# Music and Imagery



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Does anyone here make it a little hobby to come up with images, scenes, or stories to pieces of music that you enjoy? As a musician, I enjoy making scenes in music, but it's something I do as a listener too, all the time, and I can't help it. I've done that to "cope" with Beethoven even. Sometimes, when hearing certain works, I just can't help _seeing_ someone holding a knife to their chest, looking at a tiny flower, throwing themselves onto a pyre, dipping one's feet in a stream, people laughing and dancing, or whatever else, to name a few personal examples. And it's often for works that aren't normally programmatic. I like to make programs for non-programmatic works.

Name some of your own!


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I hear distinct Biblical story lines in Beethoven's 3d and 9th and hear a way to overcome temptation in the 5th. Also, I hear in the Heiliger Dankesang a pure form of prayer which touches the eternal in a tangible way. They may not have been his intentions, but the beauty of art is how its message transcends that of the artist.

Also, in Brahms' f minor clarinet sonata, its third movement brings an image of an older couple dancing, sometimes together, sometimes with the freedom of a temporary separation but with an ultimate return.


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

I do create images sometimes. Particularly when I am half asleep.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Sometimes I do, but very abstractly. When I hear Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, I think of tragedy, like a parent losing their child or vice versa through a terrible accident. I am a very visual person, but its hard to describe, most pieces, if they make images in my head, they are abstract, like if you turned an emotion or feeling into a visible thing.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

All the time, music really activates my imagination.
Sometimes i start to see colors spontaneously in my mind. 
For example the second movement of Beethovens 9th is very greenish with some flashes of violet.
This piece is very violet with some dark red


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Sometimes I wish I had synesthesia. It just sounds really interesting, and it would be an interesting thing to utilize as a compose.


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## Mephistopheles (Sep 3, 2012)

I tend not to, and generally prefer not to, unless a piece of music has some particular sentimental attachment - such as a piece of music that evokes images of the place I first heard it on a special occasion. Of course, I'd never have thought of those images except for those coincidental circumstances, but the reverie can be enjoyable.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

No I never do. Even Debussy's La Mer - I don't need my mind cluttered with images of the sea - the music is enough.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

This is sad, but I sometimes visualise the score when listening to a work (or try to). If it is an opera soundtrack then I will generally visualise the action. I do not have synesthesia (sorry about making sound like a disease - it sounds really cool), but I often think of a background colour when listening to works. Many of my favourite Haydn Sturm und Drang works seem to rise out of a blackness. But this also seems to be the recording in part, since different recordings are different.

But I don't do plots, no. I prefer to think of music in terms of a series of emotions and climaxes. Actually, I often take the opposite approach to literature and film, trying to abstract them like a piece of music.


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## opus55 (Nov 9, 2010)

Sometimes I see myself in a place, usually related to my early childhood. Other times I'm in a place that is not really even a specific place but more like a space without any clear details. I enjoy doing it while listening to music but I cannot intentionally make it happen


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

I occasionally close my eyes while listening to music (recordings and concerts). I'm sure some scientists claim that closing down one or more senses aids or enhances the remaining sense(s), but I don't feel I've gained any insight during. No imagery or new thought. I'm just resting the eyeballs, that's all. 

Shifting. Scriabin was into colors and music, bigtime.


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## Mephistopheles (Sep 3, 2012)

Just for the intrigue, here's what Stravinsky had to say in a roundabout way (the bolded part is most relevant):

"I have always had a horror of listening to music with my eyes shut, with nothing for them to do. The sight of the gestures and movements of the various parts of the body producing the music is fundamentally necessary if it is to be grasped in all its fullness. All music created or composed demands some exteriorization for the perception of the listener. In other words, it must have an intermediary, an executant. That being an essential condition, without which music cannot wholly reach us, why wish to ignore it, or try to do so-why shut the eyes to this fact which is inherent in the very nature of musical art? Obviously one frequently prefers to turn away one's eyes, or even close them, when the superfluity of the player's gesticulations prevents the concentration of one's faculties of hearing. But if the player's movements are evoked solely by the exigencies of the music, and do not tend to make an impression on the listener by extramural devices, why not follow with the eye such movements as those of the drummer, the violinist or the trombonist, which facilitate one's auditory perceptions? *As a matter of fact, those who maintain that they only enjoy music to the full with their eyes shut do not hear better than when they have them open, but the absence of visual distractions enables them to abandon themselves to the reveries induced by the lullaby of its sounds, and that is really what they prefer to the music itself.*"


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

^^^^^
Very interesting, and very Stravinsky.

It seems he is separating attention to the music from attention to our reaction to the music. I had never thought of that before. I suppose the latter is more ego-centric than the former, although knowing Stravinsky he could be against any kind of emotion...
But then, both are definitely better than paying attention to where the attention is focussed in the listening process, so I think I'll just go with the flow.


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## MaestroViolinist (May 22, 2012)

When I listen to music, for sure! Images just kind of "pop" into my head. Sadly, when I'm playing music I can never seem to come up with anything, which is really annoying because my teacher wants me to create stories. 

Examples, Sibelius symphony no. 2, I think everyone sees a thunder storm in the second movement, well it just seems very obvious to me. Actually, there is one piece I'm playing by Wieniawski where you can just see these dances jumping around the stage.


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## MaestroViolinist (May 22, 2012)

BurningDesire said:


> Sometimes I wish I had synesthesia. It just sounds really interesting, and it would be an interesting thing to utilize as a compose.


 Haha, it certainly would be interesting...


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

There we have it. Eyes Wide Open versus Eyes Wide Shut.

I can guarantee Igor, that most assuredly, my eyes would've been open for the 1913 Monteux premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps.


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## Guest (Sep 14, 2012)

I once had a very elaborate plot worked out for R-K's Scheherazade - a tragic story of a naval officer and his exotic new bride who later drowned in the shipwreck.

I'm not sure I get much credit for this leap of the imagination though.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Mephistopheles said:


> *As a matter of fact, those who maintain that they only enjoy music to the full with their eyes shut do not hear better than when they have them open, but the absence of visual distractions enables them to abandon themselves to the reveries induced by the lullaby of its sounds, and that is really what they prefer to the music itself.*"


Well then, I have another fight to pick with Stravinsky, as I seem to do often.  I love the music more than the images I make _fyi Stravo_. I don't cry at the images that I see, I cry at the music. I don't use the images to invoke _different_ meaning, I use it to _exponentiate _the meaning that's already there. It's just I can't help seeing images regardless, even words. If he wouldn't (or couldn't) find imagery or plot within music, likely that's not what he meant his own music to express. Thus, I have another reason why to oppose his mentality toward music that it isn't allowed to be an implicit representation of life itself.


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## Renaissance (Jul 10, 2012)

Yes, I do create such images when listening to music. With certain composers I find it easier to do that, while with others, more difficult. Mostly impressionism, Beethoven, Cesar Franck, Vivaldi and early-baroque music are full of images for me.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

For some reason the last movement of the Brahms Double Concerto makes me think of Alice in Wonderland, and there's a specific bit that makes me think of the caucus race...


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