Edson Tadeu Ortolan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>The music is a language non-verbal. Its grammar is the estruturation:
>modal, tonal, atonal, or eletroacustical syntaxes.
Mr. Ortolan, it does not matter how many times you repeat this assertion,
how many times it has been written. It does not matter how many degrees
have been granted by true believers to their accolytes, it does not matter
how often in seminars everyone nods their heads to it. The statements you
are putting forward are not true.
- - -
The 20th century had a need for the idea of language that was different
from the 19th. For the 19th century language was identity. For an object
to be correct it had to have been created by time, and go back to some
moment of beginning. Hence a language, a people's language, was one of
the traits which identified them as a people.
Language was identity, because language was cognition. This idea of the
greeks was fundemental to the Romantic, and later Victorian world.
While nationalism was not dead in the 20th century, and we have had
more than our share of revolutions and wars over language - the world
of business and science needed language for quite another purpose, and in
the early years of this century. It needed language to train people, to
directly control actions minutely so that they could be synchronised with
machine and travel. Consider the difference between someone stationed as
a colonist and someone stationed as an engineer.
The colonist must, practically, be made to hold to the mother country
more fiercely than anything else. They need to go about their business
reflexively, and they need to remain loyal. This is but one example of the
very practical use that the idea of "language as identity and cognition"
has.
The engineer on the other hand, must be at certain places at certain times.
He must be able to demarcate, draw up contracts, instruct people with no
knowledge of engineering what to do. The consequences for a misstep are
huge. Again this is one example out of many. With the increasing speed of
travel, the increase of mechinisation, and the fast but limited bandwith of
telegraph suplemented by post - these situations increased.
The 20th century came to a decision: "Language is communication."
From this flowed the most important moral dogma of the century. "The
sole purpose of language is clear communication, hence he who does not
communicate clearly, has violated language." This might seem a strange
tennet of faith. But consider the consequences of someone giving a garbled
order to a ship trying to navigate a shoal, an ambiguous order, or a poorly
worded instruction to a foreign diplomat.
We make moral prohibitions not when the action is intrinsically evil,
but especially when the action cannot be determined, a priori, to be
intrinsically evil - but has terrible consequences none the less.
Anything else, is not kosher.
Instead of broad autonomy held in check by structuring the loyalties, the
modern needed to reduce the autonomy of the individual so that he could
function as one more part of the system.
Once this pillar was in place, that is, it is a postulate, without which
it is impossible to procede, the logical consequences of it were imposed
everywhere. Music was one of these places.
- - -
If one defines language as communication, then it breaks down into signs -
that which is perceived, and the signified - that which is brought to
mind by the sign. Grammar then is the means by which signs are arranged
to communicate every more abstract signification. This, in a word, is
"Structralism". Every modern movement in philosophy eventually accepted
structuralism in one form or another, or had to reject it on quasi mystical
grounds, the impossibility of its final consequence.
If language is signs, signified and grammar to communicate, then, in
this system, music is language. But since the relation between sign and
signified is "arbitrary", the signification must be learned. You must be
taught that "cat" means "cat".
Therefore, since the signs of music do not have any teachable meaning, and
the relationship is arbitrary, music cannot express emotions, nor anything
else, because the words are not taught. Hence music can only express
music.
Squid Est Demonsrotum (sick, sick, sick, sick)
- - -
The only major kink in the road was the various schools of thought
which attacked two points of this doctrine. The first was the recognition
that organic development of laws or structures was incompatible with the
fundemental assertions of basic doctrine. To spend a moment to expand
this: the romantic and its successor movements assumed organic
development. It is no accident that the word "evolution" becomes prominent
starting in the late 18th century, used by the new idealists. To them
"evolution" was what made something "natural" while logical imposition
was "artificial".
I should note that since they did not have artificial vanilla flavor,
the word "artificial" was not as negative as it is today. It was negative
if the artifice was also arbitrary - such as the imposition of laws on a
people. But artifice was good - it was the sign of work. But artifice
would eventually be weathered into something part of the natural landscape.
The early moderns were modern, but they were also late victorians. They
believed in organic evolution of structures, and they believed in natural
laws.
But the post-structuralists saw this as impossible - how can a language
be natural, when it is arbitrary? Hence comes the first tennet of
post-modernism, if structures are coherent only in their interior
relationships, there is no virtue to organic wholeness of a single object.
