Music has no gender?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

By connected I refer to the opinion that anticipation is a subjective phenomena dependant on previous experience in music (so different for (possibly) for everyone) and structure being a system that is the music- or a 'thing' that the music is bound to. So we have music theory going against human psychology- how are they connected?

But this is to think of "structure" as a noun - a pre-existing template which the Music is "bound to". That sort of thinking will result in confusion in a great many works, so that the works have to be twisted and contorted into shapes to which it doesn't actually conform. It's much less confusing to approach "structure" as a process - something you do as a listener (just as the composer has done when composing - it's not for nothing that "to compose" and "to structure" are synonyms - and that the performer does when performing). Music woks within cultural "anticipation" and "expectation" - the composer providing or denying satisfaction, and in so doing realizing/creating the "character" of the piece.

Second point- I agree but what if it impossible for the listener to create these connections? As in one surprise after another. What if there is pure spontaneous activity after the other?

Define "pure" and "spontaneous"!

Even if a composer decides to write a String Trio in which a herd of elephants is directed to walk through the aisle of the concert hall, and the last hour of the piece consists of a looped recording of Marie Lloyd singing "A Little of what You Fancy Does You Good"; those ideas might "spontaneously" occur to the composer seven months before the premiere of the work, but the effects have been calculated and refined (and the elephants hired) by the time of the performance. An extreme example - but, in trying to think of a random series of events "spontaneously" to illustrate my example, I had to "push" my imagination into extremes. To come up with "spontaneous" examples, I had to cut out the more obvious possibilities. There is no such thing as "pure spontaneous activity" - all surprise/novelty depends on what the listener/reader/viewer already knows and doesn't know.

And if a listener finds it impossible to create connections, then s/he has two options according to temperament: deciding that s/he wants to hear the work again and again until s/he begins to make the connections; or deciding that s/he doesn't like the piece and moving on to something else. We all decide the extent to which we want to devoe time to other people's ideas - some of us want to grasp an idea quickly and get very cross when something isn't easily assimilated. Others are intrigued by possibilities that haven't occurred to us before, and want to work at ideas getting closer and closer to our own "understanding" (I don't really like that word in connection with Music - I prefer "assimilation").

[jean]

Isn't music feminine?
Die Musik, la musique, la musica, la música, to give just German, French, Italian, and Spanish.

Only in a peculiar abstract, symbolic, mythological sense - nothing to do with real women at all.

Well explored by Marina Warner, here:

MONUMENTS AND MAIDENS: THE ALLEGORY OF THE FEMALE FORM

Monuments and Maidens explores the tradition of personifying liberty, justice, wisdom, charity, and other ideals and desiderata in the female form, and examines the tension between women’s historic and symbolic sculpture, and painting, poetry, and classical mythology, she ranges over the allegorical presence of the woman in the Western tradition with a sharply observant eye and a piquant and engaging style.

(That's a very strange sentence - I think there's something missing. But it's a very good book.)

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[ahinton]

Would some music sound as though by a female composer?

Er (well, at least in my experience and understanding) NO!!

[ahinton]

Since Musica ricercata has been mentioned, would anyone know whether it was written by a man or a woman if they hadn't been informed?

My point entirely!

[Richard Barrett]

I was immediately under the impression it was written by a man.

Statistics aside, what do you think it was about the music that gave you this impression? Was it (given that you seem to be very interested in talking about this aspect of music) something about the structure?

As for composers "providing and denying satisfaction"... recently I read David Huron's Sweet Anticipation, which is entirely about this aspect of music, from both a compositorial and a psychological standpoint; and I came out of it with my suspicions strengthened that this is too simplified a way to describe musical "syntax", particularly where non-tonal music is concerned (and I mean pre- as well as post-, as well as musics outside the European tradition). It seems to me that this is a particular case of something more general which doesn't lend itself to such encapsulation.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

As for composers "providing and denying satisfaction"... recently I read David Huron's Sweet Anticipation, which is entirely about this aspect of music, from both a compositorial and a psychological standpoint; and I came out of it with my suspicions strengthened that this is too simplified a way to describe musical "syntax", particularly where non-tonal music is concerned (and I mean pre- as well as post-, as well as musics outside the European tradition).

I get that - I should've said something along the lines that aspects of Musical perception can lead some listeners who have heard similar sounds in other contexts to expect consequences that are not always realized (rather than the somewhat cynical view of composers always toying with what they might expect their listeners might be expecting). But - as I've just demonstrated - syntax doesn't always allow for both precision AND eloquence!

It seems to me that this is a particular case of something more general which doesn't lend itself to such encapsulation.

