Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony Question

[Elgarian]

So can we reduce that purpose to words?

I don't think so. Ultimately we hit up against Wittgenstein's distinction between things that can be said, and things that can only be shown. The music 'shows' us something that can't be said. So speaking purely personally, I think the only thing that really counts, when all the talking is done, is the individual subjective encounter with the music - whatever form that takes, and regardless of whether or not the nature of the encounter can be explained to anyone else. So I'd say (at my present state of thinking, which might change) that the 'purpose' of the music is to make possible a satisfying and life-enhancing experience for the individual listener. But I don't say this is a suitable universal definition, and I wouldn't want to attempt a philosophical defence of it.

[Elgarian]

I'm going to have to reply to this intriguing post in bits, because I'm struggling for time. These two bits I can respond to immediately:

I think here you have identified the crux of the matter, of this conversation if not of the topic. The bicycle is music, then, and cars are art and scooters are sculpture and horses are dance and buses are theatre and feet are poetry. How's that? And music does have many similarities with the other arts. But Popper is concerned with defining the characteristics of art, or so I understood it from a) your citation and b) my own very hazy recollections of reading him thirty or forty years ago. (Not to avoid confusion, just to identify what's characteristic to art.) So yes, all art, however different the various kinds are from each other, is all about "travel" shall we say? (though I would not agree that getting from one point to the other is the only point of travelling!!). And "travel" is not something a chair does, say, or a basketball game.

Yes yes yes! We understand each other perfectly. That's exactly what I meant, and mean.

Hmmm. Not perfectly. Only approximately. (You do know people whom Mozart leaves perfectly (!) cold, do you not?)

Yes. I should have said 'could' rather than 'would', because there are no guarantees in art. But it doesn't matter. The important thing is that, having once seen something so clearly expressed as it is in 'Come scoglio', we can recognise the composer's multiplicity of intention - that is, for a really quite specific emotional and dramatic outcome, not merely a musical one. Once we recognise that multiple intention in a very specific, sharply focused situation, we can admit that something similar (albeit vaguer) may be going on when Tchaikovsky was composing the 6th.


[Your important 'Duchamp' paragraph isn't being ignored - just deferred.]

[secondwind]

I don't think so. Ultimately we hit up against Wittgenstein's distinction between things that can be said, and things that can only be shown. The music 'shows' us something that can't be said. So speaking purely personally, I think the only thing that really counts, when all the talking is done, is the individual subjective encounter with the music - whatever form that takes, and regardless of whether or not the nature of the encounter can be explained to anyone else. So I'd say (at my present state of thinking, which might change) that the 'purpose' of the music is to make possible a satisfying and life-enhancing experience for the individual listener. But I don't say this is a suitable universal definition, and I wouldn't want to attempt a philosophical defence of it.

Most of this discussion has been taking place about 100 feet over my head.  But this statement makes sense to me and corresponds to my own sense of the function of music.  I would add, though, that while individual responses to a piece of music differ, there is a sufficient overlap to say that music also can create a type of community of listeners who experience the same piece of music in similar (if not identical) ways.

[some guy]

The music 'shows' us something that can't be said.

Hahaha, yes! Now it's my turn to say, "Yes, this is exactly what I've been trying to say."

So speaking purely personally, I think the only thing that really counts, when all the talking is done, is the individual subjective encounter with the music

Not following the logical progression here. How did you get from 'music presents something that can't be said' to 'the only thing that matters is the individual encounter'?

So I'd say (at my present state of thinking, which might change) that the 'purpose' of the music is to make possible a satisfying and life-enhancing experience for the individual listener. But I don't say this is a suitable universal definition, and I wouldn't want to attempt a philosophical defence of it.

Whew! Neither would I! In fact, again you have gotten to the core of the matter--my point all along has been that the purpose of music (of art) is not to provide satisfying experiences (though it may indeed include them). I believe that this focus on the individual and the individual's experience is what started the whole process around 1800 of audiences clamouring for older (i.e., familiar) music, which led to the shift from dead composers taking up only 11 percent of concert time (1782) to taking up 50 percent in Leipzig and 74 percent in Vienna (1830) to the overwhelming 90 percent in Paris (1860s).

