Pietism & Bach

The early eighteenth century was a period of relative tranquility in Western Europe compared to the seventeenth century and the religious and political upheavals of the 30 Years’ War.  In Protestant Germany, the question of the necessity for intercession and entreaty between God and Man, by agent or agency, had been answered with the evolution of Luther’s teachings through the development of Pietism.  Routley writes (1967) that in Germany, Pietism was “…an intensely individual piety without any ‘fighting’ qualities of doctrine” (p. 154). The individual could become one with God through direct, spiritual prayer and atonement without fear of persecution.

Perhaps this notion of atonement, the attempt by Man to become one with God through personal petition, influences and informs many of Bach’s works, for it is within the setting of Pietism that Bach “…lived but to worship God and write music” (Cross & Ewen 1969, p. 22).  In the years between 1718 and 1723, he merged both of these endeavors while serving as Kapellmeiser and director of chamber music at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt in Cöhen and writing Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.  One example from that work that illustrates Pietism’s central tenet, the individual’s determined, personal effort to reach God, is Bach’s Prelude of Suite No.1 in G Major, BWV 1007.  

A single musical voice sounds throughout the work’s forty-two measures, consisting of sixteenth notes with few exceptions.  A low bass note, repeated in every eight-note arpeggio, may represent the inertia of physical existence, from which the individual must break free in order to reach God, while the higher notes of the series suggest the attempt by Man to break earthly bonds and reach God. The difference between the lowest and highest notes of each arpeggio is great, and this difference implies that there is a gulf, a separation between Man and God, which Man attempts to bridge. By measure five, the bonds are almost broken, and Man gradually ascends to the spiritual plane of God as the musical pattern ascends in pitch.  

As the work continues, the melodic line occasionally falls back to the lower register of the work’s beginning, hinting that Man’s struggle to become one with God may ultimately fail.  Near the end of the piece, intensity and tension increase as the cello’s bow moves rapidly and aggressively across its strings and mimics the considerable effort required to bridge the gulf.  

As I listen to the work, I wonder if Bach is suggesting that the earthly bonds that ground man in physical existence are too strong to be broken by Man’s effort alone.  Perhaps, the gulf is too broad to cross without intercession by external agent or agency.  But Bach provides resolution to my concerns in the last measure’s final chord, which consists of the low bass note heard in the beginning of the work and two notes at a much higher pitch. A second instrument (agent) does not assist in the struggle to bridge the gulf.  Instead, the three notes that compose the G major chord are played by cello alone, the single voice of the work, and I better comprehend Pietism and atonement; Man reaches up to God, and God reaches down to Man. God and Man are joined in that final chord.

References

Routley, E. (1967). The church and music. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. LTD.

Cross, M., & Ewen, D. (Eds.). (1969). The milton cross new encyclopedia of the great composers and their music (Vol. 1). Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Music Perception & Emotional Arousal

A new ballet debuted in Paris on the evening of May 29, 1913. The ballet, The Rite of Spring, depicted a ritual pagan suicide, a peasant girl’s dance of death, as an offering to the god of spring.  The work opened with a deeply affecting bassoon solo played in a register atypical for the instrument. With the second section, Adoration of the Earth – II, a series of strident, heavy, tension-producing chords assailed the audience and continued throughout the entire ballet.  Catcalls and loud booing gave way to pushing, jostling, and eventually fist-fighting (Glass 1998).  Audience members began fighting with one another, some calling the work genius, others decrying it as an assault against traditional ballet. Differences of opinion might have been expected with the debut of an avant-garde work, but could the music itself have played a role in exacerbating the strength of the disagreement between the two groups?  If so, what possible biological or cognitive mechanisms might have been at work?

Some experts advocate a neurophysiological view of the effect of music on emotional arousal.   In a program on music and the brain (Abumrad 2006), neuroscientist Jan Fishman states,  “We find that chords, musical chords that are typically judged to be dissonant, elicit these wild fluctuations in brain activity.”  In this view, a sub-population of neurons in auditory cortex sensitive to novel sounds is tasked with giving “sense” to the sound, in finding underlying patterns to the sound, and relating the patterns to innate or learned experience.  One explanation of the audience’s behavior is that the continued dissonance of Stravinsky’s work made it difficult for these neurons to find patterns in the music and to relate the music to past musical experiences. The overwhelmed neurons may have released dopamine in excess quantities, which contributed to a transitory effect on brain chemistry akin to a kind of temporary schizophrenia.  Frustration, confusion, and violent behavior ensued, regardless of whether the individual liked or disliked the work.

Ball (2008) describes cognitive views regarding music and emotional arousal.  One view is that emotional content is inherent in elements of music such as major or minor mode, tempo, timbre and melody.  These elements provide aural cues that humans have learned to interpret, which switch on emotional mechanisms of the brain and activate the sympathetic nervous system for action, or the parasympathetic system for inaction, depending on the cue presented. A scene in Hitchcock’s thriller, Psycho, may provide an example of this mechanism at work. 

