4.1 A Musical Ear and Hearing

Having a musical ear is a fundamental quality required for musical creative activity, and for the performance and active understanding of music. The subtle perception of the distinct elements of music (such as pitch, sound and timbre) and their functional connections (tonal, rhythmic, melodic or harmonic) is dependent on this. The musical ear is governed by desires, needs and attitudes. It can respond to not only external but also internal impulses. This means that a person, even without singing or playing an instrument, can in their imagination (thanks to the inner hearing) perform the imagined song or instrumental work—either one which has already been created or one which is created according to their fantasy.

The most important types of musical hearing are considered to be:

  1. 1.

    Absolute or perfect pitch—the ability to identify the pitch of absolute musical sounds without the use of a reference point (or tuning fork);

  2. 2.

    Relative pitch, which can identify the pitch relative to other notes in e.g. a melody, chord or interval;

  3. 3.

    Inner hearing (which we will dwell on further)—the ability to imagine clearly (or hear) in one’s head the future sonic shape of musical units or even whole pieces. For the art of performance, which is devoted to creating the sounds of the musical text, the most relevant is inner hearing.

Musical hearing and ordinary hearing are two different things. It is possible to hear only when, and to the extent that, what is heard and they who hear are connected by a certain understanding.

People talk about hearing music. Analogous concepts might be talents and abilities. Thus, both a musical ear and a talent (for anything, not just music) are simply a potential gift. In speaking about the relationship between musical hearing and ordinary hearing, one should pay attention to the qualitative aspect of the act of listening: what do we want to hear while we are listening? Is it merely the separate sounds or meaningful information presented by their structural relationships? We see here the superiority of inner musical hearing over acoustic hearing, since “those who do not respond to the formal structure of music ‘simply do not hear the music; they hear only musical elements.’”Footnote 1 That is why one needs to distinguish between acoustic hearing (hearing the pitch of different sounds) and a musical hearing—which hears the meaning hidden in the structural relationships.

The intonational purpose of hearing, whether for creation or re-creation, when perceiving intonational structures, is impeded by so-called pointillistic (dotted) hearing or, put another way, the same acoustic hearing. “In music theory, there are several terms derived from the same root: pointed (dotted) rhythm, counterpoint, pointillism. Pointillistic compositions are technically based on the autonomy of the musical sounds. Each sound is perceived as a certain sonic point, as if a particular moment had been given material form. One needs to listen closely to it, examine it and think oneself into it, without connecting it with the adjacent moments of sound. Instead of a stream of sound, or “melos” (Asaf’ev’s term), what emerges in the pointillistic fabric of music is the sum of individual sounds (not a tonal structure based on their relationships—J.R.).”Footnote 2 The intonational and harmonic link passes into the background. The sense of the interval in the tonal relations, which is so necessary and natural for a developed understanding and expression of music, weakens, if it does not disappear altogether. Pointillistic orientation often becomes a brake on the development of musicality. This aspect is characteristic not only of an untrained musical ear but also of the formation of sound—sound creation.Footnote 3

The pedagogy of special instrumentalism must be oriented towards the intonational perception of structural units of varying size, and not towards the so-called clean exposition of the different sounds. Aristotle also emphasised that the whole emerges sooner than the parts (the details), which come into being only as a result of the perception of the whole. And that is the rationale for the appearance of the means of expression—the forms of the details. Pointillism of sound is more observable among performers with perfect pitch (there are, of course, many exceptions) and those with less musicality. This tendency was, incidentally, observed by Carl Martienssen, whose method of sound creation we will discuss later.Footnote 4

These characteristics of hearing coincide in general terms with the traits of pointillism. The concept of the person with absolute or perfect pitch intersects to some extent with the understanding of intonational relations in sound structures. In the intonational process there is nothing absolutely accurate or constant. It is a phenomenon of sound which is part of a process and changes with time. The development of hearing from syncretism to synthesis was relatively slow. In linguistic and musical practice this process passed through an analytical stage when, thanks to intonation, musical tones entered harmony as a defined unit of intonational relations. Hearing turned into “knowledge” of future sound—prior training of both its acoustic (in respect of pitch) and its qualitative characteristics. This is the case also with the language in which we express our thoughts: before something is said, it is first “had in mind.” Sadly, it is often the other way round. Because, as Aristotle said, to speak is to express out loud words which we use to describe what we have in mind. In music “having in mind” is the internal project which through the act of interpretation is manifested externally as the result of our ability to organise structural—intonational—meaningful expression.

No manifestation of musicality is possible without the engagement of inner hearing; since interpretive expression is related to the text, the performer must follow closely the all-important sequence of actions: I see—I hear—I play (or sing). “I see” and “I hear” means seeing and hearing not only a separate sound (as if “I hear with my eyes”) but also, to the extent possible, a broader sub-set of notes, which is perceived by inner hearing as a sound structure. “I see” presupposes seeing not only the scattered dots on the paper (points) but also the direction, the differences in pitch—the interval, and that means a certain tension between the sounds (tonus), as well as the rhythmic relationships between them. “I hear” means I organise the sound units and interval relations in my head, and through inner hearing create the sound of those structures in my imagination. And now as a final act, I capture in sound the structural-intonational unit which I have seen in the notes and heard, that is, perceived.

The term ‘listening’—as well as ‘looking’—evokes the idea of a deep bond, a resolute desire to reach the depths, perhaps even the pleasure of understanding. But all this has a price, in that it requires […] virtual absoluteness, it requires the presence of a person and the acts which constitute the presence: perception, will, attention, silence, commitment, time; these are acts which are completely the opposite of passivity or, one could say, improvisation.Footnote 5

Initially, this sequence of actions appears very difficult. That is why it is so important at the start of people’s musical education to instil the right orientations. “One must listen as to living speech, not thinking about musical grammar; when one perceives verbal speech, understanding comes, not from grammatical analysis, but from an evaluation of the significance of intonation in its every moment (word, accent, tone of speech, and connection of the preceding with the following), in conjugations of groups of moments, and, finally, in the whole. Thus, in music, one cannot neglect a single detail, and must recognize each conjugation of sounds […] as persuasive and natural from the perspective of meaning of music […]. It is very difficult to explain this condition of listening verbally, but it is known to every musician (especially experienced musicians—J.R.) to a greater or lesser degree.”Footnote 6 After all, if you have got used to behaving one way, it is difficult to reorient yourself when you get older—the burden of different experience weighs upon you. “Falsity has its seat in similitude to the true. […] False notes, as musicians call them […], are not lacking in similitude to those which are called true.”Footnote 7

This also applies to the semantic orientation in the process of creating sound. So long as there are no skills, the intermediate act—“I hear”—appears unachievable. Thus, most often there is no attempt to achieve it, but to pass immediately to the third stage—“I play” (or sing). “I see and I play,” in whatever way. It is important that this is clean and rhythmic, without intending a semantic or structural link. Only the effort to understand creates the second act—“I hear”—and leads to interpretive freedom, that is, achievement of the third act—“I play.” If one considers music as the art of intoned meaning (Asaf’ev)—and intonations are created only with the help of the inner hearing—one needs to develop intonational hearing in its true sense—based on the principles of singing, in order to feel the tension (tonus) between the notes which make up the intervals, and to hear the tractive force of the notes. The coloured texture of musical works requires from the performer—the interpreter—actions supported by developed hearing. Its development is assisted by thinking based on vocal principles (which C.P.E. Bach called singende Denken)Footnote 8 with the use of vocal expression. “Endeavour, even with a poor voice, to sing at sight without the aid of your instrument; in that way your ear for music will constantly improve.”Footnote 9

Inner hearing is like an inner language. Here, thoughts and understanding are not expressed but a potential basis for future sound is already created. A decisive process of hearing is necessary, because it comes first in time, and the mind cannot fulfil its task (evaluation) without encountering the activity of hearing. Inner hearing is an expression to oneself, in oneself, but which is conveyed externally through an interpretive act to others—to the perceiver-listener, for whom the music is intended.

4.2 Formation of the Sound Process (Sound Creation)

Every object comes into being

before it manifests itself.

—J. W. Goethe

The method of forming sound expression which, based on psychological principles, was developed by Carl Martienssen, the German piano educationist, and described in his book Individual Piano Technique, is so clear and simple that it is difficult for anyone to disagree with the ideas which it teaches.

These principles apply to all types of performing arts (with only a few exceptions), although the book is a written by a piano teacher. This clearly shows that the principles of performance (interpretation) of music and its expression in sound are common to all performers’ professions. Here it is worth recalling the thought of Andrés Segovia, the Spanish guitarist, that music is the ocean, and instruments are the islands, which are washed by that ocean. All instruments are the children of music, who have to obey the wishes of the musicians—the performers—who guide them according to certain rules. Those rules are particular directions of musical behaviour. These are outlined in Martienssen’s book very clearly and persuasively. The performer’s behaviour is focused on a process based on creativity, without emphasis on the external—physiological—technical parameters often applied in practice.

Martienssen bases his understanding of sound creation on the explanation of the so-called Wunderkind complex. He takes as an example the beginning of W. A. Mozart’s musical journey, since his first steps have been well documented.

The author’s interpretation of the Andante from Cassation in B flat major (KV 63a) of W. A. Mozart, written when the composer was 13 years old [link] [2:49] (recorded in 2007 in the studio of Lithuanian Radio, performed by Juozas Rimas, oboe, and the Sostinės styginių trio [the String Trio of the Capital] of Lithuania).

When talking about a child’s aptitude for music, probably the most important thing is their relationship with sounds. Do they want to find them themselves? Or, when they listen attentively from the side, do they react with pleasure? Martienssen presents a sequence of actions, which would have been relevant for Mozart before he became familiar with the notes: the auditory sphere, the effect of the auditory sphere through the will on motor skills (that is, the relationship with the instrument based on inner hearing), the realisation in sound of the result which is heard, and its evaluation.

Such a scheme is typical of any conscious activity: I know—I do—I evaluate. The concept of “perspective” is very apt to explain the scheme. The etymology of this word very clearly substantiates the notion of the process of sound creation (from the Latin, perspiciō—I see clearly). Here one can similarly offer an explanation of the concept of articulation (from the Latin, articulō—I speak clearly)—when I understand what I have to say, to turn it into sound, then I know how to do this. Never to bypass thought through action. “Between hearing and the result, between hearing and sound, each of which stimulates the other, there exists in direct dependence an area of movements and the bodily organs which perform them; the stronger the will of the auditory sphere becomes due to the heterogeneity of the goals, the more flexible and stronger the organs participating in the process of playing also become.”Footnote 10 The organs which arouse sense and movement are harmonised with each other. The former symbolise and guide our ability to perceive, the latter our ability to act. The result is that any expression is an expression of sense—of understanding.

The sequence of actions for the average performer are, according to Martienssen: motor skills—the will to apply motor skills—the keyboard (fingerboard)—the auditory sphere. The motor skills (the favoured “technique”) cannot, like hearing, set as their goal the contextual—intonational—quality of sound. That is an unconscious, schematic movement which, thanks to a degree of practice, has acquired a quality of automaticity. After all, the fixing of a particular key, valve or place on the fingerboard guarantees the production of a corresponding sound; and only after this moment of production, does it trigger evaluation of the result by hearing. Maybe therein lies the cause of “false” playing. After all, if one hears what must come out as sound, the sensory and motor organs engage in tandem. This is called ideomotor response—action aroused by thoughts and images. And now for the young Mozart’s actions when he is acquainted with the notes: the sphere of vision (the notes)—the auditory sphere—the will of the auditory sphere applied to the motor skills—the production of sound (the realisation of hearing) and the feedback of the action to the auditory sphere—or whether what was heard, intoned through the inner hearing, has occurred. Or to put it another way: I see (the notes)—I hear—I play (or sing). However, only an understanding of this necessity enables the act “I hear” and brings one closer to the correct execution of the third action—“I play (or sing).” With such a plan of action, rehearsals also become meaningful, since the aim of repetition is to realise again what was wanted—what was heard. In contrast to the above sequence of actions stands the usual (frequently applied) scheme of training and action: sphere of vision—motor skills—the will to apply motor skills—the keyboard (fingerboard, valves)—the auditory sphere. The feedback loop from the resulting sound does not connect to the auditory sphere but to the field of the motor skills: it came out (“technically”) or not. Unfortunately, such a sequence of actions is almost the norm (let’s admit it!).

