Pieces Not Fit for Purpose

[ahinton]

All that is of concern with music is whether it sounds good or not. Complexity does not have a bearing on that.

How can you say? What determines whether or not it's "good"? My reference to complexity was in any case only in response to Richard's question on it.

[ahinton]

Well no, I don't think those last three factors are worth bearing in mind during the creative process since they'll tend to lead to compromise and safe solutions. Also I don't feel that creating music should involve "avoiding" anything. I was talking about being completely open and curious at the same time as being completely focused and disciplined. And being involved with the kinds of commissioners who are "kept happy" by this approach.

All fair and balanced comment.

[NatBalance]

If you don't need any criteria for deciding that, then how do you know?

Well, how do you know if you like a piece of candy? Get your microscope out and study how complex it is?

Amazing that people find so much to say about it then, no?

Well of course, no. Finding out why we like music, or certain types of music, is a difficult question to answer. I can't see that complexity has anything to do with it. It's like comparing a complex food recipy with a simple one. Which one will do the business? Which one will you like?

Sorry to be comparing music to food but I think it is a good way to look at the subject because they both excite the senses. My main judge whether I like a certain food or a certain piece of music is whether my senses like them. Do I like the taste of the food, do I like the sound of the music? The other concern with food is whether it is healthy. How the analogy of that transfers to music I am not so sure. Perhaps it is whether it fits the purpose or meaning the composer set out for it? In other words, if the composer's aim with the piece was to make you feel sad, or contemplative, does it do that? Perhaps unhealthy music could be DEATH METAL? Grrrrrrrr!

Sorry, don't know what came over me there. I'm alright now .... normal and decent again. Now what was I saying? The point about the latter concerns, healthy food, 'healthy' music, is that they do not matter if the first and main concern is not satisfied. If you can't stand the taste of the food, for instance I can't stand tomatoes (unless cooked), so it does not matter how healthy they are for me, I do not like them, full stop. The same with music, it does not matter how complex a piece of music is, how theoretically accurate it is, if you do not like the sound of it …. well …. what's the point?

How can you say? What determines whether or not it's "good"? My reference to comlexity was in any case only in response to Richard's question on it.

You are quite right. How naughty of me. I was dashing out a quick reply on my way out, I should have addressed Richard.

RICHARD! Come here! :)

[Richard Barrett]

RICHARD! Come here! :)

There's always someone that can be relied on to jump in and answer questions addressed to someone else, especially the rhetorical ones. Anyway. Whether something "sounds good" will obviously vary according to the individual, his/her social origin and cultural background, experiences and education, as well as through the difference between individuals as such, and within the same individual at different times, stages of life, moods and so on. So it's not really a very useful criterion for talking about music except at the most superficial level; and talking about music at less superficial levels will have to allow that the relationship between music and listeners is a highly complex one (much more complex than that between food and consumers I would say) whether or not "the music itself" (whatever that is) is complex in some way or other. It's a mistake to think in terms of "the composer's aim" being "to make you feel sad, or contemplative". Composers' aims don't work like that. As has been discussed here at length, music which one recognises for example as "sad" can be and often is uplifting and mood-enhancing, and "happy" music can have a contemplative or even depressing effect, without in any way "failing in its stated purpose", at least for me and I think for the vast majority of listeners. And the kind of simple stimulus-response relationship implied by your metaphor of food and recipes doesn't begin to encompass the many other ways in which music can affect its listening participants, not just emotionally.

[ahinton]

There's always someone that can be relied on to jump in and answer questions addressed to someone else, especially the rhetorical ones.

!!!

Anyway, I had thought that questions posed here rather than in PMs might be open to any other member to answer, should he/she so choose...

[NatBalance]

I just can't help myself Richard, as soon as I see even the slightest hint that complexity and simplicity are being used as a means of judging music's quality I'm in there like a rat up a drain pipe :)

Whether something "sounds good" will obviously vary according to the individual, his/her social origin and cultural background, experiences and education, as well as through the difference between individuals as such, and within the same individual at different times, stages of life, moods and so on. So it's not really a very useful criterion for talking about music except at the most superficial level; ….

