Musical Listening in the Age of Technological Reproduction

Gianmario Borio, Gianmario Borio

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317091448
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Ethnomusikologie

It is undeniable that technology has made a tangible impact on the nature of musical listening. The new media have changed our relationship with music in a myriad of ways, not least because the experience of listening can now be prolonged at will and repeated at any time and in any space. Moreover, among the more striking social phenomena ushered in by the technological revolution, one cannot fail to mention music's current status as a commodity and popular music's unprecedented global reach. In response to these new social and perceptual conditions, the act of listening has diversified into a wide range of patterns of behaviour which seem to resist any attempt at unification. Concentrated listening, the form of musical reception fostered by Western art music, now appears to be but one of the many ways in which audiences respond to organized sound. Cinema, for example, has developed specific ways of combining images and sounds; and, more recently, digital technology has redefined the standard forms of mass communication. Information is aestheticized, and music in turn is incorporated into pre-existing symbolic fields. This volume - the first in the series Musical Cultures of the Twentieth Century - offers a wide-ranging exploration of the relations between sound, technology and listening practices, considered from the complementary perspectives of art music and popular music, music theatre and multimedia, composition and performance, ethnographic and anthropological research.

PART I
Facets of a Theoretical Question

Chapter 1
Aesthetic Experience Under the Aegis of Technology

Gianmario Borio

Benjamin’s Seminal Essay and Adorno’s Responses

There is something ‘auratic’ about Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’, first published as a shortened French translation in 1936. The fragmentary discourse, the peremptory nature of some of his assertions and the character of ‘work in progress’ drew criticism even among its first readers; and yet the fascination this text has continued to exert demonstrates that it represents a historical watershed. It gave rise to a wide-ranging debate concerning the repercussions of new media on the reception of artistic products whose scope has gradually altered, according to the technological innovations and changes in social structures. The issues he raised, even though often only hinted at or ambivalently formulated, have established a conceptual framework in which commentators have taken a variety of positions and come up with diverging explanations.

Benjamin started from some observations concerning the reception of visual arts, and focused on the perceptive and cultural changes introduced by two new artistic genres: photography and cinema. Three passages deserve mention for their relevance to the domain of music: the ‘aura’, the prevalence of the ‘exhibition value’ and the ‘reception in distraction’. For Benjamin, the first consequence of technical reproducibility is the dissolution of a work’s hic et nunc, that direct and immediate presence which clearly figures in the appreciation of paintings and sculptures. In the so-called ‘modern’ Western culture, which has seen the origins of criticism and aesthetics, a full experience of the work of art derives from a direct encounter with the object itself. To define this distinctive experience, Benjamin used the term ‘aura’, current in theosophy and esoteric thought:

what withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work of art is the latter’s aura. This process is symptomatic; its significance extends far beyond the realm of art. It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced. These two processes lead to a massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed down from the past – shattering of tradition which is the reverse side of the present crisis and renewal of humanity. (Benjamin 2002a: 104; 2003: 254)

In Benjamin’s approach, the concept of aura embraces the essential elements of the experience of beauty in the modern era. The outcome of an artistic work is a creation which has no correspondence in any other object, past or present, with an exceptional and unrepeatable structure. The work of art is metaphorically surrounded by an aura which captures the observer’s attention and remains a permanent stimulus to reception. Thus, first the aura testifies the artist’s imaginative achievement and visionary capacity; secondly it represents the driving force of the historic process, the tradition consolidated in the work and prolonged in its reception. This dual character led Benjamin to describe it as ‘the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be’ (2002a: 104–5; 2003: 255). The aura is the symbol of something far off that becomes present and bursts into the observer’s consciousness, situated in a certain space and time, with all its potential for meaning. The multiplication of specimens, the potential ubiquity of the work and its universal availability – phenomena presupposing means of technical reproduction – lead to the dissolution of the aura; this is the final stage in a social process closely linked to the affirmation of democracy, the free market and mass culture.

