Compos Mentis

On Music

This post is a response to several things that I have encountered recently. The most important was something which Chris posted recently on a similar subject. Far less important were works by Roger Scruton and Tolstoy on the subject "What is Music?" Last and least is my own recent conversations with people on the question at hand, and the realization that my conviction on one side was inconsistent with the other. This is something that I can't live with and so am trying to come to terms with it in the most public way possible. Further, this post is going to be long. I wouldn't be offended if any of you skipped some of the paragraphs which seem to be anomalous. For example, the first two paragraphs have to do with my personal experience, which has been commented on recently - so if you're not interested in what I'm saying, you have my permission to skip it.

First, an apology, in the sense of a defense for my view which I'm convinced will satisfy nobody. I've been a musician for ten years. About the same time, I started taking an interest in listening to music. The two things quickly diverged. My first CD that I bought with my own money was P.O.D., a Christian heavy-metal nu-metal group. The first music that I was learning to play was easy classical. The classical remained throughout school, and even now I play mostly classical, even now that I've switched to guitar. The composition of the genres on my computer is about forty percent rock, of various genres, thirty percent classical, twenty percent jazz and ten percent various other things.

The reason I mention all of this is because there is a disproportionate emphasis on classical music when it comes to figuring out what music is and what good music is. For people like Scruton and Tolstoy, classical music is the only name in town. For most other people in all periods of history, what we call classical music has been seen as outside the common experience, something that might be beautiful and transcendent, but still unknowable. I had to mention what I listen to and what I've learned to play because I seem to be the outsider to both traditions. Unlike Scruton, I can't overlook the musical value of bands like Nirvana. Unlike most people who listen to music, I can't see classical music as being remote.

There is a difference between most classical music and much of the music of most other genres. Classical music has drawn on a tradition that reaches back, in some ways, nearly a thousand years, and in other ways, about five hundred years. Over that time, there have been various rules on what is supposed to sound good and what is not - but the prevailing motion has been to push compositions which toe the line between the good and bad. The most obvious example is the use of discordant lines or chords: anyone comparing Schoenberg and Palestrina can instantly hear the difference. For the most part, however, except for the rather poorly executed experiment of twelve tone serialism, the good composers using discordant elements knew how they fit in to the rest of the music. They had hundreds of years of theory to draw upon to make sure it could work the way they wanted it to work. Contemporary bands may choose to ignore this history, making their music as discordant as they wish: or, they can make use of the simplest elements to ensure what they play sounds good - which would annoy those people raised on classical music hoping for something more interesting than a continuous I IV V7 I progression.

Keep this difference in mind while I put something which has some small influence upon this on the table. Music is a type of communication. As such, the closest analogous process is language. There are many things that music lacks that keeps it from actually being a language: syntax, for example. But it signifies in a similar way to language. Instead of communicating concepts or desires or a host of other things like language does, it seems to me - and if I stumble, it's because I can't effectively back up this statement except by pointing to personal experience- music communicates emotion. What springs to mind is the possible congruence between language and music that might result: that is, that the more complex a handle a person has on language, the more complex concepts that person can communicate. I think this is the case - but my justification for it won't fit here.

Complexity is not a normative value. Further, there are times when complexity is called for and when it is superfluous. So, classical music shouldn't be called better because most of it communicates more complex emotions than most other genres. I'd like to think Scruton would be pulling his hair out at this point. "How, then," he would ask, "are we to tell what music is good and what music is bad?" To answer that question, I have to answer a more general question than the one Chris raised in his post: the question of what is good music is the goal of criticism. So to that I turn.

I would like to mention something that I've admittedly stolen right from the literary criticism of C.S. Lewis. He describes how there is two different ways of reading poetry or literature. The first, which is the most common, is using literature. This is reading to pass the time, to find people who agree with your state of mind, for any other reason. The other is reading to absorb the literature - this is the kind of reading that is done in English classes. This is reading in order to understand the work as it is, to relate to its characters and to understand its language. This second type of reading involves some amount of knowledge beforehand. In music, this disjunct is even more pronounced. Many people have music on in the background in order to have some kind of rhythm or something to sing along to while they are doing work. Others listen to certain kinds of music because they believe it relates to how they feel. Others enjoy certain kinds of music because it is fun to dance to. The other type of listening involves some previous knowledge of musical functions, and also involves listening in order to try to understand the various individual elements that makes up the whole. This listening is usually a lot more work than the other. Unlike C.S. Lewis, I'm not going to say that the one is better than the other, as it seems to me that music is easily adaptable to different situations, and there is a time and place for both kinds.