I would say that the purpose of art in its current manifestation is to "say" something meaningful and revelatory (Cage's favorite word, btw) about the universe and about the relationships between things. That means that current art will doubtless be "saying" things that are either annoying and abhorrent or just flat incomprehensible. (This is not to say that if something is annoying, abhorrent, and incomprehensible it is therefore artistic!!) But there's that annoying (!) time thing happening, too. Whereby the annoying, abhorrent, and incomprehensible of yesterday (and last week) becomes the comprehensible, pleasant, and desirable of today.

And there's also the other annoying business of some listeners being less out of synch than others, whereby the annoying listeners are constantly going on and on about the pleasures of electro-acoustic improv to people still struggling with the putative difficulties of serialism.

It's not hard to see that older (more pleasant) art is easier to take as something whose purpose is to please the listener, including the "harder" messages we've been imputing to the Pathetique, I would say. That is, no one finds the 6th to be difficult or off-putting like some people (still) find serialism to be, even if it's possible to say something like the 6th is "darker" or more "depressing" than the Nutcracker ballet. My question all along has been, can we experience the music as something above and beyond our own each individual needs and desires, all music, not just the new stuff that's obviously not meeting our needs!! Can we experience all art as being like Rilke's angels, whom we adore because they disdain to destroy us?

In The Educated Imagination, Northrop Frye says this about "the top half of literature": "This is the world of heroes and gods and titans..., a world of powers and passions and moments of ecstasy far greater than anything we meet outside the imagination. Such forces would not only absorb but annihilate us if they entered ordinary life.... As the German poet Rilke says, we adore them because they disdain to destroy us. We seem to have got quite a long way from our emotions with their division of things into 'I like this' and 'I don't like this'," which is where Frye begins his traversal of literature in this book. "Literature gives us an experience that stretches us ... to the heights and depths of what the human mind can conceive, to what corresponds to heaven and hell in religion. In this perspective what I like or don't like disappears, because there's nothing left of me as a separate person; as a reader of literature I exist only as a representative of humanity as a whole."

I think that that view of things is possible with music as well--indeed I would claim that music can stretch even better than literature, is even more able to absorb and annihilate--except that music has been domesticated somehow, as have angels, too, come to think of it! We have turned music into our servant, something that must meet our needs, something that must serve us and our desires.

I like to think we can get beyond that!

[Elgarian]

Rather than identifying something belonging to you, I think what Duchamp is after here is more along the lines of responsibility in a relationship. Think of it that way. To make a human relationship work, you have to balance your needs with the other person's needs, based on a pretty fair idea (which you continually work at to improve) of who that other person is. I think I may be only trying to point out that if we don't keep trying to understand what sort of thing music is, and what it requires from us as listeners, then our relationship with it will be flawed. If in a relationship with another human, you were to process everything as what you were getting out of it, what value it had for you, then that would be a relationship that wouldn't have much chance of surviving.

Yes, this is much better than the too-casual statement that I made. Instead of talking about 'the Duchamp 50% that belongs to us', I should have said 'the Duchamp 50% that I'm responsible for'. That's much, much better, and I agree with you completely in what you say here. The only point I would add is that even with the best of intentions, we can end up with a flawed relationship with the music - and in most cases almost certainly do. That's part of the essential risk in art, even if we open ourselves to it as well as we can.

But what I was really trying to say about 'my 50%' is that I do have a say in what happens here and now with this musical engagement. Once the artist has made his statement, and if I'm doing my best to attend to it, my experience of that encounter is as valid as anyone else's. Or rather, I've no clear reason to give preference to someone else's statement over my own about the meaningfulness of what happens. I may consider what others say, and I may change my way of listening as a result to try out their suggestions for myself; but if again and again my listening persuades me that (for instance) emotional expression is an essential component of musical experience, then I can do no better than go with whatever light I have. I know what I know - at least, for now. I may hear the opinions of a million others with respect, but at the end it's I who has to decide.

[Elgarian]

Not following the logical progression here. How did you get from 'music presents something that can't be said' to 'the only thing that matters is the individual encounter'?

Again you're right - I'm not being precise enough. If you want to tell me something that can be said, we have a linguistic means of checking the accuracy of our communication. We can thrash the thing to and fro in words until we're satisfied that the other understands our meaning (much as we're doing in this very rewarding exchange we're having now).

