Let me take you to lunch some day - at your convenience. Just about anytime after next Tuesday would be good for me. I have Tuesday and Thursdays that I don’t teach until 1 so I could be ready by 11:45.

Great website - great ministry. I will try to see if we can have you this Spring. Look forward to hearing from you.

No need to post this comment—I just wanted to let you know I noticed a typo. You mentioned the “novelty waring off”—that should be “wearing”.

Great post–very helpful. Thank you for your ministry.

Meg Johnson
Greenville, SC

Your link is broken…

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Brad; great to have you here!

My only comment here will be to reiterate that no one is denying that meaning exists in both content and context. And I would also agree that meaning in context (conventional meaning) can at times overpower the meaning in content (intrinsic meaning).

For instance, although the tune austrian hymn intrinsically communicates noble moods because of its natural association with how we feel when we are proud or stately, its conventional association with Nazi Germany created new meaning during WWII that overpowered the positive meaning with that which was quite negative. What must be remembered on this point, however, is that when conventional associations overpower intrinsic associations, it always happens in a negative direction and never in a positive one.

Perhaps an illustration will help here. If you are in the company of a happy person, his happiness will be communicated to you through his facial features, bodily gestures, and tone of voice. Those symbols are intrinsically associated with the state of happiness because that is exactly how you act when you are happy. However, even if a given individual looks and sounds positive, your personal relationship with him may cause you to have a negative feeling about him merely because of some negative association. On the other hand, an angry person will communicate his anger to you through facial features, bodily gestures and tone of voice, but no amount of positive association can contradict such expressions due to the nature of negative emotions.

Hanslick is an interesting character. His critiques of composers of his time were biting, yet quite entertaining. He railed against the over-emotional music of Wagner and Liszt, yet he praised Berlioz’s “Symphony Fantastique” early in his career (his stance on the music of Berlioz and others changed in his 20s). Margaret Kartomi said, “He didn’t actually dislike any of the music of Berlioz or of Wagner or of anyone else. He was not a hater of anything Wagnerian in the music field, he just hated his ideas.” Of course, it didn’t help that Wagner was anti-Semitic. It is also important to remember that Hanslick’s formation of his opinions on music and emotion started with Mozart and ended with Brahms (see the quote later in this post).

It’s interesting to read how the opinions of Suzanne Langer and Leonard Meyer, though based on Hanslick’s writings, differ in their explanations of why we feel emotion when we listen to music. Here’s another interesting quote from Kartomi:

“Word-painting, program music, all that kind of stuff is out of the question. That music, to be properly respected, has to be regraded as music. Music is music. Music is sound in motion, as Hanslick said, that’s all it is, but we human beings associate emotional responses with certain things, so that [sings] that all means something to a western audience, horses racing along, or whatever. If you were in Eskimo land somewhere or in central Africa it would mean something else. That’s another thing that Hanslick was very forward-looking in thinking; his aesthetic, his meaning of music tracts really only referred to music, as you said, from Mozart to Brahms. It doesn’t refer to other cultures, and they have different ideas of the beauty in music.”

This is where my previous comments were leading concerning music of other cultures. Kartomi’s opinions also include consideration of culture (or context, as I might say). She goes on to say she tends to be terribly influenced by Hanslick, but with her students, she lets them make their own decisions on music and emotion. There are other sides to the argument (as I previously stated), and it is important to make a decision on the matter.

For those of you who would like to read the very interesting interview with Margaret Kartomi (a leading figure in the discussion on music and meaning), go to:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/.....498161.htm

Ok Tim…great discussion! Anyone else wanna jump in??

Brad

Further clarification:

I’m not arguing that context doesn’t give meaning. But I am arguing that musical content should be the prime means of evaluating music for the purpose of worship.

Tim

You’ve done your reading! I’ve read the Meyer and Hanslick’s little book, but not the Kopiez. I’ll look forward to that. It sounds as though we’re speaking from a similar starting point - two modes of communication. Content and context to use your terminology, bioacoustic and associative to use mine (which is stolen from Makujina).

I find Makujina’s summary of Meyer’s opinion telling:

“Meyer is convinced that of the two modes of signification, bioacoustic and iconic, the bioacoustic is dominant.”

