Paul Crowther
National University of Ireland, Galway
MUSIC AS VIRTUAL EXPRESSION
Razprava / Discussion
Abstract
It is argued that, through the tonal system, music projects possibilities of experience created by
another person or persons. This virtual expression enables the audience to be, as it were, blended
with the expressive dimension of the work in a way that is not possible through other art media. The
education of feeling and imagination that this involves is constitutive of music’s uniqueness as a
form of experience.
Keywords: virtual expression, meaning, education, feeling, imagination, experience, tonality
Izvleèek
Glasba kot virtualna izraznost
Prispevek poudarja, da glasbena dela skozi tonski sistem omogoèajo izkustva, ki jih je ustvarila
druga oseba ali osebe. Ta navidezni izraz omogoèa, da se poslušalci poveejo z izrazno dimenzijo na
naèin, ki ni moen v drugih umetniških medijih. Vzgoja obèutljivosti in predstavljivosti je temeljni
del edinstvenosti glasbe kot oblike izkustva.
Kljuène besede: virtualna izraznost, pomen, vzgoja, obèutenje, predstavljivost, izkustvo, tonalnost
This paper develops the theory of music set out more fully in Chapter 7 of my book
Defining Art, Creating the Canon: Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 2007
I
It is important to explain the depth of music’s importance in human experience. This
involves clarifying its role in the education of imagination and feeling, and the
self-fulfilment that is consequent upon this. Pedagogically speaking, this educative role, in
itself, justifies music as a curriculum subject in schools. For music’s effects do not simply
happen. They require initiation into both performance and appreciation.
First, then, like literature, music is an art of temporal realization based on a successive
linear order of presentation. True, there are some avant-garde works where the order in
which one hears the parts of the work do not matter, but these are highly marginal. The
narrative content of music is much more ambiguous than that of literary works and I have
described it at great length elsewhere. Here is a summary of my position. Music has an
intimate connection with the emotions. Emotions are involuntary states but they can be
expressed through features – such as the voice – which are amenable to voluntary control.
The voice, in fact, provides an important clue as to the basis of meaning in music. When
listening to a conversation – even at a distance where we cannot actually hear what is
being said – as the conversation develops, the protagonists’ vocal tones will undergo
95
Paul Crowther, MUSIC AS VIRTUAL EXPRESSION
change. We may find transitions from, say, a matter-of-fact character, to a sense of
urgency; or, alternatively, a mere sense of accumulating significance. In such cases,
simply listening to the vocal tones of the conversation exclusively, we can follow the
cumulative progression of a narrative of emotional intonations.
Now, the decisive point is that the gestural aspects of an emotion can be mimicked so as to
make a point, or to deceive, or to amuse other people. In other words, vocal gestures can
present possible emotional responses rather than actual ones. This is the case with singing
or instrumental articulations of sound. They present possibilities of expressive experience,
irrespective of whether or not the performer or composer actually experiences or
experienced such feelings. Expressive features are presented at the auditory gestural level
so as to create narratives of intonation and its development as possibilities of experience
for a performer or listener. Music, in other words, is virtual expression.
The narrative factor involved in this is closely tied to the tonal system. It allows the
intonations to be developed through structures that allude to real life feelings but without
being having to be tied to any actual real-life situations. Major keys have strong general
associations of positive and assertive feeling and/or movement, whilst minor keys have
more introspective or melancholic association. The meaning of individual musical units
and phrases within such keys and, indeed, the transitions from one to another is a function
of their place in the developing whole of the work in which they are parts. They anticipate
both that which is yet to come, and reconfigure the meaning of parts that have preceded
them.
The upshot of all this is that the tonal scale-system is a kind of formalization of the
intonations of auditory conversational narrative. Indeed, it enables the relation between
units of sound (be they vocal or instrumental) to be formalized to such a degree, that the
developing narrative of emotionally intonated notes, rhythms, and harmonies becomes
much more complex. A narrative structure of virtual expression is formed not just through
the evocation of vocal tones but also from patterns of interaction or conflict between them.
