tarasti, music models through ages - a semiotic interpretation

Music Models Through Ages: A Semiotic InterpretationAuthor(s): Eero TarastiSource: International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jun.,1986), pp. 3-28Published by: Croatian Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/836621 .Accessed: 05/07/2014 20:03

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Croatian Musicological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toInternational Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 132.248.9.8 on Sat, 5 Jul 2014 20:03:59 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=croathttp://www.jstor.org/stable/836621?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

E. TARASTI, MUSIC MODELS.... IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

MUSIC MODELS THROUGH AGES: A SEMIOTIC INTERPRETATION

EERO TARASTI

University of Helsinki, Department of Musicology, Vironkatu 1, 00170 HELSINKI, Finland

UDC: 78.01:781.1

Original Scientific Paper Izvorni znanstveni rad Received: October 15, 1985 Prispjelo: 15. listopada 1985. Accepted: April 7, 1986 Prihvadeno: 7. travnja 1986.

ABSTRACT

The article consists of two parts: in the first one methodological tools are prepared for what follows in the second part, namely the comparison of different models of music historical, as well as aesthetical thought. Thus, the essay deals with the rationality of music history, the mutual relations of musical aesthetics and history.

Theoretically speaking, two different ways of seeing and conceiving music are distinguished using Levi-Strauss's division into lived-in-models and

thought-of-models of human cultural life. Our question then is, whether musical history is a 'lived-lin-model' i.e. whether there is really a 'progress' (Burney) and development in the series of musical events and facts, or whethet the rationality of musical changes are only due to 'thought-of-models' which the history writer or aesthetician brings there. In the latter case musical history would be reduced to a certain kind of narratlivity (Erzdhlbarkeit, by Carl Dahlhaus).

We may start by posing a direct and simple - and perhaps a naive - question: what is music history? Is it a typical thought-of-model (Levi-Strauss 1958:347-348), constructed by a researcher, a writer of music history in order to create contfinuity and coherence for a series of events and musical phenomena which would otherwise seem to be detached, incoherent and discontinuous? Or is music history really a lived-in-model, based upon the experilence of musi,cal subjects and aimed at shaping different phases of musical communication, i.e. the views of the composer,

3


http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

E. TARASTI, MUSIC MODELS..., IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

the sender of a musical message, the performer or, finally, the receiver? In this latter case one might, accordingly, speak of music history as a particular experience, emerging at a given phase in musical communication, at a certain moment (as when a style changes abruptly and a former movement with its intonations is denied, or when one consciously and de- liberately returns to an older style: see, for example, the influences of Bach and Handel in Mozart and Beethoven, or Stravinsky's neoclassicism). Nevertheless, the problem stil] remains of whether this view of music history as an experience is, in the first place, too limiting. Would we really be justified in speaking of music history solely at the moments when we feel the presence of history, for example when Musik ilber Musik is composed, or when we evidently consider that we have at a concert, say, listened to some epoch-making work or, in the worst case, have recognized some work as faded, as having only historical interest, but without anything to say to modern times? It seems that music history as an experience would easily become degraded into a sort of subcategory of musico-aesthetic experience, where the aesthetic Gegenwdrtigkeit (Dahlhaus 1977:13) is not fully realized.

According to Carl Dahlhaus, the essential tension between musical history and aesthetics lies in the fact that a musical work, when belonging to history, forms a document from a previous age; while as an aesthetic phenomenon it is experienced by a listener as fresh, expressive and meaningful in the present. Thus it may seem that music history as an experience would merge into its exactly opposite pole, aesthetics, and would consequently lose its own inherent characteristics. The only conclusion to be drawn is that music history as a musical and operational lived-in-model seems to be too restricted.

Evidently music history is also a thought-of-model, a sort of interpretational scheme by which we organize the events of our musical past according to certain criteria. In this case, we are faced with new types of problems: is there in the musical events, the data (it is not yet necessary to define more closely what is here understood by a musical datum) something like 'a musical development'? Does the concept of progress, used by Charles Burney in his musical. history (1789, 1935), have any empirical justification? Or is this kind of order always and exclusively a function of an organizing consciousness, do we bring this order always with us? If so, music history is something rather arbitrary and depends on the musical model assumed by each era, in order to articulate its musical past. There would not exist any music history in an objective sense. In this way we would finally elevate the aesthetic principle of Gegenwdrtigkeit above everything else. Accordingly, when we read a music history written by Sir John Hawkins, Fetis or Ambros, what we do, in fact, is only read certain interpretations, aesthetic views, which try to legitimate by dis- guising their discourse as an objective and impartial narrative of historical data, composers and their music.

4



E. TARASTI, MUSIC MODELS .., IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

One of the basic human needs is undoubtedly to create continuity and predictability in life, to replace the unsure state of enthropy by redundancy. Against the chaotic overview of music history, its discontinuous enthropy, even elementary schoolbooks provide neat distinctions into periods with characteristic features manifest i!n all the arts. Other means have also been used, it is true, to find the underlying thread of music history. Jacques Chailley, for example, reasons that the history of Western art music, in fact, follows the adoption of the invervals of the overtone series, in the order in which they emerge in the series: the age of octave and fifth lasted thousands of years; the third was accepted as a consonance and an element of music only at the end of the Middle Ages; the minor seventh was taken into usage a hundred years later, atonal music meant the acceptance of minor seconds and major sevenths, and now composers experiment with micro-intervals which can be produced by synthesizers (Chailley 1977:23). What is interesting is that the further one goes in the overtone series, the shorter the historical periods become; if the continuously accelerating progress were followed toi its end, we would already have inevitably arrived at the end of all musical development. This is one way to make music history - on a certain level - rational. What is involved in Chailley's model, after all, is a natural principle provided by physics, which musical systems of various ages would apparently unconsciously follow in their development. However, it is as useless to try to prove this model right, as to ponder the question whether tonality is a perceptual, biologically rooted principle common to all human beings.

Music in all its modes of exiistence is, of course, a remarkably more complicated and subtle phenomenon. Our fundamental question would thus be: is there a rationality, common to all periods, all musical experi- ences and practices, which would help us to compare historically different musical works, composers, whole musical cultures and societies with each other? Are there, or can one conceptually determine, dimensions which would form a basis for a sort of universal music model, naturally not realized in any concrete case in their full extent, perhaps, but forming a kind of ideal type or paradigm, whereby the diachrony of music history could suddenly be interpreted as a synchrony?

Our question can be further specified: if such a rationality is found, is it based merely upo'n the way in which a music historiographer organizes his discourse and speaks about musical data - in other words, is the existence of music history only due to the phenomenon which Dahlhaus calls Erzdhlbarkeit (1977:80) but which we may call by another term from a different research tradition, namely narrativity? There is every reason to suppose that the narrative model is a strong one, probably one of the strongest models created in Western thinking and art, and it is by its character both a thought-of and a lived-in model.

Our.music, as well as our talk about music, seems often to follow certain narrative principles, which were generalized during the classical

5




period, and which persist even in the present century. The whole of XXth century modernism has sought to destroy and sweep away the narrative model from people's consciousness, but without any convincing success. If modernism in this century has any common denominator, it is undoubtedly precisely anti-narrativity (or 'anti-illusionism', to use a term from Brecht; or 'ostranenie', alienation, to refer to the Russian formalists).

The same holds true, by and large, for any musical research which declares itself to be an 'objective' science dealing only with facts. First, one has to remember that a scientific discourse which claims to be objective, universal and non-subjective, is itself based upon the usage of certain discourse mechanisms (see: Greimas: Semantique structurale, p. 153-154), by which it creates an illusion of realism, the fiction of a language telling us about reality 'just as ilt is'.

