cybermule | More on the music and mythology analogy

Cut, to save space on people's "friends" view.

As the themes in the examined myths are going to be explored in several dimensions, division into isometric chapters would naturally give birth to sections of unequal volume. However, each one will have a certain self-contained unity, together with a unique flavour, again making the analogy with music appropriate in models such as sonata and fugues.
Both myth and music are languages that transcend articulate expression while still needing a temporal dimension in which to unfold. As well as the normal external temporal axis, they have a special time of their own - the internal psychophysiological time of the listener, who enters a kind of immortality.
This internal axis of time involves organic and cerebral rhythms, the memory and power of attention. In both music and myth, the listener must be able to sustain prolongued interest, to make parallels and back references and to recognise themes. Relation of music to physiology was an interesting timely link to a recent post I read.
If both music and mythology are simplified to two grids - physiological and cultural - the job of the composer is to maintain the principles of the hierarchies of notes within these two grids, but to nonetheless entrance the listener by challenging expectations instilled by the natural rhythms.
And finally we can come to the difference between music and myth - each are a conscious approximation of the ideas generated by a centre of unconscious truths. In mythology, that centre is generated collectively, and it is only the interaction with the listening individual that brings about the approximation. However, we can have no idea of the mental state of the composer of a piece of music, and hence it brings about some sort of double approximation - we do not understand the difference between the minds of the creator and of the listener.