Music is Not the Sound

[This article was also published as an episode of the podcast Where is the Music. The episode is available on Spotify, ApplePodcast, Youtube, links BELOW.]

January 2024

Music is not in the sound, but in the listener’s ear.

Sounds like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is obviously true in music as well as in any other art, but in the case of music there is more to be said. We take for granted that music is made of sound, and we perhaps learn at school that what distinguishes musical sounds from noise is the fact that in music sounds are organized in order.

While not entirely wrong, orderliness being a precondition for music is an outdated perspective: just think about the last one hundred years of music history, during which all sorts of acoustic experiments were conducted, including noises and sounds very much NOT orderly, including prepared pianos, microtonal explorations, atonality (the lack of a harmonic centre of gravity, or the emancipation of the dissonance), all sorts of vocal utterances entering opera and commercial music; think also at the merging of digital sounds (that often don’t have pitch no duration and can’t be notated) with acoustic instruments – movie soundtracks have plenty of these; or the inclusion of the sound of rain, wind, birds, etc.in many modern classical, neo-classical, new-age music, arriving at the ultimate extreme, John Cage’s ‘4.33’, a piece that allows the listener to find music in whichever sound they hear, from the stage or anywhere, given that during its performance no instruction at all is given. ‘4.33’ is indeed 4 min and 33 sec of silence.

The distinction between music and noise is not so clear, and orderliness doesn’t help defining music any longer. The idea that music originates in the ears of the listener rings even more true. So then, can literally everything be music?

The philosopher Roger Scruton makes a distinction between sound and tone: while every acoustic phenomenon can be considered ‘sound’, not every sound raises to the level of tone. Tone is not just a note from a musical instrument, or an orderly acoustic phenomenon (distinguished from a noise): a tone is a sound that carries intention, human intention, which allows the listener to experience an interaction with music, an exchange of intellectual or emotional content.

A tone signifies more than the sound that reaches the ears. That extra dimension is what makes music a uniquely human activity: dogs, cows, or elephants can very well hear and perhaps even enjoy the sounds made by musical instruments, they might even prefer this or that type of music, but they won’t grasp nor respond to the human intention behind it.

This important distinction allows us to put the phenomenon of music in a special place, a dimension somewhere in between the real, solid-matter, tangible world (instruments, scores, physical actions and collaborations between people, along with the production of that acoustic phenomenon that shares the same ontological reality as speech or colour, which we call sound) and the world of ideas, emotions, and imagination, which is invisible, unquantifiable, unmeasurable, subjective and in constant transformation, so difficult to bring out and communicate to others, but which is a universal aspect of our existence, an experience we share with our fellow human beings.

Music does a great job in bringing the two dimensions together: without imagination, music scores are just pieces of paper covered in ink, and without the intention to communicate something, playing an instrument is just a practical sequence of actions, leading to a practical result, not different in nature from fixing the engine of a car or set your garden in order. As much as we like fixing a car or gardening, deeply enjoying the creative part they entail, as much as we find true pleasure in focussing on the active process rather than the final result, expressing ourselves in the most genuine way, there is no clear reason why we should think someone else would get anything out of watching us fixing a car or gardening, in the same way they would attend a performance of music.

Every piece of music exists in such space, where the practical combines with the intangible, the visible with the invisible, the subjective with the universal. This is probably the reason why we feel so fascinated by music, drawn to inhabit it, compelled to look into it.

The story of some compositions might serve us as a clear example: I chose a collaboration that extended for around 200 years, between Anthon Webern, Austrian composer from the 20th century and Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer from 18th century. The collaboration I'm talking about is on a piece of music originally written by Bach towards the end of his life called Ricercare a 6, from a larger work entitled Musical Offering (1747), and a transcription of the same piece for orchestra that Webern published in 1935.

Bach composed the Musical Offering as a present to the regent King of Prussia in the 1740s, who was a musician himself. According to historical records Bach improvised on a theme that was originally wrote by the king, and subsequently worked out, refined, and completed a larger body of pieces, all inventions on the same subject, sending it altogether to the king weeks later with the title ‘Musical Offering’. The Ricercar a 6 is a composition for six different parts, for which Bach did not specify the instruments. The music would work regardless the instrument chosen by the interpreter, or at least this is what we make of Bach’s instruction. We can play this music with six different instruments or at a single keyboard instrument, piano or harpsichord. The piece has been transcribed for a variety of ensembles throughout the years, but the version written by Webern is quite unique and interesting, the first reason being because he orchestrated it for an ensemble of 11 different instruments plus a string quintet: 16 instruments at all.

