If it is not representational, then what is it?
John Lennon and I share (to some extent) our society. Were we to have met before his death, there are subjects we could have discussed - there would have been things that both of us knew simply by having lived in (more or less) the same times. I could relate to what he might have said. Granted, we might have less in common than someone who lives across the street from me - but we still have far more in common than I have in common with, say, Bach.
You don’t listen for a walrus because you have the text. Were there no text, what would you listen for in a song called “I am the walrus?” I’d listen for a walrus, or maybe the ocean.
If the lyrics were in Swahili, I’d probably think “Hmm nice tune, wonder what its about?” That would probably be it, though. I’d need to be fluent in Swahili to make any sense of it.
Neither the music nor the text alone is sufficient. Good music but crappy text=no go. Crappy music but good text=no go. Both parts mus be good, and they must match one another.
I don’t know about that… Bach lived and worked in Germany. He never traveled far and rarely wrote to people. He plugged away at his job, had lots of kids, and had some illegal substance issues. (Coffee was banned then, the way marijuana is now, but he still used it and wrote about it.) He was a pretty normal guy. He just happened to be a really good organist and things moved on from there. background
And don’t get me started on jazz…
Well, Mont already said that he doesn’t get jazz, a development of the 20th century, so I doubt that it has anything to do with being able to “relate” to the composer (whatever that means).
I’m curious, what do you think about the instrumental sections of your favorite non-classical songs? The guitar solo in “Stairway to Heaven”, the intro and outro of “Hotel California”, the piano outro of “Layla”. The latter can musically stand on its own, and often wish that Clapton had dispensed with all the lyrics (and, really, they were rather trite) and simply used the additional time to develop the instrumental.
Jazz is a development of the early 1900s. Dixieland is something that I can relate to a little - the titles at least give me pointers to a direction and a subject that has a connection to my roots in the south of the US. I was born in Shreveport, La. and lived a good part of my childhood down around Baton Rouge and over a little east there.
As for the pieces you’ve named, I am familiar with them all. For me, they’d be severely lacking with out the rest of the song.
The intro to “Hotel California” always reminds me of creepiness and dark and something frightful hanging around in the background - but, that is a direct result of how I was exposed to hte song, and my understanding of the text. Take the text at face value, and you have the story of a guy who’s traveling and wanders into a hotel with what sounds like vampires living in it and his trying to escape. Of course, having read Cecil’s take on “collitas,” the guy might have just been high and dreamed it. The intro is mildly thrilling and scary to me because of what comes after. The first time I heard it, it didn’t have those feelings. I learned to associate that feeling with that song because of the text.
I can see that we’ll probably never agree on this, as we don’t even have a common vocabulary. This is a sad thing.
A sensual experience. One that is more immediate than anything that words can describe. In much the same way that I choose certain foods because of the delightful little dance they do on my taste buds, I choose music that feels good to my ears.
The Barber piece mentioned so many times probably has no meaning at all. It’s just notes. But it evokes in me a great feelings of deep emotion. Primal feelings beyond words. And the way it unfolds is a wonderful layering of sensations. It’s like a warm blanket, but it’s not about a warm blanket.
Does that make any sense?
Well, yes. The fourth movement has Ode to Joy embedded in it. Of course, it’s all in German.
As for the second joke, I guess it’s not all that good a joke. It’s just that the Ninth Symphony is one of the longest ones I know of, and the fourth movement is something like 26 minutes long. That is a long striptease.
Mort, read Scylla’s essay “Zen for Assholes” in the Teemings ezine. You’re way guilty of sighting w/pins (I’m not calling you an asshole, don’t misunderstand). I think this will explain what we’ve been trying to say re: your insistence on the representational. Plus it’s a great piece.
How can you say you don’t like classical music, or music with out lyrics, because it has to be explained to you but, you like music with lyrics.
Are not the lyrics explaining the song to you?
If you took the words away from ‘Stairway to Heaven’ would you have any idea what the song was about?
The lyrics force a narrow interpretation of what the song is about, or at least narrows the scope of how the song will be interpreted. However a lack of lyrics means that the music can take on a meaning that is relevant to YOU the listener. You don’t have to hear the horses or the thunderstorm or anything. With symphonic music, you the listener can decide what the music is about and apply meaning to it from your own life.
tdn: Music as “a sensual experience”. I like this comparison. Sort of reduces the OP to saying something like “How relevant is chocolate?” Not particularly relevant for day-to-day living, but if you can’t enjoy the rich, silky texture of good chocolate melting on your tongue, then you really don’t know what you’re missing. And no amount of description will explain it.
Music is also an intellectual exercise, hence the oft-remarked correlation between music and math. A lot of Mozart is simply Mozart wanking off. But it’s very clever wanking off. When it all comes together, you get both intellectual and emotional fulfillment: “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”.
The lyrics are an integral part of the song, and add to it musically as well as explaining it. The other thing is, that I don’t have to go off and study for hours to guess what the composer was one about as I would have to do with classical music. The composer tells me right there in the lyrics what he’s got in mind.
One more thing, Mort, if you go to any reasonably conscientious concert they’ll explain the music to you in the Program Notes, it doesn’t take long to read them. It’s not a Master’s thesis or something.
Ah, but here’s the thing – one doesn’t need to study a classical piece to enjoy it, either. Doing so might add to your enjoyment, or perhaps not. I have no idea where you got the notion that classical music must be studied to be enjoyed – that notion is dead wrong.
