Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope

[Madiel]

Well, this is going to take some coding work to keep clear. Here goes.

No, language is language; an analogy in language to relate the idea music communicates something does not abracadabra presto-chango magically turn music into language. If music were a language, why is their an utterly different word for music which in meaning is distinct from the meaning of language?

There are at least 2 significant problems with your argument as it stands.

The first is that it just doesn't hold up as a logical proposition. The existence of "utterly different" words with "distinct" meanings simply doesn't prove anything. As can be illustrated by demonstrably false examples such as:

• No, English isn't language. English is English. If English is language, why is there an utterly different word for English with a distinct meaning?
• No, lemon isn't citrus. Citrus is citrus. If lemon is citrus, why is there an utterly different word for citrus with a distinct meaning?
• No, women aren't people. People are people. If women were people, why is there an utterly different word for women with a distinct meaning?

Asserting distinctiveness isn't proof of anything. It's asserting the very thing you're supposed to be proving. You might very well be able to construct an argument as to why music does not share key characteristics of language, but the mere fact of a different word tells you precisely nothing. I work with creating categories all the time, and assigning different words doesn't, on its own, tell you whether 2 categories are distinct, whether one is a complete subset of the other, or whether there is overlap between them.

The second problem with your argument is that you're ignoring all the cases where the terminology of language and the terminology of music coincides - though you later try to get around this by declaring those are "analogies". Many "musical" terms aren't musical at all, they're literary. The most immediately obvious example is "phrase". If you're going to mount an argument based on the names that things have, then you're going to have to do some fancy footwork to explain why the decision to use the word "phrase" in music is a complete coincidence and has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of a "phrase" in a sentence in a language, and waving around the term "analogy" when it suits you doesn't solve anything. You can't have it BOTH WAYS. You can't say that different words are highly significant, but identical words are meaningless, just when the outcome in either direction suits you.

"Exposition" is not a musical term either. And people do refer to musical "paragraphs". I'm sure there are other examples, these are just the ones that leap to mind most readily.

Whose science?  As long as I can remember, neurologists have claimed that music comes from one hemisphere, speech from the other. Otherwise, how do we account for all those stroke victims, paralyzed on one side and rendered incapable of speech, and the standard and often effective therapy where they can learn to sing words to retrieve the ability to verbally communicate once they learn to access the unaffected hemisphere of their brain?

You're referring to output - production of speech. I was referring to input. The same part of the brain processes music that you hear and speech that you hear. Sorry that I wasn't clearer on that point.

But it's certainly not just "bunko pseudo-science" just because you say so. If you're allowed to talk about claims of neurologists without providing me references to science journals, I feel quite justified in referring to reports of the scientific literature I've come across without giving you similar citations. I have a science degree, by the way, so I'm perfectly capable of hunting for citations if you wish and I'm not given to just repeating some random claim off a morning chat show.

Even if that scene has as a translating aid a massive bank of computers, the idea that one linguist could quickly understand everything the computer spews out about the 'alien language using tones,' and that the linguist would so instantly surmising how the language works, to then readily say, 'try this sequence' and then name it as if he were dictating a solfege exercise... oh, lol.

Well, yes, lol. It's a movie where solutions have to come within 90 minutes. I don't see what that has to do with anything, though.  Given that there are written scripts of languages that have either taken generations to crack, or still haven't been cracked (Linear A), this isn't any kind of evidence about the compatibility of, or non-compatibility of, music with the most basic linguistic concepts. I'm quite sure that the Hollywood version of a linguist would have cracked a written script within the movie's running time.

Nor is the notion of an association of musical qualities with language complete nonsense, given that a considerable proportion of the world's actual languages are tonal. Mandarin is one of the more famous examples, with the same syllable having different meanings depending on whether it is high, low, rising or falling.  And, to give you another bit of allegedly junk science, there is evidence that Mandarin speakers without musical training are slightly more adept at detecting pitch differences in musical tones than English speakers without musical training.

Just because notes have been, for the sake of convenience only, assigned alpha names, that does not impose anything like the requirements or restrictive parameters of language on notes.

I never once suggested that the requirements or parameters of notes were based on the requirements or parameters of language. For starters, which language? The grammar rules of different spoken languages are completely different from one another.

This is a completely different thing, though, from asserting that music simply has no grammar at all, or that different styles of music don't have individual grammars that are fundamental to why we can distinguish between them despite them using the same collection of notes.

Choose five notes, choose any one of the high number of permutations of the order they can be presented in, add the possibility of repeating some of those five before all five are used, add the myriad possibilities of an assigned rhythm, and or varying that rhythm, add the many dynamic possibilities, and you have all those permutations immediately acceptable as 'resonating with meaning' in a staggeringly greater variety and quantity than the conventions of any verbal language allows.

This proves what, precisely?

There are 12 notes, in conventional tuning. There are 26 letters, in English. I fully accept that not all possible combinations of 26 letters are assigned meaning (although it's perfectly possible to type them). I also fully accept that the 12 notes can be combined in a lot more ways, and that when you factor in the great variety of possibilities for things like volume and rhythm, music has enormous flexibility.

But what does that prove? Is English, with its vastly greater vocabulary and number of synonyms compared to other languages, fundamentally different in kind because of the impressive things it can do? No.

You also appear to be asserting that EVERY combination of notes is equally meaningful. There are centuries worth of people who would tell you otherwise, and while I suppose you could argue that the super-enlightened listener to modern music has overcome all that kind of prejudice, one could just as equally argue that the super-enlightened reader of literature has overcome any insistence that letters be organised to form "traditional" words. I'm quite sure there is writing out there that throws together words and letters in ways that the average unenlightened high school English teacher would mark as wrong.

I'd highly recommend accepting that just about every term used for language when applied to music is an analogy and not a literal statement, and accept that communication can be non-specific and non-verbal, and many is the instance where never the twain shall meet.

The fact that you're suggesting that music involves communication is an exciting advance on your previous position, and one that I applaud wholeheartedly. In fact, that was rather the point of this in the first place. Given time, you might even come to acknowledge that when the manufacturers of my microwave programmed it to go "Ding! Ding! Ding!" at certain times, they did it for a purpose that was something more than proving that their device had the capacity to make the sound "Ding! Ding! Ding!".

[Madiel]

I can't help it. Now I'm thinking about the machine that goes Ping!

http://www.youtube.com/v/arCITMfxvEc

[some guy]

Sign me up for this manifesto! For it to suit me perfectly I'd like to modify that 'never' (highlighted) to 'often not', and the 'should' (also highlighted) to 'may', but the general thrust of what you say describes my own approach pretty well.

I've discussed this sort of thing enough with some guy to know that he really does revel in music as a pure world of sound, and he's gone a long way towards improving my understanding of the way he listens. It's an exciting approach for him, but it couldn't work for someone like me: the making of extramusical associations isn't something I can stop doing. It happens (as you imply above) automatically/ intuitively; and it's an important motivation for why I listen to music at all. I don't wish to pare away the extramusical. I want the whole package, including the extramusical free gifts that come with it. It feels like a very natural approach, and it seems to provide me with a lot of apparently meaningful experiences - but then of course it would, given what I've been saying! I know that some guy feels much the same about his approach, and he's a passionate advocate of it. But I don't think (even though he may be waiting just around the corner with the custard pie at the ready) he sees my extramusical associations as delusional, or on a par with being misled by parlour tricks. (Does he?)

I am waiting just around the corner, it's true, with a pie, it's also true, but not to fling at you--to share with you. Come on Elgarian, let's eat some pie together.

To think of me as waiting to hurl pastries at you is just wrong.

Now, on to the substance. I would never--and I can't imagine having never mentioned this before to you (which means I'm a bit disappointed in you right now)--put the word "just" in front of music. There's no "just" about it. That's it, in a nutshell. (Well, this is it, in a nutshell.) You guys keep putting "just" in front of music, because for you, music is insufficient. But I'm not enamored of, and so am not arguing for, a music that is insufficient.

I'm talking about a music that is so complete, so sufficient, so overwhelming, so overwhelmingly glorious, that the idea of needing or wanting something extra never even enters into it. Extra for complete? That's not even logical. Complete means complete.

For you and Florestan and the rest (even Rachmaninoff, for Christ's sake!) to come along and insist on a music that's incomplete, and insisting on translating everything I say about complete music into your idea of incomplete music and insisting that that's what I'm talking about, too,  is more that a titch frustrating. For me, music is not pure, for example. Pure has all sorts of connotations that are impertinent to my experience. Music is complete. Purity has nothing to do with it. It is full. There is no room for anything else, do you understand that? "Anything else" is just a rather startling impertinence. What do you mean, anything else? Do you guys even know what "full" means?

