Example Cultural Studies Essay

The nature of musical communication and the framework of thought, feeling and behaviour within which this communication takes place.

Musicalcommunication is commonly associated with place or location; for instance apiece of music will often bring about a flood of memories recalling the placethe piece was heard, perhaps the people in whose company the time listening tothe piece was spent and certainly the mood of the piece. A piano recital is thecultural event we will focus on, using specific examples of piano recitals heldaround the world, drawing on reports about those recitals from performers andaudience alike. The framework of thought, feeling and behaviour which takesplace at a piano recital is different from any other cultural environment,primarily because it the most special and intimate of instruments, one whichconnects the player with the listener in intimate and unmediated communication,in a pure communicative act. The piano is an instrument which evokesextraordinary passion, requires considerable dedication and patience, togetherwith skill and flair to bring about a perfect percussive performance.

Thereare a number of key players in a piano recital, not least the composer whocommunicates his art to the pianist and onwards, through the instrument, to anaudience. The composer is the translator of musical ideas into a symbolic form,usually the twelve semi-tone scale on a musical stave. The standard Westernmusical notation is a treble clef and a bass clef. Each note can be betweenlines or on a line and the piece is given a time signature denoting the rhythmof the music. Other symbols signify changes in tone, pace, volume and feeling.The behaviour of the player is also communicated from the composer to thepianist using symbols, including Italianate adjectives, although with moremodern piano pieces the Italianate is often replaced with words from the composers'usual vocabulary. Examples include piano, meaning quiet and forte, meaningloud.

The nature of this communication is symbolic, or in the words of RolandBarthes, the literary critic, semiotic Barthes (Barthes 1977) views semiologyas underlying all communication, an 'empire of the signs' that extends overfilm and photography, music criticism and reading and writing as historicallysituated activities. He identifies two natures of music:

There are twomusics (at least so I have always thought): the music one listens to, the musicone plays. These two musics are totally different arts, each with its ownhistory, its own sociology, its own aesthetics, its own erotic; the samecomposer can be minor if you listen to him, tremendous if you play him (evenbadly) - such as Schumann. (Barthes 1977, p. 149)

We will employthis distinction between passive and active to our discussion of the pianorecital, where passive music is the music we listen to and active music is themusic we play. Schumann is the composer we will focus on when discussing thecultural event that is the piano recital.

RobertSchumann was a significant figure in German musical romanticism. (Jensen 2001) Schumannspecialised in writing lyrical piano music and songs, but also composed notableorchestral choral and chamber works. He literary output was motivated by hislove of literature which informed his musical criticism and composition. He wasforced to abandon his career as a pianist after critically damaging, with astrengthening device, a finger on his right hand. Schumann wrote piano worksthat were a linking of short sections, such as Kreisleriana and Carnaval.Linked together, these sections paid extreme attention to detail, forming aninterlocking composition. A talented music journalist, he was editor on one ofthe most significant journals of his day, Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.In 1840 he wrote over a hundred songs, a year that became known as his year ofsong, including the song cycles Dichterliebe and Liederkreise.Schumann suffered from depression and mental instability as a result ofsyphilis and died in an asylum.

Schumannbelieved that musical communication was under attack from virtuoso players whohad little thought or feeling for music. His mission statement was given in hisjournal Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which, perhaps in spite of itsname suggesting new music, promoted music proven by history - music which hadwithstood the test of time His era saw the rise of piano virtuosity fromplayers who wanted to become celebrities in their own right without recognitionof whose music it was they played, going so far as to compose pieces withoutthought about the framework of the musical communication, preferring technicalcomplexities over clearly communicated music. Their ignorance of the thought,feeling and behaviour of composers, said Schumann, was philistine. He thusfounded the Davidsbündler, or League of David, named after thebiblical King David, who composed music, wrote poetry and slew the Philistines.

