Since that means all of us here, I figure the piece has relevance. Unfortunately, try as I may, I couldn't find a link to the essay so I could put it here for people to read in its entirety and I hate to try and paraphrase the thing, but....

First off, I'm two ways about Barzun. I love his insistance on high educational standards. I don't always agree with his tastes (baseball) and politics (pro capital punishment). Then again he loves crime novels and so do I.

But never mind all of that.

In his essay "Is Music Unspeakable?" he raises some of the following:

People like to talk about music after hearing it but feel at a loss in tems of what to say.

Most musicians feel words about music are either silly or superfluous.

Barzun tells the story of a pianist who plays a piece. Someone asks, what was the meaning of that? So, the pianist sits down & plays the piece again.

[In other words, the music is the meaning, it speaks for itself, without the need for discussion. However, it would be like magic to just leave it at that.]

Barzun: "The meaning is inside any work of art and it cannot be decanted into a proposition."

[This suggests he's against deconstructing works & yet he spends a lot of time explaining their value.]

Barzun notes that there is a tremendous amount of "verbalizing" about music despite all of this.

First, technical language. "Composer X moves from a quarter tone to a......" Barzun notes that musicians already know this stuff from the works themselves and don't need to have it written down and for lay people, who don't know it, such writing is meaningless.

Second, ordinary language. Barzun says that music strikes us in non-verbal ways "below the emotions". Music is first before all else a visceral experience, there is a tie between musical sounds & bodily states.

It seems logical that certain emotions mirror certain tempi & dynamics: Sadness "should be" slow and not loud. Even musical terms have emotional connotations: allegro means joyful.

He also says it should make sense that music makes conductors move around & wave his arms: "The listeners in their seats, they too are moved to beat time and wave their arms. The conductor is their surrogate."

The music creates a physical stirring but it is still nameless. If "we want to refer to it, we have to make up some analogy."

Barzun follows: "The list of possible situations, of possible notions analogous to a given musical stimulus is limited only by one's imagination."

[Fine, but that just leaves us with a lot of adjectives and analogies: the music is like this, the music is like that. And that can lead to a lot of nonsense: the music is like the feeling in the air at 5:30 every afternoon on the Plaza de Frites in midwinter. It says a lot and means zero.]

Barzun: "Analogies are never literal, only suggestive signposts."

But he defends the practice from those who want to eliminate everything extra-musical or literary in music because composers often think in terms of words themselves: songs, operas, cantatas, etc. "The overwhelming proportion of Western music has been composed to words that refer to actions & ideas."

Barzun shoots down the notion of Program Music, because: "Musical sounds cannot tell a story." This holds even if the composers themselves name the works on some storied theme. Barzun gives the following anecdote: After a performance of a movement of Debussy's La Mer entitled From Dawn to Noontime on the Sea, Erik Satie said "I liked the passage around half past eleven."

But he quickly adds that: "Music cannot be composed without a program or plan."

However, he doesn't necessarily mean specific plans: "These are conventions since there is nothing in the nature of sound that compels a suite to have 3 movements, fast, slow, fast, and a symphony four. The sonata form is a scheme, not the product of a law of nature."

He asks: "Who could listen with patience to an incoherent, lopsided piece?" So what matters in music is "organized sounds."

Barzun: "Underlying these forms is a human preference, a visceral yearning, for symmetry and balance. This holds for all the arts."

[Paul Johnson in his writings about art says art is about ordering reality into a comprehensible form.]

Barzun shoots down the idea of pure and absolute music: "Though Western music obeys certain rules arising from its chosen system of scales, these rules are far from having the rigidity of mathematics."

Barzun doesn't like the idea of music trying to imitate natural sounds like birds or storms: "If imitation seems childish, then so must we call the great composers who have gone in for it." We're not just talking Ferde Grofe here either but Haydn, Bach, Beethoven, Strauss and others "fallen into the temptation."

Lastly, in this interplay between words & music, Barzun writes: "Music is not a language for it is inarticulate and needs words even to be played right. Music is not one and universal, there are musics in the plural."

Of prime import to us here: "Music lovers in the West divide into innumerable factions, fanatic sects that worship at different shrines. They 'cannot understand' what others find in this or that composer, this or that period, this or that genre. Many despise opera. To the devotee of chamber works the orchestra is bombastic."

