# Does music carry moral / deontological / extramusical baggage for you?



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

So it's probably a bad idea to start this thread, but I'm hoping it will provide a space for productive discussion on a topic which seems to be at the heart of many of the debates at TC but which itself does not receive sufficient explicit discussion.

At the risk of oversimplification, I'll present two extremes of a spectrum: those who try to read meaning into music, and those who merely "enjoy" it.

People in the latter category are, for instance, often willing to accept a total separation between music and the rest of their lives. Most probably do not readily take inspiration from music in their day-to-day lives. If music were to disappear completely tomorrow, they might lose one of their favorite pastimes and some of their most cherished memories, but the rest of their life would probably remain intact. They are willing to separate their personal life from music, and likely view art as being relatively low priority on the hierarchy of needs (they probably did not consider artists to be "Essential Workers" during the pandemic, for instance). They are more likely to solely or at least primarily find "emotional" value in music. They are less likely to believe that composers and works of music have had a substantial impact or at least influence on human history.

Those in the first camp, in the other hand, are more likely to integrate what they learn from music into other aspects of their life. They probably bring it up tangentially in conversations with others in their personal life, and perhaps they are more likely to believe that one's artistic taste is - in some sense - a defining aspect of his/her identity, in a similar manner to philosophical beliefs or family values. They probably are more acutely aware of (or at least interested in) the intellectual aspects of music theory and music history. They are more likely to find intellectual, philosophical, or spiritual value in music, and perhaps the emotions that it evokes in them is linked or even caused by one or more of these facets. They are more likely to believe that music has played a part in shaping cultural values and the course of history. Etc, etc... I think you guys get the point.

So, where on this spectrum would you place yourself? Does music (or art in general) carry extramusical baggage? How significant of a role has it had (and does it have) in shaping the course of history? I've included a poll with a variety of options that I hope will capture most of the prevailing views on this topic, but please elaborate on your own beliefs!


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Myself: I acknowledge that music and art in general - like all parts of culture - is a defining aspect of my identity, and I find attempts to separate music or any other interest from the rest of one's personal or professional life misguided and perhaps a bit immature. That said, I think it's very easy to get derailed talking about politics or only very loosely related topics when discussing music, and I rarely have any interest in those kinds of tangents on TC. I'm willing to entertain a connection between (to use one example which I think Mandryka brought up before) a possible connection between - say - the value of social equality and musical polyphony, but I view such comparisons as simplifications and analogies more than truisms. Of course, art reflects culture, and culture reflects art, but ultimately I feel that the lessons learned from music cannot be put into words. They speak for themselves, uniquely through themselves. Perhaps we can approximate or abstract them using language, but it is nowhere near a perfect translation. I believe music does have a profound intellectual impact on even the most uneducated listeners - perhaps more than they are able to recognize or willing to admit. But I think view this impact as being fundamentally subjective, even more so than literature, film, history, etc.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

I will admit though: I do often get pretty annoyed at those who try to compartmentalize or diminish the significance of music. Everything is connected; nothing is so black-and-white.


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## RogerWaters (Feb 13, 2017)

The options are not mutually exclusive, so this poll makes little sense.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Give us an example. I suspect this is motivated by the recent discussion on Lennon? John Lennon talentless?


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

It seems to me that _some_ music (serious music, classical music) is philosphical in nature and content, especially in the Romantic era and, to some degree, in the 20th and 21st centuries. I don't figure there is much of moral or philosophic depth in Vivaldi or early Mozart, but it's impossible to be unmoved by the issues churned up in works like Beethoven's Fifth, Brahms's First Symphony, or Bruckner's Seventh. These Romantic stalwarts suggest a larger presence than merely organized sounds made by an orchestra.

Too, I would suggest that it is hard to dispute the assertion that there is a philosophical presence in the Impressionist works _Prélude À L'après-midi D'un Faune_ or _La Valse_, though in much of the piano music of Debussy and Ravel one encounters moreso a working with effects of sound rather than a tackling of humanistic issues.

The most recent centuries have produced philosophical masterpieces as diverse as _Le Sacre Du Printemps_, _Turangalila Symphonie_, _4'33"_, and the string quartet _Black Angels_. Often, the strongest philosophically set works are written by composers who claim to seek "a new objectivism", which is itself a philosophical viewpoint.

But I remain comforted in the notion that there exists a great deal of "music" that simply exists for the pleasure of listening to it, and one need not worry about the aesthetics of the world being fractured or shaken-up by their sonic presence.

