A case for musical sophistication
Derek Sivers reposted this story a little while ago. It was originally published in Reader’s Digest. In it, the journalist describes the night on which he met Albert Einstein and how the physicist taught him to appreciate Bach. Einstein’s analogy equated the appreciation of music to the learning of arithmetic. He explained to the writer that if his teacher had thrown long division or fractions at him the first day, he’d have reacted in panic and forever closed his mind to those concepts. It would’ve been madness to ask a student so new to arithmetic to grasp such concepts before having learned more basic ones. “So it is with music,” Einstein claimed.
As far as I know, Einstein never gave concerts or tried to sell records. Maybe he was right though. I wrestle with a conflict of sophistication in my musical life quite often. It’s my nature to go for something more than the simplest approach to composition and arrangement. I need something more engaging than what is the most predictable to enjoy what I’m playing or listening to. As an artist, that idiosyncrasy can be an obstacle to universal appeal. Instead of becoming frustrated in striving for musical heights in the modern commercial climate, perhaps I should simply make a greater effort to teach long division.
I’ve always had a musical ear, it’s true. Before I completely understood what I was hearing, music would affect me profoundly. The way the parts worked together, the emotional effects that certain harmonic intervals could create in me, these stimulated my brain and heart even as a small child. As I grew up and became a musician, I honed my abilities and began to work my own alchemy with organized sounds. Now that I understand very much about music’s moving parts, I feel sometimes as if I have the key to a golden door. Behind it lay the ability to appreciate a special beauty in life, an enrichment fueled by what I can only equate with the somewhat exclusive perception of another dimension entirely. Since music is my racket, it only makes sense that I would arrive at the “long division and fractions” phase of musical appreciation and creation sooner than someone of a different vocation. If music could be equated with juggling, I’d be tossing a chain saw, a kitten, a raw egg and an apple, and eating the apple along the way. It would be a great show until I severed a limb, but then, I’m not finished learning either.
Sadly, Einstein’s age has passed. Since math is never as cool as music from a cultural standpoint, countless people claim to love music. However, if a recording artist in 2010 creates something of reasonable sophistication, there is an overwhelming contingent of listeners, critics and other musicians who are quick to dismiss the work as “indulgent” or “overblown.” In the most painful of instances, this dismissive ilk has been known to label the music as “prog,” a dreadful-sounding, shortened form of the word “progressive,” which carried with it a certain prestige some 30 years ago.
It’s almost as if the popular culture as a whole has turned its back on ambitious musical expression and achievement. I can’t believe the fuss that is made over some really terrible musicians and singers. My perspective dooms me here, but I’m still fascinated and simultaneously flummoxed when I hear yet another recording of musicians struggling to play songs that essentially reinvent the wheel of the most basic structures. They never seem to become curious about what other possibilities their music might hold.
Punk is my favorite example of this. Punk is great for kids with more passion than musical ability or experience. But even the real wave of the style didn’t last that long. It simply doesn’t take that long to progress musically and emotionally from it. However, “punk” is a connotation that has come to imply a certain creditability in the cultural consciousness of popular music. It’s baffling. I mean, how can you be approaching 50 years old and still be embracing the punk idiom? In that case, I doubt we’re even talking about music anymore. We’re just using the word to describe an affectation instead of an art form. Nevertheless, in music, Americans seem incessantly to celebrate the bird house of high school shop and to ignore the Roman arch.
When did that happen?
I don’t know what it was about the 70s, but it gave rise to some of the most experimental rock music ever recorded. Musicians had grown in skill and sophistication to the point where certain artists and bands were more aptly described as composers than songwriters. Musicianship soared as well. Rock and roll music, a folk form played by primitive musicians, had grown up. I thought of this while listening to a couple of Yes albums this week. There was such an audience for music played by guys with real chops and unusual musical vision in those days. How could a group that played so well and performed such obtuse variations on the rock style achieve such amazing popularity?
I have a few theories. One is that people had a bit more capacity to appreciate something outside of themselves. People seemed to be more willing to evolve, to go deeper into the object of the obsessions they chose. I believe that progressive rock grew in part out of a raised consciousness and more eclectic philosophical attitudes of the late 60s. Those philosophies were experimental and perhaps ultimately flawed, but at least some people were unafraid to search, to find something new.
That cultural trend has been replaced by one of fear and cynicism. As cynicism grew with each succeeding decade of psychological overload, greatness became less of an inspiration and more an unspoken indictment of one’s own laziness and unwillingness to sacrifice. In music now, it seems like everyone, regardless of true skill, thinks they can make a viable record. It’s the highest form of delusion, but there’s enough encouragement and momentum in that world for aesthetic criteria to have eroded almost to non-existence. Or so it would seem. In the modern musical climate, are skill, passion and vision looked upon as reminders of chores that were never completed, of the ever-present fear that the multitudes of the “three chords and the truth” set might not be as great as they think they are? To cope with the fear, have they created a culture of acceptable mediocrity to disappear into? If enough people use the word “prog,” any divergent musical vision becomes a punchline and it becomes safer to be around. With the right dismissal, any ambition can be controlled and there’ll still be a chance to be great without really trying.
My own cynicism compels me to accuse. Or is it like Einstein said? Has the overload of our “too much, too soon” culture simply turned so many minds off to learning more?
I want more. I want the keys to more golden doors, behind which lay more beauty and enrichment. I don’t think that progressive rock is the only way. Nor do I believe that simple music should be discounted. Not at all. I simply want every chance to experience the extraordinary humanness that only music can provide for me. My challenge then must be to figure a way to take people, as Einstein did, off to a room to listen to records and share the keys to which I believe we are all entitled. Perhaps that’s why I write my little essays here.
In that spirit, I’ll close with something for your heart and head. Maybe you need to be an ace “juggler” to dig it, but I’ll try my best at least to describe what happens when I listen to a piece of music enough times. This is an excerpt from the guitar part of a Yes tune called “The Gates of Delirium” as I remember it. Even if you find progressive rock demanding or annoying, Yes was one of those groups that could take things way out without neglecting beauty or the sublime musical release.
In measure 2 and 3 is an F major chord. It’s technically outside of the key signature, which is D, creating some sense of conflict to my ear. The chord is played in staccato eighths with accents that separate them into groups of 3. It’s tough to find a strong downbeat there, so you’re really being pushed out of your comfort zone. Back into the key, is a glissando up to a G major in measure 4. Some relief, but we’re not there yet. With a single F# that bridges you into beat 4, we’re made to wait just an instant longer before the phrase resolves wonderfully into a Dmaj7, which starting at the F chord two measures before, I had been absolutely yearning for. There it is, and all is right with the world.
This phrase changed my life in the 6th grade. It was like an orange sunset for my ears. Just greater than words. I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since. I have countless examples of similar experiences too. I wouldn’t part with a single one. If I never searched deeper into music, they would have been lost to me. What a tragedy that would have been.
