The Need for a Metaphysics of Sound

Peter Garland (student, c. 1971): How does one compose music that is deep and authentic, and not just … "sounds?"
James Tenney (teacher): It is a question of feeling things more deeply.

Now I would like to ask a different question: How does one compose music that is deep and authentic to the phenomenon of sound?

The problem is not about how to utilize sounds, to use sound for an end that is unrelated to sound, but about what is sound, the meaning of an entity being a sound, and how sounds should be organized, so that the organized sound, music, becomes authentic to the phenomenon of sound itself. Hence, first of all, to unravel its mystery, the mystery of the phenomenon of sound: the effects, the characteristics, mathematical or physical or psychological or cultural, of sound, and the 'position' of sound in the Cosmos, be it hierarchical or structural. Its ontological status, out of which a hint might be given about how sounds should be organized. Also, the situation might be reversed: first dictate how sound should be organized, by legalization or by speculations over other matters, and then fix the ontological status of music in the Cosmos. Note that I used the phrase 'phenomena of sounds', not 'physical sound' or 'mathematical sound'.

It is understandable that some artists or artistically minded but not well-read or not much experienced amateurs would resist this attempt to 'constrain' music with philosophical and even metaphysical speculations. The reasoning they give will take the form of proclamations that those outside of their idiom and realm will never understand the aesthetics intrinsic to the music they comprehend and hold as noble, and to be really an insider an outsider needs to take a leap of faith [1], meaning that one needs to be initiated into a cult, since the leap is towards a set of criteria. Not even a religion; religious people at least try to persuade and reason. Let's stop wasting time and instead assert that there should be a unified metaphysics that serves as a substratum over which all phenomena unfolds and an associated - since it can never be decoupled from its coupled metaphysics - telos, not necessarily an end-goal but a direction, that endows meaning to all the phenomena. Even aestheticists of the kind mention above have a common telos, roughly aesthetic pleasure, those deny this characterization of their common telos simply didn't reflect enough upon their aesthetic theories; they might be paraphrasing Deleuze.

But here I am proposing that one should not follow any philosopher, alive or dead, and in particular not to compromise to any big-name. It is true that one can be fascinated by the beauty intrinsic to mathematics, the fascination comes, usually, from perceiving and ruminating on the deep connections and mirroring between mathematical entities. There are always questions that intrigue. There are always mysteries. But for music this is unture, a specific mode of thinking needs to be accepted, which is not the same as learning a mode of thinking. Something is lacking in music nowadays, and the mystery of music per se is never, never, directly attacked. The problem is furthermore not really with how historical contingencies are not completely eliminated since it is unclear whether history and culture should be seen as contingent, it depends on the metaphysics one accepts, it is rather a problem of how music not contingent to history gains meaning and its ontological status. There is no cosmology that gives sound a definite place where it can obtain its own being, it is not legitimate to talk about 'historical non-contingent music' since witout history there is no music, in the metaphysical universe of the modern age. Artists merely say that they're searching for forms of art that are eternal and not contingent, but what they have found are all contingent and bound to a specific culture.

As a continuation of "Western" - which is the only culture that factually exists, at least for those who are using digital computers that utilize modern western science - culture, it is true that the way music unfolds in the History should reflect the past part of the time continuum of human civilization and the Spirit, ergo there are something valuable in those criteria and blue prints drawn by artists. There might also be some hints of how sound - and hence music - should be contemplated upon intrinsically. However it is also true that contemporary culture have lost sight of the future course that the culture-civilization continuum should traverse.

Let's be honest, Romanticism is dead, pure art is dead, absolute music is dead; this should not sound novel, but its implication doesn't seem to be of any significance for most people. It is not the problem of how to explore sound in a brand-new manner, of how to synthesize different arts, or even of how to mingle music with politics or mathematics or physics or whatever technology, it is the problem of constructing a background, a structure, in which music unfolds and becomes, in which music generates its own meaning. From the medieval period on, arts and various subjects of intellects decoupled and disassociated from the Medieval Cosmology that transformed the heritage left by the ancient world and gave birth to their modern form, and hence became autonomous. Now the potentials endowed via the metaphysics and cosmology by the scholastic philosophers and theologians, after centuries of unscrupulous use, are almost depleted. Art and music are speaking a false language, a language that is dead, a similar situation being something like a person living in 21st century writing poems in classical Latin or ancient Greek, whilst even the Roman Church has allowed the use of vernacular language in post-Vatican II liturgy.

