SEMIOTICS IN THE ANALYSIS OF OPERA: CYRANO DE BERGERAC BY EINO TAMBERG

This paper brings together two matters: the influential method of music analysis representing the field of musical semiotics, and one of the most outstanding masterpieces in the history of Estonian opera.

The method coming under discussion is the analysis of the neutral level or, in other terms, the paradigmatic analysis of music, developed by Nicolas Ruwet and especially by Jean-Jacques Nattiez in 1960ies and 1970ies. The opera in question is Cyrano de Bergerac by Eino Tamberg. The work saw its first production in 1976. The present discourse comes from the viewpoint of a researcher of 1990ies.

The subject is divided into following topics: (1) the formation of the paradigmatic analysis of music, or, in other words, the method of the analysis of the neutral level; its essence, some significant examples; (2) why might any kind of derivation from this method be appropriate for analysis of opera; (3) why and how to use the derivation from this method in the study of Cyrano de Bergerac, what does it say about this music, how does it facilitate to deal with questions this piece gives birth to.

Some words about Jean-Jacques Nattiez (to whom I owe thanks for the possibility to have this subject). He is a French-speeking Canadian, professor of musicology at the University of Montreal. His pioneering book about musical semiotics dates from 1975, in English its title would be Foundations of a Semiotics of Music (Nattiez 1975). The book also contains the representation of the method we shall examine. In his second book, published in 1987 and translated into English in 1990 as Music and Discourse concentrates on semiotical and philosophical problems, such as the concept of music and musical work, as well as the semiotics of musical analysis (Nattiez 1990).

The development of the method.

In this discourse we have to contend with absolutely necessary facts and comments only. Some valuable information may thereby be simplified. I can only mention the father of European semiotics - Ferdinand de Saussure, Swiss linguist whose revolutionary distinctions like signifier/signified, synchronic/diachronic, language/speech and the axes paradigmatic/syntagmatic in the study of language have been the groundwork for the most part of semiotic theories.

The history of the paradigmatic analysis of music begins with similar analyses of myths made by Claude Lévi-Strauss, the influential anthropologist. He gave much attention to a feature of myths, that the same relations and functions are returning again and again. Recurrences in myths can be listed paradigmatically like the elements of language. Besides linguistics, especially fonology, Lévi-Strauss was imposed on the orchestra score, its organisation. The score can be read both diachronically - along horizontal axis (or page after page, from left to right), and synchronically - along vertical axis (all the notes written vertically beneath each other). By the same way we have to read the "score" or "chart" representing the repetitiousness of relations and functions in myths (Ex. 1).

There are four columns each setting out a group of items which have one common functional trait. As Jonathan Culler has explained in his book Structuralist poetics these common traits are (1) giving kinship more than its due, (2) parricide and fratricide, (3) killing of anomalous monsters, and (4) inability to walk properly (Culler 1975:42).

Paradigmatic analysis of music was born with the article by linguist Nicolas Ruwet in 1966 on the subject of medieval songs (without words; see Ex. 2: Maria muoter reinu mait).

Ruwet's chart is composed in the same manner as Lévi-Strauss's - repeated or similar units beneath each other. It may be read from left to right and from top to bottom. The difference is that Lévi-Strauss has selected the incidents which fit into the proposed structure of the chart and left out the others. The principles of his procedures are not fully explicit. Ruwet, on the contrary, has very clear principles of segmentation pronounced in his article from 1966 (to identify the longest passages repeated fully; non-recurrent passages as units on the same level as recurrent passages in the respect of length; complementary resources for if the above operations have not yielded a satisfactory analysis etc.).

The example is so simple that a musician can grasp it in a moment. This medieval song itself is a guide to such type of analysis. The segmentation is made almost mechanically, anyone may attain to the same result. In Ruwet's own words his method is "a machine for the discovery of elementary identities" (Monelle 1992:83). With Ruwet's work is born the practice (in this field) to analyse music for solo instruments, or to approach a score as if it was a monody.

The simplicity of the example is the argument for Ruwet not to consider himself as a great discoverer. As Raymond Monelle has mentioned in Linguistics and Semiotics in Music the simplicity is a proof that Ruwet's mechanical system of segmentation leads to a result which we acknowledge as realistic; Ruwet offers a way of verifying an analysis reached by intuition. Monelle also makes a remark that other musical examples chosen by Ruwet are more sophisticated and then his method works less well. It is always seemed to me that in this case (Maria muoter) the method and music under consideration lay in extremely strong interdependence and there is not too much music in the world giving as beautiful chart as Maria muoter.

