Thomas Hewitt BA (Hons) (Open), Dip.Mus.

OU personal identifier: M2567164

THE MYCELIUM AS A METAPHOR FOR THE

METAPHYSICAL MEANING-SPACE OF MUSIC

Dissertation submitted for the degree of Master of Arts in Music

Date of submission: 10 September 2013

Word count: 16,459 (excluding prefatory material, diagrams and bibliography)

 ABSTRACT

How does music have meaning? Accounts describe musical meaning as

autonomous (relating to music’s internal structures and properties) or as

heteronomous (situating meaning as an interrelationship between the musical object

and the world).

Chapter 1 reviews the literature relating to these accounts and argues that there are

no purely autonomous musical meanings and that all descriptions of musical

meaning rely on heteronomous explanations.

Chapter 2 discusses five types of explanation: Grice’s natural meaning, ‘Kantian’

transcendence, emotional accounts of meaning, semiotic explanations and,

ecological descriptions which are given a place on a ‘spectrum’ of increasing

heteronomy.

Chapter 3 contends that the descriptions of musical meaning outlined in Chapter 2

are given within the Anglo-American tradition of analytical philosophy whose

aesthetics rely heavily on ontological classification (descriptions of what things are).

The Continental philosophical tradition builds on the philosophy of Nietzsche and

Heidegger, through Foucault and Derrida, in developing an epistemological account

(the way things work and act). These two traditions are a contrast between,

respectively, what things are and how things are. Deleuze’s ‘rhizome’ is introduced

as the metaphysical space which is a bridging position between the two traditions,

allowing for the necessity of ontological entities, but describing how they may interact

epistemologically. It is argued that such a metaphysics is required to describe how

musical objects interact in construction of heteronomous meanings. Toynbee and

Latour are introduced as writers who describe Deleuzean rhizomatic spaces.

Toynbee’s notion of the ‘Social Author’ and Latour’s Actor Network Theory are given

diagrammatic explanations which prove useful in depicting how musical meaning can

emerge in the metaphorical rhizomatic space.

Chapter 4 proposes the fungal mycelium, with its network of hyphae and fruiting

bodies as a metaphor for the metaphysical space inhabited by musical meaning.

The mycelium has multi-valent connections through branchings and nodal

connections allowing for material to pass around it in all directions – which is

required for heteronomous accounts of musical meaning.

Chapter 5 considers two musical exemplars; the first movement of Beethoven’s

string quartet in A minor, Op. 132 and a piece composed on the iPad application

GarageBand called Network. The results of some empirical research into listeners’

responses to these two pieces are considered from a ‘mycelial’ perspective.

It is concluded that the mycelium provides a good metaphorical description of the

type of metaphysical space required to give an account of how music comes to have

meaning in the world.

 CONTENTS

PERSONAL STATEMENT i

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 1 - ONTOLOGIES OF MUSICAL MEANING 5

Autonomous and heteronomous accounts of musical meaning 5
Autonomous accounts 5
Problems with transcendence 6
Paul Grice and natural meaning – a trivial musical case 8
Heteronomous accounts 10

CHAPTER 2 - A SPECTRUM OF HETERONOMOUS MEANINGS 12

Grice’s trivial meaning 12
Kantian transcendence 13
Emotional responses 15
Semiotic accounts 18
Ecological accounts 23
Summary 26

CHAPTER 3 - THE RHIZOME OF DELEUZE AND GUATTARI 29

Introduction 29
Rhizomatic or machinic thinking 30
Examples of rhizomatic space 31
Toynbee’s ‘Social Author’ 31
Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT) 35

CHAPTER 4 - THE MYCELIUM 40

Why the mycelium as a metaphor? 40
Synchronicity and Diachronicity 45
Superimposability of Gestalten in mycelial space 46
The mycelium as meaning 49
A mechanism for perception of the transcendent 51

CHAPTER 5 - EXEMPLARS 54
The online experiment 55
The pieces 55
The responses 55
The sound clip Network accompanied by images 64
A summary of the responses 65
Comparison with Krumhansl (1998) 66
A composite personal Gestalt of the Beethoven piece 68

CONCLUSION 72

BIBLIOGRAPHY 75

RESEARCH DIARY 87
 PERSONAL STATEMENT

This dissertation is the sole work of Thomas Hewitt.

The concept of the fungal mycelium as a metaphor for a metaphysical space in

which musical meaning can operate was introduced in my project for the MA module

A871 in 2012. In that context it was described in the narrow terms of meaning in a

particular aspect of music, namely the notion of indexicality in the Wagnerian

leitmotif.

This dissertation builds on that general concept but expands discussion of the

metaphor to apply to a broad range of descriptions of musical meaning.

No part of this dissertation has previously been submitted for a degree or other

qualification to the Open University or any other institution.

i
 INTRODUCTION

On Sunday 25th March 1973 I discovered music. I was at home in London, fresh

from three nights singing Hilarion in a school production of Princess Ida and I lay

alone on the living-room floor in near-darkness listening to an LP of Wagnerian

highlights on my parents’ radiogram. With Gilbert’s allusions to Tennyson’s medieval

imagery swirling around my 16 year-old mind, as I listened to Siegfried’s Rhine

Journey and the Funeral Music, the tears welled-up in me and I was overcome with

emotion. How had that happened? Nearly forty years later, as part of my studies for

my MA I was watching a DVD of some bewigged orchestral players dressed in late-

18th century costumes playing Mozart on ‘authentic instruments’. I thought how

anachronistic they looked. These two incidents bookend a lifetime of musicking 1, as

a performer, listener and student; musicking which has finally prompted this

academic enquiry into the spaces in which these musics and our responses to them

operate. Spaces which might explain my tears at Wagner, my disparagement of

authentic revivalism and all points in-between. A tall order? Certainly.

I will introduce the notion of the mycelium – a seemingly ever-branching web of

fungal material – as a metaphorical image of the way musical associations are made

and operate. I hope to show that this ‘meaning-space’ is sufficient to accommodate

any musical association at all, from the obvious to the esoteric and even the

ineffable. Anyone who starts to enquire into these matters will soon encounter

Hanslick's 1854 work On the Musically Beautiful 2. Heavily influenced by the

philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer, it is an absolutist account of musical meaning

which puts music on a metaphorical pedestal, as if it were an object for veneration,

1
Pace Small 1998.
2
Vom Musicalisch Schönen.

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and pays little or no heed to music's place in the wider world. I find such absolutist

accounts lacking in essential details of my own musical involvement with the world;

not necessarily wrong, but not giving the full picture. It is for this reason that, in

addition, this paper will consider other explanations of musical meaning from rather

more heteronomous perspectives. I will consider how these differing accounts of

musical meaning can flourish in the metaphorical mycelial-space and show how

elements of any of them might even interact there to give as broad and

encompassing view of musical meaning as is possible.

No-one has yet discovered a human culture which lacks music. It is ubiquitous

(Cross 2009: 179). Tagg (2012: 40) points out that, on average, every human being

on the planet spends the price of a loaf of bread every day on music as a product.

Davies says that, ‘music seems gravid with meaning. ‘We talk not solely of a

person’s enjoying music but of his understanding or misunderstanding of it’ (Davies

1994: x). Davies’s remarks imply that music has a meaning which stands in need of

understanding. So music is everywhere, it is meaningful and we value it. I will

suggest that music’s meanings and values are not constant, that they change over

time, and that a mechanism is required to explain how this can be so. The fungal

mycelium is, metaphorically, the space wherein this mechanism operates.

An outline of Chapter 1: Descriptions of musical meaning (ontologies).

There are many descriptions of what musical meaning is (ontologies). These have

usually been described as being of one or other of two types: autonomous or

heteronomous. Autonomous descriptions of music state that it is a ‘separate, self-

contained construction’ (Beard and Gloag 2005: 20). Heteronomous descriptions

2
place music in a wider context, usually emphasising its position and role in a cultural

milieu. Demers summarizes this dichotomy as having its roots in

[…] the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as European concert music polarized itself into
the absolute and programmatic camps. In brief, the absolutists claimed that music could
comment only on itself and should not contain references to the outside world. The
programmatics regarded music as essentially narrative and advocated the use of external
references within musical works as signs of music’s pertinence to the outside world. (Demers
2010: 23)

In this paper I will argue that this dichotomous position is wrong and claim that all

musical meaning (including the trivial case of Gricean ‘natural meaning’) is, in fact,

heteronomous.

An outline of Chapter 2: A spectrum of heteronomous meanings.

I will argue that various descriptions of musical meaning, from a Kantian

disinterested approach, through theories of music’s emotional expressivity,

language-like descriptions and broader semiotic explanations, to ecological

explanations, such as those given by, e.g., Small (1998) or Clarke (2005), lie on a

spectrum. Their positions on the spectrum depend on the level of complexity of their

associative involvement with the world; that is the accessible world which lies within

the event horizon described by Toynbee (see Chapter 3). I will argue that all of

these descriptions require an arena in which to operate and act. This metaphorical

space, the rhizome, will be discussed in Chapter 3 and further developed as the

mycelium in Chapter 4.

An outline of Chapter 3: The rhizome of Deleuze and Guattari.

The space described by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism

and schizophrenia (2004) will be explained to the extent that is necessary to provide

3
an understanding of the metaphysical space in which the theories outlined above

can act. Some examples of ‘rhizomatic spaces’, particularly those of Toynbee and

Latour, will be discussed.

An outline of Chapter 4: The Mycelium.

The notion of the fungal mycelium will be proposed as a metaphor for a particular

case of the Deleuzean rhizome, one which allows for musical meaning to develop

over time. The diachronic nature of changing musical meanings can be explained in

the context of changes to the mycelium. Combining the rhizomatic mycelium with

Toynbee’s boundary, an explanation will be offered as to how we can even grasp the

so-called transcendent or ineffable in music.

An outline of Chapter 5: Exemplars.

Two musical examples will be considered from a ‘mycelial’ perspective. Firstly,

Beethoven’s string quartet in A minor, Op. 132 and, secondly, a composition called

Network made using the iPad application GarageBand. This chapter will draw on

some empirical responses to these two pieces of music and show how musical

meanings – Gestalten – can be constructed in the mycelium.

Summary

In the discussion of the chapter outlines which I have indicated, I will explore those

aspects of musical-meaning philosophies which contribute useful explanatory power

to our experience of the musical phenomenon, but also indicate where they fall short

in that regard. I will propose an over-arching metaphysical framework, the mycelium,

and explain how the useful exegetical properties of the other theories can operate

within it to give us as full a view of modern musical meaning as is possible.

4
 CHAPTER 1

ONTOLOGIES OF MUSICAL MEANING

Autonomous and heteronomous accounts of musical meaning

Autonomous accounts

The late 18th century saw the increased importance of considering the musical work

as an autonomous rather than a functional entity (Bowie 2013: §III.2). In the 19th

century Wagner coined the term ‘absolute music’. Dalhaus, cited in Beard and

Gloag, (2005:3) suggests that Wagner used the term ‘absolute music’ to refer to

‘purely instrumental music that appears to exist without reference to anything beyond

itself’ (ibid.). This idea has its germ in Kant’s Critique of Judgement (1790 / 2013).

Kant proposed the idea of the ‘disinterested’, which means ‘that aesthetic responses

are “free” and distinct from other, more common, responses and desires’ (Beard and

Gloag 2005: 20). This is often referred to as the notion of ‘art for art’s sake’ and

represents the idea that artworks are an end in themselves. Both Beard and Gloag

(2005) and Monelle (1992) cite Hanslick in their explorations of ideas relating to art’s

autonomy.

