I was watching an interview, many years old, between Jonathan Miller and Vladimir Ashkenazy. In it, Miller poses this question (typically verbose, but this is a transcript):

"What is audible inside a piece of music which could be said to refer to ones emotional life or ones personal or biographical life: You see, in piece of prose or a picture you can see what it refers to and you can see, in some sense, what the artist has been through, because often they include details of his or her life, but in a piece of music . . . there is nothing in music which refers in a point to point way to anything in the world, yet how is it that the world's experiences can have their effect upon the way in which you feel a piece: the way you perform it?"

Ashkenazy's reply was far more succinct: "I don't know and I don't know if anyone knows" (to be fair to Ashkenazy he then goes on to say more, but this was his gut reaction).

I have my own ideas, but I wondered: What does the team think?

I've read it several times, and I'm not sure I understand the question!

ART

Now try and define the meaning and there will be no definitive asnswer - I guess Ashkenazy has it about summed up.

As you say, this is a difficult question, but I will attempt a response.

I don't believe that it is the world's experience which affects the music at all, but the individual composer's or listener's experience of the world. Because we all live in the same world, anything major which happens, e.g a world war affects us all, so only in that sense can you say that the world's experience affects the music.

Music touches something within us which releases feelings and emotions. The music may simply be sad, maybe reflecting the composer's sorrow about something in his life, but the listener picks up the sadness and that releases emotions connected to sad events in his own life.

Music has a particular poignancy if we know it was written with a given event in mind, e.g. the War Requiem, because then every listener will be releasing feelings about the same thing - in this case the horror and waste of war. This gives a sense of community to the experience of listening, and things always seem more powerful and meaningful if lots of people are sharing the same emotions about something.

Not very deep, but my humble best!

I think the question he was trying to ask was not "how is one piece of musuc sad and another happy?" but "how does the performers experience of the world affect his performance, so that a performance on one day can be so markedly different from another day and yet still equally valid?", given that music is, by its nature, an abstract form and does not, in any tanigble way, relate to events in the world.

Surely music relates to what was going on in the composers world at the time they were composing?? One only has to look into the background of pieces (i.e. the Eroica) to learn that world events had a major bearing.

The way I interpret a piece I'm playing depends on my mood...which may or may not have any bearing on what is going on in the world. The most recent world event that shook me to the core (apart from the Tsunami) was theTwin Towers tragedy. I recall at that time I was playing "sadder" pieces. Apart from that, I play according to how I'm feeling at the time I sit down at the piano.

OK, I've quoted the post this time so I can actually see it as I reply.

Although I wrote about "the listener" in my last post, I think what I said is equally valid for the performer. When you come to play a piece of music, if it's to really come over to an audience it must be fresh each time you play it; a top player will approach every performance in a different way, expecting to discover new things about the piece.

Because the music is mediated through the performer, the emotions it releases in him are dependent on his recent and past experiences, i.e. what has gone on in his world, and these are somehow relayed back into the playing. I'm not a great performer musically, but when my children were small, they liked to have the same books read to them over and over again, and I know my readings were not the same each time. If we'd had a happy day they were more exuberant, and if something sad had happened, they were more subdued. I'm guessing it's the same for musical performance.

In my view, any performance is valid which truly communicates - if you use a machine to play the notes, there is no sense of real music, it's just wooden. I think we all know what is meant by musical playing; it centres on communication and has to involve the emotions - good technique alone is not enough. If the player, then, is to involve himself emotionally, it's inevitable that his experience of the world will be tied up in it.

Music may be an abstract form, but it's also a universal language which speaks to people affected by events in the world. The actual notes are just a vehicle for expression, and the performer is putting across some mixture of his own and the composer's feelings - but the listener is a very important third in this process. I've listened to recordings which have moved me to tears on one occasion and left me cold on others, and I feel that shows that my world experiences play a big part in my ability to respond to music.

Hi Robodoc. I didn't read it that way but that's the problem with Jonathan Miller - he's all showy show-off and no substance - he mugs his way through platitudes and shallow pretensions. Which is why no one knows what the question was that needs to be answered. It wasn't a question - it was subtefuge for a mind that wants to be brilliant but isn't. I much preferred the response from BerkshireMum and DaisyChain and BusyBee.

