Peter Etzkorn Georg Simmel And The Sociology Of Music

Georg Simmel and the Sociology of Music Author(s): K. Peter Etzkorn Source: Social Forces, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Oct., 1964), pp. 101-107 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2575972 . Accessed: 26/06/2014 05:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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GEORG SIMMEL AND MUSIC traditionally hypothesized adoption of an oppositional political position. Naturally, but especially in view of the limited nature of the data presented herein, the usual caveats concerning further research apply. It is especially necessary that the whole concept of ressentimnent be carefully analyzed

and operationalized for further testing and examination. Additionally, this testing should make use of samples and population which allow for some determination of the sources and generability of the concept insofar as it may be used to explain and predict the behavior of other social groups.

GEORGSIMMELAND THE SOCIOLOGYOF MUSIC* K. PETER

ETZKORN

University of Nevada ABSTRACT Simmel's first published study is examined for its current relevance to the sociological study of music. It is found to be rich in suggestions for research while it does not present a coherent theoretical scheme or program for the sociology of music. Simmel's empirical examples, however, suggest that key areas for this discipline are (1) the social meanings which are represented and expressed in music, and (2) the position and function of music in society. Implications for a theory of taste groups on the basis of. differential socializationi are suggested. A

rticles in sociological j ournals and interests.2 However, more directly sociological

books contain many references to the manifold aspects of Georg Simmel's work. Indeed the recent centenary of his birthi (1858) occasioned several reappraisals of his various contributions to sociology in the light of contemporary scholarship.' One significant aspect of his work, though, has to our knowledge been neglected. It is of sufficient merit to be brought to the attention of contemporary scholars, especially since there seems to be a growing interest in the sociology of artistic life. This is Simmel's extensive early work in what today might be called the sociology of music or ethnomusicology. In his later life Simmel's discourse on artistic and aesthetic subjects tends to pursue more philosophical interests while it nevertheless still contains passages that reveal his sociological * This version of a paper originally prepared for the 1960 American Sociological Association meetings owes much to the incisive discussion of Seymour Leventman and helpful comments by my former colleagues Walter F. Buckley and Clovis R. Shepherd. For example Kurt H. Wolff, ed., Georg Sim-

inel 1858-1918:A Collectionof Essays, with Translations and a Bibliography (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1959), xv, 396 pp.

and relevant to the traditional concerns of the social sciences is his 1882 paper "Psychologische und Ethnologische Studien ihber Musik" which he published in Lazarus and Steinthal's Zeitschrift

fuir Vo3kerpsychologie.3

This study

was published three years prior to the well known Alexander Ellis paper "On the Musical Scales of Various Nations,"4 which is frequently considered the earliest important landmark in the history of ethnomusicology.5 Ellis' paper is concerned with the analysis of structural aspects of the tonal materials of different culture areas and with developing devices for their description and measurement. In many ways Ellis' approach is analogous to traditional anthropological concerns with the study of culture traits. 2

See for example chapters IV and V in Georg

Simmel, Philosophische

Kufltur (Leipzig:

Klink-

hardt, 1911). 3Vol. 13 (1882), pp. 261-305. 4 Alexander J. Ellis, "On the Musical Scales of Various Nations," Journal of the Society for Arts,

33 (1885). 5 Curt Sachs, Our Mlusical Heritage (New York: Prentice Hall, 1955), p. 12. Bruno Nettl, Music in Primnitive Culture (Cambrdige: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 28.

