{"id":345,"date":"2016-01-26T07:35:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T07:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=345"},"modified":"2024-02-20T16:42:08","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T16:42:08","slug":"a-new-music-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/a-new-music-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Music Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have written before (in\u00a0Music Memories<\/a>) about the different ways in which various pieces of music trigger very specific recall about some past event. Just the other day I had an experience which both reinforced my previous ideas and caused me to think about a new aspect of this.<\/p>\n

I was listening to a recording on a journey (on my own, in the car) when I was “transported” – at least in my mind – back to a previous occasion when I had been doing the same thing. It was, of course, immediately clear to me that here was a piece of music (It was actually Morten Lauridsen’s\u00a0O Magnum Mysterium<\/strong>\u00a0– however the actual music is not too relevant to this post) that generated powerful memories.<\/p>\n

It was only by looking back to what I previously wrote that I could sort out the chronology and new meaning of this. I hadn’t mentioned this music in the previous post – and – given the strength of the recall that was a bit of a surprise. Turns out that I was recalling something that happened AFTER I wrote the previous post.<\/p>\n

There are a couple of things that this taught me about memories – first was that it isn’t always the case that you can identify (at the time) the significance of the connection between the music and the memory. I wrote in\u00a0another post<\/a>\u00a0that often we are not aware of the importance of “the moment” at the point that it happens to us. This was borne out by my experience.<\/p>\n

A second point was that the connection isn’t even necessarily with some specific “event”. In this particular case – yes, it reminded me of sitting in the car listening to that piece of music, but that was not the ‘strength’ of this association – the association was more with what I was thinking and feeling at that time – and hearing the music again allowed me to have an action replay of how that felt.<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, I discovered that there is a radio series on BBC Radio 4 called “Soul Music”. These half hour podcasts (there are over 100 of them at the moment) each take a single piece of music and people recount how their lives have been touched by that music – the choice of music is a wide one – from the simplicity of\u00a0Silent Night<\/strong>\u00a0to the grandeur of Elgar’s\u00a0Dream of Gerontius<\/strong>\u00a0– from the disco anthem\u00a0Don’t Leave Me This Way<\/strong>\u00a0to the operatic world of Purcell and\u00a0Dido’s Lament<\/strong>\u00a0– from Dire Straits’\u00a0Brothers in Arms<\/strong>\u00a0to Richard Strauss’\u00a0Vier Letzte Lieder<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The range of effects that people report from the same piece of music is telling. If you abstract things sufficiently you could perhaps get away with saying that a given piece of music has THIS effect. However, at the level that is relevant to the individuals the effect tends to be much more ‘targeted’ – much more so than “it makes me sad” or “it is uplifting”. Instead there are immensely personal (and specific) feelings and memories reported – often linking the music in the same sort of way as I have discussed in Music Memories.<\/p>\n

In another little coincidence the new “playlist” as from next week for BBS Radio 3’s Breakfast problem will be “Music that transports you somewhere”. Again, it will be interesting to hear what choices are made for that playlist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have written before (in\u00a0Music Memories) about the different ways in which various pieces of music trigger very specific recall about some past event. Just the other day I had an experience which both reinforced my previous ideas and caused me to think about a new aspect of this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[79,97,103],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ignorance","tag-cognition","tag-musical-theatre","tag-philosophical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}