32

Theory of Sustainment

32.1. CONCRETE CRITERIA

We have noticed that a collection of objects could be explored for other things than the forms it suggests. This is what happens when, for example, we say of a number of figures that some are printed, others drawn by hand, or with a ruler and a hard or soft pencil, with a saw-edged roller, or a paintbrush. This is nothing to do with the interaction of forms in these figures. What holds our attention is the diversity of factures or, more precisely, the variations in the “sustainment” of the line in different drawings. We can easily transpose this example to the domain of hearing.

We have already discussed sustainment as a morphological criterion, which allowed us to identify objects and underpinned their unity: nonexistent, continuous, or iterative sustainment. It was the crudest, most general thing we could say. Here we are dealing much more with the characteristics of sustainment, its “manner,” involving the manner of the energetic agent.

The reader may find it surprising that the analyses above did not bring in the “manner” of sustainment. Surely we were studying sustained sounds, which therefore came under the corresponding criteria? And, indeed, the criteria for grain, which apply to the perception of the matter of sound, could have been studied in homogeneous sounds, and the criteria for allure, which primarily concern small variations in dynamic profile, would logically have come into the picture when we studied formed notes. We preferred, however, to keep the theory of allure and grain for a chapter of their own, thinking that if mass and dynamic profile come from the abstract pole of the object—that is, its effects—then grain and allure on the contrary are perceptions that reveal the concrete pole of objects, closely linked to the energetic history that relates the origin of every moment of the sound.

More precisely, since sustainment criteria are obviously themselves abstracted from the data given by a specific act of listening, we should say that the perceptions of allure and grain readily come to mind as bringing together two extreme examples of dynamic and mass perceptions, at the junction of the criteria for form and matter. It is this special situation that made us decide to study them separately.

32.2. SUSTAINMENT CRITERIA

(a) Grain

A homogeneous sound may include a microstructure, generally due to sustainment from a bow, a reed, or even a drum roll. This property of sound matter reminds us of the grain of a textile or a mineral.

If we observe the movement of a bow filmed in slow motion, we do, in fact, notice that in the most limpid note the best “held” bow in reality produces a series of attacks in which the jolts are more or less far apart, more or less regular. Similarly, a bassoon reed emits as many “noises” as beats, and then we find ourselves in a zone where two sensations from the same phenomenon merge: the perception of pitch from the beats, and the perception of beats from differentiation of the impacts. Finally, a quivering cymbal, even when left alone, “teems” with sounds, and the resulting impression is also similar to grain.

Here we can measure the importance of a type of musical analysis that groups three such physically different phenomena under the same perceptual heading; purely dynamic, or purely harmonic, with nothing in common between the grain of the bow and the cymbal where causes are concerned; conversely, the grain of a bassoon is one of the two simultaneous qualitatively different perceptions of the same periodic phenomenon, the other being pitch. The idea of grain, with its disparate physical origin, sums up all these aspects of a single type of perception.

(b) Allure

We know that the dynamic profile of an object is the envelope of the dynamic variations of the sound in the course of its duration as it could be represented as a curve. We can easily observe that, while some profiles are characteristic of the instrument (piano, guitar, pizzicato, etc.), other profiles are characteristic of the sustainment and even the style of sustainment of the instrumentalist: violin vibratos, which are deliberate, and singers’ vibratos, which are more or less involuntary. Therefore the overall profile, often typical of the sound body, may also have an allure, a vibrato for example, typical of sustainment.

How is allure distinct from dynamic profile? In that the latter characterizes the object while ignoring sustainment. Does a sound come to a sudden end, does it have a steep attack, or does its energetic development make it a swelled sound? Morphology identifies this profile in an initial perception of energy. But sustainment is also revealed in irregularities by a law of sustainment that characterizes the object only secondarily.

Allures, as we can see, are more like dynamic than mass criteria. Nevertheless, allure is not only a dynamic criterion; the more or less regular oscillations that are its hallmark also cause variations in pitch (vibrato in stringed instruments, singers, etc.) and harmonic timbre. We could say that allure is made up of many factors (in varying proportion depending on the type of sustainment), the most important of which are associated with the dynamic and pitch of sounds.

