What music can and cannot do

Where does the musical program find itself in this situation? Are all the elaborate titles and subtitles of a Tone Poem (take for example Richard Strauss' "Alpine Symphony") limiting the listeners' imagination - and its boundless capacity to make subjective readings into music, or are they molding imaginations to produce mental imagery to the specifications of the composer?

In the end I think programs, while they may stimulate the imagination (what exactly constitutes the 'sentimental' in your own "Naive and Sentimental Music"? is it the aggressive motoric orchestral counterpoint to the ever-syncopated, 'naive' melody, or is it the way the melody evolves and is incorporated into this very same accompaniement?), can also block the fruitful flights of the imagination that could be inspired through the same music.

Take for example Honegger's most famous piece, "Pacific 231". Although he had stated again and again that the idea of the train had only been the starting point in the creation of the fiercely rythmic chorale reminiscent of Bach's work, Norton's Anthology of Western Music still calls it the "Translation into music of the visual and physical impression of a speeding locomotive". Attractive, stimulating programs can be highjacked into the 'canon', even against the composer's wishes!

Another contrasting example: Witold Lutoslawski stated categorically that his music had no relation to the world outside of himself, even if dramatic, lucid pieces such as the slow movement from his first symphony, or his Cello Concerto beg for a program of oppression and resistance in Cold War Poland. Maybe this is for the best. In future generations, listeners might well be glad that his music hasn't been historicized by the author of a textbook.

"There is, however, a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language." - Edgar Alan Poe

I'll have to read up on Proust. He sounds interesting. I'm really stuck on musical aesthetic and philosophy right now. The subject is so vast and I think that western music could potentially go through another defining phase. That would spice things up!

Not to sound rash (or to disassociate myself from musical phenomena), but I find it hard to believe that any musical gesture can trigger an emotional memory unless the listener has a specific experience with that gesture or one that is similar - whether the experience originated in music, nature, or conversation. Any gesture without a contrast is absolute.

Ideally, absolute music will provide only musical feeling and must withhold itself from implying anything. Even a simple title, with little or no intent by the composer, can imply a large series of memories and therefore steal that named-music from the definition of "absolute."

I think that for western music to push itself as a whole the genre must accept its conceptual ability, while also maintaining the ability to control feeling. Doing so allows a composer, conductor, and performer to directly contrast a listener's thoughts (while making sure they enjoy it). Music really is the only pure art, in that it borrows from no other perceptual sense than sound, that can aesthetically push itself in this way. That's kind of cool, isn't it?

[Did I make any sense...? I think I just restated some stuff, but I'm going to post it because I took the time to write it.]

Music is the ultimate expression of empathy. I'm always amazed at how directly the performer or composer's sentiment, attitude, or state of mind is injected into my own, and like some psychedelic drug it either results in a moment of spiritual ecstasy or a long-lasting bad trip. There is no hiding your feelings when you're on stage.

But really, I shouldn't be talking about drugs because I've actually not done any. And people say I grew up in northern California... hah!

The question of signifiers is also determined by the relationship of these signifiers (individual events and objects) to the surrounding reality: with music these realities differ considerably at various historical points. The Vinteuil phrase functions as a sort of leitmotif that gravitationally attracts meaning as the reader progresses through the book, which is the opposite of the way motivic organisation functions in Wagner. Of course, we never actually ‘hear’ the Vinteuil phrase any more than we ‘taste’ the madeleine, but a Wagnerian leitmotif has no existence outside of the operatic context.

It’s perhaps easier to see the differences here between music and literature if one looks at Gerard de Nerval’s ‘Sylvie’: the most remarkable of stories, its influence on Proust was very great. Proust said that to read ‘Sylvie’ for the first time was to experience a disorientation verging on mild panic. And however many times one reads this story one forever feels fatally lost somewhere in the narrative. To be fair, Nerval had great difficulty in assembling its final form, he later suffered a mental breakdown, and finally hung himself (a note to all parents whose children embark on English degrees, taking drugs is not the danger…).

The moral from the Nerval seems to be that if one creates a narrative that skews events in a dizzying way, but within the context of what appears to be a clear and ordinary reality, then one is pushing mental processes to the limit. This is different from the non-sequential high-jinks of, for example, a Robbe-Grillet, where the emotive core is missing in the labyrinth of ideas and events: one can still weep with Nerval, but not with Robbe-Grillet.

However, music can effortlessly do just what Nerval experiments with, because the framework of its own being is different; it can twist and turn events with ease (Haydn is a good example). Maybe this is partly because at the root of it music is essentially ‘magical’ – in a pre-rational psychological sense – especially at the level of rhythm. Perhaps the rules of its game go back beyond sophisticated language, springing from the dictates of emotion. And rhythm has been the great unrecognised ruler of music, even in Debussy, whose later pieces are vividly disconnected in the most organised way: as are the writings of Proust.

BTW, liked your L.A. Noir.
Created an image for me of a view of Ventura blvd through a stained glass window.
Hope that is in line with what you had in mind.

Where does this idea of non-signifiers intersect with words set to music? Does this not confound what is sometimes called the "pure" expression of instrumental music? Or perhaps a potent deception, lurking in the transmissive agents of the performance, (between audience and singer, that is). My love for the voice, and especially opera always finds conflict in this point: between the imbalances of what I am feeling and what I am being told to feel. Maybe therein lies the complexity of the experiences in staged musics. The other/other, in the Lacanian sense.

"Music... does not consist of signifiers."

Shit. Should I stop reading Robert Samuels' Mahler's Sixth Symphony: A Study in Musical Semiotics. It was just getting good! ;)

Thanks for your post!

I would argue that music primarily reflects (and manipulates) sub-semantic 'structures' of the brain, which 'carry' the ontological and semantic structures/signifiers. If music carries emotion well, it's because human brains are similarly structured for audible manipulation at that 'level'. But even at the emotional 'level', conditioning applies. I can think of a section of one composition that I associated with agitation initially, but after a period of time, now consider joyous.

Might I suggest considering jazz performance and other musical forms where notations on music paper are central. When Coltrane forces high notes from the tenor or soprano saxophone, the emotion is very personal and quite specific to Coltrane. When Roscoe Mitchell constructs a sonic space from nothing, one can "see" the creative process he's engaging in. This search for "new" emotions expressed personally leads to a concept of transcendence which may or may not be an "emotion."

Just a thought.