Obviously, this way in which a discourse pretends to be objective corresponds to deep epistemes of our cultural era. However, the structur- alists have just discovered that we are guided by certain systems of thinking which rule over all our actions, oblige us to say certain things according to the automatisms of certain codes, and determine what reality is. Lotman's view of Freud was that he did not discover the unconscious but that the unconscious is a creation of our own culture, and not a discov- ery in the sense that some new continent, island or planet can be found and charted (Uspenski & al. 1973:3-4). All this holds true also for music: when Hildesheimer tells us that he reveals to us the real Mozart (Hildes- heimer 1980) and his view is transmitted to millions of theatre- and cin- ema-goers, via Schaffer's and Forman's Amadeus, he refers to Freud as his scientific authority without noticing himself the interpretational nature of the whole doctrine (this is not to be understood as an objection to Freud-

inspired art theories as such). In fact, Hildesheimer organizes Mozart's life

according to classical narrative principles - following the general actantial model which was fiound by the Russian formalists lat the beginning of this century and later formulated by Greimas in its currently known form with six factors: sender, receiver, subject, object, helper and opponent. (How naively well this model fits Schaffer's interpretation of Mozart's life: sender - Leopold Mozart, receiver - humanity, subject - Amadeus, object - music, helper - Paron wan Swieten, opponent - Salieri). It is very difficult to get rid of the narrative model!

It is not possible, either, to find any satisfactory continuity for the delineating of music history by pointing out the usual genetic relations between different works of a composer, or the works of different composers. Mostly, what is involved is only a new variant of the narrative model, particularly regarding the relationship sender-subject. For example Erik Tawaststjerna's Sibelius biography tells of the composer's strong emotional reaction to a performance of Bruckner's Third d-minor symphony in Vienna. Moreover, there is an evident structural connection between the main themes of the Kullervo Symphony and Bruckner's Third Symphony

6




(Tawaststjerna 1976:110). Does this mean that there is a genetic relation between these two works? Or to return to Mozart: the small Fantasy in d-minor for piano (KV 397) is almost like the whole of Don Giovanni in a nut-shell. We may well hear the immobility of the Stone Geast in the chromatically descending choral passage in the mediating section, or the frivolous carelessness of Don Giovanni in the allegro at the end. According to Charles Rosen, Mozart's instrumental music often follows the dramatic development of his operas, and the expressivity of his iinstrumental pieces is in fact a sort of dialogue of opera personages, the musical development being drama-like (Rosen 1976:296). Even so, we would hardly say that the small d-minor Fantasy influenced the creation of Don Giovanni. Rather, the phenomenon should be called auto-oommunication, a semiotic term meaning the internal dialogue or monologue within a composer's consciousness (Gasparow 1974, also Tarasti 26).

In what follows, I shall try to search for the 'rationality' of music history by comparing different aesthetico-theoretical models of music created at different times. Whether these models are, in turn, only ration- alizations and intellectual justifications of musical practices at a given period - as music histories often are - is hard to determine here. In a certain sense our enterprise will be, it is true, an effort to reduce music history to aesthetics, while the method by which this is done will be semiotical. The fact is that before we can start to confront those enormously varied sources and 'music models', we must already have in our minds, as a sort of initial hypothesis, a kind of universal model for all music, a model of what music ultimately is. The empirist could argue here: would it not be reasonable to form such a general model only after we have gathered enough evidence from different musical practices? Nevertheless, music history constitutes an endless and unarticulated store, where we can find something only it we know what we are searching for. Another counter- -argument would be: would not the way we are going to detach musical ideas and models from their original historical contexts, from their complex ties with the epistemes of the age, its social and cultural history, lead us easily to false conclusions? The concept of affect of the baroque era cannot be equated with the sentimentality of romanticism. To this we may answer that we are not going to proceed in that way. Instead, we compare conceptions of different eras for music history, as a reading model by which we interpret musical thinkers of various ages. Accordingly, our hypothetically universal music model is not an empirical model - it is not a lived-in-model - but expressly a theoretical construction, with a met- alanguage and discourse of its own. In this regard my epistemological choice is the same as in the Greimasian school of semiotics. >This kind of discourse cannot appear like empirical discourses as an objective discourse, as a 'pure' description of facts, since the aim is to form a model of the object of study, to project thils model onto its object and again back to the discourse of the research. This procedure is based upon the idea that the

7




reference of the study is not the relation to a reality conceived as being outside the discourse, but the relation to the model which the study has of its cbject.

E. TARASTI, MUSIC MODELS . ., IRASM 17 (1986.), 1, 3--28

the receiver and music-listener as an 'intonation' - to borrow a term from Boris Asafjev (1976). In fact, one has to make the statement that if we are to seek for the moment of continuity in music history, it will be found in the area and in the processes which occur before and after a work. The very category of a work, an isolated, identifiable and perhaps unique composition, is the factor which makes music history discontinuous. How can we then describe what happens before and after a musical work?

We notice that the Greimasian model with its three phases, going from the virtual through the actual to the real, is indeed sufficient to describe what happens before the work, i.e. the process which leads to the outcome of a work. But is it still convincing when it is used to describe the reception of a work, the life of music in the collective memory of the society of receivers and listeners, which in turn forms a starting-point for the creation of new musical works and thus brings us back to the very beginning of the 'generative process'? Already at this point we notice that the Greim- asian model should perhaps be supplemented. We may of course examine how some musical idea develops following a wave-like movement on the axes virtuality, actuality and reality; we would thus study how some musical structure, as it were, first 'ripens' in its virtual mode of existence during some period until it emerges in some later period in a concrete composition, but disappears again later under the surface without perhaps vanishing altogether, but remaining to wait for its next manifestation in some more favourable era. The situation might be pictured as follows:

real

actual %,, A

virtual

where the horizontal lines represent certain thresholds of repression. This implies that not all virtual composition-technical innovations, ideas and structures are realized and attain the 'real' level, since the ability of musical conception of the receiving audience sets its restrictions upon them.

Greimas also describes each level in terms of its proper 'modalities', general human ways of evaluation and approach: virtual modalities are represented by vouloir and savoir (willing and knowing), actual modalities by pouvoir and devoir (ability and obligation) and real modalities by etre and faire (being and doing). The transformation or crystallization of music into an intonation is produced through these modalities: the upwards direction in the model represents the willing (vouloir) of the sender/composer, the downwards direction the willing of the receiver/listener, which appears to a composer as certain norms, obligations and aesthetic judgements.

It is also important to notice that music can remain on the virtual level alone, i.e. the generative course may be stopped on whatever level - for example in the Middle Ages the most appreciated part of music was

9



E. TARASTI, MUSIC MODELS ...., IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

what was called musica speculativa, the pure thinking of theoreticians, 'knowing' without 'willing' i.e. without movement towards a musical manifestation or any sound-form. Nevertheless, insofar as music aims at the real level, the manifest realization, or, in other words, towards communication, it is always faced with the expectations and aesthetic evaluations projected onto it by the receiver. This forms a sort of obstacle for creativity, the free fulfillment of ideas and the generative process. If aesthetics tries to describe this kind of evaluation, to select by either approving or rejecting musical intonations, one perhaps needs another term to depict the contrary motion, the anti-aesthetics, i.e. the energy which flows from the virtual towards the real. Aesthetics as a science and art of devoir proceeds, accordingly, in a contrary direction, from the real to the actual and virtual. For an artist, everything is possible, the paradigm is open (in theory) for him; but as soon as he starts to think what is really possible in a given situation of communication, he applies a sort of implicit and inverse aesthetics, an internalized devoir, an obligation on his own artistic will.

