> As far as music as an all-encompassing entity, I kind of see the
> idea. There has been a time-worn debate over what music is (can we define
> it?), and more importantly, is music the "universal" language.
> So certainly, a particular piece of music will not signify the same
> thing to different people. Therefore music is not the universal language,
> right? Nu-uh.
> Music is not science, we can not explain music
Well, I'm a bit confused about the music and science connection, myself.
I think I'll probably stay confused - it's a mind bender alright.
Still... as I was sorting through email this morning, a friend walked
into my office with a book that I had loaned him called LANGUAGE, MUSIC
AND MIND by a woman named Diana Raffman. As my friend pointed out, the
title is a bit misleading. The book isn't as general and accessible as
it sounds. It's an extensive analysis of ineffable (verbally
inexpressible) musical knowledge. For anyone who is interested in this
topic seriously, there is quite a literature. Ray Jackendoff's research
group (at MIT, I think) has done a lot of work on this and there are some
other books on related topics like:
A GENERATIVE THEORY OF TONAL MUSIC by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff
(Ray Jackendoff is both a linguistics philosopher and a clarinet player)
WAYS OF THE HAND: THE ORGANIZATION OF IMPROVISED CONDUCT by David Sudnow
which is a very cool sounding book about what is happening cognitively
when the author learns how to improvise jazz on the piano.
The line of thinking that I'm familiar with isn't all that focussed on
the cultural aspect of music - these researchers assume some universals
of psychological experience.
That's two academic musical comments in one month. Enough. I'm just
out of news bits. Hey Gordon, the new Step Jazz is great. I think the
band was happy to see the good review of Karl's record. And Robert got
a grin at the comment Barry made about the mixing - he thinks it's good
when reviewers can be objective about local music. I don't know what
Andy had to say about that...
-Teresa