Moral Maze - British Places : Better Represented By Classical Music Than Other Forms

[teamsaint]

Nice Parry (like the Third Symphony, the "English") - but does that mean that Holst is evoking "at least a dozen Dorset heaths", and can listeners who know the area "spot" which is which at different points of the composition - or is the Music a generalized "heaths" Music (and [how] does the harmony, rhythm, orchestration, texture etc etc communicate this? What if a listener says "that thirteenth chord with the sharpened seventh isn't Dorset - it's the Car Park outside the Dog and Loo Bowl pub on the Yorkshire Moors just outside Leyburn"?)

Why would that particularly matter , unless a composer was specifically aiming to produce a precise set response in each listener , on every occasion? Which would be rather limiting all round, wouldn't it , and which presupposes a specific way for listeners to engage their critical faculties ?

[Lat-Literal]

Well, to go back to Ferney's example of the Furiant ,( which might be more helpful , and easier, than me describing a response to La Mer) when thinking about the rhythm, we might count the rhythm in words, ( even if "made up" words like Ferney's descrition of the rhythm). Or if hearing a harmonic change, we don't just hear it, we translate it into language( at last ordinary mortals like me do ! ) along the lines of " Oh its gone to the relative minor" .And of course in a thousand other ways. I don't doubt that the more experience ( and expert?) we become as listeners, the more intuitive this becomes, and the less "translation" is needed. To describe something that aims at a different approach, my daughter was involved in teaching at a school in Germany where they used something called the Gordon method.

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

I think that this is a teaching method that attempts a type of immersive approach which attempts to cut out( among other things) the "translation " phase. But other people may know more about this than me. I certainly hope so !!
Anyway, I'm interested in your language box closing down. Maybe this is something I need to consider aiming towards ? Perhaps my language box is too active when listening, and I am assuming this is the state in which other hear, when in fact it isn't always.

Thank you for your kind words, Lat. I hope you enjoyed the Early Music Show.

As Richard Tarleton says, music is abstract. I think any association with place, or most things for that matter, can only be based on acquired knowledge and the knowledge of ‘musical grammar’ which makes us aware of what to listen out for. One of the most famous places associated with music must be Alhambra but this is because we are told by the title, the photograph on the CD cover etc., When it comes to British music, aren’t the works that have something like meta-musical element that is said to be an essence of places in Britain composed by a small-ish group of composers from a certain era in history whose works have come to be known to represent British-ness?

Yes, I agree that the connections are there by association rather than anything ( usually ) intrinsic. But I'm not sure I can remove those associations, once there.

As Vinny says, pipes, for example, place music by association, but the kind of music which they tend to produce can then be representative of place.

If one accepts that, then you can take it further. So the pipes example, can be extended to the music of Stuart Adamson, who presented( created) a guitar sound which incorporated some elements of pipe sounds, and which thus, secondhand or by association perhaps, places his music geographically. I think you could listen to his sound, and confidentally place him as Scottish, without any lyric or other clue.

It's true. But still, recognising a place from a sonic representation of it (even a field recording, let alone a transmutation into some kind of music) isn't really possible in principle, is it? I have very strong associations between some pieces of music and certain places. For example the second movement of Beethoven 5 always reminds me of my grandparents' garden. Why? I have no idea, but it's a much stronger feeling than any association I might be told I ought to have between say Elgar and the British countryside, that's the stuff of TV commercials really.

Well, his Guardian obituary mentions 'Big Country's distinctive riffs were described as "making guitars sounding like bagpipes" - a description Adamson hated' - so I think what enhanced enjoyment one gets from 'identifying' location is surely the listener's individual creation. Is 'Scottish', 'Czech' any different from 'jazz' or 'folk song' in terms of the musical colour palette; or any other sources which a composer absorbs and utilises?

I wouldn't want to distract the discussion , but Stuart Adamson's music does reflect place in a number of ways, and this includes his music before Big Country. He might not have liked the description of his guitar work ( as a suggestion ,possibly feeling that it distracted from other musical qualities) , but it is hard to escape the association when listening.
I'm not sure my enjoyment of his music is particularly enhanced by the ( secondhand) association with place, but his playing was very distinctive, and one of the distinctive features was one which other people associate with place.

But I'd agree to the point in any case that the" listener's individual creation" is always critical.

Yes indeed a place can have a particular sonic signature, especially with things like bells. That's why I said "in principle". Most places seem to me relatively generic in terms of the sounds that happen there, although I'm not an expert on this kind of thing by any means so I'm happy to be corrected. I do like Chris Watson's work; the other day I was listening to his album made on Holy Island, which is a place I know quite well, though I wonder if I'd get as much from the recordings if I didn't.

