# Excessive Emotion or Intellectualism in Music?



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Can music be too emotional or intellectual? Of course it depends on taste or personal aesthetics. Use this as a soap box for your views. Don't take it personally if your favoured composers or sort of music is bashed. Just throwing ideas around.

Personally, Arvo Part drives me up the wall screaming. I find his music repulsively corny. I asked myself why. Is it not intellectual enough? Is it badly composed? Or just me? 

On the other hand, Ferneyhough seems to aim to do the opposite, throw off all your expectations. Is his music really that complex? Or intentionally unconventional. I feel there are some other composers that aim to do the same, that it becomes conventional in a certain way, especially when I tuned into these amateur composers on Soundcloud, that seem to imitate that "contemporary" feel.

Ok, bash me. I can take it.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I run hot and cold on the Ludus Tonalis. Sometimes it seems like too much of a technical exercise, but at others I can't help but feel while listening like Hindemith had a good time composing it. In the end I'd probably put it in the category—a large one, for me—of "cheerful intellectualism."


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I feel a lot of contemporary music is too intellectual, focusing on ideas rather than producing something moving.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I don't care for anything too sappy. Very little classical music reaches that point - here and there some romantics get too rich for me to really love, but I can usually appreciate how well they're doing what they're doing. 

I can't imagine anything - music or anything else - being too intellectual. Maybe it's not enough of something, but the problem would never be that something is too intellectual. 

"This is just not stupid enough for me. I want more stupidity in my music." <-- Get this guy's drugs.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

science said:


> I don't care for anything too sappy. Very little classical music reaches that point - here and there some romantics get too rich for me to really love, but I can usually appreciate how well they're doing what they're doing.
> 
> I can't imagine anything - music or anything else - being too intellectual. Maybe it's not enough of something, but the problem would never be that something is too intellectual.
> 
> "This is just not stupid enough for me. I want more stupidity in my music." <-- Get this guy's drugs.


That depends on how you define intellectual. Can't something be based too much in thought apart from emotion?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

The works that used to be called over-intellectual when I was young - works like the Art of Fugue! - are no longer damned so widely. And the works that had been damned as crude and vulgar in their emotionalism - Mahler! - are now widely thought of as extraordinarily deep. So I feel cautious in applying either label. But I can think of lot's of music that seems to me to be manipulative of our emotions, of going for an easy wallow, and am reasonably confident that I won't change my mind (which is not to say others can't enjoy it). I guess the slow movement of Shostakovich's 2nd piano concerto might be one famous example but there are many others.

I'm not sure I can come up with an example of music that is too intellectual although the "concept music" of Cage and some others might qualify.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

All the music I really like seems to defy either category. Let's take an example. Is this intellectual or emotional or both or neither? I can't say.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I always found a lot of Hindemith's music repugnantly cerebral and lacking in heart. All those miscellaneous sonatas for various instruments bored me to death (I use the past tense because it's been years since I last felt like checking them out). A lot of music of the "neoclassical" persuasion strikes me this way, and that includes a fair amount of Stravinsky.

On the "too emotional" side, I'm rarely in the mood for certain feverish outpourings of Tchaikovsky and Mahler. I was just listening to the former's Fourth Symphony and was fine with it until the fourth movement, which made me want to suggest to the composer a nice, relaxing Mediterranean cruise.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Captainnumber36 said:


> That depends on how you define intellectual. Can't something be based too much in thought apart from emotion?


Something might not have enough emotion for you, but in that case is the problem really that too much thought went into it?

Emotion and thought are not opposites.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

science said:


> Something might not have enough emotion for you, but in that case is the problem really that too much thought went into it?
> 
> Emotion and thought are not opposites.


I think it can be that too much thought went into it and not enough feel. And I think often they are seen as opposites.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I think it can be that too much thought went into it and not enough feel. And I think often they are seen as opposites.


Well, I feel they are not.

[N. B. That sentence contains a joke.]

Emotion and thought complement each other. The opposite of both is unconsciousness.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

science said:


> Well, I feel they are not.
> 
> [N. B. That sentence contains a joke.]
> 
> Emotion and thought complement each other. The opposite of both is unconsciousness.


