tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post6003624308240643515..comments2024-03-27T23:06:03.736-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: The Sadness of MusicBryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-4659491898926929622013-10-03T07:54:20.034-05:002013-10-03T07:54:20.034-05:00Just getting to think about your comment now. I th...Just getting to think about your comment now. I think what you are describing are "modes of listening" rather than something inherent in the music, though of course different kinds of music might inspire different modes of listening. How we listen when we are sitting in an ear training class being asked to take down a passage in dictation and how we listen when we are relaxing after dinner and how we listen when we are out at the club dancing are all quite different...Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-34342332209203065592013-09-28T13:14:14.787-05:002013-09-28T13:14:14.787-05:00I think there are four broad ways people think whe...I think there are four broad ways people think when listening to music (this applies mainly to classical music, I guess popular music might need different categories):<br />1. Emotions, ofc how deep those emotions are depends on how the listeners can relate the music with feelings at the moment or with events in their lives.<br />2. Scenery/descriptions/story, this one is especially true for music that accompanies threatre (i.e. opera or ballet), film music, TV music & video game music. But ofc there's music specifically meant to tell a story, show a scenery etc. by itself (tone poems or works with more specific titles for instance). Ofc people might think of scenery when listening to music that doesn't really refer to a scenery.<br />3. Technical/compositional/historical, by this I mean: Listening to admire the playing or getting ideas how to play it (for example if the person listening wants to learn the piece). Or listening for the purpose of analysis, maybe score reading. Or finally to listen from the hisorical perspective (trying to understand why it sounds this way, how it relates to composer's life or the society around him/her).<br />4. And finally: Just enjoying the music because it sounds good (or listening to it eventhough it sounds bad).<br /><br />The fourth way is most common for me. I just enjoy listening to the music because it simply sounds good (or bad sometimes).<br /><br />Anyways, these four categories are ofc a oversimplification.Rickardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08084578675339015204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-19078932109639346572013-09-27T06:59:53.402-05:002013-09-27T06:59:53.402-05:00Thanks for another very thoughtful comment!
I'...Thanks for another very thoughtful comment!<br /><br />I'm not sure I feel that music is similar to a moral fervor, but perhaps there is a connection. Hume seems to have thought that aesthetic and moral intuitions are related.<br /><br />Right about the Grosse Fuge: it is pretty hard to say what it is making us feel, but it certainly is doing something! Just impossible to put into words.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-30405560619849483402013-09-26T14:29:41.000-05:002013-09-26T14:29:41.000-05:00I think music lets us regard an emotion from very ...I think music lets us regard an emotion from very close, rather than feel it ourselves. It's like feeling sympathy or compassion, closely related to a moral fervour. It might be programmatic, which means the sympathy is directed at actual suffering, or it might me just because of the mood. It's about the pictures music creates in our mind, it's like reading a story. Films are unsuccessful in this sense because they provide images which are too specific and rigid, literature is better, but music is flexible to our distortion, and we can imagine a lot with music playing.<br /><br />Of course, not everybody has that bent for meditation and fantasy, so they use music for other ends like relaxing. Mediocre music offers only a first level of experience, which is immediate and temporary. It serves a singular purpose. But good music enchants you, pulls you, gathers you in ways which are sometimes hard to pin down. This is when it becomes human, offering as much as a real person would. That is music at maximum power really.<br /><br />I thought about this when listening to the Grosse Fuge. It's not beautiful, it's not sad, it's not lyrical, it's not grand, it's not even that complex, but it somehow gets across that unique position of being human, which is ...<br /><br />I'll stop here. But this is that kind of post really.Shantanuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09910091531263531496noreply@blogger.com