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From: oscar@utcsrgv.UUCP (Oscar M. Nierstrasz)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: sound and vision - something for everyone
Message-ID: <3316@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19-Feb-84 23:37:13 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.3316
Posted: Sun Feb 19 23:37:13 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 20-Feb-84 00:30:52 EST
References: <6783@unc.UUCP>
Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto
Lines: 79

Of the power of images to move and inspire, much has already been said.
Of the worthlessness of television, much too has been said -- I haven't
watched TV (regularly) since 1976.  This matter about music and image,
however ....

I find not so much that music evokes images so much as it does emotions,
or even, more importantly, *programmed responses*.  I can't listen to
Also Sprach ... or the Blue Danube Waltz without thinking of 2001, or
to Singin' in the Rain without remembering Alex in A Clockwork Orange.
These images, or emotions, are *after the fact*, however.  Most of
what I listen to inspires no image whatsoever, the exceptions being
opera and programme (or `programmatic') music.  Like being on drugs
or being asleep, you see whatever you happen to be thinking about.
If the music evokes an emotion, that emotion may spark images that
are associated with that emotion -- a sort of Pavlovian response.
It is *you* that provides the image, and it will be different for everyone.
(Again, the exceptions being for some well-established image-evoking
cliches, leitmotivs, or what-you-will.)

A fine example of how the mind can be triggered by something as simple
as a snatch of music or a particular phrase occurs in the writing of
Tom Wolfe: Wolfe is fond of creating `macros' or `global variables'
that automatically expand whenever you encounter them.  The device is
very simple yet astonishingly effective.  In "The Right Stuff", for example,
he describes early on the Precise Meaning of the euphemism "burned
beyond recognition".  He explains how it *is* a euphemism, and then he
goes into gruesome detail for a page or two explaining what is
Truly Meant by this oh-so-genteel turn of phrase.  'Nuff said, says Tom.
Every time after this that he mentions this phrase, *without adding
anything more*, the reader instantly fills in the missing detail
with a veritable flood of ghastly images.

Of course, Tom Wolfe has deliberately set us up, but this is an excellent
illustration of what happen, I suspect, whenever we say, Oh, this music
reminds me of such-and-so -- don't you *see* that?  Sometimes these
associations are set up publicly, so that the playing of The National
Anthem (pick yer faverite) will illicit a certain response from all
citizenry alike, and other times they manifest themselves privately:
"It's *our* song!"

In the two-hour epilogue to Berlin Alexanderplatz, Fassbinder gives us
*his* rendition of the hero's `dream' (a coma-like revery that is the
only possible reaction to the events preceding.)  The story is set in
1928, but Fassbinder uses such music as Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen
etc. etc. in this part of the film.  He *doesn't* use this music elsewhere,
but then only here are we seeing *Fassbinder's* dream of Biberkopf's dream.  
The music, blatantly anachronistic, is  not out-of-place if we can accept
the premise that this is a *dream*.  (After 13 hours of this story, we are
ready to accept *anything*!)  In a dream, anything makes sense.  We do not
impose the limitation that everything be logical.  Rather, we flow from
thought to thought, image to image, like a stone skipping along the
surface of a pond.  Think of the dreams that you've had and remembered --
how often does the beginning of the dream have nothing to do with the end?
Rather, each part leads to another without there necessarily being any
grand pattern to the whole mess.

Music can set one off on a spree of daydreaming that brings forth images
as they do in real dreams.  In Berlin Alexanderplatz, Fassbinder was using
music that *he felt* belonged to the images he was showing us, the ideas
he was trying to express.  Film, however, is a medium of communication, which
can only succeed if the language can be recognized.  Fassbinder, therefore,
must have been counting on us to bring to the film through the music some
of the same associations that it had for him.  (This would, of course,
break down if Leonard Cohen reminded him of a thwarted love affair that he
had that reminded him of Biberkopf, but we, the audience, have no way of
knowing about.)

So, yes, I think that music can evoke images, but it does so in complex
and often personal ways that may have nothing to do with `what the
composer intended' (as if that had anything to do with anything).
Yes, propagandists and advertising executives can set up associations
between pieces of music and images or ideas.  Yes, an entire generation
can have a particular association between a piece of music and an image
that other generations do not (the first few notes of Beethoven's Fifth
to anyone who heard German broadcasts throughout WW II; Beatles' music
to kids growing up in the Sixties; ...).  And yes, music may not bring
forth any image whatsoever.  For me it usually doesn't.

Oscar Nierstrasz @ utcsrgv!oscar