an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 17, Spring 2020, ISSN 1552-5112
Vibrations: Music and Ontology*
“Without
music, life would be a mistake.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the
Idols (Götzendämmerung)
I.
A
Biographical Note
Did
you start reading Alfred North Whitehead at the beginning of your studies? Did
you read the relevant statistics at the beginning of the studies?
I
did not, for several reasons. I liked music right from the beginning: singing,
playing the flute, playing the accordion, playing the piano, enjoying concerts
every other week in my home city. When I started studying philosophy and
theology, the focus was on political, social and
metaphysical topics, excluding, simply overlooking, or neglecting aesthetics.
Meeting
my wife Lalitha in New York at Columbia University, where she was reading
English Literature, being a poet herself and a music lover as well, strengthened
my interest in the arts. It was only much later, after I had been studying
Whitehead for quite some time, that the importance of his aesthetics became
clear to me. I realized this while I was teaching a seminar on Prosses and Reality at Heinrich Heine
University together with Aljoscha Berve,
while he was finishing his Ph.D. thesis. It suddenly struck us, what a central
role aesthetics plays in Whitehead's oeuvre. And of course meeting Martin Kaplicky (Charles University, Prague) with his expertise in
aesthetics[1]
and his project on it, in which I am gladly participating, led to a further
deepening of my studies in aesthetics and, among other things, to the Summer
School on aesthetics in České Budějovice .
One
of the revealing passages in Whitehead states:
In this Supreme Adventure, the
Reality which the Adventure transmutes into its Unity of Appearance requires
the real occasions of the advancing world each claiming its due share of
attention. This Appearance, thus enjoyed, is the final Beauty with which the
Universe achieves its justification. (AI 381)
There is a striking similarity to the above quote in a
passage in Nietzsche’s The Birth of
Tragedy:
Already
in the preface addressed to Richard Wagner, art, and not morality, is presented
as the truly metaphysical activity of man. In the book itself the suggestive
sentence is repeated several times, that the existence of the world is
justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. Here it becomes necessary to take a
bold running start and leap into a metaphysics of art, by repeating the
sentence written above [Section 5], that existence and the world seem justified
only as an aesthetic phenomenon. In this sense, it is precisely the tragic myth
that has to convince us that even the ugly and disharmonic are part of an
artistic game that the will in the eternal amplitude of its pleasure plays with
itself. But this primordial phenomenon of Dionysian art is difficult to grasp,
and there is only one direct way to make it intelligible and grasp it
immediately: through the wonderful significance of musical dissonance. Quite
generally, only music, placed beside the world, can give us an idea of what is
meant by the justification of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. [2]
II.
Research on
Whitehead’s Aesthetics
The Whiteheadian
discourse on aesthetics is reflected in the marginal role it has played in
research. So far there have been only three monographs in English on
Whitehead’s aesthetics:1961:
Reiner Wiehl from Heidelberg (1926-2010) was among the first who
pointed out the central role of aesthetics in Whitehead’s metaphysics.[3] Later, in 1990, L.Wessell, an American philosopher, wrote a Phd thesis in German under Wiehl’s
guidance: Zur Funktion des Ästhetischen in der Kosmologie
Alfred North Whitehead
The subtitle of
Sherburne’s book, Whiteheadian
Aesthetic, Some Implications of Whitehead's Metaphysical Speculation, is
revealing: aesthetics is seen as a concept of fine arts, implied in Whitehead’s
metaphysical system. Unlike the others he has not assumed a central role of
aesthetics in Whitehead’s metaphysics. A similar objection can be made, when he
speaks of an aesthetic object.[4] The Aesthetic Object for
Sherburne is always, implicitly or explicitly, an art object:
In this chapter it will be
argued that art objects have the Ontological status of Whiteheadian
propositions. Crucial to this argument is the distinction between works of art
and their performances, which will be shown to be the distinction between
propositions and their objectifications. This essay presents a general
aesthetic theory, not a theory of this or that particular art. Therefore, it
will apply its doctrines to all the major arts: music, the dance, literature
(including poetry and the theatre), architecture, painting, and sculpture.[5]
The
restriction of aesthetics to art objects, as he calls them, is the main
shortcoming of Sherburne’s otherwise thoughtful and detailed monograph.
