Let me turn now to an alternative conception of musical movement. Malcolm Budd (2003) and Stephen Davies (1994) suggest that musical movement may be strictly temporal. In Chapter 2, I introduced Aristotle’s pluralistic ontology of motion. This suggests a conception of motion that is richer than the narrow conception of motion as spatial displacement. I left opened the possibility of motion being more nuanced than we generally assume it be. Aristotle may be right to say that motion includes change in quantity and change in quality. However, I said that this conception of motion does not satisfy what we
mean by musical movement – as part of the Datum. When saying that a glissando slides upwards we do not just mean that it changes its frequency. Space seems inevitably involved in the conception of musical movement.
Budd and Davies’ conception of musical movement in a non-spatial sense challenges the point I made in Chapter 2. In his 2003 paper that aims to debunk the Scrutonian idea that metaphors lie at the basis of musical experience, Budd offers an alternative to Scruton’s view: melodic movement is literal and non-spatial; it is merely temporal. He writes the following:
The movement of a melody is constituted by the succession of the tones of different pitch that compose it, and the relations among these tones is a matter of their positions on the pitch continuum, which is not itself a spatial dimension, although to a limited extent analogous to one, rendering terms that indicate relative positions along that dimension suitable as descriptions of relative positions along the continuum, and terms indicating movement along the dimension suitable as descriptions of change of position along the continuum. (2003: 219).
Budd concedes that a pitch continuum is somewhat analogous to a spatial dimension, although it is not a spatial dimension. To understand this point, it helps to go back to a claim Budd makes earlier in his paper. Budd considers whether the pitch attributes ‘high’ and
‘low’ are spatial. He suggests that the terms high and low were first imported from the spatial domain. We needed attributes for pitches and appealed to concepts of relative height.
However, he stresses that the pitch attributes have lost their connection to relative spatial height:
For pitch as such it seems clear that the terms ‘high’ and ‘low’ do not import an essential reference to relative spatial height (2003: 214).
The two terms merely designate the quality of a pitch on a pitch continuum. The pitch continuum may be analogous to a spatial dimension to a limited extent given that a reference was initially made spatiality, but the connection no longer exists. I do not develop Budd’s point.
Here is the conception of melodic movement he offers:
A melody does move from one tone to another, but this movement is merely temporal, not spatial: progress in time, not space. (2003: 219)
Budd thinks that there are possible alternative conceptions of movement than spatial ones.
As he writes,
‘[M]ovement’ is not restricted in its meaning to change in spatial location, but can be used to mean change along a non-spatial continuum or with respect to some discrete variable, no reference to spatial movement being intended or implicated (2003: 219).
Chapter 2 indeed offers an alternative conception of motion. As I noted, an exploration of Aristotle’s conception may seem promising to help substantiate the conception of motion Budd gestures at. However, I do not see how Budd’s succinct characterisation of melodic movement satisfies the Datum. I take it that we experience rises and falls in music. How can we make sense of this experience in a strictly temporal sense? As it stands, Budd’s understanding of melodic movement is unsatisfactory.
Let us turn to Davies’ view. Davies notes that movement paradigmatically relies on the following presuppositions: (i) there is an individual with an identity that persists through time and is independent of its location, (ii) movement is relational, i.e. the change of position is measured relative to the position of something else, (iii) the individual (or its parts) changes its location at different times. In music, movement is widespread: music may be for instance dragging, fast, slow, or rushing (1994: 234). This form of movement however does not have the characteristics of paradigmatic movement: there is no individual whose identity persists through time independently of its location, and there is no individual that changes its location at various times. Davies’ remark is no big news. We have outlined the puzzle of musical movement throughout the thesis.
Here is the solution he attempts to gesture at: melodic movement needs not be understood in a spatial sense given that we can find various phenomena to which we ascribe movement and yet that do not involve any spatial dimension. He gives the following examples of temporal processes that are described in terms of movements: political moves towards the war in the Middle East, the dropping of the Dow Jones Index, and peace movements reaching new standing (1994: 235). Davies believes that melodic movement ‘moves’ in the same – temporal – way:
I suggest that music is an art of temporal process. A theme is constituted by movement in the way that the progress of the Dow Jones Index is. (1994: 235) My objections to Davies run along the same line as that given above in response to Budd’s characterisation of melodic movement as temporal. First, a word on the analogy between
musical movement and the dropping of the Dow Jones Index. Rather than stipulating that the movement of the Dow Jones is literal, albeit merely temporal, it seems more promising to interpret this kind of movement as a metaphor. This is the kind of metaphor George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1981) call “orientational metaphors”: such metaphors are grounded in our physical and cultural experiences. Other examples include ‘feeling down’
and ‘cheering up’. I think it is more attractive to say that the dropping of the Dow Jones originates in a reference to spatiality, like the two examples I have given, for first, it is not clear how the word ‘dropping’ can be merely temporal. Thinking of the concept seems to necessarily involve thinking of it in a spatial sense; and second, if all the above phrases are understood as metaphors, then they all cohere together. We can group them in the same category. This parsimony is appealing.
Davies may in part bite the bullet, saying that the term ‘dropping’ originates in an orientational metaphor. But he may add that the connection between the loss of points on the Dow Jones (we speak of ‘dropping’) and spatiality is not essential. He may gesture at the claim that Budd makes regarding the pitch attributes ‘high’ and ‘low’. Remember that Budd concedes that the attributes originate in a spatial reference to relative spatial height.
Likewise, we may say that the characterisation of the Dow Jones Index in terms of movement originates in a reference to relative spatial height. However, Budd stresses that the connection no longer exists. We may suggest that the same has happened with the Dow Jones Index: the term ‘dropping’ no longer bears a reference to ‘dropping’ in a spatial sense.
In other words, it is a dead metaphor. By this I mean that the meaning of the word ‘dropping’
referring to the Dow Jones can be grasped independently of any relation to spatiality.
Even if the suggestion in the above paragraph was correct, though, it would not suffice to secure Davies’ argument. Musical movement seems to involve space, and neither Budd nor Davies provide strong justification to deny the spatiality in music that is assumed by the Datum. Perhaps with the Dow Jones we do not have a sense of dropping. But when we listen to music, we experience glissandos sliding upwards or downwards, melodic rise and fall, and so forth. As it stands, neither Davies nor Budd offer a compelling argument in favour of a strictly temporal conception of melodic movement.