If now we ask what should be expressed by means of this tone-material, the answer is musical
ideas. But a musical idea brought into complete manifestation in appearance is already self-
subsistent beauty; it is an end in itself, and is in no way primarily a medium or material for the
representation of feelings or conceptions.’ (Hanslick quoted Beard and Gloag 2005: 21. Italics
added)

And Monelle chooses this quotation from Hanslick,

Any attempt to make music into a signifying system like language merely destroys the life of
music; the innate beauty of form [is] annihilated in pursuit of the phantom “meaning”. (Monelle
1992: 9-10)

5
Schopenhauer raises the transcendental bar even higher, and, according to Monelle,

says that musical meaning ‘was something not accessible to ordinary experience’

(ibid.: 6).

Music does not express this or that particular joy, but anxiety, pain, horror, jubilation happiness,
contentment in themselves, to a certain extent in the abstract, unaccompanied by any
incidentals and thus by any self-interest. And yet we understand them completely in this
quintessential form… Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its happenings, not
those happenings themselves, the details of which thus do not always affect it. (Schopenhauer
1818 / 1913 quoted in Le Huray and Day 1981: 328)

But do we ‘understand them completely in this quintessential form’, a form which is

‘beyond ordinary experience’?

Problems with transcendence

Scruton is keen to emphasise the nature of the music qua music and our Kantian /

Schopenhauerian approach to it. ‘It is,’ he says,

important to distinguish the meaning of a work of art from its associations. We do not always
do this, since we are not always concerned to distinguish the meaning of a work from its
meaning for me. Nevertheless, to say that a work of music is associated for me with certain
3
feelings, experiences, memories, etc., is to say nothing about its musical character . (Scruton
1997: 149)

This paper argues that not only do people ‘not always’ make Scruton’s distinction

between an artwork and its associations, its ‘meaning for me’, but that, in fact, they

virtually never do so. Particularly in relation to the musical object, disinterestedness

is simply not the way in which most people engage with music on the radio, iPod or

at the concert or nightclub. The very fact that engagement with the music is located

in an ‘environment’ seems to preclude a consideration of its transcendent qualities (if

it, in fact, actually possesses them). Scruton, having emphasised the importance of

3
Scruton does not say what its ‘musical character’ consists in.

6
such a disinterested approach seems to acknowledge its impossibility because he

says,

The metaphor cannot be eliminated from the description of music, because it defines the
intentional object of the musical experience. Take the metaphor away, and you cease to
describe the experience of music. (Ibid.: 92)

What are metaphors if not associations of ideas – descriptions of one object in

comparison with some other, unrelated object? Making metaphorical connections

runs counter to Kant and Schopenhauer and perhaps leads to the conclusion that

heteronomous descriptions will better serve our experience of musical phenomena.

The disinterested, transcendent account of musical meaning is not just a

phenomenon of the 18th and 19th centuries. Here is a contemporary statement of it:

Music, I will argue, creates its own context of reference and meaning, within the sonic texture of
a given work. (The situation is more complex than this: musical works may utilise publicly
available concepts in a variety of ways, including making reference to extramusical objects and
ideas. My argument is that music’s defining characteristic—what distinguishes it from other
human activities which make such references—is the meaning created through relationships
between different sound events, which in itself does not entail extramusical reference.) While
there are many publicly established concepts relating to relationships between sound events
(including concepts involving pitch relations such as perfect cadence, scale degrees, melodic
intervals; concepts of metre and rhythm; and higher level concepts of musical styles and so on)
I will argue strongly that even music which embodies such concepts also embodies
nonconceptual content. Music is a means by which nonconceptual content can both be
explored and made public. (McGuiness 2009: 28. Emphases added)

The question for McGuiness must be to explain how the nonconceptual, internal

content of music’s meaning can be made public without some kind of interaction with

‘publicly available concepts’ (op.cit.). Either it is, pace Monelle, something not

accessible to ordinary experience or it is in the public realm and so not autonomous.

7
Paul Grice and natural meaning – a trivial musical case

The philosopher HP Grice, in a complex work on the meanings of words,

distinguished two categories of meaning which he called natural meaning

(meaningN) and non-natural meaning (meaningNN) (Grice 1989: 213-223). It is worth

exploring these in a little more detail because their distinction is important for many

later writers (e.g., the philosopher of music Stephen Davies) in expanding the

categories of meaning which might apply to music.

As an example of natural meaning Grice uses the sentence, ‘Those spots mean

measles’ and as an example of non-natural meaning, ‘Those three rings on the bell

[of the bus] mean that the bus is full’. To make the distinction between the two types

he explains that in the case of meaningN, the sentence can be restated beginning

with ‘the fact that’ and its meaning preserved; so, ‘The fact that he has those spots

means that he has measles’ is the same as ‘Those spots mean measles’. But in the

case of meaningNN, the addition does not (necessarily) preserve meaning; so, ‘The

fact that there are three rings on the bell means “the bus is full”’ might not be true

(ibid. p. 214). Perhaps the conductor is mistaken in the belief that the bus is full, or

perhaps the conductor always rings the bell three times as the bus goes over

London Bridge ‘for luck’. Grice’s position, put simply, is that meaningN implies

certainty between the signifier (spots) and its signified (measles) whereas meaningNN

leaves the possibility of doubt or a need for interpretation as between signifier (three

rings) and signified (a full bus / a mistaken conductor / a conductor who rings the bell

for luck). This puts his meaningNN clearly in the category of the contingent. That is

to say that all meanings of this type are context dependent and require interpretation

in order to establish meaning. All of the categories of musical meaning-types

discussed in Chapter 2 below fall under this heading. They require the end-

8
interpreter to ‘decipher’ the meaning, intended, implied, or otherwise. Such a

deciphering of meaning is prone to interpretation and such interpretation cannot

always be said to be veridical or non-veridical. It is in the nature of contingent

meaning that one interpretation is as ‘good’ (or valid) as another, depending on the

social and ecological situation of its reception.

So what would constitute a musical example of Grice’s natural meaning? Examples

seem trivial. Putting one’s ear near the bell of a bugle and hearing the sound which

emerges meansN that someone just blew into the mouthpiece. The circumstances

suffice to tell us that a state of affairs obtains: spots tell us that someone has

measles; the bugle rasp tells us that someone blew into the mouthpiece. Those

signifiers do not indicate to us how or why the state of affairs obtains: the spots tell

us nothing about the pathology of measles; the bugle sound tells us nothing about

the physics of vibrating air streams in a tube of brass. Is there a meaningN to be

extracted from the sounds of a more complex musical phenomenon, say the

Beethoven String Quartet Op. 132? Perhaps those sounds meanN that four people

are playing two violins, a viola and a ’cello. But that tells us nothing about the object

of audition – the music. It might be argued that these trivial meanings are

autonomous. However, trivial though they are, they still stand in need of

interpretation by an observer / listener. And so, Grice’s trivial meaningN along with

any meaning which falls under Grice’s description of non-natural meaning, i.e., that

which stands in need of interpretation or explanation beyond the trivial case, is, by

definition, heteronomous. This is so with all cases of musical meaning including the

trivial examples of the bugle rasp and the rubbing strings of the quartet discussed

above.

9
Heteronomous accounts

Having argued that truly autonomous accounts of musical meaning do not exist, it

follows that all accounts of musical meaning must be heteronomous. These

accounts, for example, range from those describing music’s ability to express and/or

embody emotions, to accounts of music performing a narrative function, to

descriptions of music’s ability to behave in a language-like way and semiotic theories

which say that music’s meaning is expressed through the signification of its

component parts or that analysis of music’s structure reveals its meaning. What all

of these descriptions have in common is that they say that music represents or

denotes something other than itself. This is what Cook calls the ‘picture’ theory of

meaning (Cook 2000: 74). These accounts are all part of what he describes as

belonging to ‘classical aesthetics’ (ibid.: 82). But there are yet further ways of

considering music’s meaning. Cook calls these ‘constructivist’ meanings (ibid.: 82-

84).

Classical aesthetics doesn’t recognize you as a stakeholder. By contrast, an approach that is

based on the activity of music – of composing it, performing it, listening to it, loving it, hating it,
in short doing it – brings everyone involved in music into the picture. (Ibid.: 82)

These ‘constructivist’ accounts describe social, environmental and ecological

theories of music’s production and reception.

It is not within the scope of this paper to consider these heteronomous theories in

great detail, nor to evaluate them for internal consistency or truth. Neither will they

be compared one against another to determine their relative validities. Each has its

proponents and opponents. It will be seen in Chapter 4 below that any or all of them

can find a place in the wide descriptive-space which the rhizomatic mycelial-space

provides. But, since they do , collectively, form the core of established explanations

10
of musical meaning, it will be necessary to give a brief description of each of them in

order that the reader might see how they could function in the rhizomatic meaning-

space of the mycelium to be described later.

11
 CHAPTER 2

A SPECTRUM OF HETERONOMOUS MEANINGS

Consider Figure 2.1. It represents a gradiential spectrum upon which certain

descriptions of musical meaning may be considered to lie, depending upon their

respective degrees of autonomy or heteronomy.

Fig 2.1

Some descriptions will be briefly discussed here and they will be assigned a position

on the spectrum. Further justification for the positions assigned will be provided in

Chapter 4 when considering how they may be explained in terms of their

representation in the Deleuzean rhizomatic space of the mycelium.

Grice’s trivial meaning

Fig.2.2

This is the case of Grice’s natural meaning which was discussed in Chapter 1 above.

There are few associations external to the object itself and so its meaning can be

described as near-autonomous. These are ‘stand-alone’ meanings which might best

12
be described as ‘ontological’ meanings, since their individual quiddity (or whatness)

completely delimits their meaning in the world. However, they nonetheless require

interpretation and so have some extrinsic connections in the world. They are close

to the autonomous end of the spectrum, but not quite located there.

Kantian transcendence

Fig. 2.3

This Romantic view of the aesthetic nature of artworks (including music) was

discussed in Chapter 1. It is a quasi-Platonic 4 world-view, relying upon the notion of

some ideal purity of form in artworks themselves. In musical terms, these formal /

structural qualities are presented by the musical ‘surface’ which the listener attends

to. The aesthetic experience is that which the listener has in decoding the complex

internal structure of the musical object from these ‘surface’ clues. Even an internally

self-consistent artistic form stands in need of appreciation and interpretation by an

aesthetic observer and so necessarily has to have some connections to the world

beyond itself. With regard to music’s formal and structural qualities, reminding us

that ‘listening to music is not quite the same as star-gazing’, Cumming, commenting

on a remark by London, says that it is designed to warn us against

4
Quasi-Platonic in musical terms because, ‘formalists increasingly rejected the idea that music
embodied indefinite or transcendent content of any extra-musical sort. The content of music […]
resides only in the tonal relations of music and nothing else; the content of music just is the tonally
moving forms (tönend bewegte Formen). This view gradually paved the way to the view that a
language for describing music, such as one using emotive or expressive predicates, can only ever be
metaphorical in status, since the content of instrumental music can never be reduced or captured in a
non-musical language’ (Goehr 2007: 156n).

13
 any attempt at giving musical categories (such as Schenkerian Ursätze) a false permanence or
quasi-necessity, as if they were Platonic forms seeking materialization, which remained
unaltered by any of the contingencies of a material world. (Cumming 200: 315)

This view mirrors Scruton’s remark quoted earlier where he allows that it is

impossible not to ascribe metaphorical interpretations to the purely musical

object. Scruton would like us to consider the musical object in its abstracted pure

metaphysical state, but he acknowledges that we cannot do other than interpret it

in terms of everyday ‘Metaphors We Live By’ 5. These are not abstracted

metaphysical, philosophical metaphors, but the metaphors of our everyday,

ordinary lives. It is for this reason that for Scrutonian ‘metaphorical interpretations’

we may just as well read Cumming’s ‘contingencies of a material world’. For

these reasons alone it can be seen that Kantian transcendental explanations of

musical meaning are placed to the right of the purely Gricean accounts on the

spectrum of autonomy / heteronomy. This is where the ‘schism’ between musical

absolutism and wider cultural interpretations of music’s meaning lie. It is a clear

dividing line.

Another quasi-transcendent approach to the meaning of artworks is that of Croce.

His view is summarised by Scruton, who says that Croce believes that artworks

express special mental characteristics called ‘intuitions’. This is a ‘preconceptual

mental particular, an apprehension of reality in its uniqueness’ (Scruton 1987:

143). The problem with this description of the transcendent, ineffability of an

‘intuition’ lies in Scruton’s use of the word ‘apprehension’. If intuitions just

prehended each other (in the terms used by Whitehead 6) then their Platonic,

transcendence would hold good, but as soon as they are ‘apprehended’ then

5
The title of Lakoff and Johnson (2003)
6
As described in Shaviro 2009: 28 et seq.

14
some element of cognitive involvement with a perceiver is encountered and the

‘intuitions’ are no longer autonomous but firmly in the realm of the heteronomous.

It is normally asserted that it is arousal theories of musical experience, rather than

Kantian / Hanslickian formalist, cognitive accounts which are Platonic in their

natures. On this issue I stand with Nussbaum who says that, ‘Whatever one wants

to say about formalism, I believe that it would be a mistake to regard cognitivist and

arousal approaches as incompatible’ (Nussbaum 2007; 190). Arousal accounts,

which deal broadly with our emotional responses to musical objects, are the subject

of the next section.

Emotional responses

Fig. 2.4

Explaining how music can evoke emotions in listeners is important because ‘such

experiences are one of the primary reasons for engaging with music’ (Juslin in

Deliège and Davidson (Eds.) 2011: 113). The brief discussion of emotional

responses to musical objects which follows will not attempt to evaluate the broad

range of theoretical positions of writers on the topic, one against another. Theories

of human emotions can themselves be arrayed on a wide spectrum of positions,

from one side, where writers such as Damasio (1994) and Griffiths (1997) claim that

emotional states ‘require little or nothing in the way of fully-fledged judgment or

propositional cognition’ (Nussbaum 2007: 191) to, on the other side, those such as

15
Solomon (1988) who hold that emotions require some amount of ‘cognitive

evaluation in the formation of evaluative judgments’ (ibid.). Juslin proposes a

‘working definition’ of emotion.

Emotions are relatively brief, intense, and rapidly changing reactions to potentially important
events (subjective challenges or opportunities) in the external or internal environment – often of
a social nature – which involve a number of subcomponents (cognitive changes, subjective
feelings, expressive behaviour, and action tendencies) that are more or less ‘synchronized’
during an emotional episode. (Juslin in Deliège and Davidson (Eds.) 2011: 114)

Griffiths describes emotional responses as ‘Affect-program Theory’. These are

responses which are ‘often brief, quick, complex, organized and to a greater or

lesser extent involuntary’ (1990: 182). It is this involuntary, non-cognitive response

which he says occurs without the conscious instigation of the subject. They occur,

he says, because ‘a neural program stores a predetermined set of responses which

are activated in a co-ordinated fashion in rapid response to some external stimuli’

(ibid.). Further, they are often activated when their occurrence is ‘irrational in the

light of our beliefs and desires’ (ibid.). 7 Solomon, however, takes a more cognitive

approach. He says,

Emotions are not occurrences and do not happen to us. [They are] rational and purposive
rather than irrational and disruptive, are very much like actions, and that we choose an emotion
much as we choose a course of action. (1973: 20)

He goes on to say that our emotions just are judgments (ibid.: 31). There are

intermediate positions between Griffiths-type descriptions and Solomon-type

descriptions, such as Frijda (1986). Perhaps the whole gamut of these emotional

responses is at play in our emotional responses to music. The case of the sudden

upwelling of tears in response to listening to Wagner described in the introduction

would seem to be a Griffiths-type affect response. At the other extreme, a listener

7
Say, the case of blushing in social intercourse despite our desire to remain suave and unflustered.

16
who chooses to concentrate on perceived musical personae in a Beethoven string

quartet in order to engender a feeling of empathy towards those personae might be

argued to be making Solomon-type emotional judgments. Nussbaum says that

many of these descriptions of emotions (from all parts of the spectrum) are, to a

degree, gerrymandered (Nussbaum 2007: 196). Any attempt to try to categorize the

responses just described, from affect-program phenomena at one end, to Solomon-

type cognitive judgments at the other is simply an attempt ‘to unify phenomena that

may turn out to be significantly divergent in nature’ (ibid.: 197). Studies into the

relative balance between affective responses on the one hand and cognitive

responses on the other are few in number. One recent study in Sweden has shown

that when asked an ‘open’ question about their emotional responses to music, by far

the majority of people report a preponderance of ‘affect’-type emotions. Figure 2.5

makes this clear.

Fig. 2.5 From Juslin et al. (2011: 191)

17
The reason for placing these emotional responses to music (when construed as

emotional meaning) further to the right on the autonomy / heteronomy spectrum is

because (on all of the accounts) they involve human responses to the musical

object 8, and so, heteronomous connections to the world which is extrinsic to the

musical object itself. There are some philosophical accounts which claim that music

itself can possess emotional qualities 9. If this is true, then in conjunction with the

emotional responses to music previously described, this would just strengthen

music’s position towards the heteronomous end of the spectrum. This paper does

not rely on such a Goodman-type ascription of emotions to musical objects.

Emotions are internal properties of humans (and, arguably, some higher animals).

They are not properties of sounds, however well-organized.

Semiotic accounts

Fig. 2.6

Semiotics is the theory of signs (Monelle 1992: 1). He goes on to say (agreeing with

Davies in the introduction above) that ‘since music seems meaningful – it is more,

apparently than its physical sounds – many have taken it to be a sign. There are

many semiotic theories, but what they have in common is the notion of a sign being

the relationship between a signifier and its signified. Further, they all illustrate how

8
Although as Juslin points out, ‘[…] a given piece of music might not be the ‘same’ stimulus for
different listeners: how the listener will respond depends on the psychological mechanism activated in
the event (Juslin in Deliège and Davidson (Eds.) 2011: 130).
9
e.g., Goodman 1968.

18
meaning is ‘socially constructed and how the relationship between signifier and

signified is arbitrarily constructed’ (Beard & Gloag 2005: 164). Most modern semiotic

accounts of musical meaning are based largely on the work of the two founders of

modern semiotics, Peirce and Saussure. They worked independently of each other.

Saussure’s work is primarily based on linguistics whereas Peirce showed that

signifying systems extend beyond the realm of the purely linguistic. ‘But what do you

mean by a sign?’ asks Chandler (2007: 1). He says,

Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, colours, flavours, acts or objects, but such
things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning.
(Ibid.: 13)

Really signs are metaphors; something is a sign if it refers to or stands for

something other than itself (ibid.). Signs would seem to be everywhere when

construed in this broad way. Language itself is a system of arbitrary signs and,

since we generally use language to think, it seems that we cannot even think

without operating within a system of arbitrary, socially constructed signs. 10 This

rich vein of signifying systems can help us, however, to make sense of the world.

It can make us less likely to take reality for granted as something which is wholly
independent of human interpretation. Exploring semiotic perspectives, we may come to
realize that information or meaning is not ‘contained’ in the world or in books, computers or
audio-visual media. Meaning is not ‘transmitted’ to us – we actively create it according to a
complex interplay of codes or conventions of which we are normally unaware. (Chandler
2011: 11)

It is neither necessary nor feasible to give a detailed exegesis of the way signs

operate in music 11. But it is necessary to give some examples of music’s semiotic

components in order to justify the position of semiotic explanations of musical

10
And all languages are of this type, if one accepts Wittgenstein’s arguments contra Hume and Fodor
in the Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein 2009 §256 et seq.)
11
For a detailed discussion of musical semiotics see, e.g., Monelle (1992), Agawu (1991), Tagg
(2012) and Nattiez (1990)

19
meaning on the autonomy / heteronomy spectrum. Some of the simplest signs in

music are iconic. This means that the signifier (the musical object) actually

resembles the signified in some obvious way. An example of this is Beethoven’s use

of the flute, oboe and clarinet to mimic the sounds of birdcalls, respectively the

nightingale, quail and cuckoo in the second movement (Andante molto mosso) of his

sixth symphony, Op. 68. In context, such iconicity might well be justified

aesthetically, but it is tempting to say that a whole work consisting of iconic signs

would be, at best, musically uninteresting.

One aspect of linguistic sign-systems is that they can be broken down into readily

identifiable component parts. These segments within a ‘text’ are called syntagms.

They are the building-blocks of syntactic structure.

The study of syntagmatic relations reveals the conventions or ‘rules of combination’ underlying
the production and interpretation of texts (such as the grammar of a language). The use of one
syntagmatic structure rather than another within a text influences meaning. (Chandler 2011:
110)

Syntactic order is important in natural languages and in music. Consider the well-

formed linguistic expression, ‘Sincerity may frighten the boy’. Its converse, ‘The boy

may frighten sincerity’, however makes no sense. They are both composed of a

sequence, noun phrase – transitive verb – noun phrase, but the first works and the

second does not (paraphrasis of Monelle 1992: 47). Now consider this convention

from the common practice period of Western music; the use of the chord sequence

V-I to indicate the ‘closure’ of a perfect cadence. Syntactic order here, too, affects

the meaning, because the converse sequence, I-V certainly does not signify ‘closure’

within this conventional reading of the musical tradition. Monelle claims that

something other than simple syntactic order is at play within the ‘boy / fright /

sincerity’ sentences. This other is the semantic forms of the words; what the words

20
themselves, as structural components of the sentences, mean. As native speakers

of English we know that a ‘boy’ is an entity which is capable of being frightened, but

that the entity ‘sincerity’ is not subject to fright. This is (part of) their semantic

meaning. But in the musical example, the simple syntagms of the chords I or V have

no underlying semantic meaning. We can allow that music can exhibit syntactic

forms but that it is incapable (for want of semantic content) of making assertoric

statements about the world. In this sense music cannot be considered to be

semantically equivalent to a natural language. Interpreters of music who seek

language-like semantic meaning from musical signs will not find it.

There are other signs which writers have identified in musical structures. Space

militates against a full description here. Cumming (2000) writes of gestural signs in

musical texts and performances. Agawu (1991) identifies semiotic structures within

works from the classical period of Western art music and relates these structures to

‘topoi’ or topics. His topics are identified in an attempt to try to reconstruct the

experiences of a listener contemporaneous with the composition and first

performances of those pieces. In relation to one of the pieces of music considered in

Chapter 5 of this paper, the first movement of Beethoven’s string quartet in A minor,

Op. 132, Agawu identifies the following topoi: Learned Style, Alla Breve, Fantasy,

Cadenza, March, Sensibility, Gavotte, Aria and Brilliant Style (Agawu 1991: 30).

