GMG Classical Music Forum

This seems to be a debate that pops up here and there and everywhere. What is the composer expressing? Can a composer 'communicate' with their music? And even on a more technical level: does something like Historically Informed Performance practice accurately provide the intended sound and musical interpretation that the composer had in his/her mind?

But I do wonder about how we got to our conclusions on these things, and how we have become to hold such beliefs that some do about what we think a Composer's Intention is.

I think that it comes down to these things for me:

As a music student, I spend less time imagining what a piece communicates to me, in favour of thinking about how a piece of music is put together and then interpreted for performance (which ultimately evokes various things in various people). But I do think about what techniques and traits different composers have in their compositions and how they use these to express pure sound as an art form.

As a music listener, I love to enjoy music for music's sake without thinking about what a piece 'communicates.' I love to just go with the flow really.

As a music student, you are learning how to do things.

At some point, you may ask yourself why you are doing them.

Belated thought: the degree to which people care about such things varies with personality anyway. Some of us spend a lot of time thinking about things, some of us are more interested in just going ahead and doing things.

Quote from: orfeo on January 17, 2016, 03:21:14 PM
As a music student, you are learning how to do things.

At some point, you may ask yourself why you are doing them.

I am tossing this quote into the ring for what it is worth.
(bless his soul. And thank you, Chronochromie, for the composer's name I could not remember: - )

My music student years long behind me, some modest composing done, I'd say during those student years, the thereafter, and ongoing -- that whenever I sit down to compose and am at work on a piece, the direct application of effort to determine how to make the piece work to the best of my ability leaves no luxury of time for cerebral indulgences other than thinking of how to make the piece work. On a note-to-note basis, then, the only real or worthwhile question in the middle of the making is "what am I doing?"

If artists ask the question, "Why am I doing this?" the question is usually answered unhesitatingly and to complete satisfaction with, "Because I must." I do think the youngest who will later find themselves committed to the full nine yards of 'being an artist' also sense that same "because I must," long before they are able to articulate it.

I would place just about any other answer to "why you are doing it" in an area near to exclusively reserved for those who listen only, who then are instead asking, "Why did the composer do it?" I.e. it is pretty much the armchair observer who has any luxury of time to think the question of much significance or who has time to muse over such a thing.

My intention when composing, fundamentally any composer's intention, is "to make the piece work."

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 17, 2016, 04:36:20 PM
I can not remember the name of the Japanese composer who uttered this (bless his soul, though: - ), but am tossing what he said into the ring for what it is worth.

"Music is not philosophy."

I would place just about any other answer to "why you are doing it" in an area near to exclusively reserved for those who listen only, who then are instead asking, "Why did the composer do it?" I.e. it is pretty much the armchair observer who has any luxury of time to think the question of much significance or who has time to muse over such a thing.

My intention when composing, fundamentally any composer's intention, is "to make the piece work."

Actually, I believe that it is not just the listener, but the performer who must also ask that question, even if it is only to gain a satisfactory perspective on the performance requirements. I can't think it is possible for a pianist, for example, to come to some place or another and not have to stop and ask himself "why did the composer do this? what was he wanting me to recreate here?" Otherwise, it is just rote note playing.

8)

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on January 17, 2016, 04:42:01 PM
Actually, I believe that it is not just the listener, but the performer who must also ask that question, even if it is only to gain a satisfactory perspective on the performance requirements. I can't think it is possible for a pianist, for example, to come to some place or another and not have to stop and ask himself "why did the composer do this? what was he wanting me to recreate here?" Otherwise, it is just rote note playing.

8)

Indeed, I omitted the performer for the sake of brevity, which is something, even being new to GMG, I'm certain I am already not known for. :)

Both the performer of a set score or the composer of same must have a clear point of view about the piece. "Why did the composer do this?" is I think way too often romanticized to the hilt, while from a musician's standpoint that is very much about the particular architecture of any piece, which must be understood to render it with any clarity.
---[I'll add 'emotion,' to that, while I must include that to many musicians all the fol-de-rol talk or writings thereon are 'for someone else,' i.e. musicians tend to have a much more direct line to 'whatever the music says,' straight up from the score, without need of extramusical explanations, and both composer and musician rely upon the given that "music is expressive," has a tremendous power to evoke emotion in the listener.]

With so many fine and /or numerous 'definitive' performances already done, and so many of those recorded, a performer must not only have a clear point of view of whatever they are playing; that point of view should not be like the dozens of other valid clear points of view already on record. Something at least slightly unique in comparison to the other known performances must be present. If you have absolutely nothing in the way of some kind of fresh view of the piece to deliver, why bother?

The composer, in whatever of the style of their time, or in any of myriad of styles of our own time, must also have something of a clear point of view which is also somewhat unique. Without that, we get music which sounds like it could have been written by any number of people -- too derivative or too directly imitative [again comes the question, "why bother?"] -- i.e. without its distinct "musical personality."

Agree, Gurn, though I do think it's also true that people can over-analyse things to the point where they can't see the wood for the trees. As a performer you've got to do a certain amount of thinking to grasp the structure of the thing - you can't bring home that a later part of the music is referencing/quoting an earlier part if you've no idea of that yourself. At the same time, I see some analyses of pieces that chop the music up into such tiny parts that I would think it would hinder a performance, causing the performer to try and give each and every note extreme significance.

Same with listening. Too much thinking about each and every single moment can actually ruin the effect of the whole part.

But some music is totally philosophy.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 17, 2016, 04:36:20 PM
I can not remember the name of the Japanese composer who uttered this (bless his soul, though: - ), but am tossing what he said into the ring for what it is worth.

"Music is not philosophy."

Akira Ifukube.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 17, 2016, 04:36:20 PM
I would place just about any other answer to "why you are doing it" in an area near to exclusively reserved for those who listen only, who then are instead asking, "Why did the composer do it?" I.e. it is pretty much the armchair observer who has any luxury of time to think the question of much significance or who has time to muse over such a thing.

Do you apply this to other things, though?

Your reference to "luxury of time" struck me, because a recurring refrain one will hear in any work/management course is that people and organisations need to make the time to stop and think once in a while about what they're doing, how it's going, whether they're on the right course, how they can improve.

I wouldn't be inclined to think of the arts as any different. Sure, there's a very romantic notion of artists simply being driven to do what they do, but the world is full of people who declare their great passion for something but produce crap results. I think top-grade artists do spend at least some time thinking about how to do it better, to ask what did and didn't work. And to do that you have to know what it was you were trying to achieve in the first place. You can't assess whether you're meeting a goal unless you know what the goal is. And yes, there's a short-term goal to make each individual composed piece work, but does that preclude longer-term goals? I don't think it does, any more than my short-term goal in my own work of making each piece of writing work precludes longer-term goals.

To put it another way, I think it's part and parcel of stylistic development. I think it's particularly interesting that many composers went back and revised some of their early pieces, trying to fix them. Some did this a lot more than others of course.

And in pop music, the artists that interest me the most are the ones that change their style, try to achieve different things with each album.

If we don't question things from time to time, then, ultimately, what are we doing listening to music and then I think of this Debussy quote "Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory."

Quote from: orfeo on January 17, 2016, 05:09:31 PM
But some music is totally philosophy.

I agree with the above if it is taken as an analogous statement only.
Otherwise... Bzzzz. Wrong!  :)

OF COURSE, a musical discourse, having tremendous power to evoke, can leave a listener with a very strong and real feeling that 'something deep and philosophical' has been touched upon, while what was heard was 'just notes.'

Such is the power of 'just notes,' if written by a composer who can write in such a way to evoke the impression of a philosophical question or truth in the listener. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Webern, Ives, Stravinsky, to name but a very few, have that power. Depending upon the listener, the names and pieces so designated as "philosophy" will vary as to whose music, which pieces have such a power.

But... a composer is a philosopher when the composer moves their pen away from manuscript paper to a blank sheet and then writes things philosophical.

I'm sometimes tempted to ask some people whether they think music is an art, or a craft. This conversation is reminding me of that.

But one has to wrestle with the supposed distinction between the two, first.

Quote from: orfeo on January 17, 2016, 03:21:14 PM
As a music student, you are learning how to do things.

At some point, you may ask yourself why you are doing them.

So far, I really really love being able to learn and share what I've learnt in a way which affects different people in hugely different ways. For me, after the process of composing and perfoming one of my compositions is done, it is extremely satisfying to hear opinions of the work because I can never tell what they feel from it. Last year I had my Sinfonia Concertante performed in the Melbourne Recital Centre, after which I found out about various opinions of those who liked it in totally different ways and those who said things like 'some parts were too dissonant for me' amongst other things.

The kind of response one recieves from the hard work of studying, composing, perfoming pays off in ways which are always unexpected, but always gives me encouragement to continue to expand my knowledge and share it with the world in a way where people can find what they like/dislike for themselves, without me trying to tell them or communicate it to them.

So far, this is why I do what I do, but it may change down the track. What do you think it may change to?

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 17, 2016, 05:49:00 PM
So far, I really really love being able to learn and share what I've learnt in a way which affects different people in hugely different ways. For me, after the process of composing and perfoming one of my compositions is done, it is extremely satisfying to hear opinions of the work because I can never tell what they feel from it. Last year I had my Sinfonia Concertante performed in the Melbourne Recital Centre, after which I found out about various opinions of those who liked it in totally different ways and those who said things like 'some parts were too dissonant for me' amongst other things.

The kind of response one recieves from the hard work of studying, composing, perfoming pays off in ways which are always unexpected, but always gives me encouragement to continue to expand my knowledge and share it with the world in a way where people can find what they like/dislike for themselves, without me trying to tell them or communicate it to them.

I get that. I really do.

But at some point if you want to make a living from music, you're going to care about the response. You're going to want at least SOME people to like your work, a lot. Enough to pay for it.

This is not to say that you ought to be running around trying to chase favourable responses. That would be a bad idea, because you're never going to please everybody and people will give you wildly different, contradictory and flat out wrong ideas about how to make your work good.

But you do need to develop your internal sense about these things, and maybe have a select few people to give you opinions, people you trust. People who basically love your work and yet who won't just gush imprecisely about how wonderful it is no matter what you do.

If you're a student, this is actually what your teachers are trying to develop in you as much as anything else. To be successful on your own, after there's no teacher around to supervise and guide you, you have to have that sense of judgement that enables you to self-correct your course. And that whole notion of a course implies that you know where you're trying to navigate.

To my mind, you do need to 'navigate' in some way to be successful. If you don't have any kind of thing you're aiming for, then success is just down to dumb luck and crucially it can't be replicated.

Just my 50 cents.

Quote from: orfeo on January 17, 2016, 06:02:41 PM
I get that. I really do.

But at some point if you want to make a living from music, you're going to care about the response. You're going to want at least SOME people to like your work, a lot. Enough to pay for it.

This is not to say that you ought to be running around trying to chase favourable responses. That would be a bad idea, because you're never going to please everybody and people will give you wildly different, contradictory and flat out wrong ideas about how to make your work good.

But you do need to develop your internal sense about these things, and maybe have a select few people to give you opinions, people you trust. People who basically love your work and yet who won't just gush imprecisely about how wonderful it is no matter what you do.

If you're a student, this is actually what your teachers are trying to develop in you as much as anything else. To be successful on your own, after there's no teacher around to supervise and guide you, you have to have that sense of judgement that enables you to self-correct your course. And that whole notion of a course implies that you know where you're trying to navigate.

To my mind, you do need to 'navigate' in some way to be successful. If you don't have any kind of thing you're aiming for, then success is just down to dumb luck and crucially it can't be replicated.

Just my 50 cents.

[deleted stuff]

Eh...I realise that I would rather not talk about my life story really.

In short: what I do is learn, create, perform, work....and it's always good when the money comes my way.

Sounds good. Best of luck!

Quote from: orfeo on January 17, 2016, 06:19:39 PM
Sounds good. Best of luck!

Thank you!

Quote from: orfeo on January 17, 2016, 05:20:36 PM
Do you apply this to other things, though?

Your reference to "luxury of time" struck me, because a recurring refrain one will hear in any work/management course is that people and organisations need to make the time to stop and think once in a while about what they're doing, how it's going, whether they're on the right course, how they can improve. You can't assess whether you're meeting a goal unless you know what the goal is. And yes, there's a short-term goal to make each individual composed piece work, but does that preclude longer-term goals? I don't think it does, any more than my short-term goal in my own work of making each piece of writing work precludes longer-term goals.

I think it's part and parcel of stylistic development. I think it's particularly interesting that many composers went back and revised some of their early pieces, trying to fix them.

In pop music, the artists that interest me the most are the ones that change their style, try to achieve different things with each album.

I think a lot of the particulars you named above are well valid.

Some individuals, without any such work/management program volume or guide the likes of which you mention, are naturally predisposed to do whatever they apply themselves to to a high degree of excellence. This is the sort who can not stand to do any less than very well even a minor job which has nothing to do with their career; that for them is a constant even if no one will ever know who did that minor job.
I have yet to see a workplace or business [excepting the very small ones made up of but a handful of people] filled with employees all of the disposition that no matter what they do, it is never good enough... from this was spawned "the work/management program Bibles." Too, the larger the company, the greater the inefficiency, ergo, waste. Attentiveness to efficiency is paramount to larger business because waste is inevitable due to the nature of its structure.

Once in the business workplace, the long term goal of that manual has everything to do within the bailiwick of those kinds of business structures reliant upon many employees, and so directly addresses both efficiency and growth; the manual is needed because so many of that business' employees are not anywhere near as driven or the type of self-starter and self-manager that an artist must be in order to keep themselves afloat.
---Some of the general premises of business remain the same for anyone who works, but the wherewithal needed to do independent networking to find musicians to perform your work, to be hired you as a performer, or get a full or part-time teaching post and all the rest have artists basically working first, if not permanently, as free-lance agents. I don't think many artists working on their own have articulated for themselves the chapter and verse as found in business manuals, or need a thick many-paged volume "guide to keep the company efficient and growing," though.

Any professional artists I know [musicians and other] are innately compelled to at least attempt to make each thing they are presently making the very best thing they have done up to that moment; even if they are satisfied with the work when done, it takes but a nano-second before they reflexively regard the work analytically, immediately noticing its every fault and weakness [those, btw, faults and weaknesses often are not detected by anyone else, including the canniest of critics.] This mode of hypervigilant self-critiquing is often enough active while working and perhaps then gets only mildly suspended, i.e. if you don't think the thing has any merit, you are likely not to write the next note, the next page, or complete the piece.
---I think most artists are perfectionists [the ones I know are, every one of them.] The only downside of perfectionism is learning to know when a piece is done, or when revision won't improve a thing further... and move on to the next work. It is to be hoped that is learned before one is done with schooling and formal training. To have to learn it once in the swim of working professionally would just not do.

For many who became professional musicians and started in their very early years and then continued in an unbroken sequence through upper levels of conservatory training, it is possible when young they had no long term plan, while the course of action taken is /was a long term goal realized -- all that before they have first hung up their shingle to do professional business. Conscious or not of their long term goal, most if not all of the needed habits and knowing how to work are already in place when they begin as young professionals. [I patently reject the pop buzz maxim that 10,000 applied hours study and practice in a skill = "Expert." As a measure for what needs to be put in before one is an expert 'classical' musician, 'classical' composer, 'fine arts' painter, author or 'literature', it falls drastically short of the actual requirement.]

Most composers [anyway, the ones not happy to repeat their last success] have an innate and compelling drive to do better in each new work, and that has to do with the development of style you mentioned. They will explore a vein 'further' until they are satisfied they have eliminated what they think of as weaknesses in their prior works, investigate another vein with its own inherent problems to solve, or develop refinements, a distillation akin to efficiency or streamlining so the music is that much clearer and to the point, with nothing extraneous in it.

If there is a long-term goal for a musician whose career has begun it is always yet vaguely to be better at it from one point to the next. It is well known in the trade, for those at the very 'top' as for all others, perfection is unattainable, and that doing any sort of music is the opposite of a dead-end job.

Their is very real competition as to the general standards of what is expected in the arts. I think for many an artist, their only real 'competition' is themselves up against excellence, and that is never-ending. Try and find one business office with all its employees 'in that place' without some whip-cracking and overseeing on the part of the owners and upper management, lol.

Quote from: orfeo on January 17, 2016, 05:46:36 PM
I'm sometimes tempted to ask some people whether they think music is an art, or a craft. This conversation is reminding me of that.

But one has to wrestle with the supposed distinction between the two, first.

Part one of that is dead simple:
---Craft precedes art: craft is involved in making art.
["The craft" is a term a number of artist friends toss about, and they are talking about "the art," as it were.]

Part two:
---"Is it craft or is it art?" Yeah...  the line is ever moveable, but how far in either direction is a matter of endless and forever irresolvable debate.

As with "entertainment or art?"—substantial overlap.

On the original query, I think I can claim the following:

1. I intend to write.
2. If I am to perform what I write, I intend to have fun in the performing.

I also use (2.) as a guide where other performers entirely are involved.

Only the composer can fully know his or her intentions, and even then....

If a composer tries to explain the intentions of a piece of music with words, then already we're in trouble. Maybe not a lot of trouble, but still. If something, an idea, an impression, an argument, can be expressed in words, the words it should be. There are other things, though, and for some of those other things only pigments will do, for some other things only sounds will do, for other other things only granite will do. And so forth.

Kinda makes you question the whole "things" thing and the whole "express" thing as well, eh? It does me, anyway. Think about that situation: there is a thing to be expressed. Composer expresses that thing in music. But that's not how things happen at all, is it? What happens is that a composer puts some sounds together. They sound good. She puts some more sounds together. Even better. She keeps doing that until she stops. The end. Anything about that situation that can be called "meaning"--and I have serious reservations about that, but never mind--has been created by the piece; it did not exist until the piece was made. And then, voila, we've got ourselves a meaning. Not a meaning that already existed, though, as the whole "express" idea indicates.

Everyone and their mother believes, or says they believe, that music starts where words leave off. But in reality, allmost everyone does not actually believe that. Almost everyone really believes that language can express anything, even the meanings of music. Hence these online conversations, for one. Hence program notes and criticism and PhD dissertations. I believe something else. I believe that mixing pigments together creates meaning, that causing sounds to occur creates meaning, that chipping away at marble or granite creates meaning.

That is, I believe that meaning is what happens when something is done and not that meaning is "out there" and that various means of expression--words, pigments, notes, glass--can more or less "capture" that meaning. "What does it mean?" almost always implies "What has been captured?" I don't think that the arts capture. I think that they make.

Quote from: orfeo on January 17, 2016, 04:07:47 PM
Belated thought: the degree to which people care about such things varies with personality anyway. Some of us spend a lot of time thinking about things, some of us are more interested in just going ahead and doing things.

No doubt.

Though while people are listening to music they are concentrating on simply experiencing it most of the time, unless maybe it's boring and they start thinking 'why the hell did the composer think this was worth publishing?' :D

The reason why music is composed and listened to I think is communication.  Music can take us away from the rather nasty, superficial and egotistical nature of everyday life onto a more abstract neutral ground where you can feel in touch with others feelings and thoughts.

Quote from: some guy on January 18, 2016, 09:18:34 AM
Only the composer can fully know his or her intentions, and even then....

Oh, I know better than to claim that I know my full intentions . . . .

I don't even intend to know my full intentions.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 18, 2016, 10:31:07 AM
I don't even intend to know my full intentions.

Are you sure?  0:)

Quote from: karlhenning on January 18, 2016, 10:31:07 AM
I don't even intend to know my full intentions.

This is how I suspected. I suppose composers generally - or at least often - do what they do, because they have something in their mind, and because it must get out. Whether someone will understand it or even become touched by it, is probably of secondary importance.

Yeah, composing-by-numbers will rarely lead to good results.

Quote from: North Star on January 18, 2016, 10:38:57 AM
Are you sure?  0:)

No, I cannot be sure.

Quote from: (: premont :) on January 18, 2016, 10:42:36 AM
This is how I suspected. I suppose composers generally - or at least often - do what they do, because they have something in their mind, and because it must get out. Whether someone will understand it or even become touched by it, is probably of secondary importance.

Well, I suppose I do want listeners to be touched.  But I trust the process.

Quote from: some guy on January 18, 2016, 09:18:34 AM
Only the composer can fully know his or her intentions, and even then....

I think often of VW's 4th, about which he claimed, "I don't know if I like it, but it's what I meant." - an interesting example of a completed work fulfilling what the artist felt he needed to say, even if (apparently) it failed to gain its creator's wholehearted emotional connection or indeed, approval. 

Quote from: karlhenning on January 18, 2016, 11:00:03 AM
No, I cannot be sure.

Well, I suppose I do want listeners to be touched.  But I trust the process.

One theoretical question:

Would it interfere with your composing process, if you knew in advance, that you listeners would not be touched.

I do not think so.

Quote from: (: premont :) on January 18, 2016, 11:05:15 AM
But would it interfere with you composing process, if you knew in advance, that you listeners would not be touched.
I do not think so.

Touching listeners (by which I understand you to mean to "move them") is but one aspect of the spectrum of responses an artist might hope to achieve.  To shock them (a favorite of modern painting, plastic and installation arts) is another. Satie famously experimented with boring his audience.  And there are many artists who seek a reaction, any reaction (preferable in their eyes to no response whatsoever).

The composer's intention isn't really relevant to how we hear the music. It's fun to read about the inspirations behind the music, sure, I'm not questioning this, but I find that whatever the composer meant doesn't really translate to our own listening experience. That's my two measly cents. :)

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 11:16:14 AM
The composer's intention isn't really relevant to how we hear the music. It's fun to read about the inspirations behind the music, sure, I'm not questioning this, but I find that whatever the composer meant doesn't really translate to our own listening experience. That's my two measly cents. :)

John, I agree not entirely relevant to our own listening experience.  But it is part of the complex of intentions, influences, inferences that go into creating the music, appreciation of which is in turn conditioned by our own intellect, tastes and emotional state. 

Quote from: ZauberdrachenNr.7 on January 18, 2016, 11:24:54 AM
John, I agree not entirely relevant to our own listening experience.  But it is part of the complex of intentions, influences, inferences that go into creating the music, appreciation of which is in turn conditioned by our own intellect, tastes and emotional state.

Like I said, it's fun to read about the inspirations behind a piece of music, but these fly out the window when it actually comes to listening to the music. These are my thoughts pretty much in a nutshell.

Quote from: ZauberdrachenNr.7 on January 18, 2016, 11:12:41 AM
Touching listeners (by which I understand you to mean to "move them") is but one aspect of the spectrum of responses an artist might hope to achieve.  To shock them (a favorite of modern painting, plastic and installation arts) is another. Satie famously experimented with boring his audience.  And there are many artists who seek a reaction, any reaction (preferable in their eyes to no response whatsoever).

I mean touching in the broadest sense = to provoke reactions in them.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 11:30:37 AM
Like I said, it's fun to read about the inspirations behind a piece of music, but these fly out the window when it actually comes to listening to the music. These are my thoughts pretty much in a nutshell.

I agree with this. The composers "specific" intentions haven´t got but a marginal influence upon my listening experience.
Well, Bach's passions and sacred cantatas may be an exception from this rule.

Quote from: (: premont :) on January 18, 2016, 11:39:08 AM
I agree with this. The composers "specific" intentions haven´t got but a marginal influence upon my listening experience.
Well, Bach's passions and sacred cantatas may be an exception from this rule.

Well if it's a vocal work, then the texts will help give a better overall picture of the music and its' alleged intent, but music is such an abstract thing that, even if I read the texts, understood their intent, etc., I would still somehow inject my own thoughts and feelings into the music, but, also, the reaction to the music is something we can't control and have really no idea how to formulate into words properly, but this doesn't stop us from trying, does it? ;) ;D

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 11:46:17 AM
..... also, the reaction to the music is something we can't control and have really no idea how to formulate into words properly, but this doesn't stop us from trying, does it? ;) ;D

Very true.

Quote from: ZauberdrachenNr.7 on January 18, 2016, 11:12:41 AM
Touching listeners (by which I understand you to mean to "move them") is but one aspect of the spectrum of responses an artist might hope to achieve.

Yes.

Quote from: some guy on January 18, 2016, 09:18:34 AM
I believe that mixing pigments together creates meaning, that causing sounds to occur creates meaning, that chipping away at marble or granite creates meaning.

Michelangelo disagrees:

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Van Gogh disagrees:

I dream my painting and I paint my dream.

At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance.

Mahler disagrees:

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.

Any performance of music where the composer and performer are separate people involves a synthesis of the intention of the composer and the intention of the performer. Ideally, both bring something to the performance. Both are equally important. They both should have unique and personal ideas to communicate through the music.

It's not as simple as putting notes together to "sound good". For starters, what defines what is "good"? Often it depends on the particular effect the composer is trying to achieve.

If The Rite of Spring was supposed to be an enjoyable singalong tune then Stravinsky failed spectacularly. But no one believes Stravinsky was trying to create a singalong tune. And I doubt anyone believes he just whacked notes together. He may well have experimented a lot of times before getting what he wanted, but the whole process of going "yes, THAT is the effect that I want" requires intent. You simply can't say that unless you have an idea of what you want the music to sound like.

Quote from: (: premont :) on January 18, 2016, 11:05:15 AM
One theoretical question:

Would it interfere with your composing process, if you knew in advance, that you listeners would not be touched.

I do not think so.

"I do not think so." -- pretty much the right answer as far as I know and think, lol.

Can you imagine an occasion where a composer did know for certain, while composing, that the listeners would be touched?

From the kernel of the idea to working on the piece through to its completion, I don't think anyone could be wholly certain that 'the listeners would not be touched.'

A lot of composers, from the moment they pick up the pen to begin a piece and while working through until the work is completed, are completely aware that what they are writing is not for everybody.

Knowing that, most composers, then and now, hope only to reach some percent of the three percent of the population who do listen to classical music. If the piece does reach / 'touch' a small percent of that crowd, that is basis enough to consider a work 'a success.'

I think many a consumer would be both surprised and at least a titch miffed if they knew exactly how much a composer, while they are writing anything, is not thinking about "the audience" -- at all.

From a German composer, early to mid 20th century, writing to his nephew:
"I've finished my numberth symphony. I hope they like it, because it is how I can write."

I've forgotten the name of that composer, while the text quoted could be from a work of fiction yet be no less true to the situation.

Quote from: some guy on January 18, 2016, 09:18:34 AM
Only the composer can fully know his or her intentions, and even then....

If a composer tries to explain the intentions of a piece of music with words, then already we're in trouble.

Kinda makes you question the whole "things" thing and the whole "express" thing as well, eh?

I believe that meaning is what happens when something is done and not that meaning is "out there" and that various means of expression--words, pigments, notes, glass--can more or less "capture" that meaning. "What does it mean?" almost always implies "What has been captured?" I don't think that the arts capture. I think that they make.

^That, the whole post.
For those who think there can be 'clear intent' which can be clearly defined or stated in words from artists who work in non-verbal media, for those who think they can and want to know 'what that intent is,' or 'what a piece means,' I strongly recommend reading some guy's full post.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 18, 2016, 11:00:03 AMI suppose I do want listeners to be touched.  But I trust the process.

I'm "using' your statement to hammer home a pet I think every listener who loves music should adopt and keep in their home, feed, and play with as one does a pet -- meeting the animal on their own terms and loving and accepting the pet as an animal.

Composers are people, not very unlike other people. They compose because... ahem, they were so attracted / compelled to the medium that they went that far to dedicate years of their time to learning the craft in order to be able to compose. Their attraction to the medium is deep, and was / is both intellectual and 'other.'

A composer:
Trusts the medium, its inherent quality of "expressiveness," regardless of what or how he writes
Trusts [must trust, no choice] the performers, who are also people not unlike other people, who are practiced virtuosi, well versed and also keenly cognizant of the expressiveness of the medium, who are 'musical,' to realize the work the composer has written.

All quests for Composer Intent, The Meaning Of The Work [or behind the work, lol], etc. does make for highly engaging discussion; the discussion, de facto, based only on and around various subjective hypothesis, with nothing anywhere near concrete in sight. This is the realm of a sort of arts/intellectual salon discussion cum parlor game... engaging, entertaining, but without much real meaning.
---Its most negative potential is to create a [bloodless] train wreck, a derailment taking the vehicle about as far away from the tracks it runs on as is possible, aborting the journey for which one has purchased a ticket, signed up. I.e. they are distractions and detractors that keep the full force of the work at arms length.

Very few people I know would get their cat declawed or have the vocal cords of their dog cut to eliminate the animal's bark. It seems to me that a lot of alleged music lovers are going about doing exactly that when it comes to these attempts at defining the intent and meaning of a composer or piece which has so profoundly attracted them and moved them.
---"Lets declaw it and take away its bark. Okay. Now I'm comfortable and not worried about the upholstery of the cushioned chair I sit in when the animal is in the house = when I listen to...."

Quote from: ZauberdrachenNr.7 on January 18, 2016, 11:24:54 AM
John, I agree not entirely relevant to our own listening experience.  But it is part of the complex of intentions, influences, inferences that go into creating the music, appreciation of which is in turn conditioned by our own intellect, tastes and emotional state.

Well, if you hear or read about all that extramusical fol-de-rol, then, yeah.

Otherwise, you're left with 'the sound the piece makes' and nothing else, and that is 'the work' as close to it as it gets.

The ancillary extramusical bits are the barnacles that slow down the ship.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 18, 2016, 05:16:26 PM
The ancillary extramusical bits are the barnacles that only slow down the ship.

No.

We are back to you insisting that extramusical bits are always bad. That's simply not true. Sometimes they are helpful, sometimes they enhance the experience.

I find it helpful, to take an example from my listening today, to know that the last movement of Beethoven's op.11 is a set of variations on a tune that was very current at the time that he wrote it. The early listeners to the piece would have known this, would have recognised the tune. Insisting that extramusical bits are bad is insisting that it's a detriment to know this and that I would be better off just listening to Beethoven's notes.

Which is a bit of a problem given that the original audience would have known about the origin of the tune, and it's us a couple of hundred years later that are lacking that extramusical knowledge.

Quote from: orfeo on January 18, 2016, 05:23:38 PM
No.

We are back to you insisting that extramusical bits are always bad. That's simply not true. Sometimes they are helpful, sometimes they enhance the experience.

I find it helpful, to take an example from my listening today, to know that the last movement of Beethoven's op.11 is a set of variations on a tune that was very current at the time that he wrote it. The early listeners to the piece would have known this, would have recognised the tune. Insisting that extramusical bits are bad is insisting that it's a detriment to know this and that I would be better off just listening to Beethoven's notes.

Which is a bit of a problem given that the original audience would have known about the origin of the tune, and it's us a couple of hundred years later that are lacking that extramusical knowledge.

You call it helpful: the fact it was a well-known popular tune of the day was for those contemporaries who knew the tune and then heard the piece for the first time [and first time only] an 'a-hah' moment of recognition. There may have been an additional dash of humor, pathos, irony, etc. if he considered the lyrics as something to which he was at also referring. Most composers will choose a tune, as he did in those variations, solely for its musical potential to nicely bend to making variations on it.

For us, hundreds of years later, there is no 'a-hah' factor because we do not recognize the tune when first hearing the work. There is also no musical 'a-hah' moment via learning of it and then knowing it was a popular tune of the day, because for those today, learning of it -- vs. its being already familiar -- is a mere intellectual footnote. Any 'a-hah' of discovering and learning about it is also a mere intellectual 'a-hah,' but not at all integral to either enjoyment or 'understanding' of the piece.

I wonder why any piece like that needs, or should need, any "help" for the listener at all. [The fact is, it doesn't; not knowing it was a popular tune of the day did not in any way make the work inaccessible to you, and did not diminish your enjoyment of it as music one iota.]

Some listeners like "help," think they need it, or actuallly need it. It seems for some, when a piece is titled sonata, or theme and variations, whatever music is there is simply not enough.

Extramusical information is helpful only for some; for others, it neither helps or changes a thing about what they get from the music.

Beethoven was a composer who was fairly confident his music would be played years after his death. I seriously doubt that with such a prospectus in mind if he planned on later generations finding it at all necessary to know anything about a popular tune of his day, let alone its lyrics, upon which he made a series of variations.

If Beethoven's music, with all its brilliance, strengths and force, needs extramusical "enhancements," or "help," via knowing of some slight and extramusical anecdotal stories, then God help all lesser composers.

"A lockdown it will be."

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KqpGUzIsAHg/UEQF6pGD_KI/AAAAAAAABKI/2hmmrS6Qo4E/s1600/yoda.jpg)

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 18, 2016, 06:15:35 PM
For us, hundreds of years later, there is no 'a-hah' factor because we do not recognize the tune when first hearing the work. There is also no 'a-hah' moment via learning of it and then knowing it was a popular tune of the day, because for those today, learning of it -- vs. its being already familiar -- is a mere intellectual footnote. Any 'a-hah' of discovering and learning about it is also a mere intellectual 'a-hah,' ancillary and not integral to enjoyment of the piece.

I wonder why any piece like that needs, or should need, any "help" for the listener at all. [The fact is, it doesn't; not knowing it was a popular tune of the day did not in any way make the work inaccessible to you, and did not diminish your enjoyment of it as music one iota.]

Some listeners like "help," think they need it, or actually need it. It seems for some, when a piece is titled sonata, or theme and variations, whatever music is there is simply not enough.

Extramusical information is helpful only for some; for others, it neither helps or changes a thing about what they get from the music.

Beethoven was a composer who was fairly confident his music would be played years after his death. I seriously doubt that with such a prospectus in mind if he planned on later generations finding it at all necessary to know anything about a popular tune of his day, let alone its lyrics, upon which he made a series of variations.

If Beethoven's music, with all its brilliance, strengths and force, needs extramusical "enhancements," or "help," via knowing of some slight and extramusical anecdotal stories, then God help all lesser composers.

Well, harrumph. Consider this discussion by pianist and scholar William Kinderman of the scherzo to the A-flat sonata, op. 110:

QuoteAs others have observed, Beethoven alludes to two popular songs, Unsa Kaetz haed Katzln ghabt ("Our cat has had kittens") and Ich bin luederlich, du bist luederlich ("I'm a slob, you're a slob') in the main section of this movement. . . . .  The word "luederlich" refers to a bedraggled or slovenly individual not fit for polite society. Beethoven was once taken for such around this time when, miserably clothed and having lost his way in Wiener Neustadt, he was seen peering in at the windows of the houses, whereupon the police were summoned. When arrested, he protested, "I am Beethoven," to which the policeman replied, "Well, why not? You're a bum. Beethoven doesn't look like that." ("Warum nit gar? A Lump sind Sie, so sieht der Beethoven nit aus.")

There's a lot to stay about this issue of intention (and I'm only responding to this immediate past post, although not however to the picture of Yoda), but are you going to tell me that such "extramusical information neither helps nor changes a thing about what [some may] get from the music"? Knowing the anecdote and the popular songs quoted, can you honestly say your perception of the music has emerged unaltered? Wouldn't it be more accurate in fact to say that once you know this story, the anecdote provides quite a different sense of the music and of the typically raucous Beethovenian humor contained therein?

Monsieur Croche, I didn't say anything about "needing". Much of your argument is directed at a notion that I didn't put forward.

Saying that knowing something more enhances my enjoyment is not the same as saying that I was unable to enjoy the piece without it. My problem is with your insistence of the reverse, that anything extramusical is bad. There is a huge difference between saying that extramusical stuff is not necessary to enjoying the music, and saying that it is outright bad. And the latter seems to be the direction you keep pushing.

There is a middle ground between "extramusical is necessary" and "extramusical is a hindrance", and it's where in fact most people live. It's certainly where I live. Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I'm advocating the exact opposite.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 18, 2016, 06:42:31 PM
Well, harrumph. Consider this discussion by pianist and scholar William Kinderman of the scherzo to the A-flat sonata, op. 110:

There's a lot to stay about this issue of intention (and I'm only responding to this immediate past post, although not however to the picture of Yoda), but are you going to tell me that such "extramusical information neither helps nor changes a thing about what [some may] get from the music"? Knowing the anecdote and the popular songs quoted, can you honestly say your perception of the music has emerged unaltered? Wouldn't it be more accurate in fact to say that once you know this story, the anecdote provides quite a different sense of the music and of the typically raucous Beethovenian humor contained therein?

Harrrrumph. [Let's roll the R, because we are, after all, talking about art, lol. I love "harumph." Contextually, I've heard it as a genuine sound made by a petty autocrat whose opinion has been controverted. But, when the written word for that sound is used, like here, I just find it deliciously funny.]

A-yep. For some, that humor you mention in Beethoven's music is blazingly obvious "just from the notes." I would even wager those who 'get it just from the notes' would not experience the piece any differently after learning of the references... i.e. it would only make for a chuckle of confirmation of what was already perceived and understood, it wouldn't make me / have made me laugh any harder when I had listened to a 'funny' Beethoven piece without knowing the particulars.

Sorry to disappoint.  :)

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 18, 2016, 06:53:05 PM
Harrrrumph, [let's roll the R's, because we are, after all, talking about art, lol.]

A-yep. For some, that humor you mention in Beethoven's music is blazingly obvious "just from the notes." I would even wager those who 'get it just from the notes' would not experience the piece any differently after learning of the references... i.e. it would only confirm what was already perceived and understood.

Sorry to disappoint.  :)

I don't care if you disappoint, but you're being much too rigid and formulaic. What are the terms of your wager? Orfeo, what sayest thou?

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 18, 2016, 06:56:45 PM
Orfeo, what sayest thou?

I say that I've spent enough of my time lately talking to fundamentalists, and that if they won't budge there's a limit to how much effort should be spent arguing with them.

I also say you can't get humour literally "just from the notes", and in fact Monsieur Croche is now arguing against his own previous position about how people draw meaning from music despite there being no inherent communication in it. But pointing this out will be ultimately fruitless.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 18, 2016, 06:15:35 PM
Beethoven was a composer who was fairly confident his music would be played years after his death. I seriously doubt that with such a prospectus in mind if he planned on later generations finding it at all necessary to know anything about a popular tune of his day, let alone its lyrics, upon which he made a series of variations.

Writing for posterity is another, complex issue. But the fact that Beethoven included known popular tunes in his music (as did Bach on occasion, in the final Quodlibet of the Goldberg Variations) is unmistakable. Taking your argument to its conclusion, why would Beethoven include these tunes at all if he feared that knowledge of these songs would be lost? Or for that matter, how would he have known that these popular songs would have been forgotten? Whether or not a composer writes in hopes of posterity, he also writes for his immediate audience.

Quote from: orfeo on January 18, 2016, 07:06:25 PM
I say that I've spent enough of my time lately talking to fundamentalists, and that if they won't budge there's a limit to how much effort should be spent arguing with them.

I also say you can't get humour literally "just from the notes", and in fact Monsieur Croche is now arguing against his own previous position about how people draw meaning from music despite there being no inherent communication in it. But pointing this out will be ultimately fruitless.

High-five, Orfeo.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 18, 2016, 06:56:45 PM
I don't care if you disappoint, but you're being much too rigid and formulaic. What are the terms of your wager? Orfeo, what sayest thou?

I think you mean unyielding to an argument you would like less questioned, lol.

If Beethoven believed his music would be played long after his death, with his saying about one piece and its being generally accepted, "I can wait fifty years," when he was at an age where he did not have fifty years to go -- I think it safe to at least come up with the deduction that if he did not include a textual note to what was quoted as being referenced in a piece that he planned on the piece being very much able to stand on its own, in a later time, without its current known popular contextual references.

If one is not able to sense and know the intense and earthy humor present in many a Beethoven score, or in part here and there even in his more 'serious' pieces, as imbued in the score alone without these incidental external bits, then please avail yourself of whatever aids and abets the fuller understanding. Know they are anecdotal, incidental, extramusical, extraneous, but let them prompt you to hear more of the nature of 'what the score itself is -- it is to be hoped that after one or two times with, that later auditions will be without bringing the album filled with those clippings to the listening room.

You know, whatever works for you and whatever it takes.

You can "Bet" your last Livre, Thaler, and pfennig, that if Luigi had thought the score needed those things known in order to be understood as music, he would have made a note of the extramusical and made sure it was on the frontispiece of the score.

Just sayin'

On betting / gambling:
"I can not understand risking the necessary for the superfluous." ~ Alexei Ivanovich, in Dostoyevskey's The Gambler.

(http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/wp-content/uploads/sites/29639/2015/09/Yawning.jpg)

Wake me when it's over...

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 07:15:39 PM
(http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/wp-content/uploads/sites/29639/2015/09/Yawning.jpg)

Wake me when it's over...

Thank you for your valuable insights. As usual, we are all bowled over by your intellectual curiosity and scintillating comments.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 18, 2016, 07:07:37 PM
Writing for posterity is another, complex issue. But the fact that Beethoven included known popular tunes in his music (as did Bach on occasion, in the final Quodlibet of the Goldberg Variations) is unmistakable. Taking your argument to its conclusion, why would Beethoven include these tunes at all if he feared that knowledge of these songs would be lost? Or for that matter, how would he have known that these popular songs would have been forgotten? Whether or not a composer writes in hopes of posterity, he also writes for his immediate audience.

I'm certain that if they thought about it at all, those composers would not think or hope to think that the popular references would still be known even one generation later. For all contemporaries concerned, maker and audience, a bit of 'a-hah,' and a bit of fun.

For later generations? References lost, the music better stand on its own [that requirement, I think we can all agree, fully met by those composers] That 'a-hah' factor was only good in the now of back then, and I think this was known and accepted by the composers who used those contemporary ditties, i.e. they had a nice slight effect, their being recognized by the listener was not integral to the quality of the piece in which the composer used them.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 18, 2016, 07:25:12 PM
Thank you for your valuable insights. As usual, we are all bowled over by your intellectual curiosity and scintillating comments.

I just find it rather useless for all parties involved to continue to argue a point that neither is willing to accept hence why I'm yawning like crazy right now. You're better off with a brick wall.

P.S. I already added to this thread a page or two ago.

Quote from: orfeo on January 18, 2016, 07:06:25 PM


I also say you can't get humour literally "just from the notes", and in fact Monsieur Croche is now arguing against his own previous position about how people draw meaning from music despite there being no inherent communication in it.

