Selena & Graham Nash = Barthes & Marcus

"Hence, it is very difficult to speak about music... The reason for this is that it is very difficult to unite language, which belongs to the order of the general, with music, which belong to the order of difference... Now my evaluation of music involves the voice, and very specifically the voice of a singer I have known, one whose voice has remained in my life the object of a constant love and of a recurrent meditation which has often carrie me, beyond music, toward the text and toward language... The human voice is, as a matter of fact, the privileged (eidetic) sit of difference: a site which escapes all science, for thee is not science (physiology, history, aesthetics, psychoanalysis) which exhausts the voice: no matter how much you classify and comment on music historically, sociologically, aesthetically, technically, there will always be a reminder, a supplement, a lapse, something non-spoken which designates itself: the voice." (Music, Voice, Language pg. 279)

Although I had a difficult time understanding the thesis statement(s) Barthes was trying to relay, I did greatly enjoy the many quotes about music that I connected to - one of them being about the voice and language and difference that exists in music. When I read the above passage, I automatically thought of music I know in a different language that I love, and of course, Selena Quintanilla came to mind! Even when there is difference in language being spoken in music, sometimes the voice of the singer and/or the rhythm of the beat is so transformative and captivating, that those differences no longer matter! I love that Barthes points out that no person can be a perfect music theorist precisely because such difference in preference, genres, and meaning/memories derived from music exists, making it impossible for any single person to understand all music and all the varied effects and affects that may have on others. It reminds me of the Griel Marcus readings from last week, where Marcus spoke about Bob Dylan's Self Portrait album. Originally, the album only received negative attention, critics did not understand the simplicity and rawness of Dylan's music. However, with time, the simplicity became a way larger symbol that the masses eventually connected with, and the album became one of the most popular albums of Bob Dylan's career. I missed posting for the Griel Marcus week, so below I am attaching a link for Graham Nash's "Sleep Song," a song that I originally thought was too simple, too folkish, and too "mom" of a song. Now, however, I love this song and I think it is one of the best love songs that I know, and as Barthes says, "What is there to say about what one loves except: I love it, and to keep on saying it?"

https://youtu.be/Hs72DMHb5jw

Barthes: Hozier and Dylan

(I think this is the right video below.  Due to copyright issues, the video I want to attach isn't coming up.)

“‘Grain’ - the singing voice is not the breath but indeed that materiality of the body emerging from the throat, a site where the phonic material hardens and takes shape.”

“This voice is not personal: it expresses nothing about the singer, about his soul; it is not original and at the same time it is individual: it enables us to hear a body which of course, has no public identity, no ‘personality’.”

“I will not judge a performance according to the rules of interpretation, the constraints of style...I shall not go into ecstasy over the ‘rigor,’ the ‘brilliance,’ the ‘warmth,’ the ‘respect for the score,’ etc., but according to the image of the body (the figure) which is given me...I know immediately which part of the body it is that plays...If on the contrary it is the only erotic part of a pianist’s body: the pads of the fingers, whose “grain” I hear so rarely....If we were to succeed in refining a certain ‘aesthetic’ of musical enjoyment, we should doubtless attach less importance to the tremendous break in tonality which modernity has produced.”

Upon listening to the first song, “To Be Alone”, the corporeality of the singer’s voice begins to emerge within the listener’s mind.  This voice brings about an assemblage of adjectives within the mind in an attempt to define the voice’s tone, timbre, and individuality.  This voice develops its own identity and personage that gives way to the development of a being that simultaneously contains an anonymity (if the artist were not pictured) and a familiarity.  This voice however can’t be deemed original or individual despite a seemingly unprocessed authenticity.  While listening to the second song, “In My Time of Dyin’”, we hear a likeness in the voice of Dylan as well as the voice of the guitar.  In both, we find the eroticism Barthes speaks of coming through the fingertips of each artist, and the grain is seen to have a feeling of spontaneity and imperfection - leaving us to wonder if each song is replicated perfectly each time they’re played.  The second song (which was released in 1962 as opposed to the 2014 release of the first) although comparable to “To Be Alone”, has much less of the perfect tonality that Barthes refers to within modern music.  The breaking and strain of the second voice contains a rough grain that the first lacks due to the first’s refinement that holds a sort of purity and precision.

Elliott Smith's Grain of Voice

"For his [Panzera's] rare phenomenon to occur, for music to enter language, there must be, of course, a certain physique of the voice (by physique I mean the way in which the voice behaves in the body--or in which the body behaves in the voice)." ("Music, Voice, Language" 283)

While Barthes enjoys Panzera for the full-bodied strength of his voice, something he describes as a "naked voice," one singer who came to mind as having a particularly interesting and effective voice is Elliot Smith. Smith's voice is fragile and soft - so seemingly unstable and raw that the listener can't help but feel Smith's own emotional involvement with his music. Even if his songs were not to have any discernible lyrics, the listener would still feel the both confessional effort and and the helplessness that Smith is feeling and expressing through his music. His voice's "physique" speaks to the listener.

Barthes

It's difficult to describe this song (or any) without adjectives and yet it has become clear, after Barthes' argument, how adjectives don't do music justice.
I won't attempt to do this song justice, but I think it comes very close to the clarity and expressiveness Barthes qualifies as successful music functionality.
Labrinth seems so honest in this song; his voice is unforgettable to me. This song touched me literally immediately - the "alert" listening. This song communicates so effectively, that the "deciphering" kind of listening came so quickly to me - or at least so it seems to me, to my best understanding.
I think Barthes would use this song as example to the case he makes about music where the grain of the voice is obvious to the listener.