Steve
Shaviro, in his book Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics from
2009, shares Wessell’s general assumption concerning
aesthetics in Whitehead’s metaphysics, but widens the general spectrum of
aesthetics. His interpretation of Whitehead’s aesthetics allows him to prevent
dogmatism in Whitehead studies, to keep the system open, to allow creativity.
He does this by a subtle interpretation Kant’s Critique of Judgement:
Kant’s theory of the beautiful
is really a theory of affect and of singularity; and it implies an entirely new
form of judgment. In the “Analytic of the Beautiful” in the Third Critique,
Kant steps back from the legitimizing and universalizing projects of the first
two Critiques, in order to problematize universalization and legitimation
themselves. Beauty cannot be judged according to concepts; it is a matter
neither of empirical fact, nor of moral obligation. This is why there is no
science of the beautiful. For Kant, aesthetics has no foundation, and it offers
us no guarantees. Rather, it throws all norms and values into question, or into
crisis. [6]
Shaviro does not follow the most common discussion on Kant’s Critique of Judgement, namely
the sublime, but concentrates on the concept of the beautiful. This might seem
old-fashioned, but, according to Shaviro, it allows
an unprecedented way of interpreting Whitehead (and Deleuze too). The art
critic and philosopher, Arthur C. Danto (1924-2013), gives a similar
interpretation of Kant in his last book (2013): What Art Is, which would allow this Kantian concept of aesthetics
to incorporate modern forms of art as well.[7]
According to Shaviro, Whitehead stresses the function of art, because of
its psychopathic effect, free from pressure and restrictions:
Art in particular is
important, Whitehead says, because of the way that it offers us an “intensity”
that (AI 84) is ”divorced from” the
“dire necessity” or “compulsion which was its origin” (AI 272). In view of this
displacement, “Art can be described as a psychopathic response of the race to
the stresses of its existence” (AI 272). And this “psychopathic function of
Art” is a necessary one, for it shakes us out of the “feeling of slow relapse
into general anaesthesia, or into tameness which is
its prelude”.[8]
And
through Kant:
There is no criterion that can
serve as the stable and objective basis for a system of judgments. This is why
the only form of valuation, or “graded envisagement” (Whitehead 1929/1978, 189,
citing 1925/1967, 176), that Whitehead accepts is an aesthetic one. For
aesthetic judgments are singular, unrepeatable, and ungeneralizable. They may
be exemplary, as Kant suggests;
but they cannot provide an actual rule to be followed (Kant 1987, 175,
186-187). Or as Whitehead puts it, “there is not just one ideal ‘order’ which
all actual entities should attain and fail to attain. In each case there is an
ideal peculiar to each particular actual entity. . .
[9]
The most recent
publication on Whitehead’s aesthetics, Steve Odin’s Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics was published in
2016. Its first part is entitled Primacy
of Aesthetics. In its opening section, he states:
Whitehead’s process metaphysics endeavors to
overturn the tradition of Western rationalism and moralism by establishing the
primacy of aesthetic values. The basic task of Whitehead’s process metaphysics
is to counter the problem of “vacuous actuality” or valuelessness
by recovering the aesthetic value of beauty in art, nature, and everyday life.
In his philosophy of culture he further argues that the aesthetic experience of
beauty in art is a defining quality of civilization.[10]
In a detailed analysis,
Odin shows the continuous importance of aesthetics in all of Whitehead’s
writings, from PNK to MT.
His thoughts on The
“Penumbral Beauty” of Darkness and Shadows in Whitehead’s Process Aesthetics[11] are an important
further qualification on Whiteheadian aesthetics. He says:
In an important passage from Science and Philosophy
(1948), Whitehead describes philosophy as an effort to penetrate beyond the
clear focus of immediate experience to the dim consciousness of a “penumbral
background”: Thus the task of philosophy is to penetrate beyond the more
obvious accidents to those principles of existence which are presupposed in dim
consciousness, as involved in the total meaning of seeming clarity. . . . In
the focus of experience there is a comparative clarity. But the discrimination
of this clarity leads into the penumbral background. . . . The problem is to
discriminate exactly what we know vaguely. (SP 131; italics added)[12]
There are two more
publications, which should be mentioned, although they cannot really be
regarded as interpretations of Whitehead's aesthetics, first Susanne K.
