Here's a link to Part One. You can also navigate through the series using the "Beethoven Project Posts" on the right bar of the blog.
In the opening movement of the Eroica Symphony, Beethoven introduces no less than three primary themes. The third theme - which is really the most remarkable one - we're not going to talk about yet, except to mention that it will happen later on at a surprising place in the piece. The first two, however, are fair game even at this early juncture in our listening, because that's where they occur.
A word, before we take a look at those two themes, about sonata form. You've undoubtedly heard the word "sonata" before, but may have assumed it refers to those solo piano (or maybe piano with violin) pieces like the Moonlight, Tempest, or Hammerklavier sonatas by Beethoven. The root of the word, however, refers not to instrumentation, but to formal structure within a piece. That formal structure was, up to and beyond Beethoven's time - usually present in the first movement of a symphony. Sometimes you may even hear an opening movement referred to as "the sonata," but this is rare except among musicologists because of the confusion it causes.
What is "sonata form?" In short, it's an A-A-B-A structure. That is, there's an introductory "A" section - called in classical music the "exposition" - in which themes are introduced and developed, and at least one initial modulation* occurs. That A section is then repeated note-for-note, though some recordings of longer works like the Eroica skip this repeat (including, incidentally, the Dudamel recording in our first post). After playing the A section twice, the B section, or "development," ensues. This is not unlike a "bridge" in modern popular music, in that it usually differs substantially from the original A section, but is still related thematically. Development sections (before Beethoven and the Eroica in particular) were often very short departures from the main ideas of the piece, designed to wedge apart the initial exposition from the recapitulation to follow.
* A modulation is a departure from the original key, accomplished by invoking a dominant feel relative to a key that is not the actual tonic. As a result, modulations usually move around either the circle of fifths or the circle of fourths, because keys a fourth or fifth away are closely related (they share all but one note) with the original tonic, making it easy to suggest a movement to a new key.
The recapitulation, then, is what follows the development. It is a restatement of the introductory A section, for a third time, but usually with modifications. As we'll see in the Eroica, this means there will be a very different treatment of the opening theme. Likewise, where an early modulation usually results in the exposition being played mostly in a key other than the tonic, the recapitulation usually is designed to allow the entire first section to appear in the original key. The result - for a trained listener who can hear such large-scale harmonic motions - is that the recapitulation is the first time the piece really feels like it's in the "right" key.
Sonata form is often bracketed with an introduction and/or a coda. The Eroica does not really have an introduction, per se, except for maybe the first two big Eb Major chords. It does, however, have a lengthy coda that comes after the recapitulation. Indeed, the coda might be the richest, most complex, and most engaging part of the entire piece, so we'll be spending some time there later. The reason for this is that, traditionally, the coda was used as a place to wrap things up and bring a piece to a nice flourishing finish. In the opening of the Eroica, the coda is actually used almost as a second development section. Material is reworked and reintroduced, developed in new ways, and synthesized unexpectedly.
Before we get there, however, we have to understand Beethoven's use of thematic material. As mentioned, the Eroica has three primary themes, two of which appear early in the piece. The first you've already hear, because it appears at the very beginning. I've left in the opening chords, but they aren't properly part of the theme:
The second theme occurs not that much further in, and it sounds like this:
In contrast to the opening theme, it is, well, melodic. Rather than overwhelming the whole orchestra - as the opening theme does after its initial statement* - this theme actually employs a variety of instruments, including winds and strings. It is not quite sweet, and it is followed by, of course, further intensity (including the "horse galloping motif shortly afterwards), but it is still a departure from the rough, militant opening.
* I encourage you to go back to the first post and re-listen to the movement as a whole. You'll see that, shortly before the second theme is introduced, this first theme is played by basically the entire orchestra all at once.
Which calls to mind one of the inherent contradictions of this first movement. These first two themes - introduced a mere minute apart from each other - are so vastly, wildly, different for a reason. That reason is related, furthermore, to the time signature of the piece. We're in 3/4, the tempo of waltzes and minuets. Listen to that second theme again. Doesn't it sound a little like a waltz? What is a dance doing in our little military march?
But, really, what is our military march doing in 3/4 time? Marches - like the second movement - are usually written in 2/4. The Eroica, however, is somewhere in between war-march and courtly-dance, between chaotic battle and refined elegance. There is no question that it comes down, in the end, further on the side of tumult than tranquility, but it nevertheless has these moments, these spontaneous outbursts of simple joy amidst such momentous, revolutionary conflict.
Perhaps some light is shed on this strange duality by the form of the piece. Despite the stretching and bending that Beethoven makes the sonata form do in this movement - pushing each part to its limit - we're still in sonata form. If we take up, once again, questions about meaning and narrative, we might ask what it means to have a revolution that, nevertheless, maintains at least a semblance of the old order. We might also ask who our waltzes are, whether they're Viennese noblemen and noblewomen who simply don't see and won't acknowledge the battles raging outside their courtly walls, or whether they're, instead, maybe the revolutionaries themselves, joyful at the prospect of victory.
As in the first post, I won't commit myself to a single interpretation, but I do want to start to forward a psychological angle here. Beethoven's hero - regardless of his political and social intent - is above all Beethoven himself. The Eroica, famously, is one of the first major pieces Beethoven composed after he learned definitively of his oncoming deafness. It is a piece he intended to write as an affront to musical sensibilities of his time. The revolution, then, is a musical one. It's hero is Beethoven. The themes, the quirks, the tumult and battle, and the sweetness are Beethoven's own.
It is so easy to picture Beethoven as he is in movies like Immortal Beloved, a surly, overwrought archetype of human suffering. Beethoven was not that.* Beethoven was extremely intelligent and witty, fundamentally kind-hearted, if a bit short-tempered, and above all intensely hard-working and devoted to his art. That he found joy in music is unquestionable, as the Ninth Symphony undoubtedly proves, but even here in the third the beginnings of that project are visible. We'll see much more of Beethoven's joy as we move through the other movements (especially the finale), but even here it begins to be present.
* That was Chopin.
The second theme, in this listening, is the dance of Beethoven's spirit, a waltz that - under the oppressive weight of his oncoming deafness and the isolation that will inevitably bring - is brushed aside too easily. While it appears again and again in this first movement, it always feels secondary, so much so that I recall many arguments in my music classes at St. John's as to whether it should really count as the "second theme" at all, it feels so weak and out of place. But that, I suppose, is exactly the point. Unassertive and transitory as it is, this second theme is a linchpin for the piece as a whole, an answer to the roaring questions the first theme asks about the purpose and meaning of human life.
Is it a satisfactory answer to those questions? Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, it certainly isn't acknowledged as such in this movement. And yet it's still there, dancing along throughout the battle, in spite of the battle, or maybe even because of the battle.
And to think, this isn't even the interesting theme.
Showing posts with label music history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music history. Show all posts
Monday, April 11, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Listening to Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, Part One: A Revolutionary Opening
Does music have meaning outside of its context? That is, when a piece is so revolutionary, so very different from everything that came before it, can we hear that difference, or do we have to be trained to hear it? Even with training, even with a knowledge of what came before, doesn't the "new" piece still sound to us like it is decidedly old, that is doesn't even begin to capture the things that came later in the composer's career, much less the things that came after the composer's death?
Those are some of the questions I struggle with when trying to explain Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. It's unlike anything written before it. The first movement alone takes about 15 minutes, making it as long as some Haydn and Mozart symphonies in their entirety. The second movement is another 15 minutes. The thing as a whole takes over a quarter hour, so long that Beethoven advised it not be performed late in a concert program lest the audience become restless.
Length, however, is not always indicative of a revolution. War and Peace is a long book, but it doesn't feel like a particularly revolutionary book as you read it. Don't get me wrong, it deserves its reputation as a great work, and it is extremely ambitious in its storytelling, but it did not fundamentally alter the way that books were written, as far as I know. The Eroica, on the other hand, well, it did fundamentally alter the writing of music. Or, if it did not alone, it was the capstone of a set of works that did.
Can you hear what makes it so outrageous, so different, so offensive, so intense, so awesome? Here's a rendition from the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, conducted, at the time, by the incomparable Gustavo Dudamel.
There's a lot in this piece, too much to talk about all at once, so let's start with the beginning. The big, fat, E-flat Major chords that open the piece are perhaps a tad jarring, but it's not unusual for a composer to signal what key he's in to start off a piece. No, what's really odd is what comes after those two chords. Take a listen to the first few seconds of the piece again.
The melody that Beethoven introduces here doesn't sound particularly odd to our modern ears, but it would have been jarring in its time. What's more, it was uncharacteristic even for Beethoven. Why? Because it has a flatted seventh (Db or C#) in it.
After the two chords, what you hear is an outline of the Eb Major triad: Eb - G - Eb - Bb - Eb - G - Bb. That is followed by a chromatic descent to the 7: Eb - D - C#. This is jarring because that C# is not a part of the Eb Major scale. It destabilizes the key, making Eb feel like a dominant, and not a tonic.* As a result, we're pulled away from the tonic, and you can hear it quite clearly in the clip; it sounds incomplete, it sounds like it's going somewhere, and it's not entirely clear where.
* Quick theory 101 lesson: tonic is, generally, the key the piece is in. It feels restful and complete. Think of a simple piece like Mary Had a Little Lamb, or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The tonic happens at the very beginning and ending of those pieces. The dominant, meanwhile, is usually the chord on the 5th of the tonic. It feels unstable and pulls you back towards the tonic. Try singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and stopping on the "how I wonder what you" without singing the "are." That "what you" is the dominant.
