# Life as Music experience



## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Several people around the threads I have noticed are implying that 'life experience' is necessary to a composer or performer. In the infamous Mozart vs Beethoven thread people are arguing about suffering informing music, and also just going out and experiencing what life has. I also remember once seeing someone arguing that performers could not perform fully if they locked themselves up and never went out to enjoy life.

This is not about age (or suffering) so much as people's speculations as to whether life experience helps a musician.

I wonder also whether people have found that experiences which have nothing to do with music help their appreciation of it as listeners. My strongest experience of this was visiting Austria and Germany and seeing the countryside there, which at least doubled my appreciation for Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.


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## principe (Sep 3, 2012)

Definitely, "Life" plays a vital role in a composer's vision for what he may compose. I cannot imagine whether Wagner would have composed "Tristan", if he had not exposed himself to the unrequited love for Mathilde Wessendonck. Beethoven's "Pastorale" is another formidable case always to mention. His String Quartet op.132 (in a minor) is the result of the composer's suffering a life threatening illness and the relief of happiness for given a new lease of life.
For performers, somehow, the same applies, at least to some extent. However, S. Richter used to claim that the soloist has to stick to the letter of the score. There, he/she can find everything. He was very satisfied when a very respectful professor and critic praised him that, apart form playing (well), he (Richter) can read the score quite well!
As for the listeners, judging from myself, life experiences enhance my comprehension of the wider scope of a music work and that's very important. However,for listeners who can read or follow the score carefully, it is a huge experience as far as the musical aspect of the work, which is the most essential.

Principe


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

As far as seasoning of an artist, every stage of life sees the world differently, and I think there is room for each age. But if you are a true artist, with age comes the ability to confront the same pieces and seek a newer/deeper/different perspective of them. Or if you are a creator, age gives you the ability to confront what you have already accomplished and still develop from there.


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## Squirrel (Oct 8, 2012)

Maybe it is possible to turn this question on its head, and ask whether, whilst life experience might improve one's appreciation of some types of music, might it also diminish one's appreciation of others? Speaking for myself, today I don't think I can listen to the pop music I enjoyed as a kid and a teenager in quite the same way as I did back then. Does that mean my increased experience/maturity/judgement/whatever has led me to recognise the limitations of that music, or is it the case that I had a superior ability to appreciate the music back then than I do now? A case can be made for either side of the argument.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

What's life?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Ramako said:


> Several people around the threads I have noticed are implying that 'life experience' is necessary to a composer or performer. In the infamous Mozart vs Beethoven thread people are arguing about suffering informing music, and also just going out and experiencing what life has. I also remember once seeing someone arguing that performers could not perform fully if they locked themselves up and never went out to enjoy life.
> 
> This is not about age (or suffering) so much as people's speculations as to whether life experience helps a musician...


I think it depends on the individual person. Some composers rarely travelled and really hated it (Beethoven, Brahms), some where not interested in women (Bruckner), some had pretty boring lives (eg. Haydn). There where composers who had less eventful lives, but its really their internal life that's more interesting than their external life, if that makes sense. How they internally related to external things or events. Its about sensitivity and perception.

Ultimately, I think most composers where 'outsiders.'

There is the opinion that some composers born with a silver spoon in their mouth can be superficial (this is often levelled at Mendelssohn). I don't know if that's important for me in enjoying their music, and I think that assessment has its limitations too.

As for comparing, we can do this. What about comparing the young Yehudi Menuhin's recordings with his late ones? As he got older, he rerecorded many things. I have not compared his recordings from different periods. But maybe you can answer your question by doing this with him, and other performers who lived and recorded for decades.



> ...
> I wonder also whether people have found that experiences which have nothing to do with music help their appreciation of it as listeners. ...


I have found that life experiences, and talking to people about their experiences, has deepened my connection with music. I have gone through things and came out the other end being able to appreciate music that I could not before certain times of adversity. & things like World War 2 or the Greek civil war are not only 'textbook' theory stuff to me. I had relatives go through these sorts of things, I have spoken to survivors of these events here. So no wonder that things like music dealing with these sorts of events is not just a technical exercise for me. I can get very emotional listening to these things. & it maybe explains my wariness of extremism - including in terms of opinions on music.

Its consoling to think that the great composers went through similar things - and more! - as we do. But the reason they are great is them being able to internalise these things and put them into music. That I think is their genius.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I imagine that if I go to visit St. Petersburg, Russia, hear the ancient bells of the great cathedrals there, see the impressive palaces and buildings, weep at Glazunov's graveside, and walk through the most deserted, old streets at dusk, and feel the icy wind on my face... I might just know a little bit better what it means to be Russian...


