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What is your relationship with music?

#81: April - May 2010 (Non-Fiction)
bleachededen

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Re: What is your relationship with music?

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Veneer, thank you so much for correcting my misconstrued facts! I always knew that Wagner was an anti-Semite and that Hitler loved his music, but I'm terrible at dates when it comes to composers, and so I assumed that Wagner was around during Hitler's time. The waltzes of Richard Strauss were also used in the Third Reich, mostly to welcome the Jews into the concentration camps, as what I have gleaned to be a way to make them feel calm while they separated the weak from the strong and sent the former to the gas chambers. Please correct me if I'm wrong, again. It is always good to learn the truths of things I have been misinformed on.
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Re: What is your relationship with music?

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eden,

Your welcome on the correction, and you were not totally wrong just had the history flipped. I can not verify the use of Strauss at the camps although it certainly would be within the realm of possibility. I am not particularly really well read on the Nazi era. Here is another interesting article regarding the music of Nazi Germany.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... agner.html

I found the information on Orff interesting. I read somewhere that the Nazi's were going to ban In Trutina for it's eroticism. It is a beautiful piece. I once seen Torvill and Dean ice dance to the piece and wept.
“Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time." Edward P. Tryon
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Veneer

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Re: What is your relationship with music?

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Going back to the question posed in this thread, what is my relationship to music? A very odd one which overtime has devolved into basically silence is golden, with rare periods of intense listening. Yet music is one of my interests in life but an interest (alas like the rest of my interests) that I merely dabble in.

Any particular piece of music falls into two narrow categories with me: I love it--I despise it. There is no mediocre hopper to dump things in between. Unfortunately about 1% of the worlds music falls into the love category with 99% falling into the hate category. Listening to a radio is something I do only when it is foisted upon me and I can usually tune it out. On rare occasions, I will turn on the radio in the car...two minutes of channel surfing and off it goes again. Friends tell me that I should get satellite radio, why? I can NOT listen to the AM and FM for free, why pay a monthly fee for a service I'll never use? Yeah but you can pick your genre? Fine, but when I despise 90% of the music in any given genre, and about 90% of the time I am not in the mood to listen to music I do like, what in the hell is satellite radio going to do for me but lighten my wallet?

And yet there are those pieces...exceedingly rare, the Shaker melody from Copeland's Appalachian Spring, The Children's Song by Oystein Sevag, In Trutina by Carl Orff, the second movement from Shostakovitch's Symphony # 5 (unfortunately preceded and followed by ostentatious blather required to keep poor Shosty alive...Stalin was not convinced that Shostakovitch's music properly reflected the greatness of the USSR--not an enviable position to be in) a great deal of Phillip Aaberg's older piano works, a rare George Winston and Liz Story, with a tiny smattering of Led Zepplin, The Who, Boston (one of the great misfortunes in life), Ahmed Jamal (stuff from the 60s), and some pieces written by Hildegarde Von Bingen. I can sit here right now and play the Shaker melody in my head and when I get to the full orchestral part tears will well up in my eyes.

Lest, you think me insane, (perhaps not inaccurate) I have MS, and a looming love for melancholy punctuated by tears seems to be one of my symptoms. Going to funerals is real pain in the ass...I can burst into tears for someone that I don't know. Rage is other symptom and I must apply a lot of effort to control it, which for most part I have been successful, but at the cost of seemingly making me more sensitive to melancholy. Sadly beautiful in music or art resonates in my somewhat loony head. Bernini's Ecstasy Of St Theresa, Sargent's Lady Agnew, and some of Andrew Wyeth's paintings can transport me off to the blue lands of melancholy where the days are deliciously rainy and the moon always full. At times nature's beauty can do the same. I once viewed a small clump of bluets swaying gently in a warm late April breeze and it was one of those oceanic moments (that I live for) where the delicate vulnerability of such a tiny beautiful flower touched my soul.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Teresabernini.JPG

http://www.hiltonpond.org/images/Bluets01.jpg

Perhaps to further convince one of my madness, for the past three months when I have listened to music, it has been limited to Bartok's three piano concertos with the second being my favorite and the second movement of the second concerto being one of my rarities...and I don't know why. Bartok is horribly discordant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQbozcIN ... re=related

When I stop and really think about most music, do I actually hate it? No, I guess not, I would just prefer not to hear it. Silence is golden.
“Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time." Edward P. Tryon
bleachededen

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Re: What is your relationship with music?

