Categorical Conventions in Music Discourse: Style and Genre

Author(s): Allan F. Moore

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Aug., 2001), pp. 432-442
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3526163 .
Accessed: 15/01/2013 08:17

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Music
&Letters.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
? Oxford University Press

CATEGORICAL CONVENTIONS IN MUSIC

DISCOURSE: STYLE AND GENRE
BY ALLANF. MOORE

of apparent exclusion from a discourse can be both painful and

THE EXPERIENCE
instructive.The operativedistinctions between the terms 'style' and 'genre"1seemed
largely transparentduring both my undergraduateand my postgraduatestudies, a
transparencywhich seemed to be of no great concern to my peers. Recently, however,
it has appearedto me that the foundationsof these apparentcertaintieswere insecure.
So, as a result of my enduring positivism(anotherlegacy from those studies), I began
to realize that either the terms had to be so loosely employed as to be useless (i.e.,
actually impeding communication because the overlap between their spheres of
reference was too great), or that they might be susceptible to a certain amount of
stabilization.It is here that this investigationstarts.
The issue came most clearlyinto focus when I undertookan informalcomparisonof
usages, particularlyof the term 'genre', between (what I think of as) conventional
musicology and the writings of popular music scholars, whose concepts normally
derive more from film, cultural and literary studies than from musical ones. Both
'style' and 'genre' are terms concerned with ways of erecting categoricaldistinctions,
of identifying similarity between differentpieces (songs, objects, performanceseven,
'texts'), but the initial unresolved question was whether the similarities thereby
identified existed on the same hierarchicallevel or whether some were subordinate
to others. For example, differentwriters identify 'heavy metal' as both a style and a
genre. There seem to be three ways of understandingsuch a situation. First, it could
mean that, whatever 'heavy metal' is, it has some characteristicsthat pertain to style
and others that pertain to genre. Secondly, it could mean that it is both style and
genre, in which case one concept is necessarily subsidiaryto the other. Thirdly, the
terms may be identical (or at least represent equivalent epistemologies). Consider
trying to distinguish 'heavymetal' from 'white metal'2in terms of style and genre. The
two categories share the same musical techniques, modes of dress and performance,
iconographic techniques, etc. They differ in lyrics and subject matter (the former is
secular with a tendency to misogyny and the demonic, while the latter is usually
confrontationallyevangelical), but they have an apocalyptic tone in common. The
sharing of musical techniques would perhaps encourage a musicologist to declare a
similarityof style, while the distinctionin subject matter calls attentionto a difference
of genre. However, the similarityof modes of dress and performancemight suggest to

Portionsof this articlehave been given at seminarsat Bologna, Cardiff,Durham and Thames Valley Universities.I am
gratefulto my colleagues Chris Mark and Steve Downes, to the unnamed reader for Music& Lettersand to all those
others who have offeredwelcome suggestions, even where I have chosen to ignore them.
1 This study forms part of a large projectwhich also interrogatesthe terms 'form', 'structure'and the superordinate
'code'.
2 Exemplified respectivelyby Iron Maiden: TheNumberof the Beast, London: EMI, 1982 and
Vengeance Rising:
OnceDead, Los Angeles: Intense, 1990.

432

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
a culturaltheorista similarityof genre, while the differenceof subject matterin such a
discourse perhaps indicates a differenceof style.
In brief, there are three types of relationshipwhich obtain between the two terms as
they are used. First, they are employed to cover broadly the same ground, but
sometimes with differentnuances. Secondly, they are again used to cover the same
ground but the relationshipis a nested one, so that style pertains to only a portion of
that ground. It is this confusion, and this unequal relationship,that I seek to address
by suggesting, in my conclusion, that the third type of relationship,where the terms
have differentareas of reference,is the one to be preferred.My reasons stem from the
need, within the interdisciplinaryfield that popular music studies is (and which now
includes musicologists),to be able to communicate unambiguously and on an equal
footing. Hence this investigation may be of benefit to those engaged in more
academicallyorientatedmusicology.
In media and cultural studies generally, genre appears to have some kind of
methodological priority,3while in musicology priority is often assumed for style.4A
comparison of two key discussions will illustrate this. In a much cited study of the
concept of genre in popular music, Franco Fabbri offersa definition:genre is 'a set of
musical events . . . whose course is governed by a definite set of socially accepted
rules'.5Genre is the key term in this discussion, although Fabbridoes note its frequent
interchangeabilitywith others (he specifies style and form) in common discourse. The
'rules' of genre subject to social acceptance include formal and technical ones, but
Fabbri also has in mind rules emanating from semiotic, behavioural, social, ideo-
logical, economic and juridical spheres. Philip Tagg, following Fabbri 'precisely',
situates style clearly as a subsidiary of genre,6noting that 'although the steel guitar
sound of Country and Western music acts frequentlyas an indicatorof the "country"
genre, it startedits life inside that style [sic] as a style referenceto the Hawaiian guitar,
i.e. as genre synecdoche for something exotic'.7 Fabbri's focus on genre is both
historicallyand geographicallysituated (his native language is Italian), and his article
is an early attemptto broach preciselythe kinds of questions which concern me here.8
Its presence in that influentialcontext has, itself, had importantconsequences, among
them the subsequent use of the term 'genre' rather than style as the dominant
categorywithin popular music studies. The position taken by Leonard Meyer, in his
extended attempt to come to grips with the notion of musical style, is encapsulatedin
his opening definition:'Style is a replicationof patterning,whether in human behavior
or in the artifactsproduced by human behavior, that results from a series of choices
made within some set of constraints'.9In his definition, genre becomes subsidiaryto
3 For example, Susan Hayward,KeyConcepts in CinemaStudies,London, 1996; Stephen Neale, Genre,London, 1983;
Tom O'Sullivan,John Hartley, Danny Saunders & John Fiske, Key Concepts in Communication, London, 1983.
4 For example, Richard L. Crocker,A Historyof MusicalStyle,New York, 1986; Siegmund Levarie & Ernst Levy,
MusicalMorphology: a Discourseand a Dictionary,Kent, Ohio, 1983, and even John Shepherd: 'Towards a Sociology of
Musical Styles', in Lostin Music:Culture,StyleandtheMusicalEvent,ed. Avron Levine White, London, 1987. Shepherd,
of course, is explicit in his opposition to formalism.
5 Franco Fabbri, 'A Theory of Musical Genres: Two Applications',in PopularMusicPerspectives, ed. David Horn &
Philip Tagg, Exeter, 1982, pp. 52-81, at p. 52.
6 Philip Tagg, 'Towards a Sign Typology of Music', in Secondoconvegno europeodi analisi musicale,ed. Rosanna
Dalmonte & Mario Baroni, Trent, 1992, pp. 369-78, at p. 376.
7 Ibid., p. 378.
8 In conversation in April 1998, Fabbri suggested to me that genre tends to be differently loaded in non-
Anglophone discussions. He has recently expanded this discussion in 'Browsing Music Spaces: Categories and the
Musical Mind', keynote address at the Third Triennial British Musicological Societies' Conference, University of
Surrey,July 1999.
9 Leonard B. Meyer, StyleandMusic:Theory,Historyand Ideology,Philadelphia, 1989, p. 3.

433

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
style, for Fabbri's rule-bound events appear to be none other than Meyer's con-
strained choices.
Both these positions assume a hierarchicalrelationship,either with genre prioritized
(popular music study) or style (musicology). It might just be argued that, in fact, the
terms can be considered roughly interchangeable(i.e., equivalent, operating within
different discourses) were it not that those different discourses each persist in using
both terms, even if individual authors often do not. This contradictionpresents three
opportunities: acceptance, rejection and resolution. We can simply accept that
meanings for genre and style are purely intra-disciplinaryand must be continually
redefined as we shift discipline. Or we can insist that one set of meanings is more
productivethan another.Alternatively,we can attemptto find a groundwhereon these
differences can be accommodated. It is this latter course that I shall follow, but a
necessary first step is to explore some of these basic differences in understanding
before attempting to explain, and then to resolve, them. This exploration will
necessitate all-too-brief summaries of how representative scholars in a range of
disciplines either employ 'style' and 'genre' as unrelated terms or conceptualize
some relationship between them. One potential result of such an exploration may
be a revivificationof the concept of style that will enable us to close the gap between
analysis and criticism.
Etymologically,in English both terms can be traced back to the fourteenthcentury.
There, 'style' had developed from stilus(Latin for 'pen') and was used to describe a
'manner of discourse'.?O'Gender', however, had connotations of type,and grammat-
ically meant any one of three kinds-genre develops in English from genderby the
nineteenth century,T"but as early as the eighteenth century the two terms were being
used in differentdisciplines to cover essentiallythe same ground. Style, as manner of
discourse, was prominent in music of the Classical period, as has been demonstrated
by Leonard Ratner,"2where specific styles (singing, brilliant, strict, learned) are
identified largely by rhythmic and textural features. Ratner identifies these also in
the writingsof contemporary(particularlyGerman)authorson music. By the end of the
century, Schlegel's characterizationof Romantic art emphasizes the inadequacy of
theorizing separate genres (epic, lyrical, dramatic) of writing,'3 a view on which
Dahlhaus's discussion (on which I shall focus below) is built. By the beginning of the
twentieth century, the need to dethrone the isolated genius had appearedin discourse
surroundingboth music and art history.The art historianAlois Riegl (1858-1905), for
instance, developed a theory of style which emphasized historical development
(whereby individual art works ensured the changing continuity of ways of working),
autonomy (that style itself generatedchange, ratherthan the skill of individualsor the
purpose to which workswere put, i.e., their 'genre')and teleology (that style developed
in the directionof greaterorder).'4This position lasted well into the twentiethcentury:
the Marxist art historianArnold Hauser takes a similar line in that he posits style as
cumulative, beyond the interventionof the individual, and, in a sense, autonomous."5
'0 The ConciseOxfordDictionaryof EnglishEtymology,
ed. T. F. Hoad, Oxford, 1986.
" The adjectivegeneric,though often used as the adjectiveof genre, pertainsto genus. The Greek original,genos,had
been used by Aristotle.
12
Leonard G. Ratner, ClassicMusic:Expression, Formand Style,New York, 1980.
13
See John Daverio,Nineteenth-Century Musicand the GermanRomanticIdeology,New York, 1993.
4
Michael Podro, 'Alois Riegl', in Dictionaryof Art, ed. Jane Turner, London, 1996, xxvi. 369.
'A style is nothing but the results at a given moment of purely individualproducts ... A style ... does not enter
the consciousness of the individuals from whose products it arises. The collective attitude which is expressed in an
artisticstyle realizessomethingwhich no one has "willed"and realizesmorethan any one individualcould will.' Arnold
Hauser, TheSociologyof Art, trans. Kenneth Northcott, London, 1982, p. 68

