From: smoliar@argon.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: John Cage is Dead
Summary: communicating about music
Date: 29 Aug 92 23:41:02 GMT
Reply-To: smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore

In article <1992Aug29.020131.24741@cs.rochester.edu> steyn@cs.rochester.edu
(Gavin Steyn) writes:
>    I'm really not sure how much overlap there
>really is between different people's images of music.  Personally, most music
>really doesn't put a picture in my head.  But whenever I talk to friends about
>what music makes them think of, they always say that it makes them think of
>a specific image (my guitar teacher and I clash pretty frequently on this
>point--he asks me what a piece makes me picture, and I can only say,
>"nothing."  It makes me feel something, but I never get a picture).  And
>so there's just no contact on that level.
>
The trouble is that, for better or worse, just about all the communicating we
do is verbal.  (Obviously, in THIS particular medium we have no choice.)  My
guess is that there are various technical matters over which you communicate
with your guitar teacher at a non-verbal (probably primarily motor) level;
but when it comes to just "talking" about a given piece of music, all we seem
to be able to do is . . . TALK about it.  That just happens to be the
communication channel we use most heavily.

There is a theory about dreams which has received a fair amount of attention
recently.  The theory basically says that REM sleep is a period of extensive,
but highly random, cortical activity.  However, just as nature abhors a
vacuum, the mind abhors lack of pattern;  so, immediately upon waking,
the first thing the mind does with all that randomness is to try to make
sense out of it.  It does this by INTERPRETING the randomness as a story;
and, VOILA, there is your dream!  One of the reasons I like this theory is
that it provides an interesting justification for Freud.  It is not that there
is all this evidence which is buried in the UNCONSCIOUS but rather that there
is this CONSCIOUS activity of dream-fabrication.  A person who relates a dream
is basically telling a story he made up.  Freud's approach may be realized as
one of asking what sort of mental state would dispose one to make up that
particular story.

When we go back to music, we find that, again, we spend a lot of our
communicating time making up stories.  Yes, our own experiences are
highly subjective and idiosyncratic.  For example, because I am not
a guitar player, I am sure that I do not hear Tippett's "Blue Guitar"
the way you do (regardless of whether either of us happen to like or
dislike it).  However, if you and I decide we want to share our impressions
(which seems to be an all-too-human condition), we have to construct some sort
of verbal plane along which that sharing can take place.  We may try to
recreate the composer's perspective, you may try to give me some idea of
what the physical sense of playing it is like, but, sooner or later, we
shall probably both want to talk about what we actually HEAR in the piece.
At this point we may talk about similar music experiences;  or we may resort
to images, the way your teacher does (although, on the basis of your account,
I guess I would not expect any images from you).

It goes without saying that there is nothing universal, or even static, about
this "plane" of communication.  If we get together again tomorrow and talk
about the same piece of music, we are likely to build a whole new plane
(particularly if either of us has listened to the piece--or, for that matter,
any OTHER music--in the interim).  I suppose the very CONSTRUCTION of that
plane becomes part of what we then call our "music experiences."  (This
probably also works for solitary listening, too.  Just as we make up out
dream stories even when we do not tell them to anyone else, we probably
construct means by which we can relate to ourselves our own listening
experiences.)
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg