The Natural Law of Music

 In response to a friend, regarding “the natural law of music” and the article “Natural Law: Its Influence on Modern Music,” by Marion Bauer, The Musical Quarterly, October 1920.

 

Hi Ruth,

A few weeks ago I heard someone wax eloquent on “the natural law of music.” He was referring to it as God’s law of chord structure, etc., and violating the natural chord structure by rearranging the music so it does not resolve breaks God’s intended purpose and is against His will.  He went much further as you can imagine, but I want to keep this simple, and ask if you think there is any merit to such a conclusion?  I googled the phrase “natural law of music” and found an article that was very interesting.

Link to the article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/737974#metadata_info_tab_contents

 

Reply:

Dear friend,

My knowledge of music theory is very limited, so please take my reply with a grain of salt. It may be helpful to first summarize Marion Bauer’s article, in which the natural law of music is discussed, before giving an opinion.

By its very definition, music implies the arrangement of sounds—or tones—into something that is pleasant to hear. M. Bauer’s opening question is whether these arrangements are governed by an absolute law—“a power inherent in music itself”—or are simply a product of social conditioning. He concedes that the pleasure the listener derives from music is subjective and that “no two people hear sound alike,” and points to several composers whose work is distinctive precisely because each of them heard and reacted to sound differently. And yet, he states: “It seems incredible, however, that for a period of five hundred years, we have been ruled arbitrarily by the common chord of C major, unless there be a fundamental principle behind it.”

He pursues the idea of the C major triad as a central, complete form from which all other musical forms are derived, and notes, simply as a point of interest, the consistency of this theory with the idea of perfection in trinity, in both nature and religion. He suggests that all the tones of the musical scale may be derived from the C major chord through the natural harmonic series (i.e., the naturally occurring overtones which are integer multiples of a fundamental frequency), and points to the production of unique and even mildly dissonant sounds from the combination of C overtones (e.g., Scriabin’s mystic chord). The point he seems eager to drive home is the boundless array of unique tones that can be generated from the C major triad alone when variables not only of pitch and intensity but of the individual ear are introduced. This serves as a segue into a discussion of the emotional effects of music on the listener, whether of pure tone or of the rhythmic contrast of tones, with the untrained listener responding to rhythms that can be imitated in dance while the trained listener responds to the melody as a product of rhythm. Here he points to the influence of modern culture—its obsession with abbreviation and individual interpretation of the abstract—on modern rhythmic styles.

Rather suddenly, he returns to the discussion of chords and whether their use in music follows a definite, natural law. In a quotation from a friend, the common C chord is put forth as a fixed point from which all music radiates. The question is whether this point was selected arbitrarily by composers or has a more fundamental basis in natural law. To the latter point, the author introduces the closing hypothesis—citing “a student of the science of vibration”—that music has always existed absolutely, as a very force of nature “to be liberated or enchained by Man.” It is from this natural law of music that the works of the great composers have arisen spontaneously, gradually illuminating the attributes of the natural law just as the experiments of great scientists have illuminated the attributes of the natural universe.

M. Bauer offers no firm conclusion to the question posed in the opening paragraph, but presents some interesting points for both sides of the question. Perhaps it was only an artifact of the technical language of his time or the speculative nature of the article, but I felt he did not make it clear what he meant by natural law. As I understand it—not in the context of this article only, but the general philosophy itself—the natural law of music is simply the finitude of pleasant tones and rhythms. Just as the physical world is confined to a certain set of immutable laws, so music can only be produced from a finite set of sounds and contrasts of sounds. Here, the author suggests that this set of sounds is centered around the C major triad and the harmonic series.

But when we talk of a natural law of music, we think of the imposition of a science into what is clearly an art. Are we to lay out a set of guidelines for what can and cannot be considered music based on natural tones and scales? You mentioned hearing someone say, “violating the natural chord structure by rearranging the music so it does not resolve breaks God’s intended purpose and is against His will.” This view implies that the natural law of music is something we must impose upon music, a set of rules we must be careful to observe. But the very meaning of a natural law is a property of the universe that is simply true, whatever we choose to do. That is precisely what M. Bauer touches upon in his article: that the law of music is absolute, and that the works of the great composers have arisen spontaneously from it without them ever knowing the parameters of the law. As in science, the laws of the physical universe only become comprehensible to us after the works of scientists, and yet the laws have always existed and governed our lives, long before we knew what to call them or how to employ them to our advantage. By asserting a natural law of music, we are simply stating that, rather than being solely dependent on what society’s ears have become accustomed to, music follows a certain pattern laid out by the natural world itself.

The important thing to note is that, whether art or science, every human activity is governed by natural law—i.e., by the finitude of the universe, by the immutability of truth. There is a natural limit to what can be done in any avenue of existence. In science, the knowledge of these limits becomes of paramount importance, because of the end it seeks to achieve: we want a structure to bear weight, we want an airplane to fly, we want a drug to target a specific ailment. Science, as a practice, has only arisen as the means by which we direct natural law to achieve a concrete end. Because we seek a very specific end, we must have a thorough knowledge of natural laws and how to work within their confines. Art, on the other hand, while it is confined to the same universe and therefore to the same natural laws, seeks a different end, a far more nebulous one, and thus is not bound to any particularly rigid guidelines. The musician only wishes to produce a pleasant sound—a quality that may vary infinitely according to individual taste. The observation of spontaneously recurring, primary patterns in music throughout the ages may suggest a natural law governing pleasant arrangements of sound, but it is not particularly important for us to know. Music has been made for centuries, without any knowledge of a natural law. Still, it makes for interesting speculation, and reminds us of the cohesion of the universe—that it is all one and whole, that science and art stem from the same immutable source, and it is we humans, in our smallness, who must break everything into manageable little pieces.

On the whole, the natural law of music (as opposed to the evolution of music as a product of social climate) is an interesting idea, but seems weakly supported at present. M. Bauer’s article is interesting, but heavily speculative, and my own knowledge of music theory is far too limited for me to give a more concrete opinion. But if there is a natural law of music, it must be, like all natural laws, inviolable. No set of rules we can impose will be of any consequence.

I don’t know if I have answered your question or not, but I hope I have at least presented some useful points. Thank you for sharing the article! It was a very entertaining read.

 

-Ruth