THE MUSICAL ICON

excerpted from Veneration Through Sound: The Composer as Iconographer

Kurt L. Sander, D.M.   Northern Kentucky University

Chapter 1

Introduction: Why a Musical Icon?

"The icon opens up to us an immense vision which embraces both the past and future of the universe. It is simultaneously a teaching and a guide in all the days of our life. Thus human creation, poor as its possibilities may be, it is used by the Church as a way to reveal to the world the mystery of the age to come."

_from Leonid Ouspensky’s Theology of the Icon

Some composers believe that behind every successful piece lies four or five failures. If true, we must then acknowledge that the understanding of a composer’s identity is incomplete if one looks only at masterpieces. I have always suspected that the composer’s persona is more a reflection of his struggles than his successes. The lives of some of the greatest writers have been afflicted with periods of creative block, yet we seldom read about the root causes that lie behind them. Analysts and historians often focus only on those years which have yielded compositional fruit. This is unfortunate, for composers learn more about themselves during their bouts with silence than in any other time. Contrary to popular belief, most creative block is not attributable to the lack of a creative idea, but rather to the inability to vocalize that idea trapped in abstraction. Many a poet has lamented not the lack of ideas, but the insufficiency of words with which to describe them. It was precisely this dilemma that brought me to the study of Eastern Orthodox iconography and how the methods of the iconographer could free the process of musical composition from those habits which are self-inhibiting .

The problem of creative block afflicts the composers of the 20th century more so that those of earlier times. Arnold Schoenberg’s self-proclaimed emancipation of dissonance was in essence an emancipation of the rules which governed its use. Consequently, today’s composer is faced with recurrent problems on what governs a musical language in the absence of common practice grammar. Imagine a language where verbs are no longer used solely as verbs nor adjectives as adjectives—the grammar that once guided the syntactical construction of an idea no longer applies. This leads then to a void where rules once were. Perhaps not fully understanding the ramifications of this chaotic freedom, many composers initially rejoiced in what they saw as a liberation from the tonal yoke. In today’s universities, many young composers continue to revel in such artistic freedom until they actually sit down to write. All too often the depth of their compositional choices is governed only by a superficial evaluation of what sounds good to them. Ideally, of course, the goal of every work should be to "sound good;" however, a good composition is more than a collection of moments that in and of themselves ‘sound good.’ A truly extraordinary creation needs to have cohesion, a unity of intent, and a presiding authority which governs the content and character of a work.

Many composers have referred to the "ego" in the compositional process as moment-to- moment compositional decisions based solely on one’s personal tastes at that particular time. Historically, the ego has caused problems in writing, mainly because there is little or no system which regulates one’s choices other than a subjective perception of what sounds good. If the compositional process is based only on the immediacy of the ego, a work will lack an overall connectedness; it will be more or less improvisational in character. An Orthodox priest once told me, "It should be accepted as a most elementary human and moral truth that no man can live a fully sane and decent life unless he is able to say ‘no’ on occasion to his natural bodily appetites." In the case of writing a composition, to be able to say ‘no’ to the particular whims of the compositional moment is quite necessary, not only to expedite the compositional process, but also to maintain a work’s cohesiveness.

If the ego of the composer dwells in moment-to-moment compositional choices, what, then, is the authority that should govern it? In other words, what if anything can a composer do to suppress the act of arbitrarily selecting one pitch after another from measure one to the end of the piece? As a composer, this has been my greatest concern. Most will agree that one cannot go back to the rules of tonality; too much wealth has been discovered in the meantime. Like so many other composers, I felt obliged to envision new rules--new ways to limit the infinite number of choices required in "ego-driven" composition and subsequently avoid the pitfalls of creative block.

I take comfort that I am not the first to wrestle with this. Ironically, it was Schoenberg, the great emancipator of dissonance himself, who feared the weight of his own compositional freedom. It was not far into the 20th century during Schoenberg’s free atonal period when he suffered a creative crisis. The distant references to the Freudian world of the subconscious could only propel his craft so far. Eventually something more concrete had to assert itself in the compositional process. This creative crisis lasted close to eight years at which point he emerged with the 12-tone method of writing, a self-imposed tool to aid his compositional technique.

Numerous 20th century composers, myself included, have at one time or another been seduced by the systematic cleanliness of the 12-tone row. There is something very gratifying and creatively safe about having an ability to justify each note through a macro system and using it to guide the individual choices every composer must make over the course of writing a work. In the most radical cases of integral serialism, momentary individual choice is completely silenced in submission to a highly complex precompositional formula. A chief complaint directed at such a method was that in eradicating the ego so thoroughly from the score, one also destroys the work’s human qualities. To many, the labor of the integral serialist perpetually delivers a still-born composition, cold and lifeless in its countenance. It seems that the goal of the composer must be to limit, but not eradicate, the ego in the compositional process.

