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Music and Meaning (Michael McMullin)
Music and Meaning (Michael McMullin)
BY
MICHAEL McMULLIN
There are two aspects to the question of meaning in music, one of them involving
the specifically musical ways of expressing meaning, the technical analysis of
the process of musical symbolism; the other involves a discussion of the mean
ings expressed, of meaning in general and the role of music in this context in
Western civilization. I have gone into the first of these aspects in a previous
essay, “The Three Dimensions of Music” (unpublished), at least to the extent
of defining the nature of symbolism, of a symbolic analysis and, in a general
way, the various kinds of interpenetrating meanings and levels of symbolism in
music. An introductory essay on this subject was published in The Music
Review of February, 1947 under the title “The Symbolic Analysis of Music”.
My present endeavour is to call attention to the second aspect.
DAS SYMBOL: The concept of symbol is fundamental to any discussion
of meaning, and so it must be said here that the sense in which I am using the
word “meaning” is that of symbolic significance—that is, in the sense of seeing
in the particular manifestation an expression of a greater whole. This inclusive
ness can expand in ever-widening circles, like the ripples from a stone dropped
into water, until eventually the whole cosmos is implied. This is the universe
in a grain of sand, or: “As above, so below”. Each part is a whole in itself
and, at the same time, a part and a reflection (a microcosm) of a greater whole.
This is the philosophy now called “holism” but it is also symbolism. And, what
is more, it accords with the principle of correspondences, which is the basis of
astrology and much ancient wisdom. Thus, meaning is not a matter of ration
alistic concepts or material values, but of awareness of relationships and
correspondences, depending on sensation, feeling and intuition in equal pro
portions to thinking. Here we are dealing with perceptions and not with
opinions.
We are focusing our attention on wholeness and relatedness, as well as on
distinctness—first we have to have differentiation and then integration of the
separate entities into a greater whole, so that “integration” becomes a keyword.
We no longer see the world as a collection of unrelated fragments—that is, as
meaningless. There is nevertheless a strong reluctance prevalent today among
those conditioned by past prejudices to see connections between things; they
prefer to have everything in separate pigeon-holes, filed and indexed and,
above all, disposed of and requiring no further thought. This suits what Jung
called “the levelling platitudes of the so-called scientific view of the world,
and the destruction of the instinctual and emotional forces which results from
it”. “The whole of reality is replaced by words”, which are separative.
Jiherefore there are no standards of value, no means of comparing concepts with
nature. Art, on the other hand, deals in whole reality and provides such a
250 THE MUSIC REVIEW
contact and a basis of values. It might be argued that the evaluation of per
ceptions is arbitrary. Some people—most people today, probably—like-to-see=
the commonplace in everything. This is the “reductionist” mentality; the
ideal is to reduce everything to “nothing but”, as Jung pointed out. The
highest expressions of the spirit are “nothing but” repressed sexuality, the fear
of death or looking forward to the next meal, and the whole universe is “nothing
but” a random assemblage, or disassemblage, of atoms, electrons or something
else. Others prefer to see the wonderful in everything, or the whole in every
thing, and a totality of order and meaning. Is there a qualitative difference
between these two points of view ? What you see depends upon your level of
development. The minds of commonplace people are inevitably rooted in the
commonplace, and it does not occur to them that Bach, Beethoven and other
great artists move on another mental and spiritual level. One can deal only
with what is within one’s own experience, and the lesser cannot comprehend
the greater. “One cannot talk of the ocean to a frog in a well.” Art, on this
higher level, is an esoteric language, addressed only to initiates or, at most, to
seekers on the path. Particularly is this so in music, where special powers of
insight and receptivity have to be consciously developed and matured.
I am concerned only with music in Western culture, where it occupies a
unique place and is of a different order from that of any other. It is, as
Spengler pointed out, the dominant and most characteristic art of our culture,
that which, more than any other, embodies its essential Weltanschauung.
Further, music has reached with us a far higher level of development than it
has done in any other culture—and of music alone of the arts can this be
said. There is absolutely no comparison between the complexity and sophisti
cation, the immense and varied resources and the technical mastery over them,
of Western music and those of any other culture. It is true that this develop
ment is overwhelmingly intellectual, and in the order of the “aesthetical” as
opposed to the “magical” (Rudhyar), or “telluric” (Keyserling) element of
Oriental music. Different dimensions are emphasized. But our music is also
a vehicle for the expression of a correspondingly vaster, more grandiose and
higher order of mental and spiritual concepts. The development of polyphony
gives the potentiality for an entirely new level of expression and of a more
powerful expression than that of any other art. This has been fully realized,
and music has been the source of the highest spiritual expression throughout our
culture. One can say that the voice of God has come to the West not through
organized religion but through music, and that music’s great “bodhisattvas
or avatars have been the messengers of a higher reality. This can be directly
experienced in their music, but one never' hears of music in this context, or no
of Western music. Present Westerners in general are unaware of and in
different to their priceless musical heritage, or those seeking a spiritua
music go in search of any kind of exotic music but never their own, while t ose
who concern themselves with music insist for the most part in regarding it as
having no relation to anything in life—unless merely to the composer s persona
mundane or physiological concerns or perhaps to his personal inte ec ua
problem of how to modulate from C to F# minor in three moves.
