Is It Music or Gibberish ?

[karlhenning]

Okay, though I do find this an odd comment of yours to read. I hope you're serious, and perhaps we can think through it a little more next time.

You can start, Sean, by thinking through what evaluative choices with which you're front-loading opinion (and it is opinion, Sean, not Universal Truth) that "Jeux . . . [falls] short of the 'simpler' La mer in artistic terms.

[karlhenning]

. . . the great Frederick Delius.

Great heavens, but I think even Delius-fans will forgive me for finding this one of the out-of-the-wild-blue funniest phrases I've read here in a while.

Of course, in Eric-speak, Delius's 'greatness' derives from his love for Pelléas . . . .

[karlhenning]

There have been some amusing comments in this thread, but still I suggest it be retitled: "Is it thoughtful analysis based on sound reasoning regarding all the relevant data, or is it pompous BS spewed by narcissistic halfwits who think they're effin' geniuses?"

An excellent suggestion!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Great heavens, but I think even Delius-fans will forgive me for finding this one of the out-of-the-wild-blue funniest phrases I've read here in a while.

Of course, in Eric-speak, Delius's 'greatness' derives from his love for Pelléas . . . .

As a Delius-fan I forgive you, Karl... 

Yes, Delius had an intense hatred of academicism, but he could only rely on his musical instinct as masterly as he did because of his learning. Every artist has to have both, as the art of composing, writing, painting et cetera by definition isn't natural but a skill you acquire and develop and hone throughout your life. Relying solely on instinct is the only requirement, perhaps, for art-consumers - and even then they are limiting themselves -, but spells almost certain death for art-producers (even naive artists must know the basics).

[Operahaven]

I know that this analytical method is anathema to you, but it remains the only way to say anything more about music than simply 'I just feel x is better than y'. Contrary to Sean, who feels that academics rarely actually love music, I'd suggest that their eagerness to penetrate into the secrets of a work, to go beyond simply enjoying the sound and to try to understand it on every level - I'd suggest that this implies a deep longing to 'possess' the piece as much as possible. And thus - I'm merely trying to pre-empt here - to try to split the critical audience for, say, Debussy into those who tear his music to pieces but aren't really music-lovers, and those who really understand the music because they love its sensuous surface - I'd say that doesn't hold water at all.

But Luke, is music's coy retreat from the powers of ratiocination really to be punished by pelting it with terms like phonology, semiotics, semantics, syntax, pragmatics and metaphor?... Do those academics tell us anything about music or only something about the rational mind's flawed apprehension of it?

[lukeottevanger]

Speaking from personal experience, reading the analyses of others has often revealed things in the music that have only enhanced my appreciation of its beauty, Eric. You make the mistake of assuming that what you can hear is all that there is to hear, and that if you don't hear it immediately it isn't really worth bothering about. Whereas in fact others who have looked deeper into the music can bring back from their explorations all sorts of things which you were not aware of before, but which only make the music appear more beautiful.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Speaking from personal experience, reading the analyses of others has often revealed things in the music that have only enhanced my appreciation of its beauty, Eric. You make the mistake of assuming that what you can hear is all that there is to hear, and that if you don't hear it immediately it isn't really worth bothering about. Whereas in fact others who have looked deeper into the music can bring back from their explorations all sorts of things which you were not aware of before, but which only make the music appear more beautiful.

Yes, that's right. That has been my experience, too. The music you like has been loved and thought about by other people before you were even born. It's fascinating to see what the most perceptive among them have made of it. I have profited enormously by reading - to name but a few - Charles Rosen, Donald Mitchell, Carl Dahlhaus, Malcolm MacDonald, David Fanning, but also very literate composers like Schumann, Berlioz, Wagner, Stravinsky... And this Forum, too, can boast a few people whose judgment I value very much.

[lukeottevanger]

...and, not to put words in Johan's mouth, but in my case, at any rate, that is why I come here - curiosity about music, desire to learn more, to hear of the experiences and views of others, all in the cause of enjoying it more for myself and also, through sharing my own ideas, in the hope of leading others in directions which they may enjoy. (All in all, then, I come here for positive reasons rooted in my love of music.)

OTOH, one wonders why someone like you, Eric, who is convinced that nothing can or should really be said about music beyond the music itself, and who in any case is satisfied that they ave discovered all that they will ever enjoy - one wonders what appeal a forum like this has for such a person. (And one is left to conclude that the appeal is only the negative one of attacking the music and the ways of approaching music that give others joy.)

