Introduction to “microtonal music”, pt. III

by Cameron Bobro

From experience, I know that a certain argument against what I’ve said in parts I and II is bound to pop up. I am not talking about my favorite response, which was to make fun of the way I dress.

(Yes, this really happened.)

There is inevitably someone who maintains that their relationship with music, especially rhthym, is deeply physical and emotional, yet listens almost exclusively to music within an extremely limited rhythmic range (boom-chick, boom-chick to be precise). My experience is that this person, having confronted the obvious fact that if they really do have a sensual relation with rhythm, then there must be a rather alarming limit to their sensuality, will, without hesitation, do an about-face and transform into a post-modernist. Nothing in music, it suddenly transpires, is direct and physical, it’s all part of culture, and something about “simulacrum”, and so on.

If you think that I’m making this comedy up, I’ll say to you: I wish I were.

But let us put aside the duplicity evident in that reply and take the claim that it’s all nurture and no nature at face value.

Let’s face it: usually when some claim about how music works makes an appeal to “nature”, what you are dealing with is thinly disguised nationalism, racialism, or plain old racism. For example, even in post-War editions of the music theorist Heinrich Schenker, which have had the obvious boners politely left out, you can smell the stench of that stuff a mile off.  Look into it for yourself if you don’t believe me.

Please take care to note what I’ve been saying, though. My claim is that if there are raw,physical relationships between music and our sensations and perceptions of emotion, feeling, etc. in music, there must be variety in the physical aspects of music, as there is variety in our emotions, feelings, and so on.

Nowhere have I claimed that such and such a physical aspect of music “naturally means” such and such a particular sensation. Our individual *interpretations* of the physical realities of music may be as cultural and learned as post-modernists claim: I do not know.

What we can NOT have in a world in which music is linked on some physical, tangible level to our experiences, emotions, etc.,  is the restriction of any given physical aspect of music to a small set of possibilities. That would mean, bluntly put, that either we or the music are emotionally
undeveloped or deliberately censored.

So, my claims about “nature” in musical perception are in direct opposition to the usual claims, which are arguments trying to justify one’s own local music as the most natural (and best, naturally). I maintain that where there is nature, there is variety, and there is NOT one “best”.

At this point, those who are genuinely open to all kinds of music may respond fairly enough to what I’ve said so far with “Well, no shit, Sherlock.”

Indeed- in this introduction, I have been careful to stick to what’s reasonable, fair, even obvious.

As we go along, though, you may find the implications of these simple statements not so obvious, and you may find them significant.

At any rate, on to the fun stuff: the practical aspects of “microtonal music”, aka, “really doing it in real life!”