Barthes speaks of the signifying and signified in relation to Musorgsky's Death of Boris versus the Death of Melisande. He claims Boris represents "the triumph of the pheno-text, the smothering of signifying under the signified; soul." (275) In the pheno-song we understand the  singer from the totality of the piece: rhythm, tone, melody, voice, silence. In this case the grain of the voice is overpowered by the drama of the other elements. Barthes notes the "perfect intelligibility of the denotation." Under this ideal, I speculate if the sheet music for such phenotypical music might convey as much to someone able to understand it as hearing the song performed. On the other hand, Barthes describes the "prosidic contour of the enunciation" for Melisande; presumably representing signifying and the geno-text. Here, the precise way a single word might sound or the way it is pronounced interacts with the (rather than embodying) denotation to form a more original meaning. Signifying's part of speech implies its nature: signifying acts on language wile signified has been planted by language.

I have a few questions. I wonder if I have oversimplified geno and pheno text? Additionally I'm curious about how Barthes interchanges "text" and "song"  because it might clarify how and why Barthes chooses to read a song like a text.

My song is "22 Offs" by Chance the Rapper. I will mostly let it speak for itself. I think Chance is signifying in the way he repeats "Off" (in homage of Jay-Z's 22 Twos) to give a sense of his own offness from the expectations of society, but his tone maintains excitement and self-empowerment.

LCD Soundsystem - New York I Love You But You're Bringing me down (Lyrics!)

LCD sound system likes to play around with the way they sing choruses-- this song demonstrates this. They keep the same words, but mold them differently- to different melodies.



"it is that culmination (or depth) of production where melody actually works on language-- not what it says bit the voluptuous pleasure of its signifier-sounds, of its letter..."

Barthes

"The 'grain' of the voice is not—or not only—its timbre; the signifying it affords cannot be better defined than by the friction between music and something else, which is the language (and not the message at all)." (273)

Oscar Peterson & Clark Terry - Mumbles (live version)

Can - Pinch (0:00 - 9:28)
(Note: I could only find the whole album, not the specific song. Just listen to Pinch. You also need to turn the speed up 2x in the video to get it to play normally.)

"Grain" of a voice: Two versions of "Fade Away" by Jay Chou (cover and original)

1.  By Jay Chou (original)

2.  By Xiao Qu Er (cover)

For this post, I selected the original and a cover of Jay Chou's "Fade Away" (烟花易冷) to examine the "grain" of the human voice. According to Barthes in this week's reading, "[t]he "grain" of the voice is not - or not only- its timbre; the signifying it affords cannot be better defined than by the friction between music and something else, which is the language (and not the message at all)" (273). Also, Barthes criticizes the music critics of today as they employ too many adjectives in their attempts to describe the music they are critiquing. By listening to these two versions of the same song, there definitely is a difference in timbre, style, and feeling of each artist.  However, where would the friction between music and language come to play here? Is it the attempt to incorporate the voice of the artist into the tune of the music? In addition, is it possible to describe the versions of this song without the use of any adjectives at all, especially if one does not understand the language it is sung in?  Personally, I feel that although a string of nouns may provide a general idea of the music, they still fail to truly describe everything that the music is embodying, much like the case of adjectives.

Pearl Jam - Yellow Ledbetter (live)

Reading "The Grain of the Voice" by Roland Barthes immediately brought to mind Eddie Vedder's uniquely iconic and at times barely comprehensible vocals. While his lyrics may be obscured by his propensity for ad hoc vocal renditions in his live and recorded music, there is an emotive quality to his voice that most keenly expresses sorrow or pining. Often, songs rely on lyrics to express what the artists want, but Vedder's voice has always had a way of doing that independently. Barthes asked us to question whether uniqueness of voice exists and Vedder's stands out as one that is widely known and admired for its distinctiveness.

Barthes - Édith Piaf, Non je ne regrette rien

"For his rare phenomenon to occur, for music to enter language, there must be, of course, a certain physique of the voice (by physique I mean the way in which the voice behaves in the body--or in which the body behaves in the voice). What has always struck me about Panzéra's voice is that... [his] voice was always secured, animated by a quasi-metallic strength of desire: it is a "raised" voice... an erected voice--a voice which gets an erection... Panzéra always sang with his entire body, full-throatedly: like a schoolboy who goes out into the countryside and sings for himself... to kill everything bad, depressed, anguished in his head. In a sense, Panzéra always sang with the naked voice. (Barthes, "Music, Voice, Language," pg. 283-4)

When reading this passage, Édith Piaf came to mind. Her voice is absolutely suspending. It raises and falls, and it is powerful, wakening. (Maybe I shouldn't be using adjectives.) It seems, at least to me, to have a type of body (especially at some points when she sings "rien"). In Barthes' talk of the grain of the voice, Piaf is a natural fit. During lecture we associated words like texture and weight to grain, and we spoke of the grain being the process of signifying, not the signal itself. I imagine Piaf's voice to embody that type of friction, between music and language without being either.

EDIT: Just scrolled down and saw that someone else posted the same song. That's cool.

Barthes: Crystallize Lindsey Sterling

"it is a muscular music; in it the auditive sense has only a degree of sanction: as if the body was listening, not the "soul"; this music is not played "by heart"; confronting the key board or the music stand, the body proposes, leads, coordinates - the body itself must transcribe what it reads: it fabricates sound and sense: it is the scriptor, not the receiver; the decoder"

Original:

In this quotation on "music you play", Barthes labels the body, not the voice, as the 'decoder' of the music that is being performed. In this regard, the body is acting as the translator between that which signifies the music and the music itself. Barthes uses the example of the key board and the music stand to exemplifies this. The key board and the music stand is the medium in which the body is able to translate the codes that it deciphers. The codes can be the received thoughts, signs, and musical notes that guides the performer to produce the melodic sound that is music. It is a type of music that can only be done through physical means, hence Barthes's use of the term 'muscular'. In my example with Lindsey Sterling's  'Crystallize', the musician utilizes an external instrument, the violin, to script the signals received by her senses into a 'muscular music' that progresses throughout the duration of the song.

Question: Would Barthes consider dancing as an act that can 'play' music?

