How We Receive Music

     As we’ve gotten the Music Room up and running this year, what has struck me most has been the audience reactions. Because it’s a very comfortable space with sparkling acoustics, the audience experience is about as good as it gets aurally and socially. At intermission and after the music, people are physically and verbally animated; there are lots of wide eyes, hand gesturings and animated conversations. I always ask as many people as I can what it is they like, and the answers are all over the board. 

     Back in the 60’s I came across Karl Jung’s idea that there are four ways of experiencing the world around us - via thinking, via sensation, via feeling, and via intuition. A recent FaceBook conversation with Kyle Gann catalyzed my realizing those four modes are a great way to talk about how different people receive music, and that since we all have different combinations of these four modes of experiencing music, it goes a long way towards explaining why so may different kinds of music can have such ardent fans.

THINKING - “Theory mind” is the term I use for people who can distinguish instantly between major, minor, diminished and augmented chords and whether they have added pitches like 2nds, 4ths, 6ths, 9ths, 11ths and so on. Theory mind can also hear and name the chord functions in real time, such as the I chord leading to the IV chord, to the vi chord. When modulations occur, they can say what the new key is and how the chords in the previous key were manipulated to prepare the ear for that modulation. 

On many occasions I’ve had band directors and fellow brass players tell me that when you have the third of the chord it should be played slightly flatter than it would be in equal temperament, and I marvel that they can automatically know where in the chord the pitch they’re playing fits. 

Part of Kyle Gann’s FB comment that triggered this post illustrates theory mind:

The other day a cultured woman with a little musical knowledge asked me what I thought made Schumann's music so wonderful. I went into my spiel about his diagonal harmonies, how he'll hit a dissonant note and not resolve it until the chord meant to harmonize the resolution has already passed, and also about how unusual the spacings of his piano sonorities are.

SENSATION - I think one of the reasons the live performances at the Music Room so affect people is that they’re simply hearing the various timbres of the instruments much more fully than what recordings can ever capture, especially if those recordings are compressed down to mp3 levels. Even audience members sitting in the back are quite close to the performers, and the very good acoustics make the aural sensations immediate and fully textured. This means the fast/slow; high/low; and soft/loud parameters of the music are easily perceived. 

When playing the horn, I have to trust that my sensation is helping me play in tune, even though my weakness in “theory mind” means I don’t know where in the chord the pitch I’m playing fits.

FEELING - One way music “touches” us is that it often encodes physical gestures that trigger our emotions. Most straightforwardly, when we see a violinist caressing notes out of their instrument or a timpanist pounding out a martial rhythm, we feel the emotions we associate with those gestures. The neural pathway for this phenomenon employs mirror neurons. When we see someone making a physical gesture, our brain fires the neurons we’d use to make that same gesture (more here). I also think, with zero proof, that just hearing some gestures in music can trigger mirror neurons, even if we can't see the performer making the physical gesture. Less straightforwardly, while phrasings and articulations in music may not have direct physical cognates, they can evoke less specific feelings and moods.

Also, a piece of music can call up emotions we’ve come to associate with that particular piece because of when and where we’ve heard it before. 

INTUITION - Intuition is non-verbal and non-rational by nature, so it’s hard to talk about. I’ve been told professionally I’m more intuitive than most, and while it’s a great help to me as a group therapist, the problem is that I can’t know right away if my intuition about something is correct. With that caveat in mind, I’ll suggest that one way intuition may come into play is those of us without “theory mind” can still intuit the general structure of a piece. I think our intuitive side can also inform us as to how the performers are approaching the music and their connection to the audience.  

Our intuitive sides are probably also part of whatever it is that happens during “flow” experiences  when our normal ego fades, time flows differently, and we feel part of a larger whole (more here).

What's Music For #2

I had a back and forth with Kyle Gann regarding the What's Music For? post and want to save it here. Going forward I want to do more posts on this subject, and maybe try to get others to chime in. The hope is this discussion will yield ideas on how to use the Music Room in innovative ways.

That isn't a subject I would dare write about. I do think the article you post is the only way to go about it: a heterogeneous list of overlapping reasons. To ask "What is music?," or "What is the essence of music?," is a time-wasting dead end - language just doesn't work that way. I used to theorize about stuff like that a lot when I was young, and I was very facile at it, but my theories always crashed into reality and burned. So what I learned is that theories are very easy to spin.

