Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Time, Music and Creation

As creative endeavors go, none are more tied to the notion of time than music. Music is temporal rather than static like a painting or photograph. It is intended to be experienced over time. It takes time for one to fully experience a book or a movie (essentially, story telling in various forms), because time is necessary to communicate the idea that the artist is imparting. In this sense, the art is the idea. But with music, the art is much more than the idea. Reading a composer's transcript of a musical piece can give one an intellectual understanding of the music, such that every note may be committed to memory. In this way, one can "know" a piece of music (the artist's idea) without ever having had an experience of it. Time is a component of music. Concequently, music may only be experienced in time. The art of it, just is the experience of hearing an audible representation of notes over time.

It is interesting to contemplate how malleable the components of music are. Both the representation (instrumentation, timber etc.) and the timing (tempo, rhythm, and time signature) can often be varied to a large degree without the piece losing its identity, that is, it is still recognizable as itself. A good example of this is the experimental time-manipulations of Pachelbell's Canon in D Major by Brian Eno. Eno has had a longstanding interest in time, and its role in music. "Discreet Music" the title piece from the same album, is one of his early forays into "Generative Music" utilizing the (then available) technology of tape looping. Simultanious playback of multiple tape loops of varying legnth, each with pre-recorded "bits" of musical sounds, yeilded in the final recording, a layered effect and a random, rather than structured relationship between musical phrases. Eno used this technique again on a later recording Ambient 1: Music for Airports, which has since been subjected to a process of reverse engineering. A painstaking note-for-note transcription was necessary to facilitate live performance of the piece by the ensemble, Bang On A Can.

Newer, digital technology has spawned musical gadgets that allow musicians to sample and loop playback in a live performance setting. Today I encountered a video of a singer/instrumentalist who skillfully uses this capability to become her own accompanist. Check out Theresa Andersson's live performance on Conan O'Brien's show:



What is evident to me from Theresa Andersson's  performance, in addition to her obvious musical talent and skill, is that she has, in advance, a clear idea in her mind of what the whole of her musical piece should sound like, and she proceeds to assemble the layers of musical performance into that cohesive whole.

What can the human propensity for musical expression and enjoyment tell us about our human nature? Music, like all forms of art, exists first in the mind of an artist, before it is given substance in the world, which allows it to be perceived and appreciated by other minds. One might be tempted to think that "generative music" methods imply that music can come into being by some "evolutionary" process. After all, the music that Brian Eno created with his tape loops was something of a surprise to him...he didn't have that exact sequence of sounds "in mind" when he set his tape loop machines in motion. Just as with natural biology though, the process has nothing to work upon unless there is some input from a mind. Eno had to set up all of the parameters: record and assemble tape loops; set up the playback devices and wire them all through a mixing board to the recorder. It simply doesn't happen without an artist's forethought to set it all into motion.

How about this? Temporal art (we have established that this is what music is), is meant for temporal beings. The ability to conceive of a piece of music, and then perform it (especially a multi-layered performance like Theresa Andersson's), requires an innate sense of time. Materialist science has a great deal of difficulty making any sense of this temporal aspect of human nature--that we have an enduring sense of "I" over time. How can this be, if human beings are merely matter? All material things change over time. The best theory materialist science can come up with is that human beings are not enduring individuals at all, but rather, a succession of separate instances of an "I". How could music, which requires for its appreciation, the apprehension of an ordered-whole through an experience of changes in sound over time, ever be comprehensible by such a being? No, I find it much more likely that the sense of identity-over-time that we all intuitively feel, and that seems to be necessary for our enjoyment of music, must be grounded in something non-material and enduring...the human soul.

Several days ago, I was speaking with my son-in-law, Kelly, who is a computer programmer and a musician, about the generative music project he is currently working on. I am of the same opinion he is, that 'all music is discovered, rather than created.' God is not surprised as Eno was, by what we "create." Any work of art that we create, existed first in the mind of the original Creator, God, who created us, that we might also create. Our works are a mere subset of what God has made by His act of creating us! What Johannes Kepler said of science, is equally applicable to the arts...that we are "thinking God's thoughts after Him." There is a sense in which God, in His omniscience, is cognizant of everything that ever was or will be created by human artists, indeed all of human history, at once, as though it were the content of a book. But God is also temporal--He creates, He communicates, He is in relationship with mankind as well as within His own tri-personal being. These are actions of God, and action assumes a temporal existence.

Exactly how God can be omniscient, eternal and yet temporal, is a mystery I am still contemplating. For now, I am just grateful to Him that in His supreme act of creating, He conceived of a world where privileged creatures as ourselves have been granted the pleasure of having the capacity to discover and enjoy music.

Apparently, that's what He had in mind!

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