Robert Taylor
perspectives II
Those of my generation who had been
"classically trained" in composition were taught according to a pedagogy that
was more 19th, than 20th century. In fact, one of the better components of that method was
of an even earlier genesis: Species Counterpoint, mentioned in perspectives, had its origins even before the appearance, in 1725, of the venerable treatise by Johann
Fux, Gradus
ad Parnassum. In this treatise,
Fux summarized,
systematically, procedures established by much earlier composers which directly influenced
European composers at least through Beethoven's time (and beyond). As I have said, the
value of this training lies in its generality: that is, its power to illustrate how, in a
given context, one can learn to control 2 or more voices ("lines",
"tunes") sounding against each other continuously while maintaining idiomatic
unity. This quality (generality) was notably lacking in almost all of what passed
for "Music Theory" when I was an undergraduate. Indeed, what passed for music
theory during that time was, for the most part, not theory at all, but analysis, which is
something completely different, as John Cleese might put it. Analysis is the
disassembly, and reassembly into a different notation, or set of symbols
("reverse-engineering" one-step-removed) of a particular piece of music in an
attempt to understand its unique structure; theory is an attempt to reverse-engineer an
entire musical system in its most highly abstract, generalizable form, according to a
well-defined set of rules.
In going into the preceding (I am going
somewhere with this...) I am trying to get at the kernel of what makes a musical idiom--of what a musical system is, and is not.
Notice that I have used the words "idiom", and "system"
interchangeably here. As
some mathematician has remarked (quoting from memory) "It is the
rules which determine the game, whether you are playing with chess pieces or
collar-buttons". [ Ref ·
1 ]
Consider the idea of Theme and Variations. Presumably, in order to "vary"
something--anything--we need, first, a
self-consistent, identifiable object, of whatever kind. Clearly, if we're to have
variations, we must have something at the outset that is comprehensible as a
complete whole, a recognizable entity; otherwise, what is it exactly that is being varied,
and how will we know that it is being varied? If I blew a passenger ship's
main horns one minute, and then began to whistle a sea-shanty the next, you might make
some vague association among song, ship and ocean, based perhaps upon clichés from films
about sea-going vessels; but would you accept the whistling shanty as
"variations" on the ship's horns? I doubt it. The two things are too
disparate, there being no intrinsic structural features in common between horns and
sea-shanty--no "common denominator/s" through which to relate the two, and
become convinced that one is a variant
form of the other.
Historically, two things have usually been present in a "musical object". (I strain to keep the discussion as generalized as possible, because it seems necessary in order to get down to the nuts-and-bolts issues involved in the production of a musical work of art. It would be too easy to get bogged down in discussions of what qualifies as "art", what genres are "acceptable" as art, etc., etc.; but, although we shall go into this presently, I would prefer to put it on-hold for the moment. It would only draw us into endless side-issues at this point which, though perhaps relevant, would not allow the discussion to hew to its main course.)
The first thing we require of a "musical object" is a set of some division/s of the sound-continuum into "n" steps per octave, where "n" is some integer ("whole number"). All classical systems of music are so constructed. In Western "Art Music" (those terms again...) the octave is divided into 12 tones, and we assume that all octaves are "equivalent" (i.e., to our ears, among all possible "Cs", any "C" is perceptually "equivalent" to any other. There are a thousand qualifications that one could apply to this statement, but for our purposes, we can use it as a working assumption.) The classical music of Northern India consists of a complex set of divisions of the octave, including "quarter-tones" (and, in practice, even smaller intervals, or "nuances" of intervals) and "modes" (scales) which may be articulated in one way ascending, and in a different way descending, and so on. In Jazz, apart from so-called "free improvisation" (I'm not sure whether this qualifies as an oxymoron or a redundancy, but let that pass for now), we are always listening to some form of theme and variations, based, either on a set of chords (several notes sounded simultaneously according to a given sequence) or perhaps simply a melody--or both, depending on the mood, style and technique of the improvisor/s. The overall shape of this "form" is the well-known three-part song form, " A-B-A' ", whereas the canonical shape of the classical theme and variations is " A-B-A'-B' ", the "two-part" song form (i.e., "A-B", and then "A-B" repeated). It is certainly worth noting that all of these forms are themselves subject to innumerable variations of their "top-down"-design; e.g., in the Classical (and Baroque) versions, one is likely to find examples where the "A" and the "B" sections are not repeated in pairs. Then again, there are examples where the repetition-scheme of the two sections may itself be varied (e.g. Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Haydn; Elgar: Enigma Variations).
