Music in Trains

“Instead of mindlessly extracting—data points for statistical analysis, Clio intelligently adapts its attention to key aspects… —just like you and I do.”

If this is truly “just like you and I do,” then the study of music should at some level be a honing of “intelligently adapting [oneself] to focus on the aspects most critical to the mood.” Perhaps I could make this more explicit in my own teaching. (June 11, 2011)

These were my initial thoughts in response to first reading about Clio from a blog post about how a computer might model the way we listen to music. While I didn’t know it at the time, the link was shared by one of the members of the management team, Alison Conrad, who I met at a music conference in Canada about a little over a year ago. It’s worth reading about the incredible technology that the researchers have developed for the Clio platform: “Clio goes beyond the limitations of categories, cultural context, and keywords to provide comprehensive search results and personalized playlists based on the intrinsic qualities of music. Every song is treated equally regardless of popularity, style or genre, providing the highest quality music discovery experience available today.”

While the technology is fascinating, I was much more interested in the fact that the model of the way we listen to music is not always the foundation for the way that I–and, I would suggest, most others–teach music theory and listening skills. I would bet that most music students graduate without ever learning which aspects of the music are the most critical to the mood. They may know that Roman numeral analysis would likely be unhelpful on a piece by Webern or that specific terminology appropriate to fugal analysis will not be applicable to a typical minuet. Yet, how well could our students take a piece of music and know what the most salient features create the mood or impression, regardless of style? For that matter, how many well-trained musicians could articulate these thought patterns?

It occurred to me that this question had really sunk into my thinking when I started introducing our listening assignments for the my Counterpoint course this semester at Mississippi College: Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier. Without quite realizing the source of my lecture topic, I began speaking about how we listen to Bach’s preludes in a different way than his fugues. Generally speaking, we experience the preludes as an extended harmonic progression that fully establishes a particular key.* While we are interested in the harmonic design of the fugue, it is extremely important to focus on the melodic development and contrapuntal interaction. Conversely, the preludes are more likely to be experienced as figuration without melody. It might also be argued that this is the way Bach thought while composing given that we have sketches of some preludes as pure harmonic progressions.

If we listen to specific pieces by focusing on salient musical data points, it would seem that analysis would be most productive if it began by ascertaining what approach or technique would be best suited to the most important data points. My Counterpoint lecture was only the beginning of what I am sure will be a transformative process my teaching will undergo as I consider how our listening might be modeled in our analysis, just as it has been technologically modeled by the researchers at Clio. I’m excitedly looking forward to my next opportunity to teach Graduate Projects in Theory & Analysis as I anticipate structuring the course as a walk through various ways of extracting musical data points through listening and analysis in hopes that my students will “intelligently adapt… to focus on the aspects most critical to the mood.”

*As an aside, I introduced the idea of a musical prelude as “fixing to play in a key” as I considered one of the more intriguing expressions I have learned in Mississippi. I had my own theories about where the phrase “fixing to” came about, but I discovered that this saying has a rather reputable etymology. The word fix was introduced in the 14th century in the sense of “set one’s eyes on something,” from the Latin fixus that meant “immovable, settled or established.” During the next few centuries, this  sense of fixing something into place ahead of time took on the 18th-century meaning of  ”arrange or make preparations for something.” By the mid-19th century the word was used in the sense implied above as simply “about to do something.”

I just finished reading Matthew Brown’s Explaining Tonality: Schenkerian Theory and Beyond and wanted to take note of some observations.

“In Terms of the Inner Voices”

Some of the most important ideas I learned while studying with Gregory Proctor involved the power of voice leading. I also became intrigued with the careful explanation for every single pitch in a piece as graphically analyzed by my colleague David Tomasacci. These ideas have been a central pursuit in my own compositions over the past two or three years. One further impetus for a careful interest in voice leading was described by Brown:

… [A]lthough certain aspects of tonal motion are controlled by the outer voice counterpoint, others can be understood only in terms of the inner voices. When graphing a particular piece, the analyst should not simply trace the motion of the soprano and bass voices; he or she should also monitor the behavior of the tenor and alto voices. … In parcitular, we found that bass motion by fifth inevitably arises when the upper voices move by step in a single direction by parallel thirds or sixths. (136)

I was somewhat surprised to realize that if you take “voices mov[ing] by step in a single direction by parallel thirds or sixths” you must generate a sequence in order to maintain good counterpoint with a third voice and that all of the typical tonal sequences can come about as such.

