Was Freud Right About Music ?

[M forever]

For as long as there has been recorded Western music, Eric.

And most likely long before that. If we look at the function of music in hunter-gatherer societies, we see that it plays a very important function there, too, usually in context with tribal rituals and magic.

[jochanaan]

You are mistaken, Eric;  the Mass is not "just drama."  And Beethoven's Opus 123 is not "just a music drama."

Glad to see you agreeing that of course, music is bigger than your limited personal uses for it;  only you did just slip immediately back into navel-gazing mode 

I don't get the reference.  Was one of Eric's posts deleted?  If so, why?

[Operahaven]

I don't get the reference.  Was one of Eric's posts deleted?  If so, why?

Jochanaan,

I stated that I adored Beethoven's  Missa Solemnis  but still considered it just a music drama.

[Operahaven]

M,

Plato said in the  Republic  that........ "when a man abandons himself to music he begins to melt and liquefy"

Is he also wrong (along with Freud) in your opinion ?

[Josquin des Prez]

M,

Plato said in the  Republic  that........ "when a man abandons himself to music he begins to melt and liquefy"

Is he also wrong (along with Freud) in your opinion ?

Since we have no idea what music sounded like in Plato's days, it's hard to put that comment in the same context as Freud's, don't you think?

[Gurn Blanston]

I don't get the reference.  Was one of Eric's posts deleted?  If so, why?

Jo,
It appears it WAS deleted (I can't find it) but it was not done so by a mod, which leaves Eric himself. Not sure why, I thought it was a good statement, and I agreed with it. The purpose of music (and all sorts of ritual ceremony) and even the great art built into the building itself, was for the entertainment value to bring people into church. If you are a believer, all of this is merely trappings. A musical "Mass" is not the sacrament, it is merely an adjunct.



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Listening to:
Philharmonia Orchestra / Giulini Itzhak Perlman - Bia 432 Op 61 Concerto in D for Violin & Orchestra 2nd mvmt - Larghetto - attacca -

[M forever]

You are very wrong about that. People didn't have to be brought into church (at least until very recently) or other places of tribal worship by making it attractive and entertaining, e.g. by the inclusion of nice music in the proceedings. They had to go anyway, no matter how fun it was or not, or be outcasts, with very dire consequences. Music and other elaborate forms of ritual ceremony have a communicative function, to create an emotional, physical shared group experience beyond just listening to words. We know that music has an extremely important function as a means of "mass communication" and it appears that people have played music in one form or another for tens of thousands of years. It appears that what made behaviorally, rather than just anatomically "modern" man is the development of complex forms of communication such as language which allows the building up of a shared culture which is communicated to other members of the group through language and other forms of communication and because of the overlapping of generations, it is handed down from one generation to the next, through verbal and other communicative means. We have all the reason to believe that music has played a very important role in that context for a very, very long time.

[Operahaven]

M,

No.

I still think Steven Pinker is correct on the topic of music:

"The intense pleasures of music are essentially by-products. The arts are a means by which we identify pleasure-giving patterns in the brain. Music purifies these patterns, concentrates them, allowing the brain to stimulate itself without the messiness of electrodes or drugs . . . [to] give itself intense artificial doses of the sights and sounds and smells that ordinarily are given off by healthful environments. We enjoy strawberry cheesecake, but not because we evolved a taste for it. We evolved circuits that gave us trickles of enjoyment from the sweet taste of ripe fruit, the creamy mouth feel of fats and oils from nuts and meat, and the coolness of fresh water. Cheesecake packs a sensual wallop unlike anything in the natural world because it is a brew of megadoses of agreeable stimuli which we concocted for the express purpose of pressing our pleasure buttons. Pornography is another pleasure technology. In the creation and experience of art, our minds rise to a biologically pointless challenge: figuring out how to get at the pleasure circuits of the brain and deliver little jolts of enjoyment without the inconvenience of wringing bona fide fitness increments from the harsh world. Music is a pleasure short-cut like puzzles, games, alcohol, drugs, and sweet, rich desserts. Art produces, causes, emotions in us.... Music appears to be a pure pleasure technology - a cocktail of recreational drugs that we ingest through the ear to stimulate a mass of pleasure circuits at once. Compared with language, vision, social reasoning, and physical know-how, music  could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged..."

[M forever]

Complete bullshit. That should be obvious to anyone who has at least a slight understanding of music. Which excludes you, obviously. People who don't understand the many layers of musical reception, experience, and communication shouldn't make dramatic statements about the subject.

[btpaul674]

Pinker is wrong.

Consult Huron, Patel, Sloboda, etc etc.

I also draw attention to my first post on pg. 1.

[PSmith08]

I still think Steven Pinker is correct on the topic of music:

[...]

In the creation and experience of art, our minds rise to a biologically pointless challenge: figuring out how to get at the pleasure circuits of the brain and deliver little jolts of enjoyment without the inconvenience of wringing bona fide fitness increments from the harsh world. Music is a pleasure short-cut like puzzles, games, alcohol, drugs, and sweet, rich desserts. Art produces, causes, emotions in us.... Music appears to be a pure pleasure technology - a cocktail of recreational drugs that we ingest through the ear to stimulate a mass of pleasure circuits at once. Compared with language, vision, social reasoning, and physical know-how, music  could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged..."

