Brian D. Josephsona and Tethys Carpenterb
Note: this material is subject to copyright restrictions and may not be used for for any commercial purpose without the permission of the copyright owner. If it is transmitted, copied or printed, then this notice, any other information herein relating to copyright, and author and publisher names, must be included in the derivative material (except for the case of brief quotes for the purposes of review or research).
ABSTRACT
It is argued that purely perceptual or generative accounts of music
are inadequate to account for its specificity, and that proper
accounts of music must take into account also a more fundamental
level of the mind (or of consciousness), a level we term the
‘aesthetic subsystem’. The latter constitutes a domain of
universality and of meaning that acts in conjunction with more
peripheral aspects of cognition. Suggestive parallels with systems
such as biosystems and lasers are used to account for a number of
features of musical processes in terms of the model.
*Paper submitted for the Proceedings of the Conference
‘Selforganisation as a Paradigm in Science’ held in Kaiserslautern,
Germany, September 28-30, 1992. [published by Springer, 1994, under
the title ‘On Self-Organization’, ed. Mishra, Maass and Zwierlen].
((c) Springer-Verlag)
aCavendish Laboratory, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HE, U.K.
bDepartment of Music, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College,
Egham, Surrey TW2 0EX, U.K.
* * * * * * * *
MUSIC AND MIND — A THEORY OF AESTHETIC DYNAMICS
Brian D. Josephson and Tethys Carpenter
1. Introduction: The problem of music and meaning
The question ‘what is music?’ is a subtle one, which has been
approached from a number of different points of view by different
authors. Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1), for example, on the basis of
examination of the structure of musical compositions, propose a
number of ‘generative principles’, which they hypothesis can serve
to distinguish actual music from arbitrary sequences of musical
elements; while Bregman (2) focuses his attention on the perceptual
processes involved in musical perception, arguing that the latter
can be expected to utilize the same cognitive mechanisms as those
involved in ordinary auditory perception. The skill of the
musician, according to this point of view, is in essence the skill
of assembling musical elements in such a way that the mind will put
them together to form a complex ‘auditory scene’, analogous to an
ordinary visual scene.
A third approach is that of Suzanne Langer (3), who regards a piece
of music as something functioning as a symbol, and which can thereby
create in our minds ideas related to feelings. This symbol aspect,
implying a distinction between what we perceive as happening in the
music (the statement and development of themes, for example), and
the effects that these percepts have on us, is not explicitly
addressed in either of the approaches previously mentioned. The
concept that there is an ‘idea’ and not just a structure or a scene
can be illustrated by an example, such as that of a person listening
to the second movement of Mozart’s piano concerto no. 21 in C major.
A few bars of this movement are sufficient to create a very specific
mood, which is sustained and amplified through the whole of the
movement. Listening to it being played, the dominant impression is
of how well the musical choices made by the composer fit into the
whole situation in this regard, the choices made having the
appearance of being both appropriate and near optimal. These
features apply equally well to music of a more intellectual
character.
Such phenomena in music fit in with Suzanne Langer’s ideas
(particularly since one of the characteristic features of a
symbolism is its specificity), but tend to suggest that there are
more constraints on good music than can be accounted for in terms of
approaches such as the two first mentioned. Again, music generated
by applying such rules as have been proposed, while in some sense
sounding like music lacks, to an experienced listener, the quality
of real music.
We are faced, then, with the existence of a phenomenon that is
apparently at once very specific and very arbitrary (the latter in
the sense of there being no clear reason for the observed
specificity). Langer’s ideas, being essentially statements of
listeners’ intuitions, have little to say about underlying
mechanisms. As a step towards the formulation of hypotheses
concerning the latter, we take our cue from situations in physics
that are analogous, such as the existence of highly specific and
reproducible atomic spectra. The latter, while observable using
very simple equipment operating on a macroscopic scale, can be
comprehended only in terms of the physics of a different domain, the
domain of the atom as understood in the light of the quantum theory.
We seem virtually forced to view music in a similar fashion, that is
to say as the outward expression of more fundamental phenomena
occurring at deep levels of the mind, or of consciousness. This
paper is devoted to the exploration of the feasibility and utility
of such a concept.
The basis of the present formulation is the postulate of the
existence of an aesthetic subsystem, which supports specific
aesthetic processes, and is presumed to be distinct from both
perceptual processes and processes of rational analysis (in which
respect it should be noted that while we can analyze an art object
with a view to understanding what factors are involved in our
appreciation of that object, such rational analysis is not a
precondition for such aesthetic appreciation to occur). Perception
of music is not ‘mere perception’ but perception allied to the
presence of a different, more fundamental system.
