hearing loss

The article is mostly focused on classical music and musicians, but contains timely and sober warnings for all:
http://www.bsherman.net/hearingloss.htm

Frith Notes - Why do Songs have Words?

Frith Words and Music
A. In the usual, simplest case, a song is a conjunction of words and music
B.The experience of the song, especially in performance, is primarily a matter of the rhythmic interaction of the words and music
According to Simon Frith, popular song has been studied as if it consisted primarily of words, with the music somewhere in the indeterminate background
Scholars of content analysis treat the song’s lyric as a message, and the song as a bearer of that content; a love song is “about” love, so all you have to do to discuss it is look at the way it—i.e., the lyric—talks about love
HF Mooney 1954: the themes of pop lyrics reflect the concerns, ideas, and emotions of the audience
No particular mention of what, if anything, the music of the songs “reflects”; and no mention of what the hell the music is doing there at all, for that matter
A song’s popularity equates to agreement with its message in reality or in fantasy (i.e. nostalgic longing for the good old days represented in country lyrics)
[kit 35:] e.g. Dave Harker’s insistence that the marriage mentioned in “Winter Wonderland” “articulates key fantasies.. about the pattern of sexual relations felt to be most appropriate for a particular social order”
once more, no hint of what, if anything, the music is doing in the piece
Frith [pg 36]: “Songs are, in this account, a form of propaganda.”
For some (academic) critics, the cure for overly romantic, idealistically phoney emotions is lyrical realism, the direct expression [in words] of the genuine emotions and social realities of the singer (and audience) (“keepin’ it real” is an expression of a related idea); the true aim of (popular) music is “authenticity,” some sort of direct correspondence between the reality of the experience and (reality of) the song
If a singer sings about drug dealing, infidelity, or stamp collecting, the song is “better” if the singer is in fact a drug dealer, philanderer, or stamp collector
Once more:  the entire perspective has buggerall to do with the music
Some entire styles or genres were/are considered “more authentic”: blues, especially rural blues; hip-hop, especially gangsta rap; country, especially pre-Shania
As a rule: the more demonstrably miserable the personal life of the singer, the better the song
[pg 40] “[assessments of].. lyrical realism.. [and banality] assume that songs differ in their effects.. [because] these can be read off good and bad words”
in other words: a good or bad song can be judged as written on the page—without music, without performance, without a singer
[pg 40] some studies suggested that listeners were unaware of the subject matter of pop songs; “changes in lyrical content cannot be explained by reference to consumer ‘moods’.”
[pg 41] Frith: “In songs, words are the sign of a voice. A song is always a performance and song words are always spoken out, heard in someone’s accent.”
In other words, ironically, the notion that the experience of a song is equivalent to the message of its lyric also overlooks the reality of those words, which is that they are sung, in a particular way, by a particular singer.
The words themselves are not the same when sung by a different singer!
[Frith:] to understand popular song lyrics requires studying the “performing conventions” that exist in particular music genres
different genres of music allow or cause their audiences to imagine different kinds of [social/emotional] community
[pg42] “The songwriter’s art.. is.. to cherish words ‘not for their sense alone but for their poise and balance,’ and this is a matter of rhythm too — the rhythm of speech.”
“Pop [love] songs do not ‘reflect’ emotions.. but give people the [romantic] terms in which to articulate and so experience their emotions.”

two very interesting articles

1. about music and sound generally:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/10/10/treasure.sound/index.html?hpt=C1
2. about sound compression (somewhat technical but informative and thoughtful):
http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/digital_data_compression_musics_procrustean_bed/

music performance and the music business

The scary thing about this cartoon is how unrealistic it isn't: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11GEx-PyNAc

CUST 2045P - a glossary

CUST 2045 Music and Society - GLOSSARY 


'A A B A' - Capital letters are used to name [repeated] Sections of a song; an 'A A B A' song repeats the first section, followed by a different section, follows by the first again; this entire unit of four sections is repeated as a unit; sections with particular names and functions use the capital letter of their name, such as 'V' for Verse, 'C' for Chorus.


Accent – a sound or syllable given relatively greater emphasis, through loudness or force of articulation 


Acculturation – the (cultural) result of contact between distinct cultures or subcultures, especially hybrids, fusions, and other blends


Art [of] music – contrasted to (“merely”) functional music, or to popular; also called “fine art [of] music”


Articulation – the separation (and conjunction) of sounds in a phrase


Artworld - Howard Becker's general term for the social formation created by all the different roles and perspectives that interact and combine to produce the artistic experience 


Authentic[/genuine] The notion that good [popular] music is not the product of artificial professionalism, or of an administered culture industry, but the honest, usually raw, sometimes crude, but always “genuine” feelings of the artist 


Beat – a pulse which is part of a regular group called a measure


Beat Feeling – the particular (internal) sensation of the motion from pulse to pulse that is created by shading the beats, by phrasing early or late, and by the interaction of patterns such as characteristic rhythm . The key notion of beat feeling is that the same basic beat and tempo can produce very different sensations, depending on how it is played by the ensemble.


Boredom - for Adorno, the result of trying to do something with your time without genuine involvement or engagement; in passive entertainment, the stimulus only seems to keep us interested, but really just masks our boredom 


Bridge – A song section , usually defined by its contrast to other sections


Characteristic Rhythm – a brief (almost never more than two bars) pattern figure, usually in an accompaniment part, repeated throughout a dance piece. Through the repetition of pattern and the generation of a beat feeling, the characteristic rhythm outlines the basic steps of a dance. Especially in Latin music, the characteristic rhythm can be created through the combination of many patterns; their interaction generates the beat feeling.


Chorus – a section usually defined by one or more of: same words and same melody every time; many voices instead of one; repetitious words, often including the title or moral point (“Don’t let your sons grow up to be hamsters!”); (somewhat) louder; often preceded by a crescendo or drum fill


Class structure – see Social Class 


Coda – the final portion of a song structure, where the performance doesn’t simply stop at the end of the last note; may be a new idea, but usually consists of earlier material repeated, such as the chorus


Composer – in common usage, a person who person who creates musical pieces such as songs, film scores, or symphonies, by writing down music notes on paper; more broadly, anyone who generates musical ideas; a person who sings to themselves in the shower can be a composer


Consumption – blanket term for the distribution, purchase, and enjoyment of music; the term is not meant to suggest that listening to music is like eating food, but rather that we must acquire music in order to enjoy it


Content Analysis - Simon Frith’s term for studying a song (or poem) by abstracting the subject matter, and discussing it separately from the actual experience of the song or poem


Context – see recontextualization 


Control group – In Seeger, what an interest or pressure group seeks to become


Convention – in Howard Becker’s usage, a feature of social behaviour that has established its familiarity through custom and tradition


Culture – the particular patterns of action defined by values, such as customs of language, music, food, sexual conduct, dress, art, design, and so on [I try to avoid “and so on”—but it’s pretty well necessary here!]


Crescendo – Italian for “get[ting] louder”; a crescendo means a passage that does this


Dance- A principle of musical experience, in which the time is organized in conjunction with (or patterned on) the rhythms of physical action; see also Song, Ritual 


Diminuendo – Italian for “getting softer,” i.e. quieter
Dissemination – a mode of distributing or reproducing cultural action; see distribution


Distribution – the circulation and supply of music to people who are not physically present for its performance, through electronic media such as the radio and internet, and physical media such as tapes and CDs


Division of Labour – the pattern of roles assigned to fulfil the basic requirements of social organization and sustaining life; used by Howard Becker to explain the assignment of different tasks involved in the production of artistic experience; a concert in which a person sings all their own songs and accompanies themselves on guitar has a different division of labour than one in which performers read notation created by a composer, who may not be otherwise involved


Enculturation – the process of passing values from one generation to the next 


Entertainment – a particular function of music, often mistakenly presumed to be universal


Feeling – in musical contexts, feeling means sensations that are based in the particular qualities of the flow of time; these qualities are usually created by particular differences, such as stress/unstress, loud/soft, and the connections & transitions between them


Folk art/fine art/popular art – Seeger’s basic classification of North American music genres; see his article for definitions & details; the relations between them have been the principle basis for North American musical history


Folk Society – a form of social organization in which the means of production are almost entirely community-based, stability and continuity are prized over innovation and change, division of labour is minimal, and individual variations in experience are slight


Form – the overall relation between the parts and sections of a song or piece; loosely contrasted to structure


Genre – a principle of correlation or similarity between musical experiences and texts; genre can be based on instrumentation (string quartet, big band), context (drinking songs, hymns), social group identity (bubble gum, Latin music), function (marching songs, TV commercials), aesthetics (avant garde), musical procedure (improvised music, jam), and more


