# Music which expresses hatred



## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

I have a really abstract request. I'm looking for music which expresses/evokes pure, cold hatred. No rage, no anger, no anxiety--but disdain for the world. The music should hate the listener, and the listener should feel the music's contempt.


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Why?

(Queen of the Night, maybe?)


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

For science. Because reasons.


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Science the TC member or science the subject?


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Science the subject 

I want to know if such music is possible, and if it is, I'd like to study it. I can think of music that expresses frustration, or self-hatred, or rage to me, but I can't think of any that expresses contempt or disdain, or how such an expression might be achieved.


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## Pip (Aug 16, 2013)

Alberich's curse from Das Rheingold is pure cold-blooded malevolence of the highest degree.
The problem is that hate is such a strong emotion, it is difficult to portray it in musical terms without emotion.


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## Esterhazy (Oct 4, 2014)

Probably opera arias where they sing bravura arias raging for war.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

It might not be exactly what you are looking for, but how about the first song that Lemmy wrote for Hawkwind back in 1972?

Lemmy sounds completely off his onion but it's as bleak as anything from Lennon's debut or anything by Joy Division...


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## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

Hatred and anger kind of go hand in hand don't they?
I'm thinking something along the lines of the 'narrator' in Survivor from Warsaw but I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for.


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## Guest (Oct 5, 2014)

Kopachris said:


> I have a really abstract request. I'm looking for music which expresses/evokes pure, cold hatred. No rage, no anger, no anxiety--but disdain for the world. The music should hate the listener, and the listener should feel the music's contempt.


The question you're posing is not one like "Is it possible for pigs to fly?"--which has an answer--but one like "How many generations would it take to genetically modify pigs' wings to produce super flyers?"--which does not because it starts from a situation that does not exist.

And even if I'm wrong about the latter, it is still true that the thing you have conspicuously left out is still operative. Indeed, it is essential.

For whom? For whom is this music expressing/evoking pure, cold hatred. Never mind that "pure" has no meaning in this context. Never mind that "cold" is probably the wrong word to describe hatred (though probably OK for disdain or contempt). Even granting all that gallimaufry as lucid, you still have make room for a whom. In fact, this is all about the whom, not about the music. So even if you come up with some music that _you_ think expresses pure, cold hatred, you don't really have any music to study. You're really studying yourself.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kopachris said:


> I have a really abstract request. I'm looking for music which expresses/evokes pure, cold hatred. No rage, no anger, no anxiety--but disdain for the world. The music should hate the listener, and the listener should feel the music's contempt.


I don't think it's possible, but I haven't formulated the argument, unless of course it's linked to a text. The problem is that music is a bit of a sledge hammer when it comes to expressing things, compared with natural languages. You may find bits of music which seem to be about some sort of nasty negative feeling, but I doubt you can get something as refined, as specific, as hatred, as opposed to contempt or anger or . . .

By the way, if we think of ones linked to a text, there's a wonderful example somewhere on Birtwistle's Punch and Judy.


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## Guest (Oct 5, 2014)

You only want classical music, I assume?


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Leaving aside the usual valid doubts about whether the hatred is _in_ the music or the result of extra-musical associations, I'll nominate Shostakovich's "Rayok."


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## Guest (Oct 5, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> linked to a text.


Exactly. You can put the pigs into an airplane and fly them around, but it's really the plane that's doing the flying, not the pig.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

some guy, he asked the question on a TalkClassical thread, so he is addressing _us_ individually, and not himself, so that takes care of the _to whom_ "quandary".

Even if the listener is studying himself more than the music, there is still a valid question here. He even admitted that his query is quite "abstract". I can assume we all understand subjectivity here. If I think "X" piece of music expresses hatred and you don't think it does. So what? This is art.

Furthermore, what is wrong with studying ourselves with regards to music? We aren't studying ourselves in a vacuum, we would be studying ourselves as a counterpart to the music we listen to. If I came to an answer by means of "studying myself more than the music", I would still have an answer that the OP would appreciate to hear about (perhaps to compare it to his answer, etc.). We're all psychological creatures, even if we were to say which music expresses beauty or love, we would still be studying ourselves just as much as the music. My _idea of_ _beautiful _isn't your _idea of_ _beautiful_, as was discussed on the R.V.Williams thread.

OP, I don't believe I've heard enough music to give you an answer. As of now, I haven't heard any music that expresses hatred in my opinion. It's a difficult emotion to pin down in music. In the limited amount of music that I know, I haven't encountered it yet.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The music written by Wagner for Hagen and Alberich in the Ring. These two had absolute contempt for humanity and schemed to destroy it. Wagner's music chillingly captures their malevolence.

These two guys would have been leaders of ISIL in contemporary times.


