Normally, when you think of negative information, your mind goes right to the scary realm of credit statuses and all the wonderous difficulties incurred within that financial realm. Everything from late loan payments, unpayable checks, "delinquent accounts," foreclosures, and all the suboptimal bile of economic insecurity, technically own the term's etymological existence. When negative information becomes too great, your credit score takes a punch.
Fine. While true, I'm not satisfied that's all the term can provide here.
And I was right apparently. There is drastically different side, one that breaks open the comprehension of what constitutes "knowledge" and seeks to develop a perceiver's purview of what it means to know music. Not only know music from the superficial, experientialist standpoint but from the cognitive and intimate space, where the auditory is a reflection of the interiority of the composer-qua-the reflection of self through the lens of internalized social interactions and bred practices.
Pulling from the psychological codification of "negative information," that being rooted in the concept of "negative bias," defined as the developmental effect to be influenced by adverse experiences more than constructive ones, in this short discovery article I want to explore what it could mean for music is to be the arbiter of such an effect. However, I am taking out the abjectness of the phenomenon and replacing it with the more relevant position of intellectual ambiguity instead. Unknowing that seeks to entangle the viewer more and more.
What does it mean when I say......
Music is the bestower of "negative information."
First, let's investigate what is presumed when one says "negative information." Upon first glance, if we separate the term from its Psychological epistemology, i.e., stripping the term of its "negative" connotations, and then replacing that with a epistemically rational variant, we are left with something that could we applicable to music. The statement then could become,
"music contains, not very easily decoded, information for the viewer to manipulate at leisure with no hope of an answer or relief from their incessant ponderings."
While music does elicit emotional and sentimental evaluations within the listener, I question not only whether these should be trusted in any sense. Seeing that a piece of music's existential power ultimately lies within the listener's grasp and how they choose to deal with the sounding event, it seems natural that even with the fecundity of compositional names, styles, and epochs, nothing is guaranteed. A composer cannot readily assume their music will be understood, nor that their epoch will grasp the complexities of their musical edifice. It is in this space where I argue music's "negative information" lies. The tenuous place, diaphanous even, where meaning has no solid construction and, as Soviet Musicologist Boris Asafiev coined, the music's "becoming" belies rational objectivity.
If, for the sake of argument, we are to presume that music is at all something to be learned from as a fully conscious "knowledge object," the musical membrane would then have to be dissected, codified, and translated into decrypted semantic constructs. An impossible task.
Defined by Dr. David Merrill as "a way to organize a knowledge base so that different instructional algorithms can use the same knowledge objects to teach the same subject matter content," a knowledge object's infrastructure houses five parts to its ontology. While a rather obtuse allusion to the argument at hand, bear with me, you'll see what the point is soon enough. Music's constructional blocks bear striking resemblance to this blueprint.
Five Parts of a Knowledge Object [K.O] (Merrill, 1998)
The Entity [read: the musical body, the sonic event, the sacrifice]
Entity's Parts [read: the components of organized sound]
The qualities of the Entity [read: dynamic, tempic, gesticulatory attributes]
Actions with the Entity: [read: interactivities with/surrounding/within the event]
Processes upon the Entity [read: secondary modifiers to the stipulated qualities]
He further debriefs thath K.O's have names, portray certain structures, can be meta-contextualized, further reified into syntactic particulars, and utilize a bimodal, Activity-Consequence modality when being interacted with. Simply put, music has 1) names, 2) micro/macro form, 3) theoretically examinable, and is 4) interactive, breeding a corollary result. This four-part sub-procedure being named PEAnet, short for process, entity, activity, network. However, why does this matter when recounting music's informational absconsion?
Well because when we listen to music, do we recognize these intricacies as they occur in our mind or do we relinquish control over our mental faculties, allowing ourselves to relish in the event at hand? There's no wrong answer of course but there's a probable antiphon. Most often than not, we allow ourselves to dissipate into the chaotic folds, or as best we can when presented with "organized sound" [music's post-everything monicker] which takes little cerebral strain [this negates much of today's climate].
It's much harder to both metaphysically and psychosomatically acquiesce to Sofia Gubaidulina's Offertorium than let's say Mozart's Sonata No. 12. Impossible? No, but certainly it takes considerable effort. And in that effort, that laborious striving to assimilate consciousness to the composorial ideal or intention, whether on purpose or by sheer subconscious initiative, is what is implied by term "negative information." What music provides you is not fully stated, but instead tacit. The insinuated suggestion of experience.
Ultimately, as many have gleaned well before I, there's no "right answer" when it comes to what is 'heard' when listening to a piece of music, post-modernist, minimalist, Romantic, or otherwise. But, I would caution the unwise, or better put unprepared, audiator from relying on first-layer effects [somatic expenditures and sonic valances] to effectuate understanding of musical objects. There cannot be understanding of music from the outside to interiority.
You'll learn and achieve nothing except wasted time and blew energy.
Instead, find the hidden paragons of thought kept entrained with the confines of the notes and its traditional symbology. Held at gunpoint by their unnerved benefactors who, even in the most unfamiliar forms, desire a protocol that must not change [i.e., sheet music]. Find the intimations about mortal desire, loss, death, hatred, scorn, distrust, receptivity, longing, pondering within the unfolding soundscapes before you, however empowered without the desire to find it. The paracletes of true knowledge arise from, in true Rousseauian fanaticism, the doing operation and not the knowing operation. To know is to be ignorant.
"Negative information" is the plodded seed which hides itself from the sun but always soaks the rays and dually grows with no one watching.
If this has been insightful for you, let me know in the comments or hit the heart button! ~~~
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