Langer’s Philosophy in a New Key, A
Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (1948), which is dedicated to her teacher Alfred
North Whitehead. Second there is a widely overlooked publication by F. David
Martin, called Art and the Religious Experience: The “Language” of the
Sacred from 1972. The text focuses on Whitehead, Tillich and Langer. I will
refer to these two publications later. Is there still something missing in all the works,
which stress the central role of aesthetics in Whitehead? Although all of them analyse,
describe and evaluate Whitehead’s considerations on aesthetics, they leave out
one of the fine arts all through: music.[13]
III.
Music in Aesthetics
The composer, conductor and
music critic Robert Schumann (1810-1856) once remarked that the best way to
talk about music is silence, or as Adorno says, “Interpreting language means: understanding
language; interpreting music means: making music.”
Nevertheless
I will write about the function of music in aesthetics with the focus on
Whitehead’s process metaphysics, which, as I said before, has been widely
neglected. This is a particularly crucial desideratum, because of the close
affinity of music to numbers and logic for a well-known mathematician as
Whitehead. He valued music to be as creative as Pure Mathematics: “The Science of Pure Mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim
to be the most original creation of the human spirit. Another claimant for this
position is music.”[14]
a. The Origin of Music
Ovid’s tale of Syrinx’s flight from lustful Pan
affords a glimpse into the mythic origins of music’s sublimating power:
A
nymph of late there was
Whose
heav’nly form her fellows did surpass.
The
pride and joy of fair Arcadia’s
plains,
Belov’d by deities, ador’d by swains:
Syrinx
her name, by Sylvans oft pursu’d,
As
oft she did the lustful Gods elude
The
rural, and the woodland Pow’rs disdain’d;….
Now
while the lustful God [Pan], with speedy pace,
Just
thought to strain her in a strict embrace,
He
fill’d his arms with reeds, new rising on the place.
And
while he sighs, his ill success to find,
The
tender canes were shaken by the wind;
And
breath’d a mournful air, unheard before;
That
much surprizing Pan, yet pleas’d him more.[15]
Ovid vividly describes the seductive power of music.
Admiring
this new musick, Thou, he said,
Who
canst not be the partner of my bed,
At
least shall be the confort of my mind:
And
often, often to my lips be joyn’d.
He
form’d the reeds, proportion’d
as they are,
Unequal
in their length, and wax’d with care,
They
still retain the name of his ungrateful fair.[16]
Jankelevitch
remarks that ‘Music acts upon human beings, on their nervous systems and their
vital processes’ and ‘In 1849 Liszt
composed a song, "Die Macht der Musik", to a text by the Duchess Helene d'Orleans: music paying tribute to its own capacities. This
power - which poems and colours possess occasionally
and indirectly - is in the case of music particularly immediate, drastic, and
indiscrete.)[17]
Also Plato: ‘it penetrates to the center of the soul…and gains possession of
the soul in the most energetic fashion…’ (‘κατα δύεται εἰς
τὸ ἐντὸς
τῆς ψυχῆς
ὅ τε ῥυθμὸς
καὶ ἁρμονία,
καὶ ἐρρωμενέστατα
ἄπτεται αὐτῆς.’-- Platon,
De republica III 401 d)
Many
musicians refer to Plato and quote the above passage to demonstrate the power
of music. But Plato himself saw this as double edged. On the one hand he
recommends music as a useful tool for education, on the other he finds certain
kinds of music dangerous:
And therefore… musical
training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony
find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily
fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated
graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful: and also because he who has
received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive
omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises
and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and
good, he will justify blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth,
even before he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has
made him long familiar. (ibid.)
