Transcript The Institutionalisation of Popular Music Studies

Tidying Tonal Terminology
including parts of ‘The Symbiosis of Epistemic Inertia’
1st presented at Euromac Music Analysis Conference, Rome, 2011-10-02
Updated versions:
Glasgow, 2011-10-12; Århus, 2011-11-18; Durham 2011-12-06; Liverpool 2012-01-31;
Newcastle 2012-02-22; Lancaster 2012-03-16; Nottingham 2012-03-20
This online version, Huddersfield 2012-03-29
Philip Tagg
Visiting Professor (retired) ,Universities of Huddersfield and Salford, UK
www.tagg.org
N.B. No audiovisuals are embedded in this PowerPoint presentation.
You will need to download or stream the relevant files (see next slide)
and play them at the points indicated in this presentation.
P Tagg
Hudd1203
Tidying Tonal Terminology
Download all 8 clips to where you’ll find them on your computer
and play each of them when instructed to do so in this PowerPoint
1.
The Female Drummer (all). www.tagg.org/Clips/FemDrumAll.mpg
2.
11 extracts of popular musics.
www.tagg.org/Clips/RomeMontageV2.mpg
Aesthesic v. poïetic (Van Eyck v. EmD9).
www.tagg.org/Clips/VanEyckBond.mpg
Atonal, no! Atonical, yes! (Morricone).
www.tagg.org/Clips/MissionM1Atonical.mpg
Ionian tertial parallels. www.tagg.org/Clips/RomeParallels.mpg
I or V or IV? Guantanamera-s with different endings.
www.tagg.org/Clips/Guantanameras.mpg
Mixolydian Montage. www.tagg.org/Clips/MixolydV06.mpg
Bimodality: ionian or aeolian? Aeolian or phrygian?
www.tagg.org/Clips/ Bimodality.mpg
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
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Tidying Tonal Terminology
presentation overview as intended 2012-02-22
• Background (improvised) (5%)
• Brief overview of central epistemic issues (30%)
• Troubles with tonal terminology
• Conclusions (15%)
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(50%)
Tidying Tonal Terminology
• You can start either on the next slide or, to concretise the
issue from the outset (if you have time), play The Female
Drummer complete (www.tagg.org/Clips/FemDrumAll.mpg)
• Questions to ask of the recording: [1] does it have a main
tonic or potential drone note and, if so, which? [2] Does it
have a secondary (alternative) tonal centre and, if so, which?
[3] What mode is used in the vocal and guitar riff parts?
(Answers towards end of article “Troubles with Tonal
Terminology” at
http://www.tagg.org/xpdfs/Aharonian2011.pdf).
• If you run The Female Drummer here you can skip it in the
first montage (slide 7).
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If you teach or study…
Popular Music History
Popular Music Analysis
Music and the Moving Image
… you’ll need to talk about the SOUNDS of
music, about MUSICAL STUCTURES.
That’s not easy if you’re only going to use
the standard terminology of
conventional, euroclassical music theory!
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Montage 1: 11 extracts
Play this montage exemplifying the range of musics to
be covered in popular music studies:
www.tagg.org/Clips/RomeMontageV2.mpg
• The Female Drummer is no. 11 in the montage and can be
omitted if you already played it (slide 4).
• Main question: which extracts can and cannot be
adequately described using the tonal terminology of
conventional euroclassical music theory?
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Omitted from montage (for example)
• West African polymetricity
• Appalachian old-time musica ficta and florid
melismatics
Both important in charting origins of popular
music in N. America and for counteracting
racist reductionism in history of music
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Popular Music Analysis:
structural denotation, the central problem
• Graphocentrism
– The ‘work’ or ‘text’ as something written
– Notatable parameters at expense of others
(e.g. timbre, metricity, aural staging)
• Poïetic v. aesthesic descriptors
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1. Music as knowledge (knowledge in music)
1a. Poïetic competence
(construction)
involves: creating, originating, producing,
composing, arranging, performing, etc.
institutionalised in: conservatories,
colleges of music, etc.
1b. Aesthesic competence
(perception)
involves: recalling & recognising musical
sounds, distinguishing between them and
between their culturally specific connotations
and functions
institutionalised in: ……?
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2. Metamusical knowledge
(knowledge about music)
2a. Metatextual discourse
involves: ‘music theory’, conventional music
analysis, identification and naming elements
and patterns of musical structure, etc.
institutionalised in: departments of music(ology),
colleges of music, etc.
2b. Metacontextual discourse
involves: explaining how musical practices
relate to culture and society, incl. approaches
from semiotics, acoustics, business studies,
sociology, anthropology, etc.
institutionalised in: departments of social
science; literature, media, cultural studies.
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Aesthesic v. poïetic
Play Aesthesic v. poïetic
www.tagg.org/Clips/VanEyckBond.mpg
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Canonic quotes
‘Passions must be powerful,
the musician’s feelings [must
be] unfettered — no mind
control,… no clever ideas…
(Diderot: Le neveu de Rameau, 1762)
‘[T]he power of pop lies not in its
meaning but in its noise,… the
non-signifying, extra-linguistic
elements that defy “content
analysis”: the grain of the voice,
the materiality of the sound, the
biological effect of the rhythm, the
fascination of the star’s body’
(Reynolds 1990).
