Ever since musical notation was standardized, musicologists have privileged the written score over any other form of expression. Even with the advent of more sophisticated folk music forms - jazz, post-Dylan rock, pop, folk, and R&B - there still remains a bias not only for western art musics (a far preferable term to "classical", which actually only denotes a single period), but for the written score. Not only has this bias hindered serious discussion of much popular and folks musics in the west, it has also set to one side any consideration of non-western musical forms. Indian classical music defies easy notation using the western diatonic scale, for example, because of its use of quarter-tones and the open spaces in even the most structured spaces for individual expression. The music created by the Indonesian gamelan - a huge influence on, for example, Robert Fripp - is another case in point where western literary prejudices keep off the table a serious consideration of a wonderful art form.
In the 19th century in America, the publication of sheet music for the expanding middle class created not just a market for all sorts of songs, but a demand that ever-new forms become accessible. First with the rags, and later with even the earliest jazz, the demand that popular musical forms become accessible in a literary form was met by music publishers. As early as the mid-1920's, Louis Armstrong's work with King Oliver and his own recording groups known as the Hot 5's and Hot 7's was annotated for others to learn. Before that, US Army band director James Reese Europe and dance band leaders like Fletcher Henderson created written arrangements that incorporated the new syncopated style, with the accent on the down beat, that were the hallmarks of jazz. Jelly Roll Morton, among his many accomplishments, wrote all his music, and arranged it for recording sessions.
Yet, some of the best jazz was never written down. Count Basie's Orchestra worked from what were called "head arrangements"; he would set out a basic harmonic framework on the piano and his band would then create the melodic and rhythmic structure. These pieces, marvelous examples of group creation, were never intended as anything more than instances for the patrons of the seedy clubs in Kansas City where Basie played to dance to. Yet, they became, due to fame and repetition and even, in the end, notation, actual "songs".
The problem, however, is that not just jazz, but blues, and later R&B and rock and contemporary pop and hip-hop, by and large, incorporate all sorts of room for individual expression - improvisation, "free-from" in Britain - that not only cannot be notated, but changes with each performance. It is right here that the whole question of the primacy of musical literacy arises. Not just for these musical forms, either. Once one raises the issue of performance, it is necessary to include art musics as well as more popular and folk-oriented musical styles as well.
Which is primary? Which is the "real", "true" form of a particular musical composition? For many pieces for the western art traditions, it is easy enough to say the musical score, being the basis for performance, should hold pride of place. In 1990, I watched a film of Leonard Bernstein conducting a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in a newly reunited Berlin. Early on I was stunned to realize, after a close-up on Bernstein, that was doing so without a score. If the musical notation is most basic, primary text from which one works - and a conductor is surely a conductor is as much a performer as the individual musicians - how do we square this with Bernstein's ability to do so without any text at all? Is it just enough, perhaps, to offer up his extraordinary understanding of the entire piece? Yet, doesn't that beg all sorts of questions?
It has been over a century that music has been available to people in recorded form. The addition of a recorded instance of musical performance (enhanced with the visual component since the addition of sound to moving pictures) muddies the water even further. It becomes almost impossible to untangle considering contemporary recording techniques (music is built from individual performances, from the bottom up - the rhythm section records first, with later additions of other parts, usually in multiple takes; finally, at the mixing process, all these pieces come together and are rearranged even more) and the ability to use samples and other pre-recorded sounds to create a composition.
Finally, there are disparate approaches to the recording process. The Beach Boys and the Beatles, in many ways, pioneered the view of the recording studio as a creative space - an instrument to be played and used, in other words. Roger Glover, bassist for the early British heavy metal band Deep Purple, once said in an interview that the band disliked recording immensely. Seeing it as too restricting, the limitations placed upon artists who desire creative space can be a burden. Considering the differences between a jazz recording, say, and a performance of that same piece, it can become almost impossible to recognize the former in the latter, especially in the hands of musicians like John Coltrance or Sony Rollins.
The limitations of the preference for musical literacy when applied outside the confines of western art musics was demonstrated by jazz critic Gary Giddins. In his National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Visions of Jazz, he includes some notated solos from a monograph on Charlie Parker. It should be noted that the monograph's author had to sit and listen to these solos and notated them himself. While musically literate, even gifted in terms of theory, Parker's solos were the product of intense concentration on the harmonic structure playing underneath him. One can, I suppose, take those notations, learn them, and play them note-perfect given enough time. They would not, then, be Parker solos as-played-by. Parker not only had a deep and subtle understanding of musical theory; his intonation, embouchure, tonguing, and phrasing were unique. It is impossible to notate these distinct, Parkeresque realities. Even taking a cue from the recordings along with the notated score leaves me at a loss as to how one could possibly recreate Parker's solos. In fact, since it becomes necessary to combine both musical literacy as well as a gifted ear for subtle distinctions, we have arrived, yet again, at the question that haunts this essay - What if there is no primary musical text?
These questions - abstracted from a musical context - become important for the discussion here on the role and function of the Biblical canon in the life of the Church. While one can point, easily enough, to the growth and final selection of the canon in the early church councils, there is also little doubt that these same writings were considered important precisely because they were seen as having been seminal in the creation of the Christian community. Even the Old Testament writings contained in the Septuagint testify that the experience of God in the community was formative; yet that experience included certain literary forms, including the legend of the law inscribed on stone. Inclusion in the community of the people called out of Egypt was signified by certain acts, in particular circumcision of the men, before it became a matter of accepting the written testimony of the history of the people.
The circle, or spiral, of reflection that insists we can, or should, or even must, point to some instance, some text as primary is belied by the very reality we continue to live. As long as the Christian faith is a going concern, text and community, the word on the page and the on-going life will inform one another, change one another, and change one another.
