The Hardwired Modal Archetype

Mode and rhythm are two complementary and inseparable features of music. Modality is brought to life by rhythm, which distinguishes its areas, exploits its potential, and energizes the evocative power of its unequal intervals. I believe humans may have an innate archetype for mode-rhythm interaction which is not learned, but discovered upon dealing with music through either education or experimentation, during which time nonsensical gestures are gradually pruned. This is why we may be impressed with a "self taught" genius, as we are simultaneously awed by the uniqueness of the individual's discovery (and therefore our humbling inability to come up with the same thing ourselves) and gratified by how the solution somehow just "works" on a subconscious level.

Several aspects of existing modal music support this notion:

1. While there are indeed many modes and tuning systems in the musics of the world, step intervals are widely recognizable across traditions, indicating that there is some innate threshold to what constitutes a step. The church modes of European music, the Indonesian modes (including pelog), the Arabic modes, and the Hindustani modes constituting the pitch set of the ragas all have 7 notes, unequally spaced by widely recognizable steps over and octave. Furthermore, the pentatonic modes existing in many cultures, whether seen as subsets of other modes, products of the harmonic series or derived in some other way, generally maintain step size in groups of notes that are similarly widely recognized. It is, therefore, quite rare to see
pitches as part of a set used in any music that are spaced particularly far apart, or that there would be any more than 7 notes used within an octave at any given time (momentary use of alternative pitches, such as sharped or flatted notes would not count to contradict the 7 note maximum, as they can be explained either as expressive variation or a complex modal modulation - such exceptions are sometimes articulated in existing theoretical documentation).

2. While stylistic variety among world musics is abundant, some features of modal music have analogs in other traditions. For example, ornamental gestures such as trills, mordants and appogiaturas seem to function in similar ways among various styles. Also, general tendencies in contour tend not to be exclusive to particular styles.

In order to verify and support empirically the above hypothesis, the following fairly simple experiments can be conducted:

1. A catalog of ornamental gestures in two or more musical traditions can be generated and compared. This study, however, will need to go beyond simply saying that these gestures "exist" but go so far as to demonstrate how they affect areas of the mode.

2. A test for the threshold of step size must be conducted in order to determine the point at which humans are no longer able to perceive steps and hear pitches as skips of a wider interval. The results of this experiment can be compared to an observation of skips in existing modal music.

The Need for Speed: How Virtuosity Evolves from Fidgeting

I spent some time last week watching the 8 year old son of a friend of mine playing with a Rubic's cube. This particular puzzle had always been rather annoying to me, as I have absolutely no idea how to structure a solution for it. And yet, he can solve it in just a few minutes - maybe twenty moves or so. Now, I'm well aware that there are some very prodigious cube-masters in the world, and there are step processes that one can look up online to solve it in as few steps. However, it did impress me that an "ordinary" child could master the puzzle (and a number of other puzzle's as well) so well, and with nothing beyond the nervous obsession that is his nature to guide him. In observing this child, I noticed a few other things as well, such as the ability to play with a particular toy for lengths of time far longer than some other children and most adults. Some autistic children, while unattentive to classroom tasks often exhibit a particularly obsessive interest in certain activities, though in this case, the child's behavior is not quite so extreme. He also sings with his sister - not songs they know, but new improvisations based on fragments of tunes they know, often changing the words to familiar melodies with marvelous fluidity.

This observation got me thinking about virtuosity in music, and particularly in instrumental playing. I think there's something inherent about being human that makes us fidget nervously, tapping our fingers, moving our feet, bobbing our heads, tapping pencils (that can get really annoying for a teacher) and a great many other seemingly meaningless activities that other people around us may even find obnoxious. But such a common behavior among so many people is probably not meaningless. In fact, studies have shown that children who fidget perform better on memory tests. I believe that fidgeting may be one of the root sources of instrumental music (and to an extent vocal), where I have intuitively felt that instrumental performance functions beyond simply accompanying, supporting and imitating the voice (as would be apparent in the recorded history of Western music). Somehow, getting our hands on an instrument, fidgeting with it, moving our fingers nervously around it, creating structures and phrases, pruning the meaningless ones (those that don't make sense to us as listeners, for whatever reason), and ultimately exploring the world of modality with the rhythms that come out of this activity, is natural and even enjoyable for us.

An instrument channels our need to fuss with our hands, and the result is something different from reproducing a song, imitating the prosidy of a text or even the pulse and movement of a dance (though there is likely to be some relation of this need to the latter). The result is virtuosity - an ability to perform at a level that is notably impressive by common standards. And this is where things just start to get interesting. There are a number of notable performers who have made amazing, enviable and significant discoveries largely through their own activities.

Music is that thing that is shared throughout our common human experience, and it is possible that music is not only something that humans can do, but something they must do. And yet, the tendency or desire to fidget, to play with something, or to achieve virtuosic levels of proficiency on an instrument varies by individual. One of the very unique things about music is that it is shared - the fidgeting discoveries made by one individual are percieved, coded and remembered by another, who can then learn it, master it and pass it on. This fairly common human ability to percieve music and transmit it (practically all children can learn music in this way, and some recent experiments of mine have found that average children of age 8 can learn atonal melodies that are practically dodecaphonic) allows us to share in the richness of our diversity, to experience and enjoy the fruits of the discoveries of various prodigious individuals.

