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What does it mean to be 'out of key' in music?

What does it mean to "seek truth in great music?"?

  • So, here's the deal. I'm just finishing an orchestra class at school. The mission of our music school states that it "seeks truth in great music." So our conductor has asked us to right a paper on how we personally have discovered truth in great music. Honestly, when we first discussed this topic in class, I could not for the life of me understand it. "Music is music," I thought. "It’s moving, inspirational, wonderful, and all that; but it does not teach us truth, per se. Does it?" I really struggled with it through the semester, trying to find examples of music teaching truth. But every truth I have found in the semester has been from a source outside the actual music, even if the music itself helped demonstrate it. It seems I can discover truth via great music, but not within it. I just don’t know what to write about in this paper. I’ve thought about it in just every way I can think of. So now I have to get help. Thoughts? By the way, the first question in the paper prompt is, "Do you feel you discovered truth in the music we played this year?" ...Well, I can't very well say "no." If I did, it would be an automatic fail, and the rest of the questions would be pointless.

  • Answer:

    I think it's kind of like when a bunch of people listen to something and have a similar experience or feeling. Of course you don't have to know that a bunch of people feel the same way, but it's just when something strikes you a certain way. I'm not big on music but there is this one piece I listened to by Beethoven and it came off to me like he was in some kind of desperate manic depressive state when he composed it, and when I looked it up, he was suicidal, in love, and heartbroken when he composed it. I think it's when a musician is able to communicate something clearly to the audience through the music.

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The conductor is an idiot. Music has nothing to do with seeking truth. I can't imagine how you could answer his question.

Wayne T

***EDIT CLEANUP**** Non-choral music has the capacity to produce sounds over time and can produce very apt melodies true to the meanong of the libretto. So let's look at non-vocal music My experience is music conveys feelings: Now what part of this conveys truth, and what type of truth? --Truth for an individual listener, ---truth as the "meaning" of the music. --- Truth could also be related to how closely a symphonic poem follows its tale. But it is a subjective individual experience, Entirely independent on the artistic source, So, Truth also has many definitions depending on the person. Unless the professor had something like this in mind, okay, we get our feelings not our rthics or metaphysics moved by listening to music However, the more I look at this question given by the teacher, the more I think this question is absurd intellectual golboldygook : 1) Academia is trying to define the indefinable; as Stravinsky stated "Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all." 2) What would be falsehood in music? Music conveys what one feels in music not what one thinks this IS the truth of music period. That is the only way one can say that music is truthful . As it is currently worded, this is an absurd question.

unknown

Well, what you are writing in this question is very truthful. I think you could expound on this. I think it is a silly topic myself.

I think its to find the meaning and the message of a song. . . and again . . . this is what I think.

Julieta Lozano

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