Classical music and emotions

[Florestan]

I see you have finally come around to my way of thinking. Welcome aboard, Florestan.

In respect with Romanticism there'll be a whole frozen year in Hell before I agree with you. 

[Gurn Blanston]

In respect with Romanticism there'll be a whole frozen year in Hell before I agree with you. 

Aw now, that's just mean. I guess I took you literally. Who knew? 

[Florestan]

I try to make my music speak simply and directly that which is in my heart at the time I am composing. If there is love there, or bitterness, or sadness, or religion, these moods become part of my music, and it becomes either beautiful or bitter or sad or religious. For music is as much a part of my living as breathing and eating. I compose music because I must give expression to my feeling, just as I talk because I must give utterance to my thoughts. - Sergei Rachmaninoff (emphasis mine)

When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love. - Franz Schubert

But, Clara, I'm overflowing with music and beautiful melodies now—imagine, since my last letter I've finished another whole notebook of new pieces. I intend to call it Kreisleriana. You and one of your ideas play the main role in it, and I want to dedicate it to you—yes, to you and nobody else—and then you will smile so sweetly when you discover yourself in it—my music now seems to be so simply and wonderfully intricate in spite of all the simplicity, all the complications, so eloquent and from the heart; that's the way it affects everyone for whom I play it, which I enjoy doing quite frequently. - Robert Schumann, letter to Clara Wieck about Kreisleriana (emphasis mine)

[Florestan]

I guess I took you literally.

Yes you did, but actually it was an irony. 

Now, that hell hyperbole, I thought it was an idiomatic English expression for "I'll never agree with you" and without any offending undertones. If I'm mistaken please accept my apologies.  0:)

[Gurn Blanston]

Yes you did, but actually it was an irony. 

Now, that hell hyperbole, I thought it was an idiomatic English expression for "I'll never agree with you" and without any offending undertones. If I'm mistaken please accept my apologies.  0:)

No, no problems, Matey; I was totally with you all the way, even unto the irony. I was being ironic myself, since you gave me the initial opening. However, my point of agreement is with my fellow Texan, Sanantonio, who may have even taken the same philosophy pills that I took! 

[Johnll]

The message I get from people who object to Stravinsky's comment is that music is not good enough by itself. It's only good if it can be all mixed up with all sorts of non-musical things, images, emotions, narratives, whatever.

Music is perfectly fine, in and of itself.

I think that is blinding obvious that music is intended to convey and invoke emotions. Do you listen only to see how clever the composer is? This does not mean we all will have exactly the same experience. Art only exists, though, because we share significant parts of our human nature and sensibilities with the rest of mankind. It is informed by experience and culture, but even in Africa people like Haydn.

A big part of c20 nonsense is that we are all equal and it is all relative. As Someguy likes to put it "who is to decide?". The answer to that question is your ears for you, and mine for me BUT ultimately society decides what is worthy and what is not. Windmills do not care how sophisticated you consider yourself to be.

If music is not calculated to express emotion will someone explain to me why the music from "Bake Me a Sunshine Cake" (movie from IIRC 40's) is seldom used in a Dracula movie. Or why bother with music at all in movies or ballet if all the expressive and emotional content is in the words or action. Is music just a filler or did Stravinsky just have a bad mouth day?

[Florestan]

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

Now really, gospodin Igor Fyodorovitch could not utter two words without contradicting himself three times. 

How and what could he have felt, I wonder, since according to his own theory music is essentially powerless to express anything at all?

[Daimonion]

Contradiction is good, because logically taken you can base any claim on it

[some guy]

There is no contradiction at all between "music only expresses itself" and "humans respond emotionally to music."

[Daimonion]

There is no contradiction at all between "music only expresses itself" and "humans respond emotionally to music."

True! The lack of contradiction, however, doesn't entail truthfulness

[Florestan]

These conversations would be a whole lot more insightful if we could all spend more time with particulars.

All right, let's do that.

Can music express emotions, feelings, moods, state of minds etc? Yes, as proven by countless works.

Does all music express emotions, feelings, moods, state of minds etc? No, as proven by countless works.

Should music express emotions, feelings, moods, states of minds etc? According to some composers and listeners, yes; according to other composers and listeners, no.

My own bottom line: if all music that expresses nothing but itself would suddenly disappear never to be heard again I wouldn't even notice. 

There is no contradiction at all between "music only expresses itself" and "humans respond emotionally to music."

No, but it is a clear contradiction between "music can't express anything at all" and "music expresses itself". Stravinsky really had a way with small time intellectual games.

[Florestan]

If you wish to allege that music conveys emotional content which listeners receive and as a consequence experience emotions, then the burden of proof for this allegation rests with you.

