GMG and classical music collection - the conflict

[Ken B]

Mahler never lived to hear Das Lied von der Erde; he only produced its score. By your definition, he did not write a work of music.

And yes, I think it is accepted that architecture exists in cases where a building was not built (either because of expense, impracticality, etc.) Daniel Liebeskind's original design for the new WTC in NY was widely admired, but was rejected and a simpler, less radical building constructed in its place. Does that mean Liebeskind did not produce a work of architecture?

I fear that all these analogies of the score to blueprints, instructions, and the like miss the most essential roles that notated scores have served in the development of Western musical culture. But I have argued these points at length above. (Whether the term "blueprint" is even an acceptable analogy for the printed documents a musical performer uses seems to me debatable as well. After all, there's no law requiring a score to mandate every detail like each nail or screw, and performers may resent being considered recipients of instructions, some going so far as to consider themselves creative collaborators. The symbiosis between performer and score seems to me of a different order than that of a builder following an architectural diagram.)

Not what Jochanaan said at all. Unless you want to argue that Mahler imagined the score as an image. No, Mahler imagined the music, and wrote the score to show others how they might hear or imagine it too.
Is a recipe a cake? You seem to argue it is.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Not what Jochanaan said at all. Unless you want to argue that Mahler imagined the score as an image. No, Mahler imagined the music, and wrote the score to show others how they might hear or imagine it too.
Is a recipe a cake? You seem to argue it is.

Jochananan: "But I agree with those who say that they are not, in fact, music, merely instructions for the making of music."

Note that "merely." But I'll let Jochanaan speak for himself if he cares to.

[jochanaan]

Mahler never lived to hear Das Lied von der Erde; he only produced its score. By your definition, he did not write a work of music.

That's true, and I don't hesitate to admit it.  We speak carelessly of "writing music," but technically, what you say is exactly right.

And yes, I think it is accepted that architecture exists in cases where a building was not built (either because of expense, impracticality, etc.) Daniel Liebeskind's original design for the new WTC in NY was widely admired, but was rejected and a simpler, less radical building constructed in its place. Does that mean Liebeskind did not produce a work of architecture?

I'll let the architects answer that one. 

...(Whether the term "blueprint" is even an acceptable analogy for the printed documents a musical performer uses seems to me debatable as well. After all, there's no law requiring a score to mandate every detail like each nail or screw, and performers may resent being considered recipients of instructions, some going so far as to consider themselves creative collaborators. The symbiosis between performer and score seems to me of a different order than that of a builder following an architectural diagram.)

From what I know about contractors, they tend to improvise almost as much as Louis Armstrong.

[(poco) Sforzando]

That's true, and I don't hesitate to admit it.  We speak carelessly of "writing music," but technically, what you say is exactly right.

And so to the gentleman who insisted: "Not what Jochanaan said at all," I will reply with Jochanaan's confirmation, "exactly what Jochanaan said." And exactly what I disagree with.

But tell me: if Mahler was not "writing music," then just what the hell was he doing?

[Wanderer]

We know for example that ancient Greek tragedies were not just recited but sung...

Assuming you don't refer to prosody, this is partly true; the chorus parts were sung (and most probably also choreographed); parts of the spoken parts were also sung (although chanted might be a more appropriate term), mainly when referring/responding to the chorus.

...but since the Greeks had no method for notating their music...

This is false. Ancient Greek music was notated, parts of notated songs actually surviving to this day. It was a system based on the Greek alphabet with the later addition of neumes.

Starting with plainchant, musical notes could be written down, and the system of notation developed with increasing sophistication through the next 10 centuries

Plainchant notation did not appear in a vacuum. It came from and evolved parallel with the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) neumatic system, itself an evolution of systems used in antiquity.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Assuming you don't refer to prosody, this is partly true; the chorus parts were sung (and most probably also choreographed); parts of the spoken parts were also sung (although chanted might be a more appropriate term), mainly when referring/responding to the chorus.

This is false. Ancient Greek music was notated, parts of notated songs actually surviving to this day. It was a system based on the Greek alphabet with the later addition of neumes.

Plainchant notation did not appear in a vacuum. It came from and evolved parallel with the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) neumatic system, itself an evolution of systems used in antiquity.

I'm happy to concede these points; however, they're more like little "gotchas" than any serious rebuttal of my position.

[prémont]

.... Mahler imagined the music, and wrote the score to show others how they might hear or imagine it too.

But the music Mahler imagined may be quite different from the music you hear in your mind, when you read the score.

So two - or more - different pieces of music may arise from the same score.

[Sergeant Rock]

A composer's opinion:

"Music on paper is nothing! It does not exist! Notes are strange hieroglyphics, notated musical thoughts that have been created in the human brain, Music does not exist until the moment the musician makes those mystical signs come alive and turn into sound. As soon as the sound stops, the music no longer exists - it reverts to strange hieroglyphics, To silence!" --Einar Englund

[(poco) Sforzando]

A composer's opinion:

"Music on paper is nothing! It does not exist! Notes are strange hieroglyphics, notated musical thoughts that have been created in the human brain, Music does not exist until the moment the musician makes those mystical signs come alive and turn into sound. As soon as the sound stops, the music no longer exists - it reverts to strange hieroglyphics, To silence!" --Einar Englund

So what? That's all very poetic, but can this composer honestly say he learned nothing from studying scores? Can any composer? What say you, Mr. Henning? I remind you of Mozart's excited discovery of the music of Bach from those stange hieroglyphics, or young Elliott Carter's purchase of the sheet music to the Schoenberg Suite op. 25 in Vienna at a time when this music was never performed. Scores are the composer's source material, his archive for learning. Once again, I quote Charles Rosen as pointing to "a difficulty that has irritated philosophers of aesthetics and their readers for a long time. Is the work of music to be identified as the written score or its performance? Is a symphony of Beethoven the printed score or the sound in the concert hall when it is played?"

I say that unless this difficulty is acknowledged, any answer to this question is inadequate.

[Florestan]

Once again, I quote Charles Rosen as pointing to "a difficulty that has irritated philosophers of aesthetics and their readers for a long time. Is the work of music to be identified as the written score or its performance? Is a symphony of Beethoven the printed score or the sound in the concert hall when it is played?"

Why should it be either one, or the other? It´s both. 

[mc ukrneal]

Why should it be either one, or the other? It´s both. 

I was just thinking that this discussion had an element of the chicken and the egg.

[prémont]

Is the score to 4'33'' music??

[(poco) Sforzando]

So two - or more - different pieces of music may arise from the same score.

Sorry, but I don't buy this at all. At least not this particular example. Whether I open the score of DLvdE, or read an analysis, or buy a CD, or go to a concert, I am certain to encounter the same sequence of notes and rhythms, in more or less similar tempos and balances, with the same orchestration (unless I hear something like the Schoenberg chamber version), etc. But fundamentally DLvdE has remained the same work of music.

A more interesting and problematic example would arise with something like Stockhausen's Piano Piece XI, whose score consists of a large sheet where the pianist is instructed to play various fragments in arbitrary sequences and no two performances of the piece could ever sound alike, down to differences in overall timings.

Or conceive an idea I had during my composing days: a woodwind-brass octet arranged around a set of eight timpani, like the head of a giant octopus. A score of 8 times 8 pages, which the performers would read from computer monitors on a rotating platform. A random generator controlling which pages they'd see, in which order, and when the piece starts and stops. I named the piece Octopoda, and the result was a completely aleatoric structure in which the least significant element of any live performance — the page turner — in effect becomes the most important. I'd love to have you guys listen to it, except that once I came up with this wonderful framework, I had no idea what notes to write. That's because I usually plan what comes before and after each section in a piece, and since this piece would be random, every section could potentially have 63 befores and 63 afters.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Is the score to 4'33'' music??

Pourquoi pas?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Why should it be either one, or the other? It´s both. 

Yes, but that's been my point all along. It's others who are claiming the score is "merely" a set of instructions, a position with which I emphatically disagree.

[prémont]

Sorry, but I don't buy this at all. At least not this particular example. Whether I open the score of DLvdE, or read an analysis, or buy a CD, or go to a concert, I am certain to encounter that same sequence of notes and rhythms, in more or less similar tempos and balances, with the same orchestration (unless I hear something like the Schoenberg chamber version), etc. But fundamentally DLvdE has remained the same work of music.

Agreed, the Mahler example is not that good, because the score is relatively unequivocal. But you do not need to go far back into musical history, before musicologists and musicians disagree about the execution of important points in the score.

[prémont]

Pourquoi pas?

Why should it be music?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Agreed, the Mahler example is not that good, because the score is relatively unequivocal. But you do not need to go far back into musical history, before musicologists and musicians disagree about important points in the score.

Yes, and I could buttress your statement with additional evidence (such as multiple versions of a work like Don Giovanni or the B major Brahms trio, or the ornamentation applied to Baroque opera arias or keyboard pieces). But the Mahler was your example.

ETA: Sorry, it was originally my example. But you picked up on it.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Why should it be music?

Well, that piece poses a unique problem in aesthetics, a piece of music that consists of nothing but timed silence. But that problem applies both to the score and any "realization" or performance.

[prémont]

Yes, and I could buttress your statement with additional evidence (such as multiple versions of a work like Don Giovanni or the B major Brahms trio, or the ornamentation applied to Baroque opera arias or keyboard pieces). But the Mahler was your example.

You were the first one to mention Mahler (post 119 in this thread).