Why does structure matter?

[Mandryka]

Can we revisit this old chestnut?

I've been enjoying a lot of music which seems intuitively composed, music by Luc Ferrari, Michael Pisaro, John Cage and others. The pieces I have been enjoying may have been designed systematically, and they may have a significant structure (≠beginning and end and middle), but if they do it's not obvious to me.

I don't care, and, to parody Liebewitz on Sibelius, I think that their detractors do not understand. The harmony which they feel is wrong makes the music so original! The absence of development, rhythm and melody are  its strengths. Take an example (and someone's bound to tell me it's a canon or a set of variations or something!)

https://www.youtube.com/v/gso6mUiDEzc

[relm1]

Structure matters and I would argue Michael Pisaro has structure in "Asleep, Street, Pipes, Tones" though it is elusive.  Obviously space and silence are an important part of this.  The entire work is an hour long and single sparse notes are the overall impression with several organ recordings interjected.  About an hour in, a simple descending melody emerges near the "climax" with notes overlapping.  A bit of a strata which in musical terms is an abstract piece of music background and foreground layers intersect and operate and different levels and speeds.  The music is also hallucinatory in nature which sort of fits its subject of being on the verge of sleep.  I once went to an art exhibit that started at midnight and ended at 7am where the whole point of it was you were sleep deprived as you experienced the visuals and music that was very slowly evolving room to room.  Some of it was hallucinatory and some of it was your own mind losing focus because you were sleep deprived.  Similarly to how the night evolves in a very elusive form, there is an arch...a structure.  Dusk, light sleep, REM, circadian rhythms 1, 2, and 3, light sleep, dawn.

[Mandryka]

Structure matters and I would argue Michael Pisaro has structure in "Asleep, Street, Pipes, Tones" though it is elusive.  Obviously space and silence are an important part of this.  The entire work is an hour long and single sparse notes are the overall impression with several organ recordings interjected.  About an hour in, a simple descending melody emerges near the "climax" with notes overlapping.  A bit of a strata which in musical terms is an abstract piece of music background and foreground layers intersect and operate and different levels and speeds.  The music is also hallucinatory in nature which sort of fits its subject of being on the verge of sleep.  I once went to an art exhibit that started at midnight and ended at 7am where the whole point of it was you were sleep deprived as you experienced the visuals and music that was very slowly evolving room to room.  Some of it was hallucinatory and some of it was your own mind losing focus because you were sleep deprived.  Similarly to how the night evolves in a very elusive form, there is an arch...a structure.  Dusk, light sleep, REM, circadian rhythms 1, 2, and 3, light sleep, dawn.

I think it's one thing to say that the music has been composed according to a plan, a process, or that the music has a long range form. But it's quite another thing to say that it matters for the listener. Of course it may matter for the composer -- I'm sure it's much easier to fill time with music if you have defined a process before you start.

My own feeling is that if I can hear the form, then that keeps me listening for longer. An hour long piece like the Wanelweiser Stones (Christian Wolff) performance, well it's just too much of randomness to make me want to stay with it. Pisaro's music is broken up into quite small units and that helps.

I think (but I'm not sure) that Cage said of Atlas Eclipticalis that the form is like the stars in the sky -- I'm not sure how long I can watch the night sky.

[San Antone]

I think all classical composers who have sufficient command of their craft utilize structure in their work.  It is most important when dealing with longer forms, but even miniatures have a structure that no doubt serious consideration went into as part of the composition process. 

Cage imposed external forms to his compositions, e.g the star charts, or the outline of a rock or even the random imperfections on a page of manuscript.  This was one way he used to remove himself, his taste, his intention, from the process, and his work is an experiment in forms in nature, or serendipitous occurances.  In his early work, Morton Feldman used graphic charts to envision and map out a work, but later he become almost entirely intuitive in his writing.  But even composing intuitively, a composer uses his internal instincts to naturally create formal structure.

A listener benefits from this process indirectly, since otherwise the music could appear to be aimless, repetitive (or the opposite), seem too long (or the opposite), or otherwise less enjoyable.

