Music Theory, Multimedia, And The Construction Of Meaning

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Music Theory, Multimedia, and the Construction ofMeaningLawrence M. ZbikowskiI,In the summer of 1938, as the storm clouds of war weregathering across Europe, Sir Donald Tovey delivered a lecture tothe British Academy entitled "The Main Stream of Music." Thelecture is a curious affair, not the least because for Tovey themainstream of music was a thoroughly Germanic one. Whilesensitive to the accomplishments of non-German composers in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Tovey nonetheless believedthere was a sea change in musical composition in the earlyeighteenth century: "With the advent of Bach, music became an artso congenial to all that is best in the Teutonic intellect that for thenext two centuries there is no musical art-form in which Germanmusicians have not produced the supreme masterpieces."' And itwas the genius of Bach that discovered resources within musicwhich rendered the medium independent of other media. Toveycontinues, "There can be no supreme musical art without thequalities of absolute music, whether the art be as compounded withother arts as Wagnerian opera or as exclusively musical as the stringquartets of Beethoven." The mainstream of music, then, was oneflooded by the works of German composers, works whoseexcellence relied on the purely musical.This conclusion caused Tovey some anxiety. Indeed, both hislong-held belief that music could speak to a broad audience, andhis tireless championing of British music, were challenged by acentral corpus of thoroughly German works that required neithertext nor program for their understanding. But a deeper source ofhis anxiety was a nagging suspicion that musicians were in dangerof losing their way. Some pages later, after having drawn his surveyto a close with a brief contemplation of Wagner's enormous operas,

Review Forum: Zbikowski on Cookhe writes "I can go no further. At the present day all musicians feelmore or less at sea, and not all of us are good sailor ." Sixty-five years later one can only look with envy on thenavigation problem that confronted Tovey, for his mainstream isnow regarded by most as but a tributary, if a significant one, to thevast body of music through which scholars must find their way.This challenge to navigation is, in less metaphorical terms, achallenge to musical analysis, for analysis is one of the fundamentalways musicians chart their course through challenging or unfamiliarrepertoire. And one seldom finds a repertoire that presents as manychallenging or unfamiliar problems as does musical multimedia, forthe various ways music can combine with words or images yieldphenomena that are often beyond the reach of our usual analyticaltools. Indeed, as Nicholas Cook argues in Analysing MusicalMultimedia, confronting multimedia opens up basic issues withinthe theory and analysis of music, and suggests a thorough reevaluation of the entire enterprise. As Cook notes, "What begins asan analysis of musical multimedia, then, turns ineluctably into ananalysis of analysis" (viii).The analysis of analysis begins not with the somewhatshopworn questions of what counts as analysis and why one shoulddo it, but with the issue of musical meaning, for the assumptionthat music means something is basic to musical multimedia. This isnot to say that musical meaning is theorized in any profound wayby those who create musical multimedia, only that thesepractitioners realize that a television commercial or a film meanssomething quite different when the music is taken away orsubstantially altered. Thus, while music often occupies a place wellbelow the obvious story-line within these media, its contribution isnot inconsequential-as Cook observes, "Music transfers its ownattributes to the story-line and to the product; it creates coherence,making connections that are not there in the words or pictures; iteven engenders meanings of its own" (20). This leads Cook to thesomewhat startling conclusion that music in the abstract-Tovey's"absolute music"--doesn't have meaning.What it has, ntha, is apotcntialfor the construction or negotiation of meaning inspecific contau. It is a bundle of generic attributes in sevch of an object. Or itmight be described as a structured semantic space, a privileged site for thenegotiation of meaning. And if, in the commercials, meaning emerges from themutual interaction of music, words, and pictures, then, at the same time, it ismeaning that forms the common currency among these elements-that makes thenegotiation possible, so to speak (23)Cook goes on to argue that the same holds true for the wordsand music in songs, and the words about music in analyticalprose-in all cases, the meaning that is produced is a consequenceof interactions between various media. Musical culture is, inconsequence, irreducibly multimedia in nature (23). Analysis mustperforce deal not only with the interaction between musicalelements but also with the interactions between media, for theseinteractions are basic to the construction of meaning.The interactions between media that Cook sees as mostimportant are oppositional in nature-what is significant is nothow media are like one another, but how they are dajiment fromone another. This sense of discrete media that in some way interactis, Cook argues, what separates the experience of multimedia fromsynaesthesia. At the same time, the most compelling examples ofmultimedia are not simply the consequence of the coincidence oftwo discrete forms of communication. What is required is a limitedintersection of attributes between the constituent media-whatCook calls an enabling similarity-which allows the media to bebrought together into the same conceptual domain so that theirdifferences can be noted and thus made accessible for theconstruction of meaning.'This notion of domains that are in some respects similar whichare brought into a correlation that reveals their differences bringsCook to the theory of metaphor first proposed by George Lakoffand Mark Johnson in the early 1980s.' In the following, I wouldlike to explore the contemporary theory of metaphor in just a bitmore detail than Cook is able to do in Analysing MusicalMultimedia. Further developments of this theory offer ways to-Tovey 1938: 139.-A similar perspective, developed from research inGcnulcr and Markman 1994 and 1997.kkoff and Johnson 1980.'canbe seen in