If
a person is not good already, even the ‘good’ kind of music would not help him.
Plato differentiates two kinds of music: the one which encourages moral growth
and the other which would have the opposite effect. After excluding hard
harmonies from his considerations, because nobody would appreciate those he
turns to soft harmonies which he abandons from the Republic. The music Plato is
advocating seems to be a rather dull affair, only meant to help warlike men,
keeping emotions to a minimum, nothing which most people nowadays would think
of as beautiful, leaving twelve-tone music aside. Music has to strengthen the
character of people, not to seduce them, according to Plato.
b. Pythagorean versus Aristoxenian
approach to Music
The correlation of sounds and the length
of the string was detected by Pythagoras on the Monochord. Harmony can be
created by whole integral numbers (1 to 2 for the octave, 1 to 3, 1 to 4
etc.) The close similarity of octaves
e.g. seems almost universally accepted in the Western-European musical system
and the Arabic, Indian and Gamelan music of Indonesia. But as Andrew Baker
remarks:
From the beginning, Pythagoreans were not typically
interested in the study of music for its own sake. Their researches in
harmonics arose out of a
conviction that the universe is orderly, that the
perfection of a human soul depends on its grasping, and assimilating itself to
that order, and that the key
to
an understanding of its nature lies in number.[18]
The contrast could not be stronger than in the
approach which Aristoxenus (c. 375, fl. 335 BCE)
advocated: music has to follow its own principles, not any from the outside,
neither mathematics, physics or anything else; music has to be independent of
those other domains of inquiry. As a student of Aristotle, he wants to define
music as a science in the Aristotelian sense.
It is to be understood, speaking generally, as the
science, which deals with all melody, and inquiries how the voice naturally
places intervals, as it is tensed and relaxed. For we assert that the voice has
a natural way of moving and does not place intervals haphazardly.[19]
»Καϑόλου μὲν
οὖν νοητέον
οὖσαν ἡμι̑ν
τὴν ϑεωρίαν
περι μέλους
παντός, πω̑ς ποτε
πέφυκεν ἡ φωνη ἐπιτεινομένη
καὶ ἀνιεμένη
τιϑέναι
τα διαστήματα.
φυσικὴν γὰρ δή τινά φαμεν
ἡμει̑ς τὴν φωνὴν
κίνησιν κινει̑σϑαι
καὶ οὐχ ὡς ἔτυχε
διάστημα τιϑέναι«
Therefore, he asserts it to be necessary that music
theory be independent of predecessors:
We
try to give these matters demonstrations which conform to the appearances, not
in the manner of our predecessors, some of whom used arguments quite extraneous
to the subject, dismissing perception as inaccurate and inventing theoretical
explanations, and saying that it is in ratios of numbers and relative speeds
that the high and the low come about. [20]
Eli
Maor points out that Aristoxenus’s
‘ideas lay dormant for two thousand years, until they were revived in the
sixteenth century by Vincenzo Galilei’.[21]
His claim is valid, except for a minor exception - St. Augustine’s De Musica. This
approach to music has a striking similarity to that of St. Augustine, which I
showed at length in a different paper. Augustine’s small tractatus
De Musica
has long been widely neglected; work on it has been done only recently. A critical edition of the Latin text was
published as late as January 2017: De Musica
(Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum
Latinorum, Band 102) (Latin) Hardbound – 6. March
2017 by Martin Jacobsson (De Gruyter, Berlin).
Augustine gives a short definition of music: ‘musica est scientia bene modulandi’ (music is the science of good modulation, De Musica I, II 2) This definition is probably taken from
Varro’s lost book on music. Unlike other sciences, the science of music is
related to two classical subjects: mathematics and grammar. Measuring relies on
the proportion of reality, including sound, but Augustine gives it a special
focus: he introduces dimensio, an additional
factor. The easiest way to explain it may be to relate it to the Latin origin: di-mensio, two ways
of measuring: one in the traditional way of numbers, rhythmus
(Latin), and the other according to ῥυθμóς (Greek) i.e. rhythm
expressed by motion or gesture [cf. mus. 3,2]:
WeIl, then, consider the nature
and force of reason, to the extent that we can observe it from its activities.
