# What's the purpose of theme development in music?



## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Sometimes, while listening to classical music, I am under the impression that modulation into other keys, or playing slight variations (with the general shape retained), while certainly presenting a chance to display the imagination and knowledge of the composer and/or the technique of the player(s), are just inferior choices of how to follow up a certain theme. 
This is more seldomly the case with what I consider "finished tunes". Finished tunes can usually be heard in overtures, dance/or other movement-based pieces, lieder, etc. In their case a "development" is more of a general question of a follow-up. Some variations might happen, but other times what follows will just be a repetition with the experimentation shifted into the areas of harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, or dynamics, or else the melodic figure will be considered finished and another theme, which fits neatly after the previous one, will follow it.

While reading this forum, I've noticed that music which does not experiment on its themes is considered pointless or boring. To me it is an exact opposite---I don't see the point of codified experimentation which would turn, for example, a beautiful melody sentence in the key of C major into a variation in A minor which sounds inferior to the original.

And if the variation does _not _sound inferior to the original, but is an improvement, then I wonder what was the point of that earlier C major version in the first place? Shouldn't it by default be considered more elegant to just let uglier sounding melodic ideas remain on the drawing table?

Why is this "development" considered so important? When I listened to some Bach organ works, now and then I spotted a beautiful short motif, which, if nurtured in its original context and environment, could be turned into a very emotional melody---> and then Bach just _moved on_, ignoring it's potential.

I don't suppose that Bach could not do what perhaps Johnann Strauss II or a Broadway arranger could do, and create something more tuneful, and let it last for a moment. He had a quadruple-digit number of opi, many of them unpublished; and yet he didn't care even once to turn these themes into a lied of some sort? I assume not, because great melodies get popular _extremely quickly_, and they would have reached me already one way or another. So... why didn't he?

On the other hand we have John Williams, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Antonio Vivaldi, for example, whose highly melodic, masterfully crafted short compositions are not considered impressive at all, because they linger with themes, repeat them, etc. But what's wrong with that? Doesn't it take sensibility to know when _not _to show-off with variation-playing and just enjoy the moment? I do think that if someone insinuated a lack of skill in developing being the reason for this to any of the three, they would be able to prove to the critic that that's not the case and that it was a conscious decision.

What do you think?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I think of thematic development somewhat differently. It can mean several things but certainly includes the very difficult practice of giving an undistinguished theme or motif considerable significance that it would otherwise lack.

One beautiful example is in the finale to Schubert’s Great C-major Symphony. The subsidiary theme starts out with four repeated notes. OK, good enough. But by the end of the movement, those four notes have been broken loose from the theme and are played like titanic hammer blows, giving considerable force to the movement (and the symphony).

This Schubert work is a good example because he would often use “finished themes,” which were not very amenable to development at all but could only be repeated, presented in different keys, and so forth. Obviously there are, in his music, exceptions!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Fabulin said:


> Sometimes, while listening to classical music, I am under the impression that modulation into other keys, or playing slight variations (with the general shape retained), while certainly presenting a chance to display the imagination and knowledge of the composer and/or the technique of the player(s), are just inferior choices of how to follow up a certain theme.
> This is more seldomly the case with what I consider "finished tunes". Finished tunes can usually be heard in overtures, dance/or other movement-based pieces, lieder, etc. In their case a "development" is more of a general question of a follow-up. Some variations might happen, but other times what follows will just be a repetition with the experimentation shifted into the areas of harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, or dynamics, or else the melodic figure will be considered finished and another theme, which fits neatly after the previous one, will follow it.
> 
> While reading this forum, I've noticed that music which does not experiment on its themes is considered pointless or boring. To me it is an exact opposite---I don't see the point of codified experimentation which would turn, for example, a beautiful melody sentence in the key of C major into a variation in A minor which sounds inferior to the original.
> ...


Maybe the trick is to consider the set of variations as a whole and not think whether this or that individual variation is more or less beautiful than the theme or whatever.

In early music variations were often very slight through a piece of music, and I sometimes wonder whether this is a model of God's law. The variations are under a tight control. Maybe at the end there's a sense of, not breaking free, but of finding a free spirit despite being ruled. Here's a couple of examples,. both based on popular (catchy?) themes

Another thing I sometimes wonder is whether emotionally these pieces are expressing obsessiveness, determination, especially the Bull seems to me like that, as if the music is exerting a hypnotic quality.











The other place we see this sort of variation is in c20 music, the Persian Rug music that Feldman wrote. Again I'm not at all sure what was going on


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

From a composer's pov, development entails recognising or discovering nascent material implied within the germ of an idea which can then become a guarantee of homogeneity and inevitability in a piece if developed and varied according to certain conventions. If the material has recognisable signifiers, such as a strong melodic or rhythmic feature, then development of such features can carry the listener forward, creating a sense of journey and if developed as such, a sense of climax and closure. (think LVB's 5th!).

Developing material using technique gives the composer many options at the compositional stage in order to progress a work and is a way of generating new ideas too, ideas that have the potential to transform initial ideas, allowing the composer to realise and maximise their full potential.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Historically, development was a part of the sonata-allegro design. Development was expected and even required in the first movement (at least) of a symphony for a composer to demonstrate his ability to develop the themes and motifs in the exposition. Some composers were better at it than others: Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn come to mind. The early composers were the ones who laid down the "law" as to what a proper symphony was and sonata-allegro structure was their creation. A symphony is not just a collection of nice tunes.

Beethoven's 5th is one of the most awesome displays of this ever - the "theme" is just those first four notes. But what he does with them in the development is astonishing. Sibelius was a master as he convincingly proves in the 2nd. But others, like Tchaikovsky had trouble - he was a melodist, and great tunes don't lend themselves well to symphonic development. Yet in his 6th, he proved to one and all that he could write a proper development, which in this case is based entirely on the first theme. That beautiful and famous second theme just wouldn't serve the purpose. There were a lot of composers who wrote great tunes and they all seemed to struggle with development. 

Don't confuse development with "theme and variations". They're not the same thing. Nor is just re-orchestrating - Tchaikovsky followed the lead of Glinka doing this in the finale of his 2nd.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I tHink: To each his own. A popular song. for instance, usualy takes a tune and a refrain, repeats them two or three times and then fades out (or, infrequently, actually ends), and listeners are happy. At least until they get bored and go on to the next. "Developed" music is often more interesteing, has the feeling of actually going somewhere, instead of just driving off into the distance until too small to see and, to the listeners who like it, stays interesting for longer. (Deviating from the home key and rreturning to it gives the feeling of going a journey.) Totally depends on what you look for in music. There's enough of each type to keep most people happy.


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## numinisgos (May 10, 2017)

mbhaub said:


> Don't confuse development with "theme and variations".


So the structure of a fugue is irrelevant to the discussion?


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Music that is developed is way more interesting than just catchy tunes that follow one another. The music develops like a story plot and there are twists and turns that are in themselves satisfying, even more so than the original theme which they develop. There are so many techniques to develop a theme and so many ways to combine them that it makes music that uses development more varied, more rewarding on repeating listening and generally more pleasing, like a beautifully architected building.

I love Tchaikovsky's symphonies but I find that I tire of them more quickly and want to move on to something else. I don't get that feeling listening to Beethoven's symphonies.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Is there any thematic development in Debussy's Jeux?

The answer, I think, is no. Not in Boulez's Repons neither. Nor in many pieces by Stockhausen's Freude.

I'm not sure that Hildegard's Ordo Virtutem contains thematic development either, or all of Machaut's sequence of 18 motets.

And so I conclude that development is by no means essential to music. It's neither a necessary or sufficient condition of pleasing music, as in the post above. It's just contingently a feature of many pieces.

Does this chorale have thematic development, or just imitation? (Nice to hear it on this colourful instrument in Naumburg)


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## Guest (Aug 27, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> Is there any thematic development in Debussy's Jeux?


