Born -- Rhetoric in Mozart

Gunthard Born: Rhetoric in the music of Mozart 1

Gunthard Born

Rhetoric in the Music of Mozart

Introduction: Music as speech – what does it say? page 1 Which approach to music – aesthetic or empirical? 2 Rhetoric of the spoken language 4 The rhetoric of music 4 Semantics 6 The canon: a symbol 7 Experiments and proofs 10 A probabilistic methodology for assessing representational elements in music 10 The meaning of language: a network with many junctions 11 The overture to Die Zauberflöte: an illustration 13 To repeat: art or science? 17 “Conclusio” 19 Bibliography 20 Index 21

Introduction: Music as speech – what does it say?

My lecture -- coming at the opening of a music festival dedicated to the music of the Baroque -- is addressed to the subject of rhetorical music. This is music conceived as speech and, for that reason, composed with traditional rhetorical precepts in mind. What a skilled orator tried to do with words -- to inform, to persuade, to move his audience -- this music wanted to do with tones. There are answers to be found in this music too; it has the power to respond to a question old as music itself: what does it say, what is its meaning? Today I want to examine whether we -- two hundred years later and more -- can come to understand this music, at least in part, so we could express that understanding in words with some skill and confidence.

I don’t want to hide from you how it happens that I was invited to give these opening remarks. Having devoted a long time to the search for meaning in Mozart’s music, I recently presented my findings in a book (Mozarts Musiksprache: Schlüssel zu Leben und Werk). With that, I seem to have started a minor revolution, not alone obviously, but rather as one of the co-conspirators and, at this stage perhaps, as ringleader.

Before I proceed, I would like to mention some of the authors whose ideas and findings have been instrumental in my work: I would start with the Bach researcher, Albert Schweitzer; next, Hans-Heinrich Unger who, following in the path of Arnold Schering, was one of the first to provide a useful compendium of the ancient rules of rhetoric; Peter Schleuning, for his fresh new presentation of the music world of the 13th century; Wolfgang Plath, for his help not only ________ Note 1: In June 1985, Dr. Gunthard Born, at conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s invitation, gave the opening address at the Styriarte music festival in Graz. The talk subsequently appeared under the title, Rhetorische Musik, in the initial publication of the Styriarte- Schriften. This translation was prepared in collaboration with Dr. Born. Note 2: Throughout the text Underlined Names refer to authors listed, with their relevant works, in the Bibliography.


in securing the musical scores but also in making the intellectual phenomenon Mozart an apt subject of study; and last but not least, Nikolaus Harnoncourt who, in addition to speaking his own mind about music, has shown time and again how clearly music itself can be made to speak.

What I have set out to do, I confess, is to topple an old and venerable piece of Mozart statuary. Mozart himself readily withstands every assault, of course, but at least an old bit of music-theory or -aesthetics finally appears to be crumbling. You see, I have had the temerity to suggest something about meaning in music from the Classic period -- in words, naturally -- even though "what is presented in music can only be comprehended musically" (as a musicologist once assured me).

That may all be quite interesting indeed, you are thinking, but hasn't our

speaker really gone off on the wrong subject? After all, the Styriarte music festival is devoted to ancient music, to the music of the Baroque -- this year we will hear Gabrieli and Schütz and Monteverdi, and Harnoncourt will perform Bach passions. Now that is rhetorical music as we know it; what has that to do with the Classic school?

Well, look at it this way: in terms of time, Mozart is no farther removed

from Bach than he was from Beethoven. He was an 18th century composer -- and it was not until the turn of the 19th century that the old musical rhetoric finally died out. As late as 1788, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, in writing about the art of music, was saying that "its true perfection is characterized by. . .the order and correctness of its grammatical and rhetorical structure" (my emphasis). But Mozart had learned that long before; he had not failed his course in rhetoric.

Historically speaking then, the hypothesis that even Mozart could have

turned to the use of rhetoric in composing appears worthy of consideration, regardless of anything to the contrary tradition might suggest. And it could be that his music will facilitate our understanding of this forbidding discipline (now a fossil of some 200 years), for Mozart's music speaks to us more readily and seems more immediately familiar and comprehensible than the music of the great Johann Sebastian Bach, whose use of rhetorical music is universally acknowledged. (Let me note parenthetically that Leonard G. Ratner, writing in 1980, found it historically appropriate to include many aspects of Classical music under the heading "Rhetoric".) Which approach to music -- aesthetic or empirical?

You ask, why the question? Don't we understand music simply as it is? And besides, haven't we long since grown weary of what we think of as "rhetoric" -- that rote-learned oratorical technique with its rhetorical questions, gestures, and pauses for effect?

Those particularly at home in the history of our culture are likely to be even

more inclined to reject this discipline, with its countless "figures of speech" and their Greek and Latin names, to say nothing of the "doctrine of emotional expression" which is supposed to point the listener in the proper direction of emotional reactions, when we are not in the least prepared to allow our emotions to be manipulated in some predetermined fashion! And anyways, it is an indispensable attribute of a work of art, isn't it, that it is somehow ambivalent and inaccessible, that we cannot ever quite grasp its essential core? And don't we mean by that that it springs from unfathomable depths of feeling? And doesn't that mean then that rhetoric -- like every theory that would explicate art -- is fighting a losing battle from the outset?


Let me first suggest that we should be slow to reject something we know so little about. With authors like Unger, Schmitz, Dammann, Eggebrecht, Ratner, and Schleuning who have immersed themselves in the history of rhetorical music, I have detected not only a devotion to scientific investigation, but a real enthusiasm for this well-contrived (if sometimes overblown) discipline. While it is true that, in earlier times, the quest for artistic expression took other directions than today's, when we consider the efforts in terms of the results, we obviously cannot dismiss them as having failed.

And if there are occasional nonsensical aspects to the principles of rhetoric,

that is also beside the point. Today's demands for a theory of music without internal contradictions certainly cannot be met by rhetoric. It is beyond question, however, that many composers once looked to rhetorical precepts for guidance. We find much of this traditional approach in the works of Bach and Schütz. Is it this perhaps that gives their music its special quality, or at least some important part of it? If so, that would certainly be worth examining.

But you might say, how I want to hear music is my private affair, a

question of my personal aesthetics. Or as Tibor Kneif maintains, it is certainly not a question of scientifically based musical aesthetics "because there is nothing scientific about personal value judgments."

I suggest we think it through: Take, for example, an admirer of antique drama. He may feel completely free to enjoy Sophocles performed in the Classical Greek even if he has forgotten all he ever learned about the language in school. From a purely aesthetic point of view, the sonority and interplay of the voices may be all he needs to satisfy him.

For me personally, however, it would have more meaning if I was able to

understand the sense of the words. Then I would not only grasp what was being said but would also gain -- through the grammar, the semantics, the dramaturgy -- an enhanced aesthetic satisfaction as well. In his text, in his poetry, the skilled, well-versed author is addressing himself ultimately to a well-prepared, knowledgeable audience, often a very well-prepared one -- I am sure you would agree with me up to now.

Would you still agree with me if I maintained (as Lerdahl and Jackendoff

do) that music also addresses itself like a language to the knowledgeable listener who is able to recognize the piece of music for a part of that language? The better I understood the language, then, the greater my grasp of the ideas and feelings the composer intended, the more complete my enjoyment of the music would be.

But stop! At this point, Dahlhaus would admonish us that "it is almost

never possible. . .to understand. . .the conscious and unconscious intentions of the composer in his conception of a work." Is that right? I don't think so. And today I would like to show you that the possibilities of investigating this question are far from being exhausted. Something regarding these intentions, indeed something essential, can often be discerned with confidence and objectivity.

I would submit moreover that those who maintain the opposite must

undertake to prove their case empirically. For the study of music (like that of the senses) must bring itself to be an empirical one -- whether it is dealing with music as such or with the psychological and intellectual aspects of its composition and hearing -- if it wants to be regarded as a serious subject of learning.

Nowhere have I seen proof that music (or a composer's intentions) is

"beyond comprehension." Many people, it seems to me, have bound their mental outlook in an aesthetic straitjacket, having allowed themselves perhaps to be


persuaded by Eduard Hanslick's concept of music as "sonorous patterns (tönend bewegte Form), with no significant content or expression other than the sound it makes." But this is a formulation out of the 19th century. Composers of the 18th century who adhered to the principles of rhetoric wanted very much to be understood and did all they could to be intelligible. Was Mozart one of these? Rhetoric of the spoken language

Before I try to answer that, however, I want to sketch out for you the principles of the traditional rhetoric, but only in their barest outlines (and already I hear your sighs of relief). Rhetoric is not limited to the art of public speaking, but concerns itself with everything a person must bear in mind to make himself fully understood. It is, in other words, a basic component of the process of speaking, of how we communicate with one another. In this sense, then, if the listener is to comprehend what I am talking about -- in the jargon of contemporary linguistics (Lyons), the relata or objects (of reference) -- it is not enough that I simply transmit my message like a ship's radio, for there are sure to be responses, prejudices, emotions, experiences of all kinds awakened in the listener that were not in the mind of the person speaking. In mutual conversation, we can (if we wish) quickly narrow differences of opinion or outlook. In a presentation, on the other hand, or in a letter or in a book, we must think through carefully in advance how most effectively -- that is, rhetorically -- to say what it is we want to say.

To do this, the old rhetoric held that there were at least four stages or sets of activity involved: 1) the "Creative Idea" (inventio) -- one spoke of the twelve areas from which to draw inspiration for a subject; 2) the "Art of Composing" (dispositio) -- how to order and arrange one's ideas, how to express them, dealing with uncertainties and arriving at conclusions; 3) the "Embellishment" (decoratio) -- how to win the sympathy of the audience, how to entertain it using anecdotes and examples. And only at the last, 4) the "Art of Presentation" (elocutio) -- the clear articulation, the gestures and rhetorical pauses and everything else that goes with it.

At all four stages, the speaker is concerned with developing (among other

things) pertinent figures of speech. Through these figures, the text and its delivery gain their distinctive features and, through them too, the end result is ultimately differentiated from mere casual conversation. In this century's renewed study of rhetoric (see Dubois), a "figure" is defined as a departure or deviation from the prosaic speech of everyday life, as an expression's singularity, as something that must perpetually be re-created anew, as the very heart of the poetic process.

To be sure, one characteristic of the old rhetoric was its compulsion for

"categorization," its itch to catalogue every rhetorical effect in sight. But another characteristic was its concern for order and comprehension. Most relevant from the standpoint of today's cultural thinking perhaps was its readiness to assimilate the novel, the unexpected turn of phrase. Many different examples could be cited, but it is important that they not be misapplied as rigid formulas, contrary to what we think of today as "rhetorical." Inventio was seen as an art, not a craft. The rhetoric of music

It was recognized early on that music is like speech. Whether accompanying a text or as an "autonomous" medium, music too works by means of a structure articulated through time, by highpoints, contrasts, and pauses, by its potential to evoke images and rouse feelings, by its capacity to surprise with unanticipated figures. This soon led, by analogy to the rhetoric of speech, to a rhetoric of music incorporating many of the earlier developed terms of verbal rhetoric, appropriately modified.


Figures were to be found in music too and it was Forkel who diligently

divided them -- writing, as I mentioned earlier, in Mozart's time -- into those for the intellect and those for the imagination. Those for the intellect were termed "grammatical" because they related to matters of structure and the formal interplay of its parts. That is essentially (simply put) what we see as form or structure when we look at written music: scales of notes that rise and fall, slurs, runs, and springs, as well as chords, canons, fugues, various rhythms, etc.

The figures for the imagination were subdivided into the text-interpretive

and the emotion-laden. In other words, it was recognized that music not only spoke to the feelings, but it was able to mediate the meaning of words as well. And how does it do that? Once again, with the musical forms of written and printed music mentioned before. But in this case, the figures for the imagination represent images (of some sort) of the objects (the relata) that lie at the heart of our discussion. The term program music (German Tonmalerei, French musique descriptive) -- one which has fallen into disrepute in recent times -- describes one aspect of this technique of composing, but only one.

I will concern myself today especially with this aspect of music. From my

aesthetic viewpoint, the disdain felt for this function of music in our times is not justified. It is just this function that opens music to yet another level of effect, enabling it to speak to matters lying far beyond the realm of musical tones and lending it a dimension that is at once logically comprehensible and objectively reproducible. In short, it helps meet my need to listen to music with my intellect and not just to let myself be wafted along by feelings or vague, amorphous fantasies.

