April 28, 2011

And Now For Something Completely Different

Well, perhaps not completely different because it touches on the nature of "intertextuality" in some large sense and therefore touches on my abnormal interest in literary echoes between various ancient texts.

I have a couple of questions about word painting and “nature painting” in music. Perhaps a musicologist could answer my questions. It’s possible that there are documented reflections on them by Beethoven or some other composer. But for this post, let’s assume that all we have is the music.

My two (on the surface) related questions are:

1) Is there some kind of a relationship between the word painting in some Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music and the extra-musical expressions in, say, Beethoven’s Strum from his 6th symphony or in the nature elements of some Romantic Era music? To me they both seem to call upon, admittedly different, notions from a world beyond the music upon which the music itself depends. At some basic level, how different is an rising scale accompanying the word “rise” in a plainchant and the timpani sounding the thunder of the storm? In other words is there a relationship between musical word painting and “nature painting?”

2) If there is such a relationship, what is it? To reuse a list from a previous post on what some may think is a different subject, is the relationship Freudian, Jungian, Levi Straussian, historical, some kind of a Dennettian good trick or just a figment of my overactive imagination?

Posted by Duane Smith at April 28, 2011 9:26 AM | Read more on Odds and Ends |

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Comments

Love your image of Beethoven STRUMming on his banjo.

Posted by: Gary at April 30, 2011 6:47 AM

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