Last time we discussed the nature of the crescendo, and the manner in which its usage has, arguably, changed very little over the history, not just of popular music, but music in general. Now it’s time to examine how far this notion is really true?
Certainly the crescendo as it has always been remains a hugely significant part of contemporary music. Its power remains undiminished, and that shall always be the case, but to suggest that it’s the only way out of built-up musical tension is misleading. Experimental music long ago reached the point at which the crescendo was not just unnecessary but completely obsolete.
The influence of industrial music in this development is unparalleled. Acts like Nurse with Wound and Throbbing Gristle dispensed with the notion of the crescendo-based right from their earliest work. The release of tension, if it ever came, was through the end of a piece, not a glorious swell of maxed-out musical bliss. Industrial music, whether it was aware of it or not, took the continuous musical elements already applied to varying extents by many jazz artists and overemphasised them to the point where the music was brutally uninterested in notions of release (for its listeners at any rate).
Industrial music has since come to shape almost all musical extremity since. Noise music has come to mean not only the manipulation of sounds that are amusical but also the deliberate, unremitting, sonic excavation of skulls and the mental faculties contained within. If much drone music has, perhaps, prolonged the crescendo to encapsulate a whole piece, then many a noise artist has done the exact opposite. The crescendo is replaced by unpredictable and unrelenting waves of aural pressure. This track by Michigan luminaries Wolf Eyes serves as a good base example:
No doubt there has also been a role in these developments played by ambient and drone acts. However it is difficult not to hear, in all but the most obscure sound art-oriented release of this kind, notions of crescendo not all that dissimilar to those employed at the fulcrum of post-rock; take the work of Stars of the Lid as the perfect exemplar of this trend. If we are to acknowledge the influence of drone then we must also recognise that of psych/post-psych artists; for instance krautrockers like Cluster and Neu! , whose approach is largely, if not exclusively, crescendo-less. The difference, perhaps, lies more in the melodic function (or lack of) that is present.
For, ultimately, the crescendo as it has traditionally been known holds a certain degree of melodic functionality as well as merely referring to an increase in volume. For a great deal of instrumental music the crescendo performs a role not dissimilar to that of the chorus in traditional song based music. Perhaps this means that even a piece with zero volume change should not be held as crescendo(climax)-less.
Indeed, to assume that the idea of crescendo has not evolved seems a bizarre line of argument to pursue further. The technical definition refers to volume, but does it not more accurately refer to intensity? Surely even the blunt repetition of the Wolf Eyes track above increases in intensity over its duration, even if it does not openly contain a gradual increase in volume. Musicians and listeners have become comfortable with equating the dynamic interplay between the loud and the quiet as being effectively equivalent to “intensity”, but it’s not as simple as that.
Swans are well known for being one of the loudest bands on the planet. In fact their reputation for volume has been overstated thanks to the infamous reputation they gained from their early shows in the eighties, yet descriptions of the band still refer to the deafening crescendos present in their music as evidence of their intensity, which is strange, given that some of the most intense moments of their discography are their quietest. The climax of a Swans song is not always the most deafening moment, but sometimes the fade-out or the moment before the deafening begins. Try this performance of 'Eden Prison' for size:
So, the relationship between tension and release has not disappeared after all. It has merely evolved over time, to the point where now the crescendo has lost most of its formal musical meaning. Intensity is delivered in many ways. Release is delivered in many ways. If our understanding of this process has held us back it is in our lack of terminological flexibility. It is not the case that music has not changed, it is that our perceptions of its devices and meanings have not caught up with the developments that have occurred within it.
