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thoughts
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Incredibly insightful
Victoria Lansford
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Willow Pearson
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Philip Rubinov Jacobson
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Stuart Davis
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M a t t h e w D a l l m a n
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THE EMBRACE OF SOUND
An Integral Music
Part I Part II
PART II: THE SONOROUS IMAGE
It is a simple statement to say that musicians, through the performance of music, communicate to listeners. For people who believe that music cannot communicate, or be used for communication, it is left to them to find some other reason why millions of people listen to music, every single day. My own stance is firmly on the side that thinks that people who play music -- any kind of music -- offer to audiences large and small some form of meaning, enrichment, and joy. The poet W.H. Auden wrote that "music is immediate; it goes on to become." Simply put, we get something out of music, and we get more out of the kinds of music that every person decides for him or herself to be 'good'. The world would be a completely different place if music did not exist, and those people who seek through music the ability to convey ideas, emotions, sensations, and movements would, sadly, have no means for expression.
So is a simple statement -- that through music communication arises -- but nonetheless, it is a remarkably profound. The mix is alchemical. Through the aural expression of various combinations of rhythm, tone, words (sometimes) and silence, energy pops -- people dance -- cultures sway -- Spirit shines. Through music, a deeper recognition of who we are and who we can become can emerge as aural reflection. Through music, we are tuned and we sing. We receive and we give. Through music, an embrace across cultures, time, and spoken languages opens. We can suppose that music has been heard since humans gained self-awareness, though sound itself emerged as the Kosmos. Thus music and consciousness go hand in hand. Through music, boundaries disappear, and unity grows. Two people meet to play music together, and the skin, hair, body shape, eyes, facial expression, prejudice, and all other non-musical blocks can go poof!. Through all of this (just the tip of an iceberg, in truth), we can simply bow. Music is among the best evidence we have that something larger than us works its forces deeper still, and deeper still. Intuition in one meets intuition in another, and you can hear the love-making.
The composer Igor Stavinsky wrote that "[h]aving been fixed on paper or retained in the memory, music exists already prior to its actual performance...". As potential, music exists in the creator, or composer. Specfically, potential music exists in the composer's interior prehension. Performers, too, have music as potential, for even as he or she prepares to perform a written score, or song from memory, music in this sense, before the performance begins, manifests in interior space. Many composers and performers bemoan that their performed music, or composed music, never is quite as good as the music each hears with their inner ears. In truth, this appears more the rule than the exception.
So what manifests in exterior space as actual music? Obviously, the actual sounds, sonorities, aural vibrations, and sonic pop all form actual music. These features of music can also be called the artifact of music. Anything thus sensed -- from a performance to a recording or score -- can be called an artifact. A musical artifact is something distinctly tangible in physical space. People and cultures can and do interpret artifacts in numerous ways. Few argue that there isn't at least something tangible, something artifactual about music. Here, explicit science can intervene, such as in the work of Hermann Helmholtz, to show just this point--that music has objective qualities.
So with music, we have it in its interior form, as potential, and we have it in its exterior form, as artifact. In both cases, music can so overwhelm as person as to drive them mad, or into deep love, wonder, awe, and awareness. Or music can drive someone to tantric dancing. All in all, the distinction between potential and artifact is an initial means to simply help a discussion get off on proper footing. Naturally, a great deal more can be said, as I will do so as I proceed. Again, to say that music has both interior and exterior aspect is simultaneously mundane, and rather breathtaking.
A lot of artists I've spoken with are blown away (in a good way) by the distinction between art and artifact. This is a distinction offered by Ananda Coomaraswamy, with specific regard to medieval art, though it is fully applicable with music. Coomaraswamy's 'art' can be seen as equivalent to 'potential', or broadly as 'consciousness'. Thus a musician's consciousness is where the potential of music can seed and bloom, both consciously and unconsiously. The artifact captures in some way the composer's consciousness, or the performer's consciousness, and captures consciousness in material energy. When we think of the whole 'conscious meets light and vision meets energy' pie that is what cultures call 'art' or 'music', citing its material and energetic qualities as artifact tends to simultaneously open up the discussion to the non-artifactual aspects of 'art'.
