A Language of Emotion: What Music Does and How It Works

By Arthur Bradley

These lively, informative essays, all related to music, are as accessible as a chatty bedside reader. A central theme is listener response, and the techniques and structures that mold it.

The story starts with sound waves, the ear, and the brain. Did song come before speech? Was it a factor in evolution? Some think singing helps complete the wiring of that organic work-in-progress, the infant brain.

Check out the frequency doubling that built our familiar scale. Learn where the word organizing came from. Follow development of the instruments as they achieved volume, accurate intonation, range, and consistent timbre.

There is criticism, but little disparagement. Any willing audience deserves respect. Musical examples come from Tin Pan Alley as often as the opera. Whether at a jazz club or the concert hall, the writer cannot hide his impatience with artists seeking to educate or intimidate.

Music can be recreation or vocation. Does your instrument match your personality or some physical attribute? We instantly distinguish a bell, a piano, and a guitar; why not a clarinet, flute, or violin? What does the conductor do? A Language of Emotion embraces such matters.

The relatively imprecise science of Psychology examines music working its magic. We all have favorites. Is it hype and marketing and peer influence, or do our choices make personal statements? Music, politics, religion, and social forces are twisted threads in the fabric of civilization.

Nothing reflects the spirit of an era better than the works of its most creative individuals. In most cases, they blend smoothly in sequence. Monteverdi, Beethoven, and Stravinsky, to name just three, clearly got ahead of the curve and helped define the world around them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9781467056229

Arthur Bradley

Arthur Bradley was born in New York City in 1926. He was drafted out of college into the Navy. The G.I. Bill put him thru grad school (Organic Chemistry, Columbia). For recreation he played the clarinet, was actively involved in community theater, and entered weekend road races. Arthur retired in 1997 after a rewarding career as an industrial scientist and is still actively consulting in the field of nutrition. Over the years he wrote many articles on popular music for a record auction quarterly, and collections were published in 1995 and 2005. He lives with his wife Pat in Floral Park NY, in frequent contact with his two children and three grandchildren, and his accumulation of 78 RPM recordings.

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© 2009 Arthur Bradley. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/31/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4389-1884-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4389-1885-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-5622-9 (ebk)

The background of the cover design and ten additional images were acquired from Jupiter International, Inc. by arrangement with the publisher. Most of the rest are Dover clip art or memorabilia from the author’s files. An artist’s conception of Pythagoras was copied from a Belgian trading card.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1

Music Maestro Please

Chapter 2

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Chapter 3

Inside The Octave

Chapter 4

Horns And Whistles

Chapter 5

A Lifetime Of Music

Chapter 6

A Language Of Emotion

Chapter 7

Musicians Organize

Chapter 8

The New World

Chapter 9

Heritage

REFERENCES

SKU-000255223_Text.pdf

INTRODUCTION 

It must have started by accident. Perhaps a partially decayed log lay beside a tree bearing desirable fruit. Homo erectus accidentally dropped his probe on the log and was rewarded with a muted boom. He pounded it harder and fellow tribesmen came closer to investigate. They found that a live tree or solid log would not convert a whack into a loud reverberation, and shrugged it off. We could have explained that the flexibility of the thinner shell increased the amplitude of air vibrations resonating in the hollow interior.

There was now the possibility of communication beyond sight or a vocal cry. Centuries would pass before it was realized that by varying the noise pattern the pounder could signal either gather together or scatter away from danger. It is conceivable that a tribal chief might have acquired a kind of sonic identity before the era of speech led to personal names. The first intentionally emotional drumming was probably intended to build ‘psyche’ for a fight.

Our cerebellum (or brain stem) has a recognizable antecedent in reptiles. It controls motion and responds to rhythm. A repetitious sound appeals to the animal instinct, whereas tone quality and melody are processed by the cerebral cortex – as demonstrated by brain scans – and cater more to the highly developed human intellect. The need to reconcile these parallel inputs helps to complete the interlocking connections of the infant brain (Levitin). More will be said about music and children.