Updated:

In this quotation on the playable type of music, Barthes labels the body, not the voice or the 'soul', as the 'decoder' of the music. This means that music is no longer being created through the expression of the voice but from the proposition, lead, and coordination of the movement of the body as it confronts a piece of implementation that can perform that task in the place of a voice. In this regard, the body is acting as the translator between the instruments that signifies music and the form of the music. Barthes uses the example of the key board and the music stand to exemplifies this. The key board and the stand is the medium in which the body expresses the musical codes that it perceives and deciphers. These codes can be received in the form of thoughts, visual cues, and sound just to name a few, that guides the performer's fabrication of 'sound and sense' into music. It is a type of music that can only be done through physical means, hence Barthes's uses the term 'muscular' to signify the movement of the body. In this example of Lindsey Sterling's 'Crystallize', Sterling confronts the violin as Barthes would say to script the codes of sound that she receives through her senses into a 'muscular' type of music that can only be performed through the expression of the body. This expression comes from the movement of the muscles strumming the instrument with the bow. Sterling utilizes large combinations of rapid, slow, big, and small movements to create different changes in pitch and tone. She then scripts those patterns to create a combination that is manifested as the beautiful harmony, 'Crystallize'.

(Barthes) "The Steward of Gondor" by Howard Shore and Billy Boyd

Barthes says that it is difficult to speak about music. We each interpret music differently and generalizing music by saying that we all must love it, then commentary comes in. We can relate this back to what Greil Marcus said about his own commentary on different types of music. He didn't have any certain credentials to speak or condemn any other persons work of art; he wasn't even musical himself. He just wrote about his opinion and people found it interesting and wanted to listen. Barthes talks about how when music enters language then it "thrusts itself forward, it is the intruder., the nuisance of music" (Barthes 283).This is where the meaning comes into the music. The first song that came to mind when I thought about this was the song "The Steward of Gondor" by Howard Shore and Billy Boyd. There is a long lead in building up the suspense before there is a change in the melody and Billy Boyd starts to sing. We draw meaning from this first part because of the dramatic intro and it is unexpected to hear someones voice, but when we do it only adds to the dramatic setting. Now the dramatic intro is given context and the music breaks through into language.

Edith Piaf - Non, je ne regrette rien (Officiel) [Live Version]

After reading Barthes’ passages, I am left with very little answers and many questions.  However, according to the basic understanding that I grasped, I selected a specific singer who I believe mirrors the description or behavior he describes. One of the biggest challenges was to determine how or what makes a voice raw. However, Edith Piaf is the closest resemblance I can make in my mind.  The music starts to fade to the background as her voice draws the listener in. When I hear her sing, I am not caught on what she is singing but how she is singing. This is how I believe a raw or naked voice would sound. No generalities—just pure, natural, and organic.

“… the  grain of the nasals, a little harsh, as though spiced; the r, rolled of course, but in no
way obedient to the somewhat heavy role of peasant speech…” (282)

How does peasant speech sound?

“I myself have a lovers’ relation to Panzéra’s voice: not to his raw, physical voice, but to his voice as it passes over language, over our French language, like a desire: no voice is raw; every voice is steeped in what it says.” (280)

How does a voice pass over language?

 “… one must pronounce, never articulate for articulation is the negation of legato.” (282)

On Barthes

Roland Barthes' essay, "Listening," begins by dividing the act of listening into three different types. "The first listening," he explains, "might be called an alert. The second is a deciphering," and the third (the least easily summarized) is "a general 'signifying' no longer conceivable without the determination of the unconscious." (245-6) While I can't claim, as of now, to have grasped what Barthes may mean with any sure grip, I nonetheless greatly enjoy his writings. Even his most academic and scientific essays have moments where Barthes' poetic nature overtakes him and he begins to write in the most colorful mixtures of the scholarly and the sentimental. The final paragraph of the first section in "Listening" is one such moment:

Barthes Questions

Barthes defines functionality as "... (clarity, expressivity, communication)..." (272). If functionality better communicates representational music, is the solution to achieving adjective-free music removing functionality. If so, what specifically (among clarity, expressivity, communication) needs to be hindered, or entirely excluded? 

Professor Naddaff mentioned in class yesterday that similes (and thus I assume metaphors) act similar to adjectives. Barthes lays the claim that "Perhaps a thing is valid only by its metaphoric power; perhaps that is the value of music, then: to be a good metaphor" (285). Does this mean that music cannot truly be more than bound by adjective/predicate? 

Barthes Presentation Questions & Music

Questions to Consider:

1) Is there an objective way of listening? Is there an objective way of communicating what you’ve heard?

2) On page 284, Barthes mentions that Panzera “sang with his entire body— full-throatedly… to kill everything bad, depressed, anguished in his head… with the naked voice” (284). What does it mean to sing with the naked voice?

3) On page 284, Barthes writes that music is, to Panzera’s art, “a quality of language” (284). What does this meaning in context of Barthes’s argument?

4) How would you read this question aloud to make it sound like the speaker is
Stupid
A Cool Hipster
Hyper-intelligent
Seductive
  What did you do to your voice in order to convey these things?

5) “In the unspoken appears pleasure, tenderness, delicacy, fulfillment, all the values of the most delicate image-repertoire. Music is both what is expressed and what is implicit in the text: what is pronounced (submitted to inflections) but is not articulated: what is at once outside meaning and non-meaning, fulfilled in that signifying [signifiance], which the theory of the text today seeks to postulate and to situate. Music, like signifying, derives from no metalanguage but only from a discourse of value, of praise: from a lover’s discourse: every “successful” relation— successful in that it manages to say the implicit without articulating it, to pass over articulation without falling into the censorship of desire or the sublimation of the unspeakable—such a relation can rightly be called musical. Perhaps a thing is valid only by its metaphoric power; perhaps that is the value of music, then: to be a good metaphor” (284-285). How do you characterize the relationship/s between signifying, meaning, pronunciation and articulation?