Spiritualist philosophies, influenced by Eastern religions, consider the aura as an energy field releasing radiations; perceived only by the initiated, it transmits information on the profound nature of a person, natural phenomenon or object; the information cannot be mediated by other signs. By applying this concept to the sphere of aesthetic reception, Benjamin promoted the Bildung to a requisite for an adequate and exhaustive interpretation of artworks. Reception goes beyond perception, being something for which the observer is prepared thanks to previous aesthetic experiences and the exercise of critical reason. However, rather than being limited to the moment of illumination that characterizes the reception of masterpieces, the link with the religious sphere evoked by the term ‘aura’ also refers to the historical evolution of the arts. In fact, the reception of autonomous art preserves a trace of the ritual within which the ancient people perceived statues and paintings, thus the identification of their meaning also took place. This is why Benjamin calls the reception of art works a ‘secularized ritual’ (2002a: 105; 2003: 256). The approach to them differs from the practices associated with the use of manufactured objects or the attitude towards nature. It implies concentration, reverence, absorption:

The reception of works of art varies in character, but in general two polar types stand out: one accentuates the artwork’s cult value; the other, its exhibition value. (Benjamin 2003: 257)

The scope for exhibiting the work of art has increased so enormously with the various methods of technologically reproducing it that, as happened in pre-historic times, a quantitative shift between two poles of the artwork has led to a qualitative transformation in its nature. Just as the work of art in pre-historic times, through the absolute emphasis placed on its cult value, became first and foremost an instrument of magic which only later came to be recognized as a work of art, so today, through the absolute emphasis placed on its exhibition value, the work of art becomes a construct [Gebilde] with quite new functions. Among those, the one we are conscious of – the artistic function – may subsequently be seen as incidental. This much is certain: today, photography and film are the most serviceable vehicles of this new understanding. (Benjamin 2002a: 106–7; 2003: 257)

The ‘cult value’ is linked to contemplation, an attitude that characterizes the reception of the art work starting from the emancipation of the subject and the affirmation of the principle of autonomy. Contemplation is not only the most appropriate conduct vis-à-vis a work of art, but also the distinguishing mark for those who possess the means to understand it. In the history of the cultural exercise of the perceptive apparatus, it highlights the primacy attributed to sight, with its capacity to analyse and classify information. At the same time, this aspect of Benjamin’s essay goes beyond the boundaries of visual arts and can be considered the key to aesthetic reception tout court. In art music, for example, it emerges in the superiority of the score vis-à-vis every performance, being the evidence of the author’s will and conditio sine qua non for the work’s survival. The affirmation of the ‘exhibition value’ goes hand in hand with the crisis of the contemplative model of reception, replaced by a model no longer dependent on attention. Benjamin associated it with the sense of touch, which suggests a large, sensitive surface and a permanent, non-oriented availability. The closing section of the third version of the essay (Benjamin 2003) is devoted to mass art, the reactions of the public and its ‘participation’ in performances and events. These new dynamics unfold in the framework of ‘reception in distraction’ (Benjamin 2002b).

‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’ had a considerable influence on Theodor Adorno’s aesthetics (1997: 310–11; 1975; Levin 1990). His first response, the essay ‘On the Fetish-character in Music and the Regression of Listening’ (2002), is of particular significance in our context because it transfers Benjamin’s interrogative to the musical domain. Adorno dismisses the potential that Benjamin had glimpsed in ‘reception in distraction’ as illusory: ‘Deconcentrated listening makes the perception of the whole impossible’ (Adorno 2002: 305). He is convinced that the means of reproduction are subjected to the ideology of advanced capitalism, which, after giving the rules for the production and exchange of goods, extended its influence to the behaviour of the individual and even to his perceptive system. The reception model inaugurated by mass music also had an effect on art music, which now is listened to in an ‘atomized’ manner and thus deprived of its true sense. At the heart of Adorno’s essay there is the concept of fetish, previously discussed by both Marx and Freud. First, music is invested by the character of fetish which the Marxian theory sees as a distinctive feature of consumption: the person playing a disc worships the cultural commodity because it reflects the effort invested and money necessary to purchase it. Secondly, listening to reproduced music implies a fetishistic relationship with the object: the listener regresses to a primitive phase of psychological development; the way in which music is experienced takes on the features of the masochist pathology, in which the subject enjoys sacrificing him/herself and being subjected to an external power.

This ruthless diagnosis of the ideological features of music in the era of technical reproducibility remained a constant in Adorno. However, in his writings one can also recognize a domain more closely linked to the artistic procedures and functions of the media. In an article that was part of the project ‘Current of Music’, Adorno argues, for example, that there is a peculiar relationship between original and reproduction in music because reproduction, understood as performance of a score, is an immanent property of music:

It is true that we cannot say that in music the ‘original’ is more authentic than its reproduction because it actually exists only in being reproduced. … The authenticity which Benjamin attributes in the visual arts to the original must be attributed to live reproduction in music. This live reproduction has its ‘here’ – either the concert room or the opera – and its ‘now’ – the very moment it is executed. And what Benjamin calls the ‘aura’ of the original certainly constitutes an essential part of the live reproduction. It is exactly this aura which leads people to be eager to attend live performance even if they cannot follow the music as well from their cheap seats as they could have followed in front of their radio sets. It is this aura which is reflected in all the talk about the fascinating conductor, the cult of the virtuoso, and all the well known ‘irrational’ features of people’s reactions to live music. (Adorno 2009: 89)

