Music As Story

OK gotta stop goofing around on YouTube watching percussion vids. I need to put together some kind of post and get busy with the other things on my agenda for this session--the reading and writing I discussed in yesterday's post. I don't have all night this time as I'm not going to stay up until I'm a Popsicle again. I estimate it will get unbearable by 2AM and I intend to be snuggled in under covers by then--maybe by 1AM. I may still be able to read but can't count on it.

I went on YouTube looking for something related to the CD featuring the Wurzburger Percussions Ensemble with Siegfried Fink that I checked out of the library today. I'd especially hoped to find something about the first track on it which had been composed by a Rolf Liebermann originally for 156 office machines and then scored by Fink for percussion instruments. I find the concept of composing a percussion piece for 'instruments' not traditionally thought of as musical instruments facinating.

Sadly I failed to find anything directly related to this CD or that track. But my search terms led me to a whole new realm of drumming delight.

And while I was watching/listening I began to notice how the music seemed to be telling a story. I'm not sure if that's because the two pieces I embedded here that initiated that concept sound like they could be from movie or TV sound tracks (and the name John Cage, composer of the piece below, is associated in my mind for no conscious reason with sound tracks) or because there really is something to it. Are well composed musical pieces based on the same form that well composed stories are? The rise and fall of drama towards a cathartic climax?

It would make a certain sense, if so, that there would be structures used by the mind around which concepts accumulate and develop or enhance meaning. I already believe that story is primal and integral to our humanity and if so it must predate language itself and what better communicator (presuming a lack of lanuguage) than music?

I wonder if anyone has done any research, writing or musing on this concept anywhere.