I asked philosopher Iain McGilchrist online at the Q&A of 09-12-2023 the following question:
How does the coincidence of opposites help create music?
This is a transcription of his answer:
It’s a terribly good question. I put it in partly because I thought this is a really testing question. And I think partly, I don’t think I have said that the coincidence of opposites helps create music.
I’ve talked about music and I’ve talked about the coincidence of opposties and most probably the coincidence of opposites applies in the case of music. And I think it does. When I come to think more about it, first of all, music is all about relations.And that’s not the same as opposites, of course.
But in those relationships and relations you can have things that do oppose one another and produce something very beautiful. So for example, there can be lines of music that in some sense both blend and contravene one another. So you get interesting discords that then resolve into something else.
And the resolustion is more beautiful then could have been, if there had not been the passing discord, which is an image for those of you who know my work.
Well, that will bring back the idea of Kintsugi, the idea of the caballistic myth of creation and the repairing of the vessels and so on. So, and I use an example in the book, from, one of Bach’s keyboard suites, where there is a chord, which is actually A,B,C,D, played simultaneously. If you’ve got an piano nearby, play them and think, how can that possibly be part of a beautiful piece of music?
But it is, and when you hear it, you are not at all, disturbed by it. In fact, there’s a sort of beauty in the fact that is does resolve. And a lot of renaissance music has these, so-called false relations, in other words, where you are led to feel and suspect something and they’re at odds with one another and then they come together and create something more beautiful.
I think there’s also a coincidence of opposites in rhythm, because rhythm seems to be and is a matter of punctuation, if you like, in, what is in essence, as I’m constantly saying, a flow.
So a melody, a piece of music is a seamless flow, but rhythm is a punctuating force. And it’s no surprise therefore that broadly speaking, at least in a non highly educated musical mind, that the left hemisphere deals with fairly simple rhythms. The left hemishpere deals with fairly simple rhythms, the right hemishpere with harmony and melody and with complex rhythms.
And I think what’s going on there is, that the harmonies and melodies and even complex rhythms like syncopations actually activate the flow so that in a syncopation you feel the flow even more because of the rhythm. So instead of being a punctiating element, the rhythm becomes an extending and unifying element.
And this way in which an element of differentiation ultimately ends up as a force for union is essential to the nature of creation. I say, this is part of the creation of the cosmos, of what exists. And I think, in the book, I quote Jury(?) is saying that individuality is a decisive phase on a process towards continuity. So, in the building of continuity and flow, there needs also to be elements that punctuate and articulate. And they may seem to be going in opposite directions, they’re not.
So those would be a couple of things that occur to me, off the top of my head, as ways in which the coincidence of opposites works for us. And we’re often sensing the possibility of that unspoken opposite. And then when it actually is revealed in the music, it’s particularly beautiful. We may not notice it, but we may notice that something beautiful happened.