In subsequent sections of this paper, this idea will be developed in
some detail. But before doing this, we note the existence of a close
parallel with natural language, in that comprehension of natural
language involves more than mere perception of its structure:
knowledge of meaning and knowledge of the corresponding object
domain are involved also. We do not, in view of the subtleties of
the constraints involved in both cases, consider that these
additional factors can be adequately taken into account by means of
a closed set of semantic ‘generative rules’ as Lerdahl and
Jackendoff (1) seem to believe, either in the case of language or in
the case of music.
Some comment should be made finally on the work of Cooke (4), who
attempted, in a somewhat simplistic fashion, to develop the idea
that music is a specific language whose elements could be discovered
by understanding their roles in particular pieces of music. This
idea that music is a language has been challenged by Langer (3),
although certain aspects of Cooke’s ideas are consistent with the
proposals developed here.
2. Details of the aesthetic process
2.1 As already indicated, the aesthetic process is conceived of as
a special aspect of mind that deals with aesthetic matters (in an
analogous way to the way that processes of the visual system deal
with vision). We can be consciously aware of the outputs generated
by the aesthetic processes, just as we can be consciously aware of
the visual percepts that the processes of visual perception
generate.
2.2 Activity of the aesthetic subsystem can be induced in various
ways. One is the process of listening to music, and another the
process of composition. These differ, obviously, in that in the
former case the stimulus comes from outside, while in the latter
case the aesthetic state is self-induced (while performance of music
involves a combination of both features).
2.3 By virtue of the fact that music can be considered as
information, it follows that information plays a significant role in
the functioning of the aesthetic subsystem. In listening,
information fed in determines the state of the aesthetic subsystem.
Conversely, in composition the aesthetic subsystem generates
information (see, however, sec. 3.2). The importance of information
is one of a number of aspects in which aesthetic processes parallel
life, where information (e.g. DNA) plays a similarly important role
(parallels with life have been noted from a different point of view
by Langer (5) and Schoenberg (6).
2.4 We are concerned therefore with a two-way process, where
information affects state and state generates information (for
example, a particular rhythm in conjunction with other aspects of
the music is a generator of a particular mental state (state of the
aesthetic subsystem) and a mental state may tend to generate a
particular rhythm. This leads one to hypothesis that
self-sustaining loops may play an important role in aesthetics (see
the subsequent discussion of composition in Sec. 3.2). A similar
feature is found in life, where enzymes may catalyze particular
subprocesses which in turn regenerate the same enzymes. According
to this picture, the rhythms or other features (e.g. harmonies or
melodic patterns) that tend to be adopted for music are the ones
that tend to be self-sustaining in the manner indicated.
2.5 This picture can now be broadened to the more comprehensive one
indicated in fig. 1. This assumes that a variety of phenomena found
in music are directly connected with unmanifest processes occurring
at the deeper aesthetic level (in the same way that atomic spectra
and the Raman effect are visible consequences of corresponding
phenomena at the atomic level). We hypothesis, for example, that
particular themes that are perceived in the music, and which are
seen to develop in particular ways, are connected with particular
subprocesses and their development at the aesthetic level. These
subprocesses in the aesthetic system have specific effects on each
other (paralleling analogous behavior characteristic of
biosystems), in a way that has visible consequences in the way
themes or musical elements influence each other.
2.6 A number of parallels between aesthetic processes and life
processes have already been noted. An interesting further parallel
is one between the process of tension creation and tension
reduction, in the case of music, and the process of homeostasis in
biology. Some aspects of biosystems can be best understood in terms
of the existence of prescribed norms and the processes of
homeostasis which seek to reestablish these norms when sufficient
deviations from them occur. The balance- unbalance condition in
biosystems has its musical parallel in tension and its absence, and
the specificity of the processes by which biosystems restore balance
has its parallel in the specificity of the ways in which musical
tensions are resolved.
3. Global level features of music
The previous section has been concerned mainly with local details of
the structure of music. In this section we step back and examine
more global features, rephrasing and extending discussions given
elsewhere (7, 8) that were centered around the concept of musical
idea. In the current picture music can be defined, roughly
speaking, as activity in the aesthetic system which is, to a first
approximation, self- sustaining under the given conditions. This
condition applies both to a listener who is following the music and
appreciating it, and to a composer whose compositional processes are
flowing adequately. Thus the listener and the composer have related
goals, connected with maintaining the activity of the aesthetic
subsystem in an appropriate form.
