Religious music does weird things to me

[Selene]

Doesn't do any thing for me.

That was not my point Brant.

If you did not have the Nazi context and just heard the music, it is powerful and hits you at a subconscious level.

A...

[Brant Gaede]

For whatever reason we are reacting differently to that music. The music of my enemy is not my music. It's like that vid Greg put up with all those commies signing about how wonderful it all was in the USSR with many glorifying heroic pics of Lenin, who was just as much of an SOB as Stalin. There is some similar Russian music I like very much but not suffused with commie crap. That's because the music is unto itself and a common humanity. A bunch of singing Krauts going out to fight and die for Hitler doesn't do it for me (except if it gives away their position). If you had simply put up the music without the visuals and opening chit-chat I might agree with you, especially since I don't understand the words. I'll never know. I suspect, but I'll go back and try.

--Brant

(tried and failed--maybe if there had been no Nazi Germany and WWII it'd be different for me)

(I could dance around a fire with a bunch of Jews singing "I Have no Tequila!" [i drank it])

[Selene]

For whatever reason we are reacting differently to that music. The music of my enemy is not my music. ...... A bunch of singing Krauts going out to fight and die for Hitler doesn't do it for me (except if it gives away their position). If you had simply put up the music without the visuals and opening chit-chat I might agree with you, especially since I don't understand the words.

Fair criticism.

Frankly, that is the way I wanted to present that music. Just did not have the time today to search for it today.

Meeting tonight...seven days to election day.

A...

Seven Days In October - hmm doesn't have the same ring as May...

[syrakusos]

Michael, you remarked in #15 that “political songs, religious, military, they all are intended to evoke a whole raft of unselfish emotional outpouring . . . .” Do you agree that to accomplish that the words must be in an understood language? ... Internationale sung in French ... The Battle Hymn of the Republic who did not understand the lyrics, ...

Right. As I said, music is a language itself and moreover, we tie music to poetry as we tie it to dance. So, when we discuss these topics about "music being religious" we are really trying to fit many related modes under a single context-free rubric. And there we must fail. I do not know Shostakovich, but I trust that we both know Beethoven well enough to agree that his 3rd and 5th are about triumph. It is in the music.

The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" could not be a love song. Schubert's "Ave Maria" is wholly different from "Onward Christian Soldiers." To me, Schubert's "Ave Maria" is a musical description of Michelangelo's Pieta. You don't need words.

Fifth Symphony of Shostakovich ... no need to receive this music as expressing any such specific category of struggle in its expressions of struggle.

I will have to give it a listen. When I first heard Chopin's "Romantic" I said "wow" to myself and looked at the jacket and saw that it was called "Romantic." Of course... But you have your pick of romances: woman, nation, idea,...

Overall, I trust that we agree, but at worst are only talking past each other, unless you are trying to make a more subtle point that I do not yet understand.

[syrakusos]

A teacher at the military war college stated clearly that our capitalist supply chain was one of the three primary reasons we defeated the Nazi nut jobs.

A...

And yet we have no songs about that...

[syrakusos]

First, if this belongs more in some other sub forum, I apologize. (Psychology? Music?)

Moving on: I come from a family that is entirely religious, to varying degrees. Consequently, I used to be rather religious too.

Has anyone else here had anything remotely like a similar experience?

Of course... here in Music, "Music as Religion"

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12486

[Reidy]

Music's special power is that it goes straight to the emotions, not mediated by concrete imagery as literature and the visual arts are. Any didactic message in the lyrics or in the program notes is even further from its artistic effect. (What about non-representational painting? someone will ask. A Randian answer I think would be that this is not the way our sense of sight works. It needs images of entities, not sense qualities, as our hearing does not.)

On top of this, the power of great art in any medium is that it can sell us, at least temporarily, on its sense of life. I don't really feel about the world the way Aeschylus did, but he's had me convinced when I've read him.

[Brant Gaede]

Music's special power is that it goes straight to the emotions, not mediated by concrete imagery as literature and the visual arts are. Any didactic message in the lyrics or in the program notes is even further from its artistic effect. (What about non-representational painting? someone will ask. A Randian answer I think would be that this is not the way our sense of sight works. It needs images of entities, not sense qualities, as our hearing does not.)

On top of this, the power of great art in any medium is that it can sell us, at least temporarily, on its sense of life. I don't really feel about the world the way Aeschylus did, but he's had me convinced when I've read him.

You create your own visuals in response to the music, at least classical--not so much opera*--and, for me, what I loosely think of as classical rock. One complaint against the early videos on MTV was they displaced one's own visualizations. Still, I miss them, especially when compared to what they devolved to. I recorded scores of them on VHS 20-30 years ago. Now they all seem available on YouTube.

