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A
n i m a l m u s i c: M u s i c
a s
a u n i v e r s a l p h e n o m e n o n Viivi
Jokela
Music,
myths and animals In
ancient mythology music and nonhuman animals (hereafter ”animals”) are
very closely related to each others. Animals seem to share the realm of
music with humans; or to be more precise, music appears as a universal
phenomenon which covers the whole phenomenological reality, from the
smallest plant to the transcendental powers of the universe. For example,
in the hindu mythology Siva in his dynamic form Nataraja is often
represented as a flute playing satyr, a snake around his neck, dancing in
ecstasy of his own music. This dance creates the whole universe, and the
snake is the very symbol of that creative energy which penetrates all the
beings and phenomenons. Francois-Bernand Mâche is in his book Music,
Myth and Nature collected a bunch of myths from the Greeks related to
the relationship between music and animals pointing out this all-embracing
power of music. Similar to the symbol of Siva is the myth of Orpheus, who
enchanted all the creatures around him into ecstasy with his playing. The
universe, impregnated with sound, is found from the depths of
unconsciousness. The myth of Arion is a good example. Arion, who is
captured by the pirates, sings a song standing at the prow of the ship
before he´s about to be executed. After that he hurls himself into the
sea and the dolphins of Apollo come to save him. An irrational act like
this is a symbol of meditation and represents daring to risk the great
leap into the primordial unconscious (Mâche 1992, 11-12). Apollo is the
symbol of the healing force of this leap. On the other hand, the unknown
depths of the ocean represent the Dionysiac ecstasy. When Apollo and
Dionysos are united they form a powerful force which manifests as a
musical myth. It is the quest for truth which is made possible by music,
the universal power of reconciliation. Nietzche describes the ecstasy of
Dionysiac music: Not
only is the bond between man and man sealed by the Dionysiac magic:
alienated, hostile or subjugated nature, too, celebrates her
reconciliation with her lost son, man. The eart gladly offers up her gifts,
and the ferocious creatures of the cliffs and the desert peacefully draw
near. [...] Singing and dancing, man expresses himself as
a member of a higher community: he has forgotten to walk and talk, and
is about to fly dancing into the heavens. His gestures express enchantment.
Just as the animals now speak, and the earth yields up milk and honey, he
now gives voice to supernatural sounds... (The
birth of tragedy out of the Spirit of music, 17) If
myths are considered as spontaneously produced universal mental images,
there must be some direct connection between musical sounds and natural
universe, including all the animals, since myths deal so much with music.
Myth is a psychic content from which words, gestures and music radiate.
The poet translates mythic thought into cultural values and makes it
understandable, communicable. What part do animals play in all this?
Through music Orpheus and Arion are in a direct contact with the entire,
animate and inanimate world. Music is the means of discovering the truth
(of the world) since it ”hurls musicians into the water to rediscover
themselves, so that they are helped by the very monsters they were
carrying within”. (Mâche 1992, 18-23.) Animals
don´t seem to have as conscious behaviour when they are putting together
sounds but even in a mere unconscious way they may be pulled to do so by
the very same interest. This interest can be called the quest for truth or
whatever but basically it is this need to live in harmony with the
surrounding world, nature. Could it be then that also animals, though mere
unconsciously, contacted directly the surrounding world through music? The
universal sound-models There is an infinite number of unheard sounds in nature. Human ear is only able to hear a very limited part of them and even more unable to use sound in a precise and accurate way of communication. The bat is a good example of an animal which lives in a sound-world totally unreachable to human ear. But dolphins and whales are even a better example of this: whereas the human audible frequency is about 18,000 Hz the hearing limit of the dolphins range to pitches as high as 180,000 Hz, over three octaves higher. The toothed whales do their hunting as bats do, by sonar echo-sounding, in the perpetual night of oceans 3,000 feet deep. The periodic and supersonic clicks that the dolphins and whales emit return as echoes which bring all the spatial information they need. (Godwin 1987, 21.) Since
sound travels well in water, actually with a speed four times as fast as
on land, it is quite wrong to think the ocean as silent. Just like space
is proved to be full of sound (this space-music is even recorded by a
space shuttle) the oceans can be considered as a vast and unknown realm of
music. Unlike the world of the sea creatures, the human world is more
shaped by sight than sound. This makes us unable to fully understand the
world of certain animals. In the depths of the oceans there are species
that rely totally on their audible abilities since they are blind and
there is anyway no use for eyes in the darkness of their world. Instead of
concluding sceptically that we have in no way key to their
phenomenological reality we should maybe redefine the concept of
musicality and music. According
to Pythagoras everything in the universe is in a continous state of
vibration: all the beings and things produce an energetic impulse or a
field of resonance which can be perceived acustically. According to
Severino Boezio´s De institutione musica the pythagorean thought is that
music can be divided into three different cathegories: musica
mundana, the music played by the cosmos; musica humana, the music
or vibration produced by human body; and musica
instrumentalis, the ordinary, heard music (James 1993, 31). In the
same way we can say that everything under the water produces a certain
sound-vibration which can be grasped and in that sense considered as
universal. One cannot help speculating that with their extraordinary
capacity of hearing dolphins and whales are able to catch these universal
models from the nature and communicate through them. But not only do they
communicate with each others but also with the surrounding world, or the umwelt,
like Orpheus. Also
the human audible world consist of certain universal models, like the
12-tone system. But are these models only cultural agreements, or are they
maybe based on more profound principles? Ofcourse one can ask, if the laws
of harmony are universal, why don´t the dolphins, for example, also make
music according to these laws. The point is simply that dolphins perceive
world differently and for that reason they express it in a different way.