But if you want to 'show' me something by, let's say, playing it on a piano, you can have no such certainty about being understood, and I can have no certainty that this musical experience I'm having is exactly what you intended to show me. There's no language in which we can check our results - we're into 'showing', not 'saying'. All I can know is what I'm experiencing. That is, the central event of this whole interchange - all I can know - is my subjective experience of your musical statement. All considerations of the meaning of art come down to this central point - the observer/listener/reader engaging with the painting/music/poem. That's the point at which the 'showing' and 'perceiving' occurs.

I'd be surprised if we disagree on this, actually; I think our differences in this particular area probably aren't real differences - but misunderstandings. It's not easy stuff to describe.

I need to think longer and harder about the rest of your post #63. This is great stuff, you know.

[jochanaan]

...--except that music has been domesticated somehow, as have angels, too, come to think of it!...

Speak for your own music! I've got some pretty wild stuff in my CD collection--and my performing repertoire. But I confess I'm a little out of the ordinary; I actually LIKE the wild stuff.

[Elgarian]

I would say that the purpose of art in its current manifestation is to "say" [show] something meaningful and revelatory (Cage's favorite word, btw) about the universe and about the relationships between things. That means that current art will doubtless be "saying" [showing] things that are either annoying and abhorrent or just flat incomprehensible. (This is not to say that if something is annoying, abhorrent, and incomprehensible it is therefore artistic!!) But there's that annoying (!) time thing happening, too. Whereby the annoying, abhorrent, and incomprehensible of yesterday (and last week) becomes the comprehensible, pleasant, and desirable of today.

Let me say straight away that I could sign up immediately to this manifesto by making only a few slight changes. First, I'd change the red bits to blue. That lifts art out of the 'saying' arena and into the 'showing' arena where (I think you'll agree), it belongs. I can't decide whether I want to change 'the purpose of art' to 'a purpose of art'. I can't decide, primarily, because to the best of my knowledge the purpose or meaning of art has never been satisfactorily resolved as a philosophical problem (it has even been declared a non-problem I believe, but it jolly well feels like one to me). So, with the proviso that I think art may have more than one purpose, I can agree to everything you write here.

I feel more and more convinced that our differences are misunderstandings, not disagreements. When I spoke of 'satisfying' or 'life-enhancing' experiences, I was wasn't talking about 'liking', or the aural equivalent of a nice dish of pudding. I was assuming (prematurely) that we were past that. What is 'satisfied' by art is not the need to get cosy and warm and comfortable, but the need to extend experience, in the same sense as CS Lewis talks of seeing 'with the eyes of a thousand men, yet it is still I who see'. That's the kind of satisfaction I mean - the satisfaction of transcending ourselves; that's the kind of life-enhancement I was talking about: exposure to the potentially illuminating Other. We're singing in unison here.

I believe that this focus on the individual and the individual's experience is what started the whole process around 1800 of audiences clamouring for older (i.e., familiar) music

I suspect that here again we may be merely misunderstanding each other. I've already said above that I agree that art involves exposure to the 'other'; but - and for me this is crucial - I can't experience this except as an individual. There is no objective experience of art. There can't be. This brings me back to that point of contact - the engagement of the receiver with the art. This is where the problem must lie. At that boundary a whole spectrum of things can happen, but at one end of the spectrum the receiver can open himself fully to the art and receive; or at the other end of the spectrum he can bring his own baggage entirely into play, and impose his preconceptions upon the art.

I presume that in most cases there's a mix of the two. As far as our present discussion is concerned, the real question is - when we listen to the 6th and feel miserable, is it our own misery that we're bringing to the music, or is Tchaikovsky genuinely sharing his misery with us through his art? It really matters. If the former, then our response to the music is on the same level as our fondness for apple pie (which is what you've been worried about, yes?). If the latter, then our experience is being extended in the way that only art can extend it; and such an experience would be a significant extra-musical contribution to the art experience.

I love all your Northrop Frye stuff, by the way. You won't find me disagreeing with any of that - most particularly what he says about 'liking' and 'not liking'. Whatever it is that both you and I are talking about (if ever we can sort out what it is) has nothing to do with 'liking' and 'not liking'.

[some guy]

Elgarian,

But now that we agree (and indeed we do, I see), what the hell shall we talk about??

I suppose there are other threads....

--Michael

[Elgarian]

But now that we agree (and indeed we do, I see), what the hell shall we talk about??

I was hoping that now you'd be able to explain to me what it is that we've been talking about....


Meanwhile, we still haven't resolved (at least, I know I haven't, because I'm unclear about the issue) the connection between our appreciation of what we might call formal structure (the purely musical, or the purely pictorial), and the feelings we experience when we contemplate it.

If (as you'd advocate) we separate them, then I believe we risk missing a proper understanding of the motivation not only for the creative act itself, but also for the act of listening. That's not to say that the separation wouldn't be valuable if done temporarily. As you've been saying all along, it really can be helpful to lay all feelings aside and concentrate purely on formal relationships (which I can do in visual art, but much less well in music where my formal understanding is so much the poorer), provided we have the intention of putting them back together again afterwards. (The bicycle in pieces might still be interesting, but you can't ride it very well.) Blake's entire mythology is a commentary on the unfortunate consequences of separating faculties that should be operating together. Ruskin says much the same: 'Senses, fancy, feeling, reason, the whole of the beholding spirit, must be stilled in attention or stirred in delight, else the labouring spirit has not done its work well.'

If we tinker with that set of spanners, we might conclude that for a complete engagement with the 6th symphony (however ideal and rare this may be), we should be sensitive to the ravishment of the orchestral sounds (senses), the stimulation of our imagination (fancy), the emotions we experience (feeling), and the rationality and relationships underpinning the musical structure (reason). Would that account satisfy all of us?

[Brahmsian]

But now that we agree (and indeed we do, I see), what the hell shall we talk about??
--Michael

You and I have this problem now too, Michael.  I just saw the first pig fly by about 8AM this morning. 

[jochanaan]

...If we tinker with that set of spanners, we might conclude that for a complete engagement with the 6th symphony (however ideal and rare this may be), we should be sensitive to the ravishment of the orchestral sounds (senses), the stimulation of our imagination (fancy), the emotions we experience (feeling), and the rationality and relationships underpinning the musical structure (reason). Would that account satisfy all of us?

It might--if anyone could balance it.  Or explain the results.

[Elgarian]

It might--if anyone could balance it.  Or explain the results.

I forgot to mention that it would be nice if, at the same time, we could tame three fierce lions and walk a tightrope.

[some guy]

Elgarian,

No, I have not left the room. But I have been busy. Drinking. I've been busy drinking.

I was hoping that now you'd be able to explain to me what it is that we've been talking about....

Hmmm. Let's let jochanaan or Brahmsian do that, eh?

Meanwhile, we still haven't resolved (at least, I know I haven't, because I'm unclear about the issue) the connection between our appreciation of what we might call formal structure (the purely musical, or the purely pictorial), and the feelings we experience when we contemplate it.

If (as you'd advocate) we separate them, then I believe we risk missing a proper understanding of the motivation not only for the creative act itself, but also for the act of listening.

Actually, I've been advocating that we not separate them, or maybe more that we not privilege our emotions above all else, to the point of ignoring all the other stuff that's going on (both inside us and outside). I'm saying that if the music is (only? largely?) something along the lines of a trigger, something that triggers certain emotions, that then the music disappears (so to speak) as something in and of itself, with its peculiarly musical values. And I am also saying that practically anything can work as a trigger: a smell, a story, a memory, a picture. And none of those things needs to be anything particularly good, either. A thing need not be anything that's any good in itself for it to be able to function as a trigger. It seems like that's all a lot of people want or need from any of the arts. And I think that that's too bad.

Music can trigger emotions, but that's not what music's all about.

Blake's entire mythology is a commentary on the unfortunate consequences of separating faculties that should be operating together.

Yes, I think this is exactly what I've been on about. The emotion-evoking or picture-making or narrative-spinning qualities of music have been separated out, for many listeners, and have been substituted for everything else that goes on to the extent that the everything else is not even perceived. The everything else, for those listeners, has vanished--and not even vanished, is not even thought of.

[F]or a complete engagement with the 6th symphony (however ideal and rare this may be), we should be sensitive to the ravishment of the orchestral sounds (senses), the stimulation of our imagination (fancy), the emotions we experience (feeling), and the rationality and relationships underpinning the musical structure (reason). Would that account satisfy all of us?

