Tarasti, Music Models Through Ages - A Semiotic Interpretation

Music Models Through Ages: A Semiotic Interpretation Author(s): Eero Tarasti Source: International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jun., 1986), pp. 3-28 Published by: Croatian Musicological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/836621 . Accessed: 05/07/2014 20:03 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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E. TARASTI,

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MUSIC MODELS THROUGH AGES: A SEMIOTIC INTERPRETATION UDC: 78.01:781.1

EERO TARASTI

Original Scientific Paper Izvorni znanstveni rad Received: October 15, 1985 Prispjelo: 15. listopada 1985. Accepted: April 7, 1986 Prihvadeno: 7. travnja 1986.

University of Helsinki, Department of Musicology, Vironkatu 1, 00170 HELSINKI, Finland

ABSTRACT The article consists of two parts: in the first one methodological tools are prepared for what follows in the second part, namely the comparison of different models of music historical, as well as aesthetical thought. Thus, the essay deals with the rationality of music history, the mutual relations of musical aesthetics and history. Theoretically speaking, two different ways of seeing and conceiving music are distinguished using Levi-Strauss's and into lived-in-models division

thought-of-models of human cultural life. Our question then is, whether musical history is a 'lived-lin-model' i.e. whether there is really a 'progress' (Burney) and development in the series of musical events and facts, or whethet the rationality of musical changes are only due to 'thought-of-models' which the history writer or aesthetician brings there. In the latter case musical history would be reduced to a certain kind of narratlivity (Erzdhlbarkeit, by Carl Dahlhaus).

We may start by posing a direct and simple - and perhaps a naive - question: what is music history? Is it a typical thought-of-model (Levi-Strauss 1958:347-348), constructed by a researcher, a writer of music history in order to create contfinuity and coherence for a series of events and musical phenomena which would otherwise seem to be detached, incoherent and discontinuous? Or is music history really a lived-in-model, based upon the experilence of musi,cal subjects and aimed at shaping different phases of musical communication, i.e. the views of the composer,

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the sender of a musical message, the performer or, finally, the receiver? In this latter case one might, accordingly, speak of music history as a particular experience, emerging at a given phase in musical communication, at a certain moment (as when a style changes abruptly and a former movement with its intonations is denied, or when one consciously and deliberately returns to an older style: see, for example, the influences of Bach and Handel in Mozart and Beethoven, or Stravinsky's neoclassicism). Nevertheless, the problem stil] remains of whether this view of music history as an experience is, in the first place, too limiting. Would we really be justified in speaking of music history solely at the moments when we feel the presence of history, for example when Musik ilber Musik is composed, or when we evidently consider that we have at a concert, say, listened to some epoch-making work or, in the worst case, have recognized some work as faded, as having only historical interest, but without anything to say to modern times? It seems that music history as an experience would easily become degraded into a sort of subcategory of musico-aesthetic experience, where the aesthetic Gegenwdrtigkeit (Dahlhaus 1977:13) is not fully realized. According to Carl Dahlhaus, the essential tension between musical history and aesthetics lies in the fact that a musical work, when belonging to history, forms a document from a previous age; while as an aesthetic phenomenon it is experienced by a listener as fresh, expressive and meaningful in the present. Thus it may seem that music history as an experience would merge into its exactly opposite pole, aesthetics, and would consequently lose its own inherent characteristics. The only conclusion to be drawn is that music history as a musical and operational lived-in-model seems to be too restricted. Evidently music history is also a thought-of-model, a sort of interpretational scheme by which we organize the events of our musical past according to certain criteria. In this case, we are faced with new types of problems: is there in the musical events, the data (it is not yet necessary to define more closely what is here understood by a musical datum) something like 'a musical development'? Does the concept of progress, used by Charles Burney in his musical. history (1789, 1935), have any empirical justification? Or is this kind of order always and exclusively a function of an organizing consciousness, do we bring this order always with us? If so, music history is something rather arbitrary and depends on the musical model assumed by each era, in order to articulate its musical past. There would not exist any music history in an objective sense. In this way we would finally elevate the aesthetic principle of Gegenwdrtigkeit above everything else. Accordingly, when we read a music history written by Sir John Hawkins, Fetis or Ambros, what we do, in fact, is only read certain interpretations, aesthetic views, which try to legitimate by disguising their discourse as an objective and impartial narrative of historical data, composers and their music.

