It has become quite clear in recent years that one of the most interesting
and provocative suggestions coming out of these efforts in music and brain
science is the realization of music as a biologically deeply ingrained
function of the human brain.
The brain has neural circuitry that is dedicated to music. Music is
associated with a specific yet complex brain architecture.
Sensitivity to music plays a critical role in the development of all
children regardless of the presence or absence of later artistic
achievement. Music is ubiquitous in all known historical and present
cultures. It is safe to say that music is much more than cultural
artifact, an icing on the cake of human evolution after basic biological
needs and developments were adaptively satisfied.. The underlying purpose
of music is in its attributes as a specific language of perception that
engages brain and behavior. Michael H. Thaut, Rhythm, Music and the
Brain. Pg.37 Routledge 2005
ELEVEN MUSICAL "KILLER ASSUMPTIONS"*:
*A set of assumptions held, singly or in some combination
which frustrate efforts to resolve complexity. John N. Warfield
by Ray Evans Harrell
1. "GREAT MUSICAL ART CAN ONLY COME FROM COMPLETE FREEDOM THEREFORE ARTISTS
SHOULD NOT BE PAID FOR THEIR WORK."
['Real Artists must be freed from the need to sellout for money." ] The
root of this is the library on Utilitarian Economics that begins with Jeremy
Bentham and J.S. Mill up through the American composer and Insurance man
Charles Ives and down to the current attitudes of value found in Wall Street
today. The confusion of American culture around these issues throughout
the history of the country has fostered chaos, lost musical lives and
fostered cultural poverty in the United States. Unlike the Utilitarian's
and Charles Ives, I believe that only if Artists are compensated monetarily
can they be free to work. Artists make the sacrifice to provide the ideal
of Mastery to the society where the live. They are also the repository of
classical cultural knowledge in the society. It is the core principle
of all education that Artists, (just as all other people do), need to eat
and have time to practice. Any worthwhile society will provide
compensation based upon the value of the service and the complexity of the
product. [We have counted the costs of this conflict and find nothing so
dreadful as voluntary slavery. Thomas Jefferson] Jefferson was a
violinist.
2. "THE LIFE OF MOST CLASSICAL MUSICAL ARTISTS IN A UTILITARIAN [Market
based] SOCIETY MUST BE THE PATH OF THE ARDENT AMATEUR."
[i.e. "If it's useful it isn't Art."] What flows from this toxic assumption
is the reality that the only people who have the "time, resources and
access" to accomplish artistic practice are those who are wealthy or those
who are so poor that Art seems an elusive door out of their condition. This
is every mother's nightmare when their child says that they want a life in
the Arts. "You don't have enough money or you may as well since you have
nothing to lose!"
These toxic assumptions belie the fact that becoming a professional artist
is a complex series of life decisions based upon a person's personal vision
of their meaning in life. That Artists accomplish a service of great value
to the society should be accepted and that they should be compensated for
their product and value should be one of the things that defines a society
as either worthwhile or philistine. REH
3. "ALL HIGH QUALITY MUSICAL ART IS SELF REFERENTIAL AND THEREFORE
USELESS"
[Without economic utility] On the contrary Art develops the human
instrument to its highest perceptual and performance competence. Those
skills are used in all of the other professions that are referential to
perceptivity. Obviously it was considered a virtue in ages past since the
root of virtuosity is virtue. We have forgotten that all humans are
either competent and free or incompetent and slaves. Art builds competence
and wisdom through the development of the psycho-physical tools of the human
body. Art is the only protection against the uselessness of life
encountered in indulgence. What is more "useful and fulfilling" than
that?
4. "THE VALUE OF MUSIC IS BASED IN ITS POPULARITY AND LONGEVITY."
[You can tell quality by whether it lasted or not.] Quality has little to
do with permanence unless you're speaking of architecture. In the aural
works of the mind, quality is always a crap shoot and an accident of
availability. Nowhere is this more evident than in the classical music
channels on the cable TV where works of great quality are unearthed daily.
Works that without the availability of the Classical Channels would have
been consigned to the trash heaps of cultures. Since Art tells the world
who we were, it constitutes a record of our successes and failures. Who
wouldn't like for their descendants to be proud of their quality and
maturity as real people rather than being comparable to the parodies of
Neanderthals?
5. "ART AND CELEBRITY ARE SYNONYMOUS."
Who the famous musical people are depends upon the level of musical
comprehension of the culture or society and not upon the virtuosity and
creativity of a work of musical art, performance or performer.
6. "THE ARTISTS ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR HOW MUCH QUALITY MUSICAL ART
THERE IS IN A GIVEN CULTURE."
[If there is no high quality complex musical art then the artists are not
good enough at something.] The practical need is for Artists to become
entrepreneurs in societies where the economic system is based upon
entrepreneurial endeavor; however, this will not be successful unless the
society itself builds the sophistication, perceptivity and intellectual
quality of their own citizens from the cradle to the grave. Then the
artist can supply a recognized need and have the time to develop their
virtuosity. It is a "killer assumption" that the generic artist can do
both in capitalist societies.
