Chris Bonds responds to me:
>I sense a double standard here... I always thought the intelligent
>layperson had both a right and a responsibility to aspire to the
>understanding of the "professional." Any pig can become a "professional"
>with a little training and a lot of chutzpah. When you say such a
>definition is "fine for the layman" I take that to mean either there is
>some truth to it, or that it doesn't matter whether the layman's knowledge
>is truth or lies.
Chris Bond's embrace of a rather status quo definition of harmony
does nothing to diminish the essential validity of his position nor
the definition itself. But here he evades the issue, moving in on alien
territory that is not even germane to the debate. In the context of an
argument whose principal objective is to broaden our understanding of this
endlessly fascinating subject, it should not concern anyone particularly
what the layman thinks, no matter how savvy his intuitive understanding,
That is precisely why the conventional definition, whose virtues Mr.
Bonds is so eager to extol, is fine for the layman, who has no fundamental
obligation to dig deeper, or to listen with pristine care in order to
deliver as much of a text as he possibly can. Indeed, for the layman, it's
probably quite enough if the musical experience satisfies some compelling
emotional need, a burgeoning intellectual curiosity or simply provides a
little pleasure; he doesn't have to ask for anything more, and is perfectly
free to adjudicate both his experience and what he perceives however he
sees fit. In the polemics at hand, however, what concerns us is what goes
on beneath the surface of a score, and behind and between the notes.
>Further, if Tovey was right in his belief that there is such a thing as
>the "naive listener," i.e., one who understands and responds in the way the
>composer presumably intended but who has no formal schooling (maybe he or
>she has just listened to a tremendous amount of music and noticed that the
>same types of things tend to happen over and over within a style), we may
>well have many instances of a layman having better understanding of music
>than the hack professional who has had the notes drilled into him but who
>has no real musical talent.
No composer that I know of presumes, or has ever presumed that this
ubiquitous listener that Mr Bonds describes so glowingly is an automaton
programmed to respond in some pat manner to what he hears. That would be
anathema to any creative (or re-creative) process. And that, in fact,
goes to the root of the issue. The layman, the sometime concert goer, the
melomane (as the French so charmingly call him), is one whose principal
mode of musical engagement is hearing, not listening. This kind of passive
experience of a text may provide the greatest pleasure, but fails to
embrace the grittier exigencies that embrace, by duplicating them in
compositional categories, conflict, pain, horror, release, tension, sexual
climax, and so on. It is overwhelmingly unlikely that the untrained layman
will ever develop, absent a great deal of study and hard work, the kind of
listening apparatus and, at the very least, intellectual acumen that even
the laziest professional - what Mr. Bonds calls a "hack" - commands.
Listening is just as complex and subtle a skill as playing and performing:
it is itself, in fact, a manner of interpretation (and perhaps the most
important aspect of it). Engaged listening is not something that happens
by accident, or even intuitively, though it is certainly true that certain
persons gravitate naturally towards a musical text from childhood, and
enjoy something akin to an instinctive understanding of how a musical
composition works, how it functions and what constitutes an event
(harmonic, rhythmic, etc.) within it. Even so, the cultivation of even
the most prodigious listening apparatus requires time and serious study,
lest it atrophy as it sometimes does in prodigies who never get beyond
fingerfertigkeit as the measure of a successful performance In other words,
instinct is indispensable, but hardly enough to engage a work for all it's
worth.
>In any case, I didn't intend to suggest that the relationships to which
>you refer don't exist or that we don't need to attend to them. But I still
>fail to see how arbitrarily redefining "harmony" is helpful. It seems more
>like a conscious act of obfuscation.
No one has arbitrarily redefined harmony, and I fear Mr Bonds labors under
some misconception to believe it. The ideas set forth by Schenker and
others, even those who have espoused rather different musical philosophies,
seek only to expand our understanding of it and to elaborate its potential.
To reify any concept, especially one as rich as harmony (the function
and status of which has evolved considerably over the centuries) is the
equivalent of killing it, and hardly does anyone, be it the musician or
the layman, any favors.. The purpose of any critique, including that of
harmony and its function, is by no means some conspiracy to obscure meaning
or to render it impossibly complex for anyone who desires to learn more.
On the contrary, the purpose of a critique is to illuminate and refine
its subject, to break it down and re-integrate it, to dehistoricize it
and explode reified attitudes that would just assume pigeonhole it
for generations to come. Were it not for immanent and transcendental
criticism, a Beethoven, a Mahler, a Berg or a Ligeti would not have been
possible. And let me be clear: I do NOT refer here to the criticism of a
reviewer, but to the critical acumen and procedures of a composer himself.
Indeed, a great work of art is itself invariably a form of critique, an
indictment of the status quo, a challenge to convention. Some may be
perfectly content to allow art to stagnate as they hold on to old,
petrified ideas. That's rather like dressing up with no place to go. But
for those of us who prefer a more imaginative route, one that celebrates
life, not death, music is an art form whose time has not yet come, but
continues, along with the elements that define it, to evolve.
