FINAL BLOG: Ólafur Arnalds - Ljósið (Official Music Video)

Final:



Firstly, I appreciate this song further after finishing the class because of its lack of words. Because there are no lyrics to dictate what I am supposed to feel, I am free to completely interpret the song as I encounter the reactive emotion. I am not busy applying personal meaning to words I did not write or feel on my own. I am not forced to find meaning in someone else’s experience or interpretation. I feel more deeply and clearly what the song is supposed to mean. My study of Schopenhauer’s musical theory has prompted me to think in this direction with his appreciation for the most direct form of the Will. 



Secondly, I appreciate the Dionysian qualities I feel when I listen to it. It is passionate, emotional, and divine. When I hear it, I can easily get lost in another world made possible by experiencing this song. However, it also has a slow, measured, calculated repetition that I enjoy when I listen to it, which keeps my mind from getting carried away by the ecstasy of the song and never leaving the house! This side of my mental dialogue was clearly inspired by Nietzsche. Although I doubt either philosopher would agree with my taste or interpretation, they do nonetheless inspire me to use their challenging theories to dive deeper into reflecting on the way I experience music.



Original:



This song reminds me that "the best art simply answers the question, 'What is life?'" (Lecture, 26/January) There is a sweet melancholy to it, a combination that always reminds me of the beautiful irony of life. There is sorrow and hope, light and darkness that complement each other and express what words cannot.

Final Blog Post: For Nietzsche and Radetsky March

Original post:

I selected this piece because I feel it demonstrates the qualities that Nietzsche saw in Bizet. Radetsky March's liveliness coupled with toe-tapping melody is similar to the Bizet's Carmen, particularly in its overture. Radetsky March is not decadent, as Wagner's Tristan and Ilsode tends to be.  There is nothing morbid in the tune of Radetsky March- all tunes are light-hearted. The sense of doom and sorrow is no where present, unlike the heavy melody of Tristan and Ilsode.

Extended post:

Although my purpose originally when selecting Radetzsky March was to provide a parallel piece of music to compare to Bizet’s Carmen, the two works are quite different in theme. Carmen is a tragedy, whereas Radetsky March is not.  Both pieces are lively indeed, but Radetsky March skill cannot be appropriately compared to Carmen.  Nietzsche praised Bizet due to the opera being light and lively despite the death of the main character Carmen and the ruin of her lover.  Such music requires burying ones ears into it to see its depth; it is not apparent to the casual observer that Carmen is a tragedy if he or she only listened on the surface.  On the contrary, Wagner’s Tristan and Ilsode is very clearly a tragedy and Wagner conveys the heaviness of the opera with rehashed, sorrowful melodies.  Thus, Nietzsche described Wagner as “decadent” due to this and the fact that Wagner takes his audience as fools instead of intelligent listeners. Music for fools only allows for surface listening:  it is very clear at first glance how the opera will proceed in terms of theme and atmosphere. Music for intelligent listeners allows for deeper listening: not all about the piece is apparent at once and one must listen carefully and be enraptured in order to understand its full significance. 

Although the feeling of Radetsky March is certainly as upbeat and lively as Carmen, it is slightly out of context to compare the two together as the atmospheres of both are not the same.  A better option I should have picked for comparison to Carmen would be Yoshiwara Lament, a more contemporary Japanese song performed by Waggaki Band.  Although this song is from a completely different culture and was created quite recently, the underlying theme is similar to Carmen as the song’s lyrics come from the perspective of a girl who wishes to be freed from her life as a courtesan and laments her fate. The characters in both Carmen and Yoshiwara Lament barely dwell upon their misfortune. Both Carmen and Yoshiwara Lament are upbeat and if one does not listen carefully, it is easy to miss the significance which lies beneath their melodies.  

Posting for Heidi Zambetti Rh 109/Naddaff 9 May 2016 Original Post: Papa Roach -

Last Resort lyrics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhJ6bE4z5vsvideo on www.youtube.com, or 

My original intent was to write about my most recent post on A Perfect Circle song titled, "Judith." However, after a personal experience this week, I decided to post this song as an alternative. "Last Resort" by Papa Roach came on Pandora Radio and I found myself to be incredibly influenced subconsciously by the lyrics and heavy metal—it even altered my thinking momentarily. This being a unique experience I felt inclined to write about it. In my essay, I speak about music's ability to become a power dynamic that shows its force in the historical (through soldiers in Plato's era) and modern era (U.S. Military today). This being most eminent in recent no-touch or music torture cases in the present era. I made comparisons to historical and present day militia in music's ability to imitate and express behavior as well as emotions.

