I want, with the moderator's permission, to start a separate thread on
this so the disinterested (so far 896+) can easily bypass this discussion.

I once tried to find some unknown, perhaps subconscious, relationship
between the art forms of painting, sculpture, poetry, literature,
cullinary, architecture and dance.  Since these appeal to the 5 senses
(and 6th as well) and to our emotions, and since our minds examine all
phenomenon in the same way, I was hoping to gain an insight into the arts.
I began by listing the fundamental aspects of each type of work and trying
to find parallels or matches between these aspects.  On the post I just use
music and painting but there is an issue of, say, harmony in architecture
and dance (apart from the music itself).

Jim Paterson mentioned that the vocabulary of one art form is often used
to express something in another art form by way of metaphor and I agree.
But knowing something about how the brian works from studying artificial
intelligence, I am interested in knowing why the brain (or mind) would
choose a particular word.  We do not know how that works but we do know
that words (sounds) are concepts and the brain (or mind) assigns a word to
a set of phenomenon that in fact "defines" the word.  When we observe some
phenomenon, the brain trys to match it with stored phenomenon and say this
is kind of like, say "harmony".  Metaphors and not well understood in terms
of how the brain generates them.  Why would Shakespeare say "the winter of
our discontent" or we may talk about "the shape of a melody".  (How can
sounds occuring in time have a shape, which is a visual concept.)

The object of this experiment is to be able to describe a piece of music
in visual terms.  In that way we may be able to talk about John Lennon's
Imagine (popular) with the same vocabulary that we describe Beethovens
Pastoral symphony and Monet's Sunflowers.

I don't agree with the classical/popular distinction and would like a
vocabulary that looks at music (see what I mean - "looks at music?") at a
more abstract level in terms of the impressions and/or emotions, or lack
thereof, that arises in the mind on hearing it.  I think of it more as
music intended to demonstrate a construction principle, like an etude,
or music intended to evoke an impression or emotion.  (Of course it may
do both - Chopin's etude Op 10,#3 and the Beatle's "All You Need Is Love
(where every other measure is in 3/4 time and every other measure is in 4/4
time).  This is done by both classical and popular.  But that's not the
point of the discussion on this thread.

For the record, so far everyone agrees that the melody (or theme) in a
composition is equivalent to the subject of a painting.  That's a good
start.  Most agree that harmony in music is equivalent to the colors
used in a painting.  Would this would make clashing colors equivalent to
dissonance harmonies? But one respondent thought that color was timbre and
harmony was subject layout, i.e.  the tone coloring of the instrumentation
and the "harmonious" arrangement of the subjects.  That too makes sense to
me since it is possible to arrange subjects in a painting so that there is
a tension or unstability, or lack of balance among them - there can be
tension, instability and lack of balance in a harmonic progression as well.
Everyone matched rhythm to brush strokes, which I did as well.  That is an
obscure relation requiring a keen understaning of both painting and music

For this experiment to work, the fundametal aspects of painting and music
must be agreed on.  Reviewing my notes from long ago, I found that I left
out a couple.  A fundamental aspects are the aspects of a thing that if
taken away, it is not the thing any more.  It the the set of things that
is the essence of the nature of a thing.  The critical elements of a thing.
Can there be music without rhythm? Sometimes the mind supplies or assumes
the missing ingredient - If a series of chords are played the mind will
take the highest pitch as the melody and the lowest pitch as the bass,
unless there is a obvious melody in an inner voice.

If this thread dies from lack of interest, I won't be offended but out
of 900+ people, hopefully there are a few would want to get into this
metaphysical dicussion on music.

Bill Pirkle
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