In moving from symbolic to contextualist explanations of music, it is well to note that a source of great confusion, in the former, is the fact that tone painting (with explicit signals that yield, when the code is understood, designative meanings) is widely regarded as musical symbolism. An example of such tone painting is Bach’s introduction of musical notes, corresponding to the letters of his own name, as a theme in the unfinished final fugue of the Art of the Fugue. And surely it may be argued that this qualifies on one level. But the contention that there is an intrinsic symbolism in the musical meaning itself is a claim that referentialists are generally unwilling to honour. Yet many theorists, whose concern is with the sociological or psychological effects of music, are not so much opposed to the idea of inner or profound meaning as indifferent to such meaning per se. Even an absolutist, however, is unable to examine music in isolation from its human environment. Meyer deliberately eschewed logical and philosophical problems of music and made “no attempt to decide whether music is a language or whether musical stimuli are signs or symbols.” (He did not defend the inference that such concerns are irrelevant to meaning.) Musical meaning and communication, he maintained, cannot exist in the absence of the cultural context. The statement is hardly open to dispute; theorists are classified according to their proximity to the referential or nonreferential pole. If referentialists emphasize explicit aims and associations of a particular work (as in varieties of Gebrauchsmusik, or “utility” music, written for specific social or educational purposes), formalists can maintain that there is also an intrinsic, or embodied, meaning to which they attach the greater aesthetic value.
Bach, Johann SebastianJohann Sebastian Bach, oil on canvas by Elias Gottlieb (Gottlob) Haussmann, 1746; in the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig, Germany.© Photos.com/Jupiterimages
Among contextualists, however, a simple referential view is the exception rather than the rule. Any theorists who examine musical perception are studying a complex human activity. They are dealing with the psychology of music, in which certain elements—e.g., music, listener, mode of apprehension, cultural context—are indispensable and in which characteristic processes recur. Specialists will emphasize one element or another: formalists the music itself, sociologists the listeners and their milieu, psychologists the how of perception. Though psychology could survey the whole field, in practice psychologists, according to their persuasions, investigate the perception of measurable acoustic phenomena, the physical-mental effects of musical sound, or—more rarely—the functional role of music in human experience, and pragmatists and analysts alike may leave something out of account. But it remains for the comprehensive theorist, probably one who, like Langer, is equipped to discern relationships among many departments of thought, to construct a valid hierarchical structure of musical meaning in all its ramifications.
Deryck Cooke, the British musicologist and the author of The Language of Music (1959), who may be classified as a referential expressionist, offered a sophisticated argument for the notion of music as language. Concepts, however, may not be rendered by this language, only feelings. Cooke reaffirmed the possibility, long disputed by many theorists, that such feelings may be recognized, identified, and even classified. But he confined his investigation to the last few hundred years of the Western tradition. Information theory
The French theorist Abraham Moles’s Information Theory and Esthetic Perception (1966) brought the science of information theory to bear on musical perception, emphasizing that the concept of form is the essential thing; the “sonic message,” whose dimensions vary from one composition to another, is a whole. Information theory thus proved to be a novel ally for organicists. The message, which is subjected to atomistic study of its components, is (thanks to recording) concrete; there is a temporal sonic material, a materia musica. Moles gave reinforcement to the aesthetic theory of distance:
The esthetic procedure of isolating sonic objects is analogous to the sculptor’s or decorator’s isolating a marble work against a black velvet draping: This procedure directs attention to it, alone and not as one element among many in a complex framework.
Information theory, which Leonard Meyer also discussed, begins its investigations without the help of traditional theory, which it finds to be untenable for its procedures. Musical messages discerned through information theory are not referential, yet Moles chose to describe the measurable elements in the sonic repertoire as symbols: “each definable temporal stage represents a ‘symbol’ analogous to a phoneme in language.” According to Moles, music must, as an art, obey rules; the role of aesthetics is to enumerate universally valid rules, not to perpetuate the arbitrary or merely traditional. He foresaw experimentation with a much richer repertoire of sounds, transcending musical instruments and drawing on whatever sources—certainly electronic ones—are available for realizing the “most general orchestra.” A host of composers set out to fulfill this desideratum. In order to increase the compass of possible sounds, various electronic synthesizers were constructed. In electronically synthesized music, the medium itself is indistinguishable from its message.
The quest for some distillation of musical meaning may be foredoomed to failure. Meanings, intrinsic and extrinsic, abound; meanings of all kinds, moreover, are revealed in and through the social setting. Church, theatre, and broadcasting affect music in characteristic ways. The modern concert is a device whereby formal, autonomous meanings are emphasized; further, the scope and available repertoire of the concert have been enormously increased through recordings, for any suitably equipped room may become, at the turn of a switch, a recital hall. Considerations related to performance practice
Listening to music for its own sake, apart from ritual or storytelling, is a relatively recent historical development. There have always been impromptu song and dance, and performances of music at home, in church, and in theatrical productions have a long history, but there was no public opera house until 1637, when the first one opened in Venice. The first public concerts for which admission was charged appeared in London in 1672. During the next 50 years there were beginnings in Germany and France also, but the modern concert was not a significant feature of musical life until the late 18th century.
Of the forms that have characterized distinct periods of music history, it is sufficient to remark here that the chief Renaissance forms—mass, motet, the polyphonic chanson, and madrigal—were allied to texts that strongly influenced their structure. Instrumental music was for the most part in the service of the voice, though instrumental church compositions, dances, and chansons arranged for organ were not uncommon. A strong alliance between voices and instruments has continued into the present, with musical theatre, the art song, and religious music. Instrumental music as a separate genre emerged in the 16th century, gaining considerable momentum in the 17th through a variety of idiomatic pieces. Increased attention to technical fluency was accompanied by greater complexity and sophistication in the instruments themselves. In response to stylistic demands for greater resonance and power, the modern forms of the violin appeared in the late 16th century, only gradually supplanting the earlier viols. The harpsichord did not finally yield to the pianoforte until the 18th century. The once-prevalent idea that early stringed and keyboard instruments were primitive precursors of their modern counterparts has been effectually demolished by research in medieval and Renaissance music and by dedicated performers, who seek to restore the sounds and spirit of those eras.