performing new pieces
Tom
First time poster here. However, my question is how does one go about
getting their piece read by an orchestra.
I've just written a new piece which I think is pretty good. My high
school orchestra is making an attempt at playing it, but the second
movement is a little over their heads because of the constant mixed
meter.
Any suggestions would be helpful
Thanks
Tom
grantco
Have you ever read the autobiography of Frank Zappa? Before you work too
hard at going after an orchestra I'd read his book where he tells his sad
tales of dealing with an orchestra. Not to burst your bubble but when you
consider the nightmare Zappa wenty through as a famous musician (and even
with orchestras that WANTED to play his music), you'll come away from it not
feeling a lot of hope. To put it briefly, one has to remember that most
orchestras nowadays don't even want to play new music, let alone something
challenging.
With my own writing I've stuck pretty much to music that I KNOW I can get
performed, particularly solo piano music! I've written some choral music as
well, but even with my brother and father being both choir directors there's
some things I've written that I've yet to hear due to difficulty. I probably
could write a symphony if I wanted to, but the thought of all that work just
to see it sit on a shelf and gather dust is too much for me to bear.
If you do still pursue an actual orchestra, I guess I'd think a community
orchestra or school orchestra to be your best bet. You'd need to find a
group that's really into the idea of premiering a new work. If your work is
as good as you think it is, hopefully others will think so as well....
"Tom" <im_not_i...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:13398427.02050...@posting.google.com...
Dr.Matt
rates tend to be so overwhelmingly favorable to the rest of the world
that you can get a fairly decent recording for 1/10 the hiring rate
of a western European or American or Australian orchestra...
--
Matthew H. Fields http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields
Music: Splendor in Sound
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a trip to the bathroom."
mike
news:ab25g9$ep534$1...@ID-19807.news.dfncis.de:
> Good luck!
>
> Have you ever read the autobiography of Frank Zappa? Before you work
> too hard at going after an orchestra I'd read his book where he tells
> his sad tales of dealing with an orchestra. Not to burst your bubble
> but when you consider the nightmare Zappa wenty through as a famous
> musician (and even with orchestras that WANTED to play his music),
> you'll come away from it not feeling a lot of hope. To put it briefly,
> one has to remember that most orchestras nowadays don't even want to
> play new music, let alone something challenging.
the only decent thing which ever came out of La Mesa, California was "ward
hardman", and only because had a house there. he grew up in the exotic
south. zappa grew up in the exotic mall.
>
> With my own writing I've stuck pretty much to music that I KNOW I can
> get performed,
yah, but such carefulness means it won't get performed at all in 20 years.
you should write for people of another age... either future or past.
> particularly solo piano music! I've written some choral
> music as well, but even with my brother and father being both choir
> directors there's some things I've written that I've yet to hear due to
> difficulty. I probably could write a symphony if I wanted to, but the
> thought of all that work just to see it sit on a shelf and gather dust
> is too much for me to bear.
>
> If you do still pursue an actual orchestra, I guess I'd think a
> community orchestra or school orchestra to be your best bet. You'd need
> to find a group that's really into the idea of premiering a new work.
> If your work is as good as you think it is, hopefully others will think
> so as well....
i can't see the point, unless he wants to do film music. post modern music
is so rich a music that, while he's learning to write, he doesn't really
need a live orchestra for anything but the vanity of being "on the
program". even jarl knows this. the orchestra should be conceived of as
just another instrument. look at what jeff's doing with midi... it's
obvious that music is going to be a very private thing from now on. i would
like to see the time when any joe could feed the parameters into a
"composer box" and have a credible (to my ear) mozart-like symphony on
demand. the rest of us can continue to write "other kind of musics" and
that would be enough. especially if orchestras became comprised of only
people dedicated to music. here in the sticks, the orchestras are going
more and more towards imitating the "thrill" of las vegas reviews. probably
sam has a pretty good situation: in a country where enough people like
music to foster performers who like music.
Richard White
im_not_i...@yahoo.com (Tom) wrote:
Well, Tom, if you play an orchestral instrument well enough to join a
local community orchestra, I'd suggest you join it before too long;
You'll meet lots of new people, some of whom may well be professional
musicians. Many community orchestras will take a chance on a new piece
that isn't too complex. Join, contribute your services for a few months
and make it a point to talk to your fellow musicians as well as the
conductor about your compositional activities. When you feel
comfortable enough and the time seems right, offer your piece for them
to read. It worked well for me when I did that sort of thing. Just be
sure you're offering them your best work: after all, they'd be doing it
for free.
Best of Luck,
Richard White
--
http://home.flash.net/~whitco (Now with Photos) whi...@flash.net
Hear Linda Ronstadt sing Richard White on
ŚA Merry Little Christmasą - Elektra #62572-2/4
CDs: ŚMusic for Guitarą and ŚMusic for Woodwinds and Piano'
available at: http://www.mp3.com/richardwhite
Tom
heard (from the parts the students could play) have been everything
from "nice work" to "I've got chills from it"
I gave the score to the orchestra director at a college who will be my
violin professor next year. I also gave it to a local youth orchestra
(very accomplished) director.
I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens!
Tom
Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in message news:<040520022045226721%whi...@flash.net>...
grantco
"mike" <orang...@aol.com> wrote in message
> >
> > With my own writing I've stuck pretty much to music that I KNOW I can
> > get performed,
>
> yah, but such carefulness means it won't get performed at all in 20 years.
> you should write for people of another age... either future or past.
Huh? Why would I want to do that? I'm not careful, I just think it mostly
pointless to write music that has little hope of being performed now OR in
20 years. If I die an unknown its not like my super bitchin' symphony has
any greater chance of being performed in 20 years than in the present. At
least if I write piano music or church music I KNOW it will be performed,
cuz I work for the churches as a player and performer.
mike
news:ab3pjs$f0h55$1...@ID-19807.news.dfncis.de:
i think it's that you'll write taking more chances, go to the edge. alot of
the writers in this group feel that just writing the music at all is pretty
radical. i think that's because they don't have much to say with music...
don't have the daemon of music. you seem to want to say something for
someone at this very moment. that's real, but the best "now" writing is
probably film music... it's derivative, but it's allowed more surprises
than concert music: like, doing a Berio during the scary scene. look how
boring the "minimalists" are when they don't have a visual to carry them
through their dumb transitions. it's a classic problem. shostakovich
wouldn't have much play if it weren't for people visualizing
"significance" over his episodic crap.
grantco
"mike" <orang...@aol.com> wrote in message
> i think it's that you'll write taking more chances, go to the edge.
Hmmm, you're talking to the wrong guy there! A LOT of what I write is
actually carefully recreated music in the style of the baroque and
renaissance. I haven't too big of an interest in taking chances and going to
the edge, though surprisingly I also write dissonant and decadent rock music
for the band I'm in. For me this is a functional outlet where my radical
ideas can actually be heard by an audience.
Not that writing new "old" music gets me a big public, it just seems to have
become my hobby of sorts, kind of like someone building "new" harpsichords
or violins.
alot of
> the writers in this group feel that just writing the music at all is
pretty
> radical. i think that's because they don't have much to say with music...
For me music usually "says" nothing. Its not my purpose or intent to have it
saying something, it just IS.
> don't have the daemon of music. you seem to want to say something for
> someone at this very moment. that's real, but the best "now" writing is
> probably film music... it's derivative, but it's allowed more surprises
> than concert music:
Again, you're kind of wrong to assume that surprises are what everyone wants
when they write music or that they are trying to say "something for
someone." It may be true for you and others, but its not all that music is
about. One can have very high quality music in a pure sense without
surprises, or without it meaning something to someone.
I do write music that isn't derived from baroque and renaissance music, but
like I said, most of my more radical music, I mold into use by the band I'm
in. I guess I'm sucker for music actually having a function and an audience.
If the music I write has almost no chance of being performed, I rarely write
it in the first place.
p.s. If you want to check out some retro music, go to my website at:
http://www.geocities.com/vienna/choir/8989
.
Samuel Vriezen
>probably
>sam has a pretty good situation: in a country where enough people like
>music to foster performers who like music.
What makes Amsterdam good, for me, is 1. Lots of great performers from
all over the world; 2. Willingness to play for low or even no fees.
It's a good underground scene, probably deriving from 1. the fact that
a modern music life exists at all (subsidized, televised,
festivalized, and with a not trivial audience too), but more
importantly, 2. the fact that costs of living are still very
sub-London.
With the sudden appearance this year of a huge populist movement in
politics, I'm quite worried about the future. To be continued....
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr/home.html
May 12, 20:30, Vondelkerk Amsterdam: 'Het Zephyr Kwartet Strijkt Terug'
Zephyr plays Weisser, Meyer, Doolittle, Voorvelt, Havelaar, Royé
Dr.Matt
Dr.Matt <fie...@rastan.gpcc.itd.umich.edu> wrote:
>For a bit of money, eastern European orchestras will work... exchange
>rates tend to be so overwhelmingly favorable to the rest of the world
>that you can get a fairly decent recording for 1/10 the hiring rate
>of a western European or American or Australian orchestra...
Well, that's an exaggeration, but 1/4 to 1/5....
mike
@news.xs4all.nl:
> On Sun, 05 May 2002 03:41:02 GMT, mike <orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>probably
>>sam has a pretty good situation: in a country where enough people like
>>music to foster performers who like music.
>
> What makes Amsterdam good, for me, is 1. Lots of great performers from
> all over the world; 2. Willingness to play for low or even no fees.
> It's a good underground scene, probably deriving from 1. the fact that
> a modern music life exists at all (subsidized, televised,
> festivalized, and with a not trivial audience too), but more
> importantly, 2. the fact that costs of living are still very
> sub-London.
>
> With the sudden appearance this year of a huge populist movement in
> politics, I'm quite worried about the future. To be continued....
what does this mean? that everyone will have to become reform protestant,
or that everyone will have to smoke dope and listen to jerry garcia?
either seems not so good. yes, i have always have the best public musical
experience in Amsterdam.
the low rent is so very important. i think that's why nothing's come out
of new york in 20 years, and it is for shur why sham francisco just
recently lost its innovation. in the mid-sixties i lived one summer in a
cooperative art gallery in north beach (we lived in the loft over the
gallery itself, which was an old storefront.) i paid 5 dollars a week
into the general fund. i just last year saw this same space being rented
as a tourist shop... without even having souvenir beatnik or ginsberg
handtowels. here is the fall of babylon.
Samuel Vriezen
>sqv.remo...@xs4all.nl (Samuel Vriezen) wrote in news:3cd6a9de.485610
>@news.xs4all.nl:
>
>> On Sun, 05 May 2002 03:41:02 GMT, mike <orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>>probably
>>>sam has a pretty good situation: in a country where enough people like
>>>music to foster performers who like music.
>>
>> What makes Amsterdam good, for me, is 1. Lots of great performers from
>> all over the world; 2. Willingness to play for low or even no fees.
>> It's a good underground scene, probably deriving from 1. the fact that
>> a modern music life exists at all (subsidized, televised,
>> festivalized, and with a not trivial audience too), but more
>> importantly, 2. the fact that costs of living are still very
>> sub-London.
>>
>> With the sudden appearance this year of a huge populist movement in
>> politics, I'm quite worried about the future. To be continued....
>
>what does this mean? that everyone will have to become reform protestant,
>or that everyone will have to smoke dope and listen to jerry garcia?
Well, the latest news is that the charismatic leader of this suddenly
appearing populist movement, Pim Fortuyn, was assassinated today at 6.
Seems like things ain't what they used to be in the happy paradise of
the Netherlands.
Scott GF Bailey
Samuel Vriezen <sqv.remo...@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:3cd6c47...@news.xs4all.nl...
Yeah, didn't he want to close all the borders and make the Netherlands
"national" rather than "international"? I heard he was only expected
to get about 20-25% of the vote, though.
Samuel Vriezen
<scottg...@msn.com> wrote:
>> >> With the sudden appearance this year of a huge populist movement
>in
>> >> politics, I'm quite worried about the future. To be continued....
>> >
>> >what does this mean? that everyone will have to become reform
>protestant,
>> >or that everyone will have to smoke dope and listen to jerry
>garcia?
>>
>> Well, the latest news is that the charismatic leader of this
>suddenly
>> appearing populist movement, Pim Fortuyn, was assassinated today at
>6.
>> Seems like things ain't what they used to be in the happy paradise
>of
>> the Netherlands.
>>
>
>Yeah, didn't he want to close all the borders and make the Netherlands
>"national" rather than "international"? I heard he was only expected
>to get about 20-25% of the vote, though.
In Dutch politics, that is enormous. He was a not unlikely candidate
for prime ministership, actually. Parties here don't rule by having a
majority, but by forming coalitions. He was probably going to rule
with the Christian Democrats and the Liberals (which were, in this
country, the largest conservative party). Fortuyn indeed was opposed
to further immigration and made a lot of noise about a lot of subjects
(safety, education, health care, etcetcetc), but most political
commentators from the 'establishment' quite found it unlikely that he
actually had any solutions.
Scott GF Bailey
> On Mon, 6 May 2002 13:21:25 -0700, "Scott GF Bailey"
> <scottg...@msn.com> wrote:
> In Dutch politics, that is enormous. He was a not unlikely candidate
> for prime ministership, actually. Parties here don't rule by having
a
> majority, but by forming coalitions. He was probably going to rule
> with the Christian Democrats and the Liberals (which were, in this
> country, the largest conservative party). Fortuyn indeed was opposed
> to further immigration and made a lot of noise about a lot of
subjects
> (safety, education, health care, etcetcetc), but most political
> commentators from the 'establishment' quite found it unlikely that
he
> actually had any solutions.
>
I forgot you had a parliamentary system. I wonder what that would be
like. In the US, politics is more like a zero-sum game.
It seems that coalition governments are pretty fragile these days.
Would a radical change of leadership result in changes to funding for
the arts? I mean, would that government be able to stay in power long
enough to actually effect changes of any duration? Of course, one
doesn't hear a lot about Dutch politics on this side of the Atlantic,
so I clearly don't know.
mike
> On Mon, 06 May 2002 17:19:56 GMT, mike <orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>sqv.remo...@xs4all.nl (Samuel Vriezen) wrote in
>>news:3cd6a9de.485610 @news.xs4all.nl:
>>
>>> On Sun, 05 May 2002 03:41:02 GMT, mike <orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>probably
>>>>sam has a pretty good situation: in a country where enough people
>>>>like music to foster performers who like music.
>>>
>>> What makes Amsterdam good, for me, is 1. Lots of great performers
>>> from all over the world; 2. Willingness to play for low or even no
>>> fees. It's a good underground scene, probably deriving from 1. the
>>> fact that a modern music life exists at all (subsidized, televised,
>>> festivalized, and with a not trivial audience too), but more
>>> importantly, 2. the fact that costs of living are still very
>>> sub-London.
>>>
>>> With the sudden appearance this year of a huge populist movement in
>>> politics, I'm quite worried about the future. To be continued....
>>
>>what does this mean? that everyone will have to become reform
>>protestant, or that everyone will have to smoke dope and listen to
>>jerry garcia?
>
> Well, the latest news is that the charismatic leader of this suddenly
> appearing populist movement, Pim Fortuyn, was assassinated today at 6.
> Seems like things ain't what they used to be in the happy paradise of
> the Netherlands.
that is really terrible. i'm sorry.
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>In article <3cd6c47...@news.xs4all.nl>, sqv.remo...@xs4all.nl
>(Samuel Vriezen) wrote:
>
>>
>> Well, the latest news is that the charismatic leader of this suddenly
>> appearing populist movement, Pim Fortuyn, was assassinated today at 6.
>> Seems like things ain't what they used to be in the happy paradise of
>> the Netherlands.
>
>Ohmygod...
>
>The trouble will killing guys like that is that it makes martyrs of them,
>and does nothing to address their ideas.
Absolutely. It will be very interesting, to say the least, to see how
matters will develop here. Fortuyn was not an easy case. He was not
comparable to Le Pen, because Le Pen is simply a racist and Fortuyn
was not. Rather, Fortuyn struck me as someone driven by strange
compulsions to power, glamour, influence, being listened to, or other
forms of sublimized aggression. His career consisted of many jobs
started brilliantly, then abandoned - I think there was something
quite negative about him. But whatever his worth might have been as a
politician, someone who mobilizes so much in a society must get a
chance, if only so that the latent tensions he invokes in a society
get the chance to be expressed. Now, that's not possible: the man
didn't have a real party (his 'party' was called 'List Pim Fortuyn'),
and his ideas were I think simply not clear, or worked-out enough to
really form a legacy, and the individuals he compiled to form this
'list' of his were an odd bunch that hardly could stick together
(there were actual reports of fighting between some people on the
list!), but it would actually be wholesome if something of this
'party' survives so that the dialectical process of democracy can go
on.
The whole thing of course has little to do with composition, but the
funny thing was that I was about to go to a concert by the
ASKO/Schoenberg ensemble that looked especially promising: Rihm,
Birtwistle, Xenakis, Jos Kunst. I didn't go at the last minute. The
previous occasion I wanted to go to a concert of theirs (Birtwistle,
Ligeti, Andriessen), well, that was on Sept 11. Hmmm...
>Nor do I think we've heard the last of LePen. I wish he'd done better, just
>to keep Chirac honest. But not much better.
Europe is in quite a shape...
Samuel Vriezen
<scottg...@msn.com> wrote:
>
>Samuel Vriezen <sqv.remo...@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
>news:3cd6d38...@news.xs4all.nl...
>> On Mon, 6 May 2002 13:21:25 -0700, "Scott GF Bailey"
>> <scottg...@msn.com> wrote:
>> In Dutch politics, that is enormous. He was a not unlikely candidate
>> for prime ministership, actually. Parties here don't rule by having
>a
>> majority, but by forming coalitions. He was probably going to rule
>> with the Christian Democrats and the Liberals (which were, in this
>> country, the largest conservative party). Fortuyn indeed was opposed
>> to further immigration and made a lot of noise about a lot of
>subjects
>> (safety, education, health care, etcetcetc), but most political
>> commentators from the 'establishment' quite found it unlikely that
>he
>> actually had any solutions.
>>
>
>I forgot you had a parliamentary system. I wonder what that would be
>like. In the US, politics is more like a zero-sum game.
>
>It seems that coalition governments are pretty fragile these days.
>Would a radical change of leadership result in changes to funding for
>the arts?
I was half-expecting a populist Secretary for the Arts to cut half the
orchestras! But the populists would never get enough support in
parliament. Still, making a lot of noise in the Arts section is quite
an easy way to make A Point that the Common Man understands. OTOH, I
still think people in this country sort of appreciate, or perhaps
tolerate art support because of some vague good it might do;
politicians can 'score' with some groups that are not entirely an
uninteresting part of the electorate by defending art. It's a
minuscule part of the budget anyway. Put simply, fights about the arts
are cheap and generate a lot of media spectacle.
>I mean, would that government be able to stay in power long
>enough to actually effect changes of any duration?
Depends entirely on parliamentary support, of course! If it's there,
all orchestras and museums could close shop overnight. The political
tradition however is one of lots of debate and reports first, and a
lot of hearing of responsible councils, etc. So changes tend to go
slowly, but sometimes dramatically still. Over the part few decades I
think the country lost about a fourth or something of its orchestras.
>Of course, one
>doesn't hear a lot about Dutch politics on this side of the Atlantic,
>so I clearly don't know.
Well, up to a year ago it was extremely boring. Up to today, it was
still mildly boring. There's an insightful survey of my country in the
current issue of The Economist. I'm not sure I would agree to
everything they say, but it certainly paints a decent enough picture
of the state of affairs in the Netherlands.
Samuel Vriezen
Vriezen) wrote:
>>Of course, one
>>doesn't hear a lot about Dutch politics on this side of the Atlantic,
>>so I clearly don't know.
>
>Well, up to a year ago it was extremely boring. Up to today, it was
>still mildly boring. There's an insightful survey of my country in the
>current issue of The Economist. I'm not sure I would agree to
>everything they say, but it certainly paints a decent enough picture
>of the state of affairs in the Netherlands.
(As it was until may 6, 6 pm of course)
Richard Brooks
Try looking around for other orchestras who, in these days of not enjoying
as much dominance in the music world, are even more open to exploring in
new works and the individuals are usually more than happy to give guidance
if the core of it has promise.
Either that or help the orchestra you are with as you could make that climb
up the hill together ending in the final result of the finished work. It
would also give you great lessons in being a good, kind and benevolent
teacher/conductor!
Good luck!
Richard.
---
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Richard Brooks
>
> First time poster here. However, my question is how does one go about
> getting their piece read by an orchestra.
>
> I've just written a new piece which I think is pretty good. My high
> school orchestra is making an attempt at playing it, but the second
> movement is a little over their heads because of the constant mixed
> meter.
I'm reiterating my other post here and in reading some of the other posts in
this thread, the orchstra can be an unforgiving beast if anyone comes in
with any sort of overblown attitude and can tear the composer or conductor
to threads in very few seconds without harm to themselves.
This is well understood of European orchestras and portrayed in an Ealing
type film about music students with one of the students telling the others
that you should put the orchestra in its place. In doing their examination
piece in front of the examiners using a professional orchestra the surly
student was destroyed by the initial question from one of the brasses about
a certain note. It escalated (as far as I remember) into all members asking
if the other member had a page of their score as it was missing.
I'm sure you are not like that and I have the feeling that you have a unique
opportunity to have an orchestra that is hopefully willing to learn. After
all, they have given you their time already so maybe you could coax them
along. Finding places to be able to conduct for most part is waiting for a
previous conductor to die.
If you like humour and orchestras then there's a little booklet of sayings
by Sir Thomas Beecham and the autobiography Suite: In Four Movements by Eric
Coates. I didn't know the 'f' hole in the smaller stringed instruments is
for laughing into ?
Richard Brooks
> I gave the score to my school orchestra director, and the comments I
> heard (from the parts the students could play) have been everything
> from "nice work" to "I've got chills from it"
It certainly fits well into Alexander Glazounov's Degrees of Scoring for
Orchestra
I. When the orchestra sounds well, playing from sight; magnificent after a
few rehearsals.
II. When effects cannog be brought off except with the greatest care and
attention on the part of conductor and players.
III. When the orchestra never sounds well.
>
> I gave the score to the orchestra director at a college who will be my
> violin professor next year. I also gave it to a local youth orchestra
> (very accomplished) director.
>
> I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens!
>
> Tom
We shall all be waiting!
Richard.
David Rubenstein
> For me music usually "says" nothing. Its not my purpose or intent to have it
> saying something, it just IS.
I your are not composing in order to communicate something to others,
then what is the point? Why not just compose a masterpiece and then
throw it in the garbage can?
--David Rubenstein
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Original Sheet Music:
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/Rubenstein/
Original Music Compositions: http://www.erols.com/druben
Dr.Matt
David Rubenstein <dru...@erols.com> wrote:
>grantco wrote:
>> For me music usually "says" nothing. Its not my purpose or intent to have it
>> saying something, it just IS.
>
>I your are not composing in order to communicate something to others,
>then what is the point? Why not just compose a masterpiece and then
>throw it in the garbage can?
When I compose, it's not to communicate, it's to make something that I
like to hear, and that maybe others will like to hear. When I want to
communicate, I use words. If I threw it in the garbage can, I wouldn't
get to hear it. There's nothing mysterious about this.
People regularly read into music all sorts of meanings and purposes that
aren't there. This may help them to enjoy it, by giving them lattitude to
make it subtly "theirs" in their mind. Folks tell me about the movies
they imagined when they heard my music, all the time--and then are surprised
to learn that I consider myself unqualified to write filmscore, as I
specialize in a different kind of musicmaking.
That doesn't mean that the stories those people thought of were in
my music, or that I communicated to them through the music. Sometimes
the stories they imagine are even detrimental to their appreciation of
the music (c.f. "McClary, Susan").
At http://www.randi.org/jr/010402.html, about 1/6 of the way down
the page, Swift on 4 January ran an article by portrait photographer
William McEwen in which he makes very much the same point about his
art: it's about making a picture that is interesting to look at, but
people keep insisting that it's making some deep comentary about its
subjects... and often enough, when there even IS a journalistic aspect,
it's popularly completely misunderstood. His example with Churchill is
a hoot!
>--David Rubenstein
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Original Sheet Music:
>http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/Rubenstein/
>Original Music Compositions: http://www.erols.com/druben
mike
news:3CDB21FD...@erols.com:
> grantco wrote:
>> For me music usually "says" nothing. Its not my purpose or intent to
>> have it saying something, it just IS.
>
> I your are not composing in order to communicate something to others,
> then what is the point? Why not just compose a masterpiece and then
> throw it in the garbage can?
that's "composting", not "composing". "compose", for this guy is what he
does to get his emotions together so that the piano doesn't scare him when
he writes music.
mike
news:UWGC8.173$kf....@news.itd.umich.edu:
> In article <3CDB21FD...@erols.com>,
> David Rubenstein <dru...@erols.com> wrote:
>>grantco wrote:
>>> For me music usually "says" nothing. Its not my purpose or intent to
>>> have it saying something, it just IS.
>>
>>I your are not composing in order to communicate something to others,
>>then what is the point? Why not just compose a masterpiece and then
>>throw it in the garbage can?
>
> When I compose, it's not to communicate, it's to make something that I
> like to hear, and that maybe others will like to hear. When I want to
> communicate, I use words. If I threw it in the garbage can, I wouldn't
> get to hear it. There's nothing mysterious about this.
don't even. this hinges on a double meaning of "communicate" and is beneath
your dignity. besides, we all know that you are a receiver for the ghost of
Morton Gould.
> People regularly read into music all sorts of meanings and purposes
> that
> aren't there.
yah. like, "this guy is pretty good!!" and "that reminds me, did you get
rutabegas today?". spooky.
> This may help them to enjoy it, by giving them lattitude
especially if they're listening to "star light, star bright".
> to make it subtly "theirs" in their mind.
golly. now how could i make music "not mine" in my mind? would it still be
music?
>Folks tell me about the
> movies they imagined when they heard my music,
so?? it's not like they've got anything else but their senses to listen
with. don't be a prig.
> all the time--and then
> are surprised to learn that I consider myself unqualified to write
> filmscore, as I specialize in a different kind of musicmaking.
yes, filmscore means having to say "this music is not mine anymore" and
that takes genius. film score writers are not writing concert music for
film.
> That doesn't mean that the stories those people thought of were in
> my music, or that I communicated to them through the music.
barf-o. you programmed some soundz and they saw things because they
listened to your soundz. don't be such a meany.
> Sometimes
> the stories they imagine are even detrimental to their appreciation of
> the music (c.f. "McClary, Susan").
oh, right... like, as if these lamers are ever going to be able to hear
music without tapping their cerabellum to the beat.
> At http://www.randi.org/jr/010402.html, about 1/6 of the way down
> the page, Swift on 4 January ran an article by portrait photographer
> William McEwen in which he makes very much the same point about his
> art: it's about making a picture that is interesting to look at, but
> people keep insisting that it's making some deep comentary about its
> subjects... and often enough, when there even IS a journalistic aspect,
> it's popularly completely misunderstood. His example with Churchill is
> a hoot!
you aren't even beginning to sense the real depth behind the topic. you're
like a shoe salesman complaining that the customers all want italian shoes.
the Negative is never a positive.
David Olen Baird
Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
feelings.
---
David Olen Baird, Composer
mailto:davb...@tfs.net
vist the Garden Suite page at:
http://www.tfs.net/~davbaird/tgs.htm
Dr.Matt
David Olen Baird <davb...@tfs.net> wrote:
>The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>feelings.
Not in mine. Just sounds chosen to sound good to me. You may supply
the feelings if you like. The alleged communication of feelings is
covered very well by McEwan's article, too.
mike
news:3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net:
yah. it's primitive to think that communication is only "fetch me a grape".
in these verbal communications there's the assumption that "truth or false
is coming", and the reception is moot. how silly to think that someone
telling you that "one plus one equals two" is telling you anything but a
certainty of feeling. why is listening to harmonic change different from
listening to any other stream of objects?
Richard Brooks
"David Olen Baird" <davb...@tfs.net> wrote in message
news:3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net...
> The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
> Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
> there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
> or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
> emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
> feelings.
A feeling is a thought (as is an idea) all coming from the brain unless you
go for that organ pumping to the left just off centre as having yearnings of
love?
Communication is whatever you want it to mean whether you go for
programmatic music or cerebral, why, didn't Beethoven use instruments to
sound like birds in his Pastoral and was he wrong to even think of doing so?
Elitism is reserved for those (British usually) who take dead composers'
works in vain and try to expound at great length what they think the
composer meant.
For once I'd like a composer to grab one of these people by the throat and
say "listen, you puffed up academic, I was so rat-arsed on all kinds of
drink that I just knocked out a damn fine tune."
Richard.
mike
@news.itd.umich.edu:
> In article <3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net>,
> David Olen Baird <davb...@tfs.net> wrote:
>>The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>>Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>>there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>>or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>>emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>>feelings.
>
> Not in mine. Just sounds chosen to sound good to me.
dimmwitsky! that's a communication of the concept to your work and from
your work to the public. the content of the work is "sounds good". that's
mappable onto any sense field.
i think that matt's playing the "i'm not going to tap my foot when i hear
this music" game. it's a necessary game and i hope he learns something from
it. i don't know if his imagination is so full of scarey thoughts that he's
afraid his real self will show in his music, or if he has no imagination at
all and wants to legislate dullness's inclusion into The Rules of Music.
>You may supply
> the feelings if you like. The alleged communication of feelings is
> covered very well by McEwan's article, too.
the point is knowing what *you* are reading in McEwan, not McEwan. he's a
lamer.
mike
news:abgupr$o7d$1...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk:
>
> "David Olen Baird" <davb...@tfs.net> wrote in message
> news:3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net...
>> The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>> Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>> there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>> or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>> emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>> feelings.
>
> A feeling is a thought (as is an idea) all coming from the brain unless
> you go for that organ pumping to the left just off centre as having
> yearnings of love?
>
> Communication is whatever you want it to mean whether you go for
> programmatic music or cerebral, why, didn't Beethoven use instruments
> to sound like birds in his Pastoral and was he wrong to even think of
> doing so?
>
> Elitism is reserved for those (British usually) who take dead
> composers' works in vain and try to expound at great length what they
> think the composer meant.
>
> For once I'd like a composer to grab one of these people by the throat
> and say "listen, you puffed up academic, I was so rat-arsed on all
> kinds of drink that I just knocked out a damn fine tune."
you'd really like that? what would it prove? that you both had "feelings"?
but, if feelings are thought objects, then is "push and shove" the best
musical approach? typically, we say that we write to correct the music of
our teachers, not punch the nose of our critic (except as a utility-grade
music in tantric writings like that of jeff h. and jarl).
Richard White
Olen Baird) wrote:
> The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
> Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
> there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
> or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
> emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
> feelings.
It's entirely possible for a composer (or a performer, for that matter)
to guide the listener to a _meaning_ of a piece of music through
gestures from slight and subtle to overt and heavy-handed. That's what
program music does. But any perceived meaning can only be supplied by
the listener. I know of no way of quantifying this except by asking
listeners' opinion and/or feeling about what they've just heard. More
often than not, such opinions and feelings will swing so widely, that
I'm left with the notion that music means everything, hence nothing.
Richard White
--
http://home.flash.net/~whitco (Now with Photos) whi...@flash.net
Hear Linda Ronstadt sing Richard White on
ŚA Merry Little Christmasą - Elektra #62572-2/4
CDs: ŚMusic for Guitarą and ŚMusic for Woodwinds and Piano'
available at: http://www.mp3.com/richardwhite
mike
whi...@flash.net:
> In article <3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net>, davb...@tfs.net (David
> Olen Baird) wrote:
>
>> The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>> Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>> there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>> or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>> emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>> feelings.
>
> It's entirely possible for a composer (or a performer, for that matter)
> to guide the listener to a _meaning_ of a piece of music through
> gestures from slight and subtle to overt and heavy-handed. That's what
> program music does. But any perceived meaning can only be supplied by
> the listener.
that's a fallacy on "perceived"... it works if you think that meaning is
just "one plus one equals two", but our notion of meaning is vertually
infinite, and, as is shown in matt's protestations, self-centered. no one
says that you are going to encode CNN into a symphony, but the point is
that CNN is basically an emotion game and might as well be a symphony
itself.
> I know of no way of quantifying this except by asking
> listeners' opinion and/or feeling about what they've just heard. More
> often than not, such opinions and feelings will swing so widely, that
> I'm left with the notion that music means everything, hence nothing.
that's also the mistake of abstracting a notion through repetition of the
word into a neutral space. music always means something or it is noise,
but never both at once. "abstraction" isn't the truth of a concept, but
the "abstraction" of a word out of context helps us to understand
concepts. paying attention to how people respond to your work is very
important. what would matt rather have, do you think? an audience which
visualized on his music or an audience which mentally counted his bars?
but, isn't "counting the bars", "watching the bass" and listening for
chord change a visualization also? it would be silly to say that it was
somehow a superior way of seeing music... since you don't want people
seeing your music in the first place. but, this too begs the question:
what is matt wanting from the audience? respect?
>
> Richard White
>
Richard Brooks
"mike" <orang...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:Xns920A50B8A6A4B...@66.75.162.196...
I think others get too important or pompous on behalf of composers,
championing them after they're dead and removing any thought that they shat,
farted and any other function that is common to all. Okay, they probably
were the supermodels of their time being told how lovely they were until it
meant nothing but a lot of composers and conductors of music were very
down-to-earth such as Elgar who was thought a bit lofty and had intrigued a
lot of people with his passing of bits of paper to an assistant while
working and it later came out that he'd been bitten by the horse betting
bug!
If we correct something then it was "wrong" but I might take it that you
might mean to modify the music of our teachers and once again that is
subjective. One student may modify in one way that others may dislike and
another student may come up with other ideas. Which is right or wrong.
Neither!
Pomposity has taken the ability for the public to applause the ending of
each section of a symphony, the applauding of a line in a piece felt as a
solo and also the placing of first and second violins together and then
included analysts in the audience armed with a copy of the score to see if
the orchestra are "reciting" it properly.
For anyone to place a specific area of "meaning" to music only give another
version of Sinead O'Conners view that music should only be used for
political comment (prior to tearing up a picture of the pope then becoming a
member of the cloth).