But they do express it, in a way that the idea of communication is not
enaugh to explain. Like Mâche
writes, sometimes nature even seems to take risks for the sake of music
(1992, 159). Some
of the patterns that, for example, those giant, toothless baleen whales (also
called humpback whales) use can be extremely complex and, unlike the
dolphin´s clicks and whistles, sound really musical to human ear. They
are long and sustained, far-ranging, wondering melodies, strangely
punctuated with noises, and full of eerie resonance of the underwater
world. These whales have been separeted into the Atlantic and Pacific
groups, yet the songs of the two regions still have some phares in common.
But the most surprising thing is that in each ocean all the whales sing a
different song in every year. The same song has been found on the same
date at places 750 miles apart. (Godwin 1987, 22.) How is this possible,
if not by grasping these songs directly from nature? And why, if the
aesthetics is so useless as the modern scientists see it? The
law of resonance In
a phenomenological sense music is a relationship with the world. According
to Mâche, to search for models in nature is to seek the most effective
use of freedom, the measure of this effectiveness being joy, whose
conquest is one of music´s missions, and which is nothing but power over
oneself and over things. Music as an organic link with the universe
enables a fusion between the mental state and the field of resonance,
creating a state of consciousness: music is a tool of apprehension of the
world. (Mâche 1992, 168-169.) But this understanding is not that of the
emprical and rational man but rises from the depths of our being, from our
very essence. This underastanding can be called aesthetic. It is direct,
immediate, intuitive and even instinctive knowledge. It connects us
immediately to that field of resonance that it carries within. The
musical mythology of the Greeks as well as of many other cultures show
this true parentage of animal and human psyches when they manifest an
interest in putting together
of sounds (Ibid.: 96). Most obiously the sounds that animals produce to
communicate form a system that can be called linguistic. In this sense we
can talk about animal language but not in a semantic way: like the example
of the humpback whales shows the most effective solution, in a semantic
sense, is seldom found in nature. Like Mâche says, the only use of
articulated language which seems to comperable to animal songs is that in
which semantics become of secondary importance, or even disappear
altogether, as in mantras (Ibid.:
105). Not
many people know what mantras
essentially are about. Basically mantra
is a syllable, a resonance sound, used as a help in tantric meditation.
There are many different kind of mantras
used in different ways. The most efficient way of using mantra is the one in which the mind is first emitting the mantra
and after that concentrating to receive the corresponding or
resonating sound that echoes back. When
the mind (is it human or animal) emits sound in order to obtain a state of
particular conciousness that allows sound to speak, it uses the method of mantra.
This is the difference to the normal situation where sound is controlled
by the filter of reason. By
understanding an abstract maquette of relations between phenomena we come
closer to the world of animals, because unlike humans they grasp these
universal models or relations naturally. By
questioning the semiotic approach we may realize that freedom doesn´t
consist of inventing new collection of signs and a new code of play, but
of giving a new expression to a synthesis of archetypes (Mâche 1992,
197). The musical world of animals can reveal us something essential of
the nature of music itself. The major problem in the philosophy of music
has for a long time been that of the representationality of music. If we consider that music
refers to something that is outside of music we are putting there meanings
that are not there (or are there only in a phenomenological sense). But if
we see music only as free, moving forms, we are clearly denying the power
that music has over nature, especially over our own nature. Music as a
means for achieving different kind of states of consciousness overcomes
this problem by showing that music doesn´t tell us about joy, for example,
it creates joy – the music is a zone of joy itself (James 1993, 17). The
western idea of a work of music as a closed and univocal path is very
limited one. When we approach musicality from the idea of the law of
resonance we bump into a totally different kind of idea of a musical work.