An example – one morning I was hanging out with my mom, and the radio was on. We had to leave for the airport. Then this piece came on the radio that was so sensual, so delicious, so yummy that I found myself unable to leave. I had to wait for it to end.
This music rolled around in my head for years. I yearned to hear it again. It was some time before I realized what it was about – it was a dance in which rich Italians danced with other rich Italians, and where a young chick spotted a real hunky dude. Later, they would boink. The composer was Prokofiev, and the story was by some guy named Shakespeare. It was a ballet.
That new information never changed my innate love of the sounds I heard on that morning.
I’ll tell you why this pisses me off. Mort clearly stated his conclusion: good music + good lyrics = relevant experience, with lyrics meaning something that’s literal, relates to his personal experience and is easily grasped. And he said, why don’t I experience other things as relevant. And we say, let go of this or that element of your equation and you’ll “get it”. And he says, no, only this equation counts. Well duh.
Not quite. He says that only this equation counts to him. In no way does he state that the rest of us should give up what we love. And he’s trying to breach the wall of misunderstanding. Personally, I think that is rather noble.
He ain’t breaching nothin’ if he won’t budge on his assumptions.
Sometimes in order to learn, a person has to un-learn a bit, certainly when they think they’ve already got the answer.
As in, not everything can be understood from the same frame of reference. That old saying, about if the only tool you have is a hammer then all problems look like nails - that’s what I mean.
And yes, this is bringing up tons of personal issues for me (feel a pitting coming on…rant is building…).
Y’all go back to waxing poetic on your experiences of particular pieces - those essays are nice to read, even though they’re not going to budge Mort one inch.
I don’t think it’s that he refuses to budge, it’s that it has never occured to him to think of music in any other way. It’s like explaining the concept of “up” to someone from Flatland. In this case, a little patience will go a long way.
But if you feel the need to start a Pit rant, go ahead. I’ll probably agree with much of what you say.
There is a nickname in film composing called “Mickey Mousing”. In that style, all action on screen has to be emphasized by overly-obvious music–music that doesn’t inflect or juxtapose or shade, only underline. A guy falls on his butt with a pie in the kisser, and the music is a trumpet mute: “Wah, wah, wah”.
By all appearances, that’s what Mort needs his music to do; if it doesn’t point to something specific and obvious, it eludes him altogether. The fact that the opening of “Hotel California” doesn’t sound creepy to him until after he has to be told what the song is about demonstrates to me a startlingly limited imagination–hearing something abstract or intangible isn’t enough to feel something; he feels obliged to wait for a cue (like in a studio audience of a sitcom) before he responds. Feel sad…NOW! Feel scared…NOW!
Do you feel the same way about movies? Do you prefer movies with lots of talking, and any movies that rely on using visual imagery to get their point across fail to connect with you? Because it’s the exact same thing. If you see someone crying in close-up and see someone crying in a long shot, you are not seeing the same thing; you have a different reaction even though “Textually”, the same thing is going on. Do you need someone to tell you what to feel in those circumstances, or do you just feel it?
Well, that’s the same thing for those of us who love classical music: we can hear a solitary oboe, or sweeping string sections, or barrelling percussion, and we may feel many different things, but as we add sensation after sensation in the piece, certain images and feeling begin to solidify. Not harden into something concrete and specific necessarily–they flow the way imagination flows, evoking associations and memories and ideas that are complex and beautiful all at once.
Appreciating classical music can be an intellectual exercise, but it need not be. It sounds like you’re trying too hard. The more you trust your feelings in how you react to it–not thinking, just reacting–the more you find that you gradually begin to understand it. The more you try to “figure it out”, the more it’s simply going to frustrate you.
What makes you think you ‘know’ what a song is about even though it has lyrics to explain itself.
A famous example is Every Breath You Take* by the Police.
Most people think that it is a sweet love song, but the composer (Sting) says it is about everything that is ugly about love. It is about obsession.
Why this compulsion to ‘know what the song is about’? Why is that the over ridding factor in you ability to like a song?
Mort, have you ever considered that you might be tone deaf, as a couple others have suggested? What I’m getting from your posts is that music means nothing to you by itself. Most people are able to listen to purely instrumental music, and simply find the relationships between the tones to be pleasing. Perhaps you can’t hear those relationships. There’s no shame in that, but it would explain your indifference to purely instrumental music. I’m curious, can you hear the difference between a major chord and a minor chord, for example? Can you tell when a song changes chords, or modulates into a new key? Can you hear when particular notes sound dissonant, like they are “clashing” with the key?
Take Stairway to Heaven, for example. There are various devices used to set this song apart from other rock songs. First, it’s in a minor key, while most songs are in major. Second, it starts with a lone acoustic guitar to set the mood. Third, they use what sounds like a pair of recorders in the intro. The recorder is an instrument from the Baroque period of music that pre-dates the flute. It previously had nothing to do with rock music at all. Most of the people who hear the song have very little knowledge of Baroque music, but they can feel how it sets the mood for the song. And finally, notice that on the first syllable of the word “heaven”, he sings the minor seventh of the key. Usually, when a song is in minor, you don’t emphasize the relationship between the minor seventh and the tonic. But in this song, they do. The effect is that it’s suggestive of the modality of Medieval or folk music. But you don’t have to know all this stuff - one might just think it sounds “spooky” or “sad”.
These are purely musical devices that exist independent of the words. If you played Stairway to Heaven exactly the same, but sang the words to Louie Louie instead, it still wouldn’t sound like Louie Louie.