Before I make this thread too long I shall give a line or two from Sir
Thomas Beecham (who, incidentally was nearly thrown with his orchestra, in
jail for throwing fireworks out of train windows).
'The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious
thought.'
'Music first and last should sound well, should allure and enchant the ear;
never mind the inner significance.'
etc.....
mike
> Before I make this thread too long I shall give a line or two from Sir
> Thomas Beecham (who, incidentally was nearly thrown with his orchestra,
> in jail for throwing fireworks out of train windows).
>
> 'The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious
> thought.'
>
i really like beecham and i think he was a great conductor because he gave
such conscious thought to his interpretations. i think, though, that the
content of music is a conscious thought too. just ask Descartes.
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
> Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in news:100520021506406967%
> whi...@flash.net:
> > It's entirely possible for a composer (or a performer, for that matter)
> > to guide the listener to a _meaning_ of a piece of music through
> > gestures from slight and subtle to overt and heavy-handed. That's what
> > program music does. But any perceived meaning can only be supplied by
> > the listener.
>
> that's a fallacy on "perceived"... it works if you think that meaning is
> just "one plus one equals two", but our notion of meaning is vertually
> infinite, and, as is shown in matt's protestations, self-centered.
Well that's a matter of opinion, amigo. It works on all levels for me.
Without being "perceived," music's meaning (assuming there is any)
lives in a place of useless abstraction. Some folks enjoy that game,
some folks don't. As an engaging pastime, I've been known to rather
enjoy it on occasion, but my preference is to have my feet on the
ground. What I find interesting is that being "vertually (sic)
infinite" _virtually_ parallels my notion that with so many
possibilities available, there may as well be none. And when that
happens, it signals - for me -the need to focus elsewhere.
> no one says that you are going to encode CNN into a symphony, but the point is
> that CNN is basically an emotion game and might as well be a symphony
> itself.
???
> > I know of no way of quantifying this except by asking
> > listeners' opinion and/or feeling about what they've just heard. More
> > often than not, such opinions and feelings will swing so widely, that
> > I'm left with the notion that music means everything, hence nothing.
>
> that's also the mistake of abstracting a notion through repetition of the
> word into a neutral space. music always means something or it is noise,
> but never both at once. "abstraction" isn't the truth of a concept, but
> the "abstraction" of a word out of context helps us to understand
> concepts. paying attention to how people respond to your work is very important.
Well that's my stand, take it or leave it; in fact, it's particularly
useful to me as a reminder to focus on the _abstractions_ that are
music rather than some phantom meaning. As for noise: The implication
that noise does not mean something seems to me to be a fallacy. Hell,
if music can have meaning to some folks, so can noise.
I agree that it _can_ be important to pay attention to how people
respond to one's work, but it's much _more_ important in so doing to
allow others full responsibility for their responses. While I have a
_preference_ that folks like my work, I give no more credence to praise
than to criticism. What others think or feel about my work is not my
doing, nor is it anything over which I have any control.
> what would matt rather have, do you think? an audience which
> visualized on his music or an audience which mentally counted his bars?
> but, isn't "counting the bars", "watching the bass" and listening for
> chord change a visualization also? it would be silly to say that it was
> somehow a superior way of seeing music... since you don't want people
> seeing your music in the first place. but, this too begs the question:
> what is matt wanting from the audience? respect?
I suppose Matt has to answer these questions for himself if he's so
inclined. Personally, I think he's too smart to wallow around in
quickstand. :-) From what I can gather, he has already made his
position pretty clear anyway. You either get it or you don't. But of
course, it's up to him if he wants to indulge.
Perhaps it might be more meaningful if you told us _your_ answers to
the rhetorical questions you pose. Or perhaps you can tell us what
Mozart's 39th Symphony _means_ to you? Or maybe it's noise?
Now, if you could write a sentence that had a straight line or two in
it... ;-)
mike
> In article <Xns920A837796378...@66.75.162.198>, mike
><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in news:100520021506406967%
>> whi...@flash.net:
>
>> > It's entirely possible for a composer (or a performer, for that
>> > matter) to guide the listener to a _meaning_ of a piece of music
>> > through gestures from slight and subtle to overt and heavy-handed.
>> > That's what program music does. But any perceived meaning can only
>> > be supplied by the listener.
>>
>> that's a fallacy on "perceived"... it works if you think that meaning
>> is just "one plus one equals two", but our notion of meaning is
>> vertually infinite, and, as is shown in matt's protestations,
>> self-centered.
>
> Well that's a matter of opinion, amigo.
>It works on all levels for me.
[lots of stuff cut]
richard, thanks for the spell check on "virtual".
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
> Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in
> news:100520022137388473%whi...@flash.net:
>
> > In article <Xns920A837796378...@66.75.162.198>, mike
> ><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in news:100520021506406967%
> >> whi...@flash.net:
> >
> >> > It's entirely possible for a composer (or a performer, for that
> >> > matter) to guide the listener to a _meaning_ of a piece of music
> >> > through gestures from slight and subtle to overt and heavy-handed.
> >> > That's what program music does. But any perceived meaning can only
> >> > be supplied by the listener.
> >>
> >> that's a fallacy on "perceived"... it works if you think that meaning
> >> is just "one plus one equals two", but our notion of meaning is
> >> vertually infinite, and, as is shown in matt's protestations,
> >> self-centered.
> >
>
> > Well that's a matter of opinion, amigo.
>
> >It works on all levels for me.
>
> [lots of stuff cut]
>
> richard, thanks for the spell check on "virtual".
My pleasure...
And thank _you_ for a straight sentence.
However, keep in mind that punctuation should be enclosed within
parentheses, as in "virtual."
mike
whi...@flash.net:
> In article <Xns920ABF948CB23...@66.75.162.198>, mike
><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in
>> news:100520022137388473%whi...@flash.net:
>>
>> > In article <Xns920A837796378...@66.75.162.198>, mike
>> ><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in news:100520021506406967%
>> >> whi...@flash.net:
>> >
>> >> > It's entirely possible for a composer (or a performer, for that
>> >> > matter) to guide the listener to a _meaning_ of a piece of music
>> >> > through gestures from slight and subtle to overt and heavy-handed.
>> >> > That's what program music does. But any perceived meaning can only
>> >> > be supplied by the listener.
>> >>
>> >> that's a fallacy on "perceived"... it works if you think that meaning
>> >> is just "one plus one equals two", but our notion of meaning is
>> >> vertually infinite, and, as is shown in matt's protestations,
>> >> self-centered.
>> >
>>
>> > Well that's a matter of opinion, amigo.
>>
>> >It works on all levels for me.
>>
>> [lots of stuff cut]
>>
>> richard, thanks for the spell check on "virtual".
>
> My pleasure...
>
> And thank _you_ for a straight sentence.
i constructed it to be readable for you. i'm glad you were able to parse
it. you'd be surprised at how many questions your opinions raised while i
read them... though i felt your post didn't help with the concept of music
and body. probably it hadn't occured to you that that's how i was
conceptualizing the topic. thanks for sharing though.
>
> However, keep in mind that punctuation should be enclosed within
> parentheses, as in "virtual."
[odd pair of "parentheses" and odd admonishment (!)]
>
> Richard White
>
thanks (,) it's illogical to do so, but i'll try (...) though doing so will
give an unnecessary stop to the modulation "virtual" (,) ripping it out of
the composition and leaving the primary module unstopped and warbling (.)
better to think that the function of the quote mark pair is punctuation for
whatever the pair is marking (.)
Richard Brooks
I can't unless you know of one of his ancestors and the great thing about
all knowledge is that, surely, if it is espoused from one mind at that point
in time it can only be subjective unless the person thinking of it refused
to think of it (kind of like the white rabbit club or whatever it was that
you mustn't think about to join) ? ;-)
As far as I am concerned, and to use a very apt American phrase "it's all
good" where music is concerned !
It's just very dangerous to one group of people to then decide that music is
only capable for one use or another, as though it belongs to their group.
Okay, I don't like all this manufactured stuff that England has been
responsible for but if others like it then that's okay for them but I won't
tell whoever likes it that music is only for some higher(?) spiritual(??)
plane.
David Olen Baird
(Dr.Matt) wrote:
>In article <3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net>,
>David Olen Baird <davb...@tfs.net> wrote:
>>The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>>Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>>there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>>or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>>emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>>feelings.
>
>Not in mine. Just sounds chosen to sound good to me.
But, what is sounding good? Is it an idea or a story. Of course not.
If I hear your music, it sounds good because of the way it makes me
feel.
>You may supply
>the feelings if you like.
We always supply our own feelings. We can argue about if the feeling I
have is different from the feeling you have. But, this sense of
beauty that you wish to infuse into your music may actually cause me
to have a sense of beauty.
>The alleged communication of feelings is
>covered very well by McEwan's article, too.
>
I missed that. Was that discussed in the prior thread?
>--
> Matthew H. Fields http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields
> Music: Splendor in Sound
> "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a trip to the bathroom."
>
---
David Olen Baird
<richar...@kdbanglia.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>"David Olen Baird" <davb...@tfs.net> wrote in message
>news:3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net...
>> The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>> Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>> there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>> or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>> emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>> feelings.
>
>A feeling is a thought (as is an idea) all coming from the brain unless you
>go for that organ pumping to the left just off centre as having yearnings of
>love?
Well, maybe "thought" was a bad choice of words.
>Communication is whatever you want it to mean whether you go for
>programmatic music or cerebral, why, didn't Beethoven use instruments to
>sound like birds in his Pastoral and was he wrong to even think of doing so?
I'd like to stay away from program music in this argument as it
obfuscates my essential point. Clearly program music has some
specific external association which communicates other than emotion
(e.g. a story). But, that is not what I am talking about
>Elitism is reserved for those (British usually) who take dead composers'
>works in vain and try to expound at great length what they think the
>composer meant.
Fate knocking at the door again? That's a programmatic connection.
>For once I'd like a composer to grab one of these people by the throat and
>say "listen, you puffed up academic, I was so rat-arsed on all kinds of
>drink that I just knocked out a damn fine tune."
I'd pay to see that. :)
>
>Richard.
>
>
>---
>Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
>Checked by Expert Anti-Virus.
>Version: 6.0.351 / Virus Database: 197 - Release Date: 19/04/02
>
>
---
David Olen Baird
appreciate what I say. Some people will ignore me. And, some people
will think I'm an irritating idiot and only be bored, at best.
So, in reaching my audience with my speech, I am clearly only
successful part of the time.
It's no different with music. Only some of the people are going to
"get it".
So, the real queston to me is, "do the people who 'get it' have the
same, or similar reaction that I had when I wrote the music?" Does it
make them feel sad as I felt, excited as I felt, surprised, tentative,
angry, etc, etc.
My opinion is that there are enough cultural and human commonalities
that we share, that these emotions (for those who 'get it') are likely
to be very similar.
On Fri, 10 May 2002 22:05:45 GMT, Richard White <whi...@flash.net>
wrote:
---
David Olen Baird
wrote:
>In article <Xns920A837796378...@66.75.162.198>, mike
><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in news:100520021506406967%
>> whi...@flash.net:
>>
>> that's a fallacy on "perceived"... it works if you think that meaning is
>> just "one plus one equals two", but our notion of meaning is vertually
>> infinite, and, as is shown in matt's protestations, self-centered.
>Well that's a matter of opinion, amigo. It works on all levels for me.
>Without being "perceived," music's meaning (assuming there is any)
>lives in a place of useless abstraction. Some folks enjoy that game,
>some folks don't. As an engaging pastime, I've been known to rather
>enjoy it on occasion, but my preference is to have my feet on the
>ground.
