Category Archives: Books

AI and the music of the mind: Revisiting Douglas R. Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach

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The art of thinking

A truly remarkable and one-of-a-kind work of nonfiction, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid was first published in 1979, winning the Pulitzer Prize. In this overly stimulating and mind-blowing book, American scholar Douglas R. Hofstadter draws inspiration from music and mathematics to art and biology, while delving into elusive notions such as consciousness, self-reference, recursion, isomorphism, and “strange loops”, in order to investigate the deeper essence and nature of intelligence itself.   

In his extensive and wide-ranging study of the inner workings of mind and cognitive processes, Hofstadter examines various properties of intelligence, such as being able to jump out of the system or breaking out of predetermined patterns. Especially appealing in Hofstadter’s approach is the way he constantly draws intriguing analogies from various fields of art in order to better illustrate complex notions and concepts. 

M.C. Escher, Bond of Union (1956). © The M.C. Escher Company, The Netherlands

Bach’s fugue in mind and space

Music, and specifically J.S. Bach’s music, is particularly prominent throughout the book as a vehicle through which Hofstadter offers many valuable insights about cognition, reasoning and creativity. “Intelligence loves patterns and balks at randomness”, he writes, while comparing Bach’s “self-contained” music with the random processes and aleatoric nature of John Cage’s works. As he puts it in a short but illuminating passage on codes and decipherment: “In form, there is content”.

In his landmark book, Hofstadter offers another beautiful analogy when he mentions “an inner tension, very much like the tension in a piece of music caused by chord progressions that let you know what the tonality is, without resolving. […] The mathematician’s sense of tension is intimately related to his sense of beauty, and is what makes mathematics worthwhile doing.” He also goes on to liken analogies to chords using the concept of an imaginary “keyboard of concepts”: superficially similar ideas – like physically close notes – are often not deeply related, whereas deeply related ideas are often superficially disparate, just like harmonically close notes are physically distant.

While discussing the cultural context and emotional appeal of music, Hofstadter wonders: “Will beings of an alien civilization have emotions? Will their emotions – supposing they have some – be mappable, in any sense, onto ours?” Questions such as this become particularly intriguing in relation to experiments like the Voyager Golden Record time capsule, a pair of two identical phonograph records included aboard the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 that are still travelling through deep space carrying music from – among others –  J.S. Bach.

In any case, music, as all art in general, retains its aura of mystique and sense of wonder. As Hofstadter puts it: “Do you really understand Bach because you have taken him apart? Or did you understand it that time you felt the exhilaration in every nerve of your body?”

AI, music, and creativity

In his discussion of computer-generated music, Hofstadter notes that “in most circumstances, the driving force behind such pieces is a human intellect, and the computer has been employed, with more or less ingenuity, as a tool for realizing an idea devised by the human. The program which carries this out is not anything which we can identify with. It is a simple and simple-minded piece of software with no flexibility, no perspective on what it is doing, and no sense of self.”

Indeed, as in the case of recent attempts to emulate the style of J.S. Bach with the help of ChatGPT and MIDI technology, it seems that technology is still in the service of human intellect, a tool rather than the guiding force behind the creative process. However, as technology evolves and AI becomes increasingly self-aware, Hofstadter suggests that there will come a time “to start splitting up one’s admiration: some to the programmer for creating such an amazing program, and some to the program itself for its sense of music.”

As he writes: “Creativity is the essence of that which is not mechanical. Yet every creative act is mechanical. […] Perhaps what differentiates highly creative ideas from ordinary ones is some combined sense of beauty, simplicity, and harmony.” It is exactly these qualities that will, in the long run, prove to be crucial: “AI, when it reaches the level of human intelligence – or even if it surpasses it – will still be plagued by the problems of art, beauty, and simplicity, and will run up against these things constantly in its own search for knowledge and understanding.”

The eclipse of man: A terrifying prospect

While attempting to crack the mysteries of consciousness and intelligence, Hofstadter’s penetrative analysis offers some deep revelations about our own human nature. “Contradiction is a major source of clarification and progress in all domains of life”, he argues, adding that “we all are bundles of contradictions, and we manage to hang together by bringing out only one side of ourselves at a given time.” 

Moreover, the awareness of human fallibility and imperfection appears in sharp contrast to the rise of superintelligence. As Hofstadter put it in a recent interview: “It’s like a tidal wave that is washing over us in unprecedented and unimagined speeds… And, to me, it’s quite terrifying because it suggests that everything that I used to believe was the case is being overturned. […] It’s a very traumatic experience when some of your most core beliefs about the world start collapsing. Especially when you think that human beings are soon going to be eclipsed… It feels as if the entire human race is going to be eclipsed and left in the dust. Soon.”  