 New post: How does the listener refrain from consuming music? How does the listener refrain from becoming influenced? The personal experience (referenced above) was an instance I wrote about in the first writing assignment. Making quite a significant impact on me, the song, in that moment, took over my body and mind—resulting in the swaying of my subconscious. A similar situation occurred recently. I was driving home from school and Pandora Radio was playing in the “background” of my thinking. I looked down at my speedometer and noticed I had started to accelerate and my speed increased significantly. This change in behavior seemed to correlate to the change in song. The unique component is the song I was listening to was also a faster beat. While speeding on the freeway, my behavior imitated the words and music—matching the beat of the song succinctly. In this instance, I believe this is a perfect example of what both Plato and Adorno speak of. It seemed as if I became the music—mirroring an automaton becoming one with it. The fast beat and repetition of the song put me in this same upbeat mode, making my body an automatic consumer of the song. Looking back on this moment, it wasn’t until after this behavior change that I even noticed the influence. How did I automatically succumb to this influence—did I become the machine? In that moment with that song, I was consuming the music allowing it to flow through my mind and body. It took its toll on me and I became a vessel through which it flowed. Plato would state this to be a modern instantiation of the imitative power music encapsulates. In Adorno’s case, he would agree that I was consuming it—even further, emulating the song like a machine.

Final Blog Post: What Music Adorno Would Like

NEW POST:

Nature considered as music would manage to avoid the temporal problem that avant-garde has with satisfying Adorno; that avant-garde is only fresh and exciting for the instant it is released and a short while afterwards. Moreover, nature considered as music could potentially battle against reinforcing comfort. Because Adorno despises music that places humanity in a state of regressive listening, I argue that he would enjoy simply listening to the sounds of nature in sequences, which are dependent on a myriad of unpredictable factors like weather and positioning, cannot ever be repeated. It would be as if nature is playing a new song to Adorno every time he tuned into listen.

While I still agree that Adorno would enjoy the sounds of nature as music, I also have to question whether or not Adorno would consider nature as music. Nature does not contain distinct patterned structures and bridges like most popular songs, and it does not understand which certain melodies, chords or sequences of notes generally appease popular crowds.

Regardless, I still believe that Adorno would love to listen to the sounds of nature because of the fact that there is absolutely no willed intention behind the sounds that nature “plays”. Adorno despises jazz in particular because of the fact that jazz is deceptive, or at least it attempts to be. His critique of jazz stems from the fact that jazz depicts itself as supposedly improvised, although he believes that any type of performance can be purely improvised. With nature, there is no pre-determined artistic approach that allows for deception. Nature is nature so nature’s sounds are nothing more than nature’s sounds.

OLD POST:

One of the reasons that Adorno dislikes jazz music is because jazz music, regardless of its improvisation, is always formulaic. If we consider the the ordinary sounds happening around us as music, then perhaps music of daily life, as a process, could be considered music that remains outside Adorno's critique. The class silence that makes Professor Naddaff feel uncomfortable and the sounds of papers being passed around in class are not subject to a formulated pattern that appeals to emotion. We do not ask or desire for the natural sounds/music that occurs around us. These sounds/music come in different patterns that make us feel uncomfortable because no pattern is ever predictable and act as a force that helps us realize how to be. Moreover, music as a natural process is similar to air. Both are distributed freely and are not able to be packaged, sold and perpetuated onto others--they are nature itself.

Final Post: Our Word Is Our Bond

Original Post:

In the popular Broadway jukebox musical "Jersey Boys," the story of Frankie Castelluccio, later Frankie "Valli," unfolds, depicting a lead character with friends caught in a few bad deals with the mob that cause him to go solo despite his success with The Four Seasons. As the musical retells, Valli released band mate Bob Gaudio's risky song "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" as a solo artist after leaving The Four Seasons, which sparked criticism and discussion before taking off as a hit and reaching number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a week. Extremely successful as a quartet, 29 Top Hits with The Four Seasons mark a comparable record with bands like The Beatles (so argues the musical). The musical narrates that the band had struggled with finding a particular sound that worked for them and that listeners would love, despite their harmonies and Valli's powerful falsetto.

Departing from the style that made The Four Seasons famous, as in "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Sherry" and "Walk Like A Man," "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" signifies, in a sense, the dying of a version of the English language, in a parallel fashion to Panzera capturing to Barthes the dying of a particular form of the French language in his singing. As a song that had to be fought for just to get any airtime, luckily for us, this song somehow slipped through the cracks and caught on in popularity once people got used to its meter and dramatic expressivity. Valli's voice, his grain, embodies love and longing that he had for his divorced wife who left him due to his constant touring/traveling with the band and his subsequent girlfriend whom he left because she was getting in the way of his relationship with his daughter. The narrative structure of the play highlights the four distinct voices, and attached stories, of the four band members of The Four Seasons, linking their voices with their experiences and interpretations of how the band formed and broke up. When listening for the grain of the voice and attempting to think of examples, Frankie Valli and this theatrical version of his story came to mind. This musical shows how the grain of the voice can be associated with narrative, with tellings and retellings of stories from different perspectives and with different emphases, with different intonations and inflections, with different voices.

