(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction: Composition, Performance and the Allure of Musical ‘Satisfaction’

3 min read ⭑

In writing and performing music, it is pertinent to reflect on what constitutes a good-sounding composition or a good-sounding performance. As a practitioner and teacher of music, I often pose this question both to myself and my students, and while it is undeniably a complex and multifaceted question, unable to be answered sufficiently in a short-form blog post, there is nevertheless one simple idea that I believe can help in facilitating good-sounding compositions and good-sounding performances. The basic principle involves the trilateral of composers, performers and listeners, and borrows from the essay Values of Music by music philosopher Jerrold Levinson. It goes as follows:

Composers and performers are first and foremost listeners, and therefore must compose and perform in a manner that rewards listening, regardless of the satisfactions that may or may not accrue to the mind of the composer or body of the performer in the activities of composing and performing themselves.

The final segment bears repeating:

… regardless of the satisfactions that may or may not accrue to the mind of the composer or body of the performer in the activities of composing and performing themselves.

On the surface this attitude feels intuitive enough: serve the song at all times, leave your musical ego at the door. But paying lip service to this philosophy is one thing; living by it is quite another.

In staying true to this philosophy, one factor that can pose a challenge for musicians is the sheer volume of both compositional devices and performance techniques available to draw upon should one choose: melismas, non-diatonic harmony, rhythmic modulations, polyrhythms, voice leading, to name but a few. As a Popular Music educator, this feels particularly salient for my tertiary-level music students, who over the course of their studies are exposed to myriad musical styles and methods, all aimed at bolstering their respective creative toolkits; and rightly so, for learning about these devices can have an enriching effect, with some scholars even postulating that the long-term creative trajectory of popular musicians can be enhanced through the acquisition of a more structured set of musical skills from which to draw from.

There is a deep pleasure, a satisfaction if you will, that can accompany not only learning about these techniques but sharpening and honing them to the point where they can then be deployed effortlessly in the act of composing and performing. Yet these feelings of pleasure and satisfaction that often accrue inside the mind and body of a musician can also act as a subtle warning sign, prompting us to confront vital aesthetic questions: is this musical device really serving the music? Is it truly rewarding the listening experience? Or is it merely satisfying the mind of the composer or body of the performer?

While this simple philosophy of emphasising the listening experience above all else strikes me as useful, particularly perhaps in the pedagogical realm, there are, of course, a few caveats here. Firstly, ‘rewarding the listening experience’ should not be construed as a demand for musicians to somehow dumb down their creative output or pander to an audience’s insistent wants and needs, for this would surely lead to more banal artistic offerings. Nor should it be taken to mean that musical simplicity is always preferable over sophistication, or that dissonance and ‘ugliness’ should be shunned in favour of consonance and ‘beauty’. Rather, its aim is to encourage a healthy scepticism towards one’s creative decision-making processes.

Ultimately, the ‘heard experience’ is the raison d’etre of the musical enterprise, to quote Levinson, and as musicians we are therefore obliged to look inwardly and ask ourselves whether our writing and playing truly rewards listening, or whether we are merely being creatively indulged. So, while Jagger et al complained about getting ‘no satisfaction’, for the musician in the act of composing and performing, this is no bad thing.