Hearing should not be limited to the control of pitch but should have the quality of directing intonationally. This is the reason for agreeing and believing that motor orientation is unwise and uncreative. Meanwhile, the method called the “Wunderkind complex” corresponds to both the nature of music and the logic of thought.

A comparison can be made with the way in which each person learns to speak during their ontogenetic development. Every child is a Wunderkind when learning to speak. “The first impulse, as with the further process of learning to speak, comes from the field of hearing. If there is no such impulse, as is the case with deaf-mute children from birth, then despite the fact that there are normal speech-forming muscles, the child is deaf or, more precisely, deaf-mute.”Footnote 11 Here Martienssen was quoting the educationist Adolf von Strümpell. Martienssen also bases his statements on another authority, Theodor Ziehen: “Usually in the process of speech the motor centre is not innervated by the field of images, but initially the audible image of the word arises in the auditory sphere and only after that is the motor centre of speech innervated.”Footnote 12

The will of hearing (auditory volition) determines the quality of improvement from one’s first relationship with music through to the level of mature proficiency. That is why acoustic hearing and musical hearing are to be distinguished. The first is the hearing of sounds; the second is the perception and expression of the musical language they create. Aristotle argued that sound existed in two forms: sound in action and sound as a possibility. The transformation of visual impressions (the symbols of the notes) into a resulting sound is probably what Robert Schumann had in mind when he said, “You must reach the stage where you are able to understand a piece of music just from seeing it on paper.”Footnote 13

The musician’s relationship with sound is conditioned by their experience: whether they extract only sounds or whether what is formed from the sound material has tonal qualities and participates in the process of intonation. The tonal effect is determined by the many different connections which emanate from the sound and are directed towards it. The sound is “obligated,” correspondingly energised in the context of the work (in the intonational field), and any tone which sounds or will sound separately is a participant in some aspect (in some mood or idea).

To explain the importance of hearing, Martienssen proposes a special definition of the will (volition) which creates the sound—schöpferische Klangwille—or, in short, sound creation (my term, in Lithuanian: garsokūra—J.R.). Sound creation is a complex phenomenon. So, for the purpose of explanation, it is worth dissecting its component parts. This is exactly what Martienssen does.

The first element of sound creation is sound pitch volition (Tonwille). This is aimed only at fixing a corresponding sound pitch. It is the ability to imagine the sound of the corresponding pitch and to desire that it be produced. This ability is not uniform among musicians. As mentioned earlier, there are two types of hearing: so-called perfect (absolute) pitch and relative pitch. Possession of absolute pitch is thought to be a sign of exceptional musicality but Martienssen asserts this is not necessarily so. In support, he compares memory with talent and argues that a good memory does not always testify to special intellectual ability; in fact, to the contrary, in some cases a developed memory and mental agility are inversely proportional. Those who make claims about the special role of perfect pitch should examine its possessors from the perspective of creativity (particularly bearing in mind the relativity rather than invariability of the organisation of the musical process) and then see how many people with absolute pitch are crudely scratching the violin strings or crashing the piano keys. Of course, absolute pitch is a talent which smooths the path towards proficiency; however, proficiency depends on other factors. So, the first element of sound creation in Martienssen’s system—sound pitch volition—is accorded the lowest place in the chain of sound creation elements (particularly in the art of piano playing, where the sound pitch is fixed and does not require effort from the performer).

The second element of sound creation is timbre volition (Klangwille). “It is the task of technical, instrumental and artistic training to teach a person how to create the optimal colour from each instrument. […] Timbre volition is an element of a higher order than sound pitch volition.”Footnote 14 This seems paradoxical, but more gifted students are more likely to have timbre volition than sound pitch volition. “The piano demands a particular effort of timbre volition. This instrument has an inherent passionlessness (Sprödigkeit) of timbre; this has to be overcome.”Footnote 15

Practice shows that modifications of timbre can be achieved through improving the activity of hearing (particularly inner—creative—hearing), by examining the special features of each interpreted work. Sound is what we hear, whilst timbre is what we perceive it to be. Sound is an object, whilst timbre is an integral characteristic. “Timbre is the otherness of tone and the material which constitutes the tone; timbre is the sphere of embodiment of tone, the qualitative manifestation of sound pitch definition.”Footnote 16 In music theory, timbre is usually perceived, together with pitch, volume and duration, as a special characteristic of sound. Timbre enables one’s hearing to pick out different voices, instruments (and occasionally instrumentalists playing the same type of instrument) and generally all the sources of sound when its other characteristics are identical. Timbre is the most important characteristic of the sound source. It is influenced and affected by the objectives of expression raised by the intonational process. The functions of timbre are well explained through the concept of sonorism: the transformation of the resonance of the sound, and the exposure of the sound’s colours and consonances. Although sonoristics are considered to be a kind of creative system based on the transformation of sounds and their timbres, such actions with sounds are also applicable in sound creation. An important component part of timbre is vibrato. This is a periodic pulsation which conveys the impression of movement of sound. This pulsation is connected with the pitch, intensity and timbre of the sound, the result of which is flexibility, depth and richness of sound. Timbre and dynamics belong to the performer’s sphere of activity. Thus, the performer’s hearing must be developed in these directions—that is, through timbre and dynamics. These are the qualitative features of expression. However, both timbre and dynamics, and even deflections from a fixed pitch, are determined by intonation as the main component of musical expression, dictating and organising all the means of expression.

The third element of sound creation in Martienssen’s classification is line volition (Linienwille). This is the first element of those which, making use of sound pitch (interval) volition and timbre volition, create a musical phenomenon. Here the author again emphasises the role of different types of hearing (absolute and relative) in forming a sound process—a line. He argues that among the people with absolute pitch there are so many formalists who hear only the aspect of a musical phenomenon focused on the point rather than the process, which is the pressing movement from within one sound into another sound, and not just away from one sound towards another sound. Melody is not “a blend of notes, as all unmusical people think.”Footnote 17 Melody can be described as a sequence of evenly spaced sounds. In homophony, melody is perceived as synonymous with music itself (melody deriving from the Greek mélos and ōidḗ: song and singing). “Melos” is the term invented by Asaf’ev to define the nature of music as a becoming. “Melos, first of all, includes that which is primary in music—song-like quality, connectedness, and dynamic quality, but dynamic quality, not in the sense of accentuated, separate shades of the force of sound, but as the operation of forces which condition the sound experienced in the correlations of pitches, in the purposeful interchange of tones, and in their conjugation.”Footnote 18 Melodic hearing serves the act of interpretation through perception of the melody. The sensing of the intervals (the dosage of the energy of their combination) is the basis of melodic hearing and a sign of musicality. It manifests itself in the sense of harmony, of the position and intonational role within it of the various tones which constitute it. The sensing of the intervals comes from a sense of harmony; this is a dialectical relationship between the whole and the detail, where the latter is determined by the character of the whole, and it is closely connected with the elements (details) which constitute it. In the process of expression the details play a very important role in determining the quality of the action. After all, the differences in interpretation of the work itself are determined precisely by a different approach towards to the details of the intonational process.

The fourth element of sound creation is rhythm volition (Rhythmuswille). Martienssen allocates this element primarily to keyboard instruments. This element of sound creation is essential for pianists, since some of the earlier elements, especially sound pitch volition, are unachievable or difficult for these instruments to access. “In the beginning there was rhythm,”—this saying is attributed to a pianist (Hans von Bülow). Rhythm volition is thus an indispensable “element of the pianist’s creative sound volition.”Footnote 19 (For more on rhythm, see Chap. 9.)

The fifth element is form volition (Gestaltwille). Form volition resides in the composer’s soul during the creative process like an insight into, or sketch of, the future work (“seeing with the ears”). The general insight consists of an outline of the whole, an idea which subordinates the details to itself, since the whole (as mentioned above) resides in each detail and is reflected in every means of expression which serves it (the whole). That is why it is so important for the performer to absorb it, to enter into that whole, to feel its idea, so that the chosen means of expression are consonant with it. In musical activity there is a division of “work”: the activity of the composer finishes when the text passes to the performer. The task of the performer is as far as possible to convert into sound (intone) the insight of the composer fixed in the text. This is the law of the art of musical performance.

The sixth element is forming volition (Gestaltungswille)—the volition of the performer. In the process of performance the metapersonal form volition, embodied in the work, and the personal forming volition of the performer (which as a matter of process actualises that form) combine. Thus, each interpreted work will have a subjective colour related to the characteristics of the interpreter. The subjective component of each performance is from a psychological perspective so obvious that it is surprising it is still persistently held that an interpretation with objective meaning is possible.

4.3 The Psychology of Tone

There is no sense without tone.

—Aleksandr PotebnyaFootnote 20

It is difficult to explain tone in words, especially its physical causality. This can only be learnt through resonance. Resonance reveals the existence of two substances within it. The external physical substance includes all the routes of sound extraction and the processes of sound vibrations which reach our ear. Meanwhile, the processes which take place inside the auditory organ belong to the field of physiology. At this stage, vibrations of air are transmitted to the brain through the most subtle impulses. Their entry within is connected with the passing of the external stimulus to the senses. From here, from the external transformation, begins the psychological part of the process.

The sound only psychically becomes an object of that other world, that is, turns into a tone. Sounds are empowered primarily due to dynamic forces, which actively possess them and permeate them with their energy. The strength of the impulse, the initial state or the culminating tension, all forms of build-up and decay, determine the individual existence and meaning of the tone. A broad variety of energies can permeate it so powerfully that sometimes our attention is completely riveted. Thus, musical ability is related not only to hearing but also to the ability to perceive the auditory impressions as the bearers of the formative forces.Footnote 21

The three spheres engaged in the musical process—physics, physiology and psychology—are inseparable. The process of translation into sound and the process of tone creation are based on the influence of the energetic (psychic) power of the tone on the acoustic. We first hear the tone through our inner hearing with its qualities corresponding to the intonational process, and only then does it “explode” outside, thanks to the physiological apparatus (breathing, hand movements). “A tone as a mere sound has no content. Therefore the tone must first be made capable, by artistic treatment, of assimilating the expression of an inner life.”Footnote 22 Only a consciously aestheticised sound turns into a musical tone. The sounds come into effect due to the dynamic forces which actively possess and permeate them with corresponding energy. “The manifestation of tone, “tonation,” if it is not simply the expression of a separate affect (a shout, an interjection), is always a becoming, that is, it is given as continuity, as fluidity, as “vocal tonus,” the limits of which are naturally defined by the volume of breathing and the moments of breath. This continuity is governed by rhythm and timbre.”Footnote 23 “To be on the tone in music, i.e. to intone accurately, is the rule of intonation as the statement of a thought or feeling in either verbal or musical speech.”Footnote 24

Objectively, there is no movement of tone, since sound measured by the quantity of its vibrations is a constant. It is something else which moves. So, in fact, no reference point which is merely two-dimensional (that of pitch and duration) establishes an intonational action. Music of itself is immaterial, it completely lacks any materiality, but its effect is delight which is incomparable; dynamic sensations are connected not with external physical “worlds” but with psychic processes, which determine the laws governing the activity of material phenomena in melodic lines and harmonies. The life of the tone is determined by Her Majesty, Intonation—as the soul of the music and the bearer of its meaning. “On the one hand, tone is sound in its quality of pitch; on the other hand, it is tonus, tension, the stages of movement of intonation, and of the emotional trajectory directly reflected in intonation […]. The meanings of tones and notes are contextual, determined by the music itself. And only the combination of tones and notes, the intonational formulas and the thematic formations appear to be able to accumulate semantic potential.”Footnote 25

The separate tone which forms the starting point of the process shows first that it is not possible to base the perception and interpretation of music on the separate tone alone. A beautiful voice, or the beautiful timbre of an instrument, are insufficient, if important, factors in the musical process. However, the activity of music as a sound art is sensed also in the separate sound, though, of course, only in its acoustic form. It is not the physical effect of the sound on the hearing which determines the laws of the psyche governing the perception and expression of music but rather it is these laws which subjugate the sound to their will. An artistic idea, even in the narrowest segment, in the formation of a separate sound, determines its [the sound’s] characteristics. The whole places the details under an obligation; it infects the details with itself. Without such a basic attribute of musical perception, the music could not acquire its specific forms or construct a unified system of connections. It would be only a chaotic hotchpotch of individual sound impressions, since the perception of form and order is determined by special factors of movement, space and matter. “What is moved is moved by the energy of the movement that moves the universe. The nature of the universe affords [motion] to the universe. The thinking essence by its nature controls the energy.”Footnote 26 With reference to music, one should focus primarily on the organisation of sounds according to certain regular qualities, one of which is the imagination—hearing, or so-called advance hearing, which generates the appropriate energy necessary for the creation of intonation. At the start of the action, there should be a model of the phenomenon in its potential form.

