# Ethical quality of music?



## Perotin

Ancient Greeks believed, that music can cultivate one's character and make him a better person, and ancient Chinese held a similar view, I think. Do you feel that listening to classical music makes you more moral? If so, which composers have positive "ethical" influence on you? If I had to choose one, it would be Haydn, I could hardly imagine myself killing somebody while listening to Haydn's music. Any thoughts on this?


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## ahammel

Perotin said:


> If I had to choose one, it would be Haydn, I could hardly imagine myself killing somebody while listening to Haydn's music.


But you *can* imagine killing somebody with the stereo off, eh? 

I kind of doubt that listening to music makes you any better behaved, frankly. It certainly didn't do much for many composers.


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## quack

What if it was a really excellent performance of your favourite Haydn symphony and someone turned it off just before the end?


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## Bulldog

It's ridiculous to think that listening to classical music has anything to do with ethical or moral behavior.


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## aajj

This thread is amusing. But i admit it's easier to imagine someone robbing a bank after listening to death metal than Mozart. There was that long ago study that (erroneously, i think) claimed babies turn out more intelligent when exposed to Mozart. On the other hand, some highly intelligent people commit crimes. This premise is bogus and i have nothing personal against Haydn.


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## ArtMusic

Perotin said:


> Ancient Greeks believed, that music can cultivate one's character and make him a better person, and ancient Chinese held a similar view, I think. Do you feel that listening to classical music makes you more moral? If so, which composers have positive "ethical" influence on you? If I had to choose one, it would be Haydn, I could hardly imagine myself killing somebody while listening to Haydn's music. Any thoughts on this?


A significant amount of classical music was composed to remind listeners of their moral situation, the church music. But of course, one today could enjoy it as much without believing the faith.

As for me I find great pieces very uplifting in spirit (not in a religious sense). Of this this is what great music should do.


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## ahammel

aajj said:


> There was that long ago study that (erroneously, i think) claimed babies turn out more intelligent when exposed to Mozart.


No study has ever shown anything of the sort.


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## KenOC

"I care not who writes the laws of a state -- just let me write its songs." --Confucius (note: another member points it that it was actually Damon of Athens -- my bad!)


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## brotagonist

Indirectly, however, a crime-control system called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) has successfully used classical music to lessen incidence of crime in subway stations and other public places. The effect is not attributable to the edifying effects of the music, but rather to the music tastes of targeted criminals, who no longer congregate in 'sanitized' areas.


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## science

If we define "ethical" in the right way, some music could contribute to it. Music can help create and strengthen group identities, for example. Since it effects our emotions, probably more deeply than we can consciously realize, it can be used to manipulate us.


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## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> "I care not who writes the laws of a state -- just let me write its songs." --Confucius


Are you sure of that attribution Ken? I could have sworn that quotation is from Ancient Greek philosophy. Plato?

Edit: It was in fact Damon of Athens, a contemporary of Plato, who said this. Plato, I believe, quoted Damon and ran with it. Greek theorists attributed different ethical effects to particular musical modes.


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## starthrower

Bulldog said:


> It's ridiculous to think that listening to classical music has anything to do with ethical or moral behavior.


Hitler enjoyed classical music. I don't think it improved his character, so you've got a point there. The ethical quality of music has nothing to do with the listener, other than how it's perceived. But music doesn't lie. And one can usually tell if the composer's/performer's hearts aren't in it.


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## Crudblud

My feeling is that music is passive, it cannot _do_ anything.


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## KenOC

EdwardBast said:


> Are you sure of that attribution Ken? I could have sworn that quotation is from Ancient Greek philosophy. Plato?
> 
> Edit: It was in fact Damon of Athens, a contemporary of Plato, who said this. Plato, I believe, quoted Damon and ran with it. Greek theorists attributed different ethical effects to particular musical modes.


Right you are -- it was Damon, sorry. But Confucius would have agreed!

BTW here's Aristotle: "...anger and mildness, courage and modesty, and their contraries, as well as all other dispositions of the mind, are most naturally imitated by music and poetry; which is plain by experience, for when we hear these our very soul is altered."


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## ahammel

starthrower said:


> Hitler enjoyed classical music. I don't think it improved his character, so you've got a point there.


Although, who knows? Maybe without his Bruckner he would have been a real jerk.


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## starthrower

Crudblud said:


> My feeling is that music is passive, it cannot _do_ anything.


Then why is it used in films? Music definitely has an effect on people. Haven't you dedicated your life to it?


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## Itullian

Athletes use it to motivate themselves. Its not ethical as the Nazi's proved. but it does evoke feelings.


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## aajj

ahammel said:


> No study has ever shown anything of the sort.


I was referring to the 'Mozart Effect' study in the '90s. I am not saying i agree with the idea; i think it is a bunch of hooey.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281386/


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## Crudblud

starthrower said:


> Then why is it used in films? Music definitely has an effect on people. Haven't you dedicated your life to it?


You're confusing music with "music+", where it becomes part of something else in a hybrid format such as cinema, television, ballet, a wholly different thing. There is music in that thing but the thing itself is not music, and the end result is a non-musical one, a hybrid media appreciated by multiple senses on many levels.

I am a devout musician, yes, but presently experiencing a crisis of faith, you might say. Or less dramatically: extended writer's block. It is difficult to say what draws me to music, but I think the best way to put it is that it is a mystery, a benign Pandora's Box of possibilities, a key to the subconscious, the closest we can truly come to magic. Or maybe that's all ******** and I just happen to have the aptitude for it, so it's what I waste my time on.


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## ahammel

aajj said:


> I was referring to the 'Mozart Effect' study in the '90s. I am not saying i agree with the idea; i think it is a bunch of hooey.
> 
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281386/


Quite. To quote that paper:



> An enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning performance after listening to Mozart's music for 10 minutes has been reported by several, but not all, researchers. Even in the studies with positive results the enhancement is small and lasts about 12 minutes.


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## Giordano

Art can show you, in this reality, that you are not what you believe your "self" to be and thus set you on a course of self-inquiry through which you discover your SELF and expand your ability to KNOW.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Can music... or any of the arts... truly motivate an individual toward a greater sense of ethics or morality? I suppose it is possible... in the sense that individuals respond in a great variety of ways toward the arts. But the idea that music or any of the arts inherently inspire a greater sense of ethics, morality, empathy, etc... is wholly undermined by history.

The Art historian, Robert Hughes, famously pointed out:

_"Nobody has ever denied that Sigismondo da Malatesta, the Lord of Rimini, had excellent taste. He hired the most refined of quattrocento architects, Leon Battista Alberti, to design a memorial temple to his wife, and then got the sculptor Agostino di Duccio to decorate it, and retained Piero della Francesca to paint it. Yet Sigismondo was a man of such callousness and rapacity that he was known in life as "Il Lupo," The Wolf, and so execrated after his death that the Catholic Church made him (for a time) the only man apart from Judas Iscariot officially listed as being in Hell - a distinction he earned by trussing up a Papal emissary, the fifteen-year-old Bishop of Fano, in his own rochet and publicly sodomizing him before his applauding army in the main square of Rimini."

Lord da Malatesta was not far removed in his cruelty, rapacity, and use of violence from the Barberini, the Orsini, the Borgias, or the de' Medici whose patronage largely wrought the Italian Rnaissance or as Orson Welles so famously put it in The Third Man:

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace-and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."_

In our own time, the examples of the sometimes excellent artistic/musical taste of the Nazis is common knowledge.

This very idea of the link between Art and Ethics seems to hearken back to ideas of the Romantics who imagined artists as visionaries... and art museums as temples and cathedrals.


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## starthrower

Crudblud said:


> You're confusing music with "music+", where it becomes part of something else in a hybrid format such as cinema, television, ballet, a wholly different thing. There is music in that thing but the thing itself is not music, and the end result is a non-musical one, a hybrid media appreciated by multiple senses on many levels.
> 
> I am a devout musician, yes, but presently experiencing a crisis of faith, you might say. Or less dramatically: extended writer's block. It is difficult to say what draws me to music, but I think the best way to put it is that it is a mystery, a benign Pandora's Box of possibilities, a key to the subconscious, the closest we can truly come to magic. Or maybe that's all ******** and I just happen to have the aptitude for it, so it's what I waste my time on.


I've heard that last line expressed by other musicians. "We do it because we can."


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## ahammel

StlukesguildOhio said:


> This very idea of the link between Art and Ethics seems to hearken back to ideas of the Romantics who imagined artists as visionaries... and art museums as temples and cathedrals.


A strong second place in the Worst Idea the Romantics Had competition, behind poetry about weeping on flowers.


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## Perotin

> "In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace-and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."


I like this quote, although I don't think I would trade the peacfulness of Switzerland for the savegery of renaissance Italy!


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## Perotin

Some of you have mentioned bad people having tastes for classical music like Nazis. I can add Stalin to the list, he was a great fan of Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov was his favourite opera. But that's the point, music can exert influence in both directions, positive or negative. I could easily imagine a politician carrying out political purges after having listened to violent, dissonant, horror evoking Boris Godunov. Although Stalin also liked Mozart, maybe he needed a relief after a tough day of killing. :lol:

P.S. After reading the Synopsis of Boris Godunov I have second thoughts, maybe this opera didn't incite Stalin to do all his evil deeds after all.


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## science

My inclination is to consider every non-democratic ruler rather evil (although to some tiny degree most of them were stuck in the system as well). And most of them enjoyed "classical" music. Indeed, the tradition is more or less what they made it.


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## PetrB

Music, without text, and pretty much then no matter whatever it is titled, its movements titled, is amoral, without ethics, or any other such intellectual / philosophical traits.

In that way, more than pictures or any other medium, _*it is The Teflon of the Arts*_: you can say it has powers x, y, and z; you can say it has power to influence in manner x, y, and z.

But *nothing sticks to it.*


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## Ingélou

Music *of itself* has no ethical quality and cannot make anyone ethical in a general, long-lasting sense.

There are ways that music can be *used* to make individuals more ethical in the short term, for example, to defuse anger, aid calming meditation, help remove the heat from a situation etc. And music can *in context *have an ethical effect on someone: Vivaldi's Stabat Mater, for instance, might make a Christian feel more compassion and resolve on bothering to help someone they'd written off.

Music can also be *used* to ratchet up violent emotions, as in war music - though bravery and patriotism, more ethical emotions, can also result.

It is sometimes said that the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which James II of England was ousted in favour of William of Orange, was brought about by an anti-Catholic song, Lilliburlero - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillibullero
The words of this are atrocious (style, as well as sentiment) but the tune is fab! (As the BBC knew well... 



 :lol

Everything in the world can be *used* to help ethical decision making or its reverse, and so can music.
But of itself it is not either ethical or inethical. Even sublime church music will not have any effect - if a listener is enjoying the art while smugly pluming him or herself on his worldly success and planning a putsch against his enemies.


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## Perotin

brotagonist said:


> Indirectly, however, a crime-control system called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) has successfully used classical music to lessen incidence of crime in subway stations and other public places. The effect is not attributable to the edifying effects of the music, but rather to the music tastes of targeted criminals, who no longer congregate in 'sanitized' areas.


Now I know how to protect my house against burglars! :lol:


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## Crudblud

starthrower said:


> I've heard that last line expressed by other musicians. "We do it because we can."


I think for me it's a bit of both. I realised I could do it, and that I liked doing it, but as the days rolled by into weeks into months into years I became aware of this mysterious quality about music. The more I thought about it the more it seemed somehow infinite, and the can do/enjoy doing became something of a need to explore and understand as much as possible.


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## GGluek

Beethoven was scandalized by Mozart writing such beautiful music to put in the mouth of a scoundrel like Don Juan.


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## aajj

I don't think anyone has mentioned that sweetheart of a gangster and lover of opera, Al Capone.


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## Albert7

Wagner's music for me always raises the question about the values of ethics in music. Personally from a scientific viewpoint music does influence behavior with modern psychological theories even though logical positivists think otherwise.