Ideology - a set of beliefs that guides individuals as well as social classes; a precondition for thought; and, for our purposes, a useful way to think about how people make judgements regarding musical value; see value ; in the Frith article, the Marxist view that the prevailing social ideas are the ideas of the ruling class; these ideas are expressed in popular literature, culture, and music


Immigration – in musical (and cultural) terms, a common source of acculturation 


Improvise/Improvisation – to create or make up on the spot, as opposed to repeating something memorized, or a rendering written text; in music, roughly comparable to everyday speech, or to speaking without a script


Institutions – in social theory, the physical and behaviour mechanisms created to solve social needs and realize values; the educational institution consists not only of buildings, but also of a trained staff of teachers, administrators, support personnel, and students; the family, the media, and private institutions such as churches are also parts of it


Interest group, pressure group – in Seeger, people with a shared vision of the role of music in North America [see Make America Musical/Sell America Music] 


Lacedaemonians – the last word in shiftlessness


Lyrical Realism – In Frith’s article, “a direct relationship between a lyric and the social or emotional condition it describes or represents


Make America Musical/Sell America Music – in Seeger, the two primary interest groups that emerged among North American settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries; one pushed for the adoption of European classical music as America’s national standard, the other for the predominance of a home-grown industry-based music


Means of Production – the system used by a society to answer its needs, basic and otherwise; the tools and technologies of manufacture


Measure/Bar – a regular group of pulses, based on (sub)groupings of two [duple] or three [triple]; 


Mode – a scale, an orderly succession of tones; the basis for melodies


Myth – a story or idea that provides an explanation for some aspect(s) of cultural experience, hence the basis for ritual ; the usage of “untrue story” stems from the fact that the emphasis in myth is on making sense of the world rather than literal narration; thus myths can be embodied in music as well as words and images, as (narrative) embodiments of the values and identity of a culture; see ideology


Oral tradition – dissemination of cultural ideas and knowledge through voice and memory


Performer, Performance – the act of making music, and the person(s) who do(es) this; does not automatically imply “professional”!


Professional [musician] — Generally, a person who performs music and is paid for it; more significantly, someone who has achieved a (recognized) professional standard of performance, such as consistency, specific skills (such as reading music or playing by ear), extensive knowledge or a repertory, etc.


Passamezzo moderno – a simple bass pattern that arose toward the end of the Renaissance in Italy, used as basis for dances and variations; it is very prominent in North American Protestant hymns (such as “Amazing Grace”) and secular folk and popular songs (such as “Jesse James”)


Popular Culture – not self-produced, primarily entertainment, urban


Popular Music – an umbrella term for the music of urban industrial societies not classed as other genres, in particular folk (which is rural, and in oral tradition) and classical (which is elite, and in written tradition); popular music embraces many genres; originally a hybrid of written and oral traditions, recording is now the primary means of dissemination; it is usually considered to be entertainment music, both in its songs and dances


Principle – An underlying basis for consistency in social and musical experience; in our course, we explore three principles of organization of musical experience [ Song, Dance, Ritual], and one of correlation [Genre]


Pseudo-individualization - Adorno's view of the consequence of standardization: a song with interchangeable parts has no organic relation, and the parts are more important than the whole; they do not contribute to it; consequently, they can be substituted at will, which means that they have no genuine or unique identity; thus a song constructed in this way cannot offer a genuinely unique or even distinctive experience, but only the illusion of individuality


Pulse – a(ny) regular motion in space or, especially, time; in music, a regular feeling of accent, the wave-like motion toward (and away from) a regular point of stress


Recontextualization/Context – in the simplest terms, “context” means the elements that surround (and affect) a particular action or situation; music has the (partial) power both to create [its own] context—playing the violin on a street corner transforms the space in part into a music-listening venue, like a concert hall, and to (become) recontextualize(d)—as when robber ballads and bawdy drinking songs become fitted with new words and turned into Christian hymns


Recorded tradition – dissemination of cultural ideas and knowledge through mechanical and electronic preservation of acoustic signals


Repertory — a body of songs or music pieces; may refer to specific communities (rural Quebéc, German cities, village brass bands), social groups (American teenagers, French Catholics, particular radio stations, jazz musicians), or individual performers (Céline Dion, Wynton Marsalis, Barney)


Rhythm – a broad term for the kinds of animating connection between parts of a piece of music, a painting, poem, or dance


Ritual – A principle of musical experience, in which the time is organized to enact a social value or myth; see also Song, Dance 


‘Sell-America-music’ – see Make America Musical/Sell America Music 


Section – a coherent portion of song structure, usually (though not invariably) repeated; with rare exceptions, at least 8 measures long, and usually not more than 16; types include verse, chorus, and bridge; introductions and endings (or codas) do not usually function as sections, because they cannot be repeated


Social Action – Action directed toward or based on other people’s interests, ideas, experiences; in other words, all action


Social Class – a (large) grouping of people, based on shared experiences and interests, typically economic; the kinds of classes in a society and their relation to each other is called ‘class structure,’ and is a fundamental dimension of the organization of a particular society 


Social Time – Time, as experienced in a way that can be shared with others; the ways in which what we experience as distinct individuals is nonetheless similar or even identical


Social Values – see Values 


Society – the structures and processes shared by large groups of people, in order (more or less) to realize their common values through institutions


Song - A principle of musical experience, in which the time is organized in conjunction with (or patterned on) the syllables of speech; see also Dance, Ritual 


Standardization – Adorno’s idea that popular songs are mass-produced, like automobile parts, and must adhere to rigid constructive recipes, in content as well as structure; typically, the part is more interesting than the whole, and is weakly connected to it; the parts are in effect interchangeable


Stereotype/cliché—a belief founded on irresponsible generalization and underexamined presupposition


Structure – the type and order of sections that constitute a particular song


Subculture – a group within a society that shares the general value system, but has evolved some distinctive values of their own, based on social indexes such as age, occupation, religion, or political conviction 


Synchronization – the coordination of activities in time, especially the rhythmical coordination of activities in (and through) musical performance and listening. To anthropologist Edward G. Hall, most forms of collective interaction between people involve synchronization, usually unconscious.


Tone – within tolerances defined by social convention, a particular rate of acoustic vibration, used as a music note in music; what makes a note “the same” when sung by child, played on the piano, or sounded by a cell phone ring


Tradition – in music, the (more or less) consistent features passed from one generation to the next; typical features of tradition include performance conventions (lit stage, evening, darkened hall), structures ( verse-chorus [popular music], improvised solos[jazz]); see also oral, recorded, written tradition(s)


Tune Family – in musics based in oral tradition, a (large) group of variants and versions of performances with overlapping (but not identical) melodic and textual phrases


Urban Industrial Society – sustains itself through division of labour, mass production, and a decision-making based in educated urban centres


Values (also called Social Values) – “general notions of the what is good and desirable”; values differ from beliefs in their typically broader acceptance, and independence from subgroups or subcultures ; they are typically unconsciously learned (e.g., no one can recall when they were taught that life is sacred or selfishness is bad), and subject to directly contradictory interpretations (both sides of the abortion and capital punishment debates are acting from the value that ‘life is sacred’)


Variants/variation – respectively, different performances or passages of a song with some features the same, and some different; a key element in many kinds of musical thinking, and in historical & cultural musical change


Verse – a section usually defined by one or more of: different words but same melody every time; one voice instead of many; non-repetitious words, with the main narrative unfolding in successive verses
Written tradition – dissemination through written or printed texts, which van be reproduced by performers as scripts, or read; see oral tradition

The Aesthetics of Fim Music - Roy Prendergast

http://web.archive.org/web/19970516041845/http://citd.scar.utoronto.ca/VPAB93/course/readings/prenderg.html

Roy A. Prendergast: "The Aesthetics of Film Music"

Index

• Introduction
• Evoking Time and Place
• Creating Psychological Refinements
• Providing a Neutral Background Filler
• Building Continuity
• Providing Theatrical Buildup

---

Introduction

What is it, exactly, that music contributes to a fihn? David Raksin has written that music's avowed purpose in films is "to help realize the meaning of a film." Aaron Copland has said that a composer can do no more than "make potent through music the film's dramatic and emotional value." Both observations approach a general answer to the question. We shall divide this question further into five rather broad areas, taking a detailed look at each. The main headings are Aaron Copland's, drawn from his article in The New York Times of November 6, 1949; the discussion that follows each heading is the author's work.

