Music is a class of non-verbal languages that use sound to produce narratives (compositions) that are independent of any objective context.

As mentioned in previous posts, music is not a single language any more than “language” is a single language.  There are different musical languages with wildly differing syntactical structures and even different semantics.  In fact, semantical differences are arguably greater in music than they are in spoken languages.

Now, to address a potential argument against my definition:  When I say “independent of any objective context”, it sounds as if I am saying that all music is “absolute” music, where the only meaning is the music itself.  This clearly isn’t the case.  What about songs that tell a story?  What about program music, such as “Peter and the Wolf”?  What about tone painting?

The well-known saying, “the medium is the  message” is highly relevant here.  Even though there may be peripheral meaning attached to certain pieces of music, it is crucial to understand that music can be appreciated independently of this meaning.  It still has deep semantics of its own that don’t relate to anything you can see, touch, taste, or smell. These semantics are entirely musical, and thus we can still say that the music is independent of any external context.  It may be associated with a real-world narrative or emotion, but this association is unecessary to the appreciation of the music.

So, there’s my definition.

I was speaking to a friend once about body language in dogs, and he scoffed at the notion.  “Dogs don’t have the intelligence for that!” he said.  I responded by saying that body language doesn’t require intelligence at all; it is purely instinctual behavior.

This perhaps wasn’t completely accurate.  It is perhaps less about instinct than it is about neural physiology.  Because of the way dogs are wired, their internal emotional state tends to be mirrored in their external body posture, facial expression, and general behavior.  The same is true of humans…our body language is rarely a conscious, intentional attempt at communication, it is more of a betrayal of our private thoughts, often surfacing as we attempt to communicate something else through verbal channels. 

This is not to say that non-verbal communication cannot be intentional.  We have all plastered smiles on our faces at times when we really didn’t feel happy (although it’s fairly easy to tell the difference between this sort of smile and a spontaeous one).  Also, people with a good knowledge of body language can choose to use it in a purposeful manner to portray themselves as confident or sympathetic in appropriate circumstances. 

It is perhaps because non-verbal language is so closely associated with our own internal emotional state that we tend to think of it exclusively as a way to communicate emotions.  This isn’t necessarily true.

If you conceptualize music as a non-verbal language, then it becomes clear that there is much more than emotion that can be intentionally communicated through the medium.  Various patterns, self-refererential and otherwise, can be presented and manipulated to produce a fairly complex experience in the listener’s mind.  Tension and excitement can be generated and resolved in a pleasing manner that is not necessarily connected to any specific emotion. 

If music is viewed as non-verbal language, then compositions are non-verbal narratives.  Director Irvin Kreshner described a good story as following a three-act formula: Put the hero in a tree, set the tree on fire, then get the hero down.  It’s a broad enough formula that it can be used in a rich array of different settings, characters, and plot lines.  In a music composition, a very similar formula is used, only there is no hero and no tree.  There is only the ghost of objective experience, hidden deep in the more primative areas of our brains.  We know there is some sort of exposition, then tension is built up within the context established by the exposition, then that tension is resolved.  This is the essence of a non-verbal narrative, one that is not only independent of words but also of any experience that needs words to describe it.

It’s a difficult concept to grasp for those who are not already familiar with it.  We do all our thinking with words, so it can be troublesome to attempt to conceptualize complex structures that have nothing to do with words.  We struggle to even find a domain-specific language in which to discuss it amongst ourselves. 

This is what I attempt to do in this blog.  As always, I can only hope to succeed.

Learning to read music is very similar. We see first individual notes, then phrases, then melodies, themes, and larger structures. Even in sight-singing, where only one note can be produced at a time, we begin to incorporate knowledge of harmony to help us understand what it is we are reading.

It’s all about pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is an important survival strategy for humans, so it is something we are all naturally pretty good at. It is not only useful in reading music, it is also essential in the enjoyment of music and, of course, in its composition.