Whether or not the Gordon theory is "taxonomy of musical preconditions for critical thinking", it is true that we all approach music with a set of classifications of which we are unaware unless we decide we want to take the time to work them out. Some of these are personal - a specific early garden - and some are general - notions shared by some that electric guitars played in certain kinds of ways make them reminiscent of pipes or bells. Indeed, in the far longer term chiming was intended to chime. That is in conveying a message on some level.

From a British pop/rock perspective, I think listeners are frequently located in geographical categories - the Liverpool sound which in eras connecting is often mostly dependent on vocal intonation etc but also in a wide range of broad concepts such as "Carnaby Street". The acquisition of cultural references which are not merely musical so that those who never knew that music but do know British social history would find it easy to comprehend. That sort of idea can be shot off in different directions depending on levels of interest and knowledge.

I would like to be able to agree that the jangle in the guitars of a Marr (the mid 1980s guitarist of The Smiths) wholly indicates a so-called Manchester sound but I know that the very similar jangle on some Postcard records instinctively brings forth notions of Central Scotland because that was where that record label was based. I'm also aware that the Manchester sound is if anything more electronic and dance based than guitar based, albeit with distinctive overlapping, while the record label to which I refer produced a fair few entirely different sort of compositions, some not from Britain at all. As for bagpipes, I think we are to some extent back in garden territory although it is for many a less personal idea. They are Scottish for most British people because that was how we heard them first although some Northumbrians may well feel differently. These categories are different maps - many only slightly geographical - so to the forum member who kindly wrote to me and explained that he had an especial fondness for Gurney, Somervell - and that list continued on - he was I felt providing me with his map. It placed that part of him and them for me and my learning. That is not to say it wasn't just one of his own, what? Horizontal, perspex, even shifting, plates.

So only after such matters does one have a composer who says this is "La Mer" though not necessarily Eastbourne where the idea emerged. Occasionally that is unhelpful. I remember the time it took to me to really take to "La Mer" in contrast with a number of Debussy's other works because it wasn't the sea as I expected it and the title somewhat got in the way. One might say the same of "Spartacus". I actually disagree with RT's point there. The person who chose it for "The Onedin Line" was, in my opinion, exceedingly astute. If that then is titles and/or original concepts there is the question about all of these other words. Ours. Unlikely though it seems, I don't think that I spoke very many sentences at all about music until I was at least at university. There were a few moments - taking into school "She Loves You" around 1969 when everyone else had brought in one of Stewpot's childrens favourites - that made me hip apparently - and, when walking into senior school at age 16, being virtually forced to declare what single I had under my arm because I said so little no one could place me. This was received as a "cool" shock. There was brief involvement in carols and classical music between those points but there we were being educated and under instruction.

Consequently the sheer amount of association I carried with me silently was fairly overwhelming. It was more the globe than the globe - almost wholly based on extensive listening that wasn't communicated to anyone. If it had been, it would have probably flown away. Later, it was all about identification. We must have talked about music for hours but I'm really not sure that it went much beyond "I like this one" and "I don't like that one" or "can I borrow that record?" or "do you want to go to this concert later in the week?". No, it is forums like this one which have opened the door to more conversation about music. It might have its own boundaries of what is and isn't possible but on balance I'd say that is a good thing.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

How about if that last sentence is broadened so that it represents a broader outlook beyond masses, ie the emphasis on music itself?

I'm not sure what you mean here, Lats - I was describing my whole attitude to Music itself, not just to Masses.

I am not sure how you are with Kraftwerk - but I would guess you would see a problem if the motorways, bikes, computers etc were taken out of their music?

Sadly, apart from a very good BBC4 documentary on Kraftwerk a couple of years ago, my chief experience of their work is trying to discuss RVW's Fifth to a group of Sixth-Formers whilst Autobahn was playing from the next room. The Sixth Formers (who knew the piece from the time they'd been that age) couldn't help joining in "fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der autobahn"!

Depiction isn't everything....I fully accept it......but there is no testament to Glasgow or Belfast or Manchester or Leeds or Hull or Cardiff or Bristol or Brighton or Croydon. I find that strange.

There is Anthony Burgess' Manchester Overture (not available Online, that I can find) and Arthur Butterworth's Mancunians (ditto). Peter Maxwell Davies' Cross Lane Fair celebrates a Salford holiday - which is why it includes Northumbrian Bagpipes and Bodhran (ditto).

Leeds, of course, is in itself a huge Musical testament! (And Huddersfield doesn't just have a single piece of Music named for it; it hosts the country's most important Music Festival every year.)