This happens to be exactly what an integral approach to music ought to do. An integral approach can highlight both the 'consciousness' aspect of music, as well as the 'artifactual' aspect of music (as well as the interpretation aspect, more on that later). And it is precisely in the discussion of music as artifact where music as means of communcation arises. What music says, conveys, suggests, and transmits, and how that happens, is the subject of the study of what I called music semiotics.
Music semiotics can frame the transmission currents that flow from composer to performer though music itself and to the audience. Semiotics is a study of recognition. And because of the aim to take as much into account as possible, the integral model appears to be the most comprehensive and nonmarginalizing means to study this ultimately mysterious interplay. As semiotician David Sless remarks, "semiotics is far too important an enterprise to be left to semioticians." If an integral semiotics of music is to be successful and enriching to musicians, then it will have to be able to find a good mix between depth of thought and span of accessibility. The last thing I want to do is take the integral model, apply it to music semiotics, and then make the thing so confusing that people run screaming.
So we can aim for that mix between depth and span, and in fact it is simply the most compassionate way to go. An integral semiotics of music aims to highlight how the process of tranmission from musician, through artifact, to listener can take shape, along several main lines and spectrums. There likely never to be final answers to the question 'how it is that music communicates?', but an integral semiotics of music aims to help musicians and lovers of music develop good questions, the exploration of which help the tradition of music further develop, and the resonance felt in all music around the world further enrich.
THAT SLIDING AVANT-GARDE
As we look at the history of music, from a worldcentric perspective, we can gather many if not all of the major milestones that have manifested in every major culture. What happens when we do so, in an honest investigation that puts all of the milestones on the table?
For example, take a Hildegard von Bingen plainchant, a dronal Australian didgeridoo, Indian table tarang, polyrhythmic mbira music from Zimbabwe Shona tribes, Bach's polymelodic fugues, Hindustani vocal/sitar music another, American blues/jazz, and so on (there are many more). Each of these forms of music represent imminant reflections of Spirit in culture. What sort of patterns emerge when all of these musics, as well as the other major aural reflections are put on the table? What I suggest is that a true definition of 'avant garde music' would have to take all of the major milestones of music into account.
We cannot hold a music's time and place against it. Avant-garde, as the leading of music at any given time in history, emerges in self-culture-nature. Hildegard von Bingen's plainchants, for example, were leading edge for her time, 12th century. Australian didgeridoo, when it first emerged as tribal beacon, was in fact novel. American blues/jazz, as it first developed in the early 20th century, popped as an entirely new flower. The same goes for all musical milestones. While some music is not appreciated in the actual time and place of its conception, nonetheless the cream of music does tend to rise to the top.
Thus if all of these milestones are to be considered avant-garde for each's time and place, and I believe each ought to be, then a sliding scale of avant-garde is a way to acknowledge the emerging, or becoming, nature of music. Avant-garde music is that which captures the leading edge of consciousness of a particular time and place. The beauty and resonance of avant-garde music is that which overwhelms and fills audiences in ways they had never experienced previously. Avant-garde is some mix of novelty, freshness, resonance, and deep re-cognition that we may never have a clear definition of, but that is okay. We can hold these ideas with love yet loosely, because with music, and all art, we know it when we feel it.
DEEP FEATURES AND UNIVERSALS OF MUSIC
With planet-centric ears, we can listen to music from any musical tradition or culture, and appreciate its value. This is not to suggest that one necessarily must like all music (although a theo- or kosmo-centric perspective allows the ground value of any emergence to shine luminous). All a worldcentric perspective suggests that that a musician or music lover can listen and appreciate music from anywhere, uninhibited by undue cultural bias, ethnocentric chauvinism, or patronizing anthropology.
A worldcentric perspective of music allows a great many things to occur, not the least of which is the ability to, for the very first time, take at least a ballpark appraisal of something we never could before -- namely, what the deep features of music might be. Corrolate to this topic are any universals of music. These two frame, in essence, the depth (deep features) and span (universals) of music, around the world, in most every culture, tradition, and music trend.
These topics have been explored by many people, usually by way of an 'what is music?' inquiry. In the book What to Listen for in Music, United States composer Aaron Copland, to take one notable example, popularized the notion of four elements of music -- rhythm, melody, harmony, and tone color. He called these elements the 'composer's materials'. His account is of course intended for lay persons, as an introduction to music, especially of Western origin, but nonetheless, his list serves as more or less an agreed upon set of elements.
