Can flowers be evoked in music?
Can flowers be evoked in music?
This question came up in a presentation on Flowers in Art, and the response gives a far-reaching insight into the nature of music.
The answer is simple: no, they cannot. But I want to explore a little deeper and talk about what it means to evoke something in music.
Sound can induce memories of sight, touch, smell, and taste. However, these other senses are not linked to sound by intrinsic value but by association, a kind of Pavlovian response to a stimulus.
If you eat popcorn while listening to a symphony, the sound of the symphony may conjure a taste of popcorn. Thus, the sound invokes the flavour. This is entirely personal, an individual response to a sensation, and is not inherent in the music.
Some associations may seem innate, and I shall give two sound examples to illustrate this. Listen to these extracts before you read on, and note the feelings that they invoke:
Ex.1
Ex.2
You may have noticed that these examples did not start with the ‘famous’ part of the melody! But you recognize the ‘Funeral March’ by Frédéric Chopin and the Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn. Why is one piece funerial, while the other is matrimonial? The answer is on two levels.
First, it is by social association: the pieces were played for occasions that fixed in our minds their suitability. The one is slow and sad; the other, happy, uplifting.
The second answer is more subtle and delves deeper: western music has two modes, major and minor, and the musical evolution of the past seven hundred years has given us the sense that major is happy, minor is sad (there are good acoustic reasons for this evolution, but they go beyond the scope of this blog).
But these are only two possible emotions; what of the others? Can music express disgust? Embarrasment? Sympathy? Shame? Note that I have chosen carefully, because I do not think that it is in music to stir those sentiments. Other emotions are open for debate (but not here!): amusement, confusion, pride, and more.
I shall give an illustration of just one other emotion: relief. It is fundamental to all western music and is independent of happiness or sadness. Here is an example, a musical build-up where I have removed the resolution:
Ex.3
A musician might scream in frustration at the missing climax! Here is what it should sound like:
Ex.4
You see that music can invoke a certain range of emotions, but it cannot invoke anything physical: a pool of water, a bridge, a cloud…or a flower. All other Arts can do this: anything connected with language can describe the physical world, and anything with a visual component (dance, painting, architecture, and so forth) can show it. Music can arguably take real-world sounds and evoke something concrete. Here is an example; what do you think this is ?! :
Ex.5
(Based on ‘Othello’ by Rossini).
Without language to give a hint, the relationship music-animal (or flower) relies on the suggestion of the composer. Here are two final examples. First Prokofiev’s depiction of a cat, in ‘Peter and the Wolf’:
Ex.6
Or…was that the music for the duck?!
And to bring us right back to flowers, here is the famous ‘Flower duet’, so-called because Princess Lakmé and her servant go to the river to gather flowers:
Ex.7
No hint of floral perfume here! The crucial point is that the libretto talks about gathering flowers. The music is simply beautiful sound.
It would be interesting now to talk about Indian music (Carnatic and Hindustani), and Chinese music. Maybe for another blog!
By the way, the piece based on Rossini is known as the ‘Cat Duet’. Obviously…