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One of the basic human needs is undoubtedly to create continuity and predictability in life, to replace the unsure state of enthropy by redundancy. Against the chaotic overview of music history, its discontinuous enthropy, even elementary schoolbooks provide neat distinctions into periods with characteristic features manifest i!n all the arts. Other means have also been used, it is true, to find the underlying thread of music history. Jacques Chailley, for example, reasons that the history of Western art music, in fact, follows the adoption of the invervals of the overtone series, in the order in which they emerge in the series: the age of octave and fifth lasted thousands of years; the third was accepted as a consonance and an element of music only at the end of the Middle Ages; the minor seventh was taken into usage a hundred years later, atonal music meant the acceptance of minor seconds and major sevenths, and now composers experiment with micro-intervals which can be produced by synthesizers (Chailley 1977:23). What is interesting is that the further one goes in the overtone series, the shorter the historical periods become; if the continuously accelerating progress were followed toi its end, we would already have inevitably arrived at the end of all musical development. This is one way to make music history - on a certain level - rational. What is involved in Chailley's model, after all, is a natural principle provided by physics, which musical systems of various ages would apparently unconsciously follow in their development. However, it is as useless to try to prove this model right, as to ponder the question whether tonality is a perceptual, biologically rooted principle common to all human beings. Music in all its modes of exiistence is, of course, a remarkably more complicated and subtle phenomenon. Our fundamental question would thus be: is there a rationality, common to all periods, all musical experiences and practices, which would help us to compare historically different musical works, composers, whole musical cultures and societies with each other? Are there, or can one conceptually determine, dimensions which would form a basis for a sort of universal music model, naturally not realized in any concrete case in their full extent, perhaps, but forming a kind of ideal type or paradigm, whereby the diachrony of music history could suddenly be interpreted as a synchrony? Our question can be further specified: if such a rationality is found, is it based merely upo'n the way in which a music historiographer organizes his discourse and speaks about musical data - in other words, is the existence of music history only due to the phenomenon which Dahlhaus calls Erzdhlbarkeit (1977:80) but which we may call by another term from a different research tradition, namely narrativity? There is every reason to suppose that the narrative model is a strong one, probably one of the strongest models created in Western thinking and art, and it is by its character both a thought-of and a lived-in model. Our.music, as well as our talk about music, seems often to follow certain narrative principles, which were generalized during the classical

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period, and which persist even in the present century. The whole of XXth century modernism has sought to destroy and sweep away the narrative model from people's consciousness, but without any convincing success. If modernism in this century has any common denominator, it is undoubtedly precisely anti-narrativity (or 'anti-illusionism', to use a term from Brecht; or 'ostranenie', alienation, to refer to the Russian formalists). The same holds true, by and large, for any musical research which declares itself to be an 'objective' science dealing only with facts. First, one has to remember that a scientific discourse which claims to be objective, universal and non-subjective, is itself based upon the usage of certain discourse mechanisms (see: Greimas: Semantique structurale, p. 153-154), by which it creates an illusion of realism, the fiction of a language telling us about reality 'just as ilt is'. Obviously, this way in which a discourse pretends to be objective corresponds to deep epistemes of our cultural era. However, the structuralists have just discovered that we are guided by certain systems of thinking which rule over all our actions, oblige us to say certain things according to the automatisms of certain codes, and determine what reality is. Lotman's view of Freud was that he did not discover the unconscious but that the unconscious is a creation of our own culture, and not a discovery in the sense that some new continent, island or planet can be found and charted (Uspenski & al. 1973:3-4). All this holds true also for music: when Hildesheimer tells us that he reveals to us the real Mozart (Hildesheimer 1980) and his view is transmitted to millions of theatre- and cinema-goers, via Schaffer's and Forman's Amadeus, he refers to Freud as his scientific authority without noticing himself the interpretational nature of the whole doctrine (this is not to be understood as an objection to Freudinspired art theories as such). In fact, Hildesheimer organizes Mozart's life according to classical narrative principles - following the general actantial model which was fiound by the Russian formalists lat the beginning of this century and later formulated by Greimas in its currently known form with six factors: sender, receiver, subject, object, helper and opponent. (How naively well this model fits Schaffer's interpretation of Mozart's life: Amadeus, sender - Leopold Mozart, receiver - humanity, subject object - music, helper - Paron wan Swieten, opponent - Salieri). It is very difficult to get rid of the narrative model! It is not possible, either, to find any satisfactory continuity for the delineating of music history by pointing out the usual genetic relations between different works of a composer, or the works of different composers. Mostly, what is involved is only a new variant of the narrative model, particularly regarding the relationship sender-subject. For example Erik Tawaststjerna's Sibelius biography tells of the composer's strong emotional reaction to a performance of Bruckner's Third d-minor symphony in Vienna. Moreover, there is an evident structural connection between the main themes of the Kullervo Symphony and Bruckner's Third Symphony

