What's the point of music? Ask Peter Gabriel

[MrGongGong]

Well I (and many others) know what I mean even if I (and everybody else) cannot adequately explain it ... hence the 'mystery' referred to by Bernstein.

It is impossible to go further than that and why should we even try to do so? Life's too short.

Caliban's earthy description of querying 'the point of music' sums it up pretty well for me.

I hope you remembered to sacrifice the goat, we really need the harvest to be good this year.

[Serial_Apologist]

I hope you remembered to sacrifice the goat, we really need the harvest to be good this year.

(He gets my goat).

[MrGongGong]

(He gets my goat).

I think he is Lord Summerisle

[vinteuil]

I think he is Lord Summerisle

( I wd envy the hairstyle -

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03042/The_Wicker_Man_3042908k.jpg

[ahinton]

Vinteuil clearly didn't understand or he wouldn't have asked the question, ahinton!

What he did and did not understand has been made clear. I do not object as much as some to certain of Prof. Scruton's statements but the woolly notion of music coming from somewhere in the beyond reminds me of the kind of sentimentalitarian nonsense at which Sorabji poked fun when referring to "tunes played on the Infinite"...

[french frank]

And you are allowed to vote?

For someone so deeply involved with music and broadcasting I find this utterly extraordinary.

That was in my point 3. - about trying to UNDERSTAND different attitudes. And yes, it will require a certain amount of mental effort in some cases. Oh, and a willingness to try

The name Fripp meant George Fripp to me, partly because he came from Bristol and there some of his paintings in the art gallery, but mainly because he specialised in watercolours which I infinitely prefer to oil paintings.

[BBMmk2]

Well said, BBM!

Thanks, Beefy! :) The group he led, so well Genesis, should have packed it in, when he left. ok, a couple of their albums were good, a trick of The tail, Then there was Three, but post these albums, nothing much, really.

[teamsaint]

There is indeed much (and many balls) in what you say!

At the same time, it must be said that I find music is much better listened to and more clearly heard without one's head up one's a***

----- Caliban -----

Very happy to take your word for it.

[Beef Oven!]

Thanks, Beefy! :) The group he led, so well Genesis, should have packed it in, when he left. ok, a couple of their albums were good, a trick of The tail, Then there was Three, but post these albums, nothing much, really.

Agreed - A Trick of the Tail and perhaps some of Wind and Wuthering, then it was all over.

[P. G. Tipps]

What he did and did not understand has been made clear. I do not object as much as some to certain of Prof. Scruton's statements but the woolly notion of music coming from somewhere in the beyond reminds me of the kind of sentimentalitarian nonsense at which Sorabji poked fun when referring to "tunes played on the Infinite"...

That is an entirely meaningful response, ahinton, unlike some of the predictable nonsense coming from some who have clearly now lost the 'point' plot and are instead reduced to posting smart-ass comments which they seem to consider will have the rest of us rolling in the proverbial aisles? If only they really knew, poor souls ...

I do not agree with you, ahinton, but I respect your opinion and thank you for your post!

[richardfinegold]

I'd never heard of him, but I played the song that accompanied the article and I thought it banal in the extreme.

The interesting question is why its effect on me is so very different from its efffect on everyone else.

[BBMmk2]

Agreed - A Trick of the Tail and perhaps some of Wind and Wuthering, then it was all over.

Yes, that's another good one, Wind & Wuthering.

Have you "Seconds Out", Beefy?

[MrGongGong]

That was in my point 3. - about trying to UNDERSTAND different attitudes. And yes, it will require a certain amount of mental effort in some cases. Oh, and a willingness to try

I don't think it's a question of attitude merely that I was extremely surprised that you hadn't come across him.
And it wasn't a criticism merely an observation.

Some (and i'm NOT talking about you here !) folks DO like to parade their ignorance of musics they don't engage with as some kind of badge of honour, whilst at the same time complaining about how ignorant youngsters are when they can't name the late Beethoven quartet on University Challenge. Those who did the "Bowie" ? who's he? seem IMV to be doing the same thing as "Beethoven, never heard of him, isn't he a big dog in a movie?".

But then i'm always surprised by those who are passionately interested in music but don't extend that to other musics, doesn't listening to Britten's Balinese Gamelan transcriptions make one want to go and hear the Balinese play?
I once met a postgraduate organ student who when I said something like "have you been inside the RAH organ, it's extraordinary?" replied with "oh, i'm not at all interested in that, I only play it".

[cloughie]

Agreed - A Trick of the Tail and perhaps some of Wind and Wuthering, then it was all over.

Bit of a Beefy overstatement, even without PG they were still a good band. Also it has become fashionable to knock Phil. Collins, who whilst still in Genesis released the excellent solo album 'Face Value' . He was also the musical architect of the 2002 Palace concert and summer in the tight little house band for the event. That concert was very good and looks even better now when compared to the appalling Gary Barlow (un)inspired 2012 event. Yes, Genesis were better with PG but not down and out without him.

[jean]

Some (and i'm NOT talking about you here !) folks DO like to parade their ignorance of musics they don't engage with as some kind of badge of honour...

It wasn't a badge of honour, it was a statement of fact. If I'd realised it was going to take over the entire discussion, I'd never have made it.

However, I did at least try to progress the discussion in the terms set out in the OP, but my last post attempting that was completely ignored.

Here it is again, slightly edited:

...But on the strength of the article, Gabriel doesn't have much to say about that bigger picture. Maybe it's just that Alain de Botton isn't interested in it.

I suppose it is a bit insulting to Peter Gabriel to know about WOMAD but not to associate his name with it, but it is possible, and I did.

But I learn nothing of his involvement in the musics of other cultures from the article linked to in the OP.

What I learn first is that (according to de Botton)

Music is so much a part of almost all our lives that it seems peculiar to stop and ask what it might be for. It just appears straightforwardly to benefit us in ways that are too diverse and ineffable to start to take apart; this might be one arena where we keep the dread hand of the theorists away. Musicians themselves have tended to reinforce such an approach, rarely venturing to supply an additional prose commentary around what their chords are already communicating.

A sort of secret knowledge they want to keep from us? They ought all to be writing prose commentaries to explain what they're doing, and they just won't?

But (says de Botton) Gabriel is different:

...One musician who stands out in the cultural landscape for his profound engagement with the theory as well as practice of music is Peter Gabriel – and what seems especially striking are his repeated pronouncements that music should, to quote his distinctive formulation, provide us with “an emotional toolbox” to which we can turn at different moments of our lives, locating songs to recover, guide and sublimate our feelings.

Here, it begins so seem as if the composers who don't tell us what they're doing probably don't even know.

Most of the rest of the article is about the song I Grieve, in writing which Gabriel was 'driven by a wish to create a song that would help people with the mourning process.' (That's what I meant earlier by my reference to manipulating emotion).

(So if I don't fully grasp the breadth of his practice, the article doesn't help me much.)

But is there really nothing further to be said about the substance of de Botton's thesis?


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