Ediological and Mutual Features of Music

Subject-Position and the Specification of Invariants in Music by Frank Zappa and P. J.
Harvey
Author(s): Eric F. Clarke
Source: Music Analysis, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Oct., 1999), pp. 347-374
Published by: Wiley
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ERIC F. CLARKE
SUBJECT_POSITION AND THE SPECIFICATION OF INVARIANTS IN
MUSIC BY FRANK ZAPPA AND P.J. HARVEY
Introduction
[Adorno's theory] makes a claim for the social, material content of musical
works, while at the same time insisting that this is only to be found within the
speciElc details of the musical material and its formulation in any given piece.
Music analysis and a sociological aesthetics, after decades of mutual suspicion,
seem set to become inseparable. Of course, in reality it is not quite so simple...
...[T]he rapprochement between analysis and a critical, historical musicology has
been elusive. The latter frowns on the ridiculous autonomy in which music
analysis incarcerates itself; and, for its part, music analysis suspects that
interpretative discourses are hopelessly arbitrary if not tied to the details of the
musical text. Adorno's theory holds out a promise, but one that remains
frustratingly unfulE1lled... (Johnson 1998: 268)
For now, [Adorno] suggests, we must be 'largely content with improvisations'...
He goes on: 'If we wished to catch up, to release the cognition of music from its
inane isolation, it would be necessary to develop a physiognomics of the types of
musical expression'. (Ibid.: 271)
In a recent article on Webern and analysis, Julian Johnson (1998) points out
the tantalising prospect - and frustrating elusiveness - of achieving some kind
of synthesis between an analytical treatment of musical material and a
consideration of music's social meaning.* As the second of the two extracts
above demonstrates, both Adorno (for whom such a synthesis was a goal) and
Johnson regard some kind of unsystematic, 'improvised' relationship between
different perspectives and disciplines as the best solution: 'I am not sure that
this muddle - Adorno scholars might call it a "constellation" - can be
fundamentally improved upon.' (Johnson 1998: 268) The aim of this article is
to consider two pieces of pop musicl from an analytical/critical perspective,
* I am grateful to Rick Bolton, Annette Davison and Nicola Dibben for their
assistance with the material, and comments on the ideas, in this paper.
Words and music for 'Taut' by Jean Harvey & John Parish 1996 Hot Head
Music Ltd./Publisher Unknown. EMI Music Publishing Ltd., London WC2H
OEA. Reproduced by permission of IMP Ltd. and Rondor Music, London SW6
4TW.
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999) 347
C) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
348 ERIC F. CLARKE
and to propose that perceptual theory can provide a systematic basis on which
to ground the relationship between musical material and social meaning.
With a few exceptions, the overwhelming majority of work in the music
perception literature has adopted a cognitive approach. An entrenched
principle in this outlook is that perception has a sequential character, starting
with basic perceptual features (such as pitch, duration, timbre, spatial location,
etc.) and proceeding in a succession of levels of processing towards more
complex and abstract constructions. As an example, consider the following
recent statements of the cognitive position:
Music provides us with a complex, rapidly changing acoustic spectrum, often
derived from the superposition of sounds from many different sources. Our
auditory system has the task of analyzing this spectrum so as to reconstruct the
original sound events. This is analogous to the task performed by our visual
system when it interprets the mosaic of light impinging on the retina in terms of
visually perceived objects. Such a view of perception as a process of
'unconscious inference' was proposed in the last century by Helmholtz
(1909-191111925), and we shall see that many phenomena of ;nusic perception
can be viewed in this way...
From such findings we shall conclude that perceptual organization in music
involves a process in which elements are first grouped together so as to assign
values to different attributes separately, and that this is followed by a process of
perceptual synthesis in which the different attribute values are combined-
either correctly or incorrectly. (Deutsch l999a: 299-301)
In this chapter we shall examine ways in which pitch combinations are
abstracted by the perceptual system. First we shall enquire into the types of
abstraction that give rise to the perception of local features, such as intervals,
chords, and pitch classes... Other low-level abstractions result in the perception
of global features, such as contour. Next we shall consider how combinations of
features are abstracted so as to give rise to perceptual equivalences and
similarities. We shall then examine how these higher level abstractions are
themselves combined according to various rules. (Deutsch l999b: 349)
Lower levels are understood to be widely shared between different individuals
(even universal in some accounts), while more complex and abstract levels are
more idiosyncratic as a result of the speciE1c training and experience of
particular listeners. Thus the social meaning of a piece of music, which is
regarded as being at the remotest level of this sequence, is conceived as the
most personal, idiosyncratic and unpredictable (or even inexplicable) aspect of
the whole experience, while the simpler perceptual attributes are a more
tractable proposition for empirical and theoretical accounts.
A variety of kinds of evidence are offered in support of this general view:
speed of processing (a simple decision task on a basic perceptual attribute is
made faster than on a more 'complex' attribute), developmental sequence
(children seem to acquire a sensitivity to simple perceptual attributes before
Music Analysis, 18/iii (1999) (C) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
FRANK ZAPPA AND P.J. HARVEY 349
more complex attributes), and inter-subjective stability (judgements of basic
features such as the grouping of events typically show more agreement between
subjects than do judgements of music's 'semantic content', for example). The
empirical truth of these f1ndings, however, does not necessarily entail the
speciE1c interpretation provided by cognitive theory, and furthermore in an
enculturated adult, developmental sequence or relatively small differences in
speed of processing may be of little or no consequence for perceptual
experience. Whatever the 'flow of information', in egfect more 'abstract' levels
may be just as directly available (and paradoxically possibly even more so) as
are those regarded as basic and primary.
Though the cognitive approach has dominated over the last thirty years or
so, it has arguably resulted in little engagement with issues of direct interest to
musicology, since it has remained conE1ned to the lower levels of the sequential
ladder, and has consequently adopted a largely 'culture-free' outlook, deferring
any consideration of musical meaning or critique until a clearer model of the
lower levels of music perception and cognition has been developed. An
alternative view of perception and cognition is provided by the perceptual
theory of J. J. Gibson (Gibson 1966: 1979), often referred to as the ecological
approach to perception because of its emphasis on the reciprocal relationship
between perceiver and environment. From Gibson's wide-ranging theory three
important principles can be identiE1ed for present purposes: i) stimulus
information is highly structured and specifies its source; ii) source speciE1cation
is an aspect of meaning - perceptual meaning; iii) there is no sharp
discontinuity between the perception of nature and culture, and the manner
in which cultural meanings are available to a perceiver is no different from the
way in which natural meanings are. Gibson himself pointed out that culture is
as dependent on material reality as is the natural environment, and that our
response to the cultural environment is similarly dependent on the ability to
pick up perceptual information:
In the study of anthropology and ecology, the 'natural' environment is often
distinguished from the 'cultural' environment. As described here, there is no
sharp division between them. Culture evolved out of natural opportunities. The
cultural environment, however, is often divided into two parts, 'material'
culture and 'non-material' culture. This is a seriously misleading distinction,
for it seems to imply that language, tradition, art, music, law, and religion are
immaterial, insubstantial, or intangible, whereas tools, shelters, clothing,
vehicles, and books are not. Symbols are taken to be profoundly different from
things. But let us be clear about this. There have to be modes of stimulation, or
ways of conveying information, for any individual to perceive anything,
however abstract. He must be sensitive to stimuli no matter how universal or
fine-spun the thing he apprehends. No symbol exists except as it is realized in
sound, projected light, mechanical contact, or the like. All knowledge rests on
sensitivity. (Gibson 1966: 26)
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999) (C) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
350
ERIC F. CLARKE
Gibson developed his ideas primarily in relation to vision, and there has
been only a rather slow attempt to apply the principles to hearing, and music in
particular (though see, for example, Bregman 1990; Dowling & Harwood 1986;
Gaver 1993; Windsor 1995). A great deal stands to be gained by doing so,
however, particularly in bringing some kind of continuity and unity to the way
in which we understand the perception of supposedly 'basic' features and the
social meanings of sounds. The ecological approach asserts that the source of a
sound is directly specified in the stimulus information as it arrives at the
sensory system of a perceiver: the spatial location (speciE1ed by differences in
the time of arrival, and intensity, of the signal at the two ears), the material
(specified in the frequency relationships that we identify as timbre), the mode
of excitation (speciE1ed in features such as the attack characteristics), its
separation from other sources (specified in the correlated and uncorrelated
behaviour of different frequency components, vibrato, dynamic variation, etc.),
and so on. Bregman (1990) gives a thorough and comprehensive account of this
aspect of auditory and musical perception from a broadly ecological
perspective. But the principle can be, and has been, extended into a domain
that is much closer to broadly musicological concerns. Windsor (1995) has
pointed out that just as sounds specify the invariants of the natural
environment, so too do they specify the constancies or invariants of the
cultural environment. The sounds of a muffled drum being struck with
wooden sticks specify the materials (wood, skin) and physical characteristics
(hollowness, damped vibration) of the material source - the drum; and they
also specify the social event (for instance a military funeral) of which they are a
part. It is in this way that the connection between the study of music
perception and the social meaning of music can be made.
