What is the 'composer's intention?'

[amw]

Take advantage of it yourself. You're the only one here who's actively trying to derail the discussion.

I've had Mirror Image on ignore since about a week after I joined the forum, I think. Seems like I haven't missed anything.

@ Orfeo & Croche, no interest in participating in this discussion myself at the moment, but I am (was) quite enjoying the back-and-forth.

[Mirror Image]

I've had Mirror Image on ignore since about a week after I joined the forum, I think. Seems like I haven't missed anything.

@ Orfeo & Croche, no interest in participating in this discussion myself at the moment, but I am (was) quite enjoying the back-and-forth.

[Monsieur Croche]

"There's no need either for music to make people think! ... It would be enough if music could make people listen." ~ Claude Debussy

...people are going to draw what they want from music despite whatever intentions were set forth from the composer. That's just the very nature of music.

Ah, so my thinking any piece of music is like an Aural Rorschach Blot -- with nothing more specific about it -- is not a wildly off comparison.
---With all the 'what it is abouts' floating about, I think composers for the most part have been more than a little wise, writing what they write and then verbally, petty much clamming up and not providing us with anything about the rest, 'intent' included.

The music is what stands out perfectly clear on its own.

It seems a number of people really struggle with this.

[/quote]Everything else is merely superfluous and arbitrary.[/quote] Uh, oh, you mean, splutter, that this Beethoven sonata with its conflicting themes of the first and second movement, brought together in sublime harmony in the final third movement, is not about, "The Eternal Feminine and then, opposed, The Eternal Masculine, and Resolved With Harmonious Love in the third movement?" Please, "Say it ain't so, Joe."

It will continue to be a mystery.

If the composers themselves don't tell us much outside of the actual work, I think we can assume they choose not to in order that the listener focus only on the work itself, or also, because they are truly incapable of telling us much more than what is already in the work. Yeah, that is nigh unto impossible for some to take at face value, while I agree with you, if that is all that was given, it should be taken and accepted as complete.

[Mirror Image]

Ah, so my thinking any piece of music is like an Aural Rorschach Blot -- with nothing more specific about it -- is not a wildly off comparison.
---With all the 'what it is abouts' floating about, I think composers for the most part have been more than a little wise, writing what they write and then verbally, petty much clamming up and not providing us with anything about the rest, 'intent' included.

It seems a number of people really struggle with this.

Everything else is merely superfluous and arbitrary. Uh, oh, you mean, splutter, that this Beethoven sonata with its conflicting themes of the first and second movement, brought together in sublime harmony in the final third movement, is not about, "The Eternal Feminine and then, opposed, The Eternal Masculine, and Resolved With Harmonious Love in the third movement?" Please, "Say it ain't so, Joe."
If the composers themselves don't tell us much outside of the actual work, I think we can assume they choose not to in order that the listener focus only on the work itself, or also, because they are truly incapable of telling us much more than what is already in the work. Yeah, that is nigh unto impossible for some to take at face value, while I agree with you, if that is all that was given, it should be taken and accepted as complete.

My point is that it doesn't matter what the composer intended. I'm not buying into it and I never will subscribe to any train of thought other than the one that happens during and after a piece of music has ended. In short, I draw my own conclusions and if the composer were to hear my thoughts on one of their pieces, I think they'd be happy that I listened. This, at the end of the day, should be enough.

[Monsieur Croche]

Maybe just the ones who reach for the popcorn.

The several mentions of popcorn have reminded me I would have been better off eating something a while ago. So, am now off to attend to that boring and basic need that does not go away... fuel.

Always fun, Orfeo.

There is a bit of sport here I hope not taken as wanting to wound or win... some people enjoy more than anything 'how long we can keep the ball in the air' without ever thinking about points or winning, and I am of that sort.

Though, I don't think you will ever change my mind on the value as per meaning and enhancing the listening experience by knowing either history, composer biography or biographical anecdotes [with which I am pretty well supplied already.] You just might, but I can not imagine what the particular nugget would be that would have me hearing anything so differently, but that might just be your kind of challenge, finding that one nugget of info that might slightly change my mind.

And, yeah, we're both intransigent enough to keep that ball in volley and in the air for a looong time, and maybe that is a bit 'inconsiderate,' i.e. occupying page after page of a thread. On the other hand, if there is an audience, silent though they might be, maybe we could set it up so you and I get paid? Lol.


Best regards.

[Madiel]

There is a show on cable television in our future.

