Communication: a vital essence of music

[San Antone]

I do not question the motivation of a composer.  If his/her music is difficult for me to comprehend, I do not blame the composer or assume they wrote the music precisely to be difficult for someone like me to comprehend.  In fact I find that kind of idea absurd.  Those people here, KenB and orfeo, who seem to be arguing that serialism or other forms of atonal music was written with a goal to be incomprehensible remind me of the Russian authorities who carried out the purges of composers because their music exhibited "formalism".

There is plenty enough music out there for everyone to find something to enjoy. 

[Karl Henning]

Fair enough. In that case I pose the following question: what exactly is the purpose of a composer who decides to supply Japanese to an English-speaking audience? Are they hoping that with sufficient immersion, the audience will eventually learn to speak Japanese?

Thank you for illustrating the difference between a language, and music.

For indeed, the language illustration were cruel.

Music operates differently.  I shall restrict myself at the moment to observing that there have been nearly innumerable times when, even if I did not "understand" a piece of music the first time I heard it, I took pleasure in hearing it.

[Brian]

If music "communicates," how did great masterworks such as Brahms's Third Symphony, B^b Major piano concerto, & string quartets fail to "communicate" their greatness to the critics who initially railed against them?

Of course the answer to this one is easy. All communication is prone to misunderstanding. You may misread my posts on this board; I may have misread your question; people may misread my choice of clothing (a friend recently said a store was for entitled teenage girls and I replied "uh...I got these jeans there"). Music is more like clothes or body language than writing, in that it's not full of specific signifiers carrying specific messages you could find in a dictionary. But even admitting the possibility that a musical work does not communicate one and only one message, it is still very likely that somebody will hear it wrong!

[Ken B]

I do not question the motivation of a composer.  If his/her music is difficult for me to comprehend, I do not blame the composer or assume they wrote the music precisely to be difficult for someone like me to comprehend.  In fact I find that kind of idea absurd.  Those people here, KenB and orfeo, who seem to be arguing that serialism or other forms of atonal music was written with a goal to be incomprehensible remind me of the Russian authorities who carried out the purges of composers because their music exhibited "formalism".

This is absurd since it was Boulez and his ilk who tried to suppress other music, who called composers useless if they did not conform, who controlled the purse strings of government subsidy. Orfeo and I have identifed an attitude prevalent amongst a swathe of the institutional avant-garde. What I find absurd is your idea that none of these people can have meant what they said, or done what they did, because the attitude "doesn't make sense."

[Brian]

This is absurd since it was Boulez and his ilk who tried to suppress other music, who called composers useless if they did not conform, who controlled the purse strings of government subsidy. Orfeo and I have identifed an attitude prevalent amongst a swathe of the institutional avant-garde. What I find absurd is your idea that none of these people can have meant what they said, or done what they did, because the attitude "doesn't make sense."

FYI Ken, Boulez and his kind tried to suppress other music, but so did the Soviets and so did the Nazis. It's not like one party being guilty made the others innocent.

[prémont]

I'm not so sure about that. The ending of Tchaikovsky's Sixth is considered quite sad, but it does not seem to actually make people more sad. In fact the symphony is often considered a quite pleasurable listening experience, and not because listeners are heartless or Tchaikovsky was a bad composer. Music does not seem to act directly upon the emotions, apart from the basic pleasure/displeasure thing, which can also vary from person to person (loud rock music annoys me, but some people love it). I think our experience of emotion in music is more like suspension of disbelief when watching a film—we know it's not real, but if the composer/character "speaks" to us, we can play along for a while.

I also don't think emotion should be first and foremost—music is equally good at conveying raw kinetic energy, and a sort of heightened, spiritual awareness akin to religious ecstasy; and those things have been equally important to audiences throughout its history.

Maybe I should have written "affects" instead of " emotions", the former word implying a wider meaning.

Concerning the finale of the Pathetique I do not think it is sad, but if it were, I do not think that artistic successful expression of sadness necessarily requires, that the listener should become sad, nor that the fact that he doesn´t become sad means, that he has not understood the musical "messsage".

[Karl Henning]

Of course the answer to this one is easy. All communication is prone to misunderstanding. You may misread my posts on this board; I may have misread your question; people may misread my choice of clothing (a friend recently said a store was for entitled teenage girls and I replied "uh...I got these jeans there"). Music is more like clothes or body language than writing, in that it's not full of specific signifiers carrying specific messages you could find in a dictionary. But even admitting the possibility that a musical work does not communicate one and only one message, it is still very likely that somebody will hear it wrong!

Nice post, thanks.

[Karl Henning]

Concerning the finale of the Pathetique I do not think it is sad, but if it were, I do not think that artistic successful expression of sadness necessarily requires, that the listener should become sad, nor that the fact that he doesn´t become sad means, that he has not understood the musical "messsage".

