Music Worlds and Internal Goods: The Role of Convention

Music Worlds and Their Rewards

Although there is some interesting work in the area (Hennion, 2001, 2004, 2007; DeNora, 2000), the sociological investigation of the pleasures of musicking is in its infancy and our understanding of the mechanisms involved is sketchy. Furthermore, there is a gap between research on the uses and pleasures of music and research on specialized musical spaces (‘worlds’). Tia DeNora’s (2000; see also DeNora, 2003) important work on human engagement with music, for example, which we regard as the most insightful of the available accounts, focuses upon use and enjoyment of music in everyday life on behalf of individuals with generally very moderate levels of commitment to a wide range of forms of music. This is important because it captures the experience of the majority but it begs the question of enthusiasts who make a much stronger commitment to a particular music world, e.g. the folkies, jazz fiends and metal heads who spend several nights a week participating in events devoted to their music. Some of the mechanisms may be the same as those described by DeNora but they are clearly working in different ways, and further research and conceptualization are called for. Conversely, where researchers have focused upon more specific and specialized musical spaces, there has been little effort to explore the pleasures and wider goods which their participants pursue. Becker’s work, which holds out great promise in so many other respects, is a case in point for us. We get very little indication from Becker of why people bother to participate in music worlds.

It might be argued that Bourdieu (1992) overcomes this limitation with his concept of the illusio or ‘belief in the game’. We agree that Bourdieu recognizes what we are referring to with his illusio concept but he only names a phenomenon which we believe needs to be unpacked and explored in more detail, both theoretically and empirically. Leaving aside the rather negative connotations of the term, it is not clear how the illusio works or indeed even what ‘it’ is. Furthermore, the intrinsic commitment of participants to specific musical fields, captured by the illusio concept, is overshadowed and overwhelmed in Bourdieu’s work by his focus upon the instrumental benefits of attachment to specific cultural forms and the strategic manoeuvring this incentivizes. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Bourdieu often seems to equate taste and commitment to specific cultural activities as positional stances adopted in relation to cultural hierarchies, a function of symbolic struggles and power relations.

We agree that intrinsic and instrumental attachments to cultural forms often co-exist in complex ways, that music worlds and tastes occupy distinct positions in social space (though we define that space differently from Bourdieu ² ) and that musicking, in all of its forms, is bound up with other social activities, including the pursuit of social advancement. However, commitment to a specific music world is not always reducible to the dynamics of symbolic struggle. Consider heavy metal. According to Bryson’s (1996) paper entitled ‘Anything But Heavy Metal’, its chief distinction is the derision it attracts from the majority. Professionals in the metal world might enjoy incentives for participation in the form of payment and adoration, but what of those who pay to attend their shows and enjoy their recordings? What is in it for them? Why would anybody like low status forms of music if liking music is primarily a means of procuring status? Why would audiences invest the significant amounts of money, time and energy that they do when they get neither status nor material benefits in return?

That any particular individual becomes a metal head may be explained by differential association: the networks in which they happen to become involved (Becker, 1996; Mark, 1998). There is a growing body of literature suggesting that tastes and commitments take shape within social networks (see DiMaggio, 2011, and Hield and Crossley, 2014, for reviews). This begs the question, however, of just what is involved in the cultivation of a taste or commitment. There is a danger that this process is reduced to mere conformity; people say that they like a type of music because that is the thing to do. We want to suggest, by contrast, that acquired tastes are often real. Participants genuinely learn to derive pleasure from a musical form and find themselves motivated to participate in a music world as a consequence. But what, exactly, does learning to derive pleasure from music entail? That is the question driving this paper.

Another writer who might claim to bring together a concern for different musical spaces with a concern for the passion and commitment which drive participation is Hennion (2007). Passion is key to Hennion’s research agenda. Like Bourdieu, whom he is very critical of, however, Hennion tends to talk around the issues of attachment and pleasure, without taking the analytic step of identifying and exploring their mechanisms. Our aim in this paper, to reiterate, is to begin to identify and explore these mechanisms as they arise in the context of specific music worlds.

In a paper which predates his major work on art worlds, Becker (1960) explicitly discusses mechanisms (or rather a mechanism) of commitment, and what he says in this context has application to music world participation. This mechanism is instrumental, however, and begs rather than answers the question of intrinsic value, such that we will bracket it out for present purposes. We can become ‘locked into’ certain activities, irrespective of their intrinsic rewards and value for us, Becker argues, because pursuing them affects our wider context in such a way that they become tied to things which we do value highly: a ‘side bet’. We might develop friendships by way of our involvement in a music world, for example, simultaneously losing contact with friends whom we know from other ‘social worlds’ that we have now dropped out of in order to pursue music, with the effect that we are dependent upon musical participation for friendship and motivated to persevere with it for this reason (see also Hield and Crossley, 2014). Furthermore, in a different vein, his work on ‘Becoming a Marihuana User’ (Becker, 1963: ch. 3) suggests that enjoyment of even chemically induced experiences may be contingent upon the actor having learned to enjoy them, an observation that is relevant to our argument in this paper. Our main focus, however, will be upon ‘convention’, a concept which is at once central to Becker’s (1982) account of art worlds, and also central to the mechanisms of pleasure and commitment which we discuss. Convention is the key.