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## Ian Moore (Jun 28, 2014)

Bartok's hatred for Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony' theme which he mocks in the Concerto for Orchestra. I can't explain why he does it. Basically makes a fool out of Shostakovich on such a serious subject. So many people died in the siege of Leningrad. I can't help but think that their may have been some anti-Russian antagonism from Bartok to Shostakovich, although I have no evidence of it. Not much else makes sense.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Very interesting results so far (and not just the musical recommendations).


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Ian Moore said:


> Bartok's hatred for Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony' theme which he mocks in the Concerto for Orchestra. I can't explain why he does it. Basically makes a fool out of Shostakovich on such a serious subject. So many people died in the siege of Leningrad. I can't help but think that their may have been some anti-Russian antagonism from Bartok to Shostakovich, although I have no evidence of it. Not much else makes sense.


Funny you should mention the Shostakovich _Leningrad Symphony_. I was thinking that the first movement may be a possible answer.

Along those lined maybe the _Mars_ movement from the _The Planets_.

I was also thinking of sections of Berg's opera _Lulu_.

I was also thinking of Schoenberg's _Survivor_.

For me, this is a difficult question and maybe the above suggestions are a bit of a stretch.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Allan Pettersson's symphonies. They definitely sound misanthropic in nature to these ears, but I'm also reading into it(for fun, I might add).

Also, what about Sorabji's music?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> The question you're posing is not one like "Is it possible for pigs to fly?"--which has an answer--but one like "How many generations would it take to genetically modify pigs' wings to produce super flyers?"--which does not because it starts from a situation that does not exist.
> 
> And even if I'm wrong about the latter, it is still true that the thing you have conspicuously left out is still operative. Indeed, it is essential.
> 
> For whom? For whom is this music expressing/evoking pure, cold hatred. Never mind that "pure" has no meaning in this context. Never mind that "cold" is probably the wrong word to describe hatred (though probably OK for disdain or contempt). Even granting all that gallimaufry as lucid, you still have make room for a whom. In fact, this is all about the whom, not about the music. So even if you come up with some music that _you_ think expresses pure, cold hatred, you don't really have any music to study. You're really studying yourself.


*Points for the use of gallimaufry, lovely word *

But, Mr. OP:
yeah... music alone will _never_ be as specific as what you are looking for. Science, and those who look at music this way, is simply not only barking up the wrong tree, but a tree which is non-existent.

_Music which is already colored with the influence of text, either in the title alone or a sung or narrated text,_ sure, then you get 'exactly' what you are looking for, but it is no longer "music" by itself, needing the supplement, or crutch, of text to prop up your premise.

Other than that, _music is not a language_, can not and will not yield to being so utterly specific, the most 'emotionally specific piece,' _without any influential title or text_ is basically an aural Rorschach blot as far as listeners go, with nothing specific enough to be conclusive to the point you want to find demonstrable.

Science, other than psycho-acoustics (half science, half psychology), or the "pure" physics of acoustics, is rather pathetic when it goes looking for these specifics in the most highly abstract of the arts. The allure of pinning it down is, I'm sure, more than great to a mind inclined to crave specific and concrete answers, but I'm pretty sure it won't happen, i.e. "the right specimen to make your quest concrete," just won't be found.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ian Moore said:


> Bartok's hatred for Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony' theme which he mocks in the Concerto for Orchestra. I can't explain why he does it. Basically makes a fool out of Shostakovich on such a serious subject. So many people died in the siege of Leningrad. I can't help but think that their may have been some anti-Russian antagonism from Bartok to Shostakovich, although I have no evidence of it. Not much else makes sense.


I thought it was Stravinsky who lampooned that in another piece, but, oh well. It was the most severe of disappointments in one composer of another he admired, thinking the music - literally the composer's choice of notes used to its purpose -- as horridly banal, and the disappointment, in a nutshell, that Shostakovich had taken a route there which Bartok thought was utterly cheap and shallow. (It is rather, then, that Shostakovich was addressing a deep tragedy with something near to circus music superficial.)

Read horrible disappointment in a demi-hero worshipped, a kind of "Say it ain't so, Joe!"


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

Does the rage I feel, when the whole schedule of Sky Arts 2, on a Saturday evening, is taken up by Andre Rieu, count?


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Ian Moore said:


> Bartok's hatred for Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony' theme which he mocks in the Concerto for Orchestra. I can't explain why he does it. Basically makes a fool out of Shostakovich on such a serious subject. So many people died in the siege of Leningrad. I can't help but think that their may have been some anti-Russian antagonism from Bartok to Shostakovich, although I have no evidence of it. Not much else makes sense.


But I don't think the music expresses hatred so much as mockery. If you didn't know the context, would it sound like hatred?

It's a bit like Shostakovich's own music mocking Stalin.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

MagneticGhost said:


> Does the rage I feel, when the whole schedule of Sky Arts 2, on a Saturday evening, is taken up by Andre Rieu, count?


That is more like, *"DISAPPOINTED!"*


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

GreenMamba said:


> But I don't think the music expresses hatred so much as mockery.


BINGO!

Yes. Music can, and does in the right hands, sound mocking, satiric and / or sardonic... a quality Prokofiev and others managed to inject into many a score.

I think, literally, there are contours and rhythms we associate with the aural equivalent of the dynamics and 'pitch contours' of speech which are a near parallel to an analogue of "Nyah, Nyah," or the inflections of phrases like "Yeah, Right," etc. (It seems these expressions get very similar inflections, even through the many western languages and cultures... i.e. near to universally recognized and understood.)

Hate, more specifically, whether full throttle rage or low-simmer seething, is far more musically / aurally elusive, without those more common-coin and commonly recognized verbal inflections we associate with sarcasm.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Perhaps Schoenberg's Ode for Napoleon Bonaparte for reciter and chamber ensemble? Like Arpeggio above, A Survivor from Warsaw came to mind, but I think of it as defiant more than livid.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

_4'33"_ generates all sorts of hatred without hearing nuttin.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Hatred doesn't have to be hot and fiery; it can be brooding. There is plenty of brooding music that might fit the bill, but not exclusively so.


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

The trio from the end of Act 2 of Gotterdammerung. 
Shostakovich string quartet 8


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## Esterhazy (Oct 4, 2014)

Esterhazy said:


> Probably opera arias where they sing bravura arias raging for war.


Further to my post, say if you listen to this piece


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I've always thought that this Boulez Sonatina expressed anger and hatred. I feel it.


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## Guest (Oct 5, 2014)

PetrB said:


> That is more like, *"DISAPPOINTED!"*


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> I've always thought that this Boulez Sonatina expressed anger and hatred. I feel it.


I thoroughly enjoyed that! But no similar feelings on my part.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Without my having looked at any entries here after my first, I suggest a later experiment:

After the thread goes relatively inactive, subtract from the total of suggestions any and all pieces which have a text or a textual suggestive title other than 'form,' and see how many of these suggestions remain after that. 

Sort through those remaining to see if anything is not, as I've said, entirely subject to various individual interpretations as to 'what it means / signifies.' ;-)


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Kopachris said:


> I have a really abstract request. I'm looking for music which expresses/evokes pure, cold hatred. No rage, no anger, no anxiety--but disdain for the world. The music should hate the listener, and the listener should feel the music's contempt.


None. No music is so precise; the listener has to supply the hatred, to resonate with appropriate music that may be just as appropriate for something else.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Hatred by its very nature is incapable of producing anything worthwhile.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

Morimur said:


> Hatred by its very nature is incapable of producing anything worthwhile.


Indeed, it doesn't translate well into music. As a force its impotent, just think of Dore's famous etch of Dante's Satan, trapped from the waist down in an icy grave, powerless.

What did Tolkein write about his orcs, works of Sauron, the epitome of evil? "The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own." That goes far beyond the realm of fantasy.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Hatred seems a stretch, but I always thought that Strauss expressed hilariously shameless contempt and annoyance about his wife in "Intermezzo." No wonder Hofmannsthal wouldn't write the libretto. Pretty embarrassing.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

> Does the rage I feel, when the whole schedule of Sky Arts 2, on a Saturday evening, is taken up by Andre Rieu, count?


Oh - it does, it _SO_ does.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Morimur said:


> Hatred by its very nature is incapable of producing anything worthwhile.


"cold" hatred is quite capable of producing ideas and things worthwhile to its ends; it is a focusing feeling. A talented composer so afflicted has the potential for producing music that expresses that sentiment - for him. What it does for other, _uninformed_ listeners, is another thing.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The song, "Deutschland erwache" sung by the Nazis, which slanders Jews. A pure expression of musical hatred.


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## Guest (Oct 6, 2014)

hpowders said:


> The song, "Deutschland erwache" sung by the Nazis, which slanders Jews. A pure expression of musical hatred.


Um. Words.

It's the words that are doing the slandering. And, if the words are written down, as I assume they are, it's libel, not slander.

The music? Um, pretty sure that that is just pitches and such.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ukko said:


> "cold" hatred is quite capable of producing ideas and things worthwhile to its ends; it is a focusing feeling. A talented composer so afflicted has the potential for producing music that expresses that sentiment - for him. What it does for other, _uninformed_ listeners, is another thing.


I have read comments by and heard interviews of both composers and poets upon writing with intent to create 'a mood.' Each and every one of those said something very close to the same thing.

