Notes in music?

[Mandryka]

His willful denial of 150 years musicology which established the way to sing Gregorian chant is a cultural crime, IMO. 

Established in the Roman Catholic church you mean? I don't think the Solesmes way  is

established musicology

and it's really only because of it's blessing from popes that it is

established . . . performance practice

I only wish J.F. Weber would have stuck around GMG if for no other reason than to offer the black letter evidence of Peres' obfuscation.

That would have been cool!

[Mandryka]

The question that arises in my mind, then, if things get stretched that far, is whether it's actually valid to continually to advertise and market the result as "the Machaut mass".

Seriously, if your focus is on Rebecca Stewart (not someone I actually know) and you're looking to buy another Rebecca Stewart recording because you like what she does, then no doubt this isn't a problem. But if someone likes the Machaut mass and buys the same recording on the basis that they want a recording of the Machaut mass and it's billed as a recording of that, then the recording not being recognisable as the Machaut mass becomes a serious problem.

Rebecca Stewart is a serious academic musicologist, I wondered if San Antone would argue that she is

willfully ignoring established musicology and performance practice in a self-absorbed vision of their own importance.

Rebecca Stewart is an (ethno)musicologist and singer, retired head of the early vocal department of the Brabants/Fontys Conservatorium and co-founder/ex 'maestro di cappella'of the Cappella Pratensis. She received her PhD in ethnomusicology in 1974 after having worked for many years in Hindusthani classical music. Since moving to The Netherlands in that same year she has concentrated mostly on early western music. After having taught for seventeen years in the Royal Conservatory of The Hague (as co-founder of the Baroque singing department and as a teacher of theory), she was invited to begin a new early music department in Brabant in which singers (and later instrumentalists) received a vocally-oriented practical and theoretical education which extended from the earliest chant traditions of Western Europe to the end of the Renaissance. She has published several articles concerning the relationship between singing and modal music. Primarily in her function as leader of the Cappella Pratensis she has made many CDs. After her retirement she formed and is leader of the Ensemble and Center Cantus Modalis. She continues to give concerts, workshops and lecture demonstrations.

Another good example would be Tom Beghin, I'm thinking of his hearing machine Beethoven



I have a suspicion that in this bit of the argument some people are confusing

established musicology .

with

established  performance practice

[Mandryka]

The question that arises in my mind, then, if things get stretched that far, is whether it's actually valid to continually to advertise and market the result as "the Machaut mass".

The point you're making is related to something San Antone said

It is music written by Beethoven, and the music will essentially be the same performed by a dozen different pianists.  Yes, there will be some differences in tempo, or articulation, or phrasing - but the overall effect will be of the same work, written by Beethoven.

If the music is essentially the same, shares the same essence, then you can call it the same name.

But as a matter of convention, people do call Rebecca Stewart's and Marcel Peres's and Bjorn Schmelzer's performances "The Machaut Mass" -- that's the practice which has developed in the community of people who discuss and think about these things. If you think that there's something incoherent about that practice, then over to you to make out the argument.

My own feeling regarding early music is that there has been a academic challenge to established performance practice, which I like to call The Modal Singing Movement, and that challenge extends from chant through Notre Dame polyphonony through to Gombert and Gesualdo. It is a major trend of C21 music making. And so it's not surprising that there's a conservative reaction, all the more so because so much of the music is linked to the church, where there's all sorts of dogmas. This sort of argument tends to home in on early music not just because the manuscripts are more open, but because Modal Singing is relatively well established and worked out and academically supported and attractive to audience.

[Madiel]

I just DID make that argument. Not based on San Antone's words but your own.

There's something incongruous between now invoking the authority of others to assert the essence of the Machaut mass is there, and your own previous testimony that you, with your own ears, struggled to hear any such thing.

Either our own ears and minds are relevant to this conversation, or you can just run to authority and basically tell me that because I don't have a degree in musicology I have nothing useful to contribute.

But what you cannot do is have it both ways at the same time. Having this discussion is not compatible with suddenly invoking a community who think and discuss about these things that you exclude US from.

If your choice is that it's all up to the experts, then we might as well just shut down the conversation here.

[San Antone]

Established in the Roman Catholic church you mean? I don't think the Solesmes way  is

and it's really only because of it's blessing from popes that it is

That would have been cool!

You are overlooking the fact that Peres has little or no actual musicological basis for his interpretations, and from what I understand, has either misunderstood the sources he cites, or has intentionally misled his audience. 

He has employed the same melismatic style of singing, because of the cantor he uses, in every recording of chant, whether or not it is appropriate according to existing musicological evidence.  But that does not mean his are not very rewarding performances, since I think they are.  There is no reason to attempt to prove that they are "the way" - they are Peres' way, and that should be enough.

And I am no expert nor a scholar in this matter, but trust those who are enough to believe that the Solesmes way of singing chant has been accepted for well over a century by the early music scholarly community (within and without the church) as "the way" to sing chant.

Peres is the outlier, not Solesmes.

