Daniel B. Lee

Making Music out of Noise:

Barbershop Quartet Singing and Society1

Citation:

Lee, Daniel B. 2005. “Making Music Out of Noise: Barbershop Quartet Singing and Society.” Soziale Systeme: Zeitschrift fuer Soziologische Theorie. 11:271-292.

1 Please direct correspondence to Daniel B. Lee; California State University; Camarillo, CA, 93012 (daniel.lee@csuci.edu). The author is indebted to Achim Brosziewski, David Robbins, and Julian Mueller.

Making Music out of Noise: Barbershop Quartet Singing and Society

Abstract

A traditionally American form of music, barbershop is a style of unaccompanied singing with three voices harmonizing to the melody (an ensemble of four voices). Depending on the production and perception of noise for its own operations, the social system of barbershop organizes and codes human vocal noise into a form of music with the help of communication. With a functionalist interest in observing how society solves problems of understanding and order, this ethnographic study describes how barbershop singers restrict the variety of their own vocal noise to conditionally reproduce the specific form of their art. The emergence and continuation of barbershop as an empirically operating social system can be considered highly unlikely, requiring much more than the willing participation of singers. The improbable connectivity of barbershop depends on semantic and structural resources made available within interaction, organization, and society: three differentiated unities of communication.

Zusammenfassung

Die traditionelle US-amerikanische Musikrichtung, Barbershop, ist eine spezielle Form des A-Capella-Gesangs mit einem vierstimmigen Akkord auf jeder Melodienote. Die selbstreferentielle Organisation dessen, was sich zunächst nur als Rauschen darstellt, aber zu Musik werden soll, gelingt dabei mit Hilfe von Kommunikation. Diese Perspektive, die sich dafür interessiert, wie eine Gesellschaft Probleme der Verständigung und Ordnung löst, verdankt sich zunächst einem funktionalistischen Interesse. Auf ethnographischer Basis wird dabei nachvollzogen, wie das soziale System des Barbershop-Singens diese besondere Form des Gesangs herstellt, indem es die Variationsmöglichkeiten vokaler Geräusche einschränkt. Entstehung und Fortdauer des Barbershop-Singens als empirisch operierendes soziales System muss als hochunwahrscheinlich angesehen werden, insofern es mehr als der Zustimmung zur Teilnahme bedarf. Es hängt darüberhinaus von semantischen und strukturellen Ressourcen ab, die auf drei verschiedenen Formen der Kommunikation beruhen: Interaktion, Organisation und Gesellschaft.

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Making Music out of Noise: Barbershop Quartet Singing and Society

“There is no such thing as an instantaneous, intuitive comprehension of harmony.”

--Niklas Luhmann2

This paper describes how communication functions to produce a traditionally American form of

music: barbershop quartet singing. Based on ethnographic observations of barbershop quartets, I

explain how human singers socially organize and cultivate the musicality of the sounds they

produce together. My socio-cybernetic approach to this form of music begins with noise,

difference, variety, contingency, and the absence of order. I outline a social science of acoustic

harmony that focuses on the problem of socially organizing sound into music.

Imagine, for a moment, four beaming adult men appear before you and stand closely in a row.

They all take a big breath of air and, low and behold, begin to produce tremendous vocal noises.

What might this quartet sound like? Showing off their human capacity for acoustic variation, our

men might pant, hoot, roar, yell, recite poetry, or belt out high and low pitches of short and long

duration. We might hear them utter explosive consonants or soothing vowels, intelligible words

or mysterious sounds. They might utter their sounds together, in perfect cadence, or deliver them

as random bursts of cacophony. A quartet of men can make very many kinds of different noises!

This open-ended noise potential points to the improbability of organizing and coordinating sound

in any specifically meaningful way—such as in barbershop—and the unlikelihood that observers

(singers and listeners) will recognize any significant difference between noise and music. How

can four different men ever come to share expectations about how each will contribute to the

practice of producing barbershop harmony? Barbershop creates this problem for itself and then

offers its own functional solutions.

With quartets of men in mind, this investigation of how music may be winnowed out of noise

increases our appreciation of the empirical variety and organized complexity of musical forms. In

this paper, I describe music as a medium of communication within which cultured observers may

anticipate, recognize, and connect selected forms of acoustic harmony (and dissonance). My

analysis features the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet

Singing in America (SPEBSQSA), an organization that plays a pivotal role in structuring the

musical possibilities of barbershop and in conditioning its members to observe the boundaries of

2 (Luhmann 2000, 21)

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its specific form. With each successive confirmation, the form of barbershop confirms and

condenses itself, programming the connectivity of its own future operations. Quartets are

described here as if they operated as interaction systems, relying on face-to-face communication

to reproduce themselves by restricting and calibrating the noises made by four men. It is

important to note, however, that barbershop quartets are also registered ensembles within an

umbrella organization that can, by its formal decisions, determine the limits of the art form. Thus,

this investigation indicates the quartet as an interaction group that empirically produces the form

of barbershop; but it also indicates SPEBSQSA as an organization that makes and connects

decisions about the aesthetic boundaries of barbershop. The singers do the singing, but the

organization decides whether or not barbershop was produced. Both of these social systems, the

interaction and the organization, continuously operate within the greater confines of society.

The conclusions presented here are based on a content analysis of materials produced by

barbershop quartets (recordings and performances), in addition to publications, compositions, and

photographs distributed by SPEBSQSA. Approximately thirty-five singers and organizational

officers were personally interviewed about their “barbershop” experience, self-understanding and

motivation as singers, and interpretation of the art form. I participated as a member of the

“society” for one year, attended weekly chorus practices, and took part in weekend conferences

(Harmony College) and interstate singing competitions conducted by SPEBSQSA. I also joined

an established, registered quartet as a tenor, replacing a member who had moved too far away to

attend rehearsals. This quartet engaged in several public performances and eventually competed

on stage in front of a panel of officially appointed judges.

The Meaning and Form of Music

What is music? One provocative definition suggested by social scientists asserts that music is the

organization of sound in time (Sakata 2002). The usefulness of this essentialist, ontologically

minded definition hinges on how one understands the concept of organization. Morse code,

telephone ringers3, knock-knock jokes, and church bells also organize sound in time, but do they

also demonstrate musicality? This definition makes no attempt to describe what special difference

music itself makes in organizing sound in time. If music is to be defined as the organization of

3 One might suggest that modern phones offer much more than the traditional ring, they can play famous musical overtures, folk diddies, and pop tunes. Such “music,” however, is useful as a ringer only if we are prepared to stop it and answer the phone. A telephone ringer having meaning as music would not be answered.

