Barthes: The Sensuality of Musica Practica

"The music you play depends not so much on an auditive as on a manual (hence much more sensuous) activity; it is the music you or I can play, alone or among friends, with no audience but its participants...it is a muscular music; in it the auditive sense has only a degree of sanction: as if the body was listening, not the soul..."

This piece demonstrates the embodied-ness of musica practica that Barthes speaks of. In this piece, hree men stood over three massive drums called “daiko,” each holding two sticks, called “bache” in their hands. They began by standing incredibly still and upright as they took their uniform positions in synchrony. Positioned in a triangle formation, their stance was wide, and their knees were bent deeply, bringing them close to the earth. Their right legs were slightly behind their left, rooting them in a stable cross-lateral pattern. Their arms began low, in line with their hips. They began to strike the daiko with the bache in a left-right left-right cross lateral pattern, first keeping the movement small and the bache close to the drum’s face. But as their tempo quickened, the movements became bigger and the force exerted on the drum was stronger which sent a thunder-like sound throughout the concert hall. Viewing the lead drummer from the back, I noticed that the motion of striking the daiko moved successively through the drummer’s body. He would first yield into the earth with his back leg then push down the leg. The power from the yield-and-push would flow through the rest of the body, up through the back, through the core, down the arm, and through the elbow and wrist, finally connecting with the bache and the drum face in one movement phrase. It seemed as if the drum responded to this strike because once the bache made contact with the daiko’s face, it seemed to throw the drummer’s arm back into the air with reciprocal force as if the drum and the drummer were equals in a conversation. There was a circular continuity to how the drummers moved. As one arm fell to the drum, the other rose in a mesmerizing pattern. I could not believe how long the performers were able to maintain their rhythm and with such vigor.

The power of the drummers’ movement translated into the rhythms they created. The deep sound of the drums completely filled the theater and I could feel the reverberations come up through the floor and into the soles of my feet. I felt as if the sound was so full bodied that it took up a physical space in the room. It seemed as if there was almost no space for me and I felt physically pushed in by the weight of the sound.

Great Gig in the Sky, Pink Floyd

"The human voice is, as a matter of fact, the privileged (eidetic) site of difference: a site which escapes all science, for there is no science (physiology, history, aesthetics, psychoanalysis) which exhausts the voice: no matter how much you classify and comment on music historically, sociologically, aesthetically, technically, there will always be a remainder, a supplement, a lapse, something non-spoken which designates itself: the voice. This always different object is assigned by psychoanalysis to the category of objects of desire: there is no human voice which is not an object of desire—or of repulsion: there is no neutral voice—and if sometimes that neutrality, that whiteness of the voice occurs, it terrifies us, as if we were to discover a frozen world, one which in which desire was dead. Every relation to a voice is necessarily erotic, and this is why it is in the voice that music's difference is so apparent—its constraint to evaluate, to affirm" (Music, Voice, Language pp. 280)

Dwight Yoakam - A Thousand Miles From Nowhere (Video)

"In this fragmented world, distorted by whirling appearances (the whole world is carnival), a pure and somehow terribly motionless element occasionally breaks through: pain" (Music, Voice, Language 296). Barthes goes on to say that there is no way to name pain, that it exists completely as itself. That "pain without object, the essence of pain, is...a madman's pain" (296). Barthes, says that Schumann suffers because he has no conflict, no "confrontation" (297). To capture a thing's essence, namely that of pain, one loses the rhythm of the sensation. This idea makes me wonder if the expression of pain through music is like the drinking of water when thirsty. Is the pain soothed by dint of being expressed through music, which has no "sign" but instead is purity felt through the body (311)? Dwight soothes, not only through the sight of those gorgeous leather pants but through his closeness to melancholic angst. This song causes a tremor through the heart strings as loneliness and sadness are felt through the high, whippoorwill-esque, longing of his voice.

Mid-Term

Alone- Ben Harper: Music, Voice, Language

"Articulation, he used to say, is the simulacrum and the enemy of pronunciation.. [articulation] seeks to give each consonant the same phonic intensity, whereas in a musical text a consonant is never the same: each syllable must be set in the general meaning of the phrase" (282). and also "Artliculation, in effect, functions abusively as a pretense of meaning.. it involves the singer in a highly ideological art of expressivity- or, to be even more precise, of dramatization: the melodic line is broken into fragments of meaning, into semantic sighs, into effect of hysteria" (283)

I am not sure whether Ben Harper's song "Alone" would fall under pronunciation or articulation. I would like to say that he pronounces, more than he articulates. Clearly, each consonant is not given the same phonic intensity- His voice expresses a whole different range of intensities. Fall and rising, twirling, etc. However, I would say his rendition is very dramatized and this imparts meaning on the song. His voice embodies the sadness/darkness he feels of being alone. So, I am at odds with whether or not this is pronunciation or articulation.

