Re: OT: Musical languistics

----- Original Message -----
From: "Samuel Rivier" <samuelriv@...>

> Okay, music can show emotion, as can painting or (if
> common art extended that far) anything else that
> stimulates a sense in a certain way (imagine odor
> paintings or texture songs).
> So why not create language that is based highly on
> rhythm and tone (perhaps start with a composition on
> piano) which uses these properties as expressions of
> meaning.
I had this very same concept years ago!  Wonderful!  I could never make it
stick, though.

The script can use a defined alphabet that is
> represented in undefined ways, like us using italics
> to emphasize certain words.
I had the notion that a grammar could be invented that would use chords and
intervals.  Then it got very complicated thereon.

> Another question. To what extent is all this NOT
> universal, that is, how much of the emotional
> experience that music and art generate comes from
> culturally biased past experience. I suspect it would
> be almost entirely biased in this way, but there
> probably are some norms.
Well, the relationship of word to meaning is arbitrary and dependent on
cultural agreement, so music would be culturally biased as well.  I read
somewhere that some Asians (I forget which culture) enjoyed and "understood"
the subtle nuances of an unaccompanied flute composition.  Bach, however,
was incomprehensible and offensive to them.  Just noise.  Today, there are
people who love Bach, who have been trained to "listen" to him, but can't
enjoy twelve tone music.  Stravinsky is just too "atonal" for my friend's
mother, and to my own mother-in-law.  I went to someone's house last week
where we listened to his compositions on Sonar.  He was very fond of using
musical patches and microtones like free-form brush strokes and combining
them.  He also had the volume cranked up way too high.  It was almost
unbearable.  I felt like those Asians listening to Bach.

> Examples I can think of offhand of musical bias as
> language:
> Surf Music-- I never would have thought that the
> hammering-on sound was supposed to represent waves
> crashing until I heard the originator of surf music
> say so. Now it seems crystal clear.
> Odd chord progressions-- in songs like 'Being for the
> Benefit of Mr. Kite' and 'Killer Queen' they can be
> quite annoying until you get used to them. Then they
> seem absolutely brilliant.
Yeah, you develop an emotional "meaning" for them.

> Microtones-- how is any musical language supposed to
> be formed if every culture has a different musical
> heritage and expresses emotion in different tones
> altogether? Or will emotion in music be universally
> understandable?
I don't think it is any more mutually understandable than language, although
it has been spoken of as THE "universal" language.  Back in graduate school,
we listened to something in Japanese that sounded cheerful and triumphant.
It was a dirge, we were told.  :)  Bulgarian women's choir has always
fascinated me, partly because of the quarter tones used in them.  Herman
Miller's site has a number of compositions where he uses quarter tones and
the effects are quite bizarre.

> Can animals like apes and dolphins (and, to a more
> familiar extent, cats and dogs) interpret emotion in
> music, or does that have to be complemented with
> conditioned experience?
I think complemented with conditioned experience.  I really don't know.
Animals respond to music, I'm told.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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