Music to Consider:

Jean Sibelius: Pelléas et Méltsande - IX. The Death of Mélisande (IX. La mort de Mélisande) ipscale ipscale (Barthes, GOV, 186-187)

Kim Borg - Death of Boris (Mussorgsky) (Barthes, GOV, p,186)

Schubert - Lieder - Fischer-Dieskau / Moore Salzburg 1957 (For Barthes, The Grain of the Voice)

Panzera Sings Fauré Claire de la Lune (Barthes, The Grain of the Voice)

Since we've been discussing Bob Dylan in coincidence with Greil Marcus's work, I thought I'd share this opportunity with you all. Bob Dylan is coming to Hearst Greek Theater on June 9th! Here's a link to the Facebook event, which will direct you to Ticketmaster should you want to purchase tickets:

https://www.facebook.com/events/981885668557450/

Questions for Griel Marcus

1.  I found your writing to be orienting, in that you use narrative techniques that place your readers in a certain space, which I found very similar to the experience of listening to a well-produced album in headphones.
Noting this, I want to ask,

A) is this deliberate?
B)Can writing be musical?
and
C) If so, do you write with the intention of producing musical writing?

2. Does writing about music change how you listen to music? and do you think your writing influences how people go about listening to the music you write about? Does compromise the personal freedom to interpret music?

Greil Marcus Questions

1) You've written extensively about particularly unique and culturally central groups/musicians, such as Bob Dylan, The Doors, The Sex Pistols etc.. In your opinion, who is the most significant musician/group in the past decade (particularly in the sense of illustrating the power of music), and why?

2) In "Self Portrait No. 25," you've certainly had some negative reactions to some of the tracks - regardless, Bob Dylan's still seems to still be worthy of notable consideration and reflection for you. Do the songs that you or others feel as less or even not at all successful contribute any significance for Dylan as an artist? That is, if his less impressive songs were simply not ever written, would Dylan be more impressive/significant, or do his failures somehow add something to his work, maybe a relatable human quality of fruitless attempts?

Questions about music and Dylan and Guitar Drag for Greil Marcus

1. What was the response to the Self Portrait review when it was published, and have the responses changed over the years?

2. From Self Portrait and Guitar Drag I get the sense that for you the meaning in a song is referential or relational. In Guitar Drag we see that the song is meaningful in relation to the story of John Henry and its relationship to history. For Dylan, you make sense of "Self Portrait" by relating it to Dylan's other work, the auteur approach, and American history. First, is this a fair interpretation? Second, is this just one approach or do you think that context ( at minimum some kind of cultural referent outside the song itself) is necessary to find meaning in a song or album?

3. Along the same vein as my last question, is music more valuable if it reflects the cultural context of its creation? Does music always reflect the conditions of its production, or does it take a certain type of songwriter to bring the real world in to a song?

4. On page 26 you discuss Dylan's "As I Went Out One Morning" and relate it to Tom Paine saying how "we have perverted our own myth." I was struck by the use of "myth" because you refer to Dylan as mythic so often. I wonder if you could speak on to what extent consumers, fans, maybe even critics pervert the history of musicians like Dylan? Does elevating Dylan to such a mythic level pervert his artistry? Or have there been events in the history of Bob Dylan's art and its subsequent discourse that you think pervert his work?

5. Have you listened to Kanye West's "The Life of Pablo" ? When you wrote about the auteur approach and said "we went out and bought Self Portrait not because we knew it was great music--it might have been but thats not the first question we'd ask--but because it was a Dylan album," I thought immediately of TLOP. How might you compare the albums or artists? After all, Kanye too live on in one name approaching mythic status.

"Bob Dylan" Questions for Greil Marcus

1. The way you wrote “Bob Dylan” for Rolling Stone seems very lyrical and playful to me. Why did you write this piece in the fragmented style you did? What were you hoping to achieve with this style of writing? Was it intended to read as a journal, an interview or a dialectic of sorts? How did you intend it to be read?
2. In what ways did Dylan’s album “rewrite history?” (“Bob Dylan” 9) 
3. What are your favorite (Blue Moon / Like A Rolling Stone?) and least favorite (All the Tired Horses / cover of The Boxer?) songs by Dylan, and why?
4. You write, “The point is that Dylan’s songs can serve as metaphors, enriching our lives, giving us random insight into the myths we carry and the present we live, intensifying what we’ve known and leading us toward what we never looked for, while at the same time enforcing an emotional strength upon those perceptions by the power of the music that moves with the words.” In what ways is Dylan’s music “about possibilities rather than facts?” (“Bob Dylan” 26) Do any modern/newer artists or genres do this for you? What is the relationship between music and words to you? 
5. Do you draw from any critical theory or philosophy in your music and cultural criticism/writing? What books or articles might you recommend, either by you or other noteworthy music journalists/authors/critics? 
6. What inspired you to write about music and culture? 
7. As a music and cultural critic, have you written anything about or taken any personal action against the US's use of music torture/"interrogation?" What's your view of this?

Questions for Greil Marcus

1. Do you think music can lead one past the phenomenal world into some sort of universal, 'true' world? Or is music forever bound to culture and its expression? Essentially, do you think there is a universality to music, either it its effects or creation?

2. Is music an abstraction of life? Can music be a true escape from life if it is eternally bound to the technology to which it's formed? In "Guitar Drag", you reference Marclay in 1991 who said, "The record is supposed to be a stable reproduction of time, but it's not. Time and sound become elusive again because of mechanical failure. Technology captures sound and stamps it on these disks. They then begin lives of their own. Within these lives, technological cracks -- defects -- occur. That's when it gets interesting for me, when technology fails. That's when I feel the possibility of expression"(232-233). So, does technology suppress pure expression by anchoring music in time and space or does it create the possibility of a musical expression that never dies but rather eternally interacts with time and space?

