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Varèse: The Liberation of Sound
From Perspectives on New Music
New Instruments and New Music

Edgard Varèse, 1936

When new instruments will allow me to write music as I conceive it, taking the place of the linear counterpoint, the movement of sound-masses, of shifting planes, will be clearly perceived. When these sound-masses collide the phenomena of penetration or repulsion will seem to occur. Certain transmutations taking place on certain planes will seem to be projected onto other planes, moving at different speeds and at different angles. There will no longer be the old conception of melody or interplay of melodies. The entire work will be a melodic totality. The entire work will flow as a river flows.

Today with the technical means that exist and are easily adaptable, the differentiation of the various masses and different planes as these beams of sound, could be made discernible to the listener by means of certain acoustical arrangements. Moreover, such an acoustical arrangement would permit the delimitation of what I call Zones of Intensities. These zones would be differentiated by various timbres or colors and different loudnesses. Through such a physical process these zones would appear of different colors and of different magnitude in different perspectives for our perception. The role of color or timbre would be completely changed from being incidental, anecdotal, sensual or picturesque, it would become an agent of delineation like the different colors on a map separating different areas, and an integral part of form. These zones would be felt as isolated, and the hitherto unobtainable non-blending (or at least the sensation of non-blending) would become possible.

In the moving masses you would be conscious of their transmutations when they pass over different layers, when they penetrate certain opacities, or are dilated in certain rarefactions. Moreover, the new musical apparatus I envisage, able to emit sounds of any number of frequencies, will extend the limits of the lowest and highest registers, hence new organizations of the vertical resultants: chords, their arrangements, their spacings, that is, their oxygenation. Not only will the harmonic possibilities of the overtones be revealed in all their splendor but the use of certain interferences created by the partials will represent an appreciable contribution. The never before thought of use of the inferior resultants and of the differential and additional sounds may also be expected. An entirely new magic of sound!

I am sure that the time will come when the composer, after he has graphically realized his score, will see this score automatically put on a machine which will faithfully transmit the musical content to the listener. As frequencies and new rhythms will have to be indicated on the score, our actual notation will be inadequate. The new notation will probably be seismographic. And here it is curious to note that at the beginning of two eras, the Mediaeval primitive and our own primitive era (for we are at a new primitive stage in music today) we are faced with an identical problem: the problem of finding graphic symbols for the transposition of the composer’s thought into sound. At a distance of more than a thousand years we have this analogy: our still primitive electrical instruments find it necessary to abandon staff notation and to use a kind of seismographic writing much like the early ideographic writing originally used for the voice before the development of staff notation. Formerly the curves of the musical line indicated the melodic fluctuations of the voice, today the machine-instrument requires precise design indications.

Music as an Art-science

And here are the advantages I anticipate from such a machine: liberation from the arbitrary, paralyzing tempered system; the possibility of obtaining any number of cycles or if still desired, subdivisions of the octave, consequently the formation of any desired scale; unsuspected range in low and high registers; new harmonic splendors obtainable from the use of sub-harmonic combinations now impossible; the possibility of obtaining any differentiation of timbre, of sound-combinations; new dynamics far beyond the present human-powered orchestra; a sense of sound-projection in space by means of the emission of sound in any part or in many parts of the hall as may be required by the score; cross rhythms unrelated to each other, treated simultaneously, or to use the old word, “contrapuntally” (since the machine would be able to beat any number of desired notes, any subdivision of them, omission or fraction of them) – all these in a given unit of measure or time which is humanly impossible to attain.

Rhythm, Form and Content

My fight for the liberation of sound and for my right to make music with any sound and all sounds has sometimes been construed as a desire to disparage and even to discard the great music of the past. But that is where my roots are. No matter how original, how different a composer may seem, he has only grafted a little bit of himself on the old plant. But this he should be allowed to do without being accused of wanting to kill the plant. He only wants to produce a new flower. It does not matter if at first it seems to some people more like a cactus than a rose. Many of the old masters are my intimate friends – all are respected colleagues. None of them are dead saints – in fact none of them are dead – and the rules they made for themselves are not sacrosanct and are not everlasting laws. Listening to music by Perotin, Machaut, Monteverdi, Bach, or Beethoven we are conscious of living substances; they are “alive in the present.” But music written in the manner of another century is the result of culture and, desirable and comfortable as culture may be, an artist should not lie down in it. The best bit of criticism André Gide ever wrote was this confession, which must have been wrung from him by self-torture: “When I read Rimbaud or the Sixth Song of Maldorer, I am ashamed of my own works and everything that is only the result of culture.”

Because for so many years I crusaded for new instruments with what may have seemed fanatical zeal, I have been accused of desiring nothing less than the destruction of all musical instruments and even of all performers. This is, to say the least, an exaggeration. Our new liberating medium – the electronic – is not meant to replace the old musical instruments which composers, including myself, will continue to use. Electronics is an additive, not a destructive factor in the art and science of music. It is because new instruments have been constantly added to the old ones that Western music has such a rich and varied patrimony.

Grateful as we must be for the new medium, we should not expect miracles from machines. The machine can give out only what we put into it. The musical principles remain the same whether a composer writes for orchestra or tape. Rhythm and Form are still his most important problems and the two elements in much most generally misunderstood.

Rhythm is too often confused with metrics. Cadence or the regular succession of beats and accents has little to do with the rhythm of a composition. Rhythm is the element in music that gives life to the work and holds it together. It is the element of stability, the generator of form. In my own works, for instance, rhythm derives from the simultaneous interplay of unrelated elements that intervene at calculated, but not regular time lapses. This corresponds more nearly to the definition of rhythm in physics and philosophy as “a succession of alternate and opposite or correlative states.”

As for form, Busoni once wrote: “is it not singular to demand of a composer originality in all things and to forbid it as regards form? No wonder that if he is original he is accused of formlessness.”

The misunderstanding has come from thinking of form as a point of departure, a pattern to be followed, a mold to be filled. Form is a result – the result of a process. Each of my works discovers its own form, I could never have fitted them into any of the historical containers. If you want to fill a rigid box of a definite shape, you must have something to put into it that is the same shape and size or that is elastic or soft enough to be made to fit in. But if you try to force into it something of a different shape and harder substance, even if its volume and size are the same, it will break the box. My music cannot be made to fit into any of the traditional music boxes.