Hmmm, probably not. I know that what I'm after, anyway, is an experience whereby I am pulled out of myself, where I vanish (as it were), where my needs and desires before the music starts are less important than the music itself. I could say that the music can create new needs and desires that I never had before, which is certainly true. But I can't say that I've ever gone to a concert or opened up a CD thinking, "I'm going to be given new needs and desires, now"!!

My only goal, if you can put it like that, going into a musical situation is to be as open and receptive as possible, to let the music do its work, to put my individual needs and desires to the side, as much as is possible, so as to be take in what's there to be taken.

Or maybe it's just to be sure I don't miss any o' them there flyin' piggies. Oh! There went one just now!!

[Elgarian]

No, I have not left the room. But I have been busy. Drinking. I've been busy drinking.

Drinking is certainly necessary, and I'm glad to hear that someone is doing it.

I am also saying that practically anything can work as a trigger: a smell, a story, a memory, a picture. And none of those things needs to be anything particularly good, either. A thing need not be anything that's any good in itself for it to be able to function as a trigger.

I know exactly what you're getting at here, but I think what you're talking about is not a fault of emotional stimulation per se. The problem lies with a particular  self-stimulating variety of it. The kinds of triggers you (we) are suspicious of are the ones that only trigger feelings we're already familiar with. They allow us to 'use' them for a kind of self-gratification which isn't an opening, but a limiting of our experience to what we already know. What we're wanting (else it can't be good art) is to be shown (Wittgenstein's word) perceptions (and feelings) that we haven't yet experienced, or can't experience on our own: perceptions and feelings that can only be experienced when in contact with the Other.

Music can trigger emotions, but that's not what music's all about.

Agreed - not 'all'; but I want to keep asserting that it's partly what it's about. On a purely practical basis, a musical ignoramus like myself is only able to enter into the purely musical aspect of music to a very limited degree. I need that emotional involvement to keep me going. But also, I find myself wanting to say, no no - when I listen to the wonderful Mozart violin/fortepiano sonatas that I've only recently 'discovered', I can hear him laughing with delight at his own inventive discoveries - and the marvellous thing is that I'm being invited to join in. The notion that Mozart would have expected me to disregard the emotional content doesn't feel right at all. It's coming from him. That's the key, I think. Are we bouncing our own feelings off the music, or are they coming in to us from 'outside'? In the case of the violin sonatas the music and the joy are so interconnected that I wouldn't know how to separate them even if I wanted to. The music is the source of the joy and the joy is the reason for the music.

[jochanaan]

I was hoping that now you'd be able to explain to me what it is that we've been talking about....

Hmmm. Let's let jochanaan or Brahmsian do that, eh?...

I thought we had fairly well established that it couldn't be explained...

[Elgarian]

I thought we had fairly well established that it couldn't be explained...

Exactly. In failing to understand, we all understand each other perfectly. Wittgenstein would congratulate us in having kicked the ladder away, now that we've reached the top of it and recognised the nonsense of it all.

[karlhenning]

Curiously, Alan, your mention of Wittgenstein coincides tidily with my re-reading (only this very week) of Saints and Scholars by Terry Eagleton.

[Elgarian]

your mention of Wittgenstein coincides tidily with my re-reading (only this very week) of Saints and Scholars by Terry Eagleton.

I haven't read it - is it any good? I've been dipping into the Tractatus yet again (it shows, doesn't it?), but my ladder is still feeling distinctly unsafe, long before I reach the top of it.

[some guy]

The kinds of triggers you (we) are suspicious of are the ones that only trigger feelings we're already familiar with. They allow us to 'use' them for a kind of self-gratification which isn't an opening, but a limiting of our experience to what we already know.

Genau. (Well, OK, not exactly exact! I'm suspicious of triggers. What provides me with new things that expand experience is not a trigger. (A trigger can only access the known.))

I want to keep asserting that [triggering emotions] is partly what [music] is about. On a purely practical basis, a musical ignoramus like myself is only able to enter into the purely musical aspect of music to a very limited degree. I need that emotional involvement to keep me going.

And I want to keep assuring you that I have not ever claimed that the emotional is not a part of the total experience, just that it's not the total of it. That is, I don't think the words "purely musical aspect of music," if they mean anything (and I'm not sure they do), exclude emotional involvement. What I do think is that for many listeners emotional involvement replaces practically everything else. (That is, it is all trigger and nothing else.)

Oh, and you are most obviously NOT a musical ignoramus. Sheesh, what a dolt to even think that!
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