Page 100 - Glasbenopedagoški zbornik Akademije za glasbo v Ljubljani / The Journal of Music Education of the Academy of Music in Ljubljana, leto 13, zvezek 27 / Year 13, Issue 27, 2017
P. 100
SBENOPEDAGOŠKI ZBORNIK, 27. zvezek
It should be emphasized that this is far more than escapism. Art that is escapist, simply
allows us to dwell imaginatively in a different world, one where we merely become
‘caught up’ with what happens there. It may be that formulaic music can sometimes be like
this, but works of higher quality are different. In such cases, music’s virtual expression
involves a dimension of direction and/or control wherein narratives of emotional
possibility are not just passively consumed in escapist mode, but are embodied in a
cognitively enhanced way. Virtual expression of this kind achieves an intrinsic education
of the emotions by sensibly exemplifying some of their key cognitive aspects at a
publically accessible level.
For example, the very fact that such emotional content is embodied in an aesthetic whole
means that the narrative structure which has enabled it, and which it further refines, is
presented much more lucidly than in our normal introspective or observational emotional
experiences. To perform and listen to music is follow the development of emotion
aesthetically rather than be pressurized and controlled by its everyday occurent and
involuntary structure. What we respond to, in other words, is emotional/imaginative
narrative possibility that has been released from the controlling and/or transient conditions
under which those cognitively significant states of mind are normally experienced. In
music, the development of emotional possibility exists in a purified form.
And, in this respect, it is not only the work as such which we learn from; it is the composer
and/or performer’s style of articulating the possibility which moves us. This, of course, is
why even the evocation of negative factors such as tragedy is so often a key factor in our
aesthetic responses to music and the other arts. It is not just the sadness of it all which is
affecting, but the fact that the tragic has been revealed and made to speak its own nature
through the creative power of individual human artifice and imagination.
Two objections must be considered. The first is that the interpretation proposed here is tied
to the tonal system of western music, but much world music does not use this system, and
much advanced work in the high modern western tradition abandons tonalism –
sometimes quite radically. In respect of the first point, it is true that may scale systems
other than the tonal one can be found all over the world. However, there is no intrinsic
reason why the function of those scales should not parallel that which I have identified in
relation to western music. This is a matter for empirical research.
The point concerning non-tonal western music requires rather more elaboration. The
advent of twelve tone and note row systems offers dynamics of sound that thwart
expectations based on the tonal system. Its positive content is in the logic of how sound is
organised in the particular case. For the informed listener this structure may be of interest
in its own right. Indeed, some such works may be assimilable in the terms I have
described. Other avant-garde pieces most certainly are.
For example, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s Kontacte (1958–1960) uses aleatory effects and
phrases presented as incidents or short episodes. There are allusions to tonal structure –
but in a fragmented and acoustically ghostly form (emphasised through the sound being
100
It should be emphasized that this is far more than escapism. Art that is escapist, simply
allows us to dwell imaginatively in a different world, one where we merely become
‘caught up’ with what happens there. It may be that formulaic music can sometimes be like
this, but works of higher quality are different. In such cases, music’s virtual expression
involves a dimension of direction and/or control wherein narratives of emotional
possibility are not just passively consumed in escapist mode, but are embodied in a
cognitively enhanced way. Virtual expression of this kind achieves an intrinsic education
of the emotions by sensibly exemplifying some of their key cognitive aspects at a
publically accessible level.
For example, the very fact that such emotional content is embodied in an aesthetic whole
means that the narrative structure which has enabled it, and which it further refines, is
presented much more lucidly than in our normal introspective or observational emotional
experiences. To perform and listen to music is follow the development of emotion
aesthetically rather than be pressurized and controlled by its everyday occurent and
involuntary structure. What we respond to, in other words, is emotional/imaginative
narrative possibility that has been released from the controlling and/or transient conditions
under which those cognitively significant states of mind are normally experienced. In
music, the development of emotional possibility exists in a purified form.
And, in this respect, it is not only the work as such which we learn from; it is the composer
and/or performer’s style of articulating the possibility which moves us. This, of course, is
why even the evocation of negative factors such as tragedy is so often a key factor in our
aesthetic responses to music and the other arts. It is not just the sadness of it all which is
affecting, but the fact that the tragic has been revealed and made to speak its own nature
through the creative power of individual human artifice and imagination.
Two objections must be considered. The first is that the interpretation proposed here is tied
to the tonal system of western music, but much world music does not use this system, and
much advanced work in the high modern western tradition abandons tonalism –
sometimes quite radically. In respect of the first point, it is true that may scale systems
other than the tonal one can be found all over the world. However, there is no intrinsic
reason why the function of those scales should not parallel that which I have identified in
relation to western music. This is a matter for empirical research.
The point concerning non-tonal western music requires rather more elaboration. The
advent of twelve tone and note row systems offers dynamics of sound that thwart
expectations based on the tonal system. Its positive content is in the logic of how sound is
organised in the particular case. For the informed listener this structure may be of interest
in its own right. Indeed, some such works may be assimilable in the terms I have
described. Other avant-garde pieces most certainly are.
For example, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s Kontacte (1958–1960) uses aleatory effects and
phrases presented as incidents or short episodes. There are allusions to tonal structure –
but in a fragmented and acoustically ghostly form (emphasised through the sound being
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