Understanding Music

[french frank]

Oh dear!
I'm finding his book extremely well written and informative, and am enjoying it.

In his favour, it seems he did choose a piece by Bach, also the Beatles, Elvis Costello, Maurice Jarre and I couldn't find out the others.

[Richard Barrett]

Pinker again: "We enjoy strawberry cheesecake, but not because we evolved a taste for it. We evolved circuits that gave us trickles of enjoyment from the sweet taste of ripe fruit, the creamy mouth feel of fats and oils from nuts and meat, and the coolness of fresh water. Cheesecake packs a sensual wallop unlike anything in the natural world because it is a brew of megadoses of agreeable stimuli which we concocted for the express purpose of pressing our pleasure buttons. Pornography is another pleasure technology... [T]he arts are a third. ... Compared with language, vision, social reasoning, and physical know-how, music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged. Music appears to be a pure pleasure technology, a cocktail of recreational drugs that we ingest through the ear to stimulate a mass of pleasure circuits at once." In other words: I don't have a particularly profound appreciation of music and I'm a pretty clever dude so anyone who claims they do have a relationship with music that's deeper and more complex than "auditory cheesecake" is obviously deluding themselves.

[Quarky]

Attributed to Feynman is the quote, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Another slant on the meaning of 'understand', not quite the same as when applied to music? Stephen Pinker noted, if I remember, as being on Private Passions and not including a single piece of classical music among his choices?

It may be a mistake to bring science into this entertaining discussion, because you may not like where science is heading......Computer science .....AI.....Robots listening/ composing and conducting orchestras......

It's all on the Web.

[ahinton]

Pinker again: "We enjoy strawberry cheesecake, but not because we evolved a taste for it. We evolved circuits that gave us trickles of enjoyment from the sweet taste of ripe fruit, the creamy mouth feel of fats and oils from nuts and meat, and the coolness of fresh water. Cheesecake packs a sensual wallop unlike anything in the natural world because it is a brew of megadoses of agreeable stimuli which we concocted for the express purpose of pressing our pleasure buttons. Pornography is another pleasure technology... [T]he arts are a third. ... Compared with language, vision, social reasoning, and physical know-how, music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged. Music appears to be a pure pleasure technology, a cocktail of recreational drugs that we ingest through the ear to stimulate a mass of pleasure circuits at once." In other words: I don't have a particularly profound appreciation of music and I'm a pretty clever dude so anyone who claims they do have a relationship with music that's deeper and more complex than "auditory cheesecake" is obviously deluding themselves.

That all seems to me to speak for itself with uniquely (I hope) sickening eloquence...

[french frank]

Going back to science and Feynman's quote about quantum mechanics, by coincidence I was reading an essay about Wittgenstein last night (being unable to manage Wittgenstein, but happy with a philosophical essay thereon) when I came upon this:

"The difference between science and philosophy, [Wittgenstein] now believed, is between two distinct forms of understanding: the theoretical and the non-theoretical. Scientific understanding is given through the construction and testing of hypotheses and theories; philosophical understanding, on the other hand, is resolutely non-theoretical. What we are after in philosophy is "the understanding that consists in seeing connections".

Non-theoretical understanding is the kind of understanding we have when we say that we understand a poem, a piece of music, a person or even a sentence. Take the case of a child learning her native language. When she begins to understand what is said to her, is it because she has formulated a theory? ... The criterion we use for saying that a child understands what is said to her is that she behaves appropriately ... "

[Dave2002]

What about sports? What kind of understanding does a cricketer have when striking a ball, or catching one?

Or in music - a pianist knowing which keys to hit/press and how hard? Note also that a pianist may be very good technically, but (according perhaps to others) not be very good "musically". What would that mean?

Does understanding have to be explained by those posessing such understanding?

Do people always understand how they themselves function anyway?

[Richard Barrett]

Another nice quotation from Wittgenstein is "my style is like bad musical composition". When it comes to music, though, his famously conservative tastes let him down badly - I'm not talking about Schoenberg here but composers like Strauss and Mahler who were far too modern for him. What constitutes understanding music as far as Wittgenstein is concerned is something that limits itself to a Schenker-like attachment to a certain vision of harmonic order (in a related way to that in which his philosophy limits itself to questions of language), which is inadequate both to much musical composition and thinking subsequent to Brahms and to most music that doesn't stem from "the central European tradition".

[french frank]

Another nice quotation from Wittgenstein is "my style is like bad musical composition". When it comes to music, though, his famously conservative tastes let him down badly

I was wondering about that, though was this simply a question of his 'taste' or, being a non musician, his 'time'? I wondered whether the distinction he was making between theoretical and non-theoretical, especially the child analogy, boiled down to little more than what we, as individuals, have in our heads: knowledge, experience, yes, personal taste. The scientist 'understands' the theory (let's leave out quantum mechanics!) to the extent that they have the relevant technical/theoretical training and knowledge. But 'understanding a piece of music' can only be a similar if you think there is only one way to 'understand' it; and what one listener 'makes of it' is actually not as valid as what another listener understands.Isn't Wittgenstein saying that they aren't similar at all? If you can't make anything at all of a piece of music, are you interested to investigate this? Is it your shortcoming? Is the music just worthless? Isn't seeing pictures or following a story 'making connections' too?

