Musical adjectives

[vinteuil]

I don't find adjectives useful in how I listen to music.

Anyhoo - since we know that musicking* is to be considered as an activity rather than a thing, a verb rather than a noun, - surely it is adverbs rather than adjectives we shd be considerin' here...

* http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0819522570

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Small

[aeolium]

Which is, I think, the point of Stravinsky's comment that "Music is powerless to express anything other than itself". What we make of it when it achieves the rich ambivalence of the Mozart, is up to us - and this alters as we do.

I'm not sure how helpful the Stravinsky quote is. For while I agree that the most interesting music is the most richly ambiguous, and that in the vast majority of cases we cannot know what the composer intended to express (beyond the actual sounds), many listeners will always attempt to attribute expressive meaning to the sounds they are hearing, simply because that's what humans do - try to find meaning and patterns in all kinds of things, from works of art to events, to the universe itself. Those meanings may differ from performance to performance, and almost certainly from listener to listener, but that does not to me invalidate the use of adjectives, metaphors, everything in the descriptive armoury, to reflect the effect a piece of music has had - as long as the listener is aware that the description is completely subjective, quite temporary, and at best a partial utterance of the nature of that effect.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm not sure how helpful the Stravinsky quote is. For while I agree that the most interesting music is the most richly ambiguous, and that in the vast majority of cases we cannot know what the composer intended to express (beyond the actual sounds), many listeners will always attempt to attribute expressive meaning to the sounds they are hearing, simply because that's what humans do - try to find meaning and patterns in all kinds of things, from works of art to events, to the universe itself. Those meanings may differ from performance to performance, and almost certainly from listener to listener, but that does not to me invalidate the use of adjectives, metaphors, everything in the descriptive armoury, to reflect the effect a piece of music has had - as long as the listener is aware that the description is completely subjective, quite temporary, and at best a partial utterance of the nature of that effect.

I think the Stravinsky quotation sums up exactly what you say here, aeolium. It's the adjectives/adverbs, metaphors and other weaponry from the descriptive armoury that I find unhelpful - except, perhaps, as a limited communication between people trying to describe their emotional response to a piece. Undeniably useful as this is for immediate social relationships, I just think that there are more important and interesting things to talk about in Music.

[Richard Barrett]

the most richly ambiguous

Personally I prefer to avoid the word "ambiguous". Maybe it's just me but I would say it carries connotations of "neither one thing nor the other" whereas the situation with musical engagement is much more like "both one thing and the other". Is there a word for this? Recall the visual illusions which you can see as depicting one object or another more or less at will - in music you have, conversely, the possibility of "seeing" both simultaneously and not just these, because (maybe) the sense of hearing is much more attuned than that of sight to the experience of multiple levels or points of focus simultaneously, and this would apply to the emotional experience as well as to the sensory input which evokes it.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Personally I prefer to avoid the word "ambiguous". Maybe it's just me but I would say it carries connotations of "neither one thing nor the other" whereas the situation with musical engagement is much more like "both one thing and the other". Is there a word for this? Recall the visual illusions which you can see as depicting one object or another more or less at will - in music you have, conversely, the possibility of "seeing" both simultaneously and not just these, because (maybe) the sense of hearing is much more attuned than that of sight to the experience of multiple levels or points of focus simultaneously, and this would apply to the emotional experience as well as to the sensory input which evokes it.

"Multivalent"? "Polyvalent"? "Multi-faceted"?

(By curious coincidence, the idea of those dual-image visual illusions also occurred to me this morning as I pondered this Topic on my village walk - as did the fact that these images can only be seen as one or the other, never both at once, unlike Music which can have many - often seemingly contradictory - aspects simultaneously. That's perhaps why the majority of Artists don't make great use of such dual images [some Surrealist images, and advertisement posters excepted], preferring to tease out everything from a single image. My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a Blackbird singing.)

[vinteuil]

Personally I prefer to avoid the word "ambiguous". Maybe it's just me but I would say it carries connotations of "neither one thing nor the other" whereas the situation with musical engagement is much more like "both one thing and the other". Is there a word for this? .

... hylomorphic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylomorphism

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_theory

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[vinteuil]

... hylomorphic?

... or hypostatic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypostasis_(philosophy_and_religion)

[aeolium]

Personally I prefer to avoid the word "ambiguous". Maybe it's just me but I would say it carries connotations of "neither one thing nor the other" whereas the situation with musical engagement is much more like "both one thing and the other". Is there a word for this?

I wasn't thinking of the "neither one thing nor the other" meaning when I used the word, though now you mention it I agree it can have that connotation. I was thinking more of double (or multiple) meanings, so more like "both one thing and the other" ("ambi" = "both" + "agere" = "to act"), co-existing and in some cases almost contradictory. I don't know of another word carrying the sense of multiple co-existing meanings.