Conceiving musical form as a resultant – the result of a process, I was struck what seems to me an analogy between the formation of my compositions and the phenomenon of crystallization. Let me quote the crystallographic description given me by Nathaniel Arbiter, professor of mineralogy at Columbia University:

“The crystal is characterized by both a definite external forma in a definite internal structure. The internal structure is based on the unit of crystal which is the smallest grouping of the atoms that has the order and composition of the substance. The extension of the unit into space forms the whole crystal. But in spite of the relatively limited variety of internal structures, the external forms of crystals are limitless.”

Then Mr. Arbiter added in his own words: “Crystal form itself is a resultant (the very word I have always used in reference to musical form) rather than a primary attribute. Crystal form is the consequence of the interaction of attractive and repulsive forces and the ordered packing of the atom.”

This, I believe, suggests better than any explanation I could give about the way my works are formed. There is an idea, the basis of an internal structure, expanded and split into different shapes or groups of sound constantly changing in shape, directions, and speed, attracted and repulsed by various forces. The form of the work is the consequence of this interaction. Possible musical forms are as limitless as the exterior forms of crystals.

Connected with this contentious subject of form in music is the really futile question of the difference between form and content. There is no difference. Form and content are one. Take away form, and there is no content, and if there is no content there is only a rearrangement of musical patterns, but no form. Some people go so far as to suppose that the content of what is called program music is the subject described. This subject is only the ostensible motive I have spoken of, which in program music the composer chooses to reveal. The content is still only music. The same senseless bickering goes on over style and content in poetry. We could very well transfer to the question of music what Samuel Beckett has said of Proust: “For Proust the quality of language is more important than any system of ethics or esthetics. Indeed he makes no attempt to dissociate form from content. The one is the concretion of the other – the revelation of a world.” To reveal a new world is the function of creation in all the arts, but the act of creation defies analysis. A composer knows about as little as anyone else about where the substance of his work comes from.

As an epigraph to his book, Busoni uses this verse from a poem by the Danish poet, Oelenschläger:

“What seek you? Say! And what do you expect?
I know not what; the Unknown I would have!
What’s known to me is endless; I would go
Beyond the known: The last word still is wanting.”
And so it is for any artist.

The Electronic Medium

First of all I should like you to consider what I believe is the best definition of music, because it is all-inclusive: “the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound,” as proposed by Hoëne Wronsky. If you think about it you will realize that, unlike most dictionary definitions which make use of such subjective terms as beauty, feeling, etc., it covers all music, Eastern or Western, past or present, including the music of our new electronic medium. Although this new music is being gradually accepted, there are still people who, while admitting that it is “interesting,” say, “but is it music?” It is a question I am only too familiar with. Until quite recently I used to hear it so often in regard to my own works, that, as far back as the twenties, I decided to call my music “organized sound” and myself, not a musician, but “a worker in rhythms, frequencies, and intensities.” Indeed, to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all what is music but organized noises? And a composer, like all artists, is an organizer of disparate elements. Subjectively, noise is any sound one doesn’t like.

Our new medium has brought to composers almost endless possibilities of expression, and opened up for them the whole mysterious world of sound. For instance, I have always felt the need of a kind of continuous flowing curve that instruments could not give me. That is why I used sirens in several of my works. Today such effects are easily obtainable by electronic means. In this connection it is curious to note that it is this lack of flow that seems to disturb Eastern musicians in our Western music. To their ears it does not glide, sounds jerky, composed of edges of intervals and holes and, as an Indian pupil of mine expressed it, “jumping like a bird from branch to branch.” To them apparently our Western music seems to sound much as it sounds to us when a record is played backward. But playing a Hindu record of a melodic vocalization backward, I found that it had the same smooth flow as when played normally, scarcely altered at all.

The electronic medium is also adding an unbelievable variety of new timbres to our musical store, but most important of all, it has freed music from the tempered system, which has prevented music from keeping pace with the other arts and with science. Composers are now able, as never before, to satisfy the dictates of that inner ear of the imagination. They are also lucky so far in not being hampered by esthetic codification – at least not yet! But I am afraid it will not be long before some musical mortician begins embalming electronic music in rules.

We should also remember that no machine is a wizard, as we are beginning to think, and we must not expect our electronic devices to compose for us. Good music and bad music will be composed by electronic means, just as good and bad music have been composed for instruments. The computing machine is a marvelous invention and seems almost superhuman. But, in reality, it is as limited as the mind of the individual who feeds it material. Like the computer, the machines we use for making music can only give back what we put into them. But, considering the fact that our electronic devices were never meant for making music, but for the sole purpose of measuring and analyzing sound, it is remarkable that what has already been achieved as musically valid. They are still somewhat unwieldy and time-consuming and not entirely satisfactory as an art-medium. But this new art is still in its infancy, and I hope and firmly believe, now that composers and physicists are at least working together, and music is again linked with science, as it was in the Middle Ages, that new and more musically efficient devices will be invented.

In the Jean-Luc Godard movie Weekend, there’s a scene in which a character is playing piano (Mozart, I believe), and at one point he says something to the effective of, “Modern classical music is the biggest practical joke to be played on the public in the history of Western art.” Something like that. Anyway, I wonder if Godard, a pretentious modernist of sorts in his own right, had read Babbitt’s article; I bet he had. Finally, I’ll end this over-long preface by pointing out that if read from the right angle, this article is funny, like a lampoon of a mid-20th century modernist manifesto:

“Who Cares if You Listen?”

Milton Babbitt, High Fidelity (Feb. 1958)

This article might have been entitled “The Composer as Specialist” or, alternatively, and perhaps less contentiously, “The Composer as Anachronism.” For I am concerned with stating an attitude towards the indisputable facts of the status and condition of the composer of what we will, for the moment, designate as “serious,” “advanced,” contemporary music. This composer expends an enormous amount of time and energy- and, usually, considerable money- on the creation of a commodity which has little, no, or negative commodity value. e is, in essence, a “vanity” composer. The general public is largely unaware of and uninterested in his music. he majority of performers shun it and resent it. Consequently, the music is little performed, and then primarily at poorly attended concerts before an audience consisting in the main of fellow ‘professionals’. t best, the music would appear to be for, of, and by specialists.

