Harmonic and textural modes of listening
Complexity in music can manifest itself in many ways. One way to look at it is horizontal vs vertical: how a piece develops over time, as a narrative, vs what the discernible textural layers are. These two kinds of complexity map, albeit not perfectly, to different modes of listening, harmonic (or narrativic) and textural.
It appears that, roughly speaking, classical music [1] is enriched for horizontal complexity while pop music has a more strongly pronounced vertical complexity. Classical music requires sustained attention to follow the narrative and see how different parts and voices relate to each other, to enjoy the harmonies. Unless it’s an orchestral piece, classical pieces are relatively simple in terms of variety of distinct textures involved at any time. Pop music, in contrast, is often simple in a narrativic and harmonic sense: it is based on short and simple chord progressions but can be vertically complex in terms of the number of textural tracks layered on top of each other.
These differences may in part explain the often expressed mutual incomprehension between people who are heavily biased toward classical vs pop music. Some people (or states of mind) get a kick out of textural complexity but are unimpressed by or uninterested in the narrative and harmonic complexity. For others, textural complexity may be an overwhelming hyperstimulus while they get bored by the repetitiveness of simple chord progressions. It is possible to switch between the two modes of listening and appreciate a wide range of genres but the different dispositions and preferences clearly exist on an individual level.
Jeremy Denk writes in his autobiography, Every Good Boy Does Fine, about this tension between classical music and other genres:
In general, popular culture demonizes classical music in a way that popular culture is not quite willing to take responsibility for, because most people feel this music is too full of itself, and deserves bullying.
I’m going to make a slight, or maybe monstrous, generalization here, and say that much of the sexuality of what we call classical music is in the harmonies. It can be in the melodies, of course, especially in opera and song, and to a lesser extent in the rhythms (with obvious exceptions—Bolero); but I’d say, by and large, the deeper and darker urges make their home in the chords. Whereas if I listen to some jazz performances, for instance, I immediately feel sex in all different parts of the musical fabric: the timbre of the voice, the bending of notes of the melody, the sultry backbeats, even the process, the improvisatory feeling-around. And it’s hyper-evident in a lot of pop, too—the human voice above the pounding beat, often-raunchy words, and harmonies that stay out of the way, to let the other parts do their work. When people who are used to other styles of music come to classical, I often sense they are looking for these visceral pleasures, but they’re not there, not in that form. And when I listen to other styles of music, too, I often have to remind myself that I’m missing the point. I’m looking for pleasure where I’m not meant to find it.
This distinction between harmonic and textural modes of listening crystallized in my mind thanks to the Russian musicologist and music historian Anna Vilenskaya [2]. She recently gave an excellent interview to the Russian-Ukrainian journalist Yury Dud’. At the end of his interviews he always asks this question: “What is power?”[3]. Anna’s characteristic answer is “openness to and acceptance of everything.” I know of only one other person who I think would probably give the same answer — Tyler Cowen. This all-acceptance is admirable and aspirational but I have to say that at least in music it doesn’t hold for me. I have strong, visceral response to music of different kinds, ranging from veneration to disgust. There’s almost a moral dimension in music for me.
In particular, there’s music that appears to be designed to be sticky, to worm its way into my brain, and this stickiness often has to do with its loopiness and being stuffed with textural layers. There’s something possessive and sinister about it, and my reaction to it is aversion. It triggers my memetic immune system. It so happens that most music that has this effect on me is pop or hip hop (but affirming the consequent would be clearly false here). It is not just Steven Pinker’s proverbial “auditory cheesecake” but much worse, like undiluted fructose corn syrup. It is a hyperstimulus that is understimulating, to borrow sympathetic opposition’s coinage, and spiritually impoverished while being overwhelming to the senses.
Pleasure is satisfying, and satisfaction makes you stop.
Hyperstimuli are not simply “more stimulating.” They are more stimulating of craving, and less stimulating of pleasure. <…>
Things succeed in a market by making you want them, not by making you like them. To the degree that satisfaction makes you stop, unsatisfying things will succeed in the market better than satisfying things, specifically because they’re unsatisfying.
The music I love most, which is overrepresented in classical genres but also includes alt rock and some rare gems of pop and hip hop, instills in me a willingness to submit, to let myself be taken away in a way that is not possessive at all but rather inviting. It is there to be enjoyed but it doesn’t want anything from me, it is a gift that I accept with gratitude and adoration. I freely admit that this distinction between inviting and possessive can be a matter of how particular sounds interact with particular minds, in the betweenness therein, but that this distinction exists seems generalizable to me.
[1] Here by classical music I mean composed music spanning Medieval to contemporary periods that typically involves solo, chamber and orchestral settings as well as voice.
[2] She recently moved to New York and continues giving lectures on music history.
[3] More literally, “Wherein lies strength/power?” (В чем сила?)