Listening Anew with Roland Barthes
This essay explores Roland Barthes’ essays “Musica Practica” and “The Grain of the Voice” from his 1977 book Image, Music, Text. I wrote this as part of my studies in critical theory. The goal is to explore the text rather than put forward a particular argument about it. I feel like this essay is especially theory heavy, so be prepared for that. I have tried to lighten that load with some music, but it comes toward the second half of the essay.
“Musica Practica” is a sketch of a genealogy of music. Barthes notes that there is a difference between “the music you listen to” and “the music you play.” In the latter, there is an element that has nothing to do with listening or with what we conventionally call musicality, but with physicality. It is this physical music, musica practica, that is disappearing, he insists, as our society gradually becomes more consumer oriented and less producer oriented.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) is the figure of interest. Barthes notes that Beethoven inaugurated the era of the interpreter (after that comes the era of the technician, which Barthes does not really deal with). Before Beethoven, music was a craft (“amateur”); after Beethoven, music was an art (“professional”). The romantic legacy, built up around Beethoven in the years after his death, elevated music to a level requiring interpretation. By “interpretation” Barthes means that the music no longer means itself, but stands in for something else.
Think about Taylor Swift. Fans buy her music in part because they wish to decode what is going on in her life. Her songs are taken as expressions of her personal life which the fans, as listeners, must interpret. It may seem the most natural thing in the world to do, since that is how we treat almost everything that we take as “Art.” Yet is it not the case that Taylor Swift, as a musician, is overlooked in favor of Taylor Swift as an object of the listener’s emotional projection?
The point Barthes makes here is that music’s elevation to the status of art resulted in its fragmentation. When Bach and Mozart were playing their music, it was just their music. Playing that music in the post-romantic era requires a great deal of thinking about emotion, intention, meaning, interpretation, and so forth. No one asks what a game of chess “means,” although it may be artistic. No one requires a blanket knit by your grandma to be “interpreted.” Music was like that before the romantic era.
The consequence of this fragmentation is that music itself becomes sidelined in favor of music’s meaning. Meaning, as Barthes wrote in “Death of the Author,” is not the province of the author of the text, but of its reader. That is the connection with a musical consumer’s society rather than a musical producer’s society. It may seem like Barthes is almost nostalgic for an era when musical “meaning” was the province of the musician, and today, when listeners re-write the text upon every listen, is a decadent era. Barthes does not advocate collapsing music into its pre-Romantic state however, but for rediscovering the musica practica for today’s time.
This is not to say one has to sit with a Beethoven score and get from it an inner recital (which would still remain dependent on the old animistic fantasy); it means that with respect to this music one must put oneself in the position or, better, in the activity of an operator, who knows how to displace, assemble, combine, fit together…
Barthes locates a Beethoven who is not played today but who could be (re)discovered through a new mode of listening. The good news is that there is still a vital force to be found in Beethoven (and by proxy the whole “Western cultural tradition”) because even he has been damaged by his own legacy, and thus the seeds of resistance and renewal may be found even in the core of the empire.
In “Musica Practica,” Barthes hints at a utopian Beethoven waiting to be (re)discovered through a new mode of listening. In “The Grain of the Voice” he sketches an idea of where this new listening might be found.
What Barthes calls the “grain” of the voice has nothing to do with timbre; if you are thinking of the vocal fry, where a voice may sound “grainy,” banish that image from your mind. Grain is how the language in which a song is sung interacts with the music. It is how the music and language work together, sometimes clashing, sometimes blending. He limits his analysis to song, though hypothesizes that it may be expanded to other instruments without too much trouble. Contrasting French song (milodie) and German song (leider), he argues that the former derives from its language, while the latter derives from the music. That is, the French song tradition emerged out of the beauty and poignancy of the language, with music emerging initially to elevate and glorify it. The German song tradition started with the music and incorporated the language in a less fundamental manner.
Barthes also brings in two theoretical terms, obviously borrowed in part from the sciences. Phenosong refers to all of the articulated parts of the song: the notes, the rests, the intonation, the score, the official modes of expression and emotional representation like rubato, ritardando, accelerando, etc. Genosong is the unarticulated parts of music tied to the body performing it. The phenosong refers to the music as an artwork, that abstraction through which we approach things like songs; the genosong refers to the music as a bodily craft. Barthes advocates for more listening to the bodily nature of music which goes unlistened to in the phenosong.
I think my experience with the classical guitar has given me an awareness of the physicality Barthes is talking about. The classical guitar is bodily instrument: it is cradled while played, and as a result the instrument’s resonance is fed back through the body of the person playing it, further informing the person’s playing. The resonating strings are in direct contact with the finger tips, unlike keyboard instruments (even the violin has the separation of a bow).
Take a moment to listen to this brief performance by Andrés Segovia (1893–1987).
There is a physicality to Segovia’s playing. The way he rolls chords (at 00:12, 00:21, and 00:37 for example) is aggressive; it is part of his hands and not part of the way other people play this piece, even those imitating his style. Notice also the moment at 1:25 when he plays ponticello (i.e. a bright brassy tone) before contrasting it with a warmer, dolce repetition right after. That tonal contrast is one of Segovia’s signature moves, but again, even those who imitate it do not have the same bodily presence in their imitations. Segovia’s sound is intimately tied up with its physicality.
Julian Bream (1933–2020) makes for a wonderful contrast. Bream is one of the few guitarists of Segovia’s caliber, and he uses the same trick of tonal contrasts in much the same way. Yet his physicality renders a completely different effect that is, once again, beyond anything that could be considered part of the phenosong.
Contrast this with Segovia’s rendition of the same.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Segovia plays at a higher tempo, and Bream is more focused on phrasing. Does Segovia not also sound much looser, despite playing much faster? And can you not hear the tension in Bream even before you see it?
The descending bass line starting at 00:12 in the Segovia clip culminates in the heavy bass note at 00:17. You can almost hear how big his hands are through that one note. My teacher told me that when he met Segovia and shook his hand, it was like shaking a baseball mitt. The Bream/Segovia comparison is not meant to denigrate either of them, but simply to show through a contrast the physicality of the music that informs it yet is beyond what is normally discussed in music. The comparison is meant to get at the genosong that Barthes discusses.
Notice the lack of physicality, the airiness or breathiness, of the following performance by Australian guitarist John Williams:
Williams’ technique is the stuff of legend. Note the machine-like efficiency of his right hand through out, and the sorcerous movement of his left hand from 3:06 onward. Yet it is as though he paid for that precision and power, not with his soul, but with his body. Every note is so clean, so perfectly articulated that it sounds detached from the person playing it. It is as though the performer has effaced himself and is merely presenting the music as composed by Bach. Indeed, that is the fantasy and fallacy of many classical performers, that they may play the composer’s intentions without putting themselves into the music. But that is impossible, as the very physical existence of the performer demonstrates. This is music as ideology, which the philosopher Markus Gabriel defines as, “the objectification of the human mind:” taking something historical, contingent, cultural in some way, and treating it as though it is Nature.
Listening to the physicality of music is difficult. It is probably easier for musicians for obvious reasons, but Barthes’ message is geared toward non-musicians. I do not know how much of it can be conveyed through an article, even one with musical examples. But next time you are listening to music, try to hear the physicality of it. Try to hear how the body or bodies performing the music inform it in a way that only those bodies may. The mere effort may enrich your musical world.