It would be a mistake to imagine that darkest Africa has always throbbed with rhythm like a 1928 Saturday night in Harlem. Primitive tribesmen are found today who cannot maintain a steady beat, nor do they care. Strict meter is as rare among traditional cultures as it was in our Western Civilization before the Middle Ages. The complex off-beats and internal counter-rhythms that characterize African music today were probably developed during the last few millennia.

Prehistoric man would have been howling to express himself long before developing any concept of melody. The kind of vocal exercise that we could consider ‘singing’ was likely invented as a communication device or an aid to remembering words, and came later.

Man was capable of imitating sounds of nature. This was helpful in hunting, or private signaling, as well as a source of innocent amusement. Could you fool your friend with a bird call? Are those birds talking to each other? What do they say? Chick-a-dee. Whip-poor-will. Bob White. Since we can fit our own words to bird melody, it would be a natural assumption that it has meaning for the wild creatures.

Birds would merit little consideration as musicians except for the remarkable fact that they often sing on key. They seem to have an instinctive feel for the ‘tonality’ discovered by humanity during the Renaissance. Do creative males have an edge on the rest? It does not seem likely because those ‘melodies’ are more or less genetically wired. One experimenter injected a female bird with testosterone and she started to warble the same song as her mate (Storr). These calls express an extremely narrow range of emotion, and the key rarely changes. An early theory that man learned to sing from the birds carries little weight today, but their influence cannot be entirely dismissed.

Anyone interested in seeing how bird calls can be annotated as sheet music will find a nightingale, a sparrow, and a thrush represented by Prof. Geza Revesz. The rooster crow also comes up for discussion therein. Apparently it never changes contour, but can vary by a whole note from day to day.

***

We know little about music in antiquity. The first hint of an instrument is a fragment of bone discovered in a 50,000-year old Neanderthal burial ground. It has holes that may have been man made. Daniel Levitin refers to it as the Slovenian bone flute but few others are convinced. It is by no means certain that homo sapiens had as yet achieved articulate speech.

The sudden appearance of cave paintings and decorated tools about 35,000 BC has suggested to some geneticists that a mutation had occurred that introduced the concept of ‘art’ into the human brain. Could music be far behind? A collection of varying lengths of wood among the ashes of a paleolithic campfire might have been components of a primitive xylophone. Intact and playable 9,000 year old flutes have been found in China. One of them sounded the interval of an octave (Gazzaniga).

Gradual development of the various musical instruments will be discussed in a later chapter. Whenever and wherever they existed in pre-history, they suggest some kind of primitive composition. Surely the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Hittites tried new successions of tones for amusement. We would expect that the best combinations would have tended to live on, but maybe not.

There has been much speculation about what role music played in primitive life. Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote that it could express feelings with good carrying power. Song readily conveys joy or sorrow, conquest or distress. It was an extension of the singer’s personality, as well as a pleasant exercise.

Marcel Proust wondered whether music could have once been employed as a principal means of communication. Speech could have come later, more structured and distilled to the essentials. Charles Darwin noted that speech has pitch values, and suggested it may have developed from mating calls (Levitin).

The earliest literature was constructed as blank verse, to be learned ‘by heart’ and recalled as a protracted chant. It far pre-dates the invention of writing in the second or third millenium BC, the latter intended initially for business purposes and as a stimulant or supplement to memory. It probably never occurred to Homer (ca 1000 BC) that historical mythology could be preserved as prose as well as poetry. Certainly not as elegantly. Compared with recitation, writing is a relatively dry and detached form of communication.

Tonal patterns that originated in verse still enhance all but the very dullest speech. Some of these have been identified and catalogued by linguists, and the more obvious characteristics can be assigned to a specific region or social status. The normal pitch range in English today is about a fifth (say E² 11236.jpg 11235.jpg B³ for men) when relaxed, wider when excited (Storr).

It has even been proposed (but not strenuously defended) that song may not have come first but developed out of natural inflections of human speech. A case could be made for the individual vocal complaints of a field of laborers gradually blending into a common statement. This approach to singing could also be applied to cries of battle, or the hunt. Tally Ho!

