April 30, 2024

🎼 April 2024: What is music?

The essence of music, aerial silks, an encouraging note from Jess Lin, and more.

Hello!

I am Chris Krycho, a working composer (among other things), and this is my monthly(ish) music update.

If someone forwarded you this email, it’s clearly because they have great taste in composers and in friends, so read on—and maybe even subscribe!

🎼 On the craft

I have two big philosophical questions bouncing around in my mind right now about music. These are the kinds of things I listened to friendly arguments about around the school of music back in college, but I have not had the time or mental space to give them serious thought since then.

1. How, if at all, does music represent things in the world? In particular, instrumental music; music with lyrics is not necessarily obvious or transparent on this front, but it is also more straightforward than purely instrumental music.¹

2. What exactly is music? Does it have—in the metaphysical sense—an “essence”? How do we describe and understand what music is, what makes it distinct from mere sound?²

I have not yet worked out what I want to say about (1) yet—your thoughts and input most welcome! On (2), I have at least something to say.

An attempt at a bit of a definition: Music is structured sound, created by one or more persons with the intent that it be heard, and in some way felt, by one or more creatures.

Each of the parts of that is essential, in that if you take it away, what you are left with is perhaps interesting, perhaps good, but ultimately not music:

• It is structured sound. This is about as general a description as I can muster here, because music can and does come in a kaleidoscopic variety of forms: loud and quiet, tonal (of every variety of tonality, macro- and micro- and Western and non-Western) and atonal, in metrical or free time, last days or but a few seconds, follow predetermined forms or be wholly improvisatory. It includes rap and symphonies and plainchant and lullabies.

• It is created by humans. Birdsong can be beautiful, but it is not what we mean by “music”.

• It is created with the intent that it be heard. A score written but not intended to be heard is not music. (It is, perhaps, potential music, but it is not music.) The chords my daughters are writing down as part of their theory and analysis work are not music—though if they eventually get to counterpoint exercises, those might be!

• It is created with the intent that the hearing produce some kind of feeling. That feeling does not have to be the sort of thing we often think of in connection with music. It could as well be perplexity and confusion as delight or sorrow or other such “classic” emotions.

• It is created to be heard and felt by one or more creatures. One can of course write music for an audience; one can also write music for oneself; one can perhaps write music for one’s dog; one cannot write music for a rock.³

Readers with a background in 20th century music might notice that this definition excludes works like John Cage’s 4′33″. Indeed, and rightly so. Cage’s work is an interesting—perhaps even a good—piece of performance art: but it is not music.

I do not think this is a perfect definition, and I imagine you might have some things to quibble with in it. (In which case, please reply!) The two bits of it I am still chewing on most:

• That bit about “creatures” is fuzzy for me. I initially wrote “people” rather than “creatures” there, but I was reflecting that my wife does sing little songs to our dog, and the dog certainly responds to them. The dog does not understand or respond to them the same way a person would, of course; but respond she does. So “creature” it is. But is that right?

• I also struggle with exactly the right word to use where I chose “feeling”. I find myself unable to articulate exactly what I mean by “feeling” there, even with the addenda above. There is something in the directness of our experience of music that seems important to name—which is related to the way music does or does not “represent” things—, and “feeling” is the best I have. How would you put it?

The other question is: To what extent does this sort of philosophical mulling contribute to the making of art? To which I confess: I have no idea. For some people, it might even be a distraction! I am the kind of person for whom my work and my thinking about my work always go hand in hand, though. Software development always pushes me into philosophy and theology and ethics; so, it would seem, does composing.

🎵 Other notes

First, a wonderful bit of follow-up news: Last time I linked to my old music colleague Barron Ryan’s Kickstarter project, There Arises Light in the Darkness—and it got funded! To any of you who contributed, my earnest thanks.

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Second, Jess Lin’s post Your tone comes from your head. Jess is a violinist, writing about practicing violin, but the major idea of the post is one every artist will relate to:

Both were important: knowing I could be better, and plodding along for years.

I have found myself in that “plodding along” mode on a major work (more on that… eventually) and even just a week ago was feeling rather discouraged. Having Jess’ encouragement in the back of my head helped me keep plodding along anyway.

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Finally: A delightful conversation between Joy Clarkson and Christopher Tin about music and metaphors on Joy’s podcast. This was one part of what got me thinking seriously on “representation” in art again for the first time in decades!

🎤 Links, updates, &c.

The other thing which got me thinking about representational and art was an aerial silks interpretation of my Fanfare for a New Era of American Spaceflight, from local aerial silks artist Kristi McCauley.

Delightfully, the performance and our surrounding discussion was recorded, and is now up on YouTube. At a minimum I recommend spending two and a half minutes to watch her performance (direct link to that timestamp), which I found genuinely astonishing. As I put it to Kristi at one point during the discussion: “I would literally die.”

It was also fascinating to have someone interpret my work in another medium—something I had never experienced before in any art form, but especially with aerial silks. (I have been an interpreter, translating poetry into music; I have collaborated with the musicians who have performed my music; I have not been interpreted.)

The discussion around it may be interesting to folks in here as well: before Kristi’s performance, I talked a bit about the process of composing the piece and working with the Budapest Scoring Orchestra to record it. In our panel discussion afterward, we talked a bunch about interpretation, the interaction between non-representational and representational art in a collaboration like this, and ideas of “fittingness” in interpretation. I would love to hear your thoughts after watching it—whether on YouTube or just by replying to this email!

👋🏼 Happy April!

Thanks as ever for your attention. I never take it for granted! I’ll be back in late May with my next missive. On representationalism, perhaps? We will see!