From: roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Bach and religious feelings
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 16:01:29 GMT

In article <1992Aug21.102459.14378@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> tomanix@sintra.xip.dec.com (Antonio Rodrigues) writes:

>roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:

>>>Maybe I'm wrong but it seems that you are that kind of people that
>>>listens music in their cars on the way home after a working day.

>>I'd say you're wrong.  I do occasionally listen to music in the car, but
>>I also listen at many other times.  Sometimes, for pay.  You see, I'm a
>>musicologist.  I study the stuff.

> It's funny I had commented your reply with a friend and he told me, and I 
>agreed, that you seem to be one of 'those academics'.

Keep trying.  I'm not an academic, either.  

Or, better yet, *stop* trying.  Stereotyping is not the path to
enlightenment.

> I don't have nothing against that, the problem is that you people easily
>became attacked by what I usually call the 'tiny-little-thing syndrome',
>more concerned about the details and lose the whole thing.

"You people"?  How interesting.  Could you name a few of "us people"?  

As to not seeing the forest for the trees (which is what they used to call
your syndrome), that's an odd thing to accuse me of, especially since it
was you who told me that "music is" or music does" just one thing, while
I responded with a long list of *other* things that music also is.  (OK,
so I just alluded to the list.)

>>>Music, the way I see it, is an image, a projection of something that is
>>>beyond itself. 

>>An image of what?  Could you be more specific?  Give an example?  

>>No, better not.  That would be explaining, I suppose.

>I think you got it !!

Yup.  

I might also point out that this idea is a fairly recent one in the
context of music history, and comes from the beginning of the Romantic
period.  Before that, nobody spoke of music in this way.  You can read
about the sources ofthe idea in Carl Dahlhaus, _The Idea of Absolute
Music_, tr. Yours Truly.  Chicago: U of C Press, 1989.  No, I don't get
royalties.  Yes, it's in paperback.

mus
>>>When you' re listen
>>>music, and Bach is a good example, you 're transported to other reality. 

>>Now, ask yourself why.  Is it sheerly because of something within the
>>music?  Or is it something within *you* that responds to the music? 

>Both, the 'something' within the music is the 'something' within me that
>responds. It's like a resonance phenomena.

Great.  Now let's figure out why the music doesn't lead to this
phenomenon for large numbers of people, including almost all people in
certain large groups.  Better yet, let's figure out how that resonance
phenomenon gets there in the first place.  We're pretty sure it's not
innate.

>Why do you think, we should had started with this, that a bunch of sounds 
>striped from some instrument in a particular order cause, what you call, 
>'esthetic pleasures' and the same sounds in a different order can cause
>pain ?!

I don't understand this sentence.  Could you try again?

>>And is that something perhaps culturally and historically influenced?  I
>>would argue strongly that it is.  And then I would argue that without
>>the cultural background, you would *not* be transported to "other
>>reality" -- in whatever sense it's real...

>Your cultural background influence the way you apprehend things, not THE
>THINGS itself.

a) Exactly.  But you're arguing for "transport" to some "other reality"
and "resonance" and all that.  Surely that's "the way you apprehend
things."

b) Culture also influences the choice of thing-itself to listen to, the
ways in which you'll listen, the times, places, circumstances.  It also
influences the creation of the thing itself.  

c) In a way, the thing-itself in music is the LISTENING.  Without that,
the music is just dots on paper or pits in aluminum or something.
Listening makes it music.

>Let me ask you something, do you think a deaf person cannot 'feel' music ? 

Depends on the deaf person.  Depends on what you'd call "feeling music."
What does this prove, in any case?  Many people with functioning ears
don't "feel" music, and many, many more don't feel the same music you
do, and more still don't feel it in the *way* you do.

>>I took a lot of math in college, and was quite "Sensitive" so some of it,
>>too. (Nor was it a language...)

>With "Sensitive" I don't mean have good classifications ! It's something
>more. I believe if you were that "Sensitive" you would understand what I mean. 

Sure beats saying what you mean...sorry.  This type of hand-waving is
entirely unimpressive, at least to me.  "You're obviously not in tune
with Eternal Truth, otherwise you'd agree with me" is a*terrible* way to
get me interested in what you're saying.  It doesn't work for the
Moonies and LaRouchies at the airport, either.

>>(There *is* some cultural aspect to the appreciation of mathematical "beauty",
>>to be sure.)

>Ah, that's a good one, I can assure you, when you look to a bunch of numbers
>and symbols and 'see' what's in it, it doesn't matter if you are Portuguese,
>Chinese or even Martian :-), you can jump, say Eureka, stay in silence but 
>deeply you feel the same joy.

