Unpopular Opinions

[chasmaniac]

I am not the first to observe so, but another fine, upstanding, and mentally toothsome post, Alan.

(Pardon me a moment whilst I toggle . . . .)

I wonder if in music, we compound the usefulness of Wittgenstein's distinction (what can be shown vs. what can be said) with something on the lines of how what I see relates to what is shown. I do not hereby mean to be obfuscatory, though I love the occasion to use the o. word. So – to the examples!

The cuckoo imitation in the Symphonie pastorale is perhaps typical of comparatively clear demonstration in music . . . we are probably not at any great risk of "seeing" something at wild variance from what Beethoven is "showing."

Two counter-examples, at several angles:

The oboe in Peter and the Wolf serves very neatly as the character of the Duck; yet (I think) the music alone does not show that – we rely on the spoken narration in order to perceive the oboe as a quacker, and then the subsequent narrative parallels to the changes in musical mood of the oboe line (the ways in which they underpin the developing story, such as the Duck's agitation at one point, &c.) become something clear to the listener.

Consider the opening of the Beethoven fifth (if you can manage it without a corkscrew . . . sorry!)  That famous opening gesture of the three short notes and the concluding sustained note: dramatic, yes – but, what does it mean?  Could mean any of quite a great number of things, I expect.  But then – where the rubber really meets the road – the answering gesture, a sequential repetition one step lower (and the sustained note a bit longer): what does that mean?  Here's where the eye may belong to a beholder who writes a 200-page essay on what those four notes mean, and yet it is possible that all Beethoven was "showing" was . . . something intrinsically musical.  (I do not here absolutely claim that he was;  but there is certainly the musical possibility.)

(Last week I read essentially a pop music equivalent of this: rather freighted discussion spreading out to pages, and I'm thinking, "It could just have been a riff that the bass player came up with one day when they were jamming.")

May I suggest that programmatic demonstration (sound-painting), whether direct or supported by context, is a pretty unproblematic analogue of linguistic reference? a kind of saying, in other words. I think the showing aspect of an artwork lies in its very objective existence, its thereness, as referent for itself. Looked at this way, a musical piece is, so to speak, a performative utterence, a something the meaning of which is exhausted by whatever it actually does. And I have found no better response to perplexity, confusion and grief than the contemplation and enjoyment of such "performances".

If this is obscure, I apologize. Don't know how else to put it!

[kishnevi]

I am not the first to observe so, but another fine, upstanding, and mentally toothsome post, Alan.

(Pardon me a moment whilst I toggle . . . .)

I wonder if in music, we compound the usefulness of Wittgenstein's distinction (what can be shown vs. what can be said) with something on the lines of how what I see relates to what is shown. I do not hereby mean to be obfuscatory, though I love the occasion to use the o. word. So – to the examples!

The cuckoo imitation in the Symphonie pastorale is perhaps typical of comparatively clear demonstration in music . . . we are probably not at any great risk of "seeing" something at wild variance from what Beethoven is "showing."

Two counter-examples, at several angles:

The oboe in Peter and the Wolf serves very neatly as the character of the Duck; yet (I think) the music alone does not show that – we rely on the spoken narration in order to perceive the oboe as a quacker, and then the subsequent narrative parallels to the changes in musical mood of the oboe line (the ways in which they underpin the developing story, such as the Duck's agitation at one point, &c.) become something clear to the listener.

Consider the opening of the Beethoven fifth (if you can manage it without a corkscrew . . . sorry!)  That famous opening gesture of the three short notes and the concluding sustained note: dramatic, yes – but, what does it mean?  Could mean any of quite a great number of things, I expect.  But then – where the rubber really meets the road – the answering gesture, a sequential repetition one step lower (and the sustained note a bit longer): what does that mean?  Here's where the eye may belong to a beholder who writes a 200-page essay on what those four notes mean, and yet it is possible that all Beethoven was "showing" was . . . something intrinsically musical.  (I do not here absolutely claim that he was;  but there is certainly the musical possibility.)