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## rspader

brotagonist said:


> Indirectly, however, a crime-control system called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) has successfully used classical music to lessen incidence of crime in subway stations and other public places. The effect is not attributable to the edifying effects of the music, but rather to the music tastes of targeted criminals, who no longer congregate in 'sanitized' areas.


Maybe I should replace my iPod with a boom box.


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## hpowders

If Beethoven could be such a $hit in his own life, yet could compose music perceived to be of a high "moral" persuasion, I choose to hear music simply as a progression of very pleasant sounds.

As Toscanini said, "Some hear Napoleon....I hear Allegro con brio!" when talking about the first movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony.

I agree. There is nothing more to it. No lessons. No morality. Simply pleasant sounds.


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## Joris

Yeah, I follow Roger Scruton here that beauty - especially music - can restore some sense of the absolute morality we have so disastrously lost.... But maybe I'm just falling again for his strange mixture of arrogant charisma and humbleness so that I don't see through this irrational piffle


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## Giordano

I admire Yo-Yo Ma. It's not *what* you do but *how* you do it that makes the difference.

Yo-Yo Ma and the Mind Game of Music (NYTimes)


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## PetrB

People perpetually haul into discussion / debates on the power of music these citations of *Music+,* not for one moment thinking there is an innate flaw in citing such pieces, or how fallacious the arguments made as supported by those citations of *Music+* are.

*Music+*: textual content. 
*Music+*: context of story and picture, whether a film, opera, etc.

Take away _any and all_ of those *+* elements or associations which are the *+* of *Music+*, you are then left with music as music, which has no such readily made and named content or associations, and there is no argument left for the effect of music on Ethics, Morals, Politics, etc.

Any such answer involving any of those extra musical elements, which include in any part the *+* of *Music+*, negates any real discussion on the actual effect of 'just music.

All those questions and responses which need the inclusion of the *+* elements in *Music+* are Canards. Quack, Quack, Quack -- i.e. fake, if not charlatan


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## Guest

aajj said:


> There was that long ago study that (erroneously, i think) claimed babies turn out more intelligent when exposed to Mozart.





ahammel said:


> No study has ever shown anything of the sort.


Fact or Fiction?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-babies-ex/


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## PetrB

aajj said:


> I was referring to the 'Mozart Effect' study in the '90s. I am not saying i agree with the idea; i think it is a bunch of hooey.
> 
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281386/


The Mozart Effect _has been debunked by any number of scientists and any who have questioned the methods which brought those results saying there is a Mozart Effect._

If you take a bunch of kids about to take an exam, play them Mozart, though the effect is temporary, it did have them performing slightly better than: the control group, who _did nothing_ but sit and wait to take the same exam, allowing them all that time to get anxious about taking an exam. Anxiety is known to be _the greatest inhibitor / killer of good performance,_ whether it is playing a recital piece, taking an exam, or thinking properly in pulling an aircraft out of trouble.

Et Voila! The Mozart Effect. Millions of little books, CDs, Sony Walkman (at that time) sold. Pregnant mums with earphones stretched over their swollen bellies playing in the womb baby boy / girl Mozart. (Ever _hear music played under water?_ :lol:


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## PetrB

starthrower said:


> I've heard that last line expressed by other musicians. "We do it because we can."


Not only do they do it because they can; they write as they can, too.

I cannot (with a bit of regret) recall which mid-20th century German composer wrote this in a letter to his nephew, but "I've finished my Xth symphony. I hope to God people like it, because it is how I can write."

Shockingly, no ideology or other purpose or agenda there, just a symphony "as I can write."


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## PetrB

PetrB said:


> Not only do they do it because they can; they write as they can, too.
> 
> I cannot (with a bit of regret) recall which mid-20th century German composer wrote this in a letter to his nephew, but "I've finished my Xth symphony. I hope to God people like it, because it is how I can write."
> 
> Shockingly, no ideology or other purpose or agenda there, just a symphony "as I can write."


Film composers, other than a few very noteable ones, are genre chameleons who turn out passable to very convincing music to order, "big late romantic music needed under this scene," "sultry soft jazz needed under the next," "light modern pop contemporary piano music in the background in this scene," and so on. Some have absolutely no distinguishing musical traits of their own, but slip into genres a - z and convince in those arenas. In a way, they are like an actor at loss to say anything until they are given a script and a role.


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## spokanedaniel

I will just add my voice to what I think is the consensus here: Music has a strong effect on our emotions, but zero effect on our "morality."

I will add that while we all have a strong sense of what is moral, there is no general consensus on the matter. As an example, I will point out that many religions classify as "immoral" certain activities between consenting adults that harm nobody. As another, I consider misleading advertising to be immoral, but many (most?) people take a buyer-beware attitude and feel that everything not specifically prohibited by law is fair in the marketplace.

I submit that there is no action concerning which there is universal agreement as to its morality. This makes the original question a thorny one indeed. Unless, of course, you agree with me that music has no effect on our actions.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

Morality is a social/ collective consensus/standard on how to behave and is completely superficial....compassion is altogether a different thing and I think music definitely can invoke compassion (as well as many other things). In my personal experience, however, I've never been motivated to do a really bad or hurtful thing, even while listening to music that is martial or revs me up.....though I think it's possible that music could cultivate a love of combat (which it may have for me).

Also, just because an individual has a nasty side doesn't mean they don't feel compassion. People, especially people like Beethoven, Wagner, and other composers whose morality is questioned, are a lot more complex than that.


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## Guest

I'm quite sure that music, like every other influence in our lives, has the capacity to have some kind of impact on our actions and our words and, therefore, our morality (since no worthwhile morality exists without deeds).

Whether this is in anyway measurable is another matter.


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## pianolearnerstride

I doubt music in and of itself has any positive ethical quality... In fact I see a lot of negative ethical qualities in more serious music listeners...


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## science

PetrB said:


> People perpetually haul into discussion / debates on the power of music these citations of *Music+,* not for one moment thinking there is an innate flaw in citing such pieces, or how fallacious the arguments made as supported by those citations of *Music+* are.
> 
> *Music+*: textual content.
> *Music+*: context of story and picture, whether a film, opera, etc.
> 
> Take away _any and all_ of those *+* elements or associations which are the *+* of *Music+*, you are then left with music as music, which has no such readily made and named content or associations, and there is no argument left for the effect of music on Ethics, Morals, Politics, etc.
> 
> Any such answer involving any of those extra musical elements, which include in any part the *+* of *Music+*, negates any real discussion on the actual effect of 'just music.
> 
> All those questions and responses which need the inclusion of the *+* elements in *Music+* are Canards. Quack, Quack, Quack -- i.e. fake, if not charlatan


Well, as charlatan is something I aspire to be, I'll take this up.

It's apparent that "Music + text" is often more powerful than text alone. If someone does something compassionate or cruel because of a song they heard (or a chant they did or whatever), the music should probably share a bit of the credit or blame.

In fact, we get into the interesting speech/music gray area when we think about this. The Gettysburg Address isn't music, but a skilled reading of it certainly has some musical elements, and _at least_ part of the power of the written text itself is precisely that musical quality. So we might even argue that text is powerful to the degree that it is musical.

Granted, a pro-slavery speech could've been set to the same "music," and it could've been exactly as powerful - for the opposite side. We see this kind of thing with actual music in songs that existed in two versions, such as "Battle Cry of Freedom."

Even if you don't want to grant that all of the power is in the music, I think you have to concede that some of it is.


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## Tristan

I don't know, I find Shostakovich's music sometimes fuels my anger--it's often full of rage itself. And Orff's music is pretty dirty sometimes. _Catulli Carmina_, especially.


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## millionrainbows

aajj said:


> This thread is amusing. But i admit it's easier to imagine someone robbing a bank after listening to death metal than Mozart. There was that long ago study that (erroneously, i think) claimed babies turn out more intelligent when exposed to Mozart. On the other hand, some highly intelligent people commit crimes. This premise is bogus and i have nothing personal against Haydn.


Haydn was Christian, so it's easy for me to imagine starting an inquisition and killing people after listening to Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson sing his arias, than it is for me to imagine killing people after listening to John Cage.


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## millionrainbows

starthrower said:


> Hitler enjoyed classical music. I don't think it improved his character, so you've got a point there. The ethical quality of music has nothing to do with the listener, other than how it's perceived. But music doesn't lie. And one can usually tell if the composer's/performer's hearts aren't in it.


Yes, but the Nazis used Wagner, Brahms, Mozart and Beethoven as nationalistic vehicles, to convey the idea of German supremacy. Their music was definitely German from a Western tradition. Isn't the real problem in the way that the music is interpreted? True, this interpretation is not wholly literally "in" the music, but certain universal elements are there, which allow it to be interpreted that way. Music has an inherent mythic power which allows it to be used as a catalyst for various extra-musical purposes. Bach's music was for the Church, and contains such elements.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that music can be "appropriated" in almost any manner we wish.


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## millionrainbows

For morality, let's use sex as the example, not killing people. We all agree that is wrong.

So, which music makes you horny? Music that appeals to your "animal" nature, rather than your "brain." That means rhythm, and dance music. As late as 1950, people were warning people that rock and roll music would ruin our teenagers' morals.

So, if music as a catalyst brings out your more basic "animal" sexual nature, then it is "immoral" because it entices, and enhances the effect of movement, dancing, which leads away from the cerebral, towards the pelvic area.

It makes perfect sense to me.


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## Bulldog

millionrainbows said:


> For morality, let's use sex as the example, not killing people. We all agree that is wrong.
> 
> So, which music makes you horny? Music that appeals to your "animal" nature, rather than your "brain." That means rhythm, and dance music. As late as 1950, people were warning people that rock and roll music would ruin our teenagers' morals.
> 
> So, if music as a catalyst brings out your more basic "animal" sexual nature, then it is "immoral" because it entices, and enhances the effect of movement, dancing, which leads away from the cerebral, towards the pelvic area.


No, it's not immoral, just natural. For the record, I'll always pick the pelvic area over the cerebral.


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## millionrainbows

Bulldog said:


> No, it's not immoral, just natural. For the record, I'll always pick the pelvic area over the cerebral.


I didn't say sex was immoral; just that it is a better example for discussion than "killing people."

Sex is frequently is said to be immoral, though, and Christianity frowns on sex out of marriage, and Judaism frowns on homosexuality.

So this seems a more fertile area for discussion of morality than "killing people," which I think most people of any religious orientation, even atheists, or of any moral code would agree was inherently wrong.


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## Bulldog

millionrainbows said:


> I didn't say sex was immoral; just that it is a better example for discussion than "killing people."
> 
> Sex is frequently is said to be immoral, though, and Christianity frowns on sex out of marriage, and Judaism frowns on homosexuality.


First, you say that you're going to leave religion out of the equation, then you bring it right back into the mix.

As for those individuals or groups that consider sex immoral, I really don't care what the hell they think. Why do you?


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## aajj

hpowders said:


> If Beethoven could be such a $hit in his own life, yet could compose music perceived to be of a high "moral" persuasion, I choose to hear music simply as a progression of very pleasant sounds.
> 
> As Toscanini said, "Some hear Napoleon....I hear Allegro con brio!" when talking about the first movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony.
> 
> I agree. There is nothing more to it. No lessons. No morality. Simply pleasant sounds.


I also agree, and for whatever reason I thought of A Clockwork Orange, where Alex's beloved Beethoven becomes tangled in his brainwashing.

Alex: No. No! NO! Stop it! Stop it, please! I beg you! This is sin! This is sin! This is sin! It's a sin, it's a sin, it's a sin! 
Dr. Brodsky: Sin? What's all this about sin? 
Alex: That! Using Ludwig van like that! He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music! 
Dr. Branom: Are you referring to the background score? 
Alex: Yes. 
Dr. Branom: You've heard Beethoven before? 
Alex: Yes! 
Dr. Brodsky: So, you're keen on music? 
Alex: YES! 
Dr. Brodsky: Can't be helped. Here's the punishment element perhaps.


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## Marschallin Blair

aajj said:


> I also agree, and for whatever reason I thought of A Clockwork Orange, where Alex's beloved Beethoven becomes tangled in his brainwashing.
> 
> Alex: No. No! NO! Stop it! Stop it, please! I beg you! This is sin! This is sin! This is sin! It's a sin, it's a sin, it's a sin!
> Dr. Brodsky: Sin? What's all this about sin?
> Alex: That! Using Ludwig van like that! He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music!
> Dr. Branom: Are you referring to the background score?
> Alex: Yes.
> Dr. Branom: You've heard Beethoven before?
> Alex: Yes!
> Dr. Brodsky: So, you're keen on music?
> Alex: YES!
> Dr. Brodsky: Can't be helped. Here's the punishment element perhaps.


That would be the _Ninth_ and not the _Eroica_ of "Lovely Lovely Ludwig Van."


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## spokanedaniel

millionrainbows said:


> For morality, let's use sex as the example, not killing people. We all agree that is wrong....


Do we really all agree that killing is wrong? Lots of people believe that killing the other side's soldiers in war is not wrong. In fact when this country had the draft, people were sent to prison for refusing to kill people. And a lot of people felt that it was wrong to refuse to kill people, as long as our government gave the orders.

A lot of people feel that killing someone who breaks into your house is not wrong.

A lot of people feel that killing certain kinds of criminals is not wrong.

In fact, there is no consensus at all about killing.

For the record, I am a pacifist. I oppose all killing. And I have often been excoriated for that position, and more often been told that I am unrealistic. I am obviously in the minority in my extreme opposition to killing.

The concept of morality is universal, but there is no action that is universally agreed to be immoral.


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## millionrainbows

I think religion is used to set up internal barriers within people's minds, to control their morality and responses. The "Apocalypse" will not be literal but will be internal, when the barriers are broken down.

Christianity implies a certain moral code; after all, old testament law is the same for Christians and Jews.

The true "amorality" comes about when these belief systems are abandoned. Then, all the mythology and interpretation goes away, and Man becomes what he truly is.

That's why many here like Western Classical music, because it originated as ceremonial music for the Christian church, and it conveys the same morals and ethics, because that's what it was designed for.

Presently, the "Islamic" terrorists are being called out as "not true Muslims" because their form of Islam is a deviant one, as it is Jihad-oriented, and condones death and murder.

Morals are inherently conveyed by religion, and if music is a tool or expression of that belief system, it is "moral" or "ethical" music by implication, if not overtly.

In general, people are headed for "the light" or the "good" side of their nature, but this is a struggle to maintain, and is not really "natural" because it suppresses or "demonizes" the darker side of Man's nature.

This is like the KKK using Christianity in an altered form; all the did was "change the demon" and substitute those people they did not like.

Even "good" sane Christians can become too over-zealous, and tend to moralize and castigate where they have no right, and this violates other people's freedoms if they happen not to agree.

But "good" and the "light" are always assumed as obvious and universal by the righteous, even when it is not.


----------



## Woodduck

I can't imagine that any adult's basic moral disposition is going to be changed by the music he or she listens to. About the moral sense of young, immature people, or mentally unstable individuals of any age, I'm not so sure. Music stirs strong and diverse feelings, and feelings both evoke and reinforce ideas. Music with words - most popular music - relates these evoked feelings to specific ideas. Ideas and feelings have power; together they are the motivators of all human action. 

Music, with or without words, has always been used to inspire and energize people, to reinforce certain socially approved attitudes and behaviors. It seems to perform this function quite well (or at least we go on using it in the belief that it does). That its effect in such contexts should be in some degree or sense "moral" doesn't seem far-fetched to me. But even on an individual basis, the ability of music to evoke feelings of considerable complexity and depth, and the intimate connection in consciousness between feeling and ideation, has at least the potential to inspire contemplations of oneself and of life which could have an effect on character. "Could" is, of course, the crucial word. And it seems unlikely that such contemplation, even in the strongest cases, would effect any fundamental shift in a person's moral conscience, but at most a reinforcement or refinement of it.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Perotin said:


> Ancient Greeks believed, that music can cultivate one's character and make him a better person, and ancient Chinese held a similar view, I think. Do you feel that listening to classical music makes you more moral? If so, which composers have positive "ethical" influence on you? If I had to choose one, it would be Haydn, I could hardly imagine myself killing somebody while listening to Haydn's music. Any thoughts on this?


Plato didn't. . . but then, who cares what Plato has to say about anything? _;D_


----------



## Badinerie

His Biographer? Anyway...I have never noticed a connection between music and Ethical behaviour. I know folks who listen to Death Metal and folks who like Debussy. None of them are violent psychotics or Bishops.


----------



## KenOC

Marschallin Blair said:


> Plato didn't. . . but then, who cares what Plato has to say about anything? _;D_


Uh, Book III of The Republic. I'm not sure Plato thought music could make a person better, but he certainly thought it could make him worse.

https://theoryofmusic.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/music-in-platos-republic/


----------



## Marschallin Blair

KenOC said:


> Uh, Book III of The Republic. I'm not sure Plato thought music could make a person better, but he certainly thought it could make him worse.
> 
> https://theoryofmusic.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/music-in-platos-republic/


Right: to the godfather of totalitarianism in the West, music is not 'good,' but only provisionally so--- provided that the music serves the State.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Badinerie said:


> His Biographer? Anyway...I have never noticed a connection between music and Ethical behaviour. I know folks who listen to Death Metal and folks who like Debussy. None of them are violent psychotics or Bishops.


I've met delightful kids sporting Slayer and Ministry shirts--- and some not-so-wonderful people who cherish Chopin and Bach.

So yeah, I think the correlation between music and ethical behavior is stochastic at best.


----------



## KenOC

Marschallin Blair said:


> Right: to the godfather of totalitarianism in the West, music is not 'good,' but only provisionally so--- provided that the music serves the State.


Quite true, and not a theme that died with Plato! Ask Shostakovich.

"We were saying, when we spoke of the subject-matter, that we had no need of lamentations and strains of sorrow?

True.

And which are the harmonies expressive of sorrow? You are musical and can tell me.

The harmonies which you mean are the mixed or tenor Lydian, and the full-toned or bass Lydian, and such-like.

These then, I said, must be banished; even to women who have a character to maintain they are of no use, and much less to men.

Certainly.

In the next place, drunkenness and softness and indolence are utterly unbecoming the character of our guardians.

Utterly unbecoming?

And which are the soft and convivial harmonies?

The Ionian, he replied, and some of the Lydian which are termed "relaxed".

Well, and are these of any use for warlike men?"


----------



## regenmusic

I think music can have some objective influence. Don't think about extremes, like Hitler.
They don't have any relevance. No one is going to think that music can influence the extremes
that already have such track records, and what does "likes classical music" mean, and is there
even truth in this biographical note. How much did he like it? What did he like about it? (Maybe
that it looked good?).

I always get a transcendental spiritual feeling from listening to Bach, Vaughn Williams, Debussy,
and many others. I think it's because these men were like that. About some composers being mean
people, well, even Jesus was often insulting Pharisees, even sometimes his own disciples like Peter.
Great people sometimes have a great range of emotions, while people who aim for much less, are
more predictable and get "nice" right most of the time.


----------



## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> Quite true, and not a theme that died with Plato! Ask Shostakovich.
> 
> "We were saying, when we spoke of the subject-matter, that we had no need of lamentations and strains of sorrow?
> 
> True.
> 
> And which are the harmonies expressive of sorrow? You are musical and can tell me.
> 
> The harmonies which you mean are the mixed or tenor Lydian, and the full-toned or bass Lydian, and such-like.
> 
> These then, I said, must be banished; even to women who have a character to maintain they are of no use, and much less to men.
> 
> Certainly.
> 
> In the next place, drunkenness and softness and indolence are utterly unbecoming the character of our guardians.
> 
> Utterly unbecoming?
> 
> And which are the soft and convivial harmonies?
> 
> The Ionian, he replied, and some of the Lydian which are termed "relaxed".
> 
> Well, and are these of any use for warlike men?"


Just to make sure people know: The Ancient Greek mode names do not correspond to any later western conception of the modes because the codifiers of the church modes read the Greek modes upside down. So, for example, Ionian as used above does not correspond to a modern major scale.


----------



## Perotin

Marschallin Blair said:


> I've met delightful kids sporting Slayer and Ministry shirts--- and some not-so-wonderful people who cherish Chopin and Bach.
> 
> So yeah, I think the correlation between music and ethical behavior is stochastic at best.


I don't buy this argument. This is what C. S. Lewis wrote in his book "Mere Christianity" about effect of christianity on people's personalities and I think the same holds true for music:

"Christian Miss Bates may have an unkinder tongue
than unbelieving Dick Firkin. That, by itself, does not tell us whether Christianity works.
The question is what Miss Bates's tongue would be like if she were not a Christian and what Dick's
would be like if he became one. Miss Bates and Dick, as a result of natural causes and early
upbringing, have certain temperaments: Christianity professes to put both temperaments under new
management if they will allow it to do so. What you have a right to ask is whether that management, if
allowed to take over, improves the concern. Everyone knows that what is being managed in Dick
Firkin's case is much "nicer" than what is being managed in Miss Bates's.
That is not the point. To judge the management of a factory, you must consider not only the output but
the plant. Considering the plant at Factory A it may be a wonder that it turns out anything at all;
considering the first-class outfit at Factory B its output, though high, may be a great deal lower than it
ought to be. No doubt the good manager at Factory A is going to put in new machinery as soon as he
can, but that takes time. In the meantime low output does not prove that he is a failure."

So, some people who listen to death metal might be nice by nature, but would be even nicer, if they didn't listen to death metal, and some people, who listen to classical music might be unpleasnt by nature, but would be even more so, if they didn't listen to classical music.


----------



## Crudblud

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I listen to death metal and classical music, and about a hundred other kinds of music. I don't think any one of them has affected my character, rather I was drawn to them all because of my character.


----------



## PetrB

Perotin said:


> I don't buy this argument. This is what C. S. Lewis wrote in his book "Mere Christianity" about effect of christianity on people's personalities and I think the same holds true for music:
> 
> "Christian Miss Bates may have an unkinder tongue
> than unbelieving Dick Firkin. That, by itself, does not tell us whether Christianity works.
> The question is what Miss Bates's tongue would be like if she were not a Christian and what Dick's would be like if he became one. Miss Bates and Dick, as a result of natural causes and early upbringing, have certain temperaments: Christianity professes to put both temperaments under new management if they will allow it to do so. What you have a right to ask is whether that management, if allowed to take over, improves the concern. Everyone knows that what is being managed in Dick Firkin's case is much "nicer" than what is being managed in Miss Bates's.
> That is not the point. To judge the management of a factory, you must consider not only the output but the plant. Considering the plant at Factory A it may be a wonder that it turns out anything at all; considering the first-class outfit at Factory B its output, though high, may be a great deal lower than it ought to be. No doubt the good manager at Factory A is going to put in new machinery as soon as he can, but that takes time. In the meantime low output does not prove that he is a failure."
> 
> So, some people who listen to death metal might be nice by nature, but would be even nicer, if they didn't listen to death metal, and some people, who listen to classical music might be unpleasnt by nature, but would be even more so, if they didn't listen to classical music.


You can throw the whole construct out. Music is a bunch of notes, a bunch of tones: _music without text has only a vague and general influence, and that is highly and briefly temporal in effect (ten minutes after the piece is over, you are on your own, "yourself again.")_

You tie in words, not only words, but a construct of a punishment if you are not good which will come your way if you believe in it. This is a sort of "Dear God make me good because I know without you I would be bad," -- all in the realm of thought as articulated and set out by words, speech or read texts, verbal thoughts -- which, BTW are processed in a completely different area of the brain than music.

With your premise, you impose (and transpose from the realm of text, not music qua music) a belief in the powers of music. The mention of "Death Metal" -- the word death right there, and the fact an overwhelming percent of pop music _is text dependent as well as primarily about the text_, ergo, that influence comes solely via the text, not 'just the notes.'

