My brother asked what I thought was an interesting question this week. How come we can remember the sound of music which consists of chords when we can only whistle or hum one note at a time? The example he chose was the climax of the second movement of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto.
Is it like art? A work of art like the Mona Lisa is obviously complex:
But it is not hard to recognise the picture from just a few lines:
Can we do the same with the extract from Rachmaninov suggested by my brother?
I thought I would find out, starting with the top note in the right-hand, which looks like this:
it really does not sound much like the real thing:
nothing much changes when you add the bottom note from the right hand, which is just the same thing but an octave down:
things start to get a bit closer when you add the rest of the right hand:
But it is still pretty clunky. The left hand add something distinctive – a series of quintuplets– and we are starting to edge closer:
But it was not until I started adding the strings that my memory of the piece started to kick in. I wonder if, when we remember the piece, we are internally humming the very simple violin line?
So, what is the moral from all of this? Apart from the fact that to try to synthesise classical music like this digitally, even if you put all the parts in, tends still to be quite clunky (unless you do all sorts of other sophisticated stuff with dynamics, tempo et cetera)? I think it might be that some works of art are readily recognisable from a reduction down to simple lines, but others very much less so. We can all hum along to the Rachmaninov, but if the real thing is stripped away, without humming be recognisable? I somewhat doubt it.
Anyway. For the sake of our neighbours, it is probably best not to try.
phenell 