Michelle Marder Kamhi's "Who Says That's Art?"

[Roger Bissell]

While I'm on the subject, there is another misconception I don't want to let go uncorrected.

I do *not* say that there is more than one correct interpretation of the emotional content of a song.

I *do* say that there are very good reasons why some people do not observe and identify that emotional content.

First, distinguish between the object and the content of an emotion. Sadness or anger or fear or joy or serenity can be generated as content by *many* different things that one evaluates in the same general way. The *objects* of that evaluation are different, while the *content* of the evaluation - the particular emotion - is the same. So, even if someone picks up the same general emotional content as someone else in hearing a piece of music, they may "particularize" or "concretize" it much differently in their imagination. People might, for instance, think that the sounds of "fear" that they hear in the music are fear of a monster, fear of an attacker, fear of an intense storm, etc., and misconstrue these specific (imagined) objects of the emotion as the *content* of the emotion.

Secondly, and more importantly to this discussion, there is the issue of the content being overlaid and hidden or obscured by other things one is perceiving or by conditions in which one is perceiving. For instance, if there is a painting of Beethoven on the wall and someone is standing between you and the painting, thus blotting out the stimulus you would normally receive, and you are asked what is on the wall, the only right answer, if you could see it is: a painting of Beethoven. Since a person is in the way: the only right answer is: I can't see, there's a person in the way.

Apply this to the Stones' performance of their song "Paint it Black." The meaning of the song, which *they themselves* said it had, was being unable to stand happy, bright things because someone beloved has died. Abstracting from the *object* of the song's meaning: sadness.

So, if "Paint it Black" had been performed *as they conceived it,* there would only be one right answer to the question, what emotion do you hear in the music: sadness. Since the Stones were getting in the way of the meaning of their song by pumping up the tempo and rhythmic intensity in their public performances, the only right answer is: I can't hear it, because all I can notice is how energetically the music is being played and sung.

I can play any song ever written as a polka, but that doesn't make the meaning of that song "excitement," "enthusiasm," etc., any more than that's the meaning of "Paint it Black," just because that's how the Stones performed it. That's just the character of their *performance* of the song Some would say: perversion of the song, but since I'm an arranger and a jazz musician, I won't go that far. But I certainly do acknowledge when I'm paying homage to the song vs. when I'm deviating grossly from what it's about. The same thing is going on with the Stones' obscuring of the meaning of their song by bumping up the metronome and putting a heavier beat to it.

Now, to get the right answer about "Paint it Black," you don't have to zero in on *what* the sadness is about (the *object* of the emotion). You can supply it for yourself, in your imagination, if you like, and it may be difficult not to. But the nature of the emotion itself, the *content* of the emotion, is sadness - and the only way you're going to get the right answer is to hear it performed like they *composed* it - not like they decided to market it.

It takes a bit of effort, abstract hearing of the melody and harmony, to strip away the distraction of the after-thought of faster performance tempos, etc., and hear the tune for what it is (was intended). (Imagine asking someone to listen to a Weird Al performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and asking them what emotional content they think it has. To quote a lying, cheating trombone player: give me a break!) So, it's really not a fair test for people not used to doing that, to try to prove one's theory - or rather, as Jonathan did, to *disprove Rand's* theory - by asking them what they hear in a performance arrangement of a song, rather than the original, composed version.

I think Rand was right, that it *is* nearly universal for people to hear sadness in certain songs under the right perceiving conditions, absent things that obscure or distract - and it is, from my perspective, because of the very kinds of melodic motion, harmony, and rhythmic patterns used by the composer to express the emotions he had in mind, and that people are basically wired to hear those aspects as embodying certain emotional content. Also, the recorded examples Rand used were probably a *lot* closer to the composer's intentions, market be damned, so I find her conclusion a lot more credible than Jonathan's methodology for throwing it into question.

REB

[Brant Gaede]

I'm sorry, but the Stones "sadness" is what they put into their song. What comes out goes into someone else's head to the same or different effect. Even a song called "sad song" wouldn't change the possible of variabilities.

--Brant

but if you push it you can find almost 100% congruity

(scroll down for spoiler)

(scroll down for spoiler)

Most suicides come out of depression and most depression comes out of repressed victim anger. If you listen to these lyrics, especially to the end, it's obvious that what is being described is an anger issue. This song doesn't make me very sad for it's not about a death of my loved one, who went crazy on methamphetamine which gave the anger a major additional degree of separation, and I know where it's coming from. I found it interesting, intelligent and courageous, but the song is somewhat in over its head although with major involvement by psychologists--this isn't an amateur effort--which is the why of this paragraph.

I could follow with a real tear jerker song, but that wouldn't be appropriate now, but you need lyrics in most cases or some accompanying video to get that effect.

--Brant

[PDS]

I disagree, Brant. Less of Rand than any other art-thread I've been in anyway. There've been insightful thoughts from everyone. I find it a refreshing change.

Some has been derivative of her, some reminiscent, but a lot of independent thought too.

Rand's "esthetics" is actually an insignificant part of her hypothesis; it is in just a few pages of TRM on the subject of "style" in her Sense of Life chapter. She writes: "(The esthetic principles which apply to all art...are outside the scope of this discussion. I will mention only that such principles are defined by the science of esthetics--a task at which modern philosophy has failed dismally.)"

Little else.

I have never quite understood what you've always meant by "Rand's esthetics". In short, she didn't express any.

Rand's "esthetics" does deal with many legitimate esthetic issues. The fact that she didn't address the primary issue of aesthetics in regard to art -- how one would "evaluate the purely esthetic elements of the work, the technical mastery,"how one would establish standards and criteria by which to make judgments of aesthetic value -- doesn't mean that she "didn't express any" aesthetics.

Heh. Others "failed dismally"? Well at least they tried! They did much more than just look down their noses at others.

Actually, Rand kind of came close to addressing a little bit of the issue, but only as it pertained to literature. She didn't identify any objective standards for how to judge aesthetic value, but she did describe her own subjective preferences and explain why she had them.

J

Give Rand a break. She wrote The Fountainhead.