Really. I feel like I'm in a room in a museum with you guys. We're looking at a painting, maybe it's by Velasquez, maybe it's by Pollock. Doesn't matter. It's itself, and we're looking at it. And then someone, maybe it's you, maybe it's Florestan, says "Well, this is all very nice, but I think I need some soup to go with it."

[Florestan]

Well, frankly, you sound like someone who's never learned to play an instrument.

And I'm saying this as a person who by inclination is rather dismissive of the super-Romantic notions of assigning specific descriptions and images to everything. If Chopin had wanted each of his pieces to have a programmatic title, he would have given it one, and Beethoven was perfectly capable of using a title on the infrequent cases that he wanted to.

But that doesn't mean that the equal and opposite reaction of declaring that there is somehow some absolute break between what is in the mind of the composer or performer and what is in the mind of the listener is any better. Because it strips music of any intent or purpose whatsoever. The proposition that a composer or performer is not ever trying to get the listener to think or feel particular things - that Haydn isn't trying to make people laugh - is turning music into a kind of useless intellectual wankery with no social value - with no intent.[/u]

Music is not composed, or performed, as a general collection of sounds, any more than what I'm typing is a general collection of letters. I'm selecting which keys to press on my keyboard on the basis of the ideas I'm trying to communicate to you. Most composers select the tools available to them on the same basis.

words are not nearly as definite as people seem to believe they are, that groups of words placed together can mean quite different things to different people, and that committees are particularly good at creating phrases that everyone can decide sound suitably knowledgeable and impressive without quite pinning down anything, so that everyone can walk away from the table believing that they got what they wanted.

writing is not a random assortment of letters, and music is not a random assortment of sounds. Both are organised, and the organisation has a purpose of communication to it, otherwise the effort of organising is simply wasted.

Three times amen, brother!

Music is a language for communicating ideas.

Not only ideas, but also feelings and moods. And perhaps "communicate" is too strong a term. Express, suggest, evoke might be more appropriate meseems.

[Florestan]

The Enlightened World was destroyed by Romantics...

The thinking process became muddled over 200 years ago when the philosophes were invited to the party. I have noticed that those who love Romantic music the best, and who thrive on this word-playing, also seem most attached to philosophies too. Funny how that goes. 

The "Enlightened" (a misnomer) World destroyed itself. The French Revolution was not the work of Novalis or of the Schlegel brothers, but exactly of those lphilosophes that you abhorr (and rightly so). Only thing is, dear Gurn, that they were precisely the high priests of the "Enlightenment". 

[Florestan]

Sign me up for this manifesto! For it to suit me perfectly I'd like to modify that 'never' (highlighted) to 'often not', and the 'should' (also highlighted) to 'may', but the general thrust of what you say describes my own approach pretty well.

Ammendments accepted.

[Madiel]

Not only ideas, but also feelings and moods. And perhaps "communicate" is too strong a term. Express, suggest, evoke might be more appropriate meseems.

Perfectly happy to subscribe to that.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

'Evoke' implies that the extramusical elements are imagined by the listener, using whatever piece of music as its basis. What I do like about that word is that it doesn't suggest that 'one way' communication from composer to listener. It isn't so directional, or 'fixed' in its implications as 'communicate' is. 'Communicate' to me implies that someone is trying to say something specific to someone else....but I've never thought of music as a medium to transmit precise moods, feelings, stories or images.

'Evoke' is a great word.

[Florestan]

You asked for it, some guy! 

Let´s take your position: Music is complete. Now, either you were born with this idea, or you acquired it. If the former, then it is part and parcel of who and how you are, of your temperament and personality, ie of extramusical things; if the latter, then it is the product of your education and growing up, ie of extramusical things. In both cases Rachmaninoff´s point, and Elgarian´s and mine is brilliantly proved: your idea of the completeness of music is not derived from music itself, nor is it an objective, universally and uniquely valid truth. Your idea of music is just (pun) as subjective as mine or Elgarian´s or Rachmaninoff´s.