>What I find interesting is that being "vertually (sic)
>infinite" _virtually_ parallels my notion that with so many
>possibilities available, there may as well be none. And when that
>happens, it signals - for me -the need to focus elsewhere.
This is probably the best argument against my theory, which I continue
to defend as follows (-:
Why has Beethoven been popular for over 200 years? I'd venture to say
that it is because we have these feelings (feelings of beauty, as Matt
would say), that have had meaning to people over the generations.
In that class of people who like LVB do you think that the feelings
provided by, e.g., the 5th symphony are virtually infinite? I feel
giddy, you feel pissed, Matt feels romantic, mike feels confused,
etc.?
I simply would argue that we have elevated LVB music to the position
it deserves because it moves us in similar ways.
I think part of the problem is the difficulty (impossibility, perhaps)
of accurately verbalizing how we feel. We really have no good common
language for describing feelings. We can say, "I feel like I did when
I first heard Fur Elise", but I can't very well describe what that
feeling feels like.
>> no one says that you are going to encode CNN into a symphony, but the point is
>> that CNN is basically an emotion game and might as well be a symphony
>> itself.
>
>???
Another one of mike's wonderful off-the-wall associations. You kinda
have to get the feeling of what he's saying. :-)
>> > I know of no way of quantifying this except by asking
>> > listeners' opinion and/or feeling about what they've just heard. More
>> > often than not, such opinions and feelings will swing so widely, that
>> > I'm left with the notion that music means everything, hence nothing.
>>
>> that's also the mistake of abstracting a notion through repetition of the
>> word into a neutral space. music always means something or it is noise,
>> but never both at once. "abstraction" isn't the truth of a concept, but
>> the "abstraction" of a word out of context helps us to understand
>> concepts. paying attention to how people respond to your work is very important.
>
>Well that's my stand, take it or leave it; in fact, it's particularly
>useful to me as a reminder to focus on the _abstractions_ that are
>music rather than some phantom meaning. As for noise: The implication
>that noise does not mean something seems to me to be a fallacy. Hell,
>if music can have meaning to some folks, so can noise.
Noise can have meaning, in the emotional sense: e.g. if it's sudden
and loud, it means: Alert! Be aware! Watch Out! Fight or Flight! This
is an easy one. I feel my heart beat faster, my senses are more
acute, I want to take action.
Usually, however, emotions are tremendously abstract. And this is one
of the other difficulties in proving my argument. Emotions don't
often don't "mean" anything specific or concrete, they just "are",
very real, but they are only feelings.
>I agree that it _can_ be important to pay attention to how people
>respond to one's work, but it's much _more_ important in so doing to
>allow others full responsibility for their responses. While I have a
>_preference_ that folks like my work, I give no more credence to praise
>than to criticism. What others think or feel about my work is not my
>doing, nor is it anything over which I have any control.
You don't have any control over what people think or feel about what
you say. It's just that the verbal is logical and concrete with
specific meanings that we can attribute to external things in the
world that we all can agree on that are concrete and real. Therefore,
it's easy to find out what people think about what you say - you ask
them, they tell you.
>
>> what would matt rather have, do you think? an audience which
>> visualized on his music or an audience which mentally counted his bars?
>> but, isn't "counting the bars", "watching the bass" and listening for
>> chord change a visualization also? it would be silly to say that it was
>> somehow a superior way of seeing music... since you don't want people
>> seeing your music in the first place. but, this too begs the question:
>> what is matt wanting from the audience? respect?
>
>I suppose Matt has to answer these questions for himself if he's so
>inclined. Personally, I think he's too smart to wallow around in
>quickstand. :-) From what I can gather, he has already made his
>position pretty clear anyway. You either get it or you don't. But of
>course, it's up to him if he wants to indulge.
>Perhaps it might be more meaningful if you told us _your_ answers to
>the rhetorical questions you pose. Or perhaps you can tell us what
>Mozart's 39th Symphony _means_ to you? Or maybe it's noise?
I choose the subject of this post to argue that the "meaning" in music
is emotional. So, if mike can accurately describe how he feels, then,
that is the meaning.
>
>Now, if you could write a sentence that had a straight line or two in
>it... ;-)
Actually, now that you mentio
>Richard White
>
>--
>http://home.flash.net/~whitco (Now with Photos) whi...@flash.net
>Hear Linda Ronstadt sing Richard White on
>ŚA Merry Little Christmasą - Elektra #62572-2/4
>CDs: ŚMusic for Guitarą and ŚMusic for Woodwinds and Piano'
>available at: http://www.mp3.com/richardwhite
---
Dr.Matt
David Olen Baird <davb...@tfs.net> wrote:
>On Fri, 10 May 2002 16:18:15 GMT, fie...@xexex.gpcc.itd.umich.edu
>(Dr.Matt) wrote:
>
>>In article <3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net>,
>>David Olen Baird <davb...@tfs.net> wrote:
>>>The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>>>Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>>>there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>>>or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>>>emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>>>feelings.
>>
>>Not in mine. Just sounds chosen to sound good to me.
>
>But, what is sounding good? Is it an idea or a story. Of course not.
>If I hear your music, it sounds good because of the way it makes me
>feel.
If that works for you, fine. If it sounds good to you, that's a lucky
side effect.
>>You may supply
>>the feelings if you like.
>
>We always supply our own feelings. We can argue about if the feeling I
>have is different from the feeling you have. But, this sense of
>beauty that you wish to infuse into your music may actually cause me
>to have a sense of beauty.
It is impossible for me to infuse my music with anything but sounds. I
pick the sounds that I want to hear. If you end up wanting to hear them too,
that's neat, and fortunate.
>>The alleged communication of feelings is
>>covered very well by McEwan's article, too.
>>
>
>I missed that. Was that discussed in the prior thread?
Over and over, alas
Kenny Chaffin
orang...@aol.com says...
Well yeah, but "Fetch me a grape." means nothing to a native
swahili/german/chinese speaker or infant.....
KAC
--
Kenny A. Chaffin
KAC Website Design - http://www.kacweb.com
Custom/Contract Programming, Graphics, Design
Poetry Page: http://www.kacweb.com/poems/
mike
>
> "mike" <orang...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns920A93ACF6ECD...@66.75.162.196...
>> "Richard Brooks" <richar...@kdbanglia.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
>> news:abhlve$oe1$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk:
>>
>> > Before I make this thread too long I shall give a line or two from
>> > Sir Thomas Beecham (who, incidentally was nearly thrown with his
>> > orchestra, in jail for throwing fireworks out of train windows).
>> >
>> > 'The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of
>> > conscious thought.'
>> >
>>
>> i really like beecham and i think he was a great conductor because he
>> gave such conscious thought to his interpretations. i think, though,
>> that the content of music is a conscious thought too. just ask
>> Descartes.
>
> I can't unless you know of one of his ancestors
we have a "thing" about thinking that we can only know him through his
writings.
> and the great thing
> about all knowledge is that, surely, if it is espoused from one mind at
> that point in time it can only be subjective unless the person thinking
> of it refused to think of it (kind of like the white rabbit club or
> whatever it was that you mustn't think about to join) ? ;-)
>
> As far as I am concerned, and to use a very apt American phrase "it's
> all good" where music is concerned !
yes, and so is all cheese, including cheese-in-a-can. the great cheese
eaters love all forms of cheese... much like the great music connoiseurs.
>
> It's just very dangerous to one group of people to then decide that
> music is only capable for one use or another, as though it belongs to
> their group.
tis true. but, the plasticity of mind allows this sort of thing, so what
does it matter? well, when you're talking with a composer it seems odd that
the composer can only envision his work as an engineering object with one
purpose. if the music is ok, though, then it doesn't matter what a semi-
educated tune turner has to say about philosophy or footbol.
>
> Okay, I don't like all this manufactured stuff that England has been
> responsible for
ah, you mean the Morris Minor... yes, but it has its fans too.
> but if others like it then that's okay for them but I
> won't tell whoever likes it that music is only for some higher(?)
> spiritual(??) plane.
you mean like the music in the Maharishi's Learjet? does this music change
in quality when the plane reaches a certain altitude? or when the guru
finally relaxes and enjoys the flight? a musical puzzle.
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
> >> >> Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in news:100520021506406967%
> >> >> whi...@flash.net:
> >> >
> >> >> > It's entirely possible for a composer (or a performer, for that
> >> >> > matter) to guide the listener to a _meaning_ of a piece of music
> >> >> > through gestures from slight and subtle to overt and heavy-handed.
> >> >> > That's what program music does. But any perceived meaning can only
> >> >> > be supplied by the listener.
> >> >>
> >> >> that's a fallacy on "perceived"... it works if you think that meaning
> >> >> is just "one plus one equals two", but our notion of meaning is
> >> >> vertually infinite, and, as is shown in matt's protestations,
> >> >> self-centered.
> >> >
> >>
> >> > Well that's a matter of opinion, amigo.
> >>
> >> >It works on all levels for me.
> >>
> >> [lots of stuff cut]
> >>
> >> richard, thanks for the spell check on "virtual".
> >
> > My pleasure...
> >
> > And thank _you_ for a straight sentence.
>
> i constructed it to be readable for you. i'm glad you were able to parse
> it. you'd be surprised at how many questions your opinions raised while i
> read them... though i felt your post didn't help with the concept of music
> and body. probably it hadn't occured to you that that's how i was
> conceptualizing the topic. thanks for sharing though.
>
Not at all. You're really too kind. And it was very good of you to
enlist "i (sic) felt" as a qualifier; shows a certain humility. If you
could, however, demonstrate to the mortals among us what "the concept
of music and body(?)" means to _you_ - or for that matter, what it
means _period_ - perhaps there'd be something to "help." Just realize
that clairvoyants are few and far between. Have a heart man. ;-) Better
yet, here's an assignment for you: Write a 500 word essay on the theme,
"What Music Means To Me." And as a special request and favor to me, if
you make your prose readable and parseable with not too much effort -
you know "one plus one equals two" - you'll have a friend for life.
>
> thanks (,) it's illogical to do so, but i'll try (...) though doing so will
> give an unnecessary stop to the modulation "virtual" (,) ripping it out of
> the composition and leaving the primary module unstopped and warbling (.)
> better to think that the function of the quote mark pair is punctuation for
> whatever the pair is marking (.)
I read this somewhere before.... Was it Strunk & White?
What do you do when you're not posting here?
mike
news:3cdd03ad...@news.birch.net:
> On Sat, 11 May 2002 04:36:44 GMT, Richard White <whi...@flash.net>
> wrote:
>>ground.
>
>>What I find interesting is that being "vertually (sic)
>>infinite" _virtually_ parallels my notion that with so many
>>possibilities available, there may as well be none. And when that
>>happens, it signals - for me -the need to focus elsewhere.
>
> This is probably the best argument against my theory, which I continue
> to defend as follows (-:
>
> Why has Beethoven been popular for over 200 years? I'd venture to say
> that it is because we have these feelings (feelings of beauty, as Matt
> would say), that have had meaning to people over the generations.
it's really only a question of whether we think that we "encode" these feelings
into the music or whether the audience encodes these feelings while listening to
the music. if the emotion is in the audience, then it's silly to think that
their only going to focus on the emotion of gratitude to the composer for
writing the work.
>
> In that class of people who like LVB do you think that the feelings
> provided by, e.g., the 5th symphony are virtually infinite? I feel
> giddy, you feel pissed, Matt feels romantic, mike feels confused,
> etc.?
don't get cute. why would there only be one emotion available in the music? the
fifth isn't some pop-schlock jinglebell song. that's the point of classical
music... that it controls the emotional spread according to a structure modelled
by the composer. music is an art, and the psychological structure of art
presents triggers and counter triggers for the emotion and wonder.
