Recently, a discussion here seemed to uncover some level of disagreement over what parts of a musical work are intrinsic, and which are up to the will of a performer. It is certainly true that works from different eras, or even from the same era, will have different kinds of intrinsic features, or levels to which those features inhere in a given work.
I'll be opening up the discussion here to others to give their own ideas about what constitutes a piece of music, which pieces they consider interesting border cases, and so forth.
Once any text, or any creation of any kind, is made public, anyone can interpret it in any way they want. Of course, some interpretations may be informed by various evidences in various different ways and some might be a massively different reworking of the original creation whereby new ideas are applied to suit the visions of others.
Each and every interpretative vision for any creation will always have value and meaning to at least a few people in the world. When it comes to music, I find that some performers make a better case for their interpretation than others when it comes down to how they play a piece. Perhaps it's because there is a certain consistent logic, or some kind of consistent rhetoric in he performance. Rhetoric is probably a better word here....if an interpretation doesn't present a unique and convincing rhetoric then I end up losing faith in what the performers are doing. This rhetoric could be anything, like how does a performer make a point of particular motifs, perhaps tempo relations and evocations of different moods based on how that works with the structure of a composition, how they use these aspects of interpretation to create a cohesive whole that might build some overall tension that is resolved later on (depending on the work) and so on.
Sometimes an interpretation that does something wildly different to the source material can have an interesting and convincing rhetoric. What happens if you set the bizarre world of the Magic Flute in some equally bizarre extra-terrestrial location complete with zany aliens and new text, new jokes to match? That isn't even the craziest thing someone could do differently, but when I watched a production of that on YouTube there was a compelling enough rhetoric to make it feel cohesive and sensible....sensibly silly, I should probably say.
What if an interpretation fails to convince me? Most likely, I haven't made a connection with the interpretative rhetoric of the performer, or perhaps the rhetoric is based on information that I consider to be flawed based on my own research and understanding. Perhaps there's no real rhetoric there and the performers are just going through the motions ad playing each note without any care for the music, although this seems unlikely.
Basically, I don't think there's anything intrinsic about any particular composition. Always question the score, come up with your own conclusions, perform it accordingly. The score ain't some kind of holy relic, it's just some dots and lines and a few words to help musicians get some idea of what they might like to do, and when they do something interesting and with a lot of purpose to it, then anyone can come along and hear it, enjoy it and derive their own meaning from it.
Conversely, no matter how good or bad the interpretation may be, if we no longer recognise the source material then it ceases to be that source material. 8)
Alright I've come up with another idea as I was leaving the house (damn, I am running late but oh well).
Say there is a performance of Mahler 6th symphony and all the notes are followed closely but there is an almost complete disregard for the orchestral balance and colours that Mahler indicated in the score as well as smothering contrapuntal features of the music and also almost a complete disregard for other expressive and tempo markings besides the ones at the start of each movement.
Another performance of Mahler's 6th follows everything that Mahler wrote in the score and makes a point of deriving certain effects of orchestration, phrasing, tempo and combining them all together in a traditionally expressive way as we would associate with Mahler's music....but.....instead of playing all the correct notes, one third of the time the pitches are played as Mahler wrote them, another third of the time the pitches are a semitone too high and another third of the the time the pitches are a semitone too low, all at the discretion of the individual musicians of the orchestra. This takes away from the the harmonic and tonal aspects of the work and even impacts the kinds of orchestral colours Mahler gets from parallel doublings of instruments even if the melodic contour is always kept intact.
The question is: when we ignore whether these are interpretations we personally like or not, which interpretation of Mahler 6 is recognisably closer to Mahler 6 as we would expect to hear it?
I have a hunch that most people will say the former is closer to Mahler 6 than the latter only because the music we listen to is from a culture that has been so systematically evolving around pitch that it's more difficult to hear and recognise music based on rhythms or colours or any other pattern that is unique to any composition. This is probably closest the idea of an element of western classical music that is intrinsic to almost all compositions in terms of how we listen to them. I would say this is an unconscious bias more than anything.
