Contributions and Acknowledgments

RESONANCES

Engaging Music in Its Cu ltural C ontext

Esther M. Morgan-Ellis

Editor-in-Chief

Blue Ridge | Cumming | Dahlonega | Gainesville | Oconee

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Table of Contents

Contributions and Acknowledgments

vii

How to Use this Book

ix

Our Vision

ix

Notes to the Instructor

x

Help make this book better!

xi

Unit 1 - Music as a Field of Practice and Study

Chapter 1: Music in Human Life

2

What is music?

2

The Power of Music

4

Music and Human Development, Learning, and Wellness

13

Resources for Further Learning

21

Chapter 2: The Elements of Music

23

The Dimensions of Sound

23

Music in the World

32

Resources for Further Learning

42

Unit 2 - Music for Storytelling

Chapter 3: Music and Characterization

44

Introduction 44

John Williams, Star Wars

44

Richard Wagner, The Valkyrie

48

Gustav Holst, The Planets

58

Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring

61

Ragtime and Dixieland Jazz

68

Resources for Further Learning

77

Chapter 4: Sung and Danced Drama

78

Introduction 78

Sung Drama

79

Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton

79

Claudio Monteverdi, Orpheus

85

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, The Magic Flute

96

Tian Han, The Tale of the White Snake

105

Danced Drama

112

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker

112

Javanese Traditional, The Love Dance of Klana Sewandana

121

Resources for Further Learning

128

Chapter 5: Song

129

Introduction 129

Song Cycles

130

Beyoncé, Lemonade

130

Franz Schubert, The Lovely Maid of the Mill

133

Ballads 144

“Pretty Polly”

144

Franz Schubert, “Elf King”

152

Bobbie Gentry, “Ode to Billie Joe”

158

Epic Recitation

160

Ancient Greece: The Iliad

160

West Africa: The Sunjata Story

163

Resources for Further Learning

168

Chapter 6: Stories without Words

170

Introduction 170

Hector Berlioz, Fantastical Symphony

172

Modest Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition

181

Antonio Vivaldi, The Four Seasons, “Spring”

187

Chinese Solo Repertoire, Attack on All Sides and Spring River in the

Flower Moon Night

194

Catherine Likhuta, Lesions

199

Anoushka Shankar, Raga Madhuvanti

203

Resources for Further Learning

211

Unit 3 - Music for Entertainment

Chapter 7: Listening at Public Concerts

213

Introduction 213

1808: A Concert by Ludwig van Beethoven

215

1924: An Experiment in Modern Music

225

1933: A Century of Progress

236

1969: An Aquarian Exposition

244

Resources for Further Learning

258

Chapter 8: Listening at Home and at Court

259

Introduction 259

The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

260

Countess of Dia, “I Must Sing”

272

Tanburi Cemil Bey, “Samâi Shad Araban”

278

John Dowland, “Flow, My Tears”

284

Barbara Strozzi, My Tears

288

Franz Joseph Haydn, String Quartet, Op. 33, No. 2 “The Joke”

294

Clara Schumann, Piano Trio in G minor

301

Resources for Further Learning

304

Unit 4 - Music for Political Expression

Chapter 9: National Identity

307

Introduction 307

National Anthems

308

United States of America: “The Star-Spangled Banner”

309

Germany: “The Song of the Germans”

314

South Africa: “National Anthem of South Africa”

317

Israel: “The Hope”

320

National Representation in Western Art Music

323

Contesting the Representation of Hungary

324

Contesting the Representation of the United States

332

National Representation in Style and Instrumentation

339

Steelband Music of Trinidad and Tobago

340

Resources for Further Learning

347

Chapter 10: Support and Protest

348

Introduction 348

Music as Political Advocacy

349

Campaign Songs

349

Carl Orff, Carmina Burana

361

Music as Political Protest

368

Protest Songs

369

Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5

382

Resources for Further Learning

390

Unit 5 - Functional Music

Chapter 11: Music for Spiritual Expression

393

Introduction 393

Hildegard of Bingen, “O Strength of Wisdom”

393

Giovanni da Palestrina, Pope Marcellus Mass

400

Johann Sebastian Bach, Fugue in G minor and Sleepers, Wake

407

John Newton, “Amazing Grace”

422

John Coltrane, A Love Supreme

435

Resources for Further Learning

438

Chaper 12: Music for Moving

439

Introduction 439

Music for Marching

440

John Philip Sousa, “The Stars and Stripes Forever”

440

Scottish Traditional, “Scotland the Brave”

446

Music for Dancing

449

Dance Music in the United States

450

Dance Music in Concert Settings

468

Resources for Further Learning

478

Unit 6 - Evaluating Music

Chapter 13: What is Good Music?

480

What is good music?

480

The Pulitzer Prize

482

1945: Aaron Copland, Appalachian Spring

482

1965: The Duke Ellington controversy

487

1997: Wynton Marsalis, Blood on the Fields

492

2013: Caroline Shaw, Partita for 8 Voices

494

2018: Kendrick Lamar, DAMN.

497

Greatness and Genre

500

Alarm Will Sound

500

Yo-Yo Ma

506

Conclusion 515

Resources for Further Learning

516

Appendices

A: Instruments of the Orchestra

517

B: Western Art Music

523

C: Definition of Terms

531

Contributions and Acknowledgments

The textbook and accompanying materials were produced by a team of faculty collaborators at the University of North Georgia, each of whom contributed as follows:

Esther M. Morgan-Ellis developed the concept, managed the project, wrote the text (unless otherwise attributed), produced the listening guides (unless otherwise attributed), edited contributions from collaborators, selected/captioned the images, and created the accompanying PowerPoint slides.

Rebecca R. Johnston wrote the Chapter 1 sections entitled “The Power of Music”

and “Music and Human Development, Learning, and Wellness” and produced the test bank questions in collaboration with Marie Graham.

Louis Hajosy wrote the Chapter 8 section entitled “The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the passage concerning Hendrix’s performance of

“The Star-Spangled Banner” that appears in the Chapter 7 section entitled “1969: An Aquarian Exposition.” He also contributed to the Chapter 9 discussion of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” produced the “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” listening guide, and created Appendix B, in addition to providing valuable feedback on the text.

David R. Peoples contributed to the Chapter 13 sections entitled “1965: The Duke Ellington controversy” and “1997: Wynton Marsalis, Blood on the Fields.”

He also typeset all of the listening guides and examples and produced all of the graphics, in addition to providing valuable feedback on the text.

Arielle P. Crumley wrote the Chapter 5 sections entitled “Beyoncé, Lemonade”

and “Ancient Greece: The Iliad” and provided feedback on the remainder of the text.

Alexandra Dunbar wrote the Chapter 4 section entitled “Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton” and produced the accompanying listening guides. She also provided feedback on the remainder of the text.

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CONTRIBUTIONS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Philip Snyder created the notation-based videos in Chapter 2, contributed some images, and provided valuable feedback on the entire text.

Lisa Prodan created the teaching videos in Chapter 2.

Bart Walters contributed to Appendix A, provided valuable feedback on the text, and corrected the initial proof. He also created the YouTube channel that accompanies this book, uploaded videos as necessary, and built playlists in collaboration with Serena Scibelli.

In addition, Jura Pintar formatted listening examples for the typesetting process and Noël Hahn selected some of the images used in Chapter 1. These contributors were not compensated and we appreciate their support.

This text was piloted with the 2019 Honors Music Appreciation class at the University of North Georgia, the members of which provided edits and feedback.

Participants included Bailey Bullard, Abigail Cartwright, Zoe Conoly, Camille Cowherd, Morgan Dow, Olivia Forrest, Sarah Graddy, Isabelle Pobanz, Julia Pownall, and Jessica Wood.

The development and publication of this textbook was funded by a Large-Scale Textbook Transformation Grant from Affordable Learning Georgia (Jeff Gallant, Program Director). Our work was also supported by a Presidential Innovation Incentive Award and a Presidential Semester Incentive Award from the University of North Georgia (Bonita Jacobs, President) and by the UNG Music Department (Benjamin Schoening, Department Head). We are very grateful to these institutions and individuals for making this project possible.

Page | viii

How to Use This Book

OUR VISION

Welcome to Resonances: Engaging Music in Its Cultural Context! Although this book is intended primarily for use in the college music appreciation classroom, it was designed with consideration for independent learners, advanced high school students, and experienced musicians. That is to say, it includes enough detail that expert guidance is not required and is written using broadly-accessible language.

At the same time, it addresses advanced topics and positions music as a serious object of study.

Unlike most music appreciation textbooks, this volume is organized thematically according to the many ways that music is and has been used in human societies. It brings together examples from classical, folk, and popular traditions from around the world. The text offers a thorough grounding in the cultural and historical context of each work and a close examination of its characteristics. While the book can certainly be read from beginning to end, one can also move freely between chapters and examples without missing crucial information.

This textbook is in no sense comprehensive. There are lots of important and influential works that are not discussed in its pages, many vital musical concepts that are not addressed, and countless ideas that are left unexplored. However, this is a feature, not a bug. The authors of this book reject the idea that a comprehensive overview of “important” music is either desirable or possible. Instead, our approach values diversity and depth. Each chapter includes wildly dissimilar examples from various times and places, each of which is uncovered as both a sonic object and a cultural artifact. The result, we hope, will be renewed interest in the music one hears every day, broadened taste for music that was once unfamiliar, and expanded awareness of the music that is still waiting to be discovered.

In short, this book does not offer a definitive curriculum. What it offers is a new approach to thinking about and engaging music—an approach that we have already piloted with a variety of student audiences and know to be successful. Whether you are reading this book on your own or using it as part of a course, we hope you will find that it is full of new ideas and sounds that change the way you listen to and think about music.

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HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

NOTES TO THE INSTRUCTOR

This text is meant to be highly adaptable to your desired curricular and learning objectives, and you are welcome to use it in any way you see fit. It is accompanied by a complete set of teaching materials, including PowerPoint slides, test banks, and videos. These can be accessed through the UNG Press website and the UNG

Music Department YouTube channel.

What follows are some guidelines and suggestions for using this text: 1. By our estimation, this textbook contains enough material for four semester-length music appreciation courses. This allows the instructor to select the desired chapters and/or examples and also to change the curriculum from semester to semester. We strongly advise that you do not attempt to teach this entire text in a single semester.

You will find that the outcome is much more satisfactory if you lead students to engage deeply with a limited number of examples.

2. This textbook is designed to be modular. Any subset of chapters can be assigned in any order, and individual examples can be skipped.

Although we advise that you teach one chapter at a time, choosing which examples to use and which to omit, it is also possible to reorganize this volume at the level of the musical example. For instance, one might choose to teach only works from the Western classical tradition, and to do so in chronological order. While this is not ideal, the fact that each example is self-contained means that it can be done. (You might also find that individual entries are of use in other music courses.)

3. In addition to being a textbook, this volume proposes a new approach to organizing the music appreciation curriculum. The examples reflect the expertise of the authors, but they are by no means exhaustive. It goes without saying that many important and interesting musical works are not included. As such, you are invited not only to chart your own path through the examples but to add your own. Please feel free to integrate additional material under the appropriate chapter headings!

4. Although the musical examples linked in this book are primarily audio-only, we recommend videos of live performances for pedagogical use, and have included our recommendations in the chapter playlists on the UNG Music Department YouTube channel. Live performances are also linked in the PowerPoint slides. We chose to link to audio recordings supplied to YouTube by record labels with the hope that they will remain accessible for the life of this text, which in turn means that the listening guides will remain relevant and useful. We have found, however, that students respond much more positively when they are able to watch a performance.

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5. You will find that some of the musical examples are accompanied by listening guides, but that many are not. There are several reasons for this. To begin with, the authors felt that only certain examples would benefit greatly from listening guides. Although guides can be helpful, we don’t want them to limit students’ engagement with the examples.

Finally, we thought that the creation of listening guides for the remaining examples would make a good assignment for your students to complete.

6. This textbook is only a tool in support of a great music appreciation course, the most important elements of which are listening, discussion, and reflection. The focal point of any course, whether in person or online, should be direct engagement with the musical objects under consideration. This means focused and repeated listening/watching, accompanied by guided observation. It is up to you to change the way your students perceive and understand musical objects. Happy teaching!

HELP MAKE THIS BOOK BETTER!

The authors intend to issue at least one revised edition of this book, which was developed on an abbreviated timeline and does not contain everything we could have wished. We want our revisions to reflect the needs and interests of those who use the text. Is it missing examples that you would like to teach? Is there an additional unit or chapter that could be integrated? Can information be added to a discussion? Could the text package incorporate additional teaching tools? Did you find an error? If you are interested in helping us to improve this book, please contact Esther Morgan-Ellis with your feedback and ideas.

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Unit 1

MUSIC AS A FIELD OF PRACTICE AND STUDY

1Music in Human Life

Rebecca R. Johnston and Esther M. Morgan-Ellis

WHAT IS MUSIC?

It is surprisingly difficult to define the term “music.” More specifically, it can be challenging to determine what is not music, and to explain why.

For example, is bird song music? It is beautiful and enjoyable to listen to, and bird song often features clear, catchy melodies. Some birds learn songs from one another, thereby developing diverse repertoires. Is it a problem that birds sing primarily to communicate and attract mates? Humans certainly make music for those purposes. Does the reason for singing determine whether a song counts as music or not? Can music even be made by non-humans, or is it a uniquely human phenomenon?

Let’s consider another example. Are the noises of the city music? How about when they are carefully recorded and curated for release by a record company?

In 1964, Michael Siegel issued an album entitled Sounds of the Junk Yard1 on

Image 1.1: Is bird song music?

Source: PxHere

Attribution: Unknown

License: CC0

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MUSIC IN HUMAN LIFE

Folkways Records. Does this enshrinement turn the sounds into music? Does your opinion change when you consider that the rock band Sonic Youth was directly inspired by Sounds of the Junk Yard and sought to replicate its sounds in their playing? How about when noises are painstakingly arranged into a collage by a composer? The 1952 work Williams Mix 2 by John Cage is made up entirely of prerecorded sounds. How about when they are imitated by a musical instrument?

Henry Cowell set out to capture the sounds of the New York subway with his 1916

piano composition Dynamic Motion3. Or when they are integrated into a concert work, such as the real car horns used in Gershwin’s 1928 orchestral composition An American in Paris?

Siegel’s 1964 album Sounds of the Junk Yard has inspired 1.

musicians. This example is titled “Loading Pick-Up Truck.”

Cage’s 1952 Williams Mix is made up entirely of real-world 2.

sounds that he recorded, organized, and assembled. Is this music?

Cowell’s 1916 Dynamic Motion imitates the sounds of the 3.

New York subway.

The broadest definition of music to date was provocatively set forth on August 29, 1952, by the American composer John Cage. He made his statement not in words but with a performance of a composition that is known as 4’33” . The premiere of 4’33” was given by pianist David Tudor, who came out onto the stage and proceeded to sit in silence at the keyboard for the time indicated in the title, interrupting his performance only to open and close the keyboard at predetermined time markers. The musical contents of the performance, therefore, were not sounds that emanated from the piano but rather the incidental sounds that audience members happened to perceive during the allotted time: rustling programs, whispers, laughter, a passing train. The composer certainly did not know what these sounds would be and exercised no control over them—and indeed, the sounds heard during performances today would in some cases have been unimaginable to the composer, who died in 1992. The object of this composition was to make the case that any sounds could be music as long as they were listened to as music. In other words, music is in the ear of the beholder. It is defined not by its source or by the intent of its creator. It is defined by the act of listening.

There is continued debate over how to define “music.” The Google Dictionary definition—that is to say, the definition that one is most likely to come across—reads Page | 3

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MUSIC IN HUMAN LIFE

“vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.” This describes most music, to be sure. But does music have to be beautiful? If so, who is the arbiter of what is beautiful? Does music have to express emotion? And what about music that is created not by voices or instruments but by computers (e.g. electronic dance music)? The above definition excludes a lot.

