Music is Still in the Dark Ages
The advent of musical instruments throughout history has always been a big
thing. The sturdiest, most noble, and reliable are usually snapped up and
included in what is called a symphony orchestra. So far so good. Nothing like
stating the obvious, huh?
But let's go back little bit in the annals of history, and dig up the legends of
our old Buddy Pythagoras and his golden section, "the smaller is equal to the
larger as the larger is equal to the whole ." Nice idea for building huge
edifices and even useful in concepts of music. Where we run into trouble,
though, is in the octave of music that was somehow handed down to us from
somewhere in antiquity.
Now don't get me wrong, mankind has come up with some profound and beautiful
music not only in the highbrow classical stuff, which really isn't classical, as
Leonard Bernstein used to constantly remind us, but actually highly
professional, often deep and sometimes profound -- not only the so-called
classical, but also the other forms of music that have usually come into
eminence because some leading personality brought in a uniqueness to which the
academicians quickly put a classification and a genre to, right down to the
smallest genius way back in the boondocks creating beautiful sounds from his or
her shared capability.
And human beings, not to mention other animals, such as cattle (I used to sing
to the few heads of cattle I was taking care of in New Zealand, and they used to
come running to listen to my street performer's style of music) need beautiful
sounds in their environment occasionally. Not just man-made music, mind you, but
also natural sounds. But that's another article for later.
The greatest composers have always had to get around the Occidental octave. My
mother was a fairly accomplished pianist, as was the vogue in the days when she
was growing up in the early 20th century. The piano was the crème de la crème
of musical instruments, a tympanic instrument by the way, and some of its best
sounds from when the accomplished musician plays the cords like a drum.
Most people listen to the piano and don't realize that. In a couple of songs
that I have on my web site, I use the tympanic technique as I accompany myself
by playing the grand piano mom used to own before she had to sell it to pay the
rent. We were the only mobile home in the entire trailer park with a grand piano
inside. This is also another article related to one of the former ones I had
written on the subject of tympani that I want to write sometime about the
importance of melodic tympani and the real importance of tympani itself which
has always been underrated by some cheap little hep cat (a jive term from the
old "Mojo" mid-20th-century jazz lingo originally meaning: someone believing in
the preternatural powers of his or her pet cat -- serious!) in some two bit band
pounding the drums in the same endless way all night and getting highly paid for
it.
Rachmaninoff and many others began to understand the dilemma of Ti, the
notorious drink with jam and bread -- but seriously, here, the notorious little
half note in the octave which I refer to later in the article, which many
earlier composers just decided to live with, most notorious Tchaikovsky and his
brand of sugarplum music, although, let's hand it to him, he really came up with
some brilliant stuff, including original melody, something of vital importance
to any composition, and the essence of creativity, even in symphonic works that
he really didn't like but had to do for the money, like the notorious 1812
overture, which, talk about leaning on the drums, even incorporated live
artillery -- the charge, mind you, without the actual round or projectile of
course -- into the composition! Not to get into run-on sentences here, what I'm
trying to say is that some of these composers began to realize the dilemma of
the notorious Occidental octave, and began to come up with slightly disconcinent
cords to compensate. They were beginning to break some barriers here, but were
soon lost in the oblivion of the ensuing mindless drivel of the institutionalist
musicians and composers trying to emulate the success of types like Tchaikovsky.
But I tell you, there's nothing like having Rachmaninoff piano concertos played
at home, on the family piano, where you can just sit down and listen and watch.
I used to see her hands skip up and down the keyboard with the type of power
that Rachmaninoff requires, studying the sounds, and even occasionally taking a
foreboding glance at the sheet's music covered with cryptic dots everywhere that
I knew in my dyslexic mind I might never be able to decipher on my own. Sure
enough, I found out in my high school days back in the sixties when we didn't
know that much about dyslexia, in fact nobody knew about it except some people
kind of understood that it was more than underachievement that caused the
several odd-bunch-out of two or three of the 30 or so students in each and every
class to get such bad grades when they really had brilliant minds.
