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From: "Ahn Fyuh Wi Dizayah" <ahn-fyuh-wi-dizayah@thegreatslashtubitch.org>
Newsgroups: alt.music
Subject: Music as Image
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Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 17:03:24 GMT
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I was listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony today, and an interesting
series of thoughts began to strike me. As I'm typically wont to do when I
listen to music, I had been analyzing the technical structure of the
composition.
On a side note, I do this far too often with the music I adore - it's kind
of an unconscious thing, being a practitioner of the craft. I realize that
it saps the music of some of it's vitality, and reduces it to a rather
three-dimensional level, but I find it terribly difficult to refrain from
doing so.
I began thinking, What's so great about classical, anyway? Is it the
technical proficiency of the composer? His understanding of theory? The
ability to unite different thematic concepts together, or compose for many
instruments at once? I couldn't even find a reason for the question forming
itself in my head, let alone a satisfactory answer. I got up, made a coffee,
and sat back down. I then closed my eyes, restarted the CD from the
beginning, let it wash over me anew, and stopped thinking altogether.
This time, images began appearing before me in the busy darkness behind my
eyelids. I was imagining the music (the notes themselves, and the
melodies/harmonies they spoke) itself as a conversation. I pictured a
vast(but not densely packed) forest, and the sky overhead was illuminated by
the nebulous light of dawn/dusk (I couldn't decide which). Two characters
were making their way through the trees, and the music I heard was their own
verbal exchange. No words were spoken - their conversation was audible as
pure music. I was aware that as these characters made their way through the
forest, I kept glancing other humans around me, a sparse few at first, but
slowly building in number as the music/dialogue continued, all of whom were
observing these two as well.
These characters continuously shifted their physical bodies with each
dynamic shift of the music, as if the tonal language they spoke in had a
consequent effect on their corporeal manifestations. They alternately
appeared as hooved satyrs, antelopes, great bearded wise men, Griffons,
along with dozens of other different shapes and forms. It seemed perfectly
natural. I began to speculate about the true nature of these beings who
seemingly spoke directly to me, even though the number of people I noticed
surrounding me was nearing the hundreds. I thought that they were some form
of demiurge from Greek or Roman mythology, and that the message they were
attempting to covey was, appropriately enough, an ode to joy and life
itself. They apparently felt that this was uncommunicable through the
written and spoken words that make up our common communication, so they
spoke through the only medium that could convey what they wished to
articulate.
Unfortunately, before I could fully immerse myself within this vision - and
I'll state for the record, I was not intoxicated by any substance, nor was
this an external vision; it was purely birthed and extant in my mind's eye -
the spell was broken by some trivial noise in my house that scattered my
attention. I couldn't recapture the same feeling, so I gave it up.
I have often had my other senses affected in small ways by music I listen
to, but nowhere near what I was feeling as I listened to those two
characters converse. I rose and fell with their every passionate breath, and
more than a few times did I feel the urge to shout aloud, out of some primal
sense of awe in what I was experiencing. I began to wonder if I was tapping
into the power of myth (To borrow from The Birth of Tragedy - Myth as a
concentrated image of the world that, as a condensation of phenomena, cannot
[express itself without] miracles; Myth alone saves all the powers of the
imagination and of the Apollinian dream from their aimless wanderings), as
the feeling was in itself intoxicating.
As silly as all this sounds, has anyone else ever experienced similar bouts
of "musical affect"? This really startled me today, and I seem to recall
things of a related ilk being discussed here in times past.
http://bbs.anus.com/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=000657
--
Pro-War religious fanatics in government:
Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Lieberman, Ridge, Cheney and
Bush
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