How important is music?

[Quijote]

Looks like we're getting close to Darwinism again. We have been warned off this topic (see above, somewhere). Perhaps this article might prove a little more illuminating :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/...ge?INTCMP=SRCH

[Quijote]

This might sound a bit silly, but I would suggest Bach.

I should have answered your response more intelligently, Sorrano, my apologies. Bach, yes, for sure. Other writers mention Beethoven (no prizes there) and Schubert (needs more clarification).
Roehre will add that a Bruckner fugue is like a Beethoven one : never fully worked through.

[Sorrano]

The lyricism of the laendlers may be Schubertian or linked to him.

[Preston]

Looks like we're getting close to Darwinism again. We have been warned off this topic (see above, somewhere).

I apologize. I had forgotten about the Darwinism thing. Please delete that post if necessary.

Perhaps this article might prove a little more illuminating :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/...ge?INTCMP=SRCH

That is quite strange indeed. And is quite a hopeless idea. It makes me wonder if any real research was even questioned? It also makes me wonder about the true roots of this experiment?

Anyway, back on topic now. See below, momentarily.

[Sorrano]

I should have answered your response more intelligently, Sorrano, my apologies. Bach, yes, for sure. Other writers mention Beethoven (no prizes there) and Schubert (needs more clarification).
Roehre will add that a Bruckner fugue is like a Beethoven one : never fully worked through.

I wonder if Bruckner's harmonic ambitions are more closely linked to Bach than anyone else, as well. We think of Bruckner's contrapuntal technique, but I think there is much more to the harmonic side (in relationship to Bach) than might be taken at face value. It's been years since I've done any analysis but my feelings are that Bruckner's harmonic structures were of considerable importance to him.

[Preston]

As for I guess one would say 12-tone and chromatic tuning, thank Pythagoras for that divine system - which is an extremely mathematical tuning system, that Pythagoras probably created for a great purpose and because of a great meaning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_tuning


In the most traditional or truest sense:

As for some of the Eastern tunings I once read that they were created by a person who became so musically attuned that he could make flutes that sounded like the voice of the various birds. That and because of the deep association with nature that certain people (mystics, etc.) of the east had the eastern tuning systems came to be. That is very traditional eastern tuning systems. It is quite fascinating. The sages and mystics became so musically attuned they would make instruments that did not really/entirely require tuning but would focus on things like the breath of the player, or the feeling that comes from the sound of the given instrument, just sounds (which is very key), etc. Though at the same time no doubt they were perfectally capable of writing songs, melody, etc. - which they probably may have done. Though the sound of melodies, harmony, etc. would probably be about anything but the sounds and styles and forms the western world has so embraced.

I love the idea of no form in music - just sounds (whether it is the sound of a rock, or the leaves rustling, or the shakuhachi, gongs, etc. Just sounds - though I cannot understand just sound, which I why I do not listen to them. One of the things I would like to understand in life is just sound. Such as a rock hit with another rock - what does that mean? Or a rock hit with a certain stick - what would that mean? Etc.

Though, western and eastern in this case is just stereotyping, and it comes down to the individual.

[Quijote]

[...] I love the idea of no form in music - just sounds (whether it is the sound of a rock, or the leaves rustling, or the shakuhachi, gongs, etc.

John Cage will be delighted to hear you say that, Preston.

Just sounds - though I cannot understand just sound, which I why I do not listen to them. One of the things I would like to understand in life is just sound. Such as a rock hit with another rock - what does that mean? Or a rock hit with a certain stick - what would that mean? Etc.

Oh, I think you do. Take the sound of the telephone. That familiar ringing tone means someone is 'phoning you (though it may be a wrong number). Take that car honking : it means someone is alerting you to their presence (normally). Take the groaning noise you make when the dentist extracts a poorly anaethetized tooth : it means "pain". To our human ears, sounds "signify", to put it very simply. On the other hand, to enjoy sounds simply for their sonic quality (without abstracting compositional intent), where is the harm? Two rocks gently hitting each other due to river or sea motion : a very pleasant sound to my ears; hitting a rock with a stick is a little bit different in that it implies human agency : also a nice sound, with rhythmic potential, if you care to construct it that way.

Asking what "sound" means is akin to asking what "blue" means, in my simplistic opinion. By the way, what does "blue" mean?

[Preston]

I have had confused and mixed feelings about this, but now I understand: Imo as of now - there should only be sounds and should be no tuning - in a sense. I renounce anykind of "tuning" or "form"... unless one is to become so attuned to sound they understand the precision of a tuning - which is almost next to impossible. Tuning (and right now I am thinking especially twelve-tone) is complete madness. I easily see the horror of the all too commonly structrured melody - it is insanity.

The key with 12-tone is to understand the math behind it - only then will it be properly used.

Long-live the great genius of Pythagoras!

Renounce tuning, embrace just sound - so to say.

