Is It Music or Gibberish ?

[Catison]

Luke and Sforzando,

Yes, I am true to myself but it's fun to read about other people's feelings and reactions towards a work I adore... That's all.

I am totally  ADDICTED  to commentary on  Pelleas et Melisande... Anything I can get my hands on. 

This coming from someone who does not value anything but the music itself?

Music is a human pursuit, written by humans for humans.  When I listen to music, I am after that humanity.  Music isn't created in a vacuum, it is created by a brain.  I want to know that brain, and music is the most potent language I know that can reach it.  Music commentary doesn't substitute for music, it provides a doorway into places you could not venture before.

[Sean]

Lukey

...but merely about analysis Bringing-Stuff-To-Your-Attention-Which-You-Hadn't-Hear-In-The-Music-Before.

Well if you listened to it, at least repeatedly, you ought to have heard it. If you didn't you're just basically then introducing an artificial adulterated focus of attention not related to what the music means on the listening level...

But I know what you are referring to now. How depressing - I'm confused as to why do you feel the need

Well maybe things are different at a particularly supportive environment as you may have found at Cambridge. Many places in the UK are out to stop people joining their cliques.

...It could equally be that you just rubbed them up the wrong way, and in turn that could stem from a failing in you, not in them - looking at your descriptions of your confrontations, and from what I know of your personality from GMG, I find it very easy to see how you could royally piss off someone attempting to talk on one subject whilst you insisted on talking about another...

I knew someone would say this. I am, I can advise, a polite enough person. In fact I'm particularly concerned to ingratiate myself, given my outlook on many things. But I'm not a highly socialized one- I'm into the arts because of the essentially critical and trans-social world of meaning they operate in. And when people bring their sorry little class identity to art music and find, just find or notice, that I don't approach music in terms of its value helping me fit into a clique, they get mad all by themselves. I only have to walk into a room of these people to cause extreme resentment. Resentment that is all their concern, not mine. You understand don't you?

...maybe I just mixed in better circles  )

Well I'm not sure what the reason is; I suspect actually that you're being too polite and not thinking things through.

and finally, c) to post these people's names on the internet. I find that most unpleasant.

Good. If I had time to find the rest of the names on the various faculties I would.

To equate score-reading with dry, anti-musical irrelevance isn't the radical iconoclastic thinking you seem to believe it is. It's more like the boorish, confused, spluttering, affronted-because-they-don't-get-what-the-clever-people-are-talking-about line that we see in e.g. the Daily Mail ('intellectual elite', 'ivory towers' yawn yawn). A self-confessed elitist like you Sean, ought to shudder at towing such a line.

As long as you keep the relationship between the score and the listening, as you clearly do, that's fine. That's what I'm arguing for: I'm not saying you shouldn't read scores. You have several thousand CDs don't you? I certainly don't know any academic with much of a CD collection, and that's the problem.

Well, there we have it - as I suspected, your hatred of musical academics (all of them, it seems) is rooted in your personal experiences of a small number...

No, there's a serious problem in the field of music study. Music is that thing we listen to, yet when we 'go to university to study music' very few people ever listen to any, or rather get to know any- the study is abstracted from what is studied. By contrast the study of maths for instance is the maths. This is profoundly paradoxical and quite interesting to think about.

[Sean]

Karl

Assertion is not truth, Sean.

There's no way of 'weighing' whether there is "more beauty" in one piece or the other.

Not in any outward way.

'Tis pity, Sean, that you do not appreciate the beauty of Jeux for itself.  And further pity that you are playing the same dead-end game that Eric is mired in, of (essentially) wishing that Debussy had gone on to write La mer again, 5, 6, 25 times...

I appreciate Jeux, don't worry. Seen it performed too, under Rattle. Haitink's recording is one of his best though, coupled with the Nocturnes (and with a Whistler cover, extremely evocative). But it's not as great a work as La mer.

Next you'll be crying over your porter that Stravinsky ought just to have written (and re-written, and re-written again) L'oiseau de feu.

Well it's a pity he couldn't find another way to use the language of the Rite. But the Dionysiac is a singular thing...

[lukeottevanger]

Lukey
Well if you listened to it, at least repeatedly, you ought to have heard it. If you didn't you're just basically then introducing an artificial adulterated focus of attention not related to what the music means on the listening level...

How convenient - that boils down to 'if I didn't hear it, it can't be important'

Well maybe things are different at a particularly supportive environment as you may have found at Cambridge. Many places in the UK are out to stop people joining their cliques.

Or just to stop you doing so... 

I knew someone would say this. I am, I can advise, a polite enough person....

That's true, in fact - I'm [almost] always impressed by the way that you comport yourself here, even when being viciously attacked. But I'm also aware of the seething anger under the surface...