I have noticed that sometimes my music seemed to reflect my own neuroses, and that I could solve a psychological problem in my music as a prelude to solving it in my life. I think art's capacity as self-therapy needs some more study. And I compose mostly because I find it an enjoyable thing to do. Part of the enjoyment for me, though, is the anticipation of people listening to it or playing it, and now that I no longer anticipate that happening, a certain resentment turns on when I start to compose and I can't enjoy it anymore. Thus the hiatus.

Thanks so much for taking the time for that reply - lots to think about. Your, "my music seemed to reflect my own neuroses", reminds me that sometimes on hearing my music played I realize I'm putting my unconscious on public display, but since I'm the only one who can really decode it I'm safe ;-) I'm going at the performance issue by participating in the playing and writing for friends who like my stuff. As for "art's capacity as self-therapy" - working as music therapist with others have found that simply the act of expressing one's self musically helps people feel better - and I think that's why I write music, to express things I haven't found in other people's music - and hoping it will resonate with an audience.

"I'm putting my unconscious on public display, but since I'm the only one who can really decode it I'm safe" - that's a good line. Kind of sums it all up.😄

Recalibration

Thanks to Kyle Gann friending me on FaceBook, a lot of new music has come my way. I particularly like this one for two reasons. 

First, there's the marvelous slowness of it. I've always thought there was room for a lot more very slow music, and I even made a CD trying to fill that gap, but this piece is way slower than anything I can remember encountering, while not becoming boring. It has the effect on me of recalibrating my sense of time, getting me to realize I'm not as calm and relaxed as I'd like to be. While it's almost ambient, there's always the sense of meant structure (at least to me).

The other thing is that this piece recalibrates my ears. By the end of it, I feel my ears are hearing much more delicately than usual - that there's greater depth to the soft sounds than when the piece starts. It's as if my ears are relaxing along with my time sense.



Terry Jennings's 1960 piece for solo piano 'For Christine Jennings', played by John Tilbury. From the CD 'Lost Daylight', which features music for piano and electronics by Terry Jennings and John Cage. www.anothertimbre.com

Current State of Music

Here are a two snips from a long comment on a post of Kyle Gann's. Kyle's post is a riff on this statement, “Humor in art is an audience divider; you are automatically paring your viewership to a core that shares your sense of humor and sensibility.”

The commenter goes by the handle "maclaren".

   Sorry, but the claim ““Humor in art is an audience divider; you are automatically paring your viewership to a core that shares your sense of humor and sensibility” epitomizes the vacuity of AmeriKKKan musiKKKal academia. The plain fact of the matter remains that any quality in art (or music) acts as a potent audience divider; no matter what quality you choose to emphasize in your art or music, you are always automatically paring your viewership to “a core that shares your…sensibility.”

   Music after modernism did not narrow down to a single “universal style” which represented the end of musical history (as falsely predicted by the modernists). Instead, music after modernism has exploded into an ever-expanding universe of mutually coexistent yet radically different styles and sensibilities. Like galaxies flying apart after the Big Bang, current music now occupies many different incompatible island universes. And most of ‘em can’t even communicate with one another because they use entirely different critical languages and incommensurable value systems. Values like “authenticity” or “new modes of listening” considered essential and plenipotent in one musical island universe have zero or negative value in other musical island universes. . . .

It's often said that the splintering of the audience is due to technology allowing people to hear just what they want and not be restricted to the main channels, e.g. the networks. That's certainly true - but the detonation of common culture in the 20th century - with WWI, Einstein and Heisenberg, Le Sacre du Printemps - set up what mclaren describes so well.

Comments On Other Blogs

I've recently been doing more commenting on other blogs than posting here. Doing this post just to have a convenient bookmark for them all.

Talking about Taruskin at Elaine Fine's.

Talking about embouchure at Dave Wilkin's.

Talking about music as healing at Kyle Gann's and at New Music Box and at Pliable's.

Gann on Satie

I recently had a back and forth with Kyle Gann about his new book and about Erik Satie down in the comments of this post and want to save it here:

LS - Very belatedly I’ve just read 4’33″. What a terrific piece of writing. Your gift for writing about music is truly remarkable, and that deft explanation of Buddhism flows naturally and clearly. You’ve mentioned having a populist strain in your music and that’s also very evident in 4’33″ as it seems as good a read for the non-specialist as the specialist.