Personally, I find this to be an interesting topic but maybe others simply don't...........
I find it interesting. It is just others do a better job of expressing my ideas than I do.
Thanks for the responses so far.
Quote from: jessop on May 01, 2018, 03:57:12 AM
Personally, I find this to be an interesting topic but maybe others simply don't...........
I was hoping, given that this is a more generalized version of a topic that generated a good deal of interest, it would spark some discussion.
Quote from: jessop on April 30, 2018, 02:09:20 PM
Once any text, or any creation of any kind, is made public, anyone can interpret it in any way they want. Of course, some interpretations may be informed by various evidences in various different ways and some might be a massively different reworking of the original creation whereby new ideas are applied to suit the visions of others.
Yeah, I go along with that.
Don't know if this is the type of response being sought, but speaking only for myself if i have a photo in a gallery then it's out of my hands. People can interpret however they want. More, it's none of my business.
But the same photo in a different forum - say, a message board - where there can be ongoing input from myself or someone else directly connected with it is then a different matter.
Quote from: jessop on April 30, 2018, 02:09:20 PMBasically, I don't think there's anything intrinsic about any particular composition. Always question the score, come up with your own conclusions, perform it accordingly. The score ain't some kind of holy relic, it's just some dots and lines and a few words to help musicians get some idea of what they might like to do, and when they do something interesting and with a lot of purpose to it, then anyone can come along and hear it, enjoy it and derive their own meaning from it.
Conversely, no matter how good or bad the interpretation may be, if we no longer recognise the source material then it ceases to be that source material. 8)
What you mean to say is, I assume, that there are no specific elements that are intrinsic to a given composition. One may change this or that element without changing its identity. It's the paradox of the heap (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/), in that some undefined number of changes would have to be made to the text to make it no longer the text.
Extreme changes to one element or another can vastly distort the whole, however.
How faithfully can we say this replicates Beethoven's work, for example?
https://www.youtube.com/v/hoINrtIWpTA
In a different sense, how about this?
https://www.youtube.com/v/6z4KK7RWjmk
Quote from: NikF on May 01, 2018, 05:41:42 AM
Yeah, I go along with that.
Don't know if this is the type of response being sought, but speaking only for myself if i have a photo in a gallery then it's out of my hands. People can interpret however they want. More, it's none of my business.
But the same photo in a different forum - say, a message board - where there can be ongoing input from myself or someone else directly connected with it is then a different matter.
This strikes me as a different meaning of interpretation from what is meant when referring to music. You are talking about a matter of reception, rather than presentation.
Some terms become less meaningful if you try to define them with too much detail. Music is one.
To my way of thinking "music" is a artistically conceived series of sounds (usually physical, possibly imagined), it is something that unfolds in time. That is an essential part of it.
A score is a prescription for making music, I wouldn't consider it music, per se. In an similar way, I'd say that an audio file is not music, but music is produced when it is fed into an appropriate playback technology.
I think it is still reasonable to say, for instance, "Beethoven wrote music" because to my way of thinking, the music was unfolding in his mind before he notated it.
I don't think there is such a thing as an "invalid" performance. There are those where the performer makes a point of trying to re-create the performance that the composer intended, and there are those where the performer looks for the "spirit" of the work. Both can result in very satisfactory or very unsatisfactory results, depending on the skill of the performer and the taste of the listener.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 05:29:18 AM
Thanks for the responses so far.
I was hoping, given that this is a more generalized version of a topic that generated a good deal of interest, it would spark some discussion.
Yes, for my part I know this is a very complex area, it involves problematic ideas like vague objects and nominalism. I just don't have the time to think about it today or tomorrow, later in the week maybe.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 08:05:51 AM
Some terms become less meaningful if you try to define them with too much detail. Music is one.
To my way of thinking "music" is a artistically conceived series of sounds (usually physical, possibly imagined), it is something that unfolds in time. That is an essential part of it.
A score is a prescription for making music, I wouldn't consider it music, per se. In an similar way, I'd say that an audio file is not music, but music is produced when it is fed into an appropriate playback technology.
I think it is still reasonable to say, for instance, "Beethoven wrote music" because to my way of thinking, the music was unfolding in his mind before he notated it.
Can an algorithm write music, then? It has no awareness of the sounds it is producing, and yet what it produces is undeniably music unless one requires that human agency be involved at the composition stage.
I agree that neither scores nor sound files are music (scores represent music, sound files contain performances of music). But we are not trying to define music in the abstract. We are discussing the boundaries of musical works.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 08:05:51 AMI don't think there is such a thing as an "invalid" performance. There are those where the performer makes a point of trying to re-create the performance that the composer intended, and there are those where the performer looks for the "spirit" of the work. Both can result in very satisfactory or very unsatisfactory results, depending on the skill of the performer and the taste of the listener.
Surely you would agree that some performances better reflect the work than others. Put the composer's intentions aside. We are talking about the work itself (as far as it can be ascertained), not what the composer was thinking about when he or she wrote it. After all, there can certainly be things in a work that the composer did not consciously put there.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 08:52:03 AM
Can an algorithm write music, then? It has no awareness of the sounds it is producing, and yet what it produces is undeniably music unless one requires that human agency be involved at the composition stage.
Yes, an algorithm can produce music, although probably the creator of the algorithm encoded his or her musical ideas into the algorithm. Mozart created a game where music could be "written" by rolling dice, I think.
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Surely you would agree that some performances better reflect the work than others. Put the composer's intentions aside. We are talking about the work itself (as far as it can be ascertained), not what the composer was thinking about when he or she wrote it. After all, there can certainly be things in a work that the composer did not consciously put there.
I'm not very comfortable with "better reflect the work than others." Certainly limitations of technical ability will prevent a performance from reflecting the work, but I consider the quality of a performance to be otherwise subjective.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 09:15:39 AMYes, an algorithm can produce music, although probably the creator of the algorithm encoded his or her musical ideas into the algorithm. Mozart created a game where music could be "written" by rolling dice, I think.
Then the music unfolding in Beethoven's mind is irrelevant to whether or not he was writing music. All that it takes is getting one's ideas into a format which can represent music or a performance thereof.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 09:15:39 AMI'm not very comfortable with "better reflect the work than others." Certainly limitations of technical ability will prevent a performance from reflecting the work, but I consider the quality of a performance to be otherwise subjective.
How well do you think the Cobra Beethoven 9 represents the work?
Quote from: jessop on April 30, 2018, 02:46:48 PM
Alright I've come up with another idea as I was leaving the house (damn, I am running late but oh well).
Say there is a performance of Mahler 6th symphony and all the notes are followed closely but there is an almost complete disregard for the orchestral balance and colours that Mahler indicated in the score as well as smothering contrapuntal features of the music and also almost a complete disregard for other expressive and tempo markings besides the ones at the start of each movement.
Another performance of Mahler's 6th follows everything that Mahler wrote in the score and makes a point of deriving certain effects of orchestration, phrasing, tempo and combining them all together in a traditionally expressive way as we would associate with Mahler's music....but.....instead of playing all the correct notes, one third of the time the pitches are played as Mahler wrote them, another third of the time the pitches are a semitone too high and another third of the the time the pitches are a semitone too low, all at the discretion of the individual musicians of the orchestra. This takes away from the the harmonic and tonal aspects of the work and even impacts the kinds of orchestral colours Mahler gets from parallel doublings of instruments even if the melodic contour is always kept intact.
The question is: when we ignore whether these are interpretations we personally like or not, which interpretation of Mahler 6 is recognisably closer to Mahler 6 as we would expect to hear it?
