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011: A Tale of Three Musics
May. 19th, 2021 02:10 pmI recently read an article quoting Dutch politician Thierry Baudet, founder of the Forum for Democracy party. His positions are quite controversial to most Europeans, and they include an Australian-style immigration policy, opposition to the EU, to climate change rhetoric, and generally being in favor of what people are calling “populism”. Those aren’t the bones I care to pick. The most interesting thing about him is that he is a tremendous fan of the classical arts, and prefers them strongly to anything the present era has to offer, whether that’s music, art, architecture, what-have-you. In terms of music, the only exception he’s willing to grant is The Beatles, which he calls satisfying in the way that fast food can occasionally be satisfying, but no substitute for a real meal.
On one hand, I agree with him. I know little about art and architecture, except that I strongly prefer looking at old paintings and old buildings to the current abstract monstrosities. I also know little about music, but it’s little enough that I want to examine his attitude towards it and what musical choices might say about an individual or a society, in general.
I wouldn’t for a minute insist that Tom Petty is in any way a better composer of music than Mozart from a technical standpoint. Tastes are subjective, but as far as we can put the subjective aside, the difference is clear. And while a return to some of the classical values in music education would be welcome, Baudet seems to believe that music reached its peak at a certain point, has devolved, and needs to return to that point. I intend to propose an entirely different way of looking at the lifespan of a musical tradition. One of the problems with comparing styles to one another is the same error I’ve mentioned before, Bertrand Russell’s confusion of logical types. Not all musics exist on the same order of magnitude. I propose three broad categories of the same order that might be useful for grouping musical traditions. These exist at a higher level of taxonomy than the other terms I’ll use, the same way we classify things by kingdom (animal or plant) before moving down to phylum, class…species. I’ll call this highest order “tradition,” and differentiate it from “family”, which in turn is higher than “genre”. We could come up with more levels in between, but I just want enough of a hierarchy to get a conversation rolling.
A tradition is distinct from any sound. It is pre-sound, the things we consider before we look at pitch, rhythm, etc. The tradition is defined by the answers to questions like: Who plays the music? Who listens? How is it passed on? What needs does it fulfill? What is the nature of the rules (but not what are the rules themselves)?
The Elite Tradition
I’ll start with the second tradition that arises in the life of a civilization, because it’s Baudet’s preference. For us, the elite tradition got its start in the Medieval period and peaked with classical an romantic music. It’s elite both in terms of the quality and skill required to compose and play it, and in terms of the typical audience. Anyone with a little musical education can see that there really is a lot more going on with this tradition, usually for the better, when compared to our modern offerings. Let me see if I can answer some of those questions I brought up.
Elite music is composed and played by individuals with a high degree of technical skill and education. The rules are generally formal (written down), complex, and somewhat strict. The audiences both then and now tended to be members of the elite class, or those one below with aspirations. It’s played in big cities, not often on tour in one-horse towns, because that’s where the elite live. In fact, playing and liking music within this tradition is itself a signal to others of your social class—one of the purposes it serves. In western history, it could be for the secular elite, or performed in religious services, which were themselves highly formal in the case of the Catholic Church. Poor people did not usually attend performances in Vienna. They did attend mass, and the best examples of ecclesiastical music were given in masses, where there is a distinct separation between the priest and choir, and the congregation (little interaction, very formal). The music was written by renowned composers, and you knew good and well when you were listening to Bach, or Beethoven. The name was part of the allure.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the way in which the music was taught to future generations. A formal music education was expensive, and required a skilled private tutor, or an institution, either of which would have charged a tuition that made it inaccessible to all but the upper classes. Once we get out of the Medieval period, notation evolved into common practices, and everything was written down. You learned and read from a sheet, and that’s how composers disseminated their works.
A brief aside. There seems to be an innate human need for music. It’s nearly impossible to find any culture without something that would qualify, even if it’s just a simple chant, or percussion. In Bateson’s rules about mind, we saw that minds send and receives messages which are transforms, or codes, of the meaning they convey. I think music is a fine example as any of a coded message, which means there is an intention of sharing information. That information could be the emotional state of the performer, a story, or any number of things, but it’s a reflection of the values of the one who shares it, be that a performer or a culture.
If only elite music is worth repeating, and if the poor are not allowed to participate, only listen (and rarely, at that), then only a certain class of citizen is allowed to express itself in that form. The cost both prohibits most of society from joining in, and demonstrates the values of those who do the prohibiting. While the music is no doubt beautiful, it seems misguided to deny most people what I would consider a basic human impulse found in all cultures, at all times, regardless of their level of civilization.
At this point it probably sounds like I’m going to take down Baudet on being a condescending elitist and make some argument for Tom Petty and the common man. Wrong. I hope to take this somewhere more interesting than the tired old “rich people suck” rhetoric. I only pause to point out the narrow-mindedness of a classical-only position. Note: nowhere did Baudet say he was in favor of denying access or expression of any other type of music, only that he prefers classical, and thinks it ought to be a part of a musical education, which I can actually get behind. It does, however, reveal more about his values than at first glance.
The Folk Tradition
Folk means the people. As this is a pre-sound category, it does not mean Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. I actually consider them representative of the third tradition, but of the folk genre. Maybe we need a better name for that genre. American folkstyle?
Folk music tends to be part of an old tradition. Granted, it had to be new at some point, but that was before it coalesced into something that also has fairly strict rules, though these are unspoken, and not written down. They’re more like habits than rules. Any type of music, whether ballads collected by Francis Child, or ceremonial drum music of some West African tribe, will qualify as folk if it meets the additional criteria.
The music is played by non-professionals, though they may be extremely skilled. It might be at a community gathering, a quiet evening with the family, or even hummed alone while going about the chores. So it’s for the community, which must be insulated from other musical traditions in order to stabilize into a mature folk form. Think of this as a closed feedback loop that has achieved a sort of homeostasis through an evolutionary process, and will continue in more or less that state until jolted by some sufficient outside feedback. Until then, it is of the people, by the people, for the people, and only sometimes involves payment. If so, it’s small and/or non-linear, such as a favor owed. The performers will otherwise be engaged in activities that provide for their daily subsistence. In other words, they got bills to pay, they can’t be fiddlin’ all day. It’s a spare-time pursuit.
You’re not likely to get famous as a composer in the folk tradition. The songs are usually very old, and the composer forgotten or in serious dispute. No one cares who wrote it, only whether or not they like it. These songs can also serve spiritual needs, just like certain elite music, but in the context of a very blurry line between pastor and congregation (think a black Southern Baptist church) if not in a family or even solo setting. They also pass the time during work, and tell important stories and share values.