Western classical music has devoted practically all of its attention to the musical framework, which it calls the musical form. It has neglected to study the laws of sonorous energy, to think of music in terms of energy, which is life. Thus it has produced thousands of magnificent frameworks which are often rather empty, for they are only the results of a constructive imagination, which is very different from the creative imagination. The melodies themselves move from sound to sound, but the intervals are empty abysses, for the notes lack sonic energy. The inner space is empty.Footnote 27

How this conflicts with the process-intonational nature of music! Music is never merely the sum or the change of external stimuli but grows out of psycho-energetic processes, which are realised in the sound material. Supplying and influencing the sound through psychic components which are conditioned by the creative abilities of the interpreter, we convert acoustic sound into musical tone. Music is “a system of organized motion; it is not an [anarchic] succession of sound complexes, but rather, their strictly and mutually determined detection in the process of intonation.”Footnote 28 So the attribution of a particular tone to the sound expression is a matter of the artistic competence of the interpreter.

4.4 Modulation (Not Only as a Change of Tonality)

The expressive modulation of the voice is the basis of all singing.

—Friedrich Schlegel

Modulation (Latin: modulatio meaning rhythmicality, harmony, moderation) is to be understood as a controlled movement, a change of the pitch, timbre or strength of the sound when singing or playing. Music is the science of how to modulate well (St Augustine). This is the definition of music itself in many treatises from antiquity to the Renaissance. Aristoxenus had already written: “What is modulation and how does it appear? [It arises] together with the phenomenon of affect (páthos) in the texture of the melody.”Footnote 29 Although the Greek word páthos has many meanings (such as feeling or passion), in this case it means the variation of moodFootnote 30 in the course of the musical process. Contemporary (scholastic) theory defines modulation as the transition from one tonality to another, secured by the cadence. Meanwhile, the word scientia (science), which comes from an early definition of music, means the knowledge of something or the ability to do something. Science is also the sum of the references and rules, which thereby offer the possibility of doing something well through science, in this case—to modulate. Apart from music, the term “modulation” was used also in rhetoric. It was claimed that modulation was an artistic suppleness deployed when delivering a speech. One of the meanings of the word modus (from which modulatio derives) is mode. And mode is one of the main concepts describing the specific qualities of music, such as moderation, relationship and sound-pitch organisation. In music, when construing modulation in the broader sense, it is to be understood not as a noun but as a gerund (a verbal noun).

But if modulation has an active character, where should one look for this? Obviously in the range of meanings of the word modus. St Augustine writes in his treatise De musica: “One can speak about moderation (modus) only in connection with movement in one form or another.”Footnote 31 In fact, if the concept of moderation potentially implies movement, then modulatio is inevitably connected with movement in practice. “Anything that endures sacrifices its ability to make an impression. Anything that constitutes the walls of our life, the backdrop of our consciousness, so to speak, forfeits its capacity to play a role in that consciousness.”Footnote 32 Movement is controlled by moderation, and the sense of moderation is provided by knowledge of the subject. Knowledge of the particular guiding principles allows one to grasp and reveal the very being of the music—its idea, its essence. “Being does not coincide with constancy, nor becoming with change. I can describe being as changing constancy, and becoming as constant change. […] The object (the creative work—J.R.) is constant but its pure inside is revealed only in the mode of becoming.”Footnote 33 Modulation is that concealed, fundamental, unmeasurable how much in respect of how, what cannot be taught because it cannot be precisely defined.

Although through history the range of the concept and use of modulatio has changed, the image of movement, or more accurately, the organisation of movement, has remained efficacious. Through our understanding of movement modulatio is connected with another ancient term rhytmos. As is well known, ancient aesthetics connected rhythm not only with music but also with sculpture and architecture—what we would today consider as static arts. We can only talk about rhythm here because of the link with the concept of modus—harmony, image, moderation, bringing order to the chaos of matter. Rhythm is not only organisation of the flow of time; it is control of the sound material. In this sense we can talk about modulation in terms of the art of movement, but the concept of movement means not only movement, or flowing (rhéō meaning to flow, to move, to be in constant movement; pánta rheĩ—“everything is in flux” [Heraclitus]—this is the origin of the concept of rhythm), but also the division, distribution and deliberate organisation of that movement. Thus, Augustine, straight after the definition scientia bene modulandi, offers a definition in which movement becomes the central action: musica est scientia bene movendi, that is, music is the science of good (correct, intelligent) movement. Three hundred years after Augustine, the Venerable Bede (about 673–735 CE) identified modulation with rhythm: in Greek rhytmos, in Latin modulatio. Augustine, in understanding music as scientia bene movendi, seems to presage an era in which movement, play and contrast were essential. This was the Baroque era, which was still more than a thousand years in the future. The primacy of movement in Baroque underlined the radical temporality and irreversibility of existence.

Although the understanding of the term modulatio has narrowed over time, the action itself has lived on in meaningful interpretations. After all, what makes a sound expression vibrant or attractive? Only the change of mood, the dynamism of sound in the change of timbre and intensity of movement of the stream of sounds. To put it briefly, modulation is also a transition, a move from something to something (qualitatively), from somewhere to somewhere (linearly, quantitatively), where the nuances are dictated by the intonation of that “something.” Asaf’ev, when speaking about the processual nature of the musical form, in terms of the organisation of musical movement, explains it as controlled movement, and more precisely, as becoming, which also occurs through the modulation of tones, because “there is no stationary musical material whatsoever.”Footnote 34 Music emerges in the process of becoming, of changing during its emergence. The definition of music can also be understood as the science of beautiful (necessary, correct) becoming. After all, the beauty of the becoming—of the process—of music is revealed through the modulations of sound dictated by intonation. Because music is duration, movement, change. “Time—a duration which is becoming—is the very essence of being.”Footnote 35 And the essence of music as a temporal art.

4.5 Intuition

The word “intuition” (from the Latin intuitio meaning “I look intently”) means a particular tendency to discern, to perceive without evidence. Some scientists (Henri-Louis Bergson, Sigmund Freud) have treated intuition as the primary cause of a creative act hidden in the depths of the subconscious. The individuality of an intuitive act is determined by personality traits: one’s emotional mood, openness to new experience and sense of wonder as an intention to act. Intuition helps to avoid behavioural stereotypes, and thus also any trivial interpretive judgement. Intuition comes from accumulated experience, from the store of previously accumulated knowledge. It acts on the basis of inner conviction, and so the richer the experience, the more reliable the intuition. In the end, all psychic phenomena have an emotional rather than a rational basis. They are only subsequently rationalised and transferred to the reservoir of experience. Confidence in intuition leads to verification and affirmation of its data in a rational way. Bergson, a proponent of the intuitive philosophy of art, treats the creative act of the artist as a constant expansion of the boundaries of consciousness and creative space: a revelation of the new, the not yet known, the unforeseen. “In the process of artistic creation Bergson sees not only the results of intuitive factors but also the results of activity of the intellect. All the complex and creative reorganisation of the artistic material, which is carried out on the intellectual plane, the artist later directs in a different, intuitive direction, where preconceived rational attitudes disappear. Feeling intuitively the new direction of the dissemination of the idea, he ‘follows an indivisible emotion, which the intellect undoubtedly helps to be expressed in the music.’”Footnote 36

What is commonly called intuition is essentially experience which is unconsciously realised (experience in a latent form). After all, without experience, without a corresponding informational or emotional basis, there is also no inner sense, since there is simply no material for this activity. Nothing comes from nothing.

“Intuition and discourse (from the French discours meaning speech, type of speech, text—J.R.) are both involved, though in different ways, in the processes of cognition as a whole; sometimes it is intuition that lies at the origin of discursive thinking and sometimes it marks the end and is the indirect outcome of mental processes.”Footnote 37 Discourses are to be understood here as both musical and extra-musical. It is important that these are texts and processes which have meaning, and which help through their understanding to bring one nearer to the revelation of the meaning of the works being interpreted.

Cognition takes place in two ways: with the senses and with the mind. With the senses we receive and experience the material which is addressed to us, and we feel its mood (if we are speaking about music), while with the mind we explore it and look for a deeper meaning, not only a sensory meaning. Sensory cognition is a direct statement of what exists. Sensory—intuitive—cognition is spontaneous; it is like empathy for a thing or event which is the object of cognition. Intuition is this type of cognition, in which the power of cognition is stimulated by the direct presence of the object. In that response of the senses lies the intuition of the thing.

There have been many approaches to intuition in history. Augustine, who was influenced by Platonism, understood intuition more in the sense of poetic inspiration. Thomas Aquinas regarded intuition only as a general orientation but not as a separate means of cognition. There is a respectable basis for calling intuition a general orientation. Intuition is a bridge to the deeper waters of cognition: knowledge which is intellectual, reflective of one’s world view, logical, philosophical and, clearly, related to a specific discipline and supported by elements of one’s general enlightenment.

As already mentioned, Bergson created a philosophy of intuition and called it new. He argued that intuition is an instinct which has acquired self-awareness. Thus, intuitive cognition is in fact instinctive cognition, transformed into this due to appropriate experience. Meanwhile, the reality which a person directly experiences in intuition is becoming—duration (durée), and this is directed by the vital impetus (élan vital). The latter participates in the intonational process which actualises the music and guides the process.

Thanks to mechanisms of intuition, humans perfected the language of art or music. Non-verbal information is very important for communication. A person expresses and receives most of their emotional information not through words but through the language of hearing, movements, gestures, colours, lines and touch. According to Bergson, art is a genuine sphere of intuitive cognition, revealing what we are often unable to notice or understand.

Intuition (mentis intuitus) is the basis, the driving force, of thought. Apart from direct encounter with an object, intuition is based on analogy—on using closely related elements of experience to resolve concrete problems.

General statements about intuition, again by way of analogy, assist also with an understanding of musical intuition. The psychic processes which determine intuition are artistic perception, the qualities of the performer’s thinking, visual and auditory responses from hearing, and emotional reactivity.

Musical perception occurs with the active participation of both the intuitive and reflexive spheres. In the different stages of perception, the importance of intuition and analysis, one against the other, varies. But a result attaining its full potential is only possible through each interacting naturally with the other. Listening to music is very important for the development of intuition. It is like learning a language which requires one to hear it and accumulate both a stock of words and intonational vocabulary. Contact with music determines the formation of intonational shapes and sound images.

Although the modern science of psychology does not consider intuition to be a creative gift, musical practice persuades us that some forms of heuristic intuition can be attributed to the structures of musical talents. Like all creative gifts, intuition too is based on certain data and is developed through encouragement and steering in the right direction. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) there is no method for the development of a performer’s intuition, that is, there are no “recipes” one can use to enable creative intuition to “emerge.” But it would be worthless if there was such a thing. It would eliminate creativity and a person’s freedom, and without them art cannot exist.

