I like a little Vivaldi, a little Haydn, a little Hovhaness, a little
Miaskovsky, and a very little Havergal Brian; but each of these worthies
did repeat themselves a tad more than absolutely necessary.  That said,
however, I tend to agree with George Marshall, who reports: "I enjoy
almost all works by almost all composers.  ...This is not true of novels,
poems, plays or paintings, and least of all of films.  Music is different.
Does anyone know why?" Like George, my tastes are very catholic, extending
from medieval to modern, and including folk and jazz.  I've even developed,
in my dotage, a certain fondness for the Beatles and Otis Redding.

I have a tentative theory as to why.  I think it has to do with time.
Of course, the experience of all artistic creations stops time, in a
way.  But music ORGANIZES time at a more elemental level than any other
art.  We don't keep time to visual art.  We don't (really) recognize the
beat in a novel or a film.  In poetry, of course, there is a beat, but
it is analagous to unaccompanied song, a minimal example of music---and
even there, in song poetry is combined with the time-organization of
melody.  Nothing in any art beside music creates the richness of MULTIPLE
lines of organized time, as the last example illustrates at a simple
level.

Sometimes, when a piece of music has a particularly felicitious COMBINATION
of rhythmic/harmonic movement in multiple lines, my psychological response
feels like a physical spasm.  This delicious response doesn't require
great complexity: three or four lines can do it, if just right, and so
it can occur even in pop or jazz or folk.  Of course Western (and some
Eastern) music increases the complexity of organized time-lines to a far
greater degree.  There are even the higher order time-lines of movement
through multiple keys, of sonata-form structure, and so on.

On the other hand, I realize this theory doesn't account entirely for
what, say, a simple, solemn chorale does for us.  Maybe the organized
time-lines idea is only part of the story.

Jon Gallant
Department of Gnome Sciences
University of Washington