Wonder-full Music

This evening I started reading An Experiment in Criticism again, and I noted Lewis' mention of the other arts as well as literature, and his suggestion that we could evaluate them with the same method as he was suggesting for books. This got me thinking about music in particular.

"Many people enjoy popular music in a way which is compatible with humming the tune, stamping in time, talking, and eating. And when the popular tune hasonce gone out of fashion they enjoy it no more. Those who like Bach react quite differently." (Lewis)

I had also watched a movie about Beethoven earlier this evening and the one line that stood out to me went something like: 'What is music? What does it do? It has the power to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer.'

So tonight as I listened to some of my favorite music, I thought I'd write a little concerning a brief observation I'd made to myself a few days ago: That I like music that sounds Grand. I am not really sure if there is any better word for it.

I was thinking to myself the other day, 'what is it that I like about the music that I like?' and the answer that first came to me was the sense of Grandure. I don't like only Grand sounding music, to be sure, but it struck me that my favorite music, the music that stirrs me most, that I most would not want to live without is the symphonic music that has a kind of swelling to it, usually with an optimistic flavor, though not always, which brings to mind a sense of something immense, soemthing great, something that evokes a sense of Wonder. This sense of wonder can also be found in the 'magical' sounding music that I enjoy. It is not large scale wonder, but wonder at a mysterious beauty.

What exactly do I mean by wonder? I think that wonder is.....delight in something that is beyond one's grasp or understanding. It does not usually have a negative connotation, though it often includes the sense of being very small or insignificant in comparrison to something else. But wonder does not focus on one's smallness, nor cause one to be fearfull because of it. The state of Wonder is focused on the apprciation of something amazing, and in this appreciation one's small self is draw out and uplifted so that it too, for a moment, feels so much larger, so much greater than one normally feels.

I love music that gives me a sense of grandure, wonder, enchantment, and beauty. I also enjoy music that sounds urgent and exciting, or triumphant. On the quieter side, I like music that has a feeling of tenderness, of sweet emotions, of being quietly reflective, as well as magical and having a sense of quiet awe.

I think much of the sense of gandure in the music I like is communicated through the quality of the sounds of the instruments - the aural texture. My favorite component is always the entire string section of an orchestra playing together their individual parts - they seem to add so much space and depth. I also really enjoy the deep round sounds of some kind of horn (not sure which of the brass instruments is my favorite) - not so much when they are played high and brassy. I also very much like the shimmering sound of small chimes.

The sense of grandure is also contributed to by the apparent layers to the music, the number of instruments playing and the number of varying parts they play which make up the whole. I am never very gripped by small scale music, such as quartets or solos. A solo embedded into a piece in which many more instruments join it can be nice, but I generally find that I enjoy the moment that everyone else joins in and we at last have the fullness of the music much more than a solo part, however lovely it may be. A good analogy, perhaps, would be the kind of illustrations I like. I love pictures that are so full of details that it seems like I could find something new every time I look at them. So too, do I like a lot of details in music. I like to be able to listen to a song many different times and each time tune into a different layer, notice different details. It must be full enough, detailed enough, deep enough so as to always inspire wonder, never coming to the point that I feel completely familiar with every bit of it. I like the mystery of a myriad of sounds blending together, so that I cannot know exactly what is going on.

I tend to like music that seems to be building up to something, which has a grand finnish, or a climactic moment before dwindling back down to restate a calmer earlier theme. As suggested by this, I like a song to have a kind of landscape or plot. I like music that isn't the same volume texture or mood from start to finnish. Along with liking progression and variation in a piece, I dislike too much repetition. I enjoy restatements that have some kind of variation to them, but music that repeats itself too closely, or repeats even with variations too many times just about drives me mad.

I seem to really like when the rhythm is communicated through instruments other than just drums, or when the underlying rhythm isn't blatently stated. I'm not sure if this ties into the Grand feeling at all, but it is my feeling that a constantly rapped out beat somehow makes the music feel flatter to me, and I tend to find it distracting from the other sounds. Since it is the textures of the instruments which I beleive most captivates me, I suppose it is no surprise that I should dislike having my attention drawn away from that. Why exactly it does so isn't clear to me though. One thing that I think is fairly true, however, is that music that has drums prominently keeping the time tends to be less likely to have a varied landscape, as I mentioned above, and is more likely to maintain a constant volume texture and mood.