Widok Problems with the origins of music PK XIV/2 2012

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(1)Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis No 3426. Ewa Kofin University of Wrocław. Problems with the origins of music. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2 Wrocław 2012. The problems signalled by the title of the article are unavoidable, for it is simply impossible today to proclaim the birth of music. We still do not know whether we should look for the origins of music at the beginning of humanity or perhaps later, but then when and thanks to what did music emerge? In any case, that the issue of the origins of music has not been resolved to this day does not mean that the topic has not been tackled by scholars. On the contrary. Many authors have examined it and – even more strangely enough – they have been not only professional musicians, for hypotheses concerning the subject can be found in works dealing with many other disciplines, for instance economics or linguistics. Clearly, the subject moves people of different professions, perhaps it is particularly important to some, for example music lovers. This can be explained by the popularity of music across the world, especially today, when thanks to electronic media we can get any piece whenever we want. Yet – what is also characteristic – these reflections on the origins of music do not end with theses, only hypotheses, which are widely divergent in any case. They can be divided into more or less convincing, but here the knowledge provided in this way does not end by any means. A question thus arises: why announce something that is not certain? In other words – are hypotheses of any value to science? We know that views on this matter are divided. Some scientists do not take hypotheses into account, while others do not disregard them, knowing that many a discovery started from a hypothesis. Often, a hypothesis could be verified only after a considerable amount of time, after the emergence of better research possibilities making its verification possible. Such an eventuality makes it worth announcing hypotheses today. That is why I will cite ideas of various authors referring to the origins of music, ideas I have come across in the literature on the subject. I am, however, aware that. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. P_K-Kofin eng-korekta.indd 1. 2014-06-26 09:07:08.

(2) 2. Ewa Kofin. there may be many more of them, precisely because they appear also in writings associated with various non-musical disciplines, which is why it is sometimes hard to know where to look for them. Rather, we come across them or learn about them accidentally.. *** Reading various hypotheses concerning the origins of music, we can conclude from them that they stem from a common initial question which can suggest some conjectures. Namely, all these hypotheses seem to be answers to the question of what could have been the use of sound making to humans living in the most primitive conditions. The answers vary; that, for example, they needed it for the purpose of getting food, of collective labour, of remote communication etc. Thus, the typical idea is that sounds not coming from nature but from human activity, sounds that could create music, were made already at the beginning of humanity, serving functional or even existential purposes, with time proving to be a necessity in life. Before I quote these hypotheses, I will put forward another problem that stems from such a premise: do all functional sounds made by humans become automatically music? Of course they do not. After all, many of them have not lost their original function and have not undergone any ontic metamorphosis, turning them into musical sounds. For instance, the Morse Code in its sonic version has not become music, it is still only a language. Noise made by machines in factories has remained a natural sound, despite the fact that these machines are the work of human beings. They are not built, after all, to make noise, but to facilitate or even replace human labour. In addition, their noise is regarded as negative and is even fought by means of silencers or mufflers, i.e. has nothing to do with musicality. On the other hand, today composers can take any sound of any origin, including natural noise, and incorporate it into the structure of their works, making it an element of music, even equal to those traditional elements produced by instruments or singing. In such a case this sound changes its ontic status and becomes a component of art. Let us take Penderecki’s Fluorescences as an example. Its orchestration includes a typewriter, the clatter of which is part of percussion effects1. When used in this manner, the machine ceases to be a tool for writing and becomes a source of musical sounds, i.e. a musical instrument. Just as often we see opposite phenomena, when musical sounds lose their ontic status of elements of art in favour of something else. I will give an example known from television. Many regular programmes have their own sound signal in this medium. Hearing it, we know, even without looking at the screen, that, for exam1 . See L. Erhardt, Spotkania z Krzysztofem Pendereckim, Kraków 1975, p. 48.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. P_K-Kofin eng-korekta.indd 2. 2014-06-26 09:07:08.

