When an instrumentalist decides to become an orchestra teacher, the first thing that they must do is to reflect seriously upon the complexity of the meaning and purpose of music. They must also take into consideration a further difficulty. This derives from the fact that playing in an orchestra is a responsibility shared with other teachers under the coordination of a conductor. Music is performed according to a score. In the form of musical notation, this contains the encoded philosophical thought of a composer who wishes to convey a message about his or her philosophical thoughts and feelings, which are the intrinsic values of any work of art.
Through its various forms of expression, music has a number of terms and contents that can be named and explained, but there are also others that cannot be explained; they can only be felt.
In order to perform a score, it is not enough just to play the notes. It is much more than that. It is necessary to convey the feelings locked up in the coded message in the score. These are the result of the composer’s experiences expressed through his or her creativity and imagination (which is synonymous with inspiration).
As an art form, music doubtlessly forms part of a multidisciplinary reality, which might compare to an indivisible monolith. Therefore, when someone becomes a professional musician, they soon realise that everything that they have studied relates to one particular area of knowledge and that it is necessary to extend this much further.Moreover, besides all this knowledge we must add the creativity of the composers and performers and, just as important, of the listeners.
In reality, everyone is creative.
However, there is such a thing as extreme creativity and this is the result of developing the skills associated with the so-called seven intelligences that make up the brain. This is the extreme creativity that sets geniuses apart from ordinary beings.
In music, which is not an exact science, the hallmarks of quality are a) endurance in time, b) creativity and c) performance. Quality can be seen in the style of a composer or player and both professionals and music lovers usually recognise this immediately.
For this reason, we performers have to make use of our creativity and knowledge through convergent thought in order to allow the message we decode to flow. In other words, we can say that the creative act is a philosophical act that the composer expresses in a composition.
This composition is performed in accordance with the dictates of musical aesthetics and is materialised through creative analysis. This kind of creative analysis is termed the phenomenology of music.
Musical phenomenology is the science that studies the phenomenon of non-interpretable sounds, sounds that, due to their intrinsic nature, cannot be altered. They are always the same, whoever the player.
Music is a controlled structure of a sonorous nature that conveys, through the performer, the personal vision of the philosophical and artistic experience of the composer.
According to its definition, there are three aspects of music that merge to form a philosophical reality. These must be investigated and determined in order to be truly aware of the act of creation or performance. Nonetheless, it is difficult to categorize the responses to the questions posed by music (exist, know, value).
In reality, the three aspects mentioned above in the definition of music represent a sequence that may consist of a schematic model made up of the following components:
- The philosophical aspect, in which the composer expresses himself or herself musically through a composition written down in a score, which is the coded language of
- The aesthetic, phenomenological aspect, in which the performer is the channel through which the music is transmitted, like the decoder and subsequent re-constructor of the composer’s philosophical
- The listener, who is the receiver of the composer’s message and who therefore performs an aesthetic act with a philosophical
Before being expressed in the form of a score, music is ethereal in nature, existing only in the thoughts of the composer. For this reason it is philosophical material. In other words, initially, as a creative act, music is not material in its structure and organizational form.
As musical writing is inexact, it does not convey in any way the precise intentions of composers. It follows therefore that players need to base themselves on the experience of previous performers passed down from generation to generation. (7) To ensure that a performance fulfils as closely as possible the creative intention of the composer, we must analyse performance through the phenomenology of music.
In its application as an investigative and analytical tool of music, phenomenology is dependent upon the state of mind of a person, expressed in his or her attitude, mentality, sensitiveness, flexibility and talent. Likewise, the state of mind of an individual is influenced and determined at all times by the space-time factor.
Taking into consideration what has been said until now, it is clear that philosophical concepts generate and determine aesthetic and formal values in music.
From the arguments set out so far, it follows that phenomenology unlocks the philosophical message of the composer, contained and coded in a score. In orchestral works, the final responsibility lies with the conductor through his or her instrument, which is the orchestra.
As creating, performing and listening to music has always been a basic need in human beings, the questions that arise when performing and receiving this message are as follows: To what extent is this message decoded and to what extent does it coincide with the intentions of the composer?
The responses will always depend on the professional competence of the conductor and of the teachers who form part of the orchestra.