Allure, therefore, gives one of several pieces of information about the history of the energy in the course of duration, which ultimately we perceive in three ways:

(a) first-order information, concerning overall forms: the intensity site that musicians allude to when talking about nuances and the contour that we call the dynamic profile.

(b) information that could be thought of as second order, inasmuch as we perceive the details of the profile as oscillations occurring, for example, at a rate of several per second: this is the allure of the sound.

(c) finally, third-order information, which appears as perceptions of matter (even though sometimes they are dynamic microstructures) incorporated in the form of grain, which is therefore a mutation of perceptions of allure when it becomes tighter.

32.3. THE SIGNATURE OF FACTURE

We have found several types of grain, corresponding to the most general modes of sustainment: it was more a matter of refining typology than distinguishing different classes. The genres of grain will, on the contrary, be illustrated by concrete examples: a particular facture applied to a particular sound body. A process of analysis centered on sector 4 (see chap. 21, fig. 24) will be needed to find calibrations and define species of grain in relation to each other in grains where type and genre are close enough together.

Allures would lend themselves better to morphological classification as embellishments of profiles or details of forms. Surely they are only transition criteria? With a limited definition such as this, allure would not deserve to be retained as a criterion. The dynamic aspects of a violin vibrato, the natural vibrato of a voice, or the random events in a fluctuating sound from a sound body moving in space would merit only a passing comment: but this is not the main thing about allure. Just as grain “leaves its signature” on matter, allure, in our sense, “reveals” the energetic agent’s way of being and, very broadly, whether this agent is living or not: life, in fact, is revealed through a typical fluctuation. Thus, such signs of facture, sometimes tiny, will appear much more important than obvious dynamic embroiderings. In other words, as with grain, we will look for types in sector 2, while we will examine genres in sector 1 and species in sector 4.

Finally, it may be noted that when we speak of sustainment, we find words more easily than when we look for words to describe the abstract in music; saying that an allure is living consists in stating a fact and discerning a very common type of causality. Obviously, we would still have to see what demonstrates life in allure.

As for grains, the criterion is so concrete that we immediately think of analogies that seem justified. When we speak of a rough or matt, velvety or limpid sound we are comparing sound to a stone, skin, velvet, or running water. Analogy with microstructures seems much more justified, although applied to perceptions that have no tactile or visual links. There must be a reason why these comparisons are made in everyday speech, spontaneously and convincingly: it is because here it is not the objects of sight or hearing themselves that count but the way they are ordered. At this level it is the structural facet of the object that is perceived: it does not matter whether it is sound or image since we perceive the same ordering process underlying the two forms.

32.4. TYPES OF GRAIN

We have, it will be remembered, distinguished three main types of sustainment: the impulse with nonexistent sustainment, continuous, and iterative sustainment. It is very likely that they will give rise to three types of grain, which the ear will identify as different in nature before organizing them into calibrations.

First we will turn to the most ordinary musical experience. As examples of nonexistent sustainment we could take a string pizzicato, a piano note, or a gong or cymbal sound. The pizzicato has no perceptible grain. In the bass piano notes, on the contrary, we can perceive a scintillation that with some pianos suggests an iridescent dust. As for the cymbal sound, apart from its harmonic mass and timbre we can clearly hear a sort of rapid tingling. Close to the harmonic timbre, therefore, and one of its generic characteristics, these are resonance grains or scintillations.

To classify the grains associated with the other two modes of sustainment—continuous and iterative—we will have to interfere somewhat with instrumental distinctions. In fact, for us who listen there is no great difference in sustainment between the beating of a bassoon reed in the bass notes and the roll of hard drumsticks on a bongo. But neither of these sounds is at all like the sound of a bow, which, lightly brushing the string, imprints a completely random microdynamic on it.

So there we find two types of grain, depending on whether the sustainment is really iterative (and relatively regular) or, from rubbing, much more continuous and tight (and, in fact, irregular, its apparent regularity being only because it obeys the laws of statistics).

