Musical knowledge and value
RECURRING PATTERNS
If we examine analytical comments about musical performances, we shall find that they make reference to the directly experiential categories of materials, expression, form, and value. We shall also come across indirect prepositional observations about social and historical context and other related ‘facts’, such as the construction and use of instruments. There are but a few ways in which we can talk meaningfully about particular experiences of music and these certainly go beyond technical descriptions and historical classifications. Here then are a few examples of critical comment taken at random from writers in various newspapers.
On John Harles, saxophonist:
No one else creates a sound like this: apparently floating weightlessly, yet robust.
The saxophone is a hybrid instrument—it doesn’t have a basic sound of its own, like the clarinet….
On Des’ree, singer, songwriter:
Melodies are simple and fluid. (Her) distinctive voice soars and sweeps impressively.
…there is something soothing and therapeutic about her music. On Hole, rock group:
…negative emotions and abrasive noise. On a performance of Brahm’s violin concerto:
…it was a joy to hear the Violin Concerto in a performance at once so rich and secure…the glowing sounds…
…showed us a turbulent genius who deserved every brief lyrical respite the piece allowed him. Nor did he let the last two movements slip too easily out of titanic character.
…it was a genial giant who emerged, refreshed and lighter of heart, in the finale.
…culminating in a Passacaglia which knew exactly where it was going. Last week’s spate of Brahms had taken on epidemic proportions by Sunday, but I would gladly catch the strain if one in ten performances were able, like Barenboim and Ashkenazy, to tell us what the fuss is really about.
On a performance of Verdi’s opera Un Ballo in Maschera:
This vocal overload even affects the orchestra, which is befuddled by the limitless tenor and can hardly produce the contrasts of expression required to bring out the psychological background to the opera.
These ‘for-instances’ confirm what has been already said about the ways we think and talk about music, the strands or layers of musical knowledge. If we are really attending carefully to music, we are bound to be aware of shifting sonorities—the management of sounds, the secure control of instruments or voices; the tone that is apparently floating weightlessly, yet robust, a distinctive voice, abrasive noise, the ‘limitless tenor’ who becomes a problem to everyone else by emphasising control over his massive vocal materials at the expense of the other musical dimensions. We are also conscious of the expressive character of music—whether it is indeed a ‘genial giant, with titanic character’, or lighter of heart, or communicating ‘negative emotions’. We also look for coherence, ways in which musical gestures evolve, relate, contrast, find a sense of direction—the Passacaglia which ‘knew exactly where it was going’. In these comments we can also find the dimension of personal valuing, of gratified commitment, embodied in such remarks as ‘would gladly catch the strain if one in ten performances were able, like Barenboim and Ashkenazy, to tell us what the fuss is really about’ and that ‘there is something soothing and therapeutic about her music’. Although direct experience of music is always a fluid mix of all these elements, it is possible to separate them out for the purposes of analysis. We have to remember though that an analysis—though apotentially illuminating description of a cross-section of an experience—is not the experience itself. Of course we can also comment non-analytically, propositionally, factually, on the context in which music is invented or performed. We might want to talk about the social and historical background of music, how certain instruments were made or played, observe that ‘the saxophone is a hybrid instrument’, or gather information about the professional careers or the personal life history of musicians, and so on. Interesting and valuable as this might be, such propositional discourse can very easily arise without relevance to our direct response to music itself. Because of the potential detachment of propositional knowledge, this knowledge strand falls into a different logical class from the others. I will therefore concentrate on materials, expression, form and value and maintain that there is no critical comment about any musical object or event—that is to say, any analysis—that does not fall into one or other of these categories.
These dimensions of discourse about music are at the heart of musical analysis and therefore of education and teaching, which is an activity essentially concerned with critical analysis at various levels and in different
circumstances, though often articulated in very practical ways. ‘What would happen if we used a cymbal here instead of a gong?’ ‘What is it that makes that sound so brilliant?’ ‘Should this phrase flow quite so confidently forward or be more tentative?’ Does that performance hold our attention?’ These are examples of critical questions and some of them can be answered in practical ways, by musical experiment or demonstration.
But what of music in other than western cultures? Are we likely to find the same elements at work? In August 1989, I was privileged to visit New Zealand to take part in a national music educators’ conference. Among the presentations was a session led by Syd Melbourne, a local Maori and student of Maori music. He took us through the elements of musical experience that he perceived to be important in the Maori traditions, in effect giving us a view of musical knowledge as he saw it within his cultural perspective. Throughout the presentation a pre-recorded tape of bird and other forest sounds ran on, as if to create indoors for us something of the environment of the outdoor world. The sequence of ideas as he presented them can be summarised like this:
Music belongs to the world of Nature, of myths and stories and in the tradition we learned that ‘sound heralds the arrival of knowledge’. Sounds heard in nature become imitated, reproduced, controlled by people. Seasons, tides and stars, the whole physical world seem to open up the possibilities of music. Then come the songs, those that tell the story of the unborn child—the struggle and the haka, a warlike song sung with strong emphasis by men. But there are also songs that seem to go beyond directly venting or eliciting feelings, the more controlled waiata, leading to traditional stories and sung by women.
