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Home , 20th century music

Prolegomena to a Viable Study of 20th and 21st Century

Ricardo Friaz

The has been determined of lithographic reproduction, as discussed by by . Musical notation is an Walter Benjamin in his highly influential alphabet, the letters of which indicate musical essay on “The Work of Art in the Age of its pitches that correspond to the . Technological Reproducibility.” Lithographs All music that can be re-created into sound “enabled graphic art to provide an illustrated prior to the invention of the recording is to everyday life,” and reliant upon musical notation, or a text. If foreshadowed the culmination of reproducible there is an exception to this, it is the oral visuals in the motion picture (Benjamin 20). tradition of music, by which the melody of a The printing press had accomplished the same given piece of music has been transmitted for the written word in the 15th century. from the past by memory and performance. Significantly, the status of film as a Thus the history of pre-recorded music, which technologically reproducible art form receives I will call the Western musical tradition, has special attention in Benjamin’s essay, and been the domain of the musically-literate and there are some affinities to recorded music. educated. Today, music can be recorded as it From the early it has been is performed, and access to recording readily possible to point to an aural example technology is cheap and simple. This or instance of a musical work. Prior to this, to constitutes a vast democratization of the speak of a musical thing was necessarily to ability to create an enduring musical work; refer to a text, or wispy memory of a musical the consequences of this are still being felt. performance. In Rock Formation, Steve Jones Music has changed, and the ways in which it illustrates this point: “prior to the , has changed require attention. music notation was the only means of To write about music has always preserving a composition short of necessarily meant referring to the text of memorization” (15). According to Jones, the music. This problem occurs in the history of first “technological method” of recording literature and art, in different ways. With the sound is traced to the year 1857, when a advent of the printing press, the dissemination Frenchman named Leon Scott developed a of written works was accomplished on a machine that ‘wrote’ sound into a “cylinder of massive scale, and the criticism and heavy paper coated with lamp black.” theorizing of literature was accessible to However, there was no way to play this much more people. The history of art is “written” sound back; still, it remains similar. The difference between other arts and significant as the first instance of writing music, however, is that the language and text sound without dictating it via musical of music is arguably experienced exterior to notation. Interestingly, neither music boxes the music itself, an effect that has heretofore nor player have the same significance been aggravated by the absence of the record. as the phonograph in regard to musical The history of the arts has experienced reproduction, as they merely produced sound, similar paradigmatic shifts. Visual art without reproducing it. It is the reproduction eventually achieved a reproducible character of sound that is significant, and which allows of its own through refinements in techniques a discussion like the following to take place.

