A very slow day indeed

[nogrod]

I'm not sure I actually believe I'm doing this... But it sure has been the slowest day for a long time and I don't think I can see any other diversion to duck the megazillion of essays I'd have to read if I were a more decent person

Comments

Decoding and interpreting...

[nogrod]

"I suppose with absolute music particularly it speaks directly to the soul without the mind having to get involved - its meaning is conveyed without having to decode symbols as with literature and most visual art."
I do agree with this up to a point but I do also think it's more problematic than that.

I mean if music is conveyd to the mind without any regulating decoding or culturally accepted / learned preconceptions how does it get "interpreted" in the first place? Is it purely random? And isn't even verbal and visual communication also partly random in this sense that they allow for personal differences as well - or at least they're not exact or determinatedly following from one's cultural backgrounds? I think one of the clues to modern art in general would be to read it through these questions...

And couldn't we think that certain things like major / minor tonalities do affect our understanding of music as a kind of vague symbols (or symbolical structures) we have learned to hear?

So what's the actual difference then, qualitative or just merely quantitative?

The reason why I was asking for the metaphysical qualities came from our European heritage of combining music with mathematics and via that to the order of the cosmos itself - of which we sure are a part and thence the musical qualities (able to be reckoned with maths) of that order would affect us as well. That was what the Pythagoreans thought 2500 years ago and many have done the same ever since. The natural sciences do still adhere to the idea that "the world has been written with the alphabet of mathematics" like Galileo once said. But can we - or should we - fit also music into that bigger picture? Or the feelings music arouses or enhances in us?

Oh thinking always ends up like this... raising more questions than it manages to even provisionally answer.

Deep down I am very superficial..

[mithalwen]

You can think too much you know... ;) I did read a scientific explanation as to why chocolate is so good to eat. It wasn't really useful. And I was talking specifically about absolute music.

On the whole I am with Haydn on this :“My language is understood throughout the world.” But then I am still trying to work out the question ....