!"#$%&'(#)*+%,&$%-.,/*.&-+-%012%34567%&(%4(./1%8'..

9:
;/2%<=%6.>+?0+'%=@<@
A))+$$%-+(&#*$2%A))+$$%B+(&#*$2%3$C0$)'#D(#./%/C?0+'%E<FG@=EEG:
HC0*#$"+'%I.C(*+-J+
K/L.'?&%M(-%I+J#$(+'+-%#/%N/J*&/-%&/-%O&*+$%I+J#$(+'+-%6C?0+'2%<@F=EPG%I+J#$(+'+-%.LL#)+2%Q.'(#?+'%R.C$+S%TFU
G<%Q.'(#?+'%4('++(S%M./-./%O<!%TVRS%5W

V.C'/&*%.L%("+%I.1&*%QC$#)&*%A$$.)#&(#./

HC0*#)&(#./%-+(&#*$S%#/)*C-#/J%#/$('C)(#./$%L.'%&C(".'$%&/-%$C0$)'#D(#./%#/L.'?&(#./2
"((D2XX,,,Y#/L.'?&,.'*-Y).?X$?DDX(#(*+Z)./(+/([(FEGPG\@\G

]&//+-%M&CJ"(+'
M1-#&%^.+"'

;/*#/+%DC0*#)&(#./%-&(+2%<E%_+0'C&'1%=@<@

!.%)#(+%("#$%A'(#)*+%^.+"'S%M1-#&`=@<@a%b]&//+-%M&CJ"(+'bS%V.C'/&*%.L%("+%I.1&*%QC$#)&*%A$$.)#&(#./S%<TP2%<S%\T%c%\\
!.%*#/9%(.%("#$%A'(#)*+2%B;K2%<@Y<@d@X@=\E@G@@E@TG<GdT@
5IM2%"((D2XX-eY-.#Y.'JX<@Y<@d@X@=\E@G@@E@TG<GdT@

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or
systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or
distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents
will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses
should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,
actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly
or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 135, Special Issue no. 1, 63!66

Canned Laughter
Response to Daniel Leech-Wilkinson

Downloaded By: [SUNY at Stony Brook] At: 15:34 12 November 2010

LYDIA GOEHR

DANIEL Leech-Wilkinson concludes his paper by writing that there is no meaningful

distinction to be made between listening as cultural practice and listening as
biological process, where listening is defined as making sense of what is heard
(p. 61). Before this, his paper is dominated by a single aim, to account both for what
is shared amongst humans when they listen to music and for what is sometimes quite
different between listeners regarding their responses to the same piece of music.
Although it is tempting to align sameness to biological process and difference to
cultural practice, thus generating a distinction between them, his argument resists
this tendency by showing that the two matters are too intertwined to make any such
distinction possible. Though admirable in intention, such a position raises difficult
questions: whether, for example, culture goes all the way down, thereby challenging
the traditional distinction that aligns biology simply with nature. But if biology or
nature is, as it were, cultured all the way down, how do biological processes ground
that which emerges as cultural practice in all the latters potential variety? Or does the
variety exist at the level of biological process and, if so, is the variety of the same sort?
And if biological process stands to nature so as to serve as the scientific foundation
of what emerges as culture, as the author seems to assume that it does, is not a
distinction preserved between biology and culture after all?
Leech-Wilkinson is interested in how listeners react to performance styles that
strike them as unfamiliar even if the listeners are biologically hard-wired in ways
similar to those responsible for producing the styles. He wants to account for the
biological underpinnings of persons, while yet acknowledging that listeners process
music in ways that sometimes lead to radical differences of taste. In his paper, the
author does not offer a full account of what constitutes such hard-wiring. He
(reasonably) rather relies on material previously developed and published by himself
elsewhere. However, he does offer the outlines of a plausible associational model,
according to which listeners, in hearing bits and pieces of music, tend individually
and socially to associate or assimilate the music metaphorically to extra-musical ideas,
thoughts, emotions or objects with which they are already presumably familiar, but
where the encounter with the music produces new forms of experience. Such forms

ISSN 0269-0403 print/ISSN 1471-6933 online

# The Royal Musical Association
DOI: 10.1080/02690400903414830
http://www.informaworld.com

Downloaded By: [SUNY at Stony Brook] At: 15:34 12 November 2010

64

LYDIA GOEHR

of experience are not only rich and varied with respect to the meanings that music
attains; they are also sometimes socially beneficial given the social cohesion they help
to promote. This would be the sort of social cohesion, the author suggests, that
brings persons together given their sense of shared experience, despite ! and this is
presumably the anti-totalitarian or democratic point ! each person potentially
coming up with different musical associations. Whether the sense of shared
experience is enough to promote the sort of social cohesion favoured by the author
is a question he does not pursue further, because his aim is otherwise directed. That
listeners generate meanings for music in associational ways, but in such ways as to
produce different associations, is the model by which the author explains why
persons or groups ! within a given culture or amongst cultures separated by time or
space ! sometimes have quite radical differences of taste, judgment or reaction even if
processually, once more, they are all engaging with music in the same way.
Leech-Wilkinson begins with a report from Nikolaus Harnoncourt of a modern
audience (of 2,500 persons) that laughed on hearing a 1906 recording of Maria
Galvany singing Mozarts Queen of the Nights aria. He tells us that though he is
familiar with the many Freudian or sociological accounts of laughter that have been
produced, he is more interested in explaining the underlying biological mechanisms
that might bring a laughter like this about. Before he turns to the biological
explanation, he considers several reasons why persons might laugh at Galvanys
performance. Maybe they laugh at the wide variations of tempo, at the duetting
cadenza, or at any other musical choices made that they would not make themselves.
Together, these reasons help to explain or establish the sense of strangeness, even
alienation, that in turn promotes the sort of discomfort to which we sometimes
respond by laughing. Again, he does not pursue the alienation thesis further,
preferring, he says, to seek the underlying mechanisms of such a response. He does
not question, therefore,
(1) whether the persons sitting in a concert hall in Vienna laugh at this recording
because laughter is infectious, especially in mass groups, so that when one
person laughs, for whatever reason, this causes others to laugh;
(2) whether persons would laugh were each sitting privately at home listening to
the same recording;
(3) whether the Viennese particularly like to laugh in a city once so dominated by
operetta;
(4) whether there is something that makes one laugh about the technology of the
early recordings ! perhaps the ghostly, gritty or tinny sound ! over and above
what one hears;
(5) whether this audience would laugh similarly at a recording were it produced in
1946, 1966 or 1986; or, finally,
(6) whether the laughter suggests an arrogance, mockery or lack of understanding
on the part of the audience or merely a funny, ha-ha reaction such that we