(Last week I read essentially a pop music equivalent of this: rather freighted discussion spreading out to pages, and I'm thinking, "It could just have been a riff that the bass player came up with one day when they were jamming.")

In support of the Prokofiev example,  there's what Peter Schikele did with that piece, providing a completely different text using human characters from the American Old West, so there's nothing intrinscially "ducky" about that oboe.

Someone here on GMG has or had a pertinent sig line.  I don't remember who, so I can't be precise; I think it was a quote from Berlioz along the lines of, Music is meant to express what words can not.

But music is expressly and instrinsically extra-verbal.  Except for those works which include a sung text or an explicit program from the composer (and not all of those either),  whatever the composer wants to communicate is by its nature not reduceable to words.   There may be other levels at which the composer wants the piece to work, but at least at one level we're meant to experience that music as music, without further implications.  Beethoven may have meant to tell us something with that opening phrase of the Fifth Symphony, but he also wanted us to notice what he was doing with that phrase as a purely musical idea.

[DavidRoss]

May I suggest that programmatic demonstration (sound-painting), whether direct or supported by context, is a pretty unproblematic analogue of linguistic reference? a kind of saying, in other words. I think the showing aspect of an artwork lies in its very objective existence, its thereness, as referent for itself. Looked at this way, a musical piece is, so to speak, a performative utterence, a something the meaning of which is exhausted by whatever it actually does. And I have found no better response to perplexity, confusion and grief than the contemplation and enjoyment of such "performances".

If this is obscure, I apologize. Don't know how else to put it!

And yet I see music as a closer analogue of painting than of text.  Both offer direct sensory experience, whereas text is entirely abstract.

As much as I love art (literature, music, painting, etc.), I find authentic contact with other human beings to be a better antidote for and response to "perplexity, confusion, and grief." Yes, the experience of art can lift me out of myself--but so can canyon-carving on a sport bike, hooking a wily trout on a perfectly drifted dry fly, or giggling with a two-year-old child.

[Elgarian]

Consider the opening of the Beethoven fifth (if you can manage it without a corkscrew . . . sorry!)  That famous opening gesture of the three short notes and the concluding sustained note: dramatic, yes – but, what does it mean?  Could mean any of quite a great number of things, I expect.  But then – where the rubber really meets the road – the answering gesture, a sequential repetition one step lower (and the sustained note a bit longer): what does that mean?  Here's where the eye may belong to a beholder who writes a 200-page essay on what those four notes mean, and yet it is possible that all Beethoven was "showing" was . . . something intrinsically musical.  (I do not here absolutely claim that he was;  but there is certainly the musical possibility.)

(Last week I read essentially a pop music equivalent of this: rather freighted discussion spreading out to pages, and I'm thinking, "It could just have been a riff that the bass player came up with one day when they were jamming.")

Like chasmaniac, I'm doubtful of getting involved with those mimetic musical effects you mentioned - I think they cloud the issue - even though we get the bonus of revelling in the multiple use of the o-word. So I'd like to comment just on this excellent closing paragraph of yours, Karl, where I think we get to the real meat of the matter. Because I say, yes: what Beethoven was 'showing' was something intrinsically musical. The perceived 'meaning' of the dah dah dah daah (and all that follows) can't be adequately expressed or explained within the 200 page essay because it isn't something that can be said - and to suppose that it's desirable or even possible to 'say' it is to make a category error. (To complain that the meaning of a work of art can't be explained is like complaining that one can't catch a rabbit with a voltmeter.)