One's ability to survive depended on a passing grade in high school and,
disability or not, I had to somehow find a way to get that C average, which
invariably meant only being able to do three of five assignments for homework
each night. It was always like being on the knife's edge trying to find a
balance of inevitable failures and good grades, in order to obtain a
passing-grade average ultimately. So although I tried to pick up several musical
instruments. the violin, the coto, the bass trumpet (an antique instrument of US
Civil War vintage, which the bandmaster at Porter Military Academy in
Charleston, South Carolina, had on hand in his little cache), the piano, the
trombone, yes, and even the drum, I soon realized that if I was going to get by
in school, there wouldn't be enough time for the battle for the C average and
the music. Though I could have opted for the music. An accomplished musician can
make a decent wage these days. Also, I tried to learn the violin in grade school
in the Armed Forces Dependant's School in Frankfurt, Germany, where it was an
elective taught on school time.
Now Pythagoras and his little clubhouse of musical enthusiasts, studied music is
if it were some kind of magical thing. Pythy, baby! -- How could you? Well, he
was discovering the mystery of the straight edge, which the Orientals were also
doing at just about the same time. Why you think they have the curves on the
roofs? Ha, you thought it was superstition. The superstitious part is that
many think of such things as magical, when they are natural, in a way, though
invisible.
You need to read my article "The Predators of Man". Maybe that's why parts of
Los Angeles and other such cities are like a war zone, when you realize that kind of violent,
sadistic, racist and genocidal music they're listening to.
Some of the rap
performers, though, are brilliant poets that can literally stand up and almost
do an impromptu recital. However, all that is lost in the violence and the lack
of creativity of the deafening crescendo that actually does permanently damage
the ears of the listeners, so after a while, nobody can hear the brilliance of
their poetry anyway, because almost the entire audience, in the auditorium or at
home listening to the media, are going or have gone practically entirely deaf --
so any potential literary value is literally lost on deaf ears, beside the
mental damage it causes. And besides, even the literary value of their genius is
canceled by their need to compromise in order to make money. So they come up
with a lot of stuff that idolizes the cruel and the criminal and glorifies the
criminal lifestyle, because the only guys with the big bucks these days are the
ones who need loud, meaningless music to drown out the agony of their guilty
consciences.
However , I learned enough about music to be able to produce it myself on a
reasonable level, becoming reasonably professional at it so that I could make
enough money to keep traveling for about 12 years of my long odyssey twice
around the world, from the late sixties to the end of the 20th century. So when
you have your notes, as they are labeled in the Occidental octave, Do, Ra, Me,
Fa, So, La, Ti, Do, according to the factor in the Golden Section, sort of
visualized like a right triangle lying on its side with equally delineated lines
inside said angle, "the smaller is equal to the larger as a larger is equal to
the whole", in music it's like saying "Do is to Ra as Ra is to all the rest, but
there is a flaw.
And this helps to illustrate our dilemma with mathematics, with calendars, and
even, you might say, our own psychological makeup. Remember that cute little
song in the musical "The Sound of Music"? "Do, a deer, a female deer. Ra, a drop
of Golden Sun"? And it goes on throughout all of the names of the octave, but
there is the problem with poor little Ti, "a drink with jam and bread." It's
only a half note.
There are only six whole notes,
one half note and a repetition an octave higher with the same note, Do. It
seems humankind can't get beyond six in anything (well, at least beyond a little
beyond six-and-one-half), even in computers and the hexanic integer, and the
hexadecimal. There are just certain things the human being wants to do,
but can't.
Here, perhaps, is a conflict between man's logic and psychological makeup, and
actual music, and the Golden Section itself. Having come to understand certain
aspects of our flawed human thinking, we may come closer to musical reality if
we replaced the concept of the octave with a unit of seven; and then we have to
have a bunch of other stuff which we have yet to discover such as the whole
notes maybe are actually three-quarter notes, and maybe other things like every
seventh note is separated by a whole note. At any rate, all musical reality
aside, a composer could really do something by getting away from the Golden
section completely, and just composing one or more compositions based on his or
her own section -- Gold, silver, copper, what-have-you.
In order to get the Occidental octave to sound like the Golden section ideal,
they have to jimmy one of the notes, and voilà, it's not a whole note but a half
note. This goes on and on with humankind. It's a very stuffy attitude, you know?
