Saturday, September 29, 2007

Music as Metaphor for Emotion

My studies of synesthesia, acoustic theology, feeling and metaphor lead me to Susanne Langer, "one of the greatest unknown philosophers in American tradition"...unkown to me until a few minutes ago..

She contended that music is inherently emotional metaphor...or something like that..

"(For Langer), the forms of music are isomorphic with the emotions that music symbolizes"(Paul Henle, "Language Thought Culture"p. 206) "Music is not a sign of emotion but rather is a particulatly intimate and direct cause and effect of it. If it signifies at all it signifies something that is quite dictinct from an emotion...auditory characters sound the way moods feel" (204-205)

"Music (for Langer) is neither the cause nor cure of feeling, but it is logical expression, music in her view can present emotions, moods we have not felt, passions we did not know before." (link)

Of course...

This leads to few more random and related quotes which I'llpost now, and organize later:

"Music annihilates space completely..Music is the soundtrack of askesis.(Cioran)

"Music is time travel" László Hortobágyi,

"From biblical time onsward, words and music have served one master or the other: 'the awful sound of the trumpet' called people to prayer or war....spirituals signaled the slaves..But nobody ever called Middle C a lie...Musicl, because it is honest, has always been the Answer...Music is believable..Unlike words, music cannot obfuscate or lie. " (Eger, 369-70 "Einstein's Violin")

"A stone is frozen muisc" (Pythagaros) "Architecture is frozen music" (Eger, 266)

Particles defy time and space (Eger, 214), and so does music (39).

Music is everything. God himself is nothing more than an acoustic" (Cioran)

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