Re: [microsound] memory and melody

[dbuchwald <dagmar.buchwald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ross,

puzzling.  I don't know what the mechanism is but I don't think that
tempo or unresolvedness alone is responsible.  Reminds me of a very weird
experience with Erik Satie music.  He wrote a small piece for piano
called "Vexations" and his wish was that it should be played 24 hours
continuously.  It so happened that a small group of people staged it over
here (Germany) according to his wishes (in the 80ies that was).  Now the
whole night was quite memorable: a small bunch of interested people
trying to stay in the small theater for 24 hours; everything was done in
white, even the food served was exclusively white, several piano players
taking shifts in playing the piece.  People walked about, talked, ate,
slept, whatever.  Now although the whole setting was quite memorable and
although I was much younger then and easier to impress and although I
spent almost 20 hours of the 24 hours in this room continuously exposed
to that piece of music -- I couldn't and cannot remember a thing of it.
When I happen to hear it somewhere I know that it is *probably*
"Vexations" by Erik Satie and that's it.  The weird thing is that equally
small and unresolved piano pieces by Satie -- in a similar tempo and
character -- such as "The Gymnopédies" stick to my memory very well
although I heard them less often, certainly not for 20 hours on end
(whether I could hum them is another question; the Gymnopédie I like best
is in my head right now, I can hear it, I could try to indicate the
whereabouts of the sounds somewhere in the air, I certainly remember the
tempo, I can sort of hum it but only accompanied by gestures) .

I have a hunch that Satie wanted to achieve that effect (actually you
could call many of his pieces "ambient" although the term didn't exist at
his time) and called his piece "Vexations" precisely because he knew it
would vex people not being able to remember it after 24 hours of
exposure.  But how did he achieve the effect?  Do other people on this
list happen to know the piece and can they remember it? I can't.

Dagmar

ross birdwise wrote:

> This post relates to vladislav delay's anima:
>
> Anima seems to be full of small melodic flourishes
> (some of which are unresolved) and long extended
> sequences of tones that seem to form melody over a
> longer period of time than the average pop song.
> There is also a multitude of fragmented and richly
> textured sounds occuring at almost all times, in
> addition to frequent timbral changes.
>
> Perhaps the melody question also raises issues of
> duration when we speak of anima (not to mention how
> other elements might cause distraction from the
> apprehension of melody) .  Perhaps extremely simple
> and unresolved melodies are harder for some people to
> remember, as are extremely slow drawn out melodies.  I
> find Beethoven very melodic and memorable. perhaps
> this is due to a lot of exposure to beethoven in pop
> culture?  or perhaps it is because his melodies are
> complex enough to create a 'good' hook (but not too
> intricate) and occur fast enough to allow many people
> to group sequences of tones together
> into memorable fragments.  Maybe we are socialized to
> listen in this way?
>
> ross
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site
> http://webhosting.yahoo.com
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> For additional commands, e-mail: microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> website: http://www.microsound.org

------------------------------