Guitar Drag (Get Ready)

A Question for Mr. Marcus

One of the major themes in Another Self Portrait is the way in which Bob Dylan (the man) confronts "Bob Dylan" (the publicly defined idea). There is the commonly accepted notion that that the famous are not allowed to be themselves in the public eye; that, as Dylan recited: "Fame is an occupation in itself" (4) where the artist turns his or her name into a brand that can be invested in, managed, sold to the public, etc. What emerges from this situation is the Barthesian 'death of the author,' where the artist is cleaved from the interpretation and effects produced by the artist's creation. We might ponder the relative responsibility J. D. Salinger holds for John Lennon's death.

I'm interested in how you understand this division. Authorship seems an especially marshy terrain in folk music, and 'political folk music' seems the very apogee of this problem. To what extent do you agree or disagree with Barthes' self-admittedly grandiose argument? To what extent do you feel an artist can be seen as responsible for his or her music? How does this change how one listens to music?

Greil Marcus "Self Portrait" Questions

Although I have many questions as much of the vocabulary in these essays rings a bell with our philosophy readings ("decadence," etc. ("Self Portrait"  9)), I wish to bring up two general points which I think direct us more to the art. Of course this particular art is Self Portrait, by Bob Dylan, but it is also the realm of art, which is where music lies and thus where we must go to begin our philosophy of music.

1) Your rhetoric in the 1970 review seems to be doing comparative, narrativizing discourse about Dylan's music. Why is this approach, perhaps central to music and cultural criticism, not itself an imperative that arrives before the art? What keeps this imperative from speaking over, as if louder than or even prior to, the art? Can we listen to music this way without consuming the art altogether?

2) In the liner notes, Dylan immediately begins describing fame as a position of curious sovereignty. Is this a cultural sovereignty? An identitarian one? The language associated with Dylan is always, as both he and you point out, "the voice of a generation..." What do you think we can see in this connection between sovereignty and vocalization? Why is there a need for verbal expression if one is to have power, and therefore responsibility? Is it appropriate or not that Dylan, recognizing this responsibility, makes a retreat from power in Self Portrait? Or does he even?

I understand these are not simple questions, but they are ones I thought of most clearly while listening to the record and while reading the 1970 review and the notes. Looking forward to class!

Greil Marcus Questions

1. When you say that "...and that destruction soon casts off any perspectives not completely sucked into an irreducible violence" are you alluding to a suspension of disbelief (229)?
   
2. How do you define and compare suspension of disbelief in film vs. suspension of disbelief in music?

Questions For Greil Marcus

1. In one of our readings discussing the review about Bob Dylan's album Self Portrait, you say that you began a review for Rolling Stone commenting on the album saying "What is this shit?" I don't remember reading a follow up comment about the album, but after a time did you begin to see the album, and what Bob Dylan was doing to find his sound during time, as music or art?

2. Do you think that the music of todays generation is more shallow and less about the art and more about the entertainment?

Ear Worms on Ebaum's World

Ebaum's world was home to many ear worms in the early days of internet culture. The songs and Flash animation videos were edited to be endless loops, which you'd get your friends to watch until they asked when the next part happens.  I still know all the words to this one (and several of the sequels), which greatly influenced my sense of humor. The words "Magical Trevor"are enough to get me going.

Magical Trevor 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsUgZANvAbU&list=RDHsUgZANvAbU

I got the feeling that Saks and Levitin think of music as a way of facilitating the encoding of messages. Comical music uses the steady rhythm and inherent predictability as a mechanism for developing a rapid flow of set up, misdirection, and punchlines.

Nietzsche and Strauss' Radetsky March

I selected this piece because I feel it demonstrates the qualities that Nietzsche saw in Bizet. Radetsky March's liveliness coupled with toe-tapping melody is similar to the Bizet's Carmen, particularly in its overture. Radetsky March is not decadent, as Wagner's Tristan and Ilsode tends to be.  There is nothing morbid in the tune of Radetsky March- all tunes are light-hearted. The sense of doom and sorrow is no where present, unlike the heavy melody of Tristan and Ilsode.

Nietzsche's Hope Drone

Confusing, longwinded, contradictory--all are words to describe Nietzsche’s philosophy of aesthetics. It appears his monologue goes on indefinitely, swaying between opinions as though his philosophy is solely of his capricious emotions. He rambles, he whines, he even points fingers to those he claims are the “naive artists,”(BoT 25). He originally praises Wagner, only to tear him apart. It’s as if Nietzsche himself can’t quite explicate his very own thinking.

What then can we take away from his thoughts on aesthetics? If there is some morsel of truth behind all the vagueness, what could it be?

To better understand Nietzsche’s complex view of music, I think it’s only fair to use a song as demonstration.

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Here, the piece Dead Flag Blues from the album “F#a#∞” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor does best to illustrate the A. wisdom of Silenus, B. blend of the Apolline and the Dionysian, and C. privleging of Bizet over Wagner.

A. Silenus speaks to King Midas: 

“Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best  thing is utterly beyond your reach not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon."

It is apparent in the song by Godspeed You! Black Emperor of an insurmountable death drive. The monologue within the intro clearly paints the picture of a universal, not subject, death. The world is crumbling; we are all destined to parish. In this way, the song is speaking not of the musicians' internal conflicts, but rather the battle of humanity, the terrible wisdom of Silenus. “The sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides” as the humanity pushes towards nothingness, the burden of living unbearable.

B. Apolline vs. Dionysiac

The melody of the song, much to dead Schopenhauer’s pleasure, is easily recognizable. It continues throughout the song with ease—any individual could hum along to the--rather bleak—tune. Not only is the melody discernible, but the chord progression has roots in the technical/logical instrumentation of blues and early 1950’s rock music. In that sense, it’s highly Apolline. Blues has it’s roots in the sorrows of the individual which expresses a fundamental dissallusionment with the world through the use of words—characteristically Apolline. Yet, the genius of this piece is that, although such sorrows are individuated by nature of blues music, there are no words to discern anything. We are left with the vague uneasiness and melancholy spirit of a blues song, without any of the indicative semblance that characterizes representational music. This makes the song highly Dionysian.

