So all of your writing intentions are helped by the total lack of any expressive punctuation (!,?, "...", etc), and all of the one-liners which probably dominate several hundred of your posts?

I completely agree. As someone who chose the path of science I am well aware of science's limitations. The sciences exist as tools to get something done either now or later on down the road. While work within scientific fields can be satisfying or even joyous when achieving a much wanted breakthrough, these emotions are merely side-effects and not the task's raison d'être.

Music, even with acoustic science and tonal ruleset controls, has its origin in the joy of being human. This places it from the start on a higher plane.

In my opinion grouping Music within the sciences is like using it as a prostitute.

I assume this is directed my way? If so, you should get yourself some religion young man.

+1
I think that's why I spend so much time on music.


Dangerous, because obviously it's subjective all over the place. We'd have to get into not just our relative subjective views of music and science, but what we mean by "plane" and "higher."
I'm serious.

But mainly, I think comparing them in that respect is like comparing....ah, forget it, any stupid analogy I think of won't prove a thing.
IMO they just can't be compared this way. I think they're both on high planes, but planes that are on different planes.
Their planes are on different galaxies.


I didn't see who did group it within the sciences, but I agree with you, but I'm not sure I get the whore thing.

are you agreeing with me?

HAHAHA!!

so the fact that we are able to determine what is billion light years away from us with outstanding precision, travel outside the Earth or teleport atoms is not match to a Chopin piece?

I don't think we can determine it that precisely. We're probably usually at least a couple of years off.

^^ (let's see if 'no smiley' gets in the way of anything there.....) ^^

Oh come on now. You know my beliefs well, and yet you've never told me to get myself religion!! Hahaha! (and I hope you don't, or else......!)

No, but I don't understand the cat ears.

Really?
(pointers to the post above it)

Or maybe your absence of smiley just fooled me!!

I don't think he was telling him to go to some kind of church or something like that. I think he was... Well, I don't know how to put it into words, but I know what I mean in my mind.

He wasn't actually saying that he needs to affiliate himself with a religion.

O.K., so back to pop music and intellectualism for a minute. Dissertation, anyone?

We all know what Rock n' Roll is about, right? This selection below includes analysis of a mature nature. Some of it might be rated R or even rated, "Health Class," if you know what I mean. The author states his views in a matter of fact manner. This particular clip (and others in the multi-part series) references the author's earlier analytical work and is intended as an update or video addendum of sorts. In any case, much meaning can be derived from it without having seen the earlier work, and my purpose in sharing this is to throw us into the deep end of the pool for a post or two. A point of departure for this clip is a mis-heard lyric.





Intellectuals of the world, UNTIE!

--Andy

P.S., crescendo, notice that nobody answered my question about where the chorus melody of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" came from?

Yeah, that's pretty much my point. Music is subjective -- what it is, who it pleases, how it pleases, etc. Science is objective -- if it's not then it's opinion, not science.

Different galaxies, yes. I'm in total agreement with you there.

As for the whore thing, well - creating anything beautiful as a sacrifice to research seems wrong to me. Microscoping music in an attempt to categorize or use it for unintended purposes is just oogy. That's my subjective belief though, nothing scientific about it.

On the other hand isn't music an attempt to objectify human emotion? Taking such into account I don't understand how music could be equated to any intellectual arena as some here have. If music is "intellectual" shouldn't it be creatively aimed at the head rather than the heart? Wouldn't it then be a science and nothing more than synapses reacting in response to stimuli? (Hmm, I love that Beethoven, he gets my frontal lobes firing!)

Perhaps it's precisely because I am so close to science that I find it somewhat repulsive to imagine music in the cold clutches of my chosen craft.

On the other hand, if provided a grant I would acoustically kill and dissect music without much problem sleeping at night.

Maybe stores can give us a little bit about how Bach's Goldberg Variations are structured. That would give you a glimpse of musical intellectualism... And yet, one does not have to know what is behind this work to enjoy it! I will say, when I scratched the surface, though, my appreciation for it exploded. It really blew my mind.

I always thought music was about expressing, not objectifying. Communicating, bonding, that sort of thing.

FWIW, it took me a minute to understand the prostitution thing, but when I finally "got it," you're right. It was oogy.

Not even close. Those are expected physical manipulations and measurements with the exception of the quantum teleport, which isn't actually understood. It's music's immeasurable effects that make it interesting and an art rather than a science.

You are perfectly at rights to interpret music as repeatably measurable results arising from physical changes in atmospheric volume driven by varying acoustic waves.

I think you'll have problems with the "repeatable results" part though.

And I don't even care for Chopin.

Sorry about that - I meant objectify in the literary sense, as a transfer of emotional state into a physical medium like words or music.

Probably not the best word choice considering the more common usage.

I'd fully support tonal studies of Bach. Or atonal studies of Liszt. Or any musical studies. It's all good in furthering appreciation -- it's just not what makes music an art form.

LOL!



No, no! Not tonal studies. I was responding to what you said about how "music could be equated to any intellectual arena," and I was thinking about this:

"For instance, in his article of 1984, David Humphreys claims that the unifying device of the work is the allegorical scheme of the work, which represents an ascent through the nine spheres of Ptolemaic cosmology..." [link]

..which, even if it is not Bach's intention as he wrote the piece, I know enough about 18th century poetry to realize that, for some people of the age, this kind of thinking applied. I think those guys had heady refererences in Latin and Greek for everything they did!

