Tuesday, May 02, 2006
positive and negative music?
It's been a while since I've started a thread here, but Glenn Freeman shot me an e-mail today about a Web site that provides information about what is termed "positive music" and "negative music." I'm providing some detail below, but I'll cut to the chase: positive music is music that is uplifting, negative music is that which is depressing:
The term positive music may be unfamiliar to some people. When we use the term positive to describe music, we are using it to describe music that has beneficial qualities and is emotionally and spiritually uplifting, perhaps even healing. Additionally, positive music can be relaxing, calming, and mentally invigorating. Positive music is not about lyrics, but about the music itself.
During the early 1950’s, every song that you heard on the radio was positive. Pop songs were romantic, filled with feeling; country tunes were upbeat, and fun; people listened to polkas: they were fun and spirited; and rhythm and blues (or race music, as it was called then) was clever and evocative. At that time, there was no term to describe positive music because there was little music that wasn’t positive. But now, the airwaves are filled with pain-filled, angry heavy-metal music: music that is grating and highly disturbing to the nervous system, and "alternative music" that is tortured, ugly, and nervous. Because of the quantity of negative music that society now accepts, there is now a great need to understand the difference between music that is positive, healthy and healing, and music that is negative, depressing, unhealthy and stress-inducing.
Needless to say, the author includes articles such as "Arnold Schˆnberg: Father of Negative Music" [what he has against spelling out Schoenberg's name is unclear to me, but as many religious Jews will write "G-D" and I consider Schoenberg to have been a god in his day, perhaps his incomplete spelling is really appropriate 8-) ]. And while he's no fan of the New Vienna School, he isn't completely positive about Cage, either. Cage represents "anarchy and chaos," although Feldman, with whom he studied, comes across more positively.
I don't like categorization, nor do I think anything is as simple as "black or white" or "positive or negative." I do think it's reasonable to claim that much 20th-century music is complex, depressing...whatever. But that's a subjective determination. Nor is it a value judgment. Admittedly, a lot of Shostakovich's late music is sad, but does that mean it isn't approachable, or that it's less worthy than "positive" music? Late Stravinsky, most Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Dallapiccola, Messiaen, Babbitt, Carter, etc. might then be lumped into a "negative" dumpster, and the word "negative" has unfavorable connotations, right?
So I'm not totally sold on the concepts expressed on this Web site. The manifesto is interesting, but I think I'm more of a fan of the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement.
So, do people feel this is a valid and/or useful distinction: positive vs. negative music? And is negative music such a bad thing? I mean, if everything were positive, we'd never know it, since there would be no opposite to call attention to it.
posted by David Toub
10:53 AM
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