Therefore, to sum up, the group of people who generate the music are the composer, through his/her composition, the performer as the conduit through which the music is channelled and decoded, and lastly, the receiver or listener.
The more experiences or references the performer and the listener have, the more they will understand the message locked up a composition (resulting experiences).
The reference represents the creative capacity of man to measure the process of expansion or comprehension of music. One sound is nothing; two sounds (an interval) already create a system of reference and orientation.
This reference system is not conscious, it is a measurement process and therefore of intellectual reference. Thus it can be said that the reference system represents a starting point.
In order to determine and quantify the level of „musical” understanding, phenomenology uses terms such as: meaning and values.
Meaning
The questions generated by the concept contained in the „meaning of music” are as follows: Does it refer to real events? Is music an ethereal, auditory material? What does it represent? The response would be: the meaning of music represents an association between the organized, harmonic-tonal reality and the philosophical message contained in the composition
For this reason, in order to determine the meaning of a composition, we use terms such as: “expresses”, “symbolizes” or “represents”, with special reference to feelings or images.
Values
For the meaning to make sense we use the values we attribute to the composition. In order to highlight these values, orchestral performers and conductors must have a knowledge and command of the components and use these in the application of orchestral practice, interrelated with the philosophical branch of music phenomenology.
The values we attribute to compositions in order to quantify their meaning are as follows:
- Tonal
- Harmonic
- Textural
- Dynamic
- Temporal
- Structural
In short, there is no doubt that, for most people, music is simply beautiful.
This phenomenological process represents a set of elements that exercise a certain amount of influence on human consciousness. This influence is called vertical pressure. In music this is associated with harmonies. If there is vertical pressure, logically there must also be horizontal pressure.
The group of elements that work in a successive manner, determined by the real time factor on human consciousness, is called horizontal pressure and is associated with melodic lines.
From this it can be deduced that by controlling the logic of vertical and horizontal pressures, it can be stated that: music represents the balance between vertical pressure and horizontal pressure at the philosophical stage. Music is, therefore, transcendental thought. As the vertical and horizontal pressure ratio determines the harmonic-melodic association, a referential system is required in order to measure the antagonism created by these two terms. This reference is the octave interval. The octave is considered to be the musical interval that resolves this tension and is therefore of great referential importance. This demonstrates that musical intervals have a philosophical-aesthetic value which is translated into expression. For this reason, we can say that as the octave is decisive in nature, in music the fourth interval has connotations with introversion: the ascending fourth is active in nature; the descending fourth is passive in nature.
The fifth interval is extrovert in nature: ascending fifth, active in nature; descending fifth, passive in nature.
For the reasons outlined above it can be said that the fifth is a generating interval and a diverging reference.
Lastly, it can be said that a semitone may be considered to be the most distant interval due to the antagonistic quality it generates.
In order for auditory information, sounds, to have any meaning they need a structure on which to base themselves, a structure that is provided and determined by musical forms.
In turn, structure and form are influenced by rhythm (pulse) and tempo.
Tempo is in reality the catalyst of all musical reactions. However, tempo leads the musical discourse towards a crucial point called the climax. It may also go in the opposite direction, in other words, towards the starting point of the composition. The first composer who used tempo contrast was F. Schubert. For this reason he had a determining influence on musical forms.
With tempo contrast, the sound mass put into motion towards the climax tends to find itself once more in the initial rest.
This climax justifies the cyclical consideration of music. To sum up, it has a beginning – accumulation of tension – elimination of tension that finally relaxes at the initial point of rest.
The beginning of a composition is called the exposition. Musical exposition is the representation of a conflict of theme, which may have a specific duration in time. The conflict or contrast of theme and its complexity determine the duration and form of a musical work. The return to the initial point of rest of a new work is called re-exposition.
To sum up, the exposition of a musical composition is the opposite of the re-exposition because, while the exposition represents the divergence of a theme, the re-exposition, in its return to the starting point, represents the convergence of a theme.
Exposition and re-exposition should not be confused with repetition because in music, phenomenologically, there are no repetitions, only the accumulation or relaxation of tension.
In order to highlight this tension we require intensity, which is synonymous with the extrinsic force of music as a reference.
Another referential system is the initial tonality.
