Music and Meaning

Opening Minds in the Caring and Healing Professions

Mary Butterton

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781315344850
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Public Health, Administration & Care

This fascinating and illuminating study brings together a wealth of information gained from individuals who reveal how music has had an effect on their lives. It unveils how music plays an important part in counselling and therapy and links the disciplines of the philosophy of music to neuroscience, developmental psychology and psychoanalysis. Psychotherapists, counsellors and therapists will find this book thought-provoking and invaluable reading; as well as doctors, nurses and those working with the elderly and people with developmental difficulties. All those with an interest in music and how it can affect their lives will also find this book interesting reading.

PART 1

Music and meaning

CHAPTER 1

What is music?

‘A rose is a rose is a rose’ or as might be said here, music is music is music.

In Gertrude Stein’s famous poetic phrase, the word music could be substituted for rose. This suggests that if you have to ask the question ‘What is a rose?’, there is a simple answer - the repetition of the word rose - and so it is with music. But there may also be a more complex answer.

EM Foster approaches this complexity in his book Howards End. He writes here of Helen’s thoughts on leaving a concert she has attended with a group of friends and relations:

Helen pushed her way out during the applause, she desired to be alone. The music had summed up to her all that had happened or could happen in her career. She read it as a tangible statement, which could never be superseded. The notes meant this and that to her, and they could have no other meaning. She pushed right out of the building, and walked slowly down the outside staircase, breathing the autumnal air, and then she strolled home.¹

In this passage, Helen is portrayed as attributing meaning to music. For her it is more than a pleasurable experience of sounding patterns of tones and rhythms, it has powerful meanings for her about her very existence. Here we meet an awareness of the complexity of music. We can begin to look at this complexity further by considering some relevant writings on the philosophy of music, from two distinct groups, the realists and the personalists.

The realists

The realist group of thinkers consider that the relationships between the tones which make up the melodies in music already exist in the world, as does the ebb and flow of rhythm. These thinkers maintain that there is ‘to and fro’ motion in the universe present in different phenomena, for example the sea, or the planets. The collective term for these phenomena is fields. These phenomena are called fields of motion, and the motion of and within the phenomena can be felt, heard and/or seen. For example, the lapping of the waves on the seashore describes the motion in the dynamic field of gravity; this motion may be felt, seen and heard. The sound of wind in the trees describes dynamic motion in the air around us. In Purcell’s Ode on St Cecilias’ Day 1692, the poet Nicholas Brady writes:

‘Hark, Hark each tree its silence breaks
The Box and Fir to talk begin.’

However, this is a poetic idea of conversation between trees through the sounding tones made by the wind in the branches. In other words Nicholas Brady is describing dynamic motion in the ‘to and fro’ movement of the sounds heard in the wind. Important also in this passage is that these sounds are said to relate to each other here; there is, as it were a conversation.

A more modern philosophical view from a realist perspective is that of Victor Zuckerkandl. Writing in 1956, he describes music as ‘motion in the dynamic field of tones’.² Here we are introduced to another dynamic field, that of the sounding tones themselves.

To put this more simply he holds the view that there is ‘to and fro’ dynamic motion in the sonic field of tones, that is, there is motion between the tones themselves. However, Zuckerkandl in another book, Man the Musician, writes that these musical tones are made by humankind; they do not exist of themselves.³ How these tones relate dynamically to each other will be considered later in this chapter.

Another group of thinkers, the personalists, hold the view that not only are human beings essential to the making of music, as we generally understand it, but also that the shaping of our emotional lives can be heard in the patterns of flowing tonal relationships. Their thinking will now be briefly considered.

The personalists

These thinkers take the view that for music to be music, human beings must shape the sounding tones to make music. This much Zuckerkandl agrees with. Susanne Langer belongs to this group of personalists and she writes in Feeling and Form⁴ that in this process of experiencing music we hear sounding symbols of the structures of our emotional lives. Put more simply, her notion of structures in music incorporates shapes and textures of sound which resonate with the structures, the shapes and textures, of our emotional lives. These are heard by us in passages of music through a length of time.

For example a passage of music, such as the opening of Brahms’ First Symphony, could be thought of as ascending shapings in sound which form a presenting structure. There is increased tension in the texture of this strong sinewy, striving shape. It reaches towards a powerful climax before fragmenting into hesitant, plaintive conversational woodwind writing. According to Langer, such a shaping in music, the rising muscular tension of the texture, could be said to be symbolic of the shapes of rising tension within our inner world of thoughts, feeling and sensations - our inner experiences, from the past and in the present.

To explain more clearly, the shapings and textures in the field of our inner world of feelings, thoughts and sensations are said to be reflected in the shapings and textures in the field of music. This will be explored later in more detail. However, having introduced humankind into this discussion brings us nearer to the experience of music and what this might mean. To open up this topic we will look briefly at how we as human beings might perceive music.

What of meaning in music?

When we play or listen to music we experience a very rich personal sensory, emotional and intellectual phenomenon, each in our unique way. We experience music, as it were, through layers of perception within ourselves. One layer could be concerned with the shape and felt sensation of the flowing sounds heard. Another layer could describe experiencing the dynamic tensions in the tones and rhythms of music, as well as an appreciation of the flow and dramatic narrative. A further layer, and the one most particular to this book, is what music means for any individual.

