Musical associations: Listening to composers and reading writers

[Karl Henning]

Good evening to you, @Karl Henning !

Warmly reciprocated!

[Lisztianwagner]

I don't mean to be polemical, Ilaria, but I've never found the Wagner - Tolkien association adequate o fair. To paraphrase Boulez, it's like olive oil, Tolkien is the second or even third pressing of Wagner.

Buona sera a te!

Buenas noches, Rafael, and no problem, I agree that, although Wagner and Tolkien took inspiration from the same sources, their ideas and artistic conceptions were very different; nonetheless I think they can be a brilliant accompaniment for each other.

[Elgarian Redux]

Buenas noches, Rafael, and no problem, I agree that, although Wagner and Tolkien took inspiration from the same sources, their ideas and artistic conceptions were very different; nonetheless I think they can be a brilliant accompaniment for each other.

I can see how this might be. The music and the literature don't have to be of equal merit - the music just needs to provide a perceived sympathetic match with the reading matter. In some cases in my own experience, the music may be far superior, considered as art, to the novel I'm reading. For example, the early Handel cantatas, considered separately, as art, completely outclass most of the historical novels I might read to their accompaniment.

[Lisztianwagner]

I can see how this might be. The music and the literature don't have to be of equal merit - the music just needs to provide a perceived sympathetic match with the reading matter. In some cases in my own experience, the music may be far superior, considered as art, to the novel I'm reading. For example, the early Handel cantatas, considered separately, as art, completely outclass most of the historical novels I might read to their accompaniment.

Good point, I agree.

[Mister Sharpe]

Anent our side-discussion on music and multi-tasking, I can recommend pianist Jonathan Bliss's article in the New York Times of two days ago: "Too Many Dings and Beeps? Try Beethoven." It's a rewarding read, if only to remind us of how fortunate we are to be classical music fans. I submit just a snippet from it:

"At the Marlboro Music School and Festival this summer, my fellow musicians and I spent an evening listening to historical recordings, an annual tradition. We ended with the slow movement of Beethoven's String Quartet (Op. 127), performed by the Busch Quartet, refugees from Hitler's Germany.

This music is as profound as can be. From the first notes, I was in tears. Time was suspended, and nothing else existed. When it ended, I quietly left the room. Making polite conversation would have brought me back to earth; I wasn't ready.

What I had experienced was complete immersion into music.

Most of life's great moments are like this. We give our full attention to one thing, and marvel at its beauty and strangeness and specificity. Past disappointments and future worries evanesce, allowing us to take in the present in its totality.

But in today's frenetic world, such moments are increasingly hard to come by. We should consider how rare and treasurable this kind of immersion is."

[Elgarian Redux]

What I had experienced was complete immersion into music.

Most of life's great moments are like this. We give our full attention to one thing, and marvel at its beauty and strangeness and specificity. Past disappointments and future worries evanesce, allowing us to take in the present in its totality.

But in today's frenetic world, such moments are increasingly hard to come by. We should consider how rare and treasurable this kind of immersion is."

I've spent most of my life searching for those moments of complete immersion, in music, in books, in  art, in nature, and in the sciences. I think they are related to what Abraham Maslow called 'Peak Experiences', and what CS Lewis called 'Joy' - or at least, to me there seem to be some very significant overlaps.

But I can't live the whole of my life as a 'Peak Experience', and I think I'd soon become exhausted if I came even close. That sense of total immersion doesn't have to overwhelm me, and it doesn't have to be focused on just one thing. It can be gentle. It can be multi-elemental, rather than involving just one kind of perception.

So what I'm suggesting is that one can be totally immersed in the act of 'reading while listening to music', just as one could be totally immersed in the act of 'reading while sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean'. Or standing at the top of the Herefordshire Beacon looking west, at sunset, while listening to the finale of Elgar's Caractacus (which I once did, in a sort of gloriously radiant state). These experience are composite, and no less valuable than confining one's attention to one element.

[Florestan]

But I can't live the whole of my life as a 'Peak Experience', and I think I'd soon become exhausted if I came even close.

