I cannot give a definition that will not break down but I can point to the thing itself: Beethoven.

 

So Mozart and Haydn fall short of "profundity"?

 

At the risk of dodging the question, it's something one know when one hears it.

 

Well certainly it's a figure of speech in our language. Hardly any music will be depicting actual depths, like a deep cavern or something. It's a way we describe things that are serious in emotion, rather than jocular. What is "serious" music? If you can answer that question, then you can answer "what is deep music?" Probably the best way to define it is to point out common features, such as slow tempo, slow melodic lines, a variety of dynamics with subtle pianos and grand fortes all in the same slow tempo, and sometimes a genre about death, such as a funeral march or elegy.

 

Slow tempo, thick texture, and an abundance of diminished 7th.

 

"Schindler, come over here. I've discovered a really easy way to make music seem profound. I'll show you how it works. I intend to use it in the quartets I'm writing now..."

 

I am no expert; however I have basic musical studios. This is my opinion, I am not stating some fact.

Generally, when people talks about profundity is when it exists a musical line that has sense. This means that the song is not only a melody with some accompaniment, or just a choral like you do an armony excercise. (Good) Music has to go somewhere, and has to receed somewhere.

The point is that some mediocre composers just composed music like an armony excercise or just like some background music. Even if you do modulate correctly, and put some dynamics, there's no meaning behind the music. You have to take in mind what do you want when composing.

PD: I am deeply sorry about my english.

 

It's what's lacking in this discussion so far.

 

Not so dear man, I have supplied the very thing itself!

 

Brahms' symphonies and concertos are supposedly examples of "serious music". Of course there is no such thing other than one's perception and "definition" which are all that matters.

 

"Serious" is not a synonym for "profound."

 

The question was not "What music is profound?" but "What is profundity?"

 

But how can one say what profundity is without appealing to the substance of profundity itself?

 

So if Beethoven is the substance of profundity, does that mean there wasn't profound music before him?

 

So if Beethoven is [ ], does that mean there wasn't profound music before him?

THEE one and only substance of profundity

What I think of your question: If I erase the number 2 I wrote on the chalk board does that mean there is no number 2?

 

Bach is profound.

 

I'm not at all sure the the noun "profundity" can be applied to music, in an attempt to categorize it. It seems best to reserve the terms "profound, profundity" to truly illuminating, penetrating insights or discoveries that pierce through a jumble of seemingly isolated and discrete facts about reality and reveal to us an underlying deep truth that knits together many disparate facts into a unity. Examples would be the Theories (using the term as scientists use it) of Special and General Relativity, Evolution by Natural Selection, Plate Tectonics, and many recently verified discoveries in astronomy and cosmology. These are profound. There are areas of mathematics that are profound, and doubtless others will bring forth other examples. But Music? Art? We find ourselves back again in a forest of tautologies and of competing definitions and of opinions about who was great, what was great, or deep or profound. However, in cante flamenco for instance, where the song can be very jondo or grande, the measuring rod is simpler and generally accepted: to what extent does the performance, delivered within the recognized confines and accepted usages of the art form, move the listener, directly, emotionally, to empathetic sorrow, tears? Maybe not the same as the Eroica, but the criterion for profundity is clearly laid down here. In the more formal arts, such clarity of criteria is rarely found and often widely disputed.

 

I disagree. Profundity in art is not different from profundity in philosophy. Works of art, too, can "pierce through a jumble of seemingly isolated and discrete facts about reality and reveal to us an underlying deep truth that knits together many disparate facts into a unity." It's just that the "facts about reality" - or, more precisely, the elements of reality - to which art refers and which it evokes belong to the realm of feeling - of internal rather than external reality - and so are less easily identified and defined.

