Tarasti, Music Models Through Ages - A Semiotic Interpretation

Music Models Through Ages: A Semiotic Interpretation
Author(s): Eero Tarasti

Source: International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jun.,
1986), pp. 3-28
Published by: Croatian Musicological Society
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E. TARASTI,
MUSIC MODELS....
IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28
MUSIC MODELS THROUGH AGES:

A SEMIOTIC INTERPRETATION
UDC: 78.01:781.1
EERO TARASTI
Original Scientific Paper

Izvorni znanstveni rad
Received: October 15, 1985
Prispjelo: 15. listopada 1985.
Accepted: April 7, 1986
Prihvadeno: 7. travnja 1986.
University of Helsinki,
Department of Musicology,
Vironkatu 1, 00170 HELSINKI,
Finland
ABSTRACT
The article consists of two parts: in
the first one methodological tools are
prepared for what follows in the second
part, namely the comparison of different
models of music historical, as well as
aesthetical thought. Thus, the essay
deals with the rationality of music history, the mutual relations of musical
aesthetics and history.
Theoretically speaking, two different
ways of seeing and conceiving music
are distinguished using Levi-Strauss's
and
into
lived-in-models
division
thought-of-models of human cultural

life. Our question then is, whether musical history is a 'lived-lin-model' i.e.
whether there is really a 'progress'
(Burney) and development in the series
of musical events and facts, or whethet
the rationality of musical changes are
only due to 'thought-of-models' which
the history writer or aesthetician brings
there. In the latter case musical history
would be reduced to a certain kind of
narratlivity (Erzdhlbarkeit, by Carl
Dahlhaus).
We may start by posing a direct and simple - and perhaps a naive

- question: what is music history? Is it a typical thought-of-model
(Levi-Strauss 1958:347-348), constructed by a researcher, a writer of music history in order to create contfinuity and coherence for a series of events
and musical phenomena which would otherwise seem to be detached,
incoherent and discontinuous? Or is music history really a lived-in-model,
based upon the experilence of musi,cal subjects and aimed at shaping
different phases of musical communication, i.e. the views of the composer,

E. TARASTI,
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MODELS...,
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17 (1986),
1, 3-28
the sender of a musical message, the performer or, finally, the receiver?
In this latter case one might, accordingly, speak of music history as a particular experience, emerging at a given phase in musical communication,
at a certain moment (as when a style changes abruptly and a former movement with its intonations is denied, or when one consciously and deliberately returns to an older style: see, for example, the influences of
Bach and Handel in Mozart and Beethoven, or Stravinsky's neoclassicism).
Nevertheless, the problem stil] remains of whether this view of music
history as an experience is, in the first place, too limiting. Would we really
be justified in speaking of music history solely at the moments when we
feel the presence of history, for example when Musik ilber Musik is composed, or when we evidently consider that we have at a concert, say,
listened to some epoch-making work or, in the worst case, have recognized
some work as faded, as having only historical interest, but without anything
to say to modern times? It seems that music history as an experience
would easily become degraded into a sort of subcategory of musico-aesthetic
experience, where the aesthetic Gegenwdrtigkeit (Dahlhaus 1977:13) is not
fully realized.
According to Carl Dahlhaus, the essential tension between musical
history and aesthetics lies in the fact that a musical work, when belonging
to history, forms a document from a previous age; while as an aesthetic
phenomenon it is experienced by a listener as fresh, expressive and
meaningful in the present. Thus it may seem that music history as an
experience would merge into its exactly opposite pole, aesthetics, and
would consequently lose its own inherent characteristics. The only conclusion to be drawn is that music history as a musical and operational
lived-in-model seems to be too restricted.
Evidently music history is also a thought-of-model, a sort of interpretational scheme by which we organize the events of our musical past
according to certain criteria. In this case, we are faced with new types of
problems: is there in the musical events, the data (it is not yet necessary
to define more closely what is here understood by a musical datum)
something like 'a musical development'? Does the concept of progress,
used by Charles Burney in his musical. history (1789, 1935), have any empirical justification? Or is this kind of order always and exclusively a
function of an organizing consciousness, do we bring this order always
with us? If so, music history is something rather arbitrary and depends
on the musical model assumed by each era, in order to articulate its musical
past. There would not exist any music history in an objective sense. In this
way we would finally elevate the aesthetic principle of Gegenwdrtigkeit
above everything else. Accordingly, when we read a music history written
by Sir John Hawkins, Fetis or Ambros, what we do, in fact, is only read
certain interpretations, aesthetic views, which try to legitimate by disguising their discourse as an objective and impartial narrative of historical
data, composers and their music.

E. TARASTI,
MUSIC
MODELS
..,
IRASM
17 (1986),
1, 3-28
One of the basic human needs is undoubtedly to create continuity and

predictability in life, to replace the unsure state of enthropy by redundancy.
Against the chaotic overview of music history, its discontinuous enthropy,
even elementary schoolbooks provide neat distinctions into periods with
characteristic features manifest i!n all the arts. Other means have also been
used, it is true, to find the underlying thread of music history. Jacques
Chailley, for example, reasons that the history of Western art music, in
fact, follows the adoption of the invervals of the overtone series, in the
order in which they emerge in the series: the age of octave and fifth lasted
thousands of years; the third was accepted as a consonance and an element
of music only at the end of the Middle Ages; the minor seventh was taken
into usage a hundred years later, atonal music meant the acceptance of
minor seconds and major sevenths, and now composers experiment with
micro-intervals which can be produced by synthesizers (Chailley 1977:23).
What is interesting is that the further one goes in the overtone series, the
shorter the historical periods become; if the continuously accelerating
progress were followed toi its end, we would already have inevitably arrived
at the end of all musical development. This is one way to make music
history - on a certain level - rational. What is involved in Chailley's
model, after all, is a natural principle provided by physics, which musical
systems of various ages would apparently unconsciously follow in their
development. However, it is as useless to try to prove this model right, as
to ponder the question whether tonality is a perceptual, biologically rooted
principle common to all human beings.
Music in all its modes of exiistence is, of course, a remarkably more
complicated and subtle phenomenon. Our fundamental question would
thus be: is there a rationality, common to all periods, all musical experiences and practices, which would help us to compare historically different
musical works, composers, whole musical cultures and societies with each
other? Are there, or can one conceptually determine, dimensions which
would form a basis for a sort of universal music model, naturally not realized in any concrete case in their full extent, perhaps, but forming a kind
of ideal type or paradigm, whereby the diachrony of music history could
suddenly be interpreted as a synchrony?
Our question can be further specified: if such a rationality is found,
is it based merely upo'n the way in which a music historiographer organizes
his discourse and speaks about musical data - in other words, is the
existence of music history only due to the phenomenon which Dahlhaus
calls Erzdhlbarkeit (1977:80) but which we may call by another term from
a different research tradition, namely narrativity? There is every reason
to suppose that the narrative model is a strong one, probably one of the
strongest models created in Western thinking and art, and it is by its
character both a thought-of and a lived-in model.
Our.music, as well as our talk about music, seems often to follow
certain narrative principles, which were generalized during the classical

