Musicality and Time
Musicality and Time
We experience music over time. We think we see a painting all at once but not really. The thing about music is that we only experience it in the present moment. What we have already heard is fresh in memory and what we have yet to hear is tucked away and hidden in the near future. Our experience of music is always and only in the present moment. Every moment that we are not paying attention we have missed something. Composing, performing and experiencing music has its own possibilities and problems that are solved with a variety of theories and techniques.
A painting we seem to take in all at once and yes we do but only in a rudimentary way. Ninety five percent of our initial experience of a painting is with our fuzzy, blurry, out of focus, peripheral vision. To really see the painting requires that the focal point of our eye - which is very small - along with our careful attention must traverse the image little by little over time in order to actually see it and ingest it. We must look at a painting over and over again to see its patterns and correspondences and relationships in order to build the image in our minds.
This suggests that, as a reading, a painting has very similar possibilities, problems and solutions as music does, or film, or the reading of literature. Hence we can apply ‘listening’ to a painting albeit with the eye instead of the ear. We accept the fact that when we hold a book of literature that even though we can see all of the pages, we are only going to experience it one line at a time. The subject matter remains hidden from us until we arrive to it in our reading of it.
Looking and Watching
One thing that is different between experiencing a painting compared to, for instance, a movie, is that you look at a painting but you watch a movie. If a thing is sitting still you look at it, if it is moving you watch it. Looking is active, watching is passive.
With a painting, since it is just hanging there still on the wall, you have to actively look at it, you have to move your eyes around to study it and that looking takes time. This is the time element that can be exploited as the musicality of a painting.
Hearing and Listening
Continuing with looking at a painting, to take in a painting as a totality can be compared to hearing. Hearing means you are having a basic experience of sound vibrating on your ear drums but that doesn’t mean you are listening to that sound. Listening is a more sophisticated version of hearing.
Hearing and listening are often used interchangeably, but they involve different processes and levels of engagement.
Hearing is a passive process. It happens when sound waves enter the ear and are converted into signals that the brain can interpret. Hearing is an automatic, biological function that doesn't require focus or attention. For example, you might hear background noise without really paying attention to it.
Listening, on the other hand, is an active process. It involves not just hearing sounds but also paying attention, interpreting, and understanding the meaning of what is being heard. Listening requires focus, intention, and mental engagement.
The art of music is to use the process of hearing in order to listen. In the same way the the art of painting is to use the process of seeing in order to look at a painting. It requires the same effort as listening to a symphony. It requires the same attention, focus, intention, and mental engagement. Now, of course, interpretation and meaning in a painting, just like in a symphony, is indeterminant, it is open to the observer’s personal experiences. Every person brings something unique to the experience of a painting.
The artist, as the composer of the painting, has their own understanding of what they have created but very often a viewer can bring a whole new interpretation to the work that the artist themselves had never considered. I have had the experience of conversing with sophisticated viewers who have articulately pointed out things about my paintings that I only had an intuitive understanding of and I very much appreciated their perspective. But frequently it is difficult for a viewer to be able to verbalize their experience of a work of art beyond the fact that they like it or they don’t. If ask why, they couldn’t tell you. This might be for the reason that art, like music, is non-verbal by nature.
Time and Memory
Music depends on the unfoldment of time to experience it but it also requires memory and memory is sustained by things like melody, motif, harmonic progressions, rhythm and repetition in order to build recognition as a work of music progresses. A symphonic orchestra can range from 80-100 players and the music can become extremely complex. In order for it to be comprehensible for the listener the composer might use some of the following techniques:
1. Repetition and Recognition
Repetition of Themes: Composers often use repetition to help listeners remember key musical ideas, such as motifs, melodies, or harmonic progressions. When a theme is introduced early and repeated throughout a composition, it becomes more memorable. This familiarity allows the listener to track the development of the piece and anticipate its structure.
Variation on a Theme: By varying a recognizable theme, composers engage the listener’s memory while keeping the music interesting. The variations are grounded in the listener’s recollection of the original theme, making the new interpretations more meaningful and easier to follow.
Leitmotifs and Musical Signifiers
Leitmotifs: In film scores, operas, and programmatic works, composers use leitmotifs—recurring musical phrases associated with specific characters, ideas, or emotions. These motifs rely heavily on the listener’s memory, as they gain meaning through repetition and association. Each time a leitmotif returns, it invokes the memory of previous occurrences, adding layers of narrative or emotional depth.
Musical Signifiers: Certain sounds or chord progressions (e.g., a fanfare for triumph or a minor key for sadness) serve as musical symbols. These signifiers tap into collective musical memory and can evoke particular feelings or associations in listeners based on their past experiences with music.
Development and Transformation
Motivic Development: Composers often introduce a simple, memorable motif and then subject it to various transformations—rhythmic, harmonic, or melodic changes. These developments create complexity but are still comprehensible because the listener can trace the changes back to the original idea. The memory of the initial motif provides coherence to the music’s evolution.
Fugue and Canon: In forms like the fugue or canon, memory is crucial for understanding how voices interact. The same musical material appears in different voices at different times, and the listener’s memory of the material from one voice helps them recognize its return and transformation in another.
Expectations and Anticipation
Musical Tension and Release: Music often plays with the listener’s memory by creating expectations based on previous patterns. For example, a composer might establish a harmonic pattern that leads the listener to expect a certain resolution. If the resolution is delayed or altered, the listener experiences tension. When the anticipated resolution finally occurs, it brings a sense of satisfaction or closure, which is only meaningful because of the listener’s memory of the previous material.
Surprise through Deviation: Conversely, when music deviates from established patterns, the surprise is more effective because the listener's memory has primed them for a particular outcome. This manipulation of memory enhances emotional impact.
An Exhibition as a Symphonic Performance
An artist might think of a series of works shown together as an exhibition comprising the idea of being a symphony in several movements with, perhaps the addition of supporting works like drawings, watercolor studies or other related works to be experienced together as if a singular work to convey a particular vision.
Painters can and often do use a lot of these same musical techniques in paintings to achieve similar results through using repeated shapes and forms, painting techniques, motifs, signifiers, variations on these forms, shifting but related or complimentary color palettes, shifts in scale or relationship, the introduction of new elements or ‘voices’, etc. to build memory and familiarity in the viewer as they move from one work to the next in the series creating a recognition of the development of the themes in the body of work presented.
In all the the arts time and its unfolding is a continuously considered element in the construction and presentation of works of art. How the artist manages the experiencer’s attention and perception of a work of art is worked out through the careful organization of all of the elements at the artist’s disposal.
Yet, even with all of that care, an artwork is dependent on the viewer. It is therefore incumbent on the viewer to pay attention and to linger long enough - to spend enough time - to attempt to grasp and be affected by the effect of what is being presented.
What a fascinating article. I never gave thought to the difference between listening and hearing or looking and seeing! You’ve opened my eyes — and ears!