What's the point of music? Ask Peter Gabriel

[jean]

Where exactly did you expect to go with this, one might feel bound to ask ... ?!

The this in my reply was a reference to the idea of music being used to manipulate the emotions, which I'd raised, and ahinton had replied to.

I certainly had no desire to go in any direction indicated by the egregious Scruton.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not to mention of course that if you take that idea to its logical conclusion, we'd have to go back at least to the Neanderthals before a real conservative would be satisfied, the only problem being that nobody would be able to say "let's not invent language, we have no idea what it might lead to!!!"

That puts the paradox that in order to have meanings we have to have language in the first place rather nicely in a nutshell. Meanings belong to the "realm" of language, however much meaning we infer in that squirrel trying to figure out how to get to those nuts up there - though I don't think this is what Screwtop is saying.

[french frank]

Why people think it important to tell us they hadn't heard of an extremely well known musician is mysterious to me.

Why do people think is important to tell us they rate an 'extremely well known musician'? Why is it important for a philosopher to give his views about anything at all, music included?

1. I had heard the name Peter Gabriel but thought he was some sort of music entrepreneur and celebrity. Just checked and see I was partly confusing him with someone called Peter André who was on Strictly Come Dancing.

2. I heard of David Bowie long before many of his fans had even been born. I dismissed him as not being interesting to me.

3. I agree with jean, that it IS interesting trying to understand how attitudes differ, and there is really no point in anyone being sniffy about other people's likes and dislikes, or feelings of 'importance'/'unimportance'.

4. Alain de Botton is 46: not surprisingly, people latch on to cultural icons/phenomena which are approximately contemporary with themselves; so when they vote for the Greatest Children's Novel, they choose Harry Potter.

[MrGongGong]

1. I had heard the name Peter Gabriel but thought he was some sort of music entrepreneur and celebrity. Just checked and see I was partly confusing him with someone called Peter André who was on Strictly Come Dancing.

And you are allowed to vote?

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

[Serial_Apologist]

And you are allowed to vote?

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

But, to be fair, I don't think Peter Gabriel would have been featured much on Radio 3.

[MrGongGong]

But, to be fair, I don't think Peter Gabriel would have been featured much on Radio 3.

In the process of sorting my things out to move house I found a box of cassettes labelled "Mixing it"
one of them has a rather interesting interview with Mr Gabriel where he talks about collaborating with musicians from Africa etc

He is hardly a "niche" artist though IMV
I can understand folks who have no interest in music struggling with knowing who Fripp is (until you play them "Heroes" and they go "AAAAH yes THAT guitar sound") but PG hasn't been exactly hidden from the media in the last 30 years.

[Serial_Apologist]

In the process of sorting my things out to move house I found a box of cassettes labelled "Mixing it"
one of them has a rather interesting interview with Mr Gabriel where he talks about collaborating with musicians from Africa etc

He is hardly a "niche" artist though IMV
I can understand folks who have no interest in music struggling with knowing who Fripp is (until you play them "Heroes" and they go "AAAAH yes THAT guitar sound") but PG hasn't been exactly hidden from the media in the last 30 years.

Maybe, but I'm prepared to bet french frank would have heard of Fripp, for the reason that he's extended his remit into areas of interest beyond world music etc but within Radio 3's.

[P. G. Tipps]

Can you explain what you understand by the word 'natural' in the following sentence:

'Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world' ?

Beyond the physical world/universe ... almost supernatural, if you like.

[ahinton]

Beyond the physical world/universe ... almost supernatural, if you like.

Yes, we all understand the literal meaning but the problem is that it actually addresses us from - and as a consequence of - what goes on in the composers' heads, wherever that might originate.

[P. G. Tipps]

NO no no no please, not again

Why not, Mr GG ...?

Are you really that terrified of hearing the correct and proper answer?

[P. G. Tipps]

Yes, we all understand the literal meaning but the problem is that it actually addresses us from - and as a consequence of - what goes on in the composers' heads, wherever that might originate.

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

Are you suggesting that he might have been temporarily prone to a bit of mischievousness, instead?

[P. G. Tipps]

The this in my reply was a reference to the idea of music being used to manipulate the emotions, which I'd raised, and ahinton had replied to.

I certainly had no desire to go in any direction indicated by the egregious Scruton.

Maybe it's that very lack of any directional desire, and self-confessed closed-mindedness, that might be part of the problem for those who cannot see the point ... ?

[vinteuil]

Vinteuil clearly didn't understand or he wouldn't have asked the question...

I asked because I did not know what you understood by the word 'natural'.

The only clear sense I have of what the word might mean is closer to a David Attenborough sense - viz the universe (or perhaps more particularly, this living world ) minus the human element. Hence my bafflement here - because 'music' seems to be a primordially 'human' construct - in its devising, performance, and reception. And so I cannot really see what 'beyond the borders of the natural world' might usefully mean.

But I see that you wish to regard it as something 'beyond the physical world / universe ... almost supernatural'.
In the which case I do not know what you mean.

[jean]

...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 that truly awful 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.

[P. G. Tipps]

I asked because I did not know what you understood by the word 'natural'.

The only clear sense I have of what the word might mean is closer to a David Attenborough sense - viz the universe (or perhaps more particularly, this living world ) minus the human element. Hence my bafflement here - because 'music' seems to be a primordially 'human' construct - in its devising, performance, and reception. And so I cannot really see what 'beyond the borders of the natural world' might usefully mean.

But I see that you wish to regard it as something 'beyond the physical world / universe ... almost supernatural'.
In the which case I do not know what you mean.

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.

(If I have interpreted his post correctly!)