Patterns in music are so ubiquitous that one may wonder if they really need mentioning at all. Melodies are patterns, rhythms are patterns, harmonic sequences are patterns. Motifs and themes are patterns, and large-scale forms are patterns. Saying there are patterns in music is almost like saying there is music in music. It is blindingly obvious to anyone who gives it more than a moment’s thought. However, I believe that examining how patterns are applied is essential to understanding how music is created.

The concept of design patterns is an important one in software development, and so it is no wonder that this concept has bled over into my thinking about music. Design patterns are a way of taking fairly sophisticated algorithms and rendering them down into their most general elements, so they can be applied to a variety of different needs.

When trying to draw a connection between patterns in software development and patterns in music I find, as I often do, that I’m comparing apples and oranges, to a certain extent. In software, design patterns have a very broad spectrum and are thus highly flexible. There are times when this applies to music as well, but other times when it does not.

A specific melody, such as a fugue subject, is relatively inflexible. In rare occasions it may be inverted or otherwise manipulated, but for the most part it must remain recognizable to the listener.

On the other hand, a generalized strategy like, say, the five-part-rondo form, does not zero in on a specific grouping of notes, either in terms of melody or harmony. This pattern is far more flexible, providing a far greater range of creative possibilities.

There is another difference between this pattern and the first, however. It is not merely a matter of flexibility, it is also one of scope. The five-part-rondo form encompasses an entire composition, not just a part of it. It therefore has global rather than local scope. Another way to look at it would be strategic versus tactical.

So here we see two extremes between inflexible and local, versus flexible and global. It isn’t difficult to imagine that there could be other types of patterns that do not fall within this continuum. There could be flexible and local patterns, and also inflexible and global.

This concept of patterns can be plotted on a cartesian graph in which the x-axis represents flexibility, while the y-axis represents scope. In practice, the distribution would fall mostly within the inflexible-local and flexible-global domain. The most common meta-pattern (pattern made up of patterns) would be specific inflexible-local patterns lying atop a substrate of more flexible-global patterns.

Here are some examples of the different types of patterns that are often found in music:

Inflexible-local: This includes specific melodies (a rigid pattern of intervals and durations) or specific harmonic progressions on one end of the spectrum, moving towards variable themes, rhythms independent of intervals, and melodic contour independent of rhythm as it moves towards greater flexibility.

Flexible-local: In theory, these should be fairly rare, as the whole point of making a pattern flexible is to allow its use in a variety of contexts over time. However, it may make sense to put entire systems of harmony/counterpoint into this category. They can be said to have local scope, because they serve the purpose of what is happening right now, but they are also extremely flexible in that similar musical semantics can be expressed with a variety of harmonic constructs.

Inflexible-global: Themes fall into this category. Themes are distinct from melodies not only for their greater complexity, but because of a wider scope. A theme examined in isolation could be viewed as a melody or harmonic progression, and therefore would be inflexible-global.

Flexible-global: This would encompass familiar forms such as sonata-allegro, minuet-trio, and other commonly used symphonic patterns.

As I brought up in an earlier blog entry, there is some confusion between genre and form. The two are so intertwined that it is difficult to talk about one without invoking the other. To me, this confusion is cleared up by referring to patterns rather than forms. Certainly, the term “pattern” is less specific than “form”, but it is definable without bringing the complication of style or genre into the mix.

So we were all taught in elementary school music classes.  Music that is beautiful, stirring, or inspirational can be appreciated by people everywhere regardless of culture, creed, or ethnicity.  Those who are prevented by language barriers from communicating directly can be brought together by the wordless spell cast by a skillfully rendered melody.  We are all brothers and sisters united under the shared experience of song.

It’s a beautiful idea.  But it simply isn’t true.