These music-figures can be perplexing things. Take the so-called

catabasis-figure, a steadily repeated sequence of descending notes: it can be used purely as form (that is, for the intellect), but it can also be used (for the imagination) as well to indicate an event in progress (say, "falling down") or to express an emotion ("suffering"), and that quite apart from whether there is a text with it or not. In earlier days, academic rigor in how a figure was defined was unfortunately lacking; most figures took their respective names from the manifest musical form or, alternatively, from the object being depicted (which sometimes led to an object being illustrated by quite different musical figures; an example would be dubitatio -- doubt). And finally, it was possible for a figure such as hypotyposis to be a collective term for all those kinds of graphical descriptions of extra-musical things that music is capable of.

In what follows, when I refer to a "music-figure," I mean a musical form defined by characteristic features of recognition, whether a verbal text is present or not.

Now, let me ask you: shouldn't it be possible, at least in principle, to

"break the code" of these music-figures, to reconstruct what those composers who used rhetorical musical figures to convey meaning had in mind? And could it be that Mozart was one of these? For example, in composing the overture to Die Zauberflöte, could it be that he had something specific in mind (which may have sunk into oblivion today perhaps) that could, in essence, be expressed in words?

As it turns out, this is not as simple to answer as it seems. For one thing, the early composers did not leave us the key to the music-figures they used for translating; it was a "trade secret." A master composer might at best pass his wisdom along to his students; he certainly was not going to go to all the expense of printing it up and spreading it around. Bach left almost nothing of the sort behind, and Mozart little more. More to the point, perhaps, is the fact that the translation had to be thought out anew every time; it was, after all, art. The old


composers were not interested in providing a formula that "would put inspiration in the mouths of those with no musical talent" (as the oft-cited Johann David Heinichen put it).

And for another thing, since Mozart's time, our view of meaning in music

has, thanks to many a musicologist, been steadily narrowed and come to rest on a very limited horizon -- an aesthetic horizon, you understand, and not one empirically determined.

Semantics

For this reason, I think it would be useful to take a look at some of the findings of contemporary linguistics. Its proponents freed themselves long ago from its early history when linguistics was regarded primarily as a field of philosophy and dogmatics, something that once made the discipline so problematic. However musicologists may choose to define and delimit their field is not particularly important: linguistic theoreticians long ago established that, in numerous respects, music -- as a natural, spontaneous language -- falls easily into the category of linguistics (Winograd). Our interest lies in its semantics.

Now, linguists have found that little purpose is served by asking what the generally valid content and the unique meaning of a particular set of acoustical phenomena might be -- and they would definitely never expect to find one answer that held true for all periods of time and under all conditions. They prefer to ask, instead, what a perceived form may refer to in each specific case (Lyons).

We do not need to be concerned about what Dahlhaus calls "Selbigkeit" --

(a composition's) sameness. It is not really a problem if a piece of music sounds somewhat different each time it is played as long as we can make out its characteristic features, as long as a triad, for example, can be recognized as a triad even if its playing is muddled.

From the standpoint of linguistics, "the focus on common characteristics"

cannot be lightly dismissed as "a naive metaphysical approach" (which is what Dahlhaus would do) -- for the root of all semantic analysis lies precisely in our ability to recognize forms according to their features.

Moreover, we have the ability to distinguish between features which are a

matter of form and the relata, the objects of reference, which are the subject of our talk. And it is immaterial whether the relata involve objects found in the medium itself (that is, in music) or those in fields outside music as such.

Natural spoken languages draw their vitality from the definite

recognizability of their word-forms and the ambiguity of their meanings. For only if the quantity of words and signs is limited in number are we capable of remembering and recalling them. The range of meanings ascribed to them, on the other hand, is -- like nature itself -- virtually boundless. That means a single word must be able to stand for many different things: it would be futile, for example, to seek after the one true meaning of the word-form, "to run." It is obvious to us all that it can just as easily mean "to flow out" (of a water-tap) as it can "to function" (like a motor): it depends on the context.

In addition, word-forms can be more than mere signs for a particular object. They also have the ability to "illustrate" something onomatopoetically, that is, where the sound suggests the sense. Used this way, many linguists call them symbols (without any hidden meaning implied in the term). Take, for example, the word-form "to crow" which imitates the sound made by the "crow." The first form acts as a symbol; the second as a sign or token for something else.


Let us apply this illustration now to two forms from the field of music: the triad g-b-d, seen by itself, is without question a recognizable form with features I can measure objectively, even using technical measuring devices if necessary. Viewed instead as a chord, as harmony, this one form can fulfill quite different functions: in the key of G major, this form refers to the tonic triad, while in the key of C major, it refers to the dominant. It all depends on the context.

We should not despair in our search for meaning, however, despite the realization that even the simplest elements of music can radiate such a rainbow of meanings. Semantically speaking, g-b-d triads are nothing but homonyms, that is, signs that sound alike but can signify different objects (here, taken from the domain of music theory).

Now I have indeed led you farther into theoretical considerations than you

may have liked perhaps. But your reward, so to speak, is that you have acquired almost the entire theoretical equipment you need to understand the musical examples we will come to next. And the reason it all came so easily is because you already understand language. Indeed once you had learned to speak, you had gained a "feel for language": a sense -- partly innate, partly acquired -- for how language must be put together to make it work, particularly to make it work to meet your needs.

And for this reason, you can readily imagine now that a composer who

wanted to say something in music would also possess the "instinct" (let us say) for expressing himself so he would be understood. That means he would organize his musical thoughts on the self-evident model of language. As you will see, this was his way of assuring himself that his music could be understood both as a language for music as such and as a language for objects beyond the sphere of music.

The canon: a symbol

Those music-forms that we call canons and fugues are good examples of ones easily recognized. It is clear from the following musical examples how we know them: in essence, a melody appears to follow itself at some distance, showing up repeatedly in more than one part and at a given interval, either on the same or a different step of the scale.

