# Inherent Nostalgic Potential



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Fans of music, worldwide will often talk about classics and masterpieces of music recording, often from the times they grew up, and often very different songs and works from one another, dependent on their varying nostalgia, experiences and culture. However, if all biases were equal, and every piece and song had equal chance of being heard, do you think there's a scale or criterion to apply to them of 'inherent nostalgic potential'? Or musical works "the most likely" to invoke nostalgia regardless of their popularity?


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

Moonlight Sonata first movement
k545
Liebestraume no 3
The Elfking


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Ethereality said:


> Fans of music, worldwide will often talk about classics and masterpieces of music recording, often from the times they grew up, and often very different songs and works from one another, dependent on their varying nostalgia, experiences and culture. However, if all biases were equal, and every piece and song had equal chance of being heard, do you think there's a scale or criterion to apply to them of 'inherent nostalgic potential'? Or musical works "the most likely" to invoke nostalgia regardless of their popularity?


Well, it depends on the individual. Two factors are also at play. Children and teenagers are sometimes more receptive and in some ways more intense in their reactions to music. And then there is the nostalgia factor you mention of the passage of time and looking back on old memories and all the associations involved with that, subconscious or more overt. 

In my case, I heard Chabrier's Espana once at a concert when I was in 4th grade, I think. I was very intrigued by the piece, and went and asked my parents when at the CD store to buy me a greatest hits disc of Chabrier. This is a composer many overlook, and regard as a light classical composer of a few somewhat mainstream numbers. I could go on about how Mahler himself was a fan of Espana and how pieces pittoreske for piano influenced a generation of french impressionist composers heavily, but the fact seems to be that Chabrier is a somewhat obscure and minor musical revolutionary, like John Field before him in another time. But the nostalgia I feel for all these works combined with my heightened receptivity and chance exposure to his works at a premium age for it, provide a very rich and deep musical experience that I find hard to describe much less impart to others.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Sorry I didn't get a chance to read the post that just popped above. I just wrote, my inquiry is one of wondering whether this criterion could be the foundation of excellence, or not a primary consideration, or if it is just arbitrary it would be interesting to hear these differences of opinions. In response to Luchesi something just came to mind in pop songs as well, like the song _Happy Together_, hence why I'm skeptical of this as it currently stands since it's such a short, perhaps simple song.

Edit: Well, with songs one must imply the thought experiment that every culture has that song in their own language (else the quality that makes that song would be displaced.)


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

I certainly wasn't alive when the Moonlight Sonata was written, but as I understand the rather opaque original post, I think what you're writing about isn't "inherent nostalgia" but rather "timeless classics" or "popular classics" or "classics that have stood the test of time."

Ergo, the Moonlight. And "Happy Together." And "Wouldn't It Be Nice."

Yes, some music appeals to almost everybody.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

To respond easily above, for some reason one may intuitively feel like nostalgia is something more measurable in qualities of composition, or to identify characteristics that lead to greater nostalgia or richer extra-sensorial, personal associations in the brain, that are based on subjective experiences, these occurences could theoretically be counted and analyzed separate from their popular influence, ie. what works which _aren't_ popular seem to instill a higher rate of nostalgia(?) So the question essentially posed is if this makes any sense in the first place. Or whereas your illustration, "timeless classics" to me, although categorized by popular examples, doesn't mean anything inherently. Could certain classics invoke more nostalgia, as a separate issue, than others? I can definitely see where you're coming from though, hmm.


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## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)

Ethereality said:


> Fans of music, worldwide will often talk about classics and masterpieces of music recording, often from the times they grew up, and often very different songs and works from one another, dependent on their varying nostalgia, experiences and culture. However, if all biases were equal, and every piece and song had equal chance of being heard, do you think there's a scale or criterion to apply to them of 'inherent nostalgic potential'? Or musical works "the most likely" to invoke nostalgia regardless of their popularity?


salience is a factor


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Ethereality said:


> So the question essentially posed is if this makes any sense in the first place.


No.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Ethereality said:


> ... musical works "the most likely" to invoke nostalgia regardless of their popularity?


Experience says that most people have a special fondness for the music they discovered between the ages of 16 and 26 (give or take). Even some really heinous music becomes "a favorite" as these teenagers grow into adults, even as they discover the larger world out there and discover their favorites were shallow and repetitive. But they continue to harbor a nostalgic fondness for "their music" because it filled a void in their lives during that decade when they transitioned from being a child to being an adult.