To delve into this further, we must first address the question of whether music is a language at all, or if it has been misidentified by generous application of poetic license.  I think the scientific evidence shows that it is indeed a language, or at the very least, a form of communication that is very closely related to language.  Language emerges from two structures in the human brain, Broca’s area, which is responsible for the expression of language (speech and writing), and Wernicke’s area, which is responsible for the reception of language (comprehending speech and text).  The structures in the human brain that are responsible for the expression and reception of music are almost identical to these areas, albeit located on the opposite hemisphere and considerably less well-developed. The hemisphere on which the musical centers are located is often referred to as the “right brain” or “non-dominant” hemisphere, but it may be more accurate to call it the “non-verbal” hemisphere. One may infer from this physiological evidence that music is, in effect, a non-verbal language.

This isn’t strictly true, however.  Music takes many forms, just as verbal languages do. These forms, usually referred to somewhat innaccurately as “genres”, correspond to different cultures in much the same manner as spoken languages. So, to be more accurate, music is a collection of non-verbal languages.

To further develop this idea, let us look more closely at what makes one language different from another.

Vocabulary

“It’s like those French have a different word for everything!”

–Steve Martin

This joke underscores the absurdity of reducing language to vocabulary.  Clearly, there is more to the French language than the substitution of English words for French.  This would imply that there is one standard reference language from which all others are derived, which is obviously an ethno-centric viewpoint.  Different languages, even those that spring from the same root language (such as the Romance languages), have different grammars.  It’s not enough to simply learn the words, you must know the rules by which those words are put together.

Music, of course, has no vocabulary.  The fact that vocabulary makes up only a relatively small part of what constitutes a verbal language makes it somewhat easier to understand how a language can exist with no vocabulary at all.

Grammar

The aspect of grammar that is most applicable to music is syntax.  Syntax in verbal language describes the rules by which words are combined to convey meaning.  In music, there are rules as well, and these rules vary wildly from one musical language to the next. 
 
Different cultures throughout history have placed different cultural demands on music.  In some musical languages, the tritone is forbidden as either a harmonic or melodic interval.  In others, the melodic fifth and octave are permitted, but no interval between the two. 

Parallelism between perfect intervals was permitted in the early days of counterpoint, was forbidden for a few centuries, then once again permitted. Similarly, asymetric meters were common during the Rennaisance, disappeared during the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, then re-emerged in the 20th century.

Syntax in music is all about the appropriateness of different musical actions within specific musical sub-cultures, not just those evolving over time but those that exist contemporaneously with each other.  A good example would be the role of improvisation.  Today, improvisation is strictly controlled in symphonic and choral music, is encouraged in most popular music, and is at the very core of jazz.  Even with music that is hundreds of years old, performance traditions have changed so that different levels of improvisation have been applied at different times, and there are in fact competing factions to this day that argue over how a particular piece “should” be performed.

Clearly, there are different syntactical rules for different musical languages.  However, the real test of whether these differences are sufficient to justify separating genres into languages is meaning.  This is where semantics comes into play.

Semantics

Noam Chomsky broke semantics down into two layers: Surface meaning, which varies between languages, and deep meaning, which is essentially the same everywhere in the world. 

The whole concept of “meaning” in music is tricky, because what music conveys has little to do with external reality.  It is a self-contained system of communication, where the meaning is self-referential.  Unlike verbal languages, which are used to mirror external realities (and to a lesser extent, subjective experiences), music mirrors only itself.  What meaning it has is relevant only to music. 

While it is true that music is sometimes used to represent external realities (tone painting or mimicry), this is essentially window-dressing, since the music can be understood independently of these representations.  I enjoyed the vocal music of Bach for years before I became aware of the extent to which he used tone-painting to mirror the ideas conveyed in the text.  Knowledge of this added another dimension to my enjoyment, but it wasn’t necessary.  There was really very little difference between music that was supposed to represent a non-musical idea (such as sadness, running water, or the sensation of falling), and music that was clearly written to communicate only musical ideas (compositions such as the concerto or fugue). In the music of Bach particularly, there always seems to be a disconnect between tone painting and the musical ideas, as if there is a stream of musical thought that is completely ignorant of the non-musical ideas it is meant to express.