I guess I'm guilty of being what Barzun calls a "self-appointed dunce." But if you think I'm hard on some people, for real invective read Tchaikovsky on Bach, Britten on Beethoven, Wolf on Brahms, Debussy on Gluck, and Wuorinen on the whole of French music!

Barzun: "Shall we explain this as 'visceral incompatibility'? Yes and no. Yes, because these revulsions are as deep-rooted as music itself. No, because some may change. Clearly, fashion is a great dictator. And change of fashion says something fundamental about music: many hidden factors govern receptivity."

Barzun finishes up by saying people experience music differently from one another which shoots down the notion of it being a universal language, the same thing to different people.

Ok, so what does all this boil down to? One, that music is a visceral, non-verbal experience, different for each person. Two, that although music requires forms and some rules of organization, these aren't strict enough to form a langauge or math of music. Three, that although words & music have been going along together for many years, trying to get music to do things words do fails and is anti-music in a way. Four, to describe what music does in words is an approximation at best prone to wide interpretation and can't substitute for the experience itself. Five, because different people listen to music differently, they will have different visceral responses to the same music.

[I've spent a lot of time & effort praising favorites and damning those I disdain, but it's wasted energy. I can say someone has good or bad taste until I'm blue in the face. In the end, if I like something and you don't, we simply have a wall between us where we are hearing the same music differently. All attempts to explain "exactly" why something works or doesn't work are futile, because no matter how elaborate the explanation, it still comes down to, "This works just because I hear that it does." Now that doesn't eliminate the conflict. If you belong to one club, tribe, sect, or country, you might find you need to fight with another different group in order to assert your needs over their's. I still don't like certain composers so I still need to balance out the praise others give them for that reason otherwise they wind up taking over unopposed. However, at a more basic level, if you love a composer I hate, I'll never be able to talk you into not loving him and vice versa you'll never be able to talk me into loving him either because we are hearing the very same music in very different ways. Completely incompatible? Maybe not, as they say, never say never again. So, it's possible we might change over time and re-assess things, though less likely.]

So there, I've written yet another long post about something that really can't be talked about. Or can it?? What do you think?

With this latest thread I feel that you are doing the same: you're trying to make us understand how eventual conversation - no matter how deep and philosophical it might turn out to be - is ultimately zilch compared to the music itself. Essentially, yes, music is unspeakable. I find myself in this predicament often at work as I talk up a storm of Avant Garde film compositions with a friend who has the same interests as I do. When I find myself referring to certain pieces by Shore, Goldenthal, or Young I find myself in the disservice that my friend has never heard of these composers, let alone the cues I'm referring to. When I return the next day with a copy of the score in full and let him give it a listen he returns with exact same thoughts. How do I talk about the feeling that the music gives you without sounding impish? To hear Goldenthal's music frantically weave it's way in and out of Joel Shumacher's disasterously concieved, neon-accented Batman Forever is one thing; but to find yourself in the discussion of why it lifts the picture that extra little bit is another thing. You can speak for hours on end in regards to music but you can never convey the meaning that it was meant for.

How does a composer describe what his music is going to do for a scene or how does a director tell a composer what the music must do? Since there is no chart that says this musical effect will create this emotional effect in everyone in every audience, film music becomes a wild card factor that can't be counted on to do precise things or things as precisely as directors and producers want them to be.

Often you will hear director's complain that because they can't compose, they have to turn over their control to a composer. This has led some directors to have to trust, other directors to become composers themselves, and still other directors to use already composed pieces or have composers follow temp-tracks.

As big Hollywood films cast the net to take in as many fish as possible, the music has to follow suit and work for as many fish as possible. This leads to more generic forms. What's interesting about this is this ratio: as film music becomes more generic to eliminate the frequency of meanings that are received differently by different people, film music "works" more to an audience.

However, as the music becomes more generic, it may "work" less to people who listen to it as music. And then again, the very opposite seems to be true for some people, as the music becomes more generic and works better in movies, it also works better for those who listen to it as music.