Allanbrook says, ‘In music the term [topos] has been borrowed to designate

‘commonplace’ musical styles or figures whose expressive connotations, derived

from the circumstances in which they are habitually employed, are familiar to all’ (in

Clarke 2005: 161). This assertion is ‘alarming’ according to Clarke, being ‘an

unrealistic assessment of the listening competence of anything but a very small and

specialized subset of late twentieth century listeners’. And the reason why Agawu’s

21
topoi will not be readily perceptible to the average modern listener is in virtue of ‘the

significant changes in musical culture and sensibility that have taken place in the two

intervening centuries’ (ibid.). Clarke claims that the extent to which a modern-day

listener might be aware of ‘topic’ is an empirical question (ibid.: 170). 12

Samuels (1995) examines Mahler’s sixth symphony from a semiotic viewpoint. He

traces ‘an arc from the objective description of segmented units, to a deconstructive

narrative concerning first the necessity, and then the impossibility, of identifying the

signs that make up the system’ (ibid.: 166). The signs Samuels does identify include

the ‘Dance of Death’, the ‘heroine’ of the romantic novel and a ‘Viennese Angst’

which he claims is shared by Mahler’s music, the drama of Schnitzler and the visual

art of Klimt and Kokoschka (ibid.).

And so it may be seen that semiotic elements may be identified in musical objects.

They vary from the trivial (and clichéd) iconic sign, such as Beethoven’s avian

mimicry, through simple chord progressions, to complex metaphorical substitutions

for Angst and other social phenomena. These are all musical meanings which rely

on heteronomous connections to the wider world which the musical objects inhabit

and so the position of the ‘arrow’ of ‘semiotic accounts’ on the autonomy /

heteronomy spectrum is justified.

12
Clarke quotes a study by Krumhansl (1998). For a comparison of some aspects of this study with
my own small-scale empirical research, see Chapter 5 below.

22
Ecological accounts

Fig. 2.7

According to Nussbaum,

There is a secret buried deep in the heart of modern Western tonal art music, some hidden
nexus of touch, movement, cognition, emotion, and human ideals that resists the importunings
of theory. It may be that the only initiates into this mystery are those whom Wittgenstein
designated “true sons of God,” the great composers of the modern West. (Nussbaum 2007:
302)

Disregarding the Eurocentric inclination of this observation, is there any truth in it? In

accordance with the views expressed in the introduction to this paper concerning the

ubiquity of music and the reaction of this author (who is certainly not numbered

among the pantheon of Wittgensteinian ‘sons of God’) the answer must be ‘no’.

Even so-called art music has lately succumbed to the enquiries, inspections and

analyses of ethnographers of music. These ethnomusicological writers seek to

examine the musical phenomenon and to account for it in terms of its place in – and

relationship to - the cultural milieu. Techniques of ‘immersion’ in ‘other’ societies

developed in ethnographic studies during the twentieth century have been brought to

bear on cultural aspects of ‘Western’ societies. Middleton emphasizes the role of

culture in establishing human meanings.

There is a strong strand right across the theories emphasizing culture as the sphere of
meaning, of collective symbolic discourse, webs of significance, processes of signification;
culture in this view is the dimension in which humans interpret their activities, institutions, and
beliefs to themselves. (Middleton in Clayton et al. (eds.) 2002: 5).

23
Far from being the preserve of some mystic initiates, it is the importance of

‘ordinary’, ‘everyday’ listening and vernacular interpretation which Middleton says is

fundamental to an understanding of musical meaning (ibid.: 10). Two writers of note

in this area of musical study are Small (1998) and Clarke (2005). Small says that,

‘Neither the idea that musical meaning resides uniquely in musical objects nor any of

its corollaries bears much relation to music as it is actually practised throughout the

human race’ (Small 2998: 7). He does not coin, but uses the word ‘musicking’ in a

novel way to describe the practice of music in human cultures. He defines it thus;

To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by

listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called
composing), or by dancing. (Ibid.: 9)

One point is that musicking includes paying attention in any way to a performance,

including recorded performances or even Muzak in a lift and a second is that

musicking is a descriptive process, not prescriptive (ibid.). Armed with this definition,

Small says that

[…] we have a tool by means of which we can begin to explore the meanings that the event as
a whole is generating. […] Like all human encounters it takes place in a physical and social
setting, and these, too, have to be taken into account when we ask what meanings are being
generated by a performance. (Ibid.: 10)

All of these interrelationships, between performers, composers, listeners and the

myriad of other interactions which must occur to bring a performance to fruition are

enormously complex, ‘too complex, ultimately, to be expressed in words’ (ibid.; 13). 13

Small builds his narrative around an imaginary attendance at a symphonic concert in

a large concert venue of a modern, industrialized Western city, but makes a case

13
But which might be represented in a condensed form schematically or diagrammatically. See
Figure 5.8 below.

24
that many of his ‘cultural observations’ of such an event are equally applicable to

other cultures and musics in the world.

Clarke (2005) contrasts his approach to musical meaning with linguistic or semiotic

descriptions by adopting a ‘perceptual approach’ (ibid.: 4). Among the areas of

agreement between Clarke and Small is in acknowledging music’s complexities; ‘The

totality of “music”, in even just one culture or subculture, is a large and complex web

of phenomena’ (ibid.: 5). Clarke concentrates on the sound component of music,

specifically listening to music. 14 The diagram in Figure 2.8 from Clarke is interesting

because it shows clearly that he places musical meaning in a top-level domain in

terms of complexity. This domain which he labels ‘Mental / Social / Cultural’

including disciplines such as ‘Aesthetics / Sociology / Critical Theory’ is clearly far

towards the heteronomous end of the autonomy / heteronomy spectrum. Clarke

acknowledges that information-processing accounts of perception and meaning-

generation are not uni-directional, ‘as higher level interpretations emerge, they

influence the processing of new information’ (ibid.: 14) and,

The variables of top-down processing therefore provide a clear and straightforward way in
which to account for particular individuals’ differing interpretations: differences in mind-set when
a stimulus is encountered can feed down through a number of levels of processing and cause
individuals to arrive at different outcomes. (Ibid.)

This statement is not surprising. As an example of its effect in action, consider two

separate listeners to a piece of classical music which neither has heard before, say a

newly-composed string quartet commissioned for the chamber series of the London

Promenade Concerts. The first listener is someone who has been brought up in a

Western cultural milieu, who plays the violin in a symphony orchestra and is trained

14
As contrasted with thinking about music or reflecting upon it when not actively engaged in listening
(Clarke 2005: 5)

25
in the norms and practices of the Western art music tradition. The second person

has grown up in an Asian country in a remote rural area and has been exposed only

to the music of that culture, say Javanese Gamelan music. These top-down

influences will almost certainly affect the perception of aesthetic value, reference and

meaning in Clarke’s top-level domain.

Fig. 2.8 Clarke’s information-processing approach to musical meaning. (Clarke 2005: 13)

Summary

In this chapter it has been argued that accounts of musical meaning can be

considered to lie somewhere on a spectrum of increasing levels of heteronomy,

depending upon the number of their connections in and with the world. All of these

26
accounts are (to use Small’s phrase, op. cit.) tools to help us understand the musical

object and its meaning. Each of the tools considered thus far falls short of a

satisfactory level of description because none of them fully accounts for the

complexity of the phenomenon. What is required is a broader, interdisciplinary

model or framework to take account of this complexity. This is metaphorically

encompassed in the mycelial metaphor of a metaphysical meaning-space. The

models described so far have an increasing number of mycelial connections, as

shown in Figure 2.9 when read from left to right. No account can provide a truly

autonomous explanation of musical meaning since there must always be at least one

mycelial connection; that between the described musical object and its interpreter.

Fig. 2.9

The accounts considered thus far and represented by the diagrams in this chapter

are but five among many. It seems clear that any other account of musical

meaning 15, whether or not it is subsumed under one of the five broad headings

considered in this chapter, must fall somewhere on this line. In Chapter 5 when

considering two musical exemplars of the mycelial approach to meaning an example

which takes into account all of the categories considered in this chapter will be

15
And there are many, from, e.g., religious and spiritual explanations to the psychiatric philosophy of
Lacan.

27
outlined in a discussion of Figure 5.8. The increasing levels of complexity of the

descriptions considered so far stand in need of a mechanism to explain how they

operate. The next chapter introduces the rhizome of Deleuze and Guattari as an

‘action-space’ in which such a mechanism can operate. Two further writers, Latour

and Toynbee are considered because they provide actual examples of the otherwise

theoretical space which Deleuze and Guattari describe. This exegesis of theory,

backed by example will act as a stepping-stone to consideration of the mycelium as

a musical meaning-space in Chapter 4.

28
 CHAPTER 3

THE RHIZOME OF DELEUZE AND GUATTARI

Introduction

In the Anglo-American analytical tradition of philosophy, ontology means ‘the study

of what there is’ (May 2005: 13). This is the approach in relation to the descriptions

of musical meaning discussed in Chapter 2 above. But in Continental thought,

ontology has come to mean ‘the study of being (or Being)’ (ibid.). This is the

philosophy of Derrida and Foucault derived from the thought of Heidegger, whom

they follow in seeing analytical ontology as an attempt to reduce the question of

‘being’ (verb) to that of ‘beings’ (nouns) (ibid.: 14). Their philosophy is a rejection of

analytical ontology as the end-point of the scientific method; according to Derrida

(1997), a fruitless search for the quiddity of things, defined in terms of the ultimately

indeterminate – language. This is, quite literally, for Derrida, a reductio ad

absurdum. Deleuze’s philosophy builds a bridge between these two apparently

antagonistic positions.

While Foucault and Derrida seek to unravel the pretentions of ontology as a study of what there
is, Deleuze revels in ontological creation and analysis. While Foucault and Derrida find
ontology to be a threat to asking how one might live, Deleuze finds ontology to be the very
route one must take in order to ask about it adequately. (Ibid.: 15)

Babich has said that it is the role of Continental philosophy to make explanations

more complex, not less so (2012: personal correspondence) and May says,

Philosophy does not settle things. It disturbs them […] by moving beneath the stable world of
identities to a world of difference that at once produces those identities and shows them to be
little more than the froth of what there is. […] A concept does not stand alone. It links up with
other concepts, coexists with them on a “plane of immanence” that allows different concepts to
resonate together in a multitude of ways. (May 2005:19)

29
Deleuze’s view is this: in order for philosophy to explore the complex, connected

world described by Babich and May, there must be things to be connected. The next

section explores what some of those things are and what those connections might

consist in.

Rhizomatic or machinic thinking

Vogl calls Deleuze’s 16 rhizome ‘a labyrinth without beginning or end’ (2006, 00:56).

A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari 2004) is described by Buchanan in

these terms,

Its terminology is abstruse and difficult to engage with and the presentation of its argument so
long and convoluted it tends to get lost in the exfoliation of the concepts themselves. (2004: 1)

Fortunately, in its final chapter Deleuze gives a clearer exegesis of its component

parts, and, perversely, it is the final chapter which is the best place for the new

reader to start before delving into the rest of the chapters (or plateaus) 17 of what Fry

calls the book’s ‘fascicular 18 structure’ (2013: 38:30). The component parts of

Deleuze’s ‘system of thought for understanding and engaging with the whole world’

(Buchanan 2004: 2) are these:

• Stratification

• Assemblages

• Rhizome

• Plane of consistency

16
Although the concept of the rhizome was co-developed with Guattari, Deleuze is considered by
many to be the prime author of A Thousand Plateaus. Sutton and Martin-Jones (2008: xiii) make a
good case that Guattari was simply the last in a long line of Deleuze’s living and dead ‘collaborators’
and so (for reasons of brevity if nothing else) in the main body of the text Deleuze will be cited in the
singular throughout the following discussions of the rhizome.
17
Despite the authors’ injunction to read the book in any order the reader wishes, except the final
chapter, which, they say, should be read at the end. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: xxi)
18
Like bundles.