>
> I simply would argue that we have elevated LVB music to the position
> it deserves because it moves us in similar ways.
>
> I think part of the problem is the difficulty (impossibility, perhaps)
> of accurately verbalizing how we feel.
yes, that's why we switch to music language to say things on the sonic level.
the sonic is one of the primary ways we determine the nature of the outer world
and of any possible "otherness" to our own being. further, and art creates this
sort of concept, the "self" itself, our "being" is created by assimulation of
the sense impressions from sound and light and touch. Art presents these primary
knowledges in an extranatural form, but one which we've been taught to
understand as a protected experience.
> We really have no good common
> language for describing feelings.
yes we have. that is what "culture" actually is. the limits of conversation are
not the limits of all word products. the "novel", apparently, helps to clarify
the understanding by inventing "emotions" to match "feelings".
> We can say, "I feel like I did when
> I first heard Fur Elise", but I can't very well describe what that
> feeling feels like.
that's your limitation. a decent report would be a "short story", where the
nature of "You" would be shown as a precipitation out of your described thoughts
and actions, your "experience". emotively, we've no way of knowing you, but i
don't think that kind of selfish need to know someone applies here... we know
you as much as we need to... that's the point of saying that an artwork exists
as "protected", is experienced in a protected space (we can stop reading or
listening, for instance).
>
>>> no one says that you are going to encode CNN into a symphony, but the
>>> point is that CNN is basically an emotion game and might as well be a
>>> symphony itself.
>>
>>???
>
> Another one of mike's wonderful off-the-wall associations. You kinda
> have to get the feeling of what he's saying. :-)
hardly off the wall. very typical philosophy usage: you substitute a abnormality
for a normality in order to see what you are actually using the normality for.
phil is another kind of literature than conversational writing, it's true. but,
the typical college educated person ought to be able to conceptualize something
out of the words.
>
>>> > I know of no way of quantifying this except by asking
>>> > listeners' opinion and/or feeling about what they've just heard.
>>> > More often than not, such opinions and feelings will swing so
>>> > widely, that I'm left with the notion that music means everything,
>>> > hence nothing.
>>>
>>> that's also the mistake of abstracting a notion through repetition of
>>> the word into a neutral space. music always means something or it is
>>> noise, but never both at once. "abstraction" isn't the truth of a
>>> concept, but the "abstraction" of a word out of context helps us to
>>> understand concepts. paying attention to how people respond to your
>>> work is very important.
>>
>>Well that's my stand, take it or leave it; in fact, it's particularly
>>useful to me as a reminder to focus on the _abstractions_ that are
>>music rather than some phantom meaning. As for noise: The implication
>>that noise does not mean something seems to me to be a fallacy. Hell,
>>if music can have meaning to some folks, so can noise.
>
> Noise can have meaning, in the emotional sense: e.g. if it's sudden
> and loud, it means: Alert! Be aware!
no it doesn't! those are things which are learnt. the first response is just to
be startled and to start crying... that for the ordinary person... but, for the
musical kid? "fascination?"
> Watch Out! Fight or Flight! This
> is an easy one. I feel my heart beat faster, my senses are more
> acute, I want to take action.
extreme associationism maybe, but it doesn't explain the mind's relation to the
sense structure enough to say that the sense structure presents a symbol for the
mind to worry about... the object of the senses is just "impulse": push... that
is the symbolic for "senses".
>
> Usually, however, emotions are tremendously abstract.
oh, just tremendously... like, during their experience you experience them, and
then, afterward, when you want to understand what happened, you've suddenly got
to pull all the parallel experiences of mind/body over their several durations
into a "talk about it" whole. that's the "tremendous abstract"of emotion.
"abstraction" means a mirroring, reflection, of a symbol outside its symbol set
and into a new symbol set... that of "thinking about".
> And this is one
> of the other difficulties in proving my argument. Emotions don't
> often don't "mean" anything specific or concrete, they just "are",
> very real, but they are only feelings.
emotions are "feelings" but they aren't specific... how do you even know they
exist apart from your creation of them? perhaps they're specific to each
conversation object they arise out of? including long-going conversations of
little content like "the dog is here", and then, loss of the dog, "where's the
dog!!"? this probably seems trivial to you, but you must have wondered, at some
time, where the "emotions", which seem so available, reside in your "head"? have
you not the slightest suspicion that they are created for specific uses? and
that Art plays with this dynamic? "What am I to he, or he to Hecuba"?
>
>>I agree that it _can_ be important to pay attention to how people
>>respond to one's work, but it's much _more_ important in so doing to
>>allow others full responsibility for their responses.
there's the point: that they're going to respond as they can. an art student, a
friend, sat through an entire BSO "symphonie fantastique"... watching the gleem
off the brass, the dancing of the conductor. when she was told, afterwards, what
the piece was meant to "represent", she bought a disc of the Berlioz. had she
suddenly discovered music? but, what of the schlockers who listen to the
"sadness and pain" in Shostakovich? -- musical people who suddenly ignore the
fact that his music is episodic and trivial? are they suddenly discovering
"psychology"? probably... they're mostly pretty shallow people.
> While I have a
>>_preference_ that folks like my work, I give no more credence to praise
>>than to criticism. What others think or feel about my work is not my
>>doing, nor is it anything over which I have any control.
"a man's gotta do..."
>
> You don't have any control over what people think or feel about what
> you say.
what control do we have over what we say? "rationality"? "self-control"? music
is about the loss of self control and rationality, yes? isn't that what Beecham
meant? the "dionysic"? -- you recognize this word? it's not as though people
haven't been thinking about this problem for thousands of years.
> It's just that the verbal is logical and concrete with
> specific meanings that we can attribute to external things
sometimes. but, what about "yahoo!!"? and "god"?
> in the
> world that we all can agree on that are concrete and real. Therefore,
> it's easy to find out what people think about what you say - you ask
> them, they tell you.
they tell you whatever occurs to them to need to tell you about a subject
they've never thought of and don't consider important enough to give more than
superficial thought to. what you're getting from them is a little "artwork".
>
>>
>>> what would matt rather have, do you think? an audience which
>>> visualized on his music or an audience which mentally counted his
>>> bars? but, isn't "counting the bars", "watching the bass" and
>>> listening for chord change a visualization also? it would be silly
>>> to say that it was somehow a superior way of seeing music... since
>>> you don't want people seeing your music in the first place. but, this
>>> too begs the question: what is matt wanting from the audience?
>>> respect?
>>
>>I suppose Matt has to answer these questions for himself if he's so
>>inclined. Personally, I think he's too smart to wallow around in
>>quickstand. :-) From what I can gather, he has already made his
>>position pretty clear anyway. You either get it or you don't. But of
>>course, it's up to him if he wants to indulge.
>
>>Perhaps it might be more meaningful if you told us _your_ answers to
>>the rhetorical questions you pose. Or perhaps you can tell us what
>>Mozart's 39th Symphony _means_ to you? Or maybe it's noise?
>
> I choose the subject of this post to argue that the "meaning" in music
> is emotional. So, if mike can accurately describe how he feels, then,
> that is the meaning.
again, you forgot to tell us what "emotion" is. it's not any more obvious than
the meaning of music. your theory of emotion will need a consistant theory of
psychology, which must, itself, be founded on a meaningful theory of logic.
logic itself, in the real world, is a heavily debated object... it's only the
tholens of the world who think that there is an object called logic which can be
associated with [the necessarily illogical] of reality.
mike
news:MPG.1746a3f64...@news.dimensional.com:
>> >>>--- Original Sheet Music:
>> >>>http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/Rubenstein/ Original Music
>> >>>Compositions: http://www.erols.com/druben
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>--
>> >> Matthew H. Fields http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields
>> >> Music: Splendor in Sound
>> >> "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a trip to the
>> >> bathroom."
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ---
>> > David Olen Baird, Composer mailto:davb...@tfs.net
>> >
>> > vist the Garden Suite page at: http://www.tfs.net/~davbaird/tgs.htm
>> >
>>
>> yah. it's primitive to think that communication is only "fetch me a
>> grape". in these verbal communications there's the assumption that
>> "truth or false is coming", and the reception is moot. how silly to
>> think that someone telling you that "one plus one equals two" is
>> telling you anything but a certainty of feeling. why is listening to
>> harmonic change different from listening to any other stream of
>> objects?
>>
>
> Well yeah, but "Fetch me a grape." means nothing to a native
> swahili/german/chinese speaker or infant.....
>
> KAC
don't get funny. the concept is that physico/symbolic "need for grape" is
outside the word/symbolic "get me a grape" experience... that the word
experience exists in and of itself and is not a replacement for "i need a
grape".
what you're saying is true, but i don't think you see all the implications
for your own posting in what you're positing: word language is only the
most obvious of the languages. that's why it got named "the thing called
"language"..."tongue work".
mike
well, you can't know everyone.
>>
>> thanks (,) it's illogical to do so, but i'll try (...) though doing so
>> will give an unnecessary stop to the modulation "virtual" (,) ripping
>> it out of the composition and leaving the primary module unstopped and
>> warbling (.) better to think that the function of the quote mark pair
>> is punctuation for whatever the pair is marking (.)
>
> I read this somewhere before.... Was it Strunk & White?
>
> What do you do when you're not posting here?
i write music! i think you even critiqued one of my pieces once.
>
> Richard White
>
mike
news:Nk8D8.189$kf....@news.itd.umich.edu:
> In article <3cdcf992...@news.birch.net>,
> David Olen Baird <davb...@tfs.net> wrote:
>>On Fri, 10 May 2002 16:18:15 GMT, fie...@xexex.gpcc.itd.umich.edu
>>(Dr.Matt) wrote:
>>
>>>In article <3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net>,
>>>David Olen Baird <davb...@tfs.net> wrote:
>>>>The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>>>>Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>>>>there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>>>>or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>>>>emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>>>>feelings.
>>>
>>>Not in mine. Just sounds chosen to sound good to me.
>>
>>But, what is sounding good? Is it an idea or a story. Of course not.
>>If I hear your music, it sounds good because of the way it makes me
>>feel.
>
> If that works for you, fine. If it sounds good to you, that's a lucky
> side effect.
i think this is a decent modernist aesthetic, but wouldn't you want to get
away from any musico/emotive coloration on your work? best if you could
work out a mathematical formula for the generation of a music... that won't
take you out of aesthetic itself, since the perfection of the formula is an
aesthetic operation on math symbol, but it will remove you from the sin of
writing "about something"... even if that something is just "feelings about
how music should be written". cooler yet to take up sculpture and make
busts of yourself... very objective.
>
>>>You may supply
>>>the feelings if you like.
>>
>>We always supply our own feelings. We can argue about if the feeling I
>>have is different from the feeling you have. But, this sense of
>>beauty that you wish to infuse into your music may actually cause me to
>>have a sense of beauty.
>
> It is impossible for me to infuse my music with anything but sounds. I
> pick the sounds that I want to hear. If you end up wanting to hear them
> too, that's neat, and fortunate.
>
>>>The alleged communication of feelings is
>>>covered very well by McEwan's article, too.
>>>
>>
>>I missed that. Was that discussed in the prior thread?
>
> Over and over, alas
the autistic always feel that the water hasn't stopped dripping. let me
call your nurse for you.
mike
@news.birch.net:
> When I speak in public, I know that some people will understand and
> appreciate what I say. Some people will ignore me. And, some people
> will think I'm an irritating idiot and only be bored, at best.
>
> So, in reaching my audience with my speech, I am clearly only
> successful part of the time.
>
> It's no different with music. Only some of the people are going to
> "get it".
>
> So, the real queston to me is, "do the people who 'get it' have the
> same, or similar reaction that I had when I wrote the music?" Does it
> make them feel sad as I felt, excited as I felt, surprised, tentative,
> angry, etc, etc.
ok, yes, so let's set up a hypothetical to present as a contrast to the
"off the top of my head" notion of "what music does". imagine, not someone
who didn't understand your "music", but who got it in a different way:
"listening to your fugue he heard the mechanism of several linked clocks".
what you get by doing this is a presentation of a reaction to music which
isn't a visual translation: he needn't have an image of "clocks" only a
soundbite of "clock" which he extrapolates onto your music. the second
thing you get from this is an implicitly "unemotional" response: it's up to
you and any psychologism to determine if his response was cause by the
music's "heating of the emotive centers".
wouldn't you think that this person's response was "atypical"? you'd expect
visualizations, since you know that music releases the mind from verbal
focus, but, here, you're getting *sonicizations in response to your music.
you understand that this is veering back to "program music" and "birdsong"?
it makes me ask the question of what it is that i'm actually hearing when i
hear a symphony. it would be petty to say to me that i'm only hearing the
horns, etc... since i don't know these things except someone has told me
that a certain sound is associated with... etc.. i'm "blending" or
"accepting" these bleats as "music", yes? and we've already talked of music
as "organized sound" [and accepted, i hope, that it is the listener who
organizes the sounds... even the composer listening to his composition as
he writes it].
now the point is, the underlying question behind "what is music" is, "what
kind of sounds Ought i to accept as legitimate sounds?" -- you understand
that this is the "we hear in order to flee..." question, but, also, the "i
write music that must be heard only as music" statement? -- a statement
which makes very little sense outside of the classroom. "legitimate", from
"lego", "law", "rule" shouldn't throw you, because it just means "which set
of sounds should i trust to show me knowledge?".
we want to say that music has no meaning, but we only say this (i've only
said it at least) as students defending our writing's inspiration in the
face of someone who doesn't comprehend our music -- "professor Y says,
well, yes, but i don't see the parts joining in a way which leads to the
creation of new material", and we say that the parts juxtaposed are A new
material: that we're inventing music. but, what of professor Z, the
painting teacher, who says "oh, that's pretty... it reminds me of Paris
street sweeping machines... and Yvonne...", and he goes off in his mind to
revisualize those paris days? that's the joke about matt's assertion that
there's nothing IN his music except the music... it's made up of
conventionalized noises! that's what "music is organized sound" means, you
know.
>
> My opinion is that there are enough cultural and human commonalities
> that we share, that these emotions (for those who 'get it') are likely
> to be very similar.
i don't know. i think that our emotions are culturally determined,
culturally invented for us. certainly the history of literature and culture
shows that our notion of emotion has a history.
Richard Brooks
> "Richard Brooks" <richar...@kdbanglia.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
> news:abieor$mtc$1...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk:
>
> >
> > "mike" <orang...@aol.com> wrote in message
> > news:Xns920A93ACF6ECD...@66.75.162.196...
> >> "Richard Brooks" <richar...@kdbanglia.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
> >> news:abhlve$oe1$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk:
> >>
>>> just ask Descartes.
> >
> > I can't unless you know of one of his ancestors
>
> we have a "thing" about thinking that we can only know him through his
> writings.
Didn't you state "just ask Descartes" ? ;-)
> > As far as I am concerned, and to use a very apt American phrase "it's
> > all good" where music is concerned !
>
> yes, and so is all cheese, including cheese-in-a-can. the great cheese
> eaters love all forms of cheese... much like the great music connoiseurs.
Hey, over here in the Western European Isles (GB) we are being told by the
boys on the mainland we are allowed this but must not have that by
punishment of law so we understand advancement at the exclusion of all else.
Hitler was a knob head! If only he'd have set up some sort of parliament
and snuck in with various guidelines he'd have caught us all napping without
spending lots on arms and more on Eurocrats.
If anyone likes cheese-in-a-can then so be it. I'm not going to be the next
twat that says "the way is narrow, most of what I say is made up by others
but follow only me and buy my book and follow no false gods.( the followers
all wandered away)" And of the cheese, we'd hold onto cheese more after the
Eurocrats stated that the various cheeses we knew and loved and our immune
systems loved were suddenly illegal to make.
And back to the music, if you have the single entitled "four minutes of
silence" or LPs of Musique Concrete then great. I'm not going to tell you
not to play it. I wonder if anyone has a copy of that single?
>
> >
> > It's just very dangerous to one group of people to then decide that
> > music is only capable for one use or another, as though it belongs to
> > their group.
>
> tis true. but, the plasticity of mind allows this sort of thing, so what
> does it matter? well, when you're talking with a composer it seems odd
that
> the composer can only envision his work as an engineering object with one
> purpose. if the music is ok, though, then it doesn't matter what a semi-
> educated tune turner has to say about philosophy or footbol.
Well, in the books they do seem to talk about architecture or "going from
room to room" when explaining the fundamentals of symphonic structure.
Maybe now they'll explain it in terms of a softcore porn site? More might
say "oh, I see now! Why didn't you say in the first place?" and more might
say "what a load of wank" of the music of course. ;-)
Damn, I need to tidy the first movement...sorry, my room.
Funnily enough I have been reading an old book (most good books on music are
a bit old) on stating that it is a grave mistake to talk of music of the
heart and music of intellect as they both include both processes. It goes
on about some of the great marches that make the heart and feet move for
some are also understood in a deeper way by those who have studied form and
composition.
Some don't give a rats-arse what philosophers think or footbol experts
(Kharasho, I love the Russian pronunciation sneaking in there. Go Spartak
or was it Dinama/Dynamo) as they are the bus systems of life. At first you
can't find one for a while then they come along in bunches but philosphers
and football experts all have their own houses and own reasonings. No-one
is right and no-one is wrong. We've had that danger with following the
followers of what became to be known as SMS or Selective Memory Syndrome as
being a rule of total truth and got our fingers burnt. Everyone loves and
trusts a person in a white lab coat or who might seem to be an intellectual
and think "that's a person with an imagination that is based on external
truth and not on their own opinion!"
That's why we have pubs. Most men get all knowledge from the pub as in
"look darling it's true! A bloke down the pub told me." At least you can
kick the shit out of him if it all turns wrong. Philosophers, scientists
and politicians all have that excellent understanding of being totally
blameless even if it kills us all. After all, it's our fault for following
them, they say and then follow that with "look, give me a golden handshake
of several millions and I'll forget the whole sordid way you awful people
treated me!"
>
> >
> > Okay, I don't like all this manufactured stuff that England has been
> > responsible for
>
> ah, you mean the Morris Minor... yes, but it has its fans too.
Don't forget the honourable Lada club of Great Britain and my home town of
Oxfordograd with it's own magazin' (shop) on the Cowley Road.
No, I'm actually back on music and those sensible brothers the US do not
have a single British single in the charts. When, before the stranglehold
of financial goals ruling the musical package there might be upto twelve
such singles from blighty. Pete Waterman has been at the forefront of this
and all on the remixing and re-jigging of a single rhythmic pattern by that
bloke with the patch over one eye singing "you spin me right round baby,
right round!" That single must be over ten years old (maybe twenty), Pete
Waterman's rich, now helping to sell the tv wannabee offshoots "Pop Stars" &
"Pop Idol" around the world.
You should have seen him freak in an audience interview when one young
hopeful put her hand up and said "what about any of us writing our own
material?" Before you knew it, his mental state boiled over and he had us
all wanting to hide our radios under the floor boards and sew yellow stars
on ourselves. That is the joy any of you are about to behold in the States
and my brother served in Vietnam in the USAF for you lot so don't let Pop
Idol in. You have been warned! Either that or get your lot at PARC or SUN
Research to get their computer to knock out tunes for young hopefuls. Same
result. Cut corners and use a Spectrum ZX81 to do the job yourself and
you'll be rich! Rich! RICH!.
This might sound out of line with my feeling on freedom but all kinds of
musical thought is put to the back (or removed) and it's the packaging of a
youngster as a commodity to sing anything given to them (usually a cover
song) and allowed to sing it with less conviction than the original and for
that young hopeful to be shelved if having individual thought and for
another blonde bimbette to replace them. Fame all over at the tender age of
eighteen and lasting a few months.
Sorry, I've had a long day running around the butt hole that is London
Underground and spent the end of it trying to understand a wailing twenty
one year old Peruvian lady on the phone who got lost after changing meeting
times after I left.
I think I might build myself a hampster xylophone and write something
woeful.
>
> > but if others like it then that's okay for them but I
> > won't tell whoever likes it that music is only for some higher(?)
> > spiritual(??) plane.
>
> you mean like the music in the Maharishi's Learjet? does this music change
> in quality when the plane reaches a certain altitude? or when the guru
> finally relaxes and enjoys the flight? a musical puzzle.
I ...will...not ....mention .....
towers.....in...a...multitude....of....more...than.....one!
In fact, Grasshopper, I think you are getting to grips with the secret of
the hollow balloon that was God or religious dogma. To man, down is hell
and up is to heaven even in music when, if you escape the surly bonds of
earth you find that up or down is superflouous and that all is moving in all
directions with man having no real significant part in the whole thing apart
from his own mind thinking that it does. After all, sound is only sound
when it hits the ear drum and is movement of air between the object struck
or stroked and the object receiving that vibration. Similarly, with the
musical conundrum is the perceived meaning of more, more or less, or is the
lesser, more or less, the larger part or more or less, less.
Meaning in music? What does that mean and what does 'mean' mean?
Even if the composer says "what I mean by this is..." and thirty people
listen to that composer try to explain, they will still have thirty
different perceptions of that due to the varying ways they perceived things
interacting for every second of their lives since before they had an
understanding of what those things meant in the same way that, thirty people
witnessing the same accident will give the police thirty different answers.
Perception is part of that equation (as it always has been). Even a
psychiatrist can only *think* they know what the patient is trying to
explain and not *know* what the patient is trying to explain. They would
have to be the patient to even halfway know. I don't know any more! ;-)
Has the composer explained it well or have the listeners misunderstood? A
bit of a bummer if he didn't explain well but they understood the meaning
better than he meant it to mean!
They're taking the crayons away now so I'll have to write in excrement and
send a padded wall or two in.
I am number six and I claim my five pounds.
mike
>
> "mike" <orang...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns920B5EEF7C9A1...@66.75.162.198...
>> "Richard Brooks" <richar...@kdbanglia.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
>> news:abieor$mtc$1...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk:
>>
>> >
>> > "mike" <orang...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> > news:Xns920A93ACF6ECD...@66.75.162.196...
>> >> "Richard Brooks" <richar...@kdbanglia.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
>> >> news:abhlve$oe1$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk:
>> >>
>
>>>> just ask Descartes.
>> >
>> > I can't unless you know of one of his ancestors
>>
>> we have a "thing" about thinking that we can only know him through his
>> writings.
>
> Didn't you state "just ask Descartes" ? ;-)
thiz is what we are calling a "joke" here in space station 23.
>
>> > As far as I am concerned, and to use a very apt American phrase
>> > "it's all good" where music is concerned !
>>
>> yes, and so is all cheese, including cheese-in-a-can. the great cheese
>> eaters love all forms of cheese... much like the great music
>> connoiseurs.
>
>
> Hey, over here in the Western European Isles (GB) we are being told by
> the boys on the mainland we are allowed this but must not have that by
> punishment of law so we understand advancement at the exclusion of all
> else. Hitler was a knob head! If only he'd have set up some sort of
> parliament and snuck in with various guidelines he'd have caught us all
> napping without spending lots on arms and more on Eurocrats.