CANNED LAUGHTER

65

Downloaded By: [SUNY at Stony Brook] At: 15:34 12 November 2010

might even think about it as artificially produced: canned laughter at cannedsounding recordings.
I raise these more sociological questions less to suggest that answering them would
yield more by way of understanding the reaction of the audience to these early
recordings, and more because it helps to bring into sharp relief what LeechWilkinson seeks by turning to underlying biological mechanisms. Everything, as far
as I can tell, turns in his argument on what is meant by the term underlying. If
biological mechanisms underlie cultural practice, does this mean methodologically
that biological explanation is merely additional to a sociological description or
explanation of cultural practice, or is it meant to offer an alternative to it? Though
the author acknowledges and indeed sometimes relies on the insights provided by
those who adopt a sociological approach, he writes as though his approach stands to
the other approach as clarity stands to obfuscation, or as sunlight stands to fog. And
yet, doesnt fog sometimes bring out what sunlight masks or relegates merely to the
shadows? Leech-Wilkinson takes the laughter of adults to be a mature extension of
what babies naturally do as a way of responding to the world around them. Fair
enough, although this is only to tell us about a first step in a process that will
eventually show a laughter that has turned away from being a positive or pleasurable
response to being a negative or damning response. Whether biology can ever take us
beyond the infant steps, literally and metaphorically, has yet to be shown.
Leech-Wilkinson looks back at old recordings neither because they are old nor
because they are recordings. Despite some assertions suggesting the contrary, old
recordings serve his theory merely as a means. The oldness or pastness and the
characteristics that make them recordings are not treated as constitutive of musics
medium. The fact the recordings are old serves only to provide examples of
performing styles different from contemporary ones: hence the feeling of their being
unfamiliar. Strictly speaking, this means that the author could have compared
different contemporary styles to reach the same conclusions. That the recordings are
merely recordings of different and unfamiliar means of performing indicates that he
could have argued the same way had he travelled the world ! with his potentially
laughing audience alongside ! listening to different performances by different artists
making all sorts of different performance choices. If, in Leech-Wilkinsons view, the
laughter of the audience marks a difference of taste, culture or response to music,
the oldness of recordings marks the same. All this amounts to saying is that the
material and materiality of laughter and of recordings do no more work in
the argument than showing merely that there are different ways of responding to the
music and that this difference needs more than a sociological or merely cultural
explanation.
Turning toward what he variously describes as an evolutionary, cognitive and
biological approach, Leech-Wilkinson considers four different theses of musical
response that have recently been offered and which might or might not result in

Downloaded By: [SUNY at Stony Brook] At: 15:34 12 November 2010

66

LYDIA GOEHR

laughter. We respond to music as if it were a person or by imagining what it would

be like to perform in that way ourselves. Or, although we respond to music as unique
and widely differentiated individuals, we are aware of sharing a powerful experience
with others who listen, and this helps promote social cohesion. Or, finally, we
respond to music as we do because our acoustic or musical experiences are
inextricably bound up with runaway sexual selection and courtship rituals. Again, it
turns out that it is not necessary to go into the details of the four theses, since each is
introduced to lead to the starting point of Leech-Wilkinsons own account, that
musical response is simultaneously personal and shared ! different and yet the same.
Central to Leech-Wilkinsons preferred model is the idea of change: change any
element in a performance and the shape or gestalt of the music will change.
However, because, as he writes, change is always significant (p. 54), it would seem
to follow that, even in cases where performance choices make no difference to the
shape of the music, this would be significant as well. Looking anthropologically
around him, Leech-Wilkinson concludes that music is shaped within a world full of
changes. That each brain processes musical material differently indicates that the
meanings music assumes can genuinely be described as personalized, even if the
mechanisms of finding or generating associations, similes or affinities are shared.
Given further mechanisms and principles of selection and foraging, LeechWilkinson claims to be able ! over time ! to account scientifically not only for why
change takes place but also for why specific changes take place. At the end of his
paper, he returns to thoughts about the laughter or, better, the unease we might feel
in hearing performances that do not correspond to how we want to be shaped by the
music, suggesting that change, although natural to human life, is also that which
humans sometimes most resist. This is a decidedly Adornian conclusion.
In some ways, Leech-Wilkinsons aim in this paper is modest, to convince us that
adding a hard-wire explanation of musical response will sort out what is right and
wrong in explanations that are given in more sociological terms. One response to this
is to say: good, show us what we have got right and what wrong ! the strength of
your account will lie with your results. Another response, a touch more cynical, is to
warn those who want to test responses to music scientifically against their begging the
question of science and culture the moment they reduce music to something it
culturally is not and has never been.
ABSTRACT

This response to Daniel Leech-Wilkinsons paper questions whether the (explanatory)

movement between culture, nature, biology and music is as seamless as his argument
suggests.