MUSIC.

1. The enjoyment of music.

What constitutes the enjoyment of music? People listen to music and it makes them feel different. Or it affects them somehow or other psychologically. That’s why they listen to music. That’s what constitutes the enjoyment of music. But what is that? Can we say anything more about the sorts of psychological states that music causes? Can we at least say how they are different from (or similar to) other desirable states, ie those not caused by music.

It’s a question that bothers me. Because I will see someone listening to an opera by Puccini or a symphony by Gustav Mahler and they will be in a state of high emotion, gripped to the very core of their being. And yet somebody else, listening to exactly the same thing, will be left cold. To them it is just wailing and noise. How is that possible?

About terminology. The term ‘classical music’ refers to Western art music in general. The term ‘Classical music’ (with a capital C) refers to a sub-part of that tradition namely styles of music predominant from about 1760 to about 1830.

2. Feelings caused by music.

The feelings caused by music have an affinity with feelings not caused by music but they are not exactly the same as them. For example, the feeling that a sad piece of music causes in us is not the same as the regular normal feeling of sadness. It’s something different.

Try it out. Think about a time when you were really sad. Remember that time so-and-so died? What were you feeling? Now compare that feeling to the feeling you get listening to such famously sad music as the Adagio by Samuel Barber or ‘Everybody Hurts’ by REM or ‘Vincent’ by Don McLean. There is a difference, isn’t there?

All non-musical feelings of sadness are the same but each ‘sad’ feeling caused by a piece of music is unique to that piece of music. If this wasn’t true then there would only ever be one piece of sad music: that would be enough.

If you made a list of all the main (non-musical) feelings you could feel. You’d get about 20 or 30. Things like sadness, anger, terror, disgust, joy. (I won’t make a long list because I think what counts as an emotion is another tricky question.) But each piece of music evokes its own unique feeling. There are as many of those feelings as there are pieces of music.

Dr. Johnson said that music was the one sensual pleasure without vice. What is it about this particular sensual pleasure that makes it without vice? Would Dr Johnson have said the same about all sorts of music? I’m sure he would have made a distinction between, say, a Lutheran hymn and Duke Ellington’s Creole Love Call. Of course nowadays that wouldn’t apply anyway because sensual pleasures in general are not considered to be ‘with vice’ as much as they were in Dr Johnson’s time. I mean that having a good time isn’t frowned upon as much it used to be.

Do listeners of music use it like a drug? To improve mood? In other words as a ‘mood-altering substance’. Then the basic mood categories might be passionate and calm. If you are feeling emotional you listen to calming music (‘classical’ Mozart) and if you want to feel emotional then you listen to exciting music (‘romantic’ Wagner). Does this mean that people in the late 18th century were stressed out and needed calming down?

Maybe listeners listen to music to match their existing mood rather than to counteract it. So it might be that they need to be in the mood to listen to some particular music. When people are feeling low they listen to ‘blues’ music, but isn’t that just going to make it worse.

3. The actual psychological operation of music, ie how it creates its effects.

I find that I have to listen to a particular piece of music more than once before it has any effect. So if I listen to a piece of music for the first time it will have usually have no effect on me at all. It might as well be a pretty random (though not discordant) set of notes strung together. Once I get to the fourth or fifth time of listening then it has some effect. The difference is often startling: it’s like I’m not listening to the same thing. Sometimes the effect kicking in happens when I’m not actually listening to the piece of music. I’ll be doing something else or on the way somewhere and suddenly a piece of music that I’ve recently started listening to will come into my head sounding nice in a way that it hasn’t sounded before. Once the effect arrives then the ‘effectiveness’ of the music reaches a peak and after that subsequent listenings don’t yield the same effect.

(While I am on this subject here’s another, although less marked and less relevant than the one already mentioned. So I listen to a lot of classical music which is in a number of movements. Say a piano sonata for keyboard is in four movements. I find that I usually prefer the earlier movements. This might be because the first movements are often slower in tempo and I don’t really like fast music. Also it might be because, by the time I get to the last movements, I am tired. Maybe I should try listening to the movements in backwards order.)

