I love science fiction, have since I was a kid.  I used to dream about going into space, inventing warp drives, and other such flights of fancy.  Alot of my love stems from my parents, growing up Star Wars and Star Trek were in heavy rotation for viewing in my house.  My parents themselves as teens and young adults read the works of Asimov and others and once I was old enough, I too read many of those works.  A quick glance at my bookshelf I see works of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Orson Scott Card.  But as I’ve grown older, and I’ve tried to explore science fiction in both literary and visual media, I have grown to appreciate just what is so wonderful about the genre.

It’s that in my opinion it’s not a genre.  At least not in the sense of “drama,” “action,” “comedy,” and other such labels you find at the local video store, though there is always a “sci-fi” section (many times lumped in with “horror”).  Or even in a bookstore, you have the “literature” section, then sub sections for “romance,” “mystery,” and “science-fiction/fantasy.”  In my opinion science fiction is a genre that transcends genre.  It’s a setting that can be anything it wants.  It can be action, drama, romance, comedy, horror, mystery.  It’s a genre that is so rich and varied.  Not to mention an underdog that has been looked down upon since its early days, and still is for the most part.  When was the last time a sci-fi film was up for Best Picture?  Maybe Star Wars?  

But despite the snubbing of many of the intelligentsia (or intellinistas as I like to call them…hey I’m one too), it is a “genre” that has flourished and has become so rich and varied that many people have a hard time knowing if to call something science fiction unless it blatantly involves robots, aliens, space travel, or preferably all three!  Many people say the TV show Lost is science fiction, but is it?  There is definitely something unknown and strange at work, weird scientific experiments and such.  But unless the last two seasons have some really strange twists (which I don’t really put anything past J.J. Abrams), there will not be any aliens or robots or space travel.  Though they did just move the entire island, which was pretty cool.

But look at how science fiction is action and drama and comedy.  What science fiction funny?  Read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy lately?  Action? Drama?  Star Wars is both in one, as is Trek.  If you want just action, look no further than The Matrix or Total Recall or The Terminator movies or Aliens.  Horror?  How about original Alien, or the more recent Sunshine (which is more 2001 drama until the last act when it turns horror). Pure drama?  How about some 2001?  Too slow or cerebral?  Well maybe Dark City, which is also cerebral, but also a good film noir too, along with a little drama and romance.  Or if you want so really good long form “space opera,” then check out the new Battlestar Galactica.  That should be dramatic enough for anyone.  Hell, it’s practically a soap opera in space.  The only thing it’s lacking is a coma patient pregnant with Admiral Adama’s love child.  But maybe we’ll get that in the last half of season four.

I guess my favorite thing about science fiction, though, is its ability to make us think.  The good science fiction challenges us and makes us think.  But changing the setting from what is known about our world, tweaking it, making changes to force us to ask questions.  Questions about humanity, what makes us who we are.  Questions about reality, what is real, could we tell the difference between reality and a completely convincing illusion?  Or what if we ourselves are the illusion?  It can force us to look at our own reality and see the absurd in how we act to each other.  As in the classic original Star Trek episode “Let This Be Your Last Battlefield.”  You know the one with the race of people that are half white/half black, and dependent on which side of your body is which you’re either slave or master.

Rodenberry was never exactly subtle with his points, but they were effective none the less.  Science Fiction is in many ways like the jester of Shakespeare.  I know, I know I’ve used the reference many times before, even in the previous post, but it is such a classic literary device.  Anyway, because Science Fiction is not dealing with the “real world” it can get away with more, just like the jester could comment on the king through comedy.  Since people didn’t take it seriously, we could dream of a better world, comment on just how terrible our current times are.  Or ask the really hard questions about our human nature.

  There is a great episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where Captain Sisko has a hallucination about being a science fiction writer back in the 1950s, “Far Beyond the Stars.”  He dreams up the entire DS9 universe complete with a black captain, which of course sparks a huge debate on whether to publish the story.  It captures much of what is great about the genre, not to mention why it had such a hard time gaining even the respect it has today.

  I guess what I’m trying to say is that Science Fiction has so many of the qualities that make other genres great, but it does them in such a way that it transcends those genres.  It’s more than just a genre.  What is a genre really?  I know there is great debate in academic communities on this very question, but I would ask if Science Fiction fits many of these qualities.  It has both drama and comedy, and aren’t those the two most basic genres?  Science Fiction can challenge us to make a better future and make a better self.  And this, among many other reasons, is why I love it so much.

  And space ships are wicked cool.

               In his Fundamentals of Music, Boethius divides those engaged in music into three categories:  those who perform music, those who composer music, and those who contemplate music.  It is only this last category that to Boethius deserves the title of musician.  It also works as a sort of social stratification, and in this sense truly shows its derivation from the Greeks.

 

                And while I do not agree, necessarily with the socio-cultural aspects of this musical caste system, it does have not only some interest educational aspects, but also shows a striking parallel to today’s musical elitist culture (which will be discussed later).

 

In learning music, the path of one’s education does go from performer to composer to philosopher, that is if one ever reaches beyond the first step.  We start out young learning an instrument, and learning some basic theory along the way.  Eventually, we learn how music is constructed, more advanced theory, and learn how to compose.  Finally, with all appreciation of these aspects we learn how to think about music.  For most students, though, the third step is not taught.  As articulated previously, we as musicians are very rarely, if ever, given the tools for this.

 

                I can appreciate not wanting to spoon-feed  knowledge to people, but a basic discussion of Kant and Hegel in relation to 19^th Century European Art Music would seem a given, but not even that is done in some cases (my case).

