PC
T&P
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PERSONAL CONSTRUCT
THEORY & PRACTICE
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Vol.6 2009 |
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| CONSTRUCTING MUSIC: INTERWEAVING CONSTRUALS AT CONCERTS |
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| Devorah Kalekin-Fishman | |||||
| University of Haifa, Israel |
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INTRODUCTION In the extensive literature of the ‘new’ sociology of music, which has expanded since the 1980s, there have been two salient trends. Following Bourdieu's (1984) study of the negotiation of cultural capital, many studies have explored how music is used by elites to reinforce and reproduce social hierarchies. But there has also been extensive emphasis on the meanings of music to people in their daily lives (Crafts et al., 1993; DeNora, 2003, 2006). According to DeNora (2003, p. 165), … music sociology
has addressed the history of the musical canon, taste and social exclusion. It
has also addressed issues of musical value and the perceptual politics of
musical reputation. More recently, it has developed perspectives that highlight
music's 'active' properties in relation to social action, emotion and
cognition. In order to trace music's active properties, the usual strategy has been to ask people when and under what circumstances they listen to music and what it means to them. Thus the focus is on how music is heard and used. Still, in the subtle descriptions of how listeners use music, surprisingly little is said about how the music comes into being and generates specific musical experiences.[1] In this paper I will discuss the meaning of music by focusing on a structured musical event, the concert, and, using tools from Personal Construct Psychology,[2] will demonstrate some of the strengths and staying power of concerts as social experiences. To begin with, I assume that (a) as an element of culture, a work of art is a constructed product, and indeed the construals of the producer and her efforts at construction determine whether or not ‘it’ is art; but (b) for the realization of its meaning, mediation is necessary, and (c) the audience's construals as well are integral to the meaning of the sounds. In relating to music, the three essential moments of sound as art are then: composing, performing, and listening. The product is a construction of sounds; the composed construction is given meaning through the construals that underlie the construction of a performance; and the audience in a given place and time completes the meaning of the work as its members are the object of the mediated experience. Events such as concerts are, by definition, therefore, multi-layered interweaving construals and constructions, the complexity of which is rarely pointed out. ART AS AN ELEMENT OF CULTURE Contemporary social scientists assume that culture is not a static collection of elements, but rather a set of tools that make ‘doing’ possible. Of the literally hundreds of definitions of culture (see Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952), many point to its dynamic character. According to Arvizu (1994, p. 76), for example, ...culture is what guides people
in their thinking, feeling, and acting, and serves as an emotional road map or
plan of action in their struggle for survival. Culture is a state of being – a
process – rather than a person, place, or thing: a verb rather than a noun. The basis for this paper is the idea that as part of culture, all art is subject to the structures and processes that govern culture however they are defined. Reading its significance in this context, art is, thus, primarily a ‘kind of activity# rather than a ‘thing’. That is to say, the process of making art evolves on the basis of a 'plan of action' which is embodied in the constructed object as 'an emotional road map'. In regard to music, the situation is both simpler and more complex. MUSIC AS ART Considering that the meanings of music, like those of “objects, utterances and acts” are “socially constituted”, DeNora (1986: 92) concludes that music creates a multi-dimensional space in which culture evolves. Making music is a multi-phased process that stems from recognition of the fact that sounds, with which the world is saturated, are materials that can be shaped deliberately. Composing The activity begins with a construal of which of the sounds available in the environment can be taken in hand as material for a musical composition. Minimally, the decision stems from experience with hearing or perhaps with having performed configurations that are recognized as music in a given milieu.[3] In Kelly's terms, musicians “evolve, elaborate, and experiment”, building themselves “through those …. immediately around them, but also ….. through many people … long dead” (quoted in Bannister, 2003, p. 188). Choosing sounds to manipulate is governed by the degree to which a composer is willing to frame new sounds as music, by the permeability of his/her constructs of the sonal art. Furthermore, whether consciously or unconsciously, the choice of types of sounds is governed by a meta-construal of possible design; i.e., of the potential of sounds available in the milieu to be grouped and regulated in terms of pitch, rhythmic relations, and encounters (contrapuntal and harmonic progressions). Composing,[4] therefore, involves the perception of appropriate sonal matter; the application of a design, and ultimately the projection of the shaped sounds and their architecture into comprehensible notation. The composer's reflection on the design and on the materials and his / her validation of what has been laid out in the map is the localization of the music. In carrying out the activity of choosing, designing, shaping, reflecting, and betimes repairing, the composer produces a representation of the construction in notation, “a road map” in Arvizu's conceptualization, which is an