Listening, pt. 4
Welcome to Part Four of an ongoing series of posts on the topic of listening. You can find past posts on the subject here:
In the last installment in this series I talked about the ways we could understand acts of listening and improvisation as two parts of a co-creative or mutually causative process. Specifically, I wrote about the ways we could analyze this phenomenon in the light of general systems theory. In this post, I'd like to tie the same angle into the Buddhist concept of pattica samuppada or pratitya samutpada. Pattica samuppada is a Pali phrase, and is equivalent to pratitya samutpada in Sanskrit, roughly translated as mutually arising or co-arising phenomena. This concept offers an understanding that is remarkably similar to the mutually causative relationship expressed in general systems theory, and I believe it can act as a paradigm for approaching the act of intuitive improvisation.
The concept, or doctrine depending on whom you ask, of pattica samuppada is a central aspect of understanding the Buddhist worldview. In this doctrine, the Buddha “…presented causality not as a function of power inherent in an agent, but as a function of relationship – of the interaction of multiple factors where cause and effect cannot be categorically isolated or traced unidirectionally” (Macy, 19).
In other words, “…no effect arises without cause, yet no effect is predetermined, for its causes are multiple and mutually arising. Hence there can be novelty as well as order” (Ibid). Novelty as well as order....hmmmmmm. That sounds like an excellent way to describe the practice of improvised music, which is structured by the improvisers but continually creates novel output based upon the changing of the music.
In this sense we can view improvisational music as a teleological entity that exhibits design and purpose in its intuitive unfolding. “Paticca samuppada is not a theory to which one assents, so much as a truth one is invited to experience” (Ibid).
In the study of a system such as improvisation, especially as performed in a group context, linear causation is inadequate for understanding what is going on. Pattica samuppada at least offers us a conceptual tool for understanding the phenomenology of the improvisational unit. Pattica samuppada is “…the pattern of change itself. As such, it represents a dual assertion – of change and order, or order within change. In the linear view of causality, order requires permanence, a static basis impermeable to change. But here order and impermanence go hand in hand” (Ibid, 35).
In jazz improvisation, musicians give order to music, going in and out of pre-composed sections, and spontaneously creating compositions in the midst of improvisation, and the audience mentally constructs order as part of listening and understanding what is going on in the music. “To understand this we must consider everything, not as statically existing, but as 'happening' or 'event'” (Ibid, 52).
The event of music only occurs at the time it is played; a recording is one level removed in the direction of static-ness, and the written element is yet another level away from the experience itself as it must be interpreted to enter the sonic realm.
Listening as a co-creative process can be visualized and understood as a nested series of listenings at which the musician who is participating in the physical aspect of the music is at the center. The musicians’ playing can be seen as the stone hitting the water and their listening as the first ripple, and the audience aspect represents the next ripple in the expanding circles that dissipate into stillness in the same way sound merges into silence. This image works as well in visualizing the approach of musicians to understand their place in the ensemble, as individual voices with autonomy as well as musical repercussions. Indeed, improvisational music “…insists on both freedom for its individual voices and the reality of their interdependence…all players are simultaneously independent and connected, free and responsible, expressing their self awareness and their relationship to the ensemble/family/community” (Lock, 144).
At any given time, musicians hone in on their musical voice in a way that goes inside to focus on their own musical process without regard for external factors, or they might hear themselves in a completely detached manner as a member of the group or ensemble sound. In between these two extremes of listening focus are infinite shades of gray that fill out the spectrum of listening position.
Note: when the musical ensemble is discussed, I believe it must refer to any and all sonic surroundings. A solo artist interacts with the ensemble of silence in a concert hall, a street musician interacts with the ensemble of traffic noise, and a musician in a quartet must interact with the other musicians in a way that hears their own voice as a part of their ensemble.
In a group setting such as this, the individual voice is a changing entity that is sometimes receptive and detached, and at other times active and propelling. Just as it is said that you can’t bathe in the same river twice as the water is constantly moving, in the realm of improvisation you can’t bathe in the same song twice – although certain properties remain the same, the current always flows with a different energy and subtly different interactions.
Facility of improvisation for musicians, combined with their physical-technical capacity, is largely the result of their ability to adapt, "...not just to things as they are, but as they are coming to be" (Ibid, 85). While pre-composed music that strictly follows a written score has the range of music already defined and the amount of musical change predetermined, in improvised or spontaneously composed music change is the heart of the musical experience.
Pre-composed music finds value in structuring the musical experience and fine tuning the parameters in order to produce a specific result in the combination, while in improvised music value "...is not found apart from change or in the attempt to avoid change or in the positing of some permanent realm aloof from change. It is found rather in the way one incorporates and learns from change, "riding" it the way a surfer rides the wave" (Ibid, 86).
This might be the last installment in the series for a while. At least I don't have a plan for the next part, as I did for the first four parts which were already mapped out in some previous writing I had done on the subject. I hope you've found them interesting, and I will write more on the subject if and when inspiration strikes.
Comments, rebuttals and disagreements encouraged.
Lock, Graham. Forces in Motion. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988.
Macy, Joanna. Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems. Albany : State University of New York Press, c1991.
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