Now, how the bleeding hell do you know what other people feel????!!!???
The same joy, indeed!  Sorry, but this is highly unlikely.  For one
thing, different people will, quite simply, "see" different things in a
bunch of numbers and symbols, even when they're arranged to state some
fascinating theorem.  

For one thing, elegant theorems tend to have lots of different
implications and applications.  This person may turned on by one
application, another by two other applications or implications, a third
may be impressed at the method of proof that was applied.  A fourth
person may have known about it intuitively for a long time, and is
utterly bored.

Where does culture come into it?  Well, it can influence the
presuppositions you bring to the study of math; *why* you study math,
whom you study it with.  It can influence your choice of field within
math.  It can affect the *rest* of your education, and, most important,
it can, and must, have a great effect on your concept of beauty.

Shall I continue?

>............

> The player and the instrument are as necessary to music as the air to your 
>ideas.

Huh?  Does that mean they're important or not? Besides, who cares if
they're important to the music?  They're important to *me,* who needs to
*hear* the music.  Who needs to MAKE the sounds into music by listening
to them.  Until I listen, they're just noise.

> Let me ask you, never happens to you to have an idea and when you
>tried to express that idea you feel that you have difficulties in saying 
>exactly what's on your mind ? 

Oh, sure, it happens all the time.  

However, when it DOES happen, I take care not to wave my handsand tell
everyone who doesn't smile and nod in agreement that they're
insufficiently "sensitive" or something.

>>>Please try to 'explain' to 
>>>me 'The Goldberg Variations' ..., no, I don't mean that text you found in
>>>your CD, 

>>Found it?  I *wrote* it!  8-)

>>Without those things, you'd never *hear* any Bach.  None.  Not a bit.

>>And if I did play you some Bach, and you had no connection to those
>>things, or if they didn't exist, you wouldn't know what to make of it.
>>Not at all.  

> It seems that you think that the 'musicologists' are the true responsible for 
>example the  Bach's music. 

Not all of it, but we'll take credit for getting the notes right and
finding out what his instruments sounded like.  This information was
lost for a long time; we're only working it out now.

Now, if you want to talk Vivaldi, yes, indeed.  Thank a musicologist for
having brought Vivaldi's music back to the listening public.  (Or curse
one, depending on your taste...)

As for older composers, e.g., Monteverdi, Josquin, etc., I assure you
that musicologists worked their fingers to the bone to get that music to
you.                 

> No, my friend, I don't intend to offend you but you play an infinitely small 
>role. 

In what?  In making music?  I also do some of that.  

In affecting which music you will hear?  I do a fair amount of that,
by studying music, by bringing it to the attention of performers, by
writing critiques for the general public to read (which gets people
interested in hearing), and by assisting in the production of the things
that people actually listen to much of the time.  Without me and people
like me, you'd hear only a very few pieces, over and over.

You haven't offended me.  Amused me, just a bit.  

You have a nasty habit of prejudice.  First, based on heaven knows what,
you assumed I was a very casual listener.  Then you replaced that with
some prejudices you have about musicologists, never bothering to
consider how and why the music you listen to is produced.  Then you
assumed that I was "insensitive" or something because I didn't readily
agree with some ideas you can't even express.  In between, you expressed
some classic absolute-music ideas, but have no notion of where they come
from or what they relate to or what they might mean.  

And now you want me to accept that I play an "infinitely small role" in
something, even though yu *still* don't know what it is that I do, and
why I do it.

>The text you wrote for the CD cannot be compared with it's contents, 
>whatever you say in it.

Did I claim otherwise?  I sometimes put "hack writer" down under
"profession."  

Any fool knows that, and nobody better than me.  In fact, my editor has
told me in no uncertain terms that the only reason those texts go in the
CD at all is that other companies still do it too.

But, as I'm sure you'd know if you'd bothered to stop being so
know-it-all arrogant for a minute, that's not all I do, and it's not all
that other musicologists do.  I assure you: very few musicologists go
into the profession for any reason other than a deep love of music and a
wish to study it.  

However, some of us *do* get ticked off at people who insist that their
inchoate notions of "what music is" are so holy that anything based on
fact would destroy the "experience" they have of music, and, without any
evidence or any consideration of what they might actually mean, say
things like "music is the universal language" or "it transports you to
another reality."  

If nothing else, it's nice to know what those words actually mean, why
people say them, and where they come from.  Try reading that book I
translated.

Roger

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