In Cultural Orbit: An Essay on (un)Popular Music

(c) 2006 Otto Lehto

(“I Am Not A Number, I Am A Free Man!”- Number Six)

In Cultural Orbit:

In Search Of Unpopular Music

1 - We are not the elite. Are we not the elite?

The semiotics of musicology has inherited the problems and prejudices of its mother science. Of these, one of the most persistent is the division – somewhat arbitrary and hermetic – between the popular and the artistic, the “folk” and the “academic”; between the πολλοί and the αριστοί, the uncultured and the cultured – in a word, between the low and the high.

My analysis will approach a branch of “popular music”, namely electronic music (specifically its “home listening” variety; whether it be called house, techno, ambient or IDM is irrelevant), from the point of view of a non-biased, non-trivializing observer, for whom musicology is a unitary field, divided only arbitrary (and mostly for budgetary and bureaucratic purposes) into fields such as “classical musicology”, “ethnomusicology” and “popular musicology”.

If it used to be ever possible (which in itself is doubtable) to draw a bifurcated genealogy of music, with one strand in the institutional state- and elite-sponsored schools and court composers and the other strand in the mostly negative class of “the rest”, “the marginal” or “the vulgar” (or even “the exotic”), we are certainly today beyond that point. The popular is artistic and the artistic is popular. One doesn’t need to be reminded of the folk nationalism of Wagner, Sibelius or Bartok to understand that what has passed for high culture has always been a situated interpretation by the centre about the periphery, about one’s environment – but with the caveat that the self-conceived “centre” (the “I” of the narration) is in fact one periphery among many. Every periphery conceives of itself as the centre, because such self-affirmation is integral to the projected historicity of one’s existential status; in fact, every centre starts out as a periphery before discovering self-affirmation as a tool for a centripetal overturning of the old order. Paris, or Greenwich, never was the centre of Europe, but one would like to have said so, in order to inflict power of influence over both contemporaries and subsequent generations. Likewise the question whether the likes of Vienna or Moscow may be held as the veritable centres of musical flourishing in the early 20^th century is anything but moot. That is to say, the high and the low are have been treated at best, at best, as “different but equal”, as some anti-feminists like to describe the situation between the sexes. Well, within the cultural discourse on musicology, the two poles of music have certainly been treated unequal, but when it comes to their differences the issue has rarely been conceived in a fair manner.

As far as I can see, there are four main ways of unfairly treating the popular in traditional musicology: 1) treating the popular as irrelevant; 2) treating the popular as antecedent (i.e. barbaric or less developed); 3) treating the popular as a side effect (an aberration or degeneration); 4) treating the popular as “foreign” (in the sense of improper and alien).

The first of these points could be felt by anybody with a healthy interest in, say, Elvis or the Beatles at a time when musicology was tuned into the zillionth mediocre Schönberg variation, Vivaldi’s post-WWII re-discovery, Chopin’s and Rachmaninoff’s cult-like legacy amongst piano lovers, and Stravinsky’s octogenarian pop-star like antics across Europe. A lag of about 20 years seems to take place in historical musicology (possibly in other social sciences too), so that Beatles only becomes relevant when Lennon is long dead. Perhaps a serious study of Britney Spears shall have to wait a while too – although the acceleration of rapid change in our society makes a much faster adaptation of the theory to the facts likely, if not certain. Going back to the post-WWII crisis in neo-classicism, we encounter perhaps the definite moment when the artificial divide between the higher and the lower (itself a relic of the feudal society) becomes blurred and maimed from within. For it is precisely this post-Schönberg, post-Tschaikovsky generation out of which arose, albeit slightly adjacent to it, an attitude of true (truly French in its revolutionary effects) egalitarianism with the society at large. Perhaps the same was true in literature, although there, I dare suggest, about a half or a quarter of a century sooner; in Joyce, Wilde and Hemingway. Still, in the mid-50’s, when Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” become popular (there’s that word again!), Karlheinz Stockhausen was finishing his quite classical education infused with Schönberg, Tschaikovsky and newer ideas born from the calcification of serialism and neo-romanticism. Stockhausen, together with a number of his contemporaries, become an integral drive in the electronic music revolution, as we’ll see.

Points two and three are arguments by the means of which a historiography is made possible; namely tracing not only parallelisms but genealogies (antecedents and heirs). A genealogy is always a polemic – let’s not forget that its greatest proponents have been Nietzsche and Foucault! This way a “mainstream” is discerned, and all deviant topics and centres are treated as either “undeveloped” forms of the mainstream influence, or then “misdeveloped” or “overdeveloped” side-effects of the same influence. Human being’s eye for pattern tends to overshadow the true complexity of historical connections in favour of a Proppian or Greimasian narrative, with good guys, bad guys, protagonists, missions and so on. Such a narrative is beautiful, but often wrong.

The last of the four points is the most interesting – treating the popular as foreign – since it is often the case that an orthodoxy, based on a new theory, or a specific musical principle, overtakes a whole field by a denunciation of diversity within the range of expressions in popular music, and instead puts value in the embellishment, mastering and re-formulating of one or two (“essential”) aspects of music – be it the harmonic scale (versus socially unacceptable forms of instrumentation and tuning), the sonata form (versus, say, “jazz” type free flow), the concert hall (versus, say, the pub or the town square) or social gravitas (versus eccentric characters and uneducated classes) . This creates a certain standardization of values which – even if short-lived – serves to radiate the periphery with a unifying impetus. This, a process very much akin to the standardization of languages into a national canon, serves to denounce the natural range of regional, local and eccentric forms of expression as needy of correction, as needy of (to coin a term) “uniformalization”.

2 - Semiotic Pleromatization in Music and Musicology

Borrowing from cues given by Jaan Valsiner in Imatra Summer Congress of 2006, I will propose one unifying semiotic principle that will help to elucidate the tendency of musicology to narrate, to simplify and to bifurcate. This principle is the principle of “pleroma” and “pleromatization”. The overflow, if you will, of information. More than an excessive inflow, however, it entails an insufficient inflow. Excessive inflow is simply a case when the nature of human semiotic sense-making of the world is brought to its knees by the realization that interpret we must, and that, in the process of interpreting, to quote Edmund Husserl, “all perception is gamble”. After all, we are imperfect beings. For us information is not passive intake but rather active interest.

The same principle is at play in musicology, especially its historiographical variant. Tracing musical linkages and genealogies is an exercise in pattern recognition and wilful omission and distortion. In simplifying a situation, on can inquire at least about the following facts:

1) Historical influences (direct or indirect; conscious or unconscious)

2) Contemporaries (with genre definitions and peer formation)

3) Technologies (instruments; recording and mastering equipment; playback devices)

4) Environmental conditions (weather; “mass psychology”; politics & social myths)

5) Solo virtuosity (vs. band/orchestra/group unison and compromise)

Behind all these definitions lies the realm of the social, decidedly trans-personal and trans-individual. What one can do is simplify – and simplify we must, in order to reduce the infinite complexity of biographical and psychological data into a meaningful pattern. This pattern formation is an exercise in semiotic narration. One could study musicological meaning-formation from two perspectives: Firstly, the perspective of the outsider historian (the one who tells a story coloured by such factors as his education, ideology, idiosyncrasies, and aesthetic preferences – i.e. one’s “expertise”); Secondly, the perspective of the musician herself. The difference between the musicologist and the musician is not only the difference between outside and inside (and thus “inauthentic” and “authentic”), but moreover the difference between varying semiotic competences. Competence here is qualitative, not quantitative.

By semiotic competence I’m referring to the ability not only to create, interpret and “understand” music and other signifying systems, but moreover to internalize and correspondingly narrate (at least to one’s self in thoughts and mental images; preferably to others in a shared language like English) the logical and proper linkages between one’s environmental encounters (from childhood to the present day) and the action, expression and thought patterns that make for an aesthetic will and need at any given time. Treating the musician as an object of study necessitates taking into consideration her natural language competence (perhaps ornitho-musicologists have a lesser problem here?), and also her competence in translating the Dionysian urges into an Apollonian rationalistic narration. Thus, the famed inability of most artists – in interviews and such – to give worded expression to their artistic output (often masquerading as shyness, coyness or stupidity) is one real justification for the existence of a group of people known as musicologists or music historians. Competence, you see, gives rise to knowledge, and thus knowledgeable action (musicology à theory of music à new art); likewise, knowledgeable action gives rise to specific knowledge, and arms its practitioners with novel competence (art à theory of music à new musicology). Musicologists are not mere parasites leeching off artistic brilliance. It is the critics who are mere parasites leeching off artistic brilliance. Nothing can justify their work, you see.

The musician, while an insider in regards to musical competence, is thus often an outsider in regards to musicological competence. But so what? Even if musicology is not seen as a mere epiphenomenon of an industry dominated first and foremost by the artists themselves, what does it mean to associate semiotic competence primarily with musicological competence? Does this reflect the bias found in structuralist semiotics emphasizing culture as “text”, and treating all languages (like music) as sub-sets or special cases of the natural language? Does this reflect a choice favouring the Apollonian over the Dionysian? Is it better to describe history rather than to make it?

Taking these considerations as a cue that a semiotics of music is never complete without due regard to living music, I shall now turn to concrete cases where the equation “popular is artistic is popular” becomes less of a thesis than a fait accompli. Enter The Orb, Aphex Twin and Lamb.

3 - Case Study I: Neo-minimalism and Electro/IDM

To define minimalism is almost as impossible as to define avant-garde; not least because the two have been intimately connected. The series of composers ranges from Schönberg, Stockhausen, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, John Cage, Terry Riley and Ligeti to Mike Oldfield, Steve Reich and even William Orbit. Philip Glass is even more known from his soundtrack work than from his operatic and stage work (the same goes for Mike “Tubular Bells” Oldfield), while Cage is a Warhol-like cultural icon. (Neo-)minimalism was the first truly TV generation of classical musicians. So to see them become infused within popular culture is not to see the end of high culture, but the flourishing of it within a wide area of public discourse – i.e. within a wide semiosphere, empowered by media.

It is actually an interesting and rarely talked about facet about 20^th century music that electronic music, from its inception to the present day, owes at least as much to 50’s and 60’s “academic” experiments with artificial sound creation (i.e. “synthesis”, whose pioneers include Robert Moog and Walter/Wendy Carlos) and art house avant-garde compositions (like Stockhausen and Messiaen) than it does to the popular music revolution of the Beatles rock’n’roll generation. Certainly it later adopted heartily from both ends of the spectrum, but not to see the direct connection form Stockhausen, Messiaen, Cage and Eno to Kraftwerk, Jean-Michel Jarre, The Orb, Underworld and Orbital would be foolish. Certain structural similarities (whether synchronicities or logical connections, I am not sure) between avant-garde minimalism and sequencer-based techno are elucidated in the following definition of minimalist music (from Wikipedia): “emphasis on consonant harmony, if not functional tonality; reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units such as figures, motifs, and cells, with subtle, gradual, and/or infrequent variation (no musical development) over long periods of time, possibly limited to simple repetition; stasis, often in the form of drones, pulses, and/or long tones.” It is clear that while certain aspects, like “stasis” and “subtle, gradual and/or infrequent variation” were only adopted by what came to be known as the ambient/downtempo/chill-out side of electronic music (Kraftwerk of Autobahn, Brian Eno, The Orb, Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre, LFO, early Aphex Twin…), certain aspects, like “repetition” and “drones, pulses and/or long tones” became synonymous with an integral aspect of electronic music: namely, “looping” and “sequencing”.

1) The indebtedness of artists like The Orb to people like Steve Reich is clear. The Orb even sampled Steve Reich (Electric Counterpoint from 1987) on their hit single Little Fluffy Clouds. The track is a marvel of sound production and care-free sampling (before the toughening of copyright laws regarding “fair use” around the mid-1990’s), sampling probably dozens of sources, including Rickie Lee Jones talking about the clouds over Arizona, and a self-referential male voice (“layering different sounds”), not to mention some truly enchanting instrumentation. In 1999, a DJ mix collection called Reich Remixed was released, further strengthening the Reich-electro bond.

2) Another point of connection exists between Wendy (formerly known as Walter) Carlos and Orbital. Carlos, best known for his soundtrack work (A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and others) as well as for his pioneering Moog release Switched-On Bach, has been an inspiration and an influence to many an electronic musician. On their seventh and last album (Blue Album), Orbital explicitly honoured Carlos in a retro-sounding synthesizer piece called Bath Time – “bath” is not only the place where P.Hartnoll of Orbital first hummed the tune of the track, but moreover an oblique reference to the analogue sound of synthesizers, (synaesthetically) described by Richard D. James in the title of his Analogue Bubblebath LPs under the moniker AFX in mid-90’s.

3) Which brings me to Aphex Twin, a maverick amongst mavericks. Richard is a pioneer of numerous things; for one, he is a pioneer of home-built synthesizers since his teenage years. Another novelty he brought into the field was his redefinition of (truly minimalist) “ambient” in his two Selected Ambient Works releases. Even further, he was the spearhead of both the drum’n’bass movement and the IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) movement starting from his more beat-oriented releases such as The Richard D. James Album. A connection to the neo-minimalist school is indirectly exhibited in numerous other ways, but a direct link is the Philip Glass collaboration Icct Heddral, a haunting remake of an earlier Aphex track with Glass’s string instrumentation.

4) Autechre, truly the avant-garde of the avant-garde, have likewise (on the same Warp label as Aphex Twin), been engaged in a decade-plus-long dialogue and correspondence with the art house aesthetic inheritance of Stockhausen’s generation. While Autechre have engaged in numerous consciously minimalist projects, such as the 40-minute long ambient/noise collaborations with The Hafler Trio, they have always shunned labelling and pure mimicking of old achievements. Indeed, of Stockhausen they have mixed opinions, resulting from the formalistic approach (such as neo-serialism or neo-minimalism) exhibited even in the most “experimental” of Stockhausen’s works. Indeed, if serialism holds an intellectual affinity with structuralism, then Autechre’s affinities are more to deconstruction (which translates into noise modulation and radical re-ordering in music). Musical linkages certainly include Brian Eno, Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin, but also people like Fennesz and Merzbow, and the aforementioned The Hafler Trio.

If minimalism radiated into a kind of futuristic utilitarianism in design and architecture, in Autechre and related IDM avant-garde forerunners the deconstructionist paradigm is not a “programme” (for a formal application of rules in composition) as much as it is a methodological a priori, radiating into, and stemming from, the politics of anarchy and the architecture of the likes of Santiago Calatrava and Felix Candela. This shows how hopeless a model is the model which considers “popular” to be simply a worn-out or simplified or degenerate version of authentic “art”. Autechre are consciously rejecting old models and creating new ones. Input-transformation-output. Music, popular or not, behaves like an analysable semiotic system, with influences, confluences and effluences. And how popular is Autechre anyhow? Certainly no more, or less, than Rachmaninoff was in the day. A certain perspective is required; else our words fail us...

A more thorough analysis of the linkages between the Viennese School of composition and the methodologies of sequencing and sound programming in today’s experimental electro will need to be postponed for a later date. Now, I will turn even more to the “pop” side of “popular” music.

4 - Case Study II: The Lamb-Gorecki Connection

Lamb, a Manchester-based trip-hop/electro duo composed of Andy Barlow and Lou Rhodes, put together four albums from 1994 (first eponymous album released in 1997 was written during a course of three years) until a quiet break-up after their 2003 album Between Darkness and Wonder. The tension within the group between the organic, “folk” vocals of Louise, and the electronic, harsh and experimental beats and synths of Andrew is an interesting thing in itself; the “yin and yang” of the band in their own words. In the vein of artists such as Portishead, they infused their computerized soundscape with acoustic accompaniment. Andy, for example, has extensive training in playing the harp, and the first two albums especially contained a mixture of the somewhat more classical sounds of harps, cello and violins with the rock’n’roll acoustics of drums and guitars, all captured within Mackintosh (Apple) hardware and software – their last album was still mostly G4 and Pro Tools. All this was heard already on their break-through track Cotton Wool, which sounded like a brutal drum’n’bass ballad – if such a thing is possible. Songs like Gold, Heaven and Gabriel have a unique aesthetic somewhere on the borderline of a half-a-dozen genres – trip hop, electro, folk, avant-garde pop, drum’n’bass, jungle… Genres were always loosely bound groups of affiliations and influence. Their tracks have received remix treatment from such big names as A Guy Called Gerald, Tom Middleton, Mr. Scruff, Autechre, Wagon Christ, Bola, Funkstörung, Photek, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Global Communication and others. These were later released on a 2-cd remix compilation, which is a telltale sign that this is an influential group within the semiosphere of electronic music. Remixing is a way of listening and learning. Semiotically speaking remixing is a way of re-reading, of interjecting new interpretations.

The most interesting case in their long list of inspiring songs is Gorecki, an almost over-produced love epic, which became their most well-known piece. In the course of about 6 minutes, a crescendo of instruments and beats builds up into a lush finale, supporting Lou’s soft vocals: “All I’ve known / All I’ve done / All I’ve felt / was leading to this / Wanna stay right here / ‘til the end of time / ‘til the earth stops turning”. Consequently the track became used in numerous movies and TV spots in the years after its release, which in our society is a true sign of success. Ask Moby.

Here’s the odd bit: The song gets its name from Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, the Polish composer almost exclusively known from the recording of his 3^rd Symphony (”Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”) made during the 50^th anniversary of Hitler’s attack against Poland. This lento 3-part piece from 1976 exhibits melancholy momentum representing the durability of human spirit under distress. He is often compared to Arvo Pärt, and the minimalist avant-garde of late 20^th century, but the emotional affectivity of his symphony is more Samuel Barber than Philip Glass in its neo-Romanticism. Certainly his Christian themes, while thoroughly Polish, are foreign to most neo-minimalists. Jesus Christ Superstar this is not, but to understand the success of this recording general comparisons to Webber are not altogether off the mark. After all, just like Symphony of Sorrowful Songs reached #1 in pop charts all over the world (overselling Madonna – now there’s a religious image!), Andrew Lloyd Webber’s productions have repeatedly topped record charts, from J.C.S. to Cats and Evita (here’s the Madonna connection again). But while there is a definite across-the-spectrum popular appeal in Webber, Górecki’s symphony seems to hold no special appeal to the seemingly musically illiterate and vulgar masses. Except...

Except what? Do I now have to denigrate Górecki’s value by exclaiming a certain simplicity or straightforwardness in his third symphony, which would purport to explain away his (however unsought) affiliation with middle class living room CD players, not to mention the several films where his music has been used (including “Fearless”). I think one could find semiotic clues for his popularity, by reading reviews of his music on Amazon.com for example; therein are numerous descriptions of his “immediate appeal” and “strong first impression” (Peircean firstness), not to forget a mention of his “minimalist” and “uncomplicated” chord progression, which can obviously be read to mean a certain lack of depth, alas. In my humble opinion such a criticism may hold true in some of Glass’s works, but Górecki is quite subtle and clever.

A few final observations about the Lamb-Górecki connection follow. 1) Any similarities in the sound between Górecki’s music and Lamb’s music (in the song Górecki specifically, but perhaps even more generally) shall remain conjectures at this point. 2) Any connections between Górecki’s achieved popular fame and Lamb’s aspirations as a somewhat “pop” band shall likewise remain conjectures. 3) It is interesting to note that perhaps the biggest Lamb fan site is called, after the song of course, http://gorecki.co.uk/home. It is highly amusing that the site is not devoted to the Górecki.

But now, since my theme is the essential erosion of the difference between the popular and the cultural, I ought to give some examples of not only how the popular is classical (like Lamb or Eno), but how the classical, mutatis mutandis, is popular.

5 - Great Composers as Cultural Icons (/Symbols)

If Górecki is a recent addition into the popular consciousness of the world, the same principle of “popularization” I believe to be at work with many perennial classics in the field of Western music. At least the following have each been used, and overused, in films, TV, commercials and public ceremonies from the very beginning of the modern electro-magnetic (TV/cinema/radio) media age:

1) Mozart’s Requiem mass; specifically Thomas of Celano’s hymn Dies Irae – a piece whose musical authorship is disputed. While I would be tempted to say it is simply a breath-takingly beautiful piece of music, someone with an anti-popular sentiment would certainly find something “wrong” with this piece of music, and instead turn one’s attention to Mozart’s less well-known pieces as exhibiting sufficient esotericism and elitism. Such a person would fail to appreciate the equation “pop=art=pop”. One shouldn’t underestimate the legendary status surrounding Mozart, lately furthered by Milos Forman’s excellent quasi-biographical film Amadeus. Furthermore, it is interesting to see that IMDB lists a total of 589 films in which Mozart is listed as a “composer”! Talk about omni-present…

2) Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, a 20^th century classic, was used prominently in the 80’s films Elephant Man (by David Lynch) and Platoon (by Oliver Stone). At the dawn of the 90’s it received electronic re-writing in the hands of the producer guru William Orbit, whose version consequently came to be remixed by the Dutch trance DJ Ferry Corsten to great popular dance-floor appeal. Even before this, Antiloop had “trance-formed” the piece. Bafflingly, both Delerium and DJ Tiesto have recently contributed their own remixes of the very same piece. The continuation from Wagnerian chord progressions to Balearic trance anthems of the late 1990’s is an interesting topic beyond the scope of this essay. Certainly, at any rate, there is nothing quite like melodic trance in today’s music which tries to re-discover (whether by sampling, by re-creation or by creation) the spirit of the heyday of Western Romanticism in all its follies and naiveté, but also in its grandiose affectivity.

3) Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, specifically the opening of it; as seen and heard in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Later the mimicking of the aesthetics of the film (whether in The Simpsons, or lately in Shaolin Soccer, or in any number of spoofs) has unequivocally meant also including this musical piece by Strauss, which contains a highly recognizable rising drum-assisted chord progression ending in a majestic harmonic resolution. Strauss has been married to Kubrick, and to black empty space. The indexical occurrence of the two auteurs means that you rarely have one without the other. Also, one would have to explain the initial choice of Strauss for the depiction of the evolution of mankind, either by studying the inherent “harmonic discourse” in the piece, or perhaps by asking Kubrick himself. As an interesting side-note, it is a plausible theory that Kubrick intended to use Pink Floyd’s Echoes for the “warp drive” sequence later in the film. Now one can study the traces of the sounds that currently exist only in images. There is a kind of translation from the musical into the visual; this is exhibited in the usage of time lapses, and in the synaesthetic qualities of sound expressing itself as kaleidoscopic visions.

4) Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony (the first bars of it), 9^th Symphony (the last movement is used as the unofficial European anthem; also present in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange), and to some extent the piano pieces Für Elise and Moonlight Sonata. Beethoven’s 5^th, at least, is more pop than Andy Warhol; one doesn’t even have need for 15 minutes of fame – a mere three seconds from the opening suffices. Playing those strings creates an intertextual signal, recognizable by anyone anywhere; at least by those with a sufficient semiotic competence in popular culture. One could even say that those who do not recognize Beethoven’s 5^th symphony are not full members of our society. There is a biopic coming about him… Distressingly enough, there already exists a film, a family film, by the name of Beethoven, which has more to do with a dog than a human. It even has sequels. And fans. And haters.

The last example, again, just serves to illustrate how social values like family and pets get associated with popular cultural icons. To deny Beethoven his prevalent social status would be to deny the dictionary definition of popular. Again; “pop music” is not a genre definition. Its main function seems to be the instrumental division between so-called classical instruments and the novel, foreign or modified instruments of popular music. But everybody knows that one can play any piece of music on a number of different instruments. Instrumentation is not always an integral component of composition. MIDI, for example, allows for “pure music” in the sense of something non-corporeal and non-fixed; something that so far has only existed in Pythagorean celestial spheres and in various systems of idealistic universal notation. Music is cosmological yet again.

The list does not end here. This is merely to show that the list is not hard to start, but impossible to end. To add to the list, well, at least Vivaldi, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Wagner and countless others have a comparable status in the pop culture. Their role in the pop culture is not peripheral to their trans-cultural reach, but integral to it. Vivaldi, for example, has never been as popular as he has become in the TV age. Bach, a perennial figure, has certainly long been a hermetic, occult influence understood (and heard) by only the few initiated; but it is also true that his productions began to be heard in churches (however small or remote) around the world long before the 20^th century. So, one way of looking at the movement from elitism to populism (in both the neutral and the negative senses of the terms) is the economic historical perspective: just like regular people today (not counting the poor and the oppressed; who does count them anyway?) live better than the rarest of aristocrats 300 years ago, in the appreciation of arts the technological and media revolutions have changed people’s outlooks for good. People can afford luxury items; perhaps in the same way people can “afford” a luxury taste? Perhaps popularization is the “aristocratization” of mankind?

Bach’s organ classic, Air for G-String (from Suite No. 3 in D Major), to give another example, was turned in Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale into an anthem for a new generation. Rachmaninoff, a more recent composer, became a popular legend at least by the time when the movie Shine featured a prominent performance of his Piano Concerto no.3 by the pianist David Helfgott (played by Geoffrey Rush). Wagner, too, is an integral part of the intellectual history of the West, and specifically of Germany. One interesting usage of his Ride of the Valkyries is in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now!, where American helicopters are blasting Wagner down at the Vietnamese in a startling scene, evoking mixed emotions (from Nazi allusions to the essential aesthetics of warfare). The piece of music there, semiotically speaking, is an open symbol, whose meaningful interpretation requires a competence in popular culture. Thus, Wagner is integrally part of popular culture, not merely as a backdrop like Einstein or Newton, whom few understand, but truly as a fully-fronted experience within the semiosphere of our culture, not hidden or obscured by a steep curvature of learning. Wagner can be appropriated and shared – and feared.

Of course the perception and treatment of classical composers as freely quotable and samplable figures leads easily into a situation where the works, lives and times of the composer are built into a new mythology based on a selective reading of history. But this is what people do. Interpretation and selective reading is the stuff of semiotic competence. To shy away from public scrutiny is no shame when the object is a shielding of a deeply-guarded sacrosanct secret, but that is the job of musicology. Musicology, as a historical study, can hold the mantle of a hermetic science, not susceptible to all momentary mood swings, while simultaneously allowing for the music to be free where it has always desired to be; in the “public domain”. It should be remembered that themes, innovations and styles have always been ways in which musicians (however much prone to lone fits of genius and autistic brilliance) were able to “publicize” their works by attaching themselves into semiotic “topics” shared by a culture or a group. For example, of the popular works mentioned, Górecki’s 3^rd is infused with age-old Christian mythos, with lyrics whose impact, if not literal meaning, is clearly accessible to any audience. An even more directly “shared” work is Mozart’s Requiem. It should be remembered that the model of the Catholic Requiem was a conservative mould, yet sufficiently flexible to attract numerous composers, from Mozart and Verdi to Berlioz. Even further, the Gregorian melody associated with Dies Irae has found its way at least in the works of some 23 post-Mozart classical composers (according to Wikipedia article). Is this not a pure case of public property, of popular (to play on words: mass) music, of intertextuality, of historical “pop art”, of semiotic “pleromatization” (in J.Valsiner’s words)? So, not only can the knowledge gained in the study of classical musicology be freely applied to “popular” (I despise the word) music, but the concepts discovered within the study of modern mass media can, with some modification, be applied to the semiotic movement and process of interpretation found in the Western Canon.

6 – The Signs, They Are A-Changin’

Perhaps a musicology-to-come, focusing on popular musicological topics, must neither fight off Big Daddy (in the form of the Classical Canon) in a grandiose manner nor fall back on “un-scientific” feel-good sociology (for the lack of more advanced tools). Hopefully semiotics can act as a referee.

To bring an end to my analysis, I will summarize my positions. For now I will be satisfied with the understanding that we have not only 1) exhibited a direct lineage between the Second Viennese School and one sub-set of what is generally called “popular” music (namely electronic music), and 2) proved the principle of semiotic pleromatization at work in an infinitely complex culture, exhibiting itself in the narrativization (viz. Propp) of musicology into a simplified, abstract story more easily handled – and most certainly skewed and one-sided. Moreover, we have 3) rejected the normative difference between the type of work and the type of composition done with different instruments, in different times and for different people (as resulting from a situated subjectivity fixated on self-aggrandizement and self-centred historiography), and 4) ultimately come to realize that for a semiotically truthful musicology, a structural bifurcation into the popular and the supposedly “unpopular” is unsound to begin with, and in need of a fundamental re-ordering. Such a re-ordering is a re-uniting of long-lost friends – or, better yet, family members, blood relatives…

Thesis:

Music, by definition, is popular.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Stockhausen (and other composers, too numerous to list)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalist_music (for an overview of a movement)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_irae (see for the list of composers)

http://www.allmusic.com (for general biographical and discographical information about artists)

http://gorecki.co.uk/home/ (Lamb’s unofficial homepage)

http://www.usc.edu/dept/polish_music/composer/gorecki.html (about the composer)

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/lamb/gorecki_20081361.html (lyrics to Lamb’s Gorecki)