It’s critical that the folk tradition is passed down orally. It is not written down, and if it is, it hasn’t yet become part of the tradition. For example, a number of ballads published in Britain as broadsides showed up as part of the Appalachian folk tradition, but first they had to enter the folk vernacular, and by the time they were gathered by music historians, the performers probably didn’t even know what a broadside was, much less who wrote it. The songs were learned from family, friends, neighbors, and were probably shared for free.
Music was usually very simple, often just a single melody line repeated—monophonic music. Partly, this was due to the limitations of oral learning. Try picking up Mozart from your granny without sheet music. And partly, I think it’s because the melody is the most basic building block of music. Even in a complex song, it’s the part you whistle while you work. People who are poor and insulated from others tend to have simple needs and simple values, and their music is a reflection of that. It also implies more of a unity in the community. People were close, and communication could take a kind of shorthand since the language was closely shared. Imagine learning a song with several verses and a chorus from your neighbor. You aren’t likely to pick it up in a single hour-long visit. The lyrics would take a number of contacts over time to get right, with suggests a more intimate relationship is required, minus all the baroque formalities of a classical education.
The folk tradition requires no formal structures. In fact, it loathes them. The elite tradition, and the next one I’ll discuss, both evolve when the folk bubble is burst by outside contacts and signals a society growing in complexity. While the folk tradition can and does survive marauding barbarians and dark ages, it does poorly when faced with good roads.
The Popular Tradition
A quick look at the criteria of the previous two traditions makes it clear that nothing we listen to on a daily basis fits into either one. What Baudet dislikes is the popular tradition. It’s played by pros for general audiences, the wider and more general, the better. While it satisfies a variety of needs, there is almost always money involved in pop music, which is not true of folk. Rather than being insulated to a certain region and/or ethnic group, pop music is widely available across social, ethnic, and geographic lines. We probably got our first taste of it in western music when troubadours sprang out of a folk tradition and toured other areas, playing appealing songs for money. The songs were chosen based not on the merits as in folk, but on how much income they generated. Over time, what people will pay to hear begins to reflect not only their tastes, but the way those tastes are sculpted by marketing pressures. It’s neither entirely what they want, or what they’re told to want, but a compromise between the two.
Popular music can be taught orally, but it’s often written down, and even sold in written form or in recording. Once folk is written down or recorded, it doesn’t immediately exit the tradition and enter the popular, but the long slow process has begun, and it ends when the last people who learned it the original way die out.
In a very mature society, it reflects a winnowing of both folk and elite traditions. The elements that are most appealing have been tested and gathered, and the ones most likely to offend are discarded, regardless of whether they are technically brilliant or communally valuable. That sounds harsh, but pop music actually has a lot of merits in my opinion. The composers are usually formally educated and highly skilled, though not always. They’ve learned important lessons from elite music and brought some of those outstanding methods to the masses who otherwise would not have had the chance to appreciate them. Say what you want about the quality of the music, but it takes an incredible amount of skill to write and perform a song that millions of people enjoy. Pop draws from both traditions, crafts a memorable and appealing work, and delivers it to more people than either could ever hope to reach. It isn’t just for the elite, or the people who live across a few counties in Western North Carolina. It’s for everyone. As important as I think music is in our lives, I’d say that’s worth a nod of appreciation.
The Lifespan of a Musical Tradition
I play and mostly listen to music that belongs to the popular tradition, but I also appreciate quite a bit of folk and elite music. There is no opportunity for me to join either tradition, only to be influenced by them. It’s not a matter of money, or choice, but a circumstance of geography and time.
If an individual’s musical tastes say a lot about them, the same is true for larger groups, and even whole civilizations. Unfortunately, we know precious little about the music of those civilizations that have risen and fallen before ours. We do know they had rich traditions, but except for a broken instrument here, a few scrawled notes in an unfamiliar notation there, all of it was lost in the dark ages following collapse. The Roman Empire, for example, definitely had a huge body of music belonging to folk, elite, and popular traditions. All that remains is about 26 seconds of a single song. We don’t even know if it was a good song. Imagine some future archaeologist unearthing just the bridge of some forgotten Justin Bieber album-filler and trying to piece together what all western music from 500 A.D. forth must have been like. We know even less about other civilizations than Rome.
Why is it lost? In a dark age, people abandon frivolous pleasures so they can devote more time and energy to things like not-starving and not-being-murdered-by-barbarians. Any music that was passed on formally by way of writing fades with literacy and economic stability. People are scattered, killed, or otherwise occupied by more important things.
But something has to have survived. The entire western empire didn’t just abandon music overnight and start singing to themselves while they did the dishes a few hundred years later. We didn’t reinvent music in the wake of Rome. What I imagine happened was that elite music probably vanished pretty quickly with the institutions required to teach it and the comfortable aristocracy required to listen. Music is not a material thing. The sheet music is not the sound. It requires minds, since it is a transformed message between them.
What likely happened was a massive simplification. Much was lost. What remained was popular songs that were easily remembered and performed, meaning they required only voice, or an instrument that is always cheap and easy to produce with modest resources. Polyphony—multiple sounds at once—gave way to monophonic melodies. If the equivalent of Beethoven’s 5th made it out, it was in the form of some guy hoeing a row while singing, “dun, dun, dun, DUN!”
While it didn’t survive intact, what probably did survive were the seeds released from a dying pod. A simple melody might be the most basic building block of music, but the pitches of the notes, the size of the segments, and how many are in an octave are not fixed. For example, Indian classical music has 22 segments to an octave, while we have 12. The frequency ratio of notes isn’t set, either. Most western music probably used Pythagorean tuning, which was traded in for the current equal temperament, neither of which is used in certain eastern styles. Even the value of a reference pitch for tuning instruments (concert pitch) has changed. There was no standard value for how many hertz an A-note had to be, and it could fall anywhere from about 400-450Hz during Baudet’s era of choice, though now it’s 440Hz in western music.
Subjective values for pitch, temperament, rhythm, etc. almost certainly changed in the wake of Rome’s collapse, but they sprung from its musical genetics and evolved from there, not from parallel traditions around the world. If we could hear ancient Greek or Roman music, it would sound odd, but more pleasing to our western ears than ancient Chinese music, for example, because it would be closer to what we expect.
Early Life
Imagine a guitar string being stretched across the instrument. It’s fixed at the bridge, rooted and unmoving. At the tuning peg, it’s also attached, but this end can be tightened or loosened to achieve notes determined by the thickness and length of the string. The same applies for a new folk tradition like the one that would have been born in the newfound isolation after Rome’s fall. It has an unchanging root in the music of the empire, but each area would represent a string of varying thickness, and each string would have gone through adjustments and selection processes the same way species do when a new ecological niche opens up, each adapting as best it can to the circumstances or dying out. First loose, it’s tightened (the rules and form) and taken to a point of stability which exists within a narrower and narrower range as tradition and rules pile up.
