A good day

Yesterday was a good day. I got to see my daughter sing in her choir robes for the first time. I took part in an interesting Bible study. I watched the Colts win a squeaker against the Texans with excellent clock management, which then switched over quite nicely to the Packers-Chargers game so I could watch Brett clinch that win. I took my wife out for a good meal and good conversation. And I got to see eighth blackbird perform the opening concert of their residency here at DePauw. I had never heard De Mey's Tafelmusik (literally performed on a table, really a dance of six hands), which was a great opening. The ending of Rzewski's Pocket Symphony was like giant wood blocks pounding out chimes that rattle the soul before moving away. The recited poetry of Bresnick's In the Twentieth Century was not amplified well for most of the speakers, but the piece had some incredible shifts of musical space, especially through timbre. And Higdon's Zaka was a virtuoso finish, even if lacking in deep emotional content.

Closing the book

I just got back from blowing shofar at the closing service of Yom Kippur. It was a lovely service, the student rabbi has really become comfortable with the DePauw community. Unfortunately an argumentative comment knocked me out of the balanced place I had found, so I'm not much for blogging tonight. I'll provide two links, and knock off until Monday. Both links are from Mind Hacks:
1) Musicogenic epilepsy, when music causes seizures. Not to be confused with Celebrity epilepsy.
2) Clive Wearing, the pianist who has forgotten everything except how to play the piano and that he loves his wife. Elaine Fine has also blogged about this.

FriPod: Every thing

I stole this idea from Fred Clark, but it works well for personal reasons.

1. "Every Little Bit Hurts" by Ed Cobb performed by The Spencer Davis Group on The Best of the Spencer Davis Group.
2. "Every Mornin'" by M. Longo, performed by Dizzy Gillespie on New Faces.
3. "Everybody Loves Louis" by Steven Sondheim, performed by Bernadette Peters on the Sunday in the Park with George original Broadway soundtrack.
4. "Everybody's Jumpin'" by Dave Brubeck, performed by The Dave Brubeck Quartet on Time Out.
5. "Everything Happens When You're Gone" composed and performed by Michael Brecker on Don't Try This at Home.
6. "Everything I Said" composed and performed by The Cranberries on No Need To Argue.
7. "Everytime We Say Goodbye" by Cole Porter performed by John Coltrane on My Favorite Things.
8. "You're My Everything" by Harry Warren, Joe Young, and Mort Dixon; performed by the Miles Davis Quintet on Relaxin' With Miles.

Tin Ear Test

Henkjan Honing directs us to an online test for amusia, the inability to consciously perceive musical pitches and/or rhythms. The test was developed by Isabelle Peretz, well-known in music cognition circles.

Syntax vs. Semantics

In the comments to a previous post, Fred Himebaugh asked me to explain the difference between syntax and semantics in music. First, I will give a general definition of the terms. "Syntax" is the description of proper construction following rules of grammar. Thus in language, syntax describes the proper order of words following the grammatical rules of that language. "Semantics" is the description of meaning assigned to a statement (or to symbols if we are going to be very general).

In tonal music, syntax is easy to describe as the expected order of harmonic progressions, melodic pitches and rhythms, both at local levels and in hierarchical systems. The expected order is based upon rules that have been (slowly) developed by observing the behavior of tonal music composed between about 1600 and 1880. Stefan Koelsch calls these rules "certain regularities." There is debate as to whether this syntax is learned by exposure to music of that culture or if this syntax is hardwired. This same debate exists in linguistics. But regardless of the means of development, there is no debate that music has a syntax.

Musical semantics is a different story. Some say that musical semantics are identical to musical syntax, that any meaning gleaned is only a perception of structure. But others say that music can communicate a variety of meanings. Koelsch describes four different aspects of meaning: 1) analogies to similar sounding objects or to qualities of objects, such as imitating birdsong; 2) emotional meaning, such as happy or sad; 3) extramusical associations, such as literary references or conventional uses of a particular musical work (anthem, folk song); and 4) perception of syntactical structure.

The question that Koelsch's team has been investigating is if our brains process musical semantics separately from musical syntax, and if these neurocognitive processes are similar to the processes of language syntax and semantics. Previous research has identified two electrical signal changes (called event related potentials) associated with harmonic expectancy. When a harmonic expectancy is violated, the ERAN and the N500 peaks are affected. By playing musical excerpts coupled with sentences in the native language of the listeners, said sentences containing either violations of syntax or violations of semantics, Steinbeis and Koelsch found that syntactic violations in the sentence reduced the effect of the ERAN, and that semantic violations in the sentence reduced the effect of the N500. Thus, if one accepts the premise that these two ERP peaks do correspond to harmonic expectancy, this harmonic expectancy has two different processes that correlate to language's syntax and semantics.

The implications of this? I'm not sure, beyond a a possible negation of that one opinion that music syntax and music semantics are identical. I suppose it opens up the possibility that there are universal meanings in music, with varying potential levels to "universal." And it could lead to investigations on whether music-making evolved as a byproduct of language development or vice-versa.

Don't give up your day job

I'm pleasantly surprised to admit that I agree with Norman Lebrecht about something. He wrote a post about the principal 'cellist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Said 'cellist, Nathan Waks, once was head of music at the Australian Broadcasting Company. That part isn't important. What is important is that Mr. Waks has another job alongside playing with the orchestra, as CEO of a winery (Nathan Waks also wrote a comment to the post). Mr. Lebrecht points out that this model leads to a much happier life, compared to full-time orchestral players who get burned out. What struck me about the post is that the concertmaster, Dene Olding, has a similar arrangement to the new concertmaster of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Zack De Pue. He is in the popular chamber group Time for Three. The ISO has also hired Alexander Kerr, a professor at Indiana University, to be the principal guest concertmaster when Zack is on tour with his other chamber groups. The day job can be teaching, composing, playing in a chamber group, or running a bistro.

Is it over?

(I'm in a questioning mood today.)

Adam Baratz has found an interesting topic to blog about from an unusual source, an LSAT study guide. The topic of discussion is Historically Informed Performance practice, which I have blogged about before. More specifically, Adam isolates possible answers to why symphonies may have played final finales more slowly in Mozart and Beethoven's days, and why audiences don't applaud between movements anymore. Alex Ross has looked at the latter phenomenon closely, supporting the comment I made on Adam's blog. You'll have to visit Adam's site to see what I said.