 

                We, as educators, should strive in training young musicians to make them true “musicians” in the Beothian sense of the term: to possibly coin a phrase, the performer-philosopher. 

I’m not advocating a return to the cultish aspects of Pythagoras, or saying that music is some mystical religion or occult teaching.  But rather that philosophy and aesthetics as related to music have lost their way, at least in regards to how we teach music.

 

In most other disciplines, they teach some basic philosophy course that lays out many aspects of it: philosophy of science, education, math, history; but no such course for music is standard.  We don’t even routinely teach aesthetics, something that is at the very heart of music.  (Now granted, this is from my own limited experience, but these are things I strongly feel should be standard in a musician’s education.)  It is part of training a true musician.  Not just one who plays or composes, but one who truly contemplates and strives to understand music.

 

We teach many of the tools:  theory to understand its construction, history to understand its place, but we need philosophy and aesthetics to bring these together.  We do not teach this.  Many courses might touch on the periphery, and students might talk about it, but if we give student two of these tools, theory and history, why don’t we give them the third, philosophy?

 

Towards a Unification

 

                String Theory seeks to give physics the mathematical tools to finally unify Einstein’s General Relativity Theory of gravity with the Standard Model of Quantum Mechanics, and music is in need of something similar.

 

                Music is a fractured discipline.  Not only do we have specialization by discipline (performance, composition, jazz or classical, theory, musicology), but we are still very music culturally biased (Western, non-Western, and every other culture on Earth).  We are all under the umbrella of music, but are we really taught to thing about music as a whole?

 

                Universals get a bad wrap in today’s culturally sensitive world.  Fears of globalization and disappearing cultures have made us keen on preserving what makes our world a wonderfully varied and unique place.  But to truly reach a unified approach to music, even with philosophy, we must first reach a unified description of music in the world, and this would HAVE to include all cultures aesthetic approach to music, non-Western theory, and how music functions culturally.  These are all things that Ethnomusicology has begun to equip us with.

 

                Once we being to understand music in the world at large more completely, we can begin to build a more complete philosophical and aesthetic base of music.  We examine what are those universals that can be found in music theories, performance rituals, cultural perception, cultural function, and others.

 

                Music is NOT a universal language, at least not yet.

 

                When we say that, many of us are thinking of only Western music, but even in Western Civilization it’s not universal.  Play a Mozart symphony for ten different people and odds are you’ll get at least five different reactions, if not ten.  The only thing universal about music is that every culture on Earth has developed some form of music.

 

                That in itself, though, is a compelling fact.

 

                Working from there we can begin to examine the philosophical underpinnings of music in culture.

 

                This is why the crucial first step in this process is to teach philosophy and aesthetics alongside theory and history.  And it is something that should be done at the undergraduate level in college.  We unify all aspects of Western music first with the proper teaching of philosophy and aesthetics to students.  Really a re-unification since to the ancient Greeks and even afterwards, this was crucial to one’s education. 

                After that, we can begin to make strides to unify the study of all musics into our schools, and not just some one semester class of “World Musics.”

  Music is in the world and the world is music. 

 

  For many years philosophers wrote about music as an integral part of the mathematical sciences along with geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy.  Music was described as having its theoretical basis in the ratios of intervals and from there building its way to theory of notes, scales, modes, and harmony.

 

  Along with this also came the harmony of the spheres; that the mathematical ratios of intervals first described by Pythagoras can be observed in the celestial bodies in our universe.

 

  Even Johannes Kepler when setting out his theories, which would become laws, of planetary motion references it.  One of his books is called Harmonices Mundi, or The Harmony of the Worlds.

  But just as Kepler’s astrology was divorced from astronomy, so was his Harmony of the World relegated to the scientific refuse pile of the occult.

  Now, though, we have String Theory, which at least from its metaphorical terms seems to bring its back to the concept of music and science coexisting in nature: the metaphysical, the natural, the musical; the Music of the Spheres.  Or as Brian Greene likes to call it, “The Cosmic Symphony.”

  Setting aside String Theory for the moment, let us consider a more terrestrially bound thesis: music can be found all around us.  It is one that 20^th Century composer John Cage exemplified in 4’33”.  Now whether you consider Cage genius or fraud is a question of personal aesthetic taste, but for my taste, and this thesis, we shall consider him the former.

  As I write this I am sitting in a room in supposed complete silence, but is there truly such a thing?  What Cage was aiming for in 4’33”, at least in my view, was for us to consider the sounds around us; the music that occurs when we truly listen.  Music is not just organized noise.  Music is the sound of the world around us, both natural and man-made.

  We only don’t consider it such because it lacks the rational, logical, organization hand of a composer.  Well, Cage gave us that with 4’33”.

  But what about in a more abstract sense?  Our lives, our culture, even our many religions are filled with musical metaphors or terminology related to music.  We talk of things being in harmony or discord.  Something is like a symphony, or someone is like a conductor.  Granted, we also like our war metaphors, or comparing things to famous historical events or figures, but music allows us a more transcendent metaphor not only because of its status as an art, but also because, even without knowing it, we still associate music with the cosmos.  We still carry a cultural memory of the Music of the Spheres.

 

From many religious creation myths to more contemporary examples like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth creation story, Ainulindalë (The Music of the Ainur), music is a powerful force, one that can be seen as providing the bridge between the sacred and the profane, heaven and earth.  “Life has a melody…A rhythm of notes which become your existence once played in harmony with God’s plan,” extols the Number Six cylon to Gaius Baltar in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.  It may be a fictional television show, but it is a popular and powerful metaphor upon which an entire cosmological musical metaphor is built upon.

 

Music is in the Universe, and the universe is music.

Music is math made audible.

Music is the universe made audible.