Whatever fragments survived in isolated regions matured into the local folk tradition, in some cases cross-pollinating with other traditions and setting roots, though not necessarily growing very wide. Once settled, I see a folk tradition as a closed system. It maintains a homeostasis as long as outside inputs are limited. In order for any system, any mind, to change, it needs to encounter something beyond itself that’s sufficiently disruptive to its homeostasis, like another tradition, or a traumatic event. Witness the way that the Appalachian folk tradition incorporated songs about the Civil War, and eventually influence from African-American styles, prior to being contacted by the researchers who recorded them and brought them into the popular awareness. Meanwhile the African-American folk tradition that we know differs sharply from West African music due to the encounter with a new land and the ordeal of slavery.
Middle Years
Medieval music would had to have grown out of folk traditions, as there was no stable central authority and no formalized education system for it to have been born of the elite tradition, and no strong economy that allows for a popular tradition to emerge. The fact that much of the early music we’re aware of is monophonic—often monastic chants—means it wouldn’t have come from earlier polyphonous traditions.
When one simple tradition encounters another, it makes new tonal relationships possible the same way as adding a second string to an instrument. Those possibilities are determined by the nature of the two strings and their relationship (ratios) to one another. To go back to the Appalachian folk music, traditional British ballads were usually sung unaccompanied, or by a single instrument. The classic pairing of the fiddle and the banjo in early band music is the joining of British and African traditions. Historians can tell that a song is likely British in origin if they’ve found authentic examples of it being played by a solo fiddle, and that it comes from the African-American population if there are solo banjo examples. While most of America hears a banjo melody and thinks Deliverance, bluegrass music is the child of a marriage between Scotch-Irish and former slaves.
A novel encounter births a new tradition that’s at first simple and diffuse in its rules, but slowly stabilizes and explores its own potential the way a teenager learns the complexities of becoming an adult. And like any good teenager, it learns many rules from its parents, and rebels against many others. Once mature, it can encounter other traditions and reproduce, or die without children.
As the folk traditions of the middle ages grew up, simple melodies blossomed into polyphony. Rhythm and notation began to standardize into the common practices we know today. In the words of Leonard Cohen, “It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth…” as those intervals along with the octave were originally common, with the major third and others coming into popularity only as folk gave way to an elite tradition. The Church helped. Originally its simple monastic folk tradition reflected the complexity of the institutions of the dark ages, and grew in complexity with the Roman Catholic influence and the royal houses of Europe. Elite music requires elite institutions to support it: stable governments and economies, and a leisure class with idle time to learn and pass it on. Our proudest musical traditions grew up under these conditions at the same time we were experiencing similar explosions in art, science, philosophy, and political structures.
Late Life
A musical tradition’s lifespan can dwarf a human being’s, but all living things grow old eventually. The older the tradition, the more calcified it gets within its own rules and habits. Fewer pieces, and then none at all, are added to the canon. A once proud man with great ideas now tells the same stories over and over until he’s muttering to himself in senility with little awareness of what’s going around him except when the nurse passes out pudding cups. While composers today are still perfectly capable of studying and writing in the classical style, for some reason, we ain’t buying it. It lacks the genius of its youth. Or maybe it’s just an inaccurate reflection of society, and we can spot the lie.
Remember that I’m considering music as a taxonomy of orders. With folk traditions stabbed and elite traditions drooling, much of what is left belongs to the popular tradition. The genres and sub-genres of music we enjoy are children of these higher traditions, and they live out their lives in similar arcs but on a smaller scale. They can only operate within the framework of their larger traditions, with the added constraints of the genre, so innovations will be fewer and less significant, still dependent upon novel contact between different genres. You might get metal, and blues, and blues-metal, but none of it is in danger of replacing the older elite or folk traditions because they belong within pop, and can only operate within the further constraints of the genre.
All of the current innovation, however small, takes place within the popular tradition. In fact, much of the innovation we see today is not in the music itself but how to popularize it. Successful songwriters have the formula for a platinum single down pat, and it’s as much marketing and sculpting tastes as it is effective use of melody and structure. Our global connections put Rome to shame, and that means producers have an incredible sample size to immediately test the appeal of a song, or a new sub-genre, and adjust accordingly. While it may not always be the most creative, you do have to give them credit for being able to craft really memorable music with tremendous appeal. Think there’s nothing to writing a platinum single? Go ahead and do it.
Another interesting aspect of pop is that it blurs class lines considerably more than either of the other two traditions. Both the British royal family and the part-time cashier at Home Depot listen to much of the same music. If Baudet thinks that’s barbaric, he’s right. No 18th century aristocrat would be caught dead listening to peasant folk. In the last decades of Rome, there was apparently a problem with Romans imitating barbarian fashion, and vice-versa. Who knows if that extended to music? It’s possible that if they brought their style, they may also have mingled their folk traditions with whatever was popular in the empire. I would bet that a Roman senator would have been just as horrified to hear of his son wearing fur pants and listening to Barbarian folk as Queen Elizabeth must be when the crown prince listens to rap music born in the American inner city. Neither were likely to have bothered the younger generations as much.
As the product of both a refined elite tradition and a deeply-rooted folk tradition, the popular tradition has the ability to remain for quite a while, though innovations will be smaller and smaller, as there are few to no novel genres left. There isn’t anything genetically different-enough to cause major waves. The genes have mixed and mixed again, so any pairing now would just bring things closer to a genetic homogeneity. This isn’t good or bad. It’s just how music—like genes—settles into a stable pattern within a population.
Popular music also needs a big, stable economy. Remember that it no longer serves as a cultural identity, or a valuable class marker. The main force behind it is profit. People will always want music, and the popular tradition does a fantastic job of listening to their tastes and making accommodations. It requires full-time musicians, and the arts only become more profitable than subsistence farming when a dark age stabilizes, resources are plentiful, and people can afford to specialize in crafts that don’t directly provide for their needs in exchange for a living. What eventually kills a popular tradition is when the economic and political rug is yanked out from under its feet—in the case of Rome, a series of barbarian invasions and a splintering empire that took with it the safe and profitable trade routes. As long as we have a stable nation and plenty of jobs to go around, we can breathe easy knowing Beyonce is here to stay. Before I look at what would happen if circumstances changed, I want to bring this back to earlier discussions about mind.
Mind and Music
Any system that contains a mind as one of its parts can itself qualify as a mind. Music itself, unchained from any human being, would not qualify at least because it lacks collateral energy, for which it depends on us. But it might be useful to think of it both as a part of an individual mind, and higher order minds—when many minds cooperate in a circuit. The song stuck in my head might alter my mood or behavior, compared to a different song, or no song at all. Likewise, a musical genre has effects on populations of fans, in general, while a tradition can be a strong part of an entire culture.
Bateson’s fifth criterion for mind was this:
5. In mental process, the effects of difference are to be regarded as transforms (i.e. coded versions) of events which proceeded them. The rules of such transformation must be comparatively stable (i.e., more stable than the content) but are themselves subject to transformation.
Sound like music? It wouldn’t be tough to argue that one, if not the only, purpose music serves for us is that it’s a transform of information that communicates with other minds, an auditory map of a territory we can’t address directly. A stable but simple folk tradition reflects a stable but simple society and the things it values. It would likely be less stable in the early stages of a dark age when the people who make the music are themselves grappling with instabilities.
Elite music reflects a much more complex society, and the undercurrents of art, philosophy, science, and politics that are going on at the same time. The popular tradition reflects a stable society that has been piled up with rigid rules, grown a bit long in the tooth, and lacks room for serious change. It is both whittling away at those elements that aren’t strong economic indicators, and cashing in on the hard work of the folk and elites in bygone centuries. In all cases, across orders and ages, you might know something of the mind by the music it holds (or the music that holds it).
To Baudet, the divergence from the admirable elite tradition represents the senility of society. If he thinks it’s a bad sign for the rest of the arts and sciences when music is pried from older traditions and wrung of everything that doesn’t sell, it would be hard to argue. The Beatles and other popular bands represent the elements of western music that are the simplest and most technically-appealing across classes, without all the subtlety and brilliance. There is no lack of technical mastery in popular genres. Only high-order innovation on one hand, and deep cultural roots on the other.
The shallow roots and high degree of mingling among musical styles might also reflect the high degree of connectivity and the ease of travel we have. Folk traditions require insulation. Elite ones requires a certain amount of interpenetration of distinct systems. Popular ones represent a more complete homogeneity. If it sounds like I’m saying any of those is better than the other, I assure you I’m not, any more than I would say I prefer a permanent Fall to a permanent Spring. Even if I did, seasons change.
What can we learn about Baudet? He likes complex but only mildly-connected societies, where there is both a regional sense of identity, and some far-reaching trade. He will not like any policies which increase connectedness, shorten distance, etc., because that would lead to a society in which the popular flourishes. As a governor, he would be about like an 18th-century aristocrat, working to stabilize his country and his class, with enough concern for the lower classes to maintain economic and political stability. He is probably very intelligent, and values education.
It’s no surprise that he wants out of the EU, and aims to limit unchecked immigration to those who can demonstrate their skills are beneficial to the economy and society. He would not likely be completely isolationist, only a limiter. I know nothing of Dutch politics, and I’m not for or against the man. He may very well be the best option his people have. Aristocrats of the golden age of Rome were much better to the population than the kleptocrats of late empire.
The one concern is that he thinks it’s desirable or possible to turn back the clock. It seems to me he’s living in a classical fantasy, as opposed to his opponents who live in a different kind of fantasy, no less unreal.
I would expect someone stuck in a folk music tradition to want the very small world to always stay the same. They would be unable to think about their world in any other terms. Their concerns would be eminently practical, though not necessarily creative or complex.
Someone stuck in the elite mindset would be creative and complex, but less practical and more abstract, and not as concerned for those beneath their social class. Elite music only ever reaches a small fraction of a society, while the rest are implicitly or explicitly denied access. An elite music fan would be able to navigate baroque social conventions, and as leaders they would likely be able to achieve regional stability and success while keeping other nations at a trading-arm’s length.
Someone who only enjoys the popular tradition would be mired in a thousand habits whose origins they wouldn’t know even if they could recognize their existence. Creativity would take place on a small scale, and they would have an easy time connecting and navigating between a large number of barely-different things, whose minor differences they would inflate. Languages and styles would be common across wide geographical areas and social classes. Just as bureaucracies pile on top one another and prevent anything from getting done, their minds would be systems of inefficient and contradictory habits and thoughts that nevertheless have managed to achieve a sort of stability, well-adjusted to minor novelty but disastrously fragile to larger disruptions.
All of these minds have their strengths and weaknesses, just as different types of maps have strengths and weaknesses when navigating a particular territory. The danger of only having one map is that you quickly forget it’s anything other than the absolute truth. It would be preferable to understand the limitations of each, and to switch and cross-reference as needed, while understanding that even that process is just an approximation.
I don’t think that we’ve been chipping away at all the boring types of music to arrive at a perfect synthesis, nor do I think trying to turn back the clocks is useful. If there’s a knock against Baudet in my mind, it isn’t the things the press is knocking, but his inability to think outside of that framework—his inability to recognize you can’t go back to better times, only forward into the fray.
So which way is forward for music? We’re as likely to return to the classical period as an old man is to wake up a strapping 25-year old. It’s inaccurate to say we make music. Our music is a reflection of the state of the system to which it belongs, subject to feedback from all other parts, and all other systems of systems. Our popular tradition will remain stable, undergoing minor variations, as long as the structures that support it do so as well. Political and economic disruption on a large scale would begin the disintegration process, as it’s done with other civilizations in the past.
At that point, I’m not sure what happens, but my guess is that the popular tradition becomes the seeds for new folk traditions. Elite music is too complex and can’t be shared in any condition other than pristine stability trending toward growth. If any elements of elite music survive, it would be the handful that have made it into the popular music of the day. Pop composers don’t follow nearly all the rules of their classical counterparts, but there’s no doubt that some of those rules have become unofficially official, and other elements from the elite tradition continue to have a strong influence on popular music. We call it “Western Harmony.” Those influences would in turn influence future folk traditions.
Short of monks hand-copying thousands of music textbooks on good quality paper, the best way to preserve those older traditions would be to find ways to incorporate their best elements into new music with broad appeal. The same goes for political structures, art, and sciences. You can’t return to the past, but you can take the greatest hits and give them new life in a form altered to better suit present needs. Music, old books, and ideas survive longest when they’re in the widest circulation.
None of us will come close to living long enough to see a new folk tradition emerge. Sad as it is that all cultures eventually lose their music, I’m glad that only 26 seconds survive from Rome. The fewer constraints, the more room for something new and creative to emerge, and emerge organically from the mouths that sing it rather than dusty records turning up centuries later.
