I find your approach fascinating. I’ve long thought literature lacks a framework? vocabulary? Even a form of notation to think about, and fully appreciate sound. I look forward to your work.
Thank you - I hope you enjoy it! I think the notation thing is a really interesting one for me: I’m so fascinated by the way some writers try to capture sound on the page, and the challenges they encounter; but also the way readers imagine when they read. I’ve been writing about what musicians call audiation recently (imagining sounds that aren’t literally present), and I’ll try to put some thoughts down in a post about that because it’s a great way into thinking about the gap between notation and sound, and how literary notation might “trigger” the sonic imagination
Brilliant Simon. I'm working on the Judith Weir setting of 'Prayer' at the moment and I think she captures that bat-like 'sounding' with the two soloists feeling their way through the piece...
Regarding the human facility for echolocation, there’s a fascinating TED talk by Daniel Kish, a blind man who uses tongue clicks to map the space around him.
Another interesting idea, which you may already be aware of as a musician, is that our human facility for numeracy - and our big brains and capacity for abstract language - originally developed from recognising patterns in sounds. Rather than as we might think from our primary school mathematical education, from counting objects, recognising visual patterns, or measuring distances. Keith Devlin’s book “The Math Gene” is a good source for this. I’d be interested to hear of other sources, perhaps from the world of music, if you have some to recommend.
Yes - this mathematical model is deeply embedded in early modern thinking about music, most obviously in ideas of proportion, the basis of all those Pythagorean models of harmonia mundi. I love Robert Fludd's images of the universal monochord etc in Utriusque cosmi historia (first volumes publishde 1617) for instance. Jamie James, Music of the Spheres is a very readable introduction to those ideas.
I find your approach fascinating. I’ve long thought literature lacks a framework? vocabulary? Even a form of notation to think about, and fully appreciate sound. I look forward to your work.
Thank you - I hope you enjoy it! I think the notation thing is a really interesting one for me: I’m so fascinated by the way some writers try to capture sound on the page, and the challenges they encounter; but also the way readers imagine when they read. I’ve been writing about what musicians call audiation recently (imagining sounds that aren’t literally present), and I’ll try to put some thoughts down in a post about that because it’s a great way into thinking about the gap between notation and sound, and how literary notation might “trigger” the sonic imagination
Brilliant Simon. I'm working on the Judith Weir setting of 'Prayer' at the moment and I think she captures that bat-like 'sounding' with the two soloists feeling their way through the piece...
Thanks James - I actually don't know the Weir setting of this text at all well, so I clearly need to check that one out!
Regarding the human facility for echolocation, there’s a fascinating TED talk by Daniel Kish, a blind man who uses tongue clicks to map the space around him.
Another interesting idea, which you may already be aware of as a musician, is that our human facility for numeracy - and our big brains and capacity for abstract language - originally developed from recognising patterns in sounds. Rather than as we might think from our primary school mathematical education, from counting objects, recognising visual patterns, or measuring distances. Keith Devlin’s book “The Math Gene” is a good source for this. I’d be interested to hear of other sources, perhaps from the world of music, if you have some to recommend.
Yes - this mathematical model is deeply embedded in early modern thinking about music, most obviously in ideas of proportion, the basis of all those Pythagorean models of harmonia mundi. I love Robert Fludd's images of the universal monochord etc in Utriusque cosmi historia (first volumes publishde 1617) for instance. Jamie James, Music of the Spheres is a very readable introduction to those ideas.
I haven't seen that TED talk - I'll look it up!