Like Apollo’s temple at Delphi, the characteristic of the intro monologue is twofold: both Apolline and Dionysiac

The inscription above the temple reads “Know thyself” and “Not to much!” as if to limit the around of logic and self discovery associated with the Apolline. And same goes for the monologue. The narration begins and ends in a state of confusion, having begun to illustrate something of grave importance, and ending before any real clarity was achieved. This is the true balance between the Apollonian logic and the Dionysian primordial unity. The narration need not continue, for the spirit of the Dionysiac is empowered as the melody of the song begins.

The rest of the song is pure sorrow and pure bliss, explicating nothing more than the melody and harmony put forth. Nietzsche might refer to the restless and turbulence towards the middle of the piece as the “moira” of nature, the fate of life itself (BoT 23). Yet, what I find so purely genius about this song, and hopefully the decomposing Schopenhauer may agree, is the ending. Though possibly overlooked, it is absolutely fundamental for our using this song as demonstration of Nietzschian aesthetics. This brings me to my last point…

C. Bizet, oh sweet Bizet

Having rejected Wagner—and inadvertently a large portion of his Birth of Tragedy—Nietzsche began his tryst with the composer Bizet. He praised him for his originality as a true artist. What Nietzsche saw in Bizet’s work was that for which he so highly praised Wagner—the return to attic Greek tragedy as the ultimate art. In this, Nietzsche claims that in order to create, we must first stare into the void, recognize our fate, and laugh. This is why the song Dead Flag Blues is absolutely genius. 

Towards the end of the piece, after the strings have calmed their wailing, the guitars have softened their tone, we the audience expect closure—we assume the song has come to an end. At this point, the song has painted for us a horrifying yet beautiful picture of the end of humanity, of death and dying, of aching sorrow and the wisdom of Silenus. We, at this point, are left with much to contemplate—the song has achieved for us a grand philosophy that Nietzsche would have praised. Yet, after short silence, the instrumentation begins again. We are catapulted back into the clamor of song as the musicians once again breathe life into their instruments. And with this new melody comes hope! What is this but a glockenspiel, ringing out the simple tune of joviality, of youthfulness, of desire, of happiness. The strings have awakened into a sublime and cheerful tune! This is it! This is what Nietzsche so pushed for in his philosophy! “Bliss born of pain,”(BoT 26). It is the reconciliation of fate; the staring into the void, only to rise up laughing. The guitar echoes sweet ecstasy as the musicians achieve the greater Will, the universal understanding, the affirmation, the justification of life. The bitterness of our condition cannot suppress the hope and levity of the human spirit. That is it. That is all.

"The Little Death" - On Morbidity and Orgasm

Listen to "The Little Death" on Soundcloud, here.

Listen to "The Little Death" on Soundcloud, here.

(I apologize for the lack of a video, but there are not even lyric videos for this song yet.)

Professor Andrew Barshay of the history department said you can always begin with a work's title. (It makes sense, given that a title is probably the first thing one reads when one reads a work.) I think this is useful for us when trying to listen to "The Little Death" as we think of Nietzsche's The Case of Wagner. This song gives us sense of what Nietzsche associates with Wagner, and is not the music he lauds, such as Bizet. I believe it is clear from the title that this song is morbid, a recurring signifier Nietzsche attaches to Wagner's music, although it might be harder to trace what makes a song like "The Little Death" decadent, which is the other recurring word Nietzsche uses to describe Wagner. First, we ought to understand what he is saying. Next, we can return to the above lyric to get a sense of what this song has to offer in terms of decadence.

"I give prominence to this point of view: Wagner's music is morbid... the compulsiveness of his emotion, his over-excited sensibility, his taste, which always asked for stronger stimulants, his instability, which he disguised as principles...altogether these symptoms represent a picture of disease about which there can be no mistake. Wagner est une nevrose." (Case of Wagner, 18)

Decadence as a spirit only comes out in an aesthetic, and as such necessarily invokes some imagery of bright, shining light, rich backgrounds, etc. However, this wealth of excess that we associate it with is essentially the spirit of excess of decadence only observed materially. Excess also exists in the "over excited sensibility" which matches the "taste" of his music (and his audience) and results in the need for "stronger stimulants." The analogy of the drug here is significant, because it implies a sense of compensation for something in the individual's feelings. Wagner satisfies his audience, he scratches their itch, and so they love him. This sort of love is pathetic for Nietzsche, and speaks of a nervous disorder where the individual is scared to exist as one's own self.

It should be clear now that decadence and morbidity share a nexus of the feeling in the psyche, which is why the lyrics to this song, about feeling human pleasure due to the connection with a feeling of death exemplify Wagner. This is exactly what Wagner does to the senses and feelings of his audience - he gives them their ghastly experience and thus unlocks their own humanity. After all, it is the death-like orgasm which is la petit morte, or the little death. Nietzsche criticizes Wagner's music as offering this exact sort of pleasure, as one always requires the other in sex (except in the case of masturbation, which is still a fundamental lack). This other reduces the self to an incomplete machine, which requires continual fuel and maintenance, and gets these, in Nietzsche, as if coddled and unable to stand upright. All the metaphors here assume and work to preserve a sense of the able-bodied human, or the strong. Nietzsche has turned from the Dionysian pessimism of The Birth of Tragedy to something I don't understand as well. But that is not the topic of this post, which is just to demonstrate the sort of music we can find The Case of Wagner or such a spirit in works other than Wagner. This spirit is strong with those who cannot defend themselves, who are easily seduced, and fundamentally themselves "the poor in spirit." (17) Their lives are defined by their suffering, and thus they lose their inherent human will to experience life. They are upside down. In an odd way, Nietzsche has reversed himself and apparently realigned with, as indicated above in the spirit of the strong, able-bodied, a correct way of being and thus reestablished a modern hierarchy of being. This is a notion I do not believe is true, because in this reversal Nietzsche embraces the notion that there are entirely different spheres of existence which will still partake in the same being. (This is what I say I do not fully understand yet.)

