What is the 'composer's intention?'

[some guy]

Me: Words are up to some tasks and not up to other. Wisdom is being able to distinguish between the tasks language is up to and the ones it is not.

This isn't all that difficult a concept, is it?

orfeo: No. And this is a music forum. All other tasks besides talking about music aren't relevant to this forum. That isn't a difficult concept either.

Me: The debate about language and how it and music are related has been going on for some time, now. You are just now noticing something about relevance?

In any event, the context has for some time now been what kinds of talking about music are useful and illuminating and what kinds of talking are silly and pointless. So the tasks, for the purpose of this discussion, are entirely about music.

Not that I agree with your attempt to be the one to determine relevance. Why, you have yourself talked about biography and politics and art (painting) and nature and philosophy and emotions--on this very thread as ever it is--have you not? Is it because when you talk about other things besides music, that's relevant, but if I do it, it's not?

[Madiel]

 

[TonyACT]

I can't say I care much what the composer's intention was; which is why I enjoy HIP at times but am not wedded to it.

I see music as a partnership between the composer / conductor / performers / listeners.

Whoever does the combination best gets my money. Which is why I love Klemperer for my Beethoven Symphonies.

[Monsieur Croche]

I can't say I care much what the composer's intention was....

I see music as a partnership between the composer / conductor / performers / listeners.

Bless you -- you brought the listener into the equation as an equally responsible partner in this business equation.

That elicits an equally important question,
? What is the listener's intention ?

[Florestan]

? What is the listener's intention ?

Well, you can start by answering it yourself. What is your intention when listening to music?

[Monsieur Croche]

Well, you can start by answering it yourself. What is your intention when listening to music?

I can not think to put it any better than I put it before.

Listen to hear what it is.

[Florestan]

Listen to hear what it is.

And what is it that you hear?

[Mirror Image]

Bless you -- you brought the listener into the equation as an equally responsible partner in this business equation.

That elicits an equally important question,
? What is the listener's intention ?

I brought the listener into the equation pages ago.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I brought the listener into the equation pages ago.

Maybe no one was listening.

[some guy]

Listeners were formally invited into the process about 60 years ago. 63.

Basically that invitation really really really pissed people off.

It's funny. Listeners are considered to be simultaneously nothing, at least as far as the whole creative process is concerned, and the ultimate lords of judgment, of taste and discrimination, with composers and performers in an also double (as in contradictory) role, that of the lords who make all of this possible and of servants to the all-puissant listeners, they who must be obeyed.

I guess being invited to participate in the creative process is not lordly enough. Or maybe, to continue the contradictions, too lordly. That is, both too lordly and not lordly enough, at one and the same time.

Be a lot more sensible to have a situation in which there are no contradictions, but I don't really see that happening, not in my lifetime, anyway. Following the simple outline as limned by M. Croche would usher in the millenium, it's true, but how many people are going to be able to follow it? Willing, I should say, eh?

[knight66]

The irony of a verbose poster declaring how words weren't up to the task wasn't lost on me.

If you don't relish being dealt with in this way, and I rather think you don't, then it is best to be more temperate.

Knight

[James]

I think music is more of an art form and less of a language. In order for music to exist, there must be someone to organise/hear certain sounds in a composition/improvisation. There are no set 'rules' for composition and anyone can come to their own legitimate conclusion about a piece in which way a day to day conversation doesn't (because 99% of the time 'would you care for some tea?' means 'would you care for some tea?'). One could argue that music came from certain rules.....but these were very very different in different cultures and at different times. Language, that is, verbal and written communication, does have rules which change over time based on human interaction within and between different cultures over time. Rules can be bent and broken to hold different connotations or in poetry and other literary forms, or in slang and other informal contexts, but the primary goal for language, unlike music, is that if it doesn't hold an explicit meaning there are certainly implicit meanings present.

It is an art form, and there is a big interaction between performers and audience .. or even between musicians  .. but there is a personal handling of a vocabulary that is developed from musician to musician. And it is a system of communication (the basis of all language) .. that expresses ideas (musical or otherwise), .. and emotions too, oh yes .. anyone who sings or plays knows that.

[James]

"Music is a language. It is a system of communication that expresses ideas & emotions." This is a completely insupportable statement unless it is meant to be understood as an analogy.