434

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
This emphasis on style is present at the beginnings of musicology, in the work of
Guido Adler. Here, too, style is subject to its own development and is beyond the
control of individuals working singly.16 In his study of Mahler, Adler argues that
Mahler's physical mannerisms (manifested as a conductor) find their sonic analogues
in his music,17 but also that the world outside (in Mahler's case, forms and melodies
intrinsic to Austria) contributes to style. The autonomous tendencies of style in
contemporary scholarship are crucial to the theory of musical meaning developed
by Lucy Green;18 they are also present in Crocker's mammoth study"9and in writers
as varied as Cope and LaRue, as we shall see.
There are two key features of the debate on style: the first is whether style operates
as an innate (natural) quality and is thus wholly autonomous, or as a (cultural)
convention to be adopted, thus only partly autonomous. (I believe we can observe a
general shift from the former to the latter as formalist accounts give way to more
culturally informed accounts.) The second concerns its conceptualization as a
hierarchical system, and whether it operates in the same way at different levels.
Outside musicology, style is widely seen as an appropriable quality.20 For Vic
Gammon, for instance, writing from within folklore studies, style is a system of codes
and conventions, wherein perception involves the decipherment of what has already
been encoded. This can be called the standard 'communication' model.21 Gammon
argues that this allows illusory comprehension (misunderstanding) to take place
through ethno- or class-centrism.22 From within communication studies, and with
explicit reference to a Madonna video, John Fiske identifies style with modes of dress
and activity, a notion closely allied to 'lifestyle', indicating an identity to be assumed,
somewhat at will.23This is also the meaning of style employed by the cultural theorist
Dick Hebdige, particularly with reference to punk culture. Rather than being innate
in an individual, style here is something to be appropriated.24 Although there is no
reference in these examples to style as musically constituted, this assumption
regarding its status will prove useful. Within music discourse, the picture is rather
different. David Cope, for instance, refuses to problematize the term, viewing it simply
as the utilization of particular patterns. Cope's is not a work of theory: for the purposes
of computer modelling, he finds a definition with no cultural component adequate:
'"musical style" [means] the identifiable characteristics of a composer's music which
are recognizably similar from one work to another'.25 This carries the implication of
16
'The style of an epoch, of a school, of a composer, of a work, does not arise accidentally,as the casual outcome
and manifestationof artisticwill. It is, on the contrary,based on laws of becoming. . .', quoted in Ian Bent, Analysis,
Basingstoke, 1987, p. 43.
17 Guido Adler, 'GustavMahler', trans. & ed. EdwardR. Reilly, in idem, GustavMahlerand GuidoAdler,Cambridge,
1982, p. 46.
18 Lucy Green, Musicon Deaf Ears:MusicalMeaning,Ideology andEducation,Manchester, 1988.
"9'Seeking the reasons for stylistic change within the history of style itself (ratherthan in the history of men or of
ideas) . . .'; Crocker,A Historyof MusicalStyle,p. vi.
20 Whether this is a position writersfrom contemporaryfields such as media and cultural studies would have held
priorto the advent of postmodernismis not, of course, determinable,and the intriguingpossibilitymust be left to one
side here.
21 Vic Gammon, 'Problems of Method in the Historical Study of Popular Music', in Popular MusicPerspectives,
ed.
Horn & Tagg, pp. 16-31. An unproblematized discussion of this model appears in John Fiske, Introductionto
Communication Studies,London, 1982, pp. 6-22. As a model for the creation of musical meaning, at least in the realms
of high art, it has been refuted by Jean-Jacques Nattiez (MusicandDiscourse,trans. Carolyn Abbate, Princeton, 1990,
pp. 16-19), among others.
22
Gammon, 'Problemsof Method', p. 20.
23 John
Fiske, TelevisionCulture,London, 1987, p. 250.
24 Dick theMeaningof Style,London, 1979, pp. 87, 103ff.
Hebdige, Subculture:
25 David Cope, Computers andMusicalStyle,Oxford, 1991, p. 30.