On a personal level, just as having more maps facilitates creative thinking, a solid musical education would be one in which students learned to appreciate all traditions: folk, elite, and popular, and to understand their shared territory and their unique brilliance and limitations. Part (almost all) of the reason I stay out of politics except to take a jab at someone’s musical tastes here and there is that people seem unable to look at anything from any perspective other than whatever narrow map they inherited. Learning about different ways of looking at something as fundamental to human beings as music might just get people to consider other ideas and communicate instead of shouting.
On one hand, I agree with him. I know little about art and architecture, except that I strongly prefer looking at old paintings and old buildings to the current abstract monstrosities. I also know little about music, but it’s little enough that I want to examine his attitude towards it and what musical choices might say about an individual or a society, in general.
I wouldn’t for a minute insist that Tom Petty is in any way a better composer of music than Mozart from a technical standpoint. Tastes are subjective, but as far as we can put the subjective aside, the difference is clear. And while a return to some of the classical values in music education would be welcome, Baudet seems to believe that music reached its peak at a certain point, has devolved, and needs to return to that point. I intend to propose an entirely different way of looking at the lifespan of a musical tradition. One of the problems with comparing styles to one another is the same error I’ve mentioned before, Bertrand Russell’s confusion of logical types. Not all musics exist on the same order of magnitude. I propose three broad categories of the same order that might be useful for grouping musical traditions. These exist at a higher level of taxonomy than the other terms I’ll use, the same way we classify things by kingdom (animal or plant) before moving down to phylum, class…species. I’ll call this highest order “tradition,” and differentiate it from “family”, which in turn is higher than “genre”. We could come up with more levels in between, but I just want enough of a hierarchy to get a conversation rolling.
A tradition is distinct from any sound. It is pre-sound, the things we consider before we look at pitch, rhythm, etc. The tradition is defined by the answers to questions like: Who plays the music? Who listens? How is it passed on? What needs does it fulfill? What is the nature of the rules (but not what are the rules themselves)?
The Elite Tradition
I’ll start with the second tradition that arises in the life of a civilization, because it’s Baudet’s preference. For us, the elite tradition got its start in the Medieval period and peaked with classical an romantic music. It’s elite both in terms of the quality and skill required to compose and play it, and in terms of the typical audience. Anyone with a little musical education can see that there really is a lot more going on with this tradition, usually for the better, when compared to our modern offerings. Let me see if I can answer some of those questions I brought up.
Elite music is composed and played by individuals with a high degree of technical skill and education. The rules are generally formal (written down), complex, and somewhat strict. The audiences both then and now tended to be members of the elite class, or those one below with aspirations. It’s played in big cities, not often on tour in one-horse towns, because that’s where the elite live. In fact, playing and liking music within this tradition is itself a signal to others of your social class—one of the purposes it serves. In western history, it could be for the secular elite, or performed in religious services, which were themselves highly formal in the case of the Catholic Church. Poor people did not usually attend performances in Vienna. They did attend mass, and the best examples of ecclesiastical music were given in masses, where there is a distinct separation between the priest and choir, and the congregation (little interaction, very formal). The music was written by renowned composers, and you knew good and well when you were listening to Bach, or Beethoven. The name was part of the allure.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the way in which the music was taught to future generations. A formal music education was expensive, and required a skilled private tutor, or an institution, either of which would have charged a tuition that made it inaccessible to all but the upper classes. Once we get out of the Medieval period, notation evolved into common practices, and everything was written down. You learned and read from a sheet, and that’s how composers disseminated their works.
A brief aside. There seems to be an innate human need for music. It’s nearly impossible to find any culture without something that would qualify, even if it’s just a simple chant, or percussion. In Bateson’s rules about mind, we saw that minds send and receives messages which are transforms, or codes, of the meaning they convey. I think music is a fine example as any of a coded message, which means there is an intention of sharing information. That information could be the emotional state of the performer, a story, or any number of things, but it’s a reflection of the values of the one who shares it, be that a performer or a culture.
If only elite music is worth repeating, and if the poor are not allowed to participate, only listen (and rarely, at that), then only a certain class of citizen is allowed to express itself in that form. The cost both prohibits most of society from joining in, and demonstrates the values of those who do the prohibiting. While the music is no doubt beautiful, it seems misguided to deny most people what I would consider a basic human impulse found in all cultures, at all times, regardless of their level of civilization.
At this point it probably sounds like I’m going to take down Baudet on being a condescending elitist and make some argument for Tom Petty and the common man. Wrong. I hope to take this somewhere more interesting than the tired old “rich people suck” rhetoric. I only pause to point out the narrow-mindedness of a classical-only position. Note: nowhere did Baudet say he was in favor of denying access or expression of any other type of music, only that he prefers classical, and thinks it ought to be a part of a musical education, which I can actually get behind. It does, however, reveal more about his values than at first glance.
The Folk Tradition
Folk means the people. As this is a pre-sound category, it does not mean Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. I actually consider them representative of the third tradition, but of the folk genre. Maybe we need a better name for that genre. American folkstyle?
Folk music tends to be part of an old tradition. Granted, it had to be new at some point, but that was before it coalesced into something that also has fairly strict rules, though these are unspoken, and not written down. They’re more like habits than rules. Any type of music, whether ballads collected by Francis Child, or ceremonial drum music of some West African tribe, will qualify as folk if it meets the additional criteria.
The music is played by non-professionals, though they may be extremely skilled. It might be at a community gathering, a quiet evening with the family, or even hummed alone while going about the chores. So it’s for the community, which must be insulated from other musical traditions in order to stabilize into a mature folk form. Think of this as a closed feedback loop that has achieved a sort of homeostasis through an evolutionary process, and will continue in more or less that state until jolted by some sufficient outside feedback. Until then, it is of the people, by the people, for the people, and only sometimes involves payment. If so, it’s small and/or non-linear, such as a favor owed. The performers will otherwise be engaged in activities that provide for their daily subsistence. In other words, they got bills to pay, they can’t be fiddlin’ all day. It’s a spare-time pursuit.
You’re not likely to get famous as a composer in the folk tradition. The songs are usually very old, and the composer forgotten or in serious dispute. No one cares who wrote it, only whether or not they like it. These songs can also serve spiritual needs, just like certain elite music, but in the context of a very blurry line between pastor and congregation (think a black Southern Baptist church) if not in a family or even solo setting. They also pass the time during work, and tell important stories and share values.
It’s critical that the folk tradition is passed down orally. It is not written down, and if it is, it hasn’t yet become part of the tradition. For example, a number of ballads published in Britain as broadsides showed up as part of the Appalachian folk tradition, but first they had to enter the folk vernacular, and by the time they were gathered by music historians, the performers probably didn’t even know what a broadside was, much less who wrote it. The songs were learned from family, friends, neighbors, and were probably shared for free.
