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CREATE.TXT
CREATIVITY
wherever we begin, it is a beginning
because there is a boundary between where
we were and where we are now that we
have begun...
We have, in other words, begun.
But what is it we have begun?
What is it, I ask, have we begun?
This was not written by Gertrude Stein.
But it is a beginning which Gertrude Stein
might have begun.
In a conversation with Gertrude Stein, John Hyde Preston noted:
"She talks freely and volubly and sometimes obscurely, as if she
had something there that she was very sure of and yet could not
touch it. She has the air of having seen in flashes something
which she does not know the shape of, and can talk about, not out
of the flashes but out of the spaces between when she has waited."
(Brewster Ghiselin, editor, The Creative Process, New American
Library, New York, 1952, p. 159)
Our subject is creativity. And as anybody can tell, we
have begun. Awkward beginning though it may be, we have...
.....begun.
Gertrude Stein herself said: "You will write if you will write
without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of
the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation
must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a
thought or afterwords in a recasting. Yes, before in a thought, but
not in careful thinking. It will come if it is there and if you
let it come, and if you have anything you will get a sudden creative
recognition. You won't know how it was, even what it is, but it
will be creation if it came out of the pen and out of you and not
out of an architectural drawing of the thing you are doing... I can
tell you how important it is to have that creative recognition.
You cannot go into the womb to form the child: it is there and makes
itself and comes forth whole--and there it is and you have made it
and have felt it, but it has come of itself--and that is creative
recognition. Of course you have a little more control over your
writing than that; you have to know what you want to get; but when
you know that, let it take you and if it seems to take you off the
track don't hold back, because that is perhaps where instinctively
you want to be and if you hold back and try to be always where you
have been before, you will go dry." (ibid., pp.159-60)
And so we have already begun and can no longer
call this a beginning, unless we are to consider
ourselves beginning afresh with each word, with
each sentence, and this may well be. Always beginning,
coiling out a thought...
stretching it out
like a phrase of music.
It snakes out, curls in the air
like wisps of smoke,
disperses, and is gone.
And we begin again.
It may be like that; or it may not.
Mary Wigman, the choreographer, said of one of her dances:
"My Pastorale was developed in the following way: I came into my
studio one day and sank down with a feeling of complete relaxation.
Out of a sense of deepest peace and quietude I began slowly to move
my arms and body. Calling to my assistants, I said, 'I do not know
if anything will come of this feeling, but I should like a reed
instrument that would play over and over again a simple little
tune, not at all important, always the same one.' Then with the
monotonous sound of a little tune, with its gentle lyric suggestion,
the whole dance took form. Afterward we found that it was built on
six-eight time, neither myself nor the musician being conscious of
the rhythm until we came to the end." (ibid.,pp. 79-80)
These are metaphors. The word "beginning" is a
delineation of a category, a description of a
defined place, geographical or temporal. Birth
is a metaphor for beginning. We are always and
always in the midst of birthing. It is to these
depths we dive, scrambling for air. To continue
and to sustain...
Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary, more commonly known simply as Joyce Cary,
British magistrate to Borgu, Africa, turned artist and novelist
late in life, said in a book about the creative process, Art and
Reality:
"...It is quite true that the artists, painter, writer or
composer starts always with an experience that is a kind of
discovery. He comes to it with the sense of a discovery; in
fact, it is truer to say that it comes upon him as a discovery.
It surprises him. This is what is usually called an intuition
or an inspiration. It carries with it always the feeling of
directness. For instance, you go walking in the fields and all
at once they strike you in quite a new aspect: you find it
extraordinary that they should be like that. This is what
happened to Monet as a young man. He suddenly saw the fields,
not as solid flat objects covered with grass or useful crops
and dotted with trees, but as colour in astonishing variety
and subtlety of gradation. And this gave him a delightful and
quite new pleasure. It was most exciting discovery, especially
as it was a discovery of something real. I mean, by that,
something independent of Monet himself. That, of course, was
half the pleasure. Monet had discovered a truth about the
actual world.
"This delight in discovery of something new in or about the world
is a natural and primitive thing. All children have it. And it
often continues until the age of twenty or twenty-five, even through-
out life.
"Children's pleasure in exploring the world, long before they can
speak, is very obvious. They spend almost all their time at it. We
don't speak of their intuitions, but it is the same thing as the
intuition of the artist. That is to say, it is direct knowledge of
the world as it is, direct acquaitance with things, with characters,
with appearance, and this is the primary knowledge of the artist
and writer. This joy of discovery is his starting point." (Joyce
Cary, Art and Reality, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York,
1958, pp. 15-16)
I saw the form of this "essay" whole, as soon as I
turned to that description of Gertrude Stein's conversation:
"She talks freely and volugbly and sometimes obscurely,
as if she had something there that she was very sure
of and yet could not touch it."
But years of interest in the subject of creativity, reading, cogi-
tating, forgetting, re-membering...was preparation for the moment
of insight. And then, from that moment on, it's all work, to keep
that beginning alive, to help it grow into the coherent whole
first perceived.
10% inspiration...
90% perspiration...
And in the end, it may not work at all.
That is the risk.
The classic model for the workings of creativity is found in the
story of Archimedes. Here is the story, recounted by Arthur Koestler
in his book The Act of Creation:
"Heiro, tyrant of Syracuse and protector of Archimedes, had
been given a beautiful crown, allegedly of pure gold, but he
suspected that it was adulterated with silver. He asked Archimede's
opinion. Archimedes knew, of course, the specific weight of gold--
that is to say, its weight per volume unit. If he could measure
the volume of the crown he would know immediately whether it
was pure gold or not; but how on earth is one to determine the
volume of a complicted ornament with all its filligree work?
Ah, if only he could melt it down and measure the liquid gold
by the pint, or hammer it into a brick of honest rectangular
shape, or...and so on...
"One day, while getting into his bath, Archimedes watched
absently-mindedly the familiar sight of the water-level rising
from one smudge on the basin to the next as a result of the
immersion of his body, and it occurred to him in a flash that
the volume of water displaced was equal to the volume of the
immersed parts of his body--which therefore could simply be
measured by the pint. He had melted his body down, as it were,
without hammering it, and he could do the same with the crown...
"Neither to Archimedes nor to anybody else before him had it ever
occurred to connect the sensuous and trivial occupation of taking
a bath with the scholarly pursuit of the measurement of solids. No
doubt he had observed many times that the level of the water rose
whenever he got into it; but this fact, and the distance between
the two levels, was totally irrelevant to him--until it suddenly
became bisociated with his problem. At that instant he realized
that the amount of rise of the water-level was a simple measure of
the volume of his own complicated body..." (Arthur Koestler, The
Act of Creation, Dell Publishing Co., New York, 1964, pp. 105-106)
The sequel to the discovery is well known. Archimedes immediately
shot out of the bath tub, not bothering to dress, and ran through
the town shouting "Eureka! Eureka!," ("I have found it! I have
found it!)
And hence this kind of creative discovery is sometimes referred
to as the "Eureka" experience. Koestler defines this as an act of
bisociation, meaning that something happening on one level--the
problem of how to determine the volume of gold in the crown, for
instance--is cut across, or connects up with, something happening
on another level--the observation of the rising water-level. In
the connection, the bisociation, is some new insight or discovery
gained.
Bisociation may also take place as one of the bases for how humor
works. Koestler uses the working of laughter, which may occur when
two levels of meaning collide to form a bisociation and demand a
physiological "working off" of the tension created. Koestler em-
ploys this model as a back-door approach to the creative process.
He tells this story by way of illustration:
"Two women meet while shopping at the supermarket in the Bronx.
One looks cheerful, the other depressed. The cheerful one in-
quires:
'What's eating you?'
'Nothing's eating me.'
'Death in the family?'
'No, God forbid!'
'Worried about mondy?'
'No...nothing like that.'
'Trouble with the kids?'
'Well, if you must know, it's my little Jimmy.'
'What's wrong with him, then?'
'Nothing is wrong. His teacher said he must see a psychia-
trist.'
Pause. 'Well, well, what's wrong with seeing a psychiatrist?'
'Nothing is wrong. The psychiatrist said he's got an
Oedipus complex.'
Pause. 'Well, well, Oedipus or Schmoedipus, I wouldn't
worry so long as he's a good boy and loves his mamma.'"
(ibid, pp. 32-33)
Here we can see the two levels of operation as they come into
collision: the cheerful woman's statement is ruled by the logic
of comon sense: if Jimmy is a good boy and loves his mamma there
can't be uch wrong. But in the context of Freudian psychiatry the
relationship to the mother carries entirely different association.
Koestler says that the creative act always operates on more than
one plane, the bisociation of more than one level of understanding.
