Words and/or music ?

[MrGongGong]

Prompted by thinking about all the stuff around Dylan this week. It seems that (as I said on that thread) that there has been a tendency to conflate the terms "music" and "songs" for most people music means songs
Almost all the things we use to listen to music refers to music as "songs" or "tunes" (though you can buy albums by Sunn o))) on iTunes and they could hardly be considered to be "tunes" ). It's a bit like the way in which computers refer to the individual all the time in a seemingly desperate attempt to personalise, iTunes, MY computer, iPod, MY documents, MY music (actually it's not usually yours as you have only bought a licence !)
The dominance of the song as a form seems to have, in many peoples worlds, almost completely taken over the whole of music. Personally there are very few "songs" that I choose to listen to, I find the words often get "in the way" of the music and the sentiments expressed (Dylan and Elgar !) seem superficial and often pompous , so I often find myself listening to singers where I can't understand the words at all (either through language or style ). I partly think that maybe the dominance of the guitar as instrument with its associated myths of the hobo poet riding the rails and singing his (more often than not HIS) heart out, is to blame.

Also when music is often discussed on the radio (DID, The Music Room etc etc ) what it usually talked about are the words to the music/songs (because they are usually considered to be one and the same) rather than the music. Talking about music in a non technical non-geeky way isn't that difficult , many of us do it everyday (and avoid discussing uni-intervalic-non-hierachical-pan-diatonacism in those terms though the whole tone scale is a wondrous thing )

why is this ?
was it ever thus ?
and is it just me ? (actually I know it's not )

what do others think ?

[Mary Chambers]

I don't know what sort of music you usually listen to, and I haven't really thought this through, but my initial response is that if you think words 'get in the way' you aren't listening to the right stuff! In the best vocal music, music illuminates words and they become inseparable. Try Purcell, Schubert, Britten - and in popular music even the Beatles have some very good words/music combinations (e.g.Eleanor Rigby). So does Bob Dylan (e.g Blowing in the Wind). In Gilbert and Sullivan the words are much more important than the music!

I'm not implying that you are insensitive to words because I don't know anything about you, but many people are, I find. I have a friend who loves Schubert song cycles but doesn't care about the words he sets (and is therefore expressing). That's only half the experience.

[MrGongGong]

It's not really about me trying to find songs I like , there are plenty of those (though none really by Dylan , The Beatles or G&S !)
Dylans music (as opposed to the words) I find superficial, tired and not as interesting as the music its often taken from (one of the Dylan things on R4 was talking about how good Hard Rain was in the way that it "borrowed" from an Irish folk song ...... which to me seemed a bit like saying how good Andrew Lloyd Webber was in the way that he "borrows" from Puccini !!! I'd rather have the real thing thank you )

I can listen to Schubert (and Meredith Monk) for ages as long as it's NOT in English and I do like reading and listening to poetry ,but so many of the so called "Great" lyricists seem to me to be teenage poets with a rhyming dictionary

I suppose I would disagree with the first line in the Bible

I once wrote a piece called "Music before the word"

[Lateralthinking1]

This thread could run as it takes a lot of thinking through. Initial thought - I am not sure that it is right to ask whether words add anything to music. Words and music when together are not separate components - the combination makes them different from music alone.

It is a bit like saying does this blue stripe benefit from a green stripe beside it. It is the wrong question because it isn't beside it. It is in it to make turquoise.

Of course your piece of music may be different shades of blue and even have other colours weaving in and out of it while my song with words, while being turquoise, may be bluer or greener at various points. Still, they are fundamentally different things.

[Mary Chambers]

I can listen to Schubert (and Meredith Monk) for ages as long as it's NOT in English

It's pretty rare to hear Schubert in English these days. Do you listen in German, then? And if so, do you understand it?

[MrGongGong]

It's pretty rare to hear Schubert in English these days. Do you listen in German, then? And if so, do you understand it?