I have a hunch that most people will say the former is closer to Mahler 6 than the latter only because the music we listen to is from a culture that has been so systematically evolving around pitch that it's more difficult to hear and recognise music based on rhythms or colours or any other pattern that is unique to any composition. This is probably closest the idea of an element of western classical music that is intrinsic to almost all compositions in terms of how we listen to them. I would say this is an unconscious bias more than anything.
Why do I get the impression that the subtext of this is Karajan's detested recording of the 6th.
And your hypothetical performance of Mahler 6th with notes randomly altered by a semitone would be recognizably less close to Mahler 6 by basically every human on earth that has heard music before.
Jessop - several observations - ignoring for a moment the 'jolt' when this semi-tone modulation occurred; for the vast majority of listeners within seconds the ear would adjust to the new pitch. I really do not think your average listener carries a "memory of tonality" across the arc of an hour long symphony. Yes it might impact slightly on the timbral nature of the sound but again the ear quickly adjusts. In any case think HIP with huge variations in pitch or indeed all those Renaissance choral works which can (and are) performed at a variety of pitches - think Spem in Alium for one. And even in modern orchestras you have a significant variation in the pitch of the A to which they tune.
My personal feeling is that the score - in as urtext an edition as possible - should be the starting point for any interpreter. But then you should NOT slavishly adhere to the score and do nothing else. Surely the whole point of music over say literature of paintings is that the art only happens through the engagement of a living performer. An performer worth their salt will be able to give you chapter and verse on any and every interpretative decision they make. It is the listener's prerogative to engage or dismiss those choices but never think for a second that the choice just 'happened'. Even the most inspired and seemingly spontaneous moments of music making will spring from hours of analysis, preparation and thought. Which is why the notion that somehow Karajan was "silly" - since this idea clearly spring from that one - irks me. Karajan might produce a performance that seemingly contradicts many of the markings in a score but my sense is that he is still aiming to serve the music - albeit through a refracting lens that demands beauty of orchestral sound above all other. I would also argue a kind of evolutionary approach which says we could not have arrived at the quasi-modernist approach to Mahler without the lush saturated version before.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 09:19:00 AM
Then the music unfolding in Beethoven's mind is irrelevant to whether or not he was writing music. All that it takes is getting one's ideas into a format which can represent music or a performance thereof.
I think music is a sequence of sound which is perceived as beautiful or meaningful, however it is produced. Beethoven had music unfolding in his head, he had the technical skill to notate it so that when the notations were followed others could hear what Beethoven imagined. He produced a prescription for concrete music to match the music in his imagination. If there is a composer who can produce musical notations entirely through theoretical considerations, without "hearing it in his or her head" then I would say music is produced when (and if) it is performed and perceived as music.
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How well do you think the Cobra Beethoven 9 represents the work?
Don't have the liberty to listen at the moment.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 08:52:03 AM
Surely you would agree that some performances better reflect the work than others.
Personally, I think I'd be inclined to say no. And even if some did (or not), I would not place much (any?) value on that. Some performances might be more successful, perhaps even at the expense of following the score more exactly. But that would likely be an entirely subjective decision.
I also agree with Roasted Swan about Karajan.
Quote from: Roasted Swan on May 01, 2018, 09:20:56 AMJessop - several observations - ignoring for a moment the 'jolt' when this semi-tone modulation occurred; for the vast majority of listeners within seconds the ear would adjust to the new pitch. I really do not think your average listener carries a "memory of tonality" across the arc of an hour long symphony. Yes it might impact slightly on the timbral nature of the sound but again the ear quickly adjusts. In any case think HIP with huge variations in pitch or indeed all those Renaissance choral works which can (and are) performed at a variety of pitches - think Spem in Alium for one. And even in modern orchestras you have a significant variation in the pitch of the A to which they tune.
This is something different from what Jessop was saying. He was saying that some of the pitches in the work are randomly altered.