Regardless of what the emotional state they aspire to present and hope to evoke, and regardless of whether that is to be in an overt or invert manner, _any and all of those intents are *"best served cold."*_

Writing a dark and brooding work, or one about 'deep sadness' is better accomplished when not in that frame of mind you wish to evoke. To successfully make a work which communicates exuberant or ecstatic joy requires just the same personal remove.

That remove is needed to have the distance of a clear perspective and the broadest overview of the work to be done in order to best be able to realize the idea and intent. No matter how practiced and adept, composing is very real work which demands the composer's full attention and a total concentration to the task at hand. This includes assessing whatever can make the piece and its intent effective in order to best realize that intent.

To attempt that work in any state other than one of a fairly steady (and emotionally more neutral) composure (pun _intended_) is to imperil the necessary discernment about the work being shaped, i.e. the project itself.

In composing there are so many critical judgments and decisions to be made, and none of them are better made when in either a depressive or an excessively up mood. Most of these states are anyway usually far from sustained: a composer cannot then rely upon a sustained being in any particular state of mind to be the fuel to carry them through realizing the work.

What is instead needed is a more balanced state wherein all that concentration and concentrated effort can take place.

Anyone with any personal history of performing a job requiring a general set of skills can think of their own various ups, downs, and recall that most of the time, they are able to either plow through or ignore the ups and downs and sit down, concentrate upon that work and perform well. Much creative work goes quite the same, the familiarity, skills which they have coming as if near reflexive because they are so much practiced.

That set of abilities also explains what may seem to be the creative acts which have the outward appearance of being utterly spontaneous and not previously contemplated. If the skill in a particular medium is well in place because of years of experience and habitual practice, the subconscious can have been long at work before its creator / executante is consciously aware of even having an idea / inspiration, and then 'just sits down and it flows out of them.'


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

*Music is not language: language is not music.*



some guy said:


> Um. Words.
> 
> It's the words that are doing the slandering. And, if the words are written down, as I assume they are, it's libel, not slander.
> 
> The music? Um, pretty sure that that is just pitches and such.


Music is not language: language is not music.

I've said it many times on TC and elsewhere, "just pitches and such" _*can not "say" anything specific.*_ Text, the very medium of saying things specific, can and does communicate very specific things; music, "just pitches and such," absolutely can not.

Remove each and every suggestion in this thread which is colored by having a sung or narrated text, is printed and read as "part of the musical program," or has even one word as title which can then predispose the listener to find something related to that word ("Red", for orchestra), and whatever suggestions remain are at the best vague and prone to as many interpretations as the works have listeners.

Music is not language: language is not music.


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## Garybeac (Oct 5, 2014)

Certain hymns: I'm a religious liberal who believes God's ways and thoughts cannot always, and never completely, be understood. Some hymns convey a camaraderie with God that makes me feel excluded from a relationship with God that the choir seems to enjoy. I don't mind being excluded now and then, but I long for God in such a way that any perception of missed attention feels like rejection. In this vulnerable state, it sometimes seems as if certain choirs, singing certain hymns, hate me. I expect real hatred in music must be a shared experience by the performer and the listener. Thus, I expect a Jewish person might feel hatred from a reunion of SS officers singing "Deutschland Uber Alles," which is an otherwise lovely piece of music.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Garybeac said:


> Certain hymns: I'm a religious liberal who believes God's ways and thoughts cannot always, and never completely, be understood. Some hymns convey a camaraderie with God that makes me feel excluded from a relationship with God that the choir seems to enjoy. I don't mind being excluded now and then, but I long for God in such a way that any perception of missed attention feels like rejection. In this vulnerable state, it sometimes seems as if certain choirs, singing certain hymns, hate me.


_"Houston, we have a problem."_


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Some would object that there are words involved, but the music to Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" stands out to me as a good expression of cold hatred. 

I'm not sure I understand hatred well enough to feel it in music. Rage I understand. Hatred, I suspect, may just be fear sounding defensive.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

some guy said:


> Um. Words.
> 
> It's the words that are doing the slandering. And, if the words are written down, as I assume they are, it's libel, not slander.
> 
> The music? Um, pretty sure that that is just pitches and such.


I'll confess that I'm surprised by all the confidence I'm seeing in this thread about the ability of language to communicate anything, let alone anything as imprecise as emotions.

As any mod will tell you, it's very difficult to tell when someone's trolling, for example.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Blancrocher said:


> I'll confess that I'm surprised by all the confidence I'm seeing in this thread about the ability of language to communicate anything, let alone anything as imprecise as emotions.
> 
> As any mod will tell you, it's very difficult to tell when someone's trolling, for example.


As much as I use'em I don't trust words much at all. There are some general sets of conventions of 'accepted meanings,' but that is less uniform from one person to another as anyone might think.