Review Forum: Zbikowski on Cookstreamline a few aspects of Cook's account of multimedia, andextensions to the theory offer a somewhat more systematicapproach to the analysis of multimedia in particular, and music ingeneral.The Contemporary Theory of MetaphorLakoff and Johnson's point of departure was the proposal thatmetaphor was not simply a manifestation of the figural use oflanguage to create colorful if imprecise images but reflected a basic. instance, in speakingstructure of human n d e r s t a n d i n Forabout a person's romantic relationships we might use expressionssuch as "He is known for his many rapid conquestsn or "She isbesieged by suitors." The linguistic metaphors central to theseexpressions are based on the conceptual metaphor LOVE IS WAR,which correlates the conceptual domain of romantic love with theconceptual domain of warfare. Once this correlation is active wecan access concepts drawn from the domain of warfare ("rapidconquests," "besiegedn) to characterize aspects of individuals'romantic relationships. More generally, WAR serves as a sourcedomain, providing a rich set of structures that we can map onto thetarget domain of LOVE. Thus "quickly bringing an enemy todefeatn is used to structure our understanding of a situation inwhich an individual is able to cause other individuals to direct theiraffections only to him, and to do so with little effort: "He is knownfor his many rapid conquests."One question raised by this approach to metaphor was of theultimate grounding of the process of mapping structure from onedomain onto another. Even if we grant that we understand a targetdomain (such as LOVE) in terms of a source domain (such as WAR),how is it that we understand the source domain in the first place?Mark Johnson answered this question by proposing that meaningwas gounded in repeated patterns of bodily experience, which giveExpanded versions of the discussion chat follows, along with more extensivecitations to recent work on metaphor theo y,an be found in Zbikowski 1998 andZbikowski 2002: 65-71.rise to what he called image chemata. An image schema is adynamic cognitive construct. that functions somewhat like theabstract structure of an image and thereby connects together a vastrange of different experiences that manifest this same recurringstructure. Thus our understanding of a source domain like WAR isgrounded in image schemata such as BLOCKAGE andCOUNTERFORCE; these, together with evaluative judgments such as"winning" and "losing," provide a rich conceptual structure whichcan then be mapped onto domains such as LOVE.Although the theory of image schemata provides a way toexplain how cross-domain mapping is grounded, it does not explainwhy some mappings are more felicitous than others. For instance,we could map structure from the domain of WAR onto the domainof PITCH RELATIONSHIPS to produce statements like "The G4vanquished the F14." But if we simply want to describe how onepitch relates to another this seems a bit much-we tend to prefermapping from the domain of ORIENTATION IN PHYSICAL SPACE:"The G4 is higher than the Ff4." To account for why somemetaphorical mappings are more effective than others, GeorgeLakoff and Mark Turner proposed that such mappings are notabout the imposition of the structure of the source domain on thetarget domain, but are instead about the establishment ofcorrespondences between the two domains. These correspondencesare not haphazard, but instead preserve the image-schematicstructure latent in each domain. Lakoff and Turner formalized thisperspective with the Invariance Principle, which Turner states asfollows: "In metaphoric mapping, for those components of thesource and target domains determined to be involved in themapping, preserve the image-schematic structure of the target, andimport as much image-schematic structure from the source as isconsistent with that preser ation." Our mapping of orientation inphysical space onto pitch thus relies on correspondences betweenthe image-schematic structure of components of the spatial andacoustical domains. Both space and the frequency spectrum arecontinua that can be divided into discontinuous elements. In thespatial domain, division of the continuum results in points; in the-6Johnson 1987.Turner 1990: 254; cmphasizcd in original. See also L;lkoff 1930.

