Music to Hear on Here: Barthes

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Music, Voice, and Body

Space in the Construction of Music

Normally with music videos, it is the video which is parasitic on the music. It requires the music to justify its existence and to serve the purposes of entertainment. With Fionn Regan's "Be Good or Be Gone," that relationship appears slightly inverted—the music needs the video to operate. This song would not be good on the radio, on your iPod, etc. this is not simply aural listening, this is a listening which, much like a face to face interaction engages the third kind of listening Barthes speaks about in that it is not, “what is said or emitted, but who speaks, who emits” and in this case where it is spoken because, “such listening is supposed to develop in an inter-subjective space” (p. 246) where, “I am listening” would also mean “listen to me” but this time the inter-subjective space begs, ‘listen to me here’.

The music video illustrates how the appropriation of space is also a matter of sound. "Be Good or Be Gone" goes beyond the domestic space as Barthes speaks of “territory”; instead it illustrates different ways territory is marked by sounds. The compilation of these “spaces” isn’t a “household symphony” but instead a symphony of our constructed Earth as sound signifies differently in each location.

This song prompts us to ask, what is the role of space in the construction of the music we listen to today?

Barthes writes in Musica Practica that there are really two forms of music, “one you listen to” and “one you play” (p.261). They are variously labeled music proper and musica practica. Forms of music which are examples of passive listening (music proper) are the concert, the festival, the record, and the radio. Most forms of music today appear to be examples of passive listening. We still have the radio, the concert, and the festival. Now instead of the record player we have iPods, and sites like YouTube and Pandora.

Barthes asserts that, “playing no longer exists; musical activity is no longer manual, muscular, kneading” (p.262) and then asks, “What is the use of composing if it merely confines the product in the enclosure of the concert or the solitude of radio reception?” We could similarly ask, what is the use of making, playing, pounding out new music if it merely confines the ‘song’ to a cage in our hands, the box (computer, radio, television, iPod) at our fingertips? Is this why playing no longer exists? Does it no longer exist?

Course Description

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Martin Mull (or Elvis Costello)

Thinking about the meaning and value, intellectual, affective and neurological experiences, and aesthetics of music has occupied an important position in modern and contemporary philosophical writings. Central to the philosophy of music is a questioning of what music is insofar as it is an art form and practice, akin to but different from other arts, such as drama, literature, painting, sculpture, to name but a few examples. Claims have been made, in fact, that music’s effect, when performed and listened to, surpasses those of the other arts because of its abstact purity, of its universality, and of its singular capacity to express, represent and incite emotions. This course will explore such issues in 19th-20th century philosophy. We will begin with introductory readings of what composes the field and discipline of the philosophy of music. We will read—among other philosophers, novelists, critics and musicologists—Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Barthes and Adorno’s writings on music. Finally, we will have the occasion to read about and listen to specific musicians, both high and low, and explore the contexts of their work, concentrating on the historical and political dimensions of the practice, performance and art of making music.