For a moment, I am going to say that it is wrong to cast one's net out to the sea of words before your eyes when reading some work and assuming that you have drudged its deepest meaning. This is not reading. I have done so above because we are not interested so much in swimming in Nietzsche's vast ocean so much as connecting it to some other music (note the metaphor breaks down). We should not, especially in the case of Nietzsche, let his words or ours be drowned, caught in their own, splashing paroxysms of deterministic thought. A quotation from On Truth and Lies, I think, is appropriate here:

“That haughtiness which goes with knowledge and feeling, which shrouds the eyes and senses of man in a blinding fog, therefore deceives him about the value of existence by carrying in itself the most flattering evaluation of knowledge itself. Its most universal effect is deception; but even its most particular effects have something of the same character…

This man, who at other times seeks nothing but sincerity, truth, freedom from deception, and protection against ensnaring surprise attacks, now executes a masterpiece of deception…he wears no quivering and changeable human face, but, as it were, a mask with dignified, symmetrical features. He does not cry; he does not even alter his voice. When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it.”

Ben E King - Spanish Harlem

For my post on Nietzsche, I chose the song "Spanish Harlem" by Ben E. King. The reason for my choice is that I was considering Nietzsche's evolution in thought from the love of Wagner's somber, "morbid" style to Bizet's, light, decadent, cheerful music that does not provoke the sickness of human life. "Spanish Harlem" embodies the wonderful spirited nature that Bizet's "Carmen" does.

Give Peace A Chance, Nietzsche!

"My 'fact,' my petit fait vrai, is that I no longer breathe easily when this music begins to affect me; that my foot soon resents it and rebels: my foot feels the need for rhythm, dance, march..." (664 Nietzsche Contra Wagner)

and

"Music a a means to clarify, strengthen, and lend inward dimension to the dramatic gesture and the actor's appeal to the senses..." (665 Nietzsche Contra Wagner)

I enjoyed the way Nietzsche talks about music and the effect on the physical body it can have. I thought of "Give Peace A Chance" because the song always gives me a physical reaction of feeling like I need to get up and move - or try to save the world - and Nietzsche's text discussed this sensation in a very beautiful way.

Nietzsche & "The World We Live In" by Sebastian Plano

“This music seems to me to be perfect. It approaches lightly, nimbly, and with courtesy. It is amiable, it does not produce sweat...It is rich, it is precise. It builds, it organizes, it completes.” (6) “The exhausted is allured by what is hurtful; the vegetarian by his pot-herbs. Disease itself may be a stimulus to life: only, a person must be sound enough for such a stimulus! Wagner increases exhaustion; it is on that account that he allures the weak and exhausted." (18) This song by Sebastian Plano is introduced with a sort of morbidity that contains a grace within its pain. It begins to build with a perceivable reverence for the sorrows of both the artist and the listener. Around 2:00, the story told by the keys picks up and the overall body of the song begins to warm while still expressing its mournful disposition. The layering of pain continues to climb incrementally in strength, yet the song feels as if there is some sort of embrace and optimism found within the despair. This disease that Nietzsche speaks of is the pain that the "artist" ultimately accepts and holds onto in order to gather freedom in the midst of his loss.

Nietzsche

Here are a two quotes from The Case of Wagner:

"At present money is only made by morbid music, our great theatres live by Wagner." (19)
"[...] it is easier to be gigantic than to be beautiful; we are aware of that..." (20)

One of the primary reasons Nietzsche seems to dislike Wagner so much is that he sees his music as overpowering, excessive, and reliant on sheer stimuli. This, coupled with Wagner's Christianity and focus on salvation, which Nietzsche already disagrees with, seems to completely kill the enjoyment of Wagner's music. That is, he disagrees with Wagner's message, and sees the music itself as further nonredeemable because it focuses more on quantity rather than quality. Bizet's Carmen in contrast, is seen to convey genuine love with all its tragedy, and uses musical devices that Nietzsche sees as beautiful and not overdone, notably because the music is "southern."

This mentality reminds me a lot of modern (or past, the idea seems to be timeless) cries against popular music because its, for example, "fake," "overproduced," or "lacking in substance." Think of popular opinion regarding excess in both musician ethos and sonic qualities of genres like Hair Metal, Dubstep, Trap, or even just typical Pop music on the radio. As general as those terms are, the main idea I'm trying to express is that certain types of music develop off of excitement with more and more stimuli, moving further in an excessive direction as the audience wants more and more. Songs in pop music around a certain time tend to sound similar to each other because that's what the audience crave - "At present money is only made by morbid music."  Wagner seems to be that for Nietzsche, and Bizet seems to be the counter-culture that expresses something more genuine (notably because the culture surrounding it is different/unfamiliar e.g. "southern").

One example of a genre that is largely a counter-culture is Shoegaze from the 90's, in which the musicians would spend most of the performance looking at the floor to operate guitar pedals, the idea being that their focus was completely towards the unique quality of the music, not the visual flare of the show. This was a reaction to the heavy presence of the visual stage flare and cheesy musical devices that were happening with Rock at the time, especially with costumes and performances within Hair Metal. My Bloody Valentine became very popular for their novel sound, but ironically for this example, they use layering of sounds to create an overpowering "wall of sound" that is key to the genre - something Nietzsche would hate for its brute force. Regardless, it was born out of nearly the same sentiment of getting away from excess that Nietzsche's providing here.

Nietzsche meets the Mosh Pit

Here I am scowering the internet for music and thinking about Nietzsche Contra Wagner, a reading where Nietzsche brings together his outlook on German culture with familiar concepts like the dionysian and apollonian. On page 669 he claims art and philosophy presuppose suffering and categorizes sufferers between those characterized by  "over fullness" and on the other side "impoverishment." He writes that people in the impoverishment side will "demand of art and philosophy, calm, stillness, smooth seas, or on the other hand, frenzy, convulsion, and anesthesia. Revenge against life itself--the most voluptuous kind of frenzy for those so impoverished!"