--Brant

*but if you ever get the chance watch the old silent movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) with its opera scoring--I once clued Barbara Branden to turn on her TV for it, for which she thanked me--the lead actress put so much of herself into the role she never made another movie (director abuse): I've never seen anything on screen so powerful other than the restored Napoleon at Radio City with a live orchestra courtesy of two Coppolas

[moralist]

Technically, music itself cannot rationally be categorized as "religious." The lyrics that accompany a piece of music could legitimately be called "religious," but not the music.

J

I see that differently... music can indeed be transcendent or degenerate. The decent have their music, and the indecent have theirs.

Greg

[Jules Troy]

Not a religious theme but a powerful piece nonetheless.

?

[BaalChatzaf]

--Brant

*but if you ever get the chance watch the old silent movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) with its opera scoring--I once clued Barbara Branden to turn on her TV for it, for which she thanked me--the lead actress put so much of herself into the role she never made another movie (director abuse): I've never seen anything on screen so powerful other than the restored Napoleon at Radio City with a live orchestra courtesy of two Coppolas

I just got through watching it. What can I say? Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooeee. That was something!

The bastards burned a Saint.

[Jonathan]

Jonathan's claim that music is not inherently "religious" reflects a common ignorance based, ultimately, on the analytic-synthetic dichotomy and therefore the mind-body dichotomy.

That's a whole lot of uppity, Objectivy bluffing and blustering you're doing there, Ayn jr.!

His assertion is equivalent to that language "cannot rationally be categorized as 'religious'." Music, is, after all, another kind of language.

No, it's not a language. People often refer to music ~metaphorically~ as a language, but it is not literally a language. Perhaps that's how you've become confused?

Do you recall what Rand said about the need to treat music and musical tastes and judgments as a subjective matter, and why? No conceptual vocabulary. Therefore, not literally a language.

It is true that with lyric music - most of what we know today from popular radio and rock concerts, i.e., "songs" - music and poetry are intertwined. In many cultures (perhaps most; maybe "all") music and dance are so integrated. To say that music does not evoke thematic motion would be equally baseless.

Are you suggesting that "evoking thematic motion" is the essence and definition of "language"? Anything which does so qualifies in your opinion as a language? If so, then everything qualifies as a language. Name anything, and I will explain how it evokes thematic motion just as effectively as music does.

Music is highly contextual. Like language, it comes from the society in which it develops. Like language, also, it serves the individual as a cognitive tool. Tibetan religious music might not speak to you the same way as does a Christmas carole. You do not understand the language of the music is all.

You're confusing tastes, and their acquisition, with language and cognition. Music is like food, not language. If you were brought up on ham and turkey, you would probably have difficulty treating sushi as a traditional comfort food during holiday gatherings. Approaching either food or music "cognitively" won't help you to learn the alleged "language." They are tastes, not languages, and they are acquired through mere exposure and repetition. No lofty Objecti-cognitivizing is involved, nor is it applicable.

The kids were playing guitars and singing happily about being saved. Against that were Orthodox monks in black, chanting... Clearly, it is a matter of "the varieties of religious experience."

Isolate the music, and scientifically test it as a "language." Allow test subjects no access to "outside considerations." Eliminate double standards, self-reporting/self-grading, and confirmation biases. Do all of that rather tha bluffing and blustering. Then come back and tell me about music being a language.

J

[PDS]

A teacher at the military war college stated clearly that our capitalist supply chain was one of the three primary reasons we defeated the Nazi nut jobs.

A...

And yet we have no songs about that...

I agree with you: very little music has been devoted to the quartermasters of the world.

[moralist]

A teacher at the military war college stated clearly that our capitalist supply chain was one of the three primary reasons we defeated the Nazi nut jobs.

A...

And yet we have no songs about that...

I agree with you: very little music has been devoted to the quartermasters of the world.

This American Capitalist song is one of my favorites...

Greg

[Jules Troy]

A teacher at the military war college stated clearly that our capitalist supply chain was one of the three primary reasons we defeated the Nazi nut jobs.

A...

And yet we have no songs about that...

I agree with you: very little music has been devoted to the quartermasters of the world.

This American Capitalist song is one of my favorites...

Greg

[Jules Troy]

Sung by a Canadian! Eh!

[moralist]

Hey, you guys are Americans too... North Americans.

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

A teacher at the military war college stated clearly that our capitalist supply chain was one of the three primary reasons we defeated the Nazi nut jobs.

A...

And yet we have no songs about that...

I agree with you: very little music has been devoted to the quartermasters of the world.

logistics probably win more wars than Valor.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

Music motivates. My belief is that music is a "universal language. It involves stimulating your hard wired genetic imprinting. For example, close your eyes and just listen to this. Can you not be stimulated by the drive and pounding. Strategically, this psychotic drive was a strength and a weakness when properly exploited. A teacher at the military war college stated clearly that our capitalist supply chain was one of the three primary reasons we defeated the Nazi nut jobs.

...