[starrynight]

How is a forum on issues like these meant to be about changing minds?  I really don't think it is at all, and I suspect you don't either.  I wonder even how much of it ends up being about music, and how much is simply putting extreme positions and use words like it's some gladatorial combat in what their is a winner (decided I assume by the audience they revel in thinking they have).  None of this is anything new here either, such issues will have been looked at several times before.

And yes people do take things too personally, and it can be tempting to push that.  But again, that's got very little to do with the music and more with human psychology on a forum.  I do think it's more productive talking about more objective qualities of music rather than more personal feelings as by its nature the latter isn't likely to be understood by many.  Composer threads are normally where you get people going off on some tangent about what a composer means to them.  But obviously people can talk about whatever they want in other areas too.

Music is obviously about manipulation in that the musical journey of a piece is meant to guide the listener.  That of course doesn't mean they are 'conmen', I think that was said just to be provocative than for any important point.  Listeners agree to be manipulated and to be led down a particular journey, most listen to music with a wish to enjoy what they are listening to and are in that way relatively passive receivers of what they hear. 

[Florestan]

As someone who is both part of, and genuinely interested in, such discussions (cheers, Mr. Sforz!) I must say that I don´t understand you at all, John (Mirror Image). If you are so bored or annoyed by the exchange, why then do you feel the need to visit the thread? Simply ignore it.

There is a bit of sport here I hope not taken as wanting to wound or win... some people enjoy more than anything 'how long we can keep the ball in the air' without ever thinking about points or winning, and I am of that sort.

So am I, actually, so am I, but taken to its extreme, this can lead to being a contrarian for the sake of contradiction --- and it´s from personal experience that I speak. 

That being said, orfeo is right, you have sort of shot yourself in the foot with Beethoven´s humor. Either it is inherent in the music itself, in which case music can and does (explicitly, for that matter) represent non-musical things; or it stems from cultural conventions and conditioning, in which case 200 years later after the work´s premiere the audience (who lives in completely different cultural conventions and conditioning) does indeed need explanation and program notes in order to fully grasp why a particular sequence of notes is humorous.

And btw, your Stravinsky concert example does nothing but support the first possibility.

[some guy]

Well, as I was getting my beauty rest--which I sorely need--the rest of you were having a swell time of it to be sure.

But no one in that whole time took M. Croche's advice and reread post number 20. That has sorta hamstrung the whole discussion.

Well, here's some more carefully thought out ideas for y'all to ignore. Be fair, if y'all were to regard them, there would be much less room for squabbling. And I think we can all agree that squabbling is the main reason most of us are here.

Entonces.

Observation: in a group of people interested in music, there does seem to be a lot of interest in and concern to defend the validity of what everyone agrees is properly called "extramusical." It would be like a group of people interested in painting spending the bulk of their time talking about sound.

Some consider the extramusical essential, though some of them do occasionally diverge from that--or appear to. Some consider the extramusical to be helpful for understanding the music. That at least make sense, if the goal is genuinely to understand the music. But some consider the extramusical to be a huge distraction from the music. Far from helping to understand, it guarantees, practically, that the music will not be understood.

Query: is "understanding" the point? If it is, are we all agree about what "understanding" means? If it's not, should we be trying to find some other words?

Logic: if the information contained in words conveys mas o menos what the music is supposed to be conveying, then what's the point of having both? Best I can see in this regard is that the extramusical is like a rocket engine, useful for getting the rocket to a particular point at which time it is jettisoned.

Query: Is music conveying the kinds of information that words can convey? If yes, then music seems redundant. If no, then words are actually conveying something different from music and will not help anyone understand what the music is doing.

Trust: Music is capable of doing whatever it is that it does without any props. Listeners might also be able to experience whatever it is that music is doing by the extremely clever stratagem of listening to the music. But if we keep harping () on the value of the extramusical, especially insofar as it purports to be conveying whatever the music is supposed to be also conveying, then we continue to enable listeners who are incapable of listening to music and getting anything out of it without crutches.*

Emotions: Music somehow has the power to effect us emotionally, more powerfully than practically anything else, even love and kittens. So we should expect that anyone who's ideas about music are questioned will get royally bent out of shape. It takes an enormous discipline to be able to talk about something that can trigger our emotions so effectively. But if we can leave our emotions to the side for just a second or two, we might be able to come up with some intelligent thoughts about some of the other things that music does.

*Mixing: Has there been some mixing of metaphors in the preceding post?

Yes.

[Madiel]

Music is capable of doing whatever it is that it does without any props.

The only way music ever exists without any props is if you take it and drop it into an entirely different culture.

[Karl Henning]

<pointless aside>

It's early morning in Boston, so I misread that as clams about humour.

