Untitled by Mark Rothko. 1948
Philip Ball’s recent article, Who’s afraid of the avant-garde, provoked much thought. Why do we seem to “get” modern art, but not modern, experimental music? I think the author nears the core of the issue here:
There are certainly parallels in the way we make sense of acoustic and visual information. Chief among these rules are the “Gestalt principles” identified by a group of German-based psychologists in the early 20th century. These are a series of implicit mental rules that help people to make good guesses at how to interpret complex sensory stimuli by grouping them together. We make assumptions about continuity, for example: the aeroplane that flies into a cloud is the same one that flies out the other side. We group objects that look similar, or that are close together. Although the Gestalt principles are not foolproof, they make the world more comprehensible. Both in sound and in vision, the ability to interpret sensory data this way must have had evolutionary benefits.
Our brain naturally organizes often disparate things, but can do so much more easily if there are visible and aural likenesses to work with, parallels, connections, logical continuations …
One difference between the avant-garde in classical music and in visual art, however, is that late 20th-century music was apt to defy these organising principles, while visual art did not. Although some viewers may fret that they cannot understand what is in front of them, it takes no more cognitive effort to “see” a painting by Mark Rothko than it does to look at wallpaper. The fact we can see the painting at all as a coherent object gives our interpretive mind something to work on, even if we come up with nothing more than a vague sense of beauty, serenity or absurdity. Music can defy even this basic sort of cognitive parsing: it can refute our efforts to find coherence, rather as if a video artist were to present us with unstructured static. Even Jackson Pollock’s chaos is contained — but sound is at once everywhere and constantly shifting.
When we listen to music, we assume what comes next and link to it, run with it in our minds. The greatest classical music has an order, a logic, a mathematical logic, in fact, of notes harmonizing with each other, taking us deeper into the abstract realms of our brain. Not into chaos. Not into dead ends or blind alleys. Nor do we feel lost and alone, unable to follow or lead. Even though the best classical music can often surprise us, that surprise is not the kind that seems divorced from any knowable map. It’s a surprise primarily of re-cognition, of renewal and a return to something we may have forgotten about.
With a painting, or a sculpture, or a building, the work itself is already organized to some degree. It has a beginning and an end. We can see that. Boundaries are visible. Even obvious. Though the best visual art breaks beyond its borders, and forces us to pursue what is left unsaid, we do not typically feel a sense of blindness, of chaotic disorientation. Experimental music, on the other hand, can leave us in just such a quandary.
Here’s an interesting collage of recent experimental works in auditory sensations. Moving beyond the subject of the article above, it provides a palpable stream of disorientating sound, and makes me want to pursue some of the works mentioned:
From Ubuweb’s Avant-garde, All the Time
On the other hand, many Westerners find Asian music incomprehensible … much of the expectation is inculcated.
Also, painting has an advantage in permitting the viewer to choose (consciously or no) how the spatial organization unfolds in time (scanning the visual field), while music dictates that unfolding as an integral part of the tonal structure.
True. Good points. We control when we move across the visual field. At least to some degree. Oftentimes, we may move involuntarily. Great compositions generally have power to direct somewhat. But, you’re right. With music, its beats, meters, pacing, basically control our reception. If we don’t move with it, we lose it.
Can’t remember who said it, but have read that one form of intelligence is indicated when a person can simultaneously follow all the key streams of a complex musical composition. I try to listen that way when I think about it before hand. When it comes to much experimental music, especially from the composers mentioned in the article above, this becomes quite the challenge. But I imagine, with practice, and some study, that challenge fades.
My experience is that a familiar “classic” piece or score of music is pre-memorized when I hear it again for the umpteenth time; so if the CD stops at any point the music keeps going in my mind; and at the end of the first movement of some familiar symphony or concerto for solo instrument, the beginning notes of the second movement start to run in my head. I did not, maybe do not know how to, listen to your examples, but perhaps music in any period, including the present-day avant-garde, requires some time for repeated listening for this pre-memorization response to take effect for a certain number of listeners.
Good points, Robert. That remembered sound is very important. Good addition to the article.
Thank you. And consider Shoenberg’s atonalism, about as avant-garde as you can be, and verging on age 100. The Suite for Piano, as recorded magnificently by Glenn Gould, is a piece I can really swing to, all things being equal.
It seems to me that what is un-understandable in any art, in fact in every area of knowledge, is usually understood over time. Doctors thought there was no reason to wash their hand. Degas’ dancers were first seen as dirty little girls. And why was he putting real clothes on them? What was Cezanne doing? My suspicion is that music, because it often requires a group of people and institutional support is the most conservative, painting next and writing the most experimental. Writing requires a pencil while painting requires colors, brushes, canvas and more. I imagine the first caveman to draw a bison was accused of ridiculing the gods .i.e. donors. Not much different than now.
