What do you picture in your mind when listening to non-programmatic music?

[radi]

Most of the times I picture the instruments that I hear, and I also tend to "see" sounds as some sort of shapes, somewhat like the kind that you would see in a sound editor, but not exactly... It's hard to explain.
Sometimes I think of different adjectives that would best describe the music. Other times I imagine places or landscapes, like when reading a book. It's funny that often these landscapes stick in my mind, and every time I listen to a specific work, the image is the same. For example, Aho's Contrabassoon Concerto is clearly an open, mountainous, snowy dusk for me.
I think it's quite common for people to see different sounds and keys as specific colours. I don't see them that way, I'm not synaesthetic - sometimes I wish I was.
What are some of the things you guys imagine when listening to music? Specific things about specific works or something general?

-r

[Brian]

What about music that DOES have a program? My mother once rejected the title of Strauss' Tod und Verklaerung, saying, "It doesn't sound like death at all! It's too romantic to sound like death!"

[TheGSMoeller]

"It doesn't sound like death at all! It's too romantic to sound like death!"

That's the Transfiguration section working its Straussian magic.

[dyn]

Nothing. Nor do i picture anything in my mind when listening to programmatic music.

[Johnll]

Nothing. Nor do i picture anything in my mind when listening to programmatic music.

To bad.

[some guy]

The sounds are sufficient. More than.

Besides, sit any number of people down to listen to a piece of program music that they've never heard before and that they don't have the program for and ask them what they picture in their minds. You'll get as many different answers as there are people in the room.

[Gurn Blanston]

In absolute music, I frequently (but not always) picture the instrument that is making the sound I hear. This is quite involuntary, I have always done it (maybe since my musical doors were opened by Bernstein's "Young People's Concerts"?).

In programme music, I frequently picture the instrument that is making the sound I hear. This is also quite involuntary

[Florestan]

Besides, sit any number of people down to listen to a piece of program music that they've never heard before and that they don't have the program for and ask them what they picture in their minds. You'll get as many different answers as there are people in the room.

Agreed.

[Rinaldo]

The same as with any music - whatever it manages to invoke in my mind. Could be imaginary landscapes, old memories, new stories.. most of the time, it simply gets me thinking.

[TheGSMoeller]

I'll tell you that Strauss' Zarathustra does not make me think of outer space.

[Superhorn]

    Non-programmatic music may not have a specific program, but it definitely  seems to convey some kind of emotional state or character in so many cases .  Music does not exist in a vacuum ; you cannot divorce it  from the extra musical .  Composers often indicate the expressive character of the music they write  in Italian or other languages . Agitato, tranquillo , feroce ,  con brio (with verve), etc. 
Even Hindemith , who was not a composer of the effusively romantic type , put  expressive  markings  in German, such as "mit kraft"
(with strength or power) etc. 
    Stravinsly was dead wrong in saying that "music is powerless to express anything" etc.   

[Mirror Image]

Stravinsly was dead wrong in saying that "music is powerless to express anything" etc.

Agreed 100%. It expresses something, but, ultimately, what it expresses is purely subjective from listener to listener.

[Johnll]

Sanantiono, please reread the two Stravinsky statements you absolutely agree with. I believe you will find them to contradict each other. Stravinsky is one of a long list of c20 composers that excelled in expressing themselves with their pens and not their months. Pray tell how has the Rite been choreographed over the last hundred years if the music expresses nothing?

[springrite]

Sex

[TheGSMoeller]

Sex

Mozart's Magic Flute?

[springrite]

Mozart's Magic Flute?

No, not that one, but many if not most other music can (as it did in my college years) suggest so. From Rite of Spring to piano concerti by Rachmaninov, Ravel, Prokofiev, to opera, to Berg... you name it.

It doesn't have to and certainly isn't suppose to. But it can.

It's really not the music. It is the listener who added it, with the music only providing an opportunity to do so.

[Johnll]

Sex

For this kind of excitement the "classical" Dire Straits Chicks for Nothing and Money for Free will do ya.

[TheGSMoeller]

No, not that one, but many if not most other music can (as it did in my college years) suggest so. From Rite of Spring to piano concerti by Rachmaninov, Ravel, Prokofiev, to opera, to Berg... you name it.

It doesn't have to and certainly isn't suppose to. But it can.

It's really not the music. It is the listener who added it, with the music only providing an opportunity to do so.

You took my question too literal.  . But I like your answer anyway.

[Mirror Image]

I picture a lot of different things. It really depends on the work I'm listening to but a lot of times I have flashbacks from my childhood or tend to think of things that are quite emotional for me like a person helping out someone in need or even rekindling a romance with a past girlfriend, but, of course, that is pretty unrealistic as my last girlfriend hates me like poison.

[Octo_Russ]

For me a piece of music usually invokes the place / time i discovered that work, or who i was with.

Sibelius gives off images of Scandinavian Fjords, other Composers likewise give me images of the country they are from.

When i listen to piano music, i imagine i'm the Pianist playing the piece.

Orchestral music i can imagine i'm conducting the work.

Usually i just see what's going on while i listen and where i am, driving a car, looking out of the window of a train, walking in the woods, sitting on the beach etc.