using music for code

[franksolich]

So, this afternoon, while buying cigarettes at a convenience store in the big city, I bumped into an older gentleman vaguely familiar to me.  He commented how much he appreciated reading--and getting a laugh out of--my recent "anti-hippie" articles in area newspapers.

So, anyway, this guy had been a music teacher in a high school about the same time Ike and Mamie were in the White House, and when itemizing to me (as if I needed a list) all the horrors the hippies have wrought on the world and civilization, he mentioned music.

So we sort of detoured, talking about music in general, which leaves me at sea, for obvious reasons; it's like trying to explain art to a blind person.

So after a while, we got to talking about how useful good music can be, for purposes other than simply listening and enjoying it.

So he mentions to me that during the second world war (1939-1945), the BBC, in broadcasts to occupied Europe, used music as a code, most notably Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

So that was something with which I was familiar, having read about it in books.  I have no idea of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, other than that it goes something like "bumbumbum-bum, bumbumbum-bum, bumbumbum-bum," which according to history books is the Morse code for the letter "v".

So we kept talking about that, but I got more and more muddled; he is after all pretty ancient and soft-spoken, hardly a muscle on his face moving when speaking.  I had my hand on the base of his neck which helped a little, but not a whole lot.

So his daughter-in-law finally drove up to take him home, and we departed with a Great Mystery (to me) yet unsolved (it might have actually been told me, but I didn't catch it)--how was it possible to use music as code, when pieces of musir are already written, engraved in stone, and messages of course are always changing?

[DumbAss Tanker]

Frank, the message lay in playing the particular piece at all, either as a signal in itself or (as I believe was the case with the BBC) to alert listeners that coded messages would be following in the subsequent verbal segment of the transmission.

You are quite correct that music committed to paper is relatively immutable, a novelist's plot might revolve around using 'errors' in it for coded transmissions.  The structure of music could lend itself to transmission of considerable information, however cultural music conventions limit the utility of actually trying to disguise information within the tune itself.

[franksolich]

Frank, the message lay in playing the particular piece at all, either as a signal in itself or (as I believe was the case with the BBC) to alert listeners that coded messages would be following in the subsequent verbal segment of the transmission.

I wondered if that was the case, but I wasn't "getting it" from the ancient.

As you might imagine, listening, or "listening," to ancients can be enormously rewarding, if one can hear, or "hear" them.  Because of their great age and frailties, many of them are difficult for me.  Not all of them, but alas, unfortunately far too many of them.

I recall one ancient in England, who had worked for the BBC in 1939, who told me that during the month of September that year, Warsaw had constantly broadcast some polanaise from Chopin, over and over again for days and weeks, unendingly, and listeners were trying to find a "code" in it.

When the music stopped, of course it was a sign that Warsaw had fallen.

But inbetweentimes, apparently there were listeners in England working trying to find a "code" in it.

[Eupher]

I agree with DAT - that a radio playing a certain piece of music can be a signal into itself.

WARNING - Idle musings follow, and could be off-topic.

But I'd also suggest that in the case of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in C minor, one of his most well-known works (though by no means his best), most of the critics over the past 200-some years have intimated that the work represents the triumph of man over all things adversarial.

It isn't a piece about war, or battles won and fought. But it is about struggle and heroism and the masses and victory over oppression.

Beethoven wrote that piece in about 1810 (IIRC - I haven't looked) and dedicated it to Napoleon initially, in that Napoleon was seen to represent the European Enlightenment, the great political upheaval that had personified itself in the French Revolution some 15 years prior.

The story goes that when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of France, Beethoven got pissed off at this rather immodest declaration (Ludwig was always getting pissed off at somebody) and actually defaced the title page of the symphony to the point that the paper/vellum was torn. He later dedicated the work to a couple of patrons (an ideal practice if you're a composer and you want to eat). But there was no doubt that his quill did some damage to the page.

I found that fact fascinating.

Beethoven wrote several symphonies with one movement as a Scherzo. The Ninth Symphony, my personal favorite, also features a scherzo. A scherzo being a lighthearted dance, I think he was able to interject humanity into his music by his use of this dance.

Other Beethoven-esque qualities include rapid, almost violent shifts in dynamics. From out of nowhere, fortissimos occur which are intended to shock and even befuddle the audience. He didn't care about shocking anybody - in fact, when the sheet music was passed out and some musicians saw how difficult his music was to play and complained about it, Beethoven would sneer and scoff.

In short, Beethoven was an asshole.

I guess I'd be an asshole too if I was growing more and more deaf. His deafness at the time of the composition of this work was becoming more and more of a problem.

[DumbAss Tanker]

The Ninth Symphony, my personal favorite....

Mine as well.

[Wineslob]

So we sort of detoured, talking about music in general, which leaves me at sea, for obvious reasons; it's like trying to explain art to a blind person

.


My mother, who just graduated from docent class, was required to do just that. She took a group of blind people through the Crocker Art Museum.
Being as perplexed as you as to just how this could be accomplished, she told me that they had certain ways of being descriptive that would actually convey the idea of the art that they were "seeing".
She said the group loved the tour, and gained a better understanding of the paintings. Just how, beats the hell out of me, but my mother succeeded in what she was required to do as part of her training.

[Eupher]

.


My mother, who just graduated from docent class, was required to do just that. She took a group of blind people through the Crocker Art Museum.
Being as perplexed as you as to just how this could be accomplished, she told me that they had certain ways of being descriptive that would actually convey the idea of the art that they were "seeing".
She said the group loved the tour, and gained a better understanding of the paintings. Just how, beats the hell out of me, but my mother succeeded in what she was required to do as part of her training.

Mrs. E hopes to become a volunteer docent when she retires for good. She's keen on museums in general and art museums in particular.

Back to your regular programming....