Review Forum: Zbikowski on Cookacoustic domain, it results in pitches. The mapping thus allows usto import the concrete relationships through which we understandphysical space into the domain of music and thereby provide acoherent account of relationships between musical pitches. Incontrast, mapping from the domain of WAR onto the domain ofPITCH RELATIONSHIPS works less well because it does not preservethe image-schematic structure of the target domain (our sense thatthe frequency spectrum is a continuum is almost completelysuppressed) and because it imports structure (notions based onBLOCKAGE and COUNTERFORCE) foreign to the target domain.'According to the contemporary theory of metaphor, then,metaphor is a basic cognitive capacity that involves mappingstructure from one domain onto another. This mapping is possiblebecause there are aspects of the structure of each domain that areinvariant-these are the enabling similarities that Cook suggests area precondition for musical multimedia. Thus, in the case ofSchoenberg's Die gluckliche Hand (discussed by Cook on pp. 4156), the "Lighting Crescendon that occurs in bars 125-53 relies onshared structure between the music, lighting, and action on thestage. As the musical materials get louder and coalesce the lightinggradually goes from dull red through a variety of hues until itbecomes a glaring yellow, and the central character moves from aportrayal of exhaustion through stages that lead to a portrayal ofextreme tension. The basic structure that unites these threedomains relies on the notion of gradually increasing energy. Theinstantiation of this structure in each domain makes it possible forthe media to combine; because the structure is instantiateddifferently within each domain the result of the combination ismultimedia. An increase in energy such as that portrayed by theactor might well be soundless, but here it is accompanied by acrescendo and the emergence of musical themes from an inchoatebackground; that same increase in energy might well play outwithin consistent lighting, but in Schoenberg's conception it beginsin murky gloom and ends in the bright light of day.Note, however, that if our concern were tonal relationships as opposed to pitchrelationships a mapping from the domain of WAR might be completelyappropriate. See Burnham 1995, Chap.1.257The perspective provided by metaphor theory leads Cook, atthe conclusion of the first part of his book, to propose three basicmodels for multimedia. The models are shown on Example 1,which laces them along a continuum which focuses on the relativedegree of similarity among the constituent media of an instance ofmultimedia, or IMM. Leftmost on the diagram is the conformancemodel, distinguished by the large number of similarities that obtainbetween the constituent media of an IMM. Differences betweenthe media are thus relatively attenuated, and in extreme cases aconformance IMM might be taken as an instance of a singlemedium. O n the right of the diagram is the contest model, inwhich similarity obtains at only the most abstract level. Differencesbetween the media are thus profound, and in extreme cases acontest IMM will simply break apart into its constituent media.These media would still be coincident, but they would not yield anIMM. In between these two extremes is the complementationmodel: differences between the constituent media of the IMM aresignificant enough that the media can be readily distinguished fromone another, but not so marked that the media seem to contradicteach other.Examplc I . Cook i three modeh of musical multimedia situated alonga similarity-dissimilarity continuum.constituent mediasimilar,constituent mediadisaimilarsomewhatdifferentconformancemedia consistentwith each othercomplementationmedia contrary, butnot contradictoryvery differentcontedt.mediacontradictory

Review Forum: Zbikowski on CookCook is thus able to extract a romisinganalytid approach tomusical multimedia from contemporary theories of metaphor. Thisapproach allows him to characterize the conditions that will i e l dan instance of multimedia, and to develop a typology of suchinstances based on similarities between their constituent media.However, the approach also raises two problems, both of whichstem from limitations of the contemporary theory of metaphor.First, the emphasis in metaphor theory has been on mappingstructure from one domain onto another. While describing whatmusic contributes to our understanding of the stage action inSchoenberg's Die gliicklicbe Hand is an important first step inunderstanding that particular IMM (since it allows us to specifywhat structures from the musical domain are mapped onto thedomain of the stage action), it does not yield a description of theIMM itself. That is because we also want to know which structuresfrom the domain of the stage action are mapped onto the musicaldomain. The same holds true for mappings between the domainsset up by the music and the lighting, and between the domains setup by the stage action and the lighting.Second (and related), metaphor theory offers no account of theunique conceptual domain that some cross-domain mappingsproduce. While mappings between the domains of music, stageaction, and lighting are important for the process of meaningconstruction initiated by bars 125-53 of Die gliicklicbe Hand, theunique domain that these mappings produce-the instance ofmultimedia specific to this moment in Schoenbetg'smonodrama-is what we are really interested in. But it is just thisspecification of elements and relations proper to the IMM that islacking in accounts that focus only mapping structure from asource domain onto a target domain.These two limitations of the contemporary theory ofmetaphor-the difficulty of accounting for coordinate mappingsbetween two or more domains, and acknowledgement that suchmappings often yield new conceptual domains-gave rise to thetheory of conceptual blending. In the following I outline basicfeatures of this theory, and describe its application to the analysis ofmusical multimedia.Conceptual Blending and Musical MultimediaA conceptual blend begins with concepts drawn from twocorrelated domains. Consider, for instance, Marcel Proust'srecollection of one feature of the springtime walks along the"MCstglise way* during visits to Combray:We would leave town by the road which ran along the white fence of M. Swum'spark Before reaching it we would be met on our way by the sent of his lilac-trees.come out to welcome strangers. From amid the fresh little green hearts of theirfoliage they raised inquisitively over the fence of the park their piumer of white ormauve blossoms, which glowed, even in the shade, with the sunlight in which theyhad bathed.9Proust's description relies on concepts drawn from the domainof trees (including not only concepts associated with the scent,foliage, and blossoms of trees, but also with their shape anddisposition) and from the domain of intelligent beings (includingconcepts associated with welcoming strangers, being inquisitive,and bathing). These concepts are then blended together to create adomain in which the lilac trees are more than alive-they are alsointelligent and animate. Within this domain there are newstructures that cannot be found in either of the two originaldomains. In the blended space, the lilacs send forth their scent,raise their foliage inquisitively over the fence, and bathe in sunlight.In order to study conceptual blends such as that represented byProust's description, the rhetorician Mark Turner and the linguistGilles Fauconnier developed the notion of conceptual integrationnetworks (CINs)."Each CIN consists of at least fourcircumscribed and transitory domains called mental spaces. Mentalspaces temporarily recruit structure from more-generic conceptualdomains in response to immediate circumstances and are constantlyProust 1981: 147-148.I provide an overview of work on conceptual blending, and its application tomusic, in Zbikowski 2002: 77-95. The most comprehensive study of conccptuzlblending as of this writing is Fauconnicr and u r i 2002.rcook has also madeuse of blending theory; see Cook 200 1.'O,

Rwiew Forum: Zbikowski on CookFor instance, Proust'smodified as our thought unfolds.lldescription of the walk along M. Swann's park sets up twocorrelated mental spaces. The first is that of the lilac trees, thesecond that of intelligent beings. Features of these two spaces arecombined in a third mental space, producing the intelligent andanimate trees of Proust's description. Turner and Fauconnier useCINs to formalize the relationships between the mental spacesinvolved in a conceptual blend, to specify what aspects of the inputspaces are imported into the blend, and to describe the emergentstructure that results from the process of conceptual blending.The CIN for the conceptual blend summoned by Proust isdiagrammed in Example 2. T h e network involves fourinterconnected mental spaces, which are shown as circles. Centralto the network are two correlated input spaces, the "lilac trees"space and the "intelligent being" space. The solid double-headedarrow linking these two spaces indicates that elements within themserve as structural correlates: trcc is correlated with being, giving offscent with animate, and shape

Multimedia, confronting multimedia opens up basic issues within the theory and analysis of music, and suggests a thorough re- evaluation of the entire enterprise. As Cook notes, "What begins as an analysis of musical multimedia, then, turns ineluctably into an analysis of analysis" (viii).

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