And you are as wrong as it gets. Music engages my whole being, heart, soul and mind, what I am and how I am. And since I cannot divorce what I am and how I am from my life experience, my love affairs, my readings and all sort of things extramusical it is only natural that all those play a part in how I react to music and why I react the way I do. From what you say it can be inferred that when you listen to music your being (in the sense described above) is completely obliterated by the sounds you hear. There´s absolutely nothing wrong with that, of course, it´s just that it doesn´t apply to me. And I don´t see the reason why what applies to you is good and what applies to me is wrong. Why not the other way around?

Bottom line: I frankly and gladly acknowledge that the way I react to music is highly subjective and personal, not universally valid and nobody is under any obligation to follow it. Are you telling me that, on the contrary, your way with music is indeed objective, universally valid and everybody should adopt it if they want to experience music as they should?

[Madiel]

'Evoke' implies that the extramusical elements are imagined by the listener, using whatever piece of music as its basis. What I do like about that word is that it doesn't suggest that 'one way' communication from composer to listener. It isn't so directional, or 'fixed' in its implications as 'communicate' is. 'Communicate' to me implies that someone is trying to say something specific to someone else....but I've never thought of music as a medium to transmit precise moods, feelings, stories or images.

'Evoke' is a great word.

I continue to be slightly amused by your faith in the ability of other forms of communication to be precise.

This may have something to do with the fact that, earlier today in my professional capacity, I encountered resistance to the proposition that a plane was a "thing".

Nevertheless I would agree with you. These things lie on a spectrum, and I have no problem with the proposition that music is at the vague end of the (ahem) communication spectrum.

Even within music, though, there are works that are clearly trying to give more specific impressions than others.

[Karl Henning]

Well, I am afraid I have disappointed Sergei Vasilyevich; the piece I am presently writing does not express my love affairs.

[Elgarian]

I am waiting just around the corner, it's true, with a pie, it's also true, but not to fling at you--to share with you. Come on Elgarian, let's eat some pie together.

To think of me as waiting to hurl pastries at you is just wrong.

I was joking about the potential for pie projectiles. (If we'd been in the same room you'd have seen me wink.)

Now, on to the substance. I would never--and I can't imagine having never mentioned this before to you (which means I'm a bit disappointed in you right now)--put the word "just" in front of music.

I never did. I never would. And you surely know I wouldn't? If I did it would be a momentary slip that I would immediately retract once you pointed out to me. I think all the way through I stuck to 'musical' and 'extramusical'. Didn't I?

No more of this talk of disappointment, please ... or I shall sue.

You guys keep putting "just" in front of music, because for you, music is insufficient. But I'm not enamored of, and so am not arguing for, a music that is insufficient.

I don't. Really, I don't. I  don't think music is insufficient.

I'm talking about a music that is so complete, so sufficient, so overwhelming, so overwhelmingly glorious, that the idea of needing or wanting something extra never even enters into it. Extra for complete? That's not even logical. Complete means complete.

It's not a need or a want. It just happens. I hear the opening of Sibelius 1 and I am there among the snowy landscapes, watching the soaring gulls and feeling the icy wind. It's possible that I might, with intense concentration, be able to stop myself from doing this, but it would require such will power that I wouldn't be able to listen to the music. And in any case ... why would I want to, when the total experience is so delicious? (We've talked about all this before but you've forgotten - and reached  ... well, not so much agreement as acceptance of the other's approach. My 'complete' isn't the same as your 'complete'. )

For you and Florestan and the rest (even Rachmaninoff, for Christ's sake!) to come along and insist on a music that's incomplete, and insisting on translating everything I say about complete music into your idea of incomplete music and insisting that that's what I'm talking about, too,  is more that a titch frustrating.

My aim is never to frustrate you, but to do the best I can to understand, empathise, and respond accurately. I don't recognise my attitude in what you say, here. I know that for you the sound world is sufficient (you taught me well). I'm not trying to persuade you that my way (or anyone else's way) of listening is better, or more complete; merely that it's different, and I can't do anything about it other than accept it.

Music is complete. Purity has nothing to do with it. It is full. There is no room for anything else, do you understand that?

Yes. I do experience some music like that (or nearly - I'm thinking hard about my mental process to try to be accurate). A lot of Mozart for instance. But even then, I can't help but think of him chucking brilliant combinations of notes out on all sides and revelling in the bedazzling thrill of it, so I can't claim to abandon the extramusical altogether.