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It may be idle to speculate why Simmel's study apparently did not arouse comparable attention in his owIn day and why it should have fallen into such neglect that even his professional colleague and personal acquaintance Max Weber ignores it in the fragment of his study of the rational bases of tonal systems.6 Weber's preoccupation with tonal systems as the building material of music is indicative of the trend of scholarsshipin this field which followed Ellis' model. Perlhaps Simmel's reluctant attitude towards behavioristic psychology averted the early German ethnomusicologists from taking serious issue with his work since their professional affiliation and training was largely in this area.7 Perlhaps these scholars felt more at ease with Ellis' "Cent System" for the objective measuring of tone intervals than with Simmel's insistence that there was an important relationship between ethnic folk music and thepsychology of the social group practicing it. In this context one mi-aybe reminded that it also took several generations of sociologists before the French conception of coi&science collective entered into the working vocabulary of. British social-anthropology and American sociology.8 And yet it is interesting to note that the only reference to Simmel's study which we found in English appeared in 1909 in W. I. Thomas, So-urce Book for- Social Origins.9 In this paper we wish to address ourselves more specifically to some of our reasons for resuscitating Simmel's study rather than to paying general homage to one of the fathers of the sociological discipline. This decision does not imply that there would be no legitimate

grounds for, say, searching for a sociological explanation of the neglect of this aspect of Sinimel's work by sociologists, especially since several outstanding scholars later arrived independently at related and even similar positions. Nor would it be less significant to examine the variety of methodological implications that are raised by Simmel's differing epistemological positions in the treatment of the arts during the course of his scholarly life. Here, however, we wish to restrict ourselves to an exploration of this early study of Simmel in which he treats mnusicas an aspect of social relationships by which individuals communicate amonig one another andclwlhich in turn, maintain, structure and restructure these relations. In his later analytical distinctions between the various modes of sociological inquiry and related Kantian arguments, he relegated music to the sphere of Itultur2.30 Kutltur was to be treated aesthetically and philosophically. The early Simmel in general, therefore, might perhaps be most relevant to modern sociological appraisals of art and music. In order to make the content of the Simmel paper more accessible to contemporary readers, we first wish to provide an extensive summary of Simmel's study before we relate it to aspects of his later writings and point to its present relevanlce. SIMMEL

ON

MUSIC

In Simmel's paper we have an example of truly 19th century scholarship. Simmel combines classical erudition (and ample quotes in Latin and Greek) with philosophical focus and the search for corroborating evidence in collections of ethnographic museums and the journals 6 Max Weber, Die rationalem tnd soziologischen of world travellers. He opens his paper with Grundlagen der M11usik (Munich: Drei Masken a critical analysis of Darwin's theory of the Verlag, 1921). of music. According to Darwin the origin 7 Among the pioneers of this field may be menhuman species developed vocal music before tioned besides Ellis, a physicist, the psychologists Herbert Spenvon Hornbostel and Carl Stumpf, and the physician developing rhythm and speech. "all that the leading a related view cer had held and physicist Helmnholtz. 8 Paul J. Bohannan recently traced the develop- vocal phenomnena . . . have a physiological ment of this concept to its present relationshipwith basis . . ." and that "the expressiveness of the 10 On this point see several quotations below and the concept culture. "Conscience Collective and Culture,"in Kurt H. Wolff, ed., EmnileDurkheiin.. the discussion of Simmel's methodology in Rudolph 1858-1917: A Collection of Essays zuith Transla- H. Weingartner, Experience and Cuiltutre:The tions and a Bibliography (Columbus: The Ohio Philosophy of Georg Simmel (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1962), p. 102. State University Press, 1960), p. 77-96. 9 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 11 Charles Darwin, Abstamming des Menscheit, 1909), p. 646. 1875, Vol. II, p. 317.

