Musicking and the Denial of Death
By Audrey Cardany | May 30, 2023
The human construction of culture is central to mitigating death anxiety by providing pathways to immortality and creating criteria for determining meaning in life as well as validating personal worth in society. The Arts are essential elements of culture; therefore, it follows that they play an important role in the denial of death. Terror Management Theory (TMT) researchers have examined Becker’s ideas through the lens of visual art, literature, and music. Music’s specific role in buffering death anxiety, however, is nascent with a small number of studies exploring song lyrics and musical genres (Cardany, 2018). One explanation for this may be the assumption that music is a noun, rather than a verb.
In this essay, I explore the role musicking plays in the denial of death, making connections between the ideas of Ernest Becker and musicologist, Christopher Small. I limit the discussion to how music-making (i.e., performing, rehearsing, practicing) and listening contribute to death denial. Further, I use the term “musician” to refer to any person who makes music in any context and the term “concert” to refer to any venue where making and listening to music occurs.
Christopher Small (1998) coined the term _musicking _to label music as cultural praxis and not cultural artifacts. Small asserts that “music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do. The apparent thing “music” is a figment, an abstraction of the action, whose reality vanishes as soon as we examine it at all closely” (p. 2). Small invites us to view music as an art-doing rather than an art-work. Musicking includes any part an individual takes in a musical performance–performing, listening, rehearsing, or practicing, composing, or dancing. This definition of music becomes a useful lens through which to consider how musicking mitigates death anxiety.
Music performance is often used as a metaphor for life and death. Small notes that metaphor uses sensory experiences to understand abstractions that people are compelled to comprehend and manage. Unlike death, the musician knows when, what, and how sound ‘events will transpire and when musical sounds will end. When performing, musicians metaphorically practice a life journey with awareness of existence, emotional tension and release, and a cadence to the end. Here the metaphor is not verbal, but what Small labels a “gestural metaphor,” an action in the form of musicking, whereby the musician embodies the ideal relationships of the abstraction. How does employing music as a metaphorical gesture serve as a useful tool in the denial of death? Is there something more significant to music’s mimesis of life’s journey than a dispassionate study of life’s journey through metaphor?
In Kramer’s (2007) publication of Becker’s personal journals, we find a brief discussion of the arts where Becker alludes to musicking serving a death-denying function. Becker places music within the context of all art, stating that the arts “stress inevitability” thereby reconciling individuals to reality – “the world as it is” – as well as “freedom, within the inevitability.” (p. 464).
And so they [the arts] underline that man’s life is not in vain. It signifies a hopeful struggle, not predetermined. Music, then, would stress inevitability within a time stream: so that what bothers man most, namely, the anxiety of random events in an irrevocable time stream, is appeased: events become just so, exactly (clarity of note and tempo) as they are meant to happen; but with the variations of freedom. The unity is then a triumph of reconciliation. This is the least discursive handling of this problem, which may explain why musicians are the most repressed: they can only give the most intuitive handling of the problem of freedom. (Kramer, 2007, p. 464)
Music is an art entangled with time, an aspect integral to existence. Musicians use their breath and bodies to control the onset, quality, and release of sounds. Musicking represses the anxiety of uncertainty, in particular, the uncertainty of when and how we will die. To speak plainly, when musicking, the musician comprehends and controls the ending, and has the power to rehearse and change it. Pianist and conductor, Daniel Barenboim (2009) highlights this aspect of music. “When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique state of peace, partly due to the fact that one can control through sound, the relationship between life and death, a power that obviously is not bestowed upon human beings in life” (p. 9). That performance will never exist again in real time; it’s gone once experienced, and yet, through rehearsal and repeat performances, the musician resurrects the experience, perfects the sound and its cessation.
According to Becker (1973), we must deny death and live with a vital lie that we are immortal (literally or symbolically). Humans seek symbolic immortality through creating or becoming a part of something that will remain after death. Individuals participate in the immortality projects of others to become a part of something bigger than themselves. Performing music of dead composers or artists may foster shared symbolic immortality.