Revision:

We can use the popular Broadway jukebox musical “Jersey Boys,” which features the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, as a lens through which we may better understand Barthes’s music philosophy, specifically regarding voice, language and culture. As “Jersey Boys” retells, Valli released band mate Bob Gaudio's risky song "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" as a solo artist after leaving The Four Seasons. The musical narrates the band’s struggle finding a particular sound that worked for them and that listeners loved, despite their harmonies and Valli's powerful falsetto. Departing from the style that made The Four Seasons famous, as in "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Sherry" and "Walk Like A Man," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" signifies, in a sense, the dying of a version of the English language, in a parallel fashion to Panzera’s voice capturing the death of contemporary French language.

The narrative structure of the play highlights four distinct voices of the four band members from The Four Seasons, attaching their voices to their experiences, songs and interpretations of how the band formed and broke up. This musical shows how grain of the voice can be associated with narrative, with tellings and retellings of stories from different perspectives and with different emphases, with different intonations and inflections, with different voices. Valli's voice, his grain, embodies love and longing. This unique voice contributed to Valli’s hit success, as not only did it resonate with the audience but also embodied the cultural longing at the time. Along with the words, language, music and culture were bound; after all, JL Austin informs us that "our word is our bond."

Final Post: Music a Torture?

Final Post:

The pleasure taken in repetition, in abrasive textures, in the ungodly volume of rock music suggests two things: we are all masochists and we are all eternally unsatisfied.

Schopenhauer was correct when he characterized our individual will as perpetually striving. We are never satisfied—and never will be. A musical melody could continue at infinitude and we will always want more. The pleasure we find in a melody is never a complete satisfaction. Just like hunger, it will resurface again in greater pains than before.

This is also twofold evidence of our masochism. When we listen to a repeating melody, there will inevitably be a deliberate refusal of our pleasure, a limiting of our intake. Essentially the song will end, and leave us as empty as we began. Yet, a more powerful illustration of our masochism would be the pleasure we take in abrasive and ostensibly harmful sounds. 

For this reason, the exact interpretation of torture will always be hazy. 

I originally included a song by the band Swans as evidence of the grey area between a tortuous repetition and a pleasurable one. As would be fitting to the song title, a comparison with sex could be beneficial. The incessant rhythm continues without break, in a near salacious masochism. The downbeats on the 1 and the 1 &  seem to hint at the act of intercourse. The song fades out almost the exact way in which it comes in, as if climax was never reached and we deliberately refuse our own pleasurable end. 

Original Post:

One defining aspect of music torture is repetition: the idea that if something is played repeatedly then it becomes obnoxious or even psychologically harmful. The detainees at Guantanamo were subjected to the same music for hours, sometimes days at a time. This extreme level of repetition caused a paralysis of will and cognition. 

But repetition itself is not harmful. If anything, small amounts of repetition can be beneficial to psychological awareness and stress purging. The issue lies within the degree of repetition, from healthy to lethal. As Paracelsus said of substances, “everything is a poison. The difference between a poison and a remedy depends on the dose.”

A band that I believe straddles the fence between healthful and harmful repetition is the noise-rock outfit Swans. 

Below I included a link to one of their songs.

[Final] Revised: Chance the Signifyin'

Barthes speaks of the signifying and signified in relation to Musorgsky's Death of Boris versus the Death of Melisande. He claims Boris represents "the triumph of the pheno-text, the smothering of signifying under the signified; soul." (275) In the pheno-song we understand the singer from the totality of the piece: rhythm, tone, melody, voice, silence. In this case the grain of the voice is overpowered by the drama of the other elements. Barthes notes the "perfect intelligibility of the denotation." Every word sung holds literal meaning, and the way the grain acts upon the voice does not confuse the meaning. On the other hand, Barthes describes the "prosidic contour of the enunciation" for Melisande; representing signifying and the geno-text. Here, the precise way a single word might sound or the way it is pronounced interacts with the (rather than embodying) denotation to form a more original meaning. Signifying's part of speech implies its nature: signifying acts on language while signified has been planted by language.

My song is "22 Offs" by Chance the Rapper. I think Chance is signifying in the way he repeats "Off" 22 times (in homage of Jay-Z's 22 Twos). As a pheno-text, Chance raps about being in high school and getting caught and arrested by the school’s police officer for smoking pot off campus. But the story is hidden behind so much slang and wordplay, and extra information (“Buying hella bugspray/making sure I get off” hahaha) that you need to listen multiple times and maybe even know about Chance to understand.

What we do understand on the first listen is how Chance signifies with his attitude. The repetition of “off” and the fact that the “off” sound sneaks up in other words, signifies how Chance thinks the criminal justice system and life on the south side of Chicago is off from the ideal of justice and the American life he would like to envision for himself. As a result he feels “off” and resorts to drinking and smoking to feel good, but this gets him in trouble with the cops. As a result is tone is both giddy and angry. The rap is delivered from some place where chance is off his nog, recalling the events.