Furthermore, given that “voices mov[ing] by step in a single direction by parallel thirds or sixths” can simply be understood as a harmonized Zug (“a direct, unimpeded motion from one place to another,” Snarrenberg), they can be readily related to activity over a pedal tone—a relationship that Brown makes quite obvious. I find this interesting given that I tend to find sequences as the most direct way of experiencing prolongation despite the constant activity. While I could explain that sensation through the incessant repetition and the lessened impact of a clear end-goal through endless cycling, I find this tonal explanation much more salient.

I recently found myself encouraging a composition student to generate this sensation of what I described at the time as “floating.” I felt that the piece could use some breathing space from its harmonic motion. The solution was to lift the bass voice up into a more tenor-like range. I can’t help but wonder now if the result (which worked well) could have been playing off of inner-voice motions with an implied pedal. I find this idea of the bass part leaving the bass voice to join with inner-voice motions as a means of suspending harmonic motion in time worth further consideration.

“The Myth of Scales”

Also in part due to Tomasacci and Proctor, I have remained interested in the viability of scale-like pitch collections that can be used in a prolongational manner. Tomasacci has uncovered an interesting phenomenon in the harmonic bass motion of Skryabin’s music that works rather well. However, the upper voice is consistently best explained in terms of an octatonic scale that lacks the specificity of a asymmetric scale. Proctor dealt with this scale in terms of a ‘transposition operation’ rather than a harmonic-contrapuntal process.

Brown notes that in general, “scales have only limited explanatory power.” (169) He quotes Mary Louise Serafine as saying that:

[S]cales… have figured disproportionately in music research, chiefly through their influence on the design and conception of studies.

and David Huron as noting that:

In comparison to most of the world’s music, Western music tends to be highly harmonically oriented. Where scales provide the basis for predominantly melodic music, explaining the harmonic properties of these scales may be inappropriate.

But he begins his demonstration of the limited explanatory power of scales with a quote by Taruskin:

Just as we get our sense of Mozart’s C major not only from his use of the “C scale on C” but also from the way the “black keys” are related hierarchically to the tones of the scale, so, if we are able to conceive of the octatonic collection as a tonality, we must be able to account for the use of the “other” four tones in relation to it.

This quote captures two important concepts on opposite ends of musical complexity. On the basic level, it is simply unhelpful to use scale-membership as a means to determine key. Brown explains further:

Even on an intuitive level, we know that scale membership is neither necessary nor sufficient for determining the tonality of a passage or piece. … It is easy, for example, to imagine how a key might be defined by progressions that do not contain every note of the relevant scale. … Similarly, the mere presence of a given scale need not guarantee that a passage is “in” the corresponding key. … To complicate matters further, we can also establish a tonality using progressions built from pitches outside the diatonic collection. … [T]onality does not simply depend on the presence of the “right” notes, but rather on the fact that particular notes appear in the “right” order according to some general laws of tonal voice leading and harmony. (144)

And yet, basic theory courses most often associate scale and key as interrelated concepts. It’s no wonder why students can sometimes get so confused when they are first asked to determine the key of a passage that does not reflect the key signature. For that matter, I suppose it should not be a surprise that students often forget to raise leading tones as those notes are not in the key signature. It might be worth discussing keys divorced from key signatures just to keep separate the idea of scale or mode and key.

On the more complex level, I find the Taruskin quote interesting due to what it says about the “other” four pitches not in the octatonic scale. It brought to my attention the fact that when I come across a passage that can be described as octatonic (or possibley whole-tone or pentatonic and the like) it is almost inevitably limited to the pitches of that particular scale. That is very different from what we experience in tonal idioms. As Brown put it:

The beauty of Schenkerian theory is that it is powerful enough to explain surfaces that are almost continuously dissonant and chromatic. (186)

I find the lack of some way of interpreting those “other” four tones outside of an octatonic scale—or some other complementary set to another scale form—an intriguing difference from tonality. This is also not merely a result of modern constructs given that modal music likewise used a limited set. Rather, it would appear that tonality is rather unique in having a set of behavioral expectations (depending on context) for each pitch of the 12-tone aggregate.

This last point may be one of the more interesting facets of tonality that permeated Brown’s book: the uniqueness of tonality may be more a result of particular behavioral expectations than anything related to pitch content. Not only does each pitch have particular behavioral expectations, but also, tonal music exhibits recursive applications of such behaviors. This is not inherently necessary, nor is it necessarily impossible with other pitch collections. Rather, these recursive strings of simple relationships simply make for a unique idiom that allow for some fascinatingly organic constructions.

Proctor and Huron

Finally, I just want to note how incredible it is to have studied/worked with two musicians who would show up in important ways throughout a book that is trying to “explain tonality.” I have truly been blessed!

While I usually prefer to not dwell on the profitability of artistic production, I also find its economic peculiarities fascinating.