30
 • Deterritorialization

• Abstract machines

All six of these concepts are intimately interlinked. As Smith says,

Because of this rhizomatic structure, a traditional summary of the “theses” and arguments of A
thousand Plateaus is either downright impossible, or at best, would be much too complex to
attempt in an encyclopedia article. (2013: §4.2)

The best way to gain an understanding of rhizomatic space is to consider some

examples of it in action. ‘Action’ is the appropriate term here, because the rhizome

is a dynamic space. Deleuze says that the only operative grammar within the

rhizome is the constant conjunctive process ‘and… and… and…’ (Deleuze and

Guattari 2004: 27). There is no place within it for the verb ‘to be’. ‘Duration is not

identity. It is difference, difference that may actualize into specific identities, but that

remains difference even within those identities’ (May 2005: 60).

Examples of rhizomatic space

When appropriate, in the examples that follow, reference will be made to Deleuze’s

six ‘distilled’ concepts listed above by using this font to highlight the concepts as

they occur.

Toynbee’s ‘Social Author’

Toynbee’s ‘Social Author’ (2000 and 2002) develops the concepts of ‘habitus’ and

‘field’ described by Bordieu (quoted in Toynbee 2000: 36-37). He describes the

position of a creative person (the Social Author, be she writer or musician) at the

centre of a Bordieuian ‘field’. This is a field of ‘possibilities’. The ‘habitus’ of the

Social Author is her pre-existing disposition to make particular choices within the

‘field’. Consider these figures:

31
 Fig. 3.1

Rhizomatic space is not Cartesian. No place is privileged over any other. In

Figure 3.1 Toynbee’s Social Author is located in Bourdieu’s rhizomatic

‘possibility-space’.

Fig.3.2

In Figure 3.2 the Social Author is surrounded by

32
 19
densely distributed dots […] represent[ing] those regularly selected choices required for the
competent production of a text in a given genre. Moving out […] an increasingly thin
20
distribution of dots indicates not only the increasing difficulty of making choices beyond the
datum of genre, but also a larger and larger space of possibilities. (Toynbee 2002: 107)

Deleuze would call these dots territories on a stratum within the

rhizomatic space

Fig. 3.3

‘Eventually [there is] a fuzzy perimeter or virtual horizon of possibility21 beyond which

the author cannot identify any coded voices at all’ (ibid.). But there are ‘coded

voices’ beyond the perimeter. 22 It was Wittgenstein who said, ‘for in order to be able

to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e.

we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought)’ (Wittgenstein 1989: 3).

It is that metaphysical fact which means that the totality of rhizomatic space is

limitless. If we were to consider this possibility-space from a musical perspective, we

19
The darker circles in Fig. 3.2
20
The lighter circles in Fig. 3.2
21
The hatched line in Fig. 3.3
22
The light grey circles outside the hatched line in Fig. 3.3

33
might reasonably replace the Social Author with, say, a composer in a particular

musical genre, e.g., sonata form. In this case the closely-surrounding circles from a

Toynbee-type diagram would represent the genre-specific components, such as

tonal melodies, conventional harmonic progressions, and formal structure of sonata

form and so on. The grey circles close to the event horizon would represent less-

common aspects of the genre; perhaps unusual modulations in key or rhythmic

structure. Beyond the event horizon would lie entities completely outwith the sonata

genre; perhaps plainchant, African drums or rock and roll. Figure 3.4 shows the

‘Sonata Composer’ example in Toynbeean form. Each component circle is a

territory in Deleuzean terms and together they are a stratum in the rhizome.

Fig. 3.4

Toynbee’s description does not describe how the component parts of the possibility-

space are linked to the Social Author. But he does acknowledge that those

34
connections are necessary. He cites Koestler’s claim that ‘bisociation’ is central to

creativity (Toynbee 2002: 107). There are no examples of Deleuze using the

expression ‘bisociation’, but it might be said that, building on Koestler, ‘multisociation’

better describes the working of rhizomatic space. These lines of association are

what Deleuze terms lignes de fuite 23 (lines of flight) (Deleuze and Guattari

2004: passim) and they are represented in Fig. 3.5 by the connecting arrows

between components in Toynbee’s field. Each of the components in the field, e.g.,

‘instrument’, ‘rhythm’, ‘key’, ‘sonata composer’ are themselves complex rather than

fundamental ontological entities. This is because of the way in which associative

meanings are accretive in nature. Neither does Toynbee consider how the space

alters its topography diachronically. The practice of Toynbee’s Social Author is, by

his definition, a social act. Recall Deleuze’s conjunctive process ‘and… and…

and…’; this is not uni-directional, but multi-valent. So, it is but a simple matter to

replace Toynbee’s Social Author with a ‘Social Consumer’. 24 A variation of this

Deleuzo-Toynbeean possibility space, which elaborates on the rhizomatic

connections and diachronically changing topography will be discussed in Chapter 5

when considering two musical exemplars.

Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT)

There are similarities between Toynbee’s description and the Actor Network Theory

(hereafter ANT) of Bruno Latour (2005). The fact that they both may be

accommodated within a Deleuzean description might indicate that there is some

validity in all three of them. 25 Latour’s ANT is foremost a theory of social

23
Lignes de fuite are the mechanisms by which territories de- and re-territorialize.
24
Although by the end of this paper it will be apparent that the distinction between construction and
consumption is moot, lying on a spectrum of possibilities containing an admixture of the two.
25
In terms of ‘consilience’. (See e.g., Wilson 1998.)

35
interactions. As with Toynbee above, this exposition of ANT will make reference to

its similarities to Deleuzean rhizomatic space. Where Toynbee’s Possibility

Space provides a good description of the topography, it lacks in consideration of

temporality. Latour is less explicit on the topography of ANT’s domain but

emphasises the diachronic importance of actions within it. Taken together they

make a good description of Deleuze’s rhizome. Two of the key concepts in ANT

are what Latour calls Intermediaries and Mediators. Intermediaries may be thought

of as parts of a cultural milieu which play no consequential part in the outcome of

associations. A biological metaphor for these two terms would be to consider

Intermediaries as vectors, in the sense that the tsetse fly is the vector or carrier of

the trypanosome parasite. In Deleuzean terms they would be considered as

strata. Mediators, however, are active players in the transformation-space of

ANT. Their association with other objects in the space brings about transformations,

which are often unpredictable. Mediators are assemblages which cause

deterritorialization and reterritorialization and produce abstract

machines. Deterritorialization should be considered as a transformative

process. Consider the frames of a cinema film; each image is subtly different from

the preceding and succeeding ones, but when they are run together in the projector,

these subtle, infinitesimal changes allow the whole imagery and narrative of the film

to unfold. Deterritorialization is what happens to things when travelling

‘along’ Deleuze’s lines of flight. 26

26
Whatever the names of the components in these models, be they Deleuze’s or Latour’s terms, the
key concept to be borne in mind is that of identifying agents which cause change and transformation.

36
Latour points out a weakness of pictorial representations of ANT-type spaces. 27

They are what he terms ‘rather simple-minded visual representations’ (Latour 2005:

132). Their drawback is one of ‘not capturing movements’ (ibid.: 133 and Latour

2010: 15’ 29”). The figures reproduced above of Toynbee’s spaces fall within this

category. Discussion of the mycelium in Chapters 4 and 5 will emphasise that each

and every graphical representation of these Toynbee / Latour / Deleuze-type spaces

is a simple synchronic ‘snapshot’. What is required for a more accurate diachronic

representation of these metaphorical spaces is an animated image 28, which is

beyond the technology of the laser-printed page.

Here is a description of the previous example of the sonata composer considered

from an ANT perspective, and that perspective further explained in Deleuzean terms.

The labelled components in Toynbee’s space (Fig. 3.4 above) which are connected

by arrows in the diagram would be Mediators according to Latour. He emphasizes

the two-way nature of the connections between Mediators or actors. This has

parallels with Deleuze’s description of ‘becoming’ in the creation of assemblages

through de- and reterritorialization. Deleuze’s famous example is of

the wasp as a becoming-orchid and the orchid as a becoming-wasp.

The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp; but the wasp
reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is nevertheless deterritorialized, becoming a piece in
the orchid's reproductive apparatus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen.
Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004:
11)

Figure 3.5 shows the same ‘sonata composer’ space which was considered from

Toynbee’s view, but this time in combination with Latour’s Intermediaries and

Mediators. This produces a Deleuzean rhizome where the de- and

27
Toynbee’s and Deleuze’s being examples.
28
Such as an animated GIF or ‘cartoon’.

37
reterritorializing assemblages are indicated by the double-headed arrows.

These arrows indicate assemblages which are analogous to Deleuze’s becoming-

orchid and becoming-wasp.

Fig. 3.5

So, for example, we now have the following as sub-assemblages in the sonata

composer rhizome: the composer as a becoming-publisher; rhythm as a becoming-

composer; composer as becoming-key, and so on. This ‘simple-minded’ diagram

(pace Latour op.cit.) represents a much-reduced picture of the complex reality of the

sonata composer rhizome. Latour bemoans the notion of the network as the

metaphor for these spaces. He emphasises that it is the action of the Mediators (the

actors) which is paramount. He would prefer the model to be called a ‘worknet’

(Latour 2010: 19’ 12”). It can be seen that the circles in Figure 3.5 which are not

connected to anything else by assemblage-making arrows are not important in this

38
particular rhizomatic space. 29 They are the non-choices from Toynbee’s

description of the authorial process. They are neither Intermediaries nor Mediators

for Latour and they are strata for Deleuze. They represent a simple state of being

whereas the connected assemblages are Latourian actors – Deleuze’s constant

conjunction and… and… and… . They ‘do’ and ‘have’. It has been shown that by

considering a musical example from the point of view of Toynbee, Latour and

Deleuze, there is now the basis for a conceptual tool which can accommodate both

the complex interrelationships between the components of musical meanings and

their diachronic nature. The mycelium which is considered in the next chapter

develops this conceptual framework further.

29
They might be important in a different rhizome.

39
 CHAPTER 4

THE MYCELIUM

Why the mycelium as a metaphor?

It might be thought that any topographical network could stand for the kind of spaces

described by Toynbee, Latour and Deleuze. If it was just a question of topography

that might well be the case. But, as we have seen in the discussion of these spaces

in Chapter 3 above, it is not just topography but also functionality which is important

and for which an analogue must be found if a metaphorical model is to be accurate.

Fungal mycelia are ‘complex, intercommunicating systems’ (Rayner and Jennings

1984: xiii).

In mycelial fungi the indeterminate body form, combined with their versatility in requirements for
growth and reproduction, increase the probability of interactions being both more obviously
manifest and more frequent determinants of their distribution at any one time. […] More
fundamentally, studies of interaction patterns may help to provide an insight of processes
involved in the functioning of mycelia and their capacity to co-ordinate their activities. (Rayner
and Webber 1984 in ibid.: 383)

The concept of morphological plasticity in mycelium of the higher fungi is well documented. […]
Thus it is possible to view individual mycelia as indeterminate entities wherein differential
morphogenesis permits co-existence of a series of 'alternative phenotypes' interconnected to
form a mycelial 'collective. (Cairney and Burke 1996: 685)

In more complex environments, hyphae will contact genetically compatible hyphae and
anastomose with them. As a consequence, the mycelium will become a complex of interlinked
groupings of mycelia, with interlinking sections resulting in complex movements of cytoplasm
around an ever-changing body. (Sydney 2013)

This shows that the mycelium, as an interconnected network, is able to

accommodate flows (principally of water and nutrients) in all and any direction

around its structure. Such ‘flows’ are precisely what is required in Deleuze’s

40
rhizome in order to facilitate the becomings and deterritorializations

previously discussed.