3.1 The listening process
For the listener, the aesthetic system activity is the response to
the structured perception of the sound, and he must adequately
perceive its structural basis in order to create the full aesthetic
response. Familiarity with the style of the music plays a
significant role here in making it easier to discover the
appropriate structure, while being habituated to a different musical
culture on the other hand may have negative effects, in that it may
mislead the listener into perceiving incorrect structures, that is
to say into perceiving overall structure that does not activate the
aesthetic subsystem in the way that it should. But in the long
term, that is to say on repeated listening, feedback in terms of the
degree of aesthetic response to the presumed structure may enable
the listener to adjust his perceptions in the right direction, and
thus in the end lead him to hear the music appropriately.
3.2 The process of composition
The composer’s task is the reverse of the listener’s. The
principles involved here are considerably more subtle, involving a
delicate two-way interplay between the aesthetic subsystem and
peripheral systems that link with it. A physics analogy in the form
of an analogy with a laser offers useful insights here (see Fig. 2).
The characteristic patterns of music have been assumed to be
reflections of the underlying dynamics of the aesthetic subsystem.
Listening to music involves the response of the aesthetic subsystem
to the music, a process parallel to the resonant response of an atom
to electromagnetic radiation. If we feed a system of atoms with
energy in an appropriate way (‘pumping’ the system), a process of
stimulated emission occurs whereby the atoms emit more radiation
than they take in by absorption, a state of affairs which tends to
result in the system becoming unstable and generating radiation
spontaneously at a frequency close to the frequency of the spectral
line. But the precise details of the radiation, e.g. in terms of
frequency and spatial distribution, may be strongly influenced by
the macroscopic environment of the atomic systems as well; for
example, a laser cavity consisting of two parallel mirrors may have
a series of resonant modes, and if these are more precisely defined
in frequency than is the relevant atomic transition then the laser
will oscillate in one of these cavity modes. By analogy, we expect
that in the musical case, under appropriate conditions, the
aesthetic subsystem activity will take a form determined both by
what is possible in terms of the aesthetic subsystem dynamics
(corresponding to the atomic resonance) and the composer’s learned
musical repertoires (corresponding to the modes of the cavity). The
composer’s ability to create music depends on the appropriate
musical environment existing in his peripheral systems, just as the
physicist’s ability to create laser radiation depends on his ability
to provide an appropriate electromagnetic environment for the laser
radiation; in both cases, adequate matching for the two subsystems
must exist.
3.3 Time dilation
Some composers (e.g. Mozart) have claimed to have seen a whole new
composition in a flash. This facility poses no particular problem
for the present point of view, provided that the properties of the
aesthetic subsystem and the linked peripheral systems are such that
it is possible to accelerate their activities without any
significant change in form.
4. Meaning in music
The problem of the meaning of music is a very subtle one. Meyer (9)
distinguishes between internal meaning or reference in music, and
external reference. If music had only internal reference, listening
to music would be a very introverted kind of activity. However,
psychological experiments designed to discover specific external
references, i.e. links between specific pieces of music and specific
types of events, have been generally unsuccessful. There are
various possible reasons for such a failure, one of them being that
the abstract situation, where a subject is asked whether a piece of
music A reminds him of situation B, may be significantly different
operationally from the corresponding concrete situation of placing a
subject actually in situation B, and asking him how he feels about
music A then. Meyer’s suggestion (9) that the reference of music may
be archetypical in nature (e.g. the whole complex of feelings
associated with death) rather than conceptual may also be relevant.
Let us now see what the picture presented here has to say about such
matters. One way to describe meaning is to say that it is a way of
talking about certain kinds of cause and effect in the context of
information processing (10). From this point of view, the initial
meaning of a composition may be considered to be the corresponding
activity in the aesthetic subsystem. Component parts of a
composition equally have meaning in respect of the various specific
effects that they induce in the aesthetic subsystem.
The ‘meanings’ considered thus far have been in the category defined
by Meyer as inner meaning. As already noted, the question of
external meaning or reference is unclear. However, the problem can
be approached via the fact that music appears to have the capacity
to enhance other kinds of activities (for example, ballet and
opera). Sometimes, for example, an opera may have an inadequate
libretto or be performed or acted badly, but the performance remains
effective because of the music. It might be said in interpretation
of this fact that the music adds information that is missing from
the performance (in the same way that a commentary or a caption adds
missing information to a picture). The aesthetic subsystem can thus
be considered to have an informative function, perhaps closely
connected with intuition or understanding in general.
