Mozart

[prémont]

Well listen to Egarr and Leonhardt in the toccata and see whether one sounds more like a musical representation of a man staggering under a weight. I just did, and I do!

I think this is overinterpretation. But I hear very well the dramatic and mournful Good Friday's mood in the entire partita, particularly when I know, that this is what I am supposed to hear. The cross figures in the gigue subject are also obvious without a preceding study of number symbolism.

[Madiel]

Anyone who has read about the "Bible Code", which was a big fad once upon a time, knows how easy it is to over-interpret things and give them meaning when you are actively seeking to GIVE them meaning. The supposed miraculous features of the text of the Bible turned out to be equally present in the text of various secular books.

See also the desire to see the face of Jesus in food items. Human beings are primed to see faces. We seek meaning.

I would certainly accept there are extra-musical meanings in Bach cantatas for example, because the whole point of the music is to enhance a text and certain traditions in setting those texts are known. When the word "eternity" gets set as an exceptionally long phrase, it's not coincidence.

It's when people supposedly uncover hitherto secret things that it gets silly. If the composer MEANT people to recognise things in a piece of music, and you can't hear them and the composer didn't tell anyone, then frankly the composer failed.

Adding together an arithmetical sequence of numbers and getting a square number as a result isn't some astonishing revelation, it's what happens when you add patterned numbers together. Music is BUILT on patterns. When you convert music into raw numbers you're highly likely to get patterned results, not random ones, precisely because patterns sound to us like music. Random sounds are treated by our ears and brains as noise.

Also, rock music generally does not contain intentionally planted backward messages advocating drug use and devil worship. It's just that if you play ENOUGH records backwards, you can find something that vaguely sounds like words instead of nonsense syllables. We are primed to find meaning.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go down to the supermarket and decode the message my Russian handlers have cunningly hidden in the number plates of the vehicles that will be parked there at precisely 6:49 pm.

[Florestan]

I think you meant most music-listeners, which in the last half of the 18th century was a fraction of the population, most of which were too poor to listen to anything but the corner harmonica player.  In the teaching of music, Bach and Vivaldi and Handel (among others) stood tall.  All one has to do is read the comments by Mozart, Beethoven, etc. etc. etc.

I'm eager to learn what did Mozart and Beethoven say about Vivaldi.

[Florestan]

I don't have the energy to go into this polemic again (and besides it's the wrong thread). Read Leonhardt's essay.

You misunderstood me, I am not about any polemic and certainly I didn't imply that the AoF could not or should not be played on keyboard.

[Florestan]

how easy it is to over-interpret things and give them meaning when you are actively seeking to GIVE them meaning.

This.

It's when people supposedly uncover hitherto secret things that it gets silly. If the composer MEANT people to recognise things in a piece of music, and you can't hear them and the composer didn't tell anyone, then frankly the composer failed.

And this. I am very skeptical about alleged secret codes and symbolism in a piece of music which nobody who have not read about them being there can find by simply listening to it. Heck, music is supposed to be listened to, not read as a cabalistic treatise.

[Mandryka]

.

And this. I am very skeptical about alleged secret codes and symbolism in a piece of music which nobody who have not read about them being there can find by simply listening to it. Heck, music is supposed to be listened to, not read as a cabalistic treatise.

This is whataboutism. Nobody has asserted the straw man which you have deliberately set up just to knock down. My argument is that the performance can, maybe should, be influence by these things. The audience need be no more cognisant of that than they are of any other work the performers put in to transforming the score into sound.

[Madiel]

Well listen to Egarr and Leonhardt in the toccata and see whether one sounds more like a musical representation of a man staggering under a weight. I just did, and I do!

Right, the audience doesn't NEED to hear this apparently...

Mandryka ignores me by the way. Which is why he attributes my argument to Florestan.

Which means, Andrei, you're going to have to quote the same post in order to refute the new claim that he never said this had anything to do with the listener. 

[prémont]

You misunderstood me, I am not about any polemic and certainly I didn't imply that the AoF could not or should not be played on keyboard.

Duly noted. No harm done.

[prémont]

This is whataboutism. Nobody has asserted the straw man which you have deliberately set up just to knock down. My argument is that the performance can, maybe should, be influence by these things. The audience need be no more cognisant of that than they are of any other work the performers put in to transforming the score into sound.

Two questions:

1)What's the point of number symbolism if the listeners don't need to be aware of it?

2)Music can only express itself. The affects we attribute to it are completely subjective. If we think that the affect of music is, for example, mourning, what importance does it have to know what kind of mourning inspired the composer. Whether it is the loss of a close relative or Jesus' death on the cross?

[Mandryka]

Two questions:

1)What's the point of number symbolism if the listeners don't need to be aware of it?

To provide some ideas for experimentation about what affecti to try to evoke in performance.

2)Music can only express itself. The affects we attribute to it are completely subjective. If we think that the affect of music is, for example, mourning, what importance does it have to know what kind of mourning inspired the composer. Whether it is the loss of a close relative or Jesus' death on the cross?

Well, for a Lutherian Christian like Bach, the sadness of mourning the death of Christ is conjoined with rejoicing his resurrection. I think there's a passage in Luther where he states this explicitly -- that when we see the crucifixion we see the resurrection at the same time, when we see the nativity and the baptism we see the crucifixion. My proposal is that this is exactly the sort of external knowledge which will inspire an informed performer, and, I would suggest, produce some very satisfying, nuanced, multi-layered, sematically complex and ambiguous results.

This became clear to me years ago, when I first started to explore CU 3 seriously. BWV 684, which seems to contain a musical representation of the lapping water of the Jordan in the pedaliter -- for a Lutherian that water, when Christ was being baptised, was not a long tranquil stream -- it was red with the blood of his imminent crucifixion. I did find one which did seem to play the water music in a threatening way, but I can't remember who -- Doerselaar maybe -- whoever it was, it was a good experiment to try.


