GMG and classical music collection - the conflict

[Ken B]

I'll let some of your other comments pass, but here I think you're dead wrong. Now it is true, I'm finding on further research, that when Mozart visited the Baron van Swieten, he heard some of Bach performed. But the account continues:

Copies, note. Not rehearsal time for performances. Nothing about instructions. What Mozart wanted to do was to absorb Bach's style as a model for future composition. And there are plenty of examples where Mozart's style was greatly influenced by his discovery of Bach.

Interesting but it is flat wrong to say "nothing about instructions" when the point at issue is whether the scores he asked for are instructions. That's just begging the question.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Interesting but it is flat wrong to say "nothing about instructions" when the point at issue is whether the scores he asked for are instructions. That's just begging the question.

Not at all. There is no indication that Mozart was interested in future performance of Bach's work; what is certain - from examples like the finale of the Jupiter Symphony and much else - that Mozart learned a great deal from the example of Bach and absorbed Bach into his own style. That is what matters.

I find this whole "instructions" metaphor unconvincing in any case. It reduces composition to the level of writing software manuals. I can just imagine Beethoven, working on the Diabellis or Missa Solemnis, pumping his fists in the air and saying, "I wrote five pages of instuctions today! I'll write seven pages of instructions tomorrow!"

Anyway, I give up. If you guys want to think scores aren't music and are nothing more than cookbooks or schematic diagrams, be my guest. Perhaps someone else will take up the argument.

[Moonfish]

Interesting but it is flat wrong to say "nothing about instructions" when the point at issue is whether the scores he asked for are instructions. That's just begging the question.

[asin] 1906142246[/asin]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eristic

[Ken B]

Not at all. There is no indication that Mozart was interested in future performance of Bach's work; what is certain - from examples like the finale of the Jupiter Symphony and much else - that Mozart learned a great deal from the example of Bach and absorbed Bach into his own style. That is what matters.

I find this whole "instructions" metaphor unconvincing in any case. It reduces composition to the level of writing software manuals. I can just imagine Beethoven, working on the Diabellis or Missa Solemnis, pumping his fists in the air and saying, "I wrote five pages of instuctions today! I'll write seven pages of instructions tomorrow!"

Anyway, I give up. If you guys want to think scores aren't music and are nothing more than cookbooks or schematic diagrams, be my guest. Perhaps someone else will take up the argument.

i know you find it unconvincing. My point is not that you should be convinced but that the argument you gave was circular. And you clearly completely missed the point in my post about types.

[(poco) Sforzando]

i know you find it unconvincing. My point is not that you should be convinced but that the argument you gave was circular. And you clearly completely missed the point in my post about types.

I didn't miss it, I just didn't respond - just as you did not respond to any of my lengthier posts from yesterday or the day before on the subject, or for I know even read them.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Just my 2 cents ..

A score delivers music composed in written form. It communicates music. Technically, realistically .. it's music.
Western Art Music is a written tradition, not an oral or folk tradition. It is a vast literature.

Thank you.

[Ken B]

I didn't miss it, I just didn't respond - just as you did not respond to any of my lengthier posts from yesterday or the day before on the subject, or for I know even read them.

No. You said I denied a score is music, when I argued something different.

[(poco) Sforzando]

No. You said I denied a score is music, when I argued something different.

« Reply #85 on: December 28, 2014, 06:43:05 PM »
Quote from Ken B:
"A score is not music. It is a way of representing instructions to players."

I give up. Must've been a different Ken B.

[EigenUser]

Just my 2 cents ..

A score delivers music composed in written form. It communicates music. Technically, realistically .. it's music.
Western Art Music is a written tradition, not an oral or folk tradition. It is a vast literature.

I like this perspective.

Especially before recording technology, many things were only "heard" by reading the score. For instance, when Bruckner showed Wagner his 3rd symphony, obviously Wagner was able to claim that he preferred it over the 2nd symphony (or was it the 4th... I forget what the alternative was). Thus, it clearly communicated music as Wagner could see that he especially liked the 3rd's opening trumpet theme.

[Florestan]

A great deal. I refer you to my previous posts.

I have read your previous posts. I have read the posts of your opponents too. You are right in pointing out that a score is much more than a set of instructions and you are also right that the music is already there. They are right in pointing out that music is a performing art and that most people experience it as music only when performed. I don´t see anything mutually exclusive here.

[Ken B]

I have read your previous posts. I have read the posts of your opponents too. You are right in pointing out that a score is much more than a set of instructions and you are also right that the music is already there. They are right in pointing out that music is a performing art and that most people experience it as music only when performed. I don´t see anything mutually exclusive here.

Which is what I was getting at with the type. 

[Karl Henning]

I like this perspective.

Actually, I find "A score delivers music composed in written form. It communicates music." either a pathetic fallacy, or profoundly mistaken.  Does a book "communicate," or does the author?  And (to build upon a point others have been making), the person reading the score (or the book) takes such information as is encoded in the document, and the music (or the story) in his mind is a creative amalgam of his experience and the information from the document.

The score does not "deliver music."  I've cited Lutosławski before:  if everything about the piece could be described in words (or, etched into a score), we should have no need of music.

[Ken B]

A lot of discussion over what was really a poetic metaphor. Someone said it wasn't music until it is played. I really don't think that was meant as a deep ontological statement. I suspect it just meant that the most important part, the really valuable part is the performance. We are acting like jesuitical hairsplitters (NOTE TO Florestan: 'jesuitical hairsplitter' is not meant as praise    )

[Karl Henning]

A lot of discussion over what was really a poetic metaphor.

Oh, aye, indeed. 

Someone said it wasn't music until it is played.

Well, as a composer, there is a practical sense in which I believe this entirely.  Why did I write it, if not so that it be played and that people hear it?

[(poco) Sforzando]

A lot of discussion over what was really a poetic metaphor. Someone said it wasn't music until it is played. I really don't think that was meant as a deep ontological statement. I suspect it just meant that the most important part, the really valuable part is the performance. We are acting like jesuitical hairsplitters (NOTE TO Florestan: 'jesuitical hairsplitter' is not meant as praise    )

No, we're talking about a legitimate issue and not just splitting hairs. You seem to want to have things both ways: first you bring up your professor's quasi-Platonic theory of types (talk about an "ontological statement"), and then when someone has the temerity to suggest there's more to scores than the idea that "the most important part, the really valuable part is the performance," you're ready to call the entire issue trivial.

[Ken B]

No, we're talking about a legitimate issue and not just splitting hairs. You seem to want to have things both ways: first you bring up your professor's quasi-Platonic theory of types (talk about an "ontological statement"), and then when someone has the temerity to suggest there's more to scores than the idea that "the most important part, the really valuable part is the performance," you're ready to call the entire issue trivial.

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.

[Ken B]

Within this written tradition (that has existed for centuries) .. there is no performance without the composer's written music in place first.

Paging Dave Brubeck! Your copy of A Musical Offering is on fire.

[Karl Henning]

Within this written tradition (that has existed for centuries) .. there is no performance without the composer's written music in place first.

Tautology du jour . . . .

[Karl Henning]

And untrue:  witness Das musikalisches Opfer.

[Ken B]

And untrue:  witness Das musikalisches Opfer.

Scroll back to comment 179 ...
*inserts great minds comment here*