Towards this condition of musical and societal “isolation,” a variety of attitudes has been expressed, usually with the purpose of assigning blame, often to the music itself, occasionally to critics or performers, and very occasionally to the public. But to assign blame is to imply that this isolation is unnecessary and undesirable. t is my contention that, on the contrary, this condition is not only inevitable, but potentially advantageous for the composer and his music. From my point of view, the composer would do well to consider means of realizing, consolidating, and extending the advantages.

The unprecedented divergence between contemporary serious music and its listeners, on the one hand, and traditional music and its following, on the other, is not accidental and- most probably- not transitory. Rather, it is a result of a half-century of revolution in musical thought, a revolution whose nature and consequences can be compared only with, and in many respects are closely analogous to, those of the mid-nineteenth-century evolution in theoretical physics The immediate and profound effect has been the necessity of the informed musician to reexamine and probe the very foundations of his art. He has been obliged to recognize the possibility, and actuality, of alternatives to what were once regarded as musical absolutes. He lives no longer in a unitary musical universe of “common practice,” but in a variety of universes of diverse practice.

This fall from musical innocence is, understandably, as disquieting to some as it is challenging to others, but in any event the process is irreversible; and the music that reflects the full impact of this revolution is, in many significant respects, a truly “new” music, apart from the often highly sophisticated and complex constructive methods of any one composition or group of compositions, the very minimal properties characterizing this body of music are the sources of its “difficulty,” “unintelligibility,” and- isolation. In indicating the most general of these properties, I shall make reference to no specific works, since I wish to avoid the independent issue of evaluation. The reader is at liberty to supply his own instances; if he cannot (and, granted the condition under discussion, this is a very real possibility) let him be assured that such music does exist.

First. This music employs a tonal vocabulary which is more “efficient” than that of the music of the past, or its derivatives. This is not necessarily a virtue in itself, but it does make possible a greatly increased number or pitch simultaneities, successions, and relationships. This increase in efficiency necessarily reduces the “redundancy” of the language, and as a result the intelligible communication of the work demands increased accuracy from the transmitter (the performer) and activity from the receiver (the listener). Incidentally, it is this circumstance, among many others, that has created the need for purely electronic media of “performance.” More importantly for us, it makes ever heavier demands upon the training of the listener’s perceptual capacities.

Second. Along with this increase of meaningful pitch materials, the number of functions associated with each component of the musical event also has been multiplied. In the simplest possible terms. Each such “atomic” event is located in a five-dimensional musical space determined by pitch-class, register, dynamic, duration, and timbre. These five components not only together define the single event, but, in the course of a work, the successive values of each component create an individually coherent structure, frequently in parallel with the corresponding structures created by each of the other components. Inability to perceive and remember precisely the values of any of these components results in a dislocation of the event in the work’s musical space, an alternation of its relation to a other events in the work, and-thus-a falsification of the composition’s total structure. For example, an incorrectly performed or perceived dynamic value results in destruction of the work’s dynamic pattern, but also in false identification of other components of the event (of which this dynamic value is a part) with corresponding components of other events so creating incorrect pitch, registral, timbral, and durational associations. It is this high degree of “determinancy” that most strikingly differentiates such music from, for example, a popular song. A popular song is only very partially determined, since it would appear to retain its germane characteristics under considerable alteration of register, rhythmic texture, dynamics, harmonic structure, timbre, and other qualities.

The preliminary differentiation of musical categories by means of this reasonable and usable criterion of “degree of determinacy” offends those who take it to be a definition of qualitative categories, which-of course-it need not always be. Curiously, their demurrers usually take the familiar form of some such “democratic” counterdefinition as: “There is no such thing as ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ music.” There is only ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music.” As a public service, let me offer those who still patiently await the revelation of the criteria of Absolute Good an alternative criterion which possesses, at least, the virtue of immediate and irrefutable applicability: “There is no such thing as ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ music. There is only music whose title begins with the letter ‘X,’ and music whose title does not.”

Third, musical compositions of the kind under discussion possess a high degree of contextuality and autonomy. That is, the structural characteristics of a given work are less representative of a general class of characteristics than they are unique to the individual work itself. Particularly, principles of relatedness, upon which depends immediate coherence of continuity, are more likely to evolve in the course of the work than to be derived from generalized assumptions. Here again greater and new demands are made upon the perceptual and conceptual abilities of the listener.

Fourth, and finally. Although in many fundamental respects this music is “new,” it often also represents a vast extension of the methods of other musics, derived from a considered and extensive knowledge of their dynamic principles. For, concomitant with the “revolution in music,” perhaps even an integral aspect thereof, has been the development of analytical theory, concerned with the systematic formulation of such principles to the end of greater efficiency, economy, and understanding. Compositions so rooted necessarily ask comparable knowledge and experience from the listener. Like all communication, this music presupposes a suitably equipped receptor. am aware that “tradition” has it that the lay listener, by virtue of some undefined, transcendental faculty, always is able to arrive at a musical judgment absolute in its wisdom if not always permanent in its validity. I regret my inability to accord this declaration of faith the respect due its advanced age.

Deviation from this tradition is bound to dismiss the contemporary music of which I have been talking into “isolation.” Nor do I see how or why the situation should be otherwise. Why should the layman be other than bored and puzzled by what he is unable to understand, music or anything else? It is only the translation of this boredom and puzzlement into resentment and denunciation that seems to me indefensible. After all, the public does have its own music, its ubiquitous music: music to eat by, to read by, to dance by, and to be impressed by. Why refuse to recognize the possibility that contemporary music has reached a stage long since attained by other forms of activity? The time has passed when the normally well-educated man without special preparation could understand the most advanced work in, for example, mathematics, philosophy, and physics. Advanced music, to the extent that it reflects the knowledge and originality of the informed composer, scarcely can be expected to appear more intelligible than these arts and sciences to the person whose musical education usually has been even less extensive than his background in other fields. But to this, a double standard is invoked, with the words music is music,” implying also that “music is just music.” Why not, then, equate the activities of the radio repairman with those of the theoretical physicist, on the basis of the dictum that “physics is physics.” It is not difficult to find statements like the following, from the New York Times of September 8, 1 957: “The scientific level of the conference is so high… that there are in the world only 120 mathematicians specializing in the field who could contribute.” Specialized music on the other hand, far from signifying “height” of musical level, has been charged with “decadence,” even as evidence of an insidious “conspiracy.”