4.6 Becoming: An Essential Feature of the Phenomenon of Music

It is important to understand the fundamental features of each art and answer the question: what makes the creative work of one or other art artistic from the standpoint of that specific art? In a temporal art, such as music, through what is artistic quality expressed? Music is a processual art characterised by the idea of becoming. In becoming, in processuality, lies a certain contradiction, which is expressed in the dynamic balance between the opposing forces or structures which make up the segment. In Latin the word which means relation—relatio—comes from the word refero, meaning to bring back, to recall, to attribute to something. “Relation” is based on the latter meaning, because its essence is “the connectedness of one thing with another.”Footnote 38 This results in a particular harmony, in which the effect of conflicting forces is expressed in the process which creates the sound, and that is a musical—an energetic or intonational—action. “Every dynamic, every change always shows that it is regulated by laws. Reality is constant, changes are regulated by laws.”Footnote 39

A creative work is expressed through the production of sound, a process accommodating all the expressions which reveal its artistic quality and are governed by certain rules. Musical expression requires a knowledge and understanding of these rules. “What is cognition? In the broadest sense, organized becoming.”Footnote 40 This is an activity based on understanding, which transports the being of the music into time through intonation. “The opening up of being is its manifestation.”Footnote 41

Becoming is the basis of time, and this means that it is the ultimate basis [последнее основание] of temporal art, that is, the ultimate basis of music itself. […] Becoming is above all emergence. However, this emergence is also at the same time extinction. In becoming there are no isolated points which, having once emerged, remain forever immovable, constant and insusceptible to extinction. To the contrary, any point of becoming, at the moment it emerges, is also extinct. So, it is not in any way possible to divide becoming into stable points or to imagine it as consisting of separate immovable points.Footnote 42

Becoming is a dialectic combination of continuity and interruption, of emergence and extinction of tension and recession. One thing becomes something else through transformation. A work which has acquired written form becomes, through interpretation as transformation in sound, an autonomous derivative from the perspective of the author who has created it. The interpreter must release the potential of the being of the work and create the conditions for it to become what it is, as a possible phenomenon of being. To explain such action, Hans-Georg Gadamer uses the concept of transformation (Verwandlung), which helps to clarify one more aspect of the existence of art. First and foremost, it should be noted that transformation is not merely change. After all, change, however total, is always accidental change, which has no effect on the substance. Transformation, however, is a substantive act, where the new derivative is different to what it was. It is also the transformation of the visual form of the work, the sign-based form, into its actualisation in sound through intonation.

The text of a musical work only becomes a creative work in this process—in becoming, through the realisation of its artistic-semantic potential. The creator does not finish their work, in the sense that a work of art without a perceiver-interpreter is meaningless. The transformation into a derivative is namely a transformation into a state in which truth is revealed to the extent it is understood. The relationship of transformation (an act of doing) and the derivative is the equivalent of the link which Aristotle established between action and result (enérgeia and érgon). Incidentally, he emphasised the priority of energy, as conscious action, over result. It is the process and its quality which determine its consequence—the result. The cause of the action—on what account something is done (imagining and hearing the future entity)—determines what is done, that is, the result of the intonational action. The idea is the image of the purpose of the activity; the image (expression) results to the extent that the idea is understood. “When a melody sounds, for example, the individual tone does not utterly disappear with the cessation of the stimulus or of the neural movement it excites. When the new tone is sounding, the preceding tone has not disappeared without leaving a trace. If it had, we would be quite incapable of noticing the relations among the successive tones; in each moment we would have a tone, or perhaps an empty pause in the interval between the sounding of two tones, but never the representation of a melody.”Footnote 43

Since becoming is the basis of any kind of musical phenomenon, this may also explain its special expressiveness. We would not be wrong to claim that the inner excitement which a musical phenomenon generates in us is incomparable to the aesthetic impression offered by non-musical forms of art. That is because music does not provide a stable and static image, although perhaps a very beautiful one, but reveals the very emergence of the impression, its appearing, and although it immediately disappears, it becomes a support to another section of becoming with its own impressions.

The essence of beauty emerges through action. And as a happening it is observable. Immediately it catches hold of a person, it fills them with pleasure, its vivacity draws them in. It is probably difficult to find the right word to describe that.Footnote 44

After all, life too is becoming, a process, full of surprises, inexplicable impressions and the desire to understand all of this. Becoming accommodates all the characteristics which establish a musical phenomenon. In the action (becoming), all at the same time, the material of the past is used for the present; and the future is heard (prepared) while it is linked to what is happening now. This is the process of intonation, and the latter is a constant of music. “The interpretation itself,” Nietzsche argues, “is a form of the will to power, [it] exists (but not as ‘being’ but as a process, a becoming) as an affect.”Footnote 45 A text is a possibility of interpretation. You can, if the work is done beforehand to prepare the ability, the interpretation.

What is the logical structure of becoming, what are its most important characteristics? Becoming is made up of a multiplicity of points. Each real point of the process is perpetually straining to take the place of the adjacent point, perpetually pulling towards its neighbour. “Every temporal being ‘appears’ in some running-off mode (from the Latin modus meaning manifestation, difference, norm—J.R.) that changes continuously, and in this change the ‘object in its mode of running off’ is always and ever a different object. And yet we continue to say that the object and each point of its time and this time itself are one and the same. We will not be able to term this appearance—the ‘object in its mode of running off’—‘consciousness’ […]. The ‘consciousness’, the ‘experience’, is related to its object by means of an appearance in which precisely the ‘object in its way of appearing’ [Objekt im Wie] stands before us.”Footnote 46

Matter or mind, reality has appeared to us as a perpetual becoming. It makes itself or it unmakes itself, but it is never something made. Such is the intuition that we have of mind when we draw aside the veil which is interposed between our consciousness and ourselves.Footnote 47

Becoming is the creation of intonational changes which occur in the process of interpretation—a creative act associated with an understanding of the particular norms and laws which determine the musical phenomenon. This is an anticipatory action, which manifests itself in a preemptive characteristic of the brain, which is distinguished by cognitive activation of the subject, which in response to instant stimuli can warn or anticipate (from the Latin anticipation meaning an image formed in advance) actions which have not yet happened, making use of past experience. In the everyday, regular acts of life, a person is constantly making use of this feature of consciousness. First, they know what they will say, and only then does they say it. In music too, this should be the fundamental principle of sound expression: to hear, and to imagine in advance what is to emerge through the playing or singing. This principle should also apply when reading the notes on the sheet. For this you need an appropriate technique, which enables you to take in with your eyes as much of the text to be converted into sound as possible in order to absorb it in the mind. Unfortunately, without constant practice of such activity, the result is an act where both the action of visual fixing and its conversion into sound takes place in a single moment. So in this case it is not appropriate to talk about anticipation.

The subject of music is specifically different from any other form of artistic subject in that it does not yield any words, any images, phenomena or facts, but is itself alone the flow or becoming (it is not clear of what or, more precisely, of anything whatsoever). But secondly, this is some sort of special becoming. It is not a becoming of facts. It is a becoming of meaning […], and besides, a very internal and real becoming.Footnote 48

The process of interpretation is the uninterrupted provision of the work (as a unit containing idea and meaning, which is the same at all moments of its becoming), and of its constituent parts, with appropriate semantic means of expression—this is precisely what affords the work the actual possibility of its coming to be.

Becoming reveals the musical process objectively as the transition of a sequence of sounds linked by relations of quantities—of pitches and durations—into a change in quality—of the degrees of tension of the tones and intensity of the movement. Thus, the perception of music, as well as the possibility of its expression, should be based on awareness of the proposition that music is rhythmic movement which becomes through intonation.

4.7 Imagination

Imagination is the formation of new images through transforming the visual experience stored in the memory. In musical terms, “visual” should be understood as an experience in sound and intonation. Imagination (the image in music is a sound event) makes it possible to anticipate the result of an activity (the interpretive act), even before the beginning of the action. For what does not exist in the mind does not exist in expression. Any expression is based on an understanding of what is expressed. The action is inspired by a certain will. This is the driver of the execution of what is understood, imagined, heard. Imagination can activate understanding or, conversely, understanding can activate imagination, while this in its turn can stimulate feelings, directing them appropriately through the power of the understanding will.

The will seems always to have to relate to an idea. We cannot imagine, for example, having carried out an act of will without having detected that we have carried it out. […] The act of the will is not the cause of the action but is the action itself. One cannot will without acting.Footnote 49

The main trend of the activity of the imagination is the transformation of visual images (musical experiences) contained in the memory, so that a new, hitherto non-existent, situation is created. The action of transformation is closely connected with the polysemantic nature of understanding (interpretation). We often hear the same works interpreted differently. Even the performer themselves cannot repeat their own interpretation in an identical way. “There is an imaginary in music whose function is to reassure, to constitute the subject hearing it.”Footnote 50 The imagination shapes the contours of action, intuition, knowing and perception. Sound images created by the inner hearing can also be attributed to the imagination.

The imagination is divided into active and passive according to the degree of activity. And the active divides into the creative and recreative. The creative is based on images which are realised by creating corresponding original and valuable products and objects. It is necessary for both artistic and technical creation. The recreative creates images from a description, a narrative or musical text. “To be fruitful, [the power of imagination] must have received much material from the external world; for this alone fills its store-house.”Footnote 51 The product of the recreative imagination is not realised immediately. It is still necessary to prepare “instruments” for its realisation—means of expression. So creative qualities are also helpful to the recreative imagination: the creative creates the sign-based form of the sound image, while the recreative also creates, that is, realises through sounds, what the composer has registered in signs.

Etymologically “imagination” is connected with imago—with representation, image, and with illustration—portrayal and repetition. This etymology reflects both a psychological reality and a spiritual truth. Imagination is a kind of psychic activity which takes possession of us. It is a way of creating musical images—sound images—in our minds, which we can reflect on and order in our own way. We can play with our imagination and use it in various ways for our own creative ideas. It is possible to draw a comparison from the physiological field. When you imagine food (especially when you are hungry), saliva is released, and this means that the organism is ready to act—to absorb the food which it is about to take. So it is with the artistic image—or the sound image. It enables you to act creatively: to realise what has been imagined—what has been organised intonationally by the inner hearing.

It is necessary to emphasise the difference between the mind (thought) and the imagination.

The rational mind thinks atomically and only of being on hold; it has access and approach only to this through its instrumentarium (logical and evidence-based); while there is precisely no transition within it towards being which is living and continuously moving (that is, becoming – J.R.). Meanwhile, the imagination, conversely, favours the living continuity of the Whole […]. In the [imagination] we rise up inspired by Being as if we are its living organ and voice.Footnote 52

It is not for nothing that we speak of a “cold mind.” But it has to follow the “hot” imagination, as the beginning which harmonises its data. There is logical thought and there is intelligent insight—intellectual intuition. The former thinks in concepts, the latter in ideas, visions and insights (hearing). So the latter is like a synthesis of thought and imagination. Immanuel Kant, in his “Critique of Pure Reason,” revealed the positive meaning of imagination, as combining concepts with sensory content. Concepts are “empty,” if they are not based on observation.Footnote 53 Imagination is futile if it is not provided with data of the corresponding experience.

The ability of Imagination stands in us at the gateway to something new, so as to let this into us, to acquire it and make it grow and connect with something we already know. It is the representative of the Future, it is the ambassador plenipotentiary in the state of our knowledge. It always runs ahead of us and carries us away: an ideal, a dream, a hope – these are all companions and motivators of our will.Footnote 54

This subtle and intelligent truth was known to the Greeks at the dawn of European philosophy. Plato described this poetically by saying that cognition is the recollection of what the soul has known but forgotten when arriving on earth. The soul knows ideas from an earlier, otherworldly existence. Ideas are not created but perceived, the soul recalls them. All knowledge and learning is recollection or anamnesis.Footnote 55 This recollection should be interpreted as the ability to understand with a certain level of experience or enlightenment. After all, everyone has had the experience of something “leaping into one’s mind” and feeling that suddenly you understand something which was previously obscure. It seems that you knew something long ago but at some time have forgotten it, but now, through perceiving, discerning or imagining, you remember. “Imagination proceeds or flows from the essence of the soul through the intellect, and […] the external senses proceed from the essence of the soul through imagination.”Footnote 56

The mastering of the imagination was probably the first act of transcendence. A human being became what they are from the moment they acquired imagination. Imagination is the path to creative activity and to the revelation of meanings.Footnote 57

4.7.1 Imagination and Thought

Imagination is a form of thought, alongside other aspects such as consideration, reasoning, interest, dreaming. A sound image—a sound event—is a necessary condition of musical movement based on the pulling of sounds towards each other. “The sensibility of the mind depends for its degree upon the liveliness, and for its extent upon the richness, of the imagination.”Footnote 58

Rational thought and imagination stimulate different parts of the brain. Logical, analytical thinking in concepts stimulates the left hemisphere, while the imagination stimulates the right, which is connected with non-verbal, visual language, and with symbols, emotional effects and intonations. The right and left hemispheres work as an integral whole; however, at the same time they each perform different functions and thus promote creative and differentiated cognition. The dominance of activity in one or other hemisphere determines the tendencies of people towards one type of activity or another. Ivan Pavlov conditionally divided these into categories of people of the artistic or thinking type. Thought and imagination are precious human talents. They help us to orientate ourselves in the world around us, to get to know it, to change it based on an ideal, which also is a particular mental image. “Images and sensations are thus translated into intentions and the energy of the will. In a certain sense, they are an invitation to act, they are the potential beginning of an action; especially those ideas which we call idées forces (key ideas), which are distinguished by a strong power of stimulation and arousal.”Footnote 59 A key idea in this sense for the act of expression is the idea of intonation. It is the key to the essence of a creative work and its revelation.

