Listening to Music III
Following
on from previous articles where I talked about the similarities in emotional
response found when listening to popular and classical music, here follow some
more parallels that point us towards a sense of general human listening that
jumps the (anyway somewhat outdated cultural) ‘torn halves’ binary and notes
further connections between form, expression and content that are equally
applicable to popular as to art or classical music (in this case literally
‘classical’ music in the sense of 18th to 19th century
music graduating from binary to sonata form – and quickly superseded by the
Romantic extension of this form; Bruckner/Mahler).
Pop
Song. Pop. Voice. Pleasure. Classical. Form. Sonata
(form) (‘type’) (‘means’) (content/signified) (orchestral) (suite/symphony) (form)
Verse Lyric Alone Expression Solo Slow movement 2nd theme
(Sad/inner/
mental)
Chorus Anthem Together Assertion ‘tutti’ First movement 1st theme
(Affirmative/out/
shared/
mental)
Instrumental Dance None Movement Rhythm Last movement Dev/Var.
(’Middle 8’) (Body/Physical)
With
respect to Sonata Form, we have the two, usually contrasting, themes,
respectively assertive and reflective, together with a contrast of keys (tonic
/dominant) implying a contrast of flavours (‘masculine’/’feminine’). So again,
we can see the relationship of a more ‘outer facing’ and a more ‘inner
orientated’ theme or group of themes, so again reflecting the division shown
above (anthem/lyric) but within a form instead of defining forms – just as in
the popular song (and also defined by their means of expression: ‘Voice’;
single, plural, instrumental, with their apposite ‘content of expression’:
expressive, assertive, ‘movementive’ – in the Rondo last movement form – a fast
‘dance’ form). And at the end of a sonata form movement there is the combined
sense of return and progress (a spiral rather than a circle); after a process
of transformations and reversals (the classical ‘development’ section) as the
first theme re-appears in the dominant, and the second theme in the tonic, so
providing a ‘logical’ climax and a coda.
In
the Concerto type (means of expression) the solo/together (‘tutti’) ‘Voice’
modality and the expressive/assertive (recognition/identification) ‘Pleasure’
modality are combined in various, predictable ways (especially in the
alternation of solo and orchestra in all movements); but always finishing with
a ‘dance’ type final movement.
Romantic
variation form, like all prior variation form, contains all aspects/speeds in
one theme, A, A1, A2, A3… (or in
the accompanying episodes A, B, A1, C, A2, D…). A form continued first in
atonal and then in 12 tone music and its aftermath in the 20th and
21st centuries. So effectively (if there are no ‘episodes’) a
‘monothematic’ music.
Looking
back to the Baroque, with music as represented by the dance suite, dominated by
forms and rhythms evolved from earlier forms of dance (and see too the following
forms of the early quartets), we find all speeds, solo/collective within
movements… … Otherwise first movement, fast/binary, movements and
expressive/lyric slow movements in the Concerti Grosso, etc.
Perhaps
a similar difference (expressive single line and collective rhythm) can be
found in the opposition of the ‘leading voice’ of the ‘top’ melody line and the
collective parts beneath, contrasts managing degrees of expressiveness and
assertion. As in melody/repeated chords, fast rhythms/slow top line (or
reverse): found in Jazz, Rock, Beethoven Quartets, or in Shostakovich’s Violin
Concerto, in the famous slow movement, where expressive solo ‘comment’ floats
over the repeated (‘assertive’) ‘topic’ theme (the orchestral passacaglia)…
with the effect (content of expression/semantic emotional equivalent) of
historical mourning and introspection.
Sets of overlapping parallels… carving up, representing,
forming… the human response to music; human emotions… complex in complex music
(whence music -like poetry- as an education for the emotions) but based upon
simple basic differences of emotional mood or pleasure of emotional response…
*
Copyright Peter Nesteruk, 2020