Professor Revesz, a Hungarian teaching in Amsterdam and writing in German, elaborated on Rousseau, Proust, and Darwin. He proposed that the first musical phrases were signal calls that arose spontaneously from the primate vocal apparatus. The yodel was probably a mating aid (think of Tarzan!), and there were rising pitch whoops of joy or discovery (ah ha!), and descending groans. A mother crooning to her baby is communicating without words, as is the cowboy with his cattle call. Our conventional Yoo Hoo to attract attention from a distance would certainly fit into that category.

Coo-ee can be heard in the wild Australian bush and the cozy back gardens of London suburbs. Moreover, both the aborigines and the British children use it as a call to assemble, and sing it out as an interval drop of a minor third (typical notes are Ab³ 11235.jpg F²). You may remember your mother calling you by that same tune.

Bellowing musical tones via vocal chords is far from being an exclusively human trait. Animal howls stake out territory, but can do much more as well. Abrupt loud cries mean danger to many species, from birds to apes. They can also express aggression/frustration or purring contentment. Such subtleties as loneliness, or a general announcement that food is available, have also been suggested as parts of the jungle code.

Early man had at least as many calls as the animals. Then he may have discovered that they retained the same meaning when expressed without aid of vocal chords. This quieter form of communication could have evolved into primitive speech. Words did not carry as far but would express a wider range of thought.

Leonard Bernstein surprised a lecture audience at Harvard by relating the origin of language to primitive musical tones. For example, he suggested that all the world wide ‘ma’ words for mother might reflect the crooning of an infant opening its mouth to take nourishment. An unhappy hominid warrior might have gritted his teeth and voiced the ‘grrr’ sound of an enraged tiger. We call it a growl, and use the same phoneme in words like great, grand, grief, grizzly, and gross. The maestro cited other tongues where this sound or a derivative has highly positive connotations like big, good, brave, etc.

Asian languages retain much more of the tonal quality that must have characterized early speech. China and Indonesia, in particular, have fewer basic sounds, but you must hit the pitch right if you want to be understood. Speech developed in the West without specific pitch values, but we still deplore monotones. We enjoy a lively, even semi-musical, delivery but consciously avoid fixed intervals. The latter, if persistent, would give our conversation an annoying ‘sing song’ quality (Revesz).

Hitler’s chanting speeches were so successful in arousing racial hatred that it is conceivable that he reproduced some of the loaded pitch combinations of primitive man that we might have thought were long gone. Effective political talk still tends to lack information content, and merely strives for a ring of sincerity. We have this gift of language, more flexible and adaptable than song, but often misuse it.

Chapter 1 continues reviewing the history of music, but on an increasingly less speculative basis. The development of notation and the influence of social and clerical forces are discussed, illustrating (among other things) how art bends to the political climate. Essential definitions and many general aspects of the music world are introduced here, but the great works and personalities are deferred until much later. The middle six chapters each relate to a particular academic discipline.

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Chapter 1 

Music Maestro Please 

Greek legends always involved their strange panorama of demigods. They attributed the lyre to noble Apollo, and associated the aulos with playful Dionysus. The stringed instrument accompanied poetry, and the woodwind played for stage productions and dance. These divisions became symbolic of contrasting musical moods, sometimes serious and sometimes frivolous. We retain that dichotomy today with designations like sacred or profane, uplifting or exciting, classical or romantic. Our ‘art song’ issues from a culture of sophistication; folk song generally has a rural background.

From at least the time of Terpander (early seventh century BC) the Greeks recognized that certain distant notes blended perfectly. No doubt these were what we would call ‘octaves.’ Even closer intervals produced what they recognized as ‘consonance’ or complimentory tones. These pitches were related mathematically by comparison of the length of plucked strings (see chapter 3).

Music styles in ancient Greece resonated back and forth from ethos to pathos (in the words of Curt Sachs) and the cycle continues to this day. Whichever type dominated the moment, we doubt that it was written down. Were performances carefully rehearsed or ‘off the cuff’ and judged on creativity? We have no clue. There must have been some concepts of composition. Aristotle and Plato both wrote on the subject, but their ideas are not clear to us. We tend to relate their ‘modes’ to our key system, but terms like Dorian and Phrygian may also have been assigned to styles of performance (Grout).

