What is the 'composer's intention?'

[Monsieur Croche]

Now it can be revealed:

In Out in the Sun, in the duet between the bass clarinet and baritone saxophone, I slipped in a quick allusion to "I Got Rhythm."

By which I intended to suggest that I got rhythm.

I got rhythm and played tennis with Mr. Schoenberg ~ Kyo Yoshida
https://www.youtube.com/v/16UmQ3tS82M

[Monsieur Croche]

You've misquoted Mahler, and in my view, completely missed his point. He actually said (translated): "A Symphony must be like the world - it must contain everything". Not that the symphony is a whole world, no, rather that it contains everything in the world. Everything you claim music doesn't. You and Mahler are not on the same page.

Sarge

Lol, a slight misquote does not alter that if a symphonic world "must contain everything," then that world is self-contained, needing no explanation that is not already within it.

[Karl Henning]

What a wonderful world!

[Monsieur Croche]

Hector Berlioz on Beethoven´s Fifth (excerpts)

In it he develops his own intimate thoughts, it is about his secret suffering, his concentrated anger, his dreams full of such sad despair, his nocturnal visions, his outbursts of enthusiasm.

To refer anyone to the selected and lengthy quotes which make up your post, the link to that post:
http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,25520.msg949238.html#msg949238

So much of the text there is thick with the subjective hyperbole which was very much in place / in fashion during the romantic era; Berlioz certainly did not adopt that style in order to condescend to his reading audience, i.e. he was being genuine. What is quoted has very little about the music itself other than a minimum of citations of but a few technical musical devices which make for this or that named effect; at least 85% of what is there written is highly subjective and highly 'poetic' hyperbole.

It is written and aimed more at the general listener - reader [who is also a bit conversant in things music theoretical] as opposed to having been written to address those more thoroughly versed in the technical.
[Though the romantic matrix of outlook was still but a kernel, nascent in Beethoven's time, here we have, not so much later, the full-blown romantic parlance in describing Beethoven.][/size]

Nonetheless, hyperbole it remains, and it is highly stylized of and from the era.  The majority of it, in bulk, covers the meat of the nut, surrounds it with a thick wrap of adjectival marzipan, that coated in allegory and lastly dipped in a coating of emotional-philosophic icing... quite a confection that; one can only guess at what colors it would reveal if it were physically manifest and presented, and perhaps those colors might be rather frightening

If anyone reads letters between close male friends from that same era [and through to the end of the Victorian era] and has no idea of the conventions and manner of speech of the time, they could easily mistake those communications being a correspondence between two men who were 'lovers.' Nope, that was just mannerisms and linguistic conventions of the day.

Fine and dandy, hunky-dory. Music criticism and the birth in the second half of the twentieth century of what is now considered truly well-informed musicology, now 'traditonal,' has changed the approach to the subject from its former mode of subjective hyperbole to instead favor clear talk, and without discounting the 'art' of it, only allows for some carefully and cautiously judged subjective statements. This did reject the previous highly poetic and elaborate language usage of the past while it still more than acknowledges that music is highly poetic, elaborate, "elevated," and does strongly evoke, eliciting those kind of responses in the listener.

To the contemporaries of today, it takes a strong and selective filter to cut through the manner and style of much of the earlier critical writings on music to get to 'what is essentially said,' about the music itself; this is almost as if it needs at the least a transliteration into contemporary usage. Those earlier music critiques and commentaries need to be read for what they are instead of wishing that what they say is the actuality or literal truth about either the musical content or composer intent.

I don't miss the more wild, the alleged, the floral language of those earlier eras of music critiques and discussions, nor so much the flora and fauna along the banks of those adjectival streams, nor the various hypotheses with no real grounded provenance; all are happily [to me] left out of the discussion on the what and how of music. [If you want to visit them, the literature of the era has plenty of just that, and needs no re-thinking.] The music, without the verbal hyperbole built up on the music as stimulus is a testament to what we already know; music has the power to evoke to such a degree that people can imagine and are stimulated to create literature,paintings, and other art based upon what the musical art evokes. It ought to be obvious that those things stimulated by the music are not the music, nor its 'meaning.'