In its aesthetic aspect, music has a referential system of rhythm or pulse.
Pulse is the unit of force that characterises a movement and therefore each change in pulse is made by means of a time unit prior to the real change, the time unit called the real anacrusis of pulse.
The sum of these interrelated individual and local references is called symphonic continuity, a term commonly used by orchestra conductors. For all these reasons, when working with an orchestra, by listening, teachers measure the points of sonorous identity all the time. This process is developed at a conscious level. Through consciousness, this measurement develops in the same way as rhythmic formulas. This confirms that the mental perception of phenomena in general and of music in particular, is not instantaneous.
Human beings need time to examine and process, and this varies from one individual to another. This leads us to the following conclusion: due to their nature, human beings assimilate phenomena that make an impression on them, generating in this way the principles of identity and difference that give music its seal of quality.
Pulse is not random, it is logical such as in the rubato, which is structured, explicit. One knows where it comes from and where it is going. Likewise, it can be said that there is no element of randomness when dealing with musical silences. They have the same or more importance as the audible parts.
Fermatas have a time structure that depends on how these are arrived at and how these are left.
The orchestra conductor is responsible for the organization of referential systems in an orchestra, He or she has the duty and responsibility to unify the formal criteria (deriving from the phenomenology of music) of the teachers through the use of the baton. Thus, the uniformity of an orchestra is dependent upon the proportional gestural functionality exercised by the conductor. Therefore, the orchestra teacher must adapt quickly in order to recognise the conductor’s gestures through the articulation of measurement.
Measurements articulated through the conductor’s géstica acquire the nature of a metric figure that guarantees the rhythmic uniformity of the pulse of the orchestra, as a unit of referential criterion.
The first part of the articulation, which will be a movement downwards to coincide with the force of gravity, is common to all measurements. Therefore, the speed of physical respiration must be perfectly coordinated with the pulse-impulse speed (anacrusis-articulation) of the conductor.
It is imperative for both physical respiration and musical respiration to be common in all teachers. The articulation of a measurement by the conductor’s arm has not only an optical function, it is and represents all of the philosophical content of the music to be decoded.
The articulation of the impulse (1st part) and the resolution (the remaining parts of the articulation) must have a certain proportion, because this determines the expressive uniformity of the orchestra as a whole.
It is clear that the result and the quality of the performance of an orchestral work depend on the authority of a conductor. This derives from his or her postural and moral attitude and must not, under any circumstances, convey any sense of fear or insecurity.
Apart from referential systems of a philosophical and aesthetic nature, teachers have to be aware of some of the problems that occur in orchestras due to their instrumental complexity. They must therefore show a degree of patience in rehearsals. This has an influence on the discipline of the orchestra.
Without wishing to diminish the importance of any instrument or position within the orchestra, the following positions are usually considered to be its backbone. concert master, 1st cello, 1st oboe and timpani.
The concerts performed by symphonic orchestras generally contain a standard repertoire which is repeated every two or three years. Works are added gradually and these, in turn, become part of their standard repertoire. Generally, a concert consists of the following parts: a first part consisting of a symphonic overture plus a large-scale concerto and a second part with a work of large symphonic dimensions.
As the article on the formal aspect of musical phenomenology linked to the orchestra teacher will analyze aspects of orchestral practice in depth, in this section we will mention inherent aspects linked to the aesthetics of performance: instrumental and musical aesthetics, tuning, the individual bow, the symphonic bow, simultaneity and timbral uniformity.
It is interesting to note that due to its sonorous spectrum, the horn does not combine well with the trombone. It combines well with the trumpet, the bassoon and the clarinet and favours the transition and union between wind-metal and wind-wood.
Thanks to its uneven harmonies, the clarinet performs the timbral union between wind-wood instruments and is the string instrument that establishes the timbral synthesis within the string section.
String instruments generally experience problems with the bow, which differs in length from one instrument to another. For example, the double bass is the string instrument with the shortest bow and that of the viola is the longest. With the exception of the first and second violin, string instruments also pose problems when placing them in the orchestra.
However, all the instruments in an orchestra involve problems relating to the distances between them and the conductor.
These philosophical considerations on phenomenology are essential in the training and practice of the profession of the orchestral musician and are just as important as the formal considerations.
