Comments on: Why do we study music? http://rogerbourland.com/2006/12/26/why-do-we-study-music/ Roger Bourland writes about music and life Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:19:13 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Brad Wood http://rogerbourland.com/2006/12/26/why-do-we-study-music/comment-page-1/#comment-7367 Brad Wood Thu, 28 Dec 2006 19:34:40 +0000 http://rogerbourland.com/blog/2006/12/26/why-do-we-study-music/#comment-7367 Seeger, much moody with logic, Weary, yet still pedagogic, Sensed he'd soon reach a limit When speech wouldn't limn it Music only, drawn onward, agogic Seeger, much moody with logic,
Weary, yet still pedagogic,
Sensed he’d soon reach a limit
When speech wouldn’t limn it
Music only, drawn onward, agogic

]]> By: Daniel Wolf http://rogerbourland.com/2006/12/26/why-do-we-study-music/comment-page-1/#comment-7346 Daniel Wolf Wed, 27 Dec 2006 12:13:22 +0000 http://rogerbourland.com/blog/2006/12/26/why-do-we-study-music/#comment-7346 Why do you we study music? To paraphrase my teacher N.O. Brown: To thicken the plot. To make music more interesting and to make out of us listeners more interesting people. Thinkening is <i>Dichtung</i>, which is also "to make poetry". Short of making poetry about poetry, or music about music. This is Charles Seeger's dilemma: why are we forced to used the language mode of communication to deal with the music form of communication (if music is communication in the first place?)? To follow Seeger to a logical conclusion, ultimately, the disadvantage of using language (or maths or graphs or whatever) to get a handle on our experience of music, is that we will come up against a limit, past which we are necessarily reduced to speechlessness. But it is our committment, if we are also committed to a life of the mind, and sharing that life, to continue to press that limit. Studying music is then often reduced to a set of very practical terms and tools for talking about musical materials and recognizeable features of musics assembled from those materials, and we also study the cultural and historical contexts in which musics are made. I'm afraid that, personally, I'm both lost and disinterested in questions of musical meaning. Musics, it seems to me, "do meaning" very poorly when it comes to communicating information necessary to the everyday functions of human beings, but they do communicate meaning superbly in precisely those domains in which speechlessness reigns. Why do you we study music? To paraphrase my teacher N.O. Brown: To thicken the plot. To make music more interesting and to make out of us listeners more interesting people. Thinkening is Dichtung, which is also “to make poetry”. Short of making poetry about poetry, or music about music. This is Charles Seeger’s dilemma: why are we forced to used the language mode of communication to deal with the music form of communication (if music is communication in the first place?)? To follow Seeger to a logical conclusion, ultimately, the disadvantage of using language (or maths or graphs or whatever) to get a handle on our experience of music, is that we will come up against a limit, past which we are necessarily reduced to speechlessness. But it is our committment, if we are also committed to a life of the mind, and sharing that life, to continue to press that limit. Studying music is then often reduced to a set of very practical terms and tools for talking about musical materials and recognizeable features of musics assembled from those materials, and we also study the cultural and historical contexts in which musics are made.

I’m afraid that, personally, I’m both lost and disinterested in questions of musical meaning. Musics, it seems to me, “do meaning” very poorly when it comes to communicating information necessary to the everyday functions of human beings, but they do communicate meaning superbly in precisely those domains in which speechlessness reigns.

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