What is the 'composer's intention?'

[some guy]

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.

[James]

I 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.

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?

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.

[James]

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.

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.

[Florestan]

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. 

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.

[zamyrabyrd]

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.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

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.

[Monsieur Croche]

Romanticism is much more than that. It is like the world, it contains everything. 

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 

[Monsieur Croche]

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.

[zamyrabyrd]

..."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

[Florestan]

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´?

[Florestan]

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/

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.

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.

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.

[some guy]

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.

[Florestan]

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)

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.

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.

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? 

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

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.

[Florestan]

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.

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.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

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

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.

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.

[Florestan]

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?

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

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?

[Florestan]

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.

[(poco) Sforzando]

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.