With these forms, what was Johann Sebastian Bach able to express? In

fact, a whole catalogue of relata, as we see in these examples: Following (after another person)

I will gladly follow in your steps, Leading (taking away)


They are leading him away, he is bound. . .

arroting, mindlessly repeating another’s words

P (The false witnesses, where the

. .

he law

second mechanically repeats the made-up testimony of the first)

He said: I can destroy. . .

. . .the temple of God and in three days’ time. T

We have a law that says he ought to die, because. . .

. . .he claimed to be the Son of God.


All this and more was spelled out, so for example the idea of "the opposite" (earlier called antitheton), as when a homophonic passage (music of a single accompanied line) was counterpoised directly to a fugue. Composers of the 1century would also use a canon or fugue of lightly fleeting notes to depict "flight" (in the sense of "fleeing from").

8th

he meanings I have ascribed to these musical examples would certainly seem

g

nguistics holds the answer: any given figure may, no, must

Tto be obvious from the accompanying text. On the other hand, one might

ask if the very diversity of possible interpretations doesn't argue against our beinable confidently to ascribe anything at all specific to this particular music-figure of the canon or fugue.

Li be able to

mean e many things so that many things can be expressed. But it must also maksense within the context -- as it does here. Almost all the things mentioned in these examples have the idea of following after one another in common. And acanon, with its voices following exactly after one another, illustrates that precisely. So you see, the music-figure of the canon is not only a sign

, it symbol

is also a in the sense mentioned before. The canon-figure does not fit to the notion of "the opposite" (for

unders tter case,

lly,

tandable reasons), nor in particular to that of "the law." In this lait is the strictly "legal" (that is, rule-following) nature of the counterpoint that endows this music-figure with its function as a symbol. Or putting it semanticahere the canon form serves as a homonym for different, hardly related things.

Let us stay with music that has an easily understood associated text. In

the ne at xt musical example, you will surely recognize that Mozart does exactly whBach did when, in Die Zauberflöte, he wants to portray the malevolent Moor Monostatos in music. Monostatos is running after the fleeing Pamina and Papageno. You can hear their running steps as pairs of notes, and then yoas Monostatos' stride suddenly falls in lockstep with the two trying to escape:

u hear

Quick, Run! Run quickly!. . .


Now that is not only creative program music; it is also the use of time-honored

y.

rhetorical music teachings, for -- like Bach -- Mozart also elected to use a canonat this point. Of course, it was the simplest imaginable (in the tonic, with a deliberately "primitive" repetitious melody) but all the more beguiling therebThe music-symbol all by itself tells us a pursuit is in progress, even before the Moor confirms the fact with his words: "Ha, hab ich euch noch erwischt?--Ha, bhaven't I caught you now!"

ut

Whether composing in this way is aesthetically rewarding is something I need n , ot go into; that would be "unscientific," subjective. Objectively, howevertwo things can be noted here: first, there is an historical connection between the art of composition used in this instance by Mozart and that of his predecessors; and second, there is a symbolic link between the music-figure he used and the action he illustrated. These are empirical observations and, as such, meet one othe criteria for a scientific approach. But their significance has to be evaluated as well. Whether Mozart deliberately intended to compose this in just this way, or whether he just happened to, must also be subject to proof.

f

Experiments and proofs

What is a proof? Did you ever have to prove the Pythagorean Theorem in school

e

t

But if you are now beginning to imagine that proving things empirically is like ca

the ure

f chance

be

probabilistic methodology for assessing representational elements in music

? If you did, you may derive a certain wry satisfaction from hearing that this deductive method of proving something (that is, going from the general to the specific) is of little use to the empirical sciences -- and music, remember, is one of them. The reason is that, in principle, we cannot arrive deductively at truresults starting out from secure axioms because there are no such indisputable axioms. We would only be going around in a circle vainly looking for a fixed poinat which to begin our chain of proof.

tching mice -- pardon my inelegant example -- that too would be misleading. In this case, if the question was whether there is a mouse incellar and we found a mouse in a trap, then we would appear to have a dead-sanswer. But in today's natural sciences, there are (generally speaking) no dead-sure answers. One reason is that we are never able to conduct so many experiments that we are able finally completely to exclude all possibility oas cause; in the case of accelerators for elementary particles, for example, we could hardly afford the cost of doing so. Results, then, can only be taken as probable or, at the best, very probable; just how probable they are must be expressed quantitatively through statistical analysis. In this way, results canobjectified. A

Music theorists know that too, of course, even if they frequently seem to give it

only lip-service: as Reinecke puts it, "At best, we can bring observations relation to each other only with certain degrees of probability."

in

hus, when I note that there are correlations between (symbolic) music-figures

T and the objects being depicted, these can only be taken as probable

relationships, and one cannot ask for more than that. Naturally the questionis justified: how

then probable? To answer that, we need statistics, and that means

we need a statistical base of some size.

Let me first go into the question of the probabilistic relationships between two (o

s

bservable) patterns that are both important and informative: music-figures and the objects referred to in an accompanying text, and the relationbetween them.


Think back to Monostatos racing after Pamina and Papageno. There I mentio uld

g

ned that the simple repetition of notes, that is, the two-note figure, cobe construed as steps, in other words, the symbol for "two-legged beings" running. This was little more than imagination applied to the picture-paintinpossibilities of music; put together with the words that go with the music, however, it becomes a statement with potential statistical significance. It ienough, though, simply to have tracked down "numerous" parallel passages in which the correlation between music and text suggests a similar connection. Wmust go further and relate them to the total amount of music in which they are found. And then still more: we must also conscientiously count those places where such correlations do not occur when, for example, the two-note figure appears but there is nothing textually to suggest running or hurrying or the likand, similarly, just the reverse.

s not

e

e --

his example, which is only one of many discussed in my book (there the entire

Tfirst act of Die Zauberflöte is analyzed), shows the following: although the

number of "correct" coincidences of text and music -- 15 -- compares with some 300 "false" possibilities (that is, either the two-note figure was present or the texthad something to do with running or hurrying, but not both together), nevertheless mere chance in the case of the 15 can be ruled out with a of 200 to one -- and thus the correlation stands as statistically

probability significant.

Now, there are some who may want to argue that it is obvious Mozart did

not just compose in some helter-skelter fashion and yet still not be prepared to accept the suggested connection between the music and the text (that is, the two-step figure = "running"). Scientists tend to look on such persons as spoil-sports. It is up to them to show that the result is false and to come up with a new, better, statistically supported hypothesis. Until that happens, we can probably let this one stand -- at least for this one correlation or "music-wordI will call it.