I should listen to it again, but I had a vague sense of Debussy playing with different motifs, that would appear in different guises. I would say it is structure, not thematic development, that Debussy eschews in Jeux.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

The "themes" in classical music are often so simple, and so restricted to the diatonic realm, that the only way to make it in any way interesting is to vary the theme and subject it to some kind of transformation that is less insulting to one's intelligence.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

numinisgos said:


> So the structure of a fugue is irrelevant to the discussion?


No - as a matter of fact composers also were expected to demonstrate their mastery of counterpoint and would frequently add a fugal section to show their stuff. The finale was the place to put them. Just a few:

Mozart: Symphony 40 finale
Beethoven: symphony no. 9 finale
Tchaikovsky: Symphony no. 3 finale, Manfred Symphony finale
Gliere: symphony no. 3 finale
Shostakovich: Symphony 4

even Gottschalk got into the act with a fugue in the 2nd and last movement of his so-called Symphony no. 1 "A Night in the Tropics"

But a fugue has no place in a sonata-allegro design as it was originally invented, although canonic entries are quite common.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

mbhaub said:


> No - as a matter of fact composers also were expected to demonstrate their mastery of counterpoint and would frequently add a fugal section to show their stuff. The finale was the place to put them. Just a few:
> 
> Mozart: Symphony 40 finale
> Beethoven: symphony no. 9 finale
> ...


But some people (Beethoven in particular) experimented with fughetto passages to see if they could add to the drama of a sonata (or other) movement. cf. the Eroica where three of the four movements have fugal passages that add to their oomph.


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## Guest (Aug 27, 2019)

To answer the original post, I think thematic development is what defines "classical music." To ask why classical music needs thematic development is like asking why jazz needs improvisation. Some composers create more elemental themes so that all of the music is comprised of variation, some have more developed themes which are varied in a more subtle way, but thematic development is ultimately at the heart of it. Thematic development is what I primarily enjoy in classical music.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I've stated this before, that I identified with wanting to hear good tunes milked to the fullest, like in film music (take the John Dunbar theme of Dances with Wolves), the middle movements of Ivanov's Symphonies 2 and 3, the theme in Jupiter of the Planets, and the slow movement of the Yellow River Piano Concerto among others. After getting what I wanted and being satisfied, I discovered forward movement is way more important and superior. To me only a good tune wears out after repeated listenings. John Williams has a formula that gets tiring after repeated listenings. Like these:











This on the other hand has great development, and to me is much more fulfilling and satisfying.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Fabulin said:


> Sometimes, while listening to classical music, I am under the impression that modulation into other keys, or playing slight variations (with the general shape retained), while certainly presenting a chance to display the imagination and knowledge of the composer and/or the technique of the player(s), are just inferior choices of how to follow up a certain theme.
> This is more seldomly the case with what I consider "finished tunes". Finished tunes can usually be heard in overtures, dance/or other movement-based pieces, lieder, etc. In their case a "development" is more of a general question of a follow-up. Some variations might happen, but other times what follows will just be a repetition with the experimentation shifted into the areas of harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, or dynamics, or else the melodic figure will be considered finished and another theme, which fits neatly after the previous one, will follow it.
> 
> While reading this forum, I've noticed that music which does not experiment on its themes is considered pointless or boring. To me it is an exact opposite---I don't see the point of codified experimentation which would turn, for example, a beautiful melody sentence in the key of C major into a variation in A minor which sounds inferior to the original.
> ...


Well, as it happens I'm listening to Bach at the moment (admittedly, a Liszt transcription), a composer whom I find more and more incredibly boring but used to find him a total genius. Indeed he can't seem to finish an idea in a decent way, it's more like starting a series of unfinished ideas one after another after another after another then some false cadenza's and finally a proper cadenza. And what's even worse, his ideas all sound the same, for me it's really starting to sound like the stutter of an emotionally incapable being. That's the one end of the spectrum. The other end is the obsession with finished melodies and tunes with less interesting development (usual suspects here are Schubert, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, pop artists), their melodic material is so "rich" in every sense that first you can't get enough of them but soon you start to get indigestion and hearing that melody again will make your stomach cringe. Right in the middle of the spectrum are the good ones: Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Prokofiev, Schumann...perfect balance between keeping things exciting and finishing some ideas when needed.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Razumovskymas said:


> Well, as it happens I'm listening to Bach at the moment (admittedly, a Liszt transcription),


What are you listening to? What you said reminds me of some Bach/Liszt performances I know, there is one by Solomon which is a bit like what you describe.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> What are you listening to?


it's Liszt's S462; a transcription of Bach's BWV543 to 548. Thank God it's finished now.


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2019)

Razumovskymas said:


> it's Liszt's S462; a transcription of Bach's BWV543 to 548. Thank God it's finished now.


Thank god? You are aware that whatever device you are listening on has a stop button. As a last resort you can cut the power. You don't have to rely on god to stop it. 

Anyway, we've established you don't like Bach.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

I - must - hear - all - of - Liszt's - transcriptions!


music shouldn't be all fun!! :lol:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Razumovskymas said:


> it's Liszt's S462; a transcription of Bach's BWV543 to 548. Thank God it's finished now.


Yes that's the one that Solomon plays that I was thinking of!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Razumovskymas said:


> I - must - hear - all - of - Liszt's - transcriptions!
> 
> music shouldn't be all fun!! :lol:


If you want big finished melodies the Bach transcriptions you should check is Walter Rummel's


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> If you want big finished melodies the Bach transcriptions you should check is Walter Rummel's
> 
> View attachment 123425


Thanks for the recommendation but I'm going to leave Bach for those who really appreciate him.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Fabulin said:


> Sometimes, while listening to classical music, I am under the impression that modulation into other keys, or playing slight variations (with the general shape retained), while certainly presenting a chance to display the imagination and knowledge of the composer and/or the technique of the player(s), are just inferior choices of how to follow up a certain theme....Why is this "development" considered so important? When I listened to some Bach organ works, now and then I spotted a beautiful short motif, which, if nurtured in its original context and environment, could be turned into a very emotional melody---> and then Bach just _moved on_, ignoring it's potential....While reading this forum, I've noticed that music which does not experiment on its themes is considered pointless or boring. To me it is an exact opposite---I don't see the point of codified experimentation which would turn, for example, a beautiful melody sentence in the key of C major into a variation in A minor which sounds inferior to the original.


By what you have said, I'm not sure of how you view Bach, but I view him as daring. A lot of diminished sonorities, and quite chromatic, plus all that jazz-like modulations through keys.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Phil loves classical said:


> To me only a good tune wears out after repeated listenings. John Williams has a formula that gets tiring after repeated listenings.


So you're saying, if you want to learn how to write good tunes, then see how fast you can make them wear out?  Sounds like fun. Let's get started!

http://onlinesequencer.net/1221008


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_What's the purpose of theme development in music?_
What's the difference between a topical sentence and a paragraph in writing?


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

It's more like

*(A) *You can say the same thing in different ways, for example: _"Wedding, wedding, WEDDing, wedDING, DING DING! It's a wedding!"
_
*(B)* Or you can say an actually interesting story where each word is something new, ie. _"The wedding cost $6,700 and my divorce cost $16,425, both were worth it."_

Extend that to paragraph form, yeah I will take (B) any day.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Ethereality said:


> It's more like
> 
> *(A) *You can say the same thing in different ways, for example: _"Wedding, wedding, WEDDing, wedDING, DING DING! It's a wedding!"
> _
> ...


Could you give examples of such storytelling?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Fabulin said:


> Could you give examples of such storytelling?


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Fabulin said:


> Could you give examples of such storytelling?


Hmm... haven't thought about it enough to provide the greatest examples of each, but (A) is certainly a lot of Bach and Beethoven, that more traditionalist time period. This very concept of experimental showcasing unfortunately extends a ways into many of the Romantics, and this is mostly due to having hours+ they need to tell a story, but the necessity to keep it memorable and focused on the same notes throughout those hours. A greater excuse for laziness of craft if you ask me, but nobody is there to judge old dead composers.

On the flipside of this philosophy, you can still allow a slight variation to return scarcely within a work, if only to signify a turn of the subject matter's psychology: This can either happen by revealing the next phase of the theme in full (previously remained hidden) which reveals the "real, full" interpretation of the theme, or by simply tweaking the original theme slightly which raises question to which one is the real theme.

But in my opinion, there's no point to oft variation for pure musical reasons. A good theme can stand alone for just a few minutes and be complete as is, with more themes added in to suit the contour of the overall piece's meaning.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

I've said before that the pleasure of music is mostly due to the pattern-finding pleasure centers of our brains. When we sense patterns, our brains reward us with various feel-good chemicals. Music is fundamentally about patterning sound. The opposite of pattern-finding is surprise, or when things break the pattern. Too much patterning can lead to boredom when it becomes too consistent or obvious, so surprise brings the necessary excitement of following a road where we don't know where it's going. A great deal of music is all about playing with this dichotomy, perhaps none more so than the classical sonata form. In sonata form, the exposition is all about establishing the patterns in extremely comprehensible ways, and the development is all about injecting the exciting "surprise" that prepares us for the journey back home to the safety and stability of the opening. 

So that's essentially the "purpose" of theme development, to take something predictable and turn it into something new and exciting before bringing us back to the predictability. This same principle shows up in all kinds of music. Jazz improvisation is based on a similar principle where you have a "head," and then a lengthy unpredictable solo based over the head's chord progressions, and then a return to the head. Even pop music frequently does something similar with its bridge sections, which may feature instrumental solos, or alterations to the verse and/or chorus melody, or the production, or introduce something new entirely, before returning us to the chorus for the end. Essentially, without development of some kind in music all you're left with is the predictability of patterns, which can easily get boring to some listeners.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Well, if you're going to run scales, it might as well be interesting.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I've said before that the pleasure of music is mostly due to the pattern-finding pleasure centers of our brains. When we sense patterns, our brains reward us with various feel-good chemicals. Music is fundamentally about patterning sound. The opposite of pattern-finding is surprise, or when things break the pattern. Too much patterning can lead to boredom when it becomes too consistent or obvious, so surprise brings the necessary excitement of following a road where we don't know where it's going. A great deal of music is all about playing with this dichotomy, perhaps none more so than the classical sonata form. In sonata form, the exposition is all about establishing the patterns in extremely comprehensible ways, and the development is all about injecting the exciting "surprise" that prepares us for the journey back home to the safety and stability of the opening.
> 
> So that's essentially the "purpose" of theme development, to take something predictable and turn it into something new and exciting before bringing us back to the predictability. This same principle shows up in all kinds of music. Jazz improvisation is based on a similar principle where you have a "head," and then a lengthy unpredictable solo based over the head's chord progressions, and then a return to the head. Even pop music frequently does something similar with its bridge sections, which may feature instrumental solos, or alterations to the verse and/or chorus melody, or the production, or introduce something new entirely, before returning us to the chorus for the end. Essentially, without development of some kind in music all you're left with is the predictability of patterns, which can easily get boring to some listeners.


Hmm. That made me reflect on my own expectations. I suppose I consider the purpose of music to be a search for the most perfect combinations, judged by their raw emotion- and imagery-evoking effect. The boring-not-boring distinction for me would concern tension-resolution and the richness of harmonies and orchestrations. This makes experimentation (like in the aforementioned jazz) / progressions only useful to me as much as they serve the goals above.

But then I still have the suspicion that most listeners of classical music (just like any other music) are lead in their judgement by feelings and imagery that the music evokes, and the difference is just that they have some associations with what the progressions do and I do not. If that were the case, then it would also interest me if this is natural, or aquired from teachers and other people, so kind of like religious views about philosophy etc.

I get why some instruments are evocative (horns because of primal hunt/war/animal sounds, woodwinds because of how they remind of the reactions of microfauna and flora to various events, strings because of how they remind of human (especially female or children's) voices, not to mention the potential emotional communication via singing human voices themselves, and so on...) The usage of rhytm and melody for the greatest effect would therefore be to resemble natural patterns that make most emotional sense when put together with the subconscious effects of the instruments.

So whenever developments would prove not evocative or clashing with instruments---with an ambiguous result, they would be perceived as uninteresting human tribe/settlement noise. Hence the resulting shrug as to what is their quality.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Fabulin said:


> Hmm. That made me reflect on my own expectations. I suppose I consider the purpose of music to be a search for *the most perfect combinations, judged by their raw emotional or imagery-evocative effect. *The boring-not-boring distinction for me would concern tension-resolution and the richness of harmonies and orchestrations. This makes experimentation (like in the aforementioned jazz) / progressions only useful to me as much as they serve the goals above.
> 
> But then I still have the suspicion that *most listeners of classical music (just like any other music) are directed by feelings and imagery that the music evokes*, and the difference is just that they have some associations with what the progressions do and I do not.


There's certainly plenty of great music that does indeed do that, though I'd say that's certainly not all musical is capable of doing and that there are many different ways of doing it. I think development is, in fact, one way of doing that precisely because it takes us down that "unfamiliar road" of surprise and can thus trigger the emotional and imagery-evocative effects associated with such an adventure. Tension-resolution is one thing that thematic development tends to do, especially along with key and/or chord changes (depending on the genre). That doesn't mean it works for everyone, and, indeed, that's why we have many different kinds of music out there because people respond differently to different techniques and goals.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I've said before that the pleasure of music is mostly due to the pattern-finding pleasure centers of our brains. When we sense patterns, our brains reward us with various feel-good chemicals. Music is fundamentally about patterning sound. The opposite of pattern-finding is surprise, or when things break the pattern. Too much patterning can lead to boredom when it becomes too consistent or obvious, so surprise brings the necessary excitement of following a road where we don't know where it's going. A great deal of music is all about playing with this dichotomy, perhaps none more so than the classical sonata form. In sonata form, the exposition is all about establishing the patterns in extremely comprehensible ways, and the development is all about injecting the exciting "surprise" that prepares us for the journey back home to the safety and stability of the opening.


I am suspicious of reducing our enjoyment of the arts to brain chemistry. On the one hand brain chemistry must underlie it (as it does all our experience) but on the other it doesn't explain very much. For example, I can imagine a piece of music - perhaps written by a computer - that fulfills your above criteria but does nothing for me. It is certain that development in a piece of music can be rewarding and that the unexpected and the fresh is also necessary. But I doubt that that is all there is to it. There must be many examples of freshness that is just plain boring or ugly. To then reduce this to electrical events in our brains seems to me to remove all explanatory possibility. Yes, they are there and they happen. But so what?


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> Is there any thematic development in Debussy's Jeux?
> 
> The answer, I think, is no. Not in Boulez's Repons neither. Nor in many pieces by Stockhausen's Freude.
> 
> ...


Was anyone here stating that development was essential to Music?


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> I am suspicious of reducing our enjoyment of the arts to brain chemistry. On the one hand brain chemistry must underlie it (as it does all our experience) but on the other it doesn't explain very much. For example, I can imagine a piece of music - perhaps written by a computer - that fulfills your above criteria but does nothing for me. It is certain that development in a piece of music can be rewarding and that the unexpected and the fresh is also necessary. But I doubt that that is all there is to it. There must be many examples of freshness that is just plain boring or ugly. To then reduce this to electrical events in our brains seems to me to remove all explanatory possibility. Yes, they are there and they happen. But so what?


It seems what you're refuting is less the notion that our enjoyment of music reduces to brain chemistry, and more that the pattern/surprise dichotomy is not, by itself, sufficient enough to explain why our brains enjoy it. I would actually agree with that, which is why my first sentence included the "mostly" qualifier. There are other factors as well. EG, the liking/disliking of certain sounds isn't explained by the pattern/surprise dichotomy, nor is the liking/disliking of certain harmonies--although these things may themselves reduce to other kinds of patterns, like the symmetry between the harmonics produced by various instruments, or even the ratios produced by certain harmonies. Then there's the fact that we tend to associate certain sounds with certain emotions, and different people have different levels of tolerance and affinities for those emotions; one person finds "peaceful and beautiful" to be boring, while finding "aggressive and ugly" exciting, eg. I'm sure we could find other examples as well. You mention, eg, examples of things that are new/fresh but boring. I think that could be possible in music that is lacking certain elements that we traditionally require to find exciting, so that could be true. However, I suspect that even much (if not all) of that is due to larger, cultural notions of expectation and surprise.

