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I think most of the music (popular, musical theatre, film, classical etc.) that I listen to always provokes associations with people, places, photos, movies, books, works of art – virtually everything that has been in my life up to the time of the musical experience, including dreams. This would, of course, include an intellectual response to the music. Or imagining an intellectual response from others in addition to imagining their emotional response. A moral nexus.
Or perhaps the music evokes its own world, unique to itself.
I remember a discussion that I attended between the American novelists/writers John Gardner and William H. Gass. They postulated a sentence in a work of fiction, “By the side of the road grew a red rose.” Mr. Gardner argued that reading this sentence about this rose could only evoke flowers that he remembered, for example a rose in the garden of his grandmother, or a rose in a park when he was in love. Thus, it became inexorably linked to an outside world with a certain associational moral force and impact. Mr. Gass argued that, no, the rose created by the sentence was a singularity in the mind of the reader – existing in and of itself with no moral compass other than the word and its evocation.
Or something like that.
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Posted: |
Apr 21, 2017 - 2:27 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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But the other kind of example would be a piece that simply on its own creates particular imagery or narratives. For example, Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta" has always sounded to me like outer space music. I can't think of anything else when I hear that music.
Well, that's a far broader category. Music is non-representational, so we are the ones attributing meaning and narratives to it, regardless of genre. True, we may be slightly "steered" through certain musical conventions ('minor mode' meaning 'sad' etc.), but other than that, all is fair game.
This is how I approach all music, also film music. Whether I have seen the movie or not, I try to disassociate myself as much as possible from the source/original program and create my own moods and narratives in my head.
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