others″ too much, it inevitably leads to limitation.