," as

As I have mentioned before, there are many, many other music-words and, using

of

et me note in passing that any child, before it has learned how to ask questi

sult

ich they

The meaning of language: a network with many junctions

this tedious analytical approach, we could put together a complete dictionary which would catalogue all of them, each with its various objects reference.

Lons, must -- in similar fashion -- acquire the beginning vocabulary of its

mother tongue: it does so by noting the correlations between the objects it meets face to face and the words about them it hears from its elders. The reis a (mental) "dictionary" -- a base of knowledge -- which contains the connections between the signs heard (i.e., words) and the objects to whrelate. (Let us call this "knowledge base Type I"; we will need to refer to a second kind of knowledge base shortly.)

ut what exactly are the objects to which the signs relate? The signs are so am

does

e can see how matters work even using a fairly naive approach: I simply choose

Bbiguous! Our problem of finding meaning in music is like that of the man

faced with translating the text of a completely unfamiliar foreign language, without knowing its grammar and having only a dictionary to draw on. Howone tell what the author really meant to say? That is the problem of linguistics, of semantics. And this discipline is going to help us develop the strategic approaches that the brain can direct so skillfully.

W those objects which, in the world around us, appear to be related most

closely to one another and thus to show the greatest number of "pragmatic junctions" between them.


I can hear your objections already: “that's just like him!. . .that's subjec possible

rly

If I gave you a sentence that began, "lt's the tone. . .," how would you interpr d

hat

tivity with a capital "S"!. . .he just rummages around in the lists of meanings until he comes up with something that fits his preconceived ideas!” And indeed, it is true that our language-comprehension faculty is something likethat. Keep in mind, however, that our internal dictionary -- our knowledge base Type I -- in spite of all the ambiguity it confronts everyday still does not tolerate proceedings that are completely arbitrary. And nowhere in either Mozart or Bach,for example, have I ever found a passage where staccato notes at a brisk tempo are used as a sign, say, for solemn mourning. Nor would it ever occur to someone to classify such a music-figure as "mourning" or something similainappropriate.

et its meaning? Are you already thinking of a certain impression of sounbecause our subject today concerns music? Haven't you perhaps too hastily overlooked the possibility that it could refer to the tinting or shading of color tgives painting its effect? But let us go on with the sentence: "lt's the tone that makes. . ." Perhaps the subject is neither music nor painting; "making" in the sense of doing or producing something does not seem to fit semantically with either one. Another word or two, however, and the meaning is clear: "It's thetone that makes the music." So, the subject is music, after all, but not only thaWe have encountered an idiomatic expression, a metaphor, whose extended meaning is along these lines: "It is not just what you say but how you say it counts." In short, from both its structure and its content, a genuinely rhetorical sentence! What comes out of it is certainly far removed from the meanings you would find for each of the words individually in a dictionary, and yet pragmaticallythey fit together beautifully. By the way, take note too that even whole sentences can be ambiguous.

t.

that

My strategic approach has already proved its use in interpreting this senten ce, at least in its literal meaning. Each object relates mutually to theothers: "tone" to "music," "tone" to "makes" (in the sense of determines), an"music" to "is determined by" (a single word is often insufficient to label an objeproperly). Altogether there are three pragmatic junctions; with three objects, you cannot have more.

d ct

You may not have realized it, but with this conclusion we have already drawn upon a second knowledge base (Type II): a pragmatic one made up ofwhat we know of the world around us (or, to be more precise, from the imagesit we carry in our brains). Experience tells us that "tone" and "music" tend to occur together more frequently (that is, have a higher order of probability) tha"tone" and "painting." Or -- to take another example -- the things we associate with "fish" and "swimming" can go together but those with, say, "fish" and "drinking," probably not -- unless of course the talk is of a tippler who "drinka fish." (The study of our preferences for certain combinations is related to the preference rules

of

n

s like

that Lerdahl and Jackendoff apply in their formal analysis of tonmusic.)

al

The strategy outlined above follows a mathematical theorem formulated by the English minister and mathematician Thomas Bayes in the 18th century. It states that the probability for a certain content of relata to apply, provided certasigns for it have been received, is proportional to the a

in priori probability which

may be assigned to this content, multiplied by the probability with which the received signs are expected to show up as a consequence of the content. Of tdifferent possible contents, the highest a

he priori probability is to be attributed to

the one which is composed of relata that are known to appear together with highprobability. This content is then selected as "true," provided that the probability for the signs to appear with it is reasonably high too.


The overture to Die Zauberflöte: an illustration

Now finally let us look at a piece of music that has no text at all -- part of the ov

erture to Die Zauberflöte, beginning with the allegro at measure 16. It obviously relates somehow to the dramatic content of the opera and to its librettobut -- so people have thought up to now -- only indirectly at best, say, in the mood it evokes, nothing concrete. The sonata setting of the allegro suggests the beginning of a fugue as well:

,

owever whole and integral this piece may seem to us -- because we are so use

Hd to hearing it as an entity -- it is in fact made up of many and varied

music-figures whose separate characteristic features can be found elsewhere in Die Zauberflöte and in other Mozart operas. In my book you will find them catalogued and listed in a lexicon, with the various meanings spelled out.

the 40 measures from measure 16 to measure 56, I have identifiedIn 18

such fit

s to be f

ighth notes to be played at a running

y-?

operas in Paris,

gures which compose this musical passage, at least so far as the melodic lines are concerned. In Table I (see page 14), I cite each of these figures and lissome of the meanings -- often quite different, as you will see -- that, according to my lexicon, could be attributed to them. The figures and what they could mean are numbered consecutively according to the measure(s) in which they occur.

ut what appears in Table I is not all. There are still other semantic clueB

ound relating to these 40 measures (summarized in Table II on page 16):

the basic structure: does the use of a fugue with quick, staccato note- --values signify "flight, escape"?