I say you can get humor "just from the notes" and you don't. Big whup.

Humor from "just the notes" is something inherently non-specific but still 'funny' about how a piece goes. I don't see a conflict with anything I've said, going out of my way to dully repeat, 'Non-literal' as it pertains to music.

Chicago Symphony Center ~ seating, 2,500
Stravinsky conducting the suite [orchestral only] of his Pulcinella. There is a brief libretto of this ballet suite in the program, though I doubt all the audience read it. Some present are completely unfamiliar with the piece, and are there more for the event of Stravinsky being present.

The Composer/conductor: back to the audience [i.e. he cannot mug or 'cue' the audience in any way];
players in standard seating onstage;
house, sold out standing room only, 2,500 and maybe a few more....

Through the course of the piece, with "Notes Only," there were a number of times during the performance of a ripple of audible laughter, the audience, 2,500 of'em, all laughing at the same time as prompted by something that had just happened "with the notes only."

Explain.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 07:39:45 PM
I just find it rather useless for all parties involved to continue to argue a point that neither is willing to accept hence why I'm yawning like crazy right now. You're better off with a brick wall.

P.S. I already added to this thread a page or two ago.

Well, you go right back to sleep and let the rest of us discuss this as we will. If we choose to be useless, that's our prerogative. I'm not the one going around telling other people how bored I am.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 07:15:39 PM
(http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/wp-content/uploads/sites/29639/2015/09/Yawning.jpg)

Wake me when it's over...

Dude, you need to take a nap. Get that needed rest.  :)

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 18, 2016, 07:45:14 PM
Well, you go right back to sleep and let the rest of us discuss this as we will. If we choose to be useless, that's our prerogative. I'm not the one going around telling other people how bored I am.

Jesus...would you just lighten up. Is everything a battle with you? I'm joking around here.

Anyway, I think Debussy said it best when he said: "There's no need either for music to make people think! ... It would be enough if music could make people listen."

As I stated in another thread, people are going to draw what they want from music despite whatever intentions were set forth from the composer. That's just the very nature of music. It will continue to be a mystery why Beethoven did the things he did in his late SQs or why Schoenberg developed his own system of composition. The music is what stands out perfectly clear on its own. Everything else is merely superfluous and arbitrary.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 18, 2016, 07:48:43 PM
Dude, you need to take a nap. Get that needed rest.  :)

:P

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 07:52:12 PM
Jesus...would you just lighten up. Is everything a battle with you? I'm joking around here.

And why don't you for once in your life accept that some people are actually interested in ideas, and they're sick of your constant insults any time a comment goes beyond your little comfort zone? You do this all the time, and everyone has to walk on eggshells around you because you're always ready to get into your little snits. And I'm not joking around here.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 18, 2016, 07:57:02 PM
And why don't you for once in your life accept that some people are actually interested in ideas, and they're sick of your constant insults any time a comment goes beyond your little comfort zone? You do this all the time, and everyone has to walk on eggshells around you because you're always ready to get into your little snits. And I'm not joking around here.

Haha...walking on eggshells? Please, just stop. You're the only one who's insulting anyone. I'm all for discussing ideas, but this thread isn't going anywhere, which is not surprising because it's merely a point vs. point argument with no let up on either side and, which, ultimately, results in a dead-end.

P.S. If you feel that strongly about me, then there's always the ignore function. You should take advantage of it.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 18, 2016, 07:44:35 PM
I say you can get humor "just from the notes" and you don't. Big whup.

Humor from "just the notes" is something inherently non-specific but still 'funny' about how a piece goes. I don't see a conflict with anything I've said, going out of my way to dully repeat, 'Non-literal' as it pertains to music.

It does in fact contradict your more absolute moments.

Again, the problem is that you have moments where you just don't see the middle ground. You say something about how there simply isn't any meaning being communicated, and when someone objects to that, you think they're advocating for the kind of meaning that you can nail down with words.

Claims about humour are particularly noteworthy to me, because it was me who talked to you about the humour in Haydn's work. I put it to you that Haydn tried to make people laugh. This was precisely because you appeared to be denying any notion of composers having intent to achieve anything beyond notating pitch, duration and volume.

You are now turning around and presenting my own argument to me.  When I talked about the humour, you were all about the notes. Now that I talk about "just the notes" (not something I actually believe, it was just a test), you're talking about the humour.

In short, it seems that whatever some people say, you'll say the opposite.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 07:52:12 PM
I'm joking around here.

What you are actually doing is belittling other people's discussion.

I can understand the discussion is frustrating and not to your liking, but it really isn't helpful when your contribution is to tell other people they ought not to discuss something on the grounds you don't find the discussion entertaining.

So you're bored. And? What are we supposed to do about that? People aren't discussing for your benefit, they're having a discussion for their own benefit.

If the thread isn't to your liking, a better solution is to go elsewhere, or to steer the discussion in a direction you find more interesting by making actual, concrete contributions.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 08:00:34 PM
Haha...walking on eggshells? Please, just stop. You're the only one who's insulting anyone. I'm all for discussing ideas, but this thread isn't going anywhere, which is not surprising because it's merely a point vs. point argument with no let up on either side and, which, ultimately, results in a dead-end.

P.S. If you feel that strongly about me, then there's always the ignore function. You should take advantage of it.

Take advantage of it yourself. You're the only one here who's actively trying to derail the discussion.

Quote from: orfeo on January 18, 2016, 08:07:51 PM
What you are actually doing is belittling other people's discussion.

I can understand the discussion is frustrating and not to your liking, but it really isn't helpful when your contribution is to tell other people they ought not to discuss something on the grounds you don't find the discussion entertaining. People aren't discussing for your benefit, they're discussion for their own benefit. If the thread isn't to your liking, a better solution is to go elsewhere.

I'm making light of a discussion that's already headed into derailment. I'm certainly not belittling anyone.

So you don't agree that you're merely arguing a point and that Monsieur Croche is arguing a point which both of you will never see eye-to-eye? If you call this kind of debasing conversation stimulating, then knock yourself out.

As a contributing member to this forum, I have every right to post on this thread as you do, so going elsewhere is not really a prerogative at this juncture nor is it your right to suggest I leave.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 08:11:15 PM
As a contributing member to this forum, I have every right to post on this thread as you do, so going elsewhere is not really a prerogative at this juncture nor is it your right to suggest I leave.

Right. But you're ready to tell other people to take a hike: "P.S. If you feel that strongly about me, then there's always the ignore function. You should take advantage of it."

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 08:11:15 PM
As a contributing member to this forum, I have every right to post on this thread as you do, so going elsewhere is not really a prerogative at this juncture nor is it your right to suggest I leave.

You have the "right" to post, but I don't?  Okay then!

I'm suggesting it for your own benefit. If you want to stay here and be bored... knock yourself out!

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 18, 2016, 08:13:01 PM
Right. But you're ready to tell other people to take a hike: "P.S. If you feel that strongly about me, then there's always the ignore function. You should take advantage of it."

You're putting words into my mouth, Sforzando. I was just telling you if you don't like my posts and what I have said thus far, then it's quite easy for you to ignore my posts hence why I suggested the ignore function.

Quote from: orfeo on January 18, 2016, 08:13:27 PM
You have the "right" to post, but I don't?  Okay then!

I'm suggesting it for your own benefit. If you want to stay here and be bored... knock yourself out!

I never stated that you didn't have a right to post. Where did this come from? I actually find it amusing to read the comments made over the past couple of pages between you and Croche, because you two guys won't back down for nothing.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 08:14:38 PM
You're putting words into my mouth, Sforzando. I was just telling you if you don't like my posts and what I have said thus far, then it's quite easy for you to ignore my posts hence why I suggested the ignore function.

And somehow Mr. Orfeo has reached the same conclusion as I: "What you are actually doing is belittling other people's discussion." How can this be if I'm simply putting words into your mouth? Has anyone else on this thread said anything like, "Wake me when it's over" or "I see a lockdown coming"? Look in the mirror, Image.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 18, 2016, 08:19:44 PM
And somehow Mr. Orfeo has reached the same conclusion as I: "What you are actually doing is belittling other people's discussion." How can this be if I'm simply putting words into your mouth? Has anyone else on this thread said anything like, "Wake me when it's over" or "I see a lockdown coming"? Look in the mirror, Image.

I'm only stating what inevitably will happen and I'll be glad when it does because there's no point two people arguing over points that they're not going to budge on. Why don't we just lace you guys up and throw you into a boxing ring? Now, that would be entertaining.

(*munches popcorn*)

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 08:17:02 PM
I never stated that you didn't have a right to post. Where did this come from?

Sorry, let me be more precise. I apparently don't have the "right" to post whatever I want, because if what I want to post is a suggestion to you that you might want to take a different course of action, this is a problem.

Whereas you presumably assert the right to post whatever you want.

As far myself and Monsieur Croche goes, I occasionally have hope of changing his mind precisely because I'm not trying to reverse his position. I'm arguing neither for wholesale acceptance of all extramusical things nor wholesale dismissal of them all.

But half the time I'm not writing for the sake of Monsieur Croche. It's quite clear that Monsieur Croche is not the only person who reads my posts. When Donald Trump and Ted Cruz stand on a podium and address each other, do you think they're actually doing it to change each other's minds? Me neither. They're actually seeking to persuade those who are listening.

Well, the ones who haven't yawned and switched channels. Maybe just the ones who reach for the popcorn.

If arguing a point that neither one of you are going to understand and accept, then please, by all means, proceed. I'm sorry to have interrupted.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 08:30:12 PM
If arguing a point that neither one of you are going to understand and accept, then please, by all means, proceed. I'm sorry to have interrupted.

My own boredom with the process exceeds your own. I'm off to the gym, where I predict they will select music with the "intent" of getting people "pumped up" and I will hate it because I need to be cool, calm and collected to do that kind of stuff.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 18, 2016, 08:10:14 PM
Take advantage of it yourself. You're the only one here who's actively trying to derail the discussion.

I've had Mirror Image on ignore since about a week after I joined the forum, I think. Seems like I haven't missed anything.

@ Orfeo & Croche, no interest in participating in this discussion myself at the moment, but I am (was) quite enjoying the back-and-forth.

Quote from: amw on January 18, 2016, 08:35:45 PM
I've had Mirror Image on ignore since about a week after I joined the forum, I think. Seems like I haven't missed anything.

@ Orfeo & Croche, no interest in participating in this discussion myself at the moment, but I am (was) quite enjoying the back-and-forth.

:laugh:

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 07:52:12 PM"There's no need either for music to make people think! ... It would be enough if music could make people listen." ~ Claude Debussy

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 07:52:12 PM...people are going to draw what they want from music despite whatever intentions were set forth from the composer. That's just the very nature of music.

Ah, so my thinking any piece of music is like an Aural Rorschach Blot -- with nothing more specific about it -- is not a wildly off comparison.
---With all the 'what it is abouts' floating about, I think composers for the most part have been more than a little wise, writing what they write and then verbally, petty much clamming up and not providing us with anything about the rest, 'intent' included.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 07:52:12 PMThe music is what stands out perfectly clear on its own.

It seems a number of people really struggle with this.

[/quote]Everything else is merely superfluous and arbitrary.[/quote] Uh, oh, you mean, splutter, that this Beethoven sonata with its conflicting themes of the first and second movement, brought together in sublime harmony in the final third movement, is not about, "The Eternal Feminine and then, opposed, The Eternal Masculine, and Resolved With Harmonious Love in the third movement?" Please, "Say it ain't so, Joe."

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 07:52:12 PMIt will continue to be a mystery.

If the composers themselves don't tell us much outside of the actual work, I think we can assume they choose not to in order that the listener focus only on the work itself, or also, because they are truly incapable of telling us much more than what is already in the work. Yeah, that is nigh unto impossible for some to take at face value, while I agree with you, if that is all that was given, it should be taken and accepted as complete.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 18, 2016, 08:52:57 PM
Ah, so my thinking any piece of music is like an Aural Rorschach Blot -- with nothing more specific about it -- is not a wildly off comparison.
---With all the 'what it is abouts' floating about, I think composers for the most part have been more than a little wise, writing what they write and then verbally, petty much clamming up and not providing us with anything about the rest, 'intent' included.

It seems a number of people really struggle with this.

Everything else is merely superfluous and arbitrary. Uh, oh, you mean, splutter, that this Beethoven sonata with its conflicting themes of the first and second movement, brought together in sublime harmony in the final third movement, is not about, "The Eternal Feminine and then, opposed, The Eternal Masculine, and Resolved With Harmonious Love in the third movement?" Please, "Say it ain't so, Joe."
If the composers themselves don't tell us much outside of the actual work, I think we can assume they choose not to in order that the listener focus only on the work itself, or also, because they are truly incapable of telling us much more than what is already in the work. Yeah, that is nigh unto impossible for some to take at face value, while I agree with you, if that is all that was given, it should be taken and accepted as complete.

My point is that it doesn't matter what the composer intended. I'm not buying into it and I never will subscribe to any train of thought other than the one that happens during and after a piece of music has ended. In short, I draw my own conclusions and if the composer were to hear my thoughts on one of their pieces, I think they'd be happy that I listened. This, at the end of the day, should be enough.

Quote from: orfeo on January 18, 2016, 08:24:52 PMMaybe just the ones who reach for the popcorn.

The several mentions of popcorn have reminded me I would have been better off eating something a while ago. So, am now off to attend to that boring and basic need that does not go away... fuel.

Always fun, Orfeo.

There is a bit of sport here I hope not taken as wanting to wound or win... some people enjoy more than anything 'how long we can keep the ball in the air' without ever thinking about points or winning, and I am of that sort.

Though, I don't think you will ever change my mind on the value as per meaning and enhancing the listening experience by knowing either history, composer biography or biographical anecdotes [with which I am pretty well supplied already.] You just might, but I can not imagine what the particular nugget would be that would have me hearing anything so differently, but that might just be your kind of challenge, finding that one nugget of info that might slightly change my mind.

And, yeah, we're both intransigent enough to keep that ball in volley and in the air for a looong time, and maybe that is a bit 'inconsiderate,' i.e. occupying page after page of a thread. On the other hand, if there is an audience, silent though they might be, maybe we could set it up so you and I get paid? Lol.


Best regards.

There is a show on cable television in our future.

How is a forum on issues like these meant to be about changing minds?  I really don't think it is at all, and I suspect you don't either.  I wonder even how much of it ends up being about music, and how much is simply putting extreme positions and use words like it's some gladatorial combat in what their is a winner (decided I assume by the audience they revel in thinking they have).  None of this is anything new here either, such issues will have been looked at several times before.

And yes people do take things too personally, and it can be tempting to push that.  But again, that's got very little to do with the music and more with human psychology on a forum.  I do think it's more productive talking about more objective qualities of music rather than more personal feelings as by its nature the latter isn't likely to be understood by many.  Composer threads are normally where you get people going off on some tangent about what a composer means to them.  But obviously people can talk about whatever they want in other areas too.

Music is obviously about manipulation in that the musical journey of a piece is meant to guide the listener.  That of course doesn't mean they are 'conmen', I think that was said just to be provocative than for any important point.  Listeners agree to be manipulated and to be led down a particular journey, most listen to music with a wish to enjoy what they are listening to and are in that way relatively passive receivers of what they hear. 

As someone who is both part of, and genuinely interested in, such discussions (cheers, Mr. Sforz!) I must say that I don´t understand you at all, John (Mirror Image). If you are so bored or annoyed by the exchange, why then do you feel the need to visit the thread? Simply ignore it.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 18, 2016, 09:33:06 PM
There is a bit of sport here I hope not taken as wanting to wound or win... some people enjoy more than anything 'how long we can keep the ball in the air' without ever thinking about points or winning, and I am of that sort.

So am I, actually, so am I, but taken to its extreme, this can lead to being a contrarian for the sake of contradiction --- and it´s from personal experience that I speak.  :D

That being said, orfeo is right, you have sort of shot yourself in the foot with Beethoven´s humor. Either it is inherent in the music itself, in which case music can and does (explicitly, for that matter) represent non-musical things; or it stems from cultural conventions and conditioning, in which case 200 years later after the work´s premiere the audience (who lives in completely different cultural conventions and conditioning) does indeed need explanation and program notes in order to fully grasp why a particular sequence of notes is humorous.

And btw, your Stravinsky concert example does nothing but support the first possibility.

Well, as I was getting my beauty rest--which I sorely need--the rest of you were having a swell time of it to be sure.

But no one in that whole time took M. Croche's advice and reread post number 20. That has sorta hamstrung the whole discussion.

Well, here's some more carefully thought out ideas for y'all to ignore. Be fair, if y'all were to regard them, there would be much less room for squabbling. And I think we can all agree that squabbling is the main reason most of us are here.

Entonces.

Observation: in a group of people interested in music, there does seem to be a lot of interest in and concern to defend the validity of what everyone agrees is properly called "extramusical." It would be like a group of people interested in painting spending the bulk of their time talking about sound.

Some consider the extramusical essential, though some of them do occasionally diverge from that--or appear to. Some consider the extramusical to be helpful for understanding the music. That at least make sense, if the goal is genuinely to understand the music. But some consider the extramusical to be a huge distraction from the music. Far from helping to understand, it guarantees, practically, that the music will not be understood.

Query: is "understanding" the point? If it is, are we all agree about what "understanding" means? If it's not, should we be trying to find some other words?

Logic: if the information contained in words conveys mas o menos what the music is supposed to be conveying, then what's the point of having both? Best I can see in this regard is that the extramusical is like a rocket engine, useful for getting the rocket to a particular point at which time it is jettisoned.

Query: Is music conveying the kinds of information that words can convey? If yes, then music seems redundant. If no, then words are actually conveying something different from music and will not help anyone understand what the music is doing.

Trust: Music is capable of doing whatever it is that it does without any props. Listeners might also be able to experience whatever it is that music is doing by the extremely clever stratagem of listening to the music. But if we keep harping (:P) on the value of the extramusical, especially insofar as it purports to be conveying whatever the music is supposed to be also conveying, then we continue to enable listeners who are incapable of listening to music and getting anything out of it without crutches.*

Emotions: Music somehow has the power to effect us emotionally, more powerfully than practically anything else, even love and kittens. So we should expect that anyone who's ideas about music are questioned will get royally bent out of shape. It takes an enormous discipline to be able to talk about something that can trigger our emotions so effectively. But if we can leave our emotions to the side for just a second or two, we might be able to come up with some intelligent thoughts about some of the other things that music does.

*Mixing: Has there been some mixing of metaphors in the preceding post?

Yes.

Quote from: some guy on January 19, 2016, 02:25:05 AM
Music is capable of doing whatever it is that it does without any props.

The only way music ever exists without any props is if you take it and drop it into an entirely different culture.

<pointless aside>

It's early morning in Boston, so I misread that as clams about humour.

</pointless aside>

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 17, 2016, 03:17:45 PMThis seems to be a debate that pops up here and there and everywhere. What is the composer expressing? Can a composer 'communicate' with their music? And even on a more technical level: does something like Historically Informed Performance practice accurately provide the intended sound and musical interpretation that the composer had in his/her mind?

But I do wonder about how we got to our conclusions on these things, and how we have become to hold such beliefs that some do about what we think a Composer's Intention is.

I think that it comes down to these things for me:

As a music student, I spend less time imagining what a piece communicates to me, in favour of thinking about how a piece of music is put together and then interpreted for performance (which ultimately evokes various things in various people). But I do think about what techniques and traits different composers have in their compositions and how they use these to express pure sound as an art form.

As a music listener, I love to enjoy music for music's sake without thinking about what a piece 'communicates.' I love to just go with the flow really.

Quality musicians spend a lot of time practicing, learning, composing, playing, evolving .. in order to be the best that they can be, and if in a band situation, also be a real band that gels as one - each part is equal, playing together. They understand that music is for people at the end of the day and they would love it to shine through to as many people as possible. The music that is, not ideas of genius or innovation - which aren't primary. Connecting is a big desire. And instrumental music, is whatever the listener wants it to be about. The listener's imagination can run wild, and find things that are relevant to their own personal experiences. So it is personal from listener to listener, you don't want every listener to come to the same conclusions.

Quote from: some guy on January 19, 2016, 02:25:05 AM
Observation False analogy: in a group of people interested in music, there does seem to be a lot of interest in and concern to defend the validity of what everyone agrees is properly called "extramusical." It would be like a group of people interested in painting spending the bulk of their time talking about sound.

Correct analogy: it would be like a group of people interested in painting spending the bulk of their time talking about the validity (or lack thereof) of what everyone agrees is properly called "extrapictural"*.

* ie, anything else than colors and their combination.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 18, 2016, 08:23:06 PM
I'm only stating what inevitably will happen and I'll be glad when it does because there's no point two people arguing over points that they're not going to budge on. Why don't we just lace you guys up and throw you into a boxing ring? Now, that would be entertaining.

(*munches popcorn*)

Actually there was a time when my position was the exact mirror image of our Debussyan friend's. With experience and maturity my position has evolved into something different. You might say I've become less rigid, more nuanced in my thinking. I'm not necessarily interested in changing Croche's mind, but rather in influencing other, more open-minded observers. And though I don't have time at the moment to develop my position in what will no doubt will be for you excruciating/soporific detail, it may surprise you that I too support the idea "that it doesn't matter what the composer intended."

(Briefly: intention precedes action. What Beethoven intended died with him and is buried with his corpse in a Vienna cemetery. All we can know is what Beethoven achieved, and proceed from there. And that of course includes introducing folk songs he knew his audience would recognize into his works. Literature provides even more striking examples. Our friend Alberich has been arguing with me over what he thinks Shakespeare "wanted us to feel" - i.e., his intentions - and I've been saying that we have no way of knowing these intentions and that however we respond is how we respond. The classic case is Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage, with its ironically named heroine. Audiences from the start took her as a sympathetic, courageous figure; Brecht insisted that he intended her to be viewed instead as a cowardly opportunist - and there is ample evidence for that in the play. Yet even though he revised the play to bring out more what he "intended," those dang audiences continued to view her sympathetically.)

And yet many of us continue to proceed as if intention were knowable, and somehow matters. The interesting question is: Why should that be the case?

That's the short version, for your benefit.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 19, 2016, 02:54:38 AM
<pointless aside>

It's early morning in Boston, so I misread that as clams about humour.

</pointless aside>

No, I think you read it correctly.

Why do we need to know the intention?

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 03:15:21 AM
No, I think you read it correctly.

The Silence of the Clams

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 02:39:23 AM
The only way music ever exists without any props is if you take it and drop it into an entirely different culture.

Amen!

I have to admit that I find it faintly amusing to read stuff about how we can't know composer's intentions, interspersed with quotes from composers.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 03:13:11 AM
many of us continue to proceed as if intention were knowable, and somehow matters. The interesting question is: Why should that be the case?

Probably because "understanding" is an innate need, at least in some people?

Quote from: Florestan on January 19, 2016, 01:06:54 AM
As someone who is both part of, and genuinely interested in, such discussions (cheers, Mr. Sforz!) I must say that I don´t understand you at all, John (Mirror Image). If you are so bored or annoyed by the exchange, why then do you feel the need to visit the thread? Simply ignore it.

Good morning to you, too, Florestan. (It is 7:30 in the morning here in New York.) Isn't it rather marvelous that I can sit here in my Long Island home and joust with people from Romania, Australia, Boston, and (ahem) even Georgia without even buying a plane ticket or showing my passport? 

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 03:20:31 AM
I have to admit that I find it faintly amusing to read stuff about how we can't know composer's intentions, interspersed with quotes from composers.

Hah!  :)

Quote from: Florestan on January 19, 2016, 03:22:28 AM
Probably because "understanding" is an innate need, at least in some people?

Aye. But why does such "understanding" need to be couched in the form of understanding "intentions"?

And I must stop here for now. Have to be out the door in a half hour.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 03:22:59 AM
Good morning to you, too, Florestan. (It is 7:30 in the morning here in New York.) Isn't it rather marvelous that I can sit here in my Long Island home and joust with people from Romania, Australia, Boston, and (ahem) even Georgia without even buying a plane ticket or showing my passport?

´Morning, sir! Indeed it is.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 03:20:31 AM
I have to admit that I find it faintly amusing to read stuff about how we can't know composer's intentions, interspersed with quotes from composers.

It's early in the day yet, and I may be misreading . . . the idea I took away is, unless the artist has told us (and we trust the report), if the artist is dead, we have no firm knowledge.

Heck, if the artist is alive, we may have no firm knowledge.

So . . . why do we need to know?

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 03:24:12 AM
Aye. But why does such "understanding" need to be couched in the form of understanding "intentions"?

Schopenhauer argued that it´s how our mind works, it cannot operate outside, or without, time, space and causality, and he was probably right.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 19, 2016, 03:25:03 AM
why do we need to know?

Why do we need to know why we need to know?  :)

If music is its own justification, then why cannot the need to know have the same status?

The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear mind be still;
Our bodies minds feel inquire, wher'er they be,
Against or with our will.

:D

I'm not questioning its validity.  I am finding the internal inquiry of interest.

8)

Quote from: karlhenning on January 19, 2016, 03:44:43 AM
I'm not questioning its validity.  I am finding the internal inquiry of interest.

8)

Trying to know the intentions has no guaranteed positive outcome but there are lots of interesting things one can discover and learn in the process. The journey itself is worth more than the destination, which might never be reached anyway.  :D

EDIT: I mean, music is supposed to be about emotions, feelings, moods and states of mind --- but a little thinking can´t hurt either. Or can it?

Quote from: Florestan on January 19, 2016, 03:56:53 AM
Trying to know the intentions has no guaranteed positive outcome but there are lots of interesting things one can discover and learn in the process. The journey itself is worth more than the destination, which might never be reached anyway.  :D

EDIT: I mean, music is supposed to be about emotions, feelings, moods and states of mind --- but a little thinking can´t hurt either. Or can it?

I think I intend largely to agree with this.  Or is it tend to agree? . . .

8)

I had listened to Beethoven's op.110 for more than 15 years when I first heard about the two popular songs (in one of Andras Schiff's lectures offered by the Guardian website). I am still not sure what to make of it. I never found that movement particularly humorous or funny, rather gruff, maybe almost angry.

For me, there are some allusions that were quite obviously intended by the composer to be heard and they add some new aspect for the listener, compared to the one who is unaware. This can be extra-musical meaning, but sometimes only highlighting aspects that are "already there".

But allusive does not mean transparently obvious. Schumann quoted the "Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder" from the last song of Beethoven's Ferne Geliebte so many times that sometimes it seems to become like a personal tag, without any explicit reference to his love for Clara (or whatever). It seems to serve different functions. E.g. in the finale of the 2nd symphony (a piece I do not find very convincing) the quotation "takes over" in the middle of the movement, like a deus ex machina forcing a happy ending or so. In other pieces (I think the fantasy, also the second piano trio) it is more of a dreamy allusion within slow movements that have the general character of a reverie, like a musician falling into some half-remembered tune while improvising.

I don't know exactly what Schumann meant with all his quotations and allusions (as I have never read anything by Jean Paul, I'll probably miss quite a bit of their possible meanings anyway). But I am pretty sure he usually meant *something* (again, not necessarily something that could be simply put in words or would be immediately grasped by mere identification of the quoted melody). So someone who has never heard "An die ferne Geliebte" and does not recognize the quotation (and does not know about its significance for Schumann) might still realize that something strange is going on in that finale with a new melody suddenly taking over. But without recognizing this and other allusions and quotations one might also miss aspects or a whole dimension of Schumann's works that were quite important for the composer. After all, his (humourous) idea of the "Davidsbündler" plays with some kind of secret society that would be characterized precisely by getting such clues and "secret messages" because its members would all be musically alert and educated.

Excellent post, Jo.

Quote
I don't know exactly what Schumann meant with all his quotations and allusions (as I have never read anything by Jean Paul, I'll probably miss quite a bit of their possible meanings anyway). But I am pretty sure he usually meant *something* (again, not necessarily something that could be simply put in words or would be immediately grasped by mere identification of the quoted melody). So someone who has never heard "An die ferne Geliebte" and does not recognize the quotation (and does not know about its significance for Schumann) might still realize that something strange is going on in that finale with a new melody suddenly taking over. But without recognizing this and other allusions and quotations one might also miss aspects or a whole dimension of Schumann's works that were quite important for the composer. After all, his (humourous) idea of the "Davidsbündler" plays with some kind of secret society that would be characterized precisely by getting such clues and "secret messages" because its members would all be musically alert and educated.

Exactly.

Quote from: some guy on January 19, 2016, 02:25:05 AM
some consider the extramusical to be a huge distraction from the music. Far from helping to understand, it guarantees, practically, that the music will not be understood.

In other words, the biographical, philosophical and / or literary/pictural background of Mahler´s symphonies, or of Strauss´s Eine Alpensymphonie, or of Schumann´s Kreisleriana, or of Tchaikovsky´s Manfred, or of Liszt´s Hunnenschlacht, or of Rachamninoff´s Isle of the Dead is a huge distraction from the music. Far from helping to understand, it practically guarantees that the music will not be understood.

Do you / does anyone really believe that?

Quote from: karlhenning on January 19, 2016, 03:25:03 AM
It's early in the day yet, and I may be misreading . . . the idea I took away is, unless the artist has told us (and we trust the report), if the artist is dead, we have no firm knowledge.

Heck, if the artist is alive, we may have no firm knowledge.

So . . . why do we need to know?

Need?

Well, one could ask whether we "need" to know lots of things. I definitely didn't say need here. The better question to me is why do we like to know?

As I've already illustrated, sometimes it's helpful, or interesting, or provides more context. And music does exist in context (unless you pick it up and deposit it in an entirely different culture). I'm a great believer in general that context tends to enhance things. It certainly enhances our understanding of things, whether it's of music or language or history or law or the Bible.

I certainly don't go scurrying around constantly looking for detailed information about a composer's intentions. But I do like reading information about pieces - about when they were written**, the environment in which they were written, and other bits of context. And usually something about what the composer was up to is included.

I like knowing that Haydn wrote one of his sets of string quartets for performance in London. I like someone pointing out that those quartets all start with loud, attention-getting gestures. I'm sure I could listen to them without knowing that, but it's interesting and it explains something about the music. Something I could hear anyway, but now I know a factor as to why that feature is there.

I like knowing that one of Dvorak's quartets was a commission where he was specifically asked to include material of a Slavic character. Again, it explains something about the music, something I could hear anyway, but understanding part of why it is the way it is, and why it's more full of eastern-European-sounding music than some of Dvorak's other works, is different from just knowing that's the way it sounds.

I like knowing that Mozart wrote a truckload of piano concertos at one point of his career because he needed pieces for himself to play. I like knowing that Beethoven wrote a group of cello/piano works for a particular cellist, and that Brahms wrote a group of clarinet works because he was inspired by a particular clarinettist. I like knowing that many of Holmboe's works were the results of requests by particular musicians, rather than the result of him just staring at the trees and deciding that he was into flutes or recorders or guitars this year.

I like knowing that Dvorak followed the plots of literary tales very closely for his late symphonic poems, to the point where some people felt it was detrimental to the musical structure. I like knowing people were surprised he even did symphonic poems. I like knowing the story behind The Sorcerer's Apprentice or The Isle of the Dead because it only adds to the vividness of the music. I like knowing that Ravel had the poems for Gaspard de la nuit printed, and that the subtitle of the suite specifically mentions the inspiration of the poems, and lord knows there are passages at the end of 'Ondine' and 'Scarbo' that make far more sense if you know the poems. I like knowing that Debussy put the title of each piano prelude at the end because he didn't want them to influence people so much.

All of this stuff informs and enlightens, and while none of it is necessary I've been arguing against the proposition that this information, this context, is somehow a problem. I can't see how any of that could be a problem.

** Including at what point of a career they were written, something we simply take for granted in many cases because we have opus numbers and catalogue numbers that tell us. And I don't think people generally run away shrieking "no! I must know whether it's an early work or a late one!"

After I've listened to the music a few times, the composer's intention(s) are not unwelcome. Probably won't be useful, could be entertaining.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 05:07:54 AM
Need?

I know. Why do I need to listen to music?  I was not putting words in anyone's mouth;  I was thinking of past inquiries of my own (and, sure, generalizing them with the first-person plural pronoun).

Most interesting post, thanks.  And as someone who enjoys reading the historical and biographical context of a good deal of music, yes, I find it of interest, and no, of itself it is nothing like a problem.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 05:07:54 AM
As I've already illustrated, sometimes it's helpful, or interesting, or provides more context. And music does exist in context (unless you pick it up and deposit it in an entirely different culture). I'm a great believer in general that context tends to enhance things. It certainly enhances our understanding of things, whether it's of music or language or history or law or the Bible.

I certainly don't go scurrying around constantly looking for detailed information about a composer's intentions. But I do like reading information about pieces - about when they were written**, the environment in which they were written, and other bits of context. And usually something about what the composer was up to is included.

I like knowing that Haydn wrote one of his sets of string quartets for performance in London. I like someone pointing out that those quartets all start with loud, attention-getting gestures. I'm sure I could listen to them without knowing that, but it's interesting and it explains something about the music. Something I could hear anyway, but now I know a factor as to why that feature is there.

I like knowing that one of Dvorak's quartets was a commission where he was specifically asked to include material of a Slavic character. Again, it explains something about the music, something I could hear anyway, but understanding part of why it is the way it is, and why it's more full of eastern-European-sounding music than some of Dvorak's other works, is different from just knowing that's the way it sounds.

I like knowing that Mozart wrote a truckload of piano concertos at one point of his career because he needed pieces for himself to play. I like knowing that Beethoven wrote a group of cello/piano works for a particular cellist, and that Brahms wrote a group of clarinet works because he was inspired by a particular clarinettist. I like knowing that many of Holmboe's works were the results of requests by particular musicians, rather than the result of him just staring at the trees and deciding that he was into flutes or recorders or guitars this year.

I like knowing that Dvorak followed the plots of literary tales very closely for his late symphonic poems, to the point where some people felt it was detrimental to the musical structure. I like knowing people were surprised he even did symphonic poems. I like knowing the story behind The Sorcerer's Apprentice or The Isle of the Dead because it only adds to the vividness of the music. I like knowing that Ravel had the poems for Gaspard de la nuit printed, and that the subtitle of the suite specifically mentions the inspiration of the poems, and lord knows there are passages at the end of 'Ondine' and 'Scarbo' that make far more sense if you know the poems. I like knowing that Debussy put the title of each piano prelude at the end because he didn't want them to influence people so much.

All of this stuff informs and enlightens, and while none of it is necessary I've been arguing against the proposition that this information, this context, is somehow a problem. I can't see how any of that could be a problem.

** Including at what point of a career they were written, something we simply take for granted in many cases because we have opus numbers and catalogue numbers that tell us. And I don't think people generally run away shrieking "no! I must know whether it's an early work or a late one!"

(http://www.picgifs.com/smileys/smileys-and-emoticons/applause/smileys-applause-459840.gif)

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 05:07:54 AM
Need?

Well, one could ask whether we "need" to know lots of things. I definitely didn't say need here. The better question to me is why do we like to know?

I would like to know whether needing to know is necessarily any different from liking to know something. The first of course implies a greater degree of need, but they're still quite interchangeable. If you were in the middle of a deep lake, I bet you would like to know how to swim. ;)

Quote from: karlhenning on January 19, 2016, 05:11:42 AM
Most interesting post, thanks.  And as someone who enjoys reading the historical and biographical context of a good deal of music, yes, I find it of interest, and no, of itself it is nothing like a problem.

+1

And it's also nice to know that Beethoven's Razumovsky quartets were commissioned by the  Count Razumovsky, Russian ambassador in Vienna, and that the first two use a Russian theme (and the third has some Russian characteristics as well). Or that Beethoven's piano sonata op. 27 no. 2's first movement is based on the Commendatore's death scene in Don Giovanni. Not that the music isn't enjoyable without knowing these things.

Quote from: some guy on January 18, 2016, 09:18:34 AM
... I believe that mixing pigments together creates meaning, that causing sounds to occur creates meaning, that chipping away at marble or granite creates meaning.

That is, I believe that meaning is what happens when something is done and not that meaning is "out there" and that various means of expression--words, pigments, notes, glass--can more or less "capture" that meaning. "What does it mean?" almost always implies "What has been captured?" I don't think that the arts capture. I think that they make.

some guy describes - and very well - one approach to making art, one that ranges from the artist having in mind something vague to an approach that is more or less aleatory and in which meaning is uncovered in the result rather than in the artist's primum mobile.  Other artists (or even that same artist working on a different project) may have something definite in mind (eg: Michelangelo's angel envisioned in the marble).  Oftentimes, I think esp. in music, it may well be a mixture of those "procedures."  The possibility that the artist merely wanted to create something [this is also encompassed in some guy's description], wanted to work with the materials available, is also very real and should be contemplated.  All of these different creative approaches are part of what makes art so compelling a topic and certainly well worth discussing, as we've seen in this thread.

Those who view their listening experience as separate, personal and inviolate - commendable, even noble in intent - have both my admiration and sympathy, for such a thing cannot exist in this world, esp. for those on this forum (please note:  I am encouraging no one to leave).  GMG is a vast warehouse of fact and opinion on composers, performers and performances that no one can visit w/o in some way being influenced as to composers' intentions (and performers' - music is by no means an immutable art form).  One's own preconceptions and prejudices will make darn sure that his or her listening experiences are not as unbiased as one could wish. Better, imo, to go to a concert armed with the best available information - even differing points of view - or seek same out after a performance, than to be at the mercy of something else, often worse, that inescapable opinionated self. 

Quote from: Florestan on January 19, 2016, 05:24:06 AM
(http://www.picgifs.com/smileys/smileys-and-emoticons/applause/smileys-applause-459840.gif)

Seconded! 8)

Quote from: North Star on January 19, 2016, 05:24:33 AM
Or that Beethoven's piano sonata op. 27 no. 2's first movement is based on the Commendatore's death scene in Don Giovanni. Not that the music isn't enjoyable without knowing these things.

Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27/2 "Moonlight" "Commendatore Sonata"

:D

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 03:13:11 AM
Actually there was a time when my position was the exact mirror image of our Debussyan friend's. With experience and maturity my position has evolved into something different. You might say I've become less rigid, more nuanced in my thinking. I'm not necessarily interested in changing Croche's mind, but rather in influencing other, more open-minded observers. And though I don't have time at the moment to develop my position in what will no doubt will be for you excruciating/soporific detail, it may surprise you that I too support the idea "that it doesn't matter what the composer intended."

(Briefly: intention precedes action. What Beethoven intended died with him and is buried with his corpse in a Vienna cemetery. All we can know is what Beethoven achieved, and proceed from there. And that of course includes introducing folk songs he knew his audience would recognize into his works. Literature provides even more striking examples. Our friend Alberich has been arguing with me over what he thinks Shakespeare "wanted us to feel" - i.e., his intentions - and I've been saying that we have no way of knowing these intentions and that however we respond is how we respond. The classic case is Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage, with its ironically named heroine. Audiences from the start took her as a sympathetic, courageous figure; Brecht insisted that he intended her to be viewed instead as a cowardly opportunist - and there is ample evidence for that in the play. Yet even though he revised the play to bring out more what he "intended," those dang audiences continued to view her sympathetically.)

And yet many of us continue to proceed as if intention were knowable, and somehow matters. The interesting question is: Why should that be the case?

That's the short version, for your benefit.

Thanks for this Sforzando. I also want to apologize to you, orfeo, Monsieur Croche, and everyone else. I shouldn't have acted like a jerk. Carry on, gentlemen!

Quote from: Jo498 on January 19, 2016, 04:16:54 AM
...For me, there are some allusions that were quite obviously intended by the composer to be heard and they add some new aspect for the listener, compared to the one who is unaware. This can be extra-musical meaning, but sometimes only highlighting aspects that are "already there".

But allusive does not mean transparently obvious. Schumann quoted the "Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder" from the last song of Beethoven's Ferne Geliebte so many times that sometimes it seems to become like a personal tag, without any explicit reference to his love for Clara (or whatever). It seems to serve different functions. E.g. in the finale of the 2nd symphony (a piece I do not find very convincing) the quotation "takes over" in the middle of the movement, like a deus ex machina forcing a happy ending or so. In other pieces (I think the fantasy, also the second piano trio) it is more of a dreamy allusion within slow movements that have the general character of a reverie, like a musician falling into some half-remembered tune while improvising.

I don't know exactly what Schumann meant with all his quotations and allusions (as I have never read anything by Jean Paul, I'll probably miss quite a bit of their possible meanings anyway). But I am pretty sure he usually meant *something* (again, not necessarily something that could be simply put in words or would be immediately grasped by mere identification of the quoted melody). So someone who has never heard "An die ferne Geliebte" and does not recognize the quotation (and does not know about its significance for Schumann) might still realize that something strange is going on in that finale with a new melody suddenly taking over. But without recognizing this and other allusions and quotations one might also miss aspects or a whole dimension of Schumann's works that were quite important for the composer. After all, his (humourous) idea of the "Davidsbündler" plays with some kind of secret society that would be characterized precisely by getting such clues and "secret messages" because its members would all be musically alert and educated.

There is also the allusion to "Ave Maria" at the end of "Widmung". "Carnaval" of course is chock full of references, some more overt or hidden. He also had cross references from other works in particular, "Papillons". It is the kind of fun in music making that Bernstein pointed out in the compositions of Charles Ives. I wonder if he was influenced by Schumann.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 17, 2016, 04:36:20 PM
I am tossing this quote into the ring for what it is worth.

"Music is not philosophy." ~ Akira Ifukube.

It isn't?

Quote from: Florestan on January 19, 2016, 01:06:54 AM
Either it is inherent in the music itself, in which case music can and does (explicitly, for that matter) represent non-musical things; or it stems from cultural conventions and conditioning, in which case 200 years later after the work´s premiere the audience (who lives in completely different cultural conventions and conditioning) does indeed need explanation and program notes in order to fully grasp why a particular sequence of notes is humorous.

Cultural conventions don't always need program notes, we can still relate to some things even many years later.  Conventions can be within the music itself and not relate to things completely extraneous.  Listening to plenty of a style of some music will soon get you used to it's conventions.  We aren't listening to things completely outside what I'd guess is most people's general cultural background here.

