Notes in music?

[Madiel]

The only time this desire has been mentioned is when someone wants to substitute this idea for the ideas actually being expressed.

Well, I would agree it's far better when we quote you directly and point out the ambiguities and downright contradictions in your own posts.

But let's just go straight to the heart of the matter: how do you explain the fact that composers repeatedly indicate they have every intention of conveying particular emotions through the titles and written instructions they attach to the score? You blame listeners for importing these notions, but composers do it frequently.

[Florestan]

You know what we call music that doesn't elicit reactions? BORING. We turn it off.

Of course. And now that I think of it, the type of music which is

not causing emotional reactions, not expressing emotional states, not telling complicated little stories, just sounding.

fits in the definition of elevator music to a T.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Certainly, but the whole argument has been that music cannot convey anything. Certainly that it can't convey emotion.

As to another part of your post that I haven't quoted, I'm really not sure that you want to tell a legislative drafter about his own job and I'm certainly not inclined to derail the main conversation any further. Suffice to say that some of the sentences you provided as examples of unambiguous utterances were not as unambiguous as you suppose. Which is no different to how many of my instructors think they've sorted everything out right until I ask them curly questions which make them realise they haven't.

It can evoke strong emotional responses. It is not my experience that the emotional response I experience is always or even often what the composer intended. I can have different response to the same piece depending on how I approach it. Communicate is too strong, I would say evoke, maybe "convey" is a vague enough term that I could agree to it. Probably because I can attach one meaning to the term while you attach another.

About the legal example, I don't mean to teach you your own business, so much as to give an obvious example I thought you would likely agree with. Let's take a famous bit of text that has roiled my country.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Is that not deliberately ambiguous? What if I used the same sentence structure, "Helium balloons, being necessarily to the making of a successful party, the right of the people to possess helium, shall not be infringed." Are only party planners guaranteed access to helium? Do the people have an absolute right to posses Helium for any purpose? If so, why add the bit about the party? Why did the framers craft this obtuse sentence that no one can agree on? Why didn't the framers write "the right of the states to maintain armed militias shall not be infringed" or "the right of citizens to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"? It seems to me that they couldn't agree and they settled on this with the idea that "my descendants will make sure that it gets interpreted right."

For something like a tax code, rather than a constitutional amendment, I think it is often the plethora of situations that causes problems.

"Ok, everyone has to pay 20% of their income."

"What about gifts?"

"Well, gifts are income, so that counts."

"What about gifts from your mother?"

"That doesn't count"

"What if your mother gives you $1 billion"

"Ok, doesn't count if it's less than $10,000"

"What if you buy something and it increases in value, is that income?"

"Not until you sell it"

"What if you get a loan, is that income?"

"No, because you have to pay it back."

"What if you don't pay it back."

"Well, then it's income, I guess."

"How would we know they aren't going to pay it back?"

...

If this goes on long enough you have a 1000 page tax code. It is practically impossible to create a document beyond a certain length that doesn't contradict itself.

[Karl Henning]

Well, I would agree it's far better when we quote you directly and point out the ambiguities and downright contradictions in your own posts.

But let's just go straight to the heart of the matter: how do you explain the fact that composers repeatedly indicate they have every intention of conveying particular emotions through the titles and written instructions they attach to the score? You blame listeners for importing these notions, but composers do it frequently.

If the music conveyed the emotion on its own, where would the need be for the determinant title?

[Karl Henning]

Of course. And now that I think of it, the type of music which is

fits in the definition of elevator music to a T.

That's a heckuva way to talk about Die Kunst der Fuge! :8

[Madiel]

If the music conveyed the emotion on its own, where would the need be for the determinant title?

You basically just said that composers are driven to provide titles because they've failed.

Who said anything about NEED?

[Madiel]

Re the 2nd amendment, firstly I don't think it's very ambiguous. I think parts of the sentence have been deliberately ignored in a concerted attempt that took decades to overturn the previous understanding of what it said. The bit about a militia has been thrown out.

Secondly I don't think any ambiguity is the result of intentional planning but of not very good writing. Frankly the quality of legal drafting in America is shit. Your country has barely adopted the idea that there's a particular professional skill involved in creating laws and prefers rhetoric.

Edit: From what I've heard, your tax code is shit as well. All those questions you're posing are exactly the sorts of questions that properly written tax code can answer. Please stop trying to describe the scope and operation of laws.   

