Trade and Music (Lapham's Quarterlies)

 

 Lapham’s Quarterly XII-2: Trade (2019) Exchange of favours is not a human species-specific trait, but organised trade is. It’s one of the constants of human culture. All human societies regulate exchange, ranging from customs and conventions to formal rules and laws governing everything from weights and measures to contracts.
     The bits and pieces assembled here remind us that many humans will cheat if they can get away with it, hence the need for law. They also remind us that humans have co-operated from the beginning to gain advantages in trading, ranging from guilds and cartels to international agreements governing trade between cities and nations. The corresponding counter is conventions and agreements that give everyone the same opportunities for fair trading.
     Trading rules within societies (families, tribes, and eventually larger communities) ensured that essentials were produced and shared equitably. Trading between such groups ensured that necessary and desirable materials and products reached those who needed and wanted them. Trade made us what we are today: the most wide-spread and successful animal on Earth. It also encouraged the development of our most dangerous vice, greed, which has brought us to the point of no return in climate change.
     In short, trade is essential to human beings, and trade requires honest dealing and justice. It also raises a question: Was it trade that distinguished us from our sibling species, the Neanderthals, Denisovians, and others? Was it trade that gave us the advantages that enabled us to outcompete them? I see no obvious method for answering this question, but I think it’s an important one. Equally important is the question of how we can adapt our trading practices to survive climate change.
     Another good collection. Pretty well all past issues are available from the publisher; some have been reprinted as annual sets. ****

 Lapham’s Quarterly X-4: Music (2017) I enjoyed the pieces by the musicians and composers best. Mixes of memoir, technical discussions, and reviews. They gave me insights not only into how music-makers experience the world and their art, but also into why I find music an essential part of my life. Music “sounds the way feelings feel”, to quote a phrase from Suzanne Langer’s Philosophy in a New Key (1957). David Levitin’s researches into the neurology of music support that insight.
     There have been many speculations about the source of music’s power and of the human need to make it, and the attempts to justify or ban it on theological, moral, or philosophical grounds. The excerpts here are interesting as evidence of how all attempts at understanding ourselves are predicated on and hence limited by contemporary assumptions about reality. They may have satisfied the writers and their readers, but reading them now I was continually distracted by current knowledge of neurology, and a wider experience of music than some of these writers had. They also demonstrate the role of culture in music: in most cultures, music is assumed to be a finished art, and students are taught to emulate and replicate music as defined by their predecessors. The notion that art should be new, that an artist should create new and original works even when within a tradition, that notion seems to be peculiarly European, and a recent one, too.
     There are several fascinating bits about the instruments. All are versions of the three basic technologies: pipes, strings, and drums. ****