For reason, to focus especially on that which is relevant for the understanding
of this work, first pondered over what a good modulation is and saw that it
consists in some kind of movement that is free and turned to the goal of its
own beauty…[22]
In a sense therefore Augustine tries to incorporate
both traditions, the Pythagorean and the Aristoxenian
in his approach to music. In the history of the equal-tempered scale, Aristoxenus seems to have been the first to have judged
‘intervals by the ear alone and not by arithmetical relation’.[23]
c. The Function of Music
“Music
consists of successions and forms of sound, and these alone constitute the
subject. They again remind us of architecture and dancing which likewise aim at
beauty in form and motion, and are also devoid of a definite subject. Now,
whatever be the effect of a piece of music on the individual mind, and
howsoever it be interpreted, it has no subject beyond the combinations of notes
we hear, for music does not only speak by means of sounds, it speaks nothing
but sound.”[24]
Hanslick’s ferocious attack on
the romantic notion of music, the assumption that it is all about feeling had a
strong impact on musicology. This notion of music was called absolute music.
Still, should Lied music, i.e. Opera, Oratory, etc,
be excluded? Hanslick and his followers draw that
conclusion, Richard Wagner was his main opponent, but not the only one, as a
long list of composers followed.[25]
Roger Scruton, among others, shows the shortcomings of Hanslick’s
notion of absolute music while agreeing with him that music has to be
understood in its own right and in this sense be understood as absolute:
To
say that musical understanding is founded in a metaphor, is to cast doubt on
the whole idea that we understand music,
or that the way in which we understand it can be educated or improved. The
experience of music comes to seem like the by-product of other perceptions—perceptions in
which our concepts are formed and put to the test. This
is one reason, I believe, why critics like Hanslick
are so resistant to the idea of musical 'content'. For it would seem to imply
that the organization of music is of no intrinsic significance. Musical
organization is made to depend upon concepts that have no literal application
to music, and which derive their sense from contexts in which this peculiar and
remarkable experience—the experience of musical form—is wholly out of mind. On
the other hand, even Hanslick described music as 'tönend-bewegte Formen' ('forms
moved through sound'). He too used the metaphor of movement; and he too
must say why it is this which
captures what we hear, when we hear sounds as music.[26]
d. The Ontological Status of Music, Time and Reality
“the fate of unhappy music … to fade away as soon as
it is born”
Leonardo da
Vinci, Trattato 1, 29
As Christopher Hasty says: “Music’s resistance to
representation has long been its curse and its promise.”[27] This is not the place to discuss the whole discourse
in musicology since Hanslick. The ontological status
of music has being widely discussed.[28] I think it is basically related to the concept of
time. As I mentioned earlier, the most elaborate and sophisticated notion of
time in the past has been done by St. Augustine. Since then, according to
Christopher Hasty, it is Alfred North Whitehead, who has taken time seriously.[29]
The first who
interpreted Whitehead’s aesthetics was his student Susanne K. Langer. In her
book Philosophy in a new Key, first
published in 1948 and dedicated to ANW :
‘To ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD my great Teacher and Friend, she develops a theory of symbolism, or, as the
subtitle of the book indicates, A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite,
and Art. It should be noted that
she is using a musical term ‘key’ to describe her innovative approach to
symbolism and art. Mrs. Langer's definition of music is the following;
"The creation of Virtual time, and its complete determination by the
movement of audible forms.”[30] In
exploring this statement, the following key phrases could be helpful;
“The elements of
music are moving forms of sound; but in their motion nothing is removed. The
realm in which tonal entities move is a realm of pure duration. ... Musical
duration is an image of what might be termed "lived" or
"experienced" time...The semblance of this vital, experiential time
is the primary illusion of music. All music creates an order of Virtual time,
in which its sonorous forms move in relation to each other - always and only to
each other, for nothing else exists there.”[31] Music
makes time audible, and its form and continuity sensible.[32]
Early in Feeling and Form, she writes that the import of music is "the
pattern of sentience - the pattern of life itself, as it is felt and directly
known."[33] Throughout
her text, she consistently uses the terms "felt time" and
"experienced passage" tο denote this pattern of musical time. The "model
for the Virtual time created in music," she asserts, is
"the direct experience of passage, as it occurs in each individual
life."[34] Α few pages earlier she states, "The realm in
which tonal entities move is a realm of pure duration."[35]
Illusion is "that which constitutes the work of
art . . . it is what results from the arrangement [of given materials in an
aesthetically pleasing pattern], and it is literally what the artist makes, not
something he finds. It comes with his work and passes away in its destruction.”[36] Music,
above all, must be heard to exist, for its vital import is a function of its
existence in time. Langer calls music (and all other non-plastic arts)
"occurrent" art, which means that it requires a definite time of
perception.[37] It is out of sound that music’s illusion is
made, and without occurrent expression, the composer’s work remains an outline
of rich possibilities, - a composition only, not yet music.
