At first sight it seems unsuitable to attempt to introduce »physiognomic« considerations into the field of social sciences. The concept of »physiognomics« comprises studies of expressive movements of the human face, based upon a definite philosophy for which terms like »expression« and »individuality« are as completely beyond dispute as the method of ascertaining them by intuitive life-experience. The original meaning of the term, which gained fame through Lavater,1 was to use an analysis of human features as a reliable indication of the personality behind those features. The premise of that sort of physiognomics holds that the features and expression are always consistent and this consistency is interpreted as an indicator of the coherent personality. This personality is considered by Lavater and his followers, among them Goethe, as a last indivisible and indelible entity, and the consistency of features is supposed to prove its very unity and indivisibility.
Now it is obvious that this concept of physiognomics is obsolete. The assumption that features are consistent with themselves and with the personality behind them survives only as a problem. Modern psychology has to investigate whether that consistency exists at all, and if so, to what extent. It cannot be taken for granted. The concept of »personality« itself, in the metaphysical sense of the term during the late eighteenth century, has been subjected to most serious doubts not by modern psychology alone. In the chapter on psychological paralogisms in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,2 there is a severe attack on the assumption that the soul can rationally be proved to be a self-consistent, indelible and independent entity. This criticism necessarily hits the older physiognomics. Only if the personality is accepted as a priori substantial and self-consistent is it reasonable to interpret the features and expressions of the face in terms of that personality. Again, only if the relation between the features and the personality appears self-evident may the observer trust any immediate intuition about physiognomic expressions without subjecting that relation to more discursive analysis. It is not accidental that the heritage of older physiognomics, based on assumptions such as these, has gone to pseudo-sciences down to chiromantics – a sort of depraved-romantic thinking which can survive only within the corners of present-day consciousness.
Doubly provocative is the application of the term, physiognomics, to any branch of radio research. Not only does it appear to contain all the associations of an arbitrary and immature method of pioneer days of psychology, but it also appears to apply this method to an unsuitable object. The physiognomic method was bound to the immediate understanding between one living being (the studied face) and another (the student). When we are faced with the direct opposite of this life-experience – the study of a fundamentally technical tool – it is hard to see any reason to apply such a method. Radio and the sound which we receive over our radio sets are not a human face. To apply the term, physiognomics, to a study of the phenomena presented to us by radio seems to be of purely metaphorical value, if any. We find ourselves in the position of pursuing an approach which can be expressed only by an oblique comparison with a science which has lost its reputation even in its proper field. Hence we must make clear why we insist upon calling our attempt »physiognomics«.
This question is not purely terminological. It involves the relation between this study and the individual sciences of psychology, technology and sociology. Roughly speaking, we insist upon the physiognomic approach because the phenomena we are studying constitute a unity comparable to that of a human face. Here we are concerned more with analyzing the conditions of this unity, no matter what they may be, than with analyzing the divergent psychological, sociological and technological elements bound up with it.
After the assumption that radio has a face, in the literal sense, has been dismissed, what does this face-like unity consist of? Whenever we switch on our radio the phenomena which are forthcoming bear a kind of expression. Radio »speaks to us« even when we are not listening to a speaker. It might grimace; it might shock us; it might even »raise its eyes« at the very moment we suddenly realize that the inarticulate sounds pouring from the loudspeaker are taking the shape of a piece of music which particularly touches us. To clarify the meaning of this type of phenomenon, and to show the fundamental structure within which every radio phenomenon is bound to take place is the purpose of our study.
Here we must avoid a fundamental misunderstanding. We do not intend to discuss the expression or meaning of the material which radio gives us. We are not speaking about the expression of the voice of the singer, transmitted to us by radio; nor do we speak of the meaning of the words of the commentator to whom we are listening. We are speaking about characteristics of the radio phenomenon as such, devoid of any particular content or material. We consider the way any voice or any instrumental sound is presented over the radio. It will be very difficult to abstract this expression of the »radio itself« from the expression of what is actually broadcast, and we shall see later that these two layers of expression influence each other. Still, the attempt can be made within sufficiently large margins. The following example may serve somewhat to clarify the sort of expression we have in mind. A person who enters a room where a radio is turned on may be momentarily struck by the sound before being able fully to realize what the content of the broadcast is. In this study our attitude is largely like that of this man, confronted by a radio phenomenon without understanding the meaning of its material, but only the fact that »radio is speaking to him«. Naturally, this attitude rarely survives for any appreciable time, and of course it cannot survive in this study either. However, in confining ourselves to a description of the radio phenomenon, consciously abstracting it from the concrete content and avoiding its reduction to social and psychological forces behind it, we are keeping faith with this attitude. Just as anthropological studies can say that »physiognomics« are justified as long as they refrain from an interpretation in terms of an underlying personality and remain strictly descriptive of features, motions of these features and gestalten, we may feel safe in doing the same within the field of radio phenomena.
The elements of the radio phenomenon which concern us here we call the »how« elements; the elements of its content we call the »what« elements. Although they are closely connected it is first necessary for us sufficiently to clarify the former elements before bringing them into the right relation with the latter. The study of the »how« elements has been neglected up to now except by musical specialists, sound engineers and radio manufacturers. It has escaped the attention of researchers that they may be of any real importance for the psychological effect and social function of modern radio. The problem of radio programs, the ratio between their items and techniques for getting great numbers of listeners before the radio set has completely overshadowed the analysis of how all programs, from Toscanini3 to the Lone Ranger,4 are all subjected to conditions of a specific »how« in contemporary radio. This sort of study is usually considered either the business of »technicians« who must try to attain the best possible conditions for broadcasting and reception, or of snobbish aesthetes who are concerned with shades of sound while neglecting the fundamental content. But this attitude is biased. The problem of what a technician should consider »the best possible« transmission or reception is certainly not settled, nor is it certain that the »how« is the shade and the »what« is the substance. Because they are so general, because they are at work in every field of radio, the temptation is entirely to neglect them since at first sight they are not expressed in differences within the radio mechanism. Just here lies the problem. Although they do not affect the differences, they may cause everything in radio to become fundamentally different from everything outside. And the less conspicuous such a change is, the less able the listener is to abstract from the phenomenon; the more attentive must he be to the pure »what«; and the more completely is he overpowered by qualities which are inescapable whenever his radio is turned on.
If this could be established it certainly would have a fundamental bearing on the analysis of radio phenomena. To say that radio-music sounds completely different from live music may be superfluous for the difference between classical and light-popular music in radio – although this is by no means certain a priori. Radio minimizes the difference between light-popular music and classical music, unifying them in comparison to live music. A consideration of this new unity of radio music where style plays only a minor part would be a contribution to our knowledge of radio, and is worthy of being pursued.
Radio physiognomics must deal not only with acoustic events. Of course, this is in no way concerned with the visual physiognomics of faces. Radio physiognomics is justified not only in the sense of a »physiognomic« discussion of the human voice. It is possible to undertake a description of the elements of a human voice containing its expression; its specific sound color; its modulations; its clearness or being veiled without any reference at first to the content of the voice. Everyday statements like, »This woman has a nice voice«, or »This man’s voice sounds arrogant«, imply physiognomical problems. In that sense the question of radio physiognomics would be, »Does radio have a voice of its own?« and »What are its specific characteristics?«
Radio terminology seems to corroborate the assumption that this »radio voice« is spread unconsciously among the masses of listeners. The instrument through which the broadcast is heard is called the »loudspeaker«, thus hinting that radio »speaks for itself«. Of course this is not the case. It merely distributes the voices of other speaking people. But by calling the instrument a »speaker«, language seems to indicate that radio itself appears to speak when taken at face value as immediate perception, although crediting the tool with a voice may sometimes become completely irrational. Children, especially, may frequently react this way, a fact which has been noted within educational broadcasting. Mr. Robert J. Havighurst5 lists the following characteristics in his statement on radio as a medium for general education, made at the »Conference on School Broadcasting«, January 27th to 29th, 1938:
a.) In the case of people the listener feels close enough to form direct impressions of a speaker’s personality; around the voice he hears, the listener builds a person as real in many ways as if he had been actually met.
b.) This illusion of closeness makes the listener feel that he is actually present at the place where the broadcast originates – or purports to originate.6
The »illusion of closeness« is as intimately associated with the »radio voice« as the subject matter of radio physiognomics. The obvious reason for this illusion of a speaking radio is that the listener directly faces the apparatus instead of the man who is playing or speaking. Thus the visible tool becomes the bearer and the impersonation of the sound whose origin is invisible. No matter how easily this experience may be corrected by the slightest afterthought, it still may very possibly affect our relation to radio much more deeply than most people realize. Attributing the sound of radio to the real, present radio set may make people who are not concentrating attentively forget the unreality of what they are hearing. Thus they may be inclined to believe that anything offered by the »radio voice« is real, because of this »illusion of closeness«. This voice can dispense with the intermediary, objectivating stage of printing which helps to clarify the difference between fiction and reality. It has a testimonial value: radio, itself, said it. For example, we know that a number of WOR correspondents consider the Lone Ranger and his companions to be real people and even send them presents.7 The most recent example of the »illusion of closeness« and its astonishing effects is the case of OrsonWelles in the H. G. Wells’ broadcast over the Columbia Broadcasting System.8 It might be worthwhile to study whether children and naïve persons are really thoroughly conscious that radio is a tool, and whether they identify it with the voice they hear, or even personify radio itself. The very fact that they are confronted by »voices« without being able to argue with the person who is speaking, or even may feel somewhat in the dark about who is speaking – the machine or the man – may help to establish the authority of the tool. The absence of visible persons makes the »radio voice« appear more objective and infallible than a live voice; and the mystery of a machine which can speak may be felt in atavistic layers of our psychical life.
Even though we know that the »radio voice« is not really radio’s own voice, it certainly filters every sound. And we must discuss how this filter affects the listener. Our subject-matter is not the attitude of children or primitives but the elements which make radio appear, in a way, to be speaking. These elements, of course, have much in common with the experience of children and primitives and we cannot neglect them when they play so important a role for the appearance of the »radio voice«. An approach to a mass phenomenon like radio cannot be biased by any sort of rationalistic psychology. Thus our knowledge that radio really has no voice cannot affect our analysis of its appearance as the bearer of a voice.
There is another possible approach to the »radio voice«. We may disregard entirely the fact that radio transmits human voices or human sounds so that they are suggestive of being produced by the tool. Further, we may disregard the fact that these basically human sounds are affected by the tool so that they actually sound like its own sound, to a certain extent. We still may maintain, however, that the »abstract characteristics of the radio sound« are somewhat similar to the voice. Attempts should be made empirically to verify this similarity by a survey of radio technique. In certain aspects the reception of live music, its transmission and the ultimate reception of the broadcast can be regarded as substitutes for human sense organs. In a way the microphone does the work of »listening« and the radio set the work of »speaking«. It might even be worthwhile to follow up the suggestion that there is an analogy between the technical structure of the microphone and the ear. Similar hints are obvious in radio sets. In form the older loudspeakers resemble the mouth. From this point of view, that the radio mechanism is a sort of mechanization of human sense organs which were used as its pattern, the concept of the »radio voice« might sound less mystical than at first. It may be that the specific characteristics of the »radio voice« are due partly to this imitation and partly to the shortcomings necessarily to be found in any attempt to undertake the function of a sense organ. Finally, how far the radio’s ear and the radio’s voice replace the listener’s own ear and voice will have to be asked. It is upon the answer to this question that much of the »influence« exercised by radio may be based.
This offers a first glimpse of the theoretical possibilities of a physiognomic study. The very fact that the features we intend to study reach consciousness only rarely either because they are regarded as self-understood or because they are not noticed at all, which amounts to practically the same thing, may even add to their importance. One of the guiding principles of the physiognomic approach is our conviction of the importance of these invariant, and hence unconscious elements of the radio »phenomenon« which the loudspeaker presents to the listener. And it is this principle to which we shall repeatedly have to refer.
We feel ready now to state our problem more concisely. The subject matter of the physiognomics of radio is the »radio voice«. This can be compared to the live voice because of the »illusion of closeness«. The »radio voice«, like the human voice or the human face, is »present«. At the same time it always suggests something »behind« it. We do not actually know what this »something« is, but it appears within the radio phenomenon and seems to be very intimately linked with its experience. This is parallel to facial physiognomics. Whenever we listen to a voice, or whenever we look at a face, we are dealing with something more or less vaguely »behind it«, not distinctly separated from it, but apparently intimately connected, although not identical with it. To put it in psychological terms: within our experience of live voices and faces the phenomenon is not a merely superficial sign of whatever is behind it, replaceable by another as well. It is connected with the content by being its expression. This relation between the »radio voice« and the hidden forces behind it, whatever they may be, is emphasized by the illusion of closeness. If the »radio voice« expresses these unknown forces we must study the categories of that expression as the radio phenomenon offers them without referring to our possible knowledge of what is presented and what is going on behind the phenomenon. Thus we may define radio physiognomics preliminarily as the study of the elements of expression of the »radio voice«.
The emancipation of the term »physiognomics« from real, human individuals is not unprecedented in contemporary psychological research. We refer to the discussion between Sándor Ferenczi and Siegfried Bernfeld on the applicability of psychoanalytical terms to biology. Bernfeld explicitly discusses the »physiognomics of organs« in Chapter IV of his study, i.e. the physiognomics of individual organs of the human body, as suggested by the great Hungarian psychoanalyst who »personifies« body organs such as the bladder and intestines.9 Although Bernfeld raises objections to the anthropomorphism of Ferenczi’s type of thinking, he agrees with the attempt to establish a physiognomics of sense organs, provided that it is possible to emancipate it from this anthropomorphism and from its inherent personifications, and to bring it finally to a more rational level than Ferenczi’s intuitive method. In the case of the »radio voice« we certainly endorse the last postulate – that is, the »illusion of«; and the »radio voice« must finally be traced back to the subjective conditions which necessitate this illusion. Yet we regard the »radio voice« as something »given« which cannot be resolved into subjective terms before being adequately described; and one of its inherent characteristics is just that personification which we may finally have to abandon. The more successful we are in formulating it in precise »objective« terms, the better will be the chances for subjective reduction. And further, since our aim is to unify the radio phenomenon here rather than to break it down into different sciences, the objective description may transcend the possibilities of subjective reduction insofar as the sociological and technical implications of the »radio voice« cannot be treated entirely in psychological terms. In studies of social relevance it is never sufficient to separate appearance or illusion from the essential and real. In a society which has as gross a veneer of »appearance« as ours, it is just as important to study the mechanism which produces the »illusion« as it is to discount it. That is why our method takes the »illusion of the ›radio voice‹« so seriously and suggests research into it on a larger scale. In our study, the »illusionary« character of the »radio voice« plays as important a role as its »reality«. We shall endeavor to show the interconnection between these features and to find a meaning within this apparent contradiction which constantly recurs.
Before beginning an outline of radio physiognomics we should offer a concrete example, discuss it in terms of our concept of physiognomics, and show how it differs from pre-scientific physiognomics.
We present an example which has the disadvantage of not being one of the basic phenomena of the »radio voice« although it does contain certain complicated implications for music as an articulate art and for its social meaning. It has the advantage, however, of showing that radio physiognomics is not just a game concerned with superficial characteristics and illusions, but really is related to broader issues in the field of the sociology of art.
Paul Bekker, in his study, The History of the Symphony From Beethoven to Mahler, polemicizes against the idea fostered by formalistic musical analyses that a symphony is really what its formal structure makes it appear to be, just a »sonata for the orchestra«.10 He points out that it differs from sonata or chamber music not so much because of the different instrumental setting, but rather because of its different social function. Bekker holds that sonata or chamber music are directed primarily to the individual and are suitable for the intimacy of the private room. The symphony, however, is defined by him by its »power to build a community« [gemeinschaftsbildende Kraft].11 It is meant to unite individuals, to melt their isolation and to combine them in one general feeling which can be defined by leading social ideas dependent upon the structure of the community instead of the isolated person. In the case of the Beethoven symphony, for example, it is the idea of freedom and unity and the idea of »joy« derived from it. Now this theory of Bekker’s is certainly open to strong objections from a sociological point of view. He still seems to be bound by nineteenth century aestheticism in his belief that music, or art in general, can »create a community«. It is rather that it reflects the actual being, or the unfulfilled desires of the community with all its innate antagonisms and difficulties. These it tries either to express or to smooth away and reconcile in its own sphere because under existing conditions (for instance in the society which Beethoven had to face) they cannot be reconciled in reality. Bekker overestimates the influence of art upon reality and he thinks of the artist in terms of a »creator«, borrowed from a different sphere. In spite of the underlying romanticism of this viewpoint, his theory contains some keen observations which still hold good. Certainly the difference between a Beethoven symphony and a Beethoven sonata implies more than the fact that the one was written for orchestra and the other for piano. It may be asserted here that it is not necessary to resort to attributing a somewhat mystical social power to the symphony to trace back this difference. The difference could be established within the limits of an analysis of the structure of the symphony and the sonata. We may take it for granted that this difference also contains certain social implications. A symphony does not create a community; but its inherent technical qualities are certainly linked with the fact that it is supposed to be listened to by a community and in a large room. In a Beethoven symphony, which inspired Bekker’s theory, the inherent compositorial qualities of unity are more decisive than those of diversity within this unity. The interconnection of parts must be particularly intense because much more drastic means are necessary to hold the attention of a group instead of a few expert amateurs in a room. The material involved appears to represent the self-expression of individuals much less than it aims at objectivity within which individual differences could be sublated. Furthermore, in musical works directed to larger audiences the extension in time must be handled completely differently from music which aims at intimacy because it is more difficult to sustain the concentration of masses than of expert listeners. (Of course this is particularly true today, but we feel justified in assuming that it already held good for Beethoven.) A symphony must always make time appear much shorter than it really is by means of certain technical devices; chamber music may use time relations in a different, »epical« sense. (This especially applies to certain chamber music works written by Beethoven at the end of his middle period, such as the last major violin sonata [the G Violin Sonata], and the Piano Trio in B flat major whose first movement can be regarded as the opposite extreme of symphonic treatment.) In fact, it is safe to say that just some of the »classical« Beethoven symphonies, the Fifth and Seventh particularly, but also the long first movement of the »Eroica«, when they are well performed, must seem to last only a very short time – to have virtually no time-extension at all, but to take place within one moment. To speak metaphorically, symphonic works transform the time element of music into space, and it is this transformation which might explain the specific appeal of symphonic music in its stricter sense. It would be comparatively easy for a technical analysis of the symphonic form to make all these issues clear and to interpret them in social terms – how they are related to the postulate which confronted the composer; that of writing music suitable for a large audience in a vast hall.a
A good performance of a symphony ought to realize these specific characteristics, especially the symphonic contraction of time. And how they are brought out plastically might even be considered the criterion of a good performance.We do not intend to solve the physiognomic problem involved here because it would presuppose a broader range of radio physiognomics than we can dispose of: we intend only to discuss it to show what we actually mean by radio physiognomics. But it may be put this way: »Can the ›radio voice‹, even if radio broadcasts an ideal performance of a symphony, still realize these specific qualities? Do the innate characteristics of the ›radio voice‹ possibly alter the whole outlook of a symphony? What qualities does a symphony lose, and what qualities does it possibly gain? What are the implications of this alteration for the listener? How do these alterations affect his attitude – specifically, the relation between a symphony and the listener?« This may finally lead to the broader educational question: »What is the significance if the listener knows a symphony only with the specific characteristics of the ›radio voice‹?«
In order to solve our problem we may start from a few very simple considerations. The radio listener generally finds himself in a small room, whose acoustic conditions are incomparable with those of a real symphonic performance and even with a normal orchestra studio of a radio network. Notwithstanding the work of the studio sound engineer, the radio listener must still adapt his set to the conditions of his room. He has to »steer« the sound. Of course, it could be objected that he could try to receive the symphony in exactly the same acoustic proportions of its original transmission. The same would not be the same. A sound tolerable in a big room would be offensive in a small one. A normal forte, with all its roundness and quiet strength would immediately sound like an assault, like the forebear of a catastrophe. Whoever has twirled the volume control of his radio can testify to the shock he experiences as soon as he tries loud sounds in his apartment. Further, the conditions of the private room affect this sound to such an extent that even if it does correspond to the strength of sound of the live performance, it does not sound at all natural. On the contrary, it sounds as if it were being heard through an amplifier – a phenomenon for which technical reasons could easily be provided. It is difficult to describe in exact terms acoustic phenomena so new and unusual as loud music heard in a small room. It may safely be said, however, that this sound possesses something of the vagueness and lack of clarity of bad photographic enlargements. At the same time, it also gains a specific sort of »expression« which can be described as aggressive, barking and bellowing. It resembles somewhat a political harangue, hostile and threatening to the listener. When heard in a private room, the disproportion between the power of the »radio voice« and the power of the individual endangers the latter: it sounds as if the sound could blow up the room. Even the most fundamental physiological experience of hearing such a strong – »over-strong« – radio voice is so exceedingly unpleasant that the listener is forced to abandon his original idea of receiving the symphony in its original acoustic proportions. Finally, even under conditions of ideal reception these proportions would be different from the original. Radio amplification lessens the range between fortissimo and pianissimo. When you get a true fortissimo through your loudspeaker you lose at the same time a true pianissimo and obtain only a mezzo forte as a substitute – a fact which already has its basic implications for the plasticity of a symphony even if one listens to its »full strength«. At any rate, the listener is forced to tune down the reception until it becomes tolerable to him.
