Communication: a vital essence of music

[Madiel]

I hate to see things go off the rails so soon. But, oh well.Too bad. I would venture to guess that your "sources" are all disaffected listeners who repeat the same made up kinds of stories.

I suspect one of my sources is Richard Taruskin's history of western music, but I don't have it to hand at this moment.

I can't say I know a lot of disaffected listeners of the kind of music in question, because the only place I'm likely to know listeners to that kind of music is right here on GMG, where those who choose to listen to it are fine with it.

Incidentally, until today I'd never read the wikipedia article on the Darmstadt school, but it conveys the same information about the attitude that was displayed towards other composers who didn't follow the 'correct' line, records criticism of the Darmstadt folk by Hans Werner Henze on that point (hardly just a 'disaffected listener'), and does far more work on citation and referencing of proper sources than your average wikipedia article.

[Madiel]

ADDENDUM

Having come home and had a chance to leaf through Taruskin, there is indeed absolutely reams of stuff on this kind of topic.  Because his work on the history of Western music is very much a social history - not just a description of what the music is like, but what its purpose was seen to be, from the point of view of the people who composed it, their supporters and their detractors.

I can't possibly quote it all because there's so much - linking attitudes of elitism in some schools of 20th century composition back to attitudes from centuries earlier, quotes from Babbitt lamenting that top Princeton students would go back to their dorms and listen to the same music as 'lesser' people in society, Krenek's articles and the reaction to them, Schoenberg's views that performers were unnecessary (because music didn't need to be performed) and listeners a nuisance if not for their ability to improve the acoustics of a concert hall...

And he goes a great deal into just why serialists felt the way they did about music, and its purpose, and why European serialists emerging from World War II were different to Babbitt as an American serialist.

It really is great stuff that I'd encourage anyone to read. I confess I've never quite read it from beginning to end in order (5 volumes, with the last 2 devoted to the 20th century so he certainly doesn't skimp on the 'modern' stuff) but I've dipped into almost every section of it at some point and it's this kind of material that makes it such a great read. There are bits that actually analyse seminal pieces of music and explain what's going on, but a great deal of it goes into the ideas and philosophies behind the music and the social and cultural context in which the music was produced.

[prémont]

Well, I don't know.

What does (can) the music communicate, apart from itself?

In a way I do not understand this persistant claim. Because the answer is simple and right at hand. Music communicates first and foremost emotions -  the emotions we have learned to associate with it. That's why there is a sender and a receiver, which must have some common background. Or else the communicated emotion will remain incomprehensible to the recipient like a language, you do not understand.

[amw]

Music communicates first and foremost emotions -  the emotions we have learned to associate with it.

I'm not so sure about that. The ending of Tchaikovsky's Sixth is considered quite sad, but it does not seem to actually make people more sad. In fact the symphony is often considered a quite pleasurable listening experience, and not because listeners are heartless or Tchaikovsky was a bad composer. Music does not seem to act directly upon the emotions, apart from the basic pleasure/displeasure thing, which can also vary from person to person (loud rock music annoys me, but some people love it). I think our experience of emotion in music is more like suspension of disbelief when watching a film—we know it's not real, but if the composer/character "speaks" to us, we can play along for a while.

I also don't think emotion should be first and foremost—music is equally good at conveying raw kinetic energy, and a sort of heightened, spiritual awareness akin to religious ecstasy; and those things have been equally important to audiences throughout its history.

[Karl Henning]

In a way I do not understand this persistant claim. Because the answer is simple and right at hand. Music communicates first and foremost emotions -  the emotions we have learned to associate with it.

My post was an invitatory question, rather than a claim, strictly speaking, but let your objection stand.

Thank you for making the point that "what music communicates" is, in fact, what the listener has learnt to apply to the music. And this is why Ilaria's observing the Stravinsky connection is apt.  Because this insistence that the music itself communicates, and that, if it "does not," the music is somehow deficient, has been periodically and perniciously employed to discredit music too new for the (unsympathetic) auditors to have learnt what emotions are to be applied to it.

[mc ukrneal]

I don't understand this topic very well. Musc is essentially a language. It is a vehicle of communication. Whether we interpret it differently or like what it says is besides the point. It is still a form of communication regardless of whether we choose to listen to it or not.