435

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
style as a factor of personality, encapsulated in the composer Roberto Gerhard's
comment that 'if style is the man, no man can have two'.26The term's degree of
autonomy in music discourse is highlighted by Lucy Green, for whom it is the literal
foundation of musical experience,27while Jean-Jacques Nattiez gives notice of his
intention to theorize the 'remarkableanti-reductionism'found in Meyer.28
Meyer's later discussion29insists that definitionsof style have fundamentalcultural
characteristics,in that style posits a series of choices to be made within a specific set
of constraints.30These constraints are learnt, largely by enculturativeprocesses. He
offers a hierarchical organization. The top level consists of laws, or 'transcultural
physical or physiological constraints'.31These quasi-psychological 'laws' will be
familiar to any reader conversant with Meyer's work.32Below this he finds rules.
These are intraculturalconstraints, such as those which distinguish the norms of
medieval European music from those of the Renaissance, or those which link the
Classical and Romantic periods. The third level of his hierarchy he calls strategies,
which represent the choices made within established rules,33and are of three types.
First, he identifies dialect, arguing that geographical neighbours or contemporaries
will share similar strategies.The resulting music might be defined by social class or
function, for example folk music or art music, military music or dance music.
Secondly, he identifies idiom, which representsthe personal voice of the composer.
The implication here is that personal style is innate, rather than open to appropria-
tion. Thirdly, he identifies intra-opusstyle. This refersto the sort of constraintmade
upon a recapitulationby an exposition.34For Meyer, changes of style 'seem mainly
to take place not through the gradualtransformationof complex entities but through
the permutation and recombination of more or less discrete, separable traits or
clusters of traits. And the traits involved may come . . . from sources of disparate
stylistic and cultural provenance.'35Moreover,it is the present which chooses its past
(its influences) rather than the past which causes style change in the present.36A
similar hierarchizationof levels of style is developed by Levarie and Levy. They
define three: the material (out of which the work is fashioned, i.e., scale, rhythm
etc.); the historico-geographic(a conflation of Meyer's second and third levels) and
the individual. They disagree with Meyer, however, in upholding what we might call
the 'cultural studies' view. Although style is 'deeper' than fashion, both terms
26
Quoted in Ates Orga, 'The Man and his Music', in programme book to the London Sinfonietta series The
Complete Instrumental Chamber Musicof ArnoldSchoenberg
andRobertoGerhard, ed. David Atherton,London, 1973, pp. 87-
94, at p. 92.
27
'Style is the medium by virtue of which we experience music, and without it we could have no music at all. No
piece of music is ever stylisticallyautonomous. Whether particularindividualshear all music in terms of either pop or
classicalstyles alone, or whetherthey make finer distinctionsbetween late Haydn and earlyBeethoven,Tamla Motown
and Disco, whether such activityis self-consciousor intuitive,it cannot be avoided . .. we musthavesomeknowledge of the
styleof a pieceof musicin orderto experience
inherentmeaningsas distinctfromnon-musically meaningfulsound,at all.' Green,
Musicon Deaf Ears, pp. 33-4.
28
Nattiez, MusicandDiscourse,p. 144 n. 8, referringto Meyer's Music,theArtsandIdeas,Chicago, 1967.
Meyer, StyleandMusic.
30
This socio-culturaldimension is notably absent fromJan LaRue's Guidelines for StyleAnalysis,New York, 1970.
31 'Proximitybetween stimuli of events tends to produce connection, disjunction usually creates segregation;once
begun, a regularprocess generally implies continuationto a point of relativestability;a returnto patternspreviously
presented tends to enhance closure; regular patternsare, as a rule, more readily comprehended than irregularones;
because of the requirementsof memory, musical structuresusually involveconsiderablerepetition,and are frequently
hierarchic.'StyleandMusic,p. 13.
32
ParticularlyEmotionandMeaningin Music,Chicago, 1956, and ExplainingMusic,Chicago, 1973.
Meyer, StyleandMusic,pp. 17, 20.
Ibid., pp. 23, 24.
35
Ibid., p. 148.
36
Ibid., p. 149. See also Allan F. Moore, 'A Problem of History', CriticalMusicology Newsletter,ii (1994), 5-7.

