The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature (37 page)
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Authors: Daniel J. Levitin
BOOK: The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature
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We get a sense of who the characters are with very few words. I’ve heard this song so many times, but it moves me to tears every time. The love he had for his father, the love he has for the medium of song, the love for those things that make life so difficult and yet so precious.
“Bring ’Em All In” by Mike Scott (the lead songwriter and singer for the Irish band the Waterboys) is to my ears among the most perfect love songs ever written. It is the yearning of one human to feel at one with the world, to embrace all that is contained in it. It is a love song to all of us, to the good and the bad, to the great and the small. It is the song of one man alone with his thoughts, by himself, trying to reach out to become connected. Out of his loneliness and despair he discovers the deepest love, the love of the idea of living, the love of love itself, a willingness to open his heart to
everything
, even the pain that he knows will be let in when he does so.
everything
, even the pain that he knows will be let in when he does so.
The song opens with a rapid, almost Spanish strum (technically very difficult to do), played with the fingers and not a pick, to give a delicate gentleness to the moment the fingers strike the strings.
Chorus:Bring ’em all in, bring ’em all in, bring ’em all in
Bring ’em all, bring ’em all in to my heart (2
×
)Bring the little fishes, bring the sharks
Bring ’em from the brightness, bring ’em from the dark(Chorus)
“Bring ’em all in” functions as a mantra. The melody scoops up on the word “heart,” as though lifting up objects from the floor or from the depths of the sea. The half-whispered voice sounds like a prayer, an intimate song to oneself and one’s creator.
Bring ’em from the caverns, bring ’em from the heights
Bring ’em from the shadows, stand ’em in the light(Chorus)Bring ’em out of purdah, bring ’em out of store
Bring ’em out of hiding, lay them at my door(Chorus)
In a double chorus in the middle, the singer’s voice becomes even softer, nearly crying, the song takes on the quality of a lamentation, the pleas of a man who is spiritually dying and opening his heart for one last hopeful time as he sings the last verse:
Bring the unforgiven, bring the unredeemed
Bring the lost and nameless, let ’em all be seen
Bring ’em out of exile, bring ’em out of sleep
Bring ’em to the portal, lay them at my feet
It is the love of our existence that is the highest love of all, the love of humanity with all our flaws, all our destructiveness, all our petty fears, gossip, and rivalries. A love of the goodness that we sometimes show under the most difficult stresses, of the heroism of doing the right thing even when no one can see us doing it, of being honest when there is nothing to gain by it, of loving those whom others might find unlovable. It is all this, and our capacity to write about it—to celebrate it in song—that makes us human.
Notes
CHAPTER 1
p. 3
“Americans spend more money on music than they do on prescription drugs or sex . . .”
Huron, D. (2001). Is music an evolutionary adaptation?
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
930: 51.
“. . . the average American hears more than five hours of music per day.”
The average American watches five hours of television per day, and that alone has to account for a lot of music listening—comedies, dramas, commercials, even news programs are presenting music nonstop. Add in music in public places such as train stations, restaurants, office buildings, and parks, and music wafting in from a neighbor’s yard or apartment, and you’ve got lots of music. See
acnielsen.com
for statistics.
“Americans spend more money on music than they do on prescription drugs or sex . . .”
Huron, D. (2001). Is music an evolutionary adaptation?
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
930: 51.
“. . . the average American hears more than five hours of music per day.”
The average American watches five hours of television per day, and that alone has to account for a lot of music listening—comedies, dramas, commercials, even news programs are presenting music nonstop. Add in music in public places such as train stations, restaurants, office buildings, and parks, and music wafting in from a neighbor’s yard or apartment, and you’ve got lots of music. See
acnielsen.com
for statistics.
p. 5
“. . . a catchy song about a murderous psychopath who kills the judge at his own trial . . .”
Lennon, J., and McCartney, P. (1969). Maxwell’s silver hammer [Recorded by the Beatles]. On
Abbey Road
[LP]. London: Apple Records.
“. . . a song promising to keep a promise . . .”
