source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 11:18:08 -0800 Subject: emotional response From: John Starrett Recent posts on the deeper emotional and spiritual meaning of tuning and music have brought up some interesting ideas, and I hope the thread of dicussion of these issues will continue. This morning I found myself moved to tears by the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir singing Ovdoviala Lissitchkata. This is a simple repetitive song for two voices and I was surprised at the intensity of the emotion it aroused. This is not the crying in your beer kind of emotion you'd expect when Merle sings about the same disaster you're going through--I don't speak Bulgarian and my life's great at the moment. This was a response of elation, and at the same time a little sadness. Do some pieces of music evoke a universal response within a musical subculture? Is there some underlying resonant structure in our brains that lets us recognize great music, or respond emotionally to "emotion invoking" music? I have had deep emotional responses to mathematics when I saw for the first time some deep connection, but mathematics is somehow different. There is more cross cultural agreement as to what is beautiful or deep mathematics than there is to music. In mathematics a theorem is considered true, and therefore worthy of attention, when it can be proven. A proof can show the place of a theorem in the larger structure of mathematics of some type, and sometimes the structure and tools of a proof shows the deep connection between different branches of mathematics. Are the realtions between musical structures comparable to the relations between mathematical structures? Is a great theme somehow a great musical theorem and the musical development of the theme its proof? Gettin' all philosophical on ya, John Starrett Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 31 Dec 1996 02:52 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA05444; Tue, 31 Dec 1996 02:55:21 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA05442 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id RAA04809; Mon, 30 Dec 1996 17:55:18 -0800 Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 17:55:18 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu