MILITARY COMPUTER GAMERS BLUR BOUNDARY WITH REAL WAR

 The 21-year-old airman arrested in Massachusetts April 13 for leaking Top Secret documents was at the nexus of two huge networks: military communications, and on-line games. Similar scenarios circulate on both, and the same demographic—young men who grew up in the on-line era—run both of them.

 

The arrested airman worked in an Intelligence Support Squadron, maintaining Air Force communications networks. And since all the armed forces and intelligence agencies are linked, to share information and avoid the comparmentalization that failed to detect the 9/11/01 attacks, he could access anything. What hit the headlines first were revelations that arms deliveries to the Ukraine were held up in the logistics chain. The documents surfaced on the Minecraft computer game, where players compete with enemies in building up logistics.

 

From an early age, millions of boys spend most of their time in on-line fantasy worlds of adventure, violence, war, espionage and crime. Many acquire advanced skills, ranging from computer technology to hacking; valuable alike in the dark side and in today’s cyber-tech military. The arrested airman played games such as an apocalyptic zombie game, and a tactical shooter game; and took part in chat groups on technical advice for computer glitches as wsell as military history and geopolitics. His real-life war information was leaked by other participants to popular game communities, and eventually through Russian intelligence into the real world. [WSJ; NYT; April 10-14, 2023]

 

Or what is the real world, and what is a fantasy version of it? The blurring between the two has become inevitable: high-tech soldiers who are gamers; and gamers who mimic high-tech war.

 

Fiction sometimes anticipates reality. Five years ago, I published a novel, Civil War Two.  It is a thought experiment about what would happen if the U.S. Civil War of 1861-1865 were fought again today, with high-tech weapons. An excerpt:

 

**********************

 

Three a.m.  Forward Operating Base, Utah National Guard, outside Malad City, Idaho.

 

            “Warning, warning,” said the voice inside Specialist Jared Smith’s earbud. “Unidentified helicopter traffic, twelve o’clock, 13 miles. Closing fast. Enemy armored vehicles, eleven o’clock to one o’clock, multiple columns, 11 miles.”

            The handheld screen flashed the same message. Jared touched the screen. A map came up: a filigree of roads amid dark spots for hills: bright yellow dots of traffic speeding down the roads; other dots in red, representing air traffic, approaching more rapidly. He touched again, brought up a visual image, zoomed for a close-up: armored personnel carriers, heavy tanks rolling across the fields. Zooming still closer: the mouth of a cannon became visible,  emitting flame as a shell departed in his direction.

            “Warning, warning, enemy tanks opening fire,” the computer voice said. “Closing to three miles. Take evasive action. Recommend counter-attack with all available weapons.”

            “Counter-attack!” Jared said aloud. “Fire anti-tank guns. Launch Apache helicopters!”

            “Smith!” Sergeant Page’s  voice broke in. “Get off that video game and pay attention to the UAV feed.”

            Reality filtered into Jared’s consciousness. Heavy sweat ran down the back of his neck, under his battle dress. The Ground Command Station felt hot and clammy, even though the air conditioning was pumping, dripping condensation from the vents overhead. He and Sgt. Page were seated side by side with barely inches between, inside a square windowless box on the back of an army truck. Electronic equipment crammed the  drab beige space.

            Three monitor screens filled the wall in front of them, along with dozens of instrument dials and control switches. One monitor showed a map display that traced the flight path of their pair of Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.  A second monitor gave video feed from the UAV’s on-board TV camera, a real-time view that would have been full life-like color if this were daytime. Another monitor was switched to infrared night surveillance, picking up heat sources on the ground, which could be computer enhanced and compared with templates of possible sources, then turned into identification messages.  Just now the monitors were showing nothing interesting, as far as Spec. Jared Smith could see.

            Sgt. Hiram Page was the remote control pilot of their pair of oversized toy model planes. But just now the UAVs were on automatic pilot,  as usual when nothing was happening, programmed to patrol systematically over the terrain between I-15 and the diagonal spur of I-84 cutting through the mountain ranges of the Sawtooth National Forest fifty miles to the northwest.  There were many threads of little roads and unpaved tracks between the Ground Command Station and the outer fringes of the UAV’s patrol territory, crossing the grasslands and the mountain valleys that became steadily more barren further west, where southern Idaho turned into the fringes of the Utah desert.

