# Music.



## breakup (Jul 8, 2015)

Listening to any music is visceral, not intellectual, if you need to analyze the music to appreciate it, you have killed it and don't really feel it, and feeling is what music is about.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I disagree. I think much pop music is emotional, but much classical is intellectual, and not in the sense of analyzing the music, but in the sense that it stimulates the intellect, whereas emotional music stimulates the emotions. I don't need to analyze Beethoven's symphonies. I just take them in and it gives me lofty intellectual feelings; whereas rock and roll gives visceral, physical feelings.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Music can be both visceral and intellectual—it all depends on the quality and/or genre of music and how one approaches it. An obvious example: J.S. Bach—full of feeling, yet intellectually satisfying. The great composers can do both seemlesly.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I enjoy analyzing music, but I don't think it makes me enjoy the music more.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

The difference between good music and great music is not what genre they are but how much analysis it can provoke and withstand. There's nothing wrong with not being able to provoke or withstand analysis, but that's how the legitimate hierarchy (as opposed to the one in which some people's tastes are just superior to others') works. 

The difference between ordinary listeners and great listeners is not which genres they enjoy but how much analysis they can perform. There's nothing wrong with listening to music with naive romanticism - that's how I am constrained to listen - but that's why some people's opinions count for more than mine.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I do think a lot of us classical fans need to really get back into the art of genuinely listening to the music we hear with full impressionability. I speak for myself, but I bet others can relate. I don't analyze based on specific music theory contexts, but I do connect things stylistically in a complicated aural association process, and I think that is sometimes intellectualizing the music too much. I need to know when to turn off that switch, know how to do it, and commit to reacting to the music I hear in a more visceral way. When I have smoked weed, I find this kind of reaction more easy to tap into. But I think it's not about the drugs, its about getting that anxiety about my life out of my head which the dulling process of being on substances does without me having to try. Then I can sink into the moment of appreciation of the task on hand, which is experiencing music. 

When there are so many options on hand, it can be hard too. I love when I go on vacation and all I have is a CD player and some CDs I carefully picked.


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## breakup (Jul 8, 2015)

Florestan said:


> I disagree. I think much pop music is emotional, but much classical is intellectual, and not in the sense of analyzing the music, but in the sense that it stimulates the intellect, whereas emotional music stimulates the emotions. I don't need to analyze Beethoven's symphonies. I just take them in and it gives me lofty intellectual feelings; whereas rock and roll gives visceral, physical feelings.


You've said what I said but tried, unsuccessfully, to twist it. Not analyzing Beethoven, is visceral.


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## breakup (Jul 8, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> I enjoy analyzing music, but I don't think it makes me enjoy the music more.


Does analyzing the music enhance the feelings you get from the music, if so, it can help you enjoy it more


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I am not persuaded that music must be exclusively about emotion. Granted, it can be emotionally powerful. But it can be many other things as well as, or even instead of, emotionally powerful.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

breakup said:


> Does analyzing the music enhance the feelings you get from the music, if so, it can help you enjoy it more


I think it depends on what you mean by analysis.

I have enough musical training that when I hear most music I instantaneously perceive at least some technical things about it, and sometimes that might contribute to my enjoyment, but I don't really consider that analysis.

On the other hand, a few months ago I read Charles Rosen's book _The Classical Style_, which has lots of detailed analyses of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. I got a lot of enjoyment out of those analyses, but I don't think they made me enjoy the pieces more when I listen to them.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

science said:


> The difference between good music and great music is not what genre they are but how much analysis it can provoke and withstand. There's nothing wrong with not being able to provoke or withstand analysis, but that's how the legitimate hierarchy (as opposed to the one in which some people's tastes are just superior to others') works.
> 
> The difference between ordinary listeners and great listeners is not which genres they enjoy but how much analysis they can perform. There's nothing wrong with listening to music with naive romanticism - that's how I am constrained to listen - but that's why some people's opinions count for more than mine.


Not sure why I'm the first to "like" this post. Maybe people are wary of opening up the "greatness" question and getting sidetracked. Anyway. I think there's a good point here. Great music tends to be rich in internal relationships, not always obvious (it may sound simpler than it is, like many a Schubert song) which a skilled listener can perceive or tease out. The kind of pap one hears in supermarkets has few internal relationships; there's nothing to perceive, much less talk about. Pap can be fun (I guess; somebody must like that simple-minded, grindingly repetitive stuff - or do they play it because it makes the tomatoes look redder? It makes me want to grab a tomato and get out quickly).

I do think there's more to greatness than complexity, and more to great listening than the ability to grasp and describe complexity, but both of those are real.


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## Guest (Nov 11, 2015)

breakup said:


> Listening to any music is visceral, not intellectual, if you need to analyze the music to appreciate it, you have killed it and don't really feel it, and feeling is what music is about.


But some music is less immediately visceral and may require analysis to find the viscera.

Then again, some music is just a turn off, requiring neither intellect nor guts to appreciate that it is so.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

One can enjoy experiencing the marvels of a beautiful sunset on the shores of a tropical island just as much as scientists can enjoy analysing the colour spectrum of the light from the sun and reflection on the sea, the gravitational influence of the tides and how the underwater habitats close to the shore are influenced not to mention the geological factors of the shoreline in question.....

One can enjoy listening to Bach's Art of Fugue just as a music theorist can enjoy analysing the internal logic of the construction and development of the theme in each fugue, just as much as a musicologist can research the manuscript and performance conventions of such a work not to mention the unanswered question of how Bach would have finished his masterwork........


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Really good music is simply magic; there's no explaining its wild talent. But longer and more complex structures repay some intellectual understanding. Just my opinion.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I just cannot see why the 'intellectual' and 'visceral' approaches are incompatible. I can appreciate great music just by listenng to it but there is often a greater appreciation that comes by studying it to find out what lies behind it, the strictures and formats and intents. I just cannot see why it is an either / or.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

DavidA said:


> I just cannot see why the 'intellectual' and 'visceral' approaches are incompatible. I can appreciate great music just by listenng to it but there is often a greater appreciation that comes by studying it to find out what lies behind it, the strictures and formats and intents. I just cannot see why it is an either / or.


Here everything is an either / or, or XOR as it is sometimes called. Mozart or Beethoven, but not both!


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

breakup said:


> Listening to any music is visceral, not intellectual, if you need to analyze the music to appreciate it, you have killed it and don't really feel it, and feeling is what music is about.


Absolutely true in the first instance with the vast majority of compositions. Great composers wrote the pieces for past audiences in mind, whether private or public.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Intellectual stimulation often gives me a visceral thrill.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Music isn't about emotion or intellect, it's about perception, an aesthetic experience, an experience of beauty that may or may not stimulate an emotional reaction. An emotional reaction alone isn't worth anything - it's everyday stuff, you get an emotional reaction thinking about your dead dog that is equal to any sadness stimulated by great music. It lacks the aesthetic element, and that's where the everyday experience is lacking and where the music finds its value. This is why two pieces of music or movie scene that give exactly the same emotional reaction can still be widely apart as an aesthetic experience, the other poor, the other great.

And you need musical perceptiveness to be able to properly appreciate sophisticated music, to be able to properly perceive it. It's not the same as analysis, although you may need to learn certain listening skills and you may need some analysis in some cases to start perceiving the music properly (in some cases you need to know the time signature to mentally group the notes according to the beat correctly, for example). Mostly, perceptiveness improves with experience, as musical memory improves, sense of tonality improves, ability to follow polyphony improves, and so on.

And if music appreciation were about the intellect, you'd get the same experience from studying patterns in a score as from actually hearing the piece in your mind or listening to it.

P.S. Sorry about the awkward EFL tone. I'm just trying to clearly express ideas without paying attention to style.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)




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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

science said:


> The difference between good music and great music is not what genre they are but how much analysis it can provoke and withstand. There's nothing wrong with not being able to provoke or withstand analysis, but that's how the legitimate hierarchy (as opposed to the one in which some people's tastes are just superior to others') works.
> 
> The difference between ordinary listeners and great listeners is not which genres they enjoy but how much analysis they can perform. There's nothing wrong with listening to music with naive romanticism - that's how I am constrained to listen - but that's why some people's opinions count for more than mine.