According to early critics of Wagner's music, it wouldn't have made a difference if this had been done, and I imagine they would have thought the same of Mahler's Sixth...
Quote from: Roasted Swan on May 01, 2018, 09:20:56 AMMy personal feeling is that the score - in as urtext an edition as possible - should be the starting point for any interpreter.
Why?
You say that the score can safely be ignored or contradicted at the whims of a given interpreter, so what reason is there to prefer an urtext?
Quote from: Roasted Swan on May 01, 2018, 09:20:56 AM
Jessop - several observations - ignoring for a moment the 'jolt' when this semi-tone modulation occurred; for the vast majority of listeners within seconds the ear would adjust to the new pitch.
I think what Jessop described was more random than that. Not that the entire orchestra would suddenly shift by a semitone, but that each melodic line would include random shifts, i.e., the phrase A B C D E is written, and the oboe takes the liberty of playing A B-flat C# sharp D E-flat, while a horn, doubling the same phrased, plays A-flat B-sharp C, D-flat, E. The result would be obvious cacophony.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 09:47:41 AMYou say that the score can safely be ignored or contradicted at the whims of a given interpreter, so what reason is there to prefer an urtext?
The obvious reason is that you should be aware that you are deviating from the urtext. How do you know you like your way of doing it better than the specified way if you don't know the specified way?
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 09:39:53 AMI think music is a sequence of sound which is perceived as beautiful or meaningful, however it is produced. Beethoven had music unfolding in his head, he had the technical skill to notate it so that when the notations were followed others could hear what Beethoven imagined. He produced a prescription for concrete music to match the music in his imagination. If there is a composer who can produce musical notations entirely through theoretical considerations, without "hearing it in his or her head" then I would say music is produced when (and if) it is performed and perceived as music.
So, let's say an algorithm is programmed on a computer in the year 2018 that produces a score. The person who programmed the algorithm could not have imagined the results in any meaningful detail, and she doesn't look at the score at all. It gets filed away for three centuries.
In that time, the program for the algorithm is completely lost and can no longer be reconstructed, but the score remains. It is discovered in a filing cabinet in the basement of a university somewhere and a performance is organized by a top-flight string quartet. Everyone present agrees that it wasn't really that good, but no one disputes that it is music.
Your model seems to imply that in this situation, the computer produced something which did not exist as a piece of music until hundreds of years after it ceased to be. In what sense can you say that the computer produced a piece of music?
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 09:52:53 AMThe obvious reason is that you should be aware that you are deviating from the urtext. How do you know you like your way of doing it better than the specified way if you don't know the specified way?
Why should that matter, though? According to Roasted Swan, the specified way is irrelevant to both the identity of the work and to the quality of the interpretation.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 09:53:28 AMYour model seems to imply that in this situation, the computer produced something which did not exist as a piece of music until hundreds of years after it ceased to be. In what sense can you say that the computer produced a piece of music?
I don't see any paradox. The computer produced a prescription for producing music, and when it prescription was played, the music was heard.
Someone made a land mine and put it in the ground. 100 years later someone steps on that mine and gets blown up. Did the person who laid the land mine kill someone. Yes. Is this a paradox worth pondering? I would say no.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 09:55:33 AM
Why should that matter, though? According to Roasted Swan, the specified way is irrelevant to both the identity of the work and to the quality of the interpretation.
I don't think it matters as a matter of principal, but it matters practically. The person who wrote the music wasn't an idiot, if it is worth the effort to perform the music, it is worth the effort to think about what the composer was expecting it to sound like.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 09:59:58 AMI don't see any paradox. The computer produced a prescription for producing music, and when it prescription was played, the music was heard.
But it could not have been music until after the computer ceased to exist, in your view, so you cannot say that the computer produced music.
Personally, I disagree. I think that the existence of a score means the existence of some music, even though they cannot be considered identical to each other. To me, the idea that a composer produces instructions rather than music is nonsensical.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 09:59:58 AMSomeone made a land mine and put it in the ground. 100 years later someone steps on that mine and gets blown up. Did the person who laid the land mine kill someone. Yes. Is this a paradox worth pondering? I would say no.
