The essence of music

[Mandryka]

I agree.

The very essence of music for me is the creative process. I think music at it's core needs to be stripped of anything superfluous and this would mean excluding anything that is descriptive or takes its cues from books or paintings. I suppose JS Bach's keyboaed music or cello suites would be a prine example. You could also cite the Chopin Preludes and i reallly like the idea of something that ia supposed to capturethe essence exploring all 24 keys. Both the Bach and Shostokovich P & Fs would also be excellent candidates

In jazz i suppose you would have to choose a Chsrlie Parker solo or something by Bud Powell.

Beacause improvisation or spontaniety is the kernal of what makes up alot of the greatest achievements in music, i am wondering if this woukd exclude Serialism or any other music created by a system ?

Didn't Chopin say that the preludes somehow related to Hamlet?

[smittims]

At any rate Chopin's Preludes are famous for their etxra-musical connotations. And maybe the only reason we might think of Bach's preludes and fugues as free from pictorial or other extra-musical associations could be simply that he didn't tell anyone what they were! Rachmaninov didn't publish or disclose publically any extra-musical references in his preludes but we know from Benno Moiseiwitsch's conversations with him that he did think of a definite picture every time he composed.

To imagine music 'stripped of anything ...descriptive or taking its cue from books or paintings' seems to me to forget that creativity is a subconscious process. There are many instances of composers writing an overtly 'abstract' work ad realising only afterwards that it did refer to specific things or people.

[Sir Velo]

I would say it only excludes them because you have chosen to take improvisation and spontaneity as part of the essence of music. I wouldn't do that. I think of music as primarily cerebral, others (not me) might think of emotion as being a key to creation.

I think there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy!

[french frank]

I think there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy!

Yes, Shakespeare made that general comment too (not directed at me personally). Do you have any comment relative to this discussion?

[french frank]

To imagine music 'stripped of anything ...descriptive or taking its cue from books or paintings' seems to me to forget that creativity is a subconscious process. .

Yes. I would say music can represent what the composer sought to achieve, pictorially, emotionally, associatively or in whatever way they choose. And also the attentive (and inattentive) listener is similarly free to enjoy or imagine the music in the way that suits them. The possibilities seem to be so wide-ranging that no one is in a position to lay down the law on it, other than in matters of known fact. I would say music contains more than is dreamt of in any one individual's philosophy and EM Forster was saying much the same in describing reactions to Beethoven's Fifth:

"All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come--of course, not so as to disturb the others--; or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee... "

Who has the correct reaction? And what is essential to music in general?

[Ian Thumwood]

The Lego block analogy for me is precisely what the essence of music is . The components are stacked together until they produce something architectural. Paul Bley is the obvious example for me.

Oddily enough, Paul Bley did state in an interview that music is meaningless without an emotional connection.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Yes. I would say music can represent what the composer sought to achieve, pictorially, emotionally, associatively or in whatever way they choose. And also the attentive (and inattentive) listener is similarly free to enjoy or imagine the music in the way that suits them. The possibilities seem to be so wide-ranging that no one is in a position to lay down the law on it, other than in matters of known fact. I would say music contains more than is dreamt of in any one individual's philosophy and EM Forster was saying much the same in describing reactions to Beethoven's Fifth:

"All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come--of course, not so as to disturb the others--; or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee... "

Who has the correct reaction? And what is essential to music in general?

One clue : the people playing it or conducting aren’t thinking of shipwrecks but they will have spent hours pretty much doing what Tibby did and practising to the point where the notes on the page seem to flow seamlessly from their fingers almost without the brain having to “think” the action. The real greats like Ogdon and Horowitz could pretty much even skip the prep and sight read it.
The essence of music is in performance. If a piece of music is worth listening to its worth the listener putting in some effort of their own.

[smittims]

Several people have said that, for them at any rate, music has to be an expression of emotion. I suspect they intend this as a slight against music they feel is academic or intellectual rather than 'heart-on-sleeve' . Yet Schoenberg denied (scornfully on one occasion) that his twelve-tone method was a 'system' and recent analyses of his music have linked it specifiaclly to 'emotional' events in his life. And Webern, once thought to be the most abstract of compsoers, told a friend that several of his works were the direct reaction to his Mother's death, and it is known that Nature was a major inspiration for him.