Regardless of what has been said and is currently said about music -- in what ever stylized manner not in the now traditional and more restrained musicological approach -- the music of both the past and present remains what it always was and is... not a verbal story, not a philosophical essay, not a parable, etc. -- Just Music.

[zamyrabyrd]

I would think that a student pianist coming to the Beethoven Piano Sonata no.31 op. 110, with the cumulative experience and technique enough to begin to approach and study it in the first place, and without ever having heard it, would by then have enough musicianship to understand the character of the tunes, themes, or interpretive aspects that in their working through it from the score alone they would not need any extramusical information or biographical anecdotes to 'make it right.'

I'm of the mind that just as you don't have the liberty to have at the score to alter it, re-write it, change notes, etc. that you have no more 'right' to add or impose mere suppositions to it, at least as a performer or when writing about the piece. [Listeners are free to listen and think whatever they wish or however they do.]

The fact that German speakers recognize a drinking and kitty song in a Scherzo that outsiders except musicologists would be generally unaware of, would make their listening and playing of this piece different. They would see it as parody or a kind of boorish fun. You might say the same thing about quotes by say, Charles Ives, that non-Americans would not recognize, who can still enjoy the music but don't get the insider jokes. I don't think a conductor can get away with not knowing the sources.

What usually happens with "just the notes, ma'am" is every jot of Beethoven becomes a god-like revelation, not to be tampered with. This faux idolization is also a variety of projection of one's own thoughts, proving in a back-handed manner what was set out to be disproved.

I have taught quite a few Asian students who have their own take on Western music, singers who believe that you only need to pronounce the syllables and not be bothered by the meaning of the words, and pianists who are taught to reproduce robot-like the exact notes of the Sensei composer, or else. When you get that far removed from the cultural context, you get caricatures of musicianship like Lang Lang.

As for "I don't care if Chopin had a toothache, ha, ha", regarding his Db prelude, one can regard the Ab/G# as only a repeating note, but then it becomes an ear ache. If in context of shifting moods, a dominant ostinato that would have a lot to do with the harmony of the major and minor section, "raindrop" is not a bad image for the overall piece.

[Monsieur Croche]

The fact that German speakers recognize a drinking and kitty song in a Scherzo that outsiders except musicologists would be generally unaware of, would make their listening and playing of this piece different. They would see it as parody or a kind of boorish fun.

It is not your fault I did not include what I've said before: to know about those tunes used will tell the performer about the character and characteristics of the material, and that makes for their rendering those inflections of parody, bawdy, triste, etc. which is part of the musical fabric.

What usually happens with "just the notes, ma'am" is every jot of Beethoven becomes a god-like revelation, not to be tampered with. This faux idolization is also a variety of projection of one's own thoughts, proving in a back-handed manner what was set out to be disproved.

Again, I readily agree with that, but think that god-like revelations are exactly what can too readily be got via the 'content' of those hyperbolic flights of prose a la the romantics -- and too often even the romantic era 'musicologists;' those comments can just as readily end up directing the performer to exactly the same place of faux-idolization not to be tampered with god-like revelation. ~ Thus, find another way more directly to the utterly earthy, dramatic, bawdy master of strategic placement of events that L.v.B. was to get to an appropriate interpretation.

I have taught quite a few Asian students who have their own take on Western music, singers who believe that you only need to pronounce the syllables and not be bothered by the meaning of the words, and pianists who are taught to reproduce robot-like the exact notes of the Sensei composer, or else. When you get that far removed from the cultural context, you get caricatures of musicianship like Lang Lang.