[LeMartinPecheur]

Nice Parry (like the Third Symphony, the "English") - but does that mean that Holst is evoking "at least a dozen Dorset heaths", and can listeners who know the area "spot" which is which at different points of the composition - or is the Music a generalized "heaths" Music (and [how] does the harmony, rhythm, orchestration, texture etc etc communicate this? What if a listener says "that thirteenth chord with the sharpened seventh isn't Dorset - it's the Car Park outside the Dog and Loo Bowl pub on the Yorkshire Moors just outside Leyburn"?)

Um, actually I think Holst was probably evoking the impression made by Hardy's writings about Egdon Heath in his own imagination, rather than any particular Dorset heath(s)!

My original point, prompted by your #97, was really just to suggest a distinction between a purely imaginary place (Griffes' Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan?) and ones rooted in some 'real' place however ill-defined. I guess composers dealing with a subject like that must be up against the challenge of not accidentally using some musical idiom too tied to some definite locale. (Cf Busoni's Turandot music that quotes Greensleeves!)

[Thinks: is Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande too evocative of France??]

At root I think we agree on music's inability to describe or even successfully evoke anything specific at all, as per your #96!

Pax?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Why would that particularly matter , unless a composer was specifically aiming to produce a precise set response in each listener , on every occasion? Which would be rather limiting all round, wouldn't it , and which presupposes a specific way for listeners to engage their critical faculties ?

So - you're saying that a specific place cannot be evoked by the Music itself, because that would be "rather limiting"? That's what I've been saying all along! And if other listeners hear specific places when they hear Music, then that's fine, too - whether or not where they hear is/n't that suggested/directed by the title of the piece. Music is abstract - and just as some people see images in abstract paintings (and others enjoy The Hay Wain more for its patterns of shape, colour, and chiaroscuro than for the "picture"), so everyone is free to hear what matters most for them, in accordance with how their "critical faculties" are "wired".

My point is that this dualism has to be so - those (listeners or composers) who hear "forests" or "seascapes" or "gridlocked traffic" or "orange-green with flashes of violet" cannot require others to share these experiences; whilst pointing out that a thirteenth chord on C# with a sharpened fifth is followed by a Bb seventh with an added augmented fourth is a technical description of the sounds that (if the performers play it correctly, and the listener isn't gazing at an attractive member of the audience sat across from them) everybody hears. That's the difference between the use of words to discuss Music - technical language is objective and factual (in the sense that the first chord either is a thirteenth chord on C# with a sharpened fifth, or it isn't). Descriptive language is subjective and true only for those listeners who share similar "stories"/"visions"/"feelings".

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Pax?

Oh, absolutely - I had no idea that there was a hint of bellum and apologise if I'd suggested there was. (One of those Threads where Forumistas have heated agreements?)

Ditto to teamsaint - no malice afore-or-afterthought.

[teamsaint]

So - you're saying that a specific place cannot be evoked by the Music itself, because that would be "rather limiting"?

No, I'm saying that a specific place can be, if that happens to work ( or perhaps be desired by both composer and listener, )but that some other place, or no place might equally be evoked. Or not. Just that I wouldn't rule out the possibility, and would accept a wide range of possibilities. And that authorial intention is important,( because the use of language in , for instance naming of a piece, is deliberate and possibly very significant) although the effect is unlikely to be very specific.

And the " limiting" thing is just that. I'm sure that composers don't generally desire a very closely specific response, and that listeners respond differently, even if only marginally, on each listening, and in fact not just when listening, also when thinking about a work.

Oh, and for once I thought it was all rather amicable, and interesting........

( ..er not that it isn't always interesting of course.......)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I take it all back! I've been watching the documentary on Milton Keynes, and looking at the place, I can definitely hear the work of ... (insert name of composer who most bores you: They themselves chose Michael Nyman for their adverts).

[doversoul1]

Well, to go back to Ferney's example of the Furiant ,( which might be more helpful , and easier, than me describing a response to La Mer) when thinking about the rhythm, we might count the rhythm in words, ( even if "made up" words like Ferney's descrition of the rhythm). Or if hearing a harmonic change, we don't just hear it, we translate it into language( at last ordinary mortals like me do ! ) along the lines of " Oh its gone to the relative minor" .And of course in a thousand other ways. I don't doubt that the more experience ( and expert?) we become as listeners, the more intuitive this becomes, and the less "translation" is needed. To describe something that aims at a different approach, my daughter was involved in teaching at a school in Germany where they used something called the Gordon method.

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

I think that this is a teaching method that attempts a type of immersive approach which attempts to cut out( among other things) the "translation " phase. But other people may know more about this than me. I certainly hope so !!
Anyway, I'm interested in your language box closing down. Maybe this is something I need to consider aiming towards ? Perhaps my language box is too active when listening, and I am assuming this is the state in which others hear/listen, when in fact it isn't always.

the Gordon method.: This is interesting. Can I go off the topic and nit-pick a bit? Ignore this if you can’t be bothered.

Audiation is a term Gordon coined in 1975 to refer to comprehension and internal realization of music,
… is analogous to simultaneous translation of languages, giving meaning to sound and music based on individual knowledge and experience.

It should be simultaneous interpreting and not translation to start with, and the basic principle of this activity is that you do not internalise what you hear. It is a highly specialised skill but entirely mechanical. Yes, you need to know the languages involved and need to be thoroughly informed about the subject including all the technical terms. The skill is to completely shut your mind and concentrate on using your brain and repeating what you are hearing but in another language. Once the job is done, usually you have no recollection of what it was all about. If you don’t believe me, try following a news reader closely, repeating exactly what you hear, and see how much you can remember afterwards what you heard.

Sorry about this. I’ll get back to the music question tomorrow if there is room on the thread. I imagine to a lot of people who have no musical education (me, to start with), language has little use when listening to music.

[Lat-Literal]

I'm not sure what you mean here, Lats - I was describing my whole attitude to Music itself, not just to Masses.


Sadly, apart from a very good BBC4 documentary on Kraftwerk a couple of years ago, my chief experience of their work is trying to discuss RVW's Fifth to a group of Sixth-Formers whilst Autobahn was playing from the next room. The Sixth Formers (who knew the piece from the time they'd been that age) couldn't help joining in "fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der autobahn"!


There is Anthony Burgess' Manchester Overture (not available Online, that I can find) and Arthur Butterworth's Mancunians (ditto). Peter Maxwell Davies' Cross Lane Fair celebrates a Salford holiday - which is why it includes Northumbrian Bagpipes and Bodhran (ditto).

Leeds, of course, is in itself a huge Musical testament! (And Huddersfield doesn't just have a single piece of Music named for it; it hosts the country's most important Music Festival every year.)

Ah yes - I know the Burgess piece. Well done, ferney. At one point, I must have found it on YT and it would surprise me if the link wasn't posted on this forum. I thought I understood what you said to be a broader approach/outlook than merely to masses but wasn't sure. You have, though, answered my question on Kraftwerk. Tthat answer reinforces your position. Fine. Interested in the PMD example which now joins RB's Holy Island piece in "music I should try to get to know". On the latter point in my last paragraph, it suddenly strikes me that I haven't really discussed music verbally for the past ten years so that bit has gone full circle. It's the net that is different - one thing which fascinates me is the cultural decision that forums such as these should be possible and popular but that similar groups are not to be accepted via telephone or skype. Few would have predicted that the major form would be writing. That in itself arguably changes relationships with music. Music is no longer the sole common means of conveying music, ie itself, in the absence of pictures and human voice.

[teamsaint]

the Gordon method.: This is interesting. Can I go off the topic and nit-pick a bit? Ignore this if you can’t be bothered.

Audiation is a term Gordon coined in 1975 to refer to comprehension and internal realization of music,
… is analogous to simultaneous translation of languages, giving meaning to sound and music based on individual knowledge and experience.

It should be simultaneous interpreting and not translation to start with, and the basic principle of this activity is that you do not internalise what you hear. It is a highly specialised skill but entirely mechanical. Yes, you need to know the languages involved and need to be thoroughly informed about the subject including all the technical terms. The skill is to completely shut your mind and concentrate on using your brain and repeating what you are hearing but in another language. Once the job is done, usually you have no recollection of what it was all about. If you don’t believe me, try following a news reader closely, repeating exactly what you hear, and see how much you can remember afterwards what you heard.

Sorry about this. I’ll get back to the music question tomorrow if there is room on the thread. I imagine to a lot of people who have no musical education (me, to start with), language has little use when listening to music.

I do believe you !! I don't know much about the Gordon theory/Method, and really threw it in as food for thought. I'm off on my hols for a few days, so may not be around to keep going around.....
However, I'd have thought that the lower the level of formal musical education, the more persuasive the power of language around music might be ?

[Lat-Literal]

the Gordon method.: This is interesting. Can I go off the topic and nit-pick a bit? Ignore this if you can’t be bothered.

Audiation is a term Gordon coined in 1975 to refer to comprehension and internal realization of music,
… is analogous to simultaneous translation of languages, giving meaning to sound and music based on individual knowledge and experience.