Google “Disgusted” With Record Labels

I was surprised to learn this tidbit about the scope of the market from a story about Google’s imminent venture into the music industry:

The latest rumor to emerge from the Google campus is that the company’s much anticipated music service is just about at the end of their rope with the major label licensing process. A source close to the negotiations characterizes the search giant as “disgusted” with the labels, so much so that they are seriously considering following Amazon’s lead and launching their music could service without label licenses.…

Google may be starting to think that if the industry weren’t going to sue Amazon, then why would they take on Google? After all, who needs whom the most in this scenario? Could you even wrap your brain around the legal costs? As a source pointed out to me, “Larry, Serge and Eric could buy the entire music industry with their personal money.”

An analysis of Google’s position points to the following:

The fact that this is literally true tells us something that is often overlooked: the music industry is economically quite small and unimportant compared to the computer industry. And yet somehow—through honed lobbying and old boy networks—it wields a disproportionate power that enables it to block innovative ideas that the online world wants to try.

On a rational basis, the music industry’s concerns would be dwarfed by those of the computer world, which is not just far larger, but vastly more important in strategic terms. But instead, the former gets to make all kinds of hyperbolic claims about the alleged “damage” inflicted by piracy on its income, even though these simply don’t stand up to analysis.

IMSLP & the Music Publishers Association

Meanwhile, I was even more shocked by the sudden takedown of the website for the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP). IMSLP came under attack by the Music Publisher’s Association of the UK (MPA):

Today, the registrar of our domain, a division of Go-Daddy, froze our domain name (imslp.org) due to a complaint issued by the Music Publisher’s Association of the UK, who made two assertions in their complaint:

1. Rachmaninoff’s work The Bells, Op.35 is under copyright in both the United States and the EU.
2. IMSLP is somehow responsible for enforcing EU copyright terms upon the entire world (the same claim UE attempted back in October 2007).

Go-Daddy (a registrar based in Scottsdale, Arizona), apparently reacting to the DMCA complaint due to its assertion of US copyright violation, took the drastic and harmful step of freezing our domain name without first notifying us of the British MPA’s nonsensical assertions.

IMSLPs position on the takedown can perhaps be best described in these creative terms:

Too bad that a gang of dying companies running on a failed business model can’t find anything more productive to do with their time (like maybe promoting the works of living composers, instead of playing lawyer over ones dead since 1943).

[Fortunately, the site seems to be back up and running again.]

The Music-Industry Delusion

On the one hand, there is MPA fighting hard against IMSLP to protect the ideals of copyright protection; on the other, the realization that the entire music industry is hardly worth Google’s effort to even put up a fight.

I find myself getting caught up in the survivalist thinking of earnings and artistic protection from time to time. While some contemporary composers have made all of their scores available for free online, I—like many others—still provide only excerpts or partial scores to peruse before purchase. And yet, I—again, like many others—am hardly making anything directly from my compositions or performances. Still, I have yet to meet the composer who would give up composing if they could not make money at it.

The World Intellectual Property Organization makes it clear that the purpose of copyright is “to encourage a dynamic creative culture, while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence, and to provide widespread, affordable access to content for the public.” We must not lose sight of the delicate nature of a dynamic creative culture in our eagerness to return value, especially when the value does not or can not return to the creators.

Can you imagine if IMSLP’s hypothetical was reality? Instead of an industry that puts all of its energy into limiting access to music and art, could we have one that put all of its energy into promoting the works of living artists? An awful lot of work is put into the current model without much return; it couldn’t hurt to try a new paradigm. It will always be difficult to find the perfect balance, but I would think that the stories above clearly suggest that the current imbalance is unsustainable.

Every once in a while a topic will come up in two or more contexts of my awareness that I would probably not notice without the reinforcement. Two articles addressing issues of copyright law recently appeared in the New York Times in as many weeks:

1. Would the Bard Have Survived the Web? (14 February 2011)
2. Free Trove of Music Scores on Web Hits Sensitive Copyright Note (22 February 2011)

The first might be considered more of a philosophy of copyright law, whereas the second deals with practical issues. If not for both sides of this same coin, this might be a much easier issue to ignore.

Copyright: Then & Now

Shakespeare is cited in the first article as a benefactor of an incipient profit-protection plan for artists:

When William Shakespeare was growing up in rural Stratford-upon-Avon, carpenters at that East London site were erecting the walls of what some consider the first theater built in Europe since antiquity. Other playhouses soon rose around the city. Those who paid could enter and see the play; those who didn’t, couldn’t.

By the time Shakespeare turned to writing, these “cultural paywalls” were abundant in London: workers holding moneyboxes (bearing the distinctive knobs found by the archaeologists) stood at the entrances of a growing number of outdoor playhouses, collecting a penny for admission.