Can you say a bit more about this, please.

[Richard Barrett]

Can you say a bit more about this, please.

I was afraid you'd ask that!

I'll have a go. As has been mentioned here more than once before, we have evolved to detect and assess patterns in our environment, and this faculty seems for evolutionary reasons to be overdeveloped (safer to see the tiger's stripes when there's no tiger than not to see them when there is). So the musical experience (creating/performing/listening) involves a constant reassessment of (possibly illusory, whatever that means in this context!) patterns and regularities, in terms of sounds/forms but also in terms of poetic/expressive aspects. There are things about the action of perception and memory which only music is able to "tell" us. The concept of anticipation/fulfilment is the verbally expressible tip of an iceberg, which can be described in words because it relates music to the kind of syntactic patterns that characterise language. Undoubtedly this is a real aspect of a great deal of musical experience (creating/performing/listening), but it's never the only one I think, and in some musics it might not need to play a role at all. There is also for example what Aldous Huxley in Heaven and Hell calls being transported to the "antipodes of the mind" (I mention this because I've just been reading it), which has little or nothing to do with the syntactic way of looking at things.

[ahinton]

I was afraid you'd ask that!

I'll have a go. As has been mentioned here more than once before, we have evolved to detect and assess patterns in our environment, and this faculty seems for evolutionary reasons to be overdeveloped (safer to see the tiger's stripes when there's no tiger than not to see them when there is). So the musical experience (creating/performing/listening) involves a constant reassessment of (possibly illusory, whatever that means in this context!) patterns and regularities, in terms of sounds/forms but also in terms of poetic/expressive aspects. There are things about the action of perception and memory which only music is able to "tell" us. The concept of anticipation/fulfilment is the verbally expressible tip of an iceberg, which can be described in words because it relates music to the kind of syntactic patterns that characterise language. Undoubtedly this is a real aspect of a great deal of musical experience (creating/performing/listening), but it's never the only one I think, and in some musics it might not need to play a role at all. There is also for example what Aldous Huxley in Heaven and Hell calls being transported to the "antipodes of the mind" (I mention this because I've just been reading it), which has little or nothing to do with the syntactic way of looking at things.

Excellent! Your students must be very fortunate to be taught by someone who thinks like this...

[Pulcinella]

Only in a peculiar abstract, symbolic, mythological sense - nothing to do with real women at all.

Well explored by Marina Warner, here:

MONUMENTS AND MAIDENS: THE ALLEGORY OF THE FEMALE FORM

Monuments and Maidens explores the tradition of personifying liberty, justice, wisdom, charity, and other ideals and desiderata in the female form, and examines the tension between women’s historic and symbolic sculpture, and painting, poetry, and classical mythology, she ranges over the allegorical presence of the woman in the Western tradition with a sharply observant eye and a piquant and engaging style.

(That's a very strange sentence - I think there's something missing. But it's a very good book.)

.

Change the comma after mythology into a semicolon, perhaps?
I'm sure it's a good book if her Alone of all her sex is anything to go by.

[jean]

Change the comma after mythology into a semicolon, perhaps?

No, that doesn't work - there's something missing after symbolic.

And here it is:

Marina Warner explores the tradition of personifying liberty, justice, wisdom, charity, and other ideals and desiderata in the female form, and examines the tension between women's historic and symbolic roles. Drawing on the evidence of public art, especially sculpture, and painting, poetry, and classical mythology, she ranges over the allegorical presence of the woman in the Western tradition with a sharply observant eye and a piquant and engaging style.

Fancy misquoting a google review on your own website!

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[greenilex]

Brilliant thread. You are the most generous companions!

I think that music's links with voice and dance could make some pieces "feminine" in a biological sense?

[vinteuil]

I think that music's links with voice and dance could make some pieces "feminine" in a biological sense?

... I seem to remember ( an essay by Borges? ) that the tango was originally a male/male dance for gaucho cowboys in Argentina on their free evenings* ...

I suspect most now wd see/hear the tango as a supremely male/female expression...

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

* EDIT - tho' a bit of googlin' sheds doubt on that theory...

[ahinton]

Brilliant thread. You are the most generous companions!

I think that music's links with voice and dance could make some pieces "feminine" in a biological sense?

But what "biological sense" would that be? Singing and dancing are hardly gender specific activities, after all! But maybe I've misunderstood your intended meaning...

[Serial_Apologist]

The concept of anticipation/fulfilment is the verbally expressible tip of an iceberg, which can be described in words because it relates music to the kind of syntactic patterns that characterise language. Undoubtedly this is a real aspect of a great deal of musical experience (creating/performing/listening), but it's never the only one I think, and in some musics it might not need to play a role at all. There is also for example what Aldous Huxley in Heaven and Hell calls being transported to the "antipodes of the mind" (I mention this because I've just been reading it), which has little or nothing to do with the syntactic way of looking at things.