I missed the part in The Fountainhead in which Rand gave her exposition on how to objectively "evaluate the purely esthetic elements of the work, the technical mastery" of all art forms, let alone just architecture, and how one would establish objective standards and criteria by which to make judgments of aesthetic value! I had assumed that since she felt that such a complex philosophical exposition was beyond the scope of her non-fictional essays on aesthetics, then she certainly would have felt that it was completely inappropriate to be included in a work of fiction!

But I'm very happy to discover that your copy of The Fountainhead includes it! May I borrow your copy, or convince you to post the exposition here, since my copy of the book doesn't include it?

Thanks,

J

You're right. What was I thinking?

How the hell is it possible that the author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead didn't also take the time to cover every single nook and cranny of all art forms, including the standards for technical mastery of same? Don't they have MFA programs she could have taken in either NYC, or LA? In her spare time?

Talk about a life wasted.

[Selene]

But I'm very happy to discover that your copy of The Fountainhead includes it! May I borrow your copy, or convince you to post the exposition here, since my copy of the book doesn't include it?

Thanks,

J

You're right. What was I thinking?

How the hell is it possible that the author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead didn't also take the time to cover every single nook and cranny of all art forms, including the standards for technical master of same? Don't they have MFA programs she could have taken in either NYC, or LA? In her spare time?

Talk about a life wasted.

[Newberry]

"...there is the issue of the content being overlaid and hidden or obscured by other things one is perceiving or by conditions in which one is perceiving."

Excellent post Roger. And the quote names the complexity of making and appreciating art. Reminds me of a story about Cole Porter praising Sarah Vaughn on what a great composer she is. She had been singing some of his songs, which were unrecognizable.

[Brant Gaede]

"A life wasted."

Lol.

[Newberry]

I have multiple criticisms of Rand's "sense of life" idea - as she explicates it, I don't think it exists.

Ellen

Go on! I am curious. Totally out of the blue I am guessing you might relate to sense of style rather than sense of life. I am reading Lessing's Prisons We Choose to Live Inside. Thanks for the hat tip. Her writing (non-fiction) is a pleasure to experience. It has a nice ebb and flow as she gently leads you through observations and ideas; some ideas and thoughts that are quite brutal - like one of the reasons for war is that people enjoy it.

Michael,

I made multiple posts about the "sense of life" issue on the "Romanticist Art..." thread. See post #295 for the start of the discussion.

I'm glad that you've found the "hat tip" re Lessing worth pursuing.

Ellen

If one saw, in real life, a beautiful woman wearing an exquisite evening gown, with a cold sore on her lips, the blemish would mean nothing but a minor affliction, and one would ignore it.

But a painting of such a woman would be a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values and one would experience a feeling of immense disgust and indignation at the artist. (There are also those who would feel something like approval and who would belong to the same moral category as the artist.)

The emotional response to that painting would be instantaneous, much faster than the viewers mind could identify all the reasons involved. The psychological mechanism which produces that response (and which produced the painting) is a mans sense of life.

--Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

And?

I've objected to that passage elsewhere, since how could one know how one would react to a painting unless one saw the painting?

Ellen

I made multiple posts about the "sense of life" issue on the "Romanticist Art..." thread. See post #295 for the start of the discussion.

Ellen

I followed up on several of your posts over about 5 or 6 pages from R. Art #295. They didn't resonate with me. I think one's sense of life is cultivated.

[Brant Gaede]

Sense of life: I am or am not depressed. I am or am not optimistic. I am or am not happy. In 1960 Ayn Rand was grossly depressed. I saw her inscription made then--a whole paragraph--in a young lady's copy of The Fountainhead and it was absolutely from a depressive. Maybe for Rand "sense of life" was one way of fighting it off and dealing with it retrospectively without mentioning depression with its cultural stigma.

I don't know.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

But back to that orchestra playing the Stones medley, including "Paint it Black." I find that the arrangement of a song greatly characterizes how people remember it, and I try to abstract the melody away from whatever performances of it I've heard, including by the writer(s), so that I can get a better sense of what it means - what it means, in itself, apart from how someone is performing it.

Hahahaha! What in the hell are you talking about? The idea in experiencing a work of art isn't to selectively and arbitrarily ignore or change any of its elements! A work of art is what it is. It is the final product that was produced and presented to the public. It is not some earlier, unfinished, initial idea which eventually led to the final product. The final product is not a mere single "performance" version which varies from what you arbitrary imagine to be the True version. There is no "apart from how someone is performing it." We judge actual individual works of art as they are performed, not some arbitrary, non-existent, Bissellian Ideal Form versions.

There is no arrangement which is the inherent or "in-itself" arrangement. Abstracting away the melody alone, or any other single element, will not give you the music's real, True meaning. The music is a whole, it is all of its elements combined, not just the ones that you arbitrarily and subjectively prefer to focus on.

But the different arrangements - and the difference they make. Anyone who is familiar with "Bohemian Rhapsody" knows what an intense, weird piece it is. Dark, brooding. "Mama, I just killed a man...put a bullet to his head" You get the idea. Invest a little time for comparative study on this tune, and how the arrangement can have a huge impact on what meaning people get from it.

Indeed! Slight differences in arrangements can have a huge impact on how people interpret a piece of music, and those differences are not to be arbitrarily disregarded. The performance that one listens to is what is to be judged, not some imagined, non-existent, original, True, Ideal Form version which one did not hear performed!

So, that brings me back once again to "Paint it Black." Jonathan has already falsely accused me of being a liar twice in one post for pretending not to know the lyrics when I did my analysis and write my comments, and for pretending not to know the title of the song.

The truth is that I did *not* know the lyrics until *after* I wrote my analysis.

You knew in advance that the song's lyrics were about "a darkened heart," because I told you so in post 1080 when I introduced the song to this thread for your consideration! But you're saying that neither my characterization of the lyrics, nor the title, influenced your interpretation, or your need to try to save face by claiming that you analyzed a non-existent Ideal Form version of the music rather than the version that the Stones actually created?!!!

Wow, you should take the time to start thinking ahead a few steps before you post. You're really turning your theory into a major, amateurish mess.

