"Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all"
  • timnuoatimnuoa
    "For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc....Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existance. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention - in short, an aspect unconsiously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being." - Igor Stravinsky, early 20th century composer (my personal favorite)

    What are you thoughts on this quote, and on the nature of music and emotion and expression in general? I find this viewpoint extremely interesting, especially from a guy who wrote music that made people feel so strongly (see The Rite of Spring).
  • bryonbryon
    I think its valid, in a technical sense. Music is nothing more than a pattern of physical vibrations. It's the response to these stimuli that make music meaningful. It is the shared human experience that those patterns evoke in/upon us. So technically I think it is correct, but in actuality humans transcend the simplicity and derive deeper meaning. So in that sense music is more.

    tl,dr; yes and no.
  • alyssadehayesalyssadehayes
    Agreed, but a composition sans lyrics can seem to mimic the ways we express our emotions, like a violin sounding like a forlorn cry. Perhaps notes and instrumentation mimicking crying or moaning could trigger something in the communication centers of our brains?
  • TsuruTsuru
    I get what he's saying, but I'll go a little further to say that because emotion is required to make the music, that even though the vibration of air may "technically" contain no emotion as we want to think of it, since we are, as quantum physics teaches us, so integrated into everything, that we, just like the air, just like the notes on the sheet, are all just energy & wave-particles & bits of pieces of atoms, that music physically is an expression and a feeling, an emotion containing "thing" because it is the same thing we are. Add in the power of language and the connections created by our genetics, experiences, and the way our genetics interprets our experiences, and I'd say that, sure, I get what Igor there is saying, but the universe is a lot more connected and tangled than his early 20th century knowledge allowed him to know.

    We are all the same stuff, music, you, me, the air, etc. If you believe we have emotion, that we can express anything at all, then so does everything else, because fundamentally and in our tiniest foundation substances, we are all the same.
  • bplittlebplittle
    All music is, is expression. Expressing something just means communicating ideas, emotion, energy, thought through whatever medium. Music is the medium, and even without lyrics, music is intended to stirr certain emotions or thoughts within you. Even without singing, old symphonies had stories with sad sections, happy sections...

    I don't know if Igor's quote was translated a little bit incorrectly but I don't know what he's talking about. I'm sure he was trying to express something when he composed, though maybe not tangible specific ideas.
  • ThomasThomas

    not sure if there's anything more to the quote, but just going from what's there, i'd tend to disagree b/c it's a textbook example of a kind of essentialist position (i.e. "music is, by it's very nature, essentially. . .").  this one's particularly difficult to assess as he doesn't define what he actually believes music to be. 

  • bondbond
    yeh - not sure if it's the translation from russian or what, but the argument seems framed in a lot of ill-defined terms (music's 'nature', 'expression', 'essential being')

    i read a brian eno quote last week along similar lines, where he talked about how he liked music because it was the most abstract and non-representational of arts. while painting and theater and movies come from a long tradition of recreating/representing things you see, music refers only to itself.. i like that angle a lot better.
  • buzzgrinderbuzzgrinder
    i'm pretty much in total agreement with the quote above.

    you all seem to be missing stravinsky's point a little, it seems. he's not saying that music from a technical and scientific standpoint holds no emotion. he's saying that people who listen to it are what bestow — they "thrust upon it" — emotions on the music. music does not hold, in and of itself, any emotion or deeper meaning, regardless of what the music's creator intends.

    once it becomes separate from the actual physical performance, it becomes abstracted to the point of losing the direct connectivity between performer and listener. as such, the only thing a listener can do is affix their own predispositions and ideologies to the music to make it relatable. granted, some music is more equipped for this task than others (which is why it's easier for people to relate to it), but that doesn't change the fact of it.

    while i don't know if all of my extrapolations from this quote were stravinsky's intension, it is nonetheless how things seem to be. it's not so much an issue of art or aesthetics as it is psychology and sociology.

    i also don't want anyone to infer that i'm downplaying the importance of music per-se. it's just that music doesn't exactly accomplish what most people assume it does in the way they assume it happens.
  • timnuoatimnuoa
    i kinda take a similar view as buzzgrinder, the emotion in music is something we give it so we can relate. Now that i think about it, the Rite of Spring thing actually backs this up, the audience was interpreting the music at such opposite extremes that it led to fighting. I like the brian eno quote too, I do think he's kinda saying the same thing
  • TsuruTsuru
    It's a relationship between the listener & the artist through the medium, no? And just like all relationships, some are more one sided than others, and some are lovely & mutual. I know I force my own emotions onto music at times, and sometimes it's vice-versa, other times we are in perfect harmony... holding hands, spooning even..
  • buzzgrinderbuzzgrinder
    no, i don't think it's as much about a relationship between the listener and artist as much as it is two separate relationships: one between the performer and the music and one between the listener and the music.

    additionally, while the performer and listener can enter into some kind of relationship, i really think that only happens in the context of attending a live performance. and then i would say the relationship doesn't exist through the medium as much as it does through the kind of social and relational bonds that are built through actual physical proximity. subsequently, we associate the emotions and memories of this experience with the music itself, which is why we can more greatly appreciate the music of a performer once we've seen them in concert.

    on a related note, that's why music is worth even less to most folks in the digital age. music has been abstracted to the point where it only exists in the ether as 1s and 0s. it has become loosened almost completely from its contest.

    at least prior to the digital revolution, there was some physical and tactile element to recorded music no matter what. and while there are still social aspects to music, it used to be based much more in a temporal, physical space than today. and while you can forge meaningful relationships online as well, it still pales in comparison to what face-to-face encounters offer.

    it this sense, it boils down to the inadequacy of dualism — and a new form of digital dualism these days, so to speak.

    obviously kind of straying from the original point and purpose of the quote, but all of these issues are bound up in this discussion of what music means and how/why it means anything to anyone.
  • John MellorJohn Mellor
    I researched this some, and I found this later quote from Stravinsky, the first quote at the start of the thread was in 1936. This second quote was from 1962 and is interesting:

    "The over-publicized bit about expression (or non-expression) was simply a way of saying that music is supra-personal and super-real and as such beyond verbal meanings and verbal descriptions. It was aimed against the notion that a piece of music is in reality a transcendental idea "expressed in terms of" music, with the reductio ad absurdum implication that exact sets of correlatives must exist between a composer's feelings and his notation. It was offhand and annoyingly incomplete, but even the stupider critics could have seen that it did not deny musical expressivity, but only the validity of a type of verbal statement about musical expressivity. I stand by the remark, incidentally, though today I would put it the other way around: music expresses itself."
    Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft (1962). Expositions and Developments.


    I especially like the end where he states "music expresses itself". Plus, he states that his original comment was "offhand and annoyingly incomplete , but even the stupider critics could have seen that it did not deny musical expressivity". Interesting...

    My opinion, music IS expression, expression of feelings, emotions, and intent of the composer. Like Tsuru said above "emotion is required to make the music", therefore emotion is expression and IS an inherent property of music.

    More food for thought.

    -HM ♥ ♫ ☮
  • timnuoatimnuoa
    Ooh, thank you for the additional quote. I sure know that nothing makes me feel stronger emotion than music. It would be interesting to get the opinion of some musicians on this
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