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(Tawaststjerna 1976:110). Does this mean that there is a genetic relation between these two works? Or to return to Mozart: the small Fantasy in d-minor for piano (KV 397) is almost like the whole of Don Giovanni in a nut-shell. We may well hear the immobility of the Stone Geast in the chromatically descending choral passage in the mediating section, or the frivolous carelessness of Don Giovanni in the allegro at the end. According to Charles Rosen, Mozart's instrumental music often follows the dramatic development of his operas, and the expressivity of his iinstrumental pieces is in fact a sort of dialogue of opera personages, the musical development being drama-like (Rosen 1976:296). Even so, we would hardly say that the small d-minor Fantasy influenced the creation of Don Giovanni. Rather, the phenomenon should be called auto-oommunication, a semiotic term meaning the internal dialogue or monologue within a composer's consciousness (Gasparow 1974, also Tarasti 26). In what follows, I shall try to search for the 'rationality' of music models of music history by comparing different aesthetico-theoretical created at different times. Whether these models are, in turn, only rationalizations and intellectual justifications of musical practices at a given period - as music histories often are - is hard to determine here. In a certain sense our enterprise will be, it is true, an effort to reduce music history to aesthetics, while the method by which this is done will be semiotical. The fact is that before we can start to confront those enormously varied sources and 'music models', we must already have in our minds, as a sort of initial hypothesis, a kind of universal model for all music, a model of what music ultimately is. The empirist could argue here: would it not be reasonable to form such a general model only after we have gathered enough evidence from different musical practices? Nevertheless, music history constitutes an endless and unarticulated store, where we can find something only it we know what we are searching for. Another counter-argument would be: would not the way we are going to detach musical ideas and models from their original historical contexts, from their complex ties with the epistemes of the age, its social and cultural history, lead us easily to false conclusions? The concept of affect of the baroque era cannot be equated with the sentimentality of romanticism. To this we may answer that we are not going to proceed in that way. Instead, we compare conceptions of different eras for music history, as a reading model by which we interpret musical thinkers of various ages. Accordingly, our hypothetically universal music model is not an empirical model - it is not a lived-in-model - but expressly a theoretical construction, with a metalanguage and discourse of its own. In this regard my epistemological choice is the same as in the Greimasian school of semiotics. >This kind of discourse cannot appear like empirical discourses as an objective discourse, as a 'pure' description of facts, since the aim is to form a model of the object of study, to project thils model onto its object and again back to the discourse of the research. This procedure is based upon the idea that the

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reference of the study is not the relation to a reality conceived as being outside the discourse, but the relation to the model which the study has of its cbject.

passions

> narrativity

There is naturaly much music in which the narrative level is not attained: one may say that this level is created through three kinds of structures and processes, called in the Greimasian model discursivization, i.e. three possible embrayages/d6brayages (for which Roman Jakobson used the term shifter) (Greimas 1979: 119-121). What is involved here is the working of temporal, spatial and actantial categories in musical discourse. For example, the aforementioned Dante sonata by Liszt represents music where