*Then* I looked up the lyrics and found that I was approximately correct - and instead of proudly proclaiming my accuracy in predicting the probable meaning of the song's lyrics, I thought I'd give Jonathan a chance to acknowledge that I had actually made a correct guess. Instead, of course, he had to accuse me of cheating and lying.

Also, the truth is that I did *not* pretend not to know the title.

You pretended to have not been influenced by the title.

I mentioned the title and said "interesting." That was supposed to be a *segue* from the previous comments to focusing on "Paint it Black." That, too, escaped Jonathan. All he could conceive is that I'm lying and cheating in order to save face.

Actually, you're not saving face, but demonstrating what a failure your method of interpretation is due to its irrationality and arbitrariness, and also, due to its being set up to be unfalsifiable (more on that in my next post to you).

Apparently *his* way of saving face is to distract everyone from his iniquities by hurling as much crap as he can at *other* people's faces. Way to make a positive contribution. Eric Holder is probably trying to get in touch with him, as we speak. Holder tries to shut down police departments. Jonathan tries to shut down productive intellectual discussions. Same methodology, same purpose.

I haven't tried to shut anything down. Quite the opposite. I've been issuing significant, substantive challenges left and right, and inviting you to address them. You've chosen to evade most them. I think the problem is that you're not used to real-world criticism. You're used to being kid-gloved by Objectivish friends who have minor disagreements with you, but who generally share your mistaken Randian premises. I've seen the same thing quite often before. Objectivish-types feel especially vulnerable and attacked when, after spending a few years preaching their ideas to their likeminded pals without facing any significant objections, they develop an exaggerated opinion of their own importance and brilliance, but then someone like me comes along and points out very elementary errors that they overlooked and very obvious criticisms that they hadn't thought of. I think it's probably a very common way that people try to handle the embarrassment of being shown to have thought things through pretty poorly when they imagined that they were brilliant sages: "Boo-frickety-hoo, I'm being viciously attacked, and my opponent is trying to shut down the intellectual discussion by asking me all sorts of questions that I never thought of before and which I can't answer! Whaaaa! I want my mommy!"

Well, anyway, here's another chance for Jonathan to do what he does so well. I just now (5 pm CDT March 12 2015), in the course of writing this post, accessed this for the first time on songfacts.com. I'm no Leonard Meyer or Ayn Rand, but I sure do feel like I've come out from under a cloud of Jonathan's crazy-making and been confirmed in what I was saying about the song.

You whine more than anyone I've ever met.

Quote

This is written from the viewpoint of a person who is depressed; he wants everything to turn black to match his mood. There was no specific inspiration for the lyrics. When asked at the time why he wrote a song about death, Mick Jagger replied: "I don't know. It's been done before. It's not an original thought by any means. It all depends on how you do it." The song seems to be about a lover who died.

Oh, it's a song about a person who is *depressed*? Hmmm. Why don't we hear that in the Stones' *performance,* then? Could it be that with their upbeat public version...?

The "public" version? Hahahaha! So, you're saying that when you listened to the tubevid that I posted of the "public" version minus the lyrics, you decided instead to analyze and judge the True and initial and "private" version that Mick and Keith invited you to listen to at their studio? They're your close personal pals, and when they saw that we were discussing their song on OL, they thought that you should judge the secret real version of it, and not the mere "public" version? Heh.

Playing it upbeat, deliberately deviating from the original meaning and intent of the song, so it would be more appealing to their audience - not so much of a downer? Naw, couldn't be...I mean, the Stones are all about good times, high energy, exuberance, party on, "Fuck yeah." So, it couldn't be a song about death and loss of love.

The original meaning and intent are irrelevant to judging the art. The final work that is presented is what is to be judged, not some earlier, unfinished incarnation of it. We don't judge a novel by guessing what the author's initial vision of it might have been. We don't arbitrarily disregard the alterations and improvements that she made during the writing of the novel. We don't ignore the discoveries and additional ideas and devices that occurred to her at any time during the process of creating. There isn't an arbitrary cutoff point at which to declare that the work of art was in its True, Ideal Form state, and after which its creator was just meddling with it and creating a mere "public" version.

Except it is. And they just threw it under the bus in order to sustain the party atmosphere and satiate their fans. Here's how it happened:

Quote

The Rolling Stones wrote this as a much slower, conventional soul song. When Bill Wyman began fooling around on the organ during the session doing a takeoff of their

original as a spoof of music played at Jewish weddings. Co-manager Eric Easton (who had been an organist), and Charlie Watts joined in and improvised a double-time

drum pattern, echoing the rhythm heard in some Middle Eastern dances. This new more upbeat rhythm was then used in the recording as a counterpoint to the morbid

lyrics.

Whoa, dude - seriously? Much slower - soul song?

Um, yeah, but we were not analyzing a much slower song, were we? We were discussing the actual song that was produced, distributed and sold to people. We were talking about a song that we listened to and experienced, not one that we didn't listen to or experience. We were discussing a song with specific musical elements, not one which you've arbitrarily decided to remove elements from.

Rhythm is an expressive element of music, just as chords and melodies are. Change it, and it changes how people interpret the entire piece. The same is true of any other element. Change the timbe, attack, sustain, chords, melody, or anything else, and the effect is different.

You seem to believe that certain elements always "mean" the same thing, regardless of which other elements they are paired with. Not true. A melody and chord progression which people might interpret as being morose when played on violins at a slow tempo can become mysteriously adventurous to the same people when played on trumpets at a faster tempo. Listeners are to experience and judge the piece that they listened to, they're not to imagine it performed differently and then claim that the piece that they actually listened to had the characteristics of the performance that they only imagined. That would be insane -- it would be the inability to distinguish between what exists out there in reality from what is actually only in one's mind!

Well, knock me over with a feather!! Spoofing Jewish wedding music? Emulating Middle Eastern dance rhythms? You're kidding, right? OMG, they *did* Weird-Al their own song. Looks like he isn't the only one who made millions of dollars turning serious songs into polkas. If that's not "ironic," perhaps someone can come up with a better, and more clarifying, alternative than "contrast." (Coming soon: the Rolling Stones and Weird Al team up to do Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead." Can't wait for that.)

