Klarinet Archive - Posting 000335.txt from 2000/05

From: Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: [kl] Tone... ask Aaron Copland
Date: Sat, 6 May 2000 03:18:21 -0400

Dan, I do not mean the following paragraphs to be a continuation of
the "dark" discussion. Instead, I'd like to answer a different question
that you asked in one of your posts.
I've lost my copy of your message, but you commented that you
didn't understand what I meant by "emotion is part of music's
fundamental structure, not a fortunate side effect" -- or something
similar.
I was looking through my books, and I was surprised that so many of
them simply say "different instruments have different tones" and then
move on. But I found a statement by Aaron Copland (Music and
Imagination, chapter two, "The Sonorous Image") that says what I was
trying to say. But perhaps Copland's voice gives the idea more clarity
and authority:

Yes, the sonorous image is a preoccupying concern of all musicians. In
that phrase we include beauty and roundness of tone, its warmth, its
depth, its "edge", its balanced mixture with other tones, and its
acoustical properties in any given environment.

<snipped -- several anecdotes of imagining sounds before you hear them>

Laboratory tests have demonstrated that differences in tone color are
the first differences apparent to the untrained ear.
<snipped -- discussion of how much additional training is required to
fine tune a person's ability to discriminate between tone colors of
related instruments, and more discussion of imagining before actually
hearing>

There are many diverse and interesting questions concerning the role of
tone color, or sound image, in musical thinking. My contention that
tonal image and expressive meaning [[my comment: 'emotion']] are
inter-connected in the composer's mind

Dan, those last few words are the core of what I was trying to say
about emotion being a fundamental part of musical structure, not an
aftereffect or side effect.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org