Music theory teaches us how to hear. Can it help us hear each other?
Chris Stover
One of music theory’s basic assumptions is that it helps us learn how to hear. How to hear from different perspectives; how to hear closely and creatively. How to hear expressive syntactic relations—as in the ways suspensions, deceptive cadences, elisions of phrase boundaries, or harmonic substitutions derive meaning by diverting expectations built into the culturally-inscribed formulations they displace. How to hear the way in which a given musical expression ‘riffs’ on norms like phrase or form categories. How to hear rhetorical relations, from mutually dependent antecedent–consequent phrase relations to intertextual ‘topics’ to how music can reinforce or refigure the meaning of the text it co-occurs with. Hearing detail, hearing context. Through learning to hear we also learn to interact, to participate in shared practices of music-making and apprehending. Music theory, then, should be thought of as a tool to help us develop our interactive potential.
We are in a historical moment in which, it is becoming increasingly clear, we’re forgetting how to hear each other. This exemplifies what philosopher Jacques Rancière calls la mésentente, “mishearing,” a refusal (intentional or not) even to recognize another’s words as speech but instead to reduce them to the noise of a lesser Other.[1]
We mishear along partisan political lines and across international borders, we fail to recognize the experiences and orientations that stem from different class, ethnic, gender, sexuality, and ability perspectives. We lose the human in the statistic when we celebrate that “only” x people died in yesterday’s tragedy, or when we forget (or refuse to recognize in the first place) that an adversary—from an opponent in a political argument to someone painted by the ideological machine as an “enemy”—has the same complexly interwoven nexus of family and friends, hopes, fears, and passions as we do. Perhaps most important of all, we have forgotten how to listen to the planet as it tells us with increasing urgency that we are hurting it.[2] It has, then, never been more politically, socially, or ecologically necessary to relearn how to hear.
Here are ten takeaways from music theory and analysis that I suggest could be valuable for developing a program of learning to hear one another.
(1) Context is everything. The meaning of any musical expression, from a single pitch to a metric structure to a melodic gesture or harmonic progression, is entirely dependent on its context. When the context changes, the meaning changes. Sensitivity to context is a skill that can be developed, and one of the fundamental tasks of music theory is to do just that: to develop a sensitivity to the diverse forces that affect how some given musical expression is functioning. We learn early on how triads are constructed. Later we learn what notes are in a vi chord, then still later what that vi chord “means” if it’s participating in a motion from I to IV or if it’s the unexpected goal of a IV to V motion, or if it’s part of a iii-vi-ii-V vamp. All of these gain further layers of meaning as we experience further related musical contexts. Music theory teaches us to pay attention to contexts, and to understand that there are always more ways to hear, more information to take in and process, and new connections to be made.
(2) There are many right answers. And it is important, when we think we’ve arrived at “the” answer, to bracket it, to set it temporarily aside to ask “what else?” What else can some musical expression mean, what additional contexts might be considered to enrich one’s understanding, what alternative framework can yield new, even contradictory insights? What can someone else’s perspective bring? This is on one hand a sort of divestment from our engrained ideas, and on the other hand a willingness to do the work involved in coming to understand another perspective, even (especially) one we don’t initially understand or agree with.
(3) Critical thinking begins with listening. Of course to say there are many right answers is not to suggest that all answers are equally convincing. But determinations about rightness (or wrongness) begin with listening (along with thinking and reflecting): why is this person saying what they’re saying, in the way they’re saying it? What is at stake? What are the conditions within which an idea was formed?
(4) Thinking outside one’s comfort zone brings new, unexpected insights. Music theory is a surprisingly interdisciplinary field. Researchers draw upon cognition studies and psychology, neuroscience and theories of embodiment, linguistics and semiotics, feminist and queer theory, mathematics and geometry, philosophy, critical theory, informatics, anthropology and ethnography, and much, much more. Some of the very best music theory results from researchers diving head-first into a new disciplinary area, and then seeing what knowledge can be produced when new methods, frameworks, and perspectives are brought to bear on familiar musical structures and processes.