Becker does allude to the relationship between convention and pleasure, or at least to one mechanism involving the two, in his work on art worlds, and we will draw this out. With this exception, however, he is curiously silent with respect to issues of intrinsic commitment and pleasure. This is a weakness in his account of worlds and our discussion in this paper is intended as a corrective to this. We aim to further develop and advance the concept of music worlds by including an account of ‘internal goods’ within that concept. We begin by introducing the concept of internal goods, as posited by Alasdair MacIntyre (1985).

MacIntyre and Internal Goods

A ‘good’, for MacIntyre, is that which we regard as worthwhile, and which operates as an end in itself (1999: 64). External goods are those rewards (fame, power, status and wealth) which might arise from certain activities but which are not specific to it. There are always alternative ways of achieving external goods ‘and their achievement is never to be had only by engaging in some particular kind of practice’ (MacIntyre, 1985: 188, emphasis in original). Internal goods by contrast derive from possession of the know-how or skills which are specific to a practice – the rewards and pleasures that accompany the development and execution of particular skills and standards and which can only be had by pursuing the practice. Internal goods are ends pursued for their own sake and can only be specified in terms of a particular practice.

To illustrate this distinction, MacIntyre describes trying to teach a child to play chess. The child has no particular desire to learn, so to encourage her we offer a reward of sweets each time she plays the game and wins: ‘thus motivated, the child plays and plays to win’ (1985: 188). However, as she learns the game

… there will come a time when the child will find in those goods specific to chess, in the achievement of a certain highly particular kind of analytical skill, strategic imagination and competitive intensity, a new set of reasons, reasons now not just for winning on a particular occasion, but for trying to excel in whatever way the game of chess demands. (MacIntyre, 1985: 188)

Initially ‘motivated by the candy, and the candy alone’, the child ‘has no reason not to cheat and every reason to cheat, providing he or she can do successfully’. However, once she starts to acquire internal goods from playing ‘now if the child cheats … she will be defeating not me, but himself or herself’ (MacIntyre, 1985: 188). Of course, skilled practitioners can still cheat, but in doing so they cannot achieve the internal goods which are intrinsic to the practice and which constitute a quite separate set of motivations and rewards, e.g. a sense of achievement and improvement.

What happens in this process? What mechanisms are at play? MacIntyre does not elaborate but we can, drawing upon the work of Mead (1967). The drive to win (e.g. at chess) and to improve (e.g. become a better player) are both facets of a ‘desire for recognition’ which Mead, in a materialist appropriation of Hegel (1975), deems central to social processes (on Mead’s materialist Hegelianism see Honneth, 1995). This desire is fundamentally intersubjective. It is a desire for the desire of the other, and as such it can only achieve fulfilment (insofar as it ever can) in a context of agreement between actors as to what winning and/or achieving entail, an agreement which is embodied in the constitutive conventions of a practice or world. Recognition is recognition ‘for’ something, and what it is recognition ‘for’ must be agreed upon in advance. As MacIntyre puts it:

To enter into a practice [‘world’] is … to subject my own attitudes, choices and preferences and tastes to the standards which currently and partially define the practice … the standards are not themselves immune from criticism, but nonetheless we cannot be initiated into a practice without accepting the authority of the best standards realized so far. If, on starting to listen to music, I do not accept my own incapacity to judge correctly, I will never learn to hear, let alone to appreciate, Bartok’s last quartets. If, on starting to play baseball, I do not accept that others know better than I when to throw a fast ball and when not, I will never learn to appreciate good pitching let alone to pitch. (MacIntyre, 1985: 190)

The victory and improvement which confer recognition presuppose agreed upon, which is to say conventional, standards against which they can be measured. The invocation of ‘convention’ here is important for our purposes because convention is also key to Becker’s account of worlds. Becker deems convention central to the achievement of coordination between participants in music worlds. What our discussion of MacIntyre suggests, however, is that they are also central to the internal goods which motivate participation.

