Musical expression

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Musical expression is the art of playing or singing with a personal response to the music. [1]

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At a practical level, this means making appropriate use of dynamics, phrasing, timbre and articulation to bring the music to life. [2] Composers may specify these aspects of expression to a greater or lesser extent in the notation of their musical score.

The nature of musical expression has also been discussed at a theoretical level throughout of the history of classical music. One common view is that music both expresses and evokes emotion, forming a conduit for emotional communication between the musician and the audience. This view has been present through most of musical history, though it was most clearly expressed in musical romanticism. [3] However, emotion's role in music has been challenged on occasion by those like Igor Stravinsky who see music as a pure art form and expression as an irrelevant distraction.

Mimesis and rhetoric

In the Baroque and Classical periods of music, music (and aesthetics as a whole) was strongly influenced by Aristotle's theory of mimesis . Art represented the perfection and imitation of nature, speech and emotion. [4]

As speech was taken as a model for music, composition and performance in the Baroque period were strongly influenced by rhetoric. According to what has become known as the theory of affect, a musician was expected to stir feelings in his audience in much the same way as an orator making a speech in accordance with the rules of classical rhetoric. As a result, the aim of a piece of music was to produce a particular emotion, for instance joy, sadness, anger or calm. The harmony, melody, tonality, metre and structure of the music worked to this end, as did all the aspects under the performer's control such as articulation and dynamics. [5]

As Johann Joachim Quantz wrote,

The orator and the musician have, at bottom, the same aim in regard to both the preparation and the final execution of their productions, namely to make themselves the masters of the hearts of their listeners, to arouse or still their passions, and to transport them now to this sentiment, now that.

— Joseph Joachim Quantz, On Playing the Flute (trans E.R. Reilly), London & New York, 1966

Baroque composers used expressive markings relatively rarely, so it can be a challenge for musicians today to interpret Baroque scores, in particular if they adopt a historically informed performance perspective and aim to recreate an approach that might have been recognised at the time. There are some general principles. Looking at the rhythm of a piece, slow rhythms tend to be serious while quick ones tend towards light and frivolous. In the melodic line, small intervals typically represented melancholy while large leaps were used to represent joy. [6] In harmony, the choice of dissonances used had a significant effect on which emotion was intended (or produced), and Quantz recommended that the more extreme the dissonance, the louder it should be played. A cadence normally represented the end of a sentence. [7]

The rhetorical approach to music begged the philosophical question of whether stirring the listener's passions in this manner was compatible with Aristotle's idea that art was only effective because it imitated nature. Some writers on music in the 18th century stayed closely true to Aristotle, with Charles Batteux writing that the sole unifying principle of taste and beauty was the reproduction of the ideal form that lay behind natural things. However, this view was challenged by others who felt that the role of music was to produce an emotional effect. For instance, Sir William Jones wrote in 1772 that: "‘it will appear, that the finest parts of poetry, musick, and painting, are expressive of the passions, and operate on our minds by sympathy; that the inferior parts of them are descriptive of natural objects, and affect us chiefly by substitution’". [8]

In 1785, Michel de Chabanon proposed that music was best understood as its own language, which then prompted an emotional response linked to but not limited by the musical expression. The same music could be associated with a wide range of emotional responses in the listener. Chabanon rejected the rhetorical approach to music, because he did not believe that there was a simple correspondence between musical characteristics and emotional affects. Much subsequent philosophy of music depended on Chabanon's views. [9]

Romantic era

Around the start of the 19th Century, the idea of music as a kind of 'ultimate language of the emotions' [10] gained currency. The new aesthetic doctrine of Romanticism placed sublime, heightened emotion at the core of artistic experience, and communicating these emotions became the aim of musical performance. Music was expected to convey intense feelings, highly personal to the vision of the composer. As the 19th century developed, musical nationalism extended these emotions beyond the personal level to embodying the feelings of entire nations. [11]

This emphasis on emotional communication was supported by an increasing confidence in using more complex harmony, and by instruments and ensembles capable of greater extremes of dynamic. At the start of the 19th century, dynamic markings like "pp" and "ff" were most commonly used, but by the late century, markings like "pppp" and "ffff" began to appear on the score. Romantic composers also made increasingly detailed use of expressive markings like crescendos and diminuendos, accents and articulation markings. [12]

Against expression

After the increasing dominance of expression and emotion in music during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a backlash. [13]

"Most people like music because it gives them certain emotions such as joy, grief, sadness, and image of nature, a subject for daydreams or – still better – oblivion from “everyday life”. They want a drug – dope -…. Music would not be worth much if it were reduced to such an end. When people have learned to love music for itself, when they listen with other ears, their enjoyment will be of a far higher and more potent order, and they will be able to judge it on a higher plane and realise its intrinsic value." - Igor Stravinsky [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

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The siciliana[sitʃiˈljaːna] or siciliano[sitʃiˈljaːno] is a musical style or genre often included as a movement within larger pieces of music starting in the Baroque period. It is in a slow 6
8 or 12
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Neoclassicism (music) Music genre

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Aesthetics of music

Aesthetics of music is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of art, beauty and taste in music, and with the creation or appreciation of beauty in music. In the pre-modern tradition, the aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics explored the mathematical and cosmological dimensions of rhythmic and harmonic organization. In the eighteenth century, focus shifted to the experience of hearing music, and thus to questions about its beauty and human enjoyment of music. The origin of this philosophic shift is sometimes attributed to Baumgarten in the 18th century, followed by Kant.

