German composer Mathias Spahlinger holds a unique place in the field of new music mainly for being on the periphery. Within this intriguing position in the field of production lies a potential power that paradoxically allows his music and thought to address new music itself, even to the level of ontology. While on the one hand, Neil Thomas Smith succeeds in filling up a void in academic literature on Spahlinger in English, his writing exceeds that purpose by bringing Spahlinger's work into a general cultural and political context. I excitedly browsed through the book to absorb all its analytic contents. Any writings on my former professor – be it in German or in English – would always invoke memories of him. Within the pages of Smith's book, there seems to be one underlying and recurring theme that characterises the music of Spahlinger, in my opinion even better than his ‘predecessors’ the composers Helmut Lachenmann and Nicolas Hub. This is the revolutionary notion of praxis, or the conscious process by which theory (or conceptual knowledge) is embodied and realised into action: in this case, music as a performative and discursive act (Baes Reference Baes2013 and Reference Baes2021, after Paulo Freire and Antonio Gramsci). I read Smith's book with this notion of praxis in mind, and found it well outlined.
There are two major parts to this book, the first of which articulates how Spahlinger defines himself as a composer. In the initial chapter of Part 1, ‘Modernism underestimated’, Smith cites Spahlinger's very critical ideological stance against the modern composer as a ‘conceptive ideologue’, a position assumed by artists that in effect replicates their place within the status quo. Spahlinger's rejection of this reflexive assumption by the modern artist is expressed in a now famous essay (Spahlinger Reference Spahlinger2008), and Smith was right to cite this to articulate the ontology of Spahlinger's creative process. In the next chapter, ‘Biography and context: Spahlinger and twentieth century Germany’, Smith attempts to show how Spahlinger's life story, set within the milieu of German society's re-building following the ravages of the Second World War, impacted and shaped his views on music.
In Part II, the book outlines four of the most significant concepts of Spahlinger's creative process: musique concrète instrumentale, order, open form and lastly (which made a lasting impression), perception. These categories point to the ways in which Spahlinger's conceptual framework(s), or rather his ‘political bent’, deeply define the nature of his music. Smith is right in showing how Spahlinger transcends musique concrète instrumentale which, while making a direct influence on his creative approach even in his earliest compositions, becomes a revolutionary achievement by making ‘noise’ a viable musical material (p. 54). In my opinion there must be even more to this observation. I believe that Spahlinger emancipates the composer from any procedural baggage, and demystifies musique concrète instrumentale as a mere approach to modernist use of instrumental ‘extended techniques’. The revolutionary fervour of Spahlinger's music goes beyond the use of such extended techniques. This is evidenced by the fact that, in the late 1990s, Spahlinger appears to have veered away from this practice, a fact that Smith notes from Kriedler's observations (p. 54). It would not be surprising therefore that a major work like ‘Farben der Frűhe’ (begun in the late 1990s and completed in 2005) utilises only ‘normal’ playing techniques. In fact, a very impressive third movement stands out, as a long sustained and continuously hammered low D♭ results in sympathetic vibrations, creating a sonic experience that may never compare with the usual extended techniques in the piano.
The revolutionary transcendence of musique concrète instrumentale extends into discussions on ‘order’, ‘open form’ and ‘perception’ in subsequent chapters. I personally found the chapter on ‘perception’ the most significant, as this aspect encompasses the breadth of the composer's creative consciousness. The discussion of Spahlinger's large-scale works ‘Passage/Paysage’ as well as ‘Und Als Wir’ (pp. 143–46) highlights the potential of those works as aural experiences of formal structure and physical movement, while that on ‘Gegen Unendlich’ and ‘Off’ (pp. 146–50) deals with the deconstruction of pitch and rhythmic categories. Most notable, however, is the discussion of ‘In dem ganzen ocean von Empfindungen, eine Welle absondern, Sie anhalten’ for choir and playback (pp. 152–65), which explores the potential for various levels of perception of this highly political work that critiques the human condition, details of which I cannot appraise for lack of space. Smith's discussion of this work actually highlights Spahlinger's composition as praxis where, in working within the social frames of reality and production/performance – and at times interchangeably – the composer calls to mind timely questions on the basic conditions of world hunger (Spahlinger, Reference Spahlingern.d.). My reading of this section actually provoked me to interrogate Spahlinger's music (as I had already done as his student in the early 1990s) as a mode of action: who is the intended audience? How, for instance, would the hungry urban poor living in shanties within the modernising infrastructure of Manila respond to, if not benefit from, this piece, if ever given the opportunity to experience this particular work?
What is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Smith's book is the detailed analysis of many notable works of Spahlinger, which generations of composers will find very useful after listening to the music. On the whole therefore, this very enlightening book illustrates how one of the most influential composers at the dawn of the 21st century put thought and sound into the wholeness of his unique works that continue to intrigue the global artistic community.
