What is the 'composer's intention?'

[Monsieur Croche]

I cannot help asking: how does he tell if "there's no love"?

It is endemic, and I blame it on that generation whose parents were completely averse to their children getting any vaccinations.

Have a glance at previous post no. four six one.
It seems, at least more currently,
no one is singing songs of love to them,
and they are not amused.

It's everywhere... and the straw men, Apollo only knows how, seem to be multiplying themselves.


Best regards.

[some guy]

...you should ask "some guy", who extolled the potential value of music that is not interested in communicating, how he can tell that there is music that is not interested in communicating. Not me.

Now it's my turn to sigh. And this time, it's personal.

I did nothing of the sort. I didn't extoll anything. I mentioned a possibility. And I suggested that there may be other values than communication for doing anything.

And I never said--or even implied--that I can tell whether music is interested in communicating or not.

Jeebers, dude!! Stick with what I said, por favor.

[knight66]

Lots and lots of music has been and is composed with an audience in mind. I am not saying that inevitably compromises the composer: it depends what the composer is trying to do. But as so much music has indeed been calibrated towards the tases of its likely audience; you can't altogether blame people for a mismatch of expectation on some occasions.

Moving through the 20th century, composers could often get ahead of public taste and understanding and time had to pass before it gathered its audience. People go to concerts for many reasons. Life is really quite challenging without being confronted by 'difficult' music if what you went for was to relax. But although the supposedly musical public's ability to absorb new music lags behind the professional musicians; it is nevertheless becoming increasingly elastic.

The great divide however is probably always going to be tonal/atonal. Atonal is much more difficult for most people to relate to and middle period Schoenberg remains hostile ground for many almost 100 years after it was written.

Mike

[(poco) Sforzando]

I cannot help asking: how does he tell if "there's no love"?

Or for that matter, how does he tell (since we seem to be writing a lot in red these days) what is "just the notes"? I'm reminded a little bit of Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest: "I don't play accurately—any one can play accurately—but I play with wonderful expression." We cannot in fact know what a performer is feeling during a performance; maybe he has a headache, or he took a beating in the stock market, or his shoes fit badly, or traffic was terrible getting to the hall, or he's playing a concerto and he's pissed off at the conductor, or he's pissed off looking at some fat guy in the audience who's sitting there picking his nose, etc. But regardless of what the performing is experiencing, it may well be that his professionalism will take over to the degree that listeners will be intensely moved by the experience. In a sense too, performers need to keep themselves somewhat distance from the emotions their performances are conveying; I cannot, for instance, be so overwhelmed by the cataclysm unleashed in the Appassionata that I ignore how to place my hands for Beethoven's highly awkward arpeggios.

[Madiel]

Now it's my turn to sigh. And this time, it's personal.

I did nothing of the sort. I didn't extoll anything. I mentioned a possibility. And I suggested that there may be other values than communication for doing anything.

And I never said--or even implied--that I can tell whether music is interested in communicating or not.

Jeebers, dude!! Stick with what I said, por favor.

I know what you said, and apologise for colouring it, I am just trying to highlight to Monsieur Croche that he is now asking me to justify something that I never sought to justify, and that if anyone could respond, it would be you.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Lots and lots of music has been and is composed with an audience in mind. I am not saying that inevitably compromises the composer: it depends what the composer is trying to do. But as so much music has indeed been calibrated towards the tases of its likely audience; you can't altogether blame people for a mismatch of expectation on some occasions.

Moving through the 20th century, composers could often get ahead of public taste and understanding and time had to pass before it gathered its audience. People go to concerts for many reasons. Life is really quite challenging without being confronted by 'difficult' music if what you went for was to relax. But although the supposedly musical public's ability to absorb new music lags behind the professional musicians; it is nevertheless becoming increasingly elastic.

The great divide however is probably always going to be tonal/atonal. Atonal is much more difficult for most people to relate to and middle period Schoenberg remains hostile ground for many almost 100 years after it was written.

Mike

Stravinsky, in one of the Books-with-Craft, was asked for whom do you compose, and his answer was: "For myself and the historical other." By which he meant, I believe, the ideal listener who will follow his musical arguments sympathetically no matter how adventurous. If music is written solely for the audience, then the likelihood is that the composer is concerned solely with making a big splash with the public. (I am not sure I can think of composers who fit this bill, but certainly the makers of TV sitcoms and Hollywood blockbusters qualify.)

On the other hand, I strongly doubt that any composer does not want to be heard and understood. Take even Stockhausen's Carré, a work which a friend of mine considers one of the highpoints of 20th-century music, but which I after many years of listening still find a hard nut to crack. Stockhausen wrote of the work as follows:

"This work does not tell a story. Each moment can stand alone. It is necessary to take time if one wishes to absorb this music; most of the changes take place very gently INSIDE the sound. I wish that this music could impart some inner peace, expanse, and concentration; an awareness that we have a lot of time, if we take it – that it is better to collect oneself than to be beside oneself, because whatever happens needs someone to whom it can happen – someone must intercept it."

