I’m not one for rap or hip-hop. Come to think of it, I seriously doubt I can distinguish one from the other. To me, they both sound like poverty, like helpnessness, like crime and violence and ugliness and despair. That’s when they’re not reduced to the obnoxious pounding emerging from a car at a stoplight. The attraction escapes me. Then again, it’s likely that my attraction for late Sibelius would be equally mysterious to that chap in the car at the stoplight. To me, his music represents crassness and vulgarity. To him, my music represents sclerotic tedium.
Since I spend no more time exploring hip-hop/rap than hip-hoppers/rappers spend exploring Sibelius, I suppose there’s a (distant) possibility that I’m talking out of my big fat fanny. In the interest of finding out if my nose-holding aversion to such music is unfair, I made a point of listening through a sample of something that was either hip-hop or rap. An incessant pounding electronic beat accompanied a black guy in gang-member attire—lots of tattoos, pants puddling low, jewelry chains, cap—talking lyrics in rhythm. I paid attention, really I did. I won’t pretend that I enjoyed the experience. Quite the contrary: I cringed. On the pain scale it stopped barely short of my periodontist’s most determined assault on a deeply hidden and firmly adhesive patch of plaque. Between the two I would have chosen my periodontist. At least periodontics serve a positive purpose. This song-thing—I won’t call it a “song” because there was no singing—served no purpose except to make my flesh crawl.
Once my gall had subsided, I thought back on the experience. It wasn’t long before I realized that the song-thing was entirely in the moment. It had no past or future, just a present. Its inane blather streamed along from moment to moment, word to word, without any more organized connection than the self-centered babble of a mindless teen at the mall. Me, me, me. That’s what it said. Me, me, and more me. I’m going to do this to you. Do this, do that, say this, say that. Want this, hate that. Stick a straw into an ignorant mind and siphon off the muddled trickle of inconsequential thoughts. Me, you, me, you, me, me, me, me. Completely and utterly self-absorbed, uncaring and unheeding of anything beyond that vacuous space between the ears.
If such childish drivel is characterized by streaming the moment only, then organized concert works—so-called “classical” music, and what a lousy term it is—partake firmly of memory, of anticipation, of a clear sense of time and its implications. Contrast and repetition work together to create the surface experience of form thanks to memory; we hear the reprise of a Rondo form and come to expect its periodic return. To do that we have to remember the reprise, and understand how the various transitions and excursions provide contrast. Sonata-allegro form is based on a principle of key contrasts: a secondary key is placed in opposition to a primary key, with the material stated in that opposing secondary key eventually resolved by re-statement in the primary key. We must hold those antitheses in our minds and recognize the resolving synthesis when it occurs. The attentive listener/viewer at a performance of an opera of Wagner’s Ring cycle picks up the various leitmotifs and their gradual transformations—how the figure of the Rheingold prelude becomes the nature-leitmotif underpinning the Rhinemaidens, then the ominous representation of impending tragedy with the appearance of Erda, finally to become the Gotterdämmerung leitmotif that heralds the end of it all. There’s a lot of memory involved with such listening, a lot of connections to be made, a lot of inner-ear synthesis required.
Such connections develop and evolve along with the maturing musical mind. One’s ability to follow the argument of a sophisticated piece of music is not inborn; it must be cultivated. As young children we listen in the moment, enjoying the tunes and sounds and chords as they tickle our fancy or not, as they flow past. As we grow we start hearing patterns; oh, there’s a repetition, oh, that’s in minor instead of major, oh, that’s the main theme in augmentation, oh, there’s that same Beethoven quote that signified resignation in the first movement, now transformed and elevated into a message of hope. Many of our most expert composers have been masters at writing music that is simultaneously appealing to listeners at varying stages along that journey. Joseph Haydn’s later symphonies, in particular, demonstrate just how well the lessons learned over a lifetime of composition could be applied to writing works that provided irresistable toe-tapping entertainment to everybody, while also posing fascinating challenges to the more sophisticated listeners. Threading one’s way through the taut monothematicism of the Clock symphony finale is no task for the neophyte, but the movement is also snazzy, chipper, and charming, brimming over with zingy energy and good spirits. Something for everybody, in other words. No wonder the English audiences turned Haydn into a wealthy man.
There’s a time and a place for everything, of course. Nevertheless, cultivated musical taste is also discriminating. Wheat from chaff; hawks from handsaws; pearls from swine. No doubt it is politically incorrect of me to state that rap/hip-hop is on a lower rung of the cultural ladder than Joseph Haydn’s late symphonies. But two plus two equals four, so I’ll wear my political incorrectness with pride. There is no discrimination or cultivation required in hearing those song-things. Nothing to remember, nothing to anticipate, nothing to learn. The manifold joys and delights of great music unfold over time; above all, they require patience, an attribute conspicuously lacking in the uncultivated mind. The gang-banger’s time-scales are short; gratification must happen now or not at all. Long-range planning, the seeking of hard-won goals that are certain to be years, if not decades, in the making, just isn’t in the cards. Thus the song-things not only speak of the immediate now, but they also have no musical content save the immediate now. That’s also why they have no staying power. What happens to the hit rap song of a year ago? Of five years ago? From what I can tell, such song-things are as ephemeral as fireflies. Compare that to the Eroica: staying power measured in centuries—208 years as of this writing, to be precise—and no doubt it will remain around for centuries to come.