Prosen, S. (1952). Till I waltz again with you [Recorded by Theresa Brewer]. On
Till I Waltz Again With You
[45rpm record]. Coral Records.
“. . . a song mourning the loss of a parent . . .”
Crowell, R. (2001). I know love is all I need. On
The Houston Kid
[CD]. Sugar Hill Records.
“. . . a catchy song about a murderous psychopath who kills the judge at his own trial . . .”
Lennon, J., and McCartney, P. (1969). Maxwell’s silver hammer [Recorded by the Beatles]. On
Abbey Road
[LP]. London: Apple Records.
“. . . a song promising to keep a promise . . .”
Prosen, S. (1952). Till I waltz again with you [Recorded by Theresa Brewer]. On
Till I Waltz Again With You
[45rpm record]. Coral Records.
“. . . a song mourning the loss of a parent . . .”
Crowell, R. (2001). I know love is all I need. On
The Houston Kid
[CD]. Sugar Hill Records.
p. 7
“Ten thousand years ago humans plus their pets and livestock accounted for about 0.1 percent of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass inhabiting the earth; now we account for 98 percent.”
MacCready, P. (2004). The case for battery electric vehicles. In
The Hydrogen Energy Transition
:
Cutting Carbon from Transportation
, edited by D. Sperling and J. Cannon. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, pp. 227-233. I first heard about this from Daniel Dennett, at a talk he gave at McGill University in 2006.
“We’re also a highly
variable
species.”
Even within the contemporary United States, there are subcultures of people who eat dirt, avoid eating anything with a face, or who eat only food that has been ceremonially blessed by their religious leaders. Americans speak more than three hundred different languages; some read right to left, some left to right, some up to down, many not at all. And music? A survey I conducted of one thousand Canadian college undergraduates last year revealed that they identified sixty separate genres of music overall that they listen to, genres that were distinct and ranged from ancient Sufi music to Swedish death metal; from the indigenous folk singing of the Ural Mountains to the heavily processed vocal stylings of Nine Inch Nails. If this much musical variety emerges from North American college students, imagine the variety that exists worldwide and age-wide.
“Ten thousand years ago humans plus their pets and livestock accounted for about 0.1 percent of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass inhabiting the earth; now we account for 98 percent.”
MacCready, P. (2004). The case for battery electric vehicles. In
The Hydrogen Energy Transition
:
Cutting Carbon from Transportation
, edited by D. Sperling and J. Cannon. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, pp. 227-233. I first heard about this from Daniel Dennett, at a talk he gave at McGill University in 2006.
“We’re also a highly
variable
species.”
Even within the contemporary United States, there are subcultures of people who eat dirt, avoid eating anything with a face, or who eat only food that has been ceremonially blessed by their religious leaders. Americans speak more than three hundred different languages; some read right to left, some left to right, some up to down, many not at all. And music? A survey I conducted of one thousand Canadian college undergraduates last year revealed that they identified sixty separate genres of music overall that they listen to, genres that were distinct and ranged from ancient Sufi music to Swedish death metal; from the indigenous folk singing of the Ural Mountains to the heavily processed vocal stylings of Nine Inch Nails. If this much musical variety emerges from North American college students, imagine the variety that exists worldwide and age-wide.
p. 8
“By definition, a ‘song’ is a musical composition intended or adapted for singing.”
This book is called
The World in Six Songs,
not
The World in Six Musical Works.
Musicologists generally make a distinction between “song” and longer musical forms, and a “song” is typically understood to have words. This distinction is meant to imply that
song
is a subset of
music,
and this does seem to follow intuition. Most of us don’t think of Wagner’s
Ring Cycle
or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as
songs.
But suppose you had never heard the latter before, and then one day, you hear your grandfather puttering around the yard humming “bum-bum-bum-baaah, bum-bum- bum-baaah.” You would be perfectly justified to ask him just what is this
song
you hear him bum-bum-bumming, and neither the language police nor the musicology marshals should have any cause for alarm that important communicative barriers, essential to the maintenance of an orderly society, have been breached. Just as the Aleutians are reputed to have twenty words for snow, so do we have many words for different forms of music: jingles, ditties, tunes, melodies, airs, anthems, arias, odes, ballads, canticles, carols, chants, chorales, choruses, hymns, lullabies, numbers, operas, pieces, rhapsodies, refrains, cantatas, shanties, strains, verses (not to mention words for specialized musical forms such as sonatas, cantatas, symphonies, quartets, opuses) . . . and the distinctions between them all can be interesting. These different musical forms typically convey different types of messages—we don’t expect an anthem to lull a baby to sleep, nor do we expect a chorale to sell tickets to a Monster Truck smashing competition. But what is the use of this distinction between
song
and
music
? Actually, the Aleutians don’t have any more words for snow than we do in English. See the excellent and amusing essay: Pullam, G. (1991). The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax. In
The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language,
edited by G. Pullam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 159 -174.
“. . . John Denver took Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and added lyrics to the melody?”
The melody for “Annie’s Song” is very close to the main theme for Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony,
Andante cantabile,
during the part when John Denver sings “You fill up my senses.” For the next line, “like a light in the forest,” Denver writes a variation of that theme, staying well within Tchaikovsky’s original harmonic context. Denver, J. (1974). Annie’s song. On
Annie’s Song
[CD]. Delta Records. (1997). Tchaikovsky, P. I. (1888). Symphony no. 5 in E minor, op. 64 [Recorded by M. Jansons (Conductor) and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra]. On
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5
[CD]. Chandos Records. (1992).
“By definition, a ‘song’ is a musical composition intended or adapted for singing.”
This book is called
The World in Six Songs,
not
The World in Six Musical Works.
Musicologists generally make a distinction between “song” and longer musical forms, and a “song” is typically understood to have words. This distinction is meant to imply that
song
is a subset of
music,
and this does seem to follow intuition. Most of us don’t think of Wagner’s
Ring Cycle
or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as
songs.
But suppose you had never heard the latter before, and then one day, you hear your grandfather puttering around the yard humming “bum-bum-bum-baaah, bum-bum- bum-baaah.” You would be perfectly justified to ask him just what is this
song
you hear him bum-bum-bumming, and neither the language police nor the musicology marshals should have any cause for alarm that important communicative barriers, essential to the maintenance of an orderly society, have been breached. Just as the Aleutians are reputed to have twenty words for snow, so do we have many words for different forms of music: jingles, ditties, tunes, melodies, airs, anthems, arias, odes, ballads, canticles, carols, chants, chorales, choruses, hymns, lullabies, numbers, operas, pieces, rhapsodies, refrains, cantatas, shanties, strains, verses (not to mention words for specialized musical forms such as sonatas, cantatas, symphonies, quartets, opuses) . . . and the distinctions between them all can be interesting. These different musical forms typically convey different types of messages—we don’t expect an anthem to lull a baby to sleep, nor do we expect a chorale to sell tickets to a Monster Truck smashing competition. But what is the use of this distinction between
song
and
music
? Actually, the Aleutians don’t have any more words for snow than we do in English. See the excellent and amusing essay: Pullam, G. (1991). The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax. In
The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language,
edited by G. Pullam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 159 -174.
“. . . John Denver took Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and added lyrics to the melody?”
The melody for “Annie’s Song” is very close to the main theme for Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony,
Andante cantabile,
during the part when John Denver sings “You fill up my senses.” For the next line, “like a light in the forest,” Denver writes a variation of that theme, staying well within Tchaikovsky’s original harmonic context. Denver, J. (1974). Annie’s song. On
Annie’s Song
[CD]. Delta Records. (1997). Tchaikovsky, P. I. (1888). Symphony no. 5 in E minor, op. 64 [Recorded by M. Jansons (Conductor) and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra]. On
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5
[CD]. Chandos Records. (1992).
p. 9
“. . . ‘Happy Birthday’ has been translated into nearly every language on earth (even into Klingon, as viewers of
Star Trek: The Next Generation
can attest; the song is called
‘qoSlIj DatIvja’
”.
