Beethoven, Powell, And The Human Experience

Beethoven, Powell, and the Human Experience Music is a powerful and unique vehicle for the arts. Graham eludes to this in several places throughout the chapter that deals with music and sonic art. He states that, "Music is special among art forms. While in theory photography could replace painting or cinema replace theatre, nothing could replace the experience of hearing music." (Graham 101) This assertion can be generally agreed upon. However, music and its ability to communicate ideas and the extent of those ideas are in question. Furthermore, there is also the question as to whether or not the complexity of a piece makes it superior to others. And what of music and emotion? It should be noted that the emotional response that results from
It instead has the ability to represent and remind the audience of a feeling or experience. It can be said that music is emotional and communicative because it is representational. Graham states that a term more fitted to this idea would be "replication" as "replication of the sound of a bell is not a representation of the sound of a bell; it is the sound of a bell. (Graham 86) However, representation is an accurate word in that a musical function could replicate a specific sound. For example, in the piece "Godzilla Eats Las Vegas," the French Horns perform what is called a rip which is intended to represent the sound of a roar. As Graham writes about on page 86, this sound imitates the sound Godzilla and therefore represents the beast itself. To apply this to Powell, as stated before, the beginning of his piece sounds very youthful and naive. This is because it sounds like a music box and consequently represents something childlike. Beethoven's unstable rhythms imitates a broken speech pattern. This in turn represents a person having difficulty speaking due to their
My personal criteria for a great work of art is very similar to this which leads me to believe that he may agree with me. Graham would likely agree that Beethoven's "Funeral March" is exemplary of valuable and irreplaceable music. This claim can be supported by the fact that he references Beethoven multiple times in this chapter. However, this piece fits the criteria of assisting one in understanding the human experience. It touches on one of the most basic and fundamental parts of life which is death. The piece is written from the viewpoint of someone attending a funeral. The music walks the audience through the grieving emotional state of this ambiguous character and connects them to the painful sorrow, happy reminiscing, and frustrated anger that is heard throughout the piece. It accomplishes this because of its scoring and representation of emotions and actions. If this were to be his final judgement, I would whole-heartedly agree with