Music and Mind

V The Making of Music

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

—Igor Stravinsky

www.mind-study.org

Beethoven: Quartet from Fidelio 4:57 ♫

Where we are . .

I. The Appeal of Music March 23

II. The Sound of Music March 30

III. The Hearing of Music April 6

IV. The Structure of Music April 13

IV. The Making of Music April 27

V. The Power of Music May 4

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Topics for today (but not entirely in this order)

• Making Music– Composing– Performing– Improvising

• Operations of the brain in making music

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Conducting

• An aspect of performing• What does a conductor do?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTM7E4-DN0o• Does the conductor make a difference?• Variation among conductors

– Example: Toscanini• His recordings of Mozart seem to hurry by• Yet the actual beat is slower than other renditions that seem slower• How to explain?• “Toscanini elicited a clean, highly articulated sound from orchestras,

showering attention-drawing detail upon the listener…” (Jourdain 142)• Consequence: the mind of the listener is made more busy

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The minds of great composers: Intuition and Theory

• Composition vis-a-vis music theory– Great composers do not necessarily make conscious

use of music theory– Stravinsky• Studied rules of harmony etc. only after using them

intuitively – Rimsky-Korsakov• Knew nothing of music theory when appointed to U

of St. Petersburg – Compare linguistic fluency and rules of grammar

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The minds of great composers: Imagery and Memory

• Exceptional auditory imagery– Example: Beethoven

• Ninth symphony• Written when he was stone-deaf• But his auditory cortex was at its peak of ability

– Just not receiving any input from ears

• Memory– The role of memory in auditory imagery– Some great composers had prodigious memories

• Mendelssohn– Left the only available copy of Midsummer Night’s Dream

music in a London cab – Went home and wrote out the entire score from memory

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The minds of great composers: Inspiration

• Great composition flows freely . .– from where?– Arrives in composer’s mind fully formed

• Wagner– It’s like a cow producing milk

• Saint-Saens– Like an apple tree producing fruit

• Mozart– Like a sow pissing (Jourdain 170)

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The minds of great composers: Inspiration (cont’d)

• Inspiration cannot be willed, just happens• What various composers have said about how it comes

– Mozart: “…say, traveling in a carriage…or during the night when I cannot sleep”

– More Mozart: “Whence and how they come I know not; nor can I force them”

– Beethoven: “They come unbidden”– Handel (while writing the entire Messiah during a 24-day mania): “I

thought I saw all of heaven before me, and the Great God himself”– Puccini: “The music of this opera was dictated to me by God”– Brahms: “I felt that I was in tune with the Infinite, and there is no

thrill like it” (Jourdain 170)

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Prodigies

• Mozart– Started playing harpsichord at age 3– Began composing at age 5– Toured Europe at 6, playing at sight & improvising in requested styles– First symphony at age 9

• Camille Saint-Saens– As a prodigy, even greater than Mozart

• Started composing at 3, played Beethoven sonatas at age 5

– Only two or three of his compositions are now widely played

• Mendelssohn– Midsummer Night’s Dream music at age 17– But later compositions not as good, even in his own assessment

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The rarity of great composing talent

• How many classical composers are heard in concert today?– About 250

• 20% of the compositions most played are by 3 composers– Bach, Mozart, Beethoven

• 50% by 16 composers• 75% by 36 composers (Jourdain 194)• What’s going on in recent decades?

– Jourdain 194U;LB;195TU– A possible factor: the phonograph (Jourdain 235)

• The law of concomitant decline

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Chord sequences

• Some chord transitions flow smoothly—consonance– Typically, to neighbors in the circle of fifths

• Others grate on the mind—dissonance• “If a composer can find a new way of structuring chord

progressions, one chord may resolve to another in what is blissful consonance for that system, although the same progression is deemed dissonant in traditional harmony” —Jourdain 1997:104

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Wagner and Tannhäuser

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig on May 22, 1813, and died in Venice on February 13, 1883. He composed Tannhäuser between July 1843 and January 1845, completed the scoring on April 13, 1845, and conducted the first performance on October 19 that year in Dresden.

—Howard HershSan Francisco Symphony program notes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTM7E4-DN0o

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TannhäuserOverture(transcription for piano)p. 1

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Tannhäuser Overture (transcription for piano) (7-20)

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BB

F

B

GmDEm

D♯7

Tannhäuser Overture (transcription for piano) (21-31)

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B♭m F♯dim E Am C B E

D Gm F B♭m dim E Dm+E

Tannhäuser Overture (transcription for piano) (32-37)

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B7++ E B

G♯m F♯ dimB7

0:50https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTM7E4-DN0o

Wagner’stour through the circle of fifths(shown only in part)

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1

2

5

4

3

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Opening (and closing) chords, New World Symphony2nd movement

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Dvořák, from 2nd movement, New Word Symphony

Dvořák, New World Symphony, 2nd movement 10:40. 22:10

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Dvořák’s opening chords

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3

4

1

7

6

5

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Rhythm and Harmony in Composing

• Composers tend to use – simple rhythmic patterns when producing complex

harmonic progressions• Why?– Tonal centers are reinforced by emphasizing certain notes– Best accomplished by making these notes coincide with

strong rhythmic beats– Complex rhythmic devices (like syncopation) make those

beats less predictable and thus less forceful (Jourdain 152)

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Playing a musical instrument

• A formidable skill (Jourdain 201Bf)• The motor cortex in performers

– E.g. violinists

• The premotor cortex– Planning movements– Higher-level organization of movements

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Right side of head, showing lobes of cortex

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Playing a musical instrument

• A formidable skill (Jourdain 201Bf)• Also involved in playing an instrument

– Basal ganglia– Cerebellum

• (Has more neurons than the cortex)– Somatosensory cortex (in parietal lobe)

• Feedback of elementary movements

– Other parts of parietal lobe• Higher-level feedback

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Reading music

• Uses still other parts of the brain• Mainly visual cortex

– Occipital lobe– Parietal lobe– Temporal lobe

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Virtuosity

• Franz Liszt – the greatest ever (Jourdain 223UM)• What makes a virtuoso a virtuoso?

– Body – e.g., hands– Brain, including

• Connectivity to emotional centers• Excellent auditory imagery

– Training and experience• Almost all virtuosos started training by age 6 or 7• By 6 for violinists

• Experience and the brain– In those who started piano by age 8, corpus callosum is

• 15% larger than in those who started later • 15% larger than in those who don’t play at all

– Practicing without touching the instrument• E.g., Glen Gould (Jourdain 229Bf) 26

Improvisation

• Performing plus on-the-spot composition• Even more of the brain is active• A frequent feature of 18th-19th century perfomances

– Mozart– Beethoven– Liszt– Et Al.

• Often in cadenzas– Perhaps more often in the past– Compare two renditions of the cadenza in Haydn’s trumpet concerto

• Maurice Andre in Heidelberg (D) Muncher Philharmoniker 5:04-5:56♫• Wynton Marsalis with English Chamber Orchestra 5:22-6:36♫

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Bach, Well-Tempered Clavier #1, first 4 bars

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Bach, Well-Tempered Clavier #1, next 4 bars

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T h a t ‘ s i t f o r t o d a y !