Classical Music

[johnr60]

Joy of Music and Infinite Variety of Music are the two books of essays by Bernstein I've read.  I'd guess the former.

Again your post represents what composers, critics, listeners feel are pieces of Nationalistic music.  I'm asking what types of melodies, rhythms, tones, etc. might inspire zealotry.  Copeland's sense of openness isnt culturally unique Sibelius has that, or Borodin.

Understanding the power of art to move is not the question.  Its why art has the power to move?

[madupont]

johnr60

"Bernstein has a piece somewhere describing the blues and why the music itself produces a sadness.  I can feel it and it certainly has nothing to do with my heritage."

It has to do with the use of minor key tonality.

In regard to Baba Yar, I am more familiar with it as the poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko who recited it at readings for massive audiences in the Soviet Union when poetry readings were as popular as mass outdoor concerts were in the USA during the Sixties whether considered folk or "Hippie" at least until Altamont.

Yevtushenko was memorializing the slaughter of Jews in the ravine near Kiev by the Einsatzgruppen of the Nazi Occupying forces in Ukraine after "the Underground resistance" of the Jewish community must have been responsible for the series of explosions in the city.  Borodin who had composed an opera set in this region, never really completed his Prince Igor (again, I am familiar with it from Eisenstein's film), which came to completion with Rimsky Korsakov and both opera and film indicate elements of religiousity regarding the Czar.

But, that said, there are no "all night Vespers".  "Vespers" refer to a distinct part of the cycle of prayers in the Book of Hours, which usually occurs late in the afternoon before supper in the monastic orders or just as the evening star appears with sun-down and star visibility, which in that case will likely occur after repast because the name of the hour itself refers to the appearance of the evening star, Venus being equivalent to Lucifer,as the darkness begins.  Venus, however is also at some portion of the year visible at dawn  and known as the Morning Star.

All of this music that you have mentioned is related by minor scale, and which I have usually preferred in the case of Russian music (or, take Della Robbia Blues, from Streetcar, by Alex North and Ray Heindorf).

[Lhoffman]

The question of Zealotry...Have you a specific incident or piece in mind?   And is zealotry here positive or negative?

Why art has the power to move....I think that would depend on the person.   Different people will take different views of a work or art or music.   Much of what is taken depends on what the consumer brings.

Perhaps this relates to ongoing events in a nation or a people's history.   An example that comes to my mind relates to the Civil Rights Movement ...many people were moved by the songs because those songs expressed views they had long held, views about justice and equality, views that they had never been able or brave enough to articulate.   The songs became Voice....sometimes speaking for the People, sometimes inspiring them to speak for themselves or spurring them to action.  The other side of this would be the fear and hatred this music inspired in those who benefited from the status quo and who found the expressions of these ideas threatening.

There is also Wagner and Hitler.   It is said that Hitler was deeply influenced by Wagner's work, Die Meistersinger..but it's not clear whether Hitler was influenced by the work itself or because Hitler felt that he and Wagner held common values and artistic philosophies.


Understanding the power of art to move is not the question.  Its why art has the power to move?....You're in good company here.   My own opinion is that music shifts neural pathways in some way that evokes memory or longing,  or speaks directly to our sub-conscious.   I don't know that I'd take it as far as instinct, although bird voice makes me wonder about this.   But these are old questions...studied by musicologists, neurologists, psychologists, philosophers, mathematicians, medical studies that show brain response...but none of these give a definitive answer.   Perhaps the ancients had it right when they related effective harmony to the music of the spheres.  

I see you've put a lot of thought into this.   What are your own ideas?

[Lhoffman]

johnr60

"Bernstein has a piece somewhere describing the blues and why the music itself produces a sadness.  I can feel it and it certainly has nothing to do with my heritage."

It has to do with the use of minor key tonality.

What is it is a minor pentatonic (five note) scale with an added raised 4th or a lowered 5th scale degree.   There is also a major nine tone blues scale which uses both the lowered and natural third, and both the lowered and natural seventh.   Not sure what Bernstein's take was on this though, haven't been able to find his essay.

In regard to Baba Yar, I am more familiar with it as the poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko who recited it at readings for massive audiences in the Soviet Union when poetry readings were as popular as mass outdoor concerts were in the USA during the Sixties whether considered folk or "Hippie" at least until Altamont.

Yevtushenko was memorializing the slaughter of Jews in the ravine near Kiev by the Einsatzgruppen of the Nazi Occupying forces in Ukraine after "the Underground resistance" of the Jewish community must have been responsible for the series of explosions in the city.  Borodin who had composed an opera set in this region, never really completed his Prince Igor (again, I am familiar with it from Eisenstein's film), which came to completion with Rimsky Korsakov and both opera and film indicate elements of religiousity regarding the Czar.

Shostakovich used Yevtushenko's text in his 13th Symphony, premiered in Moscow on 1962.   If you haven't got a copy, you can listen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQccC7ATJbE&feature=related


But, that said, there are no "all night Vespers".  "Vespers" refer to a distinct part of the cycle of prayers in the Book of Hours, which usually occurs late in the afternoon before supper in the monastic orders or just as the evening star appears with sun-down and star visibility, which in that case will likely occur after repast because the name of the hour itself refers to the appearance of the evening star, Venus being equivalent to Lucifer,as the darkness begins.  Venus, however is also at some portion of the year visible at dawn  and known as the Morning Star.