The whole Golden Age vs Modern Age debate is based in this. Movie music is generic to begin with but was once less so than now. Does a more generic or less generic approach work for movies? Does a more or less generic approach work as music to listen to? And the answer is: it depends on you. Or, as Barzun suggests, it depends on fashion, on what you are ready for, programmed (like a computer or robot) for.

But the main question raised by me in reading the article is whether our likes, dislikes, tastes, and such can ever be articulated except as approximations?

And that puts the whole idea of a message board or blog about music into some question. Because in the end if you boil down 6-7 years of this board being here and all of the thousands of posts that have been written, they all come down to basic information (so & so is attached to this film, the CD comes out Jan. 6th, it doesn't have this cue, it's selling fast & is out of print but on Ebay for more money can people can afford) and opinion (I liked it. I didn't like it. Who here is on my side in falling into one of these two camps?)

I mean if you can't say all that much about something which is beyond words to begin with what's the point of the board? It must mean that we need the company or need to talk. I was looking at some early posts here at the board and so many people who were regularly here have just left. Where did they go? Some left to FSM or other places. But some have just disappeared. I have to assume they still love the music but maybe they feel everything has already been said. Sean accused me of becoming repetitious. I said I didn't know how to find any new words or ways to say the point I was making. If that's the same for everyone, then the boards become boring and just say the same things over & again. We welcome new blood, new members, new posters, but within a month, they're saying the same things too. Maybe the people who have left don't feel any more need to talk about film music because it's all been said & can't really be talked about and they also don't need to publically announce that they a part of a film music community any longer.

However, when I was asked by people, ok, I've got an open mind, tell me just why exactly does Horner not work on this level or that and I may be able to follow you on this, I got stuck and started to stutter. Well, er, because...if you listen to this, you'll have to automatically agree with me that it sucks. You see the language to discuss this really isn't there. Music defies logic.

Failing an objective argument, you're right, next I tried to convey why I thought Horner was a bad seed so people could atleast see where I was coming from. After all people were accusing me of madness and thought they should alert the police. So I explained the background in ideas I had that formed my position. And i tried to explain just why I thought the way I did. But even here, I crashed. It's just hard to explain to people where you are coming from when it comes to discussing sound, you can approximate but can't really discuss in words what music is. Finding the Barzun article at this point was synchronicity.

As for V in V For Vendetta, he's a true revolutionary, not just a theorist trying to get other people to be revolutionaries (though he is that too). Basically, he acts. I mean, sure he talks to people and uses symbolic gestures and incidents, maybe he writes letters to the Times, but he also kills people. He's not just trying to get a message across, he's trying to effect real change, to change the actual reality, to get certain people out of power and others in. If others chime in, that's great, that's what he wants, but he's going to act regardless. And, in true revolutionary style, he'll sacrifice both his own love and life to do so.

In comparison, I just spout a lot of hot air embarrassing myself in the process. But as I said before, I'm just a couch potato, one of those people D.H. Lawrence looked on with disdain: "There's no energy for revolution in these people." I'm not up for revolutionary action myself. I'm not going out to assassinate all the artists I dislike. No matter how much damage I think an artist is causing, I have to do a Patrick Henry when it comes to defending their right to expression.

That goes for DeSade, Gangsta rap, Robert Mapplethorpe, Disney movies, Mariah Carey, pornography, Michael Medved, and even Sonic Wallpaper. Of course, if I feel the whole world is coming to ruin because of what some message-maker is doing, that's something different. But so far I know of no film composer who has become a dictator and threatened the use of nuclear weapons on people. Of course, when it comes to certain scores and composers, it almost feels that way.

Words are words, and notes are notes.

While notes are not abstract (pure sound)... language is completely abstract.

Dropping names is another thing: When you mixed it with your written attacks on people who may or may not like Horner's music, it just sounded crazy and stuck up, not intelligent. What you've written here makes more sense and I've enjoyed your posts this time.

I think music is speakable, but not all the time. It is just a matter of finding the right words. There's always limitations to any kind of language, so you can only go so far in trying to convey what a song or piece of music sounds like, speaking or writing about it; there's going to be boundaries no matter what. One thing that helps for sure, with film music, is knowing past works by a composer and then it becomes much easier to grasp, verbally or written out, what their new score might sound like or be similar to. Of course, that's not a garauntee: In 1999, I would have had no idea how to describe Hans Zimmer's music in The Thin Red Line compared to anything else he'd composed up to that point—it sure as hell didn't sound like Crimson Tide, or Black Rain, or The Peacemaker, or Backdraft ... the closest score to it might have been House Of Spirits, but even there, I'd be pushing it.

