metaphor+in+musical+rhthym

[//Batya//] I started out thinking I would analyze the overtones in singer's voices and turn that into a comparison. Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerland came to mind because I prefer Billie and thought I could somehow justify my opinion with the data. However, I've decided that the topic seems somewhat limited- and I thought of something else.

In my paper, I will explore the ways in which music mirrors our own lives, strictly in terms of rhythm. In discussing certain examples (I would like to use Beethoven's Sixth Symphony as well as a cover of a Smith's song by the Dream Academy) I will make the case that we, as listeners, relate to the music because of its use of rythmic patterns and the ways in which those figures work as a metaphor for life. I think it would also be interesting to then compare the ways in which the rthyhmic metaphors differ between the classical and pop music styles (and perhaps look at a jazz example as well).

I checked out the chapter in Ways of Listening on motion in music and that seems to be basically the same idea....should I think of another topic since this one is already a part of our reading?

[//Aaron//] I have a few articles you might find helpful. One is a chapter from a former teacher's dissertation on metaphorical logic in the conceptualization of musical experience, one is an article by Robert Adlington on the linearity of time in musical experience, and the other is a summary of experimental findings on the contribution of various different musical parameters to a feeling of musical motion. While not dealing with rhythm per se, they all deal with ways we conceptualize motion in music. In fact, some of them deal with issues that Ian brought up in his post about Calvin and Hobbes. I'll try and bring these in for you tomorrow.

To summarize, though, the idea is that while musical motion is not literal - we don't literally //approach// the cadence, we never actually //arrive// //at// the climax, because these things don't exist in physical locations - it is motivated by various conceptual metaphors, specifically the conceptual metaphor STATES ARE LOCATIONS, the PATH and CONTAINER image schema, and our bi-directional conceptualization of TIME in terms of MOVEMENT. That is, what allows us to experience //musical relations// as //spatial relations// is the fact that we conceptualize the "progression" of various states through time as exhibiting a motion between those states. It's easy to miss the boat here, though, and simply explain this through the Gestalt principle of good continuity (like the figure made of points of light that Jerry described). However, this ignores the ways in which //state relations// differ from //spatial relations//. We do not experience points in space when we listen to music, or if we do, it is because we are conceptualizing the various bodily and mental states the music affords us as such points. By stringing these states together, we get the experience of musical motion that most of us are familiar with.