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GEORG SIMMEL AND MUSIC

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only to provide special emphiases to existing linguistic communication patterns rather than to form the very origin of human communication. Having establislhed this point, he proceeds to supply further ethnographic illustrations. From this evidence he then concludes that occasions for the employment of musical emphases oln speech communication occur whenever, in the view of the respective social groups, some of the hunima emotions are not adequately represented by speech. Anger, happiness, and joy are such occasions which are characterized in primitive and civilized discourse by variations in the voice pitch and modulations of the speech melody. Von Humboldt is quoted- as having shown that the expression of sexual desire in the courtilng situation also leads to pitch variations in speech patterns. Another example of humanl emotions which find expression in music is the complex of mystic-religious phenomena. Simmel's refutation of Darwin's hypothesis could be treated as an example of an elementary functional approach to the sociology of music. His search for the origins of music proceeds from relatively contemporary social consequences of music to the hypothetical reconstruction of its very origin. This is the identical process by which 19th century ethnography was shown to illustrate "incipient functionalism" by Evans-Pritchard.l6 For Simmel, the definition of vocal music is "speech which is exaggerated by rhythm and modulation."'7 Thus, rhythmic patterns have to be superimposed on the variation of pitch, which is the outgrowth of emotional vocal expression, before modulated speech becomes vocal music. *The structure of Simmel's argument for the origin of instrumental music is explaining 12 Herbert Spencer, Essays ont Edutcation (New his subsequent analysis of addiFrom similar. York: Dutton), p. 317. reports he infers that inethnological tional Gedanken, 13 "Wie die Sprache zum concreten strumental music is generally a further elabverhalt sich die Musik zu der mehr verschwinimenden Stimmnung: das erste ruft das zweite hervor, oration of the already practiced performance weil das zweite das erste hervorrief." of vocal music.'s The use of ideophones seems 14 He refers to the writings of Amniian, John to be predoominantly associated with dance

various modifications of voice is . . . therefore innate."12 While Simmel does not deny that vocal phenomena have physiological bases-wlhich would be untenable from any scientific point of viewv-he proceeds to refute the claim of the genetic priority of musical vocal belhavior over language behavior. In the course of this stimulating argument, Simmel develops his conception of music which is of interest here. He views music as an acoustic mediumnof communication which conveys feelings of the performer. "Just as language is related to concrete thought so is music related to feelings which are somewhat less precise. The first [language] creates the second [thought], since the second created the first."13 Accepting the to psychologist Steinthal's thesis-according which the first manifestation of Man is connected with processes of thought and "human thought is derived from speech"-Simmel reasons that language could not have developed out of vocal music. For empirical support of this argument Simmel turns to evidence contained in a number of ethnographic sources.14 In this fashion he presents data from a sample of societies which includes people of Rio de Janeiro, the Caribbean, the Maori, Brasilians, Australians, Caucasian soldiers, "the Tehueltschen," and classical antiquity.15 In addition to these data gleaned from published sources, he also reports his own experiences with a family in Berlin whose children could not sing the melodies of folksongs without also singing their words. Simmel seems to be convinced by this combined evidence that vocal music camnechronologically after the development of speech in the history of communication. Thus the role of music is

Horne, Freycinet, Hochstetter, Martius, Grey, Poppig, Bodenstedt, and Cicero without, however, giving full citations of his sources. 15 One should probably not be too critical as to whether he is indeed dealing with "societies" since this criterion would not be satisfied by the scanty evidence which he provides.

16 See especially chapters II and III of E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Social Anthropology (Glencoe, Illinois: the Free Press, 1952). 17 Simmel, op. cit., p. 264. Is He refers especially to the reports of GerlandWaitz, Briigsch, Le Gobien, and Salvado.

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activities or other functions which are rlhythmically patterned, such as tribal preparationls for warfare. His designation of European military music as Ldrm und BlasmusikI9 may suggest that he conceives of military activities as primitive, especially since he stresses that wind instruments are more characteristic of primitive society than string instruments. Instrumental music thus represents to Simmel a more elaborated mode of expressing human emotions than can be gained through vocal music alone. Onice instrumental music has been developed in the history of mankind, it can be divorced from its accompanying function for vocal music and come to stand by itself. To Simmel, vocal music expresses referential emotions in their natural state, while instrumental music can more easily approach objectivity-which is for Simmel "the ideal of art." In instrumental music "feelings

do not disappear,

. . . they still

stimulate the production of music and are still stimulated by it." However, instrumental music and its performance are not the immediate expression of these emotions. Rather instrumental music turns out to be "an image of them which is reflected through the mirror of beauty."20