But they at least set out to be specific, their goal do define, describe and articulate thoughts, describe things, name emotional and other more vague and, yeah, even more abstract ideas. Their premise and use is a universe apart from absolute (completely abstract) music, though.

Ergo: the take on music including speech, text, a word for a title meant to color inform, or predispose the listener is then no longer 'just music' but music 'with something else very different' is nothing new, nor should it surprise.

It just mildly surprises (and really shouldn't I suppose) that the moment a question of the nature in the OP is raised on a forum where all think they are "all about music," the majority immediately cite musical works whose titles are tinted / tainted by words, or the works themselves include one way or another a text, a recitation, a literal script as analogue to the piece -- unthinkingly resorting instantly to words, not "just music."


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

I agree with the objections: it is very difficult that a purely musical piece can be so outright expressive to draw out from all listeners alike the same emotion.

However, music IS a language so I just do not rule out the possibility.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Blancrocher said:


> I'll confess that I'm surprised by all the confidence I'm seeing in this thread about the ability of language to communicate anything, let alone anything as imprecise as emotions.
> 
> As any mod will tell you, it's very difficult to tell when someone's trolling, for example.


I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying.

Ok, just kidding.

But I suspect the example you used shows the power of clever people to use language well - in this case, to tread that knife-edge between something the mods can pin down with assurance and something whose intent other participants will fail to perceive. It's a gift and only the gifted manage to do it for a long time!

But there are those limits to language, especially when the emotion is strong and no words can express it. Grief and rage, regret and loneliness and despair. Sometimes also love, awe, elation. And, I don't know, maybe even fear and hatred.

I don't think people are entirely wrong to look to music to express some of that. Perhaps in conjunction with words, but perhaps not always.

I don't know, the subject is too deep for me. But I'm sure that we often manage to express ourselves and to be understood, and that both language and music have power to help us do so, while other times we cannot manage to contain our emotion within any sort of expression, verbal or musical or otherwise.


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## Guest (Oct 7, 2014)

Blancrocher said:


> I'll confess that I'm surprised by all the confidence I'm seeing in this thread about the ability of language to communicate anything, let alone anything as imprecise as emotions.
> 
> As any mod will tell you, it's very difficult to tell when someone's trolling, for example.


Well, that may be a problem with the mod, you know.

Otherwise, you do seem quite confident that you can use language to communicate the idea that language is incapable of communicating anything. Now, whether that confidence is genuine or part of a joke, I'm not entirely sure. (So I'm with the mods on this one.) But that's an uncertainty I can live with. Your post is funny whether you intended it to be funny or not.

Otherotherwise, to be serious for a second or less, language is really crappy at communicating, it's true. But it's better than anything else we've got. It is much better at doing the kinds of things music does, actually. There's a saying that all fiction aspires to the condition of poetry. I've extended that: all language aspires to the condition of music. I agree with PetrB that music is not language. But I don't agree with the converse. Language is very much like music. It has musical qualities. Since they share qualities, it might be tempting to say that the converse _is_ true. But the bits of music that are similar to language are just the musical bits that language shares with it. Things that are unique to language don't appear in music at all.

I can state confidently that I would never have used notes or paint or marble to express the preceding.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

some guy said:


> Well, that may be a problem with the mod, you know.
> 
> Otherwise, you do seem quite confident that you can use language to communicate the idea that language is incapable of communicating anything. Now, whether that confidence is genuine or part of a joke, I'm not entirely sure. (So I'm with the mods on this one.) But that's an uncertainty I can live with. Your post is funny whether you intended it to be funny or not.
> 
> ...


Very nice sentence.
I will quote it often for shock effect, and when arguing that music is the highest form of art.

However, just to clarify, when I say "music is a language" I mean "system of communication", not "human language" of course.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Stavrogin said:


> I agree with the objections: it is very difficult that a purely musical piece can be so outright expressive to draw out from all listeners alike the same emotion.
> 
> However, music IS a language so I just do not rule out the possibility.


[ADD ^^^ Now, after the fact, I read your entire post, and realize you did not mean 'literally,' and in misreading that therein also demonstrated that even with careful qualififications, what is read and heard is not so exact on party to another. I'm leaving my rather impassioned original post below intact -- because so many are given the analogy that music is language, able to tell stories, and even those teaching that often take it and mean it literally.... END ADD]

_Not a language,_ and I don't mean that most dreadfully cliché analogy almost everyone is taught when first introduced to music, i.e. "music is a language," (shudders) and even worse, the analogy told to many a beginning music student about playing music, "music tells a story." (shudders to near seizure intensity.) "Music is a language, Music tells a story," for western classical music anyway, are trash nonsense _unless it is made more than very very clear those are only analogies about music._

_*It is taught that way to very young kids and beginners of any age because they are thought too simple to grasp its more abstract and formal aspects*_ (I could go on a rave about all preliminary education, for anyone at any level, and _just how much of the approach assumes stupidity in the student, which comes off -- even to very young children -- as hugely condescending, but I won't)_.