The resistance to taking this step has been twofold: i) so-called 'higher level'
properties of music (such as tonality and metre, for example) are held to be
mental constructs rather properties of the material itself; ii) cultural meaning
has, under the influence of linguistics and semiotics, been theorised as based on
arbitrary codes, and thus subject to constant and arbitrary change. Both
assumptions are unwarranted. The tonality or metre of a piece of music is as
much a property of that music (in relation to a perceiver) as is the identity of
the physical instruments playing it. Tonality can be regarded as specified in
sounds (though obviously distributed over time) in the same way that the
brittleness of a wineglass is specified in the sounds that are generated when it is
struck. Similarly, although it is true that the coding of a cultural unit with its
conventional meaning is arbitrary (in the sense of not being determined by the
form or substance of the signifier) and thus potentially infinitely changeable,
the reality is that once that cultural unit is embedded within a system of any
complexity, its meaning is effectively as invariant as a natural law. It may be
possible in theory to decide that the signifier << metre >> will from now on
Music Analysis, 18/iii (1999)
(C) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
FRANK ZAPPA AND P .J . HARVEY 351
denote the conceptual content that was previously denoted by the signifier
<< tonality >>, but essentially impossible in practice to effect such a change,
given the weight of human culture. Thus << metre >> means what it does for a
particular cultural community with about the same degree of flexibility that the
acoustical information broadcast by the slamming of a car door specifies just
that - a car door slamming. Note that ecological theory does not suggest that
perceivers can pick up the perceptual meaning of events in a universal or innate
fashion: perceivers must learn to be sensitive to the information available in the
environment, by becoming more and more finely attuned to invariant
properties - and this applies to car doors as much as it does to music.
The contribution of ecological theory is thus to ground the 'improvisation'
to which Adorno and Johnson refer above by insisting upon the manner in
which the stimulus information in musical sounds specifies a whole range of
invariants - from the instruments on which it is played, through the musical
structures of which it is composed, to the social conditions from which it arises.
The problem is not how to bring such disparate elements together (they are not
disparate, but are components of a manifold perceptual field), but rather to
trace explicitly how any particular invariant is specified in the stimulus - an
issue which is also tackled by analyses in Moore (1998) and Clarke & Dibben
(in press).
As already noted, it would be an impossibly naive form of direct realism that
claimed that the same invariants were specified in a stimulus for every
perceiver. A stimulus can itself only be described in relation to the perceptual
capacities, sensitivities and 'interests' of a perceiver: the sound of two pianos
playing a quarter-tone apart may specify the music of Charles Ives to a
musicologist (his Three Quarter-Tone Pieces for two pianos of 19234), and a
serious problem to a piano tuner. A variety of different phenomena fall under
the umbrella of this mutualism, but one particularly important component is
the way in which the relationship between listener and music defines an
aesthetic attitude, and it is this that will constitute the primary focus of this
article. The relationship is given focus and emphasis in discussions of what has
been called the 'subject-position' - the way in which the general manner of a
listener's response is directed or determined by material characteristics of the
music.
Subject-Position
The term 'subject-position' has been used in relation to the cinema, where it
describes the way in which a perceiver is encouraged, or obliged, by the film to
adopt a particular attitude to what he or she is witnessing. Johnston (1985)
characterises the idea as follows:
352 ERIC F. CLARKE
We need to take into account a key conceptual distinction. On the one hand
there is the empirical spectator whose interpretation of Ellm will be determined
by all manner of extraneous factors like personal biography, class origins,
previous viewing experience, the variables of conditions of reception, etc. On
the other hand the abstract notion of a 'subject-position', which could be
defined as the way in which a Ellm solicits, demands even, a certain closely
circumscribed response from the reader by means of its own formal operations.
This distinction seems fruitful, inasmuch as it accepts that different individuals
can interpret a text in different ways, while insisting that the text itself imposes
definite limits on their room to manoeuvre. In other words, it promises a
method which avoids the inElnite pluralism which posits as many readings as
there are readers, and an essentialism which asserts a single 'true' meaning.
Theories of subjectivity should perhaps be seen as a H1rst step towards
understanding how these two processes interact in particular social contexts.
(Johnston 1985: 245)
The important distinction here is between the empirical spectator and the
subject-position: clearly every spectator has his or her own unique perspective
on a film (or any other object or event, for that matter) resulting from the
unique circumstances, experience, background and aesthetic attitudes of any
individual, and the particular details of the specific occasion being considered.
But the claim made by the idea of the 'subject-position' is that there is a limit
on this potentially infinite plurality which can be attributed to properties of the
film itself- understood within a certain shared cultural context. The notion of
a subject-position is thus an attempt to steer a middle course between the
unconstrained relativism of the equivalent of 'reader response theory' (the idea
that every perceiver constructs his or her own utterly individual and
unpredictable meaning out of contact with an aesthetic object) and the
determinism (or essentialism as Johnston calls it) of rigid structuralism - the
idea that meaning is entirely contained within the objective structures of the
work itself.
In the case of cinema, the manner in which the formal devices of film-
making may solicit or demand a certain kind of attitude to the events of the film
is not hard to imagine because of the conceptual elbow room created by the
separation between the narrative content of the film, and the manner in which
we as viewers are allowed or invited to know about that narrative. To take a
concrete example from Jane Campion's film The Piano, the viewer is made to
see Ada's (the central character's) relationship to her own improvised music as
liberating and her own music as a medium of unconstrained self-expression for
her (despite the subordination at the hands of Baines - the man who becomes
her lover in the film- that music also mediates). In other words, the 'subject-
position' that the film constructs is a portrayal of improvised music as a
positive force in Ada's life (cf. Purkis 1995). There are many ways in which this
is achieved by the film, but a particular instance is a scene in which Ada returns
(C) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999 Music Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999)
with her daughter to a deserted beach, where they had both earlier been
brought ashore with their belongings, to find and play her abandoned piano.
The circling and flying movement of the camera around Ada at the piano, and
the general sense of physical freedom and the release of energy (reflected in her
daughter's physical play down at the water's edge) that this rapid, mobile but
controlled camera-work produces, expresses a view of the music that she is
playing (her music) as liberating and liberated. As a crude simplification, the
film's subject-position in relation to music is that of 'unmediated self-
expression'.
This does not mean, however, that any particular viewer will actually feel
this way about music and the music in the film. It is not hard to imagine a
spectator feeling irritated or affronted by what he or she might regard as an
idealised and naive notion of music and its supposedly untainted capacity to
express Ada's subjectivity, resisting an ideologically suspect association of
lyricism with femininity. This is the reaction of an individual 'empirical
subject' (to use Johnston's term), and is neither to be denied nor to be taken as
a challenge to the notion of subject-position: indeed it is the separation
between what the film seems to be doing (i.e., the subject-position that it
adopts) and an individual subject's reaction to that which is so telling. If the
two are collapsed, we are back to total relativism.
A second example from film may help to show how tricky - but provocative
- this distinction may be. David Lynch's Blue Velvet deals with violent and
abusive sex, and Kaleta (1993) discusses, in relation to one particular scene, the
way in which the film's collusive character attracts, repels and confronts the
viewer:
The scene melds content with presentation inextricably in our disquietude as
we watch first for Dorothy and then for Jeffrey. It further goads and humiliates
the viewer, first for watching Dorothy, then for watching Jeffrey, then for
noting - perhaps understanding - the erotic pleasure in watching, using, being
used. Yet it compels through its cinematic texture of color and sound that [sic]
viewers cannot turn away.