So here we see a hint of Chomsky’s model of semantics in that there are at least two layers of meaning in music, and in most music the extra-musical meaning is absent.  Like verbal languages, I believe that there is a very deep meaning conveyed through music that is, in fact, universal.  This meaning has to do with very non-specific subjective experiences that we all share: Joy, sadness, restlessness, contentment.  Although music is often interpreted as being joyful or sad, there is often no direct intention on the part of composers to communicate such obvious emotions.  What is conveyed is even more basic than this, reaching all the way down to the reptilian instincts within us all.  Conflict, motion, rest, warmth…these are the sort of things that music communicates on the deepest level.

Perhaps the most basic aspect of the human experience that is touched and mirrored by music is something so ubiquitous that it is often overlooked: Timing.  While timing is not considered as noble and lofty as things like courage, longing, and love, it is every bit as important to us, if not more.  It has been discovered that rhythmic motion is crucial to the development of motor skills, which is why infants of many species respond positively to being rocked.  We are creatures of motion, who can only experience the world by moving through it in a rhythmic fashion.  As soon as we lose track of the metronome within us, we lose our ability to negotiate our environment, as well as to communicate.

The importance of timing is overlooked until, by illness or injury, we lose it temporarily or permanently.  Whether we realize it or not, though, it also becomes evident when we listen to music. Since timing helps form the basis of what makes us all human, this crucial element of music is instantly comprehended wherever it is heard.

We could therefore argue that music is a universal language because of the deep meaning it conveys.  However, we would then have to acknowledge that verbal languages are just as universal for the same reason.

There are huge differences between the surface semantics, as well as the syntax, among different musical languages.  The syntax of symphonic music is immensely more complex than that of popular music in terms of large structures, while popular music may be more complex in the tactical details such as rhythm. Go back far enough in the development of Western music, and you will find syntax where rhythm and harmony are non-existent, but rules about melodic structure and modes are so much more complex than that of music we hear today that it sounds like nonsense to those unfamiliar with it.  

Serial music of the twentieth century presents the same problem.  Doing away with the concept of key center was a major paradigm shift in the development of music, and to those rooted in the diatonic tradition it sounds like a cacophany of wrong notes.  Again, the problem is that the syntax is so different from that of traditional Western harmony that it can’t be understood by the uninitiated, any more than Swahili can be understood by someone who only speaks English.

Symphonic music has essentially the same melodic and harmonic syntax as popular music, but to those familiar only with the latter genre it may be baffling because of the use of strategic patterns that are seldom heard on the radio.  Symphonic music is thematic, meaning that recognizable musical ideas are not simply stated and repeated, but are shaped and developed over time to extract their complete potential.  Add to this the variety of different textures used, the tendency to drift from the home key, and the use of transitional passages, and it becomes clear that symphonic music is really a different language entirely.

This isn’t simply a matter of syntax. There are whole hierarchies of meaning to be found in classical music, with its emphasis on thematic development and its use of complex structural elements.  While there are syntactical elements in popular music that are not found in “serious” music, the same really isn’t true for semantics.  The closest popular music comes to surpassing the more sophisticated forms in this respect can perhaps be found in the improvisational element.  However, this aspect of music seems to flirt with the boundary between syntax and semantics.  Is improvisation a sort of musical “meaning” in itself, or is it simply a means to communicate that meaning? 

At any rate, improvisation has existed in classical music for centuries in the form of such techniques as rubato, continuo realization, and cadenza.  It is simply far more restricted than it is in popular music; its importance far less critical. Does the added emphasis on improvisation in popular music shift this particular aspect, that of spontaneous creativity, from the realm of syntax into that of semantics?  It’s an interesting question that I will no doubt be pondering for some time.

