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Music and Transfiguration

An Open Question

This is a thought that I would like to put out there and see what kind of responses it gets. I've been thinking about this for a little while and it more or less goes along with my last post. Is there any other art (literature, dance, etc.) that is analyzed to the extent that music is? I can't think of one. For example, we don't subject a novel to the same kind of rigorous and complicated analytical techniques that we do a piece a music. Yet, a novel by, say Victor Hugo, I would consider of the same artistic quality, depth and substance as a Beethoven symphony. My experience with literature is reading it, so correct me if I'm wrong here. My next question is if none of the other arts require complicated analysis for a work to be understood, then why does music? What makes music different, if it is indeed different? Why is it that we can understand and learn from, in a technical sense, a novel by simply reading it but we subject a piece of music to various analytical techniques to get anything from it? Something seems out of place to me. What are your thoughts?

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Well, I think the difference is in the level of abstraction.  But going back to your question, I'm afraid you're wrong in assuming that literary works do not undergo as much analysis as works of music.  They're analyzed to death, starting with the college coursework, then, of course in the Ph.D. dissertations and then in the required publications all the way to the cherished tenure.  Just think of all the schools of literary criticism, formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and on and on...  And they all go over the same body of work.

But again, music is different: there is no theme, message, philosophy, what have you.  It's art in its purest.  Therefore the analysis is also more formal than in other arts.  I think this is a very interesting topic but I better stop here, otherwise it could lead who knows where...

Submitted by coda15 on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 10:03. Report abuse

Thank you for correcting me on the amount of analysis concerning literary works. I was not aware of its extent. Like I said, my experience with literature is reading it. I must disagree, in part, with the reason you give for music's difference. True, music is too abstract to have a specific message like the moral of the story in a novel. However, music most certainly has theme and philosophy. See my first few posts for the reasons. In a nutshell, art, be it music or any other form, is an open book and the truest picture of a society's philosophical beliefs. My point is basically that we take in so much from simply reading a book: it's theme, the moral of the story, the philosophical content, the sequence of events, the reason for the events and character's actions. However, with music we don't grasp those things automatically. It's assumed the nature of music is different from the other arts. Lately, I've started to question whether the reason is our own lack of understanding of music. I think we could agree that music is the least understood of all the arts. But I digress, this could turn into a long debate and like you said lead who knows where.

Submitted by jsdubois015 on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 14:14. Report abuse