I often talk to friends about music and musical preferences. This post is inspired by one such theme which often finds its way in most of these conversations: instrumental music v/s vocal music. Or more precisely, why listen to instrumental, or plain music, when you can have vocals accompanying the music.
This post is not from a musical perspective, but rather to emphasize on the entirely separate form of beauty inherent in instrumental music. Personally, I think the term instrumental music is somewhat a misnomer for this discussion. Let’s just call the two lyrical music, and lyric-less music.
Now sometimes when an artist wants to convey an idea, the best way to do that is just say it out loud. Think of some of the most powerful protest songs, or songs with a social message. Let’s say, What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye. Certainly, the song loses its entire theme without its powerful lyrical content. It has one key, and important idea – what is going on around us; without the lyrics it loses the entire point the artist wants to make. Think of Monet’s Water Lilies, but without the lilies. The painting has one primary subject, and it conveys the idea of light playing around the water surrounding the object beautifully.
On the other hand, sometimes the artist wants the audience to interpret the work in their head. The audience is certainly not left clueless and lost in the woods in this exploration. Rather the artist can ‘trick’ them into certain specific directions. Those intended directions constitute the primary theme of such an art work. Consider the famous song Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. Now (one of) the main themes of the song is the coming of spring. It is clear from the the moment the lyrics start. It is further emphasized by an upbeat, airy, light-stringed intro to the song played on the acoustic guitar by Harrison. Contrast this with the monumental Concerto No. 1 fom Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Vivaldi goes above and beyond in painting a vivid aural landscape complete with sounds of Spring including the barking of a dog. The central concept of the composition, though right there, is abstracted from the audience. They have to do the processing of the key idea, tie together the ends, and interpret and relate the sounds to paint a picture for themselves. The picture thus painted would be different for different people, but tied thematically. This is very deliberate because of the artist’s intended interaction with the audience. Important aspects needed to paint the complete intended picture are consciously abstracted away. This, to me, is the difference between lyrical and lyric-less music.
The idea of abstraction is abundant in different art forms. For comparison, consider Mary Cassatt’s Mandolin Player. It depicts its subject, a lady playing mandolin, and does so with gracefulness. The key idea is blunt, outright, and right there for the audience to consume. It is simple and effective. Compare this with Picasso’s Mandolin Player. The subject is still the same; a lady playing mandolin. However, here the audience has to do the physical interpretation of what is on canvas by putting together the pieces in their heads (typical of cubist paintings).
‘Lyricless’ songs, or instrumentals, are often thought to be in a universal language and thereby increases the portability of the music, making is easy to understand by everyone on Earth. However, this comes at a price: the listener has to do the interpretive work.
That being said, lyrics are often better suited if the artiste wants the message to not get diluted and wants to convey the perfect thing that he/she has in mind, removing the perfunctory interpretation layer, hence some listeners prefer that lyrics accompany music.
In art, almost always, it depends!.
