Ted Gioia has been publishing his new book at Substack, and I still disagree with the conspiratorial claim that musical inventors are "suppressed" from music history books

Ted Gioia has listed ten reasons why he has been publishing his newest book on Substack rather than through a more traditional book-publishing path. Samuel D James has written why he thinks you should not publish your book through Substack. 

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/10-reasons-why-im-publishing-my-next

https://samueldjames.substack.com/p/i-dont-think-you-should-publish-your

For those who don't recall how or why James ended up getting mentioned at Wenatchee The Hatchet you can poke around with the search engine for that. I would venture that Gioia is well-established enough he can publish via Substack to his heart's content. 

That said ... I still think Gioia tends to be speculative and tendentious outside his fields of expertise.

For instance, he's staying on the path he sketched out in Music: A Subversive History.

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/why-is-the-oldest-book-in-europe

.... But, at a minimum, your achievement is removed from the history books. If you think I’m exaggerating, convene a group of music historians and ask them to name the inventor of the fugue, the sonata, the symphony, or any other towering achievement of musical culture, and note the looks of consternation that ensue, even before the arguments begin.

and that would be because Gioia has read stuff like Theories of Fugue from the Age of Josquin to the Age of Bach?  The fallacy in the rhetorical question is to surmise that some one person "invented" the fugue, the sonata, the symphony or any other towering achievement of musical culture.  Polyphonic music has been around for a very long time and forms and styles changed.  Someone like George Oldroyd could counsel students to not just study Bach but also Byrd to get a sense of how approaches to contrapuntal music changed across centuries.  Charles Rosen called his classic treatment of sonata forms Sonata Forms for a reason. No one person "invented" sonata forms and there are so many varieties of forms that can be called sonata it remains one of the most difficult aspects of explaining what sonata forms are to those not already steeped in listening to or performing or composing them.  Elements of Sonata Theory is a massive book that maps out no less than five types of sonata forms.

Then there's the problem with the question of whether sonata form is a category galant style composers would have used or whether sonata form was a post hoc early 19th century shorthand for what 18th century theorists and music teachers were more apt to call "grand binary form". Why ever would they do that?  Go through Haydn string quartets and observe the repeat indications for the largest sections of the first movements and you'll begin to get some ideas.

Music history and historiography isn't going to tell us who invented the sonata, sonata forms or things like that because those are debatable questions in terms of whether and why they should be asked and how and why they should be answered.  What "can" be answered by way of scholarly and popular consensus is who was considered good, average or great at writing sonatas but the criteria for those evaluations shift over time.

...

In other words, the history of musical innovation overlaps closely with the history of dissidents and their rebellions. Mull over the implications of that connection.

And the story continues, in the same discordant manner, century after century. The inventor of musical notation, the monk Guido of Arezzo (991-1033), was harassed and evicted from his monastery, and eventually sought out the protection of the Pope. Saint Benedict, who developed a system of chanting still practiced among monastic orders today, is now venerated as a both a musical and religious innovator, but he barely survived several poisoning attempts during his tumultuous lifetime. The emergence of counterpoint in European music was accompanied by a similar controversy and backlash.

...

The crisis didn't show up until 1470 and Bog Wegman has a book about that crisis called, aptly enough, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe 1470-1530. Wegman pointed out that there was really no controversy about polyphonic music at all until Johannes Behem was livid that his city's elders ripped on polyphony and preferred plainchant and registered a complaint that roundaboutly sparked off a century of heated debates about the legitimacy of mensural polyphony.  Wegman's book covers how the debate was about the question of whether such complex and opaque music: 1) benefited lay congregants who couldn't understand what was going on and 2) as Zwingli and others would begin to argue, the whole system of beneficial indulgences was doctrinally dubious at best and was bankrolling what was increasingly viewed as a venal, corrupt self-serving regime that defended itself in part on the basis of the amazing arts it produced via patronage and 3) Erasmus objected to how this played out in English Catholicism in such a way that if anyone did dare to criticize complex polyphony as being unhelpful to the poor and self-aggrandizing acts on the part of paid musicians they were apt to be accused of the heresy of Lollardism and have the full punitive weight of the English crown and secret police brought down on them for objecting to complex counterpoint. 

