Stefan Wolpe's dialectical logic: a look at the Second Piece for Violin Alone.

Publication: Perspectives of New Music

Publication Date: 22-JUN-02

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2002 University of Washington

With [Hegel, the dialectic] is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.

--Karl Marx

MUSIC HOPES TO DRAW its vitality from nature. A study of this ambition would produce a natural history of the art form, starting with the Pythagoreans and reaching beyond Hegel. Indeed, the dialectical reasoning in dispute between Hegelians and Marxists has been a rich source of such organicist beliefs. If art progresses according to nature's own principles of growth and contrast, can its validity be doubted?

As greater attention is paid to the music and theoretical writings of Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), the question arises: what was their conceptual origin? Much within the visionary utopian language of his lectures suggests left-Hegelianism. And if this is the case one can then ask: to what extent are the premises of these systems embodied in his musical works? To a great degree, and often without ambiguity, I suggest. Once these premises are accepted, new paths open to the music. The brief Second Piece for Violin Alone (1966) will serve as an example. (1)

From the dialectical viewpoint a work of art is a conflict, with struggles, victories and defeats on every level. Wolpe must have become familiar with such thinking through his studies in the Berlin Marxist Workers' school (2) and probably through contact with Bauhaus Masters such as Moholy-Nagy. (Indeed, the Bauhaus reductivism itself suggests a Hegelian origin.) Although it is impossible definitively to separate Hegel from Marx in Wolpe's writings, the provenance of a number of crucial terms can be traced back to one or the other source.

For Wolpe--following Marx--the historical context of an artwork is a dominant structure:

Laws of nature can't be bent into modifying the nature of laws, but one can sit out history and its yesterdays' implications. Many have tried so. But, having taken their judgments for granted, they find themselves confronted by the turntables of history and, being like waves that try to stick to the ground, they fight or they give up or wither away.... One has to practice one's art with a knowing sense of its radical nature. (3)

The specter of Marx haunts this passage, first in the dialectical exchange "laws of nature"/"nature of laws," a reversal of terms typical of Marx (for example, his rebuttal of Proudhon's Philosophy of Poverty was entitled The Poverty of Philosophy). Marx's notorious "dustbin of history" also turns up, in the guise of a "turntable of history," which turns the tables on the "waves that try to stick to the ground." But in Wolpe's account it is non-dialecticians who wither away, not the state. (4)

Which are the elements of dialectical Logic that Wolpe invokes? The most significant are Totality, the oppositions Quality/Quantity and Symmetry/Asymmetry, and of course the basic logical structure Thesis--Antithesis-Synthesis. Hegelian Logic is built up from primal elements into a network of higher and higher levels of synthesis. A synthesis is something both "preserved"--in the sense of "incorporated"--and "suspended." "Suspension" signifies either "raised to a higher level" or "ended" (all are possible meanings of aufgehoben).

A synthesis may be progressive and transformational; class conflict in Marx, for example, where a consequent revolution "incorporates" previous class antagonisms. Or it may be a dialectical suspension of opposing aspects, as in the conjunction of the part and the whole.

For Wolpe, musical logic reflects historical logic, and both operate under the same terms. He situates his revaluation of total chromaticism within the forward motion of history:

Historical unsettiings, derangements of concepts, the anti-dogmas, always take place as history leaps into successive phases....The allchromatic continuum becomes questionable or insufficient as the exclusive source for content-making material. (5)

The field upon which the dialectic unfolds is Totality. In Hegel, it...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.