We have spoken above of the modalities as kinds of general attitudes of ways of approach, by which a subject evaluates an object, as it were takes possession of it and humanizes it. In fact, in comparing different music models we pay attention precisely to this aspect, not so much to the acoustic or syntactic properties of music. If we may say that music starts from something, then it evidently starts just from these modalities, to which can be reduced not only the generative course of music towards its sound realization but also the contrary course, the life of music within the consciousness and memory of a listener. Therefore, when we say that modalization is a process which in a way humanizes and anthropomorphizes music, unites it with the sphere of human values, we are not referring to any concrete, semantic content, which also can be attached to music on its various levels. This symbolic and referential dimension of music remains totally outside this modalization - although they are linked, both being modalizations, to other semiotic mechanisms, which enable music also to describe and represent extra-musical events, personages, acts, choices etc. One could thus depict the creation of music in the following way: first, we meet the level of modalities (willing, knowing, ability, obligation) which is condensed into different passions, emotions. It is a common place to speak of feelings and emotions in music aesthetics and about how music is a language of emotions. In the following we shall, however, use the term passion, by which we understand rather a certain constellation of modalities, their articulation and the resulting virtual-actual state, which, accordingly, is already determined by the modalities it consists of, and can be conceived as a rather distinct emotion. For example, a pupil of Greimas, J. Fontanille, has analyzed 'despair' by reducing it to various modalities (Fontanille 1980); Greimas (1981) himself finds certain fundamental modalities within 'anger'; and Herman Parret (1982) has done several similar studies. In music, too, one could in the same way analyze for example the

10



E. TARASTI, MUSIC MODELS ..., IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

'despair' of the beginning of the Dante sonata by Franz Liszt by using purely modal concepts, and examine in a corresponding way other individ- ual modalizations of different composers, which perhaps seem to be fully unique, but beneath which the network of fundamental modalities can still be discovered (for example, see Scriabin's idiolectal modalizations, which appear on the verbal level as special linguistic (mostly French) performance advice in such an amount that a special dictionary has been compiled of it in Russia; if this dictionary were analyzed, one could cut down the number of entries by reducing them to some few modalities). In fact, this kind of analysis of passions, where they are reduced to modalities, is a very similar procedure to the one Descartes presented in his tractatum Les Passions de l'ame, where he first listed a great many passions: (I'estime, le mepris, la generosit6, l'orgeuil, I'humilite, la bassesse, la veneration, le dedain, l'esperance, la crainte, la jalousie etc.), which he then reduced to six fundamental passions (Descartes 1970:115-116): ?But the number of those which are simple and primitive, is not very great. Since while reviewing all those which I have listed, one may easily remark that there are only six of this category, namely, Admiration, Love, Hatred, Desire, Joy and Sadness, and all the others have been composed of some of these six or are their subspecies. In order to not embarrass the reader by their multitude, I shall deal here separately with the six primitives. Then I shall make clear in which way all the others originate from them.,<

When reducing the passions to modalities we are doing a similar type of analysis. But on the other hand, it is also evident that music does not consist of presenting only one passion, one state of mind, but that music in particular is a temporal continuum of several passions, and that a composition may contain several passions successively and even in a certain, precisely planned order. Where this occurs, i.e. the listener is led to experience a given series of emotional states, we are, in fact, already approaching a still more complex series of events, which we might call narrativity. A musical work becomes in this case the realization of a certain narrative program:

modalities > passions > narrativity

There is naturaly much music in which the narrative level is not attained: one may say that this level is created through three kinds of structures and processes, called in the Greimasian model discursivization, i.e. three possible embrayages/d6brayages (for which Roman Jakobson used the term shifter) (Greimas 1979: 119-121). What is involved here is the working of temporal, spatial and actantial categories in musical discourse. For example, the aforementioned Dante sonata by Liszt represents music where

11




the narrative model functions and where 'despair' and the powers of hell at the beginning are later replaced by the principle of 'hope' and the light of paradise. This simple narrative program in music could be described using the categories mentioned above: the actantial category of 'personage' appears in the way how Liszt's theme serves as a sort of musical fictive subject, a musical actant, personage and hero with which the listener can identify himself; the temporal category contributes to the time-shape of this actant-theme: first, in the restless, jerking a'nd panting alternation of pairs of sixteenth notes in the 'despair' section, and particularly in the absence of a clearly-marked verse boundary (the performer is expected to add it as a sort of suppressed respiration - this is not an ordinary theme with a clear-cut melodic, song-like structure, but something which de- liberately goes against this expectation) in the 'despair' section, and again in the rhythmic expansion when it expresses 'hope'; the spatial category is manifested by the way the 'despair' motif dwells in a low register, erring back and forth chromatically with minor harmonies; in the 'hope' motif the music moves into the luminous upper register and a major key.

The way musical narrativity precisely emerges from a series of emotions (caused by the music itself) forms a principle also used by several applied techniques of music, such as musical therapy. According to the state of mind of the person under therapy, and also the level of his musical culture, a series of works or passages from works are selected for him, leading him through certain emotional states according to a certain program (Guilhot-Jost-Lecourt 1979:48). This is manifestly music being organized in accordance with the narrative principle - it is, in fact, exactly the same process as is used in many compositions based on narrativity. If one asks, for example, why Beethoven did not take as the slow movement of his Waldstein sonata the piece he originally planned to use there, namely Andante favori, but composed a new movement titled Introduzione, the answer surely is that he attempted to subordinate the whole sonata to one narrative program, which necessarily required a kind of 'bridge' between the rhythmically energetic character of the first movement and the Klang- farben-theme with its pedal effects in the last movement. The influence of a similar type of integrating narrative principle is to be felt also in Schu- bert's Wanderer-fantasy, where different movements are articulated, it is true, according to classical musico-syntactical genres - sonata and variation forms, scherzo and fugue - but where the movements are temporally united under one dominant narrative program in such a way that the boundaries of the movements are weakened and actantially there is only one main theme, which is varied.

d'Alembert remarked of the purely instrumental music of his time that it was on the threshold of narrativity when it expressed certain emotional series. When discussing Muzio Clementi's sonata Didone abbandonata in his essay De la liberte de la musique he says (d'Alembert 1821:554). >,All that purely instrumental music without form and object does not speak to the spirit neither to the soul, and well deserves to be faced with

12




Fontanelle's question: Sonata, what do you want of me? Composers of instrumental music produce only useless noise when they do not have in their minds, like the famous Tartini had, some action or expression to be painted. Some sonatas, but very few, do possess this desirable ability, which is so important in order to please people of good taste. We only mention one of them, entitled Didone abbandonata. It is a very beautiful monologue; one perceives there how pain, hope and despair follow one other quickly and distinctly in all their degrees and nuances; one might even use it for a very lively and pathetic scene on the stage. But such pieces are rarities.


In principle, music models can be divided in this way into two main classes: narrative and non-narrative, where non-narrative models are those in which the afore-mentioned generative course has stopped at some phase or where various elements of the generative course are 'negated', annulled, resulting in anti-narrativity as represented e.g. by the Brechtian reaction to the culinaristic opera or John Cage's philosophy of silence. The term non-narrative is not after all, sufficient for these models, since what is involved is precisely an anti-narrative phenomenon.