Nice post, too, thanks.

[prémont]

Because this insistence that the music itself communicates, and that, if it "does not," the music is somehow deficient, has been periodically and perniciously employed to discredit music too new for the (unsympathetic) auditors to have learnt what emotions are to be applied to it.

Yes, music is an acquired taste, and often it is hard work for the listener to acquire that taste.

[Ken B]

FYI Ken, Boulez and his kind tried to suppress other music, but so did the Soviets and so did the Nazis. It's not like one party being guilty made the others innocent.

Seriously Brian, WTF?
According to san antonio's logic you are now Zhdanov, like me and Orfeo.
I seriously see no similarity at all to observing an attitude that most certainly was real and "purging" composers. Or where orfeo or I cheered on nazis or soviets.
I am hoping that all we have here is "failure to communicate." As Strother Martin might say.

[Karl Henning]

Yes, music is an acquired taste, and often it is hard work for the listener to acquire that taste.

That, too, is true.  One reason I admire the persistence in some of our GMGers in re-applying themselves to music with which they've failed to connect in the past.

[North Star]

Of course the answer to this one is easy. All communication is prone to misunderstanding. You may misread my posts on this board; I may have misread your question; people may misread my choice of clothing (a friend recently said a store was for entitled teenage girls and I replied "uh...I got these jeans there"). Music is more like clothes or body language than writing, in that it's not full of specific signifiers carrying specific messages you could find in a dictionary. But even admitting the possibility that a musical work does not communicate one and only one message, it is still very likely that somebody will hear it wrong!

But... isn't it very likely that somebody will not understand what you say to a large group of people who come from different cultures? As people need to learn languages in order to understand them, so it is with music. We have first languages, and 'first musics' - the music we're first exposed to. Somehow I don't think the soprano Marc talked to would have responded similarly had they been at a seminar with a speaker of some foreign language.  0:)

Actually I'm off-topic here, but last night me and a friend went to a concert with organ & vocal works of Ernst Křenek, the 'main course' being his Lamentatio Jeremiae prophetae, Opus 93.

Walking back to the bus after the concert, we ran across a group of choristers and I thanked them, saying it was a beautiful concert. One of the sopranos looked at me rather suspicious and asked Are you a 12-tone freak?

Even here in Finland there are some dialects that are very different from others, and practically incomprehensible to people from other parts of the country. Some words in Estonian are identical to words in Finnish, but mean something entirely different.
As for the dictionary -- a monolingual dictionary isn't much good for you if you don't know the language, and a score doesn't help someone who can't read music.

[Madiel]

I do not question the motivation of a composer.  If his/her music is difficult for me to comprehend, I do not blame the composer or assume they wrote the music precisely to be difficult for someone like me to comprehend.  In fact I find that kind of idea absurd.  Those people here, KenB and orfeo, who seem to be arguing that serialism or other forms of atonal music was written with a goal to be incomprehensible remind me of the Russian authorities who carried out the purges of composers because their music exhibited "formalism".

Again, to return to Taruskin, he talks a number of times about the notion of 'elitism'. There have most certainly been composers/groups of composers who considered themselves elitist, and who saw that as a good thing, and who as a result of that philosophy saw it as a problem if too many people liked what they were doing.

Because the goal in elitism is to 'advance' or 'perfect' your art. To take your place in history as having done something that wasn't done before. And part of an elitist view is that 'the masses' are behind the times, looking forward not back, and comfortable in their ways.

Such a view of art is emphatically NOT about communication, it's about achieving something very abstract. I've already mentioned Schoenberg's view that performers are unnecessary, because a perfect piece of music is perfect on the page and a performance risks the performer mucking things up.

Feelings about the need to improve and fix the art of music and leave behind what was 'wrong' with the old music that the public is fond of are hardly confined to the serialists, if Taruskin's book is any guide. There was a lot of fun stuff written in the 19th century by the Liszt and Wagner supporters. Heck, I've even read a quote from David Bowie that he ended up upset that his Let's Dance album was a huge hit, because he realised he'd started writing 'popular' music instead of 'arty' music.

But Boulez' declaration that Schoenberg was dead and that anyone who tried to dilute the purity of dodecaphony (as Schoenberg had done) by relating it to old, traditional tonal forms must be rejected was a fairly extreme example of the elitist view. It's noted in Taruskin's book, with a large degree of irony, that some of the composers that emerged in Europe from the horrors of World War II actually ended up using language about the need to maintain the purity of music that was uncomfortably close to the language the Nazis had used about the purity of the Aryan race.


