# Literature vs Music



## schuberkovich

Which do you prefer? Which takes you to emotional depths (more)? Which do you consider the greater art form? Which do you spend more time enjoying?


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## Taggart

I've gone for can't compare. On the grounds that it all depends on the music and/or the literature - and that the OP has forgotten about the mixture of literature and music that is opera and also about songs. It's like arguing about Pomp and Circumstance 1 - whether it works better with or without the words.

Some poetry is sublime, some music is sublime. Some poetry is OK but is lifted by an excellent musical setting. Some music is OK but is helped by the words that accompany it.

Great Poll :cheers: and thanks to mmsbls  :tiphat: for getting it approved.


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## Ingélou

This is an unrealistic choice, since we can have both, and I for one *must* have both.

But out of deference to Schuberkovich, I forced myself to think it over, and finally voted 'literature, but only just'.

This reflects the fact that I read English at university, did an MA thesis on Traditional Ballads & taught literature to A-level to earn my bread and butter. My head is stuffed with scraps of poetry, Shakespeare plays, novel characters etc which heighten my perceptions, lend insights, and help me appreciate the world and the people about me.

I've always loved music, and these days I listen to music more than I read - not sure if this will be temporary or not - so in fact, music is almost overtaking literature. But not quite.

They overlap in songs. I've always been able to memorise lyrics. In my cot, I'd recite or sing nursery rhymes, and once, when I was bored out of my skull working a student job in a cardboard box factory, I kept myself from going insane by singing my hymn and carol repertoire. The hymns (none repeated) lasted two hours, and the carols one hour.


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## Cheyenne

The third add-in here for me would be cinema, and the fourth video-games, though the latter is more for communal activities and more 'base' fun. Technically I prefer music and literature over cinema because as traditions they have been practiced for a significantly longer time, and I technically prefer cinema over video-games because there is more depth to it, but they are all rather close. As Carlyle wrote: 'Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.' Such it is with all of these. I could easily live without one of them, and still quite well without any of them. I just like that they're all there. 

Good topic!


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## ptr

I for one don't feel the "vs" part!, just can't see them as opposing each other! For me they are two of a number of life enhancing "cultural" components that makes it all worth while! 

/ptr


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## cwarchc

Life would be incomplete without either


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## Garlic

I'm a philistine and haven't read fiction in years. I do read non fiction voraciously but I don't think that counts as literature does it? So I could easily do without literature but I need music to live.


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## ptr

Garlic said:


> I'm a philistine and haven't read fiction in years. I do read non fiction voraciously but I don't think that counts as literature does it? So I could easily do without literature but I need music to live.


I for one can't see why non-fiction shouldn't be regarded literature! Some of my most priced books are dictionaries and biographies (I even think of scores as literate reading material, just written in a different alphabet! ), for me only one in say ten read books are fiction or poetry.

/ptr


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## StlukesguildOhio

Impossible to answer. I am an artist (a painter), a self-declared bibliophile (if not full blown bibliomaniac) and music lover. I sit typing this from my den/library surrounded by some 3500 books... a good 1000 of which are devoted to art and a good 3500 CDs. Art (especially painting... but certainly print, sculpture, architecture, and film) is my passion and the source of my livelihood... yet music and literature are no less central to my life.


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## Klavierspieler

Well, if I _had_ to choose, it would definitely be music, but I'd really rather have both. I plan to start reading a lot more, though, when I have the time (retirement?).


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## Taggart

Klavierspieler said:


> ...I plan to start reading a lot more, though, when I have the time (retirement?).


Dream on, things happen to fill the time available and you think "how did I work?" when you find you don't have time for all the things you planned to do.


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## Guest

schuberkovich said:


> Which do you prefer? Which takes you to emotional depths (more)? Which do you consider the greater art form? Which do you spend more time enjoying?


Hang on, hang on...which question do you want answered - they're not all the same?



Garlic said:


> I'm a philistine and haven't read fiction in years. I do read non fiction voraciously but I don't think that counts as literature does it? So I could easily do without literature but I need music to live.


Yes, non-fiction does count as 'literature', unless you're going to discount Gibbon, MacAuley, Caesar, Holinshed, Hawking, Dawkins, Read, Strachey...

Speaking as a graduate in English Lit and Drama, I spend more time listening to music and recently decided that I might have made a better scientist, has I not made a different choice at my trad school where you had to be one or t'other. With regard to arts overall, I prefer the magpie approach, enjoying as much of the cream of each as my idle tendencies allow.


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## Manxfeeder

I prefer music because:
1. It's not hard to find time to listen. But I don't always have time to sit down and stare at pages. 
(I know there are audiobooks, but after five minutes, my mind tends to drift. I audiobooked Anna Karenina, and that's the last time I do that.)

2. After a full day of proofreading, editing, and staring at the computer screen, a lot of times my eyes won't let me look at another page.


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## Guest

By the way, if the question of the poll is, "Which do you prefer?" I assume those who say you can't compare them simply mean that they personally cannot determine a preference, not that there si something intrinsic to each of them that makes preference objectively impossible???


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## Blancrocher

Manxfeeder said:


> (I know there are audiobooks, but after five minutes, my mind tends to drift. I audiobooked Anna Karenina, and that's the last time I do that.)


Keep an eye open for audiobook dramatizations (not just readings). I'd recommend the BBC's John le Carre dramatizations in particular, which have good voice actors and sound effects. (If this is the kind of thing you were referring to, my apologies!)


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## Ondine

I think that even if they can not be compared, by far, music.

I like to read _essay_ being it a literary genre or as a way to communicate scientific facts. But novels, poetry and the like has never hooked me.