436

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
identify a particular manner of articulation: 'Style . . . concerns the manner of a
work, not the essence'.37
There is therefore some disagreement over whether style is innate or conventional,
there being a tendency for musicology to treat it as the former, and a lesser tendency
for it to do so at higher hierarchical levels. Whether there would be interdisciplinary
disagreement over its hierarchization is unclear, since the issue seems not to arise
outside musicology. These usages of style have a strong tendency towards em-
phasizing the poietic. Discussions of genre, however, tend to emphasize the esthesic,38
although there seems no necessary reason for them to do so. Again, genre can be seen
to work as organizing system or as positing conventions.
Until recently, the term 'genre' was somewhat under-theorized in musicology.
Lewis Rowell's position appears normative. For him, the issue was clearly not
problematic: he refers to 'multimovement genres such as the symphony, concerto,
sonata, and quartet', to the fact that 'many Japanese vocal genres are narrative styles
[sic]' and to the qualitative change marked by the Romantic era, wherein 'the
classification of music into a set of clear types and genres was replaced by the idea
of music as a unified, amorphous, transcendental process, manifested by a vast
number of individual works, each containing its own rules'.39 Note that, although
Rowell appears to view genre and style as somehow equivalent, this last citation points
to a key difference: whereas style can be posited for all music, no matter what its
historical or geographical origin,40 genre has come under increasing attack in the
Romantic and modern periods. This is the core of Carl Dahlhaus's concerns. Prior to
the seventeenth century, he declares, genre was defined primarily by a piece of music's
functions, its text (if present) and its textures. Subsequently, definitions came to rest
on matters of scoring and form. The determining factors were social ('external') rather
than technical ('internal'), although 'external circumstances . . . were . . . assimilated
as internal determining factors'. Developments in the twentieth century have chal-
lenged the centrality of the concept, resulting in the predominance of a work as an
individual entity, rather than in relation to a putative genre.4"A similar point is made
by Nicholas Cook, who suggests that for the contemporary classical tradition, genre
has become a musicological rather than a musical fact, by which he means that we
listen to individual works rather than to abstractions of a type (and his proffered list
includes courante, waltz, Charleston and reggae). The eighteenth-century concentra-
tion on genre suggested that an individual item was ephemeral, and that the style of
each was necessarily derivative.42It is in this opposition of ephemerality to autonomy
that we find the roots of the concern of theorists of mass culture with genre, of texts as
instantiations of type, for it only requires a non-specific competence to recognize genre
conventions, as opposed to the specialist competence required to recognize what
individuates specific works. This is borne out by contemporary practices. For example,
when a working dance band is required to play a Charleston, it generally does not
37 Levarie & Levy, MusicalMorphology, p. 264.
38 The terms are Nattiez's: the
poietic dimension is that of the creation of the art work or situation (the 'symbolic
form');the esthesic dimension is that of the creationof meaning in the presence of that symbolic form. The distinction
is not simply one of conception-reception. See Musicand Discoursepp. 11-12 ff.
39 Lewis Rowell, ThinkingaboutMusic,Amherst, 1983, pp. 114, 192, 122.
40 This is true even if it can be posited only negatively, as a source for appropriation,as in many postmodernist
works. This employment of style in the constructionof musical works has, of course, been a common aesthetic for
centuries.
41 Carl
Dahlhaus, 'New Music and the Problem of Musical Genre', in idem, Schoenberg and theNew Music,trans.
Derrick Puffett & Alfred Clayton, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 33, 35, 38ff.
42
Nicholas Cook, Music,Imagination,and Culture,Oxford, 1990, pp. 147, 37.

437

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
matter which tune is taken.43Alternatively,with contemporaryclub culture, it is the
particularDJ and the genre (trance, garage etc.) defined by the groovewhich attracts
customers, rather than the particular recordings to be played. And even among
autonomous works, the process does not take place consistently:it still makes sense to
discuss operatic conventions in Tippett, or symphonic conventions in Lutoslawski.
The historicalchanges in the sphere of referenceof genre in Europeanmusic are thus
fundamental. Dahlhaus goes further, insisting on a degree of 'community acquies-
cence', such that the notion of the masterpieceemerges out of conventions of genre.
Contemporary programming and composition thus deny genre by denying the
mediocre.44This idea of genre as social convention is crucial to film theory.
The standardrelevanttext in film theory is by Stephen Neale.45He refersto a key
definition by Tom Ryall, that 'genres may be defined as patterns/forms/styles/
structureswhich transcendindividual films, and which superviseboth their construc-
tion by the film maker, and their reading by an audience',46and in which genre is
elevated unproblematicallyabove style. Neale offersan extensive criticism of this key
position, primarilyon the grounds that no mechanism for the supervisionof meaning
is involved. He summarizes his position in these terms: 'genres constitute specific
variationsof the interplay of codes, discursive structuresand drives involved in the
whole of mainstream cinema', but he insists that there are no generic 'essences'-
genres are sites of repetition and difference,which he grounds in desire (specifically
the desire to repeat an experienceprecisely,but the impossibilityof actuallydoing so),
in pleasure (lying both in the repetition of signifier(s)and the differencesseparating
instances of repetition) and in jouissance.In his final summary, he notes that 'both
[genre and authorship]provide limited (contained and coherent)variety,both engage
similar economies of repetition and difference, and both regulate the display of
cinema, its potential excess, whether on the one hand as a generic system or, on the
other, as personal style', wherein genre acts both as a body of texts and as a system of
expectations.47Robert Walser's study of 'heavy metal' represents an intrusion into
music discourse of this tradition of enquiry. For him, 'the purpose of a genre is to
organise the reproductionof a particularideology, and the generic cohesion of heavy
metal until the mid 1980s depended upon the desire of young white male performers
and fans to hear and believe in certain stories about the nature of masculinity'.48In
similar vein, John Fiske defines genre as 'a culturalpracticethat attemptsto structure
some order into the wide range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture'.49
He argues that the function of genre is to create an expectationwithin an audience for
the range of pleasures on offer by activatingthe memory of similar texts, a position
strikingly similar to that of Neale. This conceptualizationof genre as an organizing
system of expectations,albeit with a varyinglevel of specificity,has recentlybeen taken
up within more mainstreammusicology by Jeffrey Kallberg.Arguing against the lack
of precision in Dahlhaus's considerationof 'social function' (a criticismwhich replays
that of Ryall by Neale), he argues that genre 'guides' the listener through a '"kind of
43 This is the situation in the 1990s, although it may not have been in the 1920s.
44 Cook, Music,Imagination,and Culture, 43. This
p. point is not universallyagreed: for Covach, genre is a historicist
issue, positing writers writing for inclusion in a museum. See John Covach, 'Dahlhaus, Schoenberg, and the New
Music', In TheoryOnly,xii (1991), 19-42, at pp. 21-5. The historical development of genres was also, of course, a
matter of concern to Adomo. See Max Paddison, Adorno'sAestheticsof Music, Cambridge, 1993, esp. pp. 175, 154.
45 See above, n. 3.
Tom Ryall, 'Teaching through Genre', ScreenEducation,xvii (1975-6), quoted in Neale, Genre,p. 28.
47
Neale, Genre,pp. 7-17, 48, 54-5.
48 Robert Walser,Running withtheDevil:Power,Gender, andMadnessin HeavyMetalMusic,Hanover,NH, 1993,p. 109.
49
Fiske, TelevisionCulture,p. 109.

438

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
generic contract" . . . the composer agrees to use some of the conventions, patterns,
and gestures of a genre, and the listener consents to interpret some aspects of the piece
in a way conditioned by this genre'.50 Here, the rules of the game are knowingly
entered into by both parties, even if they are not foregrounded. How a particular
composer fulfils his/her side of the contract seems to remain a separate matter.
The conceptualization of a genre system follows a different path from that of the
hierarchization of styles. Although Dahlhaus discusses genre as a hierarchic system,
this is not a (nested) set of levels within the concept, but a hierarchy of values attached
to discrete genres. How these genres interrelate is not frequently discussed (for
example, Fiske offers a specific list of genres but without any mechanism for relating
them). Fredric Jameson developed for Hollywood cinema a different, non-hierarchic,
system for relating genres, a system borrowed by Krims for making sense of the
different genres inhabited by rap. The key idea here is that a series of genres organizes
an entire field through a series of contrasts.51 Thus, within rap, Krims finds four
distinct genres, which he defines in terms of flow (largely a case of rhythmic density),
topics and the musical styles most likely to appear within each. These genres then
cover the entire field, such that new material appears either within one of these, or
extends the boundaries of the field as a whole. Thus, whereas a style system (the
hierarchy of styles) can be considered to move from the general (all the music of an
epoch or region) through ever greater levels of specificity, the most important aspect of
this theorized genre system is that it covers a field synchronically through particular
genres spanning adjacent areas.
One problem for my endeavour to tease out the differences between these two terms
is that, outside conventional musicology, very few scholars have space for both 'style'
and 'genre' within their terminologies. In film studies in general, as in literary studies,
style specifies the work of individual authors, roughly equivalent to Meyer's idiom.52
There seems to be little understanding of, or need for, style as a wider, theorized,
concept. Such a position is supported by Susan Hayward's dictionary,53 which
contains an extended entry for genre, but no entry for style. Apart from her
uncontentious assertions that genres are neither pure nor divisible, she notes that
one of the defining features of a particular genre results from spectator speculation as
to its outcome.54 This is of course an important point for, prior to their dissolution
under modernism, all genres of music except opera shared the same denouement (i.e.,
there is no doubt as to the return of the tonic, or the closure of the fundamental line).
The dominance of genre is also supported by the equivalent text for popular music,55
and by Bauman's 'communications-centred' dictionary, where genre is seen as socially
grounded, and its importance traced particularly to Vladimir Propp's work on fairy-
tale classification and to Bakhtin's linguistic work.56
Robert Walser's discussion of heavy metal accepts a clear distinction between the
ways that style and genre are constituted: genre is socially constituted, while 'stylistic
traits' are autonomous. Despite this, Walser sees style subsumed within genre,
50
Jeffrey Kallberg: 'The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin's Nocturnein G Minor', NineteenthCenturyMusic,xi (1987-8),
238-61, at p. 243.
51 See Adam Krims, RapMusicand the Poeticsof Identity,Cambridge, 2000, pp. 80 ff.
52 For film-makers,as opposed to the industryand film critics, 'style' may well have greaterimpact than 'genre'. My

thanks to my ex-colleague, film-makerLezli-An Barrett,for this observation.