E. TARASTI,
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period, and which persist even in the present century. The whole of XXth
century modernism has sought to destroy and sweep away the narrative
model from people's consciousness, but without any convincing success.
If modernism in this century has any common denominator, it is undoubtedly precisely anti-narrativity (or 'anti-illusionism', to use a term
from Brecht; or 'ostranenie', alienation, to refer to the Russian formalists).
The same holds true, by and large, for any musical research which
declares itself to be an 'objective' science dealing only with facts. First,
one has to remember that a scientific discourse which claims to be objective,
universal and non-subjective, is itself based upon the usage of certain
discourse mechanisms (see: Greimas: Semantique structurale, p. 153-154),
by which it creates an illusion of realism, the fiction of a language telling
us about reality 'just as ilt is'.
Obviously, this way in which a discourse pretends to be objective
corresponds to deep epistemes of our cultural era. However, the structuralists have just discovered that we are guided by certain systems of
thinking which rule over all our actions, oblige us to say certain things
according to the automatisms of certain codes, and determine what reality
is. Lotman's view of Freud was that he did not discover the unconscious
but that the unconscious is a creation of our own culture, and not a discovery in the sense that some new continent, island or planet can be found
and charted (Uspenski & al. 1973:3-4). All this holds true also for music:
when Hildesheimer tells us that he reveals to us the real Mozart (Hildesheimer 1980) and his view is transmitted to millions of theatre- and cinema-goers, via Schaffer's and Forman's Amadeus, he refers to Freud as
his scientific authority without noticing himself the interpretational nature
of the whole doctrine (this is not to be understood as an objection to Freudinspired art theories as such). In fact, Hildesheimer organizes Mozart's life
according to classical narrative principles - following the general actantial
model which was fiound by the Russian formalists lat the beginning of this
century and later formulated by Greimas in its currently known form
with six factors: sender, receiver, subject, object, helper and opponent.
(How naively well this model fits Schaffer's interpretation of Mozart's life:
Amadeus,
sender - Leopold Mozart, receiver - humanity, subject object - music, helper - Paron wan Swieten, opponent - Salieri). It is
very difficult to get rid of the narrative model!
It is not possible, either, to find any satisfactory continuity for the
delineating of music history by pointing out the usual genetic relations
between different works of a composer, or the works of different composers. Mostly, what is involved is only a new variant of the narrative model,
particularly regarding the relationship sender-subject. For example Erik
Tawaststjerna's Sibelius biography tells of the composer's strong emotional
reaction to a performance of Bruckner's Third d-minor symphony in
Vienna. Moreover, there is an evident structural connection between the
main themes of the Kullervo Symphony and Bruckner's Third Symphony

E. TARASTI,
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MODELS...,
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17 (1986),
1, 3-28
(Tawaststjerna 1976:110). Does this mean that there is a genetic relation

between these two works? Or to return to Mozart: the small Fantasy in
d-minor for piano (KV 397) is almost like the whole of Don Giovanni in a
nut-shell. We may well hear the immobility of the Stone Geast in the chromatically descending choral passage in the mediating section, or the frivolous
carelessness of Don Giovanni in the allegro at the end. According to Charles
Rosen, Mozart's instrumental music often follows the dramatic development of his operas, and the expressivity of his iinstrumental pieces is in fact
a sort of dialogue of opera personages, the musical development being
drama-like (Rosen 1976:296). Even so, we would hardly say that the small
d-minor Fantasy influenced the creation of Don Giovanni. Rather, the phenomenon should be called auto-oommunication, a semiotic term meaning
the internal dialogue or monologue within a composer's consciousness
(Gasparow 1974, also Tarasti 26).
In what follows, I shall try to search for the 'rationality' of music
models of music
history by comparing different aesthetico-theoretical
created at different times. Whether these models are, in turn, only rationalizations and intellectual justifications of musical practices at a given
period - as music histories often are - is hard to determine here. In
a certain sense our enterprise will be, it is true, an effort to reduce music
history to aesthetics, while the method by which this is done will be
semiotical. The fact is that before we can start to confront those enormously
varied sources and 'music models', we must already have in our minds, as
a sort of initial hypothesis, a kind of universal model for all music, a model
of what music ultimately is. The empirist could argue here: would it not
be reasonable to form such a general model only after we have gathered
enough evidence from different musical practices? Nevertheless, music
history constitutes an endless and unarticulated store, where we can find
something only it we know what we are searching for. Another counter-argument would be: would not the way we are going to detach musical
ideas and models from their original historical contexts, from their complex ties with the epistemes of the age, its social and cultural history, lead
us easily to false conclusions? The concept of affect of the baroque era
cannot be equated with the sentimentality of romanticism. To this we may
answer that we are not going to proceed in that way. Instead, we compare
conceptions of different eras for music history, as a reading model by
which we interpret musical thinkers of various ages. Accordingly, our
hypothetically universal music model is not an empirical model - it is not
a lived-in-model - but expressly a theoretical construction, with a metalanguage and discourse of its own. In this regard my epistemological
choice is the same as in the Greimasian school of semiotics. >This kind of
discourse cannot appear like empirical discourses as an objective discourse,
as a 'pure' description of facts, since the aim is to form a model of the object
of study, to project thils model onto its object and again back to the
discourse of the research. This procedure is based upon the idea that the

E. TARASTI,
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MODELS...,
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reference of the study is not the relation to a reality conceived as being outside the discourse, but the relation to the model which the study has of its
cbject.<< (Ahonen 1984:155). Consequently, the comparison of different
models taken from music history - from Al Farabi and Kircher to Romain
Rolland or Arnold Schering, Luigi Russolo and John Cage - is possible
precisely in the context of this theoretical model. On the other hand, what
is essential in all semiotical study is the idea, already consistently expressed
by Louis Hjelmslev, that research must make its implicit commitments and
presuppositions explicitly manifest (as Jean-Jacques Nattiez, 1985:89-106,
has emphasized in his musical semiotics). This is necessary in order that the
way in which the research forms its own referential illusion, its own
discourse, should not be concealed, and that the study should not acquire,
because of this kind of concealment, ideological and dogmatic features.
The elaborated theoretical model must therefore be set face to face with
the music models under examination, so that it can be thereafter corrected,
if needed.
In the first place, it is evident that on this level of examination our
'universal model' does not yet need to include the whole generative process of music, but we may concentrate on some level of it (for the concept
of 'generative process' see Greimas-Courtes: 1979). As a sort of implicit
background hypothesis one could refer to Greimas' general model of the
generative process, from which, however, I only choose some parts as the
basis of my examination without pondering the applicability of the model
in its entirety to the musical field.
In fact, in a somewhat similar way to certain phenomenological
aestheticians, Greimas distinguishes in every formation of meaning three
processual phases: virtual, actual and real levels. (Greimas 1979). He
supposes that the direction of the process goes precisely from the virtual
to the real, from the immanent to the manifest. This can be well taken
as a background for what we understand, in fact, by music. Carl Dahlhaus'
ideas about musico-historical facts may also be interpreted in this light;
he asks: what do we mean when we say that 'a work' is a musico-historical fact? Where do we ultimately find its historical character: in the
intention of the composer, which the historiographer attempts to reconstruct; or in the musical structure of a work, which is then analyzed by
formal and genre-historical criteria; or in the consciousness of the contemporary audience of a musical work, for whom the work was an 'event', a
consciousness which cannot be grasped in its individuality and uniqueness,
but lonly in its general features and determined as a period, generation
or social class with all their characteristic traits (Dahlhaus 1977:58-59)?
In other words, music does not perhaps only begin in the notation, neither
in the performed, played or sung, i.e. acoustic form - in fact no more
than it ends with them. Music already exists before it crystallizes in the
brain of a composer into a work, and it still exists after it has been performed - in other words, music continues to live in the consciousness of

E. TARASTI,
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MODELS
., IRASM
17 (1986.), 1, 3--28
the receiver and music-listener as an 'intonation' - to borrow a term from