Instrumental music, thus, is also shown to be related to the basic communicative function of vocal music. But it is much less direct in expressing human emotions. It is more of an imitation of the original emotions and is, therefore, not as constrained in the use of musical idioms and expressive musical symbolism as is vocal music. By being less precise in expression, instrumental music is more inclusive than vocal music. Music as an art form, according to Simmel's views in his early period, comnlunicates feelings less precisely than vocal folkmusic. Nevertheless it creates "typical reactions which include fully the more individually specific responses which are produced by verbal communication."21 MUSIC

IN

SIMMEL

S SOCIOLOGY

From this summary of the "forgotten" Simmel paper it may already become clear why it might be of relevance to the contemporary student of the relations between art and social 19

20 21

Simmel, op. cit., p. 278. Ibid., p. 282. Ibid.

structure. Simmel not only provides us with a suggestive explanation of the role of music in social life and an elementary (though theoretically based) taxonomy of types of music, but he also demonstrates that a proper sociological assessment of the social context of art requires both an understanding of the technical aspects of the musical art medium and an awareness of the social processes which surround it. His example suggests that it is important to study how the musical properties are acquired by social actors, how they become socially defined as something special and how this special status is related to the variety of special social adjustments which influence the social system and may in turn have repercussions on the musical mode of expressions. These are some of the concerns which are implied in the early Simmel, but are not as explicitly explored in his later sociological writing where he seems to be more colncerned with the impact of already given art forms on selected forms of social interaction. In his Grundfragen deroSoziologie (1917), for example, he treats art as having laws all of its own.22 "Fully established, art is wholly separated from life. It takes from it only what it can use, thus creating, as it were, a second time.3 . . . From the realities of life they [art and play] take only wlhat they can adapt to their own nature, what they can absorb in their autonomous existence."24 Even though he speaks here metaphorically, as if art by acting anthropomorphically could produce social consequences independently of human actors, he seems to employ this ambiguity in order to introduce philosophical and aesthetic ideals concerning wllat the ideal role of art should be. While I do not mean to suggest that one could not study sociologically the relations between some relatively autonomous properties in social life and those social action patterns which are typically influenced by them, the limitation to this approaclh on aesthetic (or philosophical) grounds would seem to be an unjustified truncation of other promising modes of scientific inquiry. By itself, such an approach would also 212 Georg Simmel, Grundfragen der So2iologie (Berlin: de Gruyten, 1917) as cited from the translation in Kurt H. Wolff, The Sociology of George Simiiiel (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1950). 23Ibid., p. 42.

24Ibid., p. 43.

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GEORG SIMMEL AND MUSIC tend to overlook the dynamic qualities of social life which demand that every aspect has to be given social significance anew-even though, of course, this process of continuous validation is seemingly automatic and ordinarily escapes our everyday attention. Nevertheless, J. S. Bach's music had to be composed first in its peculiar style and then had to acquire social significanice in each. succeeding generation of admirers of Bach. This is so even though his music represents the aesthetic perfection of the art of a period and serves as a model for the evaluation of other composers of the same period. While it is a legitimate sociological question to ask how Bach's music affects social groupings under varying circumstances, it is also a legitimate and fruitful approach to ask how certain social groupings today happen to appreciate Bach (and not Teleman) and what musically speaking, they come to appreciate in Bach and how these acquired musical insights affect other significant aspects, say, in the lives of Bach disciples. It is these latter types of questions which the early Simmel raises and which the later Simmel does not seem to entertain.25

In the early Simmeel analysis of music, all types of musical expressions are, as we have seen, examined in terms of their communication function in social life. A given piece of music may communicate both absolutistic and referentialistic meanings.26 While niot ruling out the former, it is the latter meanings with which the early Simmel is principally concerned. These refer in some way to concepts, actions, and emotions of the extramnusical world in which the composer and musicians (and their audiences) live. They would seem to be related to the socially mediated choice of the particular musical activity and its content. The later Simmel is more concerned with absolutistic meanings which are provided by the context of the musical composition itself. Frequently (if not exclusively) they concern formal relationships between musical elements which make up the structure of the compositions.27 Since music in general is defined as a

