[RoundTheBend]

Applerill, I thoroughly enjoyed your quotes you shared.

Also, they brought up Wagner, and I remember learning that he wanted to create the Gesamtkunstwerk (complete artwork) where music, art, poetry, etc. all came together. And I don't mean just an opera... I mean the mother of all operas where his stage work was much more than operas of the time, his poetry was quite intense (using the old Norse alliteration ) and of course a 16 hour opera.

Part of the motivation behind this was that with Kant, the idea of ranking aesthetics and what is beauty etc. came to the conclusion that music was the least aesthetically strong because it required little to no cognitive power (think their time period, it was only instruments and no lyrics, etc. and so music was VERY emotional, if not mostly limited to emotion). On the opposite side of the spectrum was poetry because not only could poetry affect us emotionally, it also required the most cognitive power.

Just another thought to share.

[Applerill]

We dun fucked up, BEA. Anyone else got stuff to say about this that doesn't involve calling Satie a formalist?

[RoundTheBend]

No response to the statements questions I brought up or about reader response, possitive reinforcement or music therapy?

I honestly think this topic is VERY VERY deep. It is not a simple subject, and so that might be a put off?

[Tap]

my simple way of looking at it is like the whole thing with the Theremin. I remember seeing some documentary about the instrument and the inventor, and either the inventor himself of someone close to him expressed frustration that the instrument was used in sci-fi movies a whole bunch, and that that established an association with the instrument's sound and the idea of spookiness or whatever. So there's that way of looking at the semiotics of music, that it's something that is built through usage (especially in movies). But I think that even if it weren't for that usage, that it would still have that association. I think people build up a library of the timbres they've heard in their heads, and new ones get filed away in relation to the others. So when the theremin sound is heard, the qualities that make it significantly different than other familiar timbres put it in a position of representing an otherworldly sort of spookiness.

[RoundTheBend]