I would like to continue to examine this idea of music as language. As always, I will do my best to find out what others, perhaps far more qualified than I, have had to say on the subject.

Update (4/15/2011):
After completing this entry, I read an article that made me realize I had missed a major aspect of musical semantics, and that is: Pattern recognition. Like timing, this is something that is central to the experience not just of humans, but of many (if not most) other organisms.

Pattern recognition is what thematic development is all about. It gives us pleasure to be able to pick out and recognize constantly morphing patterns in music. Unfortunately, this rarely occurs in popular music, since it requires a fairly sophisticated ear to recognize thematic patterns unless they remain essentially unchanged.

In the previous two installments, we have discussed how the dreams associated with REM sleep are similar to imagination, and may in fact be variations on the same function.

In short: Dreams associated with REM sleep are spontaneous and unconscious interpretations of our most primal thoughts.

Imagination, on the other hand, is a willful and conscious interpretation of those same primal thoughts.

Primal thoughts come from the most primitive part of the brain, the limbic system. This area causes us to react to danger as well as to feel hunger and a range of emotions. It is the source of our basic drives, and also the source of the “spark” of creative thought. It allows us to begin the first step in creativity, divergence, in which random ideas are generated for later sorting and sifting. The second step, convergence, takes those sorted and sifted ideas and translates them into something useful. The process is somewhat like a snowball effect, in which a very basic representation of human experience is built up, using experience and cognition, with layer upon layer of additional information that helps to form it into something that can be communicated to others.

Now we come to the place where music is introduced into the equation.

In composition, musical ideas are usually generated by first imagining the basic feeling the listener should experience, then imagining a sound that will convey that feeling, and finally assigning specific notes to bring that sound into focus. This produces only the germ of an idea; it then falls to the composer to place the idea in a coherent context that can be communicated to the listener. Here is where the higher brain functions come into play, now that the limbic system has done its part. Specific tactics dealing with harmony, instrumentation, texture, etc., can be implemented without using our imagination…but I suspect that really great composers are constantly polling the limbic system, searching for more feedback to help imbue the piece with inspiration at every level of development.

One of the undeniable realities about the creative output of the great composers is that the kind of ideas they come up with change as they grow older. The liveliest, most audacious ideas arise in youth, while thinking becomes more standardized and conventional as they grow older. This is consistent with the observation that REM sleep occurs most often in childhood, and becomes less and less prominent as we age. If the two phenonmena, REM sleep and imagination, are related, then it makes sense that they would behave similarly as the brain matures.

In science and mathematics, most of the great discoveries are made by young men and women. After the age of thirty, the scientists and mathematicians are undoubtedly no less intelligent than they were before, but the sheer audacity of their ideas begins to wane, and their contributions are not nearly as ground-breaking.

So why do composers not suffer from this problem? Haydn produced his best work when he was in his sixties and seventies, and many other composers continued to produce great works well after the comparable age where scientific and mathematical achievement tends to dry up.

My belief is that, while imagination in the form of bold and exciting ideas becomes less prominent, it is more than made up for by the composer’s burgeoning experience and expertise. While composers who exclusively write songs or incidental music have difficulty in their later years, symphonic composers are able to grow and develop their architectural skills to a degree that allows them to produce memorable works from not-so-memorable ideas. Compare Bach’s main subject from “The Art of the Fugue” with some of the expansive melodies from the cantatas of his Weimar period, and it will become obvious that it is not the idea, but the development of the idea, that makes his last major work something special.

These three entries sum up my belief about the ultimate source, from a mechanistic perspective, of novel ideas. Is it possible there is more to it than this, that there is indeed something deeper and more fundamental — a soul perhaps — from which they truly emerge? That is a question for philosophers. In my mind, understanding how it happens is at least as useful, and as enlightening, as knowing why.

