Sensory and cognitive perceptions in music

The Double Life of Veronique (Kryzstof Kieslowski, 1991)

For a film module I'm taking I did a presentation on this clip. I touched on several themes, but something I covered that I'd like to explore in further detail here is a theme of 'universality' and its relation to music.

Double Life is a film Kieslowski made in the wake of a realisation that his storytelling gifts were universal. He realised that he didn't, he said, make small 'provincial' films but that his films moved hearts from across the globe.

The film features the same person, Veronique/Weronika, or far more arguablytwo 'soul mates', who make different ethical choices. Both are musically gifted and when Weronika has a chance to be a lead singer in a choral piece, because of her frail heart condition, collapses and dies. Veronique, having a presentiment or fear that this fate awaits her, pulls out of music.

So, using this clip, I argued that people from all walks of life react similarly to the same piece of music because it is a 'universal' language. I argued that music could be seen as more sensory than cognitive; you 'feel' it far more than 'think' through it.

In hindsight, I realise that this isn't entirely true... It's just that, because of my lack of technical musical knowledge, I see music as some sort of ineffable language that can't be explained nor elucidated...

But is music really a 'universal' language? This may seem odd coming from an ardent fan of classical composers like Xenakis and Varese and dissonant rock performers like The Fall and Captain Beefheart...

That's why many of the post-war composers were accused of 'elitism' - producing material that could only be heard and understood by small groups of people.

Kieslowksi used music to represent this interconnection between cultures, to bridge a gap between eastern and western Europe. People can be united by the 'Ode to joy', but would the blaring sounds of Varese's Ionisation really do the trick? ...

Yet, still, for me, listening to modern classical music is a sensory experience. Never setting my eye on the scores of these pieces I just listen to the sounds and try disentangling the musical activity. This still isn't cognitive - I'm not exactly using my brain to decode intellectual processes... I'm basically reacting very emotively to something that was conceived in a very methodical and intellectual manner.

And to place all this together is in itself a mathematical discipline. The school of serialism and many other forms of modern composition use procedures that are cognitive... But when I hear music by Webern and Berg I'm not able to distinguish all this - I react to it through sheer intuition.

Whilst listening to music is principally, though not always, a sensory endeavour... the argument I made in my presentation is arguable. The Third Reich appropriated Wagner in their pursuit of world domination, but did the whole world come together as a result? No.