>>trained ears can discern relationships over temporal distances that
>>in fact, not only govern compositional strategy, but create the harmonic
>>underpinnings of a composition, no matter how complex or how simple.
>
>Contrary to what Schenkerians may think, it's not at all clear that
>anything of the sort actually happens. All we have is the anecdotal
>evidence of people who SAY they can do that.
Mr Bond may be unable to experience music in this way, but I can assure him
that many others can, and do. I was fortunate to have been trained in this
context since childhood, so it's hardly news to me. What's more, there are
those who simply say they have perfect pitch, too - and I have it - but if
Mr Bond does not have it, for example, it's overwhelmingly likely that he
never will and will never be able to understand what it's about or what it
feels like. That hardly invalidates its existence or even its use value.
(For me and many others with perfect pitch, every note has a specific,
visceral and physical feel, no different from the feel of a particular
fabric or substance that we can identify by touch; of course, I can only
speak for myself when I say that I can actually feel a sound in my head,
and in every fiber of my inner ear, just as surely as it were something
with physical material dimensions, and as if I was reaching out to touch
it).
Things are no different, really, where listening to, identifying and
conveying a musical structure is concerned. In fact, it is perfectly
clear that this "sort of thing' does in fact happens. Again, I repeat
that listening is itself an art form, and to cultivate a refined listening
apparatus requires hard work to penetrate, with pristine attention, the
details and complexities of a musical text as it unfolds and develops, like
a silvery emulsion coming into focus. What such an apparatus encourages
is an ability to think along with what is heard. It also demands the
development of memory, which must be exercised with the discipline of an
athelete training his muscles. One need not be a die-hard Schenkerian in
order to probe the labyrinthine relationships that give shape to a musical
composition. Those of us whose interest lies in engaging the structure of
a composition en route to delivering it listen with our inner ear, as many
of my Russian colleagues and teachers have often dubbed it. Compositional
relations do indeed occur across compositional time and space, and the
implicit prolongation of a pitch or group of pitches, for example, whose
resolution is suspended is not some kind of magic trick, nor someone's
arbitrary invention, but a property of the work itself. We are simply
obliged to pay attention and follow the destiny of an idea or group of
ideas, and to see where they lead and how, were and when they dovetail or
collide one with another over the life of a text. Nowhere is this more
true than in late Scriabin, for example, where pitch material hovers
endlessly in search of a center that never materializes. What's more,
Scriabin exploits pitch relations whose very ambiguity, by virtue of their
idiosyncratic construction and delineation within his soup of whole tone
and octatonic scales, French sixths af tritone variants, point to more
than one possible harmonic context and resolution (which he invariably
withholds). It is crucial in this music to hold certain pitches within the
memory and the inner ear if the diaphanous textures and interwoven prisms
are to make any sense. It is multi-dimensional music, and requires a kind
of prismatic imagination capable of listening to the movement and, even
more importantly, the destiny of multiple voices simultaneously. Scrabin
may have assassinated functional harmony, and the attendant expectations it
sets up in the listener, but that hardly means the music should be played
in some arbitrary manner and thus, unintelligibly. Furthermore, the
complex interplay of Scriabin's harmony hemorrhages into the text,
creating extraordinary opportunities in the household of articulation, and
consequently, rhythm. Now in this regard, especially for its most savvy
interpreters, Scriabin's music is extreme, but even so, much the same can
be said for Schumann and certainly for Chopin.. There is nothing anecdotal
about the construction nor the complexity of contrapuntal relationships,
which inform the way in which the keenest ears listen to a work of music..
>I didn't say it was "merely" that. I said it STARTS with that. A
>"requirement for harmony to exist" is what I wrote. Anyone can see that
>most melodies in Western culture during the so-called common practice
>period are triadic in nature. I have no beef against calling them
>harmonically based. But that's only part of the world. Show me a
>successful Schenkerian analysis of a polyphonic Baku Pygmy chant.
Once again this is being evasive. Baku Pygmy chants, which have
absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. It is an entirely
irrelevant allusion. However, there is no reason on earth that any music
can not be harvested for even greater riches than may be immediately
transparent. Seems to me that even Alan Forte subjected "Somewhere Over
the Rainbow" and other popular tunes to a Schenkerian analysis, and rather
successfully at that, in his fascinating book on the American popular
ballad. But Mr Bond is simply begging the question in order to dismiss
the larger issue, which is certainly not about theory in its own right, nor
about those who would would fetishize or hide behind it. Theory, and its
models for analysis are essentially something that concern expanded ways of
thinking and listening, so that we, as musicians, may find new, unchartered
and significant relationships within a composition that at once enrich and
illuminate it, and which in turn enhance our approach to interpretation and
our ability to bring a text to a sonorous life.
>... For your information I know those books (and others such as Forte,
>Gilbert and Bill Mitchell) rather well--I taught from them for many years.
