Music to Hear on Here: And the Note Thickens

Thursday, February 10, 2011

And the Note Thickens

Super sweet clip, Alex. Schopenhauer (to my reading) also does not discuss whether music that "imitates," specifically, other music should be "rejected once for all" ("Metaphysics of the Beautiful and Aesthetics" 119). How far do we stretch the adjective-noun, "imitative music" (The World As Will and Representation 263)? That is, Ella Fitzgerald's scat singing more than winks toward Brazilian songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim's "One Note Samba," which became popular in 1963 (six years before the performance below). But is Fitzgerald's scat derivative or does it stand on its own two notes?

Also, note (yes, note) how the lyrics provide us with a rhetorician's nightmare: "There's so many people who can talk and talk and talk and just say nothing or nearly nothing. I have used up all the scale I know and at the end I've come to nothing or nearly nothing."

2 comments:

AlekFebruary 11, 2011 at 10:57 AM
Aaron-
Thank you for the response. In regards to Ella, I was thinking more along the lines of the singing rather than the song itself. But this really just illustrates a certain impossibility in separating/isolating these sorts of things, what considerations entail other considerations, which context to create, etc. - in short, the sort of nebulous world of music which we look a bit helpless in trying to organize/understand.

Ella's version falls in between two elements unfavorable to Schopenhauer but also somewhat contradictory: imitation and improvisation. Ella's version is definitely a sort of hectic 'mind-less' improvisation, but also very much a 'version' of the already was "One Note Samba" - I am not sure what Schopenhauer would think of these 'covers' getting rid of them 'once and for all' seems a bit drastic to me, but imitative-music can be stretched very far, if you like, all over and around what we call 'music.'

I could see these sorts of works more as exercises, not unnecessary, but not works of genius - imagine Mozart doing a version of "Silent Night."
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Aaron BenavidezFebruary 11, 2011 at 11:36 AM
Hi Alex, thanks for the thoughtful comment above. I was so focused on "imitation" and all the fantastic versions of "One Note Samba" that improvisation as essential to the scat fell outside my horizon. Thanks for bringing the improv back into the analysis.

As we both are demonstrating, the Fitzgerald clip is really rich material for engaging Schopenhauer's theory on music.

And to add to our soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sc3Xx64WGE
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Course Description

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Martin Mull (or Elvis Costello)

Thinking about the meaning and value, intellectual, affective and neurological experiences, and aesthetics of music has occupied an important position in modern and contemporary philosophical writings. Central to the philosophy of music is a questioning of what music is insofar as it is an art form and practice, akin to but different from other arts, such as drama, literature, painting, sculpture, to name but a few examples. Claims have been made, in fact, that music’s effect, when performed and listened to, surpasses those of the other arts because of its abstact purity, of its universality, and of its singular capacity to express, represent and incite emotions. This course will explore such issues in 19th-20th century philosophy. We will begin with introductory readings of what composes the field and discipline of the philosophy of music. We will read—among other philosophers, novelists, critics and musicologists—Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Barthes and Adorno’s writings on music. Finally, we will have the occasion to read about and listen to specific musicians, both high and low, and explore the contexts of their work, concentrating on the historical and political dimensions of the practice, performance and art of making music.