Music was usually very simple, often just a single melody line repeated—monophonic music. Partly, this was due to the limitations of oral learning. Try picking up Mozart from your granny without sheet music. And partly, I think it’s because the melody is the most basic building block of music. Even in a complex song, it’s the part you whistle while you work. People who are poor and insulated from others tend to have simple needs and simple values, and their music is a reflection of that. It also implies more of a unity in the community. People were close, and communication could take a kind of shorthand since the language was closely shared. Imagine learning a song with several verses and a chorus from your neighbor. You aren’t likely to pick it up in a single hour-long visit. The lyrics would take a number of contacts over time to get right, with suggests a more intimate relationship is required, minus all the baroque formalities of a classical education.
The folk tradition requires no formal structures. In fact, it loathes them. The elite tradition, and the next one I’ll discuss, both evolve when the folk bubble is burst by outside contacts and signals a society growing in complexity. While the folk tradition can and does survive marauding barbarians and dark ages, it does poorly when faced with good roads.
The Popular Tradition
A quick look at the criteria of the previous two traditions makes it clear that nothing we listen to on a daily basis fits into either one. What Baudet dislikes is the popular tradition. It’s played by pros for general audiences, the wider and more general, the better. While it satisfies a variety of needs, there is almost always money involved in pop music, which is not true of folk. Rather than being insulated to a certain region and/or ethnic group, pop music is widely available across social, ethnic, and geographic lines. We probably got our first taste of it in western music when troubadours sprang out of a folk tradition and toured other areas, playing appealing songs for money. The songs were chosen based not on the merits as in folk, but on how much income they generated. Over time, what people will pay to hear begins to reflect not only their tastes, but the way those tastes are sculpted by marketing pressures. It’s neither entirely what they want, or what they’re told to want, but a compromise between the two.
Popular music can be taught orally, but it’s often written down, and even sold in written form or in recording. Once folk is written down or recorded, it doesn’t immediately exit the tradition and enter the popular, but the long slow process has begun, and it ends when the last people who learned it the original way die out.
In a very mature society, it reflects a winnowing of both folk and elite traditions. The elements that are most appealing have been tested and gathered, and the ones most likely to offend are discarded, regardless of whether they are technically brilliant or communally valuable. That sounds harsh, but pop music actually has a lot of merits in my opinion. The composers are usually formally educated and highly skilled, though not always. They’ve learned important lessons from elite music and brought some of those outstanding methods to the masses who otherwise would not have had the chance to appreciate them. Say what you want about the quality of the music, but it takes an incredible amount of skill to write and perform a song that millions of people enjoy. Pop draws from both traditions, crafts a memorable and appealing work, and delivers it to more people than either could ever hope to reach. It isn’t just for the elite, or the people who live across a few counties in Western North Carolina. It’s for everyone. As important as I think music is in our lives, I’d say that’s worth a nod of appreciation.
The Lifespan of a Musical Tradition
I play and mostly listen to music that belongs to the popular tradition, but I also appreciate quite a bit of folk and elite music. There is no opportunity for me to join either tradition, only to be influenced by them. It’s not a matter of money, or choice, but a circumstance of geography and time.
If an individual’s musical tastes say a lot about them, the same is true for larger groups, and even whole civilizations. Unfortunately, we know precious little about the music of those civilizations that have risen and fallen before ours. We do know they had rich traditions, but except for a broken instrument here, a few scrawled notes in an unfamiliar notation there, all of it was lost in the dark ages following collapse. The Roman Empire, for example, definitely had a huge body of music belonging to folk, elite, and popular traditions. All that remains is about 26 seconds of a single song. We don’t even know if it was a good song. Imagine some future archaeologist unearthing just the bridge of some forgotten Justin Bieber album-filler and trying to piece together what all western music from 500 A.D. forth must have been like. We know even less about other civilizations than Rome.
Why is it lost? In a dark age, people abandon frivolous pleasures so they can devote more time and energy to things like not-starving and not-being-murdered-by-barbarians. Any music that was passed on formally by way of writing fades with literacy and economic stability. People are scattered, killed, or otherwise occupied by more important things.
But something has to have survived. The entire western empire didn’t just abandon music overnight and start singing to themselves while they did the dishes a few hundred years later. We didn’t reinvent music in the wake of Rome. What I imagine happened was that elite music probably vanished pretty quickly with the institutions required to teach it and the comfortable aristocracy required to listen. Music is not a material thing. The sheet music is not the sound. It requires minds, since it is a transformed message between them.
What likely happened was a massive simplification. Much was lost. What remained was popular songs that were easily remembered and performed, meaning they required only voice, or an instrument that is always cheap and easy to produce with modest resources. Polyphony—multiple sounds at once—gave way to monophonic melodies. If the equivalent of Beethoven’s 5th made it out, it was in the form of some guy hoeing a row while singing, “dun, dun, dun, DUN!”
While it didn’t survive intact, what probably did survive were the seeds released from a dying pod. A simple melody might be the most basic building block of music, but the pitches of the notes, the size of the segments, and how many are in an octave are not fixed. For example, Indian classical music has 22 segments to an octave, while we have 12. The frequency ratio of notes isn’t set, either. Most western music probably used Pythagorean tuning, which was traded in for the current equal temperament, neither of which is used in certain eastern styles. Even the value of a reference pitch for tuning instruments (concert pitch) has changed. There was no standard value for how many hertz an A-note had to be, and it could fall anywhere from about 400-450Hz during Baudet’s era of choice, though now it’s 440Hz in western music.
Subjective values for pitch, temperament, rhythm, etc. almost certainly changed in the wake of Rome’s collapse, but they sprung from its musical genetics and evolved from there, not from parallel traditions around the world. If we could hear ancient Greek or Roman music, it would sound odd, but more pleasing to our western ears than ancient Chinese music, for example, because it would be closer to what we expect.
Early Life
Imagine a guitar string being stretched across the instrument. It’s fixed at the bridge, rooted and unmoving. At the tuning peg, it’s also attached, but this end can be tightened or loosened to achieve notes determined by the thickness and length of the string. The same applies for a new folk tradition like the one that would have been born in the newfound isolation after Rome’s fall. It has an unchanging root in the music of the empire, but each area would represent a string of varying thickness, and each string would have gone through adjustments and selection processes the same way species do when a new ecological niche opens up, each adapting as best it can to the circumstances or dying out. First loose, it’s tightened (the rules and form) and taken to a point of stability which exists within a narrower and narrower range as tradition and rules pile up.