So Gioia's claim that the powers that be have always been suppressing musical innovators seems like a rockist jazzbro's just-so story for those of us who have read a few books on the tumultuous pre-Elizabethan era England and the musical controversies swirling around there.  Wegman pointed out that the controversies about the legitimacy of polyphonic music were basically tabled after Martin Luther hit the European scene and objected to the entire indulgence system at its core. Suddenly defending the polyphonic musical works that were bankrolled by that system were not quite as important to defend as the doctrinal foundations of the system that Martin Luther was directly attacking (and Zwingli and Bullinger, too, I think, from what I've been reading the last few years).  

In Gioia's history of music anything occult, anything magical, anything involving sorcery is sympathetic and anything that allegedly reduces music to "science" or "math" is an attempt to clamp down on control. Plato wanted to suppress music.  But it takes very little effort to see that someone like Plato advocating for philosopher kings and citizen soldiers able to bear the mantle of philosophically informed culture would want to control music because they assumed it had literally magical powers.  I'm not sure I should even need to cite Kofi Agawu pointing out that in African culture contexts there aren't even necessarily words for music and that the ritual, work-based, or recreational contexts for music-making tend to be pertinent to what kind of music gets made.

But that "does" get me to a point about Gioia's conflation of music and magic that I'll get to after I've quoted him some more:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/why-is-the-oldest-book-in-europe-60a

…

Perhaps the most fascinating thing here is the insistence that singing the song isn’t enough to help the supplicant who is in a crisis situation. It’s also essential to understand what the lyrics really mean. The Derveni author gets most irate when describing those who turn to other musical ritualists for enlightenment, for “they go away after having performed [the rites] before they have attained knowledge, without even asking further questions.”

So we are left with the surprising fact that not only is the oldest book in Europe about music criticism, but that this is not a trivial detail or mere happenstance. In this time and place, knowing the meaning of a song could be a matter of grave importance (no pun intended). Or even more to the point—the effects of making a wrong choice could last into the afterlife. Was there ever a music fan who made a more extreme claim for a favorite song? Or was more intent on deciphering its hidden meanings? Here we are at the birth of Western culture and we find something very similar to the extreme fandoms of modern times.

Who was this ritualist and others of a similar orientation—and there must have been others, because the Derveni author is so intent on attacking them—who dealt in such arcane practices? I have referred to them as music critics or musicologists, but that clearly only captures a tiny part of their repertoire of skills, which also could include everything from ritual purifications to the interpretation of dreams and omens.

…

(1) Musicology originated as sorcery and divination.

(2) Songs were widely recognized as repositories of remarkable powers—although this view was later discredited and, in most spheres of musical life, eventually forgotten.

(3) Important songs contain secret information, and the most powerful practitioners not only could perform the music, but also understood the hidden meanings. They were, in a very real sense, code-breakers.

(4) Music is useful in decisive or dangerous situations, and at the most important interludes in human life—hence musicology must address this reality. At the birth of Western culture, the most esteemed musician, Orpheus, was also celebrated as chief protagonist in the most dangerous and ambitious hero’s quest known to ancients: the journey to the Underworld to bring back a dead soul through the power of music. As such, Orpheus was a role model for others who sought musical interventions in moments of crisis and uncertainty—both in this world and elsewhere.

(5) Music is the engine that empowers the hero’s quest. Those who hoped to surmount these obstacles in a transformative, decisive process —what I call here the genuine hero’s journey—need the right songs to make it happen.

