Schoenberg's Style and Idea Discussion

[Florestan]

EDIT: And every time you separate out some different "intellectual" thing, you're actually buying into Schoenberg's statement that upset you so much and saying you think there is something that an 'ordinary' person can't do.

It's a fact that an 'ordinary' person really cannot analyze the score and identify the nuts and bolts of any given piece of music. This has got nothing to do with that 'ordinary' person's capacity of understanding what music has to say. There are millions of people out there who can't read a score or tell an E-flat from a C yet are perfectly able to understand what Beethoven or Tchaikovsky had to say.

You're also saying that they don't NEED to do it

Yes, that is indeed what I am saying. They don't need to analyze the music in order to understand its message (ie, "what music has to say").

but your starting premise is that Schoenberg is right and there's something only a select few are capable of.

This is what Schoenberg wrote:

THERE ARE relatively few people who are capable of understanding, purely in terms of music, what music has to say.

It's not my premise at all, in fact I strongly disagree. My own premise is, on the contrary, that there are lots of people who are capable of understanding, purely in terms of music (ie, purely by listening to music), what music has to say.

We can look at any given piece of music in two ways: music as score ("intellectual") and music as performance ("empirical"). If the former, Schoenberg is wrong: even in his own times there were lots of composers, performers and musicologists perfectly capable of doing what he claimed they could not do; nowadays their number is legion. If the latter, Schoenberg is even more wrong, for the reasons shown above.

I would argue that an "elite" person is doing the same process as an 'ordinary' person, but through training as much as anything can hear more detail in the patterns.

Yes but this applies only to the process of actual listening (that which I call "empirical"). When it comes to analyzing the score as score, not as performance (that which I call "intellectual"), an 'elite' person is not doing the same process as an 'ordinary' person for the simple reason that the latter is doing nothing at all.

[Florestan]

Yeah I can agree with that. Not least because I'm not one of those elites who can hear the music just by reading it. 

How many people can hear the music just by reading it, I wonder? Only those with perfect pitch, perhaps?

[Luke]

I can, with concentration. I don't have perfect pitch. The difficulty depends on the harmonic complexity of the score. I struggle beyond a certain point.

[Madiel]

It's a fact that an 'ordinary' person really cannot analyze the score and identify the nuts and bolts of any given piece of music. This has got nothing to do with that 'ordinary' person's capacity of understanding what music has to say. There are millions of people out there who can't read a score or tell an E-flat from a C yet are perfectly able to understand what Beethoven or Tchaikovsky had to say.

Yes, that is indeed what I am saying. They don't need to analyze the music in order to understand its message (ie, "what music has to say").

This is what Schoenberg wrote:

It's not my premise at all, in fact I strongly disagree. My own premise is, on the contrary, that there are lots of people who are capable of understanding, purely in terms of music (ie, purely by listening to music), what music has to say.

We can look at any given piece of music in two ways: music as score ("intellectual") and music as performance ("empirical"). If the former, Schoenberg is wrong: even in his own times there were lots of composers, performers and musicologists perfectly capable of doing what he claimed they could not do; nowadays their number is legion. If the latter, Schoenberg is even more wrong, for the reasons shown above.

Yes but this applies only to the process of actual listening (that which I call "empirical"). When it comes to analyzing the score as score, not as performance (that which I call "intellectual"), an 'elite' person is not doing the same process as an 'ordinary' person for the simple reason that the latter is doing nothing at all.

My only response to this is that I keep telling you I'm not talking about the score, and you keep insisting on talking about it.

The score is not relevant to listening to music. I can tell you about the structure of any number of pieces of music (whether classical or pop) that I've only ever heard, not read. You seem completely determined to ignore me every time I say this.

Just as you seem to determined to ignore every time I point out that YOU ARE HEARING PATTERN AND STRUCTURE TOO. THAT'S why it sounds like music and not noise.

[Luke]

BTW I think you two are only arguing because your terms are not the same, specifically on the word technical. I agree with both of you!

Edit - But that's basically what Madiel just said.

Score-reading is one thing. I do it a lot, and I love to do it. But though I prefer to do both concurrently I fully recognise that it is not the same activity as listening. Nevertheless, when I listen, sans score, my mind, like everyone's, is still paying attention to 'pattern and structure' as Madiel very rightly says. It's doing it consciously - noticing repetition, noticing change - but also subconsciously. It does this against a backdrop of all the other music I know, so that each new piece increases my mental 'repertoire.' That's what we all do. That's the only reason why the Dudley Moore I posted last night is funny - because of the comparison to norms that we already know. Play it to a small child who has never heard Beethoven and they won't find most of it funny, beyond the faces he pulls.

[Madiel]

BTW I think you two are only arguing because your terms are not the same, specifically on the word technical. I agree with both of you!

Also on this notion of what's intellectual.

The idea that you can only read a sonata form rather than hear it is just wrong. The terminology was invented to describe things that people were hearing.

[Florestan]

My only response to this is that I keep telling you I'm not talking about the score, and you keep insisting on talking about it.

The score is not relevant to listening to music. I can tell you about the structure of any number of pieces of music (whether classical or pop) that I've only ever heard, not read. You seem completely determined to ignore me every time I say this.

Just as you seem to determined to ignore every time I point out that YOU ARE HEARING PATTERN AND STRUCTURE TOO. THAT'S why it sounds like music and not noise.

I don't ignore you on those counts. In fact, I have already agreed with them, see my reply #39, which begins with "I don't disagree", to a post of yours dealing with pattern recognition and intuitively grasping sonata form and theme and variations. I reiterate my agreement here, in case you missed it at the time.