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Veneer, again, thank you so much for sharing. I can understand your distaste for 90% of the music you hear, and I find those that you do enjoy or that move you to be particularly fascinating choices. I also love Shostakovich, as I tend to be a fan of most 20th century Russian composers (Prokofiev being my favorite), and Orff's music is indeed powerful enough to bring one to tears, despite the erotic lyrics (which you can't understand without a guide anyway, because they're in Latin :-P). I also find it interesting that you love a specific Bartok piece, even though you profess not to like the discordancy that pretty much defines him (he makes excellent use of the 12 tone scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-tone_technique, which I found interesting to work with when learning advanced theory).

The Shaker melody from Appalachian Spring (which I assume is "Simple Gifts") is another one that is very moving. I've been a Copland fan my entire life, and love to see his influence on the other great American composers such as Bernstein and even Sondheim, so you need not fear that you are alone in falling into melancholy or bursting into tears just from hearing a tune: I share these same qualities, even though I have a wider range of music to cause me to do so. I don't believe I could go a day without music, but I can understand your need for silence most of the time, because sometimes, when you are prone to fits of great emotion, music will only enhance the emotion and can cause legitimate pain to the listener. Such is its power, as I have come to learn over my lifetime thus far, always full of music. Many times I prefer to listen to cartoons or movies as background noise when I can't take silence, because music would be too distracting from what I am trying to write or read. Movies and television I can generally ignore, but music draws me in and forces me to pay attention to it, and also can pull my emotions in ways they weren't going on their own. And as I said, sometimes when I am too emotional, I can't listen to anything, and silence is, indeed, golden.

Thank you for sharing your views. I found them fascinating and educational, and I hope to hear more from you in other discussions on this site. :)
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Re: What is your relationship with music?

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Schoenberg and the 12 tone scale! Those are fighting words! I hate the 12 tone scale, or at least I think I do. Bearing in mind that I am not very knowledgeable in music, I never realized that Bartok worked in 12 tone. Anything that I realized was 12 tone always sounded like pure crap to me. Yet in reading the article I see that a lot of 20th century composers worked in 12 tone. I should pay more attention to it.

Russians? Stravinsky is probably my favorite in the 20th century although Rimsky Korsakov would be my favorite 19th century Russian, and Le Coq d'Or my favorite piece, followed by Scheherazade and the Capriccio Espagnol.

Yes, "Simple Gifts" is the proper name of the Shaker melody. Speaking of Sondheim, he died last week and I was listening to NPR (in one of my rare fits of radio listening--but it was the news, not music). They played a 30 second piece that had "pretty women" in the lyrics. When I got home I tried to find such a piece on YouTube and couldn't find anything that sounded like it. Would you be familiar with the piece?

Very interesting commentary on your preference for movies or TV for background noise. I am quite the opposite, I find any background noise to be distracting if I am reading or working.

Thanks for your kind comments on my rather bizarre relationship with music.
“Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time." Edward P. Tryon
bleachededen

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Re: What is your relationship with music?

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"Pretty Women" is one of the songs from Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
It is indeed a fine piece of music, but it is best when listened to in the entire context of the musical. I would recommend finding a copy of the live stage performance of Sweeney Todd, often called "the Dream Cast" that was filmed in 2001, starring George Hearn, Patti LuPone and Neil Patrick Harris, among others. I would not recommend watching the 2007 Tim Burton adaptation, as it strips away most of the music and plays up the tragedy and plays down the wonderful morbid humor which is essential to Sondheim's vision. Also, no one in the Tim Burton film is really up for the vocal challenge that the music presents. I love Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, but they're just not meant to be singers.

Sondheim was truly a brilliant composer and lyricist. Once you have watched this (or even listened to its soundtrack), watch for the song "A Little Priest," specifically noting the lyrics, and you will see just how much of a linguistical genius he really was. I am sorry to hear that he died, I was completely unaware. Such a shame.