Music is not _literally_ a language, nor 'a story telling medium.'


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Well, luckily I had never heard "music tells a story" before.
But, since my conception of "language" is a bit wider than "what humans use to tell stories", I do think that music is a language.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Stavrogin said:


> Well, luckily I had never heard "music tells a story" before.
> But, since my conception of "language" is a bit wider than "what humans use to tell stories", I do think that music is a language.


Is any medium we consider communicative then called a language? If you answer _my conception_ of language is 'all of that,' you are using the word language as analogy for those other forms of communication.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

PetrB said:


> Is any medium we consider communicative then called a language? If you answer '_my conception_ of language is 'all of that,' you are using the word language as analogy for those other forms of communication.


Yes, I guess I am... Is it a bad thing?
Let's not get back in the neverending dispute about a specific definition of music, but is it agreeable that music _can_ be a form of expression/communication?


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## Guest (Oct 7, 2014)

The word language has a fairly (uncharacteristically) precise meaning, though. Which your usage controverts.

So yeah. I would say that that is a bad thing. 

But a conversation about what music is, while inevitably full of a lot of half-baked nonsense--I want my nonsense full-baked, thank you very much!--would be an interesting and perhaps useful conversation. I know, it's been done already. But nothing's come of those conversations, so there's always room for another. Anyway, far as I can hear, and I've been listening to music all my life, it is not at all agreeable that music can be a form of expression/communication.

Music is a fine and lovely thing all on its own with no need to be something else. But there is a powerful and incorrigible and relentless urge to value music only insofar as it can be made to appear to be doing non-musical things.

I don't understand.

Maybe it's fear. I dunno. Seems like a possibility. Music is so utterly relentless and powerful in and of itself, we feel we need to tame it, to control it by devaluing its real values, substituting non-musical values for the things we fear. Could be. I have a feeling there's no way to find out one way or another.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Well now you're the one who seems to be attaching extra meaning to something which does not have it. (In this case, the opinion about what music is). Relentless urge? Fear? Tame? Devalue? Doh. Overthinking much?

However, can you write the precise definition of language then? So I can understand why I am wrong.

As concerns music. Excluding the possibility that any piece of music be conceived to communicate something is quite bold. I would like to have your certainties in such a delicate field as music aesthetics and semiology.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

I don't believe that music is a language. 
"If you consider a language to be a means of transmitting data about the external world from one person to another, then music doesn't seem to fit the bill. One can't find any information about the outside world purely from the music, although one can infer certain ideas if one knows some of the history behind the creation of a piece of music."

The distinction between language and music seems to be precise articulation. As a society, we have decided what "sad" means, what "tired" means, the list goes on. We have hyperbole, superlatives, sarcasm, irony, modifiers, context, etc., to alter the subtle nuances of those words when we need.

However, I don't think a certain violin sound in C-Minor precisely means something, we have not decided that it means "this" or "that". There has been no social construct built to determine what it means.

Here are some links to a couple things I found:

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/music-language-75521/

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/cliffsnotes/literature/is-music-a-language

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/how-brains-see-music-as-language/283936/

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/language
- a : the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community

b (1) : audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs (2) : a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings (3) : the suggestion by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings <language in their very gesture - Shakespeare> (4) : the means by which animals communicate (5) : a formal system of signs and symbols (as FORTRAN or a calculus in logic) including rules for the formation and transformation of admissible expressions (6) :


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Just occurred to me: Mantagues and Capulets (or Dance of the Knights) from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. I can't think of any music that says more clearly, "I'd really like to cut your heart out." In a refined way, of course.


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## Guest (Oct 7, 2014)

Play the Montagues and Capulets bit to a hundred people who have never heard it before.

See how many say that it says "I'd really like to cut your heart out"?

I'm guessing (this being a thought experiment) that the answer would be exactly zero.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

DiesIraeVIX said:


> I don't believe that music is a language.
> "If you consider a language to be a means of transmitting data about the external world from one person to another, then music doesn't seem to fit the bill. One can't find any information about the outside world purely from the music, although one can infer certain ideas if one knows some of the history behind the creation of a piece of music."
> 
> The distinction between language and music seems to be precise articulation. As a society, we have decided what "sad" means, what "tired" means, the list goes on. We have hyperbole, superlatives, sarcasm, irony, modifiers, context, etc., to alter the subtle nuances of those words when we need.
> ...