Boris Asafjev (1976). In fact, one has to make the statement that if we are
to seek for the moment of continuity in music history, it will be found
in the area and in the processes which occur before and after a work. The
very category of a work, an isolated, identifiable and perhaps unique composition, is the factor which makes music history discontinuous. How can
we then describe what happens before and after a musical work?
We notice that the Greimasian model with its three phases, going from
the virtual through the actual to the real, is indeed sufficient to describe
what happens before the work, i.e. the process which leads to the outcome
of a work. But is it still convincing when it is used to describe the reception
of a work, the life of music in the collective memory of the society of
receivers and listeners, which in turn forms a starting-point for the creation
of new musical works and thus brings us back to the very beginning of
the 'generative process'? Already at this point we notice that the Greimasian model should perhaps be supplemented. We may of course examine
how some musical idea develops following a wave-like movement on the
axes virtuality, actuality and reality; we would thus study how some musical structure, as it were, first 'ripens' in its virtual mode of existence
during some period until it emerges in some later period in a concrete
composition, but disappears again later under the surface without perhaps
vanishing altogether, but remaining to wait for its next manifestation in
some more favourable era. The situation might be pictured as follows:
real
actual
A
%,,
virtual
where the horizontal lines represent certain thresholds of repression. This
implies that not all virtual composition-technical innovations, ideas and
structures are realized and attain the 'real' level, since the ability of musical conception of the receiving audience sets its restrictions upon them.
Greimas also describes each level in terms of its proper 'modalities',
general human ways of evaluation and approach: virtual modalities are
represented by vouloir and savoir (willing and knowing), actual modalities
by pouvoir and devoir (ability and obligation) and real modalities by etre
and faire (being and doing). The transformation or crystallization of music
into an intonation is produced through these modalities: the upwards direction in the model represents the willing (vouloir) of the sender/composer,
the downwards direction the willing of the receiver/listener, which appears
to a composer as certain norms, obligations and aesthetic judgements.
It is also important to notice that music can remain on the virtual
level alone, i.e. the generative course may be stopped on whatever level
- for example in the Middle Ages the most appreciated part of music was

10
E. TARASTI,
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MODELS
....,
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17 (1986),
1, 3-28
what was called musica speculativa, the pure thinking of theoreticians,

'knowing' without 'willing' i.e. without movement towards a musical manifestation or any sound-form. Nevertheless, insofar as music aims at the
real level, the manifest realization, or, in other words, towards communication, it is always faced with the expectations and aesthetic evaluations
projected onto it by the receiver. This forms a sort of obstacle for
creativity, the free fulfillment of ideas and the generative process. If
aesthetics tries to describe this kind of evaluation, to select by either
approving or rejecting musical intonations, one perhaps needs another
term to depict the contrary motion, the anti-aesthetics, i.e. the energy
which flows from the virtual towards the real. Aesthetics as a science and
art of devoir proceeds, accordingly, in a contrary direction, from the real
to the actual and virtual. For an artist, everything is possible, the paradigm
is open (in theory) for him; but as soon as he starts to think what is really
possible in a given situation of communication, he applies a sort of implicit
and inverse aesthetics, an internalized devoir, an obligation on his own
artistic will.
We have spoken above of the modalities as kinds of general attitudes
of ways of approach, by which a subject evaluates an object, as it were
takes possession of it and humanizes it. In fact, in comparing different
music models we pay attention precisely to this aspect, not so much to
the acoustic or syntactic properties of music. If we may say that music
starts from something, then it evidently starts just from these modalities,
to which can be reduced not only the generative course of music towards
its sound realization but also the contrary course, the life of music within
the consciousness and memory of a listener. Therefore, when we say that
modalization is a process which in a way humanizes and anthropomorphizes
music, unites it with the sphere of human values, we are not referring to
any concrete, semantic content, which also can be attached to music on
its various levels. This symbolic and referential dimension of music remains
totally outside this modalization - although they are linked, both being modalizations, to other semiotic mechanisms, which enable music also to
describe and represent extra-musical events, personages, acts, choices etc.
One could thus depict the creation of music in the following way: first,
we meet the level of modalities (willing, knowing, ability, obligation) which
is condensed into different passions, emotions. It is a common place to
speak of feelings and emotions in music aesthetics and about how music
is a language of emotions. In the following we shall, however, use the term
passion, by which we understand rather a certain constellation of modalities, their articulation and the resulting virtual-actual state, which, accordingly, is already determined by the modalities it consists of, and can be
conceived as a rather distinct emotion. For example, a pupil of Greimas,
J. Fontanille, has analyzed 'despair' by reducing it to various modalities
(Fontanille 1980); Greimas (1981) himself finds certain fundamental modalities within 'anger'; and Herman Parret (1982) has done several similar
studies. In music, too, one could in the same way analyze for example the

E. TARASTI,
MUSIC MODELS
..., IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28
11
'despair' of the beginning of the Dante sonata by Franz Liszt by using

purely modal concepts, and examine in a corresponding way other individual modalizations of different composers, which perhaps seem to be fully
unique, but beneath which the network of fundamental modalities can still
be discovered (for example, see Scriabin's idiolectal modalizations, which
appear on the verbal level as special linguistic (mostly French) performance advice in such an amount that a special dictionary has been
compiled of it in Russia; if this dictionary were analyzed, one could cut
down the number of entries by reducing them to some few modalities).
In fact, this kind of analysis of passions, where they are reduced to modalities, is a very similar procedure to the one Descartes presented in his
tractatum Les Passions de l'ame, where he first listed a great many
passions: (I'estime, le mepris, la generosit6, l'orgeuil, I'humilite, la bassesse,
la veneration, le dedain, l'esperance, la crainte, la jalousie etc.), which he
then reduced to six fundamental passions (Descartes 1970:115-116): ?But
the number of those which are simple and primitive, is not very great.
Since while reviewing all those which I have listed, one may easily remark
that there are only six of this category, namely, Admiration, Love, Hatred,
Desire, Joy and Sadness, and all the others have been composed of some
of these six or are their subspecies. In order to not embarrass the reader
by their multitude, I shall deal here separately with the six primitives.
Then I shall make clear in which way all the others originate from them.,<
When reducing the passions to modalities we are doing a similar type
of analysis. But on the other hand, it is also evident that music does not
consist of presenting only one passion, one state of mind, but that music
in particular is a temporal continuum of several passions, and that a composition may contain several passions successively and even in a certain,
precisely planned order. Where this occurs, i.e. the listener is led to
experience a given series of emotional states, we are, in fact, already
approaching a still more complex series of events, which we might call
narrativity. A musical work becomes in this case the realization of a
certain narrative program:
modalities
>
passions
> narrativity
There is naturaly much music in which the narrative level is not attained:
one may say that this level is created through three kinds of structures
and processes, called in the Greimasian model discursivization, i.e. three
possible embrayages/d6brayages
(for which Roman Jakobson used the
term shifter) (Greimas 1979: 119-121). What is involved here is the working
of temporal, spatial and actantial categories in musical discourse. For
example, the aforementioned Dante sonata by Liszt represents music where

12
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the narrative model functions and where 'despair' and the powers of hell
at the beginning are later replaced by the principle of 'hope' and the light
of paradise. This simple narrative program in music could be described
using the categories mentioned above: the actantial category of 'personage'
appears in the way how Liszt's theme serves as a sort of musical fictive
subject, a musical actant, personage and hero with which the listener can
identify himself; the temporal category contributes to the time-shape of
this actant-theme: first, in the restless, jerking a'nd panting alternation
of pairs of sixteenth notes in the 'despair' section, and particularly in the
absence of a clearly-marked verse boundary (the performer is expected to
add it as a sort of suppressed respiration - this is not an ordinary theme
with a clear-cut melodic, song-like structure, but something which deliberately goes against this expectation) in the 'despair' section, and again
in the rhythmic expansion when it expresses 'hope'; the spatial category
is manifested by the way the 'despair' motif dwells in a low register, erring
back and forth chromatically with minor harmonies; in the 'hope' motif
the music moves into the luminous upper register and a major key.
The way musical narrativity precisely emerges from a series of emotions (caused by the music itself) forms a principle also used by several
applied techniques of music, such as musical therapy. According to the
state of mind of the person under therapy, and also the level of his musical
culture, a series of works or passages from works are selected for him,
leading him through certain emotional states according to a certain program (Guilhot-Jost-Lecourt
1979:48). This is manifestly music being
organized in accordance with the narrative principle - it is, in fact, exactly
the same process as is used in many compositions based on narrativity. If
one asks, for example, why Beethoven did not take as the slow movement
of his Waldstein sonata the piece he originally planned to use there, namely
Andante favori, but composed a new movement titled Introduzione, the
answer surely is that he attempted to subordinate the whole sonata to one
narrative program, which necessarily required a kind of 'bridge' between
the rhythmically energetic character of the first movement and the Klangfarben-theme with its pedal effects in the last movement. The influence
of a similar type of integrating narrative principle is to be felt also in Schubert's Wanderer-fantasy, where different movements are articulated, it is
true, according to classical musico-syntactical genres - sonata and variation
forms, scherzo and fugue - but where the movements are temporally
united under one dominant narrative program in such a way that the
boundaries of the movements are weakened and actantially there is only
one main theme, which is varied.
d'Alembert remarked of the purely instrumental music of his time
that it was on the threshold of narrativity when it expressed certain emotional series. When discussing Muzio Clementi's sonata Didone abbandonata
in his essay De la liberte de la musique he says (d'Alembert 1821:554).
>,All that purely instrumental music without form and object does not
speak to the spirit neither to the soul, and well deserves to be faced with