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The first from Panda Bear’s “Person suspicion, and threaten the validity of the Pitch” ends on a perfect 5th that falls slightly genres as music proper. One such critic is out of tune. This last note is clearly the Allan Bloom, who dedicates a chapter to highest note the singer, Noah Lennox, can music in his book The Closing of the reach. The musical notation of this song American Mind, focusing on the negative would all but erase the timbral history of this effects “” has on young people. note. Certainly, all the components would be Bloom’s thesis is that rock music, and in place to recreate it. The for generally the of the time, “Untitled #1” can contain detailed instruction provides “premature ecstasy,” and as a result on how to recreate the effect of this final note, lacks “enthusiasm or great expectations” (80). even to the point of demanding a singer with a He explicitly links rock music to drugs, similar vocal range in order to create the insofar as turning off the CD player is strained sound of an overextended voice. tantamount to “[having] a serious fling with What has always been missing in musical drugs—and getting over it”. Rock music notation of all kinds, and remains missing in “encourages passions and provides models this example, is the actual ‘timbre’ of the that have no relation to any life the young sound, which here is the unique sound of people who go to universities can possibly Panda Bear that note. lead.” The connection to drug use is made In Audiometry: Principles and Practices, explicit here: young people who listen to rock timbre is called a “wastebasket” attribute: if music are satisfying their “sexual desire” and two tones are judged to be “different,” and yet the “treat them as its only natural and have the same pitch and the same loudness, routine culmination for children who do not then they must differ in timbre” (Glorig 55). yet have the slightest imagination of love, The quality of timbre in music has marriage or family” (74). In addition to being traditionally received less priority than the an addictive and exhausting drug, rock music trifecta of rhythm, , and melody. is presented as a substance that awakens, With the advent of recording technology, satisfies, and exhausts lust in “children” timbre becomes possibly the most important through words that celebrate “puppy love as attribute. In The Ambient Century, Mark well as polymorphous attraction.” Rock Prendergast charts this development. He music’s attraction goes beyond simple observes that “the importance to twentieth- simpering lyric choice, for “young people century music of atmospheric sound, its know that rock has the beat of sexual timbre and personality—indeed its intercourse. That is why Ravel’s “Bolero” is ‘Ambience’–is a measure of how much the one piece of that is innovative musical ideas intertwined with commonly known and liked by them” (73). technological change,” which points directly In order to illuminate Bloom’s take on the to the development of timbre in his own thesis concepts that appear here, as well as to give for declaring this century one of ‘Ambient’ context to the current connotations of the music (3). Obviously this is not necessarily a terms he invokes, I will clarify the points of negative development; Prendergast, among his argument as well as attempt to understand others, finds that this century has produced his understanding of music and its interesting and rich music. It is fair to say that consequence. Here Bloom’s critique functions this innovation led to the of as an example for why new terms or methods like , Otto Luening, and are necessary to discuss the history of music. Charles Dodge, as well as rock and hip-hop. It Because without a revaluation of the methods is the last two that tend to be looked at with currently used to critique music, people like

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Bloom will continue to determine the course education. No longer are the “young people” and opinion of musical study. For Bloom, carried by the hope of real heroes and sensible music is a thing that “uses the passions and passions; their senses are expended and their satisfies them while sublimating them and expectations will no longer be met, thanks to giving them an artistic unity” by way of the Mick Jagger, that “male and female” who “cultivation of the soul” (72). Contrast this to could “enter everyone’s dreams” (78). his understanding of rock music: Through the course of the essay, Bloom But rock music has one appeal only, the actually makes very little reference to musical barbaric appeal to sexual desire—not love, examples and citation. One of the few not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and instances involves his anecdotal mention that untutored. It acknowledges the first “young people know that rock has the beat of emanations of children’s emerging sexual intercourse” which is why he refers to sensuality and addresses them seriously, Ravel’s “Bolero” (73). While it is probably eliciting them and legitimating them, not as little sprouts that must be carefully tended ridiculous in itself to conjecture that most in order to grow into gorgeous flowers, but young people enjoy this “seventeen minute” as the real thing (73). piece that Ravel described as “one long crescendo,” the claim that music can have the The origin of this argument is unclear, but its beat of sexual intercourse may merit some pedigree is familiar. The line of thought is investigation (Calvocoressi 477). derivative of the idea that ‘classical’ music signifies intelligence and thought, in contrast This point highlights one of the problems to the popular music, which is for the ignorant involved in the discussion of music. There is a masses. However, Bloom complicates this tendency to divide musical discussion into dichotomy further. While “Bach’s religious two mutually exclusive languages: that of the intentions and Beethoven’s revolutionary and musicologist and that of the sociologist. humane ones” cultivate the soul, he argues, Unfortunately, Bloom’s discussion seems to rock music is a drug insofar as it expends the fail on both fronts. There is no musicological listener. evidence to support the outlandish conclusion that rock music has the beat of sexual The argument begins to look familiar: it intercourse. Nevertheless, Bloom has found would seem Bloom is linking rock music to supporters, and this highlights the problem deviancy. He actually clarifies this point, involved with the discussion of music. While acknowledging that “my concern here is not Bloom does not indict the 4/4 “common time” with the moral effects of this music—whether of Classical music, he is somehow able to it leads to sex, violence or drugs” (79). In accuse rock music of the same crime in a fact, Bloom’s argument is that the manner that seems coherent. In The Aesthetics “imagination of young people” is ruined by of Rock, Theodore Gracyk points out that this music by way of its sabotage of the “Bloom does not find a sexual beat in the “esthetic education of man.” This is to say, Adagio of Mozart’s ‘Hunting Quartet’” even rock music, in contrast to classical music, though the music itself is written in the same creates and perpetrates fantastic ideals that meter as many rock . have no basis in real life. The formula of sex and decadence prevalent in rock, according to In a chapter called “Jungle Rhythms and Bloom, “encourages passions and provides Big Beat,” Gracyk discusses the rhythm of models that have no relation to any life the rock music, and in doing so explicates the young people who go to universities can concepts of rhythm, meter, beat, pulse, accent, possibly lead,” and this exactly ruins their and syncopation. These are the terms of the musicological tradition, which are taught in 3