Arguably, the very lack of definiteness inherent in an aesthetic experience opens up the possibility of greater profundity, greater complexity of experience and meaning, than is found in the more delimited concepts of philosophy or science, since the possible areas of subjective experience the forms of art can evoke are effectively limitless, and may merge, interpenetrate, and transform into one another both while the art is experienced and in retrospect. Not all art is equal in its capacity to tap the complexity of subjective experience. Art which seems to express the more complex, subtle, rich, difficult to comprehend, important states of our subjective being, as opposed to simple, sensational, sentimental, or merely intense ones, is recognized as more profound. It doesn't matter how much agreement exists about any particular work of art; what is a profound experience for you may not be for me. But that's merely the personal nature of artistic experience, and doesn't invalidate the idea of profundity. Of course humans have much in common, and so certain works and their creators are very widely recognized as profound.

 

The point is that some mediocre composers just composed music like an armony excercise or just like some background music. Even if you do modulate correctly, and put some dynamics, there's no meaning behind the music.

Hmmm...? What exactly is the "meaning" of Mozart's clarinet quintet... or Beethoven's Hammerklavier?

 

A lot of pre-Beethoven music is named "De Profundis" so there's your answer.

 

I think in this context profundity is what occurs when someone has a very 'deep' experience listening to music that is beyond what they are able to explain in words. There surely is a subjective aspect to this, yet I still think some composers are more profound than others. (ie. Debussy is more profound than Johann Strauss Jr) I do not believe that music became more profound because of Beethoven. I don't think it is possible to get more profound in musical expression than Bach (or if it is no one has yet achieved it) and I have experienced what I consider to be profound musical experiences in pre-Baroque music.

 

Profundity, or rather the discovery of profundity in something, must necessarily be experiential. We cannot find profundity in Beethoven if we do not listen to Beethoven, but if we do listen to Beethoven we only permit the possibility of finding profundity in Beethoven. For some people, it will simply not be there, no matter how much others would like to push onto them their own findings of profundity in the music of Beethoven or in any other composer. I don't doubt that most people agree that Beethoven has at least produced musical moments which we find profound in some way, but this does not necessarily mean that the music of Beethoven is profound, only that most people agree that they find it to be so. The distinction between the purely objective and the mass subjective is always contentious here, so I'm not sure if we want to get into it, but I think that is ultimately where all or most discussions of this kind lead.

So, what is musical profundity? Given that I reject the notion that there is anything like an objective measure of qualities which are found only through the process of reflection upon the listening experience after the fact, I would propose the following definition: a listening experience in which the music appears to bypass the brain and is instead felt directly by the body. This is what we might even term a spiritual experience, something that transcends the rational everyday processes of thought and enters into us directly at a deeper level than that on which we normally process musical input. Given that we are attempting to qualify and quantify, I'm not sure "spiritual" really cuts it, but we could probably make a link between what we think of as spiritual and elements in the subconscious which are sympathetic to particular musical inputs, and which reflexively expand the experience of listening to such inputs.

Also, I think it is possible to draw a distinction between two kinds of profundity in music, these being a) profundity of construction, and b) profundity of experience. In the case of a, I am talking specifically about the way in which the musical materials are treated, their interrelations, the "thesis" which they serve, and the level on which they come together. This "profundity of construction" is something that is inherent in the music, the fruits of the composer's labour, which can be gleaned through analysis of the actual score. On the other hand, b is specific to the listener, and may, as I suggested in the second paragraph, involve no ratiocination whatsoever. Both a and b are obviously somewhat dependent on the natural sympathies of the receiver; despite a being a matter of inherent musical qualities, it is entirely possible to give two people of equal experience and level of education the task of analysing the same score independently of each other, and have their findings differ, possibly wildly, because of those natural sympathies. And a similar test in the mode of b would perhaps give us even wilder differences, not only for all that is true in the case of a, but also as, in the process the mind goes through in order to recall and collect the particulars of the listening experience into an ordered account, it may invent certain things to aid in its explanation, such as narratives and images, or may conflate those things with the music through the sudden triggering of memory during the listening experience, and these retroactively become part of the experience. So, in another way, it is entirely arguable that profundity of experience is far more than just a case of "feeling the music," and may have more to do with what we add to it than what we take away from it.

