Prolegomena to a Viable Study of 20th and 21st Century Music Ricardo Friaz The history of music has been determined of lithographic reproduction, as discussed by by musical notation. 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 diatonic scale. 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 accompaniment 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 20th Century 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 phonograph, 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 pianos 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. 1 The first song 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 “rock music” 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 sheet music for generally the popular music 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 singing 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 lyrics “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, harmony, 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 classical music 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 electronic music of as an example for why new terms or methods composers like John Cage, 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 2 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.