Music often captures memory in that it often evokes exactly how you were feeling about life in general at the time you were first listening to it. Even though how you were feeling about life in general at that period in time might not have been noticeably different from how you felt about it at any other time. The music somehow magnifies whatever tiny differences there were.

What if music “in and of itself” did not evoke any feelings but it was only through associations. Almost always so subtly that we’re not aware of those associations. This would explain why I am affected by some old TV theme tunes (like the one for The Rockford Files) a lot more than that music could possibly deserve. I suspect my liking is due mostly to the context in which I was exposed to the music.

People who like classical music, rather than pop music, are usually older. But why is this? My mind vaguely assumes this is because that’s the music from their era. But that would mean they would have to be at least 200 years old. So that can’t be right. Also this way of thinking is related to the idea that classical music and pop music both exist on the same historical line. That in the 1820s people music like Beethoven’s was the predominant style and in the 1960s it was The Rolling Stones. So The Rolling Stones are ‘modern music’ and Beethoven is ‘ancient music’. But this is incorrect. They are on separate lines.

Sometimes music reminds me of the time it was first popular even though I didn’t listen to it at that time. So I once listened to some pop album from 1990 in 1998 and it reminded me of 1990, although 1998 was the first time I had listened to it. Again in the 1990s my local music library put recordings of 1920s pop/jazz under a section headed ‘nostalgia’. But it wasn’t only people aged at least 80 who were listening to those recordings. Somehow listening to that music made people nostalgic for (ie reminded them of) a time long before they were born.

One more thing about memory. Maybe this memory association thing explains why often some trite TV show theme tune sounds really good but it can’t really be that good.

Music doesn’t create its effects through melody only. Sometimes people will complain about some music that it has no proper tune to it. But music creates the effects it does through more than just melody. For example tuneless patterns as in some Baroque music. Or rhythms as in some non classical music. (Maybe a better way of putting it is that what we like is patterns and melody is just one sort of pattern. And there are many other kinds.)

In a lot of music (most often in classical music) you will get separate lines of music playing against one another. This creates a weird sensation due to your mind being forced to listen to two things at the same time. Maybe this is the essential aspect of western classical music. (Given that I think the string quartet is the basic form of western classical music.)

I think that some music is about suppressing feelings rather than causing them. I mean ‘calming’ not suppressing (example being Orpheus’ Lyre taming Cerberus). I suppose there are certain aesthetic pleasures about which the word ‘feeling’ would be too strong. It is pleasurable to contemplate a circle (as opposed to a scribble) but this pleasure is more the absence of feeling than the presence of some sort of feeling.

Sometimes to fully appreciate music you have to learn to ignore ‘associations’ which are surely just incidental and need to be ignored before you can appreciate what is the ‘true content’ of the music. Does that make sense? For example if you have only ever heard the Hammond organ play silly joke music then even when someone plays Bach on it the quality of the effect on you will be lessened by the fact of the associations in your mind with the silly music. Another example: what if you had only ever heard Jazz music in a sleazy strip club?

On the other hand the effects due to the quality of the sound of instruments isn’t incidental but integral to the music. For example the orchestration of late 19th century Austro-German symphonic classical music. So The ‘period instruments performance movement’ insist on authentic instruments. (Except when it comes to the harpsichord, then you can play it on a piano, that’s fine!)

The difference between orchestrated music and plain piano version of the same thing is like the difference between colour and monochrome photography.

How does excessive polyphony work? If there were 10 lines in some music you were listening to would you notice if one was missing? Isn’t 10 too much? If the fourth clarinets were missing from some large symphony would anybody notice? And if they wouldn’t then how does the line of fourth clarinets create an effect. If it doesn’t create an effect then why did the composer put that line in?

4. How to work out what constitutes the difference between different sorts of music.

What is it that distinguishes sorts of music from each other? What is it about a particular piece of music that makes it an example of the sort (/style) of music that it is. For example a pop song by the Beatles and a symphony by Mozart.

(Why does classical music sound different to pop music. You can’t just use any bit of classical music to make a pop song. ‘Seven Nation Army’ notwithstanding.)