In his unpublished PhD thesis from 1974, THE
FULFHIMENT OF TIME: Α LANGERIAN/WHITEHEADIAN AESTHETIC OF MUSIC
PERFORMANCE Wayne Arthur Dalton, refers to Sartre to illustrate the special
character of music:
“For the moment, it is the jazz that plays; not even a
melody, simply the notes - a myriad of small tears. They know no rest; an
inflexible order first gives them birth, then destroys them, never allowing
them to truly exist. They run, they hurry, they strike me in passing with a dry
blow and then disappear. I would like to hold them, but I know that, if I were
to succeed, nothing more would remain between my fingers. ... I must accept
their death; I must even wish it.”[38]
Dalton disagrees with Sherburne concerning the
ontological status of music. Sherburne claims that all forms of art are
propositions, including music.[39] Dalton, in a more Whiteheadian sense, concludes:
It is suggested…that the "art object" or
"art symbol" is no proposition, but rather a society of objectively
immortal occasions. It is fully actual, with nothing of the proposition' s
tentative status. That which does obtain as a proposition is the set of tendencies,
tension and release, the form of which, in the case of music, the composer has
approximated on paper.[40]
The real power of music
lies in the fact that it can be "true" to the life of feeling in a
way that language cannot; for its significant forms have that ambivalence of
content which words cannot have. This is, I think, what Hans Mersmann meant, when he wrote: "The possibility of
expressing opposites simultaneously gives the most intricate reaches of
expressiveness to music as such, and carries it, in this respect, far beyond
the limits of the other arts." [41] Music is revealing, where
words are obscuring, because it can have not only a content, but a transient
play of contents. It can articulate feelings without becoming wedded to them.[42]
Victor
Zuckerkandl in his lately rediscovered monograph, SOUND AND SYMBOL: Music and the External World from
1956, is fighting the dualism of an inner and outer world, not only in a
Whiteheadian fashion but in direct reference to his work.[43] The inner and outer world dichotomy is surmounted in
music.[44] Only when it can be
demonstrated that musical experiences are not experiences of “another" world,
of an “unknown ideal life"; that the audible and the visible belong to the
same reality; that motion of tones and motion of things take place on the same
stage; that one space, one time embrace the world of visible event and the
world of audible event - only then is a critique of our concept of reality from
the point of view of music possible.[45]
Zuckerkandl refers to Whitehead to deconstruct a common
scientific notion of reality, which would not allow music and other forms of
art to be called real. After all, he writes, a mathematical philosopher
Whitehead, is calling a piece of iron a ‘melodic continuity.’[46]
The inner-outer world dualism is overcome by music and that allows a new,
non-dualistic view of reality: “Even iron is an event. This is no special peculiarity of life. It is equally true of a
molecule of iron or of a musical phrase. Thus there is
no such thing as life ‘at one instant'; life is too obstinately concrete to be
located in an extensive element of an instantaneous space.” (PNK 196)[47]
F. David Martin's compression of Whitehead's thought
is useful
Music
more than any other art forces us to feel causal efficacy, the compulsion of
process, the dominating control of the physically given over possibilities
throughout the concrescence of an experience. The form of music binds the past
and future and present so tightly that as we listen we
are thrust out of the ordinary modes of experience, in which time rather than
temporality dominates. Ecstatic temporality, the rhythmic unity of
past-present-future, is the most essential manifestation of the Being of human
beings.[48]
In
an earlier essay F. David Martin pointed to the unrealized possibility in the aesthetic experience, an
important character of any concrescence of an actual entity.[49]
I would like to refer you to John Cobb’s summary of
Concrescence and Time:
Concrescence
is simply the process of becoming “concrete.” Concrete
means fully actual, and that means a completed actual occasion. The use of the
term “concrescence” places emphasis on the idea that even these momentary
flashes of actuality that Whitehead calls actual occasions are processes.
