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Originally Posted by MidtownTraffic
Ok, this might sound a little strange, and I'm having trouble finding the right way to put this, but how do you hear the story in music? I look at videos and I hear people saying that you have to hear the story to understand, and it seems that they have story that everyone agrees with. I can formulate visions in my head, but how do you write and hear a music story? Do you have to know the background story or do you guys just understand the music like you understand words?
Hopefully, after my question is answered a discussion will arise because other wise this is a pretty pointless topic.
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Hearing a story in any piece of music is a highly individualistic experience. The "story" of a piece you may hear in a certain programmatic piece (let's say for example Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain) may be different from my story. Even if the composer intends certain themes to represent certain characters, if you have no access or you have not read the program or if you have no knowledge of the title at all, it is highly probable that you'll end up with a different story altogether than that of the composer.
Or to put it in another light, let's say you hear "Bald Mountain" for the first time and you don't know the title. Probably, you'll get the impression that the piece is somewhat scary but would you for certain identify which motives represent Chernabog or which measures would play out the chatter of the witches? You might think that those tremolandi, trills, and certain fast passages in that piece could sound like flies or insects buzzing instead of chattering witches. This is the reason why composers associated with program music needed to include a programme for their audiece to read so that these listeners would know what the music is all about (this to account for, as stated earlier, highly individualistic perceptions and interpretations).
I think some composers had the goal of being able to put in concrete ideas to their audience with their music (I for one am guilty of that goal but have yet to realize it, which could be something impossible). If I can recall things correctly, I think that Debussy once had the idea of having his pieces played out without the audience knowing the title or programme to see if the audiece could figure out what his pieces were all about. I would assume that it could have been a failed effort (unless his audience had some idea about it one way or another).