In Howards End, EM Foster understood these levels of human perception. He writes of the members of the party attending the concert referred to above as follows:

It will generally be admitted that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come - of course, not so as to disturb the others; or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music’s flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee.⁵

Each layer of perception described here is to do with the listener’s experience of dynamic shapings in tone and rhythm, which reach her from outside her body. In receiving these dynamic shapings, she resonates with them. This would be like Mrs Munt tapping in response to Beethoven’s rhythms; or Helen, who projects imaginatively into the presenting shapes and textures. We already know, however, that Helen goes further than these projections to reach the layer of meaning in her life. From the passage quoted earlier, she is said to have these deeper thoughts as she leaves the concert hall by herself. Tibby is intrigued intellectually by the music and studies objectively the shapings and textures in the counterpoint. Margaret is said to ‘see only the music’. This is an enigmatic statement. One wonders if Margaret, through this musical experience, is in touch with depths of her inner world which reach beyond words, beyond projective images.

These perceptions can be about everyday life experiences, or they can engage with memories, that is, contexts and structures of past experiences, or all of these phenomena together. In hearing and receiving these dynamic shapings the listener experiences music.

It must be added that not only might these complex layers of music be experienced in any combination or singly, they may also be encountered all together in a rich interwoven aural experience.

Having suggested that there may be more to the experience of music than initially meets the ear, other aspects of how music is experienced will now be looked at.

Music to my ears!

What sounds as music to one person is experienced as noise by another. Personal preference could be put forward as the reason for this state of affairs, but this sidesteps the problem rather than engaging with it.

Personal preferences in music rest on how we experience it. From simple observation, the rock concert listener is obviously caught up in the excitement of sound. He or she is responding to a particular sounding phenomenon, the dynamic shapings of sound which is rock music. Likewise the chamber music listener or the audience member at the ‘proms’ is personally engaged in different dynamic shapings of sound. These shapings, however, are said to ebb and flow in this dynamic field of tones, and more needs to be said about this field and what it is.

The dynamic field of tones

Zuckerkandl has described music as ‘motion in the dynamic field of tones’. This field of motion he names as the ‘Third Stage’,⁶ an area not identical with the human psyche nor identical with the physical world. This ‘Third Stage’ is said to stand in the relationship of the primary to the derivative like a central flowing core encountered through the physical world and the world of persons.

But we as persons encounter this field of tones through listening to music and the tones come to us from without. These tones are shaped into what we know as music by persons. The music is of these persons, composers. This ‘Third Stage’ then is the domain of tones and is also the personal. Music therefore has that about it of human interpersonal motion and communion.

According to Langer, this musical communication or dynamic motion in and through music between persons describes intensities, shapes, textures and patterns in the tones and rhythms in music, which have been arranged in a relational context. When we listen to a passage of music we are said to experience a relational context.

To explain these terms further, intensities refers to degrees of striving from one tone to another. In the fourth movement of Sibelius’ Second Symphony, there is a slow build up of great intensity before the statement of the broad, majestic first subject or theme. It is suggested here that the magnificence of this theme is in part due to the deliberate build up in degrees of intensity of the climbing phrases immediately before. The shaping of the repetitive rising scale-like writing, and the increasing thickening of the instrumental texture along with the unsettling punctuated rhythms, form a powerful intense shaping. This powerful architectural build up reaches its climax in a freely flowing powerful melody. There has been a sense of striving and completion or resolution which makes emotional sense. Langer writes that, ‘The symbolic power of music lies in the fact that it creates a pattern of tensions and resolutions’.⁷

It may be noted here that there is no description of what the composer himself might feel. It is a view held by the author that such a description of Sibelius’ own particular feelings would be mere speculation; unless, of course, he had let these feelings be known verbally. What we do know and hear are the shapings of feeling of Sibelius which he has framed through tonal relations and communicated to us.

Returning to the reader’s understanding of the relational context which frames the tensions and resolutions in music, this phrase, the relational context, needs more explanation. However, without going further at this point into the technical musical detail of this important phrase, a brief explanation may bring some clarity as to its particular meaning.

A relational context here means that the tones and rhythmic pulses are drawn towards each other in a musical framing which, through its rhythmic and tonal tensions, seeks a resolution, a sense of completion. One overarching way of describing it, is to say that the relational context has a beginning, a middle and an end. In the Sibelius example above, the beginning of this particular relational context is quiet. This is followed by a tremulous, slowly building tension through the middle section reaching towards an ending or resolution in the broad majestic theme.

However, not only do different types of music, such as rock music or chamber music, occupy similar but different shapings in this dynamic field of music but the listener or performer of rock music or chamber music each occupies an inner world of similar but different shapes of mental personal dynamics. We will now consider further this inner world of persons-in-relationship.

The dyamic field of persons

We have discussed shape and texture in the opening of Brahms’ First Symphony. According to Langer’s thinking each listener might agree on the striving shape and sinewy texture of this passage of music, but what these shapes and textures mean in the world of inner feelings will be different and particular to each listener. Further to this, a musical passage or temporal sounding of tones may be thought of as a condensed symbol of many experiences for the one listener.⁸ This means that more than one feeling or sensation may be heard simultaneously. The music may be heard as sweet, beautiful and also deeply tragic and painful at the same time.

These individual experiences or personal dynamic feelings or sensations within each of us are different in nature and unique to each person. Each one of us may project her unique feelings, thoughts and sensations into the same piece of music and have quite different internal mental experiences even though we do have the same basic brain structure. What is different in the brain structure for each person is the wiring of the neural pathways.⁹ When we encounter music these different inner mental pathways and connections are to do with who we are as persons, as experiencing listeners or performers, at the time of listening to or performing the music.

We are now moving towards talk...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication Page
• Introduction
• Part 1 Music and Meaning
• Part 2 The project
• Part 3 Time for Reflection
• Glossary
• Index