The problem arises when we wish to define the form of the content, which seems to correspond to what Wittgenstein called the musical idea, which is that ideal of «good form» upon which the performer is trying to confer substance while interpreting the notes on the stave. What does musical idea mean? Whatever it means, it is certainly that formal individuality that I must identify in order to recognize SC2 as such. But is it also that sequence of notes that Bach imagined, a Dynamical Object whose whereabouts (ontologically speaking) we no longer know, in the same sense that we do not know the whereabouts of the Square Triangle?
One would have to say that the Immediate Object should be the physiognomic type of this Dynamical Object, otherwise how could we clone it in an intersubjectively acceptable way and recognize each of its clones? Nonetheless in my mental experiment the matter gets more complicated, because Bach conceived his suite for the cello (not for the recorder), and therefore his first musical idea also included features of timbre that were changed in the transcription. But I have not chosen such a damned complex situation by chance. The fact is that when people who know SC2 only in the transcription for recorder hear the piece performed for the first time by the cello, they have a moment of puzzlement, but usually by the end they will have recognized with surprise that it is the same composition. On the other hand we recognize any given song whether it is performed on the guitar or the piano, and it is therefore worth sticking to a physiognomic type so schematic that it can do without parameters such as timbre, which is no small matter. 50
It is clear that, if the relation between the sound waves and the grooves of the disc is a case of primary iconism—and if the relation between Briiggen’s execution and the notes of the score is already substantiated by multiple interpretative inferences, choices, and accentuations of pertinency—we have now arrived, with the physiognomic type, at an extremely complex process that seems very difficult to take account of. What is the musical idea I am considering? Must it correspond to Briiggen’s? Certainly not. My physiognomic type might be different from Robert’s. I can sight-read the score of the transcription for recorder of SC2, and if I try to play from memory, I can continue for a minute or two, then I stop and can no longer remember how it goes, while Robert, who can also play the recorder a bit, has listened to the piece thousands of times and can recognize it, but could not play it if he tried.
Therefore Briiggen, Robert, and I can recognize SC2, but we refer to (or bring into play) three different (different, that is, in terms of complexity and refinement or definition) physiognomic types. Can we speak of three «acoustic images» that are equivalent for the purposes of simple recognition? What is an acoustic image? It is not enough to say that I recognize Johann Sebastian on the basis of visual features and SC2 on the basis of acoustic features? The fact is that Johann Sebastian’s physiognomic features are presented to me all together (even though inspecting them may sometimes take time), while the acoustic features of the musical composition are presented to me distributed over time.
But our problem, in the dark room, is not a matter of recognizing SC2 after having listened to the whole record. That would be like recognizing Johann Sebastian only after having spent a long time making him walk backward and forward, smile, speak, and after a police-style interrogation regarding his past (something that happens only in exceptional circumstances). In order to satisfy my request, Robert must recognize SC2 in a fairly short time (perhaps on the basis of a few random selections). This is a problem we come across very often, for example, when we switch on the radio and listen to a piece that we certainly know but cannot identify straight off the bat. If Robert needs to listen to the whole composition before recognizing SC2, he has lost even before he has begun, so let him bring me The Well-Tempered Clavier, and I’ll be just as happy, because I’m not hard to please.
Can we say that the physiognomic schema of SC2 is no different from that of the Mona Lisa? I should say not. If I can recognize the Mona Lisa, it is because I have seen it before; if I have seen it, I would know how to interpret it verbally (a half-length portrait of a smiling woman, seen against a landscape…), and even though I am only a very poor drawer, I could make a sketch of it that, no matter how rough the sketch was, would still be enough to make the Mona Lisa distinguishable from Botticelli’s Venus. But I can recognize SC2 even without being able to play so much as the first few notes. And let it not be said that this is due solely to my or Robert’s incapacity. If we know Traviata, all of us are perfectly capable of humming a few notes of «Sempre libera degg’io» or «Libiam nei lieti calici.» But you can know Don Giovanni like the back of your hand, and nevertheless I challenge anyone who is not a professional singer to hum «Non si pasce di cibo mortale.» Yet as soon as we hear it, we know instantly that it is the Commendatore who is singing.
We might be tempted to say that one recognizes a «style.» But apart from the difficulty experienced in trying to define a stylistic schema (a musicologist can easily tell us what characteristics we seize on when we identify a piece as Bach and not Beethoven, but the trouble is that, in identifying the piece, we do not know what we are identifying), our problem is how we distinguish the second suite without confusing it with the first. Here I think that even the musicologist, so good at analyzing the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic devices proper to Bach’s style, could do no more than refer us to the stave: SC2 is that musical individual composed of this and that set of notes, and if the notes are different, then we are dealing with another composition.
What Robert should instinctively prepare to search for after my mentioning SC2 is something of which he possesses not a highly complex cognitive type (like that of Brüggen) but a partial physiognomic type, like a clue that encourages him with regard to the possibility, if necessary, of executing a more complex combination of «pattern recognition skills» (Ellis 1995: 87) and that curiously enough can also imply the capacity to recognize acoustic features he was unaware of when he associated a partial type with the name.
Ellis (1995: 95 ff.) suggests that we have memorized a simple melodic-rhythmic pattern, the first five notes, for example. I would say more, that we recognize some compositions not at the beginning but at a certain point, and therefore these five (or twenty) crucial notes could be anywhere, according to the physiognomic type that each of us has elaborated. In any event we would still be dealing with a truncated response: those few notes «give me the feeling of confidence that I could execute the piece.»51
But what happens to people who cannot «carry a tune»? We must be careful here: I am talking not about clinical cases of tone deafness but of those people who can recognize a tune but are moderately «off key,» and so when they try to hum a few bars, any listeners ask them to stop. People of this type would have in mind (or in any mnemonic recording apparatus standing in for mind), in some mysterious way, the first five or twenty notes, even though they would not be able to reproduce them (either with their voice or on the ocarina). The case is not unlike that of the lover constantly seeking to call up the image of his beloved; he is never satisfied with his evocation, would be absolutely unable to draw her portrait, and yet as soon as he meets her, he recognizes her. Faced with the greed of their own desire, all lovers are imaginatively off key.
The person who cannot carry a tune possesses a minimal schema of recognition, a feebler version of the one that would allow a great number of people to draw the silhouette of a mouse, or the outline of the Italian peninsula, and yet when he is subjected to the stimulus, he recognizes the configuration. Such a person has no idea what a musical fifth is, nor could he reproduce one with his voice, but he could recognize one (even without being able to name it as such) as a known configuration when he hears it.
And so we recognize SC2 by features that are sometimes melodic, sometimes rhythmic, and sometimes having to do with timbre, and on the basis of a «truncated» physiognomic type, in which pertinency has perhaps been assigned to features wholly absent from other people’s physiognomic type. While