For a more clinical take, we can turn to Merriam-Webster, which describes music as “the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.”

This definition is more difficult to criticise, but it still seems lacking. What about the power of music to make us cry, or dance, or become overwhelmed with nostalgia?

What about the significance of music to personal and cultural identity? A dictionary definition certainly doesn’t have to address these dimensions, but they are integral to a deeper understanding of what music really is.

THE POWER OF MUSIC

Although we might argue over what is and what is not music, there is no question that music is important. Its significance ranges from the historical to the cultural to the biological. Music has played a role in every documented human society of the past and present. The oldest instrument found to date is an ivory flute created about 43,000 years ago—clear evidence that music is not a recent development.

But why did humans start making music? The answers to that question might be discovered by examining the extraordinary effects that making and listening to music has on our brains.

Image 1.2: This bone flute from the Geissenklösterle cave Germany is the oldest known musical instrument.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: José-Manuel Benito

License: CC BY-SA 2.5

Music, Human Experience, and the Brain

All of our activities are governed by the amazing organ situated inside of our skulls and between our ears: the human brain. And it is clear to religionists and evolutionists alike that there is something distinctly different between humans and other animals. But what is that difference? What makes us capable of complex reason and emotion? What gives us the ability to have an awareness of our own Page | 4

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MUSIC IN HUMAN LIFE

thought processes? It can’t simply be the size of our brains, as the brains of blue whales are much larger than those of humans, yet we don’t credit them with equivalent intelligence. Conversely, gorilla brains are only a little smaller than human brains, and they are not capable of the extreme creative and processing power of humanity. So what is it that makes our brains different?

Image 1.3: This brain, which belonged to a sperm whale, is many times the size of a human brain.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Yohei Yamashita

License: CC BY-SA 2.0

What makes us human?

Consider just a few of the qualities that are claimed to be unique to humans.

We recognize ourselves in the working order of things, and are capable of standing back as a spectator and seeing our part in the greater picture. In other words, we have self-consciousness, and are capable of making choices based upon that information. Scientists use the mirror test (whether or not an animal species recognizes reflections of themselves as self, rather than another animal) to measure self-consciousness. But there are many species of primates that recognize their reflections as self, so that characteristic isn’t unique to humans. We have an appreciation of beauty and of aesthetic things, and are compelled as a species to create art. But there are some elephants who paint surprisingly beautiful imitations of the world around them, and some birds who decorate their nests—does this mean that they possess our same capacity for appreciation of aesthetics?

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What about humor? All people possess a sense of humor (though some have less than others) and can appreciate and express humor. Not only does humor require intelligence and understanding of situational variables, but it also requires the ability to see the odd, absurd and ironic. But there are chimpanzees that “laugh”

when they are tickled, and if you watch young chimps playing long enough, you will eventually see one pull a prank on another and run away “laughing.”

Image 1.4: This elephant is painting

Image 1.4: This satin bowerbird has

a picture. Does that mean it can

decorated its courtship stage with a wide

appreciate art?

variety of blue objects. Bowerbirds appear

Source: Wikimedia Commons

to have a keen artistic sense and decorate

Attribution: User “Raki_Man”

with exquisite care.

License: CC BY 3.0

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Joseph C Boone

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

What about awareness of death? While many creatures exhibit behaviors we could characterize as mourning when they lose a beloved human or fellow animal, humans have elaborate funeral rituals upon death. The ancient Egyptians actually buried people with physical objects so that they would have things with them in the next life. But elephants4 have been observed burying their dead (and the dead of other species) in addition to placing food, fruit, and flowers with their bodies. That sounds a lot like a funeral.

This video captures elephants seeming to mourn a dead

4.

companion.

What about awareness of time? Humans experience sequence of events, form memories, and then predict future outcomes, and we have ways of measuring the passing of time in equal intervals (think second hand on a watch). Dogs and other animals certainly don’t have clocks or devices, but they reliably know when it is dinner time. Is this because of biological processes, or do they, too, have some sense of time?

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What about love? It is arguably one of the most important motivational forces in a human’s life, but are we alone in this? Animals display behaviors that clearly indicate affection, but do they love each other the way we do? Cats will rub their companions and purr, whales can deliberately save seals from attack, and dogs display extraordinary altruism towards their owners and other creatures. In humans, these behaviors signal the thing we call love. Do animals experience it the way we do?

What about language? Humanity is the only species that uses language, although we are clearly not the only species that communicates. So what is different about us? Animals communicate in many ways with one another, and some gorillas have been taught sign-language. Koko the gorilla reportedly understood over 2,000

spoken words and was able to use more than 1,000 signs to convey thoughts and emotions. She was even able to communicate compound ideas by using signs in ways they had not been taught to her. This certainly was a form of communication and language use, although Koko could never learn to speak. In addition, while some animals can understand words, sounds, and tone of voice, they do not comprehend syntax or communicate in complex sentences. Throughout history, human beings have devised hundreds of languages and endless dialects, despite the fact that we are born with no way to verbally communicate, at all. So what is it about our brains that makes them capable of complex language, when the composition of our brains is so similar to chimpanzees and gorillas?

Image 1.6: Bonobos Kanzi and Panbanisha are pictured here communicating with a pictorial “keyboard.”

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: User “Wcalvin”

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

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Language and the Human Brain

It comes down to the structure of our brains and to what those structures do.

Generally, the human brain can be divided into three regions: the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain. This characteristic is absent in most animals. Although the size of the brain itself does not determine complex intelligence, the size of the brain in relationship to the size of the body matters. Humans win the rodeo with the largest brain of all animals in comparison

to the size of their bodies. In addition,

the human brain has more neurons in its

outermost layer (the cerebral cortex)

than do other animals, and the insulation

around nerve fibers in the human brain

is thicker than that of other animals,

enabling more rapid signal transfer

between neurons. We literally think

better and faster. But it is the structures

responsible for language production and

comprehension (Broca’s and Wernicke’s

areas) that are unique to human beings. Image 1.7: These are the regions of the And, interestingly, both of these areas brain.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

are heavily involved in the processing of Attribution: User “BruceBlaus”

music, which brings us to the crux of the License: CC BY-SA 4.0

matter: human beings are the only

animals who employ “music” and

“language”. That is what separates us

from every other species on the planet.

And it seems as though we do these

things because we have been endowed

with neuroanatomical structures that

are unique to us. So what do these two

critical brain regions do? And how is

music cognition different from language

cognition?

Early investigators learned about

particular regions of the brain that

control speech by observing patients’

limitations and then conducting

postmortem exams. A French neurologist Image 1.8: This engraving from ca. 1881

named Paul Broca observed a patient depicts Paul Broca, a French neurologist responsible for making foundational

who understood language but who was discoveries about language and the unable to produce more than a few brain.

isolated words. When that patient died, Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Unknown

Broca conducted a postmortem exam License: Public Domain

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Persons with damage to Broca’s area understand heard language and know what they wish to say but are unable to speak. They can’t speak because Broca’s area controls the physical production of speech. Essentially, our brains take in auditory stimuli, then Broca’s area (in conjunction with Wernieke’s area, which we will discuss in a moment) converts the stimuli to neuronal

representations that are then translated into

the physical motions involved in producing

speech sounds. To put this more simply, that

area of the brain helps us understand what we

hear, formulate articulate thoughts and then

convert them into speech.

About ten years later, a neurologist

named Carl Wernicke identified a similar,

Image 1.9: Broca’s area and

Wernieke’s area handle the input

but different, problem in patients who

of sound, conversion of sound to

were unable to comprehend language or to

understanding, and utterance of

construct meaningful sentences, even though

spoken language.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

they did not experience difficulty in producing

Attribution: Peter Hagoort

articulate words. In postmortem examination,

License: CC BY 3.0

he found lesions at the junction of the parietal,

temporal, and occipital lobes. He deduced that

this area, now termed Wernicke’s area, had

something to do with the understanding of

language. Conjunctly, Broca’s and Wernicke’s

areas handle the input of sound, conversion

of sound to understanding, and utterance of

spoken language. And these two areas are

distinct to humans. The genuinely fascinating

thing is that for many years, these areas were

thought to be exclusively involved in the

processing of language. But recent researchers

have discovered through fMRI (functional

magnetic resonance imaging) technology

that the two language processing centers are

activated during listening to and processing

music, even when it contains no text. In other

Image 1.10: The German

words, your two language centers fire when

physician Carl Wernicke,

you are listening to instrumental music and

photographed here in the early

20th century, expanded on

are not processing language. How bizarre is

Broca’s observations.

that? Why might that be? How are music and

Source: Wikimedia Commons

language similar in such a way as to explain

Attribution: J.F. Lehmann, Muenchen

License: Public Domain

this phenomenon?

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Connections Between Speech and Music

What two things do you think of most easily when someone asks, “What is music?” Probably variation in pitch (frequency) and rhythm (time), even though those are not the only elements of music. Is there a pitch and a rhythm to speech?

Read that question aloud to yourself, and note the fact that not all words are the same pitch. This is because we emphasize more important words and increase pitch when asking a question. Read it again and note the fact that not all of the words are the same speed or length, due to the fact that we vary the rhythm of speech sounds. And not only that: there is a syntax (the orderly arrangement of sounds in a system) to both language and music. They behave similarly in that the arrangement of sounds is predictable and conforms to patterns. And there we have it. Our brains are uniquely constructed for the successful intake, conversion, and execution of language and music. And the reason other animals can’t and don’t make music or speech (some animals make musical sounds, but the construction of these sounds doesn’t conform to syntactical rules, so these sounds aren’t actually music in the way we understand it) is because their brains lack the two areas involved in the processing of orderly sound systems. How crazy is that?

But what does this really mean about the nature of music and speech? It suggests that those are the two primary things that make us human and that distinguish us from all other creatures on the planet. That’s a significant point. But music isn’t only processed in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, although speech primarily is.

Before we examine that, however, we need to discuss how the brain is generally structured. The brain is divided into three main parts: the cerebrum, the cerebellum, and the brain stem. The cerebrum is the part that gives the brain its wrinkled appearance. It is divided into a left and right hemisphere separated by the corpus callosum, a bundle of fibers that transmit messages from one side of the brain to the other. The cerebrum performs higher functions like receiving and analyzing sensory input such as touch, sight, and sound, and also processes reasoning, emotion, memory, and fine

motor control. Both Broca’s and

Wernicke’s areas are situated in the cere-

brum. The cerebellum is located under

the cerebrum. It primarily coordinates

muscle movements, and processes the

body’s position in space for purposes of

balance. The brainstem is the most evo-

lutionarily primal area of the brain—one

that we share with other primates. The

brainstem performs primarily autono-

Image 1.11: The brain is divided into

mous functions—those that don’t involve the cerebrum, the cerebellum, and the voluntary thought, like heart rate, brain stem.

breathing, body temperature, digestion, Source: Wikipedia Attribution: Cancer Research UK

swallowing, coughing, and vomiting. You License: CC BY-SA 4.0

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can see that as you move upward from the brainstem, the functions of the brain become more complex.

Now that we’ve handled some of the less-interesting technical information about the way the brain is structured, let’s go back to the cerebrum, where most complex brain function occurs. If we can arrive at an understanding of the way the cerebrum is divided and what kinds of information are processed in each area, it will help us to understand the differences in the way the brain processes language and music—perhaps the two most significant markers of what it is to be human.

As previously mentioned, the cerebrum is divided into a left and right hemisphere that communicate with one another across the corpus callosum. Not all functions of the two hemispheres are shared. In general, the left hemisphere controls the physical motion on the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the physical motion on the left side of the body. Also, in general terms, the left hemisphere processes speech, comprehension, arithmetic, and writing. The right hemisphere controls creativity, spatial ability, and artistic and musical skills. This explanation is a bit misleading, however.

If you look down at a brain from the top, you can see it is divided into two distinct hemispheres. But if you look at the brain from the side, you can see that each hemisphere has distinct fissures that divide the brain into chunks, called lobes. Each hemisphere has four lobes. Moving from front to back, they are the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. Each can be divided even further into areas that serve specific functions (like Broca’s and Werneike’s areas). But it is important to understand that no lobe or area of the brain functions in isolation.

There are complex networks between the lobes of the brain and between the hemispheres that interact to process information. In that sense, our brains are the most complex computers on the planet! We’ll quickly take a look at what is generally processed in each lobe before circling back to talk about the differences between language and music processing in the brain.

Frontal lobe processing determines personality, behavior, emotions, judgment, planning, problem solving, speech (Broca’s area), fine body movement, intelligence, Image 1.12: This diagram illustrates the

lobes of the human brain.

Image 1.13: This diagram illustrates the

Source: Wikimedia Commons

functional areas of the human brain.

Attribution: User “Sebastian023”

Source: Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Attribution: User “BruceBlaus”

License: CC BY 3.0

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concentration, and one of the other defining characteristics of human beings: self-awareness. You can see that the frontal lobe (put your hand up to your forehead—

that’s where the frontal lobe is) handles most of the things that make you, well…

you. This is why traumatic injury to the frontal lobe from head-impact is often absolutely devastating to the individual. You can lose what it is to be you if that area is damaged. The parietal lobe processes senses of touch, pain, and temperature, and interprets signals from vision, hearing, motor input, memory, and spatial perception. It also plays a role in the interpretation of language and words. Moving further back, the temporal lobe handles the understanding of language (Wernicke’s area), memory, hearing, sequencing, and organization. And finally, the occipital lobe interprets visual stimuli, including color, light, and movement. Whew! That was a lot of information about our highly complex human brain.

So let’s go back to examine language processing a little more deeply. First, our ears take in sound waves and translate them into electrical impulses that travel through nerves to different parts of the brain. The first place they go is the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe, where the sound is translated into neuronal representations (basically, your brain’s “image” of the sounds). The neuronal representations are then transmitted to the areas of the brain involved in interpreting them and deciding what to do with them. In the case of speech that is only heard, the auditory cortex and Werneike’s area are primarily involved. In the case of language that is read and interpreted, the visual cortex and Werneike’s area are primarily involved. In the case of speech that is produced, Werneike’s area transmits neuronal representations to Broca’s area, which converts them into spoken language with involvement in the motor cortex. But if language and music are so similar, what is different in the way that the brain processes language and music?

Well, to begin with, language processing is fairly isolated. As we’ve discussed, depending on the type of language activity a person is engaging with, there are a few areas primarily involved in processing the information. In the case of music cognition, however, the brain lights up like a Christmas tree. There is activity all over the place: in both hemispheres, in all four lobes, in the cerebellum, and even in the brain stem. With the advent of fMRI, we can see which areas of the brain light up as a person is engaging with music. As in the case of language, it depends upon the way in which you are engaging with music. But the one thing that is consistent is that no matter how you are engaging—whether you are listening passively, or listening actively (listening and thinking about what you are listening to), whether you are hearing music with or without words, whether you are playing music, reading music, writing and composing music, or improvising music—a unique neural network lights up all across the brain. Normally unrelated areas of the brain work in synchronicity to process music, even when they do not coordinate to process any other type of information. That is pretty crazy! Even the brain stem—the part of the brain that handles automatic and subconscious processes—assists in music cognition.

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So here we come to the crux of it. The human brain is an incredibly complicated computer. It handles incomprehensible amounts of information every second, and is more complex than the brains of other animals. There are two primary things that separate us from all other animals on the planet: language and music. Our brains are structured differently than are those of other animals, and it is these specialized structures that allow us to engage in language and music. But while language processing is complex, music cognition is even more complex, involving more brain regions and involving activity in both hemispheres, all lobes, the cerebrum, and the brainstem.