Further along, the author draws the conclusion that “money changed everything…. As with much else, literary talent often remains undeveloped unless markets reward it.” The argument here is that if artists are not paid for their work, they will simply stop producing. If we want and value art, we need to protect the income of artists.

While being a good start for a philosophy of copyright, the unfortunate end result of copyright thinking results in the situation described by the second article:

“In many cases these publishers are basically getting the revenue off of composers who are dead for a very long time,” Mr. Guo said. “The Internet has become the dominant form of communication. Copyright law needs to change with it. We want people to have access to this material to foster creativity. Personally I don’t feel pity for these publishers.”

Economics of Art (Some Initial Thoughts)

A simple argument could be put forward: Everyone needs the means to obtain life-sustaining goods. An individual’s productive energy and time can be spent 1) cultivating life-sustaining goods; or 2) performing an activity in exchange for the means to obtain life-sustaining goods. If we (society) wish to have artists spend all of their productive energy and time producing art, they must be able to obtain life-sustaining goods in exchange for their time and effort producing art.

In contrast, it has been a formidable challenge to determine how best to coordinate an economy of artistic production:

• Artists can earn some income for direct exchange of an original product of art, e.g., a commission. The problem is that it would be difficult to piece together a living off of commissions alone.
• Artists can earn income from related activities—such as teaching—one of the most likely scenarios. And yet, if the goal is to provide the artist with maximum time to produce, how does this help?
• Artists can be supported by a regular salary from an institution—such as a government or church—to produce art on an ongoing basis, which gets more complicated when it takes larger organizations to be able to afford such an endeavor that would likely be unable to agree on aesthetics or goals.
• Artists can earn derivatives from prior work via copyright laws.

And none of these take into consideration the great likelihood that many artists make most or all of their income from some completely unrelated employment.

A World without Copyright…

The heart of the argument for copyright law in the first article is “centuries of scientific and technological progress based on the principle that a creative person should have some assurance of being rewarded for his innovative work.” We are to believe that if there was no copyright protection, artists would simply stop producing art.

I somehow doubt the story would end there. If that were entirely true, we would never have had artists before copyright law. For that matter, the practice of Shakespeare’s day was not copyright, but rather something a little closer to earning income for direct exchange of an original product of art, a performance. If a derivative production of a Shakespeare play were to come about that was equally good and yet charged less, the Bard would have to simply write something new and try again.

What would happen if copyright law were suddenly nullified? The first likely thing to happen would be a continuation of the present: consumers would download all sorts of music and books for free via the internet. Then, artists would likely find it unsustainable to continue spending their time producing art. But, it wouldn’t stop with this defeating blow to the arts. At some point, someone would want to support an artist again. According to Google’s autocomplete function, “without art life is” … “stupid.” [I'm sure there is a more eloquent way of putting this, but the irony of this made me smile ;)]

Respecting the Arts

Why do so many consumers—as the first article puts it—”transmit and receive copyrighted material without the slightest guilt”? I believe it may come from a sort of extended adolescence that is pervasive in many arenas of life. One historian [with whom you do not necessarily have to agree politically to get the point of the description] describes The Rise of the Adolescent Mind:

We live in a therapeutic age, one in which the old tragic view of our ancestors has been replaced by prolonged adolescence. Adolescents hold adult notions of consumption: they understand the comfort of a pricey car; they appreciate the status conveyed by a particular sort of handbag or sunglasses; they sense how outward consumption and refined tastes can translate into popularity and envy; and they appreciate how a slogan or world view can win acceptance among peers without worry over its validity. But they have no adult sense of acquisition, themselves not paying taxes, balancing the family budget, or worrying about household insurance, maintenance, or debt. Theirs is a world view of today or tomorrow, not of next year—or even of next week.

Because copyright law ensures sufficient “assurance of being rewarded for [an artist's] innovative work,” it hardly matters if individual consumers actually support artists. “Someone will pay for it,” they argue. And they are right. Copyright law catches enough dissidence to scare most people into respect of the law. The question is, do consumers respect the artist? I would venture to say that the ubiquitous search for free downloads would suggest otherwise.

Concluding Thoughts

I’ll reiterate what I noted above: If not for the philosophical and practical sides of this same coin, this might be a much easier issue to ignore. Surely, IMSLP’s free hosting of public domain music does not deprive any artists from their due. Even the publisher’s admit that “there’s room for both of us.” The problem comes with the practicality of living artists earning their due. Even completely eliminating copyright law would likely make things worse before there was any chance of getting better (as I predicted above). And yet, I can’t help but see a lack of respect for art that I believe would be alleviated if consumers recognized that not paying for the art reduces the likelihood of future availability.