I don't understand every word as it flows BUT I do read the translation and find NOT understanding every word as the piece progresses far more satisfying
In many ways I find music almost infinitely more powerful than words could ever be

[antongould]

On a previous thread I have laid bare my complete lack of "musicality" in that I can hardly remember music without the hook of words! Therefore words are to me vitally important - I suppose it all started with Sounds of Silence and the happy

"hello darkness my old friend.........."

I think there are some very good words to modern music but that of course would be a very personal opinion!!

[Mary Chambers]

I don't understand every word as it flows BUT I do read the translation and find NOT understanding every word as the piece progresses far more satisfying

This simply doesn't make sense to me. How do you know it's 'more satisfying' if you don't know the alternative?

[MrGongGong]

Than having a translation I mean

[Mary Chambers]

Than having a translation I mean

Translations are never word-for-word, so only give a very vague indication of the relation between words and music.

For a long time I had a big problem with Britten's Michelangelo Sonnets, because I didn't know enough Italian to follow anything so complex. I've just about worked out the words at last, but they aren't easy. It was (to me) worth the effort. I hear them completely now.

[Lateralthinking1]

There is definitely an appreciation to be had in words that are not understood. They become more like music.

Other things too. How different has it felt to you to be in a country that speaks a language you don't understand? I find it to be a completely different experience and far more relaxing unless there is any need for direct communication.

I don't think you can lump words into one bracket. I find that poetic words about landscape, perhaps particularly when set to music, can add to my appreciation of music. Scientific words, or words that describe how things work, generally detract.

[3rd Viennese School]

I have often thought how awful Beethoven 9/ Mahler 2 etc would be if they actually sung it in English.

"Oh friends! No more these sounds1 We are all brothers and so no.."

" God is looking down on us and creation...."

( not the correct words, of course!)

I would never set words like that ! In my pre-12 note pop tunes days my stuff was about the river from my window and how you can see the boats!
And how awful the Poll Tax was.

3VS

[Flosshilde]

I'm not sure what you are saying, Mr GongGong. People who listen to classical music listen, on the whole, to music without words (unless of course their preference is for lieder or opera). If you are complaining about iPod etc referring to music as 'songs' it's presumably because they are devised by people, for people, whose musical lives are dominated by 'pop' (in its broadest sense) music, which is song based. (It also seems to me that 'song' is used as a measure of time or storage capacity - eg the information that one can store X number of songs on ones device.)

If it's a question of which is more important - music or words - then they are interdependent. Perhaps you should listen to Strauss' Capriccio - either sung in an English translation or with a dual-language libretto.

[John Wright]

I'm very much into dance band music as many of you know, 1920s-1940s, and as it implies the tunes of the era were mostly for dancing; foxtrots, waltzes, tangos etc. And they, mostly, have words. Usually romantic lyrics but often not.

That was the era of 'words and music'.

I enjoy instrumental recordings but certainly prefer hearing the tune/song sung. The drawback is that not all singers of the period were 'great' singers, and even worse are singers today trying to sing dance/swing era tunes, folks like Feinstein and Cullum just make every song sound the same.

There were some great songwriters (music) and lyricists (words) in those dance decades, and several great partnership whose songs often featured on Broadway, Hollywood and London's West End, and all the fine American tunes were recorded in Britain by singers and bands (as well as the American records issued in Britain like Crosby, Sinatra and the swing bands).

'Words and Music' great partnerships include Ira and George Gershwin of course, Johnny Burke and James Monaco, Jack Yellen and Milton Ager, Mort Dixon and Harry Wrubel, Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, Al Dubin and Joe Burke, Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern, and sometimes trios were at work like Box, Cox, Ilda and De Sylva, Brown, Henderson and Butler, Damerell, Evans and Sigler, Goodhart, Hoffman etc etc

Most of those names mean little to many of you but when you hear them their words and music will mean more, and they go together so well such were the skills of those writers in those swing and pre-swing days.

[antongould]

......and don't forget Johnny Mercer and just about anybody.