Re: Mahler #6


"tag gallagher" <tag@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:c00yf.7205$ZA2.6538@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> david7gable@xxxxxxx wrote:
>> Tag writes:
>>
>> "As for the 'experience in the head,' I disagree that it is music.
>> Music is something experienced physically, like movies and paintings."
>>
>> Is that all it is? If music is no more than the physical perception of
>> sound, surely you don't need Mozart or Beethoven. John Cage or ambient
>> noise should do. If you were only interested in the physical aspect of
>> painting, you wouldn't need Rembrandt or Monet. Just pour a bucket of
>> paint on the floor and perceive the colors. Of course, the colors of
>> Monet and Rembrandt are of some intrinsic aesthetic interest, but the
>> relationships among them are of even more interest.
>>
>> I think we might have to define some of these terms more narrowly
>> before we could discuss this meaningfully, just to make sure we mean
>> exactly the same thing by the terms we're using, but it seems to me
>> that even what you refer to as physical experiences might come under a
>> category that I would refer to as "mental experiences." All of that
>> physical stimulation ends up in the mind.
>
> I also said that the artwork has physical existence and asked if you
> agreed it's a "form"?
>
> "All of that physical stimulation ends up in the mind" -- well, no,
> actually, lots of physical stimulation ends up in the body, and one can
> talk about how much of what the body physically experiences actually makes
> it way to the mind, even in a terribly distorted fashion (distorted by the
> mind). Surely your love of certain aspects (not all!) of Italian opera is
> (I hope) firmly based on sensation and not on mere intellectualization
> (whereas in reading one never transgresses beyond mere
> intellectualization -- unless you really zonk out on font design).
>
> My point is the difference between reading a novel and experiencing
> music/painting/movies.
>
> Ian for some strange reason wants to deny the physical reality of harmonic
> progressions. But for me these have an existence independent of my
> mind -- or at least, in our "idealistic" language, they exist objectively,
> not as mere hallucinations and not as mere conventions, like my blood
> circulation.

I never said they were mere hallucinations. I said that the relationships
between harmonies are things we perceive, not physical objects. Like all
relationships. You can see an image of pure red, then one of pure yellow,
and you form a relationship between the two (which isn't entirely subjective
of course). But the relationship is a perception - all that exists
physically is the two images.
>
>>
>> I know that a pianist derives some pleasure from his hands while
>> playing,
>
> I think you slight this. Would you slight Caruso deriving pleasure from a
> high C or a well-delivered phrase? What else is a dance but the pleasure
> of submitting one's body to a form?
>
> I think this is very close to the essence and glory and wonder of art.

I don't think David is slighting that.
>
> that the singer can feel things going on in the throat when
>> singing. I appreciate the sheer materiality of the thick oil paint on
>> a canvas by Monet or Van Gogh. Nevertheless, when you experience a
>> movie, although it may be that you experience the sounds and colors
>> physically at the level of "pure" perception, you're much more actively
>> engaged in discerning that one shape is a car, another a cat, another a
>> tree.
>
> That's why the shittiest movies - the least cinematic ones - make the most
> money, and why current pop music overwhelms everything else in music.
>
> I'm don't care about the thickness of paint.

I do, for example in Van Gogh's paintings.

> I care about the images.

But can't the three-dimensional aspects of the images (made possible through
varying thicknesses of paint) contribute to the experience?

> The Monet exists outside my head. Art experience means I experience that
> artwork. You are almost suggesting that the artwork need not exist, that
> it can all take place in the mind.
>
> Music would not exist without sounds, without our bodies, and without our
> emotions - which ought not be wholly equated to intellect.
>
>
> You're taking note from the color of the sky that it's sunset:
>> you therefore know the time of day.
>
> In my experience, this is precisely the sort of thing that a lot of
> intense cinephiles miss, until the second or third viewing. They're so
> engrossed by the colors, the light, the composition, by, if you like, a
> zen rush over being alive and the vastness of the world --- that they miss
> entirely the obvious narrative point.

That's if you privilege narrative primarily. I'm not sure if that really
does justice to the films of Chris Marker, or Andy Warhol, or Peter
Greenaway, to give three very dissimilar examples (though of course there is
some narrative in Marker or Greenaway).

It is rather like saying that those who take pleasure in the pure sonorities
of a piece of music, outside of their functional purpose, are missing the
point. For me this way of listening, to both the passing sonorities and the
passing emotions, is very fundamental to Debussy, say.

I think what you're saying above implies a very particular cinematic
aesthetic.

> The sunset is more like a chord by the orchestra that starts off a
> quartet.
>
Why can't it have some autonomous life of its own?

> You not only hear the sounds of
>> the voices, you understand the sentences being spoken.
>
> Well, sorry, but when I hear someone singing, I pay almost no attention to
> the narrative thrust of the words. I don't think much Italian opera would
> survive as pure libretto.
>
It was never meant to - the total effect comes from a symbiosis between
words and music. I always want to know what the words mean when I'm
listening to a piece of vocal music (and get very annoyed when CDs don't
include texts and translations).
>
> You're keeping
>> track of the story. If there are striking visual images of intrinsic
>> aesthetic interest to you quite apart from the story,
>
> No, you missed entirely the point of the Jean Mitry quote. He says when
> you make (or watch) a movie, your raw ingredient is "the world." And then
> you organize this into a story. Therefore, say I, in order for me to
> arrive at the "story" -- to know what the movie is about, or what the
> sonata is about -- we must concentrate on the "now" qualities -- the
> images and sounds we're experiencing.

But some cinephiles (including myself) appreciate films where the passing
moments have a life of their own.

> If we jump to "story," we are prejudging the concept rather than
> experiencing the work.
>
> (Mitry says that with a novel we start with a story, and by dint of having
> a lot of story, we end up with a world. In other words, he sees
> literature as essentially verbs: action. Even "John is a man" is an
> action, and by piling up actions we end up with a world.

Again, that's a very particular aesthetic of literature. I'm not sure it
accounts so well for 'Finnegan's Wake', say.
>
> But in a movie or painting, we are transfixed by the portraiture and by
> the person within the portrait. There is a world of difference between
> writing "It was autumn" and seeing the trees.

One can imaginatively describe the trees in such a way that communicates a
very personal vision of them. Much 'poetic' literature does that.

>
> you're taking in
>> the relationships that constitute them as such. In short, a strong
>> case could be made that visual and aural stimuli are only the raw
>> material used to form the relationships constituting the artwork for
>> the perceiving mind.
>
> Before the relationships can stimulate the mind, the "raw" material must
> first stimulate the mind. Now you know very well that a Bach fugue can be
> played hundreds of ways, because one can endlessly alter the
> relationships. With some singers, I am quite content to hear them sing
> one note -- (and wasn't it you who could proclaim loudly enough the
> virtues or Robert Mann?) -- and when they go on to the next note, that's a
> bonus, and eventually we get the whole song. But if I don't like it
> moment by moment, I'm not going to like the "story."
>
I find there are cases where even if I don't like the singer's voice, the
total experience can still carry me along.
>>
>> In short, I think the mental aspect of the art work is not only far
>> more important than the physical, narrowly defined, but the sine qua
>> non of art. Maybe both the physical and the mental are sine qua non
>> for art, but the mental certainly is.
>
> So you'd have to conclude that pure mathematics is the highest form of
> art.
>
> Tag

Ian


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