And last but not quite, my comment that the Stones' live performance needed less gitar, more sitar. I love this:

Quote

Stones guitarist Brian Jones played the sitar on this. He made good television by balancing the instrument on his lap during appearances. Keith Richards: "We were in Fiji for about three days. They make sitars and all sorts of Indian stuff. Sitars are made out of watermelons or pumpkins or something smashed so they go hard. They're very brittle and you have to be careful how you handle them. We had the sitars, we thought we'd try them out in the studio. To get the right sound on 'Paint It Black' we found the sitar fitted perfectly. We tried a guitar but you can't bend it enough."

As Jonathan would say, "Heh."

And the Bissellian Ideal Form version of the song might have no guitar, sitar or drums, but instead might consist of only, say, cellos and bagpipes, and if we were to actually hear that version of the song (which currently only exists in Roger's head), then, and only then, we might agree with Roger than Paint It Black's music is morose. We might also have different opinions of Vermeer's paintings if we were instructed to judge the imaginary Bissellian Ideal Form versions of them rather than the real ones. Are we to arbitrarily disregard the effects of Vermeer's warm color palette, or of his clean, orderly, Mondrian-esque compositions in order to arrive at the True versions of his art rather than the mere "performance" versions that were presented to the public? Who knows, other than Roger? No one can guess which elements in works of art we are to disregard in order to arrive at their True, "objective," Ideal Form versions.

J

[Jonathan]

I disagree, Brant. Less of Rand than any other art-thread I've been in anyway. There've been insightful thoughts from everyone. I find it a refreshing change.

Some has been derivative of her, some reminiscent, but a lot of independent thought too.

Rand's "esthetics" is actually an insignificant part of her hypothesis; it is in just a few pages of TRM on the subject of "style" in her Sense of Life chapter. She writes: "(The esthetic principles which apply to all art...are outside the scope of this discussion. I will mention only that such principles are defined by the science of esthetics--a task at which modern philosophy has failed dismally.)"

Little else.

I have never quite understood what you've always meant by "Rand's esthetics". In short, she didn't express any.

Rand's "esthetics" does deal with many legitimate esthetic issues. The fact that she didn't address the primary issue of aesthetics in regard to art -- how one would "evaluate the purely esthetic elements of the work, the technical mastery,"how one would establish standards and criteria by which to make judgments of aesthetic value -- doesn't mean that she "didn't express any" aesthetics.

Heh. Others "failed dismally"? Well at least they tried! They did much more than just look down their noses at others.

Actually, Rand kind of came close to addressing a little bit of the issue, but only as it pertained to literature. She didn't identify any objective standards for how to judge aesthetic value, but she did describe her own subjective preferences and explain why she had them.

J

Give Rand a break. She wrote The Fountainhead.

I missed the part in The Fountainhead in which Rand gave her exposition on how to objectively "evaluate the purely esthetic elements of the work, the technical mastery" of all art forms, let alone just architecture, and how one would establish objective standards and criteria by which to make judgments of aesthetic value! I had assumed that since she felt that such a complex philosophical exposition was beyond the scope of her non-fictional essays on aesthetics, then she certainly would have felt that it was completely inappropriate to be included in a work of fiction!

But I'm very happy to discover that your copy of The Fountainhead includes it! May I borrow your copy, or convince you to post the exposition here, since my copy of the book doesn't include it?

Thanks,

J

You're right. What was I thinking?

How the hell is it possible that the author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead didn't also take the time to cover every single nook and cranny of all art forms, including the standards for technical mastery of same? Don't they have MFA programs she could have taken in either NYC, or LA? In her spare time?

Talk about a life wasted.

Hey, she didn't have to present herself as a philosopher of aesthetics, and she definitely didn't have to bluff and bluster that others' serious inquiries into the nature of aesthetics were far beneath what she would come up with. Apparently it wasn't enough for her to have authored some fabulous works of art. She also needed to pose as being superior to those who had accomplished what she hadn't.

J

[Jonathan]

Btw, Roger, it's "Jagger," not "Jaggar."

J

[Jonathan]

While I'm on the subject, there is another misconception I don't want to let go uncorrected.

I do *not* say that there is more than one correct interpretation of the emotional content of a song.

Prove that there is only one correct interpretation of the emotional content of a song.

There are many different elements to a piece of music. Prove that people don't subjectively place more importance on some elements rather than others. After all, that's what you do. You do it to the point of disregarding certain elements and altering the song!

I *do* say that there are very good reasons why some people do not observe and identify that emotional content.

In other words, you're saying that your theory is unfalsifiable. When people have different interpretations than you do, they must be wrong! Roger's method of interpreting emotional content must be correct, and therefore if everyone on the planet but Roger interpreted a song as having the same emotional content, they would all be wrong because they just don't know how to do it right where Roger does! Their emotional experiences would not be legitimate. They would have felt the wrong emotions!

Secondly, and more importantly to this discussion, there is the issue of the content being overlaid and hidden or obscured by other things one is perceiving or by conditions in which one is perceiving. For instance, if there is a painting of Beethoven on the wall and someone is standing between you and the painting, thus blotting out the stimulus you would normally receive...

There is no "stimulus you would normally receive" in a work of art. The work of art is what it is. There is no Bissellian True, Ideal Form of it.

Apply this to the Stones' performance of their song "Paint it Black." The meaning of the song, which *they themselves* said it had, was being unable to stand happy, bright things because someone beloved has died. Abstracting from the *object* of the song's meaning: sadness.

Notce that they did not say that they're song's music has that meaning. They said that an earlier version of it had that meaning.

So, if "Paint it Black" had been performed *as they conceived it,* there would only be one right answer to the question, what emotion do you hear in the music: sadness.

That's not necessarily true. Many people probably would interpret the "conceived version" as being sad, but others would not, depending on which elements of the music they subjectively focused on. And even if most people did respond to this one version of this one song in the same way, it doesn't logically follow that most people would hear the same emotion in every other song. Some songs elicit the same responses in most people, where many other songs do not.