Finally, we still have to specify one further aspect in our concept of a music model: In all music models, roughly speaking, two different levels can be distinguished: the level of the signifier or of the music to be listened to, the physical stimuli, musical material; and the level of the signified, the concepts, thoughts and emotions aroused by music, in a word the content (whether it be the level described above of modal processes prior to music, or the level of its decoding, de-modalizations, the articulation of the emotional content by the music listener after a musical event). Music models can also give value to and emphasize either of these aspects, and in an extreme case even entirely deny the existence of either of them. On the other hand, in the same way as composers search for new ideas, new contents to be expressed by their music, so journeys towards the unknown can be made by seeking for new signifiers, by enlarging the musical material. Then music models determine what, at the level of the material, is music and what is not (for example, excluding/including bird song, noises etc.). Moreover, within the limits of what is then considered music on the purely material sense there is a constant oscillation between two spheres, one representing 'order', redundancy - and at the level of signified, pleasure, harmony - and the other non-order, disorganization, chaos and enthropy, displeasure. This may be illustrated by the concepts of dissonance and consonance, and the gradual enlarging of the sphere of consonance during music history until it has totally included the sphere reserved for dissonances and transformed everything into musical order. If we now speak of the distinction and dialectic between music and anti-music (with reference to Juri Lotman's cultural theory), we are still moving within music, while the previously mentioned more radical distinction means a separation between music and non-music. (Uspenski & al. 1973:2)

music

non-music music anti-music

Furthermore, one important aspect is how a music model represents itself: the mere fact that Kircher's book as a discourse so evidently differs from, say, Hawkins, Burney, Ambros etc., also reveals something essential about the differences between these music models themselves.

14



E. TARASTI, MUSIC MODELS..., IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28 15

Comparing Music Models

Al-Farabi

The first music model for our paradigm of comparison comes from the Turkish-Arabian music theoretician Al-Farabi, who lived about AD 870-950, and of whose great tractatum dealing with music, Kitdb al- musiqi al-kabir, only the first part has been preserved (Al-Farabi 1930 and 1935). In this part, Al-Far&abi discusses intervals and instruments (especially the lute), but also pays attention at the beginning to problems which we would call music aesthetical. Al-Farabi rejects the doctrines of Pythag- orean music theoreticians and distinguishes three kinds of music: the first kind arouses in us a pleasant, sweet and quiet response; the secoind kind has the same properties and in addition the ability to excite our imagination: this music makes ideas emerge in our minds, it expresses them. The first kind is compared by Al-Farabi to a decorative ornament, the second to a representative painting. The third kind of music is produced by states of mind, by the passions: both men and animals produce sounds which may vary in their emotional content, and can express sadness, tenderness and anger. In reality, however, these three classes are inter- mingled, and Al-Farabi considers the highest category to be music where all these three kinds are represented. Nevertheless, he devotes a special chapter to the third type and says: >,We have noticed that certain sounds result from a certain passion or a certain state of mind. We have to consider tones as the goal of this emotional state, its fulfilment, because we know that the consequence of a given thing is at the same time its aim and realization. The tones and sounds due to a state of mind have to be regarded also as a sign of the existence of this state of mind, this passion, since the necessary consequence of a thing is also a sign of its existence..< (Al-Farabi 1930:14-15)

Accordingly, Al-Farabi has a rudimentary conception of the 'generative course' in the sense of our universal model: he also considers heard music to be the result of a certain process, and finds 'passion' to be the virtual level of music. Al-Farabi also takes into account what happens after the generative process, i.e. the existence of the music listener: >>The pur- pose of the sounds is, in turn, to revive the passion in question or to under- line it... in this way the tones arouse in us a certain state of mind or their corresponding emotion.< (Al-Farabi 1930:15)

But what is essential is that, according to Al-Farabi, this is only an 'illusion' of the original passion; in modern terms: the intentions of a composer or player are not the same as, although similar to, those of the receiver. There is also another sense in which Al-Farabi refers to what we understand by the modalization or 'modalities' of music. Towards the end of his tractatum, in the book about composition, he makes a distinction between two kinds of elements in melody: those which are necessary to its being (i.e. scales, rhythms) and those which make them more complete.




He enumerates eight ways to make melodies more beautiful and pleasant tol the ear, while at the same time he admits that it is impossible to define and denominate these qualities (i. e. what we would call musical modalities). These eight ways of interpretation are: purity of tone; making long notes trembe, vibrate; performing softly notes with lengthened time values; singing certain tones from memory: performing certain tones nasally; accelerating certain tones in the course of or at the end of a melody; singing some tones with maximum volume; and emphasizing tones sometimes by singing them with a chest voice (Al-Farabi 1935:88-90).

Al-Farabi particularly stresses the importance of the modality of 'knowing' (savoir) in his musical theory, and presents af the same time very semiotically-sounding reflections on musical structure. He compares music with poetry: as poetry consists of phonemes, accents, half-lines and lines, so in music tones constitute the primary element, forming melodies and ultimately all music (1935:65). According to Al-Farabi musical structures are artificial and not based on nature: the Pythagorean argument about the relations of planets and stars producing music is based upon a linguistic misunderstanding: namely that of using the word 'music' in two different meanings. Further, as early as the beginning of the Middle Ages Al-Farabi is fully aware of differences between cultures and of the fact that what are regarded as natural tones in a given culture, e.g. Arabian, are 'natural' only in this context. He even determines rather strict limits for the cultural sphere to which his musico-theoretical considerations about tonal relations, distinctions between structural kernel motifs and second- ary ornamental motifs, can be applied. We have to wait a long time before we meet an equivalent 'semiotical' consciousness of the cognitive starting- -points of the scholar himself (which we emphasized at the beginning) in Western musicology.

Kircher

The most characteristic feature of the music model in the Musurgia universalis (1650) by Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) is its totally non- discursive nature: the text contains alternating sections which we would call empirical observations, musico-theoretical charts of scales, advice for making instruments, mythical stories (for example about the healing power of music or the origin of music), theological reflections on 'the music of the angels', musico-historical remarks about old and new music, fantastical experiments with various kinds of music machines (even at this early date we meet an example of musical man-machine communication, which is thus not only the invention of the computer age), and so on. These different chapters cannot be placed in the same dimension, since single observations and chronicle-like narratives are intermixed with scientific experiments and systematic reports e.g. about the principles of composition and rules of counterpoint.

16




The whole study starts with very 'anatomical' terms, since Kircher analyzes how a tone is produced and (already!) what different affects, passions of the soul, music can arouse in us (love, hatred, fear, pity, shame, joy, stupidity, contempt, fidelity, anger, despair etc.). He also examines the auditive and vocal organs from the anatomical point of view, comparing, for example, the human larynx with that of animals and insects (and explaining also why the voice of eunuchs is reminiscent of that of females). He supposes that wind instruments have been constructed by analogy with the structure of the vocal organs. Special attention is given to the fact that even animals are able to produce 'music' i. e. musical signifiers: he introduces a quadruped found in America and called Pigritia, whose voice has been testified by several witnesses to be miraculous, and which sings according to a diatonic scale (Kircher 1650:27). After these mainly zoo-semiotical observations Kircher presents both mythical and historical information about the invention and origins of music - accordingly, his music model has a historical dimension. Nevertheless, what matters most is how music became a speculative science dealing with numerical relations: consequently music has its place beside arithmetic, geometry and physics. Thereafter Kircher introduces new methods of composing with various kinds of charts, speaks of the phisiology of con- sonances and dissonances, the sympathy and antipathy of tone relations or the power and influence of music - and again, not only in humans but in animals as well. He has a variety of empirical evidence concerning this, such as experiments in which tones make animals (e.g. wolf cubs) frightened or pleased (zoo-semiotics again!). Advice is given about how the bites of the tarantula spider can be cured by music, and there are also general reflections on the medical use of music, based upon the fact that music has a direct influence upon the nerves and muscles. In this sense, Kircher's model anticipates modern musical therapy and neurophysiolog- ical studies (cf. later John Cage's music model, in which there are cases where music is transmitted directly to the human nerve system). Kircher deals largely with the class of sonus prodigiosus; it consists of three subclasses: natural, unnatural and supernatural. To the first class belong the inexplicable sounds met in Finland (!) which are heard especially in the mountaineous areas (Kircher quotes the chronicle by Olaus Magnus), but which can be explained as being produced by the internal structure of the mountains, where the sound is multiplied - like in the mountains of Switzerland (Kircher 1650:234). The next chapter considers echo effects and musical acoustics with many diagrams and results of empirical experiments. For example, Kircher asks how a church can be built in such a way that three singers can produce as much sound as a hundred. The chapter presents experiments providing that sound is carried more power- fully through a curved tube than a straight one; there are comments on theaters built by Vitruvius, and various proposals for artificial acoustical spaces under the title Magia echotectonica (Kircher 1650:283).

