Has anyone wondered why and what makes music so powerful that has an ability to control human senses? How music touches our emotions?
I just wanted to share this brilliant piece of scientific research article which I found on music. Though, it's lengthy, it is an excellent read and I would recommend this to every one. Somehow it relates to so many arguments that happen here and I hope every one will find their answers by reading this. http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/MusicMindMeaning.html I'm just pasting a part of it below (taken randomly) as the entire article is too long!! *Composing and Conducting: * In seeing, we can move our eyes; lookers can choose where they shall look, and when. In music we must listen *here*; that is, to the part that's being played now. It is simply no use asking Music-Finder to look *there* because it's not then, now. If composer and conductor choose what part we hear, does not this ruin our analogy? When Music-Analyzer asks its questions, how can Music-Finder answer them unless, miraculously, the music happens to be playing what music-finder wants at just that very instant? If so, then how can music paint its scenes unless composers know exactly what the listeners will ask at every moment? How to ensure–when Music-Analyzer wants it now–that precisely that "something" will be playing now? That is the secret of music—of writing, playing, and conducting it! Music need not, of course, confirm each listener's every expectation; each plot demands some novelty. Whatever the intent, control is required or novelty will turn to nonsense. If allowed to think too much themselves, the listeners will find unanswered questions in any score—about accidents of form and figure, voice and line, temperament and difference-tone. Composers can have different goals: to calm and soothe, surprise and shock, tell tales, stage scenes, teach new things, or tear down prior arts. For some such purposes composers must use the known forms and frames or else expect misunderstanding. Of course, when expectations are confirmed too often the style may seem dull; this is our concern in the next section. Yet, just as in language, one often best explains a new idea by using older ones, avoiding jargon or too much lexical innovation. If readers cannot understand the words themselves, the sentences may "be Greek to them." This is not a matter of a simple hierarchy, in which each meaning stands on lower-level ones, for example, word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, and chapter. Things never really work that way, and jabberwocky shows how sense comes through though many words are new. In every era some contemporary music changes basic elements yet exploits established larger forms, but innovations that violate too drastically the expectations of the culture cannot meet certain kinds of goals. Of course this will not apply to works whose goals include confusion and revolt, or when composers try to create things that hide or expurgate their own intentionality, but in these instances it may be hard to hold the audience. Each musical artist must forecast and pre-direct the listener's fixations to draw attention here and distract it from there–to force the hearer (again, like a magician does) to ask only the questions that the composition is about to answer. Only by establishing such pre-established harmony can music make it seem that something is there. **-- Cheers, Madhavan.R Be a Music Fan; not a Music Pirate!
