Classical - (Jazz) - Pop

[MrGongGong]

I have no beef with that beefy - indeed I have a theory (only IMV, TBH) that too much musical "understanding" may lead to a lesser enjoyment of a given piece or performance

OG

I often encounter this view which is rather contradictory IMV
One can adopt different listening strategies at different times.
Surely the way one listens to music isn't always the same?

Do you also think that the appreciation of the visual beauty of the universe is diminished by studying astronomy?

When I was a teenager I did a bar-by-bar analysis of Debussy's string quartet.
When I hear it now I choose not to listen in that way.

Lots of folks have been thinking about this
for example

http://www.ems-network.org/ems08/papers/valle.pdf

and

http://www.ems-network.org/IMG/pdf_EMS14_emmerson.pdf

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Do you also think that the appreciation of the visual beauty of the universe is diminished by studying astronomy?

... and as for knowing the "Facts of Life" ...

[Beef Oven!]

I often encounter this view which is rather contradictory IMV
One can adopt different listening strategies at different times.
Surely the way one listens to music isn't always the same?

Do you also think that the appreciation of the visual beauty of the universe is diminished by studying astronomy?

When I was a teenager I did a bar-by-bar analysis of Debussy's string quartet.

Me too. Pissed as a fart, I don't remember a note of it!

When I hear it now I choose not to listen in that way.

Lots of folks have been thinking about this
for example

http://www.ems-network.org/ems08/papers/valle.pdf

and

http://www.ems-network.org/IMG/pdf_EMS14_emmerson.pdf

Listening strategies? Over-egging the pudding, aren't we?

Btw, the real question is 'does studying astronomy increase the visual beauty of the universe'?

[Beef Oven!]

... and as for knowing the "Facts of Life" ...

I got the birds bit, but couldn't figure out where the bees came into it.

[MrGongGong]

Listening strategies? Over-egging the pudding, aren't we?

No

Though i'm sure Natty Dread would say otherwise

Some great things have strategies
"Oblique" ones
and ones "against architecture"

Useful word imv

[Beef Oven!]

No

Though i'm sure Natty Dread would say otherwise

Some great things have strategies
"Oblique" ones
and ones "against architecture"

Useful word imv

Well you will knock about with university professors, I suppose it goes with the territory

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Btw, the real question is 'does studying astronomy increase the visual beauty of the universe'?

Depends on the student - for some, the answer is yes: talking about Biology, David Attenborough has said that the more he studies, the more wonderful life appears to him. I feel the same about Mozart and the others - the more I study, the greater the feedback for me in terms of enjoyment and sheer bloody astonishment.


(Bees? - I suppose it's all to do with what follows from "Hi, honey, I'm home!")

[Beef Oven!]

Depends on the student - for some, the answer is yes: talking about Biology, David Attenborough has said that the more he studies, the more wonderful life appears to him. I feel the same about Mozart and the others - the more I study, the greater the feedback for me in terms of enjoyment and sheer bloody astonishment.

Hmm, interesting. I'm reading Ian Bostridge's book "Schubert's Winter Journey - Anatomy Of An Obsession" and I think I am getting more out of, and enjoying, the recording. I need to think more about this.

(Bees? - I suppose it's all to do with what follows from "Hi, honey, I'm home!")

A waspish reply, quite often.

[Serial_Apologist]

Maybe that’s the (or one of the) difference (-s) between Art and Science?

Were humanity to solve that question I believe many common problems would be solved at a stroke.

[vinteuil]

... as so often, I do not agree at all with Wordsworth.

But for them as likes a pome, here's a pair of pomes :


EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY

"WHY, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?

"Where are your books?--that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.

"You look round on your Mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you!"

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:

"The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.

"Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

"--Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old grey stone,
And dream my time away,"

THE TABLES TURNED
An Evening Scene on the same Subject

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless--
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
1798.





.

[Serial_Apologist]

I have always preferred a tree to be something that is just visual rather than a concept that functions. As soon as there is a labelling of parts, it all becomes too real and yet also, oddly, it's then that it is artificial. That, I think, is on account of the fact that leaves and branches are only meaningful as words to people.

More than just visual, in oppsition to a conceptualisation, one would hope?