53 See above, n. 3.
54 Hayward,KeyConcepts, p. 160.
55 Roy Shuker, Key Concepts in PopularMusic,London, 1998.
6 RichardBauman, 'Genre', in Folklore,CulturalPerformances, andPopularEntertainments, ed. idem, New York, 1992,
pp. 53-60. For Propp, see his Morphology of the Folktak,Baltimore, 1968. For 'folktale',read 'fairytale'.

439

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
particularlybecause of the importanceto the music industry of rigid genre definitions
and coherence, definitions impossible to sustain in practice.57A similar relationship
between the two obtains in the writing of Johan Fornms,writing from Nordic cultural
studies, and in EdwardLippmann'saesthetictheory. Fomrassuggests that 'a genre is a
set of rules for generating musical works', while 'a style is a particularformation of
formalrelationsin one single work, in the total work of an artist,or in a group of works
across many genres'.58Although genre here appears to subsume style, we have a
glimpse of some more equal and complementaryrelation between them. Lippmann
notes, perhaps confusingly, that genre
carrieswith it not only a groupof subordinateconceptions-theme,medium,harmonic
idiom,form,emotionalcharacter,and so on-but alsoa groupof moregeneralones,which
areessentiallycomprisedby the notionof style.[This]is not the ideaof styleas subordinate
to the genre. . . alongwith the adoptionof the conceptof a genre. . . the composeralso
implicitlyacceptsthe commitmentto thinkand createwithina styleof the times,and often
alsowithina local,national,and personalidiom;the genrebecomesthe focalpointof these
more general styles . . .59

Both Lippmann and Fornmsappear to conceive of style as abstract,as requiring the

adoption of a specific genre to make musical thought concrete. In this sense, a musical
work could be said to appear at the intersection of these two concepts, which thus
maintain a degree of flexibility one with another. The poietic/esthesic organizing
principle is also apparent in other discussions. Writing from a position within
historical musicology (specifically studying the Elizabethan period), David Wulstan
implies that style is the reorderingof experience to suit the artist'sviewpoint, while
genre consists of the elements that bind items together (explicitly, here, that of the
cries of Elizabethan street vendors, the equivalent then of today's shopfronts or
televisionadvertisements).This equates to the notion of style as a manner of discourse,
although chosen to a particularend, while genre remainsa set of conventionsenabling
communication.60
Other writers,however,do not follow this distinction.From a backgroundin social
anthropologyand folklorestudies, Philip Bohlman defines musical style as 'an aspect
of the sharing of repertoriesby groups of individuals formed on the basis of social
cohesion', a definitionwhich raises questions about the recognitionof such a style by a
listener unfamiliarwith it. Viewed as genre, on the other hand, 'folk music' would be
seen as a genre of 'folkloristics',or as a genre of 'nationalmusic', where commonality
of origins is necessaryfor the identificationof an item of music within a specific genre.
This commonality is not requisite for the identification of a style in a repertory.
Bohlman also accepts separate genres of folk music such as narrative,lyric, ballad,
epic and blues. Genre is identifiable here through melodic grammar and syntax.61
Writing from within semiotics, Nattiez argues (as had Meyer) for 'levels' of style
analysis, but one of these is the 'style of a genre [e.g. the concertantestyle]'.62Nattiez
seems not to find style problematic, although this type of category is declared by
Fabbri as no longer having any explanatoryvalue, for Fabbri insists that form, too, is
subservient to genre, and is perhaps wholly included in it: '. . each genre has its
57 Walser,
Runningwith theDevil, pp. xiv, 28, 4-5, 27.
58
Johan Fomas, 'The Future of Rock: Discoursesthat Struggleto Define a Genre', PopularMusic,xiv/1 (1995), 111-
27, at pp. 111 and 124. His definitionsreflect his appropriationfor music of categoriesdeveloped by Paul Ricoeur.
59 EdwardA.
Lippmann, A HumanisticPhilosophy of Music,New York, 1977, p. 335.
60
David Wulstan, TudorMusic,Iowa City, 1986, pp. 2, 47.
61
Philip V. Bohlman, The Studyof FolkMusicin theModernWorld,Bloomington, Indiana, 1988, pp. 4-12, 18, 38.
62 Nattiez, Musicand
Discourse,p. 136.

