The Transformational Power of Music - Research Paper Example

The Transformational Power of Music Music has the power to move a person through more than just the sounds within the ear. Music is emotional, editorial, and connected to memory. The way music sounds gives cues to the meaning of imagery. Music is a culturally defined experience, the language of music designed by learned understandings of associations. How the memory creates emotional responses to music is defined by the associations that have been made. This is one of the reasons why writing about music can be difficult as it is better to describe the feeling it evokes than to try and write about the sound. How it feels can be described from one point of view, but how it sounds is defined through the interpretation of each individual. Music is a complex experience that stimulates the emotional memories within the mind. According to Meyer, the meaning of music is based upon cultural learning, societies determining how to take the cues that are placed through the sounds that are made in their music (2). Sounds are not universally understood, the semiotic language developed through the associations that are made to the music. According to Cohen “when we emphasize music’s universality, we might mislead ourselves into thinking that musical elements can be borrowed from here or there, without paying sufficient attention to distinct cultural meanings, such as the sacred dimensions of performance” (27). However, she goes on to say that the aptitude and capacity for music is universal even though how those capacities are shaped is defined by cultural learning (Cohen 28). Therefore, how music affects one through the senses will be different from one culture to the next. With a qualified hesitation it can be said that some emotive qualities of music are natural and can be translated between cultures. According to Taylor, “Rapid beats produce a decidedly harsh and grating effect on the ear; and this is quite what the analogy of the other senses would lead us to expect. The disagreeable impressions excited in the organs of sight by flickering, unsteady light, and in those of touch by tickling or scratching, are familiar to everyone.”(129). This is very limited and the nuances of what those sensations and emotions mean can change the nature of the emotive interpretation (Witchel 52). A good example of Shubert’s Ave Maria. For those who have heard the song in a Cathedral and associate it with a deep religious meaning, the emotions of the piece will be very different than if it were played for a group that had never been exposed to Western influences that would shape these emotions. It could be interpreted for a sadness, a contemplated joyfulness, or as harsh against an ear that cannot tolerate the sometimes shrill nature of the soprano, when sung by a soprano. A common Western cultural understanding of a sound can be found through the theme music of Jaws. John Williams created the sound that would embody the nature of the shark, swimming towards its prey, the tempo picking up and creating tension as the warning sound that the character would never hear goes off, signaling the audience to feel fear and dread as the shark is about to attack. Witchel describes this music as “a slowly alternating pattern of two notes (E and F) followed by suspense inducing pregnant pauses, a pattern which repeats and speeds up to mirror the audience’s trepidation” (53). Play this music anywhere in the Western world and it is likely that the smell and taste of salt water, the cold feeling of the sea, and the icy chill of impending death will accompany the music as the visual image of a shark will flash across the memory. Even for those who have not seen the film, the cultural association has crossed generations and created an iconic imagery that accompanies the music. Memory is the most stimulated part of the mind where music is concerned. When a piece of music is heard, the content of the music will evoke memories that are associated with certain sounds. According to Witchel “If your territorial associations with a piece of music are very strong, they will swamp out any emotions hinted at by the acoustic features of the music”(54). The associations that are made to a piece of music become compounded by the new experiences that are associated with it. As an example, Witchel suggests that an Abba song may have had one connotation when it was first heard, but when it is used as a piece of music for a wedding, as an example, the memory connotations change (54). A good example of this is through a personal example of listening to a song over and over while creating a research paper. The song was looped for a few hours while a report was being prepared on Leonardo da Vinci. As the song played, the information that was being read became intrinsically linked to that music. When that music is played, because of the depth to which the research was being done, the smell of urine as it is mixed with pigment, the feel of paint on a brush, and the amber hued images of Italy wash through the mind. Annoyingly, facts and dates that are relevant to da Vinci’s life also come to mind. Just as an Abba song that is used for a wedding might evoke the flavor of overly sweet wedding cake, a piece of music affects the memory in such a way that all of the senses can be brought into play. A piece of music that is associated with sensuality may bring the feeling of touch to the forefront of memory. An example of how this is relevant can be seen in Raval’s Bolero. The music is sensual, but if it is combined with the associations made through the movie “10”, they become much more erotic. Thus, music can change depending on how it is associated. The irony is, the scene’s that include Bolero are also humorous, thus it is highly possible that instead of a sensual feeling, they may evoke humorous memory, the music suddenly being the punch line to a joke. The concept of memory is a tangible function of the mind. Echoic memory creates the initial response to a piece of music. Echoic memory happens as the inner ear “converts sound into trains of nerve impulses that represent the frequency and amplitude of individual acoustical vibrations”(Snyder 4). The information that is developed does not last and will decay as an echo within a second. Features extraction will allow for features of the music to be categorized and placed within the echoic memory through which perpetual binding is created so that they form into associations which will become perpetual categorization (Snyder 4). According to Snyder “Echoic memory is an aspect of early sensory information processing