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From: greg@olivee.UUCP (Greg Paley)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Tone poems
Message-ID: <472@olivee.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Aug-85 13:53:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: olivee.472
Posted: Mon Aug 26 13:53:28 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Aug-85 20:48:07 EDT
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> I would like to start a discussion on a new topic. I've long been fascinated
> by the ability of music to evoke vivid images without words, and would like
> to see what people consider as the best examples. I'm not referring to
> images based on prior association; I suspect that not many people thought of
> shuttles and space stations in earth orbit upon hearing An Der Shoen Blauen
> Danau until after the movie 2001.  On the other hand, it is hard to mistake
> the opening of Also Sprach Zarathustra as anything other than a sunrise, or
> the Allegro of Beethoven's Pastorale Symphony as anything other than a
> summer thunderstorm. (The fact that these were the composers' deliberate
> intentions didn't hurt.)
> 
> Other examples include The Planets, although the names Holst gave to each
> movement give it away.  Ideally, the kind of music I'm talking about would
> evoke the same images in almost anyone hearing it for the first time,
> without being told the name of the piece or the composer's intentions.
> 

I doubt that there is any music which would evoke the same images in
almost anyone hearing it for the first time.  You're dealing here with
a process I've heard referred to as "synesthesia" (I'm not at all sure
that's spelled right) which is, in artistic contexts, stimuli directed
at one sense which evoke a reaction in another.  In this case, it's
sound evoking "visual" images.  This happens all the time in literature,
where the printed or spoken word evokes both visual and auditory images.

I would say that there is a fairly large body of music which evokes
very distinct visual images to a large number of listeners, but that the
actual content of those images would vary widely from one to another.
However, even something as specific a verbal description as "a cool, 
ocean breeze wafting across a deserted beach" is going to create widely 
diverse images in the minds of two people reading it.  Just how cool?  What
color is the water, grey or blue?  What kind of trees (if any) surround
the beach?

A number of friends with whom I've discussed this sort of thing point to
the "impressionists" as being sources of music that is particularly
evocative of visual imagery, although the actual point of impressionism
is not to depict an object itself, but to convey those feelings which
the object evoked in the artist.  Debussy is the most obvious example,
although it was either Aaron Copland or Virgil Thomson who referred
to Sibelius as the "impressionist of the North Country" and I find
much of his music extremely evocative in this way.

I feel that ultimately music makes its own expression which is 
independent of either verbal or visual means of communication.  It
"says something" that cannot be said by any other means, although
a visual object or a literary work can provide the initial stimulus
to a composer.

	- Greg Paley