Still, I don't mind being shaken-up at times. There is room enough for both sorts of music in my world.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

This is why I like symphonies: pure, abstract music. There's no political baggage, no social justice demands, no trying to make me feel guilty. Too many modern composers seemed to think their music must convey some meaning. Be it Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw or the Corigliano Aids symphony (no. 1), I ignore it. Music first of all is entertainment. Too many composers forgot that. If you want to send a message, get a Hallmark card.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I would not like to try to fit myself into any established "spectrum." I can only relate the experience of a life devoted to music, and leave it to others to interpret.

While music has been as important to me as any aspect of life, and possibly more so, there is no simple or uniform way to describe what meaning I find in it. The question of what sorts of meaning music can convey is complex, and I think the idea that it's merely pleasing sound to which we attribute whatever meaning we can or will is simplistic and false. What we can say is that it doesn't carry propositional meaning: it doesn't make statements about reality. It can, though, trace patterns in sound that correspond to and evoke for us, if we're sensitive to them, patterns of thought, sensation and emotion which may seem to refer indirectly to philosophical, spiritual and moral ideas. It's hard not to hear certain music as, for example, "noble" or "seductive" or "sarcastic." Great composers know how to find and use such expressive patterns (which, to refer here to another recent thread, is a factor contributing to our considering certain works particularly "beautiful").

I was strongly attuned to the expressive qualities of musical forms at an early age, and apparently this faculty allowed me never to feel intimidated by very complex works of Bach, Beethoven and Wagner. I don't really know, but I suspect it's not common for people in their teens to fall in love with Beethoven's late quartets, Wagner's _Parsifal,_ and Mahler's _Das Lied von der Erde_, which are supposed to be "difficult" works but which overwhelmed this kid with what seemed their profundity and emotional richness. Indeed, though I enjoyed all sorts of music, I was much slower to appreciate fully music of a lighter nature, with some exceptions such as Strauss waltzes, which nevertheless still carried meaning for me: a sweet, sensual, joyous old-world romance more sympathetic to me than most of the popular music of my own country and era (the 1950s and '60s).

As a musician and music lover I don't require that the music I enjoy suggest profound meanings, but works that are capable of doing that remain, to my mind, the peaks of my musical experience and have added something special and important to my life.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I think the poll options are too complicated and ambiguous. 
A lot of music has obviously extramusical significance (like a national anthem) but it hardly derives its musical value from there. It's also often not the original intention; pieces have acquired political significance the author did not dream about (again a trivial example: Beethoven's Ode to joy being used as a European anthem).
Or these operas starting riots or revolutions in the 19th century, not always with a clear connection to the content. 

But this is often quite "external" it does not seem to be what you want to get at in the text.

Even pieces with a fairly clear content, say Fidelio or Shostakovich's 11th, we would probably doubt that they derive their value from the political content. 

I completely agree that music and arts are important for a society (and even more for individuals with strong affinities to them) and also that their "meaning" is usually not just expressible in any other way. (To put it bluntly, if we could express the content of music simply in any other way we would not need music, or music would not be as special as it is!) But along these lines I also hesitate to say that such content is "extramusical" and that this gives music value. It sounds too external to me, like a rhymed fable deriving most of its value not from the poetical artistry but from the morale (what it teaches - fabula docet).


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Music almost always carries for me something non-musical on a personal level. This can be used to steer my soul. The healing effect of Bruckners music is by far the best for me. Cultural/political significance is much less common but sometimes it is there. But usually this does not give the music its value. However when I hear Haydn symphonies, something I really like about it is that it represents a world in order, and this for me this gives it a significant portion of its value, but even this works rather on a personal level.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

*Does music possess philosophical / extramusical significance?*

Gosh, I hope not.  If so, it has entirely gone over my head. Thankfully.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

it extremely depends on the piece, and even then, the music must be effective in some way for any textual meaning to be conveyed. Capital-E Enlightenment philosophy is generally considered outdated but that doesn't really harm Beethoven 9 for most listeners, because the music used to convey that message is so engaging that it doesn't really matter.

i also think music does say a lot about the culture which produced it, even when not explicitly conveying meaning or a text, but I generally don't listen to music this way, or ascribe moral standards to the music


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

RogerWaters said:


> The options are not mutually exclusive, so this poll makes little sense.


Broski I ain't finna spend 5 hours makin some Walter Rudin separable *** ****

Answer the damn question or keep quiet


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

SONNET CLV said:


> It seems to me that _some_ music (serious music, classical music) is philosphical in nature and content, especially in the Romantic era and, to some degree, in the 20th and 21st centuries. I don't figure there is much of moral or philosophic depth in Vivaldi or early Mozart


Why do you think they wrote music?


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## JTS (Sep 26, 2021)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Why do you think they wrote music?


They wrote music to entertain people, especially those of the upper classes who would pay them for it. It was something they did very well and could express themselves in.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Hate to play the toddler here, but - even if that is the case (I think it's an unfair simplification) - why is music entertaining? What does "entertain" mean?