So he must face an entirely new phenomenon – a symphony acoustically adapted to the conditions of a small room. This phenomenon is in question whenever we discuss how far a symphony is still a symphony.
First of all, the softened sound can no longer carry the illusion of being directed to a vast community which, in our discussion of Bekker’s thesis, we regarded as so essential for the effect of a symphony. The idea that the soft sound of the work actually being heard is being directed to several hundred people is so ludicrous that it must be discounted. To the objection that certainly most listeners are not aware of these implications, the answer would be that they nevertheless make themselves felt within the phenomenon itself. It is not merely a matter of the quantity of sound or of the consciousness of how many people could listen to such a symphony or how many could be attracted or affected by it. As happens so often, the quantity tilts over into the quality. The following considerations may make this clear.
One of the chief characteristics of the symphonic style of Beethoven is a preference for very short and very pregnant motifs impressed upon the mind of the listener by an unabating intensity of presentation. The best known example is the opening bars of the Fifth Symphony. This emphatic manner of presentation requires a strength of sound that gives the distinct effect of exposing the symphonic material affirmatively. As soon as this strength is tuned down, these motifs lose much of that meaning. The importance of the material is no longer underlined. Hence the stubborn repetition – of the rhythm of the initial motif of the Fifth Symphony, for example – becomes utterly senseless. The intensity of musical »statement«, which is so important for the impressiveness of the symphonic movement, is lost as soon as it is lowered to the acoustic conditions of a private room. But it is only this intensity which makes allowance for the excessive simplicity of texture in some of Beethoven’s symphonies, a simplicity which otherwise touches the borders of futility. When the »radio voice« in its full strength seems to exercise a sort of collective command over the individual listener that becomes unbearable, the symphony transmitted by a »chamber voice« loses any command and becomes virtually a piece of chamber music even though its own imperative structure actually does not permit a chamber-music-like presentation. In other words, a Beethoven symphony heard as a piece of chamber music would be »bad« chamber music, lacking all the more subtle elements of texture and richness of divergent thematic characters which we are accustomed to regard as the true content of chamber music.b
Further, these alterations of the sound quantity and intensity affect not only the general character of the piece presented by the »radio voice«; they affect also its formal articulation and the realization of the whole structure of the symphony. We should like to call attention to the following points: the lack of specifically symphonic »intensity« affects one feature mentioned before as characteristic of the Beethoven symphony. That is the »transformation of time into space«, the impression that the music lasts only a moment while it actually may take twenty minutes. This impression, of course, is dependent upon the utmost intensity of performance. As soon as this intensity is lacking, the symphony drops out of its suspension; it, so to speak, falls back into time.c The concentration vanishes; the listener may concentrate upon certain details or parts, but it is most unlikely that he will be able to realize the relation between the part and the whole as well as he could with the intensity of presentation of every moment. Thus the symphonic work, in a way, will be atomized when presented by radio. That is, it will appear not as a totality in which each part derives its proper meaning only in relation to the other parts, but rather becomes a rapid succession of »atom-like« sections, each apperceived more or less in isolation.d This damage to the whole is furthered by another tendency of the »radio voice«. We mentioned in our discussion of the full strength of the »radio voice« the waning and shrinking of the distance between the piano and the forte while their contrast is such an outstanding means of musical articulation. It appears doubtful to us, however, whether these conditions are much better if the »radio voice« becomes a chamber voice. An investigation should be made to compare the range of strengths of a real performance with the range of strength in a »normal« private room reception. This could easily be done by measuring minima and maxima sound strength in both cases. Our immediate experience leads us to expect that the forte is muted considerably for chamber conditions while the piano is not especially affected. Notwithstanding the proportions within radio reception itself, it appears that the difference between the original forte and the radio forte would be much greater than the difference between the original piano and the radio piano.e It may be assumed that the total of a »radio voice« adapted to chamber conditions may approach something like an average mezzo piano. The dynamic contrasts are among the foremost means of articulation of a piece of music and of establishing the interrelations of its parts. In many cases, especially Mozart, it may even be said that just this unity is established by means of subtle contrast of details. If this means has to be discounted the articulation of the whole is considerably weakened. It would be fallacious to expect music to appear more unified as all the dynamic elements become more similar. Just this likeness makes the concentration falter similar to the way it is made to falter by the lack of symphonic »intensity«. A movement played in uniform mezzo piano throughout is not only much more difficult to follow but as a unity without any discernible and articulating parts, the unity, the »whole itself«, threatens to vanish. It must be added, too, that radio in its present form also considerably reduces the coloristic means of articulation. Further, it loses its plasticity for several reasons. One of these reasons has been called »keyhole listening« in the most recent American discussion of the subject.12 All this leads to the conclusion that symphonic unity is seriously endangered by radio transmission. This danger is of immediate concern for the social significance of the trans-personal objectivity of a symphony, expressed in the preponderance of symphonic unity over the parts. The »radio voice« subjects symphony to a sort of decomposition, and whatever remains is basically different from the original.
However, we must be careful not to simplify the issue. If you know a symphony and you hear it over the radio, you will, of course, recognize it for the same thing you have heard before. The better you know it, the less you will be disturbed by its alterations and the more you will be able to realize even the structural elements which are fading away by the very process of radio transmission. This leads to a somewhat paradoxical inference. The objection will probably be raised that the »radio voice« is a problem only for listeners who already possess some musical knowledge while it really makes no difference for the millions of people to whom radio brings music for the first time. We believe that just the opposite is true. People who already know symphonic music can still realize the symphonic unity when they listen to radio because, from their previous musical knowledge they can spontaneously add interrelations which are not expressed through the »radio voice« itself. The new listener will not be able to do so. Compared with the idea of symphony, his picture of a symphony in radio will be more distorted than that of the expert listener even though the latter may be aware of the alterations created by the »radio voice« while the former may know nothing about them. It would be worthwhile to undertake studies along this line. People who have a certain musical knowledge and people who have none at all should be interviewed about the same broadcast, for instance the Toscanini rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Opponents of our theory would expect the naïve listener to be happy to receive the symphony for the first time, and the expert listener to be critical of the performance. This is most likely to be the case. But if a capable interviewer goes into greater detail he probably will find out that the expert listener will speak about the rendition of the symphony as a whole, how Toscanini connects the elements, upholds one tempo throughout a movement: the naïve listener, however, will probably dwell on the beauty of the sound or the sublimity of expression but he will probably not be aware of the unity which radio loses more completely for him than for the expert. Our fictitious opponent will answer with the objection that realizing a unity requires just that knowledge which only the expert has and which cannot be expected from the naïve listener, so that our assertion, however true it might be in itself, would not hit anything specific to the »radio voice«. While we admit that this characteristic of listener-types is sound, we should still maintain that radio performances as they are now just cannot give an adequate understanding of the symphony as a totality while live performances still can do so. We should answer that as long as radio cannot bridge the gulf between these different types of apperception, and does not enable the so-called naïve listener to become aware spontaneously of the structural elements of the symphony, it fails the very educational task it has in dealing with the masses of new listeners. The idea that structural listening could later be developed out of sensual listening appears dangerous to us. Sensual and atomistic listening seems to us not the first step of musical understanding, but an obstacle to it; and the specifically sensual listeners are always ready to denounce anything which they consider highbrow. The issue is that radio, at the outset, ought to offer presentations of music adequate to the specific meaning of the music, in our case to the specific meaning of symphonic unity.
Radio symphony holds a double relation to live symphony. It is, at the same time, »the same« and »something different« from the original. This complexity gives rise to the thought that the radio symphony is a sort of »reproduction« of an original in the same sense that pictures are reproduced. The sound received over the radio in a private room is not only physically a reproduction of the live music played in the studio. Being built out of the elements of the »symphony as such« and the alteration it undergoes by broadcasting, the phenomenon in itself has the innate characteristics of reproduction just as a print has certain innate qualities of reproduction beyond the fact that it actually reproduces the original. The print not only reproduces the original, but even phenomenally »looks like a reproduction«. The same holds good for the radio symphony. It is this phenomenon which attracts the attention of a physiognomic approach. It may later be found that its importance is much further reaching than a brief discussion of form, such as a symphony, can bring out.
This permits a first glimpse of the more far-reaching sociological consequences of our »attempt at radio physiognomics«. If the character of reproduction is a phenomenal feature of the »radio voice«, we shall have to ascertain how people apperceive music which has innate qualities of reproduction. Does this music still retain the same validity as live music? Do listeners »take it as seriously«? Does it have the same obligatory character which can be found in live music? Do listeners remember it as well as live music? Does it play the same role in their psychological household formerly played by live music? What significance is there for the listener’s behavior toward music in the fact that radio reproduction minimizes certain structural elements and emphasizes others? Would such an increase of »atomistic elements« be affected by radio’s alterations of the sensual sound quality of music? What influence does radio reproduction exercise upon the listener’s previous knowledge of a work? Does it establish the work more firmly, or does it tend gradually to deteriorate it? Or can both tendencies be witnessed at the same time? That is, are they more firmly established as authoritarian museum pieces, but deteriorated insofar as people are no longer able to arrive at a genuine and live relation to their meaning when they have been placed upon a pedestal? And finally, perhaps the most important question of all for this country, how do people who know symphonic music only through radio reproduction react to it? We are still completely in the dark about the last question, and guessing is of no help. Methods of finding an answer can be developed much more easily, however, if we succeed in outlining radio physiognomics; if we can formulate our questions about radio reception in the light of the results of an analysis of radio production.
One mistake must be avoided from the very first. Our approach might seem to imply a bias; it might seem that we are setting out to defend the sacrosanctity of musical cultural-goods from the profanation of mechanical reproduction; that we see all the light on the side of live music and all the shadow on the side of radio reproduction. This interpretation would be entirely misleading. It would be utterly reactionary and irresponsible to defend a type of musical performance which is steadily degenerating into the privilege of the happy few while the vast majority must remain content with mechanically reproduced music. The stubborn condemnation of mechanically reproduced music would deprive it of possibilities which, no matter how it may be criticized, should be developed and improved with the help of criticism instead of being rejected for the sake of the sanctity of the work of art; for the idea of this sanctity has become as problematic in present-day concert and opera life as radio broadcasting may be at its worst. The l’art pour l’art attack on radio would be problematic for reasons more fundamental than just that we »must make the best of a given situation«. Such a resigned viewpoint would still remain within the spell of romanticism. It would imply that the alterations we spoke of are due only to the mechanical tool while beyond the field of radio, and perhaps recording, live music is still in good order. This, however, is not the case. We hinted at the social background and social function of the »radio voice«. However this may be, and however many intermediary stages lead from general social conditions of our day to radio organization and radio technique, this much we may take for granted: that radio and all its social implications are part of social life as a whole, and that its shortcomings are not so purely »technical« as they may seem in the first approach to the physiognomics of the »radio voice«. These shortcomings have a deeper social significance; they can be spotted in other realms of present-day life as well. Here we do not have to deal with the relation between radio technique and social background; we may assert that we do not see any sort of mystical connection and harmony here, but that we firmly believe in the possibility of establishing missing links between radio technique and more general trends in modern society.
To show what we mean by the social implications of a technique, here is an example from the earlier history of wireless telegraphy. We consider it almost a model for the interpretation of this relation. Gleason Archer, in his book, The History of Radio to 1926 describes Edison’s experiments in the field of wireless electricity. Mr. Archer’s account reads as follows:
Edison took out a patent in 1885 on a system of inductive telegraphy. By affixing a tinfoil covered plate to the top of the locomotive or coach, the inventor found it possible to attract from telegraph lines bordering the roadbed what amounted to wireless messages. However rapidly a train might be moving at the time, the Edison device continued to function. One fact that militated against it as an answer to the problem of how to maintain telegraphic communication with a moving train was that the device was too democratic in its operation. Any nearby telegraph wire over which a message might be passing found equal favor with the Edison collector of signals. One wire might be carrying a message to the train, but any number of nearby wires might alike contribute to a jumbled collection of signals. The manifold difficulties of the problem and the fact that Edison was working on more universally important inventions, led him to suspend activities in this field of endeavor.13
Here one can virtually seize the idea that a technique is not isolated. At a time when the merely technical productive powers are in a practical sense ready for an invention, social conditions may make it impossible not only to be generally accepted, but also to be carried through. When liberalism was still at its height and the concept of the privacy and freedom of the individual a taboo stronger than any other consideration, the concept of »discretion« prevented Edison from pursuing experiments which could easily have led to the invention of radio fifty years earlier. Only in a mass society governed by monopolistic institutions in which the taboos of the individual have faded away has radio technique been fully developed. It may be more than mere coincidence that at the time of radio’s triumph in many countries the secrecy of private letters has been abolished – secrecy which, earlier, had prevented the transition from telegraph to wireless. Whether the present state of affairs can be called more democratic than Edison’s time, referred to by Dr. Archer, is another question.
Here is another example: The characteristics of »reproduction« which we suspect are profoundly bound to the »radio voice« are due to the fact that for one social reason or another radio has set for itself the task of reproducing and imitating live music instead of emancipating itself from the »original« and trying to produce something specifically its own. The shortcomings we mentioned are due not so much to the »radio voice« as such, but to the inadequacy of this voice for live music, even though it still insists upon upholding the impression of this adequacy. This implies first that if we could deduce, as Veblen, for instance, has attempted, the social reasons for the cult of the »original« being propagated by its radio reproduction,14 one of the most important links between radio technique and modern society would be discovered. Again, if theoretical knowledge could lead to an abandonment of the practice of imitation, these shortcomings might disappear and radio might become really adequate to its potentialities. This is not the point, however, which we have in mind here. Our principal consideration tends in a different direction. Let us assume for the moment that […]15
If our assumption that the shortcomings of radio have a deeper social significance is true, we must expect them not to be related to the tool and we must not expect them to be circumvented by changing technical practices. The man who would turn his back to radio and face live music, then, would be no better off. We do not pretend to have established the »missing links« and we even consider it doubtful whether the musical phenomena we are discussing can be traced very far back to social conditions by individual motivation from one given cause to one given effect. They may be effects of the totality of our society; we may not be able to discover the individual social motivation for each individual musical phenomenon upon which we must focus our attention. All this admitted, however, we may still say that, even though we still lack these links, we actually can still identify features in modern live music and official music life which definitely prove that there is no escape from the field of the radio mechanism into a field of unspoiled musical culture. This concept that radio, and especially its shortcomings, are indicators of contradictions in our whole art life and ultimately in our whole social life instead of being false because of the degeneration of art into a mechanical process, may dispense with the suspicion that we want to save an island of genuine and live music against the threatening sea of mechanization and reification. We want to face the danger of this sea, not for the sake of fleeing to cultural islands, but for better navigation. Any investigator who does not see the dangers of that sea and who simply allows himself to be drugged by its grandeur, and who sees its waves as waves of unbroken progress, is very likely to be drowned.
The tendency to atomize music, to lose the musical entirety and replace it by detail, the vanquishing of the »seriousness« of music; all these are by no means confined to the »radio voice«. That seems to be only the precise technical executor of trends which cover a much larger field. We may assume that it is not only within the sphere of light-popular music that this atomistic listening which we think is encouraged by the »radio voice« takes place. In the sphere of so-called serious live music as well we must note obtrusive symptoms of the same type. The constant repetition of a very few standard works by a very few composers; the increasing attention paid to sound quality compared to the constructive elements of the composition; the presentation of works merely as occasions for showing off some conductor who gives »his Fifth«; all point in the same direction. But just the conservative elements of live concert music, those which most fiercely defend its magic qualities, its intensity and its original form against deterioration, are now open to the gravest doubts. They all have a certain touch of »quasi«; they are overdone as if the conductors really do not believe in the possibility of this defense and were trying to persuade themselves that it is still »possible«; and those very magic qualities, the intensity and the pathos which some conductors show (in an extreme manner, Mr. Furtwängler)16 are spoiled by a sort of over-emphasis and theatrical performance which bears witness against the cult of the »genuine« which they pretend to serve. We may even question whether these magic qualities are becoming market articles today, similar to the catchwords of a hit song to which they allege to be so strictly opposed. The reactions of people to these elements are in any case by no means so very different from those which we are inclined to suspect the »radio voice« of imitating. The concert-goer who waits just for the very moment that the conductor begins to fascinate is very similar to the radio listener who, although he entirely misses the formal structure of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, nevertheless dwells upon the beauty of the tune of the slow movement. The insincerity and insufficiency of today’s concert life has become such a commonplace that, under certain aspects, one often feels obliged to defend it against objections which would replace it by more primitive types of musical behavior. It is impossible, however, to escape the conviction that abandoning radio for the sake of live music would not help very much, and that progressive chances can be sought within the sphere of radio itself.
Here again a study of the »radio voice« may prove helpful. In our comparison between an »original« and a »radio« symphony we have so far pointed out only the shortcomings of the reproduction. A physiognomic study of the »radio voice« will have to be equally careful about the opposite tendency. For the moment, we content ourselves with translating some remarks by Ernst Krenek17 who tried to develop a theory of the positive possibilities of radio listening from a criticism which followed the same line as our remarks about the radio voice. The passage reads:
Radio reproduction is well suited for the production of a new and hitherto unknown concentration on the work of art while at the same time it postulates a higher degree of such concentration to bring about an effect suitable to the subject matter. (That is, for over-compensating the elements of deconcentration which we sketched above.) Radio may become an especially valuable means of musical apperception for a listener who is willing and able to enter into a relation to music sincerely in keeping with the facts (sachgerecht). He will not consider the concert hall as the room furthering concentration at its best. The concert room was predisposed for collective reception of music as long as it was »community building«, affirmative art. The more recent forms of music are different and they again affect older music so that their new values are generated which are less to be thought of in terms of »elevation«, »edification«, »entertainment«, and similar characteristics. These values can be much more easily apperceived in an attitude of composure, intellectual preparedness and conscious orientation. Listening to music in the seclusion of a private room is favorable for attaining this attitude because there one can utilize any means of concentration, such as reading the score, smoking, drinking, pacing up and down, and so on. It is obvious that this function of radio – a new type of concentration just opposite of the tendency of deconcentration which we outlined before – today takes place only in very few and exceptional cases and plays only an infinitesimal part in the organization of the broadcast. Surely here, however, the essential and most promising future values of the institution of radio should be sought.18
We may add that the very fact which we mentioned in our discussion of symphony in radio, that the parts become preponderant over the whole, may lead to a sharpening of attention upon the parts. One may listen to individual musical sections in radio as if through a microscope, or, to choose a more appropriate comparison, just as in the movies one concentrates upon a close-up where the scene remains vague as long as one follows only the whole. Personal experience leads the author to think that just the breaking of the spell of the whole which we discussed earlier in terms of its negative manifestations, so to speak releases the detail; and that the »radio voice« makes allowance for the study of details which previously could be obtained only by studying the abstract score of the music. It might well be that this study of details, free of the »spell«, will finally lead to a new apperception of the whole which, although totally different from the traditional, may ultimately make good its losses. Certainly such an attitude would be, as Krenek pointed out, less emotional than the traditional one. The slogan of »intellectualism« should not deter us, however, from seeing its prospective chances. What will be lost of the »spell« and its persuasive intensity may be regained by clarity and adequacy of the listener’s relation to the work of art which is transmitted to him mechanically.
But another and more subtle issue is involved which may come to the aid of the effect of radio. We discussed the lack of articulation of the radio performance which, at the same time, allows a closer study of the details. It would be fallacious, however, to regard this »lack of articulation« in itself purely as a loss. As a performance of classical music, especially chamber music, becomes more refined, it also becomes more inclined to thrust the rougher contrasts into the background. If the structure of a work is so well established that anyone – in a way, even the man who has never heard it before – is somehow aware of it, then a sophisticated interpreter will no longer try to articulate the work by means of heavy surface contrasts. He may even avoid such contrasts and try as much as possible to produce an unbroken unity, a sort of musical texture, so to speak, whose outward articulation is up to the listener; the constructive elements stressed by this performance are not immediately evident in the sound phenomena. This type of interpretation could be compared with the works of highly differentiated writers, such as Marcel Proust, who strongly resist any outward articulation of their texts, even avoiding paragraphs or italics in an attempt very densely to weight their texts, thus challenging the reader’s intellectual activity. (In some older literary forms, especially the Arabic, the same is found. Overt articulation is strongly connected with the desire to relieve the writer’s customer of any work of his own. The ultimate of cheap articulation is the newspaper headline. An aversion to »headlines« in music can also be felt.) If the most modern type of musical interpretation draws the articulation away from the surface of sound into deeper layers of the connection between motifs and themes, then the way radio presents music by smoothing away outward articulations would unexpectedly again be up-to-date, an executor of musical tendencies of which it certainly is not aware.
