A Discourse on Ten Essential Musical Works;

Alternately: “If you were stuck on a desert island and could only have 10 songs with you...” somewhat over-thought.

In an attempt to seek out the most comprehensive methodology for exploring the various musical elements of the ten songs that, were I stranded on a desert Island would be most essential to my survival, I’ve considered several approaches: philosophical, psychological, technical, and mathematical to name a few. Of these, no one approach established clear dominance, and so I will move forward along multiple planes with the aim of converging these into a single cohesive framework. Naturally, my instinct was to turn to the works of established musical theorists. 

On page one of his popular treaties on genre-specific compositional theory, So You Wanna Write a Kick-Ass Metal Ballad?, Thoraxx Deathfingers writes: 

In truth, neither Mr. Deathfingers nor his book (or any of its meticulously arranged appendices) in fact exist—though the need for such a work is self-evident. Nevertheless, had it been written, one might note that Mozart’s opera seria, Idomeneo, was rife with possibility for “artistic reinterpretation” by a group of musical metallurgists such as the creative team behind Aesma Daeva. Between the time Electra faces the audience in Act III to perform her tormented aria, “D’Oreste, D’Adjace,” and the time she quits the stage, she single-handedly checks off seven of the nine thematic elements in section 3 of Deathfingers’s rubric.

However it came to pass, I’m glad Aesma Daeva covered the song. Their fortondoando handling of the material with its driving, more linear (than the original) meter, and freight-train-like tempo underlines the urgency in Electra’s pleas for death as she bemoans her woes to her brother, to the mighty Ajax, and to the chthonic DAEP, Alecto (the Greek pantheon’s castigatrix of unslakable anger). Melissa Ferlaak’s liquid, powerful vocals over the gritty tambour of the guitars are stunning as she portrays an MPI begging the horned, serpentine, Ceraste, to rip out her still-beating heart.

It bears mentioning that, as a generalization, I am by no means powerfully attracted to Heavy Metal music. But I am heavily attracted to powerful music—music that makes me want to stand up if I’m sitting, walk if I’m standing, or run if I’m walking. Music that moves me to do... something. My biggest source for this is the classical genre: for example, attempting to remain seated or motionless when the chorus bursts into “Freude, schöner Götterfunken Tochter aus Elysium” in the finale of the second micro-movement of the fourth macro-movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (3:45), or when the chorus explodes into the third part of Orff’s setting of “O Fortuna” with “Sors salutis et virtutis michi nunc contrary” (1:47), results in my spontaneously devolving into a twitching, quivering mass. In any event, owing to the classical roots inherent to certain of its genres (as Deathfingers would point out), Metal is another potential source when powerful music is wanting. Interestingly, so is rap in my estimation. Songs like Blackalicious’s “A to G,” have a similar, mysterious power to (literally) move me. Certainly “A to G” accomplishes this via a different pathway than “D’Oreste, D’Adjace.” The latter can trace its roots back through Romantic and classical music, through the Baroque, and the origins of plainchant, to the occidental evolution of religion, and along gossamer threads through the apocalyptic onslaught of the Sea People, the rise and fall of Mycenae, of Babylon, of Ur, to the ancient Animist priestesses of prehistory, casting their ecstatic faces up to the sky and trees and earth all around in a rapturous, primal communion with existence itself. Viewed this way, it is little wonder that such music can access listeners on a primal level. Of course rap’s roots can likewise trace back to these same priestesses, as well as, perhaps, their counterparts in some genesis region of Western Africa. These roots seem to secure Rap’s potential to move contemporary listeners as does both Mozart’s and Aesma Daeva’s renditions of “D’Oreste, D’Adjace;” yet these roots route differently, suggesting that the described potential is independent of path.

Mathematically, it looks like this: the evolution of genre with respect to the departure from primal experience is consistent with the evolution of experience with respect to the departure from primal music. We can express this symbolically as follows: 

where G is genre, E is experience, PG is the departure from primal music, and PE is the departure from primal experience. If you’re thinking this looks like the difference at the protagonistic core of the double integral in Green’s Theorem: 1) that’s entirely intentional, and 2) well spotted!