More broadly, I am not impressed by notions of human beings managing nature. Any garden isn't owned but rather it is, in my opinion, on loan. But what I did believe in until this year was the power of reason, especially when it came to systemic organisation. That turns out to have been a ludicrous idea and curiously there is a plus and a minus. The latter is that one can feel vulnerable in not having a strong argument for anything. The former is, as contributors have suggested, that everything can safely be labelled as raving mad.

There's nothing wrong per se with reason: our ability to do so is surely natured-bestowed; the problem arises in thinking that fact somehow makes us and our capacity superior to the rest of (assumedly) unthinking nature.

How could an unthinking nature have come up with us? Again the problem consists in thinking of ourselves as separate from nature - this is a by product of religious indoctrination. Any nutritionist will tell us we are what we eat, any biophysicist what we breathe. The separation and the belief flowing from it that we have to control nature, including our own, has caused untold spiritual distress and eco-destruction. The way out is not to separate our reasoning capacity from our capacity to feel but rather to see the former as an aspect of the latter given to intercommunicate in symbols, whether images (aural or visual) or words, rather than its entirety. This way has no need to confuse the symbolic and the representational (the menu, or the map) for the described (the meal, or the journey) Then as Ferney and MrGG point out you can enjoy the music through both capacities for responsiveness, the emotional and the intellectual, if you will, and seen how each reinforces the other - the former for itself, the latter as its potential means of communicating through you, and the subsequent positive feedback resulting from the latter in terms afforded by the former.

It's rather like having a 3-dimensional picture of a cube on a 2-dimensional piece of paper: is the lower of the two superimposed squares at the front or the back? The paradox of perception is that you can only see it one way or the other, never both at the same time. Or instantly seeing the "point" of a joke - which by any definition of "joke" loses its "point" by being explained.

Similarly, when it comes to music, a bit of knowledge can be spice but it is possible to boil it all down so assiduously that it disappears into nothing. I have had moments when any meaning has seemed to drop into a permanent void. Two hours later the emotional structure has reappeared showing that any brilliance was just an over-elaborate optical illusion.

This is the problem of confusing the description with the described, which, by definition, cannot be resolved. Most communication between people is at the level of "body language" - which is why the latest NHS initiative to have online psychiatric consultations can only be of limited benefit. In the end we just have to make the best of it.

[doversoul1]

CD Review tomorrow (24 October)

11.00am Guy Barker on newly released jazz interpretations of classical music

Guy Barker joins Andrew to discuss recent recordings of cornerstones from the classical repertoire, reinterpreted as jazz.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06k8x4b

Something Natty might be interested in (or maybe not)

[Serial_Apologist]

11.00am Guy Barker on newly released jazz interpretations of classical music

Guy Barker joins Andrew to discuss recent recordings of cornerstones from the classical repertoire, reinterpreted as jazz.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06k8x4b

Something Natty might be interested in (or maybe not)

Thanks for the warning, dovers.

[Quarky]

- I don't think I "understand" the Music I most enjoy, either. I love Quantum Physics - I find it reassuring that at a fundamental level, the universe is bonkers: I feel more at home with that knowledge.

Application of Quantum theory to sound and music is not well-known, although you may be familiar with it, ferney:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YxnqcAR7xjkC&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=gabor+theory+of+sound+quantum&source=bl&ots=c1CcOZZzX1&sig=kflsHCuejV-8Wd79g9csdDwVjJ0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBWoVChMI2q_eo6bayAIVQk4aCh3JugGh#v=onepage&q=gabor%20theory%20of%20sound%20quantum&f=false

Representation of sound as phonons is well known in semiconductor theory, as are nanotechnology musical instruments the size of a blood cell, e.g. Cornell University produced a guitar a micron or two long.

However Denis Gabor, who got a Nobel Prize for his work on holography, was dissatisfied with representation of sound as a collection of sine waves produced by Fourier analysis, and produced a granular theory, where sounds are represented in a matrix. He backed up his theory with experiments, and his work was followed up by others, including Xenakis. Didn't know this previously, but this thread prompted me to look into it.

The Universe may be bonkers, but it is the sense we make of it which is the important thing.

[NatBalance]

11.00am Guy Barker on newly released jazz interpretations of classical music

Guy Barker joins Andrew to discuss recent recordings of cornerstones from the classical repertoire, reinterpreted as jazz.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06k8x4b

Something Natty might be interested in (or maybe not)

Hey thanks Dover, I'll set to record now.

PS. Lots of interesting fancy discussion going on here