For a pronunciation guide, see
http://www.kli.org/tlh/sounds.html
.
“. . . ‘Happy Birthday’ has been translated into nearly every language on earth (even into Klingon, as viewers of
Star Trek: The Next Generation
can attest; the song is called
‘qoSlIj DatIvja’
”.
For a pronunciation guide, see
http://www.kli.org/tlh/sounds.html
.
p. 12
“I have actually known people named Maggie Mae, Roxanne, Chuck E., and John-Jacob (think Rod Stewart, the Police, Rickie Lee Jones, and an old children’s song), and they are astonished when people sing these songs to them as though no one has ever thought to do this before.”
In a fit of what I thought was my own cleverness, I asked Rosanne Cash on first meeting her if it was true that she had a brother named “Sue.” I was making reference to the song written by Shel Silverstein and made famous by her father, Johnny Cash, “A Boy Named Sue.” Rosanne rolled her eyes, and lest the gesture was lost on me—after all, at this point, she had every reason to think that I was dim-witted—she said, “You have no idea how many people have asked me that.” I suppose I am dim, because it took me several months of playing this encounter over in my mind (and wishing I had said something more intelligent to so beautiful and charming a woman) that I realized that the joke, weak as it was, was poorly formed. The hero of the song is a man who
himself
was named Sue by his father. Johnny is singing the song
as
Sue. In fact, at the end of the song the narrator sings “If I ever have a son I think I’ll name him Bill, or George—anything but Sue!” So the proper way to make the joke would have been to ask Rosanne if it was true that her
father
was named Sue, not her brother. When I next met with her—thank goodness, she either has a huge heart full of forgiveness or forgot me between meetings—I pointed this out to her and she said that she had already been through this dizzying chain of reasoning, and that it continued to surprise and amaze her that virtually every one of her tormentors asked her about a brother, no one getting the (fictional) familial connection right. Silverstein, S. (1969). A boy named Sue [Recorded by Johnny Cash]. On
This Is Johnny Cash
[LP]. Harmony Records.
“I have actually known people named Maggie Mae, Roxanne, Chuck E., and John-Jacob (think Rod Stewart, the Police, Rickie Lee Jones, and an old children’s song), and they are astonished when people sing these songs to them as though no one has ever thought to do this before.”
In a fit of what I thought was my own cleverness, I asked Rosanne Cash on first meeting her if it was true that she had a brother named “Sue.” I was making reference to the song written by Shel Silverstein and made famous by her father, Johnny Cash, “A Boy Named Sue.” Rosanne rolled her eyes, and lest the gesture was lost on me—after all, at this point, she had every reason to think that I was dim-witted—she said, “You have no idea how many people have asked me that.” I suppose I am dim, because it took me several months of playing this encounter over in my mind (and wishing I had said something more intelligent to so beautiful and charming a woman) that I realized that the joke, weak as it was, was poorly formed. The hero of the song is a man who
himself
was named Sue by his father. Johnny is singing the song
as
Sue. In fact, at the end of the song the narrator sings “If I ever have a son I think I’ll name him Bill, or George—anything but Sue!” So the proper way to make the joke would have been to ask Rosanne if it was true that her
father
was named Sue, not her brother. When I next met with her—thank goodness, she either has a huge heart full of forgiveness or forgot me between meetings—I pointed this out to her and she said that she had already been through this dizzying chain of reasoning, and that it continued to surprise and amaze her that virtually every one of her tormentors asked her about a brother, no one getting the (fictional) familial connection right. Silverstein, S. (1969). A boy named Sue [Recorded by Johnny Cash]. On
This Is Johnny Cash
[LP]. Harmony Records.
p. 13
“When a man loves a woman / Spend his very last dime / . . .”
Lewis, C., and Wright, A. (1966). When a man loves a woman [Recorded by Percy Sledge]. On
When a Man Loves a Woman
[LP]. Muscle Shoals, AL: Atlantic.
“When a man loves a woman / Spend his very last dime / . . .”
