Consider last week's post, Blind vs Deaf, as a prelude to what I really consider to be the main event, Books vs. Music. It is an artificial construct to suggest that somebody has to choose between the two, but I'm going to put out some thoughts regarding their similarities and differences. I am also declaring at the outset that I am omitting both poetry and drama from the discussion because not doing so would just make things way too complicated.
1. Music exists in an extraordinarily wide array of genres and styles. Gregorian chant, Beethoven, the Beatles and Lady Gaga are all part of the same continuum of a tonal musical tradition that has European roots. Music of other cultures sounds different because it follows different sets of compositional rules. Even just within the Western musical tradition, the amount of variety is enormous - vocal music (song, choral music, opera), solo instrumental, chamber, orchestral, band, etc. - you get the idea. When it comes to books, your choices are more limited: fiction (novels and short stories), non-fiction (memoir, history, biography, self help, philosophy)
2. While the music from another culture may sound strange to us (think of those twangy plucked instruments that were always used to evoke the Far East in movies and television), a musical composition cannot be "translated" from one mode of compostion to another without losing its essence. And yet, great pieces of prose, translated well, retain their greatness.
3. Music can be enjoyed through live performance or through the technological miracle of recorded sound, either alone or as a shared experience with an audience or companions. Reading a book is usually experienced as a solitary pursuit although the relatively recent development of commercially produced and professionally performed audiobooks muddies the water a little.
4. We will listen to the music we love countless times over the course of our lives. Even so, we will still have the opportunity to listen to many new pieces of music. Books, on the other hand, require a larger share of our time; a favorite book is reread at the expense of reading something new. While I can probably count about 25-30 books that I have read more than once over the course of a lifetime, I can think of only five (A Separate Peace, Catcher in the Rye, Pride and Prejudice, Heart of Darkness, and Patrimony) that I have read three or more times. Of those five, only Philip Roth's Patrimony was not an adolescent literary infatuation.
5. In the worlds of literary fiction and classical music, there have been more great authors than there have been great composers.
6. In the industrialized world, most people have the ability to write prose while relatively few people have the ability to compose music. In third world societies, I'm thinking that the reverse may be true.
7. While I can't actually prove it, I think it's a pretty safe bet that there are more people in the United States who have spent the several hours required to read To Kill a Mockingbird than have spent the 75 minutes required to listen to a live or recorded performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. You can blame the philosophy behind the America educational system for this one.
8. Going back to that strange alternate universe conjured by my daughter, the one in which people are confronted with strange choices to which they cannot demur, let's imagine that I am offered not blindness or deafness but instead the chance to write either the great American novel or the great American symphony, which would I choose?
I wouldn't have to think about it for even a second.
Not quite sure what the point of all this is, but I'd be curious to know what you would choose.