Whatever else you can say about this work, its composer cannot be accused of not wanting to communicate.

[Madiel]

"... because whatever happens needs someone to whom it can happen – someone must intercept it."

Whatever else you can say about this work, its composer cannot be accused of not wanting to communicate.

Then what is the part about "intercepting" about?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Then what is the part about "intercepting" about?

Beats me. Never said he was clear.

[James]

Top players that spend a life within the sort of composed music we are referring to on this board are often very immersed in what they are doing, they become very intimate with the music, and very opinionated about it and what it is trying to convey - and on a good night, they are in the moment, zone etc. This will definitely shine through and be felt, heard by those sensitive & attentive to it.

[Karl Henning]

Vo do dee-oh do

[knight66]

Stravinsky, in one of the Books-with-Craft, was asked for whom do you compose, and his answer was: "For myself and the historical other." By which he meant, I believe, the ideal listener who will follow his musical arguments sympathetically no matter how adventurous. If music is written solely for the audience, then the likelihood is that the composer is concerned solely with making a big splash with the public. (I am not sure I can think of composers who fit this bill, but certainly the makers of TV sitcoms and Hollywood blockbusters qualify.)

On the other hand, I strongly doubt that any composer does not want to be heard and understood. Take even Stockhausen's Carré, a work which a friend of mine considers one of the highpoints of 20th-century music, but which I after many years of listening still find a hard nut to crack. Stockhausen wrote of the work as follows:

"This work does not tell a story. Each moment can stand alone. It is necessary to take time if one wishes to absorb this music; most of the changes take place very gently INSIDE the sound. I wish that this music could impart some inner peace, expanse, and concentration; an awareness that we have a lot of time, if we take it – that it is better to collect oneself than to be beside oneself, because whatever happens needs someone to whom it can happen – someone must intercept it."

Whatever else you can say about this work, its composer cannot be accused of not wanting to communicate.

Is there anything in this I wonder? Assuming that most musicians have wanted to communicate, my impression that the major ones we think of in the 18th and 19th centuries were communicating emotions, colour, feelings and some ideas; such as the heroic, the lonely one against adversity etc. But as is very much pointed out by Stockhausen and by some others who are on the experimental edge including Boulez, perhaos in the 20th century they were moving more towards philosophy and abstractions?

Returning to the knotty problem of music having an inherent meaning: I sat/stood before probably about 80 or so conductors, many at the top of the tree, who almost all spent time telling the singers what the music was saying, what it meant. Even if this was what it meant to them; it seems that it had to mean something that was not abstract to move towards the kind of performance they envisioned. A few never did this, but most did.

Example, Solti on Missa Solemnis.....here, Beethoven is stamping his determination to continue to believe with these repeated fortissimo chords that mirror the repeated cries of Credo. ( As near as I can recall.)

Mike

[James]

On the other hand, I strongly doubt that any composer does not want to be heard and understood. Take even Stockhausen's Carré, a work which a friend of mine considers one of the highpoints of 20th-century music, but which I after many years of listening still find a hard nut to crack. Stockhausen wrote of the work as follows:

"This work does not tell a story. Each moment can stand alone. It is necessary to take time if one wishes to absorb this music; most of the changes take place very gently INSIDE the sound. I wish that this music could impart some inner peace, expanse, and concentration; an awareness that we have a lot of time, if we take it – that it is better to collect oneself than to be beside oneself, because whatever happens needs someone to whom it can happen – someone must intercept it."

Whatever else you can say about this work, its composer cannot be accused of not wanting to communicate.

It is more of a modular/static/mediative thing .. seeking to halt psychological time in a sense, with more of the focus/concentration on the NOW (absorbing the present), as opposed to a more linear progression (involving, worrying about past/future). On disc the work is severely limited. It does have a very immersive/spatial design/form. I'd like to experience it live - but few dare mount it that often, most likely due to the performance space requirements, which pose a logistical challenge.

[Monsieur Croche]

Vo do dee-oh do

Doo-dah, Doo-dah....

Thing is, with the frontispiece of my first year undergrad theory text bearing this quote from Herodotus, ''Everything is in flux,'' and that same year harmony teacher saying, ''remember, every note you make [sound] goes out into the universe and keeps on going forever.'' -- I think I understand Stockhausen's use of intercept.

The music sounds; it sounds, literally, out. If you give any credence to The Butterfly Effect, that sound will keep spreading and traveling out to at least our uppermost stratosphere... if you don't 'intercept it' hear it close to its source -- or in plain language, 'be in the audience at the concert' -- then you're gonna miss the most critical part of the show, the start of the big bang, etc.