One's imagining one to be what one certainly is not. Almost everything gets
jimmied in our society. You think it's bad when the white-collar “crims” cook
the books? Buddy, there's not enough penitentiary going around to accommodate
all the walking around, scratchin', “prudes” that are out there jimmying
something in order to try to get it to fit.
It reminds me of the front tires on all vehicles (that have four tires). The
last time I learned about that one was a couple of decades ago, I wonder if the
glorified automotive engineers that are so revered in society have managed to
come up with a solution for that one. They never figured out the best way to set
the front tires, so their solution was to jimmy the tires and cause them to
scrub in a slight bit, causing them to wear out a lot faster, but in a lot safer
and more controlled way. And this business about pi. I'm in the process of
writing an article about that. They never could figure out how to measure
curves, so they jimmy those too, and that term "jimmied" covers just about
everything out there. As a matter of fact, that's probably a better name for the
human being. Forget Homo sapiens. Just call them Cook-the-Book Humannus, or how
about something cute like "Humana of the Bandanna?"!
So our drink with jam and bread, good old Ti, is more like a tinkering with
jammin' and greed. Good old mankind, they only get so far and as long as it
looks good, they leave it at that. I have to remember that as an artist: We tend
to leave a work of art when it starts to look OK. The problem once again is not
only the human mind, but also the frame of reference in which the mind exists.
Now if we were amebas in a pond, and I suppose it's questionable as to whether
we are or not, then we might have some excuse. But in fact, among all the
creatures on the planet, the human creature is one that is renowned, especially
among themselves, as being capable of building their own environment from
scratch, or more accurately scratching away at the existing environment,
obliterating it, and then coming up with a cheap imitation or worse, something
that is totally hermetically sterile and void of life.
So music hasn't even gotten off the ground yet. People are treating it like
it's gone as far as it can go, especially in this so-called classical music. Oh, there's probably somebody out there who could be greater than Beethoven or
they could be greater than a combination of Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninoff,
Brahms and the whole list, including Franz Liszt, we don't want to be listless,
but they got ripped off by the retail world's indulgence in neo-mercantilism and
are probably out there as waitresses, sanitary engineers, dishwashers, garage
mechanics, you name it! Anything but what could get us out of this depression
into which we've sunk with punks like Jagr, McCartney, and lord plush bottom --
what's his name? I forget, Sir somebody or other -- oh, yeah, Sir Tomming-The-Piano
Himself, Elton John -- leading the whole world of destabilized, mindless
consumers down the garden path and the putzie little yellow brick road to
oblivion. With their pathetic little jimmied octave of Do, Ra, Me and on and on
they go.
But, let's hand it to them. They knew which side their bread was buttered on,
they knew where the payola was and where the money was in our present mindless
society, and they went for it. It's not their fault. They're really not to
blame, in fact they're to be congratulated. They may not have made it in the
annals of great musical accomplishment -- in other words, they could have been the
next Mozart but they never made it -- but they did supply one very valuable thing:
They exposed the common man as being no Home Sapiens, not even a Cook-the-Book
Humana Bandanna. But I personally, I'm not impressed with their musical
antics though I'm sure they don't care
about that. But in my opinion, they're no musicians -- at least not
serious ones -- and that goes for all
the rest of those pop music guys. Maybe Jagr could've been,
but he turned his back on music. He knows that and I know that.
In the mid-20th-century there was a flutter of activity in the classical music
realm. People were reaching out for chaotic, discordant and erratic composition
and falling flat on their faces. In fact, after a half-century of that, we are
now looking at what may be the death of classical music. The great composers are
out there, but along with those who have starved to death are those who survived
and who have had to resort to menial work; jobs they do not fit that they are
overqualified for and therefore are not really good at, anything but music, and
as a result they're neutralized; canceled out by two-bit cheap-shot,
cook-the-book mercantilism, which 20 years ago when I last looked at the
statistic, were usurping over a quarter of the nation's wealth while the
greatest musicians and composers consigned amongst the poor of the land, were
having to subsist on a mere 3% of that wealth. And that was 20 years ago,
imagine how bad it is now. This is perhaps Napoleon's biggest lesson on why you
need aristocracy: once you let the cheap get into power, that's the end of
creativity and intellectualism, at least creative intellectualism.
