A n i m a l m u s i c: M u s i c a s a u n i v e r s a l p h e n o m e n o n

A n i m a l m u s i c: M u s i c a s a u n i v e r s a l p h e n o m e n o n

Viivi Jokela

Music, myths and animals

In ancient mythology music and nonhuman animals (hereafter ”animals”) are very closely related to each others. Animals seem to share the realm of music with humans; or to be more precise, music appears as a universal phenomenon which covers the whole phenomenological reality, from the smallest plant to the transcendental powers of the universe. For example, in the hindu mythology Siva in his dynamic form Nataraja is often represented as a flute playing satyr, a snake around his neck, dancing in ecstasy of his own music. This dance creates the whole universe, and the snake is the very symbol of that creative energy which penetrates all the beings and phenomenons. Francois-Bernand Mâche is in his book Music, Myth and Nature collected a bunch of myths from the Greeks related to the relationship between music and animals pointing out this all-embracing power of music. Similar to the symbol of Siva is the myth of Orpheus, who enchanted all the creatures around him into ecstasy with his playing.

The universe, impregnated with sound, is found from the depths of unconsciousness. The myth of Arion is a good example. Arion, who is captured by the pirates, sings a song standing at the prow of the ship before he´s about to be executed. After that he hurls himself into the sea and the dolphins of Apollo come to save him. An irrational act like this is a symbol of meditation and represents daring to risk the great leap into the primordial unconscious (Mâche 1992, 11-12). Apollo is the symbol of the healing force of this leap. On the other hand, the unknown depths of the ocean represent the Dionysiac ecstasy. When Apollo and Dionysos are united they form a powerful force which manifests as a musical myth. It is the quest for truth which is made possible by music, the universal power of reconciliation. Nietzche describes the ecstasy of Dionysiac music:

Not only is the bond between man and man sealed by the Dionysiac magic: alienated, hostile or subjugated nature, too, celebrates her reconciliation with her lost son, man. The eart gladly offers up her gifts, and the ferocious creatures of the cliffs and the desert peacefully draw near. [...] Singing and dancing, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten to walk and talk, and is about to fly dancing into the heavens. His gestures express enchantment. Just as the animals now speak, and the earth yields up milk and honey, he now gives voice to supernatural sounds...

(The birth of tragedy out of the Spirit of music, 17)

If myths are considered as spontaneously produced universal mental images, there must be some direct connection between musical sounds and natural universe, including all the animals, since myths deal so much with music. Myth is a psychic content from which words, gestures and music radiate. The poet translates mythic thought into cultural values and makes it understandable, communicable. What part do animals play in all this? Through music Orpheus and Arion are in a direct contact with the entire, animate and inanimate world. Music is the means of discovering the truth (of the world) since it ”hurls musicians into the water to rediscover themselves, so that they are helped by the very monsters they were carrying within”. (Mâche 1992, 18-23.)

Animals don´t seem to have as conscious behaviour when they are putting together sounds but even in a mere unconscious way they may be pulled to do so by the very same interest. This interest can be called the quest for truth or whatever but basically it is this need to live in harmony with the surrounding world, nature. Could it be then that also animals, though mere unconsciously, contacted directly the surrounding world through music?

The universal sound-models

There is an infinite number of unheard sounds in nature. Human ear is only able to hear a very limited part of them and even more unable to use sound in a precise and accurate way of communication. The bat is a good example of an animal which lives in a sound-world totally unreachable to human ear. But dolphins and whales are even a better example of this: whereas the human audible frequency is about 18,000 Hz the hearing limit of the dolphins range to pitches as high as 180,000 Hz, over three octaves higher. The toothed whales do their hunting as bats do, by sonar echo-sounding, in the perpetual night of oceans 3,000 feet deep. The periodic and supersonic clicks that the dolphins and whales emit return as echoes which bring all the spatial information they need. (Godwin 1987, 21.)

Since sound travels well in water, actually with a speed four times as fast as on land, it is quite wrong to think the ocean as silent. Just like space is proved to be full of sound (this space-music is even recorded by a space shuttle) the oceans can be considered as a vast and unknown realm of music. Unlike the world of the sea creatures, the human world is more shaped by sight than sound. This makes us unable to fully understand the world of certain animals. In the depths of the oceans there are species that rely totally on their audible abilities since they are blind and there is anyway no use for eyes in the darkness of their world. Instead of concluding sceptically that we have in no way key to their phenomenological reality we should maybe redefine the concept of musicality and music.