Many good points. But I think it’s easier to fall into the flow of new visual art. For the reasons mentioned in the article. Music is the most abstract of our arts to begin with. There is really no object named in music, no touchstone. When we hear a sense of harmony, this aids us in organizing the chaos of sound. Mathematics plays a part. Some of the avant-garde music mentioned is almost without the maths. At least at first listen. Perhaps with continued exposure and some guidance, we can discover the organizing principles behind it, or not worry about their lack, etc.
Speaking of the visual arts, today I went to the Met in NYC for the first time in 2 – 3 years having been a regular visitor of MOMA. First I visited some of my old favorites in the European rooms and found many of the paintings that I had so admired for years to be cluttered, disorganized and repetitive. Then I went to see Chinese sculpture of the 5th and 6th Centuries and was breathless in front of the power and simplicity of those works. My point being it’s almost impossible to explain anything that has to do with the arts and how they effect us. However the effort is worth it since we gain by thinking about it.
I just think that the further comments are an attempt to elicit the possibility for something like Gestalt principles so as not to abandon altogether the recent musical kinds as they are represented by Philip Ball. In other words, even though this music can be assessed in terms of the degree to which it eludes the listener’s implicit abilities to organize impressions, the comments suggest that aspects of historical context and real practice contribute to formations that would then become recognized as the Gestalt principles in this case. The writer’s point is that the musical kind being examined is especially difficult to understand because it seems to abandon all hope, that is, to abandon any possibility of a mathematical logics, such being understood as necessary for Gestalt principles of any kind to apply. Contrarily, the effort in theory to try to save this musical kind by suggesting other possibilities for the process of musical understanding is in its own way admirable.
So, the historical context and repeated listening acting as a sort of new gestalt? Interesting. Please elaborate when you have the time. Pretty good alternative path for the article …
I can go back (and promise to do so) to Wolfgang Kohler’s book “Gestalt Psychology,” which I recommend and with which I was extraordinarily impressed when I read through it several years ago. Also, a text by Jean Piaget on the concept of evolution and how changes are generated during the evolutionary process in a collective manner when individual changes occur — or something to that effect. In any event, these contributions to the Gestalt would only be a small part of the picture, so it may prove in the end that this kind of music isn’t ever going to appeal. In general, however, new developments reorganize the universal patterns of reception to some extent.
Recognizing the importance of the theses and questions presented thus far (and subsequent comments), I suggest further study of all kinds on this very big and difficult subject. I suggest, for example, paying attention to Adorno’s elaborate and cogent discussion in “Aesthetic Theory.” Among Adorno’s contributions are an enthusiastically argued examination of the role of avant-garde productions in determining lasting aesthetic value (a very complex historical procedure) and concomitantly his enthusiastically developed remarks on Schoenberg’s music and presumed lasting value.
Now, because of its sketchy nature and for other reasons, it is unlikely that Philip Ball’s depiction of Shoenberg’s place in the history of music comes anywhere close to what can be found actually to be the case. But just as Mr. Ball’s assertions call for challenge and testing, so do those of enthusiasts and supporters of Schoenberg, including the many points made by Glenn Gould in his own liner notes for a record of Shoenberg’s music for solo piano. I recomment these remarks, also understandably brief but not nearly so brief, for a contrary depiction of Shoenberg’s place in history (one which acknowledges, to be on the safe side, that his reputation can be seen as problematic), and for the notion, among others, of an intimate connection with previous musical forms (from the Baroque period, for example) in the following passage on the Suite for Piano, the composition that I refer to in a comment above. Here is the relevant passage from Glenn Gould’s liner notes:
“The fact that some of Schoenberg’s greatest works were produced in the last half of the 1920s is undoubtedly related to his use of the twelve-tone method. But indirectly! Schoenberg, the prophet who had fallen silent, had found his voice again. From out of an arbitrary rationale of elementary mathematics and debatable historical perception came a rare joie de vivre, a blessed enthusiasm for the making of music. And the Piano Suite along with the other exuberant non-Rococco essays of this period (Serenade, Opus 24; Wind Quintet, Opus 26, etc.), for all its reliance on binary dance forms and its sly digs at pre-Classical convention (the French Musette’s pedal-ostinato is an insistent tritone), is among the most spontaneous and wickedly inventive of Schoenberg’s works.”
Interesting, Robert. Adorno was a very good music critic. I think he was better at that than he was on political and economic matters. I need to go back and reread him. Will probably do something on Schoenberg later. Thanks for your comments.
And thank you. Adorno was wild about Beethoven’s “Middle” String Quartets, and after that comes Schoenberg’s music, if memory serves me — but music is vastly important, of many different kinds, as has been demonstrated in Spinozablue, and so thank you also for that.
Music doesn’t lie. If there is a touch to be changed in this world, then it can only come about through music.