What Needs to be Understood About Rhythm

Rhythm is one of the most powerfully affective and yet elusive aspects of music. Through rhythm, music exists as a time art, pitch is organized, periodicity is reinforced and defeated. It is structured - and yet it flows continuously, and its structure reflects not only the brain's capacity to perceive structure and its meaning, but also a constantly moving total sum of accumulated significance at any instant. To really understand rhythm and its meaning, we need to look at it in four different ways, including how it functions, how it is structured, where it came from, and what the rhythmic content of a music is. While it may seem that simply understanding the function of rhythm (with such studies as the relationship between rhythm and melodic mode) or looking at the structure of music that can be discerned by patterns of stress and duration at various archtitechtonic levels would be sufficient to explain rhythm, examining the origins and content (gesture as well as any other hard-to-explain constructions) is really necessary. This is because rhythm has evolved throughout our history and interactions as something that exists both inside the mind/body and is stored and transmitted through sound, space and media (print, recordings and treatises). As humans we create music, and then it is "out there." And when we reabsorb the music, we are both experiencing the musicianship of its creators vicariously and learning it as new information. Therefore, it is simultaneously a shared human experience and an inert object, and to understand what it really is, it must be explained as both - in real music (i.e., literature, rather than fabricated laboratory material used in testing cognition) one does not exist without the other.

In Pursuit of Authenticity

I looked at the journal Early Music - all 36 years of it in fact, and found a few (only a few, really) that dealt with Arabic connections or even Medieval monophonic music. There was only one article, actually, regarding David Munrow - a tribute the year of his death. Apparently he was very well respected by his colleagues, and a lot of people were really upset at his passing. The journal did not seem to discuss any controversial aspects of his work. There was one article in the late 70's by Imogen Holste which suggested medieval connections. The next article to deal with the subject was by John Haines in 2001, discussing the legacy of Thomas Binkley and his work with the Studio Freuer Musik in the 1960's and 70's. He mainly critiqued the Orientalism of the 1960s new approach to early music. I can't quite get a handle on whether he liked what he heard or not, though it seems clear he finds Binkley's contributions to be quite important. He indicates that a major drawback to Binkley's work is the failure to ornament or in any way tamper with the melodies, while professing to tap into features of Arab music performance practice. I listened to Binkley's album of minstrel songs, and found this to be pretty much the case.


The study of Early Music is indeed a tough thing to get a handle on. Stretching at least a thousand years, the area of study is enormous, and at least in the journal, there are only rare instances of scholars coming head to head on controversial issues, particularly with respect to the highly speculative area of medieval music. Anything thing I noticed is that there seemed to be a significant drift over 36 years in the way scholars addressed interests and problems. In the early years, contributors tended be fairly forthcoming with fresh, albeit somewhat naive ideas. By the time the 1990s came around, though, there seemed to be a shift toward more carefully worded titles (some of them are really hard to get the gist of until I read them a few times) on highly specific topics. Articles also often tended to be very critical in tone, taking into account timely trends in political considerations.

So...I come down to my own personal interest in the subject of very early European music and the significance of an Arabic connection. In short, I feel intuitively that the un-notated music which existed shortly before and during the rise of notated, vocal (and largely sacred) polyphonic music must have contributed to performance practice of instrumental music in subsequent periods. Whether or not there was an Arabic influence on European music is somewhat beside the point - the main thing is that Europeans did play instruments, probably improvised, probably ornamented their music, and probably passed on some of rhythmic and modal sensibilities [here is where this is all connected to my dissertation] to musicians of the new, documented era. The Arabic connection through Moorish Spain is interesting because of the real evidence of some exchange through the migration of instruments (i.e., just look at the pictures), and the available written knowledge of this music in Arabic texts and the continuity of theoretical discussion of the music by Arab scholars (Binkley claimed that continuity of performance practice was evidence, though while I believe there may be some value to it, such continuity is obviously not verifiable).




The question of authenticity seems to drive a nagging wedge between critical scholars (applying a fairly scientific approach to rediscovering the past) and performers of early music, who in order to actually complete the act of recreating a music, must take an educated leap of faith and "just do it," completing our fragmented knowledge with conjecture and imagination. Just what does it mean for something to be "authentic" and what value is that? Haines criticized early recordings of Early Music in using Egyptian instruments as "signifies" of Eastern otherness, and cited lack of ornamentation as failure to really accomplish the task of adopting Andalusian performance practice. Performers and critics alike put great stock in somehow approaching the "elusive original."