--the tempo: are the staccato etempo, or much faster still, in a volatile "floating" tempo, "light as a fairtale" (as this piece has been characterized by some Mozart commentators)

the aesthetic of the times: did Mozart observe the stricture of Johann --Adolf Scheibe (a Bach student) that an overture’s function was to set thestage for the start of the opera? If so, then it must relate to the situation involving Tamino and the serpent as the opera begins.

another relevant bit of history: having been present at --was Mozart inclined to follow the practice of Grétry, who would often beginthe action, even raise the curtain, while the overture was playing and providing a programmatic introduction to the start of the first act (Abert)?


So far, all the suggested relata in the two tables are just possibilities and there is little to be gained from arguing case by case which the right ones are in connection with the overture to Die Zauberflöte. In the beginning, we should accept them all without prejudice, including the possibility that a music-figure being used in a purely musical sense (that is, grammatically

is ) and has in fact no

semantic meaning at all. To reflect that, each entry in both tables is also given a“no meaning” (n.m.) possibility.

That said, we still have to decide how probable it is that any two given I, we

thout

music-figures are pragmatically connected. From our knowledge base Type Iknow that exceedingly fine shades of difference can exist, but from experience we have also learned that we do not need to apply this knowledge with great precision: we can grasp the meaning of many sentences instantaneously wihaving to calibrate every word. A screen with fairly wide mesh is obviously all we need to be able to tell from their contents what things go together (or to put it in the language of mathematics: the conditional probabilities that an object a is to be expected if an object b has been encountered need not be known very precisely).

_ _ _

Table I

o. N Information Object (relatum)

.

.

.

.

.

knocking, beating g

1. 2 3 4 5 6

asking for, expectinrunning, hurry, haste n.m. (no semantic meaning) turning, twisting faster! n.m. running zigzag

hurry. haste stressing, emphasizing

nning aimlessly

n.m. ru

ighing, moaning

hurry, haste n.m. s

inking, fainting, giving up

n.m. slosing hope n.m.


7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

going up, rising n.m. turning, twisting faster! n.m. feeling, emotion pain, grief n.m. sighing, moaning n.m. agitation, trembling n.m. walking hitting, beating n.m. cramped, worried losing hope n.m. exaggeration tension, strain n.m. shaking, trembling n.m. walking hitting, beating n.m. decreasing, waning (wanting to) disappear n.m. terror, panic n.m.


_ _ _

Table II No. Information Object (relatum) 19. Fugue with quick note flight, escape values n.m. 20. Tempo: 1/8-note = ca.240? -- running 1/8-note = ca.360? -- “floating,” “fairy-tale light” n.m. 21. The opera’s action begins Tamino, serpent with the overture? n.m. 22. Contemporary programmatic Mozart followed suit. use of the overture? Mozart did not follow suit.

_ _ _

In his semantic analysis of tonal harmony, Winograd proceeded successfully

using only four magnitude-levels of probability. (You will recall that determining the harmonic meaning of chords is also a question of semantics.) To simplify matters for us, I will opt for only two levels: large (with a probability value near 1) and unlikely (probability value, close to 0). That may cause some difficult decisions, of course, but since we are drawing on a common base of knowledge, we should be able to reach agreement in most cases.

Looking no farther than the first five figures of the allegro we come up with closely interconnected objects if we select running (No.1), faster! (2), running zigzag (3), flight, escape (19), and running aimlessly (4). If on the other hand we went just by the dictionary and made a possible choice of asking for, expecting (1), turning, twisting (2), stressing, emphasizing (3), flight, escape (19), and running aimlessly (4), then I would see only a single connection possible, that between the last two objects -- meaning that it would be highly improbable that we could expect to encounter this particular group of objects together. Again in the language of mathematics: there is too little information available to justify connections between the objects in this second alternative, and that is sufficient reason to reject it in favor of the first. Only after we have looked at this passage in its entirety, however, will we be able to decide finally.

The figures and objects that seem to work best together (the ones underlined in the tables) can be placed in groups of pragmatically related content as follows:

Group 1, made up of these music-figures (from Table I) and information points (from Table II) -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 17, 19, 20 -- can be expressed in words like this: someone is fleeing, running back and forth, uncertain where he is going, constantly driving himself on, wishing he could disappear from the face of the earth.

Group 2 (5, 6, 9, 10, 13, 15, 18): he is desperate, moaning, in pain, frightened, losing heart, trembling, terrified. Group 3 (11, 14): he is agitated and under great stress.

Group 4 (12, 16): he cannot keep on running, is worn out, ready to quit.


Group 5 (21, 22): because this piece of music is leading into the beginning of the opera, the subject of the passage probably is Tamino.

Of course, we can make this last judgment only when we note that there are connections -- in terms of their subject matter -- between some of the groups as such: Group 1 with 4, 2 with 3, and 5 with each of these two combinations. (And that tells us that the subject of the passage is not the serpent because serpents neither walk nor run.)

All in all, there are many close pragmatic junctions to be found between

the selected (underlined) objects as well as between the groups of objects themselves. This means that there are many good reasons to assume that Mozart, in composing the overture, intended to use the opening measures of the allegro to depict Tamino trying to escape from the serpent, and that he did this by bringing the beginning of the opera's action forward and expressing it (programmatically or symbolically) in music. (How Mozart introduces the serpent at the end of this episode and why this event is important enough to serve as a "headline" to the whole opera is something you can read about in my book.)

With such an analytical approach, that is, by comparing various possible combinations in parallel, we can come to have a fairly good comprehension of a language, however rough the method may seem in relation to actual life. And it works even in the absence of grammar, something musical settings rarely show (and something simple languages, such as pidgin English, do not make much use of either).

Could we come up with a different result? Of course. We have not yet

factored in such potential sources of semantic content as harmonic structure, instrumentation, and so on; we also have to make sure that the foregoing partial interpretation fits with the rest of the overture. Out of all this could come additional ideas and new interpretations. As for a complete negation of these findings, however, that is likely only if someone evolves an alternative, rationally worked-out hypothesis that is rooted in even more pragmatically related junctions -- which is always possible but, in my view, not probable.

To repeat: art or science?

But what do we say if someone expresses great doubt about the basic proposition, doubt that one can deal in any way at all with music as a language for expressing extra-musical things? How do we respond if someone maintains, in keeping with 19th century thought, that classical music is solely a matter of "sonorous patterns"?

Think back for a moment to the start of my talk: as a product of the human genius and the medium for its expression, music is like every other art form and every language — it speaks only to those who understand it. Only to those most knowledgeable is its ultimate beauty revealed.

