Author: Matt74
Date: 2016-07-29 00:33
Brycon,
Thanks for your comments. I think you are right when you said that words refer to something, whereas, strictly speaking, notes don't. I tried to come up with something to the same effect, but it got too complicated.
Yes, one could treat a piece of music, or any other piece of art, as if it were literature, making social an other comments about it, and then have this influence your playing. However, the basis for interpreting it that way is extra-musical, and the audience would have no idea what you were thinking. They just hear the music. Writing about music isn't making music.
If someone uses Marxist or Feminist critiques (or adopts any other "-ism") they are to that extent a Marxist or Feminist (or whatever), because "-isms" are ways of thinking. When you are writing it matters a great deal what you think about "gender", "class", etc. You will say different things. It doesn't matter when you play music. Wagner thought a great deal about being German, but you don't have to be German to like Wagner! (Or NOT like Wagner!) If someone decided that Mozart was bourgeois, and played him elegantly, the audience wouldn't know the difference. Later, they might say to themselves, "Hmm. Mozart must have been elegant." I doubt they would say, "Hmm. Mozart must have been subversive." You might think Haydn is funny, but he is. If you play Bach like a thundering stampede of buffalo for some reason, you frighten young children!
Music, like any art form, has social aspects. However, when most classical musicians make music they don't have any personal agenda in performing. It's music. A great musician shows us things in the music, and brings new things to the music, but doesn't make their performance a socio-political commentary on the music. At least, I don't think they should.
The harmonic series was understood well by the Ancient Greeks, especially the Pythagoreans. Plato uses the harmonic series in "The Timaeus". Boethius explained the knowledge passed down to him from the Greeks. The ancients constructed a seven step "major" scale by stacking perfect fifths. And of course, people have played trumpets and flutes from time immemorial, so they knew about overtones, even if they didn't analyze them mathematically like the Greeks.
When I said tonality, I didn't mean "Western Tonality", although I understand that was confusing. I meant any music that uses octaves, fourths, fifths, etc. Most forms of music are modal. The reason most of the world's music is some variation on pentatonic scales and 7 step scales is because the overtone series makes it work. The whole step derives from the distance between the fourth and the fifth, the half step the distance between the third and fourth.
Atonal music (at least the 12 tone sort) is based on the octave. Anything based on the octave is also based on the overtone series. Even equal temperament, which technically violates the overtone series, still has to respect the true octave, and the rest of the intervals are close enough to the real overtone series to sound like them. So, even the whole step, half step, and other intervals in atonal music are ultimately based on the overtone series. (Even quarter tones are theoretically based on equal temperament, and ultimately the natural scale.) Truly atonal music would have to avoid the octave and any interval which reminded the ear of any natural interval. That would be noise. Atonality is based in natural harmony, because it can't be otherwise, but is a deliberate attempt at destroying it.
Atonal music and Free Jazz are usually introduced as the ultimate logical extensions of harmony, etc. I don't think this is true. Atonality (literally "not tonal") is deconstructive because it deconstructs tonality. The purpose of a 12 tone row is to avoid any harmonic center. Free jazz is deconstructive because it deconstructs form.
IMO atonal music isn't really a style. If it all sounds the same it's only because, you can't really write in ANY style using only 12 tone rows.
Free Jazz is a style but depends upon the manner in which they play, and because you can't really improvise 12 tone rows. There is always some harmony.
- Matthew Simington
Post Edited (2016-07-29 00:38)
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