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MUSIC AND SENSIBILITY: HEARING AND THE BODY
Music is more than a casual leisure, an art or the new way to increase the benefits of a company. It is all of that and even more. The music industry is a rich ecosystem in which everyone and everything has a specific place. From the composer to the listener, from psychology to spirituality, from art to science, get insights on each field of music, learning about craft or history, about human behavior or consciousness. A place is also given to ethical questions.
MUSICAL CULTURE IN ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS
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Appreciative music listening and the nature of sound
What is appreciative music listening?
Appreciative music listening happens when, stimulated by a piece of music, a music listener produces an individual emotional response to that sensory stimulation. It includes three main steps: attraction, contact and critical evaluation of the music that is perceived. Various elements may influence appreciative listening: the perception itself, the psychological background of listeners, their expectations, their musical knowledge, etc.
Music listening may be appreciative at different levels: one may appreciate the sensuous character of music, another person the feelings induced by music, and a third one will love a piece of music for its structure. Sometimes, the same person may practice these three types of appreciative music listening at different moments. Appreciative music listening may be developed by concentrating attention, gaining experience and, of course, a willingness to listen with attention.
When it comes to appreciative music listening, liberty is the motto. In fact, what is more boring than following a list full of music that is prescribed to be heard? By whom and for what purpose? Music listening should be descibed as appreciative only when someone really enjoys the act of music listening.
How can music listeners improve appreciative listening by knowing more about sounds?
The best for listeners is to determine themselves what they enjoy listening to most, consider why they enjoy specific pieces of music and compare their likes and dislikes over time. In fact, appreciative music listening is an individual and even an intimate process. Listening becomes appreciative when it comes from a desire to develop a sympathy for the music. From that sympathy, the will to broaden musical horizons and listen to new music may arise.
Actually, musical preferences may established only by experiencing a lot of music and by giving to the music the permission to make an impact. Music listeners do not really need critics tell them in a dogmatic way what must touch their ears, their heart and their mind. What is necessary is to listen perceptively, focusing on sounds, melodies and rhythms. That attitude, composer Aaron Copland says, is the ‘sensuous plane’ of music listening: practicing that sensory experience of listening, listeners bask in the sheer pleasure of musical sounds. They do not search especially to attribute a meaning to music. Most listeners only focus on that type of music listening. Is it childish? Is it a lazy attitude to listen to sounds without trying to analyze them? No. It is just the beginning of any musical activity. Musical sounds have a potent and primitive strength. And listening to more and more sounds, listeners may become more sensitive to the different types of sounds used by individual music composers and performers.
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Why do sound and music produce such an effect on listeners?
The action of sound is direct, powerful, and sudden: it is surprising. That is why listeners may experience pleasure from a piece of music. More than any other artistic production, music directly meets the body through hearing and it may directly affect the nervous system: chords, melodies and timbres impress the whole human organism and nerves transmit the impulse produced in the ear to the entire organism. In fact, the auditory nerve is linked to other nerves.
That strong action of sound on the body explains why dance music produces a twitching of the whole body, especially the feet, in music listeners. That is why, by the way, it is called dance music, because it puts the feet in motion. It seems that each sound has the power to produce one specific sensation. Listeners perceive one sound as harsh, another one as clear, etc. Even if their impressions are partly subjective, they are partly objective too.
Sounds are linked to physical excitement. Does it mean that musical appreciation is governed by physiological laws? Partially, because of the physical properties of sound. In Ancient Greece, these properties were highly appreciated and the main function of music, which was rare, was to intensify the effects of poetry. Music was thus seen as a sensuous element and perhaps it may explain why music was only performed by slaves. Anyhow, sonorous pulses, because of their native simplicity, are highly qualified to induce sensation, and, when they are organized in a harmonious way, pleasure.
The sensuous nature of music and serendipity
Surprise, which is related to animation and movement, and may be defined as an unexpected event that happens suddenly, is neutral in itself: it may be positive or, on the contrary, negative. It is generally included in the repertoire of human emotions. When a sound is produced, it may be a surprise for the listener, who may be startled, astonished or dazzled. When is sound a pleasant or an unpleasant surprise? It depends on the moment and the listener. Yet there are general rules: apparently nobody likes to hear tires that make a noise or a jackhammer in motion. On the other hand, sounds produced by a music box, even if they are not the object of specific attention, are habitually seen as pleasant. It is, of course, the same for sounds that are included in sophisticated musical structures: these structures are considered pleasant or unpleasant.