The best thing, so far, (IMO) is the FSM Podcasts: The Kaplans, Tim Currin, and Doug Adams do an excellent job in their descriptions of the scores they review while playing the pieces they're discussing. It's great! (And not only that, they happen to be hilarious!) That, to me, is probably the best solution to discussing film music and hearing it play out, with their criticisms and praise.

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Most musicians feel words about music are either silly or superfluous.

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Even when I heard Daniel Barenboim tell an audience in attendance at a CSO concert, "All music has a meaning, but it's a meaning that can't be expressed in words because if it could, the music would be worthless," he said this in the midst of several minutes of explaining the piece he was about to conduct. That piece, by the way, was something the CSO commissioned from Lalo Schifrin called "Concerto for Screenplay and Orchestra," which Barenboim described as "a film score for a film which doesn't exist." He encouraged the audience to imagine the film in their heads and noted that the film they imagined was entirely up to them. There would be a movement called "Love Scene," for example, but whether that love scene was romantic, unsettling, perverse, etc., would depend on the listener. This is an interesting side to our discussion, I think, because we usually think of film music as performing a very specific function within a scene, usually in an effort to reduce such ambiguities.

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Barzun: "The meaning is inside any work of art and it cannot be decanted into a proposition."

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First, technical language. ... Second, ordinary language.

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It seems logical that certain emotions mirror certain tempi & dynamics: Sadness "should be" slow and not loud. Even musical terms have emotional connotations: allegro means joyful.

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"The listeners in their seats, they too are moved to beat time and wave their arms. The conductor is their surrogate."

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The music creates a physical stirring but it is still nameless. If "we want to refer to it, we have to make up some analogy."

Barzun follows: "The list of possible situations, of possible notions analogous to a given musical stimulus is limited only by one's imagination."

[Fine, but that just leaves us with a lot of adjectives and analogies: the music is like this, the music is like that. And that can lead to a lot of nonsense: the music is like the feeling in the air at 5:30 every afternoon on the Plaza de Frites in midwinter. It says a lot and means zero.]

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Barzun writes: "Music is not a language for it is inarticulate and needs words even to be played right."

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Of prime import to us here: "Music lovers in the West divide into innumerable factions, fanatic sects that worship at different shrines. They 'cannot understand' what others find in this or that composer, this or that period, this or that genre. Many despise opera. To the devotee of chamber works the orchestra is bombastic."

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Barzun finishes up by saying people experience music differently from one another which shoots down the notion of it being a universal language, the same thing to different people.

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Of course, as Scorro pointed out, language itself is abstract. I can speak to you at length in English and explain myself in great detail, and even if you technically understood me you may still miss my point entirely.

Furthermore, poetry can be "unspeakable" in precisely the same way music is, even though by nature poetry is spoken. Come to that, it doesn't even have to be poetry: how often in simple conversation do people have to ask you, "What did you mean by that?" when you thought you were being perfectly clear?

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Three, that although words & music have been going along together for many years, trying to get music to do things words do fails and is anti-music in a way.

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Four, to describe what music does in words is an approximation at best prone to wide interpretation and can't substitute for the experience itself.

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I don't think music is actually any more or less difficult to talk about than anything else. But perhaps it seems this way precisely because of music's visceral effect. Whereas in, say, a political debate you would have to strip away a bunch of "surface noise" before you eventually got to the moral issue at the heart of the matter, music practically demands that you cut to the heart much earlier.

I don't think music defies logic (usually). I certainly doesn't embrace it (usually) but it doesn't defy it, either.

Sean-Well, there IS a part of me that feels if you like Horner you're not dealing with a full deck. Sorry. I can try to explain why I consider any composer a better or lesser composer but I do find it hard. Maybe Doug Adams can podcast a better explanation than I can but I run into trouble. But this is easier to do than to actually describe music even without evaluating it. I could no sooner describe what Goldsmith sounds like than I can describe the color Blue.