Thought selects and sorts the emotional impressions of the imagination, although the imagination essentially “gives work” to the mind, for analysis. They complement one another in a relationship as feeling and intellect. Imagination represents the sphere of the emotions, offering information for control by the intellect. It “lets through” only those visual or sound images which conform to a person’s values and beliefs. “All action aims at getting something that we feel the want of, or at creating something that does not yet exist.”Footnote 60 Thanks to the imagination and our inner hearing we transform the text that we see—the picture in signs, on the basis of which we construct a reality in sound. “There is more, and not less, in the idea of an object conceived as ‘not existing’ than in the idea of this same object conceived as ‘existing.’”Footnote 61 The existing object is the sign form of the creative work, and the non-existent object is the creative activity of the interpreter, based on the transformation of the existing object.

Artistic expression is an aesthetic act, that is, an act of the creation of beauty. This concept, introduced in the eighteenth century by Alexander Baumgarten (writing in 1750), meant sensory cognition as distinct from conceptual cognition. Aestheticism is understood as a fundamental quality of human culture, while culture is to be understood as the elevation of a person to a higher—spiritual—level, from nature to culture, which also means art. Art, in its turn, comes to be in an act, which we call a creative act of beauty. “Beauty invades the text, turning it into a creative work.”Footnote 62 Beauty as the goal of any creative work is a form of activity which a person performs according to the laws of beauty. For artistic activity to emerge, a certain ethics is also important, which is understood as knowing and following certain forms and norms of behaviour which condition a particular activity.

The dialectical link between the goal and the means is the dictate of the goal—of beauty—for its means. The education of the imagination, based on the accumulation of artistic impressions and appropriate information, as with other abilities, serves the same goal—of meaningful expression. “Not everything is real, there is something that is not real. Non-reality is like the reverse side of reality. If there is not non-reality, reality is deficient. But in what way is something not real?”Footnote 63 It is important to explain this too.

4.8 Intentionality

Intentionality is the directionality of consciousness towards an object, and is treated as an essential quality of psychic actions and phenomena. It is also a belief in the importance of one’s activity. After all, each action, as phenomenological philosophy asserts, is the perception, realisation, recollection, imagination of something—only then does it become meaningful. The term (from the Latin intentiō meaning stretching or strengthening) is close in its dynamics to intonation. We use the concepts of intention and intonation to describe purposeful directionality, which reflects the interconnectedness and affinity of these acts of consciousness.

“Intentionality” comes from the Latin stem intendere, which consists of in plus tendere, tensum, the latter, interestingly enough, meaning “to stretch”, and from which we get our word “tension”. This tells us immediately that intention is a “stretching” toward something.Footnote 64 (an inclination to something, a tendency – J. R.)

Edmund Husserl emphasised the importance of intentionality for the processes of perception. He did not distinguish these, the results of the activity of the consciousness, from sensations. Sensations, as a real part of experiences, are in Husserl’s view the building material of intentional (and thus intonational) analyses; they are not always realised in the consciousness and so can be unintentional. “The essence of intentional experience is being the perception of something.”Footnote 65 In turn, “each experience has a horizon of experiences which is modified in response to changes in the context of consciousness and in phases of the flow of consciousness itself, and which is an intentional horizon of reference to potentialities of consciousness corresponding to that very experience.”Footnote 66

Intentionality as a condition of intonation means nothing other than the most common, fundamental quality of consciousness, due to which consciousness is the consciousness of something, and which, by means of intention (directionality towards an object) determines its perception in one way or another. According to Husserl, intentional and volitional consciousness are synonyms. But initially there must be a desire, a mood or a motive, and only then does directionality emerge, that is, the intention and will to perform an action. When there are abilities and desires, when there is acting in a directional way, then a corresponding attitude is formed. “An attitude is a way of directing and controlling our perception. […] [It] guides our attention in those directions relevant to our purposes. […] What we single out for attention is dictated by the purposes we have at the time.”Footnote 67

Intentionality is one of the most important features of aesthetic experience; any experience is intentional. Experience, according to phenomenologists, is mysterious and capable of multiple meanings, because each phenomenon points to “something else.” An aesthetic object (especially a musical work) always remains unfinished and depends on the direction of experience, on the intentions of the person experiencing. The source of intentionality of the consciousness is experience. A person experiences what has been experienced by many. That is the result of the relationship with cultural data. Any experience is limited. Each views the object they experience from their own vantage point, from some type of value-based position. Aesthetic experience is active; it arises from individual contact (dialogue) with the creative work. After hearing its “questions,” the interpreter constructs “replies,” that is, expressions. “In making (Greek poieîn), the principal aim of the action is to dominate and organize external matter.”Footnote 68 Thus, poetic activity is not only the writing of poetry. The aesthetic experience encompasses different phases, which are characterised by a unique state of consciousness and distinctive relationship with the work. Three such phases can be identified, which come one after the other and are interconnected by various motivational links. These are the phases of aesthetic attitude (introductory emotion), aesthetic process and contemplation.

Aesthetic attitude is an intermediate state between one’s ordinary attitude and aesthetic experience. By “parenthesising” the ordinary attitude (which is habitual or superficial), the perceiver separates themselves from it and focuses all their attention on the here and now: on that which demands perception and expression. This phase is the phase of analysis. It is characterised by dynamism and activism—the desire to enter into a fully worthwhile contact with the creative work, to get to know it and discover how to express that knowledge (understanding).

The phase of creating the aesthetic process is the most significant. The introductory emotion grows into this. Something that has been felt, that wants to be understood. This phase demands the maximum creative activity. One needs to hear the creative work from within, to feel the features of its inner form. In this phase an aesthetic—sound—form is constructed and realised.

In the phase of contemplation the perception of the creative work which has been constructed and expressed in sound takes place—the evaluation of the result (from the Latin perceptio meaning the reflection of a thing, phenomenon or situation in the consciousness). Intention is determined by the aesthetic attitude which thus determines also the quality of the expression.

4.9 Emotions

Feeling is the inner surface of expression. Feeling is expression seen from the inside.

—Aleksei LosevFootnote 69

The importance of emotions in a person’s life, especially in artistic expression, is difficult to overemphasise. Or, to be more precise, their importance receives too little attention. Whatever conditions and circumstances may determine a person’s life and activity, it becomes only psychologically effective where the emotions succeed in penetrating the sphere of relations conditioning that activity and establishing themselves there. “The perception or the impression occasioned in the mind by the action of the senses is the first operation of the understanding.”Footnote 70 What you feel is the precursor to understanding it.

“Tone-speech is the beginning and end of word-speech: as the feeling is beginning and end of the understanding.”Footnote 71 The feeling of what is understood. “Everything which is alive in the mind was previously in the feelings,” claimed Aristotle.

A spirit living by feeling is all the time open to what might arouse in us excitement, wonder and confidence stimulating and empowering a thirst for knowledge, and therefore emotionally compelling artistic expression. According to Michel de Montaigne, feelings are the beginning and culmination of human cognition. Emotionality is the sum of the features of the quality and dynamic of the content of human emotions. The content of emotions is determined by phenomena and situations which to an individual have particular significance.

An example of a work expressing emotions arising from circumstances of particular significance to an individual is the Lithuanian folk song Tu, paukštuke (“You little bird”) [link] [2:53] (recorded in 2005 in the studio of the Lithuanian Academy of Music, performed on the oboe and sung by Juozas Rimas).

The singer addresses a little bird that has brought sad news about his beloved.Footnote 72

This content is closely connected with the most important qualities which shape the personality: morality, attitudes, intellectuality. In the sphere of musical expression, unfortunately, one observes performances of a bureaucratised, desensitised, technologically organised character, lacking any wonder—conforming to the “letter”—steering round the demands raised by the spirit of the interpreted work or not going anywhere near them. “We react to music and experience it as a complex intellectual process, in which the emotions are closely connected with the operations of thought, and the sensory beginning is multiplied by the rational. Emotions become intellectualised, while thoughts are expressed emotionally; the sensory beginning acquires a rational severity, while the rational convinces thanks to a developed imagination.”Footnote 73

When speaking about emotions, it is important to distinguish them from feelings, which are often understood as the same sensation, only with a different name. The highest form of a person’s emotions are long-term feelings aroused by the person’s human needs. A feeling is a more fundamental experience than an emotion. Feelings, in comparison with emotions, are relatively constant experiences. Feelings emerge later than emotions—they are influenced by the development of an individual’s consciousness. Meanwhile, emotional experiences are situational; a person’s various needs are expressed in feelings, encouraging action to satisfy them. Aesthetic feelings are based on the conscious ability (and only this) to perceive phenomena of ambiance and art in terms of beauty. So here the system of values of the perceiver plays a role. The perceiver’s aesthetic attitude forms an aesthetic feeling, and this becomes the impulse for the interpreter’s practical activity. It is said that “a person feels music,” yet, for the moment, that is only the basis of a certain talent or motive for musical expression. “Meaning arises when an individual becomes aware, either affectively or intellectually, of the implications of a stimulus in a particular context.”Footnote 74 The sense of music is still not a conscious, creative feeling. Such a sense of music has to be developed constantly through contact with musical works: by performing them or critically evaluating other interpretations (reinterpreting them). Reinterpretation is an act of absorbing what is heard through one’s own value matrix. This is a controversial phenomenon, related to the values you hold, when in the process of evaluation you say “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it”—whether this has aroused approval and positive emotions or rejection, based on a different understanding of the work’s interpretation, supported by appropriate experience. “Tender expression in music. […] It isn’t to be characterized in terms of degrees of loudness or tempo. Any more than a tender facial expression can be described in terms of the distribution of matter in space. As a matter of fact it can’t even be explained by reference to a paradigm, since there are countless ways in which the same piece may be played with genuine expression.”Footnote 75

It should be emphasised that a passive or only superficial relationship with the music—either when turning the signs into sound or when evaluating the music (“beautiful voice,” “sounded good” or similar)—leads to the atrophy of talents. The performer remains only “someone of great promise” but not someone who is meaningfully expressing themselves. So the psychological attitude is very important, since this determines the direction, the way of perceiving a phenomenon in one manner or another, anticipating a situation, and performing a particular activity related to it. The attitude fuses the experience of facts (in this case, the data of the text) and of relationships (personal qualities based on certain values). For artistic consciousness what is important is not the truth of the fact itself but the psychological truth of the fact: how much it is understood and emotionally warmed. The interpreter’s professional experience is also important.

The structure of a person’s consciousness is naturally connected with the character of their activity, that is, the quality of their expressions. Emotion like an inner necessity is born from a relationship—positive or negative—with the need for action, which is its motive. “The etymology of the words ‘emotion’ and ‘emotivity’ points to a movement or motion (from the Latin [emotio: e (ex)—out—J.R.] movere, to move) that comes from within, as evidenced by the prefix ex. […] An emotion is not a somatic reaction but a psychical event that is distinctive in its nature and qualitatively different from the reaction itself of the body.”Footnote 76

[Emotivity is] indicative of a specific sensibility to values. Man’s sensitivity to values based on emotive grounds has a spontaneous character; in this respect it manifests the same trails as emotivity itself, which always reflects what in the person takes place in a “psychical way” […]. Because of this spontaneous sensitivity to values the emotive potentiality supplies the will with, so to speak, a special kind of raw material; for in choice and decision an act of will is always a cognitively defined, intellectual response to values.Footnote 77

The link between emotion and action is reciprocal. On one side, the process of action arouses in a person emotions of one sort or another, on the other—a person’s activity is influenced by their feelings, their emotional state. The will as the engine of activity is activated by feeling, and feeling by images. Emotions not only condition activity but also are themselves conditioned by it.

Emotions as a form of personality need act as an internal catalyst of activity. These internal impulses which stimulate activity manifest themselves through feelings, conditioned by the real relationship of the individual with the things in the world around the individual. This is to be understood as one’s circle of interests, one’s relationship with cultural documents and phenomena, which is also the value base (intellectual base) which forms the content of one’s feelings.

Every real emotion includes affective and intellectual, experiential and cognitive, as well as volitional and visual aspects of the impetus to act. In short, it contains the expression of the whole person, including character traits and spiritual content. It is worth noting the substantive orientation of feelings. These are different depending on the sphere to which they belong. From the standpoint of substance, feelings can be divided into intellectual, aesthetic and moral. This corresponds to the three main higher values: truth, beauty and goodness. They are all closely related; one cannot exist without the other. Beauty cannot be created without particular knowledge, and the acquisition of that knowledge is based on an understanding of what does, or does not, constitute goodness. “The ancient Greeks used the term ‘kalokagathia’ to describe the unity of beauty and goodness. Their conjecture and belief was that beauty, goodness and truth are inseparable, since aesthetic consciousness and emotional intelligence conceal within themselves an intuitive ‘chamber pitch of absoluteness.’”Footnote 78 Personality is expressed through activity. This reveals everything at its disposal: the more spiritually rich the personality, the broader its competence in the relevant field of activity and the greater the motive for that activity (from the Latin motivum, meaning impelling reason).

Music is the art of emotional intelligence which has mastered the language of intonation. Although the mind does not create emotions, it is able to regulate and control them. The art of music is called intelligent art because within it, as within a person, two opposites are combined: a world of emotions and fantasies, together with strict logic, the requirement of a critical mind. Just as a person possesses a dualist nature, having both a spirit and a body, so music has a material, external form fixed by signs, and an ideal, intangible semantic content. The object of music, as Georg Hegel claims, is a sounding spirit or sensuous showing of the idea through its sonic objectification in an interpretive act. The action of expressive and substantial, that is, emotional and meaningful, intonation is the principal feature of the vitality of music.

An example of a work requiring the action of emotional intonation is three excerpts from the music for the drama “Caligula”, composed by Julius AndrejevasFootnote 79 [link] [3:45] (recorded in 2004 in the studio of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, performed by Juozas Rimas, oboe, and the ART VIO String Quartet of Lithuania).

The most important thing for an actor is not the words, but the states of the soul. As the Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni says, everyone can learn words. The gist of this applies equally well to musical expression. The world of art is a world of “organised emotion attached to experience.” It changes the emotional content of a person’s consciousness “so that he can react more subtly and deeply to the world.”Footnote 80 Emotion is the movement of the soul. It never remains stable—it is constantly changing, with varying degrees of tension. That is why music, being a temporal art—of movement, badly needs emotionality in its expression.

The tonal structures we call “music” bear a logical similarity to the forms of human feeling-forms of growth and attenuation, flowing and stowing, conflict and resolution, speed, arrest, terrific excitement, calm, or subtle activation and dreamy lapses—not joy and sorrow perhaps, but the poignancy of either and both—the greatness and brevity and eternal passing of everything vitally felt. Such is the pattern, or logical form, of sentience; and the pattern of music is that same form worked out in pure, measured sound and silence. Music is a tonal analogue of emotive life.Footnote 81

4.9.1 The Expression of Music as Emotional Dynamics

The Baroque theory of affects, which focused on creative practice, concentrated on forms of music which were based not on development but on the principle of opposition and juxtaposition. However, towards the beginning of the nineteenth century, the principle of development prevails, where the work is perceived as an internally motivated whole, in which each moment is significant only in the relationship and context between the sound moments of the past and the future. The form changes from spatial architectonics into unity in time. The theory of affects as a theory of feelings is “shattered” when it confronts this new fact of the development of musical thought. “Bergson’s intuition of duration is depicted by the special qualities of music: music is an adequate ‘tangible’ form of infinite movement and flow. In the intuitivity of duration (as in music), various hidden possibilities are constantly spreading. […] According to Bergson, the real sphere of the expression of vital impetus—élan vital—is beyond vulgar materiality and does not obey the rational cognition which destroys and schematizes everything that is alive.”Footnote 82 To understand a work of art is, therefore, first to feel it, to experience it emotionally (the sound sequence or tonal structure itself must already arouse a certain emotional reaction in the performer—the perceiver) and then to analyse it rationally—structurally. “Intuition is the basic process of all understanding, just as operative in discursive thought as in clear sense perception and immediate judgment.”Footnote 83

The form of a work, when it opens up in a signified type of meaningful (comprehensible or incomprehensible) phenomena, is a factor that continuously provokes a person’s response and emotional reactions. The response of the feelings—the emotional response, which is stimulated by one phenomenon or other, is undoubtedly related to the understanding of that phenomenon—identification based on a person’s cognitive experience, in the context of which it is also interpreted—a perceived phenomenon. “Art is a central emotion, or an emotion which unfolds primarily in the cerebral cortex. Artistic emotions are intelligent emotions,”Footnote 84 says the Russian philosopher Lev Vygotsky. Another component which determines understanding is that based on values. “Value-based meaning is the semantic factor that directly determines the emotional response. Emotions do not manifest themselves outside a person’s conscious evaluative relationship with reality and the value-based meaning which opens up within it.”Footnote 85 Perception of art must start from feeling; through this it must develop, but it is insufficient. The ultimate goal of the perception of a work of art is the assimilation of its idea and the finding of the means to express it. Expression is the diffusion of experience of the person who is expressing.

4.10 Spirituality and Musical Expression (the Spirit of the Work: Its Idea-Based Code)

Musical thinking is most of all related to one’s intuitive sense of experienced meanings and one’s understanding of them. Feeling is expressed through intonation, and the means of its expression are manifested through the structural analysis of a creative work. In this aspect, music, like art in general, has much in common with philosophy and religion, which also require interpretation. Meaning is the spring that sustains and tones a person’s life. After all, everyone seeks meaning through their actions, but they do not understand it uniformly. Relying on different values, they call that effort the pursuit of meaning.

Spirituality is one of the qualities which conditions meaningfulness. “The spirit controls matter and imposes its own law upon it, which is a law of harmony and beauty.”Footnote 86 The essence of music, the spirit of its works, cannot be perceived separately from a person’s inner beliefs and their spiritual content. “The life of the spirit and the spirituality of life are the two intercommunicating sources of creative activity; when one dries up, the other too drains away.”Footnote 87 The division of the concept of the “thinking spirit” into the sensory and the supreme, which is totally independent, could also be applied to the understanding and expression of the sensory and semantic relationship with the interpreted work. The idea or spirit of the work signals itself through its external signs. The Greeks spoke of a person as an embodied spirit. When applied to sound expression, this is the spiritualised character of the expression influenced by the idea (spirit) of the work.

An example of expression influenced by the idea of the work is Juozas Rimas’ interpretation of Syrinx by Claude Debussy [link] [2:48] (recorded in 2007 in the studio of Lithuanian Radio, performed by Juozas Rimas, oboe).

In classical Greek mythology, Syrinx was a nymph who fled from the pursuit of Pan and turned into a reed, which he used to make a pipe that became known as the Pan Flute.

Spirituality as spiritual culture is the result of a person’s efforts to perceive oneself and the world, and the manifestation through direct action of one’s own approach towards phenomena. “‘Will and understanding constitute in the strictest sense a mind or spirit. The [cause] of my ideas is [therefore] a spirit.”Footnote 88 Science and technology (that is also the primacy of instrumentism and craftsmanship in music) created power but did not succeed in instilling spirit, because it diminished the priority of culture. “The fatality of technicity lies in the fact that we have broken the links between technē and poiesis.”Footnote 89 Culture, in turn, is definitively spirit, preserved and encoded in the works of those who have physically left us. Cultural activity is the decoding of the spirit, the idea, in the works. The spirit of the work is the intonation, its face, which is illuminated through interpretation. A work of art, particularly of music, is like a person, a composition of two elements—body and spirit. Although their function is different, their purpose is the same—to empower a person’s life and existence. “It must be understood that actuality is not only sensual actuality. The spiritual is in no wise limited to perception-forms for the actualizing of its idea.”Footnote 90

The spirit is the rudiment which holds life and sustains it. Lithuanians sayFootnote 91:

“The poor person has died, they have released their last breath (spirit).”

“You can blow any breath (spirit) on them, but they won’t listen.”

“You know, I’m already entering the spirit (beginning to understand).”

The process of interpretation is constituted as the materialisation through sound of the work’s idea, which is also its spiritual essence. “A person is spiritual to the extent that they have adopted human values and are able to follow them, directing and correcting their behaviour.”Footnote 92 Spirituality is directly connected with the inculturation of a person, the interpreter, both in a general sense and with reference to a specific discipline. The spirit determines the form of a work. At the same time it is also the norm according to which (passing from within to without—to expression) this form or spirit—the idea—is realised in the process of its translation into sound—intonation. Nothing exists without attending to the spirit; that is an effective appeal to the inner, but still only as a formal area of the intellect. The intellect is the condition of the recreative imagination. Creative power is the metaphysical vestige of divinity within a person. With good reason it is said that a person is gifted by God or has acquired certain talents through God’s grace. We perceive music through the senses with the powers of our spirit. This ability is ensured by a special human facility—artistic thinking. In the case of music, thinking, if it is recognised as necessary, has to be continuously developed. Unfortunately, in many cases, the (non-interpretive) expression of many performers is limited to the sensory—empirical—cognition of the music (rather than achieving an understanding of the music). Such a limitation can be overcome if one attempts to cross the threshold of sensory perception and rationalist—positivist—thinking. So, if one wants to change the quality of artistic expression, a deeper competence is required, a relationship with philosophical-aesthetic thought, and not only instrumental orientation. “Inner beauty is created by an imperative inner necessity which renounces conventional beauty. To the uninitiated, this inner spiritual beauty naturally appears ugly [уродство], because humanity inclines to outside charm, dislikes recognition of inner necessity.”Footnote 93 Spirituality is not only psychic activity; it is also the expression of energy. This energy depends on creative potency—on talents, but for them to develop, to become abilities, a stable relationship with objects embodying spirit is required. The spirituality of the interpreter determines the value of their expression. After all, spirituality presupposes a relationship with values and intellectual potential. “The body is strengthened and developed by exercise; so is the spirit. As the neglected body grows weakened and impotent, so does the spirit. The feeling inherent to the artist is the talent, as spoken of in the Gospel, which should not be buried.”Footnote 94

Action is always the expression and consequence of an act, while the experience of its effect is related to its inherent possibility. A person experiences and gains to the extent that they have the power to experience.Footnote 95

4.11 Intonation: The Cause of the Life of Music, the Source of Its Means of Expression

Sound is external, intonation is spiritual. This is their relationship. Intonation is the spirit of sound.

—Juozas MiltinisFootnote 96

Art is science in the flesh.

—Jean CocteauFootnote 97

Unfortunately, the concept of intonation is understood in the everyday practice of music only as the accurate registering of the pitch (“clean” or “not clean”). There is no discussion of intoning as the grasp of the work’s spirit, its idea, and of the expression which is adequate to the latter.

As regards the definition of intonation as the last phase of tuning of instruments, it is routinely naive. To ‘smooth out’, to ‘smooth over’ correlations of sounds on instruments, i.e. to achieve purity of pitch, is actually important for intonation, because false pitch disturbs the meaning, the qualitative tonus of music as intonation, in just the same way as careless pronunciation in language cripples the meaning of speech, even if one is understood at all!Footnote 98

Sound and tone should be distinguished. Even if a tone is always a sound, by no means every sound can be called a tone. “No rose without a thorn. But many a thorn without a rose.”Footnote 99 Tone is a particle of intonation. What does that mean? It means that intoning manifests itself as a cohesion of tones and their corresponding relationship. But one cannot claim that intonation is derived from tones—to the contrary, it comes first. Because only the separate sounds included in the intoned movement of the structure are perceived as tones. It is not the tone that makes music, but music that makes the tone. This is similar to the relationship between being and consciousness. Materialists maintain that being determines consciousness, but in fact it is consciousness—a person’s world view, intellect, values—which determines the quality of their life and being.

In the intonational process the approach towards tone acquires contradictory characteristics. On the one hand, it is connected with the stability of the sound, especially the parameters of pitch; on the other, a sound only becomes a tone when it is integrated into the process, which provides it with dynamic-modulational qualities dictated by the intonation. With the result that stability and movement in the tone merge into an inseparable unity. The lack or renunciation of movement with the qualities ascribed to it, through failing to perceive the importance of the phenomenon, makes the tone only a sound of a certain pitch. Intoned movement is the living pulsation of a work. St Augustine justifiably calls music the art (science) of beautiful and correct (if correct, then also beautiful) movement (bene movendi). “Thought, intonation, the forms of music—all are in continuous connection: thought, in order to be phonetically expressed, becomes an intonation—is intoned.”Footnote 100 To envelop the work with thought means to perceive, then to “retell” in one’s own way—to articulate in sound. The intoning of music is the emergence of a musical event in becoming. Just using an instrument acoustically—drawing out corresponding sounds in terms of pitch and duration—does not mean performing the action of intonation, although the acoustic relationship with the sounds is also part of the intonation. This is similar to reading a text, when one recognises the letters, but does not understand the meaning of the words they convey.

If one accepts that the interpretation of music is personal, individual, the question arises, through what is that individuality expressed? What is the mechanism of this individual creative (recreative) activity? Intonation is indeed that mechanism, instrument, means, by which the individual interpretive judgement is carried out. After all, the same thing—the work—is revealed by each interpreter in light of their experience, abilities and intonational insights. The basis for intonation, the first step, is provided by a work to be interpreted, which has potential intonational meaning. The text of the work is a potential part of the form which has to become a process. It is actualised through the production of sound—in the intonated expression. The act of actualising the potentiality depends upon the actor—the interpreter, who provides the intonational process with the means of expression that are appropriate to the intonational process, corresponding to the idea of the work.

Intonation is that part of the art of music which is not within the control of the composer. This is the starting point of the domain and power of the intermediary—the interpreter (the prefix inter means “between”), the intermediary between the composer and the person to whom the music is addressed, the perceiver, the listener. “The life of a musical composition is in its performance, i.e. in the revelation of its meaning through intoning.”Footnote 101 The interpreter, without crossing the permissible limits set by taste, intellect and acknowledged values, can influence the parameters of the rhythm, timbre, dynamics, syntax and articulation of the work. The intonational action for performer-interpreters should become dogma in a good sense (from the Greek dógma meaning a proposition, an indisputable truth), because only thanks to this, is it possible to feel what is most important in the work: to enter its “inside,” to perceive its so-called inner form, that is, its spirit.

Intonation is a regular activity which operates regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not. All the same, any performance is always based on, and unfolds through, intonations, but the quality of the intonations depends upon the level of perception. The essential being of the music is sound, and its meaning is disclosed through intonations.

The composer does not intone, they only set the structure. But the listener does not distinguish whose intonations these are, that of the author or the performer. The listener either accepts or does not accept the work as it sounds—such as they hear it. In the intonations everything which the interpreter at that time knows about the work, what they feel, is reflected. At that moment, all of their life and artistic experience is diffused. In the process of intoning, an energising persuasive force emerges, because “the tonal structures bear a close similarity to the forms of human feeling.”Footnote 102 The intonation of the music’s performer is the external expression of their inner feeling or experience. Intonation is a spiritual expression. “To hear the dynamic relations in the tonal argument, is to generate anew, to wake out of silence, out of potential absence, the proceedings of the artist.”Footnote 103

Intonation is always expressive if the inner hearing is self-verified (a concept of Stasys ŠalkauskisFootnote 104) before the sound emerges. The intonations of the music which sound are a truer being of the music than the notes written down. They (the intonations) are nominally divided into objective and subjective. Those which are objective—created by history, tradition or a creative school—are treated and accepted as particular norms. But the existing norms must not always be accepted undisputedly. Only the intonational action itself, as the path to the expression of meaning, should be undisputed. The more creative the performer, the more the person is an interpreter, then the more they psychologise the action of intonation and accord it features of personality. To base oneself on objective intentions, described only by signs or traditions, means not to have an individual creative standpoint, to remain as a craftsman producing sound, rather than an intoner—an interpreter.

However, if a subjective beginning crosses the permissible limits of taste and intelligent perception, anarchy will reign.

The true artist finds delight not only in the aim of his creation, but also in the very process of creation, in the handling and moulding of his material (that is, the intonational process – J.R.). […] The journeyman reckons only the goal of his labour, the profit which his toil shall bring him; the energy which he expends, gives him no pleasure; it is but a fatigue, an inevitable task.Footnote 105

According to the fact of the phenomenon (which the text of the work is exactly), we must recognise the essence which is hidden behind the hard signs of the fact—the text. Here the objective aspects (the datum of the text) and subjective aspects (the feeling for its content and its subsequent expression) combine. “Everything is what it is and not another thing. Things acquire ‘significance’ only through their relation to my will.”Footnote 106 If we call the fact of the work a certain representation of form, then the duality of form is explained by Asaf’ev thus: “Form as a process, and form as a crystallized scheme […] are two sides of the same phenomenon.”Footnote 107 The form (which we actualise) is explained by John Cage in yet another way:

Structure in music is its divisibility into successive parts from phrases to long sections. Form is content, the continuity. […] Structure is properly mind-controlled. Both delight in precision, clarity, and the observance of rules. Whereas form wants only freedom to be (this is in the hands of the performer, as the provider of that freedom, the executor of the process – J.R.). It belongs to the heart; and the law it observes, if indeed it submits to any, has never been and never will be written.Footnote 108

Although we are talking here about the creation of the form of a work, it is possible to say the same also about its revelation in sound, which is also determined by freedom, as the recognition of necessity—still limited by certain norms. “It is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation. […] The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing.”Footnote 109 The limitations should be understood as an acknowledgement of certain norms and principles and the need to follow them. Here too, Hegel’s definition of freedom as the recognition of necessity is particularly pertinent.

The phonetic and syntactic levels of intonations, their common “action,” are important as ways of realising the form. The phonetic level emerges from the sound structure of the work, which makes use of the phonetic qualities of the sound. Here phonetics (a term borrowed from philology) is to be understood as the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of language (in our case, musical language). Phonetic hearing is important in determining with what tone and with what manner of articulation the sound will be endowed—“obligated” by the intonation. The syntactical level determines the punctuation marks of the musical language, which are set by the architectonic form of the work: the separation of the structures by caesuras, breathing points and pauses. In real sound both elements combine—one is dependent on the other.

Through what sound qualities and ways of sound organisation are intonations realised? How do these operate on the foundational elements of the musical process?

  1. 1.

    Form and intonation. Form is the main starting point for the emergence of intonation. Without a defined structural unit (a motif, phrase, or larger structure) it would not be possible to talk about intonation at all: there would not be anything to intone. There has to be “what,” so that one can seek “how” to realise (interpret) this. After all, in Asaf’ev’s, form is also a process, and not only a structural unit; it cannot be realised outside of intonation. The features of the form inspire the manner of phrasing, and phrasing is determined by the logic of the development of a musical thought. The phrase is the outer envelope of the thought (in a timeframe), while intonation is the inner content of the phrase, the sonic expression of the idea which has been understood (that is, of the emotion).

  2. 2.

    Tone and intonation. As already mentioned, only the intoned sound becomes a tone. Through intonation the performer determines the quality of their tone (the colour or intensity of the sound). The nature of the sound’s timbre, modulation and dynamics depends upon the quality of the performer’s hearing and command of the instrument. Intoning is the energising of the acoustic material—understanding energy as intentional action (from the Greek enérgeia, meaning “action”).

  3. 3.

    Rhythm and intonation. The duration of the sounds, the intervals or other elements of the work fixed in the text do not change fundamentally in the process of intonation but, based on the principles of agogics, the character of the movement of the structures and their arrangement in musical time change more or less. “Rhythm in the structural instance is relationships of lengths of time. Such matters, then, as accents on or off the beat, regularly recurring or not, pulsation with or without accent, steady or unsteady, durations motivically conceived (either static or to be varied), are matters for formal (expressive) use, or, if thought about, to be considered as material (in its ‘textural’ aspect) or as serving method.”Footnote 110 Rhythm is the variation of emotional tension and its release. Rhythm is a characteristic of all vital processes and movements. Thus, in the process of intonation, as in the form of the manifestation of musical life, the dynamics of rhythm, through agogics and rubato, are very important, and an essential aspect of expression.

  4. 4.

    Intonation and dynamics. Dynamic nuances are always contextual, situational. It is impossible to mark accurately the strength of a sound. Dynamic signs in the text are only directions, guidelines. There are works (particularly from earlier eras) where even such guidelines do not exist, yet dynamics are necessary as a dosing of the power of the sound. What then? Here everything lies at the will of the interpreter. Dynamic expression is always intonative. The dynamics have to be heard at the same time as one is viewing the text of the notes. This recalls what Robert Schumann said—that, when looking at the notes, you need to hear their music and, consequently, their dynamics.

  5. 5.

    Intonation and tempo. Intonation determines the variation of tempo, but not vice versa. The author’s indications are again only for guidance. The character of the work or its structure must dictate the speed of movement, the time (from the Italian tempo, meaning “time”) in which the process of intoning occurs. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov once said: “I place the metronomic markings for un-musical conductors (he added a crude epithet); otherwise the devil only knows what they will do. A conductor who is a musician does not need a metronome; he hears the tempo according to the music.”Footnote 111 The intoned tempo is alive, pulsating; the speed is variable, not chronometric, but psychological. This is the sphere of agogics. The term “agogics,” introduced by Hugo Riemann in 1884, means the development and modification of sound movement. Dynamic nuances fill the intonation from within, while agogic nuances frame it from without. The places of agogic nuances also become clear in the intoned movement. But it is important to remain in the frame of the main movement of the work, and divergences of tempo cannot go beyond the norms dictated by the character of the work and its idea.

  6. 6.

    Timbre and intonation. Timbre is the colour of the sound, determined by the quantity and intensity of the overtones supplementing the main tone. It is one of the four characteristics of sound, alongside pitch, loudness and duration. “The opposite and necessary coexistent of sound is silence. Of the four characteristics of the sound, only duration involves both sound and silence.”Footnote 112 All four parameters of sound, even silence—a pause—are connected with the intonational process. The quality of the timbre depends most on the distribution of energy between the individual elements of the sound spectrum. The source of vibrations, the vibrator, the system of resonance—all these components make their own contribution to the sound of the musical instrument which is so complex in its structure. These are the tangible components of timbre. The sonic (tonic, intonational) imagination is the spiritual—inner—basis of the timbre and its modulations.

  7. 7.

    Articulation and intonation. This is a separate, broad and multifaceted topic, to which a separate section of this book is devoted.Footnote 113 One should only emphasise that articulation and phrasing (these are sometimes equated) are different things. Phrasing is something internal, while articulation is the external act of materialisation of a thought. (Similar to affect and rhetoric; mood and its expression.) Articulation is the pronunciation and combination in the structures (by means of articulatory slurs), of one sort or another, of individual sounds. Meanwhile, it is important to show in the phrasing the relationship between the musical thoughts. Asaf’ev understood perfectly the role of the performer, the interpreter—the intonator.

The performer, in intoning, translates the music into reality; the particular importance of the styles of performance is attributable to this fact. But the performer’s culture has two “offshoots;” either it is co-creative with the art of the composer, or else it mechanically reproduces notation according to established norms of technique. Between these extremes there is a multitude of nuances, but there are still two basic divisions of performers. Some […] listen to and understand music with their internal hearing, intoning it within themselves before reproduction, i.e. before they hear it from without, from under their fingers, or from the orchestra; others study a composition with their eyes, analysing its construction, but they hear it only when it sounds in voices or instruments. Some know beforehand what they will hear; others always guess.Footnote 114

Not intoning music in their consciousness, receiving it from outside, they only reproduce notation.Footnote 115

Music should be understood and realised as intonationally organised becoming. This must be served by the appropriate abilities of the interpreter and the requisite means of expression.

4.12 The Concept of Value

The realm of values is the realm of ideas, and the realm of ideas is the realm of culture.

—A. Maceina

Experience of values is always experience of something which is given for the purpose of being understood. “1. Every value is the value of some object (a thing, phenomenon, situation, event). The value belongs to the object as the owner of that value. 2. What is valuable is always valuable to someone, that is, to a particular subject, who recognizes that the owner of the value is a valuable thing. Just as there can be no value which does not belong to someone, so there can be no value which is not in relationship with a subject who values it.”Footnote 116 Value is not experienced in the same way as a living need or emotion. Value orientation is not a quality which exists within the subject in itself. Values colour a person’s action, as well as acts of interpretation, only when they become a person’s own. A person is not their own value nor valuable in themselves. They have to acquire value through a relationship with values. The quality—the value—of its expression also depends on this. A person is “the measure of all things, of the things that are that they are, of the things that are not that they are not” (Protagoras, about 515–488 BCE).Footnote 117

The fact of aesthetic experience has, like every conscious activity, subjective and objective equivalents. The object experienced—the musical work—acquires the qualities of the experiencing (perceiving) person through the act of interpretation—actualisation. Having regard to the intentional structure of consciousness, one should note that actions, like thoughts, are directed towards someone or something, and through each action we recognise a person—the author of the action. In every action his or her set of values is diffused.

In the words of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, the first professional Lithuanian composer (and one of the most important Symbolist painters of the early twentieth century), “the music of every nation, as it develops and grows, does not lose its distinctive characteristics, because it continues to be produced by composers who, being sons of their Fatherland, receive from the parents, along with their blood, a love of their songs, and often, without feeling it themselves, like their style and characteristics. These composers, when developing music, make a song out of a ditty, and a symphonic composition out of a song, and nurture truly cultural music.”Footnote 118 Thus, for example, the piece for solo oboe “Adieu” by the Lithuanian composer Raminta Šerkšnytė, inspired by the ending of “The Little Prince” of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, is nevertheless imbued with Lithuanian lyricism:

Raminta Šerkšnytė,Footnote 119 Adieu (2002) [link] [6:17] (recorded in 2002 in the studio of Lithuanian Radio, performed by Juozas Rimas).

Of course, the actor—the interpreter—also has to have innate gifts which stimulate his or her intentionality. “To the understanding of every art and ability to experience it, there belongs a natural disposition which must be related to artistic talent or instinct itself; for whoever possesses this, artistic enjoyment is possible, but for others never.”Footnote 120 Cultural experience is a way of encountering values. In a broad sense culture is also the sum of material and spiritual values—that which is created, attained and objectified by a certain part of human society through creative works inspired by a certain value orientation. “Beauty (as the goal of art—J.R.) is a value, that is, it is not a perception of a matter of fact or of a relation: it is an emotion, an affection of our volitional and appreciative nature.”Footnote 121 Value and evaluation have a common root, hence a person’s value, together with the quality of their works, depend on what values one follows in their activities.

(1) The value-judgment can be confirmed or disconfirmed. The judgment is true when the property which it ascribes to the work (or interpretive act – J.R.) is actually present in the work. (2) Therefore, when two people disagree about the value of a specific work, only one of them can be right. The one who is wrong is attributing a property to the work which it does not in fact possess. (3) “Good taste” is the capacity to apprehend the property of aesthetic value, when it occurs in an object. A man has “bad taste” when he lacks this capacity. (4) Therefore, some aesthetic judgments are authoritative, others are not.Footnote 122

The personality is a spiritual—value-based—creature. With the knowledge of values comes fidelity to them, a sort of imperative to act accordingly. Values are the basis of a person’s world view. The social quality of a person (and also professional quality, since through this a person expresses self in society) depends on the value orientation, or more specifically, on the degree of spirituality. Our living spirit or inner “I” is made up of three components: feeling, will and intellect. Feelings connect us directly with the environment; will means our power to pursue goals; intellect determines, according to the limits of its perception, the tiers of our knowledge and orientation in values. “The higher the education […], the more quickly and more surely everyone casts off what is not fitting for them, and the more penetratingly they perceive everything that is related to them.”Footnote 123 What a person does not perceive—that they are not able to evaluate, that does not interest them. The rules of nature act on us directly like a straight line, but the effect of values can be imagined only as an indirect one, as a broken line. Value touches a person only when the will is already in fact resolved with regard to it. “Values are directed towards a specific being, who stands up for them, and engages in the real world through his or her actions.”Footnote 124 Perhaps that is why artistic expression is so deficient if based on only a shallow—linear—orientation.

No qualities of beings being perceived can acquire the meaning of axiologically understood fundamental qualities in isolation from the giving of meaning to them based on values. The giving, based on values, of meaning to beings or their separate aspects or features presupposes insight, cognitive interpretation, and understanding of those features […]. The cognitive interpretation of beings, their qualities and connections takes place through the actualisation of a person’s cognitive experience.Footnote 125

The act of interpretation, being an action and a process, presupposes a certain degree of understanding of this action. “Thought was supposed to rule over action, to prescribe principles to action so that the rules of the latter were invariably derived from experiences of the former.”Footnote 126

It is important to recall the relationship of potentiality and action which is characteristic of the whole being. Potentiality can be explained both as the cause of the action and as its energetic and intellectual base. Often we hear the word “self-evident”—as if one is stating the obviousness of meaning: seemingly, it is right here, easily accessible. But there comes a time in a person’s life (alas, it often does not come at all) when

the obviousness of meaning disappears and the natural feeling of understanding abandons us. Only then do we notice that there is “something” which we call meaning. To put it more precisely, we notice we are missing that “something”. In other words, we understand that we do not understand “something”. […] Accordingly, our lack of understanding can be experienced with varying degrees of intensity – ranging from light surprise or academically methodical scepticism to the tragic experience of total senselessness throwing one into the embrace of suicide.Footnote 127

Discontent with one’s present self and the feeling of lacking something are the first positive steps towards self-creation, values and the search for meaning. The concept of “universal values” means the necessity of values for all. These are revealed through cultural signs—as a system of value-based images. By relating to objects of culture, a person becomes its subject. “The argument about the subjective universality of aesthetic values goes back to the recognition that the conditions necessary for perception of aesthetic quality are much more varied than in other areas, in that they demand a higher level of education.”Footnote 128

As the Russian culturologist Mikhail BakhtinFootnote 129 argued, consciousness, by relating to values, becomes cultural; culture, when it takes hold in a live consciousness, becomes full of life; and the expression determined by values acquires meaning. Human existence achieves meaning only through reflecting and interpreting cultural phenomena. “Reflection is the appropriation of our effort to exist and of our desire ‘to be’ by means of the works which testify to this effort and this desire.”Footnote 130 However, a human being finds an inert, habitual, irresponsible existence very comfortable. “The prejudice in favour of custom has always been an obstacle to the progress of the arts, and music has especially suffered under it.”Footnote 131 Does not such habit-formed behaviour operate as a brake on change in our quality of life, as well as in artistic expression?

The external side of beings experienced by the senses does not express their essence – that which is constant, regular, necessary in phenomena. The essence of phenomena only opens itself up to intellectual intuition.Footnote 132

This requires a change in thinking, which the Greeks called metánoia. The general value-based orientation today leans towards subjectivism—what we want is good (the hedonistic standpoint), and what we shun—what we reject unable to understand—is bad. An attitude prevails that values are “only subjective phenomena in a person’s mind which have no independent meaning and existence.”Footnote 133 It is clear that a value becomes such only when it is perceived and acknowledged. However, that does not mean that nothing exists beyond the horizon of a person’s current perception. For the person nothing yet exists, because they do not perceive it, although they should recognise it.

This […] (subjectivist – J.R.) view leads to one of two conclusions, both of which have become points of departure of modern morality (the latter also conditions artistic activity – J.R.). It entails either a justification of complete anarchy in questions of moral judgment, so that nothing at all seems “certain” in this respect, or the assumption of a substitute for true objectivity of value, a presumedly generally valid “generic consciousness” which asserts its power over the individual through an imperious “thou shalt”.Footnote 134

A failure to acknowledge the objective basis of values encourages an empirical approach to values, based on the psychological state of the subject.

Desire is “appetite accompanied by the consciousness thereof”. […] We do not endeavour, will, seek after or desire because we judge a thing to be good. On the contrary, we judge a thing to be good because we endeavour, will, seek after and desire it.Footnote 135

There is what Max Scheler calls organic mendacity. In this case, falsification takes place not in the consciousness, as is usual when simply lying (a conscious statement of falsehood), but on the path from experiences to the perception which transfers them into the consciousness, that is, in the very process of the formation of value-based feelings and images. All this is not intentional, but only because there is no true basis for activity which would be true and supported by values. This is a problem of being educated or educating oneself, as an orientation towards the (self-)formation of values. After all, every bad action or incentive comes from ignorance of what is good and what is bad. A person—an educator or teacher—who is unfamiliar with true values becomes an “organic liar” not from ill will—he or she understands things that way and does not doubt their correctness. “The most honest and upright convictions may prevail in the periphery of consciousness. The apprehension of values follows this pattern, to the point of their complete reversal.”Footnote 136 And what has been so falsified, “truly,” “honestly” corresponds to the illusory value.

The reason for the loss of the value base is the attempt by civilisation to mechanise everything (the technological revolution, computerisation and so on). The machine has come to dominate life… Objects “have progressively grown in vigour and intelligence, in size and beauty—while man, who created them, has more and more become a cog in his own machine.”Footnote 137 The application of mechanical principles to the phenomena of life explains a lot of the shortcomings of our profession. Focusing only on the fact—the signs of the notes, while rejecting the metaphysical lodestar of musical activity, distorts the very phenomenon of music, and pushes one away from the search for its meaning and expression.

A person observing a work of art (especially its interpreter – J.R.) must be able to analyse an act of creation in order to understand the work of art correctly. Analysis of the object is in turn closely connected with analysis of the act, because the peculiar aesthetic, to which examination of the object is directed, is only revealed to the subject who has the correct view.Footnote 138

The interpreter of the music merits that title less and less and turns into a rushing homo fugens (and not homo sapiens), who has no time to engage in orientation of oneself to values. In the long term such a musical actor loses their energy that could be directed to values, failing to find time to charge themselves intellectually or emotionally. Meanwhile, their activity, in the absence of any search for value, becomes uncreative, and the result artistically ineffective, and consequently meaningless.

It seems plausible to regard “value” as an experience which, like meaning, evolves and changes, rather than as a fixed rigid attribute of particular stimuli. […] Thus value, information, and meaning might profitably be considered as being different, though related, experiential realizations.Footnote 139

Values are the basis of meaningful expression. For this reason their attainment must become an inescapable part of the artist’s life. Without appropriate decisions based on values or evaluation, things of value cannot be created.

What is the value of the aesthetic if it can only become an “appearance” and yet is not an illusion? Plato had answered this question in ancient times: beauty is the idea. In Plato’s view, each object somehow reflects the idea according to which it is formed. […] Only those [things] from which the idea reflects most brightly are beautiful. […] The first time [the aesthetic] is described in modern times is with this definition of Hegel: beauty is not the idea itself but only “the sensuous showing of the idea” (these days called “appearance”).Footnote 140

In the interpretation of musical works the idea “appears” through expressions given meaning through intonation.