Anyway - rant over. I think he just meant how can you/one impose the personal on the abstract. Well that's a nonesense question because you can't. That's the beauty of abstraction. Abstraction has its moods but it doesn't have data. The 'personal, the 'particular' the 'self' only really came into its own with Romanicism. The 'I' as the centre of the universe. It's like asking how anyone can be inspired by Arabic or Islamic or Jewish art which doesn't involve the 'I' but involves the 'universal' abstract, ie awe inspiring works of art. If you asked that very same question to these abstract art forms you can see through the paucity of the question. Have you read Lorca's essay on Duende? Now that's worth checking out. Sorry - I just think it's a none question posited by a twerp.

Oh it's a bit late and I'm just rattling off thoughts after being brain-dead up the ladder painting ceilings. But it's just not a valid or well formed question - methinks...


Tweets,

Goldfinch

That's the point of the question: not "whether?" but "how?"


Good point, but see below.


I know what you mean, but underneath the froth Miller is a very sharp mind and a masterful musician: You don't get invited to conduct Wagner at Beyreuth by being a lightweight. On this occasion I think a very difficult question got buried in the froth.


I do hope you mean Miller and not me!!

However, here's my six penn'orth:
I agree with Berkshiremum that there are three elements (not quite "people" as some compositions are collaborations, many performances are by ensembles and most audiences are of more than one) in musical interpretation, but this question is specifically about the second: The performance.

It is taken as an assumption that the mood of the performer affects his or her performance and that the mood will be influenced by the world around the performer. We are all agreed that music is abstract from the world so the question is "how" the delivery of an art form that is abstract from the world can be affected by events in that world.

Ashkenazy's answer (after "I don't know") was that whatever it was it was something eternal, to do with the soul and that if you could express it in words music would be unnecessary.

My feeling is that one of the assumptions is wrong: Music is not abstract from the world! Here's my explanation:

Words are not the world, they are only a way of describing the world. For instance, there are infinite variations in colour, but only a fairly limited number of names for colours, even in the Dulux catalogue! Despite their limitations, words are good at describing the physical world, nouns, pronouns and verbs, adjectives and adverbs all being fairly straightforward in any language. The more abstract the concept, the less adequate words become.

You can't touch love or pin anger to the wall or bottle despair. Where words fail, music speaks. Music is as much a direct reflection of the world as any other medium of communication, it's just that what it is communicating is that part of the world which is not tangible: It has been said that all the best music is about love, lust, loss or longing and I'm sure the reason for this is that these are things where words are inadequate.

Ashkenazy had it in right on the mark: "If you could express it in words, music would be unnecessary." Without the emotion, music is nothing.

Taking up the 'colour' idea.
What does 'red' mean to a blind man? Not a lot, but it might mean something if we try to describe it in relation to pink. On a day of charged emotions, an energetic sonata could be made to sound red by the performer. On a day in which he has other trivialities on his mind, it might come across as more pink-tinged. There will be a limit to how the performer will affect the impact of pure classical music, but Romantic music, played live, is extremely subjective, and is more than just a rendition; it is a communication between performer and listener. If the performer is absorbed in the music, he will also sense the rapture of his audience, and may hold on just a fraction longer to that suspension, for example, than he might when just practising alone. A pregnant pause may be more pregnant, his coulour-shading more subtle, or a crescendo more resounding. He will be feeding on his audience.

I'd never really thought about it that deeply, but have you ever been to a foreign country where you can barely speak a word of the language?

I did, a few weeks ago, and it's extremely frustrating - you can't communicate what you want to, and you can't understand what other people want to say to you. But one evening, there was a small stage set up in the town square and instruments were being set up.

The first note I heard was just a saxophone warming up. Now, I've never been a massive saxophone fan (I don't dislike them though - they're just not really my thing). I was surrounded by people who I couldn't understand, and who couldn't understand me. But those couple of notes, just casually played as a warm-up, it was as though someone was shouting at me in english!

It's so hard to explain, but I felt a huge connection with the performers on that stage - all the frustration of being isolated in an unknown country totally disappeared. I never thought music could make me feel that intensely, and I don't think it happens every day, but I really understood what was happening, and what they were saying with their performance.