If you did not have the Nazi context and just heard the music, it is powerful and hits you at a subconscious level.

... sort of like when I wake up at 3:00 am because the cat is hacking up grass ...

The Nazis thought of themselves as looters - Goering's Pluenderekonomie - but really they were just a bunch of moochers. The Panzerlied was really the Kepi Blanc of the French Foreign Legion.

And the thing is that you have to earn the white cap: it is only awarded after basic training. So, the song has a bit more harmony. In fact, that, too, is symbolic on several levels.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Do you recall what Rand said about the need to treat music and musical tastes and judgments as a subjective matter, and why?

Do you recall what Rand said? You once again appear not to remember - or is the misrepresenting deliberate?

No conceptual vocabulary. Therefore, not literally a language.

Do you mean to imply that any phenomenon for which we have a conceptual vocabulary is a language? Logical error if so.

And Rand thought that we one day will have a conceptual vocabulary of music - a mathematical one - which will provide an objective criterion of aesthetic judgment of music. (That was her opinion. It isn't mine.)

I agree that music isn't literally a language.

Ellen

[BaalChatzaf]

And Rand thought that we one day will have a conceptual vocabulary of music - a mathematical one - which will provide an objective criterion of aesthetic judgment of music. (That was her opinion. It isn't mine.)

Ellen

Believed when seen and heard.

[Jonathan]

Do you recall what Rand said about the need to treat music and musical tastes and judgments as a subjective matter, and why?

Do you recall what Rand said? You once again appear not to remember - or is the misrepresenting deliberate?

I haven't misunderstood or misrepresented Rand.

No conceptual vocabulary. Therefore, not literally a language.

Do you mean to imply that any phenomenon for which we have a conceptual vocabulary is a language?

No, I do not mean to imply that. Nothing that I said suggests that I was implying that. Likewise, if I were to say that MSK isn't a stalk of corn because he doesn't have a tassel, the meaning of my statement would be that all stalks of corn have tassels, not that anything which has a tassel is a stalk of corn.

And Rand thought that we one day will have a conceptual vocabulary of music - a mathematical one - which will provide an objective criterion of aesthetic judgment of music. (That was her opinion. It isn't mine.)

Her subjective wishes and hopes and predictions are not relevant to my point on this thread. Music does not have what Rand called a "conceptual vocabulary," and her wishing and hoping and predicting that one day it would have one does not make it true. And it especially doesn't make it true today. The Objectivish method of treating music as objectively valid today, or as calling it a language today, based on assertions of future discoveries of music's nature and means, are not rationally valid.

If, at some point in the future, a "conceptual vocabulary" of music is discovered and identified (it won't be, but for the sake of argument, let's pretend that that it will), then, and only then, will music become a phenomenon which can be categorized as a legitimate language, and as objectively measurable. Up until that point, music cannot properly be called a language, and it cannot be judged objectively. No instances of past production and consumption of music would become retroactive examples of language usage or of objective judgment.

I agree that music isn't literally a language.

Then we're largely on the same page.

J

[Peter]

Jonathan wrote:

If, at some point in the future, a "conceptual vocabulary" of music is discovered and identified (it won't be, but for the sake of argument, let's pretend that that it will), then, and only then, will music become a phenomenon which can be categorized as a legitimate language, and as objectively measurable.

end quote

In the Charley Brown video cartoons the adults have musical voices. "Wah wah, wah wah, wah" means "Stay out of the pumpkin patch, Linus."

[BaalChatzaf]

... sort of like when I wake up at 3:00 am because the cat is hacking up grass ...

The Nazis thought of themselves as looters - Goering's Pluenderekonomie - but really they were just a bunch of moochers. The Panzerlied was really the Kepi Blanc of the French Foreign Legion.

And the thing is that you have to earn the white cap: it is only awarded after basic training. So, the song has a bit more harmony. In fact, that, too, is symbolic on several levels.

I prefer this version:

By the way, the French Army has a fantastically good sale on their FAMAS rifle (see http://www.forgottenweapons.com/rifles/famas-f1/) The are in prime condition. Never been fired and only thrown down once in surrender. They also have a sale on French Army wristwatches with their hands set permanently to 11:05

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

They also have a sale on French Army wristwatches with their hands set permanently to 11:05

Ba'al Chatzaf

I never understood that line. What does it mean?

(Also, the tagline previous was supposed to be: "Never been fired and only dropped once.")

As for making fun of the French army, that seems to have originated with The Simpsons: "...cheese-eating surrender monkeys." Earlier references are harder to find. On the other hand: 'Ils ne passeront pas." Read about the Battle of Verdun before you joke about the French. As for the Foreign Legion, you would be similarly hard-pressed to find them dropping their weapons without firing.

The best tank in the world is just a way to kill or die.

On the other hand, a washing machine brings happiness.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine

... but again, no thrilling songs for that...