The First Stage of Cognition during Listening
Integrated Structural Analysis of Music
Perceiving the Enlivened and Unenlivened Nature in Music
The Origin of Schematic Dance
Musical Basis of the Physical Kinetic Impulses of the Listener
Manipulating the Physiological Structure of Movement
The
Unenlivened World of Music Seizes Control over the Listener
Structural Musical Analysis of Values
In our process of gaining knowledge in music, a systematic evaluation identifies different stages of cognition.
By
means of the physiology of our ear we perceive the tone which reverberates
in the acoustic space, and this is our first step towards knowledge.
Now one can easily doubt the correct or complete perception of our organ of
hearing.
The completeness of our perception can be verified by examining the tone, which reverberates in the acoustic space, with our hearing and with measuring instruments simultaneously, and by comparing the results of the instruments with the results of our hearing. Naturally, in this case only that aspect of the tone is being examined that can be measured physically-structurally.
In
our analysis we music lovers go a few steps further – because we hear
music, and not just a single tone – and examine the inner shape of the
tone by means of our faculty of logic.
By means of our understanding, we examine the structural changes of the tone,
and by means of our feeling we examine the inner nature of these structural
changes.
If
our cognizing understanding finds that the structural changes of the sound
are not really harmonious, but rather in steps or periodical, then we infer
the absence of a living soul – of a living musical formative force in
a tone – or a lack of life in the musical statement, and we miss the
musical meaning.
Our intellect, therefore, relates the meaning of that kind of sound –
in reference to its structure – to the material world, i.e. to our physiology.
This
is where the origin of schematic dance is located.
The listener begins to move his body to the material structure of the tone
– he taps the beat, for example, with his foot or with other parts of
his body, or he begins to dance by rote to the simple patterns of the music.
The
cause of these physical kinetic impulses we find hidden in the atomic or molecular
structure of the musical sound-space.
And this limited kind of tonal-structural movement finds its equivalent in
man, in our physiology.
Thus, in a completely natural manner, we listeners react physiologically with mechanistic movements to that which, by its very structure, concerns our physiology.
From
the resounding event our feeling gathers its dynamic impulse, and transforms
its stepwise structure into the impulse of our physiological motions.
At the same time, on the basis of the tonal structure, our understanding determines
the kind of our motions.
If music, then, is structured in such a way that its elements, the tones, appear to our analyzing intellect in steps and in periodical segments, then it is suited for schematic dance music, and indeed, it even forces us into the world of primitive dancing motion.
And it depends on the simplicity or complexity of the periodical orders or steps within the subtler tone patterns, whether the dance will appear clumsy or graceful.
© AAR EDITION INTERNATIONAL 1982