Flatley Catharsis And Music

Flatley (2008: 5) discusses of the ideas connected to the aesthetics and melancholy and for them art can be seen as a relief of “repressed emotions through a cathartic release” (Flatley 2008: 5). Flatley (2008: 150 – 151) discusses of the emotional effects of slave songs on singers as well as listeners. Flatley gives two viewpoints on catharsis by discussing of the works of Du Bois and Douglass. Douglass “suggests that the songs allowed pent-up emotion to be innervated, that they are, in effect, cathartically therapeutic”, whereas “[f]or Du Bois, although the songs articulate sadness, loss, disappointment, and “unvoiced longing,” they do not themselves relieve sadness.” (Flatley 2008: 150 – 151) However, the connection of catharsis and music has been noted already by Aristotle as he observed the impact of music on affecting differently to
Content includes lyrical components and form refers to those elements which affect the shape of the music, for instance, tempo and texture. According to Piper (2013: 33), the distinct musical characteristic of doom metal is the slow tempo. Bowring (2008: 182–184) states that the act of defamiliarization is an artistic technique used to add melancholy value, and regarding music defamiliarization can be created by altering the tone or the texture. The tone can be modified, for instance, by detuning the guitars, whereas by varying the tempo the texture can be changed. Detuned guitars may enhance the feeling of weightiness in music and as slow tempo is commonly connected to sad and melancholic songs. Swallow the Sun emphasizes the rhythmic and metric differences between sections, meaning that the tempo and melody may differ considerably. This is linear with the vocal practices as they vary between growling and clean singing, thus it can be argued that these techniques connect the music of Swallow the Sun to