We then heard recordings of a flute playing melodies with regular phrases and sequences which also underwent variation and transformations. There were also songs by Melbourne himself composed in often fused styles— including rock music and Country and Western songs but still carrying something of a distinctive Maori feeling. He was clearly committed to music and because of this he had come to see himself as responsible for its transmission and development among the Maoris.
The order of this presentation seemed to me quite striking, for I had recently been involved in a study charting the musical development of children where we found the same sequence. In both settings, initial response to music seems to be an interaction with sound materials, delight in sonorities, noticing the calls of birds and sound of water which leads to the pleasure of controlling sounds, reproducing them, imitating birds or water on pipes, drums, voices. Out of these copies of natural sound grows the element of human expression.
Sounds are transformed into musical gestures and often related to dance; they may be suggestive of ideas, images, feelings; they can be transformed into warlike shouts, heroic declamations, lullabies, dances, stories. Shared meanings within musical conventions make possible communal participation and musical performances may become powerfully important sources of meaning at both an individual psychological level and particular traditions and cultures.
And these expressive ideas may be imaginatively re-configured or broken, perhaps by contrasting phrases, creating small embellishments, disrupting a rhythm, or in other ways playing with our expectations, our sense of musical future, surprising us. At this level music takes on organic form and seems to assume almost an independent life of its own, transcending local cultures and extending the range of personal feelings.
I find a parallel to this analysis of the layers of musical knowledge in the work of John Blacking, especially in his observations among the Venda people of South Africa.
Often, when an infant started banging with some object, he or she was not told to shut up: an adult or older child would convert the spontaneous rhythm into intentional musical action by adding a second part in polyrhythm.
(Blacking 1984:46)
Here again we are aware of exploration of sound materials being transformed by skilled control, making it possible to fit in with others.
As children grew up, they began to explore available musical instruments and tried to participate in performances. By the age of five or six, some had begun to learn certain solo instruments for pleasure and reflection, but all participated in the boys’ and girls’ play dances on moonlight nights, where they first learned to improvise words and dance steps, use additive rhythms, and lead songs—all good training for malende songs and dances, which were a major musical activity of adults (p. 49).
Dance, movement and story-telling in songs unwrap the expressive layer of music. And later:
They had grasped the basic principles of harmony and could recognise two different melodies as transformations of a single harmonic framework; they understood the principles of repeated rhythmic patterns; and also appreciated that repeated melodic patterns could be transformed by the organising principles of tonality and mode (p. 49).
Expression is taken up into shared musical conventions and there are in Blacking’s account glimpses of the playful possibilities of musical form at work in the transformation of phrases by transposition and modal shifts. Woven into all this is a layer of commitment and purpose, a sense of musical value, which Blacking perceived was being analysed by Venda people along the following lines:
The aim of musical performance was to experience the spiritual foundations of the cosmos and the common humanity of every individual through the practice of music and dance (p. 44).
Materials, expression, form and value; we shall not escape these strands of knowledge whenever or wherever we think and talk about music. Such knowledge is surely more than a rather complicated way of gaining sensual pleasure. The interwoven layers of musical knowledge seem to arise—like language—in all cultures and appear to serve a need to make sense of the world, to celebrate life and living in symbolic forms. Any analysis of the so- called ‘meaning’ of music seems to be articulated within this matrix of knowing. As to music education: we may agree with Hesse that ‘meaning’ cannot be taught: a proposition at a fundamental level that is true of all educational endeavours. But we can learn to find meaning and teachers can facilitate or impede this learning.
To summarise: I have intuitively reflected upon musical knowing without much in the way of recourse to what may be called the scholarly literature. From this naive enquiry, musical knowledge appears to be either propositional or direct, by acquaintance. Acquaintance knowledge is prime, for there is no other way of accessing music, and it is complex, having several layers. These I categorise as materials (knowing how), expression and form (knowing this) and value (knowing what’s what). Of these it is valuing that characterises the deepest levels of musical experience.
It is these strands that education in music may be supposed to develop and that process will involve analysis. Propositional knowledge—factual knowledge by itself—is very different from musical analysis, which is an activity starting and ending with direct musical experience, thus having the potential to enrich insights and enlarge musical response. But a great deal depends upon our conception of the relationship between analysis and intuitive ways of knowing. This is the main theme of the next chapter.
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