Beyond this, music also activates the limbic system within which emotions and feelings are processed. It is capable of eliciting sympathetic emotional response from listeners even in the absence of words, and our memory systems are intrinsically woven into the brain’s processing of music. This is why music can be used to “bring back” patients with Alzheimer’s5, and why you can remember a song even if you haven’t heard it for 40 years. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself singing along and wondering how in the world you still have that information in there—but it’s in there because the retrieval pathways were laid down in more than one way.

You won’t remember a poem or a story, or any other information, the way you remember music. For this reason, it is a profound educational tool: information can be entrained quickly and permanently when connected to music. Think about how many things were taught to you as a child through song, beginning with learning your letters! The A-B-C song is the most commonly taught song in the U.S. (and many other places have their own version) because it is such an effective way of teaching children to remember otherwise unfamiliar and disconnected information (the sound of each letter and the order in which they occur in the alphabet). If it is such a profound educational tool because of the effects on memory and retention, how else can music be used?

This video details the experience of Henry, a man with

5.

Alzheimer’s Disease, who remembers who he is through the

use of music.

MUSIC AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, LEARNING,

AND WELLNESS

Due to the information that we have gained from the field of neuroscience, the use of music therapy has exploded in the past decades. Music therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a licensed music therapist. And because music is processed all over the brain, music therapy can be utilized to rehabilitate patients suffering from a broad host of disorders, ranging from traumatic brain injury to cerebral palsy, from learning disabilities to Parkinson’s Disease. It can be Page | 13

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used to regain voluntary movement or return speech skills when they have been lost because of a blood clot or stroke. And the remarkable thing is how genuinely effective these interventions are.

The Field of Music Therapy

It is important to talk about what music therapy is, and what it is not. Although all people can participate in music, and music teachers spend time creating music and working with students, board certified music therapists are the only individuals who participate in an allied health profession that is research-based, and that, in the words of the American Music Therapy Association, “actively applies supportive science to the creative, emotional, and energizing experiences of music for health treatment and educational goals.” Music therapy is applied in either an educational or clinical context, and music therapists must hold a music degree(s) and a degree in music therapy. The degree involves clinical internship and certification by the board of the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA). Licensing involves many hours of training in order to understand which musical activities to apply in a given context, and it may be used to improve individuals’ functioning, health, or wellbeing.

So why does music therapy work? Because it is a stimulus that activates every major region of the brain simultaneously. Because music processing occurs globally in the brain, it develops more comprehensive and stronger neurologic processes.

According to Sharon Graham, founder and director of the Tampa Bay Institute for Image 1.14: Here, a music therapist works with a patient who is recovering from traumatic brain injury.

Source: Military Health System

Attribution: Caitlin Russell

License: Public Domain

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Music Therapy, “Music is used as a stimulus when one encounters trauma, disease or disorder, and is the most powerful non-pharmacological tool we have to address any deficits that arise.”

What is music therapy used for? The possibilities are almost limitless! It may be used for physical rehabilitation and facilitating movement, because when we hear rhythmic information, the motor cortex in our brains is activated: It is for this reason that you are compelled to move on the beat when you hear a peppy song. Have you ever noticed how people unconsciously coordinate themselves in time when music is played? Pay attention when music is playing outdoors—

nearly everyone will begin to walk at the same tempo as the music. The funny thing is that they don’t even realize they are doing it! The activation of the motor cortex can be utilized by music therapists to increase motor function and voluntary movement in people with Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis and in physically injured veterans.

Music therapy may be used to facilitate improvement of mood and reduction of depression. This works for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that music is enjoyable. However, it also works because we have an immediate physiological response to the music we enjoy. Engaging with liked music causes the release of serotonin and dopamine- neurotransmitters

in the brain, which leads to feelings of

happiness and well-being. It also releases

norepinephrine, which can result in a sense

of alertness and euphoria. The act of singing,

in particular, releases endorphins—the

“feel good” chemicals in the brain. Choral

singing (singing in a group with others) has

been shown to cause the release of oxytocin,

which enhances feelings of trust and bonding

and results in reduction of depression and

loneliness. One study recently indicated that

choral singers have lower levels of cortisol,

indicating lower stress, while multiple studies

have indicated that singing relieves anxiety

and contributes to quality of life. And the best

part is, you don’t have to be a good singer to

reap the rewards: A 2005 study indicated

that group singing “can produce satisfying

and therapeutic sensations even when the

sound produced by the vocal instrument is of

Image 1.15: This music therapist is

mediocre quality.”

visiting Renown Children’s Hospital

Studies have indicated that music can be

in Reno, Nevada.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

used to reduce insomnia and to reduce the

Attribution: Dara Crockett

perception of pain, and it can be used as part

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

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of a rehabilitation protocol after injury or surgery. One study from the General Hospital of Salzburg found patients recovering from back surgery had higher rates of healing and less pain when exposed to music. Music therapy can be used with older adults to lessen the effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease and it can be used to restore speech when aphasia (loss of ability to speak) occurs as a result of injury or stroke. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords used music therapy to regain speech after surviving a gunshot wound to her brain. Interestingly, music can also be used to reduce the symptoms of asthma, can be used in premature infants to improve sleep patterns and to increase weight gain, and can be used to help people with Down’s Syndrome or Autism when speech is limited. In fact, it seems that there is little that music therapy cannot be utilized to improve. So what should we take away from all of this? That music is awesome, of course, and that everyone should engage with music actively throughout the course of their lives.

Why do (and should) humans make music?

If music can help rewire a brain that has been damaged or is limited in some way, it can also be used to create new brain growth and increase processing efficiency in all students. This is why there is a strong correlation (relationship) between studying music and higher grades in other subject areas. In 2015, the Image 1.16: Studying music can lead to higher achievement in other areas.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: F. Rodricks

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

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Every Student Succeeds Act replaced No Child Left Behind, and for the first time codified music as part of a core, well-rounded academic experience with which all children should be provided. The current academic environment focuses on and prizes primarily STEM subjects, but we have learned that it is actually the A in STEAM (Arts) that provides training ground for the things employers say they prize more than subject-matter knowledge: creativity, initiative, and the ability to generate new solutions to problems not previously encountered. No child should go through school without access to these subjects.

Humans have engaged in music for as long as we have written history. Even before humans had the ability to write down the music they were creating and performing, they produced written descriptions documenting the fact that they valued music. The Biblical authors wrote about people engaging in music by playing instruments, dancing, and singing. Clearly, music was a part of those ancient cultures. We don’t know what that music sounded like, because they didn’t have a system to write it down, but we know they were doing it.

We also know that humans have been “musicking” since long before written history, as evidenced by prehistoric bone flutes found in various parts of the world.

The existence of these instruments suggests that music may actually have preceded formalized spoken language as we understand it, and certainly preceded writing.

To put this in perspective, humans were creating and playing instruments when wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers roamed the earth. And to make that fact even more intriguing, when researchers blew through those flutes, they heard the pentatonic scale still in use in elementary school music today. Why would those early humans have created music, when the primary objectives were to eat, not die from the elements, and not be eaten? We can’t answer this question definitively, but one theory is that they were imitating the sounds they heard in nature. Another is that humans utilized music to coordinate themselves in time together (think: one, two, three - pull! ). Yet another is that music simply feels good and touches something spiritual in humans. We will likely never know. All we can say for certain is that music is one of the things that separates us from every other animal on the planet, including our closest relatives, and that it was part of human experience before modern humans existed.

One final consideration is that it appears as though music and language acquisition skills are innately learned by humans. No one sits down with children and attempts to formally teach them to produce language or music. They simply learn those things by listening to and imitating the sounds being used in their environment. All humans in all cultures the world over uniformly amass both language and music skills simply by being immersed in an environment in which those systems are being used. And this tells us that our brains are hardwired for success with those two systems. Even if we didn’t have fMRI scans to show us that, we can deduce it from the informal experiences of babies. Studies have even shown that newborn infants who have had no experience in the world whatsoever recognize and respond to essential musical elements. These elements, which will be described and discussed in the next section, Page | 17

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include tonic and dominant (I and V in the scale—the two most important chords) and meter (the way beats are grouped and divided). How is it that babies’ brains are able to do this with no training? It’s hardwired!

Music and Innate Aptitude

We have all seen that some people seem naturally to have more musical ability than others. Some children seem born singing beautifully, while others struggle to develop musical skills. We tend to look at children who sing early and well, and think, “ Oh, she’s so talented.” But that perception can be a little misleading, and here’s why.

Researchers have indicated that there are two primary things that contribute to musical ability. One of them is aptitude, which is defined as the ease and speed with which your brain processes certain kinds of information. Aptitude is innate.

You’re born with it. It is woven into the development of the grey matter in your brain as you are developing in your mother’s womb. Strangely, research indicates that aptitude is developmental until somewhere around age eight or nine. In other words, the ease and speed with which your brain is able to process certain types of information is formative until you reach age nine, at which time it stabilizes. From that point forward, you will be reliant on whatever aptitude you developed during your earliest years. This doesn’t mean you can’t learn to do new things or develop new skills. We can all learn to do things within whatever aptitude we possess. It just means that the ease and speed with which we work doesn’t fundamentally change beyond that point.

Image 1.17: Everyone has an aptitude for music, even though some people have a greater aptitude than others.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: User “Sungmin Yun”

License: CC BY-SA 2.0

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Interestingly, the same is true of aptitude for language, which makes sense, because the two systems are so intrinsically similar. Research has indicated that the same developmental window (birth to age nine) exists for language aptitude.

For both of these, early exposure, and early development, are critical for the rest of the life of a human being. How do we know language aptitude stabilizes at that age?

Obviously, it would be horribly unethical to lock children up for the first nine years of their lives and expose them to little or no language to see what would happen.

We can’t do that. We do, however, have multiple stories of severe neglect that shine some light on what happens when children don’t develop language aptitude while they are young.

In one particularly famous case, a young girl was born to an abusive father who kept her chained to a potty chair or in a crib, and rarely let anyone speak to her or interact with her. Because there was no interactivity with the sound system, this child did not learn to speak. When she was rescued, around age 12, she was immediately taken into custody, and teams of researchers attempted to teach her to speak. She learned the use of some nouns and verbs and was able to communicate simple things, but she never learned the complex grammar that all children innately learn simply by hearing language spoken around them and having people interact with them using language. In fact, researchers estimate that all she could achieve was the basic communicative ability of Koko the gorilla (who had limited ability to form compound or complex thoughts, and did so with sign language). Why was this? Because a child’s aptitude for certain kinds of processing is developmental, and is developed, during the first years of life. Once that developmental window closes, the child is working with established aptitude.

In another famous case, a child was kept contained in a room with a television on all day. The child was hearing language spoken regularly, but by abstract people on the television. In other words, no one was interacting with the child while using language. Interactivity is critical—just hearing language isn’t enough. That child did not learn to speak just by listening. In the same way, music aptitude is not developed simply by listening. Children must hear others around them singing and see them moving rhythmically, and others must interact with them as they do these things.

In addition to aptitude, the thing that most determines a person’s skill is achievement. This is what an individual does with the aptitude they have. Do they learn to sing and play an instrument? Do they learn to read and write? Do they regularly engage in creating music? If the answer is yes, then chances are, their achievement (or skill) will be relatively high. Does high innate aptitude automatically mean a person will have high achievement? No. There exists only a correlation between the two variables—not a causative relationship. A child may be born with lower aptitude but work her entire life and emerge as a person with relatively high skill after years of training. By the same token, a child may be born with relatively high aptitude but never engage with it or use it. That child is likely to have much lower achievement than the one who worked at it. Interestingly, the same seems to be true of language.

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And in both cases, there is no such thing as a person with no aptitude. I’ve frequently heard people say: “Oh, I can’t sing.” My usual response is: “Yes, you can. Everyone can.” Usually when people make statements like that, what they actually mean is: “I don’t sing well.” But our society has robbed so many people of their birthright by fooling us into thinking that music is something only the most talented and skilled should do while everyone else watches, and, as a result, these people believe their aptitude is so low that they just shouldn’t do it. Knowing what we do about music and the brain, and about the benefits of engaging in music over the course of a lifetime, this is a pretty tragic thing! If I told you that simply singing, reading music, playing an instrument, or writing music over the course of a lifetime could decrease the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s when you are older, would you change your mind about whether or not you should pursue it? (I hope so!) All humans have aptitude for music and for language. This aptitude is generally distributed along a bell curve. There are people with higher aptitude and people with lower aptitude. But none of us have no aptitude, because it is a matter of our brain structure.

In fact, they had to search the world over to find only ten or so people to participate in a study in amusia (a condition in which the brain simply doesn’t organize musical sounds into meaningful patterns). In people with amusia, the brain takes in sound, but it is disorganized and the individual can’t perceive the structure. In other words, they don’t hear music, they hear noise. While a normal individual might hear a beautiful symphony, an individual with amusia might perceive the sounds of New York City on a busy day. Obviously, both people hear the same thing, but one person’s brain organizes the sound meaningfully into melody, harmony, phrases, meter, and other elements, while the other’s brain doesn’t organize it at all. What a terrible thing! Can you imagine not being able to listen to and enjoy music? Not being able to play a song back in your mind? Not being able to tap on a beat because your brain doesn’t perceive the organization of meter and rhythm? Imagine how colorless life would be! Fundamentally, what I am telling you is this: Of course you can sing and learn to play an instrument, and learn to read or write music. Do you know how I know? Because you can listen to and enjoy music. Your brain is organizing the sound, which means you have the fundamental capacity to engage with it.

Music and Human Flourishing

So what does all of this together tell us? Music is important to the human species and always has been. Though you may remember a poem or a story, the way you remember words differs from the way you remember music. This difference is why music, like literature, belongs in the curriculum. Because information can be entrained quickly and permanently when connected to it, music is a profound educational tool. It is something that engages all areas of the brain at once, and no other activity does that.

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Image 1.18: It’s never too late to get involved in music!

Source: Flickr

Attribution: Garry Knight

License: CC BY 2.0

Music can be used to train and grow the brain and build connections between areas, or to rehabilitate and heal individuals. It assists in the formation of long-term memories and in the retrieval of stored information, increases processing efficiency in other modes of cognition, and assists the brain in coordinating normally unrelated brain regions. It is for these reasons that music is one of life’s most miraculous phenomena. It has probably been with us for the totality of our existence as a species. And despite the fact that there are a limited number of pitches and rhythmic patterns, people throughout history, in every corner of the globe and every culture ever recorded, have engaged in the creation and performance of music that is unique to them. It truly is part of our human birthright and deserves to again take its place as a critical curricular offering in all of our schools.

And you know what else? Even if you didn’t learn to read music, sing, or play an instrument while you were in school, it’s not too late! Researchers tell us that you can begin at literally any point in life and still see benefits. It truly isn’t about how well you do it—it is that you regularly do it over time. So go join an ensemble or find some private lessons!

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER LEARNING

Print

Knight, Andrew J., A. Blythe LaGasse, and Alicia Ann Clair. Music Therapy: An Introduction to the Profession. American Music Therapy Association, 2018.

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Murph, Megan Elizabeth. “Max Neuhaus, R. Murray Schafer, and the Challenges of Noise.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kentucky, 2018.

Patel, Aniruddh D. Music, Language, and the Brain. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Sacks, Oliver. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Revised and expanded edition. Vintage, 2008.

Online

American Music Therapy Association: https://www.musictherapy.org/

Alive Inside documentary: http://www.aliveinside.us/

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2The Elements of Music

Esther M. Morgan-Ellis

THE DIMENSIONS OF SOUND

All sound—not just music—has certain characteristics. The distinction between music and non-musical sounds, in most cases, is one of organization: sounds that we describe as noise tend to be irregular and unpredictable, while sounds that we describe as music are more likely to exhibit patterns. This is not always the case.

A jackhammer, for instance, makes a regular and patterned noise, while certain composers create patternless music.

