Jeremy Ricketson - Tuberculosis Rhapsody

[Nightscape]

I decided to convey my feelings about the tuberculosis thread into music terms today.  If you listen, towards the end you can hear unrest in the music, and also some creepy laughter, symbolic of the lie.

[rob47]

I like the ending a lot, very mysterioso. 

[Derek]

haha...I love how around 3:20 all of a sudden  its like a   "weird look"  at the thread when you realize it was all a lie. I like the juxtaposing of the "man this is weird" with "awww how sad" moods,

[Nightscape]

My god, Derek, I can't believe you caught that (the juxtaposing).  I figured that no one would get it... usually my friends can't hear stuff like that.

[ted]

I like it, but I saw things very different from events on the forum. It is my habit in recent years to ignore titles and programmes and just let my responses run free. It is a fact that the inspiration of a piece can have nothing to do with the response of the listener. In a sense it could be said that Derek is wise to avoid titles for this reason - they are often as limiting as they are helpful. Part of the fascination of music is its abstract chameleon power over the imagination.

[Derek]

I have some liner notes of a performance of Beethoven sonatas that says something like: "The title of Moonlight Sonata is wonderfully inept"  and makes some mention of the third movement.

Who said moonlit nights are ALWAYS peaceful?  Long before I read those notes, I had thought of the third movement as a bunch of wispy clouds and wind streaking across the moon and flurries of bats and so forth.  How come people who write liner notes always completely lack imagination?

[Derek]

Hmm in terms of using titles---I think I've always been one to be attracted to completely abstract music.  As a small child I loved Fantasia, and my favorite segment by far was the first one, the Bach fugue. All of the imagery were just colors and shapes....  I haven't yet heard a piece of music and immediately thought of dancing hippos. (or anything else concrete in the real world).

[Nightscape]

You are all right, in that a title does not have to limit your imagination when listening to a piece.  In fact, I would encourage anybody who heard my music to think of whatever they want when they hear it.

But I also find it fascinating to hear a piece from the composer's point of view... for example, take The Rite of Spring (also in Fantasia).  I first heard the piece without knowing the titles of the sections, and later when I found out it conflicted with what I thought.  But the very fact it was in Fantasia shows that a piece of music can be interpreted many ways.

This debate between absolute and programmatic music has existed for over a hundred years.....  I quote from the Harvard Dictionary of Music:

"The debate between the proponents of absolute and program music has continued for over a century, orelapping, but only in part, with a debate over the extent to which music is a form of expression.  In the 20th century, the proponents of absolute music have generally had the upper hand; the influence of the doctrine can be seen in many workds of musical aesthetics, in Schenkerian and other approaches to musical analysis, and not least in the relatively objective, intellectual, or formalistic character of much recent music.  Nonetheless, hte dichotomy between absolute and program music is essentially misleading, for it obscures the complex intertwining of extramusical associations and 'purely' musical substance that can be found even it pieces that bear no verbal clues whatever."