And why do you think I would question Rebecca Stewart's scholarship?  It is you who found her recording/performance of the Machaut Messe "so different from the mainstream" - not me (an opinion I do not share).  Hers is a fine performance, and I don't hear anything odd or strange about it.  I don't enjoy it as much as Mary Berry's or Andrew Parrott's, but Stewart's is not unidiomatic.

We have wandered far off the topic of this thread.  And have begun to repeat our arguments from the other thread, here.  Maybe it is time for us to agree to disagree.

Neither one of us is expert in these matters, I am relying upon Weber, you on Peres - and I would prefer that those two gents would fight it out, as opposed to the two of us.  That would be a most entertaining and enlightening debate.

[Mandryka]

With all due respect to you and Jerome, you are forgetting that Peres studied with Michel Huglo at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique prior to recording for Harminia Mundi. Huglo had been at Solesmes. Oh, and by the way,  he doesn't use the same cantors or indeed the same melismatic style in all his chant recordings, have you heard his Missa Tournai, or his Hildegard psalms CD - from memory they're not like that at all, maybe much of the stuff in the Auxerre recording.

[Pat B]

But, again, despite Peres and Schmelzer's departure from long-standing musicology in early music, their music-making is enjoyable and worthwhile. I just wish they would drop the pretense of claiming that their way is more authentic and just embrace the fact that because the manuscripts were created in an environment of oral transmission, and much of their interpretation has been lost, they have the liberty to sing Machaut in the way they imagine in their mind's ear.

Where do Peres and Schmelzer claim their way is more authentic?

[San Antone]

Where do Peres and Schmelzer claim their way is more authentic?

You would need to read their essays, some of Peres' writing has been quoted in this tread.

[Mandryka]

Yes it's a nice quote of San Antone's that Pat B found because it puts the emphasis quite rightly on oral tradition. I am out of my depth at the moment here, I don't know what "musical anthropology" has to say about oralcy - I shall investigate. I'd be surprised if associations (confrères)  with long practices transmitted orally are just discounted, dismissed, by modern researchers, though I believe that the C19 researchers at Solesmes did exactly that.

There's a fabulous bit in one of Peres's books where he talks about the first time he showed Angelopoulos a very early manuscript, the Solesmes method just couldn't makes sense of the neumes, he says that Angelopoulos knew exactly how to turn it into music. But this is clearly contentious, and the approach was a major reason why Dominique Vellard and Ben Bagby left EO and formed their own ensembles.

[BasilValentine]

Music takes different people differently. How true that is. But one thing seems pretty standard here at GMG (and almost everywhere else, for that matter), and that is that music has emotional content. Without getting into the merits of that view, though if that happens it happens, I'm more interested in the moment in finding out if anyone at GMG listens to music itself, without having to turn it into something else. Sure, music sets all sorts of different feelings and ideas going in all sorts of listeners, but that power must surely go without saying. What it seems to have no power to do is convince anyone that it's good and fine and strong just being its own sweet self, not causing emotional reactions, not expressing emotional states, not telling complicated little stories, just sounding.

Anyway, the people who have responded to relm1's despair thread, needn't respond to this one. I already know who you are. What I'm interested in is whether there are people who just like listening to music qua music. People for whom music itself is so powerful, so sufficient, that there's never any need on their part to turn it into other things that aren't music before it becomes pleasing or understandable.

I don't buy the dichotomy at the basis of your query: that the emotion or expression in a musical work is "content," as distinguished from "the notes," meaning the work's formal properties or "structure." I don't buy that "the notes" are the music and the expression is something else derivative and external to the music. Expression and structure are indecomposable. In music from Beethoven on, especially, the logic of a musical work's expressive arc is often a primary factor in its formal coherence. If one isn't hearing the indecomposable effect of a work's formal and emergent expressive properties, one isn't hearing the music. Expression is baked in and integral. IMO, obviously.

[San Antone]

This is a request to a moderator to consider moving the lengthy off-topic discussion of chant to the Chant thread.

Thanks.

[Florestan]

I don't buy the dichotomy at the basis of your query: that the emotion or expression in a musical work is "content," as distinguished from "the notes," meaning the work's formal properties or "structure." I don't buy that "the notes" are the music and the expression is something else derivative and external to the music. Expression and structure are indecomposable. In music from Beethoven on, especially, the logic of a musical work's expressive arc is often a primary factor in its formal coherence. If one isn't hearing the indecomposable effect of a work's formal and emergent expressive properties, one isn't hearing the music. Expression is baked in and integral. IMO, obviously.

This.

[some guy]

I don't buy the dichotomy at the basis of your query: that the emotion or expression in a musical work is "content," as distinguished from "the notes," meaning the work's formal properties or "structure." I don't buy that "the notes" are the music and the expression is something else derivative and external to the music. Expression and structure are indecomposable. In music from Beethoven on, especially, the logic of a musical work's expressive arc is often a primary factor in its formal coherence. If one isn't hearing the indecomposable effect of a work's formal and emergent expressive properties, one isn't hearing the music. Expression is baked in and integral. IMO, obviously.