Just curious: have you really never ever felt any emotion at all when listening to music? Do you simply sit and listen without never ever experiencing the slightest feeling? Is listening to music really a purely intellectual thing for you? Not that something is wrong with that approach, but you'd be the only person I've ever met to take it. 

[Mirror Image]

Just curious: have you really never ever felt any emotion at all when listening to music? Do you simply sit and listen without never ever experiencing the slightest feeling? Is listening to music really a purely intellectual thing for you? Not that something is wrong with that approach, but you'd be the only person I've ever met to take it. 

All excellent questions and ones that I've been pondering myself since the arrival of this robot.



"Danger Will Robinson...danger! I just felt a human emotion!"

[Gurn Blanston]

Just curious: have you really never ever felt any emotion at all when listening to music? Do you simply sit and listen without never ever experiencing the slightest feeling? Is listening to music really a purely intellectual thing for you? Not that something is wrong with that approach, but you'd be the only person I've ever met to take it. 

Is there only black or white in your life? Not that there is anything wrong with that...

You shouldn't let the opportunity to understand someone with a different POV simply slip by with such a dismissal. The argument is not about whether one feels something when listening to the music, it is on the source of the feeling. The emotion doesn't come from the music, it comes from you. Yes, hundreds of years of exposure to music, cultural acclimatization so to say, has trained us to feel sad when a funeral march is playing. But the march itself isn't sad, it is the cultural association of that music with a sad event that makes you feel sad. Not that I know if it has ever been tried, but I wonder at the sort of mixed reaction would derive from playing Offenbach's Parisian Gaieties at a funeral!  Is outrage a mixture of happy and sad? And is it brought on by the music? Or is it brought on by the inappropriate cultural association? 

I feel when I listen to music. However, when I read things like "Mozart's g minor quintet is one of the saddest works ever written and it is a reflection of his great sadness over XXXX", which is something I have read many times, BTW, I think to myself "either that entire paragraph was a total crock of shit or else I have no empathy with the music at all, because I simply found it to be very entertaining and well-written".

So, in the event that my reaction and feelings are different than the norm, that should be a proof that the emotion is not in the music, since I don't seem to share it. 

[Karl Henning]

. . . The argument is not about whether one feels something when listening to the music, it is on the source of the feeling. The emotion doesn't come from the music, it comes from you. Yes, hundreds of years of exposure to music, cultural acclimatization so to say, has trained us to feel sad when a funeral march is playing. But the march itself isn't sad, it is the cultural association of that music with a sad event that makes you feel sad.

And hence, Stravinsky's point about whether music has any power to express anything.

[Florestan]

Gurn, we're friends (or so I hope) and I want us to remain so, therefore I will refrain from any comments. 

[some guy]

Can music express emotions, feelings, moods, state of minds etc? Yes, as proven by countless works.

Does all music express emotions, feelings, moods, state of minds etc? No, as proven by countless works.

Should music express emotions, feelings, moods, states of minds etc? According to some composers and listeners, yes; according to other composers and listeners, no.

Um, I hate to be the first to mention this to you, but this is not particular at all. It's all just as general as most of the rest of the thread.

My own bottom line: if all music that expresses nothing but itself would suddenly disappear never to be heard again I wouldn't even notice. 

Well, at least your agenda is no longer hidden. That's a plus, I think. Though I also hate to have to be the one to point this out, too, but what if your distinction between music that expresses and music that doesn't express is a false one? (It's a false one.)

[If you respond to this, does that mean we're not friends?]

[Florestan]

Um, I hate to be the first to mention this to you, but this is not particular at all. It's all just as general as most of the rest of the thread.

Are Pastoral Symphony Symphonie Fantastique or Symphonie Pathetique particular enough for you as examples of music overloaded with emotional content? I should have thought that anyone could find plenty of examples so I didn't mention them myself.

Well, at least your agenda is no longer hidden. That's a plus, I think

My "agenda" was in plain sight ever since I joined GMG. I love Baroque and am a fan of Classicism all the while being an unabashed Romantic.

. Though I also hate to have to be the one to point this out, too, but what if [...]

Too much hate is bad for digestion (among other things). 

[If you respond to this, does that mean we're not friends?]

I don't know. Are we? 

[Gurn Blanston]

Gurn, we're friends (or so I hope) and I want us to remain so, therefore I will refrain from any comments. 

My response was the friendliest possible response available. You really must consider other possibilities. I consider and respect yours, but I am telling you that they are not the same as mine (or Sanantonio's, clearly). There is nothing remotely unfriendly about that. 

[Mirror Image]

My response was the friendliest possible response available. You really must consider other possibilities. I consider and respect yours, but I am telling you that they are not the same as mine (or Sanantonio's, clearly). There is nothing remotely unfriendly about that. 

To each their own.