We do not mean to suggest that either worlds, attachment to them or achievements within them (e.g. beautiful music) are reducible to status contests. Beautiful music remains beautiful, as path-breaking science remains path-breaking, irrespective of the motivations of those responsible for it. More importantly, however, properly interpreted, ‘the desire for recognition’ drives efforts for self-improvement, measurable against the abovementioned conventional standards, as much as competition between actors. The I, to borrow Mead’s terminology, can take delight in its own achievements and improvement (qua ‘me’) by comparing its efforts at different points in time against the aforementioned standards – a process which, in many cases, is mediated by the ‘looking glass effect’ of the wider network of participants. Furthermore, internal goods and the standards upon which they are based give life meaning. They define goals and goods which participants in worlds strive for.

This only works, however, to the extent that ends and goods are taken for granted by the actor; that is, to the extent that the actor has internalized the perspective of the ‘generalized other’, acquiring both the capacity and the tendency to view itself and its activities from the perspective of the practice or world. By participating we learn to take the ends of the practice as our own. We term this process of incorporation identification with a world and, in addition to the assumption of the world’s standards and ends, we posit that it has two elements. First, participants feel a sense of belonging to the world in question, which, in turn, informs their personal identity. Second, they acquire the capacity, when occupying an audience role, to project themselves into the ongoing play they are observing and thereby to feel its tensions and recognize the achievements of others.

In these ways participation generates new wants, ‘new ends and new conceptions of ends’ (MacIntyre, 1985: 273). These ends may entail competition, as the example of chess illustrates, but this is competition oriented to the rules and standards of the practice and not only the pursuit of status, power and prestige. Internal goods ‘are indeed the outcome of competition to excel’ (1985: 190) but are ‘realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence’ upheld in a world, and it is the process of their acquisition and execution which makes any practice a ‘rewarding reality’ for practitioners (1985: 286).

Internal goods are not conditional upon acquiring great skill or high levels of achievement. The pursuit of excellence is not the same as its achievement, and many of those with lesser skills reap internal goods by striving and improving (MacIntyre, 1985: 274–5). To reiterate, however, this is only possible insofar as a world involves rules and standards against which achievement can be measured and assessed. Warde makes an interesting contribution to this point when he observes the need for standards to offer participants a challenge which will stretch them without exceeding their capabilities and potential. Goals must be difficult to achieve but not too difficult:

… if tasks are too simple boredom ensues, if they are too difficult then anxiety is aroused. Best to have activities which fall between, where challenge and competence are in balance, when … people achieve a highly positive sense of ‘flow’. This implies, first, that level of proficiency in a practice is a major determinant of psychic reward. It also follows that some practices can be seen as more complex than others because they offer more levels at which opportunities to experience flow can be found. The greater the range of challenges, the more a practice can deliver internal goods to a larger number of people. (Warde, 2005: 143)

Actors, individually and collectively, will tend to find ‘their level’ and orient their activities and striving around that level, pursuing and valuing what is do-able for them – albeit whilst still perhaps admiring the ‘genius’ of other, more proficient and celebrated participants in their world.

Developing this idea further, MacIntyre distinguishes between the pursuit of achievement and the pursuit of pleasure. To achieve internal goods is often satisfying and pleasurable but pleasure per se is not the reason why we pursue internal goods because pleasure per se, as conceived by MacIntyre, is not specific to a particular activity (we question this below). Internal goods are intrinsic to the performance of specific practices. For example, the goods internal to the practice of chess are goods which ‘cannot be had in any way but by playing chess’ and they are internal in two ways: 1) they can only be specified in terms of chess (or similar games of analytical skill, strategic imagination and competitive intensity); 2) ‘they can only be identified and recognized by the experience of participating in the practice in question’ (MacIntyre, 1985: 188–9). Extending this, Higgins argues that one element of the internal goods deriving from a practice is a kind of moral phenomenology, in which a pursuit ‘structures the experience of its practitioners in distinctive ways’ affording participants ‘distinctive modes of being, in which practitioners deem it good to participate’ (2003: 288).

From MacIntyre to Music

The application of these ideas to musicking and music worlds is clear. Much like chess, the constitutive activities of music making, which, as Dewey (2005), Small (1998) and Becker (1982) each argue, include those of audiences and ‘support personnel’ as well as artists, involve acquired, embodied competences which, in the context of specific music worlds, can be measured against established rules and standards. Musicians, producers and sound engineers must all learn their craft and can experience improvement in their performance over time, relative to established standards. Miles Davis (1985), for example, notes that he was initially unable to play trumpet in the higher register like his hero, Dizzy Gillespie. With time, however, he acquired this skill and took pleasure from the fact. Similarly, audience members learn to listen for and hear elements of the music that the untrained ear does not pick out, deriving a similar pleasure from this growth of expertise.