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

SONNET CLV said:


> It seems to me that _some_ music (serious music, classical music) is philosphical in nature and content, especially in the Romantic era and, to some degree, in the 20th and 21st centuries. I don't figure there is much of moral or philosophic depth in Vivaldi or early Mozart... .





BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Why do you think they wrote music?


I know that I was attracted to music long before I ever knew what "philosophy" or "morality" were, or had even ever heard the words. I did not come out of a family which made its living from music (as did Mozart) or from the Church ministry (Vivaldi) in which music was fundamental. I did hear music in a church, but mostly on the radio as a kid, and I thought of playing an instrument and writing songs without ever having had any idea of what philosophy could mean in music. At the time I wrote (in my head, and which I sang to myself) my first "song" -- I was probably six years old -- I had never heard anything by Beethoven or Brahms or Tchaikovsky or Schoenberg, and likely hadn't ever heard their names. Yet music was attractive and interesting to me.

I do take a greater pleasure in music today having received an education that enlightened me about political eras and aesthetic movements, which steeped me in concepts of development of culture, and revealed to me great philosophical thinkers and movements. But when I hear Mozart's First Symphony, a delightful piece I've long cherished, I'm not drawn into philosophical or moral channels of thought, and I suspect the young Mozart wasn't either when he penned the piece. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Were I a composer today I would certainly attempt to foreground my music with aesthetic thoughtfulness (which one might read as philosophical underpinnings), especially were I a symphonist, but that does not change the notion of that very first song I conceived in my mind, one which still resonates with me after more than half a century and which has no moral/humanistic depths of purpose that I can hear.

I suspect Vivaldi wrote music because he was attracted to it, had been trained in it, and found it well fit his chosen profession. I suspect Mozart wrote music for much the same reasons, spurred on, of course, by his father's insistences. Leopold was a professional musician and composer, one in whose music I find little to "philosophize" about. (I recall reading that Mozart's sister mentioned that had Wolfgang not become a composer he would have been a fine mathematician. I suspect we could make an argument that math, like music, can be both non-philosophical (especially on lower levels such as elementary arithmetic) and highly philosophical (as in advanced calculus, probability and statistics, fractal geometry and measure theory.)

Perhaps this explanation isn't totally clear, but I hope it helps somewhat to understand what I meant.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Why is arithmetic less philosophical than measure theory? I'm not trying to be pedantic; I'm honestly just very confused.

Edit: I suppose you mean "the study of ...". I guess I agree somewhat, but still not entirely. We approach them differently. Elementary arithmetic we tend to teach on an intuitive level (we don't build up the natural numbers from the Peano axioms, but just assume their existence or even represent them with physical objects), whereas even just defining the Lebesgue measure requires a discussion of infinity and countability, concepts with no tangible analogue. But I still don't really see why people almost universally agree that one approach is more philosophical, or even more abstract, than the other.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Bach might have been extraordinary in many way but I think his general stance towards music was rather typical for not only Lutheran cantors but many musicians before ca. Beethoven (and I am not saying that this stance completely changed around 1800, see below)
The complete title of Bach's "little organ book" is the following: 

"Orgel-Büchlein worinne einem anfahenden Organisten Anleitung gegeben wird, auff allerhand Arth einen choral durchzuführen, an bey auch sich im Pedalstudio zu habilitiren, indem in solchen darinne befindlichen Choralen das Pedal ganz obligat tractiret wird. Dem Höchsten Gott allein' zu Ehren, dem Nechsten, draus sich zu belehren."

"Organ book, wherein a beginning organist is instructed how to treat a chorale in diverse ways, additionally to get used to playing the pedals because in the chorals contained within the pedal is obligatory." 

So it is for organists to get good at a certain ability needed in church music. Why is this needed? The last sentence gives the answer to this and is also a general motto for the following organ pieces.

"To the glory of the highest God alone, for the neighbour to learn something from it" 

If music was not functional, as in service or court ceremony, it could be "mere" divertissement or ornament, but it also has a contemplative character, especially if played alone or with a few friends and maybe a small audience. It will always to some measure reflect (like an icon) the overall harmony of the spheres and Everything, or for the more devout, like Bach, always be praise to God in some way (like the singing of the birds or just anything in creation, cf. that verse "The heavens proclaim etc." set in Haydn's Creation).

I don't think music has completely lost his connotation, despite secularization and general "disenchantment". Maybe because music is an enchantment that obviously works  and therefore is believeable.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Music does not exist in a vacuum . It cannot be completely divorced from the extra-musical . 
Some music is abstract , but by no means all classical music is such as program music or opera for example .