The takeaway here is that a leap of faith is involved: to sensitively connect with a discipline like, say, embodied cognition requires prolonged attention to the nuances of new technical languages and concepts. It also requires a considerable shift in perspective, which often means leaving one’s comfort zone and going far beyond what one thinks they already know. Inquiry in this way can be a productively humbling experience.
(5) “Truth” is not always what we’re trying to find. While much music theory draws upon scientific methods, it itself is not a science. Music theory is what I like to call an art of sense-making. As an art, it is not about the discovery of truths but about the formulation of affects and percepts, about what kinds of connections are possible under what kinds of conditions, and then—and this is the important part—about creating those conditions.[3] Music theory is a practice of imagining new possible conditions within which to create connections. A music-theoretical method or framework, then, does not purport to reveal the (or even a) “truth” about the music it engages, but offers a new way of hearing one’s way through the music, of newly connecting with it. As philosopher Brian Massumi asks, “The question is not: is it true? But: does it work? What new thoughts does it make possible to think? What new emotions does it make possible to feel? What new sensations and perceptions does it open in the body?”[4]
(6) It’s hard to translate a subtle concept into words. But to paraphrase a great American thinker, we don’t do it because it’s easy, we do it because it’s hard. Communicating music-theoretical concepts is difficult for many reasons: there’s a great deal of insider jargon to learn, and there are aspects of music that simply are not captured well in ordinary language. This is one reason that “meta-languages” like mathematics and formal logic have been offered as possible ways into intersubjective communication.
But no matter the language one chooses to use (whether it derives from within musical practices or is brought in from without), it is important to keep in mind that music analysis is a form of storytelling. It’s a way of explaining how different aspects of musical processes seem to work, or what different listening perspectives reveal. Music theorist Edward T. Cone described certain musical experiences as similar to reading (and rereading) detective stories.[5] Another theorist, James K. Randall, tried to make writing about music “be more like music” by incorporating musical techniques like rhythmic accumulation and counterpoint into the very act of writing.[6] Yet another theorist, Marion Guck, considers the very act of analyzing music as one of inventing musical “fictions” that narrate metaphorically what seems to be transpiring in the music.[7] There are endless ways to tell stories about how music goes, and music theory helps us engage a broad variety of them as well as imagine new ones.
(7) Interpretation involves trust. I mean this in at least two ways. If music theory, as a form of storytelling, involves interpreting musical expressions, then when we engage someone else’s analysis we need to learn to trust that they are acting in good faith, that their story represents a thoughtful account of their own experience hearing the music. In addition, since much music theory aims at helping performers make sense of the music they are working on, they also must learn to trust each others’ stories, each others’ analytic or interpretive perspectives. What this means is:
(8) Interpretation is a continuous process of negotiation. Music theory is a tool that helps frame new interpretive ideas, which conjoin with existing ones in a continuous process of connecting, pulling apart, and reconnecting. As performers develop a collective sense of how they want to interpret a musical expression, they negotiate: with each other, with theories, with the music, with innumerable possible contexts. There are two interwoven forces at work here: keeping the question at all times open (recall that there are many right answers), while also striving to reach some kind of provisional agreement to ensure performance success. Likewise with analytic discussions outside of performance practices, like classroom discussions of hearing strategies. In these cases it is less a question of provisionally agreement than proselytizing such that others find value in your interpretation, while simultaneously listening thoughtfully to others’ interpretations and seeking value in them. This takes us back to the “what else?” question. Not only are there many right answers, but they can co-exist and mutually enrich one another.
(9) The personal is political. This second-wave feminist anthem should never be far from our thought. Not to coopt it and neutralize it by stripping away layers of important historical-political meaning, but (1) to reinforce that anything one does or says has resonances that matter beyond the action or statement, and (2) to remind us always to keep in mind the human behind the idea, not to simply engage the idea but also the one sharing it.
