Musical Reception and the Evolution of Music

Talia Jimenez-Ramirez
Mar 28, 2001

The goal of this meeting was to discuss the phenomenon of reception in general and of music reception in particular, and to test the application to music of concepts from evolutionary biology. The ultimate purpose of the project I presented for discussion is to understand music reception, from the single piece to the evolution of music and the recording of its history, taking into account the impact of vaguely and equivocally so-called "extra-musical considerations." Forum members were asked to read Francisco Maturana and Humberto Varela's The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding (Boston: Shambhala, 1987).

First I gave an overview of what "reception" has referred to when linked with music in the areas of musicology, music criticism, music theory, ethnomusicology, musical semiotics, socio-musicology, psycho-musicology and neuro-musicology. Despite the obvious efforts of scholars in those areas to empower the listener in the musical process of communication, certain assumptions still lurk behind mentions of reception, because they have existed in musicological discourse from Plato's times. For example, by and large, we unconsciously presume that listening to music is a passive phenomenon over which the listener barely has any control. When confronted with the question, "What kind of control can you, as radio listeners and recording consumers, exert over the music you listen to?" my Art of Listening students would answer, "None. It just happens. You have to let it happen because of freedom of expression."

How to challenge such an assumption? A first, simple step toward this goal would be to show that reception is anything but passive. At the Forum meeting, I demonstrated that the simple reception of the order "eat an apple" elicited the highly active creation of a "framework of reception" from each Forum member ("framework of reception" is my concept and term, inspired by Hans Robert Jauss's "horizon of expectations." For a history of Jauss's idea see Robert C. Holub, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction (London and New York: Methuen, 1984), 58-63). Each member's framework was created through a self-dialectical process, and it continued to transform until the experience was over. Evidently, the framework of reception depends on factors that we would not associate immediately with the experience itself (politics, economics, gender, health, etc.), which are consistent with our immediate and long-term interests as well as our environment and the way we construct it. Different successive stages characterize the formation of the framework of reception, and they are valid for any kind of receptive experience. Music reception, though, is a special case, since music provides very specific, time-bound instructions for the creation of the framework, unlike other types of experiences. However, framework formation for music is still determined by what has been vaguely and equivocally called "extra-musical considerations": politics, economics, gender, and health, among others.

We can identify different methods for framework formation as what has been called "ways of listening." These are the "engines" that we may put to work as we actively "construct" the music in our minds, making it into part of our environment (whether we do it consciously or unconsciously is a different matter to explore). For example, a piece listened to through the engine of "classification" would create a different framework than a piece listened to through "narrative imagery." Certainly, these engines could be used simultaneously or intermittently.

A special case for these considerations is the composer of Western concert music: How do the composer's engines for the formation of her or his framework of reception work? How does the composer receive, what does he or she receive, and what does he or she do with what he or she receives? How does the composer choose what to keep from what he or she receives, and what to reject, in the process of creation? How do "extra-musical considerations" affect the music itself?

Beyond the Western composer, the implications of this view of reception for the way music evolves in time and the way we record its history are significant, and they can be aided by the use of evolutionary-biological concepts. Even though a goal of our meeting was to discuss the applicability of ideas from evolutionary biology to music reception problems, I did not foresee that Maturana and Varela's concepts would need further explanation and would be questioned even before we tried to apply them to music. I also meant to touch on Memetics but time had run out.

Questions and comments can be directed to the author at talia.jimenez@nyu.edu