Now, digging back into our elementary school memories, we recall sitting in science class and learning that moving something from one place to another is called "work." This struck  me as odd because up until that moment, work was a rather nebulous concept connected with my father leaving the house every morning in a jacket and tie¹. In any case, now we’re smiling because we understand that when music is moving us, it must be doing work. And thanks to equation (1), we can use Green’s Theorem to quantitatively express the power of music, M⃗, to delocalize our position by a discrete distance, x, along a trajectory, r, as a function² of work, f: 

where a is a position sitting in a chair, and b is a standing position x work units away, as depicted here: 

But if we apply the determinist view that all things are describable by the events that precede them, we should be able to trace all music back to some “First Culture” whose inclinations toward the fundaments of tone and rhythm were absolutely unaffected and unfiltered by any agenda, bias, or even, if we go back far enough, language. So by extension, shouldn’t all music have the same potential? 

One reasonable answer to this is that it does; though the potentials of different musical genres have different values for different people. This is perfectly true. It’s also simplistic and superficial, so it leaves me wanting.

I propose that path matters. The fact that some routes are more direct, and others more circuitous is a non-ignorable variable in calculating music’s power. Empirically, this feels right to me as No-Fi, Easy Listening, and Honky-Tonk, for example, affect me not at all; but the question is why don’t they move me? What’s more, if path matters, and “A to G’s” path to primal roots (with its strong focus on rhythm and kinesthetic use of recitative) is more direct than that of “D’Oreste, D’Adjace³,” then why do they both affect me so similarly? My response is a second proposal: that certain routes involve shortcuts. Consider our supposed pathway for “D’Oreste, D’Adjace:” it makes a B-line for secular music. That’s significant, because secular music evolved directly from the same system of causes that acted on our priestesses. The music of U-2, as a random⁴ example, can make no such claim, and so their overrated “music” moves me only to turn them off. Another empirical example might be the sweetly satisfying changes in Johnny Winter’s Ray Charles cover “Drown in My Own Tears.” The patiently metered I-VI-II-V backbone underpinning its overlay of Gospel substitutions, is really just an evolution of the I-IV-V which our ear easily recognizes as the go-to formula for blues, bluegrass, nearly every popular song written in the 50’s and early 60’s, and, of course, Bob Dylan. And yet the I-IV-V progression comes to us from tribal music in lands once frequented by slave ships bound for American soil, and so clearly songs like “Drown in My Own Tears” have a fairly direct path to ancient tribal roots, though perhaps not as direct as songs like “A to G;” and this seems to correspond to the fact that while Winter moves me, it’s not quite on the same guttural level as the way “A to G” moves me.

So then, what about our beautiful work formula? What about Greene’s Theorem? What about our childhood images of parents leaving their houses every day to push great objects from hither to yon? Well, the first thing one might notice is that equation (2) hinges on the fact that f has all the capability to do the work of the complex integral to get us from a to b. For this to be true, f must have the same potential to do work as M⃗. This appears to be the case since Green’s Theorem says f must be the potential of M⃗, if M⃗ is independent of path—as expressed in equation (1).

But I’m suggesting that M⃗ is not independent of path: 

However, this would make equation (2) collapse in on itself. So we’re back to: is M⃗ independent of path or not? Lets approach it from the other direction: starting with if M⃗ is independent of path, then f is the potential of M⃗. So the real question is: is f the potential of M⃗? More to the point: what does that really mean?

As it happens, potentiality can be defined mathematically: the potential of a formula like M⃗, is the component-wise derivation of some function (our f ), and this is denoted with a special symbol, nabla (∇), that, rather aptly, takes its name from a type of harp:

Here we use γ and ε to denote the elements giving rise to genre and experience, respectively. So what is the equation telling us? That f is defined as the combined precursor to the derivation of genre with respect to primal music and the precursor to the derivation of experience with respect to primal experience, plus constant music or constant experience. Now while that is in fact mathematically sound, there exists one needling little problem: it’s fucking nonsense. And so I’m confident in my assertion that the relationship between a work of music and its power to move is at least partially linked to the work’s roots, and that the relationship is not independent of path in any meaningful way (quod erat demonstrandum!).

But I digress. What I’m getting at is the fact that both Rap and Metal have the potential to move me, not just x units from my chair, but in an abstract, psycho-ethereal sense. This has always been the case with me. In my early teens, my friends were fascinated that I kept a mixed tape in my Walkman with Run DMC on side A, and Metallica on side B. Apparently it was a novelty to them, though it seemed quite natural to me—and I imagine right around the same time, Robert James Ritchie (AKA Kid Rock), and Erik Francis Schrody (AKA Everlast), had similar mixed tapes in their Walkmans as well.

