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Author: Oliver Moore
Date: 20050319
Rousseau's Theory of Music
Rousseau's aesthetic theory emerges from his writings on music. Based on the comparison which he makes between music and painting in the "Essay on the Origin of Languages," Rousseau's aesthetic theory may be understood as making claims about art forms other than music, and indeed, in the "Dictionary of Music" he writes that imitation is the "common principle to which all the Fine Arts are related" (Dictionary 413), but in this paper, music is the only art form which will be considered. An aesthetic theory is an answer to the question of what constitutes beauty, and while anything may be judged beautiful or not, art is distinguished by the fact that it is tied to the concept of beauty from its very inception and in its very essence, and it is bound so through a conscious act of the human will. It is for this reason that an aesthetic theory must make special reference to art. Thus it is that Rousseau's aesthetic theory deals not simply with beauty, but with beauty in art, and, for my purposes, in music. Beauty, for Rousseau, is successful imitation. Drawing on his texts "Letter of French Music," "Dictionary of Music," and "On the Principle of Melody," I will demonstrate this relation between beauty and imitation. First I will argue that beauty is the ideal quality of music. Second, I will establish that music functions by imitation. Finally, from these two premises I will then deduce the conclusion that beauty is the quality of music whose imitation is successful.
In attempting to uncover the nature of beauty according to Rousseau, my first premise is that beauty is the goodness of music. I mean this as a claim about beauty, rather than about music, for I wish to use what knowledge we have about music in order to shed light on the nature of beauty, and not the converse. This means that in order to discover the nature of beauty, it is to music that we must turn out attention. This approach is justified by the fact that an aesthetic theory is propounded in Rousseau's musical writings; that is to say that through his writings on music, Rousseau expresses a theory of beauty in art in general. In the "Letter on French Music," Rousseau discusses bad music as lacking "real beauties" and as being forced to make up for this defect with "unnatural" and "conventional beauties" (Letter 144-5). In the same text he says of French music that it is "unbearable to any ear not prepared for it" (Letter 174). These passages support my basic claim that beauty is the quality of good music, and that bad music is characterised by false beauty, which Rousseau colourfully describes as "gloomy finery" (Letter 145) and "cold and gloomy little ornaments" (Letter 147).
Having established that beauty is music's good, it must now be determined what makes music good. What conditions must obtain in order for music to be beautiful? In order to answer this question, I will first determine music's goal, and then the means by which it pursues this goal. In this way, it will be possible to measure the goodness of music.
Music's goal is the arousal of passions in the listener. According to Rousseau, language originated from the need to persuade, that is to say to influence a person through his passions rather than his reason. Men found it necessary to use persuasion for such ends as saving themselves from aggression or wooing a woman (Essay on the Origin of Languages 253). Whereas practical, factual messages could be effectively communicated through gestures, vocal communication was best suited to the expression of a person's inner state, what Rousseau refers to as the "movements in the soul" (Dictionary 414), that is to say the passions. And such expression of passion was the most effective way to arouse the passions of another person. Thus the goal of early languages was to influence another's behaviour. It is of great import that Rousseau believes early languages to have depended heavily on prosody to express their meaning. Music is similar to this early form of language in that it also appeals to the passions and it also is melodious, but it differs in two ways. First, music is not the expression of passion but the imitation of its expression, Secondly, Rousseau attributes no self-serving intent to the composer or musician. That is to say that neither of them creates music with the intention of making other people act in a way beneficial to the musician or composer himself. Thus the goal of music is not the influencing of behaviour, but simply the arousing of passions, apparently for their own sake. The creation of music, then, and singing in particular, is a symbolic activity which utilises the same form of interaction as that originating in the early languages. This symbolism and the abandonment of a concrete, self-serving goal is precisely what makes music a cultural phenomenon and early language a potentially political one. (I say "potentially" because while early language implies relations of power due to its coercive dimension, it is not necessarily linked to the state.) It is most interesting to note that in this light, music appears as a ritualistic ode to the early days of our species. The goal of music becomes clear: it aims to arouse the passions of its listeners. To this it might be added that in a broader, cultural sense, its goal is to extol ancient times; it can nearly be seen as a type of worship.
A discussion of music's ends, or goals, has been necessary, because without it, a discussion of music's means would have been blind. Yet it is the means by which music attains its goals which is of particular import to my thesis. Music functions through imitation; that is its means. "Genuine Music [is] not so much the simple accent of speech as this same accent imitated" (Principle of Melody 262). Specifically, the musical notes must imitate the cries of passion that come naturally to the human mouth. Cries of passion are natural, while song is not
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