Lewis, C., and Wright, A. (1966). When a man loves a woman [Recorded by Percy Sledge]. On
When a Man Loves a Woman
[LP]. Muscle Shoals, AL: Atlantic.
p. 15
“It is unlikely that either language or music was invented by a single innovator or at a single place and time . . .”
Individual songs are “invented” of course, as are individual words such as “Vietnamization,” or “soundscape,” but this is not the same thing as inventing music or language themselves.
“. . .
perspective-taking
. . .
”
Psychologists call this “theory of mind,” a term introduced by David Premack and Guy Woodruff in 1978 and used commonly in the developmental psychology literature. It is similar to what Piaget called “objectivity.” I find “theory of mind” to be a bit too jargony, so I’m going to use the term “perspective-taking.” Stated this way, the link becomes clearer to Einstein’s recognition of the importance of the perspective of the observer; this is fundamentally the same notion, that different observers will perceive the same events differently. Premack, D. G., and Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
1(4): 515-526.
“It is unlikely that either language or music was invented by a single innovator or at a single place and time . . .”
Individual songs are “invented” of course, as are individual words such as “Vietnamization,” or “soundscape,” but this is not the same thing as inventing music or language themselves.
“. . .
perspective-taking
. . .
”
Psychologists call this “theory of mind,” a term introduced by David Premack and Guy Woodruff in 1978 and used commonly in the developmental psychology literature. It is similar to what Piaget called “objectivity.” I find “theory of mind” to be a bit too jargony, so I’m going to use the term “perspective-taking.” Stated this way, the link becomes clearer to Einstein’s recognition of the importance of the perspective of the observer; this is fundamentally the same notion, that different observers will perceive the same events differently. Premack, D. G., and Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
1(4): 515-526.
p. 16
“. . .
octave equivalence
. . .
”
An octave can be thought of as an interval between two notes when one is half or twice the frequency of vibration of the other. A typical adult male speaking voice has a frequency of 110 Hz , an adult female 220 Hz . (Hz = Hertz, and is a unit of measurement equal to 1 cycle of vibration per second.)
“. . .
octave equivalence
. . .
”
An octave can be thought of as an interval between two notes when one is half or twice the frequency of vibration of the other. A typical adult male speaking voice has a frequency of 110 Hz , an adult female 220 Hz . (Hz = Hertz, and is a unit of measurement equal to 1 cycle of vibration per second.)
p. 19
“. . . we don’t think babies are cute because they are intrinsically or objectively cute . . .”
Cuteness is a product of the perception and interpretation of a mind, human or otherwise. It is not an inherent property of any object.
“. . . we don’t think babies are cute because they are intrinsically or objectively cute . . .”
Cuteness is a product of the perception and interpretation of a mind, human or otherwise. It is not an inherent property of any object.
p. 20
“What distinguishes us most is one thing no other animals do:
art.
”
I leave aside the controversial question of elephant art and other similar demonstrations. When given brushes, paints, and some instruction, elephants will paint on canvases, and generally their paintings are best described as “abstract.” A few paintings resemble flowers, but it is difficult to determine the extent to which these flowers were more the product of zealous human instructors. Given appropriate instruments, elephants will also make sound together in something that resembles music, and which my colleague Ani Patel has studied, noting that they can maintain a remarkably steady beat. Without the interference of humans, there is no evidence that elephants or other animals would engage in these activities on their own, and calling them artistic expression strikes me as a case of gross anthropomorphism combined with wishful thinking.
“What distinguishes us most is one thing no other animals do:
art.
”
I leave aside the controversial question of elephant art and other similar demonstrations. When given brushes, paints, and some instruction, elephants will paint on canvases, and generally their paintings are best described as “abstract.” A few paintings resemble flowers, but it is difficult to determine the extent to which these flowers were more the product of zealous human instructors. Given appropriate instruments, elephants will also make sound together in something that resembles music, and which my colleague Ani Patel has studied, noting that they can maintain a remarkably steady beat. Without the interference of humans, there is no evidence that elephants or other animals would engage in these activities on their own, and calling them artistic expression strikes me as a case of gross anthropomorphism combined with wishful thinking.
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