Music theory comes from the body, from one’s specific situated perspective. I can only hear with my ears; you with yours. Your thoughts, as mine, are products of your specific history of experiences, your cultural contexts, your relationships, and as such evolve in highly personal ways. Bodies, experiences, perspectives, relations: ideas, including music-theoretical ones are highly personal, so to take the idea seriously is to take the human behind the idea equally seriously. (And, conversely, to recognize that there is always a human behind the idea is a call to consider the idea thoughtfully in the first place.) Music theorist John Rahn describes how music theory can form an interpersonal conduit, using two hypothetical characters listening to the same music but each having their own personal experience of it. He suggests that what music theory does is allow each of them to communicate their experience (which he calls “m”) to the other: “This is the domain of music theory: the construction of the interpersonal m.”[8]
(10) Theory is everywhere. Music analysis is not just something done by “professional” music theorists. When a string quartet deliberates over how to interpret a difficult passage, when a funk band or hip hop producer methodically works out how to get an ensemble groove just right, when a sitar guru patiently repeats a melodic gesture for her student to gradually assimilate: these are all just as much acts of theorizing as are ascribing formal labels to a sonata-form composition. Theory (musical or otherwise) is not something to fear, but rather to embrace, to enjoy, and to use. Remember that music theory is itself a creative practice, that it does not seek “truth” so much as rich modes of sense-making, and that it is first of all communicative. As a form of communication it does require some buy-in: it takes time and will to understand new concepts and use new terminology.
I urge the reader to observe many of these themes in action in a wonderful recent essay by music theorist Noriko Manabe, on Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright.”[9] In this essay Manabe examines aspects of musical structure using methods familiar to music theorists (like comparing various heard criteria to consider how a musical passage might be felt metrically) but then extending and transforming them in highly creative ways. She uses tools from outside music theory (for example, phonetic analysis) to make subtle suggestions about how to interpret a lyrical anomaly in Lamar’s song. She carefully engages many extramusical contexts, from “Alright’s” music video to its function in the album’s longer narrative arc, from histories of race relations in Compton and elsewhere to nuanced considerations of black American rhetoric, and draws them into her analysis. She interprets other music-theoretical perspectives, not just of this song but of contemporary rap and hip-hop more broadly. And much more. There are many lessons in Manabe’s essay, through which we can learn to hear Lamar and his co-creators, community voices, historical arcs, social themes, and many different music-theoretical personae, all from multiple perspectives. Can all music theory do this, potentially? I’d like to think so, and I’m interested in pursuing the idea much further to see where it can go.
Warm thanks to Poundie Burstein and Tanya Kalmanovitch for their comments on the first draft of this essay.
Chris Stover (www.chrisstovermusic.com) is a composer, trombonist, and scholar.
Notes
[1] This idea is most fully developed in Rancière’s book La Mésentente, translated into English by Allison Ross as Disagreement (University of Minnesota Press, 1995). Rancière draws on Aristotle’s distinction between logos (meaningful speech) and phone (noise), with the former identified exclusively with human communication. To refuse to hear what someone says as logos, then, is to relegate them to the sub-human: this move has been extremely common in geopolitical discourse in recent decades.
[2] See Donna Haraway’s remarkable recent volume Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthuluscene (Duke University Press, 2016) and Naomi Klein’s On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal (Allen Lane, 2019).
[3] The idea that art connects with the world differently than does truth comes from Friedrich Nietzsche (for example, his provocative, and frequently misinterpreted, suggestion that “we possess art lest we perish from truth” (Will to Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, Vintage Books [1967], 435). The notion that the task of art is to create (or reveal) affects and percepts comes from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy (translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, Columbia University Press, 1994).
[4] This passage is found in Massumi’s Translator’s Foreword to Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), xv.
[5] Edward T. Cone, “Three Ways of Reading a Detective Story: Or a Brahms Intermezzo,” The Georgia Review 31 no. 3 (1977), 554–574.
[6] James K. Randall, Compose Yourself: A Manual for the Young (Open Space, [1972] 1995).
[7] Marion Guck, “Analytical Fictions” (Music Theory Spectrum 16 no. 2, 1994, 217–230).
[8] John Rahn, “Repetition,” in Music Inside Out: Going Too Far in Musical Essays (G+B Arts, 2001), 12.
[9] Noriko Manabe, “We Gon’ Be Alright? The Ambiguities of Kendrick Lamar’s Protest Anthem” (Music Theory Online 25 no. 1, 2019).
