Dynamic's Range
Gustav Mahler is a late romantic composer, born in Bohemia on July 7th, 1860. He is considered the linchpin between the 19th and 20th centuries, with a broad expanse of influence on his contemporaries and those who would follow in his footsteps. Mahler wrote primarily symphonic works of a large scale akin to that of Beethoven, though he stretched the barriers of tonality by taking major and minor modes to their limits. Schoenberg, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Shostakovich are some of the musicians who would later be greatly influenced by Mahler’s contributions, pressing on into the world of atonality. His 9 symphonies, along with his unfinished 10ths, were written in the late 1800s; an era filled with international conflict, nationalism, industrialization, anti-Semitic sentiments, and late-stage colonialism. War was driven with technological advancements making it louder, deadlier, and closer to civilian populations. Regional conflict abounded as Germanic speaking lands sought to consolidate, the French continued to battle England for colonial supremacy, and America was fighting for territory with Spain. The list of conflicts between 1850 and 1900 are overwhelming, and large scale battles like the Crimean Wars (1853-1856), The Spanish-American War (1898), and the Austro-Prussian War (1866) pointed not only to impending world conflict, but to the grotesque. Abstractions in the human experience created strange reflections in the world of artistic endeavors. The visual arts represented this in the paintings of Impressionism and Realism that sought to make sense of this new world with depictions of landscape, light, and life above those of historical figures, legends, and fantasy. Music sought to break with melody and represent this new world with expanded instrumentation, unexplored melody, and dynamics.
Mahler used a wide pallet of colors when writing symphonic work. His 7th Symphony used tenor-horn, cowbells, guitar and mandolin. He was known for his extraordinary orchestral arrangements for large ensembles and the volume could reach impressive levels. This was not just from the sheer amount of sound being projected, but because of the incredible range of ideas being expressed. The invention of the piano had evolved the musical compositional dynamic range. Prominent composers like Mozart and Haydn had explored dynamics as a more important facet of melodic expression. Hector Berlioz had evolved knowledge of orchestral leadership, marking the importance of honoring the notation of musical phrasing, especially dynamics. Now Mahler was at the helm, and the practice of dynamic principles of written music would afford new opportunities at even greater levels of abstraction in the art of tonality. World politics, technological advancement, and creative use of written notation was the benchmarks of symphonic music leading into the 20th century, with a World War at the doorstep of the next chapter of musical expression. The globe was about to get much louder than it ever was before, and the composers of the 1900s were standing by.
At this point, recording music is limited to the written form. A group that formed in 1851 called the Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique (SACEM) was one of the first to sue for payment of a public performance of their work. By 1910, roughly 25,000 popular songs were being written and published in the form of sheet music a year (Seth Lorinczi, “A Brief History of Music Publishing”, Apr 3, 2018). The story of dynamic expression goes beyond just how loud or quiet a song was, but into the importance of how the song was supposed to sound. This made the market of reproducing music to those who would reproduce it. Composers recognized the melody was only part of the story and written music with special attention to dynamics vastly enhanced the ability to express complex ideas and evolving social commentary in artistic representative form. This not only went for masterpieces like Mahler’s symphonies, but also to the immense library of popular music meant for the public entertainment. Tin Pan Alley, West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Flower District of Manhattan, was one of the major distribution centers of hits of the early 1900s in America and a hub for music publishing companies. Manufacturing advances and improvements in the design of the piano meant that more and more homes had a source of entertainment. It only required skilled hands and music to play it.
The alternative was the music box and the player-piano. While the later was expensive and not as accessible as the former, it had its own list of notable qualities. The increasing improvements in metallurgy during the industrial age meant more sophisticated music boxes and means to supply content, however. The remarkable construction and wide range of repertoire availability made the music box an early form of analog music recording. Its design was remarkably similar to the punch-card style of data recording that would be used in early computers of the 1920s. (In fact, the use of punched cards for processing procedures goes back a shockingly long way. Some of the first recorded uses for punched cards to control textile looms in 1725.) The connections between expanded use of dynamics in western symphonic music, the importance associated with this principle and its ties to they mastery of effective conducting, and the rise of the publishing house as a means to distribute carefully documented musical compositions puts our story right at the foot of a world changing advent to the technological landscape. The vinyl record was right around the corner, and one of the first genres to burst through its dawn would be the raucous dance of New Orleans jazz.
The music box was a household favorite, but one thing it couldn’t manage was dynamic range. The method for changing auditory level was to close and open the wooden cabinet doors of its housing. It would take a wax cylinder and a needle another couple of decades to bring us the wonders of dynamic nuance, but for now, we would have to make do with the primitive form of mechanical song reproduction available to us. As the age moves on, the scope of information used as a means to reproduce music through mechanical means seems like an enormous understatement. Technological ability to document and reproduce sound borders at the doorstep of artificial intelligence. This cast journey may not have started with the piano, and it certainly doesn’t end with the midi keyboard, but the travel of dynamics and its impact on western music is a fascinating tale, with surly more chapters to come.
Here is an example of a Victorian Music Box from the turn of the 19th century. This is a coin operated Polyphon music box (ca. 1890) in the collection of the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Here, it plays a rendition of "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful,” on a pressed metal disk. (from the Canada Science and Technology Museum YouTube channel). Thanks for reading!