THE MUSIC ITSELF- CHARACTERISTICS AND THEORY OF REPRODUCTION
In his music, Wölfli uses two different kinds of notation:
1)
traditional notes with staves, notes, keys etc.
2)a system of syllables indicating degree i.e. the French do, re, mi, fa sol, ti. In the early drawings 1904-5 there are only empty staves.
Yet the traditional system contains many oddities unique to Wölfli: Staves are always of 6 lines rather than the usual 5, with many auxiliary or 'ledger' lines. The notes are usually quavers or semi-quavers, rarely crochets. The sterns of the notes have 'flags' some-times en both sides instead of the normal one. He uses the treble and bass clefs, time signature (usually 2/4), and a sharp (#) indicating key signature - possibly that of one sharp i.e. G major. Bars are used to indicate metre hut in strange sequences. These defy reading in traditional way, but are regular enough to suggest that they were meaningful to Wölfli.
A number of ether signs cause more problems: the use of the sign '9' at the end of bars, for example. The #sign is very often used ether than as a sharp because it is not next to note. In these frequent cases it seems most likely that it performs the function of a 'rest'.
The appearance of the figures 1 2 1 before and after bars is unexplained, as is the function of dots after note sterns, unless they are a variant of the traditional dotted note. Diagonal bars linking sterns may be interpreted as lies bul there are otherwise no indications of dynamics or timbre.
Streiff and Keller have suggested that where Wölfli employs staves in pairs, it seems reasonable to assume that the line he draws between them should represent middle C as in the traditional notation. Then the top line in the treble would be the extra 6th line (i.e. A) as would be the bottom line of the bass (i.e. E). And if the use of ene sharp at the bezinning of most pieces represents the key of G major then Wölfli's music begins to be readable.
We must re-emphasise however, that this is hut ONE interpretation and the major importance of Wölfli's work is that its pictorial framing and peculiar formation render the possibility of many, if not unlimited interpretations.
The result of reading the music by this system is on the compact disc and whilst in his time, if it had ever been performed, it might have sounded somewhat 'atonal', it certainly sounds quite melodic to a modern listener. No chords seemed 'unrealisable', and there are always interesting developments of melody, harmony and counter-point. Rhythm is a problem, however, and his numerical system remains a mystery.
WÖLFLI'S IMPORTANCE TO PHILOSOPHY/ ANTIPSYCHIATRY/ ART HISTORY/ MUSICOLOGY.
Adolf Wölfli was mad, of that there Ais no doubt. But it is vital not to categorise bis art as separate-as mad, or 'naive'. Wölfli, like all artists, is confronting the essential question of art, religion, philosophy: Original Sin, in the sense of man's powerlessness to confront the Absolute. He sees himself as One: the sinner and the sinned against, and asks, why must humans suffer guilt, and sonic become insane as welt?
Wölfli always spoke of art as 'a beautifully rhymed curse' which simultaneously endowed him with great power, but ultimately imposed its ineluctable limitations.
Madness, in the sense of dissatisfaction with accepted norms is always a-social and lies at the origin of alt creation. Creativity is always a deviance, a transgression of accepted modes of thought. in fact. art like Wölfli's casts light on the origin of art in general, because the creative mechanisms behind it are often more visible than in that of the 'healthy' artist. In contrast, cultural (i.e. accepted) art is only a controlled madness, a HYPERBOLE which can only be indulged by constantly referring back to the yardsticks of its culture. Therefore, instead of its being a supposed expression/symptom/result of an illness, art such as Wölfli's must be accepted as 'art', and that is alt. The 'illness' does not disappear, by reason of this acceptance, of course. But rather it exists alongside, affecting hut not conditioning the creative process.
Wölfli's MUSIQUE BRUT is this neither an illness nor merely an aesthetic, hut a challenge to the human condition, like any great oeuvre. lt is process rather than product (a process of documentation); production rather than expression; creativity rather than communication, though of course it communicates a dimension beyond mere semantics.
Wölfli creates an 'individual mythology, (Barthes) which over-runs meaning: from the inythological/ archetypal it becomes transcendental/informal; and thence beyond intelligibility to irrational transcendental,
a sphere of meaning which eventually appears as a metaphysical truth in the "FUNERAL MARCH".
"A Water-Snake you shall become! if you fall once away From God! ? How come: we seeflor sure, today, on down: before the dog's face all the world is mocked. ... The world has now, delusions o grandeur!
So don't you from
the beginning all over!
MDCCCCXI"
But he also wrote:
"Some day, again-in the dark wind-sweet childlike innocence will come!"
In the idenlity of art and artist, represented and representation, schizophrenia poses the central issue of humanity (Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze & Guattari). The artist's work must be seen both as part of his time and also as something out of time.
Wölfli's work thus documents his time in much the same way as in modern art there has been an incorporation of actions, ideas, situations and materials. There is thus no real difference between Wölfii's "Campbell's Tomato Soup" and that of Warhol, except that the latter is a bit late.