I suppose there are those who will say of Wittgenstein's distinction that 'meaning' lies only within the things that can be said (just as the logical positivist would accept 'whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent' only with the proviso that there's nothing to be silent about). I think we have to leave them with their impoverished definition of 'meaning', to discuss among themselves the things that can be said, while we get on with the extended perception of meaning through showing. And when we're 'shown' Beethoven's four notes, you nod and think 'yes, I see that'; and so do I; and so does chasmaniac; and so do countless millions of others; and therein lies the meaning - because the thing that's communicated contains its own meaning. And we only get it by attending completely to the thing shown - not to the things we might try to say about it.

[Elgarian]

I think the showing aspect of an artwork lies in its very objective existence, its thereness, as referent for itself. Looked at this way, a musical piece is, so to speak, a performative utterence, a something the meaning of which is exhausted by whatever it actually does. And I have found no better response to perplexity, confusion and grief than the contemplation and enjoyment of such "performances".

That's close to perfect. You took a mere few lines to say (better) what I've been blathering on about for paragraphs.

[Karl Henning]

. . . And when we're 'shown' Beethoven's four notes, you nod and think 'yes, I see that'; and so do I; and so does chasmaniac; and so do countless millions of others; and therein lies the meaning - because the thing that's communicated contains its own meaning. And we only get it by attending completely to the thing shown - not to the things we might try to say about it.

(* nods *)

— (* not nods off, just . . . nods  *)

[chasmaniac]

You took a mere few lines to say (better) what I've been blathering on about for paragraphs.

Thanks. But of course, people will understand you! 

[starrynight]

Doesn't it depend on what you consider to be a philosophical problem though, Mike?

The overwhelmingly most important reason why I immerse myself in the arts again and again is because deep engagement with works of art resolves (at least temporarily) the anxiety of nagging existential questions of the kind: 'why am I here?' 'what's the meaning of life?' etc. (I don't say that only art can do this, please note, but merely that art has the potential to do it.)

If I'm looking attentively at a painting, or listening to a symphony, to the extent that my perceptions are fully occupied and extended by that activity, philosophical questions of meaning become insignificant. The present moment becomes so enriched by what I might crudely call 'directly experienced meaning' that philosophical analysis of the experience becomes redundant. Indeed, philosophical analysis would be counterproductive - if one were foolish enough to switch from one mode to another in midstream it would be seen as a mere distraction from the real business.

I suppose what's happening is that we're moving back and forth across that boundary formed by Wittgenstein's distinction between 'what can be shown', and 'what can be said'. We can argue endlessly about the merits of this symphony compared to that one, or this composer compared to another, dealing purely with aspects of 'what can be said'. But no symphony was written with the purpose of stimulating such a discussion. It was written to show us something. And only when we're engaged with it, when we're listening to it, when we're contemplating with full attention what's being shown, is the existential issue of 'meaning' finally and properly resolved. Any philosophical outlook that doesn't acknowledge this is unsatisfactory, in my view; so in that sense I think composers are indeed solving philosophical problems when they write symphonies.

It is an engagement.  Maybe initially people can see it as an engagement with another individual (the composer) but ultimately I think it is more than that.  It's partly an interaction with the art of music itself but also with the expression contained within it.  It takes us out of ourselves but at the same time further within ourselves.  As said earlier it is a kind of sustenance, but not like food which is purely a physical need in most cases and means no more than that.  We could still live without music (unlike food) but it has arisen naturally as a means to express what we find hard to express otherwise.  In that sense it is probably no different to other arts, but its more abstract nature makes it more universal.  The act of expression and identifying with that expression can potentially give a kind of fulfillment which we may find hard to achieve just on our own.  And maybe underlying all this can be the feeling that we aren't alone, something else expresses what we feel.  And for the composer, apart from the wish to just express themselves, perhaps there is a desire to enter the same exploration as other composers and to find an audience who feel an affinity with the same type of music.

[Elgarian]

As much as I love art (literature, music, painting, etc.), I find authentic contact with other human beings to be a better antidote for and response to "perplexity, confusion, and grief." Yes, the experience of art can lift me out of myself--but so can canyon-carving on a sport bike, hooking a wily trout on a perfectly drifted dry fly, or giggling with a two-year-old child.

