Section The First
"In that respect I was much better off than he was, for my progress was not slowed down by any Prizes, whether from Rome or any other town since I don't carry that sort of thing on me or on my back, because I'm a type rather like Adam (the ‘Paradise' Adam) who never won a prize - a lazy type, no doubt."
Erik Satie,
From a lecture on Claude Debussy, quoted in Erik Satie by Rollo H. Myers.
Science was once so large that one could as easily trip over it in one‘s spare room as in a nobbled copse or stagnant pond. But, now, it is so small that the electron microscopes needed to magnify it can be housed only across three storeys of a biology lab and the telescopes required to view it clearly cannot be accommodated on earth at all, but must be sent instead into our orbit. The age of the Gentleman Amateur scientist lasted a period of time, from some first date to a second date, and can, no doubt, be pinpointed with great accuracy by gentleman historians. Within such a timeframe, independent study and wild experiment flourished in middle-class parlours and appropriately-equipped basements, in the provinces, financed by trust fund, inheritance or frugality and resulting in insights both profound and specious. The success or failure of such Naturphilosophs, if I may use broadly a term that others may use narrowly, is of no relevance, for all scientific inquiry requires that the faulty be discounted as much as the truth revealed. And, amidst the smoke of uncontained explosions and shattered conical flasks, the archetype took solid form as Mr. Darwin and Brother Mendel and justified any fallacy through the poetical expressions of M. Fabre and Mr. Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus. However, as scientific inquiry sharpened its self through empiricism, rather than mere observation, it moved out of the amateur's reach. The particles to split became too small and the repetitions of experiments too numerous that investigations could only be conducted in collaboration and afforded by institutions. Without attachment to a university or affiliation with a corporation, break-through is beyond the independent individual. This is quite probably a good thing.
Music, though, would seem to move in the opposite direction, for, while scientific knowledge refines its self, in principle, by replacing old understanding with new and winnowing out false theories until only the truth remains, art is accumulative. One work of art does not replace another, but is placed alongside it. Or below it, if the second is not very good. Many are forgotten with good reason, but it is certain that, at this year's end, there will be more beautiful tunes in existence than at the same time last year. So long as time continues in the direction to which we are accustomed, the sum total of art works, of whatever quality, will only increase, for, with the internet as it is and may be, very few pieces now living are likely to die. A second Fr. Savonarola and an infinite number of his vain bonfires would be required to set us back.
If scientific knowledge moves from the general to the specific, while music transmutes from the rudimentary to the bewilderingly diverse, it is also true that, as science progressed from the independent to the institutional, music progressed in the opposite direction. The earliest pieces of music to come to us whole were composed through the support and at the behest of religious institutions, most notably the catholic church, which in the post-formation/p-Reformation period was the largest institution imaginable. The patronage of composers by emperors, archdukes, viceroys and kings is also known to anybody who has seen the documentary, Amadeus, and it was through one such association or the other that most of the earlier composers with whom we are still familiar were sustained, whether, like Mr. Handel, in the courts of Europe's monarchs or, like Mr. Bach, as a lowly Kapellmeister. The long-upheld oral tradition, as an instituted body, offered distribution of music in return for nothing more than the composer's identity, so it was not until Mr. Arezzo developed scoring as we know it that one was liable to equate composer and composition without a formal introduction. A music-as-entertainment industry developed naturally as the means of distributing music became easier and the desire for recreational performance became greater. Thus, composers and musicians began to free their selves from the occasional direction of patrons to the simple appetites of the public, which is how we reached Mr. Foster, the first person to maintain their selves on the publication of their music alone. But, of course, such success resulted in alcoholism and early death. And, although nothing in life is so straightforward as a paragraph may claim, such a simplification can be seen rerunning, microscopically, as the patronage of major labels loses its allure somewhat to minor presses and self-release. With distribution made simpler, one can cast one's line to the public, receiving bites from as many as all to as few as none, rather than creating work to the satisfaction of one sovereign institution. In such a climate, each musician has the independence to explore in any such way as they choose and can organise.