Analyzing the experience of hearing this opening harmonically is only a beginning, however. More important is the meaning: what is Beethoven trying to accomplish with this C#? This symphony is called - by Beethoven himself - Eroica, "Heroic." Famously, it was originally written for Napoleon Bonaparte, but rededicated after the French Consul declared himself Emperor to Beethoven's chagrin. Is this a Napoleonic symphony, then, a story of the French Revolution? Or is it, perhaps, meant to stand for an ideal instead? Was it ever, really, about Napoleon at all?
Those are questions we can't answer yet, and some of those questions may not be easy to answer from the music alone. Instead, we need to dive into the narrower questions posed by the infamous C#. What kind of heroism is this piece going to be about? Martial heroism? Political heroism? Populist heroism? Artistic heroism? And what does it mean to have the tonic - the core of the piece - destabilized so early? Perhaps the heroic is a result of instability. We, as listeners, are invited to understand musically the context in which heroism takes place.
On the other hand, some listeners want to make the opening theme stand for the hero, and not heroism or the hero's situation. In that account, the C# is perhaps some kind of Greek tragic flaw, hubris, or a failure of self-awareness. If the piece is about Napoleon, there could be a kind of accidental truth to this interpretation: while it was written before Napoleon's ambition became clear, the piece might nevertheless anticipate his arrogance.
For my part, I do not think there is meant to be a single correct interpretation. Music is not, after all, denotative. There is, however, intent. Beethoven intends, regardless of specific imagery we apply to his C#, to make us uncomfortable, to make us wonder what is going on. This effect is compounded by the meter of the piece. The opening movement, here, is in 3/4, despite its "military march" feel. Indeed, the opening two chords are wholly ambiguous - they could just as easily be in 4/4 - and it is only with the introduction of the very theme that destabilizes harmonically that we realize our rhythmic expectations have been violated as well.
Regardless of specific interpretation, it is worth recognizing that the movement as a whole is very warlike. Particular motifs and themes suggesting a battlefield are frequent. For example, there's this "galloping horses" motif:
And a passage many liken to cannon fire:
This latter passage is particularly notable thanks to the extended "4/4" at the end of it. After a series of "1-2-rest, 1-2-rest" chords we hear a bunch of big fat "bam rest bam rest bam rest" chords that betray the time signature.* This is a particularly warlike device, because it shakes the rhythmic foundations of the piece.
*This moment of undermining the time signature is worth keeping in mind as we progress, because it is a tool Beethoven will use in every movement of the symphony.
These motifs we'll come across as we progress through the first movement, but for now they can lend a hand to our understanding of the opening. In short, there is a revolution afoot. What kind of revolution? It's hard to say. Certainly a musical one - for nothing quite like this symphony has ever been written before - but perhaps a political one and a spiritual one as well. What that looks like, how music can convey that or - perhaps more to the point - help to create that is the question that we'll be confronting throughout this series of posts. For now, it's sufficient to recognize that the opening of the Eroica sets us up to go on a long journey. The destabilization of the tonic here is not something easily resolved, and it may take quite some time to put everything back together again. Indeed, as we wrap up the first movement (in the distant future) we'll have cause to ask whether or not the questions raised by our C# have really been resolved: can you return to the tonic - to the way things were - after such a piece of music? Is the hero of this piece redeemable? Is heroism itself? Is there such a thing as a great man in an egalitarian society?
Beethoven, in his idealism, believed that Napoleon would bring about a Europe filled with equality and freedom and opportunity. But there's more than just boundless optimism in the Eroica, because Beethoven recognized the innate contradiction in Napoleon's project: forcing equality on the world. He believed the General could do it, but his symphony - from its very outset - is very much aware of the challenge. That Napoleon himself did not live up to Beethoven's expectations - or, more properly, his dream - does not change the very nature of the project. If anything, it only reinforces how extremely difficult it is to accomplish what the Eroica suggests: transforming a society for the better.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. For now, we've set off on the heroic journey of the 3rd Symphony. It's not always pretty, and it's not always easy, but it is exciting and stirring and intense. The fear and indignation with which many of Beethoven's listeners - those disciples of Haydn and Mozart who believed music should be just so - was countered by the excitement and expectation of those listeners who could tell that this was a new, and altogether more powerful kind of music.
If powerful, then also dangerous, perhaps? That's another question we'll have to pursue as we go along. Before we get there, however, let's first learn how to hear the optimism, the idealism, the joy, along with the frustration and the violence in the Eroica. Without hearing those things, first, the question of danger and power is meaningless.
Those are some of the questions I struggle with when trying to explain Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. It's unlike anything written before it. The first movement alone takes about 15 minutes, making it as long as some Haydn and Mozart symphonies in their entirety. The second movement is another 15 minutes. The thing as a whole takes over a quarter hour, so long that Beethoven advised it not be performed late in a concert program lest the audience become restless.
Length, however, is not always indicative of a revolution. War and Peace is a long book, but it doesn't feel like a particularly revolutionary book as you read it. Don't get me wrong, it deserves its reputation as a great work, and it is extremely ambitious in its storytelling, but it did not fundamentally alter the way that books were written, as far as I know. The Eroica, on the other hand, well, it did fundamentally alter the writing of music. Or, if it did not alone, it was the capstone of a set of works that did.
Can you hear what makes it so outrageous, so different, so offensive, so intense, so awesome? Here's a rendition from the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, conducted, at the time, by the incomparable Gustavo Dudamel.
There's a lot in this piece, too much to talk about all at once, so let's start with the beginning. The big, fat, E-flat Major chords that open the piece are perhaps a tad jarring, but it's not unusual for a composer to signal what key he's in to start off a piece. No, what's really odd is what comes after those two chords. Take a listen to the first few seconds of the piece again.
The melody that Beethoven introduces here doesn't sound particularly odd to our modern ears, but it would have been jarring in its time. What's more, it was uncharacteristic even for Beethoven. Why? Because it has a flatted seventh (Db or C#) in it.
After the two chords, what you hear is an outline of the Eb Major triad: Eb - G - Eb - Bb - Eb - G - Bb. That is followed by a chromatic descent to the 7: Eb - D - C#. This is jarring because that C# is not a part of the Eb Major scale. It destabilizes the key, making Eb feel like a dominant, and not a tonic.* As a result, we're pulled away from the tonic, and you can hear it quite clearly in the clip; it sounds incomplete, it sounds like it's going somewhere, and it's not entirely clear where.
* Quick theory 101 lesson: tonic is, generally, the key the piece is in. It feels restful and complete. Think of a simple piece like Mary Had a Little Lamb, or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The tonic happens at the very beginning and ending of those pieces. The dominant, meanwhile, is usually the chord on the 5th of the tonic. It feels unstable and pulls you back towards the tonic. Try singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and stopping on the "how I wonder what you" without singing the "are." That "what you" is the dominant.
Analyzing the experience of hearing this opening harmonically is only a beginning, however. More important is the meaning: what is Beethoven trying to accomplish with this C#? This symphony is called - by Beethoven himself - Eroica, "Heroic." Famously, it was originally written for Napoleon Bonaparte, but rededicated after the French Consul declared himself Emperor to Beethoven's chagrin. Is this a Napoleonic symphony, then, a story of the French Revolution? Or is it, perhaps, meant to stand for an ideal instead? Was it ever, really, about Napoleon at all?
Those are questions we can't answer yet, and some of those questions may not be easy to answer from the music alone. Instead, we need to dive into the narrower questions posed by the infamous C#. What kind of heroism is this piece going to be about? Martial heroism? Political heroism? Populist heroism? Artistic heroism? And what does it mean to have the tonic - the core of the piece - destabilized so early? Perhaps the heroic is a result of instability. We, as listeners, are invited to understand musically the context in which heroism takes place.
On the other hand, some listeners want to make the opening theme stand for the hero, and not heroism or the hero's situation. In that account, the C# is perhaps some kind of Greek tragic flaw, hubris, or a failure of self-awareness. If the piece is about Napoleon, there could be a kind of accidental truth to this interpretation: while it was written before Napoleon's ambition became clear, the piece might nevertheless anticipate his arrogance.
For my part, I do not think there is meant to be a single correct interpretation. Music is not, after all, denotative. There is, however, intent. Beethoven intends, regardless of specific imagery we apply to his C#, to make us uncomfortable, to make us wonder what is going on. This effect is compounded by the meter of the piece. The opening movement, here, is in 3/4, despite its "military march" feel. Indeed, the opening two chords are wholly ambiguous - they could just as easily be in 4/4 - and it is only with the introduction of the very theme that destabilizes harmonically that we realize our rhythmic expectations have been violated as well.
Regardless of specific interpretation, it is worth recognizing that the movement as a whole is very warlike. Particular motifs and themes suggesting a battlefield are frequent. For example, there's this "galloping horses" motif:
And a passage many liken to cannon fire:
This latter passage is particularly notable thanks to the extended "4/4" at the end of it. After a series of "1-2-rest, 1-2-rest" chords we hear a bunch of big fat "bam rest bam rest bam rest" chords that betray the time signature.* This is a particularly warlike device, because it shakes the rhythmic foundations of the piece.
*This moment of undermining the time signature is worth keeping in mind as we progress, because it is a tool Beethoven will use in every movement of the symphony.