This assumption flows from the monetarist economic principle of "Quality
supply will create demand." A variation on the utilitarian economics of
the French economist Jean Baptiste Say. It states that Artists must
first provide "supply" in order to create demand in the mind of the
audience. For the singer "supply" means an expensively sustained
virtuosity and a mounted stage production. Creation and virtuosic
practice are the non-monetary "capital' that creates imagination, delight,
fulfillment and desire in the potential audience. Under Say's dictum
Artists must first provide "supply" in order to create demand.
The double bind for the singer is the tremendous cost of artistic
sustainability plus the cost of production that makes a profit (surplus)
impossible. The only possibility of sustainability is repertory or super
stardom. Given the yearly graduate figures for artists and the 2% job
availability both are less likely than winning at the slot machines in the
local casino.
7. "GOD IS SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR HOW MUCH QUALITY MUSCIAL ART THERE IS IN
A GIVEN CULTURE."
[It isn't your fault or the society, you either have "it" or you don't.]
"It" is a consequence of a history well learned, a perceptivity unbound by
good parenting or extraordinary circum-stances and a society that encourages
discipline, technical virtuosity and success. American law terms artistic
success a "Gift of God" rather than a developed business. If "it" was a
universal law then "it" would have the same expression of "it" worldwide,
but it doesn't. This is perhaps the most reprehensible of all of the
"killer assumptions " in that it places blame on religion (God) rather than
on pedagogy. It is the most philistine form of superstition and it's
taught all over the world by people who should know better but don't for
money's sake.
8. "THE ARTIST FURNISHES THE MOTIVATION FOR MUSICAL ART IN A
SOCIETY."
[The Artist is the developer of "good taste" in a society.] Another truism
whose practicality is the purveyor of cultural failure. The Classical
Musical Artist is the repository of all of the history of his culture in the
abstractions of sound. Every Art is a system. Artists provide the maps
but not the motivation for following the maps. That is evolutionary and
biological. The motivation for all Art is found in the need for the skills
of perceptual patterning in the human child (aesthetics) and the child's
desire to communicate with its parents and the world. Nature provides
anatomical and chemical reward for such activities both in the Vagus nerve's
connection to ecstasy and the brain's stimulation of pleasurable brain
chemicals as a result of musical activity.
Motivation and potential is the gift from the Creator at birth to every
child born on the planet. They are there to be taught or messed up.
Artists are not the motivation for musical art. Motivation is biological
and evolutionary.
9. "MUSIC THAT IS ART WILL ALWAYS HAVE AN AUDIENCE."
["if you build it they will come"] Developing the audience is the most
problematic situation in the history of all complex Art wherever found all
over the world. When a composer is a Master he writes music that contains
too many surprises and too little generic predictability for his audience.
If his audience happens to be "perceptively" poor or asleep then even an
average classical composer has no hope of an audience until the audience is
awakened or taught. The nature of all Art and especially the complex
abstractions of music is that this is normally true after the composer is
dead and buried for a long time.
10. "THE AUDIENCE IS SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR HOW MUCH QUALITY MUSICAL
ART THERE IS IN A GIVEN CULTURE."
The answer to this Killer Assumption is a dialogue that recognizes the need
of the Artist to provide a map and guidance to complex art while the
audience puts out the sweat equity to understand the mirror the Artist holds
before them. It is a collaborative dialogue not a solo responsibility.
This "killer assumption" flows from the economic principle made famous by
Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations: "supply comes from demand". It is
a rule for the marketing and distribution of mass produced widgets not for
"one of kind" complex products (Art) that demand perceptivity and
discrimination from the consumer in order for value to be perceived.
11. "IF YOU LIKE IT THEN IT MUST BE GOOD."
What you "like" has nothing to do with the quality of a work of musical
art but instead has to do with the generic level of your own musical
comprehension. Any work of musical art is determined by the parameters,
rules and systems etc. that make up its universe and how well that work
satisfies those rules within that environment. "Like and Entertainment"
are twins who by their very natures are predictable and generic. The
Entertainer walks the road already traveled. The "Art" in Entertainment
is always the invention of the performer-interpreter. It is not the highly
creative and surprising demands of the "Classical Creator."
The Classical artist translates the present into a psycho-physical medium
grounded in the values of the culture's sensorium. (Truth and Beauty) The
term for Artistry is mastery or virtuosity. In Classical Art the mastery
is in the creativity of the composer and the virtuosity of the interpreter.
In Entertainment the mastery is the simple delight of "like" and is
formulaic. Any surprise in Entertainment is in the novelty of the story
or the layered virtuosity of the performer. Entertainment does not seek to
challenge but to enforce beliefs both positive or negative. Entertainment
and old Classical Art have a common thread since entertainment uses the
tools of the past. Old Classical Art is entertaining but NOT
Entertainment. Not because it's easy but because the difficulties have
been answered and conquered. Old Art is the "tool shed" from which the
craftsmen of Entertainment draw their materials. Entertainment is both
commercial and recreational. Art is often neither.
Copyright 2010 REH
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