>I think they're fine books. I think they give a lot of insight into the
>musical process as practiced in Western lands during a certain time period.
>I do not think they have anything relevant to say about transcultural
>universals, which as I recall is what started this whole discussion.
As for "transcultural universals", which sounds more like a moniker tossed
around in Haight Ashbury 30 years ago, than it does like a point of this
particular debate (which as far as I'm concerned remains focused on
harmony, its function and interpretation) I have no idea what Mr. Bonds
is talking about. Does anyone else?
>I've thought about the similarity between Freud and Schenker myself. In
>fact I've thought about writing an article about it. Given the current
>reputation of Freud in the psychological profession these days, I'd be
>hesitant to put your man in the same league--unless of course you are also
>a Freudian.
A Freudian, a Lacanian, a Foucaultian, a Gauatarian, a Lyotardian,
a Jungian. Nothing like a large personal library and a voracious
intellectual appetite to satisfy one's pluralistic proclivities, day
or night.
>The problem with Freud is that he made up explanations for
>things he couldn't prove and then promulgated them as truth.
The problem with Mr Bond's proposition is its specious presumption.
Freud never set out to prove anything, as anyone intimately familiar with
his complete works can tell you (even a cursory reference to Chapter 7 of
the Interpretation of Dreams demonstrates that point unequivocally), He
DID set out to raise questions, to challenge presumptions, to explode the
status quo, to inveigh against reified practices. In Freud's view, there
was no truth, certainly no single truth, but only the innumerable layers of
psychical and emotional activity could only reveal tehmselves essentially
within the context of language and gesture,, and that language (and its
usage), though subject to interpretation, could only proceed from and
the patient himself. If Freud, whose contributions to not only to
psychoanalysis and philosphy were immeasurable and transcended the
superficial attacks of tabloid analysis, had any shortcomings, it
was his increasing reliance on creating a language about a language,
where interpretation itself was eventually threatened with reification.
Eventually, he began to reevaluate his methods, and others since, across
many disciplines (especially semiotics), have done just that, and without
in the least denigrating or diminshing the inherent value and seriousness
of Freud's achievements and ideas.
>I feel somewhat the same way about Schenker, except that there is a kind
>of logic to Schenker's approach (which is what attracted me to it in the
>first place). With reference to your last sentence, I would ask, what is
>the value of an UNconscious perception of music, or how can such a thing
>even exist, or if it exists, how can we know about it, and when we have
>made it conscious how will it affect us?
Performers know the value of allowing works learned, for example, to linger
untouched for days, weeks, months or even years, to allow them to become
subsumed physically and psychically, to expose them to the play of
unconscious forces, rather than continual perceptive analysis.Without this
process of interioirization, things can get dammed up. But interiorization
is is something that happens, and must happen, over time. New layers, new
relationships and new perceptions evolve in this way, and a piece that only
a year ago presented some particularly thorny interpretive or technical
challenge has now, after being taken up again after a rest, emerges fresh
with a solution now mysteriously (not so mysterious given what we know
about the unconscious) in place. In fact, the process works in much the
same way as dreams do, wherein some prevailing problem, at first disguised
by all manner of apparently irrelvant images, is in fact a matrix of
signifiers, each pointing to some particular cause or underlying
motivation. It takes time for our frail psyches to work through it all, to
unravel those signifiers in order to see where they lead and from what they
evolved.
>Nice analogy, but not necessary for me at least. A great pedal point
>strategically placed makes my chest full, puts a lump in my throat, raises
>my hackles and makes me gasp for breath. (Obviously it's not just the
>pedal point, you gotta have all that other stuff going on too.) I weep at
>a Schubertian modulation. If a Schenkerian wants to say, "Oh well, the
>reason you weep there is because this is a prolongation of the flat mediant
>approached by a middleground circe-of-fifths progression," I could care
>less. That isn't going to make my experience any more satisfying, and it
>certainly isn't going to help me share it with others.
Of course it isn't, when viewed in the context Mr Bond's interprets it.
How many times do I have to say that the issue here is not about the
analysis itself, nor its fetishization, but concerns what analysis
can teach us and what it can illuminate about a work? These mysterious
"Schenkerian" creatures Mr Bond continually refers to are a mystery to me;
if he believes I am one of them, mouthing in the theoretical shadows, he is
sorely mistaken. Like many of my colleagues, but speaking for myself, I am
a musician first, one who performs (and sometimes writes about music), not
a theorist who happens to play in order to rationalize some particular
argument. For those of us who cannot dig deep enough over a lifetime
of learning to fathom all there is about a work of art, the theoretical
literature is hardly a crutch, or a shield to hide behind, nor should it
be, but a tool that opens up new possibilities for interpretation, for
thinking about a work, for discerning its idiosyncratic message, for
fathoming its symbolic ethos.
>Who said "God is in the details?" Einstein?
No. I did.
John Bell Young
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