Figure 4.1 shows various stages in mycelial growth. The diagrams are this

author’s but follow descriptions outlined in Harris (2008). A description of the

stages follows the diagram. Reference will be made to the various sub-figures in

the discussion of the Deleuzean rhizome which follows Figure 4.1.

41
Fig. 4.1.1 Fig. 4.1.2

Fig. 4.1.3 Fig. 4.1.4

Fig. 4.1.5 Fig. 4.1.6

Fig. 4.1.7 Fig. 4.1.8

Fig. 4.1.9 Fig. 4.1.10

Fig. 4.1 Stages of mycelial growth

42
Figures 4.1.1 to 4.1.5 show the development of a mycelium by the growth and

branching of hyphae (which are able to branch at their apices and also to form lateral

branches (Harris 2008)). Figure 4.1.6 shows the development of a different

mycelium (which may or may not be of the same species as the first (Cairney and

Burke 1996)). Figure 4.1.7 shows a connection of hyphae between the two mycelia.

Figure 4.1.8 shows yet a third mycelium which then connects to the conjoined

mycelium composed of the first two. Figures 4.1.9 and 4.1.10 show how these

independent mycelia grow on to form a dense mat of interconnecting hyphae. These

structures may extend over considerable distances. The diagrammatic

representations in Figure 4.1 cannot extend beyond the limits of the diagrammatic

space. That is sufficient mycological explanation for the purposes of this discussion.

The method by which these stages of mycelial growth can be said metaphorically to

represent the development of Gestalten, meta-Gestalten and Weltanshauungen 30

has been essayed by this author elsewhere. 31 In this sense, the mycelial germ in

Fig. 4.1.1 can be said to represent a primitive or simple component of a Gestalt.

Considering the example of the sonata composer discussed in Chapter 3 again, take

Fig. 4.1.1 to represent one of the simple components of that Gestalt, say the

influence of Haydn. It might reasonably be asked, what is simple about Haydn’s

influence upon sonata composition? The implication of a Toynbee-type diagram with

‘Haydn’s influence’ simply inscribed within a circle is that Haydn’s influence is

somehow a primitive irreducible simple component. But the ever-increasing

branchings of the developments shown in Figs. 4.1.2 to 4.1.5 demonstrate that

‘Haydn’s influence’ (in the context of this particular example of sonata composition)

30
These German nouns are used here because of their prevalence in the literature on psychology
and the philosophy of mind.
31
Hewitt 2012: 14-18.

43
is far from simple. The branchings indicate a growing Gestalt encompassing, for

example, aspects of Haydn’s own work in sonata form, his published works in

manuscript form, recordings, ethnographic studies of Haydn, knowledge of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire, and any number of other associations. Eventually at a

point in time the diagram of this particular Gestalt could be represented by Figure

4.2.

Fig. 4.2

The circle in Figure 4.2 is the outline of ‘Haydn’s Influence’ which is familiar from the

Toynbee-type diagram, but it now shows the complexity of this particular Gestalt

from a mycelial perspective, in line with the discussion of its development in the

previous paragraph. It is possible to see how the component circles of the Toynbee-

/ Latour- / Deleuze-space of Figure 3.5 are in fact constituted by mycelial structures

in a similar way to that labelled ‘Haydn’s Influence in Figure 4.2. Just as with a

fungal mycelium, the metaphorical Deleuzean mycelial space can be observed at

any level of complexity or ‘magnification’ required, from its primitive component

parts, up through the development of mycelial Gestalten, through the level of meta-

Gestalten to the complete space of a Weltanschauung. In this sense, Figures 4.1.1

to 4.1.10 just represent different levels of ‘zoom’ under the metaphorical Deleuzean

44
microscope. Figure 4.3 is a schematic representation of a mycelial connection at an

arbitrary level of ‘zoom’, showing two nodes and a mycelial ‘line of flight’

connecting them.

Fig. 4.3

Each node might be anything from a primitive component up to the level of a meta-

Gestalt. A and B might respectively be, for example; a minor third chord and a

feeling of sadness; two computers and an internet connection or something as

complex as the relationship between Western Art Music and Vietnamese Tai Tu

Nam Bo.

Synchronicity and Diachronicity

Fig. 4.4

Time’s arrow runs in just one direction (Reichenbach 1957: 138). In the real world

there is only the left-hand button of Figure 4.4. This fact may seem so trivially

obvious that it hardly needs to be mentioned. But all of the diagrams of

45
rhizomatic space which have been considered so far are seen on the printed

page as if the right hand-button had been pressed. It is part of the ontology of

Deleuze’s rhizomatic spaces and, therefore, of the mycelial metaphor, that there

is no ‘pause’ button. When considering these pictorial ‘snapshots’ of rhizomatic

spaces it must always be borne in mind that they represent just one synchronic

moment in time in the evolution of the space. A snapshot taken an instant before

would look slightly different as would a subsequent image an instant later. There is

no stasis in rhizomatic or mycelial space.

Superimposability of Gestalten in mycelial space

Why does mycelial space not ‘fill-up’? As Latour points out, networks (or worknets

as he prefers to call them) are almost entirely empty space. ‘Nets are made of

holes. Distance is subverted. ‘Close’ and ‘far’ are dependent on conduits, bridges

and hubs’ (Latour 2010: 18’ 40”). What Latour hints at here is taken to its logical

conclusion in mycelial space. Latour’s hubs, conduits and bridges are the stuff of the

metaphysical mycelium. And in a metaphysical space the hubs can be made

arbitrarily small and the connection between them arbitrarily thin. And so, just as

there is always ‘space’ on a number line for another real number, so there is always

‘space’ in the mycelium for more ‘hyphae’ and ‘nodal connections’. This is

necessarily so, otherwise it would be possible to reach a limit to thought, which

Wittgenstein has told us is impossible (Wittgenstein op. cit.).

Figure 4.5 below shows diagrammatically how the mycelial space can accommodate

the superimposition of multiple Gestalten. The ‘lines’ of the Gestalten within the

hyphal mass are drawn so that they may be visualized in these diagrams. In fact,

they are composed of mathematical lines, which occupy no physical space.

46
Therefore, however ‘physically’ dense the mycelium becomes as Gestalten develop

and superimpose themselves in the formation of whole Weltanschauungen (Figures

4.5.1 to 4.5.7), any magnification of that mass (e.g., Figure 4.5.8) will always reveal

more space for further mycelial Gestalten to occupy. The same caveats regarding

the synchronic nature of these ‘snapshot’ diagrams which was discussed in 4.2

above should be applied to the diagrammatic representations of the mycelium shown

in Figure 4.5.

47
Fig. 4.5.1 Fig. 4.5.2

Fig. 4.5.3 Fig. 4.5.4

Fig. 4.5.5 Fig. 4.5.6

Fig. 4.5.7 Fig.4.5.8

Fig. 4.5 Superimposition of mycelial Gestalten

48
The mycelium as meaning

It has been shown that a complex web of connections in the mycelium leads to the

development from simple components of complex and interconnected Gestalten and

meta-Gestalten. So far in this paper, the diagrammatic representations of the

mycelial space (including its Toynbee-type representations) have been produced as

if the observer is looking down on the plane from above. Extending the fungal

metaphor slightly, consider the picture looking in the line of the plane represented by

Figure 4.6.

Fig. 4.6 The mycelium viewed in the line of the plane

Seen this way the fruiting bodies of the fungus, the mushroom shapes, are

analogous to the conscious elements of Gestalten, i.e., that which is within the mind

49
of the hearer or cognizer 32 of the music at a moment in time. The hyphae in the

central band represent those elements which are outwith the conscious Gestalten

but which remain accessible to conscious Gestalt construction through processes

such as cognition, introspection and so on. They represent the ‘coded voices’ in the

example of Toynbee-space described by Figure 3.3 above. In Figure 4.6 the dotted

boundary between the lower two bands separates the ‘unconscious’ from the

‘transcendent’ and is equivalent to Toynbee’s ‘event horizon’ discussed in Chapter 3

and which is shown as the dotted line in Figure 3.3 above. The contention is that the

meaning of a musical object for an individual (Scruton’s ‘meaning for me’) at some

synchronic moment just is those Gestalten which are represented by the

metaphorical mushrooms at that moment in time. Diachronically the mushrooms

wither and are replaced by others, which are produced from the product of a slightly

different combination of mycelial hyphae from the subconscious ‘meaning substrate’.

This is the mechanism by which meanings change over time. In reality the

‘mushrooms’ of Gestalt development come into existence an order of magnitude

more quickly than real fungal fruits, but, as a model, the mycelial metaphor is

analogous to reality if considered as a slowed-down representation.

Furthermore, the meaning of the musical object is just the totality of the combination

of individual ‘meanings for me’. 33 This approach describes meaning in terms of

epistemology rather than as a component of the ontological status of a musical

object. It is a view of meaning as a product of how an object relates to and acts in

the world rather than its ontological status or quiddity; Deleuze’s conjunctive

sequence and… and… and…, rather than ‘to be’.

32
To include those cases contra Clarke where the subject is thinking about the musical object at a
time other than during actual audition.
33
One consequence of this definition of the totality of meaning is that there is no such thing as an
isolable meaning of an historical object, such as an Urtext or ‘authentic’ performance.

50
A mechanism for perception of the transcendent

As described in Chapter 2 above, to perceive or experience the transcendent is a

contradiction in terms, since apprehension removes the transcendent object from

that realm and available to the realm of ordinary perception and appreciation. So

why, then, do people often describe some aspect of the musical object as

transcendent and ineffable? If we consider the ‘event horizon’ of a Toynbee-type

representation of rhizomatic space, there are objects beyond that horizon from

the subject’s point of view which are inaccessible (as in Figure 3.3). The hypotheses

being proposed here is that the ‘event horizon’ is sometimes caused to ‘bend’ or to

become ‘permeable’

Fig. 4.7

In the case depicted in Figure 4.7 the event horizon has been extended to enclose

some object which was hitherto beyond the horizon. It is analogous to the situation

of a biological unicellular entity like an amoeba which extends a pseudopodium to

‘swallow-up’ something external to its cell wall. At this stage the ‘swallowed’ entity

has become available within the mass of objects which are available for inclusion in

51
a conscious Gestalt. What was a Platonic / Crocean ‘intuition’ has been rendered

perceptible to the perceiving subject. Why, then, do subjects sometimes report an

inability to describe the experience in detail? The object seems to have regained its

transcendent or ineffable status. The conjecture is this: sometimes the event horizon

wholly or partially recedes again, leaving the temporarily perceived object once again

outside the event horizon, as shown by the black disc in Figure 4.8.

Fig 4.8 The event horizon retreats leaving the black entity re-isolated

The further conjecture is this: that by some mechanism, having previously been

inside the event horizon, the now re-isolated entity leaves some trace within the

horizon which the perceiving subject is able to report, but in no detail, since the

object is no longer available for apprehension directly. It is this effect which is

reported by subjects as an experience of the transcendent. If the external object is

incorporated into the space inside the event horizon often enough, it might form

mycelial connections within it and thus become permanently part of the perceptible

realm. This is not necessarily a uni-directional process. Objects which were once

within the realm of human cognition may become lost or excluded when they no

52
longer possess meaningful mycelial connections. This conjecture should be the

subject of further empirical research.

