Klarinet Archive - Posting 000936.txt from 2000/09

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Smiling and feelings (vs. music)
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 08:05:35 -0400

On Thu, 28 Sep 2000 18:15:09 -0700 (PDT), Bilwright@-----.net said

> Obviously the more that a person understands how his or her nervous
> system works, the more likely the person is to reach appropriate
> decisions.

I thought that that was the precise opposite of the philosophy in your
book?

I notice that I'm arguing against you rather more strongly than I would
have expected. I think that's because I get the impression that you
have an idea of what musicians do that you want to *explain* to them.

Musicians are a 'given' in the world. We always did what we did, before
anybody even knew that the brain is important than the belly.

We understand how what we do isn't all under our conscious control.
(Hence the idea, in past times, of muses, and gods; and in the present,
of the unconscious.) So we are prepared to be moved and surprised by
our 'feelings' and our thoughts when we play.

We are also engaged in representing the patterns of the music, with all
their connections in the 'relationship' domain. Things like
'acceptance' and 'rejection', 'tension' and 'resolution', which are the
common vocabulary of expressed emotion, all figure in how we
'understand' the music.

You have to have an experience of what it's like to play this game
before you can try to make sense of it -- and then, you perhaps won't
want to, in some ways. (BTW, I expect your instructor, in having you
*choose* your mouthpiece, is trying to get you in touch with your
'feeling' for what is right, not in the world of doing, but in the world
of listening.)

Art, as practised, was always the best argument against Descartes, for
its practitioners at least.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

... Drive C: Error, (A)bort (R)etry (I)gnore (K)ick (S)cream

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