Whether we are listening to noise or music, we will perceive the same elements: rhythm, pitch, volume, articulation, and timbre. These elements will combine in time to produce a sonic object of a given texture that either exhibits or lacks form. In the following sections, we will define each of these dimensions and explore the roles that each plays in the creation and perception of music.

Rhythm

Rhythm is the temporal aspect of sound. It is the pattern of “on” and “off”

states exhibited by any sound as time passes. Rhythm is by no means unique to music. When you speak, the consonants of your words produce rhythm. When a car drives by, the oscillating sounds of the tires and engines create rhythm.

Music often (although not always) features rhythmic patterns. The most basic of these is the pulse1, which—like the pulse produced by your own heart—is a sequence of regularly-spaced sounds. The frequency of the pulses determines

tempo2, which can range from very slow to very fast. It makes sense that music should tend to be organized around a pulse, since our very existence is organized around pulses. Our hearts beat to a pulse, we often breathe to a pulse, we walk to a pulse, and we organize time into pulses (seconds). It is usually not difficult to detect the pulse in a musical work: simply tap your foot or clap your hands, and there it is.

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1.

This video demonstrates pulse.

2.

This video demonstrates tempo.

Pulses, however, are usually not all of equal weight. Some have a greater musical significance than others. When pulses are organized into groups containing strong and weak beats, meter is established. Each metrical group is called a measure or bar. In notated music, these groups are physically separated by bar lines, which help performers to easily perceive how the pulses are grouped and to identify which is the strongest. While measures can contain any number of pulses, the most common grouping are two, three, and four. These groupings are termed duple, triple, and quadruple meter. Each measure in all three of these meters will begin with a strong pulse, termed the downbeat. In duple meter, the pattern of pulses is [strong-weak]. In triple, it is [strong-weak-weak]. And in quadruple, it is

[strong-weak-medium-weak].

Pitch

Pitch3 refers to the “highness” or “lowness” of sound. Sound, of course, is not physically located in high or low spaces, but most listeners can easily perceive the difference between a high-pitched sound and a low-pitched sound. Our use of the terms high and low to describe pitch reflects the characteristics of sound waves.

This video introduces the concept of pitch in the context of 3.

a familiar melody.

All sounds are produced by vibrating bodies, which in turn produce sound waves that can be perceived by mechanisms in your ear and decoded by your brain. Pitch4

is determined by the frequency of those sound waves. A high pitch is produced by a high-frequency sound wave, and a low pitch is produced by a low-frequency sound wave. The frequency of sound waves is in turn determined by the characteristics of the vibrating body that sparks them into action. All other parameters being equal, a long string, once plucked and set into motion, will produce a lower pitch than a

short string5. Likewise, a thick string will produce a lower pitch than a thin string of the same length. The same principles apply when you blow across the ends of Page | 24

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tubes, strike bells, or beat drums: the larger, longer, and heavier the vibrating body, the lower the sound it will produce.

This online oscilloscope allows you to visualize sounds.

Pitch is reflected in the distance between waves, which will 4.

decrease as pitch level increases. Volume is reflected by the size of the waves, which will grow in amplitude as dynamic level increases.

This video demonstrates the relationship between pitch

5.

frequency and wave form.

Music is usually characterized by the careful organization of pitches. To begin with, most musical systems recognize what is termed octave equivalence6. This is the consensus that you can halve or double the frequency of the pitch without changing its essential identity. To see this principle in action, attend any birthday party at which both women and men are present. When the guests sing “Happy Birthday,” they will not sing exactly the same pitches. Instead, the women will tend to sing in a high octave, and the men will tend to sing in a low octave. In technical terms, this means that the women will probably sing pitches that have frequencies equal to twice that of those sung by the men. However, all participants will agree that they are all singing the same pitches, or in unison. An octave is an example of an interval, which is the distance between two pitches.

In the Western system, we acknowledge this phenomenon by using the same letter names to designate pitches in different octaves. For example, pitches at the frequencies of 110 hz, 220 hz, 440 hz, 880 hz, and 1,760 hz are all called “A.”

However, specific frequencies are still important. Music that contains mostly high pitches has a different effect on listeners than music containing mostly low pitches, even if the rhythms and sequence of pitches are the same. Additionally, melodic range7 (the distance between low and high pitches) and changes in register (the use of high or low pitches) can be important musical elements.

This video demonstrates octave equivalence in the context

6.

of “Happy Birthday.”

7.

This video introduces the concept of melodic range.

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The Western system—that is to say, the system of musical organization that was first developed in medieval Europe and continues to dominate global listening today—goes quite a bit further in its efforts to organize pitch. Let us return to the octave. Between the A at 220 Hz and the A at 440 Hz, there are a near-infinite assortment of possible frequencies at which an intermediary pitch might sound.

However, we do not use all of those pitches when we create music. Instead, we identify a limited number of specific pitches to be used. The Western system is best represented by the piano keyboard, which is both familiar and useful.

Image 2.1: Each white key on a piano is assigned a letter name. Those letter names repeat at each octave, reflecting our agreement that every A (for example), whether high or low, is in some sense the “same” note. The black keys are named after the adjoining white keys: simply add “flat” to the name of the white key to the right or

“sharp” to the name of the white key to the left.

Source: Public Domain Pictures

Attribution: Karen Arnold

License: CC0

As you can see, the space between the A at 220 Hz and the A at 440 Hz is divided across twelve piano keys. This is called the chromatic8 pitch set, and it includes all of the pitches used in Western music. However, composers only rarely use the entire chromatic pitch set. When you do hear music that uses every available note, you will probably find that it makes you uncomfortable. This is because we are used to hearing music built using a set of only seven pitches that is called a scale.

Most music is based on one of two scales: the major scale9 and the minor scale10.

If the pitches in a piece of music are drawn from a major scale, it is described as being in the major mode. Likewise, if the pitches are drawn from a minor scale, it is in the minor mode. A scale can start on any pitch, which then determines the key of music that is based on that scale. For example, music created using pitches drawn from the A major scale is in the key of A major.

8.

This video demonstrates the chromatic pitch set.

9.

This video demonstrates a major scale.

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10.

This video demonstrates a minor scale.

In most pieces of music, pitches are assigned to two different roles: melody11

and harmony12 & 13. Melodies are constructed out of a sequence of pitches. This is the part of a musical work that you might sing along with or that might get stuck in your head. Melodies have various characteristics, including shape14 and motion15, which can be conjunct (in which the melody primarily moves up and down the scale) and disjunct (in which the melody contains larger intervals and leaps). Harmonies are constructed out of groups of pitches that are usually sounded simultaneously and constitute chords16, while a sequence of harmonies is termed a chord progression. In a musical work, the harmony is usually unobtrusive and might be repetitive. A melody and a harmony sound good together when they are based on the same scale and contain some of the same pitches. However, every melody can be harmonized in many different ways, using various chords. Likewise, a single harmony can be used to accompany many different melodies.

This video demonstrates the melody to Beethoven’s “Ode to

11.

Joy.”

This video demonstrates melody and a possible harmony to

12.

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

Here, you can hear Beethoven’s melody and harmony in the

13.

context of his original composition.

14.

This video introduces the concept of melodic shape.

15.

This video introduces the concept of melodic motion.

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This video demonstrates chords, which are used to

16.

harmonize melodies.

Although this text will not offer a technical explanation of harmony (which can become very complicated indeed), it is often central to the listening experience.

A certain chord progression can surprise you, or excite you, or break your heart.

It is not necessary to understand harmonies from a theoretical perspective to feel their impact. You also don’t need a theoretical background to understand the role harmony plays in establishing and then satisfying or frustrating expectations. As long as a piece of music is in a key, one chord—the chord built on the note that the key is named after—will serve as a home base, while other chords in the key will facilitate journeys away from or back towards that home base. We get used to hearing certain chord progressions and come to expect them, so we often have a sense of where the music is going to go. If we hear an unexpected chord or—most shocking of all—a chord that is not in the key of the piece of music, we tend to respond emotionally.

Volume

Like pitch, volume—the loudness or softness of a sound—is a parameter of every soundwave. Volume is determined by the amplitude of the wave, such that waves with a large amplitude produce high-volume sound and waves with a small amplitude produce low-volume sounds. While volume is simple to understand and assess (we can all tell whether music is “loud” or “soft”), its significance in the creation of musical meaning cannot be overlooked. On the one hand, certain genres of music depend on volume for their identity. You cannot appreciate the impact of heavy metal by listening to it with the dial turned down, just as you cannot sing a baby to sleep at the top of your voice. Changes in volume can also communicate meaning in music. A gradual increase in volume can indicate growing excitement, while a sudden change in volume can indicate a dramatic mood shift.

A few terms will help us to talk about volume, which is also referred to as dynamic level. An increase in volume is referred to as a crescendo, while a decrease is termed a decrescendo or diminuendo. Musicians in orchestras, bands, and choirs describe volume using Italian terms including fortissimo (very loud), forte (loud), mezzo forte (medium loud), mezzo piano (medium soft), piano (soft), and pianissimo (very soft). While this book will not employ these terms, you might encounter them elsewhere.

Articulation

Articulation has to do with how pitches are begun, sustained, and released, and it is driven primarily by changes in dynamic level. In music production Page | 28

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language, this dimension of sound is referred to as the envelope17. The envelope is independent of pitch, but it determines the character of that pitch. For example, a pitch might begin with a gentle increase in volume, or a sudden decrease, or no dynamic change. Once it has begun to sound, a pitch might be sustained for a long time, or it might be abruptly cut off. And when it is ended, it might be released with a decrease in volume, and increase in volume, or no dynamic change.

This video explains the four elements of the envelope: attack, 17.

decay, sustain, and release.

Although the preceding description was highly technical, the effects of articulation are easy to perceive. At one end of the spectrum, a series of pitches might be heavily punctuated, with forceful onsets and no sustain. The traditional Italian term for this articulation is staccato—a term that means short and accented, and which is difficult to replace with an English equivalent. At the other end, a series of pitches might be smoothly connected, with gentle onsets and a great deal of sustain. The term for this articulation is legato. Between these extremes are an enormous variety of approaches to beginning, sustaining, and releasing notes, many of which are unique to the instruments that produce them.

Timbre

The final characteristic that is universal to all sounds is timbre (TAM-ber), which describes the quality of a sound. Whether one has no musical training or is an accomplished performer, we are all skilled at identifying minor variations in timbre. This ability lets you know that your mother is calling you from the other room, not your sister. It helps you to tell the difference between a guitar and a piano. Not only does every voice and every instrument exhibit a unique timbre, but performers can alter the timbre they produce by changing their technique. Timbre is also integral to genre and style: A symphony orchestra produces one range of timbres, while a rock band produces another.

Variations in timbre are made possible by the existence of the overtone series, which is a sequence of higher-pitched frequencies that are activated every time a pitch is produced. When you strike a key on the piano, for example, you are not only sounding the pitch associated with that key, you are also activating dozens of pitches at set intervals above that pitch, each of which might sound at a relatively high or low volume. The combination of these overtones produces timbre. Two instruments playing the same pitch sound different, therefore, because they are activating different pitches in the overtone series at different volumes. The complexity of this process allows for near-infinite variety in timbres.

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Image 2.2: These are the pitches of the overtone series as they might be notated on a staff. Even if you cannot read notation, you can see that the pitches get closer together as they get higher. When one plays a low C on any instrument, most of these pitches are sounded to some degree. The pitches in blue will be out of tune.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: User “Hyacinth”

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

If you engage with every example in this volume, you will experience an extraordinary range of contrasting timbres. Audiences for various genres develop unique preferences and expectations for timbre, and timbre is often one of the most distinctive characteristics of a musical tradition. Variations in timbre are often not hard to identify: A piano trio, for example, had a different sound quality than a thrash metal band. These differences, however, can be very difficult to put in to words. While timbre is easy to perceive and measure, it is hard to describe.

For the most part, we will consider timbre in the context of individual examples.

We will investigate different ways of producing sound with the human voice (which is capable of extraordinary diversity), the various instruments that are responsible for the characteristic sounds of non-Western classical traditions, and the electric instruments and sound processing techniques that have contributed to popular music of the last seventy years. There is one sound source in particular, however, that pervades this volume: the symphony orchestra. For an overview of the instruments that make up the orchestra, please see Appendix A.

Texture

We are now really to move from sound to music, which usually exhibits some additional characteristics. One of these is texture18, which concerns the contents of and interactions between various layers or voices in a musical work. We use four basic terms to describe texture, although these terms can tell us little about what a piece of music actually sounds like. Monophonic19 music has a single melody

line, performed by a soloist or in unison, with no accompaniment. If you add an accompaniment that has different pitches (probably chords) but that is secondary to the melody, you have homophonic music. In polyphonic music, every voice is independent but equally important, and there is no distinction between melody and harmony. And in heterophonic music, multiple instruments or voices each perform a unique version of the same melody, such that unison is not achieved.

We will encounter these terms in the context of specific examples throughout this volume.

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18.

This video introduces the concept of texture.

19.

This video explores variation in texture.

In addition, texture can be described using qualitative terms. It can be thick or dense, meaning perhaps that there are many independent and highly-active parts, or it can be thin or sparse, meaning perhaps that there are few instruments, each of which can be clearly identified and tracked. Consider, for example, two songs from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, discussed in Chapter 8. The concluding thirty seconds of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” are irrefutably dense: There is so much going on that it is difficult to identify individual sources of sound, and the listener’s focus is constantly attracted by new and varied voices. The first verse of

“A Day in the Life,” on the other hand, has a thin texture, made up only of guitar, bass, and shaker. It is possible to focus on individual instrumental parts and to hear the unique articulation of each.

Form

Finally, we need a way to talk about how music unfolds over time. This element is known as form. Most musical compositions exhibit formal characteristics, although some pieces are very amorphous or difficult to describe in terms of form.

At the very least, creators of music usually plan the formal dimensions of their work. John Cage’s 4’33” doesn’t have form, per se, since its sonic contents are always different, but at least the composer decided how long the piece was going to last.

In most cases, the creators of music rely on three organizational principles that produce form. These are repetition, variation, and contrast. Repetition occurs when we hear the same thing twice, whether it is a long and complicated melody, a short melodic fragment, a rhythm, or a harmonic pattern. Variation occurs when musical material returns, but with alterations. Contrast, naturally, refers to musical material that has not been heard before.

Repetition is key to our ability to understand and enjoy music. When we hear something new, internal repetition allows the music to quickly become familiar and helps us to predict what is going to happen next. For this reason, all popular music features repetition of various kinds. When an unfamiliar song comes on the radio, you can expect to hear the chorus (the catchy part with words and melody that both repeat) several times. Most popular songs also have repetitive chord progressions and some sort of repeating accompaniment, known formally as an Page | 31

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ostinato20. Ostinatos are important in many types of music and will play a role throughout this book.

The bass line at the beginning of White Stripe’s “Seven

20.

Nation Army” provides a good example of an ostinato. This

seven-note melodic figure is heard throughout the song.

Variation and contrast are what make music interesting. We enjoy and rely upon repetition, but we can only take so much. However, music that contains constant variation or lacks repetition altogether requires more of the listener. Most people cannot relax and enjoy music that is constantly changing and that offers something new and different with each passing moment. At the same time, such music can communicate a great deal and be particularly rewarding for an engaged listener.

The degree to which music relies on repetition or contrast is often linked to its purpose. Dance music, for example, tends to be repetitive. When people are dancing, they don’t want much contrast. They want the music to maintain a constant tempo, rhythmic character, and mood. Minor variations might make dancing more interesting, but major changes can make dancing impossible. In addition, when you’re dancing you don’t pay careful attention to the nuances of the music. Music belonging to a sung theater tradition, however, is much more likely to exhibit contrast. In the first place, it is probably being used to express emotions or to portray a nuanced character. Variation and contrast allow for more complex and meaningful communication. In the second, audience members are paying full attention to the music, and, therefore, have a higher tolerance for contrast and change.