"Music can create a more convincing atmosphere of time and place."

There are a variety of ways of achieving an atmosphere of time and place, or, musically speaking, "color." In a broad sense, musical color may be taken to represent the exotic or sensuous aspects of music, as distinct from musical structure, or line, which might be considered the intellectual side. Although admittedly an oversimplification, this distinction has a good deal of validity in terms of film music. Film music is overwhelmingly coloristic in its intention and effect. This is always true when a composer is attempting to create an atmosphere of time and place.

Color is associative--bagpipes call up images of Scotland, the oboe easily suggests a pastoral scene, muted brass connotes something sinister, rock music may imply a youthful theme, and so on. Also, color is not intrusive; it does not compete with the dramatic action. This is especially important for film music. The effect of color, moreover, is immediate, unlike musical thematic development, which takes time. In addition, color is highly flexible and can be brought in and out with relative ease by the experienced screen composer. An important quality of color, given the short amount of time the composer usually has to write a feature score, is that color is easier to achieve than musical design. Finally, and probably most important of all, color can be readily understood by a musically unsophisticated film audience.

Musical color can be achieved in a variety of ways. One is to use musical material indigenous to the locale of a film. Thus Adolph Deutsch employed sea chanteys in Action on the North Atlantic, and Alfred Newman used street songs and hurdy-gurdy music in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. A related technique is the use of musical devices that are popularly associated with foreign lands and people; for example, using the pentatonic idiom to achieve an Oriental color. The "Chinese" music written for a studio film of the 1930s and '40s is not, of course, authentic Chinese music but rather represents our popular Occidental notions of what Chinese music is like. The Western listener simply does not understand the symbols of authentic Oriental music as he does those of Western music; therefore, Oriental music would have little dramatic effect for him.

Along the same lines, there is the problem of stylistic integration. This arises when composers are required to use set pieces of music for purposes of color within the larger framework of their score. Such set pieces can include folk songs, music for fairs, street cries, dances, and so on. It is far better for the composer to arrange these pieces himself so that they conform stylistically with the rest of his music for the picture. The folksong arrangements of Bartók indicate ample precedent for this. The problem can be avoided entirely if the composer creates his own atmosphere music. An example of this is Bernard Herrmann's hurdy-gurdy music for Hangover Square. The film's climax includes the performance of a piano concerto written specially for the film and Herrmann simply took one of the concerto themes and transformed it into the hurdy-gurdy music.

Stylistic parody* is another coloristic device, and one that has been only slightly cultivated in film music. Examples can be found in Hugo Friedhofer's score to 7he Bishop's Wife, wherein he uses a concerto-grosso style, and in David Raksin's score to Forever Amber, in the pseudo-Handelian music for the amusing scene in the king's antechamber (a portion of this music can be seen in Figure 1). Few composers are capable of carrying off stylistic parody, for it takes an intimate sense of another's compositional style.

[*Parody, as used here, refers to the musical procedure common in the ltter part of the sixteenth century and exemplified in such works as Josquin's Mass Malheur me bat. The somewhat unfortunate term, of 19th-century German coinage, refers only to a method of composition and is not intended to have a pejorative meaning.]

This emphasis on color does not mean that musical line should or does go unused, however. The primary reason film composers have traditionally stayed away from complex line and structure in music is that such complicated structures cannot successfully be emphasized without competing with the dramatic action; i.e., it is bad film music. The answer to the problem of color and line, as it applies to film music, is that musical color can, to an extent, be created just as effectively by the confluence of individualized lines (a more contrapuntal texture) as by the arbitrary piling up of dissonance in a chord. Examples of this kind of contrapuntal coloristic writing abound in the scores of both David Raksin and Hugo Friedhofer. Raksin's score for the little-known film The Redeemer is full of canons and fugatos; Friedhofer's score to Joan of Arc has several highly contrapuntal sequences.

"Music can be used to underline or create psychological refinements--the unspoken thoughts of a character or the unseen implications of a situation."

Frequently, music can imply a psychological element far better than dialogue can. This use of film music is perhaps most effective when it is planned well in advance--when the film is in the scripting stage. Far too often, however, this possibility is passed over and music is not allowed to speak. Copland has observed that music"can play upon the emotions of the spectator, sometimes counterpointing the thing seen with an aural image that implies the contrary of the thing seen." Although music in film can be most effective in such instances, composers are given little chance to use it.

One of the classic examples of this kind of writing is found in David Raksin's score to Force of Evil discussed in some detail in chapter 3. In the final scene the main character, Joe (John Garfield), is seen running in the street, then along a great stone wall and down a huge flight of stairs. Yet the music here is not "running" music--Raksin has scored the emotional rather than the physical character of the scene. Joe has been running, figuratively, throughout the film; it is only now, as he begins the search for his dead brother's body, that he finds any sort of quietude. Raksin refleets this psychologieal point in his slow music for this sequence.

The ability of music to make a psychologieal point in film is a subtle one, and perhaps its most valuable contribution. Yet film theoreticians appear not even to recognize music's possibilities in this area. For example, George Bluestone, in his book Novels into Film, states that "the film, being a presentational medium (except for its use of dialogue) cannot have direct access to the power of discursive forms. The rendition of mental states--memory, dream, imagination--cannot be as adequately represented by film as by language. . . . The film, by arranging external signs for our visual perception, or by presenthig us with dialogue, can lead us to infer thought. But it cannot show us thought directly. It can show us characters thinking, feeling, and speaking, but it cannot show us their thoughts and feelings. A film is not thought; it is perceived."

This quote demonstrates the typical naïveté of most film theoreticians concerning the possibilities of music in films. If by the word "film" Bluestone means a total work (i.e., visuals, dialogue, sound effects, and music) then his statement is totally invalid, for music can and does serve just this function better than any other element of film.

Composer Leonard Rosenman has pointed out that ''film music has the power to change naturalism [in films] into reality. Actually, the musical contribution to the film should be ideally to create a supra-reality, a condition wherein the elements of literary naturalism are perceptually altered. In this way the audience can have the insight into different aspects of behavior and motivation not possible under the aegis of naturalism.

"Film music must thus enter directly into the 'plot' of the film, adding a third dimension to the images and words. It is an attempt to establish the supra-reality of a many-faceted portrayal of behvior that should motivate the composer in the selection of sequences to he scored and, just as important, the sequences to be left silent."

While music certainly does have the catalytic ability to change the audience's perception of images and words, it is worth pointing out that there is a corollary: the effect of the image and words upon the music. A simple recollection by composer Leonard Rosenman should suffice to make the point. Rosenman says,''There is a symbiotic catalytic exchange-relationship between the film and the music that accompanies it. I have personally had the experience of hearing musically unenlightened people comment positively and glowingly on a 'dissonant' score after seeing the film. I have played these same people records of the score without telling them that it came from the film they had previously seen. Their reaction ranged from luke-warm to positive rejection. . . ."

"Music can serve as a kind of neutral background filler."

Aaron Copland has said of "background" music: "This is really the kind of music one isn't supposed to hear, the sort that helps to fill the empty spots between pauses in a conversation. It's the movie composer's most ungrateful task. But at times, though no one else may notice, he will get private satisfaction from the thought that music of little intrinsic value, through professional manipulation, has enlivened and made more human the deathly pallor of a screen shadow. This is hardest to do . . . when the neutral filler type of music must weave its way underneath dialogue."

This can sometimes be the film composer's most difficult task for it calls for him to be at his most subordinative. At times one of the functions of film music is to do nothing more than be there, "as though it would exist as sound rather than as 'constructed' music." Even though it is filling a rather subordinate role to other elements in the picture, "filler" type music is in fact a very conscious dramatic device. Hugo Friedhofer's score to Broken Arrow offers two outstanding examples of how this can be masterfully handled.

The first example (Figure 2) is the underscoring for a scene at the beginning of the film. In this scene the film's star, James Stewart, is riding on horseback through the Western desert. Pictorially the setting is spacious, immobile, and quiet. The slow gait of the horse is the only sign of life; the hero is meditative, and a narrator starts the story on its way. Even though the inner parts are extremely simple, they still make music by themselves. There is just enough harmony in the outer parts to keep the solo clarinet from competing with the narrator's voice, and just enough mobility in the inner parts to counteract the rather static monotony of the double pedal.

The other example (Figure 3) of Friedhofer's from Broken Arrow is music accompanying a wedding ceremony. The tender, delicate melody, cast in the aeolian mode, is so well suited to its purpose that Lawrence Morton was moved to say that it "shows how it is possible to avoid the pitfall of an Apache Lohengrin."