It often has been remarked that only in politics and the “arts” does the layman regard himself as an expert, with the right to have his opinion heard. In the realm of politics he knows that this right, in the form of a vote, is guaranteed by fiat. Comparably, in the realm of public music, the concertgoer is secure in the knowledge that the amenities of concert going protect his firmly stated “I didn’t like it” from further scrutiny. Imagine, if you can, a layman chancing upon a lecture on “Pointwise Periodic Homeomorphisms.” At the conclusion, he announces: “I didn’t like it,” Social conventions being what they are in such circles, someone might dare inquire: “Why not?” Under duress, our layman discloses precise reasons for his failure to enjoy himself; he found the hall chilly, the lecturer’s voice unpleasant, and he was suffering the digestive aftermath of a poor dinner. His interlocutor understandably disqualifies these reasons as irrelevant to the content and value of the lecture, and the development of mathematics is left undisturbed. If the concertgoer is at all versed in the ways of musical lifesmanship, he also will offer reasons for his “I didn’t like it” – in the form of assertions that the work in question is “inexpressive,” “undramatic,” “lacking in poetry,” etc., etc., tapping that store of vacuous equivalents hallowed by time for: “I don’t like it, and I cannot or will not state why.” The concertgoer’s critical authority is established beyond the possibility of further inquiry. Certainly he is not responsible for the circumstance that musical discourse is a never-never land of semantic confusion, the last resting place of all those verbal and formal fallacies, those hoary dualisms that have been banished from rational discourse Perhaps he has read, in a widely consulted and respected book on the history of music, the following: “to call him (Tchaikovsky) the ‘modern Russian Beethoven’ is footless, Beethoven being patently neither modern nor Russian…” Or, the following, by an eminent “nonanalytic” philosopher: “The music of Lourie’ is an ontological music… It is born in the singular roots of being, the nearest possible juncture of the soul and the spirit…” How unexceptionable the verbal peccadilloes of the average concertgoer appear beside these masterful models. Or, perhaps, in search of “real” authority, he has acquired his critical vocabulary from the pronouncements of officially “eminent” composers, whose eminence, in turn, is founded largely upon just such assertions as the concertgoer has learned to regurgitate. This cycle is of slight moment in a world where circularity is one of the norms of criticism. Composers (and performers), wittingly or unwittingly assuming the character of “talented children” and “inspired idiots” generally ascribed to them, are singularly adept at the conversion of personal tastes into general principles. Music they do not like is “not music,” composers whose music they do not like are “not composers

In search of what to think and how to say it, the layman may turn to newspapers and magazines. Here he finds conclusive evidence for the proposition that “music is music.” The science editor of such publications contents himself with straightforward reporting, usually news of the “factual” sciences; books and articles not intended for popular consumption are not reviewed. Whatever the reason, such matters are left to professional journals. The music critic admits no comparable differentiation. We may feel, with some justice, that music which presents itself in the market place of the concert hall automatically offers itself to public approval or disapproval. We may feel, again with some justice, that to omit the expected criticism of the “advanced” work would be to do the composer an injustice in his assumed quest for, if nothing else, public notice and “professional recognition.” The critic, at least to this extent, is himself a victim of the leveling of categories.

Here, then, are some of the factors determining the climate of the public world of music. Perhaps we should not have overlooked those pockets of “power” where prizes, awards, and commissions are dispensed, where music is adjudged guilty, not only without the right to be confronted by its accuser, but without the right to be confronted by the accusations. Or those well-meaning souls who exhort the public “just to listen to more contemporary music,” apparently on the theory that familiarity breeds passive acceptance. Or those, often the same well-meaning souls, who remind the composer of his “obligation to the public,” while the public’s obligation to the composer is fulfilled, manifestly, by mere physical presence in the concert hall or before loudspeaker or- more authoritatively- by committing to memory the numbers of phonograph and amplifier models. Or the intricate social world within this musical world where the salon becomes bazaar, and music itself becomes an ingredient of verbal canapés for cocktail conversation.

I say all this not to present a picture of a virtuous music in a sinful world, but to point up the problems of a special music in an alien and inapposite world. And so, I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition. By so doing, the separation between the domains would be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories, and the composer would be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism

But how, it may be asked, will this serve to secure the means of survival or the composer and his music? One answer is that after all such a private life is what the university provides the scholar and the scientist. It is only proper that the university, which-significantly-has provided so many contemporary composers with their professional training and general education, should provide a home for the “complex,” “difficult,” and “problematical” in music. Indeed, the process has begun; and if it appears to proceed too slowly, I take consolation in the knowledge that in this respect, too, music seems to be in historically retarded parallel with now sacrosanct fields of endeavor. In E. T. Bell’s Men of Mathematics, we read: “In the eighteenth century the universities were not the principal centers of research in Europe. hey might have become such sooner than they did but for the classical tradition and its understandable hostility to science. Mathematics was close enough to antiquity to be respectable, but physics, being more recent, was suspect. Further, a mathematician in a university of the time would have been expected to put much of his effort on elementary teaching; his research, if any, would have been an unprofitable luxury…” A simple substitution of “musical composition” for “research,” of “academic” for “classical,” of “music” for “physics,” and of “composer” for “mathematician,” provides a strikingly accurate picture of the current situation. And as long as the confusion I have described continues to exist, how can the university and its community assume other than that the composer welcomes and courts public competition with the historically certified products of the past, and the commercially certified products of the present?

