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Musical Emergence in Björk's Medúlla

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2011

Victoria Malawey
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Abstract

Björk's 2004 album Medúlla offers listeners radical and new combinations of vocal sounds in pop music. The album features emergent processes ranging from textural emergence, as in standard pop-rock formulas for song introductions, to less common emergent and transformative processes involving metrical, tonal, motivic and phrasal structure. When such processes involving different parameters are combined, other (non-emergent) processes recede to the background, and the effect of emergence assumes a fundamental role over the course of the composition as a whole. Recognizing emergent processes opens up connections with song lyrics and possibly also extra-musical narratives which can enrich our analytical understanding and ultimately our listening experiences of these songs. Furthermore, Medúlla models ways in which other contemporary songwriters could develop sophisticated emergent processes that disturb conventional understandings of popular music as simplistic and formulaic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 136 , Issue 1 , 2011 , pp. 141 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Musical Association

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References

1 Björk Gu?mundsdóttir, discussing Medúlla, quoted in Martin Aston, ‘The Mojo Interview’, Mojo: The Music Magazine, 132 (November 2004), 42–6 (p. 45).

2 Jerrold Levinson, ‘Sound, Gesture, Spatial Imagination and the Expression of Emotion in Music’, Emotion and Action, ed. Elisabeth Pacherie, European Review of Philosophy, 5 (Stanford, CA, 2002), 137–50 (p. 147).

3 Quoted in Lorraine Ali, ‘Voices Carry’, Newsweek, 144 (6 September 2004), 64.

4 ‘A “human beatbox” is a hip-hop performer who mimics beats, turntable scratches, and other electronic effects when the equipment itself isn't available.’ Alex Ross, ‘Björk's Saga’, New Yorker, 80 (23 August 2004), 49–59 (pp. 58–9). <http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/10/alex_ross_bjrk.html>, par. 51, accessed 28 November 2005.

5 Personnel from liner notes in Björk, Medúlla, One Little Indian 9867590 (CD, 2004).

6 Quoted in Aston, ‘The Mojo Interview’, 45.

7 Quoted in Aston, ‘The Mojo Interview’, 45.

8 Björk, information about the track ‘Öll Birtan’, ‘XFM Commentary, 2004 Medúlla’ (25 August 2004; <http://www.bjork.com/facts/lyrics/>, accessed 7 September 2010).

9 Björk, quoted in Jenny Eliscu, ‘Q&A: Björk’, Rolling Stone, 957 (16 September 2004), 36.

10 Laura Sinagra, ‘Breath Fed: Mom Conceives New Uses for her Lungs, Mouth, and Throat’, Village Voice (26 August 2004; <http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0435,sinagra,56281,22.html>, accessed 26 May 2006), par. 3.

11 Nicola Dibben, Björk (Bloomington, IN, 2009), 115–18.

12 For example, textural emergence may be paired with metrical emergence, or emergence of phrase structure may be combined with textural emergence, and so forth.

13 Wallace Berry, Structural Functions in Music (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1976), 186. Berry contrasts ‘progression’ with ‘recession’ (the reversal, or release, of the increased complexity in preceding ‘progressive’ passages). He argues: ‘Progression and recession within element-structures, events paced and shaped in a way that is interesting and consistent in functional relation to an apparent expressive end, are basic to musical effect’ (p. 201; emphasis added). Thus, Berry's idea of ‘progression’ relates to the effect of emergence, and likewise his idea of ‘recession’ relates to the effect of decay. This discourse fits into his larger theory describing the ebb and flow of levels of intensity in music, discussed in Structural Functions. Berry argues that intensity can increase in music through a variety of parameters: (1) melody, through upward melodic gestures; (2) harmony, through departures from tonic, through chromaticism and through dissonance; (3) tonality, through departures from the tonic key; (4) metre, through motion ‘toward shorter units’; (5) tempo, through acceleration; (6) texture (as described above); and (7) timbre (For example, textural emergence may be paired with metrical emergence, or emergence of phrase structure may be combined with textural emergence, and so forth., 11).