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sound in time, the impression of organization cannot plausibly be attributed to that which is

actually heard. There can be no organization, meaning, or music directly in sound: any alleged

organization must be attributed to an observer who cognitively separates music from aural

perceptions. This capability is demonstrated by barbershop singers. Before I relate how

barbershop quartets produce their musical order from noise, I will assert the need for a definition

of music as communication.

Many scholars presume that human musicality is selectively structured or organized by human

nature. Thus, the meaningful expression of music is guaranteed by an underlying, innate

Chomsky-esque grammar. This view is shared, for instance, by Wallin, Merker, and Brown

(2000, 45):

There are musical and linguistic universals that characterize human thought. They are

expressed by basic rules that constitute a core grammar common to all languages and to

all musical systems. These basic rules produce the sequence types or forms that we find

everywhere in all cultures. Regarding music, analysis of diverse musical grammars

should gradually allow better understanding of what these universal elementary forms

are, whose structures are attributable to psychological systems that produce them, and

that are presumably common to all human beings.

Thus, for these authors, musical expression appears to be locked into a closed, mechanical,

grammatically correct sequence or form. Language, music, and even “psychological systems” are

thought to be structured in the same way, according to a presumed natural order of human beings.

This perspective seems to suggest that “psychological systems” produce music and language;

indeed, that they are able to do this by nature. Barbershoppers, as we shall see, must study and

practice their highly stylized art of singing. Instead of expecting inborn “basic rules” or a

“universal musical grammar” to organize their singing, barbershop singers conscientiously work

hard at what they do, as if successfully ordering sound and time could not be guaranteed. Indeed,

barbershoppers (and other musicians!) seem to operate as if humans, as humans, could not make

music.4

The proposition of an innate, cross cultural, “universal musical grammar” common to all

“psychological systems” suggests that music can have no social organization: it has already been

4 As does every other social system, the organization of barbershop depends on the continued success of communication. From the perspective of social systems theory, however, humans cannot communicate. Only communication communicates (see Luhmann 2002, 156). Extending this understanding of autopoiesis and self-organization, one could assert that only music makes music.

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ordered. The notion suggests that humans have been hardwired to produce music according to

basic rules that cannot be changed. Such rules would equally bind every human, leaving no room

for creativity, virtuosity, cultural programming, accidents, or surprise. Making music would be as

natural, predictable, and unavoidable as coughing, sneezing, and having the hiccups. If, thanks to

the constraints of human nature, there is no possibility for musical disorganization, then it makes

no sense to define music as art or a form of creative expression. If the artistic decisions have

already been made by nature, what can an individual musician add? Even more troublesome is the

suggestion that psychological systems produce elementary structures of music that are common

to all human beings. If the structures of music are instinctive and universal, how can their

production also be attributed to psychological systems? From this perspective, it would seem that

there is no escape from music, that the successful production of music may be taken for granted.

Observing the work of barbershop singers takes this feeling of security away: they know that their

music is constantly threatened by the resurgence of noise. The “always already organized”

account of a universal musical grammar runs away from the key problem for which organization

appears as a solution: it fails to explain how music is different from unorganized noise or random

perturbations.

Music, like language, is a form of communication that organizes noise. As communication, music

is accomplished when three separate selections are combined and related to each other:

information, utterance, and understanding (See Luhmann 1995, 1997; Baecker 2003). Music

emerges out of this recursive combination of selections. A musician selects the informative

difference that she wants to make as an artist; she selects a particular sound; and she demands

attention by staking a claim, expressing the expectation that her sound will be understood as a

meaningful and contingent selection by those who hear it (See Luhmann 1995, 195). The sound

of barbershop is reproduced when the separate selections of each member of a quartet

(contingently related and different utterances) are meaningfully related to one another to simulate

its own recognizable style. An emergent unity in difference, barbershop produces barbershop by

programming human noise makers and helping them imagine a distinction between predictable

and random sounds.

The meaning of music is imagined as the difference between what is heard and what could have

been heard; or, in other words, between actual and potential sounds. To have meaning, music

must take on a contingent form, one that is neither necessary nor impossible. To observe music,

the acoustic energy waves one actually hears from moment to moment must be cognitively

connected with impressions of meaning tied to sounds that came before, as well as to possible

sounds that might, to a conditioned listener, be expected to follow. Thus, forms of music result

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from tight couplings between sound and meaning. One hears a sound, remembers all of the

sounds that could have been heard, and evaluates the sound as a selection that either fits or does

not fit what came before. When it comes to observing the form of music, observers culture

themselves to expect certain sounds to accompany and succeed one another (and not others).

According to Niklas Luhmann:

Music functions as communication only for those who can realize this difference between

medium and form and who can use it to make themselves understood. Only for those who

can also hear the decoupled space within which the music is played; only for those who

can also hear that the tonality of music makes many more possibilities for noises than

what might be normally expected, and this from the vantage point of disciplined

regulation through form. (Luhmann 2001, 203-4)

Music disciplines the unorganized complexity of noise, suggesting imaginary preferences for the

actual delivery of certain pitches at certain times. Styles of music, such as barbershop, condition

preferences differently. Music opens up its own possibilities for organizing variety, inventing its

own rules of inclusion, by closing down the surplus options of noise. As the cyberneticist W.

Ross Ashby might have put it, only the variety of music can destroy the variety of noise.

Depending on the perception of noise for its own operations, the social system of barbershop

provides a particularly apt illustration of how communication functions to order noise. I use the

term noise (“random perturbations”) with reference to the “order from noise principle” of general

systems theory (von Foerster 1960). Participation in communication conditions singers, enables

them to inform themselves with respect to the possibilities of sound, and meaningfully establishes

the self-referential standards to which they must accommodate themselves in order to function as

members of viable quartets. The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop

Quartet Singing in America is the self-appointed organization that oversees cultural efforts to

sustain and increase the variety and complexity of barbershop music, in spite of the greater odds

of hearing noise.

Organizing Noise: The Case of Barbershop

The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America

(SPEBSQSA) held its first formal convention in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1939, with 150 men in

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attendance. Today the organization has more than 34,000 members in approximately 800 local

chapters in the United States and Canada. Established to preserve a particular form of

unaccompanied vocal harmony, the organization informs its new members:

As time passes, you’ll make friends and create memories that will last a lifetime. You’ll

share the excitement of preparing for a major show, feel the heat of the stage lights and

enjoy the roar of applause. You’ll touch the hearts of audiences with tender love songs

and ballads, and delight them with comedy and rollicking uptunes. You’ll bring light in

the lives of shut-ins, and help a new generation of singers learn the simple pleasures of a

cappella singing and the good old songs. (SPEBSQSA 2001, 2)

Members of SPEBSQSA meet to practice their art each week, perform for the public in annual

shows, compete in regional and national contests, and attend weekend clinics with arrangers,

directors, and music educators. Members begin each chapter meeting by standing up to sing their

theme song, “The Old Songs,” and close by singing their motto song, “Keep the Whole World

Singing.” When they finish milking the last chord, members raise their right fist in the air and

exclaim together: “It’s great to be a barbershopper!”

Several sociologists have already investigated SPEBSQSA (Stebbins 1996; Averill 2003; Kaplan

1993), but focused on describing how barbershop singers share solidarity, collective values,

expressive needs, and feelings of community. Barbershoppers are without a doubt interested in

experiencing camaraderie and expect to have a good time with their brothers. O.C. Cash, the

founder of SPEBSQSA, once wrote: “Only at our Society conventions do I find the genuine, old-

time, small-town, neighborly affection and fellowship so manifest when our bunch gets together”

(O.C. Cash 1941, 3). Barbershoppers expect one another to be respectful and sociable, but at

some point they must also demonstrate the ability to sing, to operatively engage in practices that

reproduce the art of barbershop. How this is accomplished by the replication and organization of

noise is the primary focus of this investigation. Friendly men of good character may make

pleasant companions, but reproducing the form of barbershop requires the fulfillment of very

different conditions.

Musicians define barbershop singing as a “colloquial term for a type of harmony used in popular

American part singing as formerly practiced in barbershops. It is typically arranged for four

unaccompanied male voices, the melody being carried by the second voice from the top” (Randel

1978, 40). This definition is further refined by SPEBSQSA’s own description of the form:

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Technically speaking, barbershop harmony is a style of unaccompanied singing with

three voices harmonizing to the melody (an ensemble of four voices). The lead usually

sings the melody, with the tenor harmonizing above the lead. The bass sings the lowest

harmonizing notes and the baritone provides the in-between notes, either above or below

the lead to make chords, specifically, dominant-type or barbershop sevenths, that give

barbershop its distinctive, full sound. (SPEBSQSA 2001, 5)

SPEBSQSA’s official definition effectively specifies four of the most critical restrictions required

to observe the unity of its form: singing, four voices, harmony, and a distinctive sound. Other

styles of music may certainly share one or more of these specific traits, but barbershop represents

a combination of its own. In his comprehensive sociological account of barbershop quartet

singing, Averill (2003) notes that those who arrange music in the barbershop style understand that

cultivated listeners will recognize a song as barbershop if it features dominant seventh-type

chords (“barbershop sevenths”) between 35 and 60 percent of the time.5 When singing is

conditioned by these four qualifications, trained observers may recognize the form of barbershop,

in contradistinction to both other types of music and forms of unorganized noise. In what follows,

we turn to a more detailed description of the reciprocal knowledge singers must have before they

can conditionally relate their own selections and reproduce the form. This description is followed

by a closing discussion of the form of music and of barbershop as a symbolically generalized

medium of communication.

Singing

Singing entails the production of musical tones with one’s voice. A singer must sing, but this

implies that he or she must also listen. In this sense, singing forms a unity of both singing and

listening. This insight underscores the improbability of barbershop as a social system. Four

singers must simultaneously produce and monitor sound, organizing the complexity of perceived

noise even as they actively contribute to it. Singing barbershop is not the same as singing scat,

jazz, doo-wop, Sacred Harp, madrigal, or other forms of a vocal music. Singing a cappella is also

5 Understanding barbershop is difficult without the chance to sing and hear it. Readers interested in sampling this music may appreciate the audio files available at SPEBSQSA’s website, located at the following internet address: http://www.spebsqsa.org/web/groups/public/documents/pages/pub_id_051957.hcsp.

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not the only way to sing. And, of course, singing is not the only way to make vocal noise.

Whatever the style, the art of singing emerges out of the difference between human vocal noise

and music. Barbershop is a specific way of informing or programming this difference.

Most American men can make plenty of vocal noise, but they do not spend much time singing.

The first major task of SPEBSQSA is to recruit men who are willing to sing. As with other forms

of vocalization, singing is a powerful way to disturb and capture the attention of other people.

Singing fascinates the ears and draws in the awareness of listeners. In this way, singing is an

unusually effective form of communication (see Luhmann 2000, 15). The members of a

barbershop quartet coordinate both sound and dramatic physical movements to impact their

audience. Consequently, it takes a certain kind of person to perform barbershop; one who is

willing to exhibit himself, one willing to irritate other people’s ears and compel observation. A

barbershop quartet requires men who are willing and able to sing: producing the medium in which

the form of barbershop—or some other form of singing—may be differentiated and recognized

by observers.

Four Voices

The musical form of barbershop entails role differentiation and a functional unity in difference:

four voices are expected to sing different parts but form only one sound. The form of music

contributes many familiar structures that serve to coordinate the actions of barbershoppers. For

instance, the members of a quartet observe the same tempo, artificially structuring the flow of

“real time” so that each performer can orient himself to a common “beat.” Many toes tapping

together is not a coincidental phenomenon: the beat made within “meaning” structures the

unorganized complexity of time. Pitch, the perceived highness or lowness of a sound, is

unnaturally standardized in music so that performers can meaningfully restrict and identify

intended frequencies. As a form, pitch opens up the possibility for musicians to observe the

difference between being “in” and “out of tune.” Pitch itself is a wide open horizon that cannot

close itself. To appreciate the importance of familiar musical structures, one must remember that

each musician retains the individual freedom and requisite variety (Ashby 1957) to make

completely unorganized noise, without regard for a controlling tempo or pitch.6 Structures

6 W. Ross Ashby’s “law of requisite variety” refers to the necessary availability of system complexity for the reduction of environmental complexity: “Only variety can destroy variety” (Ashby 1957, 207). A system cannot handle the total variety available in its environment: it emerges by selectively reducing environmental complexity. A barbershop quartet “destroys” the variety that is latent in its singers: selecting from their possibilities only what is meaningful within the form of barbershop. If the quartet fails to do this, SPEBSQSA’s official judges will disqualify their performance, signaling that only noise was produced, not

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constructed out of meaning cope with the problem that the environment is always more complex

than the system (Luhmann 1995, 182). Differentiating members of the quartet by vocal part is a

crucial step in organizing this latent environmental complexity.

