The influence of music, which I mentioned briefly in my last post, keeps coming up in conversation lately. For instance, I was persuaded to acquire the CD "Lean by Jarre" which contains film music and some other scores composed by Michael Jarre for the films of David Lean. When planning his films, Lean wanted music that would make the audience feel, and enhance the emotional subtext of events onscreen. This is old news to film buffs and composers, but it gets me thinking about music's power. Some of us can feel ourselves being manipulated when watching a film whose music is particularly heavy, emotionally. But I don't feel manipulated by, say, Mahler's First which I was just playing, or by music of Brahms (depends on the conductor in that case, for me), or for that matter, by Holst's two Psalms for voices and orchestra. Why is that? Am trying to decide.

For the last couple years, I've been transcribing music (usually for voice, sometimes for voice and orchestra) for brass ensembles, and the results are, to my ear, striking. The emotional impact of the music changes when transcribed. So the instrumentation, with its colors and textures, makes a big difference in music's emotional impact. Other musicians I know have commented on this also. The sound of a particularly fine trumpet playing a line formerly carried by a vocalist can intensify the impact--though in other cases, in other lines of music, the vocalist may be more powerful in impact. This has to do with the range, I think. My earliest experience with effects of range occurred when I learned how to play in certain high reaches of the violin's E string, and found tears coming to my eyes because the timbre reached back into some place behind my eyes and incited a feeling--not sadness--something more ineffable. This effect did not occur with each high note, but only with certain ones. I won't get any more technical at this point, but I do think that instrumental timbres and range have a huge effect on most (sensitive?) listeners. This effect can be good or evil, and it's powerful enough to be worth some more thought.

Then there is music whose effects on me are definitely negative. For instance, rap music (no offense to anyone--this is a matter of personal taste): When I hear rap music in passing, deluging forth from open car-windows for instance, I feel anger and bitterness and nebulous hate in the texture of that music. And when I'm in a store and there's certain kinds of music on the store stereo, I might begin to feel so bad that I have to leave. Often I don't even know what group or person is producing the music. On one or two occasions I've tried to let students of mine explicate certain kinds of music to me, such as Heavy Metal--or even Christian Heavy Metal--and the effects are still bad, despite my attempts to bring intellect to bear on the listening.

Today's quote: Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.