[rauschwerk]

I have known the fourth symphony of Shostakovich ever since the first Western performances about 60 years ago. I cannot say that even now I fully understand it, especially that bizarre pot-pourri in the finale. This thread has moved me to look up a commentary http://www.michaellewanski.com/blog/...-c-minor-op-43 from which I quote:-

"A divertimento follows, a suite of urban street music… waltzes for the strings and flutes, a sarcastic polka for the bassoon, more waltzing for the winds, a break-neck galop in the strings. There are references to the tone of Petrushka, and not only musically—just as Stravinsky’s puppet (literal and figural) experiences a private grief that his public knows nothing about, so here a nostalgia for a by-gone Russia is masked. The trombone comments throughout with motivic material from the the scherzo. While I encourage you to try to follow the formal and musical logic, I similarly exhort you not to feel bad if ever detail escapes you on first listening."

Stravinsky said, 'I wonder if Les Noces can ever completely reveal itself to a non-Russian', and I am left wondering if the same could be said of Shostakovich 4!

[Richard Barrett]

I was wondering about that, though was this simply a question of his 'taste' or, being a non musician, his 'time'?

On the other hand, he came from a high-bourgeois family which was at the centre of Viennese cultural life, with many well-known musicians paying visits including the aforementioned Mahler and Strauss as well as Brahms, and his elder brother Paul was of course a musician who collaborated with many of the most prominent composers of the time. So I think Ludwig understood a great deal more about music than the average "non-musician". I remember back in 1996 being part of a three-week session for scientists and artists to discuss ideas with one another (imagine!) and observing that, while those among the artists who were interested in science were interested in the latest cutting-edge developments, those among the scientists who were interested in (for example) music tended to be interested in "the classics". It's even more strange to me that Wittgenstein, who certainly broke new ground in epistemology, seemed so blinkered when it came to appreciating music that expressed in a different medium exactly that current state of the Zeitgeist from which his philosophical ideas emerged. So I'm inclined not to take his views on music too seriously...

As for Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, well yes it is very Russian of course, and Stravinsky has a point in relation to a work which is so immersed in Russian tradition, but surely too much can be made of such references to national culture. Can the St Matthew Passion "ever completely reveal itself" to someone who isn't an early 18th century Lutheran from Saxony? Does any music ever "completely reveal itself" to anyone? Something as complex and ambiguous as this symphony of Shostakovich has too many facets to be understood in a single way, which might lead some listeners to the conclusion that it can't be understood at all. We all see ourselves (or not) in the art we try to understand. I would reject Ian McDonald's interpretation of the symphony as a thinly veiled anti-Stalin tract but I wouldn't claim that he hasn't understood it.

[french frank]

I remember back in 1996 being part of a three-week session for scientists and artists to discuss ideas with one another (imagine!) and observing that, while those among the artists who were interested in science were interested in the latest cutting-edge developments, those among the scientists who were interested in (for example) music tended to be interested in "the classics".

That's fascinating! I always felt that when mixing with scientists they were always much more knowledgeable about 'the arts' (yes, 'the classics') than I was about 'science'. More humiliating, they knew a lot about the arts that I didn't

[Pulcinella]

That's fascinating! I always felt that when mixing with scientists they were always much more knowledgeable about 'the arts' (yes, 'the classics') than I was about 'science'. More humiliating, they knew a lot about the arts that I didn't

A-level General Studies (does it still exist?) always seemed easier for scientists (we could still write an essay and have a stab at a foreign translation, remembering something from our O-level studies) than it did for artists. We were encouraged to read 'The Listener' while they got given "New Scientist', I seem to remember.

[Bryn]

. . . As for Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, . . . I would reject Ian McDonald's interpretation of the symphony as a thinly veiled anti-Stalin tract but I wouldn't claim that he hasn't understood it.

That interpretation might, perhaps, better fit the 5th, at least in Gerald McBurney's analysis of the work.

[Richard Barrett]

A-level General Studies (does it still exist?) always seemed easier for scientists (we could still write an essay and have a stab at a foreign translation, remembering something from our O-level studies) than it did for artists.

I got my highest A level grade for that "subject"! (but I was more of a scientist then)

[french frank]

A-level General Studies (does it still exist?) always seemed easier for scientists (we could still write an essay and have a stab at a foreign translation, remembering something from our O-level studies) than it did for artists. We were encouraged to read 'The Listener' while they got given "New Scientist', I seem to remember.

Probably a good basis for a lot of things. I didn't take that (don't know that it was on offer), but having done French, German and Latin, I knew nothing of TS Eliot or Ezra Pound - as scientists I knew did. They also played musical instruments, often very well.