[Dixielandjazz] Music is ?

[John Farrell]

Music which describes, evokes or otherwise alludes to a non-musical source
e.g. a poem, novel, play, picture, landscape, or an explicit emotional
experience is referred to as "illustrative music" or "programme music".
Joplin's Crush Collision March is a good example, written to describe the
1896 occasion when a deliberate head-on collision between two locomotives
was staged, the engines blew up killing three spectators and injuring many
others.

One of my sources says : "In its crudest form programme music is purely
imitative; many sounds - bird song, thunder and the like - are readily
imitated.".

On the other hand "absolute music" does not depend for its full appreciation
on any association with a story or mood or other fact of life.

So now you know.

John Farrell
http://homepages.tesco.net/~stridepiano/midifiles.htm

-----Original Message-----
From: dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com
[mailto:dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com]On Behalf Of Fr M J
(Mike) Logsdon
Sent: 23 April 2005 06:54
To: m - DJML
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Music is ?


> One literal example is Respighi's "Pines of Rome" wherein he has recorded
bird calls noted in the score to be played in concert.
>
> In another more figurative context, Beethoven in the second movement of
the Pastoral Symphony has scored the flutes and piccolos to play cuckoos and
bird calls.
>
> I'm sure there are more but those two immediately spring to mind.

Handel's *Israel in Egypt* has an entire section where the music totally
represents the plagues Moses inflicted, the plague of the flies being
the most eerie, particularly for the 18th century listening public!,
--
Etc,

Fr M J "Mike" Logsdon
Special Assistant to the Presiding Archbishop
North American Old Roman Catholic Church (Utrecht Succession)
www.naorc.org