Assignment 9/15
I would not consider music to be a language in itself; I consider it a medium or a vehicle by which thoughts and emotions can be somehow universally understood by the collective ear, regardless of native language.
People argue that music is a language, and to some extent, it could be. Music has syntax, it has rhythm, different styles, and it evokes certain thoughts and emotions. In a way, music is like poetry without words. But for me, it doesn’t qualify as a language for the simple fact that it is not specific enough to tell the listener exactly what it is saying. In short, it lacks accuracy. Let me explain. A piece of music may have a generally accepted theme, such as melancholy, jubilation, or apathy. It can communicate that to its listeners, and communicate it well, but not all listeners will have the same theme in mind. Music cannot directly say what it wants to say. It can offer a listener a glimpse of what it intends, but only the composer or the performer who interprets it knows the complete message.
It is undeniable that music has a great impact, not only in our minds, but in our deeper psyches as well. We do not always consciously understand what music says, but we have an intuitive understanding of what it could mean to us. Music is powerful, and its power is subliminal and difficult to define.
Nice post. Well written. To continue your thought:
“Music is powerful, and its power is subliminal and difficult to define”, precisely because we have no words to explain or translate it.
“Music cannot directly say what it wants to say. It can offer a listener a glimpse of what it intends, but only the composer or the performer who interprets it knows the complete message”
This is actually not true. Musicians and composers experience music very differently, both from each other and from audiences. In particular, composers are often less emotionally affected by music (due to training in analytic listening) and their preferences are usually quite different from those of lay audiences. Canadian composer/pianist Glenn Gould, for instance, thought Mozart was only mediocre at best, and Debussy was strongly critical of Beethoven and Brahms. Musicians’ experience of music when performing it is very different and not necessarily more “accurate” than their experience when listening to it.
Moreover, audiences have read much into music that was not put there by the original creator. Consider Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, which concludes with a very slow and bleak movement. From Tchaikovsky’s point of view, he had been searching for a solution to the “finale problem” (writing a final movement that carries sufficient weight to conclude the work satisfactorily, while both grounding earlier tensions and holding the audience’s interest) that occupied many nineteenth-century composers, and found choosing to balance the lighter dance movements of his symphony with a darker and more lyrical finale ideal, being very pleased with the work overall. This is borne out through his letters. However, its minor key conclusion and his death soon after (unexpected, from cholera, but sometimes misinterpreted as suicide) have led some people to believe he wrote it during a fit of profound depression, or was trying to be deliberately enigmatic – which, while probably true, was most likely intended more as humour than anything else. Moreover, neither of these interpretations adds anything to our enjoyment of the music itself. The piece’s “message” can be easily understood by anyone with a CD player or tickets to the Philharmonic.