The other Benjamin... (no, NOT Floella!)

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't think "tunes" in the modern Western sense have been a particularly important feature of most musics, or of Western music before a certain point in history. Surely rare exceptions like "Greensleeves" (and "Sakura" which actually isn't so ancient) just serve to underline this.

I really wouldn't say there's anything crassly individualistic, about the idea of fostering innate creativity. I would always put the emphasis, as indeed I did in a previous post, on collaboration and cooperation being central to people's creative potential. On the one hand there is the idea of being part of something larger than the individual, as you say, but this isn't the whole story. For example, the composer/performer/scholar George Lewis has this to say: "the pursuit of individualism within an egalitarian frame has been central not only to the jazz moment, but also to African American music before and since that moment. … Indeed, it seems fitting that in the wake of the radical physical and even mental silencing of slavery ... African Americans developed an array of musical practices that encouraged all to speak." Anyway, I know it's possible to talk about developing people's creativity without couching it in terms of "self-expression" and all the baggage that comes with that, and this is one reason why I wouldn't use a very traditionally self-expressive composer like Lutoslawski as a model!

Thanks Richard for reproducing George Lewis's comment on what could be a vexed question, namely the extent to which disciplines imposed in the supposed name of bringing out the innate creativity of the individual may be deceptive and over-simplified: mystification can be implicated, and values implicit in materials, methodologies and inculcated practices passed off which go under the radar of critical evaluation in the name of compliance, and passed off as "authentic". I'm trying to remember, but I think this was (at least in part) what Eddie Prévost was getting at in his article "No Sound is Innocent", with its very apposite title.

[RichardB]

the extent to which disciplines imposed in the supposed name of bringing out the innate creativity of the individual may be deceptive and over-simplified: mystification can be implicated, and values implicit in materials, methodologies and inculcated practices passed off which go under the radar of critical evaluation in the name of compliance, and passed off as "authentic".

I'm not sure what all that means! but indeed I was also thinking of Eddie's "No Sound is Innocent" in connection with what I was trying to say.

[Master Jacques]

I'm not sure what all that means! but indeed I was also thinking of Eddie's "No Sound is Innocent" in connection with what I was trying to say.

Interesting. I found Serial Apologist's meaning pretty clear, and 'No Sound is Innocent' indeed gets to the heart of the matter. There is inescapable political and social -as well as musico-philosophical - content in educational disciplines around sound structures (or the lack of them). Thus "innate creativity", "authentic voice" and "self-expression" are terms loaded with implications which need to be treated with great caution. They are, in a word, metaphors not reality.

Focusing this on those popular "tunes", folk-melody in particular has often historically - at least back to medieval times - been associated with political protest and covert messaging: the 13th c. lay of Blondel, King Richard's minstrel who identified and communicated with his master in prison through the use of loaded tunes (a legend which forms the basis of Grétry's superb opera on the subject) is a good case in point. Political regimes have often been keen to harness this power, by yoking folk song and dance to the state wagon.

Connected with this, is the question of the age of such folk materials. Although we can point to (say) the moment of composition of 'Sumer is icumen in' as mid-13th century, the original of many tunes is shrouded in mystery. Although 'Sakura' was indeed not collected and formalised until (possibly as late as) the Meiji period, doesn't mean that it wasn't around for a long time before that in variant forms. Just as 'Dives and Lazarus' didn't suddenly spring into being at the point RVW collected its variants in the early 20th century. "Tunes" have been seen throughout Western history as dangerous weapons, by authorities keen to keep popular feeling under wraps - there's an interesting study showing how both sides in the Spanish Civil War used the same zarzuela tunes as marching songs, to focus popular feeling on their side.

Last, I take RichardB's point, that theoretically Lutoslaski may indeed be a "very traditionally self-expressive composer", whose aesthetics have a root in Lisztian-Wagnerian egotism; but I think we'd agree that if that notion had been put to the Polish authorities (who considered his music to be anarchistic and politically dangerous) or to the great body of the Polish people (who considered it rubbish, when they heard it) they'd have been united in laughter at the idea that the refined and exquisite world of Witold L. had any reference to "tradition". For them, he was just a mad radical.

The marvel of the Western musical tradition is that we can't pin it down to collaborative (the 'symphonic') or individualistic (the 'concerto' or 'aria') urges. Ambiguity is all. Another reason, I think, for caution in deploying the notion of "self-expression" as somehow the end point - or justification - for any particular mediated sound process. That is what Stravinsky, for one, was warning against.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks Master Jacques for articulating so much better what I was trying to put across!

[RichardB]

Another reason, I think, for caution in deploying the notion of "self-expression" as somehow the end point - or justification - for any particular mediated sound process.

Note that at no point have I couched the ideas I'm trying to put forward in terms of "self-expression", still less "authentic voice" which is a formulation I'm particulay allergic to, particularly in the context of composition teaching. But what is endlessly fascinating about musical thought is that Stravinsky's and say John Coltrane's convictions about music and expression, to name only these, can both be true - what's important then is to explore what that might mean.

When it comes to "tunes" as political instruments, it's actually the lyrics that carry most of that weight, as we see in the way that any kind of cultural phenomenon that can be used subversively in the way you describe can also be used as a support for official ideologies - "God Save the King", "Deutschland über alles", "Allons enfants de la Patrie" and so on. But my point about tunes wasn't that they're insignificant but that they are a historically and geographically limited phenomenon, in answer to your claim that "everyone loves a good tune".

