The essence of music

[french frank]

seriously though, wouldn't one say that anything that is defined is surely so by way of the field of definitions conventionally ascribed to it by given authorities at any specific time?

I was using the word define in a very literal way from finis, a boundary or limit, from which one should be able to illustrate that what lies beyond that boundary is no longer 'music'. It may be something very beautiful, profound, powerful (and whatever adjectives can be applied to a piece of music), but is there a point at which it can no longer be considered music? And if there is no limit or boundary, at least one should be able to describe what all these 'musics' have in common to be thought of as 'all just music'.

Is there any purpose to categorising different types according to 'definitions' - something which in some quarters is strongly resisted? Yet at the same time the BBC offers radio services for Black music, for Asian music, for contemporary popular music and so on. And Radio 3 has programmes for 'early music' and 'new' music. What is it that they all have in common that makes them 'music'? Anthropogenic sounds created as diversion for anthropoids?

[Ian Thumwood]

I want to turn the idea of a broad definition on it's head. All sound can be notated but this does not make it music. More contemporary composers are pushing the boundaries of what music might be but i think most is still musical even if i don't care for it.

i love history and recall reading once that the most sophiisticated cave paintings are often the oldest. I think we are now in a low point where music as art is concerned. Both classical music and jazz are running out of inspiration and i feel pop
music is now dominated by non-musicians. I do not feel that 21st century is a place that will leave much music behind for future audiences to appreciate. Not sure if this makes identifying the essence of music any easier. I do feel that our perceptions of music do change over time and there are composers who are now considered essential but not so understood in their own time.

[Serial_Apologist]

I was using the word define in a very literal way from finis, a boundary or limit, from which one should be able to illustrate that what lies beyond that boundary is no longer 'music'. It may be something very beautiful, profound, powerful (and whatever adjectives can be applied to a piece of music), but is there a point at which it can no longer be considered music? And if there is no limit or boundary, at least one should be able to describe what all these 'musics' have in common to be thought of as 'all just music'.

Is there any purpose to categorising different types according to 'definitions' - something which in some quarters is strongly resisted? Yet at the same time the BBC offers radio services for Black music, for Asian music, for contemporary popular music and so on. And Radio 3 has programmes for 'early music' and 'new' music. What is it that they all have in common that makes them 'music'? Anthropogenic sounds created as diversion for anthropoids?

Wagner's theory was that music and speech are forms of communication evolved from primitive utterance: music went one way, speech the other. He felt that the new kind of music he was creating sought to re-unjite music and speech by making harmonic and melodic movement directly expressive of the emotional sung content. Unfortunately he believed that the German language, being closer to its primitive roots than other (presumably European) languages, rendered it purer and therefore more suitable for his purposes, thus handing the pure Ayrian race devotees a race ideology for future use; but should this automatically rule out his basic idea?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Wagner's theory was that music and speech are forms of communication evolved from primitive utterance: music went one way, speech the other. He felt that the new kind of music he was creating sought to re-unjite music and speech by making harmonic and melodic movement directly expressive of the emotional sung content. Unfortunately he believed that the German language, being closer to its primitive roots than other (presumably European) languages, rendered it purer and therefore more suitable for his purposes, thus handing the pure Ayrian race devotees a race ideology for future use; but should this automatically rule out his basic idea?

I think Wagner wrote in German for two reasons - his audience was likely to be largely German and he wanted to communicate as widely as possible and secondly he was an ardent German nationalist. The German Ur- language theory I’ve never read in any of his works . German is no closer to the root (not primitive ) Indo -European language than English or many other European languages. The exact site and root of the origin Indo-European language is a matter of quite a lot of debate. Ancient Hittite ( in Turkey ) could be one.

[french frank]

[Wagner] ... felt that the new kind of music he was creating sought to re-unjite music and speech by making harmonic and melodic movement directly expressive of the emotional sung content.

I wouldn't know what special techniques he created for those effects, but surely composers of song had long matched their music to the emotional content of the words? There was an account of young Mozart (I think it's described in Deutsch's documentary biography) doing special compositional exercises creating different emotional effects.