In any case Ruwet's idea is a valuable theoretical standard.

Jean-Jacques Nattiez connected Ruwet's "machine" with the idea of the neutral level of music, suggested by Jean Molino. For this reason the term "paradigmatic analysis" is used in parallel with the denomination "the analysis of the neutral level". On the basis created by Ruwet and Molino, Nattiez has built up his famous analyses and developed the extensive theoretical and philosophical background for the studies of musical works. He has "immortalized" this synthesis into the, so to say, "gold reserve" of musical semiotics.

What is the neutral level? According to Molino and Nattiez it is the level of music which is eliminated from the intentions and activities of a composer creating a work, as well as from the activities of a listener, their perceptions and interpretations. The neutral level of music is the theoretical notion or device, located in a theoretical universe. Explaining more "fleshly" the neutral level is the sound-trace, acoustic phenomenon, the material existence of music - a score, a performance. Nattiez is working with a score. He may be accused, as Monelle mentions, of identifying a music with a score, like most analysts in the Western tradition; but yet the Western musical culture is essentially a "score culture" (Monelle 1992:114).

The most famous representatives of the method prove to be highly rational: Brahms's Intermezzo Op. 119 No.3 (Ex. 3), Debussy's Syrinx (Ex. 4), Varèse's Density - all by Nattiez himself; also Varèse's Intégrales by Jean-Bernard Mâche. Some analyses of Xenakis's and Messiaen's music are made by less well known musicologists. Raymond Monelle considers Marcelle Guertin's work with the first book of Préludes by Debussy (1981) to be notably successful (Monelle 1992:116).

Nattiez opened the way for various derivations from Ruwet's method. He has made different analyses of the same piece using different segmentations (observing not only a melody but also a rhythmic line). Monelle finds Nattiez's third segmentation of Debussy's Syrinx (not included here) being the most complex and novel: instead of placing together units which are similar to each other he examines in which respect do units differ from each other.

What has opera to do with this?

It should be said that the method of this kind is yet proper for music in which the repetition or transformation is the essential component of its structure, so that it is possible to take it as a basis of survey. With regard to leitmotivic operas among which also Cyrano de Bergerac can be included, it is observed that leitmotives are of paradigmatic nature.

Opera is an extra large musical territory, and the material of a potential paradigmatic chart is sometimes laying at a great distance. Whereas opera is a large-scale musical work it takes much time to put together the paradigmatic charts of its material. But there are several reasons to undertake this process. In a certain phase of analysis of opera it is anyway needed to extract (write out) the musical material. The method developed by Ruwet and Nattiez offers a systematic approach for this. It will be objective in this sense that a piece will be examined note by note, bar by bar, nothing missed out.

Paradigmatic writing out is the process of analysis and the result at the same time. Paradigmatic charting reveals the flexibility of the same musical material throughout the whole work. Thereby it facilitates discovering the composer's way of thinking and his technique. Using this method (or derivation from it) intends to describe the opera (like any musical work) through the variability of its material. It illustrates the plasticity of music using a rigorous systematic approach.

The whole material of a piece should not form charts after segmentation. There may be a lot of passages not identical or similar to any others. Such non-recurrent elements may have a great importance in the dramaturgy of the work, to be a significant musical event.

The charting of material may become the starting point for following analyses. In case of large-scale works as operas it is fruitful to make a selection from the charts according to analyst's decisions what is essential in the piece to deal with. It is likewise depending on the intentions of the analyst what kind of derivation from Ruwet's and Nattiez's work it is useful to construct; for example: either to operate with longer or shorter units. If the analyst has selected a smaller number of items to deal with, it is proper to concentrate on special traits of repetition: identity; repetition with extension or addition; repetition with suppression; or repetition with substitution - like Marcelle Guertain does in the case of Debussy's Préludes.

How does Eino Tamberg meet Jean-Jacques Nattiez?