On another level, participants within music worlds may derive pleasure from the accumulation of knowledge, experiences or artefacts which, like a chess opponent’s king, have no value outside of the world but great value within it. Within the folk world, for example, knowledge of songs of a particular period is eagerly sought and valued (Hield, 2010). Similarly, musing on The Sex Pistols’ first gig in Manchester, Nolan (2006) observes the significance that being at a particular gig might assume within a given music world – his book is entitled I Swear I Was There. Participants ‘collect’ significant gigs (see Fonorow, 2006). And of course they collect recordings too, rare recording in particular. Gibson’s (2010) work on northern soul, for example, highlights the importance which particular labels and pressings assume, irrespective and sometimes almost in inverse relation to market value.

As in playing and appreciation, collecting is satisfying because it involves know-how, e.g. knowing where to look, being able to recognize a precious object when one sees or hears it, etc. Furthermore, echoing Warde’s argument mentioned above, there is an element of difficulty involved, in virtue of the rarity of precious objects and experiences. In addition, however, there is also an element of luck which perhaps adds the frisson common to gambling; tonight’s band might just be the next big thing, this record fair just might have that record, etc. That the ends sought in these ‘games’ are not always obviously pleasurable in any simple and generic sense, and that participants will sometimes forgo more obvious pleasures, taking on stress, inconvenience and graft, in pursuit of them, also resonates with MacIntyre. Participation in music worlds is sometimes ‘serious leisure’, in Stebbins’ (1992), sense and, as such, is distinct, both for insiders and to the outside observer, from the mere pursuit of fun. Indeed, Stebbins’ (1996) main empirical case study centres upon a form of musicking in a distinct music world, i.e. barbershop singing.

Finally, where musicking is pleasurable there is often a sense, as MacIntyre suggests, that its pleasures are specific to it:

The physical, emotional, and pleasure quality of music and music-making cannot be experienced in quite the same way through any other form of social or creative and artistic activity, which is why music is so popular and valued so highly. (Cohen, 1991: 191)

Indeed these pleasures may assume distinct and unique forms even within the same music world and especially between worlds. Musicking is always immersive, embodied and affectively-tinged but the mosh pit, gospel choir, concert hall, folk club and iPod, to mention only a few, offer very distinctive modes of musical being (and value) in which practitioners acquire a different sense of the goods of participation.

For these reasons we believe that MacIntyre’s concept of internal goods makes an important contribution to our understanding of musicking and participation in music worlds. When we suggested in our introduction that networks and more specifically contact with others who are enthusiastic about particular forms of music may introduce the actor to rewards and pleasures which elude the outsider to a music world this is, in part, what we had in mind. Like MacIntyre’s child learning chess, the neophyte may initially be drawn into a music world by incentives which are only contingently associated with it and by no means exclusive to it, e.g. the opportunity to mix and associate with others. By musicking with those others, however, they may come to identify with a particular music world, in the sense of ‘identification’ referred to above. Achieving identification is, in this respect, a key stage in the ‘moral career’ of music world participants (albeit one which has to be continually maintained).

Beyond MacIntyre

MacIntyre’s concept of internal goods allows us to see how the conventions which Becker deems central to music worlds play a key role in securing the intrinsic interest and commitment of participants. Whilst not entirely insensitive to this dimension, Becker focuses more upon the coordinating function of conventions. However, for his part Becker is more alert to the contestation of conventions and standards by ‘mavericks’ and rival factions. In our view MacIntyre overstates the extent to which rules and standards are shared, underestimating levels of conflict and factionalism that occur within social worlds, giving rise to competing rules and standards (Crossley, 2014). As Becker acknowledges, struggle itself presupposes a level of agreement about that which is struggled over – the object of struggle is itself an internal good – but agreement is very often tempered by conflict. How much is an empirical question and will vary between worlds and points in time.

Furthermore, MacIntyre’s insistence on hiving off internal goods, as he defines them, from the more contingent pleasures that might induce initial participation and, indeed, from external goods such as status and wealth, makes sense in terms of the project he is pursuing within moral philosophy, but is questionable in sociological terms. Sociology must focus upon the empirical reality of social practices and worlds, and that reality seldom throws up pure forms. Insofar as we can distinguish internal from external goods and, indeed, the more usual external goods of sociology, such as power and status, from the contingent goods of friendship, sociability, etc., we would expect participants in music worlds to orient to all of them (see Becker, 1960). Though she argues that we must tease out what is distinctive to musical participation by exploring how music becomes ‘unique or special’ to participants ‘through continued engagement gradually assuming an embedded role in their lives’ (2005: 44), Pitts found that participation in musical activity was often valued for a range of different reasons, some of which fit with MacIntyre’s criteria but others of which, such as serving as a ‘forum of social interaction and friendship’, or a ‘source of confirmation and confidence’, or as a way of ‘escaping’ and ‘enhancing everyday life’, do not. Many of the rewards of musical participation for even longstanding participants, she found, are not specific to music per se, and arise within many other practices: ‘had I interviewed actors, footballers or rock-climbers I might have found similar results’ (2005: 44). Whilst it is important to examine the ways in which repeated participation in musical (inter)activities ‘structures events in which it is worthy to participate and which are attended by a distinctive kind of satisfaction’ (Higgins, 2003: 288), we should not consider these in isolation from other goods.