The expression ‘it is music to my ears’ is generally used to mean to people that their comments are a pleasant surprise and that the situation may lead to serendipity. Serendipity is actually more than a pleasant surprise, as it obviously supposes the occurrence of an event by chance, but also its development in a beneficial and satisfactory way. When there is a surprise, it is because implicit and explicit expectations are fulfilled and even surpassed. The idea of randomness is present in serendipity, but so is the idea of arrangement. When something good that was not expected happens, it is better to go further. Considering that, it is evident that a lot of electronic music producers today may combine random elements in a very quick and very efficient way before using their musical knowledge to get the most of the most satisfying combination. The best of them master the natural power of the sound and the best musical techniques.
Musical sounds, sensibility and serendipity
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The musically beautiful
What are the elements that can influence musical perfection, when is music said to be pleasant? A pleasant piece of music is, at least, appealing. Now in which specific way does music affect our feelings? A lot of philosophers have tried to give an answer to that question, considering the musical object in itself and the emotions that music awakens. Listening to music, listeners may enjoy the music alone. Yet the emotions are only the aesthetic foundations of music and it is interesting to know more about the nature of the link between music and emotions. In fact, the musically beautiful affects the sense of hearing, however this is not particular to the beautiful alone.
Actually, the musically beautiful relies on forms. That is why, most of the time, pieces of music are judged against similar pieces belonging to the same musical genre: human imagination contemplates the beautiful with intelligence, inspecting the musical object. Now does it mean that the musically beautiful relies on the laws of aesthetics? It is a complex question, however, the fact is that, to say something is beautiful or not, there is a judgement which is rapid and is more an act of intuition than an analysis. Also, the act of mental hearing is an inspection of musical images. In consequence, artistic judgment does not only depend on feelings, it largely depends on imagination.
Can universal aesthetics laws define the musical taste?
Why do music listeners enjoy music in a specific form and in no other? Conversely, why do music listeners experience changes of taste? And at which level do these changes operate? In fact, when listeners find merit and beauty in a piece of music, even when that piece is no longer evoking feelings, they still consider the work as being beautiful. Why? Partly because music, in itself, never represents any definite emotion. It is the listener who puts emotion into music.
The vocabulary related to beauty may provide a first bit of help: terms such as ‘melodious’, ‘harmonious’ and ‘euphonic’ or more generally ‘elegant’ and ‘graceful’ seem to refer to intrinsic characteristics of the musical object itself. They do not bind the musical phenomenon to any sensation, they do not link it to psychological or ethical considerations. They help to represent the feelings that music induces in listeners in a structured way and thus to talk about the musical art.
Such terms evoke the transcendent and immanent nature of music. They are also useful to explain how music is trying to produce effects similar to those found in nature. For instance, when music wants to reproduce the fluttering of birds or the falling of snow, it uses specific processes that can be described with words. These words traduce musical events like rhythms, sounds, pitch or velocity and try to capture the aesthetical emotions that they generate amongst listeners.
Music, sensation and imagination
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Music and silence, the body as part of the sensitive musical experience
An intuitive perception of music
What is the difference between music as it is experienced by the listeners and the sheet music? First, simply, a piece of sheet music cannot be heard by a listener! A score is a two-dimensional object whose function is to transmit a specific piece of information, here musical information and that musical information is written for a human being, be it a conductor or performers. On the other hand, sounds may directly enter into contact with the ears of a listener.
Talking about music all the time, people have an intuitive idea of what music is. However the music phenomenon is not easy to define. Partly because there is a sort of a disconnect between the music most people hear and sheet music, which is associated with the intellectual aspects of music. Which elements do people experience when they hear music and what is the essence of music? Phenomenologist Thomas Clifton talks first about musical time, that he does not define as having an objective duration. Music is existing in a time and music has a tone time that is not a running time. It is a time that arises in the present, between a past and a future, between the music that is already heard and the music that has not happened yet.
As listeners are themselves in the present, music is the experience they make of it. It may be defined as an answer produced by the body perceiving sounds, the experience being full of nice feelings when the body is agreeing with what is perceived: the music is recognized as music, not as noise.
Musical experience and the silence
When listeners hear new sounds, what they precisely hear is the diffraction of sounds around their heads. These sounds may sometimes be described as silence. In fact, silence may be defined as an absence of sound, but also as low sound. A silent atmosphere may help the listener to listen carefully to the sounds that are given. Thomas Clifton tried to define the phenomenon of musical silence. Actually, silence is to music what the spaces between the trees are to a forest. As these spaces are constitutive of the forest in itself, silence is an essential part of music.
Silence is a constitutive element of the music in its dimensions of space, time and gesture. Let us notice that silence does not relate directly to nothingness, as it is not autonomous: it is part of a sounding environment. Of course, there is a sharp disparity between silence and sound. That is why silence is meaningful in musical experience: it creates places where listeners may co-create music, as much as when listening to sounds, for example by increasing expectation.
Music and silence, the body as part of the sensitive musical experience