Mr. Panfile wrote:

>Like almost everything else, music can contain feeling, but also much
>more... though that is a rare notion to be sure, and very hard to separate
>out.  If you follow the history of music, from its literal invention by
>Pythagoras....

If Pythagoras invented music, what were all those far-more-ancient
cultures doing with it? :-) I'm talking about Egypt, which had
professional musicians and entertainers, as well as a plethora of
recognizable instruments; plus Mesopotamia, which had a form of musical
notation?

Pythagoras may have "invented" or popularized an analysis of music via
mathematical analogies, but that's quite a different thing. Both he and
Euclid applied mathematics to musical structures, but civilizations across
the Mediterranean had for centuries been using music in both liturgical
and popular milieux. 

It's possible, in fact, to argue that there was no distinction made (as we
make it today) between sacred and secular music. Psalms could express
great passion for God as well as for more earthly delights, and it's not a
paradox to suggest that such things could be expressed simultaneously, in
different streams of the same music or lyric. 

Music is a powerful entity. For immediacy of expression, it runs rhapsodic
rings around boring old prose (like mine)---a songwriter worth his salt
would get said in three verses what it takes me two hours to write. And
don't forget that, pre-Pythagoras, music that moved the body and warmed
the soul was at the heart of the Dionysian cult in Greece. Is this
religious or profane? 

If there's a chance that we make too much of the "difference" between what
the ancients saw in heavenly and earthly music, have we done its modern
counterpart a disservice to suggest that there must be "much more" than
the mere emotional component? 

What's "mere" about emotion? What's not sensual about scholarship? How are
they not different reflections of the same thing? 

Are we inadvertently making an unfair distinction about what's necessary
in musicology, or music appreciation, based on how "seriously" (read
"religiously") we study it?

>The problem is that finding that thing is blocked by the
>instinctive seeking of emotional satisfaction.

Or is it the opposite, in fact? Is this instinct one of the great
strengths of music, and has it led to its use throughout time as a focus
of human feeling? Think of infants. They don't know from aeolian cadences,
but they know how to respond to simple rhythms. People who were
preliterate (as much of ancient civilization was, from birth to death)
could respond to and memorize chants and holy evocations that were set to
music. That emotional component---the innate response to rhythm and
words---was a decided advantage to all. 

A really clever pop composer knows this. It's in his best interest to
catch the listener with the equivalent of a modern "hook"---a melody or
beat that helps give birth to prayer or ballad, a lyric that restates the 
most common triumphs and tragedies---love, as a subject, works pretty
well and appeals to all those who have felt its touch. Even a child knows
the comfort and love implicit in holding hands. He has not yet fallen in
love and run afoul of its complexities...but he knows the basics, and the
song works for him.

Perhaps, similar to the theory of generative grammar, we're all hardwired
to respond to music on a visceral level. If we are, we don't really need
analysis to make it work. 

Not that there's anything wrong with analysis. I've been a fan of it for
years. I think it adds to the pleasure of the song's emotional
core---it's not a detraction unless you forget that the mind and body are 
intertwined.

I don't see why, however, it's seen as an either/or syndrome. Whether the
Beatles ever envisioned their music being enthusiastically dissected (as
early as December 1963, when William Mann did it for the Times) is
immaterial. Whether they meant to put in aeolian cadences or flatted
sevenths is also a bit off the mark. Such analysis provides another view
of the sound; but it's an alternative, a potential enrichment, extra
texture to the pleasure we get from hearing music that pleases and
delights and arouses.

>I have no problem with
>people putting emotion into music- I do it- and no problem with people
>evaluating music on its emotional impact- I do it.  I do feel, think,
>opine, and in my own pompous opinion believe that I know- that stopping
>there is closing Pandora's box a bit too soon, before letting out the final
>necessary ingredient.

No one would suggest that you have to stop. But what is lost, exactly, by
the rest of us not pursuing that "final necessary ingredient"? Are the
stars any less astonishing when we know their names, chemical
compositions, and magnitudes? A beautiful night sky can move the soul as
completely for an amateur as for an astronomer. These two simply get
aroused by different aspect of the same study.