^ Well, you were 'very brave' and dared to say what I also dare to say often enough and cited that same party who is one of the most egregious of examples of that ilk now treading the boards of concert halls throughout the world. I'm certain we've both got our armor in the ready against the onslaught of his fans' injured butthurt protests that might be on the way as I type. [It is not a dodge, but I had thought but forgot to include, 'born and raised in western culture,' as a qualifier for that student about to take on anything like the Op. 110.]

As for "I don't care if Chopin had a toothache, ha, ha", regarding his Db prelude, one can regard the Ab/G# as only a repeating note, but then it becomes an ear ache. If in context of shifting moods, a dominant ostinato that would have a lot to do with the harmony of the major and minor section, "raindrop" is not a bad image for the overall piece.

If there is a prelude which could at all be called "about raindrops," it is the Op.28 No.6 b minor, near certainly penned while in Majorca and after the forced move [because Chopin and Sand were not married] and the consequent alternate lodgings into the danker monastery smack dab during the rainy season. The insistent and virtually omnipresent eighth notes in the treble, one set per beat on the beat, certainly have something more than a little obsessive about them. With the dynamic directives and articulation so marked and the markedly 'gloomy' melody in the bass... this is more like a protest and complaint about the depressing weather and the maddening Drip>drip' like that of the cumulative temperate zone misty rain gathering and falling all too persistently for days on end from the eaves.

So much for those damned titles and 'rain,' eh?  Op.28 No.6 is replete in its notation and the directives marked [as is all of Chopin, and we know just how meticulous the scores were that he handed over to his publisher, no spelling or other corrections needed. Ergo, we don't need no stinkin story to get it, or its 'emotional' characteristic, right.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Just a thought....perhaps some people actually like the hyperbole-ridden Romantic fantasies from the brains of Berlioz and like minded people in their genuine attempt to describe music to the layperson. I can't argue with something like that; anyone has the right to enjoy music in their own way. Personally I have little use for Berlioz's emotive language, but it's interesting to read nevertheless as an historical opinion.

[Florestan]

at least 85% of what is there written is highly subjective and highly 'poetic' hyperbole.

Well, you should tell that to some guy, not me. It is he who claimed that one can notice <<how little Berlioz relies on non-musical vocabulary to convey his ideas>> and that <<rarely does he get any more specific than "tender" or "furious,">>. My lengthy quotes served no other purpose than to show that this is far from being the case and anyone can see that by simply reading the texts. You confirmed my position in the best and most explicit manner possible. Thank you.

[Florestan]

Just a thought....perhaps some people actually like the hyperbole-ridden Romantic fantasies from the brains of Berlioz and like minded people in their genuine attempt to describe music to the layperson. I can't argue with something like that; anyone has the right to enjoy music in their own way. Personally I have little use for Berlioz's emotive language, but it's interesting to read nevertheless as an historical opinion.

If one accepts or not Berlioz´s interpretations and their style is of course a matter of taste. In assessing their merits (or lack thereof) one must nevertheless take into account some facts: Berlioz was a highly cultured man, had a vivid imagination and a strong emotional life of his own and, last but not least, his knowledge of music, both in its technical and expressive aspects, was on a completely different plane than ours.

[Madiel]

Question: having established that any words a composer writes about a piece are not definitive, how are we treating the words IN the piece?

Because most scores do not consist solely of musical notation.

[Monsieur Croche]

Just a thought....perhaps some people actually like the hyperbole-ridden Romantic fantasies from the brains of Berlioz and like minded people in their genuine attempt to describe music to the layperson. I can't argue with something like that; anyone has the right to enjoy music in their own way. Personally I have little use for Berlioz's emotive language, but it's interesting to read nevertheless as an historical opinion.

But of course, and no real harm done.

I do think that latching on to the ethos and its use of language from well over one hundred years ago a kind of highly specific and repeated musical tourism, and perhaps a hard core escapism in embracing an era other than your own. It can be a way of denying yourself living in and being more a part and participant in your own time... I suppose that includes 'not facing' the arts from your own time as well....