14 Robert Snarrenberg, Schenker's Interpretive Practice (New York, 1997), 4.

15 Peter Kaminsky, ‘The Popular Album as Song Cycle: Paul Simon's Still Crazy after All These Years’, College Music Symposium, 32 (1992), 38–54 (p. 39).

16 Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory, History, and Ideology (Philadelphia, PA, 1989), 198–9.

17 Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory, History, and Ideology (Philadelphia, PA, 1989), 198.

18 Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory, History, and Ideology (Philadelphia, PA, 1989)., 198, 222. Meyer shows how emergence can disguise conventions in Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (pp. 223–5) and in the first movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony (p. 226).

20 Lewis Rowell, ‘Music as Process’, Time and Process: Interdisciplinary Issues, ed. J. T. Fraser and Lewis Rowell, The Study of Time, 7 (Madison, CT, 1993), 127–46, 140.

19 Lewis Rowell, ‘Music as Process’, Time and Process: Interdisciplinary Issues, ed. J. T. Fraser and Lewis Rowell, The Study of Time, 7 (Madison, CT, 1993), 127–46 (p. 134).

21 Lewis Rowell, ‘Music as Process’, Time and Process: Interdisciplinary Issues, ed. J. T. Fraser and Lewis Rowell, The Study of Time, 7 (Madison, CT, 1993), 127–46, 137.

23 Berry, Structural Functions, 293.

22 Berry, Structural Functions, 184–300.

24 Mark Spicer, ‘(Ac)cumulative Form in Pop-Rock Music’, Twentieth-Century Music, 1 (2004), 29–64 (pp. 32–3).

25 Mark Spicer, ‘(Ac)cumulative Form in Pop-Rock Music’, Twentieth-Century Music, 1 (2004), 30.

26 Unlike the other authors named here, however, Rowell points out that a combination of different musical processes may evoke ‘multiple levels of meaning’ (‘Music as Process’, 140). We can identify a similar richness of meaning in Björk's use of emergence among multiple parameters. The analysis of ‘Miðvikudags’ attempts to demonstrate this.

27 This and all other musical examples that appear in this study are my transcriptions of songs that appear on Medúlla and are intended to guide discussion of musical events by providing key reference points, such as bar numbers. Excluding neutral and nonsense syllables, the lyrics that appear in the transcriptions and throughout this article are quoted from Björk's official website (<http://www.bjork.com/facts/lyrics/>, accessed 1 September 2005).

28 In his examination of African music, very different from the music being discussed here, but which involves a similar process, Kofi Agawu identifies emergent properties in topoi, which are ‘short, distinct, and often memorable rhythmic figure[s] of modest duration’. See his Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions (New York and London, 2003), 73, 77. To borrow Agawu's concept, the topoi of popular music used in an emergent fashion would be musematic loops, such as the ostinato in the treble part, Tagaq's repeating rhythm and the two-bar repeating gesture in the backing vocals in ‘Mouth's Cradle’.

29 Spicer, ‘(Ac)cumulative Form’, 33.

32 Dibben, Björk, 117.

30 Björk, Vespertine, Elektra 62653 (CD, 2001).

31 Nicola Dibben, ‘Subjectivity and the Construction of Emotion in the Music of Björk’, Music Analysis, 25 (2006), 171–97 (p. 177).

33 Several songs in various popular styles come to mind as examples of this type of emergence: Radiohead's ‘Exit Music (for a Film)’ from OK Computer (1997), Finger Eleven's ‘One Thing’ from Finger Eleven (2003), Seether and Amy Lee's ‘Broken’ from Disclaimer II (2004), Patty Griffin's ‘When It Don't Come Easy’ from Impossible Dream (2004) and U2's classics ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’, ‘I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For’ and ‘With or Without You’ from The Joshua Tree (1987).

34 Textural emergence materializes at least twice more in ‘Triumph of a Heart’: (1) the bridge section (2:24 – 2:56) begins texturally more sparsely than the previous music, being marked by a significant reduction in texture, and then gradually builds again layer by layer; and (2) the last two chorus sections (2:56 – 3:28 and 3:28 – 4:06 respectively), both immediately following the bridge section, feature a chorus of Björks (that is, multiple overdubbed recordings of her voice singing the lead vocal), and this makes the texture even fuller and continues the process of textural emergence over the course of the song. Pop critic Jake Coyle describes the cumulative effect: ‘There are moments when her voice melds on top of the others, building into a frenzy of sound. The best example of this is “Mouth's Cradle”’ (‘Medúlla’, Philadelphia Tribune, 3 September 2004).

