Walter Pater wrote that all art aspires to the condition of music. What do you think he meant by this?
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hijklmno
ANSWERS: 3
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Music has a power that no other medium can claim. Music has the capability to CHANGE your mood. Think of something so simple as a school dance. If a fast, rock son is being played, every boy (and some girls) in the room immediately fancy themselves serious metalheads, and start mosh-pitting on the floor. If it's switched to a slow song, they calm and become all romantically lovey-dovey. Next song is hip-hop, and you could turn into a pillar of salt watching the mock-sodomy going on. That is incredible influence. All other forms of art strive to touch the senses, and to alter the imagination... to make the audience see or feel what the artist is trying to convey. Music does all of this seamlessly, without half trying. It's an amazing thing.
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I disagree to a certain extent with Lady Alathia about the Pater quote. What Pater is really trying to convey is that music cannot be didactic. Music doesn't teach lessons. With much literature, there is often an underlying "moral" or "lesson." Pater is saying what Oscar Wilde later echoed when he talked about "art for art's sake" in the introduction to "The Picture of Dorian Grey." The same is true with poetry. What Pater is saying is that art's primary concern ought to be, quite simply, entertainment. Not vapid, un-moving <i>stimulus</i> like much of today's television or film, but deep, emotional entertainment. When Lady Alathia speaks of music moving without really trying, this is true insofar as all art should work to move without the pretense of trying to teach some arbitrary lesson.
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I think what he means is that all forms of art aspire to have the rules that Music has been founded on. Melody, Harmony and Rhythm with these tools any piece of art becomes closer to linking with the observer. For example a good movie or story would have the Melody (story line) Harmony (tragedy/comedy) Rhythm (events that unfold/Actions/feelings/emotions).
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