I don't think any of us would want to claim some sort of exclusivity for art for 'lifting us out of ourselves' though, Dave. I'm a little worried that we might drift over into the territory of 'art as therapy' which is another matter. I'm not really concerned here with art as something that makes us feel better (though it's nice when it does), but as something that extends our perceptions in ways that are self-evidently meaningful, by contemplation of the art-object itself.

It's true that treacle pudding can only be tasted and not said; and when I put it into myself it takes me out of myself (in a distracting way). But it doesn't do what art does.*


* Or does it? Suddenly, contemplating memories of Great Treacle Puddings I Have Known, I have doubts!

[Karl Henning]

Great Treacle Puddings Alan Has Known!

[Elgarian]

Great Treacle Puddings Alan Has Known!

I know now what I have to do. I must construct the Greatest Treacle Pudding there has ever been. A Treacle Pudding so Great that just one taste of it will solve the profoundest questions about Custard, the Syrupverse, and Everything.

I am going now, but I shall return in a million years time with The Great Pudding and a large number of Spoons.

[Karl Henning]

Ever so many spoons!

[The Six]

The best music of the past 20 years was written for video games.

[knight66]

Doesn't it depend on what you consider to be a philosophical problem though, Mike?

The overwhelmingly most important reason why I immerse myself in the arts again and again is because deep engagement with works of art resolves (at least temporarily) the anxiety of nagging existential questions of the kind: 'why am I here?' 'what's the meaning of life?' etc. (I don't say that only art can do this, please note, but merely that art has the potential to do it.)

If I'm looking attentively at a painting, or listening to a symphony, to the extent that my perceptions are fully occupied and extended by that activity, philosophical questions of meaning become insignificant. The present moment becomes so enriched by what I might crudely call 'directly experienced meaning' that philosophical analysis of the experience becomes redundant. Indeed, philosophical analysis would be counterproductive - if one were foolish enough to switch from one mode to another in midstream it would be seen as a mere distraction from the real business.

I suppose what's happening is that we're moving back and forth across that boundary formed by Wittgenstein's distinction between 'what can be shown', and 'what can be said'. We can argue endlessly about the merits of this symphony compared to that one, or this composer compared to another, dealing purely with aspects of 'what can be said'. But no symphony was written with the purpose of stimulating such a discussion. It was written to show us something. And only when we're engaged with it, when we're listening to it, when we're contemplating with full attention what's being shown, is the existential issue of 'meaning' finally and properly resolved. Any philosophical outlook that doesn't acknowledge this is unsatisfactory, in my view; so in that sense I think composers are indeed solving philosophical problems when they write symphonies.

As always Alan, an original and an elegant take on a subject. I was, as you propably knew really, making reference to the formal argument that classical philosophy requires. I like your points and of course, a solution for one is an irrelevance to another in the context of what music can cut through and provide enlightenment or balm.

Mike

[madaboutmahler]

The best music of the past 20 years was written for video games.

What?!!!!!  You seem to be dismissing some very great music....

[The Six]

What?!!!!!  You seem to be dismissing some very great music....

That statement is not about the inferiority of other music, it's about the relatively unknown greatness of that composed for games.

[Elgarian]

I was, as you propably knew really, making reference to the formal argument that classical philosophy requires.

Exactly so, Mike. And as you'll have realised by now (for my subterfuge was thinly disguised), I was really only  using your post as a springboard to launch my new philosophy based upon the Great Treacle Pudding Construction Project.

[madaboutmahler]

That statement is not about the inferiority of other music, it's about the relatively unknown greatness of that composed for games.

I see....

[Karl Henning]

Great Treacle Pudding Video Games!

[starrynight]

That statement is not about the inferiority of other music, it's about the relatively unknown greatness of that composed for games.

It may be underrated, but that's still a completely different statement to the first one you made.