That is an interesting concept, but I don't concur. I can analyze really bad music in depth and describe why I don't like it. I struggle more with describing why I enjoy other kinds of music


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

For me, musical enjoyment is a mixture of the intellectual (the "formal"), and the directly sensual (often having to do with timbre), and both governed by my state of mind as the music evolves; it's a complex, constant interaction. If I want to clear and calm my mind, I put on Bach's WTC. If I want a shot of fantastic exultation and exaltation, I'll listen to Pohjola's Daughter if time is short, or to the Eroica if time is available. Prokofiev's piano concerto #3 gives me a whole range of possibilities. Theorists have teased out much of the "formal" attributes of classical music that cause us to enjoy it the more or the less (see Leonard Meyer's work), and we're getting a better handle on the direct physiological aspects of chills'n'thrills response to musical stimuli-- some of which are triggered by "formal" effects (cusp events); others by sheer physical triggering (cymbal clashes, piccolo trills). Great subject!


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

breakup said:


> Listening to any music is visceral, not intellectual, if you need to analyze the music to appreciate it, you have killed it and don't really feel it, and feeling is what music is about.


First time through, let the guts do the work; 2nd time, thinking is optional.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Everyone who listens to classical music with any comprehension at all is performing complex acts of analysis, parsing it into main and subsidiary phrases, recognizing repeated elements, connecting varied motives with their sources, locating themselves in relation to meter on more than one level, grasping when a harmonic event is unusual or against the general flow or progression, and so on. All of this happens more or less unconsciously. People with formal musical education can use terms and concepts to explain these unconscious analytic processes to themselves and others, and this helps them to generalize their experience across different pieces, styles and composers. Imagining that people with highly developed analytical skills — those who recognize Neapolitan and augmented 6th chords automatically and in real time, who know when they are approaching the retransition in a movement in sonata form, who grasp how one melodic idea relates to another — imagining that such people have an experience that is somehow deficient compared to their naive friends is no doubt a comforting fiction for those doing the imagining. In fact, it is more likely that effortlessly grasping details and deep relations in the music without having to think too much about it, which is pretty much the point of analytical listening, frees the viscera to do their thing.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> Everyone who listens to classical music with any comprehension at all is performing complex acts of analysis, parsing it into main and subsidiary phrases, recognizing repeated elements, connecting varied motives with their sources, locating themselves in relation to meter on more than one level, grasping when a harmonic event is unusual or against the general flow or progression, and so on. All of this happens more or less unconsciously. People with formal musical education can use terms and concepts to explain these unconscious analytic processes to themselves and others, and this helps them to generalize their experience across different pieces, styles and composers. Imagining that people with highly developed analytical skills - those who recognize Neapolitan and augmented 6th chords automatically and in real time, who know when they are approaching the retransition in a movement in sonata form, who grasp how one melodic idea relates to another - imagining that such people have an experience that is somehow deficient compared to their naive friends is no doubt a comforting fiction for those doing the imagining. In fact, it is more likely that effortlessly grasping details and deep relations in the music without having to think too much about it, which is pretty much the point of analytical listening, frees the viscera to do their thing.


You make an interesting point with the last sentence. I may be wrong, but I seem to have noticed more connection with the same piece of music when I don't focus as much on following it, when I just relax my mind and trust my brain to follow the music on its own.

To comment on the rest of your message: I wouldn't conflate perception and analysis. People who mock the intellectual aspect of music aren't usually aware of the importance of basic perceptual processes, and how much these are dependent on experience and attitude. No need to give them ammunition by grouping such processes with knowledge about forms, paying attention to motivic development, and other non-essential advanced musical analysis - all of which at most improves the music in the same way that make-up improves a woman, which is to say not at all when the music is beautiful as it is.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

If you have a good ear/brain connection, they are both aspects of the same thing, perception. If your ear is not so good, you will tend to think of music as emotional only, because the ear/brain aspect is not fully there; in other words, you lack having what is known as a "good ear."
People can still have a good ear which is "unlearned" or undeveloped intellectually, but on an intuitive level, they will hear things more deeply, and have a basic sort of cerebral stimulation which those with mediocre ears will not experience. These "mediocres" might pick up on this difference on a subtle level and "lash out" by insisting that this intellectual or cerebral level of "good-ear experience" does not exist, or is irrelevant. The "good ear" experience is known as "musical intelligence," and can be seen in toddlers, even before they can name notes. They can imitate long passages by ear only.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> If you have a good ear/brain connection, they are both aspects of the same thing, perception. If your ear is not so good, you will tend to think of music as emotional only, because the ear/brain aspect is not fully there; in other words, you lack having what is known as a "good ear."
> People can still have a good ear which is "unlearned" or undeveloped intellectually, but on an intuitive level, they will hear things more deeply, and have a basic sort of cerebral stimulation which those with mediocre ears will not experience. These "mediocres" might pick up on this difference on a subtle level and "lash out" by insisting that this intellectual or cerebral level of "good-ear experience" does not exist, or is irrelevant. The "good ear" experience is known as "musical intelligence," and can be seen in toddlers, even before they can name notes. They can imitate long passages by ear only.


My ear is probably horrendous and no one in my family is musical. I enjoy complex music on a visceral level but I've gotten a lot of mileage out that. I don't think there are very many musically 'unschooled' individuals out there who would enjoy Brian Ferneyhough's music (as one example). And yes, that makes me _better_ than most people . . . that's right, I went there.

:tiphat:


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Chordalrock said:


> You make an interesting point with the last sentence. I may be wrong, but I seem to have noticed more connection with the same piece of music when I don't focus as much on following it, when I just relax my mind and trust my brain to follow the music on its own.


Sure. That makes good sense. But one thing I think distinguishes folks with good analytical skills from others is that lots of technical details tend to register without any special act of focus. When listening for pleasure I too tend to turn off or minimize any internal verbal activity.



Chordalrock said:


> To comment on the rest of your message: I wouldn't conflate perception and analysis. People who mock the intellectual aspect of music aren't usually aware of the importance of basic perceptual processes, and how much these are dependent on experience and attitude. No need to give them ammunition by grouping such processes with knowledge about forms, paying attention to motivic development, and other non-essential advanced musical analysis - all of which at most improves the music in the same way that make-up improves a woman, which is to say not at all when the music is beautiful as it is.


Where to put the line between perception and analysis is not all that easy for me. When we comprehend, automatically, a complex bit of human speech in real time, instantly comprehending different parts of speech and syntactic relationships, is that just perception? It might feel like it, but I think it is really a tremendously detailed process of analysis which we spend years, as children, learning how to perform. The analytical engine is to some extent hard wired - and that same engine no doubt underlies our ability to parse musical phrasing and structural divisions of all kinds from sentences to paragraphs to entire movements. It's likely parasitic on verbal capacities. Is perception just any analysis we can perform automatically? (I don't know, I'm asking.) If that were true, I could argue that recognizing deceptive cadences, strange predominant chords, and motivic inversions is just perception and not analysis because it happens in my brain without thinking about it - I hear a Neapolitan chord and it is as clear as recognizing the color green - but I think it is more than just perception in the normal sense we understand it.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> Is perception just any analysis we can perform automatically? (I don't know, I'm asking.) If that were true, I could argue that recognizing deceptive cadences, strange predominant chords, and motivic inversions is just perception and not analysis because it happens in my brain without thinking about it - I hear a Neapolitan chord and it is as clear as recognizing the color green - but I think it is more than just perception in the normal sense we understand it.


I think perception can be seen as having two components: sensory data and interpretation. What I like to always highlight is that even what seems like pure sensation is heavily dependent on memories for the final subjective, conscious experience.

People tend to think they're just hearing music as it is, but let's say they listen to Bach's C minor fugue from Bk2 for the tenth time - they already hear the beginning in C minor even though the first few notes don't yet establish C minor. So there's all this memory material that's participating and modifying the pure sensory experience and making it sound like a certain kind of thing. If you virgin listened to that fugue without the prelude, the first few notes would seem incomprehensible tonally. This is just one example of how perception works, but you can probably imagine how much this sort of thing can change the listening experience.