And then, quoting Meyer:

“However important the associations formed by contiguity (iconic system) may be, their role in connotative signification (standardized associations between sign and referent) is a relatively minor one. Most connotations arise as the result of similarities which exist between our experience of music, on the one hand, and our experience of concepts, objects, activities, qualities, and states of mind found in the extramusical world, on the other. Generally associations formed by contiguity modify and delimit those formed by similarity. Both music and life are experienced as dynamic processes - as motions differentiated both in shape and in quality. Such motions may be fast or slow, continuous or disjointed, precise or ambiguous, calm or violent and so forht. Even experiences without literal, phenomenal motion are somehow associated with activity. Sunlight, the pyramids, a smoothly polished stone, a jagged line - each, depending partly upon our attitude toward it, is felt to exhibit some characteristic quality of motion and sound.”

Further quoting Meyer:

“The question is whether the processes of association are the same in different cultures; whether similar musical processes and structures give rise to similar or analogous connotations in different cultures. A modest sampling of the evidence indicates that these processes are cross-cultural.”

Makjuna then goes on to cite several other authorities whose writings point in the same direction (Lidov, Tagg, and others).

The passage you cite deals with how music creates meaning - basically through dashed expectations. Establish patterns and expectations, surprise the listener by contradicting those prepared expectations, and musical meaning results. (This is the basic formula for the creation of style.) But your passage doesn’t address the type of musical meaning achieved, or by what sound signifiers are used to produce it.

Hanslick had two major postulations: .

“The negative proposition that to express or arouse emotions is not the purpose of music, and the correlative positive proposition that whatever in music is beautiful is beautiful in a specifically musical way, wholly independent of our emotions and of natural beauty.”

Hanslick states:

“If the contemplation of something beautiful arouses pleasurable feelings, this effect is distinct from the beautiful as such. I may, indeed, place a beautiful object before an observer with the avowed purpose of giving him pleasure, but this purpose in no way affects the beauty of the object. The beautiful is and remains beautiful though it arouse no emotion whatever, and though there be no one to look at it. In other words, although the beautiful exists for the gratification of an observer, it is independent of him.” (pp.9-10)

“In music we see content and form, material and configuration, image and idea, fused in a mysterious, indivisible unity. This peculiarity of music, that it possesses form and content inseparably, opposes it absolutely too the literary and visual arts. . . In music there is no content as opposed to form because music has no form other than its content.”

Hanslick was writing in an atmosphere charged with hyper-emotion (the Romantic Era), and was reacting to the overt sentimentality rampant in the day. While I agree with Hanslick that musical meaning is inherent in the form, I would disagree that in music there is no content as opposed to form. Certainly there is intellectual meaning in the organization of the sound structures in music, but there is also emotional meaning to be found in the elements. Honegger (whom I have not read) seems to be arguing the opposite of Hanslick. The truth probably lies in a synthesis of their ideas.

Kant was simply wrong. The Bible mentions music more than 600 times and the vast majority of these times makes an integral connection between music and human emotion. Paul even discusses meaning in instrumental music in I Corinthians, presuming meaning in instrumental music as an analogy for meaningful speech in worship.

Have a blessed Lord’s Day!

Tim

Leonard Meyer’s “Emotion and Meaning in Music” is a major work in this area, and according to the author, the most important meanings in music do not correspond with extramusical concepts. However, he does not contend that other kinds of meaning are nonexistent. Meyer’s perspective advanced by the book is often described as that of an “absolute expressionist.” In his own words, “absolute meanings and referential meanings are not mutually exclusive.” One of the major tenets of his theory deals with inhibition and delayed response, that is, when music presents a listener with unexpected sounds or rhythms, it causes the listener to become suspenseful and expecting of an event. It is in this expectation (and delay, or inhibition) that emotional arousal occurs. Some of you may have seen Meyer’s three-part equation: expectation=emotion=meaning. This theory presents some problems, particularly in the area of the arousal of a pleasurable response. His theory does not account for “a good explanation of why pleasant emotions are aroused” (R. F. Miller, 1992).