How that happens, I'd love to know, but I think that's one of those questions on a par with "Where did life begin?", "What happens after life?" and "Did Simon Cowell ever have human teeth?".

I have heard a number of live performances of Pergolesi's Sabat Mater. In one version, the two singers were both very young and sang very well. But it seemed to me that they had never experienced the death of a child or even someone they loved. Other performances seemed to reflect the loss that was in the words and the music.

I also know that I respond emotionally to music in a different was depending on how I feel.

[I just think it's a none question posited by a twerp.
[/quote]
I do hope you mean Miller and not me!!

Your hope is correct! Sorry Rob, Mr Miller just irritates me. I'll try and be more measured now!

'Where words fail, music speaks. Music is as much a direct reflection of the world as any other medium of communication, it's just that what it is communicating is that part of the world which is not tangible: It has been said that all the best music is about love, lust, loss or longing and I'm sure the reason for this is that these are things where words are inadequate.'

Ashkenazy had it in right on the mark: "If you could express it in words, music would be unnecessary."
[/quote]

I just so disagree with these statements. (see - measured!!).


I 'm just not happy about this setting words against music as if they are in competition or that music is something happens only when words or language fail. I sincerely don't think this is true. Language has poetry or poetic prose to supplement its more mundane uses which is does with great success. You may as well argue that we eat pudding because the savory course was lacking sweetness! No. It's not lack, it is just a difference that is equally fulfilling.

If we go to a funeral of someone close (I use the funeral as an example of one of the most emotionally charged and needy times we must endure) we would not be satified with either just words or just music - we employ both - not because one or the other is lacking but because both are such essential components of our lives.

Also both the Ashkenazy quote and your own echoing its sentiments of 'Where words fail...' ignore SONG which is of course words AND music. Following this on why do so many composers title their works in a way that coherses the listener to regard it a specific context? An example being the tone poem or symphony - music as illustration to narratives. Music isn't solely a venture into the abstract world of ineffable emotion.

I think the problem with this question is that it has two seperate elements which are getting entangled. One is concerning the emotional imput of the performer and how it affects their performance and the other seems to be trying to solve the very nature of music itself and why we are so moved by it. I'm not sure either is answerable - but that doesn't have to stop us trying.



[quote name='Goldfinch' date='Aug 20 2007, 01:07 AM' post='574785']
[I just think it's a none question posited by a twerp.
[/quote]
I do hope you mean Miller and not me!!

Your hope is correct! Sorry Rob, Mr Miller just irritates me. I'll try and be more measured now!

'Where words fail, music speaks. Music is as much a direct reflection of the world as any other medium of communication, it's just that what it is communicating is that part of the world which is not tangible: It has been said that all the best music is about love, lust, loss or longing and I'm sure the reason for this is that these are things where words are inadequate.'

Ashkenazy had it in right on the mark: "If you could express it in words, music would be unnecessary."
[/quote]

I just so disagree with these statements. (see - measured!!).


I 'm just not happy about this setting words against music as if they are in competition or that music is something happens only when words or language fail. I sincerely don't think this is true. Language has poetry or poetic prose to supplement its more mundane uses which is does with great success. You may as well argue that we eat pudding because the savory course was lacking sweetness! No. It's not lack, it is just a difference that is equally fulfilling.

If we go to a funeral of someone close (I use the funeral as an example of one of the most emotionally charged and needy times we must endure) we would not be satified with either just words or just music - we employ both - not because one or the other is lacking but because both are such essential components of our lives.

Also both the Ashkenazy quote and your own echoing its sentiments of 'Where words fail...' ignore SONG which is of course words AND music. Following this on why do so many composers title their works in a way that coherses the listener to regard it a specific context? An example being the tone poem or symphony - music as illustration to narratives. Music isn't solely a venture into the abstract world of ineffable emotion.

I think the problem with this question is that it has two seperate elements which are getting entangled. One is concerning the emotional imput of the performer and how it affects their performance and the other seems to be trying to solve the very nature of music itself and why we are so moved by it. I'm not sure either is answerable - but that doesn't have to stop us trying.
[/quote]


Hope you can all suss the quotes etc - is anyone else getting these annoying pop-up bars which won't let you quote or italicise etc for security reasons unless you go through some impossibly complex rigmarole?