It should be simultaneous interpreting and not translation to start with, and the basic principle of this activity is that you do not internalise what you hear. It is a highly specialised skill but entirely mechanical. Yes, you need to know the languages involved and need to be thoroughly informed about the subject including all the technical terms. The skill is to completely shut your mind and concentrate on using your brain and repeating what you are hearing but in another language. Once the job is done, usually you have no recollection of what it was all about. If you don’t believe me, try following a news reader closely, repeating exactly what you hear, and see how much you can remember afterwards what you heard.

Sorry about this. I’ll get back to the music question tomorrow if there is room on the thread. I imagine to a lot of people who have no musical education (me, to start with), language has little use when listening to music.

Yes......please may we have more.

No, I'm saying that a specific place can be, if that happens to work ( or perhaps be desired by both composer and listener, )but that some other place, or no place might equally be evoked. Or not. Just that I wouldn't rule out the possibility, and would accept a wide range of possibilities. And that authorial intention is important,( because the use of language in , for instance naming of a piece, is deliberate and possibly very significant) although the effect is unlikely to be very specific.

And the " limiting" thing is just that. I'm sure that composers don't generally desire a very closely specific response, and that listeners respond differently, even if only marginally, on each listening, and in fact not just when listening, also when thinking about a work.

Oh, and for once I thought it was all rather amicable, and interesting........

( ..er not that it isn't always interesting of course.......)

I'm more with you on this one. Not sure that requirements come into it. If I write a piece of music about a cat and someone hears it as Saltburn by the Sea I'm not going to get annoyed by it. It appears to me that everyone is in agreement that an audience removes detail selectively. Some might want the idea of the trees in the place but not the houses, the traffic jams and the ambulance that went up a street one evening but not on any other, however much Google street maps would claim to offer all of those things while being wholly unable to depict the street I mention on all the days when there was no ambulance there. Sure, some people don't even want the trees. They want the musical structure to stand in its own right; for the spaces to be there rather than between moving branches; for texture to be purely aural, not in the bark. Either way, there is separation just as in any photography there is separation.

Cartier-Bresson never told us what was taking place elsewhere. His street scenes may hint of it or appear to exist entirely in their own sphere. What would worry me is any absolute notion of what it means of anything to depict. Oddly enough seeing it is coming from me the word I am going to use is shorthand. In the early 1980s, I visited Manchester and Hull and Sheffield etc for the first time. Had lengthy conversations in each with people who had meaning for me and some very positive experiences. I can recall a considerable amount of it but it is the music of that time from those areas which speak to me more about those places and it principally defines them for me. Why? Because I think I just need to hear a name and a sound and it is very route one. There is no elaboration and it is if anything truer and richer in its way. It becomes a box of colour and feeling and association. A marble or a painted egg.

Similarly, I've never been to North Norfolk. I did read "The Shrimp and the Anemone". Liked it. Felt it. Can't recall the detail much. I also know about the coloured rocks at Hunstanton because I've read about them on the internet. Yes I would like to go there. Some of it would be tremendous - the sweep of a bay perhaps - and some of it would remind me that in almost every place there are dodgy youths on corners and ugly estates. I might go into a library and discover that old LP was not my sort of person in the slightest. How deeper the hue in a one second "Hartley - coloured rock by the sea - Hunstanton". That is what the best music does in my opinion. It almost makes me understand why some folk choose not to travel.

[doversoul1]

I do believe you !! I don't know much about the Gordon theory/Method, and really threw it in as food for thought. I'm off on my hols for a few days, so may not be around to keep going around.....
However, I'd have thought that the lower the level of formal musical education, the more persuasive the power of language around music might be ?

You may already have gone but just in case. I think we are talking about two different things: how to talk about music; and how to talk about what a particular work of music is about. It’s the latter I am not convinced that it can be done. Are there systematic ways, theories or established reference points, of talking about what a work of music is about other than the referring to the title or added descriptions?

Have a great holiday. Make sure your cats will be looked after well.

[teamsaint]

You may already have gone but just in case. I think we are talking about two different things: how to talk about music; and how to talk about what a particular work of music is about. It’s the latter I am not convinced that it can be done. Are there systematic ways, theories or established reference points, of talking about what a work of music is about other than the referring to the title or added descriptions?

Have a great holiday. Make sure your cats will be looked after well.

Thanks DS.
I'll contemplate this on my hols.
The cats have robust plans in place for their comfort and requirements at home !!
( Can't bear to put them in kennels.)

[Pulcinella]

Are there systematic ways, theories or established reference points, of talking about what a work of music is about other than the referring to the title or added descriptions?

I'm still trying to understand why you would want to do this.
If music is about anything, surely it's about getting a group of performers together and performing it!