From Thin Air

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

The genesis of musical creativity has long been perplexing. As a medium comprised of the invisible properties of silence and sound, music seems to emerge from and return to thin air. Its substance and impact defy pictorial and linguistic descriptions, and the experience of it is beyond the grasp of notated scores and mathematical graphs. Of all the arts, music is both the most mysterious and the most intimate. It is intangible and transient, yet deeply affects the interior of our being.

Because music-making is so difficult to unravel, many cultures have arrived at supernatural explanations. These range from calling musical genius a “gift from heaven” to more involved mythologies. An extreme example is found among the Suyá, a tribe of about three hundred located at the headwaters of the Xingu River in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The Suyá maintain that all new music originates outside of their dwellings. The composer’s spirit is sent to a village of animal spirits, where it listens to and learns different songs. When the spirit returns, the composer transmits the songs to the people.

The Suyá also believe that the spirits of tribespeople are linked with particular animal spirits. This has musical implications, as the spirit of one person may travel to the spirit village of fish, while the spirit of another might go to a community of deer spirits. The former will return with fish songs, the latter with deer songs. According to Anthony Seeger, an anthropologist and author of Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People, about thirty percent of Suyá men and women in a generation claim to have spirits that acquire new songs.

However fantastical this and other beliefs about musical creativity may be, they do illustrate the enigma of the process. Musical inspiration is difficult to pinpoint, as it is often spontaneous and rarely perceptible by sight or other senses. Cultural factors naturally shape the details of the musical stories. A monotheistic group places its deity at the inspirational center, animistic tribes locate music with animals, polytheistic societies assign the role of muse to a god or two, and so on.

Whatever form a myth takes, its impetus is the mysteriousness of musical creation. While a painter begins with paints and a sculptor starts with stone, the composer commences with seemingly nothing but air. Of course, on a technical level, all of the available notes, durations and articulations are already present in nature, and the organization of these sounds can be distilled, mapped and analyzed with precision. But music-making may be as close to creatio ex nihilo as we can approach.

The materials of music differ from materials in the physical sense. Most creative activities involve selecting, arranging and shaping pre-existing external matter, or creatio ex materio. But music, while played on instruments and within mechanical parameters, seems to reside in a spiritual or otherwise inexplicable realm. As a result, musical creativity lends itself to supernatural storytelling.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

 

Mythic Melodies

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

In the summer of 1953, Cantor Reuben Rinder of Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco submitted a composition to Julius Freudenthal, his trusty publisher at Transcontinental Music Corporation. It was a setting of Adon Olam (“Master of the Universe”), a closing doxology of Jewish prayer services. Rinder received a letter of rejection from Freudenthal, who explained, “Time and again we encountered great reluctance on the part of the synagogues to change the music for the final hymns of the service.” Adon Olam exists in hundreds, if not thousands, of renditions, and fresh ones are being written all the time. Despite this, most congregations settle on a few versions and have little desire to try something different from the array of alternatives.

What accounts for this hesitation? There are a few simple explanations: the comfort of the familiar, the fulfillment of expectations and the old maxim of complacency, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But these only go so far. Familiar prayer melodies are tightly woven into the fabric of the service and etched into the identity of the congregation. Replacing the music is tantamount to a desecration. The service and all of its repetitive parts are felt as holy, and musical departures threaten the sacred flow.

The reasons for this are rooted in what mythologists call “strong time.” We live in a complex, unstable and rapidly changing world. The only certain thing is uncertainty. Myths offer a remedy for this fluctuating and unpredictable reality. They give a perception of strong time:  prodigious moments when something foundational, unparalleled and inflexible was made fully manifest. These are episodes removed from the laws of nature and the ambiguities of the day to day. They include creation narratives, hero tales, miraculous interventions and other legends. They are the unshakable and unhistorical stories that people gather to commemorate, and around which identities and ideologies are constructed.

For strong time to remain strong, it must be periodically recounted in rituals, recitations and song. These scheduled reminders, which punctuate the calendars of devotees, provide a sense of steadiness amidst the randomness of existence. If these observances were neglected, the world would fall into chaos—or at least the turmoil of reality would become more apparent. Repetition imparts stability.

It is largely because of this that prayer-songs resist change. Worship services are devised to harness and project strong time. Repeated scripts, regulated rituals and predictable choreographies transmit a sensation of security. The musical score to which the liturgical drama is set likewise demands consistency. Certain melodies become attached to certain occasions. Their specific sounds encompass the essence of the events themselves. Deviations from the expected music are experienced as more than just novelty or harmless variety. They are, quite often, unwelcome reminders of life’s fragility.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.