Your view seems to imply that what was in the ground wasn't a mine until it exploded, but merely a latent possibility for a mine.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 10:04:24 AM
But it could not have been music until after the computer ceased to exist, in your view, so you cannot say that the computer produced music.
I would not say the computer produced music, the computer produced a score which might or might not produce music when performed.
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Your view seems to imply that what was in the ground wasn't a mine until it exploded, but merely a latent possibility for a mine.
The score is a mine, the music is an explosion. Not all mines explode, some are duds, and some are never stepped on.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 10:07:59 AMI would not say the computer produced music, the computer produced a score which might or might not produce music when performed.
How does a score produce music? How is it that the same piece of music can retain its identity across thousands or tens of thousands of different interpretations, if it is not implied by the score?
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 10:07:59 AMThe score is a mine, the music is an explosion. Not all mines explode, some are duds, and some are never stepped on.
I think that the mine is the music, and the explosion is a performance. Not every piece of music is performed. Some are never heard at all by anyone.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 10:20:03 AMI think that the mine is the music, and the explosion is a performance. Not every piece of music is performed. Some are never heard at all by anyone.
There we differ. I think of the term "music" as the unfolding of the piece in time. There are musical scores that are never performed, but not music. Well, maybe there is music that unfolded in the composers mind but never got performed.
This is degenerating into semantics.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 10:30:40 AM
There we differ. I think of the term "music" as the unfolding of the piece in time. There are musical scores that are never performed, but not music. Well, maybe there is music that unfolded in the composers mind but never got performed.
The idea that you can have a piece of music that doesn't exist as music until many years after it was created still strikes me as absurd.
I can't make sense of any conception of music that would agree with that view, because as far as I can understand, a piece of music consists in relationships, both temporal and in terms of frequency/pitch/timbre. Which relationships are part of the piece's identity and which are not depends on the individual work. Obviously, those relationships can be completely independent of any given performance, though, and exist prior to and after a performance.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 10:30:40 AMThis is degenerating into semantics.
Discussions about definitions and meaning usually do...
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 10:44:32 AM
The idea that you can have a piece of music that doesn't exist as music until many years after it was created still strikes me as absurd.
Your use of language creates the impression of a contradiction where I find none. The composer creates music in his or her imagination, he or she makes a score, a performer creates music in observance of the score which reproduces what was imagined (hopefully). If you discover a score in some library archive and perform it for the first time, music which presumably existed in the composers imagination is re-created.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 11:09:19 AMYour use of language creates the impression of a contradiction where I find none.
My use of language reflects, to the best of my ability, my conception of the relationship between score and work. The contradiction is the one that I see in your conception of music. You do not see any contradiction, and I understand that.
Quote from: Baron Scarpia on May 01, 2018, 11:09:19 AMThe composer creates music in his or her imagination, he or she makes a score, a performer creates music in observance of the score which reproduces what was imagined (hopefully). If you discover a score in some library archive and perform it for the first time, music which presumably existed in the composers imagination is re-created.
The problem I have with this is the equivocation between music in the first clause and subsequent uses. I don't see music (the piece created by the composer) and music (the realization of a piece by a performer) as being identical in kind. A piece of music as created is not something that exists fully in a single performance, but is rather instantiated across any and every possible performance.
Who cares really? The performer is left in good faith to deliver what is, hopefully, a faithful reproduction of the score at hand. There are many times where liberties are taken, but everyone interprets what is written differently. This isn't a to end all ideal and the composer, no matter how much bellyaching he/she does, should be eternally grateful that musicians want to perform their music.
Quote from: San Antone on May 01, 2018, 11:35:40 AMFor me, music is sound, not a score in any form or even the work as it exists in the composer's mind. So, while I would admit that a musical work exists outside of a performance, the music occurs when it is performed.
