Sean on rhapsody, the Rite and Bax

[jochanaan]

It's fair to ask, Can someone using a total-serialism method, an ancient mode, or other devices that have little or nothing to do with traditional tonality, write music that evokes joy and wonder in other people, even only a few others?  Pierre Boulez has done so.  Guillaume de Machaut has done so.  One counter-example suffices to disprove a "universal rule," and I have given two.  Therefore, it is invalid to claim that the "tonal system" is the only valid one.

[relm1]

It's fair to ask, Can someone using a total-serialism method, an ancient mode, or other devices that have little or nothing to do with traditional tonality, write music that evokes joy and wonder in other people, even only a few others?  Pierre Boulez has done so.  Guillaume de Machaut has done so.  One counter-example suffices to disprove a "universal rule," and I have given two.  Therefore, it is invalid to claim that the "tonal system" is the only valid one.

In a way, your question is music innately emotional?  I believe the evidence is both yes and no.  Music is emotional because we attach emotion to our experiences while hearing sounds.  Meanwhile, infants seem to have an innate desire towards consonance rather than dissonance. 

[jochanaan]

In a way, your question is music innately emotional?  I believe the evidence is both yes and no.  Music is emotional because we attach emotion to our experiences while hearing sounds.  Meanwhile, infants seem to have an innate desire towards consonance rather than dissonance.

A fair comment. And it's equally fair to ask whether someone like myself experiences joy and wonder on hearing Boulez because I've been conditioned to expect it?  But the conditioning was by no means forced upon me; if anything, some of my early familial associations would seem rather to have conditioned against it.  It was not in college that I began to like Varese and Stravinsky, but in my high school years, from almost the first time I heard them; and my love has not diminished in the forty years since then. So at least in my case, one cannot entirely explain my liking for non-traditionally-tonal music by "attaching emotion to my experiences."

[Karl Henning]

Infants prefer both consonance, and breastmilk. I don't think we successfully argue for norms of adult diet nor listening, by that appeal.

[jochanaan]

Infants prefer both consonance, and breastmilk. I don't think we successfully argue for norms of adult diet nor listening, by that appeal.

+1!

[relm1]

Infants prefer both consonance, and breastmilk. I don't think we successfully argue for norms of adult diet nor listening, by that appeal.

-1
Not sure I get your point. 

[kishnevi]

But can not consonance (or something so aurally similar as to make no difference to the ear) be found in modal and other systems of music?

[Sean]

Yes, it's just better organized in tonality than anywhere else. This was the whole point of tonality to begin with.

It took a while to work it out, and it's since been lost by a tide of modernist academic relativism and sheer foolishness.

[Karl Henning]

-1
Not sure I get your point.

My curtness was unclear. But one point is, that as adults, it's not either/or. We enjoy both consonance and dissonance.

Jeffrey's is an excellent point, too. But it all defers to Alan's excellent and quite comprehensive post. It's no use trying to make a bogeyman of Dissonance, without deciding just what mean. And, in any event, at the least a significant minority here on GMG will affirm Jo's point, that listeners enjoy dissonance, and this enjoyment is in no meaningful sense "unnatural."

[Sean]

Dissonance isn't wrong in terms of a reference to consonance to make sense of it, it's wrong in terms of taking itself as a starting point in an intellectually contrived harmonic system where the mind is expected to deny its commonsensical responses to C and C# in contrast to C and G.

Post-tonality is musical doublethink.

[Mandryka]

the "tonal system" is the only valid one.

Do you think Scruton claims this?  I can't find anywhere where he says tonality is the sole paradigm, but I haven't looked very hard yet.

I'm not even sure that Sean thinks this. But he can answer for himself.

[Mandryka]

It's fair to ask, Can someone using a total-serialism method, an ancient mode, or other devices that have little or nothing to do with traditional tonality, write music that evokes joy and wonder in other people, even only a few others?  Pierre Boulez has done so.  Guillaume de Machaut has done so. 

I don't believe anyone is seriously arguing with this.

[Elgarian]

And it's equally fair to ask whether someone like myself experiences joy and wonder on hearing Boulez because I've been conditioned to expect it?  But the conditioning was by no means forced upon me; if anything, some of my early familial associations would seem rather to have conditioned against it.

Both fair and helpful to bring this up, I'd say. 'Conditioning' plays an enormous role, surely, and we can see it again and again, both in the unfolding history of the arts on a large scale, and on a personal level. If I think back to my first listenings to Wagner in my twenties, I can't say I enjoyed it much. But something niggled, and I kept listening, and somehow, after about a couple of dozen listenings to my experimental purchase of a Gotterdammerung highlights record, I found myself accepting - and revelling in - the very things I'd found unacceptable a few months earlier. I'd been 'conditioning' myself all the time to listen in a different way.

I suspect that there's something to do with identity in all this: that some inner impulse drove me to want to enjoy Wagner, even though I was initially uncomfortable. It's something of a mystery to me why we're willing to keep trying with some forms of art that initially turn us off, while others are dropped instantly. I doubt it's got anything much to do with the art form itself - more likely just a personality trait, I should think. It's hard to escape that all-pervading 'pathetic fallacy' whereby we project our own feelings outwards onto the thing that's troubling us, in instinctive preference to acknowledging ourselves as the true origin of the discomfort.

