Schubert,
Yes! And not to forget Art Tatum. |
Sabai, I stumbled unto this thread only now unfortunately, being intreaged about your use of magnets on a new thread of yours.
To my mind a system is felt to be musical, if it allows a listener to be deeply touched by what he hears. A system, which lets "the soul of the music" come through. A musical person is generally also a music lover and not necessarily just an audiophile. The two do not always and at all occasion necessarily coincide and this fact makes the definition of musicality difficult in our context here. A system itself can never be musical. It is just a collection of machines. Nor can the software, we feed our machines with be musical. It is rather in the interplay of software, machine and ear that we deem one system musical and another not.
I find the fact interesting, that even with a system which we on one day experience as musical, on another day with the same music playing we find as sounding awful. So there is more to it, than just "ear".
The high end industry strives in part due to the fact, that we often enough question our systems. Is it really as good as we think? Shouldn't we rather get product B, because our product A does somehow not keep its promise? And so on and on ad nauseam. Compare that to our going to a live concert. Unless we sit in a really lousy seat, would we ever criticize the sound as unmusical? The interpretation of a given piece, yes of course, but the sound itself? Hardly, I would contend, unless again, we are seated in an acoustical unfortunate place. So, live music, even if it is perhaps not pleasing to us, IS by definition musical. And hence I am thinking, that perhaps the late Harry Pearson was right, when he tried - at least in his beginnings - to judge systems in comparing them to what he called "the absolute sound", namely that of live music. And yes, to be a good critic of how a given system sounds, you must necessarily be a "musical person" who, if he is a music lover, would also enjoy music from whatever source it comes from. If the source is more important than the music, I would call that person an audiophile, a sound lover, translated, but not a true lover of music. Just my two cents..... |
By the way, I brought up the same question about a decade ago with a lot of very thoughtful replies to my thread.
Here is one, which I consider one of the most thought provoking and certainly should be recalled here:
04-28-01: Ozfly
Detlof, this has been an inspiring thread. IMHO, and borrowing liberally from Katharina, Frogman and others, musicality cannot exist without, first, the highest level of artistry. Whether the art is in physics (Djjd) or the creation and performance of music, the artist must have a natural emotional and intuitive understanding of the craft. We've all heard it -- it's what keeps us going and stirs our souls: The performances that are so seamless that is seems the artist is transparent and only something greater, the music, exists. Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughn come to mind in the blues genre. Once that happens, our amps and speakers are called on to deliver it in our homes. I dont know whether the delivery of musicality occurs because of accurate nth harmonic reproductions, the accurate capture of natural echoes, a totally black background or just the right soundstaging. But it does require enough subtlety to capture the nuances that differentiate the great performances. Presumably, the audio reviewers use the music that stirs their souls when they test systems. So, since the musicality was already there in the performance being evaluated, the system can be tested for the faithful reproduction of the subtleties that define great musicality. As many suggest, it is simply a matter of whether you feel you are there -- you are sharing in the mastery of music. Maybe I'm rambling, but a system can get in the way of musicality but it cannot reproduce it if it isn't in the performance first. Great performances are differentiated from average ones by great differences in emotion and talent that are funneled to us in many small ways. The accurate capture of those small things is what counts. Since we are dealing in nuances and each system has tiny imperfections, we are guaranteed a life of tweaking and searching as audiophiles. But, its a happy search and there are a lot of gems found along the way. Again Detlof, thanks (Ive pretty much left musicality linked to my emotional response now, Im wondering whether there arent some things that can be grasped more analytically so I can improve my system more intelligently. Not to worry, I cant give up the emotional response :-))
Ozfly (System | Threads | Answers | This Thread) |
For 14.99 they're a steal! They even have a chain to fix to your system, so the cat can't mess with them. |
Sabai,
thank you for your kind words. Pandora's Box indeed, judging from some of the remarks here.
There is no society on earth without some kind of music. In the old Chinese dynastes there were of the opinion, that if the music was "good", the state was in order. A good point perhaps, because music often seems to reflect the "mood" certain strata of society are in. Just think of jazz developing from the 30 of the last century onward.
Everyone knows that music can have a deep influence on our state of mind, but actually nobody really knows how this connecting of mind and organised sound is possible. |
I think Mapman is right, when he says, that it is impossible to quantify musicality. That is also the reason that psychology generally shies away from this problem.
Learsfool, I think, makes several excellent points, although I disagree, that "emotions are part of the music".
