The final of the four humours of music. The literalism humour like, the impressionism humour, defines what a piece of music says and how it says it. Unlike the impressionism humour, the meaning of music with a high level of the literalism humour comes directly from the creator rather than the listener. The most obvious way a creator provides this meaning to a piece of music is with lyrics which guide the listeners mind in a certain direction. More so than an instrumental piece where more is left to the imagination of the listener. However, even providing a title pushes the creator’s thinking into the mind of the listener. For example calling an instrumental piece “The Forest” will have the listener thinking about a forest and trying to attach the mental images the have of a forest to the music, if the piece was untitled who knows where the listener’s mind would go. Even classical titles such as “Study in …”, “Prelude”, “Variations on a theme of …” tell the listener what the piece is about, what to expect and what to take from the music.
Of course an imaginative listener may throw the creators instructions away and come up with some completely different interpretation whereby the levels of the literalism humour and impressionism humour in the music would shift in favour of the impressionism humour.
The level of the literalism humour in a piece of music determines how much of the meaning of the music comes from the creator.
The level of the impressionism humour in a piece of music determines how much of the meaning of the music is generated by the listener.
Even in music with lyrics, written in a language in which you are fluent, whose meaning may at first look obvious, there is always room for interpretation.
The levels of these humours in a piece of music therefore depend on both the creator and listener and are not fixed, varying with mood and each listen/performance.
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