Hanslick from On The Beautiful in Music
Formalism in music argues against the
customary emphasis in music on emotions.
Hanslick, the most influential formalist
theorist of music, insists that his theory of music derives from a purely
objective approach.
The argument depends on the conceptual
connections between autonomy, objectivity, and form.
Hanslick rejects two ideas:
a. that the point
of music, it’s “meaning,” is ultimately to be understood in terms of emotional
effects
b. that the
meaning of music is to be understood in terms of its alleged ability to
represent emotional states,
Desires to develop an objective
musical aesthetics that deals with music in its own terms, that is, as an
autonomous phenomenon.
Emotional responses to music come and
go. (Stravinsky's Rite of Spring) Our
emotional estimate of a piece of music varies too much, from context to context
and person to person, to be a valid basis for detecting and analyzing what is
beautiful in music:
Does not possess the attributes of inevitable-ness,
exclusive‑ness and uniformity...
Pure instrumental music, commonly
called "absolute music" in music theory, is championed by Hanslick and other nineteenth‑ and twentieth‑century
theorists as the highest form of music.
"In
the pure act of listening we enjoy the music alone and do not think of
importing into it any extraneous matter. But the tendency to allow our feelings
to be aroused implies something extraneous to the music" (p. 282).
(not in whatever emotions or
associations we may connect to the music.)
Thinks the imagination (an active
organ of the mind) performs the function of constructing experience
to enable us to mentally grasp external perceptual objects.
To hear sounds as music is not to feel emotions or to think of distant scenes but
to hear the sounds with our imagination, which can represent the sounds as pure
music.
Contemplates it with intelligence
Distinguishes direct effect on
imagination from indirect effect on emotions.
The only valid analysis of the beauty
of music must focus on the music itself, on what is in the music, not on the
music's variable and indirect effects.
Hanslick's argument thus
shows that a demand for complete autonomy for artworks (and I would argue
coupled with a demand for objectivity, necessity and universality) implies a
rejection of mimetic theories and expression theories of art in favor of the
formal 'relation of elements within the artwork.
What remains after we put aside the
emotional and representational content is the musical content, the musical
properties of sounds.
The primordial element of music is
euphony, and rhythm is its soul. . . . The crude material which the composer
has to fashion ... is the entire scale of musical notes and their inherent
adaptability to an endless variety of melodies, harmonies, and rhythms. Melody
... is preeminently the source of musical beauty." (p. 284)
Note:
not only is he identifying the elements of music so as better to decern musical formal properties, but also tacitly
recommending a research project for each artistic medium to discover its own
essential nature (Minimalsim- media formalism)
An “Intellectual Principle” is implied
according to Hanslick
it is essential, “for we would not
apply the term ‘beautiful’ to anything wanting in intellectual beauty;”
“and in tracing the essential nature
of beauty to a morphological source, we wish it to be understood that the
intellectual element is most intimately connected with the sonorific
forms,” (p. 286)
Hanslick grounds his account on the more traditional concepts of beauty as well as what pleases us. Hints that form furnishes music with even more profound values.
"On Rehearing Music," Leonard
Meyer
Is Musical beauty, is a temporal
phenomenon?
Meyer distinguishes two different
formal approaches to music:
1. “the non-temporal approach”
·
a musical event
"must be complete, or virtually so, before its formal design can be
comprehended"
·
music is to
appreciated, must be contemplated as a completed whole.
2. "the kinetic‑syntactic
approach”
·
music is a
dynamic process
·
understanding and
enjoyment depend upon the perception of and response to attributes such as
tension and repose
·
music is seen as
a developing process
·
claims that the
primary example of music to be experienced in this way is Western music from
1600‑1900
o
It is
characterized by harmonic development that requires modulation between keys and
resolution of harmonic tensions.
o
This harmonic
development, in conjunction with manipulation of thematic material, gives such
music a prospective and dramatic air, as Meyer notes, a sense that the music is
“always progressing forward.”
Kinetic Position:
"The
significance of a musical event be it a tone, a motive, a phrase, or a section
lies in the fact that it leads a practiced listener to expect, consciously or
unconsciously, the arrival of a subsequent event or one of a number of
alternative subsequent events."
The degree of the probability of
subsequent events contributes to the sense of significance or meaning
·
We feel this
significance when the actual musical events happen.
·
If a piece of
music is very predictable (for example, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"),
it has little meaning.
·
If our
expectations are more complex and the fulfillment is much less probable (as in
a Beethoven symphony), then the music has much more significance, because the
musical notes are surprising.
This analysis of music is clearly
formalist.
For Meyer, meaning depends on syntactic or
structural complexity, which in turn is connected to enjoyment.
He understand this enjoyment as a
psychological process to be explained some day by a more advanced cognitive
science.
For Meyer value is the enjoyment it
gives us.
Eugene Narmour
from the
He is first and
foremost a music theorist (though he is also a former conductor/ performer).
He has been and
is continuing to develop a theory of music cognition. The basics of his view
are easy enough to understand.
He claims that we
process music though two largely distinct but interrelated systems;
The Bottom Up Processing and the Top Down Processing.
Bottom Up
Processing is a sort of fixed, hard-wired response to music innate and
automatic.
He suggests that
it is the sort of reflex reactions requiring no learned or conscious thought
(the sort of responses often necessary in situations where immediate action is
required -fight or flight situations) etc. As such they may be seen as an
extension or a deployment of evolutionarily advantageous automatic cognitive
processing.
This he contrasts
with Top Down Processing which is learned, pliant, subject to development,
augmentation and revision, and dependent to a large extent (though not
entirely) on cultural setting and personal history. Here past experiences and
learned musical forms etc. mediate our responses to music.
While the values
we derive from music are many and diverse and can turn on learned subjective
relations and associations (such as an otherwise unremarkable Hymn played as
his mother’s funeral), certain structures in the music itself can account for
convergent judgements among perceivers.
Specifically,
much of our shared response to music turns on the ability of music to set up
expectations ("Implications") and either satisfy them (thus achieving
"Closure") or deny them (yet still achieve closure by providing a
"Surprising" resolution) or prolong the expectation (thus remaining
"Open" but setting up even greater expectations).
Thus Implication
and Surprise as well as Openness and Closure account for much of our
Syntactical processing of Music.
As musical
phrases build expectations (“implication”)
they are "open," but if
and when these expectations are satisfied the phrase is "closed". When we have an
expectation based on perceived regularities (that a certain ascending arpeggio
will continue, say) but that expectation is not realized (the next notes played
are a descending) or is fulfilled, but in a novel way (the next notes played
are ascending, but at a different interval) we have discontinuity of a
perceived pattern and thus “surprise”
and aesthetic interest.
Closure is
achieved when the expectation has been resolved, either as expected or in a
surprising way. This sort of thing can go on in melody, rhythm (the length of
notes held), harmonies, etc., all setting up different expectations and either
fulfilling them or denying them, creating varying areas of interest throughout
the work. Sometimes they even pile-up affording a really big pay-off and thus a
"really important, salient" moment in the piece.
He also suggests
that this same sort of mechanism is at work in Top Down processing as well, but
here in involves things like knowledge of style, genre, etc. For instance,
having heard the piece before you might expect a certain arrangement or
placement of emphasis, but that be denied or fulfilled in an unexpected way.