During REM sleep, several things happen in the brain at once. Some brain functions are inhibited, while others are excited. In particular, cognition and episodic memory are reduced to a low ebb. At the same time, the amygdala becomes unusually active, sending out random messages telling the brain that something — some completely undefined series of events — is happening.

Normally, the amygdala serves as a warning system that there is something in the environment that we need to direct our attention to. It reacts according to incoming stimuli and prompts us to take appropriate action.

So what happens when we are asleep, and there is nothing to react to?

The brain is skilled at drawing connections and placing experiences into categories. We see a face on the moon, horses in clouds, and ghosts in cemeteries. Our memories allow us to quickly decide how to classify unexpected sensory input. Even if it’s something completely outside our experience, we try to classify it as something that is known. Consider, for instance, the Native Americans who first saw the tall ships of Cortez and described them as “floating mountains”.

When the amygdala is activated, we expect this activation to be associated with some important stimulus. If we don’t see what we expect, then we interpret it according to what we know about the world. This is how dream images are created. The amygdala sends a message, “something is making me anxious”, and we visualize something that we know is associated with anxiety. If it says, “something is going to kill me”, then we imagine something dangerous. In children, this dangerous thing is usually a wild animal — no doubt a hard-wired fear inherited from our primitive ancestors. As we grow older, the wild animal is replaced by scary things from our own experiences.

Now, consider the fact that cognition and episodic memory are deactivated. What effect would this have on the way we interpret the random brain activity from the amygdala? My hypothesis is that this combination of primal excitation, the ability to interpret the unexpected, and the inability to remember or make logical sense of things, leads inevitably to the creation of novel scenarios. These scenarios involve things we haven’t experienced before, and perhaps will never experience because they are logically impossible.

(It is important to note here that cognition and memory are not completely deactivated; they are essential to the process of interpreting the stimuli. However, it order to achieve true novelty, their influence must be relaxed.)

In this sense, dreams do, indeed, predict the future. They tell us what might happen to us when we are awake, giving us an opportunity to react in a safe, virtual environment.

Clearly, the fact that REM sleep hasn’t been eliminated after millions of years of evolution shows that it has some survival benefit. Scientists still don’t know for sure what this benefit is, but they have found a clue in the correlation between the amount of REM sleep a particular species experiences, and how helpless that species is at birth. Marsupials are the most helpless REM sleepers at birth, and they also experience the most REM sleep.

This tells us that REM sleep may help an organism that can’t actually experience life firsthand run simulations in its brain while sleeping. While many of these simulations will not be remembered consciously (remember, memory is inhibited), it nevertheless creates new connections in the brain that will benefit the individual when it is more developed and can take its place in the outside world.

During REM sleep, then, the brain generates novel scenarios involving things that might happen to us when we are awake. This is most important to us in childhood, and becomes less important as we grow older and more experienced. Predictably, all animals who experience REM sleep do most of their dreaming early in life. Frequency of REM sleep declines as we grow older.

So what does this have to do with imagination?

My hypothesis is that REM sleep and imagination are very closely related phenomena. Rarely in evolution does a new structure or a new ability spring up out of nowhere, we always see a modification of a previously existing structure or function. Although many species of animal can spin up random scenarios as they sleep, human beings have learned to do so in a waking state.

How do they do this? I believe it is done the same way REM sleep images are created. Humans are able to voluntarily relax the influences of cognition (the “willing suspension of disbelief” that is so necessary in enjoying fictional narratives) and memory, and to create a small amount of stress that the wandering mind automatically tries to interpret.

This stress is inherent in any form of creativity. In pragmatic problem solving, the conflict is obvious. There is a problem, it needs to be resolved. Less well understood, however, is the fact that seemingly soothing products of the creative process — music, art, literature, and poetry — are also the result of conflict. In each case, the work creates some sort of dilemma in the mind of the observer, then resolves it in a more or less satisfactory manner. Any form of art that doesn’t do this at some level isn’t worth observing.

