I've been comparing the work of Roger Scruton and Leonard B. Meyer in the last year or so. It's interesting as a literary and philosophical experiment because some of the points that Scruton seems to take as most given in his later works are more tentative in his earlier work. Foremost among these is what Scruton has subsequently called the semaphore test. It's worth quoting Scruton at some length on what this thing is and in reaction to which authors he tentatively formulated this idea.
The
Aesthetics of Music
Roger Scruton
Oxford University Press
© Roger Scruton 1997, reprinted 2009
ISBN 978-0-19-816727-3
Pages 343 to 344
When Schoenberg turned away from tonality,
it was because he felt that it was no longer available, as a vehicle for
sincere artistic intentions. Recall his animadversions against the diminished
seventh: `it fell from the higher sphere of art music to the lower sphere of
music for entertainment. There it remains, as a sentimental expression of
sentimental concerns. It became banal and effeminate. Became banal!’ This thought, which became banal in the writings of
Bloch and Adorno, bears directly on our present argument. For notice Schoenberg’s
way of describing the offending chord: not banal merely, but sentimental and
effeminate. The tiredness of a musical gesture becomes a moral failing. The composer who works in an exhausted idiom does
not merely produce clichés and banalities. His emotional repertoire is confined
to the sentimental and the effeminate—to that which is false, undisciplined,
and self-deceived. Looked at from the philosophical standpoint, such a
conclusion is remarkable. For how can this merely formal defect in a work of art—that its effects are taken from an
`exhausted’ repertoire—lead to so defective a content, and to a condemnation, therefore, which is as much moral
as aesthetic? Even if Schoenberg is exaggerating, the instinct behind his
remark is shared by many, perhaps most, sensitive listeners. Clichés are not
merely to be avoided: they are false, unserious, destructive of something that
we value—though of what, perhaps, it is hard to say.
If we are to make sense of Schoenberg’s
remark, we must first show how absolute music—music considered in itself and
without ancillary text or drama—can express , convey, or contain a state of
mind or character. And in returning to the topic of expression we must
acknowledge a singular and important truth: that many people who manifestly
understand music will deny that it has expressive content, refuse to describe
it in emotional or mental terms, and obstinately adhere, like Hanslick, to the
view that musical value is to be found in form alone. A theory of expression
must show how it is that people can understand the expressive character of a
work of music, and yet sincerely deny that that
is what they understand. [emphasis added]
Tentative Conclusions
It is worth summarizing, first the tentative
conclusions of earlier chapters, and secondly, the tests which a theory of
musical content must pass. For, although our earlier discussions left us with
many unanswered questions, they have considerably narrowed the field of
enquiry, and marked out the terrain in which a theory of content must be
sought.
1.
Music
does not represent objects or actions, except at the margin. [emphasis added]
2.
Nevertheless
music is often meaningful, in the strong sense that there is something to be
understood in it.
3.
Listening
to music is an expression of aesthetic interest, and music is understood
through the aesthetic experience.
4.
Music
is not a language, even if it is like a language in certain respects.
5.
The
expressive qualities of a work of music form the most important part of its
content.
From these conclusions we can derive certain tests which a theory of
content must pass. Four in particular
seem important:
(a)
Musical
meaning is not like the meaning of the Morse code or a semaphore signal. You do
not attribute expressive qualities to music merely by devising some code or
convention, and thereafter using it as a means of communication. The content of
a work of music is given only in the aesthetic experience, which is something
over and above the recognition of convention (The `semaphore test’.) [emphasis added]
(b)
The
meaning of a piece of music is what we understand when we understand it as
music. (The understanding test.) Most existing accounts of expression in music
fail this test—or at least, fail to show that they can pass it. We just do not
know what is proved by them, or whether anything important is being said—for instance,
by Peter Kivy, when he points to the way in which the shape of a musical phrase
may resemble the `shape’ of an emotion.
(c)
The
value test. It follows from (3) and (5) above, that expressive qualities are
also objects of aesthetic interest to the person who grasps them. This is why
we must distinguish the expressive content of a piece of music from the
associations, atmosphere, and emotional aura that inhabit its surface. A piece
of music might be dreamy and indolent, like the guitar in the music of Luiz
Bonfa, and all the worse for it. But if it expresses dreaminess and indolence,
as does Debussy’s masterly `La puerta del vino’, from the Second Book of
Preludes … then this is a kind of aesthetic success. …
There are a number of objections that can be and have been raised toward this kind of argument. First and foremost, it's not a given that "absolute" music as it developed as a concept in later eighteenth through early twentieth century musicology is sufficiently representative of music in the West as a whole, let alone music across the world. Scruton could be construed as granting Hanslicks as being able to set the terms of debate about what, if anything, is "expression" in music.
