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

[some guy]

I like to picture people who say what they picture when they listen to music as burning in hell. Or being tortured in some hideous way.

That doesn't apply to posts online, of course. I don't have to read those. But when someone starts in in person, live, then I'm in a bit of a pickle. Can't close my ears. I like listening to the world--traffic, babies crying, dogs barking, engines starting up, neighbors throwing furniture above me at three in the morning--but I really draw the line at someone telling me what they picture when they listen to a piece.

Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala

[Octave]

Well, there are special places----not unlike hell----for contemptuous, self-exempting pricks to get together and have a big laugh at the chumps who waste their time on reactionary, ridiculous, arbitrary, personal things like admitting to mental images evoked by music.  Like IHM, which thinks it's ironically named but, ironically, is not.  Why waste your time waiting for all of us to catch up, SG? 

I almost always "see" things, or experience images, while listening to music; the harder I listen, the more abstract or prelingual the image becomes----unless I'm distracted by a score or some other extraneousness.  What tiny little I've read from neuroscience about the brain's response to aural and musical stimuli suggests that maybe music's "moved forms" might be most significant precisely in their expressive power, as long as it's understood that really important "pressing out" that's being done is from the inside out; the objective forms "within" the music itself matter (literally) of course, but are overemphasized for similar reasons that people are overmedicated in a cognitive-behavioral epoch.  (In music's case, much longer than that, unfortunately.)  The abstract forms I personally experience with music aren't transcendent to language* or to experience of the physical world, but I do wonder if they act as indicators of the working of the brain itself while stimulated by the movement of music.  When I hear others offer their own images, I wonder if those are experiential equivalents to the same kinds of things, movements rather than objects; and even then, movements from the world that act as stand-ins or surrogates for movements much, much closer to the soul, such as it is.  Not to second-guess** what people are saying here, of course!   

* Naturally it's the difficulty (and necessity?) of bringing these impressions to language that make writing about music or talking about it so daunting, for me at least; there is also the perpetual letdown of seeing something so immediate sullied out in the agora, c'est la vie.  The thread question stands as a primal question, though, an essential question.

** it's not psychoanalysis, but how would one protest such condescension?  "Don't neuroscientize me!"

[some guy]

Wow. If I had been aiming for a nerve, I would have been enormously chuffed by those ad homs there. But, alas, I was just going for some harmless humor, worth maybe a courtesy chuckle or two, but not the tsunami of revulsion and horror I got. Whew. Why don't youse guys tell us how you really feel!

But seriously, IHM as a "special place----not unlike hell----for contemptuous, self-exempting pricks to get together and have a big laugh at the chumps who waste their time on reactionary, ridiculous, arbitrary, personal things like admitting to mental images evoked by music"? Really? I have never seen anything like that there. A lot of those people are professional musicians. The one I've met is not a contemptuous prick at all. And the recordings that one of them produces (on Erstwhile) are to die for. (And not die and go to hell for, either! ) Great sound, endlessly fascinating and lovely music. What could be better?

The only thing I've ever seen there is a bunch of nice people who really love music and who like to talk about it. There is less nastiness there (so far as I've seen, anyway) than on any other music board I know.

[Florestan]

Stravinsky is one of a long list of c20 composers that excelled in expressing themselves with their pens and not their months.

Besides those contradictory statements (they are, indeed) he also wrote something to the effect of there being more melodic invention in La donna e mobile than in the whole Ring cycle. He was a well known contrarian and his pronouncements should always be taken cum grano salis. Most of the time they could safely be ignored altogether. 

Pray tell how has the Rite been choreographed over the last hundred years if the music expresses nothing?

Oh, but that was Regietheater... 

[dyn]

Well, there are special places----not unlike hell----for contemptuous, self-exempting pricks to get together and have a big laugh at the chumps who waste their time on reactionary, ridiculous, arbitrary, personal things like admitting to mental images evoked by music.  Like IHM, which thinks it's ironically named but, ironically, is not.

This IHM place sounds rather attractive

As someone with a moderate knowledge of music and the brain, image responses to music are entirely a learned phenomenon dependent on culture and upbringing. That's why i, a trained musician, experience music not in association with pictures but with abstract musicological/psychological concepts like "notes", "lines", "timbres". The only universals, like five- and seven-note scales and a qualitative difference between major and minor, could be explained by acoustical factors (the harmonic series).

he also wrote something to the effect of there being more melodic invention in La donna e mobile than in the whole Ring cycle.

i'm not going to argue with that

[ibanezmonster]

I used to have a strong connection with imagery and music. Now, I never listen to music without doing other stuff at the same time, though, so it's not quite as strong of a connection.

Some things I used to think of:
Prokofiev's 6th sonata, first movement- a picture in an old high school textbook portraying a black and white picture of a girl during Bosnia's war.