The settling of such questions overreaches by far our present purpose.We must confine ourselves to discussing the example of the symphony in radio from a methodological point of view to clarify our method sufficiently before sketching a more systematic outline of radio physiognomics.
First of all, our study tries to keep as closely as possible to the phenomenon and not to any hypothesis or pre-judgments about the phenomenon, roughly understood as the music pouring out of the loudspeaker. Of course, our inferences sometimes take the form of hypotheses, but we are trying to develop them from observation of the phenomenon itself and not to deduce them from above. The question of why we follow this descriptive or »phenomenological« method can easily be answered. We are dwelling on the phenomenon because it is actually the phenomenon which determines the reaction of the listeners, and it is our ultimate aim to study the listener. The man who sits in his armchair and listens to radio does not hear what is going on in the conference room or in the studio of the network. He does not hear wave-lengths and frequencies. He hears only what goes on »under his nose«. The elements and events behind the radio phenomenon affect him only through the medium of the phenomenon and not by themselves.f A scientific attempt to reconstruct the listener’s reaction must follow the same line. To start from the causal conditions of radio instead of from the phenomenon would bring arbitrary elements into play. We cannot know to what extent these elements can actually be felt in the listener’s conscious and unconscious life unless we can definitely trace them back to the phenomenon which he experiences. Just as the radio phenomenon provides the »material« for the listener’s psychological relation to radio, it also provides the material for its scientific penetration. This, of course, does not mean that the consideration has to stop with the phenomenon. To »penetrate« it actually means to dissolve it and to reduce it to its conditioning factors. It makes all the difference, however, if we actually start from the phenomenon and then »reduce« it, or if we think in terms of objectivity before having determined whether that »objectivity« can actually be spotted within the living-experience of the radio listener.
Here we must face one inevitable objection. If we stress the »subjective« radio phenomenon as our starting point, how, then, can we talk about it in »objective« terms? How are we safeguarded against the danger of private arbitrariness and bad generalization? If, for instance, we attribute an aggressive character to the radio voice in its full strength or a lack of symphonic intensity to a symphony transmitted by radio, how do we know that this is not merely an individual statement? For instance, does the concept of symphonic intensity play any role within the experience of people who have no musical knowledge whatsoever?
We must be very careful in answering these questions because we are fully aware of the fact that the phenomenological method has frequently been guilty of exactly the same arbitrariness of which we accuse ourselves. But it appears to us that the terms, »subjective« and »objective«, handled in the usual way, are much too indefinite to have any explicit meaning. First of all, the assertion of relativists that subjective reactions are arbitrary and accidental and that each individual may react differently is much too radical to be true. The relativist who challenges the absoluteness of his adversary’s statements is much more absolute in some of his assumptions than the latter could ever be. The assumption that there are extreme differences among individuals could never be corroborated by experience and can be upheld less than ever in a period where individuals, thoroughly subjected to standardizing influences, seem virtually to become more and more similar to each other. In the second place, the statement, »subjective phenomenon« itself, ought to be much more clearly differentiated. However outdated the old Lockian distinction between primary and secondary qualities may be, from the viewpoint of the consistent abolition of the idea of things in themselves, which are still the basis of Locke’s concept of primary qualities, his classification of qualities contributes something important to our knowledge of the phenomenon itself – without any regard for »things behind it«. In our own immediate, phenomenal experience we seem to be largely aware of the difference between »we« qualities and »it« qualities. The musician, for example, who rehearses a work and is busy controlling and possibly altering a sound phenomenon and not any »thing« behind it, is fully aware of the difference between the quasi-objective qualities of this phenomenon (however much it may be »subjective« compared with an »objective« thing) and elements purely subjective in the somewhat different sense of being conditioned by his own individuality and the contingencies of his own individual listening. This sounds rather involved but it is comparatively easy for an elementary example to make it clear, although the real issues are on a much more differentiated level. Let us take a musician in a string quartet who is studying a new work. By some accident he is placed next to the cellist. At one moment he may notice two things: that one of the parts sounds somewhat out of tune (he may not even know exactly where and what it is, at first) and the cello sounds loud, out of proportion to the whole. He probably will correct the playing out of tune because he is aware that »his« sound phenomenon of being too loud has a strong and objective validity. He may refrain, however, from asking the cellist to play more softly because he realizes that the cello’s apparent loudness is due to the observer’s closeness to it; whereas in the concert hall the music may appear in its proper proportions. The differentiation of »subjective« and »objective« within the phenomenon which itself is »subjective« in a wider sense, is not related to such primitive sensual data as »too strong« and »out of tune« but is most likely to reproduce itself whenever higher intellectual differentiations of the phrasing, the expression, the sense or the meaning of the music are at stake. Throughout our apperception of music we immediately differentiate between »subjective« and »objective« characteristics within the realm of our subjective phenomenon. In the long run, this phenomenal discrimination between subjective and objective within the phenomenal field, of course, damages the trite division into »subjective« and »objective«. Here, however, we are not concerned with these much farther-reaching epistemological consequences, but simply state our method. Our description must stick to immediate radio phenomena as the »material« of the listener’s reactions; but it must also try to elaborate the »objective« characteristics of these elements, as they present themselves as »objective«, and to drop those which again are characterized phenomenally as related to specific individual differences.
Because we consider this objectivity a phenomenal character and not a result of discursive thinking we cannot give any abstract »criteria« for what is objective and what is subjective in the radio phenomenon. Selecting the elements of »phenomenal objectivity« which we have in mind becomes a matter of exactitude of description. On the other hand, we must acknowledge that even if the exactitude of description can be achieved it is not sufficient protection against the arbitrariness we hinted at. It will be necessary to find out if other people have arrived at the same objective characteristics of the phenomenon which we mentioned. The results of a physiognomics study are necessarily subject to quantitative verifications. This verification, however, must presuppose as careful a phenomenal description as possible. The description may uncover elements inherent in the phenomenon which an untrained respondent can notice only with difficulty even though he experiences them. Only if our description can, so to speak, »locate« them and help to determine why people are not consciously aware of them even though they »have« these »objective« characteristics, shall we be able to develop control methods for ascertaining them.
We consider the lack of symphonic intensity in the above-discussed sense one of these objective characteristics of the phenomenal »radio voice«. Just here the objection will be raised that this lack of intensity will not be noticed by a listener who has never heard a symphony or even who might have heard a few but still knows nothing about symphonic treatment and the specifically Beethovenian style. And we might even be sued for projecting some of our expert prejudices into the experience of the man on the street. But this is not the point. At the present moment we are not interested in what people know or do not know about music; nor are we interested in how much of the music and its implications they are able to grasp individually. Our assertion is only this: the »phenomenon itself« – a phenomenon which within sufficiently wide margins we can suppose to be »objective« and the same phenomenon to both the expert and the man on the street – cannot convey features which we characterized in our analysis of a Beethoven symphony as the components of »symphonic intensity«. We do not say that the radio listener loses something of which he was never even aware.We only say that the phenomenon does not even give him a chance to grasp this »something«.
This discussion of the »objectivity« and »subjectivity« of our physiognomic attempt enables us to return to the question of what really constitutes its physiognomic character. The »objective« element within the subjective phenomenon of the subject matter of radio physiognomics is the expression of the »radio voice«. Its objectivity has a deeper meaning. In the example of the man playing with the string quartet, we may say that the objectivity of the phenomenal characteristics of playing out of tune can also be stated in truly objective terms, entirely independent of the individual observer. This could not be done, however, in the case of the cello appearing too loud. A cause for the out-of-tune-ness could be given within the sphere of objective things: it can be traced back to the violinist’s failure to put his finger on the right place on the sounding board. In a similar sense the »expression« or meaning of the »radio voice« is objective insofar as within the strict limits of the phenomenon it points to the processes and forces which are going on behind the phenomenon. Here lies the justification for calling ours a physiognomic approach. A physiognomist tries to establish typical features and expressions of the face not for their own sake but in order to use them as hints for hidden processes behind them as well as for hints at future behavior to be expected on the basis of an analysis of the present expression. In just the same way radio physiognomics deals with the expression of the »radio voice«. This relation, at the same time, sets the limits to the physiognomic approach. In the last analysis its scientific value entirely depends upon whether we shall be able to resolve the rebuses of the expression of the »radio voice« into the moving forces behind it and the consequences before it. Thus our study is preliminary in a radical sense. Radio physiognomics marks only a crossroad; the point at which, within the phenomenon, the past, namely the causes of the phenomenon, and the future, namely its prospective consequences, intersect.
How must we understand the »expression« of the »radio voice« as an index? Let us return to our examples of adapting the radio sound to the private room and subjecting the symphony to the conditions of that adaptation. We mentioned the harshness of the unadapted strength of the voice heard through a loudspeaker. This harshness as a mere expression hints quite irrationally at a sort of authority behind the phenomenon. One imagines a person recklessly addressing the individual; this person appears to be very much concerned with the listener insofar as he derogatorily demands his attention. At the same time, though, he appears not to be at all concerned with the listener but to show him, by the disproportion between his huge radio voice and the listener’s tiny voice how unimportant the latter is compared with the power which addresses him. Now this expression, in a way, is certainly an illusion. The real owner of the terrific voice may be quite a humble person. In the studio he may even speak quite normally, while the overemphasis is caused only by amplification. But is the expression of harshness which we attribute to the phenomenon, therefore, just futile and disconnected from radio as a whole? Or does it actually »express« something fundamental about radio itself, namely that a private person in a private room is privately addressed by a public voice to which he is forced to subordinate himself?
Even if we discount the presupposition of the cause, an authoritarian voice, and its effect, frightening the individual, as a reality behind radio, still the structure of the radio phenomenon works as if that relation existed, and makes it a sort of living force. When a private person in a private room is subjected to a public utility mediated by a loudspeaker, his response takes on aspects of a response to an authoritarian voice even if the content of that voice or the speaker to whom the individual is listening has no authoritarian features whatsoever. Either the public voice gains an overwhelming strength over the individual, or just in order to bear the public voice the individual must alter it, as we sketched in the case of the radio symphony. In radio the configuration of public tool and isolated individual promotes serious obstacles to the older type of individual art consumption, clearly witnessed in the case of the symphony heard in the private room.
These obstacles and the illusion of such individual art consumption which radio maintains can be equally understood. When radio comes into these conflicts with the conditions of a private room, why, then, does it address individuals in a private room? Why do we not find new forms of listening to music in large rooms and under conditions better suited to the material? The answer is necessarily complex. First, as paradoxical as it sounds, the authority of radio becomes greater the more it addresses the listener in his privacy. An organized mass of listeners might feel their own strength and even rise to a sort of opposition. The isolated listener definitely feels overwhelmed by the might of the personal voice of an anonymous organization. Second, the deeper this voice is involved within his own privacy, the more it appears to pour out of the cells of his most intimate life; the more he gets the impression that his own cupboard, his own phonograph, his own bedroom speaks to him in a personal way, devoid of the intermediary stages of the printed word; the more perfectly he is ready to accept wholesale whatever he hears. It is just this privacy which fosters the authority of the radio voice and helps to hide it by making it no longer appear to come from outside. Here are the deeper social reasons for the difficulties we described in musical terms when we discussed our example of the symphony. Radio upholds the illusion of privacy and individual independence in a situation where such privacy and independence do not really exist, which contradicts it. It is evident, however, that this illusion of privacy, immediacy in facing public events, and individual liberty in choosing them, is by no means limited to radio and runs through our entire public life. As people are subjected more and more to public mechanisms of every kind, and as the pressure of these mechanisms upon the individual increases, it is evident that these mechanisms must try all the more to conceal themselves behind a façade of the individual’s adaptability, privacy and intimacy, just for the sake of not frightening him so badly that the effect tilts over to the contrary and the individual no longer attempts to escape the inescapable.19 Here, again, the physiognomics of the »radio voice« fits completely the experience of how modern mass society works in other fields. The cult of the »original« which we have already mentioned is closely bound to the artificial survival of individual categories in the monopolistic era. We refer here to Veblen’s theory of art and the leisure class, where the desire to possess an »individual«, non-manufactured, non-standardized object as a motive of social prestige plays so vast a role.20 This idea affects not only listening conditions, but also the idea of the »object« received under such conditions. Radio’s tendency to imitate live performances, reinforced by practices such as broadcasting applause, describing the concert hall and the audience, or the auditorium where the work is played, could be described as an attempt at pseudo-democratization of aristocratic or, at any rate, ruling class aspects of art, thus changing each listener, no matter how economically and psychologically weak he may be, into a smart, pleasure-taking person sitting in a seat reserved for the happy few. This tendency to make believe that the majority is in the situation of the privileged minority can again be witnessed in much broader fields. The decisive point is that today the technical structure of the »radio voice« makes objects which fall under the category of mass products, appear, by the very nature of their distribution, to be »original« and »owned« by the individual who hears them. This again is in line with other phenomena which cannot escape the attention of the sociologist of art. We refer to the fashion of artsy-craftsy things (Kunstgewerbe) which plays so vast a role in Germany. The basic trend in this type of production appears to be handling cheap and mass produced material and, by means of individual »taste«, making it appear to mean something in itself, to have the value of something »original« (Eigenkleidung). Even its cheapness becomes transfigured into a sort of noble and ascetic simplicity (schlicht). This last tendency has not yet been developed by radio, but its aspect of offering the mass product as something homely, unadorned and genuine is definitely »artsy-craftsy«. The »personal« attitude of some radio commentators, and especially radio advisers in private affairs like Martha Deane,21 may even be related to this tendency. Here again, however, the limits of the physiognomic approach are transcended and the material questions of program-analysis are involved. But we reach the following methodological conclusion.
Even if it is impossible for the characteristics of the »radio voice« which we discussed to be traced back to immediate social causes, and even if they appear to be due to radio’s specific technical structure without regard for its social function, we may still say that this »technical structure« in itself contains social facts and fits into social aspects. We gave two examples: the ideal of imitating live music and the ideal of maintaining the privacy of a public experience. These two examples reflect inherent elements of present-day society, as we tried to point out, although a physiognomic study could not provide all the necessary links between these social tendencies and their results in radio. But a physiognomic attempt may negatively phrase the social implications of these examples in radio; if radio gives up these two »ideals« some of the technical characteristics which we considered most problematic would be dropped. That this cannot be done as easily as it might be recommended as an improvement in a theoretical discussion is again a social fact and now a very clear and drastic one. Every attempt now made to liquidate the »live« work in radio, or the comfortable privacy of reception, appears doomed to failure for the sake of what is called the »wish of the majority« which the tool must serve. A perusal of a publicity release of any major network will show that the greatest positive emphasis is placed upon those very features which we regarded as the strongest enemies to radio functioning suitably for its material and its bringing the listener into a living relation with the material.g The man who believes that the commentator shouting through his loudspeaker is a virtual dictator is wrong; but the fact that he »sounds like a dictator« is certainly due to conditions which do not allow any voice to be broadcast so that it might fundamentally touch upon the public speaker’s illusion of privacy. Thus, in a way, the naïve listener who becomes afraid of the voice of the commentator is right: the social mechanism behind the technical one leading to these disproportions is necessarily one which he has every reason to fear, and it may easily be one which breeds dictators who really shout just as the voice of the humble commentator sounds in a private room.
We pointed to the features which make our study of phenomenal expression an indicator for social forces behind it and social prospects ahead of it. The last discussion may have given an idea of the type of »hidden forces and prospects« we have in mind. At the same time, these considerations now allow us to clear up the question of how our physiognomics differs from the traditional physiognomics mentioned at the beginning of this study. This difference, of course, goes much further than the obvious fact that the physiognomics of the »radio voice« does not deal with live expressions and live individuals. From the methodological viewpoint it may be stated as follows: older physiognomics was undertaken and regarded as an intuitive science of its own. Our attempt is nothing of that sort. It is only a description of phenomena assembled at a crossing point with the aim of showing the unity of aspects scientifically so different from each other as are the psychological, technological and sociological sciences. It is not the ambition of radio physiognomics to replace these scientific approaches by a »vision« of the totality. Physiognomics intends only to define more correctly the inherent features of radio phenomena and to elaborate within these features certain relations which deserve as much attention for further analysis as radio’s isolated scientific problems. We spoke of the »radio voice«. We described it as a phenomenon whose realm is not to be transcended except by an interpretation of what is given within its proper limits. Here we met psychological features; for instance, the problem of the individual’s concentration or deconcentration, the problem of the individual becoming afraid, the problem of »sensual« or »constructive« response to symphonic music. Then we discovered technological features, such as radio’s alteration of live sound, the unsuitability of a strong »radio voice« for a private room, a weak »radio voice« for a symphony, etc. Finally we hinted at the social implications of these features, such as why the illusion of individual appearance is upheld throughout the field of radio, or why radio tries to imitate a live sound instead of producing a sound of its own. All these considerations can be, and have to be pursued for themselves. As far as we can see, however, it is only by means of radio physiognomics that we can ever become aware of the way they are concretely connected instead of reconstructing their unity in a totally abstract way after having sectioned it into the disciplines traditionally used for handling them. It is this intention to connect scientific processes of different levels with the phenomenon from which they are abstracted which finally guides our physiognomic endeavors.We may confess here that the axiom which governs all these attempts is our conviction that the unity of the radio phenomenon, in itself, as far as it really has the structure of a unity, is simply the unity of society which determines all the individual and apparently accidental features. In our approach we try to combine sociological, psychological and technological aspects because we believe that they are only »aspects« of our society and, in the last analysis, that they may be reduced to fundamental categories of our society.
The basic characteristic of the relation between radio and time is the time-coincidence of the »phenomenon« to which we are listening and the broadcast performance. This time difference is so infinitesimal that it may safely be overlooked. This can lead to astonishing results which may influence the »expression« of the »radio voice« by giving it a touch of unreality and witchcraft. This will occupy our attention later as one of the essentials of that voice. The author knows of the following fact from his own German experience. In Kronberg, a country place not far from Frankfurt am Main where he often stayed with friends, he had the opportunity of listening to a nightingale which sang very beautifully in the garden. This nightingale was discovered by the Frankfurt Radio Station, and the author and his friends managed to listen to it over the radio when the windows were open. The result was that we were able to hear the radio nightingale a bit earlier than we could hear the real voice because sound takes longer to reach the ear ordinarily through space than by electrical waves. The real nightingale sounded like an echo of the broadcast one. Thus the »radio voice« creates a strong feeling of immediate presence. It may make the radio event appear even more present than the live event. This feeling of presence necessarily means a feeling of immediacy, too. There is no gap and no mediation between the time something is going on and the time at which you are listening to it. When we face a radio phenomenon we are actually »present« in that our own presence in time is no different from that of witnesses to the broadcast event. Because of this immediacy, this experience of being present in time, radio always tends to make us forget that it gives us in other respects a mediated phenomenon. Therefore the element of time-coincidence must be kept evident as one of the basic features of the »radio voice« from the very beginning.
It is because of this identity in time that radio strongly resembles telephone and differs strongly from the phonograph. It may be pointed out here that one of the main temptations for radio to imitate live events can be found in this coincidence. Radio, as a means of dispersion, presents any real event without, so to speak, taking the event out of time. It does not »thingify« it – at any rate it does not appear to do so to a superficial observer. The illusion of immediacy and spontaneity we mentioned in Part Ih is based upon the fact that this immediacy actually exists in time proportions. Further, the fact that radio is free of objectivated or »canned« material, in the crude sense of the phonograph record, gives a much greater mobility to the tool, and this mobility enforces the illusion of immediacy and presence. For instance, there are no narrow time limits as there are with phonograph records. One can listen to a whole Bruckner symphony without interruption. In listening to a recorded symphony the interruptions always remind the listener of the separation between the record and the live performance and destroy the musical continuum, notwithstanding the fact that in a deeper sense the »radio voice«, too, »breaks the music into bits«.i Again, the mobility of radio allows it to broadcast accidental elements of a performance such as noises of tuning, applause when the conductor appears, conversation of the audience and the sudden silence with the conductor’s appearance, applause when the curtain goes down, etc. The elimination of these accidental features helps to make a phonograph objective and »beyond time«. The more faithfully they are reproduced and the more emphasis given them by the handling of the programs, the more does the listener feel as if he were within immediate, spontaneous life wherein the essential and accidental are separated without any attempt being made to raise them to an »objective« level above the listener’s consciousness of the »current of life«. However, from the outset we must be conscious that live qualities of radio are due only to the factor of time-coincidence and the absence of the necessity to fixate the sound, independent of time. The sound itself, however, will show characteristics more akin to the sound of the phonograph. In the categorical structure of the phenomenon we can already find the root of problems which later become decisively important for the radio phenomenon and its effect, namely that it appears to be a live phenomenon, whereas actually it is very much different from the live event to which it is connected by the abstract element of time-coincidence. The time-coincidence and the swiftness by which radio can chase events in time brings the listener into closest possible touch with what he listens to: in other respects, namely in terms of space and specific sound qualities, the »radio voice« keeps him far distant from the very same events.