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Those who can't conceive art without a "well lived life" have a very romantic idea of what art is. Art is a much more complex thing. The emotions of the composer play a role, sure, but also his intellectual interests, his aestetic thoughts, etc. All this will depend on many factors, some of which are intrinsic to the composer's personality, which, I think, does not suffer big changes through life.


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## etkearne (Sep 28, 2012)

As a budding (hopefully budding quickly) composer, I feel that my sometimes difficult life experiences have influenced my music in many ways. Due to some of the more unpleasant emotional areas I have been through, I have always been comfortable with extremely strong musical ideas and tonality that is very odd, frankly.

It is as though, since I have lived a very tumultuous life (well, specifically the ages 17-24), I have experienced stronger emotions than the average person, and thus, I require stronger material in my own works, which leads me to push tonality harder and harder (although I like to keep it from breaking down just for fun - that is somewhat my style, which is evident from listening to my SoundCloud if you have already). 

And, no, I don't want to discuss on the public forum what happened during those years particularly. You can PM me to ask if you desire and I will tell you, though.


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

Life experiences are important, especially to giving a composer and individual voice. But humans do not live long enough to have all those life experiences that are supposed to give their music depth and importance. That's why we have the arts. Through the arts and humanities we can experience far more than would be possible in one life. When you are experienceing a work of art, put yourself into the protagonists place, or the villians. Or the poets, or the historical characters. Feel and experience with them. That is one of the things that makes Shaklespeare so powerfull. All his characters are people we can experience the story through. Hero, Villian, noble, base. 

If you can't be there yourself, live through art.


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## Guest (Oct 10, 2012)

aleazk said:


> Those who can't conceive art without a "well lived life" have a very romantic idea of what art is. Art is a much more complex thing. The emotions of the composer play a role, sure, but also his intellectual interests, his aestetic thoughts, etc. All this will depend on many factors, some of which are intrinsic to the composer's personality, which, I think, does not suffer big changes through life.


This captures my view pretty well. My preference is to listen to the music, and not speculate about what kind of life the composer led. That has a tendency to lead people to make value judgements about the most valuable kind of life to lead, (and to have led) for the production of the greatest art. This is dodgy territory. If I like the music, that's all that matters. Everything else may be of historical interest, but then mere speculation.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

I just love to live in a mansion and compose music like Mikhail Glinka!

I hope everyones life will be like Schumann's Rhenish symphony


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I visited Germany and Switzerland last year too and when I was there, I was constantly on the lookout for landscapes which looked "Wagnerian" to me, which could provide a visual background to his operas (since I am not quite satisfied with any of the existing stagings and prefer to listen to Wagner rather than watch): the North Sea in a storm, the Rhine in the first morning light, the hills around Bonn, where Valhalla might well have stood and where according to the legend, Siegfried killed his dragon etc.



Huilunsoittaja said:


> I imagine that if I go to visit St. Petersburg, Russia, hear the ancient bells of the great cathedrals there, see the impressive palaces and buildings, weep at Glazunov's graveside, and walk through the most deserted, old streets at dusk, and feel the icy wind on my face... I might just know a little bit better what it means to be Russian...


No, that's not how it is done. In order to understand fully what it means to be Russian you have to go to some bar in Moscow and get drunk while listening to Glazunov, then get behind the steering wheel with a buddy or two you have met in the same bar, take a ride across Moscow, run over a pedestrian ot two, get arrested, bribe the traffic police, get released, go to the biggest and most luxuriously built church in the city and weep about your sins. Repeat as necessary :devil:


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## MaestroViolinist (May 22, 2012)

SiegendesLicht said:


> No, that's not how it is done. In order to understand fully what it means to be Russian you have to go to some bar in Moscow and get drunk while listening to Glazunov, then get behind the steering wheel with a buddy or two you have met in the same bar, take a ride across Moscow, run over a pedestrian ot two, get arrested, bribe the traffic police, get released, go to the biggest and most luxuriously built church in the city and weep about your sins. Repeat as necessary :devil:


That is surprisingly true, from the stories I've heard anyway. :lol:


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

My response to this as a believer in Absolute Music (cf. Programme Music) is that life experience is not necessary for moving/good music to by written. What emotions, trials, tribulations and feelings we connect or ascribe to a piece is a post-factum event manufactured in the mind and heart of the listener, not the writer. This is not to say that life experience is irrelevant, only that it is not IMO the driving force or even major stimulus in music composition. Nor should it be.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

aleazk said:


> Those who can't conceive art without a "well lived life" have a very romantic idea of what art is. Art is a much more complex thing. The emotions of the composer play a role, sure, but also his intellectual interests, his aestetic thoughts, etc. All this will depend on many factors, some of which are intrinsic to the composer's personality, which, I think, does not suffer big changes through life.