It's also important, I feel, to make a further distinction between a and b, which is the fact of authorship of input. In a, the input can reasonably be assumed to be the work of the composer, yet in b we are presented with an input which comes from this source but is filtered through something else. Even if we could remove the fact of interpretation from the situation, the fact is that we are still hearing a sonic projection of a work written in a logographic system. But since in real terms it is not possible to remove interpretation from a performance, the fact of interpretation complicates things further, and it is for this reason that I say a can only be experienced through the analysis of a score rather than focused "analytical listening" to a performance or recording. Of course this may be pedantic, after all it is reasonable to assume in most cases that a given performance is generally an accurate projection of the score, and that it can therefore be analysed with a view to determining the profundity of construction, yet I feel that projection and interpretation distance the listener enough from the source that this is still impossible to properly achieve.

Take note, ladies, gentlemen, and children of all ages, the post you have just read is the result of someone thinking far too much about things that don't really matter. Enjoy your music and don't sweat the small stuff!

 

Take note, ladies, gentlemen, and children of all ages, the post you have just read is the result of someone thinking far too much about things that don't really matter. Enjoy your music and don't sweat the small stuff!

 

Profundity:

Bach: Keyboard Partitas, WTC, Art of the Fugue.

Mozart String Quintet in g Minor.

Beethoven: Missa Solemnis, a Minor String Quartet, Hammerklavier Sonata.

Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel.

Schumann: Symphonic Variations.

Schubert String Quartet in G Major.

You get the idea yet?

 

Not a definition, but an example: slow movements of Vivaldi's late violin concertos. That's (barroque) profundity.

 

Von Hoffmansthal says that profundity is hidden... On the surface.

 

Profound music is that which helps a listener understand an important truth about life and the universe. This is necessarily going to be subjective, but I would not limit the possible classical music choices to the slow and serious. Motion and fun exist in life, so their musical counterparts can also be illustrative and provide meaning to a listener beyond "That sounds nice."

 

Dude, this is an awesome definition. I like and accept.

 

Profound means 'very deep and serious.'

Schuman's 4th Symphony in D minor is a good example.

It seems that humor will ruin the atmosphere of profundity, since to be profound, something must be serious.

 

What, indeed, is profundity? To answer this, we need to leverage our personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable ourselves to synergize with each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and successfully architecting and implementing a forum-wide value definition across the continuum of cross-median processes.

 

Now you're talking.

 

EDIT: this is an answer to reply #23
Just my english limitations. I was refering to the a) of post #28. He explained what I was trying to say much better than me. I was refering to the technical construction of the piece, not an actual meaning like God, freedom... This is one of the most important things that differenciates a Mozart Sonata from any mediocre Clasical composer sonata. They both use alberti bass, same structure, same typical cadenzas, but it is not the same.

 

"Profundity" has more than one link to fundament.

 

It's rarely more than yet another way of denigrating the tastes of people who don't worship at the right musical altars. That covers 99.99999% of the time it's used.

That remaining little bit probably refers to variation or development in ways that experienced musicians find very surprising and yet satisfying.

 

I find myself coming down very much on the side of SM in this discussion (probably no surprise given my scientific background). I think that the key to the concept of being profound is that the word root and early usage meant having deep insight into a topic. However, as with so much else in language, particularly in recent times, the word has been increasingly used in different contexts where the original meaning would be less applicable, e.g. music and art. As a result the meaning of the term has become very fuzzy. This then brings us directly to Becca's First Law of Threads - the fuzzier the word/concept, the longer the thread.

 

I find myself coming down very much on the side of SM in this discussion (probably no surprise given my scientific background). I think that the key to the concept of being profound is that the word root and early usage meant having deep insight into a topic. However, as with so much else in language, particularly in recent times, the word has been increasingly used in different contexts where the original meaning would be less applicable, e.g. music and art. As a result the meaning of the term has become very fuzzy. This then brings us directly to Becca's First Law of Threads - the fuzzier the word/concept, the longer the thread.

But it's the fuzzy ones that are most fun. There's always something under the fuzz.