Is there really a division here? 

>Perhaps it's best explained by analogy.  Lately there has been some sort of
>sensationalist exploration of ancient Egypt onscreen on the Fox network. 
>My 14 year old son has followed it with interest, and mentioned that some
>seer type predicted that some "magical objects" or somesuch were buried in
>this or that tomb or under the Sphinx.  He posited that perhaps these
>objects could be found.

They can be found. They have been found. And they're probably in some
grand museum within your grasp. I'm not talking about models of spaceships
and plans left by the cosmic visitors who built the pyramids, of course.

There really were (and still are, in numerous unexcavated areas of Egypt) 
magical devices meant to convey the deceased from one part of this
universe to the next world. These objects may not be truly magical to us;
after all, we don't believe in them in quite the same way ("It's a
different religion from ours...I think"). 

But these relics too, no matter how remote their origin, can evoke emotion
on different levels (there are seven, I believe, and Macca should know).
Egyptologists can find a satisfying emotional connection via cataloguing
and publishing the results of their finds; we can view them with pure
unsullied awe. And that, for most of us, is enough.

Knowing the best common denominator of humanity's collective soul is, I
suspect, a greater talent than any scholarly delineation of it, and I
don't mean to denigrate any of the analysts and historians of Beatles lore
(or any other lore) for focusing on what's deeper and more complex,
because---lacking the talent to create---I'm an analyst too.

>The point being that I believe that to some extent, some popular music
>contains a hidden ingredient that operates on a higher level than mere
>emotionality.

See, we operate in different hierarchies. "Mere emotionality" is for me
the high point of any investigation. If you're not impassioned by what you
hear or see, and if no one else feels that pulse...perhaps the objet d'art
is not what it seems...a shell game, under which there is no hidden
marvel, whose magic is ephemeral, whose catalog of wonders is empty.

Mr. Seely, a highly esteemed member of our crowd, quoted a perspicacious
fellow on the subject of simplicity. We've also had the same notion from
Sir Paul, who said to Alan Aldridge in 1968 (misquoting his own lyrics,
mind you):

"It's just that we've at last stopped trying to be clever, and we just
write what we like to write. If it comes out clever, okay. You get to the
bit where you think, if we're going to write great philosophy it isn't
worth it. 'Love Me Do' was our greatest philosophical song: 'Love me
do/you know I love you/I'll always be true/So love me do/Please love me
do'. For it to be simple, and true, means that it's incredibly simple." 

My original point was that if a child of not quite five could grasp the
meaning and beauty of a song that admittedly has a fair level of
sophistication (musically speaking) going for it, there must be some
irreducible communication that is being achieved between songwriter and
listener, and this is not an insignificant accomplishment. 

Thirty-five years ago the Beatles wrote and played music that met a
similar emotional need in me. I hadn't yet become cynical. I believed then
(as I do now, having come round to my past) that sometimes the simplest
expression of love can be the most intimate. I still hear that in "I Want
To Hold Your Hand". I hear it without further scholarly undressings of the
song. Of course I like undressing it too...but all in good time. 

I think those of us married to the scholarly world love talking about
these innumerable complexities of the Fabs' genius, even if it's just to
remind ourselves that they *remain* complex...and some elusive notions can
never be captured in "mere" words. It takes "mere" emotions to do the job;
and the Beatles had covered every emotional map we ourselves have used.
More often than not, they've shown us the way.

Like chroniclers of old, like history-tellers whose tales merge with
legend, we too indulge in words about the Beatles, from simple to
abstruse---repetitively, relentlessly---if just to savor the marvelous
mystery of their music...if just to honor, with our dim words, the
incandescence of their sound. 

-- 
"I fail to see why those awful common lads make all that 
money, in spite of me and the government in a society such 
as ours where our talent will out". 
--------------------------------saki@evolution.bchs.uh.edu

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