These two composers already show a completely different perspective with regards to the same piece of music: on one side Bach writes the notes, but is indifferent to which instruments exactly should perform his composition, on the other Webern takes apart the original score for 6 parts and fragments it into 16 separate parts, deciding with incredible creativity which instrument shall play which note.

Let’s listen to the original score played by a baroque harpsichord, which will help us having a sense of what Bach heard while writing.

From it we can deduce that Bach’s intention is to make music speak through its inner construction and architecture. Bach seems to be interested in music as a way to represent an outside order, a harmony of elements that is intrinsic to the world, represented in the composition through the orderly, harmonic relationships of its elements. Bach is confident that whichever instrument or sound is picked to perform his composition, the architecture of the music would always be clear to the listener. Compare what you just heard with this version for ensemble:

On the other side Webern is not satisfied with this somehow detached representation: the notes written on the score perhaps were to him a bit lifeless, perhaps he felt that there was more expression to bring out, and that a wider range of acoustic colours would help the original architecture to come out. Not only he allocates each melody, each motive, sometimes even single notes to different instruments, but he adds articulation and dynamics to the music, he makes a point of exploiting the full potential of the instruments to be at the service of expression. Webern ensemble is constituted by: flute, oboe, horn, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, harp, timpani, and string quintet. The musical results is superb and fascinating: as we shall listen the contrast between the two versions is huge. Listening to the Ricercar played by a keyboard, you might have the feeling that this music while beautiful exists almost under a glass, perfect for aesthetic admiration in the same way we could look at an object in a museum. Perhaps that was Bach’s intention. In Webern’s orchestration these incredible, rich and colourful textures allow us to explore the deeper connection between the notes and their emotional depth.

The operation carried out by Webern is just an interpretation, he effectively interpreted and reimagined those notes wondering what could be the most expressive way to sound them: most of the time then a melody is played by more than one instrument, sometimes taking turns other times playing together, showing that an individual musical element such as a melody can effectively be separated in its components, to be reconstructed again in our imagination of listeners.

While he practically carries out a fragmenting operation, splitting melodies and motives into small chunks, involving 16 instrumentalists to perform a piece that could be played by 6, the musical result is one of outstanding coherence and integration.

As you listen, I encourage you to follow the music without trying to identify the distinct instruments, whether is brass, woodwind, a clarinet or an oboe, and just let yourself be carried by the pure expression, the dynamic nuances, rushing and slowing down of the interpretation.

By comparing the two versions, we might say a few things. Perhaps Bach wasn't interested in these musical details, or perhaps writing music in search for a particular set of nuances at his time would have been not as significant as it was in the 20th century. We might also think that while the score does not instruct on expressive details, it was normal for composers of his time to let the interpreters do as they wish, demonstrating confidence in a fundamental alignment between the universal order (sublimated in the composition) and the individual expressiveness (which would not need to be notated). If we don’t connect easily with Bach’s music is possibly because through modernity we have lost that confidence. On the contrary, while Webern seems very interested in expressive nuances, he directs his attention inwardly, hence his attention to the subjective response of his music: the listener is invited to a journey of sensuous experiences, one in which the universal order is merely hinted at.

However we like to think, we can at least posit that for both composers this music exists in both dimensions. Bach focuses on representing the inherent harmony of reality by creating a musical architecture; the score allows the listeners to imagine all the expressive nuances they wish and to freely respond to them, in the same way they would appreciate and respond to a piece of art in a museum. Webern instead focuses on the story of expression carried by the piece, invites the listeners to a journey of lush colours and nuanced emotions, allowing them to perceive, almost in the back of the head, the underlying grandiose architecture originally designed by Bach.

To conclude: Music is not in the sound, but in the listener’s ears. What does this tell us about music? We have seen that both composers had a different intention in relation with the Musical Offering, and that such intention depends on what they considered more relevant, namely their personal interpretation of it. As an artist I believe that there is nothing more important than intention, and in order to transform intentions into sound we constantly have to make judgments and choices with regard to what sound means to us. Effectively we are constantly elaborating interpretations.

As a teacher I find it necessary to promote interpretation as the starting point of every musical activity: interpretation is that rather free activity where one can decide what a sign on the paper means, and by doing so it is possible to identify intentionality behind it. In other words we are doing what the philosopher Roger Scruton was suggesting at the beginning of this episode, which is, we turn sound into tones by adding intentionality to them.

A more detailed analysis of the entire work “Musical Offering” by J.S. Bach, where I delve into its magnificent structure, compositional techniques, and historical significance is available here (PDF download) as a thesis project I wrote in 2014.

This article was also published as an episode of the podcast Where is the Music. The episode is available here (Spotify, ApplePodcast, Youtube)