[jess]

Jonathan D. Kramer has an excellent book called The Time of Music which discusses the cultural and theoretical implications of structure. Having a piece of music which is end-goal oriented, having a clear 'trajectory' through time is something fairly unique to european classical styles, where cyclical structures and other approaches to having sounds exist through time that aren't so end-goal oriented are more common everywhere else.

John Cage took a lot more than his contemporaries out of non-western philosophies and practices when it came to structuring his music, which is why I guess many of his longer pieces don't have audible and familiar structures to them.

[relm1]

What is important to understand is not everyone defines structure the same way.  For example, the movie Pulp Fiction has traditional structure but is then told out of sequence.  It bends traditional structure yet also conforms to it.  Form and structure is very important part of art but artists are granted great liberties in how they reveal or interpret it.

[Mandryka]

Jonathan D. Kramer has an excellent book called The Time of Music which discusses the cultural and theoretical implications of structure. Having a piece of music which is end-goal oriented, having a clear 'trajectory' through time is something fairly unique to european classical styles, where cyclical structures and other approaches to having sounds exist through time that aren't so end-goal oriented are more common everywhere else.

John Cage took a lot more than his contemporaries out of non-western philosophies and practices when it came to structuring his music, which is why I guess many of his longer pieces don't have audible and familiar structures to them.

Unfortunately Kramer's book is rare and expensive.

[some guy]

Structure doesn't matter.

Or rather, it only matters when something goes wrong. And "something goes wrong" depends almost entirely on who's doing the looking (listening). We do pretty consistently, and persistently, talk as if these kinds of things were not relationships, as if the listener were not also doing things, active things, with the music as it plays. (The Carter double concerto that I now hear would not be so radically different from the Carter double concerto as I first heard it were that not so.) And leaving the listener out of the equation has consequences, the most pernicious being the elevation of "the listener," meaning always "those listeners who agree with my (totally objective) assessment of this or that piece or style of music," to infallible omnipotence in aesthetic matters.

A listener who dislikes a piece has many ways to express that dislike, noisy, dissonant, formless, and surely the current favorite, atonal. None of these describe the music itself. All of them identify that a listener has failed to establish an understanding or sympathetic relationship with the music in question. Of course there may indeed be reasons for that failure in the music itself, but none of those adjectives do any more than suggest what some of those reasons might be. And if there is one listener--it only takes one--who is able to enjoy the piece, then Hey Presto!!, the piece is enjoyable.

Formless, I would say, is a null set. Everything has a form. Or, to put it another way, every person responding to a thing will impose a sense of form upon it. If that is true, it makes the "formless" criticism disingenuous at best. You are a person? Then you cannot but see, hear, experience structure in everything. It's what you do. That's the matter.

[jess]

Unfortunately Kramer's book is rare and expensive.

steal it from a library

(it's worth it!!!!!)

[dissily Mordentroge]

steal it from a library

(it's worth it!!!!!)

As an ex-librarian I should warn those planning to widen their 'cultural horizons' they could easily end up in court.
You see librarians tend to take a very dim view of the theft of rare, valuable tomes.

[jess]

As an ex-librarian I should warn those planning to widen their 'cultural horizons' they could easily end up in court.
You see librarians tend to take a very dim view of the theft of rare, valuable tomes.

It's probably cheaper to pay the court fees!

[prémont]

My own feeling is that if I can hear the form, then that keeps me listening for longer. An hour long piece like the Wanelweiser Stones (Christian Wolff) performance, well it's just too much of randomness to make me want to stay with it. Pisaro's music is broken up into quite small units and that helps.

I think you answered your own question here. Structure is important - not to say critical - because our brain works best if it can systematize the sensory inputs. Without consciously or at least unconsciously perceivable form, the listener becomes disoriented - which may be the composer's intention - but the point is quickly realized and becomes trivial by repetition, which naturally causes most listeners to lose interest in the music in question.