However, everything we experience/feel reduces to electrical events in our brains, since that's what our experiences/feelings ARE. Essentially, we are brains.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> It seems what you're refuting is less the notion that our enjoyment of music reduces to brain chemistry, and more that the pattern/surprise dichotomy is not, by itself, sufficient enough to explain why our brains enjoy it.


I was refuting (if that is the right word) both.



Eva Yojimbo said:


> However, everything we experience/feel reduces to electrical events in our brains, since that's what our experiences/feelings ARE. Essentially, we are brains.


Yes. And? How does knowing that add to our understanding of music or our appreciation of music. It is clear that these are psychologically very complex matters. A lot goes on before we arrive at the experience of enjoying (in lots of different ways) or not and very little of that can be modelled by a description of what is going on in our heads at neuronal level. Maybe one day we will be able to but that day seems very far away. In the meantime you can reduce any experience and any behaviour by reference to brain chemistry and neuronal impulses (_the brain must be doing x and y_) but learn nearly nothing about what caused the experience or behaviour. Knowing that my appreciation of a joke involves neuronal activity in certain parts of my brain and a pathway to other part to result in my laughter really tells you nothing at all useful about why I found the joke funny. "I laughed _because of _certain activities in my brain" might be true but adds very little to our understanding of humour and nothing more towards an understanding of my sense of humour.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> Yes. And? *How does knowing that add to our understanding of music or our appreciation of music.* It is clear that these are psychologically very complex matters. A lot goes on before we arrive at the experience of enjoying (in lots of different ways) or not and very little of that can be modelled by a description of what is going on in our heads at neuronal level. Maybe one day we will be able to but that day seems very far away. In the meantime you can reduce any experience and any behaviour by reference to brain chemistry and neuronal impulses (_the brain must be doing x and y_) but learn nearly nothing about what caused the experience or behaviour. Knowing that my appreciation of a joke involves neuronal activity in certain parts of my brain and a pathway to other part to result in my laughter really tells you nothing at all useful about why I found the joke funny. "I laughed _because of _certain activities in my brain" might be true but adds very little to our understanding of humour and nothing more towards an understanding of my sense of humour.


Knowing that fact doesn't, by itself, add to our understanding/appreciation of music, but it does point us in the right direction for investigating why we understand and appreciate the music we do. There is a whole scientific field that's recently been built around this called neuroaesthetics. I've only read popular science blogs on the topic, but I'm sure there's more in-depth out there to investigate. As such, I'd be very careful about definitively stating what science doesn't know about any given subject unless one is well-read in that subject.

In any case, we seem to have drifted a ways away from the original point, which was about enjoying the pattern-finding aspect of music and how surprise/breaking the patterns yields its own rewards/excitement and how that dichotomy is important to a subject like thematic development. I can't really see as how you've refuted this other than to say that there are other factors at work, which I've agreed with; but unless you want to move on to discuss those other factors--which I tried to do somewhat in my last post--I don't see how we're getting anywhere by speculating what science does/doesn't/can/can't know about our understanding/appreciation of music via brain chemistry and neuronal impulses, seeing as neither of us are experts in the field.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ I'm not saying that science doesn't or can't tell us much. I'm saying that about neuroscience or rather about neuroscience at the moment and for the foreseeable future. We can compare brain activity when we are experiencing the recognition of a musical pattern that has meaning and when we are experiencing recognition of a pattern that is meaningless or boring. But that tells us nearly nothing about what it is that makes one meaningful and the other boring. That's what I am saying. 

It adds nothing to our understanding to say that reward circuits in our brain respond to one and not the other. We could say the same thing by saying no more than that we enjoy one and not the other. Neuroscience is deeply interesting but it offers us little to answer the question before us. Anything we can say about what invokes what sort of brain activity can be said without invoking neuroscience by saying we enjoy x but not y.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Again, not being an expert in the field I'd hesitate to state how much neuroscience can tell us now, much less in the future. EG, we know from such neuroscience that one reason most people don't enjoy most modern and atonal music is precisely because they can't sense the patterns in it. Conversely, I'd guess the people that love such music are those that find such lack of patterning, the unpredictability, exciting. I'm guessing if you were to supplement this with cultural anthropology you could answer why we classify much music as we do, at least in broad swaths. This might not explain why two people of a similar culture react to the same piece of music differently (yet!), but I still think it's a solid foundation that accounts for many fundamental basics. 

What I find curious is why, considering that the answers, whatever they are, ultimately lie within our brains, one would say that "neuroscience... offers us little to answer the question before us." If it doesn't, then what does? I think understanding that our brains reward pattern-finding, and react to surprise either with (or with a mix of) fear/anxiousness/confusion/excitement/fascination is, in itself, "answering much." No, it doesn't answer why I, specifically, react to X piece one way and you the opposite, but that's like saying because evolution can't tell us how life began it doesn't answer the "questions before us" about life. It rather depends on what questions we're asking, doesn't it?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

A problem with using neuroscience to understand complex behaviour (like finding some thematic development in music to be meaningful and rewarding) is that complex behaviour involves very complex interactions between large number of neurons across the brain. Some of these interactions are about understanding what is happening in the perception of the music from minute to minute. Others may be involved in bigger patterns that emerge over time. Others link all this to the subject's knowledge and memory and taste (whatever that is). And there are many other factors, including what is conscious and what is preconscious. We are a very long way from being able to unravel all of that. While neuroscience can show us some small aspects of the ways our brains work in listening to music, I believe that in our lifetimes we will learn much more from cognitive and other psychologies, cultural anthropology, philosophy etc. Even cognitive psychology needs to break down the matter into much simpler processes (such as discerning a pattern or not) and doesn't get us that far. But at least we can hypothesise (and then test experimentally) how this simple task is related to slightly bigger questions about music.

Evolution is not a good analogy to support what you are saying as it successfully explains something apparently very complex with an algorithm that is actually quite simple. Crucially, it did not do this by observing what was happening with the molecules we call genes (indeed, Darwin knew nothing of these molecules and even if he had there would still be no way of examining the genes of long extinct organisms) but by observing patterns of a higher order. So it is an example of where reductionism could not have helped us. Of course, evolution is not about how life started so we should not look for answers to that question using it.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> ^ I'm not saying that science doesn't or can't tell us much. I'm saying that about neuroscience or rather about neuroscience at the moment and for the foreseeable future. We can compare brain activity when we are experiencing the recognition of a musical pattern that has meaning and when we are experiencing recognition of a pattern that is meaningless or boring. But that tells us nearly nothing about what it is that makes one meaningful and the other boring. That's what I am saying.
> 
> It adds nothing to our understanding to say that reward circuits in our brain respond to one and not the other. We could say the same thing by saying no more than that we enjoy one and not the other. Neuroscience is deeply interesting but it offers us little to answer the question before us. Anything we can say about what invokes what sort of brain activity can be said without invoking neuroscience by saying we enjoy x but not y.