Humans, also higher forms of mammals have emotions. Music per se has not. It is sound, which however composers as well as their interpreters can shape cleverly, if they so chose, to arrange in such a way, that they can evoke all sorts of feelings, images and emotions in the listener. Maler and Richard Strauss were masters in this about 200 years ago, Prokofiev and Shostakovich in the last century just to mention a few. Strauss in fact was famous for saying, that if need be, he could put a glass of beer into music. There is a whole bag of tricks, as musicologists will point out, which by clevery arranging notes and the voicing and combination of instruments, by which you can evoke almost any state of mind you wish for in the listener. You might say, that music is able to manipulate us, as for example Stalin and Hitler very well knew.
However, it seems to me,that there is more to it: Bach's music is basically pure mathematics and with a bit of a jump in time also Schoenberg's. But they can and do evoke deep emotions in a listener, if he has the ear for their music.
I also fully agree with Learsfool, that what we call PraT and phrasing, are used to evoke something in the listener, who then, listening to a given piece, if he likes it would probably call "musical".
Bascially though, I think that Mapman has hit the nail on the head: As little as you can quantify what makes up a human being, you cannot quantify what makes for musicality.
You can certainly identify parts, as we try to do here, you can examine the question through musical education, historically, aesthetically, sociologically, psychologically, musicologically, but the whole is always more than all the parts and at least for me it remains a mystery. |
Here's a piece, which perhaps at least in parts of it, also covers what we try to discuss here.
http://www.performancerecordings.com/capturing-music.html |
HUH? You just said something, but it ain't musical. I must be deaf. |
Frogman,
with all due respect and fully agreeing with the distinction you make between perceived emotion and emotion that is felt as well as apologies for being a nitpicking old curmudgeon, I still insist, that emotion is NOT in the music. It may be in the composer, who translates it into his score, it may be in the interpreter, who through his training, his artistry, his concept of the score and perhaps, but by no means always, by his being moved emotionally by the composer's score, translates it into sound, which again in the listener may or may not cause emotions. In a way, I don't like what I am saying, I love music, but I also try to stand for what I at least think is precise.
To be honest, it is only when I envisage this amazing chain of events, of how the magic of what is music evolves, that I stand in awe of the mystery what music is and what it can do to us. |
Learsfool,
Yes of course. I do not discount what you point out. As in all art, in poetry, in painting, and in music, which we talk about here, there can be emotion transmitted from artist to recipient. What fascinates me is, that the medium of transmission per se is dead. It is our mind, soul, psyche, "us", which in a sense put our emotion back into what we hear, see or read. We then call the medium emotional, because it triggers something in us, which you rightly say, may be intended by the composer as well as the interpreter of his/her score.
You put the emphasis of this process on the medium, I on "us". We're probably both half right.
But I'll stop now flogging a horse which is half dead. We're already way out of what this thread intended.
Geoffkait,
I am at a perdition. I ever motorise Google's translator.
My nativity mouthing is a subdialekt of Klingonian.
Many Cheerleaders to you too.
detlof
Sabay,
apologies, won't do it again. At least it's not intellektual, I think, probably not even particularly funny, but I just could not help myself. The music was too emional and I too full of good wine.
|
Czarivey,
what about Jazz? I love classical music, but I find musicality in many other forms and cultures as well and I don´t think, that I am alone in this.
Menahem Pressler, world famous pianist and leader of the Beaux Arts Trio had the highest respect for Oscar Peterson for example. Friedrich Gulda loved and played jazz, just to name two who were classical musicians. |
Frogman,
I fully agree. I would even go as far as to say, that technical perfection, both in classical as well as in jazz music is the prerequisit of a great artist. This alone does not necessarily makes his playing "musical". There are performes in both fields with stupendous technicality, whose performances are "dead", without life, do not take you in and in the end just bore you. They do not "live" their music but just use their score or theme to show off how good they are. |
Sabai,
REgarding those two artists you mention, I could not agree more. Not to forget, that Monk was also a composer and a great teacher in his own way. All the jazz greats of his time came to him, seeking his advice. His genius was behind and formed the way jazz music was being played then. At least that's what I have been told...... |
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me, that Monk was more interested in chord structure and chord changes, which he hammered out with aplomb, whereby his timing often made for a desired tension between his playing and his rythm section. An effect which to me always seemed an essential part of his "musicality".
Yes, he could be very fast indeed, but when he was, to me he did not seem to care much for his phrasing usually. As I said, to my understanding his emphasys were on his timing and his chords, which he put beneath the melodic lines provided by his co-players. |