On the other hand, under those considerations neither is the music's complexity, or its theoretical accuracy.

It seems to me that the sound is always forgotten about when people describe why they like certain music. Someone is asked on Essential Classics or Desert Island Discs why they have chosen a certain piece and they will mention that it reminds them of a certain period or incident in their life, it was used in a film, it was a parent's favourite, whatever, which is all fair enough, but they very rarely mention what grabs them about the actual piece itself, its sound, which is after all what music is.

I agree with the rest of what you say except, although I do agree the relationship we have between music is far more complex than our relationship with food, I still think the analogy is a usefull one, especially when someone says about a piece "I don't know what to think, I didn't understand it".

Rich

[jean]

I know you did, that was my point. I was puzzled by your mention of "without the canon." The canon is there in "your" version. What did you mean?

I thought I'd heard it with just the 'tune' on top as a single line. But you're right, and that wasn't it.

Perhaps the banalising of the ostinato there made me think what I heard was simpler than it actually was...or perhaps what I was thinking of is so banal no-one even bothered to put it on YouTube.

[jean]

Well, how do you know if you like a piece of candy? Get your microscope out and study how complex it is?

In the past decade, Americans have gotten serious about dark chocolate. Rich, complex, and even bitter, its flavor transcends the mild, sugar-laden milk chocolate that many of us grew up with. As a result, ever-climbing cacao percentages are now posted prominently on packaging, and chocophiles have come to describe bars with the same level of detail that they’d use for a fine Cabernet. “Bean to bar” is hot, as artisanal chocolatiers take control of every aspect of chocolate making, from sourcing to production. Single-origin bars are trendy, too, showcasing distinct regional characteristics such as the intensely floral flavor of beans from the mountains of Peru or the dried mint overtones of bars made from the beans from Trinidad...

Seriously, though; the complexity is there (or not) whether it's music or candy, and it is possible to appreciate it whether you've undertaken the analysis explicitly or allowed it to work on you unanalysed.

[NatBalance]

Seriously, though; the complexity is there (or not) whether it's music or candy, and it is possible to appreciate it whether you've undertaken the analysis explicitly or allowed it to work on you unanalysed.

Pieces that seem simple may be more complex than we think, musicians say that about ABBA, and I'm not saying there is anything wrong with complexity, I am saying it cannot be used as a judge of the quality of a piece of music. I love variety, I can have just as much love for a simple piece that only has three chords as for a complex piece. There is the saying 'less is more'. Yes, it very much can be, on the other hand less can also actually mean less. Quality depends on other things.

That's interesting about chocolate. Perhaps analogizing food with music is not so far removed after all. I use dark chocolate as a means of cutting down on my chocolate intake. I could get through a whole bar of Green & Black milk chocolate in one evening, no chance of that with dark chocolate :)

[Richard Barrett]

I just can't help myself Richard, as soon as I see even the slightest hint that complexity and simplicity are being used as a means of judging music's quality I'm in there like a rat up a drain pipe (...) It seems to me that the sound is always forgotten about when people describe why they like certain music.

To the first point, it's the relationship between music and people that's always complex, which means, given that it's impossible in the end to disentangle what "the music itself" actually is, that music is a complex phenomenon. This complexity might or might not be a surface feature of the way the music sounds, and you might or might not wish to acknowldege it there or anywhere else, but those are side issues. To your second point, of course people are responding to the sounds of music (although that certainly isn't "after all what music is", it's a lot of other things too: sounds expand and accumulate into structures which are just as much part of the poetic identity of the music but in which time and memory might be in the perceptual foreground). Most people don't have the vocabulary to describe sounds as precisely as they can describe associations, and I include myself in "most people" although I've worked with sounds and music all my adult life. It is simply impossible to describe say the opening chord of the Eroica, or that of Pli selon pli, or that of "Hard Day's Night", in such a way as to create that experience of sound in someone who hasn't heard the sound being described. Yet in each case as soon as I think of the piece in question, I inwardly hear its sound. The sound of music is in a literal sense indescribable. That doesn't mean it's forgotten about.