For Adorno it is not possible to establish a precise link between an ‘auratic’ and a ‘technological’ work. In fact, the aura can be at the service of the artistic reification, becoming an instrument of its commercial diffusion. Authenticity is transformed into the authority of a ubiquitous presence which the user regards with an attitude of glorification:

The phonograph record destroys the ‘now’ of the live performance and, in a way, its ‘here’ as well. … Now, when they are played again and again, they can no longer uphold the dignity of the occasion. They are losing their aura because they no longer keep their distance from the listeners. They show, instead, a tendency to mingle in his every day life because they can appear at practically every moment …. If this means a loss of authenticity in our sense of the term, this can also mean an increase of authenticity in another sense, just as the authority of an advertisement increases when it is repeated again and again. The more often you hear the Seventh Symphony, the less, probably, will you cease to discuss it. The exposition value which Benjamin sees increasing against the cult value of a particular work, and which is closely akin to the fatality of plugged music, appears to us to be even more authoritarian than the former. Here the theory of the aura becomes involved in difficulties which cannot be hidden for the very simple reason that they are not difficulties of an antagonistic theory, but are created by contradictions in reality. Although a symphony loses the authority of its uniqueness, it accumulates new authority by ubiquity and its faculty of appearing at any time. (Adorno 2009: 90–92)

Far from making things clearer, the shift in approach creates new problems. First, Adorno was able to define the interpretation of music as reproduction because he adopted Schoenberg’s theoretical framework, so that performance is essentially the ‘reproduction’ of a meaning fully enshrined in the score (Schoenberg 1984; Adorno 2006). This position had a certain legitimacy as a reaction to the abuses of interpretational subjectivity that characterized musical performance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. However, it reveals all its shortcomings as soon as it is adopted as a general principle. In fact, the performing arts differ from their visual counterparts inasmuch as the identity of the work is not contained in a specific object, but is created and renewed in the continuous articulation of the relationship between written medium and performance. Secondly, even if one accepts the equivalence of the ‘reproduction’ and performance of a musical text, this has little to do with the dynamics discussed by Benjamin, which specifically concern the relationship between art and media. His initial hypothesis – that the use of mechanical and electrical media exerted a considerable influence on the experience of arts – can be perfectly transferred to music. In fact, new technologies have an impact on all three spheres of its experience: production, performance and reception. Thirdly, music has achieved a second form of aural existence thanks to electronic means: listening to a recorded performance is now an additional alternative to listening to a live performance, and this twofold possibility has consequences both for listening modalities and for the definition of the aesthetic experience. An important aspect, which undoubtedly contributes to reconfiguring the relationship between original and reproduced, is that the technological reproduction of a performance (not of a work) is also production. In spite of the myth of absolute fidelity, the performance is not simply replicated on a medium that is transportable, transmissible and further multipliable; rather, a new product is created ad hoc, starting from the score and from a performance of this score. Thus, the heart of the issue does not consist in originality or uniqueness, but in the differentiation of the modality of reception.

‘Reception in Distraction’ and ‘Tactility’: Further Developments

The considerations offered so far concerning Benjamin’s theory of technical reproducibility help us to identify its point of contact with the domain of music. The question whether ‘reception in distraction’ applies only to music for a mass audience or can be considered a legitimate form of reaction also in art music is secondary; it is the reiteration and sharing of social practices that bestow legitimacy on a behaviour. On the other hand, it is important to ask whether ‘reception in distraction’ can be reconciled with the aesthetic experience. Technical reproducibility has given rise to a specific type of music; on account of its mass diffusion, linked to the primary form of production on a disc, it has been called ‘popular music’ – a term Adorno used to express the German leichte Musik. Thanks in part to the impulse of the 1968 political movements, popular music became a specific sector of musicological study, broadening its field of research and improving its methodology. However, as research progressed, people became increasingly aware of the instability of this concept. Alf Björnberg made the following observations:

Technological and social developments in the course of the 20th century have resulted in several musical genres, from the point of view of production, distribution, function and use, having increasingly assumed popular-musical characteristics, for instance, the overwhelming part of historical art music or forms of non-western music previously not included in the circulation processes of the transnational music industry (cf. ‘world music’). Rather than designating a particular genre or group of genres, the concept of ‘popular music’ could thus to an increasing extent be said to define the general conditions of music in contemporary information society. (Björnberg 2007: 136)

When the field of enquiry is extended to popular...