Program music - is it really that context-dependent?

[starrynight]

Maybe program music within instrumental music just fed people's instinctive need to explain why they react to music how they do.  Didn't Romantics also look back on absolute music from the past and ascribe to it all kinds of story and description?

[eyeresist]

I was thinking about this topic last night, while listening to Schnittke's 1st symphony (twice! congratulate me).

The programmatic elements are the least successful parts of it, particularly the gestural wackiness of the 1st movement and the extended jazz improvisation of the 2nd. Presumably in this work Schnittke is "saying" something about music, but buggered if I can tell what it is just from listening. It helped to know (from the Bis liner notes) that the musical quotations relate in part to the Soviet banalisation of classical music by repeated use of excerpted arrangements at mass events, but only a little. It reminds me of Tom Wolfe's warning (in The Painted Word) that in future the artwork would be merely a small illustration appended to the more important theoretical text.

So, without being guided by something outside the triad: what does a C Major triad express?

Take your time, we've all day . . . .

A. Happiness and success.

[bigshot]

Is it? If it weren't for the general and section titles, would you have been able to tell which particular 1,001 Nights story it depicts --- or even that it has anything to do with it at all?

I would be able to discern a storm, and probably a ship as well. The solo violin is pretty clearly representative of a human voice too. I hear car horns in Gershwin, Frost in Sibelius, donkeys in Grofe and a firecracker in Strauss. Not necessarily plotlines, but definite images.

[eyeresist]

I would be able to discern a storm, and probably a ship as well. The solo violin is pretty clearly representative of a human voice too.

Not to me, it's not.

[starrynight]

I'll bore you with another thought.  How did music begin?  Perhaps by trying to imitate sounds of nature....

[bigshot]

Not to me, it's not.

The way the music transitions from the "story part" to the solo violin is exactly the same as a dissolve from an flashback scene to a narrator in a movie.

[Florestan]

I'll bore you with another thought.  How did music begin?  Perhaps by trying to imitate sounds of nature....

Or perhaps by trying to express inner feelings...

[Ten thumbs]

If music tells a story then it is structured, that is - a story is a structure. The elements that may invoke sounds to illustrate the story are really no different from any other musical ideas and are often developed in much the same way. I find that in most cases the story can be observed or disregarded as the mood takes me. Scheherezade for example can be listened to simply as a symphonic suite. Other works such as Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus are in sonata form anyway, so can be listened to as such.

[Superhorn]

   A triad does not represent anything in and of itself, the same way that a few worlds isolated
   from a poem don't convey its meaning. 

[starrynight]

Cave paintings were more representational though, so music may have been as well.  The idea of art as something that reflects purely subjective aspects of an individual is more of a later idea, not that it wouldn't have had some influence in the expression of course.

[starrynight]

   A triad does not represent anything in and of itself, the same way that a few worlds isolated
   from a poem don't convey its meaning.

But as I said earlier rhythms maybe can, or perhaps a particular sequence of notes.  And it's about the expression of the sound too.  The basic building block of a note or a syllable are more abstract, but we don't interact with art on that level very often.

[Ten thumbs]

Mendelssohn's declared intention in composing the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture was to represent a dream. Like most dreams, its story if any is difficult to fathom but that does not detract from the music. He later wrote Overtures that stood alone without reference to an opera or stage work and there are also examples by various composers of Overtures without even a title. Here we have what is essentially program music without any context. One can only listen to the music.

[eyeresist]

Deryck Cooke (he of the Mahler 10 completion) wrote a book The Language of Music, in which he "argued that music is essentially a language of the emotions, and showed that composers throughout history had tended to choose the same musical phrases to express similar feelings or dramatic situations."

(Quote from Wikipedia)

[Florestan]

Mendelssohn's declared intention in composing the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture was to represent a dream.

No. It was to musically represent Shakespeare's play, which has nothing to do with "a dream"per se.  .

He later wrote Overtures that stood alone without reference to an opera or stage work and there are also examples by various composers of Overtures without even a title. Here we have what is essentially program music without any context. One can only listen to the music.

Program music without a context? Rather oxymoronic, I should say. 

[karlhenning]

Deryck Cooke (he of the Mahler 10 completion) wrote a book The Language of Music, in which he "argued that music is essentially a language of the emotions, and showed that composers throughout history had tended to choose the same musical phrases to express similar feelings or dramatic situations."

(Quote from Wikipedia)

Sure, I pretty much buy that; but it doesn't alter the fact that a C Major triad of itself possesses no inherent expressive value. It's an observation on much the same order as, most European languages (and, as a result, some few non-European) use an indigenous phonetic equivalent to "beer"; the association of the meaning is thus a matter of widespread consensus and tradition — Lord knows it's no such romantic notion as that this magical sequence of phonemes "means" Toga Party!!!!

[karlhenning]

Mendelssohn's declared intention in composing the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture was to represent a dream. Like most dreams, its story if any is difficult to fathom but that does not detract from the music.

Of course, the difference is that a dream may be difficult to fathom, but there are still clearly perceived objects and persons.  Even a dream is less abstract than music.

[Ten thumbs]

No. It was to musically represent Shakespeare's play, which has nothing to do with "a dream"per se.  .

Program music without a context? Rather oxymoronic, I should say. 

Obviously you don't believe Mendelssohn's own words. Yes, it was meant to represent the play but he did say that it was written as dream music in the same sense as Traumerei, that is a dream sequence.

I should have said program music for which the context is not stated. My point was that the listener can either guess what the subject matter is or treat is as pure music.

[Scarpia]

Sure, I pretty much buy that; but it doesn't alter the fact that a C Major triad of itself possesses no inherent expressive value. It's an observation on much the same order as, most European languages (and, as a result, some few non-European) use an indigenous phonetic equivalent to "beer"; the association of the meaning is thus a matter of widespread consensus and tradition — Lord knows it's no such romantic notion as that this magical sequence of phonemes "means" Toga Party!!!!

The major triad is not an accident.  It is a combination of three musical tones in which the frequency relationships between the different notes are as simple as possible.  Your ear cannot calculate frequency ratios, but it does register the fact that the overtone series of the three notes tend to match up with each other so that the notes blend together well.  Other combinations of notes do not have these simple frequency relationships and have overtone series that don't line up and don't blend as well.  They clash.  They are more noisy than a simple triad. Although the rules of diatonic harmony are in some sense arbitrary they do take advantage of this contrast between clashing notes and blending notes.  Dissonances are clashing combinations of notes that resolve to combinations of notes that blend better.   The rules of diatonic harmony provide a well defined scheme where dissonances resolve so we can learn to anticipate and interpret these events.

[Scarpia]

Dissonance is relative - a chord which sounds dissonant in one context can be made to sound consonant in another - dissonance is not defined by the physics of the harmonic array, but by the harmonies around it.

I do not claim harmony reduces to the mathematical relationships, only that it takes advantage of them.

[petrarch]

I do not claim harmony reduces to the mathematical relationships, only that it takes advantage of them.

Not to mention that major thirds were not always considered consonances.