(3) Problems with the origins of music. 3. ple, Panorama [a news programme] is about to begin. This means that the signal functions as information and this is its ontic status, even when it is part of some musical work. It may seem lovely or become popular, and yet when separated from its original, musical structure, it changes its ontic status, becoming simply a different entity. It ceases to be music and becomes a language. This is facilitated by the fact that television, at least Polish television, does not inform us who composed the signal in question or where it comes from. For instance, television audiences in Poland associate Anton Webern’s Variations for Piano Op. 27 mainly or even exclusively with Pegaz, a television programme that ran for many years, because the source composition is not very well known. Let us refer here to another complication: composers themselves may intend to create functional music without giving up their artistic ambitions. This is the case of, for example, film music. First of all, it is to be functional with regard to the film, but it can be at the same time very beautiful and popular with the viewers. Alicja Helman believes that in such cases the film-related meanings of music “delay” its own, purely musical ones2. Indeed, film makers do not think about music using categories like the first theme, link, transformation, refrain, episode etc., but, for instance, the theme of the main protagonist, sign of retrospection, escape, crime... What occurs, therefore, is a real transcoding, but this does not strip music off its aesthetic values, so it can still be regarded as artistic component of the film. These examples show that the way for some sounds created by people to become an artistic structure is by no means automatic or simple; it can be varied or can be a dead end, i.e. it does lead sounds to the status of art. And we have to bear this in mind, as we consider hypotheses concerning the birth of music. For if it really was born from functional sounds, it did not become music as an art until it changed its ontic status, transforming itself from a tool into an artistic entity or at least provoking by its very existence the creation of such entities, if only because they are liked. This is the perspective from which the following hypotheses should be examined.. *** Some of these hypotheses have another thing in common, in addition to the initial question. They authors believe that some elements of music can be found in nature, namely rhythm and melody, as a result of which they are sometimes called primeval elements of music. Indeed, rhythms are a frequent phenomenon in nature; in their “macro” version as rhythms of changes of the seasons, of day and night, or high and low tide, and in the “micro” version – primarily in the human 2 A.. Helman, “Problem syntezy sztuk w świetle semiotycznej koncepcji systemów złożonych”, [in:] Pogranicza i korespondencje sztuk, ed. T. Cieślikowski, J. Sławiński, Wrocław 1980, p. 16.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. P_K-Kofin eng-korekta.indd 3. 2014-06-26 09:07:08.

(4) 4. Ewa Kofin. body in the form of heart rate, breathing or measured gait. Melody is a rarer phenomenon in nature; it occurs mainly in birdsong. Thus, some authors of hypotheses dealing with the origins of music derive it from rhythm, others from melody. Given the existence of natural primeval elements of music, some think that the oldest form of music must have been either percussion music (which may be rhythm only) or vocal music (which is sometimes only sung melody). Sometimes this provokes another question – which came first: music of rhythm or music of melody? Yet this question persistently brings to mind the well-known paradoxical philosophical question about which came first, the egg or the chicken – which of course remains unanswered. Therefore, let us leave aside digressions concerning the primacy of some elements in music, and let us move on to the hypotheses. Those who derive the origins of music from rhythm include Karl Bücher, a German economist3, who associates the need for creating rhythm with collective labour, with improving its effectiveness. This sounds convincing in the case of labour without tools, because, for example, lifting a heavy stone requires accumulation of the energy of several people, which can be achieved e.g. by agreeing that the joint heave will be made when someone counts to three. This practice is well-known today and is used, for example, when transferring a patient from the stretcher to the bed. This is confirmed by iconographic finds depicting workers in the same poses with another individual placed next to them, holding, for example, two stones and evidently beating the rhythm. This clearly shows that the work was rhythmical. The practice, when used every day, may have instilled in people a sense of rhythm, though it is difficult to infer how it may have acquired musical qualities. The essential minimum in this case would require at least the most modest role for rhythmic aestheticism. If someone simply had liked this rhythm as a phenomenon in itself, it would have been possible to see in it the germ of a musical, i.e. artistic, entity. Yet if a monotonous rhythm, used simply to mark time, had been the only option, then we have to bear in mind that such a phenomenon irritates rather than inspires. After all, we dislike monotony, which can provoke us into organising it in one way or another, an excellent example of which is provided by Curt Sachs. He makes us realise that we refer to the unchanging “tick-tick” of a watch more often as “tick-tock” or even “tick-a tock-a”4. So monotony provokes us into introducing some rhythmic complication that enables us to bear it. This human inclination may have been the reason why the very first rhythmic pieces were based on a stable metre and were not indivisible sequences of sonic-temporal monotony. On the other hand, becoming used to rhythm may have resulted in the creation of a sonic basis for dance, which even in the early days of humanity can be regar3 K. Bücher, Arbeit und Rhythmus, Leipzig 1897, quoted after Z. Lissa, Wstęp do muzykologii, Warsaw 1974, p. 18. 4 See C. Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, Dover Publications 2008, p. 28.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. P_K-Kofin eng-korekta.indd 4. 2014-06-26 09:07:08.

(5) . Problems with the origins of music. 5. ded as a natural means of human expression. Such practices may have given rise to rhythms that were slightly more complex, that were provoked by movements of the body. If we are to regard this as music, it was still functional music, serving dance and so integrated with it that it was probably not used in other circumstances. Though we may also be dealing here with the beginnings of a fascination with rhythm itself and with creation provoked by it no longer for practical purposes but for pleasure. This may have been the beginning of percussion music. Primitive people may have created rhythms also to communicate, for in many cases in prehistoric times distances could be covered only on foot and only human voice, especially shouting, could travel farther and faster than human legs. Many scholars believe that this led to the emergence of the drum language in Africa. Some later explorers reaching the most primitive human communities and not finding there any musical instruments except drums concluded (and popularised their findings) that percussion music was the oldest music in the world. But this type of reasoning was challenged by linguists, who demonstrated that we were dealing here with a language. According to Anna Czekanowska, a drummed language can even be used to tell stories to children5.. *** Melody is the basis for hypotheses of those authors who see the origins of music in birdsong. They include Charles Darwin6. In his view, people living in forests and eating what they were able to catch must have been able to imitate birdsong in order to lure and catch the birds. But imitating birdsong is by no means easy and requires careful self-control in producing sound. So if Darwin is right, then this imitation of birds’ voices must have been real training in conscious voice production, which may have made people fond of producing various sounds, which was just one step away from creating melodies and signing them. What may also have been at play was aesthetic sensitivity to birdsong, which prompted creation of such melodies. Such a reasoning leads to a hypothesis according to which human singing comes from birdsong. Alejo Carpentier disagrees, claiming that whatever surrounds us every day, including birds, which are also hunted as food, seems not beautiful but ordinary. “I thought of all the nonsense uttered by those who take the position that prehistoric man discovered music in his desire to imitate the beauty of bird warblings – as though the song of a bird had any musical-aesthetic value for those who hear it constantly,” he writes in The Lost Steps7. This is in accordance with Stanisław 5 See A. Czekanowska, Główne kierunki i orientacje etnomuzykologu współczesnej, Warsaw 1983, p. 32. 6 Z. Lissa, op. cit., p. 18. 7 A. Carpentier, The Lost Steps, University of Minnesota Press 2001, p. 200.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. P_K-Kofin eng-korekta.indd 5. 2014-06-26 09:07:08.

(6) 6. Ewa Kofin. Pietraszko’s view that in the past objects of nature like earth, flora or fauna were seen one-sidedly, that is only from the point of view of their usefulness. “Nature at that time was neither lovely nor ugly, neither cheerful nor sad”8. For Pietraszko, it was at some later stage of human development that the world of nature became so removed from humans that they began to see it as a value and not only as some thing useful. Edgar Morin takes a completely different view on the origins of singing9. He believes that the ability to sing is one of natural human competencies with which each human being is endowed. Thus, it is among the numerous characteristics of the human species, like Homo sapiens or ludens, like singing man or dancing man etc. Singing belongs to natural means of human self-expression. If so, there are two kinds of singing: natural and artistic, that is no longer spontaneous, involuntary even, but learned, fully controlled, treated selectively, adapted to some rules of art. And this kind of singing is music. But how can we distinguish this natural singing today? Perhaps it is associated with amateur singing, as opposed to professional singing, but it would be difficult to conclude that amateur singing is not quite music. Perhaps if we regard all singing as music, then we should ask whether all music is art? And this provokes a reply in the negative, though it would be difficult to say why it is so. We can at most cite the currently acknowledged characteristics of art, which, however, are by no means universal. This is a matter of accepted conventions, which are neither uniform nor historically durable. Melody is also sometimes derived from calls and shouts. For instance, the German musicologist Curt Sachs notes that some of the oldest surviving melodies are formed as if they were modelled on shouting. Thus they begin high and loud, and, then, as the breath runs out, they descend and then fade away. Indeed, such a shape of melodies can be found in, for example, the Aboriginal songs of Australia10. It could be explained by the fact that if people had to call each other often, they spontaneously adopted a fixed model of shouting as the most comfortable for the throat. And this fixed model may have become a model for melodies sung with text. It can still be observed today, for ice-cream sellers, for example, often repeat a constant motif in advertising their services. But does this give rise to music? Very unlikely... Some authors look for sources of singing in language, given the fact that both systems have a common source, i.e. the human voice organ. They also wonder what came first: language or singing? Another eventuality they take into account is that at the beginning of both these systems there might have been a kind of 8 . S. Pietraszko, Studia o kulturze, Wrocław 1992, p. 109. E. Morin, Le paradigme perdu: la nature humaine Polish translation by R. Zimand, Warsaw 1977, p. 198 (originally published in 1973). 10 C. Sachs, op. cit., pp. 23-24. 9 . Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. P_K-Kofin eng-korekta.indd 6. 2014-06-26 09:07:08.