17




The next section in the book discusses the construction of instruments: different music machines and mechanisms are examined by which even the sounds of animals may be imitated (pioneer forms of modern synthesizers, therefore) including a tone cylinder, water organs, and auto- matic Glockenspiels (Kircher 1650:304-343).

After these extremely concrete and empirical technological presen- tations a chapter follows on the phenomenon of symphonismus (Kircher 1650:370), which does not mean 'symphonism' in any sense referring to instrumental music, musica humana, but which signifies that the whole universe is constructed according to musical relations. Thus Kircher speaks of the 'symphonism' of stars, stones, plants, trees, water, animals, birds, quadrupeds and colours, classifying them according to a musical scale. He then ponders the interrelation between the internal microcosm of man and the macrocosm - particularly from the viewpoint of various rhythmic and metric modes. He presents a chart of different rhythmic figures and their impact upon the human body, fifteen different cases altogether, which this prestructuralist of music combines in order to obtain the effects he wants. In the chapter entitled Symphonismus patheticus Kircher reveals himself as a 'behaviorist' as he proves that passions can move the human soul, so that the rhythm of the pulse reveals particular passions; the pulses of a joyful or a sad person, or of one fallen in love, are different. Finally Kircher even organizes the virtues according to a musical scale, then does the same for politics, and the whole study ends with reflections upon musica angelica, which cannot be perceived through the senses. In this music model the limits between music and non-music become rather vague: ultimately music can be found anywhere and in anything (cf. here the similar 'universal grammars' of music developed later by Charles Fourier (1848) and Claude Levi-Strauss (1964, 1966, 1968 and 1971)).

Burney

Our next music model is from an entirely different age and cultural area: two competing music histories appeared in England in 1776: A Gen- eral History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period by Charles Burney (1776-1789, 1935) and A General History of the Science and Practice of Music by Sir John Hawkins (1776). They both clearly represent a linear model of musical development and its phases. The alter- native model in the 18th century was, as we know, in the form of a diction-

ary, as used by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Sebastien de Brossard - not to mention the musical thought of the baroque era, exemplified by Kircher's wholly paradigmatic and achronic model (above), where the

paradigm of various dimensions in music is not yet closed and restricted to the model of a linear, syntagmatic unfolding, which in the next century gave birth to the narrative model of music history.

18



E. TARASTI, MUSIC MODELS..., IRASM 17 (1986), 1. 3-28

Burney introduces the deictic 'ego' category, the first-person narrator, though at the same time he remains aware of his own, explicitly subjective point of view. Although his aim is to 'trace the genealogy of Music in a right line' (Burney 1935, book 1:20), at the beginning of his work he presents his general principles, the explicati,on of his own music model, in the chapter Definitions. The last remnant of the old 'paradigmatic' model is in fact this short introductory chapter; in Burney's music model it is the only one with absolute, timeless validity. Burney considers that he has the right to take and reinterpret all earlier 'models' of music history according to his own concept of rationality: his speaker is a real historiographer, who evaluates musical facts and puts them in their proper order. He criticizes the way in which Kircher presents Ancient Greek and Hebrew music without clarifying the original terms: (Burney 1935, book 1:443-444): ,Kircher undertakes to give his reader an idea of modern Greek music

and its characters; and has indeed collected a great number of notes and their names, put pretends not to furnish equivalents in the music of the western world. And to insert such barbarous names, and more barbarous characters here without explanation, would no more help to initiate a student in the mysteries of Greek music, than the Hebrew or Chinese alphabet.< There is evident irony in a footnote of Burney's referring to Kircher >to whom even Egyptian hieroglyphics are easy.?

Music is for Burney a discourse of its own, whose development he follows country by country and genre by genre. He pays only limited attention to the technology of music; man-machine communication is not included in his model, though he introduces the instruments of antiquity and even gives to one of his chapters the title >Music after the Invention of PrintingMusic is an innocent luxury, unnecessary, indeed, to our existence, but a great improvement and gratification of the sense of hearing. It consists, at present, of Melody, Time, Consonance and Dissonance.

By melody is implied a series of sounds more fixed, and generally more lengthened, than those of common speech; arranged with grace, and, with respect to Time of proportional lengths, such as the mind can easily measure, and the voice express. These sounds are regulated by a scale, consisting of tones and semitones; but admit a variety of arrangement as unbounded as imagination.

Consonance is derived from a coincidence of two or more sounds, which being heard together, by their agreement and union, afford to ears capable of judging and feeling, a delight of a most grateful kind. The com- bination and succession of Concords or Sounds in Consonance, constitute Harmony; as the selection and texture of Single Sounds produce Melody.

19




Dissonance is the want of that agreeable union between two or more sounds, which constitutes Consonance: in musical composition it is occa- sioned by the suspension or anticipation of some sound before, or after, it becomes a Concord. It is the Dolce piccante of Music, and operates on the ear as a poignant sauce on the plate: it is a zest, without which the auditory sense would be as much cloyed as the appetite, if it had nothing to feed on but sweets.

Of musical tones the most grateful to the ear are such as are produced by the vocal organ. And, next to singing, the most pleasing kinds are those which approach the nearest to vocal; such as can be sustained, swelled, and diminished, at pleasure. Of these, the first in rank are such as the most excellent performers produce from the Violin, Flute and Hautbois. If it were to be asked what instrument is capable of affording the greatest effects? I should answer, the Organ; which can not only imitate a number of other instruments, but is so comprehensive as to possess the power of a numerous orchestra. It is, however, very remote from perfection, as it wants expression, and a more perfect intonation.

With respect to excellence of Style and Composition, it may perhaps be said that to practised ears the most pleasing Music is such as has the merit of novelty, added to refinement, and ingenious contrivance; and to the ignorant, such as is most familiar and common.<

Burney's 'definitions' reveal many interesting aspects of his music model: first, the specificity of music is already defined there and clear normative requirements are set regarding almost all the parameters of music. The task of music is limited solely to producing pleasure (compared to this, the principles of Sir John Hawkins seem to be considerably more serious and 'structural' when he says in his music history that he wanted to: >>... reprobate the vulgar notion that [music's] ultimate end is to excite mirth; and, above all, to demonstrate that its principles are founded in certain general and universal laws, into which all that we discover in the material world, of harmony, symmetry, proportion, and order, seem to be resolvable.* (Allen 1962:77)

Burney states quite directly which tones are more pleasant, and bases his view ulon a sort of earlier variant of the intonation theory: in fact, the myth of the song-like character of music is already manifest here. On the other hand, Burney is conscious of the existence of musical competence. Where musical competence was limited in Al-Farabi's model to the

modality savoir, likewise Burney announces that his 'definitions' concern

only the 'trained' or competent listener. The justification of this competence itself is not questioned, but he admits later in his work that >,There is a degree of refinement, delicacy and invention which lovers of simple and common music can no more comprehend than the Asiatics harmony. ... The Chinese, allowed to be the most ancient and longest civilised people existing, after repeated trials, are displeased with harmony, or Music in parts; it is too confused and complicated for ears accustomed to simplicity.< (Burney 1935, book III: 11)

20




From the point of view of our generative model Burney's definitions seem to stop at the real level of music, although the concept of musical competence does provide it with a certain depth.