Alan Watts put across a very similar insight at the end of his 'Psychotherapy East and West', a few years in advance of Huxley, if I'm not mistaken; and perhaps it's worth re-quoting here, (forgive a short bit of lead-in and sundry in-fills):

'All perfect accomplishment in art or life is accompanied by the curous sensation that it is happening of itself - that it is not forced, studied or contrived. This is not to say that everything which is felt to happen of itself is a perfect accomplishment; the marvel of human spontaneity is that it has developed the means of self-discipline - which becomes repressive only when it is felt that the controlling agent is separate from the action. But the sensation that the action is happening of itself, neither from an agent nor to a witness, is the authentic sensation of life as pure process in which there is neither mover nor moved. Process without source or destination, verb without subject or object - this is not deprivation, as the word "without" suggests, but the "musical" sensation of arriving at every moment in which the melody and rhythm unfold.

'Music is our nearest approximation to Boehme's "sensual language", for, unlike ordinary language, it does not refer to anything beyond itself, and though it has phrases and patterns, it is without sentences which separate subject from object, and parts of speech which separate things from events. "Abstract" as they may at first seem to be, music and pure mathematics are closer to life than are useful languages which point to meanings beyond themselves. Ordinary language refers to life, but music is living. But life itself is made to behave as ordinary language when it is lived for a purpose beyond itself, when the present serves the future, or when the body is exploited for the purposes of the soul. Such a way of life is therefore "beside itself" - insane - and because it is being made to behave as language and words it becomes as empty as "mere words". It has no recourse except to go on and on to the future to which the present aparently refers, only to find that here, too, the meaning is still beyond.

'The liberative artist plays the part of Orpheus by living in the mode of music instead of the mode of language. His [sic] entire activity is dancing, rhythm for its own sake, and in this way he becomes a vortex which draws others into its pattern ...' (Watts, A. (1961) Invitation to the Dance. Psychotherapy East and West, Pantheon Books, NY, pp 193-194) (My underlinings).

Sometimes after reading passages from this and other books by Watts I have to suppress a wild impulse to rush out and proclaim them to the world.

[The_Student]

Alan Watts put across a very similar insight at the end of his 'Psychotherapy East and West', a few years in advance of Huxley, if I'm not mistaken; and perhaps it's worth re-quoting here, (forgive a short bit of lead-in and sundry in-fills):

'All perfect accomplishment in art or life is accompanied by the curous sensation that it is happening of itself - that it is not forced, studied or contrived. This is not to say that everything which is felt to happen of itself is a perfect accomplishment; the marvel of human spontaneity is that it has developed the means of self-discipline - which becomes repressive only when it is felt that the controlling agent is separate from the action. But the sensation that the action is happening of itself, neither from an agent nor to a witness, is the authentic sensation of life as pure process in which there is neither mover nor moved. Process without source or destination, verb without subject or object - this is not deprivation, as the word "without" suggests, but the "musical" sensation of arriving at every moment in which the melody and rhythm unfold.

'Music is our nearest approximation to Boehme's "sensual language", for, unlike ordinary language, it does not refer to anything beyond itself, and though it has phrases and patterns, it is without sentences which separate subject from object, and parts of speech which separate things from events. "Abstract" as they may at first seem to be, music and pure mathematics are closer to life than are useful languages which point to meanings beyond themselves. Ordinary language refers to life, but music is living. But life itself is made to behave as ordinary language when it is lived for a purpose beyond itself, when the present serves the future, or when the body is exploited for the purposes of the soul. Such a way of life is therefore "beside itself" - insane - and because it is being made to behave as language and words it becomes as empty as "mere words". It has no recourse except to go on and on to the future to which the present aparently refers, only to find that here, too, the meaning is still beyond.

'The liberative artist plays the part of Orpheus by living in the mode of music instead of the mode of language. His [sic] entire activity is dancing, rhythm for its own sake, and in this way he becomes a vortex which draws others into its pattern ...' (Watts, A. (1961) Invitation to the Dance. Psychotherapy East and West, Pantheon Books, NY, pp 193-194) (My underlinings).

Sometimes after reading passages from this and other books by Watts I have to suppress a wild impulse to rush out and proclaim them to the world.

Music is living? But can it? Music only exists in the temporal frame that it is played in. The music itself is not a thing, more an idea that cannot be harnessed. Only by playing and being in the music as it unfolds, it is alive.