Identity of a Musical Work

[Mahlerian]

Recently, a discussion here seemed to uncover some level of disagreement over what parts of a musical work are intrinsic, and which are up to the will of a performer.  It is certainly true that works from different eras, or even from the same era, will have different kinds of intrinsic features, or levels to which those features inhere in a given work.

I'll be opening up the discussion here to others to give their own ideas about what constitutes a piece of music, which pieces they consider interesting border cases, and so forth.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Once any text, or any creation of any kind, is made public, anyone can interpret it in any way they want. Of course, some interpretations may be informed by various evidences in various different ways and some might be a massively different reworking of the original creation whereby new ideas are applied to suit the visions of others.

Each and every interpretative vision for any creation will always have value and meaning to at least a few people in the world. When it comes to music, I find that some performers make a better case for their interpretation than others when it comes down to how they play a piece. Perhaps it's because there is a certain consistent logic, or some kind of consistent rhetoric in he performance. Rhetoric is probably a better word here....if an interpretation doesn't present a unique and convincing rhetoric then I end up losing faith in what the performers are doing. This rhetoric could be anything, like how does a performer make a point of particular motifs, perhaps tempo relations and evocations of different moods based on how that works with the structure of a composition, how they use these aspects of interpretation to create a cohesive whole that might build some overall tension that is resolved later on (depending on the work) and so on.

Sometimes an interpretation that does something wildly different to the source material can have an interesting and convincing rhetoric. What happens if you set the bizarre world of the Magic Flute in some equally bizarre extra-terrestrial location complete with zany aliens and new text, new jokes to match? That isn't even the craziest thing someone could do differently, but when I watched a production of that on YouTube there was a compelling enough rhetoric to make it feel cohesive and sensible....sensibly silly, I should probably say.

What if an interpretation fails to convince me? Most likely, I haven't made a connection with the interpretative rhetoric of the performer, or perhaps the rhetoric is based on information that I consider to be flawed based on my own research and understanding. Perhaps there's no real rhetoric there and the performers are just going through the motions ad playing each note without any care for the music, although this seems unlikely.

Basically, I don't think there's anything intrinsic about any particular composition. Always question the score, come up with your own conclusions, perform it accordingly. The score ain't some kind of holy relic, it's just some dots and lines and a few words to help musicians get some idea of what they might like to do, and when they do something interesting and with a lot of purpose to it, then anyone can come along and hear it, enjoy it and derive their own meaning from it.

Conversely, no matter how good or bad the interpretation may be, if we no longer recognise the source material then it ceases to be that source material.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Alright I've come up with another idea as I was leaving the house (damn, I am running late but oh well).

Say there is a performance of Mahler 6th symphony and all the notes are followed closely but there is an almost complete disregard for the orchestral balance and colours that Mahler indicated in the score as  well as smothering contrapuntal features of the music and also almost a complete disregard for other expressive and tempo markings besides the ones at the start of each movement.

Another performance of Mahler's 6th follows everything that Mahler wrote in the score and makes a point of deriving certain effects of orchestration, phrasing, tempo and combining them all together in a traditionally expressive way as we would associate with Mahler's music....but.....instead of playing all the correct notes, one third of the time the pitches are played as Mahler wrote them, another third of the time the pitches are a semitone too high and another third of the the time the pitches are a semitone too low, all at the discretion of the individual musicians of the orchestra. This takes away from the the harmonic and tonal aspects of the work and even impacts the kinds of orchestral colours Mahler gets from parallel doublings of instruments even if the melodic contour is always kept intact.

The question is: when we ignore whether these are interpretations we personally like or not, which interpretation of Mahler 6 is recognisably closer to Mahler 6 as we would expect to hear it?

I have a hunch that most people will say the former is closer to Mahler 6 than the latter only because the music we listen to is from a culture that has been so systematically evolving around pitch that it's more difficult to hear and recognise music based on rhythms or colours or any other pattern that is unique to any composition. This is probably closest the idea of an element of western classical music that is intrinsic to almost all compositions in terms of how we listen to them. I would say this is an unconscious bias more than anything.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Personally, I find this to be an interesting topic but maybe others simply don't...........