universities today as the words to describe flourish in the absence of serious thought musical sound par excellence. Even new work about stylistic and aesthetic qualities as in the cognition of sound by the brain bearers of meaning” (143). maintains the terms. In This is Your Brain on This concern, and misinterpretation, of the Music, Daniel J. Levitin discusses rhythm by experience of timbre in the written history of referring to ‘groove,’ which is “that quality music as contrasted with the recorded history that moves the song forward, the musical of music can be framed in terms of the equivalent to a book you can’t put down” relation of music to noise. This discussion is (166). Bloom’s discussion is couched in these taken on by Jacques Attali in Noise: The same terms, and he ends up relying on their Political Economy of Music, and elaborated connotations in place of providing a real on by Paul Hegarty in Noise/Music: A discussion or presentation of evidence. History. It is obvious that Bloom is referring to the Noise is always framed as the negative sound of rock music. The sound of rock music aspect of sound. More than silence, which is is different from the Classical tradition. often named as a necessary component of Classical music has generally had a primary quality music, noise is “not only a judgment palette of timbres; much as rock music can on noises, it is a negative reaction, and then, often be expected to be a mix of drums, usually, a negative response to a sound or set guitar, and vocals. Even when Wagner came of sounds” (Hegarty 3). Hegarty mentions to prominence with his “grandiose operatic that science attempts to classify noise as orchestration,” he still composed with something that is borne of evolution in order woodwind and string sections (Prendergast 2). to protect our ears from damaging Furthermore, Bloom finds that the sound, or frequencies, and goes on to conclude that timbre, of rock music itself conjures up “noise is cultural, and different groups of wasteful, sexual experience. Gracyk takes hearing machines will process sounds issue with this claim by presenting an differently.” This discussion leads up to the example from his own experience: thesis that “noise is an excess, is thought of as When I played Ravi Shankar’s performance being too much, and for human hearing, this of the Raga Gara to thirty students, most occurs almost entirely through cultural of them music majors, none of them thought perceptions, and individual reactions within it was “romantic” despite that description of that framework” (4). Noise, or all aural it in the ’s liner notes. When I played experience, always happens to the subject; it the same group a Burundi song expressing is not a choice that is deployed at will. A homesickness, none of them felt homesick in response. The majority thought it was gazing subject and a reading subject are sexual (143). always directing themselves towards the world, and sound possesses the distinction This example demands the question of among the senses as something that is always whether music can represent something intruding in. consistent to all audiences: yet this key issue never arises in Bloom’s essay. Instead, there Noise is not simply a “synonym for is only dismissal and sneering at music that dissonance” (Hegarty 12). Consonance is does not function to advance the history and generally explained as sounds that are aurally criticism of the Western Classical tradition. In pleasing to the ear, and this definition is his own appraisal of Bloom’s argument, sometimes grounded scientifically, as Levitin Gracyk concludes, as I also do, that “Bloom is explains when he points out that although “the drawing on the stereotypes of rock that neural mechanisms underlying consonance and dissonance are debated, there is 4

