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Posted: |
Sep 1, 2015 - 5:38 PM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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On the rare occasion that I can get around to isolated, dedicated listening any more, I find that most of the music I listen to - the vast majority being instrumental - represents a form of escapism for me. It will produce a variety of images, many abstract. I almost never conjure literal images of the music, i.e., the musicians playing it. It takes me to another realm.
On the other hand, certain music for me provides a deeper window into reality and the human condition.
Curiously, I find that jazz, perhaps paradoxically, somehow manages to produce both responses simultaneously. I'm not sure that I can convey how or why.
What are your experiences?
Discuss...
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On the rare occasion that I can get around to isolated, dedicated listening any more, I find that most of the music I listen to - the vast majority being instrumental - represents a form of escapism for me. It will produce a variety of images, many abstract. I almost never conjure literal images of the music, i.e., the musicians playing it. It takes me to another realm.
On the other hand, certain music for me provides a deeper window into reality and the human condition.
Curiously, I find that jazz, perhaps paradoxically, somehow manages to produce both responses simultaneously. I'm not sure that I can convey how or why.
What are your experiences?
Discuss...
I don't know if I'm intelligent enough for this thread, so here's a clumsy rabbit. Most of the time, the music I listen to is indeed a form of escapism. It takes me to "another realm" (Onya's words) too, but it's an artificial realm of heroism and filmic stereotypes in many cases. It's not totally MY reality, although there's a lot of me in it, because I'm interpreting the music the way my brain "tells" me to. Interestingly, I've found myself creating concrete images less and less. Abstract images are more frequent now, or no images at all - if the music connects with me, it's enough to make me feel something, although intangible.
In some cases abstract scores (or even "pure jazz") do seem to produce a glimpse of the reality of the human condition, but I'm not sure how much that is really a universal reality or, again, my interpretation of it. I think that probably the freer the music is, the less pigeon-holed we're likely to react to it. Shouldn't we all be sharing a big joint when talking about this?
///ADDED A BIT LATER///_________________________________________________________
I suppose another thing could be that with free jazz, or purely abstract music, the artists are starting with a blank canvas, so if they're creative and "honest" enough, what you're getting is the real Doc McCoy. It's as close to the human condition as you can get. Or as close to "their" human condition. And then we filter it. So it's a prickly issue. But it's certainly not going to be as "second-hand" as a composer being asked to write a horror stinger for a shock scene in a film... which of course can be enjoyed for the escapism it is.
Still need to hunt out some maria for this to take shape...
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Come on people - get thinking! Definitions of "The Human Condition" are right there on Wiki! Or do you want WILLIAMDMCCRUM to come here and hammer it home for you all?
"Gentlemen, the thing that people seem to be failing to grasp is..."
Or Thor?
"We need a definition of the human condition regarding parameters of metacarpels as suggested by Dr Cochlea in his seminal "The Python Theory and the Meaning of Life"."
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Posted: |
Sep 3, 2015 - 5:49 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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He, he...
It will always depend. I find that with more "intellectual" music (avantgarde or modernistic stuff, for example), I focus more on the music and performance itself; the relationship between the instruments and so forth. With more classically oriented soundscapes, I'm more easily swept away to my own imaginary images.
Film music is in a unique position, though. While music itself is "non-representational" -- the only meanings we can ascribe to it are culturally coded, associative or emotive, like 'minor mode' meaning 'sad' etc. -- it can take on representational meaning when applied to concrete images. However, once you then remove the music from the images (on an album), it once again takes a non-representational role. Still, the 'remnants' of its representational application remains. This is why you have different kinds of soundtrack fans -- those who embrace its once-representational status to relive the movie in their head, or the general 'ambiance' of the movie, and then the fans who separate it as much as possible from its source, experiencing it as any other kind of music.
Much of this has been at the heart of much academic music and film music literature in the last 30-40 years, and we've discussed it quite a few times on the board over the years.
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I've posted this quote from Stravinsky before. This comes closest to my own experience of music in the last 15-20 years.
"For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention – in short, an aspect which, unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being."
I listen to music for its own sake, and though did do some imagining while listening when younger, now just mostly focus on the music as music, or if it's more background in nature then it's more part of my environment. But in some ways the best part of the environment.
I don't know if this makes any difference, but I'm an amateur musician and occasional home composer (though infrequent in recent years), so my relationship with music is also more technical, at least some of the time. Has a big impact on how I respond to music.
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That's the spirit, Thor. I'll give you a 7 out of 10 for that, no more, because you managed to avoid addressing the issue of "reality and the human condition" - which is what Onya was originally on about. At least I think that's what he was on about.
ADDED AFTER I READ SEAN'S POST_________________________________________________
Getting there Sean, 8 outta 10. But what about "the human condition"? Are we going for the Buddhist view or something else?
Onya, get back here and do the work for me!
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Posted: |
Sep 3, 2015 - 6:28 AM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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Yes, Onya's use of the term human condition doesn't really speak to me. For me, the human condition encompasses everything humans think and feel and do, so any relationship with music whatever its depth or nature speaks to the big HC.
"Human condition" is admittedly a catch-all phrase that, for better or worse, has made its way into the vernacular. It is not necessarily my first choice, but for communication purposes, I thought it would work reasonably well as a descriptor. If you prefer, we can use another phrase.
What I was getting at is the idea of music taking you outside of this reality, or connecting you more deeply to this reality, or a combination of the two. And for me, it varies, although escapism generally wins.
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Sorry guys if I sounded too frivolous. I honestly thought that part of Onya's post was related to the minority of music which seemed to go beyond the simply escapist or representational, bordering on "the human condition" meaning the universal experiences of birth, growth, emotionality, conflict and morality.
Some people will find their "true self" (see the inverted commas?) reflected in the songs of The Smiths, others in the freeform music of Charlie Parker.
I know that that doesn't sound very brainy, but I think it's kind of relevant to part of Onya's post.
ADDED JUST AFTER READING ONYA'S NEW POST--------------------------------------------------
I think I see what you mean, Onya. Maybe I was complicating things.
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Well, Royal S. Brown has this neat formulation too:
"The mainstream interaction between film and non-diegetic music depends on a dialectical opposition between the unconsummatedness of the musical symbol and the consumatedness of the cinematic object-events" (Brown 1994: 40).
I like that one!
I'm not gonna get into a debate about use of language, but given the "non-diegetic dialectal unconsummatedness object-events" I bet more people can get what Stravinsky's saying right away, and a goodly number of readers will wonder what the heck Brown is going on about.
Okay I guess I am getting into a debate on it, but just this week at work I was quoting Strunk and White's three rules for writing:
1. Simplify
2. Simplify
3. Simplify
so you can see where I'm coming from.
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