There's been some interesting work on music lately with fMRI studies, but it's still in its infancy.

So, I was reading this book that my wife got me for Christmas this year, Practicing: A Musicians Return to Music by Glenn Kurtz, and I ran across these paragraphs, which struck me as putting words to some of what Angelina has been trying to express. The passage recounts what Kurtz was discovering as a sophomore in high school in the mid-1970s. Get this:

************

I had started digging around in my parents' LP collection in the den and found Beethoven sandwiched between Herb Alpert and the Kingston Trio. In my new room I listened to the first movement of the Third Symphony over and over, leaping up to grab the needle before the next piece started and ruined the mood. I didn't realize that symphonies had movements. I thought a symphony meant music played by an orchestra. It would be six months before I discovered the second movement, the third, and the fourth.

But the first movement was enough. Lying in bed, I heard enormous blocks of sound, solid and yet in constant metamorphosis. I pictured a kind of molten architecture, surging in my mind, a palace dancing. Each time I listened, the image grew more refined and intense. I heard new relationships, new tensions. Within this immense and active architecture the music unfolded an emotional drama. The lines resolved into figures that separated and coalesced, intimately and forcefully. The figures felt drawn from my own imagination yet were infused with a meaning I could hardly conceive. I listened closely and deeply until the architecture I first envisioned dissolved, and the music seemed to be shaping me as it shaped itself.

************

Yes? This book is a great read! (I swear, the guy puts words to my unformed thoughts in each paragraph!!!) But wait! There's more!!!

************

I rushed downstairs, bewildered and bursting, to the dining room, where my parents were reading The New York Times. It was a regular Sunday morning in the rest of the house. Coffee, bagels, the newspaper--the reassuring rituals of domestic harmony.

"I've discovered something!" I blurted. "There's a passage where the violins and cellos play the same thing, but staggered, like a round." And I tried to sing it, then dragged my parents upstairs to listen on my secondhand stereo.

They listened; they agreed it was incredible. But they'd heard the symphony before, of course. It was wonderful that I enjoyed the music so much, they said. But then they wanted to finish reading the news. My parents returned to the dining room, and their Sunday continued unaltered.

************

Here is where I thought of Angelina, and what she's been trying to say:

************

I was mystified. Couldn't they hear the grace, the violence that Beethoven expressed? Didn't they feel the ache of this music, its urgency and explosiveness? With a sixteen-year-old's dramatic disbelief, I wondered if I was the first to discover it. There had always been music in the house. But now, suddenly, it seemed that no one had been listening. It was just there, like the pictures on the wall. How could they hear this music and not feel that everything had changed?

I closed the door to my room and listened to the symphony again from the beginning. And again, the boiling energy of Beethoven's passion poured forth, igniting my own. This music might leave my parents unmoved, but it changed everything for me. It gave me a sense of unlimited possibility; it showed me the limits of my parents' understanding.

My parents spoke of comfort and stability. But I dreamed of living the life I heard in the music. It would be an artist's life, full of pleasure, discovery, an edifying sort of suffering. I would tour the world's concert stages, performing the transformation of feeling into sound, and of sound into vibrating emotion. I imagined the love and the gratitude that my audiences would show me for resolving their fears and desires into musical form. It might be lonely and difficult work. But it would be a vibrant, joyous, and inspired life.


************

Here's the kicker:

************

...Rilke spoke of the artist's sensitivity and privileged insight. The poet, he wrote, is "destined to set in motion supreme forces within his own heart, forces that others hold at bay in theirs and reduce to silence." "Yes!" I trembled. My parents couldn't feel it. They silenced their emotions, delegated them to others. They sacrificed what was most important in order to preserve their comfortable lives. But I was part of a select society, with music and poetry as our secret language. It was startlingly clear: artists expressed exquisite emotional truths in tones that everyone heard but few had the courage to feel and understand. To speak these truths, to be an artist, was the ultimate calling, the antithesis of school and partying and repetitive family rituals. Of course it was difficult and lonely! How could it be otherwise? To be an artist demanded an unsettled life. "What kind of peace could he hope for," explained Rilke in "The Young Poet," "when, within, he is suffering the assaults of his god?"

************

My apologies, Angelina, if I am out of line, here. But the resonance compelled me.

--Andy

That sounds somewhat like me when I discovered the Brahms 1st piano concerto when I was young and was showing it to my friends. They thought it was fine, but they didn't feel the same way I did about it.

Nope. No match at all.

Hahaha! Pogo, you're so sweet. King Soda, is correct...I meant nothing, whatsoever, about religion in such terms as you and I have discussed.

I feel the way you do about it.

After listening to the 2nd movement of the concerto, I got obsessed with Brahms. I learned it, then Op. 116, then the clarinet trio, then the first sonata, then the viola sonatas, then the Handel variations within 4 years. I've since gone back and learned the 3rd violin sonata and the horn trio. It's amazing the power one piece of music can have on a person.

That's asking a mouthful, but perhaps tomorrow at some point I'll try to summarise as best I can.

OK, that does it -- choose your weapon!

BTW, I see that you're a relatively new member and I imagine a lot of us don't know you very well yet. I'd never noticed you before but I'm very glad to make the acquaintance. You're pretty good.

And me2. I remember very well the first time I heard it. I didn't yet know either of the Brahms concerti and I was totally blown away.