Why does structure matter?

[Mandryka]

Suppose someone said that the sound of the piano tuner or hammer was music.  Would that be like saying that Yves Klein's IKB 191 is fine art?

The extension of the concept of "fine art" to IKB 191  has been authorised by experts: curators and investors and academics.

(This post is like something in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations!)

[jess]

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.

Is this implying that the listener should not be considered a) a human nor b) an active participant in the music?

Could the experience of listening to a jackhammer be an experience which is organised in part in the listener's mind and in part by the contract that the human operating the jackhammer is working with? Could the listener be a human being who intentionally intends to listen to it as music, and therefore the sound of the jackhammer is music?

How do you define what sounds are organised by a human and what is not?

[steve ridgway]

It's much more pleasant on hearing the grating of a metal roller shutter on a nearby building to remark "somebody is playing Xenakis" .

[some guy]

Or if someone knocks over a bag of nails, and then drops a hammer, to say "someone is playing Beethoven."

Which actually was said. In 1881, 54 years after Beethoven had died. So at least, you picked a composer who has only been dead for 18 years. But you have also probably never written anything as important as The Stones of Venice, so perhaps that evens things out....

This does illustrate, for the 27 billionth time, give or take an odd million or six, the difference between music "criticism" and music--music changes over time, that is, Beethoven sounds different from Bach, Tchaikovsky from Beethoven, Stravinsky from Tchaikovsky (mostly ), and Xenakis from Stravinsky. But the invectives all sound the same, whether they're from 1819 or 1919 or 2019.

You'd think that as the sounds of music change over the years that the invectives would change, too. But nope. With very small changes in vocabulary and maybe style, any slam of new music from any year about any composer will sound identical. "Noisy, formless, off-putting." Who's that about, Chopin? Brahms? Cage? Nobody knows. Could be anybody.

At least music by an architect won't be criticized for lacking structure, eh? Or WiLL it?

[Mandryka]

So how does noisy, formless and off putting get transformed into beautiful and deep?

I'm reading a book about Van Gogh at the moment, where exactly this happened. In his case part of the story is the investment of very large sums of money.

Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to hear op 131 or the Leipzig chorales with the same bewilderment, the same naivety, as the first listeners?

It's also maybe worth mentioning that beautiful and deep can get transformed into noisy, formless and off putting, presumably when institutional investment dries up. This happened to Ockeghem in the c19 century.

[some guy]

Well, I'm not sure I could explain how it happens. Why it happens is easier--none of those things, that is, none of the adjectives, describes the music. They all refer, in reality, to the responses. By people. And people do respond differently, from person to person and from year to year.

It would indeed be interesting to be able to hear op. 131 like its first listeners.

[Mandryka]

Well, I'm not sure I could explain how it happens. Why it happens is easier--none of those things, that is, none of the adjectives, describes the music. They all refer, in reality, to the responses. By people. And people do respond differently, from person to person and from year to year.

I am sure you're right.

[steve ridgway]

I wasn't criticising Xenakis, I like his electro acoustic works and the roller shutter actually sounds more pleasant to me as a result .

[some guy]

I wasn't criticising Xenakis, I like his electro acoustic works and the roller shutter actually sounds more pleasant to me as a result .

The roller shutter is indeed a lovely sound.

I had a similar experience with fingernails on a black board (soon to be replaced with the squeaking of a dryerase marker on a white board). That sound used to trigger an unpleasant physical reaction in my chest. After several years of listening to new music, I heard that sound one day (I was a teacher, so had many opportunities) without the unpleasant reaction--only pleasure. So that's good.

Otherwise, it occurred to me the other day to wonder "what do people mean when they say 'structure'?" That is, what are they referring to? It's embarrassing to me to admit this occurred to me so late in the game. I usually go straight for the premises, after all. Perhaps Mandryka's "beginning, middle, end" reference lulled me into submission.

But in this thread so far, no one has spent much time talking about the word itself, thus leaving the conversation free to wander all over the contradictory place, with no sense of the contradiction. So I wonder. How much of any disagreements so far are not really disagreements, just different ideas about what 'structure' refers to.

[This, just by the way, is a good example of why the "let's not get into semantics, here" plaint is so pernicious. Or at least disingenuous. If we DON'T get into semantics, then we're liable to the endless loop recounted in Twain's story about the father, the daughter, and the daughter's boyfriend. The father and boyfriend find themselves unexpectedly agreeing about the importance of c.o.'s. Only one tiny problem, which has the daughter biting her otherwise impeccable nails against when the loop DOES end--the father means "commissioned officer" and the boyfriend means "concientious objector."]

[Madiel]

It essentially matters for the same reasons that the grammar in this sentence matters.

Or the reasons why buildings and architecture are different to having a pile of bricks and wood dumped on a plot of land.

Making choices as to the organisation of sonic materials, construction and planning, is what makes the difference between music and random ambient sound.

I mean, people seem far to keen these days with all sorts of things, not just music but particularly music, to claim that there are no parameters at all. But if you simply have no decisions at all then you completely destroy the point of having a different word for an art form and the point of attributing authorship to it. You cannot claim to be the composer of a piece of music you didn't actually in any way compose.

And as soon as you have composition - as soon as you have any kind of decisions and planning about how sounds are going to be generated - you have structure. You have parameters that have closed off certain sonic possibilities in favour of others.

And you also have the possibility of assessing a performer who is not improvising, composing music as they go, as having made mistakes in failing to follow with sufficient accuracy the pre-planned instructions.

[Mandryka]

"what do people mean when they say 'structure'?"

Here's a piece of music with no structure, the harmonies and the rhythm seem random, as does the sequence of phrases and silences. Cage, Music of Changes, David Tudor at the piano.

https://www.youtube.com/v/B_8-B2rNw7s&t=147s

[Madiel]

How do you define what sounds are organised by a human and what is not?

