Finding Meaning in Classical Music
Music is everywhere in the 21st century; we play it while we are commuting and shopping, and every advertisement seems to require a background track. Technology has enabled personal musical consumption in a revolutionary way, paving the way for an unimaginable amount of diversity and quantity of high-quality music available to us. In today’s world, where music is pervasive and often passive in our lives, I ask the question, what is meaningful about listening to classical music?
When asking how and why music matters, it’s both helpful and impossible to attempt to tease apart the music from the listening environment. Classical music, when referenced colloquially, usually refers to instrumental music written from the 17th century until the early 20th century. A non-musician college student can listen to “classical music” while studying — which is likely the most common usage of classical music today. This environment is quite the opposite of the night at the symphony attended by highbrow middle-class elites. Contrasting these two experiences should tease apart some of the answers to the question, why does classical music matter?
Classical music often does not contain words, and if it does, these words are often sung in a foreign language. As such, no obvious lexical meaning is imparted onto the listener from the composer, lyricist, or libretto. The language-processing part of the brain is free to focus on other tasks like studying or conversing at a wedding reception.
Peirce defines three kinds of references in which signs can reference objects to create meaning (Turino 2008, 5–12). These include Icon, Index, and Symbol. Symbols are agreed-upon lexical signs that refer to a meaning; due to the abstract nature of instrumental music, these are mostly absent. The remaining two are Icon and Index. An Icon contains a resemblance to another known object, where no explanation or training is necessary to be able to interpret this relationship. An example from programmatic classical music would be imitative birdsong played by woodwinds.
Index is the most common referential tool in classical music — these are learned associations between a sound and some other object or meaning. As we hear different themes, elements, or harmonies used in a specific way, we associate them with feelings, tension, or ideas. The shower scene in the movie Psycho is the prototypical example of scary music being associated with a scary movie.
The entire system of western harmony is, in Christopher Small’s words, a human construct that has been created over time (Small 1998, 124). As a non-musician listener with minimal learning time devoted to the monolith that is the western classical music tradition, it is unlikely that most of these index meanings would be available. In the case of a busy college student, this lack of meaning or external reference in a Mozart Symphony or Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto are a benefit. The listener is thinking about their study texts and not about rondo form or 19th century Vienna. If the student doesn’t listen to classical music in any other context, it is quite possible that they will form an indexical connection between classical music and studying, further facilitating their studying process. In this case, classical music is meaningful to this listener, just in a way that is different from the classical music culture and its musicians.
I now transition the discussion of classical music to the context in which it is performed today. World-class symphony orchestras perform in government-financed purpose-built halls — despite this not being the place where most works were intended to be performed (Small, P. 21). There must be something about classical music culture that drives governments around the world to spend great sums of money constructing these impressive halls and funding their performances. The obvious argument is that the performances that take place in these venues is akin to the great art seen in museums — a pinnacle of human culture and achievement. A complementary explanation is one that Bateson puts forth: it is in these situations where we experience what it is to be human (Turino 2008, 15). By stretching what Bateson says and combining it with Small’s beloved bluntness, “…a concert hall is a place where middle-class white people can feel safe together” (Small 1998, 42), we see that there is something about this experience that embodies middle-class western culture.
On the surface, hundreds of years of innovation, craftsmanship, and culture are invested before we can have a concert experience. From the fancy architecture of the symphony hall to the design and construction of the antique instruments that are played. A pervasive culture combined The collections of music pieces and countless hours of education and practice time give these musicians the ability to perform music. This represents large investments of time, energy, and culture. Finally, there is the audience. To exemplify the middle-class experience, one must have money to attend, nice clothing, and the desire to sit still for approximately two hours. Like other kinds of music, the symphony is a strong cultural ritual that solidifies one’s cultural identity.
What does classical music have to do with a middle-class white cultural identity? One could arguably have a similar cultural cohesion if we attended a fancy auditorium and silently read Shakespeare to ourselves. There must be something special in western classical music that makes both the performing and listening experience special.
Popular classical music is like a fine single-malt scotch. In our first experience, we don’t know what makes the drink, we don’t particularly enjoy it, but the experience is expensive, and others tell us how wonderful it is. For a few years after this first time, we try different whiskies from time to time, and we find that we even enjoy some. One day, we taste a bottle that is remarkably pleasurable with many flavor characteristics, in addition to the wonderful social company. We find that the bottle is the same as the first Scotch that we had years prior. It is us, as people, who have grown and changed.
The high-browed complexity of classical music is alluring. It is impressive that listening to the same recording of the same symphony performed by the same orchestra can yield wildly different emotional, social, and intellectual results. In Small’s words “Whatever the contemporary concertgoer is in search of, it does not seem to be new musical experiences” (Small 1998, 89). Much like a religious service, there is power in both the ritual, social cohesion, and stability (Small 1998, 96).
The discussion of class, ritual, social cohesion, and cultural identity marches a nice circle around the music experience itself: having a dedicated place and time to actively listen to music in an environment isolated from the world and free of distractions.
Index connections between music and ourselves are less likely to occur if we are focused on another task. Index symbols are the only semiotic link that are likely to have emotional charge. Turino claims that “Indexical experience plus a perception of iconic similarity with other people and forms of life is the basis for feeling direct empathetic connection” (Turino 2008, 16). Empathetic connection is incredibly powerful and the basis for meaning for a great deal of people’s lives.
Index connections are continuously evolving, adapting, and becoming more complex. It is possible to have multiple objects assigned to a single indexical trigger and have different objects result from the same stimulus. This combined with semiotic chaining processes — a kind of runaway chain where the object of one sign creates another effect ad infinitum (Turino 2008, 11).
A classical music concert has the opportunity for many different personal outcomes depending on the mental state of the listener. A musician can easily become enamored with the technical prowess of the performers and spend the entire performance appreciating the aesthetic crispness that arises from exceptional ability. A music historian could just as easily use the experience as an opportunity to time-travel and imagine the work being performed in its original contexts. A musician can also experience a vivid memory recall and be transported into the past to a previous geographical time and place upon hearing the piece.
It is embarrassingly common for me to close my eyes during a performance and experience an index connection with a bit of the music that triggers some thought or memory in my mind’s eye. My mind and the music continue two parallel tracks with some influence from the music as I surf through my life’s memories in a semi-conscious state. This experience is deeply meaningful and personal, but hardly likely to be the intention of anyone creating this experience.
Gibson describes an affordance as a bit of information perceived by a subject that is actively scanning an environment (Clayton 2007, 7). The content of classical music is so incredibly dense, particularly for a musician, that the number of affordances present is astronomical. It is by random chance which are observed and activated at any given time.
In conclusion, listening to classical music can be incredibly meaningful and deeply personal. It is not beneficial to judge listeners for their level of experience, choice of music, or how they listen to music. Common throughout these personal experiences is the indexical symbol — linking the music with something in our lives. While the experience of attending a classical music concert is steeped in western tradition and is a marker for the middle class, there is something special about the music itself that leads to continued investment by people and governments alike.
References
1. Turino, Thomas. Music as Social Life : the Politics of Participation. Chicago The University of Chicago Press, 2008.
2. Christopher Small. 1998. Musicking : The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Music/Culture. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.
3. Clayton, Martin. “Introduction: Towards a Theory of Musical Meaning (In India and Elsewhere).” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10, no. 1 (2001): 1–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060769.