[arpeggio]

I find it interesting.  It is just others do a better job of expressing my ideas than I do.

[Mahlerian]

Thanks for the responses so far.

Personally, I find this to be an interesting topic but maybe others simply don't...........

I was hoping, given that this is a more generalized version of a topic that generated a good deal of interest, it would spark some discussion.

[NikF]

Once any text, or any creation of any kind, is made public, anyone can interpret it in any way they want. Of course, some interpretations may be informed by various evidences in various different ways and some might be a massively different reworking of the original creation whereby new ideas are applied to suit the visions of others.

Yeah, I go along with that.

Don't know if this is the type of response being sought, but speaking only for myself if i have a photo in a gallery then it's out of my hands. People can interpret however they want. More, it's none of my business.
But the same photo in a different forum - say, a message board - where there can be ongoing input from myself or someone else directly connected with it is then a different matter.

[Mahlerian]

Basically, I don't think there's anything intrinsic about any particular composition. Always question the score, come up with your own conclusions, perform it accordingly. The score ain't some kind of holy relic, it's just some dots and lines and a few words to help musicians get some idea of what they might like to do, and when they do something interesting and with a lot of purpose to it, then anyone can come along and hear it, enjoy it and derive their own meaning from it.

Conversely, no matter how good or bad the interpretation may be, if we no longer recognise the source material then it ceases to be that source material.

What you mean to say is, I assume, that there are no specific elements that are intrinsic to a given composition.  One may change this or that element without changing its identity.  It's the paradox of the heap, in that some undefined number of changes would have to be made to the text to make it no longer the text.

Extreme changes to one element or another can vastly distort the whole, however.

How faithfully can we say this replicates Beethoven's work, for example?

https://www.youtube.com/v/hoINrtIWpTA


In a different sense, how about this?

https://www.youtube.com/v/6z4KK7RWjmk

[Mahlerian]

Yeah, I go along with that.

Don't know if this is the type of response being sought, but speaking only for myself if i have a photo in a gallery then it's out of my hands. People can interpret however they want. More, it's none of my business.
But the same photo in a different forum - say, a message board - where there can be ongoing input from myself or someone else directly connected with it is then a different matter.

This strikes me as a different meaning of interpretation from what is meant when referring to music.  You are talking about a matter of reception, rather than presentation.

[Baron Scarpia]

Some terms become less meaningful if you try to define them with too much detail. Music is one.

To my way of thinking "music" is a artistically conceived series of sounds (usually physical, possibly imagined), it is something that unfolds in time. That is an essential part of it.

A score is a prescription for making music, I wouldn't consider it music, per se. In an similar way, I'd say that an audio file is not music, but music is produced when it is fed into an appropriate playback technology.

I think it is still reasonable to say, for instance, "Beethoven wrote music" because to my way of thinking, the music was unfolding in his mind before he notated it.

I don't think there is such a thing as an "invalid" performance. There are those where the performer makes a point of trying to re-create the performance that the composer intended, and there are those where the performer looks for the "spirit" of the work. Both can result in very satisfactory or very unsatisfactory results, depending on the skill of the performer and the taste of the listener.

[Mandryka]

Thanks for the responses so far.

I was hoping, given that this is a more generalized version of a topic that generated a good deal of interest, it would spark some discussion.

Yes, for my part I know this is a very complex area, it involves problematic ideas like vague objects and nominalism. I just don't have the time to think about it today or tomorrow, later in the week maybe.

[Mahlerian]

Some terms become less meaningful if you try to define them with too much detail. Music is one.

To my way of thinking "music" is a artistically conceived series of sounds (usually physical, possibly imagined), it is something that unfolds in time. That is an essential part of it.

A score is a prescription for making music, I wouldn't consider it music, per se. In an similar way, I'd say that an audio file is not music, but music is produced when it is fed into an appropriate playback technology.

I think it is still reasonable to say, for instance, "Beethoven wrote music" because to my way of thinking, the music was unfolding in his mind before he notated it.