They can be described in terms akin to those which pertain to the emergence and
development of emotional states in personal and group narratives.
Of course, one might describe a piece of music as ‘cheerful’ or ‘sad’ but if that was all that
could be said about it, the piece would be fairly mediocre. The real substance of musical
meaning and expression lies in the way that tense, relaxed, or anticipatory phases are
transformed into others – usually in an extended way on the basis of melodic, rhythmic,
and harmonic factors. The point is that music engages us not just emotional associations as
such, but through the way these are given narrative development of a unique kind.
In this respect, let us consider the children’s nursery tune Frere Jacques.
‘Frere Jacques, frere Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.’
96
GLASBENOPEDAGOŠKI ZBORNIK, 27. zvezek
This is a simple tune consisting of small musical and verbal phrases each repeated once at
a gentle tempo. The ascending/descending progression of notes and words evokes a calm
and reassuring world. It asks Brother John whether he is still sleeping – with the clear
implication that he shouldn’t be, because the morning bells are already ringing. Of course,
what makes this simple tune so magical is how the rhythm and melodic progression of the
words and music blend - to evoke the sound of bells ringing. This extraordinary formal
unification of notes, words, and a second order of musical association deeply enhances the
overall sense of calmness and reassurance, thus making the tune especially suited to
children.
And there is more. Earlier, we noted how in order to appreciate an artwork it is not
presupposed that we have any collateral information about the artist’s own life, or the
circumstances in which the work was created. But, of course, we often do have such
information – and it can deepen our enjoyment. For example, we may know that the
ringing of bells in pre-Revolutionary France was often the job of local orders of monks.
‘Brother John’ may be intended as one of these. But, if is the case, the simple song
becomes a mystery. For if Brother John is still sleeping, then who is it who is ringing the
bells? Has he hired a surrogate; is it an impostor. Has he been done away with?
Many pieces of music – from nursery tunes to symphonies will yield such interesting
outcomes if considered in the right way. They will sensuously present fascinating
possibilities of experience, that can be deepened through appropriate secondary
knowledge. However, let us keep our focus on the immediate significance of musical
formats.
Some have tended to be historically specific – such as the madrigal, a form that arose in the
European renaissance as an idiom of secular choral music. However, no matter the
historical specificity of a musical format, it can still find an audience across time. Consider
Jacobus Gallus’s Musica Noster Amor (Music, Our Love). This late sixteenth-century
madrigal is a work that explicitly praises music as an inspirational power. Whether its
audience is Renaissance or Postmodern, it has a efflorescent joy that is hard to resist. The
singing launches itself with breathless enthusiasm, and – just over half way through the
piece – even gives the humorous impression of voices bumping into one other, excitedly,
before rhythmic composure is regained. Given that the work is a celebration of music it is
hardly surprising that it also overflows the boundaries between vocal and instrumental. At
the heart of this is its repeated use of the vocal device ‘taratantara’ as both a melodic and
harmonic feature – thus crossing from linguistic sense to an evocation of the world of
dance and of instrumental rhythms.
All this energy is built on an equally enthusiastic formal play. For whilst the work is a
secular madrigal, it is written and performed in Latin - the language of the sacred motet,
and, at some points, even includes passages remniscent of sacred polyphony. If one
regards the work in terms of musical knowledge, in other words, it is not only a joyful
crossing of boundaries between song and dance, but also achieves these effects through a
deeper crossing of musical formats, per se.
97
Paul Crowther, MUSIC AS VIRTUAL EXPRESSION
II
There are, of course, other musical formats that have proven much more enduring than the
madrigal. The sonata form, for example, has been a dominant feature of music from the
1750’s even into high modernism (for example, in the piano works of Boulez). A less
formal but equally productive format (that often incorporates sonata structure) is that of
the concerto for instrument and orchestra. Let us consider, for example, the first
movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor. The work commences with
an orchestral exposition of the grave and resolute main theme, with the clarinet event
going on to introduce the second main subject in the minor key of e-flat major. The piano’s
entry is in the form of a dramatically rapid ascending scale in c minor, then repeated twice
– each time an octave higher, but with a pause between each repetition. The entry is, in
effect, both an announcement of arrival, and through the gaps between the scales, also an
inquiry.