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the narrative model functions and where 'despair' and the powers of hell at the beginning are later replaced by the principle of 'hope' and the light of paradise. This simple narrative program in music could be described using the categories mentioned above: the actantial category of 'personage' appears in the way how Liszt's theme serves as a sort of musical fictive subject, a musical actant, personage and hero with which the listener can identify himself; the temporal category contributes to the time-shape of this actant-theme: first, in the restless, jerking a'nd panting alternation of pairs of sixteenth notes in the 'despair' section, and particularly in the absence of a clearly-marked verse boundary (the performer is expected to add it as a sort of suppressed respiration - this is not an ordinary theme with a clear-cut melodic, song-like structure, but something which deliberately goes against this expectation) in the 'despair' section, and again in the rhythmic expansion when it expresses 'hope'; the spatial category is manifested by the way the 'despair' motif dwells in a low register, erring back and forth chromatically with minor harmonies; in the 'hope' motif the music moves into the luminous upper register and a major key. The way musical narrativity precisely emerges from a series of emotions (caused by the music itself) forms a principle also used by several applied techniques of music, such as musical therapy. According to the state of mind of the person under therapy, and also the level of his musical culture, a series of works or passages from works are selected for him, leading him through certain emotional states according to a certain program (Guilhot-Jost-Lecourt 1979:48). This is manifestly music being organized in accordance with the narrative principle - it is, in fact, exactly the same process as is used in many compositions based on narrativity. If one asks, for example, why Beethoven did not take as the slow movement of his Waldstein sonata the piece he originally planned to use there, namely Andante favori, but composed a new movement titled Introduzione, the answer surely is that he attempted to subordinate the whole sonata to one narrative program, which necessarily required a kind of 'bridge' between the rhythmically energetic character of the first movement and the Klangfarben-theme with its pedal effects in the last movement. The influence of a similar type of integrating narrative principle is to be felt also in Schubert's Wanderer-fantasy, where different movements are articulated, it is true, according to classical musico-syntactical genres - sonata and variation forms, scherzo and fugue - but where the movements are temporally united under one dominant narrative program in such a way that the boundaries of the movements are weakened and actantially there is only one main theme, which is varied. d'Alembert remarked of the purely instrumental music of his time that it was on the threshold of narrativity when it expressed certain emotional series. When discussing Muzio Clementi's sonata Didone abbandonata in his essay De la liberte de la musique he says (d'Alembert 1821:554). >,All that purely instrumental music without form and object does not speak to the spirit neither to the soul, and well deserves to be faced with

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Fontanelle's question: Sonata, what do you want of me? Composers of instrumental music produce only useless noise when they do not have in their minds, like the famous Tartini had, some action or expression to be painted. Some sonatas, but very few, do possess this desirable ability, which is so important in order to please people of good taste. We only mention one of them, entitled Didone abbandonata. It is a very beautiful monologue; one perceives there how pain, hope and despair follow one other quickly and distinctly in all their degrees and nuances; one might even use it for a very lively and pathetic scene on the stage. But such pieces are rarities.to whom even Egyptian hieroglyphics are easy.? Music is for Burney a discourse of its own, whose development he follows country by country and genre by genre. He pays only limited attention to the technology of music; man-machine communication is not included in his model, though he introduces the instruments of antiquity and even gives to one of his chapters the title >Music after the Invention of PrintingMusic is an innocent luxury, unnecessary, indeed, to our existence, but a great improvement and gratification of the sense of hearing. It consists, at present, of Melody, Time, Consonance and Dissonance. By melody is implied a series of sounds more fixed, and generally more lengthened, than those of common speech; arranged with grace, and, with respect to Time of proportional lengths, such as the mind can easily measure, and the voice express. These sounds are regulated by a scale, consisting of tones and semitones; but admit a variety of arrangement as unbounded as imagination. Consonance is derived from a coincidence of two or more sounds, which being heard together, by their agreement and union, afford to ears capable of judging and feeling, a delight of a most grateful kind. The combination and succession of Concords or Sounds in Consonance, constitute Harmony; as the selection and texture of Single Sounds produce Melody.