In fact I'm particularly concerned to ingratiate myself, given my outlook on many things. But I'm not a highly socialized one- I'm into the arts because of the essentially critical and trans-social world of meaning they operate in. And when people bring their sorry little class identity to art music and find, just find or notice, that I don't approach music in terms of its value helping me fit into a clique, they get mad all by themselves. I only have to walk into a room of these people to cause extreme resentment. Resentment that is all their concern, not mine. You understand don't you?

Really, Sean, I understand, but in a different way to you. If you only have to walk into the room to get these people twitchy, then the problem is clearly with you here.

Well I'm not sure what the reason is; I suspect actually that you're being too polite and not thinking things through.

Yes, that's it. My life experience doesn't chime with yours, so I must be remembering it wrong.

No, I go through everyone with whom I worked extensively - I don't pretend to know the ones who I saw less, such as my dissertation supervisor who I met precisely once! - and I come up with a list of music lovers passionate about their chosen areas. I remember the intense conversations we had, not just in supervisions but in pubs, hushed over books in libraries, in chance encounters in the street (strangely, given that none of these people is interested in recordings, many of these encounters took place as we crossed paths in various Cambridge CD shops  ; conversely, the only such people I ever saw in Cambrige's best sheet music shop - where, surely, all these score-obsessed academics ought to hang out - were Robin Holloway and Hugh Wood, composers both)

Good. If I had time to find the rest of the names on the various faculties I would.

Charming

As long as you keep the relationship between the score and the listening, as you clearly do, that's fine. That's what I'm arguing for: I'm not saying you shouldn't read scores. You have several thousand CDs don't you? I certainly don't know any academic with much of a CD collection, and that's the problem.

Sean, every time I visited the house/rooms of one of these evil academics I noticed a large CD collection. Even the one guy I mentioned despising - he had a much bigger collection of Janacek CDs than I do.

No, there's a serious problem in the field of music study. Music is that thing we listen to, yet when we 'go to university to study music' very few people ever listen to any, or rather get to know any- the study is abstracted from what is studied. By contrast the study of maths for instance is the maths. This is profoundly paradoxical and quite interesting to think about.

Again - I think through all the people who attended university with me and I can't think of very many at all who fit this description. I can think of plenty who introduced me to all sorts of things, and I returned the favour when I could. Just to give a flavour, I shared a house with the composer-pianist Huw Watkins - currently an evil academic teaching composition at the RCM and played at the Proms - and recall hilarious evenings round my piano where Huw played from my score of Wozzeck and we falsetto-ed our way through the vocal parts; or more serious evenings where he and I played Debussy piano duets; or times he came home excitedly saying 'you must hear this piece of Monteverdi/Mahler...'

to-the-point edit - in the case of the Mahler, now I think on a bit, it wasn't 'you must hear this piece', it was 'you must hear this recording'.

[karlhenning]

There's no way of 'weighing' whether there is "more beauty" in one piece or the other.

Not in any outward way.

Right; in other words, you feel that La mer is more beautiful than Jeux.  And you are entirely welcome.  There are many days when I feel that Jeux is more beautiful than (among other great pieces) La mer.

Well it's a pity he couldn't find another way to use the language of the Rite. But the Dionysiac is a singular thing...

You truly fail to see how pointless it is for you, Sean, to look over the oeuvre of a giant of a composer, and for you to rue "what a might 'a' done."

Your navel-gazing carp there, Sean, would mean more — would, in fact, actually mean something, which it don't at present — if you write a piece which finds another way to use that language.  Let me know when that happens, there's a good chap.

(Mind you, I don't mean to speak ill of any fish, smelt, hake or carp . . . .)

And, BTW, if you do write that piece, it doesn't mean anything against Igor Fyodorovich;  but it will mean that you have made an actual contribution to the literature.  Let's remind you, Sean: it is the art which lasts;  the chatter about the art lasts a season, and withers away.

Edit :: slight expansion, and the odd typo

[karlhenning]

Luke, has Sean demonstrated for us how La mer is "more beautiful" than Jeux?  I don't like to think that I missed something 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

(Mind you, I don't mean to speak ill of any fish, smelt, hake or carp . . . .)

They will be much relieved.

[karlhenning]

They will be much relieved.

Well, one feels gratitude to an order of creature which has so well fed one 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Well, one feels gratitude to an order of creature which has so well fed one 

Yes, one loves what one eats.

The opposite, fortunately, usually isn't the case.

[Catison]

I appreciate Jeux, don't worry. Seen it performed too, under Rattle. Haitink's recording is one of his best though, coupled with the Nocturnes (and with a Whistler cover, extremely evocative). But it's not as great a work as La mer.