According to one official judge appointed by SPEBSQSA to evaluate barbershop quartets during

competitions, each of the four members of a quartet has a unique “operating directive,” or “o.d.”

The lead’s o.d. is to sing out the melody and “sell the song” to listeners. In the words of the

judge, “the lead must shine above all else as the one who really tells the emotional story.” The

baritone’s o.d. is to “build an incestuous relationship with the lead,” harmonizing as tightly as

possible without singing the same notes. The lead and baritone voices playfully switch between

soothing harmony and unnerving dissonance, at times carefully crossing over each other in pitch.

In the society of barbershop, baritones are often called by the nickname “Phil” because they must

creatively search for a note that has not yet been taken by the other voices, thereby filling up the

chord and completing a full sound. The operating directive of the bass is “to envelope the quartet

with sound, giving full support to the lead.” The judge asserted that “a good bass places each of

his notes into the mouth of the lead, constantly working through the lead.” Finally, the tenor’s

o.d. is to deliver the overtone produced by the other members of the quartet. In the words of the

judge: “When the trio does its job well, the tenor note is always ‘already there’ and must only be

reinforced. The tenor should focus on matching the tone that appears by nature, whenever the trio

sings as it should. The tenor has the ‘easiest job of all’ and should let the other guys work the

hardest, while always looking relaxed and comfortable.” The judge’s discussion of operating

directives names four essential voice parts and metaphorically describes how each is expected to

perform within barbershop’s own division of labor. By restricting the operational freedom of each

singer and differentiating functions, the social system of barbershop conditionally relates four

voices, creating the possibility for harmony.

Harmony

In pursuit of their different operating directives, the members of the quartet must work constantly

to conditionally relate their separate sounds together. The four singers must not only deliver their

sounds at the same time and place, but they must acoustically blend, simultaneously articulate

consonants, match vowels, and remain in tune.

the sound of barbershop.

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As I have stressed above, the achievement of vocal harmony is a highly improbable event. As one

barbershop singer told me, “The barbershop hobby (or singing accapella) is a challenge for

anyone. It requires a very good ear, a lot of memorization, and certainly a lot of work. But more

importantly, it requires a person to express one’s feelings through song.” A particular song’s

emotional effect is highly dependent on its chord structure, tonal progression, and harmonic

character. Imagine singing a love song out of tune! Artistically expressing one’s feelings through

song requires tonal accuracy. But how does one sing in tune with others?

Music is an artificially constructed horizon of meaning that replicates, among other things, the

natural possibilities of pitch in a manner that can be ordered through signs. A bird’s song can be

arranged and transcribed in musical notation so that it can be simulated by a human singer. With

the help of signs and the difference between black ink and white paper, an actual pitch can be

virtually doubled and represented on paper. Barbershoppers learn how to “read” music, as if

printed notes could determine the pitch a voice produces. The self-reference of music closes itself

to open up meaningful possibilities for musicians, creating a context in which sounds can be

imitated, identified, transposed, and connected with others. The four members of a quartet

monitor and condition one another’s sounds, attempting to ensure musicality. Before a song

begins, one member of the quartet sets the beginning pitch by quietly and steadily humming

while the others wait attentively. This initial note is typically located with the help of a tuning

fork, pocket-sized pitch pipe, or piano key. The other three singers then join in humming the

same note, reinforcing the standard and conditioning themselves, before switching up or down to

their own beginning notes and building a chord. Listening to the four pitches, one or more

members may decide that the humming failed to produce a well-tuned chord. One may signal

with a hand wave or shake of the head that the quartet failed to “tune up” and that it should try

again. Sour facial expressions and verbal accusations may be exchanged: “Come on, Bill, you

were flat.” Another member might attempt the initial humming sound, or else a pitch pipe may be

blown a second time. In any case, the first hummed chord permits the quartet to check and

condition each singer’s sense of being in tune and harmonic balance. This is the first critical test

of musical viability and acoustic compatibility, the time when the first problems can occur. The

test is subsequently repeated with every single chord of a song. After the last chord is rung, a

rehearsing quartet might again blow the pitch pipe to check how well it was able to maintain a

constant pitch. According to one barbershopper, “Taking a pitch and tuning that first chord is the

key. Barbershop harmony depends on everyone in the quartet staying right in tune, right from the

beginning. Some people can sing great alone, in the shower, but they fall apart when they have to

stay in tune with others. The members of a quartet police each other and keep each other honest.”

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Each member of the quartet experiences the other three voices as elements in his own acoustic

environment. While perceiving the sound of the other three voices, each member of the quartet

must observe a corresponding difference between noise and music, distilling musical information

from environmental noise and demonstrating his understanding by responding with an

appropriate sound of his own. Each singer is obligated to contribute only that difference that

makes an immediate difference between harmony and dissonance; between being in tune and out

of tune. When four singers produce barbershop harmony, the art itself integrates them without

violating the operational closure of both psychic and social systems (Luhmann 2000, 48).

Theories that account for the organization of music by way of “universal grammars” or

intersubjective constraints assume an implausible unity of consciousness and communication, a

unity that would kill music as an art form.

Each member of the barbershop quartet comes to the group as an individual noise maker

equipped, more or less, with his own sense of music. The form of barbershop requires these four

singers, each one a divergent complex with his own operating directive and requisite variety, to

function as a unified system of difference. In barbershop harmony, one singer emits a particular

note, actualizing a pitch from a continuum of possible sound waves. The selection of this note

(recognizable as a redundancy within the form of music) and not another determines the

meaningful possibilities open to the other singers, who in turn make further selections with

reference to the initial note.