You’ve often mentioned the importance of Satie, so the bit about him was very helpful in understanding how you situate his work. If you’re ever casting around for something more to write about, I’d snap up a book like this on him in an instant. I’m deeply affected by playing some of his pieces (Ogives & Crossed Up Dances), but can’t shake the feeling the reasons I enjoy his work are probably different from yours.

Another small point about 4’33″ – my compliments to the book designer. At first I thought the slightly larger font filling up the slightly smaller page was unusual, but quickly adjusted and found it made the reading very easy on the eye.

KG replies: Thanks all round. Writing about Satie would be a blast, and, for research purposes, I can actually bring back my three years of high-school French when I’m motivated. But I’m not sure what I could add to what’s out there aside from my own idiosyncratic enthusiasm.

• LS - Is there one Satie book/article out there you’d recommend? How about a blog post sometime briefly delineating your “idiosyncratic enthusiasm”? Are his harmonies merely misguided antiquarianism and whimsy or are they something new under the sun? Is there anyone else’s music which can induce similarly pleasant, mysterious, moody reveries with such seemingly simple structures? What do you think he was trying to do for audiences? Is the piece Vexations the single most important thing he did in terms of foreshadowing what happening now? Your microtuned version of that was a ear opener – do you think that’s where he was headed? Is he mostly dismissed or passed over because of the comparatively slight output or is it that it’s not complex enough for specialists to deconstruct, so unworthy of their attention? Sorry to go on – but his music gets to me like nobody else’s and your mentions of him over the years have always made me wish you’d said more.
  KG replies: Wow, that’s more than I can answer. What I like most in Satie harmonically is, I think, a kind of postmodern approach to tonality; no matter what series of chords you drift through, a sudden V7-I will satisfy the ear that you’re in some key or another. For me the Pieces Froids, Gnossiennes, and Three Love Poems point to late 20th-century music more clearly than Vexations does; and, of course, Socrate, which could have been written last week and remain just as amazing. And I think most composers dismiss Satie because education makes composers stupid, and infects them with horrible neuroses about being profound and macho, so that they remain forever too immature for the real profundity of Satie’s humor – since you asked. But don’t tell anyone I said that, they hate me enough already.

  Oh, and while there are several OK biographies, the book you’ve got to get is Robert Orledge’s Satie the Composer, which really analyzes his music.

  
  

Gann on Cage

Kyle Gann's No Such Thing As Silence - John Cage's 4'33'' is the most well written book I can remember reading. So often in books coming from academia I can sense the stack of note cards the author has spent years assembling and then dutifully plows through. 

In his piece The Planets there are narrative arcs, but he uses an astonishing array of musical ideas to get them across and it's the same with his prose style. Different chapters and sections use different ways of writing to convey deeply thought out ideas so freshly it's as though he just came up with them. The fact that there's probably nobody more conversant with the music of the 20th century means that even in talking about details he's illuminating.

I couldn't put the book down and on finishing it found myself greatly refreshed. Besides presenting the info really well, the way he gets you to think about it all limbers up the mind.

Music, Fiction & Apprehension

A recent post of Kyle Gann's, Literature as a Mirror, along with the extensive comments, is  wonderful conceptual exploration of music and fiction and group think. I've reread it a number of times and have yet to keep all the thoughts it triggers in any kind of tidy bundle. For now just want to bookmark it and paste in my comment.

This is an amazing post and discussion, full of idea boxes to unpack. I am as in agreement with your basic argument as my general unfamiliarity with new music and fiction allow. I’ve been happy to leave *most* of it outside my sphere of interest ever since majoring in English back in ’71 and getting a whiff of what was coming down the line. What you’re calling sophistication has always come across to me more as pretentiousness, and in-crowd validation, once I left academia.

But what’s driving this comment is your phrase, “try to expand my means of apprehension to appreciate what was there”. That’s what your language on this blog, and your music, particularly The Planets, has done for me. It’s a very handy phrase for talking about a dimension of art/music/literature that’s not neccessarily present in entertainment.

It also seems a good phrase for talking about the purpose of Buddhist mind training (and a lot of other spiritual endeavors), which is not meant to be mere routine, but a catalyst.

Really glad you’ve kept on blogging for a while!