You're using a lot of 'we', 'us' and 'our'. _The comment 'It adds nothing to our understanding to say that reward circuits in our brain respond to one and not the other.'_ assumes that it doesn't add to anybody's understanding, something which you have no way of knowing.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I've said before that the pleasure of music is mostly due to the pattern-finding pleasure centers of our brains. When we sense patterns, our brains reward us with various feel-good chemicals. Music is fundamentally about patterning sound. The opposite of pattern-finding is surprise, or when things break the pattern. Too much patterning can lead to boredom when it becomes too consistent or obvious, so surprise brings the necessary excitement of following a road where we don't know where it's going. A great deal of music is all about playing with this dichotomy, perhaps none more so than the classical sonata form. In sonata form, the exposition is all about establishing the patterns in extremely comprehensible ways, and the development is all about injecting the exciting "surprise" that prepares us for the journey back home to the safety and stability of the opening.
> 
> So that's essentially the "purpose" of theme development, to take something predictable and turn it into something new and exciting before bringing us back to the predictability. This same principle shows up in all kinds of music. Jazz improvisation is based on a similar principle where you have a "head," and then a lengthy unpredictable solo based over the head's chord progressions, and then a return to the head. Even pop music frequently does something similar with its bridge sections, which may feature instrumental solos, or alterations to the verse and/or chorus melody, or the production, or introduce something new entirely, before returning us to the chorus for the end. Essentially, without development of some kind in music all you're left with is the predictability of patterns, which can easily get boring to some listeners.


This is a good explanation for the popularity (among other things) of the music of the classical and romantic periods. Perhaps one of the best examples is the Grosse Fuge in which Beethoven introduces 2 or 3 thematic elements (the primary one being at the opening) and (almost) endlessly repeats them over 14 to 17 minutes, but rather than boring the listener, develops them to the point that one can be entranced by the experience. And then in the last 2 minutes comes a rather magical complete resolution.

At a young age I first heard the Grosse Fugue as the Klemperer transcription for orchestra. I also enjoy the original string quartet, but am most moved by the former.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

DaveM said:


> You're using a lot of 'we', 'us' and 'our'. _The comment 'It adds nothing to our understanding to say that reward circuits in our brain respond to one and not the other.'_ assumes that it doesn't add to anybody's understanding, something which you have no way of knowing.


OK. But you are wrong in perhaps two ways. Firstly, "we" logically means me and at least one other, rather than everyone. Secondly, when used in the way I used it, "we" can legitimately refer to our scientific knowledge as a species but there is no implied assumption that all people share that scientific knowledge.

Of course, for people who don't know the findings that Eva was talking about, her posts on the subject would be informative and interesting - I had no intention to deny that - but my concern is that neuroscience is often held up as having answers concerning aspects of human experience even though those answers can be quite hollow and can sometimes lead nowhere. You can say "x feels scared every time he sees a cat" or you can describe what is going on in his brain when he sees a cat (a _description _of the neuronal activity elicited in x's brain by his sighting a cat). Neither statement explains much about why x feels that fear, and if you want to understand why it will probably pay you to investigate his personality, his thinking patterns and his memories rather than looking for the answers in his brain activity.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> A problem with using neuroscience to understand complex behaviour (like finding some thematic development in music to be meaningful and rewarding) is that complex behaviour involves very complex interactions between large number of neurons across the brain. Some of these interactions are about understanding what is happening in the perception of the music from minute to minute. Others may be involved in bigger patterns that emerge over time. Others link all this to the subject's knowledge and memory and taste (whatever that is). And there are many other factors, including what is conscious and what is preconscious. We are a very long way from being able to unravel all of that. While neuroscience can show us some small aspects of the ways our brains work in listening to music, I believe that in our lifetimes we will learn much more from cognitive and other psychologies, cultural anthropology, philosophy etc. Even cognitive psychology needs to break down the matter into much simpler processes (such as discerning a pattern or not) and doesn't get us that far. But at least we can hypothesise (and then test experimentally) how this simple task is related to slightly bigger questions about music.
> 
> Evolution is not a good analogy to support what you are saying as it successfully explains something apparently very complex with an algorithm that is actually quite simple. Crucially, it did not do this by observing what was happening with the molecules we call genes (indeed, Darwin knew nothing of these molecules and even if he had there would still be no way of examining the genes of long extinct organisms) but by observing patterns of a higher order. So it is an example of where reductionism could not have helped us. Of course, evolution is not about how life started so we should not look for answers to that question using it.


Honestly, I don't disagree with anything in your first paragraph. I strongly agree with the notion that other fields can (and undoubtedly have, and will more so in the future) add to our understanding of how/why we react to music as we do. I never wanted to imply that one field could answer everything, though I think all of these fields you mention have in common a method of exploring/understanding how/why people think how they do. Neuroscience and Cognitive Science are both, essentially, looking at different aspects of what the brain does.

The point with the evolution analogy was merely that it explains one aspect of "the mysteries of life" without explaining them all. I think that analogy perfectly fits with how neuroscience can explain something of how/why we react to music as we do, even if it also doesn't explain the whole mystery. You may (rightly) say that evolution explains more of its field than neuroscience does with music, but that's beside the general point.



Enthusiast said:


> Of course, for people who don't know the findings that Eva was talking about, *her *posts on the subject would be informative and interesting...


*His (Eva is short for Neon Genesis EVAngelion).


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> *His (Eva is short for Neon Genesis EVAngelion).


Ha :lol: - now I'll have to picture you differently! Sorry for the mistake.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> Ha :lol: - now I'll have to picture you differently! Sorry for the mistake.


No need for the apology given that it's an extremely common mistake. Username made more sense when I was on a forum about that work, but I've been too lazy to think up new ones for other forums so it's stuck!


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> OK. But you are wrong in perhaps two ways. Firstly, "we" logically means me and at least one other, rather than everyone. Secondly, when used in the way I used it, "we" can legitimately refer to our scientific knowledge as a species but there is no implied assumption that all people share that scientific knowledge.
> 
> Of course, for people who don't know the findings that Eva was talking about, her posts on the subject would be informative and interesting - I had no intention to deny that - but my concern is that neuroscience is often held up as having answers concerning aspects of human experience even though those answers can be quite hollow and can sometimes lead nowhere. You can say "x feels scared every time he sees a cat" or you can describe what is going on in his brain when he sees a cat (a _description _of the neuronal activity elicited in x's brain by his sighting a cat). Neither statement explains much about why x feels that fear, and if you want to understand why it will probably pay you to investigate his personality, his thinking patterns and his memories rather than looking for the answers in his brain activity.


Yes, but Eva's information, as you agree, was informative and interesting and I would bet it is for a majority of readers here. Constantly pointing out 'Yes, but that doesn't tell us...' is more counterproductive than informative when it is repeated several times. From MRIs and Pet scans we have learned far more about how music affects the brain than we ever knew just a few years ago, but there's still much undiscovered. Given the complexity of the brain and the limitations of neuroscience, a response to someone describing almost any future discoveries, could be, 'Yes, but that doesn't tell us...'


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## Guest (Sep 9, 2019)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I've said before that the pleasure of music is mostly due to the pattern-finding pleasure centers of our brains. When we sense patterns, our brains reward us with various feel-good chemicals. Music is fundamentally about patterning sound. The opposite of pattern-finding is surprise, or when things break the pattern. Too much patterning can lead to boredom when it becomes too consistent or obvious, so surprise brings the necessary excitement of following a road where we don't know where it's going. A great deal of music is all about playing with this dichotomy, perhaps none more so than the classical sonata form. In sonata form, the exposition is all about establishing the patterns in extremely comprehensible ways, and the development is all about injecting the exciting "surprise" that prepares us for the journey back home to the safety and stability of the opening.
> 
> So that's essentially the "purpose" of theme development, to take something predictable and turn it into something new and exciting before bringing us back to the predictability. This same principle shows up in all kinds of music. Jazz improvisation is based on a similar principle where you have a "head," and then a lengthy unpredictable solo based over the head's chord progressions, and then a return to the head. Even pop music frequently does something similar with its bridge sections, which may feature instrumental solos, or alterations to the verse and/or chorus melody, or the production, or introduce something new entirely, before returning us to the chorus for the end. Essentially, without development of some kind in music all you're left with is the predictability of patterns, which can easily get boring to some listeners.