Now just because I run into trouble doesn't mean everyone will. Barzun suggests music is also difficult to discuss in words for everyone, but while it has that quality, it can be and has been done.

You may feel my "name-dropping" was crazy & stuck-up but I think I was sincere. If I call on some quote and attribute it to its author, I do so because I figure the quote is applicable to what I'm saying. I may draw on things from all sorts of places, times, and disciplines, but I always feel they are a propos (just as I think it's a propos to use French phrases too).

"What you've written here makes sense and I've enjoyed your posts here this time." Well, that's nice, but I still reserve the right to be an assshole and write whatever the kl;j;iou;doihcfb;oiqw7fyb;ocwhiee I wish to if that's the way I feel or what I consider to be effective.

Comparing one score to another might help give some people a picture but as you say they have to have the familiarity first. If I compare the design of two Mosques built in Lebanon in 980 AD, you might be able to follow the written descriptions, but would still be at a loss without a photo or actual visit to atleast one of the places.

John-As long as the guy wasn't playing Horner, I'd applaud too

There is a famous piece like this by John Cage I think. 4 minutes of silence and it has sheet music!! Rest figure after rest figure. I don't know if it has a title. Giving it a standing ovation is pretty hilarious, it's like the audience joining the joke.

James-"Every musician I've ever met would go on for days about music." Ok. But what do they actually say when they talk. Does it all just boil down to technical talk or opinion?

I hadn't heard of the Schifrin piece. I wonder if he composed it specifically with this idea in mind or if he was just taking rejected cues and trying to do something with them. In any case, to do a concert piece of film music sounding music that one is encouraged to create images to only supports Barzun's argument that people make of music different things regardless of the established program. In this case, the program was loose, but it's still possible to listen to the music and create no story/image in your head to go along with the sound.

Barzun is probably wrong that you can't "decant" or de-code the message of art. At one point, the work IS the message but at another there are interpretations, descriptions of how a work effects you, suppositions of what the work might be trying to make a person feel and so forth.

Still, it's all a form of translation work as you suggest.

I've read Copland and others on music in writings aimed at the lay person in a way that allows them to get a little music theory under their belts. L-Bernstein's texts and films fall into that category too. So, ok, they bridge both worlds and aren't dull to either. I'm not against telling Barzun he blew it.

Barzun's examples were mainly to say that music and bodily sensation or emotion have a link, that sounds create response. He put "should be" in quotes because he realized that should does not mean always.

When Barzun writes that music is inarticulate, he's saying that music can't express itself as verbal information. Kind of like Gerald McBoing Boing who can't talk but only makes sounds. Music can't tell you how it's to be played, it can't tell you what time it is, it can't tell you anything, it simply can't talk. However, Barzun is not completely correct when he says music is not a language, because music can "talk" but only in a completely non-verbal manner. However, not everyone transaltes the sounds to mean the same thing. You hear the sound "cat" if you speak English you know what that sound means. But if you hear a B-flat, you'll get some communication from it and an emotional response, but just what it refers to or if the guy sitting next to you gets the same B-flat response you just did is something else.

You may understand why people like Dylan even if you don't, but I'm not sure everyone can make that stretch. Geoffrey O'Brien writes about film saying that he suddenly realized that there was a cult for every film ever made no matter how obscure or bad. But even here it's an intellectual epiphany. Even though he sees the reality that every art work has a following somewhere, he doesn't really get how such a thing is possible.

Barzun felt people actually listen differently in a physiological way. But I follow that music will bridge the gap between the Finn and the Frenchie that their language won't even if they come to different conclusions.

However, in coming to different conclusions over the same music (or written text for that matter), battle lines can be drawn. Who knew that listening to music could lead you down the path to war?

"I'm all for mixing things up." Ok, sure, no restrictions, no rules. But if Barzun is right that music is inarticulate, non-verbal, has no speaking voice, then to try to use it as a spoken language might be doomed to failure from the start.

In any case, I would rather you were right than Barzun. And you're right, even if you can't get completely close to the subject, getting closer to it is no slouch. So what if discussion about music is all analogy or approximation, it's better than nothing. And for all the talk, the music isn't going to disappear and if any of the talk helps understanding, it's worthwhile.

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
Sean-Well, there IS a part of me that feels if you like Horner you're not dealing with a full deck. Sorry. I can try to explain why I consider any composer a better or lesser composer but I do find it hard. Maybe Doug Adams can podcast a better explanation than I can but I run into trouble. But this is easier to do than to actually describe music even without evaluating it. I could no sooner describe what Goldsmith sounds like than I can describe the color Blue.

Now just because I run into trouble doesn't mean everyone will. Barzun suggests music is also difficult to discuss in words for everyone, but while it has that quality, it can be and has been done.

You may feel my "name-dropping" was crazy & stuck-up but I think I was sincere. If I call on some quote and attribute it to its author, I do so because I figure the quote is applicable to what I'm saying. I may draw on things from all sorts of places, times, and disciplines, but I always feel they are a propos (just as I think it's a propos to use French phrases too).

"What you've written here makes sense and I've enjoyed your posts here this time." Well, that's nice, but I still reserve the right to be an assshole and write whatever the kl;j;iou;doihcfb;oiqw7fyb;ocwhiee I wish to if that's the way I feel or what I consider to be effective.

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Hey, I didn't write that you shouldn't be an ******* or that you don't "reserve the right" to be one (that's your choice)—I just didn't understand why you wanted to be so aggressive towards to people who don't share your opinion; that doesn't make sense to me. BMikeJ is the perfect example of a genuine ******* on this message board: The only time he seems to emerge is to post something when he wishes to slam me or wants to put someone down because he considers himself to be more intelligent and worldly than most others; that's just stupid (he'll tell people to go take classes on philosophy or some crap).

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
John-As long as the guy wasn't playing Horner, I'd applaud too

There is a famous piece like this by John Cage I think. 4 minutes of silence and it has sheet music!! Rest figure after rest figure. I don't know if it has a title. Giving it a standing ovation is pretty hilarious, it's like the audience joining the joke.

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I would think this would be easy to figure out. The people who support the things I hate are the ENEMY. And it has nothing to do with a desire to slam others or an attempt to make myself out to be some kind of superior person. It's just that if I encounter something and just know in my soul it's bad and then a ton of people come forward and say, oh, this is so good, it's heaven, give us more, give us more, well, those people need to be told off and put in their place (if at all possible). It usually doesn't work and it more often backfires to make you look like an idiot but that's no reason not to put up some fierce opposition. You should be able to understand my aggression towards them. They are the holders of beliefs I scorn.

As for the quoting, looks like we'll just have to be at odds on it. I don't think my attributions amounted to zilch and I wasn't on a brag fest. However, even if I were on a brag fest, that's ok too. You should be out there reading & learning & getting in as much as you can under your belt rather than thinking this is not the way to go. In any case, I'd have to do 3 or 4 more lifetimes of work to get to a level where I could enter a room with the big boys.

Not too long ago I saw an extra on the Mauvais Sang DVD. Kent Jones was interviewing Leos Carax. Carax said he got the idea for the film from watching a Raoul Walsh film. So Kent asks which one? Carax answers Salty O'Rourke. And without missing a beat Kent answers back, Oh yes, with Alan Ladd. Well there I am in my living room going, Oh sh-it, the one guy mentioned a Raoul Walsh film I'd never even heard of let alone seen and the other guy knew it cold. All the time on-line I stumble into blogs or sites where the chatters are talking about obscure films with a depth I can't even begin to reach. But even so, one has to try.

You may feel it would be ridiculous if someone talking about politics were to mention this pundit or that one, but I would figure, that as long as the guy wasn't lying about it, he was better educated & informed.

So, sorry to slam you, but you're wrong. The more people you can quote the more I'm likely to take you seriously not less. And that goes for everything, the more films you've seen, books you've read, scores you've listened to, places you've been, things you've done, all that exposure makes you more of an authority not less of one.

Put another perhaps more cruder way, who would you rather get tips from on how to pick up chicks, the 40 Year Old Virgin or Ron Jeremy?

It does not have a bad ring to it. If someone came here with that kind of background, I would respect that. I may still fight with the guy over issues but I'd be impressed by the legwork he put into things.