The above compare and contrast of the histories of science and music is so inexact as to be practically facetious, but it is enough to suggest an archetype reciprocal to the Gentleman Scientist - the Musiphilosoph, our own gentleman amateur of music. It would not do, though, to suggest that the Musiphilosoph were merely any such person that practiced music for their own amusement, just as one who bends to sniff the roses is not an amateur botanist. In a time when music can be created or listened to at little cost and with just as little understanding, that broad definition would lead us each to suspecting one another of filling the position, like all of life were a dystopian fiction, rather than the romance Roman it clearly is. Instead, the Musiphilosoph should be defined by those two traits that exemplify our amateur scientist - independence and a thirst for discovery. She must live and work some distance from the mechanisms of the music industry, though she may be supported by or through her work, and she must tamper with music, not solely to create the beautiful, though that is an admirable practice in its self, but to prod and poke its limits and peripheries. Through her isolation, the Musiphilosoph could be thought to create her own smaller, more manageable world within the chaotic universe of our accumulated musical culture and, like the Naturphilosoph, she is keen to scrutinise its physical and metaphysical laws. The Musiphilosoph is, perhaps, any person that conducts experiments in listening.
Fig. 1
The distance between the Musiphilosoph and the central mechanisms of music production and distribution would appear to be maintained in an equilibrium, as if each side exerted a repulsive force on the other, repulsions that grow stronger as the two attempt to meet in the middle. The Musiphilosoph has the freedom to explore the medium as she wishes, because she is not dependent on the patronage of major labels, which requires, explicitly or implicitly, that one adhere to certain notions of commerciality and taste. Equally, she may never take advantage of the benefits such patronage affords in terms of distribution and promotion, because the singular nature of their investigations alienates such a high proportion of the public that the excessive costs suffered by the label would never be repaid.
Unable to sustain her self through her work as a musician proper, in the way that a rock star of even moderate renown could, the Musiphilosoph must finance that work through other means, of which the most obvious is small-scale self-release. However, amongst the most prominent examples of Musiphilosophistry , there are other, more-colourful ideas - Mr. Moondog was a street-performer and tourist attraction (although his first elpee was released on Columbia, the company soon lost faith and he certainly never lived on royalties), M. Satie played cabaret piano, Ms. Oram and Ms. Derbyshire both worked for the beebeecee's Radiophonic Workshop, while Mr. Nancarrow fixed player-pianos in Mexico and Mr. Lucier, like many others, took a position in a university. In the case of music, a university position is not an institutionalised post in the same way as it is in the scientific world, because the university lab is far removed from the market place, where most people interact with musical culture, and because professors are largely seen as squares, the enemies of the pop rebel. There is an argument that granting music sanctuary in the academy may be as restrictive as the pop charts, for just as many requirements of sophistication must be met before admission is given. However, the Musiphilosoph is always the exception. Like the rock star, the Musiphilosoph creates an aesthetic that is identifiably her own. But where the rock star's persona ingratiates him with the public, thus becoming a commodity, the image of the Musiphilosoph isolates her from that same audience. The rock star, whether their image is viewed positively or negatively, is a success because he sells records. The Musiphilosoph, even if her identity is sympathetic, is a failure because she sells none; she is, perhaps, a success despite her failure.
Fig. 2
What the Musiphilosoph does exactly is quite probably not important and this not solely because few people will care. Although certain Musiphilosophic investigations can be seen, upon reflection, to have had some influence on the course of music's progress, this is merely the law of averages operating as usual. For each M. Satie or Dr. Moog that is acknowledged a little later in the day than we would have liked (for we had already put on our slippers by then), there is a Prof. Alvarado or a The Shaggs that remains only a curiosity. Like the theory of parallel universes that imagines bubbled universes drifting side by side in a vacuum, the microscopic spheres of the Musiphilosophs float amongst the larger mainstream worlds that one can see with the naked eye, or hear with the naked ear; most come to no harm, interacting with nothing, but occasionally one small bubble will meet the larger and from the collision a third universe comes, not bound by the full laws of either of its parents.
To divide up Musiphilosophs taxonomically may be helpful, if only to show the variety of positions any one can adopt and the distance still between any two of a similar stripe. For example, if Mr. Lomax is an archivist, so too is Mr. Tiny Tim. Would one describe Mr. Moondog and Mr. Ra as mythologists or political-philosophers or both? It is certainly hard to imagine any two characters at once so similar and yet so utterly opposed. And Mr. Pythagoras, who seems to be progenitor of the field, cannot be adequately housed under just one or any whole roll of labels, yet one rarely thinks of him as a musician. The most effective way, then, of identifying a Musiphilosoph, if one saw any use in doing so, may be to simply believe so and attempt to justify one's choice after the fact. Defined by their individuality, no Musiphilosoph can be rightly designated by comparison with a pre-existing definition, for it is only through their singularity that they could be admitted to the seemingly contradictory notion of a pantheon of Musiphilosophs. And, needless to say, the many more to come will not make the task easier. Although, the following graph may help.
Fig. 3
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