The nature of each would depend upon the definitions we use. There are narrow as well as broad definitions in each case. The narrow definition of rhythm, for example, would refer to repeated and sequential pulses of an instrument's expression. A more broad broad definition would refer to the periodicity of any aspect of sonority, including melody, harmony, and tone color, as well as large-scale form, texture, dissonance, meter, and so on. Any aspect can be looked at for its rhythm. This leads to an astonishing amount of confusion about music. You might even say that music is all rhythm, all the way up and all the way down (just like the turtles).
As the seminal music researchers Brown, Merker, and Wallin suggest, while we might never be fully able to answer the question of 'what is music?' authoritatively, we can nonetheless focus on what music tends to be, around the world. This is where Ken Wilber's orienting generalizations becomes a useful tool. As a means of meta-analysis of the kind that a worldcentric appraisal of music requires, 'orienting generalizations' allow us to step back and highlight the points where musicians, musicologists, music theorists, and music lovers generally agree. Orienting generalizations allow us to see what music tends to be, no matter where we look or listen.
For introductory purposes, I will list what appears to be a generally-agreed upon list for both the deep features and the universals of music, or just the depth and span. To be clear, deep features means sonic commonality in any kind of music, no matter where it is composed, improvised, or expressed. Universals means commonality as well, only in the more surface features of music (the kinds of actual expression, forms, venues, and patterns).
For example, the fact that most cultures around the world have expressed music through the voice is astonishing. We look around the world at music, and we see that most if not all cultures have vocal music, and we can simply remark that it is a wonderful pattern that suggests that, perhaps, there is something to the act of singing that nearly all humans have found important, and musical!
Thus singing would be one of the universals, or universal surface features, of music, and we can begin our list with that. So on with an introductory list, for the purposes of a truly authentic Integral Music. (Thanks to Bruno Nettl's essay, "An Ethnomusicologist Contemplates Musical Universals".)
Univeral Surface Features of Music
1. All societies have vocal music, sung by both men and women.
2. Virtually all have musical instruments, at least percussion.
3. All societies have at least some music with a discernible meter and pulse.
4. The principal interval of virtually all music is some kind of 'major second', though the frequency interval varies.
5. All societies have music that uses only three or four pitches (with combinations of major seconds and minor thirds).
6. Music in every culture is used to address God, Goddess, Spirit, the Supernatural, or some kind of higher order.
7. Music is used to evoke a fundamental change in consciousness or ambiance of a gathering -- simply, to 'transform experience'.
8. Music is used to celebrate the importance of an event (birthday party, political rally, coming-together of tribes, appearance of a king, queen).
9. Music is used as an accompaniment and support of dance.
You can see that the list of universal surface features generally emphasizes universals in culture and societies -- in other words, how cultures use and manifest music in day to day life in a culture or society. It is impossible to divorce music expression from culture. Music is one of the best pieces of evidence for the axiom that the smallest human unit is not one, but two. If even for a couple other people, music is meant to be heard by people beyond its creators.
So what are the universal deep features of music? These are the aspects that no matter what cultural dressing or clothing nonetheless are at the root of most all music. A wayno folksong from Peru has many differences compared to a bluegrass folk song from the USA. There are different languages for the lyrics, different cultural meanings, different social settings for performance, and so on. But as musical artifacts, the purely musical qualities each share and have in common lead us to the deep features of music. So what is an introductory list of these?
Univeral Deep Features of Music
1. All music is comprised of silence and rhythm.
2. All music employs kind of tonal expression.
3. Nearly all music uses implicit or explicit counterpoint (broadly defined).
4. Nearly all music uses some form of intensity and release, or call and response.
5. All music is time-based.
6. All music implies a harmonic structure, at least in the distant background.
'Counterpoint', in the broad definition I use here, means the contrast of two or more aspects of music simultaneously. Thus a hand drum and a voice could be in counterpoint with one another. Or the tones of a solo violin could suggest a counterpoint, or contrapuntal, relationship.
A MAP OF INTEGRAL MUSIC
Composers such as Copland, Stravinsky, Inayat Kahn, and many more have isolated what are called the 'elements of music'. As I wrote above, Copland famously named four: rhythm, melody, harmony, and tone color. John Cage added silence. There is some disagreement, both about the number of elements on the list, and what each of the elements mean. 'Harmony' to Copland is different than 'harmony' to Allaudin Mathieu. 'Color' means something to Western composers than it does to Inayat Kahn, from the East. Regardly, each of the musics named above generally are made up of some number, say 1-7, of major objective elements of music.