A selected pitch is a function of the relative frequency of a sound wave: when a singer’s vocal

chords vibrate more frequently, releasing more energy into the air, the pitch seems to rise as air

molecules are pressured into oscillation. The opportunity to produce acoustic harmony results

from this physical ability to selectively produce more or less constant sound waves at the same

time. Each musical note has a standard frequency of cycles per second. On a piano, for instance,

middle C has a standard frequency of 256 cycles per second. Doubling the frequency of a note

produces the same note an octave higher, while reducing the frequency by half results in the same

note an octave lower. As a musical construct, harmony suggests that different pitches can be

coordinated in ways that physically reinforce each other and form socially meaningful acoustic

relationships (for example: fourths, fifths, octaves, or even the risky “barbershop seventh”). Some

combinations of acoustic energy waves sound “good,” while others sound “terrible;” and this

aesthetic difference is defined and conditioned by the contingent preferences of musical forms.

Without any ability to count cycles per second, the members of a quartet adjust their pitches and

disturb the air around them, negotiating the boundaries of barbershop’s own form of harmony

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during every live performance. Using musical notation, the progressive self-organization of

barbershop harmony may be visualized as follows:

Beyond the written music, however, many other things can happen besides harmony. The bass

may decide to sing the same note as the lead. The baritone may sing too loud, too fast, and out of

key. Even if everybody else conforms to expectations, the tenor may just sneeze. Established

barbershop quartets know about obstacles like these and other problems caused by the multiple

constitution or double-contingency of social systems (Luhmann 1995, 103).

Though it may cause the chord to collapse into noise, multiple constitution is precisely what

makes harmony possible. There could be no barbershop system without noise. If everyone sings

contingently, and thus everyone could also sing differently and knows this about oneself and

others, it is improbable that one’s own singing will find points of connection in the singing of

others (compare to Luhmann 1995, 116). Yet this is the unlikely conferral of meaning that must

take place in the production of harmony. Noise makes noise, but barbershop controls noise to

make harmony. How is this possible? With so much environmental complexity, how can

barbershoppers ever successfully strike a chord?

The members of a quartet must trust each other to observe the closed form of barbershop and to

limit the possibilities open to them as individual singers (Luhmann 1990). Each member must say

to the others: I will limit myself to barbershop if you will limit yourselves to barbershop. When

each member practices this kind of discipline, continence, training, and good faith, the quartet

gains the chance of emerging as a self-referential social system sui generis, a circular unity that

cannot be reduced to any one of the participating singers. A barbershop system gains the unlikely

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chance of producing itself because quartet members are cultured observers (Fuchs 2001), self-

socialized to reciprocate each other’s willingness to fit into the form of barbershop. As I will

relate below, SPEBSQSA cultures singers, rewards accommodation, and makes decisions about

the relative quality and viability of quartets.

Distinctive Sound

The social system of barbershop music reproduces itself by organizing the unorganized

complexity latent within singers (i.e. singer/listeners) and listeners. This self-organization

depends on singers (and listeners) conforming to the selective behavioral determinations made

available by the form of barbershop. Harmony often occurs in other forms of music, but the

distinctive sound of barbershop harmony, an experience of contingency, must reference

barbershop’s own program: its own history, themes, expectations, and conditions for success.

The form of barbershop selects certain possibilities and manages only those possibilities,

excluding all others. This self-limitation and the need to overcome the resulting artistic problems

is what grants barbershop its distinctive sound. For example, barbershop singers are not

accompanied by musical instruments. The four human voices are left alone with the problem of

building a full and satisfying sound. The strict functional differentiation of four parts—lead, bass,

baritone, and tenor—and the prohibition of solos helps the quartet deliver a rich sound with

substantial chords.

Drums are also excluded from the form of barbershop, and singers may not add percussive vocals

or other purely rhythmic sounds such as finger snaps or hand claps. Working without a conductor,

the exclusion of percussion places a tremendous burden on the members of the quartet to

coordinate themselves in time. Several practices have evolved to help solve this problem. The

members of a barbershop quartet sing while standing in a semi-circle, so that they may see and

hear each other as well as possible, while still projecting sound to an audience of listeners. The

moving hands and lips of the lead give subtle, but constant temporal clues to the other members.

Following the lead’s cadence, the other members are prepared to progressively hold two of more

chords while singing a single word or syllable. This “hallmark of barbershop style” is known as a

“swipe,” and serves to add forward motion to the lyric (SPEBSQSA 2001, 5).

The distinctive sound of barbershop is also notable in the structural coupling of music with

language. Not only does the quartet make music, it also recites lyrics designed to make a

meaningful artistic difference for listeners. The quartet provides an intelligible linguistic

15

utterance, but the audience is expected to remember that the meaning of the utterance is entirely

fulfilled in its musical delivery. From moment to moment, the quartet’s sound is adjusted to

match the semantic intent of words and sentences. As a consequence, the barbershop sound tends

to reflect unusual sentimentality and an unabashed, melodramatic appeal to emotions. Barbershop

lyrics typically describe nostalgia for the “good old days,” affairs of the heart, memories of

friendships past, patriotism, and a longing for the comforts of home. Though it might appear

obvious, the words of a song also assist in the achievement of temporal consonance, with

articulated consonants serving a rhythmic function. Opting to sing songs with words, of course,

creates the opportunity for members to forget the correct words. Barbershop quartets tend to

practice singing with the aid of musical notation and written lyrics. When they perform, however,

barbershoppers are expected to have the words and their individual voice parts memorized.

Traditionally, the form of barbershop prescribes a quartet comprised of only men. Consequently,

the distinctive sound of barbershop is tied to the acoustic quality of single sex ensembles. Social

programs suggesting gender integration and equal rights do not seem to make a difference within

organizations devoted to barbershop. Although there are some unregistered mixed quartets, there

is no organization or movement that acknowledges their contribution to the form of barbershop.7

One might argue that the tight harmonies and compact sound of a barbershop quartet would be

sacrificed if males and females sang together. Whatever the reason for the single sex limitation, a

mixed ensemble’s wider range of sound does not present advantages within the form of

barbershop. The limited range of a unisex quartet presents an artistic problem, but a good

barbershop quartet accepts the challenge and aims to complement the middle voices of the lead

and baritone with the extremes of the bass and tenor. To escape the normal confines of the male

vocal range, tenors frequently sing in falsetto with their “head voice.” As in the case of the contra

tenor featured in early renaissance compositions, the soft and airy sound of the barbershop tenor

typically adds harmonic completeness rather than melodic contour. The resulting sound of

barbershop contrasts sharply with the well known doo-wop style of the 1950’s, in which tenors

frequently covered the melody line in falsetto, while the bass contributed a driving rhythm.