I find this explanation quite plausible and a good explanation for the role of "development" in classical music. I also find it a good way to think about the challenges of "atonal" music. In standard practice harmony, if you year a chord progression your brain can sense where it is going, and this allows the composer to play with fulfillment of expectations and surprise, when the music takes an unexpected turn, as is typical of a classical "development" section. Sometimes when I listen to 12 tone music (Schoenberg etc) I consciously try to see if I can anticipate the next note or phrase. It is not as clear as in tonal music. How do you surprise the listener when anything is possible? I think it points to the greater challenge of writing "atonal" music, and is responsible for the fact that atonal music is satisfying in a different way than tonal music.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

DaveM said:


> Yes, but Eva's information, as you agree, was informative and interesting and I would bet it is for a majority of readers here. Constantly pointing out 'Yes, but that doesn't tell us...' is more counterproductive than informative when it is repeated several times. From MRIs and Pet scans we have learned far more about how music affects the brain than we ever knew just a few years ago, but there's still much undiscovered. Given the complexity of the brain and the limitations of neuroscience, a response to someone describing almost any future discoveries, could be, 'Yes, but that doesn't tell us...'


Ah, OK, so your objection concerns my poor forum etiquette. Fair enough perhaps but it does seem relevant that a research finding of the neural pathway of a well-known behavioural trait doesn't actually take us closer to an understanding of how that trait fits within our enjoyment of music and it does seem relevant that the next step in researching how that trait works in this is likely to again being found in disciplines that can address such complex questions rather that with a reductionist paradigm. Even cognitive psychology (a discipline that is more concerned with the hypothetical construct of "mind" rather than with brain) may be too reductionist to throw that much light on these questions. As for my repeating my argument about this several times, I was clarifying in a discussion with Eva by (respectfully, I hope) responding to her responses. Isn't that how a discussion forum works?

But it is true that I do have a bit of a thing with claims that a discovery in neuroscience "proves" that something we have known already (claims like saying that a brain scan *proves *that a person who claims to be , say, hungry is indeed hungry) is true. I am not suggesting that Eva was guilty of that - merely that it is a sensitive subject for me. This doesn't mean that I don't recognise that neuroscience is a deeply interesting subject that is advancing fast. It merely means that I feel we need to be careful how we interpret its findings. But (you will be relieved to hear) I am done with that subject for now!


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Baron Scarpia said:


> I find this explanation quite plausible and a good explanation for the role of "development" in classical music. I also find it a good way to think about the challenges of "atonal" music. In standard practice harmony, if you year a chord progression your brain can sense where it is going, and this allows the composer to play with fulfillment of expectations and surprise, when the music takes an unexpected turn, as is typical of a classical "development" section. Sometimes when I listen to 12 tone music (Schoenberg etc) I consciously try to see if I can anticipate the next note or phrase. It is not as clear as in tonal music. How do you surprise the listener when anything is possible? I think it points to the greater challenge of writing "atonal" music, and is responsible for the fact that atonal music is satisfying in a different way than tonal music.


There are actually already studies out there that show one reason most don't like atonal music is because they can't sense the patterns in it: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/7279626/Audiences-hate-modern-classical-music-because-their-brains-cannot-cope.html

However, atonality also has its fans, and that needs to be explained too. This: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2018.00979/full is a lengthy but illuminating piece that reviews much of the literature on the matter. The conclusion suggests that tonality and atonality offer different modes of pleasure; where the former creates patterns and that our rare "wrong predictions" (as in developments) lead to excitement/pleasure; while in atonality the lack of overt patterns means that our rare "right predictions" lead to excitement/pleasure. This reminds me of what Paul Fussel once stated about the difference between meter and free-verse in poetry; that the former provided the patterns from which poets could creatively diverge to create excitement/pleasure, while the latter provided a lack of patterns from which patterns could emerge to create excitement/pleasure. That piece suggests that perhaps the "problem" with atonal music is that most don't become accustomed to it enough to ever experience the excitement/pleasure of "right" predictions, and there's probably a lot of truth to that.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Conditioned to being happy as a dog at a rare correct prediction? A rather shabby substitute for being happy because everything flows naturally---when the composer thought about everything, instead of leaving it to the listener---isn't it?

It seems more impressive to me to be a listener of atonal music than a composer thereof.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Fabulin said:


> Conditioned to being happy as a dog at a rare correct prediction? A rather shabby substitute for being happy because everything flows naturally---when the composer thought about everything, instead of leaving it to the listener---isn't it?
> 
> It seems more impressive to me to be a listener of atonal music than a composer thereof.


One might liken it to the happiness attained after repeatedly attempting a difficult task, failing, only to finally succeed. There is perhaps a sense of greater reward than there might be if the task was simply done for you, or if it were easy. I also don't think it's a matter of a composer thinking about everything or not, or leaving it to the listener or not. From what I understand, much atonal music is as meticulously composed and "thought out" as tonal music is; but composers can't dictate how audiences listen to it, and it's entirely possible that the patterns they hear/conceive the audience does not.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> There are actually already studies out there that show one reason most don't like atonal music is because they can't sense the patterns in it: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/7279626/Audiences-hate-modern-classical-music-because-their-brains-cannot-cope.html
> 
> However, atonality also has its fans, and that needs to be explained too. This: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2018.00979/full is a lengthy but illuminating piece that reviews much of the literature on the matter. The conclusion suggests that tonality and atonality offer different modes of pleasure; where the former creates patterns and that our rare "wrong predictions" (as in developments) lead to excitement/pleasure; while in atonality the lack of overt patterns means that our rare "right predictions" lead to excitement/pleasure. This reminds me of what Paul Fussel once stated about the difference between meter and free-verse in poetry; that the former provided the patterns from which poets could creatively diverge to create excitement/pleasure, while the latter provided a lack of patterns from which patterns could emerge to create excitement/pleasure. That piece suggests that perhaps the "problem" with atonal music is that most don't become accustomed to it enough to ever experience the excitement/pleasure of "right" predictions, and there's probably a lot of truth to that.


The trouble with The Telegraph review (apart from the agendas of the paper itself), and possibly with the book it reviews, is that it seems to misrepresent or misinterpret the findings it reports. People will obviously be better at recognising patterns that are of a familiar type. I don't think it would be possible to find subjects who are not familiar with Western tonal music (even if that familiarity stems from Western pop music) but unless they selected subjects with great care they would be unlikely to have found one who was familiar with post-Schoenbergian atonalism. The article from Frontiers in Neuroscience underlines this and is a much more serious piece with much of interest in it.

I do think, though, that a small majority of experienced classical music listeners are more or less familiar and comfortable with the atonalism of the first half of the 20th century and it might be an interesting field of study to explore how the familiarity involved in that developed.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> The trouble with The Telegraph review (apart from the agendas of the paper itself), and possibly with the book it reviews, is that it seems to misrepresent or misinterpret the findings it reports. People will obviously be better at recognising patterns that are of a familiar type. I don't think it would be possible to find subjects who are not familiar with Western tonal music (even if that familiarity stems from Western pop music) but unless they selected subjects with great care they would be unlikely to have found one who was familiar with post-Schoenbergian atonalism. The article from Frontiers in Neuroscience underlines this and is a much more serious piece with much of interest in it.
> 
> I do think, though, that a small majority of experienced classical music listeners are more or less familiar and comfortable with the atonalism of the first half of the 20th century and it might be an interesting field of study to explore how the familiarity involved in that developed.


I agree, in general, that people will be better at recognizing familiar patterns, but I think it's a good question as to whether there are types of music that are innately better at stimulating our intuitive understanding and finding of patterns than others. Atonal music, after all, isn't exactly new anymore given that it's existed for over 100 years. It's had plenty of time for people to adjust to it and to recognize its patterns, yet it's never really gained in any ground in terms of popularity over tonal music despite its age and despite even being featured in a good deal of popular culture (films and TV, eg). Perhaps we can chalk this up to tonality saturating the culture so much that it's still almost always more familiar among the vast majority of listeners, but I'd argue that we see many more people (especially young people) flocking to other new forms/genres of art/music in a way we don't see with atonality.