The second bump on the road was the examination from the other direction
of structuralism. If the relationship between sign and signified is
taught, therefore the means to construct them is also taught, and we can
see that what is taught reflects society. Hence language is steeped in the
assumptions of power and societal norms. Hence also the interpretation of
a text must also be steeped in those norms. Hence the supposed meaning of
a text must become more and more ill defined, as the means by which the
"correct" interpretation was imposed are replaced by others.
This is variously termed "post-structuralism" or "deconstructionism". It
is why, separate from "philosophy" most large American book stores have a
section labelled "critical theory".
- - -
As can be seen, I'm tolerably familiar with the basic texts involved here,
and can explain the substance of them as well as anyone on this list, or
most people who are teaching such things in school.
Strange as it may sound - simple recitation of or from this texts does not
convince me. And it does not do so, because there is evidence on the other
side of the equation which contradicts the fundemental assertions of the
entire structure of the 20th century's exploration of language.
- - -
The first step to understanding this is to realise that the assertions
of the 20th century: "Language is communication", "Signs are arbitrary
with respect to signification" and "Grammar is convention" - are just that
*assertions*. They aren't proved any place. No one in the long list of
books that the true believer will site did an experiment to show this to
be so, nor proved it by elimating all possible alternatives.
They are assertions which, however, one cannot procede without in a modern
context. They hold, because they must hold.
That is, until someone goes out and proves, conclusively, that they are
false.
- - -
The second piece of the puzzle is to realise a very simple and obvious
statement: language is a creation of the brain processing input, even its
own. Hence language, in a human sense, is defined by the mechanisms of
that processing. What is acceptable as language is what is acceptable in
so far as it is mappable to that processing.
Hence if we discover that the way the brain processes information is
incompatible with fundemental doctrine, we must either accept this - and
think anew - or we loose any pretense of being anything other than another
doctrine which banishes unbelievers. Many people are not unhappy with this
second option.
- - -
When the brain processes spoken language, particular patterns emerge. They
are differentiated between the genders in certain ways, but within that
structuring are consistent. That is, difference map one to the other.
These patterns occur for every human language in the strict sense, even
constructed languages learned as native languages. Example: American Sign
Language, when learned from an early age, shows all of the signs of English
or Japanese. It is a full language because it requires the full range of
language processing.
Music, however, does not display this characteristic pattern. Therefore
music is not a language. Music has elements in common with language, and
therefore we may use words by analogy, we may see common structures based
on their correspondance. But we cannot argue from the definition of
language, and then generalise to music. This is unacceptable because
language is not merely a special case of the general "language", but is,
instead, a related case of a separate instance.
To argue by analogy. One cannot make a decision about "dogs" and then
apply it to "cats" because cats are not dogs. However, cats and dogs have
enough in common that many things true of dogs are true of cats. Language
and music are the same way.
What further complicates this situation is that to perform music we use
language. Hence many restrictions of music as implemented are based in the
restrictions of language elements used in its creation. The difficulty of
some music is not the music, but notating it, not the correct means of
performing it, but communicating that means to others.
- - -
Hence one may footnote as many papers as one likes with "op cit Boulez",
and it means nothing. In fact it is dangerous to do this because the whole
point of a footnote is to allow people to trace back to the source of the
idea, as I have done here, and determine whether it is sound. The footnote
is the beginning, not the end, of the discussion.
All that is contained in various texts on music which Mr. Ortan has listed
is various rationalisations for the music that the writers wanted to put
forward, based on the assumptions - postulates if you will - of their age.
These postulates are false, and therefore the conclusions are suspect at
best.
The reason all of this gets important is because these rationalisations
were not created in a vacuum - they were written to respond to specific
criticism from other quarters. Just as the music of the 19th century still
has its adherents, so too then do the doctrines used to support it when it
was new and had to defend itself against other theories of music.
Which is why it is important to end this with a reminder that several
styles of music have been created under false theories of hearing and
cognition, and the results have still been valid music, to the extent
that the composer followed music rather than rigidly adhered to theory.
Rameau's theory of harmony is wrong - and yet that does not mean tonal
music does not work.
- - -
But in the end the incontrovertable evidence of inquriy is that music
is neither a thing apart, nor is it a specied of language, and that
the structure of cognition is far more complex than we have heretofore
considered. The inertia of academia prevents this from being spelt or
spoken within its halls, but that is not based on anything other than the
well known truth that ideas are maintaind by people immune to them, and
that the only way they change their minds is by dying.
Stirling Newberry
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