[Master Jacques]

Note that at no point have I couched the ideas I'm trying to put forward in terms of "self-expression", still less "authentic voice" which is a formulation I'm particulay allergic to, particularly in the context of composition teaching. But what is endlessly fascinating about musical thought is that Stravinsky's and say John Coltrane's convictions about music and expression, to name only these, can both be true - what's important then is to explore what that might mean.

When it comes to "tunes" as political instruments, it's actually the lyrics that carry most of that weight, as we see in the way that any kind of cultural phenomenon that can be used subversively in the way you describe can also be used as a support for official ideologies - "God Save the King", "Deutschland über alles", "Allons enfants de la Patrie" and so on. But my point about tunes wasn't that they're insignificant but that they are a historically and geographically limited phenomenon, in answer to your claim that "everyone loves a good tune".

Bravo to much of this! Yet I am unconvinced by your argument that lyrics carry the weight. Tunes are the powerhouse, as they were in 1930s Spain, where different words were sung to the same tunes by opposing sides. The whole world is stirred by La Marseillaise, whether or not Rouget de Lisle's words are known, let alone understood. It's his tune which moves us.

As an illustration, I happened to see a superb 1955 film called Twilight Saloon (Tomu Uchida) recently, which encapsulates the point to a nicety. The film is set in a Tokyo bar, where all humanity seems to congregate. On the evening in question, the patrons include a couple of right-wing veterans, getting drunk to forget Japan's war loss and disgrace. Hearing one of their old marching tunes from the street, they immediately join in singing the nationalist text, only to be disconcerted when they (and the laughing pub regulars) realise that the passing marchers are working class protesters, singing a completely new text. The veterans rush over to the window, shouting out their own words in a doomed attempt to drown out the politics of the new era.

It's a terrific scene, which graphically shows that it's the tune not the words which makes the important effect - providing emotional, collegiate solidarity - no matter what text happens to be favoured at any one time. Similarly, the tune of 'Dives and Lazarus' can move us deeply, whether we're singing a collected text or the English Hymnal's religious one.

As we agree, ambiguity is all, though sometimes we wish it wasn't. These simple 'tunes' offer us an illusion of certitude - solidarity at deep and mysterious emotional levels - which seems constant, despite changes in political and social context.

As to their being "historically and geographically limited", I would question that too: whereas Gagaku is not going to easily yield its logic to listeners raised on Beethoven and Brahms, 'Sakura' conveys its deceptively complex truths in the West (c.f. Sallinen's superb and deeply-felt part setting) just as readily as it does in Japan, despite the huge cultural differences. And your example of La Marseillaise is, after all, effectively a world anthem - there isn't a continent where it hasn't been taken up by revolutionary, popular causes, somewhere, sometime.

[RichardB]

The whole world is stirred by La Marseillaise, whether or not Rouget de Lisle's words are known, let alone understood. It's his tune which moves us.

That depends on who "we" are, doesn't it? It has always seemed a pretty banal melody to me. But of course such melodies are a memorable way of packaging verbal messages.

I'm not sure why you keep coming back to "Sakura" as a phenomenon that supposedly proves that "tunes" are something universal rather than, as I'm arguing, limited in both historical and geographical terms. Yes there is one Japanese melody that has been well known for at least the last couple of hundred years. That doesn't quite compare with say Mozart and Schubert, dozens of whose melodies are much more well known world wide, does it? And how many melodies do you or anyone else remember from other parts of the world with rich and varied musical traditions? - India, China, Indonesia, the Middle East, for example. This isn't intended as a value judgement one way or the other. I don't think Mozart and Schubert as being in any way superior or inferior to the products of the Japanese classical music tradition. But Western music from around 1700 to 1900 puts an emphasis on "tunes" that isn't really present in other comparably "classical" traditions. There's a thought-provoking example from Colin McPhee's memoir A House in Bali where he describes playing Western classical music from Bach to Debussy on a piano he'd taken with him to Bali, to a highly musically sophisticated audience of gamelan musicians who had never heard a piano before, and their response was that it all sounded pretty much the same.

[Master Jacques]

I'm not sure why you keep coming back to "Sakura" as a phenomenon that supposedly proves that "tunes" are something universal rather than, as I'm arguing, limited in both historical and geographical terms. Yes there is one Japanese melody that has been well known for at least the last couple of hundred years. That doesn't quite compare with say Mozart and Schubert, dozens of whose melodies are much more well known world wide, does it?

Forgive me for trying to keep the argument tight, and sticking with one tune amongst thousands of others which we might have focused on. Millions who know 'Sakura' won't recognise a note of Schubert, so I'm not sure that a vox pop on the subject of 'top tunes' tells us much that's interesting about the abiding power of 'tunes' generally, worldwide, in or out of Western culture. Or about why they work, which is what interests me. The debate is getting tedious, so I shall stop there.

Except to ask RichardB whether his version of history is in danger of overlooking the Council of Trent? (Which endless barny reflected a hundred years of debate by the 1550s - and offered major reforms consequent to the allegedly negative impact of secular tunes on sacred music. This debate was a very important pillar of the counter-reformation. Tunes have always been around, and usually contentious in the sacred v. secular content. And c.f. Pfitzner's Palestrina!)