That's entertainment

July 4, 12:53 PMSF Classical Music ExaminerScott Foglesong

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Throughout my twenties and well into my thirties I worked as a busy freelance pianist in the SF Bay Area, always ready to take on whatever (paid) opportunity came my way. At one point I played in an amateur ragtime band, a gig I took on because I had several friends in the group, not out of any particular enthusiasm for ragtime or playing in an amateur group. I had played in the Peabody Ragtime Ensemble back in the early 1970s in the wake of the Scott Joplin fad kicked off by the movie The Sting, and that was about as much ragtime as I wanted. But I did it anyway for some years and had a good time in the process.

During a rehearsal, one of the group members mentioned something about the group's being "in the entertainment business." I was downright offended by the remark. Entertainment?? I thought. ENTERTAINMENT???

What the hell was I doing in entertainment, I thought. I don't belong here. I'm not in music to entertain people. Oh, we have to keep the monkeys in the zoo ENTERTAINED, you know, otherwise they become restless and fretful and start throwing their feces at the visitors. 

Photo: Photobucket

The fact that I had made it so far along -- after having begun piano at the age of four, suffered all of the usual trials and tribulations of becoming a professional-caliber pianist, and having established myself as a successful working musician -- without ever once thinking of myself as an entertainer speaks volumes to the oddity of so-called "classical" music as entertainment.

The word "entertain" comes to us from the French, as a compound of tenir (to hold) and entre (between or together). So literally it means "to hold together" or "support" -- thus I might "entertain" an idea. Eventually the meaning broadened to include the idea of "amuse" or "divert", in the sense of something that "holds" one's attention. (The monkeys at the zoo...)

Certainly music can be used to divert, as any visit to a restaurant will attest. The 'background' music (often loudly, distressingly foreground) diverts our attention away from the woman at the next table recounting the details of her kidney dialysis or the cooks in the kitchen breaking glassware. Ditto most retail establishments, with their "soothing" (aggravating!) gush of prerecorded schmaltz.

Sidenote: In my neighborhood retail establishments tend towards tacky gay-bar music, loathsome sonic drivel if ever there were. So much for the bromide that gay men have better taste than your average joe. End sidenote.

Music may serve little purpose other than repetitious noise, establishing a steady beat for dancing, marching, or porn flicks. I'm not sure if that's entertainment, though -- more like utility when you get right down to it.

Another sidenote: in my aforementioned freelance days, among the very few paying freelance jobs I ever turned down was to improvise background piano music for porn movies. To this day I think it was a wise decision, even if the money was OK for ludicrously simple work; it's not the sort of thing you want on your tax records in the event of a background check.

I can accept that music may be functional only, or created solely as diversion. What I cannot accept is the notion of, say, a Beethoven symphony as entertainment. Consider the Ninth for a moment; musicians and audiences sought it out as part of two critical events in modern history: the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the aftermath of 9/11 in New York. In the former instance it was the rapturous joy of the fourth movement that made it such a perfect choice; in the latter, it was the sheer comforting beauty of the third movement that made it such a balm for New Yorkers, as members of the Philharmonic played the movement informally throughout the city in the aftermath of the tragedy. In neither case was the music treated as diversion or amusement; it acted instead as a universal cultural connection, after 9/11 perhaps a reassurance that civilization will endure.

Somehow I doubt that the Jonas Brothers -- had they been around -- singing "Hey We're Gonna Be Alright" would have had the same impact.

I realize that I'm now teetering dangerously on the edge of the tiresome distinction between "art" and "popular" music. That isn't my intention; I neither subscribe to that particular distinction nor consider it to contribute much to the issue at hand.

In his 2004 address to the incoming class at Boston Conservatory, Karl Paulnack likened a classical musician to a firefighter, medic, or rescue worker. It's an apt comparison given that music plays such a larger role in our lives than mere diversion, and is capable of taking us to emotional, intellectual, or spiritual places far removed from our day-to-day existence. Music is, in fact, a powerful substance; if it were a chemical I have little doubt it would be regulated down to a gnat's eyelash by the FDA.

Music's ability to reach inside our heads and hearts, to speak directly to us without the need for words (or any overt semantic content) renders it remarkably influential. Wittgenstein opined that we react to musical meaning much as we do to facial expressions: we can't say precisely why we read one set of emotions in a person's face, but we definitely do respond. When the addlepated Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd claimed that "I can say anything with my eyes", she knew perfectly well that she couldn't make her viewers hear words, per se, but she could get an emotional meaning across without spoken language. "We didn't need words," she ranted. "We had FACES!"

The language of gesture and facial expression tends to convey the innermost state of one person to another, and words just get in the way of the process. How easily we humans can spot insincerity in a face, even if the words being spoken are those of trust and comfort; how quickly we can read genuine love and interest. What, precisely, are we seeing? After all, there is no actual reason for a combination of various muscular contractions to convey anything. But convey it does, often at an instinctive level that transcends spoken language.

If I make a distinction between "art" and "pop" music, it has to do with just that communicative power. I would hold that artistic expression moves beyond the descriptive and/or verbal. I claimed a few paragraphs earlier that the Jonas Brothers song "Hey We're Gonna Be Alright" would be inappropriate as a healing statement after 9/11, yet the song offers lyrics which are meant to be comforting; banal platitudes aimed at pre-teens, to be sure, but well-intentioned nonetheless. The adagio of the Beethoven Ninth, on the other hand, does not address any particular situation; it is not inherently reassuring or comforting; it simply is what it is and we, the listeners, supply the reassurance and comfort. Certainly it does not make its overall impact via pretty tunes (Beethoven wasn't all that facile of a tunesmith), luscious harmonies or swooshy orchestration. So how, and why, does it work?

I would suggest that the how and why isn't really all that important. Some writers have addressed the issue -- consider Lawrence Kramer's "Why Classical Music Still Matters" or Julian Johnson's "Who Needs Classical Music"; that latter book wades into the pop-vs-classical issue with less-than-stellar results (in my opinion) but nonetheless offers plenty of food for thought. Both are well worth the time and energy.

I don't know precisely why music can affect us as powerfully as it can. Certainly it affects me, and has done so viscerally for as long as I can remember. I cheerfully confess to being one of those instrumentally-oriented musicians who pays no attention to verbal elements -- i.e., the libretto of operas or the text of lieder, or even popular songs for that matter. I never can remember any of the words, mostly because I tend to ignore them. Music does not elicit visual images for me; I have no urge to dance to the rhythm. It doesn't make me think of Shakespeare or Milton or Harry Potter or mountain streams or roast turkey.

Neither does it entertain me as a rule. Entertainment is, to my mind, something you can do without -- a pastime, a luxury to fill up the time remaining after you've finished the day's work of keeping a roof over your head, food on the table, and the car insurance paid up.

I can live without diversion -- including such show-biz-manquée items as the evening news -- or facile amusement. In fact I would probably be damn well better off without most of it. (I've resolved to avoid the general news media entirely until the current creepshow regarding Michael Jackson has run its course.)

But music -- true music of sound, syntax, structure, harmony and counterpoint, music that requires attention and listening -- is integral to our very humanity, a natural form of communication by which we express what words cannot.

And that ain't entertainment.