But talking about it like it's some either/or situation of completely needing contextual information to enjoy something, or finding any of that completely useless is just setting up the usual duelling antagonism here which isn't much to do with the music but is more to do with the people here.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 05:07:54 AM
I like someone pointing out that those quartets all start with loud, attention-getting gestures. I'm sure I could listen to them without knowing that, but it's interesting and it explains something about the music. Something I could hear anyway, but now I know a factor as to why that feature is there.

This is the point, you could hear this anyway.  You're just taking it to extremes.  The more you listen to a style of music the more you'll understand.

Again, not taking it to extremes because I find that pointless, some cultural context could be interesting with some pieces.  But then you also have to trust who is giving you that context in some later period.  Though even a performance of music is putting it into our modern context anyway, because no musician can transport themselves back into some earlier period.  I know I'm being inconvenient and complicating things rather than getting into the opposing sides argument.  But isn't it more fun letting your thoughts wander and bounce off others and see where they end up than just setting up some opposing positions? 

Quote from: starrynight on January 19, 2016, 06:48:07 AM
I know I'm being inconvenient and complicating things

By all means, feel free to do so. There´s always room for more inconvenience and complication.  :D

Maybe I should add that I think Schumann is a rather extreme case. I think that many "program note style" information about biographical and other background is often trivial, sometimes misleading and almost all music should be first and foremost appreciated as music not as expressing some program, composer's emotions or state of mind etc. and I am not fond of the idea of "program music" in general nor of many famous pieces in that genre.

But allusions like Schumann's work in a more subtle way. And I cannot deny that there is some evidence that Beethoven (who later was both claimed by the faction of "absolute music" and by the friends of program music) connected some works (not only the Pastoral symphony and Les Adieux) with poetic programs. (Although I am not convinced that "Our cat had kittens" etc. is significant for op.110...)

Quote from: Jo498 on January 19, 2016, 07:37:49 AM(Although I am not convinced that "Our cat had kittens" etc. is significant for op.110...)

Es muß sein!

Quote from: Jo498 on January 19, 2016, 07:37:49 AM
Maybe I should add that I think Schumann is a rather extreme case.

He was a Romantic, and one of the more nervous among his peers, too.

I'm not saying I wish Schumann to be at all otherwise than he is.  I do find myself preferring his 'abstract' works (the pf quintet, the vn sonatas, e.g.) . . . and there must be reasons  ;)

Quote from: North Star on January 19, 2016, 05:24:33 AM
...Or that Beethoven's piano sonata op. 27 no. 2's first movement is based on the Commendatore's death scene in Don Giovanni. Not that the music isn't enjoyable without knowing these things.

Wanting to check that out (How could I miss it all these years as a pianist?), I am sitting here with the score of Don Giovanni where the father is dying after the sword fight dramatized by the orchestra in D minor. OK, there are quiet triplets in the middle strings in the dominant of F minor but not really establishing any stable harmony as appropriate to the action. Other than that, I don't see any Op. 27 No. 2 in this scene at all. The end trails off with descending chromatic notes in the interval of a fourth, also nothing "Moonlight" about it.

ZB

Quote from: Jo498 on January 19, 2016, 07:37:49 AM
...Although I am not convinced that "Our cat had kittens" etc. is significant for op.110...

Neither am I about the Katz. However, since the 2nd movement is a Scherzo and the theme of the drinking song is quoted more at length, I do believe that "Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich" (I am dissolute, you are dissolute) is with intent. 

The problem is that since I have heard "Unser Katz hat Kätzerln ghobt" etc. I can hardly avoid the association when I listen to the piece. I have to pull myself together not to sing along... ;)

Quote from: Jo498 on January 19, 2016, 08:46:12 AM
The problem is that since I have heard "Unser Katz hat Kätzerln ghobt" etc. I can hardly avoid the association when I listen to the piece. I have to pull myself together not to sing along... ;)

Some people who got to know the piece from Fantasia cannot hear Le sacre without visualizing dinosaurs.  Just sayin'.

Quote from: Jo498 on January 19, 2016, 07:37:49 AM
Maybe I should add that I think Schumann is a rather extreme case. I think that many "program note style" information about biographical and other background is often trivial, sometimes misleading and almost all music should be first and foremost appreciated as music not as expressing some program, composer's emotions or state of mind etc. and I am not fond of the idea of "program music" in general nor of many famous pieces in that genre.

But allusions like Schumann's work in a more subtle way. And I cannot deny that there is some evidence that Beethoven (who later was both claimed by the faction of "absolute music" and by the friends of program music) connected some works (not only the Pastoral symphony and Les Adieux) with poetic programs. (Although I am not convinced that "Our cat had kittens" etc. is significant for op.110...)

+1 about Schumann.

About Beethoven...I remember reading somewhere about someone who was soooo convinced about the 'moonlight sonata' accurately representing 'moonlight' that they were in a bit of a shock when they found out that there was a completely different background to the composition entirely! As you say, sometimes things can be very misleading.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 19, 2016, 09:58:38 AM
Some people who got to know the piece from Fantasia cannot hear Le sacre without visualizing dinosaurs.  Just sayin'.

For me it's not the dinosaurs, it's the hippos and elephants in tutus for the Dance of the Hours segment. And "hello mudda, hello fadda" in the background.

Quote from: James on January 19, 2016, 03:02:01 AM
Quality musicians spend a lot of time practicing, learning, composing, playing, evolving .. in order to be the best that they can be, and if in a band situation, also be a real band that gels as one - each part is equal, playing together. They understand that music is for people at the end of the day and they would love it to shine through to as many people as possible. The music that is, not ideas of genius or innovation - which aren't primary. Connecting is a big desire. And instrumental music, is whatever the listener wants it to be about. The listener's imagination can run wild, and find things that are relevant to their own personal experiences. So it is personal from listener to listener, you don't want every listener to come to the same conclusions.

I think you and I are seeing eye to eye on something this time. ;)

Quote from: starrynight on January 19, 2016, 06:48:07 AM
The more you listen to a style of music the more you'll understand.

Yes. Which is exactly why I said that music doesn't exist without props unless you drop it into another culture. People don't generally come to a piece of music without a frame of reference, of other music they already know.

Quote from: Jo498 on January 19, 2016, 07:37:49 AM
Maybe I should add that I think Schumann is a rather extreme case. I think that many "program note style" information about biographical and other background is often trivial, sometimes misleading and almost all music should be first and foremost appreciated as music not as expressing some program, composer's emotions or state of mind etc. and I am not fond of the idea of "program music" in general nor of many famous pieces in that genre.

But allusions like Schumann's work in a more subtle way. And I cannot deny that there is some evidence that Beethoven (who later was both claimed by the faction of "absolute music" and by the friends of program music) connected some works (not only the Pastoral symphony and Les Adieux) with poetic programs. (Although I am not convinced that "Our cat had kittens" etc. is significant for op.110...)

No argument with any of this. I definitely think that composers varied wildly in their approaches, and that trying to take any one composer as 'proof' of something would be a mistake unless you're trying to prove the sheer variety of approaches.

Which is one of the things about this series of conversations I've found so damned odd. It's basically a replay of the culture wars of the second half of the 2nd century, where devotees of Liszt and devotees of Brahms (more than the actual men themselves) had raging debates about whether music must express extramusical things or ought not express extramusical things. The fact is the music of both camps has survived and is listened to.

PS And when it comes to program/liner notes, some of them are terrible. You know people are off on flights of fancy when they draw the exact opposite conclusions for a piece from the same biographical information.

Whenever I've listened to Liszt I haven't been able to find out anything Liszt supposedly expresses apart from music itself....am I missing something in the actual sounds? Is there something that certain chords or harmonies or textures clearly represent that I am meant to be hearing?

Quote from: Jo498 on January 19, 2016, 07:37:49 AM(Although I am not convinced that "Our cat had kittens" etc. is significant for op.110...)

I think he was just having a bit of fun, composers do that sometimes :)

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 01:57:45 PM
Whenever I've listened to Liszt I haven't been able to find out anything Liszt supposedly expresses apart from music itself....am I missing something in the actual sounds? Is there something that certain chords or harmonies or textures clearly represent that I am meant to be hearing?

You don't think Mazeppa contains galloping? You don't think the Fountains of the Villa d'Este sound even vaguely watery?

You don't find the Héroïde funèbre at all funereal?

Frankly I wouldn't treat Liszt as a terribly great example of "program music" despite his role in pushing forward the genre, but that's possibly because I don't find Liszt a very rewarding composer in general. Nevertheless, there are some examples where I don't find it difficult to perceive a connection.

And something like a funeral march... honestly, is there where we are getting to? Does anyone seriously deny that Beethoven or Chopin composed funeral marches? Does any actually listen to that music and say "no, I just hear actual sounds that are just the same as in"... some piece with a joyous or happy title?

It's not just notes, it's evoking a mood. I honestly don't understand what people are getting out of music if they can't perceive a difference between a happy dance and a funeral march. If you can't hear anything water-related in a piano piece with a water-themed title, there are a vast line of composers who have failed utterly in firing your imagination.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 01:57:45 PMWhenever I've listened to Liszt I haven't been able to find out anything Liszt supposedly expresses apart from music itself....am I missing something in the actual sounds? Is there something that certain chords or harmonies or textures clearly represent that I am meant to be hearing?

Which is fine. Seems like your focus is more on the musical plane, which a good thing. It is a deeper way of listening, the average listener doesn't put the focus there. Perhaps when you listen to Liszt no matter who's performing it, all you hear just sounds like notes and nothing more, he doesn't move you in any way - he doesn't speak to you.

... or perhaps that musical plane you're hearing with Liszt is good enough for you and you dig it. Your stimulation may be more cerebral/abstract.

Quote from: amw on January 19, 2016, 02:07:49 PM
I think he was just having a bit of fun, composers do that sometimes :)

The ones who don't seem to have had their sense of humor surgically removed.

Quote from: James on January 19, 2016, 02:10:38 PM
Which is fine. Seems like your focus is more on the musical plane, which a good thing. It is a deeper way of listening, the average listener doesn't put the focus there. Perhaps when you listen to Liszt no matter who's performing it, all you hear just sounds like notes and nothing more, he doesn't move you in any way - he doesn't speak to you.

Yes I suppose it's more on the 'musical plane' than anything else. Music evokes emotions within me, and things that move me are rooted in rhythm, timbre, texture and harmony.....trying to describe music as 'watery' or 'galloping' is, for me, like diverting my attention away from the actual composition and the sounds that I love. I could really be listening attentively to the interlocking counterpoint, the harmonic movement and rate of its change and stuff like that and be moved by those elements.

I recently listened to Bach's BWV 25, and not knowing anything about its history or background or what the words mean, I found it especially enjoyable in the first movement to hear the changes of instrumentation, the development of small motifs, the harmony and things like that. Every time a phrase of the chorale melody was added to the texture it created an effect which I certainly, immensely enjoyed but can't describe in words. I don't even want to describe it in words really, because then it loses its evocative power for me.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 02:49:28 PM
I recently listened to Bach's BWV 25, and not knowing anything about its history or background or what the words mean, I found it especially enjoyable in the first movement to hear the changes of instrumentation, the development of small motifs, the harmony and things like that. Every time a phrase of the chorale melody was added to the texture it created an effect which I certainly, immensely enjoyed but can't describe in words. I don't even want to describe it in words really, because then it loses its evocative power for me.

It's not an either/or proposition as far as I'm concerned. Bach quite clearly intended people to know what the words mean, but knowing what the words mean doesn't prevent me from noticing the changes of instrumentation or the development of motifs.

I'm fairly sure I've mentioned on this forum at some point my early experiences with Shostakovich's 13th symphony. First time through, very little clue as to the words, only a general synopsis. Yes, okay, dark and dramatic, especially that spot in the 1st movement where the music explodes.

Second time through, reading the words (Russian transliteration alongside English translation)... get to the passage about Anne Frank... the music explodes, and it's like I'm being hit by a bloody thunderbolt.

There are cases where it doesn't matter all that much whether you know anything beyond the music. There are cases where you are absolutely missing out on the full effect if you don't know anything beyond the music, and cases where there is a set text are assuredly among them. What's the actual point of setting a text otherwise?

I'm sure some aspects of BWV 25 would be just as effective if the words were replaced with Johann's shopping list, but the words are nevertheless part of the package that Bach expected people to experience.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 02:49:28 PM
Yes I suppose it's more on the 'musical plane' than anything else. Music evokes emotions within me, and things that move me are rooted in rhythm, timbre, texture and harmony.....trying to describe music as 'watery' or 'galloping' is, for me, like diverting my attention away from the actual composition and the sounds that I love. I could really be listening attentively to the interlocking counterpoint, the harmonic movement and rate of its change and stuff like that and be moved by those elements.

I recently listened to Bach's BWV 25, and not knowing anything about its history or background or what the words mean, I found it especially enjoyable in the first movement to hear the changes of instrumentation, the development of small motifs, the harmony and things like that. Every time a phrase of the chorale melody was added to the texture it created an effect which I certainly, immensely enjoyed but can't describe in words. I don't even want to describe it in words really, because then it loses its evocative power for me.

I get ya .. and how the performer or group execute the music is another huge factor too. Then you have recording or live venue features which can enhance or detract from the whole thing.

Quote from: James on January 19, 2016, 03:17:16 PM
I get ya .. and how the performer or group execute the music is another huge factor too. Then you have recording or live venue features which can enhance or detract from the whole thing.

Yes...it's all these sonic possibilities which add an extra layer of interest/enjoyment on my part. Music sung with words, however, often influences interpretative choices on the part of the performer rather than how I like to hear a piece, and this is a different thing altogether for me.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 02:58:34 PMbut the words are nevertheless part of the package that Bach expected people to experience.

Indeed. The words do have meaning, and how they are set musically, and more importantly performed (with commitment, talent and feel) is what shines through, really effecting people emotionally I think. And no knowledge of music can really tell us why people are emotionally affected by music. It just exists.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 19, 2016, 02:21:16 PM
The ones who don't seem to have had their sense of humor surgically removed.

... reminds me of the ones who do seem to have had their sense of humor surgically removed.

[You know all the tools it used to require for a lobotomy were a hammer and a long but not very wide-ended chisel? I mean, if you have enough pluck and a few bucks, you could run down to your local Home Depot, pick up the tools, and save that friend of yours who needs this operation a ton of money.]

I don't think those who have undergone the procedure are exclusively but a handful of composers, though...  ;)

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 03:44:37 PM
Music sung with words, however, often influences interpretative choices on the part of the performer rather than how I like to hear a piece, and this is a different thing altogether for me.

This sounds a lot like you're saying "the words mean something to the performers, but not to me".

What makes you different from the performers?

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 04:58:09 PM
This sounds a lot like you're saying "the words mean something to the performers, but not to me".

What makes you different from the performers?

I'm sure you already know this, it's pretty much common sense to all musicians......Interpreting a piece of music comes down to using dynamics, articulation and balance in such a way as to provide a stimulus for whoever is listening to the music. The words might be about something frightening, so the musicians might determine for themselves what interpretive devices can evoke a sense of this in the way they express the notes on the page. They might highlight certain dissonances, they might use a wider dynamic range, they might perform it faster or slower, it all just depends on their point of view. Nothing is fixed in stone when it comes to interpretation.

As a listener, I listen to the sounds these musicians make and I go with the flow. I listen to all parts of the music, every sound attentively. Sometimes if I'm particularly curious about a timbre or texture or harmony or whatever, I might even pinpoint where in the score the thing I especially like occurs so I know how it's done in terms of what the composer did and/or how the musicians interpreted it.

Perhaps you and I listen to music very differently and that's okay. That's wonderful in fact because it means that music itself can do so many different things when listened to by different people. It constantly affirms in me the universal nature of music; not that it is understood by everybody, but that everybody can come to their own conclusion about any piece of music. :)

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 05:17:34 PM
I'm sure you already know this, it's pretty much common sense to all musicians......Interpreting a piece of music comes down to using dynamics, articulation and balance in such a way as to provide a stimulus for whoever is listening to the music. The words might be about something frightening, so the musicians might determine for themselves what interpretive devices can evoke a sense of this in the way they express the notes on the page. They might highlight certain dissonances, they might use a wider dynamic range, they might perform it faster or slower, it all just depends on their point of view. Nothing is fixed in stone when it comes to interpretation.

As a listener, I listen to the sounds these musicians make and I go with the flow. I listen to all parts of the music, every sound attentively. Sometimes if I'm particularly curious about a timbre or texture or harmony or whatever, I might even pinpoint where in the score the thing I especially like occurs so I know how it's done in terms of what the composer did and/or how the musicians interpreted it.

Perhaps you and I listen to music very differently and that's okay. That's wonderful in fact because it means that music itself can do so many different things when listened to by different people. It constantly affirms in me the universal nature of music; not that it is understood by everybody, but that everybody can come to their own conclusion about any piece of music. :)

You're sounding like a politician refusing to answer the question.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 05:17:34 PM
I'm sure you already know this, it's pretty much common sense to all musicians......Interpreting a piece of music comes down to using dynamics, articulation and balance in such a way as to provide a stimulus for whoever is listening to the music. The words might be about something frightening, so the musicians might determine for themselves what interpretive devices can evoke a sense of this in the way they express the notes on the page. They might highlight certain dissonances, they might use a wider dynamic range, they might perform it faster or slower, it all just depends on their point of view. Nothing is fixed in stone when it comes to interpretation.

As a listener, I listen to the sounds these musicians make and I go with the flow. I listen to all parts of the music, every sound attentively. Sometimes if I'm particularly curious about a timbre or texture or harmony or whatever, I might even pinpoint where in the score the thing I especially like occurs so I know how it's done in terms of what the composer did and/or how the musicians interpreted it.

Perhaps you and I listen to music very differently and that's okay. That's wonderful in fact because it means that music itself can do so many different things when listened to by different people. It constantly affirms in me the universal nature of music; not that it is understood by everybody, but that everybody can come to their own conclusion about any piece of music. :)

Yeah... Honestly, I get a "seeing the trees, not the wood" vibe from this. And from some of your other posts as well.

And if you're perfectly happy examining trees, then go for it. But all your talk of timbre, texture, harmony really does come across to me as if you are so interested in the composer's tools that you are likely to not give a lot of attention to what they are building with those tools. The equivalent of admiring the detailed stonework on a cathedral but being disinterested in the soaring edifice.

Obviously, as a student of music those tools are important. My chief concern for you is that once you have all those tools... how are you going to decide what to build with them?

I dunno. Maybe you're the kind of person who doesn't actually need a goal or motivation. Maybe your goals and motivations will be external, purely driven by someone asking you for a piece within certain performance parameters.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 05:30:24 PM
You're sounding like a politician refusing to answer the question.

I see that you've noticed I took a different angle in my response to Orfeo than directly addressing the question. This was because Orfeo and I approach music in very different ways. I listen to music for the enjoyment of utter sound. I love to hear a piece from start to end where I feel like I've been taken somewhere that I cannot describe. I also find interesting what tools a composer uses to compose, and these things simply quench my thirst for knowledge.

Orfeo asks me lots of questions, sometimes making me question myself and how beneficial it actually is to listen to music and learn about music in the way I do....but of course, the questions I am often asked already imply that there is a different philosophy in each of our minds. Because I can't experience music the way Orfeo does and because we barely know anything about each other, I don't make assumptions.

Words don't really matter to him (especially foreign ones?) .. he's more interested what is done with them musically. He has a very valid perspective. For lots of people, they could care less about the actual words, they mostly remember and hum the melody.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 03:44:37 PM
Yes...it's all these sonic possibilities which add an extra layer of interest/enjoyment on my part. Music sung with words, however, often influences interpretative choices on the part of the performer rather than how I like to hear a piece, and this is a different thing altogether for me.

Well, you claim to be a composer, and I see some signs of talent. But would you never consider setting a vocal piece? Bear in mind that to many composers of opera or sacred music, the texts they set are an essential part of the compositional dynamic. One can look at composers as disparate as Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Berlioz, Berg, and Wagner to see that the librettos they chose were deeply meaningful to them for their stories and characters, and audiences at these operas often respond in kind. I suppose you can take an approach such as Bruckner did to Wagner, where he claimed he hadn't the slightest idea what happened in Tristan und Isolde, but then you're left with the problem of not being able to account for the libretto in the first place.

It's like saying Le Nozze di Figaro has its home key as D major, and the second act finale concludes in the remote key of E flat, without considering that the opera is a comedy about the relations between the Count and Countess, Susanna and Figaro, Cherubino and all the others. Similarly, Berg's own sense of Wozzeck was that "However thorough one's knowledge of the opera's musical forms, from the curtain's rise until its final fall no one in the audience should think of the various Fugues, Inventions, Suite and Sonata Movements, Variations, and Passacaglias. Everyone should be filled only with the idea of the opera, an idea that far transcends the individual fate of Wozzeck."

For the record .. i'm in ComposerOfAvantGarde's camp .. can't be bothered with lyrics, text, libretti. I mainly just listen to the music, as I would instrumental music. Even watching most opera bores me to tears, and is overlong. Ditto old masses and the like. For me .. most opera is an absolute waste of time, and I'm searching for the meaty bits.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 05:35:28 PM
Yeah... Honestly, I get a "seeing the trees, not the wood" vibe from this. And from some of your other posts as well.

And if you're perfectly happy examining trees, then go for it. But all your talk of timbre, texture, harmony really does come across to me as if you are so interested in the composer's tools that you are likely to not give a lot of attention to what they are building with those tools. The equivalent of admiring the detailed stonework on a cathedral but being disinterested in the soaring edifice.

Obviously, as a student of music those tools are important. My chief concern for you is that once you have all those tools... how are you going to decide what to build with them?

I dunno. Maybe you're the kind of person who doesn't actually need a goal or motivation. Maybe your goals and motivations will be external, purely driven by someone asking you for a piece within certain performance parameters.

Learning about the tools of composition is something I find interesting and is very useful knowledge for me, but it's pretty useless when enjoying music for music's sake.

My motivations to compose usually come from either or both of these two things: a particular sound or timbre I have in my mind or a collection of notes/rhythms that I come up with. One piece of music I wrote (called 'Please Do Not Feed The Fish') came initially from an idea I had of a canonic arpeggio focussing on the resonance of the open strings of two guitars. I was simply asked to write a piece for a classical guitar duo, I had an idea of that sound, more ideas came, I worked at developing my ideas and putting them down on paper in an order which seemed right to me, and voilà! A new composition. I whacked a title on top (I saw a sign in a park that said Please Do Not Feed The Fish, so I thought that would be good enough) and the piece was performed a number of times, recorded, published and broadcast a few times.

Honestly, I have no idea what happens when I compose, I can't describe it really. It's like I have found stray ideas wandering into my mind and I use my background knowledge of composition to create something new out of it. Works every time. 8)

Quote from: James on January 19, 2016, 06:01:32 PM
For the record .. i'm in ComposerOfAvantGarde's camp .. can't be bothered with lyrics, text, libretti. I mainly just listen to the music, as I would instrumental music. Even watching most opera bores me to tears, and is overlong. Ditto old masses and the like. For me .. most opera is an absolute waste of time, and I'm searching for the meaty bits.

Well, what we like is what we like. You probably would prefer those old Opera Without Words recordings where just excerpts were performed without voices. Hopefully COAG is not so set in his ways as to accept a few challenges to his way of thinking.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 06:05:56 PM
Well, what we like is what we like. You probably would prefer those old Opera Without Words recordings where just excerpts were performed without voices. Hopefully COAG is not so set in his ways as to accept a few challenges to his way of thinking.

No .. I love the voices, I just don't give a shit what they are saying.

Quote from: James on January 19, 2016, 06:07:33 PM
No .. I love the voices, I just don't give a shit what they are saying.

Good thing then it's usually in a foreign language.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 06:02:54 PM
I whacked a title on top (I saw a sign in a park that said Please Do Not Feed The Fish, so I thought that would be good enough)

Something I would never, ever do. I would never bother with a descriptive title of that nature if hadn't formed part of the conception of the piece.

And I'm the one who's supposedly fond of extramusical stuff...

The 90 seconds on iTunes sounds nice, by the way.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 06:09:46 PM
Good thing then it's usually in a foreign language.

Yea .. well, that's a big part of it.

Don't get me wrong though, there is quite a bit of vocal oriented art music that really moves me AND I marvel at it's musical/performance aspects, from most eras.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 05:54:03 PM
Well, you claim to be a composer, and I see some signs of talent. But would you never consider setting a vocal piece? Bear in mind that to many composers of opera or sacred music, the texts they set are an essential part of the compositional dynamic. One can look at composers as disparate as Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Berlioz, Berg, and Wagner to see that the librettos they chose were deeply meaningful to them for their stories and characters, and audiences at these operas often respond in kind. I suppose you can take an approach such as Bruckner did to Wagner, where he claimed he hadn't the slightest idea what happened in Tristan und Isolde, but then you're left with the problem of not being able to account for the libretto in the first place.

It's like saying Le Nozze di Figaro has its home key as D major, and the second act finale concludes in the remote key of E flat, without considering that the opera is a comedy about the relations between the Count and Countess, Susanna and Figaro, Cherubino and all the others. Similarly, Berg's own sense of Wozzeck was that "However thorough one's knowledge of the opera's musical forms, from the curtain's rise until its final fall no one in the audience should think of the various Fugues, Inventions, Suite and Sonata Movements, Variations, and Passacaglias. Everyone should be filled only with the idea of the opera, an idea that far transcends the individual fate of Wozzeck."

When I compose a piece of music where I set words to music, I often think about what sounds I can imagine accompanying the text. In the little song I wrote called The Sand Timer (I've uploaded an old version of midi instruments and real voices here https://soundcloud.com/composerofavantgarde/the-sand-timer but I'll see what I can do about recording a live performance in February) I used the imagery of the poem to make loose connections to a soundworld of my own imagining. Words such as 'Darkness' in my mind connote very low sustained notes, 'falling' relates to descending contour, even something like 'the sand timer' itself helped me to decide upon the use of the harpsichord and guitar. The interlocking and gradually descending arpeggios at the start remind me of the grains of sand as they fall. It's really just my own imagination as inspired by the words.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 06:11:46 PM
Something I would never, ever do. I would never bother with a descriptive title of that nature if hadn't formed part of the conception of the piece.

And I'm the one who's supposedly fond of extramusical stuff...

The 90 seconds on iTunes sounds nice, by the way.

Thanks for listening. :D

My reason for titling it in such a way was simply because I know that there are people (musicians and listeners alike) who are fond of the extramusical stuff and who would make the effort to connect the title to the sounds.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 06:11:46 PM
Something I would never, ever do. I would never bother with a descriptive title of that nature if hadn't formed part of the conception of the piece.

And yet Debussy supposedly decided on his titles only after writing the pieces, and Satie was fond of whacking titles on top of his pieces that had nothing to do with the music. Still, in Debussy's case the titles generally seem to fit, while in Satie's they just sound like whack jobs.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 06:18:02 PM
When I compose a piece of music where I set words to music, I often think about what sounds I can imagine accompanying the text. In the little song I wrote called The Sand Timer (I've uploaded an old version of midi instruments and real voices here https://soundcloud.com/composerofavantgarde/the-sand-timer but I'll see what I can do about recording a live performance in February) I used the imagery of the poem to make loose connections to a soundworld of my own imagining. Words such as 'Darkness' in my mind connote very low sustained notes, 'falling' relates to descending contour, even something like 'the sand timer' itself helped me to decide upon the use of the harpsichord and guitar. The interlocking and gradually descending arpeggios at the start remind me of the grains of sand as they fall. It's really just my own imagination as inspired by the words.

I can't really say much about your song because I don't find the words intelligible from the recording. But even with art songs, just as with operas, composers have often been drawn to the genre because of their deep response to the poetry. This is certainly true of Britten, whose cycles on poets like Donne, Blake, Hardy, and others form a kind of mini-anthology of English literature. What I'm hearing from you is a sense of setting words bit-by-bit, but not of creating an overall conception of the text similar to the way Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, or Mahler would. Think of Schumann's "Ich grolle nicht" from the Dichterliebe, for example: Schumann is not just looking to set individual words, but to create a kind of mini-drama in which the self-deceiving speaker, unlucky in love, pretends to a kind of stoicism to shield himself from hurt, and pretends that the girl who has rejected him is the one who is actually suffering. That's the sort of thing that creates a great art song.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 06:42:03 PM
I can't really say much about your song because I don't find the words intelligible from the recording. But even with art songs, just as with operas, composers have often been drawn to the genre because of their deep response to the poetry. This is certainly true of Britten, whose cycles on poets like Donne, Blake, Hardy, and others form a kind of mini-anthology of English literature. What I'm hearing from you is a sense of setting words bit-by-bit, but not of creating an overall conception of the text similar to the way Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, or Mahler would. Think of Schumann's "Ich grolle nicht" from the Dichterliebe, for example: Schumann is not just looking to set individual words, but to create a kind of mini-drama in which the self-deceiving speaker, unlucky in love, pretends to a kind of stoicism to shield himself from hurt, and pretends that the girl who has rejected him is the one who is actually suffering. That's the sort of thing that creates a great art song.

Yes, the song I wrote is still just an exercise for me as I haven't studied much art song. I will be sure to learn a bit more about the songs you mention, thank you very much for the advice. :)

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 06:26:02 PM
And yet Debussy supposedly decided on his titles only after writing the pieces, and Satie was fond of whacking titles on top of his pieces that had nothing to do with the music. Still, in Debussy's case the titles generally seem to fit, while in Satie's they just sound like whack jobs.

Oh, I know other people would do it. I just find it stupid if it has nothing to do with the music. And no, I'm not a fan of Satie.

There've been many examples provided on this thread of cases where the title clearly was part of the composer's method to convey/evoke something. To me, providing a title when it has nothing to do with your ideas about the music is at best pointless and at worst cynical and displaying a contempt for listeners.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 06:53:57 PM
Oh, I know other people would do it. I just find it stupid if it has nothing to do with the music. And no, I'm not a fan of Satie.

There've been many examples provided on this thread of cases where the title clearly was part of the composer's method to convey/evoke something. To me, providing a title when it has nothing to do with your ideas about the music is at best pointless and at worst cynical and displaying a contempt for listeners.

Has there ever been an example of a title which actually displays a contempt for listeners?

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 06:22:20 PM
My reason for titling it in such a way was simply because I know that there are people (musicians and listeners alike) who are fond of the extramusical stuff and who would make the effort to connect the title to the sounds.

Yeah, and this... this is what I have a problem with. Because it seems very much as if you are enjoying misleading people. Ha! If I put fish in the title, there'll be people who will try to relate the music to fish.

Seriously, why would you want to make people think about fish? If it's all about appreciating the music in and of itself, if that's what is of value to you, why would you deliberately aim to throw some of your audience off track by setting them on a path to somewhere that you didn't actually want them to go?

Do you enjoy looking down on people who make such connections? Are you thinking "look at those fools, they think this piece has something do with fish"?  Yeah, but they think that because of something YOU did.

It's one thing for people to come up with their own imagery and associations for a piece of music. It's quite another for a composer to choose to steer people in a certain direction. Doing so when you care is fine, but doing so if you don't care is manipulative and deceptive in my view.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 06:55:25 PM
Has there ever been an example of a title which actually displays a contempt for listeners?

The decision to provide a title. Not the title itself.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 05:54:03 PMBut would you never consider setting a vocal piece? Bear in mind that to many composers of opera or sacred music, the texts they set are an essential part of the compositional dynamic.

Sorry to jump in, but as a sort of composer myself, I find that words and music interfere with each other when I'm listening—I think the same part of my brain processes both, so they compete, and if I can understand the words they take over from the music. When listening to songs I'll generally read the text afterwards, and I've never been able to enjoy songs in English. (I find that the best songs convey meaning even without the words. Don't know how else to explain it, but I think you can grasp the entire emotional trajectory of eg Dichterliebe or Winterreise, with less specificity but more of... whatever the word is for when a work of fiction makes you feel that the world of the story is much wider and more real than is actually shown onscreen/on the page. Of course there's also probably bias on my part in selecting which ones are the "best" songs. Lmao)

I wonder if there are any composers who didn't write any vocal music, or at least a minimal amount of it. I can't think of any offhand. (Even I've put some work into a Requiem, although that text is so formalised already as to be virtually meaningless....)

ComposerofAvantGarde, let me clear about one thing regarding "random titles".

I get that music with a distinctive title does better in the world. I'd more or less assumed that was your purpose - that you take the view it's better to have a title because it makes it more likely the piece will be successful.

But the explanation you've given gives me a different impression - that you know what people will do in their minds with that title, that they will make the futile effort to give the title meaning.

And that's the difference, for me, between a title being a bit pointless and a title being misleading. Your decision processes, your motivation is what makes the difference.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 07:00:30 PM
Yeah, and this... this is what I have a problem with. Because it seems very much as if you are enjoying misleading people. Ha! If I put fish in the title, there'll be people who will try to relate the music to fish.

Seriously, why would you want to make people think about fish? If it's all about appreciating the music in and of itself, if that's what is of value to you, why would you deliberately aim to throw some of your audience off track by setting them on a path to somewhere that you didn't actually want them to go?

Do you enjoy looking down on people who make such connections? Are you thinking "look at those fools, they think this piece has something do with fish"?  Yeah, but they think that because of something YOU did.

It's one thing for people to come up with their own imagery and associations for a piece of music. It's quite another for a composer to choose to steer people in a certain direction. Doing so when you care is fine, but doing so if you don't care is manipulative and deceptive in my view.

Despite your negative assumptions of me, I will see if you will understand something....

I don't wish for any of my compositions to be 'all about appreciating the music in and of itself' simply because that's how I listen to music. What I love most about music is when people make connection to music that I could never have thought of myself. Even in this case, I never would have thought I would receive a response such as yours, so even though you are blasting negative assumptions about me at me it is still a rewarding and enlightening experience. The duo who performed my composition used the title as a kind of expression marking for their interpretation, this is something which is incredibly useful to many musicians and it payed off in this case.

In terms of an audience's response to the piece and its title, any response from 'I don't hear what the title has to do with the music' to some kind of detailed story about fish in a pond is a legitimate response, even no response is fine. Even an outright attack on the composer of it is a legitimate response that proves to me what effect words can have when put beside pure music. :laugh:

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 07:16:17 PM
ComposerofAvantGarde, let me clear about one thing regarding "random titles".

I get that music with a distinctive title does better in the world. I'd more or less assumed that was your purpose - that you take the view it's better to have a title because it makes it more likely the piece will be successful.

But the explanation you've given gives me a different impression - that you know what people will do in their minds with that title, that they will make the futile effort to give the title meaning.

And that's the difference, for me, between a title being a bit pointless and a title being misleading. Your decision processes, your motivation is what makes the difference.

I don't think it's futile, I think it's shining a new light on the music, it encourages the imagination in ways I can't even imagine and I find that inspiring above all else. :)

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 07:21:46 PM
I don't think it's futile, I think it's shining a new light on the music, it encourages the imagination in ways I can't even imagine and I find that inspiring above all else. :)

...why isn't your music enough on its own to encourage the imagination?

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 19, 2016, 06:55:25 PM
Has there ever been an example of a title which actually displays a contempt for listeners?

Satie: "Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear."

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 06:53:57 PM
And no, I'm not a fan of Satie.

Mon non plus.

Quote from: amw on January 19, 2016, 07:10:26 PM
I wonder if there are any composers who didn't write any vocal music, or at least a minimal amount of it. I can't think of any offhand.

Chopin.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 07:24:36 PM
...why isn't your music enough on its own to encourage the imagination?

It is. But I really enjoy hearing how people connect with extramusical elements in ways that I don't connect to them. In some ways, I suppose you could say I like to allow an audience to manipulate even my own mind about why a piece of mine is titled in a certain way. It allows me to think about my compositions in a fresh new way as if I'm in the shoes of someone completely different. I always think to myself 'oh I've never thought of this piece in such a way before' whenever anyone shares their interpretation of the title Please Do Not Feed The Fish. The piece is using extramusical elements, but it's the audience who expresses it and not the composer. That's the whole point.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 05:35:28 PM
Yeah... Honestly, I get a "seeing the trees, not the wood" vibe [from the approach to music some take.]

[some listener's] talk of timbre, texture, harmony really does come across to me as if they are so interested in the composer's tools that you are likely to not give a lot of attention to what they are building with those tools. The equivalent of admiring the detailed stonework on a cathedral but being disinterested in the soaring edifice.

I don't get a feeling of anything much like genuine concern in this statement.
---I think this more a fairly transparent form of a less than implicit sort of protest against any whose approach to music or discussion of it does not place first and foremost the emotional / spiritual aspects of the art of music (with, it seems, a requisite to nearly gush and drip about it.) Any non-emotive/spiritual approach is then somehow judged as deficient and read as a denial of and insult toward those emotional / spiritual aspects of the art itself and an insult to those who pride themselves in wearing that particular emotional / spiritual fan-of-the-art badge.
---I don't think I'm the only one who senses in that a kind of purport of seriously elitist-exclusive one-upsmanship re: who is more deeply sensitive than whom. That too readily gets to who has "the right" to talk about music and in what tenor of speech... the implication being one party 'owns' music. That property owner it seems can also make the rules about how the serfs may speak about the property, the owner having both droit du seigneur and a moral obligation to cry out if the serfs do not speak about his property in tones deeply pious enough.

In what way is it inconceivable to imagine an architect can be / is far more likely to be fully aware of both the macro and the micro of the building he is making or has made, as well as the aesthetic, spiritual, and all other aspects of and about the structure? I find it much harder to imagine the architect would not, innately, be 'all that' at once.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 05:35:28 PMMy chief concern is that once [a compostion student] has all those tools... how are they going to decide what to build with them?

---Wow, and I thought I could be a moralizing pedant finger-wagger, lol. Well, welcome to that club of deeply dubious distinction.  :laugh:
---Leave those concerns to those who have all the tools and are working with them. Other artists, critics, and the general public, collectively, long term and generally, all do their job well -- after the fact of those with the tools having made and completed a work. Best wait until a building is built, see it in its finished entirety, to have any valid concerns or critiques about it.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 05:35:28 PMI dunno. Maybe there is a kind of composer who doesn't actually need a goal or motivation. Maybe their goals and motivations will be external, purely driven by someone asking you for a piece within certain performance parameters.

---This is a futile and useless spin, does nothing, goes nowhere. The only ones who need at all to bother with those questions are the ones actually writing the music.


Best regards.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 19, 2016, 08:18:50 PM
I don't get a feeling of anything much like genuine concern in this statement.

Then I'll have to try harder to communicate my concern next time. I'm not especially good at conveying emotion in writing. Someone on a forum once accused me of being autistic.

Quote
---I think this more a fairly transparent form of a less than implicit sort of protest against any whose approach to music or discussion of it does not place first and foremost the emotional / spiritual aspects of the art of music (with, it seems, a requisite to nearly gush and drip about it.) Any non-emotive/spiritual approach is then somehow judged as deficient and read as a denial of and insult toward those emotional / spiritual aspects of the art itself and an insult to those who pride themselves in wearing that particular emotional / spiritual fan-of-the-art badge.

And once again, you think that if I'm protesting against one extreme I must therefore be advocating the other. I don't know how many times I've pointed out that the music I most enjoy and listen to is absolute, structural, intellectual. I get more pleasure out of a sonata form than a Wagnerian singer spending 10 minutes dying. I've got no time for people appending romantic titles to every Chopin piece within sight. I go around these forums expressing my fandom for Holmboe, a "neoclassical" composer who frequently gets described with terms like 'intellectual' and 'severe'. You simply won't find me gushing and dripping. The only person who thinks I'm that kind of person is you.

Quote
In what way is it inconceivable to imagine an architect can be / is far more likely to be fully aware of both the macro and the micro of the building he is making or has made, as well as the aesthetic, spiritual, and all other aspects of and about the structure? I find it much harder to imagine the architect would not, innately, be 'all that' at once.

It's not inconceivable at all. But I'm simply not getting both the macro and the micro from the posts I'm responding to. If I actually got the sense of both at once, then it would be thoroughly in accord with my own views and indeed my own temperament. I work in a job that requires awareness of both the macro and the micro, and it's precisely the ability to hold both of those at once that makes it a specialised and difficult job.

But what is coming across to me is frequently no more than a description of music as a series of "micros".  Which in my mind is really not the same thing as "macro". It's not actually the "micros" that distinguish a masterpiece from an also-ran, but the manipulation of those "micros" into larger patterns and structures. The Mona Lisa is made up of brushstrokes in exactly the same way as the painting of an amateur hack.

And that's really what I'm trying to explore here. What makes one thing a masterpiece and another thing an also-ran? Even among masterpieces, what makes one piece of music sound tragic and another sound joyous? You've got the same 12 notes to work with, you've got (at least for the same time period) the same instruments available to play those notes. Describing music at the molecular level simply doesn't explain the overall effect, and in fact it's felt at times in these discussions as if there's no logical reason for more than one piece of music to exist.

I don't really care whether it's called "emotional" or "spiritual" or whatever, but the fact is music generates a reaction, and it's generating different reactions that actually provides some kind of purpose to bothering to generate different sounds to the ones previously generated.

The short version: what's really struck me is the complete lack of a connection between those tools at the "micro" level and the intention to create a tragic piece, a heroic piece, a lyrical piece, a calm piece or an agitated one. I keep hearing that it's just about making... a piece. That sounds good. Doesn't matter how it sounds, so long as it's... good.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 09:56:36 PM
The short version: what's really struck me is the complete lack of a connection between those tools at the "micro" level and the intention to create a tragic piece, a heroic piece, a lyrical piece, a calm piece or an agitated one. I keep hearing that it's just about making a piece that sounds good. Doesn't matter how it sounds, so long as it's... good.

I am more than a bit stymied by the question in there. My first reaction is those adjectival qualities, as so named, sound very like qualities attributed most to romantic era repertoire and those, titled just 'symphony,' etc. and without text having such qualitative attributes named after the fact of their completion.

I think the intents you name, and maybe that is just a matter of language falling short, or words not so well chosen, sound more like a laundry list a film director would hand a film composer.

