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MHC Arts of NYC
Glenn Liu
Professor Glick
12/12/2013
Barthes’s Exclusionary Aesthetic
Language is the embodiment of the human will to understand and grasp the
abstract world around them. It is a means of communication with others, a means
comprised of a system of labels that establishes order among formless chaos. This sense
and desire for order is often shared subconsciously within a society, as they adhere to
cultural and societal norms that not only facilitate the workings of human civilization but
also assure a convenient survival. However, what happens when one semiotic system
attempts to interpret the other? In this clash, which system dominates, and how does one
establish their sense of reality with the disparity of perspectives and interpretations
outlaid before them? In his essay “The Grain of the Voice”, Roland Barthes
acknowledges this phenomenon, and further describes the point of contact between two
languages, the language of speech and music. He emphasizes the insufficiency of
adjectives in music criticism and commentary. He also notes mass culture and its
adherence to an adjectival aesthetic of music criticism and its effect on musical
performance styles and popular tastes that are less able to accept the atonal styles of the
twentieth century. By prescribing his own mode of musical criticism, an aesthetic
focused on the “grain” of the voice, Barthes presents an innovative, unique perspective
on musical expression and performance. His arguments surrounding and focused on the
physical aspects of the performance as well as the sensual pleasure derived from it are
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also striking points. However, while he consistently criticizes “mass culture” for its
inability to perceive music in a way separate from the burden and inefficiency of
adjectives, their attachment to pheno-text music, and the commodification of musical
styles, he offers no particular solution to connecting his own technique of music
interpretation to others. He instead focuses on exclusionary qualifications and epithets
that he hypocritically denounces rather than inclusionary methods to share his perspective
to “mass culture”. Just like the same individuals he disagrees with, he offers a “correct”
way of interpreting this grain of the voice, a way that discredits other methods of music
criticism and excluding others.
The human tendency to understand the abstract world around them and the desire
for a standardization of a semiotic system surfaces in Barthes’s introduction as he
describes language’s shortcomings in musical interpretation, a tendency that is reflected
in his idea of the “constituted” man. This tendency can be attributed to the social nature
of human beings and the necessity to communicate, leading to the usage and
establishment of dominant semiotic systems. He describes the sense of comfort one
experiences when they use a dominant semiotic system to interpret something foreign or
outside the range of their semiotic scope, such as music. While describing the economic
function of epithets in music, Barthes continues to say: “the man who provides himself or
is provided with an adjective is now hurt, now pleased, but always constituted” (Barthes
179). Here, he touches on the commodification, unification, and containment of
emotions by the adjective, a mere unit of language. This sense of being “constituted”
highlights the understanding of an abstract concept that adjectives bestow upon their user
and audience, giving rise to a contained, standardized and generally universal feeling
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simultaneously communicated to others. The sense of societal consensus and
membership of which the semiotic system of language is the key is shown in Barthes’s
example of constituted man who uses the adjective. This feeling of being “constituted” is
derived from social integration in which an individual is able to tap into a collective
consciousness, a contained spectrum of experiences, emotions, and intangible, nameless
qualities gathered into physical units organized in semiotic systems. The more
standardized and widespread this semiotic system is in society, the more intensely this
security of being ‘constituted’ is felt by the user. Barthes himself affirms this comforting
feeling of reassurance associated with the unity language brings as he states “There is an
imaginary in music whose function is to reassure, to constitute the subject hearing it”
(179). He emphasizes here the imaginary in music, which has its own system of
constituency separate from language, which manifests constituency in adjectives. This
disparity in imaginaries that constitute listener and interpreter leads to a consequent
insufficiency as one system, a system of adjectives, is directly applied and substituted as
the imaginary in a differing semiotic system.
Barthes strategically avoids the discussion of the adjective, as he correctly points
out the need to focus on altering the perception of music rather than the predication and
language interpreting it. Barthes here decides to pursue the imaginary of the music,
which he calls the “grain” of the voice, at the intersection of both semiotic systems: a
form of vocal music called the art song, with specific focus on the French mélodie and
the German lied. By choosing a point of contact between the two semiotic systems, an
art form in which both must work in harmony in their conveyance and creation, Barthes
can successfully examine the interaction between the two semiotic systems without the
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danger of hypocritically adjectival interjections from his primary mode of expression in
the English language that would lead to an unfair representation of a musical perspective
of the topic.