Thus, wind instruments can be divided into two categories, according to their type of sustainment: a flute sound, for example, has a very perceptible rubbing grain owing to air, which could be compared with the rubbing of the bow. As for reeds, they vibrate, “crenellating” the dynamic. Similarly a voice in the lowest bass notes gives not a rubbing grain but a succession of breaks in and intakes of air: so the glottis can be compared to a vibrating reed, and its grain, crenellated, to a bassoon in the bass register.

32.5. GENRES OF GRAIN

Our division into three types is therefore based on three characteristics specifically linked to the mode of sustainment. Resonance, rubbing, and iteration will produce pure types: harmonic, compact, and discontinuous grains respectively. But in practice these types of sustainment are superimposed and combined. What are the main combinations that will constitute genres of grain? Where, for example, will we classify the grain that results from rubbing a rough surface? The iteration of micronoises from the rough edges is mingled with the perception of the rubbing itself. We are inclined to suggest an illustration of the main mixed genres, combining the earlier types in pairs; we could take the analysis further by identifying the contribution and proportion of the three typical components in the most complex examples (see fig. 39).

FIGURE 39. Types and genres of grain.

How can we classify the noise of a cart on paving stones, for example? The wheels creak (rubbing), hit rough bits (striking), and these impacts resound (resonance) on the cart. A buzzing noise is explained by its consonants: a rubbing sound “zz” and a plosive “b.” A marble rolling in a gong has all three grain types mingled together: rubbing, micronoises, all wrapped in a scintillation from the resonance. The terminology of this figure is reminiscent of the Italian “noise” men, the precursors of that rather too anecdotal part of music theory.1 Although preoccupied with the dramatic effects of noise, as we can see, they must instinctively have attempted the act of generalization that properly belongs to music.

Reducing grain to six main genres does not, of course, exhaust the ear’s capacity for discernment; we could make distinctions within each genre; thus, we can find scintillations that are regular (as in a bass piano note) or random (as in a cymbal sound). Other sounds may present a progressive or varying scintillation. We will make a distinction between rubbing through friction and “aeolians” (wind, breath). With vibrations we will have to distinguish those that are regular or random, rhythmed or progressive, or those that develop, become tighter or open out, causing both their relative weight and their module to vary (boxes 66 and 69 in fig. 41).

32.6. SPECIES OF GRAIN

With species we expect to find the various ways of describing the emergence of grain in the musical field. But how does this hybrid criterion between matter and form present itself in this field? Does a grain have its own sort of mass and intensity? How does it relate to duration? We will make a brief exploration of this virgin territory.

The most elementary description concerns the dynamic texture of grain: this can be more or less tight. In contrast, though, we could say that, if grain is understood as distinct from mass, this raises the question of its weight in a relationship between mass and “background noise.” This relationship is very marked in high notes on the violin, for example, which have a veritable corona of white sound, the aesthetic or nonaesthetic nature of which depends less on the level than the quality of the grain. We must admit, however, that this example is somewhat dubious, for a grain can only exist “in” a sound, since it is a property of the sound matter itself; when we have objects where the grain seems to “detach itself” from the continuation of the sound, we are justified in taking the analysis further by breaking down the sound into two distinct objects. This is what is done by the listener who hears the grain as noise in a musical note (for example, the high notes of a violin and the rubbing of the bow). In extreme cases this breakdown leads us to describe grain as a mass, as shown in boxes 64 and 65, 66 and 67 in figure 41 (section 34.3).

When the listener is faced with mixed grains, he similarly separates out the objects that carry these grains; these then become distinctive criteria, even where the objects are inextricably entangled in the pitch field; this analysis applies to the example of the marble rolling in a gong, where a clear distinction is made between the marble (discontinuous grain) and the gong (resonance grain); it is the same type of analysis that allows us to find distinct musical notes in the miscellany of harmonic instrumental sounds.

When we are dealing with much more complex sounds, this sort of phenomenon often facilitates the analysis of contexture; in fact, some of these nodal sounds will be discerned by their grain. Thus, grain is the signature of the sound, the sometimes crude, sometimes subtle sign that leads to its identification. Helmholtz had remarked on this without using the word. On this subject we should note that instrument makers have constantly striven to obtain grains that are subtly and closely linked to mass. The success of stringed instruments is significant in this respect.

Accustomed as we are to the smoothness, the softness, the purity of the sounds a good violinist draws from a good violin, cinematographic slow motion, as we have said, has some surprises in store: what the camera reveals is a continuous starting and stopping of the string in an unexpected, highly instructive state of agitation. This is an excellent lesson, indeed, which should prevent our confusing our descriptions with the physical or instrumental event: a soft grain, a pure sound, are, fortunately for our ear, living, perpetually disturbed, subtly changing realities.

32.7. ANALOGICAL CRITERIA: CLASSES OF GRAIN

Seeing yet again how little the physical nature of sounds accounts for the actual perception of them, it seems better not to take the earlier theoretical descriptions of species of grain too far and to prefer the empirical classification obtained by describing the “aspects” of sound matter (as we would say: the aspect of the surface of a material object). From this new standpoint, nearer to morphology, we will be able to reintroduce the earlier gradation. In effect, to say that a grain is rough or matt is also to say that it is more or less tight, but in addition it involves referring to a quality linked to sound matter, differentiating one mass from another.

We will therefore place a grid for further evaluations of grain in box 62 of the general diagram, putting comparable grains in analogical relationships. Rather than comparing a resonance and a rubbing grain, it is better, with grains of the same type, to evaluate how they progress from quivering to limpid via tingling, from rough to smooth via matt, or from quavering to fine via dense. This is the best approach for spontaneous description and suitable terminology.

32.8. ALLURES

The quality of grain attached to sound matter suggested the surface of a material object and the sense of touch. Similarly, the criterion of allure, attached to the form, suggests the dynamism of the agent and the kinesthetic sense; it enables us to appreciate the vivacity and energy specific to the object. The example of the violin is particularly convincing in this regard. Our ear judges the action of the right hand, the hand that manipulates the bow, by its results: whether the resultant sound will be described as beautiful, full, shrill, or insipid depends on the grain. Conversely, the action of the left hand, the finger vibrating on the fingerboard, the vibrato, reveals the sentient presence through an allure that can in turn be described independently of profile or mass: it will be broad, dense, ample, tiny, or again, generous, brilliant, never irregular or mechanical. If it should be missing, we would listen more attentively to the right hand and recognize the violinist all over again by the inevitable fluctuations in the sound in another sort of allure (besides, surely vibrato is made precisely to compensate for and move beyond the mechanical uncertainty of the performer in life’s fluctuations?). On the contrary, if a barrel organ plays its naive tremolos, the ear will identify its allure before any musical description: it is a machine.

This is a very common question asked by man about any object, musical or otherwise: “natural or artificial? craftsman or machine? wood or plastic?” With the musical object it is allure that gives the answer. In allure, perception focuses on everything that can reveal the presence of the differentiated, the living.

What seemed only to be a second-order dynamic aspect of sound is therefore linked to a fundamental question. We immediately distinguish a very regular vibrato played by a violinist from another produced by a machine: where form is concerned, the difference between the two is not great. However minimal it is, it is immediately seized on and interpreted by a faculty of perception that seeks to know if the event, dependent on natural laws, is totally predictable, if it is the product of human will or merely of chance. We must not think for one moment that this endeavor is beyond the capacities of the ear: in the domains into which the ear is led by ancestral training in decoding clues, it is capable of grasping second- or third-order information very easily and shows extraordinary skill in deducing from the smallest fragment of sound whether its origin is human or mechanical, its character predictable or random.2

The allure that gives equilibrium to a tangle of small events, the fluctuation characteristic of a living agent, is a central class or type in all modes of sustainment. On the two sides we will put predictable mechanical order on the right, and the unpredictability of chance, disorder, on the left.

What professional sound effects engineers (on the radio, in the theater, etc.) are trying to do is precisely to deceive the listener about origins. Thus, they imitate the howling of the wind in the trees, a railway engine, footsteps on gravel. Without an accurate intuitive understanding of allure on the part of the sound effects man the stratagem fails; so we recognize nature, man, or the machine by allure, just as much as or even more than by the contents of the sound chains they produce.