The inclusion of faith, in this instance Christianity, is also completely about words and their influence (not music, just to harp on it and a text-conveyed tenet which has people led to believe that some force can and does 'mind you even if you are not minding yourself,' with its built in awarded punishments as threat that if you are not good....

Sweet sentiment, however, about the power of influence of music, but a wished for sentiment, nothing more.


----------



## Guest

Perotin said:


> I don't buy this argument. This is what C. S. Lewis wrote in his book "Mere Christianity" about effect of christianity on people's personalities and I think the same holds true for music:
> 
> "Christian Miss Bates may have an unkinder tongue than unbelieving Dick Firkin. That, by itself, does not tell us whether Christianity works. The question is what Miss Bates's tongue would be like if she were not a Christian and what Dick's
> would be like if he became one. Miss Bates and Dick, as a result of natural causes and early upbringing, have certain temperaments: Christianity professes to put both temperaments under new management if they will allow it to do so. What you have a right to ask is whether that management, if allowed to take over, improves the concern. Everyone knows that what is being managed in Dick Firkin's case is much "nicer" than what is being managed in Miss Bates's. That is not the point. To judge the management of a factory, you must consider not only the output but the plant. Considering the plant at Factory A it may be a wonder that it turns out anything at all; considering the first-class outfit at Factory B its output, though high, may be a great deal lower than it ought to be. No doubt the good manager at Factory A is going to put in new machinery as soon as he
> can, but that takes time. In the meantime low output does not prove that he is a failure."
> 
> *So, some people who listen to death metal might be nice by nature, but would be even nicer, if they didn't listen to death metal, and some people, who listen to classical music might be unpleasant by nature, but would be even more so, if they didn't listen to classical music.*


I enjoyed reading that post, Pérotin, about C.S. Lewis, which is new information to me. To address the part I have highlighted in blue in your quote, may I ask how this applies to the racist murderers running the death camps during WWII who really did quite enjoy classical music?


----------



## Perotin

TalkingHead said:


> I enjoyed reading that post, Pérotin, about C.S. Lewis, which is new information to me. To address the part I have highlighted in blue in your quote, may I ask how this applies to the racist murderers running the death camps during WWII who really did quite enjoy classical music?


Well, instead of killing "just" 6 million Jews they would have killed 12 million? Just kidding! I don't know how to reply, maybe it depenends on what kind of classical music did they listen to, or maybe their character was beyond repair, so that even classical music couldn't help them, or maybe it did help them, but only in their private life. God knows what was going on in their minds!


----------



## ahammel

Perotin said:


> So, some people who listen to death metal might be nice by nature, but would be even nicer, if they didn't listen to death metal, and some people, who listen to classical music might be unpleasnt by nature, but would be even more so, if they didn't listen to classical music.


The claim isn't that particular people who like classical music behave badly. The claim is that classical music fans in general are not any better behaved than non-fans.

And by the way, are we _really_ going to start throwing around the assertion that heavy metal causes immoral behaviour? What year is this? I thought the satanic panic was over.


----------



## PetrB

Perotin said:


> Well, instead of killing "just" 6 million Jews they would have killed 12 million? Just kidding! I don't know how to reply, maybe it depenends on what kind of classical music did they listen to, or maybe their character was beyond repair, so that even classical music couldn't help them, or maybe it did help them, but only in their private life. God knows what was going on in their minds!


Bach, Mozart, Wagner, Brahms, etc. There is just no argument to be made to support your premise. As I said, it is a lovely thought, but nothing else. People, collectively and routinely are swayed by one, or the writings of one, or they sway themselves by way of verbal thought and rationale to do unspeakable things.

Currently, we have peoples so literally misinterpreting their particular holy writs that they think it right to go and kill others whose holy writ that is, as well as kill those who believe in some other holy writ. A listener's misinterpretation of a Mozart Symphony has yet to be demonstrated or proven a similar lever or vehicle to get to that same obscene and horrible place.

A psychotic can listen to Bach's Goldberg Variations and think it is the most suitable 'setting him up' to go out and torture and kill. At best, you can say that psychotic was stalled for the duration it took to listen to the Bach before going out to kill.

There is just no such direct connect with music as you would attribute to it, _until that very different category of music with texts is included._


----------



## PetrB

Crudblud said:


> You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I listen to death metal and classical music, and about a hundred other kinds of music.


But Crudblud, you are a transparent and too easy read: that is all over your face.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Perotin said:


> I don't buy this argument. This is what C. S. Lewis wrote in his book "Mere Christianity" about effect of christianity on people's personalities and I think the same holds true for music:
> 
> "Christian Miss Bates may have an unkinder tongue
> than unbelieving Dick Firkin. That, by itself, does not tell us whether Christianity works.
> The question is what Miss Bates's tongue would be like if she were not a Christian and what Dick's
> would be like if he became one. Miss Bates and Dick, as a result of natural causes and early
> upbringing, have certain temperaments: Christianity professes to put both temperaments under new
> management if they will allow it to do so. What you have a right to ask is whether that management, if
> allowed to take over, improves the concern. Everyone knows that what is being managed in Dick
> Firkin's case is much "nicer" than what is being managed in Miss Bates's.
> That is not the point. To judge the management of a factory, you must consider not only the output but
> the plant. Considering the plant at Factory A it may be a wonder that it turns out anything at all;
> considering the first-class outfit at Factory B its output, though high, may be a great deal lower than it
> ought to be. No doubt the good manager at Factory A is going to put in new machinery as soon as he
> can, but that takes time. In the meantime low output does not prove that he is a failure."
> 
> So, some people who listen to death metal might be nice by nature, but would be even nicer, if they didn't listen to death metal, and some people, who listen to classical music might be unpleasnt by nature, but would be even more so, if they didn't listen to classical music.


Well, whether my way or C.S. Lewis' way-- neither can be proven conclusively, unless perhaps one took identical twins at birth and inured one to Motley Crue and exposed the other to Monteverdi.


----------



## spokanedaniel

Perotin said:


> [Argument from C.S. Lewis snipped out for brevity...]
> 
> So, some people who listen to death metal might be nice by nature, but would be even nicer, if they didn't listen to death metal, and some people, who listen to classical music might be unpleasnt by nature, but would be even more so, if they didn't listen to classical music.


I disagree with this assertion, both as regards Christianity or any other religion, and as regards music. The assertion is pure speculation, without any evidence, and is self-serving since Lewis was a passionate defender of Christianity. Lewis, furthermore, consistently makes the most flawed arguments I've ever encountered in favor of religion. Pascal's Wager, which C.S. Lewis was fond of citing, is the single most infantile argument for religion I've ever seen, since it makes the implicit assumption that there are only two possibilities: Pauline Christianity, or no god at all. Lewis is just not worthy of being quoted in any argument.

The actual evidence is that neither music nor religion has any effect on people's behavior, though religion is almost universally claimed by its adherents to be their motivation.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I can't imagine that any adult's basic moral disposition is going to be changed by the music he or she listens to.


But if your daughter went to a rave, and listened to "rave" music, ans ended up doing drugs and getting pregnant, you could safely say that music, as an enhancement, certainly contributed in some way to her behavior. What about females throwing their panties at Tom Jones? Surely his music was at least a contributing factor, as a propaganda tool for Tom Jones' projection of sexuality.


----------



## Woodduck

You quote the first sentence of my post: "I can't imagine that any adult's basic moral disposition is going to be changed by the music he or she listens to." Your comment:



millionrainbows said:


> But if your daughter went to a rave, and listened to "rave" music, and ended up doing drugs and getting pregnant, you could safely say that music, as an enhancement, certainly contributed in some way to her behavior. What about females throwing their panties at Tom Jones? Surely his music was at least a contributing factor, as a propaganda tool for Tom Jones' projection of sexuality.


What you missed in my sentence was its two key words: "adult," and "basic."

I also said, in the same post: "About the moral sense of young, immature people, or mentally unstable individuals of any age, I'm not so sure. Music stirs strong and diverse feelings, and feelings both evoke and reinforce ideas. Music with words - most popular music - relates these evoked feelings to specific ideas. Ideas and feelings have power; together they are the motivators of all human action."

And: "Music, with or without words, has always been used to inspire and energize people, to reinforce certain socially approved attitudes and behaviors. It seems to perform this function quite well (or at least we go on using it in the belief that it does). That its effect in such contexts should be in some degree or sense 'moral' doesn't seem far-fetched to me."

Does that cover your two examples?


----------



## KenOC

Marschallin Blair said:


> Well, whether my way or C.S. Lewis' way-- neither can be proven conclusively, unless perhaps one took identical twins at birth and inured one to Motley Crue and exposed the other to Monteverdi.


Even so, we have to ask: What is the preferred mode of behavior and of facing the world? Lewis might support the kind tolerance of the gentle English parson -- but history might suggest otherwise. If I'm dispatching a warlike force to face the foe, I might prefer one inured to the Stones than to Schubert.


----------



## Guest

The problem I have with the direction the discussion is taking is not whether music has the power to change (or reinforce) behaviour...I already posted that I believe it does...but that different behaviours are being put in some kind of 'moral/immoral' continuum.

Whilst there may be common agreement that murder is 'immoral', other behaviours are less likely to be agreed upon - though I'm sure that some here will insist that 'doing drugs' is immoral.

IMO, it's an unhelpful approach.


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> Whilst there may be common agreement that murder is 'immoral', other behaviours are less likely to be agreed upon...


Well, as a "civilized" society we seem to indulge in it quite a bit. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" has a lot of exceptions that scroll well down the page.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Well, as a "civilized" society we seem to indulge in it quite a bit. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" has a lot of exceptions that scroll well down the page.


Agreeing to commit an immoral act does not negate the fact that it is immoral. Our civilised society, having once determined that murder is wrong, cannot then cite exceptions in order to commit 'moral' murder. All it can do is recognise that it has consented to commit an immoral act.

(Also, I said 'there _may _be agreement', and I think there is a difference between 'murder' and 'killing' which is why I used the one term and not the other.)


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> (Also, I said 'there _may _be agreement', and I think there is a difference between 'murder' and 'killing' which is why I used the one term and not the other.)


Ah, drawing you in deeper! Would you care to explain the difference between "murder" and "killing"?

On second thought, don't. This is a music thread, and we don't want to rouse the mods from their dogmatic slumbers.

So, how about those Raff symphonies?


----------



## Blancrocher

KenOC said:


> Ah, drawing you in deeper! Would you care to explain the difference between "murder" and "killing"?
> 
> On second thought, don't. This is a music thread, and we don't want to rouse the mods from their dogmatic slumbers.
> 
> So, how about those Raff symphonies?


I think they're murder, though I know some around here think they're killer.


----------



## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> Ah, drawing you in deeper! Would you care to explain the difference between "murder" and "killing"?
> 
> On second thought, don't. This is a music thread, and we don't want to rouse the mods from their dogmatic slumbers.
> 
> So, how about those Raff symphonies?


It's always Raff, isn't it? I swear to you, Raff is gonna get you some day.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Ah, drawing you in deeper! Would you care to explain the difference between "murder" and "killing"?
> 
> On second thought, don't. This is a music thread, and we don't want to rouse the mods from their dogmatic slumbers.
> 
> So, how about those Raff symphonies?


Sorry...I missed the references to 'Raff' ("who he?"*) I was so distracted by the quotes from the lovely but insipid CS Lewis.

[*anyone know where this expression - not a typo - comes from?]


----------



## Headphone Hermit

MacLeod said:


> [*anyone know where this expression - not a typo - comes from?]


Who He (also published as The Rat Race) is a novel by science fiction author Alfred Bester, published in 1953

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_He?


----------



## Guest

Headphone Hermit said:


> Who He (also published as The Rat Race) is a novel by science fiction author Alfred Bester, published in 1953
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_He?


Thanks. That's all I'd found too. However, on another forum, I got this answer...



> James Thurber reports that his boss (can't remember which paper - New Yorker?) used to say it every time Thurber mentioned Someone Famous


----------



## ahammel

KenOC said:


> Ah, drawing you in deeper! Would you care to explain the difference between "murder" and "killing"?


