GMG and classical music collection - the conflict

[(poco) Sforzando]

Again you miss the point. Let me repeat it.
I think the original comment that we are discussing was just a fancy way of expressing the opinion "the most important part, the really valuable part is the performance,". I neither endorsed nor disavowed that opinion. I merely identified it. FWIW I endorse it.

But if you want hair splitting ... Let's talk dance for a second, as choreography can be "scored" too.

E R Tufte worked out a notation for choreography. Is one of his "scores" dance? It seems to me it is in the same sense that a music score is music. Are we agreed?if music scores are music then dance scores are dance in the same sense, whatever sense is meant.

So that raises an issue. What if the notation is defective? What if it cannot describe all the effects or elements or actions the dancer/choreographer desires? Is it still just as much the piece as a performance? I think not. No written system of choreography before Tufte's was remotely adequate (I do not claim his is, only that it is better.) Would Balanchine's partial directions, the best his notation of the time could do, count as dance in the same way Balanchine actually dancing would?

Imagine watching a dance and transcribing it using Tufte's notation and any of the older systems. Tufte's would have more detail. So the "scores" would differ. In important ways Tufte's would have *more* information. Would these describe the same dance? If so, what is that extra information? If not, then how was the first "score" the same as the performed dance?

But frankly I'm bored with hairsplitting. A fortiori (there it is again!) I am bored with hairsplitting about hairsplitting.

Whatever you say, Ken. Again you have missed my points, but since you are the ultimate authority on all things, I bow down to your wisdom.

[Florestan]

We are acting like jesuitical hairsplitters (NOTE TO Florestan: 'jesuitical hairsplitter' is not meant as praise    )

You are indeed hairsplitting. Whether it is Jesuitical or not, I wouldn´t know. Lots of Jesuits were scientists and lots of scientists were Jesuits. Is science hairsplitting? Not to mention that in the moral realm (which is the original hairsplitting field of the Jesuits) a thinner or a thicker hair can make the difference between life and death... 

On topic. Why do composer create music? For other composers to marvel at, and study, their music? For all those who can read scores to read them? For the audience at large to hear it performed? None of the above. all of the above, part of the above? Talk about hairsplitting. 

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture"...

[Ken B]

Sometimes I just shudder at the level of stupidity on this forum.

Under the "G" number 4.

[Karl Henning]

And again, he shuddered with self-knowledge . . . .

[(poco) Sforzando]

Sometimes I just shudder at the level of stupidity on this forum.

No wonder you've been here eight years and have 8600 posts to your credit.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Under the "G" number 4.

Honestly, I don't have the slightest idea what that means. 

[Florestan]

Like this means anything when we look at the bigger picture ..

That´s exactly the answer the unrepentant Communists offer when questioned about the Gulag. 

(I know it is a false analogy and I beg pardon for using it, but I cannot help myself... )

[Ken B]

Honestly, I don't have the slightest idea what that means. 

Time for Karl to post the bingo sheet! Then all will become clear.

[(poco) Sforzando]

And how does that Bach composition up-end the fact that western art music (for centuries now) is a written musical tradition, or that Bach himself was one of it's greatest & most-valuable writers.

I guess the idea is that because Bach improvised the 3- and 6-part Ricercares at the court of Freddy the Great, those pieces existed prior to notation. (Though how the same applies to the 10 canons or the trio sonata escapes me. I betcha even Bach had to work out the canon per augmentationem, contrario motu on paper.)

Never mind that unless Bach wrote the ricercares down in score later, they would have been lost to the world forever. Or that Webern could have never orchestrated the 6-part.

[mc ukrneal]

Maybe this tangent should be elsewhere? After all, this was not the conflict that db had in mind...

[Ken B]

Whatever you say, Ken. ...I bow down to your wisdom.

This is the wisest policy poco, but you look like a natural born recidivist to me, and I expect in a week or so you'll be back to thinking for yourself.

[(poco) Sforzando]

This is the wisest policy poco, but you look like a natural born recidivist to me, and I expect in a week or so you'll be back to thinking for yourself.

My only dispute is the time frame, which you have overestimated by at least six days and 23.999 hours.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Maybe this tangent should be elsewhere? After all, this was not the conflict that db had in mind...

I know, but that's what makes the discussion so endearing.