Of course. Living in a permanent state of intellectual or aesthetic excitation, far from being desirable, would actually be deleterious for one's mental and bodily health.

That sense of total immersion doesn't have to overwhelm me, and it doesn't have to be focused on just one thing. It can be gentle. It can be multi-elemental, rather than involving just one kind of perception.

In his Autobiography (a most interesting and enjoyable book, btw), Dittersdorf recounts a concert he attended as a young man in the gardens of his patron Prince Friedrich von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The paragraph is worth quoting at length.

"I shall never forget the scene—the mild
summer evening, the grateful coolness after
the glaring heat of the day, the soothing music
of the wind instruments, the happy faces all
around, and the graciousness and kindness dis-
played by the good Prince to everyone, the
humblest guest included.

I still have before my eyes the exquisite
performance of 'La Danza,' the slight comic
opera, arranged by Metastasio from his play
'Il Ballo Chinese,' and set to music by Gluck.
Quaglio's decorations were quite in the Chinese
taste, and transparent. Workers in lacquer,
carpenters and gilders, had lavished all their
resources upon them, but their chief brilliancy
depended on prismatic poles of glass, which
had been polished by Bohemian craftsmen,
and were carefully fitted into one another in
empty. places, previously soaked in coloured
oils. They were very effective, even in sun-
shine and the broad light of day, but no pen
can describe the surpassing and astounding
brilliancy of these prisms when lit up by in-
numerable lamps. The reader must imagine
the reflected brilliancy of the azure-coloured
meadows of lacquer, the glitter of the gilded
foliage, and, lastly, the rainbow-like colours
repeated by hundreds of prisms, and flashing
like diamonds of the finest water. The most
vivid fancy will fall short of the real magic.
And then, Gluck's god-like music! It was not
only the delicious playfulness of the sparkling
symphony, accompanied now and again by
little bells, triangles, small hand-drums, etc.,
sometimes singly, sometimes all together, which,
at the very outset, and before the raising of
the curtain, transported the audience : the music
was from first to last an enchantment."

That's exactly the type of gentle, multi-elemental experience you mention.

So what I'm suggesting is that one can be totally immersed in the act of 'reading while listening to music', just as one could be totally immersed in the act of 'reading while sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean'.

What better spot to read Mémoires d'outre-tombe than this?

Or standing at the top of the Herefordshire Beacon looking west, at sunset, while listening to the finale of Elgar's Caractacus (which I once did, in a sort of gloriously radiant state). These experience are composite, and no less valuable than confining one's attention to one element.

I'd say they are even more valuable and desirable, because from a monolithic experience such as described by Bliss generally one emerges precisely as he did, asocial and silent, while generally a composite one makes one exuberant and communicative, as Dittersdorf attests.

[Mister Sharpe]

I've spent most of my life searching for those moments of complete immersion, in music, in books, in  art, in nature, and in the sciences. I think they are related to what Abraham Mazlow called 'Peak Experiences', and what CS Lewis called 'Joy' - or at least, to me there seem to be some very significant overlaps.

But I can't live the whole of my life as a 'Peak Experience', and I think I'd soon become exhausted if I came even close. That sense of total immersion doesn't have to overwhelm me, and it doesn't have to be focused on just one thing. It can be gentle. It can be multi-elemental, rather than involving just one kind of perception.

So what I'm suggesting is that one can be totally immersed in the act of 'reading while listening to music', just as one could be totally immersed in the act of 'reading while sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean'. Or standing at the top of the Herefordshire Beacon looking west, at sunset, while listening to the finale of Elgar's Caractacus (which I once did, in a sort of gloriously radiant state). These experience are composite, and no less valuable than confining one's attention to one element.

