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Wittgenstein’s Music, Music’s
Wittgenstein, and Josef Labor
[November 2004.]
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein employed musical analogies to illustrate his ideas. (What deep thinker can resist seeing notation as an entity distinct from the music it represents?) A copious scribbler, Wittgenstein ruminated on favorite and despised composers, particularly disdaining the music of his time. In the philospher's view, it was as if nothing of value had been composed after the 19th century’s demise.
Commenting upon Wittgenstein’s indifference, observers have wondered why the famously arrogant thinker who attempted to infuse philosophy with logic didn’t find Schoenberg’s 12-tone system attractive. Orderly serialism does seem an obvious complement to Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Pitches lack tonal music’s grammatical meaning, having no intrinsic value except in relation to one another. Pitch manipulation is rules-based rather than expressive. But by examining his few artistic endeavors, it becomes clear that Wittgenstein could only have been attracted to common-practice tonality, with its codified rules and delineation between ornament and form.
Wittgenstein hailed from a musical family. His grandparents were wealthy industrialists, the Austrian Carnegies of their time. (The philosopher momentarily became Austria’s richest man when his father died.) Ludwig’s grandmother was violinist Joseph Joachim’s distant cousin; in fact, Joachim became an adopted son. The elder Wittgensteins came to know Joachim’s accompanist, Johannes Brahms, who gave piano lessons to some of the philospher’s aunts. Clara Schumann, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Bruno Walter attended Wittgenstein soirées, as did critics Eduard Hanslick and Max Kalbeck. By the century’s close, Brahms had become a fixture at the Alleegasse Palais, where his clarinet sonatas and quintet had their first private performances.
(These Wittgensteins were no relation to Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, Franz Liszt’s longtime lover.)
Born in 1889, young Ludwig matured at Vienna’s musical epicenter. Two older brothers were destined for careers as keyboard virtuosi before pressures drove them to suicide. The remaining brother — never considered the family’s best pianist — achieved great success even after losing an arm in WWI. Particularly interested in new music, left-handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein commissioned concertos and chamber music from Hindemith, Korngold, Prokofiev, Ravel and Strauss.
Oblivious to his brother’s achievements, the philosopher liked to say that there were six truly great composers: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Labor. Labor? Blind organist and composer Josef Labor (1842-1924) owed much to Wittgenstein patronage. Paul commissioned his first left-handed concerto from Labor. Schoenberg counted among his students. Ludwig was a close friend, and when visiting Vienna, he would pass significant time, even days, with the aged composer instead of with his family.
As an adult, Wittgenstein learned to play the clarinet as part of his teacher-training. He gained enough proficiency to play Brahms’ sonatas and of course Labor’s. Anecdotes relate his untiring obsession with perfect recreations of the classics. He apparently felt little of that spontaneous joy that comes of joining with others to play chamber music, disdaining all but his “great six.” His musicmaking conformed strictly to the printed page, striving for the unattainable Ideal.
He was a fastidious listener. Hearing a Schubert record playing at the wrong pitch, Wittgenstein would interrupt the conversation to adjust the turntable’s speed. Acquaintances marveled at his virtuoso whistling. His repertoire included Brahms’ Haydn Variations and other symphonic works. He would unhesitatingly correct others’ inaccurate humming or singing.
G.H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman collated some of Wittgenstein’s non-philosophical writings into Culture and Value. His musical observations are pithily subjective: “Brahms is Mendelssohn without the flaws.” The American-style detective-story fanatic admired Bruckner and Labor, but detested Mahler: “If it is true that Mahler’s music is worthless, as I believe to be the case, then the question is what I think he ought to have done with his talent. For quite obviously it took a set of very rare talents to produce this bad music.”
Culture and Value reproduces four measures of what are believed to be Wittgenstein’s invention. (No one has otherwise identified them, so the attribution stands.) The amateur clarinetist probably wrote them down as an accompaniment to a recurring phrase of self-doubt. Firmly rooted in A-minor, an arpeggiated gesture recalls the piano’s upward swoops of the Trout Quintet’s opening. Hairpins on chords suggest the sketch is for winds or strings. Composer Anthony Powers characterized it thus: “… nothing particularly remarkable … it’s like the continuation of an incomplete sentence, as if he had started to say something and hadn’t the words to finish it, and turned to music.”
Besides these few bars, Wittgenstein’s artistic creations include a sculpted woman’s head. (He also designed airplane propellers!) His most significant creation is the sculpture’s container, the house he designed for his sister Margaret, immortalized in Gustav Klimt’s portrait. There are instructive parallels between Wittgenstein’s approach to architecture and music.
As with music, Wittgenstein showed little interest in contemporary architecture despite acquaintanceships with Vienna’s leading lights. His father had single-handedly bankrolled the Viennese Secession, and Ludwig knew Adolf Loos. At first glance, the house reflects the prevailing unornamented style: flat façades, crisp lines, absent trimmings and festoonery. However, Wittgenstein’s obsessive attention to detail indicates a dominant vision stemming from rigid principles.