Perhaps for the same reason, the various institutes of advanced research and the large majority of foundations have disregarded this music’s need for means of survival. I do not wish to appear to obscure the obvious differences between musical composition and scholarly research, although it can be contended that these differences are no more fundamental than the differences among the various fields of study. I do question whether these differences, by their nature, justify the denial to music’s development of assistance granted these other fields. Immediate “practical” applicability (which may be said to have its musical analogue in “immediate extensibility of a compositional technique”) is certainly not a necessary condition for the support of scientific research. And if it be contended that such research is so supported because in the past it has yielded eventual applications, one can counter with, for example, the music of Anton Webern, which during the composer’s lifetime was regarded (to the very limited extent that it was regarded at all) as the ultimate in hermetic, specialized, and idiosyncratic composition; today, some dozen years after the composer’s death, his complete works have been recorded by a major record company, primarily- I suspect- as a result of the enormous influence this music has had on the postwar, nonpopular, musical world. I doubt that scientific research is any more secure against predictions of ultimate significance than is musical composition. Finally, if it be contended that research, even in its least “practical” phases, contributes to the sum of knowledge in the particular realm, what possibly can contribute more to our knowledge of music than a genuinely original composition?

Granting to music the position accorded other arts and sciences promises the sole substantial means of survival for the music I have been describing. Admittedly, if this music is not supported, the whistling repertory of the man in the street will be little affected, the concert-going activity of the conspicuous consumer of musical culture will be little disturbed. But music will cease to evolve, and, in that important sense, will cease to live.

The most debated subject among philosophers of music is the nature of our emotional experience of music. At the heart of this debate is the question of what sort of meaning music can and does communicate to the listener. Most philosophers agree that in order to have an emotional experience of music, there must be some kind of understanding on the part of the listener, and for there to be understanding, there must be meaning. In his highly influential book, Emotion and Meaning in Music, philosopher and composer Leonard B. Meyer describes the two major points of view in this regard as “absolutism” and “referentialism.” [1]

 It is the view of the absolutists that music only communicates meaning within the context of the music itself, and that such meaning does not contribute to an emotional experience in the listener. That is, the relationships of the musical elements correspond to an established system, such as Western music theory, and it is these relationships that mean something to the listener, but any emotional experience would come from something outside of the music, such as a conditioned response (e.g., nostalgia). The absolutists also argue that extramusical meaning in music would typically come from program material (such as a story meant to be read in conjunction with listening to the music) or sung text (which is why it is generally program and text-free music that is discussed when considering the question of meaning). Referentialists, however, argue that, in addition to musical meaning, music also “communicates meanings which in some way refers to the extramusical world of concepts, actions, emotional states, and character.” [2]

 One of the primary aims of Meyer’s book is to find a middle ground between these points of view by showing that the relationships between the musical elements can and do express a kind of meaning that results in an emotional experience in the listener. He points out that when a listener is familiar with a certain style of music, there are expectations of how musical elements will relate to one another. The anticipation of the fulfillment of those expectations creates suspense, which skilled composers play with in order to evoke different kinds of emotions in the listener. In this way, the drama and interplay that happens within the music itself reflects the sort of drama that occurs in life. This may seem closer to the referentialist point of view than the absolutist, but it is in fact a combination of the two because the referentialists tend to view the extramusical references in the music to be abstract and naturally inherent to the music; Meyer makes it clear that familiarity with the kind of music being listened to is important in order to develop expectations of what that style of music would typically do.

Meyer’s work has been very influential over the last 60 years. However, he himself was also influenced by contemporaries in his field. The most notable of these is perhaps Susanne Langer, who proposed a reason/emotion dualism in our experience of music. Meyer and others since have sought to reduce this dualism to a single experience. One of the more successful recent examples is Felicia Kruse’s (Meyer-influenced) article “Emotion in Musical Meaning: A Peircean Solution to Langer’s Dualism.” By way of theories of Charles S. Peirce, who developed a concept in which we are argued to interpret musical meaning through feeling, Kruse attempts to eliminate the dualistic experience in Langer’s theory in favor of a monistic one. The essential premise upon which Kruse builds her argument is stated as follows: “The fact that experience is irreducibly temporal guarantees that it is a semiotic process.” [3] In other words, because music relies on a series of pieces of information (i.e., musical elements) being relayed over time, there must be an understanding of how one musical element relates to the next, as well as each to the larger whole, which ultimately results in a meaningful narrative (otherwise music would just be a random collection of isolated, unrelated sound events).

Despite the prevalent influence of the likes of Meyer and Langer, however, most current philosophers fall into one view or the other in terms of whether music can impart the sort of meaning that is necessary to have an emotional experience of music per se. Two of the most widely recognized thinkers working in the field today are Stephen Davies (professor and Deputy Department Head at The University of Aukland) and Peter Kivy (Rutgers Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy). Davies argues that emotion is an inherent property of music, and that the emotions present in music evoke an experience of those same emotions in the listener. Kivy, however, argues that, although there are emotional properties in music, the listener’s emotional experience of music does not involve “garden-variety emotions such as happy, melancholy, angry, and the like.” [4] Instead, argues Kivy, emotional responses to music are a particular kind of response to the aesthetic beauty of the music itself, which we sometimes mistake for garden-variety emotions. Or, we mistakenly attribute a conditioned response to music, such as when a song triggers a sad memory.

The arguments to which I am the most sympathetic are those presented by Davies in his book Musical Meaning and Expression. Davies points out that there is the experience of sadness (to use one emotion as an example) on one hand, and the appearance of sadness on the other. One example he uses for the appearance of sadness is the face of a St. Bernard, which, based on human ideas of sadness, appears to be sad. The same is true in music, says Davies. To experience music that sounds sad can create a secondary kind of sadness in the listener that, although not genuine sadness, is a gradient of actual sadness. I’ll point out here that to recognize that music sounds or is sad does not necessarily mean that one is actually having a profound experience of the music (that is, enjoying it to a great degree). It is possible to recognize that a minor chord, for example, sounds sad, without actually feeling much sadness. However, if one is subjected to hours of hearing nothing but a string of minor chords, one might start to fall into a gloomy mood. Davies, in fact, uses a similar example, pointing out that the sight of a tragic mask may not make one sad, but to work in a tragic mask factory would eventually cause the melancholy tendency of the mask to affect one’s mood.

Kivy refutes Davies’ mask theory, pointing out that it is a far from normal circumstance to imagine occurring, and that the analogous situation in music would be to expose oneself to the same amount of melancholy music, which, claims Kivy, nobody would ever do (that is, no one would ever choose to submit oneself to such an unpleasant experience). All in all, says Kivy, people subjected to normal doses of melancholy music (such as at a single concert) do not become depressed. While what Kivy is saying is largely true, it does not negate Davies’ theory of appearance. Davies does not suggest that a single concert of melancholy music would leave one depressed. What he suggests is that it does cause a minor form of sadness, which he emphasizes by pointing out that abnormally large doses would cause a more drastic form of sadness.

One of Davies’ most convincing arguments is that music can have intentional, arbitrary meaning, generally based on convention, but also based on conditioning. Meaning based on convention refers most notably to intentionally referring to an extramusical element within a strictly (non-programmatic) musical context. Davies uses the example of J.S. Bach using his initials as the basis for a motif in the The Art of Fugue. Regarding conditioned meaning, as I pointed out earlier, many philosophers discredit the idea that an emotional response to music as the result of conditioning is a result of the music itself. Davies points out that salivating at the sound of a bell in an orchestral score is just as meaningful as salivating at the sound of a dinner bell in an extramusical context. I find this to be a particularly important point. It is my view that it is unfair to remove music from all contexts that would give it meaning in order to prove that music does not have meaning. If removed from the context of the English language, the word “help” also no longer has meaning in the way we think of it, but that does not prove that the meaning it has within the context of the English language is invalid or nonexistent.

This idea of context is something that Davies relies on quite a bit in his theories. Writes Davies, “An appreciation of musical history is more directly pertinent to an understanding of individual works than is mastery of technical vocabulary.” [5] I agree with this idea in general, though would qualify what is meant by the word “appreciation.” I don’t necessarily have to have knowledge of music history in order to have an understanding of how a piece of music (including a current pop song) fits into the greater context of a stylistic idiom. However, familiarity with music from earlier eras within an existing style will lend itself to a greater or lesser enjoyment of an individual work. For example, if a current band were to be heavily influenced by the 1960s band Pink Floyd, fans of the current band, upon discovering Pink Floyd for the first time, might gain a greater appreciation of the meaning behind the music of the current band. This scenario might lead to disappointment or greater affinity for the current band, depending on the extent to which the band has added their own innovations to those elements which were borrowed from Pink Floyd.

Western classical music is, in general, a good example of the role of familiarity in one’s appreciation of music, partly because of its inexhaustible scope of types. That is, the work of Thomas Tallis (c. 1505 – 1585) has very little in common with the work of Pierre Boulez (1925 – ), however they are broadly put into the same category of music based on the tradition from which they arise. An understanding of Tallis, a British liturgical composer, would not seem to lend appreciation to the work of 20^th century avant-garde French composer Boulez. Yet, it does seem that having a familiarity with Tallis and other composers in the line that precedes Boulez does in fact make it possible to have a greater understanding of Boulez’s work, even if that understanding enables one to confidently denounce Boulez’s work. This is particularly interesting to me in the case of a composer such as Boulez, as he claims to strive for contextual autonomy in each of the works he produces. That is, he wants whatever meaning is contained in an individual work to be unique to that work, and to reside solely in the music itself, and to rely on no extramusical contexts, nor on existing musical contexts. Due to this, you will not hear a major or minor chord in the work of Boulez. Instead, he strives to essentially construct his own historical context for each specific piece, which would make it especially difficult for non-composers to penetrate, as it requires a deep understanding of music theory to understand the meaning that Boulez is putting into the music.

The question of how important musical knowledge is to one’s understanding of a piece of music is another topic of debate among those concerned with meaning in music. Like many other philosophers, Kivy argues that at the very least grasping the large-scale form of most Western classical music works is necessary for an understanding of them. What is not clear is what Kivy means by “understanding.” On a basic level, this idea refers to the fact that a listener needs to be able to retain what happens early in a piece of music in order to relate it to what happens later in the piece (which in some cases may be thirty to sixty minutes later). Knowledge of form may help with this, and helps give the listener a framework within which to form expectations that relate specifically to the music and not to the form itself. Andrew Kania describes this idea as follows: “Even if architectonic listening is non-perceptual it is a well-established mode of understanding pieces of music in the Western classical music world.” [6] (By “architectonicism,” Kania is referring to the alleged need to comprehend form in order to understand a work, which is in contrast to “concatenationism,” proposed by Jerrold Levinson, and which suggests that musical understanding consists in paying attention to musical and emotional elements in particular passages of music.)

Kivy’s idea seems obvious to me, and I would argue that it’s just as true of pop as of classical music, especially in the case of pop albums that make use of repeating and contrasting themes. Still, while I see the value in understanding form, I think that there are many people who would not care either way and will simply enjoy music for the experience of hearing the music. I also do not believe that it is necessary to be familiar with, or enjoy, an entire symphony in order to enjoy a profound experience listening to an isolated movement from that symphony. Kivy has a tendency to imply that his own experience of music is everyone else’s experience of music. Or, perhaps more accurately, he views his learned experience of music to be superior or more profound to that of someone with less knowledge. I do not agree with this except for in instances in which a cultural contextual familiarity with a certain style of music aids in its appreciation. I would even point out that this familiarity is itself a form of cultural conditioning (the sounds of home can be quite comforting to one undergoing culture shock, for example). But Kivy does not give credence to conditioning as an experience of music itself, so, I find it very difficult to find much in his theories that I can agree with.

Returning to Kivy’s above use of the word “understanding,” my question to him would be, “Understanding to what end?” Based on what I know of his work, I think he is suggesting that in order to understand the meaning behind the music so as to have an emotional experience of the specifically musical kind, one must understand the various forms that are specific to classical form. Again, I find this to be untrue in many instances. The knowledge that Beethoven added an extra movement to the symphonic structure, or that his seventh symphony’s fourth movement is in sonata form, would seem to add little extra value to the experience of the music for most listeners.

Aside from the field of philosophy of music, there has also been much research into our experience of music done in the field of neuroscience. The most notable of these is producer turned neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin’s fascinating book, This Is Your Brain on Music. In the first chapter, Levitin writes, “Pitch is a purely psychological construct, related both to the actual frequency of a particular tone and to its relative position in the musical scale.” [7] He also explains one of the most important aspects of the nature of musical sound, and something that I’ve not seen discussed among current philosophers, though I have seen it explored by neuroscientists and composers (most notably Arnold Schoenberg): the overtone series. When a single pitch is played on a piano or sung by a human voice, there is a series of notes that occurs. In the case of a piano, the string vibrates simultaneously at varying frequencies throughout its length, thereby producing multiple notes at once. The note that has the strongest representation will give the series of notes its single name, such as “C” or “A.” The other, quieter notes are referred to as overtones, thus the name “overtone series.” How loud the varying notes in the series are throughout the life of the pitch determine in large part the timbre (or color) of the pitch (which helps us distinguish between a piano, flute, or other instrument). The mathematical ratios between the notes in the overtone series are consistent on any instrument, including the human voice; that is, the overtone series always occurs in the same order or notes. Also, research by Levitin and others has shown that neural pathways form in the brain that correspond to specific pitch frequencies and, by extension, the overtone series.

With this information in mind, there are a number of ideas that begin to develop. It is my view that our emotional experience of music is not only contingent upon meaning in music, but also on the interplay of consonance and dissonance: the juxtaposition of pretty sounds and clashing sounds, essentially, which implies a physical response to sounds (despite these sounds being psychological constructs: the process that causes the construct, for example, might have something to do with the emotion we experience). All well-known music I am aware of, even of the prettiest sort, has a fair amount of dissonance in it. Generally this dissonance arises from the combining tones that are close together in the scale, such as A and A#. However, if we consider that the overtone series exists in each note, we see that dissonances occur much more frequently than originally assumed, such as when we combine “C” and “F,” two notes which, alone as pure tones, would not clash; but their overtones do clash. We do not always consciously hear this, but the dissonance is not lost on us. It has been theorized for some time that our musical system developed in compliance with the overtone series, as, it seems, have some of our neurobiological features. It seems plausible to me, then, that the interplay of the overtone series could create an emotional reaction in us. This explains, in fact, why a minor chord sounds sad and a major chord happy or triumphant: the minor chord has more clashing overtones (in fact, the strongest overtones of a single note spell out a major chord). It is a much more intricate affair, of course, to combine notes in a way that results in a deep emotional experience, but I think that the fact that a single chord can evoke an idea of an emotion is significant, and that emotion, it seems to me, arises out of the consonance or dissonance happening in the overtones (note that if pitch exists solely in the mind, so do consonance and dissonance).

With this idea in mind of consonance and dissonance as an integral part of our emotional musical experience (thereby being a natural biological response), I shall now return to and elaborate on some of the ideas mentioned earlier in this essay.

As I see it, there are a few very important contributors to our emotional experience of music. As I’ve pointed out, philosophers generally discuss music that has no sung text (or, more specifically, no human voice at all). However, I don’t feel it is the text so much as the presence of a human voice that creates the emotional response to music in such works. Otherwise, it would be acceptable to use a sung work so long as the listener does not understand the words. In reality, the most emotionally charged sounds that humans can voice have little to do with words, and often contain no words. A wail, scream, laugh, or sob do not need words for an emotion to get across. These human sounds, however, only have the sort of meaning we attribute to them (consciously or unconsciously) in a human context (and that meaning is not specific, which Kivy seems to think is required of any sort of musical information for it to convey emotionally-relevent meaning to a listener). That human context continues to exist where music is being listened to. The extent to which that music hits the right contextual spots in the listener will determine the level of emotional response that listener experiences.

Another important element of our emotional experience of music is the role that emotions existing prevalently in us play at the time of listening to music. A generally melancholy person might seek out music that is melancholy, or at least respond more strongly to such music than happy music (which could also be used as a sort of antidote to the melancholy). Kivy admits that scary sounding music can be used to enhance the existing scariness in an already scary movie, but claims that the music on its own will not be scary. Note that by “scary sounding,” Kivy is not necessarily admitting that there is something in the music that evokes an emotion of fear. To be clear, his claim is that music can contain properties that, for a number of reasons, suggest the idea of certain emotions, but do not create those emotions in listeners. Even given this qualifier, however, Kivy’s “scary” music theory seems illogical to me, in that there must be something in the music that evokes fear, otherwise it would not enhance the scariness in the movie. In this same way, there must be something melancholy in the music, otherwise it would not be able to enhance melancholy in a person. Note that I’m using “melancholy” in the human context. That is to say, whatever elusive quality that constitutes this state of melancholy must have some component within the music itself, and we must recognize that somehow upon experience the music, consciously or unconsciously (biologically, for example).

Another example that seems to provide strong evidence for the ability of music to invoke an emotional response in listeners is the fact that non-programmatic and wordless music is capable of inspiring laughter. Laughter itself is not an emotion, but it does seem clear that laughter is the result of some kind of emotional response in the laugher to some kind of external stimulus. Dmitri Shostakovich was known for inserting musical jokes into his works, some of which would require a specific contextual knowledge (such as inserting the practically ubiquitously-practiced Hannon piano exercises into a piano concerto written for his son), and some of which simply had the appearance or shape of humor (such as sliding a note downward on a trombone to give a clear sonic impression of a deflating erection following a sex scene in the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District). The former example shows the importance of context when imparting musical meaning, as does the latter (a young child may not get the reference, but most adults would; Sergei Prokofiev is often quoted as having referred to it as “pornophony”). However, the latter example also shows that the mere shape or appearance of humor in the music itself is enough to inspire a reaction to humor in the listener. In this instance, the humor results from an extramusical reference rendered funny because of the context of being played on a classical instrument in a music hall (note that this is a cultural context, not a context that requires a knowledge of musical language or theory). In other instances, such as in much of the music of Frank Zappa, similar results are achieved with no specific extramusical references.

Also in the example of laughter, I see further evidence pointing towards the idea that something must already exist in the listener in order for the music to strike an emotional chord. Our mood, the company we are with, the kind of sense of humor we have, etc… will determine whether we laugh or even recognize humor in music. Therefore, there must be something in the listener with which the music can ring in sympathy. Another interesting point that is made with this example arises out of the idea of recognizing the humor at all. We may not recognize the humorous aspect upon first listen, but, whether spontaneously discovered or brought to our attention, once we do recognize the humor, something clicks and we laugh. Recognizing the humor is really just a registering (that is, understanding) of a kind of meaning held in the content of the music. It seems to me that this meaning can be one of humor, sadness, happiness, triumph, or any other number of emotions.