These motifs we'll come across as we progress through the first movement, but for now they can lend a hand to our understanding of the opening. In short, there is a revolution afoot. What kind of revolution? It's hard to say. Certainly a musical one - for nothing quite like this symphony has ever been written before - but perhaps a political one and a spiritual one as well. What that looks like, how music can convey that or - perhaps more to the point - help to create that is the question that we'll be confronting throughout this series of posts. For now, it's sufficient to recognize that the opening of the Eroica sets us up to go on a long journey. The destabilization of the tonic here is not something easily resolved, and it may take quite some time to put everything back together again. Indeed, as we wrap up the first movement (in the distant future) we'll have cause to ask whether or not the questions raised by our C# have really been resolved: can you return to the tonic - to the way things were - after such a piece of music? Is the hero of this piece redeemable? Is heroism itself? Is there such a thing as a great man in an egalitarian society?
Beethoven, in his idealism, believed that Napoleon would bring about a Europe filled with equality and freedom and opportunity. But there's more than just boundless optimism in the Eroica, because Beethoven recognized the innate contradiction in Napoleon's project: forcing equality on the world. He believed the General could do it, but his symphony - from its very outset - is very much aware of the challenge. That Napoleon himself did not live up to Beethoven's expectations - or, more properly, his dream - does not change the very nature of the project. If anything, it only reinforces how extremely difficult it is to accomplish what the Eroica suggests: transforming a society for the better.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. For now, we've set off on the heroic journey of the 3rd Symphony. It's not always pretty, and it's not always easy, but it is exciting and stirring and intense. The fear and indignation with which many of Beethoven's listeners - those disciples of Haydn and Mozart who believed music should be just so - was countered by the excitement and expectation of those listeners who could tell that this was a new, and altogether more powerful kind of music.
If powerful, then also dangerous, perhaps? That's another question we'll have to pursue as we go along. Before we get there, however, let's first learn how to hear the optimism, the idealism, the joy, along with the frustration and the violence in the Eroica. Without hearing those things, first, the question of danger and power is meaningless.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Towards Defining Great Music, Part Five: Nicht Diese Tone
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is, of course, one of the most famous pieces of music ever recorded. Who hasn't heard the "Ode to Joy?" Which young piano student doesn't learn the melody?
Of the many reasons for the fame of the Ninth Symphony, however, the most curious is the presence of a choir. Not only was this a new addition to the symphonic style, it was also new to Beethoven. In a time when opera was the rage - and in the shadow of the master of opera, Mozart - Beethoven curiously composed only one opera (which was not successful) and a spattering of songs. In short, lyrics were not his forte, and composing for the human voice was essentially unknown to him. How odd, then, that his perhaps best known melody (up there with the opening of the 5th Symphony) is one of the very few he wrote for the voice.
Why did Beethoven compose so little music for the voice? Why is the Ninth Symphony, on the contrary, the Chorale Symphony? Those questions hardly seem to address the problem I've been dancing around for the last month, but I believe they are actually at the heart of the question. Great Music ought, I believe, to speak for itself, and no composer is as systematic in his rejection of lyric - in, we might say, his elevation of pure, instrumental music - as Beethoven. His symphonies and sonatas claim that they are comprehensible to the musical mind without the attendant translation of singers and words. Their purpose, indeed, might be inexpressible except through music alone.
If any music is great, then, to my mind, this is a key ingredient: it must be the music which is great. Music with lyric may very well be great, but by removing the lyrics, we can find music pure, and see whether greatness is even possible. Indeed, the question, "Is there Great music?" should be reconstituted thus: "Is there music which speaks for itself, and which expresses something words cannot." Perhaps all music does that, perhaps only some. But Great music would almost certainly do it and do it well, expressing not "I'm extremely sad in a way words cannot express," but revealing, instead, we might say, what the non-linguistic root of sadness is. What, indeed, the spiritual, emotional, mythical, or animal root might be.
Because we are moving - by necessity - into the realm of pure music, words will almost certainly fail us soon. Nevertheless, let us push on a little further, so we can see what lies at the borderlands between language and music, and see whether that further realm is fallow or fertile.
So let's start with a piece. The Kreutzer Sonata. Not quite "early" Beethoven (whose music is notoriously similar to that of his mentor Haydn), but still fairly early in his life. The first movement, which I have linked to above, is a stunning adventure through what sounds, more than anything, like the frustrations of tremendous romantic desire. And yet also it could be a lover's quarrel. Either way, it is violent and intense, raging from major to minor and back again, displaying a dizzying give and take between the piano and violin that is not quite cooperative, but is not quite confrontational either.
I must confess that my interpretation of this piece is colored by two sources. Tolstoy wrote a short story called "The Kreutzer Sonata" about this very piece, and it is a dark and disturbing work about jealousy and violence in love. In addition, the movie "Immortal Beloved" places this piece centrally in its narrative, claiming that it is the result of a frustrated Beethoven when his carriage gets stuck in the mud, causing him to miss his rendezvous with his beloved.
Neither of those specific images, however, really captures the meaning of the piece, as I understand it. Rather, exactly what makes the Kreutzer great is that it can accurately be conveyed by two such disparate physical situations. Why can it do that? Because it is not limited by any words you can apply to it. The spiritual and emotional processes behind it - the feelings that it reveals to us - are expressible most completely exactly by sonata, and that same feeling can be traced to both Tolstoy's story and the movie.
I won't go into depth on the Kreutzer now - rather, I want to save for future posts exploration of Beethoven's works - so instead I can point out a couple other words that I find comparably profound, as further argument for Great Music.
Consider the Spring sonata as well.* While not as intense as the Kreutzer, the Spring is one of, I think, Beethoven's most intensely romantic works. Unlike much of his "romantic" music, the Spring is not rife with conflict or frustration, capturing instead the lighter and more playful side of love (the "Spring" side, if you will). I point to it as a contrast to the Kreutzer, and because it is also a violin sonata. It is worth finding violin sonatas by other composers and comparing them to Beethoven. No other composer comes close to his mastery of the interaction between violin and piano, if only because he is not afraid to understand the instruments as lover and beloved, rather than merely as instruments. Beethoven's violin sonatas have a built-in sexual tension that is unmatched elsewhere.
* In all four movements.
I've linked to this before, but here's Beethoven's Appassionata sonata in an excellent performance. This, like the Kreutzer, is an intense and almost violent work. Its title is telling, but "passionate" doesn't really explain the nature of the passion on display. And yet, listening to the appassionata, one cannot help but "get it" without really being able to say what it "gotten."
There are other pieces I could mention, but I want to jump forward to the 9th Symphony, since I think I've paved the way for my ultimate point.* What is fascinating about the 9th Symphony - as I mentioned at the outset - is that Beethoven puts a choir in the final movement. It's more than worth listening to the entire thing on the way to that choir, of course, because of how they make their entrance: "O Fruende, Nicht Diese Tone..."
* Karajan conducting.
"Oh friends, not these tones. Let us sing yet more joyfully." Beethoven wrote the opening to the choir's lines, and then borrowed the remainder from Schiller. Legend has it that he anguished over those opening lines, unsure whether to introduce Schiller's "Ode to Joy" by name, or to signal instead some of the key themes of the text to follow. He settled, instead, on looking back, "Not these tones." The 9th Symphony is in D minor, until this moment, at which point it switches to D Major.
What is important to remember, however, is that the choir does not sing right away in the final movement. Instead, the orchestra by themselves play exactly what the choir is about to sing. The meaning is already there, the choir is just there for clarification. Indeed, Beethoven is cautioning the listener not to take too seriously the lyrics, or at least to be a little critical of the deeper meaning. Which words does he, in the end, emphasize? Which sections are presented with some musical sarcasm? Humor? Sincerity?
I'll return to the 9th Symphony at some point - possibly in a recapitulation of my senior thesis at St. John's - but for now I want to point to this: Beethoven creates a whole realm of spiritual meaning in the body of his work, meaning that would be diminished by lyric. When he finally did incorporate lyrics into his music, in his final symphony, it was done with slyness and humor.
Perhaps that doesn't answer any of our questions about Great Music. For my part, I'm not sure there is a conclusive argument to be made about music, if only because we each have such different experiences. Nevertheless, there is a reason that musicologists and theorists study Beethoven and Mozart and Wagner (and even some non-Germans) so closely. Their music, if you can unlock your ear, speaks a language divine. Perhaps music of any genre can do that, but I wonder whether the complexity of the harmony in what is broadly called "classical" music isn't actually an essential part of that language, a part we too often leave out nowadays.
Either way, there is a modern conception that Beethoven and his ilk - those long-dead white men - wrote music that is boring. That is a terrible mistake. Whether you accept any of my premises, trust me on this: all of those stereotypes that we associate with classical music - old foagies sitting around listening to boring, fluffy violins while they smoke their pipes - are not true. Beethoven has more to do with what you listen to today than you think, and if that does not make his music great, it at the very least makes it important.
Of the many reasons for the fame of the Ninth Symphony, however, the most curious is the presence of a choir. Not only was this a new addition to the symphonic style, it was also new to Beethoven. In a time when opera was the rage - and in the shadow of the master of opera, Mozart - Beethoven curiously composed only one opera (which was not successful) and a spattering of songs. In short, lyrics were not his forte, and composing for the human voice was essentially unknown to him. How odd, then, that his perhaps best known melody (up there with the opening of the 5th Symphony) is one of the very few he wrote for the voice.