E. TARASTI,
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13
Fontanelle's question: Sonata, what do you want of me? Composers of

instrumental music produce only useless noise when they do not have in
their minds, like the famous Tartini had, some action or expression to be
painted. Some sonatas, but very few, do possess this desirable ability, which
is so important in order to please people of good taste. We only mention
one of them, entitled Didone abbandonata. It is a very beautiful monologue;
one perceives there how pain, hope and despair follow one other quickly
and distinctly in all their degrees and nuances; one might even use it for
a very lively and pathetic scene on the stage. But such pieces are rarities.<,
It is interesting to notice that later Arnold Schering mentions exactly the
same sonata as a sort of early form of program music, when discussing
Beethoven's poetical ideas.
We may say, then, that the narrative model is indeed one of the strongest models developed during the history of Western art music, and other
arts as well, and we may finally even wonder whether musical narrativity
was born together with tonality. In the Renaissance any chord could still
be followed by any other chord, whil.e in the early baroque period chords
are given a certain direction, an order of succession, i.e. a program. Thus
it would seem that the basic scheme of tonality I-V, V-I is that basic
syntactic scheme to which the fundamental syntax of the narrative deep
level could particularly well be linked (the fundamental syntax which
Greimas describes by hiis semiotic square: sl-s2, s2-sl), and which at the
level of narrative surface syntax would appear as a process in which subject
seeks object; we might then say that going from tonic to dominant would
mean giving up the value-object (Greimas 1979:124-125) (in Charles Morris'
(1956) terms the movement 'away from') i. e. the 'disjunction' of subject
and object (SnO), while the return from dominant to tonic would signify
the regaining of the object (and is in fact the basic movement of all tonal
music, i.e. 'towards' something); further, all movements taking place contrary to this scheme would represent movements against something. On
the other hand, one has to remember that the basic schemes of narrativity
may also settle upon other kinds of musico-syntactic structures, and that
the generative process of music may stop at some level; consequently,
the formation of narrativity may remain either at the level of 'passions'
or even at the level of modalizations preceding passions.
Moreover, narrativity is a model which - taking i(nto consideration
all the modes of music - is difficult to situate exclusively at the level of
a work: within a musical work it has occured most clearly in the compositions of the romantic age, as a certain psychological conception of music
in the syntagmatic and figurative ,form of 'wandering' (Nielsen-Sloth
1984:222-223) (see Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt); even the development of
a style was seen at that period as a narrative process (as the 'development',
rise, flourishing, decline and destruction, of some musical genre), and similarly also the lives of composers as they were depicted in biographies,
and finally the whole of music history. We shall return to this problem
later.

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In principle, music models can be divided in this way into two main
classes: narrative and non-narrative, where non-narrative models are those
in which the afore-mentioned generative course has stopped at some phase
or where various elements of the generative course are 'negated', annulled,
resulting in anti-narrativity as represented e.g. by the Brechtian reaction
to the culinaristic opera or John Cage's philosophy of silence. The term
non-narrative is not after all, sufficient for these models, since what is
involved is precisely an anti-narrative phenomenon.
Finally, we still have to specify one further aspect in our concept of
a music model: In all music models, roughly speaking, two different levels
can be distinguished: the level of the signifier or of the music to be listened
to, the physical stimuli, musical material; and the level of the signified,
the concepts, thoughts and emotions aroused by music, in a word the
content (whether it be the level described above of modal processes prior
to music, or the level of its decoding, de-modalizations, the articulation of
the emotional content by the music listener after a musical event). Music
models can also give value to and emphasize either of these aspects, and
in an extreme case even entirely deny the existence of either of them. On
the other hand, in the same way as composers search for new ideas, new
contents to be expressed by their music, so journeys towards the unknown
can be made by seeking for new signifiers, by enlarging the musical material. Then music models determine what, at the level of the material, is
music and what is not (for example, excluding/including bird song, noises
etc.). Moreover, within the limits of what is then considered music on the
purely material sense there is a constant oscillation between two spheres,
and at the level of signified,
one representing 'order', redundancy other
and
the
non-order,
disorganization, chaos and
pleasure, harmony
enthropy, displeasure. This may be illustrated by the concepts of dissonance and consonance, and the gradual enlarging of the sphere of consonance during music history until it has totally included the sphere reserved
for dissonances and transformed everything into musical order. If we now
speak of the distinction and dialectic between music and anti-music (with
reference to Juri Lotman's cultural theory), we are still moving within
music, while the previously mentioned more radical distinction means a
separation between music and non-music. (Uspenski & al. 1973:2)
music
non-music
music
anti-music
Furthermore, one important aspect is how a music model represents itself:

the mere fact that Kircher's book as a discourse so evidently differs from,
say, Hawkins, Burney, Ambros etc., also reveals something essential about
the differences between these music models themselves.

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Comparing Music Models

Al-Farabi
The first music model for our paradigm of comparison comes from
the Turkish-Arabian music theoretician Al-Farabi, who lived about AD
and of whose great tractatum dealing with music, Kitdb al870-950,
musiqi al-kabir, only the first part has been preserved (Al-Farabi 1930 and
1935). In this part, Al-Far&abidiscusses intervals and instruments (especially
the lute), but also pays attention at the beginning to problems which we
would call music aesthetical. Al-Farabi rejects the doctrines of Pythagorean music theoreticians and distinguishes three kinds of music: the
first kind arouses in us a pleasant, sweet and quiet response; the secoind
kind has the same properties and in addition the ability to excite our imagination: this music makes ideas emerge in our minds, it expresses them.
The first kind is compared by Al-Farabi to a decorative ornament, the
second to a representative painting. The third kind of music is produced
by states of mind, by the passions: both men and animals produce sounds
which may vary in their emotional content, and can express sadness,
tenderness and anger. In reality, however, these three classes are intermingled, and Al-Farabi considers the highest category to be music where
all these three kinds are represented. Nevertheless, he devotes a special
chapter to the third type and says: >,We have noticed that certain sounds
result from a certain passion or a certain state of mind. We have to consider tones as the goal of this emotional state, its fulfilment, because we
know that the consequence of a given thing is at the same time its aim
and realization. The tones and sounds due to a state of mind have to be
regarded also as a sign of the existence of this state of mind, this passion,
since the necessary consequence of a thing is also a sign of its existence..<
(Al-Farabi 1930:14-15)
Accordingly, Al-Farabi has a rudimentary conception of the 'generative course' in the sense of our universal model: he also considers heard
music to be the result of a certain process, and finds 'passion' to be the
virtual level of music. Al-Farabi also takes into account what happens after
the generative process, i.e. the existence of the music listener: >>Thepurpose of the sounds is, in turn, to revive the passion in question or to underline it... in this way the tones arouse in us a certain state of mind or
their corresponding emotion.< (Al-Farabi 1930:15)
But what is essential is that, according to Al-Farabi, this is only an
'illusion' of the original passion; in modern terms: the intentions of a
composer or player are not the same as, although similar to, those of the
receiver. There is also another sense in which Al-Farabi refers to what
we understand by the modalization or 'modalities' of music. Towards the
end of his tractatum, in the book about composition, he makes a distinction
between two kinds of elements in melody: those which are necessary to
its being (i.e. scales, rhythms) and those which make them more complete.