Reinhard Kopiez has written an excellent article on music and meaning entitled, “Making Music and Making Sense Through Music.” In the article, he explains the three basic positions concerning music and meaning: 1. Music has no meaning at all (Kant indicated that music without text was a mere “amusement of the senses”). 2. The meaning of music is in its form. This theory gained prominence in the 19th century and was summarized by Eduard Hanslick, who stated that music comprises only “tonally moving forms” (from the comments you have made on Makujink, this theory seems to be the one he most closely attends. Hanslick speaks at length on the motion of music, the rise and fall, the fast and slow, weak and strong. However, Hanslick also states that motion is just one attribute of feeling, not feeling itself). 3. The meaning of music is the expression of emotion. Hausegger contended that, while there is a cognitive side to understanding music, there is also an universal and intuitive understanding of emotion in music. This is one possible explanation why the untrained musician may listen to music and find it expressive of emotion.

Obviously, there is much more to say on the concept of music and meaning. As shown in this post, there is no unified, “one-answer” approach to the subject. I am enjoying the discussion on music, emotion and meaning. I look forward to receiving comments on the three theories presented in this post.

Brad

You ask very good questions. I do not deny context. But the prime context to consider is within the arena of the sound constructs of the music itself. Acoustically, this arena contains a sound context that boils down to four essential phenomenon within the physical world - the raw elements in nature from which music is created: waveform, amplitude, duration, and frequency. Perceptually, these four elements translate roughly into timbre, volume (dynamics), rhythm (in all its various manifestations), and pitch (including interval, melody, harmony, texture, etc.). These elements and their sub-parts interact with one another in complex and myriad (infinite?) ways to create what we call music. Composers leave us clues to their expressive intentions using symbols for these these elements. Performers decode these clues to the best of their ability, deciphering the symbols on the page and transferring them to sound across time. Listeners hear sound signifiers that include the elements of dynamics, pitch, timbre, and rhythm. These sound signifiers represent distance across time that signal motion to the listener. These motions indicators in turn trigger within the listener the emotions that are accompanied by the motions of human beings cross-culturally when human beings experience emotions; thus the term bioacoustic. Makujina says it something like this: when human beings (in all cultures) experience sadness, their body motions are slow, downward, smooth, soft, etc. Music represents in sound these motions of the body using melodic intervals (descending dominates), harmony (minor, with its lowered third), register (lower rather than higher ranges), tempo (slower, rather than faster tempi), rhythms (longer, rather than quicker note values), timbre (darker, rather than brighter instruments), articulations (slurred, legato passages, rather than staccato or marcato), and a variety of other musical elements. Composers (and performers to some degree) can control the degree to which these elements interact with one another to temper the emotion. Contrapuntal voices can offer contradictory sound signals to express complex emotions (sadness tinged with happiness, struggle foreshadowing triumph, etc.). The process of musical communication from the mind of the composer through the performer to the mind of the audience is a complex one, with multiple opportunities for a breakdown in communication. These breakdowns can lead to contradictory emotional responses on the part of various listeners - yet another viable explanation for differing opinions as to what music means.

Makujina does indeed observe external musical contexts as well, which I don’t deny either. These he notes are variously labeled (and sometimes distinguished from one another) by aestheticians, theorists, and musicologists as “iconic” or “associative,” as well as a few other terms. These associative responses to music do indeed carry meaning, but that meaning is brought to the listening experience by each individual listener through previous experiences and may well be completely unrelated to the sound constructs of the music itself - a kind of Pavlovian response to certain songs, certain timbres, certain styles. But Makujina argues for the bioacoustic model of interpretation as prime for the purposes of selecting music for worship. He argues that we base our evaluation of music’s meaning on the sound constructs of the compositions themselves as the alternative is to degenerate into chaos. As I say, I think he argues this very effectively from scripture.