R.I.P.
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Don't start mourning yet! Reports of his death are vastly overrated! Apparently it was his 80th birthday last week, not his death! Sorry for the confusion. Thanks for the info on Pretty Women. How is it that you know so much?
“Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time." Edward P. Tryon
bleachededen

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Re: What is your relationship with music?

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Veneer wrote:Don't start mourning yet! Reports of his death are vastly overrated! Apparently it was his 80th birthday last week, not his death! Sorry for the confusion. Thanks for the info on Pretty Women. How is it that you know so much?
:x
I just now thought to look up his death and found nothing, and thought, "Wait, there is no way Sondheim could have died without my knowing -- he is my brother's personal hero, and I just saw my family two days ago, so one of them would have, at some point, let me know he died, and if not, it would have been covered under my Yahoo news that I read everyday." I can't believe I didn't even think to look it up until JUST NOW, literally. Shows how gullible I can apparently be! Good unintentional April Fool's joke! :lol:

How is it that I know so much?
I have never been asked a more flattering question, thank you. :blush:

I'm not really sure. I pick things up as I go along. My family is very into musical theater, my brother especially (he's one hell of an actor and singer), and Sondheim is my brother's personal hero, as I mentioned. Through his love of Sondheim's music I found out about it, and when I find music, especially musicals, that I like, I obsess, until I know absolutely every note and every last lyric so well I could sing it all myself. (I was also "blessed" with a good ear and aural memory, which means that I can remember endless quotes from movies, even if I don't like them, and sometimes can quote a movie as I'm walking out of the theater after seeing it for the first tme.)

I also listen to a very wide range of music, as opposed to just sticking with one genre, and I tend to be able to notice how other types of music influence each other, and I also adore history, so intertwining my love of literature, history, language, and music, I have created a relatively large collection of knowledge that I can sometimes command, am sometimes unable to grasp any coherent idea at all, and also shows itself at random moments and for no apparent reason. I don't ever profess to know everything, and in a million lifetimes I will never be able to know as much as I could ever possibly want to, but I am proud of the knowledge I do have, and of the capacity to continue gaining knowledge and insight to link that knowledge to what I already know. I'm kind of picturing it as some sort of giant spiderweb, if that makes any sense. (I also believe I have what they call spatial synesthesia, where I see abstract concepts visually and as taking up actual physical space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia.) I also look things up a lot. I like knowedge, I like reading, and I like learning. I guess that's "how I know so much."

I definitely don't believe I know enough, that's for sure. There's far too much more to learn!

(Yeah, I'm a total nerd.)
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Re: What is your relationship with music?

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Again sorry about reporting Sondheim's death. I probably wasn't paying attention until I heard the piece of music. It was not intentional.

Sysnesthesia, I read about that in "This Is Your Brain On Music" which I am ashamed to report I did not finish. I must go back and finish it. Wait it might have been "The Accidental Mind", I can't remember which and I am too lazy to look it up. Do you experience tones as a color or taste? That is fascinating to me. Our minds are truly wonderful hunks of claptrap thrown together in the most haphazard way and yet look what they can do.

I must confess an envy for your knowledge and the speed that you fire off replies to these posts. Learning is rather cool is it not.
“Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time." Edward P. Tryon
bleachededen

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Learning is indeed cool.

The speed of my replies probably speaks more to my lack of a social life than anything else. I'm a bit of a hermit, and I love this forum because it provides me the outlet I desire and require to share my ideas with other people who read and like to learn. There are so many intelligent, articulate people here, and I am grateful to be able to share my knowledge and learn more from theirs.

I don't taste colors or see numerical or musical colors (although my boyfriend professes to see music in colors, something I am slightly jealous of), but I do see things, such as the organization of years, months, and days of the week with color and with an actual space, starting with the present year and going backwards (and forwards). Each century has a color, sometimes certain decades have specific colors but this changes over time, and each month and day of the week has a very specific place and color that doesn't change.

It's rather hard to explain and even harder to explain over the internet, with no chance to use my hands or draw even a crude picture. I can say that it's been that way for as long as I can remember, although I no longer see the Pilgrim's coming to America in physical space right before the 1960s, as I did when I was very young and had no concept of historical time.
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