I'm not sure about how this applies to Mozart, by the way, but I bet it does! Similarly for the esoteric symbolism in late Beethoven.

[Mandryka]

Not Mozart, but Haydn -- well worth reading Chapter 5 of Beghin's book in the context of this discussion -- what he says about the Auenbrugger Sonatas (Hob. XVI:35–39, 20)

[Florestan]

Okay, let's play the game. Bach's whole life was governed by 2.

Born 1685, 1+6+8+5= 20, 2+0 =2
Born in Eisenach which has 8 letters, 8=2 cubed
Died 1750, 1+7+5=13, 1+3=4 which is 2 squared
Died in Leipzig which has 7 letters, 7=8 (which is 2 cubed)-1 which symbolizes his departure from terrestrial life
Lived 65 years, 6+5=11, 1+1=2
4 letters in his name, which is 2 squared
Often signed his compositions and letters JOH. SEBAST. BACH, which adds up to 13 letters, 1+3=4 which is 2 squared
Had 2 wives
Had 20 children, 2+0=2
Only 2 of his children were influential composers on their own
Had 4 cousins, which is 2 squared
Had 4 grandchildren, which is 2 squared
Wrote 4 Passions, which is 2 squared
Wrote 224 cantatas, 2+2+4=8 which is 2 cubed
Wrote 40 chamber music works, 4+0=4 which is 2 squared
Wrote 22 keyboard works, 2+2=4 which is 2 squared
His complete works are listed in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis which has 20 letters, 2+0=2
Matthaus-Passion was revived in 1829, 1+8+2+9=20, 2+0=2 by Felix Mendelssohn which has 16 letters in his name and 16 is 2 times 8, ie 2 times 2 cubed

And so on and so forth. 

[prémont]

To provide some ideas for experimentation about what affecti to try to evoke in performance.

Yes, one approach of many.

Well, for a Lutherian Christian like Bach, the sadness of mourning the death of Christ is conjoined with rejoicing his resurrection. I think there's a passage in Luther where he states this explicitly -- that when we see the crucifixion we see the resurrection at the same time, when we see the nativity and the baptism we see the crucifixion. My proposal is that this is exactly the sort of external knowledge which will inspire an informed performer, and, I would suggest, produce some very satisfying, nuanced, multi-layered, sematically complex and ambiguous results.

But the performer himself needs almost himself to be a believing Christian in order to be able to approach the music from that point of view.

This became clear to me years ago, when I first started to explore CU 3 seriously. BWV 684, which seems to contain a musical representation of the lapping water of the Jordan in the pedaliter -- for a Lutherian that water, when Christ was being baptised, was not a long tranquil stream -- it was red with the blood of his imminent crucifixion. I did find one which did seem to play the water music in a threatening way, but I can't remember who -- Doerselaar maybe -- whoever it was, it was a good experiment to try.

I only hear the waters of Jordan, because I have read, that some authority suggests so. If Bach had this in mind, no insight in numerical symbolism is needed to understand it. And also it looks more impressive in the score than when listened to.

The running semiquavers are played by the left hand - not the feet. They are usually registered with 16' and for that reason stand out as the lowest voice, whereas the pedal part usually is registered with a penetrating 8' stop.

I think many organists play the running semiquavers in a somewhat dark threatening way

[prémont]

Okay, let's play the game. Bach's whole life was governed by 2.


Wrote 4 Passions, which is 2 squared
Wrote 224 cantatas, 2+2+4=8 which is 2 cubed
Wrote 40 chamber music works, 4+0=4 which is 2 squared
Wrote 22 keyboard works, 2+2=4 which is 2 squared

This is what has survived. We don't know how much he wrote, maybe twice as much     So this may be governed by two too.

[Florestan]

I only hear the waters of Jordan, because I have read, that some authority suggests so.

Crux of the matter, really. It's all ex post facto.

It's the same problem as with program music. Play Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique or Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra or indeed any tone poem by anyone to someone who is completely unaware of their program and ask them to describe the music. I very much doubt that one single such person would guess their program even remotely.

[Florestan]

This is what has survived. We don't know how much he wrote, maybe twice as much     So this may be governed by two too.

That's the spirit!   

[Mandryka]

I only hear the waters of Jordan, because I have read, that some authority suggests so. If Bach had this in mind, no insight in numerical symbolism is needed to understand it. And also it looks more impressive in the score than when listened to.

Yes, my point was really that the informed musician can usefully avail himself of esoteric ideas to guide his interpretation, exegetical, numerological or whatever. I mean esoteric ideas which were current in the composer's milieu.



Of course you only hear a semiquaver as a certain pitch and a certain duration because some authority suggests so -- but this comment gets right to the heart of my contention. I am blurring the disctinction between the strictly musical and the non-musical.

The running semiquavers are played by the left hand - not the feet. They are usually registered with 16' and for that reason stand out as the lowest voice, whereas the pedal part usually is registered with a penetrating 8' stop.

Yes, I wasn't thinking. Have you played it?

[prémont]

Yes, my point was really that the informed musician can usefully avail himself of esoteric ideas to guide his interpretation, exegetical, numerological or whatever. I mean esoteric ideas which were current in the composer's milieu.

I understand and agree.

Yes, I wasn't thinking. Have you played it?

No.

[calyptorhynchus]

I am quite certain that there are many subtleties in music that I will never hear. 

[prémont]

I am quite certain that there are many subtleties in music that I will never hear. 

Yes - probably very true, and this is equally true of all of us. This is also why great music can be listened to again and again, and the reason why it may be rewarding to hear different interpretations of the same music.