At the end of the last repetition, the piano then picks up the initial orchestral subject, and in
the development, the themes introduced by orchestra and piano respectively are frequently
swapped between them, with key modulations at decisive moments. An emotional climax
to the movement is achieved when, in the cadenza, the piano repeats and develops the
main orchestral theme for the last time - embellishing it and probing it introspectively with
complex arpeggios. In the course of building towards a climax the main orchestral theme
appears unexpectedly as a bass line for the piano. The thematic development is then
completed in a modulated sequence of trills, and taken in descending arpeggios to a point
of apparent repose before the climax. The repose is emphasized – given, indeed, an
astonishing introspective stillness - by simple two note motifs – repeated and then made
more complex in successive three note and two note phrases - before a plunging descent of
arpeggios from which the original piano c-minor scale returns to close the movement.
Now, in all this exposition and development of themes across different keys and harmonic
structures, there is an overwhelming sense of narrative – of different voices or gestures, or
different personal situations constantly developing and responding to one another –
building into moments of confrontation, resolution, and fulfilment, sustained throughout
by moments of introspective insight. The cadenza, indeed, in its very pianistic gathering
up and developing of the earlier thematic and harmonic materials becomes itself,
emblematic of a subject reflecting upon and responding to its own recent history.
It is possibilities such as these which explain why the sonata form and other features of the
tonal system have established themselves as recurrently compelling. They set conventions
wherein the possibilities of emotional exchange between formal structures become
conventionalized. Indeed, the interest of the Beethoven example is the particular way in
which the structural interplay of major and minor keys is revealed as the basis of
emotional meaning in an especially clear way. For example, as noted earlier, the piano’s
entry involves simply the scale of c-minor played rapidly, three times with a pause
between the second and third statement. But the orchestral exposition has prepared us in
98
GLASBENOPEDAGOŠKI ZBORNIK, 27. zvezek
such a way that this simple formal device takes on the form of a dramatic yet, at the same
time, tentative outburst that both interrupts and complements the first subject.
Indeed, there is a wonderful and striking contrast. At the start of the movement, the
playing of the scales with a separation between each one serves, in effect, to both
introduce a presence and to ask questions of the context in which it finds itself. But, at the
end, the scales return in a climactic and continuous run over four octaves. They now assert
an acquired psychological authority.
Contextualised rightly, in other words, a simple formal device can be deeply evocative in
emotional terms. This is why music has a unique character. In it, emotion and, more
importantly, emotionally charged auditory narratives are expressed in virtual terms.
Whereas in the actuality of real life, emotions are enacted as states of persons, or are
described second-hand in purely linguistic terms, music offers a virtual expression of
them. This means that it is an image of emotional intonation and its narrative development
– one that is presented quasi-sensuously, but which is not tied to any actual emotionally
significant narrative of tones or gestures that ever existed. (Even in the case of programme
music meant to evoke some specific real life situation, how the music evokes this is open;
it cannot reproduce the emotional narratives involved in some kind of documentary way.)
When it comes to music as virtual expression or any other mode of art, what we identify
with is the possibility of experience that the work presents, and not those unknowable
personal states of the artist that were involved in its creation. In the Beethoven Piano
Concerto, what the composer is doing is not a report of his own feelings but the projection
of a range of structured emotional possibilities that develop and play out in a unique way –
just as the situations in life do. Precisely because the narrative emotional intonations of the
work as embodied in the music are not tied to any actual individual then all the
aforementioned parties can appropriate it, enjoy it, and even live it on their own terms to a
degree that other art media do not allow.