by which a sensory impression persists long enough so that it can be encoded into basic features and bound together into events” (23). Perceptual representations of the world are then formed into images, which can be more than just a visual representation, but a scent image, a touch image, or a taste sense of imagery). Snyder calls this a “pre-linguistic syntax of mental representation” (23). He goes on to describe the experience as when “some of the meaning music conveys may take the form of such representations, which might explain why some aspects of musical meaning seem to resist verbal explanation” (23). Music is difficult to describe through literary efforts, although it is always possible that writing can convey the necessary sense of the experience. However, sometimes the right writer can capture the spirit of music, if not the true nature of what it is to hear it One of the most powerful books in regard to ‘hearing’ music through writing is Violin by Anne Rice. While the story was not very powerful and did not actually appeal, the descriptions of the feeling of the music were powerful and moving. The most important difference in the way in which she wrote the work is that instead of writing about how the music sounded, she wrote about how it felt (The Minstrel). Her words described the emotional context of the experience of music, rather than the futile attempt that most writers make to write about the way music sounds. The importance of understanding this difference is relevant to understanding the core nature of the way in which music has an affect. The linguistic elements of music are created by the listener, combined with the universality of some types of sounds. While the specific emotion is not created through universal means, the basic nature of a type of music; soothing, irritating, exciting, or sleep inducing, can most often be universally understood. The communication that is created through the music is best described through the emotional content which is defined by the sociological associations that have been learned. In reading about music, one should know how it makes one feel, but to write about sound is to create an interpretation of something that cannot be interpreted for the benefit of someone else. One can say that a sound is dissonant, but that means nothing unless it is said that the dissonant sound rose from deep within the belly, filling the heart with a dread that spread out over the skin in a cold sweat. That is a description of fear. Emotions are experienced both through episodic and dispositional mental situations. Episodic emotions occur as they are felt, within a situation that evokes the emotional response. Dispositional moments of emotion are created by certain types of thoughts, after which an episodic emotion is felt (Budd 1). In other words, thoughts form an environment in which the emotion is then experienced. According to Shibles, the cognitive-emotive theory suggests that whenever there is a cognitive thought, an emotion is produced. “Therefore, emotions are intrinsic, not extrinsic, to music“ (199). Without emotion, then music does not truly exist. Movement within music and art is sometimes considered the reason for the feelings that are associated with the responses to those creations. According to Shibles, the formalist view on music suggests that the movement of the music is like the movement of emotion. This takes musical movement and reduces it to bodily feeling. However, the expressionist point of view is that the movement is within the individual, not within the music, thus the movement is created within the listener. “Movement’ is a way in which we observe an object. Movement is not in an object or heard in an object anymore than beauty is an object of in an object”(92). Therefore, the emotional element of music, according to the expressionist, is created within the individual. The formalist point of view makes the emotional element of music tangible, while the expressionist point of view makes the emotional element of music an intangible entity that is created. According to Crowe, emotion begin with arousal in the brain within the limbic systems and those systems are stimulated by sound that stimulates the hypothalamus and the amygdala. This stimulation happens in the right hemisphere where other stimulations from music are experienced. As well, in the left side of the brain are the stimulations of the small muscles of the hands which is also connected to the stimulation of happiness. This may account for the satisfaction that is felt by a performer as the left and right brains are both stimulated by the creation of music (239). Music is an emotionally stimulating experience that defies verbal capacities of description. It has the ability to create an intense experience within a movie, as shown by Jaws where the music is far more frightening than the rubber shark. The associations that are created with music depend on memory and the way in which the memory creates a connection to other experiences that have been enveloped by the music. Whether it is an association of smell, taste, touch, or sight, music affects more than just the sense of hearing. While the experience that is the physical aspect of what occurs in the brain may be interesting to note, it is the aesthetics of music that move the soul that has the greatest impact on the listener. What is heard blossoms within the heart and soul, creating a connection to memories and emotions that define a great part of the human experience. Works Cited Budd, Malcolm. Music and Emotions: The Philosophical Theories. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, 1992. Print. Cohen, Cynthia. Music: A Universal Language? ed. Olivier Urbain, Music and Conflict Transformation: Harmonies and Dissonances in Geopolitics. London: I.B Tauris in association with the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, 2008. Print. Crowe, Barbara J. Music and Soulmaking: Toward a New Theory of Music Therapy. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2004. Print. Meyer, Leonard B. Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Print. Shibles, Warren A. Emotion in Aesthetics. Dordrecht [u.a.: Kluwer Acad. Publ, 1995. Print. Snyder, Bob. Music and Memory: An Introduction. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2000. Print. Taylor, Sedley. The Science of Music: Or, the Physical Basis of Musical Harmony. New York: D. Appleton and Co, 1875. Print. The Minstrel. Anne Rice, Violin (Review). n.p. n.d. Web. Witchel, Harry. You Are What You Hear: How Music and Territory Make Us Who We Are. New York: Algora Pub, 2010. Print. Read More