[Cato]

I'm not so sure about that. The ending of Tchaikovsky's Sixth is considered quite sad, but it does not seem to actually make people more sad. In fact the symphony is often considered a quite pleasurable listening experience, and not because listeners are heartless or Tchaikovsky was a bad composer. Music does not seem to act directly upon the emotions, apart from the basic pleasure/displeasure thing, which can also vary from person to person (loud rock music annoys me, but some people love it). I think our experience of emotion in music is more like suspension of disbelief when watching a film—we know it's not real, but if the composer/character "speaks" to us, we can play along for a while.

I also don't think emotion should be first and foremost—music is equally good at conveying raw kinetic energy, and a sort of heightened, spiritual awareness akin to religious ecstasy; and those things have been equally important to audiences throughout its history.

And so the ancient Greek idea of the catharsis can be involved: the University of Dayton has been a leader in Music Therapy.  Many decades ago when I was there, a professor told me how slow and sedate music had been seen as one way to treat patients with depression and repressed anger issues, but little positive effect was seen.

(There is a scene in Vertigo where the shell-shocked James Stewart character Scotty is being treated in this manner.)

Later, it struck music therapists that stormy passages from e.g. Bach might be better.  The professor recalled seeing a formerly rather mute and passive patient brightening to in fact a "stormy" passage from Bach, and saying: "THAT'S how I feel!"

The music therefore, because the patient responded to it so well, became a key for opening him to further treatment.

[Karl Henning]

To be clear, I am disinclined to accept a cut-&-dried ruling in either direction.  Take my Agnus Dei;  the text, and centuries of practice and social context, are a guide to what the music should "communicate," and it is perfectly fair to judge whether or not the music does a good job of it, or to discuss how the music does it.

But, take my Viola Sonata.  To most of my musical colleagues, it says one thing (or a number of elements within a reasonably coherent set of thing).  But to Saul, it "communicated" the worst viola sonata in the world.  Or let's just go back to Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective:  If music "communicates," how did great masterworks such as Brahms's Third Symphony, B^b Major piano concerto, & string quartets fail to "communicate" their greatness to the critics who initially railed against them?

[Karl Henning]

(There is a scene in Vertigo where the shell-shocked James Stewart character Scotty is being treated in this manner.)

The Mozart Effect before it was hip! 

[Karl Henning]

I don't understand this topic very well. Musc is essentially a language. It is a vehicle of communication. Whether we interpret it differently or like what it says is besides the point. It is still a form of communication regardless of whether we choose to listen to it or not.

I don't understand your remark.  Is my objection to the thesis that "communication is a vital essence of music" the result of my not listening to music?

I do not flat out disagree with your assertions that music is essentially a language or a vehicle of communication;  but such theses (it seems to me) are made possible by broad stretches of the nouns language and communication.

[Ken B]

ADDENDUM

Having come home and had a chance to leaf through Taruskin, there is indeed absolutely reams of stuff on this kind of topic.  Because his work on the history of Western music is very much a social history - not just a description of what the music is like, but what its purpose was seen to be, from the point of view of the people who composed it, their supporters and their detractors.

I can't possibly quote it all because there's so much - linking attitudes of elitism in some schools of 20th century composition back to attitudes from centuries earlier, quotes from Babbitt lamenting that top Princeton students would go back to their dorms and listen to the same music as 'lesser' people in society, Krenek's articles and the reaction to them, Schoenberg's views that performers were unnecessary (because music didn't need to be performed) and listeners a nuisance if not for their ability to improve the acoustics of a concert hall...

And he goes a great deal into just why serialists felt the way they did about music, and its purpose, and why European serialists emerging from World War II were different to Babbitt as an American serialist.

It really is great stuff that I'd encourage anyone to read. I confess I've never quite read it from beginning to end in order (5 volumes, with the last 2 devoted to the 20th century so he certainly doesn't skimp on the 'modern' stuff) but I've dipped into almost every section of it at some point and it's this kind of material that makes it such a great read. There are bits that actually analyse seminal pieces of music and explain what's going on, but a great deal of it goes into the ideas and philosophies behind the music and the social and cultural context in which the music was produced.

Thanks for this Orfeo.

[chasmaniac]

Wrote this a lifetime ago. While it doesn't limit itself to communication, it is relevant to this discussion...