I have no problem with anyone enjoying it for what it is if in the proportionately right place and time, i.e. please don't spill it over onto anyone in music before Schubert [with the odd and one legitimate exception of Carl Maria von Weber] or post Mahler other than that second wave of the small handful of late and later 'modern' romantics who lived well into the twentieth century, Schoenberg, Sibelius, R. Strauss, Tubin, etc.

So, me included, a few peeved minds because of a contest of whose opinion is thought to be, I suppose, "More Valid," and that is seen on online fora everywhere, and is also a very "first world problem."

Still, none in that camp are writing the liner notes for classical recording companies, major orchestra's program notes, etc. -- and neither are you or me. Some Guy, on the other hand, has been paid to do just that, a good number of times over the years. 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Now it can be revealed:

In Out in the Sun, in the duet between the bass clarinet and baritone saxophone, I slipped in a quick allusion to "I Got Rhythm."

By which I intended to suggest that I got rhythm.

But did you provide a footnote, so that if you thought the score needed those things known in order to be understood as music, you would have made a note of the extramusical and made sure it was on the frontispiece of the score?

[some guy]

But did you provide a footnote, so that if you thought the score needed those things known in order to be understood as music, you would have made a note of the extramusical and made sure it was on the frontispiece of the score?

As has been pointed out before, a couple of times, musical allusions in a piece of music are not extramusical. And, in a way, even musical references to things that sound, like thunder or bird calls or coyote howls or train noises, are just barely extramusical, the things being referenced being already on the way to being music simply by being sounds.

But on to orfeo's query. I was just gearing up to write something about words and music, so sure, I'll take the bait.

Here's the thing about language. While the cliche about music being a language is pretty questionable, language is quite a lot like music. When people talk about music being a language, they often use words like "phrase" and "grammar" to make their point. These are analogies and only useful to give a general idea about how music and language are related. But if you think about language being like music, the words you use will be things like "rhythm" and "pitch." These are not analogies; these are just literally true.

Music cannot be made to express meaning like language does, no matter how hard you push it--even if you're Richard Strauss. Language, however, becomes musical quite easily, most obviously in poetry, which is a use of language that's as much about sound as it is about connotative meaning. But even in ordinary conversation, language--spoken language--is clearly a thing of rhythm and pitch and volume, all musical things. So normal is this, that the exception, inflectionless speaking, is still referred to with a musical term, tone, as in monotone.

It is quite easy and natural for language to do musical things and hence quite easy and natural for words and music to play well together, as it were. While music does not need words to explain its meanings--and my point all along has simply been that trying to explain what music means with words will inevitably start pointing away from the music to something else--the musical elements intrinsic to language means that words can be made to work very nicely in a musical context, because they're already halfway there in the first place. Like train brakes or the wind or the rain outside M. Chopin's house.

[(poco) Sforzando]

As has been pointed out before, a couple of times, musical allusions in a piece of music are not extramusical. And, in a way, even musical references to things that sound, like thunder or bird calls or coyote howls or train noises, are just barely extramusical, the things being referenced being already on the way to being music simply by being sounds.

If you had read above in the thread, you would have understood the irony in my comment. Perhaps a footnote was necessary.

[Karl Henning]

But did you provide a footnote, so that if you thought the score needed those things known in order to be understood as music, you would have made a note of the extramusical and made sure it was on the frontispiece of the score?

I did not, and I half fear that this disclosure has compromised me.

[Monsieur Croche]

I did not, and I half fear that this disclosure has compromised me.

Uh-huh. You should'a left that to the discretion of your biographer, who would know better than you whether to include it or edit it out.

Well, too late now, blabbermouth! 

[(poco) Sforzando]

I did not, and I half fear that this disclosure has compromised me.

Then heed the other half. I do not support Croche's position on this matter at all. In fact by not identifying the allusion, you create an "in joke" between you and the members of your audience alert to pick up the reference. Same thing, I would say, when Beethoven quotes folk songs in Op. 110, or Bach does the same in the Goldberg Variations, or Wagner parodies an aria from Rossini's Tancredi in the last act of Die Meistersinger, or Bartok makes fun of the Shostakovich 7th in the 4th movement of the Concerto for Orchestra (in a passage that from a strictly musical standpoint just sounds disruptive and intrusive).