In the second volume of his study Burney examines the principles of musical criticism, and says there that music history and even music in general cannot be evaluated and reflected upon without a sort of music model, which he calls 'principles'. These are necessary for judging both compositions and performances. His list of essential factors is a mixture of musico-syntactic but at the same time also 'modal' elements, in the sense discussed earlier. A perfect composition consists, according to Burney, of the following ingredients: >,melody, harmony, modulation, invention, grandeur, fire, pathos, taste, grace and expression, while the executive part would require neatness, accent, energy, spirit, and feeling; and in a vocal performer, or instrumental, where the tone depends on the player, power, clearness, sweetness; brilliancy of execution in iquick movements, and touching expression in slow.< (Burney 1935, book III: 8) What is interesting in this list is that the properties are so far from each other - contrary to our universal model in which we supposed that the same modalities might be used to depict both musical enunciation and the act of enunciating, the work as well as its performance. A composition can only be elevated to the level of passions when all the above-mentioned criteria in composition and performance have been fulfilled and 'polished into passion', as Burney puts it.

Romanticism

In many senses Burney's model already refers to the narrative model which flourished during romanticism; the view of musical communication as persuading the receiver-subject, as guiding him according to the abilities of the composer and the performer, so that the receiver is subordinated to their dominance - this is there quite clearly. A good illustration of how the life of a composer forms the starting-point also for the modalization of music, is provided by the composer biographies in the romantic era. For example, as late as in Romain Rolland (1921) we find several examples of this kind of inference in his Beethoven study: music is seen as a direct continuation of the ihner and outer events of the composer's life: >>This sombre melancholy is obvious in some works from this period: in the Pathetique sonata and, above all, in the Largo of the third piano sonata, op. 10.< (Rolland 1921: 17) This is the ad hoc hypothesis of a romantic biog- rapher, which allows him to explain away all the counter-evidence: >It is curious that the same characteristics cannot be seen everywhere, that beside these works so many others, like for example the smiling Septetto (1800) and the bright First symphony (in C major 1800) are full of youthful nonchalance. The soul evidently needs time in order to get used to pain. It needs so much joy that if it does not have it, it creates it.< (Rolland

21




1921:17-18) At the level of the discourse itself, a biography of a composer takes shape in a form which could be analysed, in Vladimir Propp's manner, into functions, stereotype actions and events, such as childhood, musical influence, anecdotes describing the exceptional traits which appear in an early phase, the fight for success, diseases, travels, premature death, glorification. It is naturally obvious that not all functions necessarily appear in the same biography, but that the above list forms an ideal paradigm from which different types of composer life are realized according to the scheme of self-destruction (Mozart), glorification (Wagner), emigrant composer (Stravinsky), national hero (Sibelius, Villa-Lobos) and other models. In fact, one could certainly also discover a composer's actantial narrative model; just as in folktales besides the hero there is a false hero who is then uncovered, so we may see by the side of a composer genius a false genius - which might be illustrated, for example, by the comparison between Beethoven and Mozart in Hildesheimer's Mozart biography (Hildesheimer 1980:62-64).

On the other hand, the 'narrativity' of romantic music has its roots also in its connection with the literary culture; even in compositions which were absolute music, one presumed that there were literary programs in the background. Arnold Schering, a late writer of Beethoven-hermeneutics, has, it is true, tried to show the place these programs had in the 'generative model' of a romantic composer (Schering 1936). The presentation of a poetic program was not an end in itself for Beethoven, but served only as an animating force, as a spiritual support for the structure and development of a composition, which occupied the composer only as long as the work to be created was under its influence. But as soon as the work was finished- or was shifted from the virtual and actual to the real level the program had fulfilled its task and could sink again into darkness. Schering's intention was to show only how the poetical programs chosen by Beethoven had adopted a musical form (Schering 1936:64).

In fact one can say that from the point of view of the narrative model there are many parallel ways to describe the 'generative course' of music. The music itself could appear as an illustration of 'the process of becoming', and in this sense it is not surprising that Beethoven's music has been considered as the musical emanation of Hegel's philosophy. The beginning of the Waldstein sonata was already described in the commentaries of the romantic era in terms like ein allmdhliches Werden und Wachsen

(Schering 1936:498), and in a certain sense it could be seen to manifest in a musical form how Hegel (1969, part 5:73-74) described 'the emergence of the beginning' in the first volume of his Wissenschaft der Logik.

Russolo

As we come to the 20th century, where the narrative model of romanticism persistently survives, with modernism a need appears to enlarge the

sphere of music both at the level of signifier and that of the signified. To

22




a great extent this was a reaction against the previous music model and had its roots in the radical change of the acoustical code in modern technology-dominated life. The view presented by Luigi Russolo in his manifesto The Art of Noises (Russolo 1975), represents precisely this kind of exten- sion of the musical field. Russolo sees the historical development of music in the following, condensed way: Musical art first searched for the soft and bright clearness of sound. Then it started to combine various sounds with the aim of obtaining sweet harmonies. However, nowadays more and more dissonant and strange sound combinations are sought. In this way one is approaching noise sounds. Russolo considers this development to be simultaneous with the quantitative increase in the number of machines participating in work. In the milieu of great cities, as well as in the otherwise silent environment of the countryside, machines produce sounds in such an abundance and variety that pure tone no longer arouses any emotion, being so weak and monotonous. In order to excite our senses music too has looked for more and more complex polyphony and varied timbres and dissonant chords, having musical noise as its ultimate goal (Russolo 1975:36).

A man from the 18th century could never have endured the dissonant intensity of our modern orchestras: on the contrary, in Russolo's opinion, our ears enjoy it since they are acquainted with all the noises of modern life. Musical sound is, in other words, too limited in the quality and variety of its timbre. Even our most complicated orchestras can always be reduced to four or five categories of sound, i.e. string instruments, plucked instruments, brass, woodwind and percussion instruments. This vicious circle, however, has to be broken at any price, and the endless multitude of noise sounds has to be conquered. Is there anything so ridiculous in the world as twenty people multiplying the plaintive mewing of violins? That is why it is infinitely more pleasant to listen to the noises of tramways, cars etc., than the Eroica or Pastorale symphonies (Russolo 1975:37).

Russolo (1975:40), nevertheless, denies that this new music should borrow its elements from the sphere of non-music: noises must not only be imitated but they have to be created and invented, and precisely such as to affect the emotions through a particular acoustic pleasure, when the artist can, in turn, combine them according to his artistic will. Russolo (1975:40-41) presents six classes of noises, which a futurist orchestra should be able to produce:

1) Grondements, Eclats, Bruits d'eau tombante. Bruits de plongenon, Mugissements

2) Sifflements, Ronflements, Renaclements 3) Murmures, Marmonnements, Bruissements, Grommellements, Gro-

gnements, Glouglous 4) Stridences, Craquements, Bourdonnements, Cliquetis, Pi6tinements

23




5) Bruits de percussion sur metal, bois, peau, pierre, terre-cuite, etc. 6) Voix d'hommes et d'animaux; cris, gemissements, hurlements, rires,

rales, sanglots.