Whatever fragments survived in isolated regions matured into the local folk tradition, in some cases cross-pollinating with other traditions and setting roots, though not necessarily growing very wide. Once settled, I see a folk tradition as a closed system. It maintains a homeostasis as long as outside inputs are limited. In order for any system, any mind, to change, it needs to encounter something beyond itself that’s sufficiently disruptive to its homeostasis, like another tradition, or a traumatic event. Witness the way that the Appalachian folk tradition incorporated songs about the Civil War, and eventually influence from African-American styles, prior to being contacted by the researchers who recorded them and brought them into the popular awareness. Meanwhile the African-American folk tradition that we know differs sharply from West African music due to the encounter with a new land and the ordeal of slavery.
Middle Years
Medieval music would had to have grown out of folk traditions, as there was no stable central authority and no formalized education system for it to have been born of the elite tradition, and no strong economy that allows for a popular tradition to emerge. The fact that much of the early music we’re aware of is monophonic—often monastic chants—means it wouldn’t have come from earlier polyphonous traditions.
When one simple tradition encounters another, it makes new tonal relationships possible the same way as adding a second string to an instrument. Those possibilities are determined by the nature of the two strings and their relationship (ratios) to one another. To go back to the Appalachian folk music, traditional British ballads were usually sung unaccompanied, or by a single instrument. The classic pairing of the fiddle and the banjo in early band music is the joining of British and African traditions. Historians can tell that a song is likely British in origin if they’ve found authentic examples of it being played by a solo fiddle, and that it comes from the African-American population if there are solo banjo examples. While most of America hears a banjo melody and thinks Deliverance, bluegrass music is the child of a marriage between Scotch-Irish and former slaves.
A novel encounter births a new tradition that’s at first simple and diffuse in its rules, but slowly stabilizes and explores its own potential the way a teenager learns the complexities of becoming an adult. And like any good teenager, it learns many rules from its parents, and rebels against many others. Once mature, it can encounter other traditions and reproduce, or die without children.
As the folk traditions of the middle ages grew up, simple melodies blossomed into polyphony. Rhythm and notation began to standardize into the common practices we know today. In the words of Leonard Cohen, “It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth…” as those intervals along with the octave were originally common, with the major third and others coming into popularity only as folk gave way to an elite tradition. The Church helped. Originally its simple monastic folk tradition reflected the complexity of the institutions of the dark ages, and grew in complexity with the Roman Catholic influence and the royal houses of Europe. Elite music requires elite institutions to support it: stable governments and economies, and a leisure class with idle time to learn and pass it on. Our proudest musical traditions grew up under these conditions at the same time we were experiencing similar explosions in art, science, philosophy, and political structures.
Late Life
A musical tradition’s lifespan can dwarf a human being’s, but all living things grow old eventually. The older the tradition, the more calcified it gets within its own rules and habits. Fewer pieces, and then none at all, are added to the canon. A once proud man with great ideas now tells the same stories over and over until he’s muttering to himself in senility with little awareness of what’s going around him except when the nurse passes out pudding cups. While composers today are still perfectly capable of studying and writing in the classical style, for some reason, we ain’t buying it. It lacks the genius of its youth. Or maybe it’s just an inaccurate reflection of society, and we can spot the lie.
Remember that I’m considering music as a taxonomy of orders. With folk traditions stabbed and elite traditions drooling, much of what is left belongs to the popular tradition. The genres and sub-genres of music we enjoy are children of these higher traditions, and they live out their lives in similar arcs but on a smaller scale. They can only operate within the framework of their larger traditions, with the added constraints of the genre, so innovations will be fewer and less significant, still dependent upon novel contact between different genres. You might get metal, and blues, and blues-metal, but none of it is in danger of replacing the older elite or folk traditions because they belong within pop, and can only operate within the further constraints of the genre.
All of the current innovation, however small, takes place within the popular tradition. In fact, much of the innovation we see today is not in the music itself but how to popularize it. Successful songwriters have the formula for a platinum single down pat, and it’s as much marketing and sculpting tastes as it is effective use of melody and structure. Our global connections put Rome to shame, and that means producers have an incredible sample size to immediately test the appeal of a song, or a new sub-genre, and adjust accordingly. While it may not always be the most creative, you do have to give them credit for being able to craft really memorable music with tremendous appeal. Think there’s nothing to writing a platinum single? Go ahead and do it.
Another interesting aspect of pop is that it blurs class lines considerably more than either of the other two traditions. Both the British royal family and the part-time cashier at Home Depot listen to much of the same music. If Baudet thinks that’s barbaric, he’s right. No 18th century aristocrat would be caught dead listening to peasant folk. In the last decades of Rome, there was apparently a problem with Romans imitating barbarian fashion, and vice-versa. Who knows if that extended to music? It’s possible that if they brought their style, they may also have mingled their folk traditions with whatever was popular in the empire. I would bet that a Roman senator would have been just as horrified to hear of his son wearing fur pants and listening to Barbarian folk as Queen Elizabeth must be when the crown prince listens to rap music born in the American inner city. Neither were likely to have bothered the younger generations as much.
As the product of both a refined elite tradition and a deeply-rooted folk tradition, the popular tradition has the ability to remain for quite a while, though innovations will be smaller and smaller, as there are few to no novel genres left. There isn’t anything genetically different-enough to cause major waves. The genes have mixed and mixed again, so any pairing now would just bring things closer to a genetic homogeneity. This isn’t good or bad. It’s just how music—like genes—settles into a stable pattern within a population.
Popular music also needs a big, stable economy. Remember that it no longer serves as a cultural identity, or a valuable class marker. The main force behind it is profit. People will always want music, and the popular tradition does a fantastic job of listening to their tastes and making accommodations. It requires full-time musicians, and the arts only become more profitable than subsistence farming when a dark age stabilizes, resources are plentiful, and people can afford to specialize in crafts that don’t directly provide for their needs in exchange for a living. What eventually kills a popular tradition is when the economic and political rug is yanked out from under its feet—in the case of Rome, a series of barbarian invasions and a splintering empire that took with it the safe and profitable trade routes. As long as we have a stable nation and plenty of jobs to go around, we can breathe easy knowing Beyonce is here to stay. Before I look at what would happen if circumstances changed, I want to bring this back to earlier discussions about mind.
Mind and Music
Any system that contains a mind as one of its parts can itself qualify as a mind. Music itself, unchained from any human being, would not qualify at least because it lacks collateral energy, for which it depends on us. But it might be useful to think of it both as a part of an individual mind, and higher order minds—when many minds cooperate in a circuit. The song stuck in my head might alter my mood or behavior, compared to a different song, or no song at all. Likewise, a musical genre has effects on populations of fans, in general, while a tradition can be a strong part of an entire culture.