[french frank]

It seems very limiting to consider music as being about 'what the composer intended'. Study the score, read what the composer said about his composition: that is all ye need to know,

But is that the all-important criterion or just what it says on the tin - what the composer intended? Expand ad libitum. If I listen to music I've chosen, I don't want to tap my feet, jig about or dance to it, whatever the composeri intended: I just want to listen to abstract sounds. What thoughts are conjured up by my own knowledge (or lack of) and experiences are what makes each hearing unique and enriching. That said, I do like following scores while listening.

[smittims]

I used to follow a score, especially in 20th-centry works where the detail can escape the ear alone. But for some reason Ive lost interest in doing this and prefer simply to listen.

But to return to your first point, I think that part of 'what the music is' consists of how it enters and remains in the listener's brainand what associations are produced. Just as music is more than the notes on the page, more even than the notes produced by the instrument, more than the notes sounding through the acoustic space between.

A simple example is Barber's Adagio, said by the composer himself to be 'a love scene ; I mean a bed scene' , but which is heard by many as a lamentation. There are lots of minor key movements in Handel, but they don't all mean he wanted to convey 'tragedy' in each case, there being a tradition of angular, non-vocal-interval fugue subjects intended to appeal to the connoisseur. An example of this is Mozart's Fugue in C minor , K546, where Deryck Cooke heard 'a fierce opening.. a violent dissonance' but Sarah Mohr-Pietsch found 'cheeky counterpoint'. I think there's a case of two listeners bringing something of their own to a work where the composer didn't tell us what his intentions were, if any.

Maybe the reason we like and return to a piece of music , has also something to do with our own reaction to it. We associate that so closely with it that it becomes part of the music, for us.

[Mandryka]

Several people have said that, for them at any rate, music has to be an expression of emotion. I suspect they intend this as a slight against music they feel is academic or intellectual rather than 'heart-on-sleeve' . Yet Schoenberg denied (scornfully on one occasion) that his twelve-tone method was a 'system' and recent analyses of his music have linked it specifiaclly to 'emotional' events in his life. And Webern, once thought to be the most abstract of compsoers, told a friend that several of his works were the direct reaction to his Mother's death, and it is known that Nature was a major inspiration for him.

Common Practice Harmony is as much a system as serialism. I think that the exploration of music without system is very much a second half of the c20 thing - Rihm in Tutuguri, Feldman in Vertical Thoughts.

[french frank]

I think that the exploration of music without system is very much a second half of the c20 thing - Rihm in Tutuguri, Feldman in Vertical Thoughts.

We could enter the world of semiotics here. We have the word 'music' = of the Muses, which we use to refer to ... music. But how well does the word capture the idea of what music is? Is it used purely metaphorically when referring to the music of birdsong or the music of the spheres? If so, to what does the word refer if not used metaphorically?

For my own part (and I'd claim to be a largely 'unmusical' person), I would see system (or systems) as essential to music. If people write off contemporary composition as 'That's not music' they mean it doesn't fit their concept of what music is. If music can be defined, does that mean that in 'exploring music without system' it is possible to go beyond what music is, making it literally undefinable? No limit can be put upon it? Logically, one ought to be able to think of 'post-music' like 'post-modern' (i.e. not as a derogatory term), following from and deriving from, but essentially not of.

[Serial_Apologist]

We could enter the world of semiotics here. We have the word 'music' = of the Muses, which we use to refer to ... music. But how well does the word capture the idea of what music is? Is it used purely metaphorically when referring to the music of birdsong or the music of the spheres? If so, to what does the word refer if not used metaphorically?

For my own part (and I'd claim to be a largely 'unmusical' person), I would see system (or systems) as essential to music. If people write off contemporary composition as 'That's not music' they mean it doesn't fit their concept of what music is. If music can be defined, does that mean that in 'exploring music without system' it is possible to go beyond what music is, making it literally undefinable? No limit can be put upon it? Logically, one ought to be able to think of 'post-music' like 'post-modern' (i.e. not as a derogatory term), following from and deriving from, but essentially not of.

What is undefinable is thereby defined . 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?