I can agree with that. I just think most ppl, and most art, tends to lean towards being emotional or intellectual rather than complementing each other as you said.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I can agree with that. I just think most ppl, and most art, tends to lean towards being emotional or intellectual rather than complementing each other as you said.


I'm glad you said that. I didn't want to say what I really think about this if it would seem to be critical of you, but IMO when people oppose them to each other, it often means they don't want to think about something.

Really, really great art -- creating it or appreciating it -- requires both emotional insight and intellectual insight. Both kinds of insight require both learning and careful introspection. No really emotionally powerful work of art was created by an artist having a temper tantrum or just weeping away or whatever.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> On the "too emotional" side, I'm rarely in the mood for certain feverish outpourings of Tchaikovsky


I feel the same way. Symphonies 4, 5, 6 - masterpieces, but his "other sides" seem more interesting now.
Nowadays I prefer his miscellaneous pieces more. The way he builds this is interestingly witty:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> I feel the same way. Symphonies 4, 5, 6 - masterpieces, but his "other sides" seem more interesting now.
> Nowadays I prefer his miscellaneous pieces more. The way he builds this is interestingly witty:


I do think Tchaikovsky's reputation for overblown emotionalism is itself overblown. It's worth recalling that his favorite composer was Mozart, and he had a "classical" side that shines in the Serenade for Strings, chamber works like the string quartets and the Souvenir de Florence, the orchestral suites, and the exquisitely melodious ballets.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Blancrocher said:


> I run hot and cold on the Ludus Tonalis. Sometimes it seems like too much of a technical exercise, but at others I can't help but feel while listening like Hindemith had a good time composing it. In the end I'd probably put it in the category-a large one, for me-of "cheerful intellectualism."


I think the clue is in the title, which in itself is enigmatic due to the flexibility of the word _ludus_. _Ludus_ in this case probably means 'schooling' or 'exercises' rather than 'games'. Then you get to the subtitle which is the real clincher - 'Counterpoint, Tonal and Technical Studies for the Piano'.

I like your expression 'cheerful intellectualism' - I'll try to remember that next time I listen to it. :lol:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I really don't see how anyone could call this a technical exercise


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

science said:


> Emotion and thought complement each other. The opposite of both is unconsciousness.


The trouble with being human is we are _both_ intellectual _and_ emotional, but not at any given moment in exact same balance. Rather, we fluctuate from more/less of the one to more/less of the other at any given moment. No two consecutive days, no two consecutive hours, no two consecutive moments (whatever a "moment" is!) holds us in a stable balance of thought and feeling. The issue isn't that the _music_ is intellectual or emotional. The measure comes from us humans, the observers or, better perhaps, the listeners, who take what we hear at the moment and process it through that filter of thought/feeling we experience at that instant. Which is why the same piece of music strikes us in different ways at different times in our hearing of it.

I think of Tchaikovsky as being a composer of emotional interest. Yet, to create the great swell of feeling-impact music he creates, such as the lyrical theme of the first movement of Symphony No.6, a great deal of intellectual endeavor was involved on the part of the composer. And the more we think about his music and study it, the greater we get a sense of its emotional revealings.

I suspect we've all been in a mood (a part of our human baggage) when we could weep or laugh through the severest works by Milton Babbitt, John Cage, Christian Wolff, or others of their ilk. And though these composers might provoke discussion about "intellectualism in music", they are all _artists_, and artists, by their very nature, celebrate the fullness of being human, perhaps moreso than does anyone in any other profession. Do artists really want robots to create our art? Can a robot truly create a work of art, or only a semblance of what may pass for "art" only if designated so by humans themselves -- humans who are possessed of both an intellectual and an emotional nature?

I commend science for his quote. Emotion and thought certainly_ do_ complement each other. And a human being cannot possess one without the other, whatever the ratio between the two from one moment to the next. Indeed, the human without these two active attributes is one in a state of unconsciousness. And the dead have no need for art. Which makes art truly a thing worthy of the living, for art is a living thing, too.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

emotional or intellectual. I am not sure I could even define those terms myself. Depending on my mood, the same piece of music can sound emotional or intellectual at different times. Sometimes Bach sounds dry and other times he sounds deeply emotional.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Phil loves classical said:


> Can music be too emotional or intellectual? Of course it depends on taste or personal aesthetics. Use this as a soap box for your views. Don't take it personally if your favoured composers or sort of music is bashed. Just throwing ideas around.
> 
> Personally, Arvo Part drives me up the wall screaming. I find his music repulsively corny. I asked myself why. Is it not intellectual enough? Is it badly composed? Or just me?


