[LAU] Re: That must suck. For me it's about beauty -- music is justone path

[Paul Davis]

On Wed, 2007-04-04 at 08:06 -0400, Louis Acresti wrote:
> > My take is that art is our attempt at emulating nature and realizing our
> > ineptness (pointlessness?) in matching its beauty.
> 
> Of all art, I think music follows this trend the most.
> 
> What I wonder, is how any particular music can convey any sort of
> objective emotion. The emotion we tie to particular sounds depends on
> what we're experiencing the first time we hear it. Why, then, do so
> many people tend to agree about the feelings certain songs convey?
> Perhaps this beauty-in-nature concept is the only explanation.

or perhaps its a learned cultural thing.

the whole western "major is happy/optimistic" and "minor is
introspective sad" take on modes is highly culturally specific. the
notion of "blue" notes is similarly constrained to a particular culture.

try listening to some indian carnatic classical music sometime. if you
have no background in the cultural construction of this music, it will
likely mean almost nothing to you, or alternatively will mean something
that is probably totally unrelated to the meanings in the minds of the
performers.