Other representational media, in contrast, tell stories about definite individuals and/or
represent them visually. Even if the individuals in question are not identified except in
schematic terms and even if they never existed in real life, they are still presented as
individuals - that is to say as beings presented as existing independently of the reader or
viewer of the work. Music, in contrast, involves expression which arises from particular
narratives of intonation that, nevertheless, are not assigned to any represented individual
either fictional or real. They represent a kind of purely imaginary possibility of
experience.
This is why one might say that, in music, the composer, performer, and listener inhabit one
another without significant restriction. The impression arises that we are actually ‘in’ the
music rather than merely encountering it as an object of auditory experience. Indeed,
whilst any artwork allows empathic identification with its creator’s style, the lack of
individual reference in the musical work allows this identification to attain a unique level
of phenomenological intimacy for the reasons just described.
99
Paul Crowther, MUSIC AS VIRTUAL EXPRESSION
It should be emphasized that this is far more than escapism. Art that is escapist, simply
allows us to dwell imaginatively in a different world, one where we merely become
‘caught up’ with what happens there. It may be that formulaic music can sometimes be like
this, but works of higher quality are different. In such cases, music’s virtual expression
involves a dimension of direction and/or control wherein narratives of emotional
possibility are not just passively consumed in escapist mode, but are embodied in a
cognitively enhanced way. Virtual expression of this kind achieves an intrinsic education
of the emotions by sensibly exemplifying some of their key cognitive aspects at a
publically accessible level.
For example, the very fact that such emotional content is embodied in an aesthetic whole
means that the narrative structure which has enabled it, and which it further refines, is
presented much more lucidly than in our normal introspective or observational emotional
experiences. To perform and listen to music is follow the development of emotion
aesthetically rather than be pressurized and controlled by its everyday occurent and
involuntary structure. What we respond to, in other words, is emotional/imaginative
narrative possibility that has been released from the controlling and/or transient conditions
under which those cognitively significant states of mind are normally experienced. In
music, the development of emotional possibility exists in a purified form.
And, in this respect, it is not only the work as such which we learn from; it is the composer
and/or performer’s style of articulating the possibility which moves us. This, of course, is
why even the evocation of negative factors such as tragedy is so often a key factor in our
aesthetic responses to music and the other arts. It is not just the sadness of it all which is
affecting, but the fact that the tragic has been revealed and made to speak its own nature
through the creative power of individual human artifice and imagination.
Two objections must be considered. The first is that the interpretation proposed here is tied
to the tonal system of western music, but much world music does not use this system, and
much advanced work in the high modern western tradition abandons tonalism –
sometimes quite radically. In respect of the first point, it is true that may scale systems
other than the tonal one can be found all over the world. However, there is no intrinsic
reason why the function of those scales should not parallel that which I have identified in
relation to western music. This is a matter for empirical research.
The point concerning non-tonal western music requires rather more elaboration. The
advent of twelve tone and note row systems offers dynamics of sound that thwart
expectations based on the tonal system. Its positive content is in the logic of how sound is
organised in the particular case. For the informed listener this structure may be of interest
in its own right. Indeed, some such works may be assimilable in the terms I have
described. Other avant-garde pieces most certainly are.
For example, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s Kontacte (1958–1960) uses aleatory effects and
phrases presented as incidents or short episodes. There are allusions to tonal structure –
but in a fragmented and acoustically ghostly form (emphasised through the sound being
100
GLASBENOPEDAGOŠKI ZBORNIK, 27. zvezek
produced by electronic devices and tapes). The remarkable thing is that much of the
material develops in a conversational way, or, on occasion as a presentation of
quasi-voices or points of view – sometimes in conflict, sometime in a kind of nervous
harmony with one another.
In a work such as this everything hangs on the timbre and rhythms of sound and the
uniqueness of their phrasings. Kontacte seems, in particular to present different ways of
imaginatively spatializing temporal duration. In some passages or episodes this serves to
make us feel at home with the imaginary environment thus created; in other passages, it
alienates us from it.
