We Need a Vienna, But for Knowledge and Health
The music performance model is not a metaphor or an analogy, but an example of how science can serve the needs of society
With Miroslaw Manicki
It must be said that the Habsburgs loved their music. They made it possible for Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Bruckner, Mahler, the Straus family, and many more. Sixty-eight of these have been identified.
The works of these few enrich the lives of billions of people now and have done so for centuries. Combined with other great composers, these demonstrate how the efforts of many can be carried out to good effect. As a result, we understand that listening to the the work of Beethoven, although stylistically different in some respects, is not watered down from the original. Whether considering the performance capacities of individuals or large groups, we can hear such works in pristine perfection, time after time.
This is a source of great joy and satisfaction to performers as well as to their audiences. It doesn’t matter that the works were conceived hundreds of years ago, they are fully true to the original — perhaps even improved, as is possible with technological innovations and improvements in method and performance skills.
This is possible because those composers were able to use that support to document their ideas in ways that could be readily copied and repeated by others. Apart from a need in some cases to clarify the scribblings of the original composers, there was no ambiguity in this. Everything was timed and managed with great precision. The process was engineered so that the fundamental model, not particularly complicated, could apply to all instruments and to the voice. This was true of one or a few musicians or to large communities of performers.
Some of the oldest written works, found in modern times in the Middle East on clay tablets, make reference to means by which governments were set up and administered that preserved the essence and the effects of that knowledge. These included both scientific and social aspects, as described in the writings of Samuel Noah Kramer. In one case, almost a hundred of these were identified. Collectively, they were called the ‘me’ (pronounced ‘may’). Armed with these, it was documented in such tablets that the people could live in peace and prosperity, sure in the knowledge that their needs would be met and that chaos or even insecurity would be very, very rare.
Following this musical model, if some composer in some far stretch of the world were to compose a desirable piece of music, it could be made available immediately to everyone. The sheet music in question would need to be distributed, but once it was, competent musicians could take it from there.
It is not so say there would be no difference as to the skills of the performers. Obviously, there is huge variation as to such skill levels and their effects. Where there is competence, however, there is an ability to provide fair and helpful renditions of the great works.
Such success does not translate into the work of people outside of music. If a person in a health field has a good idea, for example, what is to be done? Is there a channel to express and apply that idea? Perhaps, but probably not, and these are likely to apply to a small locale. Much good work ends up in published documents that quietly age on library shelves or computer storage systems.
There are many roadblocks to application of health-related science and practice. Even if expression of the health-related idea could be carried out in some generalized, widely-accessible way, it is not clear that commercial and social interests would be in line with this. Such issues are not foreign to music. The point, however, is that in the music world, the ability to lay out performance requirements simply and consistently minimizes these.
Musicians have a form of me in sheet music. What do people have with regard to health policy and procedure? Nothing like sheet music.
We know how to do this, however. Such ideas in health are born of processes and cycles, many of these embedded in one another. The complexities of these can be sorted out using tree-based structures that represent processes. Linking these serves to outline underlying cycles.
Actually, it is an understatement to say that they may be laid out using trees. Trees are an absolute requirement of such work. Not a metaphor, there must be a place where trees are allowed to branch and grow in similar sense as was the case in Classical Vienna and musical composition and publishing.
Where is this new Vienna to be? There are a few requirements. First of all, the requisite knowledge must exist in the community in question or thereabouts. It is best if these exist as bodies of work to be converted over to the needed forms and then enlarged upon. Starting from nothing is certainly possible, but much less efficient.
Second, there must be a persistent, supportive environment for such projects to take hold. Associated projects should not face risks of early cancellation or premature evaluation. The Habsburgs planted their seeds of support in Vienna years before the musical greats began to emerge. In some cases, it took generations of emergent family talents for genius to shine through.
Technology can surely serve such purposes, but it currently is broadly used to sew cacophony and chaos in health and related fields.
We can only imagine the working life of sheet music that did not reflect knowledge of melody, harmony, rhythm, and tone. It would be downgraded readily to line the bird cages of the world and otherwise be relegated to the shadows. We can hope that the same happens to pernicious social media flows once legitimacy and dependable results are established in this way.
Vienna still benefits from its golden years years ago. That tradition enriches the city and region, as well as the entire world, in untold and unimagined ways. The origins of the me, extolled and described by the ancients, is not known. Professor Kramer did not purport to know where they came from. When a locale somewhere in the world unites its forces in support of similar outcomes in health and governance, everyone will know where that came from.