MUSIC AND MEANING 251
or a mere foil to the “first subject’’, and we can say that it has spiritual signifi
cance, with some intensity. There is no need to say anything of the p^-fri __
ordinary beauty of the second movement, which may be self-evident enough to
allow the use of this very unspecific word.
In this example we are almost exclusively concerned with the dimension of
feeling, which is the least analysable in words. Much more can be said in the
context of the other two dimensions, those of sense-perception and thinking. I
These three correspond to Jung’s three basic psychological functions, and in |
“The Three Dimensions of Music’’ I have defined them as “Lyrical”, “Dramatic” ]
and “Symphonic” (or “Epic”), on the most general level. In the process of |
string quartets of Bartok took me a long time to understand, until I heard them
as nocturnes looking out over an industrial city and saw them as a reaction to
that extremely negative environment, much as the poetry of Baudelaire,
even though they do not coincide exactly in time. A very good case of pointing
musical significance on this principle is the description of the great organ fugues
of Bach by Sacheverell Sitwell in his book Splendours and Miseries, in a chapter
entitled "Fugue”. Here he uses an intuitive imagination to .shed a great deal
of light on the music and enhance one’s appreciation in a way that no pedantic
(and frequently erroneous) formal analysis could do.
A further level of environment is that of the state of civilization as a whole
and the over-all human predicament. This merges into the philosophical
dimension but often involves at the same time, very markedly, the dramatic
one. We have seen it in the case of Bartok, and it is even more conspicuous
in much of Shostakovich, as in his eighth and fifteenth Symphonies. It is
foreshadowed in Mahler, with his monumental Farewells to European culture;
Shostakovich gives us a preview of death and annihilation, ending with an
invocation of the Valkyries and a dance of skeletons. In this way he is much
more contemporary than those who think he should have been writing elec
tronic "music”. In the fifteenth Symphony in particular he is seen as a master
of the grotesque and the macabre, which alternate in the movements, and
exactly reflect the contemporary scene. In other places—the finale of the sixth
Symphony—we have a Liimpenmarsch which, far from being a jolly piece of
fun, "trivial but enjoyable”, reminds us of Bruegel’s peasants, belonging to some
nightmare, or of a typical modern parade of the insane. Since the Politburo,
too, see no meaning in music, such things could be openly stated and pass for a
description of "a toy shop” and, inevitably, “the triumphant spirit of man”.
If one takes meaning into account one has the only final yardstick with which
to evaluate modern art: what is it saying, and what is its relevance ? Or is it
merely itself a psychological symptom of the prevailing state of chaos and
neurosis ? Scarcely anyone understands any form of art, and most follow along
with the lastest fashion or whatever is the going "opinion”. What is acclaimed
in its time is frequently worthless, and what is accepted from the past is as
frequently congealed into some formula of permanent misconception, as in the
case of Hamlet}
^ I cannot resist, in this context, quoting from Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken:
Riibek: When I completed my masterpiece — for The Day of Resurrection is a master-
piece. Or was, when I first . . .
Maja: Yes, Rubek. The whole world knows that.
Rubek: The world knows nothing. It understands nothing.
Maja: At least they can sense something. . .
Rubek: Something that isn’t there, oh yes! Something I’ve never imagined. And that
is what they all go mad about!
MUSIC AND MEANING
255
resistance to any suggestion that there might be some meaning in them. The I
movements are analysed as though they were haphazard or randomly thrown ~ij
together with no particular meaning or relevance to the rest of the Quartet—
let alone quartets.
The formal principle underlying these quartets is thematic transformation,
and this carries many implications that give it much more in common with
fugue than with the sonata. Kerman admits this principle in some of the j
movements; but it applies to all of them. The quartets are monothematic;
this is apparent from listening to the C# minor and, with careful attention, to
i
the A minor. By carefully analysing the notes, as Deryck Cooke has done, it is
clear with all of them. Beyond this, all three are essentially monothematic as
a whole, giving a development of this idea on a scale comparable only with
Bach’s Art of Fugue.