If one follows those definitions of language then I totally agree that music isn't one.
This is negligible, however. 
Rather than wondering if music implies a "conventionalized"/"formal" set of "signs" to communicate (which is most definitely not the case), the key question is: can music be used to communicate?

some guy is certain: it has never happened.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

some guy said:


> Play the Montagues and Capulets bit to a hundred people who have never heard it before.
> 
> See how many say that is says "I'd really like to cut your heart out"?
> 
> I'm guessing (this being a thought experiment) that the answer would be exactly zero.


Out of KenOC's hyperbole, do you think that ALL of them will say "it says nothing"?


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Stavrogin said:


> If one follows those definitions of language then I totally agree that music isn't one.
> This is negligible, however.
> Rather than wondering if music implies a "conventionalized"/"formal" set of "signs" to communicate (which is most definitely not the case), the key question is: can music be used to communicate?
> 
> some guy is certain: it has never happened.


Stavrogin, OK, but you're saying language _is _communication. It isn't. Communication is communication. They are related, sure. However, language and communication are not interchangeable nor are they synonymous. The study of language is called linguistics, not musicology.

You've changed what language means, we can't do that. We abide by the social construct known as language, English in this case. We can have our own opinions, not our own facts. I promise you I'm saying this _without _an ounce of snide or sarcasm. I'm trying to get across that we can't define words according to our own subjective experience. Incidentally, that's a key difference between language and music. On one hand, I can say all I want that Mahler's 6th symphony is about life-affirmation and someone else can say it's about death and defeat. The latter may be better musically informed, but is the former opinion actually incorrect in a black-and-white manner? I'd say no. On the other hand, I can't say that happy means sad, it simply does not mean sad. Happy means happy.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Don't get me wrong.
I agree with you. I used "language" badly. My bad.
But that's not the point in this thread.

I repeat.
The point is: can music be used to express hatred?
The point is not: are there conventionalized/formal ways with which music expresses hatred?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Stavrogin said:


> Yes, I guess I am... Is it a bad thing?
> Let's not get back in the neverending dispute about a specific definition of music, but is it agreeable that music _can_ be a form of expression/communication?


If not bad, I think two things are less desirable there at least.

1.) So many people are taught, told, read, or think that 'Music is a language,' (and ergo, that "it tells a story.") you are only reinforcing a mistaken notion many have -- perpetuating it, as it were.

2.) The whole perspective of _*My conception of*_ where it comes to word usage has become endemic, comes from I think of late, a trend where people have been taught that what they personally feel is as good enough to pass as what they know, and that sometimes weirdly extends into things like the more conventional meaning of words, history, and troublesome little things like known facts if they then get in the way of _*my conception of*_, lol, and "words used in whatever way I want them to mean."

I find even a bit of it highly egomaniacal, self-centered, i.e. as if an individual expects all others to know just how they think of a word outside of the generally understood dictionary sense(s) of it -- dictionaries already having many senses of one word listed. Add as many personal takes on a word past that number, times the number of people who want to share what they think, their ideas, discuss those with others, and if taken to an extreme the construct is of a world populated with nothing but Humpty-Dumptys living in the state of Babel.

As some guy put it in admirably compressed form,
"We can have our own opinions, not our own facts."


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Stavrogin said:


> Don't get me wrong.
> I agree with you. I used "language" badly. My bad.
> But that's not the point in this thread.
> 
> ...


Can music express anything? -- only evoke enough to allude to, and then most generally or vaguely.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Go ask the Norwegian Black Metal guys how they do it. And you don't even have to be that musically inclined, wooo-weee! I'm sure people won't be thinking too hard on love when they're jamming some Gorgoroth.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

PetrB said:


> If not bad, I think two things are less desirable there at least.
> 
> 1.) So many people are taught, told, read, or think that 'Music is a language,' (and ergo, that "it tells a story.") you are only reinforcing a mistaken notion many have -- perpetuating it, as it were.
> 
> ...


You are venting in the wrong direction though. I am certainly not one who doesn't care for the meaning of words. Otherwise I wouldn't even have asked, don't you think?
Starting this thread I had my own idea about the definition of language, but I see it is not the "shared" one. I acknowledge that and act accordingly, and I don't try to impose my own interpretation upon others (especially because it has now changed).

You guys need to calm down.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I like to think a little hatred shines through Beethoven's 22nd piano sonata.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

PetrB said:


> Can music express anything? -- only evoke enough to allude to, and then most generally or vaguely.


That's an opinion, like Stravinsky's.

The possibility to evoke is itself a means of communication.
There are many studies on the way dynamics and articulation affect the perception.
And here I get back to my first post in this thread.

_I agree with the objections: it is very difficult that a purely musical piece can be so outright expressive to draw out the same emotion from all listeners alike.