Small writes that musical works exist “in order to give performers something to perform” (p. 8). Music exists only for the duration of the sounds themselves. By contrast, the visual arts present artifacts that can be kept; a painting or sculpture remains the same over time (wear and tear notwithstanding). Music, however, does not keep the hand of the artist so fast as visual art despite efforts to notate. Instead, the living recreates great works and songs to participate in the symbolic immortality projects of the music artist or composer.
Musicking expands an individual musicians’ boundaries and aids in merging themselves with an entity more enduring than themselves alone. Barenboim alludes to this merger when describing a feeling of “timelessness” after playing through Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier: “I have the feeling that this [music] is actually much longer than my real life, that I have been on a journey through history, one that begins and ends in silence” (p. 9). In re-creating a musical work, the musician brings the past into the present with the knowledge that future performances are likely. That knowledge, the idea of “great works” or “great performances” being programmed and performed repeatedly, ensures that the musical work persists and confirms the success of a musical immortality project.
Regardless of the period in which a piece or song was composed, musicking makes the music “contemporary.” The concert venue could be described as a sonorous museum, in that it validates the music of the past and sets new music on the path to immortality with a “stamp of approval” from the culture. The museum experience compares with the concert experience with some interesting differences. Museums may provide avenues for donors to achieve symbolic immortality through the promise of the artifacts remaining in perpetuity. Visitors to museums may bear witness to symbolic immortality of individuals and groups through appreciation of items of cultural significance. One researcher notes, however, that visitors frequently experience “museum fatigue,” and that that fatigue may reflect “the struggle of bringing the objects of the dead to life, and suppressing thoughts of death to which they [the objects] give rise” (O’Neill, p. 62). By contrast, concert goers frequently leave a venue exhilarated after immersion in music of the past. Perhaps this is because in the sonorous museum, musicians literally bring into existence the sounds of the past using their breath and bodies. The art object is not dead, instead, the music and the expression of the individual or group associated with it are resurrected through the alchemy of musicking.
In summary, musicking viewed as action, not object, offers a unique lens through which to consider music’s role in the denial of death. Musicking provides a shield against existential dread through a sense of ordering chaos, controlling time, and resurrecting or entering a timestream through the music of past cultures and individuals, and proclaiming existence in a world of uncertainty. In this essay, I suggest that musicking may be useful in exploring the existential through its gestural metaphor, while musicking alone may serve as an unconscious defense for mortality salience through reconciliation of chaos and uncertainty. Further, musicking expands the individual boundaries of listeners and performers, aiding their merger with entities more enduring than themselves alone. It fosters shared symbolic immortality with the music of past artists and composers, thus validating the vital lie of immortality.
By way of a coda, I offer these words from a fellow musicker describing her experience performing with an orchestra for an understanding audience: “It’s kind of a feeling that that’s when I’m at my most alive.”
References
Barenboim, D. (2009). Music Quickens Time. Verso Books.
Becker, E. (1997). The Denial of Death. Simon and Schuster.
Cardany, A. B. (2018). Mitigating death anxiety: identifying music’s role in terror management. Psychology of Music, 46(1), 3-17.
Kramer, R. (2007). The Journals of Ernest Becker, 1964-1969. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 47(4), 430-473.
O’Neill, M. (2012). Museums and mortality. Material Religion, 8(1), 52-75.
Small, C. (1998). Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Wesleyan University Press.
Dr. Audrey Cardany, D.M.A., is an Associate Professor and Director of Music Education at the University of Rhode Island. She teaches diverse courses encompassing choral and general music methods, educational psychology for music teaching, and conducting labs. Motivated by the belief in the essential role of the Arts, Audrey strives to enhance music accessibility and provide opportunities that benefit individuals, families, and communities, fostering a profound musical experience for all.