Marsha wrote on Fec. 25:
I love music of all kinds. It is an intricate
part of my daily experience. This night I have
given myself a long planned for experience. I
settled into a comfortable chair, and listened to
Tannhauser. That has got me to thinking. I was
wondering if you could give a specific example,
using a particular piece of music, with which to
analyze your analogy? And I'm not sure of what
you mean by E for acknowledgement. Acknowledgement?
Marsha, About "a specific example using a particular piece of music": I was
using Sibelius Fifth Symphony previously; I'll stick to that one then. However,
I hope you don't mind if I borrow some components from the "long planned for"
music experience you describe.
I'm not fond of Wagner's operas; you seem to be; it's very unlikely that I
could undergo a music experience with Tannhauser. But I like very much (among
many other composers) Sibelius; you might not and, if so, it's unlikely that
you'd undergo a music experience with his Symphony. So, here we meet an
important component; one very much dependent on individual traits; let's call
it 'positive affect'. I guess yours was a deep, intense music experience; to
undergo such an experience positive affect is capital. (One could have, I
guess, a music experience by listening to a piece one intensely dislikes but,
unless one happens to be extremely irritable and cranky, that would be
'experiencing a nuisance' rather than a music experience).
Is positive affect an important or even 'essential' component? I'd say it
is; listening to music we dislike would hardly result in a music experience. In
the jigsaw puzzle representation (JPR for short)if one would take out the piece
representing it, the overall picture would be scarcely discernible, that is, it
wouldn't be recognized as a music experience anymore. (an opinion that remains
to be substantiated later on).
Another component: the comfortable chair. I'd venture to say that, in a
musical experience of this kind, what we are doing with our body while
listening to the music is quite important. I myself wouldn't set forth to
listening Sibelius Fifth while I'm washing dishes or having a hearty breakfast.
When talking about a music experience we tend to underestimate the importance
of the corporeal components (other than the ears) This comes, I think, from
emphasizing 'music as intellectual'. What we do with our body while listening
and what music does to our body, is a not negligible piece of the puzzle.
The JPR (for jigsaw puzzle representation) is not a hierarchical
representation, not even a sequential one, so the order in which we pick up the
component pieces for examination does not matter much. What do matters is their
size and their position in the picture.
I wish I could insert images in the Posts; it would make things much clear
and would save a lot of words. Instead let's use a picture we all know, say,
DaVinci's Monna Lisa; if the position of a particular piece was anywhere in the
face or around it, on taking it out, the picture would be ruined (an
"important" component). On the other hand if the piece in question was a
section of the robe, close to the frame, the image would retain its quality.
Another component: you wrote "That has got me thinking". A piece of
music we may be experiencing would usually "got as thinking"; it will induce
thoughts, some pertaining to the music itself ( which conform another important
component, 'reflection' and others loosely related or unrelated, according to
the particular trains of thought we may pursue. The music then would act as a
'trigger' (A. Koestler again) for the recall of a poem, or a face or event and
this recall, in turn leading us to other thoughts in the train. Some people may
consider this matter of trains of thought triggered by the music as an 'output'
of the experience. I differ; I think it's an integral component of it; a part
of what music does to our minds and bodies.
I don't want to go on just now with other possible components, they
are many and varied. How many? As many as we want to use really. A JP of the
same picture may be made of 10, or a hundred or a thousand pieces (there is
some cute Java software that does it at one click of the mouse).
The question that I keep postponing is how could we possibly ascertain the
relative importance of each component of the overall experience. For that I
must first introduce the ideas of Berys Gaut and also of a mathematician that
goes by the improbable name of Florentin Smarandache and I don't quite know how
to without presenting equations and diagrams.
Acknowledgment: this is quite a tricky piece of the puzzle and I
understand your 'puzzlement'. It'll take long, so I'll leave for a following
Post, this one is already too long.
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