Since the Stones were getting in the way of the meaning of their song by pumping up the tempo and rhythmic intensity in their public performances, the only right answer is: I can't hear it, because all I can notice is how energetically the music is being played and sung.

False. The right answer is that changing any elements in a work of art changes how the elements interact to form a whole. The allegedly True, Ideal Form that your proposing isn't being drowned out by changes in the song's elements. That True, Ideal Form was never there. Rand wasn't "getting in the way" of The Fountainhead by eliminating Vesta Dunning and other things which she initially intended to include. That initial version of The Fountainhead is not the True, Idea Form of it. The book that she wrote is the work of art, not the book that she first wanted to write but didn't.

I can play any song ever written as a polka, but that doesn't make the meaning of that song "excitement," "enthusiasm," etc., any more than that's the meaning of "Paint it Black," just because that's how the Stones performed it.

Actually, yes it does mean that the song can legitimately be interpreted as containing excitement, enthusiasm, adventure, etc. Those interpretations are based on the real effects that the actual song contained, not on the non-existent song that you subjectively prefer in which you've arbitrarily rejected the effects of tempo on the other elements of music.

That's just the character of their *performance* of the song Some would say: perversion of the song, but since I'm an arranger and a jazz musician, I won't go that far.

Their performance of the song is the song. That's what we are to judge, not some non-existent initial intention which was never produced.

But I certainly do acknowledge when I'm paying homage to the song vs. when I'm deviating grossly from what it's about. The same thing is going on with the Stones' obscuring of the meaning of their song by bumping up the metronome and putting a heavier beat to it.

They're not "obscuring the meaning," but changing it! When the elements of any work of art are changed, they no longer ad up to the original meaning. They become "about" something else.

Now, to get the right answer about "Paint it Black," you don't have to zero in on *what* the sadness is about (the *object* of the emotion). You can supply it for yourself, in your imagination, if you like, and it may be difficult not to. But the nature of the emotion itself, the *content* of the emotion, is sadness - and the only way you're going to get the right answer is to hear it performed like they *composed* it - not like they decided to market it.

The initial intended sadness isn't in the music of Paint it Black. It was modified into something else by changing the tempo. In this case, adding a faster tempo to what most might interpret as a sad tune altered the sadness into something like exotic adventure, in the same way that adding cyan to yellow makes green -- when an artist intentionally adds cyan to something which was initially yellow, the idea would be to judge the art based on the effect that the green has on us, not to judge it based on the fact that it was initially yellow and the arbitrary belief that it should therefore still be yellow.

Again, the artists' initial intentions are not relevant. We don't judge Rand's novels based on imagining how she initially intended to write them versus how she eventually decided to "market" them.

It takes a bit of effort, abstract hearing of the melody and harmony, to strip away the distraction of the after-thought of faster performance tempos, etc., and hear the tune for what it is (was intended). (Imagine asking someone to listen to a Weird Al performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and asking them what emotional content they think it has. To quote a lying, cheating trombone player: give me a break!) So, it's really not a fair test for people not used to doing that, to try to prove one's theory - or rather, as Jonathan did, to *disprove Rand's* theory - by asking them what they hear in a performance arrangement of a song, rather than the original, composed version.

Hahaha! There's the pompous poseur that I'm used to! I knew that the cautious, tentative Roger wouldn't stick around for very long.

What I'm wondering now is how we deal with the massive complexity of Roger's mess of a method of interpreting not actual works of art, but True, Ideal Form intended ones. What is the objectively proper tempo for all music, and how did Roger arrive at that tempo? Any piece of music can be changed significantly with a change of tempo, so which speed is the universally right one to use in eliminating what Roger thinks are the false effects of improper tempo? How much research do we have to do about artists' initial intentions versus the final product that they produced? How do we objectively arrive at the True, Ideal Form of their creation? What is the objective cutoff point of their creativity -- at what point in time are the ideas no longer legitimate additions and alterations to the work but are to be considered impairments to the initial vision of the work?

I think Rand was right, that it *is* nearly universal for people to hear sadness in certain songs under the right perceiving conditions...

That wasn't Rand's position. Her position was that almost all people identify the same general emotion in all songs, not just in "certain songs." Her attempt to make the subjective nature of music "objective" required the fantasy that all music evokes the same emotions in almost all people. The fact of reality is that it doesn't.

Anyway, as I said earlier, your position is set up to be unfalsifiable. When we see clear evidence of people identifying different emotions in the same piece, your response is to arbitrarily deny their responses, to claim that they are wrong, and then to say that the proper way for them to judge the music would have been to judge an earlier version of it that doesn't exist but was only a temporary version during the creative process. You just arbitrarily ignore evidence or declare it invalid because it doesn't confirm your theory. You accept no possible conditions or outcomes as disproving your theory. Therefore it is pseudoscience, and nothing resembling an actual Objectivist/Objectivish, rational approach.

J

[BaalChatzaf]

I think Rand was right, that it *is* nearly universal for people to hear sadness in certain songs under the right perceiving conditions, absent things that obscure or distract - and it is, from my perspective, because of the very kinds of melodic motion, harmony, and rhythmic patterns used by the composer to express the emotions he had in mind, and that people are basically wired to hear those aspects as embodying certain emotional content. Also, the recorded examples Rand used were probably a *lot* closer to the composer's intentions, market be damned, so I find her conclusion a lot more credible than Jonathan's methodology for throwing it into question.

REB

No such thing a "nearly universal" That is an absolute situation. Either something is true for all x or it is not. No intermediate positions logically exist.

And how can a listener possibly know if he/she had the same emotions as the composer? Emotions are private to each person. We are not endowed with mental telepathy. And external manifestation of emotions do not count. They can be faked or simulated. It is called acting or lying or deceiving. One human cannot know what another human thinks or feels. One human can see the public actions of another human including talking, laughing, crying or whatever public display can be managed. We only know what we see, hear, feel (as in touch), taste or smell. Everything else is supposition and inference.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anthony]

We listen to the finished product, and that must be all we know and should know. Regardless of the composer's intentions and his mastery, or not.