53
 CHAPTER 5

EXEMPLARS

During March 2013 I conducted an experiment (hereafter, the OUSA 34 experiment)

with readers of and contributors to an online students’ association forum called

OUSA Postgraduate Music; part of the Open University’s suite of student-supervised

discussion forums. It should be emphasized that this was not a bona fide

psychology experiment subject to all of the proper controls of the scientific method.

There was no control over the time and place where the respondents accessed the

material under discussion. There was no control group and the results have not

been subjected to any kind of statistical analysis. The data collected has been

anonymized, firstly, to protect the identity of those who responded and secondly,

because such factors as age, gender, ethnicity and other demographic measures are

not relevant to the points being made in this chapter. 35 There is scope for proper

controlled experiments in this arena for further research. The purpose of this chapter

is to utilise the experimental data collected and to present some of them in terms of a

mycelial-rhizomatic explanation. Some of the responses are reproduced below36

and some of them are summarized in the form of a Toynbee-type diagram to

represent their mycelial-rhizomatic links. At the end of the section reproducing

the data from respondents is a summary of the results and a comparison to another

empirical study of the Beethoven example conducted by Krumhansl (1998).

34
Open University Students’ Association.
35
A description of the exercise and data collected can be found online here:
http://www.academia.edu/4149988/Online_Music_Meaning_Project_-_Responses
36
The majority of the responses are given in full as they appeared on the forum discussion. There
has been some minor editing for clarity.

54
The online experiment

The experiment took this form. Two pieces of music were posted to the student

forum one week apart. Initially the identity of the pieces of music was not revealed to

the participants. In respect of both pieces of music the participants were asked to

listen to the uploaded music and to respond to this text; ‘I would be pleased to hear

whether you find any meaning in the music and / or whether the music is

meaningful to you.’

The pieces

The first piece of music was the first movement of Beethoven's String Quartet Op.

132 in A minor (Assai sostenuto - Allegro)37. In all there were 17 online replies

posted on the forum. Two further offline replies were received from people who did

recognise the piece and who stated that they did not wish to respond online so as to

avoid influencing the responses of others (who might not be familiar with the music).

The second piece of music was made by me using an iPad app called GarageBand.

It is called Network 38 for reference purposes.

The responses

There were 19 responses to the first sound clip, the Beethoven quartet. Some of

those responses are reproduced below and indicated by upper case letters. There

were 23 responses to the GarageBand piece Network. Some of the responses to

this piece are reproduced below and indicated by Arabic numerals. Many are

37
It is an out of copyright recording by the Pascal Quartet. The actual track can be heard online here:
http://archive.org/details/BeethovenQuartetNo.15InAMinorOp.132
38
The track can now be heard online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipcfy3AiTN0

55
reported in full because the variety of the responses shows just how varied individual

Gestalten can be when prompted by the same musical stimulus.

Respondent A:

Gloomy start - agitation - it's a string quartet - probably late romantic - I don't like string quartets -

boredom - why is this piece so long? Mid-section (around 3 mins.) - total misery - next section meant

nothing - towards end - anguish - triumphant ending.

Fig 5.1 Respondent A – meaning Gestalt

Respondent B:

Ok I'll have a go first: to me there is a strong sense of the outdoors in this, a blustery day with clouds
passing quickly between spells of sunny clear sky. Or in terms of action, of moving through woods,
from clearing to clearing between denser areas of trees.

Respondent C:

I was told a clear story listening to that. I don't know what the music was, but here are my

thoughts, as I wrote them. (I really hope none of you are psychoanalysts...!)

Sadness> anguish> desolation> anger> questioning> anger> revenge> memories> retelling a

happier story> then of how it went wrong> maybe things aren't that bad?> lots of people!> will

56
we/won't we?> calm> tired> weary> fighting to stop a panic attack now...> getting better, focusing
on the good things...> I'll allow myself one last 'sounding off'> feeling sorry for myself> reaching
out to others> it's no good, I'm too depressed> anger is more productive than pain> Sod it, let's
have a party> Ooh! I've found a distraction!> Actually, I'm quite happy at the moment, that has
surprised me> Oh, but maybe I shouldn't be feeling happy...?> I'm nervous about not being
depressed anymore> I'm angry with myself and feeling confused> But feeling happy is less
draining...> Feeling quite confident now!> end of a confusing day...> Actually, I haven't forgotten
the hurt at all and I'm feeling really destructive. Leave me alone!

Fig. 5.2 Respondent C – partial meaning Gestalt

Figure 5.2 represents the development of Respondent C’s Gestalt up until the

point of ‘anger’ in the description above. Diagrammatic space militates against a

complete labelled diagram of this description. Respondent C describes about 33

different 39 components. At this level of complexity the diagram of Respondent C’s

full description would appear topographically equivalent to something like

Fig.4.1.5, repeated here.

39
Depending on parsing of the commentary.

57
 Fig 5.3 (Fig. 4.1.3) Showing level of complexity of Respondent C’s meaning Gestalt

The fact that the diagram in Figure 5.2 represents a ‘snapshot’ of the developing

Gestalt shows clearly the diachronic nature of the development of Gestalten and,

therefore, meanings.

Respondent D:

As it seemed to be quite biographical I looked at it and listened to it in relation to time. Each

minute I jotted a few thoughts-
Initially a sadness but a definite appearance of rising upwards - > whilst there was still grief and
despair underneath there was definite hope, maybe a reconciliation -> unhappiness, grief,
sickness, relentless but new foundations can be heard -> a sense of routine and normality->
solutions and resolutions, enjoyment and intensity-> unity and agreement -> unwinding, dream or
sleep-like state with some turmoil-> a sense of relief being at peace-> resolve, calm and final
dalliance.

Respondent E:

Gothic is a good word for it. I’ve been watching a Time Team programme about Pugin today, and
thought this would be the ideal music to accompany such a programme. I guess I would describe it
as opulent and passionate. Whether the music has an intrinsic meaning, or whether the performance
gave it that feeling / interpretation I don’t know. There was a rhythmic motif in it that has been acting
as an earworm since I heard it (now where have I heard that before?) which sounded like a reference.

This description has been chosen for diagrammatic representation because it is

able to show the connections between not only the elements of the Gestalt

described by the respondent, but also speculative connections internal to its

declared components and connections to external Gestalten too.

58
 Fig. 5.4 Respondent E – meaning Gestalt and its relationship to external Gestalten

The boldly-outlined box in Figure 5.4 represents the meaning-Gestalt of Music

Example 1 as described by Respondent E. Within that part of the figure, the

elements ‘Gothic’ and ‘Pugin’ are contained within a dotted boundary. This

boundary is not part of Respondent E’s Gestalt, but serves to highlight those two

elements in order to link them to the external Gestalt contained within the box at

the top left of the Figure. This box contains the elements ‘Gothic revival

architecture’, ‘Palace of Westminster’ and ‘Gothic fiction’. In a like manner,

‘Gothic fiction’ is encircled within a dotted boundary in order to show how it links to

the components of the Gestalt within the box at the bottom of Figure 5.4, which, in

its turn, contains sub-Gestalten of types of Gothic fiction.

59
Respondent F:

Not knowing the piece or composer, these are my notes, made as it played: [words in square

bracket retrospective thoughts / gloss]

NB a very rusty recall of Grade 5 theory has had some role here!

tension - passion (strings close [harmony]) strings going up, [violin] gypsy / Jewish? – romantic,
'sturm und drang' - bursts of joy - dance - tenderness - love? - waves of emotion - tender-
desperate? - cello - low - quieter - contemplative? Reflect - [rhythmic] motif; dotted - da da di daa
- [seemed recurrent & strong to me] - develop[ment] - blend tender & sturm - hidden tensions -
keep tension - brief more (solo violin) purer - other violin - song? - resolution in harmony - drawn
in and out [the sound seemed to draw in then out] -almost pleading scale - strong down
movement lower strings - ?contain[ing] [emotions*] - lyric violin - answer[ed] – change -
more feeling – torrent - torment? - quieter - tension dissolved [dissolving] - strident strings –
chords - final [chord] - leaves tension -

* to expand 'contain' a bit, I had the sense even in the quieter and / or slower sections of contained
emotions - passions just under the surface (as per the notes these emotions ranged from
moments of joy to torment / desperation)

Respondent G:

The music seemed to have roughly 3 sections. It put me in mind of 'a day in the life of an insect'.
This insect is scuttling about on a forest floor looking for food when there are predators about.

Up to about 2:50 we have several sequences of slower phrases that sounded pensive to my ear,
then there faster slightly frantic phrases. The slow bits were where it was hiding under a leaf
plucking up courage to dash to the next cover, grabbing what food it could along the way.
The frantic bits were scuttling about in the open. The middle section 3:00 to about 7:00 was a
repeat of the same sort of thing, but seemed a bit more relaxed. The final section 7:00 to the end
was again the same sort of thing, but slightly more weary.

60
The second piece of music was posted to the forum a week after the first. Again,

it was posted as a simple sound-clip with no indication given as to its provenance.

Respondent 1:

It's entitled 'The Hangover' (my imaginary title) because it starts with a repeated slow split chord

(the headache) which is regularly repeated. This is then accompanied by the discordant and

dilating strings (the stomach). The percussion (throbbing temples) joins in. The head tries to

convince the stomach that it’s really not that bad but this gradually gives way to a feeling of utter

nausea. I felt physically ill as I listened to it and as the piece accelerated I felt propelled forward

toward an obvious end. Really felt this one!

Fig. 5.5 Respondent 1 – meaning Gestalt

Respondent 2:

Below is transcript of notes from the first and second listenings, plus afterthoughts that are not
planned at this moment.

61
Regular - irregular piano, 'plonk' chords. String sounds - not soothing - slide, some discord, richer
sound. Edgy, high strings, tapping? Beat, drum, bass = typewriter? - 'jazz' effect (suggested by
bass). Very persistent chords - almost car crash sound - siren? Horns? Large lorries (effect [of]
synth)
lower effect - ships horn? - swaying - unsettled - not [suggesting] stability
sliding
regular piano a bit disconcerting
late chords - 'sinister' (threat) - end chords - finality
unsettled - open - unclear

Further thoughts.
I seem to have noted the sounds themselves and tried to make identify them with 'real' sounds -
having noted my impression that most (if not all?) of the sounds are electronically generated.
Given the context of this exercise I find it hard to avoid comparisons with the first piece, which to
be honest I much preferred. It seems to me my reactions to this (second) one are much more
abstract. I felt some emotional effects, but (it seems just now) this is more an impression from the
sounds themselves, rather than how the first piece seemed to express emotion more directly
The second piece seemed much more 'modern' and, if I'm honest 'difficult'. I'm not against
'modern' music, I just find it harder to relate to - which of itself does not mean 'modern' music is
worth less.
Yet, I've noticed going to art galleries etc. that while I may not 'like' the pieces in the sense of their
being immediately attractive, they do make me think. Perhaps it’s the nature of this exercise that
I'm thinking now, but if modern music is intended to undermine certainties and thus provoke
reflection, the second piece has done that!
The problem for me with the second piece though, is reflect on what? Is there anything is the
second piece that more or less any other series of abstracted sounds that I could take away? How
much is the above simply my rather amateurish ideas on modernism that I already have? So (with
respect) I'm not sure the second piece really adds much beyond my the above rambling
introspections... which I doubt add much / anything that will be appreciated beyond
the research aims?

Respondent 3:

Someone climbing down a very long fire escape in New York?

62
Respondent 4:

Wow! I found this to be like an impressionist painting, splashes of colour carefully placed, - and it

conjured up for me a motorway journey, with various traffic conditions, possibly ending in disaster.