'

By checking out whether a human organised them. This isn't a difficult question unless you bend over backwards to make it one by pretending that the accidental side-effect of operating a jackhammer, noise, is the same thing as the planned goal of operating a jackhammer.

The sound of a jackhammer is only a component of music if someone decided that they wanted to hear the sound of a jackhammer, and weren't interested in breaking up some concrete.

[Madiel]

Here's a piece of music with no structure, the harmonies and the rhythm seem random, as does the sequence of phrases and silences. Cage, Music of Changes, David Tudor at the piano.

https://www.youtube.com/v/B_8-B2rNw7s&t=147s

On what basis do you say it has no structure? "Seeming" random is not a solid argument.

Either Cage is the composer or he isn't. Choose.

EDIT: In fact, some brief reading on Music of Changes seems to indicate that the timing of phrases and silences and the rhythm is entirely determined by Cage in advance. His technique in composing is an entirely different question. The point is he wrote the results of his technique down just like any other composer, and created a series of instructions for later performers to follow.

[Mandryka]

More complicated things are going on in Cage's Four, where there does seem to be some sort of pattern of phrase lengths and pauses. I very much like Four.

https://www.youtube.com/v/_UsC2TBvGy8&feature=emb_logo

[Cato]

On what basis do you say it has no structure? "Seeming" random is not a solid argument.

Either Cage is the composer or he isn't. Choose.

EDIT: In fact, some brief reading on Music of Changes seems to indicate that the timing of phrases and silences and the rhythm is entirely determined by Cage in advance. His technique in composing is an entirely different question. The point is he wrote the results of his technique down just like any other composer, and created a series of instructions for later performers to follow.

True, but I believe Mandryka's point is that some sort of structure does exist.

More complicated things are going on in Cage's Four, where there does seem to be some sort of pattern of phrase lengths and pauses. I very much like Four.

Music theory derives from what composers create: I suspect that even the Neanderthal flute players had some sort of pattern in their music, well before any Neanderthal Professor X could expatiate about intervallic analysis.     

[some guy]

Either Cage is the composer or he isn't. Choose.

Um, no.

One of Cage's contributions to the conversation was to redefine what "composer" means. To open up the situation to collaboration, or, better, to acknowledge that collaborative nature of any human undertaking.

That is, to re-establish what "composer" used to mean? One of the more frequently ignored aspects of what we now call "baroque" music is how improvisatory it was, with scores functioning more as mnemonics than as the detailed and exclusionary documents favored by Romantic composers, along with the absurdity of a written-out cadenza. (Here, you performers--improvise here by playing this bit just like you played all the other bits, note by written-down note, and nothing else!!)

So was Handel the composer or not? Choose!!

[Madiel]

True, but I believe Mandryka's point is that some sort of structure does exist.

I don't know why you believe that when his first sentence is: "Here's a piece of music with no structure."

[Madiel]

Um, no.

One of Cage's contributions to the conversation was to redefine what "composer" means. To open up the situation to collaboration, or, better, to acknowledge that collaborative nature of any human undertaking.

That is, to re-establish what "composer" used to mean? One of the more frequently ignored aspects of what we now call "baroque" music is how improvisatory it was, with scores functioning more as mnemonics than as the detailed and exclusionary documents favored by Romantic composers, along with the absurdity of a written-out cadenza. (Here, you performers--improvise here by playing this bit just like you played all the other bits, note by written-down note, and nothing else!!)

So was Handel the composer or not? Choose!!

You misunderstand my point entirely.

The answer is yes in both cases, and I've already explained why. And nothing I said is inconsistent with the way baroque composers gave more latitude to performers than Romantic ones did.

Because baroque composers might have been less exclusionary than Romantic ones, but they were nevertheless exclusionary. A baroque score is not a free-for-all that does not dictate in any way what sounds you produce while claiming to perform it. There are reasons why you can identify one sound recording as a performance of Handel's keyboard suite in D minor (HWV 437) and another sound recording as not a performance of it. The document is doing something to the sounds being generated. And if the document and the sounds don't match then someone will be along in the comments on Youtube to say "hey, that's not the piece you've said it is".

[Cato]

I don't know why you believe that when his first sentence is: "Here's a piece of music with no structure."

Because he tempered that with further qualifications.

You misunderstand my point entirely.

The answer is yes in both cases, and I've already explained why. And nothing I said is inconsistent with the way baroque composers gave more latitude to performers than Romantic ones did.



Because baroque composers might have been less exclusionary than Romantic ones, but they were nevertheless exclusionary. A baroque score is not a free-for-all that does not dictate in any way what sounds you produce while claiming to perform it. There are reasons why you can identify one sound recording as a performance of Handel's keyboard suite in D minor (HWV 437) and another sound recording as not a performance of it. The document is doing something to the sounds being generated. And if the document and the sounds don't match then someone will be along in the comments on Youtube to say "hey, that's not the piece you've said it is".

Very nice!  An analogy: a performance of Shakespeare in modern dress -and with e.g. American accents -  would still be recognizable because the words would be the same.  One can disagree with the method of performing the play, but the text is the same as one done in Elizabethan-era clothing and accents.

[Cato]

I was just thinking of certain reviews by critics from the past and present.   Right now I cannot find an example but one often reads complaints about Pianist Wam-Bam Keyster or conductor Manny Jesters "losing sense of the structure" of a work and only "playing the notes" as if they were disconnected.

In fact, not too long ago, I came across a review of a performance of a Bruckner symphony somewhere, and the critic complained about the disconnected nature of the performance, and how nothing "hung together."

Certainly structure matters to those critics!  0:)