[(poco) Sforzando]

Do those academics tell us anything about music ?

Yes.

[karlhenning]

Yes.

Certainly academics have told me much, much, much more about music than has Eric's whingeing.

[Operahaven]

Yes.

They don't.

Music is terrifyingly simple, something the inquiring intellectual has a hard time dealing with. Its effects can be profound and lasting, but its processes render the word ''meaning'' meaningless. Music bypasses reason..... And on another level the idea of the explanation and understanding of a piece of music in terms of its social and cultural context at the time the music was written has always seemed to me an enterprise perverse in the extreme in terms of interpretive understanding and performance; an idea inimical to the very music itself.  Any music that lives beyond its time of creation will say and mean different things to succeeding generations and eras (which, in fact, is precisely what enables it to live beyond its time of creation), and attempting to fix what it has to say and means in terms of the social and cultural context of the time of its composition is not only thoroughly wrongheaded and potentially destructive but lethally contrary to a true and meaningful understanding of the music itself qua music.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Music is terrifyingly simple, something the inquiring intellectual has a hard time dealing with. Its effects can be profound and lasting, but its processes render the word ''meaning'' meaningless. Music bypasses reason..... And on another level the idea of the explanation and understanding of a piece of music in terms of its social and cultural context at the time the music was written has always seemed to me an enterprise perverse in the extreme in terms of interpretive understanding and performance; an idea inimical to the very music itself.  Any music that lives beyond its time of creation will say and mean different things to succeeding generations and eras (which, in fact, is precisely what enables it to live beyond its time of creation), and attempting to fix what it has to say and means in terms of the social and cultural context of the time of its composition is not only thoroughly wrongheaded and potentially destructive but lethally contrary to a true and meaningful understanding of the music itself qua music.

Since these are not your words you think you might credit the author, Pink?

[Operahaven]

I apologize.

The are the words of  ACD.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I apologize.

The are the words of  ACD.

Oh. ACD. Then it must be true.

[Operahaven]

Oh. ACD. Then it must be true.

ACD is correct on this issue.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

I apologize.

The are the words of  ACD.

Good, that's one step.

Next up: it's also true you've taken this snippet completely out of context.

Here's the entire article which of course gives the full story. The last line is of particular import...

[Dancing Divertimentian]

ACD is correct on this issue.

You and he aren't saying the same thing...see link...

[(poco) Sforzando]

You and he aren't saying the same thing...see link...

Apparently what ACD is saying is that there is a question as to whether "the work of music [is] to be identified as the written text or its performance":

Rosen quite correctly says that consideration of this question involves

...a difficulty that has irritated philosophers of aesthetics and their readers for a long time: Is the work of music to be identified as the written text or its performance? Is a symphony of Beethoven the printed score or the sound in the concert hall when it is played?

Rightly or wrongly, I quite clearly come down on the side of the latter — resoundingly and categorically.

Rosen's review (the first part of a two-part review, the second part of which is to follow at a future date) is brilliant and hugely informative in it own right, and must reading for every music-lover.

But while ACD makes it quite clear which "side" he comes down on, it's a little difficult to reconcile (however resoundingly or categorically) such a comment with his emphatic approval of the work of Charles Rosen - for Rosen, as should be unmistakable from his dual career as musicologist and pianist, as analyst and performer, is quite as much interested in the written texts of music and in intellectual analysis as he is in playing such texts on the piano.

[DavidRoss]

Music is sound, not notation, just as dance is movement, not notation, and football is a game played on a field, not the playbook.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Music is sound, not notation, just as dance is movement, not notation, and football is a game played on a field, not the playbook.

Very impressively phrased. But when Mahler set down Das Lied von der Erde as a score - which he never heard performed in his lifetime - was he not creating music? If a Balanchine ballet has not been performed for decades and has no videorecording, but was taken down in Labanotation, is it not choreography, and therefore dance? Musicians speak of a score as "the music," and music exists in both dimensions - as notation that performers can interpret and scholars analyze, and as sound that listeners can experience. Whereas Rosen alludes to " a difficulty that has irritated philosophers of aesthetics and their readers for a long time," you (and apparently ACD, as well as certainly Operahaven) hastily dispose of it in a sonorously phrased sentence. Again, very impressively phrased, but not so impressive as to obscure the fact that you've missed the problem summarized in Rosen's statement.