Dreams have fascinated us for thousands of years. They can give us inspiration, true horror, or clarity on a real-life situation; they make us laugh or cry; sometimes they seem to warn us about something, predict the future, or reinvent the past.

Not surprisingly, the very human act of dreaming has inspired all kinds of art and music. Rather than explain the science behind dreams (of which I know very little), let’s dive into a few musical interpretations of dreams.

First of all, a confession – the main reason for this post is that I wanted to include a piece I wrote called Fantasmagoria. It’s three movements long and for flute & organ. The movements document: 1) Fantasmagoria – a calm, pleasant dream that corrupts into a hideous nightmare 2) Oneironautics – the act of being in control of one’s dream 3) Deja Vu – the feeling that you’ve experienced this before (in this case, an unchaning single-note pulse).

If we look at the body of art music, I think we can boil down dream-music into two categories: 1) sweet, gentle, calming works 2) wilder, fantastical visions.

Starting with category 1 – sweet, gentle, calming works. Common characteristics of these pieces include simpler, more predictable harmonies, a consistent, slower rhythmic pulse, and hummable melodies. They are more often written for solo instrument, or for two players. They appeal to our musically conservative side, hinting at music we already know – perhaps lullabies or songs of tenderness. They put our minds in safe places and make us feel love and warmth.

Reverie was one of Claude Debussy earlier works, and captures a delightful, pleasant daydream of sorts.

Francisco Tárrega wrote this gentle dream for solo guitar.

Franz Liszt was known for writing-impossible-to-play piano music, but his Liebestraum is almost manageable. On top of that, its supremely cheesy melody and sentimental mood make it a regular encore at piano concerts or romantic piano CDs.

And speaking of cheese, the master of all sentimental cheese was Robert Schumann. He was so cheesy that Brahms tried to out-cheese him, but failed. So Brahms decided to go after his wife instead.

Let’s just stay in cheese zone for another moment and move on to Gabriel Fauré‘s haunting “Après un rêve” (after a dream).

Alexander Scriabin was a true nut job, and that is historical fact, not opinion. Even so, his music is pretty amazing, and strongly influenced by his interest in philosophy and theosophy.

This first category of dream music is mostly romantic schlock – but there are some modern pieces that fit here, including George Crumb‘s Dream Sequence, which uses a glass harmonica (invented by Benjamin Franklin, no less!)

Now, the second category of dream-music: wilder, fantastical visions. These works are more likely to challenge our musical expectations a bit, perhaps with sudden changes of harmony or meter, broader dynamic range, and lack that singable melody. Like a wild dream, they don’t go where we expect them to go – sometimes making us dizzy, filling us with a sense of dread, or even frightening us into waking up.

Going right back to Debussy – Reverie might have been a child’s innocent daydream, but his later dreams turn much more erotic. Besides the dreamy harmonies and short, gesture-based melodies, the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is based on a poem in which a faun gets aroused by nymphs before falling asleep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzzF21CFJFE

Engelbert Humperdinck might win the award for composer with the funniest name (an old-school Butterscotch Cabbagepatch?) In his most famous opera, Hansel and Gretel, there is a lovely bedtime prayer which is sung, followed by a dream sequence based on the prayer’s hymn-like tune.

Tōru Takemitsu wrote many pieces with “dream” in the title, and most of them paint an impressionistic and atonal dreamscape.

If that was a little too modern for you, the next piece is by the tried-and-true Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. His First Symphony bears the title “Winter Dreams”, and really is more of a typical symphony than a dream-piece, but hey, there must be some dreaming in there somewhere.

Bedřich Smetana wrote a series of solo piano works on dreams. They’re a little more involved than the earlier solo piano works, with a broad range of emotion, which is why I think they belong in the category of wild, fantastical dream music.

Sergei Prokofiev wrote a symphonic poem on dreams – it’s also fairly conservative, but too dramatic to be in the first category.

And of course, no music collection based on dreams would be complete without Hector Berlioz‘s bad opium trip, where he dreams of witches and an orgy around his dead body.

Next up: if you listen to one of these pieces while falling asleep, does it affect your dreams? Happy dreaming!

My newsfeed exploded this week with posts about Ludwig van Beethoven‘s 250 birthday.

trigger warning: If you love Beethoven, be prepared to hate me.
2nd trigger warning: I’m about to mention abortion, but this post has nothing to do with the being pro-life or pro-choice. So for goodness sake, don’t comment on it. If you must send me a hate-comment, do so because I am throwing shade at Beethoven.

There’s a pro-life meme that’s been travelling around for some time – there are variations, but it goes something like this:

“A syphilic mother of eight handicapped children becomes pregnant. Should she have an abortion? If you said yes, you just killed Beethoven!”

Just for the record, this is incorrect. Ludwig was the 2nd born, and the oldest surviving child in his family, and I won’t get into the logic issues of the argument.

So it’s Beethoven’s 250th birthyear. That means that musicians all around the world will be programming MORE Beethoven on their concerts this year. I can’t say I’m particularly excited.

To be clear: I love the music of the great composers of the past. There is a reason that masterpieces stand the test of time – their message is enduring, they are crafted perfectly, or they evoke a sublime reaction. If I didn’t think it was worth keeping these pieces alive, this blog wouldn’t exist.

So here’s my Beefoven with Beethoven. You can hear his symphonies performed live every year – at least the best six of the nine. If you look at orchestra repertoire in general, the composers are overwhelmingly dead. This chart from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra takes into account thousands of concerts and shows living composers represent 12.3% of pieces performed (and I get a sense that the chart is bragging about how high that number is). A rough estimation based on this chart suggests that Beethoven is performed 25% of the time – one composer, getting twice the amount of performances as ALL living composers combined.