After all, Stockhausen was being dead Sirius.

[jochanaan]

Is that a Remark?


0:)

No, it's a comment.

[Karl Henning]

No, it's a comment.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Returning to the knotty problem of music having an inherent meaning: I sat/stood before probably about 80 or so conductors, many at the top of the tree, who almost all spent time telling the singers what the music was saying, what it meant. Even if this was what it meant to them; it seems that it had to mean something that was not abstract to move towards the kind of performance they envisioned. A few never did this, but most did.

Example, Solti on Missa Solemnis.....here, Beethoven is stamping his determination to continue to believe with these repeated fortissimo chords that mirror the repeated cries of Credo. ( As near as I can recall.)

Mike

Yes, but I can see some musicians finding that sort of thing annoying:

CONDUCTOR TO FIRST CLARINET: Yes, but you are the concertmaster's/leader's lover. You must make love to the violin . . .
FIRST CLARINET (looking at scrawny concertmaster): You want this forte or mezzo-forte?

Back to your more complex other point later.

[Monsieur Croche]

Returning to the knotty problem of music having an inherent meaning: I sat/stood before probably about 80 or so conductors, many at the top of the tree, who almost all spent time telling the singers what the music was saying, what it meant. Even if this was what it meant to them; it seems that it had to mean something that was not abstract to move towards the kind of performance they envisioned. A few never did this, but most did.

Example, Solti on Missa Solemnis.....here, Beethoven is stamping his determination to continue to believe with these repeated fortissimo chords that mirror the repeated cries of Credo. ( As near as I can recall.)

Mike

Let us first remind all that when a conductor is addressing the chorus with some analogy to get the desired musical effect, that unless it is one of those few pieces using a wordless chorus, there is a text as partial guide.

Then, it is all analogy, and 'whatever analogy works' to get the desired result. My first year college harmony teacher, after first giving the 'technical' explanation of some aspect of harmony, chord function, etc. then always had ready three disparate analogies which he gave to further illustrate the technical harmonic bits of business to the class. This is a commonplace practice in many a field where the basic terminology, mechanics and functions involve highly abstract concepts. Analogies are very useful; while it seems most students / performers will need them, a few do not.

We also know Beethoven had an incredible marked ability for strategic placement, the timing of the where of a gesture that makes for the greatest dramatic effect, and in many works he has used the same device of highly dramatic repeated vertical / stab chords to similar effect as the passage you mentioned. Boiled down to the essential yet less colorful, they are signal-like, insistent, and assertive. Beyond that ....

Since we do not have 'the direct meaning' in writing from the horse's mouth, any analogy from conductor to the performer that works is fair game; if it works it will seem 'valid.' Ditto for any performer coming up with their own analogy; ditto with whatever analogy the import of the piece had on the listener to evoke the analogy they come up with in reaction to the music.

Words can be useful for formulating a better idea of structure, and to better give 'a quality' to a particular passage. Since music is a temporal art, unfolding in real time, one very neat parallel -- also an analogy -- is that there is 'a narrative.' This too is merely analogue, getting a grip on what seems like to a narrative not unlike how a story unfolds, ergo what a story 'is.' If the music is cohesive, it is easy to justify by way of rationale that the imagined story evoked by the music is therefore 'the meaning' of the piece.

Without saying that Solti was either lying or making something up 'to jerk the chorus' chain' in order to get what he wanted, there is nothing from that anecdote to prove that what he told the chorus is literally what the conductor thought that part of the piece 'meant.'

From another top of the heap conductor, speaking about Beethoven's Eroica,
''To some it is Napoleon, to some it is a philosophical struggle,
to me it is Allegro con brio.''

[(poco) Sforzando]

From another top of the heap conductor, speaking about Beethoven's Eroica,
''To some it is Napoleon, to some it is a philosophical struggle, to me it is Allegro con brio.''

That of course was Toscanini. But Beethoven wrote on the title page, after scratching out the initial dedication to Napoleon: "Sinfonia Eroica ... composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grande Uomo," and marks his second movement "Marcia Funebre." Sounds like "direct meaning in writing from the horse's mouth" to me.

[Hilltroll73(Ukko)]

That 2nd mvt is considerably more than a funeral march. I take Beethoven's label as an indicator for pace and mood, music with a funereal quality to be generated. Of course that may be wishful thinking - because I want to hear flexibility in the music's interpretation, not the same thing in every performance. Dammit.

[Uhor]

Math is like a language without 'real meaning', full of mathematical ideas about math, sometimes inspired by physics without the intention to be physics. You can put all your might into physics and end up doing math. Good math lives on independently of its applicability to its inspirational source.