I can think of some general mechanics, configurations, combined with the tempo and relative amount of musical activity, that might lead a listener to think, 'particular qualitative adjective,' but as far as actual note content, again, it seems like a list where a composer would be most reliant upon borrowing or imitating gestures and vocabulary of the past.

I guarantee you I am not being deliberately obtuse or coy about the question.

Maybe, without intending it to be any kind of challenge, or great task, if you would name some pieces which were known to have been intended by the composer as setting out to write a "tragic or heroic or lyrical piece," might help.

"Calm or agitated" have at least as much to do with tempo and the relative 'traffic' of note activity within that tempo. Again for these last two qualities, other than the more direct 'chase scene' 'agitated' cliche genre from the archives of film scores, I'm rather stumped as to what your concept and perceptions of those are, which is why I would like to have further from you on the very idea, the premise, and who you think has come up with music with that intent at the fore.

I have to confess that a lot of what you ask here, and the sort of ethos of it, sounds like a devotee of music asking for a return of the arch-romantic sensibility from composers of the present day, yet, you say you are a fan of the neoclassical, which some do think as either more cerebral or if other, 'emotionally remote.'

I'll be very curious if I can get a better idea of what you're getting at. It may be clear to you, but it is extremely vague and general to me as I read it.


Best regards.

Brahms. Tragic Overture.

Strauss. Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life).

I don't have to go things with titles either. Heck, try Sibelius' 4th symphony for tragedy and 5th symphony for heroism. I've referred before to cases where a composer wrote 2 or 3 pieces in a set with clearly different characters. Beethoven's violin sonatas op.23 and 24 are as good an example as any of pieces with contrasting moods. There are a sufficiently large number of such sets that it's difficult to believe they just happen by accident, that the contrasts are just stumbled upon.

And this is one of my two glaring, screaming problems with statements that seem to limit musical success to a technically proficient process of putting notes together until they sound good. I keep being given the impression that emotional effects that are almost universally recognised by audiences ought to be treated as accidents.

The other glaring, screaming problem, which is related, is this:

I own one car. It works. I haven't felt the need for another, although at the moment it's beginning to have a few small issues and I'm considering replacing it. I own one television. I own one functioning kettle. One properly functioning kettle.

Explain to me why, by contrast, my house contains hundreds upon hundreds of bits of music. Because you keep giving me the impression that one technically proficient, fully functioning one that satisfies me ought to be enough.

Okay, so do I have several different varieties of tea in the house. I sort of have a 'default' one, and other flavours that I'm sometimes in the mood for. But I've only got one English Breakfast, one Earl Grey and so forth.

And yet, having one fully satisfactory sonata form, or theme and variations, or symphony, or string quartet, in now way prevents me from wanting to acquire another one. Explain why.

That's what your point of view is missing. If you reduce music to skilfully putting sounds together, if you take out notions of individual expression, you provide me with no explanation not only of why I should prefer your composition to another well-constructed composition, but why I should ever want to have two of them in my house at the same time.

This really has nothing to do with Romanticism, it has to do with the basic question of why people keep manipulating 12 notes and the instruments that can play them despite the fact that it's all been done extremely competently many times before. It has to do with why there is the slightest point to our composer friends on the forum bothering to add more material to a market that is already super-saturated.

EDIT: And if you say "they create because they must", that is a far more Romantic notion than anything I've said. It also provides no basis for why anyone ought to  listen. Just create, shove it in a drawer and start the next one.

PS I just stumbled across a Strauss quote, while composing the work.

QuoteIt is entitled 'A Hero's Life,' and while it has no funeral march, it does have lots of horns, horns being quite the thing to express heroism.

My hat off to orfeo and (poco) Sforzando. High five, gentlemen!

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 11:34:13 PM
That's what your point of view is missing. If you reduce music to skilfully putting sounds together, if you take out notions of individual expression, you provide me with no explanation not only of why I should prefer your composition to another well-constructed composition, but why I should ever want to have two of them in my house at the same time.

This really has nothing to do with Romanticism, it has to do with the basic question of why people keep manipulating 12 notes and the instruments that can play them despite the fact that it's all been done extremely competently many times before. It has to do with why there is the slightest point to our composer friends on the forum bothering to add more material to a market that is already super-saturated.

EDIT: And if you say "they create because they must", that is a far more Romantic notion than anything I've said. It also provides no basis for why anyone ought to  listen. Just create, shove it in a drawer and start the next one.

Excellent points and an implicit question whose answer I eagerly await.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 19, 2016, 11:10:51 PM
Maybe, without intending it to be any kind of challenge, or great task, if you would name some pieces which were known to have been intended by the composer as setting out to write a "tragic or heroic or lyrical piece," might help.

Beethoven - Wellington´s Victory
Schubert - Symphony No. 4 "Tragic"
Tchaikovsky - 1812 Overture
Liszt - Heroide funebre, Mazeppa, Orpheus, Prometheus, Tasso
Nikolai Medtner - Piano Sonatas: Tragica, Minacciosa, Romantica

Grieg - no less than 4 books of Lyric Pieces, each with its own title
Alexander von Zemlinsky - Lyric Symphony
Alban Berg - Lyric Suite

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 06:53:57 PM
Oh, I know other people would do it. I just find it stupid if it has nothing to do with the music. And no, I'm not a fan of Satie.

Surely you enjoy his sense of humor?

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 07:00:30 PM
Yeah, and this... this is what I have a problem with. Because it seems very much as if you are enjoying misleading people. Ha! If I put fish in the title, there'll be people who will try to relate the music to fish.

They will play . . . Find the Fish!

Quote from: amw on January 19, 2016, 07:10:26 PM
Sorry to jump in, but as a sort of composer myself, I find that words and music interfere with each other when I'm listening—I think the same part of my brain processes both, so they compete, and if I can understand the words they take over from the music. When listening to songs I'll generally read the text afterwards, and I've never been able to enjoy songs in English. (I find that the best songs convey meaning even without the words. Don't know how else to explain it, but I think you can grasp the entire emotional trajectory of eg Dichterliebe or Winterreise, with less specificity but more of... whatever the word is for when a work of fiction makes you feel that the world of the story is much wider and more real than is actually shown onscreen/on the page. Of course there's also probably bias on my part in selecting which ones are the "best" songs. Lmao)

I wonder if there are any composers who didn't write any vocal music, or at least a minimal amount of it. I can't think of any offhand. (Even I've put some work into a Requiem, although that text is so formalised already as to be virtually meaningless....)

Chopin arguably wrote "minimal" vocal music, but his work had its characteristically singular focus.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 07:31:19 PM
Chopin.

Should have known you had got here first!

Quote from: karlhenning on January 20, 2016, 01:40:10 AM
Chopin arguably wrote "minimal" vocal music, but his work had its characteristically singular focus.

As well, vocal music makes up the second largest proportion of his output, I believe.

It seems like all actual composers relate strongly to text in some way, probably another respect in which I shouldn't call myself one, heh

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 11:34:13 PM
I keep being given the impression that emotional effects that are almost universally recognised by audiences ought to be treated as accidents.

That is because that is often the case. Sibelius four: Maybe he actually sat down before he penned a note and said, "I am going to write a tragic piece." I doubt it. More likely, he had musical ideas, recognized their quality, and being a formalist and a very practiced composer, consciously stayed on track through the writing. I'm pretty sure it is not labeled by Sibelius as "Tragic," while most everyone agrees it feels 'dark.' The Strauss Ein Heldenleben you mentioned, well, I'm avowedly not a fan, and a lot of his music other than the operas sounds very shallow to me, the "emotions" on the superficial and cartoonish side. Each to their own, of course, but I hear frippery, you hear "Tragic."

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 11:34:13 PM...having one fully satisfactory sonata form, or theme and variations, or symphony, or string quartet, in no way prevents me from wanting to acquire another one.

Because those forms are not at all fully set or rigid, the forms differing one piece to the next, with sonatas, from the earliest Sonata di Chiesa to later one-movement massive structures like Liszt's Sonata in B Minor, through to the latest sonata written where the ink dried moments ago. Sonata form, or the others, is not a cake pan with a non malleable shape, and if it were there are still an infinite amount of ingredients to mix, pour into it, to make an infinite variety of cakes, just as there is no limit on the variety of harmonic language that can be in any of those forms.
You may as well ask why Beethoven wrote thirty-two piano sonatas and numbers of other sonatas for violin and piano and 'cello and piano, or why then Schubert and Brahms and Ives and Boulez bothered to compose sonatas. You know the answer. None are the same, and one was just not enough.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 11:34:13 PM...it has to do with the basic question of why people keep manipulating 12 notes and the instruments that can play them despite the fact that it's all been done extremely competently many times before.

I'm certain you fully know the 'why' of this, but if this question is for you genuous, and really something you will grapple with unless you get that one highly romanticized sort of answer, "yes, I sit down and know exactly the piece will be tragic and pull out all the tragic musical devices and vocabulary and make it tragic," you might have to accept that as much as you are deeply into music as a listener, knowing the actual process at all intimately may remain forever outside of you.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 11:34:13 PMIt has to do with why there is the slightest point to our composer friends on the forum bothering to add more material to a market that is already super-saturated.

Sorry, dude, once an artist has managed to get a work performed or recorded, you can require that they further personally hard sell themselves and their works to you until you are blue in the face, though I would not hold my breath if I were you. Sure, music is a business, but from one business company to the next, the uniqueness of either the product or service usually does not come anywhere close to the uniqueness of a piece composed by even a second-tier composer.
---It is a different marketplace with an entirely different product of an entirely different nature. You're expecting the artists, or the classical music industry, to pitch to you why you should ride in their car and buy it. Well, music is not actually a car. Your expectation of that hard-sell of the music, that's a massive fail.

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 11:34:13 PMIf you reduce music to skilfully putting sounds together, if you take out notions of individual expression, you provide me with no explanation not only of why I should prefer your composition to another well-constructed composition, but why I should ever want to have two of them in my house at the same time.

---Why on earth you think you should have a right to expect an explanation about a piece of music which has already been vetted and accepted by professionals for performance in a public venue or accepted by professional companies who record and sell CDs is for only the egocentrically entitled mind to know. I find that whole approach crass, not a little infantile, and think any explanation as to why that explanation should be expected would be a self-excusing rationale.
---When it comes to the young tyro composers, the amateurs and not quite yet fully professional, it seems it might be better and less stressful for you to stay at a far remove, i.e. it appears that when it comes to music you require a lot of prior certifications in the form of approvals, the seals and wax from experts and general public acclaim from past generations to the near present. Don't expect of yourself to then comfortably measure the quality of new and unknown works by the not yet fully vetted professionals.
---Some people, you know, just use and trust their own ears in these matters, but that means a willingness to listen, to sample the product as it were, without a sales pitch first.
---If being hard sold is part of the deal for you, maybe you're better off going out and looking for a new-used or new car instead of music if you're expecting that kind of sales pitch about the product. At least the car will actually get you somewhere.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 20, 2016, 01:34:34 AM
Surely you enjoy his sense of humor?

Satie? No, not really. I don't actually know a huge amount of his music, but from what I know I'd put the humour no higher than causing a slight smirk together with some bemusement.

I did play the "Sonatine bureaucratique" many years ago, and I don't think I found the written commentary especially funny.

Haydn is far funnier for me.

Monsieur Croche, you missed orfeo´s point entirely. Anyway, the tone and content of your reaction speak volumes.

Monsieur Croche,

I don't have time to untangle your mess of quotes, nor your even bigger mess of misunderstandings. So let's just make some brief points.

1. I selected Ein Hedenleben, A Hero's Life, for heroism. How on earth you could possibly think I consider it "tragic" is... I'm sorry, that's just bizarre. And whether you or I like the piece is completely irrelevant.

2. I do know the answer re Beethoven writing 32 sonatas. I'm asking whether you know the answer. The whole point is that it's far harder to derive an answer from your position than mine. Shouting one is not enough is not an argument, a kettle salesman could just as easily shout the same thing. Do I thereby give in and buy a second kettle?

3. You appear to believe that I'm arguing that every piece must have an easy word label such as "tragic". This is not what I'm arguing, and it's never been what I'm arguing. What you've apparently been arguing is that a composer never has such a label in mind, which is demonstrably not true.

4. And your entire last part misses the point all the more spectacularly than the rest. I'm not putting forward what I believe, I'm putting forward what I think is the logical question as a result of what you believe. I believe that music is a form of expression which means that each composer brings something unique as a result of their unique personality.  You deny that music expresses and conveys things - it's you who needs a further explanation as to why there's any point to providing more material. And I repeat, shouting one is not enough is not an argument, it's a bald assertion.

Quote from: Florestan on January 20, 2016, 01:12:10 AM
Beethoven - Wellington´s Victory
Schubert - Symphony No. 4 "Tragic"
Tchaikovsky - 1812 Overture
Liszt - Heroide funebre, Mazeppa, Orpheus, Prometheus, Tasso
Nikolai Medtner - Piano Sonatas: Tragica, Minacciosa, Romantica

Grieg - no less than 4 books of Lyric Pieces, each with its own title
Alexander von Zemlinsky - Lyric Symphony
Alban Berg - Lyric Suite

Schubert added the title Tragic to his autograph manuscript some time after the work was completed. [after the fact intent?

There are numbers of works I would call 'lyric,' Berg's Violin Concerto certainly qualifies on that front, as does Stravinsky's Apollo.

I don't have 'the facts' on how or when the others were titled, the many instances of like 'what Schubert did,' title after the fact of the work having been completed, are known... Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique another known, Beethoven submitted the piece to his publisher, who then suggested the Pathetique; Beethoven said, "Alright." lol.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 20, 2016, 02:16:23 AM
Schubert added the title Tragic to his autograph manuscript some time after the work was completed. [after the fact intent?

I know it allright. But I´m sure that he didn´t add it just because he saw a signpost in the park reading "Tragic" and thought: "Hey, that would make a great funny title for the last symphony I wrote!"

Quote
I don't have 'the facts' on how or when the others were titled

And I don´t expect you to get them right, either. After all, they are unimportant, or even harmful, extramusical trivia., right?

Quote from: orfeo on January 19, 2016, 11:38:36 PM
PS I just stumbled across a Strauss quote, while composing the work.

Common knowledge, coin of the realm and semiotic. "The Horn Call," a signal, depending on the notes and dynamics, one of alarm, "lone Hero" etc.

Most composers would neither be impressed or find this any kind of point of argument pro or con your wont of their knowingly sitting down to compose, "Deliberately Penned Emotion No. 5."

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 02:03:52 AM
Satie? No, not really. I don't actually know a huge amount of his music, but from what I know I'd put the humour no higher than causing a slight smirk together with some bemusement.

I did play the "Sonatine bureaucratique" many years ago, and I don't think I found the written commentary especially funny.

Haydn is far funnier for me.

Fair enough, one has preferences.

When asked what he thought of La mer, he replied (I paraphrase), "I especially liked the bit at a quarter to nine." I think that is one of the funniest-without-being-unkind things I've known any composer to say.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 20, 2016, 01:59:03 AM
Sibelius four: Maybe he actually sat down before he penned a note and said, "I am going to write a tragic piece." I doubt it. More likely, he had musical ideas, recognized their quality, and being a formalist and a very practiced composer, consciously stayed on track through the writing.

I'm going to come back to this bit specifically to say something further.

Again, you basically are claiming that composers stumble over the emotional content of their work as a result of "staying on track".

There are two problems with this. One, I've already referred to, is that you think I am arguing that Sibelius sat down and said "I am going to write a tragic piece". I'm not arguing that at all. Maybe it's one of the cases where a composer sat down with that kind of purpose, but I don't know that. I don't recall seeing a quote to that effect.

The other problem is one that I've previously raised and which you still haven't addressed. If composers simply stumble over these things all the time, then how do we ever end up with sets of contrasting works? Suppose that Brahms' Festival Overture was literally an accident of happiness. How, then, did he manage to produce a Tragic Overture to go with it? How did Beethoven manage to get op.24 to contrast with op.23 (they were supposed to be presented as a single opus, by the way, the separate numbers are the result of a printing issue)? How did Brahms get his op.26 piano quartet to contrast with his op.25 piano quartet?

Heck, how did anyone manage to create multi-movement pieces where the mood of the 2nd movement contrasts with the mood of the 1st? Is it all just by accident?

This is what you essentially propose. You propose that a composer diligently works the material out, stays on track... and that whether the music comes across as joyous or tragic or heroic or whatever words are used to approximate the impression it gives, is just an accidental result of working out the material.

I'm sorry but that's just ludicrous.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 20, 2016, 02:24:40 AM
When asked what he thought of La mer, he replied (I paraphrase), "I especially liked the bit at a quarter to nine."

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 20, 2016, 02:21:47 AM
Common knowledge, coin of the realm and semiotic. "The Horn Call," a signal, depending on the notes and dynamics, one of alarm, "lone Hero" etc.

And it's your insistence that composers somehow don't or shouldn't care about or utilise semiotics that completely bemuses me.

Seriously? You declare it's common knowledge, and yet you immediately say that this doesn't prove anything about deliberately using horns?

Wow. What a massive contradiction. Everyone knows what horns represent, yet no-one ever deliberately chooses horns for what they represent.

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 02:25:32 AM
If composers simply stumble over these things all the time, then how do we ever end up with sets of contrasting works? Suppose that Brahms' Festival Overture was literally an accident of happiness. How, then, did he manage to produce a Tragic Overture to go with it? How did Beethoven manage to get op.24 to contrast with op.23 (they were supposed to be presented as a single opus, by the way, the separate numbers are the result of a printing issue)? How did Brahms get his op.26 piano quartet to contrast with his op.25 piano quartet?

Heck, how did anyone manage to create multi-movement pieces where the mood of the 2nd movement contrasts with the mood of the 1st? Is it all just by accident?

This is what you essentially propose. You propose that a composer diligently works the material out, stays on track... and that whether the music comes across as joyous or tragic or heroic or whatever words are used to approximate the impression it gives, is just an accidental result of working out the material.

I'm sorry but that's just ludicrous.

+ 1

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 02:25:32 AM
Again, you basically are claiming that composers stumble over the emotional content of their work as a result of "staying on track".

What I took away there (not to detract from the general interest of your longer post) is that Sibelius's immediate concern may have been musical and procedural, rather than making sure an emotional narrative would be somehow clear to the listener. Certainly the musical material has its character, or an aptitude to a range of character; and the notes "come from somewhere."

Through all this (as I hope is no secret from my various intrusions) I have overlapping allegiances. The Stravinskyan skepticism against treating music as pages from any sort of diary; and relying on the listener's sympathetic resonance to the mysterious heart of the music. (And I understand that you get all that.)

Forgive my jumping elsewhere ... but it is in the handling of the musical material that composer expresses his individuality.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 20, 2016, 02:38:13 AM
the listener's sympathetic resonance to the mysterious heart of the music

You´re such a romantic, Karl...  :D  :D :D

Quote from: karlhenning on January 20, 2016, 02:38:13 AM

What I took away there (not to detract from the general interest of your longer post) is that Sibelius's immediate concern may have been musical and procedural, rather than making sure an emotional narrative would be somehow clear to the listener. Certainly the musical material has its character, or an aptitude to a range of character; and the notes "come from somewhere."

Through all this (as I hope is no secret from my various intrusions) I have overlapping allegiances. The Stravinskyan skepticism against treating music as pages from any sort of diary; and relying on the listener's sympathetic resonance to the mysterious heart of the music. (And I understand that you get all that.)

Forgive my jumping elsewhere ... but it is in the handling of the musical material that composer expresses his individuality.

Absolutely no problem, Karl. I've no objection to any of that. I myself have exactly the same skepticism about treating music as a diary - cf my recent exasperation at two conflicting sets of liner notes about Dvorak's Piano Trio No.2 where one was "oh, it sounds tragic because his daughter died" and the other was "why doesn't his music sound happy when he's being successful?". Attempts such as that to link music to biography are not at all to my liking.

And I certainly have no problem with overlapping allegiances. What I have a problem with is any kind of idea that composers simply don't notice anything about the emotional resonances of the material that they're working out musically/procedurally. Why on earth should composers, of all people, be less sensitive to this than listeners? Why wouldn't they factor that into their decision-making process? The degree to which they do this will vary enormously, of course, but a blanket assertion that composers just diligently work away at musical procedures without paying any attention to the emotional content is going too far. There is too much evidence of composers who have made musical choices based on emotional content.

Quote from: Florestan on January 20, 2016, 02:57:29 AM
You´re such a romantic, Karl...  :D  :D :D

But I'm not a sap!

Quote from: amw on January 20, 2016, 01:56:35 AM
As well, vocal music makes up the second largest proportion of his output, I believe.

I don't know what this means. Chopin wrote 19 known songs, but they're rarely heard and show no great affinity for the genre. He also wrote no purely orchestral music, no opera, no choral music either. More than any other major composer, his primary output is for solo piano.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 19, 2016, 06:26:02 PM
And yet Debussy supposedly decided on his titles only after writing the pieces, and Satie was fond of whacking titles on top of his pieces that had nothing to do with the music. Still, in Debussy's case the titles generally seem to fit, while in Satie's they just sound like whack jobs.

Wait? You mean that Satie's Desiccated Embryos has nothing to do with the music?! ???

The whole idea of titles in music is interesting. My position is that they don't have to affect the listening experience, but they can. I think my favorite example is Ligeti's San Francisco Polyphony (I think I've talked about this before on here). Suppose he called it Essay for Orchestra (or something vague and non-descriptive). It would still be a cool and interesting piece exhibiting his ability to write multiple short melodic "cells" occurring simultaneously. Add the title San Francisco Polyphony. Suddenly it becomes one of my favorites, bringing to mind a vibrant city, rush hour, and fog. I'm not going to try to remove the influence of the title if I'm enjoying it. I'd much prefer just to let it add to the work.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 20, 2016, 03:17:04 AM
I don't know what this means. Chopin wrote 19 known songs, but they're rarely heard and show no great affinity for the genre. He also wrote no purely orchestral music, no opera, no choral music either. More than any other major composer, his primary output is for solo piano.

Well basically that he contributed 19 songs (which are as you say), something like 6 chamber works (only one of which is ever really heard these days), and 2 piano concertos (both early works and not very characteristic). All of which are minor compared to the piano works, but songs (with text, obviously) being the most common non-piano music he wrote. I guess. I don't know that it means much either way.

Quote from: EigenUser on January 20, 2016, 03:17:09 AM
Wait? You mean that Satie's Desiccated Embryos has nothing to do with the music?! ???

The whole idea of titles in music is interesting. My position is that they don't have to affect the listening experience, but they can. I think my favorite example is Ligeti's San Francisco Polyphony (I think I've talked about this before on here). Suppose he called it Essay for Orchestra (or something vague and non-descriptive). It would still be a cool and interesting piece exhibiting his ability to write multiple short melodic "cells" occurring simultaneously. Add the title San Francisco Polyphony. Suddenly it becomes one of my favorites, bringing to mind a vibrant city, rush hour, and fog. I'm not going to try to remove the influence of the title if I'm enjoying it. I'd much prefer just to let it add to the work.

Well, yes. Debussy might have written a set of Three Symphonic Sketches, or he might have called them Les Montagnes or La Forêt. Instead he called them La Mer. Would the music evoke different feelings or moods with a different title or none at all? Even the use of an absolute title has connotations of its own. I heard John Adams (not the U.S. President) give a talk before the NY premiere of his Naïve and Sentimental Music where he was asked if the work were not a symphony (which in essence it is). Adams, obviously trying to distance himself from the grandiosity associated with that term: "Well I don't know about a Symphony . . . . "

Quote from: EigenUser on January 20, 2016, 03:17:09 AM
Wait? You mean that Satie's Desiccated Embryos has nothing to do with the music?! ???

The whole idea of titles in music is interesting. My position is that they don't have to affect the listening experience, but they can. I think my favorite example is Ligeti's San Francisco Polyphony (I think I've talked about this before on here). Suppose he called it Essay for Orchestra (or something vague and non-descriptive). It would still be a cool and interesting piece exhibiting his ability to write multiple short melodic "cells" occurring simultaneously. Add the title San Francisco Polyphony. Suddenly it becomes one of my favorites, bringing to mind a vibrant city, rush hour, and fog. I'm not going to try to remove the influence of the title if I'm enjoying it. I'd much prefer just to let it add to the work.

A listener is going to formulate an opinion of a work regardless of a title or what truly may be the composer's intent. Sibelius' The Wood-Nymph, for example, has a very specific inspiration and one can read about it all they want, but once the music hits our eardrums it does take on a life of its' own. I do, however, love reading about how a genesis of a work came to be and what it's direct influence was and so forth, but, for whatever reason, I can never make the connection between the composer's own inspiration and what I'm actually hearing. Now, I can inject all sorts of emotions and mental imagery into a work as I'm listening to it, but I don't actually believe that was the intent of the music. There always seems to be a disconnect between the composer and the listener and I'm perfectly fine with this kind of understanding as it's not really my place to question what the composer actually meant. It's merely my job to listen, enjoy, and, hopefully, come away from a piece with a better understanding of the composer's music.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 20, 2016, 02:24:40 AM
When asked what he thought of La mer, he replied (I paraphrase), "I especially liked the bit at a quarter to nine." I think that is one of the funniest-without-being-unkind things I've known any composer to say.

Yes, but the joke doesn't work unless you remember that the first movement is entitled "De l'aube à midi sur la mer," or "from dawn to noon on the sea."

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 20, 2016, 03:30:38 AM
Yes, but the joke doesn't work unless you remember that the first movement is entitled "De l'aube à midi sur la mer," or "from dawn to noon on the sea."

Bien sûr!

Speaking of Debussy's La Mer, there are times when I think "This passage right here (whatever catches my ear at the time of listening) must mean something? How could it not?" but I soon realize that once again perhaps I'm quite wrong again. Music that means something to us makes us question, not necessarily the composer, but why we were so affected by the piece to begin with. I freely admit that I have often imbued a piece with perhaps some absurd thoughts that would make me sound as if I'm a crazy person, but I just can't help it. I think it's fun to discuss a piece of music and what we hear, but I don't ever think we should let these kinds of thoughts trick us into thinking this is what the composer really meant, because we'll never truly know, but I never thought for a second that anyone is wrong with their own personal impressions of a work. Everyone has a right to listen to music however they want. Like I mentioned before, if it brings us closer to the music, then I certainly won't complain.

I don´t claim that every piece of music has, or should have, a program. I don´t even make my own program for each and every piece I hear. More often than not, I don´t. But I can surely tell that this piece here, or part of a piece, is sad, that other one joyful,; this one is passionate and turbulent, that other one serene and tranquil; I surely recognize sorrow when I hear it, or pain, or melancholy, or yearning, or happiness, or love, or despair, or resignation, or triumph or whatever. And I have big difficulties in believing, or being persuaded, that the emotional content which is so obvious to me (and in many cases not only to me) is just an accidental result, an unintended consequence, of someone´s combining sounds as s/he best sees fit without any other consideration, and it is irrelevant to the music itself.

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 02:25:32 AM
I'm going to come back to this bit specifically to say something further.

Again, you basically are claiming that composers stumble over the emotional content of their work as a result of "staying on track".

There are two problems with this. One, I've already referred to, is that you think I am arguing that Sibelius sat down and said "I am going to write a tragic piece". I'm not arguing that at all. Maybe it's one of the cases where a composer sat down with that kind of purpose, but I don't know that. I don't recall seeing a quote to that effect.

The other problem is one that I've previously raised and which you still haven't addressed. If composers simply stumble over these things all the time, then how do we ever end up with sets of contrasting works? Suppose that Brahms' Festival Overture was literally an accident of happiness. How, then, did he manage to produce a Tragic Overture to go with it? How did Beethoven manage to get op.24 to contrast with op.23 (they were supposed to be presented as a single opus, by the way, the separate numbers are the result of a printing issue)? How did Brahms get his op.26 piano quartet to contrast with his op.25 piano quartet?

Heck, how did anyone manage to create multi-movement pieces where the mood of the 2nd movement contrasts with the mood of the 1st? Is it all just by accident?

This is what you essentially propose. You propose that a composer diligently works the material out, stays on track... and that whether the music comes across as joyous or tragic or heroic or whatever words are used to approximate the impression it gives, is just an accidental result of working out the material.

I'm sorry but that's just ludicrous.

Sticking with the accident premise, I still maintain when it comes to composing, a lot of accident is very much what does happen. And choose not to believe it, but it is not ludicrous if you're adventurous enough to abandon verbal, literal, and lineal thought. Bear with me, please.

After LOTS of practice writing, the composer will have more specific experience in -- necessarily qualified "for them" -- what works, what doesn't, what just might be generally evocative of a general emotion, at least, and then becomes better versed in that. Then, I believe they can more deliberately and willfully command the direction the piece takes.

If you think of any hundreds of sonatas and symphonies, with so many of those not really having any solid compositional device binding the three movements together, it is a nearly certain conclusion that even there, the contrasts of mood, color and tempo [in a work perhaps not so specific as to emotional color and more 'absolute' and formal], that some heavy duty intuition based upon all that prior experience is at work. Otherwise, those three or four movements, outwardly somewhat 'arbitrarily' connected, would not feel connected. Sometimes, all it takes is that the same person was writing, in 'one session,' the three movements, i.e. perhaps the perceived flow might not have felt as connected if the composer had written the opening and closing movements and returned a year later to 'fit in' the middle movement. Relationships of the movements' key signatures [or pitch-centric if atonal], the meter, rhythm, all help to 'connect' what is otherwise truly non-related material.

Too, we have the semiotic veins of association to mine, of minor with 'sad/dark' and major with 'happy/light,' etc.
So, write a contrasting piece, hmmm....
Use small intervals in piece 'B' where piece 'A' used large intervals.
Use major or minor in opposition to the mode of the other piece.
Use a related meter, with the other elements contrasting. There are both connection and distinction.
Use a different meter.
Use relatively disjunct lines in piece 'A' and then conjunct lines in piece 'B.'
Use generally longer phrases in one piece, then shorter and more frequently aspirated phrasing
There are a lot of ways to go about this without waiting for the proverbial bolt of inspirational mystical lightning to strike, or knowing any more specifically 'what you want to express.' And then, yes, 'you run with it.'

Unless one is the composer, there is no telling how much 'they were into it.' I must say, that once composing or performing is your profession, it is hard and cold fact that when required to perform or compose to a deadline, you will not always,"feel like it or be into it." And... that is where, especially, you are just f★★★'d if you do not have a mega arsenal of technique and 'the craft' at your disposal.
"The craft" is what carries a composer through the problematical or 'uninspired' parts of a piece. "The craft" is what carries a performer who does not at all feel like performing a specific piece as programmed to render a performance which the paying audience has a right to expect, fully present, plugged in, 'communicative,' etc. The craft can actually get the not engaged composer or performer back to being fully engaged. If learned well enough and applied, no player or audience member will ever know where inspiration left off and craft took over, whether it was but one measure, an entire segment, a whole movement.

Imagine a sustained emotional context or inspiration which holds constant and steadfast over the period of up to nine months it can take to, daily and full-time, bring a thirty-minute long symphonic composition to completion. That just does not happen. That is where the craft comes in.

There is also a generally accepted tenet born of generations of experience: if you are going to compose a piece 'expressing tragic,' you yourself are much better off achieving that aim while being personally at the furthest remove from feeling or experiencing anything 'tragic.' This is less true or somewhat moot if writing something ebullient and 'happy,' though some remove from what is being expressed is always well-advised. All this is the opposite of the notion that composers are inspired throughout working on a piece [inspiration is usually no longer than a nano-second] and sit down and pour the emotion ultimately felt by the listener into each and every note as they write.

This is a bit of fun: both the baroque doctrine of emotions and minor=sad, major=happy were tossed out the window and turned upside down, to do the opposite of their known and expected semiotic -- in a masterly and completely successful way -- by Handel in his L'allegro where he set texts by Milton. [So much for any of the known bits most usually associated with 'x' emotion or mood being any sort of concrete constant.

OF COURSE, composers 'put emotion' in about every piece they write. They're people, not without emotions, and being so well-versed in music, there is an inevitable result of their application where some part of them enters the piece, i.e. what they make comes from them and has, in some measure, at least a bit of 'their soul.' Hippie-dippie, mystical, maybe 'romantic,' but pretty much real, and nothing much provable or to talk about, either, which is why I've left off including it until now.
--- For me, 'the composer is in the piece no matter what,' is a basic given. That is one reason why wanting more specific detail about that really confounds me, i.e. 'emotion and intent' are embedded in just about every piece of music ever written, across all genres, whether the composer is finding their way or has full command of the piece before they first set pen to manuscript paper. Past that, I find it both intriguing and a little silly that people seem to be so busy with it. I.e. if there is a piece of music, intent and emotion are "just there".

P.s. The above is, I think, as close to bringing this 'inside' of an answer to your question as I can get. I hope it will suffice.

Best regards.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 20, 2016, 03:25:22 AM
Even the use of an absolute title has connotations of its own.

This is often striking in music from the first third/half of the 20th century. Many composers seemed to take pains to avoid "loaded" titles like symphony and preferred neutral/technical terms like "Music for string instruments, percussion and celesta" or "Orchesterstücke", "kleine Kammermusik". Often this seems like obvious distancing not only from program music but from the connotations of the late romantic SYMPHONY.
Sometimes this leads to clashes between the music and the title: Janacek's "Sinfonietta" with 8 (or 10?) trumpets. Reger called a 40+ min. piece for full orchestra "Sinfonietta" as well.

Quote from: EigenUser on January 20, 2016, 03:17:09 AM
Wait? You mean that Satie's Desiccated Embryos has nothing to do with the music?! ???

You've gotta watch out for them Dadaist composers, especially when it comes to the titles they gave their pieces... devious tricksters, the lot of'em  :)

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 20, 2016, 04:27:27 AM
After LOTS of practice writing, the composer will have more specific experience in -- necessarily qualified "for them" -- what works, what doesn't, what just might be generally evocative of a general emotion, at least, and then becomes better versed in that. Then, I believe they can more deliberately and willfully command the direction the piece takes.

Finally. Thank you. You're finally acknowledging that there's an intent. And that semiotics have a purpose for composers rather than just being noticed by listeners after the fact.

This is pretty much all I've ever been asking for.

I never suggested, for one second, that composing was simply some kind of diary of what mood a composer was in, and part of my frustration has been that you've treated me as if that's what I've been suggesting.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 20, 2016, 03:30:22 AM
A listener is going to formulate an opinion of a work regardless of a title or what truly may be the composer's intent. Sibelius' The Wood-Nymph, for example, has a very specific inspiration and one can read about it all they want, but once the music hits our eardrums it does take on a life of its' own. I do, however, love reading about how a genesis of a work came to be and what it's direct influence was and so forth, but, for whatever reason, I can never make the connection between the composer's own inspiration and what I'm actually hearing. Now, I can inject all sorts of emotions and mental imagery into a work as I'm listening to it, but I don't actually believe that was the intent of the music. There always seems to be a disconnect between the composer and the listener and I'm perfectly fine with this kind of understanding as it's not really my place to question what the composer actually meant. It's merely my job to listen, enjoy, and, hopefully, come away from a piece with a better understanding of the composer's music.

I tend to agree with this. How much these titles have to do with one's experience of a work is questionable, IMO, and I generally find them at most a kind of fleeting evocation that may have little to do with the actual music. The first movement of La Mer may have been called "from dawn to noon," but musically speaking it feels overall more like a journey from a kind of pianissimo vagueness at the opening to a blazing fortissimo conclusion. The sun at high noon? or just a fortissimo resolution of the primary theme for the full orchestra in Db major? There's a marvelous passage midway where following an initial small climax, a quartet of cellos springs forth, highlighted by chords in the horns, to begin the second half of the movement. I don't know if this was Satie's 8:45AM or Debussy's attempt to depict a sunrise; whatever the case it feels aurally like a uniquely beautiful tonal palette that would be the same if the piece had a title or not.

Sometimes these programs can get in the way, too. I find almost all of Dvorak's tone poems prolix and unsatisfying because he seem so earnest to tell a story; similarly, the larger tone of poems of Strauss like Zarathustra and Heldenleben seem to me garrulous and diffuse because they are so program-dependent. Contrast these to the more successful IMO smaller works like Till, T+V, Don Juan, and even Don Quixote. These pieces work for me because whatever the merits of the program, they all express a musical coherence that can be traced back to standard forms like rondo (Till), sonata form (T+V and Don Juan), or variations (DQ, though the last of these comes close to stretching the limits).

But much of the discussion here seems to be getting hung up on program music, where there are of course innumerable examples of music where a program doesn't apply. And so far I'm just considering instrumental music; music with texts (song, choral work, opera) or scenarios (ballet) creates its own set of complications.

Quote from: Jo498 on January 20, 2016, 04:37:46 AM
This is often striking in music from the first third/half of the 20th century. Many composers seemed to take pains to avoid "loaded" titles like symphony and preferred neutral/technical terms like "Music for string instruments, percussion and celesta" or "Orchesterstücke", "kleine Kammermusik". Often this seems like obvious distancing not only from program music but from the connotations of the late romantic SYMPHONY.
Sometimes this leads to clashes between the music and the title: Janacek's "Sinfonietta" with 8 (or 10?) trumpets. Reger called a 40+ min. piece for full orchestra "Sinfonietta" as well.

Yes, but there are numerous examples of 20th-century music that use evocative titles as well: Tippett's The Rose Lake, Stockhausen's Punkte and Kontakte, Boulez's Répons and Rituel, Ferneyhough's La Chute d'Icare, Lindberg's Kraft, Ligeti's San Francisco Polyphony, Adams's Harmonielehre, just to name a few.

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 04:51:35 AM
Finally. Thank you. You're finally acknowledging that there's an intent. And that semiotics have a purpose for composers rather than just being noticed by listeners after the fact.

This is pretty much all I've ever been asking for.

I never suggested, for one second, that composing was simply some kind of diary of what mood a composer was in, and part of my frustration has been that you've treated me as if that's what I've been suggesting.

Misunderstanding is the basis of all comedy. Neither of us were aspiring to that, so for taking you too literally, and you me, perhaps, made the comedy, and frustrated intent -- as it were  :) Apologies, all round.

To think there would be a way to completely avoid putting oneself into ones creative work, regardless if it is severely 'intellectual,' is a comic proposition in itself.

Quote from: Jo498 on January 20, 2016, 04:37:46 AM
This is often striking in music from the first third/half of the 20th century. Many composers seemed to take pains to avoid "loaded" titles like symphony and preferred neutral/technical terms like "Music for string instruments, percussion and celesta" or "Orchesterstücke", "kleine Kammermusik". Often this seems like obvious distancing not only from program music but from the connotations of the late romantic SYMPHONY.
Sometimes this leads to clashes between the music and the title: Janacek's "Sinfonietta" with 8 (or 10?) trumpets. Reger called a 40+ min. piece for full orchestra "Sinfonietta" as well.

So many younger composers of the time wanted to separate and distance themselves from the hegemony of Germanic influence, its harmonic practice and traits, and its formalism especially (even the young Germans stepped away, lol.)

As well as those pieces you mentioned, we get things like Debussy's La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre, which, despite its name, is a formal three-movement symphony (go ahead, analyze it if you need a confirmation : -)

Debussy wanted no truck with being associated with the Germanic influence and its hierarchy of traditional musical forms, at least outwardly.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 20, 2016, 05:30:16 AM
I tend to agree with this. How much these titles have to do with one's experience of a work is questionable, IMO, and I generally find them at most a kind of fleeting evocation that may have little to do with the actual music. The first movement of La Mer may have been called "from dawn to noon," but musically speaking it feels overall more like a journey from a kind of pianissimo vagueness at the opening to a blazing fortissimo conclusion. The sun at high noon? or just a fortissimo resolution of the primary theme for the full orchestra in Db major? There's a marvelous passage midway where following an initial small climax, a quartet of cellos springs forth, highlighted by chords in the horns, to begin the second half of the movement. I don't know if this was Satie's 8:45AM or Debussy's attempt to depict a sunrise; whatever the case it feels aurally like a uniquely beautiful tonal palette that would be the same if the piece had a title or not.

Sometimes these programs can get in the way, too. I find almost all of Dvorak's tone poems prolix and unsatisfying because he seem so earnest to tell a story; similarly, the larger tone of poems of Strauss like Zarathustra and Heldenleben seem to me garrulous and diffuse because they are so program-dependent. Contrast these to the more successful IMO smaller works like Till, T+V, Don Juan, and even Don Quixote. These pieces work for me because whatever the merits of the program, they all express a musical coherence that can be traced back to standard forms like rondo (Till), sonata form (T+V and Don Juan), or variations (DQ, though the last of these comes close to stretching the limits).

But much of the discussion here seems to be getting hung up on program music, where there are of course innumerable examples of music where a program doesn't apply. And so far I'm just considering instrumental music; music with texts (song, choral work, opera) or scenarios (ballet) creates its own set of complications.

Absolutely agreed. I have nothing to add except giving you a high five! ;D

Quote from: Florestan on January 20, 2016, 04:16:51 AM
I don´t claim that every piece of music has, or should have, a program. I don´t even make my own program for each and every piece I hear. More often than not, I don´t. But I can surely tell that this piece here, or part of a piece, is sad, that other one joyful,; this one is passionate and turbulent, that other one serene and tranquil; I surely recognize sorrow when I hear it, or pain, or melancholy, or yearning, or happiness, or love, or despair, or resignation, or triumph or whatever. And I have big difficulties in believing, or being persuaded, that the emotional content which is so obvious to me (and in many cases not only to me) is just an accidental result, an unintended consequence, of someone´s combining sounds as s/he best sees fit without any other consideration, and it is irrelevant to the music itself.

That's true. Some composers go through a whole myriad of emotions before they hit the 30th measure. ;) But do we really know the intent of the work in question? It's not like we can call Brahms up and ask him what he meant with his Violin Concerto or whatever. We have to just listen to the music and trust our own instincts and hope we can come away with some kind of understanding even if it's totally off the mark. :)

P.S. A funny anecdote to what I wrote above, I remember watching an interview with Thomas Beecham and the discussion was about Delius. The interviewer asked if Beecham ever discussed Delius' own compositions with him and he said "Oh god, no. He couldn't tell me anything about them." ;D

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 20, 2016, 05:30:16 AMBut much of the discussion here seems to be getting hung up on program music, where there are of course innumerable examples of music where a program doesn't apply. And so far I'm just considering instrumental music; music with texts (song, choral work, opera) or scenarios (ballet) creates its own set of complications.