Galant music

In music, galant refers to the style which was fashionable from the 1720s to the 1770s. This movement featured a return to simplicity and immediacy of appeal after the complexity of the late Baroque era. This meant simpler, more song-like melodies, decreased use of polyphony, short, periodic phrases, a reduced harmonic vocabulary emphasizing tonic and dominant, and a clear distinction between soloist and accompaniment. C. P. E. Bach and Daniel Gottlob Türk, who were among the most significant theorists of the late 18th century, contrasted the galant with the "learned" or "strict" styles.) The German empfindsamer Stil, which seeks to express personal emotions and sensitivity, can be seen either as a closely related North-German dialect of the international galant style, or as contrasted with it, as between the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, a founder of both styles, and that of Johann Christian Bach, who carried the galant style further and was closer to classical.

Parody music, or musical parody, involves changing or copying existing musical ideas, and/or lyrics, or copying the particular style of a composer or performer, or even a general style of music.

Expressionist music Movement in music

The term expressionism "was probably first applied to music in 1918, especially to Schoenberg", because like the painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) he avoided "traditional forms of beauty" to convey powerful feelings in his music. Theodor Adorno interprets the expressionist movement in music as seeking to "eliminate all of traditional music's conventional elements, everything formulaically rigid". This he sees as analogous "to the literary ideal of the 'scream' ". As well Adorno sees expressionist music as seeking "the truthfulness of subjective feeling without illusions, disguises or euphemisms". Adorno also describes it as concerned with the unconscious, and states that "the depiction of fear lies at the centre" of expressionist music, with dissonance predominating, so that the "harmonious, affirmative element of art is banished". Expressionist music would "thus reject the depictive, sensual qualities that had come to be associated with impressionist music. It would endeavor instead to realize its own purely musical nature—in part by disregarding compositional conventions that placed 'outer' restrictions on the expression of 'inner' visions".

Emotion work is understood as the art of trying to change in degree or quality an emotion or feeling.

In music theory and especially in the branch of study called the aesthetics of music, formalism is the concept that a composition's meaning is entirely determined by its form.

In the years centering on 1600 in Europe, several distinct shifts emerged in ways of thinking about the purposes, writing and performance of music. Partly these changes were revolutionary, deliberately instigated by a group of intellectuals in Florence known as the Florentine Camerata, and partly they were evolutionary, in that precursors of the new Baroque style can be found far back in the Renaissance, and the changes merely built on extant forms and practices. The transitions emanated from the cultural centers of Northern Italy, then spread to Rome, France, Germany, and Spain, and lastly reached England . In terms of instrumental music, shifts in four discrete areas can be observed: idiomatic writing, texture, instrument use, and orchestration.

Philosophy of music is the study of "fundamental questions about the nature of music and our experience of it". The philosophical study of music has many connections with philosophical questions in metaphysics and aesthetics. The expression was born in the 19th century and has been used especially as the name of a discipline since the 1980s.

Baroque music Style of Western classical music

Baroque music is a period or style of Western classical music from approximately 1600 to 1750 originated in Western Europe. This era followed the Renaissance music era, and was followed in turn by the Classical era, with the galant style marking the transition between Baroque and Classical eras. The Baroque period is divided into three major phases: early, middle, and late. Overlapping in time, they are conventionally dated from 1580 to 1650, from 1630 to 1700, and from 1680 to 1750. Baroque music forms a major portion of the "classical music" canon, and is now widely studied, performed, and listened to. The term "baroque" comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning "misshapen pearl". The works of George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach are considered the pinnacle of the Baroque period. Key composers of the Baroque era include, Claudio Monteverdi, Domenico Scarlatti, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, Henry Purcell, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Arcangelo Corelli, François Couperin, Heinrich Schütz, Dieterich Buxtehude, and others.

Music and emotion

Research into music and emotion seeks to understand the psychological relationship between human affect and music. The field, a branch of music psychology, covers numerous areas of study, including the nature of emotional reactions to music, how characteristics of the listener may determine which emotions are felt, and which components of a musical composition or performance may elicit certain reactions. The research draws upon, and has significant implications for, such areas as philosophy, musicology, music therapy, music theory, and aesthetics, as well as the acts of musical composition and of musical performance like a concert.

References

  1. ↑ Scruton, Roger. "Expression". Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
  2. ↑ Scruton, Roger. "Expression". Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
  3. ↑ Scruton, Roger. "Expression". Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
  4. ↑ Kovaleff Baker, Nancy. "Expression - History before 1800". Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
  5. ↑ Buelow, George. "Rhetoric". Grove Music Online (subscriber only access). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
  6. ↑ Tarling, Judy (2000). Baroque String Playing for Ingenious Learners. Tring: Corda Music. pp. 4–6. ISBN   978-0-9528220-1-1.
  7. ↑ Tarling, Judy (2000). Baroque String Playing for Ingenious Learners. Tring: Corda Music. pp. 203–205. ISBN   978-0-9528220-1-1.
  8. ↑ Kovaleff Baker, Nancy. "Expression - History before 1800". Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
  9. ↑ Kovaleff Baker, Nancy. "Expression - History before 1800". Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
  10. ↑ Paddison, Max. "Expression: History - After 1800". Grove Music Online (subscriber only access). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
  11. ↑ Hugh Macdonald (2002). Burton, Anthony (ed.). Performer's Guide to Music of the Romantic Period. London: ABRSM. p. 4. ISBN   978-1-86096-194-6.
  12. ↑ Hugh Macdonald (2002). Burton, Anthony (ed.). Performer's Guide to Music of the Romantic Period. London: ABRSM. pp. 16–17. ISBN   978-1-86096-194-6.
  13. ↑ Baker, Nancy Kovaleff; Paddison, Max; Scruton, Roger (2001). "Expression". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.09138 . Retrieved 2020-09-18.
  14. ↑ "Stravinsky on expression in music". Theory of Music. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
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