addition to the atlas of road maps – musical cases, so to speak – that are within the reach of a willing audience. Thus the process of composing is preserved in an observable product, a representation of successive combinations that indicate the potential of the chosen sounds. But this representation is no more than the first phase of the process of making music. The processes involved in completing the achievement of music are embedded in space and time in different ways. Stories about composers show that modes of composing, planning and realizing a representation of music, are highly diverse. Some composers are known to have worked out the representations of their sonal ideas without the help of any instrument (Bach); others have insisted on composing at the piano, no matter what combinations of instruments and voices they intended to shape (Stravinsky). Some compositions are known to have emerged painfully from motifs jotted down in a small notebook during forest walks and from experiments with how they may be entwined (Beethoven); some representations are a miraculous outpouring onto paper of work already fully fashioned in the composer's head (Mozart). Moreover, by contrast with the calculated step by step patterning of music according to pre-conceived principles of form (Schoenberg, Berg), there are works that are intended to provide ‘a roadmap’ of pure feeling (Chopin). Time is both material and context. At the design stage, the composer conceptualizes a projection of the ultimate length (in time) of the composition. Within the frame (which undergoes changes as the work progresses), rhythms are introduced through distributing successions of sounds to patterned silences. Decisions are taken as to how long sounds are to be heard and as to which sounds, will reverberate simultaneously. None of these decisions can pre-determine the length of time it takes to complete the writing of a piece of music to a composer's satisfaction. Each revision is based on the composer's freedom to reconstrue his/her sonal design. In the course of composition, the validation or invalidation of the design of any given work, and perforce reflection and propositions of alternatives are accomplished without benefit of social encounters. Performing In the second phase, the representation is construed by persons with instrumental skills who construct a performance, a realization of the shaped sound in a space equipped with instruments called for by the composer's mapping. Equipment for a performance of music may include a solo instrument, a group of instruments, the human voice, or voices, or sounds induced in pots and pans! But a performance is complete only when it is shared with an audience, a person or persons challenged to construe the constructions of the composer as mediated by the performer(s). This, however, requires preparation. In preparing a performance, there is also a need to manipulate different time spans. First of all, deciding to perform a given composition is a primary signal that it is validated as music. It is also a sign of how the performer understands the music and understands his/her own professional proclivities. In order to begin to learn any given composition, or ‘road map’, there are conditions of space and time which cannot be evaded. In addition to their access to appropriate instruments in well-stocked spaces, performers must have a command of a bank of skills. Acquiring instrumental skills takes literally years of guidance and practice. And even then, with each new composition, translating or retranslating the representation of a musical construction into sound is a process which may extend over weeks or months. For a trained musician - performer, the process of construing pitches is not difficult, and takes a relatively short time. Construing the rhythms from representations of the time values (length of time sounded) noted for each sound is again an elementary demand. But refining the reconstruction requires the mobilization and honing of techniques. Depending on the varieties of effects that are available with given instrument(s) and voice(s), performers have to adapt techniques to the production of different qualities; their choices demonstrate reconstruals and reconstructions in the light of constantly renewed audial experiences. The effects of performance ultimately disclose a construal of a world of feeling. This process is often monitored by teachers and coaches. Listening Somewhat ironically, the culmination of music-making is reached in a highly defined space – the concert hall – and for a well-defined and limited time. From the point of view of the audience, the situation of listening is not necessarily construed as a challenge. People need not bother with cumbersome explanations for their experience. Still, a composed work reaches people's ears only because the creator's design is mediated by performers' validating construals and by their skills in fleshing those construals out in performance. In a word, music that comes to life is the embodiment of layers of constructed moments. These moments must be presented, or represented, in order to assemble a musical event, whether heard through media or live in a concert. It is somewhat misleading to know that the only preparation an audience needs includes acquiring a ticket and arriving at the hour cited as the beginning of the concert. Audience participation in the event is signaled by culturally sanctioned decorous behavior during the performance, and, from the point of view of the performer(s), applause with appropriate enthusiasm at its conclusion. Although in principle the concert is an event in which all those present play roles 'in a social process involving other persons'; there is no certainty that the musical agendas of the listening audience are coordinated with the agendas of meaning and emotion that move the performers. Among the listeners, there are many different kinds of orientations to the event as music. Some