But how do we reach into the remote historical past and decide who today

has that degree of knowledge? Could it be -- from the viewpoint of the composer who, unfortunately, is no longer with us -- that there really are no fully qualified experts anymore?

Without sensitive and knowledgeable practitioners, art -- at least where its

less well understood aspects are concerned -- is as dead as a forgotten language. All that remains then is to look at it now as a discrete subject for analysis, one that can be empirically inspected, objectively measured, and probabilistically examined.


How high would a thorough-going skeptic estimate the probability that the

identified music-figures have in fact no extra-musical, semantic meaning whatsoever? 100 percent? That would, of course, amount to prejudging the outcome of analysis still to be done: in short, a highly opinionated approach, one hardly in keeping with an open, scientific attitude. Given that assumption, there is no reason at all why any two music-figures in the piece should relate to one another; you might as well regard their juxtaposition as happening simply because on a certain day the composer just felt like writing that way; a week later, quite different kinds of music-figures might have occurred to him. We can formulate this as the zero-hypothesis: music-figures being meaningless in and of themselves are therefore statistically unrelated and have nothing to do with each other.

Such an a priori assumption of no semantic content would, of course, be very dogmatic. Normally in proceeding scientifically, we assign equal likelihood to alternative hypotheses at the outset. Let us agree then to assign a "prior" probability of 50 percent to the entry "no semantic meaning" that appears with each of the items in the two tables and call this zero-hypothesis A. The combination of the (underlined) meanings that seem to me the most likely ones would then receive the remaining 50 percent; let us call this hypothesis B.

We then have to compare the probabilities for the hypotheses A and B.

When we do our sums, we find that the probability for A is proportional to the immensely small product of the very small individual probabilities for any one of the observed music-figures to appear in any Mozart composition of a certain duration. In contrast, the probability for B comes out larger by many orders of magnitude; it is proportional to the product of the individual conditional probabilities for any of the music-figures to appear when the textual contents composed of the objects underlined above are present. (These latter data are known to us through our knowledge base Type I.) Bayes Theorem now states that hypothesis B has to be considered more probable than A by many orders of magnitude. In other words, far more information is available for the assumption that the musical score we have analyzed is associated with the meanings we have assigned than with no semantic meaning at all.

Faced with calculations that result in astronomically high probabilities, mathematicians usually throw them out on the ground that they merely state the obvious. And in a sense, we all do the same: none of us would expect that an overturned box of ABC's spilled on the floor would spell out a lengthy, literate statement entirely by chance, and so we do not need to calculate the odds of its happening. Given a coherent text, the only explanation we will accept for its existence is that someone wanted to make a rational statement. Isn't it the same with Mozart and the overture to Die Zauberflöte?

In music, two figures may occur together of course for purely formal

musical reasons; repeats or the cadential sequence of dominant-tonic are among the most frequent. In these cases, however, it involves figures and informational inputs of kinds quite different from those given in our two tables. The existence of interrelations whose demonstrable purpose is musical and nothing more does not compete in any way with the existence of semantic, extra-musical ones. It’s the tone that makes the music -- and it is not only sequences of words that can have multiple meanings, but sequences of notes as well. The order and correctness of its grammatical and rhetorical structure were, for Forkel, the characteristics of truly perfect music. Music works its magic at many levels; each merits attention.


"Conclusio"

A proper lecture -- traditional rhetoric reminds us -- should close with a conclusio. Or to put it another way: the speaker should make one last effort to answer the question, what did he really mean to say.

So, first: Mozart had the precepts of the traditional musical rhetoric in

mind as he composed; examples demonstrating this are far more numerous than I could possibly mention here. He assimilated the new directions in music -- the rococo style, the new naturalism -- without forsaking the received art of composition known to the connoisseurs. In short, the "Classical" composer Mozart remained a Baroque composer as well. Keep in mind that the music of the Classic period was something else, was something more than we (looking out from an ever narrower aesthetic viewpoint) have come to think of it as being.

Second: Rhetorical music is not meant to sound as though it only reflects the lilt and cadence of some language of the imagination, as if it were a kind of discourse without words. If that were the case, then only the last of the four areas of rhetorical precept – elocutio -- would matter. The realm of extra-musical ideas not only can be counted among the twelve areas of "the Creative Idea"—inventio – but it should be. (See above, page 4.)

Where rhetorical music involves extra-musical content, its structure is

determined at least as much by that as by principles of musical form as such. Following the trail blazed by linguistics researchers, musicologists today are also endeavoring to create a generative grammar for music; within such a music rhetoric, there will have to be a semantic component as well.

Third: The view is widely held that only Mozart himself could tell us what

he actually meant to express in his music; this view is groundless. Given enough music at hand to make statistical analysis possible, there are objective methods for reconstructing at least something of his intentions. We can, with adequate statistical certainty, relate music-figures to the accompanying text, to the traditional historical context, and to the characteristics of the extra-musical objects being portrayed in the music. It follows then that we can assemble a kind of lexicon showing what semantic use Mozart made of specific music-figures referring to extra-musical things.

And: With such a lexicon in hand, we can even essay interpretations of purely instrumental pieces, compositions not tied to any text and heretofore looked on solely as examples of autonomous or absolute music, devoid of programmatic content.

Fourth: From time immemorial right down to today, music theorists and

composers alike have regarded Mozart as the quintessential example of a composer of absolute music. Music "solely as sonorous patterns" -- is this "ideal conception" of the "higher evolution" of the art of music rooted in a fundamental lack of understanding? I believe it is. In Gernot Gruber's historical review of Mozart's fate at the hands of succeeding generations, you will find many milestones along this (to me) false path.

And finally: Let me break a lance for the study once again of the principles

and use of rhetoric. For almost two centuries, this particular discipline has been absent from our lives. There was a time when it helped to ensure that the orator, the poet, the music composer, the painter, all worked for the audience each sought to reach with his message. And those being addressed obviously were able to depend on the fact that the message was directed at them and could, with a little effort on their part, be understood.


With the mediating effect of rhetorical art gone, is it any wonder that this

formerly self-evident connection between "speaker" and "listener" should have come undone? Without it, what is to keep the artist from preoccupying himself with his own ego, from searching solely for "self-fulfillment," as one says these days.

