Music as Synthesis of Language and Movement

It was a good ten years ago that I participated in a high school band competition down in Florida. Our symphonic band played Elgar's "Enigma Variations," and even after I've been a professional musician for a number of years since, I still remember it was a knockout performance. It was thrilling to play, we were well prepared, and there were a number of musicians in the ensemble I was quite proud to perform with. The downside, really, were the judges comments. Now, as many of us were quite aware, our performance should have an intrinsic value, and it shouldn't bother us too much whether we "win" the competition or not. However, the judge's comments seemed to be neither positive, negative, or particularly informative. He just said "Music either dances or it sings...and Enigma sings!" And he panned the performance. I suppose we danced, instead of sang it? Why should it be one or the other? The judge's written comments weren't any more clear, and there was little he said or wrote that supportated any interpretation of what he was saying. It seemed there was something he wanted to say, though he couldn't articulate it. Or maybe he was just trying to say something to have something to say, and calling up stock general statements.

From my reading of Daniel Levitin's "This is your Brain on Music" I am coming to realize, on a neurological level, how music engages the brain both in ways that resemble language processing as well as ways that resemble and relate to expressive movement. In fact, the brain on music exhibits activity utilizing massive amounts of the brain's processing apparatus. Music seems to be unique in this as far as human activities go. I think that there is historical evidence in historical performance practice, organology and treatises on music theory that would support this as well.

Early music theory treatises regarding music of the 14th century or so (which are highly influenced by ancient Greek writings) tend to focus on the relationship of language to music, particularly in metered music setting text. Poetic feet bind text to rhythm in a fairly systematic way, and throughout the ages of rhythm theory, these relationships between long and short note values continue to be the basis of analysis, both at micro and macro structural levels. However, I feel that with the rise in instrumental music (notated) toward the end of the Renaissance there must be another ingredient. Performance practice on these instruments was likely not simply invented or derived solely from vocal performance. These instruments, often being adopted by European musicians through encounters with the Islamic world, would have had centuries of performance practice - at the very least, the interface and therefore playing technique would translate from one culture to another by the very physical nature of the instrument. The precise nature of this meeting of worlds and the exchange of instrumental technique, performance practice and even style and rhythmic content is of great interest to me, as I think it may be largely undocumented and yet a major infusion of style, structure and content in the development of western instrumental music.

The other, more clearly identifiable source of non-linguistic roots in rhythmic content is dance. The evolution of dance forms (structural and rhythmical) from functional courtly (and folk) dances through baroque forms they inspired, then through the classical, romantic and modern styles is gradual, yet discernible. The equation of rhythmic activity in music with the rhythmic activity in dance (and visceral movement in general) has existed for a long time, and the rhythmic content of music must have evolved along with our exploration of our exploration of our bodies in space, time, and against gravity, as well as regular patterns of movement we have developed for reasons of survival or culture.

If music were simply a derivation of language or a synchronized mimic of the body in motion, it would not be the mysterious obsession it is in human culture. There is something about music that is more than either of those activities, and functions in its own, indescribable world which is at once mysterious and syntactically consistent and functional.