This is the same elitist trolling of which you accuse academics.  But where an academic provides examples and uses big musicological words, you substitute your opinion.  The academic might be shortsighted to think his analyses could substitute for all tastes, but you think your opinion is the substitute.   That's even more insulting.

[karlhenning]

Yes, one loves what one eats.

Love is perhaps overstating the case  0:)

[Sean]

Oh well, another blocked thread on the Diner. Just tried to send you this Luke and the system says I can't because your inbox is full...

They could have axed it before I just logged on: for what its worth (not much) I wrote

Nice one Luke, I'm touched and gratified as ever. But the fact is most music academics are a right bunch of imposters, and that ***** was a particularly unpleasant and class-ridden person. Someone told me recently he quit music altogether, which would hardly surprise me.

[Knight] What you have done might conceivably damage their reputations if it is copied out of our site and posted elsewhere.

Really? Big deal.

I am considering deletion of the names of the people involved, I will discuss this with the other Mods......and get back to you.

Sure, whatever- thought it'd have gone by now anyway.

[Sean]

This is the same elitist trolling of which you accuse academics.  But where an academic provides examples and uses big musicological words, you substitute your opinion.  The academic might be shortsighted to think his analyses could substitute for all tastes, but you think your opinion is the substitute.   That's even more insulting.

It's not. Aesthetics is 'opinion' or rather, absolute conviction in the personal experience one has, and which of course is universalizable.

[karlhenning]

But the fact is most music academics are a right bunch of imposters

Part of your trouble, Sean, is you don't have any proper grip on what a fact is.

[karlhenning]

I suspect an elaborate post is in the works, Sean, but I doubt that you will answer the res.  Your interpretation of and feelings about your own past experience (a) is not as cool-headed as you may perhaps imagine, nor (b) does not drive fact in the outside world.

[Sean]

Karl, I'm a genius and my pronouncements can be relied on with greatest confidence. You'll find it a lot easier and better for your health once you understand this a little more.

Luke, you're obviously as nuts as Karl- you two remind me of the mad hatters tea party.

Cliques aren't things I would or could want to join.

Basically though I do feel you're making a big mistake in your evaluations of the average 'music' academic, but one can live with.

I've heard Huw Watkins speak on the radio and he's a down to earth sort of chap- I've heard several of his works also, including if I remember a piano concerto.

[Sean]

I suspect an elaborate post is in the works, Sean, but I doubt that you will answer the res.

Not exactly, I just can't think straight drinking dodgy Korean beer.

[Sean]

res ?

Is that like res extensa or res cogita?

[karlhenning]

Well, at least you've recovered some of your sense of humor, Sean. Perhaps there's hope.

Now all you need is a strategy for humor-recovery which doesn't entail intoxicants.

Can you say "Anatole's entailing intoxicants" five times fast?

[Monsieur Croche]

How did a discussion on Carter's musical worth turn into a barrage of personal attacks against music academics?

Well, then, I will not attempt a further stirring of the pot, since being confrontational is not part of my nature, but let me just state my opinion on this issue - keeping, of course, to only the bare essentials for the sake of avoiding a long argument:

I can hear a clear musical narrative in Carter's works - or, at least, in those works he composed before adopting serialism - and if a rather inexperienced listener as me can, and a prominent critic such as ACDouglas can not, then obviously his musical sensibility deserves to be called into question. (Note that I don't mean to talk ill about serialism here - it is just a major problem area with me).

The idea that a composition can only be called "music" if it has such a narrative is, in my mind, suspect and unnecessarily restrictive; what to make of, for example, Morton Feldman, who intentionally set out to emphasize isolated musical moments, and require you to - in a way - forget the notes that come before? That said, I have a rather conservative definition of "music", and hesitate to call some of the more experimental works in the twentieth century onwards as such, but I have no problem with calling them art.

The notion that art music = only tonal music is gibberish, and I will not even bother arguing the point. Personally, I find that to like only early Debussy and to say that they are only worthy because of their Romantic sentiment is an insult to the composer, because rebelling against the confines (or excesses) of Romanticism is an integral part of Debussy's artistic vision.

Technical analysis will never suffice to describe a piece of music, or explain why the piece made the impact that it did, and score-reading can never be a substitute for real listening, but they can enhance your listening experience in ways that have been mentioned by other posters, and that I am not keen to repeat.

I can not comment on what music academics are generally like, having never met one myself, but the account given by Luke is more objective and level-headed compared to Sean's. In any case, when I read books written by some of these evil academics, and was usually left with the impression that these academics really loved the music that they specialized in. Therefore, if indeed there are academics who are devoid of any real musical sensitivity as Sean described, then I can be assured that at least these academics would never rise to a position of prominence in the eye of the public.