Thank you, Elgarian, a lot, these are valuable points to ponder. I believe you are suggesting two things, really:  a.) that transcendant (I prefer that word to "peak" which might suggest something exhausting, far too overwhelming) life experiences can be subtle, "gentle" is your word; and b.) that they can be composite, perhaps even more than the sum of their parts. I can agree with that, certainly.  While I don't think Bliss would deny the possibility (and worthiness) of these kinds of experiences, what I don't know - and can't speak for him, of course, is whether or not he would see these as representative of what he is describing as "total" or "completely immersive." Dunno if you were able to read his entire op-ed but what he is most concerned about is the fragmenting of our lives by multi-media presentations (he really dislikes those) and constant links with and interruptions by computer tech which, he fears, is affecting our ability to focus, listen intently. I don't know if he would view composite sensory inputs as legitimate "total immersion" experiences or not.  Suspect, however, he would not.  Also, his message is entirely music-based: "I can testify that music is uniquely well positioned to provide an antidote to this avalanche of stimulus." [my italics] So, in sum, I'm uncertain just how he'd respond to sunsets and multi-elemental experiences. Overall, I do believe he is correct: I fear we are losing our ability and at an ever-increasing pace to focus on anything, much less a complex - and indeed profound - LvB quartet.

[Elgarian Redux]

I'd say they are even more valuable and desirable, because from a monolithic experience such as described by Bliss generally one emerges precisely as he did, asocial and silent, while generally a composite one makes one exuberant and communicative, as Dittersdorf attests.

I think the example you quote is excellent. Dittersdorf's account suggests not a scattergun of impulses that we strive to accommodate, but a kind of unifying experience. All these things are absorbed as part of a whole, which in turn is greater than the sum of the parts. It's one of the things we admire in a still life by Cezanne, where we may look separately at a representation of a jug, a plate, some fruit, a tablecloth, etc, and see them as part of a great whole.

So we're used to doing this sort of thing, examining this synthesis, within a work of art -  I don't see, myself, any problem with going a step further, and 'synthesising' one or more works of art: book, music, etc.

[AnotherSpin]

I've spent most of my life searching for those moments of complete immersion, in music, in books, in  art, in nature, and in the sciences. I think they are related to what Abraham Mazlow called 'Peak Experiences', and what CS Lewis called 'Joy' - or at least, to me there seem to be some very significant overlaps.

But I can't live the whole of my life as a 'Peak Experience', and I think I'd soon become exhausted if I came even close. That sense of total immersion doesn't have to overwhelm me, and it doesn't have to be focused on just one thing. It can be gentle. It can be multi-elemental, rather than involving just one kind of perception.

So what I'm suggesting is that one can be totally immersed in the act of 'reading while listening to music', just as one could be totally immersed in the act of 'reading while sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean'. Or standing at the top of the Herefordshire Beacon looking west, at sunset, while listening to the finale of Elgar's Caractacus (which I once did, in a sort of gloriously radiant state). These experience are composite, and no less valuable than confining one's attention to one element.

I liked your comment, it speaks to something many feel. Let me share my view.

Immersion and so-called peak moments are not to be chased or collected but glimpses of what is always present, steady rather than passing.

What Maslow called peak experiences and Lewis called Joy are not the essence. They are brief openings where ego falls away. Delight in music or nature is not in the object but in the fading of the line between I and it.

Your thought that immersion can be layered, music with reading or sunset, is right. Variety is not clutter but the play of awareness. The true ground is not narrow focus but the open space where everything appears.

The fear of exhaustion shows it is the restless mind that tires, not the deeper self. Real immersion is effortless because it is free of strain.

That moment with Caractacus was more than aesthetic. It was a doorway, from form into the formless. The real question is not how to keep it but who was experiencing it.

You say you have spent your life searching for immersion. Perhaps the search itself is the block. What if immersion is not a prize but the quiet fact that is always here once the seeker lets go?

[Elgarian Redux]

Thank you, Elgarian, a lot, these are valuable points to ponder. I believe you are suggesting two things, really:  a.) that transcendant (I prefer that word to "peak" which might suggest something exhausting, far too overwhelming) life experiences can be subtle, "gentle" is your word; and b.) that they can be composite, perhaps even more than the sum of their parts. I can agree with that, certainly.

So we're OK so far. 