[Florestan]

Re the 2nd amendment, firstly I don't think it's very ambiguous. I think parts of the sentence have been deliberately ignored in a concerted attempt that took decades to overturn the previous understanding of what it said. The bit about a militia has been thrown out.

I don't want to derail the thread but I agree with Scarpia: this is a textbook case of ambiguity. What people have the right to bear arms? All people, or only those who belong to a well-regulated militia? There is no way to deduce it unambiguously from the formulation.

[Madiel]

And yet for the first century courts had no difficulty understanding that one of those interpretations made the mention of militias irrelevant, and therefore was not likely to be the intended meaning.

"Militias. But actually everybody can bear arms for any reason, forget I ever mentioned militias. The militias meant nothing."

Night.

[Karl Henning]

You basically just said that composers are driven to provide titles because they've failed.

Who said anything about NEED?

I agree: I affix titles to my music because I am a failure as a composer.
Your words are unambiguous.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Well, I would agree it's far better when we quote you directly and point out the ambiguities and downright contradictions in your own posts.

But let's just go straight to the heart of the matter: how do you explain the fact that composers repeatedly indicate they have every intention of conveying particular emotions through the titles and written instructions they attach to the score? You blame listeners for importing these notions, but composers do it frequently.

I would not deny is not uncommon that composer wants to unburden himself or herself by writing a piece of music that somehow expresses his or her feelings. That doesn't follow that a typical listener will recognize the same feeling. I often find myself having a reaction at variance with the title of a piece, or composers intent as related in the little musicological essays you find in CD booklets. I remember hearing a Mendelssohn string quartet which struck me as fairly tedious pseudo-Mozartian minor key note spinning. Then I read that it was composed to express his overwhelming grief at the death of his sister. Ooops. I didn't get the message.

Oddly it is the "sincere" music that I find ambiguous, not the playful. I've been listening to Poulenc orchestral music and there he is figuratively putting on this mask, then that mask, switching from melodramatic gloom to flippant happiness and back. He is playfully invoking all of the familiar tropes we've learned from all the "serious" music we've been exposed to. The profound music the the ambiguous music.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

That's a heckuva way to talk about Die Kunst der Fuge! :8

Good thing I wasn't drinking my coffee at the moment I read that.

[Florestan]

That's a heckuva way to talk about Die Kunst der Fuge! :8

Do you imply that you have no emotional reaction whatsoever when listening to it?

[ritter]

I'd say a sensuous reaction, which not necessarily has to be emotional. Why would one's reaction to, say, listening to the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto have to be different to that of looking at a Braque still life?

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Do you imply that you have no emotional reaction whatsoever when listening to it?

I have an emotional reaction when I hear the door bell ring. The fact that there is invariably an emotion component to the response to music doesn't prove that transmitting emotion is the sole or primary function of all music.

[Florestan]

The fact that there is invariably an emotion component to the response to music doesn't prove that transmitting emotion is the sole or primary function of all music.

I don't remember ever making that claim.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

You said music "not causing emotional reactions, not expressing emotional states, not telling complicated little stories, just sounding" is the definition of elevator music.

You've convinced me of one thing, I have nothing further to say in this thread.

[Florestan]

You said music "not causing emotional reactions, not expressing emotional states, not telling complicated little stories, just sounding" is the definition of elevator music.

And I stand by that.

I have nothing further to say in this thread.

Quite possibly.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Quite possibly.

Sorry, didn't intend to get snippy.

I still have nothing further to say.

[Florestan]

But let's just go straight to the heart of the matter: how do you explain the fact that composers repeatedly indicate they have every intention of conveying particular emotions through the titles and written instructions they attach to the score? You blame listeners for importing these notions, but composers do it frequently.

Not only titles and instructions, but also explicit statements, like for instance:

I know well that music is made to speak to the heart of man, and this is what I try to do if I can; Music without feelings and passions is meaningless --- Luigi Boccherini

I compose music because I must give expression to my feelings, just as I talk because I must give utterance to my thoughts. --- Sergei Rachmaninoff

I saved for last what is possibly the most direct and unequivocal rebuttal of some guy's claim:

My music is the expression of emotional states. I have no interest whatever in sound for its own sake --- Arnold Bax