Fr. Antonio Soler's Sole Abode

[AnotherSpin]

What is artistry? What makes you think artistry is present in one case and not present in another?

[Todd]

What is artistry? What makes you think artistry is present in one case and not present in another?

One is bound to run into a Colombo fan online at some point.

[Florestan]

Yes, I saw it. So? Some people don't understand exactly how the recordings were made or who this Colombo guy is. Many people also don't know the difference between quality audio equipment and crap equipment, they don't distinguish between cables, they don't hear the difference between compressed and uncompressed files and so on. After all, what difference does it make? The sounds roughly correspond to the notes written on the paper, what more do you need? 

Well, I made no judgement whatsoever on Columbo, whose recordings I haven't heard. I just answered your question in Todd's stead.

[AnotherSpin]

One is bound to run into a Colombo fan online at some point.

You can't define artistry, but you use the term. I don't think there's anything strange about that. People imagining things.

[Todd]

You can't define artistry, but you use the term.

I can define it. 

[AnotherSpin]

I can define it.

Please.

[Todd]

Please.

No.

[Florestan]

You can't define artistry,

Tell that to Merriam-Webster or Cambridge Dictionary. 

[AnotherSpin]

Tell that to Merriam-Webster or Cambridge Dictionary. 

You mean there are words which define words? Funny...

[AnotherSpin]

No.

Of course. At the very least you are well aware that any definition you make would be too subjective to be universal, i.e. meaningful to anyone else.

By the way, thank you for your previous comments in the thread. I haven't listened to Soler before, but now I've paid closer attention. It was entertaining for a while.

[Todd]

Of course. At the very least you are well aware that any definition you make would be too subjective to be universal, i.e. meaningful to anyone else.

That applies to any definition that anyone would offer.

[Florestan]

You mean there are words which define words? Funny...

By this token we should close GMG altogether, nay, humanity as a whole should stop talking and writing altogether.

Honestly, I don't get your point or even whether you have any at all other than being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Anyway, I don't even care, I'm out of here for good. Bye bye.

[AnotherSpin]

By this token we should close GMG altogether, nay, humanity as a whole should stop talking and writing altogether.

Honestly, I don't get your point or even whether you have any at all other than being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Anyway, I don't even care, I'm out of here for good. Bye bye.

I asked question (see above) and get an answer which required follow-up questions. Isn't it a talking you care about?

Bye)

[Florestan]

Isn't it a talking you care about?

What meaningful and worthwhile talking can be had with someone who implies that words cannot be used to convey any universal meaning and that no matter one says other people may, and will, find it meaningless? If we don't have any common ground, if we don't even agree that words are useful in general, let alone agree about their meaning, there's no sense whatsoever in talking because there is actually no talking at all, it's just simultaneous monologues. In such a situation the only meaningful thing left is to remain silent. 

[AnotherSpin]

What meaningful and worthwhile talking can be had with someone who implies that words cannot be used to convey any universal meaning and that no matter one says other people may, and will, find it meaningless? If we don't have any common ground, if we don't even agree that words are useful in general, let alone agree about their meaning, there's no sense whatsoever in talking because there is actually no talking at all, it's just simultaneous monologues. In such a situation the only meaningful thing left is to remain silent. 

Hello again. Of course, words are useful. To some extent. Would you believe that love can be expressed and conveyed fully and truthfully in words?

[Brian]

Just read through that Colombo discussion on the piano society forum. It sounds like his digitized/artificially sped-up performances are mostly education tools for his students. I'm not sure that I would ever pay any money to hear any of them, but it might be fun to sample some here and there, to find out what a limitless robot could achieve in the music.

In fact, Colombo sounds part of the way toward AI pianists. Maybe he is a trailblazer (unfortunately).

[Todd]

In fact, Colombo sounds part of the way toward AI pianists. Maybe he is a trailblazer (unfortunately).

He's the contemporary Joyce Hatto.  He can play anything. 

[Florestan]

Would you believe that love can be expressed and conveyed fully and truthfully in words?

I believe love can be expressed and conveyed in words, period. Whether it's fully and truthfully, depends on the reader but there is pretty general agreement that some plays, novels and poems give a fairly accurate expression of love: Romeo and Juliet, for instance, or Anna Karenina, or Byron's When We Two Parted*. I also believe that most normally constituted people intuitively understand and appreciate such writings without any desire or need to analyze and dissect every word to see if its definition matches their own. After all, language is a social, not an individual, construct (and contract, if you will). Anything else is just Humpty-Dumpty linguistics. 

* I go even further and claim that a clumsy love letter written by a teenager in all earnest is also a pretty accurate expression of love.

[AnotherSpin]

Whether it's fully and truthfully, depends on the reader

Exactly. Words mean nothing without a reader. Similarly, sounds have no meaning without the listener. One person will listen to Soler's Fandango and hear nothing but cacophony, another will hear something else. Where music happens? What do you think?

[Florestan]

Exactly. Words mean nothing without a reader.

Words mean a lot, period, and one individual reader cannot claim that even if most other readers during centuries understood the meaning of words, they are meaningless to him --- or rather, he can claim that alright but it would raise grave concerns about his mental health. Once again, language is a socially constructed communication tool; the meaning of words in any language is socially and collectively determined and understood, and if hundreds of millions of people, living across a few centuries, even millennia, understand by the word "love" more or less the same thing with more or less the same features, and one person claims that that word is meaningless to him, or its meaning is completely different than the socially constructed and accepted meaning, then he's either joking, or being deliberately provocative, or a madman.