Murder is the intentional, unlawful killing of a human being.


----------



## Albert7

Allow me to joke around but the only ethical music are the tracks which are downloaded from legit sites like iTunes and not torrented LOL.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> It's always Raff, isn't it? I swear to you, Raff is gonna get you some day.


Stirring the pot.

I can tell what you're Raffter.


----------



## KenOC

Raff's brother Riff -- killed in a hunting accident after having a sex change operation. Bob Marley wrote a song about that. It's name was...was...was...


----------



## Woodduck

Marschallin Blair said:


> Stirring the pot.
> 
> I can tell what you're Raffter.


Raff ain't riff raff. He'll have the rast raugh.


----------



## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> Raff ain't riff raff. He'll have the rast raugh.


From another forum, a very successful tongue-twister. Say three times. "He who laughs at Raff laughs last."


----------



## Marschallin Blair

KenOC said:


> From another forum, a very successful tongue-twister. Say three times. "He who laughs at Raff laughs last."


I tried out loud just now. . . and someone in my office told me I sounded like a leprechaun. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

CORRIGENDUM: Someone in my office told me to: "Shut up! You sound like a f*#[email protected]^% leprechaun."


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> Raff ain't riff raff. He'll have the rast raugh.


Even even if I roar with Raffter?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

KenOC said:


> From another forum, a very successful tongue-twister. Say three times. "He who laughs at Raff laughs last."


Try being blonde and saying it: You'll sound like Al Gore, only not so smart.


----------



## Woodduck

Marschallin Blair said:


> Even even if I roar with Raffter?


Even... even if you stam...stammer while do...doing it.


----------



## Markbridge

It's common knowledge that evil people listen predominately to classical music. That's why Hollywood always has the bad guy listening to classical music when he (it's always a guy, you know) is planning his next murder. Gosh, I thought everyone knew that.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> Even... even if you stam...stammer while do...doing it.


Well, let me try: "My name's Al Bore. . . . . . . and I. . . . I. . . I'mmmmmmmmm. . . wee-_todd_. . . . _WE-TODD-ID_.

-Yes we can.


----------



## science

Markbridge said:


> It's common knowledge that evil people listen predominately to classical music. That's why Hollywood always has the bad guy listening to classical music when he (it's always a guy, you know) is planning his next murder. Gosh, I thought everyone knew that.


Oh, no. This means even Hollywood's on to me. I could take the Pentagon, the Kremlin, maybe even the Bilderbergers, but if Hollywood's on to me, I need to move on to Plan B.

Watch out talkfolk. Science is a-comin' to your town.


----------



## Albert7

science said:


> Oh, no. This means even Hollywood's on to me. I could take the Pentagon, the Kremlin, maybe even the Bilderbergers, but if Hollywood's on to me, I need to move on to Plan B.
> 
> Watch out talkfolk. Science is a-comin' to your town.


Sorry but I'll be dropping some Science... splat on the mat.


----------



## PetrB

ahammel said:


> Murder is the intentional, unlawful killing of a human being.


Bingo!

I've read in a number of places that particular old testament commandment is more correctly translated,
"Thou shalt not murder."


----------



## Haydn man

Music can influence your mood, which in turn can have an effect on behaviour. However I don't think this is an ethical effect as that would suggest it can change rather than influence you.


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## PetrB

Markbridge said:


> It's common knowledge that evil people listen predominately to classical music. That's why Hollywood always has the bad guy listening to classical music when he (it's always a guy, you know) is planning his next murder. Gosh, I thought everyone knew that.


Ah, yes, _The Goldberg Variations_ as prelude to murder and cannibalism. Bach _always elevates the spirit,_ doesn't it?


----------



## EdwardBast

PetrB said:


> I've read in a number of places that particular old testament commandment is more correctly translated,
> "Thou shalt not murder."


And even more correctly as: "Thou shalt not kill members of thine own family and tribe who believeth as thou doest; anyone else is fair game."

Pardon me for once again addressing the premise of the thread:

The most sustained modern argument for music's ethical power I am aware of is Philip Downs' essay, "Beethoven's 'New Way' and the Eroica,"* an early example of a modern (so-called) narrative analysis. He focuses only on the first movement. To paraphrase and summarize: Heroism is metaphorically exemplified in the principal theme, not as an aspect of content, but as a structural idea. To wit:

The movement's hero, the first part of the principal theme (mm. 3-22) meets a powerful opposing force, embodied in the duple cross-rhythms and harmonic tension of mm. 23-36. By confronting and reasserting itself in the face of this dangerous force (m.37ff) - the very definition of heroism - the central conflict of the movement is set.

In the development the opposing force grows in power and fury, staging an onslaught (mm. 248-79) in which duple rhythms cut against the prevailing meter, reaching a harrowing, dissonant climax on the Neopolitan 6/5 of E minor. The consequence is the so-called "new theme" of the development, which is, in fact, a dark, downfallen alter-ego of the "hero theme."

The conflict, according to Downs, is resolved in the recapitulation. Downs believes that the movement's dramatic conflict, along with its final resolution, "provide a lesson on the conquering of self," benefiting humanity by showing "the listener an analogue of his own potentiality for perfection[;] a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."

*Downs, Philip G. "Beethoven's 'New Way' and the Eroica." In _The Creative World of Beethoven_, ed. Paul Henry Lang, 83-102. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1970.


----------



## PetrB

EdwardBast said:


> And even more correctly as: "Though shalt not murder members of thine own family and tribe who believeth as thou doest; anyone one else is fair game."
> 
> Pardon me for once again addressing the premise of the thread:
> 
> The most sustained modern argument for music's ethical power I am aware of is Philip Downs' essay, "Beethoven's 'New Way' and the Eroica,"* an early example of a modern (so-called) narrative analysis. He focuses only on the first movement. To paraphrase and summarize: Heroism is metaphorically exemplified in the principal theme, not as an aspect of content, but as a structural idea. To wit:
> 
> The movement's hero, the first part of the principal theme (mm. 3-22) meets a powerful opposing force, embodied in the duple cross-rhythms and harmonic tension of mm. 23-36. By confronting and reasserting itself in the face of this dangerous force (m.37ff) - the very definition of heroism, by the way - the central conflict of the movement is set.
> 
> In the development the opposing force grows in power and fury, staging an onslaught (mm. 248-79) in which duple rhythms cut against the prevailing meter, reaching a harrowing, dissonant climax on the Neopolitan 6/5 of E minor. The consequence is the so-called "new theme" of the development, which is, in fact, a dark, downfallen alter-ego of the "hero theme."
> 
> The conflict, according to Downs, is resolved in the recapitulation. Downs believes that the movement's dramatic conflict, along with its final resolution, "provide a lesson on the conquering of self," benefiting humanity by showing "the listener an analogue of his own potentiality for perfection[;] a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."




Narrative Analysis might well have its useful functions. I still think imposing _completely impossible to prove_ verbal thoughts and interpretations on "a bunch of notes" is a no-strength non-argument that music is about 'anything' or that it can evoke / provoke anything about "a bunch of notes" and ethics.

What if, really, that particular movement is, as the guy said, _only about_ Allegro con Brio? -- and Eb? -- about the only two things anyone can be certain it is, at any rate.


----------



## EdwardBast

PetrB said:


> Narrative Analysis might well have its useful functions. I still think imposing _completely impossible to prove_ verbal thoughts and interpretations on "a bunch of notes" is a no-strength non-argument that music is about 'anything' or that it can evoke / provoke anything about "a bunch of notes" and ethics.
> 
> What if, really, that particular movement is, as the guy said, _only about_ Allegro con Brio? -- and Eb? -- about the only two things anyone can be certain it is, at any rate.


A common misconception about narrative analysis is that its purview is "imposing … verbal thoughts and interpretations on … notes," that is, assigning definite meanings or attributing extramusical stories to absolute music. In fact, the mainstream of narrative analysis has been focused primarily on structural parameters, but ones that are, for various reasons, beyond the reach or purview of formal analysis. Most important among these are thematic processes, about which traditional music theory has virtually nothing to say.

Take as an example the thematic process Downs describes in the first movement of the Eroica (see post above). Synoptically: A relationship among two motives at odds in the principal theme changes over time such that the element predominating in the beginning is eclipsed by the other motive later in the movement. Essentially, they are engaged in a power struggle whose working out is a primary factor in the work's formal coherence and sense of directed motion. This kind of procedure is apparent in many of Beethoven's most dramatic and innovative works, including the first movements of the sonatas Op. 57 ("Appassionata"), Op. 31 no. 2 ("Tempest"), Op. 31 no. 3, the quartets Op. 59 no. 3, Op. 95, Op. 130, and Op. 135, not to mention the _Andante con moto_ of the Fourth Piano Concerto. This procedure is an essential element of Beethoven's mature style, it is objective and readily observed, but there are no formal theoretical terms for it. It can only adequately be described in narrative terms, as a sort of abstract plot, that is, one with no specific extramusical implications.

Another primary application of narrative analysis has been explaining why some thematic links among movements in romantic sonatas and symphonies seem strongly motivated and devastatingly effective while others are banal or incoherent. Formal analysis is useless in these matters, which is why much of the best recent criticism on thematic processes on the grand scale has been done by the musical narrativists.

Edit: By the way, in my last post I wasn't endorsing Downs's interpretation or conclusions, only making known the existence of a serious attempt to grapple with the issue raised in this thread.


----------



## Woodduck

EdwardBast said:


> A common misconception about narrative analysis is that its purview is "imposing … verbal thoughts and interpretations on … notes," that is, assigning definite meanings or attributing extramusical stories to absolute music. In fact, the mainstream of narrative analysis has been focused primarily on structural parameters, but ones that are, for various reasons, beyond the reach or purview of formal analysis. Most important among these are thematic processes, about which traditional music theory has virtually nothing to say.
> 
> Take as an example the thematic process Downs describes in the first movement of the Eroica (see post above). Synoptically: A relationship among two motives at odds in the principal theme changes over time such that the element predominating in the beginning is eclipsed by the other motive later in the movement. Essentially, they are engaged in a power struggle whose working out is a primary factor in the work's formal coherence and sense of directed motion. This kind of procedure is apparent in many of Beethoven's most dramatic and innovative works, including the first movements of the sonatas Op. 57 ("Appassionata"), Op. 31 no. 2 ("Tempest"), Op. 31 no. 3, the quartets Op. 59 no. 3, Op. 95, Op. 130, and Op. 135, not to mention the _Andante con moto_ of the Fourth Piano Concerto. This procedure is an essential element of Beethoven's mature style, it is objective and readily observed, but there are no formal theoretical terms for it. It can only adequately be described in narrative terms, as a sort of abstract plot, that is, one with no specific extramusical implications.
> 
> Another primary application of narrative analysis has been explaining why some thematic links among movements in romantic sonatas and symphonies seem strongly motivated and devastatingly effective while others are banal or incoherent. Formal analysis is useless in these matters, which is why much of the best recent criticism on thematic processes on the grand scale has been done by the musical narrativists.


This inspires the reflection that when people dismiss or belittle the idea of "meaning" in music, reducing the subject to statements such as "music means itself" or "music is about putting sounds together," they seem to assume a restricted definition of "meaning," as a property of specific concepts more or less capable of being verbalized. The sense of "narrative" in the "Eroica" is unmistakable, and, in Beethoven's hands, irresistible, but it isn't a narrative of specific events reliant on any concrete story or plot. Rather, it gives us an experience of the kinds of dynamic forces that underlie, and make possible, particular stories and plots. That's not an absence of meaning, but a kind of "meaning beneath all meanings." This kind of abstraction of qualities, transcending the particular, is not a specifically musical process - it's the way perception and thought work - but music gives it sensuous embodiment and allows us to experience it as an object of direct perception.