            “Shit, there’s a lot of roads to cover, considering there’s nothing there,” Jared complained. “And why are there so many people driving around, at this time of night?”

            Sgt. Page put down his book. “Watch your language. Truckers like to drive at night. Especially when it’s a hundred degrees in the daytime. And I’d say not much cooler in here right now.”

            “Don’t they know better than to drive in a war zone?” Jared said.  His hands moved habitually back to the video game, then stopped under Page’s disapproving stare.

            The three weeks they had been encamped at Malad City had not been what Jared expected. Instead of rushing into combat, blasting away, escaping death, maybe getting wounded, coming home to show off his bandages and tell his friends about it-- instead of the wonderful story he was getting ready to tell, it was nothing so far but sitting in this hot little room being bored. 

            Even the Idaho locals seemed to know nothing was going to happen-- they went right on driving around in their pickup trucks, going to work, shopping, going to parties, whatever they did for fun out here in the farm country. While he and his unit were on combat alert, no leaves allowed, full combat dress all the time. It was getting old. Everybody knew nothing was going to happen.

            Eventually new orders would come down, the Utah National Guard brigades and the rest of the Idaho expeditionary force would move somewhere else. Maybe we’ll find the enemy then, Jared thought, reaching for his video game. Or maybe we’ll be sitting around somewhere else being bored.

            “Hey, look at that!” Jared said. The infrared display showed a green blob on a road 20 miles away, the thick penumbra glow of a ghostly balloon. “Something really big. A tank, or a tank on a HET, by the speed it’s moving.” A heavy-equipment transporter moved tanks on a giant truck-bed with a lot less fuel.

            “That’s probably just construction equipment. Somebody getting ready to work on the highways soon as it gets light,” Sgt. Page said.

            “Don’t you think we ought to call Captain Squires?”

            Sgt. Page swiveled in his chair towards the closed door at the back of the command station, then shook his head. “Squires about bit my head off last time I went to him in the middle of the night with one of your false alarms.”

            “We could blast that tank-hauler right now,” Jared said. “Our Hunter has a laser-guided munition on each wing. I’d sure like to see what that looks like hitting its target.”

            “Grow up,” Page said. “This is no video game. Those munitions aren't cheap, and this is the only Hunter team on this front. This is valuable property.  You talk Captain Squires into wasting one of those on a useless target and they’ll take it out of your hide-- and mine too.”

            “Look,” said Jared.  “There’s another one. That’s a lot of traffic on that road. Could be a whole enemy battalion.”

            Sgt. Page peered at the screen.  “A battalion is much bigger than that. And that reminds me,  that’s the second time you got me in trouble. Two weeks ago, when our reinforcements from Fort Carson arrived at night, you thought it was an enemy attack because they were driving around on the west side of I-15 looking for places to park.  That alert went all the way to General Cruz, and the Captain was definitely not happy about what came back down.” 

            Page looked at the screen again, shook his head definitely.  “See, they’re coming from the south. Probably the reinforcements from the Utah National Guard that everybody’s been waiting for.”

            He opened the door, reached back to pick up his book, and started outside. “That AC unit sounds like it’s about to break down. I’m going to get the tech to work on it. Keep your eyes on those monitors, Smith, and stay away from that video game.”

            There was definitely traffic out there, Jared could see. Some of it was coming up the little roads from Utah, and some of it was looping almost due east now, on highway 37, heading toward Malad City. He’d like to see what the IR feed looked like for the roads closer in, all those little back roads in the farm country and in the mountain valleys on the west side of I-15; some of them coming out of the Indian reservation outside of Pocatello.

            But the Hunters were on autopilot, and they were sweeping the area further west, cruising quietly at 110 knots, methodically sending in strip after strip of video of a aerial view several miles wide. If Sgt. Page were here, he could take over manual control and bring the UAVs nearer their own positions, to see what could be coming up on them in the dark. 

            Jared was tempted to climb over to Page’s seat and take the remote pilot controls; he had seen him operate them often enough, how different could it be from a video flight simulator? But if Page caught him, there really would be hell to pay. 

