Published by The Royal Bank of Canada

The Need for Music

A wise man once said that music is theonly cheap and unpunished rapture onearth. It is that and much more. Itis an aid to living, a shield againstdespair, and a triumph of the humanspirit. Here its nature is explored...

[] "What is the use of music?" a famous Englishjudge once asked. That is a very important ques-tion, even though one might suspect that HisLordship raised it only because he had no ear formusic himself. Music has so many "uses" to peoplethat it is hard to imagine them living without it.Yet it is curious how little thought is ever givento it as a vital force in human affairs.

It is clear that music fills a need deep in thepsyche. This manifests itself soon after birth. Afretful infant will settle down contentedly to thestrains of a lullaby. Long before he can understanda single spoken word, he is profoundly influencedby melody, rhythm and tone.

The ability to make music would seem to be afundamental feature of the human species. Manappeared on this earth as a self-contained musicalinstrument, equipped to sing, hum, whistle, dance,and clap his hands. Making music ranks withmaking fires and using weapons and tools as oneof the activities that initially separated humanbeings from the lower animals. It did more thananything else to set them apart as special, ascen-dant beings.

To build fires and shelters and to hunt withmore than the hands and teeth were essential tothe survival of a thin-skinned, relatively weakcreature. To make music was to strike out beyondthe bare exigencies of existence into a dimensionunknown to the other inhabitants of the earth--that of the spirit or soul.

The human spirit finds its main outlet in art,and music most likely was the world’s first artform. It may also have been the world’s firstscience. Behind all science are curiosity, ingenuity,and an urge to do or know things better. Thesequalities were present in full force as peoplelearned how to make music by artificial means.

It is generally believed that the first musicalinstrument as such was a hollow reed which some-one had the curiosity to blow through. Havingdone so, early man was not content with this pleas-ant effect. He had to see what would happen ifgraduated holes were punched in the reed. Outcame an articulate vocabulary of notes.

Before history was ever recorded, the forerun-ners of the flute, horn, drum, maraca, harp andguitar had been invented (legend has it that thefirst sound box of a guitar was a turtle shell). Theconcept of writing music dawned almost as soonas the concept of writing language. Crude musicalsymbols were chiselled on tablets in the MiddleEast as early as the 2nd millennium B.C.

Why this concentration of effort on somethingthat was not essential to survival? Probablybecause primitive human beings realized thatmusic was not as inessential as it appeared. Al-though they could not touch it, they knew that ithad useful applications. It did something of greatvalue to them: It lightened the burdens of life.

It had the power to change people’s moods, usual-ly for the better. As soldiers have known ever

since, music lifts morale. Under the trying condi-tions of prehistoric times, it must have seemedmarvellous to have available a way to pick up yourspirits when they were weighed down by hardship.Music made people forget their troubles andgenerally feel good before anyone thought ofmaking wine.

Miraculously enough, a song or a rhythmic chantseemed to get work done faster. It took your mindoff your aching back as you dug a hole or harvesteda field. Someone realized that a certain kind ofmusic could inspire a man to face death in battlewith a heady mixture of confidence, courage andferocity. Whoever composed the first patriotic (orin those days, tribal) song forged a mighty politicalweapon. "Give me the making of the songs of anation, and I care not who makes the laws," theScottish patriot Andrew Fletcher wrote.

Music helped to perpetuate the folklore of a peo-ple by making the words of poems and balladseasier to remember. It also blended easily withdrama and comedy. Culture, as we now know it,was on the march to a musical beat.

Music had a role in the mating process which itplays to this day. It was a civilized person indeedwho composed the first love song. It was used, too,to worship the gods, as it still is. No wonder;primitive people believed that the gods had be-stowed it on them as a gift.

Men as knowledgeable as the Greek philos-ophers of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. believedthat it was of divine provenance. They thought of itas one of the disciplines controlled by the goddessesthey called the muses, hence its name. This did notprevent them from closely examining its nature.They were acutely conscious of the sway it heldover behaviour through its influence on people’sfeelings.

In line with the Chinese sage Confucius, Platoregarded music as a critical element in the uni-versal scheme of things. He believed that rhythmand melody ideally should be in concert with themovements of the celestial bodies, which lent orderto human affairs. This rendered him somethingof a philistine in his tastes, preferring plain andsimple modes of music. These days we might saythat Plato liked schmaltz.