What music does, and what it conveys by doing what it does, is, even in simple musical structures, of a subtlety, complexity and potential for stimulation, evocation and suggestion quite beyond verbal equivalence or explication. But, as you're pointing out, it's beyond conventional formal analysis as well. Neither verbal programs nor descriptions of how he "puts notes together" can tell us, ultimately, what Beethoven is doing in the "Eroica," and why it works upon us and works so powerfully. We have to take account of melodic shapes, thematic mutations, harmonic progressions, rhythmic emphases, dynamic gradations and contrasts, and all the complex interactions of these - and then we have to resort to simile and metaphor referring to dynamic processes of both inner experience and life in the world, extending beyond the bounds of music itself, even to approach an "understanding" of why the notes are put together in this particular way. Some people may think this an arbitrary, hopeless, or simply uninteresting endeavor, but they should not mistake a complexity of meaning that resists definitive verbal explication for an absence of meaning. Meaning exists in the selection of notes by the composer, their interpretation by the performer, and their reception by the listener, whether or not any meaning is ever verbalized - or susceptible to verbalization - at any point in the process.

Does the narrative of the "Eroica" allow an interpretation with moral implications? I don't believe we need to hear it that way, but I think the music supports Downs' perspective quite compellingly.

Will listening to it improve mankind's moral character?

No. Nothing will.


----------



## ahammel

EdwardBast said:


> Downs believes that the movement's dramatic conflict, along with its final resolution, "provide a lesson on the conquering of self," benefiting humanity by showing "the listener an analogue of his own potentiality for perfection[;] a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."




Well, that's why nobody likes Beethoven wackos.


----------



## Triplets

EdwardBast said:


> Are you sure of that attribution Ken? I could have sworn that quotation is from Ancient Greek philosophy. Plato?
> 
> Edit: It was in fact Damon of Athens, a contemporary of Plato, who said this. Plato, I believe, quoted Damon and ran with it. Greek theorists attributed different ethical effects to particular musical modes.


Plato abhored music. He wanted it banned in The Republic.


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## Giordano

In post #21, I said,



> Art can show you, in this reality, that you are not what you believe your "self" to be and thus set you on a course of self-inquiry through which you discover your SELF and expand your ability to KNOW.


I was thinking of the _Eroica_ and _The Iliad_, both of which I discovered at about the same time when I was 11-12 yo. I don't remember what my thoughts were exactly. I don't think I had any thoughts... I often think without thoughts... The best description of my reaction to the then new-to-me art was that I already knew them and I had come home. The feeling of home (which was not temporal or spatial) was so at odds with what I perceived physically that I _knew_ I was not what I _apparently_ was. I did not think of heroism; I just _knew without thoughts_ that I was _larger_ than what physical perception and worldly ideas allowed me to be. This was a direct result of being absorbed in and attuned to the music and the poetry. Obviously I had not studied any literature or music and knew nothing beyond what I actually read and heard in the works.

This story does not prove anything, of course, but it was the event, caused directly by the content/something in the art, that opened the door for my further growth, continuing to this day.

The narrative analysis by Philip Downs is interesting, but after the fact, and unnecessary (to me). The something in the music that affected an ignorant but receptive boy is the quality of music that cannot be easily articulated. My best argument would be that there is more to the music than is apparent to the physical senses, that affects human consciousness, but the receptivity and the effect is very much dependent on the state of particular individual human consciousnesses.

I am not too satisfied with what I wrote here, but I think it's at least worth a read...


----------



## PetrB

EdwardBast said:


> A common misconception about narrative analysis is that its purview is "imposing … verbal thoughts and interpretations on … notes," that is, assigning definite meanings or attributing extramusical stories to absolute music. In fact, the mainstream of narrative analysis has been focused primarily on structural parameters, but ones that are, for various reasons, beyond the reach or purview of formal analysis. Most important among these are thematic processes, about which traditional music theory has virtually nothing to say.
> 
> Take as an example the thematic process Downs describes in the first movement of the Eroica (see post above). Synoptically: A relationship among two motives at odds in the principal theme changes over time such that the element predominating in the beginning is eclipsed by the other motive later in the movement. Essentially, they are engaged in a power struggle whose working out is a primary factor in the work's formal coherence and sense of directed motion. This kind of procedure is apparent in many of Beethoven's most dramatic and innovative works, including the first movements of the sonatas Op. 57 ("Appassionata"), Op. 31 no. 2 ("Tempest"), Op. 31 no. 3, the quartets Op. 59 no. 3, Op. 95, Op. 130, and Op. 135, not to mention the _Andante con moto_ of the Fourth Piano Concerto. This procedure is an essential element of Beethoven's mature style, it is objective and readily observed, but there are no formal theoretical terms for it. It can only adequately be described in narrative terms, as a sort of abstract plot, that is, one with no specific extramusical implications.
> 
> Another primary application of narrative analysis has been explaining why some thematic links among movements in romantic sonatas and symphonies seem strongly motivated and devastatingly effective while others are banal or incoherent. Formal analysis is useless in these matters, which is why much of the best recent criticism on thematic processes on the grand scale has been done by the musical narrativists.
> 
> Edit: By the way, in my last post I wasn't endorsing Downs's interpretation or conclusions, only making known the existence of a serious attempt to grapple with the issue raised in this thread.


I think I've said this before, but every teacher I had, instrumental private study, classroom theory, analysis, performance ensembles, always had several ready and varied _analogies_ to make the very connections with a work that no clinical analysis will ever bring to light. Every time one of these analogies is put forth _without an announced qualification that it is but an analogous means to better understanding a musical structure,_ it only reinforces that notion that music 'actually tells, literally, a story."

I can not imagine an environment where at least one entire generation was unfortunate enough to not have teachers who would and could spontaneously come up with an apt analogy, often tailored to the student or class for their readier comprehension, and that makes me wonder why the emphasis on thinking of it as anything remotely new as a working principle in music analysis, or if it is even necessary to name the approach also as if it is slightly revolutionary.

I had been hoping it is only through my reading of your posts that I have the impression that "Narrative Theory" somehow calls for the codification of those analogies. *This you did finally clarify, above.* It then seems contrary, however, to say, "but there are no formal theoretical terms for it." -- which still points for some desire to codify 'the narrative.' As an analogous principle, fine, but as I said, _that has been traditionally in place for a long time._ *I don't see anything different between the quoted essay on Beethoven's Eroica's possible inherent 'ethic,' and those now generally laughed at as ridiculous and affected 19th century 'narrative approach' of "Let's interpret the Beethoven Piano Sonatas through the lens of Shakespeare." *

What astonishes me most, though (and maybe again it is your view and not a tenet of Narrative Theory as practiced?) is to post that author's point of view as something which _could even remotely_ have the first movement of the _Eroica_ as actually about ethics... or anything of these narrative analogies as any thing other than mere analogy, as you say, as useful as something more than a theoretic only analysis of a piece.

To put these sorts of points out (other than as some tangential conversational pleasantry -- with absolutely no certain proofs to back it up) around and about but not actually on music) under the guise of any sort of Musicology flies in the face of about every aspect of the rigors of expected scholarship the discipline is known to demand of any who call themselves "Musicologist." _I.e. interesting philosophic rumination over the possible interpretation of the first movement of the Eroica, but where is the research, horse's mouth documentation and proofs?_ No where in sight.

I just see no need for the emphasis, or the naming or declaring of 'narrative theory' as anything remotely new, or distinct, from the way music theory and analysis has been taught on both sides of the Atlantic for quite many decades prior 'narrative theory' birthed itself. It seems to me utterly redundant when the practice of analogy to get to an understanding of musical structure for theoretical needs or better understanding a piece to perform it has been a common part of teaching for such a long time.


----------



## KenOC

Triplets said:


> Plato abhored music. He wanted it banned in The Republic.


Not so. He excepted two modes from his suggested eliminations.


----------



## PetrB

Giordano said:


> In post #21, I said,
> 
> I was thinking of the _Eroica_ and _The Iliad_, both of which I discovered at about the same time when I was 11-12 yo. I don't remember what my thoughts were exactly. I don't think I had any thoughts... I often think without thoughts... The best description of my reaction to the then new-to-me art was that I already knew them and I had come home. The feeling of home (which was not temporal or spatial) was so at odds with what I perceived physically that I _knew_ I was not what I _apparently_ was. I did not think of heroism; I just _knew without thoughts_ that I was _larger_ than what physical perception and worldly ideas allowed me to be. This was a direct result of being absorbed in and attuned to the music and the poetry. Obviously I had not studied any literature or music and knew nothing beyond what I actually read and heard in the works.
> 
> This story does not prove anything, of course, but it was the event, caused directly by the content/something in the art, that opened the door for my further growth, continuing to this day.
> 
> The narrative analysis by Philip Downs is interesting, but after the fact, and unnecessary (to me). The something in the music that affected an ignorant but receptive boy is the quality of music that cannot be easily articulated. My best argument would be that there is more to the music than is apparent to the physical senses, that affects human consciousness, but the receptivity and the effect is very much dependent on the state of particular individual human consciousnesses.
> 
> I am not too satisfied with what I wrote here, but I think it's at least worth a read...


You have made the point in a rather eloquent manner: no words can either generally or specifically define what music alone can do to an individual. The more literate yet literally-minded will continue to try, and imho, ceaselessly continue to fail to capture the butterfly, kill it, and pin that specimen to the board and give it a name... something the most potent and canny of the cognoscenti have failed to do for, oh, so far approximately 1000 years.

What you wrote is closer to the truth, and I thought very well said.

Congratulations. :tiphat:


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## Giordano

PetrB said:


> You have made the point in a rather eloquent manner: no words can either generally or specifically define what music alone can do to an individual. ... something the most potent and canny of the cognoscenti have failed to do ....
> 
> What you wrote is closer to the truth, and I thought very well said.
> 
> Congratulations. :tiphat:


Thank you very much, PetrB! :tiphat:


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## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> No words can either generally or specifically define what music alone can do to an individual. The more literate yet literally-minded will continue to try, and imho, ceaselessly continue to fail to capture the butterfly, kill it, and pin that specimen to the board and give it a name... something the most potent and canny of the cognoscenti have failed to do for, oh, so far approximately 1000 years.


What music can do to an individual cannot be _defined_, but it can be _expressed_, in whatever words, and in as many words, as an individual may be inspired to think or utter, from none at all to a limitless number. Such expression is an indication of literal-mindedness - or pinning the butterfly to the board - only if the music is assumed to be defined by it, i.e. to mean what those particular words mean and nothing else or nothing more. Since meaning in music is a joint product of composer and listener, all listeners are invited to contribute to its fund of potential meanings whatever it inspires in them. Some interpretations, though, are based on greater knowledge and comprehension than others. To the extent that they appear to be so grounded, I find them worthy of interest and respect, and do not find the use of verbally articulated ideas in their expression limiting or misleading. If Downs, based on experience and study of the score, finds in the "Eroica" a narrative expressive of a struggle, one with moral implications, that seems to me one valid way of perceiving its internal dynamics, a way which illuminates its range of possible meanings without foreclosing any others, including those which disagree. That music makes no moral statement goes without saying. That it can inspire moral sentiments and conceptions should be equally unremarkable.


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## Guest

The difference, it seems to me, is that what giordano and Woodduck allow is the personal 'truth' - it's whatever the individual listener hears that matters - to the individual, at any rate. PetrB seems to want to assert is that no such personal narratives are acceptable, either for the individual, or for anyone else.


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## Leonius

I think classical music fans are usually the kind of people who are patient and thoughtful as they are willing to sit down, stay quiet, and taste music for a long time. Those quiet, thoughtful, and patient people tend to behave better ethically.


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## Triplets

KenOC said:


> Not so. He excepted two modes from his suggested eliminations.


Excuse me. I should have said that he wanted to greatly restrict musical expression. I guess Stalin and Zhadnov had an intellectual precedent


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## DeepR

Leonius said:


> I think classical music fans are usually the kind of people who are patient and thoughtful as they are willing to sit down, stay quiet, and taste music for a long time. Those quiet, thoughtful, and patient people tend to behave better ethically.


I'm not sure about the last part, it could be true... though in that case it would be a quality of the listener, not the music.