There are times when music accompanying dialogue can take on a definite foreground character. An example of this is in the film The Heiress (see chapter 3). Generally, such music is treated musically in a recitative style reminiscent of the opera: blank spots in the dialogue are filled with fragments of music, which come to the foreground momentarily to comment on the dialogue and then drop back into the background when the next line is said. All of this has to be done, of course, by the way the composer writes his music, not by the simple turning of knobs in the dubbing room. Dimitri Tiomkin's score to High Noon has several prominent examples of this kind of writing, especially in the scenes involving the sheriflf and his deputy. Another example, again by David Raksin, and from the film Will Penny, clearly demonstrates how a composer writes around dialogue (see Figure 4).

In this example Raksin has treated the dialogue operatically, that is to say, in the manner of a recitative. The small "x's" above each staff of music indicate the "clicks" of the click track. Note that Raksin has written in the dialogue spoken by Preacher Quint exactly where it will occur in relation to the clicks. The dialogue begins in bar 7 with Preacher Quint's invocation, "Beware the wrath of the Lord." The music drops out when there is a line; this "clears" the dialogue without the dubber's having to drop the music level down when mixing it with the dialogue track. The time space between Quint's lines is filled with declamatory music. Note, too, Raksin's notation of the rhythm of the delivery of the lines "Life for life" and "eye for eye" in bars 11 and 12 (example 5).

The importance of this masterful attention to detail can be seen especially in bar 12 where the strings play a pizzicato figure, the third note of which (D- flat) fills the eighth rest in the dialogue.

"Music can help build a sense of continuity in a film."

Music can tie together a visual medium that is, by its very nature, continually in danger of falling apart. A film editor is probably most conscious of this particular attribute of music in films. In a montage, particularly, music can serve an almost indispensable function: it can hold the montage together with some sort of unifying musical idea. Without music the montage can, in some instances, become merely chaotic. Music can also develop this sense of continuity on the level of the film as a whole. This idea is discussed in greater detail in chapter 7.

"Music can provide the underpinning for the theatrical buildup of a scene and then round it off with a sense of finality."

Music has a way of bypassing the human's normal, rational defense mechanisms. When used properly, music can help build the drama in a scene to a far greater degree of intensity than any of the other cinematic arts. It is of little significance whether the scene involves an intimate love relationship or a violent fight; music evokes a gut reaction unobtainable in any other way. On the other hand, this can be one of the least effective uses of film music if not handled properly. In fact, many producers and directors seem to feel this is film music's only function in a film--especially if the film is inherently weak. Every composer who has worked in film has, at one time or another, been asked to provide music for a weak scene in the hopes that the music will somehow make the scene stronger. It simply cannot be done, and it is then the composer who usually but unfairly receives the critic's blame for a scene poorly executed.

One wonders if some of the objections to music in films is that it is too effective. We tend to react to music whether we desire to or not and if we don't wish to be moved by it, we resent its presence for making us begin to lose control of our rational, "sophisticated" defenses.

Of course, there are times in a film, perhaps even entire films, when any kind of music is inappropriate. One critic, writing about the film Sunset Boulevard, said: "The plain fact is that the script of Sunset Boulevard with its use of both narration and dialogue, and its realization through the camera, is so complete as to leave music not much to do." This certainly can be the case, but it is not true of most films. Films usually lack music because a producer or director did not want it. To them, music impinges on a sense of "realism." "Where's the music coming from?" is the oft-quoted question. This question was raised during Hitchcock's filming of Lifeboat. On hearing that Hitchcock had asked, "But where is the music supposed to come from out in the middle of the ocean?" composer David Raksin replied: "Ask Mr. Hitchcock where the cameras come from."* The answer, unfortunately for the film composer, demonstrates more intelligence and perception than the question. The film composer must understand more about every other aspect of the filmmaker's craft than any other individual involved in the production. Since the composer is usually called in on the project after the film is complete, he must know what the director, cinematographer, actors, and editor are all trying to say dramatically. Without this dramatic sense for film, the composer is lost and his contribution to the film will be negligible.

[* In my research I have seen this famous reply attributed respectively to David Raksin, a sound technician, Lionel Barrymore and someone in the studio music department. Some checking with those present at the time, however, proved beyond any doubt that it was Raksin who came up with this famous comment.]

A famous example of what purports to be a totally fused relationship of music and picture is the "audiovisual score" constructed by Sergei Eisenstein of a sequence from Alexancler Nevsky. Because this example is used frequently in filn classes and because the assumption that it is a totally fused relationship of music and picture is wholly incorrect, a critique of its essential points are in order.

Figure 6 shows that Eisenstein has constructed a diagram of the "picture rhythm" as well as the "musical movement," for he considers the two to be identical. "Now let us collate the two graphs," he writes in his book The Film Sense, "What do we find? Both graphs of movement correspond absolutely, that is, we find a complete correspondence between the movement of the music and the movement of the eye over the lines of the plastic composition. In other words, exactly the same motion lies at the base of both the musical and the plastic structures."

Two areas in this "correspondence" between picture and music are highly questionable. The first is the relationship of the rhythm of the music to the rhythm of the picture. The identification of musical and visual rhythms is dubious because in the plastic arts the concept of rhythm is largely metaphorical. Here the problem for Eisenstein is compounded, as his graphs refer to single shots, not to the thne relation between them.

The second area in which Eisenstein's views are questionable deals with the idea that the graphs are supposed to prove that the actual movement of the music is similar to the sequence of pictures. In reality, what the graph proves is that there is a similarity between the notation of the music and the picture sequence. This is an extremely important and crucial distinction upon which the whole of Eisenstein's premise rests. But Eisenstein's comparison is a bogus one, for musical notation is merely a graphic fixation of actual musical movement, "the static image of a dynamic phenomenon," according to Hanns Eisler. Music is an art that moves through time, an art that cannot be perceived instantaneously; whereas, in Eisenstein's graph, the pictures are perceived instantly. And while it is possible for the film director, through the composition of his shot, to control somewhat the direction of the viewer's eye movement across the frame, there is no way to control the rhythm or pace of that movement. In shot IV in the diagram, two flags are visible on the horizon. Eisenstein correlates these two flags to two eighth notes in the music. Bccause these two flags are vertical images and in direct conflict with the primary horizontal composition of the shot, they are recognized instantly by the eye. The music, however, is quite another matter. Using Prokofiev's tempo marking of Largo [qtr. note] = 48, it takes approximately 4 seconds from the time shot IV appears on the screen to the appearance of the first specified eighth note on the sound track. It is another 2 1/2 seconds before the second eighth note is heard. The point is that the recognition of the metaphorical picture rhythm of shot IV is instantaneous, while the musical rhythm that Eisenstein claims corresponds to the picture rhythm takes 6 1/2 seconds to be perceived.

Another example of this sort of faulty comparison can be seen in Shot V. The music supposedly imitates the steeply sloping rocks by descending down a triad. The descent down the triad in the music actually has the appearance of a precipitously falling curve in the notation. But the problem here is that in the music itself the fall occurs in time, while the steeply sloping rock in Shot V is seen as unchanged from the first note to the last.

A further objection has to do with the development of the sequence and the music. If we are to accept Eisenstein's thesis of a correspondence between the music and the picture, then we can assume that the musical development will match that of the motion picture. The music then should show some distinction between the close-up and the panoramic views of the film.

However, a close examination of both music and picture will reveal that just the opposite is true, for here the picture moves on while the music merely marks time. For instance, there is a clear difference in the stage of development between the first three shots, which show a good amount of detail, and shot IV, which is a general view of the battle line. But an examination of the music will show that measures 5 through 8 literally repeat measures 1 through 4. In this instance Eisenstein's repeated suggestion that picture and music should correspond in movement goes unnoticed. Alluding again to shot IV, the two eighth notes representing the flags also are heard in the music accompanying shot 11, which does not show any flags. If Eisenstein wishes to be so pedantic in translating picture details into music, he should at least make the pedantry consistent. Instead, Eisenstein seems to practice such pedantry one moment and then forgets it in the next.

What Prokofiev seems to be doing with the music at this point is catching the general tension of this pre-battle moment. In other words, the music is speaking to the psychology of the moment (i.e., apprehension, fear) in terms of the characters involved rather than to any abstract notion of shot development or metaphorical "picture rhythm."