Echoing the concerns of other important scholars and thinkers such as Geoffrey Hinton and Noam Chomsky, Hofstadter is cautious about AI-powered language models such as ChatGPT. As he wrote recently: “It makes no sense whatsoever to let the artificial voice of a chatbot, chatting randomly away at dazzling speed, replace the far slower but authentic and reflective voice of a thinking, living human being. [..] To fall for the illusion that vast computational systems “who” have never had a single experience in the real world outside of text are nevertheless perfectly reliable authorities about the world at large is a deep mistake, and, if that mistake is repeated sufficiently often and comes to be widely accepted, it will undermine the very nature of truth on which our society — and I mean all of human society —is based.”

The worship of music: Reading David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue

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Ever wondered how it would feel to be in a rock band during the summer of love in swinging London? Well, for those of us not around at the time, reading David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue is probably as close as we can get without having to get teleported back to Soho’s music scene in the late 1960s.

As one might expect, the novel deals extensively – yet not exclusively – with topics such as sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll (increasingly so, in this order). However, it builds and extends upon these classic themes, touching upon issues such as gender equality, (hetero)sexuality, emotional dyslexia, mental illness, perception and hallucination, the process of songwriting, as well as the inner workings of music business.

Carnaby Street, London, c. 1968 / H. Grobe

In his latest novel, Mitchell recounts the birth and rise to fame of a fictional four-piece psychedelic-folk-rock band called Utopia Avenue. As the story unfolds, the reader follows the band from their beginnings in Soho, London to their first – and final – tour of America (“an endless, world-class distraction, if nothing else”), with eventful detours in Rome and Amsterdam in between. While getting to know the the band members (and their manager), the reader stumbles upon several famous musicians and artists who interact with the band at various points throughout the book, such as Brian Jones, David Bowie, Syd Barrett, Francis Bacon, Sandy Denny, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Jerry Garcia.

Although the focus is primary musical and cultural, the novel also taps into the politics and activism of the late 1960s. Referencing anti-war demonstrations and debates about the Vietnam War, Mitchell also discusses the nature of radicalism, the demise of hippie culture, and the subsequent commercialization of anti-commercialism.

Still, Utopia Avenue is largely a novel about the mystifying power of music and its ability to enrich, transform and make sense of one’s life. To quote Jasper, the band’s troubled yet supremely gifted guitarist: “How music works is learnable. Why it works, God only knows. Maybe not even God.” While playing in Paradiso, Amsterdam’s hallowed venue, Jasper comes to a realization: “Worship still happens here, worship of music itself. Music frees the soul from the cage of the body. Music transforms the Many to a One.”

Paradiso, Amsterdam, 1979 / Hans van Dijk for Anefo

So can music actually change the world? The answer, once more, is given by Jasper: “Songs, like dandelion seeds, billowing across space and time. Who knows where they’ll land? Or what they’ll bring? […] Often, usually, they land on barren soil and don’t take root. But sometimes, they land in a mind that is ready. Is fertile. What happens then? Feelings and ideas happen. Joy, solace, sympathy. Assurance. Cathartic sorrow. The idea that life could be, should be, better than this.”

From cover to cover, Utopia Avenue is an immense joy to read. Its pages are sure to captivate music enthusiasts, as well as anyone with even a passing interest in the cultural and social upheaval of the late 1960s. An ideal companion would be Joe Boyd’s memoir White Bicycles, which Mitchell also cites as an inspiration. And while you’re at it, you might also want to check out this cool playlist inspired by the novel. Enjoy the ride!

5 lessons from Miles Davis’s autobiography

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Over the last year or so, I have been listening a lot to the discography of Miles Davis, while studying and trying to play some of his music. During this time I also read Miles: The Autobiography, a book full of provocative and stimulating thoughts about music and his tumultuous life.

Here are some key takeaways that can serve as both guides for aspiring musicians, as well as general life lessons:

Lesson 1: Knowledge is freedom

For Miles, there is no point in having access to knowledge if you don’t take advantage of it. As he puts it:

¨A lot of the old guys thought that if you learned something from theory, then you would lose the feeling in your playing. I would go to the library and borrow scores by all those great composers, like Stravinsky, Alban Berg, Prokofiev. I wanted to see what was going on in all of music.¨

Lesson 2: Music is about style

It his book, Miles acknowledges his influences from a very broad (and often extra-musical) cultural spectrum. ¨If I were to play with Frank Sinatra¨, he says, ¨I would play the way he sings, or do something complementary to the way he sings. I learned a lot about phrasing listening to the way Frank, Nat King Cole, and even Orson Welles phrased. I mean all those people are motherfuckers in the way they shape a musical line or sentence or phrase with their voice.¨

And when it comes to blues in particular: “If you play the blues you just have to play a feeling; you have to feel it.” Like much of Miles’s playing, his advice sounds deceivingly simple.