Musically we can learn far more about the process of musical ereation from Wölfli's varlous methods of representation-ornamental, pictorial, symbolic, verbal - than we can by adhering to the accepted form of the time. In the twentieth century we have now explored many of these forms: e.g. the verbal indications of Cage as to instrumentation and duration in pieces otherwise governed by chance; the figurative scores of Martin Davorin jagodic; the architectonic ideas of Xenakis, to name hut a few.
Wölfli must be seen as both unique and of his time: a time where new forms. were coming into beingSchoenberg and Webern on the one hand, Satie and Debussy on the other.
How might musical history have developed if Wölfli had been an "official" part of it?
NOTES ON GRAEME REVELL AND HIS APPROACH
GRAEME REVELL: born 1955 in New Zealand, now resident in the U.S.A.
Received some classical training hut began his career in music while training as a psychiatric nurse in Australia. Formed the music/performance group "SPK" in 1978 and has since worked predominantly in Europe. Studied philosophy in France and now works as a film music composer. Established MUSIQUE BRUT in 1985 of which he is a director.
"In order to do this project the justice it deserves, I have tried to complete the picture of Wölfli the composer by reading his music in the classical sense (at least in 3 of my pieces). Many of his annotations suggest that this is what he had in mind at least some of the time e.g. this directive he gives as to the reading of the mandala piece COUNTESS SALADINE (1911) (Cf. P. 10):
'The inner circle is the sol-clef, the outer circle is the g-clef, beginning at the bottom.'
"Thus 1 gave to the COUNTESS SALADINE a straightforward pianoforte representation using the system outlined en page 5, and generating a consistent rhythm by treating Wölfli's own spatial arrangement of notes as its rhythm. lt is quite remarkable how the resulting (a)tonality seems appropriate for its time (not dissimilar to Satie bul pre-12-tone Schoenberg).
"For NECROPOLIS, AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES (1911) 1 took the fragmentary chord progression and expanded it using classical inversions etc. I used violin as the solo instrument because this is the instrument most often visually represented in his paintings. The ether elements of the piece: rooks/toads/bells are all ornamental features of nearly all Wölfli's works. The EBONY TOWER IN THE ORIENT. WATER/FANFARE #1(1904) is a typical example of his early pieces which are purely ornamental hut which he still always called "musical compositions". He had yet to develop the more standard notation-the 'music' being more a function of spatial arrangement. Hence this piece draws en the forms therein circles (loops), bell strings (church bells), and of course the fanfare (french horns) and the oriental scale which derives, like the tower, from the Near Orient (perhaps Turkey, the Balkans ... ). 1 also deliberately affected a religious overtone which is in keeping with Wölfli's texts, populated as they are by saints (St. Adolf 11) and religious symbols.
"THE BÄLLI (1908) is a slightly later piece, and ene of the first in which Wölfli employed his variant of standard musical notation. 1 have interpreted this piece in the spirit of his imaginary travels to far flung corners of the world, repeating the fragmentary melody en the marimba.
For the last 3 years of his life (1928-30), Wölfli worked ceaselessly en his Funeral March, his most ambitious work and one that was most important to him. Unfinished, but numbering some 3080 pages, it consists of collages and text, the latter comprising short rhymes in dialect followed by word series or phonetic structures which are separated by time indications. This song, for in fact Wölfli envisaged these syllabic inventions as rows of tones (speech and music becoming one), may be interrupted by short prayers or bible quotations.
"The underlying structure of the Funeral March is as follows: Wölfli picks out an object or a persen from the collage picture and makes a rhyme including its name and the phrase 'i d'r Wiiga witt". Thus a single symbol unites the real world and Wölfli's private world, connecting in effect, each series with every ether. Imaginary words, creatures, places, and people, amalgamated and exaggerated from his own experience and from magazines, are oirmipresent to an almost intolerable degree.
"Interpretation of these tone poems remains an enigma, not least to myself. So I have combined an example with a funeral march for Wölfli, played in his favourite country brass band style, and inspired by an earlier painting which depicts well his fabulously overbrimming universe. CHIMPNAGS-APES OF THE UlNION CANADA:AMERICA is a final homage to the joy and intense emotional contradictions in all of Wölfli's creation".
The CD from Graeme Revell is called The Musique Brut Collection and containes "Necropolis, amphibians and reptiles, the music from Adolf Wölfli", Combined with "the insect musicians", all made or based upon sounds only from insects. Not only for documentary reasons this work is unmissable not to have heard at least once. The insect music is sometimes more melodic as always as effective as in some tracks. But certain tracks certainly don't miss its effectiveness. The notes about it are interesting to read as well. What Graeme did with Wölfli's work is impressive.
Conclusion : a very recommended releases. (UK, Mute Rec.,1986) *****
PS. All texts come from the booklet from the CD.