BUT, any decent composer is well aware as he's pre-conceiving, writing and playing sections of the piece for himself, that certain chords, structures, instruments... and all the rest, in certain combinations DO have (and have had) a particular emotional effect. This in itself is telling. If not proof, it indicates music is very much emotionally universal, not arbitrary.

[Brant Gaede]

I think Rand was right, that it *is* nearly universal for people to hear sadness in certain songs under the right perceiving conditions, absent things that obscure or distract - and it is, from my perspective, because of the very kinds of melodic motion, harmony, and rhythmic patterns used by the composer to express the emotions he had in mind, and that people are basically wired to hear those aspects as embodying certain emotional content. Also, the recorded examples Rand used were probably a *lot* closer to the composer's intentions, market be damned, so I find her conclusion a lot more credible than Jonathan's methodology for throwing it into question.

REB

No such thing a "nearly universal" That is an absolute situation. Either something is true for all x or it is not. No intermediate positions logically exist.

And how can a listener possibly know if he/she had the same emotions as the composer? Emotions are private to each person. We are not endowed with mental telepathy. And external manifestation of emotions do not count. They can be faked or simulated. It is called acting or lying or deceiving. One human cannot know what another human thinks or feels. One human can see the public actions of another human including talking, laughing, crying or whatever public display can be managed. We only know what we see, hear, feel (as in touch), taste or smell. Everything else is supposition and inference.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Thank you for this necessary simplicity, Ba'al.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

We listen to the finished product, and that must be all we know and should know. Regardless of the composer's intentions and his mastery, or not.

BUT, any decent composer is well aware as he's writing and playing sections of the piece for himself, that certain chords, structures, instruments... and all the rest, DO have (and have had) a particular emotional effect. This in itself is telling. If not proof, it indicates music is very much emotionally universal, not arbitrary.

No one has claimed that music is "arbitrary." No one has presented the falsely limited alternative that music must either be emotionally universal or arbitrary.

The obvious mistake that Objectivish-types make is that of inappropriately extrapolating from a few personal observations. They happen to experience a very specific emotion in a piece of music which uses emotional/musical cliches which they've been repeatedly culturally conditioned to interpret as conveying that specific emotion, and they discover that others whom they know report experiencing the exact same emotion, and then they make the illogical leap to the unwarranted belief that ALL music, including that which is not an emotionally conditioned cliche, also effects people in exactly the same way, and not just the few people that they unscientifically sampled, but ALL people.

That's not the practicing of the Objectivish virtues of logic and reason. That's needing to believe a fantasy. That's simply wishing something to be true.

J

[Jonathan]

I think that Roger's primary error with his analyses of the Stones tunes may have been influenced by the typical Objectivish belief in essential properties. He seems to believe that chord structure and melody are the essential properties of music, and that they are therefore the ONLY properties that one has to "read" while interpreting a piece of music.

It's kind of like if he were to identify molecular structure as the essential property of substances, and arbitrarily ignore the effects and impact of all other properties. If I were to present him with samples of steel and cookie dough, he wouldn't actually observe the samples, but would instead refer to his theory of their essential properties, and would therefore tell me that the steal was hard and the cookie dough was soft. Well, the samples that I provided were heated beyond the temperature the Roger arbitrarily imposes as being the normal and True, Ideal temperature. The steel is actually liquid, and the cookie dough is baked hard. I've introduced the element of higher temperature, and it has had the effect of significantly changing the "essential properties" that Roger limits himself to considering, just as the Stones introduced the element of faster tempo, which significantly changed the effects of the chord structure and melody. Roger would then tell me that the steel SHOULD be interpreted as being hard and the cookie dough SHOULD be interpreted as soft because temperature isn't an essential property, and therefore the reality of the steel's liquidity and the cookie dough's hardness is just a public performance version and not how the steel and cookie dough should really be.

Really messed up thinking.

J

[anthony]

We listen to the finished product, and that must be all we know and should know. Regardless of the composer's intentions and his mastery, or not.

BUT, any decent composer is well aware as he's writing and playing sections of the piece for himself, that certain chords, structures, instruments... and all the rest, DO have (and have had) a particular emotional effect. This in itself is telling. If not proof, it indicates music is very much emotionally universal, not arbitrary.

No one has claimed that music is "arbitrary." No one has presented the falsely limited alternative that music must either be emotionally universal or arbitrary.

The obvious mistake that Objectivish-types make is that of inappropriately extrapolating from a few personal observations. They happen to experience a very specific emotion in a piece of music which uses emotional/musical cliches which they've been repeatedly culturally conditioned to interpret as conveying that specific emotion, and they discover that others whom they know report experiencing the exact same emotion, and then they make the illogical leap to the unwarranted belief that ALL music, including that which is not an emotionally conditioned cliche, also effects people in exactly the same way, and not just the few people that they unscientifically sampled, but ALL people.

That's not the practicing of the Objectivish virtues of logic and reason. That's needing to believe a fantasy. That's simply wishing something to be true.

J

And yet. Composers keep on composing and the public keeps buying and listening. There is a concurrence here. One ~could~ see it as a mutually beneficial 'feed back' between the two - perhaps over hundreds of years and millions of samples, a 'vocabulary' of emotional intention and response has emerged. Then each young newcomer to music 'learns' it. You don't only have to "extrapolate" from personal observations. (Which I have too).

I suggest this only as one possibility.

[Jonathan]

We listen to the finished product, and that must be all we know and should know. Regardless of the composer's intentions and his mastery, or not.

BUT, any decent composer is well aware as he's writing and playing sections of the piece for himself, that certain chords, structures, instruments... and all the rest, DO have (and have had) a particular emotional effect. This in itself is telling. If not proof, it indicates music is very much emotionally universal, not arbitrary.

No one has claimed that music is "arbitrary." No one has presented the falsely limited alternative that music must either be emotionally universal or arbitrary.

The obvious mistake that Objectivish-types make is that of inappropriately extrapolating from a few personal observations. They happen to experience a very specific emotion in a piece of music which uses emotional/musical cliches which they've been repeatedly culturally conditioned to interpret as conveying that specific emotion, and they discover that others whom they know report experiencing the exact same emotion, and then they make the illogical leap to the unwarranted belief that ALL music, including that which is not an emotionally conditioned cliche, also effects people in exactly the same way, and not just the few people that they unscientifically sampled, but ALL people.