The peasants took over, and a few centuries later, the only thing you've got
left is a pop culture with a violent, cruel, criminal-oriented pop music with a
few inordinately rich grunts sittin' around beating a drum, screaming
obscenities and getting paid for it. Humana Bandanna the Crim, with his and her
genocidal music to riot by and to kill by which everybody listens to: the 15%
who like it, and the 85% who are forced to listen to it against their will
because the 15% have to use their super sound systems as hearing aids just to
hear it because they're being made permanently deaf by it. What a sad story.
What a bunch of failures and losers.
One other thing that was very popular to try in the mid-20th-century was an
effort to create new instruments. That never got off the ground. Usually
they were a
bunch of weird things, percussion mostly, that looked like they were about to take off at any
minute and the musician had to run around hitting them with rubber mallets and stuff. Man, it's hard to beat
or best the tried-and-true instruments like the clarinet or the trumpet or the
flute for crying out loud: So-called modern instruments that have taken centuries to perfect. And the
humble little guitar, who would have ever thought it? You try to play some
decent music on those instruments and they'll run you out-of-town. You'll get
guitarred and feathered.
The original guitar was started back when rap art and rap music was really
something to listen to in the days of the ancient classics, when the poet played
a harp at his or her recital. Then somebody realized, if you put a little
backboard behind the strings of the harp and you press the board at any point
along a string, you could instantly get a higher note. The first guitars,
according to our friends the archaeologists, were perfected by the Hittites, I
think, over 2500 years ago. The first guitars were made, so they say, out of
clay. By putting frets on the board behind the strings, and by limiting the
number of strings, they began to find that they could get one vital thing from
their music that was very important for professionalism: speed.
Enter the staccato note, stage left. The vital ingredient of the classical
performance. If you want a definition of classical music in one essential word,
it would have to be, you guessed it, "speed". This is the ultimate professional,
who can pepper his audience with a barrage of skillful and precise staccato
notes and cords. OK , that's wonderful, but where are you going to take your
audience? I mean, you've gotta go somewhere with all that professionalism.
It reminds me of a truly great musician of the 20th-century, who didn't need no
fancy Symphony to be a great composer: Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, known by his huge
and loving audience, and even his numerous enemies as "Woody". Now I forgot his
quote I'm sorry to say, please forgive me, whether it was two or three, I think
it was two, but the quote went something like this: "if you're playing more than
two cords, you're showing off."
Guthrie was one of those geniuses that knew it was not in the brilliance of the
musical virtuoso, although that could be something, but usually wasn't, but
rather it was in where the musician or the composer took the audience that really
counted. He knew the importance of music was really in that it could lift people
up, inspire and enlighten them, and really as I keep saying, take them somewhere
-- somewhere higher, somewhere better. He wandered around the poor and homeless,
he and his friends, such as Burl Ives and others, performing for free for those
folks who were too poor to be able to afford to go out to a concert of live
music, except for what they made themselves, and that quite often wasn't bad at
all.
Woody said "I hate a song that makes you feel like you're no good..." And I
suppose that's it in a nutshell. We're at the dawn of music, folks. We haven't
even begun, despite the greats, despite the Mozarts, the Bachs, the Brahmses
and so on, and also despite those who didn't compose for symphonies but still
could do something great on a humble instrument like the guitar and lift the
poor people up out of this dismal, cheap-shot, cook-the-books,
institutionalized, mercantilized, downsized and outsourced world of ours. We
have not yet stepped out of the dark ages of music. As John Paul Jones once said
"I have not yet begun to fight", so it is with the world of music: They have not
yet begun to do what music can really do.
--Fine art,
digital art,
music,
several voice
introductions by me about my work, articles about
my artwork
and other topics such as
sociology,
the cosmos,
economics,
education,
medicine,
poetry,
humor,
something I call premonitions,
and a series about covered bridges,
all by
yours truly, the webmaster, Paul A.L. Hall. There are
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...the golden
section and the octave...
Copyright (c) 2005 by Paul A. L. Hall. All rights reserved.
Music is still in the dark ages.
16 March, 2005
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