Abstract:

Listen and See: The Musical Provocation of Visual Imagery examines music as it regards visual imagery in the mind of the listener. Some music is especially adept in provoking visual images with the inclusion of variegated styles, instrumentation, musical quotation, and recordings. In highlighting this music and understanding its methods I attempt to enrich the experience of the listener and reorient the purpose of the composer. For example, Ives' Central Park in the Dark has the listener see many visual images with quotations, styles, and musical amalgams punctuating 'the dark'. The first chapter explores the philosophical and artistic history of connections and interactions between sound and sight. Our common understanding of a link between sound and sight is extensive.

The second chapter provides psychological evidence supporting the probability for the widespread experience of visual images when listening to music, including: the development of visual skills with expanding technology and cultural adaptation; the primacy of the visual mode for information and cognition; the extensive stores of individually held memories; the compositional capability to identify and 're-awaken' these memories; the understanding of modal senses and cross-modal association; the voluntary nature of visualization (contrasted with the involuntary responses of persons affected by synesthesia); and the individualized motivation in musical reception. Further, means for scientifically evaluating these conditions is suggested.

The third chapter details instances of music provoking visual imagery. Beethoven gives the listener not only the music of the Pastoral Symphony but the freedom to experience the pictures. Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony provides a vivid carriage ride, and one of great excitement. Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead makes music that is both from pictures and for pictures. Torke's Green sets us on our path with the power of the title. Ferrari's Presque Rien has us see pictures that he wants us to see, just as he desires. Spoken words in Hostetler's Happily Ever After make us think in pictures but our ability to translate these words into pictures becomes overwhelmed, and the words become music. Bunny Berigan's recording of Walkin' the Dog strolls to let us have our own experience--physically, visually, and musically.