John Bell Young wrote:

>Chris Bonds wrote:
>
>>I agree that all humans are biologically the same when it comes to the
>>structure of the ear. Big deal. It seems to me by identifying harmony so
>>closely with perception you are simply making the definition of "harmony"
>>so broad as to be useless.
>
>Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is all old - and I do mean
>OLD - news.  "Most people" are not musicians, and the generic popular
>description of what constitues harmony, or a harmonic event, is fine
>for the layman, but for the professional little more than poppycock.

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.

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.

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.

>I don't have the time or patience to go into the details of harmonic and
>contrapuntal organization in the context of how voices are laid out and
>put together in a horizontal context; nor do I care to elaborate here just
>how 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.

>To describe harmony as merely the vertical organization of tones one upon
>another is simply naive and jettisons without even so much as a modicum
>of aforethought or critical analysis the labyrinthine organization of a
>musical text; to do so would be to ignore the function, to cite only one
>example, of leading tones and pedal points, and all they imply within a
>larger structural Diaspora.

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.

>Instead, I would simply suggest that you get your hands on an introduction
>to the theories of Heinrich Schenker, or better yet, after you've consumed
>that, on "Structural Hearing", perhaps the most famous critique of Schenker
>by his distinguished protagonist, Felix Salzer, or the no less famous
>dissertations by Carl Schachter.  These will address your questions with
>meticulous detail as it disavows and assassinates mercilessly any notion
>that the idea of harmony is as black and white as you, and many others,
>think.

You don't have the slightest idea what I think.  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.

>...indeed, what Schenker did for musical composition is akin to what
>Freud did for the mind; mapping out its functions and regions, calling
>into question its structures and motivation.  The conscious perception
>of music only begins to scatch the surface of what's really going on.

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.  The problem with Freud is that he made up explanations for
things he couldn't prove and then promulgated them as truth.  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?

>On the contrary, music is a perpetually evolving entity, an organic matrix
>of dendrites and rhizomes, of branches and synapses which rely upon each
>other for nurturing and growth, to speak nothing of structure.  And if a
>persistent pedal point, for simple example, becomes the sun around which
>a work orbits, reaching out like an aged root into the fertile soil of a
>composition as its destiny unfolds, then its relation to other harmonic
>systoles, likewise coalescing around it, also metamorphoses.  So you see,
>it IS a big deal - a very, very big deal.

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.

Who said "God is in the details?" Einstein?

Chris Bonds