I'm onestly don't get it. I mean, I could perfectly understand that someone could not like his music for many different reasons, but... corny? Like he was a sort of I don't know, Liberace or a hair metal band? He's a musician who makes a quite austere music influenced by medieval composers like Perotin, it's almost the opposite of what I would consider corny.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

SONNET CLV said:


> The trouble with being human is we are _both_ intellectual _and_ emotional, but not at any given moment in exact same balance. Rather, we fluctuate from more/less of the one to more/less of the other at any given moment. No two consecutive days, no two consecutive hours, no two consecutive moments (whatever a "moment" is!) holds us in a stable balance of thought and feeling. The issue isn't that the _music_ is intellectual or emotional. The measure comes from us humans, the observers or, better perhaps, the listeners, who take what we hear at the moment and process it through that filter of thought/feeling we experience at that instant. Which is why the same piece of music strikes us in different ways at different times in our hearing of it.
> 
> I think of Tchaikovsky as being a composer of emotional interest. Yet, to create the great swell of feeling-impact music he creates, such as the lyrical theme of the first movement of Symphony No.6, a great deal of intellectual endeavor was involved on the part of the composer. And the more we think about his music and study it, the greater we get a sense of its emotional revealings.
> 
> ...


I have to say, this seems to address what I was thinking (or feeling) in my original post, and gives me a lot of closure on the whole thing. I'm not sure if Art is a living thing though.



norman bates said:


> I'm onestly don't get it. I mean, I could perfectly understand that someone could not like his music for many different reasons, but... corny? Like he was a sort of I don't know, Liberace or a hair metal band? He's a musician who makes a quite austere music influenced by medieval composers like Perotin, it's almost the opposite of what I would consider corny.


I dunno. He just seems to push the right buttons (or wrong ones). He seems to strike me as a Steven Spielberg or Tom Hanks does. I have to look into it some more.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Phil loves classical said:


> I'm not sure if Art is a living thing though.


Metaphorically speaking, of course. Still, a work of art derives from the very humanness (the intellect and emotions) of the creator, and it lives on past the stopping of that creator's heart.

We all know Hector and Achilles, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Huck Finn, Rambo and Rocky, George Bailey, Tiny Tim and Ebenezer Scrooge … as well as we know family members and friends. Maybe, even, we know these literary characters better. They have become part of our vocabulary of life.

The enigmatic Mona Lisa smiling, potential energy-rich Adam reaching out his hand to the life granting finger of God, assured and confident David with shoulder slung sling-pouch, the demure and lovely girl with pearl earring … these remain images indelible in our human consciousness, and will continue to form such memes in human consciousnesses for all foreseeable time to come.

We often speak of soundtracks of our lives. Such soundtracks derive from musical works of art that grip our minds and hang on to our futures with a relentless persistence that changes the way we experience our very world. My own soundtrack is alive with the sublimity of Bach's B minor Mass, of Mozart's opera Overtures, of Beethoven's symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets, of so many symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets, and jazz and pop and show-tunes and rock-and-roll ….

In my own life experience I've stood on theatre stages and conversed with Willy Loman and Macbeth, lamented with Mercutio and Medea, laughed with Rosalind, Jaques and Touchstone, and wept with Tevye and his daughters. These remain real experiences, as were talking my parents, spouse, children and grandchildren. The words I shared with these and others still stream through my consciousness with significance and meaning.

Just as my long deceased grandmother still lives vividly in my memory, so does so much art, and in that seemingly endless repository of thoughts the imageries of literature, music, painting, theatre, dance, sculpture spark my emotions, imagination, dreams, anticipations, judgments, assessments, biases and conclusions. If such art be not a living thing, I too do not live. For I _am_ so much part of it.

And I cannot even surmise what I might be without it.

Metaphor remains a powerful force, indeed. A living thing. And it shall die only when the last of us humans takes his final breath.


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