Film theoreticians refuse to give up their idea that this example represents the ultimate wedding of music and picture. For example, John Howard Lawson in his book, Film: The Creative Process, decries the fact that "the experimental work initiated by Eisenstein and Prokofiev in Alexander Nevsky has not been appreciated in theory or utilized in practice." This support of Eisenstein's concept of an "audiovisual score" on the part of film theoreticians is a result of their highly limited and superficial knowledge and understanding of music.

Dance Steps and Characteristic Rhythms - Online Resource

The online resource An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals ca. 1490 to 1920 contains a marvelous series of demonstration videos, giving the basic musical figures (and
characteristic rhythms) of nearly a hundred dances, together with their dance steps: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dihtml/divideos.html

Action Replay - by Marilia Duffles

Reprinted with the very kind special permission of author Marilia Duffles, and the assistance of FT editor Pat Hooper:

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5dd08b34 c2b0 11d9 b509 00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=2.html
FT.Com Financial Times
Arts & Weekend Saturday May 14 2005

Action replay
By Marilia Duffles

Why is dancing so enjoyable to watch? What is it about bodies moving in unison that is so captivating that it drove Degas zealously to paint the human body in all its poses?

Scientists have been investigating such questions for years and it seems that the rapt audience is right inside our head. Research shows that when subjects watch films of ballet or capoeira (a Brazilian martial art), the same areas in the brain are activated as those used to execute the movements. When watching motion, the brain “moves” along every step of the way, so much so that it stimulates physiological responses such as increased oxygen consumption to the point where the weak hearted might suffer a heart attack merely watching strenuous sports.

This is why mentally “going through the motions” is just about as good as rehearsing to improve a dancer’s or sportsman’s performance. To observe, then, is to dance.

How does the brain do this? Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of Parma, Italy, discovered that the brain has specialised cells, aptly called mirror neurones, which mimic the actions of others. They illustrated this ability through “point light” experiments, in which the subjects watched films of people dancing, cycling and doing other activities in a dark room with tiny lights attached to their shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees and ankles. The observers were easily able to identify the actions of the performers, as well as their intentions, emotions, beliefs, genders and personalities from the point lights alone.

This finely honed perception of human movement, the ability to read body language and readily to perceive and express our own is known as social intelligence. This capacity to navigate our social world means we can work out “where others are coming from” (are they angry or happy?) or “where they are going” (are they coming to yell at me or to ask for help?) so we know how to react accordingly.

To mirror others is to empathise, using the same mental rehearsal of the body language of others that allows us to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Some of us fail miserably, while others can really “feel your pain”. It enables us to recognise a friend at a distance just by their gait and subconsciously to acquire the mannerisms of our spouse. And it is why, like yawning, dancing is contagious.


So when someone says, “I’ve got rhythm”, they probably have the graceful social movements of an extrovert that translate well on the dance floor. Equally, you can probably count on the socially inept introvert to jerk about to the music.

If empathy is the great imitator and lubricant of social life, it naturally plays the same role in dancing. A Nureyev and Fonteyn pas de deux, or Baryshnikov on his own, moves audiences with the empathic splendour of fluid narrative movements. As a dancer with the National Ballet of Washington, I used to feel that dancing was sensing the audience moving with me as I used my body to express not just a series of thoughts and feelings as motions, but the primal exhilaration of doing so successfully.

Why does music make us want to dance or even tap our feet in time? According to Petr Janata, a neuroscientist from UC Davis, University of California, after a mere 15 seconds of listening to music, the very regions in the brain involved in mimicking and composing action sequences (mirror neurones again) are strongly activated even when we’re forced to lie still. Ezra Pound expressed it well when he said: “Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance.”

We also have an internal metronome that moves us to synchronise our gestures with subtle rhythms not only to the music but to the beat of our partner or others on the dance floor. It’s no wonder that we get a kick out of watching folk dances, the ultimate in synchronised body movements, or the powerfully “swaying” Libiamo (”Let’s drink”) chorus of Verdi’s La traviata, says Steven Brown, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas.

Marching to the beat of the same drummer allows us to demonstrate our innate need to communicate sympathetically with others. It is at the core of dance therapy, in which a co ordinated companionship is created between therapist and client, recreating what should have been happening in the outside world.

But is dance purely an art form or did its form follow function? Brown argues that our prehistoric ancestors used it to communicate vital needs such as those required during a hunt. The gestures were a para language that our culture lacks today and endures only in rituals such as the ceremonial dances of Tibetan Buddhism or Kenya’s Masai initiation.

The beauty of dance is its ability to transcend cultures with its universal language of human movement. Indeed, the story of Thai khon (classical mask dances) and the classical Cambodian apsara dancers (whom Rodin proclaimed to be supreme examples of human nature) is easily understood well beyond its borders.

The beauty of the science of art is the discovery of the essential purpose behind man’s artistic endeavours. It gives meaning to art, and is why it takes two to tango.

On Popular Music - Theodor W. Adorno

On Popular Music
Theodor W. Adorno With the assistance and collaboration of George Simpson

The Musical Material

The Two Spheres of Music
[1] Popular music, which produces the stimuli we are here investigating, is usually characterized by its difference from serious music. This difference is generally taken for granted and is looked upon as a difference of levels considered so well defined that most people regard the values within them as totally independent of one another. We deem it necessary, however, first of all to translate these so-called levels into more precise terms, musical as well as social, which not only delimit them unequivocally but throw light upon the whole setting of the two musical spheres as well.

[2] One possible method of achieving this clarification would be a historical analysis of the division as it occurred in music production and of the roots of the two main spheres. Since, however, the present study is concerned with the actual function of popular music in its present status, it is more advisable to follow the line of characterization of the phenomenon itself as it is given today than to trace it back to its origins. This is the more justified as the division into the two spheres of music took place in Europe long before American popular music arose. American music from its inception accepted the division as something pre-given, and therefore the historical background of the division applies to it only indirectly. Hence we seek, first of all, an insight into the fundamental characteristics of popular music in the broadest sense.

[3] A clear judgment concerning the relation of serious music to popular music can be arrived at only by strict attention to the fundamental characteristic of popular music: standardization.[1] The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to circumvent standardization. Standardization extends from the most general features to the most specific ones. Best known is the rule that the chorus consists of thirty two bars and that the range is limited to one octave and one note. The general types of hits are also standardized: not only the dance types, the rigidity of whose pattern is understood, but also the "characters" such as mother songs, home songs, nonsense or "novelty" songs, pseudo-nursery rhymes, laments for a lost girl. Most important of all, the harmonic cornerstones of each hit--the beginning and the end of each part--must beat out the standard scheme. This scheme emphasizes the most primitive harmonic facts no matter what has harmonically intervened. Complications have no consequences. This inexorable device guarantees that regardless of what aberrations occur, the hit will lead back to the same familiar experience, and nothing fundamentally novel will be introduced.

[4] The details themselves are standardized no less than the form, and a whole terminology exists for them such as break, blue chords, dirty notes. Their standardization, however, is somewhat different from that of the framework. It is not overt like the latter but hidden behind a veneer of individual "effects" whose prescriptions are handled as the experts' secret, however open this secret may be to musicians generally. This contrasting character of the standardization of the whole and part provides a rough, preliminary setting for the effect upon the listener.

[5] The primary effect of this relation between the framework and the detail is that the listener becomes prone to evince stronger reactions to the part than to the whole. His grasp of the whole does not lie in the living experience of this one concrete piece of music he has followed. The whole is pre-given and pre- accepted, even before the actual experience of the music starts: therefore, it is not likely to influence, to any great extent, the reaction to the details, except to give them varying degrees of emphasis. Details which occupy musically strategic positions in the framework--the beginning of the chorus or its reentrance after the bridge--have a better chance for recognition and favorable reception than details not so situated, for instance, middle bars of the bridge. But this situational nexus never interferes with the scheme itself. To this limited situational extent the detail depends upon the whole. But no stress is ever placed upon the whole as a musical event, nor does the structure of the whole ever depend upon the details.

[6] Serious music, for comparative purposes, may be thus characterized: Every detail derives its musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece which, in turn, consists of the life relationship of the details and never of a mere enforcement of a musical scheme. For example, in the introduction of the first movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony the second theme (in C-major) gets its true meaning only from the context. Only through the whole does it acquire its particular Iyrical and expressive quality--that is, a whole built up of its very contrast with the cant us hrmus-like character of the first theme. Taken in isolation the second theme would be disrobed to insignihcance. Another example may be found in the beginning of the recapitulation over the pedal point of the first movement of Beethoven's "Appassionata." By following the preceding outburst it achieves the utmost dramatic momentum. By omitting the exposition and development and starting with this repetition, all is lost.

[7] Nothing corresponding to this can happen in popular music. It would not affect the musical sense if any detail were taken out of the context; the listener can supply the "framework" automatically, since it is a mere musical automatism itself. The beginning of the chorus is replaceable by the beginning of innumerable other choruses. The interrelationship among the elements or the relationship of the elements to the whole would be unaffected. In Beethoven, position is important only in a living relation between a concrete totality and its concrete parts. In popular music, position is absolute. Every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine.

[8] The mere establishment of this difference is not yet suffcient. It is possible to object that the far-reaching standard schemes and types of popular music are bound up with dance, and therefore are also applicable to dance derivatives in serious music, for example, the minuet to and scherzo of the classical Viennese School. It may be maintained either that this part of serious music is also to be comprehended in terms of detail rather than of whole, or that if the whole still is perceivable in the dance types in serious music despite recurrence of the types, there is no reason why it should not be perceivable in modern popular music.

[9] The following consideration provides an answer to both objections by showing the radical differences even where serious music employs dance types. According to current formalistic views the scherzo of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony can be regarded as a highly stylized minuet to. What Beethoven takes from the traditional minuet to scheme in this scherzo is the Idea of outspoken contrast between a minor minuet to, a major trio, and repetition of the minor minuet to; and also certain other characteristics such as the emphatic three-fourths rhythm often accentuated on the first fourth and, by and large, dance like symmetry in the sequence of bars and periods. But the specific form-idea of this movement as a concrete totality transvaluates the devices borrowed from the minuet to scheme. The whole movement is conceived as an introduction to the hnale in order to createtremendous tension, not only by its threatening, foreboding expression but even more by the very way in which its formal development is handled.

[10] The classical minuet to scheme required first the appearance of the main theme, then the introduction of a second part which may lead to more distant tonal regions--formalistically similar, to be sure, to the "bridge" of today's popular music--and finally the recurrence of the original part. All this occurs in Beethoven. He takes up the idea of thematic dualism within the scherzo part. But he forces what was, in the conventional minuet to, a mute and meaningless game rule to speak with meaning. He achieves complete consistency between the formal structure and its specific content, that is to say, the elaboration of its themes. The whole scherzo part of this scherzo (that is to say, what occurs before the entrance of the deep strings in C-major that marks the beginning of the trio), consists of the dualism of two themes, the creeping figure in the strings and the "objective," stone like answer of the wind instruments. This dualism is not developed in a schematic way so that first the phrase of the strings is elaborated, then the answer of the winds, and then the string theme is mechanically repeated. After the first occurrence of the second theme in the horns, the two essential elements are alternately interconnected in the manner of a dialogue, and the end of the scherzo part is actually marked, not by the first but by the second theme, which has overwhelmed the first musical phrase.

[11] Furthermore, the repetition of the scherzo after the trio is scored so differently that it sounds like a mere shadow of the scherzo and assumes that haunting character which vanishes only with the afffirmative entry of the Finale theme. The whole device has been made dynamic. Not only the themes, but the musical form itself have been subjected to tension: the same tension which is already manifcst within the twofold structure of the first theme that consists, as it were, of question and reply, and then even more manifest within the context between the two main themes. The whole scheme has become sub ject to the inherent demands of this particular movement.

[12] To sum up the difference: in Beethoven and in good serious music in general--we are not concerned here with bad serious music which may be as rigid and mechanical as popular music--the detail virtually contains the whole and leads to the exposition of the whole, while, at the same time, it is produced out of the conception of the whole. In popular music the relationship is fortuitous. The detail has no bearing on a wholes, which appears as an extraneous framework. Thus, the whole is never altered by the individual event and therefore remains, as it were, aloof, imperturbable, and unnoticed throughout the piece. At the same time, the detail is mutilated by a device which it can never influence and alter, so that the detail remains inconsequential. A musical detail which is not permitted to develop becomes a caricature of its own potentialities.

Standardization
[13] The previous discussion shows that the difference between popular and serious music can be grasped in more precise terms than those referring to musical levels such as "lowbrow and highbrow," "simple and complex," "naive and sophisticated." For example, the difference between the spheres cannot be adequately expressed in terms of complexity and simplicity. All works of the earlier Viennese classicism are, without exception, rhythmically simpler than stock arrangements of jazz. Melodically, the wide intervals of a good many hits such as "Deep Purple" or "Sunrise Serenade" are more diffficult to follow per se than most melodies of, for example, Haydn, which consist mainly of circumscriptions of tonic triads and second steps. Harmonically, the supply of chords of the so-called classics is invariably more limited than that of any current Tin Pan Alley composer who draws from Debussy, Ravel, and even later sources. Standardization and non standardization are the key contrasting terms for the difference.

[14] Structural Standardization Aims at Standard Reactions. Listening to popular music is manipulated not only by its promoters but, as it were by the inherent nature of this music itself, into a system of response mechanisms wholly antagonistic to the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society. This has nothing to do with simplicity and complexity. In serious music, each musical element, even the simplest one, is "itself," and the more highly organized the work is, the less possibility there is of substitution among the details. In hit music, however, the structure underlying the piece is abstract, existing independent of the specific course of the music. This is basic to the illusion that certain complex harmonies are more easily understandable in popular music than the same harmonies in serious music. For the complicated in popular music never functions as "itself" but only as a disguise or embellishment behind which the scheme can always be perceived. In jazz the amateur listener is capable of replacing complicated rhythmical or harmonic formulas by the schematic ones which they represent and which they still suggest, however adventurous they appear. The ear deals with the diffficulties of hit music by achieving slight substitutions derived from the knowledge of the patterns. The listener, when faced with the complicated, actually hears only the simple which it represents and perceives the complicated only as a parodistic distortion of the simple.

[15] No such mechanical substitution by stereotyped patterns is possible in serious music. Here even the simplest event necessitates an effort to grasp it immediately instead of summarizing it vaguely according to institutionalized prescriptions capable of producing only institutionalized effects. Otherwise the music is not "understood." Popular music, however, is composed In such a way that the process of translation of the unique into the norm is already planned and, to a certain extent, achieved within the composition itself. [16] The composition hears for the listener. This is how popular music divests the listener of his spontaneity and promotes conditioned reflexes. Not only does it not require his effort to follow its concrete stream; it actually gives him models under which anything concrete still remaining may be subsumed. The schematic buildup dictates the way in which he must listen while, at the same time, it makes any effort in listening unnecessary. Popular music is "pre- digested" in a way strongly resembling the fad of "digests" of prmted Material. It is this structure of contemporary popular music which in the last analysis, accounts for those changes of listening habits which we shall later discuss.

[17] So far standardization of popular music has been considered in structural terms--that is, as an inherent quality without explicit reference to the process of production or to the underlying causes for standardization. Though all industrial mass production necessarily eventuates in standardization, the production of popular music can be called "industrial" only in its promotion and distribution, whereas the act of producing a song-hit still remains in a handicraft stage. The production of popular music is highly centralized in its economic organization, but still "individualistic" in its social mode of production. The division of labor among the composer, harmonizer, and arranger is not industrial but rather pretends industrialization, in order to look more up-to-date, whereas it has actually adapted industrial methods for the technique of its promotion. It would not increase the costs of production if the various composers of hit tunes did not follow certain standard patterns. Therefore, we must look for other reasons for structural standardization--very different reasons from those which account for the standardization of motor cars and breakfast foods.

[18] Imitation offers a lead for coming to grips with the basic reasons for it. The musical standards of popular music were originally developed by a competitive process. As one particular song scored a great success, hundreds of others sprang up imitating the successful one. The most successful hits types, and "ratios" between elements were imitated, and the process culminated in the crystallization of standards. Under centralized conditions such as exist today these standards have become "frozen."[2] That is, they have been taken over by cartelized agencies, the final results of a competitive process, and rigidly enforced upon material to be promoted. Noncompliance with the rules of the game became the basis for exclusion. The original patterns that are now standardized evolved in a more or less competitve way. Large-scale economic concentration institutionalized the standardization, and made it imperative. As a result, innovations by rugged individualists have been outlawed. The standard patterns have become invested with the immunity of bigness--"the King can do no wrong." This also accounts for revivals in popular music. They do not have the outworn character of standardized products manufactured after a given pattern. The breath of free competition is still alive within them. On the other hand, the famous old hits which are revived set the patterns which have become standardized. They are the golden age of the game rules.

