Pattern, code and design.

What did you take away from the last concert you attended?

Previous blogs have explored the notion that people make particular choices before and while listening to music, and their interest can be directed towards detail (development, variation, fine gradations and/or long term goals) or satisfied by physical movement and sensation. There are elements that are shared such as a love of texture. The majority of listeners experience pleasure from both viewpoints but a bias towards one or the other is commonplace.

The involvement of listeners to the music heard may range between superficial and detailed, they may have collections of recordings, enjoy concerts, be aware of the use of music in films and enjoy the music in its own right. In terms of performance many have some competence, and some sufficient competence to engage with others, a number will have skills on an instrument which helps guide their listening into the quality of commercial recordings, and emulate or reproduce elements of the recordings for the entertainment of others.

With such a broad range of musical ability listeners who reflect on their experiences should be able to describe what they attend to during a performance and what is retained afterwards. What is retained could range from a fragment played by a particular instrument or a memorable turn of phrase through to a detailed recollection.

All of the above comments refer to all styles of music from all cultures, a person responding to a popular piece of music may retain more than a listener in a concert hall attending a contemporary concert.  It may be that (whatever the style) a part, significant part or everything heard is absorbed at once and then reinforced with repeated hearing, it is also possible that we respond with different degrees of spontaneity to layers of information such as pattern, code or design. All of this leads to the question, do listeners need to understand music in order to respond to it?

Let us take Nurtan’s thoughts on the matter:

“looking at the question, the obvious answer is depends... But depends on what? If we look at rhythms and melody alone we must explore a number of associated aspects

Rhythm: Which one? Harmonic rhythm? Melodic rhythm? Pulse?

Melody: Primary melody? Principle Theme? Development?

If one wants to make some sense out it, there must be an unbiased set of criteria. If there is such criteria, is there a measure? If there is a measure, is it universal or culturally defined?

Let us start with a few dictionary definitions

Code

Merriam-Webster:

·         a system of signals or symbols for communication

·         a system of symbols (such as letters or numbers) used to represent assigned and often secret meanings

·         coded language : a word or phrase chosen in place of another word or phrase in order to communicate an attitude or meaning without stating it explicitly

In communications and information processing code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form or representation. An early example is the invention of language, which enabled a person, through speech, to communicate what he or she saw, heard, felt, or thought to others. But speech limits the range of communication to the distance a voice can carry, and limits the audience to those present when the speech is uttered. The invention of writing, which converted spoken language into visual symbols, extended the range of communication across space and time. In addition it permitted greater levels of complexity to be shared.

Pattern

A pattern is a discernible regularity in the world or in a manmade design. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. 

Design

Design is the creation of a plan for the construction of an object, system or measurable human interaction. Design has different connotations in different fields. In some cases, the direct construction of an object is also considered to use design thinking.

Before exploring these elements let us consider for a moment a simple musical figure, a rhythm of four notes, three long and one short. It was famous during WWII as V for victory. Musicians would recognise it as the fate motive of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. The alteration of major third to minor third also has psychological associations, a change of mood. The wartime messages were preceded by the motif on kettledrums alone, the change of timbre calling us to attention, threat. With this simple illustration we can see that pattern can be extended to code with relative ease through the process of association and the understanding of historical significance. It may be that the historical significance of this figure goes further back in time, the descending third alone may be associated with alarm calls, a sequenced fall, doubly alarming. The persistence of a four note rhythm is different to a single or double blow, less information more care, four taps, panic and flee. What Beethoven does with this pattern (extended to code) is to repeatedly use it (and transform it) to create a design underpinned with contrasts and change of key.

The 19^th century use of the idee-fixe and leitmotif suggests a system of coding as do the dancing letters of Schumann’s “Carnaval”. These examples can form basic patterns, but are more complex in that they emerge from varied backgrounds to suggest alterations of mood and temperament. They are not code in the sense that they convey meaning, rather they act as a signifier and offer an opportunity for us to empathise with the composer’s intentions. Like words these signifiers require context to convey meaning. Recognisable associations have existed before the 19^th century, these may be shorter than melodies, repeated chords and intervals alone have created suggestions of mood and character. The terms suggestion and representation are at the loose-end of code and some distance from a system of rules to convey information.

Pattern, as the definition above tells us, has predictability as a factor, whereas code contains variations and levels of unpredictability, and as such creates the excitement we associate with music. Some may argue that 20^th century music made too great a play of pattern. While the main focus of these blogs is 20^th century music one could argue that the music of the Baroque is as concerned with pattern as let us say, the early minimalists.  All of this takes us to the question, is pattern alone sufficient to entertain the ear, satisfy our musical interest or give listeners the “chills”? We know from the discussion of types of listeners that some are attracted to the dance like repetitions of pattern, some appreciate the hooks of emotional and pictorial interjections like the idee-fixe, while others prefer the long term evolution of a musical argument in which elements like key-structure or a gradual process of transformation takes place.

Concerning pattern it is helpful to know that psychologists have explored the field of pattern recognition a process that recognises how our thinking combines new experiences with stored memories. The new experiences in this process regularly moves from short to long-term memory. It may seem redundant to express the view that in works like Beethoven’s fifth the attention to repetition within the material aids pattern recognition, the understanding that contrasting material derives from the initial pattern enhances what the psychologists term “identification”.

The detail of how much a person identifies varies between individuals, just as does the recall of a text in a play or poem, the colour and form of a painting and so on.  However the process of storing seems to be the same for all of us. Performers will have additional information in the recollection of patterns, physical and often repeated actions and particular muscular techniques to play a phrase or passage of music. 

UCLA studies demonstrated that regional brain activity is common to performers and non-performers, neurons are activated for muscle reactions when music is heard by listeners and performers alike. The implication is that we have a common human response to sound. This is of course different to musical preference as discussed in earlier blogs. 

Readers who recall the Bernstein lectures on Chomsky and his exploration of musical grammar might recognise a common theme in the issue of common human responses. Reflecting on what may be considered as the search for a universal musical grammar, in our cross Atlantic e-mails Nurtan offered me a number of statements to challenge or review Bernstein’s original thesis (an action which Bernstein openly offers listeners to engage in). Nurtan suggests:

Music 

·         does not need to have definable semantics 

·         does not need a meaning 

·         does not need a regularised system or conformity 

·         does not need a universally interpretable form

Music does operate on a psychological basis where preference is personal.  

The questions arise:

Why do these preferences exist?  How they develop?

We examined the term musical semantics and decided to adhere to a shared view accepting that four areas apply.

·         Meaning relates to mood or temperament, excitement, passion, relaxation, grief etc.

·         Meaning relates to external sonic associations (e.g. Respighi’s Fountains of Rome).

·         Meaning relates to shared events (history, religion etc.) e.g. Tchaikovsky’s 1812; such music may combine music and text, national anthems etc.

·         Meaning relates to design, patterns of tension and resolution, sonata form.

We recognised that key words of titles are undependable as a guide to meaning. However key words may act as a guide to associating design with external sonic associations, shared events and mood / temperament. What some musicians might describe as a hook.

So if music does not require definable semantics it can exist:

·         without temperament or mood

·         without associations to external forms

·         without shared experience of external events

·         without formal patterns

There is a big difference between does not require and cannot exist without. In reality there are sliding scales for the above. Works like Barber’s Adagio for Strings or Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration communicate mood sensations (without text) in such a convincing way that a majority of listeners would say music has the vocabulary to express emotion and create a response. Then there are works in which emotion takes a minor role, The Art of Fugue or Stockhausen’s Microphonie 1. The same type of argument can be applied to the bullet points given.

The emotional response argument has been covered in the blogs before but there is an extract below from Wiki which refers to the main research area at this time. If we are talking about musical semantics this has to be a side issue because the usually held notion is that the grammar is in the fabric of the music not the listener. Whether that fabric includes the performance is another matter again. It may be useful to remind ourselves that gesture and expression are considered parts of the structure of language.

To develop the discussion I shared some views held by Rick Nauert PhD in which he attempts to provide answers to a simple question: Why can't we stay still when talking to others? Or, why do we use gestures?  His answer is

 "Because gestures and words very probably form a single communication system, which ultimately serves to enhance expression intended as the ability to make oneself understood,"

Understanding (he explains) arises from speech "prosody", the intonation and rhythm of spoken language which together illuminates and clarifies sentence structure.

"In human communication, voice is not sufficient: even the torso and in particular hand movements are involved, as are facial expressions".

The full article can be read here:

https://psychcentral.com/news/2014/06/24/study-looks-at-gestures-as-part-of-language/71631.html

At this point it seems that the discussion of where the listener places his or her focus is moving from the structures of music towards response, and a physical response at that. There is a TED video which illustrates the point, it features Evelyn Glennie, and the section which touches on the physical aspect can be heard in the first 5 minutes:

https://youtu.be/IU3V6zNER4g

I’ll say no more than watch the performer’s physical responses and how they change between reading and responding to the score.

Returning to the bullet points the cleft between where we have traditionally looked for meaning and the view that extra-musical factors carry great weight becomes increasingly apparent. Here is Nurtan’s view:

It is important to clarify that the structure of a piece is not equivalent to grammatical rule based sentences. Even with a human voice produced song using one or more elements of speech, the communication of an idea with semantic comprehensibility is neither necessary nor sufficient. These demonstrations can be readily extended to all parameters of the apt definition of music as organised noise. It is important to point out that what we may refer to as “musical organisation” has no rules that can be stated as something close to a universal grammar; yet, most people react to music.

One might argue that in order to form preferences there must be some sort of cognitive recognition, which could be identified as “musical semantics”. Although we can substitute code for musical semantics it is not “meaning” in the normally understood definition which requires at least locally shared information between two strangers though it is still capable of transmitting some sort of message that will elicit a similar (not necessarily the same) psychologically determined reaction.

In the previous discussions, the requirement for a systematic universal underlying structure for music (such as musical grammar, meaning of chords, correspondence to speech, et cetera) demonstrated to be fallacious.  For any component of music empirically demonstrating such a hypothesis could lead to a seemingly valid and/or interesting approach to understanding structure or evolution of music, but such an exercise is likely to be full of hidden fallacies, weaknesses that can look wildly interesting but invalid.

Those paragraphs require close reading but in essence amplifies the bullet points and again emphasises the differences between the scholastic expectations we place on the art of composition and what is actually delivered to the listener. It takes us to the most awkward of questions, why do some compositions communicate and others fail to do so? Before (and indeed if) we chose to try and answer that question let us summarise:

Each listener perceives a different response to what is heard

Though there is a logic to the structure of music the form is not in itself what is appreciated.

Hooks are used by composers to attract attention but these are not in themselves structurally important to the composer or hugely significant to the listener.

The listener is affected by a series of cues, when seen – as in a concert – these can be gestures, when unseen the cues are articulations and performance details where the artist imposes details on the music.

The vocabulary of the language of music is varied and based on:

·         The musical parameters as they affect our senses

·         The articulation of the parameters in performance

·         The gestures made during the performance

·         Associations made by the listener (entirely individual)

·         Informed cultural and scholastic understanding (musical memory)

·         Recognition of pattern, code and design which includes cues and mannerisms

In addition it may be argued that the successful communication of musical ideas depends on social aspects such as the desire to share, whether it is in a concert hall, ballroom or a ritual gathering.