Why did Beethoven compose so little music for the voice? Why is the Ninth Symphony, on the contrary, the Chorale Symphony? Those questions hardly seem to address the problem I've been dancing around for the last month, but I believe they are actually at the heart of the question. Great Music ought, I believe, to speak for itself, and no composer is as systematic in his rejection of lyric - in, we might say, his elevation of pure, instrumental music - as Beethoven. His symphonies and sonatas claim that they are comprehensible to the musical mind without the attendant translation of singers and words. Their purpose, indeed, might be inexpressible except through music alone.
If any music is great, then, to my mind, this is a key ingredient: it must be the music which is great. Music with lyric may very well be great, but by removing the lyrics, we can find music pure, and see whether greatness is even possible. Indeed, the question, "Is there Great music?" should be reconstituted thus: "Is there music which speaks for itself, and which expresses something words cannot." Perhaps all music does that, perhaps only some. But Great music would almost certainly do it and do it well, expressing not "I'm extremely sad in a way words cannot express," but revealing, instead, we might say, what the non-linguistic root of sadness is. What, indeed, the spiritual, emotional, mythical, or animal root might be.
Because we are moving - by necessity - into the realm of pure music, words will almost certainly fail us soon. Nevertheless, let us push on a little further, so we can see what lies at the borderlands between language and music, and see whether that further realm is fallow or fertile.
So let's start with a piece. The Kreutzer Sonata. Not quite "early" Beethoven (whose music is notoriously similar to that of his mentor Haydn), but still fairly early in his life. The first movement, which I have linked to above, is a stunning adventure through what sounds, more than anything, like the frustrations of tremendous romantic desire. And yet also it could be a lover's quarrel. Either way, it is violent and intense, raging from major to minor and back again, displaying a dizzying give and take between the piano and violin that is not quite cooperative, but is not quite confrontational either.
I must confess that my interpretation of this piece is colored by two sources. Tolstoy wrote a short story called "The Kreutzer Sonata" about this very piece, and it is a dark and disturbing work about jealousy and violence in love. In addition, the movie "Immortal Beloved" places this piece centrally in its narrative, claiming that it is the result of a frustrated Beethoven when his carriage gets stuck in the mud, causing him to miss his rendezvous with his beloved.
Neither of those specific images, however, really captures the meaning of the piece, as I understand it. Rather, exactly what makes the Kreutzer great is that it can accurately be conveyed by two such disparate physical situations. Why can it do that? Because it is not limited by any words you can apply to it. The spiritual and emotional processes behind it - the feelings that it reveals to us - are expressible most completely exactly by sonata, and that same feeling can be traced to both Tolstoy's story and the movie.
I won't go into depth on the Kreutzer now - rather, I want to save for future posts exploration of Beethoven's works - so instead I can point out a couple other words that I find comparably profound, as further argument for Great Music.
Consider the Spring sonata as well.* While not as intense as the Kreutzer, the Spring is one of, I think, Beethoven's most intensely romantic works. Unlike much of his "romantic" music, the Spring is not rife with conflict or frustration, capturing instead the lighter and more playful side of love (the "Spring" side, if you will). I point to it as a contrast to the Kreutzer, and because it is also a violin sonata. It is worth finding violin sonatas by other composers and comparing them to Beethoven. No other composer comes close to his mastery of the interaction between violin and piano, if only because he is not afraid to understand the instruments as lover and beloved, rather than merely as instruments. Beethoven's violin sonatas have a built-in sexual tension that is unmatched elsewhere.
* In all four movements.
I've linked to this before, but here's Beethoven's Appassionata sonata in an excellent performance. This, like the Kreutzer, is an intense and almost violent work. Its title is telling, but "passionate" doesn't really explain the nature of the passion on display. And yet, listening to the appassionata, one cannot help but "get it" without really being able to say what it "gotten."
There are other pieces I could mention, but I want to jump forward to the 9th Symphony, since I think I've paved the way for my ultimate point.* What is fascinating about the 9th Symphony - as I mentioned at the outset - is that Beethoven puts a choir in the final movement. It's more than worth listening to the entire thing on the way to that choir, of course, because of how they make their entrance: "O Fruende, Nicht Diese Tone..."
* Karajan conducting.
"Oh friends, not these tones. Let us sing yet more joyfully." Beethoven wrote the opening to the choir's lines, and then borrowed the remainder from Schiller. Legend has it that he anguished over those opening lines, unsure whether to introduce Schiller's "Ode to Joy" by name, or to signal instead some of the key themes of the text to follow. He settled, instead, on looking back, "Not these tones." The 9th Symphony is in D minor, until this moment, at which point it switches to D Major.
What is important to remember, however, is that the choir does not sing right away in the final movement. Instead, the orchestra by themselves play exactly what the choir is about to sing. The meaning is already there, the choir is just there for clarification. Indeed, Beethoven is cautioning the listener not to take too seriously the lyrics, or at least to be a little critical of the deeper meaning. Which words does he, in the end, emphasize? Which sections are presented with some musical sarcasm? Humor? Sincerity?
I'll return to the 9th Symphony at some point - possibly in a recapitulation of my senior thesis at St. John's - but for now I want to point to this: Beethoven creates a whole realm of spiritual meaning in the body of his work, meaning that would be diminished by lyric. When he finally did incorporate lyrics into his music, in his final symphony, it was done with slyness and humor.
Perhaps that doesn't answer any of our questions about Great Music. For my part, I'm not sure there is a conclusive argument to be made about music, if only because we each have such different experiences. Nevertheless, there is a reason that musicologists and theorists study Beethoven and Mozart and Wagner (and even some non-Germans) so closely. Their music, if you can unlock your ear, speaks a language divine. Perhaps music of any genre can do that, but I wonder whether the complexity of the harmony in what is broadly called "classical" music isn't actually an essential part of that language, a part we too often leave out nowadays.
Either way, there is a modern conception that Beethoven and his ilk - those long-dead white men - wrote music that is boring. That is a terrible mistake. Whether you accept any of my premises, trust me on this: all of those stereotypes that we associate with classical music - old foagies sitting around listening to boring, fluffy violins while they smoke their pipes - are not true. Beethoven has more to do with what you listen to today than you think, and if that does not make his music great, it at the very least makes it important.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Towards Defining Great Music, Part Four: Modern Music
I heard there was a secret chord,
That David played, and it pleased the Lord,
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall and the major lift,
The baffled king composing Hallelujah.
That David played, and it pleased the Lord,
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall and the major lift,
The baffled king composing Hallelujah.
Popular music throughout history has found itself both indebted to and in conflict with so-called "art music." There was a time when the conflict was essentially religious; popular music was vulgar, meaningless, and the work of peasants while art music was composed almost exclusively for the church. Gregorian chant fits this model, of course, but much of the medieval polyphony that followed was likewise devotional. Giovanni Perluigi de Palestrina was probably the most prolific and famous composer of his time, and it is no accident that he was also deeply religious.
It is not my intention to trace the history of popular music, as such, but rather to point out that art music and popular music have always shared a reciprocal relationship. Though the more deliberate forms that make up symphonies and operas have always had a kind of aristocratic preference over the more streetwise popular forms of every era, innovations in either one almost always became innovations in the other. Over time, as the distance between art music and popular music has decreased, those innovations have been shared more and more readily. But even during the classical and romantic eras, folk melodies became the rage, and the eerie dissonances heard on the streets and in brothels began to make their way into the music of Brahms, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and especially Dvorák.
It is impossible to discuss modern popular music (and modern art music) without confronting jazz. Though it has been waning in popularity since, frankly, the 50s, jazz is perhaps the single most influential genre in the history of Western music. Though of course it is based upon European harmonies, it transformed the formal and rhythmic essences that those very harmonies had always existed in, and therefore also began to transform the harmonies themselves. As a result, even recent composers of art music - such as Bernstein, Copland, and Gershwin - have written a kind of "classical jazz," extracting the solo, but leaving the remainder of jazz form, harmony, and rhythm.
Modern art music, however, is even more marginalized than jazz, occupying a small niche among musicologists and the "pretentious for the sake of pretension" crowd that makes up our modern aristocracies (though we tend to prefer gentry, or "upwardly mobile"). I could say much about some of the better modern composers, like John Tavener or Arvo Part, but they don't really constitute what I mean by modern music. Judgment as to the greatness of their music will not come any time soon.
Modern popular music, on the other hand, is an interesting case. My object here - as I spiral towards (or away from) a definition of great music - is to consider whether popular music can be great. Because that question is unanswerable, I fear, for the time being, I expect rather to address what the purpose and effect of modern music is, and whether that seems to befit greatness.
The quotation with which this posts begins comes from a piece you have probably heard in many versions. Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah may not be the most harmonically complex piece of music ever, but to me it captures the essence of what modern music is. There are many songs we could look at, of course, but Hallelujah straddles them all: it is about music, it is a love song (like so much modern, and indeed historical, music), it has a simple and repetitive harmonic structure, it has lyrics which are probably as important as the song itself, and it is immensely popular. The first of these qualities should not be overlooked. It is always informative to look at music which is about music itself when trying to understand the work of an era.
Cohen calls attention, from the beginning of his piece, to the simple harmony he's using. "It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth." Those words could be in just about any modern song, and in many that would cover the entirety of the harmonic variation. In Cohen, however, there are a couple wrinkles. Hallelujah fluctuates continuously between C Major and A minor, keys which share the same scale, but which have very different harmonic qualities. His "fourth" and "fifth" indicate that the piece is in C, ultimately, but the minor twinge is unavoidable. What's more, besides the four, five, and six ("the minor fall," which is also A), there is a guest appearance from E minor, the three. In classical music this would not happen without a modulation as well, but here it works because E is the dominant of A, meaning that the presence of the E minor - though it is minor and not the expected Major - reinforces the sense that either C or A could be the tonic.