"Anything else" is just a rather startling impertinence. What do you mean, anything else? Do you guys even know what "full" means?

Well, ... I don't like this bit much.

Really. I feel like I'm in a room in a museum with you guys. We're looking at a painting, maybe it's by Velasquez, maybe it's by Pollock. Doesn't matter. It's itself, and we're looking at it. And then someone, maybe it's you, maybe it's Florestan, says "Well, this is all very nice, but I think I need some soup to go with it."

Oh ... now it's my turn to be a bit disappointed with you. (Not really - just playing the game.) You know I'm not like that - and I think Florestan is being travestied too. Let's go back to your museum, and let's say we're looking at a Cezanne, and we're loving it, and Florestan recalls some little anecdote about Cezanne that changes the way he sees the picture in some way, so he mentions it. And maybe what he says changes the way I see it too, and maybe it doesn't for you - or maybe vice versa, or maybe we both see it. But something outside the picture has been introduced and has extended the experience for one, or both of us. That's good stuff. That's one of the ways we grow.  That soup business is nothing to do with all this.

[Karl Henning]

... Let's go back to your museum, and let's say we're looking at a Cezanne, and we're loving it, and Florestan recalls some little anecdote about Cezanne that changes the way he sees the picture in some way, so he mentions it. And maybe what he says changes the way I see it too, and maybe it doesn't for you - or maybe vice versa, or maybe we both see it. But something outside the picture has been introduced and has extended the experience for one, or both of us. That's good stuff. That's one of the ways we grow.

It's another layer of counterpoint.

An illustration that the idea of a piece of art as hermetically thingummy is counterintuitive.

[Elgarian]

Well, I am afraid I have disappointed Sergei Vasilyevich; the piece I am presently writing does not express my love affairs.

Drat! I was hoping for a scoop!

[Florestan]

Oh ... now it's my turn to be a bit disappointed with you. (Not really - just playing the game.) You know I'm not like that - and I think Florestan is being travestied too.

Not a little and not for the first time, but I got accustomed to it. 

It's not a need or a want. It just happens. I hear the opening of Sibelius 1 and I am there among the snowy landscapes, watching the soaring gulls and feeling the icy wind. It's possible that I might, with intense concentration, be able to stop myself from doing this, but it would require such will power that I wouldn't be able to listen to the music. And in any case ... why would I want to, when the total experience is so delicious?

I'm not trying to persuade you that my way (or anyone else's way) of listening is better, or more complete; merely that it's different, and I can't do anything about it other than accept it.

Yes to both.

Let's go back to your museum, and let's say we're looking at a Cezanne, and we're loving it, and Florestan recalls some little anecdote about Cezanne that changes the way he sees the picture in some way, so he mentions it. And maybe what he says changes the way I see it too, and maybe it doesn't for you - or maybe vice versa, or maybe we both see it. But something outside the picture has been introduced and has extended the experience for one, or both of us. That's good stuff. That's one of the ways we grow.  That soup business is nothing to do with all this.

Of course it hasn't. I''d rather have a crème de Cassis than a soup. 



Seriously now, when it comes to figurative painting some guy''s case is irredeemably week. Looking at the painting above I do not and cannot see just colors --- and frankly I doubt some guy sees himself only colors. I cannot help remembering that I have been there myself and I have seen that mountain with my own eyes. I cannot help remembering a lot of feelings and moods I experienced in Provence, a lot of things I did, saw, ate and drank there and, above all, I cannot help remembering that at the time I was in the middle of a passionate love affair... To sum it up, I cannot help being myself and engaging my whole being when responding to a work of art.

[Florestan]

Well, I am afraid I have disappointed Sergei Vasilyevich; the piece I am presently writing does not express my love affairs.

How 'bout your love affair with composing?

[Florestan]

We, the barren, the dry, the emotionally remote, the socially detached, as near sociopaths without empathy, compassion, or passion, must hang together or the romantics will try us, condemn us, and burn us at the stake. 

Given the present state of world's affairs, the danger is higher on the side of the romantics.

[Karl Henning]

How 'bout your love affair with composing?

Never seems to cool down.

[Florestan]

Never seems to cool down.

There! Every piece you write is its expression. Sergei Vasilyevich is pleased.   

[Karl Henning]

Well, he's a fine chap and a supreme artist: I hate to let him down!