            Jared picked up his video game.  It was almost brand new, called “Civil War Two.”  It was the most realistic war game Jared had ever seen, and he had been playing war games ever since he was four years old. Not just monsters or unrealistic icons, it had the sight and sound of real war, from the monitors and map displays on down to the video feed as you actually experienced it. At least, how Jared expected to experience it, since he had never yet been in combat. The voice in his earbud started up again, “Warning, warning--”

            “Smith, what did I tell you?”  Sgt. Page was back. The AC units were working no better, and a blast of hot air had entered the command station while the door was open. “Give me that video game.”

            Jared resisted having the book-sized game tugged from his hands. “Listen, Sergeant, it’s no worse than that religious crap you’re always reading.”

            “Watch your language!” Page put the Book down hurriedly on his seat and ripped the video game away from Jared.

            The command station monitors were bright and full of green glowing shapes, moving rapidly.  The Hunters had gone on methodically covering their swath of territory, scanning nearer and nearer to the USA Army front along I-15, and the volume of traffic heading their direction was now plain to see.

            “That’s disobeying a direct order, Smith,” the Sgt. said. “I’m putting you on report, as soon as this shift is over.”

            “Why don’t you put me on report right now?” Jared tried to stand up in the cramped space. There were scarcely room to swing a punch. Jared landed a glancing blow and Page pushed him back into his chair.

            The command monitors were now flashing bright red messages: 

 

WARNING, ENEMY TROOP VEHICLES IDENTIFIED, TEN O’CLOCK TO TWO O’CLOCK, CLOSING TO THREE MILES. WARNING--

 

            In their jostling, a switch had been hit. The Ground Control station computer had switched to audible mode. The computer voice rang out:

            “Warning, warning, alert, alert!  Enemy fire incoming!”

            An explosion shattered the wall of the Ground Control Station. The monitors went out and then everything in Jared Smith’s consciousness was dark.

 

                                    **********************

 

            Most of the troops were asleep in their windowless pods, the portable quarters of the well-equipped modern army, with air conditioning on and doors shut.  Soldiers who weren’t asleep were listening to music on headphones or playing video games, sealed off from the hot night.  Chattering of helicopters came near.  Soldiers shrugged, swore, turned over to burrow their heads deeper into bedding. The military was always moving something day or night, among bases strung out over 50 miles with mountains in between, commanders flying in and out, shifting reinforcements and logistics.  The helicopters persisted overhead.

            Then--

 

 

 

Excerpt from “Year Two: Technowar.”  Randall Collins. Civil War Two. 2018. San Diego: Maren Ink.

SIMPLE DECLARATIVE SENTENCES

The endlessly repeated Hemingway-cliché is that he wrote simple declarative sentences.

 

Did he really?

 

He didn’t write declamations like Dickens, if that’s what you mean.

 

Declamatory, exclamatory: Oh pioneers!

 

Call me Ishmael.

 

The greatest opening line in American literature, followed by an ocean of Melvillean oratory.

 

What else is there but declarative sentences?

 

Questions interrogative

Commands imperative

Exclamations expletive

Orations orotund (with rounded mouth)

Odes, Oh-you-there listener--

 

Every newspaper is full of declarative sentences; every academic treatise, most novels. Much of how we talk-- not so grammatically if you record it and play it back, but cleaned-up, declarative enough.

 

Take a look at the opening lines of The Sun Also Rises  (1927).

 

         Robert Cohen was once middle-weight champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohen. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton.

 

The first sentence qualifies as simple declarative. The punch is in the following lines, which aren’t.

 

Or this, from For Whom the Bell Tolls  (1941).

 

         El Sordo was making his fight on a hilltop. He did not like this hill and when he saw it he thought it had the shape of a chancre. But he had no other choice except this hill and he had picked it as far away as he could see it and galloped for it, the automatic rifle heavy on his back, the horse labouring, barrel heaving between his thighs, the sack of grenades swinging against one side, the sack of automatic rifle pans banging against the other, and Joaquin and Ignacio halting and firing, halting and firing to give him time to get the gun in place.

 

Perhaps Hemingway got the reputation as a simple declarative writer from the short stories in  In Our Time (1926) with their vignettes from his newspaper days in the early 20s:

 

         They shot the six cabinet members at half past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were wet dead leaves in the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water. The other five stood very quietly against the wall. Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.