Ok, so his music is great. It’s hard to argue against that. But let’s go back to the “would you abort Beethoven” meme. Today, a syphilic mother of eight handicapped children needn’t worry that she might abort the next Beethoven; nobody will perform the child’s music anyway, because they’re too occupied with overplaying the first Beethoven’s music.

Now throw in the concerns that orchestras are failing to attract young or diverse audiences. Living composers are far more likely to bring musical ideas to the stage that would attract new audiences – not only with new sounds and styles, but also by addressing current issues or events. And using living composers would allow orchestras to actually diversify their repertoire and include more women and non-white composers. (go back to the chart from the Baltimore Symphony. A whopping 1.3% of music performed is by women composers. The chart doesn’t even mention race; I’m willing to bet it’s because the percentage of black composers would be even lower than women.)

But no, no, no, let’s not change anything. Let’s play Beethoven’s 5th for the birthday boy for the 5,555,555th time.

read PART I of this post: Why do we make music?

Why do we enjoy music? And why are some pieces more likable than others? It’s a big question for a single blog post. I’ll do my best to be as clear and concise as possible!

Take a look at this video:

Why is this fun for us to watch? Would a simpler-minded animal enjoy this as much as humans do? Many YouTube videos of dominoes (and other physical events) are described as “satisfying” – why satisfying?

I start with this video because ultimately it is meaningless (like music?) – the domino build has no purpose other than to be destroyed. And once the chain reaction starts, we want to watch until the end. The pleasure we find has to do with expectation and fulfillment. Through our understanding of the physical world, we know that if you push the first block, it will knock down the next, and the next, etc. But why is it fulfilling to watch what we already know will happen?

Our brains are constantly working to predict what will happen next in the world, and many of our emotions are tied directly to our predictions. Consider a common scenario: the delicious, cheesy aroma of a pizza reaches your nose. You predict that you’ll soon be eating pizza, and if that expectation is fulfilled, you’ll be fat and happy. If, on the other hand, the expectation that you’ll be eating pizza is NOT fulfilled, you might react in a number of ways: Anger (the pizza is not for you to eat!), Curiosity (it turns out it’s not a pizza – what could be making that smell?), or Delight (it’s not a pizza, it’s a Stromboli, even better!)

Part of the pleasure of music comes from a combination of knowing AND not knowing what is coming next – and I should mention that this applies to any style or genre of music. We have expectations of sound (timbre), harmony, melody, and rhythm from any music we listen to. Whether or not you are aware of it, your brain has organized these musical qualities so that you can listen to a few seconds of any song/piece and instantly categorize it in a way that best suites your needs.

When you hear the opening chords of your favorite song, your ears perk up, and you get ready to dance and sing. Your body recognizes the sounds of the music, and identifies them as something familiar, known, and loved.

But consider your reaction when your expectation is shattered by an unwanted alteration.

Disaster.

This is a macro-example of expectation and fulfilment in music. But our enjoyment of music is based on this same principle on a subtle scale – so subtle that it’s possible you’re only unconsciously aware of it. Consider something as simple as the “ode to joy” theme. Hearing the first phrase of this hymn, a number of expectations are set:

Whether or not we know it, we now have an expectation of harmony (D major or one of its close relatives), rhythm (4/4 time of mostly quarter notes, one dotted near the end), and melody (goes up, goes down, goes up, goes down.) The music then continues:

The first three measures are identical to the one above! Expectation fulfilled. The last measure is slightly adapted to bring the phrase to a more solid conclusion. Expectation not met, but perhaps more fulfilling this way (it’s Stromboli!) (or perhaps, it was the first phrase which didn’t meet our expectation of a solid conclusion, and the second which did fulfill the expectation. Or maybe both at the same time, in different ways.)

Then comes this phrase, which uses a different set of harmonies, wider melodic range, and much more rhythmic variety:

So this is new material – where did it come from, and where are we going? Thankfully, before we start to lose our composure, we get a return of the initial phrase, concluding in the more fulfilling way:

This might seem a little far-fetched, but I believe this series of expectations and fulfillments (denied and delivered) are what drive our love of music – classical or popular. If you’re not yet convinced, let’s try pushing expectation and fulfillment to their extremes. What if our expectation is ALWAYS fulfilled, and virtually nothing is new?

Maybe at first it’s exciting because you recognize it (or equally exciting because you don’t recognize it), but after a while, it can get dull. After hearing only two pitches for the first few minutes, the unexpected third pitch sounds like an atomic bomb. On the other hand, when nothing is predictable …

… our attention is lost quickly because we have no expectations, and therefore nothing to fulfill. In this piece, the vocal melody is built on large leaps, instead of steps – definitely not the common expectation for a vocal melody. The harmony is not based on triads, and the rhythm doesn’t fit into the clean-cut measures that we expect in nearly all other music.

So we need both a set of musical rules that we accept as normal, and a composer who is willing to work within those rules, bending and breaking them at just the right moments, from micro to macro levels. What is especially interesting about this is that, even when we know how the composer is going to break the rules, it still excites us. We also might use this to consider our reactions when we dislike music – can we back up our distaste with concrete complaints or are we just lacking knowledge of a different style’s musical rules?

I want to end with the iconic 5th symphony of Beethoven, because both the primary theme is built on a short, easily recognizable 4-note motif:

After just a measure, we have very clear expectation. But Beethoven is able to craft this simple idea in new ways, over and over again, keeping our attention. We know what we expect, but are constantly delighted in the different ways the two motifs are presented. Even when we know this piece well, our brains stay in a state of delightful surprise.