This element of time-coincidence is basically important because it provokes the feeling of immediately »being together with« against all the tendencies of objectivation and reification which also characterize the phenomenon. We shall have to prove more exactly what we already hinted at in Part I – namely, that we regard the elements of reification as essential, and the feeling of »being face to face with« as only superficial. But when reflecting upon time-coincidence, we shall have to admit anyhow that this feeling of »being face to face with« has its reasons within the fundamental structure of radio, even as do the opposite trends. If, finally, this immediacy, this feeling of »being face to face« finally must be discounted, it will have to be done for social reasons and not for technological ones. These reasons, of course, will have to be studied again in terms of the phenomenon.We may discover that the feeling of »being face to face« gains its illusionary character as soon as the radio phenomenon uses the time coincidence as a means of attempting to bridge the gulf in space, and of suggesting a presence in space as well; whereas as soon as suggestions for future handling of radio come into play, just this element of time coincidence may be useful. It then may help legitimately to break down some of the barriers of reification which we find so strongly developed in other spheres of radio. There are certain occasions, like the broadcast of political meetings, where the situation of the radio listener does not differ in function from the situation of those who listen to the live event. In such cases time-coincidence suits the meaning of the occasion. Here people are really present – as long as radio does not want to have them make believe that they are present at the place where the event occurs. The virtual antagonism between radio’s reification or alienation and its immediacy also affects the »radio voice’s« mobility. This can easily be clarified by a comparison between radio and phonograph. The difference is evident. Although a phonograph record is recorded at a special time and a special place, it is no longer bound to this special time and place. Radio can chase live events with greater mobility than the phonograph, but its mobility is limited by the uniqueness of the live event. Phonograph recording takes place under different conditions, and you cannot chase the live events by phonograph in the sense of reportage. But the mobility of the results – that is, of the record – is greater than the mobility of the result of radio broadcasting – that is, of the phenomenon which comes out of the loudspeaker. You are rigidly bound to the very moment of the event or performance by the very closeness of the »radio voice« to the »now« of the broadcast performance. This leads to severe limitations which do not apply to the phonograph record. Although you can listen to the radio virtually everywhere in space, you can’t do it in principle everywhere in time. You remain the slave of the very immediacy of radio – of the time- coincidence of the performance.
This, again, has certain implications for the structure of the phenomenon. You are bound to a specific time. You can listen to things that you are interested in only at the time that they are offered to you and not when you would choose to listen to them. When you have only your free time to listen to music you cannot listen to whatever you like as you may do when you, yourself, play, or choose something out of a vast repertoire of records. You have to adapt yourself to the comparatively small range of the dial of your set at a specific hour. All these conditions a priori subject you much more to the will and the power behind the instrument than when you are listening to the phonograph. It may be expressed more generally: while radio is more mobile than the phonograph in its connection with immediate life, closeness to real events – musical or non-musical – you are less mobile in that you must keep pace with the tool itself. The new tool, by its closeness to life, may be more »dynamic« than the older form of technical reproduction. The radio listener becomes less mobile than the phonograph listener, though, because he must fit more strictly within the events which radio presents to him.
Of course we must mention here that both tools – radio and phonograph – cannot be totally opposed. Not only are both steps in the mechanization of musical production. They are often both combined not merely as far as the sets are concerned, but also as far as the actual performance is concerned. There are a good many recorded performances over the radio, and one of the stations most conspicuous for its discriminating musical programs relies almost entirely on broadcasting records.23 This mixture, however, does not fundamentally alter the structure of the phenomenon. That is, the broadcasting of a record fundamentally remains a radio phenomenon and not a phonograph phenomenon as far as the time factor is concerned. If the record is broadcast you can listen to it only at the moment it is broadcast. It has lost its mobility in time and, on the other hand, you will have much more of the impression of witnessing an immediate musical event than you have when listening to a phonograph, whereas when you hear a non-broadcast phonograph record, you will recognize the phonograph sound at once.j For this, of course, not only the time factor is responsible, but mainly the fact that technical acoustic conditions of radio may make good some of the shortcomings of a phonograph record. In particular, you do not hear the scratching of the needle over the radio, although you do hear it when you play the phonograph in your room.
The broadcasting of records appears to be a gain for the quality of the record. At the same time, it appears to be a gain for radio, too. The former director of the Berlin Radio Station, Dr. Hans Flesch,24 pursued the policy of broadcasting records only – records not brought out by the phonograph industry and not available to the public, but made especially by order of the broadcasting company and available to the company only. There followed a long discussion about this procedure, and Dr. Flesch was assailed especially for his »mechanizing« radio by broadcasting only records, and for breaking the spell of immediacy which we have mentioned as one of the inherent consequences of time-coincidence. The new regime in Germany has abolished his practice partly in order to create work for the unemployed whose interests they considered damaged by a stock of fixed performances on which radio could live for a considerable time.
It is not up to us to criticize the social implications of an action which conserves more primitive forms of labor at the expense of more highly developed ones, thus chaining productive powers. But we feel justified in discussing the problem of radio performances of records, in itself, and we feel strongly inclined to defend Dr. Flesch’s procedure. The incomparably higher number of listeners and the higher degree of musical validity necessarily attributed to any radio performance because the listener emancipates himself from being bound to a special place and occasion and feels the right to listen to the »music itself«, appears to us to be sufficient reason for freeing radio performances as much as possible from the contingencies of live performances. This purpose is well served by broadcasting records, if these records are well-planned and well-controlled. The broadcaster, then, does not have to be content with what is given by the artist at the moment he plays. He does not have to take into consideration the disposition of the artist at that moment. And the artist himself is free of these contingencies as well. He may record his performance as long as he has achieved the most nearly perfect one, or he may just record it several times and then select the best from all the records. Or he may use the results of his previous records as a means of improvement till he reaches a definite version which he considers satisfactory. Finally, it would be possible in this procedure to define more rationally and more exactly the functions of the sound control engineer. At present the sound control is, to a great extent, independent of the performer. The sound engineer is a technician who controls the broadcast of the performance according to technical rather than purely musical categories. The conductor has no influence over the sound engineer while he conducts the performance. He is at his mercy. One need only imagine a conductor who, for some reason or other, pursues a policy of performing music with extreme and surprising sound effects, as much as possible, in order to make the texture of the work clearer, for instance. These effects would be tuned down by the sound engineer, probably; and this clearly illustrates the grave implications of his function at this point of radio production. The broadcasting of records could dispense with these complications very simply. The conductor of the original performance could rehearse the broadcasting of the record in the studio with the sound control engineer, and together they could determine how the sound must be »steered«. For all these reasons the quality could be considerably improved by broadcasting records.We think that this improvement would compensate for the so-called lack of immediacy, especially because a trained listener finds it very difficult to distinguish between a technically well-done broadcast of a technically well-done record and a broadcast of live music with all the contingencies of the occasion.
But there is still a deeper reason for recommending this procedure. We spoke about the »illusion« of immediacy created by the element of radio’s time-coincidence. Evidently the sponsors of the phonograph-radio method realized that this was an illusion, and they felt that somehow it is unsuitable to imitate the irrational factors of a performance, and even to foster them artificially with a rigid and entirely mechanical tool. They became aware of the fact that the immediacy of the phenomenon, upheld artificially, ceases to be immediate.k Thus they tried to develop a method of replacing this immediacy by an objectivity suitable to the tool. This attempt, again, bears witness to the basic antagonism within the »radio voice« – that of immediacy vs. objectivation. They decided in favor of objectivation by abolishing the pseudo-immediacy of using the time-coincidence to suggest space-coincidence and promoting the illusion of witnessing a live performance which, after all, is not really witnessed. Another way, the opposite, would be to replace the pseudo-immediacy by genuine immediacy. We shall have to discuss this possibility in the Music Study in its proper place. It is the problem of combining electrical musical instruments with radio. Both tendencies, as much as they appear to be opposed – the objectivation of radio phenomena by broadcast records and the breaking down of its reification by »playing on the radio« as electrical instruments suggest – coincide in one decisive element. They both want to liquidate the pseudo-immediacy – the mere appearance of being present with an original when faced with a reproduction – by a structure of the radio phenomenon which is no longer an illusionary one, but suitable for the event itself. From the opposite poles of progressive broadcasting we find tendencies which ultimately point in the same direction.
In its relation to time, radio seems to have much of the same structure as live music. It even appears to come closer to ordinary time experience than does recorded music. This thesis, by the way, must be modified in the light of some of the later characteristics of the »radio voice«. Its relation to space is fundamentally different from that of live music as well as from that of the phonograph. This relation may be formulated as follows: live music takes place at one particular time, at one largely specific locus. Phonograph records can appear at different loci, in principle at different times. The phonograph phenomenon in principle appears at different times; the radio phenomenon in principle appears at one time, but at different loci. The one phenomenon of the performance, because of the element of time-coincidence with the live musical performance making it still appear as the »one and original performance«, is scattered in space. The structural paradox involved here strongly resembles those discussed earlier in this study. Something which does not appear to be a »reproduction«, like a phonograph record, but an original – namely the performance – at the very moment of its being performed, nevertheless has the character of reproduction insofar as the uniqueness of the phenomenon ceases to exist and appears at the same time as »images« of it in innumerable places. This paradox again points to the core of radio phenomena. Something general and mechanically reproduced appears to be something individual and »original«. It is from this structure of the »space« of radio that its faculty of delivering the same material at the same time and to all places must start. As early as 1930 the German writer, Günther Stern, published an article called Spooks in Radio in which he treats the phenomenon of radio ubiquity. He starts with the assumption that music is, in principle, neutral to space. »Music is nowhere and everywhere it is heard; it transcends the ›here-itself‹ in spite of its ›here-ness‹, and never finds its unity in a limitation of space.«l He believes that as soon as music gains a more definite relation to space, its fundamental character is somewhat altered. He gives as the simplest example of the phenomenon that of a street organ which, »in spite of the space- neutrality of music, ›takes music for a walk‹, playing it now here in one locus, then there in another, thus leaving what it has already played like a trail of smoke behind it, and metaphorically, going to meet what still remains to be played, thus dragging the unity of the piece which should be neutral to space the whole length of the road.«m
Stern assumes that, »When the locus of music is stable, the space is contingent and ungiven. This space becomes articulate when the music moves and changes its locus.«n On the other hand, according to him, this precise localization of music is always inadequate because even under these conditions the real unity of music itself is by no means identical with the space-unity of sounds constituted by a continuous movement.
He considers this phenomenon a radical one in radio. According to him it completely destroys the space-neutrality of music. »When one leaves his house, the music of the loudspeaker still resounds in his ear. He is still in it – it is nowhere. One takes ten steps and the same music sounds from a neighbor’s house. Now, when there is music here as well, one finds music here and there, localized, rammed into place like two stakes. But, at the same time, ›here‹ it is the same music which was heard ›there‹. ›Here‹ Mr. X continues singing what he has started to sing ›there‹. One continues walking. At the third house X3 continues again, accompanied by X2, and very vaguely echoed by the cautious X of the first house.«o
Stern assumes that »shock« originates in this phenomenon. He sets as his task the explanation of this shock, and gives three reasons for it.
The ubiquity of music, in that it accentuates its being »here« and »there«. This »individualizes« music, in spite of the fact that the piece heard in three different places is always the same.
The possibility of a plurality and even numerability of »musics«. According to Mr. Stern, this is not due to music because each individual piece is a world in itself which does not suggest another musical world beyond itself and identical with it, but different because of its localization.
The »double« or second-self phenomenon. Each of these different »here-s« and »there-s« of the music pretends to be the piece itself which now, again, is »nowhere to the second power« because it could appear everywhere.p
Mr. Stern assumes that this »shock« in radio, founded upon its ubiquity, is closely related to a fear which always seizes men whenever technical tools become stronger than him and overpower him. We have already hinted at this in mentioning the »radio voice« creating the illusion of a voice of its own, independent of human activities which are actually behind it.
Mr. Stern’s sketch deserves careful discussion. On the one hand, it is open to criticism which may affect the ground of his interpretation. On the other hand, we think that some of his observations are well founded, and we shall have to try to bring them in line with our framework of radio physiognomics.
Objections must be directed primarily against the philosophy behind Stern’s sketch. At the time this article was written, he was still a follower of the »existential« philosophy of Heidegger. He tries to explain a phenomenon like radio, with all its social and historical implications, in terms of reactions of »the« man being an invariant, instead of trying to find the historical and social determinants of the phenomenon itself in the sense in which we tried to uncover them when we mentioned the social background of the disproportion between the public tool and its individual appearance. He undertook radio physiognomics as an anthropology of radio. He tried to deduce radio characteristics from the essence of man. In considering radio, however, it is not enough simply to be content with radio’s »being human«. He must also consider how it alienates itself from man. Of course, Mr. Stern, too, mentions this alienation in his sketch. But it makes all the difference if you subject radio to an anthropological approach with static categories within which the alienation appears as a mere variable; or if you speak of radio’s essence, its dynamic relation to our society, which we baptized preliminarily as its »contradiction between immediacy and reification«. While Stern sticks to the idea of existential invariants, he hypostatizes very specific historical insights as general and, so to speak, a priori characteristics of the »radio voice«. This applies especially to his theory of the »shock« of the »radio voice«. This shock, we think, vanishes – or at least recedes into the background – as soon as one becomes acquainted with the phenomenon which Mr. Stern discusses. No one will experience the continuance of one piece from different houses as a sort of ghost-like apparition any longer. The same thing takes place which seems to have taken place with the phenomenon of the double, or second-self. This, too, is handled by Mr. Stern as being fundamentally disquieting. The double, once a problem for Edgar Allan Poe and Heine, has long since become a trite, technical term in the film business. This warns us of one of the difficulties of radio physiognomics which we have not yet mentioned, but which we cannot evade.We must be careful not to generalize our physiognomic observations »in time«. That is, we must fully realize that they all have their historic indices and that whatever appears as a fundamental characteristic of the »radio voice« may disappear sooner or later. On the other hand, we must try to elaborate as carefully as possible these historic elements of the »radio voice« because they may be precisely the deciding ones for the actual constitution of the phenomenon which we are dealing with. In spite of all this, however, it would be superficial to dismiss Mr. Stern’s assertions about the haunting character of radio. We believe that they should be altered only insofar as they can no longer be treated as a priori factors, but as they constitute a sort of vague, unconscious fringe about the radio phenomenon which gives it a characteristic touch, but which is not evident in its immediate apperception. Still, it is possible that just by this unconsciousness of the »haunting characteristics« which Mr. Stern outlines, the power over the phenomenon in a certain dimension may be even greater than his article realizes. In Part I we gave the example of the child who believes that the loudspeaker speaks for itself. Something similar holds good for the present question. Now, certainly, all these imaginings have to be dropped as soon as there is a fuller understanding. This, however, Mr. Stern does not do. Just as the illusion of the »radio voice« disappears when we consider the radio machine, the shock described by Mr. Stern disappears as soon as one becomes fully conscious of the structure of radio, mentioned at the beginning of this sketch. It is this structure which allows it at a given moment to disperse the same piece of music over innumerable loci. But we may take it for granted that this consciousness exists only for comparatively few persons, and comparatively seldom. This problem, by the way, will bother us especially when we deal with suggestions for empirical research in radio physiognomics. And we may uphold the hypothesis that whenever the listener assumes an attitude to radio which is not fully rational, and moreover whenever he does not keep all the technical implications of radio in evidence, when he listens to radio, some of the shock elements mentioned by Mr. Stern may still hold good.
This, however, needs a further reservation which springs from another insufficiency of Mr. Stern’s thesis. It is the thesis of the spacelessness of music. His theory is based upon a threefold assumption. First, that music is normally (as live music) entirely spaceless in that we do not relate the sound which we hear to any specific locus. (This should not be confused with the fact that music is always necessarily produced at a special locus.) Second, it gains a sort of relation to space as soon as it is »taken for a walk through space«;q and third, finally, this relation to space is again destroyed by the ubiquity of radio. We think that this assumption does not do justice to the phenomena which are to be described, and a criticism of it may help to clarify the concept of radio ubiquity. Mr. Stern is right about the neutrality of music to space insofar as the unity of music and its properly musical constitution is in question. It may be assumed that, in a way, music has its own space. One can speak of musical »dimensions« and even of musical »perspective« as something clearly noticeable by any keen listener. This is more than purely metaphorical but is by no means identical with empirical space, and certainly different from music’s relation to the place where it is executed and heard.r But this space cannot be entirely severed from our experience of external space. The following example may help to clarify this, although we know that these problems are so deeply involved that it will not be easy for a non-musician to understand what is meant, especially since these problems have not been dealt with even in music theory.
Let us take an orchestral score of the mature Wagner, for instance, Die Meistersinger. In this score the horn plays an outstanding role for several different reasons. One of them is the sound quality of the horn in the piano. This makes it possible to give tones and even leading melodies to that instrument which do not sound quite »present«. They are not, so to speak, on the surface of the musical space, but somewhere deeper in this space.s At the same time, the main voices have »something not quite here«. Of course, few listeners will be conscious of this effect and of the means of achieving it. Nevertheless, the music is most likely to impress them that way. Now, certainly, it would be fallacious to assume that an immediate relation between this effect and empirical space exists. The horn is no further distant in empirical space than, for example, the violins which seem to be more »here«. But this phenomenon, very characteristic of musical perspective and, by the way, one which is hardest for radio to realize, certainly would never occur unless the specific expression of the horn sound, its »calling«, would necessarily provoke the consciousness of a space which is penetrated by the horn call. And this space, which the horn sound recalls, is certainly the empirical space. When this calling expression sounds piano it sounds as if it were »coming from a distance« and in this indirect way, by the specific expression of an instrument, empirical space is introduced into musical space where it is contained in a sublimated form. Most probably, if all the phenomena of musical space were analyzed with proper thoroughness, it could be found that these phenomena are related to outside space by means of musical »expression«. This outside space is, so to speak, left as a sediment within the interiorized musical space, just as the most interiorized psychology is necessarily related to the external reality and can be expressed only in terms of this reality. It is this relation which is particularly neglected by Mr. Stern’s approach. Even in a more primitive sense musical space is not so independent of the normal and empirical space as Stern and also Kurth appear to believe. Even if the proper musical dimensions of a work are not related as such to empirical space, they still fall within it in that every musical phenomenon takes place within certain limits where it can be heard.
As trivial as this objection is, it must be remembered in contrast to Mr. Stern’s tendency to make music an island separate from our empirical life by stressing the autonomous elements of music. He loosens the ties between music and the concrete world and transfigures music into a sort of absoluteness which makes it sublime and fetishistic at the same time. Here, however, we are concerned not so much with this consequence of his theory about the space-neutrality of music.We just want to maintain, as a result of our previous discussion, the fact that in principle the relation to empirical space, in the case of a moving street organ or a piece of music moving from one loudspeaker in one house to another loudspeaker in the next, is by no means more closely associated with space than any other music phenomenon in the sphere of live music. This can be ascertained also by a good many examples where the two »loci« of music – its own »space« (in the purely psychological sense developed by Professor Kurth) and empirical »space« – collide, and where this collision even creates certain shocks. We refer to the odd, haunting expression of an opera heard by a latecomer in the lobby of an opera house; or to the feeling retailed to the listener who comes from the auditorium of the opera to the lobby that he is still in the music-space. This leads to the inference that the shock which Mr. Stern describes is due not so much to the scattering of music in space and to complications of the relation of music-space and empirical space which were certainly known in pre-radio days, but to other characteristics of radio which will have to be investigated.
Mr. Stern’s assumption that music is spaceless and noticed in terms of space only on exceptional occasions like the street-organ case, or walking through the street where the same music pours out of the windows of different houses, would imply that radio in a private room, anyhow, is spaceless.We have already had to correct this thesis of spacelessness, entirely. Now we must go beyond that as far as the »radio voice« is concerned. Is it true that radio music in a room has the character of »here-ness« which, under certain given and normal conditions, live music has? Does the »radio voice« really sound as if it is »here«? A man with musically well-trained ears, who is walking along outside a restaurant and hearing music inside, will almost always be able to determine whether this music is really being played in the restaurant or if it is being transmitted by radio. Of course, this partly depends on the specific modifications of sound which any music undergoes by radio. And it would be impossible to sever our present observations from these modifications. But we believe that the so-called spacelessness of music is affected also by these modifications. Even if the transmission is very good, radio music always seems to be an echo of music coming from a distant place. The space-distance between the room in which a person is listening and the room wherein the broadcast is taking place has not been altogether bridged by radio. It will be rather hard to give the exact technological reasons for this, and we cannot exclude the possibility that in a way it is illusionary – that is, the echo character of radio music which appears to be the resounding of distant music is actually not due to the space-distance but to the specific conditions of the loudspeaker which are responsible for the echo-like hollowness and resounding of the radio voice. At any rate, this feeling is so strong that every radio phenomenon obtains a new and very specific space relation, namely that it is not actually here, that it comes from somewhere else. And this is not due to our knowledge of the technical tool, but to the immediate sound of the phenomenon.t Thus Mr. Stern is quite right in seeing radio music related to space in a new sense. He is mistaken only in that he attributes this quality solely to the sequence of music at two different loci, whereas it actually affects the radio phenomenon in its most elementary form – within the private room.