Finally, viewers are assaulted by their own confusion about their voyeurism.
Neither the audience's uneasiness nor its fears of exposure is the final turn that
concludes the scene. (Kaleta 1993: 106-7)
Different viewers may have a range of reactions to this aspect of the film: they
may, for instance, see this as a critique of the hidden, extraordinary and
corrupted underside of apparently conventional small-town American life, and
as a disturbing but effective way of confronting the viewer with this
unpalatable reality. The dissonance between the contrasting reactions of
different empirical subjects, rather than simply standing as 'different meanings
for different people' with no more to be said, suggests a re-examination of the
Music Analysis, 18/iii (1999) t) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
354
ERIC
F. CLARKE
film
itself
to see whether
the source
for one or other
of these
different
reactions
to the same
materials
might
be found
in the techniques
of the film
itself-
an
assessment
of what
the
H1lm's
subject-position
in relation
to violent
sexual
abuse
might
be. This
does
not imply
a kind
of authorial
determinism
- a
concern
with
what
Lynch
himself
felt about
these
matters,
and
with
what
he
himself
thought
he was doing.2
It is possible
that
he may have
had no deE1ned
or articulated
personal
attitude
to the question.
Rather
it is a question
that
is
directed
at the H1lm itself
- at its immanent
qualities
viewed
within
the general
terms
of contemporary
culture.
To apply
this
idea
to
music
seems
to require
that
some
equivalent
separation
between
'content'
and 'technique'
is identiE1ed-
just
as the topic
of 'music'
and the flying,
circling
camerawork
in the
example
from
The
Piano
respectively
occupy
these
two
categories.
In the case
of instrumental
music
this raises
issues
to which
I shall
return
at the end of this
article.
First,
however,
I shall
take
the rather
more
obvious
approach
of regarding
the
relationship
between
words
and
music
as a context
in which
the notion
of a
'subject-position'
might
play
a fruitful
role.
The two
musical
examples
that
are the focus
for this
article
are, like
Blue
Velvet,
both
concerned
with violent
and
abusive
sex,
but in contrasting
contexts,
and in decidedly
different
musical
styles.
They
are 'Magdalena'
by Frank
Zappa
and
The
Mothers
of
Invention,
from
the album
ffust
Another
Band
from
LA;
and 'Taut'
by Polly
Jean
Harvey
and John
Parish
from
the album
Dance
Hall at Louse
Point.
In
both
cases,
I shall
show
how
features
of the
musical
materials
specify
the
subject-position
of the
song,
making
explicit
the link
between
subject-
position
as a component
of music's
social
meaning
and
the
perceptual
principle
of the speciE1cation
of invariants.
'Magdalena'
3fust
Another
Band
from
LA (CDZAP
25) was originally
released
(on vinyl)
in
1972,
and contains
live
recordings
from
an appearance
by the
band
in Los
Angeles
in 1971.
The
album
as a whole
consists
of a twenty-five
minute
miniature
rock
opera
'Billy
the
Mountain',
and a suite
of four
songs
of which
'Magdalena'
is the third.
The lyrics
of 'Magdalena'
deal
with the sexual
abuse
of a daughter
by her father,
and
do so with
an uncompromising
explicitness
and crudity.
The song
itself,
which
is about
six and a half
minutes
long,
is
structured
in a relatively
conventional
verse/chorus
manner,
but with a greatly
extended
'coda'
- featuring
impassioned
speech
but virtually
no singing
- that
takes
up nearly
half of the song's
duration.
The
basic
structure
of the song
is
shown
in Ex. 1. In terms
of 'voice'
structure,
the singer/speaker
(Howard
Kaylan)
alternates
strictly
between
a narrating
role in the verses,
and the first
Music
Analysis,
1 8/iii ( 1999)
t) Blackwell
Publishers
Ltd. 1999
FRANK ZAPPA AND P .J . HARVEY
355
Ex. 1 Outline song structure for 'Magdelena'
Time (mins. secs)
0.00 Introduction (Instrumental)
0.07 Verse 1 (Sung)
0.22 Verse 2 (Instrumental + 'doo doo doo')
0.36 Verse 3 (Sung)
0.52 Chorus 1
1.42 Verse 4 (Instrumental + 'doo doo doo')
1.55 Verse 5 (Sung)
2.11 Chorus 2
3.00 Latin Interlude (Instrumental with brief sung section and
'doo doo doo')
3.43 Coda (Singing turning to speech by 4.04)
6.24 End
person voice of the father in the choruses. He also takes the first person voice of
the father in the short sung section of the Latin Interlude, and the singing and
speech of the coda. Only once, and very briefly, is the 'voice' of Magdalena
herself heard, when in verse 5 we hear her, in the absurd falsetto voice of the
'narrator', repel her father's advances. In terms of textual content, the verses
deal with the evolving sexual encounter, while the choruses (all with identical
lyrics) present a pathetic and ludicrous appeal by the father for her daughter to
trust and feel sympathy for him, as shown in Ex. 2. The singing in the 'Latin
Interlude' (see below) is delivered entirely in a strained and exaggerated
falsetto voice - often an index of absurdity and extremeness in Zappa's music -
and makes the transition from the first person father's voice of the chorus,
which deals with less 'dangerous' verbal material, to the verbally dense coda.
This short falsetto interlude is also in first person voice, but now uses the
sexualised language that appears in the verses combined with the pleading tone
of the chorus. The coda itself, following what appears to be a conventionally
romantic start with a typically caustic twist ('Magdalena, Magdalena,
Magdalena, Magdalena, Daughter of the smog-filled winds of Los Angeles')
rapidly becomes increasingly demented and sexually abusive, culminating in a
hysterical mixture of pleading, self-loathing and chaotic derangement.
Turning now to the music, the song is characterised (as is so much of Zappa's
music) by its constantly changing collage of musical styles, each of which is
executed with enormous skill and ebullience, but always with the sense that the
music is being used ironically - that it is being played within heavily inverted
commas. The very short instrumental introduction, the majority of the verse
and chorus material, and the 'Latin Interlude' are all jaunty and up-tempo in
style (with a basic tempo of c. 120-130 bpm), with two exceptions: at the end of
356
ERIC F. CLARKE
Ex. 2 Chorus lyrics for 'Magdalena'
My daughter dear,
Do not be concerned
When your Canadian
Daddy comes near
My daughter dear,
Do not be concerned
When your Canadian
Daddy comes near
I worked so hard,
Don't you understand,
Making maple syrup for the
Pancakes of our land
Do you have any idea
What that can do to a man
Do you have any idea
What that can do to a man*
* Lyrics reproduced from:
http://www.wins.uva.nl/robbert/zappa/albums/Just_Another_Band_From_L.A. /04.html
each verse, on the word 'Magdalena', the music suddenly switches to a rather
overblown and mock-portentous half tempo; and similarly in the final (third)
part of each of the choruses, at the words 'Do you have any idea what that can do
to a man?', the tempo is halved and treated in the same exaggeratedly imposing
manner. The coda, which has something of the character of a sung and then
spoken recitative, takes up this slow tempo (c. 65 bpm), which it preserves until
around 5'34" when a long accelerando starts (coinciding with the ever more
hysterical lyrics), reaching a tempo of c. 220 bpm before dissolving into non-
metrical chaos for about the last 8 seconds of the track.
The song starts and remains fairly securely in D major, but turns towards
the relative minor at the start of the coda, the whole passage consisting simply
of an unbroken alternation of B minor 5 and F# minor 3 chords. Throughout
the track, Zappa makes use of the cliched cultural stereotype of specifying
positive and active/projective emotions (the verses and the first two thirds of
the chorus) by means of fast tempi and the major mode, and negative, passive
and unfulfilled emotions (Magdalena's name at the end of each verse, the last
third of the chorus ('Do you have any idea...'), and the whole of the coda) by
means of slow tempi and the minor mode.