Bateson’s fifth criterion for mind was this:
5. In mental process, the effects of difference are to be regarded as transforms (i.e. coded versions) of events which proceeded them. The rules of such transformation must be comparatively stable (i.e., more stable than the content) but are themselves subject to transformation.
Sound like music? It wouldn’t be tough to argue that one, if not the only, purpose music serves for us is that it’s a transform of information that communicates with other minds, an auditory map of a territory we can’t address directly. A stable but simple folk tradition reflects a stable but simple society and the things it values. It would likely be less stable in the early stages of a dark age when the people who make the music are themselves grappling with instabilities.
Elite music reflects a much more complex society, and the undercurrents of art, philosophy, science, and politics that are going on at the same time. The popular tradition reflects a stable society that has been piled up with rigid rules, grown a bit long in the tooth, and lacks room for serious change. It is both whittling away at those elements that aren’t strong economic indicators, and cashing in on the hard work of the folk and elites in bygone centuries. In all cases, across orders and ages, you might know something of the mind by the music it holds (or the music that holds it).
To Baudet, the divergence from the admirable elite tradition represents the senility of society. If he thinks it’s a bad sign for the rest of the arts and sciences when music is pried from older traditions and wrung of everything that doesn’t sell, it would be hard to argue. The Beatles and other popular bands represent the elements of western music that are the simplest and most technically-appealing across classes, without all the subtlety and brilliance. There is no lack of technical mastery in popular genres. Only high-order innovation on one hand, and deep cultural roots on the other.
The shallow roots and high degree of mingling among musical styles might also reflect the high degree of connectivity and the ease of travel we have. Folk traditions require insulation. Elite ones requires a certain amount of interpenetration of distinct systems. Popular ones represent a more complete homogeneity. If it sounds like I’m saying any of those is better than the other, I assure you I’m not, any more than I would say I prefer a permanent Fall to a permanent Spring. Even if I did, seasons change.
What can we learn about Baudet? He likes complex but only mildly-connected societies, where there is both a regional sense of identity, and some far-reaching trade. He will not like any policies which increase connectedness, shorten distance, etc., because that would lead to a society in which the popular flourishes. As a governor, he would be about like an 18th-century aristocrat, working to stabilize his country and his class, with enough concern for the lower classes to maintain economic and political stability. He is probably very intelligent, and values education.
It’s no surprise that he wants out of the EU, and aims to limit unchecked immigration to those who can demonstrate their skills are beneficial to the economy and society. He would not likely be completely isolationist, only a limiter. I know nothing of Dutch politics, and I’m not for or against the man. He may very well be the best option his people have. Aristocrats of the golden age of Rome were much better to the population than the kleptocrats of late empire.
The one concern is that he thinks it’s desirable or possible to turn back the clock. It seems to me he’s living in a classical fantasy, as opposed to his opponents who live in a different kind of fantasy, no less unreal.
I would expect someone stuck in a folk music tradition to want the very small world to always stay the same. They would be unable to think about their world in any other terms. Their concerns would be eminently practical, though not necessarily creative or complex.
Someone stuck in the elite mindset would be creative and complex, but less practical and more abstract, and not as concerned for those beneath their social class. Elite music only ever reaches a small fraction of a society, while the rest are implicitly or explicitly denied access. An elite music fan would be able to navigate baroque social conventions, and as leaders they would likely be able to achieve regional stability and success while keeping other nations at a trading-arm’s length.
Someone who only enjoys the popular tradition would be mired in a thousand habits whose origins they wouldn’t know even if they could recognize their existence. Creativity would take place on a small scale, and they would have an easy time connecting and navigating between a large number of barely-different things, whose minor differences they would inflate. Languages and styles would be common across wide geographical areas and social classes. Just as bureaucracies pile on top one another and prevent anything from getting done, their minds would be systems of inefficient and contradictory habits and thoughts that nevertheless have managed to achieve a sort of stability, well-adjusted to minor novelty but disastrously fragile to larger disruptions.
All of these minds have their strengths and weaknesses, just as different types of maps have strengths and weaknesses when navigating a particular territory. The danger of only having one map is that you quickly forget it’s anything other than the absolute truth. It would be preferable to understand the limitations of each, and to switch and cross-reference as needed, while understanding that even that process is just an approximation.
I don’t think that we’ve been chipping away at all the boring types of music to arrive at a perfect synthesis, nor do I think trying to turn back the clocks is useful. If there’s a knock against Baudet in my mind, it isn’t the things the press is knocking, but his inability to think outside of that framework—his inability to recognize you can’t go back to better times, only forward into the fray.
So which way is forward for music? We’re as likely to return to the classical period as an old man is to wake up a strapping 25-year old. It’s inaccurate to say we make music. Our music is a reflection of the state of the system to which it belongs, subject to feedback from all other parts, and all other systems of systems. Our popular tradition will remain stable, undergoing minor variations, as long as the structures that support it do so as well. Political and economic disruption on a large scale would begin the disintegration process, as it’s done with other civilizations in the past.
At that point, I’m not sure what happens, but my guess is that the popular tradition becomes the seeds for new folk traditions. Elite music is too complex and can’t be shared in any condition other than pristine stability trending toward growth. If any elements of elite music survive, it would be the handful that have made it into the popular music of the day. Pop composers don’t follow nearly all the rules of their classical counterparts, but there’s no doubt that some of those rules have become unofficially official, and other elements from the elite tradition continue to have a strong influence on popular music. We call it “Western Harmony.” Those influences would in turn influence future folk traditions.
Short of monks hand-copying thousands of music textbooks on good quality paper, the best way to preserve those older traditions would be to find ways to incorporate their best elements into new music with broad appeal. The same goes for political structures, art, and sciences. You can’t return to the past, but you can take the greatest hits and give them new life in a form altered to better suit present needs. Music, old books, and ideas survive longest when they’re in the widest circulation.
None of us will come close to living long enough to see a new folk tradition emerge. Sad as it is that all cultures eventually lose their music, I’m glad that only 26 seconds survive from Rome. The fewer constraints, the more room for something new and creative to emerge, and emerge organically from the mouths that sing it rather than dusty records turning up centuries later.
On a personal level, just as having more maps facilitates creative thinking, a solid musical education would be one in which students learned to appreciate all traditions: folk, elite, and popular, and to understand their shared territory and their unique brilliance and limitations. Part (almost all) of the reason I stay out of politics except to take a jab at someone’s musical tastes here and there is that people seem unable to look at anything from any perspective other than whatever narrow map they inherited. Learning about different ways of looking at something as fundamental to human beings as music might just get people to consider other ideas and communicate instead of shouting.
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Date: 2021-05-21 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-21 11:56 pm (UTC)