Barthesspeaks of piano recitals as an active form of music that has declined inpractice to almost extinction where the piano has been forsaken for the guitarrecital:

The music oneplays has disappeared; initially the province of the idle (aristocratic)class, it lapsed into an insipid social rite with the coming of the democracyof the bourgeoisie (the piano, the young lady, the drawing room, the nocturne)and then faded out altogether (who plays the piano today?). To find practicalmusic in the West, one has now to look to another public, another repertoire,another instrument (the young generation, vocal music, the guitar). (Barthes1977, p. 149)

Barthes'interest in the piano recital as a cultural event for a particular socialgrouping, the bourgeoisie, is part of his semiotic history, analysable throughthe distinction between active and passive:

Two roles appearedin succession, first that of the performer, the interpreter to whom thebourgeois public (though still able itself to play a little - the whole historyof the piano) delegated its playing, then that of the (passive) amateur, wholistens to music without being able to play (the gramophone takes the place ofthe piano). (Barthes 1977, p. 163)

We mustrecognise that Barthes is writing from a French point of view and that hiscritique of the piano recital as bourgeois is not necessarily relevantto our discussion of the piano recital as a event instructive for an analysis ofthe nature of musical communication, although it does give some behaviouralinsights of the social roles of the performer and the audience at a culturalevent, despite its over-politicisation of the framework within communicationoccurs. There is something more peculiar about Barthes' role in the study ofculture, namely that whenever a term is difficult to define, translators forgettheir native English tongue, as in this example, again discussing the piano:

The melodie succumbedto its salon image, this being a little the ridiculous form of its classorigin. Mass 'good' music (records, radio) has left it behind, preferringeither the more pathetic orchestra (success of Mahler) or less bourgeoisinstruments than the piano (harpsichord, trumpet). (Barthes 1977, p. 187)

This is notbiased criticism: the death of the French language is acknowledged by Bartheshimself, therefore it seems right for us to acknowledge his language togetherwith his semiotics as being nothing more than an exercise in textual ambiguityand irony. (Barthes 1977, pp. 187 - 188) The melodie is not significantfor the history of the piano recital and is perhaps more relevant to anotherform of musical communication, such as the voice, however. >From Barthes wedo have one definable framework within which musical communication takes place:the political. What Barthes shows is that the nature of music is to some degreegoverned by the environment in which it takes place, namely the background andpolitical situations of the participants, who in the case of the piano recitalare, according to Barthes, middle class. As a descriptive fact, the pianoplayer and the passive audience will behave according to certain middle classconventions or thought or feeling, though what such middle class behaviourmight be is not discussed by Barthes, who confines himself to semiologicalvagueness.

How is culture tobe evaluated? According to its origin? Bourgeois. Its finality?Bourgeois again. According to dialectics? Although bourgeois, this does containprogressive elements; every one of them bourgeoisified. There are some whofinally prefer to give up the problem, to dismiss all 'culture.' (Barthes1977, p. 211).

If pianorecitals are to be dismissed as 'culture', then we would be obliged to rejectBarthesian discourse as overly polemicised, concerned overly with the politicaland insufficiently with the communicative, because the music of the piano isnot bourgeois. Far from it, as Schumann argued, the piano is an instrumentthrough which thought, feeling and behaviour can be transmitted; and althoughSchumann was not completely apolitical, his compositions must be musical firstand foremost.

Musicalevents such as a piano recital have a specific format. Firstly the audience isseated in front of stage upon which there is a piano. The stage marks theboundary between the active musician and the listeners, who with theirprogrammes know the pieces that will be played, before the recital starts.Secondly, the pieces (whether they are by Schumann or another composer) areperformed. Finally, the passive element joins the active element duringapplause, concluding the event.

Musicalcommunication can take the form of quoting ideas from previous musicalcompositions in new ones. Schumann borrowed from Beethoven, Clara Wieck, andother composers. For the cultural event that is the piano recital, this is thenature of musical communication, because it is history and allows us to placeSchumann, or other composers of piano music, in historical context. Continuingwith the example of Robert Schumann, we can say that Schumann borrowed fromBeethoven because he came afterwards. Schumann built upon the musical frameworkleft behind by Beethoven in the piano recitals Schumann attended, so much sothat he could incorporate Beethovenian thoughts, feelings and behaviour intohis own compositions.

Amore prosaic framework of musical communication is the biographical context ofRobert Schumann's life. Schumann was born in 1810 and died at the age of 46, in1856. He was a major figure in German musical romanticism, amongst the leadingcomposers of his day, whose communications are highly regarded. The descriptiveterm of the time was Neu-Romantisch, or Neo-Romantic, the earlier Romanticismbeing associated with composers of Beethoven's period. We should not try todefine the meanings of feeling, thought or behaviour within a discussion ofGerman Romanticism. The movement is its own framework, with Schumann at itseditorial front, writing for the Davidsbündler.

Pianomusic is its own form of musical communication. The music played at a recitalis not only a communication from the composer to the audience; it is also acommunication of the ideas behind the music, such as in Schumann's case fromBeethoven, to the audience. An educated audience will be able to hear these audiblemessages. The programme notes may even identify an idea to the audienceexplicitly, for instance in a performance of Carnaval, where the finalsection is March of the Davidsbündler against the Philistines. Similarlythere is a quotation of a musical theme, also in Carnaval, called Papillons.(Jensen 2001, p. 83)

Themood of the piece Carnaval is quixotic, a description that may also beused of Schumann's nature, because he loved to incorporate crypticcommunication within his compositions. For instance, Schumann received the ideafor the musical mottos that serve as the basis of Carnaval from the nameof the home town, Asch, of a female correspondent. (Jensen 2001, p. 119) Thereare three combinations of Asch possible, in musical notation: S, C, H, A; AS,C, H; A, S, C, H. All but two of the twenty-one compositions that make up Carnavaluse the latter two, which from the German musical system transcribe to thenotes A flat, C, B, or A, E flat, C, B. Schumann decided to call the mottosSphinxes. (Jensen 2001, p. 150) Each of the pieces comprises a musicalrepresentation of a masked ball during carnival season.

Jensendescribes Schumann's behaviour laconically and contradictorily:

It says much aboutSchumann's naivete that he was convinced the sphinxes in themselves wouldcreate something of a sensation and sales of the work - as if there werewidespread interest in such musical games. But for much of his life Schumannwas fascinated by puzzles and ciphers, particularly if they could be applied tomusic. His interest in ciphers was one that was common to not a few writers andartists associated with German Romanticism; Friedrich Schlegel, for example,described art as inner hieroglyphic writing. (Jensen 2001, p. 151, citingDieckmann 1955, p. 311)

We shouldrecognise this relationship between codified musical communication and GermanRomanticism. It was shared by other writers:

Schumann'sinterest in cipher, number symbolism, and musical/word puzzles is frequentlyencountered in his writings. [] Such an approach permitted him to add bothmystery and extra musical significance to his works. [] An entire section of Aestheticsis devoted to the creation of secrets and hidden identities, all for thedelight of the unravelling of little knots for the reader. (Jensen 2001,pp. 152 - 153, citing Richter 1973, p. 195)

In conclusion, aframework of communication, we have shown, can be semiological, cryptic andpolitical. Barthes' semiological analysis of a piano recital tends towards thepolitical, with his disdain for the bourgeois influencing his dislike ofthe politics of those attending piano recitals. If Schumann is played at apiano recital, there are semiological frameworks of musical communicationderived from Schumann's interest in musical code. What is certain is that thehistorical context for each, the composer and the cultural analyst equally, isof paramount importance Without musical communication with Beethoven, Schubertwould not have composed vastly different piano pieces, not to mention thepieces he composed for other instruments; and without a French social milieuBarthes might have had more tolerance for the piano recital as an excellentcultural event through which to investigate the nature of musicalcommunication. As an event, the piano recital will generate a flood of memoriesfor the active player and the passive audience, whose mood will be affected bythe communication of thought, feeling and behaviour of the composer and by themusic. Therefore historical is probably the best discussion of the specifictype of cultural event that is the piano recital, because the music ishistorical, as is the event, and the environment.