[(poco) Sforzando]

Uh-huh. You should'a left that to the discretion of your biographer, who would know better than you whether to include it or edit it out.

Well, too late now, blabbermouth! 

There you have it, Karl. You must make arrangements for a biographer, then all will be well.

[Florestan]

Question: having established that any words a composer writes about a piece are not definitive,

We have not established that, not by a long stretch! Liszt, anyone? Berlioz, anyone? Mahler, anyone?

how are we treating the words IN the piece? Because most scores do not consist solely of musical notation.

Hah! 

"What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.' --- Gustav Mahler

[zamyrabyrd]

It is not your fault I did not include what I've said before: to know about those tunes used will tell the performer about the character and characteristics of the material, and that makes for their rendering those inflections of parody, bawdy, triste, etc. which is part of the musical fabric.

Again, I readily agree with that, but think that god-like revelations are exactly what can too readily be got via the 'content' of those hyperbolic flights of prose a la the romantics -- and too often even the romantic era 'musicologists;' those comments can just as readily end up directing the performer to exactly the same place of faux-idolization not to be tampered with god-like revelation. ~ Thus, find another way more directly to the utterly earthy, dramatic, bawdy master of strategic placement of events that L.v.B. was to get to an appropriate interpretation.

^ Well, you were 'very brave' and dared to say what I also dare to say often enough and cited that same party who is one of the most egregious of examples of that ilk now treading the boards of concert halls throughout the world. I'm certain we've both got our armor in the ready against the onslaught of his fans' injured butthurt protests that might be on the way as I type. [It is not a dodge, but I had thought but forgot to include, 'born and raised in western culture,' as a qualifier for that student about to take on anything like the Op. 110.]

If there is a prelude which could at all be called "about raindrops," it is the Op.28 No.6 b minor, near certainly penned while in Majorca and after the forced move [because Chopin and Sand were not married] and the consequent alternate lodgings into the danker monastery smack dab during the rainy season. The insistent and virtually omnipresent eighth notes in the treble, one set per beat on the beat, certainly have something more than a little obsessive about them. With the dynamic directives and articulation so marked and the markedly 'gloomy' melody in the bass... this is more like a protest and complaint about the depressing weather and the maddening Drip>drip' like that of the cumulative temperate zone misty rain gathering and falling all too persistently for days on end from the eaves.
So much for those damned titles and 'rain,' eh?  Op.28 No.6 is replete in its notation and the directives marked [as is all of Chopin, and we know just how meticulous the scores were that he handed over to his publisher, no spelling or other corrections needed. Ergo, we don't need no stinkin story to get it, or its 'emotional' characteristic, right.

I am trying to relate to what you have been saying and I think we actually agree in most points. To be more specific about Op. 110, for years I was not aware of the bawdy folk tunes used in the Scherzo. Without this vital piece of information, it was simply cryptic. Even being grounded in Western culture didn't help, it was necessary to be more local.

One piece that I learned a long time ago, the C minor variations of Beethoven, finally came alive in a masterclass given by Maria João Pires. She brought out the emotional possibilities of the piece that was no less a revelation to me who regarded it for years as just variations, the way it was presented to me. OK, intuitively, one can get to the same place without a program, knowing how things go as it were, but poor in imagination. It was interesting to get a view of Berlioz' life of the mind. His own works came from that fertile soil.

I do like the approach of Alfred Brendel which to me is a good balance of pure musicianship yet conversant with the extra musical associations when they apply. I am thinking of his DVD recordings of Liszt's "Italie" where he gives a short speech about the poetry or art that inspired these works. When I play the "Spozalizio", I don't so much have Raphael's picture in mind but the sublime, mystical feeling it evokes.