105

vehicle for the communication of emotions and instrumental music as the vehicle for the communication of diffuse emotions, Simmel raises theoretical questions as to the basic structure of social communication. Part of his argument is, we recall, that in instrumental music the commmunicativecontent is not as precise as in vocal music. Yet we know that the degree of communicative precision depends on a variety of social responses to the vehicle of communication. These responses, of course, are learned responses and subject to variations by changes in the learning situation. Musical themes, thus, may call fortlh specific emotional (or other) responses among properly prepared listeners. For example, comnposersof film music frequently capitalize on this phenomenon when they accompany love scenes with the sounds of soft violins. By employing systematically selected musical cliches, composers of film music have succeeded in preparing the audiences of mioving pictures to expect certain happenings on the screen or to have an appropriate emotional set for the happenings. As long as the listener has learnedi how to convert the abstract musical tone sequences into anticipations of socially significant consequences, it is not necessary to employ Simmel's referentially more precise vocal music. Instrumental music will do tlle same if a sufficiently consensual group has learned to associate similar responses with appropriate musical stimuli. Even though it might be desirable to discuss undeveloped and weak points in the Simmel paper and to comment at lenigth on Simmel's questionable ethnographic evidence, this would not substantially contribute to what would seem to me to be the more essential contribution of the study to contemporary scholarship. That is, for him sound patterns per se are devoid of meaning unless they are perceived as conveying learned emotive content. While Simmel demotistrates that the learned emotive content and the form of expression may vary, he concludes from this examination of the descriptive materials that "apparently [the style of] music is

25 See for example Simmel's books on Goethe trinsic" and "extrinsic" modes of analysis raises analogous methodological problemnsin the sociol(1913) and Rembrandt (1916). 26 For this distinction see chapter I of Leonard ogy of knowledge. "Ideologischeund soziologische Interpretation der geistigen Gebilde," in Salomon, B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning of Music (Chied., Jahrbuch fur Soziologie (Karlsruhe: Braun, cago: University of Chicago Press, 1956). 27 Karl Mannheim's distinction between "in- 1926), Vol. II, pp. 424-440.

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characteristic for the character of a people."28 Variations in the appreciation of different musical styles might therefore be associated with social group differences. More specifically, Simmel stipulates that in order to become great art, music must embody national or social group characteristics. Only thereby will it have meaning for the members of the nation. He cautions, though, that this observation. "is not to be construed to mean that they [the arts] have to be patriotic [in subject matter]. On the contrary, history shows that art could produce the most beautiful blossoms in politically most disorganized states-iin analogy to flowers which grow on heaps of rubbish. What I mean is simply this, whatever great and well-formed talents an individual may bring into his life, living within his society will only transform him into what he is. It will impress his character on him. From it he will receive his goals and means. Precisely, the greater are his talents, the more will he accept from his national heritage."29 In order to achieve greatness, the artist has to work within an artistic tradition, parts of which he must accept anid refine. This train of reasoning will hardly sound revolutionary to the contemporary social scientist, even though it might have had such a flavor in the outgoilng 19th century romantic era. Simmel's early conception of artistic greatness is thus based to a large extent on techniical artistic dimensions, such as how an individual makes use of the artistic tools which are provided for him by his tradition. Moreover, it would seem to me that it may contain the beginnings of a theory of taste groups. In stuggesting that the artist is great who refines the artistic style of his national heritage, Simmel opens the question as to (a) the social processes which differentiate between the access that individuals have to the sources of artistic tradiBach spent most of his life in tions-e.g., Northern Germany while Handel (another North German) lived and worked in the major musical centers of the 18th century; (b) there are obvious differences in the processes of acquisition of the technical skills needed for the refining of musical traditions-e.g., Mozart's extensive and protected early studies vs. Bee28 Simmel, op. cit., p. 302. 29 Ibid., p. 297.