According to Pythagoras everything in the universe is in a continous state of vibration: all the beings and things produce an energetic impulse or a field of resonance which can be perceived acustically. According to Severino Boezio´s De institutione musica the pythagorean thought is that music can be divided into three different cathegories: musica mundana, the music played by the cosmos; musica humana, the music or vibration produced by human body; and musica instrumentalis, the ordinary, heard music (James 1993, 31). In the same way we can say that everything under the water produces a certain sound-vibration which can be grasped and in that sense considered as universal. One cannot help speculating that with their extraordinary capacity of hearing dolphins and whales are able to catch these universal models from the nature and communicate through them. But not only do they communicate with each others but also with the surrounding world, or the umwelt, like Orpheus.

Also the human audible world consist of certain universal models, like the 12-tone system. But are these models only cultural agreements, or are they maybe based on more profound principles? Ofcourse one can ask, if the laws of harmony are universal, why don´t the dolphins, for example, also make music according to these laws. The point is simply that dolphins perceive world differently and for that reason they express it in a different way. But they do express it, in a way that the idea of communication is not enaugh to explain. Like Mâche writes, sometimes nature even seems to take risks for the sake of music (1992, 159).

Some of the patterns that, for example, those giant, toothless baleen whales (also called humpback whales) use can be extremely complex and, unlike the dolphin´s clicks and whistles, sound really musical to human ear. They are long and sustained, far-ranging, wondering melodies, strangely punctuated with noises, and full of eerie resonance of the underwater world. These whales have been separeted into the Atlantic and Pacific groups, yet the songs of the two regions still have some phares in common. But the most surprising thing is that in each ocean all the whales sing a different song in every year. The same song has been found on the same date at places 750 miles apart. (Godwin 1987, 22.) How is this possible, if not by grasping these songs directly from nature? And why, if the aesthetics is so useless as the modern scientists see it?

The law of resonance

In a phenomenological sense music is a relationship with the world. According to Mâche, to search for models in nature is to seek the most effective use of freedom, the measure of this effectiveness being joy, whose conquest is one of music´s missions, and which is nothing but power over oneself and over things. Music as an organic link with the universe enables a fusion between the mental state and the field of resonance, creating a state of consciousness: music is a tool of apprehension of the world. (Mâche 1992, 168-169.) But this understanding is not that of the emprical and rational man but rises from the depths of our being, from our very essence. This underastanding can be called aesthetic. It is direct, immediate, intuitive and even instinctive knowledge. It connects us immediately to that field of resonance that it carries within.

The musical mythology of the Greeks as well as of many other cultures show this true parentage of animal and human psyches when they manifest an interest in putting together of sounds (Ibid.: 96). Most obiously the sounds that animals produce to communicate form a system that can be called linguistic. In this sense we can talk about animal language but not in a semantic way: like the example of the humpback whales shows the most effective solution, in a semantic sense, is seldom found in nature. Like Mâche says, the only use of articulated language which seems to comperable to animal songs is that in which semantics become of secondary importance, or even disappear altogether, as in mantras (Ibid.: 105).

Not many people know what mantras essentially are about. Basically mantra is a syllable, a resonance sound, used as a help in tantric meditation. There are many different kind of mantras used in different ways. The most efficient way of using mantra is the one in which the mind is first emitting the mantra and after that concentrating to receive the corresponding or resonating sound that echoes back. When the mind (is it human or animal) emits sound in order to obtain a state of particular conciousness that allows sound to speak, it uses the method of mantra. This is the difference to the normal situation where sound is controlled by the filter of reason. By understanding an abstract maquette of relations between phenomena we come closer to the world of animals, because unlike humans they grasp these universal models or relations naturally.

By questioning the semiotic approach we may realize that freedom doesn´t consist of inventing new collection of signs and a new code of play, but of giving a new expression to a synthesis of archetypes (Mâche 1992, 197). The musical world of animals can reveal us something essential of the nature of music itself. The major problem in the philosophy of music has for a long time been that of the representationality of music. If we consider that music refers to something that is outside of music we are putting there meanings that are not there (or are there only in a phenomenological sense). But if we see music only as free, moving forms, we are clearly denying the power that music has over nature, especially over our own nature. Music as a means for achieving different kind of states of consciousness overcomes this problem by showing that music doesn´t tell us about joy, for example, it creates joy – the music is a zone of joy itself (James 1993, 17).