Lesson 3: There are no ”wrong” sounds

A famous Miles Davis quote is that ¨there are no wrong notes in jazz.¨ A profound insight into his overall approach to music, this is a concept that, for all its clarity and simplicity, remains exceedingly difficult to fully realize and apply creatively.

As he puts it in his autobiography:

¨Nothing in music and sounds is ”wrong.” You can hit anything, any kind of chord. Music is wide open for anything.¨

Lesson 4: Technology is not -necessarily- evil

On the issue of technological innovation in relation to music making, Miles is pretty clear: it’s not technology itself that causes trouble, but rather how it’s being put into use by the musicians themselves. As he writes:

¨Musicians have to play the instruments that best reflect the times we’re in, play the technology that will give you what you want to hear. All these purists are walking around talking about how electrical instruments will destroy music. Bad music is what will ruin music, not the instruments musicians choose to play.¨

Miles Dewey Davis III (1926-1991)

Lesson 5: It’s all about change

If anything, Miles’s entire career and life in music is a perfect example of constant evolution, experimentation and adaptation. In a nutshell: a prime example of constant change.

In his own words:

¨If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change. Living is an adventure and a challenge.¨

Conversations on music

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When people from different disciplines interact and engage in dialogue, novel and stimulating perspectives often emerge. This is the case with the following fascinating exchanges between world-class musicians and prominent representatives from other fields, who also happen to share a deep passion and interest in music.

Haruki Murakami – Seiji Ozawa: The writer and the conductor

An ex-owner of a small jazz bar in Tokyo, Murakami is known for his love and appreciation of music, which is evident throughout his oeuvre. In Absolutely on Music (2011), he exchanges views with acclaimed Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa on a variety of topics, ranging from Beethoven and Brahms to opera, Chicago blues, and the joys of teaching.

These conversations, dating from 2010 – 2011, unravel while the two men listen to various recordings from Murakami’s record collection and exchange views on various artists and music genres. They offer a unique insight into Ozawa’s approach to conducting, memories of his mentors such as Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein, was well as his educational activities and work with the prestigious Saito Kinen Orchestra.

https://youtu.be/DHtojYUEVz8

Moreover, Murakami provides some very interesting remarks about the relationship between writing and music. “You can’t write well if you don’t have an ear for music”, he says, referring to his own beginnings as a writer:  “How did I learn to write? From listening to music. And what’s the most important thing in writing? It’s rhythm.”

Edward Said – Daniel Barenboim: The intellectual and the maestro

A highly compelling exchange between cultural critic Edward Said and pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim, Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (2002) features conversations between the two men centered on music, but touching upon many themes such as the nature of sound, religion, antisemitism, politics and identity.

Full of captivating ideas and insights, the book offers a glimpse of the two men’s philosophical pondering and the great significance they attribute to music. For Said, “music, in some profound way, is perhaps the final resistance to the acculturation and the commodification of everything”, while Barenboim, who subscribes to Ferruccio Busoni’s definition of music as “sonorous air”, says: “Whenever we talk about music, we talk about how we are affected by it, not about it itself. In this respect, it is like God.”

In 1999,  Barenboim and Said (who was an accomplished pianist) founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, a youth orchestra consisting of Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians, with the aim to promote understanding and enable intercultural dialogue. As Barenboim has put it: “The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. A project against the fact that it is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it.”

Bruno Monsaingeon – Glenn Gould: The director and the virtuoso

French filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon has made several documentaries about prominent musicians, while his interviews with Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter and French composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger have also been published separately as books (Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations, and Mademoiselle: Conversations With Nadia Boulanger, respectively).

One of the artists that most fascinated Monsaingeon was Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. On hearing Gould performing J.S. Bach for the first time, Monsaingeon later wrote: I don’t think I was less inflamed that night than Blaise Pascal during his night of fire. “Joy, joy, tears of joy!!!” In July 1972, Monsaingeon traveled to Toronto to meet Gould, who by then had already stopped giving public recitals. The two would develop a lasting friendship and work on various projects that included the films Glenn Gould, the Alchemist (1974) and Glenn Gould, hereafter (2006).

