Abstract
When investigating the question of how people make music together in string ensembles, hearing plays a prominent role. The question arises as to how the musicians hear while playing. By illustrating a hearing coordination problem of a string ensemble, the conditions of reciprocal hearing are described, for example in the form of seating arrangements. Furthermore, different forms of hearing and listening are differentiated, which are connected with the knowledge, spatial positionality and perspectivity of the musicians (positioned, subjectivized hearing and acting listening).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Or to put it in Schütz’s words: Music, as a phenomenon of consciousness, is a temporal, polythetic one that refuses to be grasped monothetically (Schütz, 2016).
- 2.
In such a constellation with five musicians it would be untypical to play with the help of the score – among other things because it would take up too much space for a music stand and would be confusing when playing.
- 3.
In the empirical original, the conversation is as follows:
- Theresa::
-
„Ich kann Dich nicht hören [Rainer].“
- Marielu::
-
„Ja, das ist allerdings richtig. Also ich höre nur Rainer. Ich höre nicht mal Jana.“
- Jana::
-
„Ich höre Marielu, aber … mich manchmal.“
- Theresa::
-
„Also ich höre nur mich und ein bisschen Felix und dann ahne ich bei hohen Tönen, dass Rainer spielt.“
- Marielu::
-
„Dann müssen wir wohl ein bisschen zusammenrutschen.“
- 4.
What exactly the “quality we want” is will be discussed in more detail below. In this brief description of the process, however, it already becomes clear that we are quite capable of playing through an entire piece at a time before repositioning ourselves.
- 5.
Exactly which parts of the music these are can vary with the knowledge and abilities of the musician and the demands made on the professionalism of the music. In this respect, I first describe my individual problems of action here, which are, however, connected to the more general structure of the composition and thus certainly represent more general challenges for musicians.
- 6.
For example, a bar with eight eighth notes requires more space than a bar with one whole note, and so on. It is quite common, for example, for the first and second voices to have more sheets of music in front of them than the third to fifth voices, and so on.
- 7.
There are also parts where my voice interlocks particularly precisely with Felix or with Jana’s and Marielu’s voices; the same applies, of course, to the voices of the others among themselves.
- 8.
Since string instruments, unlike guitars, have no frets (the silver cross-pins on the fingerboard of a guitar), differences in the positioning of the fingers on the cello fingerboard that are only a few millimetres apart make an audible difference in tone. For this reason, the musicians must not only constantly check their own tones with the help of hearing, but also adapt to the pitches of the other musicians. It is precisely at such parts of increased need for cooperation that errors in ensemble playing are more quickly ‘punished’ with audible dissonances.
- 9.
Each instrumental realization of the same piece always sounds somewhat different in the interplay than the ‘ideal’ idea of the piece of music derived from it, which is compared with the situational sound.
- 10.
At this point, one also recalls Jana’s statement: “I hear Marielu, but... me sometimes”.
- 11.
For example, it is not a musician’s skill to be able to identify which piece of music is being played by means of playing movements alone – even though this would theoretically be possible with string instruments.
- 12.
In string ensembles, when one also has the notes of another voice in front of one in score notation, the reading along of these parts during one’s own playing creates a different form of expectation, which also influences the joint music-making. For example, under such conditions I can see in the notes when my fellow musician has to play a demanding passage, so that I can play more slowly at such points until they has succeeded, even if this means deviating from the previous rhythm. But even in these cases, hearing is the most important sensory resource for coordinating and synchronizing the playing. Of course, this also applies to other forms of making music together (improvisation in the jazz band, choral singing etc.), but here, too, hearing fulfils slightly different purposes in each case, which vary according to whether further information can be gained sensually about the other musical parts.
- 13.
For example, children who are just learning to play together often do not yet play together, but only simultaneously, so to speak, without orienting their play to the others. (This example is not coincidentally reminiscent of Mead’s differentiation of “play” and “game”).
- 14.
The different body formations also depend on which instruments are played. For example, violinists and violists can also stand while playing, which influences mutual perception in such a way that in more professional ensembles cellists playing together with standing violinists sometimes sit on a platform so that the musicians can also see each other at face level.
- 15.
From the ‘perspective’ of an audience, this impression can be relativized, for example, by the spatial distance to the ensemble and by the liberation from the play action, so that different parts of the audience get a more uniform acoustic impression of the ensemble sound, even if it is still different from this perspective. Thus, the sound impression of the ensemble varies for different parts of the audience – depending on how the space is designed and how they are positioned in relation to the ensemble. In this context, one might think of architectural efforts to design concert halls in such a way as to provide the best possible acoustic experience for the entire audience (e.g. Pierre Boulez Hall).
- 16.
We end up choosing a seating arrangement that helps to map the typical voice relationships of the various pieces we will be playing. (E.g. it was particularly important for Marielu and Jana to sit next to each other, Rainer and I now sit much closer etc.) At the same time, this aspect of the seating arrangement was not discussed by us on this more abstract level of ‘compositional structure’, but rather in relation to our individual wishes for making music in this room, from which the structure of the seating arrangement finally crystallizes. In fact, it was first brought to my attention at a conference that our final seating arrangement also corresponded to the typical allocation of voices in the band.
- 17.
There is a small discourse on string ensemble seating arrangements in the field of classical music. There is, for example, the classical seating formation of a string quartet (semicircle from left to right: first, second violin, viola, cello), but this also varies depending on different compositions and framings (such as chamber or concert music). Thus, in most of the seating arrangements from the case study described, the intended orientation towards an audience is also revealed (cf. Figs. 1, 2 and 4), as we open the seating arrangement towards a side where the audience is supposed to be. The third seating arrangement (Fig. 3), on the other hand, shows our desperation, so to speak, to find an order at all in which we can make music well together. (Unless playing to an audience or rehearsing for a concert, the musicians would position themselves in a circle rather than a semicircle).
- 18.
Discussing the sensory perception of one’s own instrument would be taking things decidedly too far here, but string musicians typically not only have a special relationship with their instrument, but experience their instrument in a way that can be compared in part to their own ‘verbal’ voice. While one cannot easily change one’s voice, the vibration of one’s own larynx is perceived when one speaks, so that one’s own voice typically sounds deeper than it does to outsiders (see, for example, Knoblauch, 2020).
- 19.
Nevertheless, I was able to continue playing ‘blind’, so to speak, and didn’t have to break off the interaction already in the piece. After all, we were quite capable of playing through one piece each before we moved. We had already played together as a band. Nevertheless, I was not able to play together with Rainer in this situation.
- 20.
Particularly interesting at this point are Stascheit’s remarks on different modes of listening in the preface to Schütz’s works on music. Here, the author proposes a phenomenological listening experiment that enables participants to focus their hearing on different aspects of a piece of music (Stascheit, 2003, p. 22 f.). However, the explanations remain at the level of the listening subject, so that in this context, for example, its positionality and perspectivity do not become relevant.
References
Adorno, T. W. (1976). Introduction to the sociology of music. Continuum.
Brabec de Mori, B., & Winter, M. (Hrsg.). (2018). Auditive Wissenskulturen: das Wissen klanglicher Praxis. Springer.
Honer, A., & Hitzler, R. (2015). Life-world-analytical ethnography: A phenomenology-based research approach. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 44(5), 544–562.
Howes, D. (Ed.). (2005). Empire of the senses: The sensual culture reader. Berg.
Knoblauch, H. (2005). Focused ethnography. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 6(3 (2005): The State of the Art of Qualitative Research in Europe). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-6.3.20.
Knoblauch, H. (2020). The communicative construction of reality. Routledge.
Knoblauch, H., Tuma, R., & Schnettler, B. (2014). Videography introduction to interpretive video analysis of social situations. Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften.
Pink, S. (2015). Doing sensory ethnography (2. Aufl.). Sage.
Schütz, A. (2015). Making music together. A study in social relationship. In J. Shepherd & K. Devine (Eds.), The Routledge reader on the sociology of music. Routledge.
Schütz, A. (2016). Fragmente zur Phänomenologie der Musik. In A. Schütz (Hrsg.), Schriften zur Musik Werkausgabe VII (S. 79–146). UVK Verlagsgesellschaft.
Simmel, G. (1997). Sociology of the senses. In D. Frisby & M. Featherstone (Eds.), Simmel on culture: Selected writings (pp. 109–119). Sage Publications.
Simmel, G. (2015). Psychological and ethnological studies on music. In J. Shepherd & K. Devine (Eds.), The Routledge reader on the sociology of music (pp. 35–42). Routledge.
Stascheit, A. G. (2003). Einleitung zu Alfred Schütz – Schriften zur Musik (S. 7–32). UVK Verlagsgesellschaft.
Weber, M. (2015). Rational and social foundations of music. In J. Shepherd & K. Devine (Eds.), The Routledge reader on the sociology of music (pp. 43–47). Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vollmer, T. (2023). Understanding Making Music Together: On the Sensuality of Making Music in String Ensembles. In: Eisewicht, P., Hitzler, R., Schäfer, L. (eds) The Social Meaning of the Senses. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38580-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38580-4_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-38579-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-38580-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)