Respondent 5:

I rather liked the piece though the emotions it invoked went from optimism to pessimism then

annihilation but maybe I am weird. It is the sort of sound track I would imagine in my head when

staring at Rothko paintings.

Respondent 6:

It must be some weird sensitivity I have to that particular blend of frequencies. It made me feel

very odd indeed. It wasn't the sounds as much as the feeling. I now understand the phrase "my

nerves were jangling", except that it was more my midriff jangling

Respondent 7:

Bit of a contrast to the string quartet. First impression was less favourable than after the second

hearing. This sort of music has a 'painting-by-numbers' feel to it; the music seems to be

assembled from what are essentially sound effects. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but when

you get an extended piece in this style, it becomes a bit of an endurance test. What does it mean?

I think using sounds with extra musical connotations - like the siren (which we think of as scary) -

influences the mood created and lends it a meaning - in a way the sound of a string quartet can't.

So this one seemed sinister because of the ostinato piano, the siren noises and the offbeat

disjointed rhythms.

Jolly interesting though!

63
The sound clip Network accompanied by images

It had been intended that the experiment should consist in consideration of the

two sound clips alone, but, as an afterthought, I posted a link to the second piece

Network, but this time the music was accompanied by a series of still photographs

of scenes in the city of New York. 40 There was only one online response to this

further presentation of the piece accompanied by visual images. This respondent

is indicated by the Greek letter α, for reference purposes.

Respondent α:

This music excerpt for me depicts New York in a very negative way and it appears threatened in

the opening sequence. At first I thought Gotham city and Batman! Images of dated artefacts,

modern art and Marilyn Monroe made me think of the 1960s and then images of 9/11 confused

me. The stars and stripes prompted thoughts of American politics, gun laws and terrorism as the

music drew to a close. I'm not quite sure what statement was being made here. It seemed more

like a city in decline rather than a vibrant and forward looking place because of the music and

chosen imagery.

40
This clip can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvm6CeoCHSk

64
 Fig 5.6 Respondent α – meaning Gestalt

It is worth pointing out here that Respondent 1 and Respondent α is the same

person. The two distinctive Gestalten evidenced in Figures 5.5 and 5.6 have

apparently been reproduced just in virtue of the different associative constructions

made by this subject in response to, respectively, the sound clip of Network and then

the sound clip accompanied by the visual images.

A summary of the responses

All of the responses described both pieces in broadly metaphorical language. This

should be unsurprising. What would a literal description of musical pieces consist

in? A response which described the frequency of the sounds produced or the

duration of the tones would not be revealing very much about the perceived sounds

as music. Lakoff and Johnson (2003) claim that almost all of human experience is

described in terms of metaphor. Some of their broad categories of metaphorical

description could be identified in the responses to this online experiment. Many

respondents described the pieces in terms of emotional metaphors, by ascribing

65
emotional qualities to parts of the music. There were also emotional responses

reported in response to the music. The metaphor of a journey was reported by a

number of respondents and was sometimes coupled with a reported narrative

metaphor, as if the music were telling a story or narrating the temporal passage of

events.

Semitoic elements were identified by some respondents. Examples of these are the

report of hearing a ‘siren’ in the piece Network and the identification of a ‘gypsy motif’

in the Beethoven.

Some respondents commented upon the structural aspects of the two pieces. The

‘formal’ structure of the Beethoven was remarked upon whilst Network was noted for

its ‘abstract’ quality.

Comparison with Krumhansl (1998)

Krumhansl’s study was conducted with students at Cornell University in California as

the subjects. The experiment was designed to test (inter alia) whether the kind of

topics identified in Agawu (1991) could be determined by subjects ‘without extensive

knowledge of the musical corpus […] presumed necessary in order for the topics to

be perceived and their connotations to be appreciated’ (Krumhansl 1998: 122). This

knowledge and familiarity, Agawu claimed, was necessary for such identification of

topics. Krumhansl’s subjects were asked to respond to a Mozart quintet and also to

the first movement of the Beethoven Op. 132, the same piece as the subjects of the

online experiment reported above. The full methodology and analysis of the data

can be found in Krumhansl (1998).

66
Fig. 5.7 Agawu’s identification of topics in Beethoven Op. 132, first movement, reproduced
in Krumhansl (1998: 124)

One of the conclusions of the study was that subjects, irrespective of their familiarity

with music in the Classical style were able to identify as ‘psychological entities’ (ibid.:

133) the same sections identified by Agawu. They were not able to identify Agawu’s

topics per se. Krumhansl posits that the ‘distinctive characteristics (such as tempo,

rhythm, melodic figures)’ is what established the distinctive identity of the topics in

her respondents. As Clarke points out in relation to Krumhansl’s paper,

67
 […] the experiment can only demonstrate that listeners respond to the existence of “distinctive
material” in the music in various ways, not how they perceive the meaning of that material –
and a vital component of the concept of topic is the matter of topical content. (Clarke 2005:
171)

From the OUSA experiment, although none of the respondents provided any

information to show direct correlation to Agawu’s identified topics, it is clear from the

responses of A, C, D, F and G that structural elements within the movement

influenced their descriptions of the piece. This would confirm Krumhansl’s findings

and also Clarke’s remarks about listeners’ ability to discern ‘distinctive material’

within the music.

The purpose of including Krumhansl’s findings in this chapter, in conjunction with the

results of the OUSA experiment is to justify the assertion that musical meaning

changes diachronically. As Clarke says, ‘[…] the world into which listeners are

drawn does not consist simply of the music’s own formal processes, but is far more

heterogeneous and heteronomous’ (Clarke 2005: 187). This heterogeneity and

heteronomy is time dependent.

A composite personal Gestalt of the Beethoven piece

‘Whose listening?’ asks Clarke in his concluding chapter (Clarke 2005: 192). He

answers that it is his own, explaining that,

Since the purpose [of the book] is to try to explain the general processes involved in perceiving
musical meaning, there is no particular significance in whose listenings these are: they are
simply my raw material. (Ibid.)

The implication of his remarks is that the response to no single listening is to be

preferred or privileged over any other.

68
He says that one approach to these kinds of analyses would be

To gather empirical evidence about what it is that larger numbers of different listeners actually
hear. Despite the rapid growth of the psychology of music over the last 25 years or so, this
evidence is still surprisingly hard to find. (Ibid)

And, Krumhansl et al. notwithstanding, those empirical results are still hard to find.

The responses obtained in the OUSA experiment recounted above have proved

useful sources of raw data for the construction of the mycelial rhizomatic

descriptions of musical meaning in this chapter.

Having been considering the subject of this paper for a considerable time, I have

listened again to the exemplar piece, the first movement of the Beethoven Op.

132. Figure 5.8 represents a personal mycelial Gestalt based upon this further

listening and notes taken contemporaneously with hearing the recording. The

diagram demonstrates how those aspects of musical meaning discussed in

Chapter 2 can be incorporated into a rhizomatic account of musical meaning.

It is acknowledged that not all of the factors considered in this particular mycelial

Gestalt are brought to bear in a ‘normal’ hearing of the piece, but as another

actual (albeit contrived) Gestalt it is, nonetheless, grist to the totality of the

mycelial meaning-mill with regard to Beethoven’s Op. 132.

Here is a contemporaneous note of my own responses to the musical object.

Slow strings. Rising and falling harmonies. Violin tune – a voice over the others, insistent and
questioning (00:59). Repetition – re-statement. Two conversations (01:25). A skipping, descriptive
voice, like a tour-guide. The others pay attention (01:40). (02:52) Solemn, quiet (I wish I had the
score in front of me) (03:32). A new topic of conversation, grave and melancholy (04:20). Busyness.
Bustling around in a room. See balletic figures at and around a table (something is being prepared) It
is all in place. They listen (05:45). A lighter mood (06:20). (Not conscious of the instrumental players

69
until now.) Three on one – we’ve told you so! (07:52). Expectation of another person coming, looking
out of a window. No! (08:59). You do what’s best.

Other notes: Not particularly relaxing, although the music took my mind away from current back pain.
I noticed the ‘Learned Style’ and ‘Alla Breve’ elements identified as topics by Agawu.

As Figure 5.8 shows, all of the descriptions of types of musical meaning described in

Chapter 2 can be identified in this brief description of my responses to this particular

hearing of the Beethoven Op. 132.

Fig. 5.8. A personal mycelial Gestalt of Beethoven Op. 132, first movement.

The solid arrows connect the musical meaning-types to the Beethoven piece. The

dotted arrows all link to the ‘Ecological’ box in the mycelium, since it will be clear by

now that it is has been argued throughout this paper that all of the other described

70
interpretations can be subsumed under the ‘Ecological ‘ heading. The ecological

space is the rhizomatic space of the mycelium.

71
 CONCLUSION

I began this paper by considering the problematic nature of musical meaning and

describing how my own search for an explanation had led me to consider many of

the standard philosophical accounts of it. The broad headings which I utilized in

Chapter 2 to identify these different meaning-types do not, of course, exhaust the

historical accounts of music’s meaning which are available in the literature; but they

do represent quite closely my own philosophical journey in consideration of these

matters. I have shown that accounts of musical meaning can be described as

having a place on a spectrum of autonomy / heteronomy, dependent upon their

respective levels of involvement and connectivity in the world. In describing these

accounts of musical meaning I have tried to emphasise aspects of each of them;

both where they contribute to a useful explanation of musical meaning, but also

aspects where they fall short of an explanation of how music is actually perceived

and cognized by real listeners. Each of these historical frameworks is of its time. In

looking for a metaphysical framework to better explain current descriptions of

musical meaning I considered the rhizomatic metaphysical spaces described by

Deleuze and Guattari. I introduced the concept of the fungal mycelium as a

functional metaphor for a particular type of Deleuzean space, but one which was

able to subsume all of the previously described musical meaning-spaces within its

ambit. I outlined the work of Toynbee and Latour and described their descriptions as

essentially Deleuzean in nature. In Chapter 5 I reproduced experimental data

concerning descriptions given by listeners to two exemplar pieces of music,

Beethoven’s late string quartet, Op. 132 and a modern, previously unheard

synthesized piece, Network. I showed that individual listeners construct their own

meaning-Gestalten of pieces of music in a manner which the mycelial metaphorical

72
space can functionally account for in terms of the connectivity between component

parts of those Gestalten, at multiple levels of complexity and organization, together

with diachronic changes. The mycelial structure was chosen as the metaphor rather

than some other network, such as neural tissue, for example. The metaphoric-space

described here is not intended to be a description of consciousness or of cognition,

although such processes might well be structurally analogous to the mycelial

process 41.

Specific aspects of this paper which would benefit from further empirical research

are these:

(1) The hypothesis in Chapter 4 concerning a mechanism for identifying and

incorporating the ‘transcendent’ into regularly perceived Gestalten. A psychology

experiment with proper controls could test this hypothesis.

(2) The approached outlined in Chapter 5 of the ‘OUSA experiment’ concerning the

way in which listeners construct musical Gestalten and, therefore, meaning, could

form the subject of proper controlled empirical research. This would build upon the

work of, e.g., Krumhansl (1998).

It might be that the result of the collection of ‘hard data’ from such experiments will

show that the mycelial-space I have described is not a suitable metaphorical

description of the metaphysical realm of musical-meaning construction. Perhaps the

construction of musical meaning will ultimately be reducible to physical,

psychological explanations, rendering metaphysical metaphors unnecessary, but I

41
Jabr 2013 shows how single celled slime molds can accurately define networks as complex as the
Tokyo railway system.

73
believe that something like the rhizomatic functionality which the mycelium

outlines will accurately model such real, physical processes.

74
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