is a series of three texts.
They should be
read in the following order
Movement conjuring signs
Sonorous
beings and absolute music
Auditory
mimesis and music
Whoever is not familiar with the concept of 'mimesis' should
first read
'Mimesis'
Below are the summaries of the three texts:
SUMMARY: 'MOVEMENT CONJURING SIGNS'
Image conjuring signs are signs that elicit the performance of a movement. They contain information about the nature and the timing of the movements that are to be
executed. They may be visual, but only as
auditory signs do they develop into the elaborate
system of movement conjuring signs that is called 'music'. With 'speech
music', the movement conjuring signs are inherent to the conjured up
movements (speech, song). With work and dance music, they are
played by musical instruments, and hence exherent to the movements that
are conjured
up . The use of musical instruments leads to the
full development of the system of musical signs (pure tones organised in scales),
and to the further unfolding of speech
music into singing. Dance music and speech music are often combined in the popular formula of ''melody with rhythmic
accompaniment'. This kind of music is primarily a sign for and not an
imitation of movements, and does, hence, not belong to the realm of
(the) art (of imitation), but to the domain of the design of image conjuring
signs and dance movements.
SUMMARY: "SONOROUS BEINGS AND ABSOLUTE MUSIC'
The sounds of speech music and dance music can also
be heard as auditory phenomena in their own right. They are then experienced as the appearance of a
sonorous being that moves in an appropriate musical space. Such reading is facilitated by the use of pitch as movement conjuring sign,
and by the
formation of all kind of complex musical formations like melody, harmony
and polyphony. It lies at the roots of the development of what is called
'absolute music'. Absolute music is mimetic: the
auditory appearance that we hear in musical space does not emanate from
a
really existing soul, it is produced by the playing of instruments in
three-dimensional space. The singer and the musician are merely the
medium bearers of the moving sounds. Absolute music is not the paradigm
of abstraction, but rather the apogee of completed mimesis. It is
immediate mimesis of monosensorial beings. The musical material may be more or less favourable to the unfolding of
musical space. Also the movement of sonorous beings can be conjured by movement
conjuring signs (although that is not always the case). That leads to the phenomenon of what we call 'sympathetic mimesis',
but also to the various attempts at playing or dancing along with the
sonorous beings. The latter lie
at the roots of the misleading impression that music is
the auditory appearance of the musicians or the composer: mimesis
misunderstood as expression.
SUMMARY:
'AUDITORY MIMESIS AND MUSIC'
Music has increasingly come to be understood as an 'abstract' -
non-mimetic - art. To convincingly demonstrate that - or in how far -
music is mimetic, is the touchstone of every theory of mimesis. In 'Movement
conjuring signs' we showed that speech and
dance music are a question of signs (semiosis), not of imitation (mimesis):
speech music does not imitate speakers or singers, but rather elicits
their speaking and singing, and dance music does not imitate dancers, but
rather elicits their dancing. With auditory mimesis, something is imitated by
duplicating its auditory appearance. Next to auditory mimesis of
non-intentional sounds (ordinary auditory mimesis) there is also mimesis
of intentional sounds. The intentional sounds may be speech - in which
case we are dealing with verbal auditory mimesis (as in
lyric poetry and theatre), or it
may be musical appearances - in which case we are dealing with musical
mimesis. Thus, musical mimesis is only one of the domains of auditory mimesis
as such. The domain of musical mimesis itself can be divided in many subdomains,
according to the kind of musical appearance that is imitated.
We
can discern musical appearances of existing and of imaginary beings.
To the former category belong musicalised
(non-)existing beings, wordless speakers and singers, (non-)existing
singers and musicians, but above all the sonorous beings that we
discovered in 'Sonorous beings and absolute music'.
Musical mimesis consists in singing or playing the appearance
that belongs to one of these beings. Next
to unmediated musical mimesis, there is also mediated musical mimesis:
the conjuring of images through movement conjuring signs (as for example
in 'program music'). There is a strong resistance to the idea of mimetic
music, and the mimetic nature of absolute music and of mimetic
music in general is universally misunderstood. That leads to to all
kinds of philosophical misconceptions. The many kinds of music can be combined, and
many forms of music can be read in each other's terms. That is precisely
why it is so important to discern the various kinds of music: only then
is it apparent that music is mostly of a hybrid nature. But above all
does it becomes
apparent that next to the paradigm of the image
- the visual, non-moving
and single image of which the art philosophers seem so fond - there are
also far more complex kinds of images, not only in music and in
literature, but in the visual arts as well.
Stefan Beyst, spring 2012.