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## SoloYH (8 mo ago)

I believed some tunes are more objectively catchy, even if you weren't exposed to any music in the past, therefore no subjective bias towards certain "scales", for example. I believe this because some frequencies combine to perfect unison, and songs that exploit that will be more catchy. Also some songs have a certain "momentum", where one would expect where the next note would go. I also believe part of that is inherent, and not cultural. Another part of momentum is rhythm. Some rhythms are more catchy, such as flow, or uniqueness. 

So add those up and we get Nocturne in E flat major.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

SoloYH said:


> I also believe part of that is inherent, and not cultural.


And yet, I used to work with an Ethiopian whose sense of rhythm was TOTALLY different from mine. At the time I owned a little programmable electronic rhythm box, and he asked to borrow it for a weekend. When it came back it was filled with the most foreign, off-beat, weird loopy rhythms... that I have since come to know & love in African music.


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## SoloYH (8 mo ago)

NoCoPilot said:


> And yet, I used to work with an Ethiopian whose sense of rhythm was TOTALLY different from mine. At the time I owned a little programmable electronic rhythm box, and he asked to borrow it for a weekend. When it came back it was filled with the most foreign, off-beat, weird loopy rhythms... that I have since come to know & love in African music.


Of course very debatable. It's my two cents.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Octaves and fifths and thirds seem to be pretty universally recognized, but SE Asia has ENTIRELY different ways of dividing them up.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

nostalgia literally means "homesickness", although it's now mostly used with reference to the past, not to one's geographical home. (And it was first broadly used in reference to Swiss soldiers and mercenaries who longed for home and this was related to alpine cowherding song) 
Therefore I think it is always relational as there need to be this relation to "home"/past. So if we find some things nostalgic it is either because we share the vague remembrances or allusions that are contained in the music. Or maybe because composers already used this longing transformation of "folksy" music that is supposed to sound like remembered songs, "echoes" from one's home/youth.


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## 4chamberedklavier (12 mo ago)

Some music makes us nostalgic because of what we associate it with, but what's interesting is, for me (& I'm sure for many of us), some music makes me feel nostalgic even if it is entirely new. There is something inherent in the music that triggers that "nostalgic" feeling.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

As one who has very little, if any, nostalgic feelings connected to music at all, it does not enter my consideration as to the quality of the music. In fact, I probably place more importance on the new, and music that creates all new feelings, as opposed to reliving old feelings.

I may have a bit of nostalgia for about half a dozen pop songs from when I was around 12, but I haven't heard them in years, so I am not even sure those feelings still remain.

I do have feelings of nostalgia for food, movies, smells, but not music.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ethereality said:


> Fans of music, worldwide will often talk about classics and masterpieces of music recording, often from the times they grew up, and often very different songs and works from one another, dependent on their varying nostalgia, experiences and culture. However, if all biases were equal, and every piece and song had equal chance of being heard, do you think there's a scale or criterion to apply to them of 'inherent nostalgic potential'? Or musical works "the most likely" to invoke nostalgia regardless of their popularity?


You should explore hauntological music, there’s a Wikipedia article which explains the concept, some examples


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## justekaia (Jan 2, 2022)

i doubt the strong inherent potential for nostalgia of music pieces, but rather believe that the circumstances and the company in which one hears a piece of music are determining your nostalgic attachment to it. like clavichorder i have many pieces mainly from my childhood that still touch me like a verdi's rigoletto aria, tchaikovsky's serenade for strings, lalo's symphonie espagnole, xenakis' akrata because they were played at key moments. i also associate some pieces with people for similar reasons. some pieces also give you strength to overcome difficult moments, because of what they mean to you. most classical music pieces tends to be melancholic rather than joyful and are perhaps therefore candidates for nostalgia.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

It's seems to you that certain pieces may not have nostalgic potential, but if they did, they would be the most melancholic, least joyful ones. Hmmmmm......

Hmmm... Well if there are any trends at all, even barely noticeable, it would be interesting to tabulate and consider why that is. Thank you 



Mandryka said:


> You should explore hauntological music, there’s a Wikipedia article which explains the concept, some examples


"Music that evokes cultural memory and the aesthetics of the past. The trend may be tied to notions of retrofuturism, whereby artists evoke the past by utilising the "spectral sounds of old music technology."

You have an interesting point there. Upon wondering if this is really the point, if_ certain aspects_ of history can be separated from others, to create the maximal effect of others' past, it does maintain certain attributes of sound can be more nostalgic or at least more pronounced than others. We'd have to test and analyze which is the case.


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