Unfortunately he believed that the German language, being closer to its primitive roots than other (presumably European) languages, rendered it purer and therefore more suitable for his purposes

He may well have believed that. As Ein Heldenleben says, there's no reason to think modern German is closer to its primitive roots than other European languages from different families: it was his language so obviously it was the one he preferred to use.

[Serial_Apologist]

I wouldn't know what special techniques he created for those effects, but surely composers of song had long matched their music to the emotional content of the words? There was an account of young Mozart (I think it's described in Deutsch's documentary biography) doing special compositional exercises creating different emotional effects.



He may well have believed that. As Ein Heldenleben says, there's no reason to think modern German is closer to its primitive roots than other European languages from different families: it was his language so obviously it was the one he preferred to use.

Admittedly mine is only based on a reductionist secondhand reading of Art and Revolution, in which, I understand, Wagner claimed that earlier German (and by implication other national) composers had made a fundamental mistake in rhythmically subordinating music to poetic conventions, arguing that not only was a new music harmonically intimately sensitive to emotional shifts in the words now needed but a new poetry that measured up to a responsibility to subordinate intellect to feeling, thereby overcoming the dualism commonly thought as a consequence of Christian dogma to falsely separate these two faculties or communicable modes of expression. Nietzsche was the obvious influence there. I think I've got this right now! Symbolist poetry has been explained as one response to this demand, and leaving aside matters pertaining to the closeness of German versus any other language to its linguistic roots it was by no accident that the one characteristic that irked Debussy about his own passion for "Tristan" was the unsuitability of Wagner's advanced chromaticism, with its wide vocal leaping, German-inflected tessitura, for purposes of creating the French operatic equivalent he sought for almost ten years in writing his own Pélleas et Mélisande. The differences in melodic contour and the harmonic approach deriving from linguistic characteristics differences (and more contentiously derived or otherwise differences in national temperament) are one of the most immediate impressions comparing the two works (or comparing French and German classical music in general since Wagner and Debussy, for that matter).

[french frank]

Makes sense, I suppose

arguing that not only was a new music harmonically intimately sensitive to emotional shifts in the words now needed but a new poetry that measured up to a responsibility to subordinate intellect to feeling,

Could be. Might be why I don't take to Wagner myself .

the one characteristic that irked Debussy about his own passion for "Tristan" was the unsuitability of Wagner's advanced chromaticism, with its wide vocal leaping, German-inflected tessitura, for purposes of creating the French operatic equivalent he sought for almost ten years in writing his own Pélleas et Mélisande. The differences in melodic contour and the harmonic approach deriving from linguistic characteristics differences (and more contentiously derived or otherwise differences in national temperament) are one of the most immediate impressions comparing the two works (or comparing French and German classical music in general since Wagner and Debussy, for that matter).

Thank you. That does seem a more sophisticated approach than the child Mozart's.

[Serial_Apologist]

a more sophisticated approach than the child Mozart's.

Which reminds me of a radio talk many years ago in which the presenter (I've forgotten who) remarked on the common view that represented the mature Mozart's approach to composing as major/minor diatonic harmonic thinking at its most fundamental, on the contrary pointing out its actual sophistication, as for example in the sudden deliberately stressed upward modulation a short way into the slow movement of the 40th symphony, the surprise element of which strikes us today as mild but would have shocked the first-night audience. The subtlety lies in the illusion Mozart creates of a downward plunge which is in fact produced by a brief upward shift of key by a semitone.

[Ian Thumwood]

I can see that, for some, Mozart would represent the very essence of music. Surprised that his name has not been cited in this thread but i think that there is a sense of the spontaneous about Mozart plus the simplicity of his music which would make him a good candidate for some.

[smittims]

Simplicity? Try the finales of the G major Quartet K387 and the Jupiter Symphony, or the Act One finale of Don Giovanni (not to mention the complex relationship between tonality and drama in all three Da Ponte operas , and then think about what you mean by 'simplicity'.

[french frank]

Simplicity? Try the finales of the G major Quartet K387 and the Jupiter Symphony, or the Act One finale of Don Giovanni (not to mention the complex relationship between tonality and drama in all three Da Ponte operas , and then think about what you mean by 'simplicity'.

There's a quote of his in reply to one of his pupils who complained that all the exercises were 'easy for you'. His reply was that it had taken years of study and practice to make it look easy.

[smittims]

Exactly: the art that conceals art.