people have had a music education; some are thoroughly unprepared in the sense of not having any formal background in the type of music heard in the concert; some are unprepared in the limited sense of not having heard the music promised on the program previously; some know about the performers from following their reputations in the media. And it is highly likely that a significant group in the audience have no knowledge that prepares them for the concert experience. A concert is distinguished above all by having an audience large enough to constitute a decisive source of (in)validation. From the point of view of composers and performers, there should be evidence of interest rather than boredom and even a willingness to be 'swept up' in the mapped emotion of the music rather than to remain unresponsive. But audiences have their own concerns. At least some in the audience are subscribers to a concert series, and this indicates comprehensive interest and support for spending time at certain types of musical events - concerts performed by symphony orchestras, chamber music or recitals. But a subscription also indicates a commitment to dates which sometimes turn out to be inconvenient. And there are those who have come to the concert as a way to ‘kill’ an evening. So, it is fair to assume that every person at the event has come with a charge of constructs that have to do with what brought them to buy a ticket, but also what was left behind at home – the baby and the baby-sitter, the partner taken ill, the obligation to drive a friend and find a parking place. There are also construals of future obligations that enter into the atmosphere: the report that has to be presented during the following morning, the shopping for gear to take on a trip, doing the ironing. THE PERSONAL IN MUSIC Beyond the relationships to sounds that are embedded in the selection, design, and shaping of sounds in the ears and hands of the composer, their reconstruction in the instrument/s (or voice/s) of the performer/s, and their construal in the ears of the audience; there are other complicating factors. Music, which exists only as music-making, cannot have a single fixed meaning. All the phases of making music (composition, performance, listening) are ‘contaminated’ by the construals and constructions that govern domains in the lives of those involved in the processes. Composer and performer approach the specifics of making music from the vantage point of their core constructs – the descriptions of the self that govern the possibility of carrying out every task. In the experience of daily life, core constructs are validated or put in question, among others, by involvement in the domains of family living, social contacts, work status, position in the political arena, and religious orientation. The maze of elements and the constructs have an impact on the perceived salience of sounds of one type or another as well as on the supply of design options considered available. In a word, there is a constant interplay between two universes of construct systems, so to speak: that of professional constructs, the constructs that determine the world of music-making for composer, performer and audience, and that of personal constructs, the constructs that govern everyday life. The elements and their construals are rooted in different depths of the construing-constructing selves of the composers and the performers. Audiences approach the event of music-making with a similar freight of constructs which may seem to be irrelevant to the music. But with each member of the audience, the core constructs and the situational life-style elements are integral to the kind of interest they have in music in general, and specifically to music presented in the form of a concert. CONCERTS Clearly, concerts are not at all events to be taken for granted. In a world which is overwhelmingly equipped with electronic tools enabling people to listen to music exclusively of their own choosing, the institution of ‘the concert’ where performers decide on the elements of the programs, has had remarkable staying power. The overview of what is involved in making music gives some indications of why this is so. The concert is a unique, one-time experience, non-replicable because the particular situation can never be reproduced in every detail. While the notation of any given piece of music does not change, every repetition of the performance, albeit by the same performer(s), will reflect a different reading of the constructed product. And repetitions of the ‘same’ program before a different audience will be met with different configurations of construals. Moreover, concert programs convey messages about how several musical compositions go together to create a joint context. This is a reading of the ‘roadmaps’ which reflects not only traditions of compiling concerts but also a non-verbal reading of the impact of the various designs on the construals of the listeners and on their capacity for ‘absorbing’ experiences of sounds. Thus, the concert is, above all, an uncommonly rich experience, where the interweaving of construals and reconstruals, constructions and reconstructions allows music to be presented once and only once, constituting an experience with an atmosphere that is unique, an “aura” (Benjamin, 1977/1936) that it will have under no other circumstances. Listening to music by using electronic equipment ostensibly changes the situation radically not only in elaborating on the construction of the performance, but also in defining the responsibility of the listener. Instead of buying a ticket for a prescribed date and hour at a pre-determined place, the listener acquires a disk, or a collection of recorded compositions which she may hear at any time and in any place she desires. Another prerogative that the listener now can assume is that of deciding on whether or not to listen to more than one composition and, given more than one, in what order. After