In addition, there is a danger in MacIntyre’s approach, on account of its ethical focus, that aesthetic matters and the sensuous pleasures integral to musicking are overlooked. His discussion mentioned above of the pleasure of chess, for example, is centred more upon the delight taken in improving one’s game than in the excitement of playing, e.g. the tension of the competition and the pleasure arising from a successful resolution of such tension in victory. In the case of music, such pleasure is even more evident and key to understanding participation. With this in mind, we turn to the second part of our paper, which focuses upon the pleasures of musicking. We begin with Alfred Schutz.

The Pleasures of Musicking

Schutz (1976a, 1976b) considers music in the context of a reflection upon intersubjectivity in social relations. At their most basic level, he argues, intersubjective relations involve a ‘fusion of lived time horizons’ (1976a: 160). Parties to an interaction move at a common pace and rhythm, each anticipating in their action the action and response of the other. Intersubjectivity involves ‘mutual tuning in’. ‘Conversations of gesture’ (Mead, 1967) between adults and children, prior to the latter’s acquisition of language, rest upon this fusion of time horizons, as do such childhood games as catch: the catcher only catches to the extent that their movement is synchronized and continuous with that of the thrower. The same is the case in adult interactions, e.g. turn taking and sequencing in conversation, as explored by conversation analysts.

For Schutz, music operates and elaborates upon the primordial level of intersubjectivity. It is a fundamental form of sociability. Music is not a thing, it is an activity (see also Small, 1998). The concept ‘musical work’ is best understood not as a noun but rather, as Becker (1982) suggests, as a verb. Actors ‘work’ both qua artists, to make sounds and, qua audiences, to perceive and make sense of those sounds (see also Dewey, 2005; Small, 1998). And the success of this collaborative work depends upon its participants managing to tune in to one another.

Though there is variation between worlds and formats, musicking generally involves multiple relays of interaction. Writers interact with performers, support personnel with performers, one performer with another, performers with audiences, support personnel with audiences, and so on. To be successful, each interaction in this web requires ‘mutual tuning in’ between those involved. For present purposes, we will consider interaction between artists and audiences, whether live or by means of recordings.

Like all interaction, this involves a fusion of lived time horizons. The listener must follow the music: its tempo, rhythm and melodic sequence. A slow song has to be listened to ‘slowly’, for example, whilst the listener must race to keep up with a fast piece. This is why we might sometimes feel that we are not in the mood for a piece of music, e.g. it is too quick or too slow to match our current state of being. We experience discomfort from the mismatch between our own time horizon and that of the music. Of course tuning in may alter our lived time horizon and through it our mood. That is sometimes the point: tuning in to gentle and slow music allows us to relax whilst tuning into something lively and up tempo, which requires that we adjust our temporal orientation to keep up with it, can be exhilarating (see also De Nora, 2000). The point still stands, however, that the listener must fuse with the temporal structure of the music, as they hear it.

Schutz does not explicitly address the pleasures of musicking but the experiences of tuning in and following the music are amongst them. The temporal and affective horizons of human experience are closely interwoven, and tuning in affords a means of enhancing or altering them. It is unfortunate, in relation to this point, that Schutz’s focus is classical music, because a convention has taken hold in that music world for listening and appreciation to be self-constrained and motionless. In other music worlds participants commonly listen, understand and appreciate music through movement and dance – from foot, finger and head tapping to air guitar, but also incorporating the doing of ‘other’ activities, from making breakfast to driving the car, in time to the music (DeNora, 2000). Various music scholars, including some staunch defenders of the classical tradition (e.g. Scruton, 1999), suggest that dance and movement are our most primordial way of appreciating and understanding music. Certainly, we argue, it is a central means of ‘tuning in’, and one which makes the visceral pleasure of ‘tuning in’ more evident, the pleasure of dancing being the most obvious example. In dance the effort (energy and focus) expended in keeping with the beat is apparent (not least when a dancer fails), and so is the pleasure this brings when successful.

