Barthes



Notes on Barthes

(9) – plaisir as an enjoyment of identity, as a homogenizer – perhaps this is where we see some universality begin, in the sort of enjoyment of the cultural identity of music, or the cultural identities derived from music – sexuality, a sort of uniform pleasure or a communal enjoyment of an innate biological experience – music becomes a sort of sexual act (maybe bring in some Freud or Lacan, here) (17) – if there are messages without a code (langue) then there can be a rhetoric of the uncoded message, too, perhaps – what would a rhetoric of a message with no code look like? And what would we analyze if not the code? Form? style, etc.?

(32) “Is it possible to conceive of an analogic code (as opposed to a digital one)?”

(45) “messages without a code”

(47) “surprises of meaning”

(49) – what is ideology for Barthes? this is important to distinguish whether this is coming from Marx, Althusser, etc. “The common domain of the signifieds of connotation is that of ideology, which canot but be single for a given society and history, no matter what signifiers of connotation it may use. (49) definition of rhetoric for Barthes: “These signifiers will be called connotators and the set of connotators a rhetoric, rhetoric thus appearing as the signifying aspect of ideology.”

“it is even possible there is a single rhetorical form, common for instance to dream, literature, and image” --- here we can think about universal applications again, if there are certain forms… we might look to memetics, even, to see what are succesful rhetorical messages, what makes something memetic? “either a narrative is merely a rambling collection of events, in which case nothing can be said about it other than by referring back to the stortyteller’s (the author’s) art, talent or genius – all mythical forms of chance – or else it shares with other narratives a common structure which is open to analysis…” (80) so here we see a bridge between performance and talent, or art… and also something “common” that is in all narratives – is music a form of narrative storytelling? Not always, no… does it have features that are common to all instances of it? relationship between narrative and music, etc.

“The music one plays comes from an activity that is very little auditory, being above all manual (and thus in a way much more sensual). It is the music which you or I can play, alone or among friends, with no other audience than its participants…. a muscular music in which the part taken by the sense of hearing is one only of ratification” – (149)

This is music when read from sheets. We can create an analogy here. There is the reading/writing dichotomy. There is also the reading/writing dichotomy in music. But people are often confused by this because in music, to read from pre-written music also means to play. Thus, every 12-year-old picks up the guitar and can read tablature, thus “learning to play” – but they have not developed the underlying skills needed to invent, to create new music, to really “write” music – which are not even necessarily the foundations of musical theory (understanding the circle of fifths or something) but has more to do with sort of natural inclinations (repeating a musical piece by ear, being able to play in a group, recognizing a key signature by ear and jumping into an on-going performance, hearing a vocal line and being able to harmonize with it, inventing melodies/lyrics/lines “on the spot” –

what I mean to say is that there is a music that plays itself from the body but that is not muscular, it is not memorized. This is emulation. And emulation without reinvention is the most basic and irritating form of music (the classic rock cover band, the little kid “prodigy” playing a Tchaikovsky piece right from the old tattered score)- But music can be very much physical, very much felt without being rigid and predetermined. And actually when music is felt it is so often more spontaneous and inventive than when it is, for example, memorized.

All music seems to be some form of rearticulation, reemulation of something. But what is the origin? The same is true with narrative, literature…. but is it because we have created a canon for ourselves or is it because there is a shared human story, a shared human mythology?

“…the fundamental code of the West, tonality” – music as code, again…. and this is important to remember, that the West has a code from which its music is built, and that there are other ‘musics’ – other codes – music has many “musics” just as “language” has many “languages” (152) – and we can talk all day about their similiarites and diffferences, syntactical structures, etc….

“The body strives to be total…” (152) Here is where I differ with Barthes. I do not think that when one plays Beethoven one must necessarily want to be the “conductor of an orchestra” or that an orchestra is even the total music… what is to say that the orchestra is complete? It is simply another social convention of music. It is not more or less complete than the three-piece 90s grunge band. HOWEVER – I am quite fascinated by this idea of the “inaudible” – that there is something inaudible in music (152), or worthwhile music… but this is where we need to figure out, what does it mean to be an “amateur” and what goes beyond this?

