Iconic realism in Music

Click the image above to hear ambient music with nature sounds

From my book, p. 77: 

A community will associate specific meaning with a sound, connecting interpretation with cultural significance. Continued and consistent associations with sound sources create iconic structures within the musical compositions of the community. These structures originate from musical instruments including the human voice, sounds of the environment, or synthesized sound sources, each source signifying a specific aspect of a community’s culture. 

A composer incorporates the semiotic theory of iconic realism through placement of the established iconic structure in a new, realistic setting, not traditional for such an iconic structure. The created dissonance alerts the listening audience to a new association, bringing awareness to a cultural dilemma represented by this innovative musical construct.  

Since music is an aural art form, the structure which music contains depends on two parameters: time and space. Sound waves travel through space within a specific time frame. Musical composition consists of metrical patterns, rhythm, arrangement of pitch variations conveyed through instrumentation and notation of musical dynamics changing the speed and intensity of those pitches. A composer determines the amount of time and space needed to express her/his art within these parameters. The semiotic component of music is most present in the genre of opera, in which music aligns with narration aurally and kinesthetically. 

The listener is an active participant in the musical flow, assimilating the sensory stimuli received from the sound source with the tonal information of the musical composition as well as the visual stimulation of the stage presentation. In this sense, the composers, the musicians and the audience collaborate albeit in an autonomous manner, forming an interpretation. 

Iconic realism in music involves the sounds of nature, outer space or any object not associated with a musical instrument, that has been synthesized with traditional musical instruments of an orchestra, jazz group, or contemporary musical group. The juxtaposition of the natural or tech sounds with the orchestral music illustrates an aspect of cultural reform, as established by the composer of the musical piece. 

We hear this kind of musical juxtaposition in many of the spa-like pieces that incorporate the sounds of wolves, birds, frogs with ambient, meditation music. Click the image above to hear an example from YouTube. 

Iconic Realism in the Medieval Narrative Poem, Roman de la Rose

“The Dance in the Garden”

by Pavane, illumination from Roman de la Rose, Toulouse, early 16th century, 

in the British Library (Harley MS 4425, fol. 14v)

From my book, The Theory of Iconic Realism..., p. 47:

The medieval poem Roman de la Rose, written by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun in the 13th century, takes place in a medieval garden and represents the experience of love and desire through the dream of a twenty-year-old man. The authors use allegorical characters such as Reason, Envy, Genius, Old Age, Fair Welcome, and the god of Love to advise this young lover, as he discovers his inner motivation and develops needed courage to seek the desire of his heart in the form of a beautiful rose. Within the poetics of Roman de la Rose the writers have interwoven ideals that pertain to intuitive thought by associating visual iconography with the lexicon it illustrates. 

The rose represents a young woman in the setting of a realistic medieval castle. Although the authors create an aristocratic presentation of courtly love by the placement of the rose in this garden as a young man’s desirous fantasy, the reality is that a young man would not likely fall in love with a flower. However, the writers situate a sense of game playing with the semantics of the text and image, transporting the telling of this tale as a primary source of entertainment and enlightenment of designated cultural restraints within an aristocratic community, utilizing iconic realism as a source of enlightenment for their audience. This enlightenment involves the medieval male audience recognizing the sensitivities and complex thinking of the women in their lives, particularly with regard to love. 

Sydney Owenson's "The Missionary" and Iconic Realism

In her novel, The Missionary, Sydney Owenson presents two religious communities, the Hindu community of 17th century India and the European Roman Catholic community during the Spanish Inquisition. Set in the year, 1620, after the establishment of the British East India Company in the lush jungles and arid desert of Western and Northern India, this tale illustrates a political genesis of European imperialism represented by the two central characters, Hilarion, a 25-year-old Portuguese Franciscan Nuncio and Luxima, a young, widowed Brahmin priestess.  

To some readers of this narrative, Owenson may appear to be telling an adventurous romance in an exotic setting to entertain her aristocratic readers, and this may be partially true. However, her romantic novel illustrates much more, for iconic properties of parochial dynamism reside at the core of each character’s restrictive community. These properties include the intense need for the Missionary to convert non-Christians to Catholicism and the deep conviction of a Hindu’s integration of natural and spiritual beliefs. Furthermore, Owenson creates an unrestrictive, fertile setting, where the Catholic missionary represents dogmatic and imperious Britain and the Hindu priestess, faithful to her own belief and community, represents the fervent hope for freedom of faith found in Owenson’s Catholic Ireland. 

Therefore, in her novel, The Missionary, Sydney Owenson illustrates the semiotic theory of iconic realism by representing two disparate icons, each placed within a realistic community, only to reveal a cultural reality that, only through a truly spiritual connection, can one be led from cultural cynicism to Divine Truth.

Aesthetics, Richard Wagner, and Iconic Realism

I took this photo of the River Shannon in Limerick, Ireland.

(Click here to listen to Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries)

From my first book on Iconic Realism:

Through the use of the semiotic theory of iconic realism, artists shape the consciousness of various aspects of culture, including education, history, business, and aesthetics whereby their works of art combine an iconic figure with a realistic setting that communicates an incompatibility with the accepted environment in which the audience commonly associates the iconic figure. Understanding the language presented through the art form, be it literary, visual or aural, the audience may respond with an emotional resistance as it perceives the iconic representation in this new realistic setting.

An example of iconic realism in a musical composition utilizing instrumentation is Wagner’s mythical composition, The Ring of the Nibelungs.  In this piece, Wagner represents various aspects of society through instrumental characterizations. As Eero Tarasti affirms, "the gods appear in the Ring not only as personifications of the elements of nature, for example, Loge as the god of fire, Donner the god of thunder etc, but also as a society, whose leader is Wotan." [1] 

Wagner's use of contrasting instrumentation throughout his opus reveals an intense desire to illustrate corruption within his society. Many filmmakers choose to accompany the drama of their themes utilizing the nineteenth century Wagner music. An example of such intense films is Apocalypse Now, which illustrates the corruption associated with war, in particular, the Vietnam War.

1. Tarasti, Eero. Myth and Music: A Semiotic Apporach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music, especially that of Wagner, Sibelius and Stravinsky (Paris: Mouton, 1979) 177.  

Blade Runner and Iconic Realism

Photo from Google Images

The 1982 film, Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott, screenplay written by Hampton Fancher, is based on the novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. In the film set in a futuristic Los Angeles, Harrison Ford’s character, Deckard, has a mission to terminate 4 replicants. 

However, his iconic character of the rugged cop experiences a change of conscience as emotional turmoil enters his stark reality. This film contains several illustrations of iconic realism through the use of iconic images overlaid with obscure, futuristic settings that bring the audience to an awareness of the ambiguous reality faced by humans as we deal with various forms of strength and weakness. Moreover, this film offers questions surrounding the applications of artificial intelligence, which, at the time of this writing, have very little connection with human consciousness.