MUSIC IN THE WORLD

With the exception of its opening passages, which considered the problem of defining what music even is, this unit has so far emphasized the empirical qualities of music. We have acknowledged the documented effects of music on the human brain, and we have acquired a variety of terms and concepts that can be used to understand and describe music as a physical phenomenon. Now it is time to address some of the messier aspects of talking and writing about music.

Categories

What kinds of music do you like to listen to? Country? Hip-hop? Classical?

EDM? Top 40? Whether we are talking to a friend, using a streaming service, or browsing records in a store, we like to think about music in terms of categories.

These categories can be very useful. They can help us pick a radio station we might enjoy, or decide whether or not to buy tickets to hear an unfamiliar band. At the same time, these categories are both artificial and extremely limiting.

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Let us begin by considering the classic tripartite division of music into the categories of “classical,” “popular,” and “folk.” This approach has been around for a long time, and it has persevered because, in many ways, it works. If I tell you that I like “classical” music, you immediately understand that I probably mean orchestral music, or opera, and that I probably listen to music that is fairly old. But there are problems with this categorization. To begin with, much of what is

“classical” today was “popular” in the past. When Mozart wrote his symphonies, for example, his object was to satisfy popular demand and sell concert tickets, and his audiences behaved the same way that fans at a rock concert do today. And what if I actually prefer experimental orchestral music composed last year? It is common practice to refer to such repertoire as “classical,” but it’s about as far from Mozart as you can get.

Image 2.3: “Classical” music is usually associated with certain performance conventions, including formal dress, music reading, and standard ensembles such as the orchestra and choir pictured here, but none of these are essential.

Source: Pexels

Attribution: Pixabay

License: Pexels License

How about “popular” music? This category is generally understood to contain commercial music that appeals to large numbers of people. But what about individual artists or songs that fail to achieve any popularity whatsoever? What about experimental rock bands that take the same attitude towards their work as serious “classical” composers? Mozart, a “classical” composer, might have more in common with a “popular” artist like Jimi Hendrix than Hendrix has in common with Pink Floyd. Mozart and Hendrix were both gifted instrumentalists who Page | 33

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dazzled their audiences with virtuosic performances and wrote music to showcase their skills, while the band Pink Floyd is known more for their nuanced production, complex song structures, and unusual instrumentation. Again, however, this category is not without its value. While there is an enormous diversity of “popular”

musics, they tend to be characterized by certain forms, instrumentations, styles, and performance venues. There might be much to separate Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd, but their music shares important elements of instrumentation and style, and it might be heard in the same types of settings.

“Folk” is also a slippery category. “Folk” music is typically described as music of unknown authorship that is passed down from generation to generation in a particular region. It tends to be fairly simple and in a distinctive style, and it is performed on instruments that are

integral to the local musical culture.

However, problems quickly arise as we

try to label individual pieces or practices.

In the United States, for example, the

works of Stephen Foster have long been

considered folk music. Songs like “My

Old Kentucky Home” and “Camptown

Races” have certainly entered folk culture,

and many who sing or play them know

nothing of their composer or origin.

But can a commercial song, created and

published by a professional composer,

truly be considered “folk” music? Different

problems arise as we address the musical

practices of non-Western societies,

many of which do not employ musical Image 2.4: Woody Guthrie, notation and reject notions of individual pictured here in 1943, is an icon authorship. But do the absence of a of American folk music. However, he mostly performed songs that he

named composer, official sheet music, and himself wrote and had a successful copyright notice mean that a work in the commercial career—characteristics North Indian classical tradition is “folk” that put him more in line with

“popular” musicians.

music? The complexity, sophistication, Source: Wikimedia Commons and technical demands of music in this Attribution: Al Aumuller category would suggest not.

License: Public Domain

A further challenge arises when we try

to identify the “folk” music of a region or nation. Let us take the United States. If I tell you that I listen to American folk music, you will probably imagine someone like Joan Baez playing guitar and singing songs from the Anglo folk tradition.

Indeed, music such as hers has come to be known as Folk music (with a capital F).

If I ask Spotify to play Folk music for me, I’ll hear Joan Baez and others like her.

However, her music represents only one cultural strain within the United States.

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What about the polka music of midwestern communities? What about the corrido ballads of Spanish-speaking communities near the southern border? What about the dance music heard at Native American pow-pow gatherings? Are any of these traditions less “folk” or less “American” than the others?

For all the reasons explored above, this narrative is going to steer clear of

“classical,” “popular,” and “folk” as categories and terms. They have been addressed here only because their use is so widespread. Instead, we will focus on what music across these categories shares in common: the purposes for which individual works were originally created and continue to be consumed. This book is organized around categories, but these categories have little to do with the style of the works contained therein. Instead, they have to do with the roles music plays in society.

These categories lead us to first understand what music is for. Only then will we seek to address how the music works, who created it, and how it is rooted in its historical and cultural context.

These categories also have their shortcomings. Many musical examples included in a given category could just as easily be included in another. We will admit that at the outset. All the same, these categories seem more useful than

“classical,” “popular,” and “folk,” and they tell us much more about what really matters: music as an integral aspect of the human experience.

Genres and Subgenres

This book will engage with another mode of categorization: genre. Genre is a way of making connections between closely-related works and musical artists that share stylistic, formal, and cultural

elements. You are sure to recognize a

large number of genres—rock, pop, R&B,

country, hip-hop—from your own musical

consumption. Each of these genre names

tells us something about what the music is

like and who listens to it. Each also hosts

a variety of subgenres that communicate

more specialized information about the

Image 2.5: Genre is primarily a

music contained therein. For example,

marketing tool. Customers in this

the genre EDM (electronic dance music)

store can easily find the music they

are likely to be interested in because

contains all computer-produced music

the recordings are organized by

intended primarily for dancing, whereas

genre.

the subgenre dubstep contains only bass-

Source: NeedPix

Attribution: User “StockSnap”

heavy EDM that uses specific timbres, is

License: CC0

in duple meter, and falls within a narrow

tempo range. The label “dubstep” also

gives us a clearer picture of who consumes the music and what a concert might be like. Finally, subgenres tend to come and go, each leading to the next, while genres remain relevant for longer periods of time.

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It is important to acknowledge that genre in the 21st century is primarily a marketing tool. The main purpose of genre is to help record companies efficiently label their merchandise, identify consumers, and advertise music to the people who are most likely to buy it. Genre also helps the music industry to track sales; consider the Billboard music charts, which have been in use since 1958. Of course, genre is meaningful to consumers as well, and subgenres are often named not by faceless corporations but by the fans themselves. Genre can also help listeners to find music that they will enjoy, and it can serve to create communities of listeners and concertgoers.

At the same time, genre can be

divisive. Historically, genre has been used

to separate black and white performing

artists whose music was stylistically

identical. This happened in the 1920s,

when the marketing categories of “race

records” and “hillbilly records” were

invented to segregate the music of black

and white Southern musicians, and

again in the 1950s, when the distinction

between performers of R&B and rock ‘n’

roll was often one of race. It is important,

therefore, to be critical of genre, and to

repeatedly assess exactly what genre is

telling us.

Indeed, genre can convey a wide

variety of types of information, but not

all genres convey the same types of

information. Let’s look at two examples: Image 2.6: This is the cover for a Victor “race records” catalog

“string quartet” and “French reggae.” published in the 1920s. Various “race”

The former provides us with precise genres are listed at the bottom.

information about instrumentation (two Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Unknown

violins, viola, and cello) and suggests a License: Public Domain multi-part concert work intended for the

stimulation of players and listeners. We might also make assumptions about the consumer of such a genre, who is probably (although not always) well-educated and reasonably well-off, and we might expect to hear performances in a formal concert hall, surrounded by well-dressed and attentive listeners. However, genre in this case tells us nothing at all about style, geographical origin, historical context, or social significance. A work in this genre might have been composed in 1780, or 1880, or 1980, or yesterday. Although the string quartet originated in German-speaking Europe, this genre has been accessible to composers, performers, and listeners across the globe for at least the past one hundred years. A string quartet might be pleasant and lyrical, or dissonant and jarring. It might be fairly simple or Page | 36

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mind-bogglingly complex. It might last eight minutes, or eighty minutes. And genre provides us no idea about what sort of meaning—political, social, or otherwise—

might be contained in such a work.

The case is quite different with “French reggae.” On the one hand, this genre tells us less about instrumentation. We can expect to hear certain instruments—

electric guitar, electric bass, drums, and perhaps electric organ, trumpet, and saxophone—but taking away or adding instruments does not fundamentally destabilize the genre. On the other, it tells us much more about everything else.

First and foremost, the “reggae” designation tells us all we need to know about style, which is a core identifying feature of the genre. It also limits the scope of time and place. Reggae has only been around since the late 1960s, and it was developed in Jamaica by Rastafarians—a nation and culture that are central to the genre’s identity no matter where individual songs might come from. The subgenre identification of “French reggae” tells us even more about geographic location and language. Finally, reggae carries certain political, social, and racial connotations. It is usually performed by musicians of African descent, and it often espouses ideals of pan-African unity and social justice. These values in turn help us to understand how and why people consume the music, and how French reggae might become an integral part of someone’s identity.

Fixed Composition vs. Improvisation

The two genres just discussed exhibit an additional pair of features that require deeper discussion: string quartets tend to be fixed compositions, such that the pitches and rhythms in every performance are identical, while reggae invites improvisation and variation from performance to performance, such that two renditions of the same song might sound quite different. In a tradition that relies on fixed composition, it is assumed that the creator of a work will make all decisions concerning pitch, rhythm, form, instrumentation, and length, and that performers will follow these instructions precisely. Fixed compositions are usually enshrined in notated music, although they do not have to be. This does not mean, however, that every performance of a fixed composition will be identical. Performers are usually invited to make minute adjustments to some of these elements, such as articulation, tempo, and dynamics, with the result that each rendition is unique to the discriminating listener.

Improvisation is much more difficult to sum up. This is due to the fact that there are nearly as many approaches to improvisation as there are musical traditions.

Improvisation implies the production of new musical elements in the course of a live performance, but it always occurs within a set of boundaries. No improviser is free to play or sing whatever they want. Instead, an improviser will tend to apply formulas to the transformation of musical material while respecting certain fundamental characteristics of the style and composition.

In jazz, for example, improvisation is guided by the form and harmonic structure of a fixed composition that serves as the basis for a performance. While Page | 37

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Image 2.7: In the United States, improvisation is most closely associated with jazz.

Here we see Coleman Hawkins improvising a solo in 1947.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: William P. Gottlieb

License: Public Domain

improvising, a player is free to choose pitches and rhythms—but they must fit with the predetermined harmonies, so choices are limited. Improvisation means something different to a balafon player in West Africa, who will constantly vary a repeated melodic figure used to accompany singing (see Chapter 5). It means something different again to a member of a Javanese gamelan, who might not know how a performance will unfold ahead of time but understands exactly how to vary their melody in response to instructions from the drummer (see Chapter 4). And it means yet something else to a Baroque violinist, who performs a fixed composition but is free to add ornaments and flourishes according to stylistic guidelines.

When we talk about fixed composition versus improvisation, we are talking about different roles in the creation of music: the role of the composer versus the Page | 38

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role of the performer. Not all traditions distinguish between these roles, which makes it particularly difficult to define our terms. Throughout this volume, we will identify and examine the contributions of different individuals—composers, orchestrators, arrangers, adapters, and performers—to the creation of unique musical objects.

Image 2.8: North Indian classical musicians, such as Shruti Sadolikar Katkar and Mulye Mangesh, also engage in improvisation. Their performances, however, are guided by entirely different principles than those of jazz musicians.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Joe Mabel

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Emotional Expression and Cultural Context

Emotional expression is, for many listeners, the main reason to interact with music. It is also the most difficult to pin down or explain. While we can make some generalizations and predictions, emotional response to music happens at the individual level, and it is impossible to know exactly what impact music will have on a given listener. A piece of music might make one person cry, another feel uncomfortable, and another feel bored. The extraordinary diversity of genres is itself a testimony to the wide-ranging responses that people have to music. There is something out there for everybody to love, and something for everybody to hate.

All the same, members of a given culture tend to agree, at least to some extent, about the emotional content of music. As an example, consider two excerpts from a musical work created by the German composer George Frideric Handel in 1740

entitled The Cheerful Person, the Thoughtful Person, and the Moderate Person (original Italian: L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato). For most of this work, two archetypal characters—the cheerful person and the thoughtful person—argue Page | 39

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about whether it is better to be happy or pensive. Each calls forth the emotional state for which they advocate, the cheerful person with an aria (song) entitled

“Come, thou Goddess fair and free,”21 and the thoughtful person with an aria entitled “Come, rather, Goddess sage and holy.” 22 Although this music was written over 250 years ago, the emotions expressed are still easy to perceive by many today.

But what is it, exactly, that makes the first aria sound happy, and what makes the second sound reserved?

Image 2.9: This 1845 painting by Thomas Cole captures the allegorical figure of L’Allegro, or “The Cheerful Person.”

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Thomas Cole

License: Public Domain

Handel’s aria “Come, thou Goddess fair and free” represents 21.

bright and cheerful emotions in music.

Handel’s aria “Come, rather, Goddess sage and holy”

22.

captures a sober and introspective emotional state.

The answer can be arrived at by comparing and contrasting the dimensions of sound that were enumerated above. The first aria is quick in tempo, while the second is slow. The first contains fast-moving rhythms, while the second does not.

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Image 2.10: Here we see Cole’s representation of Il Penseroso, or “The Thoughtful Person.”

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Thomas Cole

License: Public Domain

The first is in the major mode, which we often hear as communicating positive emotions, while the second is in the minor mode, which can sound sad or serious.

The vocal line in the first aria jumps around, skipping notes in the scale, while that in the second generally does not. The articulations in the first are bouncy and accented, while those in the second are smooth and connected. The first aria features bright-timbred wind instruments—oboe and bassoon—while the second relies on the mellower strings.

However, we still haven’t answered the question. After all, what do oboes have to do with cheerfulness? Why does a melody that moves stepwise suggest sobriety?

Why does the minor mode signify a somber mood? There are two ways that we can begin to answer these questions. The first has to do with the web of relationships between music—a purely acoustic phenomenon with no required visual component—

and the “real world.” Our brains easily map high pitches onto elevated physical locations, rapid rhythmic activity onto frenetic physical activity, and melodic leaps onto physical leaps. The other has to do with cultural signification. There is nothing objectively sad or serious about the minor mode, for example, but in the Western tradition we have developed an association between minor-mode music and profound emotional expression. (This is largely due to the complex inner workings of Western harmony, which are beyond the scope of this book.) Other cultures have not made this association, and listeners in those traditions might respond to minor-mode music differently than those acculturated to Western music.

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This has been only a brief introduction to questions that will occupy us throughout this book. Our object will not be to answer these questions, but rather to carefully consider how music can create an emotional experience, how we respond to it, and how it has been used by humans over the span of centuries and continents.

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER LEARNING

Print

Duckworth, William. A Creative Approach to Music Fundamentals (11th edition).

Cengage Learning, 2012.

Online

Music theory lessons and exercises:

• https://utheory.com/

• https://www.musictheory.net/lessons

Page | 42

Unit 2

MUSIC FOR STORYTELLING

3Music and Characterization

Esther M. Morgan-Ellis

INTRODUCTION

Music may have originally developed for the purpose of communication, and it has become a powerful tool in the telling of stories. Over the next four chapters, we will explore ways in which music has been used to convey, enhance, or transform stories in a variety of cultural contexts.

Most storytellers use music with great care. They do so because it is powerful.

Music can help to set the mood in a video game, or allow a character on stage to express emotion by singing, or add interest and gravity to the recitation of an epic poem. It can encourage an audience member to get more involved in a performance, either emotionally or by joining in with the music-making. It can help a listener to remember the words to a story. And it can “say” things that go beyond words and images.

