Technique, Expression, and How Things Blend: Musicality Book Club, Week 5
Over the past two weeks, we’ve read some of Mathieu’s thoughts on Music as Mind and Music as Heart. We’re now on Chapter 5, Feeling Mind, Thinking Heart, of Bridge of Waves: What Music Is and How Listening to It Changes the World. This chapter touches on one of the most heated ongoing debates in the world of dance, music, and probably every other art form, which is the (presence or lack of) relationship between technique and expression. Mathieu returns to the idea of name vs. nameless and develops it further through the concept of the ancient brain (more intuitive) and the new brain (more analytical). He argues for a balancing and uniting of the two:
As in any love relationship, learning to listen to music – even music you love – takes practice. Partners learn to compromise, negotiate, take turns and, eventually, cohabit in peace. Same with the partnering of intellect and intuition in every listener. Your mind and heart learn to be a nice old married couple, completing each other’s sentences and clipping each other’s toenails. [p. 95]
But Mathieu takes this even deeper than most by discussing the emotional investment behind our perspectives on this topic. Basically, he gets to the core of what this debate is really about, something I think we don’t do often enough:
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