While I don't think Bliss would deny the possibility (and worthiness) of these kinds of experiences, what I don't know - and can't speak for him, of course, is whether or not he would see these as representative of what he is describing as "total" or "completely immersive." Dunno if you were able to read his entire op-ed but what he is most concerned about is the fragmenting of our lives by multi-media presentations (he really dislikes those) and constant links with and interruptions by computer tech which, he fears, is affecting our ability to focus, listen intently.

I would draw a sharp distinction between the kind of unifying experience I'm advocating, and the kind of multimedia fragmentation that Bliss is referring to. Everything I'm suggesting hangs on the attention of the observer/listener. If he ends up with a disintegrated bunch of fragments then the experience has been a failure.

I don't know if he would view composite sensory inputs as legitimate "total immersion" experiences or not.  Suspect, however, he would not.

If so, I think I'd disagree on this point, depending on the nature of the composite inputs he's worried about.

Also, his message is entirely music-based: "I can testify that music is uniquely well positioned to provide an antidote to this avalanche of stimulus." [my italics]

Music is certainly well-positioned to provide an antidote, but I couldn't agree that it is uniquely so. Stand me in front of a landscape by Turner, a Waterlilies by Monet, or a still life by Cezanne, and I'll shut out the rest of the world no less effectively than if I were listening to Elgar's violin concerto.

So, in sum, I'm uncertain just how he'd respond to sunsets and multi-elemental experiences. Overall, I do believe he is correct: I fear we are losing our ability and at an ever-increasing pace to focus on anything, much less a complex - and indeed profound - LvB quartet.

I think that may well be happening in society in general, and I'm not at all knocking the idea of attending solely to a Beethoven quartet. That's a Good Thing and I'm all in favour of promoting more of it. But if he thinks Caractacus can only be appreciated properly in a concert hall, rather than at sunset at the top of the Herefordshire Beacon, because he thinks somehow the sunset and the location dilute the attention given to the music, then I would say he might be seriously mistaken, and should try it before he dismisses it.

[AnotherSpin]

Thank you, Elgarian, a lot, these are valuable points to ponder. I believe you are suggesting two things, really:  a.) that transcendant (I prefer that word to "peak" which might suggest something exhausting, far too overwhelming) life experiences can be subtle, "gentle" is your word; and b.) that they can be composite, perhaps even more than the sum of their parts. I can agree with that, certainly.  While I don't think Bliss would deny the possibility (and worthiness) of these kinds of experiences, what I don't know - and can't speak for him, of course, is whether or not he would see these as representative of what he is describing as "total" or "completely immersive." Dunno if you were able to read his entire op-ed but what he is most concerned about is the fragmenting of our lives by multi-media presentations (he really dislikes those) and constant links with and interruptions by computer tech which, he fears, is affecting our ability to focus, listen intently. I don't know if he would view composite sensory inputs as legitimate "total immersion" experiences or not.  Suspect, however, he would not.  Also, his message is entirely music-based: "I can testify that music is uniquely well positioned to provide an antidote to this avalanche of stimulus." [my italics] So, in sum, I'm uncertain just how he'd respond to sunsets and multi-elemental experiences. Overall, I do believe he is correct: I fear we are losing our ability and at an ever-increasing pace to focus on anything, much less a complex - and indeed profound - LvB quartet.

When attention scatters towards notes, ideas, or passing sensations, we create a divide: music on one side, listener on the other. The quartet becomes an object to analyse or consume, and in doing so we miss the experience of simply perceiving, where music and listener belong to the same whole. It is no wonder we complain of exhaustion.

Real focus is not a matter of clinging to details but of letting go of their apparent separateness. When the mind ceases its restless grasping and turns to the act of perception itself, the music is no longer difficult or sublime. It simply is. And so are we. In this light, the quartet is not a puzzle to be solved but a doorway into wholeness.

Music embodies this movement. It does not ask for control but for surrender, to the silence between the notes as much as to the notes themselves. The problem of attention is not only distraction but dispersion, a scattering of the self into fragments. The more we chase after parts, the more we forget the stillness from which they arise. Music leads us back to that stillness, not by turning away from the world but by seeing it clearly.