Music is used to tell stories in many different ways. Sometimes it accompanies images, such as in a film. Sometimes it is combined with stage action, as in ballets and musicals. Sometimes it is paired with a text, which might be sung or provided to the listener to read. Of course, we can choose to hear a story in any piece of music, and we will encounter examples later in this book that seem as if they must be communicating something, even if we can’t say exactly what it is. In the next four chapters, however, we will examine pieces of music that are used to tell clearly defined stories, and we will focus on understanding how music enriches and impacts those stories.

JOHN WILLIAMS, STAR WARS

We will start with an example that is familiar to most listeners: the music created for the Star Wars films. We will examine this music on its own terms, but through it we will also encounter five other works and styles that strongly impacted the creation of this score. No art exists in a vacuum. New works are built upon old, and creators rely upon cultural memory to communicate meaning. Even the Star Wars films were not conjured out of a vacuum—director George Lucas based his creation on Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 samurai film The Hidden Fortress.

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You probably already have a wealth of associations with the Star Wars soundtrack—both personal and general—as a result of having watched these films. On the personal level, you might find that this music evokes nostalgic memories of watching Star Wars with your family as a child, or it might make you uncomfortable if you found the films particularly scary or sad. Such responses are valid and worth exploring. Here,

however, we will focus on objective

characteristics of the music that help us

to explain how it enhances the story.

Williams’s Career

The soundtrack to the Star Wars

films was composed by one of the most

prolific and influential of all cinema

composers, John Williams (b. 1932).

Williams’s career took off in 1974, when

director Steven Spielberg recruited him

to score his first feature production,

The Sugarland Express. The two went

on to produce a string of hit films with

memorable soundtracks, including Jaws,

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. , Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan,

the Indiana Jones films, and the first Image 3.1: John Williams frequently two Jurassic Park films. This kind of conducts live performances of his film collaboration has long played a role in the scores, as in this 2011 appearance with the Boston Pops orchestra.

production of great music, and we will see Source: Wikimedia Commons similar partnerships at work in opera and Attribution: Chris Devers ballet. It was Spielberg who recommended License: CC BY-SA 2.0

Williams to George Lucas, the director of

the Star Wars films. His scores for the

(1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980),

and Return of the Jedi (1983)—are among

the best-known musical works created for

the big screen.

Williams—who had studied music

at UCLA and the Juilliard School—

certainly knew his music history and Image 3.2: Director George Lucas is concert repertoire. He also had decades best known for his work on the Star of experience as a session musician in Wars films.

Los Angeles, recording soundtracks for Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Joi Ito

television and film. He came to the task of License: CC BY 2.0

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writing film scores, therefore, with a deep understanding of how music can shape the viewer’s experience of a drama.

The Star Wars Soundtrack

At the heart of Williams’s soundtrack is a series of themes—about eleven per film—that represent individual characters, settings, or ideas. The viewer doesn’t need a guide to these themes. Instead, one quickly connects music with onscreen action as themes return throughout the films. Here, we will examine themes associated with Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Yoda, and the Force.

Williams carefully crafted each of these themes to represent the character or idea, and they are used both to amplify the onscreen action and to enrich the storytelling.

“Main Theme” from Star Wars

Composer: John Williams

Performance: the Skywalker Symphony,

conducted by John Williams (1990)

Time

Form

What to listen for

0’00”

intro

The opening fanfare features the brass section

0’06”

A

This triumphant trumpet melody contains multiple

upward leaps

0’17”

The A theme is repeated with changes in the

accompaniment

0’26”

B

This melody features the strings

0’48”

A’

When the A material returns, the melody is played by

violins and horns, giving it a different character

1’10”

End of listening guide

We will begin with Luke Skywalker’s theme (officially titled “Main Theme”), which is first heard over the opening title. This is clearly the music of a hero. The opening fanfare suggests royalty, while the duple meter and moderate tempo tells us that this is a march. This, in combination with brass-heavy instrumentation, suggests a military character—a good representation of the Rebel Alliance. The melody soars into the upper range, confirming Skywalker’s confidence and authority with a series of leaps up to the high tonic scale degree. (This is the first and most important note of the scale on which the melody is built.) Trumpets, with their bright timbre, are more prominent than the other brass instruments. And, Page | 46

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of course, Skywalker’s music is in the major mode. In addition, this theme has more emotional depth than Darth Vader’s. It is in a three-part form, which might be described as a b a’. While the a section has the characteristics described above, the b section features the string section, thereby introducing a warmer timbre and indicating that our hero has a human side. Finally, the fact that we hear Skywalker’s theme over the opening title tells us from the start who is going to emerge from this conflict victorious.

“The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)” from

Star Wars

Composer: John Williams

Performance: London Symphony Orchestra,

conducted by John Williams (1980)

Time

Form

What to listen for

0’00”

intro

The strings and percussion lay down a pattern of

dotted rhythms suggesting a slow, militaristic march

0’09”

A

The trombones and trumpets play a low, ominous

melody

0’18”

B

This section of the melody begins with a leap to the

high range followed by a twisted chromatic descent

0’28”

B’

The repetition of B’ concludes differently

0’38”

End of listening guide

The theme that represents the villain, Darth Vader, has many of the same characteristics. It, too, is a march (the theme is entitled “Imperial March”), and it features similar instrumentation. However, this theme is in the minor mode, which lets us know that this is the bad guy. The fact that the melody is played in a low range makes the music ominous, while the chromatic pitches and unusual harmonies make it mysterious. Darth Vader’s theme is forceful and threatening, perhaps even unstoppable, but it is not heroic.

The other themes are similarly suited to their subjects. Leia’s theme1 opens with a winding chromatic melody in the flute and oboe before unfolding into an expressive melody for french horn with muted strings in the background. The music suggests seduction and romance, while largely ignoring her role as an action hero (although there is a historical connection between the horn and heroes of the opera stage). Yoda’s theme2 is heard in the cellos and oboes with a peaceful accompaniment of strings, bassoons, and harp. The instrumentation resonates Page | 47

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with his life in the woods, while the simplicity of the melody communicates his character. Both themes are heard at the same moderate tempo—an indication of romance in one case and peace in the other. Perhaps the slowest theme is that used to represent the Force, 3 but now the tempo signifies inevitability and power. The theme itself is in the minor mode, not because it is tragic but because it is serious.

It starts with a lone french horn, supported by tremolo in the strings, but grows dramatically in volume to embrace the whole orchestra.

“Princess Leia’s Theme” from Star Wars

Composer: John Williams

1.

Performance: The Utah Symphony Orchestra, conducted

by Varujan Kojian (1983)

“Yoda’s Theme” from Star Wars

Composer: John Williams

2.

Performance: London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by

John Williams (1980)

“The Force Theme” from Star Wars

Composer: John Williams

3.

Performance: London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by

John Williams (1980)

This has been a fairly technical description of each theme’s attributes, but the character of the music is easy to perceive without specialized knowledge. It is worth a reminder, however, that our understanding of what music expresses is determined by our own cultural contexts. This music builds on centuries of stylistic development and depends on each listener’s lifetime of experience. We understand what it is trying to communicate because we dwell in the same musical world as the composer. Sound, however, seldom has objective meaning. We recognize the sounds of a military march because we have heard one somewhere else. We know that swelling strings signify romance because we have seen a hundred other movies, which in turn build on older theatrical traditions. A listener from a culture that had no military bands and in which, say, organ music was understood to signal romance would not make these connections.

RICHARD WAGNER, THE VALKYRIE

We are now going to explore that cultural context. John Williams was well educated in the Western concert and theatrical traditions. He served in the U.S.

Air Force Band from 1952 to 1955, during which time he played piano and brass, arranged music, and conducted. His piano degree from the Juilliard School in New York City came with a thorough grounding in music history. And his decades recording film and television scores as a session musician in Los Angeles allowed Page | 48

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him to become deeply familiar with the conventions of the screen.

Our examples, however, will come not from television or movies but from older traditions of theatrical music. We will begin with an example from the opera repertoire. In the European tradition, opera is a staged work of music theater, complete with costumes, sets, and dramatic plot twists. Most operas employ an orchestra to accompany the stage performers, who often sing throughout. While Richard Wagner’s style and melodies certainly influenced Williams’s work (the

“Imperial March,” for example, is clearly derived from a theme Wagner’s wrote to represent a magical helmet known as Tarnhelm4), we will focus here on Williams’s use of a technique that Wagner perfected: the technique of assigning a unique theme to each character, object, place, and idea in a drama. Wagner called such a theme a leitmotif.

This theme by Richard Wagner bears a clear resemblance

4.

to Williams’s “Imperial March.”

Wagner’s Career

Before examining Wagner’s music, some biographical context is called for.

It is possible that Richard Wagner (1813-1883) has had a greater impact on the development of Western art music than any other composer. For such a towering figure, however, he got off to a very slow start.

He did not exhibit any particular talent as a

child and never became an accomplished

performer. In his twenties, he dedicated

himself to the composition of operas, although

it was many years before he made a success

of the endeavor. In 1839 he actually had to

crawl through the gutters of Riga to escape his

creditors after having his passport confiscated

by the municipal authorities. Then in 1849 he

became involved in an attempt to overthrow

the Dresden government. He not only helped

to plan what is now known as the May Uprising,

but actually participated, throwing grenades

in the street. After the uprising failed, Wagner

fled to Switzerland, where he remained in Image 3.3: This portrait of exile for most of a decade.

Richard Wagner was painted by

In Switzerland, Wagner shifted his Franz von Lenbach.

attention from practice to theory. He quit Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Franz von Lenbach

writing music for several years and instead License: Public Domain Page | 49

RESONANCES

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wrote about music. In one 1849 essay, “The Artwork of the Future,” Wagner theorized a Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total artwork,” that would bring together all art forms—music, dance, gesture, poetry, image—into a single, ideal medium of artistic expression. Naturally, he imagined himself as the artist who was most capable of achieving this fusion. To prove the power of his ideas, he set to work on a monumental cycle of music dramas that would take him decades to complete. In a highly unusual move, Wagner not only wrote the music for these operas but also developed the narrative, wrote the libretto (the sung text), and even designed the theater in which the operas were eventually premiered. The project took him decades to complete, and the entire cycle was not premiered until 1876. By this time, Wagner had returned to Germany under the patronage of the King of Bavaria, who admired his work and offered him permanent financial support. The King also financed the construction of a grand opera house (the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth) to Wagner’s specifications. It was there that the complete cycle was finally staged.

Image 3.4: This early edition of Wagner’s manifesto was published in 1850.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: H. P. Haack

License: CC BY 3.0

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The Ring Cycle

Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs (German: Der Ring des Nibelungen)—

or, as it is now known, the Ring Cycle—consists of four massive operas and takes about fifteen hours to perform. The story derives from Norse mythology, which Wagner understood to describe the ascent of his own German race. The operas enact a prolonged struggle between the gods and the humans. The gods are ruled by Wotan (the German version of the more familiar name Odin), who seeks to consolidate their power, but he is finally defeated by the human Seigfried. The story begins with the forging of a powerful ring out of gold extracted from the Rhine river and ends with the return of the ring to the river,the burning of Valhalla, and the flooding of the Rhine. These catastrophes mark a new age of human rule—

the Norse myth of Ragnarök.

Like John Williams and George Lucas, Wagner relied on centuries of cultural history in crafting his masterpiece. The story outlined above is not original. His approach to setting that story to music was also not original, although he took preexisting techniques to new heights. To begin with, Wagner expanded the size of his orchestra, introducing new instruments into the brass section. These instruments—

which included the bass trumpet, contrabass trombone, and a euphonium-type device now known as the “Wagner tuba”—allowed him to produce a more subtle variety of timbres for the creation of diverse sound worlds. His musical style, like that of other composers of the time, was highly varied and expressive, although many of Wagner’s contemporaries felt that his music set the bar for intensity of emotional content. Finally, Wagner adapted and transformed a practice that had long been common in opera: the use of recurring melodic themes (leitmotifs) to help tell the story.

If a listener sits through Wagner’s entire fifteen-hour drama, they will hear hundreds of leitmotifs, most of which are frequently repeated. Some span all four operas, while some are restricted to an act, or even a single scene. Each is connected to an important element of the drama, and each is introduced along with that element.

The first time Wotan picks up his spear, for example, we hear a forceful, march-like descending melody in the brass. This music then returns every time we see the spear or hear a reference to it. Wagner’s leitmotifs are often melodically connected to each other, such that themes representing related ideas or characters sound similar to one another. The leitmotifs5 can also be transformed as the power of an idea or object

shifts over the course of the story. Most importantly, however, the leitmotifs can be used to communicate information to an audience that is not included in the libretto or onstage action. We will see this principle at work in our example.

This video, produced by the brass section of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, presents several important leitmotifs and 5.

demonstrates how they can be transformed to communicate

meaning.

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The Valkyrie

“Wotan’s Farewell” from The Valkyrie

Composer: Richard Wagner

Performance: Bryn Terfel with the Berliner

Philharmoniker, conducted by Claudio

Abbado (2002)

Time

Leitmotif

What to listen for

7’53”

Powerful

Heard in the trombones as Wotan prepares to

destiny

put

Brünnhilde into an enchanted sleep

7’59”

Renunciation

Heard first in the horn and continued in the

oboe

8’06”

Wotan announces that he is about to strip

Brünnhilde of her immortality

8’40”

Magic sleep

Heard first in the woodwinds, then the strings

9’26”

Innocent sleep

Heard in the strings

9’36”

Wotan’s grief

Heard in the strings in combination with

“Innocent sleep”

11’10”

Powerful

Heard in the tromobones in combination with

destiny

“Innocent sleep”

11’35”

Wotan’s spear

Heard in the low brass

11’43”

Loge as fire

The collection of leitmotifs related to Loge as

fire enter the texture

11’45”

Wotan calls forth Loge, the demigod of fire

12’05”

Wotan’s spear

Heard in the low brass

12’11”

Ambivalent

We hear hints of this leitmotif interwoven with

Loge

“Loge as fire”

12’44”

Ambivalent

Heard in the woodwinds

Loge

13’19”

Magic sleep

This version of “magic sleep” moves at a much

quicker tempo than that heard at 8’40”

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13’33”

Innocent sleep

Heard in the woodwinds

13’43”

Siegfried’s

To the melody of “Siegfried’s heroism,” Wotan

heroism

declares that any man who fears his spear will

be incapable of crossing the flames

14’11”

Siegfried’s

Repeated in the brass

heroism

14’36”

Wotan’s grief

Heard in the cellos

15’25”

Powerful

Heard twice in the low brass

destiny

We are going to take a look at the final scene (Act III, Scene 3) of the second opera, The Valkyrie (German: Die Walküre). This scene contains two characters, Wotan and his favorite daughter, Brünnhilde. At this point in the drama, Brünnhilde, daughter of the god Wotan, has disobeyed her father’s orders by interceding on behalf of the humans Siegmund and Sieglinde. Despite her efforts, Siegmund is killed, and Brünnhilde is left to face Wotan’s fury. The punishment for disobeying the ruler of the gods is death, but Wotan takes pity on Brünnhilde, Image 3.5: These two engravings both appeared in the 1917 Victrola Book of

Opera. The first depicts Wotan taking pity on his erring daughter Brünnhilde, who in the second has fallen into a magic sleep.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Internet Archive Book Images

License: Public Domain

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whom he loves dearly, and instead declares his intention to strip her of her immortality and powers and put her into a magical sleep on top of the mountain.

He conjurs Loge, the demigod of fire, to erect a ring of flames around Brünnhilde, and declares that only a hero who does not fear his spear will be able to pass through the fire and wake his daughter.