Brahms symphonies (especially the opening of the 2nd, first movement)-  I'd imagine exploring the forests of the Digital World from the show Digimon

Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (Mystic Circle of the Young Girls)- the scene from Final Fantasy 10 in which Yuna "sends" the souls of the villagers who died from the attack by Sin by dancing on the water.




http://www.youtube.com/v/men3LxSdfPc
http://www.youtube.com/v/hKCLShJP08A

[Johnll]

As someone with a moderate knowledge of music and the brain, image responses to music are entirely a learned phenomenon dependent on culture and upbringing. That's why i, a trained musician, experience music not in association with pictures but with abstract musicological/psychological concepts like "notes", "lines", "timbres". The only universals, like five- and seven-note scales and a qualitative difference between major and minor, could be explained by acoustical factors (the harmonic series).
i'm not going to argue with that

Dyn your academic training has value. The thing is most profs cannot find the real world with both hands and do not care. In your case music profs, and in mine business profs. If you want to be of any import you need to take the techie stuff they gave you and find your own way. You have to make something happen. In my world it was turn a buck, but in yours it is to write a piece that involves people. This kind of stuff does not make you musician  and nor do I find it impressive even though I do not really understand it.

[Ten thumbs]

I tend to think emotively, whatever the music is. The majority of programme music is either opera or ballet, in which case it does have a visual background. Some other items of so-called programme music are in fact in sonata form, and I suppose that form is strictly a programme in itself, even when untitled. In the piano literature, there is a large class of character pieces that do have titles, e.g. Grieg's Lyrical Pieces. These could, I suppose, invoke visual responses, but as a general rule, they are not programme music, having fairly basic classical structures such as ABA etc. One could compare a strophic lied with a through-composed one and ask whether or not one's response is different.

[jochanaan]

I seldom experience "images," visual or otherwise, when listening to non-programmatic music--and when I'm playing it, my body, mind and spirit are completely occupied in its production and so have no attention to spare for images.  Yet I don't think my "enjoyment" or "understanding" of music has suffered.  I love it for itself, just because it is.

As for program music, if the composer has done his job well, performers shouldn't have to think consciously about portraying a river, a scaffold, Death, or whatever.  The opening notes of Smetana's Moldau, for example, so perfectly evoke "mountain stream" that the flutists only need to play the notes he wrote (allowing for natural flexibility), and the audience will see pristine running waters sparkling in sunlight.

[Sergeant Rock]

I picture something like this...but then, that's usually what's in my mind, music or no music 






Sarge

[Chaszz]

When listening to Brahms' symphonies, especially nos. 2 and 3, I often see landscapes. Symphony No. 3 seems to me to take place entirely in an autumn forest. I see landscape images with Sibelius also, forests and mountains of the north. And Wagner's orchestral "bleeding chunks", and the stand-alone Siegfried Idyll, also often make me see landscapes. This may be related to the fact that I'm a landscape sculptor and painter, and I sometimes imagine landscapes in my mind, with no music playing, and these images sometimes lead to art works.

I have never seen any image when hearing Bach, except possibly a crucifixion when hearing the B Minor Mass. 
And not a single image with Brahms' chamber music.

An deceased older friend, a classical music devotee with whom I spent many happy hours discovering new works and new interpretations, insisted that music expressed nothing but itself and that she never saw images when listening. Our polarity in this matter never stood in the way of our enjoyment of each others' company and the music. It seems this polarity is present in the people who have posted in this section. Some see images and some don't. Some see music as expressing something and others see music as expressing nothing, or expressing itself. To the mystery of music's overwhelming effect on us can be added other mysteries such as these differences in the experiencing of it and thinking about it.

Among those who do see images, landscape seems to be a fairly common thread. Since I see landscapes when listening to Brahms symphonies but not his chamber music, I wonder if the large orchestra and the orchestration are part of it. You other posters to this thread who see landscape: have you ever seen any when listening to chamber music? If you have, is it less prevalent for you than with orchestral music?

[Mirror Image]

Lately, I've had no kind of mental imagery whatsoever. I've just been enjoying the music itself. I never see landscapes when I listen to music. If it's a particular musical passage that hits me just right, it might trigger an emotional reaction from me, but these days I don't see much of anything when I'm listening to music.

[Elgarian]

The more I try to pin down how to describe the process, the more it eludes me. That's partly because I respond to different kinds of music in different ways. If I think of my oldest passion (Elgar), there are inevitable associations that I can't help being conscious of (nor would I wish to): Worcestershire landscapes, places, walks, bike rides - even memories of places and feelings associated with where I was when I previously listened to the music. This doesn't seem surprising - even Elgar himself asked the orchestra to play part of the slow movement of the 1st symphony 'like something you might have heard down by the river'. So whether I want it or not, there's this layering of experience emerging, that seems to get richer as the years go by. When I listen to Elgar's violin concerto now, I find I simply can't help experiencing thoughts of Demeter and Persephone and spring and winter and heartbreak and loss and a love of the feminine so deep that it hurts, but is so beautiful that I still want it. This isn't something instead of the 'pure music', but something that rides above or below or in the middle of the experience of the sounds. It's not 'instead of' listening to the music; it's 'as well as'.

