Dizzying music

A blog I discovered recently and have enjoyed reading, This Blog Will Change the World (seriously, that’s the title), has drawn my attention to composer Paul Hindemith’s interesting comments on atonal music - that is, music with no tonal center or key. From Hindemith’s book A Composer’s World:

To be sure, [atonal composers] do not, contrary to their conviction, eliminate tonality; they rather avail themselves of the same trick as those sickeningly wonderful merry-go-rounds on fair grounds and in amusement parks, in which the pleasure-seeking visitor is tossed around simultaneously in circles and up and down and sideways in such fashion that even the innocent onlooker feels his insides turned into a pretzel-shaped distortion. The idea is, of course, to disturb the customer’s feeling of gravitational attraction by combining at any given moment so many different forms of attraction that his sense of location cannot adjust itself fast enough.

So-called atonal music, music which pretends to work without acknowledging the relationships of harmonies to tonics, acts just the same as those devilish gadgets; harmonies both in vertical and in horizontal form are arranged so that the tonics to which they refer change too rapidly. Thus we cannot adjust ourselves, cannot satisfy our desire for gravitational orientation. Again spatial dizziness is the result, this time in the sublimated realm of spatial images in our mind. I personally do not see why we should use music to produce the effect of seasickness, which can be provided more convincingly by our amusement industry. Future ages will probably never understand why music ever went into competition with so powerful an adversary.

Even if I agreed completely with Hindemith’s take on atonality (which I might…I’m not sure), it still seems to me that even dizziness, sonic or otherwise, is a sensation one might actually enjoy every once in a while, at least temporarily. If tonality is gravity, maybe atonality is weightlessness. I’d buy a ticket to ride, but you couldn’t pay me to call it home.

February 26, 2008 | Filed Under New Music | Leave a Comment

Musical Jokes

The website of the Oratorio Society of New York boasts an exhaustive list of music-related jokes. I haven’t made my way through to the end yet (not sure I’ll ever have that much time on my hands), but I would especially recommend the humor on “Composer Effects.”

Composer Effects
The Mozart Effect
A new report now suggests that the Mozart effect may be a fraud. For you hip urban professionals: no, playing Mozart for your designer baby may not improve his IQ or help him get into that exclusive pre-school. He’ll just have to be admitted to Harvard some other way.
Of course, we’re all better off for listening to Mozart purely for the pleasure of it. However, one wonders that if playing Mozart sonatas for little Hillary or Jason could boost their intelligence, what would happen if other composers were played in their developmental time?
LISZT EFFECT: Child speaks rapidly and extravagantly, but never really says anything important.
BRUCKNER EFFECT: Child speaks very slowly and repeats himself frequently. Gains reputation for profundity.
WAGNER EFFECT: Child becomes a megalomaniac. May eventually marry his sister.
MAHLER EFFECT: Child continually screams - at great length and volume that he’s dying.
SCHOENBERG EFFECT: Child never repeats a word until he’s used all the other words in his vocabulary. Sometimes talks backwards. Eventually, people stop listening to him. Child blames them for their inability to understand him.
BABBITT EFFECT: Child gibbers nonsense all the time. Eventually, people stop listening to him. Child doesn’t care because all his playmates think he’s cool.
IVES EFFECT: the child develops a remarkable ability to carry on several separate conversations at once.
GLASS EFFECT: the child tends to repeat himself over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
STRAVINSKY EFFECT: the child is prone to savage, guttural and profane outbursts that often lead to fighting and pandemonium in the preschool.
BRAHMS EFFECT: the child is able to speak beautifully as long as his sentences contain a multiple of three words (3, 6, 9, 12, etc). However, his sentences containing 4 or 8 words are strangely uninspired.
AND THEN OF COURSE, THE CAGE EFFECT — CHILD SAYS NOTHING FOR 4 MINUTES, 33 SECONDS. PREFERRED BY 9 OUT OF 10 CLASSROOM TEACHERS.