(6) Everybody can participate in this. The musical intervention embedded in the Derveni papyrus made a kind of heroism and immortality, previously attainable only by deities and rare individuals, accessible to anyone brave or daring enough to pursue the quest. These heroes were the forerunners of today’s musicians, and they not only sang their amazing songs but defied authorities by advancing human rights and expanding personal autonomy.

… 

Gioia asserts that "musicology" originated as sorcery and divination.  No, I'd say it's more honest to say that music played a role in rituals that sprung from sorcery and divination.  Regular readers of Wenatchee The Hatchet may already know I dissented from Gioia's earlier "subversive" thesis by pointing out that he talked up "trance" without explaining how or why "trance" was used in divination and exorcism.  So now Gioia is getting around to highlighting his idea that musicology originated in sorcery and divination.  This, however, is a move that highlights a criticism a reviewer made of Gioia a few years ago, that if Gioia actually understood what the Pythagoreans were claiming on behalf of music he would need to admit he's a Pythagorean rather than making Pythagoras and post-Pythagorean theorists the devil in his master-narrative about the "secret" origins of music and musicology.  

But there are two important issues Gioia will have to deal with.  The first has to deal with something basic about the Orphic myths he leans on besides Orpheus being slain, it's that the most famous tale of Orpheus is about his failure.

Orpheus made music that charmed gods and animals and allowed him to enter the underworld to reunite with his wife but he broke the taboo against looking at her while still in the land of the dead and he lost her, again.  Gioia has said he's studied the Orpheus myth for 25 years and if he has then he has to concede that the Orphic myth describes Orpheus' failure to successfully bring his lost wife back from the realm of the dead.  It didn't matter that his music was so powerful, he still failed. Gioia may want to imagine music powerful enough to bring people back from the dead exists but in the end he seems to be building up to Romanticist boilerplate.  

Gioia is welcome to stage a musical ritual that he thinks will raise a dead person to life any time he wants but he seems content to claim that critics and scoffers don't believe in the magical power of the secret music.  Well, sure, count me as a person who doesn't subscribe to the idea that music has a sacramental power in itself and that it isn't magic.  Ted Gioia can't have his cake and eat it, too, when it comes to the occult power of music that he thinks "everyone" can participate in.  If everyone "can" participate in it then it is more or less by nature not occult if anyone has the most rudimentary understanding of what "occult" even means.  

Transposing an early twenty-first century notion of "counterculture" back on the Orphic and Delphic cults simply doesn't count as serious or intellectually honest history or historiography where music is concerned.  If Gioia were talking about Mesopotamian exorcistic medicine as a subject unto itself that might or might not even include music that would be one thing. There's plenty of scholarship on exorcistic medicine. There's plenty of writing about exorcism and one specialist on exorcism has pointed out there are more books on exorcism and exorcists and the history of the development of demonologies now than ever before.  So the idea that these are not topics musicologists want to talk about is a feint if Gioia thinks we have no choice but to talk about exorcism and divination and mystery cults in order to even talk about music.

But the problem with all of that is that Gioia's version of the origin of musicology has to posit an intra-Hellenistic battle of ideals that is not necessarily an accurate or credible account of the role music and music-making has made even within Western contexts.  Sure, Zwingli and Calvin differed with Luther on whether the Paraclete was present where good music-making happened.  Zwingli and Calvin thought music and music-making were this-worldly practices that Christians can and should enjoy without imputing to music the kinds of literally  magical powers Gioia claims music had that some bad old powers-that-be types wanted to suppress.  If that were at all true why did any Catholic clergy seek to clamp down on protests against mensural polyphony as symptomatic of the corruptions of Roman Catholicism and the graft of the system of indulgences that bankrolled esoteric music that some specialists in medieval and early Renaissance music have proposed may have only been made by and for the singers themselves?  

If Gioia is going to go with the sorcery angle he needs to be serious about it enough to say that the music was meant to appeal to the spirits who would then act on behalf of the spell-casting musician or singer. The music itself could help a believer induce a mantic state which could then be used for divinatory, exorcistic or medicinal purposes but Gioia so far merely asserts that the music itself got the work done rather than claim that a spirit offered the music as a sacrificial/ritual gift, being pleased with said gift, grants the request of the ritual performers or spell-casters. 