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii (1999) t) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
FRANK ZAPPA AND P.J. HARVEY
357
However, while this description of the basic framework (textual, tempo,
tonal) within which the song is contained may give a sense of the overall
pattern, it does not really touch on the musical and ideological substance of this
music, nor on the central question that the analyses in this article are intended
to address: namely, what subject-position does this music adopt in relation to
its semantic material, and how is that subject-position articulated in technical
terms? It is Zappa's use of ironised, exaggerated and ridiculed musical styles,
and the cultural values that each style specifies, together with a number of
aspects of the vocal delivery, that articulates the music's subject-position. The
next step is to identify some of the stylistic references that this music employs,
and to reflect on the interpretative stance that they imply.
The opening instrumental introduction, with snare drum, guitars,
keyboards and cymbals prominent in the mix, and all instruments playing in
rhythmic unison, functions as a kind of crude call to attention or fanfare, and
has a distinctly theatrical quality to it: 'Pay attention now, and listen to a story',
the listener is told. This brief opening leads immediately into the first of three
verses, and a style of music that is poised somewhere between a marching band,
and a country dance band with an oompah bass (the bass simply trots out an
unvarying and rhythmically four-square tonic/dominant alternation in D major
and C major, while the snare drum, guitar and organ play tritely on the off-
beats). The vocal line is a banally simple five-note ascending scalar melody,
which- as the harmony moves to C and the lyrics list the father's 'possessions',
including the teenage daughter after whom he lusts - simply gets stuck on a
single note and pushes the vocal phrase two beats beyond the point at which
both the melody and harmony should (by the symmetrical conventions of this
simple style) have changed. At the same time the bright and breezy vocal
manner with which Kaylan starts the verse shifts subtly towards a more
menacing and tight sound3 as he persists with his single note. Finally, as the
first verse reaches its climax and conclusion, the vocal line breaks out of its
stasis and rises up a five-note scale parallel to that of the first phrase before
finishing in a lower register, with a breathy and melodramatically vibratoed
enunciation of the name 'Magdalena' echoed with an archaic and anachronistic
turn figure on the organ at the half cadence.
The second verse has exactly the same structure as the first, but is
instrumental, with the vocal line taken by a thin, guitar-like keyboard sound
and falsetto 'doo doo doo' harmony singing from Kaylan and the band's other
main vocalist, Mark Volman, in rhythmic unison with the line. The overall
effect is of a cheap and ludicrous banality, which again turns dramatic as the
melodic climax of the verse is reached: the keyboard swoops down in a manner
reminiscent of the organ gestures of progressive rock before Kaylan again
finishes the otherwise wordless verse by intoning the name 'Magdalena' on a
single note with the same mock serious gestures of high drama that were used
358 ERIC F. CLARKE
before. Verse three takes the narrative forward, following the model
established by the first verse, but with an even more tenacious perseveration
on a single note in the middle which now pushes the phrase structure six beats
beyond its expected boundary. The words delivered by Kaylan's obsessional
monotone are 'He caught his daughter in her blouse by the light, and he said to
himself "She looks alright". He reached for a tit and grabbed it tight...', and we
hear his obsession directly in the unvarying pitch and the manner in which the
song's structure (phrase structure and metre) is simply ignored and bulldozed
by his own urges. Again the verse finishes with Magdalena's name treated to
the same vocal and instrumental devices that were used before.
The music of the verses, with its wooden and conventional character, tells us
that 'this is a story of everyday nice folk' at the same time as the lyrics make it
clear that this is nothing of the sort - or rather that this is the corrupt and
hidden 'other world' concealed behind the well-ordered favcade of North
American family life. We get sudden glimpses into the father's abusive mind
every verse in the obsessional quality of the perseveration on a single note, and
associated change in vocal timbre, as the narrator tells us the unfolding story-
a glimpse made all the more disturbing and highly charged by the way it leads
straight into the ironised and melodramatic potency with which Magdalena's
name - treated like a fetish object - is delivered.
The chorus which follows establishes a rather different style reminiscent of
the music of a Broadway show. It consists entirely of harmony vocals by
Volman and Kaylan (with additional vocals from other members of the band
towards the end of the chorus) who, in the first part of the chorus ('My
daughter' to 'near' - see Ex. 2 above) sing triplets against the continuing duple
metre of the bass and other instruments, giving the music a rather self-
conscious quality. This is the sound of second-rate show music trying to be
'clever'. With the tempo effectively halved (see above), the instrumental sound
is looser and fuller than for the verses: the bass plays a more varied line that has
none of the wooden oompah quality of its verse playing, the guitar and
keyboards provide a rhythmically simple harmonic wash, and the kit playing
gives the whole sound a looseness and mobility that comes from a far freer use
of the snare drum (no longer confined to single off-beat shots but now playing
longer sequences) and a much greater and splashier use of the cymbals.
Nonetheless, the deliberation of the vocal triplets gives this section a distinctly
contrived quality, as do its stylistic associations with show music: as the father
tells his daughter not to be concerned, the music tells us that this is a show, a
sham- artifice.
The second part of the chorus ('I worked' to 'land' - see Ex. 2) intensifies
the rhythmic self-consciousness of the first part with a chain of metrical
transformations that turns the vocal triplet crotchets of the first part into
ordinary quavers within an implied 6/8 metre ('I worked so hard, don't you
Music Analysis, 18/iii (1999) ( Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
understand') and then quaver plus semiquaver groups in an implied 12/16
metre ('making maple syrup for the pancakes of our land'). The rather forced
quality of these changes, their awkward self-consciousness, make this part of
the chorus decidedly uncomfortable and lacking in fluency - as if the
performers were simply the puppets of some other musical authority (a score or
director). This is a role that Zappa quite often inflicted on his performers both
as an expression of his musical domination, but also as a very obvious
expression of domination and control in a broader ideological fashion. Here,
the jerky banality of the music that accompanies the father's appeal to his
daughter's sympathy with references to his hard-working life tells us that this
man is no more than a rather pathetic functionary in the processing of Canada's
most famous product - maple syrup. The man is as much a puppet of a
ludicrous machine as this awkward and uncomfortable music is a 'puppet' of
Zappa's musical domination, with the implication that the father is no more in
control of his sexual desire than he is of his work (and music).
The final part of the chorus comes as a release from the straitjacketed
rhythms of the preceding section, and breaks out into a weighty and grandiose
E minor (the rest of the chorus revolves entirely around G and A major chords)
that revives the associations with progressive rock (and rock opera) noted in
relation to the verse endings on the word 'Magdalena', but now even more
exaggeratedly, with an extravagant vocal line swooping between normal and
falsetto voice, heavy guitar chords, and lots of cymbal and drum fills from the
kit. By contrast with the constricted quality of what has gone before, this is
musical high drama, and it is used both to emphasise and ridicule the pitiful
appeal by the father to his daughter's sympathy: with exaggerated stylistic
contrast (from jerky awkwardness to overblown pomp - and a ludicrous
falsetto) the protagonist asks his daughter (and we, the listeners) to reflect with
melodramatic seriousness on the question of what spending a life making maple
syrup might have 'done to a man'! (although underneath, or alongside that, we
are aware that the father is also asking a rhetorical question about the effects of
unsatisfied, and illicit, sexual desire).
Now (at 3'00") the music moves into new territory: first a short section
which starts instrumentally before adding vocals, the whole section adopting a
kind of sanitised and caricatured Latin American dance style. It starts with the
kit alone playing just the tom-toms and hi-hat, adding maracas, keyboards
(playing thin, guitar-like sounds in parallel sixths) and a very active and
characteristically syncopated bass part. This is 'happy, good-time dance
music', and nothing serious should be expected of it. The vocal is sung by
Kaylan once again in a ludicrous falsetto (a style of singing in which he
specialised), with exaggerated vibrato, a totally symmetrical phrase structure
and an utterly trite rhyming scheme (the lyric is the father's voice in first
person pleading with Magdalena, and reassuring her that her mother won't
360
ERIC F. CLARKE
find out), with other members of the band successively entering with rapid
doo-wop backing vocals. Finally, when Kaylan concludes his lyric, only the
backing vocals are left manically repeating their 'Dada dada dada, dup dup de
yup' at breakneck speed and on a suddenly unsettling bare B/F# fifth. With an
abrupt change to a more voluptuous sound the backing vocals slide (on a
'waah') onto a 6 chord in Ft minor and the lengthy coda, which turns out to be
the apotheosis of the song, begins.