[doversoul1]

... but they very rarely mention what grabs them about the actual piece itself, its sound, which is after all what music is.

... when someone says about a piece "I don't know what to think, I didn't understand it".

Rich

Is something like this of any interest?

The skin comes out in goosebumps and tingles run up the spine. But how particular pieces of music can induce such rapturous effects in people has stumped researchers for centuries.
With the passing of time comes new technology though, and suitably equipped with modern brain scanning equipment, scientists may now have made some headway.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/17/breakthrough-in-understanding-the-chills-and-thrills-of-musical-rapture

The second point: maybe it’s another way of saying ‘it's dead boring’?

[Richard Barrett]

That article struck me in the same way as almost everything I've read (which is quite a lot, for my sins) on the subject of music psychology: an article, or a research paper, or a book, promises to unravel some of the mysteries of music-perception and/or -cognition, I read it and think either that this was a massively elaborate way of establishing something that most people who think about such things would already have intuited, or that the complexity of the relationship between music and listeners which I've alluded to before has been reduced so far in the interests of having a tidily quantifiable outcome that the results are basically useless. Or both.

[NatBalance]

The sound of music is in a literal sense indescribable. That doesn't mean it's forgotten about.

Oh yes, sound is a bit of a bugger to describe, but I'll have a go. If I were on Desert Island Discs I reckon one of my choices might be 'I Feel Love' by Donna Summer. I would state that it was the first song I kept playing on repeat. That it was those quick repeated notes which dipped repetatively that held me in a trance, the way that repeated dipping phrase gradually changed in nature so that it never became boring even though it was always there, the way the music weaved its way around that repeated phrase with a simple downscaled melody, and of course, the sexy voice of the delicious Donna …. ooooo. The words do play a part aswell, and the fact they are crude and basic is all part of the superb quality of the piece, they are not reasons to degrade it. It appeals to the animal in me, whereas Arvo Part's Fur Alina appeals to my contemplative side, Scriabin's Poem of Ecstacy appeals to the side of me that wants more sophistication. Variety is the spice of life. The complex and the simple both play their part.

I know some pieces have features that lend themselves to a certain amount of description and some do not. Music theory is an atttempt to understand patterns that attract us to the sounds we call music, and the theory works very well in general, but it is not an exact science because breaking the rules can also sometimes work.

Even though I have attempted to describe why I like a piece because of its sound there is still the question why? That question is always there no matter how much we try to describe why a piece of music is of good or bad quality and that I think is because the real answer lies in our individual biology. It looks like Doversoul has linked something that attempts to answer that question and I look forward to looking at that later.

Rich

[doversoul1]

It looks like Doversoul has linked something that attempts to answer that question and I look forward to looking at that later.

Rich

Oh, I wouldn’t take it too seriously. It’s just one of those ‘scientific’ articles that don’t tell you much more than anybody’s common sense but I thought you might be able to pick up a few useful vocabularies if you wanted to talk about this sort of things.

[Richard Barrett]

the real answer lies in our individual biology.

Part of it probably does, but a great deal of it certainly doesn't. As I said before, "environmental factors" play a large role. To take an extreme example, the Canadian composer Colin McPhee relates that during one of his extended stays in Bali he played various examples of Western classical piano music to local musicians, who in those days had very limited access to it, and their response was that it all sounded very similar, whether it was Bach or Debussy. In other words the perceptual features which those musicians were attuned to, and in which musical "quality" for them inhered - subtleties of intonation and particular kinds of multilayered forms - were missing. Nowadays we have the opportunity to experience and assimilate not only local musical traditions but many others too, which our "individual biology" doesn't prevent us from appreciating but which require patience and effort for a re-attunement to different aspects from the ones we were brought up with.