[19] This "freezing" of standards is socially enforced upon the agencies themselves. Popular music must simultaneously meet two demands. One is for stimuli that provoke the listener's attention. The other is for the material to fall within the category of what the musically untrained listener would call "natural" music: that is, the sum total of all the conventions and material formulas in music to which he is accustomed and which he regards as the inherent, simple language of music itself, no matter how late the development might be which produced this natural language. This natural language for the American listener stems from his earliest musical experiences, the nursery rhymes, the hymns he sings in Sunday school, the little tunes he whistles on his way home from school. All these are vastly more important in the formation of musical language than his ability to distinguish the beginning of Brahms's Third Symphony from that of his Second. Of ficial musical culture is, to a large extent, a mere superstructure of this underlying musical language, namely, the major and minor tonalities and all the tonal relationships they imply. But these tonal relationships of the primitive musical language set barriers to whatever does not conform to them. Extravagances are tolerated only insofar as they can be recast into this so-called natural language.

[20] In terms of consumer demand, the standardization of popular music is only the expression of this dual desideratum imposed upon it by the musical frame of mind of the public--that it be "stimulatory" by deviating in some way from the established "natural," and that it maintain the supremacy of the natural against such deviations. The attitude of the audiences toward the natural language is reinforced by standardized production, which institutionalizes desiderata which originally might have come from the public.

Pseudo-individualization
[21] The paradox in the desiderata--stimulatory and natural--accounts for the dual character of standardization itself. Stylization of the ever identical framework is only one aspect of standardization. Concentration and control in our culture hide themselves in their very manifestation. Unhidden they would provoke resistance. Therefore the illusion and, to a certain extent, even the reality of individual achievement must be maintained. The maintenance of it is grounded in material reality itself, for while administrative control over life processes is concentrated, ownership is still diffuse.

[22] In the sphere of luxury production, to which popular music belongs and in which no necessities of life are immediately involved, while, at the same time, the residues of individualism are most alive there in the form of ideological categories such as taste and free choice, it is imperative to hide standardization. The "backwardness" of musical mass production, the fact that it is still on a handicraft level and not literally an industrial one, conforms pcrfectly to that necessity which is essential from the viewpoint of cultural big business. If the individual handicraft elements of popular music were abolished altogether, a synthetic means of hiding standardization would have to be evolved. Its elements are even now in existence.

[23] The necessary correlate of musical standardization is pseudo- individualization. By pseudo-individualization we mean endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market on the basis of standardization itself. Standardization of song hits keeps the customers in line by doing their listening for them, as it were. Pseudo-individualization, for its part, keeps them in line by making them forget that what they listen to is already listened to for them, or "pre-digested."

[24] The most drastic example of standardization of presumably individualized features is to be found in so-called improvisations. Even though jazz musicians still improvise in practice, their improvisations have become so "normalized" as to enable a whole terminology to be developed to express the standard devices of individualization: a terminology which in turn is ballyhooed by jazz publicity agents to foster the myth of pioneer artisanship and at the same time flatter the fans by apparently allowing them to peep behind the curtain and get the inside story. This pseudo-individualization is prescribed by the standardization of the framework. The latter is so rigid that the freedom it allows for any sort of improvisation is severely delimited. Improvisations--passages where spontaneous action of individuals is permitted ("Swing it boys")--are confined within the walls of the harmonic and metric schcmc-. In a great many cases, such as the "break" of pre-swing jazz, the musical function of the improvised detail is determined completely by the scheme: the break can be nothing other than a disguised cadence. Here, very few possibilities for actual improvisation remain, due to the necessity of merely melodically circumscribing the same underlying harmonic functions. Sincc thc-se possibilities were very quickly exhausted, stereotyping of improvisatory details speedily occurred. Thus, standardization of the norm enhances in a purely technical way standardization of its own deviation--pseudo-individualization.

[25] This subservience of improvisation to standardization explains two main socio-psychological qualities of popular music. One is the fact that the detail remains openly connected with the underlying scheme so that the listener always feels on safe ground. The choice in individual alterations is so small that the perpetual recurrence of the same variations is a reassuring signpost of the identical behind them. The other is the function of "substitution"--the improvisatory features forbid their being grasped as musical events inthemselves. They can be received only as embellishments. It is a well-known fact that in daring jazz arrangements worried notes, dirty notes, in other words, false notes, play a conspicuous role. They are apperceived as exciting stimuli only because they are corrected by the ear to the right note. This, however, is only an extreme instance of what happens less conspicuously in all individualization in popular music. Any harmonic boldness, any chord which does not fall strictly within the simplest harmonic scheme demands being apperceived as "false," that is, as a stimulus which carries with it the unambiguous prescription to substitute for it the right detail, or rather the naked scheme. Understanding popular music means obeying such commands for listening. Popular music commands its own listening habits.

[26] There is another type of individualization claimed in terms of kinds of popular music and differences in name bands. The types of popular music are carefully differentiated in production. The listener is presumed to be able to choose between them. The most widely recognized differentiations are those between swing and sweet and such name bands as Benny Goodman and Guy Lombardo. The listener is quickly able to distinguish the types of music and even the performing band, this in spite of the fundamental identity of the material and the great similarity of the presentations apart from their emphasized distinguishing trademarks. This labeling technique, as regards type of music and band, is pseudo-individualization, but of a sociological kind outside the realm of strict musical technology. It provides trademarks of identification for differentiating between the actually undifferentiated.

[27] Popular music becomes a multiple-choice questionnaire. There are two main types and their derivatives from which to choose. The listener is encouraged by the inexorable presence of these types psychologically to cross out what he dislikes and check what he likes. The limitation inherent in this choice and the clear-cut alternative it entails provoke like-dislike patterns of behavior. This mechanical dichotomy breaks down indifference it is imperative to fdvor sweet or swing if one wishes to continue to listen to popular music.

THEORY ABOUT THE LISTENER
Popular Music and "Leisure Time"
[28] In order to understand why this whole type of music (i.e., popular music in general) maintains its hold on the masses, some considerations of a general kind may be appropriate.

[29] The frame of mind to which popular music originally appealed, on which it feeds, and which it perpetually reinforces, is simultaneously one of distraction and inattention. Listeners are distracted from the demands of reality by entertainment which does not demand attention either.

[30] The notion of distraction can be properly understood only within its social setting and not in self-subsistent terms of individual psychology. Distraction is bound to the present mode of production, to the rationalized and mechanized process of labor to which, directly or indirectly, masses are subject. This mode of production, which engenders fears and anxiety about unemployment, loss of income, war, has its "nonproductive" correlate in entertainment; that is, relaxation which does not involve the effort of concentration at all. People want to have fun. A fully concentrated and conscious experience of art is possible only to those whose lives do not put such a strain on them that in their spare time they want relief from both boredom and effort simultaneously. The whole sphere of cheap commercial entertainment reflects this dual desire. It induces relaxation because it is patterned and pre-digested. Its being patterned and pre-digested serves within the psychological household of the masses to spare them the effort of that participation (even in listening or observation) without which there can be no receptivity to art. On the other hand, the stimuli they provide permit an escape from the boredom of mechanized labor.

[31] The promoters of commercialized entertainment exonerate themselves by referring to the fact that they are giving the masses what they want. This is an ideology appropriate to commercial purposes: the less the mass discriminates, the greater the possibility of selling cultural commodities indiscriminately. Yet this ideology of vested interest cannot be dismissed so easily. It is not possible completely to deny that mass consciousness can be molded by the operative agencies only because the masses "want this stuff."

[32] But why do they want this stuff? In our present society the masses themselves are kneaded by the same mode of production as the arti-craft material foisted upon them. The customers of musical entertainment are themselves objects or, indeed, products of the same mechanisms which determine the production of popular music. Their spare time serves only to reproduce their working capacity. It is a means instead of an end. The power of the process of production extends over the time intervals which on the surface appear to be "free." They want standardized goods and pseudo-individualization, because their leisure is an escape from work and at the same time is molded after those psychological attitudes to which their workaday world exclusively habituates them. Popular music is for the masses a perpetual bus man's holiday. Thus, there is justihcation for speaking of a preestablished harmony today between production and consumption of popular music. The people clamor for what they are going to get anyhow.

[33] To escape boredom and avoid effort are incompatible--hence the reproduction of the very attitude from which escape is sought. To be sure, the way in which they must work on the assembly line, in the factory, or at office machines denies people any novelty. They seek novelty, but the strain and boredom associated with actual work leads to avoidance of effort in that leisure time which offers the only chance for really new experience. As a substitute, they crave a stimulant. Popular music comes to offer it. Its stimulations are met with the inability to vest effort in the ever-identical. This means boredom again. It is a circle which makes escape impossible. The impossibility of escape causes the widespread attitude of inattention toward popular music. The moment of recognition is that of effortless sensation. The sudden attention attached to this moment burns itself out instanter and relegates the listener to a realm of inattention and distraction. On the one hand, the domain of production and plugging presupposes distraction and, on the other, produces it.

