Was Freud Right About Music ?

[M forever]

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

I didn't say that.


The fact, however, that you keep repeating that is, from your own words, proof that you are an individual of very limited intellectual capability with only very basic understanding of the complexity of the cultural phenomenon we call "music". That you like to listen to music doesn't mean that you understand that phenomenon completely - and you are certainly far from being able to judge the role music plays in human cultures in general.


Like I said, I like to eat, that doesn't mean I know everything about eating and cooking and food and everything that's connected with it.


I still like to eat though. However, I don't feel the need to hold dramatic speeches about that and related subjects.


I said that music is a very, very, very complex cultural phenomenon which can not be easily understood and discussed in simplistic terms. Nobody completely "understands" music and its role in our cultures, so why does someone like you, who is only an interested amateur with very little understanding of the subject, have to make these dramatic statments about it?


It shows that you are not very intelligent and intellectually self-critical that you feel the need to produce yourself in this way.


Sometimes, it is just better to shut up about stuff you don't understand. I don't blabla out dramatic statements about subjects I don't get either. What mental problems of yours lead to your need to make a fool out of yourself in this way, I don't know, and I don't want to know.

[Operahaven]

You are an individual of very limited intellectual capability

Is my worth as a person proportional to the level of my conceptual and reasoning abilities ?

[bwv 1080]

Was Freud right about anything?

[M forever]

I don't rank people according to their "worth", but it makes sense that somebody like you would ask such a silly question.

Personally, I don't think a person's "worth" has much to do with how "intellectual" they are. You apparently do, and so you feel the need to pretend to be very intellectual about something you hardly understand at all. That makes you come across as totally ridiculous. I don't see why you should do that to yourself. There is no need to. Or maybe there is. But nobody here is interested in your personal dramas and traumas. This is a chitchat forum for discussing music (and a few other subjects), not a therapy forum for people like you. You don't have anything of interest for other people to say about music. Everything you say is about yourself only. And that, frankly, is not very interesting.

[Bonehelm]

Was Freud right about anything?

Well apparently Mahler found help from him when he found out Alma wasn't being loyal to him.

[Operahaven]

Personally, I don't think a person's "worth" has much to do with how "intellectual" they are. You apparently do, and so you feel the need to pretend to be very intellectual about something you hardly understand at all. That makes you come across as totally ridiculous.

I don't see why you should do that to yourself. There is no need to

M,

Believe it or not I actually feel a bit better now.... Thank you for this.

The problem is that in most Western societies, men are programmed from childhood to base their self-esteem on how well they grasp abstract concepts, reason analytically, adjust in social situations and so on..

I berate myself constantly for my intellectual slowness.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

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.

Pink, forgive me, but what is your aim with all of this? To convert everybody?

Let's say you finally succeed in a wholesale, worldwide conversion to your way of musical thinking. Then what? Would you finally feel validated in your feelings? About music, I mean.

If the entire world finally succumbed to "Pink's Pleasure Law Of Music" what would you hope to gain? If it's your aim to eliminate all 'musical technicians' (musicians/composers/critics like Freud) then who'd be left to CREATE the music, INTERPRET the music, and COMMENT on the music??

Music just doesn't spring into being out of thin air! It has to be first molded and crafted by the composer, using inspiration AND technical ability; then studied/examined by an interpreter with the aim of assimilating the musical language into said interpreter's personal library which is then drawn upon to reproduce the music; and lastly oggled over and critiqued by all manner of folk from critics (like Freud and a whole host of others you repeatedly "quote") to laymen like you and me.

See how technical it all is??

And being a listener yourself if your brain couldn't analyze and decipher and decode and whatever else you wouldn't even be able to RECOGNIZE emotion in music (art) at all!!

So zero would be gained by erasing from our consciousness the technical side of the creation/recreation of music. We'd all be walking around bumping our heads together and wondering where all our aesthetic pleasure went...



   

[jochanaan]

The problem is that in most Western societies, men are programmed from childhood to base their self-esteem on how well they grasp abstract concepts, reason analytically, adjust in social situations and so on..

LOL Tell that to my grade-school (that's "elementary" school for you younger folks) classmates back in rural Nebraska who were constantly teasing me because I liked to read the encyclopedia! Tell that to any number of guys in city high schools who deliberately lower their grades or drop because it's not "cool" to be intellectual or understand abstract concepts!  You may have been "programmed" as you describe, but the trend in much of the US is definitely the reverse: being intellectual is "weird," not "cool."

