Klarinet Archive - Posting 000783.txt from 2000/05

From: Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: [kl] Tone -- a neurological approach
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 22:51:55 -0400

Every attempt to measure "dark" or "liquid" or "sweet" fails to
generate consensus. Yet these words appear every day in speech and
catalogs and musical literature. Why? If they don't convey useful
information, why do people continue to use them?
Is it simply because some expert used these words a few centuries
ago and nobody with prestige has dared to argue? Did some advertising
genius brainwash us and take away our ability to think for ourselves?
I think that we must face the fact. These words say something in
some fundamental way, else they wouldn't appeal. But what _is_their
appeal? Where does this appeal come from?

I posted a few weeks ago about a book titled "Descartes' Error --
Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain" by Antonio Damasio (MD, PhD,
professor, department head, etc) (paperback $13). I purchased it out of
general interest -- it's a neurology book for lay persons -- but it
turns out to have something to say about the "dark vs. bright" question.

This book's thesis is that rational thought operates -- and must
operate -- by means of imagery, where 'image' has a broader meaning than
just visual image. This thesis reminded me immediately of Aaron
Copland's statement that I cited a week or two ago: "The way music
sounds, or the sonorous image..." One of the early chapters in
Copland's book is titled: "The Sonorous Image." Most of us have heard
that Einstein reasoned in images of a sort, and he sought out words &
equations to describe the images afterwards. And so forth.
Dr. Damasio's claim, which is based on PET scans and neurological
injuries and surgeries and other medical data, is that all rational
thought (as opposed to autonomic response) uses -- and must use -- the
same brain structures that process our sensory 'images' when we first
receive them from our eyes, ears, taste, smell, touch and viscera. That
is, we cannot 'think' without sending/receiving nerve impulses to/from
these sensory imaging structures.
Hence it is no accident tat our everyday language includes phrases
such as "tone color", that the statement "I see what you are saying"
makes "sense" to us, that we "feel happy" or "feel in love", and that
Copland wrote: "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." Copland
didn't include "bright" or "dark" in his list, but he may as well have.

Given that music is not science but does require rational thought
and self-awareness, I will be very interested in what the second half of
Damasio's book has to say. Perhaps from a purely practical point of
view, "bright" and "dark" don't translate directly into embouchure shape
or tongue position. But these words aren't meaningless either.
It takes time and practice and skill to learn the language that we
may decide to call 'Formal Tone Color', just as it does to learn
English. Unhappily for music, Formal Tone Color doesn't have immediate
survival value for a newborn. Hence we do not begin the learning and
practice of Formal Tone Color when we're one or two years old, and we
don't continue using and practicing it during almost every waking moment
of our lives.

If you're interested in something beyond the merely practical issue
of describing tone, I recommend this book -- even though I've read only
half of it so far.

....and while I'm recommending things, a recording is in print
right now of Marcellus playing in the Cleveland Orchestra: Debussy
"Petite Suite", Ravel "Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet & Orchestra"
and "Pavane pour une infante defunte" and "Five Pieces For Children",
Satie "Gymnopedies", and a few other things.
If ever there was a tone that I would like to have, it is on this
CD -- which is only $9 or something like that.

Bill
<who will now practice a jump from E-on-the-4th-space to
C#-on-the-3rd-space> <I think someone made a mistake when they
assembled my pinky>

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