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He enumerates eight ways to make melodies more beautiful and pleasant

tol the ear, while at the same time he admits that it is impossible to define
and denominate these qualities (i. e. what we would call musical modalities).
These eight ways of interpretation are: purity of tone; making long notes
trembe, vibrate; performing softly notes with lengthened time values;
singing certain tones from memory: performing certain tones nasally;
accelerating certain tones in the course of or at the end of a melody; singing
some tones with maximum volume; and emphasizing tones sometimes by
singing them with a chest voice (Al-Farabi 1935:88-90).
Al-Farabi particularly stresses the importance of the modality of
'knowing' (savoir) in his musical theory, and presents af the same time
reflections on musical structure. He compares
very semiotically-sounding
music with poetry: as poetry consists of phonemes, accents, half-lines and
lines, so in music tones constitute the primary element, forming melodies
and ultimately all music (1935:65). According to Al-Farabi musical structures are artificial and not based on nature: the Pythagorean argument
about the relations of planets and stars producing music is based upon a
linguistic misunderstanding: namely that of using the word 'music' in two
different meanings. Further, as early as the beginning of the Middle Ages
Al-Farabi is fully aware of differences between cultures and of the fact
that what are regarded as natural tones in a given culture, e.g. Arabian,
are 'natural' only in this context. He even determines rather strict limits
for the cultural sphere to which his musico-theoretical considerations about
tonal relations, distinctions between structural kernel motifs and secondary ornamental motifs, can be applied. We have to wait a long time before
we meet an equivalent 'semiotical' consciousness of the cognitive starting-points of the scholar himself (which we emphasized at the beginning) in
Western musicology.
Kircher
The most characteristic feature of the music model in the Musurgia
universalis (1650) by Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) is its totally nondiscursive nature: the text contains alternating sections which we would
call empirical observations, musico-theoretical charts of scales, advice for
making instruments, mythical stories (for example about the healing power
of music or the origin of music), theological reflections on 'the music of
the angels', musico-historical remarks about old and new music, fantastical
experiments with various kinds of music machines (even at this early date
we meet an example of musical man-machine communication, which is
thus not only the invention of the computer age), and so on. These different
chapters cannot be placed in the same dimension, since single observations
and chronicle-like narratives are intermixed with scientific experiments
and systematic reports e.g. about the principles of composition and rules
of counterpoint.

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The whole study starts with very 'anatomical' terms, since Kircher
analyzes how a tone is produced and (already!) what different affects,
passions of the soul, music can arouse in us (love, hatred, fear, pity, shame,
joy, stupidity, contempt, fidelity, anger, despair etc.). He also examines
the auditive and vocal organs from the anatomical point of view, comparing, for example, the human larynx with that of animals and insects
(and explaining also why the voice of eunuchs is reminiscent of that of
females). He supposes that wind instruments have been constructed by
analogy with the structure of the vocal organs. Special attention is given
to the fact that even animals are able to produce 'music' i. e. musical
signifiers: he introduces a quadruped found in America and called Pigritia,
whose voice has been testified by several witnesses to be miraculous, and
which sings according to a diatonic scale (Kircher 1650:27). After these
mainly zoo-semiotical observations Kircher presents both mythical and
historical information about the invention and origins of music - accordingly, his music model has a historical dimension. Nevertheless, what
matters most is how music became a speculative science dealing with
numerical relations: consequently music has its place beside arithmetic,
geometry and physics. Thereafter Kircher introduces new methods of
composing with various kinds of charts, speaks of the phisiology of consonances and dissonances, the sympathy and antipathy of tone relations
or the power and influence of music - and again, not only in humans
but in animals as well. He has a variety of empirical evidence concerning
this, such as experiments in which tones make animals (e.g. wolf cubs)
frightened or pleased (zoo-semiotics again!). Advice is given about how
the bites of the tarantula spider can be cured by music, and there are also
general reflections on the medical use of music, based upon the fact that
music has a direct influence upon the nerves and muscles. In this sense,
Kircher's model anticipates modern musical therapy and neurophysiological studies (cf. later John Cage's music model, in which there are cases
where music is transmitted directly to the human nerve system). Kircher
deals largely with the class of sonus prodigiosus; it consists of three
subclasses: natural, unnatural and supernatural. To the first class belong
the inexplicable sounds met in Finland (!) which are heard especially in
the mountaineous areas (Kircher quotes the chronicle by Olaus Magnus),
but which can be explained as being produced by the internal structure
of the mountains, where the sound is multiplied - like in the mountains
of Switzerland (Kircher 1650:234). The next chapter considers echo effects
and musical acoustics with many diagrams and results of empirical experiments. For example, Kircher asks how a church can be built in such a
way that three singers can produce as much sound as a hundred. The
chapter presents experiments providing that sound is carried more powerfully through a curved tube than a straight one; there are comments on
theaters built by Vitruvius, and various proposals for artificial acoustical
spaces under the title Magia echotectonica (Kircher 1650:283).

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The next section in the book discusses the construction of instruments: different music machines and mechanisms are examined by which
even the sounds of animals may be imitated (pioneer forms of modern
synthesizers, therefore) including a tone cylinder, water organs, and automatic Glockenspiels (Kircher 1650:304-343).
After these extremely concrete and empirical technological presentations a chapter follows on the phenomenon of symphonismus (Kircher
1650:370), which does not mean 'symphonism' in any sense referring to
instrumental music, musica humana, but which signifies that the whole
universe is constructed according to musical relations. Thus Kircher speaks
of the 'symphonism' of stars, stones, plants, trees, water, animals, birds,
quadrupeds and colours, classifying them according to a musical scale. He
then ponders the interrelation between the internal microcosm of man and
the macrocosm - particularly from the viewpoint of various rhythmic
and metric modes. He presents a chart of different rhythmic figures and
their impact upon the human body, fifteen different cases altogether, which
this prestructuralist of music combines in order to obtain the effects he
wants. In the chapter entitled Symphonismus patheticus Kircher reveals
himself as a 'behaviorist' as he proves that passions can move the human
soul, so that the rhythm of the pulse reveals particular passions; the pulses
of a joyful or a sad person, or of one fallen in love, are different. Finally
Kircher even organizes the virtues according to a musical scale, then does
the same for politics, and the whole study ends with reflections upon musica angelica, which cannot be perceived through the senses. In this music
model the limits between music and non-music become rather vague: ultimately music can be found anywhere and in anything (cf. here the similar
'universal grammars' of music developed later by Charles Fourier (1848)
and Claude Levi-Strauss (1964, 1966, 1968 and 1971)).
Burney
Our next music model is from an entirely different age and cultural
area: two competing music histories appeared in England in 1776: A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period by
Charles Burney (1776-1789, 1935) and A General History of the Science
and Practice of Music by Sir John Hawkins (1776). They both clearly represent a linear model of musical development and its phases. The alternative model in the 18th century was, as we know, in the form of a dictionary, as used by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Sebastien de Brossard
of
the
by
baroque era, exemplified
not to mention the musical thought
Kircher's wholly paradigmatic and achronic model (above), where the
paradigm of various dimensions in music is not yet closed and restricted
to the model of a linear, syntagmatic unfolding, which in the next century
gave birth to the narrative model of music history.