In the next segment we will discuss how it all fits together.

This is a loaded question, and perhaps one of the most basic philisophical conundrums in human experience. When we try to define the word “imagination”, we come across an inevitable tautology.
Q: “What is imagination?”
A: “The ability to generate novel information.”
Q: “How do we generate this novel information?”
A: “By using our imagination.”

We know that our minds are able to think of new things, and we have learned quit a bit about the mechanisms for forming these new thoughts into useful constructs. There are two basic processes at work, according to scholars: Divergence, where a multitude of possible solutions to a problem are considered, and convergence, where the ideas are sifted and brought together in a coherent fashion. This is what is meant by creativity.

However, this leaves the basic question unanswered: Where do the ideas come from in the first place?

Imagination is so close to the core of what makes us human that there is a natural reluctance to look at it too closely. If we analyze and unravel the very essence of humanity, will there be anything meaningful left? Most people prefer to look at imagination from a teleological perspective. Novel thoughts come from divine inspiration, from the soul, from the Platonic realm of ideas.

As poetic as these explanations are, they aren’t particularly useful in helping us understand the process. That doesn’t mean they are invalid, it simply means that a mechanistic approach is more helpful.

I think looking at simpler organisms help us to understand how humans work. We think of imagination as being uniquely human, but is it really? Can other species of animals create new ideas?

They can, and they do. Not only do individual animals come up with new ways to manipulate their environment, but they can teach other individuals, who pass the information along until it becomes a cultural entity. However, there is a key difference between how animals come up with ideas and how humans do it.

Animals figure things out by doing them. They try different things and discover what works best as they try them.

Humans, on the other hand, visualize. They work things out in their minds ahead of time. They use their linguistic abilities to analyze the ideas internally, using an inner monologue. They apply reasoning and experience to “test” the idea without actually acting it out.

This, of course, has led to the propagation of many ideas that are just plain wrong. The problem of crackpot ideas is a failing that animals, for the most part, do not share (although B.F. Skinner did note that pigeons are prone to superstition).

However, here is a key difference between animals and humans: Humans imagine things that have no obvious practical application, and they work tirelessly to bring these ideas to fruition. We owe all of our art, music, and poetry to this fact.

I won’t go into the reasons why this obsession to create gives humans an evolutionary advantage. I am merely interested in the mechanisms involved.

This brings us to another attribute that humans share with many animals, a bizarre and puzzling one that has left scientists scratching their heads for decades: REM sleep.

As is well known, Rapid Eye Movement sleep is a stage in the sleep cycle in which we have our most vivid dreams. The first observation about this sleep stage was that the eyes moved restlessly under the sleeping eyelids, as if scanning some imaginary landscape. People woken during this stage reported vivid dreams.

Later, experimenters learned that the parts of the brain associated with motor control were highly activated during this stage. When the brainstem mechanism for shutting down the voluntary muscles was disabled, animals appeared to “act out” their dreams.

While REM sleep was only discovered in the last century (oddly, because it could have been observed at any time by watching someone sleep!), dreams have long been a source of fascination in every culture.  People have been trying to analyze the content of dreams for millenia. At first, it was assumed that they foretold the future. Later, the images were interpreted as symbols that revealed hidden insights into the dreamers personality.

As it turns out, the earlier assumption was closer to the truth.

More coming…

In his book, Bach and the Patterns of Invention, Laurence Dreyfus repeatedly brings up the question of whether the fugue in general, and the Bach fugue in particular, could be considered a genre or should be classified more generally as simply a technique or a texture.  I found his use of the word genre confusing, as it seemed to be synonymous with “form” rather than “style”. 