There is the actual occasion in the process of becoming, and then there is the
completed occasion. Whitehead calls the completion “satisfaction.” This
term emphasizes that this process of becoming is characterized by subjectivity.
There is a subjective aim, a subjective form, a decision,
and a satisfaction. But as soon as the occasion attains satisfaction it becomes
an objective datum for successor occasions. [50]
IV.
Coda
Think of a melody! Is this not an adequate description
of concrescence? What is happening in a melody is the uninterrupted time, the
indivisibility of it. You can divide both melody and time for analytical reasons but you will lose the impact; the full impact can
only take place, if you allow the whole melody to happen. When rereading
Deleuze’s Fold, something arrested my
attention:
A concert is being performed tonight. It
is the event. Vibrations of sound disperse, periodic
movements go through space with their harmonics or submultiples. The sounds
have inner qualities of height, intensity, and timbre. The sources of the
sounds, instrumental or vocal, are not content only to send the sounds out:
each one perceives its own, and perceives the others
while perceiving its own. These are active prehensions that are expressed among
each other, or else prehensions that are prehending
each other [. . .]. The origins of the sounds are monads or prehensions that
are filled with joy in themselves, with an intense satisfaction, as they fill
up with their perceptions and move from one perception to another. And the
notes of the scale are eternal objects, pure Virtualities
that are actualized in the origins, but also pure Possibilities that are
attained in vibrations or flux.[51]
It
is the event! Suddenly it becomes clear why there are so many similarities in
describing a melody and the process of concrescence! The similarities are in
fact caused by its identity! If that is the case, music becomes the basic
ontological principle of reality.[52]
An event was happening in Berlin in 2018, A L’ARME! Festival Vol. VI
AVANT-GARDE JAZZ & VIBRATING EXPERIMENTAL in which a multilayer sound
installation by MARK FELL (UK) with archive material of Zbigniew was taking
place.[53]
The
Polish composer Zbigniew Karkowski (14 March 1958 –
12 December 2013) put it provocatively and clearly:
So it seems that all the forms existing in the
universe: plants, trees, minerals, animals, even our bodies have their shape
created by resonating to some specific frequencies in nature. In a very real
sense then, at the core of our physical existence we are composed of sound and
all manifestations of forms in the universe are nothing else but sounds that
have taken on a visible form. The music must become aware of the subtleties of
its effects. There is no doubt that the body metabolism functions primarily via
a combination of electrical frequencies, pulse rates and biochemical hormones.
The brain is dependent on input. There is nothing else but sound, all that
exists is vibration. My goal is to expand music until there is nothing else but
music.[54]
Defined
thus, major conflicting notions in Music Aesthetics can be solved: absolute music
versus relational music. The concept of actual entities allows for the special,
unique entity while its ‘composition’ includes language, sounds, feelings etc. Kenneth LaFave in his recent publication The Sound of Ontology: Music as a Model for
Metaphysics is on a similar track.[55] Feelings are included in the
prehension, but not exclusively, as there is causal efficacy as well; the complex
notion of time can be understood in an Austinian-Whiteheadian sense. When Bruno
Walter defines music as ‘a parable of creation’[56] he
comes close to what Karkowski has in mind and Zuckerkandl’s statement that ‘the audible and the visible
belong to the same reality’[57]
also supports this. Whitehead’s stress on rhythm, particularly in his early
writings, adds to the claim that aesthetics, particularly music, is central to
his metaphysics.[58]
Jankelevitch’s treatise, Music and the Ineffable echoes the above mentioned description of
concrescence as a process, which can never been fully described, but only
experienced and is therefore ineffable.