[Dave2002]

I don't find adjectives useful in how I listen to music.

It doesn't automatically follow that others wouldn't find words - adjectives, adverbs, ... other, useful in their own consideration of music.

Anyhoo - since we know that musicking* is to be considered as an activity rather than a thing, a verb rather than a noun, - surely it is adverbs rather than adjectives we shd be considerin' here...

* http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0819522570

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Small

I can "see" that I might be trying to herd cats here.

If "we" start nit picking lingistically, if we can consider a piece of music as a "thing" then it is no more meaningful to consider any piece as "happy", "sad", "melancholy" etc., than it is to describe a chair in the same way. A chair, being an (I assume) inanimate object cannot have feelings, so it would be senseless to describe a chair in that way. On the other hand a reader might understand the sentence "he relaxed into his happy chair", depending on the context.

Next objection - pieces of music are not "things". Maybe I'll address that later.

I never "said" that any piece of music had to be described by a set of universally agreed set of adjectives - or adverbs if "you" wish to consider them also.

Some composers clearly prefer/preferred not to associate their music with words or pictures, but others have done, at least for some of their output.

FWIW, I have a very strong visual impression for one piece of music. I'd be very surprised if others have it, or if the composer intended it. That's at the opening of the fourth movement of Brahms' first symphony, where the horns have a splendid (adjective) motif, followed by a flute. For some reason it always conjures up a sort of reddish brown golden "feel"' and a vision of a sailing ship just setting off out of a harbour. Don't ask me why - I have no idea where that came from.

[greenilex]

Synaesthesia is relevant here. And it does vary in individuals, apparently.

[Richard Barrett]

Synaesthesia is relevant here. And it does vary in individuals, apparently.

Yes. I often have very intense experience of "colour" and "shape" and "texture" in music, and have had for as long as I can remember, I put them in inverted commas because I would say that "colour" and "shape" and "texture" are approximate ways to describe some kind of qualia at a deeper level of consciousness than those which are easily separable into sights, sounds, tactile experiences etc., so that one of the things music is doing is gaining access to that level. These impressions aren't just momentary but also somehow embody music's time dimension(s) so that a "shape" subtends more dimensions than those of (internal) space. In a certain sense, composition could be an attempt to understand and express that phenomenon by retracing it, beginning from the "shape" and finding a way to hear it.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Interesting. Rebecca Saunders often refers to the "weight" and "tactility" when trying to describe how she composes - subconsciously using her hands as balances and rubbing her fingers as if feeling the fabric of cloth or paper.

But here I've never got the impression that she was attempting to describe the "character" of the Music itself; more the way she composes the Music. "Weight" is a metaphor that I frequently resort - the daughter of friends of mine used to talk of "fat" sounds when she was a little girl.

[kea]

Yes. I often have very intense experience of "colour" and "shape" and "texture" in music, and have had for as long as I can remember, I put them in inverted commas because I would say that "colour" and "shape" and "texture" are approximate ways to describe some kind of qualia at a deeper level of consciousness than those which are easily separable into sights, sounds, tactile experiences etc., so that one of the things music is doing is gaining access to that level. These impressions aren't just momentary but also somehow embody music's time dimension(s) so that a "shape" subtends more dimensions than those of (internal) space. In a certain sense, composition could be an attempt to understand and express that phenomenon by retracing it, beginning from the "shape" and finding a way to hear it.

Nothing much to say (as usual) but I really appreciate the eloquence of this description, seeing as I usually resort to saying "This kinda sounds... yellow... and like, sort of papery? Not like high quality fine grain paper, but coarse and sort of brittle? You know what I mean?" and people just stare at me and it's really awkward.

I think it's possible certain sounds (or whatever) activate the same areas of the brain activated by certain colours (or whatever), and therefore they are "the same" and basically just one thing conceptually, but separation of the senses is so ingrained in our culture that we just don't have words to describe.

[Dave2002]

Synaesthesia is definitely one aspect of this, for some people, and there appear to be sound neurological reasons why some people experience this. I don't know what proportion of the population at large can realistically claim to exhibit synaesthesia though. Fascinating area - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

[Dave2002]

Listening to BAL on Haydn Qiuartet G major Op 77 no 1 today, the reviewer made a comment on one excerpt about "sadness", yet as I was listening it never occurred to me that it was sad, but "merely" very beautiful and calm. Other people try to persuade us that music has characteristics which it may not "really" possess. Lots of comments about how difficult Haydn's life was (his relationship or lack of with his wife) not being reflected in his music too. Why do reviewers and critics have to assume that there should be an obvious connection?