But, yes, I agree this would be/is an interesting field of study and I too would like to know how people's familiarity with atonal music developed.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I agree, in general, that people will be better at recognizing familiar patterns, but I think it's a good question as to *whether there are types of music that are innately better at stimulating our intuitive understanding and finding of patterns than others. *Atonal music, after all, isn't exactly new anymore given that it's existed for over 100 years. It's had plenty of time for people to adjust to it and to recognize its patterns, yet it's never really gained in any ground in terms of popularity over tonal music despite its age and despite even being featured in a good deal of popular culture (films and TV, eg). Perhaps we can chalk this up to tonality saturating the culture so much that it's still almost always more familiar among the vast majority of listeners, but I'd argue that we see many more people (especially young people) flocking to other new forms/genres of art/music in a way we don't see with atonality.
> 
> But, yes, I agree this would be/is an interesting field of study and I too would like to know how people's familiarity with atonal music developed.


I'm not sure how the question I have highlighted in your post could be investigated. Familiarity (with the musical language or closer variants of it) would trump any pure (uninfluenced) pattern recognition effect. And, anyway, I suppose if pattern recognition (without the novelty and surprise you have mentioned) is all you are looking for then surely the simpler the better. Add in the surprises and simplicity would still probably win in terms of people's ability to recognise patterns. So the "pattern recognition pleasure" we are thinking about must (surely?) involve recognising patterns as potentially pleasurable.

But, even then, how useful are such findings for us? I think our rewarding experience with classical music is more tied up with musical development of some sort - something that emerges during a piece over time. And yet, even with a composer we know well, it can take a few listens for us to perceive this development in a rewarding way. With less familiar composers - especially those using a language that we are not familiar with - it might take a lot longer. I'm not sure how easy such "recognition" and "comprehension" (of a piece over time) would be to research quantitatively. There seem to be too many variables. And, then, I wonder what it is that makes some of us persevere in getting to know an unfamiliar piece in an unfamiliar musical language, while others don't? Is it down to something akin to personality (some people are more "adventurous" than others)? Our 75 years of adjustment to atonal music is communal rather than individual. Some of us have become familiar with it, others are turned off before that happens. I don't think, BTW, that the use of atonal music in films has been that useful in familiarising us to atonal music. I am not sure I often watch the films where atonal music is used. At least, it don't remember it happening very often. But it may have played a role in helping some to explore atonalism more deeply.

As I have said, I do think that a majority of serious classical music listeners these days are unfazed by atonalism and enjoy many of its key works. I don't think that would have been true even 25 years ago.


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2019)

Fabulin said:


> Conditioned to being happy as a dog at a rare correct prediction? A rather shabby substitute for being happy because everything flows naturally---when the composer thought about everything, instead of leaving it to the listener---isn't it?
> 
> It seems more impressive to me to be a listener of atonal music than a composer thereof.


That's not the point. I don't listen to atonal music because I want the same predictability/unpredictability reaction as common practice harmony, but in a diluted form. I listen because it is something else (just as I might read novels and poetry to find different kinds of pleasure). What I find attractive about some atonal music is the free counterpoint, where the composer does not have harmonic structure to fall back on, but only the melodic interest of the voices and his or her imagination. It is being up on the high wire without a net, and it is exciting in its own way. It is obvious that this sort of music will never eclipse conventional classical music in popularity. It will never evoke the same emotional responses as tonal music. That doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

Music exists in time. Just because a theme sounds good at one point in time doesn't mean it's necessarily also the best sounding exactly the same way at another point in time. Surely this is obvious? I'm confused. 

Also Bach wrote some of the most beautiful and popular melodies in the history of music, while developing them, so the use of him as an example is a bit strange...

And experimentation in "harmony, counterpoint, orchestration" are all very prominent in theme development. So I'm not even sure what the original post is criticising.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm not sure how the question I have highlighted in your post could be investigated. Familiarity (with the musical language or closer variants of it) would trump any pure (uninfluenced) pattern recognition effect. And, anyway, I suppose if pattern recognition (without the novelty and surprise you have mentioned) is all you are looking for then surely the simpler the better. Add in the surprises and simplicity would still probably win in terms of people's ability to recognise patterns. So the "pattern recognition pleasure" we are thinking about must (surely?) involve recognising patterns as potentially pleasurable.
> 
> But, even then, how useful are such findings for us? I think our rewarding experience with classical music is more tied up with musical development of some sort - something that emerges during a piece over time. And yet, even with a composer we know well, it can take a few listens for us to perceive this development in a rewarding way. With less familiar composers - especially those using a language that we are not familiar with - it might take a lot longer. I'm not sure how easy such "recognition" and "comprehension" (of a piece over time) would be to research quantitatively. There seem to be too many variables. And, then, I wonder what it is that makes some of us persevere in getting to know an unfamiliar piece in an unfamiliar musical language, while others don't? Is it down to something akin to personality (some people are more "adventurous" than others)? Our 75 years of adjustment to atonal music is communal rather than individual. Some of us have become familiar with it, others are turned off before that happens. I don't think, BTW, that the use of atonal music in films has been that useful in familiarising us to atonal music. I am not sure I often watch the films where atonal music is used. At least, it don't remember it happening very often. But it may have played a role in helping some to explore atonalism more deeply.
> 
> As I have said, I do think that a majority of serious classical music listeners these days are unfazed by atonalism and enjoy many of its key works. I don't think that would have been true even 25 years ago.


I'm not sure how it could be investigated either, but it seems, at least, intuitively likely that that would be the case. The alternative would be to think that, say, the almost world-wide rise of tonality's dominance was completely arbitrary, that it could've just as easily happened with any musical language, and I have my doubts that that's the case.

As for such things being "useful," I guess it depends on how you're defining that. Some find the pursuit of such knowledge for the sake of knowledge worthy in itself without the question of use. I believe that second piece I posted talked some about how personality can factor into the interest in atonal music, but I'd think it would factor in to one's interest in anything unfamiliar. I always use the scene in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for reference on this matter, when the monolith first appears to the hominids. Some react with fear and agitation, some react with curiosity and interest and reach out to touch/explore it. That dichotomous reaction to the unknown and unfamiliar seems to be a particularly personality trait that strongly influences how we react to new and unfamiliar art as well; we tend to react with a negative repulsion, or with a curious interest to learn/experience it more. I'm also guessing that that "openness" lies along a spectrum, meaning that most are only willing to go so far before the unfamiliar irritates, annoys, angers, what-have-you rather than intrigues; atonality may be that point for many even adventurous music listeners. I'm sure others have other/different limits.

It might depend on how you're defining "serious classical music listeners," but I'm not sure I'd agree, but I'm also unsure of how we'd quantify such a thing.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> It might depend on how you're defining "serious classical music listeners," but I'm not sure I'd agree, but I'm also unsure of how we'd quantify such a thing.


You could take those who regularly post here, remove those who claim to be newbies, and I think you would find that more than 50% are able to enjoy Schoenberg, Berg and Webern to some extent. And this despite the observation (mine - but not entirely wrong, I think) that many contemporary music fans tend to move on quite quickly. I don't think so many would have been so open to atonal music 15 years ago.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> You could take those who regularly post here, remove those who claim to be newbies, and I think you would find that more than 50% are able to enjoy Schoenberg, Berg and Webern to some extent. And this despite the observation (mine - but not entirely wrong, I think) that many contemporary music fans tend to move on quite quickly. I don't think so many would have been so open to atonal music 15 years ago.


That would require the assumption that this forum is a good representation of "serious classical music listeners," and I'm also not sure that's true; but it might be an interesting experiment, nonetheless.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Eva Yojimbo said:


> That would require the assumption that this forum is a good representation of "serious classical music listeners," and I'm also not sure that's true; but it might be an interesting experiment, nonetheless.


Considering that a work as universally beloved as _The Nutcracker _is on the 19th tier, all bets are off.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> I do think, though, that a small majority of experienced classical music listeners are more or less familiar and comfortable with the atonalism of the first half of the 20th century and it might be an interesting field of study to explore how the familiarity involved in that developed.





Enthusiast said:


> As I have said, I do think that a majority of serious classical music listeners these days are unfazed by atonalism and enjoy many of its key works. I don't think that would have been true even 25 years ago.