What then should we make of this interlude? Once again it is the
exaggeratedly ironic contrast between words and music that is most striking:
to the sound of up-tempo Latin dance music, with its conventional cultural
specification of 'care-free good times' we hear the father's lust and deception
expressed with shocking directness, whilst simultaneously being undermined
by the absurdity of the vocal delivery and the banality of the musical materials.
This situation, we are told, is simultaneously dangerous, pathetic, and as
laughable as the musical style is vacuous.
The rather more serious and sinister final twist introduced by the backing
vocals makes a link to the music of the coda. It is suddenly completely
different: relaxed, slow, lush, with a pleasant harmonic wash consisting of
sustained backing vocals and keyboard sounds in an unbroken and utterly
regular alternation of B minor 3 and F# minor 3 chords, and very light kit
playing consisting largely of cymbals with occasional little rolls and fills on the
snare drum and tom-toms at the changes of harmony. The vocal line starts with
an extravagant cliche - a descending arpeggio in Ft minor of an octave and a
half, that turns around at the bottom into an equally showy scalar ascent back
to (and beyond) the starting point- and uses this to project the romantic/
caustic lines: 'Magdalena, Magdalena, Magdalena, Magdalena, Daughter of
the smog-filled winds of Los Angeles'. Kaylan sings with a full, conventionally
expressive, non-falsetto voice, but almost immediately, as the lyrics plunge into
the father's lust-filled fantasy, the vocal sound becomes strained and pinched
with that same sense of uncontrolled emotion and rising frenzy that is heard in
milder form in the middle of each of the earlier verses. Within a further twenty
seconds, the singing has degenerated into highly charged speech, and stays like
it for the rest of the song: this, really, is where the song has been heading for
the past four minutes. The rest of the coda is delivered in a style of rising
dementia and uncontrolled passions, to words that become increasingly
deranged, abusive and chaotic, laced with a catalogue of fetishised sexual
images ('crotchless underwear', the 'five-inch spiked heels' and 'maroon hot-
pants' that the daughter wears), tacky American domestic images ('the little
chartreuse hallway', 'the sparklets machine', 'the little neon Jesus picture on
the wall'), Hollywood cultural icons of various kinds ('the street by the stars
that say Jon Provost and Leo G. Carroll together') and fantasy ('Frank Pernell4
and us until dawn'). The instrumental and vocal backing remains relatively
Music Analysis, 18/iii (1999) t) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
361
detached until around 5'00" (which is about one-and-a-quarter minutes into
the coda). From here on, the backing vocals and instruments become
increasingly rhythmically forceful and differentiated, switching from wordless
'doo' and 'wah' sounds to the repetition of the single word 'walk' from 5' 08" (at
which point the text consists of the father imploring Magdalena to walk back to
him). From 5'34", where the speech starts to become shouting, a gradual
accelerando starts which lasts over the next 45 seconds and reaches a tempo of
c. 220 bpm at 6'16" before dissolving into uncontrolled and non-metrical chaos
for the final 98 seconds of the song, accompanied by a rising siren with tritely
obvious sexual connotations.5 The end is a noisy chaos (the dissolution of both
orgasm and degradation) that continues straight into the opening of the next
track ('Dog Breath').
The perspective taken by this long final section of the song is not hard to
identify: on the one hand we are taken inside the mind of the father (since the
whole of this part of the lyric is first person) and in some sense obliged to
participate in his increasing frenzy and mania, directly expressed in the
unbroken crescendo of rhythmic activity, dynamic level, rapidity of speech and
musical tempo. It is hard not to be drawn into this vortex of rising passion, not
only because of the first person voice of the text, but also because the music at
the start of the coda is lush and beguiling by comparison with the fast and
unsettlingly changeable music that precedes it. The music refers less obviously
(at least to begin with) to external styles, and therefore seems to address the
listener in a more genuine and 'authentic' manner. On the other hand the 'in
your face' crudity of the text, the ghastly mix of images (cultural, domestic,
sexual) and the pathetic appeals of the father add up to an absurd and gaudy
collage that is clearly an object of irony and ridicule - as the background
laughter of other members of the band and the audience at various points
underlines. The longer the music goes on, the greater is its sense of vacuity
(tonic/dominant alternation with doo wop vocals): combined with its
melodramatic instrumentation and backing vocals, and protracted accelerando
the effect is of a huge and mad fantasy - a 'grand passion' without substance.
This, in a sense, is why the song's subject-position is so uncomfortable.
When we are invited to laugh at and ridicule the father's apparently cosy,
small-minded and tacky 'public' life with its neon Jesus pictures and maple
syrup, are we also being asked to regard the dangerous and abusive
relationship with his daughter as nothing more than a 'ridiculous
aberration'? And if we laugh (with surprise? embarrassment? discomfort?
amusement?) at the crudity of the father's words and actions, do we collude
in a smutty voyeurism? From the perspective of the daughter, this is no joke:
we may be told by the narrator that she tells her father to 'go eat shit' and
then '[runs] on down the hall', but the reality is that girls and women are
abused and that the abuse is real - as the menace in the rising frenzy of the
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999) t) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
362
ERIC F. CLARKE
coda suggests.
We are not allowed
the easy comfort
of a clear ideological
perspective:
the song is neither
a crushing
and serious-minded
indictment
of
abuse,
nor a simple
indulgence
in the smutty
humour
that is a part of the
violence
and abuse that are described.
It draws its listener
into a world that is
both dully familiar
and shockingly
unacceptable,
and solicits
both the
collusion
and the repugnance
of the listener.
The potential
for a range
of
responses
to this by different
'empirical
subjects'
is clearly
enormous
- from
deep offence,
and the discomfort
of uncertainty
and ambivalence,
to
voyeuristic
guilt or a laddish
delight
in smut.
It is unclear
whether
the
song's 'polymorphous
perversity'
is a cynically
irresponsible
and exploitative
kind of fence-sitting,
or the uncomfortable
indeterminacy
that Adorno
called
non-identity
thinking.
'Taut'
If 'Magdalena'
is a tricky
and elusive
case, then 'Taut'
by Polly Jean Harvey
and John Parish is a rather
more direct confrontation
with sex and violence.
The song comes from the CD Dance Hall at Louse Point (CID 8051/524
278-2)
released
in 1996, which consists
of twelve
songs
co-written
by Harvey
and
Parish (music
by Parish,
words by Harvey).
The song lasts for three-and-a-
quarter
minutes
and apart from the initial
chorus
with which it starts,
is
organised
in a conventional
verse/chorus
alternation,
as shown
in Ex. 3. The
content
of the lyric is a little less specific
than Zappa's
for 'Magdalena',
less
offensive,
but arguably
more disturbing.
The words are reproduced
in Ex. 4.
As the example
demonstrates,
virtually
all of the text is in the first person
voice
of the female
protagonist
- the only exceptions
being the two brief interjections
by 'Billy'.
The vocal delivery,
all of which is by Harvey,
is of three kinds: i) the
initial
and final choruses
are double-tracked,
the two voices
wavering
in pitch
relative
to each other so that clashes
of anything
from a fraction
of a semitone
to about a tone result, in a vocal style that is thin, high, cold, distant
and both
angelic
and sinister;
ii) the second
chorus
is sung in full voice; iii) the two
verses
are delivered
in an urgent,
sometimes
rapid and close-miked
semi-
whispered
speech.
In complete
contrast
to 'Magdalena'
this music is stylistically
homogeneous
and entirely
free of the inverted
commas
that are so audible
in Zappa's
song.
This is music of a frightening
stripped-down
violence:
hard, angular
and razor
sharp.
The track opens
with about a second
of rather hissy 'silence'
before the
initial
chorus.