There are two sorts of answers to this question. The first is in terms of the actual constitution of the music. So you might say that such music uses such and such a scale or such and such phrases and that that’s what makes it that kind of music. The second answer is in terms of the sorts of psychological states that the music evokes.

As far as answering these questions goes I think that a proper answer would have to exclude any reference to the quality of the sound of the music. I mean in the sense in which the sound of a trumpet has a different aesthetic effect to the sound of a violin. Which doesn’t mean that I’m saying that music strictly speaking is only the arrangement of note pitches in time and that anything else is superfluous. It’s just that I want to concentrate on that aspect of it. Not to mention that the distinction between sorts of music in terms of sound quality is obvious anyway.

So what I mean is that if we wanted to compare two pieces of music then first we need to reduce them to the same instrumentation. So that we are comparing like for like. So take a Mozart symphony movement and a Beatles pop song and arrange both for piano. And start from there.

I find this useful even within classical music. So if you make a string quartet arrangement of some late 18th century symphony and compare it with a string quartet from the same period it becomes clear that the orchestration isn’t the only thing that distinguishes a symphony from a string quartet. They’re actually different sorts of music. There’s things that composers would do in a symphony that they wouldn’t do in a string quartet.

Although there are different sorts of music, deep knowledge of music surely applies to all sorts. If you have studied the art of composition you should be able to compose a pop song as well as a symphony. But then why are all pop rock bands formed by youth? I’m sure that professional classical composers could pop songs. They have the skills surely.

4a. Answers of first sort.

I know hardly anything about the technical aspects of music so any answers I give will be of the second sort.

If you had an answer of the first sort then this would be, in a way, coming up with the, so to speak, the genotype or blueprint of a style of music. (By style I mean Baroque style as opposed to Classical style. Or even Mozart’s style as compared to that of Haydn.)

I wonder if you could come up with new and original styles simply by trial and error modifications of some existing blueprint. Which would be easier than relying on being a genius.

4b. Answers of second sort.

There is a distinction between the sorts of feelings caused by classical music and those caused by pop music. And you don’t get any overlap. Nobody ever says that the feeling they got from listening to some Beatles song was the same kind of feeling as the one they got from listening to some symphony by Mozart.

What does the distinction consist of? The feelings caused by classical music tend to be more serious. And somehow more subtle. (Which doesn’t mean to say they are less intense.) And so with a greater range. ... And because they are more subtle the effect is less immediate.

Classical music never causes feelings which you would call ‘sentimental’ although a lot of popular music does.

Jazz music never causes feelings you would call ‘sad’. (Unless you say that Blues is a part of Jazz. And even the effect of Blues music isn’t exactly sadness.)

See earlier about music capturing memory. I was thinking that this point applies more to pop than to classical music. But I think it’s just that it’s more obvious with pop music.

Listening to Classical music is like listening to a narrative or long sentences. Listening to pop music is similar except the sentences are shorter which is why the form of pop music is usually the short song. Pieces of classical music are longer than pieces of pop music. Classical music has a form and, unlike with pop music, it’s almost like you have to be consciously aware of this form. A piece of Classical music might contain lots of different melodic elements and it’s part of the appreciation of the music that you’re aware of this. So if at the start of the piece tune A comes before tune B and then at the end of the piece tune B comes before tune A then you need to know this. It’s like you have to pay attention. The way you have to pay attention when following an argument. (When I say Classical music I guess I mean that in the strict sense as in music from about 1760. Non-Classical classical music (eg Baroque period music) is not like listening to sentences at all. It’s often about patterns rather than form.

Maybe this explains why pop music normally has words but classical music is generally wordless. The narrative in classical music is done by the music so you don’t need words to do that. (Having said that I often don’t pay much attention to the words in music with words anyway. Although I feel I ought to. But does it matter if I know the words being sung in a Bach Cantata?)

This might explain why classical music is considered more ‘intellectual’ than pop music. In pop music you don’t need your intellect you just let it wash over you. In classical music you need to sit and consciously listen to it and pay attention. (Is this why classical music is ‘better’ or it snobbish and elitist to say so?) But that can’t be right either. Because ultimately the virtue of music is in the immediate effects of feelings it creates. If this wasn’t the case then you could have music which consists only of the thinking sort of thing. I mean where no feelings as such are caused at all and the appreciation consists wholly of seeing form and patterns.