Like many the social critic since, Plato wouldcheerfully have banned types of music that heconsidered corrupting. He viewed "far out" music

as a threat to the body politic. "Musical innovationis full of danger to the State, for when the modesof music change, the laws of the State alwayschange with them," he warned. In this the antiquephilosopher might have been a modern conserva-tive inveighing against the degeneracy of rock ordisco music -- or, earlier in this century, of boogie-woogie or jazz.

The intellectual world, it seems, has always beendivided between those who overestimate the socialimpact of music and those who dismiss it asmeaningless. The Greek philosopher Democrituswas of the latter school, declaring that it arose outof superfluity. Twenty-two hundred years later,like-minded social scientists would find themselvesable to write thousand-page tomes on the presentand future condition of the world without accord-ing a passing nod to this potent influence on howpeople feel and act.

Music gives the worlda unique new language

If men have always associated music with thegods, it is partly because they saw it as a form ofcommunication between the earthly and the ethe-real. Great sacred music almost has a divinity of itsown. The Abbot Angelo Grillo expressed this nicelyin the early 17th century when he wrote to ClaudioMonteverdi thanking him for a copy of his latestbook of madrigals: "I can assure you of the eminentworth of your melodious gift; it seems to me tobelong not so much to the earth on which I acceptit, as to the heaven in which I listen to it."

That was during the Renaissance, when many ofthe guiding ideas were derived from ancientGreece. Among these was Plato’s theory that musicshould be controlled lest it lead to voluptuous-ness and immorality. Church leaders--and mostof the serious music was played in church- werewary of effects of music on social mores. Theyassigned it a distinctly secondary role to the wordsof the liturgy, and placed restrictions on the abilityof composers to experiment and innovate.

Outside the churches, however, music wasthriving. Minstrels drew crowds to hear them sing

their ballads to hummable melodies. No secularceremony was complete without music, and therewere always dances on festive occasions. Theat-rical performances often took the form of "musi-cals" which the clergy condemned as profane.

Music burst the bonds they had tried to imposeon it. Popular tunes crept in among the intricaciesof the Gregorian chant. "Instruments of the devil"such as the pan-pipes, fiddel and cornett had to beallowed on church property to cope with the grow-ing richness of orchestration. The restrictions onform gradually disappeared.

The most significant progress in the art duringthe Renaissance came in the musical "writing"called notation. For the first time, a composer wasable to send a written copy of his work to someonewho could play it more or less exactly as he intend-ed it to sound. In the 1320s the French bishop,composer and musical theorist Philippe de Vitryadded bar signs to the system of notes on parallellines devised 200 years earlier. The result, accord-ing to The Larousse Encyclopedia of Music, wasthat "composers found themselves in possession ofa notation that could satisfy all requirements andwhich comes close enough to our modern ideas."

Music had given the world a unique new lan-guage- one that could be mutually understoodamong people who might not understand oneanother in speaking or writing. It has been saidto the point of triteness that music is the inter-national language. In the case of musical notation,this is literally true.

Technology is harnessedto the pursuit of beauty

A golden age of music followed the Renaissancein the 18th century. Chamber music and operacame into their own. Composers like JohannSebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel laidthe stylistic groundwork for classical music as wenow know it. The strides made in musical formwere at least paced by developments in what wewould now term "hard technology." While Bachand the rest were writing their immortal music,Gottfried Silbermann was building his magnificentorgans. Antonio Stradivari and his fellow Italianartisans were raising the craft of string instru-ment-making to a pinnacle never touched since.

It is interesting for a present-day person tocontemplate the technological priorities that thenprevailed. War was still being waged with swords,muskets and cannons that had not changed great-ly in 300 years. Long-range transportation re-mained the preserve of beasts of burden and sailingships. Industry ran primarily on hand labour. Yetin the pursuit of beauty through music, there hadbeen spectacular progress in the state of the art.

The brilliant versatility of the violin family hadeclipsed all the bowed instruments before it. Theinvention of the piano in 1710 was a breakthroughin the quest for a standing concert instrument thatwould combine expressiveness, resonance andrange. Great organs with as many as five key-boards and 50 sets of pipes crowned cathedrals.Like space satellites today, they were the wondersof their age.

The circle of modern orchestral instruments wascompleted early in the 19th century when theintroduction of valves brought out the full capabili-ties of the brass and woodwinds. The piano soonbecame the standard entertainment device inmiddle class European and American homes, muchas the television set is now.

By the latter part of the century, everybodyseemed to be playing, singing, dancing and listen-ing to music; it was the leading public preoccupa-tion. Its popularity gave rise to a fresh wave ofspeculation as to what it meant to mankind.

The German philosophers who were thenprobing the deepest reaches of thought attachedconsiderable significance to it. Georg WilhelmHegel concluded that the music is latent in thelistener, and that the external sounds draw it out.Arthur Schopenhauer observed that it is the oneart that works on the feelings directly, and notthrough the medium of thought; it thereforetouches something in our being more subtle thanthe intellect. Friedrich Nietzsche reasoned that artis a natural defence against pessimism, and so thecreation of art is a necessary human activity. Hesaw music, in effect, as an aspect of fantasy, anddeclared that fantasy is a sustaining and resto-rative force in life.

It is interesting that virtually the only joy thesegloomy individuals ever experienced was throughlistening to and playing music (Schopenhauerplayed the flute, Nietzsche the piano). Music hasalways held a strong attraction to men and womenof genius who were not necessarily accomplishedmusicians themselves. Perhaps this is because,as Walter Pater wrote, "All art constantly aspiresto the condition of music." A highly creative per-son is likely to turn to it in an attempt to givevent to feelings that cannot be expressed in anyother way.

Sheer intelligence, however, has never beenenough to make a great musician or composer.Musical genius is largely a matter of having whatexperts can only describe as "the gift." One of themany mysteries of the art is how musical prodigiesare able to master its bewildering complexitiesbefore other children have learned the alphabet;not only that, but to interpret them with a maturetouch.

Yet talent alone is not enough, either. To playor write music at its best takes self-sacrifice,discipline, and a great deal of effort. Years afterhe had won the title of the greatest pianist in theworld, Jan Paderewski rose early every day to putin several hours of practice. Tchaikovsky thoughtthat Brahms was "giftless." If so, Brahms madeup for any deficiency in talent he might have hadwith legendary hard work.

In music, one man’s meatis truly another’s poison

There can be no harder-working group than asymphony orchestra. A good orchestra in full-flightis a near-miracle of precision, teamwork, and col-lective panache. This is achieved through an exact-ing regimen of practice and rehearsal which honesthe skills of the players to razor sharpness. Or-chestral conductors are sometimes reviled astyrants, but they know that they must drill theplayers relentlessly to do justice to the music theyperform.

It might be thought that this passion for preci-sion is all very well for the highbrows of the con-cert stage, but that it has no place among the freespirits of popular music. Many pop and jazz artistsseem almost to take pride in their lack of musicalknowledge and discipline, in the belief that thesewould spoil their spontaneity. On the other hand,some of the most successful popular artists, includ-ing the Beatles, have been uncommonly conscien-tious musicians. It is no coincidence that the manknown as the most consistently inventive of alljazz soloists, clarinetist Benny Goodman, was alsofamous for the long hours of practice and rehearsalhe imposed on himself and his band.

When it comes to different types of music, oneman’s meat is truly another man’s poison. Class-ical music lovers have been known to be physicallysick from listening to rock. The argument overwhat is music and what is mere noise will simmeras long as people turn on a radio or put on arecord- especially if those people are of differentgenerations and live in the same household. Musi-cal purists would do well to remember the words ofAmerican composer Aaron Copland in this context:"Music that is born complex is not inherentlybetter or worse than music that is born simple."

Copland also said that "music is a languagewithout a dictionary whose symbols are inter-preted by the listener according to some unspokenEsperanto of the emotions." This leads us back toHegel’s theory that the music is within the lis-tener; if so, it follows that different kinds of musicwill pique different emotions in different people,according to their conditions of life at a given time.

The emotions that music brings out are mostlygood ones: love, joy, hope, humour, sadness.Though it has stirred men in war, it more oftenhas addressed those gentle feelings that peopleknow when they are at peace with themselvesand the world.

Why do we need music? Because, in so manyways, it brings out the best in humanity. Poortwisted madman that he was, Nietzsche was rightwhen he wrote: "Without music, life would be amistake."