Athenian interest in music appears to have faded during the series of wars with Sparta. It has been suggested that the greater availability of written manuscripts pushed music out of primary education. Yet again, some ‘protective association’ of artists may have suppressed attempts at notation to keep their tunes private. Or could religious zealots have destroyed it all? It is certain that the social status of the performers hit rock bottom. Plato banned them from his Utopia.

At this stage in a history of music, a discussion of elementary theory and the development of the scale are strongly indicated. Rather than interrupt the narrative before it gets started, these issues will be addressed later.

***

As far as the early Christians were concerned, music was a useless pagan art. It was probably reluctantly accepted as part of the worship service. Setting biblical passages to simple melodies was permitted, and these works were termed ‘canticles.’ It would not have been considered sinful to play the lyre at home, but no instruments came into a church for over a thousand years. Some scholars believe that there was a lively secular music during the Dark Ages, but little has been preserved.

Pope Gregory assembled a vast liturgy of approved canticles about the year 600. To keep would-be innovators in line, he arbitrarily assigned equal duration to each note. The church exercised all of its authority to suppress developments in this frivolous art. Even to this day there are churches that restrict performance to the original ‘Gregorian Chant.’

It seems that the ancients considered short runs like C-D-E-F and G-A-B-C as stand-alone units, sort of mini-octaves. Most of the earliest canticles were based on these ‘tetrachords’ and so had the limited scope of just four tones (Helmholz). It was something like a breakthru just to expand into the whole octave. Long afterwards, composers were still repeating whole passages, as in fugues and sonatas, in the next upper tetrachord, which came to be known as the ‘dominant.’

Christian church music remained stable and rudimentary for many centuries, but the expanding size of the choirs gave them a problem. Large groups did not comfortably sing in unison. Each man tended to pick a note in his own range. When the baritones hit F² at the lowest space on the treble scale, the tenors found C³ (two spaces higher) more congenial. Such practice gave a richer body to the ensemble – closer to that of the pipe organ – and was much to be desired.

Adjusting simultaneous note selection to emulate the organ was called ‘organizing’ and the resulting harmonic effect described – in Latin, naturally – by the word organum. In musical terms, the second voice would ordinarily be a fifth (four notes) higher; if a third voice was added, it would likely be the fourth (three notes). Other intervals were not originally considered pleasing to the ear.

Organum is so closely associated with Christian church music that it is surprising to find hints in the literature that it originated in the Moslem world (Hunt). Some historians traced it to Ibn Sina (Avicenna) about the year 1000 (Abbey). Parisian interest and influence grew stronger in the following centuries. The most prominent name in the Notre Dame School was Perotin, often dubbed Magister (the great). His exact dates are uncertain, but there is no doubt that this giant of Gothic sacred music was active about 1200.

There were still difficulties. F goes with C, and G goes with D, and A with E, but B and F make a bad match. You must avoid this combination or introduce accidentals like Bb or F#. Harmonizing F# called for C#. The church fathers hated these ‘accidentals’ and often threatened to ban organum on their account. Choir directors eventually carried the day, but it was not until the thirteenth century when all of the semitones were recognized and in more or less accepted usage.

Parallel vocal lines were daring, but tolerated as long as the ‘off notes’ maintained a constant and compatible interval. Then more trouble loomed. Gregorian convention required that each syllable of a hymn had to be represented by a single note. This handcuffed composers who wanted to improve a melody by bending a word with an extra note or two. When finally approved, this controversial practice was termed melisma.

A highly risky departure was to let an additional voice (often solo) wander around the main melody. This was the first timid appearance of polyphony. As the chants became more complex, with designated rests, the more reactionary church fathers ranted and threatened. Nevertheless, this kind of ‘free’ melismatic organum has continued to grace church music up to the present day.