This scene, which lasts less than twenty minutes, contains twenty-one separate leitmotifs. Indeed, the listener hears virtually no music that cannot be classified as a leitmotif. Most of the themes in this scene were introduced in the first opera and have been heard many times, although some do not return after this scene. Four themes, however, are introduced in this scene and proceed to play an important role in the remaining operas. Although various music scholars have counted and named Wagner’s leitmotifs in different ways, we will use the descriptions supplied by Roger Donington in 1963.

According to Donington, the scene in question contains the following leitmotifs: love as fulfillment, Wotan frustrated, powerful destiny, unavoidable destiny, Valkyries as animus, Valhalla, Wotan’s spear, relinquishment, Volsung as destiny, the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde, downfall of the gods, the curse, Siegfried’s heroism, sword as manhood, magic sleep, innocent sleep, ambivalent Loge, Wotan’s grief, renunciation, and Loge as fire (two different versions). As you can see, these themes connect with a wide variety of dramatic elements. Some are straightforward representations of objects or places, while others embody abstract concepts. All enrich the drama and aid in telling the story.

Like Williams, Wagner did not randomly pair themes with objects and ideas.

Each leitmotif expresses meaning in sound. We will examine a few of the themes used in this scene before seeing them in action. The music associated with “Loge as fire,” 6 for example, is meant to capture the characteristics of flame. This passage features high-pitched instruments with bright timbres, such as the flute, and the sharply-articulated melody leaps about. The music almost sparkles. Swells and ebbs in the music—created using rising and falling dynamic levels and pitches—

represent the unpredictable spread of fire across the ground. (This kind of music has long been associated with wind and storms.) In contrast, both of the “sleep”

leitmotifs are slow and peaceful, and they feature the soothing sounds of strings and harp. “Magic sleep”7 consists of a gradual chromatic descent that comes as close as music can to representing the act of falling asleep. “Innocent sleep,” 8 on the other hand, is easily recognized as a lullaby, with its rocking rhythms, lilting melody, and stable harmonies.

The “Loge as fire” and “Ambivalent Loge” leitmotifs, both

6.

heard in this passage, capture the characteristics of a leaping flame.

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7.

The “Magic sleep” leitmotif suggests the act of falling asleep.

8.

The “Innocent sleep” leitmotif sounds like a lullaby.

Wagner used his large brass section to represent strength and power. “Wotan’s spear,” 9 which features the trombones and tubas, marches confidently down a scale into the very low range. “Siegfried’s heroism”10 begins with a confident leap up to the tonic and often grows in volume. (Many listeners observe that this leitmotif closely resembles John Williams’s theme for “the Force.”) “Powerful destiny,” 11

which is heard throughout the scene, consists of a simple but surprising shift from one harmony to another. Wagner weaves all of these leitmotifs together into a tapestry of orchestral and vocal sound.

9.

The “Wotan’s spear” leitmotif is brash and aggressive.

The “Siegfried’s heroism” leitmotif represents confidence 10.

and bravery.

11.

The “Powerful destiny” leitmotif is simple but mysterious.

Finally, this scene—which is often referred to as “Wotan’s farewell”—exhibits one of the most significant powers of the leitmotif: its ability to foreshadow events yet to come. In the final moments of the scene, Wotan declares that only a hero who does not fear his spear will be able to pass through the flames and wake Brünnhilde. He sings this declaration to the melody of “Siegfried’s heroism,” which is then echoed by the full orchestra in a resounding climax. At this point in the story, however, Siegfried has not even been born. Sieglinde has only just learned that she is pregnant with him, and he will not appear until the next opera. At the same time, the theme is not new. It has been in use since earlier in this opera to foreshadow the appearance of a human hero, and it will be heard nine times in the Page | 55

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next opera. When we hear this music, therefore, we know exactly who is going to wake Brünnhilde, even though Wotan—who sings the melody—does not.

Image 3.6: This engraving from the 1917 Victrola Book of Opera portrays the scene in the next opera in which Siegfried awakens the sleeping Brünnhilde.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Internet Archive Book Images

License: Public Domain

Concerns

There is no question that Wagner’s Ring operas have been both influential and successful. They are staged in countless opera houses around the world every year, often at great expense. The most lavish cycle to date was produced at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House in 2012 at a cost of $19.6 million. Every year, fans travel to the Bayreuth Festival in Germany to see the Ring and other Wagner operas staged in the theater that the composer himself designed. At the same time, some critics argue that we should no longer produce these operas or listen to Wagner’s music. Their argument is not that the music is bad, but rather that the composer’s ideology is so repugnant as to merit the erasure of his art.

Wagner’s anti-Semitic views were widely known during his lifetime. In an article entitled “Jewishness in Music” (1850), he argued that Jewish composers were incapable of producing profound musical expression, and that their attempts to do so were damaging to the progress of art. Furthermore, he claimed that Jewish artists lacked the capacity to recognize or represent authentic German culture.

Although Wagner first published the article under a pseudonym (presumably to Page | 56

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Image 3.7: This 1910 postcard captures the interior of the Bayreuth Festpielhaus, designed by Wagner himself for the presentation of his operas.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Ramme & Ulrich, Hoffotograf, Bayreuth

License: Public Domain

make his attacks against other composers seem less personal), in 1869 he republished it under his own name, and with a long addendum reflecting the artistic and political developments of the intervening decades. Wagner’s views provoked considerable resistance among his contemporaries, but they were later embraced by the Nazi Party. Indeed, Adolf Hitler would become Wagner’s most infamous admirer.

There are also concerns about the content of Wagner’s music dramas. While the Ring is not overtly anti-Semitic, it expresses an ideology of nationhood that tacitly excludes all but the ethnically pure “German” of Wagner’s imagination.

Stripped of their mythology, the Ring operas tell the story of a human race that rises to a position of world dominance. For Wagner, this was the German race, and the German race did not include Jews.

For these reasons, Wagner’s music is unofficially banned in the nation of Israel, while music lovers around the world hold his work in disdain and choose not to program or consume it. The debate over whether we can separate an artistic work from its creator, however, is far from settled. Should the sins of the artist be visited upon the art? Can we enjoy music, films, or paintings that we know to have been created by reprehensible individuals? Does it matter that Wagner died many years ago, and can neither profit nor suffer as a result of our consumption decisions?

Does support of Wagner’s art suggest support of his ideas? We are forced to grapple with these questions not only in the case of Wagner but every time that the creator of beloved cultural products is discovered to have committed hateful actions.

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GUSTAV HOLST, THE PLANETS

While John Williams’s approach to

creating the Star Wars soundtrack can be

traced through Wagner, his music is more

heavily influenced by other composers and

works. The most frequently noted of these is

the orchestral suite The Planets (1914-1916)

by British composer Gustav Holst (1874-

1934). The reasons for which Williams chose

to borrow from Holst are simple enough

to understand. Holst was one of the first

composers to write music about outer space,

and he did so with a dramatic flair that has

kept this work in the repertoire ever since its Image 3.8: This photograph of 1920 premiere.

Gustav Holst was taken around

the time that The Planets

Holst and The Planets

premiered.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Holst studied composition at the Royal Attribution: Herbert Lambert License: Public Domain

College of Music in London, where he met with

moderate success. He was not attracted to the

life of a professional musician (Holst played

the trombone), but he struggled to make a

living as a composer. In 1903, therefore, Holst

began teaching music in schools. Although he

would write some of his most successful music

for the orchestras he directed, he had little

time in which to pursue his craft. Nevertheless,

Holst continued to produce serious concert

pieces and his reputation steadily grew.

Holst finally earned national attention in

1920, first with a work for choir and orchestra

entitled The Hymn of Jesus and then with The

Planets. The Hymn of Jesus paved the way for The Planets’ success by establishing for Holst a

reputation as a mystic and spiritual composer.

As we will see, these qualities are prominent

in the orchestral suite. Although the entire Image 3.9: Alan Leo’s suite was not premiered until 1920, Holst had astrological work inspired Holst’s compositions. Here, we see Leo’s

been at work on it since 1913. He first wrote own horoscope, published in the music for two pianos, and produced the 1919.

orchestral score only after the composition Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Alan Leo

was complete.

License: Public Domain

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Much of Holst’s work as a composer can be traced to his personal interests.

This is certainly true of The Planets. In 1913, Holst travelled to Majorca with a group of fellow artists, who introduced him to the study of astrology. Holst became fascinated and immersed himself in the work of British astrologist Alan Leo, reading his book What Is a Horoscope and How Is It Cast?. The idea of composing an orchestral suite came to him almost immediately, and he began sketching the first movement, “Mars,” that same year.

Holst’s intent was to capture the astrological significance of each of the planets, as described by Leo. He was interested in the specific characteristics bestowed on those who were born under the influence of each individual planet. At the same time, Holst was a composer first and an astrologer second. His primary concern was musical cohesion and expression. As a result, he frequently deviated from Leo’s prescription, and in the end used Leo’s writings merely as an inspiration for his own creative work.

It seems that Holst was worried that audiences would not take his music seriously. An orchestral work inspired by celestial bodies, after all, might easily be dismissed as a mere novelty, especially when compared to the traditional symphonies that formed the core of the concert hall repertoire (see Chapter 7).

For this reason, Holst first titled his suite Seven Pieces for Orchestra, only later changing it to The Planets. He added the individual movement names, indicating which planet the music is about, only just before the work was published. The descriptive titles qualify The Planets as program music, a term used to identify an instrumental composition that tells a story or paints a picture. Holst chose not to order the movements in order of their distance from the sun, instead swapping Mars and Mercury. The reason for this decision is clear enough: The music that Holst composed to depict Mars makes a great opener for the work.

The Planets was a massive success. It was immediately programmed by orchestras all over England and has since become one of the most familiar and most frequently performed pieces in the orchestral repertoire. All the same, Holst came to regret his biggest hit. He continued to develop and grow as a composer, and within just a few years he considered The Planets to be outdated. Critics, on the other hand, were disappointed when Holst’s new compositions did not sound like his original blockbuster. Although Holst went on to write many beloved works, he never matched the success of The Planets.

We will examine the first and last movements of Holst’s suite: “Mars, the Bringer of War” and “Neptune, the Mystic.” “Mars” served as a model for John Williams’s “Imperial March” in the Star Wars soundtrack, while “Neptune” seems to have had a general influence on Williams’s musical portrayals of space.

Mars12

In astrological terms, the planet Mars is associated with confidence, self assertion, aggression, energy, strength, ambition, and impulsiveness. Leo described those born under the influence of Mars as “fond of liberty, freedom, and Page | 59

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independence,” noting that they “may be relied upon for courage” and are “fond of adventure and progress” but are also “headstrong and at times too forceful.” In mythological terms, Mars is the ancient Roman god of war.

“Mars” from The Planets

Composer: Gustav Holst

12.

Performance: Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by

James Levine (1990)

Holst seems to have combined these

influences in his music, which is overtly

militaristic. The staccato rhythms heard at the

beginning are the rhythms of a military march.

At first they are played by the entire string

section using a special technique, known

as col legno, for which players turn their bows upside down and bounce the wooden

stick on the string. Later, the snare drum—an

actual military instrument—plays the same

rhythm, which is heard almost throughout

the movement. There is something very

strange about Holst’s march, however: It is in

quintuple meter, with five beats per measure.

It would be very difficult to actually march to

this music.

Holst uses other strategies as well to

communicate the character of Mars. The first

melody we hear is low and ominous, consisting

only of a rising gesture followed by a small

descent. As the texture thickens, the volume

increases and the melodic gestures seems more Image 3.10: This ancient Roman threatening. The introduction of trumpets statue depicts Mars as the god of war.

and other brass instruments reinforces the Source: Wikimedia Commons militaristic flavor of the movement. In the Attribution: Andrea Puggioni middle section, the trumpets seem to be License: CC BY 2.0

sounding battle calls. Finally, the whole movement comes to a crashing close with the strings and brass playing as loudly and violently as possible.

Neptune13

Holst’s representation of Neptune, the final planet in his suite, is entirely different. This is natural enough, given Holst’s astrological mindset, for the influence of Neptune is associated with idealism, dreams, dissolution, artistry, Page | 60

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empathy, illusion, and vagueness. Holst creates music, therefore, that captures these same qualities.

“Neptune” from The Planets

Composer: Gustav Holst

13.

Performance: Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by

James Levine (1990)

We might begin with a discussion of timbre. “Neptune” includes a sound that is completely absent from the other movements: women’s voices. Holst includes two choirs of sopranos and altos, making for six separate vocal parts. The women don’t sing words, however, but are instead instructed to sustain long, open “ah”

vowels. The singers therefore function in the same way as instruments, bringing an ethereal, transparent quality to the upper register of the orchestra.

Apart from the voices, “Neptune” calls for the same instruments as “Mars.”

However, Holst deploys these instruments quite differently. He hardly uses the brass section at all, relegating them to low, sustained pitches in the background of the texture. Holst assigns the melody to wind instruments, with a preference for the airy sound of the flutes and the reedy timbre of the oboe and English horn.

He also foregrounds the two harps and a percussion instrument called the celeste, which has a keyboard similar to that of a piano but produces the sound of bells.

The articulation in “Neptune” is completely unlike that heard in “Mars.” While

“Mars” is characterized by abrupt, accented rhythms, the pitches in “Neptune”

are sustained and connected. Interestingly, this is the only movement that Holst originally composed for organ instead of piano. He felt that the organ, which can sustain pitches indefinitely, was better able to capture his musical vision. While both “Mars” and “Neptune” are in quintuple meter, the differences in articulation and tempo (“Neptune” is much slower) means that the two movements have completely different effects on the listener.

Finally, we might say something about the melody and harmony. There are no catchy tunes in “Neptune.” Instead, the wind instruments and voices repeat floaty, circular melodies that don’t seem to go anywhere. “Neptune” is also not in any particular key. Instead, the music rocks back and forth between seemingly unrelated harmonies. All of this creates the sensation of being unmoored. It is hard to predict where the music is going, but easy to enjoy the beautiful sounds.

IGOR STRAVINSKY, THE RITE OF SPRING

While the influence of Holst’s “Mars” is particularly evident (after all, we hear the “Imperial March” repeatedly in almost all of the films), Williams also tapped the musical language of another prominent composer working at the same time.

This borrowing did not become one of the repeated themes in Williams’s score, but it is no less unmistakable. In addition, he borrowed for the same reason: Another Page | 61

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composer of musical drama had already succeeded in setting the mood that Williams wanted to create: a mood reflecting uncertainty, suspense, and possible danger. Why reinvent the wheel?

The scene in question comes early in the first film, A New Hope (1977). The droids, R2D2 and C3PO, have landed on the desert planet Tatooine, where they argue and strike off in different directions. The setting is desolate and eerie, and the music serves to amplify our feeling of uncertainty about what is to come. We follow the path taken by C3PO, who doesn’t know where he is, where he is going, or what might happen to him. The music that accompanies his journey is similarly uncertain. Oscillating melodies in the winds and muted trumpets are paired with high sustained notes in the strings and chromatic interjections from the bassoon and clarinet. Low, ominous sounds from the brass and reeds suggest a lurking danger. The music is in neither the major nor minor mode, there is no sense of a “home” note (the tonic), and we are not provided with any conclusive musical gestures (cadences). Instead, the pitches seem to float about. There is no sense of direction or purpose. At the end of this brief scene, the music simply fades away.

In the context of Star Wars, we are talking about just over 50 seconds of music.

Were it not for Williams’s borrowing, this scene would hold little interest. However, the work from which Williams extracted this brief passage of music was among the most influential of the twentieth century, and it is therefore worth exploring in order to understand why Williams chose this source, why the original work was composed in the first place, and how the dramatic intent of the two composers can help us to understand how music communicates meaning.

The passage adapted by Williams appears at the beginning of the second half of Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring (French: Le sacre du printemps).

Like Williams, Stravinsky needed music that would create an atmosphere of mystery and suspense. Both dramas are set in an undefined, distant past: Williams’s “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” Stravinsky’s amongst the pagan tribes of prehistoric Russia. The differences arise when we examine the scenes for which each composer is preparing the viewer. C3PO is about to be captured by traders, while Stravinsky’s characters are about to choose their victim for a virgin sacrifice.

Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring

Stravinsky wrote The Rite of Spring for a Paris audience (for whom Russia was indeed “far, far away”). Although Stravinsky was himself Russian, he had been living in Paris and writing ballets for three years. He was recruited for the job by Sergei Diaghilev, a wealthy Russian who had embarked on the quest of exporting Russian ballet to Paris. To do so, Diaghilev established a ballet troupe known as the Ballet Russes (that’s “Russian Ballet” in French). His troupe specialized in flamboyant stage presentations that were meant to dazzle Parisian theatergoers with exotic stories, costumes, and music. When Stravinsky first agreed to join Diaghilev, he did so only because he had few other opportunities. He was unknown in Russia and had just begun his career in music. In accordance with Diaghilev’s Page | 62

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scheme, he participated in the production of a series

of ballets with Russian themes. The first was The Firebird (1910), which combined various Russian folk tales with a typically Russian musical language.

The second, Petrushka (1911), was set at a fair in the Russian countryside. Rite of Spring carried on this trend to a degree, but it was also startlingly new in

several ways.

Like all ballets, The Rite of Spring was developed by an artistic team. The idea for the ballet was

conceived jointly by Stravinsky and the painter

Nikolai Roerich. Roerich, who was an expert on pre-

Christian Slavic history, also designed the ballet’s

scenario (how the story unfolds), costumes, and sets. The choreographer—that is, the person who

planned and taught the actual dance steps—was Image 3.11: Although Vaslav Nijinsky, a famous dancer who had been part Nikolai Roerich’s original of the Ballet Russes since its founding and first costumes have been lost, replicas such as this have

performances in 1909. Working together, these three been created based on men put together a show that they knew would turn sketches and photographs.

heads. At the same time, their ideas weren’t entirely Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra

new. Artists working in Paris and beyond had for License: CC BY 2.0

Image 3.12: Nikolai Roerich created this sketch for scenery in 1912.

Source: Wikipedia

Attribution: Nikolai Roerich

License: Public Domain

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decades been preoccupied with so-called

“primitive” cultures, which were believed to

reveal fundamental truths about the human

condition. At the same time, paintings of half-

naked island dwellers, such as those produced

by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), were enticing

and exotic. They allowed momentary escape

from the constraints of Western society as

they invited viewers to gaze upon supposedly

innocent and uninhibited subjects.

doesn’t tell a particularly coherent story. It is

in two parts. Over the course of Part I, which is

entitled “Adoration of the Earth,” members of

Roerich and Stravinsky’s imagined pagan tribe

engage in a variety of rituals and games. In

Part II, “The Sacrifice,” a young girl is selected

as the sacrificial victim. She dances herself to

Image 3.13: Here we see Vaslav

Nijinsky in an earlier role with the

death in the final minutes of the ballet.

Ballet Russes.

The Rite of Spring caused something of

Source: Wikimedia Commons

a stir at its premier. In what has since been

Attribution: Bert. A

License: Public Domain

described as a “riot” (although historical

evidence indicates that this characterization is

overblown), audience members reacted with consternation to what they saw and heard. To fully understand this response, we need to examine context, precedent, and the musical and visual elements of the ballet.

To begin with, The Rite of Spring was not the evening’s sole entertainment. It was the second ballet on a double bill. The first ballet, entitled The Sylphs (French: Les Sylphides), was a classic from the Russian ballet repertoire. Diaghilev had included it in the first Paris season of the Ballet Russe, so the audience knew what to expect—and The Sylphs, which featured music by the 19th-century composer Image 3.14: This 1898 painting by Gaugin captures Tahitian scenes.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Paul Gauguin

License: Public Domain

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Frederic Chopin, was just the kind of thing Parisians wanted to see. The action consisted of elegantly-clad dancers cavorting gracefully about the stage. Viewers admired the beauty and poise of the artists.

The most disturbing element of The Rite of Spring, therefore, was not the plot or music but the dancing. Nijinsky had abandoned the graceful gestures and acrobatic leaps of traditional ballet. Instead, he had the dancers stomping around the stage on flat feet,14 with hunched backs and awkwardly protruding limbs. He did so in an attempt to capture the primitive and raw aesthetic of the subject matter, as he perceived it. Of course, all of this came out of Nijinsky’s imagination. For him, the idea of ancient pagan tribes served as an inspiration to try something new and daring. He had no way of knowing how his subjects might have actually danced.

This 1987 performance by the Joffrey Ballet attempted to 14.

recreate the original appearance of Rite of Spring, including the costumes and choreography.

Nijinsky’s choreography was complimented by Roerich’s costumes. Instead of delicate tutus revealing stocking-clad legs and pointe shoes, Roerich’s dancers appeared in cumbersome, floor-length dresses and cloaks. The women wore flat shoes and had long braids instead of neat buns. Audiences were thereby denied the opportunity of admiring the female form—a luxury that was central to the enjoyment of ballet.

Image 3.15: This photograph captures the original costumes for The Rite of Spring.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Unknown

License: Public Domain

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Nijinsky was also responding to Stravinsky’s music, which was unlike anything that had been heard in the theater before. The music did not contain lyrical melodies or compelling harmonic progressions. It did not express feelings of yearning, or heartbreak, or passion—the typical “human” emotions of the stage. Instead, it was alternately mechanistic, mysterious, threatening, and frenzied. Stravinsky’s ostinatos and pounding rhythms inspired Nijinsky’s similarly repetitive and rhythmic choreography. To understand how the music worked, we will look at two examples: the “Introduction” to Part II (later borrowed by Williams) and the

“Sacrificial Dance” that concludes the ballet.

Part II: Introduction15

Part II: “Introduction” from The Rite of Spring

Composer: Igor Stravinsky

15.

Performance: San Francisco Symphony, conducted by

Michael Tilson Thomas (2004)

The “Introduction” opens with a dissonant cluster of notes. The oboes and horns hold their notes, while the flutes and clarinets oscillate between pitches.

What we hear does not suggest any particular key, major or minor. Stravinsky achieves this by having the instruments play in a number of different keys at the same time, a technique known as polytonality. The result is that the listener has no sense of direction or grounding. This disorienting effect serves to introduce a dramatic world with mysterious and unfamiliar characteristics.

There is no discernable melody for a long time—just the ebb and flow of Stravinsky’s unusual sound colors. When a recognizable tune finally appears in the violins, it is played using harmonics, a string technique that causes pitches to sound much higher than usual and gives them an eerie quality. The melody uses only four pitches (it is quadratonic), and was probably inspired by Russian folk music.

Near the middle of the movement, the music changes. Two trumpets introduce a new melodic idea, changing pitches in alternation with one another. Starting at this point, Stravinsky employs a compositional technique that is typical of The Rite of Spring: He begins to build up layers by bringing in the sections of the orchestra one by one, each with its own characteristic melodic motif. First the strings begin to play quick rhythmic figures with repeated notes. Then the clarinets and violins enter with upward melodic swoops. The musical texture slowly gets denser and busier, the swoops coming with gradually increasing frequency. This ends with the return of the quadratonic melody in the horns as Stravinsky transitions into the next movement.

The “Introduction” has a pulse throughout, but the pulse is unevenly grouped into measures and phrases. For this reason, it is impossible to predict when a melodic or harmonic change is going to come. The effect is to leave the listener on Page | 66

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edge, never certain what is going to happen next. Stravinsky uses this technique in every movement of The Rite of Spring, but to various ends. While uneven phrasing makes the “Introduction” seem vague and mysterious, it makes the “Sacrificial Dance,” which concludes the ballet, sound violent and threatening.

Part II: Sacrificial Dance

“Sacrificial Dance” from The Rite of Spring

Composer: Igor Stravinsky

Performance: The Chicago Symphony, conducted by

Seiji Ozawa (1968)

Time

Form

What to listen for

0’00”

A

All parts of the orchestra engage in an unpredictable

back-and-forth characterized by constant meter

changes

0’25”

B

The texture is reduced to an uneven rhythm

0’37”

Brass interjections begin

0’52”

Strings enter to supplement the uneven rhythms and

intensity builds

1’21”

Following a climactic point, the texture is reduced to

a minimum and the process repeats

1’27”

Brass interjections begin again

1’35”

A whirling figure in the strings intensifies the music

1’43”

A’

Nearly identical to A

2’08”

C

The texture is dominated by brass and percussion

2’40”

A’’

Brief return to A material

2’46”

C’

Return to C material

3’07”

A’’’

Rhythmically, this passage can be recognized as a

version of A, although the range, harmonies, and

instrumentation are different

3’54”

Coda

The dance ends with an ascending flute run and a

final cacophonous chord

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The “Sacrificial Dance” is in rondo form, in which a primary melody returns throughout. It might be summarized as A B A’ C A’’ C A’’’ with a brief coda, although in reality it is somewhat more complicated. However, using these letters will allow us to briefly discuss each section.

The A section is the most rhythmically jarring. The strings and winds play accented, dissonant chords in alternation with one another, culminating each time in one of two melodic figures: a short series of descending pitches or a series of repeated pitches with one higher outlier. Both figures are loud, accented, and aggressive, and, due to the rhythmic irregularity, it is impossible to predict when they will be heard.

The B section is significantly more subdued, although no more predictable.

The strings provide an underpinning of irregular chords, while brass instruments periodically interject with accented, descending melodic fragments. The music builds in intensity before reverting to its original character. It then builds once more before the return of the A material (labelled A’ to indicate the fact that the music is slightly different).

The C section features a wide variety of percussion instruments, including timpani and cymbals. Over these, various brass instruments enter with heavily accented melodies. Again, the music gets louder and more intense as it builds into yet another return of the A material. A’’, however, is very brief, for it is almost immediately interrupted by the continuation of C—now with even greater intensity.

The final return of the opening material as A’’’ sounds significantly different, for it employs different sets of pitches. However, the rhythmic character is the same.

Once again Stravinsky builds the intensity of the music by alternating between his melodic ideas with increasing frequency, never establishing a pattern that will allow the listener to get comfortable. Finally, an ascending glissando in the flute, followed by a loud final chord, indicates that the dancing girl has collapsed.

RAGTIME AND DIXIELAND JAZZ

We will consider one more of Williams’s borrowings. This time, however, we will be giving primary consideration to style, for Williams was influenced by a pair of musical traditions—specifically, those of ragtime and Dixieland jazz—rather than by a specific composition. Before we can examine the borrowing, however, we need to take a step back and consider the different ways in which music works in film.

Underscoring vs. Source Music

Think back on the scene we used to introduce the borrowing from The Rite of Spring. Was C3P0 able to hear that music? Did the eerie, discordant sounds tell him anything about what lay in store? Most viewers would agree that he heard nothing other than the wind across the desert sands. That music was only for us, the movie-watchers, not for the character in the scene. Indeed, most of the music in Star Wars seems to be only for the viewer. Darth Vader does not keep an orchestra on hand to Page | 68

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play his entrances, and Yoda certainly doesn’t have one out in the swamp. When we hear music while watching the movie, we understand that its purpose is to amplify emotion and help tell the story. It is not actually a part of the story.

In the film industry, this technique is known as underscoring. It has been in use since the silent era, when theater organists and orchestras used to provide live music to accompany moving pictures that did not have dedicated soundtracks.

Of course, this kind of music played a role in theatrical presentations long before movies came on the scene. Operas and ballets also include music that the characters on stage cannot hear, but that is nonetheless essential to the storytelling. In general terms, this is termed non-diegetic music.

If there is non-diegetic music, there must be diegetic music—music that the characters in the drama can in fact hear. In film, this is called source music, because the source of the sound is usually visible on screen. Almost every film and television show combines these two types of music. When a character is listening to the radio, or playing the guitar, or attending a concert, or dancing in a club, you are hearing source/diegetic music. When you can’t see where the music is coming from and have good reason to doubt that it is audible to the onscreen characters (for example, when you hear an orchestra while watching someone walk down the street alone), you are hearing underscoring/non-diegetic music.

Often, it is not obvious whether the music we are hearing is diegetic or non-diegetic. In the case of the “Imperial March,” for example, it is reasonable to believe that the Imperial Army might in fact have a band present that might in fact play a march. Many militaries have such musical ensembles, and even though we never see a band, we cannot prove that one is not present. At the same time, we can doubt that such a band would contain the full range of winds and strings that we hear in the soundtrack. Perhaps the Imperial forces are indeed hearing music—

just not the same music that we are hearing. (The opposite can also occur. In one famous scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 film The Man Who Knew Too Much, a live concert performance also serves to underscore the unfolding drama, such that we cannot confidently label the music as either diegetic or non-diegetic.) These problems become much more frequent and difficult to solve in musical theater genres, as we will see later.

Both diegetic and non-diegetic music can be equally important to the telling of a story, although each type tends to serve a different purpose. The most striking use of diegetic music in Star Wars occurs forty-five minutes into the first film, when the protagonists arrive at a bar to meet with Han Solo. In this scene, known popularly as the “cantina scene,” we both hear and see a band playing a catchy tune. Because we see the performers, we can be quite certain that the onscreen characters are able to hear the music as well. At the same time, the music makes sense in this context. It is natural for a bar scene to contain a band playing lively music in a popular style.

The style itself speaks to us. Although Williams is not borrowing from a specific composition in this case, he is borrowing from a rich tradition of African Page | 69

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American dance music. Specifically, he is reinterpreting the rhythms and textures of two related dance music styles from the early twentieth century: ragtime and Dixieland jazz.

Ragtime

Ragtime was developed in the 1890s by African American piano players working in Midwestern entertainment venues. These highly-skilled musicians began to take a new approach to performing well-known tunes. A ragtime pianist would keep a steady beat with his left hand, alternating between high and low pitches, while performing complex syncopated rhythms with the right hand. (A syncopated rhythm includes accented notes that do not line up with the underlying pulse, but instead seem to fight against it.) While any melody can be “ragged” (that is, performed in this manner), African American pianists soon began composing and publishing original pieces with “ragtime” in the title or description.

The style quickly caught on across the nation. Its syncopated rhythms were fresh and exciting, and they made the listener want to dance. By 1910, ragtime rhythms and references were common in all types of popular music. At the same time, white Americans exhibited a great deal of concern about the influence of ragtime, which was associated with establishments where alcohol was served and the opposite sexes mingled freely. It was believed that the music’s enticing rhythms were so powerful that they might lead young people to commit immoral acts. Most importantly, ragtime was the first in a long line of African American styles to have a major impact on mainstream popular music, and it was therefore perceived as a threat by white cultural powerbrokers.

George Botsford/Winifred Atwell, Black and White Rag

We will take a closer look at Black and White Rag

(1908), a composition by the Iowa pianist George

Botsford (1874-1949). Like all rags, this piece is in a form derived from that of 19th-century marches. This

approach to organizing music is based on the repetition

of several distinct melodies, each of which is heard twice upon being introduced and then may or may not return

later in the piece. The form of Black and White Rag can be summarized as follows: intro A A B B A C C B’. As you

can see, the A melody returns after the introduction of

B. The B melody then returns (in modified form) after Image 3.16: Black

we hear C. The result is a musical work that balances and White Rag was repetition with contrast. The listener is able to identify published as sheet music in 1908.

familiar melodies as they return, but is kept from Source: Wikimedia Commons becoming bored by the regular introduction of new Attribution: User melodies.

“Ragtimedorianhenry2010”

License: Public Domain

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Black and White Rag

Composer: George Botsford

Performance: Winifred Atwell (1951)

Time

Form

Source for the passage

0’00”

Intro

Botsford

0’04”

A

Botsford

0’20”

B

Botsford

0’36”

A

Botsford

0’52”

Transition

Atwell

1’01”

D

Atwell

1’16”

E

Atwell

1’32”

F

Atwell