Ok, harmonic hand-wringing aside, Hallelujah is much more complex than most modern, popular music, but not be a lot. The form repeats itself over and over, and what variation occurs in the melody or harmony is the work of the individual performer, and not the intent of the piece. Nevertheless, the harmonic "trick" here is to inspire a kind of restless wandering in the listener's ear. Is it Major? Minor? How ought I to feel, when listening to this piece? Of course, the lyrics reinforce that confusion, answering with a resounding "both." Hallelujah is desperately joyful, but defeated. Its title and lyrics are not ironic so much as reflective. Hallelujah - and you can't avoid the comparison with this title - is not what Handel thought it was. It's not a chorus of angels, "It's not a cry that you hear at night, it's not somebody that's seen the light."
Whether the message connects with you or not, the song is incredibly persuasive because of its harmonic workings. That it tries to access a basic human experience - love - and that it acknowledges not just the stereotypical emotions we experience therein makes it all the more powerful. So many love songs are about wanting: I want you back, I want to hold your hand, I want you to live forever, and so on... Hallelujah expresses neither the pain of lost love nor the expectation of unrequited love. Rather, it tries to access the inexpressible desires - spiritual, musical, human - that cannot be fulfilled. It dashes the expectations of those naive love songs which believe that "happily ever after" means dancing every day: "Love is not a victory march." In Hallelujah, there is melancholy of the truest form, the unrequited, unspoken desires of being that are not good or evil or even in between.
I have chosen an exceptional case, however, for this reason. While Hallelujah accesses that essential feeling - doing it through both words and music - it does little more than alert us, or remind us, that it is there. How much modern music can even say that much? We may associate music with certain emotions and memories, but our own associations do not therefore make that music great. Even Hallelujah falls short, to my mind, of greatness because it feels so ravaged, so Orphic, so uncontrollable.
Modern music is almost always about the lyrics. Unfortunately, the result is that modern music has more complicated and sophisticated lyrics than the music of almost any other time, whilst having simpler harmonies, rhythms, and melodies. That doesn't mean modern music need not be enjoyable, but it does mean that, when you strip the lyrics away, you also strip the meaning away. Music without meaning is not, to me, great. Even Hallelujah - one of the closest things I can find to a piece of great, modern, popular music - is repetitive and essentially meaningless without its lyrics. Compare, again, Handel's Hallelujah. Take away the lyrics - which most people don't know anyway - and the meaning is still clear. The piece doesn't change without the words.
Perhaps modern music should be judged by the standards of poetry? That's fine with me. I'm certain a great deal of it is good or even excellent poetry. But that does not mean it is great music. Music is far too sacred an art, and far to complicated a craft, to strip it of its complexity and hope that it might still be great. Modulation (changing the tonic from one key to another during a piece) is not a necessary condition of greatness, but a piece without it has to work extra hard. Why? Because modulation helps to give a deeper, subtler sense of meaning to a work, and deep, subtle meanings are the especial purview of music.
Put it this way. Remember from a previous post what Arnold Schopenhauer said. Music is, essentially, the mind doing metaphysics. He argued, in short, that music is the only possible route to understanding what things really are. I don't know that I agree with that, but I do like the sentiment. Music is not a language, it is beyond language. Music expresses things which are beyond language. Poetry tries to do just that, but, in my opinion, music has preference over poetry because it does not merely try. It is hard to go beyond language with language, and so a music built upon lyrics is a music that has artificially limited itself. On the other hand, a music built upon music - even if that requires a little more study and effort on the part of the listener - is destined to express something a bit more essential.
Of course, you might hold that music does no such thing. Perhaps you say, "It's a vehicle for words, and without them, it is meaningless." Fair enough, but it doesn't sound that way to me. That, however, is the subject - or at least a part of the subject - of our next and final post in this series. While there are many possible avenues available, expect my rebuttal to your "music needs words" argument to come in the form of Beethoven.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Towards Defining Great Music, Part Two: On Genre and Deciding Greatness
In trying to decide what is great music – and whether such a thing exists – it is important to consider the genres of music that have dominated and defined their particular times. Genre might as well be, here, a substitute for context, or even for culture more broadly, and is therefore intimately tied in with taste, but it is nevertheless a useful way of categorizing an incredibly complicated phenomenon.
In any given era, there are seemingly uncountable genres and sub-genres of music. It is tempting and simple to simply divide music into two camps, “art” and “popular.” But that is a misleading attempt, because much of what we now consider “art music” was wildly popular at the time, and much music that is written primarily for the sake of a popular audience is nonetheless artistic for it.
Similarly, we might divide music into “spiritual” and “secular” music. While not a meaningful distinction in contemporary music, historically there is a significant difference between the purposes and forms of the two. Indeed, for a long time “spiritual music” and “art music” were essentially the same thing, with popular, secular (and thereby vulgar) music serving an entirely different function and performed by an entirely different set of musicians.
At the other extreme, we might choose to define genres of music narrowly. The minuet and the fugue might be separate, as might the 12-bar blues and the 16-bar blues, or the symphony and the concerto. A narrower understanding of genre might help us to compare pieces under those frameworks – and it strikes me that most reasonable narrow divisions are actually formal constraints – but they don't necessarily help us to find great music.
Perhaps the most common delineation of genres in music is the chronological one. That is, classical music is divided into distinct eras, each of which has a distinctive but related (by the “progress” from one understanding of harmony to the next) style. Beginning with the medieval era, Western music is traditionally said to have gone through the following eras (in order): Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern. Some nit-pickers also slide Nationalist in between Romantic and Modern, or at least alongside, but that's of more political than musical interest.
While I don't think any of these approaches really properly captures what I mean by “genre,” I think they are useful nonetheless, especially when considered together.* A genre is, in short, the combination of the context in which the work was written (that is, its historical, geo-political, and philosophical situation) and the purpose for which it was written (that is, whether it was written for the sake of religion, art as such, popularity or notoriety, or what-have-you). The historical side of that equation is something a composer has essentially no control over, and if there is an argument for or against the existence of great music from a particular time period, it ought to therefore confront the context and the not the composers of that time.**
*I will avoid, for the time being, the thorny issue of modern music, because that is where 'genre' becomes especially uninformative in trying to qualify music. I promise, however, that I will have a whole post in this series specifically devoted to modern music.
** Indeed, we don't really speak of “Great Music” from the Dark Ages primarily for this reason; the social, political, and religious realities of the time made great music all but impossible. Of course, it is also possible that, rather than making great music impossible, context instead made the transmission of that music impossible. Likewise with the Greeks. We cannot evaluate their music – even though discussions of it abound in their writings – because none of it survived. Accessibility is a necessary condition for greatness, and music, after all, must be heard.
So the question becomes, what is greatness? Is it relative, or absolute? Does it even exist?
It seems to me that the simplest claim is that greatness is merely the sorting of music in a particular genre by quality, as is generally agreed upon by those most versed in the language of that genre,* with some help from popular opinion, and as confirmed by the experts who learn that language later and confirm the former judgment. I realize that's a fairly long-winded “simple” definition, but I think the components all make sense, and I'm inclined to use it moving forward. Because of that, I want to go through the definition in a little more detail, to make sure it is clear and to argue for each part.
* Those with the most taste, as we might say, drawing on my last post.
First off, this definition of greatness assumes that greatness is not Platonic, dealing with eternal forms, and rather is a relative measure of art against the other art from close to the same time. That is not to say we don't set up a non-contextual scale, comparing music from the 1800s to music from the 1600s, deciding that Bach is perhaps greater than Wagner, but that Wagner is greater than Vivaldi. Rather, it is to say that, before we compare Vivaldi or Bach to Wagner, we compare them to the other, lesser known composers of their own time, and we recognize that those “lesser knowns” are lesser known for good reason.*
* By way of analogy, there is endless debate amongst baseball fans as to who the greatest player of all time is. Babe Ruth still has a lot going for him because of how much better he was than his contemporaries, but then again Willie Mays faced what was probably a higher level of competition. Barry Bonds may have been a cheat, but he faced an even higher level of competition and managed – by whatever means – to life himself well above it. The point being, there's no way to really decide who's the best baseball player, but it is fairly widely acknowledged that, comparing Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds against their contemporaries, it's hard to say they were not great. Though undoubtedly Willie Bloomquist is an exceptional athlete and phenomenal baseball player by most any measure, he is “lesser known” for good reason when compared against Albert Pujols.
As for how the greatest composers of an era are decided, a great deal of that happens well before we modern folk ever had a say. Beethoven was anointed great and his music preserved because his contemporaries understood his music to be great. The same could be said of Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, and the myriad other household name Classical composers. This, however, is an important part of greatness; the recognition of the experts of the time.
While certainly Beethoven was helped by broader popularity, it was the favor of both his fellow musicians and of the more austere, academic critics of music which carried him. Of course there was also substantial negative reaction to much of what he wrote, and a good deal of misunderstanding, but that too we might label a condition for greatness. On the whole, however, it was widely recognized that Beethoven was incomparable among his contemporaries even at the time, a judgment that came from a combination of expert opinion and general enjoyment of the music he produced.