So I tend to see the dividing line between what seems like sensory experience but is actually a combination of memory and sensory data, and between what no longer seems like sensory experience but more like interpretation of such experience (naming chords, identifying similarities, and all that stuff you mentioned).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Naming may complete the act of perception, but we have to perceive before we can name. Knowing the names of things, the names of musical structures, may help us perceive those structures, but perceiving them is not wholly dependent on knowing their names - much as we can know what we're trying to say without being able to find the right words, but once we find them we know more clearly. 

I'm glad I know as much about the structure of music as I do, but I remember a time when I didn't know what to call anything and the magic of music was greater. Not much greater, to be sure, but there are mysterious thrills in our early years which can never be recaptured. Perhaps - but only perhaps - being able to say that Schubert is moving through the Neapolitan to reach his final cadence compensates me somewhat for the muting of that fearful thrill of being plunged, uncomprehending, into the heart of darkness.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

science said:


> The difference between good music and great music is not what genre they are but how much analysis it can provoke and withstand. There's nothing wrong with not being able to provoke or withstand analysis, but that's how the legitimate hierarchy (as opposed to the one in which some people's tastes are just superior to others') works.
> 
> The difference between ordinary listeners and great listeners is not which genres they enjoy but how much analysis they can perform. There's nothing wrong with listening to music with naive romanticism - that's how I am constrained to listen - but that's why some people's opinions count for more than mine.


I find this hierarchy business unsavory and elitist. From my perspective, each listener is unique; adjectives such as ordinary or great are arbitrary.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

To whatever limited capacity I possess, I like to take the time (not always the first time) to listen critically (intellectual). This serves as a basis for further understanding on subsequent listens (visceral).


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I do just the opposite.


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## Bayreuth (Jan 20, 2015)

breakup said:


> Listening to any music is visceral, not intellectual, if you need to analyze the music to appreciate it, you have killed it and don't really feel it, and feeling is what music is about.


I'm sorry but I find such statement to be empty and ridiculous.

First of all, you don't get to decide what music is about. Maybe you can say that all YOU look for in music is emotion. And that 's perfecty right. Lot of people do, and they enjoy classical music very very much. But if you think that music is ONLY emotion then it is you who is killing the multiple offerings that classical music provides, being one of them, obviously, the analytical component. For instance, I find a lot of joy trying to understand the structures of music and unravelling the particularities of the musical language of different composers. I don't feel like I'm killing music by doing so, since I have discovered pleasures and emotions that (I believe) one can only get out of understanding and analyzing music.

Second, I think that saying that music is not intellectual is quite ambiguous, basically because without intellect music is just vibration creating sound. It is your intellect that decodes those sounds and turn them into something that you either like or dislike. Classical music happens to require of a slightly bigger intellectual effort in this decoding process, which doesn't mean that you need to be a frigging genius to enjoy the Radetzky March, but that you need to be eager (and capable) to put the intellectual effort to enjoy Classical Music with all its complexity of form. A good example is that almost everybody knows the first notes of Beethoven's Fifth (which are catchy and easier to process) but only people whose intellects are used to make bigger efforts have gone further than those few notes, getting to know the whole work.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Naming may complete the act of perception, but we have to perceive before we can name. Knowing the names of things, the names of musical structures, may help us perceive those structures, but perceiving them is not wholly dependent on knowing their names - much as we can know what we're trying to say without being able to find the right words, but once we find them we know more clearly.


Yes! For example, there is a commonplace way of extending a musical paragraph in the classical era, by going to a dominant chord and then, instead of immediately resolving it, going to another chord as a diversion. Then one repeats the would be final phrase but this time resolving the dominant chord "correctly." I might immediately recognize the diversion as a so-called "deceptive cadence on the submediant." Someone without theory training won't have the words for this, but their essential experience is identical. They too understand the diversion and delaying tactic and feel the final correct resolution just as strongly.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> Everyone who listens to classical music with any comprehension at all is performing complex acts of analysis, parsing it into main and subsidiary phrases, recognizing repeated elements, connecting varied motives with their sources, locating themselves in relation to meter on more than one level, grasping when a harmonic event is unusual or against the general flow or progression, and so on.
> [snip]


You make it obvious that I have no comprehension at all. Enjoyment without comprehension is better than nothing though.

[I listened to Igor Levit play Beethoven's Diabelli Variations yesterday, a work I am familiar with. 1st go at it, I found myself 'analyzing'; had to stop and start over. (He done good BTW.)]


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

Like a lot of such debates that we have on the site, I think there are always very strong subjective elements in any view that is advanced. Each one of us will response differently to a particular piece of music - I find again and again that friends will be affected by different passages from the ones I might find most moving or effective. And, turning to the subject of this debate, whether we want to intellectualise the music or not will depend on our mood. It is easier to be analytical in a calm atmosphere; more difficult if we bring our own personal baggage to a listening experience.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

It is indeed subjective.
However, I think that classical music listeneres are on average more willing (than pop music listeneres) to explore the "background" of the music, that is not only enjoy the sheer perception of it, but also take the intellectual challenge of understanding its nature/context, thus achieving further enjoyment.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I suspect that Edward is correct about the sort of things he mentions in his post. But there's more to comprehension of classical music than that. There are intertextual references too. Can anyone get much stimulation from History of Photography in Sound without tracing the quotes? I doubt it. 

And there's all the cultural baggage. If you don't know the hymns that Bach based his chorales on, and the Lutherian ideas he was encapsulating, then you're missing out on a part of what the listening experience can offer.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I think there are different kinds of analyzing. When you are new to a piece and you are just listening to it, you are also analyzing in a way. Your developed musical perception and memory helps you make sense of the music in time. I think eventually one can have a good understanding of the structure and intricacies of a piece of music, simply from listening experience, without any theoretical knowledge and without the ability to put a label on the various musical/compositional elements.
Then there is technical analysis that requires not only listening to the music, but studying the score, while having a thorough grasp of music theory and composition. I don't doubt this kind of analysis gives its own kind of satisfaction and that it increases one's appreciation for the composer and his art. Yet I don't believe, or refuse to believe, that this kind of insight truly enhances the whole experience of listening to the music, certainly not the "visceral aspect" of it.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> Where to put the line between perception and analysis is not all that easy for me.


Yes, this is the crux.

I think I made a mistake in my original answer in that I basically _defined_ "analysis" as "stuff I can't actually hear." Of course if I define it that way, it can't very well enhance the enjoyment of hearing.

But at the same time, I don't think we can call any perception of the structural features of music "analysis." The most naive listener will perceive a surprising key change, even if he doesn't know what a key is. Surely that isn't analysis?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Call me a hedonist (I've been called worse), but the point of listening to music is to experience pleasure. No other reason I can think of. To be utterly simplistic, the sources or engines of that pleasure are intellectual/formal (expectation manipulation), sensual/physiological (chills'n'thrills), and social/psychological/contextual (empathic). Classical music leans more to the intellectual/formal corner of the triangle as its primary pleasure engine, but when we're sitting in a concert hall or watching a video of a concert of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun among fellow enthusiasts, we get doses of the other two engines. Rock or Pop offer much larger doses of the sensual and the empathic than of the intellectual, but the pleasure experienced can be quite as great and is dependant really on the capacity of the listener to experience pleasure in/from music. Look at a YouTube of a Rush concert where the musicians and the audience are as one. My own additional interest besides classical and Rock/Pop is traditional cante flamenco. There, the pleasure is largely empathic, as the singer, aided by a sensitive guitarist, fills the small space occupied by singer, guitarist, and auditor with intense emotion. Again, while the means vary, the end is pleasure, and the degree of musical pleasure that each person can experience is uniquely his or her own.


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## Bayreuth (Jan 20, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> My own additional interest besides classical and Rock/Pop is traditional cante flamenco. There, the pleasure is largely empathic, as the singer, aided by a sensitive guitarist, fills the small space occupied by singer, guitarist, and auditor with intense emotion.