 

Or this, tell-it-like-it-is about a bullfight in Spain:

 

         The first matador got the horn through his sword hand and the crowd hooted him out. The second matador slipped, and the bull caught him through the belly and he hung on to the horn with one hand and held the other tight against the place, and the bull rammed him wham against the barrier and the horn came out, and he lay in the sand, and then got up like crazy drunk and he tried to slug the men carrying him away, and yelled for his sword but he fainted. The kid came on and had to kill five bulls because you can’t have more than three matadors, and the last bull he was so tired he could hardly get the sword in. He could hardly lift his arm. He tried five times and the crowd was quiet because it was a good bull and it looked like him or the bull and then he finally made it. He sat down on the sand and puked and they held a cape over him while the crowd hollered and threw things down into the bullring.

 

This is not exactly Dick and Jane: Jump, Dick, jump. See Jane jump too. Something else is going on besides simple and declarative.

 

Some of it is sarcasm:

 

         It was a frightfully hot day. We’d jammed an absolutely perfect barricade across a bridge. It was simply priceless. A big old wrought-iron grating from the front of a house. Too heavy to lift and you could shoot through it and they would have to climb over it. It was absolutely topping. They tried to go over it, and we potted them from forty yards. They rushed it, and officers came out alone and worked on it. It was an absolutely perfect obstacle. Their officers were very fine. We were frightfully put out when we heard the flank had gone, and we had to fall back.

 

Some of the simple declarative comes from Hemingway’s ear for uncomplicated people’s dialogue. (from The Killers, 1928):

 

         He wore a derby hat and a black overcoat buttoned across the chest. His face was small and white and he had tight lips. He wore a silk muffler and gloves.

         ‘Give me bacon and eggs,’ said the other man. He was about the same size as Al. Their faces were different, but they were dressed like twins. Both wore overcoats too tight for them. They sat leaning forward, their elbows on the counter.

         ‘Got anything to drink?’ Al asked.

         ‘Silver beer, bevo, ginger-ale,’ George said.

         ‘I mean you got anything to drink?’

         ‘Just those I said.’

         ‘This is a hot town,’ said the other. ‘What do they call it?’

         ‘Summit.’

         “Ever hear of it?’ Al asked his friend.

         ‘No,’ said the friend.

         ‘What do you do here nights?” Al asked.

         ‘They eat the dinner,’ his friend said. ‘They all come here and eat the big dinner.’

         ‘That’s right,’ George said.

         ‘So you think that’s right?’ Al asked George.

         ‘Sure.’

         ‘You’re a pretty bright boy, aren’t you?’

         ‘Sure,’ said George.

         ‘Well, you’re not,’ said the other little man.  ‘Is he, Al?’

         ‘He’s dumb,’ said Al. He turned to Nick. ‘What’s your name?’

         ‘Adams.’

         ‘Another bright boy,’ Al said. ‘Ain’t he a bright boy, Max?’

         ‘The town’s full of bright boys,’ Max said.

 

Hemingway is expert at capturing tones of voices. Simple and declarative doesn’t begin to capture what it’s about.

 

Another thing going on is Hemingway being economical, especially when he wants to describe a scene without repeating a lot of unnecessary grammar. (from A Way You’ll Never Be, 1934)

 

         The attack had gone across the field, been held up by machine-gun fire from the sunken road and the group of farmhouses, encountered no resistance in the town, and reached the banks of the river. Coming along the road on a bicycle, getting off to push the machine when the road became too broken, [he] saw what had happened by the position of the dead...

         In the grass and the grain, beside the road, there was much material: a field kitchen, it must have come over when things were going well; many of the calfskin-covered haversacks, stick bombs, helmets, rifles, sometimes one butt-up, the bayonet stuck in the dirt, they had dug quite a little at the last; stick bombs, rifles, entrenching tools, ammunition boxes, star-shell pistols, their shells scattered about, medical kits, gas masks, empty gas-mask cans, a squat, tripodded machine-gun in a nest of empty shells, full belts protruding from the boxes, the water-cooling can empty and on its side, the breech block gone, the crew in odd positions, and around them, in the grass, more of the typical papers.

         There were mass prayer books, group postcards showing the machine-gun unit in ranked and ruddy cheerfulness as in a football picture for a college annual; now they were humped and swollen in the grass; propaganda postcards showing a soldier in Austrian uniform bending a woman backwards over a bed; the figures were impressionistically drawn; very attractively depicted and had nothing in common with actual rape in which the woman’s skirts are pulled over her head to smother her, one comrade sometimes sitting on her head. There were many of these inciting cards which had evidently just been issued before the offensive. Now they were scattered with the smutty postcards, photographic; the small photographs of village girls by village photographers, the occasional pictures of children, and the letters, letters, letters. There was always much paper about the dead and the debris of this attack was no exception.

 

In The Snows  of Kilimanjaro (1933) a dying man’s memories:

 

         There was a log house, chinked white with mortar, on a hill above the lake... Then that log house was burned down and all the guns that had been on deer-foot racks above the open fire-place were burned and afterwards their barrels, with the lead melted in the magazines, and the stocks burned away, lay out on the heap of ashes that were used to make lye for the big iron soap kettles, and you asked Grandfather if you could have them to play with, and he said, no. You see they were his guns still and he never bought any others. Nor did he hunt any more. The house was rebuilt in the same place out of timber now and painted white and from the porch you see the poplars and the lake beyond; but there were never any more guns. The barrels of the guns that had hung on the deer feet on the wall lay out there on the heap of ashes and no one ever touched them.

 

Death in the Afternoon (1932) ends with a peroration about being a writer of one’s own life:

 

         If I could have made this enough of a book it would have had everything in it. The Prado, looking like some big American college building, with sprinklers watering the grass early in the bright Madrid summer morning; the bare white mud hills looking across towards Carabanchel; days on the train in August with the blinds pulled down on the side against the sun and the wind blowing them; chaff blown against the car in the wind from the hard earthen threshing floors; the odour of grain and the stone windmills...

         ...the cafe where you got your education learning who owed who money and who chiseled this from who and why he told him he could kiss his what and who had children by who and who married who before and after what and how long it took for this and that and what the doctor said. Who was so pleased because the bulls were delayed, being unloaded only the day of the fight, naturally weak in the legs, just two passes, poom, and it is all over, he said, and then it rained and the fight postponed a week and that was when he got it. Who wouldn’t fight with who and when and why and does she, of course she does, you fool, don’t you know she does? Absolutely and that’s all and in no other fashion, she gobbles them alive and all such valuable news you learn in cafes. In cafes where the boys are never wrong; in cafes where they are all brave; in cafes where the saucers pile and drinks are figured in pencil on the marble tops among the shucked shrimps of seasons lost and feeling good because there are no other triumphs so secure and every man a success by eight o’clock if somebody can pay the score in cafes.

         What else should it contain about a country you love so much? ... We’ve seen it all go and we’ll watch it go again. The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after. Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it’s made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it. No. It is not enough of a book, but still there were a few things to be said. There were a few practical things to be said.

 

Hemingway is a master of repetition for the sake of rhythm; prose that approaches poetry without trying to be poetic. And master of punctuation, bearing in mind that a period means full stop; semi-colon, half-stop; comma, brief pause; just plain ‘and’ means no pause at all, just keep the rhythm rolling and whatever you’re describing too. 

 

Bits of simple declarative, the building blocks.

 

NETWORK OF CREATIVITY: COMPOSERS AND PHILOSOPHERS

 

Networks are the actors on the stage of intellectual history.  Creativity is not an attribute of individual persons standing alone. Creativity happens in chains of individuals. They pass along skills and techniques. They extend each other's work. They build on rivalries to find new niches in the attention space of the field.

 

In The Sociology of Philosophies , I traced the careers and networks of 3000 philosphers and mathematicians, from all the major world civilizations, from about 500 B.C. to 1950 A.D. These are my main conclusions:

 

Major philosophers never appear alone; there are always 2 or 3 (or slightly more) of them in the same place and the same generation.

 

The most important philosophers are connected to others in two dimensions:  vertically across generations, from mentors to pupils or protégés; and horizontally among acquaintances, friends, and rivals. Often they begin as a small clique of rebels against the older generation, then split apart into rival positions once they achieve fame.

