Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
I have read, when awake, that in dreams one cannot read because the part of the brain that decodes written language is inactive. I know from experience that's balderdash. In my more lucid dreams (once also thought impossible by many psychologists, by the way), I've deliberately read out loud, so as to try to grasp the meaning of these dream texts. I've read everything from open books to fortune cookie notes this way, and succeeded. Mind you, the texts didn't actually make sense, and they had a tendency to morph even while I was looking at them, but I could read them out loud. This exercise generally causes me to wake up, so I've even jotted down a few peculiar dream-text phrases from time to time.
Last night, I read dream music for the first time. A professor/teacher-type figure handed me a sheet of Western staff notation, asking me to fill in some transitional notes between two chords arranged for the piano in six-part harmony. The wacky dreamlike nature of the score showed in a key signature consisting of F-sharp and B-flat, a combination you won't see in real life because it doesn't describe any major or minor key in the Western harmonic system. The F-sharp itself does connote G major (or its relative minor, but one can figure out which by looking at the chords themselves), and in the dream I decided the score was in that key. (For music nerds: I apparently decided that the raised leading tone was a greater indicator of both the tonic and of major modality than the lowered third degree.)
For the transitional chord I was adding, I decided I wouldn't move all the notes and that the ones I did move, I'd move by half-steps, to best preserve the original character of the progression while still adding my notes. (Again, for music nerds: in the dream I thought of it as effectively a double suspension, because I moved three notes of the six-part harmony, and left two in place, one of which was mirrored at the octave. However, in reality I would have needed a second transitional chord for it to be a true double suspension, because the notes I added were not borrowed from the original second chord in the progression.) Among other notes, I inserted an A between a high B-flat and a high G in the soprano line.
I mention these specifics in part to fend off any naysayers about my actually having read and edited the notation in the dream, vs. simply thinking I had afterwards, and in part because it's just so cool. :-)
Beyond the odd key signature, other parts of the dream were quite dreamlike. For example, when I went to play my draft of the additions I'd made to the score, I kept not hearing the lower notes of the arpeggiated first chord until I found and turned up the volume knob on the acoustic piano I'd been playing. "I've never seen a piano with a volume knob before," I told the teacher. Also, the keyboard had a tendency to shorten itself when I wasn't looking, so when I tried to play the low notes, the fingers of my left hand wound up in a silverware drawer instead.
Why have this dream now? Well, it might be the result of singing a three-hour Bach piece on Sunday, followed by lots of singing at seders the two nights following. Or, it could just be the way my mind works....
Last night, I read dream music for the first time. A professor/teacher-type figure handed me a sheet of Western staff notation, asking me to fill in some transitional notes between two chords arranged for the piano in six-part harmony. The wacky dreamlike nature of the score showed in a key signature consisting of F-sharp and B-flat, a combination you won't see in real life because it doesn't describe any major or minor key in the Western harmonic system. The F-sharp itself does connote G major (or its relative minor, but one can figure out which by looking at the chords themselves), and in the dream I decided the score was in that key. (For music nerds: I apparently decided that the raised leading tone was a greater indicator of both the tonic and of major modality than the lowered third degree.)
For the transitional chord I was adding, I decided I wouldn't move all the notes and that the ones I did move, I'd move by half-steps, to best preserve the original character of the progression while still adding my notes. (Again, for music nerds: in the dream I thought of it as effectively a double suspension, because I moved three notes of the six-part harmony, and left two in place, one of which was mirrored at the octave. However, in reality I would have needed a second transitional chord for it to be a true double suspension, because the notes I added were not borrowed from the original second chord in the progression.) Among other notes, I inserted an A between a high B-flat and a high G in the soprano line.
I mention these specifics in part to fend off any naysayers about my actually having read and edited the notation in the dream, vs. simply thinking I had afterwards, and in part because it's just so cool. :-)
Beyond the odd key signature, other parts of the dream were quite dreamlike. For example, when I went to play my draft of the additions I'd made to the score, I kept not hearing the lower notes of the arpeggiated first chord until I found and turned up the volume knob on the acoustic piano I'd been playing. "I've never seen a piano with a volume knob before," I told the teacher. Also, the keyboard had a tendency to shorten itself when I wasn't looking, so when I tried to play the low notes, the fingers of my left hand wound up in a silverware drawer instead.
Why have this dream now? Well, it might be the result of singing a three-hour Bach piece on Sunday, followed by lots of singing at seders the two nights following. Or, it could just be the way my mind works....