BY HASAN MURAT SÜMER (EE/IV)
hasan.sumer@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
If you regularly read music reviews or visit music forums on the Internet, you may sometimes see statements like, “The more technical the music is, the less soul it has.” Although I do not deny this statement (mostly because the meaning is not clear), I reject the idea that complexity kills the “feel” in music. It’s our fault as listeners when we don’t devote enough attention to a song because it is not easily understandable. However, the more ambitious works of the rock and folk genres may offer a very strong feel if the listener can get through the complexity barrier. When I say “feel” in this column, I don’t specifically mean the perception of emotions such as happiness, sadness, nostalgia, etc. I also mean the feeling of certain conditions that are hard to describe in a single word; for example, the feel of trying return home from a forest in the middle of nowhere during a snowstorm.
How one perceives a musical composition depends on his personality, the state of his life at the moment, the state of his life the first time he listened to it and many more variables. If we know everything about these variables, then we theoretically can find out what “feel” a composition represents for a given listener. But artists can impact our interpretation greatly through their use of lyrics, song titles and cover art (i.e., their intentions matter). For their album “Si On Avait Besoin D’Une Cinquiéme Saison” (1975), Harmonium recorded four songs with the intention of portraying the four seasons: the spring of beginnings, energetic summer, melancholic autumn and frosty winter. I honestly think that the songs wouldn’t put me in mind of the seasons if I didn’t know the artists’ intentions, but because I know, I automatically make the connection. However, the album includes another song without lyrics, “Histoires Sans Paroles” (Stories Without Words), which portrays the imaginary fifth season. This song is a perfect example of portraying a concept with nothing but sound. It has no lyrics and no explanatory title; the album cover is an ordinary, natural, yet artistic scene. In this case, the artist only tells you the concept to be portrayed and leaves everything else to your perception. Technically, the song can be described as a symphonic composition with an extreme folk influence. The sound is very relaxed because there are no drums or electric guitars. Instead, there is a sweet harmony of acoustic guitar and woodwinds; excitement is provided by electric keyboards when necessary. The work exceeds seventeen minutes in length, with very different melodies that replace each other every three or four minutes. This richness in content increases the variation of the feel it induces in different people in different moods. I highly recommend this composition, as well as the less folky autumn song, “Depuis L’Otomne.”
The feel a song gives may change over time as we gather new information. In “Yesstories: Yes in Their Own Words” (1996), Jon Anderson states that the title song of “Close to the Edge” (1972) is based on Herman Hesse’s novel, “Siddhartha” (in my opinion, the whole album is based on the novel). The lyrics seem mostly abstract and all about imagery, but a river is mentioned throughout the entire album, catching the listener’s attention. In “Siddhartha,” the river is essentially the central concept and the instrument that the main character uses to enlighten himself (that’s enough of a spoiler). It’s an enjoyable experience to read a novel when you know a song based on it by heart. If the song is long enough and the novel is short enough, it’s quite easy to synchronize the music and the text. After reading the book, the lyrics start to become meaningful to a certain degree due to its influence. This isn’t something good, though, because it restricts the listener’s imagination and freedom to perceive the song however he wants. Luckily, “Close to the Edge” is musical perfection with a great many feelings to discover; but whenever I listen to it, I always have the feel of searching for something, and of eventual enlightenment.
The beautiful thing about using musical instruments in art is the fact that feelings are your only tools for expressing yourself to the audience. Using only instrumental sounds, you can’t construct meaningful scenarios the way you can with words, and you can’t fake real-life scenes the way you can with colors. (You can always portray reality by using sounds from nature itself, but the artistic value of this is another subject to discuss.) The feel you get from a piece of wordless music is actually the act of experiencing a universe, whose creator is the artist, with complete freedom. That’s the difference of music; keep on feeling.