Sorry for that off-topic rant ; you inadvertently hit a nerve.  I have developed my own intellectual capacity not because it was "cool," but in the face of considerable opposition from people who neither understood nor wanted to understand.  Fortunately, most of my current friends like and respect such things--that's one reason they're my friends.

[End of off-topic rant. ]

[Lethevich]

You may have been "programmed" as you describe, but the trend in much of the US is definitely the reverse: being intellectual is "weird," not "cool."

It is like that everywhere IMO, and always has been (outside of elite educational institutions).

[Gurn Blanston]

It is like that everywhere IMO, and always has been (outside of elite educational institutions).

I agree, especially on the "always has been". I attended "elementary school" starting in 1955, and it took no time at all to become an outsider because I applied myself and always finished pick of the litter. As Jo says, liked to read the encyclopedia and such. I picked up the nickname "Doctor Gurn" as early as 3rd grade. And not always said fondly, I might add. Of course, even then my attitude was "screw 'em", but I know that not everyone can do that. Pity, really.



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Listening to:
La Gaia Scienza - Schubert D 929 Piano Trio in Eb 1st mvmt - Allegro

[M forever]

It's not necessarily like that everywhere. When I went to school in Berlin, being smart was seen as being "cool", too, just like being able to play an instrument or do other things, or being good at sports. It didn't really matter so much. Actually being good at sports is something which is respected but it is not seen as so dramatically important as it is here. And you can't get into university because you are good at throwing a leather egg.

[Gurn Blanston]

It's not necessarily like that everywhere. When I went to school in Berlin, being smart was seen as being "cool", too, just like being able to play an instrument or do other things, or being good at sports. It didn't really matter so much. Actually being good at sports is something which is respected but it is not seen as so dramatically important as it is here. And you can't get into university because you are good at throwing a leather egg.

That is a good ideal, and one that should be emulated here, but it isn't. Being good at sports, or else being a rebel against anything that represents establishment values, is the ONLY thing that's cool.



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Listening to:
Lafayette Quartet / Kubalek - Dvorak Quintet in A for Piano & Srings No 2 Op 81 1st mvmt

[M forever]

Sorry to hear that. In my school, music evenings (on which the schol orchestra and chorus and individual groups played) were just as well attended as football (you would say "soccer") games between schools, pretty much the entire school came to both and other types of events and cheered.

[kristopaivinen]

In response to M forever's perceptions, I'd say Operahaven is probably just young or inexperienced in scientific reasoning. Which is more true?

[M forever]

No. M was right. Operahaven said so himself. I freed him from a vicious circle in which he was trapped, thinking that he needed to show intellectuality about something that he doesn't understand to prove his "worth".

[btpaul674]

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.

Although its comforting to say a person cannot be 'right' or 'wrong' about music, I assert that it is more plausible to say a person is 'wrong' about music. This may be argued further.

M, I'd also be aware of you tossing around music as a 'cultural phenomenon.' I believe types of music can be classified as 'cultural phenomena,' however I don't see music as an entity itself being a cultural phenomenon.

As for your inquiry about what Dr. Patel means, I will tell you exactly what he means after I attend his lecture.

Thanks.

[jochanaan]

It's not necessarily like that everywhere. When I went to school in Berlin, being smart was seen as being "cool", too, just like being able to play an instrument or do other things, or being good at sports. It didn't really matter so much. Actually being good at sports is something which is respected but it is not seen as so dramatically important as it is here. And you can't get into university because you are good at throwing a leather egg.

You are very lucky, M.  I hope you never forget it.

[greg]

whoa..... being smart was considered "cool"?

that sounds like an alien planet.... interesting 

[M forever]

M, I'd also be aware of you tossing around music as a 'cultural phenomenon.' I believe types of music can be classified as 'cultural phenomena,' however I don't see music as an entity itself being a cultural phenomenon.

What exactly does that mean?

As for your inquiry about what Dr. Patel means, I will tell you exactly what he means after I attend his lecture.

Well, uh...you quoted him, didn't you? Why did you quote him when you didn't understand what he meant either? Because it sounded so nice and intellectual?

[karlhenning]

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 ?

Eric, Freud's remark makes a sociological assertion about music (which possibly he did not mean to be taken as the dogma which, peculiarly, you are trying to make it);  Plato's is a pleasantly vague simile.  The two statements operate on entirely different planes, in the first place.

In the second, how exactly does one interpret Plato's simile, so as to weigh whether he is "wrong"?

Well, I have never seen any human being melt upon the application of music; so Plato is obviously wrong.