He thought deeply about how the house was to be used and experienced. The residence features precisely designed window latches, one-of-a-kind door handles, custom-built radiators (specified in such a way that no Austrian firm could cast them), and ingenious, asymmetrical floor-tile patterns.
Similarly in music, Wittgenstein would only have found a use for a system the details of which enhance an underlying structure. Common-practice tonality is such a system. Precisely specified details find their complement in the rules that manage first and second theme groups, specifying a return to the initial key. Ornamentation is secondary to proper and effective use of harmony. Rarely do Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert or Brahms lose their tonal argument. Presumably, Labor kept to that tradition.
Mahler and the expressionist Schoenberg (limiting ourselves to Vienna) were among the first to thwart common-practice harmony and tease its forms. Starting in the minor mode and finishing in the major, as in Beethoven’s Ninth, isn’t a concern. Wittgenstein would have shunned the transformation of tonality and structure of Mahler’s Second, Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande or Verklärte Nacht, works that migrate from initial tonal areas and play havoc with sonata form. Needless to say, he thought little of Wagner and his brother Paul’s four-hand partner, Richard Strauss. With its rules and fixed forms, tonality perfectly suited the philosopher’s requirements.
* * *
There is no stylistic allegiance among Wittgenstein settings or any of the music he inspired. One of the earliest — serial in fact — is Elizabeth Lutyens’ 1953 Wittgenstein Motet, containing gems from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, e.g., “The world is everything that is the case.” Premiered in October 2004, the third movement of Steve Reich’s You Are (Variations) sets “Explanations come to an end somewhere.” A philosophy honors student, Reich also penned a 1995 Proverb employing “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!” Michael Torke’s 1995 Bright Blue Music was inspired by Wittgenstein’s idea that words possess no meaning outside of their grammar: “I conceived of a parallel in musical terms: harmonies in themselves do not contain any meaning, rather, musical meaning results only in the way harmonies are used.”
In 1999, Dieter Kaufmann created the electroacoustic composition Dialog mit Wittgenstein. Heiner Goebbels’ Max Black (1998) incorporates the thinker’s words, and Anthony Powers set bits of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in A Picture of the World (2001) as did Toru Takemitsu in Stanza I (1969), Tibor Szemző in Tractatus (1991-95) and Peter Ruzicka in his Fourth String Quartet (1996). Salvatore Sciarrino’s Un’immagine di Arpocrate (1974-79), for piano, orchestra and chorus, incorporates texts by the Cambridge lecturer and Goethe. Harder to characterize are M.A. Numminen’s Numminen Sings Wittgenstein (1983/89), George Coates’ theatre work Wittgenstein: On Mars (1998) and Sir Vent’s Wittgenstein’s Ladder. And of course there’s Derek Jarman’s 1993 movie Wittgenstein whose soundtrack includes Brahms, Ravel, Franck, Janacek, Satie, and Gilbert and Sullivan. (Thanks to Mr. Thomas Delehanty and M.J. Walker for bringing the Sciarrino and Takemitsu to my attention.)
* * *
Marco Polo 8.223414 offers the second clarinet and piano quintet Franz Schmidt wrote for Paul Wittgenstein with its finale, “Variations on a theme of Josef Labor.” Priory PRCD 688 is the only disc I managed to locate containing Labor’s own music. On the strength of these varied pieces for organ, Labor ought to be rescued from oblivion and more widely recorded. (He may figure occasionally in Austrian recitals.) A welcome project would match Labor’s clarinet music with similar works by Brahms and Robert Fuchs.
“Organ Works of Josef Labor.” Josef LABOR: Sonata, Op. 15 (1912); selections from Seventeen Preludes (1908); Improvisations, Op. 13; Fantasia, Op. 9 (1908); Three Interludes (1914); Fantasia for Organ Duet, Op. 12. Ian Coleman, Ann Carey (The Organ of St. Ignatius, Stamford Hill, London). Priory PRCD 688 (http://www.priory.org.uk/).
This collection demonstrates Labor effectively combining melody and harmony in short forms. I had expected a heavy, Reger-like tedium. These airy works, sounding like Brahms’ late choral pieces, afford the organist ample opportunities for color, one of this recording’s more pleasurable aspects. The preludes and interludes are light and brief, emotional subtlety taking precedence over pompous virtuosity. The sonata and Fantasia, Op. 9, are multi-movement essays, the latter an eight-part theme and variations on the Austrian national anthem. Given the Haydn-attributed theme’s overuse during the past century, it’s hard not to wince at the initial statement and at various points in the fugal sections. With its efficient themes and counterpoint, the sonata’s three movements nicely cohere, the closing Chaconne reflecting Bach studies.
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