You can keep thinking, but I don't know how far that's going to get you, since - for all of Pinker's words - he doesn't actually get very far. Firstly, and you can protest all you want, but you've haven't made a cogent or coherent counterargument, you have to discard a lot of music to get to the point where any of your half-baked theorists' notions can be, even remotely, correct. Does Sylvano Bussotti's Rara Requiem or Passion selon Sade create the same aural pleasure that Mozart or Wagner does? No. Those works do not. And yet people enjoy them. Your superficiality is wrecked when it comes to those shoals. You can argue for a superficial appreciation of music only so long as the music is pleasing in a traditional and superficial sense; once you go beyond that point, you're in trouble.

If you're going to continue to valve off whatever pressure you've built up in the real world with these provocative epigrams, then you could be so kind as to choose epigrams, properly attributed, that have some merit. That's my advice to you.

[Operahaven]

Complete bullshit. That should be obvious to anyone who has at least a slight understanding of music. Which excludes you, obviously. People who don't understand the many layers of musical reception, experience, and communication shouldn't make dramatic statements about the subject.

M,

Now that Plato, Freud and Pinker are wrong on music, do you at least agree that no art form is superior to human decency ?

[M forever]

Nobody says anybody is "right" or "wrong" about music. Music is a very complex cultural phenomenon which can not be discussed in simplistic statements. It is obviously completely beyond your horizon anyway. Your last sentence there is just verbal diarrhoea.

[Operahaven]

Does Sylvano Bussotti's Rara Requiem or Passion selon Sade create the same aural pleasure that Mozart or Wagner does?

No. Those works do not.

And yet people enjoy them. Your superficiality is wrecked when it comes to those shoals. You can argue for a superficial appreciation of music only so long as the music is pleasing in a traditional and superficial sense; once you go beyond that point, you're in trouble

Patrick,

That's not what I'm saying.

My whole point in this discussion is that, ultimately, music is about pleasure. If you choose to hear a piece, it's because you want a particular experience that that piece provides. The result of that experience will, however indirectly, bring you pleasure, or you wouldn't choose it.

Any music that provides you with experiences that you're glad to have can be said to be about pleasure, however harrowing, challenging, innovative, retrospective, alienating, or welcoming the music itself might (seem to) be.

[ezodisy]

Patrick,

That's not what I'm saying.

My whole point in this discussion is that, ultimately, music is about pleasure. If you choose to hear a piece, it's because you want a particular experience that that piece provides. The result of that experience will, however indirectly, bring you pleasure, or you wouldn't choose it.

Any music that provides you with experiences that you're glad to have can be said to be about pleasure, however harrowing, challenging, innovative, retrospective, alienating, or welcoming the music itself might (seem to) be.

Spot on. For a listener this sums it up succinctly and clearly. For a player, like M, I'm sure it doesn't; composers too would disagree. Hard to find fault if you're just a listener though, as according to M your comprehension would be pretty much nil (not that he'd get far as a pro without our support, however).

[M forever]

as according to M your comprehension would be pretty much nil

That's not what M said.

[ezodisy]

That's not what M said.

my apologies then. Though I admit I have little understanding of music, one thing I do know is why I listen to it and what limits it has for me personally (which of course I extend well out beyond myself ).

[jochanaan]

Perhaps, if one listens to music only in order to gain pleasure, it becomes easy to think that only pleasure is to be gained from music.  But many of us listen to it--and play it--for other reasons too.  Or else why would I and others deliberately seek out music that is not "pleasurable" in the traditional sense on first hearing?

Story time: Once in my grandmother's last years, I went to visit her and found that she and I could not communicate.  She was too much in the world of the distant past for me to say anything about my world.  Finally, in desperation, I began to sing to her The Old Rugged Cross, which I knew she would know or at least respond to.  She said, "That's pretty."  Encouraged, I went on to sing "Holy, Holy, Holy."  She sang with me!  It was the only time during the visit--and the last time--that we communicated at all, yet for that moment, despite her cracked voice, we were sharing something very precious to both of us.

Now tell me one more time about how pleasure is the be-all and end-all in music...

[marvinbrown]

"Who ever learned anything from music except the emotional power of music ?... It's a thin rather than an intellectually thick art form... Music is simply a cultural narcotic, but without the long-range costs that other drugs exact"

--Sigmund Freud

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To what extent was he right about this ? Or was he completely wrong ?

The older I get the more true it seems.

  Based on his comment my guess is Freud didn't watch much opera  .

  marvin

[Operahaven]

M,

I would like to say one last thing:

You were very insulting and rude to me on this thread, suggesting that I don't understand music... What NONSENSE!

I adore music...You don't know who I am, OK ?

And let me just say that anyone who ranks Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande,  Verdi's Falstaff,  Strauss' Elektra,  Schoenberg's  Moses und Aron,  Berlioz'  Les Troyens,  Monteverdi's  The Coronation Of Poppea,  and Wagner's  Gotterdammerung  as his top favorite operas is no dummy, OK ?

Have a good evening.