The gist of all this, Brad, is to say that music communicate through two principal means: bioacoustic and associative. Makujina has made a believer out of me (using Scripture!) that music’s primary means of communication is bioacoustic - using sound through time to communicate motion, which in turn triggers emotion. It’s no coincidence that the words are related, or that we say we were “moved” to indicate intense feeling, or that a symphony’s divisions are entitled “movements,” I hope you’ll forgive me if my response is overly passionate. Multiculturalism, in combination with relativism, has commandeered the discussion these past 40 years so that no one should dare challenge the prevailing notion that we are all entitled to our own opinion (which of course we are), but in addition, that’s the end of the story. “No one had better dare tell me that this music objectively means thus and such,” is the attitude with which many individuals arrive on the scene. But in fact, while I won’t claim that music communicates propositional truth absolutely, it does (using motion) communicate affections within a fairly narrow band on the emotional spectrum such that certain emotions (sensuality and majesty, for example) are clearly distinguishable by listeners across cultural boundaries.

Thanks for the discussion, Brad. Did I answer your questions?

Tim

I would like you to answer the question I asked in my initial post: is the meaning you perceive in music, the music you state is “carried by the music itself,” absolute? I’m fairly confident I know the answer. However, I would still like to read your response.

As for Makujina, I have not read his book, but I have listened to some of his lectures online. When asked at a 2005 lecture about rock music, he states “music is difficult to quantify,” and that is it “it difficult sometimes to say, it must mean this (emphasis on this).” He then references dance and juxtaposes modern dance with the dancing often seen on stage by rock music performers. Makujina himself comments in the lecture on the “context” of music as being very powerful.

My point here is not to say that instrumental music is devoid of meaning- it surely does possess meaning. I think we’re talking about different things here. You’re stating instrumental music carries meaning, which I don’t dispute. However, my question once again is, whence comes the meaning?

Brad

Actually, quite a bit of cross-cultural study with regard to sound gesture has been done by Australian neurologist and musician Manfred Klein. Klein proves that human beings (from Aboriginal tribes through trained Western listeners) beings hear gesture in sound as a manifestation of the motion that accompanies emotion. Sadness, joy, fear - all these and more are heard across multiple cultures with an extremely high degree of accuracy without regard for previous education or training in music.

Secondly, John Makujina (Measuring the Music) argues very effectively from several passages in Scripture that this means of understanding music proven by Klein (called bioacoustic) is the one presumed by the authors of the Bible. He postulates that the Bible’s premise is that sound has direct connection to the human emotion via this connection with the various physiological responses that accompany our feelings.

There are many other explanations for the two examples you cite, including the biases that you readily describe (i.e. the feminist could easily override or deny a more normally understood interpretation of the opening of Beethoven’s 9th simply to further her agenda). Although, I’ll have to say, there’s a lot of anger in the opening of the Ninth symphony. Her attachment of murderous rape is no doubt her own personal association but she’s on the right end of the emotional spectrum in describing the violent anger Beethoven evokes with that opening.

Sorry Brad, but I think you’ve been hoodwinked by the spirit of this age with regard to musical understanding - this very new musical manifestation of postmodern, multi-cultural, relativism. Read Makujina and reconsider musical interpretation from a Biblical framework.

Tim

Consider this point: Susan McClary, a leader of the “New Musicology” movement, and professor of music at UCLA, wrote that the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony “explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist.” Apparently, when McClary listens to and analyzes the 1st movement of Beethoven’s 9th, this is the message she perceives. Is that message absolute? Does (or should) everyone hear the “murderous rate of a rapist” when listening to the aforementioned piece? Of course, if you read anything at all about McClary, you will quickly learn how she came to such a conclusion (hint: it has little to do with the music itself).

Another point: In the book “Music in East Africa,” Vanderbilt University musicologist Gregory Barz makes the following comments about “music” in East Africa: “For many East Africans, the concept of “music” does not exist, at least not in the sense we may be most familiar with.” Barz goes on to point out how the term “ngoma,” which is used in many areas in East Africa to describe what we think of as music, is an all-encompassing term that pervades daily life. The line between what is and what is not “music” is blurred.

These two examples illustrate how perspectives (in these cases, feminism and culture) can influence “meaning” in music. Surely no one would argue that a piece of high western art music would possess the same “meaning” when heard by the tribal people of East Africa, for example.

Brad

Thanks so much for doing the research on this stuff! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!