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Dissonance is the want of that agreeable union between two or more sounds, which constitutes Consonance: in musical composition it is occasioned by the suspension or anticipation of some sound before, or after, it becomes a Concord. It is the Dolce piccante of Music, and operates on the ear as a poignant sauce on the plate: it is a zest, without which the auditory sense would be as much cloyed as the appetite, if it had nothing to feed on but sweets. Of musical tones the most grateful to the ear are such as are produced vocal organ. And, next to singing, the most pleasing kinds are those the by which approach the nearest to vocal; such as can be sustained, swelled, and diminished, at pleasure. Of these, the first in rank are such as the most excellent performers produce from the Violin, Flute and Hautbois. If it were to be asked what instrument is capable of affording the greatest effects? I should answer, the Organ; which can not only imitate a number of other instruments, but is so comprehensive as to possess the power of a numerous orchestra. It is, however, very remote from perfection, as it wants expression, and a more perfect intonation. With respect to excellence of Style and Composition, it may perhaps be said that to practised ears the most pleasing Music is such as has the merit of novelty, added to refinement, and ingenious contrivance; and to the ignorant, such as is most familiar and common.< Burney's 'definitions' reveal many interesting aspects of his music model: first, the specificity of music is already defined there and clear normative requirements are set regarding almost all the parameters of music. The task of music is limited solely to producing pleasure (compared to this, the principles of Sir John Hawkins seem to be considerably more serious and 'structural' when he says in his music history that he wanted to: >>... reprobate the vulgar notion that [music's] ultimate end is to excite mirth; and, above all, to demonstrate that its principles are founded in certain general and universal laws, into which all that we discover in the material world, of harmony, symmetry, proportion, and order, seem to be resolvable.* (Allen 1962:77) Burney states quite directly which tones are more pleasant, and bases his view ulon a sort of earlier variant of the intonation theory: in fact, the myth of the song-like character of music is already manifest here. On the other hand, Burney is conscious of the existence of musical competence. Where musical competence was limited in Al-Farabi's model to the modality savoir, likewise Burney announces that his 'definitions' concern only the 'trained' or competent listener. The justification of this competence itself is not questioned, but he admits later in his work that >,There is a degree of refinement, delicacy and invention which lovers of simple and common music can no more comprehend than the Asiatics harmony. ... The Chinese, allowed to be the most ancient and longest civilised people existing, after repeated trials, are displeased with harmony, or Music in parts; it is too confused and complicated for ears accustomed to simplicity.< (Burney 1935, book III: 11)

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From the point of view of our generative model Burney's definitions seem to stop at the real level of music, although the concept of musical competence does provide it with a certain depth. In the second volume of his study Burney examines the principles of musical criticism, and says there that music history and even music in general cannot be evaluated and reflected upon without a sort of music model, which he calls 'principles'. These are necessary for judging both compositions and performances. His list of essential factors is a mixture of musico-syntactic but at the same time also 'modal' elements, in the sense discussed earlier. A perfect composition consists, according to Burney, of the following ingredients: >,melody, harmony, modulation, invention, grandeur, fire, pathos, taste, grace and expression, while the executive part would require neatness, accent, energy, spirit, and feeling; and in a vocal performer, or instrumental, where the tone depends on the player, power, clearness, sweetness; brilliancy of execution in iquick movements, and touching expression in slow.< (Burney 1935, book III: 8) What is interesting in this list is that the properties are so far from each other - contrary to our universal model in which we supposed that the same modalities might be used to depict both musical enunciation and the act of enunciating, the work as well as its performance. A composition can only be elevated to the level of passions when all the above-mentioned criteria in composition and performance have been fulfilled and 'polished into passion', as Burney puts it. Romanticism In many senses Burney's model already refers to the narrative model which flourished during romanticism; the view of musical communication as persuading the receiver-subject, as guiding him according to the abilities of the composer and the performer, so that the receiver is subordinated to their dominance - this is there quite clearly. A good illustration of how the life of a composer forms the starting-point also for the modalization of music, is provided by the composer biographies in the romantic era. For example, as late as in Romain Rolland (1921) we find several examples of this kind of inference in his Beethoven study: music is seen as a direct continuation of the ihner and outer events of the composer's life: >>This sombre melancholy is obvious in some works from this period: in the Pathetique sonata and, above all, in the Largo of the third piano sonata, op. 10.< (Rolland 1921: 17) This is the ad hoc hypothesis of a romantic biographer, which allows him to explain away all the counter-evidence: >It is curious that the same characteristics cannot be seen everywhere, that beside these works so many others, like for example the smiling Septetto (1800) and the bright First symphony (in C major 1800) are full of youthful nonchalance. The soul evidently needs time in order to get used to pain. It needs so much joy that if it does not have it, it creates it.< (Rolland