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## Heliogabo

Hanibbal Lechter listening Bach. 
Really, classical music doesn't make people better. Please, just listen to it and enjoy...


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## ahammel

Heliogabo said:


> Hanibbal Lechter listening Bach.
> Really, classical music doesn't make people better. Please, just listen to it and enjoy...


In fairness, Dr. Lecter is fictional.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

MacLeod said:


> The difference, it seems to me, is that what giordano and Woodduck allow is the personal 'truth' - it's whatever the individual listener hears that matters - to the individual, at any rate. PetrB seems to want to assert is that no such personal narratives are acceptable, either for the individual, or for anyone else.


Of course. Except, I wouldn't necessarily call it a "personal 'truth'". There can be narrative analysis of music just like there is of literature, one isn't any more guaranteed to reach the "truth" in literature rather than in music. For instance, I could be completely off about my analysis of _The Aeneid_. To be clear, I'm not discussing *literal meaning*, when Virgil writes, "Aeneas' father was Anchises", that's literal. Rather, I'm discussing a meaningful pursuit of a *narrative analysis*.

Woodduck isn't claiming to find a "truth" (the word isn't even used in his above posts), only that certain "_melodic shapes, thematic mutations, harmonic progressions, rhythmic emphases, dynamic gradations and contrasts, and all the complex interactions of these_" _can_ be thoughtfully analysed.

Speaking of thoughtful analysis and same old stories, I rather enjoyed how Downs' analysis was showcased as an example of why nobody likes "Beethoven wackos" (with the obligatory "like" from PetrB, of course). Seems to be a recurring thing on TC, to call out all the imaginary Beethoven "wackos" and "rabid fanboys". Using their same criteria for what constitutes a rabid fanboy or wacko, shouldn't I expect to see the same language used for all the Bach and Mozart fanboys and wackos? You know, real posts like this, "Johann Sebastian Bach as the swellest composer of music ever born on Planet Earth!!!!", can you imagine if Ludwig van Beethoven were substituted for Johann Sebastian Bach? The rabidness! The fanboyism!

Another day on TC. :tiphat:


----------



## ahammel

DiesIraeVIX said:


> Speaking of thoughtful analysis and same old stories, I rather enjoyed how Downs' analysis was showcased as an example of why nobody likes "Beethoven wackos" (with the obligatory "like" from PetrB, of course). Seems to be a recurring thing on TC, to call out all the imaginary Beethoven "wackos" and "rabid fanboys". Using their same criteria for what constitutes a rabid fanboy or wacko, shouldn't I expect to see the same language used for all the Bach and Mozart fanboys and wackos? You know, real posts like this, "Johann Sebastian Bach as the swellest composer of music ever born on Planet Earth!!!!", can you imagine if Ludwig van Beethoven were substituted for Johann Sebastian Bach? The rabidness! The fanboyism!


I'm not saying that other composers don't have their wackos (Wagner, anybody?), but when I'm told that I should listen to this music because it will expose me to a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, I have to assume that I'm taking to a cultist. I have heard Beethoven 3 many times and that have happened yet.


----------



## ahammel

Actually, in retrospect, I see how that statement could be taken as being directed at people who merely think that Beethoven is the swellest composer ever, rather than the specific claim that the Eroica will give you cause to throw away all your philosophy books. That was unfriendly, and I withdraw the statement.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

ahammel said:


> I'm not saying that other composers don't have their wackos (Wagner, anybody?), but when I'm told that I should listen to this music because it will expose me to a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, I have to assume that I'm taking to a cultist. I have heard Beethoven 3 many times and that have happened yet.


Well, we are reading his analysis differently, I don't get the idea that we "_should_" listen to Beethoven 3 so that we may be revealed a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. That hyperbolic last sentence aside, by Downs, it seems to principally be a musical analysis, citing musical themes, keys, dissonance, and resolutions in recapitulations. He is, of course, tying all those those musical ideas to a narrative analysis, and offers that it could possibly "provide a lesson on the conquering of self". I don't get anything cultist from that.

I also haven't got anything like that from listening to Beethoven 3. I think the 1st Mvt does sound "heroic", but for the most part, I do only think "Allegro con Brio" when I listen, but musical narrative analysis is valid, why not? For the record, I don't believe music enters the realms of ethics or morality. I'm probably a worse person now than before I started listening to classical. :lol: I'm all for musical narrative analysis, though. That said, if someone wants to use a piece of music as a self-help DIY therapy session, go for it. lol


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## Heliogabo

ahammel said:


> In fairness, Dr. Lecter is fictional.


Of course, is fictional, but fiction has links with truth. I mean, a lot of terrible people loves music, while beautiful people could doesn't.


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## Triplets

Heliogabo said:


> Of course, is fictional, but fiction has links with truth. I mean, a lot of terrible people loves music, while beautiful people could doesn't.


 One doesn't have to go far to find terrible people who played, composed, and listened to Classical Music. Reinhard Heydrich, the number two man in Hitler's SS and the Chief Architect of the Final Solution, was an excellent Violinist and the son of a Composer and Music Educator. Lully was a Pedophile. The Conductor Eugene Goosens career was derailed when his extensive Pornography collection was discovered during an overseas tour (apparently he traveled with it). Mikhail Pletnev was detained in Thailand accused of procuring Child Prostitues.
Those are random examples of the top of my head. We humans are prone to our failings and the type of music we enjoy, imo, doesn't tend to guarantee any type of behavior, good or bad.


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## Bulldog

ahammel said:


> In fairness, Dr. Lecter is fictional.


That's what I thought until I saw him lurking at the American Airlines ticket counter at the Albuquerque International Airport.:devil:


----------



## Giordano

I agree with "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." Whether any particular piece is a revelation depends on one's perspective... obviously.

---

I sometimes think *PetrB* and *Woodduck* may be trying very hard not to agree even when they do agree (on some things). This is not the first time they both "liked" my post in a contentious thread.


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## Woodduck

Giordano said:


> I agree with "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." Whether any particular piece is a revelation depends on one's perspective... obviously.
> 
> ---
> 
> I sometimes think *PetrB* and *Woodduck* may be trying very hard not to agree even when they do agree (on some things). *This is not the first time they both "liked" my post in a contentious thread. *


That means that you're either brilliant - or just "likable."

Perhaps there's an ambassadorship in your future.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

After pondering the issue of whether or not music can influence your behavior to be more empathic or compassionate or more violent or bitter, I've come to think that it absolutely can, looking back on my listening experiences.....it helps if you already feel that way, but it can definitely make those feelings swell. It's just silly to deny music's power.

In addition, it takes a very simple person to think people can't be so complex as to have a compassionate side, a sadistic side, and so on.....a cruel dictator could be as sensitive to music as anyone. So the idea that it logically follows that music has no effect on one's sentiments as they regard ethics or empathy, if evil people can listen to and enjoy music.......makes no sense. People, especially great people, can be fairly complex and have conflicting sides to their personality.

So.....you can be evil and have your empathy cultivated by music.....even to a very high degree. But some people have a lot more in them than just empathy.


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## EdwardBast

ahammel said:


> Well, that's why nobody likes Beethoven wackos.


Well, musicologist Carl Dahlhaus also thought the ethical argument Downs made was wacko (I'm out of town and don't have the reference handy) but he nevertheless ended up making another argument for the centrality of thematic processes in the structure of Beethoven's mature music.


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## EdwardBast

PetrB said:


> I think I've said this before, but every teacher I had, instrumental private study, classroom theory, analysis, performance ensembles, always had several ready and varied _analogies_ to make the very connections with a work that no clinical analysis will ever bring to light. Every time one of these analogies is put forth _without an announced qualification that it is but an analogous means to better understanding a musical structure,_ it only reinforces that notion that music 'actually tells, literally, a story."


What I was on about is not an analogy, it is just a literal description of a formal process. It does not imply any sort of extramusical story. Take as an example a movement you know and love well, the Andante con moto of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. If the movement resembled any standard formal structure, there would be a simple way to describe how it works in formal terms. One could say, for example, "it is a five part rondo," "it is a modified ternary form," "it is a sonata-rondo with an extended coda," or so on. In the case of the Andante con moto, one must work a little harder, something like: It is a dialogue of two diametrically contrasting thematic configurations. The one that is forceful and which predominates in the beginning (strings) fades away and is subdued in its later iterations and developments, the one that is quiet and lyrical in its initial statement (piano) eventually comes to dominate by ever more complex and assertive elaborations. This bare-bones description is in narrative form, necessarily, simply because there is no standard formal vocabulary to cover the situation. As it turns out, this pattern of shifting dominance among themes or motives is a basic m.o. for thematic processes in Beethoven's middle period. One of the things musical narrative theory does is to describe and categorize such formal processes, for which there is no technical vocabulary. The analogizing and story telling you decry are, I suspect, simply a byproduct of listeners and critics trying to come to terms with such unusual aspects of style, especially in the music of Beethoven. Many of Beethoven's works have a kind of storied quality because of the way he systematically develops dramatic oppositions, and the credulous tend to assume, usually, but not always, mistakenly, that there must be an actual story behind them.



PetrB said:


> I can not imagine an environment where at least one entire generation was unfortunate enough to not have teachers who would and could spontaneously come up with an apt analogy, often tailored to the student or class for their readier comprehension, and that makes me wonder why the emphasis on thinking of it as anything remotely new as a working principle in music analysis, or if it is even necessary to name the approach also as if it is slightly revolutionary.


One thing new is that narrative theorists are "going meta" with this. Would you agree that some analogies spun by pedagogs are more apt than others? Well, arguably, what makes some analogies better than others is that they better approximate some aesthetically significant, or even formally significant, aspect of the work in question, albeit one difficult to express in formal terms. Narrativists don't so much seek to impose these analogies on specific works to arrive at their "meanings," but rather want to discover what features good analogies have in common and what aspects of structure classes of good analogies more accurately approximate. Many of them draw on concepts from narrative theory (in literature) in doing this. By the way, the field is called "musical narrative" primarily because of this borrowing of analytical tools rather than because such theorists spin narratives about musical works.



PetrB said:


> I had been hoping it is only through my reading of your posts that I have the impression that "Narrative Theory" somehow calls for the codification of those analogies. *This you did finally clarify, above.* It then seems contrary, however, to say, "but there are no formal theoretical terms for it." -- which still points for some desire to codify 'the narrative.' As an analogous principle, fine, but as I said, _that has been traditionally in place for a long time._ *I don't see anything different between the quoted essay on Beethoven's Eroica's possible inherent 'ethic,' and those now generally laughed at as ridiculous and affected 19th century 'narrative approach' of "Let's interpret the Beethoven Piano Sonatas through the lens of Shakespeare." *


Just to be clear, I think the ethical argument Downs makes is misguided. Carl Dahlhaus (in a book comprising his essays on Beethoven, I forget the title) went to great pains to refute it, but at the same time he recognizes that what Downs was saying about thematic processes in the Eroica contains a valuable structural insight, once one strips away the ethical blather. Dahlhaus went on to state it in more objective and general formal terms.



PetrB said:


> I just see no need for the emphasis, or the naming or declaring of 'narrative theory' as anything remotely new, or distinct, from the way music theory and analysis has been taught on both sides of the Atlantic for quite many decades prior 'narrative theory' birthed itself. It seems to me utterly redundant when the practice of analogy to get to an understanding of musical structure for theoretical needs or better understanding a piece to perform it has been a common part of teaching for such a long time.


Musical narrative theory is an enormously broad field, encompassing folks we would both no doubt identify as loons, but also many theorists approaching old problems with new and promising tools, including the analytical techniques of literary structuralism and semiotics. It is a very mixed bag and difficult even for people practicing musical narrative theory to make sense of. Have you heard of the 80% rule (or 90% or 95%, depending on ones level of cynicism)?: "80% of everything is c--p." It applies to musical narrative theory just as much as to everything else. I would like to believe you just haven't found the missing 20% -- or 10% or 5% -- yet.


