Why does structure matter?

[San Antone]

Was it you who once read a book on Cage which you recommended really enthusiastically? Or was it someone else?

Silence.  That is his best book, and is really a good read if you are interested in his philosophy.  I may have recommended it.

[amw]

My view is that structure only matters to the composer. Otherwise it is of no importance.

Otherwise, noise remains noise, whereas a Beethoven sonata will be music no matter if anyone listens or not.

If no one's listening it's not a Beethoven sonata it's just a pattern of vibrations of the air. Music requires a listener, specifically the presence of a conscious mind.

[Cato]

I want to hear it! You've sold me a ticket. Is it recorded anywhere.

Here is a MIDI version: it is not bad for MIDI.  OF course the words are not sung, only vowel sounds.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/db79ny3b2wqd4re/Exaudi_Me_%25283%2529.mp3/file

And the score:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/bgm446csffvy8hy/Schulte_Exaudi_Me_with_keybd_-_2016-07-16_%25282%2529_%25281%2529_%25281%2529.pdf/file

[San Antone]

My view is that structure only matters to the composer. Otherwise it is of no importance.
If no one's listening it's not a Beethoven sonata it's just a pattern of vibrations of the air. Music requires a listener, specifically the presence of a conscious mind.

Point taken.  I phrased my post crudely.  What I meant was that a listener must intentionally desire to hear noise as musical, whereas, no matter how a listener approaches a sonata by Beethoven, they will perceive what they hear as music.  This is not to say that there are people who might think the 4th movement of the Hammerklavier sonata might sound like noise to them.   

[amw]

That is somewhat affected by cultural factors though. We react to Beethoven as though it's music primarily because we're raised in an environment with constant exposure to certain kinds of sounds that we learn to consider musical—ie songs on the radio, background music in TV and movies and advertisements, and music at our place of worship or that we sing ourselves during holidays (and these days also streaming sites, etc). But as far as I know the reaction to certain sounds being "musical" is entirely a learned reaction: we learn that the sound of a piano signifies "music" and should be listened to rather than ignored or talked over, and therefore that primes us to hear a Beethoven piano sonata as "musical" etc. To someone who grew up immersed in a culture without pianos or equal temperament, or in general with a different conception of music, Beethoven might well sound like noise. (There's some limited anthropological evidence to support this, but obviously it's hard to find cultures that haven't ever been exposed to Western music at this point.)

In any case this is a tangent but I think we hear both a Beethoven piano sonata and e.g. this largely unstructured piece by Peter Ablinger as "music" primarily because of the sound of the piano rather than any identifiable structural elements. Whereas something like this, also by Ablinger has a very clear structure but is harder to accept as "music" because we're not used to hearing the spoken word as musical, but the presence of the pianist forces us to recontextualise and try to ignore the meaning of the words in order to focus on their sounds.

[Mandryka]

Maybe we end up saying something like X is music for Y iff Y listens to it in a certain way - so presque rien is music for me but not for Premont because I get myself in a certain relation with it. But this raises more questions than it answers. What is this relation to a listener which is constitutive of being music?

[dissily Mordentroge]

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.

You haven't met some of my acquaintances.

[Ratliff]

Maybe we end up saying something like X is music for Y iff Y listens to it in a certain way - so presque rien is music for me but not for Premont because I get myself in a certain relation with it. But this raises more questions than it answers. What is this relation to a listener which is constitutive of being music?

Music is an unfolding of sound that gives us pleasure. Is there a circumstances when it is practically necessary to define it with any more specificity than that, except for course for the purpose of wasting an entire evening arguing with someone on an internet forum?

[dissily Mordentroge]

Music is an unfolding of sound that gives us pleasure. Is there a circumstances when it is practically necessary to define it with any more specificity than that, except for course for the purpose of wasting an entire evening arguing with someone on an internet forum?

Accepting music as an unfolding of sound that gives us pleasure how would a reluctant conscript define a marching band he/she hated the sound of  ?

[San Antone]

If the definition of "music" is too broad, then almost anything could be considered music, creating no distinction between sound, noise, and music.

IMO, there two defining aspects of music: 1) organization of sound and 2) an intention to create music, both accomplished by a human being(s).

I do not think it useful to allow a listener to define what is music; if someone wishes to hear a jack hammer as music, so be it - but that does not change the definition of what music is for everyone.

[dissily Mordentroge]

If the definition of "music" is too broad, then almost anything could be considered music, creating no distinction between sound, noise, and music.

IMO, there two defining aspects of music: 1) organization of sound and 2) an intention to create music, both accomplished by a human being(s).

I do not think it useful to allow a listener to define what is music; if someone wishes to hear a jack hammer as music, so be it - but that does not change the definition of what music is for everyone.