That's not the practicing of the Objectivish virtues of logic and reason. That's needing to believe a fantasy. That's simply wishing something to be true.

J

And yet. Composers keep on composing and the public keeps buying and listening. There is a concurrence here. One ~could~ see it as a mutually beneficial 'feed back' between the two - perhaps over hundreds of years and millions of samples, a 'vocabulary' of emotional intention and response has emerged. Then each young newcomer to music 'learns' it. You don't only have to "extrapolate" from personal observations. (Which I have too).

I suggest this only as one possibility.

In the arts, the actual history has been that the newcomers learn of the cliches of the past generations and reject them in favor of their own new means of expression, which are first seen as very shocking, disruptive, disturbing, vulgar, etc., but eventually become a part of the established tastes and acceptable norms, and then they start to become cliches and the next generation overthrows them. All art is a mix of culturally conditioned cliches, new discoveries and inventions, subjective preferences, vague hunches and vibes, and lots of other stuff. It's never going to be the nest, tidy, objective package that Rand and her followers fantasize it to be. That's not the reality of art's nature.

The really sad thing is that, in carelessly dabbling in the philosophy of aesthetics, Rand ended up with a theory which is in opposition to the attitude of Howard Roark. The demand of "objective" intelligibility in the arts is to side with established, conditioned, cultural cliches, and to oppose individual, innovative expression.

J

[Brant Gaede]

We listen to the finished product, and that must be all we know and should know. Regardless of the composer's intentions and his mastery, or not.

BUT, any decent composer is well aware as he's writing and playing sections of the piece for himself, that certain chords, structures, instruments... and all the rest, DO have (and have had) a particular emotional effect. This in itself is telling. If not proof, it indicates music is very much emotionally universal, not arbitrary.

What is "universal" is all in the composer's head. Watch the musical Oliver. The song that starts right after the intermission makes me cry when Mark Lester sings. I doubt if that's a universal though it may be common. I'd put up the vid, but it won't work as illustration unless you watched the movie to that point or had previously watched it. There is something deep in my psychological history that was triggered, but why should I or anyone think it's any universal even if the emotion per se is?

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Over 40 years ago I made the deliberate and conscious decision to stop studying the Objectivist catechism because I finally recognized it to be such. That's why I'm seemingly frequently on the side of bad-manners' Jonathan in these discussions. Bottom line, I tend to find him grating, but bottom line, it doesn't really matter to me. Sin loi.

--Brant

the basic principle of OL is, What Is It?

[william.scherk]

William, thanks for sharing those links. I really liked the Moldava orchestra playing the Stones medley.

Me too. Speaking of links, you omitted a link to the Song Facts page you quoted from. I kind of see why -- none of the statements (however true) are sourced.

To my mind -- and from my experience as a songwriter, singer, and performer in several bands -- it is part of the creative process to add to or subtract or compress or augment or rejig elements. It's part of the confection process to tinker with the song as presented to the band. It's not readily apparent to me that the creator (in this case me and my songwriting partners) had a pure song in mind that did not survive collaboration, that something was wounded in the process, that the creative alchemy of the band-with-song-idea renders some suspect product. This just isn't my experience in writing songs with my collaborators.

-- this isn't to say that that first idea (melody, lyric, rhythm, hook, emotional valence, etc) is not a valuable thing, In my experience there is always something in the initial musical notion that appeals enough to be worked on (in other words, if my song idea wasn't taken up, it did not get arranged and performed or recorded, because it wasn't good enough or appealing enough to the band's sensibility in the first place).

If Roger, me, and a keyboard dished up a song idea, it may well be that we both get excited about an essential bit or hook to the idea, and that both of us work to draw out that essence, intensify it, and render it properly present and accounted for in our preliminary arrangement. It could be that when we brought our worked-up idea to the rest of our band we insisted on retaining or emphasizing the "ideal" hooks and other elements we cherished. It might well be that the 'essence' of the confection is agreed upon by all participants, and that they happily fall in place with our preferred initial concept.

In any case, the Rolling Stones chose to create the recording that we know as Paint it Black. They did not publish the earlier, possibly more proper version of the song -- so we don't have actual access to it, it is not concrete. It may be fun and interesting to chart the imaginary creative process of the band, to consider the initial 'intent' of the song as it developed into the version we know -- but Roger, how can we reliably gain access to that initial idea or arrangement? How can we warrant that the ideal is more worthy than the 'finished product'?

Let's say, however, that you are entirely correct, that the song we have as performed by the Stones is not 'the song' as originally and properly conceived. Let's also say that your computation of the song's emotion does also spit out a correct summary: Sad.

If all this is true, what could this mean about 'sad' songs, songs of lamentation, songs of mourning, songs of 'down' emotions? Can we conclude something about such songs? Are they lesser in value to 'happy' songs to the listener or fan? What is the larger calculus that should be put in play?

Oh, it's a song about a person who is *depressed*? Hmmm. Why don't we hear that in the Stones' *performance,* then? Could it be that with their upbeat public version, they are Weird Al-ing their own song? Playing it upbeat, deliberately deviating from the original meaning and intent of the song, so it would be more appealing to their audience - not so much of a downer? Naw, couldn't be...I mean, the Stones are all about good times, high energy, exuberance, party on, "Fuck yeah." So, it couldn't be a song about death and loss of love.

Let's put aside the sarcasm and accept the paragraph's conclusion: the song is about death and loss of love. Let's stipulate that an overwhelming majority of listeners would answer a forced choice question about the song's meaning with the word "sad." There we are with a sad song from the Rolling Stones, a very popular sad song.

I think the interesting question to then try to answer is 'why is this song so appealing to listeners and fans? Why has it endured? Why is it a favourite of symphonies, high school bands, ukulele orchestras? Why, indeed, do human beings enjoy sad songs ... ?

-- here, I suggest we ought give way to those who do enjoy the song (in its recorded form), we should pay attention to the gestalt response of those listeners. As with Jonathan's quick survey of some of his contacts, emotional readings do actually vary, and individual interpretations will not necessarily overlap with Roger's findings.

