The essence of music

[french frank]

Or, What is Music?

Posts to be moved here from the Pedants thread

[LMcD]

'I'm glad I don't know anything about music. It might stop me enjoyng it'.

I'm probably living proof of the accuracy of Beecham's assertion that the English love the noise it makes. .

[french frank]

I'm probably living proof of the accuracy of Beecham's assertion that the English love the noise it makes. .

Diff'rent strokes . I've never been anything approaching an audiophile and have never possessed or coveted top-end audio equipment. I'm sure it's weird and incomprehensible (not least to me) that I feel the music itself is something other than the 'noise' it makes. I can't explain how my brain is processing what I hear: certainly not in the same way as a genuinely 'musical' person who can even hear the music in their head by simply reading a score. But I do need to concentrate intensively to extract anything 'enjoyable' from listening. Call me passing strange, but there's nothing I can do about it . End of humiliating confession.

PS Hope this helps

[oddoneout]

Diff'rent strokes . I've never been anything approaching an audiophile and have never possessed or coveted top-end audio equipment. I'm sure it's weird and incomprehensible (not least to me) that I feel the music itself is something other than the 'noise' it makes. I can't explain how my brain is processing what I hear: certainly not in the same way as a genuinely 'musical' person who can even hear the music in their head by simply reading a score. But I do need to concentrate intensively to extract anything 'enjoyable' from listening. Call me passing strange, but there's nothing I can do about it . End of humiliating confession.

PS Hope this helps

I wouldn't dream of calling you strange - passing or otherwise FF! We are all different - as shown by the strong views expressed on the merits or otherwise of composers and performers - but that also extends to the way we hear/experience the music.
My mother's listening was often a deeply involved and intense process(especially with those works that linked with her faith), but even at a lesser level her attention and awareness were considerable. It wasn't always easy to live with, especially when we were young, as it felt like a form of exclusion. In comparison I often felt rather inadequate, but over the years I've realised that I often do manage to pick up quite a lot of the detail, not just the general reaction, but I can't express or explain it in technical terms as she did nor, I suspect, experience music as fully as she did.

[smittims]

I think you're right,ff, that music is something other than the sounds . It's something ineffable conveyed by a language of pitch, rhythm, dynamics and timbre. And that's what's so wonderful about it, for me; it's why I prefer so-called 'pure' or 'abstract' music (i.e. music about music, not music with a story or words) .

[Serial_Apologist]

I think you're right,ff, that music is something other than the sounds . It's something ineffable conveyed by a language of pitch, rhythm, dynamics and timbre. And that's what's so wonderful about it, for me; it's why I prefer so-called 'pure' or 'abstract' music (i.e. music about music, not music with a story or words) .

Being in agreement with you that music is a form of language my previous neighbours, sticklers of pedantry, would probably accuse us both of making a category mistake! The British jazz saxophonist John Surman has however spoken of music as being a language, a dialect, or dialects of different musical cultures which can be brought together as one in improvised settings. Postmodernist principles proclaim an equality of all musical manifestations and advocate different but equally valid criteria for purposes of understanding and appreciation. I tend not to think of music which is about itself and its inner processes (as opposed to referring to literary or other external inspirations, as found in word settings or symphonic poems) as absolute music, rather than abstract music, as seen in terms of heralding 20th century pictorial abstraction. Seen in relation to language, Alan Watts had this to say - and I have to say he presents a good rationale for deep listening to music:

"Music is our nearest approximation to Boehme's 'sensual language', for, unlike ordinary language, it does not refer to anything beyond itself, and though it has phrases and patterns, it is without sentences which separate subject from object, and parts of speech which separate things from events. 'Abstract' as they may at first seem to be, music and pure mathematics are closer to life than are useful languages which point to meanings beyond themselves. Ordinary language refers to life, but music is living. But life itself is made to behave as ordinary language when it is lived for a purpose beyond itself, when the present serves the future, or when the body is exploited for the purposes of the soul. Such a way of life is therefore 'beside itself' - insane- and because it is being made to behave as language and words it becomes as empty as 'mere words'. It has no recourse except to go on and on to the future to which the present apparently refers, only to find that here, too, the meaning is still beyond.

"The liberative artist plays the part of Orpheus by living in the mode of music instead of the mode of language. His entire activity is dancing, rhythm for its own sake, and in this way he [sic] becomes a vortex which draws others into its pattern ..." (My emphases added) (Watts, A. Invitation to the dance, in Psychotherapy East and West, Jonathan Cape, London, 1971, PP193-194).

[french frank]

Being in agreement with you that music is a form of language my previous neighbours, sticklers of pedantry, would probably accuse us both of making a category mistake! The British jazz saxophonist John Surman has however spoken of music as being a language, a dialect, or dialects of different musical cultures which can be brought together as one in improvised settings.

I've also heard objections to the idea of music being a 'language', and as a linguist I feel that the term 'language' is a bit earthbound. Does 'describing' music and 'defining' music amount to the same thing? Is it no more than what each individual feels/thinks it is? We each know what we get from it, why we value it - but we all experience it differently?

[Ein Heldenleben]

I've also heard objections to the idea of music being a 'language', and as a linguist I feel that the term 'language' is a bit earthbound. Does 'describing' music and 'defining' music amount to the same thing? Is it no more than what each individual feels/thinks it is? We each know what we get from it, why we value it - but we all experience it differently?

That’s right . Music is not a language let alone a “universal” language. It can’t communicate with anything like the precision of even the most basic sign language. It’s dominated by Western diatonicism ( largely because of US and British pop) which would have been a mystery to the Ancients and ,until recently, two thirds of the worlds population.

[Bella Kemp]

I have to say that I was enjoying Radio 3 Unwind one morning until Dr Whatever- her -name- is announced that in the next segment a professor mate of hers would explain why our brains found certain music soothing. I'm not a fan of these faddish 'explanations' based on what is considered the latest science. We are moved because we are moved. Having said that, it is a mystery to me why I may be devastated by a certain performance of a piece of music and yet other people will be left entirely cold. In the same way I am Christian to the core of my being, although acknowledge other pathways to God, but atheism is beyond my comprehension. Funny old life this.

[Roslynmuse]

I've been involved in music all my working life, as a performer, teacher, listener... ...and it is still a great mystery to me. I remember reading the disputed (?) Shostakovich memoirs, Testimony, when I was a student and being particularly struck by his comment that the folk music he heard in his youth had the capacity to move him more that anything else. The one thing that I am sure of for myself is that associations, memories, are the things that continue to move me - certain performances, particular voices, they are my comfort and joy, even after a long day working with my students. And the great thing is that we can continue to form those associations.

A composer friend once talked about listening in the 'right' or 'wrong' way; I don't really believe in that distinction; but I know that there are times when I listen with greater clarity of mind and that is when I am most receptive to hearing new pieces - we are all so different, with the baggage we bring with us, and sometimes I wonder if my more innocent younger self heard music in a more authentic (true to myself) way. And that reminds me of a passage in one of David Lodge's books (Changing Places?) describing the professor of English being presented with the choice of Bartok quartets or trad jazz and feeling he ought to listen to the Bartok but - with some guilt - listening to the jazz instead. How sad that he was experiencing that guilt!

[smittims]

Maybe I didn't make my meaning clear. I don't actually think music is a language, but that it is an ineffable thing conveyed by language, The Language is the notes, but the music is an idea behind the notes. When I hear music, I'm hearing the sound of music , just as, when I hear a train, I'm hearing the sound of the train.

I haven't attempted to analyse it further than that. I think life is more interesting when some things are left unexplained. .

[kernelbogey]

That’s right . Music is not a language let alone a “universal” language....

I think it's a different category of language, which can communicate in a combination of cognitive (rational) and affective (emotional) modes. The balance of these has differed as between (say) the Baroque and the Romantic eras, yet each of those combinations (broadly speaking) communicates to me.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I think it's a different category of language, which can communicate in a combination of cognitive (rational) and affective (emotional) modes. The balance of these has differed as between (say) the Baroque and the Romantic eras, yet each of those combinations (broadly speaking) communicates to me.

There are no “different “ categories of language . It’s derived from the word for tongue and essentially means spoken or capable of being spoken . Even used metaphorically the word doesn’t work in relation to music. Music has no precise meaning and communicates nothing more than a vague emotion - an emotion that will vary , as Bella Kemp rightly suggests, from person to person. The phrase “I want something to eat ” cannot be expressed in music nor - unlike say the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth - is it subject to interpretation .Thinking of music as a “universal language “ is a bit of a sentimental cliché. There are swathes of the global population to whom the opening of Beethovens fifth will just not resonate but the phrase “I want something to eat “ certainly will . It can even be mimed.

[Serial_Apologist]

There are no “different “ categories of language . It’s derived from the word for tongue and essentially means spoken or capable of being spoken . Even used metaphorically the word doesn’t work in relation to music. Music has no precise meaning and communicates nothing more than a vague emotion - an emotion that will vary , as Bella Kemp rightly suggests, from person to person. The phrase “I want something to eat ” cannot be expressed in music nor - unlike say the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth - is it subject to interpretation .Thinking of music as a “universal language “ is a bit of a sentimental cliché. There are swathes of the global population to whom the opening of Beethovens fifth will just not resonate but the phrase “I want something to eat “ certainly will . It can even be mimed.

Nevertheless there are quasi-verbal approximations to be found in music. Going through a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in my head this afternoon, I was struck by how frequently sequences of ideas presented themselves as questions, or at any rate interrogations, and answers, or attempts at such. Call and response seems to be quite a common phenomenon in music - not just were typically cited, as in Renaissance antiphony, Blues or Gospel.

[french frank]

Nevertheless there are quasi-verbal approximations to be found in music. Going through a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in my head this afternoon, I was struck by how frequently sequences of ideas presented themselves as questions, or at any rate interrogations, and answers, or attempts at such.

But how adequately can one communicate in words, written or spoken, the necessarily subjective ideas which the music evokes; or even evaluate objectively what Beethoven might have had in his mind?