Music and painting- repetitive use of form

[Sean]

Scarlatti's ecstatic sonatas use repetitious devices but also example the exploration of the same form, over 560 times; other baroque and renaissance composers likewise wrote large numbers of similar works, and Birtwistle has written a series of contained, similar extended orchestral canvasses. Examples in painting include Rothko's and Cezanne's reproduction of the same scheme or scene numerous times and Van Gogh the same sunflowers five times; there's also Bridgit Riley's series of repetitive geometrical schemes that create mesmerizing, disorientating effects through drawning in the cognitive faculties and their self-referential processes- a similar process to the glitter, dazzle and Dionysian random associations in minimalism due to perceptions individual listeners make. In each case a specific form is endlessly explored, again staying within the nataraja.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NatarajaMET.JPG

[jochanaan]

But are they the same?  Or are they only similar?  I can think of nothing more irritating or boring than endless repetition without variation.  No two even of the Nataraja's flames are alike.

Repetition and variation are two of the three "life principles" of music and the other arts.  (The other is contrast.)  Most composers use some form of all three.  Baroque music may look repetitive on paper, yet no musician of that time would have performed a literal repeat without variation; that was part of musical craft as taught in those days--a part that many musicians today are relearning, to music's benefit.

[Sean]

I can think of nothing more irritating or boring than endless repetition without variation.

Well I'm arguing here that something interesting happens in repetition- the mind can focus on the inexhaustible value of the aesthetic content: it's not boring because it's not intellectual or understandable. Apart from the minimalism examples, there's a good one in Gotterdammerung where the redemption-through-love motif is repeated several times over in increasingly rich harmony, orchestration and volume in order to focuss the mind on its inherent aesthetic merit, repeatedly drawing the attention back until the motif shines in utter radiance and exultant, divine glory and power.

[Sean]

Similarly in the Walkure act 2 opening (Ride of the Valkyries) at the point where one might expect the initial motif to be developed, new material being provided in a form leaning on balance and intellectual satisfaction, it's simply replayed but again at increased volume and works superbly by focussing the mind instead on the increasingly emerging inherent, infinite aesthetic resource of the quality material- this takes the place of the structural need that traditionally would have been answered by an architectonic placement: such development is seen to be unnecessary and ultimately misguided. Motifs and the wider intuitive form by motivic web are static though new motifs are generated out of characteristics of older ones, similar to the stasis from architectonic suppression and slow change of material in minimalism.

[jochanaan]

...Apart from the minimalism examples, there's a good one in Gotterdammerung where the redemption-through-love motif is repeated several times over in increasingly rich harmony, orchestration and volume in order to focuss the mind on its inherent aesthetic merit, repeatedly drawing the attention back until the motif shines in utter radiance and exultant, divine glory and power.

That's not repetition; it's variation.

[Sean]

I thought you'd say that. At least you didn't say my hyperbole is repetitious.

[Guido]

This is a great interview anyway, but Eliott Carter also says a bit about repetitive music.

http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/interview_carter.html

[Sean]

Hi Guido, that garbage the modernists wheel out about post-tonality not being familiar enough yet and needs repeated exposure ought to be repeatedly thrown back at them.