Commentators have cautioned that our historical conceptions of the Gregorian Chant and accompaniment are based on shaky assumptions, and modern re-creations are not reliable. We do not know for sure that all notes had the same length. In all probability, those early bellows-powered organs were raucous and unwieldy. It was nearly 1300 before the keyboard was perfected and the pipe sound softened (Grout).

With more than one line of melody in progress, it became necessary to do a little rudimentary counting. The first ‘measured music’ dates back to about 1150 (Copland, 1952). It would take another four hundred years for this crude beginning to evolve into our present system of precise note lengths, rests, and measures. Even today a composer’s intentions are not always made entirely clear by the score.

***

Careful study of polyphony, plus the ever-present need to find good notes to accompany the voice, introduced the concept of the ‘chord.’ Long before there was a key system, performers had noticed that certain notes made a satisfying combination when sounded together. Taste for matching tones developed gradually. For example, in the madrigal days they liked C + G, but thought of C + E + G as too difficult to grasp. With time, most Western ears learned to enjoy this kind of threefold combination, and the ‘major triad’ became the basis of harmony from the early Renaissance to the present day.

Instrumentation was still fairly crude so it is not really surprising that vocal music predominated. Up to 1500 the strings were weak, the horns limited in range, and the shawn excessively piercing and edgy (Ratner).

Latin was the original language of all scholarship, but polyphony offered the option of singing one line in the vernacular for the benefit of the general congregation. Not long after, works of literature would appear in native tongues (Chaucer, Dante, Petrarch). At the same time, semi-sacred lyrics began to stress virtues like loyalty and brotherly love, and denounce corruption, with less emphasis on the ecstasies of faith.

A motet was a short work on a sacred theme. By tradition it could be either contrapuntal or constructed as a fugue. There would be sections where contrasting melodies might overlap, making it difficult to follow the text, but that was tolerated. The madrigal (or chanson in France) was a kind of secular motet. Motets and madrigals employed voices only, but a chanson might include instrumental parts.

If a group wished to perform a madrigal of eight parts, and only six voices were on hand, they might fill in the missing notes with an instrument like the viol. Composition intended for such a mix was rare until 1600, when the era of unaccompanied choral writing was coming to a close.

There would be jongleurs (wandering minstrels) by 1100, and with them came the beginning of what we would now call popular song. In the following century, elements of structure that are commonplace today were developed: section units of standard length, reversals, themes in balance, cadences, optional repeats, and final endings.

These early works enjoyed a free play of phase rhythm that we would consider undisciplined. There was no reliance on harmonic changes to season the melody or bring it to conclusion. In the grand scheme, motets and madrigals fit in somewhere between the ancient world and the new, or perhaps between the orient and the occident.

Curious about phase rhythm? It is well known that syncopation shifts emphasis out of an established rhythm pattern (Farnsworth). It can be described further as two phase rhythms in parallel being heard simultaneously. In a practical sense we may say that the beat often arrives sooner than expected.

***

After many centuries the relationship between pitch and the vibration frequency of air molecules became generally accepted. Some Persian astronomer or mathematician had a handle on it by 1219 when his speculative treatise on sound (Ars Novae Musicae) was circulated. That manuscript also described a nineteen-stringed keyboard instrument (the chekker), possibly an Arabian prototype of the harpsichord (James).

Secular tunes were being enjoyed at the feudal courts by 1100. Count Guillaume IX of Aquitaine supported the first troubadours, and his granddaughter Eleanor (1122-1204) introduced them to both France and England (she married both kings!). Fragments of notation from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries allow us to guess at the construction of some madrigals. There were repeating sections with different endings, but little range of notes and over-reliance on the fourth and fifth intervals. We may be sure that a love of dancing promoted the rise of the secular side of music.

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About this time, Italian songs developed a distinctly independent flavor that emphasized the warm sonorities of the third and sixth intervals, and these eventually caught on in England as well. A British historian credited the Netherlands with making the madrigal spring to life (Colles). Unfortunately, there was as yet no reliable system of notation. It is troubling to think of how many beautiful phrases – works of genius – were lost within minutes! The art of music was still mostly ephemeral.