How so? The atonalism of the first half of the 20th century is marked by Schoenberg and the serialism of the 2nd Viennese school. All the evidence suggests that the majority of experienced classical music listeners -which has to include many of regular concertgoers- are indeed familiar with it, but rather than being comfortable with it, have, for the most part, rejected it. It seems that the fact that this forum is a refuge for those who like atonal music (which is fine with me btw) tends to color objectivity when assessing overall acceptance of it.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

DaveM said:


> How so? The atonalism of the first half of the 20th century is marked by Schoenberg and the serialism of the 2nd Viennese school. All the evidence suggests that the majority of experienced classical music listeners -which has to include many of regular concertgoers- are indeed familiar with it, but rather than being comfortable with it, have, for the most part, rejected it. *It seems that the fact that this forum is a refuge for those who like atonal music (which is fine with me btw) tends to color objectivity when assessing overall acceptance of it.*


My impression of internet forums is that they tend to attract certain types of people and fans that are rarely representative of the broader people and fans that make up that demographic. At the end of the day, this is still a pretty small community, and a very small sample size of all the people that listen to classical music, seriously or otherwise.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

DaveM said:


> How so? The atonalism of the first half of the 20th century is marked by Schoenberg and the serialism of the 2nd Viennese school. *All the evidence suggests that the majority of experienced classical music listeners *-which has to include many of regular concertgoers- are indeed familiar with it, but rather than being comfortable with it, have, for the most part, rejected it. It seems that the fact that this forum is a refuge for those who like atonal music (which is fine with me btw) tends to color objectivity when assessing overall acceptance of it.


What evidence would that be, then, David?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> What evidence would that be, then, David?


I'll show you mine if you show me yours. 

Seriously, since I was responding to your statement that the *majority* of experienced classical listeners enjoy many of the key atonal works, the onus is on you to show your evidence first. Fwiw, you would have been better off saying 'some', rather than 'the majority'.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ I said that I _think _it is the case. It is an _impression _I have formed (partly in comparison to, say, 15 years ago). You, though, referred to "all the evidence" and I wondered what that evidence is!


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> I've stated this before, that I identified with wanting to hear good tunes milked to the fullest, like in film music (take the John Dunbar theme of Dances with Wolves), the middle movements of Ivanov's Symphonies 2 and 3, the theme in Jupiter of the Planets, and the slow movement of the Yellow River Piano Concerto among others. After getting what I wanted and being satisfied, I discovered forward movement is way more important and superior. To me only a good tune wears out after repeated listenings. John Williams has a formula that gets tiring after repeated listenings.


What Ivanov is intended here? Mikhail Mikhaylovich Ippolitov-Ivanov? For him, I am aware of only one symphony. Did you mean Borodin?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> ^ I said that I _think _it is the case. It is an _impression _I have formed (partly in comparison to, say, 15 years ago). You, though, referred to "all the evidence" and I wondered what that evidence is!


Well, of course, I'm questioning your thinking. Doesn't any opinion or statement someone makes here amount to 'their thinking'?

If the majority of experienced classical listeners were comfortable with atonal music of the 'Schoenberg period' (my quotes), then there would be far more scheduling of the music in concert venues. While we all know that not all concert-goers are experienced, it is still experienced classical music listeners that are keeping concert venues viable and the majority of them are not crying out for more Schoenberg et al. Likewise, it is still 'traditional' CM that has kept classical recordings, CD and downloads, alive and it isn't Schoenberg and his brethren that are important to their life-blood that it would be if the majority of experienced CM listeners were comfortable with that music.


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## Guest (Sep 12, 2019)

Number of CDs available (according to Archivmusic)

Beethoven 5406
Schoenberg 482
Alban Berg 386
Martinu 352

So yes, according to my fairly arbitrary metric, atonal composers are less than one tenth as popular as the big mainstream composers, but they are comparably popular as second tier mainstream composers. But people writing more Beethovenish music will not keep classical music vital. Weird music is important, even if it is not the most popular.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

DaveM said:


> If the majority of experienced classical listeners were comfortable with atonal music of the 'Schoenberg period' (my quotes), then there would be far more scheduling of the music in concert venues. While we all know that not all concert-goers are experienced, it is still experienced classical music listeners that are keeping concert venues viable and the majority of them are not crying out for more Schoenberg et al. Likewise, it is still 'traditional' CM that has kept classical recordings, CD and downloads, alive and it isn't Schoenberg and his brethren that are important to their life-blood that it would be if the majority of experienced CM listeners were comfortable with that music.


I am not convinced that concert audiences reflect experienced listeners. I think the programming of concerts in Europe is a little more adventurous than programming in the US (judging by lists that have been posted to this forum in the past) and we do get a fair bit of Schoenberg and Berg along with our Berlioz and Dvorak. I would like to see more (and know I am not alone in that) but there you are. Schoenberg, Berg and Webern are holding their own in that market but have not enjoyed to great growth in popularity of Bartok and (probably) Stravinsky.

There are sufficient recordings of modernist works for it to be clear that they have a good market - even if it is nowhere near as big as that for the Beethoven symphonies - and I assume that much of that is experienced listeners.

I certainly am not trying to say that these composers enjoy the success with the public of Beethoven and Brahms but am trying to say that there remains interest and it is growing slowly.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Enthusiast said:


> I am not convinced that concert audiences reflect experienced listeners. I think the programming of concerts in Europe is a little more adventurous than programming in the US (judging by lists that have been posted to this forum in the past) and we do get a fair bit of Schoenberg and Berg along with our Berlioz and Dvorak. I would like to see more (and know I am not alone in that) but there you are. Schoenberg, Berg and Webern are holding their own in that market but have not enjoyed to great growth in popularity of Bartok and (probably) Stravinsky.
> 
> There are sufficient recordings of modernist works for it to be clear that they have a good market - even if it is nowhere near as big as that for the Beethoven symphonies - and I assume that much of that is experienced listeners.
> 
> I certainly am not trying to say that these composers enjoy the success with the public of Beethoven and Brahms but am trying to say that there remains interest and it is growing slowly.


I don't disagree with most of the above. My problem with your previous statements was: the majority of experienced CM listeners being comfortable with atonal music of the first half of the 19th century (Schoenberg et al). Fwiw, I will press my point that, overall, experienced CM listeners are still the lifeblood of concert venues and their programs reflect what the demand is. To say it is otherwise is to say that the majority of CM concert goers are inexperienced, something that seems highly unlikely.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Baron Scarpia said:


> Number of CDs available (according to Archivmusic)
> 
> Beethoven 5406
> Schoenberg 482
> ...


Another metric that could be useful in this thread is the one given by _Google Trends_. There, we have the following score averages*:

*Beethoven - 86
Berg - 1
Schoenberg - 2
Webern - 1*

If we remove Beethoven, then we have:

*Berg - 25
Schoenberg - 64
Webern - 21*

Versus Stravinsky:

*Stravinsky - 68
Berg - 14
Schoenberg - 36
Webern - 12*

*I used the following options in GT:

"All World" - "Last 12 Months" - "Music and Audio".


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Has anyone stated the obvious yet?: The purpose of thematic development in music is the same as character development in literature. A reader inclined to our OP's position is happy to know Anna is a beautiful and beguiling woman. Those with an eye to development think it significant she ends up under a train. Likewise for Beethoven sonatas. Some hear the second theme of Beethoven's Appassionata/i as a placid and gentle relief from the tension of the first theme, or, as A.B. Marx put it, Elysium following so closely on the Hades of the first theme. Those with an eye to development see that this placid, gentle theme is pushed beyond its breaking point into disintegration in the development section, and then to the point of desperate fury and at last dissolution in the coda. Those changes in the character and fortunes of the theme are at the very essence of the music. The term theme in both literature and music implies development as a central part of its meaning. A theme _just is_ something one develops. One demonstrates its many facts and implications in a novel, the many concrete ways in which it is manifest in the actions and fortunes of the characters. A musical theme is also by its central nature something that is developed. The ones that aren't are better known as tunes or melodies or arias.


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