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Safe in Sound:  Audio Analyses of Shakespearean Sonnets

By John Estioko, Textones

    At its inception, the Textones project at University of California Santa Barbara was a simple concept, to apply a tonal value to a part of speech. Likewise the objective was as simple as the initial concept, to derive a tonal pattern that may allow its audience to form conclusions as to the structure, meaning or other aspect conveyed by the work.

    In Graphs, Maps, Trees, the author Franco Moretti writes about “distance reading”, in this type of reading the distance is "not an obstacle, but a specific form of knowledge" (Moretti 1). The knowledge discovered by the Textones project would be knowledge of form, about what goes where and why it does. The project also embodies Moretti's idea of seeing "fewer elements, hence a sharper sense of their overall interconnection." (Moretti 1) By simplifying the complexity that surrounds the meaning of a word we are able to see nuances in the overall construction of the work. An analogy that may make more sense would be computer coding, though the overall software code in use presents something very complex, inherent to that code would be 1's and 0's that builds up hierarchically to form the software.

    The Textone process was not meant create aesthetically pleasing musical pieces; if it did it was merely a byproduct. The purpose of the project was to create a model that was meant to be analyzed. Essentially the audience's interaction with a Textone model is meant to provide a new method of close reading, a close reading of the sequence of sounds. Katherine Wilson proposes in Sound and Meaning in English Poetry that "Evolution in art, if art does evolve, is not towards synthesis, but from the primitive general impression to an analytical perception." (Wilson 14). This thought presents that the highest appreciation of art and music is the thorough analysis of the work, to decode the complexity presented and in a way to complete one objective of "close-reading", to figure out what the work means to the audience.

The methodology for the Textones project was defined and redefined throughout the project. A basic procedure was formed that worked in concordance with a basic set of rules. Developments that acted on the methodology and rules fall within two categories; aesthetic development and functional development.

    The initial idea involved the arbitrary application of tones within a chromatic (12 note) scale to the varying parts of speech (section titled "Chromatic Tonal Value Chart" at http://english149-w2008.pbwiki.com/Textones). The chromatic scale assignment allowed the project to form a basis for its rules and create a prototype audio model (http://english149-w2008.pbwiki.com/f/Sonnet12.mp3). The approach that was then taken by the Textones project was one that involved the iterative design methodology. Iterative design was a procedure introduced to the Textones project by Salen and Zimmerman in Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. In an iterative design process the "prototype is played, evaluated, adjusted, and played again"(Salen 71). Though the Textones project is not a game, the development of it relied on some fundamentals of game design. Besides the iterative design process, one of the most important game design fundamentals present in the Textones project is the presence of a system of rules. The initial rules may be summarized as consisting of such: only 1 tone may be applied to a part of speech, every word in the work will have a corresponding notation as a part of speech, thus, every word will have a tone applied to it, and every syllable will represent a separate playing of a tone.

    The development that almost immediately followed the creation of the first set of tonal assignments was an aesthetic decision. These decisions involved the definition of tonal constructs surrounding the project; firstly, rather than an arbitrary assignment of tones a more elaborate system was created that involved human influence and recognition, secondly, a metrical system was decided on based on the commonly held perceptions considering the performance and reading of the work.

The second iteration of assignment rules (see "Scale Oriented Tonal Value Chart” at http://english149-w2008.pbwiki.com/Textones) involved some logic pertaining to music theory and the grammatical structure of language. The grammatical structure of a sentence as defined by Noam Chomsky is a "noun phrase" and a "verb phrase" (Chomsky 5), essentially the structure would resemble something like "The man took the book" or "Bob threw the ball". This idea led the Textones project to connect constructs in grammar to constructs in music. By using a scale with the C as the root note, the idea was to have the progression of a sentence such as "I threw the ball" have some basis on the tonal progression of C-F-G; the root, 4th, and 5th intervals in the scale. Therefore a sentence such as "I threw the ball" was first translated to I(pronoun) threw(verb) the(article) ball(noun-object), the sentence was then musically translated to(tonal notes in parentheses), I(C) threw(F) the(Db) ball(G) (http://english149-w2008.pbwiki.com/f/C-F-Db-G.mp3).