Cyrano de Bergerac is an interesting phenomenon. Tamberg has composed this opera after his modernist period in 1950ies and 1960ies. In some respects this work - where the beauty of music is in the foreground - is a reaction to the modern musical language and Tamberg's previous work Joanna Tentata. By the way, the literary basis of Cyrano de Bergerac - a play of the same name by Edmond Rostand (from 1897) - also contrasted with its cultural surroundings (at the end of 19th century) full of symbolism and naturalism.

Essentially interesting is the fact that musical language of Cyrano contains elements of gregorian chant, renaissance and baroque music, modernism, and slightly even popular music of 1970ies, but altogether we have a romantic piece. Of course, the romantic mood begins with the libretto (story).

The many elements belonging to earlier styles of music is an influential reason why to use the paradigmatic method and put together the charts on music of the opera. Charting offers a possibility to get a clear picture of: 1) what kind of elements is the musical language of the opera consisting of; 2) which are the particular styles by which the elements of early music occurring in the piece are inspired; 3) which are the relationships between elements of earlier styles, which elements are predominating; and also, 4) which are the relationships between elements of earlier styles and the musical language of Eino Tamberg, and how he has used these elements. The proportions (relations) between different musical languages integrating the whole in Cyrano could be a fundamental question in the analysis of the opera. The charts can verify methodologically what the ear has caught and made the analyst guess.

It is important that in the process of charting also will be explained the structure and variability of musical units (the keys and orchestration - whereas the timbre is stylistic element, too - are also in the scope of view).

There is no place for chronology in the use of elements of earlier styles. Bringing together all the transformations of the same element, the diachronic dimension of the work will be turned to the synchronic dimension, which existence is fundamental to any truly Saussurean approach (the view of language as a self-consistent system at one moment of time).

My suggested analysis of Cyrano

First of all, in what respect is my treatment different from that of Nattiez? Firstly - the choice of matter: the opera. It is hard to believe that Nattiez would ever take the opera as a subject matter. Secondly, I have moved away from the possibility (or even the principle) to approach music a priori: my purpose is to list all the stylistic components associated with earlier styles. (The term "paradigmatic analysis" seems to be proper here rather than "the analysis of the neutral level".) Thirdly, ensuing from the previous, there occur many cases of double-charting in the analysis of Cyrano, whereas simultaneously with the unit under consideration there may appear (sound) another unit representing some earlier style. For example, so to say "renaissance motiv" (Ex. 5) occurs simultaneously with other (longer) units or within them. This chart (Ex. 5) does not differ so much from simple succession of leitmotives. The Ex. 6 is a better representative of what I am doing with Tamberg's music. Among the previous examples the one of Syrinx (Ex. 4) is the closest to this chart.

Here I have started to display one type of similar units all over the work, in the order of their appearance. Before every staff there is marked the number of the scene (with Roman numerals), the page number and in which (whose) part the unit occurs. By a unit I mean a musical passage which is making a whole by means of thematic material, texture, orchestration etc. of the same kind, and which ends at the moment of appearance of another passage having different thematic material, texture and so on.

Some scenes of the opera are longer single items. For example, an arioso of some character. In that case its chart is like an analysis of an independent piece (like Syrinx or Maria muoter). In the Ex. 6 the units are quite short. They appear in different parts of the opera, in different scenes (as we can see from their numerals). Here the units occurring in different syntagmatic chains throughout the opera are exposed in paradigmatic organisation, and may be considered as transformations of each other.

A lot of charts (I have about 100 of them) are composed like piano score, revealing also harmony and orchestration. Some of them may be interpreted as timbre-charts, some of them as charts of rhythm (if the repetition of rhythmic patterns is obvious). It is possible to compose charts on anything taken as a goal of analytical work (Tamberg's ninths for example).

Afterwards the analyst can pay attention to syntagmatic organisation of the work, and the question of which role every unit has in the dramaturgy of the opera. The musical units can also be connected with the theory of communication developed by Roman Jakobson. Under consideration shall be the ways how do the musical units function as code, message, channel and context.

References:

Culler, J. 1975. Structuralist Poetics. Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Cornell University Press. Ithaca, New York

Monelle, R. 1992. Linguistics and Semiotics in Music. Harwood Academic Publishers.

Nattiez, J.-J. 1975. Fondements d'une sémiologie de la musique. Paris: Union Générale d'Éditions

Nattiez, J.-J. 1990. Music and Discourse. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press