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The long-distance phone
companies have always made a lot of money out of separated young lovers who
spend hours mostly sighing back and forth between Pittsburgh and Bahrain. To an
eavesdropper, not much is happening. But to the lovers -- enormous amounts of
very important information are being exchanged.
I think good instrumental
music is that kind of a communications channel: Deeply personal, but deeply
important information, even if it's "fuzzy" information about the
heart and glands that you can't put into words very well -- deep limbic
communication.
Is it "about" something? I
don't think I'm tainted with anyone's formal theory; I think I've just naturally
always responded to music as if it were a big bag of important emotional, æsthetic, even intellectual
information.
Debussy's putting the titles at the end
of the score makes a lot of sense -- a snappy title can "prejudice the
jury," force it towards the composer's desired paths.
Is this a synæsthesia thing? Two groups of people
listening to the same music, one group hears just the notes and integrates them
into pleasure; the others perceive an explosion of complex and unexpected
information.
Bob
P.S. God I just love
diphthongs!
Elmer Elevator's Discount Prep
has a new URL!
It's not my
fault!
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