Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2005-06-29 21:52
Markael wrote:
> > Music is sensory, sensual—like food. Some people like chocolate; others like strawberry.> >
I replied:
> > Music is sometimes just that; but good music is a great deal more than that…[music] engages both our conscious and unconscious selves.> >
Markael further wrote:
> > So do chocolate and strawberry. Some of the engagement that takes place is universal, some is particular to the individual. The odor of a food you remember from childhood can "take you back" in much the same way as happens when you hear an old song you haven’t heard in years.> >
Does it not occur to you that there is an analogy between 'the taste of strawberry' and 'the sound of a clarinet'? And that that analogy makes it clear that 'the sound of the clarinet' is on a more superficial level than 'what the sound of the clarinet *does*, in detail, in a passage of the Schubert Octet'?
> > I’m not saying that these deeper and more complex associations don’t exist. Quite the contrary. The deeper and more profound they are, the sillier one begins to sound when trying to unravel and explain them.> >
Who wanted to 'explain' them?
What I and other serious performers do is to *explore* them, and make them come alive.
'Unravelling' is another matter. In fact, it's *you* that sounds 'silly' when you say that you can't unravel aspects of music. Of course you can unravel those aspects. And the fact that you can unravel them, and characterise them, allows you to begin to have the relationships *between* them to operate on a deeper level.
That's why we practise, for god's sake.
> > I guess I’m trying to say is that you sounded silly when you said that "what we need" is a reason to like music or be moved by it.> >
Well, I didn't say that. What I said was that "what we need is a contribution to the discussion of how vibrato may be useful for something, or possibly *not useful* for something, and how we might use whatever realisations we have about that to inform our playing in general."
I haven't been particularly concerned with vibrato myself, but I've needed to understand how similar things are useful, and to practise them, and I'd say that *quite probably*, you and others need to do so too. For example, it's not a question of whether I 'like' 'bright' or 'dark' sounds, just as it isn't a question of whether I 'like' 'consonants' or 'vowels'.
I'm beyond that.
Or perhaps you think -- since I'm 'silly' -- *you're* beyond that.
So I'd argue that what we *don't* need is a discussion of whether we 'like' or 'don't like' vibrato, or like or don't like chocolate, or like or don't like red, or green, or 'dark' or 'bright' sound, or Buffet, or Selmer, or all the other stupid likes and dislikes that people delude themselves with here.
(But, of course, Sue, that's just an opinion. Or is it an argument?-)
Tony
Post Edited (2005-06-29 22:08)
|
|
Keepers
