Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg's "Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene"
The heterogeneity of elements seen at work in Moses and Aaron provides a link to the work of Schoenberg as presented in Introduction . "Accompaniment," composed in 1930, bears the simple inscription "Threatening Danger, Fear, Catastrophe." The piece is the only music heard in the Straub/Huillet film, one of a series of short films on composers commissioned by West Germany's Süd-West-Funk television station. The film is a collage of the following elements: a short introduction by Straub, showing him on a balcony in Rome and then shifting to images of Schoenberg's expressionistic self-portraits; excerpts from letters Schoenberg wrote to Wassily Kandinsky in which he confronts anti-Semitism and proclaims his rejection of politics (read on-screen into a microphone by two young men in the broadcasting studio);[46] a statement by Brecht on the connection of economics to fascism, from the year 1935 (recited by Huillet in her home); and finally, images of bombs being loaded onto B-52 aircraft and then dropped on the rice fields of Southeast Asia. Schoenberg's "Accompaniment" begins about halfway through the film, while the composer's letters are being read, and continues to the end.
The arrangement of such diverse elements into the temporal unity of a film is a film counterpart to Schoenberg's atonal compositions and his method of twelve-tone composition. Traditional tonality in music has a structural function parallel to that of traditional narrative in film. The overall structure of both is hierarchical, giving each note, image, or moment a "meaning" dependent on its relative place in the hierarchy. Dissonance in music, like the "lack" or "unreality" caused by the fragmentation of film, postulates a final resolution that restores and confirms equilibrium and completeness.
This sense of completeness based on hierarchical organization was rejected by Schoenberg. As Rosen puts it, "In Schoenberg, there is no voice, no note that is expressively neutral."[47] As noted above, however, this renunciation of a hierarchical structure is not a renunciation of structure or organization in itself. The composer still uses musical materials as a means of expression, but the value or meaning of certain expressions is no longer merely accepted as given by tradition. Thus other means of organization proposed by the nature of musical possibilities themselves are investigated; variations in sound were produced by changes in instrumentation rather than by the arrangement of notes. Rather than rest on a tonic chord, serial composition pushes toward the logical material limit of eventually using all the notes. "The saturation of musical space is Schoenberg's substitute for the tonic chord of the traditional musical language."[48]
Here is another parallel to the narrative tradition. A spectator of narrative cinema is held in position through the activity of filling the gaps in the narrative, restoring connections as time passes to synthesize the experience into a coherent memory. The gaps and dissonances in tonic composition serve the same purpose. They urge the listener to participate in the hierarchy by anticipating its formal coherence, knowing often what the next note will be, or at least feeling that each note fits comfortably into the structure.
Schoenberg's abandonment of the traditional principles of harmonic structure was not absolute. In fact, "relative degrees of stability" are still created but not on the basis of an external hierarchy. Schoenberg's atonal compositions of the pre–World War I period were thus both a step in the direction of his later twelve-note technique and a method of pushing the tensions within the earlier tonal system to their extreme. Stability is now internal to the music, or is implied by a reference to the traditional stability it refuses to provide. Rosen describes this relation of innovation to tradition as follows:
Here we touch on the most delicate and most difficult to understand of all Schoenberg's innovations: his reconstruction of the relation of consonance and dissonance without the use of the perfect triad, which had been the ground of this relation for more than four centuries. . . . For the moment, we must concentrate on his reconstruction of relative degrees of stability, that subtly nuanced wavering between intense anguish and half-resolution which is so characteristic of Erwartung . The simplest and most localized device for achieving this is described by Schoenberg himself at the end of the Harmonielehre , but with a certain hesitation as if he did not himself quite understand the technique he had invented. It concerns an implied resolution that does not in fact take place. In a discussion of the attenuation of the harshness of dissonances by spacing the dissonant notes far apart, Schoenberg gives a chord from Erwartung , of thirteen notes, which embraces eleven different notes of the chromatic scale plus two octave doublings. He observes that a resolution of the two upper notes into consonances according to the rules of tonal harmony appears to be implied by the structure of the chord,
and that this allusion to older forms seems to have a satisfying effect even though the resolution does not actually occur. Schoenberg himself realized the important role that the older style was to play in his work.[49]
A parallel to Straub/Huillet and Brecht emerges here. There is no "resolution" in their work, according to the hierarchical rules of traditional organization of meaning, but the relation of the organization of its materials to these traditional forms implies a resolution outside the work itself. As noted in regard to History Lessons , the subject of this "resolution" is outside the work of art but implied by it—is its utopian aspect.
The two most important aspects of Introduction in this regard are the heterogeneity of its material elements, parallel to musical "saturation," and its arrangement of and its existence in time. Heterogeneity of elements is one of the aspects common to Schoenberg's music and to the Straub/Huillet film that is stressed by Martin Walsh. Contrast, as opposed to transition, was found by Adorno to be Schoenberg's formative technique. "The 'separation of elements,' a materialist articulation that resists homogenization—and hence resists the appeal to any single universal 'truth'—is common to Straub/Huillet and Brecht, as it is to Schoenberg."[50] But Walsh fails to include "politics" as an element not to be homogenized. If the work appeals to no "single, universal 'truth,'" must it then appeal to a single, particular political truth? Walsh cites the separation of art and politics in Schoenberg's view but places Adorno and Brecht side by side without reflecting on their philosophical differences. Therefore, my analysis of the film will refute his conclusion that "this conscious desire for total separation of music and politics is precisely opposed by Straub/Huillet's structuring of Introduction ."[51] On the contrary, the separation of music and politics is intrinsic to the film.
As Walsh has said of Bridegroom , this short film, too, is almost a summary of film history, a chromatic scale of cinematic possibilities. Walsh compares the elimination of tonal harmony in Schoenberg's music with the "elimination of perspectival illusionism" in Introduction .[52] Although I would argue that the elimination is not absolute, the flatness of the images throughout the film is indeed striking and crucial to its structure. On the one hand, this flatness increases the relevance of time as a tool of visual composition, since there is virtually no movement within the images in most of the film. On the other hand, this flatness does lend the film an added level of "unreality," as desired by both Brecht and Schoenberg.[53] The shots of the film have a "still-photo quality,"[54] which Walsh locates as the distinction between "document" and "documentary." Each shot is in some respect a document, in addition to its content, of an aspect of film history and film's material possibilities.
On the material level, the film very simply runs through a broad range of possibilities, without organizing them in a traditional hierarchy. The film begins
Jean-Marie Straub in Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg's
"Accompaniment for a Cinematographic Scene."
Courtesy New Yorker Films.
with shots in color, with live sound, although most of the shots are in black-and-white or in color but of black-and-white subjects. The final shots of the film are entirely two-dimensional: the newspaper columns, announcing the acquittal of concentration camp architects; then the credits, white letters on red, the color of film leader, a nonverbal way of saying "the end" and perhaps a political statement. The only exterior color panorama, behind Straub in shot 2, is complemented at the end by the most extreme flatness of which film is capable. The live sound is complemented by the music, which is mechanically dubbed onto the film, like the printed titles, having no spatial relationship to the camera's presence. Even the number of shots, thirty-four, is supplied by the opus number of Schoenberg's work, a parallel to the composer's earlier Pierrot Lunaire opus 21, a setting of "thrice-seven" poems.
Between these two extremes are variations. For instance, although Straub/Huillet always use live sound, Schoenberg's letters to Kandinsky or Brecht's speech read by Straschek and Nestler are also "studio sound," since they were filmed in a studio of the broadcasting station that commissioned the film (Süd-West-Funk in Baden-Baden). The definition of this is therefore ambiguous because we "see" the recording of this studio sound; it is not dubbing, but if this very sound track were used to accompany another image, the event here recorded might still have looked the same.
Günter Peter Straschek in Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg's
"Accompaniment for a Cinematographic Scene." Courtesy New Yorker Films.
Visually as well, the film runs through a chromatic scale of possibilities. It begins with the fountain that ends History Lessons, but this time with only peaceful water sounds and not the Bach oratorio. The well-known diagonal composition is here, in shot 2 of Straub speaking from the Giannicolo, for instance, and in the shots of the studio. The two shots in the studio stand out, most prominently the empty movie screen in the background, spilling over the upper right corner of the image, leading away from this image; then the microphone, the reading lamp, and the readers' shirts and faces, which appear almost white. The rest of the image, a study in black and gray, is dominated by the tilted horizontal (black) line of the desk and the vertical but angled (gray) plane of the wall. In the second shot of the studio, which involves camera movement and a cut, the lines end up in a less diagonal and more "resolved" arrangement. But in a rare occurrence in a Straub/Huillet film, a person—Danièle Huillet—speaks squarely facing the camera. Of course, this extreme is mitigated by the unpredictable motion of the cat on her lap. Also, for further ambivalence, this shot, too, is in color, but it is very hard to remember it as such; it is very flat because of the angle, and the cat, as well as Huillet's dress, is black and white.
Although the entire film naturally consists of photography, variations are explored here as well. Photographs are seen, such as Man Ray's portrait of
Danièle Huillet in Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg's "Accompaniment
for a Cinematographic Scene." Courtesy New Yorker Films.