I agree with this. What's more I think that ascribing feelings in a composition to events in a composers biography is a very dangerous tool available to the biographer which should be used with much caution. It is fascinating, I think, that we can tell so much about a composer from the sounds which he wrote down on music. It isn't obvious that it should - and yet it does - speak volumes - and yet it is only sound! Is this not wonderful?



KRoad said:


> My response to this as a believer in Absolute Music (cf. Programme Music) is that life experience is not necessary for moving/good music to by written. What emotions, trials, tribulations and feelings we connect or ascribe to a piece is a post-factum event manufactured in the mind and heart of the listener, not the writer. This is not to say that life experience is irrelevant, only that it is not IMO the driving force or even major stimulus in music composition. Nor should it be.


Well I don't believe in programme music either per se, but rather in the emotional world that music can create and the power of it. Mahler and others said that if they could write what they wanted in words, they would do that rather than write music. I say the opposite - if you could write what you wanted to in music why write it in words when music is so much more powerful? This has been acknowledged since ancient Greek times through the early Christian era, when music was absorbed into Church services for this very reason, and then into the age of Classical music.

I don't think of German countryside when I listen to Beethoven's pastoral, but rather I listen to the music and hear the emotions it contains. However, when I see (saw) the German countryside I feel the same emotions through the sight of nature. When I see other beautiful scenery I usually get the same feeling as I do when listening to a Haydn symphony. This may be a personal reaction but it is a very real one and I don't think that music is any weaker for it - quite the contrary.

Any reaction is manufactured in the mind and heart of the listener. A novel may describe the horrors of war, for example, but the horror which the reader feels is still only an invention of their own - yes. But of course the writer intended it. It is the same for music. It is one of the powers of a genius artist in whatever medium to be able to provoke similar or different reactions in many people through their art.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

SiegendesLicht said:


> No, that's not how it is done. In order to understand fully what it means to be Russian you have to go to some bar in Moscow and get drunk while listening to Glazunov, then get behind the steering wheel with a buddy or two you have met in the same bar, take a ride across Moscow, run over a pedestrian ot two, get arrested, bribe the traffic police, get released, go to the biggest and most luxuriously built church in the city and weep about your sins. Repeat as necessary :devil:


:lol: I don't think he ever did anything THAT bad. He did his escapades, but he was more the proper kind.

It is on my bucket list to go to St. Petersburg and visit his grave though. I might just cry too, I don't know how I will react.


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I visited Germany and Switzerland last year too and when I was there, I was constantly on the lookout for landscapes which looked "Wagnerian" to me, which could provide a visual background to his operas (since I am not quite satisfied with any of the existing stagings and prefer to listen to Wagner rather than watch): the North Sea in a storm, the Rhine in the first morning light, the hills around Bonn, where Valhalla might well have stood and where according to the legend, Siegfried killed his dragon etc.
> 
> The place I have found that seems most Rhinegold/Valhallaish is the Columbia River Gorge
> on the Oregon/Washington boarder. It's very easy to imagine a rainbow bridge over the river with the castle gleeming on a hill.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

*Drpraetorus*, yes, this place is quite amazing! "Completed the eternal work, the fortress of gods on the mountaintops..."
*Huilunsoittaja*, I did not say Glazunov did all these things. I said "true" Russians do them (and then complain about corruption, high crime levels and the evil West that makes Russian people drink) :lol:


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

I think its actually interesting to hear artistic perspectives from a huge variety of people, from young to old, from various walks of life, various countries of origin, of various races, genders and sexualities. There isn't a single point of view that is "most interesting" or "most valid" or even "universal" from my perspective. I like variety. It makes things interesting. I try to achieve some variety in my own music, drawing from my various experiences, as well as my perspectives on things outside of myself. But then even another composer who may have had extremely similar experiences to mine, their perception of those experiences will be totally different. That is interesting ^_^


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

yes traveling helps everything.


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