440

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
typical forms, even if... a form is not sufficient to define a genre'. Fabbri suggests that
new genres are born by transgressions upon accepted conventions, but he also talks of
a number of genres based on the form canzone (song), which calls into doubt his
inclusion of form within genre.63I include these references to make it clear that there is
no single understanding of these terms which can be imposed on all instances;
nonetheless, a normative understanding remains worth pursuing.
My investigation has had as its impulse the need to avoid a sense of panic at the
inclination 'to make the mistake of hearing a word and assuming that the various
things it points to are similar'.64 Right though Stokes is, we do need to make explicit
the differences between the things a word points to, particularly in the interdisciplin-
ary arena of popular music studies. There is a set of oppositions which genre and style
can usefully be employed to structure. These oppositions are not hierarchically but
orthogonally related. Each tells us something different about how we organize the
sequence of sounds issuing from instruments or speakers, and I think this is where the
emphasis needs to be. There is an inevitable tendency to conceive of these categories
(and of other descriptive terms) as resident in the music we hear. They are only there
to the extent that, as competent listening subjects, we have learnt to put them there, as
an aid to our organizing that sequence of sounds. Any organization we impose on
those sounds is literally that-it is an organization we individually, socially, impose.
However, it is also an organization we must impose if we are to understand the sounds
as music. Lucy Green's discussion implies the priority of style, in her declaration that,
without it, there is no sense to be made. But, if we cannot make sense without style,
can we make sense without genre? The implication of Alan Durant's discussion of
David Bowie's song 'Fashion' is that we cannot.65 Understanding 'Fashion' is
dependent on understanding its irony, which in turn is dependent on understanding
the genre conventions of up-tempo dance music (such songs as 'Loco-motion'),66
against which 'Fashion' works.67 We might argue whether genre categories are less
crucial than Green's emphasis on style, but clearly a rich understanding is dependent
on both sets of conventions. As we have seen, the music of high modernism tries to
evade genre conventions, but it may be that, in doing so, the music becomes
aesthetically (as opposed to structurally) poorer.
There are, then, four ways of distinguishing between the realms of reference of the
two terms. First, style refers to the manner of articulation of musical gestures and is
best considered as imposed on them, rather than intrinsic to them. Genre refers to the
identity and the context of those gestures. This distinction may be characterized in
terms of 'what' an art work is set out to do (genre) and 'how' it is actualized (style).
Secondly, genre, in its emphasis on the context of gestures, pertains most usefully to
the esthesic, while style, in its emphasis on their manner of articulation, pertains most
usefully to the poietic. Thirdly, in its concentration on how meaning is constituted,
genre is normally explicitly thematized as socially constrained (Kallberg, Neale,
Krims). Style, on the other hand, in its emphasis on technical features and
appropriability, frequently simply brackets out the social (Cope, Crocker) or at least
regards this realm as minimally determining, where it is considered to operate with a
negotiable degree of autonomy (Green, Hebdige). Fourthly, in its consideration of
63
Fabbri, 'A Theory of Musical Genres', p. 64.
64 Martin Stokes, Introductionto Ethnicity,IdentityandMusic:theMusicalConstructionof Place,Oxford, 1994, pp. 1-
27, at p. 7.
65 Jason Toynbee, MakingPopular Music,London, 2000, cites Derrida making the same point, p. 103.
66 Little Eva, 'The loco-motion', New York: London Records, 1962.
67
Alan Durant, Conditions of Music,London, 1984, pp. 188-90.

441

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
manners of articulation, style itself operates at various hierarchicallevels, from the
global6 to the most local.69At global levels it is usually considered to be socially
constituted, while it may operate with greater degrees of autonomy at more local
levels. Indeed, if style at this lower level is something which can be appropriated,as
cultural theoristsargue, then it must operate autonomously here. I have gravedoubts
as to whether this hierarchytruly extends down to the level of idiolect-in the light of
the appropriabilityof more global levels of style, many musicians involved in the
popular sphere are adept at switching from one to another, at will. Genre as a system
also operates hierarchically,but with the distinction that 'sub-genres'cover an entire
genre territoryin a way that 'sub-styles'do not.
Finally, to pursue a thought initially expressed elsewhere, where I suggested that
much of the interestin music comes from the realizationof frictionbetween awareness
of stylistic conventions that appear to be relevantto a particularpiece of music, and
the sonic experience itself:70as a result of the investigationssummarizedhere, it now
appearsto me that such frictioncan exist between that piece and genre conventionsas
well. Gammon71accepts this position, but sees the frictionas createdby the composer
or improviser, that is, that the work/performance is the most important site of
residence of those conventions.It appearsto me, however,that this site is the preserve
of the listening act.

68 What
Bradley, following a line of semioticians, refers to as code. Dick Bradley, UnderstandingRock'n'roll,
Buckingham, 1992, pp. 32 ff.
69
What Middleton, following a similar line, refers to as idiolect.Richard Middleton, StudyingPopularMusic,
Buckingham, 1990, p. 174.
70
Moore, Rock:thePrimaryText,p. 170.
71 Gammon, 'Problems of Method'.

442

This content downloaded on Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:17:29 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions