MUSIC

1
MUSIC
What is it? What are its components? How does it
work? How did it develop? How do we experience
it? How do we evaluate it? Who are the great com
posers? What are the great masterpieces? Why doe
s this music matter?
What is a musical event? Whos involved, and ho
w? How do you participate? Why do you participat
e? What about the other participants? What sort
of relationships are involved?
Why does the event happen at all?
Whats at stake here? Whats really going on?

• Music as activity

Music as object
2
MUSIC . . .

• Character is the backbone of our human culture,
  and music is the flowering of character.
  
• -- Confucius
• what unifies.
• -- Seu-ma-tsen

Music as object
3
MUSIC . . .

• a reflected sound from a remote world.
• -- Jean Paul
• a reflection of the will itself, revealing its
  very essence, whereas other arts treat but the
  shadows of the will.
  
• -- Arthur Schopenhauer

Music as object
4
MUSIC . . .

• is well said to be the speech of angels. It
  brings us near to the infinite.
  
• -- Thomas Carlyle
• the vapor of art. It is to poetry what reverie
  is to thought, what fluid is to liquid, what the
  ocean of clouds is to the ocean of waves.
  
• -- Victor Hugo

Music as object
5
MUSIC . . .

• the universal language of mankind.
• -- Henry W. Longfellow
• the crystallization of sound.
• Henry David Thoreau
• our myth of the inner life.
• -- Susanne K. Langer

Music as object
6
MUSIC . . .

• an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and
  the permissible delights of the soul.
  
• -- Johann Sebastian Bach
• is the electrical soil in which the spirit
  lives, thinks and invents.
  
• -- Ludwig van Beethoven

Music as object
7
MUSIC . . .

• the inarticulate speech of the heart, which
  cannot be compressed into words, because it is
  infinite.
  
• -- Richard Wagner
• an outburst of the soul.
• -- Frederick Delius

Music as object
8
MUSIC . . .

• a calculation which the soul makes
  unconsciously in secret.
  
• -- Gottfried von Leibnitz
• an order of mystic, sensuous mathematics a
  sounding mirror, an aural mode of motion.
  
• -- James Gibbons Huneker

Music as object
9
MUSIC . . .

• the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the
  geometry of light.
  
• -- Claude Debussy
• natural law as related to hearing.
• -- Anton von Webern
• a system of proportions in the service of a
  spiritual impulse.
  
• -- George Crumb

Music as object
10
MUSIC . . .

• When you hear music, after its over, its gone
  in the air. You can never capture it again.
  
• -- Eric Dolphy
• You cant mess with peoples heads, thats for
  sure. But thats what musics all about messing
  with peoples heads.
  
• -- Jimi Hendrix

Music as object
11
MUSIC

• n. That one of the fine arts which is concerned
  with the combination of sounds with a view to
  beauty of form and the expression of emotion.
  
• Oxford English Dictionary
• n. that one of the fine arts which appropriates
  the phenomena of sound to the purposes of
  beauty.
  
• Encyclopedia Brittanica

Music as object
12
MUSIC

• n. 1. the art of combining tones to form
  expressive compositions.
  
• 2. such compositions.
• 3. any rhythmic sequence of pleasing sounds.
• Websters New World Dictionary

Music as object
13
MUSIC

• n. 1. the art of organizing tones in a coherent
  sequence so as to produce a unified and
  continuous composition.
  
• 2. vocal or instrumental sounds possessing
  rhythm, melody, and harmony.
  
• 3. a. A musical composition.
• 3. b. The written or printed score for a musical
  composition.
  
• 4. A musical accompaniment.
• 5. A particular category of music.
• 6. An aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sound
  or combination of sounds.
  
• The American Heritage Dictionary

Music as object
14
MUSICKING
The Meaning of Performance and Listening
Christopher Small
Wesleyan University Press, 1998
Music as activity
15
MUSICKING

• Music is not a thing at all but an activity,
  something that people do. The apparent thing
  music is a figment, an abstraction of the
  action, whose reality vanishes as soon as we
  examine it at all closely. It is very easy to
  come to think of the abstraction as more real
  than the reality it represents . This is the
  trap of reification, and it has been a besetting
  fault of Western thinking ever since Plato, who
  was one of its earliest perpetrators. (p.
  2)

16
MUSICKING

• A musical performance is a much richer and
  more complex affair than is allowed by those who
  concentrate their attention exclusively on the
  musical work and on its effect on an individual
  listener. If we widen the circle of our attention
  to take in the entire set of relationships that
  constitutes a performance, we shall see that
  musics primary meanings are not individual at
  all but social. These social meanings are
  fundamental to an understanding of the activity
  that is called music. (p. 8)

17
MUSICKING

• So far as I know the word musicking does not
  appear in any English dictionary, but it is too
  useful a conceptual tool to lie unused. It is the
  present participle, or gerund, of the verb to
  music. This verb does have an obscure existence
  in some larger dictionaries, but its potential
  goes unexploited because when it does appear it
  is used to mean roughly the same as to perform
  or to make music . I have larger ambitions
  for this neglected verb. (p. 9)

18
MUSICKING

• I have proposed this definition To music is to
  take part, in any capacity, in a musical
  performance, whether by performing, by listening,
  by rehearsing or practicing, by providing
  material for performance (what is called
  composing), or by dancing. (p. 9)

19
MUSICKING

• I have to make two things clear. The first is
  that to pay attention in any way to a musical
  performance, including a recorded performance,
  even to Muzak in an elevator, is to music. The
  second is related but needs to be stated
  separately the verb to music is not concerned
  with valuation. It is descriptive, not
  prescriptive. It covers all participation in a
  musical performance, whether it takes place
  actively or passively, whether we like the way it
  happens or not, whether we consider it
  interesting or boring, constructive or
  destructive, sympathetic or antipathetic.
  (p. 9)

20
MUSICKING

• The act of musicking establishes in the place
  where it happens a set of relationships, and it
  is in those relationships that the meaning of the
  act lies. They are to be found not only between
  those organized sounds which are conventionally
  thought of as being the stuff of musical meaning
  but also between the people who are taking part,
  in whatever capacity, in the performance and
  they model, or stand as metaphor for, ideal
  relationships as the participants in the
  performance imagine them to be .
  (p. 13)
  

21
MUSICKING

• My purpose is to propose a framework for
  understanding all musicking as a human activity,
  to understand not just how but why taking part in
  a musical performance acts in such complex ways
  on our existence as individual, social and
  political beings. It is one of my aims in this
  book to make readers more aware of the nature of
  their theories of musicking and thus be in a
  better position to take control of their musical
  lives. (pp. 12-13)

22
Music as object

• What kind of musical object is this?
• melody is of unknown origin
• roots of the melody traced back to 1677
• current version resembles tune in William
  Shieldss opera Rosina (1783)
  
• current version identical to Sir Alexander Dons
  Strathspey (1784)
  
• words are by Robert Burns (1759-1796), published
  in 1794
  
• Berliner recording dates from 1890
• CD dates from 1988 (Symposium Records 1058)
• transcription to cassette dates from last night
• your hearing of it took place just a moment ago
• your memory of the song dates from ???????

23
Music as object

• from Percy Scholess The Oxford Companion to
  Music (1938)
  
• Auld Lang Syne has become the ritual song of
  parting amongst the English as much as the
  Scots. All stand in a circle, and at the last
  verse take hands (with arms crossed, i.e., the
  left hand grasping the right hand of the
  neighbour on the right and the right hand
  grasping the left hand of the neighbour on the
  left) the whole circle of hands is then raised
  and dropped repeatedly and rhythmically to the
  music. The song and this custom connected with it
  shows some signs of being taken up outside the
  British Empire for instance, the Boy Scouts
  organization of Switzerland in 1934 adopted both.

24
Auld Lang Syne

• 1. Should auld acquaintance be forgot
• and never brought to mind?
• Should auld acquaintance be forgot
• and days of auld lang syne?
•  For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang
  syne,
  
• well take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang
  syne.
  
•  
• 2. And heres a hand, my trusty friend,
• and give a hand of thine,
• well take a cup of kindness yet,
• for auld lang syne.
•  For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang
  syne,
  
• well take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang
  syne.
  
•