Composing Music

Over in this post, Kyle Gann says the following:

It felt as firm as though I had had a math problem with an incorrect answer, and I recalculated and got the right one. It “clicked.” Every composer knows this click, or should. It doesn’t feel as though I simply “liked it better.” Even though there is no objective criterion against which I can measure a phrase in a piece I’m writing, right and wrong answers come up. Because such judgments are made in the right brain, I suspect, there are no words to justify them. When I’m about done with a piece, I put the MIDI version on a CD and play it over and over in my car as I’m driving and – this is the crucial part – try not to listen to it. What happens, as I have my mind on other things, is that every wrong note in the piece jumps out at me and attracts my attention. This works, I think, because when I’m focusing on the piece (with my left brain), I can justify to myself anything I put in it, but with my peripheral (right-brain) listening, things that are wrong become impossible to ignore. My peripheral listening catches the mistakes. My conscious, analytical brain puts these oh-so-clever ideas in, and my intuitive, unfocused brain tells me the ones that don’t work.

I'd previously come up with the analogy that for me composing is game like and puzzle like, and that when you get something right there's the feeling of winning the game or solving the puzzle, but Kyle's description is much better and goes much deeper, and I agree that listening to a piece in an unfocused way is different, but hadn't realized it until reading this.

note to regular readers - the picture for this series of posts isn't here because I'm migrating from a five or six year old iBook to a brand new MacBook Air - and going from dial-up to wireless that's now available here on the farm due to a new cell tower not to too far away - and getting every thing organized, and trying not to look at music YouTubes all day (!) has slowed blogging.

Composing Music

A while ago I blogged about composing a piece of music because a lot of people seem to think it's  a much more mysterious proposition than it really is. The tag for that series of posts is Vermont Song. One of the points made in those posts is that first you set your parameters - things like instruments, pitch set (scale), and meter - and then it's sort of like a game wherein you work to see what you can do musically within those parameters. 

So I was delighted to see Kyle Gann say in a recent post:

“if you get an interesting enough scale, you can just explore all the inherent possibilities of that scale, both the ones you built into it and the ones that appear unexpectedly, and the piece practically writes itself.”

I quoted that in a comment and added: "That’s a wonderful way to think about composing – that you’re simply releasing inherent possibilities of a set of parameters – takes the conscious ego right out of the equation."

Kyle was talking specifically about one of his micro-tonal scales (this one has 36 different pitches per octave), but the concept can work for a bundle of parameters, not just one.

The phrase "conscious ego" might be one I start using regularly because it's a handy way of talking about what the lamas call "the self-cherishing ego", as opposed to the "neutral ego". In the case of composition, once you set the parameters, who you are will determine what you find in that space, there's no need to be constantly wondering what it is you want to say.

As I've mentioned before, the first time I hear a piece performed, or the first time I perform it for someone else, there's this amazing feeling of being in a waking dream state that I think is due to hearing how some part of me I'm not conscious of is being expressed.

In Praise of Technique

As a music therapist I tend to let working with clients' musicality lead the work on technique. The idea is that as they become more engaged in music making, the more they'll appreciate how empowering technique can be, and the more motivated they'll be to do the work involved to improve it. Too much technique too soon and you're going to lose a client.

For educators, technique is much more central, and in the last generation or two there's been a huge payoff. In this post Kyle Gann talks about a piece of very difficult music written by John Halle that can only be played these days because the, "rhythmic complexity standards have risen miraculously among the younger generation".

As Kyle always offers audio examples of music he's talking about, there's a link in the post to an mp3 of the first movement of the piece. It's astonishingly beautiful, takes me to places I've never been before, and I can't even begin to get my mind around the technique needed to achieve it. 

Gann on Angst

In a recent post Kyle Gann says:

There is nothing I work so hard on as ridding my life of angst. And I do it first in my music, in hopes that that will teach me how to do it in my life….

I asked in the comments:

This makes me wonder if you like/appreciate angst in the music of others, and whether you have any thoughts on catharsis via music.

He responded with:

Interesting question. There is certainly music I like of which angst is a well-handled component, for instance Wozzeck. But I think in general, music that exudes a free-floating, unmotivated angst is music that I grow bored with easily. I can love sad, and angry, and especially depressive music, because there are always things at hand to be sad and angry and depressed about. But to express undifferentiated worry and apprehension is boring in people and I find it boring in music. Catharsis seems like a very different thing. I think about it mainly in terms of Mahler, especially his Sixth, one of my favorite works. Wouldn’t try it myself, though perhaps there’s a little of that in the finale to Custer.