A fascinating feature of the distinctive sound of barbershop is the mysterious occasional sound of

a fifth voice. When the four members of a quartet successfully achieve barbershop harmony, the

sound frequencies each emits may physically reinforce one another. Members of SPEBSQSA

describe this phenomenon as “ringing the chord:”

7 Female barbershop singers established a separate organization called the Sweet Adeline’s in 1945 (Averill 2003, 127). Sweet Adeline’s may be viewed as another self-appointed observer of barbershop, communicating its organizational decisions about what lies in and outside of the form.

16

Probably the most distinctive facet of barbershop harmony is the phenomenon known as

expanded sound. It is created when the harmonics in the individually sung tones reinforce

each other to produce audible overtones or undertones. Barbershoppers call this “ringing

a chord.” Singing in a quartet or chorus and creating that “fifth voice” is one of the most

thrilling musical sensations you’ll ever experience, leading to goosebumps the size of

golf balls. (SPEBSQSA 2001, 6)

If there is a test to decide whether or not a quartet is producing barbershop, it would have to be

the successful ringing of a chord, the organization of vocal noise to create a supplemental noise

from “natural” harmonics. One sees four singers, but hears the sound of more. According to one

member of a registered quartet, “When we all get our notes just right, when everyone gives the

chord just what they are supposed to, that’s when it happens. The quartet is suddenly joined by

another member, one who floats sound all around us, giving us the pay off experience that makes

singing barbershop like finding the Holy Grail.” Another member of SPEBSQSA, one who has

sung baritone in the same competitive quartet for more than ten years, explained, “It’s difficult to

put into words what it feels like to get four voices to sing in tune and ‘ring a chord’ except to say

it’s a thrill. It’s even more thrilling when it happens in front of an audience. There is nothing

more inspiring than standing in front of an audience and watching their emotions and reactions

when you sing them a song.”

Barbershop unfolds itself as organized noise within the dimension of real time, with the sound of

each consonant and tonal change arriving and departing in succession. Moment by moment and

sound by sound, the quartet works to connect its successive operations in conformity to the

expectations of cultured observers, both singers and listeners. The quartet produces a dynamic

string of constantly vanishing perceptions, surprising listeners with a display of controlled

variety, always remaining within the redundant and stable form of barbershop. A quartet

intentionally slides in and out of tune, changes keys, slows and quickens its tempo, adjusts its

volume, and tweaks melodic lines: all in an artistic effort to create something new without leaving

the expected form. Each song must form a unity of different sounds, each with its own history,

and each quartet must form a unity in the style of barbershop. The quartet’s central problem is to

recursively connect its operations within the established form of barbershop, but it must do so in

resistance to all other quartets. The sound of an accomplished quartet must be recognizable as

barbershop, but it must also be fresh and new and entirely of its own kind. As Luhmann

suggested with regard to art, “Only novel works can please” (Luhmann 2000, 44). As a social

system operating within art, the barbershop quartet paradoxically reproduces a singing style while

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also innovating—avoiding imitation and repetition—and carefully pressing the boundaries of

music.

SPEBSQSA and the Reduction of Complexity

The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America

is committed to realizing one of its guiding statements: “Barbershop harmony is music that’s

easy, fun, and anyone can sing it.” The organization’s official “motto song,” “Keep the Whole

World Singing,” is sung by members at each weekly rehearsal and at other official events. How

does SPEBSQSA reduce the complexity of barbershop so that it can be described as “easy” and

exportable to the whole world?

As a social system, barbershop organizes itself within society. Before, during, and after they sing,

barbershoppers participate in communication. Communication creates a boundary around four

singers, assigns the different vocal parts, decides which song to sing, and chooses the key in

which to begin making noise. Language makes itself available to music by differentiating itself

within communication. Lyrics reference the world without indicating the world beyond the song.

The singers may not mean what they sing, but they do mean to sing and language must be

implicated in the process. The complexity of communication must be effectively managed and

reduced by speakers who want to sing barbershop. Someone must first say, “Would anyone care

to sing barbershop with me?” Three other cultured observers of barbershop must hear the sound

of the question (more noise!), understand its meaning, and return signs of affirmation. Producing

barbershop requires the improbable success of society.

Operating as a formal organization, SPEBSQSA contributes music, recordings, and other cultural

material that restricts singers to the possibilities selected as meaningful and appropriate within the

self-constructed form of barbershop.8 It decides whether or not to officially register individual

members, quartets, and choruses. SPEBSQSA maintains a corporate presence, prints music,

operates a website, distributes newsletters, collects dues, markets products, and unifies central

and peripheral social networks. Much like other large organizations, SPEBSQSA uses a

8 From the perspective of social systems theory, an “organization” organizes communication in terms of its own decisions. According to Luhmann, “Since (organizational) memberships are founded in decisions and the subsequent behavior of members in decision-making situations is dependent on the membership, one may characterize organizations as autopoietic systems that operate on the basis of communicating decisions. They produce decisions out of decisions and are in this sense operationally closed systems. In the form of the decision there is also a moment of structural uncertainty. And because each decision evokes other decisions, every decision reproduces this uncertainty” (Luhmann 1997, 830).

18

hierarchical chain of command to ensure that official communication is supervised by directors at

its central office in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Organizational decisions are then passed down to the

district stratum (Mid-Atlantic District, Seneca Land Distict) and finally to the board of directors

of local chapters (Altoona Horseshoe Chorus, Chorus of the Genesee). The organization recruits

members, appoints officers, directors and board members, trains arrangers and conductors, and

selects judges to evaluate contests and performances. SBEBSQSA also sends music educators

into public high schools to expose students to barbershop and help them form quartets. The

organization publishes a special collection of music designed to appeal to younger singers, with

barbershop arrangements of hit songs by the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Drifters.