The semantic confusion over the word “genre” seems to be unique to music.  According to Dreyfus, this can be traced back to the theoretical word of A. B. Marx, who “semantically annexed” what was previously thought of genre and placed it into the category of form.  Classifying works such as art songs and sonatas as forms rather than genres has led to the confusion we experience today. Especially vexing is that genre means something completely different more general usage, particularly when the topic is popular music.  Since popular music is very limited in form, it is style alone that determines genre.  When popular culture attempts to shoehorn serious music into the terminology used for popular music, it muddies the waters considerably.

I learned about the relationship between form and style a couple of years ago when I completed a commission for a chamber sonata.  I had decided to make use of the Baroque style, but the Viennese Classical sonata form.  What I discovered what that style of one had a direct effect on the form of the other, and vice versa.  Simply making the key transition from the first theme group to the second made the music sound Viennese Classical.  Giving the piece the sense of fusion that I wanted required a detailed study of how key transitions are achieved in Baroque verses Classical works.  What I eventually realized was that what I had thought of as style had formal elements, and what I considered form was highly stylistic.  They weren’t the two separate concepts I had thought they were.

In the previous post, I described the concept of generative style.  Perhaps we need more classifications of style to build a clearer and more complete set of semantics when discussing these issues.  The elements of style that made my sonata sound Baroque–the harmonic structure, texture, and melodic focus–could be called the ubiquitous style. Style that is determined by gross form could be called formal style.  I tried to come up with a Greek term for this using the roots for “sound” and “form”…morphonic?  Phonimorphic? I will have to play around with it.

Going back to Dreyfus’ discussion of where the place the fugue in the grand scheme of things, I like a term borrowed from software development: pattern.  In programming, a pattern is a useful construct that gets used over and over again in a variety of different contexts.  I believe that fugue makes a good pattern, as well as do more generalized techniques used in composition, such as sequence (ascending or descending), cantus firmus, pedal point, and others.  There are many more that are so ubiquitous that we don’t really have names for them, so I usually invent them as I go along.  Prodigal melody, Ruthian melody, and Broadway counterpoint are just a few examples.

I’ll keep thinking about it.  It’s possible (in fact, likely) that greater minds than I have already created a complete and cohesive theory that brings all these issues together in a satisfying way that makes sense to most people.  If so, I look forward to learning from them.  If not, then there’s work to be done.

Music critics and philosophers often talk about inspiration when they discuss where music comes from, but rarely do they consider pragmatism as a factor.  In the composer’s mind, the music they are trying to conjure up performs some kind of function, and this function determines the form of the resulting musical idea.  This form imparts a certain style, and from this style we may make an educated guess as to the composer’s intentions.

When we hear a beautiful melody, it is tempting to think that it came from some sort of Platonic realm of ideas, independent of any earthly considerations.  Music that comes close to this ideal I place at one end of the Generative Style scale, and refer to as organic.  Such purity is almost unheard of, however, as musical ideas carry with them so much cultural baggage related to melodic structure, harmonic structure (either actual or implied), and instrumental medium.  The closest we can come to organic style is sounds that come from nature…and even then, there is some sort of pragmatism limiting the “music”.

On the other end of the scale would be the style of music that is formed by the limitations and the capabilities of the instruments on which it is played.  Music that is highly idiomatic of the instrument on which it is intended to be played has a mechanistic or machine style.

Between these two extremes, things are a little fuzzy.  We have, of course, music whose style is governed by contemporaneous fashion.  We also have music that is intended to convey some non-musical idea, which is the basis of tone-painting or program music.  In all cases we don’t have music that comes straight from God and is then molded into these styles by the composer.  Instead, the style is generative, it actually performs a key role in the creation of the music itself.  Without the framework of pragmatism, the melody would not exist. 

I will post some examples of this in the future.  It’s interesting stuff because it allows us to peek into the minds of long-dead composers to see what makes them tick.  There will always be some who think that analyzing the creative process and removing the need for inspiration as the key to creation somehow lessens the beauty of the end result.  I disagree.  In my mind, there is no way that achieving a deeper understanding of something beautiful can diminish its beauty at all.