We have had to discount a great many of Mr. Stern’s assertions, such as the anthropological character of the radio shock, the difference between a space-neutral live music and a nonspace-neutral music that again, finally, becomes – by its ubiquity – again space-neutral radio music, etc. What is left of his theory may help us to establish a better understanding of ubiquity in radio. We believe that two of his »reasons« for the shock are to be dealt with here: namely first, his observations about the »plurality or numerability of musics«, closely associated with the structure of its mechanical reproduction, which he regards as unfit for music – and, second, his observation that this plurality comes into conflict with the claim of each reproduction to be the »thing itself«. To clarify further this discussion, we refer to a theory developed by Walter Benjamin.u Benjamin treats the difference between the uniqueness and reproducibility of the work of art from the point of view of a fundamental historical change – terms which can enlighten Stern’s last two points and which can help to understand the shock he mentions no longer in »existential« concepts, but in social and historical ones.
We are giving some of the basic ideas of Benjamin’s essay so that we can employ them in a discussion of the problem we tried to condense from Stern’s essay. Benjamin holds that up to the era of mechanical reproduction (which he studies particularly in the field of motion pictures) one of the essentials of the work of art was its »hic et nunc« – its here and now – its existence unique to the locus at which it can be found. The »authenticity« of the work of art is based upon this »here and now« character, and the elements which make for its authenticity strictly deny any sort of reproduction, not only mechanical. »Only the original sustains its authority and the ›aura‹ of the work of art is only the way this authenticity is expressed in the phenomenon of the artwork.«28 Benjamin traces the uniqueness of the artwork back to its ritual function in former ages. That is, he deduces it from the veneration of a special artwork at a special locus, supposed to represent superhuman powers only in its original form, as a symbol that is not interchangeable with other figures at different places without affecting the metaphysical substance attributed to it by its worshippers. The destruction of this ritual nature of the artwork, the vanishing of its »aura« and its becoming reproducible are, for Benjamin, equivalent terms. In moving pictures he finds elements of a radically new, non-auratic art which is determined even within the process of its very production by the basic idea of its reproducibility. Its »cult value« is being replaced by its »exposition value«.29
Now it is obvious that this theory cannot be directly applied to music because there is no conceivable music, except perhaps improvisations and they do not count, which is not based upon the idea of reproducibility.v Reproducibility, itself, cannot be considered an element of basic change, which accounts for our observations about the ubiquity of the »radio voice«. Here, however, we must be careful. It is true that we cannot say that in music the »original« is more authentic than its reproduction because it actually exists only in being reproduced. Every score is, in a way, only a system of prescriptions for possible reproduction, and nothing »in itself«. We may add here that the epistemological justification for our speaking about changes »within« the artwork (for instance, the decomposition of »the symphony« or »the opera«) can be found here. If these prescriptions for possible reproduction fundamentally relate the work to its reproduction, basic changes within the reading of these prescriptions also affect the work itself because the work is not independent of them and their relation to a possible interpretation. However, we must acknowledge that in music something very closely akin to Benjamin’s observation can be found. The authenticity which Benjamin attributes in the visual arts to the original must be attributed to live reproduction in music. This live reproduction has its »here« – either the concert room or the opera – and its »now« – the very moment it is executed. And what Benjamin calls the »aura« of the original certainly constitutes an essential part of the live reproduction. It is exactly this aura which leads people to be eager to attend a live performance even if they cannot follow the music as well from their cheap seats as they could have followed it in front of their radio sets. It is this aura which is reflected in all the talk about the fascinating conductor, the cult of the virtuoso, and all the well known »irrational« features of people’s reactions to live music. Even the characteristics of symphony, discussed in Part I, are largely due to the aura or authenticity of the live performance.w
Now, we believe that this authenticity, or aura, is vanishing in music because of mechanical reproduction. The phonograph record destroys the »now« of the live performance and, in a way, its »here« as well. Although the ubiquity of radio observes the »now«, it certainly is more hostile to the »here«.
It appears to us that these observations are implicit in Stern’s thesis of the »plurality and numerability of musics« and the contradiction in the claim of the duplication of the piece to be the »piece itself«. In radio the authentic original has ceased to exist and, as a category, it has fallen behind the actual state of technical development. The shock which Mr. Stern describes, however, is nothing but the collision between the innate tendency of mechanical reproduction to abolish the »thing itself« in its originality and authenticity, and the claim still surviving and artificially fostered, that one is facing that original. The claim to be the »thing itself« is not, as Mr. Stern appears to hold, the claim of radio. It is a claim which comes from the listener and which is nourished also by the way radio functions under present conditions. But the shock – that is, the basic conflict – will cease to exist as soon as radio has learned to emancipate itself from the idea of originality which it denounces at every step. This appears to us to be the real theoretical explanation for our preliminary remarks on originality in Part I. In radio the authentic original has ceased to exist. The present standard of technical development has surpassed the category of the original. However, the illusion of the original is maintained by present-day radio.x But we must briefly re-examine Mr. Stern’s theory in the light of this explanation. He speaks of the »plurality and even numerability of musics which are really not due to music«. This »not being due« to music, then, refers only to the idea of the original in the sense of the live performance. Only relative to that concept is the plurality contradictory and shocking. If, however, the concept of uniqueness is abolished, not only will this shock no longer survive, but also the entire feeling of plurality will collapse. The disquieting factor lies only in a plurality of uniquenesses. Without uniqueness the plurality will no longer be felt because divergent claims of different »here’s« will not exist. Stern’s thesis that plurality is not due to music is a hypostasis of the auratic character of music, incompatible with its mechanical reproduction. Radio music is haunting in the sense of a double only when it makes its fictitious claim to be unique, to be »here and now« which, at the same time, is disclaimed by technical reproduction. In this historical context, and not as anthropological or existential insights, Mr. Stern’s remarks become understandable. If the haunting character of radio really does still exist, it is nothing but the futility of the impression of uniqueness or individual expression still maintained by radio in its present form. The haunting factor in radio is not the newness of the mechanical tool, or the overpowering of man by the machine. It is only the remnants of the pre-technical concept of authenticity haunting an art technique basically opposed to it. When these remnants are driven out, the »spook« in radio will be finished.
So far, we have discussed the destruction of the older character of uniqueness of the work of art by mechanical reproduction in terms of space alone. We must add, however, that in a more indirect sense this destructive tendency holds good beyond the concept of space. Here is an example which, although it does not belong to physiognomics, certainly influences radio’s physiognomic expression. It is the repetition of standard works. By being repeated again and again some of them, for instance the Beethoven symphonies which we mentioned in Part I, not only lose their »here« but also their »now«. Even if they used to be repeated at certain specific intervals, the quasi-ritual dignity attributed to them as long as they appeared at one particular hour vanishes. Now, when they are played again and again, they can no longer uphold the dignity of the occasion. They are losing their aura because they no longer keep their distance from the listeners. They show, instead, a tendency to mingle in his every day life because they can appear at practically every moment, and because he can accompany brushing his teeth with the Allegretto of the Seventh. If this means the loss of authenticity in our sense of the term, this can also mean an increase of authenticity in another sense, just as the authority of an advertisement increases when it is repeated again and again. The more often you hear the Seventh Symphony, the less, probably, will you cease to discuss it. The exposition value which Benjamin sees increasing against the cult value of a particular work, and which is closely akin to the fatality of plugged music, appears to us to be even more authoritarian than the former. Here the theory of the aura becomes involved in difficulties which cannot be hidden for the very simple reason that they are not difficulties of an antagonistic theory, but are created by contradictions in reality. Although a symphony loses the authority of its uniqueness, it accumulates new authority by ubiquity and its faculty of appearing at any time. A further complication is created here by a tendency already mentioned. Under present conditions radio produces resistance to abolishing the cult value and aura of music. By creating festival and exceptional situations, presenting the work in an exaggerated, solemn way, etc., many radio performances try to save the uniqueness at the same time that they are attacking it. The situation of the listener who is facing the radio phenomenon as a unique one, in that it appears within the four walls of his room, certainly helps to strengthen these tendencies. Our task will be to discuss these complications more systematically. We shall have to visualize radio’s structure when mechanical means of reproduction are confronted with individualistic situations, individualistic claims, and surviving relics of authenticity in time and space in the older sense. In spite of the »echo« of the radio phenomenon we can assume that its ubiquity is self-evident in the listener’s concrete experience. The ubiquitous radio phenomenon has a subjective »here« for the listener although the objective lack of that »here« probably deeply affects his experience.
We must be very distinct in our use of such terms as »subjective« and »objective«. Our present distinction has nothing to do with the »primary« and »secondary« qualities of the »radio voice« we mentioned in Part I. If we take up this terminology we are within the field of primary qualities. That is, we are not dealing with individual differences (like the difference between a trained musician and a cowboy listening to a radio symphony, for instance). We are remaining strictly within the limits of what we called »objective« features of the radio phenomenon. Hence it appears to be confusing to introduce a new difference between »objective« and »subjective« elements.
First, we formerly called these qualities »objective«; second, everything related to a phenomenon and not to a thing is to be called »subjective« in a phenomenological sense.We can overcome this difficulty by forgetting for the moment our older distinctions and just trying to stick to the subject matter which now concerns us. In this part of our study we intend to give a draft of the »categories« of the »radio voice«, the framework within which the »radio voice’s« phenomena take place, and not a description of the »radio voice« itself. This treatment of categories belongs, as we must always keep in mind, to the phenomenon in that here we are not treating causal mechanisms which determine it.We do not speak of things, or the influence of the microphone upon the loudspeaker or the program-maker on certain features like »standardization of works«. Thus the total analysis which we are undertaking at present may be called a subjective one. But within the broadest sense of subjectivity we must differentiate between phenomena which are suitable to their own structure, and phenomena which conceal this structure even though they are bound to it. In this context we call the former »objective« and the latter »subjective«.
The following example may clarify this. The ubiquity of the radio phenomenon can be called a »subjective« characteristic in the older and broader sense.We do not deduce this ubiquity as a causal consideration.We ascertain it only in the phenomenal field, as walking along the street and listening to the same tune pouring out of ten different windows. But in spite of this entirely phenomenal verification, we may justifiably call ubiquity an objective characteristic of the radio phenomenon in our new, present sense insofar as every radio phenomenon takes place within this ubiquity. (Hence we called it a category.) In principle, there is no radio phenomenon which cannot be spotted at any or every place. Although the »here-ness« of the »radio voice« is one of the inherent characteristics of present-day radio, and thus also a radio category according to our new division, it is still a subjective one because it necessarily hides the ubiquity within which it must always take place.We called it illusionary because it makes us forget the ubiquity within which the phenomenon we witness in our room also occurs, whereas ubiquity, in itself, is indifferent to our realizing that we have forgotten it.
At this point we must face an objection.Within our sketch of radio categories we introduced some which are plainly contradictory. On the one hand, we speak of ubiquity as a category; on the other hand, we speak of the »here-ness« as very closely related to the way radio phenomena now present themselves – almost a category, too. Generally, however, one expects a set of categories to be consistent. To this we must reply that our ambition is not to give a radio philosophy. We do not want to hypostatize any of our characteristics of radio as logically inherent in the tool, or the way it expresses them. Our categories are physiognomic insofar as we try to describe and determine the expression of the »radio voice« within the historical and social situation in which it appears. We do not want to systematize what may be disorderly. We do not want to harmonize what may be discordant. Our set of categories may contain contradictions, but we hold that these contradictions are not logical shortcomings of a systematic approach which is subject to grave doubts in advance in a field like radio. We hold that these contradictions in the categories express contradictions in the subject matter itself and, in the last analysis, contradictions in our society. We hinted at the role played by concepts such as »aura«, »authenticity«, »the original«, »the genuine«, and so on, in radio. These concepts are still upheld by current cultural standards, but they are nevertheless basically opposed to technical reproduction. They are artificially maintained, for one reason or another. This may account for the contradictions reflected in our set of categoriesinspeaking of » objective characteristics« of the» radiovoice« and »subjective« illusions which still have a certain »objectivity« within the framework of modern radio experience. As long as the idea of the original survives, the antagonism between publicity and privacy in radio will survive as well.
The basic ubiquity of radio is expressed in a sort of standardization of the radio phenomenon in that the material is offered to a vast number of people and, if they want to use their radios, they are more or less forced to listen to this material. This standardization must be understood as a phenomenal character of radio and not as any standardized content. It is due to the structure of the tool and not primarily to mass production, although it fits completely with more general conditions of monopolistic economy.y
The standardization which we mean is the more or less authoritarian offer of identical material to a great number of people. It would hold good even if there were no standardization of programs. This standardization, in a way, is the essence of radio itself. The abstract fact that an identical content appears at innumerable places at the same time practically coincides with the concrete fact of standardization – namely, that the same material is impressed upon a great number of people. It ought to be absolutely clear at the outset that no matter what alterations may be recommended for program policies, this sort of standardization cannot be altered. It would be absurd under given technical conditions to attempt a type of broadcasting which would produce different material at the same time in different spots. One must reckon with iron laws of technical reproduction which cannot be altered and should not be hidden and radio should try to make the best of them.
This standardization is so self-evident that it would not be worthwhile to attach too much importance to it. It is necessary, however, to keep it in mind as a basic fact because only against its background can all its countertendencies be properly understood. Most of these countertendencies have already occurred to us. We mean the illusion of »here-ness«, of closeness, of authenticity in radio. We also mean the listener’s attitude: his resistance to subjecting himself to any standardized material even though he is most likely to enjoy the very same subjection in another layer of his psychological reactions. We must say this first. All these trends which we must now deal with in greater detail attempt to alter something which in principle cannot and should not be altered so long as the basic principle of radio remains the offer of the same thing at the same time to a number of people – at least for an indefinitely long period.
The first countertendency is the drive to select from a number of stations. We must say, however, that this freedom of selection is not an inherent quality of radio, like the standardization of phenomena. It depends upon an element which cannot be called a category of the structure of the phenomenon. It depends upon the fact that a number of stations operate independently of each other, presenting different programs at the same time. This fact certainly is not an invariant. It clearly depends upon social and economic trends outside the field of radio. A superficial observer who believes that the monopolistic tendency in our society is basic would expect the number of independent stations to become smaller because the increasing cost of producing different programs at the same time is unnecessary for programs planned by one big unity. In fact, during the boom of radio rationalization in Germany a sort of program-concentration took place which offered the same programs to every listener to the Frankfurt and Stuttgart radio stations. Still, it is doubtful if this tendency really was fundamental. In America, however, we find a highly complicated situation which cannot be stated in simple terms of monopolistic production leading to program-standardization whose ideal would be hearing a certain program at a certain time at all places. Just the opposite appears to be true. Here, however, our study will later have to provide extensive verification.
As the power of radio stations, and especially the large networks increases, they try more and more to maintain a diversity of programs at the same time. The countertendency we mention may well increase in direct proportion to the basic tendency not of ubiquity-standardization (which, within broad limits, must be considered such an invariant that it would be meaningless to speak of its increase) but of the power of monopolization. A study of how this individualization in a deeper sense expresses standardization – a study of how different stations manage to broadcast »the same« even though they present totally different programs – would no longer be physiognomic. Still, it appears to be part of the purely phenomenal experience of the listener that as long as he is not selecting one special program he is most likely, just by twirling the dial, to feel that he is »getting the same stuff« everywhere. Here we quote another passage from Krenek’s article which expresses the conviction that in spite of the apparent diversity of programs the real differences are much smaller than we are led to believe, not only among stations, but even among entire nations with antagonistic philosophies. »One would be mistaken in assuming that American, European, Italian and French radio have diametrically opposed contents.«z The so-called freedom of choosing different programs at the same time, however, is very limited. In totalitarian countries like Germany this choice is so limited that Volksempfänger (radio sets for the masses) are built to allow the listener to tune in only government-controlled German stations. But apart from these arbitrary limitations, there are arbitrary ones everywhere. Still, the ubiquity-standardization remains unaltered in the variety of stations at the listener’s disposal. First he must select a station from those available on his dial, and even at best these are very limited – even more so than, for instance, his choice of phonograph records to be played at a given time. To a great extent he still remains at the mercy of standardization. The very act of selection, however limited, sometimes makes the listener feel as if he were playing an instrument. Certain effects of turning the dial, as long as all the programs are musical ones, resemble musical colors. The role of this effect is still unknown for the listener, but it may be compared to the dragging sound of an accordion. The accordion is a very primitive instrument which is tremendously popular especially in Germany where there are not enough teachers to meet the demand for instruction. This instrument’s appeal, celebrated in special hit songs, is worthy of sociological consideration. Its role may be roughly defined as a piano fit for camp life or collective life of any sort, involuntarily antagonistic to the private apartment. Significantly, the accordion is called in German, a »sailor’s piano« [Schifferklavier]. In America there is the name, »gypsy piano«. Its portability is closely connected with its primitiveness. There is no space for all the keys nor are the players expected to combine chords with their fingers. Instead, ready-made chords are already provided. It may well be guessed that the expression of the »radio voice«, which resembles the sound of the accordion when the dial is being twirled, often plays a somewhat similar role. Just as the accordion player strikes ready-made chords in a quasi-improvisatory manner, the radio listener can »play« on his dial. Thus his apparently free efforts can produce pre-formed effects. In a sense, radio introduces into the private room certain effects and functions of the accordion. If we could find out how often people willfully produce accordion-like effects by twirling their dials, we would have an indicator for studying this. In New York, in fact, a cabaret artist imitates the effect of twirling the radio set’s dial. Certainly he would not have done so unless the phenomenon had a rather broad collective basis. We might use him and his experiments as a hunch for finding out more about the questions involved here. In any case, the man who plays »on his radio« as if it were an instrument, obtaining ready-made, accordion-like chords dragged into each other in a dilettantish way, is a sort of model for all behavior where individual initiative attempts to alter ubiquity-standardization.
In addition to this selection and »playing« on the dial, the listener can make further attempts to alter the standardized phenomenon. After he has selected the station, he may try to influence the phenomenon by regulating the volume and carefully adjusting the dial at the point which he believes the best for reception. He may also utilize additional makeshifts to influence the tone color, obtain clearer reception, and the like, if his set possesses them. When all this fails to satisfy him he can try to influence the standardization by making program suggestions to the radio stations. This last attempt, again, necessarily remains within the framework of ubiquity-standardization. Even if the station follows the suggestion of the listener and does alter its program, the new program will again be impressed upon a multitude of people at the same time and at different places. This, however, will be discussed later.
An analysis of how people try to resist ubiquity-standardization by influencing reception is a particularly good example of the difficulties in a physiognomic analysis as well as in any other deeper reaching study of the listener’s attitude to radio. For the listener’s professed motive in regulating the dials of his set is contrary to an attempt to exercise that influence. What he is aiming at is generally not to modify the radio phenomenon to express his own taste. He tries to get »good reception«. That is, he tries to achieve as clear an idea of the »thing itself«, the actual performance, as he can with his set. Now, the idea of »good reception« in itself is not an invariant. There may be youngsters, drunks or musically uncultured people who regard the radio set as a means of providing them with as much noise as possible, and who think that reception is »good« when it is as strong as possible. This tendency is fostered by the difficulty in receiving certain stations and the necessity to increase the volume to prevent interference from nearby stations. Then there is the other extreme: good reception as a background; that reception which disturbs the listener as little as possible. Between these extremes there is a wide range of shades and finally there is the desire to get as clear and concentrated a picture of the music as possible. This is sometimes independent of volume and, although it appears on this scale, it cannot be expressed in mere terms of distance from the two poles.
But there are even greater difficulties involved in the idea of »getting good reception«. This can easily be seen in the tone-control dial. Getting the »thing itself« as accurately as possible by adjusting the volume-control would presume that the recipient possesses sufficient knowledge of the work to adapt the volume of his reception to the volume necessary for a particular work. This certainly cannot be expected in many cases. On the other hand, we may assume that the average listener can determine whether reception in his own room is clear and articulate. He can control this clearness and articulation by means of the volume-control.aa This may indicate that the concept of »good reception« is by no means so unequivocal as might be expected. It certainly contains strong individual elements on the part of the listener, but we may still say that in his consciousness it is the ideal of good reception and not self-expression which prevails in his regulation of the radio phenomenon. For, roughly speaking, any attempt to express himself as an »additional factor in the performance« will obviously only spoil the phenomenon and will sound childish. Although it is our conviction that if the automatic behavior of radio listeners could be checked many more cases where this spoiling of the phenomenon actually occurs could be found, it would be hard to verify it because no respondent is likely to admit that he behaves so. He would be afraid of making a fool of himself. The reason for this is that no matter how far the activity of a regulating listener may go, he has no real power over the phenomenon. It always remains within the framework and within certain proportions of the given material. The ridiculous and spoiling effect of that sort of activity, which we shall simply call »pseudo-activity«, is based upon the fact that all of the listener’s possible attempts to modify the phenomenon remain external to it, an arbitrary addition instead of a really constitutive element.