Music isn't talking or writing in common tongue so to speak .. but it is it's own language. It most certainly is it's own system of communication. And for damn certain it does communicate ideas and emotions. Only a severely short-sighted person would say otherwise, or that it is "insupportable".

[Florestan]

Now that Monsieur Croche and some guy have given us the nec plus ultra of the listener´s intention, let´s hear some of the performer´s intention.

Pianist Paul Badura-Skoda says:

Like in poetry, like in writing, that's something we really cannot tell how that happens.  You are just moved by a phrase of Mozart or by a phrase of Schubert.  You can analyze it; you can say, "It's very well constructed.  Here it's first, fourth, fifth step."  But that doesn't explain the miracle of it; you are just moved.  And why?  Here I disagree heartily with those who try to minimize Mozart the man, because Mozart the man was so great; same with Bach.  He had to say something.  And as my teacher Edwin Fischer pointed out, Mozart's music is love.  That's the way I feel about it.  If a person writes music with a great knowledge and a great artistry, but if there's no love, no urge to communicate something which is more than just the notes, I cannot be moved.

I feel that we had a certain generation of younger pianists — I'm just past sixty, so everybody who is less than fifty is younger — who perhaps emphasize too much what we would call the technical perfection, something of course we all strive to attain.  But there is limit to what every human being can do, and if you put all your energy in the so-called technical perfection not to miss one note, and to practice and to practice, then you might miss the beauty of a phrase. Let's recall another great name — Artur Schnabel.  Sometimes there were plenty of wrong notes.  Or Alfred Cortot, the greatest Chopin player.  Horowitz agrees with me; he loved Cortot.  I met Horowitz last year.  So if you take these players with all the wrong notes they give you, sometimes it becomes more than those who play no wrong notes.  But I feel that there is a younger generation coming back, as a reaction who try again to understand what is beauty, what is poetry.  You might find it interesting that the word beauty is hardly ever mentioned in reviews or in writings about music — or has not been in the last ten or twenty years.


First of all, you must convince [the students] that the printed music as such is not the only thing, that it was preceded by manuscripts, by sketches, by sometimes a very tedious work in process.  I'm thinking of Beethoven, but Chopin also had a very, very hard time to come to the so-called definite version.  I let them share the excitement of creation.  I let them write their own cadenzas and sometimes improvise on the spot.  At the beginning they are terribly timid about it, but they learn; some of them learn, and some are a little bit too inhibited about it. In order to understand the composers' lives, they need to understand their joys and their sufferings, their happy and unhappy loves, and to share the life with the composer. This helps them to become a friend.

RTWT here: http://www.bruceduffie.com/badura-skoda.html

[James]

Listening to music evokes thoughts in the listener which are nowhere present in either the written score or in any performance of that score, and that is where people are soooo frequently mistaken if they take the Music Is Language analogy literally. If mistaken, they can believe a completely abstract, or absolute, piece of music has a very specific and literal meaning.

This is a very, very wrong interpretation of what I was meaning! And we're writing in the English language, never mind a musical language!

The fact that there there is a written something, that someone else reads, learns and then delivers (performs) to others (who receive & listen to it) - ITSELF, proves my point! It is a system of communication that expresses ideas and emotions between people.

[James]

There is also a large intellectual (thoughts/ideas) and emotional investment in learning, writing and performing music too. Can all of that be interpreted literally - not really, it's more abstract, but it certainly exists. As if literal interpretation or literal meaning solely defines what a language is to begin with! A language is really about communicating.

[Madiel]

If you don't relish being dealt with in this way, and I rather think you don't, then it is best to be more temperate.

Knight

I'd rather get in trouble for my own ideas, rather than for when I echo another poster's remark as I did here.

[James]

but the primary goal for language, unlike music, is that if it doesn't hold an explicit meaning there are certainly implicit meanings present.

Musical language is really no different in those regards though, you can get that range. But we shouldn't pin things down to certain words. Bottom line is, the true primary goal of any language at the end of the day is to communicate & express ideas and emotions to each other. The language that is music, certainly does this, and that is it's primary goal I'd say.

[Karl Henning]

Sometimes the notes come first, and the intention clarifies afterwards.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Sometimes the notes come first, and the intention clarifies afterwards.

Absolutely spot on.