[Preston]

Oh, I think you do. Take the sound of the telephone. That familiar ringing tone means someone is 'phoning you (though it may be a wrong number). Take that car honking : it means someone is alerting you to their presence (normally). Take the groaning noise you make when the dentist extracts a poorly anaethetized tooth : it means "pain". To our human ears, sounds "signify", to put it very simply. On the other hand, to enjoy sounds simply for their sonic quality (without abstracting compositional intent), where is the harm? Two rocks gently hitting each other due to river or sea motion : a very pleasant sound to my ears; hitting a rock with a stick is a little bit different in that it implies human agency : also a nice sound, with rhythmic potential, if you care to construct it that way.

Well said. It is really all too deep, at least for me, and you would have to tap in to the world of sound, much like the maker of the flutes. Though, it has been done.

Asking what "sound" means is akin to asking what "blue" means, in my simplistic opinion. By the way, what does "blue" mean?

I do not know - which applies to a lot of things.

[Sorrano]

With respect to Philip's post I think it is needful to understand that many composers have attempted to recreate some of these sounds with conventional means. How often have birds been incorporated into music, or water, or sounds of a storm? Cage's ideas are not all that out of place; he's simply skipping the "middleman", if you will, and jumping straight to the source.

[Quijote]

I wonder if Bruckner's harmonic ambitions are more closely linked to Bach than anyone else, as well. We think of Bruckner's contrapuntal technique, but I think there is much more to the harmonic side (in relationship to Bach) than might be taken at face value. It's been years since I've done any analysis but my feelings are that Bruckner's harmonic structures were of considerable importance to him.

My recent listening to various symphonies of Bruckner (especially the later ones, the 5th, 8th and 9th in particular) show - to my ears - a sense of harmonic "subversion" that leaves Brahms looking more like the provincial organist-church composer than Bruckner ever was! The reasons for Bruckner's "exclusion" from the accepted canon are complex (especially in the Anglo-Saxon world), but this is rapidly changing. There is no doubt in my mind that Bruckner's day is coming...

[Sorrano]

I couldn't agree more! The 5th opened to my mind the enormous impact of the harmonic structure in his works. People get caught up so much in the linear aspect of the thematic material that the overall harmonic structure slips by them and therein lies the great beauty of his symphonic output.

[Euan Mackinnon]

Megan

I have been away so apologies for entering this thread rather late and when it has drifted rather from your original questions.

1. Did music come before structured languages as a means of communication.

If you haven’t read it, you might find Steven Mithen’s The Singing Neanderthals interesting. It deals in detail with the evolutionary relationship between music and language suggesting that they had a common ancestor.

A couple of reviews – the first very short, the second rather more detailed – give you an idea of the ground covered.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.p...=9780674025592
http://silentlistening.wordpress.com...-neanderthals/

2. And is the study of music important in furthering our understanding of the human condition?

I think that, potentially, this question leads to some really deep insights. However, that does depend upon how you define ‘the human condition’.

Perhaps, Megan, before I go any further, you could briefly describe how you see the term (especially as you have requested that Darwinism is kept out of the thread).

Thank you.

Euan

[Megan]

Thank Euan, I did have a look at the link you gave and without being too critical, I really wonder if we have come much further in archeology than the musings of Sr. James Frazer and the Golden Bough. You will recall that Frazer's view was that ancient societies were based on myth and the power of magic. So to take something like music, its purpose was useful in war chants to unify the warriors of one group who fought against another group, there is a similar kind of thing you can see to this day in aboriginal and maori war chants , I am not trying to be flippant here, but it does seem to me that archeology and the state of its evidence or lack of evidence at the present time doesn't really put it much above the status of Frazer's Golden Bough.
I think the real problem is, is that we just don't know enough about what music is in itself as a kind of philosophical reality or construct. Nietzsche said some very interesting things on music, which unfortunately, because of his other strange views have tended to be a bit ignored. He wondered in what world music could be said to exist, for instance, when music stops playing , does it start playing somewhere else. Is a musical notation similar to a formal written language, but then why is it that you can read a sentence in English , but musical notes have to be transposed into some sort of scale to make any sense. Nietzsche was a brilliant classical scholar, particularly of ancient Greece, and he thought that music was rather like tragedy or drama in that it enabled a catharsis to take place, whereby the community enabled dangerous emotions to be purged in a safe way. When we look at the ancienbt world though, we don't know enough about music making to draw any conclusions. It was used for war, relaxation for those lucky enough to be able to do that, and probably for relgious functions as well.
Did the ancients regard music as art?
So far as the human condition is concerned, the spiritual nature of music , its not something you can touch or see, but only something you can hear, means that it is a fairly privileged way of communicating. Music certainly conects into all the higher faculties, like imagination, sympathy, intellect, reason etc. The Romantics went one better and prompted this notion they got from German philosophy of Einfuhlung, meaning the sense of oneness that we feel with the music when we listen to it, so that as long as the music is playing, in T.S. Eliot's words, you hear the ''music .... so deeply,
that it is not heard at all, but you are the music, while the music lasts.''

Music is the closest thing we have outside religion to an out of body experience, but its deeper meaning , origin is something which eludes us, at least for the present time.