 

Look at the European network at the turn of the 20^th century. In this simplified network, we see Wittgenstein is a pupil of both Russell and Frege (and in close contact with G.E. Moore, where he acquired an interest in ordinary language). And Wittgenstein shares the same teacher—Frege —with  Carnap. Surprisingly, Carnap has a Neo-Kantian teacher in common with Heidegger, who was taught also by Husserl. Husserl in turn is only a few links from the mathematicians preceding the Vienna Circle—the two major opposing schools branch off from the same point. Wittgenstein and Heidegger are network cousins, so to speak.

 

What we can infer from these network patterns about the process of creativity? What is it that the younger generation learns from master-pupil chains? It cannot be simply imitation, since creativity means doing something new.  Great thinkers have many pupils, but the ones who loyally repeat their teachers do not become famous in their own right. Close contact with the creators of the previous generation is the way to acquire their methods of being innovative: not so much specific ideas as their way of positioning oneself in the field so as to do something distinctive. Creativity is a process of recombining concepts to find new combinations, such as those we see in the networks around Wittgenstein, Carnap, Heidegger, and Husserl.

 

Newcomers who become creative internalize a sense of the field. Concepts and the persons who create them become synonymous in their minds. The sense of who are ones allies and one’s enemies becomes automatic; such persons think and create faster than others. They appear to think intuitively, but this is not a lifelong individual attribute; it arises by experience in the centers of creative networks.

 

The same process happens in horizontal circles of "Young Turks" rebelling together: intense discussions and arguments within the group produce a strong sense of where the action is,  and what are the new niches they can create in moving beyond what has already been done. The Vienna Circle is another such example.

 

Do these patterns apply to all fields of creativity?  Yes, with some exceptions (I find it applies to painters, but novelists are different). But this has to be shown empirically for each field. I am now applying the network method to music composers in Europe from 1600 to  1930.

 

We will look at two of the networks: the German-speaking area from 1700 to 1900; and Russia from 1830-1930.  There are also networks for Italy, France, and elsewhere that I will not discuss.

 

My method is to assemble a large number of names of musicians: those in large CAPITALS  are major (such as Handel); small capitals are secondary (such as C.P.E. Bach); and small print are minor (such as Pachelbel). Rank is based on their long-term reputation, which I measure by number of performances and recordings of their music, music scores for piano, and by the amount that has been written about them. 

 

I checked their biographies, looking for details of who they took lessons from, or worked with as an apprentice or accompanist [these are network links with an arrow]. Network lines without arrows indicate persons who are friends and acquaintances. I limit these to contacts which happen early in the younger  musician’s career, preceding their major creativity. Lines with arrows at both ends indicate rivals, such as the famous rivalry between Wagner and Brahms. Links consisting of double lines indicate collaboration: these persons both worked on producing the same composition.

 

 

Look now at the German network.

 

The major composers are linked to each other, both vertically and horizontally. Many are direct contacts; some are mediated by secondary or minor figures in a two-link connection. Johann Sebastian Bach is connected to Mozart downstream, via of two of his sons, including the secondary figure  C.P.E. Bach (who for a time was more famous than his father). Mozart and Haydn have personal contact and exchanged mutual influences. Beethoven is a pupil of Haydn and possibly of Mozart. Also very important is the mediating link, Baron van Swieten, the leading music patron in Vienna—who was the early patron of both Mozart and Beethoven. Van Swieten, who had known C.P.E. Bach in Berlin,  also  revived Bach's music and propagated the idea that some music is perennial classics, not just ephemeral music for the present occasion, and that some composers are living classics in our midst. Beethoven was the first to benefit from this new status; Mozart came a little too early.

 

Via direct or 2-link connections, we can trace the network of important composers for 8 generations, from Bach and Handel down to Schoenberg and John Cage.