widespread agreement about some of the artistic, heard work of sound can be looked at intervals that are deemed consonant” (72). A as a work of sound proper. single note can never be dissonant on its own; The history of what I have variously it takes multiple notes that “[do] not conform called the “classical tradition,” the history of to the customs we have learned that go with “musical notation,” or the history of music in our musical idioms” (73). Like noise, general has not necessarily been the history of dissonance is unwanted and culturally sound or noise. Indeed, sheet music is constituted, yet dissonance “works through its precisely the excision of all noise; it is the rethinking of consonance, and composers purification of the sound abstracted into ovals using it tended to think of their work as on the page. I will go further and say that reinvigorating the Western tradition of music” noise is the sighting of timbre. Timbre, the (Hegarty 12). Noise is never described as actual “heard’ sound of music, can be thought such, even though Hegarty claims that all of as the process of reducing the noise factor , even those “against the existing intrinsic to actually producing music. institution of music… imagined at some level that they were contributing to advancing Timbre here is another name for the music.” Dissonance is named as a part of difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ tone. music; meanwhile noise is the name for the This distinction works as a testament to the cause of the riot “at a performance of repression of noise in the history of music; Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” and for other pre-recorded music has been the preservation violent protests against sound. of good tone at the expense of bad tone. It is the rare 19th-century musical score that The history of noise outlined by Hegarty would have read: “play with broken, poorly and Attali makes its own claim to be part of cut reed,” or “to be played on a pianoforte the history of ; yet both with rusted strings.” Contemporary avant authors claim touchstones similar to garde music is written and performed with Prendergast’s theory of the “Ambient instruments like the ‘prepared ,’ which Century,” which prefigures the history of refers to a normal piano that has had music as on its way to the recognition that “all miscellanea like bolts, screwdrivers, and recorded music” is, by definition, “Ambient” strips of rubber lodged in its strings. The fact (4). While Gracyk takes a narrower focus, his that music is now written for instruments end is the same: an account, and implicitly a prepared in such ways, and the sheer volume validation addressed to people like Bloom, of and quality of music that has been produced 20th century music. Levitin calls attention to worldwide in the form of recorded music both how “Western music was largely dominated speak to the need for a new lexicon and by pitch,” but “for the past two hundred years approach for analyzing contemporary music. or so, timbre has become increasingly Otherwise, the influence of someone like important.” The pitch-centric approach to Allan Bloom, who proposes to invalidate the music has resulted in “an arcane, rarified set new music and all who listen to it in of terms and rules that are as obscure as some deference to conservative tradition, is likely to of the most esoteric domains of mathematics. prevail in public discourse. To the non-, the blobs of ink on a page that we call music notation might just as well be the notations of mathematical set theory.” It is precisely through the technology of recorded music that a relation to the sound of music can begin to take place, and an

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Works Cited

Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility,” in The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. Calvocoressi, M. D. (1931-07-11). "M. Ravel discusses his own work: The ‘Boléro’ explained." Daily Telegraph. Reprinted in Orenstein (2003). Glorig, Aram. Audiometry: Principles and Practices. Ann Arbor: William & Wilkins, 1965. Gracyk, Theodore. Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996 Hegarty, Paul. Noise/Music: A History. New York: Continuum International, 2007 Jones, Steve. Rock Formation: Music, Technology, and Mass Communication. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1992. Levitin, Daniel. This is Your Brain on Music. New York: Penguin Group, 2006. Marcus, Greil. The Old, Weird America. New York: St. Martin’s Press 1997 Orenstein, Arbie (ed.), A Ravel Reader: Correspondence, Articles, Interviews. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2003. Prendergast, Mark. The Ambient Century. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000.

Fillmore Jerry 1967 – Jim Marshall

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