I have said that "two" things are necessary in order to make a musical object. The first, as described above, is the division of the sound-continuum into some number of discrete pitches; in other words, into a scale or scales. The second, logically enough, is some means of navigating through and around those pitches and/or combining them into some coherent, comprehensible idiomatic "vocabulary" which enables us to shape the notes into some "flavor" (genre) of music to our liking. It is this that I mean by the words "idiom" and "system". That is, once we have decided on some division of the sound-continuum into steps, (scales, modes) what determines the ways in which we move around in them? (Or, to be more precise, "move them around?".)
This is a deep question, and one that we cannot hope to plumb even to a fraction of its fullest depth in this context. To do so would involve us in the most complicated, technical aspects of music theory, which would be inappropriate here. But, as I have remarked elsewhere, this does not stop us from gossiping about it, and that, surprisingly, can be both interesting and fruitful if it is approached in the right spirit. We'll give it our best.
In recent times, the idea that some musical vocabulary, some idiom,
some unifying superstructure should be a sine qua non, an absolute precondition of making any kind of music with the expectation that something non-trivial and
sonically coherent might
emerge from it--something that could be appreciated, apprehended, or, at least in some
manner decoded by other human beings--does not seem to be widely understood. Indeed,
during the last three or four decades it has become, if not "fashionable", then
at least matter to be taken seriously that "music" need have no discernible
sonic structural basis at all; in other words, that "everything is everything
else", and if I shoot a paint-ball at a billboard, or stare at a nine-foot Steinway
for an hour and a half, that is, somehow, "music", or at least "a work of
art". Why? Presumably because I say so, and because there are enough
gullible people out there that a fraction of them are going to believe me if I'm a good
enough "business-man". (Which reminds me: the German word for entrepreneur
is Unternehmer; in English, literally, "Undertaker"...I just thought
I'd throw that in.) And
so, like Napoleon Pig who, when told that he was not permitted to urinate on the floor,
promptly did so, saying, "What do you mean I can't piss on the floor? I just
did it!", we talk gibberish or stare intently into the distance over the keyboard of
an instrument for forty-five minutes in front of a crowd of people, call it art and, if
challenged, reply "What do you mean it's not art? I just did it and called it
art.", thus ipso
facto defining art out of
existence.
And then the audience, responding as most normal people would, are so startled by being
told that, ' No Virginia, black is white ', they are at
least momentarily hard-put to construct some response that does not itself sound
preposterous, redundant, or circular. And from a practical point of view, the
trouble is that the impresarios, producers, managers and their ilk are no better--and are
often worse--equipped in this regard than the public at large.
But the Emperor's clothes have fallen down around his ankles and have been ripped to shreds and dragged out of sight by the running-dogs of cricketry ( in the press and inter silvas Academi ): " Es brennt Paris, und keiner weiß was er schreiben soll! " as Berg has it in his wonderful opera Lulu. ( I quote from memory, but that's pretty close.) The result, not surprisingly, is mass-confusion, frustration and entirely justified anger on the part of the concert-going public.
And so, among other things, there has been an extreme reaction (and I use the word advisedly) "rightwards", musically speaking, such that a host of people are now writing music in C Major (or pick a key), for all the world as if Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler and Schönberg had not already worn it out. This is perhaps understandable, but it is also ridiculous. ( As George Sanders said to Marilyn Monroe (in her first screen-appearance, in All About Eve Ref · 2 ), " You have a point my dear; an absurd one, but a point." ).