My feeling is that since, "there are always things at hand to be sad and angry and depressed about", I don't need music to get me to those places. There was a time I "enjoyed" listening to music that mirrored various interior turbulences, but these days I want to play and listen to music that, on balance, evokes positive rather than negative emotions. Because of that, I find myself hesitant to give myself over to the negative emotions needed to precede and set up the catharsis mechanism.

I should add that one of the reasons I'm so taken with Gann's The Planets is that the music doesn't map to emotions in ways I'm used to. There are lots of places it just sounds new and different and very engaging, but where I'd be hard pressed to say what emotion it's expressing.

Overdoing Music

In this post about John Cage, Kyle Gann says:

If I no longer listen to the 1950 String Quartet, it's because I listened to it so frequently in my younger years that I kind of overdid it - most Mahler falls in the same category.

It's obvious, once you think about it, that your experience of a particular piece of music can change over time as you listen to it more or less often than other pieces. I'm always bugged by critics talking about a piece of music as if their personal experience with the piece were the only possible history one might have with it. Some time back, Pliable, over at On An Overgrown Path, used Buddhist mind tools to talk about how our experience of music is not a static thing, but constantly evolving and changing.

For sure, one thing involved in all this is what the neuroscientists are telling us about our being attracted to a mix of the expected and the unexpected. The more you listen to a piece, the more difficult it is for it to surprise you. 

Performing New Music

Here are a couple of paragraphs from a recent Kyle Gann post I want to save because they speak to an aspect of the current state of "classical" music I hadn't really been aware of, but it makes a lot of sense once you have it called to your attention.

. . . This is difficult music to play, even though clear-lined, melodic, and devoid of the 11-against-9 grupetti and rhythmic fragmentation of an Elliott Carter or a Pierre Boulez. And why, since it scorns such complexities, is it so difficult? Because, like every new style, it demands of performers a certain sensibility that must be internalized. The unison lines and rhythms of totalist chamber music entail an ensemble unity of gesture quite different from the heavily-counted Babbitt serialist work or the flexible, diversely-functioned give-and-take of a Schumann piano quintet. The smooth uniformity of line, casual yet without swell or nuance, demands ears nurtured on the minimalism of Terry Riley and Phillip Glass, and hands and lips that can swing like John Coltrane. 

If I may ascend my soap box and preach just the briefest sermon, very few chamber ensembles have learned to negotiate music derived from minimalist influences because they don't perceive the difficulties involved. They glance at the score, see a line of unison 8th-notes, say to themselves, "Oh, this is nothing, I played the Carter Fourth String Quartet," and then they proceed to underrehearse and perform miserably. I've heard it all too often. I've heard members of the New York Philharmonic do a laughable job on a piece as simple as Terry Riley's In C. A handful of groups, like the California EAR Unit, Relache, Kronos Quartet, and Essential Music have superbly cultivated the technique needed for post-minimalist music. What are the rest waiting for, a message from God? As Schoenberg said - and it applies again in each new generation - "My music isn't modern, it's only badly played."

Gann Again

Here are two quotes from a recent Kyle Gann post:

. . . in truth I am disappointed if my music is playing and a passerby, any passerby, doesn't stop to ask, with a twinkle of curiosity, "What is THAT?"

I know the feeling.

. . . This is partly why I can't get into highly detailed notation. I put staccato dots on a few notes and call a piece finished, and the next day I wake up and look at it and say, "No no, that should be legato!", and draw in a slur instead, and afterward I'll change my mind again. The piece changes for me too much in my head to try to obsessively pin it down with interpretive markings. The score is a guide, like lines in a play, not a fixed objet d'art.

Back when I had a number of piano students and had recitals, one of the things I most loved to do was have several players include the same piece in the set they played. That single piece would always sound very different coming from the hands of different players, and the differences illuminated the music as much as the players.

As to the overall point of the post, for whom is one composing, the Buddhist mind tool of considering one's motivation is very helpful. 

More on The Planets

Back a while ago I sent Pliable at On An Overgrown Path a CD of Kyle Gann's The Planets, being very curious as to what he'd think of it. He just got back from traveling and put up this post and Kyle has responded with this one. My previous posts on Kyle are here.

A lot to say about all this, but two things are at the fore. I'm very much on the fringe of both Kyle Gann's and Pliable's worlds, and their knowledge of music is way beyond mine. It's wonderfully validating that Pliable seems in agreement with me as to the importance of The Planets. Just to make another connection, I think what's so important about this music is that it so well meets the needs Greg Sandow blogs about.