Speaking of liturgy, it was from the rite of the Latin church, of which the liturgical function is the fixation and integration of personhood directed towards the Word, that required purification of sound, that the purified and abstract music of the Gothic age came into being. It was due to the scholastic shattering of the Medieval Cosmology achived by the mendicant orders that modern science emerged. By the works of theologians with legal leanings of the Baroque age the phenomenological cosmos became mechanical in the age of Leibniz and Newton. In the writings of Rameau, who was roughly a contemporary of Newton, with the abandonment of modal thinking and the adoption and invention of classical harmony, the musical patterns were mechanized, and further physicalized, so that consonances, seen in light of purely physiological consequences of coincidental vibrational frequencies, became no longer metaphysically distinct from dissonances, and the choice of consonances over dissonances are more that of context and taste rather than that of following a rule imposed by some cosmic order. Musical harmony was a subject of highest dignity in the cosmology of the ancient Greeks, it is to the dignity given by the Greeks to the mathematical harmony of numerical ratios, and the theoretization of practical music, which is the same as the immanentization of ancient music theory, by the Roman Church, that contemporary so-called serious music owes. It is surprising that people nowadays are so ignorant about the history of music and how Western music became possible.

The autonomy given by the school men is not without cost. If musicians cannot and do not contemplate upon the phenomenon of sound and generate meaning, intrinsic to something that is factually eternal or at least furthers the course of the time-continuum of the civilization, not intrinsic to a pseudo-autonomous entity subsisting on the legacy that this entity itself laughs at and shows no gratitude towards, then music is over. Forgetting its own origin, the basis upon which musical discourse is built upon, there is no meaning left and the self-appreciation or musicians will soon become self-deception and hypocrisy, since they think, deceive themselves, that what they're cultivating has some intrinsic meaning, insisting that it is autonomous, ignoring the fact that it is now merely a parasite that doesn't know how to contribute back and doesn't even want to; it is then over, and if so, it should be eliminated and destroyed as soon as possible.

A complete synthesis of natural philosophy and metaphysics is in need. From mathematics to physics and engineering, from logic to literature, from visual arts to architecture, from the everyday life of each individual to the civilization as a whole, from historical considerations to future prospects. We need to know what is happening to human spirit, and how the Spirit moves in order to be in touch with that which is true and eternal. Surely some meaning can only be shown, and those who render the meaning are, often, artists and musicians, but it is only when the artist thinks and ruminates on his art, not day-dreaming and paraphrasing other artists and philosophers. Artists need to be philosophers themselves, and being a philosopher doesn't mean merely reading trendy or not philosophers.

Whether it is impossible for meaning to exist without a cosmology is subject to debate and more importantly scrutiny, but it is crucial that the question itself can be asked, without being mocked and even being lessoned by ignorant "music lovers" and musicians who might know their craft but can never comprehend how their craft was formed and where, and in what manner, the meaning they perceive in the craft unfolds. It might be argued that one can never be authentic to the phenomenon of sound itself, since even as a phenomenon something as it is in itself can only be conceived by, say, God, but it might also be argued that this is the first truth that we can learn, and from the fact that something can be recognized as a truth, one can learn about his own telos: there must be something that renders a truth true, which might be the ultimate Truth that music should be directed to.

The task is to generate meaning that is eternal, or for historicists metaphysics, true to the time-continuum of civilization, or for those leaning towards Naturphilosophie, true to the continuous becoming and generation of the Universe. As organization of the phenomena of sounds, music should be true to the ontological status of sound that is true to some metaphysics. To which metaphysics is to be debated and moreover sought for with the direction reversed, that is, by composing authentic music; it is certainly not wise to forbid all dialetical methods for the search of truth, unless one believes that the Universe is once and for all determined upon its creation. Since not everyone is a metaphysician, and at the same time everyone who is reading this short essay ought to have a sense of responsibility towards music, the question should be addressed:

How does one compose music that is deep and authentic to the phenomenon of sound?