[Listening to music the right way
means] ‘fully surrendering the
spirit to the welling torrent of
sensations and disregarding
every disturbing thought’…
(Wackenroder, 1792)
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Music excites the body to
automatic movement, an
exhilaration that defeats boredom
and inspires insight… Music
gives the body control over itself,
granting personal freedom and
revealing sexual potential’
(Lull 1992)
Absolutism and semiotics in music studies
Conventional
euroclassical
‘PomoRockologist’
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
‘Theory’
Lots of text, v. little context All context, no text
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Inflation of ‘theory’ c. 1980-2000‡
• The Adorno problem and empiriphobia
- no ‘text’, no audience but left-wing credentials*
• CCCS, multidisciplinarity and the need for
intellectual commonality
- inflation of theoretical litanies, ‘La French Theory’
• Bourdieu’s critique of scholasticism†
- lack of reflexivity on power agenda of discourse
* Tagg & Clarida: Ten Little Title Tunes, pp. 39-47, 59-77 (MMMSP, 2003) and Mattelart
& Neveu: Cultural Studies Stories (in Réseaux, 1996).
† Bourdieu: Practical Reason pp. 127-140 (Stanford Uni. Press, 1998) and Pascalian
Meditations pp. 49-84 (Polity, 2000).
‡ A J Bruce Johnson: Cultural Theory: Who Needs It? (Conference paper, 2009 at
www.tagg.org/xpdfs/TheoryWhoNeedsIt.pdf).
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Tonal Terminology: focus
• Aspects of musical structure compatible
with Western notation:
• i.e. a system of graphic representation
developed to encode mainly
monometric music whose pitches
conform to the twelve notes of our
chromatically divided octave.
• (a v. small % of all music in the world)
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¿¡“Atonal”!?
Play Atonal, no! Atonical, yes! (Morricone)
www.tagg.org/Clips/MissionM1Atonical.mpg
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Definitions
• TONE
a note with audible fundamental pitch
• TONAL
consisting of or characteristic of tones
• TONALITY
system of tonal configuration
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Linguistic derivative pattern (1)
centre
central
centrality
centralist
form
formal
formality
formalist
crime
criminal
criminality criminalistic
sense
sensual
sensuality
tone
tonal
sensualist
tonality — ???
…better than before but still a bit weird…
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Linguistic derivative pattern 2
(better!)
comic
ethic[s]
comical
ethical
clinic
magic
clinical
magical
music
musical
optic
optical
polemic
polemical rhetoric
rhetorical
statistic
statistical
tropical
TONIC
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tropic[s]
TONICAL – TONICALITY
Chordal mystery category
TERTIAL
‘triadic’? ‘functional’ ? ‘diatonic’?
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QUARTAL
Gm11
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3 categories of tonical tertial harmony
• Euroclassical tertial harmony
• Non-classical ionian tertial harmony
• Non-ionian tertial harmony
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Montage 2:
Non-euroclassical tertial harmony
Play Ionian Tertial Parallels
www.tagg.org/Clips/RomeParallels.mpg
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Montage 3: Guantanameras
Play Guantanamera-s
www.tagg.org/Clips/Guantanameras.mpg
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Mixolydian and ionian cadencing
Play Mixolydian Montage
www.tagg.org/Clips/MixolydV06.mpg
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Aeolian cadencing to I (#3)
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Same chords, different tonics
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Montage 5: bimodality
Play
Bimodality: ionian or aeolian?
Aeolian or phrygian?
www.tagg.org/Clips/Bimodality.mpg
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Conclusions (1 of 2)
• Tonal impoverishment
• ‘Tonal’ and its illogical prefixes ‘pre-’, ‘post-’, ‘a-’
• ‘Tonal’ as absurd opposite to ‘modal’: is the ionian
not a mode, too?
• Ethnocentricity
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Conclusions (2 of 2)
• Don’t confuse TONE with TONIC. Tonal music without
a tonic is ATONICAL, not ‘atonal’.
• Don’t confuse TRIADs with THIRDS. If harmony based
on stacked fourths is quartal, harmony based on stacked
thirds is TERTIAL.
• Don’t propagate false contradictions like ‘TONAL v.
MODAL’. Please conceptualise all modes, including the
ionian, as modes.
• Don’t use TONAL and TONALITY in a musically,
culturally and intellectually restrictive manner. Please
consider the PLURALITY OF TONAL SYSTEMS
(TONALITIES) in the real world.
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What to do?
• Go home, pretend that nothing is wrong
and carry on as before (ostrich strategy)
• Take note but no action. (‘We have to deal with
“music theory” as is: we can’t change >100
years of ethnocentricity and inexactitude’.)
• Risk alienation from conservative musicology
(both ancient and modern) by making life easier
for the popular majority of students through:
- simple reform of a few basic terms;
- recognition of vernacular musical competence;
- reintegration of music as a specific form of
symbolic production on a par with others,.
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Three numbers
127
14
0
1
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Total # musicologists employed in
Italian universities in 2008
of which ethnomusicologists
of which popular music specialists
(2009)
THE END
Philip Tagg,
Huddersfield/Rome/Glasgow/Århus/Durham/Liverpool/Newcastle/Lancaster/Nottingham Sept 2011-March 2012
This online version updated 2012-03-29
www.tagg.org
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Hudd1203