The Perception Lecture given by Charterhouse pupil, Frederick Hervey-Bathurst, took place on Thursday 28 January. Review by Anastasia Kolomiets (Year 12):
The Perception Society is one of the most successful societies at Charterhouse, they hosted yet another exciting lecture in January, but instead of inviting an outside specialist, Dr Balasubramanian (Chair of Perception Society) looked inwardly and allowed a current pupil, Frederick Hervey-Bathurst (Year 13, Gownboys), to present a lecture on one of the most creative forms of expression of the human spirit – music.
This elegantly presented lecture was given by Frederick in the last academic year and was so popular and fascinating that he was asked to do it again, this time in more detail. Frederick’s true passion is music and the talk was undoubtedly worthy of any university lecturer.
What makes us enjoy music? What is music to us? How can we explain different musical tastes and are we naturally tuned to like some music more than others? These are the questions one might ask when considering the psychology, philosophy and history of music. For Frederick, these questions will always remain unanswered as they will, indeed, for all of us. However, some analysis of music, scientific entity (sound waves), nature (our natural perception of music) versus nurture (the culture we have been brought up in) can influence our musical taste and help shed some light onto what music really means to us.
Music is incredibly complex. The idea of a sound wave is really simple: it is a vibration, a ripple pattern travelling through air. However, if the same note is played on a variety of musical instruments it produces a set of unique sound waves at different frequencies, amplitudes and wavelengths, which is the reason why orchestral music is so rich and varied. Sound waves combine the instruments’ characteristics as well as the way the waves overlap (whether they are in phase or out of phase) to affect the result we hear. If waves join together in an orderly, regular way (for example when the peaks of one sound wave correspond to the peaks of another) they will combine to give a harmonious sound, what we call a consonance; these are traditionally thought to be pleasing to the ear. Dissonances are created when the frequencies of the notes do not overlap nicely; these are considered to be unpleasant.
The traditional stereotype of what is and what is not enjoyable in music have been challenged throughout the last century. Composers such as Andrew Lloyd Webber and musical groups like Pink Floyd base their music around dissonant chords; this does not mean their music is unpleasant to the listener; on the contrary, it has gained admirers across the whole world. This does not mean there is no such thing as “bad” and “good” music since the basic components of consonances and dissonances do not seem to determine whether we like it or not. To prove this point, Frederick engages his audience in a small listening exercise in which he played a series of musical intervals and the audience was asked to determine whether they were consonant or dissonant; even though most of the intervals were guessed correctly, most people in the audience got at least one of them wrong.
Another feature of music is that it is used by artists to convey or represent something. For instance, Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ captures each season of the year by creating a mood to represent that season or mimicking the nature of that season, such as the rapid energetic descending melody of ‘Summer’ to represent powerful summer rainstorm. However, this language is not precise as there is no set vocabulary: it is more intuitive and open to personal interpretation. In fact, our interpretation of music is largely based on the associations we already have, largely influenced by nurture: our culture and our previous musical experience. Frederick played several musical pieces to his audience and asked them to allocate a picture to illustrate what they thought the music represented. For example, upon hearing a march one would be expected to select the picture of soldiers on parade. The audience was then asked what influenced their decision. A common response was ‘in films we always hear this type of music accompanying a certain scene’ or ‘during events, this type of music is always played’. The exercise illustrated the effect nurture, culture and previous experience, has on our perception of music.
This shows just how important culture is in considering music. A traditional stereotype of the Colonial Western society was that classical Western music, by composers like Mozart or Chopin was superior to the music created by “uncivilized” aboriginals in conquered continents. However, this stereotype is being subverted by many musical artists today who are influenced by the music of South American and African tribes. Is this our natural tastes coming to the surface? In this entanglement of culture and nature, there is one thing we can say that will always be true: music is unique, every nation, every civilization has its own music. This was a powerful message that the audience took away with them.
It is clear that Frederick had invested much time, emotion and effort into preparing this lecture and his style of presentation enraptured the audience – what a resounding success! This extraordinary lecture ended with a question and answer session, delicious supper and the beautiful sound of music reaching into our hearts…