So, if "Paint it Black" had been performed *as they conceived it,* there would only be one right answer to the question, what emotion do you hear in the music: sadness. Since the Stones were getting in the way of the meaning of their song by pumping up the tempo and rhythmic intensity in their public performances, the only right answer is: I can't hear it, because all I can notice is how energetically the music is being played and sung.

"There would only be one right answer" if the Stones hadn't thrown their 'concept' under the bus and given us a travesty of 'das ding in sich'? The only (additional) right answer is 'I can't hear "sadness" 'cause the Stones fucked up their own song'?

I can play any song ever written as a polka, but that doesn't make the meaning of that song "excitement," "enthusiasm," etc., any more than that's the meaning of "Paint it Black," just because that's how the Stones performed it. That's just the character of their *performance* of the song Some would say: perversion of the song, but since I'm an arranger and a jazz musician, I won't go that far. But I certainly do acknowledge when I'm paying homage to the song vs. when I'm deviating grossly from what it's about. The same thing is going on with the Stones' obscuring of the meaning of their song by bumping up the metronome and putting a heavier beat to it. [...]

It takes a bit of effort, abstract hearing of the melody and harmony, to strip away the distraction of the after-thought of faster performance tempos, etc., and hear the tune for what it is (was intended).

This is to my eyes a fruitless excursion. "Deviating grossly from what it's about" ... "obscuring the meaning of their song" ... is non-demonstrable. As I argued above, the creative process of songwriting in a band takes the first material and redraws it, perfects it, adorns it, gives it oomph. That process is not necessarily a gross deviation from a ding in sich in my opinion, because the ding in sich is a transient construction or a post-facto inference, in some cases ineffable, unable to be restored or heard -- not an ineluctable feature of the song that millions know.

A work of art is what it is. It is the final product that was produced and presented to the public. It is not some earlier, unfinished, initial idea which eventually led to the final product. The final product is not a mere single "performance" version which varies from what you arbitrary imagine to be the True version.

[...]

Rhythm is an expressive element of music, just as chords and melodies are. Change it, and it changes how people interpret the entire piece. The same is true of any other element. Change the timbe, attack, sustain, chords, melody, or anything else, and the effect is different.

I am in general agreement with this, as it pertains to Paint It Black. The Kantian ding in sich or the Platonic 'perfect form' is perhaps an interesting metaphysical cul-de-sac for players, but it isn't as apparent or as 'real' as the recorded version.

(In an earlier posting Roger demurred from trying to let decent Objectivish people know how to approach and judge particular visual artworks. He said, in reply to an invitation to do so: "I am not going to tell them how to approach and judge music, let alone paintings or other artworks."

Is he not in fact telling decent folk how to approach and judge music with the excursion into 'correct' readings of Paint it Black?')

While I'm on the subject, there is another misconception I don't want to let go uncorrected.

I do *not* say that there is more than one correct interpretation of the emotional content of a song.

Prove that there is only one correct interpretation of the emotional content of a song.

I think we would need other examples of popular music confections. If Roger or Jonathan are not up to specifying the ding in sich, well hell. Who cares? Here's one worldwide smash pop hit -- with trombones and Dusty Springfield!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1TSbCDyYBY

Sad? Frustrated? Mourning? Hopeful? A travesty of the original song as designed?

And how can a listener possibly know if he/she had the same emotions as the composer? Emotions are private to each person. We are not endowed with mental telepathy.

We can get a large cohort, expose them to a particular piece of music, and examine their brain states while listening. Will some songs hit 'the sweet spot' of a particular emotion? Will there be patterns of reaction common across individuals, as measured? The limits on this kind of research is how well distinct emotions mirror distinct brain activity. There is a huge literature on this.

In another experiment, we can compare given pieces of music cross-culturally and see what folks immersed in mutually-ignorant musical traditions will report as emotions of the pieces from the contrasted culture.

I am familiar with the second kind of experiment, particularly a fifteen-year old study by Blakewell and Johnson, A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Perception of Emotion in Music: Psychophysical and Cultural Cues. In this research the question was whether Western ears could identify the emotions conveyed by raga music -- sadness, anger, joy (free download PDF here) -- and vice versa.

And another more recent study caught my attention. This one involves Western music and music of the Mafa people. Here's a link to the full study, following are excerpts from a Dave Mugger report on the study at Science Blogs (Cognitive Daily):

Even isolated cultures understand emotions conveyed by Western music

The Mafa people, who live in the far north of Cameroon in the Mandara mountains, are one of the most culturally isolated groups in the world. Since many of their settlements lack electricity, there are some individuals who have never been exposed to western movies, art, or music.

But the Mafa do have their own musical tradition. Many of their ceremonies are accompanied by a unique chorus of flutes of varying sizes, which can produce different pitches by covering and uncovering a small hole at their tip. The music they produce is quite different from Western-style music. [NB: the SciBlogs story has 404ed its MP3s, but the music files can be downloaded here ]

[...]

The researchers say this shows that at least some portion of music appreciation may be universal. The more dramatic effects among Western listeners suggest that cultural influences may also contribute, but some basic part of the the way we understand music may be shared by everyone, no matter what we have learned from our culture.

To put all of this tl:dr in perspective, here's one of Ayn Rand's fave tiddly-wink songs:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/3000/3590/cusb-cyl3590d.mp3

Edited March 14, 2015 by william.scherk

[william.scherk]

My last comment was a long, dreary ramble. Here, to re-orient to the original topic, "Who says that's art," I give you an untitled artwork, for slaughter, for joyous deconstruction, for grumbles, for emotional reaction, for an artist's appreciation..

[Brant Gaede]

My last comment was a long, dreary ramble. Here, to re-orient to the original topic, "Who says that's art," I give you an untitled artwork, for slaughter, for joyous deconstruction, for grumbles, for emotional reaction, for an artist's appreciation..

Try twice.

[Brant Gaede]

Paint It Black--played with oomph!

Did the Stones do "sad songs"?

Do people go to concerts to hear sad songs?

Do sad songs and "oomph!" go together?

--Brant