The essence of music

[french frank]

Yes of course. (Though, re Pooh, I recall Rabbit may have made a similar point to him. )

I am indeed lost for words just now! I was trying also to imply that (in the case of opera) as well as the dramatic & character-describing things going on in the music*, the same 'abstract' processes as in the Eroica are also going on simultaneously.
(* How often have we read or heard in commentary the elaboration, in relation to an operatic scene, Such and such is now going on, but the orchestra tells us what is really happening'?)

Yes, I see that point. I suppose in starting the thread I was actally engaging in analysis ad absurdum. Music can reflect exactly what we see going on but also what we can't see which is also going on. But that seems to be music as narrative, and there could be music as picture. What is going on in music in the abstract? (I muse to myself ).

[vinteuil]

So if I played you an orchestral extract from, say, The Makropulos Affair could you tell me precisely what action was taking place?

... I don't think that is what the kernel is claiming. But, for example, in the da Ponte operas what Mozart is 'telling' us in the music can be 'truer' than the words that the protagonists are fumbling over...

.

[Sir Velo]

... I don't think that is what the kernel is claiming. But, for example, in the da Ponte operas what Mozart is 'telling' us in the music can be 'truer' than the words that the protagonists are fumbling over... .

Exactly my point! Music can only give very imprecise approximations of feeling and as such does not function as language in any meaningful sense. It can be a tool for communication, and a very effective one, but we should be careful of ascribing more sophisticated linguistic characteristics to it. That to me has at least a kernel of sense.

[Ein Heldenleben]

... I don't think that is what the kernel is claiming. But, for example, in the da Ponte operas what Mozart is 'telling' us in the music can be 'truer' than the words that the protagonists are fumbling over...

.

That happens in Wagner and Verdi but I’m struggling to find an example in Mozart . It’s often said that in Wagner the orchestra is the singers unconscious. What Mozart is very good at is integrating contrasting emotions musically e,g, the recognition sextet in Nozze where the Count and Don Curzio sing a chromatically angst ridden counterpoint to the serene harmonies of the reconciled . But it’s all mirrored in the orchestra.

[Ein Heldenleben]

So if I played you an orchestral extract from, say, The Makropulos Affair could you tell me precisely what action was taking place?

Some one who’s seen the opera a lot certainly could. And that’s the other problem with the music is language idea. Most of the music we hear we’ve heard thousands of times before . Not as individual notes (like words) but as works complete with programme notes , even overt programmes. We “know “ already what the music might mean.
I greatly enjoyed Deryck Cooke’s Language Of Music where he links certain intervals to certain emotions, The only problem was when those pieces of music were played to 22 people who hadn’t heard them before they couldn’t identify the emotion. That just wouldn’t happen with a few sentences of prose.

[Sir Velo]

Some one who’s seen the opera a lot certainly could.

Well, indeed. However, that's the effect of memory rather than anything intrinsically narrative about the music. Sure, music can express an emotion, but even that imperfectly and open to a wide range of interpretation!

[Roslynmuse]

I'm sure that memory has everything to do with all the phenomena that have been described thus far. As EH has said, we hear certain pieces many many times and remember their progress, and, in that process we add a level of 'interpretation' which we might - in the absence of any other way of describing it - call the 'language' of that particular piece of music. Depending on its style, we may add extra-musical layers to that interpretation that, once there, are difficult to remove. I heard Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture as a boy at school and it was described to us in the usual programmatic way; I can't unhear those associations, although they vie with more purely musical thoughts - following the structural/ tonal argument - or more abstract emotional/gestural responses. The things we learn listening to one piece inform the way we hear others in similar styles, and in turn how we might hear the differences in other pieces. We hold so much in our memories, we are often not aware of it, but there will be a communality of response held by fairly widely-listened people like us that will create the illusion that we are listening to a language that is more universally comprehensible than it actually is.

I was also thinking about the example brought up above of Beethoven 5. There is nothing in the notes themselves to suggest C minor over E flat major in the first four bars - G x3, E flat, F x 3, D - but once we have heard the whole movement we can't unhear it and the opening immediately sounds doom- or fate-laden. Memory adding a layer of 'meaning'. The same could apply to the opening of Brahms' 1st Piano Concerto - B flat major first inversion, but once we know the rest of the piece, or the opening in context, we certainly don't hear it as suggesting a major tonality for the piece as a whole.

Memory and personal, subjective associations are such a strong part of our experience of listening to music that I sometimes wonder if musical analysis that has no room for the personal is in the end missing the whole point of this thread title - the 'essence' of music. Many years ago, the Chopin scholar, Arthur Hedley, wrote (in connection with, I think the Berceuse Op 57) words to the effect that you don't learn anything about the song of a nightingale by cutting its throat open.

[smittims]

Yes, but , once you admit the personal,the subjective, as a valid tool of analysis, might it not open a Pandora's box, where 'my emotion' becomes a more influential criterion of musical value than hard fact, and you'll hear people say 'Well. I just know that the theme from The Guernsey Literary and Potato-peel-pie Society is the greatest music ever, because it blew my mind when I saw the film. Your Beethoven op. 132 just bored me'.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I'm sure that memory has everything to do with all the phenomena that have been described thus far. As EH has said, we hear certain pieces many many times and remember their progress, and, in that process we add a level of 'interpretation' which we might - in the absence of any other way of describing it - call the 'language' of that particular piece of music. Depending on its style, we may add extra-musical layers to that interpretation that, once there, are difficult to remove. I heard Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture as a boy at school and it was described to us in the usual programmatic way; I can't unhear those associations, although they vie with more purely musical thoughts - following the structural/ tonal argument - or more abstract emotional/gestural responses. The things we learn listening to one piece inform the way we hear others in similar styles, and in turn how we might hear the differences in other pieces. We hold so much in our memories, we are often not aware of it, but there will be a communality of response held by fairly widely-listened people like us that will create the illusion that we are listening to a language that is more universally comprehensible than it actually is.

