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Dialectics and the movement of music

The purpose of this essay is to explore the ideas of Dialectics and how it can be seen in the movement of music, whether in a song, a particular group/musician or the progressive history of music.

Hegel’s Dialectics is a way of thinking; it introduces the depth and divisions within Logic and thus Contradiction. Engels described dialectics as ‘nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought’ (Engels, F, 1990) where as Leon Trotsky described it as ‘the logic of evolution’ (Trotsky, L, 1942). Hegel mentions in his lectures the idea of Totality, how Logic is made up of moments, however these moments are only partial, and so partially untrue, and forever striving for the Whole. The Whole is made by overcoming and subsuming the moments, a process by which Totality is the product. Overcoming and subsuming preserves moments, nothing is destroyed but instead improved, it is an organic rather than mechanical logic, it is a continuous fluid process. Hegel called the term for this contradiction Sublation (Aufheburg).

This can be seen in the triadic structure of Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. Thesis is where by a moment is asserted but on reflection is incomplete, there by the Antithesis drives the assertion of its Negation but also is incomplete, they are partial moments, and so Synthesis is Negated, the moments are overcome and preserved to produce totality, the whole, which has been improved. Where as in Classical logic the result would have reinstated the Thesis and no improvement would have been made, however the Russian Marxist, Georgi Plekhanov argued that, ‘without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement’, (Plekhanov, G, 1883). This means that the social conditions at any given period in time, would equal the thesis, this in turn would lead to revolutionary theory against the constraints put upon the people, which would equate to the antithesis, and therefore must result in change, the revolutionary movement, the synthesis. Whether this is mass change that affects the structure of society, i.e. laws, politics, or economic conditions, or whether it affects the conscience of society, people’s way of thinking, their beliefs or behaviour.

Within logic there are categories, which are: one, many, being, becoming, essence, existence, cause, effect, universal, mechanical and life. Hegel believed this to be the dynamic aspect of thinking, he called it Negation. Negation is the process by revealing Contradictions within identities or categories. Negation/contradictions, means a variety of relations, reflection, relation, opposition and difference, these can indicate incoherence within a category. To divide even further, there are three kinds of Contradiction, Being, Essence and Concept/Notion, and within them opposing subcategories.

Marx adapted dialectics to include his theory of Materialism, which is an approach to society, by which the Base of society, (forces of production/relation of production) determines the content and form of the Superstructure of Society, (family, art, law, politics, culture) which are a direct result of the economic base. Everything emerges from the base of production and reflects on it, the Superstructure reflects form and legitimises it. In addition, Base relations start to condition the way society thinks. Engels’ wrote, ‘All our ideas are taken from experience, are reflections-true or distorted- of reality’ (Engels, in Sewell, 2002). This suggests that everything influences everything else, society at the time we are born and as we grow up affect how we live and think and therefore how we act. This can be seen in dialectics when applying materialism.

Dialectical materialism is different to Hegelian dialectics, it states that A the Thesis, or for example the time in society at which we are born, clashes with B the Antithesis, how we develop and how society affects us, to create C, the Synthesis, how we then adjust ourselves to fit into society. The Synthesis is seen to be better than A and B, but then in turn become the Thesis, the process is continuous, much like Hegel’s dialectics.

Throughout the history of music, there has always been change and progression; early music would have been with simple instruments and basic vocal accompaniments. Some early music, for example chamber music, which led on to orchestras but then decreased in size to Big Band which then turned into swing, rock and roll etc. An example of dialectics in the history of music would be the turning point the year 1976, where by musicians were fed up of self involved and over conceptual progressive rock music (prog rock) and decided to create the opposite which was short, direct, ill produced music which would then become known as punk. Dick Hebdige in Subculture: The Meaning of Style wrote that ‘punk’s guttersnipe rhetoric, its obsession with class and relevance were expressively designed to undercut the intellectual posturing of the previous rock musicians’, (Hebdige, D, 1979). Here the thesis would be prog-rock and the antithesis would be punk creating the synthesis post-punk, as punk itself was only short-lived, as it was rebelling against previous kinds of music and the social and political conditions of the time. Post punk, overcame and subsumed punk, it encapsulated and preserved the directness of punk but still had some influence with melody and technical ability of progressive music. From post punk, it created the antithesis grunge, in the late 80’s and early 90’s, which rebelled against post punk and new romantics light heartedness, melodies and song structure. It became slower, grittier, heavier and more personal. Leading on from grunge was nu metal, and shoegaze, two wildly different genres, yet both the antithesis of grunge, it included new technology, better quality recording technics and technical ability.

These are only a few examples as at each time there is more than one type of music, the thesis not only produces one antithesis but multiples and so instead of a singular spiral it creates an expanding net, which like in Hegel’s dialectics overcomes and preserves, no genre truly dies away.

Recently there has become increased focus on combining audio and video, in an attempt to give music the same standing as art, this could also be seen as a response to technology and media, the internet has become a vital influence on how we access and consume music, putting more emphasis on the visual aspect as well as the audio. Genres such as experimental ambient, minimalist and pop have put this to good use, and incorporate the visual as an integral part of the over all outcome. Also there are many more sound artists that could still be classed as musicians. In these cases the internet is the thesis and they are the antithesis which then influences the next up and coming group of artists, producers and musicians.

An observation of today’s society is that music, not including classical, is rarely given a status such surrounds art, it is nearly always presented separate to it, it is a creative outlet more focused in audio than in visual and appears to be disregarded for this. However, music is still an expression, it is still art and as we have already seen been put through the theory of dialectics. To further this, particular groups, such as Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart have been linked to Dadaism, which in itself can be seen to have dialectical aspects, the idea of turning Logic against itself.

To look at this closely we will focus on Zappa, he stated that his influences were avant-garde composers such as Stravinsky, Webern and Varese, however he also listened to modern jazz, as well as R&B and vocal groups. Applying dialectics we can state that the Thesis is the musical culture of the 1950’s when Zappa was a teenager, and the Antithesis are the collection of artists Zappa was listening to. These then clash and create the Synthesis, which would be Zappa’s own music, which creates a non-classifiable genre. Marco Maurizi stated that ‘Dada’s negation is not abstract, it’s a determinate negation…They’re the reflex of a conscious refusal of driven models’ (Maurizi, M, 2001) this applies to Zappa music, although having influences from a range of genres, Zappa did not conform his music into one particular model, it can not be clearly defined as one specific genre like modern jazz, Zappa owns style was that his music often changed during a song, it defied the logic/stereotype of the repeating verse, chorus, verse. Zappa said once that, ‘Since I didn’t have any kind of formal training, it didn’t make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin’ Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels… or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music,’ (Zappa, F, 1989).

Adorno, in 1941, wrote about popular music as being standardized, ‘the rule that the chorus consists of thirty bars and that range is limited to one octave and one note’ (Adorno, T, 1941). Zappa clearly rebels against this structure, whether consciously or not; he adopts complicated guitar arrangements, keyboard and unorthodox vibraphone solos, on multiple occasions the speed and tempo changes dramatically and lyrics do not follow a regimented or typical pattern, neither do they repeatedly contain the same ‘characters’ such as ‘mother songs, home songs’, or ‘laments for a lost girl’. Following this it would seem that Adorno would approve of Frank Zappa’s music.

To conclude we can see that dialectics can be easily applied to the history and movement of music, however we must remember that in this case dialects is in constant flux, as already mentioned, everything influences everything else. The thesis can be seen to be social conditions or pressures on a society at a present time that causes contrary thought or actions, or a popular genre of music that dominates the charts, coupled with the progression and innovation of technology this produces multiple synthesises, it creates an ever expanding web or net, rather than a continuous spiral, that is assumed in Hegelian dialectics. Looking at it directly applied to music we can see how the moments throughout history are forever striving for the whole, each moment or scene/genre of music are influenced and respond to one another, whether in respect or out of pressure to be different, each one whether thesis or antithesis overcome and subsume the other, creating synthesis after synthesis. Due to its repeating nature no true whole can be made, each end product turns into the next thesis and so totality is never truly reached. 

Bibliography

Quoted References

Engels, F, ‘Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy’, in MECW, vol. 26, New York: International Publishers, 1990, pg383

Trotsky, L, (1942) ‘In Defence of Marxism’, New York: Pioneer Publishers, pg53-54

Plekhanov, G, in Selected Works, vol. 1, pg90

Sewell, R, (2002)  ‘What is Dialectical Materialism?’, http://www.marxist.com/what-is-dialectical-materialism.htm

Hebdige, Dick  (1979) Subculture: the meaning of style, London and New York, Routledge

Maurizi, M (2001) No Foolin’, USA, Tracking: Popular Music Studies, available from http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME04/No_foolin.shtml

Frank, Z, (1989) Zappa with Occhiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa Book

Adorno, T.W & Simpson, G. (1941) On Popular Music, in: Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, New York: Institute of Social Research, 1941, IX, 17-48

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Hegel, G. W. F (1993) Introductory lectures on Aesthetics, Harmondsworth, Penguin

D’Amato, P (2006) The meaning of Marxism, Chicago, Haymarket Books

Denski, A.W & Sholle, D.J (1989) Asking Questions, USA, Tracking: Popular Music Studies, available from http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/TRA/Asking_questions.shtml

Sanjek, D (1992) Pleasure and Principles, USA, Tracking: Popular Music Studies, available from http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/TRA/Pleasure_and_principles.shtml

Benjamin, W. (1936), ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Harrison, C. and Wood, P. (eds.) (2003), Art in Theory 1900-2000, Oxford: Blackwell, pages 520-527

Unknown, (unknown), Dialectical Materialism, available from http://www.marxist.com/science-old/dialecticalmaterialism.html

Philosophy of History, Spark Notes, available from http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hegelphilhist/summary.html

Hegel’s Philosophy of History, Marxist.org, available from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/hiconten.htm

Hegel, G.W.F. (1821-31) The Philosophy of History, Canada, Batoche Books (version published 2001) on http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/hegel/history.pdf

Field Music’s One Copy album is an attempt to make people pay more attention to music and for it be held in the same regard as visual art. After the all the recording, editing and production, the band had to delete all their extra files from their hardrive so that there was only one copy left and this was shown in Sale’s Lauriston Gallery. The band’s idea behind the piece is a response to the threat of how people are consuming music and the looming idea that no one will own physical copies anymore, that it will all be streamed via the internet.

One Copy also presents the idea of Reproduction, whereby Walter Benjamin argued when a piece of visual art is reproduced its essence is no longer felt, the original holds the ‘aura’, the impact on the viewer, and the reason why thousands still visit the Musee de Louvre to see the Mona Lisa. This theory can be applied to music, all though it is just harder to pin down the exact original, as although there is only one physical copy of One Copy, the files that were deleted may have been the original recorded files and then to destroy them and only have a copied version on the One Copy album, to Benjamin this would have been like destroying an original painting.

Field Music

Guardian article

Lefebvre & Space

In 300-400 words, use Lefebvre’s Spatial triad (see above) to conduct a critical reading of one Social Space in or around Leeds.

For the purpose of this task I have chosen a lift, this can either the one in college by the cafeteria or in any other building across Leeds.

The purpose, or Practice- its daily routine, of a lift is to ensure everyone can access all levels of buildings, for example it allows people in wheelchairs access to levels that would have been previously only accessed by stairs.

Lifts are designed for travel from point A to B, depending on how many levels there are in a building can be seen as the lazy way, for example Leeds College of Art has Lower ground, Ground, First and Second floors, this in comparison to some of the towers that can be seen across the city seems very small yet still people take the lift from the Ground floor to First floor. In a taller building it seems acceptable if you’re in a rush to use a lift to travel say, ten floors, as it would save you time and also energy, however in a building with only 4 when you use it for this purpose it does make you feel differently about it. You feel like you are cheating in some way, as you know it can take the same amount of time waiting for the lift and traveling up or down as it would just using the stairs. You know you it would be more beneficial health wise to use the stairs and yet people don’t.

On the other hand a lift can offer a temporarily secure place in which a person can be utterly alone. Once you have stepped in and the doors shut it is then you know you have a few seconds to yourself, you can relax and not worry about others, it can provide a place to think if even for only short period of time. This means people then use the space as a place to hide, with stairs you cannot control who will walk up or down them, but to a point you can in a lift.

A lift also changes when a group of people are inside, you feel differently about the space when trapped inside with people you don’t know or don’t like. It can create awkward silences, or in some cases touching, when there are too many people inside.

Lefebvre argued that social spaces are never determined, that they are in constant change by their design, the contents, the people who occupy it, the time, etc. and therefore a clear idea of a social space is never reached. Hegel’s dialectics could be applied to this, as in dialectics Totality is never reached, you could say that the thesis is the space and what it was designed for, the Representations of Space, and then the antithesis could be the Practice, what the space is used for, the daily routine. This then creates a space, the Synthesis, where by its design and contents try to determine how it is used, appears, and affects people but then it collides with the next antithesis, the Representational Space, people’s ideals, imagination, theory and vision towards the space. This never-ending structure will continue each time a new factor affects the space, and Totality, or a total picture will never be reached.

Contemporary Art

Feminism

Psychoanalysis 

Sight/Sound

Space, Place and Body