These constitute, according to Russolo, the fundamental noises; others are only their combinations. This kind of new orchestra can produce the most varied new sound-emotions through imaginative combinations of the noises, accordingly, a special taste and passion for the understanding of noises takes shape gradually. Noises must be liberated from their sources and become abstract elements, which the will of a composer can elaborate and transform into an emotional part of a work of art. In his compositional aesthetics Russolo thus, in fact, goes back to the old model of romanticism and the generative course of the emotional content of music. But by renewing the selection of musical signifiers he believes it will be possible to reform also the signified. In reality, the Cartesian theory of passions returns in his music model but at the level of signifiers. In other senses too, and in its experimental character, his model is similar to Kircher's in intro- ducing new machines and instruments, bruiteurs.

Cage

The model elaborated by Russolo is taken to its extreme by John Cage, who entirely rejects the modality of will of a composer. He con- sistently represents this century's post-narrative ways of thinking, the attempts to get rid of lineary-syntagmatic programs and to open the musical paradigm to new alternatives (Charles 1981). In John Cage's con- versations with Daniel Charles this view is clearly manifested. The new anti-narrative model which he represents has often been erroneously interpreted as if it excluded all previous music models. When Cage was asked whether he would agree to conduct all Beethoven's symphonies, he answered: >I would agree if I could use enough musicians to conduct, in one single concert, all nine symphonies superimposed!< (Charles 1981:98) Cage rejects the negative aesthetic criteria that noises are inappropriate in the service of music, and says that a new aesthetic attitude should

accept anything whatever that happens in music. The aesthetic 'devoir' and the normativity in our universal model should be totally rejected. If

Cage had referred to the Asafievian idea of the intonation store, it would have included all the sounds of the environment! Consequently, he does not make any distinction between music and non-music. On the other hand Cage denies the existence of the 'generative course' altogether: >Sounds have no goal! They are, and that's all. They live. Music is the life of sounds, this participation of sounds in life, which may become - but not voluntarily - a participation of life in sounds. In itself, music does not obligate us to anything.. (Charles 1981:87)

24




That is why Cage does not accept, for example, melody at all, since as soon as there is melody there is a will and a desire to bend sounds to that will. He particularly sets within parentheses the modality of 'will' and everything related to its energetic thought. His principle is detachment or, to quote Charles Morris, letting things happen (Morris 1956). As a composer he is not interested in the will to subordinate the tones to some narrative program, which the listener would be persuaded to follow. x>They bend sounds to what composers want. But for the sounds to obey, they have to already exist. They do exist. I am interested in the fact that they are there, rather than in the will of the composer. A 'correct understanding' doesn't interest me. With a music-process, there is no 'correct understanding' anywhere. And consequently, no all-pervasive 'misunderstanding' either.^ (Charles 1981: 150)

Accordingly, Cage also rejects the idea of music as communication: in his view the very concept of communication presupposes that there is something to be communicated. Communication always means imposing something, determining something. Instead, in a conversation, a dialogue, this does not hold true, but the participants remain what they are. Cage, as Kircher did in his time, notices that music is in direct contact with the human nerve system. But whereas usually the nerve system is influenced by music, the situation can in fact be reversed: one can produce music with the nerve system. Cage tells about a work by Alvin Lucier where electrodes were attached to the composer's scalp, he closed his eyes and performed other movements, and the performance consisted of alpha- -waves which were transmitted through several loudspeakers situated around a kettledrum, a gong or a trash can. The same waves sounded differently through the different resonators, and the audience was hugely delighted by the aspect of 'mystic' participation in the work, since the electrodes could just as well have been attached to anyone's skull. What fascinated Cage in this kind of performance or 'bio'-music was the fact that the performer didn't have to have any particular skill at all, he was no longer needed in the traditional sense as a transmitter on musical communication. (Charles 1981:221)

In fact, Cage gives up the whole concept of a structure in the Grei- masian sense as an entity based upon two contrary elements. Our thought- -of-models are considerably rougher than the lived-in-models of our experience. When we think in opposed pairs, like sound and silence, being and nothingness, we simplify our experience, which is extremely complicated and not reducible to the number two. In Cage's view even when we hear a periodic, repetitive rhythm, we hear something other than the tones themselves. We do not hear the tones as such but the fact that they have been organized. Consequently, he ends with a negation of structure itself. Cage thus excludes from his musical model the contract between composer and listener and everything that can be determined with unchangeable units. In fact, what he accepts is the temporality of music

25




in its broadest sense. However, it seems that his music model would lead us most decisively out of music history.

In reality, the historicity of music disappears in this last model entirely and merges into the aesthetic Gegenwartigkeit. One may perhaps assume - and this may be stated in conclusion - that music history itself is a phenomenon which emerges in connection with musical change. There is a certain 'normal' speed of events. If music models or intonation stores change more slowly than this ordinary speed, the change remains unnoticed and music models adopt the achronic paradigmatic form. If again change occurs too quickly it is not observed either, and the result is rather the experience of a sort of 'stasis'. This is John Cage's case, since according to him each work and each sound experience must provide its own music model which is different from the previous 'models'. Not without reason, Cage has remarked that all necessary music has already been composed, and all we need is to open ourselves to the 'music' surrounding us.

Music history would thus be a phenomenon of a certain speed of change, and accordingly definable as a certain articulation of temporality. To paraphrase McLuhan's words: neither cold nor hot societes have a history, only 'mild' societies possess one.

REFERENCES

AHONEN, Perti (1984). A. J. Greimasin Pariisin koulukunnan semiotiikka: Sosiaali- antropologiasta ja kansansatujen tutkimuksesta yleiseen ihmistieteeseen. In Suomen Antropologi 4/1984.

D'ALEMBERT (182,1). Oeuvres. Tome premier, Ire Partie. Paris: A. Belin. AL-FARABI (1930). Grand traite de la musique, La musique arabe, livres I et II,

trans. by Rodolphe d'Erlanger. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner.

ALLEN, Warren Dwight (1962). Philosophies of Music History. A Study of General Histories of Music 1600-1960. New York: Dover Publications Inc.

ASAFJEV, Boris (1976). Musical Form as a Process. Doctoral dissertation by J. R. Tull. The Ohio State University.

BURNEY, Charles (19351). A General History of Music. From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (1789). 2 vis. London: G. T. Foulis & Co. Ltd.

CAGE, John (1981). For the Birds. John Cage in conversation with Daniel Charles. Boston, London: Marion Boyars.

CHAIT.T.EY, Jacques (1977). Traite historique d'Analyse harmonique. Paris: Alphonse Leduc.

DAHLHAUS, Carl (1977). Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte. Koln: Musikverlag Hans Gerig.

DESCARTES (1970). Les Passions de l'Ame. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin.

FONTANILLE, Jacques (1980). Le d6sespoir. Documents de recherche no. 16. Groupe de Recherches semio-linguistiques. Paris: CNRS.

FOURIER, Charles (1848). Oeuvres Completes I-VI. Paris: A la Librairie Societaire.

26




GASPAROW, Boris (1974). Tarton semioottinen koulukunta. In Struktarismia, semio- tiikkaa, poetiikkaa, S. Apo, J. Enckell, O. Kuusi ja E. Tarasti (eds.). Helsinki: Gaudeamus.

GREIMAS, A. J. (1967). Semantique structurale. Paris: Librairie Larousse. GREIMAS, A. J. and COURTES, J. (1979). Semiotique, Dictionnaire raisonn6 de la

theorie du langage. Paris: Hachette. GREIMAS, A. J. (1981). De la colere. Documents de recherche, no. III, 27. Groupe

de Recherches semio-linguistiques. Paris: CNRS. GUILHOT, J. and M. A., JOST, J. and LECOURT, E. (19,79i). La musico-therapie et

les methodes nouvelles d'association des techniques. Paris: Les E'ditions ESF. HAWKINS, Sir John (1963). A General History of the Science and Practice of Music.