Here I can begin to explicate my answer to Chris' question: "what qualifies one to be a reviewer?" In this case, the role of the critic is divided. On the one hand, the qualification for being a critic would have to be a deep understanding of the structure of music, the traditions involved and used, an actual knowledge of the elements which make up music. For the absorptive kind of listening, I would say that it does take a degree or equivalent knowledge to do it justice. But what about functional listening? Here the answer becomes murky. I assume there would be a multiplicity of answers, one each for all of the ways people use music. But perhaps things are not quite so dire. If we look at it from the reviewers point of view, his or her point of view can be taken into consideration. Does he or she listen to music while they are trying to study? In order to feel good? Then as long as he or she are clear about what they are trying to accomplish when they listen to music, it won't go too far wrong. Even if they don't listen to music with the same goal every time, they can mention what they did find it good for: I know I was surprised to discover that listening to rap can help me relax before I go to sleep.

Here, I would like to see what my formulation makes of the two suggestions Chris makes in the second-to-last paragraph of his post; in order to save anyone too lazy to actually go over there, I will quote them directly (I have copyright permission, right, Chris?): "maybe what we need... is a greater opportunity for the non-professional critic to offer their response to art, one that can actually claim to speak for the layman" and "whether the ideal of a review or criticism should be to confront the art on its own terms, it should not be out of the question for a review to be approached on its own terms." The second deals with the controversy that has embroiled the esteemed Aaron Brown that Chris mentions, but the idea is one that perhaps differentiates Chris from many other reviewers and potential reviewers out there: Chris has a reasonable explanation for what he is trying to accomplish with his response to music. Anyone attacking Chris, including its composer, for not understanding the subtleties of the Mozart Quintet would be misguided.

Overhead, the other shoe looms. Here it falls. The problem lies in the phrase "response to art." An immediate, emotional response to art is something that is profoundly personal, even if it is something shared by many people. Writing about it is a tricky business, especially if one wants to avoid the technical methods by which that response was brought forth by the music. It is not wrong to write about it by any means; many great poems, novels, and other compositions were written by those responding to music. But, going back to the analogy of music to language, one's response would be the personal understanding of what the other has said - but it is not part of what is articulated. It is a result of the music, but brings with it much that is not part of the music - it carries personal baggage. What a person's "response to art" cannot be is a review, critical or otherwise, of the music. How could such a review "speak for the layman" when it is one's personal experience?

There is a particularly useless mindset that can come from an extreme formulation of this position. That is the person who listens to music, explicates on it, and insists upon the legitimacy of their position solely because it is their response to music. This is, for the record, miles away from Chris' position as it appears to me. He hopes to describe the music as much as he can, using accepted terminology when appropriate. The person or caricature I mentioned would insist upon accuracy of description because it 'matches' in some unreasoned way what they heard. The image that jumps to mind is that of English class, where teachers are always asking for the 'textual evidence' for things - if this is a review or response or anything to music, there must be a place in the music that you can point to that matches what you are trying to say. If you can't point it out while listening to it, then what you say is meaningless. If you can, and want to explain what the certain section is doing - then there is very likely an accepted term for it, and insisting on the accuracy of your formulation on the basis of your personal legitimacy is just laughable.

Perhaps, though, some people might object that I haven't managed to answer Scruton's question. I haven't explained the difference between good music and bad music, it's true. And my answer, I'm afraid, might seem like a cop-out. I think the question is too simple, because it begs another question. Where I imagine Scruton asking, "what is good music?" I respond, "good at what?" As I mentioned, music has many different aspects, so where some music is good at one thing, it might be worse at something else. As a result, I think that if one reads any review, of either kind I mentioned, and find that it says that "x piece of music" is better than "y piece of music", then there is an implicit function that x is specifically better than y at. So, if a piece of music serves you well, listen to it. All past that are details.

posted by Emmett @ 14:04