 

Patrons are an important part of the network. Haydn began his career as accompanist to a traveling opera singer, thus learning the current repertory; he then became the house composer for the palace orchestra of Prince Esterhazy. It was just at this time when orchestras in the modern sense developed, with large number of string players and other instruments; and the time of the shift from polyphonic counterpoint (characteristic of Bach and Handel) to homophonic compositions of melody line and supporting chords. Haydn was the first to have the opportunity to experiment with the melody-and-chord style, with his own orchestra; and to lay down the chief forms of orchestral music still popular to the present time. Liszt's father was a musician in this same orchestra, and the Esterhazy family sponsored the early training of Franz Liszt, who became the first big pop star, in the era when the modern piano spread into middle-class households, resulting in a big outburst of amateur music fans.

 

I will note two more ways of lauching a career. Schubert struggled in poverty, but (besides some lessons from Mozart's enemy, Salieri), he had the great advantage of being a choir singer in a school in Vienna that had its own student orchestra; this enabled Schubert in his teens to learn the scores of Mozart and Beethoven by conducting them. Schubert also could use this orchestra to try out symphonies of his own-- the earliest ones were imitative, but the later ones a distinctive blend of his own.

 

Wagner illustrates another way to acquire a network link that launches one's creative fame. His early career is in a theatre family, without direct contacts with important musicians. His early compositions are unsuccessful, until he reaches Paris around 1840, where he has contact with a conventional opera composer, Meyerbeer. More importantly, Wagner has to eke out a living working for publishers by writing out orchestra parts for opera composers like Donizetti. Wagner generates a revolution in opera by reacting against the operatic style in which the solo singer is the center and all the rest of the instruments are background-- a formula that Wagner reverses: the orchestra  carries the musical themes, and the singers provide accent marks.

 

This is creativity by negation: Wagner reverses one central element in the traditional style, while keeping other techniques such as chordal harmonies. This is similar to the development of non-Euclidean geometries, by rejecting the parallel lines postulate, then reworking the rest of traditional geometry on that basis. It became a technique of innovation in mathematics, such as creating non-commutative algebras, and then a variety of non-Euclidean geometries once the pathway was opened. This method of axiomatizing and then reorganizing the philosophical field was taken up by Wittgenstein two generations later, after Russell and Whitehead attempted it in the foundations of mathematics.

 

Wagner learned his technique, and formulated his distinctive style, by several years of grinding work at the heart of the opposing camp. Knowing the techniques of your enemies in detail is the crucial resource for those who want to establish a new direction. Reading and copying music scores gives a strong sense of how existing music is put together, and how it can be done differently. 

 

 

 

Turn now to the Russian network. The most prominent pattern is the group of "Young Turks" –the  young composers who set out to create a distinctively Russian national music. They were famously called the "mighty five" or "mighty handful" because they were featured in an early concert together, but only four of them are important. Balakirev is the earliest, the first to bring European techniques of orchestral composition into Russia in the 1850s and 60s. His network comes from several Russians who had gone to Germany and France: Glinka who introduced opera into Russia, and the Rubinstein brothers who founded the music conservatories at St. Petersburg and Moscow. The network connections are to European composers Donizetti and Berlioz, on one side, and Chopin and Liszt on the other.

 

The great Russian composers had to learn their orchestral techniques for themselves, since none of them attended conservatories (which did not yet exist). They are all from families of rich landowners, and they attend government schools for officials and military officers. Two of the most important, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, are the first professors of composition at the Moscow and St. Petersburg conservatories—and they got their posts before they had composed anything notable, learning on the job. Both of them published books on orchestration-- creating the lush Russian sound of full instrumentation, going beyond the string-dominated European orchestras.  In effect, the Russians had a musical version of the "advantage of comparative backwardness", jumping over the forming generations of European music into the late 19th century phase when the classical melody-plus-chords formula was being transcended.

 

The most radical of the Russian composers, Mussorgsky, was rather like a hippie-- full of radical ideas at the time of the freeing of the serfs, living on a commune, drinking heavily. He composes a nationalist Russian opera, Boris Godunov, full of the sounds of monk's chants and booming church bells. He has trouble getting it performed; at first he does not know enough about opera to have a part for a soprano. Rimsky-Korsakov becomes a mentor to the rest of the group, helping the others with orchestration.  Boris Godunov became known to the world in a posthumous version reworked by Rimsky-Korsakov, who also helped with the orchestration of Night on Bald Mountain, and Mussorgsky's unfinished opera, Khovanshchina.

