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  • A Cure for Musicians Afflicted with Baumol's Disease:Squeezing More Music out of Performance in the Age of Digital Reproduction
  • Matthew C. Lawyer (bio)

See <mitpressjournals.org/lmj> for supplemental materials related to this article.

Baumol's Disease and String Quartets

Productivity growth in a service-oriented economy, such as the United States, tends to lag behind productivity growth in a manufacturing economy [1]. One explanation for this finding is that the conditions of production in service industries preclude such growth because within any given service industry, "The work of the performer is an end in itself, not a means for the production of some good" [2]. This principle was named "Baumol's Cost Disease" (or simply "Baumol's Disease") after it was proposed in 1966 by economist William Baumol. An oft-cited example given in support of this principle is that a group of musicians need as much playing time to perform a string quartet piece today as they did in the 19th century [3].

Promise of Digital Technology

The ability to record music has long liberated musicians from requiring a coincident physicality of performance time and place with their audience [4]. The advent of digital sound-processing technology further liberated musicians with new tools of creative expression that are being continually refined to provide musicians greater efficiency in the creative process. This technology has empowered musicians to more easily realize their artistic goals. Even so, as Baumol duly observes, efficiency in performance (i.e. the productivity limitation of a direct 1-to-1 ratio of music performance to its production) has been left unchanged.

A Cure for Musicians

The following experiment was conducted to investigate whether a novel application of conventional digital sound-processing technology can provide a cure for musicians afflicted with Baumol's Disease.

The experimental performance consisted of a string quartet performing an arrangement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, 4th Movement (Ode to Joy) at twice the regular listening tempo. A regular tempo version was performed as a control for the experiment. Note that the decision to use precisely twice the ordinary tempo in the experimental performance was made merely for the convenience of the musicians. The recording of the experimental performance was processed through a conventional digital audio workstation in order to slow down the tempo to the same tempo as the control performance, with concordant changes in pitch.

The experimental performance required half the performance time of the control performance, yet both performances produced the same amount of music. Thus, the heretofore limitation of a 1-to-1 ratio has been overcome.

Future Measure of Productivity

I predict the not-too-distant future will include innovations in digital sound-processing technology to squeeze music in ways that are more elegant and sophisticated than the simple experiment presented here. For example, one can envision combining real-time digital sound processing with a neuroprosthetic system to squeeze music encoded as digital data gathered directly from a musician's brain [5]. The result will be entire performance pieces produced in a fraction of their listening time without the musician having even to move a muscle.

Irreproducibility of Performance

The idea of this experiment was expressed to a professional jazz musician, who responded with a strong visceral aversion. The musician opined that notes are not music and that there exists a quality of irreproducibility to live performance that cannot possibly be captured by any digital sound-processing technology. After all, our own direct experience provides convincing evidence that there is a human sense of time, a physiologic rhythm that may follow a different beat from that dictated by an external metronome. Live performances possess these rhythms in the form of a signature "spiritual energy" or "emotional resonance" (for want of more precise terms) that are inevitably lost in digital processing.

This argument initially held some appeal for me, since it reflected some personal experiences with rhythm. However, it otherwise presumes that all aesthetic evaluation is neither contextual nor subjective. Indeed, in the experiment, some of the audience, including musicians, enjoyed listening to the results of the experimental performance more than the control performance.

Beyond demonstrating that digital technology can improve efficiency in performance, with attendant...

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