A couple of years ago I had the immense pleasure of watching the Andalusian cantaor José Merce in the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid, which is the mecca of classical music in Spain, quite a big venue. And I'm still impressed by how he filled the complete arena singing without microphone. Just his voice getting directly into my ears. A hell of an experience. Life-changing beauty


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## CypressWillow (Apr 2, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> ....I'm glad I know as much about the structure of music as I do, but I remember a time when I didn't know what to call anything and the magic of music was greater. Not much greater, to be sure, but *there are mysterious thrills in our early years which can never be recaptured. Perhaps - but only perhaps - being able to say that Schubert is moving through the Neapolitan to reach his final cadence compensates me somewhat for the muting of that fearful thrill of being plunged, uncomprehending, into the heart of darkness.*


What a gorgeous description of your experience! 
I'm almost totally ignorant about structure and theory, so I've retained my original _tabula rasa_ state of being when listening to music. I've always rather regretted this, wondering what I've been missing, what additional levels of joy are available. But your eloquence has offered me some consolation: the 'fearful thrill' is still always present for me. 
Thanks, Woodduck. Reading your posts is always a rewarding experience for me.


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## breakup (Jul 8, 2015)

Chordalrock said:


> You make an interesting point with the last sentence. I may be wrong, but I seem to have noticed more connection with the same piece of music when I don't focus as much on following it, when I just relax my mind and trust my brain to follow the music on its own.
> 
> To comment on the rest of your message: I wouldn't conflate perception and analysis. People who mock the intellectual aspect of music aren't usually aware of the importance of basic perceptual processes, and how much these are dependent on experience and attitude. No need to give them ammunition by grouping such processes with knowledge about forms, paying attention to motivic development, and other non-essential advanced musical analysis - all of which at most improves the music in the same way that* make-up improves a woman,* which is to say not at all when the music is beautiful as it is.


This I must disagree with, early on in our relationship I told my wife I wanted to see her, not a layer of paint. And now she doesn't wear makeup, just occasionally lipstick, and that is an almost natural color.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Ukko said:


> You make it obvious that I have no comprehension at all. Enjoyment without comprehension is better than nothing though.
> 
> [I listened to Igor Levit play Beethoven's Diabelli Variations yesterday, a work I am familiar with. 1st go at it, I found myself 'analyzing'; had to stop and start over. (He done good BTW.)]


That's just it: You probably comprehend every one of the things I listed, but just haven't described to yourself what you are doing when it happens. It's like listening to speech. We can comprehend exceedingly convoluted sentences and note subtle shadings of meaning and tone. Does that mean we can diagram the sentence? Can we say this is a subsidiary clause, this is a prepositional phrase and this is an indirect object? Perhaps not, but our minds nevertheless comprehend all of these relationships on some level. Same with music. I'll bet you recognize where one phrase finishes and a new one starts, you can likely tell whether the music is in groups of two or three beats, and you can feel where a big arrival takes place. And you surely routinely connect little snippets of motives with the themes whence they come. When I said we are all performing complex acts of analysis I meant in the same unconscious way we do when we listen to speech. Not in the sentence diagramming way.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> But at the same time, I don't think we can call any perception of the structural features of music "analysis." The most naive listener will perceive a surprising key change, even if he doesn't know what a key is. Surely that isn't analysis?


Yes, but in my deceptive cadence example, a naive listener will feel: "Oh, I thought it was going to end there but then … oh wait, it's coming back. Ah _there_; that's what I expected it to do the first time." That really is analysis of a sort. Not academic analysis. And a Neapolitan chord might strike a naive listener as a strange, unexpected bit of light (an unusual major chord) before the plunge to a dark cadence in the minor mode (Is this what you were hinting at Woodduck?). That is the essential thing about the chord, and feeling that unexpected major glow is more important than being able to name the chord it inhabits.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes, but in my deceptive cadence example, a naive listener will feel: "Oh, I thought it was going to end there but then … oh wait, it's coming back. Ah _there_; that's what I expected it to do the first time." That really is analysis of a sort. Not academic analysis. And a Neapolitan chord might strike a naive listener as a strange, unexpected bit of light (an unusual major chord) before the plunge to a dark cadence in the minor mode (*Is this what you were hinting at Woodduck?*). That is the essential thing about the chord, and feeling that unexpected major glow is more important than being able to name the chord it inhabits.


The music I had in mind was the ending of the adagio movement from Schubert's C-Major Quintet, which delays the consolation of its major conclusion by plunging us unexpectedly into the Neapolitan minor - unexpectedly, despite the persistence of the Neapolitan in the movement's anguished middle section. It's precisely the right thing at that moment, and as Schubertian as Schubert could be.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Strange Magic said:


> *Call me a hedonist (I've been called worse), but the point of listening to music is to experience pleasure. No other reason I can think of.* To be utterly simplistic, the sources or engines of that pleasure are intellectual/formal (expectation manipulation), sensual/physiological (chills'n'thrills), and social/psychological/contextual (empathic). Classical music leans more to the intellectual/formal corner of the triangle as its primary pleasure engine, but when we're sitting in a concert hall or watching a video of a concert of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun among fellow enthusiasts, we get doses of the other two engines. Rock or Pop offer much larger doses of the sensual and the empathic than of the intellectual, but the pleasure experienced can be quite as great and is dependant really on the capacity of the listener to experience pleasure in/from music. Look at a YouTube of a Rush concert where the musicians and the audience are as one. My own additional interest besides classical and Rock/Pop is traditional cante flamenco. There, the pleasure is largely empathic, as the singer, aided by a sensitive guitarist, fills the small space occupied by singer, guitarist, and auditor with intense emotion. Again, while the means vary, the end is pleasure, and the degree of musical pleasure that each person can experience is uniquely his or her own.


Your first sentence reminds me of the Debussy quote: "*There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law*. I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth - an open-air art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art."


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes, but in my deceptive cadence example, a naive listener will feel: "Oh, I thought it was going to end there but then … oh wait, it's coming back. Ah _there_; that's what I expected it to do the first time." That really is analysis of a sort. Not academic analysis. And a Neapolitan chord might strike a naive listener as a strange, unexpected bit of light (an unusual major chord) before the plunge to a dark cadence in the minor mode (Is this what you were hinting at Woodduck?). That is the essential thing about the chord, and feeling that unexpected major glow is more important than being able to name the chord it inhabits.


Well, I find the Neapolitan chord in a minor key to be exceptionally _dark_, actually, despite being major. Maybe it's just me.

As I think about it, I wonder if the classic deceptive cadence on the submediant isn't the rare device where knowing what it is actually detracts from enjoyment. When you know what it is, you can't help but be aware that it's a very easy and well-worn device. And unlike the passages in Mozart that are all perfectly proportioned I-IV-V, the deceptive cadence always calls attention to itself as a conscious artifice on the part of the composer.

It's hard to say because I really have no idea what music sounds like to our "naive" listener. I'm by no means very musically talented, but I've played the piano since I was 5. I can't remember music before that.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Triplets said:


> That is an interesting concept, but I don't concur. I can analyze really bad music in depth and describe why I don't like it. I struggle more with describing why I enjoy other kinds of music


That's a good point. But this is basically what I mean by "how much analysis it can... withstand." If our analysis shows weaknesses (or things that we take as weaknesses) then we are finding the limits of the quality of the music.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Bulldog said:


> I find this hierarchy business unsavory and elitist. From my perspective, each listener is unique; adjectives such as ordinary or great are arbitrary.


You're right, objectively speaking. However, the community of listeners whose opinions I value is one that values analysis.

This is the taste/perception difference I've discussed before. All tastes (value judgments) are equal. All perceptions (awareness of facts) are not.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> I suspect that Edward is correct about the sort of things he mentions in his post. But there's more to comprehension of classical music than that. There are intertextual references too. Can anyone get much stimulation from History of Photography in Sound without tracing the quotes? I doubt it.
> 
> And there's all the cultural baggage. If you don't know the hymns that Bach based his chorales on, and the Lutherian ideas he was encapsulating, then you're missing out on a part of what the listening experience can offer.