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Burney introduces the deictic 'ego' category, the first-person narrator,

though at the same time he remains aware of his own, explicitly subjective
point of view. Although his aim is to 'trace the genealogy of Music in a
right line' (Burney 1935, book 1:20), at the beginning of his work he presents his general principles, the explicati,on of his own music model, in the
chapter Definitions. The last remnant of the old 'paradigmatic' model is
in fact this short introductory chapter; in Burney's music model it is the
only one with absolute, timeless validity. Burney considers that he has the
right to take and reinterpret all earlier 'models' of music history according
to his own concept of rationality: his speaker is a real historiographer, who
evaluates musical facts and puts them in their proper order. He criticizes
the way in which Kircher presents Ancient Greek and Hebrew music
without clarifying the original terms: (Burney 1935, book 1:443-444):
,Kircher undertakes to give his reader an idea of modern Greek music
and its characters; and has indeed collected a great number of notes and
their names, put pretends not to furnish equivalents in the music of the
western world. And to insert such barbarous names, and more barbarous
characters here without explanation, would no more help to initiate a
student in the mysteries of Greek music, than the Hebrew or Chinese
alphabet.< There is evident irony in a footnote of Burney's referring to
Kircher >to whom even Egyptian hieroglyphics are easy.?
Music is for Burney a discourse of its own, whose development he
follows country by country and genre by genre. He pays only limited
attention to the technology of music; man-machine communication is not
included in his model, though he introduces the instruments of antiquity
and even gives to one of his chapters the title >Music after the Invention of
Printing<; but, in general, the sphere of music is quite clear to him and
he does not need to define strict borderlines between music and non-music.
Instead, the field of music is clearly divided, at the level of signifier, into
spheres, like the contrast between consonance and dissonance (Burney
1935, book I: 21-22):
>Music is an innocent luxury, unnecessary, indeed, to our existence,
but a great improvement and gratification of the sense of hearing. It consists, at present, of Melody, Time, Consonance and Dissonance.
By melody is implied a series of sounds more fixed, and generally
more lengthened, than those of common speech; arranged with grace, and,
with respect to Time of proportional lengths, such as the mind can easily
measure, and the voice express. These sounds are regulated by a scale,
consisting of tones and semitones; but admit a variety of arrangement as
unbounded as imagination.
Consonance is derived from a coincidence of two or more sounds,
which being heard together, by their agreement and union, afford to ears
capable of judging and feeling, a delight of a most grateful kind. The combination and succession of Concords or Sounds in Consonance, constitute
Harmony; as the selection and texture of Single Sounds produce Melody.

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Dissonance is the want of that agreeable union between two or more

sounds, which constitutes Consonance: in musical composition it is occasioned by the suspension or anticipation of some sound before, or after,
it becomes a Concord. It is the Dolce piccante of Music, and operates on
the ear as a poignant sauce on the plate: it is a zest, without which the
auditory sense would be as much cloyed as the appetite, if it had nothing
to feed on but sweets.
Of musical tones the most grateful to the ear are such as are produced
vocal organ. And, next to singing, the most pleasing kinds are those
the
by
which approach the nearest to vocal; such as can be sustained, swelled, and
diminished, at pleasure. Of these, the first in rank are such as the most
excellent performers produce from the Violin, Flute and Hautbois. If it
were to be asked what instrument is capable of affording the greatest
effects? I should answer, the Organ; which can not only imitate a number
of other instruments, but is so comprehensive as to possess the power of
a numerous orchestra. It is, however, very remote from perfection, as it
wants expression, and a more perfect intonation.
With respect to excellence of Style and Composition, it may perhaps
be said that to practised ears the most pleasing Music is such as has the
merit of novelty, added to refinement, and ingenious contrivance; and to
the ignorant, such as is most familiar and common.<
Burney's 'definitions' reveal many interesting aspects of his music
model: first, the specificity of music is already defined there and clear
normative requirements are set regarding almost all the parameters of
music. The task of music is limited solely to producing pleasure (compared
to this, the principles of Sir John Hawkins seem to be considerably more
serious and 'structural' when he says in his music history that he wanted
to: >>... reprobate the vulgar notion that [music's] ultimate end is to
excite mirth; and, above all, to demonstrate that its principles are founded
in certain general and universal laws, into which all that we discover in
the material world, of harmony, symmetry, proportion, and order, seem
to be resolvable.* (Allen 1962:77)
Burney states quite directly which tones are more pleasant, and bases
his view ulon a sort of earlier variant of the intonation theory: in fact,
the myth of the song-like character of music is already manifest here. On
the other hand, Burney is conscious of the existence of musical competence. Where musical competence was limited in Al-Farabi's model to the
modality savoir, likewise Burney announces that his 'definitions' concern
only the 'trained' or competent listener. The justification of this competence itself is not questioned, but he admits later in his work that >,There
is a degree of refinement, delicacy and invention which lovers of simple
and common music can no more comprehend than the Asiatics harmony.
... The Chinese, allowed to be the most ancient and longest civilised people
existing, after repeated trials, are displeased with harmony, or Music in
parts; it is too confused and complicated for ears accustomed to simplicity.<
(Burney 1935, book III: 11)

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From the point of view of our generative model Burney's definitions

seem to stop at the real level of music, although the concept of musical
competence does provide it with a certain depth.
In the second volume of his study Burney examines the principles
of musical criticism, and says there that music history and even music
in general cannot be evaluated and reflected upon without a sort of music
model, which he calls 'principles'. These are necessary for judging both
compositions and performances. His list of essential factors is a mixture
of musico-syntactic but at the same time also 'modal' elements, in the
sense discussed earlier. A perfect composition consists, according to Burney,
of the following ingredients: >,melody, harmony, modulation, invention,
grandeur, fire, pathos, taste, grace and expression, while the executive part
would require neatness, accent, energy, spirit, and feeling; and in a vocal
performer, or instrumental, where the tone depends on the player, power,
clearness, sweetness; brilliancy of execution in iquick movements, and
touching expression in slow.< (Burney 1935, book III: 8) What is interesting
in this list is that the properties are so far from each other - contrary to
our universal model in which we supposed that the same modalities might
be used to depict both musical enunciation and the act of enunciating, the
work as well as its performance. A composition can only be elevated to
the level of passions when all the above-mentioned criteria in composition
and performance have been fulfilled and 'polished into passion', as Burney
puts it.
Romanticism
In many senses Burney's model already refers to the narrative model
which flourished during romanticism; the view of musical communication
as persuading the receiver-subject, as guiding him according to the abilities
of the composer and the performer, so that the receiver is subordinated
to their dominance - this is there quite clearly. A good illustration of how
the life of a composer forms the starting-point also for the modalization
of music, is provided by the composer biographies in the romantic era.
For example, as late as in Romain Rolland (1921) we find several examples
of this kind of inference in his Beethoven study: music is seen as a direct
continuation of the ihner and outer events of the composer's life: >>This
sombre melancholy is obvious in some works from this period: in the
Pathetique sonata and, above all, in the Largo of the third piano sonata,
op. 10.< (Rolland 1921: 17) This is the ad hoc hypothesis of a romantic biographer, which allows him to explain away all the counter-evidence: >It is
curious that the same characteristics cannot be seen everywhere, that
beside these works so many others, like for example the smiling Septetto
(1800) and the bright First symphony (in C major 1800) are full of youthful
nonchalance. The soul evidently needs time in order to get used to pain.
It needs so much joy that if it does not have it, it creates it.< (Rolland

