June 15, 2008
A Natural Basis for Musical Consonance?
Phillip Ball in Nature News:
What was avant-garde yesterday is often blandly mainstream today. But this normalization doesn’t seem to have happened to experiments in atonalism in Western music. A century has passed since composer Arnold Schoenberg and his supporters rejected tonal organization, yet Schoenberg’s music is still considered by many to be ‘difficult’ at best, and a cacophony at worst.
Could this be because the dissonances characteristic of Schoenberg’s atonal compositions conflict with some fundamental human preference for consonance, embedded in the very way we perceive musical sound? That’s what his detractors have sometimes implied, and it might be inferred also from a new proposal for the origins of consonance and dissonance advanced in a paper by biomathematicians Inbal Shapira Lots and Lewi Stone of Tel Aviv University in Israel, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface 1.
Shapira Lots and Stone suggest that a preference for consonance may be hard-wired into the way we hear music.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 06:39 PM | Permalink
Comments
Of all the crappy metaphors for human thought floating around in the culture, "hard wired" has to be the worst. Time to retire it as a piece of positivist nonsense.
Posted by: joseph duemer | Jun 15, 2008 9:57:44 PM
I daresay Western popular and classical music has become considerably more chromatic over the past century or two.
Posted by: Sagredo | Jun 16, 2008 12:02:15 AM
Another (possibly at least partly complementary) theory on the origin of the musical scale can be found in this article.
Posted by: Jesse M. | Jun 16, 2008 1:02:38 AM
I daresay Western popular and classical music has become considerably more chromatic over the past century or two.
And yet western music remains basically tonal.
As best I can tell, humans have a clear preference for tonality, but it is not exclusive or determinative. We can and do appreciate much less tonal, even atonal, music. Natural sounds such as waves crashing gently on the shore, or the wind through the trees, are completely atonal, yet we love those sounds. I was exposed to a lot of Balinese gamelan music very early in life, and it remains some of my most favourite and meaningful music.
I have also recently heard some of the work by Rob Schneider, using scales based on logarithmic principles, and though it is still in early development and may not eventually bear much fruit, and has no resemblance to anything I have heard before, I find it interesting and moving.
Interestingly, my ear find thirds and sixths in the equal tempered scale slightly dissonant and I prefer the 'pure' versions of those intervals, such as a found in a cappella or string quartet music.
And thanks to Jesse M for that interesting link.
Posted by: Seeker | Jun 16, 2008 1:24:51 AM
But likewise most contemporery novels do not resemble Finnegan's Wake - does this mean the 19th century novelistic style is 'hard wired'?
Posted by: Gabe | Jun 16, 2008 12:17:45 PM
Please help spread the word about this unusual concert. Thank you. Sonia
There is an extraordinary concert on Oct 15 in NYC at the Mannes College of Music. Internationally acclaimed pianist/composer DANIEL ABRAMS will perform works from his "Opera For Piano" series (www.Daniel-Abrams.com/Opera-For-Piano) including the American premier of his "Musical Portraits from Wagner's 'Ring'". Mannes College is at 150 West 85 St (between Columbus & Amsterdam Avenues) and the concert is at 8 pm. There is no charge and seating begins at 7:30 pm
More information: www.Daniel-Abrams.com/Opera-For-Piano
Posted by: nia | Sep 18, 2008 7:43:03 PM
I can't wait to hear the newly discovered one page melody by Mozart.
Posted by: Jared | Sep 19, 2008 9:50:19 AM
Concert reminder.
DANIEL ABRAMS' Opera For Piano concert on Oct. 15, at the Mannes College of Music, will include the American premier of his Musical Portraits from Wagner's 'Ring' (each"Portrait" is based on the musical motif of that character, a particular scene of importance, and/or a verbal statement of consequence).
The program also includes ABRAMS' Chaconne on "Dido's Lament" from Dido And Aeneas , Variations on "Voi Che Sapete" from The Marriage of Figaro, and Variations on "Ein Engel Leonora" from Fidelio. Opera For Piano retains each pieces original style, preserving its complex moods and subtle powers -- as if the composers themselves had written the operas as piano music. They are not transcriptions, but music that Abrams' deeply loves and wished to be able to play on the piano. Abrams considers this series his most important legacy to music and feels that Opera For Piano is adding some glorious music to the performing pianist's repertoire.
DANIEL ABRAMS has been internationally acclaimed as both a pianist and as a composer. He had a double Fulbright in piano & composition (which was renewed for a second year) to the Royal Academy of Music, and performed extensively throughout Europe as an American Cultural Ambassador. His highly heralded New York debut at Town Hall in 1957 brought him major management and years of concertizing. Also, appearances on many TV and radio shows (including The Today Show, the Mike Wallace show, Joe Franklin, Pegeen Fitzgerald, etc.) In 1962, shortly after surviving a plane crash while on a concert tour in S. America, Abrams accepted a teaching position at Goucher College and The Johns Hopkins University. While in Baltimore, he founded and, for sixteen years, conducted The Goucher/Hopkins Community Symphony. He has continued to perform as soloist with orchestras and in recitals, but has restricted his appearances to the area in which he lives. Recently, Martha Argerich heard some of Abrams' music and included it in her Lugano Piano Festival.
Following is an excerpt from The New York Herald Tribune review for the first concert (of his four concert cycle) of the Mozart piano sonatas at the Kaufman Y : "Mr. Abrams, as has been noted before, is born to the piano; he cannot help but make beautiful sounds and he brings to whatever he tackles not only musicianship, technique and interpretative prowess, but a very special kind of intellectual radiance that quite sets him apart. In short, the five sonatas heard contained a veritable galaxy of refinements--indeed, the sort of refinements that seem slowly to be creeping out of contemporary piano
playing. We urge you to attend."
More information: www.Daniel-Abrams.com/Opera-For-Piano
www.Daniel-Abrams.com
Concert information: Mannes College of Music, 150 West 85 St (bet. Columbus & Amsterdam)
Wednesday, October 15 8 pm No charge: seating begins at 7:30 pm
Posted by: sonia sudak | Oct 10, 2008 5:36:45 PM
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