5. Parallels between music and exposition
The use of phraseology such as ‘the statement of a theme’ or ‘the
development of a theme’ points to the existence of parallels between
music and the exposition of a collection of ideas. Such parallels
are to be expected in a model where informational input is building
up complex structures, and it may be anticipated that similar
universal principles or processes might be involved in both
situations. One such principle is the principle of reference, i.e.
the connections that exist between simple surface forms (e.g. words
in the case of language; particular patterns of notes in the case of
music) and deeper entities. In the case of language, words are used
to gain access to particular pieces of knowledge or activities based
on that knowledge. In the case of music, patterns of notes provide
access to musical processes (cf. Fig. 1), for example starting a
process, developing it or bringing it to a close.
However, music and natural language are in many ways not at all
equivalent. For example, with language, meanings (which are
mechanisms whereby different processes may be linked) are learned
associations, whilst in the musical case the dynamical factors
linking different processes in the aesthetic subsystem are assumed
to be universal. This is not, however, to say that learning is
unimportant or irrelevant in the musical case. But in the musical
case learning, as has been explained above, is taken to be operative
at more peripheral levels (e.g. the level of auditory perception).
6. Concluding comments
We started off arguing that a conventional perceptual account of
music was inadequate, and that something corresponding to the subtle
influence of the products of the perceptual process on the mind
ought to be included in cognitive models as well. A model
incorporating an ‘aesthetic subsystem’ was developed, and used to
give an account of a number of processes associated with music. The
essence of the model is that aesthetic processes have a certain
universality, making them essentially independent of the ordinary
biological domain but perhaps akin to mathematical intuition. While
these are somewhat unusual hypotheses, it is hard to see how the
specificity of music can be accounted for in any other way.
For the future development of the model, one possible avenue is the
question of to what extent very specific regularities of music
discussed by investigators such as Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1) and
Narmour (11) can be accounted for in a transparent manner on the
basis of the model. Such connections might enable one to
characterize specific processes in the aesthetic subsystem, and to
understand their cognitive function, perhaps producing ultimately
accounts of the workings of the aesthetic (or intuitive) subsystem
of a similar kind to those that we now have of life. Finally,
attempts to account for the semantic aspects of music in detail,
such as those mentioned in the introduction due to Cooke (4), can
perhaps be usefully extended on the basis of concepts such as those
developed here.
Acknowledgment
We are grateful to Dr. Ian Cross for helpful comments on drafts of
the manuscript.
References and footnotes
1. F. Lerdahl, R. Jackendoff: A Generative Theory of Tonal Music
(MIT Press, London, Cambridge, Mass. 1983).
2. A. S. Bregman, Auditory Scene Analysis: the Perceptual
Organization of Sound (MIT Press, 1990).
3. S. K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (Harvard University Press,
London, Cambridge, Mass. 1951).
4. D. Cooke, The Language of Music (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, New York 1989.
5. S. K. Langer, Mind: an Essay on Human Feeling (Abridged edn.:
Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1988, chap. 7).
6. A. Schoenberg, Folkloristic Symphonies, in Style and Idea:
Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg (ed. Leonard Stein, Faber and
Faber, London 1975).
7. B. D. Josephson and T. L. Carpenter, New Scientist 129(1762), 2
(1991).
8. B. Josephson and T. Carpenter, New Scientist 131(1780), 51-2
(1991).
9. L. B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Univ. of Chicago
Press, Chicago 1959).
10. D. J. Bohm, Meaning and Information in The Search for Meaning
(ed. P. Pylkkaenen, Crucible, Wellingborough, Northants., U.K. 1989)
p. 43 P 62.
11. E. Narmour, The Analysis and Cognition of Basic Melodic
Structures: the Implication-Realization model (University of Chicago
Press, Chicago 1990).
Figure Captions
1. Illustrating the way musical phenomena in perception (or in the
imagination), such as A and B in the diagram are linked with deeper
phenomena such as a and b in the postulated aesthetic subsystem.
The interactions and dynamics in the aesthetic subsystem have a
strong influence on the observed structure of music, in the same way
that the dynamics of the atom influences the observed behavior of
atomic spectra.
2. The composer’s aesthetic system and the peripheral systems
mutually influence each other, in the same way that in the laser the
atoms and the radiation field mutually influence each other. In
either case, the two subsystems in isolation have their own
characteristic modes of behavior, and when the subsystems are
coupled together the observed behavior has features deriving from
the modes of behavior of the isolated subsystems (see sec. 3.2 for
a fuller discussion).
(pictures omitted in this file — they convey no information that a basic exercise of the imagination using the above will not do).
