Abstract
The present study aims at three main goals. Firstly, there will be an effort to define and describe the notion of “sound” in popular music, not in its denotative sense (as in “the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other medium”—or similar definitions), but within the complex semantic field of discourses and practices occurring among musicians and music listeners. Far from simply addressing the idea of sound as “physical” phenomenon, such field tends to incorporate a varied range of musical and extra-musical elements, including production, performance, arrangement, sensorial perceptions, taste, cultural conventions and much more. Secondly, an investigation will be performed on the relationship between sound and human subject, in terms of impact, conducts and, so to speak, “familiarity” between the two parties. In other words, the research will attempt to understand how and how much the sound (in that eclectic and heterogeneous sense that is here discussed) manages to impose itself on the listener's attention (also in relation to other fundamental musical traits, such as rhythm and melody), if it is possible to speak reasonably of a specifically “sonic” musical conduct, and finally of what nature is the relationship existing between sound and subject, in terms of importance and, in a way that shall be clarified later, of ‘priority’. Both this and the previous goal will be highly informed by the theories of the late Gino Stefani, the first (and, to some extent, the only) musical semiotician who has devoted attention to this particular acceptation of the term “sound”, and, at the same time, to its relationship with the subject, within his well-known theoretical framework of the “musical competence”. Finally, the above reflections will be empirically applied in a traditional “Stefanian” sense (that is, by using his methodologies), through the transcription and the analysis of a full “From experience to theory” workshop (performed at Helsinki University in 2015) focused on sound.
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Notes
- 1.
It may be useful to clarify that Stefani made explicit use of the adjective “synesthesic” (“sinestesico” in Italian), as opposed to the more common “synesthetic”. The reason is similar to what brought Nattiez to employ the term “esthesic”, in his famous triadic model of musical levels (along with the poietic and the neutral). That is: the word intends to address the sensorial/receptive experience as a whole, as opposed to the more codified (and often culturally-mediated) “aesthetic” experience.
- 2.
In his seminal interdisciplinary book, Delalande (1993) discusses a “musical conduct” as the totality of active and receptive approaches that a person (whether or not musically-trained) establishes with a musical item: expectations, motivations, cognitive plans, reactions, attitudes, background, etc.
- 3.
I shall take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the following authors, performers and sound engineers who have kindly agreed to share their definition of S: Matteo “Molecola” Di Marcoberardino, Roberto Ferrario “Gilvian”, Kevin Holm-Hudson and Victoria Trunova.
- 4.
Varankaitė performed her experiment with three musical samples: Taylor Swift’s “Blank space” (which she abbreviated as POP excerpt), Domantas Razauskas’ “Lietaus kambarys” (called DP excerpt) and E.S. Posthumus’ “Odenall Pi4” (INST excerpt).
- 5.
As by tradition, when it comes to Peirce's Collected Papers, the reference is made to volumes and paragraphs and by using the philosopher’s initials.
- 6.
I must say that here in particular, but also in other cases throughout the essay, I had to take some liberties in my translation, in order to make the text more intelligible for the anglophone readership. Especially in his late years, Stefani, whose prose has always been rich anyway, took up the habit of expressing himself in highly metaphoric and intentionally-fragmentary ways, playing a lot with words and also proposing (untranslatable) neologisms. While this works well in pretty much any Neo-Latin environment (Spanish translations of his writings, for instance, tend to be quite literal), an English translation requires numerous rewritings of his sentences and a general adaptation (reduction, if we like) of his prose to a more linear one.
- 7.
“The grips that I have on music, and that music has on me” (Stefani-Guerra Lisi 2004, 136).
- 8.
The situation has certainly improved nowadays, with the academic instutionalization of numerous musical repertoires that were previously overlooked or even dismissed, such as popular music itself, but we are still far from an all-encompassing approach to the “musics” that is respectful and inclusive of all diversities in human and also not human communities. One of the memories from my university years in Bologna that I share with my students nowadays is the big, fat and feared-by-all exam in “History of music”. The subject had no subtitle that would specify what kind of music we students would have been taught the history of, so I naively expected a bit of everything—an expectation quickly encouraged by the fact that the compulsory bibliography consisted of no less than twelve volumes of an encyclopedia of music history, published by the Italian EDT. I distinctly remember the progressive disillusionment, as I proceeded, page by page, to study those books. It was actually “History of Western music”… no, it was “History of Western art music”… no, it was “History of Western art male music”… no, it was “History of Western art male written music”… and so forth—one gets the idea. The point was: the exam boldly and paternalistically called “History of music” was in fact covering less than 0.1% of the music produced in this planet.
- 9.
In Italy, unfortunately, there is still this annoying habit of identifying all genders under the term “uomo” (man). I only keep it here for questions of translation’s faithfulness, and also because Stefani’s few non-Italian publications (in Spanish, English and French) still employed this term. In actual fact, however, the correct word should be “person”.
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Martinelli, D. (2021). The Notion of “Sound” in Popular Music. In: Chagas, P.C., Cecilia Wu, J. (eds) Sounds from Within: Phenomenology and Practice. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72507-5_7
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