Barthes’s attempt to capture what constitutes the subject in music, and musical
equivalent of an adjective that brings at once the reassurance of universal consensus and
recognizable order amidst the abstract world, leads to his view on the physical process of
vocal musical performance. Barthes accomplishes this with religious, cultural, sexual,
and biological anecdotes. He describes the grain as the “materiality of the body speaking
its mother tongue” (182). Here, he associates the grain as an aspect of spoken language
in his reference of the mother tongue. His example of the Russian church bass captures
the multilayered expressionism of music as it interacts with language. On the biological
level, he describes the processes that create sound, which include the “cavities, the
membranes, [and] the cartilages”(181). This physical process that creates music works in
unison with the linguistic quality of the Slavonic language, as it is the “same
movement… from deep down in the Slavonic language, as though as single skin lined the
inner flesh of the performer and the music he sings” (181-182). This “dual process” that
involves the coordination of both musical voice and language define two primary layers
that define the grain of the voice in the art song.
The grain of the voice lends itself to a third layer of the art song, a loss of
personal individuality that leads to a communication of universality, as well as a physical
separation granted by that moment of distinct order amidst the noise, chaos, and silence
of the world. Barthes here states the almost superhuman quality that the Russian bass
singer obtains, as his voice supersedes “the symbolic, over the intelligible, the
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expressive” (182). The voice loses its personal quality and expression and becomes
something above the intelligible, similar to a primal instinct that cannot be rationalized or
consistently controlled. Barthes appropriately compares it to the mystique of religion as
well as the concept of sex in his anecdote. He draws a comparison between the bass
singer’s performance and the religious figure of the Father, stating that the performance is
“thrown in front of us like a packet… the Father, his phallic stature” (182). Here, the
phallic imagery of a religious figure is at once surprising, yet demonstrative of a typical
norm of patriarchal societies that seek both unity as well as the primal desire for sexual
activity. Barthes adequately describes it as a packet, something that cannot be separated
into its components without destroying its current state. Similarly, this grain of the voice
created by the joining of music and language is an inseparable factor, one that supersedes
the rational, depersonalizing the individual while providing a deep rooted universality not
dissimilar to the “reassurance” provided by adjectives as a unit of linguistics in his earlier
example.
Barthes’s further classification of the grain of the voice arises in his theoretical
differentiation of the pheno-song and geno-song, based on a textual description by Julia
Kristeva. Barthes distinguishes between the two with the origin from which each derives
their significance. According to Barthes’s definition, the pheno-song is “in the service of
communication, representation, expression, everything… [that] forms the tissue of
cultural values… [and] the ideological alibis of the period”(182). Barthes here
illuminates how popular culture in a certain period dictates the pheno-song in the
derivation of its meaning. The pheno-song is thus a point where communication of ideas,
especially those currently popular, takes priority over music. Likewise, Barthes defines
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the geno-song as a type in which “significations germinate from within the language and
its very materiality”(182). The reoccurrence of Barthes’s association of the material with
the grain of the voice reinforces the idea of the physical contour of language, with its
consonance and vowels, letters and sounds. In the geno-song, these phonetic, auditory
traits of language drive its correlation with the melodic contour in the song, as opposed to
the pheno-song’s reliance on the meaning of words used, and the concepts expressed by
the lyrics. The geno-song’s derivation of significance from the diction apart from the
personal involvement of the singer contrasts with the pheno-song’s focus on the
expression of the singer’s emotion through the structure of language and music. Thus,
Barthes’s theoretical distinction between the two types of song highlight a distinction in
popular taste, as the widely occurring pheno-song correlates with the adjectival criticism
of music, while the lesser heard geno-song adheres more to Barthes’s musical aesthetic of
the grain of the voice.
This continual opposition between mass culture and the minority, pheno-song and
geno-song is echoed in Barthes’s paradigm between a popular singer, Fischer-Dieskau
and the less popular singer Panzera. In his remarks on Fischer-Dieskau’s performances,
Barthes notes how Fischer-Dieskau focuses on the expression of emotion in singing,
notably in the “checkings and releasing of breath, [which] occur like shudders of passion”
(183). This emotional expression contrasts with Barthes’s earlier example of the Russian
bass, whose sense of personality is lost in the song, while a universal sense of the
Slavonic language and the physical separation of the body that harbors the voice is
brought forth. However, Panzera proves to be different, as Barthes observes the manner
in which Panzera rolls his “r”s, as a roll that “was an artificial roll, the paradoxical state
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of the letter-sound at once totally abstract (by its metallic brevity of vibration) and totally
material (by its manifest deep-rootedness in the action of the throat)” (184). Here,
Panzera’s phonetic techniques fulfill Barthes’s physical focus of materialism in the grain
of the voice, with the action of the throat as well as the phonetic, linguistic character of
the rolling “r”. This physical element in performance is absent in Fischer-Dieskau’s
voice, as Barthes criticizes him, stating that “with FD, I seem only to hear the lungs,
never the tongue, the glottis, the teeth , the mucous membranes, the nose” (183). Barthes
unique mentions of biological parts not usually associated with singing highlight his
innovative take on the grain of the voice and its aesthetic as one composed of the
workings of a multitude of organs and parts of the human instrument, rather than the
singularity of the lungs.