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1921:17-18) At the level of the discourse itself, a biography of a composer takes shape in a form which could be analysed, in Vladimir Propp's
manner, into functions, stereotype actions and events, such as childhood,
musical influence, anecdotes describing the exceptional traits which appear
in an early phase, the fight for success, diseases, travels, premature death,
glorification. It is naturally obvious that not all functions necessarily
appear in the same biography, but that the above list forms an ideal
paradigm from which different types of composer life are realized according
to the scheme of self-destruction (Mozart), glorification (Wagner), emigrant
composer (Stravinsky), national hero (Sibelius, Villa-Lobos) and other
models. In fact, one could certainly also discover a composer's actantial
narrative model; just as in folktales besides the hero there is a false hero
who is then uncovered, so we may see by the side of a composer genius
a false genius - which might be illustrated, for example, by the comparison between Beethoven and Mozart in Hildesheimer's Mozart biography
(Hildesheimer 1980:62-64).
On the other hand, the 'narrativity' of romantic music has its roots
also in its connection with the literary culture; even in compositions which
were absolute music, one presumed that there were literary programs in
the background. Arnold Schering, a late writer of Beethoven-hermeneutics,
has, it is true, tried to show the place these programs had in the 'generative model' of a romantic composer (Schering 1936). The presentation of
a poetic program was not an end in itself for Beethoven, but served only
as an animating force, as a spiritual support for the structure and development of a composition, which occupied the composer only as long as the
work to be created was under its influence. But as soon as the work was
or was shifted from the virtual and actual to the real level
finishedthe program had fulfilled its task and could sink again into darkness.
Schering's intention was to show only how the poetical programs chosen by
Beethoven had adopted a musical form (Schering 1936:64).
In fact one can say that from the point of view of the narrative model
there are many parallel ways to describe the 'generative course' of music.
The music itself could appear as an illustration of 'the process of becoming',
and in this sense it is not surprising that Beethoven's music has been
considered as the musical emanation of Hegel's philosophy. The beginning
of the Waldstein sonata was already described in the commentaries of
the romantic era in terms like ein allmdhliches Werden und Wachsen
(Schering 1936:498), and in a certain sense it could be seen to manifest in
a musical form how Hegel (1969, part 5:73-74) described 'the emergence
of the beginning' in the first volume of his Wissenschaft der Logik.
Russolo
As we come to the 20th century, where the narrative model of romanticism persistently survives, with modernism a need appears to enlarge the
sphere of music both at the level of signifier and that of the signified. To

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a great extent this was a reaction against the previous music model and
had its roots in the radical change of the acoustical code in modern technology-dominated life. The view presented by Luigi Russolo in his manifesto
The Art of Noises (Russolo 1975), represents precisely this kind of extension of the musical field. Russolo sees the historical development of music
in the following, condensed way: Musical art first searched for the soft
and bright clearness of sound. Then it started to combine various sounds
with the aim of obtaining sweet harmonies. However, nowadays more and
more dissonant and strange sound combinations are sought. In this way
one is approaching noise sounds. Russolo considers this development to
be simultaneous with the quantitative increase in the number of machines
participating in work. In the milieu of great cities, as well as in the
otherwise silent environment of the countryside, machines produce sounds
in such an abundance and variety that pure tone no longer arouses any
emotion, being so weak and monotonous. In order to excite our senses
music too has looked for more and more complex polyphony and varied
timbres and dissonant chords, having musical noise as its ultimate goal
(Russolo 1975:36).
A man from the 18th century could never have endured the dissonant intensity of our modern orchestras: on the contrary, in Russolo's
opinion, our ears enjoy it since they are acquainted with all the noises of
modern life. Musical sound is, in other words, too limited in the quality
and variety of its timbre. Even our most complicated orchestras can always
be reduced to four or five categories of sound, i.e. string instruments,
plucked instruments, brass, woodwind and percussion instruments. This
vicious circle, however, has to be broken at any price, and the endless
multitude of noise sounds has to be conquered. Is there anything so
ridiculous in the world as twenty people multiplying the plaintive mewing
of violins? That is why it is infinitely more pleasant to listen to the noises
of tramways, cars etc., than the Eroica or Pastorale symphonies (Russolo
1975:37).
Russolo (1975:40), nevertheless, denies that this new music should
borrow its elements from the sphere of non-music: noises must not only
be imitated but they have to be created and invented, and precisely such
as to affect the emotions through a particular acoustic pleasure, when the
artist can, in turn, combine them according to his artistic will. Russolo
(1975:40-41) presents six classes of noises, which a futurist orchestra
should be able to produce:
1) Grondements, Eclats, Bruits d'eau tombante. Bruits de plongenon,
Mugissements
2) Sifflements, Ronflements, Renaclements
3) Murmures, Marmonnements, Bruissements, Grommellements, Grognements, Glouglous
4) Stridences, Craquements, Bourdonnements, Cliquetis, Pi6tinements

E. TARASTI,
24
MUSIC MODELS...,
IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28
5) Bruits de percussion sur metal, bois, peau, pierre, terre-cuite, etc.

6) Voix d'hommes et d'animaux; cris, gemissements, hurlements, rires,
rales, sanglots.
These constitute, according to Russolo, the fundamental noises; others
are only their combinations. This kind of new orchestra can produce the
most varied new sound-emotions through imaginative combinations of the
noises, accordingly, a special taste and passion for the understanding of
noises takes shape gradually. Noises must be liberated from their sources
and become abstract elements, which the will of a composer can elaborate
and transform into an emotional part of a work of art. In his compositional
aesthetics Russolo thus, in fact, goes back to the old model of romanticism
and the generative course of the emotional content of music. But by
renewing the selection of musical signifiers he believes it will be possible
to reform also the signified. In reality, the Cartesian theory of passions
returns in his music model but at the level of signifiers. In other senses too,
and in its experimental character, his model is similar to Kircher's in introducing new machines and instruments, bruiteurs.
Cage
The model elaborated by Russolo is taken to its extreme by John
Cage, who entirely rejects the modality of will of a composer. He consistently represents this century's post-narrative ways of thinking, the
attempts to get rid of lineary-syntagmatic programs and to open the musical paradigm to new alternatives (Charles 1981). In John Cage's conversations with Daniel Charles this view is clearly manifested. The new
anti-narrative model which he represents has often been erroneously
interpreted as if it excluded all previous music models. When Cage was
asked whether he would agree to conduct all Beethoven's symphonies, he
answered: >I would agree if I could use enough musicians to conduct, in
one single concert, all nine symphonies superimposed!< (Charles 1981:98)
Cage rejects the negative aesthetic criteria that noises are inappropriate
in the service of music, and says that a new aesthetic attitude should
accept anything whatever that happens in music. The aesthetic 'devoir'
and the normativity in our universal model should be totally rejected. If
Cage had referred to the Asafievian idea of the intonation store, it would
have included all the sounds of the environment! Consequently, he does
not make any distinction between music and non-music. On the other
hand Cage denies the existence of the 'generative course' altogether:
>Sounds have no goal! They are, and that's all. They live. Music is the
life of sounds, this participation of sounds in life, which may become but not voluntarily - a participation of life in sounds. In itself, music
does not obligate us to anything.. (Charles 1981:87)