[Florestan]

Also on this notion of what's intellectual.

I qualified my use of "intellectual" in my post #57 and you agreed in your post #58.

The idea that you can only read a sonata form rather than hear it is just wrong.

Yes, it is, and I don't remember stating or supporting it --- but if you showed me that I actually did, I'd retract.

[Madiel]

I don't ignore you on those counts. In fact, I have already agreed with them, see my reply #39, which begins with "I don't disagree", to a post of yours dealing with pattern recognition and intuitively grasping sonata form and theme and variations. I reiterate my agreement here, in case you missed it at the time.

Right. But you still want to treat this as something different to "analyzing the score". It's not different. Any time you have the capacity to recognise when the same tune came back, you're doing it.

That you might not do the same kind of exhaustive analysis that happens in a musicological journal and which bores me to tears is a difference in degree, not in kind.

[Florestan]

Right. But you still want to treat this as something different to "analyzing the score". It's not different. Any time you have the capacity to recognise when the same tune came back, you're doing it.

That you might not do the same kind of exhaustive analysis that happens in a musicological journal and which bores me to tears is a difference in degree, not in kind.

I don't disagree with this either. Let me try to reformulate my point, then: not even this kind of intuitive, unconscious analytical capacity, acquired after repeated listening, is necessary for the enjoyment of music and for understanding what it has to say -- for otherwise how do we account for the fact that countless people (yours truly included) were spellbound, hooked, blown away by the very first piece of classical music they've ever heard?

[Madiel]

I don't disagree with this either. Let me try to reformulate my point, then: not even this kind of intuitive, unconscious analytical capacity, acquired after repeated listening, is necessary for the enjoyment of music and for understanding what it has to say -- for otherwise how do we account for the fact that countless people (yours truly included) were spellbound, hooked, blown away by the very first piece of classical music they've ever heard?

Mostly we account for it by noting that it wasn't the first piece of Western music you ever heard.

I think a lot of kids these days start with The Wiggles...

Anyway, enough talking about the stuff. I'm off to listen to some.

[Florestan]

Anyway, enough talking about the stuff. I'm off to listen to some.

Excellent idea. 

[Florestan]

An Alberti bass is what you hear about 1.03 into Dudley Moore's famous Beethoven sonata parody....

Thanks. The whole thing is indeed hilariously funny.

[Karl Henning]

I really wish you wouldn't describe this as "intellectual", because you keep giving the impression that it's somehow separate from just listening to the music. It isn't. Almost all music listening relies on pattern recognition. Music IS patterns. The whole reason that music doesn't sound like random noise is because we perceive the patterns. And you're using your brain to perceive those patterns.

EDIT: And every time you separate out some different "intellectual" thing, you're actually buying into Schoenberg's statement that upset you so much and saying you think there is something that an 'ordinary' person can't do. You're also saying that they don't NEED to do it, but your starting premise is that Schoenberg is right and there's something only a select few are capable of. Whereas as I would argue that an "elite" person is doing the same process as an 'ordinary' person, but through training as much as anything can hear more detail in the patterns.

All this, but esp. what I've italicized.

[Karl Henning]

I can, with concentration. I don't have perfect pitch. The difficulty depends on the harmonic complexity of the score. I struggle beyond a certain point.

Ditto.

[Karl Henning]

Thanks, gents. Reading this has been a lovely way to pass a little time before having my brain taxed (in good and necessary ways) by my weekly PT.

[Cato]

How many people can hear the music just by reading it, I wonder? Only those with perfect pitch, perhaps?

When my mind is composing music (it happens daily), I often see the score as the music plays.

Sometimes the score appears after the initial idea occurred to me.

I do not pretend to understand anything about the ability: one could, I suppose, interpret the hallucination of the score as an "intellectual" item and the music itself as "non-intellectual" or "unconscious" entity.

However, I am not sure that such a division explains anything.

Given my current situation, I have no chance to bring any music to greater fruition.

I should mention that, when I am composing the prose for my stories, it happens that I sense a certain necessary rhythm for the next sentence...and need to shape the content to fit that rhythm.

I suppose that phenomenon might be parallel with hearing music and seeing the score.

(Many decades ago, a doctor looked at the interior of my ears very carefully and said in amazement: "Everything in there is transparent, almost like glass!  You have the most sensitive ears I have ever seen!"  In more recent years, after hitting 70 and beyond, my hearing was tested by an otolaryngologist: "You have the most sensitive hearing I've seen, especially for someone your age!") 

[Florestan]

I should mention that, when I am composing the prose for my stories, it happens that I sense a certain necessary rhythm for the next sentence...and need to shape the content to fit that rhythm.

I can relate to that. In the rare moments when I am inspired to write poetry, it's usually the first verse that comes fully formed. AFter that, it's the rhyming words and the metric scheme that take shape in my mind and then I write the remaining verses accordingly in a trial-and-error manner.

[Florestan]

(Many decades ago, a doctor looked at the interior of my ears very carefully and said in amazement: "Everything in there is transparent, almost like glass!  You have the most sensitive ears I have ever seen!"  In more recent years, after hitting 70 and beyond, my hearing was tested by an otolaryngologist: "You have the most sensitive hearing I've seen, especially for someone your age!") 

Impressive.

[Cato]

Impressive.

When I was teaching, I overheard all kinds of things and easily caught assorted whispers, which I was not supposed to hear! 

Wide-eyed amazement - and then terror about what sort of punishment would be inflicted    - always followed.