Music, objectivity, harmony.

[Graalsword]

Some months ago, I was discussing with a friend (both of us musicians, He plays electric bass guitar, I play piano and sing(and both of us songwriters)) about keys, harmonies, and why there are some combination of keys and harmonies that are more used and more liked by people.

He said that he thought that people are used to listening to certain combinations, and that that was the reason why major and minor chords were more common, and that maybe thousands of years ago it was different, and that some chords seem more nice or more suitable to be used as main chords just because of people getting used to it through the ages, or through the fashion of the times.(or even imposed)

Then my idea, was that, though, he may be right to some extent, one can objectively perceive more harmony in certain chords or keys combinations than other chords or combinations. I think that it is not just a matter of the ear getting used to it (though in general terms it is so), but also that there does exist certain keys that "get on well" with certain others even viewed objectively and not according to fashion or what one "got used to" hearing.

That made me think of objective art VS subjective art, and the fact that both polarities can be discerned with certain ease in other arts such as painting, skulpture, and even the lyrics in a song. But what about music?.

Is A# - Gb - F more objective than Db - E - G ???(and so on)

Is the intro of La Traviata more objective than the guitar solo of Bohemian Rhapsody?

Or the only thing that makes the difference in the music is lyrics when present?

What do you people think about it?

 

[Pierre]

One thread is somehow adressing this topic :
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=2633

Also Gurdjieff in his "Search of the Miraculous" mentions objective art. Around page 60 he is dealing with antic objective art pieces and also about persian carpets. Then Ouspenski wonders if the drawings on those carpets is not a reflexion of the music sang by the workers who create them (sorry I don't have any electronic version of this book so I'm unable to quote precisely this paragraph)

 

[Bholanath]

I have been involved with Indian classical music for 35+ years, but am not extremely educated concerning Western music. However, Indian musicians have discussed the "fashion" question. In their system they say 108,000 ragas exist. These are scales of at least 5 notes, with various patterns of ascending and descending. (This is modal music, of course.) They say throughout the centuries different ragas have come into, and go out of, fashion. Many "major" and "minor" scales are currently in use today in raga-world. There are also many "folk" scales which have lasted in popularity for centuries. During Mughal (Moslem) times certain scales were "imposed" by the rulers, or at least promoted, coming from Arabic lands. Musicians have always exercised some power of choice of raga in performing, and promoted their own "discovered" melodies. A huge amount of Western music was "imported" from the East. During that process the Church had a lot of influence over which scales could or couldn't be used in the "canon". Much of that Church culture influenced Western classical profoundly. But the European folk-music traditions (surviving side-by-side, and heavily Eastern-influenced) also contributed to classical culture. Another thing: modern science/physiology has discovered that the inner ear "translates" or "compensates" for slight out-of-natural-intonation, and the brain seeks simpler rather than complex "harmony". Apparently the public can be "conditioned" to accept many different types of harmonies.