You may be surprised to
find a modern composer using process metaphysics to understand music. His name is Richard Elfy
Jones. The Welshman studied at the Bangor University, King’s College (1944) and
now teaches at Cardiff University. He uses a fairly known piece of classical
music to interpret it in a Whiteheadian manner: the Prelude I of Book 1 of the
Well-Tempered Clavier. His interpretation:
Whitehead’s advice was to start from some
section of our experience in the belief that the knower, the percipient event,
provides the clue to nature in general. Thus, in art the potentiality for
becoming is no mere abstract concept, for since all actual occasions are
dipolar, the physical and the conceptual must work hand in hand with an outcome
that is real, and that produces a real experience. In art, creative advance
into novelty is underpinned by the individual choices of the artist and
his jealous involvement with inclusion and exclusion. In relation to a
dipolar reality we can regard the opening note of Bach’s Prelude 1 in C major
from the Well-Tempered Clavier as
an individual essence, as middle C, 260 cycles per second. But as the root of
the C major chord, this C has a determinate i.e. a relational, essence to other
features of the tonality of C. Here C is the tonic and there is
a fundamental axis of C (tonic) and G (dominant), both notes being
eternal objects in mutual relation. A congruence exists between these
predisposed tonal forces present in nature, and the creative manipulation of
the creative artist (drawing in other notes and chords) so as to make a coherent
pattern of 35 bars ending conclusively, as it began, on a C major chord.
As the piece develops, the relational essence is extended, at least with regard to the choice of notes and the tonal progress.
Unusually for Bach the rhythmic progress is very regular and repetitive, and
even minimalist until 3 measures from the end, the result of deciding to
base the piece throughout on a simple broken chord formula. We can follow
the relational aspect in great detail, from the initial departure
in measure 2 from C to a D seventh chord in third inversion whose
relation to C is as a pseudo-dominant (it is not a major chord) to C’s own
dominant, G major. The fundamental ploy of presenting chords 1, 5 and 2
(C major, G major and D minor) in relation to each other is characterised and enhanced by Bach’s decision in measure 2
to hold the C root so that it becomes the seventh of the D chord, thus exerting
a compulsive tension demanding resolution down to B in measure 3.[59]
Another example of a
Whiteheadian interpretation of 20th Century music is undoubtedly
Christopher Hasty’s analysis of Anton Webern’s 6th
Bagatelle.[60] Without going into a detailed examination of Hasty’s ideas – this would request a much longer article - I would like to
refer you to a recording of Anton Webern’s 6.th
Bagatelle. And finally, let us share the experience of John Cage’ 4’33.
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 17, Spring
2020, ISSN 1552-5112
Abbreviations
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1861–1947)
AE The Aims of Education. 1929. New York: Free Press,
1967.
AI Adventures of Ideas. 1933. New York: Free Press, 1967.
CN The Concept of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1920.
ESP Essays in Science and Philosophy. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1947.
CE 1 The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead:
1924–1925. Ed. Paul Bogaard and Jason Bell. Edinburgh UP, 2017.
FR The Function of Reason.1929. Boston: Beacon, 1958.
IS Interpretation of Science. Ed. A. H. Johnson.
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961.
MT Modes of Thought. 1938. New York: Free Press, 1968.
OT The Organization of Thought. London: Williams and
Norgate, 1917.
PM Principia Mathematica. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1929.
PNK An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural
Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1919.
PR Process and Reality. 1929. Corrected Edition. Ed.
David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: Free Press, 1978.
R The Principle of Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1922.
RM Religion in the Making. 1926. New York: Fordham UP,
1996.
S Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect. New York: Macmillan,
1927.
SMW Science and the Modern World. 1925. New York: Free
Press, 1967.
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Notes