PHQ | QUESTIONS: Music Type Theory and Donations

39 comments

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  • Taylor
  • August 21, 2015 at 10:32 pm

  I don’t know if I speak for other Ni-users, but metaphors are sometimes the only means I have to verbalize ideas which exist comfortably in my mind, but do not fit within the confines of language that exists. Its not about seeing what sticks, its about seeing how the qualities in everything is like the qualities in everything else.

  …Homer never mentions the color blue in the Odyssey. He instead says things like, “the wine dark sea”. Metaphors. Why? The greeks didn’t have a word for blue. If the language doesn’t exist for a concept, you either have to create new words for it, or you have to explain it using ideas or words that are already available to you.

  I saw an essence in personality type, and the concept of that essence I translated using the circle of fifths and the octave. Its less about getting all the details right than it is about conveying an idea through a familiar model. As soon as you zoom in any further on the infinite number of exceptions, yes, the model falls apart. With that same logic, so does personality type.

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  • Meg
  • August 21, 2015 at 9:31 pm

  True, the “amen” is plagal, which follows the perfect cadence of the chorale or hymn tune. (Been a while since I’ve sung one. :) ) In which case, yeah, the example doesn’t hold up. Chess? Now I feel like it’s just throwing metaphors at a concept to see what might stick. And I’m still going with the Western music chord tone analogy does not stick. However, look at the harmonic series, interval ratios, the actual physics of sound, and I bet you’ll be very happy with what you find there. Good luck!

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  • Taylor
  • August 21, 2015 at 7:28 pm

  Afraid I have to disagree and still stick with the dominant function as the dominant, and the inferior function as the tonic. The Amen Cadence is not an authentic cadence (V-I) but a plagal cadence (IV-I)—perhaps that was a bad example to use. I didn’t want to make the point of tension through cadences at the end for, as you rightfully pointed out, there are many kinds of cadences.

  Again, I want to stress I’m talking about an idealized musical piece like a classical sonata. You’re right, the inferior function is aspirational, and we aren’t likely to ever fully arrive. Unlike a classical sonata, we’re unlikely to end in the tonic. Jazz, in my opinion, is the most “realistic music” if we want to use music as a representation for people. Jazz pieces often do not end in the tonic—jazz pieces break the rules of the idealized piece.

  We don’t seek the dominant function because we are the dominant function. The dominant function describes how we move through life, I don’t see tension there because we own it. The inferior function describes what we’re moving towards. Its the goal point.

  Okay, I’m probably complicating things even more by throwing out another metaphor, but here it goes.

  Chess. What drives the movement of the chess pieces on a board?

  The opponents king.

  Why? The opponents king represents the goal. The end point. The game of chess ends when I have successfully cornered the opponents king. From the beginning of the game, every movement of each pawn, bishop, queen, rook, knight etc is strategically played in the pursuit of the end goal. Sometimes my queen might stray to accomplish a smaller side goal, by removing a pawn for example, but the big goal is always in sight. Every movement is always to move one step closer to chessmate.

  What happens if I remove the King? There is no end point to drive the movement of the pieces. The game becomes a “last man standing” which would be pointless, and chess surely would not have survived for several hundred years if that was the case.

  This metaphor is the same for all competitive sports. The goal drives the movement of the players. The dominant function of a pawn is “straight ahead, one space”. Thats how it moves. The dominant function of a bishop is “diagonal spaces”. That is how it moves.

  The dominant describes how we move through life, but its not the end we seek.

  This was the point I was making with the second law of thermodynamics, but Ill leave the point for now..

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  • Meg
  • August 21, 2015 at 6:23 pm

  (correx: that’s Re-Do and TI-Do!)

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  • Meg
  • August 21, 2015 at 6:21 pm

  OH! I TOTALLY misheard your question! But now I think I like it a little less. My understanding of the inferior function is that there’s an aspirational quality to it - we want to get there, or integrate it into our consciousness, but it’s not a place we are likely to fully arrive at and not where we’re most comfortable living. We’re comfortable in the dominant Jungian function. To my mind, that’s the tonic, or do, not the dominant/fifth, or sol. And then, OK, let’s think about cadences. The one you describe is actually commonly called a “perfect” cadence – from V to I – which is a neat name in this context! (Called that mainly because it follows certain rules for getting from one chord to another that were written down around Bach’s time.) A lot of the tension we perceive in that dominant chord ("Ahhhh“) that makes us want the final tonic chord (”-mehhhhhnnnn!") soooo bad are the closer intervals that movement creates — not merely the sol-do motion but also the re-do and mi-do that go along with it. Those closer vibrations are an important piece of this puzzle that are hard to ignore.

  Then there are other types of cadences that go from the fourth to the tonic — listen to Van Morrison’s “Hymns to the Silence” for a good example of those. For me, that harmonic motion creates a certain kind of stasis — it’s kinda cozy! But it never feels like it gets anywhere. Where would that fit into the Jungian stack? Maybe dominant-auxiliary? Auxiliary-tertiary?

  Please see my reply to one of the previous comments for ideas about the octave and the harmonic series, which seems like it might have more juice as a metaphor for typology models and human development.