I was also thinking about the example brought up above of Beethoven 5. There is nothing in the notes themselves to suggest C minor over E flat major in the first four bars - G x3, E flat, F x 3, D - but once we have heard the whole movement we can't unhear it and the opening immediately sounds doom- or fate-laden. Memory adding a layer of 'meaning'. The same could apply to the opening of Brahms' 1st Piano Concerto - B flat major first inversion, but once we know the rest of the piece, or the opening in context, we certainly don't hear it as suggesting a major tonality for the piece as a whole.

Memory and personal, subjective associations are such a strong part of our experience of listening to music that I sometimes wonder if musical analysis that has no room for the personal is in the end missing the whole point of this thread title - the 'essence' of music. Many years ago, the Chopin scholar, Arthur Hedley, wrote (in connection with, I think the Berceuse Op 57) words to the effect that you don't learn anything about the song of a nightingale by cutting its throat open.

Yes you only hear the opening of Beethoven 5 once as tonally ambiguous and even then it’s only for a fraction of a second. The Brahms 1 opening is only hearable once as a first inversion Bflat chord . As soon as the C sharp appears it’s clearly D minor with a B flat discord,Even at first listen to some one versed in the classics it’s a bit of a veiled tribute to the tremendous dischord that starts the finale of Beethoven’s ninth just as the magnificent piano entry is a Brahmsian “take “ on a Bach Arioso. I don’t suppose there was ever a composer more conscious of his responsibility to the German musical past ( with the possibly exception of Mendelssohn himself. )

A propos of nothing in particular the main theme of Fingal’s Cave is a very simple falling Bminor chord and the opening of Brahms 1 a rising B flat major chord ( aa is essentially the opening theme of the 2nd) . From these very simple building blocks geniuses weave magic,

[french frank]

Yes, but , once you admit the personal,the subjective, as a valid tool of analysis...

I wouldn't admit it as 'a valid tool of analysis'. If you're the introspective type you might engage in such analysis, but only to understand and clarify your personal experience and feelings vis-à-vis the music, what you like, what you dislike, what puzzles you &c; not to understand or discuss the music itself in any genuinely critical way with others..

[Roslynmuse]

Yes, but , once you admit the personal,the subjective, as a valid tool of analysis, might it not open a Pandora's box, where 'my emotion' becomes a more influential criterion of musical value than hard fact, and you'll hear people say 'Well. I just know that the theme from The Guernsey Literary and Potato-peel-pie Society is the greatest music ever, because it blew my mind when I saw the film. Your Beethoven op. 132 just bored me'.

I wasn't trying to suggest making value judgements on the basis of personal, subjective; associations; as FF says, sometimes clarifying things for oneself is the aim. "I like this - I wonder why, when I don't like that?" I have had conversations with myself in the past over my preference for Holst over RVW - nothing to do with saying that one is better than the other, simply my way of trying to understand why two quite similar (in some ways) composers evoke very different responses from me. Sometimes there is something valuable though in these musings that may be applied more generally as a sort of hypothesis.

I caught the tail end of the latest programme in Rory Stewart's new series, The Long History of Ignorance, when I was driving home this evening; it touched on what I think we have been discussing in part in this thread; Rowan Williams, another contributor to the programme, made an interesting comment about the difference between puzzlement and wonder - the latter being a sort of acceptance of what one will never understand.

[smittims]

Thanks for that clarification, Roslynmuse. My example is that I like listenng to Otto Klemperer's symphonies and quartets, but I couldn't make any claim for their quality. I don't think he valued them highly, though he did think it important for him to compose.

Rowan Williams wrote the most difficult book I have ever read: 'The Edge of Words'. How I struggled to understand what he was saying! I'm sure he knew what he meant and that it is a brilliant and profound work, but it's just beyond me. I'll have another bash at it some time.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for that clarification, Roslynmuse. My example is that I like listenng to Otto Klemperer's symphonies and quartets, but I couldn't make any claim for their quality. I don't think he valued them highly, though he did think it important for him to compose.

Rowan Williams wrote the most difficult book I have ever read: 'The Edge of Words'. How I struggled to understand what he was saying! I'm sure he knew what he meant and that it is a brilliant and profound work, but it's just beyond me. I'll have another bash at it some time.

I can't remember who it was who said that theologians, post Wittgenstein, tie themselves into knots in futile efforts to explain the inexplicable, or, rather, non-explicable. I felt that very strongly in a discussion between Rowan Williams and Richard Dawkins I taped from TV many years ago in which they amiably talked across each other in a blizzard of mixed categories. I must dig it out sometime.

[Mandryka]

I can't remember who it was who said that theologians, post Wittgenstein, tie themselves into knots in futile efforts to explain the inexplicable, or, rather, non-explicable. I felt that very strongly in a discussion between Rowan Williams and Richard Dawkins I taped from TV many years ago in which they amiably talked across each other in a blizzard of mixed categories. I must dig it out sometime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruhc7XqSxo

(Anthony Kenny's the star!)

[Serial_Apologist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruhc7XqSxo

(Anthony Kenny's the star!)

Thanks so much for that, Mandryka.