all, recording (by whatever means) provides access to performances of single compositions, each of which is analogous to an item in a concert program. So it is the responsibility of the listener to compile the program – both in terms of the number of ‘items’ he or she is willing to listen to, and in terms of the kinds of compositions which she chooses to include in a listening session, a personal ‘concert’. The performances of recorded compositions are made possible by the intervention of additional performers sine qua non. These are the technicians whose equipment makes it possible to smooth over discerned lapses and thus to ensure consistency in the performed product. This consistency, however, is bought at a price – the elimination of the tensions among different modes of construing that heighten the replications of live performances. And yet, this does not completely eliminate the variety in the musical event. It is customary to think of recordings as the consummate reproductions of music which lack an ‘aura’. But since the listener is an intrinsic element in music-making, the fact that the performance is frozen, so to speak, in the recording does not eliminate the possibility that each re-hearing is a different musical event depending on the evolution of the listener's construals since the previous listening session as well as in the domain with which the listening is coordinated. AUTHENTICITY IN MUSIC A reading of musical events in terms of personal construct theory provides a lens for revising the scorn with which critical social science viewed the mass consumption of art in general and music in particular since the beginning of the twentieth century (Adorno, 2001). Benjamin (1977/ 1936), for example, discusses the “aura” of a work of art as one that is preserved only in the authenticity of the original product, or construction, an authenticity which is, to his mind, lost once a work of art (a picture, a piece of sculpture) is reproduced. Elaborating on how the photograph and the cinema lose touch with authenticity, he does not discuss music. Truth to tell, in music we find a kind of reversal of his argument. Neither the ‘original’ documents that record the notation of a musical construction nor the sounds made by a performer preparing for an appearance before an audience have an ‘aura’ of authenticity. The sounds symbolized on pages with notes can only be heard if at all by the inner ear of a trained musician. The practice sessions of the performer are all trials that are constantly undergoing reconstruction. Only when music is performed before an audience does it come into being as art. At first sight this is clear. At first sight this is clear. Following Benjamin's (2005/1998: Section II) requirement for authenticity, there is no doubt that in a concert music has “its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” Moreover, it is being performed and being listened to, in a word, being 'made' at that place and within that time. The concepts of construals and constructions shed light on the multiplicity of the event. Like films, music is made through compilations of details; but like paintings, music is comprehended as a unit only in the concert performance, a performance which can be no less but also no more than a reproduction. The concert in its essential constitution can be distinguished from a session with a recording not in kind but be a variation in the sources of the systems of constructs that make up the event. These complexities, or better, complications, are neither the ‘fault’ of the times (the twentieth or the twenty-first centuries) nor the ‘fault’ of the spread of the mass media for accessing music. They are, rather, integral to the very creation of music as art. CONSTRUCTING A SPECIFIC CONCERT At a concert in which the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the New York Collegiate Chorale performed the Cantata, ‘Wachet auf (Sleepers Awaken!)’ by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750) and the ‘Avodat Hakodesh (Sacred Service)’ of Ernst Bloch (1885 – 1959), was a miraculous example of how complex the concert experience can be. This was the last concert of the Israel Philharmonic's season and there was a particularly lively atmosphere as festively dressed people sipped drinks and looked at an exhibit of photographs displayed in the lobby before they filed into the hall to take their places. Many of the people who came to this concert regularly buy subscriptions to the programs for the entire season, so for them (as for the orchestra) this concert was the culmination of a series of eleven concerts. Since the audience consists of people who affect an interest in a kind of music that is different from that of the hoi polloi, and, moreover, people who have the money to invest in a rather expensive cultural undertaking; they constitute a kind of elite (Bourdieu, 1984) – and make a point of this in the fore-concert chitchat. A further indicator of the importance of the event was the number of performers needed: over two hundred instrumentalists and singers, under the baton of a single conductor, not to mention all the people involved in the technical arrangements. The program was a departure from routine. Instead of the standard fare of a light introductory piece, a symphony or a concerto from the classical literature, and a dance suite, this program was made up of two examples of liturgical music – the first a setting for selections from the Lutheran liturgy and the second, after an intermission, a setting for selections from the liturgy of the Jewish Temple.[5] The program was basically chronological - a cantata from the seventeenth century followed by a sacred work written in the twentieth. It also reflected developments in the apparatus of performance: many fewer instrumentalists and singers are needed for the cantata than for the ‘Sacred Service’. In terms of the approaches, the two compositions illustrate two landing stages in the history of stylistic developments in Western music: a succession of loosening and tightening of constructs regarding musical composition from the virtuoso counterpoint in Bach to the lush chromatic treatment of themes in Bloch. In the 'space' between them, there was a loosening of the construal of virtuoso counterpoint and a tightening into consonant harmonic writing, loosening and tightening to chromatic harmonic successions, and thence to a construction of composition as an ordering of the twelve half-tones of the octave. Moreover, in the temporal placement of the two, there was also a political message for Israeli music-lovers. The crowning concert piece of the season, the ‘Sacred Service’ by Bloch, is a work by a well-known and highly respected 20th century composer who, although not a Zionist, was Jewish, and openly fascinated by the challenge of setting Jewish subjects to music. INDIVIDUALITY OF THE COMPOSERS Sounds and Work The program of the concert disclosed what types of sounds the composers considered interesting. For Bach, who earned his livelihood as cantor and organist for the Lutheran church in Commissioned at the request of a cantor in a reform synagogue, Bloch was free of teaching and other tasks in 1930 when he began the three year project of writing the ‘Sacred Service’ (Ward, 2003). When done, it was premiered in Attitude to religion Although both works are based in religious texts, the differences cannot be summed up as differences between two religions. The religious orientations of the two composers were quite different from one another. According to Schweitzer (1952 [1905], p. 166-7), Bach consciously wrote music as part of his personal religious convictions, “garnish[ing] his scores with S. D. G. (Soli Deo Gloria, “to God alone be praise”) and J. J. (Jesu juva, “Help me, Jesus!”) ….. Music is an act of worship with Bach.” Born into a family which prayed regularly in a nearby synagogue, Bloch grew up in a milieu where religion was highly respected. Bloch and his sister were not of the same mind as that of his parents in regard to prayer. Still, many of Bloch's works are threaded with Jewish themes, among them ‘Schelomo’ (1916), a work for cello named for King Solomon; ‘Baal Shem’ (1923) for violin and piano named for the leader of a Hasidic sect; and a symphony called ‘Israel’ (1916) as well as a ‘Suite Hébraique’ (1950). According to him, the message of his ‘Jewish Cycle’ was at once that of realizing ...the vigor … of
the Patriarchs, the violence …. in the books of the Prophets, the burning love
of justice… the sorrow and the grandeur of the Book of Job, the sensuality of
the Song of Songs. All this is in us, all this is in me, and it is the
better part of me” (Mariwinn, 2003). Thus, in the ‘Sacred Service’ Bloch deliberately evaded the quotation of themes from actual prayers, although he did incorporate an antiphon style (between baritone and chorus) which is characteristic of the Jewish services. As he put it: I do not propose or desire to attempt a reconstruction
of the music of the Jews … or to base my work on melodies more or less
authentic. I am not an archaeologist. I believe that the most important thing
is to write good and sincere music – my music ….[my emphasis, DKF] According to Kushner (2002), Bloch “wrestled” with the question, “to be or not to be – a Jew” throughout his life. In the ‘Sacred Service’, he gives expression to the spiritual struggle in that he intended to convey a message of universal justice through a five-section work that was to be performed in the style of a Catholic mass. Even before the ‘Service’, Bloch had intended to write a mass based on themes from his ‘Israel Symphony’ and he is quoted as saying that the Catholic service is the service that had moved him most (quoted in Ward, 2003, p. 248). Evidence supports the hypothesis that Bach identified with the transcendental meanings associated with Lutheranism and this identification reverberates in the music he composed for the services. Bloch, on the other hand, was driven by an ambiguous orientation to religion. He sought ways to fuse the Jewish motives that inspired his music with the spirituality he repeatedly found attractive in Christianity. Construals of family and work The family situation of the two composers was also vastly different as was their situation at work. Bach was a devoted father and husband, happily married until his first wife died, and married a second time to Anna Magdalena. He accepted the job of ‘cantor’ in Leipzig even though it was less important than the position he held before as Kapellmeister for the Duke of Cothen, so that he could count on an adequate livelihood. The most important consideration for him, as noted in letters to friends, was that of providing his children with a good education and for that reason he was constantly wary of being swindled by his employers. [7] Bloch married once, sired three children, and never divorced, but he was notoriously and self-righteously promiscuous (Móricz, 2005). He did not, moreover, have any trouble earning a decent livelihood. After his arrival in the How each composer grasped the sources of his sounds; how each construed religion, and how each constructed the institution of the family, and ordered his working life are inevitably embedded in the works on the program. The coherence and cohesiveness of Bach's systems of constructs is evident in his approach to religion, to family and to his work. The ambiguities in the way Bloch conducted his life and oriented himself to fundamental institutions point to his functioning by employing, whether successively or interchangeably, “a variety of construction sub-systems …. inferentially incompatible with each other.” THE PERFORMANCE Texts and participants It is my contention that the constructs of the composers are an inevitable presence in the work as it is performed. What the performers see, however, are the notes. In both halves of the concert, the composers' constructions were represented in two forms of reproduction. The members of the New York Collegiate Chorale who sang in the compositions held partial scores that show the voice parts and sections of the orchestral accompaniment arranged for piano. On the stand of each of the members of the orchestra was a copy of the part she or her had to play in order to contribute to the whole. The complete scores copied and printed in a modern publishing house were not present on the state at all because the conductor, Zubin Mehta, had committed both works to memory. The lack of complete scores in the performance is a validation that bespeaks the honor with which both these works are regarded. According to Benjamin (2005/1998, Section II), …even the most perfect reproduction