Rachmaninov, Vespers, All Night Vigil, No. 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMmO0Gyfthg&feature=related





All of this music that you have mentioned is related by minor scale, and which I have usually preferred in the case of Russian music (or, take Della Robbia Blues, from Streetcar, by Alex North and Ray Heindorf).

[johnr60]

"It has to do with the use of minor key tonality"

Yes but Moonlight Sonata or Coventry Carol are not bluesy altho minor.

"What is it is a minor pentatonic (five note) scale with an added raised 4th or a lowered 5th scale degree.   There is also a major nine tone blues scale which uses both the lowered and natural third, and both the lowered and natural seventh.   Not sure what Bernstein's take was on this though, haven't been able to find his essay."

Bernstein's take is similar as is Pinker's in How the Mind Works (circa p 560).  Cooke did a lot of work on specific musical formulae producing specific results but I havent read it and suspect it above me.
I am not adept at music theory but familiar with the music.

The question is one that has entertained me for a long time, originally phrased as something like: Does a Chinese baby need a lullaby in the pentatonic scale to sleep?  I think the answer is yes, music is culturally oriented; but if that's the case why do I want to fight when I hear Finlandia of Shostakovich
5?  My heritage should be Yankee Doodle.  Is it because I've been told that these should inspire or is there something physically present in the music itself.

Julian Jaynes (I dont want to know about Princeton Mad) has the most original and interesting view on this when he says the gods sang to us.  I'll go no further on that but it's the best I've heard so far.

[Lhoffman]

I had to laugh when I came to your Chinese Baby comment because it is entertaining.  I think the answer might be both yes and no. 

The Yes:     A baby would most likely be comforted by music which he heard in utero because it would be familiar and speak directly to his experience. 

The No might related to Julian Jaynes ideas on bicameralism, the gods singing, etc.   Perhaps related to ancestral memory (which would not necessarily be related to nationality or culture). 

Finlandia and Shostakovich 5 are both statements on oppression, so wanting to fight might be what the composers had in mind.   

Finlandia...interesting structure.   The beginning section (Andante) has a sense of foreboding or malevolence.   Around measure 24, a key change and the mood becomes more pastoral...you think of scenes from the homeland.   Next, the Allegro Assai, a reiteration of the threat heard in the beginning of the piece, with the added stridency and militarism of trumpets.  This seems to resolve in the Allegro...a sort of sense of jubilance  for me here which takes us into the cantabile (the hymn...text not written until 1940 or 41).    Concluding section which begins with that low brass...for me a feeling of victory or hope.   Subjective...yes, but I see why you might think of fighting.

Shostakovich...for me, that coda is crushing....the sound of forced applause.   

Here's a show from PBS on the Shostakovich...narrated by Tilson-Thomas.   

http://video.pbs.org/video/1295305133/%5D%20PBS%20Video

[johnr60]

"not necessarily be related to nationality or culture"

I disagree with that as does Campbell, Jaynes, Jung, Pinker and those two Language guys whose name I forgot.   


Jaynes, in his search for the "nature and origin of all this invisible country of touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries, this introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in any mirror", says:

"...our culture is our history.  In our attempts to communicate or to persuade or simply interest others, we are using and moving about through cultural models among whose differences we may select, but from whose totality we cannot escape.  And it is in this sense of the forms of appeal, of begetting hope or interest or appreciation or praise for ourselves or for our ideas, that our communications are shaped into these historical patterns, these grooves of persuasion which are even in the act of communication an inherent part of what is communicated." 

[Lhoffman]

I like the image from Jaynes..."grooves of persuasion".   And I agree to some extent.   But brain scan technology gives researchers access to information that would not have been available to Campbell et al.  What we do know from studying brain scans is that there is a physical response to music.   It's unclear how much of that response is related to culture and how much to some biological pre-set left over from prehistory.   

The term that I see a lot in these discussions is "psychophysical cue"....which relates to any element of music that can be removed from culture or listening history.  Some of these elements would be rhythm, tempo, harmonic structure and progression, mode and melodic shape and patterns, dynamics....

[Beppo]

Current listening is Op. 127 and Op. 131 - Beethoven's Late String Quartets by The Lindsays.

 

[madupont]

http://culturemap.com/newsdetail/12-01-10-the-ancient-and-the-modern/

 DA CAMERA PERFORMANCES
Ensemble Organum adds a modern touch to medieval music

[bosox18d]

FUCK YOU!!!!!!!

[harrie]

No comment on La Winehouse?

[barton2]

In Classical Music thread??  Why not...

Seems to have followed the Janis Joplin playbook.  At another website, several noted the peculiar fact that so many musicians died at age 27 -- Joplin, Morrison, Brian Jones, Winehouse, Hendrix.   

[harrie]

Oh, man!  One could say Amy Winehouse was a classic, so yeah - I'm going with it.   Guess I was channeling Ms. Winehouse and randomly posted in the music forum.  Plus, I thought bosox's "FUCK YOU" was finishing the Harry Nilsson lyric that I started.  So it's completely understandable, you see......

I wasn't a big fan, but she did have a nice voice; and even if referring to "Rehab" is in bad taste, it's a great song (as is "Valerie," but I think she covered it).  It's a shame we'll never know what Amy Winehouse could have done. 

[barton2]

One cure for spam on message boards?  Strychnine.  Cyanide is also good.