The chorus
itself (simply
a descending
E major triad with an
upper
neighbour
note on the initial
B), recorded
at a low dynamic
level and
with a moderate
amount
of reverb,
sounds
remote
and other-worldly,
an effect
that is emphasised
by the hissy background
and the electrical
hum and crackle
that overlay
it- sounds
that specify
a guitar amplifier,
turned
on with the gain
Music Analysis,
1 8/iii ( 1999)
(C) Blackwell
Publishers
Ltd. 1999
363
Ex. 3 Song structure for 'Taut'
Time (mins. secs)
0.00 Opening (Background sounds)
0.02 Chorus (Vocals alone)
0.27 Instrumental introduction
0.50 Verse 1
1.36 Chorus (Full)
2.00 Verse 2
2.45 Chorus (Full)
3.15 End
up and an instrument plugged in with a loose connection. This first chorus has
the sound of a distant location recording- someone (or rather two women)
singing somewhere bleak and deserted. Once the chorus has come to an end,
and with a moment more of the hissing silence that forms the backdrop to the
song's beginning, two rhythm guitars start to play with a hard, relentless sound
- the guitars whose crackling connections and humming amplifier were heard
at the start of the track. Their music (material A, shown in Ex. 5) consists of a
cyclically repeating two-bar unit in a fast quaver rhythm (at crotchet = 160)
based around two superimposed fifths (A-E-B) with the middle E embellished
with upper and lower neighbour notes. The sound is distant and somewhat
distorted - as if played at high gain through a distant or low-powered amplifier
- and remote, as with the chorus.
After four cyclical repetitions, a constricted vocal creak/scream begins that
initially grows and then sustains over a further four repetitions of the guitar
figure. Neither the gender nor the location in the 'sound stage' of this voice are
at first identifiable because of the thin, tight nature of the sound itself, but its
pitch height suggests a woman's voice more than a man's - and so it turns out
to be. This disturbing sound has an overwhelming sense of suppressed violence
about it, as though the thin and constricted vocal sound might break out into a
full-voiced scream, but complicated by an uncertainty about whether this is a
creak/scream of anger, ecstasy, terror. In the prevailing bleakness of the guitar
sound, it is the more negative interpretations that inevitably dominate. After
the fourth repetition of the guitar figure, the first verse starts (at 0'50"),
signalled by a number of simultaneous changes. First, the rhythm guitar parts
change to the two guitar parts shown in Ex. 6. Both parts make use of a
considerable amount of pitch bend6 so that the resulting combination is more
dissonant - and often microtonally dissonant - than the opening figure (Ex. 5),
and less harmonically rooted. Second, the kit enters placed forwards in the
mix, and at a dominating dynamic level, with the syncopated and
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii (1999) (C) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
364 ERIC F. CLARKE
Ex. 4 Lyrics for 'Taut'
Chorus
'Jesus save me'
'Jesus save me'
Verse 1
Can I tell you something?
Can I tell you a story?
It's about me an' Billy.
Cos ... as I remember.
I remember it all started when he bought that car.
It was the first thing he ever owned apart from me.
And the colour was red.
And the colour was red and he drove me...
He drove me out of my mind.
I am over it now.
It was Spring or Summer '65, I don't remember.
Steamin' and sweatin' and stickin' against the wheel.
And I could see the tendons stand out in the back of his neck.
And he used to make me pray
Wearing a mask like a death's head.
He'd make me pray
Kneeling in the back seat,
Make me say, make me say:
[To chorus]
Verse
Inherited his father's hate is what he'd say
And he'd cuss enough to strip the paint off heaven's gate
But somehow he could make joy come loose inside me
I would feel really ... I would feel really and truly alive ...
And I would do anything for him.
It just wasn't enough.
It was never enough.
He'd turn to me and say, he'd, he'd say:
'Even the son of God had to die, my darlin"
An' he wanted everything, he wanted everything
He wanted the honey from the cane.
He used to make me pray, kneeling in the back seat ... Jesus,
An' he wanted, he wanted everything,
He'd turn to me, it was never enough.
An' say 'Say it:
Even the son of God had to die, my darlin'. Hargh! Say it!'
[To chorus]
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999)
Ex. 5 Initial rhythm guitar figure (material A)
Gliiws 1 ( 0^ r J r J T
Ex. 6 Rhythm guitar figures at the start of the first verse which together constitute
material B
a)
i'vJ
I Iz 11
b)
4( N; X Jln n In nbr r r r 11
365
discontinuous material shown in Ex. 7. Third, Harvey's voice changes from the
creak/scream into an intensely whispered speaking voice, recorded close to the
microphone with a lot of audible breath and at the very front of the sound
stage. There is now a separation between two relatively distinct layers of
sound: the guitars comparatively distant and remote, the voice and drums more
forward and direct.
The effect of these changes at the start of the verse is to disrupt and disturb
the context established previously. If the music of the first Elfty seconds
establishes a sense of bleak and disengaged remoteness, the creak/scream
leading up to the Elrst verse introduces directness, immediacy and a kind of
pent-up urgency. Harvey asks 'Can I tell you a story?', and the intensity of her
whisper tells us that this story will be so grippingly intense, so unpalatable, or
so secret that it must be conveyed with the confidentiality and 'barely
speakable' sounds of whispering - the most intimate form of speech (lovers'
whispers, conspirators' whispers, fugitives' whispers). The kit-playing during
the verse (see Ex. 7) is idiosyncratic and powerful. Intermittent and frequently
on weak quaver beats, it acts rather like a foil to, or commentary on, Harvey's
voice, filling in gaps between the lines of the lyric, sometimes jutting through
them, with a mixture of isolated and more continuous drum, cymbal and stick
sounds. There is hardly a single repeated pattern and there are frequent gaps of
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999)
C) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
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366 ERIC F. CLARKE
Ex. 7 Kit pattern for verses 1 and 2
a)
Open hi-hat
. \ k k k k k k k
Snare drux
Cyrnbal
Bass drun
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii (1999)
silence. The 32-bar verse has a simple three-part structure (8 bars of material B
(Ex. 6); 16 bars of material A (Ex. 5); 8 bars of material B), with an association
between material B and the kit, with the result that the kit plays at the
beginning and end of the verse but is silent in the middle. In the middle
section, as the kit drops out and Harvey tells us of Billy's car, the sound is
briefly somewhat calmer and less chaotic, with small, rather more lyrical
melodic guitar fragments derived from material A. But as the verse moves
forwards towards its climactic ending and into the chorus, the kit re-enters -
first just with stick sounds (at 'sweatin" and 'stickin'') and then (when the B
material returns) with explosive drum and cymbal shots. The accumulating
tension of these disruptive gestures catapults the verse into the chorus.
The music in this first verse bristles with tension (the kit playing, the
dissonance of material B, the whispered, pitchless voice) and the constant
threat of breakdown. Only in the middle of the verse, as the more consonant A
material returns and the kit falls silent, is there some temporary and partial
respite from the frenzy and instability - the very section of the verse where
Harvey tells us of Billy's car, and of this remembered time. Her vocal delivery,
whispered though it is, remains quite controlled - even calm - until she reaches
the words 'drove me out of my mind', where her voice is suddenly tighter and
is followed by a slight gasp. The next line ('I am over it now') is delivered in a
more deliberate and measured fashion, but as she tells us more of what went
on, of 'Steamin' and sweatin' and stickin' against the wheel' and of being
forced to pray in the back seat of the car, her voice again threatens to lose
control, as the delivery once more becomes rapid and broken up.
The chorus into which this increasingly tense music erupts is like an
explosive release from claustrophobia. Harvey sings with full voice in a rich
instrumental texture, with the anchoring effect of a bass guitar for the first time
in the song. A strong and unambiguous E major tonality, and a secure sense of
metrical stability brought about by the grounding effect of the bass and the
more fluent, full and conventional use of the kit dispel the sense of a bleak
location-recording that characterised the opening chorus. The bass and kit
sound are big and right in the front of the mix, Harvey's voice a little further
back and treated with reverb which continues to confer a slightly other-worldly
character on it - as if transported by the intensity of the experience.
