I discovered this while I was walking besides the school of philosophy after completing my class in in engineering. As I was hearing to the sounds of leaves and birds, I was approaching my music lab at the Frost school of music. As I was about to get into my department, I heard a beautiful melody from a saxophone. I kept chanting the melody for sometime as I started to work on my computer. With time, I started to feel the image of the melody subjectively. But I felt that to be too faint to hear. I wanted it to be a bit louder and tried to turn up the volume button in me. I noticed that I could not do that. Any attempt that I made to turning up the level of the music only helped me transposing the melody up my one or two keys (semitones). Similarly, any attempt to lower the tone helped only in transposing the melody down by few keys.
I started experimenting this at home by listening to music on tape. Then I turned the tape off and "immediately" started to listen to that piece subjectively. I turned up the volume button. It worked now. The volume went up in my head without transposing the music to higher keys. Seeing the contradictions, I tried the same experimented the next morning. This time, I was not able to have control over the parameters of the music. The volume did not go up but transposition happened again. Is the amplitude control mechanism not possible after data storage in memory? Does the feel of amplitude control experienced only if external matter is tweaked? That clearly re-defined the problem formulation in me about the "theory of forms" mentioned in Plato's Cave Allegory/Republic.
These events lead me to think that memory plays a vast, unpredictable role in connecting independent events of the world and give a meaning to it. If memory does not work, each phrase in a music is an individual phrase; each note in a phrase is individual note, each part of sound in a note is an individual sound; each granular atom in a sound in individual grain. The necessary connections to these events are "believed" to be happening in human brain. But the existence of a human brain is also part of memory. The residence or location of memory is said to be in human mind. Wherein, the human mind dwells cannot be told because it comes from living experience.
On Fri, 3 Sep 2010 17:56:13 +0530
Rustom Mody <rustompmody@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There are two voices I hear here vis-a-vis Bach:
> 1. Art for art's sake -- the romantic idea
> 2. Art for money's sake -- the distinction of commercial vs
> commisioned being a fine semantic distinction.
>
> Bach himself expressed a view however which does not fit in with
> either: *
> Anything done other than for the service of God is vanity*
"The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the
glory of God and the refreshment of the soul."
God, unfortunately, doesn't pay for food directly. The refreshment of
the soul alone would have left him starving as well.
Although he was extremely devote and clearly most of his inspiration
was generated by that religious stance, he was not above squabbling for
better pay. The fact that his employer was the church might also had
something to do with that stance as well.
"He regarded himself as a conscientious craftsman doing a job to the
best of his ability for the satisfaction of his superiors, for the
pleasure and edification of his fellowmen, and to the glory of
God." [ Grout & Palisca: A History of Western Music ]
David
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