Several years ago, my wife and I purchased a large abstract painting from a starving artist sale. It proudly hangs in our family room and I enjoy asking new guests what they see when they look at it. Some have seen an old woman in a hood; others see a dove; some see a chair; and those with a musical bent often see a sunken upright piano.  

Occasionally, I stare at the painting and see if I can pick out a new likeness.  Other times I just look at it and enjoy the contrasts of colors, the way the layers of paint provide a sense of depth, and the proportions of the various objects.

Paintings and music are similar in many ways.  I feel Monet’s paintings share a sort of kinship with the music of Debussy.  The objects in a Monet painting do not have hard edges, they sort of gradually melt into other objects, blurring the line where one object begins and the other ends.  Debussy's music shows a lot of these subtleties, with melodies gently emerging from and rescinding back into an amorphous background texture.

There is certainly abstract music too.  Music where, like the painting in my living room, seemingly unrelated musical objects (or sections) coexist in the same work.  The relationships between the objects may exist, but the composer has obscured them, either through using a multitude of thematic developments without allowing the listener to hear the step-by-step process to get from point A to point F, or by using mathematical systems to obscure the form.  

However, there are some important differences between the visual arts and music.  First and foremost, the way the two art forms use time. No external force dictates that an individual looking at a painting “needs to move on" to the next piece of art in some arbitrary time period.  This allows unlimited time for an art connoisseur to contemplate the meaning of a painting.

Secondly, viewers can take in an entire painting at once or, choose the order in which they look at the sections.  They can stare for longer periods at those sections they do not immediately grasp, and then relate those back to the painting as a whole.

In music, the composer dictates the order in which the listeners hear the sections. In a live performance, if we do not understand or fully comprehend a section, there is no way to rewind the orchestra to re-examine it. And, once the final note has been sounded, our time with the piece is up. We must then move on to the next piece of music on the concert.

We also cannot hear, in an instant, the entire piece and then hone in on small sections to relate them to the work as a whole.  Instead, we listen in real time to short lived events – simultaneously collecting new information, while recollecting old information and trying to relate the two. This is tricky business - even for those of us with lots of experience.

All of these complex variables make it challenging to understand even the most clearly formulated pieces of music. For these reasons, I believe music and dance (which shares many of the same experiential limitations) are the most abstract art forms.

So why would composers abstract that which is already abstract by its very nature?  Why not instead provide clarity by using musical material that is memorable, by creating musical characters (or themes) that are uniquely distinct from one another, by reinforcing material through unambiguous repetition, and by developing ideas in a clear, step-by-step fashion?

As composers we should try to do everything we can to help our listeners wade through music’s inherently difficult language. We should aim to clearly communicate that which we are trying to say.  In doing so, we'll bring more listeners to our concerts rather than repelling them, as though new music can only be appreciated by an 'elite listening club'.  

After all, we are communicating something, right? 

ShareThis