of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its
unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of
the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the
time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in
physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its
ownership. There is evidence that both the cantata and the ‘Sacred Service’ were performed in ways that departed from the original intentions of the composers, or, in the case of Bach as far as can be told, from the conditions under which the Leipzig church enable him to present his work. At best, Bach could write scores for only a few string players - where the strings were of the viol family, and two or three woodwinds. The chorus he worked with was, according to Schweitzer (1952 / 1905) made up of students at the school beside the church, and in the years of Bach's work there, the standards were steadily in decline. The question of whether performances today should be faithful to the original performance conditions is still weighed by musicians. But at the concert of the two liturgical pieces, the decision was to take advantage of the performers' professionalism and give expression to the difference between the styles in the size of the participating ensembles. A part of the symphony orchestra, a chamber orchestra, used modern instruments. Similarly, only part of the Collegiate Chorale participated in the performance of the cantata. Although commissioned for a Temple, the ‘Sacred Service’, written for a symphony orchestra, a large chorus, and a baritone soloist and a narrator, who tells part of the story in recitatives toward the end, is, as noted above, usually performed at concerts. When he conducted performances of the piece, Leonard Bernstein made changes in the narration and eliminated the recitatives. Instead, he had the text read in English. Bloch was upset by the changes, but Bernstein's reading is the version that was performed. In aiming for a “perfect reproduction” of the works, Zubin Mehta could choose from among the various versions in order to convey the musical experience that he felt was suitable. For the cantata, he chose to conduct a small group of instrumentalists who play in the orchestra. For the ‘Sacred Service’, he chose to perform the Bernstein version. Thus, the performance embodied validations of some of the known intentions of the composers, but not of all of them. Imposed sociality All the participants in the concert had to learn their parts independently. In carrying out the task, it is possible to say that for each and every one of the singers and the instrumentalists there was an individual encounter with the composition. Since the goal of their learning, however, was participation in a concert, they knew in advance that they would not have the right to take independent stands on what to perform or how. In the course of the rehearsals, their interpretations of the sonal ‘meanings’ yield to those of the choir director and the conductor of the orchestra. In giving in to these interpretations, however, they agree to hide their personal constructs of the sounds and the situations that impinge on their personal construals. The tension that accrues from the necessary limitations on self-expression each performer exercises for the good of the expression of the whole turns into part of the dynamics of the performance. The validation of the notation of a complex score is, then, the outcome of negotiations among bearers of construct systems. The numbers of singers in the chorus, and that of the instrumentalists in the orchestra were decisive in conveying the impact of the sounds. For the soloists there seems to be a greater possibility of expressing their individuality. But in practice, their access to independence was differentiated in the two halves of the concert. While the soloists' arias (duets) and the solo recitatives in the Bach cantata are closely integrated with the work of the chorus; the baritone soloist of the Bloch work dominates throughout. And the recitative at the end comes as another surprising exhibit of individuality. In the ‘Sacred Service’, the soloists dwarfed the background of the gigantic orchestra and chorus, creating an electrifying bridge to connect the audience and the performers. Although billed as a concert of two works that derive from some approach to religion, a kind of bow to the importance of religion in the lives of so many people, the succession of musical events in that concert went beyond the externalities to paint a picture of modes of religious orientation. The inward-looking self-effacement of Bach's Protestantism in the modest forces of instrumentalists and in the rather withdrawn experience of the godhead led, after the intermission, to a theatrical call to community in the apparently under-stated, but pressured experience of the Bloch's Jewish work. The overwhelming impact of this concert was the outcome of authoritative control. JAZZ[8] AND ITS CONCERTS Considering the wide distribution of recordings, video-clips, DVDs, and internet files, it is even more astounding that concerts of outstanding groups in music that is popular, i.e., music which is widely accessible are sold out