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Woodduck said:


> I was strongly attuned to the expressive qualities of musical forms at an early age, and apparently this faculty allowed me never to feel intimidated by very complex works of Bach, Beethoven and Wagner. I don't really know, but I suspect it's not common for people in their teens to fall in love with Beethoven's late quartets, Wagner's _Parsifal,_ and Mahler's _Das Lied von der Erde_, which are supposed to be "difficult" works but which overwhelmed this kid with what seemed their profundity and emotional richness. Indeed, though I enjoyed all sorts of music, I was much slower to appreciate fully music of a lighter nature,


This was the case for me as well. At 13 I listened everyday to the last 5 Beethoven sonatas; now they're too draining for me most of the time.

But I think that "light" is often interpreted the wrong way. A lot of "light" music possesses just as much depth - and _meaning_ - as Beethoven's Opus 111 or Mahler's Ninth. It's just not as immediately apparent. Maybe it wasn't even the composer's intent, but that doesn't mean it isn't _there_. At least, to me.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

I bring too much of my own extra-musical baggage to be bothered with anything the composer might have been trying to convey to me. Besides, if he was up to something like that, it wouldn't be extra-musical, would it?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I can see classical music in its socio-political and historical contexts but that has little to do with my experience of listening to it. Perhaps my experience is enriched by that knowledge but what I experience is, I think, more direct and more personal. 

I don't need to buy into a certain set of beliefs about God and "his" church to be bowled over by the visions presented to us in masses by, say, Josquin or Bach. As an atheist I suppose I could call those visions "lies" but isn't it amazing that some supreme artists have been able to enable us to see (hear) such beautiful "lies"? I can listen to such music without feeling any clash between my beliefs and the beliefs being promoted. I do perhaps gain a bit more understanding of the vision that the church was keen to promote back then and thereby understand a little more about that attraction. 

But then there is Wagner - perhaps the most philosophically oriented and able of the great composers - and I sometimes find I need to put any understanding of his philosophical views aside. His music is beautiful but the lie is egregious. I cannot enjoy his music while gaining an understanding from it of the attraction that views he espoused exerted. 

But great music is great music and what it does to me bears little relationship for me to its intended social and philosophical function. But I do generally enjoy getting a better understanding of the myths it seeks to promote. It is only, I think, with Wagner that that enjoyment breaks down. Perhaps his music makes me feel things that seem to explain the power of certain mythical archetypes but it is still too close for me to the appalling crimes that it seemed to many to call for. I love Wagner but I really need to suspend my disgust when I am enjoying his music.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Some musicians have philosophical and political themes in mind when they compose and play. I am under no obligation however to try to comprehend them in order to enjoy a piece of music. That's not to say I actively shun such research. Occasionally I engage in it. For instance, this quite enjoyable documentary.

But I can't say I think about the French Revolution every time I listen to the 3rd or the 5th or the 9th. In fact, I almost never do. That's the beauty of (especially purely instrumental) music - it can be thoroughly abstracted from its original milieu and can speak directly to people with no interest in political history.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

But the Beethoven symphonies are, if at all, only very distantly and vaguely related to e.g the French revolution. There might be slightly closer relations between the Eroica and Napoleon and the 9th symphony could be seen as a reaction against Metternich's restauration, but all this is very abstract; it's not music depicting or illustrating anything.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Am I the only one who needs to ask what "deontological baggage" is?


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

Roger Knox said:


> Am I the only one who needs to ask what "deontological baggage" is?


Maybe. I bet I'm not the only one who had to look it up.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I'd say sometimes. The composer/songwriter sometimes intends a certain extramusical message to be brought across, and if the listener picks it up, then the significance has been sucessfully conveyed.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Forster said:


> Maybe. I bet I'm not the only one who had to look it up.


I've looked up "deontological" now. Used in moral philosophy or ethics, it typically means "rule-based." Here's my attempt at an example (perhaps more "principle-based" than "rule-based"):

Vincent D'Indy (1851-1931) was a conservative Catholic composer who applied the principle of moving from darkness (bass register) to light (treble register) in several compositions, and described it in terms of evil to good in his _Complete Course of Musical Composition_. His symphonic poem _Summer Day in the Mountains_ does that in the opening movement "Dawn" (Aurore), which closes with a blazing brass section in C major. The work's final movement closes with a faint reference to that passage, indicating the cyclic return of dawn.

The association of "light" with goodness is a Christian belief, e.g. as proclaimed by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works ..." (Matthew 5:16). As a Christian I appreciate the extra-musical connection, and musically the work is a favourite of mine. But I appreciate music on its own without overt meaning just as much. To me this is a stronger position than that of always being on one side, either absolute music or program music. In classical music's history both approaches have been fruitful.


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