That more or less lines up with my view, although I tend to think of music as an experience rather than as the physical sound, so imagined music and music heard to be closely related, although not identical, obviously.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 05:42:41 AM
What you mean to say is, I assume, that there are no specific elements that are intrinsic to a given composition. One may change this or that element without changing its identity. It's the paradox of the heap (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/), in that some undefined number of changes would have to be made to the text to make it no longer the text.
Extreme changes to one element or another can vastly distort the whole, however.
How faithfully can we say this replicates Beethoven's work, for example?
https://www.youtube.com/v/hoINrtIWpTA
In a different sense, how about this?
https://www.youtube.com/v/6z4KK7RWjmk
Both of these sound almost shockingly bad, but of course I can recognise the source text. The source text is recognisable if we personally recognise it. The identity of the composition is the recognition we have of it. That doesn't say whether the interpretation is convincing or not and usually the ones that are more convincing use the score/text (or perhaps a combination of different texts) to create a well informed interpretation. Cobra's performance is informed, but it's informed by a complete misunderstanding of tempo and how we hear it (being brought up in a culture where recordings and performances of Beethoven symphonies are abundant) ....and to my ears he doesn't even justify it in the performance of the work no matter how much he tries to justify it in his writings.
Whether something is 'faithful' to Beethoven's score is not really the argument I am interested in, as Beethoven's score is merely a text that performers can get a lot of information out of with presupposed knowledge or with other texts to aid interpretation. The abundance of texts that are actually out there, and the already existing associations of Beethoven's 5th and 9th symphonies
can allow for interesting performances that are largely but faithful to other sources or even completely new performance contexts altogether. The one thing that unifies them is that they each reference some aspect of the same source—the score—no matter how wildly different the outcomes might be.
Beethoven's 5th pops up in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in a context which wildly differs from the score, however it is very interesting that those familiar with Beethoven's 5th certainly recognise the piece when Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are about to be thrown off a Vogon constructor ship into the vacuum of space...........
Quote from: jessop on May 02, 2018, 05:43:57 PMBoth of these sound almost shockingly bad, but of course I can recognise the source text.
Indeed. The difference is, I think, that the latter one is bad not because of any intent contrary to the work so much as sheer incompetence of execution (and yet on YouTube it's the single most popular version...).
Quote from: jessop on May 02, 2018, 05:43:57 PMWhether something is 'faithful' to Beethoven's score is not really the argument I am interested in, as Beethoven's score is merely a text that performers can get a lot of information out of with presupposed knowledge or with other texts to aid interpretation. The abundance of texts that are actually out there, and the already existing associations of Beethoven's 5th and 9th symphonies can allow for interesting performances that are largely but faithful to other sources or even completely new performance contexts altogether. The one thing that unifies them is that they each reference some aspect of the same source—the score—no matter how wildly different the outcomes might be.
My question was about how faithful these were to the work, rather than the score. The score does not encompass everything of the work, as you say, and neither does any one interpretation.
It is certainly true that perceptions of a given work change over time with associations and contexts.
Quote from: Mirror Image on May 01, 2018, 11:35:55 AM
Who cares really? The performer is left in good faith to deliver what is, hopefully, a faithful reproduction of the score at hand.
I think (without quoting examples) that the balance of recent evidence is that composers
like hearing what others make of their music.
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 09:53:28 AM
So, let's say an algorithm is programmed on a computer in the year 2018 that produces a score.
This made me think of bell-ringing - change-ringing that is, England-style. You have (typically) 8 bells, all tuned differently. The biggest bell, being the most sonorous, automatically provides the Tonic, the rest could in theory be tuned any old how. They are rung in sequence according to an algorithm ('method' - and there are several to choose from, dating from about 1650) such that every possible tone row is played once - which for 8 bells would apparently take 22 hours! Some tone rows are more euphonic than others but it helps that they co-exist with a rich Tonic-led drone.
