Rene Leibowitz (II): The Music

Extract

Leibowitz's Toccata for piano, op.62 (1964) is a particularly flagrant example of his mastery of the art of contradiction. It is based on a chapter from the book The Raw and the Cooked by his friend Claude Lévi-Strauss, where the author shows the basically identical origin of several myths which appear to be entirely dissimilar, and points out their similarities through a ‘coding’, or the recognition of repeated details. Leibowitz's Toccatais built upon two themes—by ‘themes’ I mean here a series of intervals in pre-determined order used vertically or horizontally. The first of these is based on a 12-tone row consisting of seconds and thirds exclusively. The second ‘theme’ is based on another 12-tone row containing fourths as well. When the two themes are first stated, simply, they appear as opposites. One proceeds stepwise, softly, or makes the easy, gentle move of a third; the other leaps boldly in fourths and fifths, or announces big chords, loudly (Ex. 1). The themes are reiterated backwards and come to rest in a third, common to both, at the conclusion of the initial period.