Schoenberg or that of the murdered members of the Paris Commune "framed" by their coffins ("the first mass murder victims of modern capitalism").[55] Schoenberg himself is represented in four ways: in the quotations from his letters, in the photograph, in his self-portrait from the expressionist exhibition of "Der Blaue Reiter," and in his music. In addition to a sound studio, including the recording engineer, the film also documents the "documentary film": the sequence near the end shows bombs being constructed, loaded onto planes, and dropped, then exploding in flames. Film's two extremes are present in the black frames spliced in and the empty white screen in the studio. Camera movement is used sparingly, merely documenting its possibility. The camera pans in shot 16 from the engineer to Nestler reading the continuation of the Brecht text into the studio microphone. The camera tilts only twice, first over Schoenberg's self-portrait and second to allow the audience to read the newspaper excerpt in the final shot, 34. Now at the end of the film, the viewer either takes over the role of the actors, reading, or simply listens to the music (the eyes follow the camera movement in shot 34 in a way unlike the three-dimensional pan in shot 16: it cannot be "read").
Thus the film cites many of the major art forms of the twentieth century without homogenizing them. Further significance of this "separation of elements" derives from the content of the text. In a rare departure from their usual
practice, Straub and Huillet here include words they have written. Hence, two shots actually contain "narration" in the strict sense of the word. It is another indication of the "material" significance of this, that when Straub and Huillet intervene between text and audience in words of their own, they film themselves. The only presence of the "voice" of Straub/Huillet in their work is also accompanied by their image. And here is a third ambivalence: the people who "narrate" in these two shots are and are not the filmmakers. They relegate themselves to a past by appearing on screen, while the role of filmmaker remains present to the whole film. When I quote myself, I am splitting my existence into two locations in time, and, of course, both are "past" in regard to the time and place in which I truly exist. On the one hand, this contradiction of past and present identity corresponds to the loss and re-creation of the subject called "suturing" in psychoanalytic term.[56] On the other hand, it is a historical contradiction as well, as Franco Fortini discovered in the film in which he and a book written by him are the center of attention, Fortini/Cani . As Fortini wrote, "Now it is clear that the main character in The Dogs of Sinai [Fortini/Cani ] is not exactly the author of that book, and also does not correspond to the person writing to you now. [ . . . ] The words that main character will say will stand in conflict with the real impotence . . . and with the countenance of the character himself."[57]
Straub's narration, aside from providing sketchy biographical information on Schoenberg, serves two purposes. Straub introduces the letters to Kandinsky as Schoenberg's response to an invitation to join the Bauhaus in Weimar. The letters themselves contain the reasons for Schoenberg's refusal, a refusal to accept an exceptional status above anti-Semitic discrimination against others. The letters read later in the film by Straschek reveal strongly Schoenberg's insight into the implications of the social forces that define him as a Jew in the first place, then grant him privileges as such.
The introduction, however, only mentions Schoenberg's exile and the reason for the letters. The main argument of Straub's speech is against the proposition that the "Accompaniment" can be dramatized. Straub quotes the reasons for Schoenberg's detailed stage directions in all his dramatic works, the desire "to leave as little as possible to the new rulers of the theatrical art, the producers."[58] The fact that the Begleitmusik has no such directions, other than the heading "Threatening Danger, Fear, Catastrophe," proves that the work is not meant to depict directly the events described or foreseen in the letters. The work has only an abstract relation to reality. Hence Straub's last assertion, before more neutral biographical narration continues in shot 3, "Otherwise unrepresentable, the cinematographic scene consists only of the so-called accompaniment."
Here, at least, the separation of music and politics is still maintained. The contents of the letters, too, although prompted by political realities, do not connect music and politics, or even suggest political action. Schoenberg drew the conclusions necessary for him from anti-Semitism, accepted the Jewishness
society assigned him, and went into exile to survive. But he did not see political causes of these events or how things could have been otherwise. "To be against war is as pointless as to be against death," he writes.
The only other third-person narrator in the film is Danièle Huillet, and her narration introduces the quotation from Brecht just as Straub's introduces the Schoenberg letters. But now the narrative stance is limited to its simplest possible form. Huillet's speech begins, "'Aber,' fragt Brecht . . ."—and her position as someone talking about a Brecht text is defined only in these two words, "fragt Brecht." Clearly, only the two narrators, Straub and Huillet, are in the position to say the names Schoenberg and Brecht, for it is only they who are "quoting." Here the presentation of the texts they cite merges with their role as filmmakers. The other readers—Straschek and Nestler—remain as speakers on the same material level as the words they speak. They too are "quotations" made by the filmmakers and introduced by them. The status of the reader is clearly not "representing" Brecht or Schoenberg in reading their words, but he is also not simply representing someone who could say "I will now quote Brecht or Schoenberg." Only the filmmakers say this, as the continuation of Huillet's "Brecht asks" in Nestler's reading makes explicit. The process of quoting merges with the process of filmmaking, as it does in all Straub/Huillet films made only of preexisting texts. Filming themselves, they quote themselves.
