Hegel, Ventricular Singing, & the Serpent

Hegelian Dialectic Diagram

Change is a spiral, not a circle. This hypothesis is the fourth and final supposition of the Hegelian Dialectic as formalized by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and it is an astonishingly profound notion. In brief, the dialectic is a continuous series of alternations between thesis and antithesis that come to form a synthesis after which the process repeats. This kind of change is not an unwavering straight line nor is it a pendulum with a static equilibrium position, but rather a combination of the two producing a spiral or corkscrew trajectory. This is a notion Nietzsche articulated brilliantly in the following aphorism that remarks on the dialectic’s effect on the progression of societies: 


What a time experiences as evil is usually an untimely echo of what was formerly experienced as good— the atavism of a more ancient ideal.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, Part 4, #149

Ningizzida depicted in the center

One of the most prominent examples of what Nietzsche calls “an untimely echo” is the cultural symbolism of the serpent. The serpent in our modern time has a negative connotation, having been that mischievous agent in the Garden of Eden that precipitated mankind’s exile from paradise. It is an animal that has been anthropomorphized to embody deceit and even evil. However, serpents in more earlier human societies, like the Sumerian and ancient Egyptian civilizations, regarded the serpent in a decidedly positive light. The cobra has long been the patron and protector of Egypt and the Sumerian god Ningizzida, whose name means “lord of the tree of life.”*

I convey this concept in my piece Aphorism IV: ...an untimely echo... for flute and playback. The flute’s primary musical material occurs at the opening and closing of the piece. These sections are starkly contextualized and contrasted by the accompaniment provided by the playback. The first playback accompaniment is purely electronic and sparse, while the final playback accompaniment consists of seven pre-recorded flutes that create a warm, thick atmosphere. The intervening middle sections serve as the transition between the two primary musical sections. The playback of these transitional sections gradually moves from densely electronic textures to more organic and acoustic sounds. The playback for the final transitional section is comprised solely of my own vocalizations. One of the vocalization techniques I utilized in the piece was ventricular singing, also known as throat singing. I began by singing a pedal tone and then activated my ventricular folds to create high wavering pitches over the initial pedal tone, a trick that I learned as a teenager when I first began exploring my voice sonically. A sample of this technique as it appears in the piece can be heard below.

ventricular singing by APJacksonic

The premiere performance of Aphorism IV: ...an untimely echo... will be featured on The Equilibrium Concert Series' Salon Concert on September 9, 2011.


*Anecdotally, there is another connection between the Abrahamic Garden of Eden and the Sumerian civilaztion, the word Eden has its origin in the Sumerian word Edin which means plain.

Play it again

Imagine any piece of music that you love immensely. A piece that you’ve listened to so many times that, if it were not for iTunes, you would be unable to enumerate how many times you have even heard it. A piece you love so dearly that you might even own multiple recordings of various interpretations of the piece. Think of the subtle or even not so subtle differences of those interpretations and how they inform your personal impression of the work. Now imagine that all your knowledge and personal history of that piece were erased, and you were forced to revert back to a state of having only heard the piece once. How would your relationship with that piece change? What moments would sound just as clearly the first time as they did the 23rd time? What nuances to which you had become so enamored with around the 41st listen would fail to even draw your attention upon the first hearing? Would the piece even be so dear to you at all on that first hearing?

This scenario of listening to a piece only once is unfortunately the norm for most concert goers of contemporary classical music. A great deal of emphasis is placed on premieres and then those works are shelved. Is it any wonder that our contemporary music scene is lacking in repertoire? Perversely, in a time in which there are more living composers than there have ever been, our contemporary repertoire is decidedly scarce. 

This uniquely contemporary predicament is one of the many reasons why myself and 3 other Boston area composers formed The Fifth Floor Collective. Aside from premiering new works, we designate a select few pieces per season to reprise, giving our audience the chance to hear fantastic new music twice. By presenting these reprise performances we are giving our audience a small window in which they can develop a relationship with specific pieces of new music. Given time to digest or even re-contextualize these works, we believe that an audience’s appreciation of a work can only be enhanced. Indeed, it is the sole process by which a piece of music makes the transition from a momentary entertainment in a long succession of others to a piece of music that comes to be an indispensable part of our own deeply personal narratives.

The final concert of The Fifth Floor Collective’s 2010-2011 Season, Season in Review, is at 7:00 pm on May 20, 2011.

For more information visit:

www.fifthfloorcollective.com