According to our definition, allure, which affects not only profile but also, indirectly, matter through very slight oscillations in every characteristic, is thus a powerful means of identification. Here we are not talking about recognizing an anecdotal causality—“Who or what in particular produced this sound?”—any more than for grain, but we are trying to find the answer to a more general question, which places allure in a range going from redundancy to disorder.

32.9. TYPOMORPHOLOGY OF ALLURES

So this leads us to classify allure just as much from the deductions we make when we perceive them (the allure of the agent) as from the study of their effect (the allure of the form).

For this classification we suggest a nine-box diagram (fig. 40), where “normal” allures are placed along the diagonal; normally a mechanical sustainment is regular, a living sustainment is fluctuating, and a natural sustainment disordered. The boxes on either side of the diagonal contain the other allures, such as those that would enable us to identify the action of man or machines in a disordered phenomenon. Thus we strive to obliterate any difference between real and stage thunder; we are trying to characterize the allure of the metal sheet being shaken in the wings, stripping it of anything that could indicate human or mechanical intervention, in order to create the illusion of natural disorder.

FIGURE 40. Typomorphology of allures.

We will concentrate here only on what directly concerns our subject: music being communication, the listener naturally expects the message to come to him from another person, but he accepts that within certain limits this partner may use machines. People do not really like electronic sound, but the piano is a machine, as is the organ; the violin is more sensitive. By mutual consent we put up with a noise and fluctuations in sound from the violin that would make any other instrument intolerable. Custom alone is the judge between innovation and conditioning. This divide is debatable and mobile.

The typomorphology we have just been discussing will figure in columns 1 and 2 of the summary diagram (section 34.3): it is highly abstract. In reality, sustainment can be both ordered and fluctuating, or it can bring together a mechanism and a living presence. Although vibrato, as we have said, basically indicates this living presence, it nevertheless comes under mechanical causalities; thus, it can be regular, symmetrical, obey a “pendular” law, or be dissymmetrical and come from a relaxation oscillation or, finally, an iteration. The term allure is therefore a way of looking at sounds from a point of view that takes in many causalities in a different way, in very different examples: percussive accumulations, variations in the pitch and intensity of a vibrato, cyclic repetitions of a loop. In all these examples we evaluate the law of sustainment in the same way, immediately describing its regularity or irregularity, its progression, itself regular or irregular depending on whether the pulsations are closer together or farther apart, accompanied by the variations in their regimen.

We can also speak of the particular allure of an object, as well as the characteristic allure of a collection of objects, such as a set of bells or a vibraphone keyboard. If a collection of sounds has an incident in its sustainment, this particular moment will also characterize the allure. Thus, particular circumstances in sustainment, the “bonds” it imposes on every value, sometimes call for the term allure prior to any more abstract analysis. But this would be to go back to pure causality; first we must complete the first-order bonds of the dynamic profile discussed in the last chapter.

32.10. SPECIES OF ALLURE

Although it is everyday parlance to use the term allure in a very general sense for a sound, in the final analysis we will not retain such a broad connotation. We should be able to distinguish this dynamic differential from dynamics itself even more easily than grain from matter. We can also calibrate allure as the differential of the average pitch of the sound (amplitude of the vibrato in the tessitura). Allure, thus limited, affects pitch and intensity criteria with its oscillations; it also emerges in duration, either by its module (the number of pulsations in duration) or by the variations in its regimen.

In these three cases we will limit ourselves to a brief analysis. No pitch or intensity site for allure, since it is only a differential, with its salience in columns 5 and 7 on the summary diagram in chapter 34, where it is simply shown in three calibers: weak, medium, or strong; these calibers evaluate the “dip” in the height or the intensity at the edges in relation to the pitch or weight of the sound. Of course, we link columns 5 and 7 to the last duration column to find the common module for frequency of pulsations.

If the allure varies, we compare the extent of the variation with its speed of development in a small nine-box diagram in columns 8 and 9 (which we will see repeated in the next chapter for all sorts of variations): three degrees of caliber intersect with three degrees of module, enabling us very roughly to show the degrees of a development in three numbered points of reference with, for example, the three following phases—initial: medium and tight (4); median: strong and well adjusted (8); final: weak and slack (3).