[Elgarian]

at the least a significant minority here on GMG will affirm Jo's point, that listeners enjoy dissonance, and this enjoyment is in no meaningful sense "unnatural."

I'm just thinking aloud, but this argument about 'natural' and 'unnatural' is an interesting one. In one sense there's nothing 'natural' about art (unless you want to argue that we are part of nature and therefore all that we do is in a sense 'natural'). But if we were inclined to pursue the idea of 'naturalness' in art, wouldn't the best music be that which draws inspiration directly from the bleating of sheep, or the sound of leaves rustling in the breeze? Yet mostly, we don't pursue that approach.

Art is mostly an intensely artificial thing, and we make it how we want it. If by banging dustbin lids together in a particular way, Jack can reach out and be 'understood' by Jill, then Jack is making effective art - even though Jill may be the only person in the world who knows its value, because she's the only person who has (so far) succeeded in climbing into the box in which Jack presents it. Once we get inside the box, all sorts of things can seem obviously 'natural' that seemed 'unnatural' while we were outside it.

[Sean]

I'm not even sure that Sean thinks this.

I don't believe anyone is seriously arguing with this.

Yes I'm quite certain that tonality is the only music that make sense to us, and Scruton says the same almost word for word. Don't have his book handy but it's probably stated in the Tonality chapter.

Other music such as Machaut and Boulez work artistically only in as far as there is a latent tonality present for the mind to respond to.

One concession I might make is that various non-tonal folk musics work well enough, but they aren't in the art music business and their harmonic opacity doesn't matter.

I have extensive notes on all this in an essay but won't post them again. And the point is that the validity of tonality cf other harmonies isn't a discussion- it's an observation.

Elgarian, your points are mistaken. But you sound like a serious listener- pity we can't quit typing and just have a coffee. S

[Karl Henning]

I'm just thinking aloud, but this argument about 'natural' and 'unnatural' is an interesting one. In one sense there's nothing 'natural' about art (unless you want to argue that we are part of nature and therefore all that we do is in a sense 'natural'). But if we were inclined to pursue the idea of 'naturalness' in art, wouldn't the best music be that which draws inspiration directly from the bleating of sheep, or the sound of leaves rustling in the breeze? Yet mostly, we don't pursue that approach.

Art is mostly an intensely artificial thing, and we make it how we want it. If by banging dustbin lids together in a particular way, Jack can reach out and be 'understood' by Jill, then Jack is making effective art - even though Jill may be the only person in the world who knows its value, because she's the only person who has (so far) succeeded in climbing into the box in which Jack presents it. Once we get inside the box, all sorts of things can seem obviously 'natural' that seemed 'unnatural' while we were outside it.

Indeed!  A delight to be part of the discussion with you, though mine be a small part.

[Karl Henning]

Infants prefer both consonance, and breastmilk. I don't think we successfully argue for norms of adult diet nor listening, by that appeal.

It is dangerous for an infant to eat honey, too 

[Mandryka]

Yes I'm quite certain that tonality is the only music that make sense to us, and Scruton says the same almost word for word. Don't have his book handy but it's probably stated in the Tonality chapter.

Other music such as Machaut and Boulez work artistically only in as far as there is a latent tonality present for the mind to respond to.

One concession I might make is that various non-tonal folk musics work well enough, but they aren't in the art music business and their harmonic opacity doesn't matter.

I have extensive notes on all this in an essay but won't post them again. And the point is that the validity of tonality cf other harmonies isn't a discussion- it's an observation.

Elgarian, your points are mistaken. But you sound like a serious listener- pity we can't quit typing and just have a coffee. S

Can we explore non tonal folk music a bit more? It seems cavalier to dismiss them like that.

[Karl Henning]

I have extensive notes on all this in an essay but won't post them again.

Thank you.

Coffee with you may not be such an occasion for the other chap 

[some guy]

Yes I'm quite certain that tonality is the only music that make sense to us.

I'm quite certain that you believe this, and in the face of many different members of the category "us" who have said you nay.

Aside from simply dismissing that testimony

Elgarian, your points are mistaken,

you've got absolutely nothing, I mean aside from the also unsupported certainty.

Other music such as Machaut and Boulez work artistically only in as far as there is a latent tonality present for the mind to respond to.

I'm tempted to say "nice try" here, but it's not even that, really, is it?

"The mind," indeed. As if there were only one of these. And, in a way, there is only one of these, Sean's, the other minds being of no account at all unless of course they agree with Sean, in which case they are correct.

I have extensive notes on all this in an essay but won't post them again. And the point is that the validity of tonality cf other harmonies isn't a discussion- it's an observation.

I'd be really angry at all of this, it all being so totally wrong, except for the rich humor of it all. "Extensive notes" is pretty gigglesome, and I for one find it impossible to be angry whilst giggling. And the assertion in re discussion or observation is pretty grin worthy, too. "I cannot demonstrate a damned thing about what I'm so sure about, but I can call my entirely subjective certainties 'observations'; that ought to silence my critics."

Oh well.