Can an algorithm write music, then?  It has no awareness of the sounds it is producing, and yet what it produces is undeniably music unless one requires that human agency be involved at the composition stage.

I agree that neither scores nor sound files are music (scores represent music, sound files contain performances of music).  But we are not trying to define music in the abstract.  We are discussing the boundaries of musical works.

I don't think there is such a thing as an "invalid" performance. There are those where the performer makes a point of trying to re-create the performance that the composer intended, and there are those where the performer looks for the "spirit" of the work. Both can result in very satisfactory or very unsatisfactory results, depending on the skill of the performer and the taste of the listener.

Surely you would agree that some performances better reflect the work than others.  Put the composer's intentions aside.  We are talking about the work itself (as far as it can be ascertained), not what the composer was thinking about when he or she wrote it.  After all, there can certainly be things in a work that the composer did not consciously put there.

[Baron Scarpia]

Can an algorithm write music, then?  It has no awareness of the sounds it is producing, and yet what it produces is undeniably music unless one requires that human agency be involved at the composition stage.

Yes, an algorithm can produce music, although probably the creator of the algorithm encoded his or her musical ideas into the algorithm. Mozart created a game where music could be "written" by rolling dice, I think.

Surely you would agree that some performances better reflect the work than others.  Put the composer's intentions aside.  We are talking about the work itself (as far as it can be ascertained), not what the composer was thinking about when he or she wrote it.  After all, there can certainly be things in a work that the composer did not consciously put there.

I'm not very comfortable with "better reflect the work than others." Certainly limitations of technical ability will prevent a performance from reflecting the work, but I consider the quality of a performance to be otherwise subjective.

[Mahlerian]

Yes, an algorithm can produce music, although probably the creator of the algorithm encoded his or her musical ideas into the algorithm. Mozart created a game where music could be "written" by rolling dice, I think.

Then the music unfolding in Beethoven's mind is irrelevant to whether or not he was writing music.  All that it takes is getting one's ideas into a format which can represent music or a performance thereof.

I'm not very comfortable with "better reflect the work than others." Certainly limitations of technical ability will prevent a performance from reflecting the work, but I consider the quality of a performance to be otherwise subjective.

How well do you think the Cobra Beethoven 9 represents the work?

[Baron Scarpia]

Alright I've come up with another idea as I was leaving the house (damn, I am running late but oh well).

Say there is a performance of Mahler 6th symphony and all the notes are followed closely but there is an almost complete disregard for the orchestral balance and colours that Mahler indicated in the score as  well as smothering contrapuntal features of the music and also almost a complete disregard for other expressive and tempo markings besides the ones at the start of each movement.

Another performance of Mahler's 6th follows everything that Mahler wrote in the score and makes a point of deriving certain effects of orchestration, phrasing, tempo and combining them all together in a traditionally expressive way as we would associate with Mahler's music....but.....instead of playing all the correct notes, one third of the time the pitches are played as Mahler wrote them, another third of the time the pitches are a semitone too high and another third of the the time the pitches are a semitone too low, all at the discretion of the individual musicians of the orchestra. This takes away from the the harmonic and tonal aspects of the work and even impacts the kinds of orchestral colours Mahler gets from parallel doublings of instruments even if the melodic contour is always kept intact.

The question is: when we ignore whether these are interpretations we personally like or not, which interpretation of Mahler 6 is recognisably closer to Mahler 6 as we would expect to hear it?

I have a hunch that most people will say the former is closer to Mahler 6 than the latter only because the music we listen to is from a culture that has been so systematically evolving around pitch that it's more difficult to hear and recognise music based on rhythms or colours or any other pattern that is unique to any composition. This is probably closest the idea of an element of western classical music that is intrinsic to almost all compositions in terms of how we listen to them. I would say this is an unconscious bias more than anything.

Why do I get the impression that the subtext of this is Karajan's detested recording of the 6th.

And your hypothetical performance of Mahler 6th with notes randomly altered by a semitone would be recognizably less close to Mahler 6 by basically every human on earth that has heard music before.

