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M U S I C T H E O R Y O N L I N E
A Publication of the
Society for Music Theory
Copyright (c) 1996 Society for Music Theory
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| Volume 2, Number 1 January, 1996 ISSN: 1067-3040 |
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All queries to: mto-editor@boethius.music.ucsb.edu or to
mto-manager@boethius.music.ucsb.edu
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AUTHOR: Littlefield, Richard, C.
TITLE: The Silence of the Frames
KEYWORDS: aesthetics, analysis, context, semiotics, silence, frame,
Cone, Kant, Derrida
Richard C. Littlefield
Baylor University
School of Music
Waco, TX 76798
Richard_Littlefield@baylor.edu
ABSTRACT: This essay concerns the edges of musical works, and how
those edges are made possible by various frames, especially that of
silence. Silence as musical frame is viewed as an index of the more
general issue of aesthetic framing. I approach that issue via a
reading of Edward Cone's theory of framing silence, as viewed through
the aesthetic theories of Immanuel Kant and Jacques Derrida. From
that reading I derive a typology of silence as musical frame. That
typology is used to effect a reversal of hierarchy in some commonly
accepted aesthetic oppositions (such as sound/silence and
work/non-work).
ACCOMPANYING FILES:
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1. Introduction
[1.1] In the course of deconstructing Kant's *Critique of Pure
Judgment*, Jacques Derrida questions Kant's evaluation of the picture
frame as mere ornamentation to the art-work proper.(1) Fastening on
details that escape Kant's notice, Derrida ascribes some interesting
functions to the frames. Though he does not explore the possibility,
it seems to me that these framing functions might apply to musical as
well as visual art, and help answer the main question of the present
essay, What goes on at the borders of a musical work?(2)
=================================================
1. Jacques Derrida, "Parergon," a chapter in his *The Truth in
Painting*, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1987); henceforth called TIP. References to the
*Critique of Pure Judgment* are to Kant as quoted in TIP.
2. This essay is an expanded and revised version of a paper presented
at the Summer Congresses of the International Semiotics Institute at
Imatra, Finland, 18 July 1992.
=================================================
[1.2] The subject of musical borders leads to the more general aesthetic
issue of how art is contextualized such that it appears as a "work."
(This last is taken here in its commonly accepted definition, at least
since the Renaissance, of an "opus perfectum et absolutum"--a
finished man-made product, a self-sufficient entity sui generis that
exists beyond the place and time of its creation.) Locating the work
is crucial, for in order to get on with analysis, criticism, and the
like, one must decide precisely what is work and what is non-work. It
seems safe to say that most analyses of musical structure usually
proceed as Alice was told to do: they begin at the beginning and go on
to the end. This common-sense attitude toward the given-ness of a
musical work's limits, however, is rarely theorized from an aesthetic
point of view.(3) Enter the present essay. Here I approach the issue
of aesthetic musical context via a typology of the musical frame of
silence.
=================================================
3. Here, the term "aesthetic" is intended in its traditional and
technical (Romantic) sense of a systematic theory of art, and
especially of art that typifies "the Beautiful" (discussed below).
For a cogent elucidation of the history of aesthetics, from its
inception in the mid-1700s to its more utopian construal in the late
nineteenth century, see Tzvetan Todorov, *Theories of the Symbol*
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), chap. 6. I discuss
elsewhere some of the ideological impact that aesthetics has on
musical values, in Richard Littlefield and David Neumeyer, "Rewriting
Schenker: Narrative-History-Ideology," *Music Theory Spectrum* 14/1
(1992): 38-65.
=================================================
[1.3] Mention of how music is contextualized might lead one to expect a
discussion of musical ontology. A massive literature on that topic
runs (at least) from Sextus Empiricus's skeptical dictum that music
does not exist--because it must exist in time; but time does not
exist, thus neither can music--to modern studies in cognition and
psychology--which understand music as primarily a mental construct
--to essentialist views of music, which take the art-work as a
reification or hypostasis of the composer's thought, of emotive or
psychological processes, of social structures, of "absolute" musical
processes, and so on.(4) Such ontic investigations are extremely
important, inasmuch as they elucidate the conditions of possibility
for anything called "music" to exist; and a thorough study of
aesthetic frames would have to make such an excursus. Such
transcendental quests, however, lead to questions of the place of
music in general knowledge rather than the more limited aesthetic
issues that interest me here. Thus any ontological issues touched on
here will be done so in passing.