These days, however, my portable music device has a far broader array of music crammed into it. The various styles and genres represented move me in different ways, ways that that vary in attractiveness depending on a context defined by forces of circumstance, and so I’m quite given to phases. Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with a particular vein of music that hovers arround a collection of musical elements but has no strict overarching delineation. Interestingly, though the collection’s musical connections are often audibly conspicuous, they emerge geographically from a broad array of locations, including such places as the United States, England, Russia, and Romania.

Topping my “Most Played” list right now is Goran Bregovic’s “Ruzica.” It’s a fascinating and wonderful song. I’ve discovered a number of popular Serbian songs (okay, “popular” is relative, perhaps “popular in Serbia” is more accurate) that have the exact same changes and the same (or very nearly so) melody as “Ruzica,” which, together with the fact that the lyrics of each song are different, lead me to conclude that either the song “Ruzica,” or perhaps just its melody, is a traditional. With my affinity for the minor, Eastern-tinged modalities, spritely folkdance rhythms, and wailing, pleading, voice-like instrumental affectations found in Klezmer and Gypsy music, and the traditional music of Yugoslavia and Hungary, it seems reasonable for a song that was either inspired by, or is a direct descendant of a Serbian traditional music to make my top ten. Especially when it is played so fluidly, its texture fattened by a Balkan Brass band like a sow before Christmas.

Certainly, much of what causes me to be drawn to “Ruzica” causes me to be drawn to Gogol Bordello’s “Start Wearing Purple.” Which is not to say, what draws me to one draws me to the other. I would not go so far as to deploy some variant of the hackneyed “The two songs are as different as (X) and (opposite of X),” but for two songs in the same minor key, sharing a family of semitones alien to the Western diatonic scale, and some conspicuous cultural ties, they’re still sufficiently different for me to be attracted to very different features of each. The clean, sexy tambour, broad dynamic range, and controlled yet highly rubato meter I love in “Ruzica,” have no analogues in “Start Wearing Purple,” which has a more robust, bruiser-like aural aesthetic. “Start Wearing Purple” is a frenetic gypsy party on wheels. The dynamics are pretty consistently held at in-your-face levels, and the tambour and texture are a rich hodgepodge of harmonized noise over a thriving, thumping, balls-bouncing beat. If “Ruzica” is a chilled Blanc Fume, then Start Wearing Purple is a magnum of Merlot. With a screw-top.

Interestingly, elements of both songs appear in the Tiger Lillies’s “Augustus and the Soup.” As with “Start Wearing Purple” and “Ruzica”, “Augustus and the Soup” is tonally minor and involves folk music instruments playing folk-derived changes. But unlike the other two, it involves a recitative vocal performance—something it has in common with “A to G.” “Augustus and the Soup” also shares elements of theatricality with “Start Wearing Purple,” “Ruzica,” and “D’Oreste, D’Adjace.” But while Bregovic’s and Ferlaak’s theatricality is limited to their singing method (acting their songs as much as singing them), The Tiger Lillies’s theatricality is more literal.

This is also the case with Gogol Bordello, but whereas Gogol Bordello has a circuslike energy, The Tiger Lillies are more vaudevillian—and in a decidedly creepy way. Furthermore, though the texture of “Augustus and the Soup” comprises a collection of tambours that feel strewn about, and that recall the hodgepodge feel of “Start Wearing Purple,” “Augustus and the Soup” is much more spare, and the dynamics and the loose (at times bizarrely so) meter is far more similar to “Ruzica.”

Also in this group, yet cycling back toward classical (Baroque, actually) influences, is Emilie Autumn’s “Opheliac,” which similarly combines minor modalities with a patchwork texture. Of course, Autumn’s offering is much more along the virtuosic lines of Aesma Daeva’s contribution. She possesses a highly developed talent for reproducing an authentic Baroque sound (oftentimes played on Baroque instruments), and seamlessly blending this into a contemporary musical framework (as is beautifully demonstrated in “Opheliac”).