Verse 2 is again 32 bars long, but divided even more simply into 16 bars of
material A and 16 bars of material B. It starts in an immediately more highly-
charged manner than does the first verse, with Harvey's whispered delivery
much faster now, almost incoherent at times, and tight and forced. Between
lines, even between words, there is a gasp or a sob, and as she tells us that 'he
wanted everything, he wanted honey from the cane', her whisper first rises to a
squeak, and then drops down to a throaty, growling whisper between audibly
clenched teeth. Even more disturbing is her deep-whispered delivery of Billy's
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999) t) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
368
ERIC F.
CLARKE
apocalyptic
phrase, 'Even the son of God had to die, my
darlin", full of the
conflicting
emotions
(desire,
terror) that
accompany her
memory of him in this
moment of
identification - the victim
impersonating the
perpetrator. There is no
doubt that this is the voice of a
person in an
extreme
passion of some kind - a
potent
mixture of sex, a kind of
distorted
religious
mania, and
terror. The kit
remains silent
through the A
material that starts the verse, and enters with the
same kind of
disruption and
discontinuity when the B
material is
reached as it
did in the first verse (see Ex. 7), as
Harvey's voice (at 'And he
wanted
everything')
becomes
increasingly
broken-up and
incoherent. The kit falls silent
again before the end of the verse as
Harvey,
suddenly and
chillingly
restored to
some kind of sense and
continuity,
growl-whispers the final line - Billy's
second
threat that 'Even the son of God had to die, my
darlin'.
Hargh! Say it!'.
The final
chorus
brings the song full circle. By
contrast with the
previous
chorus and its rich vocal
power, we now hear the thin and
clashing
double-
tracked vocals which were heard at the
opening of the song. The bass is there,
as in the
second
chorus, but the kit stays silent until the first 'me'
(virtually
halfway
through the
chorus), when it comes in with a more
muted,
distant and
reverberant sound than
previously. A
partial
fade-out to the thin, wan sound of
the start has
already
begun, and
draws the
music away to leave only an
unresolved 6 chord on B with an A in the bass, and the
reverberating and
receding drum and
cymbal shots. We have been led into a
woman's
recollection
of an
experience of
overwhelming
intensity
whose
immediate
outcome and
consequences (in the
'Spring or
Summer of '65') are
unknown
(unresolved),
but whose deep and
ineradicable mark on her is
deafeningly
audible. The song
returns to the
fragile and
colourless world from which it
sprang, and tells us
that she is only 'over it now' by virtue of a
continuing effort of will,
control and
denial.
Subject-Position and
Subject-Matter
What does this add up to as a
'subject-position'? The music could
hardly be
further from the
character of
'Magdalena': no hint of irony
(though a
degree of
ambivalence), and not a whiff of
smutty
voyeurism,
collusion or crude shock
tactics. This is
chilling, even
terrifying, music whose
position is clear - a direct
confrontation with
power,
desire and
manipulation. We are made to stare this
frightening
mixture in the face and
experience its hold on a
person.
At the start of this article I
claimed that the
ecological
perceptual
perspective
had no
difficulty (in
principle) in
embracing a
broad range of
apparently
disparate
elements, but that it
brought with it the
opportunity- and
perhaps
the
obligation - to try to
account for how
invariants are
specified in the
stimulus. What is it in the
material that can
account for the
subject-position
outlined here for
'Taut' and, by
contrast, for the
rather more
ambivalent
Music
Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999)
C)
Blackwell
Publishers Ltd. 1999
369
subject-position claimed for 'Magdalena'? Even before the Elrst verse of 'Taut'
starts, in the first wordless fifty seconds of the song, a number of features of the
sound specify a rather narrow range of states:
* The hissy silence at the start specifies a poor quality (or at least not studio
quality) recording: this is the sound of either a historically distant, or
impoverished, reality.
* The lack of vibrato in the female voices singing 'Jesus save me' in the
opening chorus specifies a number of possibilities: naivete (a lack of
conventional vocal training); a lack of engagement (going through the
motions of singing this lyric - as if under duress); 'other worldliness' (a
lack of robust human physicality). Equally, the wavering intonation
specifies a lack of training and/or control; or lack of concentration and
commitment (singing unwillingly, or with distracted attention). A
number of these same features also point to the child-like quality that
can be heard in the voices.
* Until the start of the second chorus, there is no bass instrument. The
resulting predominance of high frequencies specifies rapid vibration,
which in turn specifies small or tightly stretched (taut!) objects.
* The specific timbre of Harvey's vocal creak/scream in the run-up to the
first verse directly specifies an almost closed, very tense vocal tract,
symptomatic of one of a number of heightened and tense emotional states
(ecstasy, fear, suspense).
* The guitar sound used throughout the song specifies a high level of
physical energy (the strings are hit hard, the rhythm is fast) but an energy
that is confined (the short riffs are static and encircled). This is high energy
in a small 'space', specifying tension (imminent rupture or explosion).
* The particular guitar sound used here was first used (or certainly made
prominent) by The Velvet Underground, whose music and image
espoused a bleak urban vision, and a condition of unsmiling and nihilistic
alienation. As a result, this sound now specifies that vision/ideology.
* The unpredictability, irregularity and discontinuity of the kit playing
specifies a particular kind of control (this is a very precise kind of
unpredictability, with no sense of the free rein of randomness), but one to
which the listener is subject rather than a part of.
* Almost everything about the sound of the chorus specifies a release from
the tension and constriction of the introduction and verse: the vocal sound
specifies the control and confidence of 'unharnessed' singing - a big and
unwavering sound with a rich timbre; the kit is now played in a regular,
continuous, and reassuringly predictable manner; and the harmony is
much more clearly defined and straightforward (obvious E major). This is
part of the paradox and ambivalence of the song's subject-matter: there is
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii (1999) (C) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
370 ERIC F. CLARKE
a kind exultation about the chorus, even though this is the frightening
climax of the song.
* The final chorus is again ambivalent, but for different reasons. The
tonal stability and security is still there, but two features call it into
question: the kit is absent, and as a result the whole texture sounds
empty, devoid of the 'power and exultation' that are speciEled by the
previous chorus; and the strong and confident voice has been replaced
by the weaker, bleaker, wavering voices of the opening, which now
bring with them not only their earlier specifications (see above), but
also the circularity and imprisonment of a return to the start of the
song. Equally, the final sounds of the song (6 on B with a seventh in the
bass, and reverberating kit) are the sounds of something unElnished: it is
not only the song but also the narrative and the psychological drama
that are 'unfinished business'.
By contrast, 'Magdalena' projects its shifting and ambiguous subject-
position in a number of ways, including:
* The changes of 'voice' (first person, third person) of the text.
* The changing delivery (falsetto, head/chest voice, singing, semi-singing,
speaking, ranting and shouting) of the singer.
* The frequent changes of musical style.
* The use of caricature and excess: the falsetto voice (used extensively in the
song) is an absurd voice 'not to be taken seriously' - because by convention
it frequently specifies a fake and transparent attempt to simulate a
different gender (female) or a different age (pre-pubertal). By contrast, the
non-falsetto voice in the coda is 'genuine' in the sense of being genuinely
impassioned, and progressively more so, but the backing vocals are
melodramatic and theatrical (falsetto, chorus-style), and in the context of
the obviously cliched and stereotyped verbal content, the drama of the
delivery is made to seem absurd and inappropriate. Similarly, the
extravagant vocal arpeggio at the start of the 'coda' is a grand gesture
that specifies 'theatre' and hence dissembling and artifice.
* Contrast and contradiction between the 'tone' of the lyrics and the music.
While in 'Taut' the intensity, fear and passion of the lyric are mirrored by
the music (with the result that the subject-position has a confrontational
directness about it), in 'Magdalena' the 'tone' of the lyrics is often in
conflict with that of the music. Examples are the 'Latin Interlude', where
the happy banality of the music contrasts with the pleading and lustful
lyric; or the verses where the ludicrous and wooden music (with the
exception of the music that accompanies the name Magdalena) contrasts
with a lyric that continually veers off into lust and fantasy. The result is
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999) (g3 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
the slippery and unsettling ambivalence that characterises the song: two
sources of information (words and music) specify incompatible
psychological states.
An exhaustive account of the relationship between sounds and the invariants
that they specify in these two songs would be cumbersome and unnecessary for
the purposes of this article. What the examples above demonstrate is that the
relationship between the particular characteristics of the sounds used and the
subject-position specified can be traced in an explicit and principled manner,
and that the relationships involved combine social conventions (for example,
the meaning of falsetto voice; the ideology of The Velvet Underground) and
physical principles (for example, the direct specification of a state of the vocal
tract by a creak/scream; the specification of space/distance by reverberation).
If the subject-position in 'Magdalena' has the distancing quality of parody
in relation to the song's subject-matter, 'Taut' draws the listener in to a close
identification with the singer and protagonist, a rather direct confrontation
with that potent mixture of infatuation and terrified submission that can turn
people into victims. Subject-matter and subject-position interact in a
compelling manner. The subject-position is the hard, bleak, tension mixed
with passion projected by the characteristics of the sound discussed earlier,
while the subject-matter of the woman's spoken/sung delivery is the conflict
between desire and fear, the wish to be 'over it now' mixed with something
unfulfilled ('it was never enough'), an ambivalence with which the listener is
encouraged to identify. For 'Magdalena, by contrast, the subject-position is a
complex and distancing mixture of ridicule, melodrama, smutty fun, and real
or simulated arousal. The subject-matter is the rather repellent pleading,
pathetic, deceiving and fantasising father/abuser, for whom the listener is
encouraged to have little sympathy (he is, for instance, described as 'grubby'
and 'drooling').
Finally, how might the approach adopted here apply to other music - in
particular instrumental music? When music has a text, the distinction between
position and content can be made in the way that it has been here: but when
there is no text, what is subject-matter? An answer might be to regard
conventionalised musical materials, of the kind discussed by Tagg (1979) or
Agawu (1991) as subject-matter (both in terms of musical materials and 'social
sedimentation') and the treatment of the material as the specification of
subject-position. When Zappa (or Stravinsky, for that matter) takes ready-
made material and 'subjects' it to a transformation of one sort or another, or
juxtaposes it with other material, the transformation specifies a position in
relation to that subject matter. The separation between matter and position
comes about often by an awareness of surplus, excess or disjunction of one sort
or another.
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999) (g3 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
372 ERIC F. CLARKE
An example is provided by the guitar solo on 'Dog Breath' - the track that
immediately follows 'Magdalena'. The solo is an example of Zappa's virtuoso
guitar playing, but laced with the same ambivalence that is found in
'Magdalena'. It seems to demand both to be taken at face value (it is
'heartfelt') and to be heard as ironic. After the falsetto vocals and melodramatic
gestures (very much in the style of 'Magdalena') which precede it in the first
half of the track, the solo sounds initially more direct, more genuine. But while
it has some of the hallmarks of Zappa's own idiosyncratic guitar style (a spiky
and angular melodic shape, and extensive use of the wah-wah pedal), it also
draws too heavily on the stereotypical conventions of rock guitar solos, and in
too explicit a fashion, to be taken entirely seriously. The chromatic descending
bass-line under static harmony, which provides the vamp for the solo, is a
cliched archetype over which innumerable long and frequently rambling guitar
solos were trotted out in the late 1960s and early 1970s (when the track was
recorded). Similarly, the use of register in the solo conforms to stereotype: a
rising trajectory across the solo as whole specifies the mounting excitement and
increasing virtuosity that typifies a conventional rock guitar solo, within which
a discrete register change at about the halfway point allows the guitar to jump
into a higher, more cutting tessitura. This, too, is a stock device in which a new
level of intensity is reached by breaking out of a register that had seemed to
incarcerate the music - with all the ideological associations of individual
freedom and heroic struggle. This is a solo which, like 'Magdalena', specifies a
subject-position characterised by a slippery ambivalence between direct
engagement and distanced parody.
In conclusion, I hope to have demonstrated that there is a way to address the
notion of subject-position in both instrumental music and text-based music,
and that the focus provided by the idea of a subject-position is a fruitful and
productive way both to direct an analysis of musical materials and to enquire
about the social meanings of those materials. The perceptual framework within
which the analysis has been carried out is another way to understand the
relationship between materials and social meaning - not through the semiotic
language of 'codification', but through the perceptual principle of
'specification'. An advantage of this is that the arbitrariness and abstraction
of codification is underpinned (in ecological theory) by the realism and
directness of perception, restoring the connection between the aesthetic
consciousness of musical listening and the practical consciousness of 'everyday'
listening. The pop music examples used here have required and shown the
virtue of a sound-based (rather than score-based) approach, and have
illustrated just how much information there is in those details of sound that
a score inevitably cannot convey.7
Music Analysis, 1 8/iii ( 1999) C) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999
REFERENCES
Agawu, Kofi, 1991: Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music
(Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Bregman, A. S., 1990: Auditory Scene Analysis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Clarke, Eric F. & Dibben, Nicola, in press: 'Sex, Pulp and Critique', Popular
Music.
Deutsch, Diana, l999a: 'Grouping Mechanisms in Music', in D. Deutsch (ed.),
The Psychology of Music (New York: Academic Press), 2nd edn.
l999b: 'The Processing of Pitch Combinations', in D. Deutsch (ed.), The
Psychology of Music (New York: Academic Press), 2nd edn.
Dowling, W. J. & Harwood, D., 1986: Music Cognition (New York: Academic
Press).
Gaver, W. W., 1993: 'What in the World Do We Hear? An Ecological Approach to
Auditory Event Perception', Ecological Psychology, 5, pp. 1-30.
Gibson, J. J., 1966: The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin).
1979: The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates).
Johnson, Julian, 1998: 'The Nature of Abstraction: Analysis and the Webern
Myth', Music Analysis, 17/iii, pp. 267-80.
Johnston, S., 1985: 'Film Narrative and the Structuralist Controversy', in P. Cook
(ed.), The Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute).
Kaleta, K. C., 1993: David Lynch (New York: Twayne Publishers).
Meyer, Leonard B., 1967: Music, The Arts, and Ideas (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press).
Moore, A., 1998: 'In a Big Country: The Portrayal of Wide Open Spaces in the
Music of Big Country', Contemporary Music Review, 17, part 3, pp. 1-6.
Purkis, Charlotte, 1995: 'Postmodernity at The Piano: l9th-Century Erotic Bodies
and the Limits of Language', Critical Musicology Nezvsletter, 3, pp. 3440.
Tagg, Philip, 1979: 'Kojak, 50 Seconds of Television Music: Towards the Analysis
of Affect in Popular Music', Studies from the Department of Musicology,
Goteborg, 2.
Windsor, W. L., 1996: 'Perception and Signification in Electroacoustic Music', in
R. Monelle & C. T. Gray (eds.), Song and Signification (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Faculty of Music).
NOTES
1. Although the general principles of the analyses presented here could be applied to
almost any kind of music, the emphasis on sound within the approach (rather
than notation) makes it particularly suited to music from an aural tradition such
as pop.
374 ERIC F. CLARKE
2. Kaleta (1993) cites an interview with Lynch which records that Lynch was
'beside himself with laughter' during the scene in which Frank abuses and rapes
Dorothy, to which Lynch responded:
I'm sure pretty near every psychiatrist could tell me right now why I was
laughing, but I don't know. It was hysterically funny to me. Frank was
completely obsessed. He was like a dog in a chocolate store. He could not help
himself. He was completely into it. But because I was laughing and I am a
human being, there must be some logical reason why. It has something to do
with the fact that it was so horrible and so frightening and so intense and
violent, that there was also this layer of humor. It has to do with the degree of
obsession where people cannot help themselves. (Breskin, cited in Kaleta 1993:
130-31)
3. Caused literally by a tightening of the vocal tract.
4. I have been unable to discover who Frank Pernell (or Purnell?) is or was; from the
context, I am assuming that he may have been a dance-band leader, or singer.
5. Zappa's music seems quite often both to make use of, and poke fun at, this kind of
'schoolboy humour'.
6. No attempt has been made to notate this in the example.
7. Indeed, an interesting issue that applies to score-based music and the subject of a
rather different kind of enquiry is the extent to which different performances
have the potential to project quite different subject-positions.
Music Analysis, 18/iii (1999) (C) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999

Ediological and Mutual Features of Music

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Subject-Position and the Specification of Invariants in Music by Frank Zappa and P. J.

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