Retrospect, however, is also important in determining greatness. At the time, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was met with mixed and, frankly, a good many negative reviews. Beethoven was, in summary, an old, deaf man grasping at straws, full of grand ideas but no longer aware of how to really write music. In retrospect, however, it is Beethoven's contemporaries that were grasping at straws, unable to understand a treatment of harmony and form that was heretofore unheard, but that anticipated the evolutions in music theory that would occur over the next century during the Romantic era.
Only hindsight, it could be said, can judge whether the wild and crazy ideas of a great mind will be prophetic or insane. Perhaps it is no mark of greatness, and merely of fortune that in this case Beethoven was the former, but I believe that oversimplifies a complicated situation. An important quality of the prophet is not merely predicting the future, but helping to make that future happen. In Beethoven's case, his greatness was not in anticipating what Romantic music would bring to fruition, but in planting the seed such that his was the only flower that had any chance of growing in the first place.
It is easy to look at transition points between historical genres and find great composers, of course, because influence and greatness are easy to confound. While a great many changes may be inevitable – for example, the progress of music theory in its essence may have been almost exactly the same had Beethoven never been born – the way those changes occur is subject to the influences of a great many men and women, and some manage to have more influence than others.
Even within a fairly static genre, however, we might find greatness. Mozart, brilliant though he was, did not live long enough to see the transition from the Classical to the Romantic eras. While much of his music may have pushed the boundaries of what was common at his time – another potential mark of greatness – he did not possess nearly the influence that Beethoven did historically. And yet we might argue that Mozart was the greater composer. Regardless, that he stood out both now and then above his contemporaries is largely unquestioned.
It is almost inevitable that a discussion of great music will end up being a discussion of great composers, because individual pieces are even harder to categorize and qualify. Nevertheless, we might approach pieces the same way, but with a stronger eye towards the theory in each piece. There are a great many musical devices and techniques that underlie even this discussion of what a musical genre is, and while it is reductionist to discuss composers without that theory, it is at least possible. Discussing the music itself without the theory itself would be impossible, because music theory is the very language that allows for the discussion to have meaning.*
* Without music theory, it's easy to get trapped in the pitfall of unarguable metaphor. “This piece is like a waterfall, that one like a giant rock.” While those connotations and images may percolate in the heads of some listeners, trying to have a discussion and trying to determine quality under such terms is about as productive as teaching First Graders differential calculus. That's not to say the images and emotions that we feel aren't important; indeed, they are the point. But just because a piece of music (or anything else) makes you feel happy or helps you imagine daffodils doesn't mean that it is great. It must also stand up to analysis and contemplation. Some might argue this is a view that encourages cynicism, and I won't disagree. But I will say this: while a great deal of music might be beautiful, happy, melancholy, or any other number of things, only music that remains beautiful, happy, or melancholy when you are cynical about it is truly great. If you are afraid that thinking carefully and critically about a thing will decrease rather than increase your enjoyment of it, perhaps it is not a thing worth enjoying after all.
With that in mind, we'll spend the next post discussing music itself. What is music, after all? Music has undeniable power, and is ubiquitous in our culture. Indeed, the music industry has been at the forefront of copyright law and the effects of digital distribution primarily because we take our music much more seriously than we take our movies, our pictures, or our words. Why is that? What is the power of music? Tune in next time, but don't expect answers.
In any given era, there are seemingly uncountable genres and sub-genres of music. It is tempting and simple to simply divide music into two camps, “art” and “popular.” But that is a misleading attempt, because much of what we now consider “art music” was wildly popular at the time, and much music that is written primarily for the sake of a popular audience is nonetheless artistic for it.
Similarly, we might divide music into “spiritual” and “secular” music. While not a meaningful distinction in contemporary music, historically there is a significant difference between the purposes and forms of the two. Indeed, for a long time “spiritual music” and “art music” were essentially the same thing, with popular, secular (and thereby vulgar) music serving an entirely different function and performed by an entirely different set of musicians.
At the other extreme, we might choose to define genres of music narrowly. The minuet and the fugue might be separate, as might the 12-bar blues and the 16-bar blues, or the symphony and the concerto. A narrower understanding of genre might help us to compare pieces under those frameworks – and it strikes me that most reasonable narrow divisions are actually formal constraints – but they don't necessarily help us to find great music.
Perhaps the most common delineation of genres in music is the chronological one. That is, classical music is divided into distinct eras, each of which has a distinctive but related (by the “progress” from one understanding of harmony to the next) style. Beginning with the medieval era, Western music is traditionally said to have gone through the following eras (in order): Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern. Some nit-pickers also slide Nationalist in between Romantic and Modern, or at least alongside, but that's of more political than musical interest.
While I don't think any of these approaches really properly captures what I mean by “genre,” I think they are useful nonetheless, especially when considered together.* A genre is, in short, the combination of the context in which the work was written (that is, its historical, geo-political, and philosophical situation) and the purpose for which it was written (that is, whether it was written for the sake of religion, art as such, popularity or notoriety, or what-have-you). The historical side of that equation is something a composer has essentially no control over, and if there is an argument for or against the existence of great music from a particular time period, it ought to therefore confront the context and the not the composers of that time.**
*I will avoid, for the time being, the thorny issue of modern music, because that is where 'genre' becomes especially uninformative in trying to qualify music. I promise, however, that I will have a whole post in this series specifically devoted to modern music.
** Indeed, we don't really speak of “Great Music” from the Dark Ages primarily for this reason; the social, political, and religious realities of the time made great music all but impossible. Of course, it is also possible that, rather than making great music impossible, context instead made the transmission of that music impossible. Likewise with the Greeks. We cannot evaluate their music – even though discussions of it abound in their writings – because none of it survived. Accessibility is a necessary condition for greatness, and music, after all, must be heard.
So the question becomes, what is greatness? Is it relative, or absolute? Does it even exist?
It seems to me that the simplest claim is that greatness is merely the sorting of music in a particular genre by quality, as is generally agreed upon by those most versed in the language of that genre,* with some help from popular opinion, and as confirmed by the experts who learn that language later and confirm the former judgment. I realize that's a fairly long-winded “simple” definition, but I think the components all make sense, and I'm inclined to use it moving forward. Because of that, I want to go through the definition in a little more detail, to make sure it is clear and to argue for each part.
* Those with the most taste, as we might say, drawing on my last post.
First off, this definition of greatness assumes that greatness is not Platonic, dealing with eternal forms, and rather is a relative measure of art against the other art from close to the same time. That is not to say we don't set up a non-contextual scale, comparing music from the 1800s to music from the 1600s, deciding that Bach is perhaps greater than Wagner, but that Wagner is greater than Vivaldi. Rather, it is to say that, before we compare Vivaldi or Bach to Wagner, we compare them to the other, lesser known composers of their own time, and we recognize that those “lesser knowns” are lesser known for good reason.*
* By way of analogy, there is endless debate amongst baseball fans as to who the greatest player of all time is. Babe Ruth still has a lot going for him because of how much better he was than his contemporaries, but then again Willie Mays faced what was probably a higher level of competition. Barry Bonds may have been a cheat, but he faced an even higher level of competition and managed – by whatever means – to life himself well above it. The point being, there's no way to really decide who's the best baseball player, but it is fairly widely acknowledged that, comparing Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds against their contemporaries, it's hard to say they were not great. Though undoubtedly Willie Bloomquist is an exceptional athlete and phenomenal baseball player by most any measure, he is “lesser known” for good reason when compared against Albert Pujols.
As for how the greatest composers of an era are decided, a great deal of that happens well before we modern folk ever had a say. Beethoven was anointed great and his music preserved because his contemporaries understood his music to be great. The same could be said of Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, and the myriad other household name Classical composers. This, however, is an important part of greatness; the recognition of the experts of the time.
While certainly Beethoven was helped by broader popularity, it was the favor of both his fellow musicians and of the more austere, academic critics of music which carried him. Of course there was also substantial negative reaction to much of what he wrote, and a good deal of misunderstanding, but that too we might label a condition for greatness. On the whole, however, it was widely recognized that Beethoven was incomparable among his contemporaries even at the time, a judgment that came from a combination of expert opinion and general enjoyment of the music he produced.
Retrospect, however, is also important in determining greatness. At the time, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was met with mixed and, frankly, a good many negative reviews. Beethoven was, in summary, an old, deaf man grasping at straws, full of grand ideas but no longer aware of how to really write music. In retrospect, however, it is Beethoven's contemporaries that were grasping at straws, unable to understand a treatment of harmony and form that was heretofore unheard, but that anticipated the evolutions in music theory that would occur over the next century during the Romantic era.
Only hindsight, it could be said, can judge whether the wild and crazy ideas of a great mind will be prophetic or insane. Perhaps it is no mark of greatness, and merely of fortune that in this case Beethoven was the former, but I believe that oversimplifies a complicated situation. An important quality of the prophet is not merely predicting the future, but helping to make that future happen. In Beethoven's case, his greatness was not in anticipating what Romantic music would bring to fruition, but in planting the seed such that his was the only flower that had any chance of growing in the first place.
It is easy to look at transition points between historical genres and find great composers, of course, because influence and greatness are easy to confound. While a great many changes may be inevitable – for example, the progress of music theory in its essence may have been almost exactly the same had Beethoven never been born – the way those changes occur is subject to the influences of a great many men and women, and some manage to have more influence than others.
Even within a fairly static genre, however, we might find greatness. Mozart, brilliant though he was, did not live long enough to see the transition from the Classical to the Romantic eras. While much of his music may have pushed the boundaries of what was common at his time – another potential mark of greatness – he did not possess nearly the influence that Beethoven did historically. And yet we might argue that Mozart was the greater composer. Regardless, that he stood out both now and then above his contemporaries is largely unquestioned.