The work simply becomes a more or less succesfull attempt to reach a
certain field of resonance. In this sense it is inrelevant to discuss
about an ”authentic musical piece” unless authencity is understood as
the most accurate resonance. The idea that the universal sound
architectures are sketched out in nature is the very opposite of the
traditional western idea. Animal
consciousness Not
only do we have to question the concept of music and musicality but also
the concept of consciousness. The claim that animals, more or less
consciously, would contact to their umwelt
according to the same principle on which the use of mantras
is based, suggest that animals do have some kind of conscious mind. If
they were just unconsciously repeating some patterns thay had catched
instinctively they would be acting in a very unnatural and impractical way
since the music would serve no purpose in their world. Colin Allen has in
his article Animal Consciousness
raised some questions about the animal cognition and mind. He puts up
interesting patterns in our thought that usually seem to be taken granted.
For example, philosophy often begins with questions about the place of
humans in nature, as if the whole universe would circle around us (as was
believed some hundreds of years ago but not anymore, I hope!). Also the
problem of determining wheather animals are conscious or not stretches the
limits of knowledge and scientific methodology, at the same time awakening
a moral reflection over our approach to animals. (Allen1995.) There
are two approaches of special interest to the question of consciousness
when applied to animals: that of phenomenal consciousness and that of
self-consciousness. The first one is that when we take account the
specific umwelt of an animal in
question and try to undesrtand its phenomenological reality thruogh this
consideration. Like Nagel puts it, there may be something like being a
whale, for example, thought we can never perceive the world like whales
do. (Ibid.) We cannot understand by our mind, though, but by our
”aesthetic direct apprehension” which somehow allows us to identify
with the musicality of the whale by ”letting the sound speak”. The
second approach is more
complicated. Allen refers to it as an organism´s capacity for
second-order representation of the organism´s own mental states. But
unlike Allen says, this ”thought about thought”, which he calls of
second-order character, has nothing to do with self-consciouness. The mind
cannot look at itself because it is limited. The concept of
self-consciousness refers to something in a living being that is present
all the time, behind mind, beyond emotions and other movements. This idea
can be traced back to Aristotle who explained the problem in terms of inner
perception of mental states. (Ibid.) According to him, even the plants
are conscious. There
is one interesting experiment made by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird
called The Secret Life of Plants.
These authors have collected an impressive body of evidence that plants
flourish when certain music or even single tones are played in their
vicinity. Even more curious is a research made by Dorothy Retallack. She
found out that by playing certain music (Western classical music, Indian
sitar music) plants inclined towards sound source. By playing another kind
of music (hard rock and pop music) they inclined away from sound source.
Even if these kind of experiments appear to be somekind of amateur
pseudo-science they rise important questions about the concept of
consciousness. (Godwin 1987, 18-19.) So
it is again a matter of different
states of consciousness which cannot be grasped by reason. If they would
then animals would in no way have an access to them since their reason is
not as developed as humans. Instead, the animal can indeed be conscious of
itself as a living organism having a particular place in the ecosystem.
The animal feels what increases this harmonious resonance and naturally
acts according to this feeling. This is what its about when talking about
animal music. The
claim that animals are musical and in an conscious way brings forth the
moral considerations. Where we go from here is in the hands of those who
dare to look into things that seem appearant and question the conventional
ways of concluding. The Cartesian model makes us blind to our own place in
nature: seeing animals as something ”other” serves as an excuse to
profit in the merit of the whole ekosystem. There is a great need for
those who want to search for new models of interpretation in order to
create a more profound understanding of nature.
Sources: James,
Jamie:
The music of the spheres – Music, Science and the Natural Order of the
Universe.
Abacus: London 1993. Godwin,
Jocelyn:
Harmonies of Heaven and Earth. Thames and Hudson: London
1987. Mâche,
Francois-Bernard: Music,
Myth and Nature or The Dolphins of Arion.
Harwood
Academic Publishers: Chur 1992. Nietzsche,
Friedrich: The
Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Penguin Books:
London 1993. Unprinted
source: Allen,
Colin: Animal
Consciousness. An article written in 1995 available in the following address: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/
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