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Research Report by Shaun Sanders

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 1 month ago

 

 

 

Research Report : Recognizing Metaphor in Music.

 

By Shaun Sanders, Textones

 

 

Recognizing Metaphor in Music

 

 Scher, Steven Paul, Lodato, Suzanne M, Bernhart ,Walter, Aspden, Suzanne. Word and Music

Studies: “Essays in Honor of Steven Paul Scher and on Cultural Identity and the Musical Stage.”  Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam-New York 2002 

 

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            This collection of essays in honor of Steven Paul Sher (available at UCSB Library, or may be viewed online), “reflect upon or extend Sher’s ideas from a theoretical standpoint” (Sher viii). While the focus of Sher’s study concerns itself with “‘intracompositional’ word/music relationships,” other scholars, such as Werner Wolf, Lawrence Kramer, and Eric Prieto, use Sher’s work as a stepping off point. As well as Sher’s “intracompositional” relationships, Wolf considers “extracompositional” relationships between separate musical works. Taking a somewhat different approach, Kramer deals with the interpretation of musical meaning through hermeneutics and deals with the “subjectivities of discourse”(Sher viii).  Kramer believes that, because it is rooted in subjectivity, musical meaning is “contingent and unstable,” and as such is always in a state of flux. Therefore, meaning in music is contingent upon both the context of the music and the receptive state of the listener.

 

Prieto, however, seems to believe there are certain universal truths within musical language that can be consistently interpreted the same way, and that some tonalities can be interpreted metaphorically within the cognitive state as representative of a system of “tension and release” (Prieto). Furthermore, Prieto believes musical values can be interpreted, “not in term of their distinctive properties, but in terms of their functions in day-to-day life” (Sher viii). He acknowledges that music performs a function other than simply being pleasing to the ear; we can follow that line of thought as we approach the audio-analytical phase of our Textone models.

 

Although we are, as yet, unsure of the musical qualities which will result from the application of tones to parts of speech within text, it is clear that the human ear identifies any musicality inherent in a sequence of notes, and, whether we want it to or not, the mind will try, through interpretation, to create some sort of sense from almost any sequence. The mind seems to initially refuse the possibility that a note sequence is simply that; notes that are random in their arrangement. When the mind cannot create a semblance of order from a discordant musical pattern, it may quickly reject the pattern. In the real world, when a listener hears discordant tonalities, the impulse is to resolve them. Upon recognition of their non-resolution, the next response is to seek cause of discord; grating metal or squeaky brakes have their own tonalities, and we recognize these as a source of discomfort; therefore we seek to restore comfort by resolving the cause of such noise. Brake pads would be changed, or, in the case of some freeform experimental music, the radio or CD player would be turned off. In the public realm, the audience for easy listening harmonies—which suggest everything is right in our world—is much greater than the audience for dissonant tonalities. A simple demonstration of this would be the vast public consumption of syrupy pop songs that are easily digested and just as easily discarded when savvy marketers roll out the latest batch of “ear candy.”

 

            In this modern context of over-exposure to commercial tonalities that possess questionable artistic merit, a yard stick is needed buy which to assess the tonal sequences resulting from our Textone applications. Prieto’s theory of metaphor implied within tonalities may be that yardstick. At an interview in his office on campus at UCSB in February 2008, Prieto explained that music and harmony produce responses in the listener that are “emotional and visceral” (Prieto).  He states they possess “affective importance,” in that they induce involuntary affected states in the listener. He suggests that attention be given to the “leading note,” which is “the note of greatest tension” heard in a piece of music just before the music resolves back to its root tone. Prieto feels that the application of this musical principle would allows us to start reading tonal patterns “in terms of tension and release.” He also suggests that, by applying dissonant tonal qualities to a particular part of speech or word, our ear may be alerted each time the text in question is experienced.

 

Regarding cognitive interpretation of music, Prieto references Steven Pinker, a well known psychologist who calls music “cognitive cheesecake.” That is to say, it can have great appeal due to its ability to lull the mind into a state of superficial security. Clearly, cheesecake is not a goal of the Textones project. Pinker has written a book titled The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature, in which he examines the relationship between the construction of parts of speech within language and inherent psychological functioning. It might be considered a controversial idea—that our cognitive processes result from our brain’s biological synaptic functioning rather than some type of Gestalt-like “mind” which might be considered to float in a type of independent, or spiritual, disembodiment. However, if, as Pinker suspects, our language patterns mirror the efficiency of synaptic processing, Textones might offer up information regarding both language and process.

 

While our main focus is toward the creation of simple tonal patterns that might tell us something about the way in which we apply and sequence parts of speech in literature, the production of tonal patterns that are truly musical may be of great assistance in determining structure of language, and, because we seem unable to escape our attraction toward musical meaning within tonal sequences, greater insight might be gained from language structures if we can develop a correspondence to musical structures. If something other than atonal patterns are formed, it is possible that we might find certain “musical” patterns that are pleasing to the ear which then lead to quicker recognition of language patterns in works of literature. Whether we will ultimately recognize metaphors in tonal patterns that have a direct correlation to meanings within passages of text is, at this point, uncertain.

 

We may or may not achieve a close parallel between tonal patterns and recognized literary interpretations, but we are developing a preliminary template with which to work. The tonal values we have so far applied to parts of speech need not stand as the final standard. Once data entry is complete and patterns are recognizable, a reinterpretation of tone assignment can be undertaken, as long as it is undertaken in a consistent manner. For example, it does not matter which tone represents adverbs, as long as it is always the same tone. It may be possible that we work for the higher purpose of the neurological system as we attempt to demonstrate, through the possibility of recurring tonal patterns, that the human brain is well ordered in its thinking. If language reflects a symbolic interpretation of our thought processes, and psychologists like Pinker say it does, there seems every chance that there is further revelation available to us from works of literary genius, revelations that might unfold through the application of Textones: We might be able to hear ourselves think!

 

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Prieto, Eric. Personal Interview. Feb 19 2008.

 

 Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature Penguin

Group (USA) Inc. NY New York. 2007

 

 

 Scher, Steven Paul, Lodato, Suzanne M, Bernhart ,Walter, Aspden, Suzanne. Word and Music

Studies: “Essays in Honor of Steven Paul Scher and on Cultural Identity and the Musical Stage.”  Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam-New York 2002 http://books.google.com/books?id=ZWOmyQemqMYC&pg=PR7&dq=Essays+in+Honor+of+Steven+Paul+Scher+and+on+Cultural+Identity+and+the+Musical+Stage&sig=JdRXqch2rRARiy6WgyIouQhyjdE#PPR8,M1

 

 

 

 

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