Of course, that's oversimplifying things, and certainly oversimpli-
fying Koestler's whole thesis, which is rooted in the complex
workings of the entire biological organism. The subject of creativity
is vast and complicated; many hypotheses, much conjecture, idea after
idea...
derives from the most profound of our mysteries...
crucial to our survival...
As the psychologist Carl Rogers says, "I maintain that there is a
desperate social need for the creative behavior of creative indi-
viduals."
He goes on to say that "many of the serious criticisms of
our culture and its trends may best be formulated in terms
of a dearth of creativity. Let us state some of these very
briefly:
1. In education we tend to turn out conformists, stereotypes,
individuals whose education is 'completed,' rather than
freely creative and original thinkers.
2. In our leisure-time activities, passive entertainment and
regimented group action are overwhelmingly predominant,
whereas creative activities are much less in evidence.
3. In the sciences, there is an ample supply of technicians,
but the number who can creatively formulate fruitful
hypotheses and theories is small indeed.
4. In industry, creation is reserved for the few--the
manager, the designer, the head of the research depart-
ment--whereas for the many life is devoid of original
or creative endeavor.
5. In individual and family life the same picture holds
true. In the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the books
we read, and the ideas we hold, there is a strong
tendency toward conformity, toward stereotypy. To be
original or different is felt to be 'dangerous.'
"Why be concerned over this? If, as a people, we enjoy conformity
rather than creativity, shall we not be permitted this choice? In
my estimation such a choice would be entirely reasonable were it not
for one great shadow which hangs over all of us. In a time when
knowledge, constructive and destructive, is advancing by the most
incredible leaps and bounds into a fantastic atomic age, genuinely
creative adaptation seems to represent the only possibility that
man can keep abreast of the kaleidoscopic change in his world.
With scientific discovery and invention proceeding, we are told, at
a geometric rate of progression, a generally passive and culture-
bound people cannot cope with the multiplying issues and problems.
Unless individuals, groups and nations can imagine, construct and
creatively revise new ways of relating to these complex changes,
the lights will go out. Unless man can make new and original adapt-
ations to his environment as rapidly as his science can change the
environment, our culture will perish. Not only individual malad-
justment and group tensions but international annihilation will be
the price we pay for a lack of creativity." (Carl Rogers, "Towards
a Theory of Creativity," in Creativity, P.E. Vernon, editor,
Penguin Books, Ltd, Middlesex, England, 1970, pp.137-38)
Now I take it that few like to be reminded of our plight, and it
would seem that we certainly do not need to be reminded of how
conformist our society is, what a dearth of creativity there is...
But this truth must be faced, for to ignore it is to evade our in-
dividual responsibilities. At the same time as we face the negative,
we must acknowledge an underlying optimism: creativity can be nur-
tured and developed; there are always solutions to our predicaments;
our actions can and do make a difference.
Stating the issue from another perspective, Rollo May, in his
eloquent little book The Courage to Create, asks:
"What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but
the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and
science derive from art forms and are fundamentally dependent
on them rather than being merely a decoration for our work
when science and logic have produced it?"
He further says that "Imagination, broadly defined, seems to me
to be a principle in human life underlying even reason, for the
rational functions, according to our definitions, can lead to
understanding--can participate in the constituting of reality--
only as they are creative. Creativity is thus involved in our
every experience as we try to make meaning in our self-world
relationship." (Rollo May, The Courage to Create, W.W. Norton &
Co., New York, 1975, pp. 150,161)
This is a beginning.
A compilation of viewpoints.
"she has the air of having seen in flashes something which
she does not know the shape of, and can talk about, not out
of the flashes but out of the spaces between when she has
waited."
This is a beginning which we have begun again
and
again
The novelist Dorothy Canfield said of the process of her writing:
"No two of my stories are ever constructed in the same way, but
broadly viewed they all have exactly the same genesis, and I con-
fess I cannot conceive of any creative fiction written from any
other beginning...that of a generally intensified emotional sensi-
bility, such as every human being experiences with more or less
frequency. Everybody knows such occasional hours or days of freshened
emotional responses when events that usually pass almost unnoticed,
suddenly move you deeply, when a sunset lifts you to exaltation,
when a squeaking door throws you a fit of exasperation, when a
clear look of trust in a child's eyes moves you to tears, or an
injustice reported in the newspapers to flaming indignation, a good
action to a sunny warm love of human nature, a discovered meanness
in yourself or another, to despair.
"I have no idea whence this tide comes, or where it goes, but when
it beings to rise in my heart, I know that a story is hovering in
the offing. It does not always come safely to port. The daily rou-
tine of ordinary life kills off many a vagrant emotion. Or if daily
humdrum occupation does not stifle it, perhaps this saturated solu-
tion of feeling does not happen to crystallize about any concrete
fact, episode, word or phrase...
"The beginning of a story is then for me in more than usual
sensitiveness to emotion. If this encounters the right focus
(and heaven only knows why it is the 'right' one) I get simul-
taneously a strong thrill of intense feeling, and an intense desire
to pass it on to other people. This emotion ay be any one of the
infinitely varied ones which life affords, laughter, sorrow, indig-
nation, gayety, admiration, scorn, pleasure. I recognize it for
the 'right' one when it brings with it an irresistible impulse
to try to make other people feel it. And I know that when it comes
the story has begun..." (Ghiselin, Op. cit., pp. 168-69)
The story has begun...
But there are many obstacles, "the humdrum of everyday life,"
the distractions, the cultural barriers errected to
ward off the "dangers" of creativity.
Joyce Cary tells a beautiful story:
"A great deal...of that spiritual and perpetual joy that
children bring to us is just this power of seeing the world
as a new thing, as pure intution, and so renewing for us
the freshness of all life. But they always lose this power
of original expression as soon as they begin there education.
A small girl of seven once asked me if I would like a drawing.
I said yes. She asked 'What shall I draw?'
'Anything you like.'
'Shall I draw you a swan?'
'Yes, a swan;' and the child sat down and drew for half
an hour. I'd forgotten about the swan until she produced the
most original swan I'd ever seen. It was a swimming swan,
that is, a creature designed simply to swim. Its feet were
enormous and very carefully finished, obviously from life.
The whole structure of the feet was shown in heavy black lines.
The child was used to seeing the swans on a canal at the end
of her garden and had taken particular notice of their feet.
Below the water the swan was all power. But for the body she
gave it the faintest, lightest outline, neck and wings included
in one round line shaped rather like a cloud--a perfect expression
of the cloud-like movement of the swan on the surface.
"I was admiring this swan when an older child in the room,
aged thirteen, looked at the drawing and said contemptuously
'That's not a bit like a swan. I'll draw you a swan,' and pro-
duced at once a Christmas-card swan, of the commonest type.
"Yet the second child had all the qualities of the first,
intelligence, sensibility. A few years before she had the
ability to see for herself, to receive the unique personal
impression. She had lost it by the education which emphasises
the fact, measurements, analysis, the concept. Education is,
and must be, almost entirely conceptual. And the concept is
always the enemy of the intuition. It is said that when you
give a child the name of a bird, it loses the bird. It never
sees the bird again, but only a sparrow, a thrush, a swan,
and there is a good deal of truth in this." (Cary, Op. cit.,
pp. 48,49)
"It is said that when you give a child the name of bird,
it loses the bird..."
Mary (M.C.) Richards, in the book Centering:
"A creative person. Initiating, enacting out of
personal being. Using his lifetime to find his
original face, to awaken his own voice, beyond
all learning, habit, thought: to tap life at its source."
(M.C. Richards, Centering, Wesleyan University
Press, Middletown, Connecticut, 1969, p. 43)
In an article on the creative process, historian Albert Rabil
recounts the findings of psychologists:
"Psychologists delineate five stages in the creative process:
Preparation, incubation, illuination, elaboration, and verification.
"Preparation involves mastery of subject matter, technical skills,
materials and tools--whatever is needed for a person's field of
work. That creative spark, the illumination, comes, wrote Nobel
Prize-winning brain physiologist John Eccles, 'only to a mind that
has been prepared by the assimilation and critical evaluation of
knowledge in its field.' Important creative ideas rarely pop into
the minds of the merely ardent, well-intentioned, or unconventional.
They need to be thoroughly prepared for. Creative persons, though,
need more than preparation in a specialty. They need to be intimately
acquainted with related fields, cross-fertilized for hybrid vigor...
Arthur Koestler...goes so far as to say that the evidence indicates
that 'all decisive advances in the history of scientific thought
can be described in terms of mental cross-fertilization between
different disciplines.' A poet who is familiar with music or social
conditions, say, or a historian who understands agriculture and
mining is better prepared to see his own work in a fresh perspec-
tive. It helps move a person out of parochial and traditional patterns.
"The second stage, incubation, involves a relaxation of the conscious
rational self. Conscious thought focuses the problem nicely and
heightens the tension. But it is blocked by established methods,
codes, and assumptions from sliding outside the routine. After
preparation, the creative process demands that one relinquish con-
trol, relax, allow deeper forces to come forward.
After incubating, if one is lucky there follows the moment of
illumination. This is the 'Eureka' experience which reorders a
part of reality, or if it is creative enough creates a fundamentally
new reality.
The fourth stage in the act of creation is elaboration. Here the
mind returns to a conscious state and works out the illumination
in persuasive detail.
The last stage is verification. The insight and its detailed elab-
oration need to be tested, refined, and subjected to critical
scrutiny." (Albert Rabil, Jr., "How Does Creativity Happen?",
Search, Winter, 1977-78)
Here is a description of Martha Graham, written by Merle Armitage
in 1937:
"It seems safe to assume that here fundamental aim is to
allow the power and energy of the living world to filter
through and animate her work... In certain figures and
movements Graham seems to uncover stratas of memory, floating
just below consciousness... Her imagination frequently con-
jures forms which seem utterly impossible of plastic
realization. Yet by force of conviction and an amazing
technique they become highly communicable. She has singular
mastery over life--an almost mesmeric power, and a nobility
which demands respect... Everything she does falls under the
scrutiny of her own devestating self-criticism..." (Merle
Armitage, editor, Martha Graham, Dance Horizons, New York,
reprint 1966)
we have done nothing more than make a beginning
but wherever we begin, it is at least a beginning
because there is a boundary between where we
were
and where we are now
that we have begun
and that boundary marks the shoreline between our walk upon the
solid earth and our plunge into the depths
it also marks the boundary between something which
has just ended and something that has
just begun
but the boudary is not so much a boundary as it is simply
a change, and change is the marvelous constant
of our lives
in our beginning, as the text for the
14th-century musical palindromes went
in our beginning
is our end
"Creativity can be fostered and nurtured. It can be learned by all
of us, heightened, though long fallen into disuse.
"Creativity includes the ability to:
*WONDER, BE CURIOUS
*BE OPEN TO NEW EXPERIENCE, SEE THE FAMILIAR FROM AN UNFAMILIAR
POINT OF VIEW
*CONFRONT COMPLEXITY AND AMBIGUITY WITH INTEREST
*TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCIDENTAL EVENTS IN ORDER TO MAKE DESIRABLE
BUT UNSOUGHT DISCOVERIES (CALLED SERENDIPITY)
*MAKE ONE THING OUT OF ANOTHER BY SHIFTING ITS FUNCTIONS
*GENERALIZE IN ORDER TO SEE UNIVERSAL APPLICATIONS OF IDEAS
*SYNTHESIZE AND INTEGRATE, FIND ORDER IN DISORDER
*BE INTENSELY CONSCIOUS YET IN TOUCH WITH UNCONSCIOUS SOURCES
*VISUALIZE OR IMAGINE NEW POSSIBILITIES
*BE ANALYTICAL AND CRITICAL
*KNOW ONESELF, AND HAVE THE COURAGE TO BE ONESELF IN THE FACE
OF OPPOSITION
*BE PERSISTENT, WORK HARD FOR LONG PERIODS, IN PURSUIT OF A
GOAL, WITHOUT GUARANTEED RESULTS." (Duane Preble, Art
Creates Us Creates Art, Canfield Press, San Francisco,
1976, p.10)
**********************************
In the summer of 1936, James Agee, author on assignment from
Fortune Magazine, and Walker Evens, photographer on "loan" from
the government's Farm Bureau, lived with three families of tenant
farmers in Alabama. They were assigned to write a documentary
article about the lives of these families. They immediately knew
that such an article, to appease the consciences of the middle and
upper-middle class white readers of the magazine, would be impossible.
The result was one of the most magnificent and powerful creations
of this century, a book of almost 500 pages so poignantly rendering
in photographs and text the lives of those families that to read it
with care is to havd one's consciousness altered irrevocably. Any
number of passages from the book would illustrate and serve as model
for all of the principles of creativity that have been hinted at
so far. But one passage in particular strikes at the heart of the
matter, in that volubility and sometime obscurity of language for
which Gertrude Stein was known. Agee is talking about the conditions
of perception, the sensibility of being, in which he and Evans
spent that summer:
"The dead oak and pine, the ground, the dew, the air, the whole
realm of what our bodies lay in and our minds in silence wandered,
walked in, swam in, watched upon, was delicately fragrant as a
paradise, and, like all that is best, was loose, light, casual,
totally actual. There was, by our minds, our memories, our thoughts
and feelings, some combination, some generalizing, some art, and
science; but none of the close-kneed priggishness of science, and
none of the formalism and straining and lily-gilding of art. All
the length of the body and all its parts and functions were parti-
cipating, and were being realized and rewarded, inseperable from
the mind, identical with it: and all, everything, that the mind
touched, was actuality, and all, everything, that the mind touched
turned immediately, yet without in the least losing the quality
of its total individuality, into joy and truth, or rather, revealed
of its self, truth, which in its very nature was joy, which must
be the end of art, of investigation, and of all anyhow human
existence...
"This lucky situation of joy, this least illusion of personal
wholeness or integrity, can overcome one suddenly by any one of
any number of unpredictable chances: the fracture of sunlight on
the facade and traffic of a street; the sleaving up of chimneysmoke;
the rich lifting of the voice of a train along the darkness; the
memory of a phrase of an inspired trumpet; the odor of scorhed
cloth, of a car's exhaust,...of pork, of beeswax on hot iron, or
young leaves, or peanuts; the look of a toy fire engine, or of a
hundred agates sacked in a red cheesecloth; the oily sliding sound
as a pumpgun is broken; the look of a child's underwaist with its
bone buttons loose on little cotton straps; the stiffening of
snow in a wool glove; the odor of kitchen sopa, of baby soap, of
scorched bellybands; the flexion of a hand; the twist of a knee;
the modulations in a thigh as someone gets out of a chair: the
bending of a speeding car round a graded curve: the swollen,
blemished feeling of the mouth and the tenacity and thickness of
odor of an unfamiliar powder, walking sleepless in high industrial
daybreak and needing coffee, the taste of cheap gin mixed with
cheap ginger ale without much ice: the taste of turnip greens; of
a rotted seed drawn from between the teeth; or rye whiskey in the
green celluloid glass of a hotel bathroom: the breath that comes
out of a motion-picture theater: the memory of the piccolo notes
which ride and transfix Beethoven's pastoral storm: the odor of a
freshly printed newspaper: the stench of ferns trapped in the hot
sunlight of a bay window; the taste of a mountain summer night:
the swaying and shuffling beneath the body of a benighted train;
the mulled and branny earth beneath the feet in fall; a memory of
plainsong or of the first half hour after receiving a childhood
absolution; the sudden re-realization of a light-year in literal,
physical terms, or of the shimmering dance and diffuseness of a
mass of granite...: in any rare situation which breaks down or
lowers our habitual impatience, superficial vitality, overeagerness
to clinch conclusions, and laziness. We were at this time, and in
all the time surrounding it, in such a situation; nor could we for
an instant have escaped it, even if we had wished to. At times,
exhausted by it, we did wish to and did try, but even when our
minds were most exhausted and most deafened such breath as we got,
and subsisted on, no matter what its change of constituence and
odor...was the breath of the same continuous excitement whose
nature seems to me not only finally but essentially beyond the
power of art to convey." (James Agee & Walker Evans, Let Us Now
Praise Famous Men, Ballantine Books, New York, 1966, pp. 203-206)
Here, then, is our beginning:
in the creative transformation
of what at first appears to be ordinary
into the actual perception of the actual
extraordinariness
of all our experience.
Mark this boundary and make a beginning of your own....
HARMONY.TXT
BEYOND THE SINGLE NOTE
Whenever two or more pitches are sounded simultaneously "harmony"
is created. This word may me a misnomer in that it does imply a
subjective evaluation of how "pleasing" two or more pitches may
sound, when in fact harmony is created whether or not the sound is
pleasant. Another term used to describe harmony is "chord." The
meaning is the same, and there may even be a hold-over from previous
ages of the same kind of implication. In discussion of tonal music,
we will refer to chords and harmony which have been accepted as being
more or less pleasing, but keep in mind that just as individual pitches
may have varying degrees of "agitation" in relation to other pitches,
and thus may be more or less "pleasant," so chords may attain the same
conditions depending upon context.
The preeminent chord in tonal music consists of three pitches, and thus
is known as a triad. Any three-note chord is a triad, but the tonal
triad is made of intervals of a third and is thus known as a tertian
triad. We have previously encountered this sound as the 4th, 5th, and
6th frequencies of the harmonic series:
Stacking three notes with intervals other than thirds will also create
triads, but not tertian triads. Having successive 4ths, for instance,
will yield "quartal" triads, while successive 5ths make "quintal"
triads:
These are legitimate sounds which may form the basis for entire
compositions. Such sounds were not fully explored until the 20th
century, however. Since it is the tertian triad which underlies the
harmonic organization of tonal music, and since tonality has been
the predominant organizing principle in Western music for the past
300-400 years, when the word triad is referred to without further
qualification, we can assume that one is speaking of the tertian triad.
THE TERTIAN TRIAD
There are, as we know, two primary forms of the interval of a third,
major and minor. Varying combinations of these two intervals produce
4 different kind of triads. These are commonly derived by stacking
up thirds above each of the notes in either a major or minor scale:
TRIADS IN MAJOR
Examination of the intervallic patterns of the triads in the major key
above reveals three different chords.
1. Major 3rd, Minor 3rd (MAJOR TRIAD, found on 1,4,5)
2. Minor 3rd, Major 3rd (MINOR TRIAD, found on 2,3,6)
3. Minor 3rd, Minor 3rd (DIMINISHED TRIAD, found on 7)
The conventional labelling of these triads, within the given key, is
a Roman numeral, with upper-case representing major, lower-case stand-
ing for minor, and lower-case with a for dimininished. Let's look
more closely at each one of these:
TRIADS IN MINOR
The same configurations occur in minor keys, but shifting to different
places within the scale. Furthermore, since the 7th scale degree in
minor is usually raised a half step (thus Harmonic Minor), the chord
on the 5th (the Dominant) is nearly always major rather than minor,
the chord on the 7th is usually diminished rather than major, and the
chord on the 3rd is sometimes augmented. The latter situation is a
new configuration, M3+M3 (making an A5) = Augmented Triad. Since this
is a new triad, and because the raised 7th is most common, we'll focus
our attention on the application of harmonic minor to triad structure:
EXERCISE 1
Triads built upon the scale tones in C Major and A Harmonic minor will be
played at random when you hit "H". First identify the quality of the triad,
(MAJ for MAJOR, MIN for MINOR, DIM for DIMINISHED, and AUG for AUGMENTED).
Then spell the triad from the given root (e.g. CEG, G#BD, etc).
HARMONIC RELATIONSHIPS
Just as one pitch may have a greater or lesser tendency to move toward
another when set in a melodic shape, depending upon the pitch set con-
text, one triad may have a greater or lesser tendency to move toward
another in a series of chords. Both the tonic pitch and the triad
built upon that pitch form the center of gravity in the tonal system.
The model chordal relationship in this system is that of tonic to
dominant (the triad built upon the 5th scale degree). Let's examine
this relationship more closely:
From tonic, we could go to any triad built upon any other scale degree.
But upon reaching the dominant triad, there is a strong tendency to
resolve to the tonic. This is so because the dominant triad contains
the leading tone, (which most readily resolves to the tonic note), the
5th (which also tends to resolve to the tonic note, either by movement
of a 5th downward or a 4th upward), and the 2nd, which may either move
to the tonic note or the 3rd of the tonic triad.
As tonal harmony evolved, this movement of a triad's root (generating
tone) by a 5th downward or 4th upward, together with the other two notes
in the triad moving to their nearest neighbors, became the preferred
chord "progression" sound. If this principle is extended in successive
similar instances, we progress around the circle of 5ths, with the
specific case of the diminished 5th root movement from the triad built
upon the 7th scale degree (the leading tone triad) to that on the 4th
(the subdominant triad) keeping the series within the original key.
Model: V - I
same pattern: ii - V
vi - ii
iii - vi
vii - iii
IV - vii
In this series, I moves to IV and then follows the pattern all the
way through successive root movements by an interval of a 5th until
reaching I again. The example is on the next page.
While this pattern of chord relationships is common, there are two
chords which usually function differently. The vii chord more often
moves to I than to iii, and the IV chord usually goes to V rather
than to vii. With these changes, we can devise a hierarchy of
chords, conceiving of I as the center of gravity, with successive
"levels" of chords above I having a "most likely" path back down:
Level 5: iii
Level 4: vi
Level 3: ii, IV
Level 2: V, vii
Level 1: I (center of gravity)
Examination of the vii chord reveals two strong tendency tones, the
leading tone and the subdominant. In fact, the vii chord is very
similar to the V chord. If we superimpose a vii and a V the result
is a 4-note chord consisting of a triad plus an interval of a 7th.
This is called a 7th chord. Given V as the root, this chord would
be labelled a dominant 7th. Adding the 7th strengthens the tendency
to move to I. In some ways, we could consider the vii chord to be
a V7 without the root!
The IV chord bears the same relationship to ii as vii does to V.
A very common cadential "formula" is ii7-V-I. In this instance,
a 7th has been added to the supertonic chord, strengthening its
tendency to progress to V. The subdominant chord could be viewed
as a ii7 chord without the root. IV is thus a substitute for ii,
and in fact is used more often then ii in much folk and pop music.
Basic Principles of Harmonization
Within the system of traditional tonality there is an obvious link
between melody and harmony. Melody tones in strong rhythmic positions
are likely to outline chords.
As a first principle of harmonization, we may thus look to the first
beat of each measure to provide a clue as to the most likely chord
for that measure. Such folk tunes as "Oh, Susannah" provide perfect
illustrations. (Next page)
Note the preponderance of notes that are members of the tonic triad.
The tune is firmly grounded in tonic. Observe also the movement to V
as a counterbalance to I, and the brief contrast on the subdominant.
The essential harmonic "message" here is a movement from I to V to I.
Most simple tunes can be harmonized with one chord per measure. The
one instance where this is not possible in "Oh, Susannah" is clear.
The sense of conclusiveness on tonic requires the momentary tension
created by dominant. The rate of change of one harmony to another
is called harmonic rhythm. Harmonic changes are most likely to occur
on the first beat of a measure, since this reinforces emphasis. In a
four-beat measure, harmonic change is also likely on beat 3. Changing
harmony on a weak beat may cause rhythmic confusion.
The Vertical Aspect
There are three chief factors in the vertical deployment of notes
that affect the resultant sound of a chord:
1. Spacing
2. Doubling
3. Inversion
Spacing refers to the intervallic distance between
adjacent tones. Common practice follows the example
of the harmonic series: notes are farther apart when
low, closer together when high. The most obvious reason
for this is that if notes are close together in the
lower registers, the resultant sound will be "muddy."
The rule-of-thumb in the spacing of notes (referred to as "voices,"
though not having to be vocal!) is never to have more than an octave
between the upper voices. Since most of the "rules" of harmony were
derived from analysis of Bach's 4-part chorale settings, we often
say that an interval greater than an octave is allowable between the
bass and tenor voices, but that the upper three (tenor, alto,soprano)
should not be greater than an octave. This principle is applicable to
instrumental as well as vocal music, and to music having more than 4
simultaneous sounds.
Deploying the notes of a triad for four or more voices clearly necessi-
tates doubling one or more of those notes. Which of the notes is thus
doubled will affect the "weight" of the sound. In general, doubling
the root of the chord will make it sound more centered, while doubling
the third will reinforce its "majorish-ness" versus "minorish-ness".
Doubling the fifth will tend to tug the ear in the direction of that
chord's dominant, making it sound unstable.
Our ears are most responsive to the notes in the outer voices of a chord.
In the previous example, the fact that the root note is in the lowest
voice contributes to its stability, while the 5th in the highest voice
create a slight instability. The most stable distribution of notes in
a chord would double the root in the outer voices.
While the highest note in a chord is important in shaping the relative
stability of the chordal sound, since it is usually being tracked as the
melodic tone, it affects the chord less than the lowest note. A chord
which has its root in the lowest voice is in ROOT POSITION. If any
other chord tone is in the lowest voice, the chord is in one of several
possible INVERSIONS. Triads have 3 positions, 7th chords have 4:
The Horizontal Aspect
Simultaneously-sounding notes create chords. Successive adjacent tones
create melodies. The emphasis here is on the word "adjacent." The ear
follows the movement of one pitch to another if those pitches are more
or less conjunct (technically no more than an interval of a 2nd). In
relating one chord to another, then, the most common sense approach is
to move each chord tone to its nearest neighbor in the following chord.
This is possible with the upper notes of chord, less so with the bass
note if it is sounding the root of chords.
If the previous example sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it is
the chord structure of the first four measures of Bach's Prelude #1
in C Major. We'll examine the whole piece in more detail later. For
now, notice that it consists of 5 voices and that Bach was able, via
chord inversion, to keep all 5 voices moving to their successors without
any disjunct motion (intervals greater than a 2nd). Notice also which
tones are doubled.
Figured Bass
Jazz musicians are used to reading off "lead sheets." These contain the
melody together with symbols for the appropriate harmonization. Figured
bass functioned in the same way a couple centuries ago. It is a system
that identifies chords, given a bass line and sometimes a melody line.
The system is not in current use for performance, but is still used as
an analytical tool.
The premise of the figured bass system is to identify what notes should
be sounding to produce a chord, and which inversion the chord is in. A
Roman numeral identifes the root of the chord in relation to the tonal
center of the music (the key of the piece). Arabic numbers are then used
to identify the chords inversion. These numbers label the intervals above
the lowest sounding voice, reduced to within an octave - although they
reveal nothing about the possible doubling or spacing of the chord.
The Arabic number identifiers are as follows:
Triad: 7th Chord:
Root Position --------- none Root Position --------
1st Inversion --------- 1st Inversion --------
(3rd in lowest voice)
2nd Inversion --------- 2nd Inversion --------
(5th in lowest voice)
3rd Inversion --------
(7th in lowest voice)
The following page presents the harmonic structure of Bach's first Pre-
lude from the first book of the Well Tempered Clavier. An analysis of
the first 13 measures is given; the remainder is left unanalysed, for you
to attempt and for class discussion. Bach's actual music arpeggiates the
chord tones in a constant 16th-note pattern with each arpeggiation repeated
twice in every measure, up to the last 2 measures. You can play the piece
by repeatedly tapping the "P" key to hear each note in turn. You can go
to any measure by hitting "M" and entering the measure number. This piece
offers a wealth of information about tonal harmonic relationships - its
sense of forward momentum is entirely dependent upon these relationships -
but a detailed discussion is beyond the scope of this text.
Non-Chord Tones
One final issue regarding harmony needs to be touched upon briefly.
If all melody tones were members of the underlying harmony, melodic
structures would be limited to intervals larger than a 2nd. This would
be akin to restricting melodies to the format of bugle calls, which
essentially only sound the 3rd through 6th harmonics above a given
fundamental (thus outlining a tertian triad). For variety and to add
tension, judicious inclusion of tones which are not members of the
underlying chord is welcome.
We've already seen instances of the two most common "non-chord" tones
in "Oh, Susannah":
The measures in question are harmonized by the tonic chord (C major in
this case). The D's and A are not members of this chord. The D's are
passing tones, and the A is a neighbor tone.
Non-chord tones are defined by how they are approached and left:
1. Passing Tone
Approached by step, left by step in same direction
(if in strong rhythmic position, known as Accented Passing Tone)
2. Neighbor Tone
Approached by step, left by step in opposite direction
(if above main note, known as Upper Neighbor)
(if below main note, known as Lower Neighbor)
3. Suspension
Approached by repetition or tie, left by step
(consists of 3 parts: Preparation, Suspension, Resolution)
(usually resolved downwards - upward resolution, known as Retardation)
4. Appogiatura
Approached by leap, left by step
(usually left in opposite direction from approach)
(usually on strong beat, sometimes sounded without preparation)
5. Escape Tone
Approached by step, left by leap
(usually left in opposite direction from approach)
6. Free Tone
None of the above
(least common - lease effective)
Discussion of the suspension, appogiatura, escape tone, and free tone
will be left for the classroom. Our main compositional concern for now
is with the capacity to inject variety through the use of passing and
neighboring tones. Remember that in your own efforts to compose melodies,
occasional use of these tones will add "color" and contribute of the
balance among factors of unity and variety.
MONK.TXT
THE MUSIC OF MEREDITH MONK
I first heard the name of Meredith Monk through some friends
of mine who live in New York City - real died-in-the-wool
New Yorkers who root out all the "in" things to do and see and
hear. I think they'd seen some Monk presentations at La Mama.
the were impressed.
Not long afterward, some other friends mentioned her
name. Then I discovered the Soho Music Gallery on the
corner of Wooster and Grand, about the only record
shop in the City where you can pick up, on the spot,
most of the more esoteric and limited-distribution labels
in all categories, including experimental, jazz, new wave,
and "non-Western." (This place has since closed. A new
and similar establishment is the New Music Distribution
Service at 100 Broadway). They had a couple recordings
of Monk's music. I bought them. And became a "follower."
" 'Meredith Monk's works are in no way autobiographical,' Robb Baker
has written. 'Yet they seem subjective in a highly unusual way in
that they touch off memories from the viewer's own past or subcon-
scious mind. Monk's works are all journeys, in a sense, back to a
kind of collective childhood of shared images, shared tradtions.'
As it happens, Baker was writing in Dancemagazine about about Monk's
dance-theater pieces, but he could as easily have been describing
her music. Mostly it is music for the human voice, and for Monk
the voice has always been an instrument of transformation and a
means of getting in touch.
"To many people, Monk is primarily one of the most
influential choreographers of the day, or a dancer, or
a deviser of theatrical presentations, [or in 1988, a
creator of spectacles, or a film-maker] and it is true
that for a time her music was more an element in these
presentations than a thing in itself. But Monk was singing
before she learned to talk, and she was reading music
before she could read words. It was only towards the end of
her college studies, which included studying the voice,
that she decided to concentrate on dance. That was in 1964.
by 1970 she was giving solo concerts devoted to her vocal
and keyboard music and beginning to gain serious recog-
nition as a performing composer. This is a period in
which the arts are much broader and more catholic than
the traditional categories and modes of criticism, and,
as often happens, critics of one art form, in this case
dance, had been slow to recognize the significance of
an artist's break-through in what they perceived as
another art form. For Monk, it should be emphasized these
art forms are not entirely separable. Her theater and
dance are musical, her music is often theatrical and her
voice dances." (Robert Palmer, notes for "Songs From the
Hill/Tablet," Wergo Sm1022, 1979)
Some characteristics of the music:
Mostly vocal, but the voice used in an extraordinary
variety of ways, eliciting a wide range of emotions,
from giddy silliness to electrifying mysteriousness
Accompaniments often on keyboard or simple instruments with
drone melodic figures
Extended sequences of sections, carrying on through a journey
of emotions
Crests of child-like sounds, evoking laughter and the sense
of freedom in the play of a child
Particular vocal techniques: glottal stops, rhythmic acuity,
textural variation, etc.
Extensive looping of materials, with build-up in layers
"If she wanted to," New York Time's John Rockwell has written,
"Miss Monk could have a respectable career in conventional
classical music. But she has already perfected her own
technique ot emit amazing varieties of sounds rarely heard
from a Western throat, full of wordless cries and moans,
a lexicon of vocal coloration, glottal attacks, and micro-
tonal waverings that lie at the base of all musical cultures." (ibid.)
"I've been trying to extend the voice in as many
ways as possible," she says, "utilizing as many
resonating chambers, different kinds of syllables,
positions of the mouth, the inside of the mouth,
the tongue, the lips and breathing techniques...
I've been trying to find a language for the voice
that's instrinsic to the voice." (ibid.)
UNANNOUNCED OFFSHOOT
EXPERIMENTAL MODALITIES: DREAM MUSIC
Gestures from the heart through the voice
SHOUTING
SINGING
In dreams we hear a music
the precise shape is unclear
at times having
startling clarity
unremembered
what is the relationship between our waking condition and
the dream state?
Have you ever heard music in your dreams?
try shaping the sounds
in your dreams
the Temiar Indians of Malaysia seek a guide
in their dreams the guide teaches them a
SONG the guide teaches them a SONG the
song is taught is taught is taught to the
rest of the tribetribetribetribetribetribe
thetribeworks through the SONG in an all night
festivivivivivity
Theodore Roethke's line:
What can be known? The Unknown.
shifting the mind
so you see behind
and underneath
and all around
the angle is changed
SHIFT ANGLES
and alter the perspective
to be fully conscious and yet deeply
in touch with the unconcsious
ex.per.i.ment
a trial, a test
(see EXPERIENCE)
TREE SINGING
dream this music
PARTCH.TXT
THE MUSIC OF HARRY PARTCH
Harry Partch is now acknowledged to be one of the great American
individualist experimenters, like Charles Ives, though the road to
this recognition, as with so many courageous explorers, was marked
by neglect and misunderstanding.
Born of parents who had been missionaries in China (although they
later "lost" their religious faiths), Partch grew up in the Ameri-
can Southwest, surrounded by the influences of Oriental visitors
and the songs of Native Americans. He had little formal training
in music, but was a voracious reader, and knowing from an early
age that he wanted to be a composer, taught himself most of what
was necessary. The knowledge he thus acquired regarding the
"rules" of Western music did not accord with his childhood experi-
ences with more exotic musics, however. He therefore became con-
vinced that there were other directions to pursue than those
within the limitations of Western music's equal temperament.
After composing in the traditional idioms for a number of years,
Partch decided to begin again. After burning his earlier composi-
tions in a pot-bellied stove in New Orleans, an act which he char-
acterized as an "auto-de-fe," he set about to learn all he could
about acoustics and tuning systems in order to compose music more
satisfying to his own inclinations.
Combining childhood training in woodworking with his musical
interests, Partch began designing and building his own instruments,
utilizing the "just" intonation system, which he felt to offer
greater potential than equal temperament, and which he determined
was the system employed by the ancient Greeks. In the just tuning
system chords, within a limited range of keys, can be sounded
which are perfectly in tune (no beat tones), whereas the twelve-
tone equally tempered system is a compromise to enable playing in
a variety of keys with chords which have beat tones. Partch's tun-
ing system was based upon perfectly tuned 5ths and led to the cap-
ability of having up to 43 increments within an octave.
Partch came to think of himself, perhaps facetiously, as a
reincarnated Greek, and along with extensive exploration of Greek
musical theory in the construction of his instruments, Partch com-
posed theatrical spectacles that combined music and drama in a
manner thought to be similar to Greek drama.
His earliest instruments were adaptations of existent instruments.
The Chromelodeon, for example, was a gutted pump organ with recon-
ditioned reeds tuned to the just system. A viola was also adapted,
with special fingering guides, to play in that tuning. As the
musical theory and philosophy developed, so did the instruments.
With his skill as a woodworker, Partch created instruments not
only unique in sound, but also sculpturally beautiful: the
Kitheras, modelled after Greek design, the Gourd Tree, the Eucal
Blossom, the Spoils of War, the Maazda Marimba, the Diamond
Marimba, and many others, each one unique and incorporated into
"total" music works in which the performers on the instruments be-
came actors and dancers, and the instruments themselves were used
as part of the stage setting.
Partch's music was not only influenced by ancient Greek and
Oriental sources, but was also affected by his travels as a hobo
throughout the U.S. during the Great Depression. That way of life,
the friendships, travails, sayings, and so on, formed a permanent
repertoire of material for his compositions. Partch was, in fact,
an authentic hobo all his life, never holding a "permanent" or
"secure" job. When a few people began recognizing the value of
what he was doing, he was invited to teach as a visiting composer,
at the University of Illinois, and the University of California,
San Diego, but these, too, were temporary positions, and Partch
spent much of his life living from hand to mouth, in a houseboat
in Sausilito, for instance, and ending up his life mostly in soli-
tude north of San Diego.
Underlying Partch's individualist approach to composition was a
solid grasp of theory, acoustics, and philosopohy. He wanted his
music to be "corporeal," not abstract. It was to produce gut
response. The music does have striking beauty, in sound as well as
structure. His largest and last full-scale work, The Delusion of
the Fury, combines bathos and pathos on a plane that carries the
listener through a sense of the human to the realm of the holy and
divine.
Partch also wrote a book about his investigations of acoustics and
the building of his instruments, Genesis of a Music. The Author's
Preface to this book contains a straight-forward statement of the
perspective from which Partch saw things. This may provide as good
a place for ending this essay as any:
"Perhaps the most hallowed of traditions among artists of
creative vigor is this: traditions in the creative arts are
per se suspect. For they exist on the patrimony of standard-
ization, which means degeneration. They dominate because they
are to the interest of some group that has the power to per-
petuate them, and they cease to dominate when some equally
powerful group undertankes to bend them to a new pattern.
It is not difficult for the alert student to acquire the
traditional techniques. Under the pressures of study these
are unconsciously and all too easily absorbed. The extent
to which an individual can resist being blindly led by tra-
dition is a good measure of his vitality.
"Traditions remain undisturbed when we say: let us improve
ourselves; let us become better pianists, teachers, con-
ductors, better composers. They remain undisturbed when we
say: let us increase the knowledge and appreciation of
'good' music. Traditions remain undisturbed, uninvestigated,
and therefore a culture of music based upon such palpably
noble precepts is already senile.
"The quality of vitality that makes any culture significant
involves something else, the presence of which constantly
undermines tradition; it is found in the perceptive fresh-
ness of the Tang Dynasty poets, the bold curiosity of the
Renaissance Florentines. In large measure it is compounded
of investigation, investigation, investigation. In poetry
and in many other forms of creative expression investiga-
tion may take an entirely intellectual and metaphysical
path, but in music, because of the very nature of the art,
it must also take a physical path. A phalanx of good
pianists, good teachers, good composers, and 'good' music
no more creates a spirit of investigation and a vital age
in music than good grades in school create a spirit of
investigation and a body of thinking citizens. To promote
a youthful vitality in music we must have students who
will question every idea and related physical object that
they encounter. They must question the corpus of knowledge,
traditions, and usages that give us a piano, for example--
the very fact of a piano; they must question the tones of
its keys, question the music on its rack, and, above all,
they must question, constantly and eternally, what might
be called the philosophies behind device, the philosophies
that are really responsible for these things.
"Good grades in school are the result of a less commend-
able ability, and no aspect of the musical scene could
be more depressing than the prospect that those with the
ability to get good grades in school, to copy others, to
absorb and apply traditions with facility, shall hold the
fort of 'good' music.
"Music, 'good' or not 'good,' has only two ingredients
that might be called God-given: the capacity of a body to
vibrate and produce sound and the mechanism of the human
ear that registers it. These two ingredients can be
studied and analyzed, but they cannot be changed; they
are the comparative constants. All else in the art of
of music, which may also be studied and analyzed, was
created by man or is implicit in human acts and is there-
fore subject to the fiercest scrutiny--and ultimately to
approval, indifference, or contempt. In other words, all
else is subject to change." (pp. xv-xvi, 1949,1974)
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Pages may be changed in 3 ways:
-- "+"= forward 1 page, "-"= back 1 page (use +/- on numeric keypad).
-- To skip a page in either direction, hit "S" prior to "+" or "-".
-- Individual page numbers can be entered using keyboard numerals.
2. F1= chapter menu, F2= this page.
3. F10= main menu.
4. <ESC>= quit.
Any key to continue
POLLUTE.TXT
Imagine, if you will, a real silence. A silence behind the sound of any
voice. A silence so deep, so profound, that your mind becomes black,
empty, void. The silence of dreamless sleep. The silence of death.
Difficult to imagine because it is not a part of our ordinary experience,
filled as this is with sounds of all kinds, and more sounds all the
time. But that absolute silence is somewhere there and it forms the back-
ground upon which all sound floats like rippling water upon a lake, waves
upon the ocean...
This silence we are asked to imagine is, of course, metaphorical. In the
poet Theodore Roethke's line, it is "the imperishable quiet at the heart
of form." It is the silence of what some people call the eternal; it is
a spiritual silence, which, through its very stillness, sings of things
transcending material reality, sings through material reality, the
singing of a rock, the sea, the light of the sun. But these are poetic
images which in the mundane world are becoming innundated with very real
sounds, undesired sounds, sounds which make it harder and harder to find
places of quietude wherein that other reality, the poetic reality, the
spiritual reality, can have meaning. The poetic reality needs actual
quiet for sustenance, and such quiet is more and more difficult to find.
In an editorial in "The Saturday Review," Norman Cousins wrote: "Silence
is not nothingness or the absence of sound. It is a prime condition for
human serenity and the natural environment of contemplation. A life
without regular periods of silence is a life without essential
nourishment for both the spirit and the functioning intelligence.
Silence offers the vital element of privacy, without which an individual
becomes something less then himself... We live at a time when thought
alone represents the difference between sanity and total madness. One of
the prime requirements of such thought is privacy and a little silence,
at least now and then."
That was in 1962. Five years later "Life" magazine, addressing itself to
a much broader readership, showed the same concern for the destruction
of solitude by noise. "The escalating noise problem," it editorialized,
"may require the widespread re-discovery of the personal value of
silence. Most religions throughout human history have insisted that
people need regular intervals of silence for spiritual health."
And now we know that it is not just spiritual health which is endangered
by noise, but, as we shall learn, physical health too is detrimentally
affected by sounds in our environment which are undesired--noise.
Noise is defined by the American National Standards Institute as:
1. any undesired sound
2. an erratic, intermittent, or statistically random oscillation
It is somehow outrageous, to use that word in its proper sense of "to be
outraged, filled with rage," that we should even have to plead a case
for the ill effects of noise, that human beings don't have enough sensi-
tivity or thoughtfulness to accept as common assumption that harmful
sounds intruding upon the private sound-spaces of people not electing to
hear those sounds, that those sounds should not be eliminated from our
environment. But we know how long it has taken us to become aware of
much less subtle damage to ourselves and our planet: the spraying of
crops with DDT; the dumping of waste chemicals into our streams and
lakes; smoking cigarettes; covering up miles and miles of plant life
with asphalt; destroying delicate ecosystems like tropical rain forests;
contributing to the eradication of 3 to 5 species a day; and so on and
so on. We know of too many instances when human beings have not acted in
the best interests of survival, individual or collective.
That human beings can have allowed pollution of any kind to render our
environment ugly and unihabitable is part of a larger malaise, the same
sickness that keeps us from solving the human problems of housing,
education, civil rights, unemployment, and health care, while at the
same time solving the difficult and expensive problems of faster air
transportation, a national highway system, sophisticated weaponry, and a
manned landing on the moon. Human beings, the so-called "thinking" or
"reasoning" animals (homo sapiens), display an amazing quantity of
thoughtlessness and un-reason. Small wonder then that the ill-effects of
noise have barely made a dent in our consciousnesses, that it was not
until the end of the 60's that Congress even began to legislate any
setting of ceilings on noise, legislation which is not not continuing
because of our current adminstration's notions about "deregulation".
In 1968 Congress authorized the FAA to certify aircraft for noise, and
in May of 1969 a new regulation required that industry doing more than
$10,000 worth of business with the Federal government reduce noise
levels so as not to deafen more than 10% of its workers. We all know how
effective legislation has been in reducing airplane noise! And isn't it
marvelous that only 10% of government employees working in high-noise
jobs should be allowed to be deafened! Some consolation for those who
fall into that 10%.
And yet, at least that legislation gave some amount of protection. No
longer. We are somehow to assume that industry, of its own sense of
propriety, will regulate itself, will make the corrections in its safety
standards, will install the "costly" pollution control devices, will
manufacture that more costly sound-muffler. If we believe this, we are
truly fools and perhaps deserve the consequences of our stupidity.
For obvious reasons, I have a vested interest in the conditions of our
hearing. My biases lead me in the direction of wanting the human species
to develop ever more refined hearing abilities, to be able to detect
nuances in sounds, to be able to live in equitable harmony with the
myriad non-human sounds which surround us, many of which are subtle and
require a background of relative silence to hear. And, of course, I am
interested in those conditions which foster imagination, creativity,
mindful responsiveness, meditative alertness, balance of the self with
the world--conditions difficult to achieve in the midst of the host of
interruptive noises which beseige us: jackhammers, airplanes, cars,
stereos shaking the walls, air-conditioners filling the air-waves with
white noise, blenders tearing vegetables to shreds, lawn mowers, leaf
blowers, etc., etc., etc.
Murray Schafer stated the issue well in the introduction to Ear Cleaning:
"The ear, unlike some other sense organs, is exposed and vulnerable. The
eye can be closed at will; the ear is always open. The eye can be
focused and pointed at will; the ear picks up all sound right back to
the acoustic horizon in all directions.
"Its only protection is an elaborate psychological system of filtering
out undesirable sounds in order to concentrate on what is desirable. The
eye points outward; the ear draws inward. It soaks up information. It
would seem reasonable to suppose that as sound sources in the acoustic
environment multiply--and they are certainly multiplying today--the ear
will become blunted to them and will fail to exercise its individulist-
ic right to demand that insouciant and distracting sounds should be
stopped in order that it may concentrate totally on those which truly
matter." (R. Murray Schafer, Creative Music Education, p. 49, 1976)
Schafer's speculation about hearing loss has been corroborated by
research. "There are many signs that the hearing ability of men and
women of industrialized cities is declining. One of them is the shift in
the base line for so-called loudness curves. In 1932 this baseline was
zero decibels. This marked the threshold of audibility for a healthy set
of ears. In 1956, less than a generation later, this reference point had
to be changed to plus-4 decibels. This shift is interpreted by acousti-
cians to mean that the hearing acuity of the general population has
diminished." (Robert Alex Baron, The Tyranny of Noise, p. 83, 1970)
Noise also has adverse effects other than to the ears. Here is a survey
of some of the damaging effects of noise on the human person, taken from
Baron's text:
Sounds evoke much more than the sensation of hearing. The sound
signal is transmitted, via the brain, to almost every nerve cen-
ter and organ of the body. Therefore, sound influences not only
the hearing center of the brain, but the entire physical, physio-
logical, emotional, and psychological makeup of the human being.
The received sound wave evokes a combination of responses--audi-
tory, intuitive, emotional, biological, asociative. Sound's
impact is a profound one. (p.45)
The most common and serious forms of organic heart disease are
those affecting the coronary arteries which supply blood to the
heart. When the passageway inside one of these vessels becomes
sufficiently narrowed, or is blocked by a clot, a heart-attack
may occur. The cause of death is the reduction of the blood flow,
and consequently the delivery of oxygen to the tissues. Without
the necessary oxygen, the tissues die.
What causes the thickening of the arterial walls is the deposit
of cholesterol and other fatty substances that float in the
blood. Though diet is popularly associated with increases in
cholesterol levels, stress has been demonstrated to increase
cholesterol and other fat levels and contribute to the thick-
ening of the arterial walls. Stress increases the secretion
of adrenalin, and this in turn increases the amount of free
fatty acids in the blood stream, an increase associated with
an elevation of cholesterol. It has been demonstrated at the
University of South Dakota that noise levels common to our
environment raise cholesterol levels in rats and rabits (and
also cause heart enlargement in rats). Dr. Samuel Rosen of the
Citizens for a Quiet City in New York has stated that loud
noises cause adrenal hormones to be released into the blood
stream to intensify tension and arousal. (pp. 54-55)
Rats subjected to excessive noise have developed hypertension,
with the older rats showing the greatest sensitivity to noise
stress... In one test, a popping paper bag raised the brain
blood pressure more quickly than a hypodermic injection. (p.56)
Noise influences the heart's beat. Experimental work in the
Soviet Union has shown a weakening of the contractions of the
heart muscle from noise exposure. (p.56)
Without awakening the sleeper, noise stimuli will
constrict his blood vessels, change his heart rate
and muscular tone. (p.59)
Even noise of a low intensity produces arousal reactions
and what is significant, prevents the sleeper from reach-
ing the deep sleep stage. (p.59)
Years ago, investigators were looking for a standardized stressing
agent, something that would consistently cause abnormalities in
animals [????]. By accident they discovered that noise could pro-
duce the abnormalities they wanted: lesions in the urinary and
cardiovascular systems, changes in the uteri and overies of female
animals, alterations in the testicular structure of male animals.
They also discovered that the acoustic stimulus could cause
changes in the body's chemistry: an increased production of
ovarian hormones, and other complex hormonal changes that influence
fertility, growth, and other essential bodily functions. (p.62)
Epileptic seizures are sometimes triggered by noise.
A department of Agriculture review of animal studies reported
experiments in which rats exposed to noise showed changes in
the lining of the stomach, changes that could cause the appear-
ance of gastric ulcers. (p.65)
-A sudden rise in blood pressure may cause a headache
-Noises causes a sudden rise in blood pressure
-Headache pain may be caused by contraction of the head
and neck muscles in response to stress.
-Noise causes stress.
-Many headaches occur when the blood vessels around the brain
swell and impinge on a sensitive nerve, or when the blood
supply to the brain is choked off by tense neck muscles.
The muscle tension constricts the arteries, and the sub-
sequent dilating phase is the painful phase.
-Noise tenses muscles.
-Migraine headaches are most often triggered by emotional
factors in persons whose blood vessels are predisposed
to painful changes in diameter.
-Noise changes the diameter of the blood vessels. (pp.67-68)
...there is good reason to suspect that in addition to chemical
and physical reactions, noise plays havoc with our minds and
our emotions. (p.68)
One does not get used to noise. Somewhere in the human body, that
sound is being absorbed--at an as yet unknown price. (p.71)
The most dangerous noise, stated Dr. Gerd Jansen, is noise we
are accustomed to, that we do not 'hear,' such as traffic noises.
These are the noises that cause physiological responses because
of their intensities or frequency ranges. They do not lend them-
selves to adaptation. (pp.71-72)
To live with noise is no unlike living
with electric shocks. (p.74)
Sounds above and below the audible range also influence
the living organism. (p.75)
R. Murray Schafer, in The New Soundscape, notes some of the bizzare
experiments being conducted with ultra- and sub-sonic sounds:
The building is on a military installation somewhere in
the United States...inside are nightmares.
In one of the large laboratory rooms, two physicists and
a biologist stand above a heavy metal table. They wear
thick ear pads. On the table is a dial-covered device
about the size and shape of a television set, with a trum-
pet-like horn protruding from its face. The device is a
kind of siren, designed to produce high-frequency sound
of an outrageous intensity. The scientists are studying
the effects of this sound on materials, animals and men.
They are wondering if sound can be used as a weapon...
One of the physicists begins the demonstration by picking
up a wad of steel wool with a tonglike instrument on a long
pole. He holds the steel wool in the invisible beam of sound
that issues from the horn. The steel wool explodes in a
whirling cascade of white-hot sparks...
The biologist has brought a white rat into the room in a
small cage. The rat is running around the cage, looking
unhappy about all the noise. But his worries don't last
long. The biologist lifts the cage into the sound field.
The rat stiffens, rises up to the full stretch of his legs,
arches his back, opens his mouth wide and falls over. He is
dead. An autopsy will reveal that he had died of instant
overheating and a massive case of the bends. There are
bubbles in his veins and internal organs.
Professor Rudnick and his colleagues built the most power-
ful siren ever conceived to that date. It made what was, as
far as anybody knew, the loudest continuous sound ever
heard on earth up to that time: 175 db, some 10,000 times
as strong as the ear-splitting din of a large pneumatic
riveter. The frequency range of this enormous howl was
from about 3,000 cycles per second (near the top range of
a piano) to 34,000 cps, in the ultrasonic range.
Strange things happened in this nightmarish sound field. If
a man put his hand directly in the beam of sound, he got a
painful burn between the fingers. When the siren was aimed
upwards, 3/4-inch marbles would float lazily about it at
certain points in the harmonic field, held up and in by the
acoustic pressure. By varying the harmonic structure of the
field, Professor Rudnick could make pennies dance on a silk
screen with chorus-like precision. He could even make one
penny rise slowly to a vertical position while balancing
another penny on its edge. A cotton wad held in the field
would burst into flame in about six seconds. 'To satisfy a
skeptical colleage,' reports Professor Rudnick, 'we lit his
pipe by exposing the open end of the bowl to the field.'
(Schafer, Op. cit., pp. 111-112)
Robert Baron summarizes the case for recognizing noise as a health
problem as follows:
We are being exposed to increasing amounts of a new and potent mix
of stresses--chemical, physical, and psychological.
Noise, at even moderate levels, forces a systemic response from
the total organism. It is not only the sense of hearing that is
involved . What is also involved is what happens after the brain
receives the sound signal. The brain places the body on a war
footing. The repetition of these alerts is exhausting. It depletes
energy levels; it can cause changes in the chemistry of the blood,
in the volume of the blood circulation; it places a strain on the
heart; it prevents restorative sleep and rest; it hinders con-
valescence; it can be a form of torture. It can so weaken the
body's defense mechanisms that diseases can more readily take
hold. The organism does not adapt to noise; it becomes enured
and pays a price. The price of this 'adaptation' is itself
a hazard to health.
The effect of noise on health may--like radiation poisoning--
be something that will show no clinically significant symptoms
at the time of exposure or shortly thereafter. Conclusions must
not be drawn from short-term observations. Nobody, even today,
knows too much about how air pollution affects people. Doctors
back in the 1920's were concerned about smoking as a health
hazard, but it was not until recent years that medical science
was able to establish a link between smoking and health. The
same lag applies to noise. Some doctors and scientists have long
suspected that noise is inflicting damage, but the nature of
that damage is yet to be discovered. (pp.85-86)
It is a well known fact that noise can cause deafness: not just the
trauma of an explosion, mind you, but the cumulative effect of prolonged
exposure to noise below the levels produced by the Chicago and New York
train and subway systems.
In 1961, together with an international team of physicians and
audiologists, Dr. Rosen conducted a study of the primitive (sic)
Mabaans of the African Sudan. These people were found to have a
keen sense of hearing and no evidence of coronary heart disease.
They live in an environment almost free of noise--a typical level
is 40 decibels--with few emotional stresses. There was evidence
that their blood vessels enjoyed a normal elasticity even in old
age. Industrialized humans lose this elasticity; hardening occurs.
Among the Mabaans, who live in an atmosphere of virtual silence,
the hearing of even men in their seventies and eighties is the
equal of healthy children of ten. (Baron, pp. 77-78)
But even a few minutes of exposure to intense noise can cause
temporary deafness. The users of noisy appliances, powered
lawn mowers, for example, experience significant hearing loss
for a variable period of time after using such products. This
loss is called noise-induced temporary threshold shift. It is
this that the members of rock bands experience wherever amplified
music is played. Subjectively it may be observed as a muffled sen-
sation and/or a ringing in the ears. One empirical method for
detecting noise-induced temporary threshold shif is to listen
to a watch before and after exposure. The degree of loss is
indicated by the amount of time needed for recovery.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota measured hearing sensi-
tivity of band members following a four-hour session of music
having an over-all sound-pressure level ranging from 110 to 125
dbs. In 25 minutes there was a loss of from 10 to 30 decibels of
hearing in the critical 2,000 hz speech frequency. Recovery in
some cases took from 18 to 50 hours. The longer recovery time
could be serious if the individual re-exposed himself before
full recovery occurred. In fact, after suffering an undetermined
amount of acoustic assaults that cause temporary deafness, the
amplified music addicts or the factory worker, may end up with
noise-induced permanent threshold shift. (pp.78-79)
Nature has made it easier for us to lose the ability to hear the upper
frequencies first. This means that the first penalty of excessive
noise is the ability to enjoy pastoral sounds and the full range of
musical tones... Most members of an industrialized society, by the
time they reach senior citizenship, will not be able to hear 10,000
cps, let alone the 15,000 cps and above that stereo systems are able
to reproduce. The decline in hearing acuity for the male in an indus-
trialized society begins somewhere between the ages of 25 and 30. Many
millions of human beings are exposed to a lifetime of noise so intense
that they find it no longer possible to hear human speech sounds.
I join Roethke in seeking that "imperishable quiet at the heart of form,"
and if not that, at least a quiet unobtruded upon by undesired sound.
Sounds are capable of violating one's intimate sound-space, and just as
we would not prop someone's eyes open and force that person to look at
pictures, or just as we would not go up to someone in a dorm or in
another room in our homes and start tapping them on the head for half an
hour or more, so we should have the considerateness not to invade other
people's privacy with sounds other people might not want to be hearing.
Curt Sachs, a noted musicologist, summarizes this predicament of our
present culture eloquently:
Western music, the pride of our culture, is no longer what
it should be and was: the highlight of our day, edifying and
blissful. Our modern lives are ad nauseum saturated with music
and wouldbe music. I do not speak of the dizzying quantity of
concerts and recitals--we attend them or stay away as we please.
But we cannot have our coffee break without the blaring inter-
ference of a non-stop loudspeaker on the wall or a jukebox in
the corner; the savings-bank pours music over our head while
we pass a check across the counter; railroad cars and buses
feed us catchy or sentimental tunes instead of improving the
service; and the neighbors force us to share in their radio
and television orgies.
People of high civilization have become voracious hearers but
do hardly listen. Using organized sound as a kind of opiate,
we have forgotten to ask for sense and value in what we hear.
In primitive music, on the contrary, sense and value are
paramount qualities. Not only is singing indispensable
for special events, like wedding and childbirth, puberty
rites and death, and whenever luck must be forced on adverse
powers in hunting, harvest, and sickness. It also acts
when regular work, as rowing a boat, or rocking a child, or
grinding edible roots, demands and gives a rhythmical impulse.
In this inter-weaving with motions and emotions, music is not
a reflex, remote and pale, but an integral part of life. As
(the musicologist) Furer-Haimenpale, puts it exquisitely
in words, this music 'resounds in the darkness, gripping the
singers and blending them one and all, til they finally merge
in the unity of the dance. This rhythm is more than art, it is
the voice of humanity's primeval instinct, the revelation of
the all-embracing rhythm of growth and decay, of love, life
and death.' (The Four Ages of Music)
THE IMPERISHABLE QUIET AT THE HEART OF FORM.
NOISE IS NOT THE PRICE OF PROGRESS
NOISE IS NOT THE INEVITABLE BY-PRODUCT OF TECHNOLOGY
NOISE IS THE PRICE YOU AND I PAY FOR GREED AND INSENSITVITY, AND
OUR OWN INDIFFERENCE...
______________________________________
For ruther information about noise and its effects, and what you
might be able to do about it, write:
International Society Against Noise
Sihlstrasse 17
Zurich, Switzerland
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