This I agree with very strongly. Music is a connection to history, to people in history and people now. I have no problem with the "only the sounds of the music count" approach, but understanding the connections to other people can only enrich that experience.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

The intellectual always comes after the fact of the initial experience of perception. But "musical intelligence" is something that is innate, not learned. So it is unfair to isolate the intellectual, as if it were the only source of "intelligence" in perceiving music. Let's not mix those two up.
The intellectual process, of naming and analyzing, only comes with hard work.
"Musical intelligence" is innate.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

science said:


> The difference between good music and great music is not what genre they are but how much analysis it can provoke and withstand. There's nothing wrong with not being able to provoke or withstand analysis, but that's how the legitimate hierarchy (as opposed to the one in which some people's tastes are just superior to others') works.
> 
> The difference between ordinary listeners and great listeners is not which genres they enjoy but how much analysis they can perform. There's nothing wrong with listening to music with naive romanticism - that's how I am constrained to listen - but that's why some people's opinions count for more than mine.


In a word, ********.

Valuing a cerebral experience of music is less, not more, important. Good, great, music transcends analysis, and the analysis of it is the least important aspect of it. The fact that some music can be analysed is unrelated to its greatness, but to its link to a written tradition. Music that emerged from a written tradition is a small fraction of the music of our world and does not have a monopoly on greatness.

Analysis occurs after the fact of the experience and is not part of a musical experience. Its usefulness is primarily for learning the nuts and bolts of composition. Great music is created by artist musicians who are well beyond knowing the nuts and bolts.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

San Antone said:


> In a word, ********.
> 
> Valuing a cerebral experience of music is less, not more, important. Good, great, music transcends analysis, and the analysis of it is the least important aspect of it. The fact that some music can be analysed is unrelated to its greatness, but to its link to a written tradition. Music that emerged from a written tradition is a small fraction of the music of our world and does not have a monopoly on greatness.
> 
> Analysis occurs after the fact of the experience and is not part of a musical experience. Its usefulness is primarily for learning the nuts and bolts of composition. Great music is created by artist musicians who are well beyond knowing the nuts and bolts.


Well, we disagree. You believe in romanticism, and I don't.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

science said:


> Well, we disagree. You believe in romanticism, and I don't.


I don't believe in anything. But I know that music is created for listening not for analysis.


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

Great music is complex and to fully appreciate it you need to understand how it works. The symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms etc cannot properly be understood without understanding the symphonic forms these composers used and developed, especially sonata form, which is one of the great discoveries and miracles of classical music.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

San Antone said:


> I don't believe in anything. But I know that music is created for listening not for analysis.


Hypothetically, what if someone creates music for analysis?


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## Johann Sebastian Bach (Dec 18, 2015)

Now pay attention all of you.

I'm better qualified to speak on this because I went to Music College, have music degrees and have many years experience as a professional conductor.

Therefore, your views on music are trivial compared to my vast knowledge of music history, theory and analysis.

OK, I admit that, as a man, I've never gone through the great joys and/or great traumas of giving birth.

I suppose I should add that I've never struggled in life particularly: I've had good relationships, a great family, I've not been poor or had to question any value systems to any great extent. I've not been to prison, nor I have I been raped (or robbed, come to that). I've lived (as a white male) in England all my life.

I'm sure you'll now agree that I know best. Knowledge is truth - and power.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Johann Sebastian Bach said:


> Now pay attention all of you.
> 
> I'm better qualified to speak on this because I went to Music College, have music degrees and have many years experience as a professional conductor.
> 
> ...


oh great master, I humbly prostrate myself before thee and await further pearls of wisdom that will no doubt drip from your lips


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## Johann Sebastian Bach (Dec 18, 2015)

Jacck said:


> oh great master, I humbly prostrate myself before thee and await further pearls of wisdom that will no doubt drip from your lips


I trust you see the irony in my post.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I wonder whether anyone would advocate for a pure-emotion approach to other arts. Literature seems like the obvious one to question but maybe architecture would be even more interesting.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

science said:


> Hypothetically, what if someone creates music for analysis?


If it sounds good, it's good.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

science said:


> I wonder whether anyone would advocate for a pure-emotion approach to other arts. Literature seems like the obvious one to question but maybe architecture would be even more interesting.


people have two brain hemispheres, one is analytical and the other is more intuitive and emotional. The best art stimulates both, for example Bach is both highly intellectual and emotional. Then there are composers who are more cerebral than emotional, for example Hindemith. And then there are the oversweet emotional composers such as Mozart.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

Jacck said:


> people have two brain hemispheres, one is analytical and the other is more intuitive and emotional. The best art stimulates both, for example Bach is both highly intellectual and emotional. Then there are composers who are more cerebral than emotional, for example Hindemith. And then there are the oversweet emotional composers such as Mozart.


Then there's Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground"; Roscoe Holcomb, anything; Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues".


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## Guest (Jun 14, 2018)

Jacck said:


> people have two brain hemispheres, one is analytical and the other is more intuitive and emotional. The best art stimulates both, for example Bach is both highly intellectual and emotional. Then there are composers who are more cerebral than emotional, for example Hindemith. And then there are the oversweet emotional composers such as Mozart.


Oddly enough, I disagree with absolutely everything here, starting from the notion that the two hemispheres are analytical and emotional, and ending with the notion that Mozart is emotional rather than intellectual.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Baron Scarpia said:


> Oddly enough, I disagree with absolutely everything here, starting from the notion that the two hemispheres are analytical and emotional, and ending with the notion that Mozart is emotional rather than intellectual.


I used the two hemispheres cliché rather as a metaphor and did not want to go into unessential details such as limbic system and brain reward circuitry. So you are right about the hemispheres. But speaking metaphorically, you can derive pleasure from pure intellect. If you know some mathematics, then you know how you can derive pleasure from beautiful mathematical relationships and equations etc. Like solving the Schrodinger equation for the hydrogen atom and obtaining the shape of the electron orbitals etc. It is like magic, like elegant music. Other forms of art are not so cerebral and stimulate baser senses than the intellect. You can obtain a good massage and derive pleasure from that. The pleasure centers in the brain are the same in all cases. Concering Mozart, that is subjective.


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## Guest (Jun 14, 2018)

Jacck said:


> Concering Mozart, that is subjective.


I won't claim that the question of whether Mozart is an emotional or intellectual composer is objective. I'm tempted to claim that the distinction is meaningless. Great technical skill is usually behind the stagecraft that evokes an emotional response. But the great subtlety of the contrapuntal music that appears in Mozart's late work seems to me to bely the notion that his music lacks for intellectual rigor.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Baron Scarpia said:


> I won't claim that the question of whether Mozart is an emotional or intellectual composer is objective. I'm tempted to claim that the distinction is meaningless. Great technical skill is usually behind the stagecraft that evokes an emotional response. But the great subtlety of the contrapuntal music that appears in Mozart's late work seems to me to bely the notion that his music lacks for intellectual rigor.


No need to argue about that. I personally have a difficulty enjoying Mozart, don't really know why. It is beyond reason, some visceral reaction to his music. And I tried quite a lot. The last time today (mass in C minor). And although I enjoy some parts of his music and can even see that it is well crafted, I do not love his music and would not take it to a deserted island (I would certainly prefer Bach or Beethoven or even many other composers considered as lesser than Mozart)
He may be intellectual and emotional to you. I can acknowledge and respect that.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

San Antone said:


> I don't believe in anything. But I know that music is created for listening not for analysis.


The issues you raise were all hashed out earlier in the thread. Did you read the thread? We got past the simplistic distinctions between listening and analysis pages (and years ) ago.


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## Guest (Jun 14, 2018)

No worries, Jacck, there are certainly composers who I respect, and who I never want to hear again.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> The issues you raise were all hashed out earlier in the thread. Did you read the thread? We got past the simplistic distinctions between listening and analysis pages (and years ) ago.


No, I did not read a thread that has taken place over years. Imo, music analysis is parasitic, but can serve a low-level pedagogical function.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

San Antone said:


> No, I did not read a thread that has taken place over years. Imo, music analysis is parasitic, but can serve a low-level pedagogical function.