The reasons for all this confusion and anger are, again, too technical to be followed by the lay-public, and so we are, with Machaut's little tune, Ma commencement est ma fin et ma fin ma commencement, stuck in what seems to be a logical conundrum, but is, in fact, only a matter of the incorrect use of language. As Bertrand Russell and A.N. Whitehead pointed out a hundred years ago, such paradoxes are not logical paradoxes at all, but merely the mis-use of words. To state that " a is equal to b ", it is first necessary to know that "there exists an " a ", such that ...", etc. Fortunately, this resulted, at least in mathematical logic, in the most momentous theoretical revolution in history, overturning the very foundations of modern mathematics; but unfortunately, it has had little effect, either in the minds of the concert-going public, or, what is perhaps worse, in the minds of those who run the concerts and manage the musicians--or of politicians. (N.b.: Sour grapes here, there are none: I have had far more than my share of public performances by some of the best players in the world, and on some of the best audio systems in existence. This is a general, not a personal problem.)
Then of course, there is what someone has referred to as "the finger-painting school of composition" (I think it was Tuck Howe, but I'm not certain of that). I suppose that could apply equally well to electronic or acoustic music--I have personally heard both. By this we mean music which defines no "divisions" of the sound-continuum at all in the sense described above; any sound--noise, burp, shake, rattle...(the temptation is great, but we shall assay to resist)--any sound at all, completely without respect to scales or intervallic ratios of any kind.
And then came "minimalism" -- the "C Major-reaction-squared". I have implied on another page of this site that this, it seems to me, is the alpha and omega of the reactionary, the boring--the infantile. As Dorothy Parker has remarked in another context ( paraphrasing ): This genre of "music" spans the entire expressive and structural gamut from A to B.
I understand where it came from. Its origins were in fact similar to those of what might be thought of as its obverse (e.g., Dada, musique concrete, analogous to "found-object" "art" in the plastic arts, etc.) and was a reaction (again, the word is used advisedly) against a brand of music, an æsthetic criterion, that I had the good fortune to be a part of during the 60s and slightly beyond. For convenience, I refer to this musical "group" as the "Princeton-Columbia Axis", led by its undisputed point-man, Milton Babbitt. First by the finger-painters, then by the minimalists (or was it the other way around) and subsequently by the neo-neo-classicists, anything that smelled even faintly of the notion "system" was declared anathema, (though what is tonality, if not a "system", or a set of systems (!), however poorly defined?) and for all intents and purposes was banished from the kingdom, where it had enjoyed an enviable position for some few years. Ah well, as my dear friend Ramiro Cortés remarked after his first and only performance by the New York Philharmonic, "every dog has his day". He was a philosopher, was Ramiro, bless his heart and rest his bones. And if you don't believe that, I can tell you that he smoked a pipe, and was one of the few persons I have ever known who actually knew how to use it.
The very oldest of musical instruments
known to us divide the octave, usually, into five discrete steps--viz., the so-called
"penta-tonic", or "five-tone" scale (cf., the "black keys"
on the modern piano). There is at present great disagreement among pundits as to
whether even the very earliest instruments known to have been made by our ancestors were
of pentatonic, diatonic (5 "whole-steps" plus 2 pairs of "half-steps",
= "7-tone", the
Major scale presently in widespread use, especially in the West) or some other type. The very oldest artifact, thought to
have been of Neanderthal origin, is a subject of heated controversy. This is a 43,000 year-old flute,
made from the femur bone of a bear, which appears to have been severed over time,
leaving it unclear as to what its scalar increments might have been. (There are even
those, perish the thought, who contend that the "flute-holes" in the bone's
surface were made by carnivores; but the odds in favor of this appear to be vanishingly
small.)