And while Autumn and Ferlaak may well have emerged from similar musical education (both having studied at conservatories), their approaches to vocal performance differ wildly. Ferlaak’s voice is polished, bell-like, and features a firm, rapid, operatic vibrato; while Autumn’s voice is husky and brassy. She sings in a deliberately rebellious fashion, vacillating unpredictably between a broad, cavernous chest voice and a fluttering, flute-like head voice, frequently landing hard on accidentals, bending her notes slightly flat to create dissonance, and slamming into her passaggio like a percussive instrument. But Autumn’s flamboyant, experimental vocal acrobatics have only the impression of wildness; they are, in fact very controlled. She has expertly accurate pitch, and in songs like “Opheliac,” she deploys all her rambunctious affectations in a way that catalyzes the impact of the rigid, Baroque elements of her music, by sometimes working against them to build tensions, and sometimes working with them with the effect of a heightened sensation of relief. It’s like listening to a Stravinsky and Bach duet.

Much harmonically cleaner is the sound emanating from my earbuds when Angelo Debarre gets a turn on my playlist. His authentic Romani treatment of the standards Django Reinhardt used to create the Gypsy Jazz genre, rival those of the eight-fingered Belgian Selmer master himself. With “Caresse De l’Est,” Debarre reaches into esoteric jazz with polyphonic chordal runs that resolve into multiple homophonic melodies layered at intervals giving way to explosive melodic lines that bring to mind the brooding passion of Beethoven and the dazzling complexity of Bach.

The last top-tenner in my family of interrelated, mostly theatrical, mostly East European music, is perhaps the vocal equivalent to Debarre’s guitar work. Andrew Sarichs’s rendition of the Judas Iscariot in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar was a perfect venue to showcase his preternatural vocal abilities. And it’s hard to say whether this showcasing climaxes in Judas’s death scene, with its incredible, abrupt gear shift from an allegro-forte-tutti recitative to an extremely heartrending aria, now a piacere-dolce-a cappella, that reprises Mary’s aria from Act I; or his melismatic arioso that opens the show, “Heaven on Their Minds,” comprising his desperate, Cassandra-like warnings to Christ, belted a across an extraordinarily broad register. Passiagio-wise, Sarichs is the antithesis of Emilie Autumn, in that he slides up and down his entire prodigious range with no discernible hitch or shift in resonance. Granted, Ferlaak and most other female operatic/musical theatre professional can do the same, but I find this less common in male singers, even at the professional level. What’s more, professional singers can hide their vocal break quite effectively by knowing where it occurs and simply avoiding it. Since it’s difficult to notice something that isn’t there, it has been traditionally easy for me not to realize anything was missing in such performances. Until I heard Sarichs sing “Heaven on Their Minds.”

But the most impressive features in Sarichs’s performances are his choices. Admittedly, a few of his diction choices are questionable, but his musical choices are brilliant and do much to draw out the true richness of the song. The best example this involves key. As with most of my ten most critical songs, the song is primarily structured on a Western minor key. In fact, all but the bridge is written in D minor, but Sarichs colors this with quartertone flourishes to suggest the Middle East setting—something I haven’t heard any other Judas Iscariot do—and the dimension this brings to the song is curious. Curious because it seems to be out of all proportion to how much ornamentation he actually uses. But then, perhaps his vocal ornamentations create a shortcut loop in a path to primal root music, bypassing much of Western music and transporting listeners to the Levant of antiquity. Perhaps as well, this is why “Heaven on Their Minds” follows me to the desert island, and his death song does not—though this may actually simply be a function of my repeated inability to find a source from which to purchase or download the latter.

Of course this hints at the cruelness of the task and reaises the question: why only ten? Moreover, what combination of circumstance, artifice, or physics could result in such a scenario? Nevertheless, taking the proposed situation at face value has left me scrambling to organize my feelings about music on both a macro and a micro scale. All the songs I’ve discussed move me in a meaningful way, some with their beauty, some with their virtuosity, and others in more ways still. But with no hard and fast way to categorize how all songs move me, or some generalizable rule to rely upon, I can’t possibly hope to identify the ten ideal song-types necessary to sustain me on my island exile. Of the songs I’ve selected, the list of which was populated out of equal parts deep consideration and whim, I sense patterns streaking through the collection like meandering veins of ore, but no crisply defined strata—even when chiseling away at the problem with diamond-tipped calculus tools, and fictionalized ferromusicologists. But while dividing music into classifiable elements is useful for its comprehension—and by extension, its appreciation—it can never be relied upon as a sole practice to provide a complete understanding of even one human response to one particular work for the simple reason that music is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a transcendent entity in its natural state. One that can be only viewed objectively to within limits, but can be enjoyed without restriction.