These considerations allow us to begin to draw out the sensuous pleasure of musicking, an internal good which is at best only hinted at in MacIntyre’s work. They are largely consistent with MacIntyre’s definition, however. Tuning into music is an activity, for example, and one which involves acquired embodied know-how. When encountering a new form of music for the first time, for example, we may be both unfamiliar with its rhythmic conventions, such that we find it difficult to follow, and unsure how we are supposed to engage with it. Not ‘getting’ a type of music is often not knowing what to do in relation to it. We may not be able to hear what we normally search for in order to tune in, or find ourselves unable to engage with it as we normally would. The music does not ‘afford’, in Gibson’s (1979) sense, our usual response. We may only learn to like certain types of music when we learn a way of engaging with and tuning in to them, e.g. learning how to dance to them- that is, when we acquire an embodied understanding of their conventions. However, engagement need not entail overt activity. The fact that one could dance or play air guitar to a tune may be enough to facilitate tuning in, irrespective of whether we actually do so.

In addition, the affective and visceral states which we achieve and enjoy by tuning in to music, whether calm and relaxed or aroused and energized, are intrinsic to our engagement with the music: musical pleasures. They are, in phenomenological parlance, ‘intentional states’. We do not experience relaxation but rather experience the music as relaxing or energizing and arousing. Our affective states attach us to the music and its wider context. Indeed, they attune us to the music and are as much an aspect of ‘tuning in’ as an outcome of it. For this reason we are critical of MacIntyre’s argument that pleasure is not specific to particular practices and therefore not an internal good. Quite aside from the fact that deriving pleasure from a practice requires specific know-how, pleasure is an intentional experience and therefore inseparable from that which it takes pleasure in.

The concept of tuning in, with its suggestion of resonance between player and listener, also hints at reasons why different groups of people might like different types of music. Willis’s (1978) discussion of the musical tastes of ‘bike boys’ and ‘hippies’ is interesting in this respect. The lifestyle of the former was characterised by speed, movement and restlessness, he argues, and this was reflected in their preference for up tempo, lively music and also for (short) singles over (longer) LPs. The hippies, by contrast, were characterised by a ‘chilled out’ orientation to life, which was reflected in their preference for longer pieces of music (e.g. concept albums) and for music which, to the ear of the bike boys, was too slow and lacked rhythm and a beat. The conventions of the music resonated with the temporal conventions underlying other aspects of the lifestyle of each group, reinforcing and allowing them to maintain their preferred pace, and also with their practices of listening (dancing/on the move versus seated contemplation). For this reason ‘their’ music was experienced positively: as a good.

Developing this point, we can also see how conventions of musical appreciation are embedded in and connected to wider social conventions, such that they will prove more or less accessible to actors according to their social circle. For example, the forms of dance associated with early jazz and rock ‘n’ roll, when they first emerged, conflicted with the sexual morals of older, middle-class Americans, making the music itself largely inaccessible to them. They could not tune in because the conventional ways of doing so ran contrary to the norms of their social circles. Furthermore, Kofsky has suggested that jazz was difficult for many white American musicians to pick up because it was rooted in rhythmic conventions commonly found in the childhood games of African Americans but unknown within the white community:

… there is a relationship – difficult to specify with complete precision but real nonetheless – between socialization games like the Hambone … and motor skills necessary for participating in black dance or the playing of black music. (Kofsky, 1998: 140)

Dewey (2005) broadens Schutz’s line of thought by arguing that engaging with music involves seeking out patterns within it and that finding patterns, particularly where they are not obvious at first, is pleasurable. Pattern seeking may be a reflective activity, as when a musicologist studying a written score delights in its mathematical elegance, but it may equally be a matter of discovering patterns through dance (e.g. finding the beat or anticipating the ‘gear change’ between verse and chorus). The disposition to derive pleasure from finding patterns is a side effect of human evolution, according to Dewey, as effective pattern recognition is integral to our survival. The organism, by rewarding itself with pleasure when it successfully identifies a pattern, reinforces a tendency which will help to keep it alive. Again connecting with MacIntyre, however, pattern recognition is rooted in embodied know-how regarding conventional pattern forms, acquired in the context of specific worlds. Through exposure to and experience of particular genres, as well as discussion with others, we form schemas and expectations which allow us to find patterns and make sense of new ‘objects’.

Dewey’s ideas are further developed by Leonard Meyer (1956), a pragmatist musicologist who also draws upon Mead (1967). There is a longstanding debate in musical aesthetics as to whether musical meaning entails ‘reference’ to anything outside of music or is purely internal. Meyer suggests that music may have both external and internal meanings, but focuses upon the latter. What it means to say that music is internally meaningful, he claims, is that we always hear individual musical units (notes, phrases, verses, movements, etc.) in relation to others which are either simultaneous with them (e.g. harmony) or which precede or follow them (e.g. melody, rhythm, etc.). Individual notes form a pattern for the listener, as Dewey suggests, and the pattern, as grasped by the listener, is the internal meaning of the music according to Meyer.