    The decision on a metrical system was based on the perception of the performance of the work. In the first prototype the metrical system was defined musically by a 5/4 time signature. By having 10 syllables to a line, musically a 5/4 time signature would fit exactly, the reason being that each syllable would be represented as a whole note encompassing 1 beat in the 5 beats of a measure. This approach at first accommodated the structure of the rules that are commonly associated with the work of sonnets. Yet anomalies persist and within the work and not all the lines consisted of 10 syllables. The remedy to this problem was to apply a concept introduced to the project by Peter Groves book Strange Music, in where he writes about the idea of "Extended Beat Addition". The addition of beats prevents the distortion of the speech patterns in English heroic verse (Groves 159). The idea can be heard in practice by the pause that occurs at the end during recitation of the sonnets. This idea can also be shown by the absence of prepositions at the end of Shakespeare's sonnet lines, as every line can be seen as a whole phrase or clause (Groves 165). The musical equivalent was decided to be 2 empty beats added. The extension in length also allowed the functional development of allowing the modeling of lines that were longer than 10 syllables.

    The most important functional development that occurred in the Textones project was the use of a grid system to diagram the notes that would later need to be programmed into a digital audio sequencer (http://english149-w2008.pbwiki.com/f/Sonnet66.jpg). The use of this method of creating a table with the grammatical information simplified into a grid pattern by line and syllable would also allow the interpretation of the initial transcription by other instrumentation beyond the digital audio sequencing software. This process of transcribing the information presented in the sonnet also facilitated other modes of inquiry. With the parts of speech deciphered and converted to a tone represented by accommodating notation (ex. C, Bb, E) then placed in tabular format it was easier to see where the patterns were in the grammatical form.

    The Textones project presented audio models of text. Though the output was abstract in nature, there were some conventions that were displayed. The decoding of the audio, though presented simply would take someone trained with an ear for recognizing tones to figure out what was heard. In an ideal situation the whole breadth of Shakespearean sonnets would be transcribed and analyzed. The Textones project was limited by time to interpret several pieces, yet there are some displays of patterns arising.

      Shakespeare's sonnet 66 (http://english149-w2008.pbwiki.com/f/Sonnet66.mp3) in textual form presents a list; this listing translates well into audio form as well as the transcription that occurs before creating the audio example. The repetition of similar tones (Db-Bb-G) line after line creates a stylistic consistency. The tonal consistency does not distinguish that which is introduced; the "needy nothing" is musically equivalent to the "gilded honor". This tonal "indifference" reiterates the idea derived from textual close reading by Professor Stephen Booth in Shakespeare's Sonnets by showing how the "line is so composed that its reader confuses the deserving with the undeserving" (Booth 248). In the Textones model it recreates what is present in the text, a listing of described objects and what occurs to them. The “chorus” in sonnet 66 also presents a sort of resolution that may represent what occurs in the text, in the first 12 lines a list is presented, repetitious in nature, in the last 2 lines someone trained to listen to the tones in the model would notice that a C note is presented only the second time in the sonnet and occurs more often, by hearing this overall progression the listener may notice the first C-F progression (the 'I' performs an action), the list, then the chorus which repeats the C-F progression. If this is noticed the listener may then assume that the idea of the sonnet would be the narrator, I, noting some things and then finally resolving how they feel and what they may do about those things.

      A particularly interesting revelation discovered by the Textones project was the adjective use by Shakespeare. In certain cases individual words were unable to be looked at as a separate and isolated entity. Syntactical rules dictate the study of context to determine which component of speech the word embodies. An example of this would be line 1 of Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet, the phrase "summer's day" in an isolated context would consider "summer" as a noun and the "day" as a noun as well. Yet in the unit of the line the "summer's" would be an adjective because it is describing some characteristic of the "day" that follows. The tone used for an adjective in the most current iteration of assignation rules by the Textone project is the note of "Bb" (B-flat). This higher pitched tone colors the song in a fairly descriptive manner, yet does not divert too much in terms of dissonance or perfect harmony (example of root C note, then Bb note, then played together - http://english149-w2008.pbwiki.com/f/C-Bb.mp3) In the most complex of the Textones model to date there is present an overlap in tones when an adjective interacts with a noun as well as when a verb interacts with a noun, in certain instances all three interacted. In the case of a noun being described by an adjective and then performing an action a chord was played (http://english149-w2008.pbwiki.com/f/G-F-Bb.mp3). In this model there may be considered a type of narration occurring, if allowed to be subjective about this occurrence one may hear that the chord conveys a sort of liveliness. Such patterns may become obvious if the Textone model was further refined and it may be deduced that the action in the audio can eventually be interpreted as narrative action.