Troubadours may have occasionally accompanied themselves, but they were primarily singers. Wagner’s Tannhauser was a minnesinger, specializing in courtly love. Verdi’s Il Trovatore literally translates into ‘The Troubadour.’ A minstrel played an instrument, but usually did not sing. We may rightly picture troubadours and minstrels occasionally performing together.

It was a time when religion was never truly put aside, and troubadour songs of courtly love could also be used to praise the Virgin Mary. Sometimes the context was left deliberately ambiguous to please all parties. As it had in ancient Greece, the practice of repeating ‘refrains’ came from backing up dance routines.

Like many pop stars of today, troubadours wrote their own material or personalized the tunes they picked up from others. The word troubadour originally meant inventor or finder. Secular melodies were generally anonymous and expected to be quickly forgotten. There was more income to be had from laboriously copying the primitive notation than there was in composing.

In time, the rise of a mercantile middle class made private ownership of the small keyboard called the ‘virginals’ widespread. The manufacturers also served their customers by offering arrangements of the most popular songs and hymns for sale. They encouraged their copyists to improve the product, which could include varying the harmonic framework. Formulas would be sought to permit the transcribers to do this rapidly.

Once it became an aid to business, notation assumed greater importance. For many years, notes had been marked merely long or short (or sometimes very short) and the performers decided just what that meant. They could also add sharps or flats at their own discretion. Printed scores changed all that, but not without backlash, as will be discovered.

The great vogue for polyphony, peaking about 1300, led to both more exact notation and better appreciation of how separate tones interact. Individual melody lines grew less independent as the idea of ‘consonance’ took hold (still well before theorists introduced the concept of tonality). Church music made slow progress melodically, but there was still little rhythmic feeling. Gradually there would appear some ‘quavers’ or eighth notes in the motets, and hymns acquired a little liveliness and color. It all remained essentially choral.

Looking further ahead, secular and commercial interests did not begin to wrest control away from the Church until about 1600. By 1900, the major/minor key system was breaking down. Music historians consider these the most critical years. Major turning points never fail to bewilder and offend conservatives, and result in protests and heated polemics.

***

As the fifteenth century got underway, a liberating spirit seemed to surface in the West, an example of which was allowing pagan themes back into works of art. There was increasing tolerance for polyphony and for intervals that had previously been avoided as awkward, if not actually dissonant. The first tentative studies of a theory of harmony had begun. In Dr. Jeppesen’s words, a new and relaxed British music came to Europe like a fresh breath of spring.

At first, the French and Italian Church fathers looked the other way. The British were all damned apostates anyway. Then some Netherlanders began experimenting with transient dissonance as a means of adding extra expression. The first non-vocal works appeared, and the transition from horizontal to vertical (richly harmonic) composition was underway. Meanwhile, secular songs enhanced friendly gatherings in Spain and rural Italy, and then everywhere. One of the first British ‘hits’ is still with us today, namely Green Sleeves.

The first printed sheet music appeared about 1500. At the start of the music business there were no copyrights, so when a more appealing arrangement of a tune became available it would sell better. There was incentive to elaborate on the melody, make it more interesting, and charge more for it. Techniques had been developed to write variations, and to place figures and rhythms in new relationships, and these eventually led to what we now call ‘thematic development.’ In a sense, the era of musical composition arrived on the scene as a byproduct of incipient commercialization of the arts.

Deliberate use of notes that were obviously off key began in the early sixteenth century. A tentative touch of dissonance added a little edge to a melody. The idea of an optional and easily overlooked ‘grace’ note may have started as fleeting dissonance where the suggestion of ‘a lack of discipline’ might be appropriate (Jeppesen). Even as composers grew in daring, they hesitated to insert spice into a rising interval. It was less distracting and more effective in a descending passage.

In a generation or two of ferment, several independent Christian (Protestant) sects grabbed footholds in Europe. Exploration and invention, and new insights in science, history, and philosophy were threats to faith. Music, that had for centuries been glorifying the Almighty, was now often regarded as working for the Devil.

Translation of Italian madrigals brought a new wave of popular music to England. Commercially, as printed sheet music, they commonly took the form of keyboard