Reading a novel makes me feel I am loosing precious time for a good scientific essay or for listening music which are a lot more meaningful for me. Also I have a slight problem -nothing compared with poetry and novels- with sung music because I don't like to be told what or how to feel. That is why I like much more instrumental music.

In the case of essays I enjoy and delight in the way an author makes a case to be essayed. Her or his strength, the quality of his argumentation, the facts shown, the things proven and all that, that makes of reading it a great learning and a revealing understanding about the topic essayed.

My field of research and work needs countless hours of dedication to plough an essay and it is really fascinating and is the source from where I can do my job being it a project, a lecture, a speech or to teach when the opportunity is there. Just imagine if I can not convince investors or researchers for investing in a research project!

But no please, not novels and poetry 

It's OK, just oddities about me.


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## PetrB

You cannot compare them, which seems to me a more than blazing flash of the obvious; but here I am at TC, saying and voting so in a poll about valuing one against the other.


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## OldFashionedGirl

It is depends of my mood, sometimes I want to spend my time reading, but sometimes I want just to listen to music.


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## deggial

of course you can compare them based on what they do to you. All arts do similar things to a consumer (feed the mind and the emotions), as far as I'm concerned. They're all good and necessary to good living.


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## Guest

PetrB said:


> You cannot compare them, which seems to me a more than blazing flash of the obvious; but here I am at TC, saying and voting so in a poll about valuing one against the other.


No, _you _cannot compare them. _I _can, in the way that is specified by the OP - ie, offering a preference.


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## PetrB

MacLeod said:


> No, _you _cannot compare them. _I _can, in the way that is specified by the OP - ie, offering a preference.


I suppose some timbre of atonement from me might be expected to respond to the above, but I don't feel it in me at all. I LOVE to read, literature and history, mainly, but I need music as much -- nearly -- as air, water and food.

So let's say the question is analogous to this one, (which it was to me when I first saw it.) 
"Do you prefer air, water, or food?"

That, as the old slang has it, is "where I was coming from" when I responded to the OP.


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## Guest

PetrB said:


> I suppose some timbre of atonement from me might be expected to respond to the above, but I don't feel it in me at all. I LOVE to read, literature and history, mainly, but I need music as much -- nearly -- as air, water and food.
> 
> So let's say the question is analogous to this one, (which it was to me when I first saw it.)
> "Do you prefer air, water, or food?"
> 
> That, as the old slang has it, is "where I was coming from" when I responded to the OP.


Oh, even easier - tea, definitely!


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## PetrB

MacLeod said:


> Oh, even easier - tea, definitely!


 
The yanks dumped all that horrible nasty tasting foliage in Boston Harbor a long time ago.

I suppose I could have said I participate in music fora, but do not participate in literature fora.


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## SiegendesLicht

A few years ago, before getting to know classical music, I would have answered "literature by a long way", but now I voted "music - only just". I value both of them a lot, but now I often simply do not have time to sit down and concentrate on a book, so the only things I get to read are news sites and internet forums. A day without music, however, is a wasted day for me.


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## Morimur

Both are essential.


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## GhenghisKhan

in my day to day life, it is music. Simply because I don't always have the time to crack open a great book.

But ideally, both.


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## Levanda

I put classical CD and reading book both give me good pleasure until next door dog is barking it make me crazy not really.:lol:


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## Guest

I love both dearly, but I could survive without classical music. But the day I can no longer read is going to be agony immeasurable.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

Music can create a story, but literature would be hard pressed to create music....so I choose music, which encompasses both.


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## elgar's ghost

I would choose music over literature nearly every time while I have all my faculties but if the worst came to the worst I would rather be deaf than blind.


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## Ilarion

If I may: Great Music and Great Literature are made for each other - Imo, they are already intimately related.


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## Bulldog

Both my father and brother have PHDs in Literature. I vote music by a long way; last time I actually read a novel was in the 1970's.


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## brotagonist

Reading and music go eye-in-ear :lol: for me. I like having instrumental classical music on while I am reading. I watch little television and film, so I get my fix of stories through reading (I read a lot more non-fiction these last years than I used to, though).


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## Dr Johnson

brotagonist said:


> Reading and music go eye-in-ear :lol: for me.* I like having instrumental classical music on while I am reading.* I watch little television and film, so I get my fix of stories through reading (I read a lot more non-fiction these last years than I used to, though).


Likewise!................................


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## Ilarion

Let me throw some more gravel into the "machinery"

Using the analogy "Architecture is frozen music", I perceive a great book like "Quiet flows the Don" by Sholokhov to be music expressed by words. Imagine "Hamlet" by Shakespeare, how rich the verbal tapestry the great Master wrote...My mind reels in ectasy now 

Any feedback is greatly appreciated...


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## SiegendesLicht

Ilarion said:


> Let me throw some more gravel into the "machinery"
> 
> Using the analogy "Architecture is frozen music", I perceive a great book like "Quiet flows the Don" by Sholokhov to be music expressed by words. Imagine "Hamlet" by Shakespeare, how rich the verbal tapestry the great Master wrote...My mind reels in ectasy now
> 
> Any feedback is greatly appreciated...


Sometimes words can be music all by themselves (certain 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century Germans come to mind). But I really don't think "The Quiet Don" is in that category.


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## Ilarion

SiegendesLicht said:


> Sometimes words can be music all by themselves (certain 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century Germans come to mind). But I really don't think "The Quiet Don" is in that category.


I hoped that no one thought that I compared Shakespeare with Sholokhov - Maybe that has happened now. Different times and countries and subjects - like comparing apples with orange - Oh woe is me


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