[some guy]

Structure is important - not to say critical - because our brain works best if it can systematize the sensory inputs. Without consciously or at least unconsciously perceivable form, the listener becomes disoriented - which may be the composer's intention - but the point is quickly realized and becomes trivial by repetition, which naturally causes the listener to lose interest in the music in question.

"The listener," you say? Different listeners make different responses to the same piece. Surely you've noticed this. Unless you are the type of person who automatically discounts others' responses, you have certainly noticed this. So take this unnamed "music in question." Listener A loses interest in it. But what about listener B, who remains rapt throughout? If that happens, the generalization about "the listener" goes out the window, no?

Listener A becomes disoriented. Listener B does not. What can be generalized about "structure" from that? Nothing. Listener A has failed at something. Listener B has succeeded.

And what about Listener C? Let's also posit Listener C, who enjoys being disoriented, who likes having expectations raised and then dashed or replaced with something unexpected. Where does Listener C fit in to this conversation?

Seriously folks. Different listeners have different knowledge, different experience, different preferences, different capacities. Making generalizations about a piece of music (unnamed but definitely in question) without considering any of that is at the very best, um, hasty.

[prémont]

My post was about the human brain, so I made a small edit in my post above.

And what is the purpose of disorienting the listener? The only thing such music evokes is chaos and this is incompatible with the way our brain works.

[some guy]

And what is the purpose of disorienting the listener? The only thing such music evokes is chaos and this is incompatible with the way our brain works.

Ah.

So Listener A gets to be "the listener," while Listeners B and C get snubbed. Too bad. I thought that their experiences might contribute something valuable to this conversation....

Also note that no one has at any time suggested that disorienting "the listener" is a credible goal. Not surprisingly, as "the listener" is not a very credible category.

Also also note that the comment about "such music" would be more compelling if the "such music" part of it referred to a particular piece.

[steve ridgway]

Can we revisit this old chestnut?

I've been enjoying a lot of music which seems intuitively composed, music by Luc Ferrari, Michael Pisaro, John Cage and others. The pieces I have been enjoying may have been designed systematically, and they may have a significant structure (≠beginning and end and middle), but if they do it's not obvious to me.

I don't care, and, to parody Liebewitz on Sibelius, I think that their detractors do not understand. The harmony which they feel is wrong makes the music so original! The absence of development, rhythm and melody are  its strengths.

I've enjoyed plenty of non-classical music that doesn't have this obvious formal structure, such as what you might term "ambient". Listening to the pieces are more like opening a window to another world, immersing yourself in the view for a while, then closing it again. They don't need to go anywhere.

[San Antone]

People have a natural inclination towards order, or structure.  From arranging furniture in a room, to books on a shelf, flowers in a vase, to writing music.  Even if no structure exists, we will subconsciously will find order, relationships among the components, and create one for ourselves.

[Mandryka]

The thing that I like very much in Some Guy's post, and San Antonio's and this is really maybe the start of a big topic in itself, is that the act of listening contributes to making the sounds into music. They're probably now going to say that they didn't say anything like that . . .

Here's a conjecture for refutation. Music is the result of an interaction between score, performer and listener in a context. Holistic. No one element is more critical than another,

[prémont]

Here's a conjecture for refutation. Music is the result of an interaction between score, performer and listener in a context. Holistic. No one element is more critical than another,

There isn't much reason to refuse this, as it is obviously true. It implies among others that the term "music" is questionable if the listener cannot structure the sounds. In such cases it is simply  noise.

[San Antone]

There isn't much reason to refuse this, as it is obviously true. It implies among others that the term "music" is questionable if the listener cannot structure the sounds. In such cases it is simply  noise.

To my way of thinking the only thing that separates music from noise is structure.  Now, one can enjoy listening to noise, but that does not make noise music.

The thing that I like very much in Some Guy's post, and San Antonio's and this is really maybe the start of a big topic in itself, is that the act of listening contributes to making the sounds into music. They're probably now going to say that they didn't say anything like that . . .

Here's a conjecture for refutation. Music is the result of an interaction between score, performer and listener in a context. Holistic. No one element is more critical than another,

I agree with this, and did say something like this in my post.