The medieval educational curriculum was designed to impart to the student the seven liberal arts of classical antiquity. To the initial study of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric was subsequently added a second layer comprising Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy.
Trivium (= a meeting of three ways)
- Grammar (mechanics of language)
- Logic (mechanics of thought)
- Rhetoric (mechanics of communication)
Quadrivium (= a meeting of four ways)
- Arithmetic (number)
- Geometry (number in space)
- Music (number in time)
- Astronomy (number in space and time)
This approach to the centrality of word and number encouraged clarity of thought and a broad understanding of the universe, equipping the student with skills to apply and principles to follow. Its current manifestation is the liberal arts curriculum, found in many modern schools and universities, leading the student through a wide range of ideas to apply to the investigative life. Although this focus has its beginnings only in the 12th century, it is often mislabeled a Classical education, an allocation off by some 500 years.
Music, as this schema understood it, was the explanation of harmonics, which are the audible result of the mathematical division of the monochord. (Ask a piano player, violinist, or guitarist to demonstrate.) As a result it had no interest in music as performed or practiced, it was a purely theoretical approach, it was mathematics made audible. Students developed listening skills and cultivated an appreciation of the proportional intricacies of sound, but did not participate in music making.
The training of the ear, which was central to an understanding of acoustics and later in developing the musical imagination, is now a minority study. Identification of intervals, chords, procedures, and forms, is a skill not expected even of music students any more, I am told. In fact, the cultivation of hearing but not attending, of looking but not seeing, to put it in visual terms, the cultivation of the opposite of paying attention, is what is encouraged in 21st century Western society, because with so much sonic accompaniment to shopping, dining, pumping gas, waiting on hold, situational deafness has become a necessary technique for maintaining a person’s sanity.
Music as an accompaniment to other activities is nothing new; fine composers have written plenty of music to serenade diners and party-goers. Background music demonstrably eases the anxieties of dining, lowers your financial inhibitions when you are grocery shopping, and relieves the boredom of holding for an operator.
But there is a difference between narrative and non-narrative music, directional and non-directional music, one that consequently compromises the former’s suitability as background material. Yet the store of bland audio soundtracks of static and non linear ambient music has recently been augmented to include inoffensive Classical compositions as if there is no difference. Massage Muzak, usually unfocused and static, typically relegated to the background to avoid mental focus and to assist in emotional absence, has been mixed in with Mozart, for example, which is all about the structure and the narrative. The broadening definition of music to ignore is troubling. And the effort it takes to ignore Mozart, well, it says something.
Try this Music for Studying, a soundtrack of Classical compositions that will ‘help you concentrate’ on calculus and geometry, or this even more egregious Music for Reading, and then try Brian Eno’s Music for Airports and hear the difference. If you don’t hear a difference….
Hours of sophisticated music to ignore is now freely available to download for your non-listening pleasure, each selection included by the curator because it increases your ability to do other things, apparently. That there is such a thing as Music for Studying is as sad as Guernica iPhone cases and Rothko tablecloths. Classical music, music that expresses a delight in proportional balance, is not good ambient wallpaper because it requires too much focus, unless the listener is a seasoned ignorer and is determined NOT to listen.
When I suggest that over dinner we put on a background radio drama or audiobook instead of a music track, my hosts don’t usually understand the irony of the joke. But I am being serious, at least in part, to test whether background narration is intrusive enough to inhibit our conversational style. For me, it’s hard to collect my thoughts while there is something claiming my attention, but I notice that for others it is as easy as pie.
The skill of listening and the skill of ignoring must balance. As a survival instinct we develop over-hearing or through-hearing strategies just not to be overwhelmed by the sonic stimulus of everyday life. But knowing how to listen attentively is crucial to our lives as interactive humans. Understanding when and how to turn on the listening feature will improve our relationships and discourage serious music’s relegation to hoity toity wallpaper or to mere lubricant for the machinery of learning.