SPEBSQSA organizes contests during which competing quartets take turns performing a few

songs on stage. A panel of officially appointed judges evaluates each quartet according to musical

ability, conformity to barbershop style, and showmanship. The established evaluation criteria are

maintained by SPEBSQSA in order to preserve the “authentic” sound of barbershop. Immediately

after a competition, quartets spend private time with individual judges, discussing their numerical

score, singing through difficult sections of their material, and receiving constructive criticism. A

winning quartet must not only please the audience and demonstrate musical excellence; it must

above all else respect the boundaries of barbershop. Championship quartets receive trophies,

widespread publicity within the organization, invitations to coach other quartets, recording

contracts, and requests to perform in shows across the country. Reducing and organizing the

complexity of quartets, SPEBSQSA’s judges decide which quartets will become the standard

bearers for the organization. Their decision making conserves, condenses, and limits the form of

barbershop, making it possible for observers to expect, recognize, and make sense of the

distinctive sound.

The organizational effectiveness of SPEBSQSA may be conveyed with a specific illustration. The

national organization provides each new member with a publication entitled, The Barberpole Cat

Program and Songbook (SPEBSQSA 1992). In a “spirit of support, fellowship, and fun,”

members are expected to work together within their local chapters to memorize twelve traditional

barbershop songs compiled in the book. According to the editors:

When a member successfully sings his voice part to one of the Barberpole Cat songs, he

should, in addition to having his individual record sheet updated, be applauded and have

his name placed on a chart, with credit for that song indicated. The chart should be

displayed prominently, so that all members can observe everyone’s progress toward the

goal of learning all 12 songs. A special chart for this purpose may be ordered from the

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Harmony Marketplace catalog (Stock no. 4001) (…). Upon completion of the first six

songs, the member can receive a Barberpole Cat certificate, when the member completes

all 12 songs, he is eligible to receive a Barberpole Cat lapel pin (…). Award certificates

and pins should be presented with appropriate fanfare. (SPEBSQSA 1992, 2)

Hundreds and thousands of men attend the organization’s annual regional and national

barbershop shows and contests. Each one walks into the crowd wearing a name badge identifying

his local chapter and voice part. Having memorized a minimum of the same canonical twelve

songs, strangers and old acquaintances alike are able to spontaneously assemble themselves into

quartets and reproduce “The Old Songs.” Strategically supported by SPEBSQSA’s semantic and

structural resources, simple social systems can create instant vocal harmony inside hotel lobbies,

bars, buses, airports, and restaurants, demonstrating the unity of barbershop. After the last chord

is sounded, communication may take a completely different tack - a second song, handshakes, a

joke, a beer - but always within society.

The quartet becomes an interactional system when it clearly identifies four co-present members

to the exclusion of all others.9 The selected participants contribute their bodies, marking the

boundary of a simple social system. “Fifth wheeling” is the ultimate barbershop taboo and any

listeners must respect the quartet’s sole authority to make noise. Between songs, quartet members

use language to critique their own performance and make future oriented, collectively binding

decisions about blend, volume, tempo, and accompanying gestures. Members of a quartet use

language to coordinate themselves in time and space. They use gestures to convey messages

about one another’s musical contributions, style of expression, and manner of delivery. As they

sing along in practice, members may grimace or point at one another, indicating poor pitch,

improper balance, or botched lyrics. When a song has ended, the members of the quartet return to

society to select another song, repeat the same one again, criticize each other, replace a member,

socialize, or break up. The following comment from a member of “the Miners,” a quartet that

lasted nearly ten years, conveys that the boundary around the interaction group remains fragile:

9 We accept Luhmann’s view of “interaction” as a social system based on the distinction between the presence and absence of members. In his words, “Society and interaction are different kinds of social systems. Society guarantees the meaningfully self-referential closure of communicative events, thus the capacity to begin, end, and form connections of the communications in each interaction. In interaction systems the hydraulics of interpenetration is activated. The push and pull of presence works on those who are present to one another and induces them to subject their freedom to constraints. Therefore society is not possible without interaction, nor interaction without society; but the two types of system do not merge. Instead, they are indispensable for each other in their difference” (Luhmann 1995, 416-17).

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“The Miners” finally fell apart. I guess it was time. Hank and I tried several times to get

Sam to keep “the Miners” going but Sam was through with Hank. Sam couldn’t accept

one more line of Hank’s criticism, even when it was needed. Hank is singing in a new

quartet from Boston, “Slam Dunkers.” They sound fair but not as good as “the Miners.”

Sam and I are working with a new bass from our chorus and a baritone that is trying his

hand at tenor. The change to tenor didn’t work, so we are still in search of (…) well, you

know the story. I’m tired of trying to keep Sam singing, so I’m thinking about trying to

start another quartet.

SPEBSQSA cannot sing barbershop, but it organizes communication about singing, guards an

orthodox form against entropy, and helps singers find each other and form interaction groups that

can gain viability as quartets. Individual members of the organization are also unable to sing

barbershop by themselves, as human beings. Rather, they contribute their perceptual and artistic

abilities, requisite variety, and inexplicable interest in reproducing a very restricted, highly

cultured form of noise. An unaffiliated and unregistered quartet might also find its own way to

produce the sound of barbershop, but its members could also not form a unity without

participating in communication.

SPEBSQSA reduces the improbability of barbershop, making it easier to “keep the whole world

singing.” It generates communication devoted to sustaining the meaning of barbershop and

recursively networks quartets, fans, music, events, and its own aesthetic and administrative

decisions. With Luhmann, we may observe that “A work of art without other works is as

impossible as an isolated communication without further communications” (2000, 53).

SPEBSQSA is the organization that has taken charge of deciding which forms of art and

communication belong to the form of barbershop. SPEBSQSA simplifies and routinizes the art so

that it can be produced more easily by more singers. SPEBSQSA reduces the improbability of

barbershop by structuring society as an organization; quartets structure singers; and singers

structure the possibilities of sound. Each unity of communication takes its turn at self-

referentially suppressing and consuming the greater variety offered by its own environment.

Trained and restricted by participation in SPEBSQSA, four men may stand together and sing,

successfully ringing a chord and conjuring up the overtones that add the magic of “expanded

sound” distinctive to barbershop. A fifth voice without a singer floats into the field of perception,

evidence of a social system’s ability to create order from noise.

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Discussion

To observe music within noise, one must draw a distinction between redundancy and variety—a

cognitive operation that is imaginary and thoroughly dependent on the self-construction of

meaning by the observer. By participating in communication, observers may learn to

accommodate and assimilate their own callings and selections to the contingent standards of

society. If the tenor sings out of tune, the other members of the quartet may rely on

communication to make a difference in his sound: “You are flat again, Bill! Pay attention to your

pitch.” Singing in tune is neither necessary nor impossible, and Bill can make all sorts of noise.