Here we shall refer to a case which the author observed in Germany. He knew a child who liked to play the player-piano. This piano was equipped with a crescendo and diminuendo mechanism, comparable to the volume-control on a radio. The child’s family had comparatively few rolls of music so that, by repeatedly playing the Scherzo of Mendelssohn’s »Midsummer Night’s Dream« and Lohengrin’s »Bride Chorus«, he became fed up with them and tried to do something of his own. This effort was especially encouraged by the fact that when he played the piano the keys moved mechanically, as if they were being struck by invisible fingers. Thus the child made lavish use of the crescendo and diminuendo button with the effect of producing only a caricature of the music. These music-characters were comparable to the distorted face which appears in certain mirrors. This distorted image, although it is fundamentally conditioned by the original, is comical because of its elongation or broadening while its dependence upon the original is still apparent. This experience is so simple that we can expect a number of radio listeners to give up the idea of influencing the radio phenomenon. But here lies the difficulty. We spoke of resistance to ubiquity-standardization. We discovered that there are good reasons to believe that the listeners do not consciously want to alter the phenomenon because it is too obvious that this alteration spoils it. How, then, can we speak of the resistance of the listener to ubiquity-standardization in handling the radio? How can we justify an assumption which has so much to be said against it? It is obvious that we can only have indirect reasons for our assertion. The principle which guides the »activity« of the dialing and tone regulating listener is »good reception«. We can assume that behind this desire lies a hidden resistance to ubiquity-standardization. But we can prove this only if we find that the listener’s actual behavior in regulating his radio set is not so completely guided by that principle as it appears. If this could be found, this question, however, would still remain: What is the nature of the reasons which induce him to behave differently? It would be impossible to identify these reasons with those of resistance to standardization without further consideration.
Now we have a hunch that, in general, people who are dealing with radio do not behave so »rationally« and are not so entirely guided by the desire to get good reception as they pretend to be and as they are expected to be. At this point we must call upon personal observation and experience; the author must admit that quantitative verification of these observations would not be easy. He has noticed that people do more with their radio sets than is necessary for good reception. It is, perhaps, more important to mention that the idea of good reception becomes largely independent of what the listener wants to hear, an idea in itself. There is, first, twirling the dial. Of course the reason usually given is that the listener is trying to get samples of the offerings of different stations before making up his mind about what to listen to. It is pretty obvious that in a number of cases this is a rationalization. People twirl the dial for the sake of twirling. They turn the dial until they get a new station and as soon as they get it, or as soon as they know they can get it, they change it again and try anew with a different station. Of course they may be captured by something which interests them particularly, but there seems to be a strong likelihood that the dial-turner – the man or woman who does not switch on his radio to get a particular station or program but just to adventure on the air – gets his main pleasure from the very fact of turning the dial and from the possibilities of the machine, without caring very much about what he gets. This likelihood increases with the similarity of programs, particularly of light musical programs which are available almost all the time. We may assume that dial-turning alone, devoid of any real selection, becomes important to the listener in direct proportion to his loss of interest and the degree of importance he attaches to the station he tunes in.
There is a corollary to this. In their efforts to achieve good reception many people skillfully adjust all the controls on their radios and actually manage to secure the best possible reception they can get with their sets. Still, as soon as this ideal reception is achieved, they either turn the dial to another station or switch off the set. Of course we shall not allege that the majority of listeners behave like that, but certainly the number is large enough to allow them considerable symptomatic value for our radio-listening masses.
The objection could be raised that this behavior still remains within the range of the »good reception« ideal, and this we must certainly admit. But the significance of that ideal is completely changed when the program he receives is no longer considered important by the listener. When good reception is divorced from the desire to get a particular musical broadcast as clearly as possible, then the only explanation is that the listener cares only about »good reception« because he himself wants to have the privilege of doing something as well as possible. He knows that he cannot really influence the phenomenon; so he substitutes for this influence the ideal of »doing as good a job as possible«. Instead of being able to do something against the mechanism when such an attempt would be futile, he wants to do something with the mechanism and identify himself with that attempt at the expense of what he is allegedly pursuing. Good reception becomes a fetish. By »fetish« we mean that the means are considered the end. This completely reverses his resistance. Doing the best job for receiving a radio broadcast no longer opposes ubiquity-standardization but obeys its laws so completely that the listener gets the illusionary self-satisfaction that the workings of the mechanism are his own. Still there is good reason to believe that behind this transformation lies only his original desire to preserve his individuality and »his phenomenon« as his property. When conditions prevent people from fulfilling this desire against a central power, they make the case of the power their own case. The pattern is: private person resists ubiquity-standardization of his radio set; knows this resistance is futile; finally transforms this wish for individual activity into preparedness to obey the laws of his apparatus; but just in this way loses his relation to the object and the content which he originally sought or pretended to seek. This pattern may well be considered an example of social attitudes covering a much broader field than the small living room where the dial-twirler proves his competence. There will, of course, be violent objections to this interpretation. While the tendencies we mention might be admitted, it will probably be said that an interpretation in terms of resistance to standardization is much too far-fetched. Probably the desire for individual activity as we have discussed it will also be objected to on the basis that it does not appear to be too overbearing in other fields of modern life. Then, too, we shall probably have to meet the antipathy of research people aroused by so psychological a concept as »identification with a central power«, so difficult to express in quantitative terms. Further, we shall probably hear the explanation that the more common-sense interpretation of this fact we discuss would be the »naïve joy« in dealing with any kind of technical tool, the child’s naïve joy in playing with his toy railroad, or the joy of the youngster who becomes an expert on automobiles even though he has never owned one and even though he may never be able to buy one of his own during his lifetime.
But here we should like to make a general remark about any objection on the basis that an argument is too far-fetched. This concept holds good only in terms of the aims of this study. If the investigator wants to find out, for instance, what makes people buy a radio set with certain devices for extensive sound control, then it would be justified to call an explanation »too far-fetched« in terms of the individual’s desire for self-expression or self-identification with the tool. This would certainly not add to the knowledge of an industrialist who wants to find out what commodity sells best in a special situation. Here the investigator should be content with a simpler and »nearer« statement. Our aim, however, is fundamentally different. We want to relate radio to the basic structure of our society. Nothing serving this purpose is »too far-fetched«. In a certain sense, the more far-fetched our statements are, and the more they transcend the limited and immediate situation and consistently relate it to basic social conditions, the more valuable they are. Of course they must be substantiated by as many indicators as possible. Now we are trying to elaborate an explanation of how this corroboration could be achieved. But we must discount the objection that a more simple explanation of a phenomenon could be given because in our study we consider it futile to interpret an isolated phenomenon in the isolated terms of what it creates. Our task is to get from it as many implications for broader social issues as we possibly can. We may be inclined to give far-fetched explanations, but we do so in order to create links between certain phenomena and underlying social processes. Thus an »adequate« explanation, an explanation with the minimum theoretical strain, does not interest us. Just the contrary, we want to glean from the phenomenon as much theoretical significance as possible. We would call an explanation »too far-fetched« only if it overstepped the limits of the phenomenon and contradicted its actual meaning. But we cannot possibly consider that the simpler explanation is a priori the better. Neither simplicity nor complexity is scientifically valuable in itself. The question, here, is the relation between the social and natural sciences, and we cannot discuss it any more extensively now; and we can fully discuss the more specific objections to our approach only after we have more quantitative material. Our present answer must necessarily remain somewhat sketchy.
First, we admit that the facts which we have observed are not confined solely to radio. They can be observed in all fields of mechanization. Still, the author believes that these tendencies played a much smaller role in the phonograph era when people had the illusion that it played »just for them«.bb We can even admit that these reactions are not directly due to the listener’s radio experience. He has transplanted his enjoyment of twirling the dial from the enjoyment of technical devices like the motor car. Or, speaking more precisely, while the listener still adheres to the idea of »good reception«, which really originates in the radio technique, he transfers attitudes borrowed from other technical fields to this idea. Even the direct motivation for phenomena such as those we are dealing with now cannot always be treated in isolation. We may not be able to describe the listener’s obedience to his apparatus while he is attempting to get ideal reception in terms of radio. We may have to go back to more general behavior in modern life. Still, however, even if we do admit all this, we would only thrust the problem further back, but by no means would we solve it. The »harmless joy« in technical devices, and in being able to master the machine, are empty phrases. Pleasure in technical tools has several components and cannot be reduced without hesitation to the categories we have tried to develop. Certainly, to explain a child’s attitude toward his toy railroad in terms of resistance to the tool, finally leading to identification with it, would be inadequate. Certainly his spontaneity has not been completely adulterated. He is not only the servant, but frequently the master of the material, even though resistance is not absent when he is so frequently ready to destroy his own toy. The desire to be the real master of machinery is a relic of this genuine spontaneity and certainly survives with the toys which our society provides for adults, of which radio is one of the most famous examples. The dial-twirler, too, shows something of this desire. But the complexity of psychological structures is properly understood only in a given social situation. We cannot discuss the structure of drives in the abstract, but only in their relation to social conditions and the expression of these conditions in the technical standards of a period.
There is every reason to believe that under present conditions people are becoming afraid of the alienated and anonymous power of monopolistic institutions. One of the only psychological refuges is identification with those very powers, just as a prisoner may grow to love the barred windows of his cell. We have good reason, too, to believe that the same mechanisms which inspire fear in the listener influence the psychology of the masses to such an extent that we can expect them to be all the more ready for this identification. It would be illusionary to dismiss this knowledge as pre-scientific and, instead, to »stick to the facts!« when these social insights may help us »understand« things better and relate facts which would otherwise appear unrelated, contradictory and accidental. Our interpretation of the listener’s attitude is a product of our observation of the listener and our knowledge of these more general social conditions and tendencies. The facts, themselves, do not absolutely demand one explanation when they are considered in isolation. But when they are considered in the light of these social tendencies; when our interpretation is based upon sufficient material and remains consistent with that material; when it explains actions which otherwise would be meaningless; and if, finally, when it links facts apparently so divergent as those we have so far discussed – when these four criteria are really fulfilled, we feel safe in preferring our »farfetched« interpretation to a »natural« one based upon »natural human behavior« which no longer exists, at least in our society.
For the present moment, though, our observations about the listener’s reactions to ubiquity-standardization go much further than we are justified in treating them now. In our present context we can consider only this fact satisfactorily settled: that the listener’s attitude to the radio phenomenon goes beyond his professed desire to get a good reception of the material. However, in our attempt to describe how this attitude works, how the idea of good reception becomes an aim of its own, and how it is related to general conditions, we feel impelled to introduce the hypothesis that resistance becomes modified to self-identification.
We are fully aware that our proof so far has been inadequate but this is so not because of lack of experience, alone. These attitudes are necessarily unconscious. If a listener should become aware of them he would either cynically admit it, abandon his rationalization and stick to the attitude with the defiance of a craftsman proud of being nonintellectual; or he would cease to react that way. But this insight would be so unpleasant that we may safely expect much stronger resistance to an attempt to force the listener to admit his attitude (for example, the attitude of resistance, disregard of content, identification) than to ubiquity-standardization. Considering the logical difficulties in any combination of psychological studies of many people, we shall probably have to discount individual analysis as a method of proof, and depend upon further hunches instead.
One of these hunches may be found within the second possibility of »resistance« to ubiquity-standardization, namely the attempts to impress one’s own will upon the stations. We have already said that this attempt does not strictly fall within the limitation of our physiognomic study because no possible result of these reactions could really affect the ubiquity-standardization itself. If we discuss it here, we do it for the sake of finding indirectly a foothold for our interpretation of the dial-twirler.
The listener’s attempt to impress his will upon broadcasters usually takes the form of letter writing. Of course, personal contacts are often attempted, but in the first place they are very difficult to check and are reflected only in vague references to the close contact between local station directors and their audiences. In the second place, it is hardly probable that any great number of people have established these contacts; and finally, those people who do contact radio officials are, in a sense, on the other side of the fence. Either they are personal friends, or else they have been personally consulted. There is not much reason to suppose that their reactions express trends of the ordinary listener’s reactions. Usually they try to adopt a more or less objective attitude, identifying themselves not with »good reception«, (as we assume the dial-twirler does) but rather with what they would rationalize as the well understood interest of the broadcaster. Thus we are forced to turn to radio correspondence.
We are fully aware of the objections to the extensive use of mail-analysis in radio research. We know that it is doubtful if letter-writers can be considered representative of non-writers. We know that their psychological make-up, by the mere fact of their writing letters to an unknown, powerful institution, is probably somewhat different from the normal listener’s make-up. This issue of radio correspondence shall be treated separately. In this study, however, we are only venturing a few observations from our rather extensive sampling of fan-letters. These observations, no matter how questionable, certainly fit in the picture we have drawn. Of course, letters inspired by an offer of reward, as in certain commercial broadcasts, must be excluded. We must also exclude letters written by any sort of pressure-groups; and finally, the extensive correspondence of radio-amateurs should not be included, either. They certainly deserve a special study of their own. And so only those letters which could be called, somewhat broadly and vaguely, »spontaneous« remain. To call their »spontaneity« a sign of resistance or self-identification with the power resisted, of course, would be premature. But they contain positive clues allowing such an interpretation. These letters deal with more or less »objective« phenomena, like bad reception, inconvenient programs, the ratio between different types of music, timing of programs, etc. Therefore, one should expect them to be stated in objective terms, suitable for such issues. However, this is not the case. Instead, they are full of references to the writer’s personality. Not only obviously neurotic persons, but also some who are apparently quite sensible talk about themselves, their age, their profession and their outlooks. They seem to justify their suggestions by considering their particular viewpoints as expressions of their particular personalities. Incidentally, these viewpoints are most frequently identical in those letters which most strongly emphasize the writer’s unique personality. The problem, then, is: why does an individual who pretends to be making objective suggestions, write about himself to an institution with which he has no personal connection when he knows that he cannot expect any real personal interest (even though the station’s stereotyped answers carefully uphold that illusion). Apparently these letter-writers feel somewhat lost and neglected in the face of »ubiquity standardization«. Thus, even while they are criticizing the phenomenon, they compensate for this lost feeling by attempting to re-establish personal participation in the phenomenon and by trying to attract the attention of the institution from which it originated. The discrepancy between the objective situation and the objective purpose of the letters on the one hand, and their obtrusively personal character on the other, indicates that this psychological motive is really stronger than the reasons given by the writers.cc
There are grounds for suspecting that a number of letter-writers are aware of these problems and are ashamed of writing these letters. The investigator continually comes across letters beginning with the assertion that »this is the very first fan-letter« the writer has ever written to a radio station; that he is »no fan of the usual type«, and so on. These formulas can be interpreted somewhat as follows: Even while he is aware of the futility of his attempt to pit his personality against the power of a radio network, the listener tries to compensate by emphasizing his uniqueness. This is the unconscious mechanism. »I, a private person, am writing a letter to you, a huge institution. I know that it is really nonsensical. I have no power over your decisions. You are not interested in me as a person, to the slightest degree. I know that, in the last analysis, the private person does not matter at all. Still, there is something which drives me to write you. It is stronger than these considerations. I must justify it and this I do by asserting that I am such an exceptional person. That is, I invoke the very category whose futility stands before me as I write.«
But there is still, in a latent and more rudimentary form, another element in the attitude expressed in these personal formulas. It is this. »I am only an individual, but still I write to you. I know very well that an individual talking about his own personality to a concern like you, makes a fool of himself. But«, – and this is the deciding point – »I am different. There are still some people who do not want to listen to crazy jazz or cheap entertainment. There are still some people of the true cultural and artistic discrimination. I am one of them, and that is why I have a right to write you.«
The fan-mail writer constructs a gap between himself and the other listeners, or »other ordinary letter-writers«. He tries to establish a bond between himself and the high radio officials he expects to read his letter. In other words, he overcompensates his feeling of being lost as an individual by making his cause common with the cause of the subjugating power. In spirit, he sits down at the same desk with the radio director and discusses what could be done. This, however, is exactly the same mechanism as the identification which we sketched in our discussion of the listener’s attitude to ideal reception. This viewpoint corroborates the individual’s weakness because here he deserts to the other side of the fence. Still, he maintains the original motive of »individual resistance«. He justifies his action by the quality of his own incomparable individuality which does not flatly accept what is offered to him. He virtually believes that he is a potential radio director just because he is »different«, because, in his opinion, he is a particular sort of individual, one of the few surviving in our mass society. It is strongly ironic that the man who is actually on the other side of the fence, the broadcaster, tries not to be different, but to identify himself with the man on the street or the tired business man; while the letter-writer energetically tries not to be mixed up with them. It is just the man on the street who wants to be different. All these differences, finally, are probably much less important than they appear to be to the different groups. The very feeling of being different most likely belongs to the illusionary individuality which we built up as a characteristic of radio physiognomics.
We do not pretend to have proved anything by these considerations. We have only sketched the approach which brings our assumptions of the pseudo-activity of the dial-twirling radio listener into a logical relation with observations of other possible reactions against ubiquity-standardization. We admit that our observations of the irrational and fetishistic behavior toward »good reception«, and our conclusion about fan-letters may be weak. But we hold that a combination of these and other similar observations may finally provide enough material to substantiate our theses. The advantage of this sort of extensive mail-analysis would be that it would contain quantitative psychological material in an objectified form. Thus the difficulty of ascertaining the irrationality of people’s behavior toward radio phenomena would be excluded. Here we must be prepared for the most severe objection. Even if we should succeed in both fields, this would not be sufficient proof. Instead of trying to understand the facts without prejudice we shall be accused of trying to corroborate them by the same underlying theory which we are trying to prove. To this objection we have very little to say. We do not wish to »repudiate« it. As a matter of fact, we admit the assertion it contains, but we dispute the validity of its presupposition. It starts from the belief that we must consider disconnected facts from different spheres, each of which demands its own explanation. If one result can be corroborated by another in a different field, it is usually considered sufficient proof. But basically the fields are not really disconnected and it is our duty to point out their connection. This can be done only by means of an underlying theory. If we are reproached for using the same categories to explain divergent facts we can only plead guilty of basing our assumptions upon one theory. Our attempt to justify our interpretation of the dial-twirler by discussing the mechanisms behind fan-mail does not aim to prove our theory by citing more »facts« which might be considered independent of it. We are only trying to show that these facts »fit« the same theory. Furthermore, by going back to this theory, facts apparently so far apart as dial-twirling and fan-mail-writing begin to »speak«. To go back to the terminology of this study, they »gain a common expression«. As long as a concrete analysis is undertaken, applying these categories to different fields does not mechanically force stubborn facts to fit the theory. We apply these categories not because we think that they are a universal recipe for every problem, but because we believe that fundamental structures of society present themselves everywhere and that every network of concepts must be woven according to these structures.
There is, too, this further objection which might be raised; we are biased because we make a theoretical approach. To this we reply that no approach devoid of theoretical elements is possible – not even a »purely experimental« one.dd Even the selection of subject matter for any research must, of necessity, contain theoretical elements. When the researcher makes up his mind to investigate one problem instead of another, he is presumably unaware of any of the facts which he will have to interpret. The abandonment of theory does not guarantee greater security. Quite the contrary, it holds the danger of allowing only a treatment of superficial data without identification of the moving forces behind it. Even the concept of »the given facts« is not an invariant. There may be situations where the given facts build a solid wall in front of what is actually taking place. And if this wall can be torn down only by referring to inconsistencies (like the irrationalities we hinted at) these inconsistencies are only small chinks. The wall can be torn down only by speculative thinking, in spite of the danger that the person who dares to speculate may be struck by some of the stones he loosens.
In addition to these symptoms of the listener, there are certain devices used by broadcasters which also fit the picture we have drawn. Broadcasters certainly have had some experience, if not with the actual psychology of the listeners, at any rate with their behavior, which is an indicator of social psychology. Here only two examples are presented, both taken from one of the largest networks: »The Home Symphony«,30 which provides a chance for the man in his home, the school orchestra, or the amateur ensemble to play with an orchestra under the baton of a first-rate conductor, and the »Music Is My Hobby« program.31
The first device is obviously irrational. No amateur is likely to play as well as any of the highly trained musicians who participate in the performance. From the viewpoint of purely musical quality, certainly the amateur’s participation only harms the resulting musical phenomenon. In addition, the activity of a listener who participates in »The Home Symphony« is very limited, much more so than the activity of the real orchestra member. Not only must the amateur obey the conductor’s directions; he must also adapt himself to the picture of an existing, objectified, rigid performance, and he most frequently falls short. Thus the pleasure he takes in playing is only the pleasure in doing something which is already objectified, and doing it not so well. This, again, is clearly the attitude of finding subjective pleasure in identification with the central institution: and, apparently, this pleasure is so strong that the shortcomings of the home-participant’s real achievements do not count. We must add, however, that this statement pertains only to the relation between individual spontaneity and the objective result, which is doubtful. The home participant has no real influence over the »standardized phenomenon« and any slight influence he may have is only negative, similar to the dial-twirler’s negative influence over the music which he spoils when he changes stations. However, there is a possible pedagogic value to such an attempt. It is possible that a player may increase his own musical skill by participating in »The Home Symphony«. He may develop a better understanding by doing something himself instead of only passively listening. Our criticism, however, would not minimize these possible benefits although we believe that »pseudo-activity« will also affect their pedagogical value. We believe that true musical understanding is furthered more satisfactorily by studying the score of a Haydn symphony and playing it on the piano, however badly, than by playing tonic, dominant and sub-dominant of the double bass at home, even under Toscanini. From a pedagogical point of view, the spontaneity which is a priori condemned to domination by something given appears to us at least to be of doubtful value. Still, of course, we must admit that playing »in« an orchestra at home may develop certain qualities better than playing the piano or chamber music without any control. We must admit, though, the further possibility that when the amateur’s own shortcomings are compared with the achievements of the orchestra, a criticism of these shortcomings may be obvious and so a higher level may be achieved. This, however, has nothing to do with the player’s first illusion that he is taking part in a performance when he really is not; and that he is doing something for his own sake when he is really only imitating what is being played to him. The relation between physiognomic and pedagogical considerations in radio is rather complicated.