The other thing is that the internet still amazes me. Here I am out in rural Virginia, just out the back door from James Madison's Montpelier, on dial-up, helping connect two of the biggest and best music bloggers out there. The geezer in me is floored.

Recorded Music

I keep coming back to the idea that the ability to listen to recorded music is the biggest change to the culture of music making, ever, with all sorts of recognized and unrecognized consequences. 

In this post, Kyle Gann talks about how much he likes recorded music, particularly his own. As usual over there, the comments are great.

In this post, Terry Teachout wonders whether second tier orchestras are needed in the age of the iPod.

In this post, ACD takes issue with Terry in his usual bracing style.

Mirror neurons, and the notion that live music is healthier than recorded, go unmentioned. Part of me thinks most music specialists, whatever the species, tend to go for the abstract elements of music and lose sense of the common touch elements of music making.

Gann on Composition (and blogging)

Kyle Gann has just put up this terrific post on composition. He draws parallels with blogging and says:

The impetus is transformed by the process. In a sense I had something to say and I will have said it, but more accurately, I will have found out by the end of this essay what I think. Which is the value, for me personally, of writing a blog - and would continue to be even were no one reading it.

This little snip resonates with my previous post.

The notes seem to be smarter than me. Thank goodness the purpose of the piece is not to demonstrate to the world how smart its composer is (which strikes me as being the case with some pieces I hear).

Here's the concluding paragraph:

The composer has something to learn from his or her own music just as everyone else does. And while we talk loosely about the composer "writing down the music he hears," I think we do more justice to the complexity and reciprocal value of artistic experience by admitting that the composer is just as subject to his or her materials as anyone else. All praise to the composition - but the composer should be humble.

UPDATE: The first comment under the linked post, by "mclaren" is a good summary of how the left and right brain work when listening to music.

Practice Time

Since talking about practicing the flute with the metronome at slightly different speeds so as to help feel the rhythm of the phrase itself, had the realization that what I was trying to get at has to do with that recent link to the article saying that we keep time in different ways in different parts of the brain. Just as music, our sense of time is not localized in a single area or two, as are most of our activities.

This is also what I was trying to get at saying Kyle Gann's The Planets refreshes our ears to rhythm shapes outside of repetitive triple and duple meters.

For me it's a given that music and physical gesture are deeply connected, and unless we're doing something like dancing, we don't count off to create a rigid time line when we nod, wink, use our hands when talking or any of the other thousands of physical gestures we make every day.

In ensemble playing we have to keep time in the metronome part of our brain so that we are, in fact, an ensemble. But for the music to trigger emotional responses in the audience, our sense of time needs to register in the other parts of the brain that perceive time as well.

photo - over in Echo Valley last year. John's wall; Kate's flowers.

The Planets

I was nearly 30 before I heard the phrase, "There's no accounting for taste". Truer words were never spoken. It's also the case that over the course of my life, I've been attracted to things well out of the mainstream. Just because this music works for me, there's no reason it should for you. But if you feel the need for something fresh in your musical diet, give it a shot.

In a number of posts I've talked how excited I am about Jeff Smiley's The Balanced Embouchure approach to helping folks come at the issue of embouchure in a wonderfully accessible way. In some deep sense, I think Kyle Gann is doing something similar in helping us to rethink the possibilities of tonal music in a new and very natural way. Both Smiley and Gann seem to be saying, "Forget the experts; come at music and music making as you are." Just as Smiley talks about how one's best embouchure can't be arrived at by following rules handed down by the masters, Gann's music creates wondrous new forms by leaving behind the monotony of regular bar-lines and harmonies meant for the parlor. 

Relâche is an odd assortment of instruments, sort of a chamber concert band without brass but with a occasional viola. Gann seems to exult in oddness of timbres, even to flaunting his ability to turn it to his uses. 

All of the novel sound sculptures in The Planets mean that you can't simply assign them to familiar pattern correspondences. Several times while listening I've had the phrase " A poem should not mean but be", float up. There are a lot of times in The Planets where the sound shapes don't easily map to known quantities. But nothing is so far removed from "normal" that it's incomprehensible.

One caveat I should throw in is that I've been following Kyle Gann's blog, PostClassic for years. When you read someone's writing that closely, an image of them forms in your mind, especially if you were an English major in a previous lifetime. While there are a number of passages in The Planets where I'm not sure of their "meaning", I have the feeling of Kyle coming to life in sound.