The thread took place over two days in 2015 and then was revived today. That's less than three days total. Your opinion was expressed by others and answered in detail by people who know stuff. If you don't want to know how your opinion was received and answered, I'm curious as to why you entered this thread at all.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Breakup, it's certainly possible to enjoy classical music without any knowledge of music theory or experience analyzing it, or reading analyses of it , but having such knowledge is extremely valuable nevertheless . 
It doesn't interfere with  your visceral enjoyment of the music at all ,let alone "destroy " it . You can enjoy a symphony by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven or other great composers without knowing what sonata form is, or what a rondo is etc , but such knowledge is still extremely useful and gives you greater understanding of the music .


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## Guest (Jun 14, 2018)

Superhorn's experience is the same as my own. I have some technical knowledge of music, and to the extent that I understand what I hear I think I enjoy it more. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy the bits I don't understand.

To make a perhaps imprecise analogy, if I am eating a dish in a restaurant and I recognize that a unique flavor is being created by, say, thyme, that doesn't interfere with my sensual enjoyment of the dish, and might add another layer of enjoyment on top.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

superhorn said:


> Breakup, it's certainly possible to enjoy classical music without any knowledge of music theory or experience analyzing it, or reading analyses of it , but having such knowledge is extremely valuable nevertheless . It doesn't interfere with your visceral enjoyment of the music at all ,let alone "destroy " it . You can enjoy a symphony by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven or other great composers without knowing what sonata form is, or what a rondo is etc , but such knowledge is still extremely useful and gives you greater understanding of the music .


I know nothing about music theory, but your post reminded me of a quote by Richard Feynman that I think is relevant

_"I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts."_

― Richard Feynman


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> The thread took place over two days in 2015 and then was revived today. That's less than three days total. Your opinion was expressed by others and answered in detail by people who know stuff. If you don't want to know how your opinion was received and answered, I'm curious as to why you entered this thread at all.


I was posting in a different thread, the "Stylistic Diversity" and then, I think one of my posts appeared here. I am not sure how I stumbled upon this thread, but found something to respond to.

But I find it humorous your statement that my "opinion was expressed by others and answered in detail by people who know stuff."

Since I will never prioritize analysis above the experience of listening to music, I'm done here.

You know there is a lot of music which cannot be meaningfully analyzed using the tools of western classical music. A staff notating the blues scale and 12-bar or 8-bar forms with the harmonic progressions, e.g., tells us only the most superficial aspects of the blues, and not even accurately, at that. What someone like Robert Johnson performs can be only crudely notated and there is no analysis that will completely explain what is so good about his music.

I think this is true for any music, even Beethoven, which has been analyzed to death.

So, you keep your analyses and I'll go on listening to music.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

San Antone said:


> I was posting in a different thread, the "Stylistic Diversity" and then, I think one of my posts appeared here. I am not sure how I stumbled upon this thread, but found something to respond to.
> 
> But I find it humorous your statement that my "opinion was expressed by others and answered in detail by people who know stuff."
> 
> ...


You seem to be having an argument with some imaginary opponent. No one in this thread prioritized "analysis above the experience of listening to music" or anything remotely like that, which, once again, you would have known had you actually read the thread.

Since you have dismissed the usefulness of analyzing the music of Beethoven, can we assume you have read and understood such analyses and found them wanting? You know, there has been a revolution in the analysis and interpretation of Beethoven over the last few decades. Did you find nothing of value in recent narrative and semiotic approaches, which attempt to deal directly with meaning and humanistic content?


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I don't doubt in any way that a deep theoretical understanding of music and the ability to analyze music from a theoretical perspective brings its own kind of reward, enjoyment and appreciation, but nobody is going to ever convince me that this understanding somehow enhances and intensifies the enjoyment, the pleasure and whatever feelings and thoughts are going on while listening to the music. Whether you get a piece of music "just" on an intuitive level or have a thorough understanding of its theoretical aspects, the expressive qualities of the music remain the same.


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## Euler (Dec 3, 2017)

DeepR said:


> I don't doubt in any way that a deep theoretical understanding of music and the ability to analyze music from a theoretical perspective brings its own kind of reward, enjoyment and appreciation, but nobody is going to ever convince me that this understanding somehow enhances and intensifies the enjoyment, the pleasure and whatever feelings and thoughts are going on while listening to the music. Whether you get a piece of music "just" on an intuitive level or have a thorough understanding of its theoretical aspects, the expressive qualities of the music remain the same.


Much of Haydn's humour relies upon detecting his contortion of sonata form -- false recapitulations, offsetting the medial caesura, surprise modulations, tonal ambiguity and so on. Some of these might be perceived without knowledge but here technical understanding surely enriches the music on an emotional level. The intellectual and the visceral need not be opposing forces IMO.


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## Guest (Jun 14, 2018)

Every discussion board I've visited has this thread. My only hard and fast rule is "don't make declarative statements about what should enable someone to enjoy music. Only make statements about what enables me to enjoy music."


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Baron Scarpia said:


> Every discussion board I've visited has this thread. My only hard and fast rule is "don't make declarative statements about what should enable someone to enjoy music. Only make statements about what enables me to enjoy music."


There's also the POV of the creator. "Don't make declarative statements about the music I should try to create. Only make statements about the music you hope to create."

Of course, if you share my values, and have more insight than I do, then I'd love to know what you think. But if Thomas Kinkade is what you want -- all feeling, cannot stand up to much analysis -- you do not share my values!


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> You seem to be having an argument with some imaginary opponent. No one in this thread prioritized "analysis above the experience of listening to music" or anything remotely like that, which, once again, you would have known had you actually read the thread.
> 
> Since you have dismissed the usefulness of analyzing the music of Beethoven, can we assume you have read and understood such analyses and found them wanting? You know, there has been a revolution in the analysis and interpretation of Beethoven over the last few decades. Did you find nothing of value in recent narrative and semiotic approaches, which attempt to deal directly with meaning and humanistic content?


What sucked me into this discussion a post by *science* in which he said,



science said:


> The difference between good music and great music is not what genre they are but how much analysis it can provoke and withstand. There's nothing wrong with not being able to provoke or withstand analysis, but that's how the legitimate hierarchy (as opposed to the one in which some people's tastes are just superior to others') works.
> 
> The difference between ordinary listeners and great listeners is not which genres they enjoy but how much analysis they can perform. There's nothing wrong with listening to music with naive romanticism - that's how I am constrained to listen - but that's why some people's opinions count for more than mine.


Which influenced my statement that I will never prioritize analysis of music over the experience of it, nor as he said give greater weight to an opinion about some music that was the result of analysis. Often I've read an article or book chapter on a work I love, in which the author performed an in-depth analysis and it was sort of interesting, but the time spent reading it would have been better spent just listening to the music.

I went through music school and came out with a degree in composition and theory so I know what analysis is, and did my share of it - back in the day. These days not so much. Regarding analysis of Beethoven, I have books on his string quartets and piano sonatas and dip into them occasionally. Analysis which incorporates other disciplines, e.g. semiotics, does not interest me at all.

The claim that to the degree a work lends itself to analysis should be a basis on how good or great it is, I consider specious. There is too much music, which I consider good, of which any analysis would address only the superficial elements since the aspects which make it great are often well beyond the tools and metrics of music analysis.


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## Guest (Jun 15, 2018)

There seems to be two variations on "analysis" being used. One that entails pulling something to pieces, forensically, without any intention of putting it back together again, just to see how it worked - the body of the work gutted and left for dead. The other that is about informed listening, being able to appreciate a work using all the faculties available to the activity - not just a visceral response, not just a cerebral response.

I enjoy Haydn's Symphony 99 more now than when I first reached familiarity with it, because I can turn it over and inspect it better than 5 years ago when I knew much less about it.


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## Johann Sebastian Bach (Dec 18, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> I enjoy Haydn's Symphony 99 more now than when I first reached familiarity with it, because I can turn it over and inspect it better than 5 years ago when I knew much less about it.


Aah yes, the old 78rpm records which you needed to turn over, half way through a symphony, in order to play the rest of it. I'd never thought about the advantage of this as providing time for reflection and analysis.


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## Guest (Jun 15, 2018)

Johann Sebastian Bach said:


> Aah yes, the old 78rpm records which you needed to turn over, half way through a symphony, in order to play the rest of it. I'd never thought about the advantage of this as providing time for reflection and analysis.


Hoho .


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

DeepR said:


> I don't doubt in any way that a deep theoretical understanding of music and the ability to analyze music from a theoretical perspective brings its own kind of reward, enjoyment and appreciation, but nobody is going to ever convince me that this understanding somehow enhances and intensifies the enjoyment, the pleasure and whatever feelings and thoughts are going on while listening to the music. Whether you get a piece of music "just" on an intuitive level or have a thorough understanding of its theoretical aspects, the expressive qualities of the music remain the same.


I think the most important benefit of theoretical understanding is being able to communicate with other people in a specific way about what you like about a piece and why. I've always enjoyed listening with others and sharing impressions. If one knows what to call things and others agree on conventions by which to describe them, communication is much easier.

I don't get distracted or preoccupied with theory or analysis when listening for aesthetic pleasure because the big features of form and thematic processes tend to occur to me automatically as the music unfolds. Since it requires little effort it isn't distracting or preoccupying.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I don't understand opposing analysis to experience or feeling. 

First of all, one of the main things we investigate when we analyze a work of art is why it has various effects on us. 

But secondly, the act of analysis is itself a source of aesthetic experience. The example of Haydn's structures are a fine example of that. 

When I talk about art with someone, I don't want to talk only about how we feel; I want to talk about form and technique, the historical context of those forms and techniques (their novelty and subsequent influence, perhaps including technological aspects), social and political context, and so on, in addition to how we feel about all of these things. 

But again, if someone doesn't value that stuff, I can't argue that they're wrong. De gustibus is an eternal law. They have a right to their opinion, and no force in the universe could deny them that anyway. But they're not the people I'm going to turn to for companionship in this voyage of discovery.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Jacck said:


> I know nothing about music theory, but your post reminded me of a quote by Richard Feynman that I think is relevant
> 
> _"I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts."_
> 
> ― Richard Feynman


I've always loved that quote, though I must allow Keats a rebuttal:

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine-
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade. -- John Keats, _Lamia_

I tend to think these two views reveal something about the differing psychological perspectives on knowledge. For some, mystery is a kind of virtue in itself. Not knowing makes things seem miraculous, or awe-inspiring. Knowing takes that mysterious power a way, a thing just becomes another object "in the dull catalogue of common things." For others, however, knowledge only deepens an appreciation while lessening none of the object's power to provoke profound reactions. Personally, I'm more in the latter category while still sympathizing somewhat with the former.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> That's just it: You probably comprehend every one of the things I listed, but just haven't described to yourself what you are doing when it happens. It's like listening to speech. We can comprehend exceedingly convoluted sentences and note subtle shadings of meaning and tone. Does that mean we can diagram the sentence? Can we say this is a subsidiary clause, this is a prepositional phrase and this is an indirect object? Perhaps not, but our minds nevertheless comprehend all of these relationships on some level. Same with music. I'll bet you recognize where one phrase finishes and a new one starts, you can likely tell whether the music is in groups of two or three beats, and you can feel where a big arrival takes place. And you surely routinely connect little snippets of motives with the themes whence they come. When I said we are all performing complex acts of analysis I meant in the same unconscious way we do when we listen to speech. Not in the sentence diagramming way.


Continuing with the analogy to language--there are lots of times in novels and poetry when actually doing that kind of analysis leads to discoveries that merely "feeling the text" would not.

To mention a famous example, in a passage in _Catcher in the Rye_, the narrator complains about someone imagining that good writing is just a matter of having commas in the right places. One of the key sentences of that passage features a comma that from a technical standpoint is objectively in the wrong place, but from an aesthetic standpoint many people would say it's perfect. That's a narrative joke that cannot be appreciated without doing the actual intellectual analysis of the way Salinger uses his punctuation. _Catcher_ is so full of self-referential jokes like that that anyone who does not do the actual analysis simply does not understand that work, and that is precisely why it is one of the most misunderstood works in the canon.

Now it's of course possible to believe that no one should write like Salinger did or read like I do, but hey, I'm pretty sure that Salinger would care about such people's opinions even less than I do.

One of the appeals of the "feeling only" romantic idea is that it seems democratic, while an approach that values knowledge seems aristocratic. This is why this discussion reminds some people of the discussion about the legitimacy of taste. But they're two completely separate things.

To illustrate the difference, I'm going to indulge in a hardcore name-drop. Brace yourself.

Jaroslav Pelikan once told me that he read Goethe's _Faust_ at least once a year to keep his German sharp. So that means he'd read _Faust_ at least twenty, maybe fifty or more times. In the original German. Now I've read _Faust_ once, in an English translation that is supposed to be good, in an edition with a lot of helpful footnotes and other resources.

This is the point where the difference is clear.

Perhaps Pelikan's opinions of the text are more interesting than mine because of his much greater familiarity with it, not to mention his much greater familiarity with the entire history of Western culture and his facility with multiple languages including German. I believe this.

Alternatively, perhaps I simply have better taste than he does, so my opinions matter more than his. People who argue that some people's tastes are inherently, objectively better than other people's (who are perhaps "cowardly" or perhaps "soulless" or who knows what) are taking this one.

A third option is that his knowledge means nothing, so our opinions have exactly equal value. People who argue that all thought and analysis are irrelevant to the appreciation of art are taking this one.

Now it is obvious that I take the first option, but is it undemocratic? Precisely not. It's almost perfectly democratic; even better, it's *meritocratic*. Almost anyone who wants to can learn German, read _Faust_ a few dozen times, and spend a few decades studying the history of Western culture. I'm going to have a load of respect for anyone who does that and demonstrates some amount of intellectual originality. That doesn't mean I'm going to agree with their *values*--they might not be able to persuade me to enjoy _Faust_ as much as they do, but I will respect the *knowledge* that underlies their opinions.


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## Johann Sebastian Bach (Dec 18, 2015)

"Cojones" was the response of a Spanish colleague, with whom I was discussing how to best interpret the choral music of Francisco Guerrero. 

I spoke very little Spanish in those days and he spoke no English. We used Italian terms to discuss tempo and expression. Neither of us really felt able to explain the detail of our different interpretations.

Later, in a joint concert of English and Spanish musicians, we understood each other's viewpoint because we both spoke the same language of music.

So my contention is that it doesn't matter whether you noted that the second subject group of the Exposition had an exaggerated dotted rhythm. Most of our responses to a paralinguistic art form are just that - beyond language.

Tell me why you like red. Or Eb major. Or rainy days. Or 11.10 on Tuesdays.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Johann Sebastian Bach said:


> "Cojones" was the response of a Spanish colleague, with whom I was discussing how to best interpret the choral music of Francisco Guerrero.
> 
> I spoke very little Spanish in those days and he spoke no English. We used Italian terms to discuss tempo and expression. Neither of us really felt able to explain the detail of our different interpretations.
> 
> ...


I don't think anyone is disagreeing with the basic ideas here.

But it might also be true that if I think about 11:10 on Tuesdays, I might come to appreciate it more or less. There would be nothing wrong with me valuing that.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

science said:


> ...Perhaps Pelikan's opinions of the text are more interesting than mine because of his much greater familiarity with it, not to mention his much greater familiarity with the entire history of Western culture and his facility with multiple languages including German. I believe this.
> 
> Alternatively, perhaps I simply have better taste than he does, so my opinions matter more than his. People who argue that some people's tastes are inherently, objectively better than other people's (who are perhaps "cowardly" or perhaps "soulless" or who knows what) are taking this one.
> 
> ...


I think I'm a mix of your first and third option, though I'd have to rephrase them to fully express my position. Knowledge will make opinions more interesting to those who value that knowledge, and it will be irrelevant to people whose appreciation of art has nothing to do with what they know about it. I don't think either position (again, being based on subjective values) is inherently right or wrong. I personally value knowledge and am a pretty voracious learner when it comes to subjects I'm interested in--none more so than art. So yes, I value the thoughts of those more knowledgeable than myself, but, much as you say, this doesn't mean I will share their values. Mostly what one learns from people more knowledgeable is facts and details that they have missed, at least on an intellectual/conscious level, and, as per Hume, no such facts can determine values. Perhaps the more interesting question is whether such facts can change people's values. I think they can, but I also think that's rather rare. This may happen more often when people have interpreted a work one way and through someone's knowledge and analysis come to see it another way. This has happened to me before (though mostly with films).