Notice that Scruton asserts that music does not "represent" objects or actions, except at the margins. Music also has "expressive" content and yet Scruton also insists that music is not like semaphore or Morse code or any system in which convention ascribes meaning to whatever the system of communication is.
Let's note, too, that Scruton's "the understanding test" depends on the music being defined as music in a way that, to go by Scruton's writings overall, cannot grant this process of hearing something as music as a volition of the listener. In other words, whatever underlies Scruton's "the understanding test" it has to preclude a John Cage from proposing that if we choose to listen to something as music we can hear it as music and then it becomes music a la 4'33". Music in Scruton's writing cannot be defined as emerging from convention but neither can it be defined as something that can be defined by the volition of the auditor. It resides in a more nebulous region in the nature of an art object that is not art art object like a painting or a book or a sculpture. Yet the important aspect of music is its expressive quality ... although it isn't language even if it has language-like properties and whatever that expressive quality is it is an aesthetic quality and not necessarily emotional content.
Scruton seems set on denying that music has a linguistic element even though for a good swath of Western history and culture music was regarded as akin to language and the rhetoric of music was considered of a piece with rhetoric and principles of rhetoric from the medieval period up until about the end of the Enlightenment, give or take, when, as Leonard B. Meyer and others have put it, ideas of organicism and expression began to emerge.
Scruton might be thought of as setting himself against an absolutist like Hanslick or Stravinsky (Scruton's admiration of Stravinsky's music withstanding).
Scruton seems to want to cast aside music as a referentialist art even if for many listeners who enjoy music the extra-musical associations and conventions are inseparable from how and why they enjoy music. Dance music, for instance, is music where the aim of the music is to encourage dance and it would hardly be a surprise to discover Scruton regarding dance music as lesser music than "absolute" music. Scruton seems to want to reject Hanslick's formalism while holding that music is expressive but rejecting the idea that this expressiveness could be mediated by conventions or that music could be regarded as of aesthetic interest at a more "formalist" level.
If that stream of jargon seems opaque, perhaps I can quote Leonard B. Meyer to unpack what some of these terms mean as I've been using them, since I mentioned I've been comparing Scruton and Meyer lately:
Notice that Scruton asserts that music does not "represent" objects or actions, except at the margins. Music also has "expressive" content and yet Scruton also insists that music is not like semaphore or Morse code or any system in which convention ascribes meaning to whatever the system of communication is.
Let's note, too, that Scruton's "the understanding test" depends on the music being defined as music in a way that, to go by Scruton's writings overall, cannot grant this process of hearing something as music as a volition of the listener. In other words, whatever underlies Scruton's "the understanding test" it has to preclude a John Cage from proposing that if we choose to listen to something as music we can hear it as music and then it becomes music a la 4'33". Music in Scruton's writing cannot be defined as emerging from convention but neither can it be defined as something that can be defined by the volition of the auditor. It resides in a more nebulous region in the nature of an art object that is not art art object like a painting or a book or a sculpture. Yet the important aspect of music is its expressive quality ... although it isn't language even if it has language-like properties and whatever that expressive quality is it is an aesthetic quality and not necessarily emotional content.
Scruton seems set on denying that music has a linguistic element even though for a good swath of Western history and culture music was regarded as akin to language and the rhetoric of music was considered of a piece with rhetoric and principles of rhetoric from the medieval period up until about the end of the Enlightenment, give or take, when, as Leonard B. Meyer and others have put it, ideas of organicism and expression began to emerge.
Scruton might be thought of as setting himself against an absolutist like Hanslick or Stravinsky (Scruton's admiration of Stravinsky's music withstanding).
Scruton seems to want to cast aside music as a referentialist art even if for many listeners who enjoy music the extra-musical associations and conventions are inseparable from how and why they enjoy music. Dance music, for instance, is music where the aim of the music is to encourage dance and it would hardly be a surprise to discover Scruton regarding dance music as lesser music than "absolute" music. Scruton seems to want to reject Hanslick's formalism while holding that music is expressive but rejecting the idea that this expressiveness could be mediated by conventions or that music could be regarded as of aesthetic interest at a more "formalist" level.
