Pieces Not Fit for Purpose

[MrGongGong]

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.

(probably OT)

Why would you choose something you knew?
I can get "I Feel Love" by simply thinking, there's plenty of music that I haven't yet encountered

[kea]

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.

The part that lies in individual psychology (not biology) has to do more with one's openness to putting in that patience and effort, and in cases where one is exposed to a wide variety of musical traditions from very early in life, which ones one chooses as "legitimate". Psychology is partly affected by one's environment as well, but within a natural "range" determined by nature and one's tendency towards various psychological disorders. >_>

For my case as an example, western classical music in my parents' household growing up was only one competing tradition among many: jazz, folk, pop, alt-rock, traditional musics of many cultures, arabic & turkish classical music, etc. It also included a large proportion of pre-Baroque classical. Yet very quickly and under no-one's encouragement I concluded that not only was classical music the only worthwhile one out of all those competing traditions, but also only a handful of classical composers (Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, Schubert, Bach, Bartók, Schumann, Dvořák, Brahms) had written anything worth hearing, and remained that way more or less until good teachers and exposure to the wider world began to convince me otherwise starting around the age of thirteen. And even then, no other kind of music I have discovered feels like coming home so much as this same handful of composers. Only in the direction of 20th and 21st century classical music, particularly its more experimental and forward-looking trends, did I find anything that seriously attracted me. For example I listened to jazz for a few years, but I could never get the same emotional effect out of it, and eventually grew tired of the omnipresent beat and the continuing unfamiliarity and stopped putting the effort in. (Except for avant-garde or experimental jazz, which comes closer to the 20th century classical music I have come to love.) The degree to which this is the fault of my environment's taste in music and my opportunities to put in that patience and effort, which if anything has encouraged eclecticism, is probably minimal relative to the ways my environment has shaped the personality and psychology I received (in all probability) from my genetics.

I don't know if this makes any sense. Probably we're fundamentally agreeing on at least one thing.

[NatBalance]

Doversoul - in answer to my statement "…. when someone says about a piece "I don't know what to think, I didn't understand it"" you offer the view "… maybe it’s another way of saying ‘it's dead boring’?"

Ha ha, yes, could be, on the other hand I reckon it could also mean that the person is not very attuned to music because it seems the music itself is not enough. Trouble is that argument has been mightly confused by one of my favourite composers, Holst, who apparently said words to that affect on first hearing Vaughan Williams' Flos Campi.

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.

Oh I don't know, I don't see why it should not be taken too seriously. I learnt a long time ago to always doubt what I think is obvious or common sense, after all, look at acupunture. It's not exactly common sense that tells you to stick a pin in someone's foot to cure their headache :)

An interesting article. I'm glad that scientists are studying the biology behind the 'tingle factor' and it is interesting what they have discovered. I know people who very much enjoy music but yet they can easily talk through the tingle factor bits. Not enough autory fibres that's their trouble.

Richard, in answer to my thought "… the real answer lies in our individual biology" you say …

Part of it probably does, but a great deal of it certainly doesn't. As I said before, "environmental factors" play a large role.

It's the old nature / nurture argument, and it must be that both play a part and I think you are right that nurture plays a bigger part.

The part that lies in individual psychology (not biology) …….

… The degree to which this is the fault of my environment's taste in music and my opportunities to put in that patience and effort, which if anything has encouraged eclecticism, is probably minimal relative to the ways my environment has shaped the personality and psychology I received (in all probability) from my genetics.

I don't know if this makes any sense.

Aey, it is a bit of a brain teaser Kea but I think I see what you are getting at.

I think the word 'biology' fits everything, the whole body. Psychology is a study of one organ.

I can get "I Feel Love" by simply thinking ….

A good trick if you can do it.

To add something to my previous text …

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.

In other words the words are 'fit for purpose' :)