Much of Stockhausen’s work involves a combination of traditional instruments and
electronic devices. And in some of his work, elements of the tonal system are involved but
somewhat concealed within an extraordinarily complex structure Mantra of 1970 (a work
for two pianos and electronic accompaniments, notably a ring-modulator) is a case in
point. The electronic devices give the rhythms and timbres of the piano parts a kind of
uncanny penumbra. In formal terms, there are a few improvised elements, but the work is
scored – and centres on two counterpointed formulae or melodies sustained by devices
such as driving rhythms and repeated notes. Throughout the work, the two pianos seem to
come together in phrases that create a kind of disassociational whole, i.e. one which
discloses a sense of things lost, losing, fading, disappearing, fraying, or decomposing.
However, whilst these factors have a negative meaning they also involve new things
coming into being, and it is the unsettling emotional ambiguity of this coming apart into
new creation that Mantra successfully evokes.
It may be that a great deal of other avant-garde music – at the extremes of tonalism or
going beyond it – exploit this same general area of association. But each piece does this in
its own particular way. It establishes the association by engaging with the listener’s own
personal history to revivify the ambiguity in terms of things previously experienced or in
terms of imagined possibilities.
The point is, then, that even music outside the traditional tonal system, or which works at it
very limits, can evoke features bound up with aesthetic self-becoming – albeit with a
narrative structure that is much more allusive than it is descriptive.
In this discussion, then, it has been argued that the musical work projects possibilities of
experience that are created by another person or persons, but which do not require
reference to the circumstances of the work’s creation in order to be intelligible. Its
expressive features can be enjoyed on the performer’s or audience’s own terms. More
specifically, through the tonal system, music’s vocal or instrumental melodic/
harmonic/rhythmic structures parallel the way that emotional intonations of voice and
gesture (and their developments) are intelligible from a distance. This virtual expression
allows the audience to be, as it were, blended with the expressive dimension of the work in
a way that is not possible through other art media. This theory was supported by sustained
discussion of a number of examples, namely the childrens’ song Frere Jacques, Gallus’s
101
Paul Crowther, MUSIC AS VIRTUAL EXPRESSION
Musica Noster Amor (Music, Our Love), Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and
Stockhausen’s Kontacte.
The burden of argument, in all this, falls upon music’s role as a self-fulfilling education of
imagination and feeling. Without it, we lack a dimension of experience that is not
available from any other source. No matter how practically accomplished we may be in
terms of making a living, we do not fully appreciate what living actually means, without
music.
Povzetek
V razpravi je poudarjeno, da glasbeno delo omogoèa pogoje za izkušnje, ki jih je ustvarila
druga oseba ali veè oseb. Ne potrebujejo referenc o okolišèinah umetniškega ustvarjanja,
da bi bile razumljive. Njihove izrazne znaèilnosti je mogoèe doivljati ob zvoènih
predstavitvah. Natanèneje, skozi tonski sistem, vokalno ali instrumentalno glasbo,
melodiko, harmonijo, ritmiène strukture, vzporedno z emocionalno intonacijo zvoka in
izraanja (v njunem razvoju), razumljivih v razmerjih. Virtualna izraznost dovoli
poslušalcem , da se poveejo z izrazno dimenzijo dela, kar ni mono v drugih umetniških
medijih. Teorija je podprta z razpravami v številnih primerih kot v otroški pesmi Frere
Jacques, Gallusovi Musica noster amor (Glasba naša ljubezen) Beethovnovem Koncertu
za klavir št. 3 in Stockhausnovih Kontakte.
Bistvo dokazovanja se v glasbenem okviru nanaša na samouresnièevanje vzgoje
predstavljivosti in obèutenja. Brez njiju izgubljeno dimenzijo izkustva ni mogoèe
pridobiti drugod. Ni pomembno kako to dosegamo, v oblikovanju ivljenja pa
premalokrat ozavešèamo kaj je ivljenje brez glasbe.
102
GLASBENOPEDAGOŠKI ZBORNIK, 27. zvezek