</pointless aside>

[James]

This seems to be a debate that pops up here and there and everywhere. What is the composer expressing? Can a composer 'communicate' with their music? And even on a more technical level: does something like Historically Informed Performance practice accurately provide the intended sound and musical interpretation that the composer had in his/her mind?

But I do wonder about how we got to our conclusions on these things, and how we have become to hold such beliefs that some do about what we think a Composer's Intention is.

I think that it comes down to these things for me:

As a music student, I spend less time imagining what a piece communicates to me, in favour of thinking about how a piece of music is put together and then interpreted for performance (which ultimately evokes various things in various people). But I do think about what techniques and traits different composers have in their compositions and how they use these to express pure sound as an art form.

As a music listener, I love to enjoy music for music's sake without thinking about what a piece 'communicates.' I love to just go with the flow really.

Quality musicians spend a lot of time practicing, learning, composing, playing, evolving .. in order to be the best that they can be, and if in a band situation, also be a real band that gels as one - each part is equal, playing together. They understand that music is for people at the end of the day and they would love it to shine through to as many people as possible. The music that is, not ideas of genius or innovation - which aren't primary. Connecting is a big desire. And instrumental music, is whatever the listener wants it to be about. The listener's imagination can run wild, and find things that are relevant to their own personal experiences. So it is personal from listener to listener, you don't want every listener to come to the same conclusions.

[Florestan]

Observation False analogy: in a group of people interested in music, there does seem to be a lot of interest in and concern to defend the validity of what everyone agrees is properly called "extramusical." It would be like a group of people interested in painting spending the bulk of their time talking about sound.

Correct analogy: it would be like a group of people interested in painting spending the bulk of their time talking about the validity (or lack thereof) of what everyone agrees is properly called "extrapictural"*.

* ie, anything else than colors and their combination.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I'm only stating what inevitably will happen and I'll be glad when it does because there's no point two people arguing over points that they're not going to budge on. Why don't we just lace you guys up and throw you into a boxing ring? Now, that would be entertaining.

(*munches popcorn*)

Actually there was a time when my position was the exact mirror image of our Debussyan friend's. With experience and maturity my position has evolved into something different. You might say I've become less rigid, more nuanced in my thinking. I'm not necessarily interested in changing Croche's mind, but rather in influencing other, more open-minded observers. And though I don't have time at the moment to develop my position in what will no doubt will be for you excruciating/soporific detail, it may surprise you that I too support the idea "that it doesn't matter what the composer intended."

(Briefly: intention precedes action. What Beethoven intended died with him and is buried with his corpse in a Vienna cemetery. All we can know is what Beethoven achieved, and proceed from there. And that of course includes introducing folk songs he knew his audience would recognize into his works. Literature provides even more striking examples. Our friend Alberich has been arguing with me over what he thinks Shakespeare "wanted us to feel" - i.e., his intentions - and I've been saying that we have no way of knowing these intentions and that however we respond is how we respond. The classic case is Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage, with its ironically named heroine. Audiences from the start took her as a sympathetic, courageous figure; Brecht insisted that he intended her to be viewed instead as a cowardly opportunist - and there is ample evidence for that in the play. Yet even though he revised the play to bring out more what he "intended," those dang audiences continued to view her sympathetically.)

And yet many of us continue to proceed as if intention were knowable, and somehow matters. The interesting question is: Why should that be the case?

That's the short version, for your benefit.

[(poco) Sforzando]

<pointless aside>

It's early morning in Boston, so I misread that as clams about humour.

</pointless aside>

No, I think you read it correctly.

[Karl Henning]

Why do we need to know the intention?

No, I think you read it correctly.

The Silence of the Clams

[Florestan]

The only way music ever exists without any props is if you take it and drop it into an entirely different culture.

Amen!

[Madiel]

I have to admit that I find it faintly amusing to read stuff about how we can't know composer's intentions, interspersed with quotes from composers.

[Florestan]

many of us continue to proceed as if intention were knowable, and somehow matters. The interesting question is: Why should that be the case?

Probably because "understanding" is an innate need, at least in some people?

[(poco) Sforzando]

As someone who is both part of, and genuinely interested in, such discussions (cheers, Mr. Sforz!) I must say that I don´t understand you at all, John (Mirror Image). If you are so bored or annoyed by the exchange, why then do you feel the need to visit the thread? Simply ignore it.

Good morning to you, too, Florestan. (It is 7:30 in the morning here in New York.) Isn't it rather marvelous that I can sit here in my Long Island home and joust with people from Romania, Australia, Boston, and (ahem) even Georgia without even buying a plane ticket or showing my passport?