35 Discussion of how emergent processes operate in songs on Medúlla other than ‘Submarine’ and ‘Mouth's Cradle’ can be found in my ‘Temporal Process, Repetition, and Voice in Björk's Medúlla’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 2007).

36 Björk, information about the track ‘Submarine’, in ‘XFM Commentary, 2004 Medúlla’.

37 Rowell, ‘Music as Process’, 144.

38 For more on the history and recent application of paradigmatic analysis, see Nicolas Donin and Jonathan Goldman, ‘Charting the Score in a Multimedia Context: The Case of Paradigmatic Analysis’, Music Theory Online, 14/4 (December 2008; <http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.08.14.4/mto.08.14.4.donin_goldman.html>).

39 Meyer, Style and Music, 222.

40 Meyer, Style and Music, 199.

41 My thanks to Jane Piper Clendinning for her suggestion to consider a modal interpretation as an alternative to a definitive tonal reading of ‘Show Me Forgiveness’.

42 Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Philadelphia, PA, 1990), 203.

43 Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Philadelphia, PA, 1990), 203.

44 Dibben, Björk, 115.

45 Berry, Structural Functions, 362; Harald Krebs, ‘Robert Schumann's Metrical Revisions’, Music Theory Spectrum, 19 (1997), 35–54 (p. 37).

46 Krebs, ‘Robert Schumann's Metrical Revisions’, 37.

47 My labelling of the grouping dissonance as ‘G4/3’ follows the convention that Krebs puts forth: ‘Grouping dissonances are labeled by a “G” followed by cardinalities of the levels involved, represented as a fraction’ (Krebs, ‘Robert Schumann's Metrical Revisions’, 38).

48 Gretchen Horlacher's concept of ‘multiple metre’ characterizes the essence of the conflicting metrical orientations in the accompaniment of 0:00–1:37 (bars 1–89) of ‘Desired Constellation’. According to Horlacher, ‘multiple metre’ is a property that arises in passages that ‘may have more than one viable interpretation’ (‘Multiple Meters and Metrical Processes in the Music of Steve Reich’, Intégral, 14–15 (2000 –1), 265–97 (p. 267)). She argues that this phenomenon of ‘shifting back and forth’ is a formal process in Steve Reich's Piano Phase (My labelling of the grouping dissonance as ‘G4/3’ follows the convention that Krebs puts forth: ‘Grouping dissonances are labeled by a “G” followed by cardinalities of the levels involved, represented as a fraction’ (Krebs, ‘Robert Schumann's Metrical Revisions’, 269). Much as in Piano Phase, multiple metre functions as a formal process in the accompanimental layers of ‘Desired Constellation’.

49 Harald Krebs, Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann (New York, 1999), 82.

50 Berry, Structural Functions, 362–77.

51 This progression toward greater stability, or metrical consonance, differs somewhat from Horlacher's concept of ‘metrical emergence’, in which a ‘span of time is initially accented in an irregular or sporadic way’, and as the music continues ‘the cues may eventually articulate the missing level(s), leading us to experience a process of growth as the metrical identity of a repeated motive is enriched’. (Horlacher, ‘Multiple Meters’, 271). The emergence in ‘Desired Constellation’, instead, features a large-scale shift from a relatively dissonant metre to a more consonant one.

52 Meyer, Style and Music, 198.

53 Meyer, Style and Music, 225.

54 Similarly, Mark Butler identifies repeated elements in electronic dance music and writes: ‘As they are repeated over long periods of time, however, they eventually move to a deeper level of consciousness; thus new elements are added at fairly regular intervals. In other words, textural elements begin as figures, but recede to the ground.’ Mark Butler, ‘Music as Action: Techno and the Perception of Agency’, Semiotics 1999, ed. Scott Simpkins, C. W. Spinks and John Deely (New York, 1999), 303–13 (p. 309).

55 Dibben, Björk, 127.