So I can’t make any sense of the way people who like listening to Beethoven and Shostakovich are considered somehow more intellectual. Thinking of any sort doesn’t come into it surely! For some reason Mozart’s music is seen as particularly intellectual. So some people play it to their children hoping to increase their intellectualness as a result. Although again that doesn’t sound quite right either. Surely any intelligence associated with the music is intelligence that is required to appreciate it not intelligence that comes from listening to it.

I remember some music used to be called: “easy listening”. Does that mean other music requires effort? If so, then what kind of effort is that?

In pop/rock music the first albums are usually considered to better than the later ones. In classical music it’s the opposite: composers produce better stuff as they get older. (There aren’t many people who think Beethoven’s best piano sonata was op.1 number 1,’ but it might be. The succeeding ones are just crazier, is that the same as better?) ... Or is this just that people don’t bother waiting for later pop/rock albums. They always want the latest, newer artists. Not realising that maybe older artists are producing their best work unheard by most people!

5. Standards of taste.

If someone doesn’t like a particular piece of music is that because for some reason it doesn’t cause in them the feeling that it causes in the people who do like that piece of music. (Why would that be? Is it because they are “blind” in some way. People who are sight-blind don’t have any feelings caused in them by a clear blue sky.) Or is it because, even though it does cause that feeling in them, they just don’t like that feeling. People who like the emotions caused by a Mozart symphony don’t like the ones caused by a Lady Gaga pop song. (Is this why (again) classical music is ‘better’ or it snobbish and elitist to say so?)

Do people decide what kind of music to like. Some music you won’t like because you’ll be thinking to yourself: do I want to be the kind of person who likes this kind of music?

Growing up in (that evil decade) the 1980s pop/rock music (as played on the radio and “the top 40”) was pretty awful so I started to listen to classical music. I could have tried listening to other pop music but I didn’t and the main reason for this was probably that I think I kind of just assumed that “the top 40” was a complete account of pop music. It didn’t occur to me that there might be pop music more worth listening to elsewhere. In fact I didn’t even try to listen to the stuff lower down the charts because I figured that if the best of this sort of music (ie the songs that got to number 1) wasn’t any good then how could the rest of it be any better?

Like most people I was listening to what the radio told me to listen to. Which is odd. Who put them in charge of deciding what I might like? But that’s what they did by choosing from all the bands out there. Now with the internet and Spotify how do you decide? I’m just presented with thousands of bands not just from now but from the year zero. Somebody please tell me which are the good ones, which ones to listen to! Don’t make me have to make that decision myself. Instead I go by recommendations (someone said the band The Pixies were good so I took her advice and I listened to their album Surfer Rosa) or just from hearing things at random (at the end of a recent This American Life broadcast they played the track Oklahoma by the band The Answering Machine so I listened to their album Another City, Another Sorry).

Suppose Mary who likes 19th century classical music says “I don’t like Bruckner’s 6th symphony”. And suppose that Jack only likes 1980s pop music. If he said “I don’t like Bruckner’s 6th symphony” it wouldn’t mean the same as what Mary means when she says that.

6. History of music.

Isn’t rock music really old? Wow! Where’s the current generation’s thing? The youth of 2011 can be heard listening to music not dissimilar to rock music circa 1977: Sex Pistols, Led Zeppelin that kind of thing. (OK it’s not exactly the same as that but it’s of the same sort.) But if in 1977 trendy youth were listening to music of the same sort as there was 34 years before that, swing and jive and bebop music from 1943 that would be odd.

What happened to make Baroque music change into Classical music. The change seems be quite abrupt. I’ve been trying to listen to a lot of music from 1730-1770. Was there less development in music before then. An opera by Handel in 1740 sounds not that much different from something 40 years before, eg something by Alessandro Scarlatti. But something from 40 years after, ie 1780 sounds completely different. Even if we exclude Mozart.