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1921:17-18) At the level of the discourse itself, a biography of a composer takes shape in a form which could be analysed, in Vladimir Propp's manner, into functions, stereotype actions and events, such as childhood, musical influence, anecdotes describing the exceptional traits which appear in an early phase, the fight for success, diseases, travels, premature death, glorification. It is naturally obvious that not all functions necessarily appear in the same biography, but that the above list forms an ideal paradigm from which different types of composer life are realized according to the scheme of self-destruction (Mozart), glorification (Wagner), emigrant composer (Stravinsky), national hero (Sibelius, Villa-Lobos) and other models. In fact, one could certainly also discover a composer's actantial narrative model; just as in folktales besides the hero there is a false hero who is then uncovered, so we may see by the side of a composer genius a false genius - which might be illustrated, for example, by the comparison between Beethoven and Mozart in Hildesheimer's Mozart biography (Hildesheimer 1980:62-64). On the other hand, the 'narrativity' of romantic music has its roots also in its connection with the literary culture; even in compositions which were absolute music, one presumed that there were literary programs in the background. Arnold Schering, a late writer of Beethoven-hermeneutics, has, it is true, tried to show the place these programs had in the 'generative model' of a romantic composer (Schering 1936). The presentation of a poetic program was not an end in itself for Beethoven, but served only as an animating force, as a spiritual support for the structure and development of a composition, which occupied the composer only as long as the work to be created was under its influence. But as soon as the work was or was shifted from the virtual and actual to the real level finishedthe program had fulfilled its task and could sink again into darkness. Schering's intention was to show only how the poetical programs chosen by Beethoven had adopted a musical form (Schering 1936:64). In fact one can say that from the point of view of the narrative model there are many parallel ways to describe the 'generative course' of music. The music itself could appear as an illustration of 'the process of becoming', and in this sense it is not surprising that Beethoven's music has been considered as the musical emanation of Hegel's philosophy. The beginning of the Waldstein sonata was already described in the commentaries of the romantic era in terms like ein allmdhliches Werden und Wachsen (Schering 1936:498), and in a certain sense it could be seen to manifest in a musical form how Hegel (1969, part 5:73-74) described 'the emergence of the beginning' in the first volume of his Wissenschaft der Logik. Russolo As we come to the 20th century, where the narrative model of romanticism persistently survives, with modernism a need appears to enlarge the sphere of music both at the level of signifier and that of the signified. To

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a great extent this was a reaction against the previous music model and had its roots in the radical change of the acoustical code in modern technology-dominated life. The view presented by Luigi Russolo in his manifesto The Art of Noises (Russolo 1975), represents precisely this kind of extension of the musical field. Russolo sees the historical development of music in the following, condensed way: Musical art first searched for the soft and bright clearness of sound. Then it started to combine various sounds with the aim of obtaining sweet harmonies. However, nowadays more and more dissonant and strange sound combinations are sought. In this way one is approaching noise sounds. Russolo considers this development to be simultaneous with the quantitative increase in the number of machines participating in work. In the milieu of great cities, as well as in the otherwise silent environment of the countryside, machines produce sounds in such an abundance and variety that pure tone no longer arouses any emotion, being so weak and monotonous. In order to excite our senses music too has looked for more and more complex polyphony and varied timbres and dissonant chords, having musical noise as its ultimate goal (Russolo 1975:36). A man from the 18th century could never have endured the dissonant intensity of our modern orchestras: on the contrary, in Russolo's opinion, our ears enjoy it since they are acquainted with all the noises of modern life. Musical sound is, in other words, too limited in the quality and variety of its timbre. Even our most complicated orchestras can always be reduced to four or five categories of sound, i.e. string instruments, plucked instruments, brass, woodwind and percussion instruments. This vicious circle, however, has to be broken at any price, and the endless multitude of noise sounds has to be conquered. Is there anything so ridiculous in the world as twenty people multiplying the plaintive mewing of violins? That is why it is infinitely more pleasant to listen to the noises of tramways, cars etc., than the Eroica or Pastorale symphonies (Russolo 1975:37). Russolo (1975:40), nevertheless, denies that this new music should borrow its elements from the sphere of non-music: noises must not only be imitated but they have to be created and invented, and precisely such as to affect the emotions through a particular acoustic pleasure, when the artist can, in turn, combine them according to his artistic will. Russolo (1975:40-41) presents six classes of noises, which a futurist orchestra should be able to produce: 1) Grondements, Eclats, Bruits d'eau tombante. Bruits de plongenon, Mugissements 2) Sifflements, Ronflements, Renaclements 3) Murmures, Marmonnements, Bruissements, Grommellements, Grognements, Glouglous 4) Stridences, Craquements, Bourdonnements, Cliquetis, Pi6tinements

