The Story Behind the Music

Last night I saw the wonderful November Dance performance, by the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois. I started getting into modern dance this spring, when I went to a few performances for one of my classes on aesthetics and education. I didn't understand it too much it until we were talking about it one day, when I realized I was looking for a story being told. While there may be a story, there isn't necessarily one, and getting past that hurdle opened up the wonderful world of modern dance to me. Already this fall I've see Hubbard Street twice, in addition to last night's performance.

After the performance I tweeted some Twitter friends (Erica, Grant and Sam) with this (modified for real English): "I started understanding dance when I stopped expecting it to tell a story. I think we should do same for music." A nice little conversation ensued, and as much as a I love Twitter, sometimes the 140 character limit is too short for an interesting topic.

But here's my basic point: we teach a lot of programmatic musics in music appreciation classes. It's easy to teach and easy for the learner to understand (and, perhaps more important, it's easy to assess). We can hear the witch or the guillotine drop in Symphonie Fantastique. Discussions of Schubert's songs talk about his marvolous use of word painting. And what doesn't have a story gets one imposed on it: fate knocking on the door in Beethoven's 5th Symphony; Mozart & Mahler writing their final pieces, knowing they were going to die (I'll leave aside the question of if that's really true or not, because regardless, we still do this). But not all music is programmatic. I'd say most music isn't programmatic. (Unless you're looking at middle school band repertoire.)

It's my opinion that in leading with this track to novice musicians (and I'm including listeners in that term) - or at least emphasizing it - we limit our students (or friends, or family, or audience, etc.). Some music is great because it doesn't have a program - just like, as Erica tweeted, the same can be said with visual arts, poetry, dance, etc.

How can we teach appreciation for musics - not just Western art music, but including it - without looking for a story? Bach doesn't tell a story; Mozart doesn't; Reich, Schoenberg, Gorecki, etc. etc. etc. don't tell stories all the time. Jazz musicians might tell a story through their improv, but it's likely doubtful. So much of "world music" doesn't tell a story, but is ritualistic instead. Taylor Swift definitely does tell stories, but ... we can usually grasp what that story is pretty quickly, without needing a degree-laden professor to tell us what it is.

I'll admit I've fallen into this trap. I'm just as guilty as the next person. I taught this way as part of my AP Music Theory class. I wrote an undergrad paper on Mahler's 2nd Symphony, connecting themes in the piece to Mahler's program, which is probably a good paper, if you forget that Mahler redacted the program he wrote for the work.

I don't feel guilty for this, per say, but I do feel bad. A beauty of the arts is its subjective nature, yet we're telling people what needs to be heard and understood so much of the time. Is this a fault of the nature of schooling? Or our own engrained ideas about Western art music?

I also appreciate hearing a performer's connection to the piece - but that doesn't necessarily involve a story behind the composition. I think we all look for an easily-found human connection in music, and perhaps that's why we take this route. We can associate with love lost (Berlioz, Taylor Swift) a lot easier than we can "only" sound (absolute music as a whole).

What can we do to get more listeners, appreciators, performers, etc., involved with the music without using this simple cop-out? Once I got past it I got more into modern dance. I imagine if musickers get past this they can get more into the marvolous world of music.

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**Two questions/connections that come up that are beyond my writing at this point in the night:
-That programmatic music is essentially a Romantic concept, and may be connected to the Romantic concept of genius
-The observation that dance is more receptive to the new and unexpected than music

Comments

[Matt Erion]

So many thoughts around these topics. I'll try to stay on track as best I can.

First, and this will get you ostracized from the classical music folks, it's all program music. The notion of absolute music vs program music is a construct of education. Now while there are many obvious examples such as you cite above they all have to be "taught". I don't know which theme is Peter's and which is the Wolf's unless I'm told. Do I miss something about the piece if I don't know that? Perhaps, but knowing the story hasn't necessarily changed how I react to the piece. Though I suppose I'll never know if I'm right about the previous statement.

I was taught that absolute music was preferred to program music, as program music was always derivative, whereas an absolute piece, such as a Bach fugue was the pure genius of music. Being a Jazz player I continue to challenge the notion that any music is absolute.

To your real point, "how can I share the music I love with students in a way that they'd actually "get it"? I think you really have to share- and not teach. But they don't hand out Ph D's for sharing, do they?

So in whole, I agree with much of your post above, but disagree that there is any division between program music and absolute music. The flaw is in trying to teach Music Appreciation in the way it's been taught since the dawn of liberal arts education.

My theory that there is no absolute music is derived from what I know about the compositional process, vs what little is known about the composition process academically and historically.

Academically, performance and education music majors outnumber composition majors by at least 10 to 1. My own college didn't even offer a composition degree. I bet in some schools today you could still get a Bachelors degree without ever doing more writing than realizing figured bass. The attitude seems to be that writing a symphony is some mystical gift that is unattainable for 99.99999% of all musicians. Well, I think 100% of us could write a symphony if we tried but 99.999999% of them won't make anybody forget about Beethoven or Mahler. Doesn't mean that 99.99999% also will never be at the pinnacle of performance or education. Doesn't stop anybody from dedicating their lives to careers in performance or education. This does all mean that few educators at any level really have any practical understanding of composition.

Historically, we know very little about the motivations for a classical composer. Mozart couldn't go on twitter and say "hey guys: I'm playing around with 2nd inversion arpeggios of a major triad- do I have anything here? Check out my soundcloud page!" So, precious little, if anything exists that tells us the real story behind the music

Practically, I know what I go through to write. Thus I strip out a lot of the mysticism in the process and assume that famous composers went through similar if not identical struggles. Ultimately, music (and all art) is about expression. Thus symphony #3 is actually about something, but what the composers original intent is simply lost to history. It might not be a story in a conventional sense of the word, but all those notes are where they are for a reason. But it is fundamentally not "absolute" as education defines the term.

So a void exists. Education says "We can't teach you how and why Haydn wrote this piece, so instead you will memorize our interpretations and related historical facts". Education says "students need culture and diversity". I agree with the latter statement, but how do you grade a paper on music appreciation? Ultimately all art is an ink blot test. When it comes to appreciation, there are no right or wrong answers.

Touching on modern dance, the intent of education worked. You got exposed to it when you might not have otherwise, and found out you dug it. If you were force fed a bunch of video tapes you might have just as easily turned off. The more you saw the more you understand, and that curve will only continue as you spend more time with the art form.

[Matt Erion]

Somehow my closing argument ended up being the fifth and fourth paragraphs.