Composers either compose music in line to whatever degree with the given conventions of that time or they ignore or rebel against them. Systems have at certain stages in music across many cultures as we know them been placed at the forefront of composers' (in the widest sense) intentions, sometimes with the aim of conveying objective principles (in nature for example) as being proper to the field of musical construction. The confinement of musical performance to special occasions, such as worship, concerts, pub gigs and recordings, has long required the composer to devise frameworks of given dimensions within which the contents of what is to be included have in some sense to be slotted in in some kind of order. At one time (maybe more than one time) composers were concerned about structure or system being clearly audible to the recipient: Bach in how he juxtaposed melodic lines to create complex interweavings of interest in themselves in order to draw in the listener and hold his or her attention. The next generation of composers (Mozart & co) were more interested, initially at any rate, in presenting musically contrasting passages in sequence to create analogies with story plots, in which the listener is taken on a ride aboard musical materials that are subject to all sorts of dramatic twists, like characters, to be eventually delivered a satisfactory outcome in the form of a final harmonic resolution - or not, as the case often turned out to be as the age of reason gave way to one of scepticism and realisation that issues at stake were more complex than once believed or hoped.

And as time has "gone on", more and more of what has been found to be includable in or as "music" has expanded - Debussy's "You have expanded the permissible in the empire of sound" to Stravinsky in response to hearing the latter's "Rite of Spring". The world of music is the world, if not the cosmos, not the limited geographical aegis of parish or nation. Now (actually for a good few decades) we have the genre known as "sound sculpture" as a step beyond the 1950s era of "musique concrète" in which composers began taking and manipulating pre-recorded sounds which are not necessarily musical in the conventional restricted sense. As long as some are prepared to allocate listening time to practices advancing beyond what others were prepared to consider as music, music will be defined as such, I believe.

[gurnemanz]

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.

I'm afraid I'm not someone who is able to string together a cogent or cohesive argument on this subject but am happy to throw in some random points. I cast my mind back many decades to some fascinating analysis which one our lecturers (incidentally, he wrote this book) gave us on Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus. The protagonist/composer, Adrian Leverkühn refers to music as "Zweideutigkeit als System" (ambiguity as a system), the twelve tone system even more so than the diatonic. He played us extracts from Beethoven's Appassionata to illustrate. Signing up as a composer is akin to a Faustian pact. In Mann's novella "Tristan" the wonderfully named protagonist, Gabriele Kloeterjahn, suffers a deadly relapse after playing Wagner's score on the piano. We know what happened to Gustav von Aschenbach in Venice. Music might not always be dangerous but it has magic and mysterious powers, as snake charmers know and as Tamino finds out with his flute's effect on the local wild life and Papageno when his glockenspiel effectively discombobulates the lustful Monostatos. Music in Shakespeare is associated with magic goings-on. In The Winter's Tale the words "Music awake her" accompany Paulina's statue coming to life. Its effect can be soothing as in Schubert's "Du holde Kunst" or destructive as with Joshua and the Walls.

[Mandryka]

We could enter the world of semiotics here. We have the word 'music' = of the Muses, which we use to refer to ... music. But how well does the word capture the idea of what music is? Is it used purely metaphorically when referring to the music of birdsong or the music of the spheres? If so, to what does the word refer if not used metaphorically?

For my own part (and I'd claim to be a largely 'unmusical' person), I would see system (or systems) as essential to music. If people write off contemporary composition as 'That's not music' they mean it doesn't fit their concept of what music is. If music can be defined, does that mean that in 'exploring music without system' it is possible to go beyond what music is, making it literally undefinable? No limit can be put upon it? Logically, one ought to be able to think of 'post-music' like 'post-modern' (i.e. not as a derogatory term), following from and deriving from, but essentially not of.

In the case of Rihm, his idea was to use scores and classical instruments to specify works made of sounds which helped listeners get in touch with their irrational sides - like Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty. In the case of Feldman, he wanted to use scores and classical instruments to specify sounds which would help the listener explore their propensity for a special sort of mental state which Kierkegaard called "anxiety"

As far as the definition of music is concerned, it seems very natural to me to say that birds singing is music, I mean I can't think of any reason to say it isn't. The concept is maybe like Wittgenstein's analysis of the concept of "game" - some diverse examples of paradigms, with little in common. And something is a game if and only it is one these paradigms or resembles a game. Note that "resemblance" is not transitive. A resembles B and B resembles C and . . . . X resembles Y but A does not resemble Y.