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5) Bruits de percussion sur metal, bois, peau, pierre, terre-cuite, etc. 6) Voix d'hommes et d'animaux; cris, gemissements, hurlements, rires, rales, sanglots. These constitute, according to Russolo, the fundamental noises; others are only their combinations. This kind of new orchestra can produce the most varied new sound-emotions through imaginative combinations of the noises, accordingly, a special taste and passion for the understanding of noises takes shape gradually. Noises must be liberated from their sources and become abstract elements, which the will of a composer can elaborate and transform into an emotional part of a work of art. In his compositional aesthetics Russolo thus, in fact, goes back to the old model of romanticism and the generative course of the emotional content of music. But by renewing the selection of musical signifiers he believes it will be possible to reform also the signified. In reality, the Cartesian theory of passions returns in his music model but at the level of signifiers. In other senses too, and in its experimental character, his model is similar to Kircher's in introducing new machines and instruments, bruiteurs. Cage The model elaborated by Russolo is taken to its extreme by John Cage, who entirely rejects the modality of will of a composer. He consistently represents this century's post-narrative ways of thinking, the attempts to get rid of lineary-syntagmatic programs and to open the musical paradigm to new alternatives (Charles 1981). In John Cage's conversations with Daniel Charles this view is clearly manifested. The new anti-narrative model which he represents has often been erroneously interpreted as if it excluded all previous music models. When Cage was asked whether he would agree to conduct all Beethoven's symphonies, he answered: >I would agree if I could use enough musicians to conduct, in one single concert, all nine symphonies superimposed!< (Charles 1981:98) Cage rejects the negative aesthetic criteria that noises are inappropriate in the service of music, and says that a new aesthetic attitude should accept anything whatever that happens in music. The aesthetic 'devoir' and the normativity in our universal model should be totally rejected. If Cage had referred to the Asafievian idea of the intonation store, it would have included all the sounds of the environment! Consequently, he does not make any distinction between music and non-music. On the other hand Cage denies the existence of the 'generative course' altogether: >Sounds have no goal! They are, and that's all. They live. Music is the life of sounds, this participation of sounds in life, which may become but not voluntarily - a participation of life in sounds. In itself, music does not obligate us to anything.. (Charles 1981:87)

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That is why Cage does not accept, for example, melody at all, since as soon as there is melody there is a will and a desire to bend sounds to that will. He particularly sets within parentheses the modality of 'will' and everything related to its energetic thought. His principle is detachment or, to quote Charles Morris, letting things happen (Morris 1956). As a composer he is not interested in the will to subordinate the tones to some narrative program, which the listener would be persuaded to follow. x>They bend sounds to what composers want. But for the sounds to obey, they have to already exist. They do exist. I am interested in the fact that they are there, rather than in the will of the composer. A 'correct understanding' doesn't interest me. With a music-process, there is no 'correct understanding' anywhere. And consequently, no all-pervasive 'misunderstanding' either.^ (Charles 1981: 150) Accordingly, Cage also rejects the idea of music as communication: in his view the very concept of communication presupposes that there is something to be communicated. Communication always means imposing something, determining something. Instead, in a conversation, a dialogue, this does not hold true, but the participants remain what they are. Cage, as Kircher did in his time, notices that music is in direct contact with the human nerve system. But whereas usually the nerve system is influenced by music, the situation can in fact be reversed: one can produce music with the nerve system. Cage tells about a work by Alvin Lucier where electrodes were attached to the composer's scalp, he closed his eyes and performed other movements, and the performance consisted of alpha-waves which were transmitted through several loudspeakers situated around a kettledrum, a gong or a trash can. The same waves sounded differently through the different resonators, and the audience was hugely delighted by the aspect of 'mystic' participation in the work, since the electrodes could just as well have been attached to anyone's skull. What fascinated Cage in this kind of performance or 'bio'-music was the fact that the performer didn't have to have any particular skill at all, he was no longer needed in the traditional sense as a transmitter on musical communication. (Charles 1981:221) In fact, Cage gives up the whole concept of a structure in the Greimasian sense as an entity based upon two contrary elements. Our thought-of-models are considerably rougher than the lived-in-models of our experience. When we think in opposed pairs, like sound and silence, being and nothingness, we simplify our experience, which is extremely complicated and not reducible to the number two. In Cage's view even when we hear a periodic, repetitive rhythm, we hear something other than the tones themselves. We do not hear the tones as such but the fact that they have been organized. Consequently, he ends with a negation of structure itself. Cage thus excludes from his musical model the contract between composer and listener and everything that can be determined with unchangeable units. In fact, what he accepts is the temporality of music

