On talking about music (shortened version)
On talking about music (shortened version)
A few days ago, I read the following sentences:
"Not only the way music was made, but also the way it was written about changed fundamentally in the late 1970s. [...] And music criticism no longer analysed songs in isolation, but related them to society, politics, philosophy and sociology."
(Alexander Kasbohm)
These opening sentences of a feature article point to some historical changes in the way music is written about or talked about, perhaps comparable to fashions, triggered by intellectual currents, even if not immediately apparent in concrete events or directly expressible new insights. Two essential dimensions or directions of these changes are identified: the importance attached to the technical analysis of musical craftsmanship, and the conceptual framework within which the supposed characteristics of music are discussed or written about.
Yet another aspect of talking and writing about music is attributing or wanting to attribute characteristics to it which, on closer inspection, are not and cannot be characteristics of music at all, but instead describe or characterise the emotional affects that music triggers when listened to, whether these are purely personal or supra-personal in the sense that there are other people who seem to feel the same when listening to the same pieces of music. At least, that is what the words I use suggest when they can be understood and taken up by conversation partners and are also experienced as accurate. This exchange about music reinforced my naive impression that I was concerned with characteristics of the music itself.
When I talk or write about music beyond its objectifiable characteristics (such as volume levels, harmonic sequences, melodic progressions, rhythmic figures), I am ‘really’ talking or writing about what the music I hear does to me when I listen to it and how I evaluate it in turn. This realisation is particularly important to me when it comes to pieces of music that I do not like. Because from this point of view, it becomes clear to me that it is not just the music itself, but also me, my spontaneous emotional reaction to it when listening. My inner response of liking or disliking is not fixed, it is not immutable, it can change unconsciously depending on my mood at the moment I am listening, and in part it can be consciously shaped by reflecting on it. The most important thing for me about this insight is that, from this perspective, it is no longer simply a question of ugly (or noisy or boring) versus beautiful (or ... or ...) music, but instead interactions between me and the music I am listening to, whose emotional affects I evaluate at that moment as aesthetically repulsive, causing a lack of pleasure, or as aesthetically attractive, triggering enjoyment.
Such intellectual clarification of what happens upon closer inspection fundamentally influences the way I think and talk about music. From this perspective, I do not ‘relate music to society, politics, philosophy and sociology’, but all the more to myself. And if a piece of music, a style of music, a way of making music is meant to be subversive and is perceived as subversive, this is still not a characteristic of the music, but a way of perceiving and evaluating it. It is a way of talking or writing about music, not a subversive (or different) power inherent in the music itself. That is why e.g. Punk as a political phenomenon only works (or worked) in certain social areas within a relatively narrow historical context. The same pieces of music (and song lyrics) now seem largely harmless politically. From a music history perspective, their provocative nature stemmed from regression, brutal simplification and the overly obvious negation of sophisticated (rock) music.
With this realisation, I become less dependent on the labels that advertising and music journalism like to attach to music (styles). Whether someone calls something ‘Industrial’ or ‘Death Metal’ or ‘Punk’ or not does not need to influence me any further. Such labelling only serves as a brief, catchphrase-like orientation within a certain language game and as a rough way of comparison between musical styles. It is not an independent truth from the sort if an apple should be regarded as red or as green.
What does this mean for me? That I remind myself: I don't like this piece today, this piece seems too long-winded or too hectic to me at the moment, that other piece appeals to me very much at the moment, has often carried me away – but these are not mechanical connections and not characteristics of the pieces of music themselves. They are interactions with me, with my current mood, with my listening experiences, with my listening habits.
If, for example, I had encountered ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’ from Modest Mussorgsky's ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, on another day, in a different situation, I might not have classified it as powerful and dramatic, but rather as schmaltzy and too loud. If I had heard the last movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in isolation, without knowing that it was the concluding part of a dramatic symphony by Beethoven, I might have found it too flashy, too striking, too euphoric.
Such initial judgements can then become entrenched and unjustifiably stick to the music. But it is not only the way we write about music that can change – the way we think about music can also be reflected upon and thus revised and relativised.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
