Organic Unity

As there is a difference between noise and music, which possesses some of kind of regularity and organization, so there is a difference between musicality of different musical pieces. The organization of a musical piece that we can intuitively perceive, we will call organic unity.

• Organic unity is correlation between all the parts of the musical piece, viewed as a whole space-time wise, in which all the parts contribute to a whole, and which in turn is reflected at each individual part.

Organic unity is often referred to with “sameness through multifariousness”. It is the only true law of musical development.

But what is among the most difficult things for human beings, is to actually create music that sounds like that. There needs to be a leading thought that unites all the phrases within a composition and which we perceive as an idea of the piece; as we listen to it, this leading thought is coming over us and we start to see it in all the individual parts that constitute the piece.

Organic unity on the formal level translates to organic unity on emotional level, on the level of meaning. For a single melody, the organic unity of its form is thus a feeling that melody captures.

• Emotional content and organic unity are always the outcome one of another.

Particular Formal Qualities And Organic Unity

Every more particular musical quality is a secondary property of organic unity, its facet, its attribute. If a piece is lacking in organic unity, it cannot have any other more particular musical virtue. So saying a piece without beauty is, for example, sophisticated, is like saying an nonexistent object is yellow. Only if a piece is beautiful it can then also be more or less “sublime”, “unusual”, or whatever. For example, a level of compositional achievement is something very different than technical level on which a piece is. A piece which is technically on the basic level can be an impressive compositional achievement, because of high level of organic unity; while a piece on the most sophisticated technical level can be compositionally worthless. It's like a book written with many words and complicated language which is still artistically worthless, where a book written with only a few thousands of words and simple language can be artistically impressive.

This fact often wasn’t respected in contemporary musical circles, which appreciate different facets of pieces ignoring whether the piece is beautiful to begin with. In particular, level of technical sophistication, ‘craft’ is respected among professionals, without keeping notion that any particular craft is not the same as artistic craft – which is the craft of creating beauty, that is of achieving organic unity. Artistic craft corresponds to overall level of articulation that one achieves, and not anything particular. Often we hear relatively simple melody, and still the sense of articulation overwhelms us - the feeling of inevitability of melody, that every note is “just right”, instead of only “O.K.” or “not wrong”. This feeling of inevitability is often lacking in more complex music, which often sounds just “not wrong”. Thus the theory of a friend of famous Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky that the complexity and emotional impact of music stand in reverse relationship – the simpler the music, the greater its emotional impact and vice-versa.

Modern music was often complexity for the sake of complexity affair. But complexity should be there only because composer needs complex devices to express himself/herself. However, in most modern music the aim and means switched places: means became the aim. False complexity – complexity without divine order in it -- is generally speaking easily pushed aside with Nietzsche’s thought of saying more in a sentence than others in a book. A single sentence can carry a whole book and make tens of other books surplus. A piece can be like an aphorism, that is a result of many thoughts that come one on top of the other, like the tower of cards. What we see is only the last card; what we don’t see, is all the unsaid thoughts that support the final thought, that lead to it, and that could maybe fill a book. We can start to become aware of that depth when we come to realize how all-encompassing and far-reaching the apparently simple thought is. And in music this is even more so.

Actually, complicated things have often been only imperfect versions of simpler things. This is because when a few crucial decisions are made right, problems which would otherwise pose great difficulty are solved simply. One can see this in JM Jarre’s work, which is largely based on good overall judgment and not on any particular musical skill. Like it or not, music is as much about general mind as it is about musical skill. And there is no doubt that clarity of thought is more important for achieving musical beauty than high virtuosity.

The abuse of complex forms was especially strong during XX century, and it is this abuse that boosted the consciousness of importance of intuitive righteousness, and even more, created a new appreciation of meaningful simplicity. There came such movements as minimalism, and world famous pieces -- such as that of Kraftwerk – made with absolute minimum of means, sometimes with only a few notes. There was almost a contest in who will make the simpler world instrumental hit. Even in movie music there is a five-notes John Williams motive from “Close Encounters Of Third Kind”.

But with XX century minimalism, which is in encyclopedia definitions often defined as philosophy of stripping a work on its core base of self-expression – which is the aim of all creation since always – there came a retrograde cult of understatement. It is comprised in saying: “less is more”. This cult of understatement is an inartistic concept. Never in art can under-statement be a legitimate aim. Once a piece is beautiful – that is, has organic unity – complexity is the single most important particular virtue. The other quality, also notoriously often abused, is unpredictability and differentness. Alas, if a piece is lacking in organic unity, it's not artistically admirable regardless of its apparent originality.