[Smt-talk] quick query

[Arnie Cox]

Proverbs 25:20:  Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on soda.  

One gloss:  These things are incongruous:  certain music to a heavy heart, under-dressing in cold weather, vinegar and soda.

More broadly:  "How shall we understand music?  It is like an action upon someone, and it is like a component in a chemical reaction."

Some modern analogs in answering the question of how we might understand music: 
- It is like a language
- It is like a thing which moves, in some cases seemingly of its own volition
- it is like a vessel which contains things, and which listeners and performers can move through (like an auditory curio cabinet), and/or which moves past listeners (like a moving curio cabinet)

A slightly different analytical question:  How does music, or this music, work?
- It has *these* objective properties (and relationships among its features)
- It has *these* properties that we attribute to it (via metaphor and/or via its effects upon us) and that we treat as objective properties
- It has these effects upon listeners (and society), whence, the countless historical and current concerns about music's effects


Arnie Cox
Assoc. Prof. of Music Theory
Oberlin Conservatory of Music


On Feb 14, 2013, at 7:48 AM, Michael Morse wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
> 
>   Is there any consensus on what counts as the first piece of music analysis? What are the contenders?
> 
> Thnks,
> 
> Michael Morse
> Cultural Studies
> Trent University 
> Peterborough, Oshawa
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