Barthes: Music, Voice, Language

"Music is both what is expressed and what is implicit in the text: what is pronounced (submitted to inflections) but is not articulated: what is at once outside meaning and non-meaning, fulfilled in that signifying [significance], which the theory of the text today seeks to postulate and to situate."
-Roland Barthes - Music, Voice, Language, p284



This song was written by, gospel artist, Kirk Franklin after the crisis in Haiti. Mr. Franklin gathered several of his friends to sing this some to raise money for the Haitian relief. Barthes says that music is expressed, the message of the song is; "Is there anybody out there listening?". Barthes also states music is implicit. The implicit message, as I see it, why does it take a disaster for us to notice the injustice in the world. Haiti has always been an impoverished country, however the world does not take notice until a massive earthquake hits. Music is able to address an issue directly while bringing attention to another indirectly.

Barthes: Music, Voice, Language & Led Zeppelin

"Since then, I have not stopped listening to his voice, on the rare, technically imperfect records he has made: Panzera's historical misfortune is that he ruled over French art songs between the wars but no testimony to the reign can be directly transmitted to us: Panzera stopped singing at the very advent of the long-playing record; we have only only some 78 rmp's of his work, or imperfect recordings. Nonetheless, this circumstance retains its ambiguity: for if listening to these records may disappoint today, it is because these records are imperfect, and perhaps more generally because history itself has modified our tastes, so that this way of singing has lapsed into the indifference of the out-of-fashion, but also, more topically, because this voice participates in my affirmation, my evaluation, and because itis therefore possible that I am the only one to love it." Roland Barthes, 'Music, Voice, Language,' pp. 280.



It seems here Barthes is suggesting the voice, disembodied by its recording--the medium on which it is recorded and then presented--loses its import, its eros when that medium falls out of fashion, which is to say, when the technology that created the medium is seen as obsolete or inferior or "imperfect" and thus the voice contained therein. The 78 rpm records were "imperfect" in comparison to the newer 33 rpm long-plays and so Panzera's voice became imperfect. Here, the performance of "Babe I'm Going to Leave You" by Led Zeppelin is "imperfect": the film is blurry, black and white when compared to the high definition color "film" of today; the sound too lacks, the decibel levels peak beyond the capacity of the equipment recording it. The bass distorts in its lowest octaves, the gain of the guitar bleeds over the other tracks; the vocals fight the hiss of the magnetic tape; the drums are subdued in the mid and high ranges of the frequencies; And as a live recording the performance lacks the expected 'polish' and preciseness of real time auto-tuning, processing and backup tracks. However, these imperfections are no longer entirely of the contemporary. We are in a time of over-production, where perfection is seen as over articulation, and thus inauthentic. This performance is then more valuable than it was perhaps a decade ago, perhaps even more than when it first aired on television. Today it is more 'raw,' more authentic because the "imperfections" signify as much, its eros was reduced in history then made stronger and more potent. In this way, the disembodied voice is susceptible to degradation and amplification, strength and weakening only in relation to it disembodied self. This can be both positive and negative, it seems Barthes is saying, and yet never quite the original.

Pheno-Text and Geno-Text

An explanation of the two terms:

http://www.signosemio.com/kristeva/semanalysis.asp

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?

once again, cheers has uncannily paralleled Rhet 108. See 5:15 (or watch the full thing its awesome).

Mona Lisa

A song about a "cold and lonely, lovely work of art".
Art commenting on art.
I wonder what Schopenhauer would say about this one...Being that it is a piece of music, which he saw as superior to all other forms of "fine art" but the lyrics are a direct representation of a phenomenon (the painting of Mona Lisa) in our reality. Sorry Nat King Cole, this may not be a "Schopenhauerian" example of music in its perfect universality, but it sure is catchy.

my soul needs rest

After a week of essaying, today marks the due date third and final paper of my midterm season, Part I. After exhaustive close listening to Wagner's Prelude to Act I of Tristan und Isolde for my paper, I'm reposting it back here to rest and stop the sleep-deprived turmoil of my being.

Midterm Selection

A Harmony of Dissonance

Because, Paige, you were right and I can only stand so much peace. Dissolution must be resolved with resolute unremitting reference . The world is, we are, this essay is due. Some things are just true. . . Sing it brother:

Essay Reprieve

I don't know how many people will check the blog this week, but I hope some of you will. I was looking through the blog to find a post of mine to put in my paper, and I noticed that a few people posted on Nietzsche claim of music making the spirit free. Suddenly, I was struck with a vivid memory of the following scene from Shawshank Redemption. As I watched the clip on youtube, I was painfully aware of the comparison between writing a paper and being in jail, and that for the minutes I spared to watch this video, I felt the computer dissolving from in front of me, the papers strewn around me disappear, and every last student on Derby St, felt free.

Hope you all enjoy.