There's a clinical term for this condition but I've forgotten it. A woman I know hears all music as noise. Her clinical hearing tests come back normal for a woman of her age, mid 30's yet she cannot tolerate music. She can detect pitch definitions but interestingly finds sounds such as the rhythmic click of a train on the tracks also intensely irritating. Doesn't help us define music though.

[Cato]

There's a clinical term for this condition but I've forgotten it. A woman I know hears all music as noise. Here clinical hearing tests come back normal for a woman of her age, mid 30's yet she cannot tolerate music. She can detect pitch definitions but interestingly finds sounds such as the rhythmic click of a train on the tracks also intensely irritating. Doesn't help us define music though.

In the 1990's, when Oliver Sacks and his books were big, I looked into things like this.

Amusia or Auditory agnosia might be the terms you want.  The former is very specific, and very rare, and a brain defect due to a stroke or tumor or whatever is involved.  I believe the specific part of the brain involved is the amygdala, but perhaps not necessarily.

[San Antone]

Mandryka entitled his thread: "Why does structure matter?"  Which seems to assume that structure does matter.  However, we've had several contributors say opposing things:

Structure does not matter
Structure only matters to the composer
Structure is what differentiates music from noise

Then the thread became derailed in a discussion trying to define "music".

The only thing that has become clear to me is that this idea of structure and even of music itself is very subjective: different people coming to vastly different conclusions.

I have made my thoughts known, and will now respectfully bow out of the discussion, continuing to lurk, because the posts are interesting, but I don't think I have anything further to add.

[Mandryka]

Here's John Cage's Four, I don't feel aware of any significant structure

https://youtube.com/v/_UsC2TBvGy8



I can just about stay with the random sequence of chords for 30 minutes.

[Cato]

Mandryka entitled his thread: "Why does structure matter?"  Which seems to assume that structure does matter.  However, we've had several contributors say opposing things:

Structure does not matter
Structure only matters to the composer
Structure is what differentiates music from noise

Then the thread became derailed in a discussion trying to define "music".

The only thing that has become clear to me is that this idea of structure and even of music itself is very subjective: different people coming to vastly different conclusions.

I have made my thoughts known, and will now respectfully bow out of the discussion, continuing to lurk, because the posts are interesting, but I don't think I have anything further to add.

We apparently want to find patterns as part of our human nature.  In responding to an earlier question I had consulted my Oliver Sacks books and was reminded of pareiodolia, which is the phenomenon of finding patterns in something random.

If the music is good, I do not think the structure matters: did not the critics complain quite a bit about Tchaikovsky's structural weaknesses, and how the Bruckner symphonies were wandering behemoths?

But whose music do people want more of these days?

[prémont]

In any case this is a tangent but I think we hear both a Beethoven piano sonata and e.g. this largely unstructured piece by Peter Ablinger as "music" primarily because of the sound of the piano rather than any identifiable structural elements. Whereas something like this, also by Ablinger has a very clear structure but is harder to accept as "music" because we're not used to hearing the spoken word as musical, but the presence of the pianist forces us to recontextualise and try to ignore the meaning of the words in order to focus on their sounds.

What about listening to a piano tuner at work? It is after all the sounds of a piano. Does he produce music or only if someone perceives it as music?

[prémont]

You haven't met some of my acquaintances.

Maybe for the better. 

[Cato]

I was thinking of all the musical journals from 1950's-1960's Academia where Professor X     would furiously show the mathematical structure of his latest post-Webern masterpiece.  0:)   Charts and diagrams and phrases like "intervallic analysis" and "non-linear motivic pulsations" were supposed to make the listener go ga-ga over this marvelous structure imitating the music of the spheres itself!

As we know, people walked or stayed away from much of this, unable to perceive much or any structure, and unimpressed by the overall musical result.

Did the structure matter in these works?  Apparently not.

[Ratliff]

Accepting music as an unfolding of sound that gives us pleasure how would a reluctant conscript define a marching band he/she hated the sound of  ?

He or she might recognize it as giving others pleasure, or might define it as "so-called music." The definition works for me. Maybe it makes sense to add a requirement that the unfolding of sound was deliberately produced for the purpose.

Feel free to go on debating whether notes on a page are music, or if music is only created when it is performed, etc.

[some guy]

I do not think it useful to allow a listener to define what is music; if someone wishes to hear a jack hammer as music, so be it - but that does not change the definition of what music is for everyone.

But when I'm listening to a jackhammer, it's just me doing the listening. "Everyone" doesn't enter into it. (I doubt there's a definition of "music" that works for "everyone," anyway.)

That's also true for when I'm listening to Shostakovich's 11th. (Which is what is on at the moment, just by the way.) It's just me, here in my wee room in Poble Sec.) There's no "everyone" about it.