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

To me analysis is also part of the enjoyment of music. I don't care for messages, etc. which kills the music for me, unless it is programmatic.


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## Mozart555 (Jun 17, 2018)

breakup said:


> Listening to any music is visceral, not intellectual, if you need to analyze the music to appreciate it, you have killed it and don't really feel it, and feeling is what music is about.


THIS. One can never criticize music for being too emotional. The whole point of art is emotion, unemotional music is by definition garbage. You can only criticize it for being sentimental, a.k.a. fake or not heartfelt emotion. The greatest music is emotional and almost autobiographical, genuine emotion must be felt by the composer and poured into the music as an an outlet of expression, it cannot be manufactured.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mozart555 said:


> THIS. One can never criticize music for being too emotional. The whole point of art is emotion, unemotional music is by definition garbage. You can only criticize it for being sentimental, a.k.a. fake or not heartfelt emotion. The greatest music is emotional and almost autobiographical, *genuine emotion must be felt by the composer and poured into the music as an an outlet of expression, it cannot be manufactured.*


Welcome Mozart555!

All of the above is quaint romantic mythology and you will be able to disprove for yourself the part in bold by thinking of practically any opera. Did Purcell have to feel suicidal when he wrote Dido's Lament? Did Musorgsky have to be in terror of an apparition when he wrote the clock scene in Boris Godunov? Was Richard Strauss mad and deranged when he wrote music for Elektra's "Allein Weh ganz alleiin?" Of course not! Composers manufacture emotion all the time. That's pretty much the job description! In any case, a central focus on expression of the kind you are describing was characteristic only of the Romantic Era and less pervasively of some music in the 20thc century. Josquin, Bach, Mozart, Debussy and Stravinsky would have found the idea that they were pouring out their inner feelings in music absurd.

To the extent that even Romantic music expresses emotion, one should never assume it is the composer's emotion being expressed unless one has specific testimony from the composer. Like novelists, who portray the fictional emotional states of their characters, often states they themselves have not experienced, so too composers create emotional fiction. The expression in any particular work should be assumed to be that of a fictional character inhabiting the work, not that of the composer.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Baron Scarpia said:


> Oddly enough, I disagree with absolutely everything here, starting from the notion that the two hemispheres are analytical and emotional, and ending with the notion that Mozart is emotional rather than intellectual.


The term "over sweet" is purely an opinion - but not a well informed one and based most likely on just a small number of his works. If Mozart's music is over sweet then the whole of the classical era can be dismissed as such.

A lot of people cant hear the emotion in Mozart neither can they hear any intellect.

And there is another group who can hear both.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Mozart555 said:


> THIS. One can never criticize music for being too emotional. The whole point of art is emotion, unemotional music is by definition garbage. You can only criticize it for being sentimental, a.k.a. fake or not heartfelt emotion. The greatest music is emotional and almost autobiographical,* genuine emotion must be felt by the composer and poured into the music *as an an outlet of expression, it cannot be manufactured.


While composers no doubt draw upon their emotional inner world in the creation of their art - I think Mozart was able to manufacture whatever mood he wanted when he wanted it. He composed some of his happiest music in the period immediately after his mother died, as well as some profound darker pieces. When he was deeply in debt writing begging letters - when his child died - he also was in the process of composing bright major key pieces.


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## Guest (Jun 17, 2018)

stomanek said:


> The term "over sweet" is purely an opinion - but not a well informed one and based most likely on just a small number of his works. If Mozart's music is over sweet then the whole of the classical era can be dismissed as such.
> 
> A lot of people cant hear the emotion in Mozart neither can they hear any intellect.
> 
> And there is another group who can hear both.


Given the number of people who've come here and said something similar, I'd conclude that there's something in it.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

stomanek said:


> While composers no doubt draw upon their emotional inner world in the creation of their art - I think Mozart was able to manufacture whatever mood he wanted when he wanted it. He composed some of his happiest music in the period immediately after his mother died, as well as some profound darker pieces. When he was deeply in debt writing begging letters - when his child died - he also was in the process of composing bright major key pieces.


All this shows is that there are lots of emotions connected with death. When my father died I remember going out of the hospital into the ambulance car park to get some air - I'd been up all night with him - and I spontaneously danced a joyful dance. I don't think it was callous, it was just that I was relieved that it was all over - his agony, my waiting. And somehow elated that a new chapter in my life was starting.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> *All this shows is that there are lots of emotions connected with death*. When my father died I remember going out of the hospital into the ambulance car park to get some air - I'd been up all night with him - and I spontaneously danced a joyful dance. I don't think it was callous, it was just that I was relieved that it was all over - his agony, my waiting. And somehow elated that a new chapter in my life was starting.


Why would you think it shows that? That only makes sense if you're assuming the music Mozart was composing was expressing his emotions about his mother. The burden of proof comes with making that assumption, don't you think?

Death and grieving are complicated. My only firm belief on the subject is that one should resist judging others for how they grieve and react to death.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> Given the number of people who've come here and said something similar, I'd conclude that there's something in it.


you mean that if several people hold a point of view - it must have some validity?

for those that hold that point of view - then yes obviously.

many people have said that Beethoven's music is merely bombastic - there must be something in that too.


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## Guest (Jun 17, 2018)

stomanek said:


> you mean that if several people hold a point of view - it must have some validity?
> 
> for those that hold that point of view - then yes obviously.
> 
> many people have said that Beethoven's music is merely bombastic - there must be something in that too.


Validity for them, yes, exactly so. Universally? No, certainly not. It's not how you find Mozart, or many other people here, but you yourself have argued that if enough people share the same opinion, it has universal validity...haven't you?


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> Validity for them, yes, exactly so. Universally? No, certainly not. It's not how you find Mozart, or many other people here, but you yourself have argued that if enough people share the same opinion, it has universal validity...haven't you?


I never claimed universal validity. Very few people on this board over the years have said Mozart's music is sickly sweet.


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## Guest (Jun 17, 2018)

stomanek said:


> I never claimed universal validity. Very few people on this board over the years have said Mozart's music is sickly sweet.


Not in those exact words perhaps, but this post of yours is the kind of thing that asserts the basic principle.

Mozart's Genius


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> Not in those exact words perhaps, but this post of yours is the kind of thing that asserts the basic principle.
> 
> Mozart's Genius


I think in that post I was just rebutting Wooduck's assertion that while Beethoven was capable of producing a work of equally great proportions - Mozart was not - or just started to do so at the end of his career. I think Wooduck himself - a fan of PC20 - would have to admit he was wrong in this statement and Mozart was composing works of the highest standard well before K551.
That I enlisted the views of great composers and conductors I suppose is a logical fallacy - but nevertheless must carry some weight.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

stomanek said:


> I think in that post I was just rebutting Wooduck's assertion that while Beethoven was capable of producing a work of equally great proportions - Mozart was not - or just started to do so at the end of his career. I think Wooduck himself - a fan of PC20 - would have to admit he was wrong in this statement and Mozart was composing works of the highest standard well before K551.
> That I enlisted the views of great composers and conductors I suppose is a logical fallacy - but nevertheless must carry some weight.


I don't recall having said that Mozart didn't write great music before K551. What statement are you referring to?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Why would you think it shows that? That only makes sense if you're assuming the music Mozart was composing was expressing his emotions about his mother. The burden of proof comes with making that assumption, don't you think?
> 
> Death and grieving are complicated. My only firm belief on the subject is that one should resist judging others for how they grieve and react to death.


Yes

............


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> I don't recall having said that Mozart didn't write great music before K551. What statement are you referring to?


You were saying that Mozart in the g minor sy started to achieve what was common in Beethoven symphonies - every note top notch.

maybe you meant symphony - not his output as a whole.


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