A recent post by @dwalbert about the proliferation of the phone-based vertical video format (and a vertical ways of noticing) got me thinking about musical mediation. One of my perennial preoccupations, as it turns out. This post suffers from a case of Too Long, but I’ve trimmed it as much as I can.
We have two primary ways of experiencing music: playing it and hearing it live. These are both embodied and direct. Player and listener are quite literally interface. We also have two mediated ways of encountering music: notation and recording. As formats of mediation, these are quite different and have very different results from one another.
The last time I taught my music technology class I asked this essay question on a quiz:
“Which technology do you think has had a greater impact on the development of music: notation or recording?”
I expected a variety of answers but was surprised at the veracity with which most students (10 out of 12) argued for notation. These were all young musicians undergoing classical music training so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it did get me thinking about the different ways we relate to music through technology.
As a tool of preservation and communication notation is of enormous value. Without it, nearly every piece of music before about 1900 would be lost. At least we assume this. Without notation would the western tradition have continued as an oral tradition rather than a written one? Would violin teachers pass Bach partitas down to their students like sitar masters pass down ragas? Would they have subtly changed over the years the way folk songs do? Would there be Bach Partitas at all or would music have sounded utterly different in his day? I don’t know, but I am fascinated by these kinds of question. I would 100% read a book of speculative musicology (which should exist) imagining a European music tradition without notation.
For everyone who ever lived before c. 1900 (and many others since) the only music they ever experienced was played within ear shot. Thinking this way it’s easy to realize why Pa’s fiddle is so present in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood memories and why music and religious ritual are so closely intertwined throughout the world.
Notation is not just a means of idea capture, it is also provides a model for compositional thought. Mozart had the inner ear to write complete pieces in his head before writing them down, perfect and complete, while Beethoven worked out his musical ideas on paper as he revised draft upon draft. The key here though is they were both translating sound to notation in their heads, Mozart at his desk and Beethoven walking around the countryside. (His typical day involved two hours of vigorous walking.) The notation was to communicate intent to the musicians, but also provided the frame of creative possibility. I’m fond of this definition of notation from Ferrucio Busoni, “Notation…is primarily an ingenious expedient for catching an inspiration, with the purpose of exploiting it later” (from Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music).
Another of my speculative questions is whether Mozart would have been such a prodigy in a different era. The classical style, with its homophonic texture and clear rhythms, is the style most well-suited to Western staff notation. It makes complete sense on the page, which is why it’s the music we give beginning music theory students to practice analysis. Mozart possessed a potent combination of aural imagination, creativity, and facility, but he was also born at the perfect time. Compared to later styles, which visibly strain against the limitations of staff notation (and eventually sought to break free of it altogether), Mozart’s music on the page is like a boat in the water drafting beautifully.
Stravinsky was the first composer I know of that bragged about composing at the piano. The complex sonorities of his music had to be worked out audibly since they didn’t follow an established vernacular. Historically though, composers hear the music then they write it down. Bach considered anyone who composed at the keyboard an amateur. Professionals do their thinking by ear.
This is why it seems obvious to me recording is a more impactful technology and has changed us as musicians much than notation. Notation is potential sound, recording is actual sound.
Think for a moment about the diversity of music you have heard in your life. Now think about the music you have heard live. One of my favorite composers is Arvo Pärt. I cannot recall ever hearing one of his works in a live concert (though I have played one!). Even the concert I attended at the actual Arvo Pärt Center in Estonia didn’t have a piece by Arvo Pärt. And yes, this felt just like going to church and not praying. There are dozens of composers whose works I know and admire for whom that is true. Recording has allowed us to become musical globalists in a way that notation could never have done. Compared to notation, recording is a populist technology giving access to an entire world of music. No skills required, just the equipment to play it.
Richard Taruskin points out in the introduction to his six-volume Oxford History of Western Music, that what we generally call “music history” is really the history of notated music plus a few bits of archeological evidence. At least until the 20th century. Now all other musical activities can be recorded, preserved, and studied. The earliest ethnomusicologists developed arcane notation systems to capture the idiosyncrasies of folk musicians’ individual performance. A generation later they could just record them.
This is the place where the “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” quote usually falls, but I’m not going to. Recording has enriched my life more than almost anything else. (And I bet Wendell has a hi-fi somewhere on that farm). If I had to choose it or notation I wouldn’t have to think two seconds. I am extremely good at reading music, but I can learn the music I want to play by ear if I have to. I cannot hear the music of the world except through recordings.
I will point out some ill effects though, perhaps analog to David’s original point about ways of seeing. Recording has had profound effects on our expectations of music. Most notably in our standard of perfectionism. I see this in my students frequently. If your main exposure to music is through studio-edited recordings that simulate perfect performance then you can have a falsely elevated standard for how good a live performance needs to be. Just like we think there are actually people who look like the instagram-famous with their clever poses, cosmetic surgery, and camera filters, we think musicians actually sound like this in real-life. They don’t. Striving for this standard leads the most dedicated students to practice to the point of injury and psychological torment over their mistakes.
Nearly every music student has had the experience of performing a recital that goes well and is well-received. Everyone (genuinely) says how nice it was, and you feel great. Then you get your recording back and eagerly listen only to hear mistake after mistake. Mistakes that nobody noticed in the live performance and didn’t detract from its effectiveness in the least sound like a pimple on your nose in a photo. Unnoticed in real life, absolutely glaring on record.
However much you might love recordings, we all know that the experience of person-to-person music-making is the real item. At least for those of us who still listen to live music. It seems some of us are so used to hearing pristine, auto-tuned, doctored vocals that hearing a real singer can be a letdown. Like the virtual porn-addled college student who has lost his desire for real people, we can lose sight of the beauty of unmediated musical experience. However much I may admire Glenn Gould, his animosity toward audiences and performing should be seen as an early harbinger of this pathology. In Adam Neely’s sharp video on AI generated music he includes results from his informal survey of Suno users. One of his questions is which AI generated music they consider influential on their own music. The responses were primarily bafflement. Why would I listen to someone else’s AI generated music? I listen to my own!
Music-making, ideally an instrumental activity extending and enriching our humanity, can become another device. Removed from the need for cultivation, discovery, experience, and sharing, one of the most humanizing of all activities, playing and listening to music, enters the goon cave.