{"id":1862,"date":"2010-09-08T09:10:08","date_gmt":"2010-09-08T08:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/?p=1862"},"modified":"2010-09-08T13:16:36","modified_gmt":"2010-09-08T12:16:36","slug":"bernstein-on-how-does-music-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/2010\/09\/08\/bernstein-on-how-does-music-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernstein on how does music mean ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ah, the thorny question: how does music mean ? Can it have external meaning, or does\u00a0meaning derive solely from its internal content &#8211; harmony, tonality, the working out of ideas ? Does it &#8211; indeed, <em>can<\/em> it &#8211; express ideas, emotions, characters, or does it simply ask the listener to follow the unfolding events, the order of ideas and the relationships between them ?<\/p>\n<p>Leonard Bernstein offers some thoughts in a lecture from Harvard:<\/p>\n<div class=\"kent-video-wrapper\"><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text\/html' width='474' height='297' src='https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/14VhzlcSuT0?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen='true'><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>As he says: &#8221;Music <strong>does<\/strong> possess the power of expressivity (sic).&#8221; Whether, like Stravinsky, you feel that music is &#8220;by its very nature, powerless to express anything at all&#8221; (1) \u00a0(Stravinsky was talking about his so-called &#8216;white&#8217; music at the time, such as the ballet\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/ham.files.uclassics.net\/prelistening\/00028943946322\/00028943946322_01_019.mp3\" target=\"_blank\">Apollon Musagete: Variation de Calliope<\/a><\/em>\u00a0for strings), or that music conjures its meaning from associations brought by the listener (i.e. previous experiences of similar chords and keys), music certainly has the power to move listeners. A listener with a half-decent wealth of listening experience perhaps comes to a piece with all that listening and its commensurate baggage: one melodic shape reminds them of another piece they&#8217;ve heard, a particular sonority or chord reminds them of another piece in which they&#8217;ve heard it, or a tonality is associated with a certain mood or frame of mind.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1868\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1868\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1868 \" style=\"margin-left: 5px;margin-right: 5px;border: white 5px solid\" title=\"lutenist\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/files\/2010\/09\/lutenist-300x235.jpg\" alt=\"Lute Player by Caravaggio\" width=\"300\" height=\"235\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/files\/2010\/09\/lutenist-300x235.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/files\/2010\/09\/lutenist.jpg 428w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1868\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#39;The Lute Player,&#39; Caravaggio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Bernstein distinguishes between &#8216;what music expresses&#8217; and &#8216;how music expresses it&#8217; by talking about metaphor, music as a language rich in metaphor, &#8216;meaning beyond the literal.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Leonard B. Meyer&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books?id=HuWCVGKhwy0C&amp;dq=emotion+and+meaning+meyer&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=bn&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=t5GGTLupD5GUjAeVhP2eBQ&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=4&amp;ved=0CCkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">Emotion and Meaning in Music<\/a><\/em> defines two types of listener: those for whom musical meaning &#8220;lies exclusively within the work itself, in the perception of the relationships set forth within the musical work of art&#8221; and those for whom music also &#8220;communicates meanings which in some way to the extramusical world of concepts, actions, emotional states and character.&#8221; Meyer calls the former &#8216;absolutists&#8217; and the latter &#8216;referentialists.&#8217; (2)<\/p>\n<p>Or perhaps you have a foot in both camps: a piece of music has its internal order, its sequence of events with its conflicts and resolutions,\u00a0that it articulates and which the listener may follow; \u00a0but it also taps into a listener&#8217;s previous experience and associated personal meanings ? Meyer declares that they &#8220;are not mutually exclusive: that they can and do co-exist in one and the same piece of music.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Absolutist or referentialist: which one are you ?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>1 Stravinsky, I<em>, <\/em>(1975)<em>, An Autobiography<\/em>, Calder &amp;\u00a0Boyars: 163\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>2 Meyer, L (1963), <em>Emotion and Meaning in Music<\/em>, University of Chicago: 1<\/p>\n<ul class=\"kent-social-links\"><li><a href='http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/2010\/09\/08\/bernstein-on-how-does-music-mean\/&amp;t=Bernstein on how does music mean ?' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-facebook' title='Share via Facebook'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='http:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=Bernstein on how does music mean ?%20https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/2010\/09\/08\/bernstein-on-how-does-music-mean\/' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-twitter' title='Share via Twitter'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='https:\/\/plus.google.com\/share?url=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/2010\/09\/08\/bernstein-on-how-does-music-mean\/' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-google-plus' title='Share via Google Plus'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='http:\/\/linkedin.com\/shareArticle?mini=true&amp;url=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/2010\/09\/08\/bernstein-on-how-does-music-mean\/&amp;title=Bernstein on how does music mean ?' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-linkedin' title='Share via Linked In'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='mailto:content=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/2010\/09\/08\/bernstein-on-how-does-music-mean\/&amp;title=Bernstein on how does music mean ?' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-email' title='Share via Email'><\/i><\/a><\/li><\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ah, the thorny question: how does music mean ? Can it have external meaning, or does\u00a0meaning derive solely from its internal content &#8211; harmony, tonality, the working out of ideas ? Does it &#8211; indeed, can it &#8211; express ideas, emotions, characters, or does it simply ask the listener to follow the unfolding events, the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/2010\/09\/08\/bernstein-on-how-does-music-mean\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Bernstein on how does music mean ?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":620,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1110],"tags":[1368,1370,1369],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1862"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1892,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862\/revisions\/1892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}