Naturally, there are various overall structures of those elements, the totality of which form musical wholes. (Ironically, we also call them 'pieces'.) A plainchant is structured differently than a fugue, which is structured differently than a raga, and so on. Here architecture and music have a lot in common. Goethe wrote that architecture is frozen music.
There is a variety in each case: a variety of elements, and a variety of structures. Using both, we can put together a theory to take stock of these artifactual sides of music. What we can do is make a transition from strict musical terms into terms where the artifactual aspects of music can translate into semiotics terms. While it may sound like a headgame, in fact it is quite brief (see diagram below).
In semiotics terms, the elements of music form signifiers. The isolated markings of music, from silence, rhythm, tone, and so on are the ingredients that a musician cooks to make a meal. Stravinsky cited the 'raw materials' of his composition, and the raw materials are signifiers. These do just that: signify something. While a simply melody, to take one element as example, could be interpreted to have meaning, what 'signifers' mean in semiotics terms is something in the composer's consciousness. His or her 'inner ear' projects, amongst many elements, a melodic sense that is captured in a score, recording, or memory.
The exterior elements (silence, rhythm, tone, etc) signify something interior and subjective to the composer. That which is interior is called, in semiotics, as signifieds. The conscious and unconscious drives in musicians of inspiration, imagination, Muse, and inner need (to borrow from Kandinsky) are referred to generally as signifieds, or 'that which is represented'. Signifieds are the intuitive energies that pop out of musicians, or are sensed deeply, and thus require composition.
The organization and structure of signifieds form what in semiotics is called syntax. Musicians mix together the elements to make music, in ways that cultures would recognize and relate with. The syntax is the objective whole, or the architectural building in sound. The signifiers are ordered by means of a system. Syntax is the general term for any kind of system.
The interpretive spaces, clearings, or zones where people and cultures interpret and process music wholes are called semantics. Semantics refers to cultural referents, points of collective meaning, intersubjective responses, and so on. There are conscious and unconscious interpretations that emerge in audiences that dance, listen to, and contemplate music. Unlike the artifactual aspects of music, the general term of semantics refers to subjectivity that arises in groups of people. You have to be part of the collective space to be able to understand the range of semantics.
Thus an integral semiotics of music is based upon these four main categories, or spectrums. I have translated Ken Wilber's 4 Quadrant conception of an integral semiotics -- signified (Upper Left), signifier (Upper Right), syntax (Lower Right), and semantics (Lower Left) -- into musical terms. Here is a basic diagram to represent the 4 Quadrants of a music semiotics.
A more detailed and speculative diagram is here. Here, I aim to incorporate the work done by integral thinkers such as Wilber, Graves, Loevinger, Kohlberg, Kegan, and others into this discussion of integral semiotics of music. What I called categories before are better referred to as spectrums. Spectrums works better as a term because there is a developmental nature of increasing complexity within each category (signified, signifiers, syntax, semantics). Below, as an introductory suggestion, I combine the spectrums cited by Housen, Wilber, Graves, Maslow, Kohlberg, Gilligan, Loevinger, Kegan, and others into two primary spectrums, those of signified and semantics. I will explicitly cite evidence for the spectrums of signifier and syntax in work forthcoming.
The good news is that taking this approach appears, at least in this early stage, to end the unhealthy view that because a kind of music is more formally complex than another kind, it is thus better. This sort of view is essentially the basis for a great deal of cultural chauvinism when it comes to music, and it is one of the main obstacles to a greater, deeper, wider, more compassionate, and integral view of music. It is also a block to any sort of furthering of the traditions of music, for if musicians stay true only to their traditions, without means for cultural exchange and transcendence of those boundaries, music cannot grow in ways that reflect the increasingly interdependent world of today. Once one's embrace moves beyond pure ethnocentrism and into a wider world- and kosmocentrism, it is clear, in my opinion, that the transparent essence of Beauty and Divinity is open to any kind of music at any point along a spectrum of artifactual form. No culture has a corner on the best music, or on resonance, which is exactly the way things ought to be.
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