I am happily working my way through Peter Kivy’s Philosophy of Music during Spring Break amidst some writing and a lot of grading. Though I am only halfway through, I can heartily recommend the book as an excellent introduction to the central issues in music aesthetics. Kivy is defending the formalist position of Hanslick with some special modifications that allow him to acknowledge and speak about the emotional aspects of music. (The monograph is from 2002, so it is rather uninformed on the advances in musical semiotics in the past 10 years.)
The formalist position nicely avoids some of the awkward problems that arise in the philosophy of music. When one of my students brought up what Kivy likes to call the “arousal” theory of music and began talking about how the music communicated emotions, I tried to get the student to clarify her position by asking the hard questions the formalist position asks. “Is the composer somehow putting his or her emotion into a major 6th? When you perform it or listen to it, are you somehow extracting that composers emotion from the major 6th? If that is not happening, what exactly are you saying?”
One solution to this problem is something that I have heard articulated by Eph Ehly on more than one occasion. That is, the composer is providing a structure for me to communicate my feelings. Now, I won’t presume to understand everything that is going on in an inspired and brilliant conductor like Eph Ehly. However, I will start this series of posts contemplating the idea he proposes as I understand because it is actually interesting philosophically.
The concept is attempting a sort of end around of the formalist position. The emotion is not in the music qua music, the emotion is in the performer. The composer’s emotions aren’t in the major 6th, but you can put your emotions into the major 6th and somehow the audience can unpack that major 6th and hear/feel your sorry/happiness/melancholy/whatever. It is a nice solution in some ways, but when you parse out the implications, it becomes more and more disturbing.
Let’s take the emotions out of the major 6th. If the major 6th exists solely for the purpose of expressing my personal emotions, then what does that mean for me as a conductor? Does that mean that the choir/orchestra exists solely to express my personal emotions? It seems the same thing to me. If an interval can be a structure upon which to express myself, why not 10 very real, human altos? Without doubt their are conductors that think this way. (Or else, why would we have sayings like, “All conductors are assholes.”) But, most conductors are not like this, and surprisingly, most musicians don’t even feel this way about their own instruments.
Talk to a violinist that owns an expensive instrument sometime. They never say that their instrument is simply a vehicle to express their personal emotions. They talk about the history of the thing. They talk about the other people who have put their heart and soul into the wood of the thing. They use mystical language to get at a more pertinent truth.
In the same way, I really don’t think that is what we are doing when we are conducting is just expressing our personal feelings. I especially don’t think that is what Eph Ehly is doing when he is conducting. When I have played for him, he said that sort of stuff in such a way that it invited each member of the ensemble to make their own contribution. The end result was not some sort of personal emotional display, but a coalescence of multifoliate expressions working toward a single musical end. What that end might be is another question.
Why is this philosophy and not say… psychology. That is the same issues are heavily discussed in literary theory, although in it we do not have the role of musician (unless its an audio book I guess). But I agree that everyone plays a part and I would argue that the listener has to activate the emotion as well.
Funny you should mention it. Kivy, thus far, has said in the book, "Maybe this is something the psychologists can figure out" a couple times. He is trying to keep some sort of philosophical purity, I think. He is making a sharp distinction between what goes on in literary theory, but that's for another post.
Is there emotion in a Major 6? No, because emotion is not a substance. It is not a photon or a wave, it is not created or destroyed. Emotion is a reaction. I believe it to be more than mere chemistry, but it is a reaction to stimuli. The composer provides the outline of the stimulus to the musicians, who interpret the outline and create direct stimuli for the hearer.
Also the question "Is there emotion in a Major 6 chord?" is intellectually sketchy. Does any one listen to merely a Major 6 chord? Not usually. Usually that chord exists in relation to sounds before and after it – it exists in a relationship to the piece as a whole and to the surrounding tones. If you ask, "Is there emotion in this movement?", then we might have something to argue about. Nonetheless, for me, G Major on a 6 string acoustic guitar sounds happy.
In the end, it's all personal. I can say "I find Beethoven's 9th joyous." I can't state as a fact "Beethoven's 9th is joyous." Music exists in relationship with its hearers. Full stop.
Certainly, there will be more on the context on the way. The major 6th is an unfair example, but I have to start somewhere.
Here are the questions I have for you. If the composer is just providing an outline for "direct stimuli", what exactly is happening when I pick up a score, imagine what it will sound like, and have an emotional reaction to it? Is that the same thing, or is it different?
Also, you might not be able to state as "fact", but the truth is that all the studies indicate that listeners actually do agree on certain conventions. They do agree on what sounds joyous. Composers actually have codified these principles in different historic eras – even down to which keys sound more joyful. It's why movie music works. There are even some studies that suggest that these reactions are cross cultural and universal.
I guess I don't know how to answer your question as to imagining what a score will sound like. I can't do that. I have no frame of reference. I suppose the answer is that your imagination is simply standing in for the physical instruments. You are imagining a specific performance. Perhaps you can imagine different ways to perform a score, but each one is specific in that imagining. That's pretty much a guess though.
Composers codifying principles is basically the definition of subjectivity. Those composers in that time found those keys joyful. Are the same keys always joyful? Does every single non-mentally-ill person agree that the key is joyful? What if someone says, "I do not find Beethoven's 9th joyous"? Are they simply wrong? Lying? Mentally ill? Failing to comply with the culture?
I agree that people from many cultures may agree on things like dissonance, volume, etc. But I don't agree that there is an objective standard for tying a specific emotion to a specific movement, or piece, or whatever, that stands independently of culture and era.
These studies, are they conducted longitudinally? For 100's of years across myriad cultures? Of course not. Are they even conducted really cross culturally? If we play the 9th for an Inuit, an Arizonan, an Amazonian rain forest tribesman, a Vietnamese villager, a Ukrainian, a Frenchwoman, a Mongolian,etc, etc, will they all say it is joyous or buoyant? You have told me about studies that show that loudly striking random keys on the piano is not considered music by any culture, but I do not think that is the same as assigning an emotional content to a piece of music across cultures.
But, I could be wrong about all of it.
It's fun to talk about though.
Remind me sometime to tell you about the conversation I had with Peter Kivy at an aesthetics conference.