Programs are mostly bogus and unnecessary imo .. at best perhaps a glimpse into the mind's eye of the composer, at worst just superfluous material tacked on. I have NEVER paid attention to them, and when I have tried to read them, my eyes just glaze over - I ultimately just care about the music and how it sounds. And I think the so-called complications folks bring to vocal things, ballet etc. are their own and unnecessary. The music can be appreciated & enjoyed on it's own terms. And getting too hung up on tags that are given pieces? Gimme a break. If a mere tag detracts a person so much from the music, they should have their heads examined.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 20, 2016, 02:38:01 PM
But do we really know the intent of the work in question? It's not like we can call Brahms up and ask him what he meant with his Violin Concerto or whatever.

No, but when I talk about "intent" I'm not talking about what was "meant" in terms of some detailed explanation, or plot, or thesis. I simply mean that a composer had something in mind. Not necessarily something incredibly specific like "this is actually based on a scene from Goethe's Faust", but something a lot more specific than "I just felt the need to put some notes down".

Writing a piece on commission or for a particular friend or for a particular occasion is intent. When people write pieces for anniversaries or other kinds of celebrations, you usually end up with happy music.

Writing a series of chamber pieces because you want to explore the possibilities of the genre is intent. Writing a concerto where you aim to integrate the soloist more closely with the orchestra is intent. It comes in many forms and degrees.

The fact that the extent to which an intent can be discerned for some pieces is very limited does not make the whole notion of intent valueless. And the fact that you can't call Brahms up does not mean that Brahms was a total hermit who never wrote a letter, or never spoke to a friend or colleague.

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 02:52:36 PM
No, but when I talk about "intent" I'm not talking about what was "meant" in terms of some detailed explanation, or plot, or thesis. I simply mean that a composer had something in mind. Not necessarily something incredibly specific like "this is actually based on a scene from Goethe's Faust", but something a lot more specific than "I just felt the need to put some notes down".

Writing a piece on commission or for a particular friend or for a particular occasion is intent. When people write pieces for anniversaries or other kinds of celebrations, you usually end up with happy music.

Writing a series of chamber pieces because you want to explore the possibilities of the genre is intent. Writing a concerto where you aim to integrate the soloist more closely with the orchestra is intent. It comes in many forms and degrees.

The fact that the extent to which an intent can be discerned for some pieces is very limited does not make the whole notion of intent valueless. And the fact that you can't call Brahms up does not mean that Brahms was a total hermit who never wrote a letter, or never spoke to a friend or colleague.

I understand, but even if you knew the composer's intent, would it influence how you perceive the music? Personally, it wouldn't matter to me because I still believe there's a disconnect from the composer to the listener and that's why whatever you take away from a piece is still a matter of subjectivity.

I've read about many composer's lives (biographies, journals, etc.) and I've learned a lot about the composer and the environment in which they conceived their masterpieces, but when it came time to listening to their music, their reasoning for writing this passage here and that one there seemed rather irrelevant to me. All that mattered was how the music was affecting me.

It's like I said before, there isn't a right or wrong way to listen to music. All that matters really is that you're listening. That's all the composer could ask for I imagine.

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 02:52:36 PMbut something a lot more specific than "I just felt the need to put some notes down".

In the end, I think the notes on paper are it for the most part though, beyond that, things are murky and open to interpretation  .. so really analyzing the composer's score, rehearsing/hearing it, getting it correct and understanding what is important within it musically are paramount to understanding the composer's true voice & intent. It will shine through. What it all means & describes in words or images is abstract and will vary from person to person ..

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 20, 2016, 03:06:15 PM
I understand, but even if you knew the composer's intent, would it influence how you perceive the music? Personally, it wouldn't matter to me because I still believe there's a disconnect from the composer to the listener and that's why whatever you take away from a piece is still a matter of subjectivity.

Yes, absolutely it would. For Strauss' more programmatic, sectional works like Ein Heldenleben and Don Quixote, it certainly makes a difference to my ability to follow the music/my interest in it. Knowing the poems behind Gaspard de la nuit most definitely enhances my enjoyment of specific parts of the pieces, most especially the coda of 'Ondine' where knowing what it represents influences the way I both hear it and play it, and just makes the piece all the more impressive to me.

I've no problem with people placing their own interpretations on music when the composer hasn't left any guidance, but when the composer has left guidance, and in fact in some cases has been very deliberate in making that guidance public, deliberately ignoring it would actually strike me as rude and dismissive of the composer's efforts. It comes across as saying to a composer "look, mister, don't give me any ideas, your job is to produce the notes and I'll decide what to do with them after that". It's saying that you, as performer or listener. are more important to the music than the composer is.**

This has to do with whether music is capable of expression or not. If it is, then that expression is first and foremost the composer's.

In similar fashion, I am appalled by the habit many pop music fans have (particularly those younger than me) of editing and reshuffling an album within a day or two of its release, cutting out whatever they didn't immediately like. Of course, once upon a time people felt free to switch Bach preludes and fugues around or insert a movement from one of Beethoven's symphonies into another. But to me both the older and more modern forms of this show a complete disinterest in the intentions and designs of the composer that I just can't countenance. People act as if they own the music, and as if they know better than the music's creator.


**An idea that Ravel in particular would have rejected. His well-known response to a complaint that he treated performers like slaves was that performers are slaves.

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 03:38:46 PM
Yes, absolutely it would. For Strauss' more programmatic, sectional works like Ein Heldenleben and Don Quixote, it certainly makes a difference to my ability to follow the music/my interest in it. Knowing the poems behind Gaspard de la nuit most definitely enhances my enjoyment of specific parts of the pieces, most especially the coda of 'Ondine' where knowing what it represents influences the way I both hear it and play it, and just makes the piece all the more impressive to me.

I've no problem with people placing their own interpretations on music when the composer hasn't left any guidance, but when the composer has left guidance, and in fact in some cases has been very deliberate in making that guidance public, deliberately ignoring it would actually strike me as rude and dismissive of the composer's efforts. It comes across as saying to a composer "look, mister, don't give me any ideas, your job is to produce the notes and I'll decide what to do with them after that". It's saying that you, as performer or listener. are more important to the music than the composer is.**

This has to do with whether music is capable of expression or not. If it is, then that expression is first and foremost the composer's.

In similar fashion, I am appalled by the habit many pop music fans have (particularly those younger than me) of editing and reshuffling an album within a day or two of its release, cutting out whatever they didn't immediately like. Of course, once upon a time people felt free to switch Bach preludes and fugues around or insert a movement from one of Beethoven's symphonies into another. But to me both the older and more modern forms of this show a complete disinterest in the intentions and designs of the composer that I just can't countenance. People act as if they own the music, and as if they know better than the music's creator.


**An idea that Ravel in particular would have rejected. His well-known response to a complaint that he treated performers like slaves was that performers are slaves.

When a composer writes anything for the public to hear, sooner or later they're going to have to accept, even if they had laid out specifics as to what their intent actually was to the listener, that it is the listener who will interpret the piece however they like. I guess I'm 'rude and dismissive of the composer's efforts' because it doesn't really matter to me what the composer meant or what their intentions were with this or that work. Music is an art and, like any art form, the listener/viewer will always end up drawing their own conclusions.

Okay. Then would you accept a performer changing the composer's musical notes?

After all, the notes are an expression of the composer's intentions.

I believe that Beethoven, at least, was quite angry when a publisher helpfully tried to "correct" his "mistakes" in his music. Why shouldn't he have accepted that other people could now do what they liked with the music?

I can't see a reason founded in logic for thinking that anything a composer puts down in musical notation is sacrosanct, yet anything a composer puts down using the Latin or Cyrillic alphabet is unimportant.

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 03:57:09 PM
Okay. Then would you accept a performer changing the composer's musical notes?

After all, the notes are an expression of the composer's intentions.

The performer is simply the middle man in the listening pyramid. We have to trust that they're performing the music correctly or how it is written, but even if they take artistic liberties here and there, I would never know if they did unless I'm able to look directly at the score. And since I can't read music, I have no idea. All I can do is make comparisons from one performer to another and find out what I like about this performance vs. that performance.

The intrepreter is the person who learns, practices and delivers the music to the listener. They bring it to life. The better they are, the better things will be. The composer pulls the strings.

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 03:57:09 PMI can't see a reason founded in logic for thinking that anything a composer puts down in musical notation is sacrosanct, yet anything a composer puts down using the Latin or Cyrillic alphabet is unimportant.

But what I'm saying is that I simply can't help how I feel about piece of music and what I take away from it. I can't make any kind of relation to a composer's intent to what I'm actually hearing, because that relation isn't something that's easily transferrable to the music itself. The composer can write down verbatim "In this section of the music, I'm angry and I intended it sound like I'm murdering someone," well this passage he's referring to I can hear as something completely different than what they intended even though it was clearly written that they intended it to sound a certain way. I wouldn't say I'm ignoring the composer and their own thoughts about the work, but it's just that this music invokes all sorts of reactions and emotions that negating my own experience in order to understand a composer's intention has never really been in the cards for me.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 20, 2016, 04:25:09 PM
But what I'm saying is that I simply can't help how I feel about piece of music and what I take away from it. I can't make any kind of relation to a composer's intent to what I'm actually hearing, because that relation isn't something that's easily transferrable to the music itself. The composer can write down verbatim "In this section of the music, I'm angry and I intended it sound like I'm murdering someone," well this passage he's referring to I can hear as something completely different than what they intended even though it was clearly written that they intended it to sound a certain way. I wouldn't say I'm ignoring the composer and their own thoughts about the work, but it's just that this music invokes all sorts of reactions and emotions that negating my own experience in order to understand a composer's intention has never really been in the cards for me.

The composer Robert Simpson, who wrote a very good book on Bruckner that I'm too lazy to pull down from my shelf and copy from, described the middle section of the scherzo from IX as a nightmarish vision, creepy crawly things skittering about. I find it delicate and charming.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 20, 2016, 05:14:24 PM
The composer Robert Simpson, who wrote a very good book on Bruckner that I'm too lazy to pull down from my shelf and copy from, described the middle section of the scherzo from IX as a nightmarish vision, creepy crawly things skittering about. I find it delicate and charming.

Well, there you go. :)

Quote from: orfeo on January 20, 2016, 02:52:36 PM
[Re: "Intent."] ...but something a lot more specific than "I just felt the need to put some notes down".

I think there is a tremendous amount of over-elaboration about and on this subject.

"I just felt the need to put some notes down." can be an impulse entirely intimate and personal. If the composer has accepted a commission contract, that is still in the realm of "feel the need to put some notes down." Whether from the interior or via accepting a commission, the intent is "to put some notes down," period. I think that is all any listener needs "to know."

I think this apocryphal story pretty much explains why I get more than irritated when the listener gets even a little bit preoccupied with 'how the composer makes/made it expressive," that expressive either specific or more general, and that preoccupation becomes a near to scratching to draw blood to get inside the composer's brain [that is just rude, and not nice :)]:

Instrumental music student, playing a piece during a lesson, to their teacher.
"I wonder what he was thinking about when he wrote this passage."
Instrumental teacher:
"Never mind that, I want to know what you're thinking when you play it."

Change the roles to Composer / listener:

Listener, to composer.
"I wonder what you were thinking about when you wrote this passage."
Composer:
"Never mind that, I want to know what you're thinking when you hear it."

Something like that...

EDIT ADD:
and something like this:

A composer may have all kinds of intents that are strictly within the musical realm, without reference to a program, especially if it's a piece of instrumental music. (Again, and pace our old friend James, I think that music involving a text works in somewhat different ways.) He may be interested in expanding the musical language, or in taking up a challenge from a previous composer, or in handling his instruments in an entirely new way. When Beethoven wrote the Appassionata, he used the full compass of his available keyboard with greater violence and intensity than anyone before him; in the later sonatas, when the piano had a wider range yet, he took advantage of the increasing degree of sonorities. When he wrote the Eroica, whatever he may have thought about Napoleon or heroism in general, I think it fair to say that he had a dominant interest in enlarging musical time beyond anything heard before; any number of examples can be used to show how the first movement especially radically alters the scope of musical time and opens the door to the innovations of Bruckner and Mahler. When he wrote the C# minor quartet, the interest he took in weighting the music towards the finale (which first occurred perhaps in the 5th symphony), led him to place the primary sonata form movement at the end of the work instead of the beginning. I think these are all legitimate ways of describing a composer's goal or intent, without getting bogged down in "I just kinda sorta felt like putting some notes down" or "I'm trying to use music to express something pictorial."

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 20, 2016, 05:14:24 PM
The composer Robert Simpson, who wrote a very good book on Bruckner that I'm too lazy to pull down from my shelf and copy from, described the middle section of the scherzo from IX as a nightmarish vision, creepy crawly things skittering about. I find it delicate and charming.

Off topic but:

A lot of musicologists have told me a theme in that middle section is based on Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. I have never once heard it myself, and anyway the mood is so different that a mere similarity in notes wouldn't seem to be enough to make the comparison.

Similarly I have never been able to pick out the reference back to the Seventh Symphony he supposedly makes in the finale of the Eighth. Also the "Dresden Amen" and the references to the Eighth and Seventh symphonies in the slow movement of the ninth are clear enough, so Bruckner evidently wanted his references to be clear and noticeable.

The thing when composers make references is that the intent is (almost) always clearly noticeable in the music without resorting to analysis or supplementary text. Someone mentioned the Schumann Fantasie—even if you've never heard Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, you know something is being referenced by the way the music sets off the quote (this is particularly the case if one uses the autograph ending of the piece). I can think of many other cases though.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 20, 2016, 06:10:45 PM
A composer may have all kinds of intents that are strictly within the musical realm, without reference to a program, especially if it's a piece of instrumental music. (Again, and pace our old friend James, I think that music involving a text works in somewhat different ways.) He may be interested in expanding the musical language, or in taking up a challenge from a previous composer, or in handling his instruments in an entirely new way. When Beethoven wrote the Appassionata, he used the full compass of his available keyboard with greater violence and intensity than anyone before him; in the later sonatas, when the piano had a wider range yet, he took advantage of the increasing degree of sonorities. When he wrote the Eroica, whatever he may have thought about Napoleon or heroism in general, I think it fair to say that he had a dominant interest in enlarging musical time beyond anything heard before; any number of examples can be used to show how the first movement especially radically alters the scope of musical time and opens the door to the innovations of Bruckner and Mahler. When he wrote the C# minor quartet, the interest he took in weighting the music towards the finale (which first occurred perhaps in the 5th symphony), led him to place the primary sonata form movement at the end of the work instead of the beginning. I think these are all legitimate ways of describing a composer's goal or intent, without getting bogged down in "I just kinda sorta felt like putting some notes down" or "I'm trying to use music to express something pictorial."

This is pretty accurate from my point of view. One's initial ideas/"inspiration" may or may not be hermeneutic, but what keeps one interested in continuing to write is usually a musical problem of some kind. One of the arguers said something similar not long ago, but I cannot remember which one.

INTENT?

G. F. Handel ~ No, di voi non vo' fidarmi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzKnyA3qxUc
from the first half...
~ Messiah, Unto us a child is born
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFBIJgkj_-g
from the second half... ca. 04:00 into the above no, di voi non vo' fidarmi
~ Messiah, All we like sheep
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmeyG5LlFWU

Intent!

I think this is besides the point. Almost all music (except for recitatives and chorales) of Bach's Xmas oratorio is recycled from (mostly) secular cantatas, e.g. the first chorus used to be "Tönet ihr Pauken, erschallet, Trompeten" etc. and the original texts often fit much better. But this only shows that there was some flexibility with the affects. Of course the same kind of music could be used to glorify a prince and to glorify God.
Usually there are still easily recognizable differences between a chorus celebrating something and a funeral march. Handel could use the music of a funeral ode for the first part of Israel in Egypt because this described the plight of the Israelites. But he could not have used the music from "Zadok the Priest" for that part...

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 20, 2016, 09:31:00 PM
INTENT?

G. F. Handel ~ No, di voi non vo' fidarmi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzKnyA3qxUc
from the first half...
~ Messiah, Unto us a child is born
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFBIJgkj_-g
from the second half... ca. 04:00 into the above no, di voi non vo' fidarmi
~ Messiah, All we like sheep
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmeyG5LlFWU

Intent!

Intent on getting that thing done in 24 days so he can earn a buck! Vivaldi was even more notorious for the way he recycled opera arias.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 20, 2016, 03:55:53 PM
it doesn't really matter to me what the composer meant or what their intentions were with this or that work.

But for God´s sake, John, it is exactly because of the composer´s intentions that the work exists in the first place. In some cases they are completely unknowable, in some cases they are obvious, in some other cases they are even specifically left as an exercise to the listener. To disregard them altogether as unimportant and irrelevant strikes me as being indeed dismissive to the composer: "Look, buddy, I don´t know what you tried to do and frankly I don´t give a shit about it. All I care is that I have something to listen to. Just keep them coming and be quiet!"

The logical extreme of this position is that CDs should be released not only without any liner notes (granted, in many cases they are horrible, but that´s another story), but without any reference whatsoever to the composer and performer(s), even without any title and artcover.

Judging by some positions expressed here, music seems to be the most autistic, solipsistic and egotistical art under the sun.

The composer´s intentions are at best unknowable and at worst irrelevant; the performer´s intentions, ditto, and anyway he shouldn´t have any except doing his best to play the notes; and the listener is free to make whatever he wants of all that . Communication breakdown, nay, communication impossible at all levels.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 21, 2016, 12:14:12 AM
Intent on getting that thing done in 24 days so he can earn a buck! Vivaldi was even more notorious for the way he recycled opera arias.

I'm sure some of those recycled pieces were plucked from his memory... if so, well -- wow.
Deadline or no, and without the more than dubious embroideries of his weeping with joy because he had seen God while writing this segment or that, he did work in a white heat, shaving weeks off the [already amazingly short] time he usually took to compose a cantata.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 12:45:26 AMBut for God´s sake, John, it is exactly because of the composer´s intentions that the work exists in the first place.

In most cases, they intend to get paid so they can survive. Hence, reason for existence.

Bzzzzt! Thank you for playing.

Composers being paid enough for their work to sustain them, is in fact the exception.

Unsurprisingly, your narrow ideologies impair your ability to read facts.

Quote from: James on January 21, 2016, 02:12:45 AM
In most cases, they intend to get paid so they can survive. Hence, reason for existence.

So in most cases music is nothing else than a mean to get some cash in order to survive. "Here´s your symphony, give me my bucks, it was a pleasure doing business with you, hope we can do some more in the future!"

Of course, it doesn't explain why a person chooses a path/life/career in music to begin with - but it is an obvious reality, and a reason for work getting done. Deadlines & money.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 20, 2016, 06:10:45 PM(Again, and pace our old friend James, I think that music involving a text works in somewhat different ways.)

I never denied that layer, it can no doubt add to a deepening perspective, noting the story or the words .. but all I'm saying is that it isn't totally necessary if all one wants to hear is great singing and music. And of course, in a lot of cases as you said earlier that strikes true with a lot people, you're dealing with foreign languages, that many people just don't understand to begin with.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 01:19:59 AMThe composer´s intentions are at best unknowable and at worst irrelevant; the performer´s intentions, ditto, and anyway he shouldn´t have any except doing his best to play the notes; and the listener is free to make whatever he wants of all that . Communication breakdown, nay, communication impossible at all levels.

You can't expect a complete historical autopsy on the part of the listener, nor is that necessary. What the composer leaves behind is all that matters in the end. Everything is there. It is the interpreter's job to do the best with it .. which of course, includes more than just playing the right notes, but understanding it, making it musical and playing it with great feel and sensitivity.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 02:22:28 AM
So in most cases music is nothing else than a mean to get some cash in order to survive. "Here´s your symphony, give me my bucks, it was a pleasure doing business with you, hope we can do some more in the future!"

Prior to the Romantic period, that is Beethoven's time, music was indeed often written to order and on deadline, and served purposes that were religious, social, or educational rather than being means of self-expression. Bach was expected to churn out cantatas on a weekly basis and Haydn had to prepare his trios and quartets that served as little more than background music for the soirées of his prince. "The music" at Esterhazy was on a level with the food and the carriages, and Haydn took his board at the servants' table. The fact that we in a post-Romantic age still take delight in this music for its own sake should not obscure the fact that it was not primarily intended (that word again!) as art for art's sake.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 02:22:28 AM
So in most cases music is nothing else than a mean to get some cash in order to survive. "Here´s your symphony, give me my bucks, it was a pleasure doing business with you, hope we can do some more in the future!"

Just about every piece of classical music you listen to was commissioned:
Written as part of a longer contractual obligation as composer in residence [Bach Cantatas, one a week, for quite a while]
Written by the composer with anticipation of remuneration via an exclusive subscription concert [Mozart piano concerti.]
Even the exception of the allegedly 'mysterious reason' Mozart composed his last three symphonies without their having first been commissioned is not a mystery. He was ill. He composed them to have them ready in advance if someone commissioned a symphony, or again, anticipating that they might be performed in paid subscription concerts.

If not commissioned, pieces were composed to directly sell to a publisher who then sells multiple copies to an amateur market [Beethoven piano sonatas and string quartets, ka-ching, ka-ching.]

Fine and great works which move us are well outside of the mundane machinations of 'the business' and how the business brought the artist to make 'the product.'

Nothing about the fact it is a business, and how the composer makes a living, implies an attitude on the part of the composer off "slap-dash I don't give a flying fig about what I compose or deliver" -- because even composers are not foolish enough to think if they do not deliver other than a fine product that they will be hired again. But yeah, "Nice doing business with you, I'd be pleased if you called me again." -- damned straight  :)

[Hired: you make and deliver / I pay.] The composer was hired, of course, based on their existing reputation. It is common sense to always deliver your best to ensure you keep getting work in the future, that is a 'doh,' and a 'no-brainer' -- i.e. not exactly rocket science.

Sometimes, intent starts with a commission, a promised fee, and a deadline to deliver.

But Handel was a fairly rich and independent man in his mid-fifties with health issues when he composed Messiah. He could easily have retired or taken his time. For whatever reason he choose to keep on composing throughout the 1740s, often like on speed and often re-using music (not only his own). (To my knowledge, Messiah is actually a case with very little re-cycled music, the 3 duets or so that were arranged as choruses are about all of it.)

Quote from: Jo498 on January 21, 2016, 03:05:44 AM
(To my knowledge, Messiah is actually a case with very little re-cycled music, the 3 duets or so that were arranged as choruses are about all of it.)

If my recollection serves (it may not), I read someone putting it thus:  that to whatever degree Messiah "cannibalized" earlier work, once Handel made use of a given patch of music in Messiah, it stayed put there.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 21, 2016, 03:02:15 AM
Just about every piece of classical music you listen to was commissioned:
Written as part of a longer contractual obligation as composer in residence [Bach Cantatas, one a week, for quite a while]
Written by the composer with anticipation of remuneration via an exclusive subscription concert [Mozart piano concerti.]
Even the exception of the allegedly 'mysterious reason' Mozart composed his last three symphonies without their having first been commissioned is not a mystery. He was ill. He composed them to have them ready in advance if someone commissioned a symphony, or again, anticipating that they might be performed in paid subscription concerts.

If not commissioned, pieces were composed to directly sell to a publisher who then sells multiple copies to an amateur market [Beethoven piano sonatas and string quartets, ka-ching, ka-ching.]

Fine and great works which move us are well outside of the mundane machinations of 'the business' and how the business brought the artist to make 'the product.'

Nothing about the fact it is a business, and how the composer makes a living, implies an attitude on the part of the composer off "slap-dash I don't give a flying fig about what I compose or deliver" -- because even composers are not foolish enough to think if they do not deliver other than a fine product that they will be hired again. But yeah, "Nice doing business with you, I'd be pleased if you called me again." -- damned straight  :)

[Hired: you make and deliver / I pay.] The composer was hired, of course, based on their existing reputation. It is common sense to always deliver your best to ensure you keep getting work in the future, that is a 'doh,' and a 'no-brainer' -- i.e. not exactly rocket science.

Sometimes, intent starts with a commission, a promised fee, and a deadline to deliver.

Exactly. Thank you.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 20, 2016, 09:31:00 PM
INTENT?

G. F. Handel ~ No, di voi non vo' fidarmi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzKnyA3qxUc
from the first half...
~ Messiah, Unto us a child is born
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFBIJgkj_-g
from the second half... ca. 04:00 into the above no, di voi non vo' fidarmi
~ Messiah, All we like sheep
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmeyG5LlFWU

Intent!

A great instance of Does this music "mean" exclusively what this extra-musical context suggests?

The attachment of meaning.

I love (poco) Sfz's comparison of his take on a given piece, and Simpson taking it for the soundtrack to a Stephen King screenplay.

If I use my punctuation ???? &$%@ right, I might be mistaken !!!! for snypsss . . . .

Quote from: karlhenning on January 21, 2016, 03:13:31 AM
A great instance of Does this music "mean" exclusively what this extra-musical context suggests?

The attachment of meaning.

I love (poco) Sfz's comparison of his take on a given piece, and Simpson taking it for the soundtrack to a Stephen King screenplay.

If I use my punctuation ???? &$%@ right, I might be mistaken !!!! for snypsss . . . .

Your ever so aptly put, "The attachment of meaning," reminds me of:

"Do you have any spare change?"
"Yeah, this dollar just happened to have a dime taped on it."

"Got an extra cigarette?"
"Yeah, one was strapped to the outside of this pack."

Attached, indeed  ;)

Quote from: karlhenning on January 21, 2016, 03:13:31 AM
If I use my punctuation ???? &$%@ right, I might be mistaken !!!! for snypsss . . . .

But that's only your intention.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 12:45:26 AM
But for God´s sake, John, it is exactly because of the composer´s intentions that the work exists in the first place. In some cases they are completely unknowable, in some cases they are obvious, in some other cases they are even specifically left as an exercise to the listener. To disregard them altogether as unimportant and irrelevant strikes me as being indeed dismissive to the composer: "Look, buddy, I don´t know what you tried to do and frankly I don´t give a shit about it. All I care is that I have something to listen to. Just keep them coming and be quiet!"

The logical extreme of this position is that CDs should be released not only without any liner notes (granted, in many cases they are horrible, but that´s another story), but without any reference whatsoever to the composer and performer(s), even without any title and artcover.

Andrei, a composer cannot dictate what will be my reaction to a work nor can they expect me to pick up on some emotion here or there that they explicitly detailed. I pull from a work whatever I happen to pull from it within that moment of listening. What will happen on the next listen I can't say, but it shouldn't surprise you or anyone else that a position, such as mine, should be upheld. As I mentioned before, I enjoy reading about what a composer has written about their own work or even what they indeed intended, but composers are the last people that should be telling any listener how they should be listening to a work.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 21, 2016, 02:47:12 AM
Prior to the Romantic period, that is Beethoven's time, music was indeed often written to order and on deadline, and served purposes that were religious, social, or educational rather than being means of self-expression. Bach was expected to churn out cantatas on a weekly basis and Haydn had to prepare his trios and quartets that served as little more than background music for the soirées of his prince. "The music" at Esterhazy was on a level with the food and the carriages, and Haydn took his board at the servants' table.

I am very well aware of that. That is the reason why I say that the advent of Romanticism liberated music and musicians from their debasing servitude and changed music´s status from a business-oriented craft to a free art ;D :P. 

Quote
The fact that we in a post-Romantic age still take delight in this music for its own sake should not obscure the fact that it was not primarily intended (that word again!) as art for art's sake.

Of course it shouldn´t. The HIP-est way to experience Haydn is hearing the music during dinner, chatting and flirting , a glass of champagne in hand.  ;D :P

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 03:41:05 AM
I am very well aware of that. That is the reason why I say that the advent of Romanticism liberated music and musicians from their debasing servitude and changed music´s status from a business-oriented craft to a free art ;D :P. 

The dawn of Spotify, you mean?  8)

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 21, 2016, 03:36:17 AM, but composers are the last people that should be telling any listener how they should be listening to a work.

Yea .. but I'm sure, since in a lot of cases they have spend the time doing it and putting it all out there, that they would greatly appreciate a listener be focused, attentive and sensitive to what they are hearing/listening-to at the very least. Nothing more really.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 21, 2016, 03:42:54 AM
The dawn of Spotify, you mean?  8)

Hah!..

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 21, 2016, 03:02:15 AM
Just about every piece of classical music you listen to was commissioned:
Written as part of a longer contractual obligation as composer in residence [Bach Cantatas, one a week, for quite a while]
Written by the composer with anticipation of remuneration via an exclusive subscription concert [Mozart piano concerti.]
Even the exception of the allegedly 'mysterious reason' Mozart composed his last three symphonies without their having first been commissioned is not a mystery. He was ill. He composed them to have them ready in advance if someone commissioned a symphony, or again, anticipating that they might be performed in paid subscription concerts.

If not commissioned, pieces were composed to directly sell to a publisher who then sells multiple copies to an amateur market [Beethoven piano sonatas and string quartets, ka-ching, ka-ching.

That is all true and all right. What I object to is James´ claim that in most cases making money out of it is/was the only reason for composing a work.

Quote
Sometimes, intent starts with a commission, a promised fee, and a deadline to deliver.

No argument from me whatsoever on this point.

Quote from: James on January 21, 2016, 03:45:57 AM
Yea .. but I'm sure, since in a lot of cases they have spend the time doing it and putting it all out there, that they would greatly appreciate a listener be focused, attentive and sensitive to what they are hearing/listening-to at the very least. Nothing more really.

If I envision a landscape whenever the composer specifically said they envisioned a cathedral in this or that passage, then this is what I'm talking about. You cannot help what kind of reaction, imagery, emotion, etc. you get from a work and a composer's own thoughts aren't my own, so there will always be this kind of disconnect from the composer to the listener.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 21, 2016, 03:42:54 AM
The dawn of Spotify, you mean?  8)

In my book, Spotify doesn´t quite qualify as Romantic.  :D

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 21, 2016, 03:52:38 AM
If I envision a landscape whenever the composer specifically said they envisioned a cathedral in this or that passage, then this is what I'm talking about. You cannot help what kind of reaction, imagery, emotion, etc. you get from a work and a composer's own thoughts aren't my own, so there will always be this kind of disconnect from the composer to the listener.

Fair enough.

Look, I don´t claim that there is, or should be, an exact, mathematically precise and unmistakable correspondence between the composer´s intentions (if any) and the reactions of the listeners. That would be the top of madness. All I say is that in some cases the composer made his intentions quite, or crystal, clear. Of course one is free to disregard them, but let´s at least have the modesty to admit that maybe (just maybe) in such cases the composer is the best qualified person in the world to talk about his work. That is all.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 20, 2016, 02:34:26 PM
Absolutely agreed. I have nothing to add except giving you a high five! ;D

Thank you, John. Didn't want to let your high five pass unnoticed.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 04:00:11 AM
Fair enough.

Look, I don´t claim that there is, or should be, an exact, mathematically precise and unmistakable correspondence between the composer´s intentions (if any) and the reactions of the listeners. That would be the top of madness. All I say is that in some cases the composer made his intentions quite, or crystal, clear. Of course one is free to disregard them, but let´s at least have the modesty to admit that maybe (just maybe) in such cases the composer is the best qualified person in the world to talk about his work. That is all.

Hear, hear.
— a composer

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 03:41:05 AM
I am very well aware of that. That is the reason why I say that the advent of Romanticism liberated music and musicians from their debasing servitude and changed music´s status from a business-oriented craft to a free art ;D :P.

Not altogether. Stravinsky lived from commissions, and was as much a money-grubber as any composer you can imagine. Carter wrote on commission too, as did Britten, Barber, no doubt others.

As so often in life, much depends on what one means by freedom.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 04:00:11 AM
Fair enough.

Look, I don´t claim that there is, or should be, an exact, mathematically precise and unmistakable correspondence between the composer´s intentions (if any) and the reactions of the listeners. That would be the top of madness. All I say is that in some cases the composer made his intentions quite, or crystal, clear. Of course one is free to disregard them, but let´s at least have the modesty to admit that maybe (just maybe) in such cases the composer is the best qualified person in the world to talk about his work. That is all.

Yes and no. During the act of composing, a composer may or may not be consciously aware of all kinds of connections and associations that may or may not be discovered by others. And (literature providing equally interesting cases) may I remind you of my example from Brecht several pages ago. To spare you the effort, let me dig it up: "The classic case is Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage, with its ironically named heroine. Audiences from the start took her as a sympathetic, courageous figure; Brecht insisted that he intended her to be viewed instead as a cowardly opportunist - and there is ample evidence for that in the play. Yet even though he revised the play to bring out more what he 'intended,' those dang audiences continued to view her sympathetically."

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 21, 2016, 04:14:13 AM
Not altogether. Stravinsky lived from commissions, and was as much a money-grubber as any composer you can imagine. Carter wrote on commission too, as did Britten, Barber, no doubt others.

Well, old habits die hard. One cannot get rid of centuries of servitude in just 100 years.  ;D :P

(Too bad emoticons cannot be bolded, italicized and underlined...)

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 21, 2016, 04:19:57 AM
Yes and no. During the act of composing, a composer may or may not be consciously aware of all kinds of connections and associations that may or may not be discovered by others. And (literature providing equally interesting cases) may I remind you of my example from Brecht several pages ago. To spare you the effort, let me dig it up: "The classic case is Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage, with its ironically named heroine. Audiences from the start took her as a sympathetic, courageous figure; Brecht insisted that he intended her to be viewed instead as a cowardly opportunist - and there is ample evidence for that in the play. Yet even though he revised the play to bring out more what he 'intended,' those dang audiences continued to view her sympathetically."

Fair enough. But if there is ample evidence for that in the play then the audiences are clearly mistaken, don´t you think? And if there is ample evidence for that in the play then it´s not even a case of the author failing miserably to convey his intentions --- they are in the plain sight of everybody. (I haven´t seen or read the play so I cannot offer my own opinion).

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 04:30:41 AM
Fair enough. But if there is ample evidence for that in the play then the audiences are clearly mistaken, don´t you think? And if there is ample evidence for that in the play then it´s not even a case of the author failing miserably to convey his intentions --- they are in the plain sight of everybody. (I haven´t seen or read the play so I cannot offer my own opinion).

Could possibly have been poor execution on the part of the playwright.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 04:30:41 AM
Fair enough. But if there is ample evidence for that in the play then the audiences are clearly mistaken, don´t you think? And if there is ample evidence for that in the play then it´s not even a case of the author failing miserably to convey his intentions --- they are in the plain sight of everybody. (I haven´t seen or read the play so I cannot offer my own opinion).

But there are also aspects of the play that Brecht apparently was unwilling to see, or rejected himself. A composer's discussion or performance of his own work has special interest, to be sure, but is by no means a definitive guide. Compare Boulez's recordings of Le Marteau and Pli selon pli, and you'll find a world of difference between his more violent early performances and the later, more gentle and coloristic ones.

A personal example, not "intended" to blow my own horn but simply because I can speak to it more readily: a short play I had written was given a public reading last year, and I had no opportunity to direct the reading before it took place. In addition you should know that it is considered unprofessional for a playwright to insert emotional cues into a script; the lines should be written to convey the emotion needed on their own, and it's up to the director and actors to bring out the emotions as they understand them during performance. Well, in one passage the actor interpreted his character as speaking nervously, when I had intended him to speak playfully. But his reading was perfectly valid. I've also come to understand one of my character's motivations somewhat differently than when I wrote the play. Same lines, same text, same play: but now I'm just another interpreter, and my original intentions are long since past.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 21, 2016, 04:42:33 AM
Could possibly have been poor execution on the part of the playwright.

And yet it's generally considered one of his masterpieces, with a lead role that numerous actresses have coveted. I say rather that given Brecht's ideology, he was unwilling to accept the complexity and ambiguity of the character he created.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 21, 2016, 04:47:09 AM
But there are also aspects of the play that Brecht apparently was unwilling to see, or rejected himself.

As I said, having not seen or read the play, I cannot comment.

Quote
Compare Boulez's recordings of Le Marteau and Pli selon pli, and you'll find a world of difference between his more violent early performances and the later, more gentle and coloristic ones.

Unfortunately I cannot do that. It is only at the point of a gun that I could be compelled to listen to Boulez.

Quote
A personal example, not "intended" to blow my own horn but simply because I can speak to it more readily: a short play I had written was given a public reading last year, and I had no opportunity to direct the reading before it took place. In addition you should know that it is considered unprofessional for a playwright to insert emotional cues into a script; the lines should be written to convey the emotion needed on their own, and it's up to the director and actors to bring out the emotions as they understand them during performance.

Wait a minute! You mean it is unprofessional to write a play containing something like the emotional inmstructions below?

KARL (angrily). I am not aware of anything for which we still require courage, and have not already shown it.

KARL  (in a fit of absence). How now? I should not wonder if your proficiency went further still.

SPIEGEL. (with bitterness). What is that incubus preaching about? Was not the head already there before a single limb began to move? Follow me, comrades!

I hope I get you wrong on this.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 05:00:30 AM
Unfortunately I cannot do that. It is only at the point of a gun that I could be compelled to listen to Boulez.

[playfully or nervously] That can be arranged.

To your final question: no, you have understood correctly. Actors hate being told things like that, and the lines should be written as to make their intended emotion unmistakable. That said, you lose me when you refer to a "fit of absence." (Which I must take for a few hours, as I have a meeting.)

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 21, 2016, 04:47:09 AM
A composer's discussion or performance of his own work has special interest, to be sure, but is by no means a definitive guide.

Most pertinent.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 05:00:30 AM
It is only at the point of a gun that I could be compelled to listen to Boulez.

Compulsion is all wrong, no matter who the artist is.

But at some point, you may wish to give Boulez a try.

Never say never.

Wait . . . does this mean (in an admittedly specialized sense) that (poco) Sfz is having a fit?

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 21, 2016, 05:09:17 AM
[playfully or nervously] That can be arranged.

:D

Quote
To your final question: no, you have understood correctly. Actors hate being told things like that, and the lines should be written as to make their intended emotion unmistakable.

Then Friedrich Schiller (from whose The Robbers I took those lines) would be considered an unprofessional playwright in contemporary America...

Not to mention that there are infinite possibilities for acting a particular line.

Character X (angrily yet composed, in soft voice): Get out of my room, now!

or

Character X (angrily, unrestrained, loud): Get out of my room, now!

or

Character X (angrily and savagely, shouting out as if on the brink of madness): Get out of my room. now!

aso aso aso.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 21, 2016, 05:12:31 AM
Compulsion is all wrong, no matter who the artist is.

But at some point, you may wish to give Boulez a try.

Never say never.

Listening to pli selon pli right now. Will let you know how many minutes before turning it off.  :D

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 05:25:40 AM
Listening to pli selon pli right now. Will let you know how many minutes before turning it off.  :D

Well, there you have it. Exactly 7´21´´.  :D

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 03:48:57 AMThat is all true and all right. What I object to is James´ claim that in most cases making money out of it is/was the only reason for composing a work.

Monsieur Croche & Larry knew exactly what I ment and elaborated further, so now you understand. Good.

Liner notes simply represent one person's interpretation of the circumstances around the music or the music itself, or are simply a bare description of what technically happens.  The listener will take from such things what they find useful for themselves, and not concentrate on what doesn't.  Different performance of music offer different interpretations. Again, the listener will pick and choose what they feel gives them more meaning in the music.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 05:32:37 AM
Well, there you have it. Exactly 7´21´´.  :D

Hey, you may make it to the 10-minute mark next time!  :)

Quote from: karlhenning on January 21, 2016, 05:53:55 AM
Hey, you may make it to the 10-minute mark next time!  :)

I´m not that sure there will be a next time.  :D

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 05:54:59 AM
I´m not that sure there will be a next time.  :D

(Brings out gun.)

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 21, 2016, 06:48:00 AM
(Brings out gun.)

Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
That, if requiring fail, he will compel . . . .

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 05:20:50 AM
Then Friedrich Schiller (from whose The Robbers I took those lines) would be considered an unprofessional playwright in contemporary America...

(Back for a brief visit.) Your Schiller example is not really relevant. First, I don't know if you are reading an Urtext or an edition. And conventions change over time. GB Shaw wrote lengthy character and setting descriptions, most of which directors ignore, but which are plainly intended mainly for reading. Shakespeare never wrote an emotional cue in any of his plays. Bach did not always indicate tempos, dynamics, or character of his pieces, probably because he could always direct his own works, but any good player will grasp the most likely characterization of a piece from the text itself. In contemporary American theater at least, the situation is as I describe.

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 05:20:50 AM
Not to mention that there are infinite possibilities for acting a particular line.

Of course, but some are more reasonable than others. (And of course, what is reasonable is a matter for reasonable people to determine, everyone of course assuming that they themselves are reasonable too.) You might say there is an infinite variety of possibilities within the gamut from A-B, but once you go past B, you've overstepped the line. Same with musical interpretation. You could play the first movement of Beethoven's 5th in a variety of tempos and dynamics, but you would not play it Adagio and dolce (except that little oboe cadenza midway through). You could play the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion as a light little gigue; there's nothing to stop you except musical sensitivity and just plain common sense.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 21, 2016, 06:51:46 AM
Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
That, if requiring fail, he will compel . . . .

And let's not forget the Second Amendment, which gives us the right to shoot animals, birds, and each other as we please.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 21, 2016, 06:59:31 AM
(Back for a brief visit.) Your Schiller example is not really relevant.

Okay, forget about Schiller.

Here is an excerpt from Eugene O´Neill´s Anna Christie

MARTHY--[Grumblingly.] What yuh tryin' to do, Dutchy--keep me standin' out there all day? [She comes forward and sits at the table in the right corner, front.]
CHRIS--[Mollifyingly.] Ay'm sorry, Marthy. Ay talk to Yohnny. Ay forgat. What you goin' take for drink?
MARTHY--[Appeased.] Gimme a scoop of lager an' ale.

And here is one from Henrik Ibsen´s Nora

Mrs Linde [in a dejected and timid voice] How do you do, Nora?
Nora [doubtfully] How do you do—

What could possibly be unprofessional in that, or repulsive to actors, is beyond me.

Quote
In contemporary American theater at least, the situation is as I describe.

I don´t question the accuracy of your description. I just say it is a most sad situation that, in which a playwright must refrain from doing what countless playwrights have been doing as part of their trade (namely, writing emotional cues for their characters) from fear of being labeled unprofessional or patronizing to actors. A situation which strikes me as plainly absurd.

Quote
Of course, but some are more reasonable than others. (And of course, what is reasonable is a matter for reasonable people to determine, everyone of course assuming that they themselves are reasonable too.)

I should have thought that it was exactly the professional business of the playwright, besides being his unquestionable auctorial prerogative, to determine what emotional cues are best suited to the lines he writes.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 21, 2016, 07:00:25 AM
And let's not forget the Second Amendment, which gives us the right to shoot animals, birds, and each other as we please.

Not quite.   ;)


Quote from: Florestan on Today at 06:20:50 AM

QuoteNot to mention that there are infinite possibilities for acting a particular line.

You remind me that many, many of those can be wrong:e.g. I once sat through a Grade Z actor's harangue that Romeo and Juliet had been misinterpreted for centuries, that in fact it was - and he had deduced this on his own - a comedy.

He then began to act a scene from the play with an accomplice he had possibly dragooned from Clancy's down the street: screeching the lines and dancing around mockingly, he tried to convince his captive audience that the "comedy of Romeo and Juliet" was hilarious.

He also claimed to own a First Folio!  ??? ??? ???

Quote from: orfeo on January 18, 2016, 08:35:23 PM
I'm off to the gym, where I predict they will select music with the "intent" of getting people "pumped up"

Ah, so they play Mahler?

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 21, 2016, 04:10:04 AM
Thank you, John. Didn't want to let your high five pass unnoticed.

You da man! 8)

Quote from: Florestan on January 21, 2016, 04:00:11 AM
Fair enough.

Look, I don´t claim that there is, or should be, an exact, mathematically precise and unmistakable correspondence between the composer´s intentions (if any) and the reactions of the listeners. That would be the top of madness. All I say is that in some cases the composer made his intentions quite, or crystal, clear. Of course one is free to disregard them, but let´s at least have the modesty to admit that maybe (just maybe) in such cases the composer is the best qualified person in the world to talk about his work. That is all.

That most of the composers, for the vast majority of their works in the canon of the repertoire, left us nothing about their intentions other than a completed work with its title that of a form (funny, that...) should not be lost on any here discussing, generally, "composer intent."

Ironic, innit?

Quote from: Jo498 on January 19, 2016, 08:46:12 AM
The problem is that since I have heard "Unser Katz hat Kätzerln ghobt" etc. I can hardly avoid the association when I listen to the piece. I have to pull myself together not to sing along... ;)

Your saying that causes me to revise my opinion about Op. 110. I lived with it for years, trying to penetrate its mysteries but it never came out right for my own satisfaction. If as you say, the German public would have recognized the two folk tunes in the Scherzo, then that puts a different slant on it.

I just listened now to several versions of "Es ist vollbracht" from Bach's St. John Passion which is supposed be referenced in the Adagio by the viola da gamba's solo. Done by different players, the melody is hardly recognizable - but OK, if they say so.

I always felt without knowing the particulars, that the transition to G major from the repeat of the Adagio in G minor was supposed to be transcendental like passing to a different plane, as it were, also in its inversion of the fugue subject.

In short, there is probably some life sequence going on, possibly auto-bibliographical, the Scherzo being the chapter of a dissolute youth, perhaps, together with the tragedy of the Adagio. I still scratch my head about the fugue as a form transplanted to the Romantic sensibility, in other words, having a gradual build up and development rather than Baroque spinning out, to my mind, is a kind of misfit to begin with.

Having learned this piece many years ago without my teacher's being aware of its extra musical allusions made it even more cryptic. I would say that it is the absolute obligation of the performer to find out everything about a piece first if playing and performing it. The onus on the listener is much less. It is possible to enjoy a piece and not know what prompted it. But program notes, ad/or explanations do help a lot.

Not sure about the exact details (we read the Schiller in 9th or 10th grade - a long time ago) but Schiller was a REALLY ANGRY YOUNG MAN when he wrote this and the piece is rather unconventional ("Sturm und Drang") compared to more "established" pieces of ca. 1780, so there could be several reasons for excessive or unconventional directions.

More generally, I think the most plausible position (and sforzando seems to arguing for something like that) is that a work of art has to some extent "a life of its own". It is not fixed by the intentions of the author but neither does "anything goes" hold. Embarassingly, I do not know the Brecht piece mentioned well enough but I also remember "Mother Courage" as a character who makes the best from a very dire situation.

Another "alternative interpretation" I find quite fascinating is one suggested by Harnoncourt (I think, not sure whether it is originally his idea)  in his booklet for Mozart's Abduction: He claims that Konstanze DID fall in love with the Bassa and her "tortures" are not primarily the separation from Belmonte and how to evade the advances by the Bassa but how to stay faithful to her betrothed (who is fairly wimpy in the opera...) despite having fallen for the Bassa. Maybe this imports to much COSI into the Abduction but it is far from ridiculous, I think, and worthy of exploration.
Of course, we cannot be completely sure what Mozart's (and Gottlieb Stephanie's) intentions were. But I do not think it matters so much.

Quote from: Jo498 on January 22, 2016, 01:02:03 AM
Not sure about the exact details (we read the Schiller in 9th or 10th grade - a long time ago) but Schiller was a REALLY ANGRY YOUNG MAN when he wrote this and the piece is rather unconventional ("Sturm und Drang") compared to more "established" pieces of ca. 1780, so there could be several reasons for excessive or unconventional directions.

I find the whole idea that just because actors don´t like to be told what to do (in which case they should have chosen other careers, anyway...) playwrights are not allowed to insert emotional cues in their plays and those who do just that are unprofessional, completely absurd.

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on January 22, 2016, 01:00:18 AM[T]here is probably some life sequence going on, possibly auto-bibliographical, the Scherzo being the chapter of a dissolute youth, perhaps, together with the tragedy of the Adagio. I still scratch my head about the fugue as a form transplanted to the Romantic sensibility, in other words, having a gradual build up and development rather than Baroque spinning out, to my mind, is a kind of misfit to begin with.

Well, what this sounds like to me is a made-up story substituting for the music itself. There's nothing in the music, qua music, that needs this substitution. That is, the piece makes "sense" without any made-up stories. I strongly doubt that thinking about this made-up story would aid in making for a better performance of the piece. That is, whatever else it does, it does not give any information about the piece.

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on January 22, 2016, 01:00:18 AMHaving learned this piece many years ago without my teacher's being aware of its extra musical allusions made it even more cryptic. I would say that it is the absolute obligation of the performer to find out everything about a piece first if playing and performing it. The onus on the listener is much less. It is possible to enjoy a piece and not know what prompted it. But program notes, ad/or explanations do help a lot.

But if you're referring now to the two folk tunes, those are not extramusical at all. They are also pieces of music. And I don't follow how the piece can be less cryptic if you know these two tunes as they exist outside the piece. But then, I don't follow how this piece is cryptic.

As for the obligation, I also don't quite follow the "everything" bit. It seems that performing a piece requires that you understand music and that you know how this piece works from start to finish. Not sure what else would help. Perhaps that Beethoven liked to make sudden and unexpected shifts. Or that he enjoyed building up and building up and building up to "something," we're not sure what, at first, and then giving us something else. (I'm looking at you, opening to the first movement of symphony no. 7.) But if you've listened to any amount of Beethoven, you already know that. And performing a piece by a composer without knowing any other pieces by that person might be a trifle premature.

Anyway, in a context that is all about raising expectations (CPT), it's surely not too much of a stretch to expect that the more unconventional minds will be all about fulfilling expectations in all sorts of strange and unexpected ways--or perhaps not at all, if that's possible. (After one has heard a piece a couple of times, the unexpected will be what you expect, of course, will come to seem to be entirely right and perfect. And it will seem even more perfect if it manages to retain its strangeness, too.)

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on January 22, 2016, 01:00:18 AM
Your saying that causes me to revise my opinion about Op. 110. I lived with it for years, trying to penetrate its mysteries but it never came out right for my own satisfaction. If as you say, the German public would have recognized the two folk tunes in the Scherzo, then that puts a different slant on it.

I just listened now to several versions of "Es ist vollbracht" from Bach's St. John Passion which is supposed be referenced in the Adagio by the viola da gamba's solo. Done by different players, the melody is hardly recognizable - but OK, if they say so.

I always felt without knowing the particulars, that the transition to G major from the repeat of the Adagio in G minor was supposed to be transcendental like passing to a different plane, as it were, also in its inversion of the fugue subject.

In short, there is probably some life sequence going on, possibly auto-bibliographical, the Scherzo being the chapter of a dissolute youth, perhaps, together with the tragedy of the Adagio. I still scratch my head about the fugue as a form transplanted to the Romantic sensibility, in other words, having a gradual build up and development rather than Baroque spinning out, to my mind, is a kind of misfit to begin with.

Having learned this piece many years ago without my teacher's being aware of its extra musical allusions made it even more cryptic. I would say that it is the absolute obligation of the performer to find out everything about a piece first if playing and performing it. The onus on the listener is much less. It is possible to enjoy a piece and not know what prompted it. But program notes, ad/or explanations do help a lot.

This seems to me similar to many scenarios of so many video commercials advertising perfume:
Sunny day, waving grasses in a field, a tree in the middle ground, a few flowers scattered throughout the texture;
handsome man lopes in 3/4 slo-mo towards pretty woman running towards handsome fellow. her hair and her dress aswirl;
they meet, he picks her up lovingly and joyously, twirls her around then lowers her to the ground;
they embrace and kiss.

I'm sorry, all that elaboration and fantasy over a few drops of an essence, and my thought is similar to these 'meaning of music' stories as it is on those perfume ads... i.e.

Quote from: some guy on January 22, 2016, 03:23:43 AM
Well, what this sounds like to me is a made-up story substituting for the music itself. There's nothing in the music, qua music, that needs this substitution. That is, the piece makes "sense" without any made-up stories. I strongly doubt that thinking about this made-up story would aid in making for a better performance of the piece. That is, whatever else it does, it does not give any information about the piece.

If you want made up stories, please refer to the flights of fancy on Chopin Preludes by George Sand, Hans von Bülow (an eminent pianist and conductor), and Cortot in the past century. Schumann himself wrote purple prose on the Symphonies of Beethoven, one of which I don't remember, claimed he saw Hero and Leander. I felt there was something transcendental in the transition from the G minor to the inverted fugue in the Major. So I went backwards. Why did he stick those two folk songs? was it something close to him and his life? Or are they just notes? I don't think the latter.

Quote from: some guy on January 22, 2016, 03:23:43 AM
But if you're referring now to the two folk tunes, those are not extramusical at all. They are also pieces of music. And I don't follow how the piece can be less cryptic if you know these two tunes as they exist outside the piece. But then, I don't follow how this piece is cryptic. 

If you're satisfied with just the notes, then you are not looking for other levels of meaning. I am and that's why music is so meaningful to me, its multiple connections within and outside itself. Imagine playing Liszt without the rich associations of art and literature. Dull!

Quote from: some guy on January 22, 2016, 03:23:43 AMAs for the obligation, I also don't quite follow the "everything" bit. It seems that performing a piece requires that you understand music and that you know how this piece works from start to finish. Not sure what else would help. Perhaps that Beethoven liked to make sudden and unexpected shifts. Or that he enjoyed building up and building up and building up to "something," we're not sure what, at first, and then giving us something else. (I'm looking at you, opening to the first movement of symphony no. 7.) But if you've listened to any amount of Beethoven, you already know that. And performing a piece by a composer without knowing any other pieces by that person might be a trifle premature.

I don't need to be talked down to. I know all the Piano Sonatas of Beethoven and played most of them, taught them, plus many of the Trios, Violin and Cello Sonatas with piano. I have also learned that what you think you know may be superficial after discovering other levels, cultural connotations being one of them, and that was the thrust of my post. I was not aware of the two folk tunes in the Scherzo and should have been, although I knew about the drinking song in passing.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 22, 2016, 05:11:12 AM
This seems to me similar to many scenarios of so many video commercials advertising perfume:
Sunny day, waving grasses in a field, a tree in the middle ground, a few flowers scattered throughout the texture; handsome man lopes in 3/4 slo-mo towards pretty woman running towards handsome fellow. her hair and her dress aswirl; they meet, he picks her up lovingly and joyously, twirls her around then lowers her to the ground; they embrace and kiss.

I'm sorry, all that elaboration and fantasy over a few drops of an essence, and my thought is similar to these 'meaning of music' stories as it is on those perfume ads... i.e.

Wow, it does all that?

Go ahead and have your fun. It's a really poor musical life without imagination, that's all!!!

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on January 22, 2016, 05:35:13 AM
If you want made up stories, please refer to the flights of fancy on Chopin Preludes by George Sand, Hans von Bülow (an eminent pianist and conductor), and Cortot in the past century. Schumann himself wrote purple prose on the Symphonies of Beethoven, one of which I don't remember, claimed he saw Hero and Leander.

Berlioz also waxed poetically on them. You can read the whole thing here: http://www.hberlioz.com/Predecessors/beethsym.htm (http://www.hberlioz.com/Predecessors/beethsym.htm).

Quote
If you're satisfied with just the notes, then you are not looking for other levels of meaning. I am and that's why music is so meaningful to me, its multiple connections within and outside itself. Imagine playing Liszt without the rich associations of art and literature. Dull!

High five, Mrs. ZB!

I think that what I'm on about, anyway, is that "just" the notes is sufficient.

That is, while I'm not a huge Liszt fan, Liszt without the "rich associations of art and literature" is not dull at all.

That's the thing; if music has to be propped up with "rich associations" then it has somehow failed, as music. If it can get along just fine without them, then it's succeeded. Or perhaps it's not the music; it's the listener. If the listener can get along just fine without them, then the music has been enjoyed for itself, on its own terms.

The idea that music without the multiple connections is somehow lacking or insufficient is at the very least no part of my experience of it. It's always seemed to me to be just fine just as it is. My favorite symphony of Schumann's has a name, but I don't ever think of the Rhine when I listen to it. Apparently that seems somehow insufficient to some people, that I'm missing out on something if I don't. All I can say is that it certainly doesn't seem like I'm missing out at all. It's a lovely symphony, and I enjoy it thoroughly. And if someone were to come in the room and start making connections between the notes and locations or events outside the piece, I would find that very distracting.

OK, fine, composers are people, and they're interested in other things besides music. That seems to go without saying. But to posit that somehow a piece of music has to have a bunch of baggage from the composer's life or times in order for listening to it to be meaningful or satisfying just seems a trifle off, to me. The baggage from the composer's life or times--and I have read many composers' biographies many times with great pleasure--may be interesting and enjoyable and all that, but none of it has ever had the slightest effect, on me, for how thoroughly I enjoy the composers' music.

I like listening to music. I like eating and hanging out with friends and reading novels and watching TV shows and walking in parks, too. Who doesn't like a wee bit walking in parks now and again? But I don't need music to remind me of any of that, to evoke any of that, for it to seem a thoroughly complete and enjoyable experience for me. And if that seems like I'm missing out on a whole wonderful world of delight to you, then OK, I'm missing out on a whole wonderful world of delight. Doesn't seem like it to me, but OK. In any event, what I do think is that the whole wonderful world that I'm missing out on is simply not music, and when I'm listening to music, that's it for me, the music. It's enough and more than enough, all on it's own.

And I'm not missing out on any of those wonderful other things in life, either, not at all. I can and do have any of those other things any time I want, whether any music is playing or not. It's just that when music is playing, I do tend to be pretty much focussed on that to the exclusion of everything else. After all, as Mahler said, it's a whole world, and I don't think he meant that it reminds us of other things besides itself. But even if he did, oh well. It is a whole world, and it's pretty cool.

Quote from: Florestan on January 22, 2016, 09:51:37 AM
Berlioz also waxed poetically on them. You can read the whole thing here: http://www.hberlioz.com/Predecessors/beethsym.htm (http://www.hberlioz.com/Predecessors/beethsym.htm).

I would recommend that everyone read these, slowly and carefully, noting especially how little Berlioz relies on non-musical vocabulary to convey his ideas.

And rarely does he get any more specific than "tender" or "furious," spending the bulk of his exposition talking, as best as words can be used for this purpose, about the music itself, qua music, with all its effects, all its powers, being a result of how the notes and the rhythms have been put together.

This is perhaps the clearest expression of what Berlioz was on about: "The public – I mean the true public, which does not belong to any particular clique – is guided by its own feelings and not by narrow ideas or any ridiculous theories it may have conceived on art. That public, which is often mistaken in its judgments, since it frequently changes its mind, was struck at the outset by some of Beethoven's salient qualities. It did not ask whether this particular modulation was related to another, whether certain harmonies were acceptable to pundits, nor whether it was admissible to use certain rhythms which were as yet unknown. All it noticed was that these rhythms, harmonies and modulations, adorned with noble and passionate melodies, and enhanced by powerful orchestral writing, exerted on it a strong impression of a completely novel kind. Nothing more was needed to stimulate its applause. Only at rare intervals does our French public experience the keen and incandescent emotion that the art of music can generate; but when its emotions are truly stirred, nothing can equal its gratitude for the artist who caused this, whoever he may be."

After all, it was Berlioz who coined the phrase "genre instrumental expressif" to talk about what Beethoven did and what Berlioz thought it was he himself was also doing.

Quote from: some guy on January 22, 2016, 09:53:10 AM
I think that what I'm on about, anyway, is that "just" the notes is sufficient.

That is, while I'm not a huge Liszt fan, Liszt without the "rich associations of art and literature" is not dull at all.

That's the thing; if music has to be propped up with "rich associations" then it has somehow failed, as music. If it can get along just fine without them, then it's succeeded. Or perhaps it's not the music; it's the listener. If the listener can get along just fine without them, then the music has been enjoyed for itself, on its own terms.

The idea that music without the multiple connections is somehow lacking or insufficient is at the very least no part of my experience of it. It's always seemed to me to be just fine just as it is. My favorite symphony of Schumann's has a name, but I don't ever think of the Rhine when I listen to it. Apparently that seems somehow insufficient to some people, that I'm missing out on something if I don't. All I can say is that it certainly doesn't seem like I'm missing out at all. It's a lovely symphony, and I enjoy it thoroughly. And if someone were to come in the room and start making connections between the notes and locations or events outside the piece, I would find that very distracting.

OK, fine, composers are people, and they're interested in other things besides music. That seems to go without saying. But to posit that somehow a piece of music has to have a bunch of baggage from the composer's life or times in order for listening to it to be meaningful or satisfying just seems a trifle off, to me. The baggage from the composer's life or times--and I have read many composers' biographies many times with great pleasure--may be interesting and enjoyable and all that, but none of it has ever had the slightest effect, on me, for how thoroughly I enjoy the composers' music.

I like listening to music. I like eating and hanging out with friends and reading novels and watching TV shows and walking in parks, too. Who doesn't like a wee bit walking in parks now and again? But I don't need music to remind me of any of that, to evoke any of that, for it to seem a thoroughly complete and enjoyable experience for me. And if that seems like I'm missing out on a whole wonderful world of delight to you, then OK, I'm missing out on a whole wonderful world of delight. Doesn't seem like it to me, but OK. In any event, what I do think is that the whole wonderful world that I'm missing out on is simply not music, and when I'm listening to music, that's it for me, the music. It's enough and more than enough, all on it's own.

And I'm not missing out on any of those wonderful other things in life, either, not at all. I can and do have any of those other things any time I want, whether any music is playing or not. It's just that when music is playing, I do tend to be pretty much focussed on that to the exclusion of everything else. After all, as Mahler said, it's a whole world, and I don't think he meant that it reminds us of other things besides itself. But even if he did, oh well. It is a whole world, and it's pretty cool.

.
A composer's analogous offspring are the composer's works.

Once your offspring is raised, with all your influences brought to bear on them over and done, did you do right if you need to send that once child now adult out into the world wearing clothes with explanatory notes with all the details of their upbringing and personal history pinned all over their clothing?

Of course not.

They will, it is to be hoped, have all on their own a presence, bearing, charisma and personality strong enough for people they meet to be able to both enjoy, and yeah, understand them.

Quote from: some guy on January 22, 2016, 10:09:12 AM
I would recommend that everyone read these, slowly and carefully, noting especially how little Berlioz relies on non-musical vocabulary to convey his ideas.

And rarely does he get any more specific than "tender" or "furious,"

Let´s see. All non-musical vocabulary is underlined.

About Symphony No. 1:

The scherzo is the first born in this family of delightful musical jests (scherzi), a form invented by Beethoven who established its tempo. In almost all his instrumental works it takes the place of the minuet of Mozart and Haydn, which is only half the speed of the scherzo and very different in character. This one is delightful in its freshness, nimbleness, and charm. It is the only really novel piece in this work, in which the poetic idea, which plays such a large and rich part in the majority of works which followed, is completely absent. This is admirably crafted music, clear, alert, but lacking in strong personality, cold and sometimes rather small-minded, as for example in the final rondo, which has the character of a musical amusement. In a word, this is not Beethoven. We are about to meet him.

About Symphony No. 2:

Everything in this symphony is noble, energetic and proud; the introduction (largo) is a masterpiece. The most beautiful effects follow in quick succession, always in unexpected ways but without causing any confusion. The melody has a touching solemnity; from the very first bars it commands respect and sets the emotional tone. Rhythms are now more adventurous, the orchestral writing richer, more sonorous and varied. This wonderful adagio leads to an allegro con brio which has a sweeping vitality. The grupetto in the first bar of the theme played by violas and cellos in unison is subsequently developed it its own right, either to generate surging crescendo passages or to bring about imitations between wind and strings, all of them at once novel and lively in character. In the middle comes a melody, played by clarinets, horns and bassoons for the first half, and rounded off as a tutti by the rest of the orchestra; it has a masculine energy which is further enhanced by the felicitous choice of accompanying chords. The andante is not treated in the same way as that of the first symphony; instead of a theme developed in canonical imitation it consists of a pure and innocent theme, presented at first plainly by the strings, then exquisitely embellished with delicate strokes; they faithfully reproduce the tender character of the main theme. This is the enchanting depiction of innocent joy, scarcely troubled by passing touches of melancholy. The scherzo is as openly joyful in its capricious fantasy as the andante was completely happy and calm. Everything in this symphony smiles, and even the martial surges of the first allegro are free from any hint of violence; they only speak of the youthful ardour of a noble heart which has preserved intact the most beautiful illusions of life. The author still believes in immortal glory, in love, in devotion... What abandonment in his joy, what wit, what exuberance! The various instruments fight over particles of a theme which none of them plays in full, yet each fragment is coloured in a thousand different ways by being tossed from one instrument to the other. To hear this is like witnessing the enchanted sport of Oberon's graceful spirits. The finale is of the same character: it is a scherzo in double time, perhaps even more delicate and witty in its playfulness.

About Symphony No. 3:

As will be seen, the subject here is not battles or triumphal marches, as many, misled by the abbreviated title, might expect, but rather deep and serious thoughts, melancholy memories, ceremonies of imposing grandeur and sadness, in short a funeral oration for a hero. I know few examples in music of a style where sorrow has been so unfailingly conveyed in forms of such purity and such nobility of expression.

The first movement is in triple time and in a tempo which is almost that of a waltz, yet nothing could be more serious and more dramatic than this allegro. The energetic theme on which it is built is not at first presented in its complete form. Contrary to normal practice, the composer has initially provided only a glimpse of his melodic idea, which is only revealed in its full power after a few bars' introduction. The rhythmic writing is extremely striking in the frequent use of syncopation and, through the stress on the weak beat, the insertion of bars in duple time into bars in triple time. When to this irregular rhythm some harsh dissonances are added, as we find towards the middle of the development section, where the first violins play a high F natural against an E natural, the fifth of the chord of A minor, it is difficult not to shudder at this depiction of indomitable fury. This is the voice of despair and almost of rage. Yet one wonders, Why this despair, Why this rage?

There is no comparable oddity in the rest of the score. The funeral march is a drama in its own right. It is like a translation of Virgil's beautiful lines on the funeral procession of the young Pallas:

    Multaque praeterea Laurentis praemia pugnae
    Adgerat, et longo praedam jubet ordine duci.
    Post bellator equus, positis insignibus, Aethon
    It lacrymans, guttisque humectat grandibus ora.

    The ending in particular is deeply moving. The theme of the march returns, but now in a fragmented form, interspersed with silences, and only accompanied by three pizzicato notes in the double basses. When these tatters of the sad melody, left on their own, bare, broken and lifeless, have collapsed one after the other onto the tonic, the wind instruments utter a final cry, the last farewell of the warriors to their companion in arms, and the whole orchestra fades away on a pianissimo pause.

Following normal practice the third movement is entitled scherzo. In Italian the word means play, or jest. At first sight it is hard to see how this kind of music can find a place in this epic composition. It has to be heard to be understood. The piece does indeed have the rhythm and tempo of a scherzo; these are games, but real funeral games, constantly darkened by thoughts of death, games of the kind that the warriors of the Iliad would celebrate around the tombs of their leaders. Even in his most imaginative orchestral developments Beethoven has been able to preserve the serious and sombre colouring, the deep sadness which of course had to predominate in such a subject.

For all its great variety this finale is nevertheless built on a simple fugal theme. Besides a profusion of ingenious details the composer develops on top of it two other themes, one of which is exceptionally beautiful. The melody is as it were derived from a different one, but its shape conceals this. On the contrary it is much more touching and expressive, far more graceful than the original theme, which has rather the character of a bass line and serves this function very well. This melody returns shortly before the end, in a slower tempo and with different harmonies which further enhance its sad character. The hero costs many a tear. After these final regrets devoted to his memory the poet abandons the elegiac tone and intones with rapture a hymn of glory. Though rather brief this conclusion is very brilliant and provides a fitting crown to the musical monument.

I stop here. Anyone can read the whole thing and judge for himself.

Quote from: some guy on January 22, 2016, 09:53:10 AMAfter all, as Mahler said, it's a whole world, and I don't think he meant that it reminds us of other things besides itself. But even if he did, oh well. It is a whole world, and it's pretty cool.

You've misquoted Mahler, and in my view, completely missed his point. He actually said (translated): "A Symphony must be like the world - it must contain everything". Not that the symphony is a whole world, no, rather that it contains everything in the world. Everything you claim music doesn't. You and Mahler are not on the same page.

Sarge

Hector Berlioz on Beethoven´s Fifth (excerpts)

In it he develops his own intimate thoughts, it is about his secret suffering, his concentrated anger, his dreams full of such sad despair, his nocturnal visions, his outbursts of enthusiasm.

The first movement depicts those turbulent feelings which move a great soul seized with despair – not the calm and concentrated despair which has an air of resignation, nor the sombre and silent despair of Romeo learning of the death of Juliet, but rather the terrifying fury of Othello when he hears from the mouth of Iago the poisonous calumnies which convince him of Desdemona's crime. At times the mood is one of frenzied delirium which breaks out in terrifying cries, at others one of exaggerated despair which can express nothing but regret and self-pity.

The character of the adagio is rather reminiscent of the allegretto in A minor of the seventh symphony and of the slow movement in E flat of the fourth. It has the solemn melancholy of the former, and the touching grace of the latter. The theme played first by the cellos and violas in unison, with a simple pizzicato accompaniment in the double basses, is followed by a passage for wind instruments which keeps returning in identical form and in the same key from beginning to end of the movement, whatever the successive changes undergone by the first theme. This persistent repetition of the identical phrase, constantly repeated with the same simple and deep sadness, gradually stirs in the mind of the listener an indescribable feeling, without doubt the most intense of its kind that we have experienced.

The scherzo is a strange composition. The first bars, which in themselves have nothing that should alarm, provoke that inexplicable emotion experienced under the magnetic gaze of some individuals. Everything here is mysterious and sombre; the orchestral effects, all more or less sinister in character, seem to belong to the world of thought of the famous scene of Blacksberg in Goethe's Faust.

Critics have nevertheless sought to diminish the composer's merit by asserting that he had merely resorted to a commonplace device in making the brilliance of the major mode follow the darkness of a pianissimo in a minor key, that the triumphal theme was lacking in originality, and that interest flagged as the movement progressed instead of increasing. We would answer: is it because the transition from piano to forte, and from minor to major, are known devices that there is less genius in creating such a work?... How many other composers have not tried to achieve this same effect? And how can their efforts compare with the gigantic hymn of victory, in which the soul of the poet musician, liberated from earthly shackles and suffering, seems to soar radiantly to heaven?...

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on January 22, 2016, 05:35:13 AM

If you're satisfied with just the notes, then you are not looking for other levels of meaning.

I beg to differ: There are plenty of composers, teachers and performers who get many other levels of meaning from just the notes. There are some for whom a score, and music, is a direct and very meaningful thing that needs no translation.
-- [I would never omit knowing and having a rounded and general history of the era from which the piece is, which includes style as well, but N.B. that general.]

A piano teacher and a very fine musician, during one lesson I was taking with her, went off on a quite a lengthy tangent about all the various stories about Chopin's pieces, and all those questions like 'was it really rainy and was he depressed and which one of the preludes then is 'the raindrop?' [Hint, if there is a raindrop prelude, what little historic info there is collates and points to another prelude presently not known as the raindrop' lol.] At the end of that tangent, she said,

Analogies, for some to a far greater degree than for others, can help get more understanding of the character, or disposition of a piece. I think if analogies are used, that once they have been effective, they are thereafter needed less and less.

It is good to know the sources of this or that popular song tune, tunes of the day or other music as quoted within a piece; the reason is not because they had 'a personal meaning' for the composer, but most importantly to connect with anything highly characteristic about the tune, or characteristic as connected with its lyric. I.e. knowing the character - witty, wry, bawdy, sentimental, etc. -- of those tunes can very much help guide the performer to bring an articulation of that particular character to the interpretation.

That said, so many musician's ears are 'caught' by a tune or melody for it's innate and unique musical qualities -- or 'just its notes,' without weight given to the lyric at all; this, without any other documentation, leaves thinking the composer referenced anything other than a bunch of notes which caught their ear as having good potential for use in their piece as a mere yet wild conjecture.

Musicologically, if their ain't a document about those ditties having any other meaning to the composer, if there is nothing with adequate provenance like a written document in the composer's own hand or a very reliable contemporary interview -- so we know for certain "what the composer said about that" -- there is nothing to be legitimately made of it other than "the composer used some known popular melodies in this work." Truly, if the composer saw fit to say nothing about those tunes, why should anyone else make anything more out of it?

I would think that a student pianist coming to the Beethoven Piano Sonata no.31 op. 110, with the cumulative experience and technique enough to begin to approach and study it in the first place, and without ever having heard it, would by then have enough musicianship to understand the character of the tunes, themes, or interpretive aspects that in their working through it from the score alone they would not need any extramusical information or biographical anecdotes to 'make it right.'

I'm of the mind that just as you don't have the liberty to have at the score to alter it, re-write it, change notes, etc. that you have no more 'right' to add or impose mere suppositions to it, at least as a performer or when writing about the piece. [Listeners are free to listen and think whatever they wish or however they do.]

Now it can be revealed:

In Out in the Sun, in the duet between the bass clarinet and baritone saxophone, I slipped in a quick allusion to "I Got Rhythm."

By which I intended to suggest that I got rhythm.

 ;D

Quote from: karlhenning on January 22, 2016, 12:20:15 PM
Now it can be revealed:

In Out in the Sun, in the duet between the bass clarinet and baritone saxophone, I slipped in a quick allusion to "I Got Rhythm."

By which I intended to suggest that I got rhythm.

I got rhythm and played tennis with Mr. Schoenberg ~ Kyo Yoshida
https://www.youtube.com/v/16UmQ3tS82M

Quote from: Sergeant Rock on January 22, 2016, 11:55:46 AM
You've misquoted Mahler, and in my view, completely missed his point. He actually said (translated): "A Symphony must be like the world - it must contain everything". Not that the symphony is a whole world, no, rather that it contains everything in the world. Everything you claim music doesn't. You and Mahler are not on the same page.

Sarge

Lol, a slight misquote does not alter that if a symphonic world "must contain everything," then that world is self-contained, needing no explanation that is not already within it.

What a wonderful world!

Quote from: Florestan on January 22, 2016, 12:09:14 PM
Hector Berlioz on Beethoven´s Fifth (excerpts)

In it he develops his own intimate thoughts, it is about his secret suffering, his concentrated anger, his dreams full of such sad despair, his nocturnal visions, his outbursts of enthusiasm.

To refer anyone to the selected and lengthy quotes which make up your post, the link to that post:
http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,25520.msg949238.html#msg949238

So much of the text there is thick with the subjective hyperbole which was very much in place / in fashion during the romantic era; Berlioz certainly did not adopt that style in order to condescend to his reading audience, i.e. he was being genuine. What is quoted has very little about the music itself other than a minimum of citations of but a few technical musical devices which make for this or that named effect; at least 85% of what is there written is highly subjective and highly 'poetic' hyperbole.

It is written and aimed more at the general listener - reader [who is also a bit conversant in things music theoretical] as opposed to having been written to address those more thoroughly versed in the technical.
[Though the romantic matrix of outlook was still but a kernel, nascent in Beethoven's time, here we have, not so much later, the full-blown romantic parlance in describing Beethoven.][/size]

Nonetheless, hyperbole it remains, and it is highly stylized of and from the era.  The majority of it, in bulk, covers the meat of the nut, surrounds it with a thick wrap of adjectival marzipan, that coated in allegory and lastly dipped in a coating of emotional-philosophic icing... quite a confection that; one can only guess at what colors it would reveal if it were physically manifest and presented, and perhaps those colors might be rather frightening :)

If anyone reads letters between close male friends from that same era [and through to the end of the Victorian era] and has no idea of the conventions and manner of speech of the time, they could easily mistake those communications being a correspondence between two men who were 'lovers.' Nope, that was just mannerisms and linguistic conventions of the day.

Fine and dandy, hunky-dory. Music criticism and the birth in the second half of the twentieth century of what is now considered truly well-informed musicology, now 'traditonal,' has changed the approach to the subject from its former mode of subjective hyperbole to instead favor clear talk, and without discounting the 'art' of it, only allows for some carefully and cautiously judged subjective statements. This did reject the previous highly poetic and elaborate language usage of the past while it still more than acknowledges that music is highly poetic, elaborate, "elevated," and does strongly evoke, eliciting those kind of responses in the listener.

To the contemporaries of today, it takes a strong and selective filter to cut through the manner and style of much of the earlier critical writings on music to get to 'what is essentially said,' about the music itself; this is almost as if it needs at the least a transliteration into contemporary usage. Those earlier music critiques and commentaries need to be read for what they are instead of wishing that what they say is the actuality or literal truth about either the musical content or composer intent.

I don't miss the more wild, the alleged, the floral language of those earlier eras of music critiques and discussions, nor so much the flora and fauna along the banks of those adjectival streams, nor the various hypotheses with no real grounded provenance; all are happily [to me] left out of the discussion on the what and how of music. [If you want to visit them, the literature of the era has plenty of just that, and needs no re-thinking.] The music, without the verbal hyperbole built up on the music as stimulus is a testament to what we already know; music has the power to evoke to such a degree that people can imagine and are stimulated to create literature,paintings, and other art based upon what the musical art evokes. It ought to be obvious that those things stimulated by the music are not the music, nor its 'meaning.'

Regardless of what has been said and is currently said about music -- in what ever stylized manner not in the now traditional and more restrained musicological approach -- the music of both the past and present remains what it always was and is... not a verbal story, not a philosophical essay, not a parable, etc. -- Just Music.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 22, 2016, 12:12:58 PM

I would think that a student pianist coming to the Beethoven Piano Sonata no.31 op. 110, with the cumulative experience and technique enough to begin to approach and study it in the first place, and without ever having heard it, would by then have enough musicianship to understand the character of the tunes, themes, or interpretive aspects that in their working through it from the score alone they would not need any extramusical information or biographical anecdotes to 'make it right.'

I'm of the mind that just as you don't have the liberty to have at the score to alter it, re-write it, change notes, etc. that you have no more 'right' to add or impose mere suppositions to it, at least as a performer or when writing about the piece. [Listeners are free to listen and think whatever they wish or however they do.]

The fact that German speakers recognize a drinking and kitty song in a Scherzo that outsiders except musicologists would be generally unaware of, would make their listening and playing of this piece different. They would see it as parody or a kind of boorish fun. You might say the same thing about quotes by say, Charles Ives, that non-Americans would not recognize, who can still enjoy the music but don't get the insider jokes. I don't think a conductor can get away with not knowing the sources.

What usually happens with "just the notes, ma'am" is every jot of Beethoven becomes a god-like revelation, not to be tampered with. This faux idolization is also a variety of projection of one's own thoughts, proving in a back-handed manner what was set out to be disproved.

I have taught quite a few Asian students who have their own take on Western music, singers who believe that you only need to pronounce the syllables and not be bothered by the meaning of the words, and pianists who are taught to reproduce robot-like the exact notes of the Sensei composer, or else. When you get that far removed from the cultural context, you get caricatures of musicianship like Lang Lang.

As for "I don't care if Chopin had a toothache, ha, ha", regarding his Db prelude, one can regard the Ab/G# as only a repeating note, but then it becomes an ear ache. If in context of shifting moods, a dominant ostinato that would have a lot to do with the harmony of the major and minor section, "raindrop" is not a bad image for the overall piece.

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on January 22, 2016, 09:25:44 PM
The fact that German speakers recognize a drinking and kitty song in a Scherzo that outsiders except musicologists would be generally unaware of, would make their listening and playing of this piece different. They would see it as parody or a kind of boorish fun.

It is not your fault I did not include what I've said before: to know about those tunes used will tell the performer about the character and characteristics of the material, and that makes for their rendering those inflections of parody, bawdy, triste, etc. which is part of the musical fabric.

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on January 22, 2016, 09:25:44 PMWhat usually happens with "just the notes, ma'am" is every jot of Beethoven becomes a god-like revelation, not to be tampered with. This faux idolization is also a variety of projection of one's own thoughts, proving in a back-handed manner what was set out to be disproved.

Again, I readily agree with that, but think that god-like revelations are exactly what can too readily be got via the 'content' of those hyperbolic flights of prose a la the romantics -- and too often even the romantic era 'musicologists;' those comments can just as readily end up directing the performer to exactly the same place of faux-idolization not to be tampered with god-like revelation. ~ Thus, find another way more directly to the utterly earthy, dramatic, bawdy master of strategic placement of events that L.v.B. was to get to an appropriate interpretation.

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on January 22, 2016, 09:25:44 PMI have taught quite a few Asian students who have their own take on Western music, singers who believe that you only need to pronounce the syllables and not be bothered by the meaning of the words, and pianists who are taught to reproduce robot-like the exact notes of the Sensei composer, or else. When you get that far removed from the cultural context, you get caricatures of musicianship like Lang Lang.

^ Well, you were 'very brave' and dared to say what I also dare to say often enough and cited that same party who is one of the most egregious of examples of that ilk now treading the boards of concert halls throughout the world. I'm certain we've both got our armor in the ready against the onslaught of his fans' injured butthurt protests that might be on the way as I type. :laugh: [It is not a dodge, but I had thought but forgot to include, 'born and raised in western culture,' as a qualifier for that student about to take on anything like the Op. 110.]

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on January 22, 2016, 09:25:44 PMAs for "I don't care if Chopin had a toothache, ha, ha", regarding his Db prelude, one can regard the Ab/G# as only a repeating note, but then it becomes an ear ache. If in context of shifting moods, a dominant ostinato that would have a lot to do with the harmony of the major and minor section, "raindrop" is not a bad image for the overall piece.

If there is a prelude which could at all be called "about raindrops," it is the Op.28 No.6 b minor, near certainly penned while in Majorca and after the forced move [because Chopin and Sand were not married] and the consequent alternate lodgings into the danker monastery smack dab during the rainy season. The insistent and virtually omnipresent eighth notes in the treble, one set per beat on the beat, certainly have something more than a little obsessive about them. With the dynamic directives and articulation so marked and the markedly 'gloomy' melody in the bass... this is more like a protest and complaint about the depressing weather and the maddening Drip>drip' like that of the cumulative temperate zone misty rain gathering and falling all too persistently for days on end from the eaves.

So much for those damned titles and 'rain,' eh?  Op.28 No.6 is replete in its notation and the directives marked [as is all of Chopin, and we know just how meticulous the scores were that he handed over to his publisher, no spelling or other corrections needed. Ergo, we don't need no stinkin story to get it, or its 'emotional' characteristic, right.

Just a thought....perhaps some people actually like the hyperbole-ridden Romantic fantasies from the brains of Berlioz and like minded people in their genuine attempt to describe music to the layperson. I can't argue with something like that; anyone has the right to enjoy music in their own way. Personally I have little use for Berlioz's emotive language, but it's interesting to read nevertheless as an historical opinion.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 22, 2016, 08:42:29 PM
at least 85% of what is there written is highly subjective and highly 'poetic' hyperbole.

Well, you should tell that to some guy, not me. It is he who claimed that one can notice <<how little Berlioz relies on non-musical vocabulary to convey his ideas>> and that <<rarely does he get any more specific than "tender" or "furious,">>. My lengthy quotes served no other purpose than to show that this is far from being the case and anyone can see that by simply reading the texts. You confirmed my position in the best and most explicit manner possible. Thank you.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 23, 2016, 12:53:47 AM
Just a thought....perhaps some people actually like the hyperbole-ridden Romantic fantasies from the brains of Berlioz and like minded people in their genuine attempt to describe music to the layperson. I can't argue with something like that; anyone has the right to enjoy music in their own way. Personally I have little use for Berlioz's emotive language, but it's interesting to read nevertheless as an historical opinion.

If one accepts or not Berlioz´s interpretations and their style is of course a matter of taste. In assessing their merits (or lack thereof) one must nevertheless take into account some facts: Berlioz was a highly cultured man, had a vivid imagination and a strong emotional life of his own and, last but not least, his knowledge of music, both in its technical and expressive aspects, was on a completely different plane than ours.