About the history of music. I mean Western classical music. It has followed a particular path, a particular path of styles. But could there have been a different path consisting of different sorts of styles? Can we recreate those alternate paths now.

7. Music and the other arts.

Does all art “constantly aspire to the condition of music”?

Unlike with reading a novel the satisfaction to be got from music all happens while you are listening to it. A lot of the satisfaction of reading a novel is like being told something. Once you’ve been told it you know it and the satisfaction is in knowing that thing. This satisfaction persists for as long as you remember what you’ve been told. The satisfaction isn’t restricted to what happens while you’re being told it. But after I’ve listened to a piece of music the satisfaction is mostly over. At least for the time being, ie until I get round to listening to it again. Or hum it to myself while not listening to it. Maybe a better way to explain what I’m saying is that (as I’ve said elsewhere) it make sense to say that you’re not going to read a particular novel because “you’ve already read it” but it wouldn’t make sense to say that you’re not going to listen to some particular piece of music because “you’ve already listened to it”.

8. Is it Music?

If I ask the question “is rap music?” it feels kind of racist. It sounds like I am inviting the answer “no” and that then I am wanting to jump to the conclusion that black people aren’t capable of producing music. Of course this line of reasoning is nonsense. It is obviously not racist to say (correctly) that rap is not music. I would go so far as to say that opera isn’t music either. Like rap, it relies on other things (like staging) too much. Certainly the part of opera which is not full singing is not music. But this is most of it. I’m talking about recitative in 18th century Italian opera. (Or ‘Sprechgesange’ in German opera.) This relies too much on the words to be music. The exact same could be said for rap. Rap is more like accompanied poetry recital.

9. Classical music recording.

I like the sound of chamber music when it is actually played in a chamber. (See link to the Dvorak String Quartet above.) Or this recording HERE. You get that rather intimate slightly muffled acoustic. And in a string quartet you can actually hear the cello properly. In most recordings the acoustic is such that you can barely hear the cello. Or you can hear it but it doesn’t sound like a cello.

Another way of putting it is that recordings are often of the room as well as the instrument. When I am listening to a piano recital I want it sound as if there is a piano playing in my room. But instead it sounds as if that piano and the room that the piano is in are in my room.

This is an even bigger problem when it comes to recordings of organ music. These recordings always include the echo whatever church the organ is in. I find the best recordings of this are ones which are electronic recordings of people playing virtual organs. See HERE.

10. Listening to music.

There’s a few people who play classical music at a much slower tempo. For example Wim Winters HERE. Also the pianist Joshua Rifkin played Ragtime piano a lot slower than was usually played.

I really like this as I’ve always thought that this kind of music is played too fast. Listening to music played too fast is like listening to someone speaking too fast and not articulating clearly. Like they are mumbling or slurring their words. Listening to music at slower speed I feel the relief when someone who has been talking too fast starts speaking slowly and clearly and suddenly I can understand what they are saying!

At a fast speed the music can’t be expressive (serious). Can’t be dramatic. Both of which things are important in Beethoven. Or maybe I mean that classical music is about controlled expressiveness. If played too fast it sounds uncontrolled which is wrong. Playing music fast emphasises energy over force. - Fast music can’t be graceful, so you can’t play Mozart fast. Fast music can’t have gravity, so you can’t play Beethoven fast.

I don’t know if the slower tempo is more historically accurate. All I know is that is that at fast speeds I find it to be unlistenable. I suspect that musicians like playing fast because they are showing off. The problem seems to be particularly acute with final movements. They play extra fast here. As if it was some kind of end of term party.

I sometimes think the same about music where there are too many lines of music. Most of which aren’t really doing much anyway. In an arrangement for fewer instruments I can hear everything. (A bit like when a heavy rock band play ‘unplugged’.)

Maybe this is all just because I am slow at processing. (Like the way birds can process visual images faster than humans which is why it’s hard to catch them.) I find the same thing with the spoken word. I don’t like Shakespeare plays because they talk too fast. I would like a version where they speak slower. Similarly I don’t like action movies because everything happens too fast. Can’t take it in. I’m not against action moves per se but would like a slow action movie.