Taruskin is certainly not against elitism as such. He points out that centuries ago, listening to music WAS an elite activity that set you apart. It was the nobility who had performances of operas and private orchestras. But then, the social context has changed vastly since then, and taking an elitist stance has very different implications now when we tend to believe that the masses are entitled to access to music in the same way as the ruling class. As much as anything, the recorded music we listen to is part of that.

[Karl Henning]

Such a view of art is emphatically NOT about communication, it's about achieving something very abstract. I've already mentioned Schoenberg's view that performers are unnecessary, because a perfect piece of music is perfect on the page and a performance risks the performer mucking things up.

I'd be interested to see the context (and the exact thing said).  Because there is an important and artistic point underneath this, which somehow has a lurid tint here.  (His wry remark that my music is not misunderstood, it is badly played, e.g.)  And Schoenberg started out as a string player;  so it is not as if he was prejudiced against performers as a class.

[Madiel]

I'm going to quote just one passage from Taruskin, in a passage from a chapter called 'The Apex' which focuses on Babbitt. I fear I'm going to end up wanting to provide about 15 pages of context to this little bit, but here goes... The only context I will provide is one of the notions Taruskin discusses is 'oral' musical culture - focused on what can be heard and remembered - versus 'literate' musical culture which is about creating an object on the page that can be admired.

A music in which analysis can potentially - and in extreme instances, even actually - replace the acts of performance or listening could thus be viewed as the highest possible realization of the literate ideal. In historical terms it does indeed represent a pinnacle, an apex, a ne plus ultra, and in the broadest view that may count as its truest historical achievement - or at least its most accurately described historical significance.

The never-to-be-settled question is, at what price? It can never be settled because price stands for values, and equally defensible values can be irreconcilable. What from one perspective may look like a logical culmination or a zenith may look from another like a perversion of values. Those who see and value music only in terms of a historical development will see the triumph of literacy in one way; those who see the primary value of music in the social exchanges it affords will find less to admire. But things and events as such are value-free. Values reside in the observers and their purposes.

That, to me, is very much hitting upon the same question of whether communication is a vital essence of music. Who is a composer writing for? Are they writing music to be performed and heard, or are they writing for their place in history and the admiration of later composers? Not all composers give the same answer to those questions, and I think Taruskin would argue that many of the great spats of musical history stem from those differing answers.

[amw]

I suspect one of my sources is Richard Taruskin's history of western music, but I don't have it to hand at this moment.

Taruskin is very tempting to take for granted. But it is worth reading the alternative views as well.

[Madiel]

I'd be interested to see the context (and the exact thing said).  Because there is an important and artistic point underneath this, which somehow has a lurid tint here.  (His wry remark that my music is not misunderstood, it is badly played, e.g.)  And Schoenberg started out as a string player;  so it is not as if he was prejudiced against performers as a class.

Okay. What I have are the following two passages:

music need not be performed any more than books need to be read aloud, for its logic is perfectly represented on the printed page; and the performer, for all his intolerable arrogance, is totally unnecessary except as his interpretations make the music understandable to an audience unfortunate enough not to be able to read it in print.

All I know is that he [the listener] exists, and insofar as he isn't indispensable for acoustic reasons (since music doesn't sound well in an empty hall), he's only a nuisance.

The citations are:

For the first one: Dika Newlin, Schoenberg Remembered: Diaries and Recollections 1938-1976. Newlin was Schoenberg's pupil and he's recorded as saying this in 1940.

For the second one: It's a letter from Schoenberg to Alexander von Zemlinsky on 20 March 1918, which has been published in a collection of Schoenberg's letters.

[Madiel]

Taruskin is very tempting to take for granted. But it is worth reading the alternative views as well.

Funnily enough, around here I was under the distinct impression I was giving the alternative view.

EDIT: And straight away I can see that that review of Taruskin is silly, because it asserts that Taruskin prefers audience-centred music to composer-centred. It's quite clear to me from what I've read this evening that Taruskin isn't picking between the 2 sides, he's presenting them and explaining them. I've just quoted for you a passage that quite explicitly says that neither side of such an argument is objectively 'right'. He does not say the composer-centred approach to music is wrong. All he says is that the composer-centred approach is not the only approach. And it looks to me like your composer-centred reviewer has a problem with that.

(It's reminds me of the constant snipes at our national broadcaster, with left-wingers complaining it's too right-wing and right-wingers complaining it's too left-wing.)

I'm picking sides, but that's because I'm quite clear in my own mind that an extreme version of composer-centricity - the kind that says "I, as a knowledgeable composer, get to tell you which music has any worth and who cares whether you like it" -  is not in line with my values.

[Cato]

Here is my final opinion on the matter:



And no, you will not be changing my mind!  0:)

[Karl Henning]

Here is my final opinion on the matter:



And no, you will not be changing my mind!  0:)

Expertly communicated!