=================================================
4. Sextus Empiricus, *Against the Musicians*, trans. Denise Greaves
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986 [2nd century A.D.]). For
a recent gestaltist ontology of music, see Roman Ingarden's *The Work
of Music and the Problem of Its Identity* (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1986). For Ingarden, and for Leonard Meyer before
him, music exists fundamentally in the "communion" between listener
and a concrete sounding object. Ingarden's study should be taken as
only a recent, and not necessarily representative, example from a vast
literature on music cognition and psychology, which I have neither the
space nor the expertise to deal with here. For an interesting
construal of "art" as a totally subjective mental phenomenon, see
Morse Peckham, *Man's Rage for Chaos: Biology, Behavior, and the Arts*
(Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1965). Essentialist views of music are
manifold; for recent representative examples post-dating the
Pythagorean conception of music as sounding number, see Schenker's
writings, Edward Cone's *The Composer's Voice* (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1974); on this issue in literary interpretation,
see E. D. Hirsch Jr., *The Aims of Interpretation* (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1976).
=================================================
[1.4] Another approach to musical framing is found in analyses of
musical closure. For one, Patrick McCreless has theorized different
types of closure in tonal music. For another, Naomi Cumming discusses
"syntactic frames," such as phrase and period endings, with regard to
their effect on a perceiving subject.(5) These studies, and others
like them, shed light on one of the most salient features of musical
structure. They do not, however, ask questions about how that
structure is taken to be there in the first place, nor how types of
framing make musical structures appear as a "work." Therefore
discussion of syntactic framing will not be considered here, though in
the "ideal" study of how syntactic and extra-syntactic frames wed,
such discussion would be mandatory.
=================================================
5. Patrick McCreless, "The Hermeneutic Sentence and Other Literary
Models for Tonal Closure," *Indiana Theory Review* 12 (1991), 35-73;
the author advances a theory of three types of musical closure--
syntactic, poetic, and rhetorical--and his article contains a rich
bibliography of other studies on musical closure. Naomi Cumming, "The
Subjectivities of 'Erbarme Dich'," unpublished ms., 1995; excerpts
read at the National Meeting of the Society for Music Theory, New
York, 2 November 1995.
=================================================
[1.5] In contrast to studies of intramusical framing such as those of
closure, much recent writing on musical context stresses the
extramusical dimension of things such as socio-cultural,
institutional, and pedagogical factors. For example, one recent
publication contains an entire section of essays on musical contexts.
Among the authors are Charles Hamm (on social contexts of listening
that affect musical reception), Peter Rabinowitz (on how verbal texts
help cultivate listening habits), John Neubauer (on academic and other
institutional contexts of listening), and Ruth Solie (on patriarchy's
use of music to advance its cause).(6) These and other such studies
of extramusical context serve as valuable reminders that boundaries
between music and non-music are artificial at best; and the writers
just mentioned generally understand music to be a phenomenological
datum whose borders vary according to who hears it and the
competencies those listeners possess. It is not surprising that
writers who embrace this antiessentialist view of music tend to eschew
detailed structural analysis of the work "itself," and instead focus
on what music *does* rather than what it *is*. I accept the logic of
this antiessentialist view, but will provisionally accept the idea
that something like music exists in and of itself. Not to accept it
would end my essay here, since aesthetics arises in response to the
notion that (something people call) "beautiful" art exists.
=================================================
6. The mentioned essays are in Steven P. Scher, ed., *Music and Text:
Critical Inquiries* (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press,
1992). A more thorough critique of theories of musical context
appears in my review of *Music and Text*, in *Journal of Music Theory*
38/2 (1994), 343-53. There exists quite a large body of literature on
discursive framing, in real life and in literature. A recent example
of the latter is Marie-Laure Ryan, "On the Window Structure of
Narrative Discourse," *Semiotica* 64/1-2 (1987): 59-81; Ryan construes
narrative according to the metaphor of the computer window as frame
for the fictional world. On the framing of real-life conversations,
see William Labov's *Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black
English Vernacular* (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1972). How insights from verbal discourse studies would play into
theories of aesthetic framing deserves thought, which would of course
far exceed the scope of this article.
=================================================
[1.6] Also, possibly relevant to the present essay would be music and
writings by John Cage ("There is no such thing as silence") and Toru
Takemitsu (silence as a sign of death).(7) Both of these writers have
brought us great insight into Eastern ways of understanding sound,
music, and all of life. But because they proceed from such a
fundamentally different epistemology than that of the West, to weave
their conceptions of silence and music into an essay concerned with
European aesthetics would require a much longer format than the
present one. Thus Cage's silence-as-ambient-noise and Takemitsu's
silence-as-death must also await future study.
=================================================
7. John Cage, *Silence* (Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 1961),
51. Toru Takemitsu, *Confronting Silence: Selected Writings*
(Berkeley: Fallen Leaf Press, 1995).
=================================================
[1.7] Instead of approaching the subject of silence as aesthetic frame
via the possible routes just outlined in paragraphs 3-6, I shall
instead look at Edward Cone's attempt to answer aesthetic questions
about the context of musical art-works in his classic *Musical Form
and Musical Performance*.(8) There Cone advances a theory of silence
as musical frame, and my paper picks up where Cone's leaves off, so to
speak. Here I view Cone's theory through the "lens" of Derrida/Kant,
using their writings as a framework or foil by which to (re)read Cone.
=================================================
8. Edward T. Cone, *Musical Form and Musical Performance* (New
York: Norton, 1966); henceforth referred to as MFMP.
=================================================
[1.8] The remainder of this essay will proceed as follows: First, I
shall look at Derrida's views of aesthetic frames and framing, arrived
at in his reading of Kant. Combining Derrida's views with Kant's, I
derive a set of four self-negating framing functions that characterize
and define any and all artistic frames. Second, I use those functions
to interpret Cone's theory of silence-as-musical-frame. In brief, my
interpretation effects a reversal of certain oppositions between
music/silence, such that the "unprivileged" (rightmost) term is shown
to be a condition of possibility for or constitutive of the former. I
close with a few comments about how aesthetic frame theory, as
interpreted by my reading of Cone, might be useful for analysis and
pertinent to the construction of a music aesthetic.
2. Frame and Framing: Kant and Derrida
[2.1] In the section of his *Critique of Judgment* entitled "Analytic of
the Beautiful" (itself Book I of "The Analytic of Aesthetic
Judgment"), Kant describes the picture frame as a mere ornament
(parergon) to the painting itself. He classifies the frame among
ornaments that do not belong to the internal properties of the work
(ergon) of art, even though such external trappings as picture frames
and draperies or clothes on statues do attach to the work proper. Why
does Kant need to make this distinction? As noted above, in order for
analysis of anything called art to take place--and thus for
aesthetics to be possible--it is crucial to define the proper,
intrinsic object of critical attention. Derrida calls this
determination "a permanent requirement [that] organizes all
philosophical discourses on art . . ." (TIP, 45). For Kant and his
critical lineage (which we shall see includes Edward Cone) that object
is "beautiful form." Such form is autonomous, organic, and autotelic,
that is, seemingly goal-directed, but with no use in the "outside"
world, and with no goal beyond simply being itself. Kant's "free
beauty" (the best kind) signifies nothing, shows nothing, represents
nothing. As a token of such beauty, music is the "play of sensations
in time," whose "design [i.e., form] constitute[s] the proper object
of the pure judgment of taste" (Kant quoted in TIP, 52-53). Now that
which frames any art-work whatsoever, if it is a good frame, should
not be considered part of the work itself, though it might help the
work along; the frame performs secondary tasks (Nebengeschaefte). The
good frame calls attention neither to itself nor to the object it
surrounds; rather, it enters modestly into the composition of
beautiful form and should be conceived as participating in that form,
though not to any essential degree. The bad frame, on the other hand,
is base ornamentation or finery (Schmuck), which takes attention away
from pure beauty, and tries to "win approval for the picture by means
of its charm" (Kant quoted in TIP, 53 and 64). For Kant, the frame,
good or bad, erases itself, so to speak, in that it plays no part in
aesthetic considerations of the work proper.
[2.2] Now Derrida suggests that Kant's exclusion of the frame from
evaluations of pure beauty is something of a swindle, because Kant
tries to introduce a logical framework that makes it possible to
distinguish work from non-work. For this task, Kant borrows
categories from his *Critique of Pure Reason*, and these categories
are irrelevant to the discussion at hand--irrelevant because,
according to Kant, aesthetics concerns the senses, not the intellect.
(We shall return to this problem toward the end of this essay, after
watching the same kind of conceptual frame-job bolster Cone's theory
of musical silence.) Derrida goes on to show that the frame can be
understood not only as mere ornament, but as that which makes possible
the work itself, through action that separates the so-called beautiful
form from a general context or milieu. For Derrida, the frame
responds to and signifies a lack within the work itself (TIP, 65).
This lack makes framing necessary, not just ornamental and contingent,
as Kant would have it. In effect, Derrida reverses the hierarchical
opposition established by Kant, that of work/non-work. He does so,
however, not by establishing a new opposition of non-work/work, but
rather by construing the oppositions involved as a set of
paradoxes.(9)
=================================================
9. Those well-read in Deconstruction will find my usage of Derrida's
(anti)concepts to be a pale shadow of the originals. Such
domestication (or emasculation) of Derrida's powerful readings is
commonplace in music studies, and in my view unavoidable, because
beyond their province of Philosophy and the Logos, Derrida's
"interventions" lose their capacity to instill what some describe as
"vertiginous" effects in the reader, and fail to signify effectively
in Western thought processes and social structures. Furthermore, to
reduce Derrida's ideas to simple analytic or heuristic "tools" robs
them of their subtle complexity--they simply are not amenable to
summary. On the other hand, Derrida's readings cannot be overlooked
altogether, given their profound effect on epistemology in all art
studies in the wake of formalism(s). Thus we shall probably see more
taming of Derrida in future, more reduction and transformation of his
thought into "tools" for music analysis. Perhaps the closest thing to
what a Derridean musical deconstruction might look like occurs in some
writings of Lawrence Kramer; see his *Music as Cultural Practice,
1800-1900* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), chap. 6;
and his "Musical Narratology: A Theoretical Outline," *Indiana Theory
Review* 12/1-2 (1991), 141-62. See also Robert Snarrenberg, "The Play
of 'Differance'," *In Theory Only* 10/3 (1987), 1-25; and Robert
Samuels' illuminating critique of that essay, in his "Derrida and
Snarrenberg," *In Theory Only* 11/1-2 (1989), 45-58; Samuels makes some of
the same points as I do about the desiccation of Derrida, but in a far
more detailed fashion than is possible for me to do here. For a
brilliant de Manian deconstruction of some writings about music, see
Alan Street, "Superior Myths, Dogmatic Allegories: The Resistance to
Musical Unity," *Music Analysis* 8/1-2 (1989), 77-123.
=================================================
[2.3] Four of these paradoxical functions of the frame are listed at
the bottom of Figure 1. First, the frame separates the work from its
context. In doing so, the frame enshrines an object, thereby bringing
it to our attention as beautiful form or "art." The frame provides us
with an object that can have intrinsic content. Second, and at the
same time, in any analysis of pure beauty, the frame must not be
considered part of the art work, even though physically attached to
it. Thus the frame also separates the work from the frame itself. To
summarize: in relation to the work, the frame seems to disappear into
the general context (such as a museum wall); in relation to the
general context, the frame disappears into the work. Therefore the
frame belongs fully to neither work nor external context; it has no
place of its own. Only framing effects occur, which are not to be
confused with the frame itself: "There is framing," says Derrida, "but
the frame does not exist" (TIP, 39).
[2.4] Functions 3 and 4 on Figure 1 are corollaries to this ambiguous
ontology. Third: the frame comes to be viewed as contingent, as mere
ornament. Fourth: at the same time, the frame must be considered
necessary, since it functions to constitute the work. The frame
*defines* the work by *confining* it. This is a paradox in the
rigorous sense; the frame is not contingent *or* necessary, but both
contingent *and* necessary at one and the same time. It is impossible
to decide logically where the borders of the frame stop and the work
begins or where the borders of the work stop and the frame begins.
[2.5] Yet as analysts we regularly decide anyway, rarely taking the
time to theorize where works "really" begin and end. For a notable
exception to this practice, and keeping in mind the four framing
functions outlined above, I now turn to Edward Cone's theory of
silence as frame.
3. Silence as Musical Frame
[3.1] In his chapter on the "The Picture and the Frame," Cone elegantly
rearticulates Kant's notions of pure beauty, and how the latter must
be separated from things external to itself: "The frame of a picture
. . . marks the limits not only of the picture, but also of the real
world around the picture. . . . First, it separates the subject
chosen for treatment from its own imagined surroundings. . . ; second,
it protects the work from the encroachment of its *external
environment*. . ." (MFMP, 14-15; Cone's emphasis). Cone goes on to
note that, unlike painting, music has no "internal environment"; by
this he means that music essentially has no representational content
as does narrative, painting, sculpture, and the like. Nevertheless
"music stands in great need of a frame to separate it from its
external environment" (MFMP, 16). That frame is silence.(10) For
Cone, in musical performance, silence as a type is instantiated by
token silences that play a variety of framing roles. We shall now
look at the individual functions of framing silence according to Cone,
and also consider a few silences he omits.
=================================================
10. Of course silence is not the only musical frame. As Cone points
out, certain types of introductions and postludes can have framing
effects, as defined by our four functions (MFMP, 23-24). More
abstractly, a composer's signature can frame a work, by delimiting
audience expectations, establishing ownership, and separating it from
works of other composers. Discourse about music can frame its
reception. When literary genres--for instance, epic (such as
Schenker's hero "Artist" in his *Harmonielehre*) and "neutral
reportage"--are used to frame musicological arguments, they can
produce auras of authority and reality, respectively. Also, the
borders of musical works change over time and according to performance
context. For example, a Machaut mass may be framed as a concert
piece, whereas it once served to frame church liturgy. Today it seems
that Satie's dream of music as furniture has come true. Music, no
longer made to be listened to, serves as a frame that keeps out the
so-called real world. This is evident from the omnipresence of music
as background, in stores, restaurants, markets, and in the popularity
of Walkman headsets. But the issue of musical frames changing over
time is more an issue for cultural semiotics than for the present
discussion.
=================================================
[3.2] To help visualize these frames, Figure 2 gives an
oscillograph-like representation of music in action, and shows framing
silences that lie at the music's "edges." Along the horizontal axis,
sounds appear in time; the vertical axis shows the musical highs and
lows in terms of pitch space or frequency. Silences A and B represent
the horizontal borders of a sounding piece of music, and each has a
different function. The beginning silence, A, is that moment in which
"*nothing* should be happening" (MFMP, 16; Cone's emphasis). It
mutely announces: "Here the real world leaves off and the work of art
begins; here the work of art ends and the real world takes up again"
(MFMP, 15). In a typical concert situation, this silence usually
precedes a conductor's first gesture.
[3.3] Cone's italicized "nothing," however, should alert us that
*something* is going on here. The beginning silence serves as a call
to attention; it focalizes the listener toward what will follow; it
finalizes a milieu. These are of course phenomenological
attributions. And yet that silence *is* heard, even empirically. The
beginning silence has a propulsive quality, a sense of Doing.(11) It
is modalized, or charged with moods, by the audience's expectations of
what will follow, even if what follows is unknown to the listener.
Out of this silence the music "officially" begins. This initial
modalization can be affected by the conductor's first gesture, which
serves as a visual cue that further pre-modalizes the sounds to come.
For example, the "silent" down-beat to the opening of Beethoven's
Fifth Symphony calls forth high energy in preparation for the urgent
motive that follows. On the other hand, the conductor's first gesture
can imbue the propulsive beginning silence with a feeling of
relaxation, of Being, as would be appropriate, say, for the pastoral
opening of Sibelius's Second Symphony. In such cases, Cone
speculates, "perhaps some of the silence [once called *the*, as in
only, frame by Cone] immediately before . . . a composition is
actually a part, not of the frame, but of the work itself" (MFMP,
17-18). This is Kant's "good" ornamentation: a frame that
participates in the work itself. Yet does this not suggest that the
work proper somehow depends on the frame, or that in certain cases
the frame does not depend on the work itself but rather forms a part
of it? Recall that, in this (Romantic) aesthetic, which treasures
organicism as a sign of good art (pure beauty), anything extraneous or
unnecessary to the beautiful form is considered a flaw. Thus for the
ornament to take part in the work proper either makes that ornament
more-than-ornament or makes the work proper something less than
proper. Or at least, as Derrida suggests, some confusion arises
between inner and outer, between frame and framed--something
"abyssal," where "the smallest circle [inscribes] in itself the figure
of the largest" and does so ad infinitum (TIP, 27).
=================================================
11. The capitalization of certain verbs designates them as technical
terms in "modal logic," which formalizes the processes of certain
modalities, or subjunctive linguistic moods; such verbs include
Willing, Wanting, Needing, and so on. Eero Tarasti incorporates the
modal logic of semioticians and logicians, such as A. J. Greimas and
Henryk von Wright respectively, and musicologist Charles Seeger in his
theory of musical semiotics. Among other things, Tarasti's theory
accounts for the interaction of certain modal states either induced or
exemplified by tonal and rhythmic structures. See Tarasti, *A Theory
of Musical Semiotics* (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
On the modalities in general semiotics, see A. J. Greimas and Jacques
Fontanille, *The Semiotics of Passions* (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1993), esp. 1-43.
=================================================
[3.4] We have not yet exhausted the richness in function of the
beginning edge of the "silent" frame. Figure 3 shows some possible
interpretations of a beginning musical silence. In semiotic terms, if
one takes the beginning silence as a sign, it might generate the chain
of interpretations shown as an idealized hearing. As a type, it forms
an iconic, or similarity, relationship with all the interior silences
to follow in the piece. The beginning silence also functions
symbolically, since as a call-to-attention it is established by
conventions and protocols of concert-going rather than by any inherent
property it might have. And on the principle of contiguity, it serves
as an index in relation to the music that follows, inasmuch as both
sound and silence share the property of duration. Figure 3 also
suggests that, at some indefinable point, the beginning silence
becomes part of the music itself. The frame has erased itself and yet
it was as "there" as any note was. A part of the general context has
contaminated or become part of that which is to be understood as
self-sufficient, proper only to itself. It is impossible to say
exactly where contextual, ambient silence becomes part of the work
proper (we have reached one of Cage's conclusions, but via a different
route). Further, the idealized hearing shown in Figure 3 gives only
possible interpretations and assumes much that we cannot take for
granted, such as our hearing in an "orderly," or serial, fashion
instead of projecting backwards and forwards. And we haven't yet
mentioned noise from the general context that might contaminate the
frame itself (such as talkers, the crackling of candy wrappers, and so
on). In this case another reversal occurs, where, in order to listen
with Kant's/Cone's ears, we must construe the sound as silence so that
the silence we construe as sounding--part of the work proper--can
be "heard."
[3.5] Silence B of Figure 2, the ending border of the music, may be
qualified as mainly absorptive, because it captures and dispels the
energy of the preceding sounds. This ending silence protects us from
the shock of "our return to ordinary time" and should not be intruded
on too quickly with applause, lest its function be thwarted (MFMP,
16). The ideal duration of this ending silence will depend on the
energy level of the foregoing sounds and their lingering effects on
our memory. For example, the silence that frames the end of Debussy's
"Clair de lune" takes little time to dispel the low energy of the
preceding music. In contrast, the bombastic chords that end
Sibelius's Fifth Symphony seem to hammer away long after they are
gone, and require a lengthy silence to dissipate their force. Silence
B can also have a propulsive quality, as silence A, when occurring in
multi-movement constructs such as suites, symphonies, and concertos.
In these cases and others, silences between movements can also
prepare, delimit, or point to what follows. As Cone says, these
"moments [of silence] represent frame, like the intermediate frames of
a triptych" (MFMP, 17). For instance, the silence after the first
movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony can be very passive, if one is
thinking ahead to the tranquil theme of the second movement. Another
example would be the active silence that occurs just after the
Introduction to Stravinsky's *Rite of Spring*, right before the "Danse
des adolescentes" begins. The quality or mood of a silence between
movements will also depend on how long the conductor makes the
silence. A framing effect might be lost between movements, if the
succeeding movement is begun to soon, without enough time in between
for the previous music to leave the memory. In that case, does
framing occur? Once the new movement is underway, will there be a
retrospective imposition of frame? And will that frame be silent?
Given all these questions about the silent frames or the framing
silences, it begins to seem that, in all rigor, they cannot be
classified as mere ornament, as somehow less essential than that which
they frame.
[3.6] We have considered beginning and ending silences as frames. Are
there other, perhaps internal, frames? Cone does not think so;
rather, he construes certain types of non-silences (i.e., sounds) such
as preludes and postludes, the "extremes of a composition," as frames
(MFMP, 22). Yet framing silences do not take place only at
"beginnings" and "endings" (the scare quotes should need no
explanation by now); they also occur, at least potentially, within the
music itself. For instance, in the aria "La donna e mobile" from Act
4 of Verdi's *Rigoletto*, a fermata appears over one silent measure of
rest during the instrumental that follows the first verse (see Example
1). If the conductor makes this rest last long enough, the interior
silence might generate the interpretation of a "new beginning." (An
easy way to test this reading is to play the interlude, first giving
the fermata a duration of five or six beats, to hear the silence as an
interruption; then ten or eleven beats, to hear the pause as a new
beginning.) Where emphasized, internal silences tend to be heard as
interruptions of continuity, and indeed, almost reverse the accepted
hierarchy in the opposition sound/silence. I return to questions of
reversed hierarchy at the end of this paper; for now, let's continue
with our typology of frames.
[3.7] Referring again to Figure 2, you will notice bordering silences
also in the vertical (registral) dimension. These vertical borders of
the frame are mentioned by neither Cone nor Kant. Yet we clearly have
at least two ways of construing these kinds of framing silence, which
are more empirically silent than silences at either the beginning or
the ending: First, silences C and D lie at the limits of human hearing
capacity. These borders are normative and what we may call "natural,"
because they are determined by physical limitation and the infinite
range of possible sound vibrations. (Incidentally, the fact that
silences C and D are "natural" would seem to qualify them as
inherently beautiful, in Kant's/Cone's aesthetics; for the Romantic
view included first and foremost among the defining traits of beauty
those processes most akin to those found in Nature; hence, the prizing
of "organicism" and all that term entails.) Second, the tones of the
piece itself can determine vertical borders. The highest and lowest
pitches establish borders that confine a piece of music to a certain
registral space. Unlike the silence that occurs at the limits of
human hearing capacity, the highs and lows produced by the piece
itself are constrained by conventions of musical style and genre, and
by the physical and mechanical limitations of instruments and/or
voices used. In this case, the work itself acknowledges or
compensates for its own framing silences, which the highest and lowest
pitches "fend off." Another reversal of function takes place: instead
of the imposition of frame from the "outside" (silence, lowered
lights, conductor's gesture, etc.), the framing occurs from the
"inside," by the work itself. The inside does the job of the outside
in order for the inside to appear to be framed by the outside--a
strange yet necessary illusion if something like a "work of music" is
to be said to exist.
[3.8] The "vertical," or registral, silences (C and D) differ from the
"horizontal," or temporal, silences (A and B). The duration of the
work will always be determined by convention, whether the piece is an
eight-hour improvisation on an Indian tala or a little Mozart
minuet. The horizontal unfolding in time has no "natural" border, as
silences C and D have. The beginning and ending silences are not
limited by hearing ability and so on, but only by conventions of
performance practice and received or earned preference. Thus, while
the horizontal silences are contingent, the vertical borders are fixed
and necessary, participating in the work, in Kant's terms, and not
serving as mere finery. They are essentially sounding silences, in
Cone's sense, mute to the senses yet essential for the "work" to be
heard. Similar to framing silences C and D would be those of "depth"
--silences that operate "front to back," so to speak, and that add a
third dimension to Figure 2. Such a framing silence would consist of
a front/back or depth relation between listener and work. Where and
how these frames of depth operate would depend on physical features of
the room or concert hall, the position of the listener in relation to
the sound source, and so on. This front/back silence would have a
quasi beginning/ending function, on the tree-falling-in-the-forest
principle that sound waves start and end when they reach the audial
membranes of the inner ear.
[3.9] Other speculation on how depth silence might frame music, as well
as on the typology of framing silences, I leave to the reader,
assuming he or she has been persuaded that silence is worth
consideration. It is time now to look further into Cone's aesthetic,
the place of the frame therein, and the conceptual framework on which
his theory rests.
[3.10] For Cone, framing silences give the musical act its own fictional
world, despite the fact that that world has nothing to say and nothing
to see; as noted before, music has no "internal environment"
(representational or propositional content) of its own (MFMP, 16).
Yet at least the illusion of such an internal content is necessary for
music, as a temporal art, to establish its own, virtual time, in
opposition to "ordinary time" (MFMP, 17). In this sense, framing
silences of a musical act serve much the same purpose as the "once
upon a time" and past-tense cues in narrative. Both establish the
borders of a fictional setting in which the story (or music) unfolds.
Why, then, if the frame is framing nothing to speak of, or nothing
that can be expressed in words or pictures, why then does the music
need the frame? To make it seem *as if* there were something to speak
of. Music must provide us with (the illusion of) another, somehow
better world, in Cone's/Kant's aesthetic, which is the Romantic world
of the observer participating vicariously in the creative process of
the artist. But this world is not accessible to just any ways of
hearing it; rather, it is framed in the mental act of comprehension.
[3.11] One gains access to this other world via two modes of
"comprehension," which Cone calls the "immediate" and the "synoptic"
(MFMP, 88-89). The former way of listening attunes itself to a
sensible surface, apprehending events as they pass by; the second is a
post-facto understanding of the piece in terms of causality and
syntax. Now, by limiting the ways of hearing to only two, that is, by
framing or setting his argument for music's need of a frame by
allowing only those two possibilities, Cone sets the context of need
--music's need for a frame--something to make its edges appear:
". . . if a piece of music is to qualify as a *work of art*, . . . as
a real *composition*, not only must it have extremes [beginning and
ending], but these must be generated by the music itself--and not
solely by the exigencies of an external function" (MFMP, 13; Cone's
emphasis). But may not the phenomenological categories of "immediate"
and "synoptic" comprehension be understood precisely as "external
functions" not at all "generated by the music itself"? These are
categories the listener brings along, and by which he or she
supplements, or makes up for, a lack in the work itself that by all
Cone's and Kant's definitions must be self-sufficient and yet which,
we have seen, needs a frame in order to exist as art.
[3.12] It is not as if there were no other ways of listening to music.
Pierre Schaeffer, for example, has proffered a third way, which he
calls "reduced listening."(12) This mode of listening focuses on the
traits of sound independent of their syntactic function and means of
production, and forms a category that would make problematic Cone's
assertion that music has no "internal environment." For if we
concentrate on the sound itself instead of listening immediately or
synoptically, we have all the content or internal environment we need.
No future or past is necessary since no causality or entailment comes
forth upon the discovery (or imposition) of structure by a "synoptic"
mode of comprehension. "Reduced listening" has no need of beginnings
and endings, and it cannot help us frame the work as heard, at least
not a "work" in the sense given it by Cone and Kant and in the sense
we are trying to understand here.
=================================================
12. Pierre Schaeffer, *Traite des objets musicaux* (Paris: Seuil,
1970), 270.
================================================
[3.13] I mention Cone's modes of listening not only as a matter of
interest nor as a prelude to a phenomenological theory of framing, but
rather to recall that a similar imposition of "external" categories
prompted Derrida's questioning of Kant's aesthetics. As noted in
section I of this essay, much of Derrida's dissertation on the frame
concerns Kant's use of the "outside" framework of reason, which Kant
had designated in his *Critique of Pure Reason* as playing no part in
aesthetic judgments, to conceptualize the essentially aconceptual
realm of feelings and taste. In Kant's aesthetics, says Derrida, "a
logical frame is transposed and forced in to be imposed on a
nonlogical structure" (TIP, 69). A similar move takes place in Cone:
he calls in his two modes of listening at the same time as he returns
the discussion, near the end of MFMP, to differences between art and
non-art (88-96). The chapters in which the discussions of art versus
non-art take place in fact frame what is usually understood to be the
"content" of the book (a theory of rhythm as the basis of form). Like
Kant, Cone is faced with a lack of categories, and must smuggle them
in, disguised as mere accessories and ornament. When trying to define
the edges of a work of content-less, nonrepresentational, labile and
sounding art, Cone relies on the framing metaphor of "outside"
structures of content-ed, representational, static and visual
painting. He further calls in selected phenomenological categories of
listening, in order to frame his own highly persuasive, if ultimately
suspect, aesthetics.
[3.14] At the risk of over-summarizing, I won't pursue further the
congruences in logic between Cone's aesthetics and Kant's, though such
a project would likely prove interesting. Instead let me close with a
few general observations that seem to follow from the typology of
framing silences and from the too-brief analysis just given them. I
begin with a look at the treatment of silence in "normal" music
analysis, and close with some remarks on framing silence, and on
aesthetic frames in general.
4. Conclusion
[4.1] In "normal" music analysis and interpretation, musical silence,
like the picture frame, tends to erase itself. In their role as
crucial structural determinants--a role which I hope has been
successfully argued above--silences rarely figure into systematic
accounts of the musical act, just as in the recollection of a novel,
criticism usually does not go to spaces between lines, paragraphs,
sections, and chapters. This remains the case, despite the fact that
many twentieth-century works, such as those by Webern, Feldmann,
Crumb, Paert, and others consist mainly of silences that are more
salient than those in the various "works" of music mentioned above.
Yet criticism and structural analysis usually focus on sounding
musical events, leaving silence to be considered incidental, a mere
accessory to the work proper. In (the) analysis (business), there is
as much silence *about* the frames as well as *of* them. And when
they are mentioned at all, as in Kant/Cone and Derrida, they receive
much more attention than such a mere "accessory" or "hors d'oeuvre"
would seem to require. There is a certain urgency, in these writers
and in all aesthetics, to give us something with intrinsic content; in
Romantic aesthetics, that something is the work itself, pure of
essence, and uncontaminated by externals. Perhaps this urgency to peg
the frame as accessory, unnecessary, adjunct, and so on comes from a
presentiment that, instead of the work itself, the frame should be the
proper focus of analysis and criticism.
[4.2] After all, doesn't the frame fulfill all the requirements of
Kantian/Conian beauty? For example, it is hard to imagine something
more non-signifying, more meaningless than the silent frame. It is
less meaningful, in the representational and propositional sense,
than absolute music, which has proven itself quite susceptible to
verbal description; it is much easier to coax a clear meaning from a
piece of sound than from a piece of non-sound. Further, the frame is
more a goal unto itself, a better example of Kantian "free beauty"
than the work proper, which always needs an "internal environment,"
whether that represented world is real (as with the picture) or
imagined (as with music). In music, as we have seen, that internal
environment is a virtual world of another temporal quality--a world
we could not access without the silence(s) of the frames. For a
musical work to exist, the frame is necessary, perhaps more so than
the "music itself," which always requires a frame to make itself
understood as music. Unlike the work itself, the frame stands alone,
inasmuch as it must be understood as adhering permanently neither to
itself nor to the work it both serves and makes possible.
[4.3] In conclusion, if all these things are true of the frame, then
how might they bear pragmatically upon music analysis? In order to
retain the fiction of the autonomous work of music, and all the
sophisticated analytic machinery that has been manufactured to show
just how "beautiful" that work is, must these functions of the frame
--and not just that of silence--be ignored? It would seem
impossible to formalize quantitatively the interactions of frame *and*
work. Yet the development of qualitative categories, in a much more
detailed manner than has been possible here, might provide or at least
suggest new ways of listening. At minimum such a project should
construct categories that account for the lack(s) within music that
allow us to hear framing as both necessary and contingent at the same
time. On the other hand, if all the above things are *not* true about
the frame--if the frame somehow is *not* as "beautiful" as the music
itself, in any of the ways outlined in the previous paragraph--then
arguments of how the frame fails to attain "beauty" would interest me
very much.
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