often months in advance. I will comment on one genre of such concerts – the jazz concert. In principle, the layering of construals of composers, performers, and audience are at work here as in concerts of other types of music. Among the drawing points of a jazz concert, however, is that there is a telescoping of the roles of composer and performer, and a heightening of the role of the audience. Although performers of jazz are likely to begin from a motif, or even a song that was composed by a known musician, the heart of the jazz concert is what the performers do with the original. In the majority of jazz concerts, the performance begins, so to speak, with forays of instrumental and even vocal solos improvising on the opening theme(s). These improvisations elaborate on the basic motifs to create a new composition; the aim is to effect a constant kaleidoscopic creation of sound clusters and sound sequences that carry surprises. In the jazz concert, the audience is expected to follow the developments, not only by listening but by catching on to the interchanges. As the evening goes on, what is expected is that the players/singers will respond every more freely to the response of the audience. This response includes the full expression of effects of the rhythms on their bodies. Thus, the audience's validation of the music is total participation and the creation of an event governed by the magic of sociality: members of the audience, among themselves, like the composer-performers and the audience as a whole are actively construing the construction processes of one another, and creating an event of what one may call ‘saturated’ sociality. Moreover, in the course of the jazz concert, the transitional states evoked by the music (see Bannister, 2003) are initiated by the performers and acted out between them and with the audience. Thus even if a bona fide group ‘repeats’ a concert, there is an implicit promise that the performance will be a variation on every prior performance. The reproduction of the jazz concert in some type of recording does not lose its power, except in that the audience may be reduced to one and there is, then, more opportunity for the expression of individuality in reacting to the music, and, of course, no response from the ‘frozen’ performers. CONCLUDING REMARKS Looking at the jazz concert, we have come full circle. In a jazz concert, the full impact of the assumption that music is a deliberate construction of design in sound is palpable. In it, composer – performers are constantly engaged in widening the range of convenience of their own construction of what sounds can be appropriated by music, and of the constructions of the audience. The means for doing this are the essence of the jazz event – the performer-composers are constantly hammering away at the core constructs of all those present, illustrating and evoking aggressiveness, hostility, fear, instilling guilt and legitimating the shifting changes (see Bannister, 2003). Concerts based on what is called ‘classical’ music depend first and foremost on how composers have expanded their constructions of musical sounds and how they have notated them. The performers' mediation and the audience's listening are pre-construed as servants of the composers' ‘vision’ of the musical design. Yet, it is possible to see that the full panoply of constructs and constructions are at work in creating transitional states in this type of concert as well, even though the still governing traditional norms of the concert do not allow for their open demonstration. By viewing the concert through the lenses of personal construct theory, however, we have discovered that, perhaps paradoxically, the jazz concert is not a deviation from the musical traditions of the West. On the contrary, the procedures of the jazz concert provide a clarification of the paradigm underlying the cultural activity of making music. In sum, different modes of music-making are epitomized in the variety of emphases on the composer, the performer, and the listener. They all speak to the dynamic cultural underpinnings of music-making. The approach I have outlined here raises questions about Benjamin's defense of authenticity in art against the mongrelization brought about by “mechanical reproduction”. As in music, there are, in all the arts, conglomerates of participants that create artistic experience. The works of the sculptor, the painter, the architect, like that of the composer – performer are art by virtue of their makers' self-definitions. But in order to be experienced as art – or as use – the work has to be mediated and conveyed to the 'audience' who integrate it in their lives. The various ways in which artistic compositions are brought to completion make for differences in the experience of art. But a priori every type of art experience has authenticity in two senses: without an audience art is damned to oblivion and to non-existence; and different audiences rise to the challenge that art presents in encounters of widely different types. This is the lesson of personal construct theory and part of the current awakening to the paradox of democratization and art, a problem no longer to be dismissed as an illogical contradiction. [1] In an early paper, DeNora (1986: 92-3) does mention elements of
performances as 'contextualization cues'; however, she summarizes their
importance in very general terms.
[2] References to elements from personal construct theory throughout the
paper are based on Kelly (1991 / 1955).
[3] From a very early age, children play with sounds – deciding on
pitches, inventing rhythms, combining sounds in different ways
(Kalekin-Fishman, 1980). But this intuitive play is channeled into the
performance of what is considered 'real' music by the adults among whom the
children are raised. An adult composer's concern with such a construal is therefore
likely to stem from contact with the literature that is recognized as music in
his / her cultural milieu.