Is music a language? a family of languages? a dialect? It is regular, meaning rule-governed, without excluding inventions by all or any of its users. This reminds us of syntax. It is uttered in sound and written in signs. It also evokes and conveys feelings, moods, emotions; in fact it does this remarkably well. It is situated at a conflux of traditions, habits and cultural norms, just like the languages we speak. (One cannot sing in a vacuum.) But what human activity is not so situated? And what else does music do? Will humming a tune order my dinner? Will arpeggios get me to the church on time?

One can imagine a world just like ours, but wordless, where colour and duration of tone, serial or simultaneous vocalization, harmonization, attack, volume, thematic variation, sonata-form development, song structure, cadence and resolution, even degrees of formlessness or atonality, blasts, sighs and whispers, perform systematically the very functions English and Spanish do in our world. This puts the metaphor in perspective, though, doesn't it? Mere words in such a world would be music to the ears. One wants to be careful with conceits.

To be sure, languages, natural ones anyway, have musical aspects. Tone, volume and attack do function in English. Music and language overlap, then? That's not saying much. Humming the chorus of 'Hungry Heart' to a waiter who knows Bruce Springsteen might indeed bring me a menu more quickly than not, but this shows us something about language, not music: it is plastic and improvisatory. But so is music! So is everything, when related to human use. Blasts, sighs and whispers are meaningful. Any body part can be used to say something, any object, any sound.

Maybe what makes a language a language, or a piece of music a piece of music, is what we do with them. We do a number of things with music, but the range and complexity of what we do with language is staggering.

[Karl Henning]

Yes:  if music be a language, it has serious limitations.  But, taken as an art rather than a language, it is illimitable.

[Madiel]

To be clear, I am disinclined to accept a cut-&-dried ruling in either direction.  Take my Agnus Dei;  the text, and centuries of practice and social context, are a guide to what the music should "communicate," and it is perfectly fair to judge whether or not the music does a good job of it, or to discuss how the music does it.

But, take my Viola Sonata.  To most of my musical colleagues, it says one thing (or a number of elements within a reasonably coherent set of thing).  But to Saul, it "communicated" the worst viola sonata in the world.  Or let's just go back to Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective:  If music "communicates," how did great masterworks such as Brahms's Third Symphony, B^b Major piano concerto, & string quartets fail to "communicate" their greatness to the critics who initially railed against them?

The thing about communication is that it is ALWAYS a 2-person process. That's true even when 'speaker' and 'listener' are both using English. How much more so, then when the tool of communication is something that is as abstract and nuanced as music.

[Karl Henning]

Art is certainly a two-person process.

Are there two-person processes which are not communication?  Id est, if we are defining communication as a two-person process, any art is communication, certainly.

But there are also reasons why we engage in this discussion, not in musical tones, but in actual language 

[Madiel]

Yes, but what I'm saying is that given how differently different listeners might react to a sentence in English, it doesn't surprise me at all that people can react even more differently to a piece of music. So when you say how did people react so badly to 'masterpieces', I'd say very easily.

People will never like all the same things, musically, because they're not all looking for the same things in the first place. Which again, is one of the things I love about Taruskin's book(s).

[Karl Henning]

Yes, but what I'm saying is that given how differently different listeners might react to a sentence in English, it doesn't surprise me at all that people can react even more differently to a piece of music. So when you say how did people react so badly to 'masterpieces', I'd say very easily.

You've a good point, but there is an important difference.  Two people react differently to a sentence, but the sentence has communicated something clear to both of them.

Two English speakers reacting differently to a sentence spoken to them in Japanese, and the reaction has nothing to do with the Japanese sentence was communicating.  In a broader sense, yes, the sentence "communicated" to them both, but differently.

[Madiel]

You've a good point, but there is an important difference.  Two people react differently to a sentence, but the sentence has communicated something clear to both of them.

Ha. You might think that, but my line of work leaves me far less convinced this is the case. They might think it's communicated something 'clear' to both of them, but if they reach two different conclusions about what that something is, they can't both have correctly ascertained what the speaker was trying to communicate, can they?

[Karl Henning]

Ha. You might think that, but my line of work leaves me far less convinced this is the case. They might think it's communicated something 'clear' to both of them, but if they reach two different conclusions about what that something is, they can't both have correctly ascertained what the speaker was trying to communicate, can they?

I take your point; but it seems to me that the distinction I illustrated stands.

[Madiel]

Fair enough. In that case I pose the following question: what exactly is the purpose of a composer who decides to supply Japanese to an English-speaking audience? Are they hoping that with sufficient immersion, the audience will eventually learn to speak Japanese?