In the next paragraph Nietzsche explains how Wagner and Schopenhauer represent  revenge against life itself, but I want to pause on this quotation and relate it to certain sub-genres of rock today. The song I chose is "You Wont Know" by a band originally from Long Isand, NY called Brand New. They've been around for about 15 years and play a breed of hard rock that gets branded commonly as metal, screamo, punk, emo, or pop punk, but also can be left to its basic element, rock, on many songs. This particular song falls on the much heavier side. I thought of this band after last class because of their tendency for morbid heartbbroke lyrics.

I most connected the song to the quotation because of Nietzsche's use of "frenzy" and "convulsion." When the band gets going their music is a huge blast of guitar sound. The live version is especially interesting because we get to see the band physically in a frenzy convulsing their bodies around the instruments. The crowd at Austin City Limits is a bit weak, but normally at shows like this the crowd could be full of people headbanging and moshing,  a timed convulsion with music. I was also struck by how when the band is playing quietly with just the guitar and the singer it sounds like it could be more of a "smooth sea." The way Nietzsche's description reflects in rock so literally interests me. I am not sure how much bands like these could be called a "revenge against life." I am struck that the lyrics are about a kind of suffering yet the performance looks like more of a celebration, so the band may get vengeance by turning suffering in to a pleasurable performance.


Great reflection.  Good theme to pursue in your next essay.  

Nietzsche Contra Wagner: What We Ain't Got by, Jake Owen

"Every art, every philosophy, may be considered a remedy and aid in the service of either growing or declining life: it always presupposes suffering and sufferers."

Country is a genre that I believe really focuses on the up and downs of everyday life. Nietzsche discusses in Contra Wagner how music can be a remedy in both growing and declining life.

Music is known to be able to help a person's mood. It makes you want to dance, sing. The artist is able to convey his feelings through the sounds and lyrics of the songs. It isn't all just happiness however. Music can also be a medium to express sadness and other negative emotions. This is where I found a connection between Jake Owen's song, What We Ain't Got. Although the artist is talking about his growing life, in other aspects it is declining. And although it seems to late to go back to the old times, he has came to accept the decisions he has made. Although the song sounds somber, it isn't all bad. His music can be seen as a remedy or an aid for someone else who may be in his position. The message behind his music has the ability to influence the life of others.

So although he may be suffering, he is aiding those who are suffers.    

Wagner shits in our mouth and calls it a sundae—and we believe him

"A typical decadent, who feels himself necessary with his corrupt taste, who claims that it is a higher taste, who knows how to make his depravity be regarded as a law, as a progress, as fulfillment. And nobody defends himself. Wagner's power of seduction becomes prodigious, the smoke of incense steams around him, the misunderstanding about him calls itself 'Gospel'—it is by no means the poor in spirit exclusively whom he has convinced. I should like to open the windows a little. Air! More air!——" (The Case of Wagner; 17)

Wagner (New Wave)

Bizet (No Wave)

 

Nick Drake - Sunday

"all music must leap out of the wall and shake the listener to his very intestines. Only then can you consider music "effective" Nietzsche thinks this of "recent music"- that it require the listener to swim and float, "surrounding themselves to the elements without reservation" rather than walk and dance. I would be interested to see his take on more modern music- where it fits in terms of walking, swimming, etc.

Nietzsche contra Wagner: "Smooth Seas" vs. "Revenge against Life Itself"

“Every art, every philosophy, may be considered a remedy and aid in the service of either growing or declining life: it always presupposes suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds of sufferers: first, those who suffer from the overfullness of life and want a Dionysian art as well as a tragic insight and outlook on life—and then those who suffer from the impoverishment of life and demand of art and philosophy, calm, stillness, smooth seas, or, on the other hand, frenzy, convulsion, and anesthesia. Revenge against life itself—the most voluptuous kind of frenzy for those so impoverished! Wagner responds to this dual need of the latter no less than Schopenhauer: they negate life, they slander it, hence they are my antipodes.” (Nietzsche Contra Wagner 669-670)

I chose this first song, “Beat Organ” by 16 Bit Lolitas, because it reminds me of the “smooth seas” (in contrast with the “frenzy”) that Nietzsche says the sufferer who lives an impoverished life seeks through philosophy and art. This quote explicates why Nietzsche no longer agrees with what he puts forth in The Birth of Tragedy regarding Wagner and Schopenhauer. While Wagner and Schopenhauer negate life through music, Nietzsche argues that the underlying reality of existence includes contradiction, pain and excess and is represented immediately as the experience of the curse of individuation. Nietzsche seems especially critical of the negation of life because it implies that this life is not worth living and many people began to use Wagner’s music as a justification for religious faith and the prospects of an afterlife, alluding to something beyond human existence. While the Dionysian to Nietzsche allows us to transcend our individuation and access the primordial unity, the Dionysian, or music, doesn’t create a useless, or negated, life. According to Nietzsche, Wagner’s music acts as a “stimulant” to the listener in a negative sense, always causing the listener to need or want more from the music through all of its dramatic crescendos and decrescendos; however, the song I chose has less of a hypnotic effect than Wagner’s “Tristan & Isolde” because of its consistent rhythm and soothing sound effects that keep the listener engaged psychologically. Nietzsche seems to state that different types of sufferers/humans could need art and philosophy in different ways, the former longing for a Dionysian experience while the latter either demanding utter stillness or complete frenzy.  As a contrast to “Beat Organ,” here’s a song I personally associate with frenzy, or “revenge against life itself,” called “Doomsday” by NERO.

If you'd like to listen to the entire album from where the calmer song comes, it's great study music, possibly because of its rhythmic steadiness and pleasant instrumentals / vocals: