3.4 Fourth layer: Gestalt

better than having silence? In other words, which part of our listening enables us to really listen to music and which part treats it as a utility? Following the invention of the gramophone record and the revolution it caused, the terms ‘utility music’, Unterhaltungsmusik, and folk music18 were given entirely new meanings.19

Both in politics and the commercial music world the debate about art has become more and more aggressive. On the one hand commercial interests turn a greedy eye towards the millions in subsidies given by the state to art music; these subsidies are jeopardised when we simply assume that there is no difference between commercial music (equals large audiences and therefore politically relevant) and art music (equals niche, politically not relevant).

On the other hand, the dominancy of utility music has driven contemporary art music into an ivory tower. Whether this is a positive development for the quality of art music remains to be seen.

3.4 FOURTH LAYER: GESTALT Music is a time-based art. Our perception of music follows a time line, second by second. Our memory registers the music and needs some time to recognise the patterns in it. This recognition takes place in two ways. The first is linked to the material: we recognise the style (Baroque, Second Viennese School) and the instruments. Then tempo, style of playing, the meter or time, and character. The second way is through the use of recurring patterns. All classical music have these recurring patterns, they can manifests itself as: - a theme - as emotional indicators, for example the wehe motif or the rising major triad as a symbol of victory and glory. The Affektenlehre from the Baroque, or Wagner’s Leitmotiv system are based on this.

18 In the past few decades, the term ‘world music’ has gained favour. The term was first used by ethnomusicologist Robert E. Brown in the early 1960s.

It became current in the 1980s as a marketing/classificatory device in the media and the music industry. 19 See Walter Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen

Reproduzierbarkeit [The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction] (1936, 1969).

More acerbic are Norman Lebrecht’s When the Music Stops...(1996) and

Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness, published in the U.S.A as The Life and his Death of Classical Music (2007).

- as building blocks, for example a theme the parts of which are developed in a composition. - as a personal expression of the instrumentalists. But that does not make it into a Gestalt. For that, we need the perceived music and the listener’s associational and emotional references to be linked. The most important composers therefore were the ones who knew how to write music, the patterns of which were more than just the material. It makes their music instantly recognisable because it evokes emotion and refers to more than just tone patterns. It illuminates the form of the piece by its recognisability, and it makes the composer’s style recognisable as well. All music of any relevance has Gestalt, deliberately or unconsciously built into it by its creator. Gestalt creates the outer layer and makes music a part of ourselves, just like an individual person with outspoken characteristics does, not so much because these outspoken characteristics may make us remember this individual, but because we understand his motivations as part of our own. This is the difference between a person who just makes a spectacle of himself to be noticed, and a person who’s personality intrigues us. This type of quality in music is very hard to create consciously: it is probably the most important sign for talent, like the difference between a mediocre actor and a very talented one.

Gestalt is not really a word which belongs to the musical world. Itis a German word for shape, form or figure. But as with so many German words it means a lot more.

Gestalt is a collection of elements, creating a whole, unified concept or pattern, which is something else than just the sum of its parts, due to the ability of humans to recognise a relationship of its parts. And because of this recognition there is often a link with terrains outside of this understood unity in the field of archetype and emotions.

The Gestalt is easily recognised exactly because it reduces all elements of a sound to a single gesture. If you are familiar with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, you only need to hear the first four tones to recognise and remember most of the work. But since the word encompasses all elements of listening it is very hard to give it any meaningful quantisation.