Musical musical nuance

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 68, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 1-10

  Roholt, Tiger C ^a  

^a MONTCLAIR STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77949936537     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6245.2009.01387.x     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. "Crazy," Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere (Atlantic, 2006)
2. "Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)," Sinatra at the Sands (Warner Brothers, 1966)
3. In this essay, unless otherwise specified, when I mention pitch or timing nuances I intend to refer to musical nuances in general. In her Language, Music, and Mind (MIT Press, 1993)
4. Diana Raffman focuses on pitch but acknowledges the import of other kinds of nuances: "as I noted early on, I conceive the N-pitches [nuance-pitches] and N-intervals as just two among a constellation of nuance features. . . . There is every reason to suppose that musical performances sustain fine details of duration, loudness, speed, articulation, and timbre, among others" (p. 90). Although my reorientation is applicable to nuances in general, I do not assume that nuances are interchangeable for the purposes of all examinations. On this last point, see Justin London's criticism of Raffman for not examining research on rhythm perception: "The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music; Language, Music, and Mind," Music Theory Spectrum 16 (1994): 269-275
5. Here are two rock music nuance timing examples: a contributing factor to the perceived power of Jon Bonham's drumming is his tending to play "behind the beat"; that is, he plays certain notes slightly late. A contributing factor to the perceived buoyancy of Ringo Starr's drumming is that he does not play behind the beat; in fact, Ringo tends to play a bit ahead of the beat. Regarding hip-hop, one of the genre's significant innovations is the exploration of just how far behind the beat notes can be placed without being perceived as rhythmically chaotic. Hear Brandy's "What About Us?" Full Moon (Urban Atlantic, 2004)
6. Diana Raffman adopts this view in Language, Music, and Mind (see chap. 4)
7. If nuances have anything to do with classical musical works, it is most likely through a composer's assumptions about performance practices. For a relevant discussion, see Stephen Davies, Musical Works and Performances (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 110, 116
8. Theodore Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock (London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 1996), chap. 1
9. Stephen Davies, "Rock Versus Classical Music," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 (1999): 193-204, quote on p. 200
10. The generative theory of tonal music posits four sets of analytic rules that a listener "applies" to pitch-time events; these rules have been unconsciously abstracted from exposure to the music of the listener's culture; the rules constitute the musical grammar ("M-grammar"). See Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (MIT Press, 1983)
11. Prior to Raffman's work, some psychologists, philosophers, and others acknowledged that perceptual discrimination outstrips conceptualization; see, for example, Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford University Press, 1982). The import of Raffman's book is to apply such an observation to the consideration of musical ineffa-bility. Note that the thrust ofRaffman's ineffability claim has resonance in the philosophy of mind literature on noncon-ceptual content (which has roots in Evans)
12. see Christopher Peacocke, "Does Perception Have a Nonconceptual Content?" Journal of Philosophy 98 (2001): 239-264
13. W. E. Kennick, "Art and the Ineffable," Journal of Philosophy 58 (1961): 309-320
14. Kennick, "Art and the Ineffable," pp. 317-318
15. Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1965)
16. Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, p. 181
17. Georges Rey, review of Language, Music, and Mind, in The Philosophical Review 106 (1997): 641-645
18. Rey, review of Language, Music, and Mind, p. 643
19. Eric F. Clarke, "The Perception of Expressive Timing in Music," Psychological Research 51 (1989): 2-9, quote on p. 3. (By 'expression,' Clarke means expressive properties such as nuances.)
20. Some minute variations in pitch and timing have tim-bral effects (objectives), and some timbral adjustments contribute to more global timbral effects. These sound qualities are central in rock, as Gracyk emphasizes: "Rock is a music of very specific sound qualities and their textural combination. Specific sounds are as central to the music as are specific colors in painting" (Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise, p. 61)
21. Raffman's nuances are perceptual properties, not acoustic events; in this regard, see especially her criticism of Nelson Goodman (LMM, pp. 115-116, 119)
22. Even though many psychologists work with a definition of nuances ("expressive variations") identical to Raffman's, some have noted the distinction between nuances thus defined and something like what I have been calling nonstructural objectives. Consider these two examples. John Sloboda writes, "We can hear rhythmic imprecision and rubato with appropriate training, but fine differences in timing are more often experienced not as such, but as differences in the quality (the 'life' or 'swing') of a performance." John A. Sloboda, The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music (Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 30
23. Eric F. Clarke, The Perception of Expressive Timing in Music," p. 3