If that stream of jargon seems opaque, perhaps I can quote Leonard B. Meyer to unpack what some of these terms mean as I've been using them, since I mentioned I've been comparing Scruton and Meyer lately:
Emotion and Meaning in Music
Leonard B. Meyer
Copyright © 1956 by The University of Chicago
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-52139-8
ISBN-10: 0-226-52139-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-521374 (e-book)
Page 1
…
The first main difference of opinion exists between those
who insist that musical meaning lies exclusively within the context of the work
itself, in the perception of the relationships set forth within the musical
work of art, and those who contend that, in addition to these abstract intellectual
meanings, music also communicates meanings which in some way refer to the
extramusical world of concepts, actions, emotional states, and character. Let
us call the former group the “absolutists” and the latter group the “referentialists.” [emphasis added]
In spite of the persistent wrangling of these two groups,
it seems obvious that absolute meanings and referential meanings are not
mutually exclusive: that they can and do coexist in one and the same piece of
music, just as they do in a poem or a painting. In short, the arguments are the
result of a tendency toward philosophical monism rather than a product of any
logical opposition between types of meaning.
Because this study deals primarily with those meanings
which lie within the closed context of the musical work itself, it is necessary
to emphasize that the prominence given to this aspect of musical meaning does
not imply that other kinds of meaning do not exist or are not important.
On the contrary, the musical theory and practice of many
cultures in many different epochs indicates that music can and does convey
referential meaning. The musical cosmologies of the Orient in which tempi,
pitches, rhythms, and modes are linked to and express concepts, emotions, and moral
qualities; the musical symbolisms depicting actions, character and emotion,
utilized by Western composers since the Middle Ages; and evidence furnished by
testing listeners who have learned to understand Western music—all these
indicate that music can communicate referential meanings.
Pages 1-2
Some of those who have doubted that referential meanings
are “real” have based their skepticism upon the fact that such meanings are not
“natural” and universal. Of course, such meanings depend upon learning. But so,
too, do purely musical meanings—a fact that will become very clear in the course
of this study. [emphasis added]
…
Let us now make a second point clear, namely, that the
distinction just drawn between absolute and referential meanings is not the
same as the distinction between the aesthetic positions which are commonly
called “formalist” and “expressionist.” Both the formalist and the
expressionist may be absolutists; that is, both may see the meaning of music as
being essentially intramusical (non-referential); but the formalist would
contend the meaning of music lies in the perception and understanding of the
musical relationships set forth in the work of art and that meaning in music is
primarily intellectual, while the expressionist would argue that these same
relationships are in some sense capable of exciting feelings and emotions in
the listener. [emphasis added]
This point is important because the expressionist
position has often been confused with that of the referentialist. For although
almost all referentialists are expressionists, believing that music
communicates emotional meanings, not all expressionists are referentialists.
Thus, when formalists, such as Hanslick or Stravinsky, reacting against what
they feel to be an overemphasis on referential meaning, have denied the possibility
or relevance of any emotional response to music, they have adopted an untenable
position partly because they have confused expressionism and referentialism.
One might, in other words, divide expressionists into two
groups: absolute expressionists and referential expressionists. The former
group believe that expressive emotional meanings arise in response to music and
that these exist without reference to the extramusical world of concepts,
actions, and human emotional states, while the latter group would assert that
emotional expression is dependent upon an understanding of the referential
content of music. [emphases added]
In other words, Roger Scruton "could" be described as an absolute expressionist in the sense that Meyer has used. Scruton contends that emotional expressive meaning in response to music exists, though he attempts to make a case that this is an aspect inherent to the musical "object" and yet that this is an intra-musical experience. That suggests, on the other hand, that Scruton has been trying to argue an expressionist anti-referentialist case as a kind of "formalist", arguing that the meanings of music as an expressive art are intramusical.
If it seems at times Scruton's arguments and stance are muddled it is likely because they are. He wants the expressive aspect of music to be the most salient thing about it yet attempts to define music in such intramusical formalist terms as to reject referentialism as Meyer has defined it and also rejecting the idea that music as an expressive art has developed in a range of extramusical referential codes and conventions. Meyer has written at some length on how he regards attempts to ground music in "nature" as dubious. We are not worse off for admitting that the musical conventions we have made as humans are conventions we have made.
