Music, Narrative and Metaphor

Now there's another dissertation-sized topic! But I say, why should grad students have all the fun? We ordinary folk can also mess around with fancy concepts.

I was just reading a great book on Western culture by Jacques Barzun, one of the most learned people alive. This book, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present is an amazingly wise and well-organized history. His thoughts on music are so sound that you would think him to be a musician. On pages 494 to 497 he gives an excellent and concise account of the genesis of program music:

The symphonies of Beethoven, beginning with the Eroica, were found hard to follow by their first listeners. To assist understanding, musical minds that did grasp the form wrote comments for the bewildered, and since the music was dramatic in purpose and effect, the obvious way to help was to suggest a story, with persons and events--as in opera, with which people were familiar. The "plot" suggested for a symphony need not fit closely--a hint about certain passages would prime the imagination. [E.T.A. Hoffman] ... led the way in programmatizing the Beethoven symphonies. Then Schumann, Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner and a host of others filled their writings on music with these supposititious dramas... [Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, p 495]

 What's wrong with that? Well, nothing really except that, as Barzun says earlier on the same page, "music cannot tell a story." No, it really can't. Music is not a 'language' and narrative is not possible. What music can do is express moods and sensations and how it does that is still rather magical, though there is a neurological lab at McGill University that is hard at work gathering evidence.

Let's talk about origins for a bit. One of the foundational stories in Western culture is the Iliad. Originally it was probably sung to the accompaniment of the four-string phorminx. Of course we don't have any of this music because it was improvised and not written down. A bit later there are some very ambiguous melodies such as this one:

He should have been singing that, and accompanying himself with the lyre. We pretty much have to imagine what a performance of Homer might have been like. But a modern equivalent might be something like this:

Only words can tell a story. But as in the song by that modern bard, Bob Dylan, music can heighten the effect. And the explanation of 'program' music, as Bazun points out, is the reverse of this. A few descriptive words can aid the listener's involvement with the score. Take this piece, for example:

Now, of course, La Mer has nothing really to do with the sea, any more than a painting of a roast beef sandwich has to do with lunch. Both are artistic representations. But the musical one is inherently abstract. Suppose that you didn't know the piece and had no knowledge of the title and description. Could you guess it was about the sea? Doubtful. In fact, different metaphors could be chosen that might be equally inspiring. But as Debussy chose the one of the sea, we have to privilege that one. Another example: many years ago I spent two summers in Banff, Alberta, Canada, studying guitar in the master-class of Oscar Ghiglia. He is an outstanding teacher and one reason is that he inspires musicality through metaphor. In both years the prelude to the first lute suite of J. S. Bach was played. In the first year, Oscar developed a wonderful metaphor for the student. It was like the plot to an Italian opera and when this dramatic dominant 7th in last inversion--a 4/2 chord--was arrived at he scowled ominously and declaimed "revenge!" It was absolutely perfect! The student will always feel the immense drama of that moment! But, of course, the Bach prelude has nothing inherently to do with revenge. The next year, teaching the very same piece, Oscar chose a completely different metaphor.

Descriptions in words of musical compositions, whether of landscapes, natural phenomena or a narrative, are merely metaphors and have no inherent connection with the piece. Their purpose, and it is a real one, is to inspire the listener or performer to awaken the real excitement of the piece, which is entirely musical: melodies, harmonies and rhythms.

Ok, quick, for those of you who don't know this piece, what piece of geography is it associated with?

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Music and Narrative

Cinema and television offer some fascinating possibilities for the use of music to enhance narrative. There are two basic modes. The fancy terms for these are diegetic and non-diegetic which come from the Greek word for narrative: διήγησις (diegesis). If the music is seen to be coming from a radio or sound system within the scene or performed by a musician who is part of the story, this is called a ‘diegetic’ presentation. If the music is not part of the narrative setting but in the musical score or soundtrack, then we call this a ‘non-diegetic’ presentation. Here is the Wikipedia article on diegesis. Taking some examples from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Willow plays a Barry White record when Oz comes to visit, that is diegetic. Don't have the clip from the episode, but here is the song:

 But if we mysteriously hear Barry White when our characters are walking down the street, that is non-diegetic. In “Conversations with Dead People” the episode starts with scenes of a band setting up and beginning a tune. This is apparently diegetic, but the tune continues when the scene shifts to Buffy walking through a graveyard, so the same music becomes non-diegetic (and the band turns out not to be part of the story). On the other hand, the lyrics to the song, written, along with the music, by Angie Hart and Joss Whedon, are a kind of voice-over narration of the theme of the episode. Unfortunately, a clip from the episode doesn't seem to be available, but here is the song:

 Ingmar Bergman’s 1982 film Fanny and Alexander has a scene where a few notes on piano are heard and we assume they are non-diegetic, that is, in the soundtrack. But then Fanny and Alexander look into another room and see the ghost of their dead father playing those notes on a piano. Deceiving the viewer about the origin of the music can be eerily effective.

In musicals the songs have a kind of double status as the singers are in the narrative, but the orchestral accompaniment is soundtrack. By the conventions of musicals and opera the singers are supposed to be unaware that they are singing--a non-diegetic use of song. But if the the singing is part of the story, as in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Richard Wagner, then the song and therefore the singing is diegetic. In the musical episode of Buffy, "Once More With Feeling", the characters are compelled by a demon to break into song and reveal hidden truths. A recurring theme in Joss Whedon's work is the truth of music. In Angel a demon opens a karaoke bar where people and demons sing and as they do so he can read their fates. In "Once More With Feeling" the characters comment on being compelled to sing and a great deal of humor comes from ordinary incidents in life, such as protesting a parking ticket, being made into song. Here is the first song, after the overture:

This seems to be a typical musical format with the singers unaware that they are singing instead of talking. But in the next scene, which is not sung, all the characters are talking about how weird it was that they suddenly burst into song the night before. In any case, the strange ways in which music and narration can interact offer a lot of room for both the uncanny and humor.

So what is so odd about singing? It is nothing but heightened speech, after all. In some languages, pitch is even part of speech. I think this just gets us up against the fundamental mystery of music: how the organization of pitch--frequency--and the organization of time--rhythm--is capable of the most remarkable expressive effect. I think the magic of this, or at least our sensitivity to it, is greatly degraded by the constant wash of very low quality recorded music that is constantly beating at us from sound systems everywhere we go. It becomes like a dingy carpet and we forget how truly uncanny music can be. But if you hear a very good piece of music, one honed down to the utmost simplicity, and if you really focus on it, then all the mystery and magic of music returns:

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