New York: Dover Publications, Inc. HEGEL, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1969). Wissenschaft der Logilc. Werke in zwanzig

Bdanden 5. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. HILDESHEIMER, Wolfgang (1980). Mozart. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschen-

buch Verlag. KIRCHER, Atanasius (1650). Musurgia universalis, sive Ars magna consoni et dissoni

in X libros digesta. Roma: Corbelletti. LEVI-STRAUSS, Claude (;1958). Anthropologie structurale. Paris: Plon.

- (1964-1971). Mythologiques I-IV. Paris: Plon. MORRIS, Charles (1956). Varietes of Human Value. Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press. NATTIEZ, Jean-Jacques (1975). Fondements d'une semiologie de la musique. Paris:

Union GCnerale d'Editions. NIELSEN, Kristian Berg and SLOTH, Erik Kristian (1984). Det romantiske et moede

med doedens landskab. Turisme og reiseliv, Schmidt, Lars Henrik and Jacobsen, Jens Kristian (eds.). Aalborg: Nordisk Sommeruniversitet.

PARLAND. Oscar (1966). Muuttumisia. Porvoo: Werner S;derstr6m. PARRET, Herman (1982). Elements pour une typologie raisonnee des passions. Docu-

ments de recherche no. IV, 37. Groupe de Recherche s6mio-linguistiques. Paris: CNRS.

ROLLAND, Romain (1921,). Vie de Beethoven. Paris: Hachette. ROSEN, Charles (1976). The Classical Style. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. London:

Faber and Faber. RUSSOLO, Luigi (1975). L'Art des bruits. Lausanne: Editions l'Age d'Homme. SCHERING, Arnold (1936). Beethoven und die Dichtung. Berlin: Juniker und Dunn-

haupt Verlag. TARASTI, Eero (1979). Myth and Music. A semiotic approach to the aesthetics of

myth in music, especially that of Wagner, Sibelius and Stravinsky. Approaches to semiotics, 51. The Hague: Mouton. - (1983a). De l'interpretation musicale. Actes s6miotiques. Groupe de recherche

semio-linguistiques, v. 42. Paris: CNRS. - (1983b). Sur les structures 6elmentaires du discours musical. Actes semiotiques.

Groupe de Recherche s6mio-linguistiques, v. 28. Paris: CNRS. - (1984). Pour une narratologie de Chopin. In International rewiew of the

aesthetics and sociology of music 15(1), 53L-75. TAWASTSTJERNA, Erik (1976). Sibelius vol. 1, trans. by R. Layton. London: Faber

and Faber. USPENSKI, B. A., IVANOV, I. I., TOPOROV, V. N., PJATIGORSKI, A. M., LOTMAN,

Ju. M. (1973). Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures (as Applied to Slavic Texts). Structures of Texts and Semiotics of Culture, Jan van der Eng and Moj- mir Grygar (eds.). The Hague, Paris.

27




Satetak

GLAZBENI MODELI KROZ RAZDOBbJA: SEMA3IOTICKA INTERPRETACIJA

Clanak se sastoji od dva dijela: u prvome se dijelu pripremaju metodolo?ka oruda za ono gto sli-jedi u drugome dijelu, tj. usporedbu razli6itih modela glazbeno- -povijesne i esteti6ke misli. Stoga se 6lanak bavi racionalno9du povijesti glazbe, medusobnim odnosima glazbene estetike i povijesti.

Teorijski govore6i, dva se razlidita na6ina videnja i shva6anja glazbe razlikuju upotrebljava ii se L6vi-Straussova podjela na proiivljene i pomitljane modele Ijud- ske kulture. Nage se pitanje, dakle, postavlja kao: da li je povijest glazbe *proii- vljeni modelv, tj. postoji ii zaista >progres< i(Burney) i razvitak u slijedu glazbenih dogadaja i 6injenica, iii se racionalnost glazbenih mijena mo2e pripisati )promi- sljanim modelima>promigljane modele(( tijekom na?e glazbene povijesti potrebno je prije svega odrediti neke kategorije, dimenzije glazbenoesteti6ke iii semioti6ke prirode kako bi se kroz razli6ita razdoblja vidjele slidnosti. Te kategorije i pojmovi tvorile bi ono Sto ovdje nazivamo >hipoteti6ki univerzalni model>glazbene raspraveo po sebi, ostaje izvan predmeta ove studije.

Hipotetidki univerzalni model uglavnom se temeiji na pretpostavci da glazba tvori neku vrst proizvodnog procesa u onom smislu u kojem A. J. Greimas definira svoj pojam parcours gdn6ratif. Tako razlikujemo u glazbi razine stvarnih, aktualnih i virtualnih stanja koje svako za sebe ima viastite modalitete. U ovome radu uzi- mamo u obzir samo semantidku a ne i sintakti&u dimenziju glazbe. Misli se da esteti6ki: iii semanti6ki sadriaj glazbe mo2e biti o~blikovan kao proizvodni proces koji zapotinje s modatnostima, a koje, kao neke konfiguracije, tvore ono Rto nazivamo strastima u glazbi. Nadalje, kada se strasti organiziraju u sintagmirki pore- dak, program iii lanac emocionalnih stanja, onda susre6emo razinu narativnosti u glazbi.

Prema ovome, narativnost mora biti smatrana vrlo jakim modelom u povijesti umjetni6ke glazbe Zapada i posebno je cvala u eri romantizma. Nije sludajno da su prve glazbene biografije, koje opisuju iivote kompozitorA sa svojim 6esto sli6nim vrstama narativizacije, i pisanje povijesti glazbe bili u stvari za6eti u tor raz- doblju. Sve se to dogadalo u isto vrijeme kada se glazbeni govor po sebi smatralo vrstom naracije.

Prirodno je da svi na'i glazbeni modeli ne dostiWu razinu narativnosti: neki se modeli zaustavljaju na njezinu pragu na razini modalnosti (Al-Farabi) iii strasti (Descartes, Kircher), dok neki pokugavaju negirati prevladavaju6u snagu narativnosti nakon romantizma, kao gto je to s Johnom Cageom kao krajnjim sludajem.

28



Article Contentsp. 3p. 4p. 5p. 6p. 7p. 8p. 9p. 10p. 11p. 12p. 13p. 14p. 15p. 16p. 17p. 18p. 19p. 20p. 21p. 22p. 23p. 24p. 25p. 26p. 27p. 28

Issue Table of ContentsInternational Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jun., 1986), pp. 1-143Front Matter [pp. 1 - 2]Music Models Through Ages: A Semiotic Interpretation [pp. 3 - 28]The Fugue as an Expression of Rationalist Values [pp. 29 - 51]

Conference Papers / ReferatiPerception and Interpretation of Vocal Music: Constructs of Social Groups [pp. 53 - 72]

Fruition of the Musical Message and Perception of Its Structures [pp. 73 - 90]Zur Begrndung des Oktavphnomens, der Konsonanz und Dissonanz. Die Herkunft der sthetik des Hrens [pp. 91 - 110]Duke Ellington's Music: The Catalyst for a True Jazz Criticism [pp. 111 - 122]

News / NovostiOn the Manuscript of Juraj Kriani's "De Musica" [pp. 123 - 128]

Reviews / Recenzije i Prikaziuntitled [pp. 129 - 131]untitled [pp. 131 - 136]untitled [pp. 136 - 137]untitled [pp. 138 - 140]untitled [pp. 140 - 141]untitled [pp. 141 - 143]