What can make Scruton's writing on music seem like a grab bag of ideas that don't entirely cohere is that he stakes out a defense of music that is simultaneously appealing to an absolutist sensibility regarding what music is but then he insists on locating its content in an expressive or expressionist field of activity where there is something like an "inherent" emotionally expressive content to purely musical content. He doesn't present himself as a referentialist but the music he enjoys the most, from the Romantic era through the early twentieth century concert repertoire, tends to be brimming with extramusical referential content.
In other words, people who argue that extramusical associations can't be "real" because they are extramusical rather than intramusical ways of thinking or responding to music could try to say this is the case because anything that has to be learned would be a learned convention rather than a "natural" response to the music itself, but this would be to ignore the reality that every style of music has to be taught and every style of music has to be learned before it can be fully and truly appreciated as music. If music were so natural and easily understood who on earth would need to blow tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on music education? Meyer declared half a century ago that the quest in Western music theory for a "natural" explanation of musical pitch systems and syntax has basically been a failure:
MUSIC, THE ARTS, AND IDEAS
Leonard B. Meyer
Copyright (c) 1967. 1994 by The University of Chicago
ISBN 0-226-52143-5
page 288
For two thousand years music theorists searched for the "natural" explanation of musical pitch systems and syntax. Their point of departure was, as a rule, some sort of acoustical data--the lengths of vibrating strings, the overtone series, or some other property of sound. Using such data, an attempt was made to show that this or that system was natural--and hence, by extension, necessary or valid. Toward the beginning of the twentieth century this search for a natural justification for music was abandoned. The development of new tonal systems in the West, the study of the history of Western music, and research in comparative musicology made it clear that musical styles are not natural forms of communication, but are learned and conventional.
The fact that something is conventional and learned, however, does not mean that it is arbitrary, any more than showing that it is "natural" is to assert that it is necessary. [emphasis added]
Meyer spent a lot of time discussing music as something that can be understood through cognition and cognitive theories such as Gestalt. Scruton has spent a good deal of time in his books arguing against cognition and cognitive processes as the way to understand what music is. He has aimed to demonstrate that music is music in a sense that there is something about the art of music as an experience or object to which we can respond that isn't predicated on conventions, but he has so far not succeeded in making a case that thinking about how we make and listen to music in cognitive procedural terms is a useless or unhelpful path. It may be that it's not a path of philosophy of the sort Scruton works with, but musicians may find that conceding that music emerged with extramusical goals and methods in mind might actually be the more fruitful and relevant path of study.
Particularly given the ways in which the Western art of literate music emerged from liturgical music and conventions developed around liturgical music in Latin I might dare suggest that Scruton has been making a category mistake by trying to define and defend the art of Western music in terms that are, at most, confined to the era of "absolute" music in later 18th and 19th century terms based on a range of categories he does not even affirm himself. He rejects a Hanslick style formalist position that music expresses only itself but he also rejects extra-musical referentialist understanding or mediation by convention. That Scruton has developed so much of his arguments over against positions staked out by philosophers such as Adorno cannot be ignored in assessing his arguments.
So far Scruton has asserted his "semaphore test" more than he has made a convincing argument as to its accuracy. Meyer, by contrast, has declared on the basis of his study of Western music across its history and in comparison to Eastern music that there is no "natural" or "intrinsic" aspect to the conventions of art:
STYLE AND MUSIC: THEORY, HISTORY AND IDEOLOGY
LEONARD B. MEYER
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
COPYRIGHT (C) 1989 BY LEONARD B. MEYER
ISBN 0-226-52152-4
page 10
The constraints of a style are learned by composers and performers, critics and listeners. Usually such learning is largely the result of experience in performing and listening rather than of explicit formal instruction in music theory, history, or composition. In other words, knowledge of style is usually "tacit": that is, a matter of habits properly acquired (internalized) and appropriately brought into play. Even when a composer invents a new rule or, more commonly, discovers a novel strategy for realizing some existing rule, the invention or discovery may be largely tacit. He or she finds a relationship that works but may be unable to explain why it does so--how it is related to other features and other constraints of the style.
