Klarinet Archive - Posting 000581.txt from 2003/02

From: b1rite@-----. Rite)
Subj: [kl] Music vs. language --- school cutbacks
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 15:13:27 -0500

My own perception (perhaps mistaken) that music and language are related
more closely than most people give credit, and also our local school
districts' need to cut budgets somehow (music programs are an obvious
candidate --- "Music isn't one of the 3 R's"), prompts me to quote:

(The comments enclosed in "[ ]" are intended to summarize what the
author states earlier in his book, not to offer my own opinions.)

"Conceptual thought requires the separation of thinking from feeling, of
object from subject, of mind from body. We have already observed the
divergence [during the course of human history] between song and speech,
and the development of language as the vehicle of rational thinking as
distinct from emotional expression. Human beings require the division
if they are to function efficiently as objective thinkers; but they also
need to bridge the Cartesian gulf between mind and body if they are to
live life as creatures enjoying a full complement of human feelings. A
great deal of what is generally considered to be 'real life' is woefully
one-sided. [....]

"Music began as a way of enhancing and co-ordinating group feelings.
Today [with the advent of recording technology and our ability to be
Solitary Listeners], music is often a means of recovering personal
feelings from which we have become alienated. [....]

"If I want to recapture [from my memory] the opening of Beethoven's
[....] or Brahms's [....], I can do so without difficulty, although I
might not be able to remember the whole of [it] accurately. This is
evidence that music can become part of our mental furniture. Because
of this, I believe that music not only has a positive function in
organizing our muscular actions, but also, less obviously, our thoughts
and the words in which we express them."

---from "Music and The Mind", Anthony Storr, Chapter 6

---------------------------------------------------------------------