The western idea of a work of music as a closed and univocal path is very limited one. When we approach musicality from the idea of the law of resonance we bump into a totally different kind of idea of a musical work. The work simply becomes a more or less succesfull attempt to reach a certain field of resonance. In this sense it is inrelevant to discuss about an ”authentic musical piece” unless authencity is understood as the most accurate resonance. The idea that the universal sound architectures are sketched out in nature is the very opposite of the traditional western idea.

Animal consciousness

Not only do we have to question the concept of music and musicality but also the concept of consciousness. The claim that animals, more or less consciously, would contact to their umwelt according to the same principle on which the use of mantras is based, suggest that animals do have some kind of conscious mind. If they were just unconsciously repeating some patterns thay had catched instinctively they would be acting in a very unnatural and impractical way since the music would serve no purpose in their world. Colin Allen has in his article Animal Consciousness raised some questions about the animal cognition and mind. He puts up interesting patterns in our thought that usually seem to be taken granted. For example, philosophy often begins with questions about the place of humans in nature, as if the whole universe would circle around us (as was believed some hundreds of years ago but not anymore, I hope!). Also the problem of determining wheather animals are conscious or not stretches the limits of knowledge and scientific methodology, at the same time awakening a moral reflection over our approach to animals. (Allen1995.)

There are two approaches of special interest to the question of consciousness when applied to animals: that of phenomenal consciousness and that of self-consciousness. The first one is that when we take account the specific umwelt of an animal in question and try to undesrtand its phenomenological reality thruogh this consideration. Like Nagel puts it, there may be something like being a whale, for example, thought we can never perceive the world like whales do. (Ibid.) We cannot understand by our mind, though, but by our ”aesthetic direct apprehension” which somehow allows us to identify with the musicality of the whale by ”letting the sound speak”.

The second approach is more complicated. Allen refers to it as an organism´s capacity for second-order representation of the organism´s own mental states. But unlike Allen says, this ”thought about thought”, which he calls of second-order character, has nothing to do with self-consciouness. The mind cannot look at itself because it is limited. The concept of self-consciousness refers to something in a living being that is present all the time, behind mind, beyond emotions and other movements. This idea can be traced back to Aristotle who explained the problem in terms of inner perception of mental states. (Ibid.) According to him, even the plants are conscious.

There is one interesting experiment made by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird called The Secret Life of Plants. These authors have collected an impressive body of evidence that plants flourish when certain music or even single tones are played in their vicinity. Even more curious is a research made by Dorothy Retallack. She found out that by playing certain music (Western classical music, Indian sitar music) plants inclined towards sound source. By playing another kind of music (hard rock and pop music) they inclined away from sound source. Even if these kind of experiments appear to be somekind of amateur pseudo-science they rise important questions about the concept of consciousness. (Godwin 1987, 18-19.)

So it is again a matter of different states of consciousness which cannot be grasped by reason. If they would then animals would in no way have an access to them since their reason is not as developed as humans. Instead, the animal can indeed be conscious of itself as a living organism having a particular place in the ecosystem. The animal feels what increases this harmonious resonance and naturally acts according to this feeling. This is what its about when talking about animal music.

The claim that animals are musical and in an conscious way brings forth the moral considerations. Where we go from here is in the hands of those who dare to look into things that seem appearant and question the conventional ways of concluding. The Cartesian model makes us blind to our own place in nature: seeing animals as something ”other” serves as an excuse to profit in the merit of the whole ekosystem. There is a great need for those who want to search for new models of interpretation in order to create a more profound understanding of nature.

Sources:

James, Jamie: The music of the spheres – Music, Science and the Natural Order of the

Universe. Abacus: London 1993.

Godwin, Jocelyn: Harmonies of Heaven and Earth. Thames and Hudson: London

1987.

Mâche, Francois-Bernard: Music, Myth and Nature or The Dolphins of Arion.

Harwood Academic Publishers: Chur 1992.

Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Penguin Books:

London 1993.

Unprinted source:

Allen, Colin: Animal Consciousness. An article written in 1995 available in the

following address: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/