Guidonian Hand

I wanted to post something I thought was cool and then saw this discussion going on about music and meaning. I’ve been reading and thinking about this lately; I’m starting to go into sociological ideas about art. So I’ll add a couple of thoughts.

Well, I think one of the problems in discussing music and meaning is that the subject (the listener) and the object (the work) are often separated. If the music is not experienced by an individual, it can be said not to exist for him/her. It would be interesting to think about a piece of music very visible in a certain society that is not experienced by some person in that society. What would that dichotomy produce? I know that since I am unfamiliar with many of the musics you guys have grown up with here in the USA, I often feel no emotional or intellectual connection when those musics are discussed in a group. I feel I am “missing out” on something.

Since I have been living with Geoff, I have listened to a lot of hip hop, and he has been nice enough to explain to me what goes on in the music. Before coming to the US, hip hop was cool beats and video clips on tv. Now it is something more, and it isn’t necessarily political or social or anything of the sort. I have experienced hip hop in a culture where  it is practiced. I have a way of understanding, of thinking about the music through labels, artist names, city names, club names. I guess it helped that the sounds interest me, but without knowledge (and I don’t mean academic labels and models) I would have tin ears – the music would be like a fascinating object I look at from a distance in a museum.

The first time, I watched Jon Stewart, I thought he was stupid. The way the person framed his work didn’t help (“it’s fake news”); his show is one of my favorites, three years later! Same reasons why that happened: watching it, understanding it, reading Stewart, talking to people about him, noticing how serious this guy is (or usually is) behind all the joking.

Another idea in an article I was reading about children’s music education is how music tends to provoke different reactions in people, some not related to music: beliefs, ideas, images. So, yes the music itself has no meaning, but that is of no use to me, like talking about a live human being only made up of a skeleton. John Dewey wrote that written/spoken language tends to dominate in society while itself not able to fully articulate other forms of perception. It is sometimes difficult to imagine how we perceive the world without putting linguistic labels on these stimuli because many of us have not been educated to do so. Nattiez’s quote from Geoff’s post says it better than I. Although I wonder what Geoff means when he writes that meaning is arbitrary in music. If it is that the same music has different meanings to different people, I agree. But I could counter and say that the musical relationships – which are meaningful because they involve agreement and disagreement, consonance and dissonance – in a fugue are intentional if I limit myself to observing the music.

Even the Threnody example… funny that you mentioned it Sam, because I remember thinking that there was no relationship to Hiroshima whatsoever the first time I heard it. Then I just convinced myself that it must have some emotional connection. On the other hand, what if it were called “A Sunny Afternoon in San Fransisco?” It wouldn’t make sense to me. It would be a joke or a comment. So there must be some direct connection between the title and the music in this case. I agree with Matt when he says that an evocative title could provide a reference (or entry) point for the listener, but I sometimes think titles coerce people into going a certain direction. So Beethoven’s 6th is all about storms and pastures because it is the Pastoral (while the first movement is an excellent example of abstract music derived from few motifs exposed at the start). On a little tangent, I have always thought if it would be possible to condition people to experience “happy” when exposed to music in a minor key.

Which brings in the article I am reading today. It mentions this anthropological theory by Gell that looks at art as an integral part of social relations. For example, when art is given as a gift, it anticipates a certain change in a social relationship, but at the same time, the object is changed in the process. Gell gives the example of a picture of a nude woman that was slashed by a feminist. Whatever the initial impetus that led to it’s painting, it’s “meaning” or “status,” what provoked her reaction, was different to the slasher. A less graphic example of how an artwork is changed is seen in Wagner’s work, used – or hijacked – by Hitler as an expression of anti-semitism. (I haven’t heard the operas, but Daniel Barenboim suggests that the Ring Cycle has no anti-semitism in it. Apparently, Wagner’s writings expose his anti-semitic views.) Even Stravinsky was dialoguing with himself and those around him at the time. True, minor chord does not equal teary face, but Stravinsky understood the world, fulfilled himself, expressed himself in musical terms. I don’t know if musical knowledge has an inherent utilitarian use, but it is a way of being and experiencing one’s surroundings. Through this process, objects become means to adapt and harmonize with the world; they acquire meaning. And so much for the myth of “original” meaning. No one can really know that. No one today can know what made Dave write his sax quartet. Heck, he might probably not know all the reasons behind his desire to write it!

There is another interesting example in the article about Gell’s theory used in today’s digital world. Hip hop beats that are popular in the US take months to get to Asia. When DJs in Asia become aware of them, they use them for the purposes of their societies, which is apparently why Asian hip hop is different. There is another article posted on Dr. Largey’s billboard about rap in China, how it adapts as an underground movement, how artists strive to use Chinese words and proverbs instead of English, how the groups stay under the government radar.

In Lebanon, I found out that Jon Stewart airs on cable tv every evening. My family watches him sometime. I wonder what it means to them? I remember watching it with my sister one night. I found out that I missed the US and hadn’t noticed how I missed the show itself after not having watched TV for a while. I knew something about the show, through experience, that my family couldn’t know. I felt that I somehow belonged to the culture of the show more than they do, even though they laughed along with Stewart. Even if the show is the same, what it means to an American, an immigrant, and a Lebanese who has never been to the US varies. And I am pretty sure that an Arabic adaptation of the show’s idea would feel different. That is how art is more visibly transformed as it is received by different people.

Now, what about older, traditional works? How are they changed with time? I’m thinking of one example, the use of period vs. modern instruments in performance and recording. Definitely, there is an ideology behind period-instrument performances, that of reproducing an “original” sound. (Heck, I could get picky even with this: how was it recorded, what venue, how many audience members, what were the acoustics like, what were the audience members wearing, what were they thinking about.) The scores are the same – or are they with all this stuff about Urtext vs. publisher/performer editions – but that doesn’t mean anything. Remember when I posted the stuff around school during my first year here, pissed off at classical musicians? I later watched the documentary about the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra and the system behind it. Criticize them all you want, but I remember thinking that I’d never post anything like that in Venezuela (nor in EL anymore. I’ve softened up a bit since). Beethoven means something different for these people there that makes them alive!

I guess what I am saying in a nutshell is that music is a part of culture and man’s activities.