thoven's lhardships in Bonn; and (c) there are differences in the conditions for the demonstration of acquired skills in various social circumstances -e.g., the captive audience of official court composers and the available facilities for musical performance vs. the contemporary free-lance composer. What, in other' words, are the social conditions that favor or tend to retard artistic greatness and the formation of taste? The current practice of defining taste groups as acceptance groups has thus been anticipated by Simmel in his view that the artist works within the taste patterns of his artistic heritage. But Simmel did not confuse the issue of popularity with that of greatness of art (as is sometimes done today) since for him greatness in art is a matter which can be established andl validated only through technical intra-artistic analysis. Success of an artist, on the other hand, may be the consequence of the size of his group or following. Russel Lynes "highbrows" would not necessarily be cultivating any greater art for Simmel than the "lowbrows." These groups would be examples of different consensual groups in which, perhaps, different meanings would be accorded to obj ectively identical artistic stimuli. Thus the Van Cliburn recording of the Tschaikowsky pianio concerto might be played for different reasons by high and low-brows and correspondingly communicate different emotional meanings to these listeners. Nor would Simmel likely conclude from the contemporary increase in statistics of classical LP record sales that good music is becoming more widely appreciated and that the cultural level of the society is rising. Ratlher, in keeping with his argument, he would probably demand additional data on the social circumstances of the utilization of the records, the types of listening situations, the musical educational preparation of the listeners, the emotional impact of the music oir, in short, the communicated musical meaning, before he would conclude that an increase in consumption corresponds with an increase in appreciation of classical music. CONCLUSION

Simmel's foremost contribution to the sociology of music as contained, in his early study consists, we would think, inl having shown that

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GEORG SIMMEL AND MUSIC emnpiricalwork in this area is possible and can lhave fruitful theoretical implications. IHe does not provide us with a systematic program of what the sociology of music ought to be concerned with. Thus he differs from contributors who make up the major proportion of the literature in this field which is noted for its scarcity of empirical woirk.30 Rather his focus on empirical problemls and his search for empirical answers would seem to us to be an example worth emulating in the building of this branch of social science. Perhaps he might be criticized for not going far enough in his search for answers, since not having an explicit system (or explicit frame of referenice) may have prevented 11im from asking systematic questions. To this it might be replied that there is no agreemenlt likely to come about as to what would constitute the final boundary of asking questions or systematizing answers in science. It would seem to us to be eminently more in the 30 While there is a small number of empirical studies by Mueller, Leventman, Nash, Kaplan, and several other contemporaryscholars, this does not detract from the fact that most of the published articles that incorporate "sociology of mnusic"in their titles are of the mentioned programmatic variety. For relevant citations see K. P. Etzkorn, Musical and Social Patterns of Songzwriters: An Exploratory Sociological Study, Ph.D. dissertatioin,Princeton University, 1959, especially Chapter IV.

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interest of science to ask the kind of questions that can be answered in the light of the data and can produce new insights than to be overly concerned with the neatness of systems of analysis. While Simmel did not construct a systematic program for the sociology of music, his study makes it clear that he did not conceive of it as Bindestrich Sociology (special subfield) but saw it within the major sociological context of human communications and social relations. In summing up, Simmel's early study on the ethnological and psychological foundations of musicj in addition to providing stimulatinig suggestions for further research, touches on at least two major concerns of the contemporary sociologist dealing with artists and art. (1) His elementary taxonomy of types of mllusic relates to the complex of questions concerning the social meaning which is represented in music. (2) His discussion of what I have here called "taste groups" relates to tlhe general area of questions concerning the position and function of music in society. It. contributes a clearer diagnosis of the relationships between different groups within the social structure and representative items of artistic production by suggesting the importance of studying the social relationship structures which are typically associated with the socializationi of artists and audiences.

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