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## ahammel

EdwardBast said:


> Well, musicologist Carl Dahlhaus also thought the ethical argument Downs made was wacko (I'm out of town and don't have the reference handy) but he nevertheless ended up making another argument for the centrality of thematic processes in the structure of Beethoven's mature music.


Centrality of thematic processes, sure, I'll buy that. I wasn't aware that was even controversial. I'll check the will-to-power stuff at the door, though, thanks.


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## PetrB

EdwardBast said:


> What I was on about is not an analogy, it is just a literal description of a formal process. It does not imply any sort of extramusical story. Take as an example a movement you know and love well, the Andante con moto of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. If the movement resembled any standard formal structure, there would be a simple way to describe how it works in formal terms. One could say, for example, "it is a five part rondo," "it is a modified ternary form," "it is a sonata-rondo with an extended coda," or so on. In the case of the Andante con moto, one must work a little harder, something like: It is a dialogue of two diametrically contrasting thematic configurations. The one that is forceful and which predominates in the beginning (strings) fades away and is subdued in its later iterations and developments, the one that is quiet and lyrical in its initial statement (piano) eventually comes to dominate by ever more complex and assertive elaborations. This bare-bones description is in narrative form, necessarily, simply because there is no standard formal vocabulary to cover the situation. As it turns out, this pattern of shifting dominance among themes or motives is a basic m.o. for thematic processes in Beethoven's middle period. One of the things musical narrative theory does is to describe and categorize such formal processes, for which there is no technical vocabulary. The analogizing and story telling you decry are, I suspect, simply a byproduct of listeners and critics trying to come to terms with such unusual aspects of style, especially in the music of Beethoven. Many of Beethoven's works have a kind of storied quality because of the way he systematically develops dramatic oppositions, and the credulous tend to assume, usually, but not always, mistakenly, that there must be an actual story behind them.
> 
> One thing new is that narrative theorists are "going meta" with this. Would you agree that some analogies spun by pedagogs are more apt than others? Well, arguably, what makes some analogies better than others is that they better approximate some aesthetically significant, or even formally significant, aspect of the work in question, albeit one difficult to express in formal terms. Narrativists don't so much seek to impose these analogies on specific works to arrive at their "meanings," but rather want to discover what features good analogies have in common and what aspects of structure classes of good analogies more accurately approximate. Many of them draw on concepts from narrative theory (in literature) in doing this. By the way, the field is called "musical narrative" primarily because of this borrowing of analytical tools rather than because such theorists spin narratives about musical works.
> 
> Just to be clear, I think the ethical argument Downs makes is misguided. Carl Dahlhaus (in a book comprising his essays on Beethoven, I forget the title) went to great pains to refute it, but at the same time he recognizes that what Downs was saying about thematic processes in the Eroica contains a valuable structural insight, once one strips away the ethical blather. Dahlhaus went on to state it in more objective and general formal terms.
> 
> Musical narrative theory is an enormously broad field, encompassing folks we would both no doubt identify as loons, but also many theorists approaching old problems with new and promising tools, including the analytical techniques of literary structuralism and semiotics. It is a very mixed bag and difficult even for people practicing musical narrative theory to make sense of. Have you heard of the 80% rule (or 90% or 95%, depending on ones level of cynicism)?: "80% of everything is c--p." It applies to musical narrative theory just as much as to everything else. I would like to believe you just haven't found the missing 20% -- or 10% or 5% -- yet.


Thanks. More than likely it has been my perception from a number of your other posts that there was something quite 'romantic flight of imagination' tinged bout this approach, and the above lays it out where at least I see it as somewhat sensible  I think if you are going to somewhat be a proponent of the more positive aspects of Narrative Theory it might be better to refrain from posting the more 'crackpot' writings just to 'fit the bill of one OP.' 

My experiences through decades of piano lessons and formal studies (conservatory piano performance + and a second round in theory and comp) and that done in various locations in the states with teachers both America and European, in in my talking with musicians abroad from Russia, Germany, Holland, France, England, etc.... throughout all that, and for all those sundry musicians, "narrative theory" was unnecessary, i.e. all those teachers from various nations and places I did work with and all those whom professional colleagues and acquaintances had worked with all fell well within that "20%" who managed to have at least three ready and highly apt analogies of their own for those technical only aspects of performance that never cover it all re: interpretation, and too, the same for the theory only aspects of music that never cover it all.

Trying to establish narrative theory, though, appears to me as a near to a reactionary move on the part of one or more who were taught so badly that they somehow missed out on all the kind of teaching I and so many others experienced. Seriously, that many musicians from different decades and from all over the globe just could not have had against all the odds such miraculous luck to stumble on the few 'who already taught that way.' Ergo, it seems to me instead that the whole effort is redundant to how music and theory has been and is generally taught all over.

Granted, it seems that whether I was taking a private lesson, a student in a classroom, or giving a private lesson, the mode of all of those fall under teaching with "Individuation" at its base, and that long before it was a word, or buzz-word in education. There too, though, what are the odds that in my instance that was also "incredible luck" in always finding that 20% who were teaching better than the other 80%?

Even when you mention that part of the intent to determine which of the analogies is the best and most efficient for people to understand, the nagging question arises once again in my mind, "What is the matter with all their imaginations?" (ancillary with that, "What is anybody without that imagination doing in any aspect of the arts?") for a search for those most apt analogies to need to be an issue in the first place -- that sort of efficiency already rampant, I guess, in my history as well as the history of just about every musician I've ever spoken with -- whether performers or the more 'purely' academic musicians -- prior calling for any studies to determine what would be more efficient.

I've also, in fifty-five years of being conscious of and in music, never heard of Narrative Theory until I found it mentioned by you, on TC. Cutting edge, or eccentric splinter group of academics in the field of musicology, I am yet undecided and so far not at all near convinced there is any real necessity for it.


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## Guest

I posted



MacLeod said:


> The difference, it seems to me, is that what giordano and Woodduck allow is the personal 'truth' - it's whatever the individual listener hears that matters - to the individual, at any rate. PetrB seems to want to assert is that no such personal narratives are acceptable, either for the individual, or for anyone else.


To which DiesIraeVIX replied



DiesIraeVIX said:


> Of course. Except, I wouldn't necessarily call it a "personal 'truth'". There can be narrative analysis of music just like there is of literature, one isn't any more guaranteed to reach the "truth" in literature rather than in music. For instance, I could be completely off about my analysis of _The Aeneid_. To be clear, I'm not discussing *literal meaning*, when Virgil writes, "Aeneas' father was Anchises", that's literal. Rather, I'm discussing a meaningful pursuit of a *narrative analysis*.
> 
> Woodduck isn't claiming to find a "truth" (the word isn't even used in his above posts)


By 'truth' (a loaded term, of course, but perhaps permissible in a thread asking about the 'ethical') I merely meant...the essential meaning for the individual, which may or may not correspond to the essential meaning that others derive from the same piece. What I didn't mean (though I see how it could be interpreted as such) was 'the correct, single, unique, only meaning'. That was why I attached the word 'personal'. Perhaps 'personaltruth' would have been better.

For me, the Eroica does not 'mean' heroism. I hear no story, though my emotions are sometimes stirred, sometimes relaxed, sometimes excited, certainly entertained by it. My intellect is challenged by it, as I try to follow the musical themes, patterns, repetitions, variations and so on. As my imagination is attached to my heart and my brain, it consequently generates images as I listen, but these images are a random stream, not a coherent, flowing narrative.

That's my 'personaltruth'. I don't get what giordano got, or at least, I wouldn't describe my response in the terms s/he did. I don't get what Downs got, though if I were to take the trouble to get hold of his writing, I daresay I could follow his 'narrative'.

I certainly don't really care what Beethoven might have intended, though it is interesting to note the tales told about him and his reported attitudes to the work.

But if a listener says she hears 'heroism', and wishes to elaborate on that idea by narrative analogy ("I picture Napoleon posing in front of a mirror, sometimes taking his hat off to get a better view of how gorgeous he is") that's their 'personaltruth' and they're entitled to it.


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## EdwardBast

PetrB said:


> Trying to establish narrative theory, though, appears to me as a near to a reactionary move on the part of one or more who were taught so badly that they somehow missed out on all the kind of teaching I and so many others experienced. Seriously, that many musicians from different decades and from all over the globe just could not have had against all the odds such miraculous luck to stumble on the few 'who already taught that way.' *Ergo, it seems to me instead that the whole effort is redundant to how music and theory has been and is generally taught all over.*


This might be because you have not read any of the important work in musical narrative theory, a field which you had not heard of until I mentioned it in a TC post.



PetrB said:


> I've also, in fifty-five years of being conscious of and in music, never heard of Narrative Theory until I found it mentioned by you, on TC. Cutting edge, or eccentric splinter group of academics in the field of musicology, I am yet undecided and so far not at all near convinced there is any real necessity for it.


Nevertheless, musical narrative theory is relatively mainstream, cultivated by eminent scholars in all periods of historical musicology and by music theorists. Many music programs teach upper level undergraduate theory courses in this area, although it is still more commonly seen in graduate programs. Conferences of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory have had numerous sessions on topics in musical narrative studies and there is a large bibliography, including essay collections and anthologies on the topic.


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## science

PetrB said:


> one or more who were taught so badly that they somehow missed out on all the kind of teaching I and so many others experienced


This means that an education of any sort but the one you got is bad. Is that really true?


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## PetrB

science said:


> This means that an education of any sort but the one you got is bad. Is that really true?


Not at all, of course, don't play the absurd card. One can be hesitant to cynical when what is described at least seems like exactly that which was fully delivered without the minutia of studies and codification.

It sounds to me like all the elements which are 'new' were one way or the other in play when I studied, just not specifically labeled as semiotic, or coming from linguistics, etc. Without knowing more than what generally has been given, it still seems to me a waste of time to 'codify' all that when from my perspective, nothing is broke, so to speak. It is in its relative very young age, and time will tell. Who knows, it may be in full flower, taught everywhere, and highly effective twenty years from now.

Shenkerian analysis was all the rage for a while, now it is realized it is more readily applied as originally intended, to common practice period tonal music (an odd other agenda -- it was going to prove German music superior to other music) and there is now little if any emphasis on it. Elliott Carter commented that he found it 'interesting' to realize a piece had, for example, dropped one octave lower from beginning to end, but that was not interesting enough! Academic trends and fashions come and go, and us older farts are more likely to wait for a few more buses to go by to see who is riding them and where they are going than get immediately excited to take that ride or hop on that bus.

Right now, I reserve the right to have reservations.


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## science

PetrB said:


> Not at all, of course, don't play the absurd card. One can be hesitant to cynical when what is described at least seems like exactly that which was fully delivered without the minutia of studies and codification.
> 
> It sounds to me like all the elements which are 'new' were one way or the other in play when I studied, just not specifically labeled as semiotic, or coming from linguistics, etc. Without knowing more than what generally has been given, it still seems to me a waste of time to 'codify' all that when from my perspective, nothing is broke, so to speak. It is in its relative very young age, and time will tell. Who knows, it may be in full flower, taught everywhere, and highly effective twenty years from now.
> 
> Shenkerian analysis was all the rage for a while, now it is realized it is more readily applied was intended, to common practice period tonal music (an odd other agenda -- it was going to prove German music superior to other music) and there is now little if any emphasis on it. Elliott Carter commented that he found it 'interesting' to realize a piece had, for example, dropped one octave lower from beginning to end, but that was not interesting enough! Academic trends and fashions come and go, and us older farts are more likely to wait for a few more buses to go by to see who is riding them and where they are going than get immediately excited to take that ride or hop on that bus.
> 
> Right now, I reserve the right to have reservations.


Good enough! But it does seem like this is a bit of a retreat though. Are you sure you don't want to go on guns a-blazin' against this idea that violates "all the kind of teaching" that you "and so many others experienced?"

I doubt you've ever detected a bit of friendly teasing without assistance, and after all affected passive-aggressive whimpering is known to be my only groove, so I might need to state all outright and crass that I here intend nothing else. After all, I've never caught myself having overestimated the strength of any of my arguments (or "debates" perhaps if that's what I'm reduced to now).


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