Recall that the leading up to the shower scene in Psycho, Janet Leigh has embezzled money from her boss, and after a tension-filled day of dodging the law, she has decided to spend the night in the Bates Motel.  To unwind after the harrowing day, she takes a hot shower.  As she relaxes in the steam’s heat, the shower curtain is abruptly thrown back, and Anthony Perkins attacks her with a large kitchen knife.  Accompanying the attack are repeated, dissonant, high-pitched, intense staccato chords.  If the chords evoke the auditory memory pattern of the sounds made when sharpening a knife for slicing and cutting, then the music could amplify the viewer’s fear by recollection of that memory pattern as Jane Leigh is sliced and cut by the butcher knife in the hand of Anthony Perkins. 

Despite the mechanism advocated, there is agreement among physiologists and cognitive behaviorists that music can move us emotionally, regardless of culture, gender, or age.  Music has the ability to intensify joy or sadness, memories or hopes, despair or ecstasy. If the manipulation is too extreme vis-à-vis our expectations, the emotions evoked may cause individuals to lose control, and in the case of the premier of The Rite of Spring, to become riotous. 

References

Abumrad J. (Abumrad J. (Host) & Krulwich R. (Co-Host)), & Krulwich R. (Co-Host). (2006). Radiolab. Musical language: Sound as touch. Podcast retrieved fromhttp://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21.

Ball, P. (2008). Facing the music. Nature, 453(8 May 2008), 160-162. Retrieved fromhttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7192/pdf/453160a.pdf.

Glass, P. (1998). The time 100: Igor Stravinsky. Time, 1-3. Retrieved fromhttp://www.time.com/time/time100/artists/profile/stravinsky.html.

Music, Humor and "The Long Haired-Hare," Part 2 of 2

The first crack in the system occurs when Jones overhears Bugs’ singing and finds himself dancing and singing Bugs’ song instead of the aria. Jones sets out to silence the rabbit through a series of violent, exaggerated actions. Music is employed to caricature and amplify the violence that befalls Bugs as Jones assails him. For example, Jones crushes Bugs’ banjo and the musical accompaniment imitates strings pulled almost to a breaking point and then finally breaking. As the banjo is destroyed on screen, percussion “Mickey Mouses” the sound of the banjo’s neck snapped in two, and low-register bass notes imitate Jones’ heavy, angry steps back to his house. Bugs doesn’t take this action lying down, and after he utters his trademark “of course you know, this means war,” line, the spoof begins in earnest.

Bugs goes to the Hollywood Bowl and wreaks havoc with Jones’ performance by sneaking into the concert disguised as a great conductor, “Leopold,” and leading Jones through a set of operatic histrionics in which Jones is commanded to sing at the lowest and highest registers of his range in short succession at the whim of Bugs. Jones is forced to hold a high note for an excruciatingly long time (so long that Bugs has time to order and receive ear muffs), and in so doing pops all the buttons of his tuxedo and bursts out of his clothes. The film ends as Jones’ sustained, high note finally cracks the Hollywood Bowl, reducing it to rubble. As Bugs takes his bow, Jones emerges from the wreckage to take his bow as well. Bugs, one more trick up his sleeve, spies a precariously perched boulder perched on a beam above Jones’ head, and he motions for the Jones to hit the note again. Jones sings his final note and is brained by the boulder. Bugs then whips out his banjo and strums a ditty to end the film. The common man and his music has symbolically undressed and destroyed the elitists and opera, just as effectively as a Soupy Sales’ pie in the face.

Music, Humor and the "Long-Haired Hare," Part 1 of 2

I chuckled a while back  when I read that the comedian Soupy Sales had died.  I wasn’t happy at the thought of Mr. Sales’ death; I was smiling with the recollection of Sales’ signature gag:  a pie in the face. In Sales’ TV show of the mid-sixties, celebrities would often appear in skits or banter with Sales. At some point in the show, they would invariably receive a pie in the face.  Everyone watching the show knew the pie was coming; the anticipation of what was to come and in being in on the joke, belonging to the group that knew what was to come, was part of the fun. The mock surprise, horror or anger expressed by the celebrity, the exaggerated show of wiping off the pie from his or her face, the fact that a well coiffed handsome or beautiful person was despoiled by banana cream pie, were funny, because a context was created with the skit or banter and broken with an incongruous act, the pie in the face.    Perhaps a kind of schadenfreude was at work—the pleasure in seeing those envied brought low. 

A fine example of humor that combines many of the comedic techniques discussed (expectation, exaggeration, incongruous acts, elites brought low) in a musical context is the animated film, Long-Haired Hare, starring Bugs Bunny.  The title is amusing in that it is a pun on longhairs, a term of derision for those who devotedly listen to classical music. Carl Stalling, the musical director of the animated short, begins the opera parody in the title sequence. He twists Rossini’s aria, “Largo al Factotum,” with the employment of bawdy muted horns and tin-whistle, non-traditional symphonic instruments, which create a banana-peel-slip effect:  a musical slapstick and pratfall that foreshadows what is to come in the context of the cartoon, a lampoon of opera and the elitists who listen and practice opera.  

The central incongruity of the short film is fashioned in the juxtaposition of two opposites, Giovanni Jones, a famous though fictitious baritone, rehearsing Largo al Factotum in his home with an off-screen pianist and Bugs, lounging over his rabbit hole, singing “A Rainy Night in Rio” and accompanying himself on banjo.  In the first few minutes of the short, Stallings has set up a system in which the urbane Jones and opera are symbols of elitism, while Bugs and popular music represent the common man.