However, music IS a [STRIKE]language[/STRIKE] form of communication, so I just do not rule out the possibility._

Of course no music can communicate something like "One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin", but i think that to rule out the possibility that music can be used in order to evoke a certain sentiment, and be successful at that, is far fetched.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Stavrogin said:


> Of course no music can communicate something like "One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin"


Not even a Broadway musical, perhaps. As an aside, the use of this line in Mel Brooks' "The Pruducers" is hilarious. Recommended to anyone who hasn't seen that movie.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Blancrocher said:


> Not even a Broadway musical, perhaps. As an aside, the use of this line in Mel Brooks' "The Producers" is hilarious. Recommended to anyone who hasn't seen that movie.


Yes! Be sure that is: _Mel Brook's_ original "The Producers," and not the filmed version of the later, uh, Broadway Musical.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Beethoven Grosse Fuge. Expresses contempt for typical society listeners of his music.

"Here!! Put THIS in your pipe and smoke it!!!"

Translated from the low German.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Beethoven Grosse Fuge. Expresses contempt for typical society listeners of his music.
> 
> "Here!! Put THIS in your pipe and smoke it!!!"
> 
> Translated from the low German.


That ain't hate, that is contempt of a type of 'classical music devotee'


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I really think this is where the difference comes in between "low" and "high" art. For your basic pop music - metal, rock, pop - it's pretty easy to see what's trying to be expressed. But when you delve into the different forms of Classical, the easily definable emotions seem to be severed... and it's just music for the sake of music; creativity for the sake of creativity.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I would probably say that music that accompanies hateful text is probably the best example, since music has such subjective qualities.

For example, this work below. It's quite pretty, but if you knew its words, and its intentions to mock, it would come off as pretty mean. This composer was jealous of Nielsen's fame. It's archaic quality is to irritate Nielsen who preferred more modern approach to composition. Nielsen wasn't even dead yet, but it's like an apotheosis or obituary. The choir is ordered to sing the same 1 minute of music for all eternity, and the same sentence over and over too: _Carl Nielsen, our great composer_...


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I would probably say that music that accompanies hateful text is probably the best example, since music has such subjective qualities.
> 
> For example, this work below. It's quite pretty, but if you knew its words, and its intentions to mock, it would come off as pretty mean. This composer was jealous of Nielsen's fame. It's archaic quality is to irritate Nielsen who preferred more modern approach to composition. Nielsen wasn't even dead yet, but it's like an apotheosis or obituary. The choir is ordered to sing the same 1 minute of music for all eternity, and the same sentence over and over too: _Carl Nielsen, our great composer_...


Proving, just like Schoenberg's little biting poem upon the occasion of Stravinsky's _Piano Sonata,_ that artists are not beneath the pettiest jealousies, the lowest form of catty b_tchiness, than anyone else.

And now we have here, instead of something I'm sure Lannggard would rather be remembered by, this little ditty of his


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The beginning of Mussorgsky's Night on Bare Mountain can tend to turn people away.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Expressing hatred, or any specific emotion, is something music cannot do, as many here have already said. Emotions are not merely feelings. They consist of both feelings and value judgments, conscious or unconscious, from which they derive their specific meaning. For value judgments there must be a subject (in this case the hater) and an object (the hated). No music can place the hater and the hated before us, or tell us what value the former places on the latter. The most music can do is present certain perceptual phenomena - certain forms, gestures, rhythms, energies - which can parallel and suggest to us feelings we might have when we hate. A composer might be more or less successful in finding musical effects that fit well with our sense of how hatred feels - hpowders pointed out that Wagner is quite successful in finding appropriate music for Alberich and Hagen in _The Ring_ - but because music cannot by itself present the subject or the object of the feeling it cannot truly be said to "express" hatred.

That said, I don't think we should dismiss or underestimate music's power to suggest and evoke feeling. No one sensitive to the brilliant depiction of evil by Wagner - whose music for Alberich's curse or Hagen's watch on the Rhine was clearly intended to give us cold chills - would make that mistake. But of course Wagner was writing opera, where music, allied with words and drama which can supply a conceptual context that music alone lacks, readily takes on an expressive specificity not inherent in it. There are wonderful things to be achieved by combining the arts in ways that reinforce and expand their separate powers.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Vesuvius said:


> I really think this is where the difference comes in between "low" and "high" art. For your basic pop music - metal, rock, pop - it's pretty easy to see what's trying to be expressed. But when you delve into the different forms of Classical, the easily definable emotions seem to be severed... and it's just music for the sake of music; creativity for the sake of creativity.


I think that's mostly because nearly all pop has lyrics. It's easy to use words to express clearly definable emotions.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

GreenMamba said:


> I think that's mostly because nearly all pop has lyrics. It's easy to use words to express clearly definable emotions.


Jeez, don't tear down my argument so easily. That is a main part of it, though. But... even so, the writing for the instruments are so basic that it doesn't leave much for the imagination.


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