I agree that music is all about expressing emotions. But it can, and should be, studied, nevertheless.
Music is not just expressing emotions. It can manipulate them.
There are lots of other ways of expressing emotions, for example with dance. You could dance a sad music and it looks sad and you can dance the exact same choreography with a happy music and it looks happy.
All other forms of art and expression are very subjective.
You can express things with language but as long as you have agree a meaning for the words. And the meaning for the words it can be always manipulated by humans. For example the word ‘philosophy’. It was born by scientists for science and totally on the opposite side of religion but nevertheless has end up to be studied with religion. You will never see a library for ‘Philosophy and Sciences’, only for ‘Religions and Philosophy’.
With music you cannot do that. The meaning of sounds are very precise and direct. Of course not everyone has the same taste, i m not talking about that.
Those who create music could have also done excellent job in any science, the opposite is not always true.
Ok that might not prove that music is science but if science is way of thinking then musicians have this way of thinking.
(To clarify: I don’t speak about myself… i don’t think i m that great musician haha!)
And why science is not an art anyway?
I wish I could find those articles I had read in the past but from a quick search:
http://media.nature.com/download/nature/nature/podcast/extras/scienceandmusic-2008-06-12.mp3
I like the Nature, by the way, it’s my favorite science magazine.
Then why are not all musicians equally good? The ones who are better, can express themselves better; technically they are all the same.
Why is Horowitz considered to be one of the greatest pianists ever?
“His technique and use of tone color and the excitement of his playing were and remain legendary.”
I’m not sure if I understand why you say that.
Is there not physicist in the same area with similar technical skills? Everyone has their own approach/solution for a specific given problem/experiment or whatever and that is why they are all useful. Ok maybe some are useful, some fail to be useful…at least everyone has different things to offer at any time.
Besides even when talking for the technical part only, no one can be same with any one.
For the record, I am neither an engineer nor particularly musical. Nor do I see any connection between engineering or musical talents and language skills. I think that anyone can learn to speak another language quite well if they are motivated, put in the time, and try to notice the new language rather than hanging back in the comfort of their own language. Those countries with lots of bilingual or multilingual people do not have more engineers or musical people than countries where language skills are less developed, from my observation.
ktm,
I said that to show you that renowned musicians are the ones who put more feelings and expression in their playing. The technical side of music is basic to becoming a good musician.
Every professional pianist can play, for insance a piano concerto by Rachmaninov, but not all play it well. The ones who can express themselves better, are better.
I gave the example of Horowitz, because you said that music is not just expressing expressions. If it wasn’t about expressing emotions, I wouldn’t be listening to Chopin or Beethoven any longer!
blindside70
"(…) real musicians are usually poor and filled with problems and strange idiosyncrasies… "
That one made me laugh.
"(…) real musicians are… … filled with problems and strange idiosyncrasies… "
Who isn’t?