Anyone who lives near a bell-tower will cry "this is not music" but, by any reasonable definition I'd say it is. (I am perhaps fortunate to live within earshot of a bell-tower, but not too close!)
Quote from: Mahlerian on May 01, 2018, 09:47:41 AM
....what reason is there to prefer an urtext?
I realize the following is not addressing the context to which you were responding, but....
The best reason for an urtext edition is there are no other directives by any other editors; any and everything therein is from the composer and no one else.
One can ignore anything or any part of directives of a score (ignoring the composer's directives is at the performer's peril), but there is always a subliminal effect of seeing those other edits that are not the composer's, or if nothing else, they are more clutter to ignore, lol.
Quote from: Monsieur Croche on May 31, 2018, 02:30:51 AM
I realize the following is not addressing the context to which you were responding, but....
The best reason for an urtext edition is there are no other directives by any other editors; any and everything therein is from the composer and no one else.
One can ignore anything or any part of directives of a score (ignoring the composer's directives is at the performer's peril), but there is always a subliminal effect of seeing those other edits that are not the composer's, or if nothing else, they are more clutter to ignore, lol.
Why, cheers, y'all!
Quote from: Monsieur Croche on May 31, 2018, 02:30:51 AM
I realize the following is not addressing the context to which you were responding, but....
The best reason for an urtext edition is there are no other directives by any other editors; any and everything therein is from the composer and no one else.
One can ignore anything or any part of directives of a score (ignoring the composer's directives is at the performer's peril), but there is always a subliminal effect of seeing those other edits that are not the composer's, or if nothing else, they are more clutter to ignore, lol.
I downloaded a version of the Well-Tempered Clavier to learn to stumble through some of the pieces, and it's a 19th century edition loaded with dynamics (even swells) and fingerings, etc. I have to admit that even seeing it there on the page is enough to affect the way I play.
Quote from: Monsieur Croche on May 31, 2018, 02:30:51 AM
I realize the following is not addressing the context to which you were responding, but....
The best reason for an urtext edition is there are no other directives by any other editors; any and everything therein is from the composer and no one else.
One can ignore anything or any part of directives of a score (ignoring the composer's directives is at the performer's peril), but there is always a subliminal effect of seeing those other edits that are not the composer's, or if nothing else, they are more clutter to ignore, lol.
Ha, I thought that too... until the following happened. I started to study Ravel's Miroirs piano suite some months ago (actually, the more technically difficult movements, I already studied the slower movements years ago.) I used the score that one can download for free from IMLSP, which corresponds to the first edition. But I started to notice quite a lot of problems. Some notes had rhythms that didn't fit in the bar (in une barque, an extra note in certain rapid passage made it virtually unplayable), some harmonies didn't sound like that in the recordings, there was a very confusing convention of using, simultaneously, different time signatures (e.g., 2/4 and 6/8, where, actually, the eightnotes from the second where just triples in the first one... but still they used the tuplet notation if the tuplets appeared in the 2/4 layer... when both layers juxtapose, the result is just visual and notational schizophrenia!)...
So, I decided to buy two newer editions (one urtext and the other commented). It took a month for them to reach this corner of the world. I was particularly interested in the unplayable passage from une barque. To my relief, and as I guessed, that extra note was either an error or it was deleted from later editions at Ravel's request. But, to my surprise, now some other notes from that same passage were changed in relation to the first edition! And each edition had its own take! One editor said that his option had to be the correct one because Ravel's orchestration of the piece suggested this version. The other just said it was just for symmetry with previous bars. Ravel's manuscript, one is told, is in a private collection and not open to consult (and, even in the other pieces where the manuscripts are avaiable, there are still disagreements!) . So, the pianist is confronted with three different options! The one I play is a fourth one (!) which I built based on all the other ones and which I think sounds like the ones played by, e.g., Perlemuter, who studied these pieces with Ravel.
All in all, it was a fun and curious nightmare.