A conversation between Gould and Monsaingeon is included in The Glenn Gould Reader (ed. Tim Page, 1984), a compilation of Gould’s writings that offers an abundance of original and highly unconventional ideas with regards to performance and music making. When Monsaingeon asks Gould  why he doesn’t want to record Mozart’s concertos, he replies: “Well, you see, Bruno, I don’t really enjoy playing any concertos very much. What bothers me most is the competitive, comparative ambience in which the the concerto operates. I happen to believe that competition rather than money is the root of all evil, and in the concerto we have a perfect musical analogy of the competitive spirit.”

Brimming with thought-provoking and stimulating remarks, Gould’s words were as unique as the notes he played. Whether one agrees with him or not, there’s little doubt he had some very interesting, and often profound, things to say – both on paper and at the piano.

Going underground behind the Iron Curtain

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I recently came across the very interesting book “X-Ray Audio” – The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone by Stephen Coates. Focusing on the underground culture of Roentgenizdat, also known as “music on ribs” or “jazz on bones”, it tells the fascinating story of bootleg and pirated X-ray music discs that were circulated illegally in Soviet Russia during the immediate post-war era through the 1960s.

Made from medical X-rays that were subsequently cut into 7-inch discs with the aid of special machines, these discs featured music by officially censored artists such as the “King of Russian Tango” Pyotr Leshchenko or Western jazz and rock’n’roll musicians like Bill Haley, Ella Fitzgerald, and The Beatles.

A sort of musical parallel to the samizdat (the underground publication and distribution of dissident literature), the history of these Soviet bone discs is truly incredible as well as illuminating: it reveals how far people were willing to go in order to obtain, enjoy and share the forbidden fruit of inaccessible music. The risks involved were serious: Sound engineer Ruslan Bogoslovsky (1928-2005), a true hero of Soviet underground record production, was sent to prison camps no less than three times throughout his life for cutting Western music onto records that originally contained speeches of Soviet leaders.

Eventually the X-ray record production was eclipsed by the emergence of reel-to-reel tape recorders which became available in the early 1960s and soon grew enormously popular. This in turn sparked the process known as magnitizdat, i.e. the re-copying and self-distribution of audio tape recordings that were not available commercially. According to leading Russian music journalist and critic Artemy Troitsky, “the overall quantity of X-ray records ever produced in the Soviet times would not exceed a million, whereas with reel-to-reel tapes we would be talking about tens if not hundreds of millions.”

In his book Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia (first published in 1987, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union), Troitsky provides a compelling account of the evolution of the Soviet rock scene since its birth in the 1960s. An insider, Troitsky offers an abundance of first-hand information and anecdotes related to the foremost Soviet rock musicians and groups that are little, if at all, known in the West, such as Time Machine (the “Russian Beatles”) and their founder Andrey Makarevich, Aquarium and their leader Boris Grebenshchikov, guitarist Alexander Lyapin (“closer to Hendrix than any other Soviet rock guitarist”), or the iconic post-punk band Kino and their singer Viktor Tsoi.

Starting with the crucial influence of The Beatles on the genesis of Soviet rock, Troitsky goes on to describe key events, places and moments of its history, such as  the hippie gatherings in Tallin and Crimea (“something of a Soviet California”), the Leningrad and Moscow scenes, the “intense though fairly isolated” rock culture of Estonia, the 1980 Tbilisi festival, the emergence of home-made albums in the early 1980s, and the “Account 904” concert (organized in 1986 by Troitsky and others to raise funds for the victims of the Chernobyl disaster).

Troitsky’s commentary is at times both funny (“punk rock with us is something exotic, like an avocado – everyone has heard the name, but very few know what it actually is”) and penetrating: “Meanwhile, nothing at all was happening in Lithuania (…) nothing, that is, if we don’t count having the best jazz and the prettiest girls in the country. Perhaps these circumstances hindered the development of rock music there.”

Apart from its purely historical value, Troitsky’s account also offers some stimulating remarks on the nature of Russian culture and its differences from the West. For example, he writes: “[T]he purely literary level of our rock lyrics is higher, on the average, than in the West. Rock lyrics here have a direct tie to our poetic tradition and reflect its lexical and stylistic heritage.” I find this assertion particularly interesting in the light of the recent Nobel award to Bob Dylan and the related discussion on the relationship between music and literature.

Troitsky’s book closes with a somewhat disheartening remark: “[T]oo few rock bands dare to test glasnost (…) And this is sad. It seems that the long-awaited sunlight has blinded most of the creatures crawling out of the underground.” Thirty years on, the Iron Curtain having long been lifted, the question of cultural and political dissent remains as urgent as ever, both in Russia and the rest of the world. And music can play a crucial role in this respect. As cultural critic Edward Said once put it: “Music, in some profound way, is perhaps the final resistance to the acculturation and the commodification of everything.”