Nonetheless, the theme of “staying in tune” is semantically supported by the musical program of

barbershop. The quartet uses “contingency communication” (Fuchs 2004, 22) to socialize and

restrict the freedom of its members. If a singer cannot control his own variety of noise, he will

lose his social address as a member of the quartet. Examining barbershop singers, quartets, and

SPEBSQSA, we come to an understanding of how the self-reference of “psychological systems”

can be trained to organize sound waves into music.

Too be observable as something more than noise, music must become a medium of

communication. In other words, every form of music must represent a synthesis of information,

utterance, and understanding. Only an adequately trained observer can inform himself that a

certain noise is music: that what is heard now fits what was heard then. He does this by

recognizing the tighter form of music within the looser medium of sound. One hears a symphony

because one has heard different symphonies (and concertos), one hears a folk song because one

has heard other folk songs (and Lieder); one hears a tango because one has heard previous tangos

(and what they are not). Hearing forms of music requires the memory of musical precedents and

the ability to recognize what is heard and what could have been heard. The meaning of music is

planted in this difference between the actual and the potential.

A barbershop quartet is expected to offer the improbable sound of barbershop music, not just any

sound. The singers must study and practice the technical skills for producing and controlling

vocal noise, emitting only noises that can be connected as barbershop. Barbershop informs the

difference between music and noise. The cultured audience waits for the sounds that they expect

to hear. They observe the difference between actual and possible sounds, anticipating limited

surprises that suggest creativity within the confines of an anticipated form. In this sense,

barbershop binds singers to the conditions of its own form (Luhmann 1995: 124-5). When four

men stand and sing, barbershop music either happens or it does not, nothing in between is

22

permitted. After the last chord is rung, the quartet rests in silence, waiting for a sign of

understanding from listeners; from SPEBSQSA’s officially appointed judges, in particular.

The successful reproduction of barbershop’s own special form of acoustic harmony depends on

the establishment of a symbolically generalized medium within communication (Luhmann 2001).

The four singers and the members of the audience must command the ability to recognize the

secondary medium of barbershop music within the primary medium of sound. The singers and the

listeners remain separated on the level of consciousness, but share openness to perceiving coded

differences in sound. The symbolically generalized medium of barbershop supports connectivity

between cultured forms of meaning and possible forms of sound, permitting observers to indicate

and recursively reference much more than what they hear at any given moment.

Communication turns what should not be expected to happen into something people can nearly

take for granted. Music is able to connect performers and listeners because it is a form of

communication. Musicians are conditioned by communication to imagine the form of music, an

improbable appearance of unity in difference. A form is a distinction with two sides (Spencer

Brown 1979; Heider 1959; Luhmann 1997, 45-47; 195-202). On one side of the form is noise,

and on the other are all of the recognizable possibilities of sound socially organized as music.

Music, because it is also noise, shows that reproducing the form of music always involves the

reentry of noise into the other side of the form. This is also the case for language. As does

language, the reproduction of music builds itself from its own historical productions. Its future is

open, uncertain, and cannot be calculated from knowledge of its available, loosely coupled

elements. Nonetheless, for cultured observers, such as barbershoppers, music may emerge from

recognizable elements of sound, from tight couplings. In this sense, it shares the self-referential

and autopoietic character of all social systems. The closure of the self-referential musical order is

synonymous with the infinite openness of noise (See Luhmann 1995, 62).

The willing participation of conditionally cultured listeners is required to self-referentially

construct music out of one or more aural irritations. The imaginary unity of every composition is

emergent and must be simulated in the course of its real-time performance: an original sense of

unity cannot be assumed, in stark contrast to traditional theories mentioned at the beginning of

this paper. Recognizing harmonic relationships and meaningful “connections” between different

sounds requires an observer trained to expect and identify previously learned unities of sounds.

As Stephan Fuchs put it, every observation is a cultured observation (Fuchs 2002). Only cultured

observers of music may self-referentially construct the meaning of pitch, intervals, rhythm,

scales, modes, and performance styles. Cultured observers may also participate in spoken and

23

written communication about music, discussing methods and techniques, written notational and

solfege systems, and even the theoretical boundaries of music.

Systems theory places music within the social system of art; a unity of communication that builds

itself from its own elements. At the second-order of observation, systems theory wonders how

first-order observers (musicians and listeners) limit themselves to reproducing the form of music.

If they fail to restrict and organize the noises they make, the chaotic result will not be recognized

as barbershop or any other form of music. If they imitate only what others have already

contributed, they fail as artists. As artists, musicians creatively combine redundancy and variety,

tradition and innovation; the familiar and the novel.

Without sound, of course, music could not be perceived. The raw, unorganized complexity of

sound is evident in the possibility of making and perceiving high or low pitches. Music also

requires the raw complexity of time, which permits the possibility of making and perceiving

sounds now or later, as simultaneous or successive events. Given the possibilities of time, one

pitch can be delivered before, with, or after another--and the difference between temporal events

may appear to reflect harmony and organization rather than happenstance. Music emerges from

decisions about high or low pitches, delivered now or later. These decisions require alternatives

and an openness to selectivity. When deciding which pitch to produce at which moment, one may

seek support from cultural resources that program and establish meaningful possibilities of music.

Musicality is not just the organization of sound in time, it is the reliance on music to reproduce

music for observers who are prepared to re-construct a contingent form. Barbershop harmony is

neither necessary nor impossible; nature does not constrain humans with an intersubjective,

innate musical grammar that guarantees the power to “ring a chord.” To produce this specific

kind of harmony, the individual members who sing in a quartet must share a minimum of

reciprocal knowledge and conditioned expectations about the possibilities for organizing sound as

a symbolically generalized medium. Barbershop is specifically coded noise. SPEBSQSA’s

formally trained judges are prepared to discern the special form of barbershop and limit its

connectivity.

The form of music processes distinctions between music and noise, harmony and dissonance,

information and utterance. Some sounds fit our expectations, find their preferred connections, and

take on temporary form as music; while others simply remain noise. The reciprocal expectations

that help support understanding in music depend on the development of semantic resources that

are accessible to sociological observers. Instead of chasing after universal grammars, we might

ask: what social resources do humans develop to help increase the likelihood that the autopoiesis

of music will continue? Barbershoppers, as shown in this study, have developed plenty.

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Diagram 1 (page 14):

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