Leigh Vanhandel
Stanford University/University of New Mexico
Collage has served as a powerful compositional technique throughout the twentieth century, boasting such notable practitioners as Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and, more recently, Morton Subotnick. Subotnick's The Key to Songs (1985) is the first in a trilogy of works each modeled on a separate collage "novel" by the Surrealist artist Max Ernst. In each piece of his trilogy, Subotnick attempts to represent musically the bizarre worlds of Ernst's innovative novels. In The Key to Songs, his means include imitation of and musical corollaries to Ernst's visual collages, whose influences range from Freudian psychology to literary theory and games.
It is easy to discuss the influence of collage on musical composition; what is more difficult is to provide an analysis demonstrating specific parallels between the two artforms. In the music world, as well as in the art world, the term 'collage' has been a very fluid one. This paper defines two styles of collage, the analytical and the synthetic; explores Subotnick's compositional technique in terms of source material, form, and motives; and discusses the relationships between Ernst's and Subotnick's methodologies. In addition, the paper discusses various linguistic influences on Ernst's art and their translation into Subotnick's musical language.