We have already seen why finding and following the pattern might be pleasurable but Meyer further develops these ideas. Building upon Mead’s (1967) theory of meaning and significant symbols, he argues that individual notes point towards others, or at least they do for those who have acquired a habitual familiarity with the conventions of a particular music world, such that engaging with a piece of music involves tacit anticipation of how it will sound and what will follow. We bring expectations to music and we form expectations on the basis of what we hear. A phrase which begins in ‘this’ way ‘feels’ like it should finish in ‘that’ way. However, interesting and exciting composers typically tease their audience, deviating from conventions and delaying resolution of anticipated sequences. They play with our expectations and they do so by playing with musical conventions. This adds to our musical pleasure, Meyer argues (building on Dewey’s (1894, 1895) theory of emotion), because it generates and then releases tension. The argument is summarized approvingly by Becker:

By using such a conventional organization of tones as a scale, the composer can create and manipulate the listener’s expectations as to what sounds will follow. He can then delay and frustrate the satisfaction of those expectations, generating tension and release. … Only because artist and audience share knowledge of and experience with the conventions invoked does the art work produce an emotional effect. (Becker, 1982: 29–30)

This process is not specific to music. Elias and Dunning (1993) make a very similar argument for football matches, detective novels and other ‘quests for excitement’, and the mechanism is very similar to that of ‘sociability’, as described by Simmel (1949). The tensions are only experienced in each case, however, by those who identify with the conventions of the practice in question and who have the know-how necessary to ‘tune in’ with the flow of activity involved. Convention again is central. It is not notes or sequences of notes per se which generate pleasure, but rather the manner in which the progression and structure of the music tease the expectations of those who engage with it – expectations which, in turn, are rooted in a habitual familiarity with the constitutive conventions of a particular musical style. The process only works insofar as all involved habitually adhere to a common set of conventions, enjoying embodied knowledge of a musical style:

… this analysis of communication emphasizes the absolute necessity of a common universe of discourse in art. For without a set of gestures common to the group, and without common habit responses to those gestures, no communication whatsoever would be possible. Communication depends upon, presupposes, and arises out of the universe of discourse which in the aesthetics of music is called style. (Meyer, 1956: 42)

This argument accords with MacIntyre’s insistence upon the necessity of ‘communities of practice’ for maintaining shared standards. And Meyer’s further contention, that composers/players should depart sufficiently from convention to challenge the listener but not so far as to alienate them, resonates with Warde’s reflections, noted above, about difficulty.

Of course there is nothing to stop ‘uninformed’ listeners, with different listening and interpretive habits, from listening to a piece in their own way. They are less likely to derive pleasure from doing so, however, or to understand why insiders rate the music as they do, if they are not familiar with the conventions that the musician and composer orient to. The situation is akin to an insider joke.

This argument extends to external meanings – that is, the manner in which music is heard as referring to extra-musical objects, e.g. events, values, emotions, etc. Properly speaking, music does not refer to anything, but it can be heard to do so, with the help of interpretive conventions (De Nora, 2000), and where interpretive communities generate an approximate consensus of such conventions, as in music worlds, the external meanings and associations of music can seem incontrovertible (Fish, 1980). Furthermore, to return to Willis, where these meanings are perceived to resonate with and reinforce wider orientations and identities, this might be experienced within a musical world as an internal good. The association of folk music with left-wing politics in ‘the sixties’, for example, elevated its value for radicals: they heard an affirmation of their identities and beliefs in the music (Eyerman and Jamison, 1998). Likewise, we could mention here the British patriot who hears a resonance with their identity and beliefs in the music of Elgar and feels affirmed by that.

Such meanings are not inherent in the music, and are unlikely to be uniformly perceived outside of the dense networks of a particular music world. This is illustrated by the widely derided appropriation of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA by Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election team, who heard it as a celebration of American society and its values. The song was heard as a critique of American society by Springsteen aficionados. However, the widespread derision of the Reagan team also illustrates the force of the official interpretation.

Understandings of musical pieces are often tacit and pre-reflective. In some cases, however, and in some music worlds, meanings, both internal and external, are subject to discursive interpretation, adding a further layer of both activity and pleasure. Whilst Willis’s biker boys took no interest in ‘the meaning’ of the songs they liked, for example, his hippies spent long evenings discussing the meaning of songs – taking special delight when they failed to arrive at a single meaning, as this affirmed their belief in the multiplicity and transcendence of meaning. They sought out patterns, as Dewey might put it, at a higher, discursive level of abstraction.

