Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- Select a popular composition and comment on its use of rhythm and tempo. Can you see connections with the use of rhythm and tempo in classical music?
jac16871_ch09_224-253.indd 252 12/11/17 9:02 PM 253
MUSIC
summary We began this chapter by suggesting that feelings and sounds are the primary subject matters of music. This implies that the content of music is a revelation of feelings and sounds—that music gives us a more sensitive understanding of them. however, as we indicated in our opening statements, there is considerable dis- agreement about the subject matter of music, and so there is disagreement about the content of music. If music does reveal feelings and sounds, the way it does so is still one of the most baffling problems in the philosophy of art. Given the basic theory of art as revelation, as we have been presupposing in this book, a couple of examples of how that theory might be applied to music are rele- vant. In the first place, some music apparently clarifies sounds as noises and tones. Music gives us insight into the resources of tonality in much the way painting gives us insight into the resources of color and visual sensa. There seems to be evidence that music gives us insight into our feelings; for example, the last movement of Mozart’s Jupiter symphony may excite a feeling of joy. The second movement—the funeral march—of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony may evoke a feeling of sadness. In fact, “joy” and “sadness” are general terms that only very crudely describe our feelings. We experience all kinds of different joys and different sadnesses, and the names language gives to these are often imprecise. Music, with its capacity to evoke feelings, and with a complexity of detail and structure that in many ways is greater than that of language, may be able to reveal or interpret feeling with much more precision than language. Perhaps the form of the last movement of the Jupiter symphony—with its clear-cut rising melodies, bright harmonies and timbres, brisk strings, and rapid rhythms—is somehow anal- ogous to the form of a certain kind of joy. Perhaps the last movement of the Eroica is somehow analogous to a different kind of joy. And if so, then perhaps we find revealed in those musical forms clarifications or insights about joy. Such explana- tions are highly speculative. however, they not only are theoretically interesting but also may intensify one’s interest in music. There is mystery about music, unique among the arts; that is part of its fascination. In addition to classical music, modern popular styles such as blues, jazz, rock and roll, and rap all have capacity to evoke intense participation resulting from the use of standard musical elements such as rhythm, tone color, melody, and harmony. They produce feeling states that can be complex and subtle in proportion to the seriousness and commitment of the artists and composers.