Question: having established that any words a composer writes about a piece are not definitive, how are we treating the words IN the piece?

Because most scores do not consist solely of musical notation.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 23, 2016, 12:53:47 AM
Just a thought....perhaps some people actually like the hyperbole-ridden Romantic fantasies from the brains of Berlioz and like minded people in their genuine attempt to describe music to the layperson. I can't argue with something like that; anyone has the right to enjoy music in their own way. Personally I have little use for Berlioz's emotive language, but it's interesting to read nevertheless as an historical opinion.

But of course, and no real harm done.

I do think that latching on to the ethos and its use of language from well over one hundred years ago a kind of highly specific and repeated musical tourism, and perhaps a hard core escapism in embracing an era other than your own. It can be a way of denying yourself living in and being more a part and participant in your own time... I suppose that includes 'not facing' the arts from your own time as well....

I have no problem with anyone enjoying it for what it is if in the proportionately right place and time, i.e. please don't spill it over onto anyone in music before Schubert [with the odd and one legitimate exception of Carl Maria von Weber] or post Mahler other than that second wave of the small handful of late and later 'modern' romantics who lived well into the twentieth century, Schoenberg, Sibelius, R. Strauss, Tubin, etc.

So, me included, a few peeved minds because of a contest of whose opinion is thought to be, I suppose, "More Valid," and that is seen on online fora everywhere, and is also a very "first world problem."

Still, none in that camp are writing the liner notes for classical recording companies, major orchestra's program notes, etc. -- and neither are you or me. Some Guy, on the other hand, has been paid to do just that, a good number of times over the years.  :laugh:

Quote from: karlhenning on January 22, 2016, 12:20:15 PM
Now it can be revealed:

In Out in the Sun, in the duet between the bass clarinet and baritone saxophone, I slipped in a quick allusion to "I Got Rhythm."

By which I intended to suggest that I got rhythm.

But did you provide a footnote, so that if you thought the score needed those things known in order to be understood as music, you would have made a note of the extramusical and made sure it was on the frontispiece of the score?

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 23, 2016, 04:38:10 AM
But did you provide a footnote, so that if you thought the score needed those things known in order to be understood as music, you would have made a note of the extramusical and made sure it was on the frontispiece of the score?

As has been pointed out before, a couple of times, musical allusions in a piece of music are not extramusical. And, in a way, even musical references to things that sound, like thunder or bird calls or coyote howls or train noises, are just barely extramusical, the things being referenced being already on the way to being music simply by being sounds.

But on to orfeo's query. I was just gearing up to write something about words and music, so sure, I'll take the bait.

Here's the thing about language. While the cliche about music being a language is pretty questionable, language is quite a lot like music. When people talk about music being a language, they often use words like "phrase" and "grammar" to make their point. These are analogies and only useful to give a general idea about how music and language are related. But if you think about language being like music, the words you use will be things like "rhythm" and "pitch." These are not analogies; these are just literally true.

Music cannot be made to express meaning like language does, no matter how hard you push it--even if you're Richard Strauss. ;) Language, however, becomes musical quite easily, most obviously in poetry, which is a use of language that's as much about sound as it is about connotative meaning. But even in ordinary conversation, language--spoken language--is clearly a thing of rhythm and pitch and volume, all musical things. So normal is this, that the exception, inflectionless speaking, is still referred to with a musical term, tone, as in monotone.

It is quite easy and natural for language to do musical things and hence quite easy and natural for words and music to play well together, as it were. :) While music does not need words to explain its meanings--and my point all along has simply been that trying to explain what music means with words will inevitably start pointing away from the music to something else--the musical elements intrinsic to language means that words can be made to work very nicely in a musical context, because they're already halfway there in the first place. Like train brakes or the wind or the rain outside M. Chopin's house.

Quote from: some guy on January 23, 2016, 04:56:31 AM
As has been pointed out before, a couple of times, musical allusions in a piece of music are not extramusical. And, in a way, even musical references to things that sound, like thunder or bird calls or coyote howls or train noises, are just barely extramusical, the things being referenced being already on the way to being music simply by being sounds.

If you had read above in the thread, you would have understood the irony in my comment. Perhaps a footnote was necessary.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 23, 2016, 04:38:10 AM
But did you provide a footnote, so that if you thought the score needed those things known in order to be understood as music, you would have made a note of the extramusical and made sure it was on the frontispiece of the score?

I did not, and I half fear that this disclosure has compromised me.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 23, 2016, 05:34:52 AM
I did not, and I half fear that this disclosure has compromised me.

Uh-huh. You should'a left that to the discretion of your biographer, who would know better than you whether to include it or edit it out.

Well, too late now, blabbermouth!  :laugh:

Quote from: karlhenning on January 23, 2016, 05:34:52 AM
I did not, and I half fear that this disclosure has compromised me.

Then heed the other half. I do not support Croche's position on this matter at all. In fact by not identifying the allusion, you create an "in joke" between you and the members of your audience alert to pick up the reference. Same thing, I would say, when Beethoven quotes folk songs in Op. 110, or Bach does the same in the Goldberg Variations, or Wagner parodies an aria from Rossini's Tancredi in the last act of Die Meistersinger, or Bartok makes fun of the Shostakovich 7th in the 4th movement of the Concerto for Orchestra (in a passage that from a strictly musical standpoint just sounds disruptive and intrusive).

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 23, 2016, 06:07:30 AM
Uh-huh. You should'a left that to the discretion of your biographer, who would know better than you whether to include it or edit it out.

Well, too late now, blabbermouth!  :laugh:

There you have it, Karl. You must make arrangements for a biographer, then all will be well.

Quote from: orfeo on January 23, 2016, 03:54:52 AM
Question: having established that any words a composer writes about a piece are not definitive,

We have not established that, not by a long stretch! Liszt, anyone? Berlioz, anyone? Mahler, anyone?

Quote
how are we treating the words IN the piece? Because most scores do not consist solely of musical notation.

Hah!  ;D ;D ;D

"What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.' --- Gustav Mahler

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 22, 2016, 11:43:26 PM
It is not your fault I did not include what I've said before: to know about those tunes used will tell the performer about the character and characteristics of the material, and that makes for their rendering those inflections of parody, bawdy, triste, etc. which is part of the musical fabric.

Again, I readily agree with that, but think that god-like revelations are exactly what can too readily be got via the 'content' of those hyperbolic flights of prose a la the romantics -- and too often even the romantic era 'musicologists;' those comments can just as readily end up directing the performer to exactly the same place of faux-idolization not to be tampered with god-like revelation. ~ Thus, find another way more directly to the utterly earthy, dramatic, bawdy master of strategic placement of events that L.v.B. was to get to an appropriate interpretation.

^ Well, you were 'very brave' and dared to say what I also dare to say often enough and cited that same party who is one of the most egregious of examples of that ilk now treading the boards of concert halls throughout the world. I'm certain we've both got our armor in the ready against the onslaught of his fans' injured butthurt protests that might be on the way as I type. :laugh: [It is not a dodge, but I had thought but forgot to include, 'born and raised in western culture,' as a qualifier for that student about to take on anything like the Op. 110.]

If there is a prelude which could at all be called "about raindrops," it is the Op.28 No.6 b minor, near certainly penned while in Majorca and after the forced move [because Chopin and Sand were not married] and the consequent alternate lodgings into the danker monastery smack dab during the rainy season. The insistent and virtually omnipresent eighth notes in the treble, one set per beat on the beat, certainly have something more than a little obsessive about them. With the dynamic directives and articulation so marked and the markedly 'gloomy' melody in the bass... this is more like a protest and complaint about the depressing weather and the maddening Drip>drip' like that of the cumulative temperate zone misty rain gathering and falling all too persistently for days on end from the eaves.
So much for those damned titles and 'rain,' eh?  Op.28 No.6 is replete in its notation and the directives marked [as is all of Chopin, and we know just how meticulous the scores were that he handed over to his publisher, no spelling or other corrections needed. Ergo, we don't need no stinkin story to get it, or its 'emotional' characteristic, right.

I am trying to relate to what you have been saying and I think we actually agree in most points. To be more specific about Op. 110, for years I was not aware of the bawdy folk tunes used in the Scherzo. Without this vital piece of information, it was simply cryptic. Even being grounded in Western culture didn't help, it was necessary to be more local.

One piece that I learned a long time ago, the C minor variations of Beethoven, finally came alive in a masterclass given by Maria João Pires. She brought out the emotional possibilities of the piece that was no less a revelation to me who regarded it for years as just variations, the way it was presented to me. OK, intuitively, one can get to the same place without a program, knowing how things go as it were, but poor in imagination. It was interesting to get a view of Berlioz' life of the mind. His own works came from that fertile soil.

I do like the approach of Alfred Brendel which to me is a good balance of pure musicianship yet conversant with the extra musical associations when they apply. I am thinking of his DVD recordings of Liszt's "Italie" where he gives a short speech about the poetry or art that inspired these works. When I play the "Spozalizio", I don't so much have Raphael's picture in mind but the sublime, mystical feeling it evokes.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 23, 2016, 04:13:09 AM
But of course, and no real harm done.

I do think that latching on to the ethos and its use of language from well over one hundred years ago a kind of highly specific and repeated musical tourism, and perhaps a hard core escapism in embracing an era other than your own. It can be a way of denying yourself living in and being more a part and participant in your own time... I suppose that includes 'not facing' the arts from your own time as well....

I have no problem with anyone enjoying it for what it is if in the proportionately right place and time, i.e. please don't spill it over onto anyone in music before Schubert [with the odd and one legitimate exception of Carl Maria von Weber] or post Mahler other than that second wave of the small handful of late and later 'modern' romantics who lived well into the twentieth century, Schoenberg, Sibelius, R. Strauss, Tubin, etc.

So, me included, a few peeved minds because of a contest of whose opinion is thought to be, I suppose, "More Valid," and that is seen on online fora everywhere, and is also a very "first world problem."

Still, none in that camp are writing the liner notes for classical recording companies, major orchestra's program notes, etc. -- and neither are you or me. Some Guy, on the other hand, has been paid to do just that, a good number of times over the years.  :laugh:

Hang me by the neck if can make head or tail of this...

Quote from: Florestan on January 23, 2016, 07:01:44 AM
Hang me by the neck if can make head or tail of this balderdash...

One minute it's put a gun to my head, the next it's hang me by the neck. My dear fellow, do you have a death wish?

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 23, 2016, 07:25:01 AM
One minute it's put a gun to my head, the next it's hang me by the neck. My dear fellow, do you have a death wish?

Hah!  :D :D :D

English is not my mother´ s tongue --- nor is it Shakespeare my best teacher!

but

One of my favorite novels is Dotkor Faustus by Thomas Mann

and one of my favorite lines of that novel is:

but, if thou marry, Hang me by the neck, if horns that year miscarry.

;D ;D ;D

Quote from: Florestan on January 23, 2016, 08:02:48 AM
but, if thou marry, Hang me by the neck, if horns that year miscarry.

Which is from Love's Labour's Lost, the Shakespearean play that Adrian Leverkühn sets as an opera. But you know that.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 23, 2016, 08:07:14 AM
Which is from Love's Labour's Lost, the Shakespearean play that Adrian Leverkühn sets as an opera. But you know that.

Yes, I know that all right.  :D

The quote about Romanticism´ s setting music free from its previously communal fanfare status is also from Doktor Faustus --- and I (mostly) agree with it...  :D

Quote from: some guy on January 23, 2016, 04:56:31 AM
But even in ordinary conversation, language--spoken language--is clearly a thing of rhythm and pitch and volume, all musical things.

But not melody/harmony.

The human voice is a powerful musical instrument too. In Art music we have a vast range & type of both male & female singers - soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto, countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass. Then you can get into the whole world of choral music. Throat/Overtone singing .. And whole works have been built on a deep knowledge of phonetics. Then the possibilities opened up further with electronics ..

Performers think constantly (or they should) about "the composer's intent."  We have several primary guides.  First and foremost is what the composer wrote.  Whatever else we do, we must be guided by the written notes and other indications such as tempo markings.  (Every once in a while one comes across obvious errors.  Then we generally play what is obviously "right" as opposed to what is an obvious mistake in copying or printing.  When possible, I like to use an "Urtext" edition, copied from the original manuscripts.)

Then comes any verbal instruction or comment the composer may have written outside the written music.  A prime example is Mozart's "It should flow like oil", referring to any legato passage in his music.

Then comes what we know about performance practices in the composer's time and place.  Here is where "Historically Informed" research is very helpful.  With more recent music, recordings conducted by the composer are especially enlightening.

Then, finally, when all this is in place, the final "decision" is made--and it is often made in the white heat of the concert--about just exactly how fast, how loud, with what kind of sound and flexibility we should play at every note.  But at every step, the written notes are our guide.  It is not for us classical musicians to "try" to impose our own personality on the music; that happens without our trying.  It is for us rather to take this non-verbal, musical message from the past and bring it to life in the present.

There is a charming story about Arturo Toscanini.  Apparently at the end of a dress rehearsal, he stopped and said, "Who am I?  I am nothing."  (This may have greatly surprised the orchestra. :o )  He then said, "Who are you?  You are nothing."  (This would not have surprised them at all.  He told them that often enough. :laugh: ) He finished with, "Beethoven; Beethoven is everything." 8)

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 23, 2016, 07:25:01 AM
One minute it's put a gun to my head, the next it's hang me by the neck. My dear fellow, do you have a death wish?

Well, that's romanticism for you, deeply dwelling on loss, yearning, unrequited love, weltschmertz, a longing for the better life as lived in dreams -- i.e. death -- vs. a life awake (Schubert ~ Nacht und Träume), the love of all things generally lugubrious, and did I mention death? (Mahler ~ Das Lied von der Erde; Der Abschied) :)

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 23, 2016, 06:49:25 PM
Well, that's romanticism for you, deeply dwelling on loss, yearning, unrequited love, weltschmertz, a longing for the better life as lived in dreams -- i.e. death -- vs. a life awake (Schubert ~ Nacht und Träume), the love of all things generally lugubrious, and did I mention death? (Mahler ~ Das Lied von der Erde; Der Abschied) :)

Death.....Mahler....songs....children......bleak music, utterly bleak.

Quote from: some guy on January 23, 2016, 04:56:31 AM
But even in ordinary conversation, language--spoken language--is clearly a thing of rhythm and pitch and volume, all musical things.

Quote from: starrynight on January 23, 2016, 02:03:23 PM
But not melody/harmony.

If you are not locked in on that simpler notion of a melody being very audible as 'tune' and in a set scale, then it is easier to see that speech is melodic or melody like -- and its elements, with or without making verbal sense, can readily go from musical to music.
Unless a person is speaking in a monotone, what comes out uses:
~ a range of tones, high to low
~ Phrases contain a sequence of those tones, high and low mixed
~ Phrases are distinguished on from the next by slight, partial or full stops [commas, semicolons, colons, periods] all part of the overall rhythm of clauses or statements in the linear-temporal flow.

Those parameters define melody, and how it occurs, how it is handled.

Harmony requires two pitches at once: Two or more persons speaking at once, in not exactly the same pitches, or tones, is then harmony.

Quote from: orfeo on January 23, 2016, 03:54:52 AM
Question: having established that any words a composer writes about a piece are not definitive, how are we treating the words IN the piece?

Because most scores do not consist solely of musical notation.

Are you referring to dynamic/articulation markings etc. as apart of a comprehensive written musical notation that give instructions to a musical performer? Or vocal-oriented music?

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 23, 2016, 10:12:29 PM
"But even in ordinary conversation, language--spoken language--is clearly a thing of rhythm and pitch and volume, all musical things." ~ Some Guy

If you are not locked in on that simpler notion of a melody being very audible as 'tune' and in a set scale, then it is easier to see that speech is melodic or melody like -- and its elements, with or without making verbal sense, can readily go from musical to music.
Unless a person is speaking in a monotone, what comes out uses:
~ a range of tones, high to low
~ Phrases contain a sequence of those tones, high and low mixed
~ the phrasing, with slight, partial or full stops [[ commas, semicolons, colons, periods, separate clauses or statement in the linear-temporal flow.

Those parameters define melody.

Harmony requires two pitches at once: Two or more persons speaking at once, in not exactly the same pitches, or tones, is then harmony.

Lots of music has been influenced by human speech. But then again, a lot of things have & can be transcribed, analyzed and used.

Quote from: James on January 23, 2016, 10:24:15 PM
Lots of music has been influenced by human speech. But then again, a lot of things have & can be transcribed, analyzed and used.

Kind of reminds me of Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters. 8)

Quote from: starrynight on January 23, 2016, 02:03:23 PM
But not melody/harmony.

The vertical aspect of melody/harmony can be considered coloristic. In other words, it is not so much what is said but how. An Eb between a C and G can make all the difference in the world if changed to an E. Acoustics and the overtone series are the 3D aspect in music, frequently overlooked or not given enough importance.

Quote from: Florestan on January 23, 2016, 08:16:53 AM
Yes, I know that all right.  :D

The quote about Romanticism setting music free from its previously communal fanfare status is also from Doktor Faustus --- and I (mostly) agree with it...  :D

A great writer and a somewhat great book, I thought. It seems Mann knew next to beans about music, so he consulted with Adorno, of all people, lol, and in whatever way he understood it he leaned heavily on what Adorno advised. So in Doktor Faustus  we have Adorno's notions on music, including his sociopolitical constructs, as filtered through Mann.

Most of the discourse about music in Doktor Faustus I found so risible that it distracted me away from 'being in the novel.' I'm reminded of what Stravinsky said on writers and music...

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on January 23, 2016, 10:55:29 PM
The vertical aspect of melody/harmony can be considered coloristic. In other words, it is not so much what is said but how. An Eb between a C and G can make all the difference in the world if changed to an E. Acoustics and the overtone series are the 3D aspect in music, frequently overlooked or not given enough importance.

And this is especially important when it comes to orchestration....different combinations of instruments sympathise differently with one another depending on which overtones are most prominent in their timbre.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 23, 2016, 10:12:29 PM
Harmony requires two pitches at once: Two or more persons speaking at once, in not exactly the same pitches, or tones, is then harmony.

Which speech isn't really about, because two speaking at once wouldn't make sense.

I do think there are differences between speech/music, not saying there can't be similarities as I've felt that in the past.  But it can sometimes feel that people are using intellectual reasoning to prove a point in every way rather than looking at just how we experience things.  There's a reason we do music rather than only speak to each other instead.

Yes, of course voices are used in music, of course the voice is an instrument (I've said that for years), but there are clearly different purposes between normal speech and the voice used in music.

On a sidenote I really hate it when on some poetry reading they stick some music in the background.  Damn annoying.  And then people look at popular song, for example, as having to be about great lyrics, when people are largely interested in the musical element of the word/music combination.  Poetry obviously has musical elements but is not music, it has an emphasis more on the cultural connotations of the words used.  Music by it's nature is more abstract.  You could make an argument they are part of some spectrum running from basic cultural connotations (normal language) to the most abstract (a cross cultural musical style).  But to make out they are all simply the same is to try and prove some argument in a way thought clever and impressing rather than trying to take into account all aspects.

Quote from: some guy on January 23, 2016, 04:56:31 AM
As has been pointed out before, a couple of times, musical allusions in a piece of music are not extramusical. And, in a way, even musical references to things that sound, like thunder or bird calls or coyote howls or train noises, are just barely extramusical, the things being referenced being already on the way to being music simply by being sounds.

But on to orfeo's query. I was just gearing up to write something about words and music, so sure, I'll take the bait.

Here's the thing about language. While the cliche about music being a language is pretty questionable, language is quite a lot like music. When people talk about music being a language, they often use words like "phrase" and "grammar" to make their point. These are analogies and only useful to give a general idea about how music and language are related. But if you think about language being like music, the words you use will be things like "rhythm" and "pitch." These are not analogies; these are just literally true.

Music cannot be made to express meaning like language does, no matter how hard you push it--even if you're Richard Strauss. ;) Language, however, becomes musical quite easily, most obviously in poetry, which is a use of language that's as much about sound as it is about connotative meaning. But even in ordinary conversation, language--spoken language--is clearly a thing of rhythm and pitch and volume, all musical things. So normal is this, that the exception, inflectionless speaking, is still referred to with a musical term, tone, as in monotone.

It is quite easy and natural for language to do musical things and hence quite easy and natural for words and music to play well together, as it were. :) While music does not need words to explain its meanings--and my point all along has simply been that trying to explain what music means with words will inevitably start pointing away from the music to something else--the musical elements intrinsic to language means that words can be made to work very nicely in a musical context, because they're already halfway there in the first place. Like train brakes or the wind or the rain outside M. Chopin's house.

I can't see how this has anything to do with my query whatsoever.

Quote from: James on January 23, 2016, 10:15:51 PM
Are you referring to dynamic/articulation markings etc. as apart of a comprehensive written musical notation that give instructions to a musical performer? Or vocal-oriented music?

I was referring to the former. Do you ignore tempo markings because they're in a foreign language (often Italian)?

I just want to know where people's conceptual boundaries lie. Music notation does not consist simply of notes. It includes a huge range of other things, and I want to know just which bits people consider to be obligatory. At what point is a performance wrong if it it fails to follow what the composer said?

Quote from: starrynight on January 24, 2016, 01:46:45 AM
Poetry obviously has musical elements but is not music, it has an emphasis more on the cultural connotations of the words used.  Music by it's nature is more abstract.  You could make an argument they are part of some spectrum running from basic cultural connotations (normal language) to the most abstract (a cross cultural musical style).  But to make out they are all simply the same is to try and prove some argument in a way thought clever and impressing rather than trying to take into account all aspects.

Well this is certainly straying quite far from what I intended in my original post, anyway. As did your original observation that language doesn't have melody and harmony. Whether language has musical elements A and B or not has nothing to do with whether or not language has musical elements C, D, E, F, and G. My point anyway was not to argue that "they are simply the same" at all. My point was to point out that our usual way of looking at music as a kind of language is backwards. It's not music that resembles language so much as it is that language resembles music.

To such an extent, as I mentioned, that the linguistic vocabulary usually used to talk about music being a language is all analogical, whereas the vocabulary that can describes the musical qualities of language is entirely literal.

Quote from: orfeo on January 24, 2016, 03:14:02 AMI was referring to the former. Do you ignore tempo markings because they're in a foreign language (often Italian)?

A highly trained and practiced performer-interpreter wouldn't. That stuff is there for them; tempo, dynamic etc. markings are there for musical reasons, otherwise the composer wouldn't go through all the trouble of working them out & indicating them. Those markings are a musical parameter. And these sort of indications have been apart of written musical syntax for a long time now - well learned performers are totally aware of them.

Quote from: orfeo on January 24, 2016, 03:14:02 AMI just want to know where people's conceptual boundaries lie. Music notation does not consist simply of notes. It includes a huge range of other things, and I want to know just which bits people consider to be obligatory. At what point is a performance wrong if it it fails to follow what the composer said?

Notation is written musical instruction for performers, they learn, work-out and interpret what is there the best they can. Interpretation varies from one musician to the next, no one plays exactly the same - and no 2 performances will be exactly the same. So there is some musical flexibility - which is good. But everything in the notation is geared toward the performance of the music.

Quote from: some guy on January 24, 2016, 03:51:05 AMMy point was to point out that our usual way of looking at music as a kind of language is backwards. It's not music that resembles language so much as it is that language resembles music.

It can go both ways though. You often have a convoluted way of looking at things. Bottom-line though, music is a language. It is a system of communication that expresses ideas & emotions.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 23, 2016, 06:49:25 PM
Well, that's romanticism for you, deeply dwelling on loss, yearning, unrequited love, weltschmertz, a longing for the better life as lived in dreams -- i.e. death -- vs. a life awake (Schubert ~ Nacht und Träume), the love of all things generally lugubrious, and did I mention death? (Mahler ~ Das Lied von der Erde; Der Abschied) :)

Romanticism is much more than that. It is like the world, it contains everything.  :D

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 23, 2016, 11:18:01 PM
what Stravinsky said on writers and music...

"If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong."

Ah yes, Stravinsky and his bon mots...

Romain Rolland, Hermann Hesse and Aldous Huxley. ¨Nuff said.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 23, 2016, 11:19:02 PM
And this is especially important when it comes to orchestration....different combinations of instruments sympathise differently with one another depending on which overtones are most prominent in their timbre.

Exactly! One of the worst combinations are groups of bleating tenors whose wave forms clash with one another. A feel for orchestral acoustic blending is a special talent, even more so when composers had to imagine it all on paper.

Quote from: James on January 24, 2016, 07:54:57 AM
It can go both ways though. You often have a convoluted way of looking at things. Bottom-line though, music is a language. It is a system of communication that expresses ideas & emotions.

I think music is more of an art form and less of a language. In order for music to exist, there must be someone to organise/hear certain sounds in a composition/improvisation. There are no set 'rules' for composition and anyone can come to their own legitimate conclusion about a piece in which way a day to day conversation doesn't (because 99% of the time 'would you care for some tea?' means 'would you care for some tea?'). One could argue that music came from certain rules.....but these were very very different in different cultures and at different times. Language, that is, verbal and written communication, does have rules which change over time based on human interaction within and between different cultures over time. Rules can be bent and broken to hold different connotations or in poetry and other literary forms, or in slang and other informal contexts, but the primary goal for language, unlike music, is that if it doesn't hold an explicit meaning there are certainly implicit meanings present.

Quote from: Florestan on January 24, 2016, 08:45:27 AM
Romanticism is much more than that. It is like the world, it contains everything.  :D

Ah yes, Stravinsky and his bon mots...

Romain Rolland, Hermann Hesse and Aldous Huxley. ¨Nuff said.

I am not aware of what or where Huxley wrote about music.

Rolland's Jean Cristophe is a magnificent and sprawling novel about the interior life of a composer. Hesse's Magister Ludi is known for its premise of a synergy of immediate connections and a sort of ready transliteration of sundry intellectual disciplines, likening, say, a Scarlatti sonata to a mathematical procedure, a chess game, etc.

Both authors, to the best of my recollection, spoke of or referred to music in the most general of terms, without getting into any of the specifics on techniques or approaches to the method of composing, nor did either at all address any of the knottier areas of aesthetics. One could say that Rolland and Hesse were no more specific than that famous description, or conceptual description, of that violin sonata described by Proust.

From that compound set of approaches taken by Rolland and Hesse, i.e. music being described only somewhat conceptually, i.e. about as vague and non-specific as it gets, we have Mann in Doktor Faustus attempting all the specifics the others had managed to avoid. Re: "a literary man putting two words together on music and one of them being wrong," Mann's Doktor Faustus is the poster-boy  ;)

Quote from: James on January 24, 2016, 07:54:57 AM
It can go both ways though. You often have a convoluted way of looking at things. Bottom-line though, music is a language. It is a system of communication that expresses ideas & emotions.

"...music is a language. It is a system of communication that expresses ideas & emotions."

You're not the only one who seems entirely hung high up the wall on the hook of not realizing "Music is a language" is an analogy, which is precisely at the crux of what Some Guy has been purporting from the get go on this topic.

The fact that music shares many of the same sonic qualities of speech is the reason the analogy "Music is Language," came about and exists in the first place. People the world over recognize that music shares a good number of the traits of speech, those elements named by Some Guy. It has the three essentials of music; pitch, duration and intensity, or put another way; tones, phrases, rhythm, cadences, etc.

I think the hang-up comes when the word Language is used as analogy, because some just do not understand it is an analogy. "Language" for them means that particular system of sounds -- speech -- which does directly communicate specific ideas and clearly articulates things like emotion, and they connect that directly to 'the system' of music, lol.

If Music is literally 'a language,' i.e. "a system of communication that expresses ideas & emotions," then music itself, without text being sung, would be able to "say / communicate" anything as specifically and clearly as actual Language can, but music alone just can not and does not do that.

Listening to music evokes thoughts in the listener which are nowhere present in either the written score or in any performance of that score, and that is where people are soooo frequently mistaken if they take the Music Is Language analogy literally. If mistaken, they can believe a completely abstract, or absolute, piece of music has a very specific and literal meaning.

"Music is a language. It is a system of communication that expresses ideas & emotions."
This is a completely insupportable statement unless it is meant to be understood as an analogy.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 24, 2016, 03:56:09 PM
..."Music is a language" is an analogy,...The fact that music shares many of the same sonic qualities of speech is the reason the analogy "Music is Language," came about and exists in the first place. People the world over recognize that music shares a good number of the traits of speech, those elements named by Some Guy. It has the three essentials of music; pitch, duration and intensity, or put another way; tones, phrases, rhythm, cadences, etc... I think the hang-up comes when the word Language is used as analogy, because some just do not understand it is an analogy...
Listening to music evokes thoughts in the listener which are nowhere present in either the written score or in any performance of that score, and that is where people are soooo frequently mistaken if they take the Music Is Language analogy literally. If mistaken, they can believe a completely abstract, or absolute, piece of music has a very specific and literal meaning.

Agree completely

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 24, 2016, 12:27:38 PM
I think music is more of an art form and less of a language. In order for music to exist, there must be someone to organise/hear certain sounds in a composition/improvisation. There are no set 'rules' for composition and anyone can come to their own legitimate conclusion about a piece in which way a day to day conversation doesn't (because 99% of the time 'would you care for some tea?' means 'would you care for some tea?').

Do you imply that, by contrast, 99% of the time ´a sequence of sounds in B flat´ means more than ´a sequence of sounds in B flat´?

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 24, 2016, 03:19:44 PM
I am not aware of what or where Huxley wrote about music.

References to, and comments about, music are scattered throughout his novels, most visibly in Point Counterpoint. His essay Music at Night is already a classic. You can read it here: https://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley/aldous-huxley-essays-music-at-night/
(https://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley/aldous-huxley-essays-music-at-night/)

Quote
Rolland's Jean Cristophe is a magnificent and sprawling novel about the interior life of a composer. Hesse's Magister Ludi is known for its premise of a synergy of immediate connections and a sort of ready transliteration of sundry intellectual disciplines, likening, say, a Scarlatti sonata to a mathematical procedure, a chess game, etc.

Brilliant and penetrating analysis, although somewhat incomplete.

Romain Rolland received his doctoral degree with a thesis about opera before Lully and Scarlatti. He had a lifelong interest in the life and work of Beethoven and wrote extensively about them, including Beethoven´s biography. He published a book about Haendel and two collections of essyas about music and musicians, both past and contemporary. FWIW, Stefan Zweig in his memoirs writes that Rolland´s musical knowledge was fabulous, that he was familiar even with the most obscure works of, say, Galuppi and Telemann, not to mention more obscure composers and that he played the piano in the most intimate, delicate and communicative manner (Zweig goes even so far as to prefer Rolland´s playing to that of Max Reger, Busoni and Bruno Walter, whom he also knew personally and intimately).

As for Hesse, music plays an important role not only in The Glass Bead Game, but also in Steppenwolf, Gertrud and Journey to the East. It is obvious that Hesse, though not having any formal instruction in music (actually, he had rather little formal instruction in anything), had a deep and sustained interest in music and thinking about music.

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Both authors, to the best of my recollection, spoke of or referred to music in the most general of terms, without getting into any of the specifics on techniques or approaches to the method of composing, nor did either at all address any of the knottier areas of aesthetics. One could say that Rolland and Hesse were no more specific than that famous description, or conceptual description, of that violin sonata described by Proust.

Well, Stravinsky´s quote was about writers writing about music, not about the theory of music or about compositional techniques.

Quote
From that compound set of approaches taken by Rolland and Hesse, i.e. music being described only somewhat conceptually, i.e. about as vague and non-specific as it gets, we have Mann in Doktor Faustus attempting all the specifics the others had managed to avoid. Re: "a literary man putting two words together on music and one of them being wrong," Mann's Doktor Faustus is the poster-boy  ;)

I presume that you mean the ideas about music and composition uttered by Adrian Leverkuhn, because those of Serenus Zeitblom or Wendell Kretzschmar are quite different. You said it yourself that they are actually Adorno´s. Therefore Stravinsky should have talked about philosophers not putting together two ords about music without one being wrong (or whatever way he formulated it), but he´d still have been wrong because Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche wrote insightfully about music. I suspect that he would have rejected them, too, because apparently he had no use for any ideas but his own.

Quote from: Florestan on January 25, 2016, 12:14:22 AM
Do you imply that, by contrast, 99% of the time ´a sequence of sounds in B flat´ means more than ´a sequence of sounds in B flat´?

The thing about "meaning" is that, for humans, it is mostly understood as a thing that has to do with language. When we talk about "meaning," we are more than likely talking about something expressible in words.

The meanings of music are not expressible in words.

Here's an experiment to try. It can be done as a thought experiment, of course, or you can do it outside of your head as well, if you really need to. Read a description of a famous piece. Now listen to the piece. Read another description. Listen to the piece again. Do this several times. Should be easy to find many different descriptions of a famous piece.

At some point, you will probably notice that the descriptions and the actual piece (in different performances, too, if that takes your fancy) differ somehow. Even if you read them out loud, the descriptions don't have quite the sound of the piece, for one. For two, the piece manages somehow to be something beyond any of the different descriptions. It's not hard. Music is different from language. If they were truly the same, if they could do the same expressions of meaning, then one or the other of them would be redundant, no? They're different. They do different things. Even though we can use language to talk about music (and about love and about cooking and about differential equations), the differences remain. And at some point, the distinct characteristics of love and cooking and so forth have to take over for us to truly understand them.

Now find a person who has not heard this piece before. Even with famous pieces of classical music, that should not be too difficult. Have that person read a description or two. Now play them a couple of pieces. Will they be able to pick out which one is the one being "described" in those programs? Do it the other way, too. Play another person the piece, then have them read several descriptions of several different pieces.

Even if you find a person who can pick out the correct matches every time, there will still be a disconnect between description and piece. That's because the "meaning" of the piece will always and forever be something beyond the capacity of language to capture, the "meaning" of the piece will always and forever be something more than what words can express, which is why, by the way, writers like Berlioz mention the "poetic" aspects of music and even made their descriptions of same as poetic as possible--because poetry gets closer to music than any other kind of language. Simples.

A sequence of sounds in B flat will always and forever mean more--or at least mean differently--than any sequence of words will ever be able to mean.

Quote from: some guy on January 25, 2016, 01:59:11 AM
The thing about "meaning" is that, for humans, it is mostly understood as a thing that has to do with language. When we talk about "meaning," we are more than likely talking about something expressible in words.

The meanings of music are not expressible in words.

(I assume you refer to "absolute" music.)

Expressible as in "objective, impersonal, exact, without and beyond any doubt, once and for all" --- obviously not. It has not been done. It cannot be done. And if it could be done, it would deprive music of all its appeal and mistery (for me, at least).

Expressible as in "subjective, personal, tentative, vague, imprecise, doubtful, changing" --- obviously yes. It has been done. It can be done. And it is part and parcel of music´s appeal and mystery (for me, at least)

Quote
Even though we can use language to talk about music (and about love and about cooking and about differential equations), the differences remain. And at some point, the distinct characteristics of love and cooking and so forth have to take over for us to truly understand them.

I thought you were against "understanding" music. Anyway, agreed.

Quote
the "meaning" of the piece will always and forever be something beyond the capacity of language to capture, the "meaning" of the piece will always and forever be something more than what words can express, which is why, by the way, writers like Berlioz mention the "poetic" aspects of music and even made their descriptions of same as poetic as possible--because poetry gets closer to music than any other kind of language.

Agreed.

Quote
A sequence of sounds in B flat will always and forever mean more--or at least mean differently--than any sequence of words will ever be able to mean.

Agreed.

Hey, I can´t believe it: I have just agreed three times with Michael. Is the world approaching its end?  :D :P

Quote from: Florestan on January 25, 2016, 12:14:22 AM
Do you imply that, by contrast, 99% of the time ´a sequence of sounds in B flat´ means more than ´a sequence of sounds in B flat´?

Not that it necessarily means more, but that greater diversity of meaning can be interpreted from it, depending on the listener. You could say that it simply 'means more,' like you have put it, but then it implies that the onus is on the creators of the said sequence of sounds to provide these meanings.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 25, 2016, 02:18:25 AM
Not that it necessarily means more, but that greater diversity of meaning can be interpreted from it, depending on the listener.

Exactly. And not only the listener. Think about two or three different performances of the same piece. Why are they different, if all that there is in music is the notes and the other indications in the scores? Why is it then that, say, Kempff plays a Beethoven sonata in quite a different manner than Pollini? After all, they have the same notes and indications.

Quote
You could say that it simply 'means more,' like you have put it, but then it implies that the onus is on the creators of the said sequence of sounds to provide these meanings.

I don´t imply that. A composer can choose to give only a vague hint about his work, or to provide a title and a quite detailed program, or on the contrary to remain forever silent about it. There is no onus whatsoever on him.

Quote from: Florestan on January 25, 2016, 02:27:19 AM
Exactly. And not only the listener. Think about two or three different performances of the same piece. Why are they different, if all that there is in music is the notes and the other indications in the scores? Why is it then that, say, Kempff plays a Beethoven sonata in quite a different manner than Pollini? After all, they have the same notes and indications.

Certainly agree with you here :)

QuoteI don´t imply that. A composer can choose to give only a vague hint about his work, or to provide a title and a quite detailed program, or on the contrary to remain forever silent about it. There is no onus whatsoever on him.

She (or he) may speak whatever she (or he) wishes about the work in question, that's true. I misinterpreted your earlier post, sorry about that!

And misinterpretation is something that I don't think can really happen in music. Something which separates it from language. ;)

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 25, 2016, 02:54:39 AM
And misinterpretation is something that I don't think can really happen in music.

I think that, on the contrary, it happens all the time. Otherwise how would you explain that some people prefer HIP over non-HIP, or Rubinstein over Horrowitz, or Karajan over Solti, or the other way around? Is not what we like more akin to our own interpretation and preference, and is not what we dislike somehow missing the points, ie misinterpreting?

Quote from: Florestan on January 25, 2016, 03:05:05 AM
I think that, on the contrary, it happens all the time. Otherwise how would you explain that some people prefer HIP over non-HIP, or Rubinstein over Horrowitz, or Karajan over Solti, or the other way around? Is not what we like more akin to our own interpretation and preference, and is not what we dislike somehow missing the points, ie misinterpreting?

Well, when a performer interprets a piece, there is no wrong interpretation...is there?

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 25, 2016, 03:20:06 AM
Well, when a performer interprets a piece, there is no wrong interpretation...is there?

Professional critics say there is. Even laymen do, witness countless posts here at GMG disparaging this or that recording. Look no further than the currently running Bach´s violin sonatas blind comparison thread. Plenty of wrong or plainly bad interpretations to choose from. :D

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 25, 2016, 03:20:06 AM
Well, when a performer interprets a piece, there is no wrong interpretation...is there?

A score doesn't play itself. A performer makes infinite choices as to how to shape individual phrases and larger elements, and that is his or her interpretation. You might not be able to say that a given interpretation is "right" or "wrong" as in a mathematical proof, but as listeners we surely find some interpretations more convincing than others. And of course we may well disagree as to which performances we find most convincing.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 25, 2016, 04:01:34 AM
A score doesn't play itself. A performer makes infinite choices as to how to shape individual phrases and larger elements, and that is his or her interpretation. You might not be able to say that a given interpretation is "right" or "wrong" as in a mathematical proof, but as listeners we surely find some interpretations more convincing than others. And of course we may well disagree as to which performances we find most convincing.

My points exactly. And I would add that the differences, both in interpretation and listening preferences, are determined / influenced by factors which are not exclusively musical, as for instance personality, education, culture, age or, why not, even the momentary mood.

Quote from: Florestan on January 25, 2016, 12:14:22 AM
Do you imply that, by contrast, 99% of the time ´a sequence of sounds in B flat´ means more than ´a sequence of sounds in B flat´?

I'll give you this, as a qualification and a bit of an affirmative:

I. You hear a human voice.

II. It is making nonsense sounds, or is speaking a language you not only do not know but have never heard of, seen in print, or heard spoken aloud -- ever -- while it sounds like it has all the qualities of tones, high and low, intensity, phrasing, rhythm, cadence, which, from your infancy through today, you have known of and associated with being literally meaningful language.

III.i. Your instant and triggered response is that something is being communicated, and that it has a highly specific and literal meaning -- though you haven't a clue of how to begin to make any literal sense out of it.
III.ii. At no time, anywhere in the world, will there ever appear a dictionary or lesson book on how to decipher, learn, or translate that unkown language you heard into any other verbal language.

I hope that covers it.


Best regards.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 25, 2016, 04:27:53 AM
III.ii. At no time, anywhere in the world, will there ever appear a dictionary or lesson book on how to decipher, learn, or translate that language you heard into any other verbal language.

But this is simply not true. I am sure that for whatever language I have never ever heard of, there is or there will be at least an English dictionary.

I don´t get your point.

Quote from: Florestan on January 25, 2016, 04:12:32 AM
My points exactly. And I would add that the differences, both in interpretation and listening preferences, are determined / influenced by factors which are not exclusively musical, as for instance personality, education, culture, age or, why not, even the momentary mood.

This is phallocentric and male chauvinist as all get out, but I just could not resist:

Moods are for girls. ~ Stravinsky.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 25, 2016, 04:49:49 AM
Moods are for girls. ~ Stravinsky.

He and his bon mots, again and again.  :D  ;D

Quote from: Florestan on January 25, 2016, 01:15:38 AM
References to, and comments about, music are scattered throughout his novels, most visibly in Point Counterpoint. His essay Music at Night is already a classic. You can read it here: https://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley/aldous-huxley-essays-music-at-night/
(https://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley/aldous-huxley-essays-music-at-night/)

Brilliant and penetrating analysis, although somewhat incomplete.

Romain Rolland received his doctoral degree with a thesis about opera before Lully and Scarlatti. He had a lifelong interest in the life and work of Beethoven and wrote extensively about them, including Beethoven´s biography. He published a book about Haendel and two collections of essyas about music and musicians, both past and contemporary. FWIW, Stefan Zweig in his memoirs writes that Rolland´s musical knowledge was fabulous, that he was familiar even with the most obscure works of, say, Galuppi and Telemann, not to mention more obscure composers and that he played the piano in the most intimate, delicate and communicative manner (Zweig goes even so far as to prefer Rolland´s playing to that of Max Reger, Busoni and Bruno Walter, whom he also knew personally and intimately).

As for Hesse, music plays an important role not only in The Glass Bead Game, but also in Steppenwolf, Gertrud and Journey to the East. It is obvious that Hesse, though not having any formal instruction in music (actually, he had rather little formal instruction in anything), had a deep and sustained interest in music and thinking about music.

Well, Stravinsky´s quote was about writers writing about music, not about the theory of music or about compositional techniques.

I presume that you mean the ideas about music and composition uttered by Adrian Leverkuhn, because those of Serenus Zeitblom or Wendell Kretzschmar are quite different. You said it yourself that they are actually Adorno´s. Therefore Stravinsky should have talked about philosophers not putting together two words about music without one being wrong (or whatever way he formulated it), but he'd still have been wrong because Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche wrote insightfully about music. I suspect that he would have rejected them, too, because apparently he had no use for any ideas but his own.

Thanks for the link to the Huxley essay. That other title is Point Counter Point, and nothing referring to "counterpoint."

Rolland and Hesse, perhaps thinking of their general readership, did assiduously avoid, at least, speaking of music other than in the very most general of terms. I never said they did not really know about music... where it seems Mann did not.

No matter how generally great a writer Mann was, I could not believe the reductive manner in which he wrote about musical procedures, of any kind, and all those passages on music in Doktor Faustus were, imo, so off the mark of what he was at least trying to do with them that I did actually find them inadvertently funny in what appeared to be their ignorance.

Yes, Stravinsky said a lot of things.  :laugh:

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 25, 2016, 05:15:08 AM
Thanks for the link to the Huxley essay. That other title is Point Counter Point, and nothing referring to counterpoint.

I did not mean the title. Music is refered to, and talked about, throughout the novel.

Quote
Rolland and Hesse [...] did assiduously avoid [...] speaking of music in the very most general of terms.

This is not what you actually wanted to say, I am sure.  :D

I don´t know what you mean by speaking of music in general terms. If one or more characters express their views about music, if music is a constant in their life and plays a major role in shaping their reactions and evolution, what else does one need? You surely don´t expect a bar-by-bar technical analysis of a specific piece of music, do you?

Quote
where it seems Mann did not.

No matter how generally great a writer Mann was, I could not believe the reductive manner in which he wrote about musical procedures, of any kind, and all those passages on music in Doktor Faustus were, imo, so off the mark of what he was at least trying to do with them that I did actually find them inadvertently funny in what appeared to be their ignorance.

Mann wrote an accompannying small book for Doktor Faustus, dealing exactly with its creative process and discussing at length the various influences he had. It´s called The Story of a Novel and might be of interest to you.

Quote
Yes, Stravinsky said a lot of things.  :laugh:

Indeed, a handbook case of si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.  ;D

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 24, 2016, 03:56:09 PM
"...music is a language. It is a system of communication that expresses ideas & emotions."

You're not the only one who seems entirely hung high up the wall on the hook of not realizing "Music is a language" is an analogy, which is precisely at the crux of what Some Guy has been purporting from the get go on this topic.

As if someone came away from reading the Gospel saying, "Jesus is a door. I've seen the jamb."

FWIW

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,54.msg698444.html#msg698444 (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,54.msg698444.html#msg698444)

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,54.msg698694.html#msg698694 (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,54.msg698694.html#msg698694)

So you see, it´s not only Berlioz...  ;D

Quote from: karlhenning on January 25, 2016, 06:57:19 AM
As if someone came away from reading the Gospel saying, "Jesus is a door. I've seen the jamb."

Quote from: Florestan on January 25, 2016, 05:40:32 AM
I did not mean the title. Music is referred to, and talked about, throughout the novel.

This is not what you actually wanted to say, I am sure.  :D

Actually I'm certain that is exactly what I wanted to say.:D

Quote from: Florestan on January 25, 2016, 05:40:32 AMI don´t know what you mean by speaking of music in general terms. If one or more characters express their views about music, if music is a constant in their life and plays a major role in shaping their reactions and evolution, what else does one need? You surely don´t expect a bar-by-bar technical analysis of a specific piece of music, do you?

One doesn't. I meant general as in really really vague, non-specific generalities, parallel to Proust's famous description of a violin sonata. I.e. something like, "it started out on a long held note, the piano playing slowly shifting harmonies shifting, adjective adjective, etc." The same can be said about any of the aesthetic opinions bantered about in Faustus. Once in a while in Faustus, there is something more Adorno essay like about some retro-political business of romantic music freeing the musicians and audience of the tyranny of the upper classes and the cognoscenti -- all rather laughable, as most sociopolitical commentary on music always strikes me.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 25, 2016, 07:17:04 PM
Once in a while in Faustus, there is something more Adorno essay like about some retro-political business of romantic music freeing the musicians and audience of the tyranny of the upper classes and the cognoscenti -- all rather laughable, as most sociopolitical commentary on music always strikes me.

Tyranny is not the right word --- servitude is more apt, but otherwise...

...is it not true that music´s social function was either entertainment for the upper classes or auxiliary to church service?

...is it not true that the social status of the musician was that of a liveried servant?

I´m not taling about the quality of the music of that era, which is beyond dispute, but about its ontological status.

Romanticism reacted to the situation by exalting music as the noblest and greatest of arts which should address and encompass all humanity and not only the happy few, and the musician as a free, creative personality not to be bound by any other allegiance than to himself and his art. Now, if this swing of the pendulum in the extreme opposite direction resulted in composing music of the same quality or higher than that of music previously composed, is of course a matter of taste, but one cannot deny that it was indeed a liberation, at least conceptually.

Quote from: some guy on January 25, 2016, 01:59:11 AM
The thing about "meaning" is that, for humans, it is mostly understood as a thing that has to do with language. When we talk about "meaning," we are more than likely talking about something expressible in words.

Um, no.

You are treating the vehicle of meaning we use, language, as if it's the source of meaning.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 25, 2016, 03:20:06 AM
Well, when a performer interprets a piece, there is no wrong interpretation...is there?

This is precisely what I asked about earlier.

Do you think changing the notes is a wrong interpretation? Do you think not following tempo markings is a wrong interpretation? Do you think not following dynamic markings is a wrong interpretation?

Do you think it's a wrong interpretation of your music if you can no longer recognise it as your music?

There is something in the French legal system, and gradually spreading to others, known as "moral rights". It's a kind of intellectual property that says that if your name is attached to a work - not just musical works, it applies to literary works and visual arts as well - then other people can't go taking your name off it or altering it, affecting its integrity.

If the notion of you being the composer is to have any meaning at all, it has to mean that there are parameters outside of which someone is no longer performing your work as it was intended to perform. That's the whole point of this thread, isn't it? Composer's intention.

If you don't actually have any intentions as to what is your piece and what is not your piece, you might as well not put your name to the piece in the first place. If there's no such thing as a wrong interpretation, then just throw something out there and let other people edit it and change it as they see fit.

I've been following this conversation with interest, but have so far not participtaed in it. It did prompt me to but a copy of Huxley's Music at night (hat tip to Florestan).

The point Orfeo mentions, nevertheless, I find rather intriguing. Although not strictly related to the music, this brings to mind a recent episode regarding Poulenc's Dialogues de Carmélites. IIRC, the heirs of Georges Bernanos (the author of the book on which the opera is based) managed to get a court injunction in France preventing a DVD of Dmitri Tcherniakov's Munich production of the work to be sold in France, as it "deviated too much" from the original (I think the nuns are killed by a bomb or something at the end, instead of being guillotined). My question, of course, is "who the hell are Bernanos's heirs--if it was them--to know what the author's intentions are, better than Tcherniakov or anyone else?". (N.B.: I don't care that much for other Tcherniakov stagings I've seen--and haven't seen this particular one) I think works of art have an independent life the exact moment they are handed over to the wider public, and it is up to the audiences to decide if what we are being given is good, bad or indifferent, and what it may mean to each and every one of us. What next? The heirs of Boulez, for instance, prohibiting pianist X's performance of the Second sonata because it's too slow?  ???

As for the initial theme of this thread, more and more I feel like Victor Hugo (not my favourite poet, mind you  :( ): "Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent", to which I would add "...while words cannot express what is put into music". Of course, it's not that easy, because we have program music, ballet, song, opera and all that, but still...

Cheers,

Quote from: ritter on January 26, 2016, 05:01:30 AM
"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent", to which I would add "and words cannot express what is put into music"

I think your addition is unnecessary, Rafael, since it is essentially Hugo's assertion phrased differently, both saying that music expresses what words cannot. Just saying.  8)

Not so sure, Karlo (and good day, btw  :) ). I think Hugo's original quote does no necessarily imply reciprocity, but well, I think you get my (or Hugo's  ;) ) point...

Over and out..off to the airport to fly to Berlin on business. I hope my obligatory late-night visit to Dussmann doesn't leave my finances trembling... :D

Cheers,

Quote from: ritter on January 26, 2016, 05:01:30 AM
The point Orfeo mentions, nevertheless, I find rather intriguing. Although not strictly related to the music, this brings to mind a recent episode regarding Poulenc's Dialogues de Carmélites. IIRC, the heirs of Georges Bernanos (the author of the book on which the opera is based) managed to get a court injunction in France preventing a DVD of Dmitri Tcherniakov's Munich production of the work to be sold in France, as it "deviated too much" from the original (I think the nuns are killed by a bomb or something at the end, instead of being guillotined). My question, of course, is "who the hell are Bernanos's heirs--if it was them--to know what the author's intentions are, better than Tcherniakov or anyone else?". (N.B.: I don't care that much for other Tcherniakov stagings I've seen--and haven't seen this particular one) I think works of art have an independent life the exact moment they are handed over to the wider public, and it is up to the audiences to decide if what we are being given is good, bad or indifferent, and what it may mean to each and every one of us. What next? The heirs of Boulez, for instance, prohibiting pianist X's performance of the Second sonata because it's too slow?  ???

There are heirs of certain artists who do in fact control material quite tightly.  One of the ones I'm aware of is the family of James Joyce, as Kate Bush was unable to get permission to use the words from one of his novels for a song, and so wrote her own version.

And there are other examples of estates who think that yes, they DO have control. And in fact intellectual property law frequently says that they do. Lovers of art may very well have romantic notions about how a work of art has an independent existence, but copyright law pretty much says otherwise. For 70 years after the creator's death, it's not in the public domain.

(I think 70 years is much too long, by the way. Should be more like 20 or 30.)

And if works of art have an independent life... then why do we keep on referring to their creators? In classical music we actually care more about that than in many other arts. Look at this forum. You will see the composer being used as the organising theme for discussion a heck of a lot. Moreso than the performer. I'd guess moreso than the subtype of music (opera, chamber, symphony etc.) as well.

As much as people seem to want to declare right now that the composer is finished and done with once the work is created, that isn't actually how people, including posters on this forum, behave.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 22, 2016, 06:03:01 PM
I got rhythm and played tennis with Mr. Schoenberg ~ Kyo Yoshida
https://www.youtube.com/v/16UmQ3tS82M

I think intention matched execution there.

Quote from: orfeo on January 26, 2016, 02:58:45 AM
Um, no.

You are treating the vehicle of meaning we use, language, as if it's the source of meaning.

I don't see anything in this to suggest that I'm talking about a source: "The thing about 'meaning' is that, for humans, it is mostly understood as a thing that has to do with language. When we talk about 'meaning,' we are more than likely talking about something expressible in words.

And, besides, the idea of language being a vehicle is not a universally accepted fact. Indeed, it is not a fact at all but a metaphor, metaphors being the principle means by which any new information is conveyed. (Even in a fairly abstract comment like the preceding, there's still metaphor: "means" and "conveyed," which are both references to a vehicle of some sort, a wheelbarrow if I had my way.)

There is an idea that meaning exists separate from language, that language carries those meanings from one person to another. I'm not a fan. Just as sounds create meanings by sounding, language creates meanings by combinations of words. But there we get into some pretty complicated and high-powered theoreticals, like meaning as it resides in words and the difference between that and the meaning that happens when syntax get in on the act. I'm pretty sure I'm not up for a wee wrangle about how language works.

Anyway, long story cut short, now that you mention it, I'm not at all sure that language as a source of meaning is all that far-fetched.

Quote from: Florestan on January 25, 2016, 01:15:38 AM
His essay [Huxley's] Music at Night is already a classic. You can read it here: https://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley/aldous-huxley-essays-music-at-night/
(https://danassays.wordpress.com/collected-essays-by-aldous-huxley/aldous-huxley-essays-music-at-night/)

On the critic, or anyone, naming 'the meaning' of a work of music....

"The limits of criticism are very quickly reached. When he has said "in his own words" as much, or rather as little, as "own words" can say, the critic can only refer his readers to the original work of art: let them go and see for themselves. Those who overstep the limit are either rather stupid, vain people, who love their "own words" and imagine that they can say in them more than "own words" are able in the nature of things to express. Or else they are intelligent people who happen to be philosophers or literary artists and who find it convenient to make the criticism of other men's work a jumping off place for their own creativity.

As much as Huxley says in his essay, the pith of what is under discussion and pertinent to the OP is here:

"What is true of painting is equally true of music. Music "says" things about the world, but in specifically musical terms. Any attempt to reproduce these musical statements "in our own words" is necessarily doomed to failure. We cannot isolate the truth contained in a piece of music; for it is a beauty-truth and inseparable from its partner. The best we can do is to indicate in the most general terms the nature of the musical beauty-truth under consideration and to refer curious truth-seekers to the original.

i.e. You just can not 'name' the content of a piece of music, and by extension, neither, really, can the composer. This ends up, full circle, a return to being left with the music itself as the only real statement of 'what it is about.'

Then close the forum.

 $:)

Quote from: orfeo on January 27, 2016, 09:56:42 PM
Then close the forum.

$:)


Well, maybe just this thread.... :laugh:

Re: Aldous Huxley

So, there is at least one literary man who put together two words about music without one of them being wrong. Ergo Stravinsky´s bon mot is disproved.

Quote from: orfeo on January 27, 2016, 09:56:42 PM
Then close the forum.

Well...that escalated quickly!

Quote from: orfeo on January 27, 2016, 09:56:42 PM
Then close the forum.

I am sure this in tongue-in-cheek, but it´s not that far off the mark actually. If the only way to talk about music is to remain silent and let the music speak for itself then this forum is essentially useless. ;D

Quote from: Florestan on January 28, 2016, 01:13:10 AM
I am sure this in tongue-in-cheek, but it´s not that far off the mark actually. If the only way to talk about music is to remain silent and let the music speak for itself then this forum is essentially useless. ;D

Well I kind of like to read what people write about music.....its enlightening! It would be such a shame to lose this place....I seem to be either hated or banned on other parts of the Internet's classical music scene. :(

Quote from: orfeo on January 27, 2016, 09:56:42 PM
Then close the forum.

Monsieur Croche being one of our more [garrulous/voluble/verbose] posters, he is the last person I could imagine wanting to close the forum.

Quote from: Florestan on January 28, 2016, 01:13:10 AM
I am sure this in tongue-in-cheek, but it´s not that far off the mark actually. If the only way to talk about music is to remain silent and let the music speak for itself then this forum is essentially useless. ;D

Well, yes, this is what I find bemusing. We're getting all these "conclusive" statements about the futility of talking about music... and the statements are in words.

Of course, a fair amount of stuff never rises above the level of "I like this" or "I don't like this", but at its heart this forum is people talking about music. Sometimes people are describing their reaction to music, but sometimes they're actually describing the music itself.

And we might as well close down all the review sites while we're at it. Heavens, on pop music sites, the reviewers are normally trying to describe new music, not just new performances.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 28, 2016, 02:56:47 AM
Monsieur Croche being one of our more [garrulous/voluble/verbose] posters, he is the last person I could imagine wanting to close the forum.

The irony of a verbose poster declaring how words weren't up to the task wasn't lost on me.

Quote from: orfeo on January 28, 2016, 03:22:18 AM
The irony of a verbose poster declaring how words weren't up to the task wasn't lost on me.

;D

Whoa

Quote from: karlhenning on January 28, 2016, 03:58:09 AM
Whoa

(Not a serious remark.)

Quote from: orfeo on January 28, 2016, 03:22:18 AM
Well, yes, this is what I find bemusing. We're getting all these "conclusive" statements about the futility of talking about music... and the statements are in words.

Um, we are getting nothing of the sort.

What we are getting is an attempt to distinguish between futile statements and useful ones.

Odd how that particular useful distinction is so roundly excoriated.

Quote from: orfeo on January 28, 2016, 03:22:18 AMThe irony of a verbose poster declaring how words weren't up to the task wasn't lost on me.

Words are up to some tasks and not up to other. Wisdom is being able to distinguish between the tasks language is up to and the ones it is not. As Mahler said, "I know, for my part, that as long as I am able to express my experience in words, I would never do so in music. My need to express myself musically, symphonically, begins only in the realm of obscure feelings, at the gate leading to the 'other world', where things are no longer destroyed by time and space."

Otherwise, at its most neutral, verbosity is an indication of amount, only. At its least neutral, its an insult. But even there, it's still only indicating amount, not the quality or the usefulness of the amount, nor--most importantly--of to what extent the words used are necessary for making whatever point is being made.

This isn't all that difficult a concept, is it?

Quote from: some guy on January 28, 2016, 07:43:30 AM
Mahler said, "I know, for my part, that as long as I am able to express my experience in words, I would never do so in music. My need to express myself musically, symphonically, begins only in the realm of obscure feelings, at the gate leading to the 'other world', where things are no longer destroyed by time and space."

While you´re at it, you might as well ponder these words of Anton Webern:

Tell me, can one at all denote thinking and feeling as things entirely separable? I cannot imagine a sublime intellect without the ardor of emotion. --- letter to Arnold Schoenberg

Except for the violin pieces and a few of my orchestra pieces, all of my works from the Passacaglia on relate to the death of my mother. --- letter to Alban Berg

Quote from: karlhenning on January 28, 2016, 03:58:23 AM
(Not a serious remark.)

I was just about to say, whoa, if people can't say what they want, well, that was the main point of those who recommended this forum to me... other than pointed rudeness, people can say what they want.

The irony of being verbose to plow through the density and resistance of the rest of the verbosity, to only conclude 'music can't say anything, ergo words can not name what it is saying' isn't lost on me, either, lol. [I counter-balance that by composing very few notes. -- That is a wholesale rationale, lol.]

Besides, it seems to be the age of first-world problem monumental butthurt, and infantile though that is, we all have to learn to deal with it or how to ignore it.

Music...can....say....anything.

Anything you want it to mean, any meaning you get out of it, it's all legit and can be expressed in words.

However, this shows the power of the human mind and human emotion. Music without anyone to interpret meaning from it is useless.

Quote from: some guy on January 28, 2016, 07:43:30 AM
Words are up to some tasks and not up to other. Wisdom is being able to distinguish between the tasks language is up to and the ones it is not.

This isn't all that difficult a concept, is it?

No. And this is a music forum. All other tasks besides talking about music aren't relevant to this forum. That isn't a difficult concept either.

While we're throwing quotes around, one of my favourites is "words are only pictures of ideas on paper".

Exploit material, discover procedures, reveal new structures, attain musicality.

Ahhhh, numbers, the letters of mathzzzzz.  :)

Quote from: Uhor on January 28, 2016, 05:11:25 PM
Exploit material, discover procedures, reveal new structures, attain musicality.

Welcome, O new member, your wisdom shall enlighten us all and bring this forum to new heights unforeseen on any Internet forum as of yet!

Me: Words are up to some tasks and not up to other. Wisdom is being able to distinguish between the tasks language is up to and the ones it is not.

This isn't all that difficult a concept, is it?

orfeo: No. And this is a music forum. All other tasks besides talking about music aren't relevant to this forum. That isn't a difficult concept either.

Me: The debate about language and how it and music are related has been going on for some time, now. You are just now noticing something about relevance?

In any event, the context has for some time now been what kinds of talking about music are useful and illuminating and what kinds of talking are silly and pointless. So the tasks, for the purpose of this discussion, are entirely about music.

Not that I agree with your attempt to be the one to determine relevance. Why, you have yourself talked about biography and politics and art (painting) and nature and philosophy and emotions--on this very thread as ever it is--have you not? Is it because when you talk about other things besides music, that's relevant, but if I do it, it's not?

 ::)

I can't say I care much what the composer's intention was; which is why I enjoy HIP at times but am not wedded to it.

I see music as a partnership between the composer / conductor / performers / listeners.

Whoever does the combination best gets my money. Which is why I love Klemperer for my Beethoven Symphonies.

Quote from: TonyACT on January 30, 2016, 02:53:34 AM
I can't say I care much what the composer's intention was....

I see music as a partnership between the composer / conductor / performers / listeners.

Bless you -- you brought the listener into the equation as an equally responsible partner in this business equation.

That elicits an equally important question,
? What is the listener's intention ?

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 30, 2016, 04:24:37 AM
? What is the listener's intention ?

Well, you can start by answering it yourself. What is your intention when listening to music?

Quote from: Florestan on January 30, 2016, 04:56:39 AM
Well, you can start by answering it yourself. What is your intention when listening to music?

I can not think to put it any better than I put it before.

Listen to hear what it is.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 30, 2016, 05:25:51 AM
Listen to hear what it is.

And what is it that you hear?

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 30, 2016, 04:24:37 AM
Bless you -- you brought the listener into the equation as an equally responsible partner in this business equation.

That elicits an equally important question,
? What is the listener's intention ?

::) I brought the listener into the equation pages ago.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 30, 2016, 06:10:05 AM
::) I brought the listener into the equation pages ago.

Maybe no one was listening.

Listeners were formally invited into the process about 60 years ago. 63.

Basically that invitation really really really pissed people off.

It's funny. Listeners are considered to be simultaneously nothing, at least as far as the whole creative process is concerned, and the ultimate lords of judgment, of taste and discrimination, with composers and performers in an also double (as in contradictory) role, that of the lords who make all of this possible and of servants to the all-puissant listeners, they who must be obeyed.

I guess being invited to participate in the creative process is not lordly enough. Or maybe, to continue the contradictions, too lordly. That is, both too lordly and not lordly enough, at one and the same time.

Be a lot more sensible to have a situation in which there are no contradictions, but I don't really see that happening, not in my lifetime, anyway. Following the simple outline as limned by M. Croche would usher in the millenium, it's true, but how many people are going to be able to follow it? Willing, I should say, eh?

Quote from: orfeo on January 28, 2016, 03:22:18 AM


The irony of a verbose poster declaring how words weren't up to the task wasn't lost on me.

If you don't relish being dealt with in this way, and I rather think you don't, then it is best to be more temperate.

Knight

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 24, 2016, 12:27:38 PMI think music is more of an art form and less of a language. In order for music to exist, there must be someone to organise/hear certain sounds in a composition/improvisation. There are no set 'rules' for composition and anyone can come to their own legitimate conclusion about a piece in which way a day to day conversation doesn't (because 99% of the time 'would you care for some tea?' means 'would you care for some tea?'). One could argue that music came from certain rules.....but these were very very different in different cultures and at different times. Language, that is, verbal and written communication, does have rules which change over time based on human interaction within and between different cultures over time. Rules can be bent and broken to hold different connotations or in poetry and other literary forms, or in slang and other informal contexts, but the primary goal for language, unlike music, is that if it doesn't hold an explicit meaning there are certainly implicit meanings present.

It is an art form, and there is a big interaction between performers and audience .. or even between musicians  .. but there is a personal handling of a vocabulary that is developed from musician to musician. And it is a system of communication (the basis of all language) .. that expresses ideas (musical or otherwise), .. and emotions too, oh yes .. anyone who sings or plays knows that.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 24, 2016, 03:56:09 PM"Music is a language. It is a system of communication that expresses ideas & emotions." This is a completely insupportable statement unless it is meant to be understood as an analogy.

Music isn't talking or writing in common tongue so to speak .. but it is it's own language. It most certainly is it's own system of communication. And for damn certain it does communicate ideas and emotions. Only a severely short-sighted person would say otherwise, or that it is "insupportable".

Now that Monsieur Croche and some guy have given us the nec plus ultra of the listener´s intention, let´s hear some of the performer´s intention.

Pianist Paul Badura-Skoda says:

Like in poetry, like in writing, that's something we really cannot tell how that happens.  You are just moved by a phrase of Mozart or by a phrase of Schubert.  You can analyze it; you can say, "It's very well constructed.  Here it's first, fourth, fifth step."  But that doesn't explain the miracle of it; you are just moved.  And why?  Here I disagree heartily with those who try to minimize Mozart the man, because Mozart the man was so great; same with Bach.  He had to say something.  And as my teacher Edwin Fischer pointed out, Mozart's music is love.  That's the way I feel about it.  If a person writes music with a great knowledge and a great artistry, but if there's no love, no urge to communicate something which is more than just the notes, I cannot be moved.

I feel that we had a certain generation of younger pianists — I'm just past sixty, so everybody who is less than fifty is younger — who perhaps emphasize too much what we would call the technical perfection, something of course we all strive to attain.  But there is limit to what every human being can do, and if you put all your energy in the so-called technical perfection not to miss one note, and to practice and to practice, then you might miss the beauty of a phrase. Let's recall another great name — Artur Schnabel.  Sometimes there were plenty of wrong notes.  Or Alfred Cortot, the greatest Chopin player.  Horowitz agrees with me; he loved Cortot.  I met Horowitz last year.  So if you take these players with all the wrong notes they give you, sometimes it becomes more than those who play no wrong notes.  But I feel that there is a younger generation coming back, as a reaction who try again to understand what is beauty, what is poetry.  You might find it interesting that the word beauty is hardly ever mentioned in reviews or in writings about music — or has not been in the last ten or twenty years.


First of all, you must convince [the students] that the printed music as such is not the only thing, that it was preceded by manuscripts, by sketches, by sometimes a very tedious work in process.  I'm thinking of Beethoven, but Chopin also had a very, very hard time to come to the so-called definite version.  I let them share the excitement of creation.  I let them write their own cadenzas and sometimes improvise on the spot.  At the beginning they are terribly timid about it, but they learn; some of them learn, and some are a little bit too inhibited about it. In order to understand the composers' lives, they need to understand their joys and their sufferings, their happy and unhappy loves, and to share the life with the composer. This helps them to become a friend.

RTWT here: http://www.bruceduffie.com/badura-skoda.html (http://www.bruceduffie.com/badura-skoda.html)

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 24, 2016, 03:56:09 PMListening to music evokes thoughts in the listener which are nowhere present in either the written score or in any performance of that score, and that is where people are soooo frequently mistaken if they take the Music Is Language analogy literally. If mistaken, they can believe a completely abstract, or absolute, piece of music has a very specific and literal meaning.

This is a very, very wrong interpretation of what I was meaning! And we're writing in the English language, never mind a musical language! ;D

The fact that there there is a written something, that someone else reads, learns and then delivers (performs) to others (who receive & listen to it) - ITSELF, proves my point! It is a system of communication that expresses ideas and emotions between people.

There is also a large intellectual (thoughts/ideas) and emotional investment in learning, writing and performing music too. Can all of that be interpreted literally - not really, it's more abstract, but it certainly exists. As if literal interpretation or literal meaning solely defines what a language is to begin with! A language is really about communicating.

Quote from: knight66 on January 30, 2016, 09:14:41 AM
If you don't relish being dealt with in this way, and I rather think you don't, then it is best to be more temperate.

Knight

I'd rather get in trouble for my own ideas, rather than for when I echo another poster's remark as I did here.

Quote from: ComposerOfAvantGarde on January 24, 2016, 12:27:38 PMbut the primary goal for language, unlike music, is that if it doesn't hold an explicit meaning there are certainly implicit meanings present.

Musical language is really no different in those regards though, you can get that range. But we shouldn't pin things down to certain words. Bottom line is, the true primary goal of any language at the end of the day is to communicate & express ideas and emotions to each other. The language that is music, certainly does this, and that is it's primary goal I'd say.

Sometimes the notes come first, and the intention clarifies afterwards.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 30, 2016, 05:06:02 PM
Sometimes the notes come first, and the intention clarifies afterwards.

Absolutely spot on. :)

Arguably, we then entertain chicken-or-the-egg speculation ....

Ha, indeed! However I do believe it would differ from piece to piece, composer to composer, listener to listener. :)

Quote from: karlhenning on January 30, 2016, 05:06:02 PM
Sometimes the notes come first, and the intention clarifies afterwards.

And people most definitely have been known to start speaking before they've figured out where the train of thought is heading.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 30, 2016, 06:21:02 AM
Maybe no one was listening.

Zing! ;) ;D But so true.

Quote from: Mirror Image on January 30, 2016, 06:10:05 AM
::) I brought the listener into the equation pages ago.

Pardon me. Of course it is by nature a two way street. I must have been out of the room on a bathroom break.  :)

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 30, 2016, 08:50:32 PM
Pardon me. Of course it is by nature a two way street. I must have been out of the room on a bathroom break.  :)

:)

Quote from: karlhenning on January 30, 2016, 05:06:02 PM
Sometimes the notes come first, and the intention clarifies afterwards.

Funny, innit... that is about as antithetical as it gets compared to intention, speech, or written speech.

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on January 30, 2016, 08:58:39 PM
Funny, innit... that is about as antithetical as it gets compared to intention, speech, or written speech.

I believe what Karl and Jessop mean is that intentions shift and evolve during the course of writing a piece, often changing as a result of putting down some notes and seeing them suggest new and unanticipated directions. Here musical composition is no different from producing a written work.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 30, 2016, 09:19:39 PM
I believe what Karl and Jessop mean is that intentions shift and evolve during the course of writing a piece, often changing as a result of putting down some notes and seeing them suggest new and unanticipated directions. Here musical composition is no different from producing a written work.

Quote from: karlhenning on January 30, 2016, 05:06:02 PM
Sometimes the notes come first, and the intention clarifies afterwards.

I wholly agree. Perhaps it is the more genius [and formalist] type who has a very clear idea and in a very straight line directly realizes it, while even from those greats generally called 'genius,' we have surviving sketches and drafts showing that once started they too often had to work their way through.

I do think for many others the idea is first at best nebulous, the setting down to work upon and realize it then becomes initial steps in better clarifying 'what it is.' Within that working context what comes out can seem, even to the maker, a bit accidental [where it is really from their subconscious.] Once in front of them, seen and known, those essays further help them direct the shape and content.

Rautavarra, as well as numbers of other artists, believe that whatever they make. the work itself is an entity, i.e. it is a preexisting thing not yet known to the public which the composer then realizes. This is within the realm of mysticism, i.e. 'artist as oracle / mere vessel,' etc. The process of idea and these uncertain and 'accidental' steps in first working upon it making clearer what that idea is and 'how it should be' has this in the area of the ineffable when it comes to questions about intent and/or 'where it comes from.'

Yes, but your mistake is in thinking this is somehow antithetical to speech or the written word. It isn't. Ideas expressed in language don't spring fully formed into the world, either. When people do speak off the cuff they often ramble all over the place, and don't express their thoughts clearly.  Off the cuff speech isn't at all crafted like an essay, in exactly the same way that vague doodling on a piano isn't crafted like a finished composition.

In the forum, it's one reason we have an 'Edit' button.

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on January 30, 2016, 09:19:39 PM
I believe what Karl and Jessop mean is that intentions shift and evolve during the course of writing a piece, often changing as a result of putting down some notes and seeing them suggest new and unanticipated directions. Here musical composition is no different from producing a written work.

Quite true, but also at the very beginning of a composition, and perhaps even up until the very end, all intentions that a composer has mey very well just be entirely about the organisation of sounds themselves. A few pieces I've written I've come up with my own little programmatic storyline (very private stuff, I won't share them here) years after the last note was written on paper. Some other pieces may have been simply inspired by something like artworks by Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely, but the translation from image to sound is something I come up with purely in my own mind with the final product (the complete composition) being an arrangement of pitches and rhythms and dynamics for various instruments.

'Pitches and rhythms and dynamics' for various instruments (or things that can produce sound) can exist in a world where there are no sentient beings to make sense of it, but it's the sentient beings that are the ones who ultimately classify it as 'music' and respond, react, come up with extramusical elements and so on. It's us humans who are truly the magicians when it comes to sound, the organisations of such sounds, what we intend to do with them and how we intend to present them.

How very odd that the response to suggestions for how to begin to think about something differently is to call it a nec plus ultra. I guess that's what you call a preemptive strike, eh?

Anyway, it's clear that the idea that music is a language is not going to just go away. Music and language do share certain characteristics, or at least seem to do so. The thing about language is that it's our primary means of communication. We use it to talk about everything, love, sticks, neighborhoods, chess, politics, painting, language. The latter can become quite an enjoyable pastime. If you're into that kind of thing.

And anything that communicates or appears to communicate is going to very naturally seem like language, which is our principal mode of communicating or appearing to communicate. So what more sensible than to use language metaphors to describe things that are not language. And what more natural than to forget that those metaphors are metaphors and start using them as if they were literal. That happens all the time.

That's all pretty innocent. But there's a dark side to the music as language or music as communication model--look at where it most often comes up. Exactly, in conversations about new music. And what is the conclusion? That new music doesn't communicate, or doesn't communicate as well, or is not interested in communicating. That the latter might be a positive thing is very difficult to argue, especially if the prevailing assumption is that the main purpose of creating music is to communicate something.

The second most frequent come upping is in conversations about emotion, I'd say, where since music makes one feel emotions, it must be like language, which also makes one feel emotions. And here that arguments that music is not a language seem to be attacking the very foundation of emotional reality. Well, they do nothing of the sort, but whaddayagonnado? As for the purpose of music is to cause those emotions, well, since humans are emotional beings, almost anything will elicit an emotional response, kittens, rainbows, murder victims, rocks, meadows, arguments, and so forth.

We should really have spent some time at the beginning of this thread thinking about "intention," should we not? :)

Quote from: some guy on January 31, 2016, 01:07:22 AM
That new music doesn't communicate, or doesn't communicate as well, or is not interested in communicating. That the latter might be a positive thing is very difficult to argue, especially if the prevailing assumption is that the main purpose of creating music is to communicate something.

Well, the purpose of music is a whole thread in itself, and I would say different music has different purposes. But I freely confess to wondering why I, as a listener, should bother with music that is not interested in communicating (or rather, was composed by someone who is not interested in communicating).

It's not a difficult thing to argue merely because of "prevailing assumptions", it's a difficult thing to argue because it is difficult to see what value such music is going to have to anyone other than the composer. No doubt the composer gets satisfaction out of the exercise, but the other several billion people on the planet might say, somewhat selfishly, that it's actually their satisfaction that is going to make the music last.

I think previously I referred to the idea of such music as "intellectual wankery". I stand by that remark. People are free to compose purely for their own desire to do so, but then is there any need to have it performed? If the composer has no interest in having the music engage with anyone else, the score can be filed in the drawer once it is finished.

Indeed, there's at least an argument that writing a score is unnecessary. I've written or half-written over 100 songs in my head, and I can play many of them in my brain fairly easily. For my own purposes, producing a score or even a chord chart is an unnecessary and difficult chore. The only reason I've ever wrestled with that task is so that other people can hear the music that's already in my head.

In other words, perhaps the purpose of music isn't communicating, but I would argue the purpose of writing it down is.

I understand that attitude and I know there have been some composers who one feels are deliberately alienating the listner. But art is often larger/deeper/wider than what the artist consciously puts into their work. Someone who is seemingly writing just for himself or herself may inadvertantly be speaking to quite an audience.

The composer can only convey their intent by notation; how that is conveyed and what people pull out of it are very different stories. If that was not so, we could all live with one performance of each piece.

Mike

One could, of course, just as easily propose writing stories or composing speeches purely for one's own purposes. Without any intention of communicating. For the sheer love of crafting beautiful phrases.

There is nothing special about music in that respect.

Quote from: orfeo on January 31, 2016, 04:09:33 AM
One could, of course, just as easily propose writing stories or composing speeches purely for one's own purposes. Without any intention of communicating. For the sheer love of crafting beautiful phrases.

There is nothing special about music in that respect.

Yep...or about painting, or sculpture, or poetry, or architeture...I really don't see why music is more "communicative" or more of a "language" than any of the other fine arts...

Quote from: ritter on January 31, 2016, 05:25:06 AM
I really don't see why music is more "communicative" or more of a "language" than any of the other fine arts...

It is nearer to language than some in that it is time-based, and sound-based. The idea of a sequence is something that music shares with language, and is the reason why terms like "phrase" get employed in music.

Quote from: orfeo on January 31, 2016, 05:33:42 AM
It is nearer to language than some in that it is time-based, and sound-based. The idea of a sequence is something that music shares with language, and is the reason why terms like "phrase" get employed in music.

Well, the term "colour" is used as well in music, and that does not mean that music is nearer to painting, either.

More and more, I get the impression that when people want the composer "to say" something through music, it's acually that they want him  to have said what they want to hear. The composer writes a piece, and IMHO that's all he has to say. How we, the audience, enjoy it, interpret it, or whatever, is entirely up to us. And God knows there's pleanty of composers whose music "tells us" (probably differently to each one of us) things that are miles away, and infinitely more palatable, than what they actually said in speach (or writing). 

Quote from: orfeo on January 31, 2016, 03:43:55 AMBut I freely confess to wondering why I, as a listener, should bother with music that is not interested in communicating (or rather, was composed by someone who is not interested in communicating).

Ah. Maybe a question would be in order, here. How do you know? If you use this as a criterion for bothering or not, and the "this" is unknown, or unknowable, then you're in a bit quandry here, no?

In any case, for the sake of argument, let's say that you do know, somehow, that a composer is not interested in communicating. Why then did that composer write music? Why did that composer get it performed? Why did a record company record it or a concert organization program it so that you even have a choice of bothering or not? Perhaps there are other reasons besides "communicating" for making music.

Quote from: orfeo on January 31, 2016, 03:43:55 AMIt's not a difficult thing to argue merely because of "prevailing assumptions", it's a difficult thing to argue because it is difficult to see what value such music is going to have to anyone other than the composer.

Well, if it gets recorded, commercially, which is probably the only way it will be available for you to decide whether to bother or not, then at the very least it is easy to see that some people--business people, some of them--have found it easy to see what value such music has.

Quote from: orfeo on January 31, 2016, 03:43:55 AMNo doubt the composer gets satisfaction out of the exercise, but the other several billion people on the planet might say, somewhat selfishly, that it's actually their satisfaction that is going to make the music last.

Somewhat?

Anyway, it doesn't take all several billion of them to make any music last, only a few thousand, maybe even only a few hundred. How many Cindy Lauper fans were there? Or Paula Abdul fans? And has that music lasted? I wonder, anyway, if you yourself even believe what you just said, or if you just said it in the heat of argument. Customer satisfaction is what makes music last? I wonder.

Quote from: orfeo on January 31, 2016, 03:43:55 AMI think previously I referred to the idea of such music as "intellectual wankery". I stand by that remark.

I'm sure you do.

Quote from: orfeo on January 31, 2016, 03:43:55 AMPeople are free to compose purely for their own desire to do so, but then is there any need to have it performed? If the composer has no interest in having the music engage with anyone else, the score can be filed in the drawer once it is finished.

Interest in having the music engage with someone else is something every composer always wants, Mike's comment notwithstanding. (No one has ever set out to deliberately alienate "the listener"--for one, "the listener" is a chimera, for two, every composer has listeners. Maybe you or you or you aren't in the group of listeners for any given piece or any given composer, but your individual absence from a group does not mean that the group does not exist. I'm not in the group for Shakira's music. Can I at all seriously say that Shakira is deliberately alienating me? Shakira doesn't even know me!)

Quote from: orfeo on January 31, 2016, 03:43:55 AMThe only reason I've ever wrestled with that task is so that other people can hear the music that's already in my head.

Yes, humans are social animals.

Quote from: orfeo on January 31, 2016, 03:43:55 AMIn other words, perhaps the purpose of music isn't communicating, but I would argue the purpose of writing it down is.

The reason for composing is to make interesting sounds and combinations of sounds. Given how humans are constituted (social animals, for example), if a sound or a combination of sounds is interesting to one person, odds are that it will be interesting to other persons. Stands to reason.

I don't write novels in order to make contact with other people. Going to bars is way more efficient. But while I'm writing, and once one of those things is done, I do bug a few people to read the things. Some people I don't even have to bug. ;D But most of the people who would end up reading them, if that ever happens, are going to be people I don't know and whom I will never meet. So if my purpose was to make contact with them in a way that I would benefit, socially, then that purpose would be a big fail, eh? Royalties are certainly beneficial, but that hardly counts, does it?, not for this conversation.

No, my purpose is to put words together in interesting combinations. And odds are, if those combinations seem interesting to me, they'll seem interesting to other people. Some of those people are people I know, but most of them, eventually, will not be. But, odds are, I will keep on doing it. (If you go to Paralelni Polis around 20h on 4 May, you can hear some of those words, too, plus some really smashing music. Because one of my novels has been turned into an opera by someone who thought those words were interesting.)

To my mind, Aaron Copland said it best:

Quote from: Aaron Copland: What To Listen For In Music"The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.'"

Quote from: knight66 on January 31, 2016, 03:53:58 AM
[...] But art is often larger/deeper/wider than what the artist consciously puts into their work.

Very true.

Quote from: orfeo on January 31, 2016, 03:43:55 AM
I freely confess to wondering why I, as a listener, should bother with music that is not interested in communicating (or rather, was composed by someone who is not interested in communicating).

Oh, please, pray tell us just exactly how you can tell the music, or the composer, is ''not interested in communicating.''

BTW, it was somewhere around the last quarter of the last century when copyright law [U.S. anyway,] was changed to allow a sound recording to obtain copyright; prior that, the only way to obtain copyright was by submitting written score.
The effected change of law was spearheaded by those composers of the Darmstadt group who had to make extensive graphic scores of electronic pieces that had been realized on tape in order to secure copyright.
Writing it down is no longer the only way to 'demonstrate' or realize an intent that you want others to hear your piece.[/u]


Best regards.