And what is to keep the listener from responding with the same egocentricity? When the untutored music-lovers of the early 19th century, making a virtue of necessity, called anything "art" that they spontaneously, essentially without learning, chose to "understand" as such -- well, why not? It is hardly astonishing that, without rhetorical principles, a breakdown in communication between artist and audience, indeed between people as a whole, had to happen.

It seems to me that every day of our lives we are all too often adversely affected by this general, overweening indulgence in "self-fulfillment." Where is the key that will unlock the door to better mutual understanding? I believe one answer to this question was left us by some composers out of the 18th century.

_ _ _ _ _

Bibliography

Abert, Hermann: W. A. Mozart (Leipzig 1919-21) Born, Gunthard: Mozarts Musiksprache--Schlüssel zu Leben und Werk

(München 1985) Dahlhaus, Carl: "Musiktheorie." Einführung in die systematische

Musikwissenschaft (ed. Carl Dahlhaus, Köln 1971) Damman, Rolf: Der Musikbegriff im Deutschen Barock (Köln 1967) Dubois, Jaques: Allgemeine Rhetorik (München 1974) Eggebrecht , Hans-Heinrich: Heinrich Schütz--Musicus Poeticus

(Göttingen 1959) Gruber, Gernot: Mozart und die Nachwelt (Salzburg 1985) Harnoncourt, Nikolaus: Musik als Klangrede (Salzburg 1982) Kneif, Tibor: "Musikästhetik." Einführung in die systematische Musikwissenschaft (ed. Carl Dahlhaus, Köln 1971) Lerdahl, Fred / Jackendoff, Ray: A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, Mass. 1983) Lyons, John: Einführung in die moderne Linguistik (München 1984) Plath, Holfgang: "Der gegenwärtige Stand der Mozart-Forschung." Kongressbericht Salzburg 1964 der internationalen Gesellschaft

für Musikwissenschaft (Band 1, Kassel 1964) Ratner, Leonard G: Classic Music, Expression, Form, Style

(New York 1980) Reinecke , Hans-Peter: "Naturwissenschaftliche Grundlagen der Musik." Einführung in die systematische Musikwissenschaft (ed. Carl Dahlhaus, Köln 1971)

Schleuning, Peter: Das 18.Jahrhundert: Der Bürger erhebt sich (Geschichte der Musik in Deutschland) (Hamburg 1984) Schmitz, Arnold: Die Bildlichkeit der wortgebundenen Musik Johann Sebastian Bachs (Mainz 1950) Schweitzer, Albert: J.S. Bach (Leipzig 1908) Unger, Hans-Heinrich: Die Beziehungen zwischen Musik und Rhetorik im 16.-18. Jahrhundert (Würzburg 1941) Winograd, Terry: "Linguistics and the Computer Analysis of Tonal Harmony." Journal of Music Theory (No. 12 / 1, 1968)


Index A summing up: 1) Mozart composed with traditional musical rhetoric precepts in mind; 2) rhetorical music includes the realm of extra-musical ideas; 3) a lexicon can be assembled showing what semantic use Mozart made of specific music-figures referring to extra-musical things; 4) music “solely as sonorous patterns” is the false path; 19-20 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 2, 3, 5; musical examples from, 7-8 Bayes, Thomas (1702-61), and his probability theorem, 12; 18 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 2 Born, Gunthard, Mozarts Musiksprache—Schlüssel zu Leben und Werk (München 1985),

13, 17 [see Introduction to the book, found elsewhere in the Apropos Mozart website].

Dahlhaus, Carl, 3; and “Selbigkeit”, (a composition’s) sameness, 6 Damman, Rolf, 3 “doctrine of emotional expression”, 2 Eggebrecht, Hans-Heinrich, 3 figures of speech, 4: for the intellect (“grammatical”); for the imagination (text-

interpretive; emotion-laden), 5; 14 Forkel, Johann Nikolaus, 2, 18 Gabrieli, Domenico, 2 Grétry, André, 13 Gruber, Gernot, 19 Hanslick, Eduard, music as “sonorous patterns” only, 4, 17, 19 Harnoncourt, Nikolaus, 2 Heinichen, Johann David, 6 “It’s the tone that makes the music”, 12, 18 Kneif, Tibor, 3 Knowledge base: Type I – the connection between the signs heard (words) and the objects

to which they relate, 11; our internal dictionary, 12, 18 Type II – pragmatically made from what we know of the world around us, 12, 14 Lerdahl (Fred) and Jackendoff (Ray), 3, 12 Lyons, John, 4, 6 Monteverdi, Claudio, 2 Mozart, Wolfgang: the use of rhetoric in composing, 2; and the overture to Die

Zauberflöte, 5 music-forms: canons and fugues, 7 Plath, Wolfgang, 1 Probabilistic analysis, 10-11; statistical significance, 11 program music (Tonmalerei, musique descriptive), 5 Ratner, Leonard G., 2, 3 Reinecke, Hans-Peter, 20


Rhetoric: definitions antitheton – “the opposite”, 9 catabasis – a steadily repeated sequence of descending notes, 5 conclusio – what the speaker really meant to say, 19 decoratio – the “Embellishment”, 4 dispositio – the “Art of Composing”, 4 dubitatio – doubt, 5 elocutio – the “Art of Presentation”, 4, 19 hypotyposis – collective term for musically graphical descriptions of extra-musical

things, 5 inventio – the “Creative Idea”, 4 relata – object (of reference), 4, 6, 12, 14 Scheibe, Adolf, Bach student, 13 Schleuning, Peter, 1, 3 Schmitz, Arnold, 3 Schütz, Heinrich, 2, 3 Schweitzer, Albert, Bach researcher, 1 Semantics: root of semantic analysis is the ability to recognize forms according to their

features, 6; the importance of context, 6-7; homonyms – signs that sound alike but signify different objects, 7, 9

Sophocles, antique drama and Classical Greek, 3 Unger, Hans-Heinrich, 1, 3 Winograd, Terry, 6, 16 Die Zauberflöte, musical examples from, 9-10; Monostatos chasing Pamina and

Papageno, 11; the overture to: an illustration, 13-17, 18

Born -- Rhetoric in Mozart

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