In summary, as Davies pointed out, it is possible, and in fact common, for composers to give music extramusical meaning. I would expand on this and point out that it is not only up to the composers to do this. Listeners are just as free to give meaning to music, and they often do, whether it’s through conditioning (“this is our song, it always makes me think of you”; “this song makes me want to go dancing at that club I haven’t been to in so long”) or conscious (“when I hear this section, I imagine a volcano erupting”). Meaning alone, however, is not the only thing that translates into a deep emotional experience of music. Other important factors are our biological response to certain frequency combinations and inflections (consonance/dissonance; baby crying), the emotion that already exists within us at a given moment, and, in many cases, a grasp of the cultural context within which the music exists.

 [2] Meyer., 1.

 [3] Felicia E. Kruse, “Emotion in Musical Meaning: A Peircean Solution to Langer’s Dualism,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 41 (2005): 769.

 [4] Peter Kivy, Introduction to a Philosophy of Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 110.

 [5]  Stephen Davies, Musical Meaning and Expression (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 369.

 [6] Andrew Kania, “The Philosophy of Music,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/music/>.

 [7] Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006), 15.

All of this points towards something I started giving serious thought to during the Den of Maniacs recording process: I really should narrow my focus more on my albums (if not in general, though that’s not going to happen!). I would like to gain a bigger fanbase, be able to tour, be able to build a better studio, hire more musicians, and, of course, sell more tickets/music. Reviews like the following (from the Phantom Tollbooth) underscore the benefits of a narrower, and perhaps simpler approach, at least in some of my work (I’ve also been getting even more urging than usual from industry types to keep my style but simplify the music so they can work with me):

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Once again, we get the slightly askew brilliance of Dan Wallace on Den of Maniacs, a project sure to delight some and to confuse others…

The fourth outing by Dan Wallace, Den of Maniacs, reinforces the artist’s steadfast dedication to his particular vision – his Culture of Self, if you will (to borrow the phrase from a previous album). Possessing all of the tools needed for crossover success -– the ability to write songs with hooks, a flexible vocal range, and all of the required rock and roll musical chops – Wallace instead walks a musical road less traveled, and a bizarrely picturesque road it is.

In somewhat of a surprise move, Wallace starts the album off with one of the most immediately accessible tracks he’s ever done –- the hard-rock (mock-rock?) “Look at Me,” which asks, “hey you there look at me / tell me, tell me, help me – tell me what you see / am i the same man i used to be? different, changed, or in between? / am i soft now or too extreme? / tell me tell me help me tell me what you see…” The song seems to give the average rock & roll consumer what he wants to hear on a surface level while at the same time asking why he wants to hear it – Wallace shows us, for the moment, a rock star persona with thundering drums, pounding bass and fiery guitar solos, all supporting questions posed in his Ray Collins style falsetto vocal, as if to illustrate the fact that all might not be exactly as it seems.

The rock star facade falls away with the second track, where we begin to hear more typically adventurous music with the sweetly macabre sounding “Go Away,” a rock carnival waltz featuring some complex guitar work under wonderfully-arranged vocal melody and back-up harmony interplay.

Wallace has a distinctive sound, primarily featuring a variety of keyboard effects, his wonderful guitar playing, compositions that are irresistibly melodic and full of surprising twists and turns, and his immediately identifiable vocals. A multi-instrumentalist, Wallace essentially plays everything you hear on the album, with a brief assist from George Lawler on drums (“Look at Me,” and “Go Away”) and Emanuel Ban on violin (“ Vante Left Them Human” and “Fell”).

To say that this music is unusual would be an understatement. “Spiders in Heaven” starts out sounding like Django and The Hot Club of France in Dante’s Inferno, “Fell (For two Musicians and a Computer)” ends up with a Sufjan Stevens-like crescendo, and the wonderfully complex “I Want to Be (Ensemble Version)” is, in parts, reminiscent of Frank Zappa’s Uncle Meat. Keeping those comparisons in mind, the fact that Wallace occasionally seems to channel Brian Wilson (perhaps a _demented_ Brian Wilson – or is that redundant?) is quite interesting (one track actually starts with the words, “God only knows…”).

Lyrically, Wallace is fairly obscure, but always compelling, writing in a poetic form more often than creating a linear narrative – from “Fever,” the last song on the CD:

what’s one more dusty faith clutched closer in the maze

whose walls are portrait lined?

it’s not fine, it’s a fever spreading like tar

it’s a fever dripping down from above …

Always interesting, sometimes challenging, undeniably memorable, Den of Maniacs shows Dan Wallace in a slightly more accessible mode, but still as intriguing as ever. You don’t have to be a maniac to like this, but it helps.

- Bert Saraco

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It’s a nice review, to be sure (I always appreciate the thought and detail Saraco puts into his reviews, and he’s always been supportive of my albums), though I can’t help but wonder where I might be able to take my work (and career) were I to remove the confusion element, at least for an album or two. Time will tell, as my plan is to focus my next few albums stylistically, as well as to include some simpler songs. To be clear, I don’t plan on doing anything that doesn’t excite me at an emotional level. Quite the contrary, I’ve done four albums of a certain kind of material (and have a fifth already composed), and am ready to venture into new territory, perhaps as a result of reducing and thoroughly exploring specific facets of my musical personality within the context of a cohesively sequenced album. Or not hahah. Who friggin knows how this stuff works?

For the longest time I’ve been meaning to up my YouTube presence from barely existent to, hopefully, thriving. I have some things in the works to this end, including live videos, videos made for album cuts, and even some instructional guitar videos. Those are in the works. In the meanwhile, I’m just going to post songs (stuff from albums and new ideas as they come about) and see how that goes.

I’ve noticed that more and more of the music clips on YouTube don’t even have videos, and nobody seems to care, myself included (it may seem obvious not to care, but I doubt such a thing would be well-accept at a place like Vimeo; in other words, YouTube isn’t so much about the video medium as it is the sharing of a certain kind of information). Aside from old and out of print stuff that predates the video age, this non-video approach is a great way to share deep album tracks from current artists who generally can only invest in videos for their singles. It’s also the easiest way to share music on Facebook.

So, last night I posted “Elegy,” a composition for solo classical guitar that appeared on my album Reattachment. It is also one of my biggest sellers on iTunes.