Meyer too notes a divergence between intellectual and purely embodied musical appreciation. All internal musical meaning is, in the first instance, embodied and affective for him. However, in some cases and for some people, this may form a basis for more reflective activity:

Intellectual experience (the conscious awareness of one’s own expectations or, objectively, of the tendencies of the music) … is largely a product of the listener’s own attitude towards his responses … some listeners, whether because of training or natural psychological inclination, are disposed to rationalize their responses, to make experience self-conscious; others are not so disposed. (Meyer, 1956: 40)

Belonging to a music world involves both knowing whether it is appropriate to intellectualize experience and, if so, how to intellectualize it; how to play the game of intellectualization in a way recognized within the world and therefore generative of a sense of fulfilment.

Change and Stasis

There is an inherent dynamism in Meyer’s view of musicking and its pleasures. Pleasure derives from deviation from conventions and the manipulation of expectation. Over time, however, deviation becomes convention, losing its effect and pushing the composer/musician to innovate/deviate further. This accords well with musical history, at least in the West. The history of the Western classical tradition, for example, is in some part a history of experimentation with harmony and melody. It is widely documented that composers such as Mozart and Beethoven, whose music is deemed amongst the most beautiful and harmonious by contemporary classical enthusiasts, were regarded as discordant and offensive by sections of their contemporary audience because they deviated from conventions. Similarly, the history of jazz, from ragtime through swing and bop to cool, modal and free jazz, is a history of establishing and challenging conventions. Indeed, the history of pop music itself, from jazz and rock ‘n’ roll to post-rock and post-dubstep, might be read in this way. As audiences catch up, artists move on. In this respect innovation itself is an internal good within many music worlds.

This claim begs a question, however, of ‘old favourites’. It may be objected that, following Meyer’s argument, we ought to tire of songs which we play often, as our expectations of them change through exposure and they cease to tease our expectations. Of course we do in many cases, but not always. Why and how, it may be asked, do certain familiar songs retain their capacity to excite? There are many possible reasons for this, which do not undermine Meyer’s argument. We may continue to hear new things in the music, for example. We may imaginatively suspend disbelief, projecting ourselves back into the position of a naive listener. We almost certainly do associate certain pieces with biographical experiences, reliving those experiences through the music. And it may be, as Huron (2007) suggests, that certain musical effects, even when shaped by expectation and familiarity, tap into ‘fast-track’ psychological mechanisms that are not easily extinguished by experience. Another possibility, however, is that familiar patterns, particularly when enhanced by secondary associations but not only because of that, generate their own forms of pleasure. We take pleasure in the comfort of conventional forms.

For Adorno (1991), this is one of the great dangers of popular music. It soothes and reassures its audience, entertaining them with child-like repetition. This is most certainly not a ‘good’ for Adorno, but it may be for some participants in some music worlds. For all that he despises it, Adorno helps us to understand why some popular music is popular; namely, because the familiarity of its patterns is reassuring and comforting. Innovation can be a source of pleasure but so can the familiar.

Conclusion

This paper has made the case for a sociological analysis of music’s internal and intrinsic pleasures and has considered some of the mechanisms that may be important to that. Howard S. Becker’s conception of art worlds provides a very important tool for making sense of music making in contemporary societies. As it stands, however, this conception assumes the enthusiasm and commitment of participants, affording little explanation of that enthusiasm and commitment. Moreover, though some of his earlier work hints at mechanisms that may be involved, it does no more than hint. This is a serious omission. The commitment and enthusiasm of participants is often bemusing to outsiders, and ought to puzzle sociologists too. It is an important key as to why music worlds happen.

In this paper we have addressed this omission, and sought to explore how the concept of music worlds can be further developed in order to interrogate the mechanisms of intrinsic pleasure. In the first part, we looked at Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of internal goods. Although problematic in some respects and underdeveloped for our purposes, this concept goes some way to elucidating what is missing in Becker, by indicating how the internal logic and the dynamics of participation in a world shape motivations, values and satisfactions. In the second part of the paper, we explored a specific train of thought on the pleasures of musicking which runs from Schutz, via Dewey and Meyer, to Becker himself. This train of thought, focused in particular on how investment in the conventions of music affords pleasure and value, serves to fill an important gap in MacIntyre’s conception, and thus further informs our own attempt to build the concept of internal goods into the concept of music worlds.

The concept of convention is crucial to our argument. Becker deems convention central to music worlds but he focuses specifically upon its role in the coordination of participants, only hinting at its role in the production of pleasure and commitment. Both of the trains of thought examined in this paper, however, explicitly focus upon the link between convention and internal goods. Furthermore, the coordination achieved by way of convention is itself important in these accounts. Internal goods exist, in some part, because definitions of achievement are agreed upon (coordinated), and because parties to a musical performance can mutually tune in (coordinate).

What we have said in this paper only scratches at the surface of a topic which is ripe for further exploration. If we have suggested fruitful ways of further exploring this topic, however, then we have done our job.