But what you're not buying, as has already been the case on this thread, is something that's not only not for sale but something not in what you've quoted. I not only never suggested that "the emotion or expression in a musical work is 'content'," but I suggest that I don't believe that emotion is "in" a musical work but rather a result of a listener engaging with the musical work, which engagement is so often a translation. (I also don't think that music expresses anything, or nothing so specific as what any individual listener can think they're getting out of it. Music does seem to be able to make people feel like they're getting messages, but as those messages differ, sometimes radically, from listener to listener, I think the more prudent conclusion would be that the actual source of the messages is the listener, not the music.)

Anyway, look at what you quoted. The statement about emotional content is not my belief but my conclusion about what other people believe.

I also, just by the way, do not think that "the notes" are "the work's formal properties or 'structure'." That misapprehension is, I think, at the core of the dichotomy that I reject, namely that if one is not responding to the emotional expression, then one is analyzing the formal properties. I'm saying something quite other, that "the notes" themselves are both sensual and sufficient. That is, to thoroughly enjoy a piece of music, one does not have to turn it into something else, philosophy, autobiography, narrative, massage, or any of a host of other "uses" to which music is so often put. Just the sounds that you're hearing are enough for a fully pleasurable experience. And, you'll recall, that was the ostensible reason for starting this topic, to see if there were others who found music to be a) a thing and b) a complete and sufficient thing.

[Madiel]

But what you're not buying, as has already been the case on this thread, is something that's not only not for sale but something not in what you've quoted. I not only never suggested that "the emotion or expression in a musical work is 'content'," but I suggest that I don't believe that emotion is "in" a musical work but rather a result of a listener engaging with the musical work, which engagement is so often a translation. (I also don't think that music expresses anything, or nothing so specific as what any individual listener can think they're getting out of it. Music does seem to be able to make people feel like they're getting messages, but as those messages differ, sometimes radically, from listener to listener, I think the more prudent conclusion would be that the actual source of the messages is the listener, not the music.)

Anyway, look at what you quoted. The statement about emotional content is not my belief but my conclusion about what other people believe.

I also, just by the way, do not think that "the notes" are "the work's formal properties or 'structure'." That misapprehension is, I think, at the core of the dichotomy that I reject, namely that if one is not responding to the emotional expression, then one is analyzing the formal properties. I'm saying something quite other, that "the notes" themselves are both sensual and sufficient. That is, to thoroughly enjoy a piece of music, one does not have to turn it into something else, philosophy, autobiography, narrative, massage, or any of a host of other "uses" to which music is so often put. Just the sounds that you're hearing are enough for a fully pleasurable experience. And, you'll recall, that was the ostensible reason for starting this topic, to see if there were others who found music to be a) a thing and b) a complete and sufficient thing.

Your proposition creates its own false dichotomy. You set up the claim of music as a "thing" as distinct from things like "philosophy" and "autobiography", which I can understand. But crucially, you also put emotional content on that side of the equation, on the opposite side of from "music as thing".

Why just 2 categories? To me, the notion of putting emotional reactions into the same category as things like inserting a philosophical or autobiographical into music is quite foolish. Reacting to music emotionally is not remotely in the same category as trying to, say, mine the autobiographical details of the composer.  Saying "this is sad music" is not at all the same as saying "this is sad music and therefore the composer must have been having a bad time of it".

I'm exasperated as anybody by many attempts to shove extramusical ideas and meanings into a piece of music that was not presented by the composer as having any kind of programme. But your choice of language is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

If you think that "the notes" are "sensual", then you are in fact advocating a reaction to the notes. While continuing this silly claim that people having emotional reactions is somehow extramusical in some different way to your own enjoyment of music.

[Madiel]

In other words, I do listen music as "the thing itself". And I get pleasure out of it. That being an emotional reaction to any sane person.

EDIT: I note the original post rejects "causing emotional reactions" but wants to find people who "like" listening to music or find it "pleasing". That's a pretty powerful demonstration of the lack of coherence in the dichotomy you're attempting to create.

[Madiel]

One additional remark:

If music doesn't have emotional content, what the blazes was Sibelius doing writing a piece called Valse triste? How dare he indicate that the notes are sad, eh?

[Florestan]

One additional remark:

If music doesn't have emotional content, what the blazes was Sibelius doing writing a piece called Valse triste? How dare he indicate that the notes are sad, eh?

Seems like for the OP the "completeness and sufficiency" of music means that it is nothing else than a combinatorial game of sounds with no other meaning and purpose than the combination itself --- but this notion is given the lie to by virtually every great composer's (utterances about) music.

[Madiel]

nothing else than a combinatorial game of sounds with no other meaning and purpose than the combination itself

The phrase "aural Sudoku" just popped into my head.

[Florestan]

The phrase "aural Sudoku" just popped into my head.

Nicely put.

[some guy]

Madiel, your struggles might be less, um, strugglesome if you cease conflating "emotional content" with "emotional reaction."