 

The habit of collaborating and reworking each other's scores continued into the following generation. With the exception of Tchaikovsky, who I will discuss in a minute, Russian music was unknown to the world until Diaghilev produced Boris Godunov in 1907 in Paris, and the Ballets Russes between 1909 and 1913, introducing the work of Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, and above all Mussorgsky to the western world. Debussy and other modernist composers collaborated with Stravinsky in the Sacre du printemps / The Rite of Spring that caused a sensation and a riot on its debut in 1913.  Another French modernist, Ravel, orchestrated Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which originally existed only in a piano version.  The "mighty handful" became a movement, stretching across two generations, with a self-conscious program to create a distinctive non-Western music-- initially Russian nationalist, but soon the leading edge of modernist music.

 

Against all this, Tchaikovsky was a hold-out. In the network, we see the heavy two-headed arrow between him and Mussorgsky: they criticized and insulted each other's music. Tchaikovsky continued to hold to the European path, lush romantic music with full touches of Russian orchestration, but still in the melody-and-chord tradition; he also creates the modern ballet repertoire, which had been stifled in old forms. Tchaikovsky was the one important Russian composer who had good contacts to the West during his career; he travelled widely in Europe in the 1880s, conducting his own works, meeting von Bulow in the Wagner network, and bringing back the latest European techniques to Russia. He and Mussorgsky had opposing niches. Here we see that niches in the music world are not merely vertical, not just the old generation against the new, but opposing ways to innovate. Tchaikovsky's niche is continued by his protégé Rachmaninoff (who also has network links to Rimsky-Korsakov and to the virtuoso pianist Liszt); the resulting combination in Rachmaninoff brings together spectacular piano technique, beautiful romantic melodies, and lush orchestration with overtones of Russian church bells.

 

To summarize: the networks contain more musicians than innovators. Many of them imitate their masters; Beethoven had many pupils, but chiefly they were flashy piano players rather than innovators. I have argued that creativity begins by internalizing a sense of the field, of what has already been done and who are the rival positions. Mozart had a tremendous memory for music that he had heard; he got this from so many different sources, as his father paraded the child around Europe, that he was able to blend many elements into his distinctly fluid style. And persons who internalize the field and sense the combinations can compose swiftly; they develop huge emotional energy, the sense of initiative and trajectory that enables them to produce large amounts of new work. Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven are all energy demons, workaholics, one might say, except that the modern cliché does not capture the delight they feel in their work.

 

And innovators tend to be closely tied to innovations in instruments: Bach began his career as a teenager repairing and building organs, becoming a virtuoso of what could be played on the big new instrument with both hands and feet. He grew up at the time when the grand organ was perfected, and this grandeur pervades his work. Beethoven from an early age spent much time with piano-makers, pushing the field of what can be done as pianos became stronger, louder and more resonant—creating his distinctive brand of dramatic music which he later transferred to the symphony. Musicians, like laboratory scientists, develop in a hybrid network of humans and their instruments, experimenting with the technical possibilities to find what can be discovered—in this case in the realm of sound.

 

Let me close with an example of innovative technique in the career of Descartes. Medieval mathematicians understood many of the concepts and operations of algebra, but they had to work them out verbally. Some abbreviations were developed, but solving a problem was still mind-fatiguing, until Descartes mechanized the proess. He set up basic procedures: Organize every mathematical statement of knowns and unknowns by lining them up to the left and right of an equals sign. If more than one equation applies, line them up one above the other. Rearrange the terms by performing the same operations, such as adding or multiplying, to both sides of the equation. Substitute terms from one equation into another, until we get an equation for the term we are looking for.  Rearranging the equations on paper becomes a mechanical process.

 

Today any school-child can do what the greatest minds before Descartes found difficult.  And it opened up the path to seeking new techniques in mathematics: Descartes himself did it again with analytical geometry, and in applying the axiomatic method to philosophy.

 

Sophistication in math and philosophy came with the recognition that innovations in technique are the path to further discoveries. This also happened in music. Unlike amateurs who merely enjoy the music, creative composers look for the techniques previously used in their network, and construct new music by innovating in technique. Similarly, creativity in philosophy comes from acquiring the techniques—or should we say meta-techniques—of constructing new philosophies.