    The paradox encountered by the Textones project was that which considered emotion as a byproduct of music. This emotional creation by the listening to of music prevents the purely objective interpretation of that which was produced. As Gardiner says it in his book Music of Nature, "There is nothing in nature that arouses our attention, or impresses our feelings more quickly, than a sound"(Gardiner 1). The first impression left by the presentation of a Textone to an audience would likely be disorientation, the juxtaposition of certain tones creates a dissonance, the introduction of new tonal phrases line after line prevent the listener from taking comfort in the repetition that is commonly present in western music. So it is necessary for the audience to separate the Textone model from a musical model and rather see it as an interpretational model.

    This concept, though at first thought to be very much abstract, may draw some assistance and evidence from the corpus of linguistics and specifically the ideas of generative grammar and the ideas of generative music. Generative grammar was an idea introduced by linguist Noam Chomsky, the idea in its simplest form is to approach the structure of language by studying its simplest parts. The simple parts, or "kernel of simple sentences"(Chomsky 1), construct all other sentences and by the use of "transformations" such parts as conjunctions, noun phrases, passives, and indirect objects are introduced. (Chomsky 11). The Textone project has essentially performed the same action that Chomsky has studied; by simplifying the parts of coherent sentences tonal phrases are introduced. If the work was expanded and included other literary works one may eventually figure out these phrases and transformations. The essential base phrase in the most current iteration of the Textone model can be considered C-F-G, which means "I (action) (object)"; the transformation present in this example may be considered the Db, the conjunction of "the". The furthest exploration of this idea can be considered in sequences of two, examples of a dual sequence that reoccurs in the Textones model would be the occurrence of "G-D" meaning a noun-object then a preposition, in terms of text these represent such phrases as "hopes to" (Booth 103), "meter of" (Booth 19) and "thee to" (Booth 19). By simplifying and analyzing this evidence there may eventually be a look into the method at which not only language is constructed in simple forms but how different writers use these simple constructions of phrases and transformations in their work.

    Lerdahl and Jackendoff use the ideas proposed by Chomsky in their book A Generative Theory of Tonal Music where they relate the study of generative grammar to the idea they propose, generative music. The idea is essentially the same in that they view music as a hierarchically organized structure with the base "phrases" interacting and eventually forming whole coherent "musical sentences". (Lerdahl 14) The connection between the construction of music and the construction of language relies very much on the idea that metrical accent is a "mental construct" (Lerdahl 18). The mental construction of meter in a language allows those interacting with the work a facilitated interface where the meter is simple and deviation from that meter creates a noticeable difference to the reader or listener. Meter and rhythm are essentially components that allow for grouping. (Lerdahl 68) The rules that dictate the creation of works of music and sonnets are essentially the same; time-signatures dictate musical rules as iambic pentameter dictates meter and emphasis rules in sonnets, musical notes dictate the harmony of a piece as words do the same in sonnets.

    There is reason to rhyme and logic that is inherent to the formation of art. Whether it is a writer, musician, painter, or any other artist there is something inherent that shapes their conviction in creating the work. As forms of art are created methods of analysis and defining that which is presented are created. The Textones project ventured to do just that, a creation of a method of analysis of Shakespearean sonnets. The concept is not beyond the realm of feasibility. With any idea it may only benefit by its exploration and utilization and as we form an analytical perception through it we form a new perception of the work.

Works Cited

Booth, Stephen. Shakespeare's Sonnets: Edited by Stephen Booth. New Haven: Yale Nota Bene,                 1977.

Chomsky, Noam. "Three Models for the Description of Language". IRE Transactions on Information Theory 1956: 113-134.

Gardiner, William. Music of Nature. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1849. Available at http://books.google.com/books?id=umYPAAAAYAAJ

Groves, Peter. Strange Music: The Metre of the English Heroic Line. University of Victoria: English Literary Studies, 1998.

Lerdahl, Fred, and Jackendoff Ray.A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.

Moretti, Franco. Graphs, Maps, Trees. New York: Verso, 2005.

Salen, Katie, and Zimmerman Eric. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: MIT    Press, 2004.

Wilson, Katherine. Sound and Meaning in English Poetry. Edinburgh: R. & R. Clark, 1930.