It is almost inevitable that a discussion of great music will end up being a discussion of great composers, because individual pieces are even harder to categorize and qualify. Nevertheless, we might approach pieces the same way, but with a stronger eye towards the theory in each piece. There are a great many musical devices and techniques that underlie even this discussion of what a musical genre is, and while it is reductionist to discuss composers without that theory, it is at least possible. Discussing the music itself without the theory itself would be impossible, because music theory is the very language that allows for the discussion to have meaning.*
* Without music theory, it's easy to get trapped in the pitfall of unarguable metaphor. “This piece is like a waterfall, that one like a giant rock.” While those connotations and images may percolate in the heads of some listeners, trying to have a discussion and trying to determine quality under such terms is about as productive as teaching First Graders differential calculus. That's not to say the images and emotions that we feel aren't important; indeed, they are the point. But just because a piece of music (or anything else) makes you feel happy or helps you imagine daffodils doesn't mean that it is great. It must also stand up to analysis and contemplation. Some might argue this is a view that encourages cynicism, and I won't disagree. But I will say this: while a great deal of music might be beautiful, happy, melancholy, or any other number of things, only music that remains beautiful, happy, or melancholy when you are cynical about it is truly great. If you are afraid that thinking carefully and critically about a thing will decrease rather than increase your enjoyment of it, perhaps it is not a thing worth enjoying after all.
With that in mind, we'll spend the next post discussing music itself. What is music, after all? Music has undeniable power, and is ubiquitous in our culture. Indeed, the music industry has been at the forefront of copyright law and the effects of digital distribution primarily because we take our music much more seriously than we take our movies, our pictures, or our words. Why is that? What is the power of music? Tune in next time, but don't expect answers.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Intervals and Astrology
I haven't written an Astrology 101 post, so forgive me if all this is a little bit confusing. Those uninterested or unversed in music theory and/or astrology may want to hold off on this post.
What I want to try to do is talk about the relationship between astrological aspects and musical intervals. In astrology there are 12 signs, in music, 12 tones. On some level that is a superficial similarity, but I wonder if they don't fit together in an unexpected way.
The ancients - Boethius in particular - believed that the planets themselves rotated about the Earth in musical intervals. Ptolemy's "circular" orbits provided a basis for Boethius in his "Musica Universalis," often translated "Music of the Spheres." The planets whizzing around were not strictly audible, but the notion that they mirrored harmonic patterns was religiously, mathematically, and philosophically agreeable.
Now we know that not to be the case, of course. The planets behave in all kinds of strange, non-circular ways, influenced not only by the incredible gravity of the Sun, but by each other as well. Nevertheless, astrology - never a musical practice in itself - has endured. How astrology works and whether it does is a post for another time (yes, I know, I've got about a dozen of these "another time" posts). For now I'm more interested in the analogy between the twelve-tone scale and the zodiac.
In trying to map the zodiac onto the scale, it is immediately clear that direct mapping is impossible. Moving chromatically creates strange relationships. Aspects that should be pleasant turn dissonant, signs that work well together sound awful. And this makes a kind of sense. Astrology comes from the ages before well-tempered tuning. While mapping directly (C = Aries, C# = Taurus, etc) might make transferring from one sign to another easier, it doesn't reflect the actual essence of astrology. Similarly, before well-tempered tuning, it was impossible to modulate from one key to another. If you started in C, you could not move to D, because in D all of the notes would sound off.
Over time, new tunings were developed, pulling all of the natural intervals ever so slightly off so that modulation became possible. These days, the difference between a C and a C# is identical to the difference between any other two half-steps. This means that, while it is very close, the frequencies of C and G are not in a 3:2 ratio. The "Perfect Fifth" was sacrificed for modulation.
All of that goes to show, we shouldn't try to make our astrological analogy work with modulation. If we are dealing, for example, with an Aries, there is no reason to imagine transforming that Aries into a Capricorn. What good would that do us? Rather, I think it makes more sense to establish the commonalities between signs and intervals according to the base sign in question. In the end, this will end up looking similar across signs, but it will be impossible to assign C to a given sign, F to another, and Bb to another.
So let's kick it off with the great kicker-offer Aries. Imagining Aries as a tonic, what roles would the other signs play? Which are dissonant, and which are consonant? Which lead into or away from Aries?
The obvious first step is to establish which signs represent the fourth and the fifth. These are the most consonant and harmonically functional intervals. Given that there are two, and that they are meant to represent the closest relationship to the tonic, I believe the other signs of the same element - in this case Leo and Sagittarius, which are also Fire signs - are the most logical choice. Because Sagittarius comes "behind" Aries and Leo "in front" on the zodiac, I think Sagittarius should be the 5th and Leo the 4th.
ARIES:
4th - Leo
5th - Sagittarius
In other words, Aries lead into Leo, and comes out of Sagittarius. As a cardinal sign - an initiator - it makes sense that Aries would lead into the fixed sign - more stable and immovable - of the same element. Likewise, Sag is a mutable sign - meaning it tends to be an ending, cycling to a new beginning - making it a natural dominant for Aries.
Another important aspect is the opposition. While my first inclination was to put the opposing Libra in the place of the tritone, I don't feel that's appropriate. The tritone is the most dissonant relationship possible between two notes. While it is a kind of musical opposite, however, that does not make it an astrological opposite. Libra and Aries have much more in common than C and F#, because Libra and Aires are both cardinal and both masculine signs. Their primary point of difference betrays a fundamental sameness: Where Aries is concerned with the individual, Libra is concerned with partnerships. Both, however, are about the relationship of the self to something. Compare that to Taurus, which is about personal resources and appreciation of beauty. Aries and Libra may have much that is not in common, but they have much that is as well. Indeed, opposites are often closer together - in terms of context - than synonyms (consider: yes and no; yes and affirmative).
With all that in mind, I think Libra fits best in the spot of the flat seven. That is not a consonant interval, but not totally dissonant either. Its presence or absence does more to transform the key than any other. The presence of a flat seven turns a major key into a dominant, causing a need for resolution. The same could be said of astrological opposites; they shape each other tremendously, and if both are present in the same chart, it signals a need for resolution.
ARIES:
4th - Leo
5th - Sagittarius
b7 - Libra
The actual largest discrepancies in astrology are between signs at the quincunx (one sign away from opposition). While these signs are not directly opposed, they share nothing in common. For Aries, Scorpio and Virgo are 150 degrees away, meaning they are different elements, ordinality, and gender. Much more than opposition, these signs are dissonant when compared with Aries, and should therefore occupy the two most dissonant intervals, the half-step and the tritone. As for which should occupy which, the shared relationship with the planet Mars suggests to me that Scorpio and Aries ought to be at least close together, so I think they should be at the half-step. Virgo, on the other hand, has nothing in common with Aries at all, and is therefore the best choice for the tritone.
ARIES:
b2 - Scorpio
4th - Leo
b5 - Virgo
5th - Sagittarius
b7 - Libra
There is one more truly dissonant interval, but it is an interval that serves an important harmonic function. That interval is the natural seventh. Similar to the half-step, the seventh is "next to" the tonic, but unlike the flat two, it leads into the seventh. Works of Medieval polyphony often started with a seventh opening into an octave. With that in mind, the natural fit here is Pisces. Pisces and Aires do not share much in common, but Pisces flows naturally into Aries all the same. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac, and signifies the end of winter, while Aries signifies the beginning of spring. The astrological New Year occurs on the Equinox, when the sun passes from Pisces into Aries. What could be more perfect than for Pisces to be the leading tone in the Aries scale?
Similarly, Aries leads into Taurus. As the "next step," Taurus fits naturally in the spot of the natural second. Again, this is not a consonant interval, but it is a natural scalar progression. With that in mind, I'll plug Taurus and Pisces into our picture.
ARIES:
b2 - Scorpio
2nd - Taurus
4th - Leo
b5 - Virgo
5th - Sagittarius
b7 - Libra
7th - Pisces
Which leaves us with the so-called "most harmonic" intervals, the 3rds and the 6ths. Functionally, the 3rd and 6th serve only to add color to a piece. What they determine, however, is the flavor of the sound, as flat 3rds and 6ths indicate a minor mood while naturals indicate major. Our four remaining signs are either at a sextile (60 degrees, or two signs) from Aries, or square (90 degrees, or three signs). Sextiles are regarded as "soft" aspects, but do not connote the same intense relationship that trines (which are also soft) do. Rather, they are a source of general ease, a kind of coloring of the basic function of the signs involved. Indeed, they are rather like the major intervals of the scale. Squares, on the other hand, are the classic "hard" aspects, indicating the major sources of challenge and effort in a person's life. That said, they also denote opportunity, and can be a source of great pride strength once mastered and overcome. For that reason, they make sense as "minor" intervals; central to the harmony of the key, not always pleasant, but far from crushing or dissonant.
As with the 4th and 5th, the "which sign goes where" game is simplified by the arrangement of the zodiac. The planets that come 'after' Aries make for a more natural fit as 3rds. This puts Cancer on the minor third, and Gemini on the major. This means that our progression from Aries to Taurus can follow naturally into Gemini as well (which follows Taurus). On the other side of the zodiac, Capricorn and Aquarius fill in the flat 6th and natural 6th spots respectively. Aquarius flows naturally into Pisces (which flows into Aries), meaning there's a nice symmetry to our "scale."