Once again, the multi-layered elements of the grain of the voice arise in Barthes
paradigm between Fischer-Dieskau and Panzera, including sexual anecdotes, religious
mystique, biological descriptions and linguistic commentary. Barthes mentions the
element of jouissance, or similarly, orgasm, to convey the feeling the audience should
receive upon hearing the music, similar to his earlier description of the positive feeling of
reassurance and constituency from man’s usage of adjectives. His consistent adjectival
usage of “voluptuousness”, with its rather sexual connotations, in conjunction with the
phonetics in geno-song, further this synchronicity with sensuality and the grain. This
sexual imagery continues as it intermingles with his biological images of the process of
singing. He states, “the lung, a stupid organ… swells but gets no erection” (183). Here,
the sexual images continue to strongly convey the physical, instinctual nature of the grain
of the voice. The element of religious mystique can be seen when Barthes criticizes the
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focus on emotive breathing and emphasis on lungs in training singers. In a humorous
tone, he notes “the whole of musical pedagogy teaches not the culture of the grain of the
voice by the emotive modes of its delivery—the myth of respiration… any exclusive art
of breathing is likely to be a secretly mystical art” (183). Barthes’s focus on these images
are furthered by his mention of the process of creating this “grain”, as he notes “it is in
the throat… where the phonic metal hardens and is segmented, in the mask that
significance explodes”(183). These technicalities and biological organs once again
comprise an essential part of Barthes’s ideology on the grain of the voice.
Barthes’s stance against popular culture, pheno-song and the adjectival aesthetic
of music criticism surfaces in his paradigm between Panzera and Fischer-Dieskau.
Following a series of rhetorical questions in which Barthes emphasizes the rarity of those
who share his perspective, if any, he continues to disparage his contemporary culture as
one that instigates a decadence in poetry and music, through “attempts at expressive
reduction operated by a whole culture against the poem and its melody” (184). This
expressive reduction, he claims, is forestalled by the geno-song and the unique physiobiological elements that generate the grain of the voice in particular singers. Barthes
expresses a strong distaste for Fischer-Dieskau and his popularity, claiming that it is a
“censorship by repletion” (185) due to the widely available recordings. This spread of a
pheno-song singer who Barthes describes as ‘sentimentally clear, borne by a voice
lacking in any ‘grain’…fits well with the demands of an average culture” (185). The
italicized average emphasizes Barthes’s distaste for mass culture, along with the neutral
to negative connotations of the word average. Fischer-Dieskau’s lack of grain, as
described by Barthes, confirms the unfavorable disposition that Barthes takes against this
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form of pheno-song. Panzera, on the other hand, represents the rarified elite that Barthes
finds a greater connection with, a marginalized singer outcast from mass culture. As
Barthes affirms “Panzera does not belong to this culture… his reign… was that of an
exclusively bourgeoisie art” (185). This contrast between the bourgeoisie, marginalized
nature of Panzera as opposed to the destructive, mass cultural Fischer-Dieskau highlights
Barthes’s exclusionary attitude towards the masses as he presents his new aesthetic based
on the grain of the voice, a grain understood by the marginalized bourgeoisie and unable
to be grasped by those of average culture.
The containment and commodification, two products of the human tendency to
label and create order through adjectives in language, are two concepts that resurface in
Barthes’s argument. These concepts arise in the effect of mass culture and the phenosong on music, which follow Barthes’s earlier idea of “censorship by repletion” (185).
This repletion is one of variety, as mass culture creates a monopolization of a few singers
with many listeners, which Barthes presents Fischer-Dieskau as an example. Barthes
captures the sentiments of such a society that desires a transparency of emotional
expression, as he states “such a culture… wants art, wants music, provided that they be
clear, that hey ‘translate’ an emotion and represent a signified… that inoculates pleasure
and reconciles the subject to what in music can be said” (185). Barthes captures an
individual from mass-culture as an individual who desires music that can easily be
understood. This music of mass culture is depicted as possessing the quality of
facilitating a direct translation of melodic language to emotions in a predictable, constant
manner. This inoculated pleasure thus requires no effort, as it is already internalized
either through indoctrination of prior experience. This monopolization and
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commodification of music is characterized by limits set by language and the economic
market, with music as a slave subject to the whims of the former.
Barthes also draws a comparison between different semiotic systems within the
spoken language and their respective relationships with music, highlighting the
importance of a geno-song’s state as a “sung writing of language” (185). He compares
both the French mélodie and the German lied. Barthes notes the more auditory nature of
French poetry, as he states “the Romantic poetry of France was more oratorical than
textual” (186), as opposed to the German lied which was “intimately bound up with the
German language via the Romantic poem” (186). Here, Barthes connects the mélodie as
a form closer to the geno-song due to its oral tradition, where the phonetic sounds and
aural memory take precedence over transcribed, etymological meanings. The lied, on the
other hand, is more based on poetry and written language where the music is a tool that
captures the sentiments and environments behind each piece of poetry. Here, similar to
the pheno-song of mass culture, the music is merely a backdrop to the expression of
emotions and meaning, a secondary semiotic system subjugated under the reign of the
spoken word.
Barthes also uses two sung deaths, that of Boris and Mélisande, to illustrate the
oppositions between the pheno-song of popular culture and the geno-song that features
the grain of the voice. Barthes connects Boris’s death, a death that is both dramatic and
expressive, to the pheno-song as he states, “it is the triumph of the pheno-text, the
smothering of significance under the soul as signified” (186-187). This smothering of
significance under the umbrella of soul is reminiscent of the concept of containment and
commodification of emotion as it is pre-packaged and distributed to mass culture, an
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archetypical representation that is within expectations, with the half the musical
performance internalized through these common, societal emotions. This expected drama
of death is contrasted by Mélisande’s prosodic death of silence. The prosodic element
highlights the focus on the phonetics and physicality of the language, along with the
surprise wrought by the silence that the viewer may not expect. The silence also bars the
singer from direct expression of their emotion, this, as Barthes aptly puts it, “nothing
occurs to interfere with the signifier” (187), leading to a vivid expression of the grain of
the voice in its unique glory.
The physical nature of the grain of the voice is further elaborated in Barthes’s
conclusion. He discusses the erotic relation between the viewer and the performer, and
the importance of the body in the expression of music. Once again, he separates any
relation with emotion as he states “I am determined to listen to my relation with the body
of the man or woman singing or playing and that relation is erotic—but in no way
subjective” (188). The erotic nature that Barthes mentions pertains to the universality
and primal feel that supersedes rationalization, rather than a subjective, personal
involvement with the singer’s emotive expression of the “soul” so often heard in the
pheno-song of popular culture. Barthes’s focus is on the physical elements of music,
with the unsual sounds created by various parts working cooperatively to create the voice
and the grain, as well as the singer’s linguistic and phonetic framework that shape the
physical, sonic contour of the melody. The idea of the standardization of playing and
singing technique once again arises in Barthes’s essay, highlighting the tendencies of
censorship, human desires of consensus and homogeneity. While describing his focus on
the fingers of a pianist, he notes the lack of variability in technique due to the societal
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pressure. Bartlett notes “there seems to be a flattening out of technique; which is
paradoxical in that the various manners of playing are all flattened out into perfection:
nothing is left by the phenol-text” (189). Barthes’s negative impression of this flattening
of technique and societal desire for homogeneity is seen in his italicized “perfection” that
emphasizes the doubled sided nature of the word. The perfection, while usually a word
with positive connections, in this case, represents the continued commodification of
music, with its pre-packaged emotions of pheno-song fed to the masses by monopolized
units that create the standard for musical expression through adjectival means.
While Barthes does illuminate this economical, societal influence in the adjectival
nature of music criticism and the popularization of pheno-song in mass culture, he shies
away from offering a direct solution. Instead, he Barthes prefers to differentiate himself
from the average culture, establishing a new system of musical aesthetics based on the
grain of the voice, which requires both understanding of the process of creation of sound
through human organs as well as phonic technicalities and specific nuances in language.
The esoteric nature and criterion of musical pleasure which Barthes presents may be felt
on an instinctive level, as shown by his many parallels with sex and sensuality. However,
the exclusionary attitude of this essay still remains dominant. In man’s struggle to make
sense of the abstract world through languages, the point of contact between two semiotic
systems is bound to be rife with conflicts. Barthe’s handling of the boundary between
music and speech gives innovative perspectives on new aesthetics. However, the
accessibility of these aesthetics remains problematic, and is not facilitated by his
exclusionary attitude.