I believe that somehow, musicians intuitively know (or should know, if they don't try to convince themselves otherwise) what kind of authenticity is truly valuable - and this would explain why performers of Early Music are so concerned with and willing to take risks with recreating a music with so little hard evidence to go on. An Authentic performance, in my opinion (moreover, based on what I value as a musician) is simply a good one, a human one, and one informed by the organic process by which the original was made to the best of our knowledge. This is also where I have my argument with criticism of Orientalism (actually, such criticism is quite important and admirable - though I find that in "calling Orientalism" on some conspicuous project often doesn't take into account other subtle issues). There may indeed be a good reason for concern among critics, seeing how there has persisted for a couple hundred years the cliche that the West is "smarter" than the East, though lacking its Vitality, and through overly rational processes notated and killed it's own vitality, needing to be reinvigorated by the East. But the problems of recreating performance practice from notated score (and the solutions for it) exist for performers of every style of Western music in every era, and a comparative study of "other" music seems a logical side project that would most likely exist regardless of clicheed racist motivations.





In all of this discussion of authenticity in performance of ancient music, and the questionable appropriation of Other musics either to prove a historical connection or to infuse a more vital sensibility (a stylistic shot in the arm?) or even to simply signify a marketable exotic flavor, I can't help think of my two musical heroes, Montserrat Figueres and Jordi Savall. Figueres apparently invented her own singing style of ancient music that is, all scholarly value aside, absolutely beautiful and compelling. Is it authentic? She's probably done her homework and some serious thinking...but who knows? I am certain, as a sensitive listener, that it works. The music she sings, even though it may be largely recreated from fragments of the 13th century, through means of tone, pitch, ornamentation, rhythm and phrasing, comes alive in the best way. When I hear her sing, I'm unaware of the music being an old "thing" that somebody found and dusted off, or that the performer is in any way taking advantage of the audiences intellectual curiosity. It's just really good.





In thinking about the work of Figueres and Savall, I feel that maybe they've hit upon something - the secret of how to recreate something that's dead and lost. It may be more trial and error and more intuition than research, or positive scientific study. If, all documentation being exhausted, it works and feels good...then it's probably authentic. If it sounds like it doesn't fit or seems "put on" we may be missing something. As a composer, I'm usually thrilled when a musician plays my music and finds a way to really live in the piece and make it work with his own sensibility...and much less thrilled when I tell him every little nuance I want, when to play the grace notes, and the result seems more duct taped together than embodying something alive and musical, however "accurate."





And for the Arabic connection? I think if it works, it just may be what the music needed. On a technical level (and thus potentially immune from Orientalist criticism), modal sensibility is largely realized by rhythm - certain notes acquire structural significance from rhythm, and areas of the mode are given expressive potential. If a comparative study of contemporary use of modes in Arabic music and the hypothetical rhythmic activity in medieval European improvised modal music yields something that starts to make sense, that would indicate value in the study.

A New Hot Tip...the Arab Connection

Back when I was studying for my qualifying exams almost exactly a year ago, Prof. Susan McClary mentioned the cultural exchange between the Christian Europeans of the late middle ages and the Muslim Arabs. This exchange can be most obvious in the European appropriation of instruments of the Middle East. Documentation, however, is less obvious if not extremely obscure. At that time, I was reviewing my study of Post-Colonialism, and my primary concern was the political and ethical nature of transnational encounters, following the transnational-feminist work of Shih and Lionnet. It seems there had to be several reasons why this particular cultural exchange was either forgotten or actively suppressed:

1. Instrumental music was largely not notated in either the East or the West, since instrumental tradition of the time did not require the coordination of multiple voices in counterpoint.

2. Composers and theorists of European sacred choral music, which is by far the most well-documented music of the time, were engaged in the extra-musical activity of glorifying God through the often mathematical and architectural creation of works of beauty. The infusion of such spiritual and symbolic material into the knowledge of music, as well as study of ancient Greek texts (without the support of actual knowledge of the ancient music through either performance practice or notation) would have trumped the influence of secular or non-Christian instrumental performance practice in the creation of new sacred choral works, which became the basis of polyphonic music in the West (at least in the apocryphal canonization of the literature).

3. There may have been an active suppression of Islamic culture and its visible influence on European culture following the fall of Al-Andalus in the 15th century. Interestingly, this coincides with the maturation of counterpoint in the West and the writing of major theoretical treatises. Subsequently, polyphonic choral music dominated European music for quite some time. Even still, use of instruments in notated music followed the traditions in vocal music. It may be interesting to examine the emergence of notated music for courtly dance music, though folk and popular styles will be much harder to study.

Prof. McClary suggested I look at the work of David Munrow in the 1960's, who she says did some important work in using performance practice of Arabic music to re-create performance practice of ancient Western music. I'll be looking at the reaction, if I can find it, in the journal Early Music. So here is my "hot tip," and I'm quite excited to follow up on it. Exploring (and possibly supporting) a case of cultural exchange between Islam and the West during the middle ages will have three significant results: first, it will help to understand the nature of the music that was performed and written at the time. Second, it may provide evidence of the "rhythmic content" of subsequent European instrumental music beyond our present understanding of the development of rhythm. Third, understanding the transnational origins of "our" music dramatically changes the landscape of present day encounters, wrought with imperialistic undertones, ethical considerations and extremely timely political significance.