There is also an interrelationship between specific movements in different
quartets. The third movement of the Bt» Quartet {Andante) was to me in
comprehensible for a long time until I saw it as a different facet—different
mood—of the first movement of the A minor (see Ex. i). The second theme of
Ex.1
this movement of the A minor Quartet is so obviously identical with fig. {a),
except in note-values, that there is no sense in calling it a “second subject”;
it is just the first theme seen in another light, or from another viewpoint. Or
it is an evolution of feeling-values. It is not a different character in a drama,
as one understands a sonata second subject to be. It is true that it is in F,
instead of A minor, and if one uses key-analysis to point to another level of
symbolic relationships it is perfectly valid; here for example, the emphasis of
the 6th of the scale has a decided significance in relation to the other quartets.
This kind of significance is susceptible to further development of symbolism in
ways hitherto undreamt-of. On the other hand, the way in which key-
analysis is often used has little meaning except as a lesson to students in text
book modulation. In discerning thematic relationships key does not enter ‘
much into it, and a motif is identifiable, in any key, as a fugue subject. An
exact notational comparison is also not necessary. Deryck Cooke has
pointed out how fugal methods of thematic transformation, such as inversion,
augmentation and diminution, apply here, and he has defined another one, ^
which he calls “interversion”, meaning “the swithching around of notes in a
phrase”. There is also an intuitive comparison by which a correspondence is
MUSIC AND MEANING
259
Ex. 2
all three quartets can be compared with A andB. The degree of the scale makes
no difference, for purely thematic comparison. C is the germinal motif; it is a
kind of seed, which is metamorphosed in all three quartets—a process of organic
growth. This motif has to be pregnant with meaning; it must have a hidden
meaning, even an occult meaning. D(B—A—C-H) has a certain suggestive
relationship to it which may be highly signihcant.
It is interesting that thematic transformation of this kind is, in exactly
the same way, the key to the mature works of Sibelius. This is obvious in a
case like Tapiola, but it seems to have been overlooked in the symphonies,
which are solemnly analysed as being in “sonata form”. Many very interesting
aspects of transformation can be seen in the first movement of no. 5, while it
has been noted by Cecil Gray that the entire seventh Symphony is evolved from
the basic progressions of the modal full close, in the scale of C, embodied in the
opening woodwind motif.
The logic of thematic transformation and fugal metamorphosis may perhaps
be compared with the intellectual logic of correspondences. In the holistic
World-view everything is related to everything else, not causally or rationalistic-
ally, but synchronistically, by correspondences and through a hierarchy of
levels. Thus a germinal, motivic theme is an archetype that can be interpreted
on a multitude of levels. The logic of correspondences is symbolic logic and is
non-Aristotelian; aesthetics can be interpreted only in a non-Aristotelian
system. This kind of thinking belongs to the future, to a different level of
perception, and this has a bearing on the meaning of the quartets we have been
considering. Their meaning is also to be interpreted as a psychological and
spiritual signpost to the future. Their message is becoming relevant now much
more than was the case in the time they were written, when they could not be
appreciated. 1 think that Joseph Kerman has given some \'ery useful pointers,
26o
THE MUSIC REVIEW
for example, when he associates the idea of “integration” with the C# minor ""
yuartet, for the same theme of integration is of vital psychological importance
to humanity at present. But to find the Presto “childlike”, and to see in it a ^
rustic dance”, is to descend to the belittling and the ridiculous; one cannot
imagine a dance less rustic than this. I should say a cosmic dance, or the
dance of Shiva, and that Wagner, in the passages he quotes, came much nearer
to understanding its context. I believe that the whole Quartet embodies a '
piritual message that is scarcely intelligible to us, that it is trans-personal and
transcendent and that to appreciate it requires profound contemplation of each
phase of the work that is, a feeling-contemplation and not only an intellectual
one. One has to associate it with one’s innermost experiences, “mit innigste
mpfindung . The Heiliger Dankgesang is an experience from another world '
from a higher plane of existence. To say that this is “tragic”, or to see “optim
ism or pessimism as subjects of these works, is surely meaningless—qn’est-ce
que cela vent dire? ^while to see them as expressing Beethoven’s personal
anxiety about death is perfectly reductionist and Freudian. One must have
a higher conception of art than that. To find the right symbols, or universal
archetypes, to express the over-all meaning of these quartets, one would have
to resort to astrology, and I believe that, in fact, the three quartets can be
related to a configuration in Beethoven’s horoscope that is extremely remarkable '
and the significance of which is transcendence~m the Bb Quartet, death and
regeneration. I have taken up this theme in its astrological context else
where.^
1 The great philosopher Dane Rudhyar was originally a composer and became also the nrincinal
Pi'bli^hed by th” AmLkan ThtosopS^PuWiThi^^^^^ Culture, Crisis and Creativity.
2 1 he Beethoven Quartets by Joseph Kerman (O.U.P., 1967/78).