The second example, the »Music Is My Hobby« program, combines the complex desires for resistance and identification. Individuals, especially those who are successful in other fields, are given a chance to appear on the »other side of the fence«, and actually identify themselves with the public power at their disposal for the time they appear before the microphone. They are, so to speak, representatives of millions of less successful listeners who will never have a chance to be heard over the radio. These people may find some consolation in the fact that if only they are successful enough in business they may some day have the chance to replace Huberman,32 no matter how badly they play the fiddle. It is as if the institution were saying, »Don’t resist me and my ubiquity. Everyone has the martial baton in his pocket. Some day this phenomenon which appears so strange to you and seems to extinguish your own personality may be ›your‹ phenomenon in the radical sense that you may actually produce it.« But just when this is achieved the individual ceases being delivered over to the phenomenon on the reception side. He becomes a part of the large power, instead. It is unnecessary to discuss here how these programs sound. Even the most self-restrained scientific observer may be allowed to utter certain doubts about the pedagogical value of a successful banker’s rendition of the Mendelssohn Concerto as a guiding example for his fellow citizens. He is a substitute for all the clerks whose voices can no longer be heard. Taken in isolation, the features described may again appear insignificant and harmless expressions of the necessity for broadcasters to take the human weaknesses of their listeners into consideration. But in light of our remarks about the relation between the individual and the institution they appear less harmless and their weakness less human. They can be expected to be symptoms of a state of affairs where the individual is stripped of his own individuality and all his »activation« is only a cloak for this expropriation.
There is one last chance left for the listener to escape ubiquity-standardization. He can simply switch off his radio. This simple gesture makes the phenomenon cease to exist. We shall discuss it here because it hints at an irrationality beyond the concrete act of switching off. Rationally, the listener turns off his radio when he no longer wants to listen, when he has no more time to listen, when he is tired, or when he dislikes the program or the performance. It appears to us, however, that in a number of cases the listener derives a certain amount of pleasure just from this gesture. Krenek hinted at this psychological motive when he wrote that the radio listener can condemn even the most powerful dictator to silence.33 Since it is absolutely impossible for the individual actually to impress his own will, he seeks refuge in one last loophole. He completely destroys the phenomenon. We consider the psychoanalytical assumption of a »drive for destruction« only the translation of a definite social tendency of this present period into the more abstract language of »human nature«. We believe that the »drive for destruction« can be described more accurately as a desire of those who are condemned to impoverishment or demolishment; who reflect their own annihilation by annihilating the whole; who console themselves by hoping for what they fear and who even prefer a world catastrophe to a change of conditions.
Totalitarian governments have not overlooked the loophole of turning off the radio. During the Czechoslovakian crisis the German authorities unambiguously expressed their expectation that every inhabitant in Germany listen to Hitler’s speech. In other words, anyone who might try to escape the voice of his Führer was virtually threatened. The particular significance is this: the individual who cannot possibly alter the ubiquity-standardization of the radio phenomenon transforms it and every pleasure he might get from it into the pleasure of destruction. The author has observed that people switch off their radios with a sort of wild joy, just as if they were shouting, »I shut his mouth for him!« This gesture of opposition is the most fruitless of all. It creates the illusion of might and power, but it really means only that the rebel is withdrawing from contact with the very public events he believes he is altering. Of course they really go on without taking any notice of him. It is a more modern form of the attitude of the philistine, talking politics in his tavern, pounding the table with his fist, shouting »It can’t go on like this any longer!« and ordering another glass of beer. As soon as the listener, the man who says proudly, »I just can’t stand this stuff any longer«, triumphs over ubiquity-standardization and changes the phenomenon, he loses his apparent power because the phenomenon ceases to exist and he is left alone. Radio correspondence, especially correspondence about modern music, shows clues of a similar attitude. The listener can really influence ubiquity-standardization only when the phenomenon no longer exists and he is no longer a listener.
In our discussion of ubiquity as a basic category in radio we mentioned that it seems to make the radio phenomenon appear to be »coming from somewhere else«. We spoke of radio’s echo-effect and mentioned that the feeling of closeness, developed by the time- coincidence between the broadcast and the live music, is somewhat shattered by this feeling of listening only to an echo of the original. This observation is only a symptom of certain broader characteristics which we consider so important that we intend to devote a more detailed treatment to them, even though we know that this »image-character« of the radio phenomenon is one of the most obscure and difficult issues of radio physiognomics. We must confine ourselves to a delineation of the problem and a description of the phenomena which lead to the problem. But we must make several reservations, especially when we discuss its effect upon broadcasting. We shall not conceal possible contradictions in our description, for these contradictions may be related to the very meaning of these phenomena.
When you place the needle upon the revolving phonograph record, first a noise appears. As soon as the music begins, this noise recedes to the background. But it constantly accompanies the musical event. Non-musical people who are not able clearly to realize this main event, always complain about this noise. The slight, continual noise is a sort of acoustic stripe. This is similar in motion pictures when the sound stripe appears on an empty screen, and seems to be moving along with the picture even though it is really stationary. Something very similar exists in radio. Even if the set is functioning properly, the electric current can be heard when it is tuned in. This current makes a »hear-stripe« [Hörstreifen] vaguely comparable to the noise caused by drawing a long strip through a narrow aperture, or rubbing something against a resisting object. This hear-stripe in radio disappears from the musical surface as soon as the performance takes shape. But it can still be heard underneath the music. It may not attract any attention, and it may not even enter the listener’s consciousness; but as an objective characteristic of the phenomenon it certainly plays a role in the apperception of the whole, and will be effective unconsciously. Respondents often express that indirect experience by reporting that radio is not so vivid to them as live music because they do not actually see the instruments being played. This explanation is not sufficient. When he is faced by a large orchestra the layman is only occasionally able to combine the sound reactions of the orchestra members whom he sees. In the modern post-Wagnerian orchestra, in fact, it is not even easy for him to identify a sound as belonging to a particular instrument or instrumental group. The feeling of »unreality« expressed by so many radio listeners is likely to have deeper reasons. In a way, not only the means by which it is produced, but the »music itself« is invisible. If our guess is right, the part of the phenomenon really responsible for this experience is the hear-stripe.
Freed of the listener’s rationalization, the complaint that he cannot see the music being played is really a vague articulation of his feeling that he cannot »see the thing itself«. Here »seeing« is to be understood in an acoustic sense. He is not faced with the reality of music, but only its reflection or its projection upon the hear-stripe. He hopes in vain to compensate by seeing how it is done, but this hope is futile. In the talkies the hear-stripe effect is very emphatic and probably more so than in radio. Motion picture revues often assist the musical event by showing the action of each instrument. But any keen observer will probably notice that this visual presentation of the instruments does not fundamentally alter the image-character of the music.ee
When music is heard along with the hear-stripe, as is the case, unmetaphorically, in talking pictures, how is this significant for the effect of the phenomenon? Does the stripe move with the music or does it stand still? The question might appear absurd because the music always moves on in time. But the issue goes beyond that. First of all, the problem is that the music appears to be projected upon the stripe, like a picture upon it. This may play as large a part in the alteration and neutralization of radio music as the loss of more distant harmonics, so often discussed by radio technicians. This loss exists only in relation to the live music performed, and presupposes a more or less distinct imagination of the live music. The picture-like projection of music upon a stripe, however, appears in the phenomenon itself and is felt without any reference to an unknown original or the listener’s musical erudition. He hears the phenomenon »like a picture«. This, and not something it has lost in comparison with the original, is the deciding consideration. The obscure implication of the hear-stripe phenomenon (mentioned here chiefly because it may have a definite influence upon the problem of symphony in radio) is that it may appear to the concentrating listener that the real movement is that of the hear-stripe while the music either stands still or is dragged away by the stripe. Similarly, in motion pictures, the screen drags the picture away.
It is hard to predict how the description of this very complex phenomenon might finally evolve. Possibly, in radio, it is just the opposite. The film transfers a number of stationary pictures into a continuum of movement by using the very small difference between each picture as a means of »dynamic« transition. In radio the constantly moving hear-stripe makes music appear to stand still. Against the hear-stripe it dissociates itself into »pictures«. This may account for the dissociation of the dynamic unity of a symphony into mere subsequent »details« which we discussed in Part I. It is very difficult to articulate this experience. It is at the same time very definite and very vague, something much easier to repeat in the face of an actual broadcast than to transform into conceptual language. Perhaps we may say that music, normally aloof from the noise of the real world, and because of this aloofness, appearing to be »real«, loses this »reality« when at each moment it is confronted by the hear-stripe, hinting so definitely at the empirical world. Radio music, in a way, seems to remain suspended in time. It is deprived of its integrating force over time. In Part I we attempted to explain this force as the deciding factor of symphonic music, but it can be understood in a broader sense as a guiding principle of any musical »form« which is more than merely a pure symmetrical subsequence of singular and dissociated features. At this point, radio really touches upon the center of what has been understood as great music, at least from Haydn to our time. However, this is not the place to discuss whether in this respect radio is a destructive or »creative« force; nor whether new musical forms, corresponding to the radio phenomenon, are in view.
Of course, it is a well-known fact that technical development is tending to abolish the hear-stripe. But it is doubtful that there has been any real success up to now. The author feels safe in assuming that the hear-stripe still exists in the majority of radio sets still in use. Technicians will have to decide if the hear-stripe is also due to the same fact which this study so often mentions as the root of the difficulties of the »radio voice« – that live music is »reproduced« by the microphone. It can be stated, however, that so far electrical instruments do not appear to present the hear-stripe. Perhaps if it were possible to play »upon the electric current« of radio, in the sense that one can play on a piano or violin, the hear-stripe would disappear. Under present conditions, however, we know that such a suggestion sounds utopian.
We shall probably be accused of a tendency to attribute too much importance to the complex we have characterized by the term, hear-stripe. We shall probably be told that the hear-stripe can be noticed only by the trained musician or the expert technician, while the average listener is seldom, if ever aware of it. We shall be told that it is foolish to dwell upon such fine shades, using radio physiognomics only as a pretext for dealing with artistic subtleties, when the really important problem for the listener to radio music is getting a good transmission of a good performance of all kinds of music. Now it is by no means our intention to dwell on nuances at the expense of basic events. The question is only, what are these basic events? Certainly, in a discussion of the listener’s consciousness, the program matters more than its »how«. But we have every reason to believe that when radio’s deeper effect upon the listener is in question, that is, its effect upon the deeper layers of his psychical life, his conscious reactions play only a comparatively minor role. For example, the conductor plays a great part in the listener’s consciousness even though, in a number of cases, his personality influences the acoustic phenomenon much less than the hear-stripe. Comparative experiments would probably show that more people are able to discriminate between broadcasts with strong and weak hear-stripes than are able to discriminate between Toscanini and Barbirolli.34 Still, these same people would probably prefer a Toscanini broadcast to one disturbed by only a slight hear-stripe. We certainly agree that the listener knows that this is a Beethoven symphony and those are the Kidoodlers.35 But his behavior toward them both may depend on his unconscious feeling of dealing with »real music« or only an echo of music. We are entitled to expect this preponderance of unconscious over conscious reactions as conditions for such behavior can be more distinctly traced back to the objective side of the phenomenon. The unconscious feeling may well outweigh the surface principles of the listener’s »taste«, in determining his real attitude. Further, in describing the radio phenomenon, the problem of the »basic« event takes a different shape for the following reason: the »how« of the »radio voice« (for instance, the hear-stripe) is unaffected by the program, but the program is by no means unaffected by the »how« of the »radio voice«. The hear-stripe plays its role when the Kidoodlers make their musical jokes as well as when Toscanini conducts Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. If, however, some of our assumptions concerning the hear-stripe are true, then the Seventh Symphony over the air is, to say the least, very different from the live Seventh Symphony, or from what the man on the street believes a symphonic broadcast to be. This whole study is based upon the assumption that, in the last analysis, the effect of radio upon the listener is dependent upon the radio phenomenon itself. If this is true, it is by no means beyond the realm of possibility that the hear-stripe question is more important than the program question just because it is unaffected by the program and still affects all programs. It is utterly possible that what theoretical reflection might hold to be a »fine shade« is really the »stubborn fact« in the phenomenon with which any theoretical interpretation must first deal.
Radio’s ubiquity is responsible for its echo effect, making music sound as if it were coming from somewhere else. This constitutes only a part of the broader tendency of the image-effect of radio. The elements of acoustic neutralization – loss of distant harmonics and the lessening of differences between different timbres – account for the image-like lack of articulation in radio. In every-day experience the term »canned«, applied to radio and phonograph music, expresses this image-character. The difference between the image sound and the real sound can very well be compared with the difference between fresh and canned food. The hear-stripe, finally, seems to act as the medium upon which the image appears. And in contrast to the »naturalness« of the hear-stripe, the image-character of the music is kept vivid all the time. We regard this image-character as the most decisive qualification of the »radio voice«, for it touches upon the fundamental relation between music and all the other arts. Before the invention of tools for mechanical reproduction, music was largely different from other arts (except stage and stage-like characters) because there was little fictitious about it. In general, music does not imitate anything – neither the external world, like painting, nor the psychical world. The autonomous logic of musical events continually rebelled against any attempt to chain it by an imposed necessity to express feelings and emotions. Music is the only art which consists largely in its own existence without giving a picture of anything. Counter-tendencies have been alive, however, since the beginning of the modern age; that is, since the invention of musica ficta in Florence during the late middle ages. These tendencies, however, were more like undulations than a constant trend. Although they were successful at certain times (like the Florentine opera, and later of Gluck and romanticism) at other times they were entirely in the background. Even in successful cases there existed a fundamental difference between the »fictitiousness« of music and the »fictitiousness« of the novel or painting. If we consider one of the first great examples of expressive music, the Lamento d’Arianna by Monteverdi, this music might »assume« the expression of a fictitious character as an element of its texture. But, strictly speaking, even this expression cannot be understood as an imitation of the psychical behavior of the dramatic character who sings the expressive tune. It is related to this character more in the sense of the relation between our shouting or laughing or crying and our psychical life. Laughing, crying and shouting also express something going on inside us. They do not give a picture of it. We should not be justified in speaking of any similarity in the psychical state of sorrow and the phenomenon of weeping in a sense comparable to the similarity of a picture to the original. Even the late romanticism of Tristan, generally considered representative of highly developed psychical expression of music, in no sense imitates the feelings of the characters. It tries to force the listener to react in a certain way to the fate and behavior of the dramatis personae.ff Even music most full of feeling offers less of an image of this feeling than it expresses and impresses the listener by it. In the listener’s behavior toward music, features strictly corresponding to this structure can be found. The »emotions« created by music are not emotions aroused by a fiction. The listener, touched by music, considers music as reality similar to the reality of his own feelings, his own memories and his own sorrows. The more »emotional« and »irrational« behavior toward music, in comparison to reactions to other arts, is probably not due to the »irrationality« of music. Music, even emotional music, is very rational in certain aspects. The vigorous and direct response which so often makes people forget that it is »only art« is probably due to this reality of music, the fact that there is so little picture-image-imitation about it.
In spite of all the elements of fiction scattered throughout music, its basic reality has been abolished for the first time by the image-character of the »radio voice« – but in a most paradoxical sense. For the image presented by the radio voice, by the music pouring out of the loudspeaker, is not an image of the outside world. This music sounds like an image of music. It loses its own »reality« in the sense we have just discussed. It is our belief that this change closely corresponds to changes in the radio listener’s attitude, regardless of whatever we assume to be cause or effect. What Benjamin called the »loss of the aura«36 in music can probably be reduced to the loss of that reality. All the older magical effects of music that people believed in were bound to a concept of music as a real power. No matter how aloof from practical necessities it may have been, music was still something in itself and not an image of something. It was on the order of prayer and play; not of painting and writing. The loss of this »reality« necessarily means the loss of »seriousness« in the older and traditional sense. Music sounding like a picture of music instead of being a sort of spiritual reality can no longer be expected to mitigate and humanize. This loss of reality, not the »music itself«, »breaks the spell«. As the illusionary qualities increase, the »irrational« power, formerly considered the essence of music, threatens to vanish. The »irrationality« of today’s emotional reactions to music is bound to this loss of reality. In this sense, this sort of irrationality is strictly opposed to older irrational effects of music, no matter how similar they may appear under other categories. Even terms like »emotional«, »irrational«, »magic«, can be understood only in an historical perspective and may have entirely different meanings at different periods. It is only when it is fully realized that the image-character of the »radio voice« ruthlessly destroys the remnants of musical magic that the fallacies in all attempts to maintain magical features in radio – if only the sacred work of art, the creative personality and the artist – can be appreciated. The tool denounces as a cheat anything which radio presents in magical terms, for the tool liquidates the reality of music as a spiritual power, the basis of all its »magical« effects.
The effects of radio’s image-character upon the listener’s attitude are manifold. As a matter of fact, they may affect his entire attitude to radio and music. Extensive investigation would be needed to determine the extent of these consequences. Here, however, we shall discuss only one rather limited problem, closely akin to the model problem of the symphony, discussed in Part I.gg This can be stated in terms of the »phenomenon« in our physiognomic sense.We refer to the image-like presentation of music; its atomizationhh and especially atomistic listening. We must again note that, although the reactions we describe can be traced back to the structure of the phenomenon, they can by no means be dismissed in terms of cause and effect. Although it may be said that it is difficult to listen to radio in any but an atomistic way, this atomistic listening which we are going to characterize is by no means limited to radio. It is valid for much broader spheres of our musical life, at least for light popular music and, we believe, for the apperception of serious music as well. Tracing back this type of listening to the structure of the phenomenon – to the »features« of the presentation – will only be a pattern for more general conditions.
It is comparatively easy to understand why the listener is forced to listen atomistically to a radio symphony. It is not so easy to understand why people probably listen to a symphony in a concert hall in much the same way. The problem still remains; what, in the last analysis, accounts for the similarity of these two reactions? We do not intend even to hint at its solution in this study, but we cannot overlook the fact that certain tendencies can partly be traced back to a period in the history of music when the possibility of mechanical reproduction in the modern sense was not even thought of.
We have pointed out that »against the hear-stripe, it (music) dissociates itself into pictures«.ii But the other elements of the image-character also participate in this dissociation. The artificiality of the »radio voice« diminishes the dynamic contrasts and differences of color. Sound color becomes more muffled, booming and reverberating. It is this layer of reverberation in most of the sounds which makes the timbres approach each other. As a result, it is certainly more difficult for the listener to distinguish between timbres in a radio reproduction than in a live performance. This is again furthered by the fact that instruments whose color does not undergo this »booming« are not quite absorbed by the unity of sound. Over the air the flute, for instance, sounds much more piercing and less blended than in a live orchestra. Its contrast does not help to articulate the rest. It is so far aloof from the tutti sound that the ear cannot properly relate it to the rest of the sound; and this relation is necessary for its function as an articulating contrast. This disproportion holds good for the percussions as well. It is hard to say if the fault lies in the over-distinctness of the flutes and percussions, or the relative indistinctness of the rest of the orchestra. And in radio many other sound elements of the rest of the tutti closely approximate each other and are still impossible to broadcast satisfactorily. We must remark that this approximation should by no means be regarded only as a disadvantage of radio. It can also make for better blending; and in later stages of radio technique, conscious handling of it may even prove very helpful. We mentioned before that radio sometimes executes musical tendencies which existed long before its invention. This blending of timbres is an especially significant example of the »radio voice« as an »executor« of older tendencies. The musical art of instrumentation and scoring, the use of musical colors as an autonomous means of expression, is of comparatively recent date. Even though its germs existed earlier, it can be said that it has been discovered in its full extent only since Berlioz and Richard Wagner, the inventors of the modern orchestra. Now, the very principle of that orchestra, beyond the mere increase of instruments, is to facilitate continual transitions from one instrumental group to another, and to overcome the conspicuous breaks (for example between woodwind and strings) so prevalent in the classical period of instrumentation. Wagner has defined music as the »art of transition« and this definition certainly holds good for this type of scoring. The effect of radio upon the orchestral sound is very much the same.jj A closer analysis shows, however, that this similarity is less mystical than it might appear at first. Wagner’s principle of orchestral blending, from the very beginning was connected with the increasing mechanization of instruments – a mechanization which has achieved its acme in radio. One of the essentials of the Wagnerian technique of blending is the horn. The older horn, consisting only of natural harmonics to a given basic tone, was replaced by the ventile horn which contained the full chromatic scale. Thus it could fulfill its new function. It is significant that this very innovation which made the horn mobile enough to fit every possible musical combination, at the same time made it lose much of its character as a »natural«, much less mechanized instrument. In his preface to the orchestral score of Tristan, Wagner himself mentions this fact. He says that he hesitated long before introducing the new horn into his orchestra because of this very shortcoming; finally, however, he decided that the advantages made good for the loss of timbre and that, in his opinion, some of these losses may be balanced by a virtuoso execution of the horn part. This expectation has not been fulfilled. Everyone who is acquainted with the modern orchestra knows that the greater the skill of the ventile horn player, the more of the original and characteristic heaviness of the horn sound is lost. The tendency to »neutralization of sound« has, for a long time, been closely connected with the mechanization of musical instruments. This may be a satisfactory, if only provisional explanation for the fact that the »radio voice« actually executes older tendencies of the modern orchestra and music.