(7) Problems with the origins of music. 7. unity (a kind of speech-singing), from which two different systems emerged only centuries later. This is the line of thinking, for instance, of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who, however, has a very original interpretation of this phenomenon11. He calls it language, regarding it as a message, though believing that the first messages must have been caused primarily by human passions (because they provide the strongest impulse for self-expression); he concludes that these primal messages must have concerned mainly emotions12. Given the fact that emotions are more easily expressed by singing than speech, these must have been the germs of music rather than language. Thus this original language was more music than verbal text. This means that music was before language, although it did originate for communication purposes. Rousseau is not the only advocate of the view that the source of singsong and thus melody was language in prehistoric times; still this hypothesis has been criticised on many occasions, a fact also mentioned by Sachs. First of all, he raises the objection concerning a crucial difference between singing and speech, namely that singing uses specific intervals, while speech modulation has unspecified pitches and intervals between them13. Some authors of hypotheses concerning the origins of music find them not in primeval elements, but in some circumstances of life or some typical behaviour. They look for the origins of music in, for example, various rites. These scholars include a particularly authoritative author – Alejo Carpentier, a musicologist who travelled to the wildest corners of the world in order to get to know how music functioned among peoples that were the least civilised and thus relatively most faithful to old traditions. He presented his observations in his book The Lost Steps14. In it, he describes a burial ritual he witnessed, when the shaman tried to create an illusion in those present that he had supernatural powers and could influence deities. Therefore, he had to look different from all others and behave differently, and produce unnatural sounds. The ritual required the shaman to stage a fight between man and death, for the purpose of which he needed something to present a dialogue of two opposing forces. And it turned out that he was a ventriloquist who was able to present a dialogue between the voice from the belly (death) and the voice from the throat (the sick man). Initially, the dialogue was dominated 11 . See J.J. Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Languages, Global Vision Publishing House 2006. A comprehensive analysis of this can be found in Z. Skowron, Myśl muzyczna Jeana-Jacques’a Rousseau, Warsaw 2010. 12 The French thinker starts from saying: “it clearly follows that the origin of languages is not due to men’s first needs [...]. To what may this origin then be due? To the moral needs, the passions. All the passions bring together men whom the necessity to seek their subsistence forces to flee one another. Not hunger nor thirst, but love, hatred, pity, anger wrung their first voices from them” (J.J. Rousseau, op. cit., s. 48-49). 13 See C. Sachs, op. cit., p. 20. 14 A. Carpentier, op. cit., pp. 225-228, 231-234, 267-268.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. P_K-Kofin eng-korekta.indd 7. 2014-06-26 09:07:08.

(8) 8. Ewa Kofin. by the human voice, though it was by no means natural but as much artificial as possible. This included, for example, “throaty portamenti ” or “tongue vibration”. On the other hand, the belly voice was first only a murmur. With time the two roles began to alternate. The human voice faded away and the voice of death grew more powerful, strengthened by the sound of pebbles in a shaken hollow gourd, which turned out to be the only instrument in this community. Finally, the voice of death sounded like an “underground lava”. When this was suddenly followed by silence, the meaning was clearly “it is finished”. Everybody froze in silence. Carpentier commented on this ritual with an exalted sentence written in capitals: “I had just Witnessed the Birth of Music”. We can support him in this conviction by pointing out that since the shaman used only artificial sounds (not his natural voice), we could surmise that art as a product of humans and not nature originates in artificiality. It is probably no coincidence that the words “art” and “artificial” have common etymology, especially given the fact that it is so not only in Polish (“sztuka” and “sztuczny”). Let us make a comparison: (Eng.) art — artificial (Ger.) Kunst — künstlich (Fr.) art — artificiel (It.) arte — artificiale (Rus.) iskusstvo — iskusstvenniy As we know, the etymology of a word can be very meaningful and instructive. A question remains however, what and how could those artificial sound structures used as incantations transform themselves into the art of music? Walter Benjamin notes that an element of magic can after a while come to be recognised as a work of art15. Karol Szymanowski, on the other hand, associates this type of metamorphosis of music with the transformation of ancient mysteries into Greek tragedy, i.e. transformation of ritual into theatre, in which music had already become a component of art. Such circumstances may have surrounded the birth of musical art as a “manifestation that is par excellence artistic, i.e. outside religious rituals”16. We know however that the religious ritual did contribute greatly to the development of music. After all, liturgical verses became with time the basis of many magnificent musical masterpieces. On the other hand, some priests still share St. Augustine’s famous dilemma concerning the appropriateness of music in a religious service. The dilemma stemmed from the fact that when singing affected St. Augustine, strengthening his religious feelings, he very much accepted its inclusion in the mass. “Yet when it happens,” he wrote in De musica, “that the music moves me more than the subject of the song, I confess myself to commit a 15 W. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Polish translation by J. Sikorski, [in:] idem, Twórca jako wytwórca, Poznań 1975, p. 76. 16 K. Szymanowski, Wychowawcza rola kultury muzycznej, Kraków 1958, p. 202.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. P_K-Kofin eng-korekta.indd 8. 2014-06-26 09:07:08.