E. TARASTI,
MUSIC MODELS...,
IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28
25
That is why Cage does not accept, for example, melody at all, since
as soon as there is melody there is a will and a desire to bend sounds to
that will. He particularly sets within parentheses the modality of 'will' and
everything related to its energetic thought. His principle is detachment
or, to quote Charles Morris, letting things happen (Morris 1956). As a composer he is not interested in the will to subordinate the tones to some narrative program, which the listener would be persuaded to follow. x>They
bend sounds to what composers want. But for the sounds to obey, they
have to already exist. They do exist. I am interested in the fact that they
are there, rather than in the will of the composer. A 'correct understanding'
doesn't interest me. With a music-process, there is no 'correct understanding' anywhere. And consequently, no all-pervasive 'misunderstanding'
either.^ (Charles 1981: 150)
Accordingly, Cage also rejects the idea of music as communication: in
his view the very concept of communication presupposes that there is
something to be communicated. Communication always means imposing
something, determining something. Instead, in a conversation, a dialogue,
this does not hold true, but the participants remain what they are. Cage,
as Kircher did in his time, notices that music is in direct contact with the
human nerve system. But whereas usually the nerve system is influenced
by music, the situation can in fact be reversed: one can produce music
with the nerve system. Cage tells about a work by Alvin Lucier where
electrodes were attached to the composer's scalp, he closed his eyes and
performed other movements, and the performance consisted of alpha-waves which were transmitted through several loudspeakers situated
around a kettledrum, a gong or a trash can. The same waves sounded
differently through the different resonators, and the audience was hugely
delighted by the aspect of 'mystic' participation in the work, since the
electrodes could just as well have been attached to anyone's skull. What
fascinated Cage in this kind of performance or 'bio'-music was the fact
that the performer didn't have to have any particular skill at all, he was
no longer needed in the traditional sense as a transmitter on musical
communication. (Charles 1981:221)
In fact, Cage gives up the whole concept of a structure in the Greimasian sense as an entity based upon two contrary elements. Our thought-of-models are considerably rougher than the lived-in-models of our experience. When we think in opposed pairs, like sound and silence, being
and nothingness, we simplify our experience, which is extremely complicated and not reducible to the number two. In Cage's view even when
we hear a periodic, repetitive rhythm, we hear something other than the
tones themselves. We do not hear the tones as such but the fact that they
have been organized. Consequently, he ends with a negation of structure
itself. Cage thus excludes from his musical model the contract between
composer and listener and everything that can be determined with
unchangeable units. In fact, what he accepts is the temporality of music

26
E. TARASTI,
MUSIC
MODELS
...,
IRASM
17 (1986),
1, 3-28
in its broadest sense. However, it seems that his music model would lead
us most decisively out of music history.
In reality, the historicity of music disappears in this last model
entirely and merges into the aesthetic Gegenwartigkeit. One may perhaps
assume - and this may be stated in conclusion - that music history itself
is a phenomenon which emerges in connection with musical change. There
is a certain 'normal' speed of events. If music models or intonation stores
change more slowly than this ordinary speed, the change remains unnoticed
and music models adopt the achronic paradigmatic form. If again change
occurs too quickly it is not observed either, and the result is rather the
experience of a sort of 'stasis'. This is John Cage's case, since according
to him each work and each sound experience must provide its own music
model which is different from the previous 'models'. Not without reason,
Cage has remarked that all necessary music has already been composed,
and all we need is to open ourselves to the 'music' surrounding us.
Music history would thus be a phenomenon of a certain speed of
change, and accordingly definable as a certain articulation of temporality.
To paraphrase McLuhan's words: neither cold nor hot societes have a
history, only 'mild' societies possess one.
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28
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MUSIC MODELS...,
IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28
Satetak
INTERPRETACIJA
GLAZBENI MODELI KROZ RAZDOBbJA: SEMA3IOTICKA
Clanak se sastoji od dva dijela: u prvome se dijelu pripremaju metodolo?ka
oruda za ono gto sli-jedi u drugome dijelu, tj. usporedbu razli6itih modela glazbeno-povijesne i esteti6ke misli. Stoga se 6lanak bavi racionalno9du povijesti glazbe,
medusobnim odnosima glazbene estetike i povijesti.
Teorijski govore6i, dva se razlidita na6ina videnja i shva6anja glazbe razlikuju
upotrebljava ii se L6vi-Straussova podjela na proiivljene i pomitljane modele Ijudske kulture. Nage se pitanje, dakle, postavlja kao: da li je povijest glazbe *proiivljeni modelv, tj. postoji ii zaista >progres< i(Burney) i razvitak u slijedu glazbenih
dogadaja i 6injenica, iii se racionalnost glazbenih mijena mo2e pripisati )promisljanim modelima<< koje pisac povijesti iii estetidar u nju unosi. U ovome drugom
slu6aju povijest glazbe bila bi svedena na neku vrst narativnosti (Erzdhlbarkeit
po Carlu Dahlhausu).
Medutim. da bismo mogli usporedivati razli6ite >>promigljanemodele(( tijekom
na?e glazbene povijesti potrebno je prije svega odrediti neke kategorije, dimenzije
glazbenoesteti6ke iii semioti6ke prirode kako bi se kroz razli6ita razdoblja vidjele
slidnosti. Te kategorije i pojmovi tvorile bi ono Sto ovdje nazivamo >hipoteti6ki
univerzalni model<(, koji, naravno, po sebi pripada klasi promiNljanih modela.
Qvaj hipoteti6ki model sluii kao interpretatiivna shema iii 6ita6ki model
s pomolu kojega interpretiramo razli6ite glazbene mislioce. Stoga se svo razmigljanje zbiva unytar rasprave o glazbi, dok vaienje tih rasprava s obzirom na
glazbene 6injenice, >>glazbene raspraveo po sebi, ostaje izvan predmeta ove studije.
Hipotetidki univerzalni model uglavnom se temeiji na pretpostavci da glazba
tvori neku vrst proizvodnog procesa u onom smislu u kojem A. J. Greimas definira
svoj pojam parcours gdn6ratif. Tako razlikujemo u glazbi razine stvarnih, aktualnih
i virtualnih stanja koje svako za sebe ima viastite modalitete. U ovome radu uzimamo u obzir samo semantidku a ne i sintakti&u dimenziju glazbe. Misli se da
esteti6ki: iii semanti6ki sadriaj glazbe mo2e biti o~blikovan kao proizvodni proces
koji zapotinje s modatnostima, a koje, kao neke konfiguracije, tvore ono Rto nazivamo strastima u glazbi. Nadalje, kada se strasti organiziraju u sintagmirki poredak, program iii lanac emocionalnih stanja, onda susre6emo razinu narativnosti u
glazbi.
Prema ovome, narativnost mora biti smatrana vrlo jakim modelom u povijesti
umjetni6ke glazbe Zapada i posebno je cvala u eri romantizma. Nije sludajno da
su prve glazbene biografije, koje opisuju iivote kompozitorA sa svojim 6esto sli6nim
vrstama narativizacije, i pisanje povijesti glazbe bili u stvari za6eti u tor razdoblju. Sve se to dogadalo u isto vrijeme kada se glazbeni govor po sebi smatralo
vrstom naracije.
Prirodno je da svi na'i glazbeni modeli ne dostiWu razinu narativnosti: neki
se modeli zaustavljaju na njezinu pragu na razini modalnosti (Al-Farabi) iii strasti
(Descartes, Kircher), dok neki pokugavaju negirati prevladavaju6u snagu narativnosti nakon romantizma, kao gto je to s Johnom Cageom kao krajnjim sludajem.


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Music Models Through Ages: A Semiotic Interpretation

Author(s): Eero Tarasti

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IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

MUSIC MODELS THROUGH AGES:

Original Scientific Paper

thought-of-models of human cultural

We may start by posing a direct and simple - and perhaps a naive

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One of the basic human needs is undoubtedly to create continuity and

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(Tawaststjerna 1976:110). Does this mean that there is a genetic relation

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the receiver and music-listener as an 'intonation' - to borrow a term from

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what was called musica speculativa, the pure thinking of theoreticians,

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..., IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

'despair' of the beginning of the Dante sonata by Franz Liszt by using

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Fontanelle's question: Sonata, what do you want of me? Composers of

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Furthermore, one important aspect is how a music model represents itself:

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Comparing Music Models

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He enumerates eight ways to make melodies more beautiful and pleasant

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IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

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Burney introduces the deictic 'ego' category, the first-person narrator,

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Dissonance is the want of that agreeable union between two or more

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IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

From the point of view of our generative model Burney's definitions

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IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

5) Bruits de percussion sur metal, bois, peau, pierre, terre-cuite, etc.

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IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

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IRASM 17 (1986), 1, 3-28

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