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From:
John Polifronio <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 31 Mar 2000 13:53:49 -0800
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It's interesting the way music is able to reveal our feelings, the
ones we want to experience and the ones we don't) to us.  By awakening
feelings like those we associate with the words "sweet" or "saccharine,"
music enables us to explore our reactions to these feelings.  I'm more
curious why we have such difficulty experiencing certain feelings, even
in a safe haven like music, than I am wondering why current styles of
musical performance fail to arouse those same feelings in us.  After all
if musicians and composers sense that the music listening public isn't
comfortable about exploring feelings of a certain kind, they're far more
likely to create and perform music accordingly.  Musicians are doing what
we want them to do.  Frankly, in principle, I envy people that can enjoy
music that's "sweeter" or "sillier" or "sadder" than I can enjoy.  That's
just one more category of things which I can't enjoy.  I'd rather have the
enjoyment itself than have the increased, but dubious respectability that
comes of rejecting conventional taste.  I once played a recording of a
Tchaikovsky work which included an extended passage full of great and
poignant sadness.  With me in the room was an old friend who I knew to have
great difficulty with feelings of the kind we're talking about.  As those
difficult moments in the music approached, my friend, having heard the
music before, nervously but unsuccessfully attempted to intrude on our
listening with some small talk.  His discomfort was palpable.  I let the
music continue; we survived it.  Schopenhauer believed music to be noblest
art; it also appears to be the most powerful.  No wonder Plato warned the
politicians of his time against the power music had over people.

John P.

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