But there doesn't seem to be a fixed pattern to this - suddenly discovering I can enjoy Chopin for the first time in my life (long story), for some reason I find myself now enjoying the Nocturnes, Preludes, etc often (but by no means always) apparently image-free. Just thrilling to the run of notes like liquid musical gold. But there again - we're metaphor-making creatures through and through, and now that I've written the words 'liquid musical gold' I've made an image for myself that I'll not be able to forget, and that'll heap on another layer next time I listen.

I can't say I see anything to be ashamed of with all this image-making, by the way. For me, part of being human seems to be about seeking connections between everything I experience; I could no more force myself to listen to music as a pure abstraction than fly.

[Brahmsian]

 

[mahler10th]

In the middle of this, somewhere.



  (Same as Ray, probably)

[Karl Henning]

The more I try to pin down how to describe the process, the more it eludes me. That's partly because I respond to different kinds of music in different ways. If I think of my oldest passion (Elgar), there are inevitable associations that I can't help being conscious of (nor would I wish to): Worcestershire landscapes, places, walks, bike rides - even memories of places and feelings associated with where I was when I previously listened to the music. This doesn't seem surprising - even Elgar himself asked the orchestra to play part of the slow movement of the 1st symphony 'like something you might have heard down by the river'. So whether I want it or not, there's this layering of experience emerging, that seems to get richer as the years go by. When I listen to Elgar's violin concerto now, I find I simply can't help experiencing thoughts of Demeter and Persephone and spring and winter and heartbreak and loss and a love of the feminine so deep that it hurts, but is so beautiful that I still want it. This isn't something instead of the 'pure music', but something that rides above or below or in the middle of the experience of the sounds. It's not 'instead of' listening to the music; it's 'as well as'.

But there doesn't seem to be a fixed pattern to this - suddenly discovering I can enjoy Chopin for the first time in my life (long story), for some reason I find myself now enjoying the Nocturnes, Preludes, etc often (but by no means always) apparently image-free. Just thrilling to the run of notes like liquid musical gold. But there again - we're metaphor-making creatures through and through, and now that I've written the words 'liquid musical gold' I've made an image for myself that I'll not be able to forget, and that'll heap on another layer next time I listen.

I can't say I see anything to be ashamed of with all this image-making, by the way. For me, part of being human seems to be about seeking connections between everything I experience; I could no more force myself to listen to music as a pure abstraction than fly.

That wasn't you I saw flapping his arms on a quiet runway off to the edge of Logan Airport, then?

[Johnll]

The more I try to pin down how to describe the process, the more it eludes me. That's partly because I respond to different kinds of music in different ways. If I think of my oldest passion (Elgar), there are inevitable associations that I can't help being conscious of (nor would I wish to): Worcestershire landscapes, places, walks, bike rides - even memories of places and feelings associated with where I was when I previously listened to the music. This doesn't seem surprising - even Elgar himself asked the orchestra to play part of the slow movement of the 1st symphony 'like something you might have heard down by the river'. So whether I want it or not, there's this layering of experience emerging, that seems to get richer as the years go by. When I listen to Elgar's violin concerto now, I find I simply can't help experiencing thoughts of Demeter and Persephone and spring and winter and heartbreak and loss and a love of the feminine so deep that it hurts, but is so beautiful that I still want it. This isn't something instead of the 'pure music', but something that rides above or below or in the middle of the experience of the sounds. It's not 'instead of' listening to the music; it's 'as well as'.

But there doesn't seem to be a fixed pattern to this - suddenly discovering I can enjoy Chopin for the first time in my life (long story), for some reason I find myself now enjoying the Nocturnes, Preludes, etc often (but by no means always) apparently image-free. Just thrilling to the run of notes like liquid musical gold. But there again - we're metaphor-making creatures through and through, and now that I've written the words 'liquid musical gold' I've made an image for myself that I'll not be able to forget, and that'll heap on another layer next time I listen.

I can't say I see anything to be ashamed of with all this image-making, by the way. For me, part of being human seems to be about seeking connections between everything I experience; I could no more force myself to listen to music as a pure abstraction than fly.

I admire the confidence and courage it takes to be real. JohnLL

[Elgarian]

That wasn't you I saw flapping his arms on a quiet runway off to the edge of Logan Airport, then?

Well Karl, there were several of us. I was the one wearing headphones.

[Elgarian]

I simply can not envision anything like your images while listening to music.  What I can usually come up with is the score scrolling by, or a musician playing the instrument, as I listen to the music.  But that is something extra, and quite unnecessary, beyond simply listening the music and adds nothing to my enjoyment.

I think this reinforces my suggestion that many of our responses are involuntary, governed by who we are, where we've been, and so on. A similar situation arises with abstract paintings, where some folks can't help 'reading' them as landscapes, etc. Problems only arise when someone insists that 'this is how it should be seen (or listened to)'. For me, the pleasure of this sort of exchange lies in the multiplicity of response and the swapping of notes.

[Karl Henning]

Well Karl, there were several of us. I was the one wearing headphones.

That combination headphones/goggles gear is rad!