A few thoughts on "Musicking" and musicking

[packbat]

We realized partway through our reading of Musicking: the meanings of performing and listening by Christopher Small that we no longer expected the reading of the book to be an event we appreciated - we expected it to be an obligation. So we halted there. We'll talk more about the book at the end.

In my own words and understanding: Small defines musicking as the totality of actions that bring together the event of music. This includes hearing music, reading music, writing music, improvising music, recording music, mixing music, printing CDs, advertising performances, booking venues, sweeping up after the performers and audience are done, all of it. It is an event with inherent politics:

At a classical concert (the focus of Small's book):

..the conductor's name appears on the front of the programme, the second violinist's name appears in the list of performers in the back, the celebrity's name appears in a news article about the event among those who attended, and the usher's name appears only on their own nametag if at all.

In a car:

...the driver (and passengers, if present) choose among themselves, by convention or by communication, who shall define what shall be heard within the vehicle; those involved in the production of an album or the scheduling of a radio station decide what sounds shall be heard by their audience, and in what order; the listeners sing along or don't; and those outside the vehicle are interrupted or not by the sounds being played within it.

At a music lesson:

...the teacher, possibly in cooperation with the student, select assignments that the student is to study within and outside their lessons; the student works on these assignments on their own time and demonstrates the fruits of that labor during the lessons; the teacher informs the student what they did that was correct or faulty and advises them on how to correct or build on what they have done; and the student or their sponsor pays the teacher for their labors.

...we could go on. In all of these cases, different participants are understood to have different roles that must be performed to result in the event of music and different levels of power to influence the others.

These roles can be questioned. Why, for example, is there an expectation that, when a musician seeks out sheet music of long-dead composers, they do so with the goal of reproducing exactly what those composers imagined their music to sound like? What is that musician expected to think the composers would want? How is one to determine the tempo at which a Scott Joplin rag is to be played: by its sheet music, by accounts of player piano rolls, by popular academic consensus ... or by one's own judgment, not as an astronomer seeking to depict with accuracy the details of a planet, but as a painter seeking to invent a portrait through an understanding of their subject?

And yes, of course there are many who have approached the history of music this way - the album "Switched-On Bach" by Wendy Carlos is deservedly renown as an artisitc work - but as a student, we had permission to play a Scott Joplin rag at the tempo we did because we could argue from a player piano roll and a word beside the score, not because we could argue from our own judgments as creators of music. It is taken for granted in the tradition in which we were trained that the function of a performer is to follow their instructions perspicaciously. It is taken for granted that when we gain access to sheet music, our role is to reproduce a platonic ideal, not to originate.

There is much we could say that is good about the book - when Small spoke of "how lightly norms fall on those for whom they represent ideal social relationships" in the context of the etiquette of concerts classical and rock, we were quite excited by this idea - but ... well. First, it is evident throughout that Small is both familiar and uncomfortable with the symphony concert, and is actively cynical in many descriptions as a way of emphasizing this discomfort - which is fine, but feels a little disingenuous in practice. Second, it is evident throughout that Small is a white person from an industrialized and Christian society, and often draws on ideas foreign to that society in crashingly uncomfortable ways when something more familiar would probably have done better. Third, and most viscerally relevant to our sex-averse self, Small sprinkles at least a couple bizarre moments of truly unnecessary sexualization into the arguments of the book, presumably out of a sincere perception that these are accurate and relevant, but that we find quite uncomfortable.

An example of this sexualization:

In Chapter 5 ("A Humble Bow"):

Let us say that tonight's conductor is none of these but a man a little past middle age, slim, erect and unhurried, secure in his command of the works to be played and of the musicians who are going to play them. He radiates that air of physical well-being and sexual energy that is often borne by those who are accustomed to command and to being admired for doing so; the stories and hints in the press of his extramarital affairs have done him no harm in this respect. [...]

We found out about Christopher Small and the book (and word) "Musicking" through the YouTube videos of Adam Neely, and were prompted to read it specifically from its reference in Neely's video about hating CCM - Contemporary Christian Music - but trying to like it. It clearly left a strong and lasting impression on Neely, and for good reason: as a musician and especially as a working jazz musician, a musician in a heavily improvisational style of music seeking to make an income out of performance, the importance of music as an entire event is inescapable. And though we don't love the book and didn't finish it, this perspective was enriching to us as well.