(9) Problems with the origins of music. 9. sin deserving punishment, and then I would prefer not to have heard the singer”17. This dilemma makes us realise that singing in the church, despite its musical form, should, in fact be a prayer and not art, because any domination of aesthetic values over religious feelings should not be accepted there. Indeed, this is how the Church has treated religious music so far, demanding from the faithful singing songs not artistic skills but religious engagement. But it does recognise as well the decorative function of music in churches, for everything there should be worthy of God, and thus as perfect and beautiful as possible, though this role is left to artists. We could also add here, using the example of Christianity, that when it was proclaimed the official religion (313), singing was immediately manifested in its rituals, as if people felt already at that time that singing was more conducive to emotional engagement than speech alone, which could lead to ardour in prayer. Although initially commonly known pagan melodies were used, the texts added to them were Christian. Thus, from the very beginning the Church supported singing, despite the fact that it was not regarded as a musical art, but as a “tool” of prayer. For decorative purposes, the Church also recognised masterpieces of religious music. Other types of behaviour conducive to the creation of music are suggested by Johan Huizinga in is book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture18. Considering the origins of culture, he derives them from play, making it clear how he understands the term. For him it is important that play be treated as a kind of behaviour which is not necessary for life, as something voluntary, disinterested, stemming from a need for pleasure, constituting a break from ordinary life in the form of its decoration and even feast, finally – an activity respecting some rules of the game, often assuming the form of rivalry, in which the winner is rewarded by achieving pre-eminence in a group and not by some financial benefit19. As an example of such conditions becoming fulfilled, the author of The Autumn of the Middle Ages discusses, among others, musical activity20. Indeed, this may tally with primal music making, when people did not yet earn their living by singing or playing. We can imagine a situation in which, for example, a little shepherd amused himself by playing with sounds he produced by blowing into some hollow stem. When he accidentally pierced it, he realised that the sound had changed. The shepherd became interested and encouraged to make more holes in the stem and create some melody out of various sounds. This would have been some kind of primeval composing for pleasure. It is enough for the shepherd to show this off to somebody to win recognition, i.e. the germ of reward, which could have provoked him into showing off in front of others, even to gain an advantage over a group. Thus, the very interest in the sound of nature might have once sparked off melody making. 17 . St. Augustine, Confessions, Oxford University Press 2009, p. 208. J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, Beacon Press 1971. 19 See ibidem, pp. 28-35. 20 See ibidem, pp. 158-161. 18 . Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. P_K-Kofin eng-korekta.indd 9. 2014-06-26 09:07:09.

(10) 10. Ewa Kofin. What can we conclude from these hypotheses? Nothing certain, it would seem, yet they do make us convinced that the birth of music has neither a specific location in the world nor a specific time in history. When it comes to the location, music must have emerged in various parts of the world, for various reasons and in various forms, if only because of the fact that in prehistoric times human groups were so dispersed that there was no communication between them, which rendered any exchange of experiences impossible. Clear evidence of this dispersion can in any case be seen in musical folklore, incredibly varied in the world, not only within various countries, but also within various smaller regions. Similarly, it is impossible to unify the historical period in which music may have emerged in the world, because the creation of musical structures stemmed from various needs depending on the natural geographical environment in which people lived. However, if the birth of music could be attributed to a stage in the evolution of man, there still remains a string of questions noted at the beginning: what is the path from the creation of functional sounds to musical structures, and from these to music with the status of an art? Personally, I would look for the origins of the artistic nature of sound structures in whether they functioned in an aesthetic aspect (for pleasure, because people liked them etc.). But in this case the birth of the musical art would have been in practices of an infinite number of people from all historical periods. After all, even today composers may regard as musical art what they have created out of, for example, noise, and yet it is difficult for them to convince their listeners that they are dealing with a work of art. Ultimately, when it comes to the chain of sound structures–music–musical art, the relations between these links seem so flickering that it is impossible to separate them arbitrarily.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/2, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. P_K-Kofin eng-korekta.indd 10. 2014-06-26 09:07:09.

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