ARIES:
b2 - Scorpio
2nd - Taurus
b3 - Cancer
3rd - Gemini
4th - Sagittarius
b5 - Virgo
5th - Leo
b6 - Capricorn
6th - Aquarius
b7 - Libra
7th - Pisces
We could go through the same process with the other twelve signs, but I'll spare you (and myself). Ultimately, I think the arrangement would be similar: trines at the 4th and 5th, opposition at the b7, squares at the minor intervals, quincunxes as the most dissonant, and sextiles and semisextiles (30 degrees) in the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th spots.
What are the implications of this kind of arrangement? Hard to say. By looking at a chart one might be able to translate it's major aspects into music, but that would only be a heuristic analogy. On the other hand, I do think that the analogy fits remarkably well (much better than I would have expected), and is probably worth further investigation. Since I'll be doing some astrology at our cohort's end-of-quarter party tonight, maybe I'll find a way to turn some of my compatriots into music. And hey, at the very least, it's fun.
What I want to try to do is talk about the relationship between astrological aspects and musical intervals. In astrology there are 12 signs, in music, 12 tones. On some level that is a superficial similarity, but I wonder if they don't fit together in an unexpected way.
The ancients - Boethius in particular - believed that the planets themselves rotated about the Earth in musical intervals. Ptolemy's "circular" orbits provided a basis for Boethius in his "Musica Universalis," often translated "Music of the Spheres." The planets whizzing around were not strictly audible, but the notion that they mirrored harmonic patterns was religiously, mathematically, and philosophically agreeable.
Now we know that not to be the case, of course. The planets behave in all kinds of strange, non-circular ways, influenced not only by the incredible gravity of the Sun, but by each other as well. Nevertheless, astrology - never a musical practice in itself - has endured. How astrology works and whether it does is a post for another time (yes, I know, I've got about a dozen of these "another time" posts). For now I'm more interested in the analogy between the twelve-tone scale and the zodiac.
In trying to map the zodiac onto the scale, it is immediately clear that direct mapping is impossible. Moving chromatically creates strange relationships. Aspects that should be pleasant turn dissonant, signs that work well together sound awful. And this makes a kind of sense. Astrology comes from the ages before well-tempered tuning. While mapping directly (C = Aries, C# = Taurus, etc) might make transferring from one sign to another easier, it doesn't reflect the actual essence of astrology. Similarly, before well-tempered tuning, it was impossible to modulate from one key to another. If you started in C, you could not move to D, because in D all of the notes would sound off.
Over time, new tunings were developed, pulling all of the natural intervals ever so slightly off so that modulation became possible. These days, the difference between a C and a C# is identical to the difference between any other two half-steps. This means that, while it is very close, the frequencies of C and G are not in a 3:2 ratio. The "Perfect Fifth" was sacrificed for modulation.
All of that goes to show, we shouldn't try to make our astrological analogy work with modulation. If we are dealing, for example, with an Aries, there is no reason to imagine transforming that Aries into a Capricorn. What good would that do us? Rather, I think it makes more sense to establish the commonalities between signs and intervals according to the base sign in question. In the end, this will end up looking similar across signs, but it will be impossible to assign C to a given sign, F to another, and Bb to another.
So let's kick it off with the great kicker-offer Aries. Imagining Aries as a tonic, what roles would the other signs play? Which are dissonant, and which are consonant? Which lead into or away from Aries?
The obvious first step is to establish which signs represent the fourth and the fifth. These are the most consonant and harmonically functional intervals. Given that there are two, and that they are meant to represent the closest relationship to the tonic, I believe the other signs of the same element - in this case Leo and Sagittarius, which are also Fire signs - are the most logical choice. Because Sagittarius comes "behind" Aries and Leo "in front" on the zodiac, I think Sagittarius should be the 5th and Leo the 4th.
ARIES:
4th - Leo
5th - Sagittarius
In other words, Aries lead into Leo, and comes out of Sagittarius. As a cardinal sign - an initiator - it makes sense that Aries would lead into the fixed sign - more stable and immovable - of the same element. Likewise, Sag is a mutable sign - meaning it tends to be an ending, cycling to a new beginning - making it a natural dominant for Aries.
Another important aspect is the opposition. While my first inclination was to put the opposing Libra in the place of the tritone, I don't feel that's appropriate. The tritone is the most dissonant relationship possible between two notes. While it is a kind of musical opposite, however, that does not make it an astrological opposite. Libra and Aries have much more in common than C and F#, because Libra and Aires are both cardinal and both masculine signs. Their primary point of difference betrays a fundamental sameness: Where Aries is concerned with the individual, Libra is concerned with partnerships. Both, however, are about the relationship of the self to something. Compare that to Taurus, which is about personal resources and appreciation of beauty. Aries and Libra may have much that is not in common, but they have much that is as well. Indeed, opposites are often closer together - in terms of context - than synonyms (consider: yes and no; yes and affirmative).
With all that in mind, I think Libra fits best in the spot of the flat seven. That is not a consonant interval, but not totally dissonant either. Its presence or absence does more to transform the key than any other. The presence of a flat seven turns a major key into a dominant, causing a need for resolution. The same could be said of astrological opposites; they shape each other tremendously, and if both are present in the same chart, it signals a need for resolution.
ARIES:
4th - Leo
5th - Sagittarius
b7 - Libra
The actual largest discrepancies in astrology are between signs at the quincunx (one sign away from opposition). While these signs are not directly opposed, they share nothing in common. For Aries, Scorpio and Virgo are 150 degrees away, meaning they are different elements, ordinality, and gender. Much more than opposition, these signs are dissonant when compared with Aries, and should therefore occupy the two most dissonant intervals, the half-step and the tritone. As for which should occupy which, the shared relationship with the planet Mars suggests to me that Scorpio and Aries ought to be at least close together, so I think they should be at the half-step. Virgo, on the other hand, has nothing in common with Aries at all, and is therefore the best choice for the tritone.
ARIES:
b2 - Scorpio
4th - Leo
b5 - Virgo
5th - Sagittarius
b7 - Libra
There is one more truly dissonant interval, but it is an interval that serves an important harmonic function. That interval is the natural seventh. Similar to the half-step, the seventh is "next to" the tonic, but unlike the flat two, it leads into the seventh. Works of Medieval polyphony often started with a seventh opening into an octave. With that in mind, the natural fit here is Pisces. Pisces and Aires do not share much in common, but Pisces flows naturally into Aries all the same. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac, and signifies the end of winter, while Aries signifies the beginning of spring. The astrological New Year occurs on the Equinox, when the sun passes from Pisces into Aries. What could be more perfect than for Pisces to be the leading tone in the Aries scale?
Similarly, Aries leads into Taurus. As the "next step," Taurus fits naturally in the spot of the natural second. Again, this is not a consonant interval, but it is a natural scalar progression. With that in mind, I'll plug Taurus and Pisces into our picture.
ARIES:
b2 - Scorpio
2nd - Taurus
4th - Leo
b5 - Virgo
5th - Sagittarius
b7 - Libra
7th - Pisces
Which leaves us with the so-called "most harmonic" intervals, the 3rds and the 6ths. Functionally, the 3rd and 6th serve only to add color to a piece. What they determine, however, is the flavor of the sound, as flat 3rds and 6ths indicate a minor mood while naturals indicate major. Our four remaining signs are either at a sextile (60 degrees, or two signs) from Aries, or square (90 degrees, or three signs). Sextiles are regarded as "soft" aspects, but do not connote the same intense relationship that trines (which are also soft) do. Rather, they are a source of general ease, a kind of coloring of the basic function of the signs involved. Indeed, they are rather like the major intervals of the scale. Squares, on the other hand, are the classic "hard" aspects, indicating the major sources of challenge and effort in a person's life. That said, they also denote opportunity, and can be a source of great pride strength once mastered and overcome. For that reason, they make sense as "minor" intervals; central to the harmony of the key, not always pleasant, but far from crushing or dissonant.
As with the 4th and 5th, the "which sign goes where" game is simplified by the arrangement of the zodiac. The planets that come 'after' Aries make for a more natural fit as 3rds. This puts Cancer on the minor third, and Gemini on the major. This means that our progression from Aries to Taurus can follow naturally into Gemini as well (which follows Taurus). On the other side of the zodiac, Capricorn and Aquarius fill in the flat 6th and natural 6th spots respectively. Aquarius flows naturally into Pisces (which flows into Aries), meaning there's a nice symmetry to our "scale."
ARIES:
b2 - Scorpio
2nd - Taurus
b3 - Cancer
3rd - Gemini
4th - Sagittarius
b5 - Virgo
5th - Leo
b6 - Capricorn
6th - Aquarius
b7 - Libra
7th - Pisces
We could go through the same process with the other twelve signs, but I'll spare you (and myself). Ultimately, I think the arrangement would be similar: trines at the 4th and 5th, opposition at the b7, squares at the minor intervals, quincunxes as the most dissonant, and sextiles and semisextiles (30 degrees) in the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th spots.
What are the implications of this kind of arrangement? Hard to say. By looking at a chart one might be able to translate it's major aspects into music, but that would only be a heuristic analogy. On the other hand, I do think that the analogy fits remarkably well (much better than I would have expected), and is probably worth further investigation. Since I'll be doing some astrology at our cohort's end-of-quarter party tonight, maybe I'll find a way to turn some of my compatriots into music. And hey, at the very least, it's fun.
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