It did not take long for me to conclude that serial writing was far too self-referential for the type of ideas I wanted to convey musically. I needed to find a new means of controlling the ego, while still allowing the human element to show through. Estonian composer Arvo Pärt once said, "A composition comes from within as a single gesture which is already inherently musical and highly human . . . The task of the composer is to find an appropriate system for transmission of this gesture." In light of this, I began to look for ways to capture these "flashes" of inspiration and to use them on a global level. Most composers will tell you that flashes are the easy part; putting them into context is the challenge.

My response to this challenge eventually led me out of the realm of music and into the world of the visual arts, particularly the iconography of the Eastern Orthodox Church. At first, this may seem a strange and remote place to find answers to musical problems. But the pages that follow reveal that the connections are not as obscure as they might first appear. For hundreds of years, the Eastern Orthodox Church has cultivated a unique interdisciplinary aesthetic for expressing a devotion emancipated from personal sentiment . Through a strict adherence to tradition, symbolism, and theology, her artists have yielded fruit from an unbroken tradition firmly rooted in the Christian faith. As a result, it has warded off the capricious nature of Western sacred art. In the West, painters have historically moved from style to style in a self-perceived evolutionary track, whereas the iconogrophers of the Easterm Orthodox Church have rejected novelty and have kept their aesthetic goals unchanged over the centuries. One must infer that they have found something perennial in their art. In the words of renowned Byzantine iconographer Photius Kontoglou, "Byzantine art contains certain seeds that never die; they blossom in every epoch and in every people, provided there are profound artists to cultivate them." But, perhaps the most valuable aspect of the Byzantine aesthetic is that it does not create divisions between art and music as we often experience them in the West. Byzantine Art is defined not by the engaged medium of an artistic endeavor, but by the primordial creative thought of the artist. It is the ultimate interdisciplinary philosophy, lending a sense of tradition and relevance to all areas of creativity, since it is derived from a common human experience. This experience in early Eastern Christianity is referred to as anagogic; that is, the lifting up of the senses from material naturalism to spiritual mysticism. As a composer, I felt I could benefit from the knowledge of this very organic, very human approach to expression.

In hopes of quelling the objections of some of the purists who would argue against the legitimacy of this endeavor, I would like to add this disclaimer. The musical icon described in this study is not intended to be taken as a literal icon, seeing as it has no ecclesiastical tradition in the strict sense. Since there is no place in the liturgy for such a creation, I use the term ‘musical icon’ with an understanding of its shortcomings. In the development of this iconographic model, I wish neither to cultivate a new artform for the Orthodox Church, nor to see the musical icon stand on equal footing with the liturgically valid visual icon. Rather, I look to the icon only as a means for establishing a personal compositional process which enables the expression of spiritual ideas with greater sobriety and personal restraint. To the extent that other composers are able to adopt this system for their own use, I offer a word of caution. This method was reared in spirituality and cannot easily be weaned from its liturgical guardian. Stripped of its tradition, it ceases to function with the same singularity of purpose. Any attempts to adopt this study would most certainly demand an acquaintance with Orthodox Christianity, its teachings and traditions. I have included several references at the end of this study which should provide a good foundation for such an endeavor.

Conclusions    (from chapter 5 of the dissertation)

 In the introduction to this thesis, I spoke of the composer’s challenge in articulating an inner idea.  Messiaen’s compositions are proof that this struggle, while perhaps necessary, need not be unpleasant.  His was a language gradually learned through faith, prayer, and contemplation.   Guided by his love for God, he wrote music with an incisive vision,  never lacking inspiration as he searched for words.  We may never know for certain if Messiaen would have accepted an iconographic interpretation of his works.  Perhaps proving this connection is less important than the actual understanding of how these  methods aided the production of a body of work that remains amazingly consistent and sincere in its devotion.
 
It seems clear that a method like iconography can aid those whose inspiration is entangled in a myriad of choices.  But what of the creative artist whose creative block is inverted?  What of the poet whose words soak the page, but quickly evaporate from their insincerity or incertitude?   Unfortunately, systems cannot fertilize a barren inspiration, only purpose can.   Interestingly enough, the iconographic method hold answers to this problem as well.  According to Orthodox composer John Tavener, "We live in an age when man has lost belief not only in God, but also in himself.  Metaphysics has been completely split from the world of the imagination."  If this is true, then the musical icon should be seen as the means to replenish such a belief and restore the meaning and mystery that has abandoned our art.  At a time when music, like humanity, is becoming more self-referential, the icon, like an anonymous messenger, delivers a new purpose to the creative process.  It provides the composer with a perennial challenge, one that mirrors the very struggle of our own human nature—the calling to emulate a perfection found only in God.  All works of art, like the lives we live, have elements of failure in them; but as most composers acknowledge, it is upon these failures that new works are built.  The process of creating the musical icon, like the Christian struggle for salvation, is driven by a vision of perfection.  With such a vision, the process of creation becomes itself an icon, the quest for artistic perfection symbolizing the greater human quest for Divine perfection.

© 1998 Kurt Sander All rights reserved

for more information on this research paper, please contact me at sanderk@nku.edu