The political argument of the film can be located between Schoenberg's indignation in response to anti-Semitism in Straschek's reading and Brecht's connection of fascism to capitalist property relations in the reading by Nestler. This argument between the two quotations also hinges materially and temporally on the word "but" (aber ) spoken by Huillet in the connecting shot. The argument between Schoenberg and Brecht (a fiction) is thus imagined; indeed, a "story" has been generated by a single word.
All this says nothing about the relation between music and politics, as Walsh supposes. No indication is made that Schoenberg should, with more political consciousness, have made his art more political. Indeed, Brecht's argument in 1935 was not for political art but for political politics—addressing the real problem. He was not making an aesthetic point when he urged anti-Fascist artists to "talk of property relations." If anything, he was urging that art not be seen as a substitute for politics, because they are separate and distinct realms of activity. This stance is implicit in his exhortation, "Let us have pity for culture, but let us first have pity for humanity. Culture is saved only when humanity is saved."[59]
The achievement of Introduction has nothing to do with conveying a political message. Rather, it is its structural refusal to confuse politics with art, art with reality. The music of Schoenberg, as Straub insists, is not meant to generate images of "the world" or even an imaginary world. The film also does not present the music as a direct result of historical, political, or even narrative
events. The music joins the film at its most abstract, material level, while the screen is black, an arrangement of sounds in time, just as the film is a temporal arrangement of sounds and images. The film thus is partly constructed out of and sustained by the Accompaniment ; it is not superior to it, it does not quote it. There is no voice to say, "And now, here it is . . ." The music is the only sound in the film that is not produced before the camera.
To oversimplify the relationship between the two, one might say that politics belongs to the fiction of the film, while the music makes up a part of its material reality. Peter Nau has pointed out the central importance of the manipulation of time to generate film fiction, to assert the real distinction between art and reality. The reading cadences of Straschek and Nestler are broken at points not corresponding to those of natural speech. These breaks (Zäsuren ), combined with the next larger temporal break, the cuts in the film and black frames, make it possible for film time to distinguish itself from real time. The inserted title card dating the two letters also contributes: it steps out of chronology and locates in time both the letter it follows and the letter it precedes. Here again, the film reveals its relation to and its distance from reality in the nature of its construction. It does not represent a memory of events for the viewer; instead the consciousness of its own kind of time allows it to become an event itself. As Nau puts it, "Through the gaps created by the unfamiliar rhythm of speech the time of the film penetrates the text. Separated as fiction from the materials of reality and giving it meaning, the distinctiveness of the film expresses itself in the conscious perception of its duration."[60]
The imaginative activity of a spectator to affirm an ideological representation of reality requires an unconscious acceptance of the whole structure of the work as past, not as passing. The material separation of a work from reality makes it possible to perceive its existence in time and to give it meaning, rather than to get a meaning out of it. The temporal structures of Introduction have no meaning to transmit, and this they share with the structures of music. Here is where the relationship between the film, the music, and reality is most subtle and complex. Because the time of the film has separated itself from the "pastness" of narrative identification, it is able to move backward and forward among the documents of human history just as the renunciation of conventional narrative enables new arrangements of film materials to appear, or the renunciation of harmony makes new musical expressions possible.
The "history" with which the film began (the fountain from History Lessons ) seemed to be confined to German fascism and anti-Semitism but is gradually expanded to include history of artistic forms as well. The documents from Schoenberg's lifetime are complemented by earlier and later evidences of capitalist barbarism—the victims of the Paris Commune, the bombing of Southeast Asia. As Benjamin put it, all documents of culture are documents of barbarism as well. And finally, a contemporary judgment of Schoenberg's time is also documented in the newspaper accounts in the final shots: con-
centration camp architects are found innocent. It is ironic that the textual narrative described earlier is complemented by visual narration in the bombing sequences; cause and effect, steps in a process, are shown, but not meaning. The final shot of the newspaper text is indeed a push out of the realm of art and into reality, for the viewer is at the same time watching a (two-dimensional, "unreal") film and reading a newspaper article of political significance. The political significance exists in the real world of the spectator but not so clearly in the fiction of the film. The link to the fictional structure of the film is now only provided by the carryover of the music. It is able to link present and past, art and reality, precisely because it does not explain that link. Its otherness, both in regard to the film and to the world, makes the spectator-listener capable of imagining a process of change in reality that does not exist, that has not been represented, "an implied resolution that does not in fact take place," a "liberation by default."[61]