[4] In this discussion, I am relating to a cultural phenomenon that is
well-known in the traditions of what we may call Western music with its highly
developed intricacies of notation. Composition outside these traditions can be
consummated in different ways. However, I would insist that the impulse of
recognizing the potential of available sounds for insertion into a viable
design and realizing that potential is the heart of making music cuts across
all cultural, political and demographic borders.
[5] Bloch was commissioned to write the ‘Avodat Kodesh’ (‘Sacred Service’)
for a Reform Temple where many of the prayers are articulated in the vernacular
rather than in Hebrew as in the orthodox prayer book (Sidur).
[7] The arrangements in
[8] For an authentic story about what it means to be involved in jazz as
performer and listener, see Scheer (2006).
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| REFERENCES | |||||
Arvizu, S. F. (1994) Building bridges for the future: Anthropological contributions to diversity and classroom practices. In DeVillar, R. A., Faltis, C. J. & Cummins, J. P. (eds.) Cultural diversity in schools: From rhetoric to practice. (pp. 75-97) Albany, NY: SUNY Press,. Bannister, D. (2003) The logic of passion In: F. Fransella (ed.) International handbook of personal construct psychology. (pp. 61-74) Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons Benjamin, W. (1977/1936) Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Benjamin, W. (2005/1998) 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production' (transcription by Andy Blunden), UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Crafts, S. D., Cavicchi, D., Keil, C. and the Music in Daily Life Project (1993) My Music: Explorations of Music in Daily Life. UPNE: DeNora, T. (1986) How is extra-musical meaning possible? Music as a place and space for work, Sociological Theory, Vol. 4, issue 1: 84-94. DeNora, T. (1999) Music and self-identity, Poetics, 27: 31-56. DeNora, T. (2003) Music sociology: Getting the music into the Action, British Journals of Music Education, Volume 20: 165-77. DeNora, T. (2006) Music and emotion in real time. In: Kenton O'Hara and Barry Brown (eds) Consuming music together: Social and collaborative aspects of music consumption technologies. (pp. 19 – 33). The Netherlands: Springer Kalekin-Fishman, D. (1980) Sound, time and control: Aspects of socialization in the kindergarten. Dr. Rer. Soc. Dissertation, Kroeber, A. & Kluckhohn, C. (1952) Culture. Kushner, D. Z. (2004) Religious ambiguity in the life and words of Ernest Bloch Minad: Israel Studies in Musicology. www.biu.ac.il/hu/mu/min-ad04/index.html [retrieved, October 30, 2008] Mariwinn (2003) Ernest Bloch' life and music are illuminated. Joplin Independent www.joplinindependent.com/display_article.php/mariwinn1070307532 [retrieved, Oct. 13, 2008] Móricz, K. (2005) Sealed documents and open lives: Ernest Bloch's private correspondence. Notes, Vol. 62, no. 1 (September), pp. 74-86. Scheer, J. W. (2006) Living with jazz: Construing cultural identity. In: J. W. Scheer & K. W. Sewell (eds) Creative construing: Personal constructions in the arts. (pp. 110–118). Giessen, Germany: Psychosozial-Verlag Schweitzer, A. (1952/1905) J. S. Bach, Volumes I and II [translated by Ernest Newman]. Ward, S. (2003) The liturgy of Bloch's Avodath Ha-Kodes.' Modern Judaism 23(3) - DOI: 10.1093/mj/kjg016, http://muse.jhu.edu [retrieved October 30, 2008] | |||||
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ABOUT THE
AUTHOR Devorah Kalekin-Fishman,
a sociologist, has been involved in the PCP Network since 1985. Her
publications explore construals of the social in PCT with an emphasis
on the nature of society and the theoretical consequences, among
others, for shaping power, citizenship, alienation, hostility, and the
world of art. With Beverly Walker, she edited The Construction of Social Realities: Culture and Society in Personal Construct Psychology (Krieger, 1995). Her newest edited book, with Ann Denis, is The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology (Sage, in press). She is currently Vice-President for Publications of the International Sociological Association and Editor of the International Sociology Review of Books (Sage).Email: dkalekin@construct.haifa.ac.il |
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| REFERENCE Kalekin-Fishman, D. (2009). Constructing music: Interweaving construals at concerts. Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 6, 51-63, 2009 (Retrieved from http://www.pcp-net.org/journal/pctp09/kalekin09.html) |
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ISSN 1613-5091
| Last update: 20 March 2009 - Photo: Jörn Scheer |