janzen@sunfun.DEC (Thomas E. Janzen CSS GNG CWO 714 850-7849 SUNFUN::JANZEN) (08/15/84)
Categories of Appeal in Music
Thomas E. Janzen 14 August 1984
2300 Fairview Road, H-201
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Music is the least universal of languages. A nation is
likely to speak in no more than two tongues, but is likely
to listen to a great many musical idioms. Also, few
listeners enjoy and sponsor more than one idiom of music.
In such diversity of artistic expression as this, can
criteria for evaluation of music be established? Would it
be desirable to do so?
In order to guide young composers in the development of
a personal standard of excellence, it is helpful to teach
them a coherent set of criteria for judging music. Whether
composers play their music on a kazoo while pacing pavement,
or build tape recordings of sounds, criteria aid composers
at all stages of their careers in choosing materials and
techniques. Criteria of excellence in music are not
required by non-musicians. Music critics do not write
criticism; they are feature writers published in
entertainment sections of newspapers to provide just that -
entertainment. Critics are not musical participants and do
not need musical criteria. Listeners do not need a set of
criteria for listening. Criteria of evaluation are a basis
of action, but a listener can take no meaningful action. A
judgment about a piece of music can take place only after an
audition, and by then it is to late. There is no question
of deciding to audition a work a second time. There is
perhaps much more music being written than there is time to
listen. A South African researcher reports having
documented eight-thousand women composers of concert music.
If we freely extrapolate two or three male composers to one
female, there may be as many as 24,000 to 32,000 composers
of concert music in the world, alive today. There is too
much music to permit listening to the same thing twice. So,
listeners can take no action and need no criteria.
Performers, however, do require criteria for choosing works
to perform. Although the most interesting composers at
present perform their own works (on tape, on computers, as
solo recitalists, or by conducting their own ensembles),
there remain many works of less self-sufficient individuals
who depend on performers choosing their works.
Having established the need by musicians for criteria
of judgment for music, they are here outlined. This list
may not be exhaustive. Other categories may be useful.
However, a musical work is rich and enriching to the degree
that it makes a variety of these appeals, rather than
depending on one or a few.
Aesthetic Elements in Music
1 : Convention
Convention is a framework of familiarity. Expectations
based on previous listening experience are cajoled into
surprise or disappointment. Poly-idiomaticism juxtaposes
idioms producing surprise, and the synergistic result of
producing new expressions by combining expressions of
different origins. Purity of idiom makes its own world, and
will usually be co-opted elsewhere when it is combined with
other musical sources. No music is without precedent,and no
music is without convention.
2 : Mathematics
The traditional contrapuntal manipulations of a motif
represent a permutational logic that has been studied as
such, and that flourished briefly in this century as
serialism. The symbols of linguistic syntax and
transformational grammar also have been used by composers,
notably in computer composition. The stochastic music of
Iannis Xenakis is well known. It is built with models of
statistical mathematics. Many composers have been
documented as using the golden mean as a ratio of partition
of musical time, including Bartok, Cage, Debussy, and Bach.
3 : Formal Congruences
Formal congruences occur in music when relationships in
sound resemble relationships in the world. This "world" may
be cognitive or perceptual or both. This type of congruence
is usually expressed in form. Recognized patterns with
which music imitates life include repetition, growth, and
adversary relationships (some concerti).
4 : Kinesthetic/Motor Responses
Involuntary reactions to rhythm, beat are experienced
by every listener. The impulse to dance when one hears
strong, pulsing music is common. Irregular rhythms have
their own nervous effect. Subtle, less accented, rhythms
have a more mild effect.
5 : Aural Symbols
Aural symbols appeal to aural archetypes. More
research is needed. (cf. the works of Carl Jung). We can
guess at some possibilities. Some directly musical symbolic
appeals may appear in sounds resembling: buzzing bees,
squealing of slaughtered pigs, an infant's wail, breaking
glass (this may entail a kinesthetic appeal more than
archetypal) a hound's howl, cries, barks, squeals, the
harmonic series (a mandala symbol?). Other symbolic appeals
are not directly musical. These include: the apparent use
of numerology by Bach, Crumb, and others, symbolic notation,
especially by Crumb. Are there symbolic forms?
6 : Literal Congruences
Literal congruences with the perceptual world are
simply imitations of sounds in the world. They include
onomatopoeia, and the imitation of bird calls in Vivaldi,
Beethoven, Messiean. The voice is its own imitator. Tape
music employing recorded sounds from the wider world depend
on the same appeal that photographs do, the recognition of
something familiar in the artist's creation, sometimes more
obscure or more clear. In Satie's Parade, special
percussion instruments mimic ordinary sounds.
7 : Illusions of the Ear
Two Scientific American articles on this subject
explore errors made by auditors. Oboes change tone-color to
suggest a change in dynamic of which they are incapable.
Such illusions must be taken into account in the effect of
the music.
8 : Euphony
The appeal of euphonious sounds depends on what the
individual auditor regards as pretty sound. Harold Budd
uses chords that, now charmingly disarming, would have
grated on the ears of people living in Europe a hundred
years ago as piercing dissonances awaiting resolution.
Nevertheless, music often depends heavily on being pleasant
to the ear.
9 : Synesthesics
When listeners allow music to suggest sensations from
sense organs other than the ear, they permit a synesthesic
appeal to obtain. What does a sound taste like, or how does
a dissonance feel? Is this a basic appeal that a composer
can intend?
Each of the above has subsets in other elements, but
each has an exclusive subset.
Values in Western music
1. Intellectual challenge, and the carrying of ideas
are basic to Western music. I am an intellectualist; I
believe good music's most important content is in its ideas,
ideas expressible without music. I use music to express
them because I like music, and am talented for it. Other
people use words or paint.
2. Music may be in a familiar and conventional framework,
but not so familiar as to lack challenge and surprise.
3. The use of symbols should serve the expression of the
ideas of the work.
4. Literal imitation of sounds from the world at large
should be kept at a minimum (except in vocal music's
imitation of the human voice) and always serve an expressive
purpose beyond the imitation itself.
5. Illusion should serve the expression of ideas.
6. Relationships in the world appear reflected in the work.
Yes, art should imitate life. Although it is impossible to
make a work that is random, because the auditor will put
order into what they hear, the imitation of life should be
in the control of the artist, and not allowed to please
itself.
7. Motor stimulation is useful in a work, but only if
serves the expression.
8. Virtuosity seems to be at times desired in music, and
other times eschewed. Performance is anti-virtuosic, but
Western music usually encourages virtuosity, whether of the
use of an instrument, or the playing of rhythms, for
example.
These, then are the proposed elements of aesthetic
appeal in music, which seem well-represented in successful
works. They are what auditors respond to. They are
categories with reference to the auditor, rather than the
physical nature of sound. The question for the composer is
always, "what will be heard when my piece is played," not
"what is the mean frequency of the oboe in next six
seconds?" With these reminders, then, composers should above
all express their own ideas, their own reactions to the
world, as richly as possible. Thomas E. Janzen
Warren, Richard M., Warren, Roslyn P. Auditory
Illusions and Confusions Scientific American. P. 30
Deutsch, Diana. Musical Illusions. Scientific
American. P. 92
Patterson, Blake. Musical Dynamics. Scientific
American. P. 78
Holtzman, S. R. Using Generative Grammars for Music
Composition. M.I.T. Computer Music Journal. 5:1, Spring
'81, p. 51.
Xenakis, Iannis. Formalized Music. Indiana University
Press. 1971.
Cooper, Meyer. The Rhythmic Structure of Music.
University of Chicago. 1960.
Wed 15-Aug-1984 09:44 PDT