[34] In this situation the industry faces an insoluble problem. It must arouse attention by means of ever-new products, but this attention spells their doom. If no attention is given to the song, it cannot be sold; if attention is paid to it, there is always the possibility that people will no longer accept it, because they know it too well. This partly accounts for the constantly renewed effort to sweep the market with new products, to hound them to their graves; then to repeat the infanticidal maneuver again and again.

[35] On the other hand, distraction is not only a presupposition but also a product of popular music. The tunes themselves lull the listener to inattention. They tell him not to worry for he will not miss anything.[3]

The Social Cement
[36] It is safe to assume that music listened to with a general inattention which is only interrupted by sudden flashes of recognition is not followed as a sequence of experiences that have a clear-cut meaning of their own, grasped in each instant and related to all the precedent and subsequent moments. One may go so far as to suggest that most listeners of popular music do not understand music as a language in itself. If they did it would be vastly difficult to explain how they could tolerate the incessant supply of largely undifferentiated material. What, then, does music mean to them? The answer is that the language that is music is transformed by objective processes into a language which they think is their own--into a language which serves as a receptacle for their institutionalized wants. The less music is a language sz~i ge~eris to them, the more does it become established as such a receptacle. The autonomy of music is replaced by a mere socio-psychological function. Music today is largely a social cement. And the meaning listeners attribute to a material, the inherent logic of which is inaccessible to them, is above all a means by which they achieve some psychical adjustment to the mechanisms of present-day life. This "adjustment" materializes in two different ways, corresponding to two major socio- psychological types of mass behavior toward music in general and popular music in particular, the "rhythmically obedient" type and the "emotional" type.

[37] Individuals of the rhythmically obedient type are mainly found among the youth--the so-called radio generation. They are most susceptible to a process of masochistic adjustment to authoritarian collectivism. The type is not restricted to any one political attitude. The adjustment to anthropophagous collectivism is found as often among left-wing political groups as among right-wing groups. Indeed, both overlap: repression and crowd mindedness overtake the followers of both trends. The psychologies tend to meet despite the surface distinctions in political attitudes.

[38] This comes to the fore in popular music which appears to be aloof from political partisanship. It may be noted that a moderate leftist theater production such as Pins and Needles uses ordinary jazz as its musical medium, and that a communist youth organization adapted the melody of "Alexander's Ragtime Band" to its own lyrics. Those who ask for a song of social significance ask for it through a medium which deprives it of social significance. The uses of inexorable popular musical media is repressive per se. Such inconsistencies indicate that political conviction and socio-psychological structure by no means coincide.

[39] This obedient type is the rhythmical type, the word "rhythmical" being used in its everyday sense. Any musical experience of this type is based upon the underlying, unabating time unit of the music--its "beat." To play rhythmically means, to these people, to play in such a way that even if pseudo- individualizations--counter-accents and other "differentiations"-occur, the relation to the ground meter is preserved. To be musical means to them to be capable of following given rhythmical patterns without being disturbed by "individualizing" aberrations, and to fit even the syncopations into the basic time units. This is the way in which their response to music immediately expresses their desire to obey. However, as the standardized meter of dance music and of marching suggests the coordinated battalions of a mechanical collectivity, obedience to this rhythm by overcoming the responding individuals leads them to conceive of themselves as agglutinized with the untold millions of the meek who must be similarly overcome. Thus do the obedient inherit the earth.

[40] Yet, if one looks at the serious compositions which correspond to this category of mass listening, one finds one very characteristic feature: that of disillusion. All these composers, among them Stravinsky and Hindemith, have expressed an "anti romantic" feeling. They aimed at musical adaptation to reality--a reality understood by them in terms of the "machine age." The renunciation of dreaming by these composers is an index that listeners are ready to replace dreaming by adjustment to raw reality, that they reap new pleasure from their acceptance of the unpleasant. They are disillusioned about any possibility of realizing their own dreams in the world in which they live, and consequently adapt themselves to this world. They take what is called a realistic attitude and attempt to harvest consolation by identifying themselves with the external social forces which they think constitute the "machine age." Yet the very disillusion upon which their coordination is based is there to mar their pleasure. The cult of the machine which is represented by unabating jazz beats involves a self-renunciation that cannot but take root in the form of a fluctuating uneasiness somewhere in the personality of the obedient. For the machine is an end in itself only under given social conditions--where men are appendages of the machines on which they work. The adaptation to machine music necessarily implies a renunciation of one's own human feelings and at the same time a fetishism of the machine such that its instrumental character becomes obscured thereby.

[41] As to the other, the "emotional" type, there is some justification for linking it with a type of movie spectator. The kinship is with the poor shop girl who derives gratification by identification with Ginger Rogers, who with her beautiful legs and unsullied character, marries the boss. Wish fulfillment IS Considered the guiding principle in the social psychology of moving Pictures and similarly in the pleasure obtained from emotional erotic music. This explanation, however, is only superficially appropriate.

[42] Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley may be dream factories. But they do not merely supply categorical wish fulfillment for the girl behind the counter. She does not immediately identify herself with Ginger Rogers marrying. What does occur may be expressed as follows: when the audience at a sentimental film or sentimental music become aware of the overwhelming possibility of happiness, they dare to confess to themselves what the whole order of contemporary life ordinarily forbids them to admit, namely, that they actually have no part in happiness. What is supposed to be wish fulfillment is only the scant liberation that occurs with the realization that at last one need not deny oneself the happiness of knowing that one is unhappy and that one could be happy. The experience of the shop girl is related to that of the old woman who weeps at the wedding services of others, blissfully becoming aware of the wretchedness of her own life. Not even the most gullible individuals believe that eventually everyone will win the sweepstakes. The actual function of sentimental music lies rather in the temporary release given to the awareness that one has missed fulfillment.

[43] The emotional listener listens to everything in terms of late romanticism and of the musical commodities derived from it which are already fashioned to fit the needs of emotional listening. They consume music in order to be allowed to weep. They are taken in by the musical expression of frustration rather than by that of happiness. The influence of the standard Slavic melancholy typified by Tchaikowsky and Dvorak is by far greater than that of the most "fulfilled" moments of Mozart or of the young Beethoven. The so-called releasing element of music is simply the opportunity to feel something. But the actual content of this emotion can only be frustration. Emotional music has become the image of the mother who says, "Come and weep, my child." It is catharsis for the masses, but catharsis which keeps them all the more firmly in line. One who weeps does not resist any more than one who marches. Music that permits its listeners the confession of their unhappiness reconciles them, by means of this "release," to their social dependence.

NOTES
[1] The basic importance of standardization has not altogether escaped the attention of current literature on popular music. "The chief difference between a popular song and a standard, or serious, song like 'Mandalay,' 'Sylvia,' or 'Trees,' is that the melody and the Iyric of a popular number are constructed within a definite pattern or structural form, whereas the poem, or Iyric, of a standard number has no structural confinements, and the music is free to interpret ~he meaning and feeling of the words without following a set pattern or form. Putting it another way, the popular song is 'custom built,' while the standard song allows the composer freer play of imagination and interpretation." Abner Silver and Robert Bruce, How to Wvite and Sel/ a Song Hit (New York, 1939), p.2. The authors fail, however, to realize the externally superimposed, commercial character of those patterns which aims at canalized reactions or, in the language of the regular announcement of one particular radio program, at "easy listening." They confuse the mechanical patterns with highly organized, strict art forms: "Certainly there are few more stringent verse forms in poetry than the sonnet, and yet the greatest poets of all time have woven undying beauty within its small and limited frame. A composer has just as much opportunity for exhibiting his talent and genius in popular songs as in more serious music" (pp. 2-3). Thus the standard pattern of popular music appears to them virtually on the same level as the law of a fugue. It is this contamination which makes the insight into the basic standardization of popular music sterile. It ought to be added that what Silver and Bruce call a "standard song" is just the opposite of what we mean by a standardized popular song.
[2] See Max Horkheimer, Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung 8 ( 1939), p. 115.
[3] The attitude of distraction is not a completely universal one. Particularly youngsters who invest popular music with their own feelings are not yet completely blunted to all its effects. The whole problem of age levels with regard to popular music, however, is beyond the scope of the present study. Demographic problems, too, must remain out of consideration.

no copyright 2002 textz.com - no rights reserved