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in its broadest sense. However, it seems that his music model would lead us most decisively out of music history. In reality, the historicity of music disappears in this last model entirely and merges into the aesthetic Gegenwartigkeit. One may perhaps assume - and this may be stated in conclusion - that music history itself is a phenomenon which emerges in connection with musical change. There is a certain 'normal' speed of events. If music models or intonation stores change more slowly than this ordinary speed, the change remains unnoticed and music models adopt the achronic paradigmatic form. If again change occurs too quickly it is not observed either, and the result is rather the experience of a sort of 'stasis'. This is John Cage's case, since according to him each work and each sound experience must provide its own music model which is different from the previous 'models'. Not without reason, Cage has remarked that all necessary music has already been composed, and all we need is to open ourselves to the 'music' surrounding us. Music history would thus be a phenomenon of a certain speed of change, and accordingly definable as a certain articulation of temporality. To paraphrase McLuhan's words: neither cold nor hot societes have a history, only 'mild' societies possess one.

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Satetak INTERPRETACIJA GLAZBENI MODELI KROZ RAZDOBbJA: SEMA3IOTICKA Clanak se sastoji od dva dijela: u prvome se dijelu pripremaju metodolo?ka oruda za ono gto sli-jedi u drugome dijelu, tj. usporedbu razli6itih modela glazbeno-povijesne i esteti6ke misli. Stoga se 6lanak bavi racionalno9du povijesti glazbe, medusobnim odnosima glazbene estetike i povijesti. Teorijski govore6i, dva se razlidita na6ina videnja i shva6anja glazbe razlikuju upotrebljava ii se L6vi-Straussova podjela na proiivljene i pomitljane modele Ijudske kulture. Nage se pitanje, dakle, postavlja kao: da li je povijest glazbe *proiivljeni modelv, tj. postoji ii zaista >progres< i(Burney) i razvitak u slijedu glazbenih dogadaja i 6injenica, iii se racionalnost glazbenih mijena mo2e pripisati )promisljanim modelima>promigljanemodele(( tijekom na?e glazbene povijesti potrebno je prije svega odrediti neke kategorije, dimenzije glazbenoesteti6ke iii semioti6ke prirode kako bi se kroz razli6ita razdoblja vidjele slidnosti. Te kategorije i pojmovi tvorile bi ono Sto ovdje nazivamo >hipoteti6ki univerzalni model>glazbene raspraveo po sebi, ostaje izvan predmeta ove studije. Hipotetidki univerzalni model uglavnom se temeiji na pretpostavci da glazba tvori neku vrst proizvodnog procesa u onom smislu u kojem A. J. Greimas definira svoj pojam parcours gdn6ratif. Tako razlikujemo u glazbi razine stvarnih, aktualnih i virtualnih stanja koje svako za sebe ima viastite modalitete. U ovome radu uzimamo u obzir samo semantidku a ne i sintakti&u dimenziju glazbe. Misli se da esteti6ki: iii semanti6ki sadriaj glazbe mo2e biti o~blikovan kao proizvodni proces koji zapotinje s modatnostima, a koje, kao neke konfiguracije, tvore ono Rto nazivamo strastima u glazbi. Nadalje, kada se strasti organiziraju u sintagmirki poredak, program iii lanac emocionalnih stanja, onda susre6emo razinu narativnosti u glazbi. Prema ovome, narativnost mora biti smatrana vrlo jakim modelom u povijesti umjetni6ke glazbe Zapada i posebno je cvala u eri romantizma. Nije sludajno da su prve glazbene biografije, koje opisuju iivote kompozitorA sa svojim 6esto sli6nim vrstama narativizacije, i pisanje povijesti glazbe bili u stvari za6eti u tor razdoblju. Sve se to dogadalo u isto vrijeme kada se glazbeni govor po sebi smatralo vrstom naracije. Prirodno je da svi na'i glazbeni modeli ne dostiWu razinu narativnosti: neki se modeli zaustavljaju na njezinu pragu na razini modalnosti (Al-Farabi) iii strasti (Descartes, Kircher), dok neki pokugavaju negirati prevladavaju6u snagu narativnosti nakon romantizma, kao gto je to s Johnom Cageom kao krajnjim sludajem.

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