The bad faith of imputing so much power to music comes here:

...
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this—both for Western culture as well as us as individuals. Before the time of the Derveni practitioner, heroism and immortality were only granted to the gods and rare individuals, such as Achilles or Odysseus, who were renowned for glorious deeds. 
...

Who or what grants the immortality to the gods and demigods? Who favored Orpheus so much that he could enter the underworld? Music is played by someone for someone. Gioia seems committed to a version of Orphic folklore where the man's music is so powerful nothing can stop it but this does not seem like a serious take on the legends of Orpheus. You see it doesn't matter that he later says this:

In other words, music criticism was not just practiced by magicians but actually originated as a kind of sorcery itself. Believe it or not, divination is the source of all of the current-day variants of what we call criticism or textual interpretation or (to apply a fancier label) hermeneutics. In the beginning, it was all a kind of wizardry. Soothsaying and magic somehow evolved into album reviews in Rolling Stone or scholarly musicology papers sent out for peer review.

if he hasn't answered the earlier question, "who is the intended audience of the magical music?"  Is it actually the music that has the power to raise the dead or did gods listen sympathetically to the music?  This is not a mundane distinction. Was Orpheus so successful (or was he?) at getting his bride from the underworld because of his music or because a god of the underworld gave him favor? Where did the divine power in the legends really come from?  Music or the favor of other gods?

Maybe he'll answer it later but if the answer remains "music" and not the spirits or gods or demons the rituals were used to summon then, well, the whole thing might as well be a card trick.  If it is the music that has the magical power and not the spirits the music invokes then Gioia's dualism in which "science" and "magic" are opposed vanishes into music itself.  Magic merely becomes ancient science in which if you have the right techniques and qualifications the outcome is assured.  Even in modern medicine the placebo effect is known and used but no placebo effect on earth brings dead people back to life in itself.  That is the self-generated trap Gioia's theory is in danger of putting him. The idea that a song that can raise the dead would be suppressed by music historians seems impossible to take seriously. If someone could be brought back from death by the right song and dance the burden of proof is on Gioia for why people would suppress rather than preserve that magic/science. At the moment he seems to just beg the question of why the powers that be would suppress rather than preserve a music that could raise the dead.  

It seems a bit like a character on South Park taking about " ... they killed Kenny" and when a girl asks Stan Marsh, "Who's they?" the punchline is there's no answer. The whole point of  "they" is it always changes episode to episode and it doesn't exactly matter who killed Kenny. 

In a similar way whoever allegedly suppresses the "magic" of music never needs to be named or actually identified in this version of the history of musicology. 

The thing is when he sticks to the field of music history he's demonstrably good at Ted Gioia can write some fun and informative stuff.  

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-plan-to-turn-thelonious-monk

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/when-duke-ellington-made-a-record

I have written extensively about what I do and don't appreciate about Gioia's work elsewhere. I don't think that selling new master narratives about music from the dawn of humanity is really what people need to solve musical problems in our time and place. I still read his work, obviously, but when he ventures outside of jazz and blues history I find that I simply can't take his proposals seriously because he seems to have made up his mind over the last twenty-five years about the magical power of music and how Western musicology came from "sorcery" and somehow academics have had some kind of grand conspiracy to "suppress" this "truth" since more or less the dawn of Western cultural history.  

But the role music played in divinatory and exorcistic practices isn't "secret" it's just that once the Enlightenment hit and post-Hume, maybe, people didn't like the idea that musicians might continue having an interest in hermetic and occult sciences. David Yearsley's got a book on Bach and counterpoint that touches on this issue I'm currently reading through but the fact that someone can mention this in a book means it's even harder for me to take Gioia's conspiracy-driven "subversive history" take at face value than it was when I first read it.