| | Hi again, Fred! Thanks for commenting on my postcript comment. I appreciate your perspective, but I disagree. I could answer you in full, but then that would entail copying a large amount of material from my essay (which you said that you read!). I hope you understand that I would rather tantalize readers into actually reading the essay themselves, rather than for them to get the wrong idea about what I wrote from our necessarily brief comments here. Nevertheless, let's make a brief stab at it...
I previously wrote: “We listen to melodies, and they function like characters in a novel or a play. We hear musical progressions, and the function like plot in a novel or play,” and you commented: "If you are restricting yourself, as I do, to absolute music, then your two sentences are wrong."
Fred, I am, indeed, restricting myself to absolute music (music without lyrics, programmatic tex or other extra-musical references) but, as I will explain, my two sentences are correct.
You wrote: "Melodies do not function like characters in a novel or any narrative structure."
Well, not exactly like fictional characters, but then music is not exactly like literature. But there are similarities or analogies between them that have been noted by many theorists, both literary and musical. Here are several:
(1) Allan Blumenthal (1974) notes that a "musical theme serves the same function as a leading character or protagonist in a novel. Both are the subjects of the work, and both are necessary for the action. Just as most novels feature many characters--the hero, the heroine, the villain, and other secondary figures--so a musical composition usually contains many themes: the principal theme, the secondary theme, and often additional minor themes." (emphasis added)
(2) Leonard B. Meyer (1989) says that "In 'pure' instrumental music, the strategies by composers to create unity were responsive to the tenets of Romanticism. One of the most important strategies involved creating coherence through similarity, usually motivic or thematic...Even in the absence of an explicit program, motivic continuity created a kind of narrative coherence. Like the chief character in a novel, the 'fortunes' of the main motive--its development, variation, and encounters with other 'protagonists'--served as a source of constancy throughout the unfolding of the musical process." (201, emphasis added)
(3) Roger Scruton (1997) writes that melodic organization "enables a composer to treat a melody or a motif as a 'subject;' it becomes a musical individual with a history. Phrases can be varied, inverted, set in counterpoint; motifs can be extracted from their context and augmented or diminished; the melody itself can be broken up or prolonged--and always the listener will recognize these unities as musical individuals, journeying through the tonal space which is their element." (63, emphasis added)
(4) Stephen Halliwell (2002) refers to the "modern psychological theory of musical experience (see Watt & Ash 1998) which speaks in terms of the hearer's imagining a 'virtual person' within a piece of music." (238, emphasis added)
Fred, you also say: "There is no plot in absolute music and nothing like a plot in absolute music. Now why do I say this? Music has in it something no narrative structure can endure and to put it bluntly I’m talking about repetition—either large-scale repetitions indicated by the dotted repeat bar, or smaller scale repetitions of a phrase or motive. Imagine reading Atlas Shrugged and getting to Part III and find that the entire Part III is a repetition of Part I. Ridiculous."
First, it is ridiculous to suppose that dramatic absolute music is exactly like a novel. But I made no such claim. You have pointed to one of the key differences between them. On the concrete level, there is repetition galore in (for instance) a sonata form piece between the exposition section and the recapitulation section. (And yes, phrases and motives repeat, too.)
However, again, as has been pointed out by both musical and literary theorists, there is a great abstract similarity in structure and event-progression between sonata form and the novel.
(1) Roger Scruton (1997) cites Schoenberg (1922), McClary (1991) and says that "the 'narrative' character of tonal music has been frequently remarked on." (341, emphasis added)
(2) Charles Rosen (1988) says that sonata form provided "an equivalent for dramatic action." (8). Anthony Storr (1992) explains this as "a story in sound which had a definable beginning, middle and end comparable with the form of a saga, novel, or short story." (81) Storr also says that "[A pattern similar to that of t]he pattern of contrast, conflict, and final resolution [of themes] so characteristic of sonata form...underlies many novels." (83) Storr emphatically concludes: "It is surely no coincidence that when music finally emancipated itself from words composers increasingly used forms which can be related to human stories..." (84, emphasis added)
(3) Leonard Meyer (1989) points out that the repeated sections Fred refers to were used less and less often from the 1780s onward. This may be due to increased familiarity of listeners with the sonata movement layout, or to the tendency of composers to think more in terms of "organic" form, rather than pre-established molds into which to pour their motives, or both. At any rate, the large-scale redundancy he cites (as a difference to literary plot) was already in the process of being abandoned by composers at the very time the Romantic Era (with its emphasis on literary plot) was unfolding. Yet another difference in attitude that led to a growing similarity of sonata form to literary novels is that composers in the Classical Era tended to think of their themes as contrasting, while Romantic Era composers tended to think of their themes as conflicting and requiring resolution through a thematic process -- analogous to a literary process of character development. Meyer writes: "Such thematic relationships were pictured as following a general plan, often of a dialectical or narrative kind, in which the first theme(s) constituted a statement or thesis, the second theme(s) functioned as a contrast or antithesis, and, following conflict or interaction in the developmental section, a resolution or synthesis took place in the recapitulation." (308; also see pp. 203 and 307)
So, Fred, while music is neither totally similar to literature, neither is it totally different. As I have (I hope, amply) shown, there are certain very significant similarities between them. As we would expect from temporal arts that re-create reality -- i.e., that project an imaginary world populated by fictional or "virtual" persons that do things.
Best regards,
Roger
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