[Roasted Swan]

Jessop - several observations - ignoring for a moment the 'jolt' when this semi-tone modulation occurred; for the vast majority of listeners within seconds the ear would adjust to the new pitch.  I really do not think your average listener carries a "memory of tonality" across the arc of an hour long symphony.  Yes it might impact slightly on the timbral nature of the sound but again the ear quickly adjusts.  In any case think HIP with huge variations in pitch or indeed all those Renaissance choral works which can (and are) performed at a variety of pitches - think Spem in Alium for one.  And even in modern orchestras you have a significant variation in the pitch of the A to which they tune.

My personal feeling is that the score - in as urtext an edition as possible - should be the starting point for any interpreter.  But then you should NOT slavishly adhere to the score and do nothing else.  Surely the whole point of music over say literature of paintings is that the art only happens through the engagement of a living performer.  An performer worth their salt will be able to give you chapter and verse on any and every interpretative decision they make.  It is the listener's prerogative to engage or dismiss those choices but never think for a second that the choice just 'happened'.  Even the most inspired and seemingly spontaneous moments of music making will spring from hours of analysis, preparation and thought.  Which is why the notion that somehow Karajan was "silly" - since this idea clearly spring from that one - irks me.  Karajan might produce a performance that seemingly contradicts many of the markings in a score but my sense is that he is still aiming to serve the music - albeit through a refracting lens that demands beauty of orchestral sound above all other.  I would also argue a kind of evolutionary approach which says we could not have arrived at the quasi-modernist approach to Mahler without the lush saturated version before. 

[Baron Scarpia]

Then the music unfolding in Beethoven's mind is irrelevant to whether or not he was writing music.  All that it takes is getting one's ideas into a format which can represent music or a performance thereof.

I think music is a sequence of sound which is perceived as beautiful or meaningful, however it is produced. Beethoven had music unfolding in his head, he had the technical skill to notate it so that when the notations were followed others could hear what Beethoven imagined. He produced a prescription for concrete music to match the music in his imagination. If there is a composer who can produce musical notations entirely through theoretical considerations, without "hearing it in his or her head" then I would say music is produced when (and if) it is performed and perceived as music.

How well do you think the Cobra Beethoven 9 represents the work?

Don't have the liberty to listen at the moment.

[mc ukrneal]

Surely you would agree that some performances better reflect the work than others. 

Personally, I think I'd be inclined to say no. And even if some did (or not), I would not place much (any?) value on that. Some performances might be more successful, perhaps even at the expense of following the score more exactly. But that would likely be an entirely subjective decision.

I also agree with Roasted Swan about Karajan.

[Mahlerian]

Jessop - several observations - ignoring for a moment the 'jolt' when this semi-tone modulation occurred; for the vast majority of listeners within seconds the ear would adjust to the new pitch.  I really do not think your average listener carries a "memory of tonality" across the arc of an hour long symphony.  Yes it might impact slightly on the timbral nature of the sound but again the ear quickly adjusts.  In any case think HIP with huge variations in pitch or indeed all those Renaissance choral works which can (and are) performed at a variety of pitches - think Spem in Alium for one.  And even in modern orchestras you have a significant variation in the pitch of the A to which they tune.

This is something different from what Jessop was saying.  He was saying that some of the pitches in the work are randomly altered.

According to early critics of Wagner's music, it wouldn't have made a difference if this had been done, and I imagine they would have thought the same of Mahler's Sixth...

My personal feeling is that the score - in as urtext an edition as possible - should be the starting point for any interpreter.

Why?

You say that the score can safely be ignored or contradicted at the whims of a given interpreter, so what reason is there to prefer an urtext?

[Baron Scarpia]

Jessop - several observations - ignoring for a moment the 'jolt' when this semi-tone modulation occurred; for the vast majority of listeners within seconds the ear would adjust to the new pitch.

I think what Jessop described was more random than that. Not that the entire orchestra would suddenly shift by a semitone, but that each melodic line would include random shifts, i.e., the phrase A B C D E is written, and the oboe takes the liberty of playing A B-flat C# sharp D E-flat, while a horn, doubling the same phrased, plays A-flat B-sharp C, D-flat, E. The result would be obvious cacophony.