The most significant take-away from Barthes:

“In this way may be rediscovered, modified according to the movement of the historical dialectic, a certain musica practica. What is the use of composing if it is to confine the product within the precinct of the concert or the solitude of lsitening to the radio? To compose, at least by propensity, is to give to do, not to give to hear but to give to write.” (153)

This is it, this is why video game music is so powerful, because it lends itself to being rewritten, it encourages itself to be remixed. Because of its power, brevity, etc. – it is not just that it inspires, this is not what Barthes means. But it is even meaningful in terms of social action or mobility, that is… this is why popular rock music of the late 60s and early 70s was so influential, because it gave to do, called for something with its lyrics. And this is when writing is most powerful (or dangerous?) when we think of didactic literature (religious literature) which also “gives to do” but in an instructive rather than a transcendent fashion

Barthes is funny, though, because his The Grain of the Voice moves from the “inaudible” to the very audible, or what makes a human voice distinct and meaningful, which is what can be heard (and I am reminded instantly of Gilian Welch, whose voice is like Colombian coffee roasting on a backyard Georgian fire fueled from crooked branches of a hickory tree) though Barthes is interested in the operatic rather than contemporary Americana – I

This is an important epistemological move, too – or foundational move, at least – “How, then, does language manage when it has to interpret music? Alas, it seems, very badly.” (179) – in a sense, music must be interpreted by music. So this is why remix and remediation and recreation (I need to stop using these interchangeably but until I work out meaningful definitions of each …. we’ll see) is important, because it is a musical ‘criticism’ of music. And this is why it is almost Luddistic to ‘cover’ a song… because it is unlike translation. Translation is more homage. Where a cover is almost always, in some way, satire. (Maybe)

ethos of music (180) codification or languification of music the adjectification of music (180) the languaging of music

-  or more broadly, the codification of language, too (and then following the languification of music) – this is important to for sorts of overdetermination and cyclical determination and redetermination where the determined product sort of hegemonically re-alters its determiner)

BUT the “grain” is also where the semiotic spaces collide (converge? no, not always harmonious in their dance!) and thus it is actually a sort of hegemony, or knowing contractual compromise or negotiation… thus music and language, being two different forms of human communication (though never equally treated – language always presides as the dominant form) negotiate for different spaces in human life

but in the grain, we see a sort of symbiosis of form, where we have the essence of music in the tonal quality with the semantic (meaning) of the lyrical and it creates a new sort of form altogether through the joining of different sorts of meaning (because there is a sort of semantic quality in tonality, too, I think)

the grain is the “dual production…. of language and music” (181)

“… it is that apex (or that depth) of production where the melody really works at the language” (182) and this is similar to what I am saying about game music, that it really works at not the language but it works at the game, the world of the game, its aesthetic qualities and such, so that if the player is swimming in-game, the music’s qualities will often digital delay (a wavering, whooshing effect…) which emulates the ripples of water, the sensation of floating under water… and I guess this starts to look like a Bogostian rhetoric of experience, but it is too inclusive to say that procuedural rhetoric can be a rhetoric of experience, because all of being human is experience –

so we might identify this as a sort of rhetoric of cooperation, a rhetoric of the meeting of semiotic spaces, to put it in Barthes terminology. And perhaps this is what I am getting at, that rhetoric starts to look less like a transfer of meaning (even a translation – from one language to another or from one person to another) and more like a collaborative (even hegemonic) recreation of the original message to make something new, because every speech act must be a new creation in new contexts leading to an infinite plurality of meaning. (But this begs the problematic: how does one ever say anything, communicate anything in this model? the answer is, I think, that we never fully transmit what we think, but language is already a destruction of the actual thought process and a cyclical determinant mess of what we think… so this is okay. And perhaps we can look to Derrida and confirm that there is a sort of empiness in plurality anyway. BUT here is the universality – the points where we DO connect must be some innate configuration, OR instances of success of recreative communication, meaning that there is more to it than ceaseless meaningless blabbering, but indeed it leads back to the individual, that through introspection and self-awareness (Gurdjieff anyone?) one can discover act deliberately and thus meaningfully in life and choose what elements to add to the recreative pool of communicaitve practice

blathering

more on music education and pedagogy (183) – this is important to Barthes, too, and relates to the Freire comment on Aristotle’s idea of music education – Barthes argues that contemporary musical educaiton does not promote the development of the “grain” or the uniqueness of the individual (perhaps what is universal to human music is that each of us is fundamentally identifiable, authentic, if we find the grain, thus paradoxically making it the most plural of all communicative modalities) –

But Barthes fails in trying to locate the “grain” in anatomy, or saying that those who sing from the lungs should be singing from the throat or whatever, this is almost as ridiculous as Aristotle’s anti-flute agenda. Surely it is a biological phenomenon, but to privilige one organ over another is ludicrous … what formulates the “voice” or the grain is probably more of experience, human history – accent, cultural identity, personal influence, and just the raw reality of the length of the vocal chords or lung capacity and also their stretching…. what I mean is that there are an infinite number of factors, both social and anatomical which would determine the grain, and even then the individual has the ability to change his or her qualities of the voice through practice (one thinks of voice actors and their many “voices”)

(184) voice within a voice the Lacanian mirror the illusion of the grain, the illusion of the voice, the narcissistic formulation of authenticity (“I am special because I have a voice that is different than yours” – the narcissism of difference, then hierarchical power relations formulated from difference, and we have society, thank you very much)

“isn’t the entire space of the voice an infinite one?”(184)

(187) music/class – and this is important and needs to be explored more.