No matter what these relations or their future chances may be, they nevertheless produce a lack of plasticity in the sound. They will continue to do so as long as the »radio voice« continues to affect music which has not been composed with that neutralization in mind. The lack of plasticity conflicts with the structure of the entire work because it prevents the clear articulation of its component parts. The lack of contour by the coloring in radio, and all the features connected with it, are felt as a lack of formal articulation. The question arises: how do these changes affect the appearance of music in the »radio voice« and how does the listener apperceive music?
At this point we are again up against a contradiction which a theory whose aim is consistency would try to smooth away. This contradiction may be briefly stated: Radio lessens the sensual charm, richness and colorfulness of each sound; but because the whole becomes less apparent due to this lack of articulation by neutralized sound colors, the listener is forced to devote his attention to the isolated details. Thus listening becomes more sensual in spite of the decrease of its sensual qualities.
For the sake of simplicity, we suggest that the qualities in question be called »culinary«. The term is used because it designates what is appreciated by the listener in music, just as an individual appreciates the good taste of food. He likes these qualities only for the instantaneous, transitory »sensual pleasure« which they give him. They act as a sort of sensual stimulus, and not as an expression of any »sense«.
Some of these culinary qualities are given here. The first is the softness and richness of sound, aimed at by practically every musician in this country, particularly in radio and motion pictures. It is a sound for which the element of »tension«, characteristic of Beethoven, for instance, is unimportant. The rich and soft sound, in the modern culinary sense, virtually abolishes everything beyond its presence. This, however, must be modified because in culinary music, especially that music affected by impressionism, there are many discords and stimuli which seem to give a sort of tension. This tension, however, is totally different. It is comparable to the voluptuous tension of tickling, and its equivalence in the sexual sphere. It is a tension which is supposed to be pleasant in itself, regardless of what it leads to in time. This fits in with the use of stimulating chords as mere sound effects without relation to the proper development in time of the music in which they appear. They are connected with the second main characteristic of atomistic listening, the »catchword« stimulus. To be effective in a culinary sense, they must be something different against the background of well-known and ordinary effects. Still, they must not be too unusual and must never shock the listener to deprive him of his »tasting« pleasure. A closer analysis of these features will be given in the study of light popular music.37
Although these sensual qualities always play a role in music, they change in highly developed music. Here they become »elements of a whole« in which they are sublated by being both preserved and abolished. In great music, though, they are no longer independent entities upon which any value judgment can be safely based. Our thesis of the effect of the »radio voice« is this: Even while these culinary qualities are like canned food, as we have previously remarked, they are still becoming increasingly important. They attract the listener’s attention away from the structural elements of the totality; and that totality is dissociated because of its lack of formal articulation through the »radio voice«.
The historical development of music during the nineteenth century helped to accelerate this change. As early as Wagner the specifically expressive elements of earlier romanticism became bearers of this sensual appreciation which Wagner characterized by the word »wonnig«, one of his favorite words. The German word »wonnig« is very hard to translate into English. The dictionary gives the synonyms: delightful, delicious, precious, pleasurable. None of these fits exactly. Its meaning can be described only indirectly. It means, at the same time, ecstasy in a spiritual and symbolic sense (the noun, »Wonne«, is a very solemn and emphatic word for pleasure) and it has a touch of the sensual intensity by which this symbolic »expression« of sublime joy is felt. While it still bears the idea of expression and symbolic meaning like a cloak, the luxurious »culinary character« already overpowers the older romantic nucleus. In a composer like Tchaikovsky the change from specifically expressive to »culinary« means has already become totalitarian. This may even account for his popularity. It is still presented as »great music« with a deep meaning of passion behind it. Actually, however, it can be entirely apperceived »culinarily«. A composer like Puccini points in the same direction. The relation between today’s light popular music and so-called serious composers like these could easily be shown.
We must be especially careful not to over-simplify the issue by our terminology. For a highly trained musical brain these »culinary« stimuli are found in certain sounds (or sound totalities) which sound abhorrent to the untrained majority, just as an undeveloped tongue is unable to appreciate certain delicacies. We are not emphasizing this differentiation here, although we shall discuss it later. We use the word in a ruder sense. Here »culinary« qualities are those which produce that immediate and unbroken sensual pleasantness of a full, soft sound, especially of harmony, in the musical apperception of the majority of today’s listeners. It remains the task of the psychology of music listening to show what qualities are regarded as »culinary« by today’s masses. As a matter of convenience, we shall place in that category those stimuli which combine simple tonal devices with certain rudiments of impressionist sophistication which can be spotted in light popular music. It might even be simpler to apply the term for our purposes to those elements of music expressed most clearly in the voice of a singer. Most people will call this voice »beautiful« without any regard to its musical function. The same sort of reference is frequently made to the »beautiful tone« of the violin. It is safe to say that, in general, this sensual quality of the sound is stressed much more than constructive elements of music, frequently denounced as »abstract« or »intellectual« no matter how concrete they may be from a musical point of view.
It is interesting that the »culinary« qualities of music, or more simply the relation between music and cooking, is considered a basic and positive category, devoid of any relation to historical dynamics and even antagonistic to such dynamics, in a book written by one of the most representative music critics of our time. This problem is so important in general musical consciousness that we shall discuss his theory in greater detail, hoping to clarify our concept of the »culinary« qualities of music by this discussion.
The point is made by Deems Taylor.38 We believe that a relation between the apperception of food and the apperception of music really exists today, and that Mr. Taylor has the great merit of expressing it very frankly. We differ, however, with his attitude toward culinary listening. He considers it sound and healthy and suspects any reaction to music which pretends to dispense with its culinary qualities as insincere and highbrow. We, however, believe that no matter how sincere and well-meaning the culinary perception of music may be, it occurs only when a real relation to the musical work is lacking.
Mr. Taylor starts with the assertion, »It is astonishing how much alike food and music are. They are so, of course, because music is decidedly a variety of food. So is all art. We feel the pangs of bodily hunger and put things into our mouths in order to stay them. Similarly, we feel certain emotional or spiritual cravings that can be satisfied only by religion or art – frequently both.«kk
We do not object to the materialism of that comparison because we believe that it is very suitable to describe how people react to music. After all, listeners who »taste« music are probably better equipped to appreciate it than sob sisters who are concerned with Beethoven’s deafness or Wagner’s love affairs with the wives of his sponsors. We dispute only the truth of the comparison as far as a strict description of musical phenomena and not present-day listener-behavior is concerned.
Mr. Taylor speaks about the striking likeness between music and food and calls the former a variety of food; but he, himself, revokes the specific meaning of his assertion by his sentence, »So is all art«. That music must respond to desires and necessities of our psychical life, that it must have some use-value instead of being merely a fetish, is self-understood and, as Mr. Taylor sees clearly, valid for other arts as well as cooking. Even the most radical new music must have some bearing upon fundamental human needs. But all this is so general that it applies to any product of human culture.
The mistake in Mr. Taylor’s argument is that first he describes cooking in these general terms which certainly hold good for music as well; but then he substitutes a much more concrete meaning of cooking which he applies to music. He still takes the similarity for granted even though it no longer applies to the specific structure of food and the specific structure of music. The evidence that music in the last analysis complies with human necessities and drives does not imply that it works the same as eating.
The analogy between music and cooking lies in the fact that eating and listening are both reactions for which a sequence of certain elements in time is essential, and they both deal with stimuli and relations of the character of »reality« sketched in Chapter VIII. Neither music nor cooking gives an image of something beyond itself, although a closer analysis of both would show that they are by no means so autarchic as they appear at first sight. But this analogy is about all. To stress it means to omit the constitutive difference, the difference by which music actually becomes an art. One may put it this way: in cooking, the momentary stimuli, the pleasure you get out of each bit you devour, really matters. Of course there are interrelations. There are tastes, a combination of which is not at all likely to give any pleasure to anyone. There are probably very few persons who would like to mix hot chocolate with pickled herring. Furthermore, the order in which a good meal is served also plays a role, although the laws of that order are much more variable than the plain man thinks. The more sophisticated one’s taste, the more will one enjoy alterations and combinations which would be perverse or just repulsive to an untrained tongue. But this is not so important. Tasting has certain limits of consistency and order. But it is really only the individual event, the isolated stimulus within the rather wide margins of that order that counts. To put it negatively, it is hardly conceivable that a piece of spoiled fish would ever please any palate, no matter in what context it is presented. Even the famous Chinese eggs are harmless compared with the effect of stinking fish. The limits are clear-cut. With music it is totally different. It is the whole that matters, and the question of whether this whole makes sense; that is, a purely musical sense, which is not easy to verbalize and which, although it can be realized only in the actual musical phenomenon, can nevertheless be decided upon very distinctly. Compared with the time-development of this whole, the individual stimuli are only of minor importance, although by no means lacking. There is great music – we gave Beethoven as an example in Chapter I – in which these stimuli are pretty much in the background, but which impresses us by its totality and by the strength by which this totality gives the essential musical sense. There are probably comparatively few bars in a Beethoven symphony which »taste good« in the sense in which caviar or snipe tastes good.
If one reduces music to elements as primitive and indivisible as the stimuli which make for our appreciation of food, one will find that practically none ever »tastes good«. It would be hard to say that one single tune »sounds beautiful« if it is completely divorced from its context; whereas the child who is given just one teaspoonful of cold roast beef juice might like this one teaspoonful much more than a full meal. Furthermore, if a composer should construct a piece of music consisting only of »good tasting« elements, the result would be simply repulsive. There were certain composers who tried this. The German composer, Franz Schreker, with his ideal of »beautiful orchestral sound« is perhaps the most characteristic, but there are also such elements in Scriabin, Debussy and Ravel. It is evident that it would be absurd to consider Schreker, perhaps the best musical cook who ever lived, as the greatest composer for that reason; and certainly Mr. Taylor, when faced with his music, would be the first to call it unbearable – and quite rightly so. He might answer that this is parallel to what would happen to a child who waits for his mother in a pastry shop for over a half-hour and then becomes sick and overpowered by the smell of all the good things. This sickness would certainly prove nothing against the culinary qualities of the cakes and chocolates displayed. But this comparison is not valid. The pastry shop is not meant for wholesale consumption. The customer is supposed to buy and eat what he likes (and what he can pay for) and not swallow everything. If he is well-to-do he may avoid entering the shop and just order his favorite chocolate truffles over the telephone. He could not behave the same toward Schreker. He would have to listen to the whole prelude to the Gezeichneten. If he should make up his mind to leave the performance before the end (for which he may safely be pardoned) it would not mean that he could enjoy the isolated beautiful sounds, but that he could not stand them. They would sound »too beautiful« in the strict sense that they would preclude the building up of the very totality which he is expecting from the music.
Finally, there is no such simple and indivisible beauty in music as there is in cooking. There are some writers who speak about the eternal and indelible quality of the triad. Hindemith, for instance, in his new treatise on composition, speaks of the grandeur which he compares with the rain and snow.39 But if you are not sheltered by a well-articulated composition, you may only become soaked by this natural power, and it will get on your nerves without conveying anything of its eternity to you. Otherwise it would be very simple to compose. But a composer who uses only triads certainly falls far behind a cook who specializes in clear and simple roast beef. On the other hand, there is no possible musical sound which could not make sense in its own context, and not even a relation to unbroken and primitive »culinary« qualities is essential to obtain that sense. The composer is not in the position of the cook who must continually take refuge in [a] joint of lamb in order not to overfeed his clients on oysters and foie gras. The versatility of the musical »tongue« is so great that it cannot be compared with the real tongue without reservations. This applies as well to many noises which can obtain a musical meaning, but which certainly have no »culinary« qualities whatsoever.
In the light of this discussion, we consider the following statements by Mr. Taylor not quite convincing. »We ask two simple questions regarding any food: Does it taste good? Does it nourish me? Now many modernist composers and their advocates remind me of a cook who should suddenly tire of doing things with the same old flour and salt and pepper and beans and lamb-chops and should forthwith proceed to invent dishes composed of benzene, shavings, quinine, oyster shells and crankcase lubricants.«40
After our discussion this question, »Does it taste good?« can be applied to music only as the vague analogy: does the work as a whole mean anything to me? The use of this analogy would gain nothing; it would only obscure the issue. The pleasure derived from any work of art can be so complex that a comparison with more elementary pleasures can no longer help. Possibly this pleasure consists only in enjoyment in mastering the most terrifying experiences of dread and fear by bringing them into some definite configuration. You may be able to »stand it« by achieving an artistic command over it.
The purely metaphorical character of Mr. Taylor’s second question, »Does it nourish me?« is obvious.41 Unlike food, music does not build a material part of the body. Mr. Taylor would probably say that it does make a part of the spiritual body. Convincing as this might sound, more complex issues are involved here which are again obscured by the comparison. The analogy would mean that music must give you something »positive« which does you some immediate good within your own psychical household. This, however, presupposes a sort of pre-stabilized harmony between the individual’s psychical household and the value of the work of art, which actually does not exist. The »nourishment« offered by music may not lie in its immediately adding a new substance which helps you feel better and go on. It may be, for instance, simply a sort of shock which just makes you doubtful about that very psychical household which, according to Taylor’s theory, it ought to satisfy. It can contribute to »nutrition« in the last analysis, but not in the sense of something which you just devour and digest. The consideration of a possible antagonism between the work of art and the psyche which it is supposed to nourish has been strikingly expressed by Rilke in his poem about the bust of an archaic Apollo. This poem ends with the words:
[…] denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.ll
It is doubtful if the B flat major Fugue for String Quartet by Beethoven is any more nourishment than the bust.
»The modernist composers and their advocates«mm whom Mr. Taylor attacks because of bad cooking would be very foolish to rely upon the argument that they use new ingredients because the old ones no longer taste good. They would submit themselves to the very theory of the »culinary character« of music in opposition to what they are advocating. It may be taken for granted that these very composers and their advocates are not very good. A modern musician who would reply, (as Mr. Taylor would have him) to the criticism, »This is nasty!« – »But you fool, it is supposed to be nasty; the old flavors are outmoded« – would be on exactly that level of musical cooking which produces only bad music. Even with the admission that the purely sensual, »culinary character« cannot be entirely omitted from compositions (and we have admitted that in our analysis of the analogy between cooking and composing) it certainly would be much too primitive for the composer to say that he chooses a certain sound because it is nasty. We pointed out that no possible isolated sound can be absolutely nasty or absolutely beautiful in itself. It may be asserted, however, that the very sounds which are today most vigorously assailed as discordant have had a certain sensual attraction for the composers. Their very complexity, the number of tones they contain, the richness of color which can sometimes be expressed more clearly by one chord than by a whole texture in older music, appeal to us sensually more strongly than more primitive chords which are less of a »structure«, a unity within a diversity. We consider it possible that this very quality of the new sounds, in fact their »beauty«, is one of the reasons that a number of young musicians pursued the lines of radical modern music. However, it is just this consideration of the new chords which no longer survives; and the more a composer develops, the more he will see that the charm of the richest twelve tone chord is only one operating force within a dynamic unity. A composer, however, who would denounce himself by calling the sensual elements »nasty« is probably insincere and, in the depths of his soul, probably dislikes his own works. In the case of great composers, however, it is totally different. Mr. Taylor holds the late Alban Berg in high esteem. But Berg, himself, was very enthusiastic about the very sensual quality of the new chords.
It would be hard to show an increase in »culinary« qualities by analyzing listeners. But there is another possibility for checking our theory that the »culinary« quality of music is really the foremost characteristic of our period. We refer to the indirect approach of showing that for objective reasons music in the past could not be listened to in a culinary way. This indirect approach will be sketched now.
A number of people will take it for granted that the majority of listeners listened culinarily in the past as well as the present. We shall probably be accused of romanticism in expressing this difference in attitudes. For example, the objection will probably be raised that the relation of parts to the whole and the sense expressed by the whole has always been confined to only small layers of cultural elite and experts; while the majority were concerned only with these sensual qualities. We shall probably be confronted by the example that Rossini was more popular than his contemporary, Beethoven; and we shall no doubt be reminded that the cult of the virtuoso has been a perennial feature of music life since the inauguration of the opera in the latter part of the sixteenth century. It will be emphasized that it is unjust to say that today the masses are on a lower music level than they were then, and the obvious fact that radio has acquainted so many people with musical features which never reached them before will be pointed out to us.
To clear up these objections we must first say that in our sense culinary qualities are totally different from the qualities stressed in former centuries. It is not accidental that in any discussion of the earlier cult of these qualities the term, »virtuoso« automatically appears. Then, people admired the faculty of handling the natural material and overcoming the resistance. The heroes of older musical popularity were more like a toreador than a bartender. Possibly their voices played an important role, but it is unlikely that their voices were venerated in the abstract without considering their ability as a tightrope walker. The »culinary« qualities were obviously not the same as they are today for the very simple reason that they did not exist in this sense. They will be sought in vain in any older opera, even the tremendously popular Orpheus by Gluck, for example. It will again be objected that his music might have possessed sensual charm, but our spoiled and perverted palates can no longer taste them. This is to the point. The difference is not simply that the older stimuli fade away when they are experienced too often and must be replaced by fresh ones. There is a difference in the quality itself. To make this clear, the origin of the so-called »culinary« qualities as they are generally enjoyed today must be considered. These »culinary« qualities were not introduced as such. They were originally created by the desire for expression. All the »culinary« qualities, the chords which sound sweet, exciting, stimulating today, were formerly the bearers of an especially intense expression which has since been lost and of which only the »culinary« stimulus is left. Now these elements of expression are comparatively new. Roughly speaking, they are no older than the romanticism starting around the time of Weber and Schubert. Of course, older music did not lack expressive elements. Beethoven, at least, was certainly received in terms of expression. But they were always interwoven in the complete texture, and integrated in this entirety whenever they were felt in isolation. Only since music has become a specifically individualist language has the element of momentary self-expression of the individual begun to supersede the texture of the whole. These elements of the individual’s spontaneous self-expression are the ancestors of today’s »culinary« qualities. Or, speaking more exactly, the »culinary« qualities are the empty shells of individualist expression in music. The tendency against the whole (which we noted as one of the essentials of culinary listening) can be observed throughout romanticism inasmuch as it was directed against any single structure which could not entirely be melted into the means of individual self-expression. As long as they were full of expression, they had a »meaning«. They were serious and, in their very shortness they were even »wholes« in themselves.nn
Today romantic expression has been used so extensively that its old expressive power has been lost. Only its emancipation from the whole has remained along with its sensual conspicuousness which formerly carried the expression. The expression, however, has faded away and become conventionalized. The momentous and conspicuous romantic self-expression has been changed into qualities which are antagonistic to the whole. These qualities are now appreciated for their »culinary« value and sensual stimuli just because they can no longer be taken seriously as means of expression. »Culinary« qualities, thus, must be considered as an historic concept. We say, therefore, that »culinary« listening is specifically modern because the very qualities which are now »culinary« stimuli formerly did not exist as features. Of course, there are exceptions to this historical generalization which could be cited against us, for example, the case of Rossinioo whom we have already mentioned, and a few other cases. Even if we admit that Rossini is an exception, there can still be no doubt that eighteenth-century music was almost entirely bound to the triad, comparatively poor in »tasty« chords and also devoid of melodic »inspiration« in the sense created by romanticism. As a whole, it could not possibly have been listened to in this »culinary« fashion, as if the listener were tasting it, as people now listen to Guy Lombardo43 as well as the rich and flavored sound of a modern symphony orchestra playing so that every bar »melts in your mouth«.44 This issue has been discussed somewhat broadly and in historical terms not unintentionally. We wanted to show by an example that questions apparently insoluble because of the difficulties of listener-research, can be resolved by a feature-analysis.