It is the goal of music theorists and style analysts to explain what the composer, performer, and listener know in this tacit way.
from footnote 18 on page 10
Textbooks dealing with harmony, counterpoint, form, and so on, are not, despite customary usage, theoretical treatises, explaining the bases for the constraints employed in some style. Rather they are practical manuals of how-to-do-it rules. They bear the same relationship to theory of music as an instruction book for radio repairing bears to the theory of radio transmission, or, more to the point, they bear the same relationship to the theory and analysis of music as an English grammar of the eighteenth century bears to the style of, say, the poetry of William Blake.
pages 11-12
... One can list and count traits--say, the frequency of sforzandi in Beethoven's music or the number of deceptive cadences in Wagner's operas--till the end of time; but if nothing is known about their functions (structural, processive, expressive, and so on), it will be impossible to explain why they are there, how their presence is related to other features observed, or why their frequency changes over time. Such traits may even serve as reasonably reliable "identifiers" of Beethoven's or Wagner's style, yet contribute nothing to our understanding of how the style functions. Put in another way; all the traits (characteristic of some work or set of works) that can be described and counted are essentially symptoms of the presence of a set of interrelated constraints. What the theorist and the analyst want to know about are the constraints of the style in terms of which the replicated patternings observed can be related to one another and to the experience of the works of art.
But we are not precisely in the same position as [John R.] Searle's observers. They can find knowledgeable informants in the grandstand or on the playing field who can tell them what the rules are; indeed the rules of football are written down and can be studied. In the arts, however, the constraints governing the choices made are seldom explicitly recorded or consciously conceptualized, even by those most accomplished in their use. As we have seen, they are usually known tacitly. As a result the theorist/style analyst must infer the nature of the constraints--the rules of the game--from the play of the game itself.
The observation that one will never actually learn the rules of the game of football just by watching a game of football seems to distill Meyer's broader observations about music, music theory, and analysis. The music historian can go back and read treatises and theoretical writings on music from this or that time but often, as Meyer noted, handbooks on counterpoint or harmony are practical guidebooks or "how to" manuals that instruct on musical strategies within constraints whose theoretical underpinnings may be largely unexamined. As yet, after reading a few Scruton books on music, I am not so sure Scruton has explicated so much as assumed the theoretical foundation of the Western musical traditions he's defended. To put this another way, by directly rejecting the legitimacy of Gestalt or cognitive approaches to music Scruton's approach throws us, with him, back upon the art object without providing much by way of explanation as to why these musical idioms are in any sense "natural". To put it still another way, Scruton never formulated a rebuttal to a Leonard B. Meyer assertion that there is no "natural" foundation for the conventions of Western music or established what we lose if that is the case.
Let's take Meyer's assertions about how music is an accumulation of conventions and consider this possibility, that once we grant that a musical style is a range of conventions, constraints and rules within which creative activity can be observed we may find that "the understanding test" is easier to pass. If music is an art of, well, artfully engaging with and modifying or contributing to conventions then "the understanding test" could probably be passed by a moderately wide range of musical styles. To put this more plainly, there are plenty of people who could probably get what "the understanding test" is for a song who would not be able to get that so readily for a ricercar or a polyphonic motet in a language they don't know. By attempting to fix more of the substance of music in the art object itself than in the conventions surrounding musical performance and education Scruton. Whatever music is may be "over and above the recognition of convention" but in historical and cultural terms we might liken this Captain Obvious observation to the level of saying that a house is built upon a foundation which is on the earth. Talking about the house as an aesthetic object without any regard for the real estate it is built upon seems a bit too abstract but that is, I would suggest, a risk inherent in how Scruton has attempted to describe music, a kind of musing upon the house that ignores the dirt it is built upon.
Let's take Meyer's assertions about how music is an accumulation of conventions and consider this possibility, that once we grant that a musical style is a range of conventions, constraints and rules within which creative activity can be observed we may find that "the understanding test" is easier to pass. If music is an art of, well, artfully engaging with and modifying or contributing to conventions then "the understanding test" could probably be passed by a moderately wide range of musical styles. To put this more plainly, there are plenty of people who could probably get what "the understanding test" is for a song who would not be able to get that so readily for a ricercar or a polyphonic motet in a language they don't know. By attempting to fix more of the substance of music in the art object itself than in the conventions surrounding musical performance and education Scruton. Whatever music is may be "over and above the recognition of convention" but in historical and cultural terms we might liken this Captain Obvious observation to the level of saying that a house is built upon a foundation which is on the earth. Talking about the house as an aesthetic object without any regard for the real estate it is built upon seems a bit too abstract but that is, I would suggest, a risk inherent in how Scruton has attempted to describe music, a kind of musing upon the house that ignores the dirt it is built upon.
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