>
> If anyone likes cheese-in-a-can then so be it. I'm not going to be the
> next twat that says "the way is narrow, most of what I say is made up
> by others but follow only me and buy my book and follow no false gods.(
> the followers all wandered away)" And of the cheese, we'd hold onto
> cheese more after the Eurocrats stated that the various cheeses we knew
> and loved and our immune systems loved were suddenly illegal to make.
>
> And back to the music, if you have the single entitled "four minutes of
> silence" or LPs of Musique Concrete then great. I'm not going to tell
> you not to play it. I wonder if anyone has a copy of that single?
great! yah, there was a single of 4 minutes of silence in disco's during
the late 60's. people'd play it just to have a break.
does all this love-fest mean that i can take or leave your opinion too?
that seems so sad.
>
>>
>> >
>> > It's just very dangerous to one group of people to then decide that
>> > music is only capable for one use or another, as though it belongs
>> > to their group.
>>
>> tis true. but, the plasticity of mind allows this sort of thing, so
>> what does it matter? well, when you're talking with a composer it
>> seems odd that the composer can only envision his work as an
>> engineering object with one purpose. if the music is ok, though, then
>> it doesn't matter what a semi- educated tune turner has to say about
>> philosophy or footbol.
>
> Well, in the books they do seem to talk about architecture or "going
> from room to room" when explaining the fundamentals of symphonic
> structure. Maybe now they'll explain it in terms of a softcore porn
> site? More might say "oh, I see now! Why didn't you say in the first
> place?" and more might say "what a load of wank" of the music of
> course. ;-)
not a problem for me, since i think that all creative acts access the same
limited set of sense experience.
>
> Damn, I need to tidy the first movement...sorry, my room.
>
> Funnily enough I have been reading an old book (most good books on
> music are a bit old) on stating that it is a grave mistake to talk of
> music of the heart and music of intellect as they both include both
> processes. It goes on about some of the great marches that make the
> heart and feet move for some are also understood in a deeper way by
> those who have studied form and composition.
>
> Some don't give a rats-arse what philosophers think or footbol experts
> (Kharasho, I love the Russian pronunciation sneaking in there. Go
> Spartak or was it Dinama/Dynamo) as they are the bus systems of life.
> At first you can't find one for a while then they come along in bunches
> but philosphers and football experts all have their own houses and own
> reasonings. No-one is right and no-one is wrong. We've had that
> danger with following the followers of what became to be known as SMS
> or Selective Memory Syndrome as being a rule of total truth and got our
> fingers burnt. Everyone loves and trusts a person in a white lab coat
> or who might seem to be an intellectual and think "that's a person with
> an imagination that is based on external truth and not on their own
> opinion!"
>
> That's why we have pubs.
i really hated the pub experience. about as fun as sitting in a room
picking apart a blanket and chewing on it.
> Most men get all knowledge from the pub as in
> "look darling it's true! A bloke down the pub told me." At least you
> can kick the shit out of him if it all turns wrong. Philosophers,
> scientists and politicians all have that excellent understanding of
> being totally blameless even if it kills us all.
i think you have "TV philosophers" in mind... "opinionists".
ah, you are KGB. that's nice. =) that's why your post is so
"disinformation"?
>
> I think I might build myself a hampster xylophone and write something
> woeful.
"xylo" means "wood", you know, so it would be a "hamstaphone" and have a
nice fluffy sound. maybe you mean a bank of "hamstabones", wailing through
grandfather night?
>
>>
>> > but if others like it then that's okay for them but I
>> > won't tell whoever likes it that music is only for some higher(?)
>> > spiritual(??) plane.
>>
>> you mean like the music in the Maharishi's Learjet? does this music
>> change in quality when the plane reaches a certain altitude? or when
>> the guru finally relaxes and enjoys the flight? a musical puzzle.
>
> I ...will...not ....mention .....
> towers.....in...a...multitude....of....more...than.....one!
stone.
>
> In fact, Grasshopper, I think you are getting to grips with the secret
> of the hollow balloon that was God or religious dogma. To man, down is
> hell and up is to heaven even in music when, if you escape the surly
> bonds of earth you find that up or down is superflouous and that all is
> moving in all directions with man having no real significant part in
> the whole thing apart from his own mind thinking that it does. After
> all, sound is only sound when it hits the ear drum and is movement of
> air between the object struck or stroked and the object receiving that
> vibration. Similarly, with the musical conundrum is the perceived
> meaning of more, more or less, or is the lesser, more or less, the
> larger part or more or less, less.
>
> Meaning in music? What does that mean and what does 'mean' mean?
>
> Even if the composer says "what I mean by this is..." and thirty people
> listen to that composer try to explain, they will still have thirty
> different perceptions of that due to the varying ways they perceived
> things interacting for every second of their lives since before they
> had an understanding of what those things meant in the same way that,
> thirty people witnessing the same accident will give the police thirty
> different answers.
tabloid sense of "meaning". the patterns under the opinion are a nice,
"meaningful", picture of meaning too.
> Perception is part of that equation (as it always
> has been). Even a psychiatrist can only *think* they know what the
> patient is trying to explain and not *know* what the patient is trying
> to explain. They would have to be the patient to even halfway know. I
> don't know any more! ;-)
>
> Has the composer explained it well or have the listeners misunderstood?
> A bit of a bummer if he didn't explain well but they understood the
> meaning better than he meant it to mean!
>
> They're taking the crayons away now so I'll have to write in excrement
> and send a padded wall or two in.
is Horizon still publishing? with your KGB contacts you ought to get
printed in a CIA rag! well, you should, anyway. there's hope.
David Olen Baird
(Dr.Matt) wrote:
>In article <3cdcf992...@news.birch.net>,
>David Olen Baird <davb...@tfs.net> wrote:
>>On Fri, 10 May 2002 16:18:15 GMT, fie...@xexex.gpcc.itd.umich.edu
>>(Dr.Matt) wrote:
>>
>>>In article <3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net>,
>>>David Olen Baird <davb...@tfs.net> wrote:
>>>>The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>>>>Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>>>>there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>>>>or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>>>>emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>>>>feelings.
>>>
>>>Not in mine. Just sounds chosen to sound good to me.
>>
>>But, what is sounding good? Is it an idea or a story. Of course not.
>>If I hear your music, it sounds good because of the way it makes me
>>feel.
>
>If that works for you, fine. If it sounds good to you, that's a lucky
>side effect.
It is _the_ side effect. In fact, it's the only effect - if there is
one at all (I suppose I could just never listen, walk out or turn it
off but then the effect is no effect at all).
>>>You may supply
>>>the feelings if you like.
>>
>>We always supply our own feelings. We can argue about if the feeling I
>>have is different from the feeling you have. But, this sense of
>>beauty that you wish to infuse into your music may actually cause me
>>to have a sense of beauty.
>
>It is impossible for me to infuse my music with anything but sounds. I
>pick the sounds that I want to hear. If you end up wanting to hear them too,
>that's neat, and fortunate.
We're beggining to degenerate into semantics at bit here, I think. I
say this because the sounds that you pick you want to hear because you
enjoy hearing them - this enjoyment, this artistic sense, is most
likely rooted in an emotional reaction you have to those sounds.
The only other conclusion that I can draw from your statement is that
you have some kind logical rulebook of sounds that you want to hear
that you strictly apply without reacting emotionally at all to those
sounds. I don't think you do this.
Now, we can talk about intent. I can certainly accept that you don't
intend to send an emotional message via your music. But, (beating a
semi-concious horse, now), I relate to music because of the way it
makes me feel. So whether you intend to or not, I get an emotional
signal from your music.
Now, the remaining part of my argument, which, if I'm reading Manfred
Clynes correctly, is corroborated by his "sentographic" (sp?) studies.
And that is, people feel similarly upon hearing similar sounds. I
have the opinion that these similar reactions are based both on
physiological responses as well as learned cultural ones. Since I
imagine that your physiology and cultural background aren't so
completely different than mine, it is my belief that I can (and often
do) "get it" - i.e. have an emotional reaction that is similar to the
one you had when you conceived the music.
OK, OK. This should be the last of my diatribe on "music as emotional
communication", for a while, at least :).
>>>The alleged communication of feelings is
>>>covered very well by McEwan's article, too.
>>>
>>
>>I missed that. Was that discussed in the prior thread?
>
>Over and over, alas
Jeeze, I'll have to root back through to see if I can find the
reference.
>--
> Matthew H. Fields http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields
> Music: Splendor in Sound
> "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a trip to the bathroom."
>
---
David Olen Baird
Sorry, couldn't help it. Actually, I think you've confused Richard.
But I digress.
>why would there only be one emotion available in the music?
No no, I didn't intend to suggest that. Manfred Clynes suggest that
the patterns of music are composed of a number of basic elements, each
suggesting a different emotion, and that a composition mixes these to
paint a complex emotional picture.
I guess what I was trying to challenge Richard on was "do you think
everyone reacts differently to the same music and if so, why?".
>the
>fifth isn't some pop-schlock jinglebell song. that's the point of classical
>music... that it controls the emotional spread according to a structure modelled
>by the composer. music is an art, and the psychological structure of art
>presents triggers and counter triggers for the emotion and wonder.
Yeah, that's it.
>>
>> I simply would argue that we have elevated LVB music to the position
>> it deserves because it moves us in similar ways.
>>
>> I think part of the problem is the difficulty (impossibility, perhaps)
>> of accurately verbalizing how we feel.
>
>yes, that's why we switch to music language to say things on the sonic level.
>the sonic is one of the primary ways we determine the nature of the outer world
>and of any possible "otherness" to our own being. further, and art creates this
>sort of concept, the "self" itself, our "being" is created by assimulation of
>the sense impressions from sound and light and touch. Art presents these primary
>knowledges in an extranatural form, but one which we've been taught to
>understand as a protected experience.
You got it. And it amazes me that some artists (at least some of the
composers that I know), seem to utterly reject that extranatural
representation of what are basic, primordial, primitive behaviours in
our brains. And maybe that is why - even my dog has emotions.
Perhaps we've evolved so far with this logical, verbal, linear cortex,
that we're often out of touch with how we feel.
>> We really have no good common
>> language for describing feelings.
>
>yes we have. that is what "culture" actually is. the limits of conversation are
>not the limits of all word products. the "novel", apparently, helps to clarify
>the understanding by inventing "emotions" to match "feelings".
OK, culture in the sense of Art I think you mean? If so I agree. I
guess I could go as far as to say that art is our emotional language.
>> We can say, "I feel like I did when
>> I first heard Fur Elise", but I can't very well describe what that
>> feeling feels like.
>
>that's your limitation. a decent report would be a "short story", where the
>nature of "You" would be shown as a precipitation out of your described thoughts
>and actions, your "experience". emotively, we've no way of knowing you, but i
>don't think that kind of selfish need to know someone applies here... we know
>you as much as we need to... that's the point of saying that an artwork exists
>as "protected", is experienced in a protected space (we can stop reading or
>listening, for instance).
You're probably right here. To know me is to hear my music.
>>
>>>> no one says that you are going to encode CNN into a symphony, but the
>>>> point is that CNN is basically an emotion game and might as well be a
>>>> symphony itself.
>>>
>>>???
>>
>> Another one of mike's wonderful off-the-wall associations. You kinda
>> have to get the feeling of what he's saying. :-)
>
>hardly off the wall. very typical philosophy usage: you substitute a abnormality
>for a normality in order to see what you are actually using the normality for.
>phil is another kind of literature than conversational writing, it's true. but,
>the typical college educated person ought to be able to conceptualize something
>out of the words.
OT here: When I take the time, I usually never have any problem
extracting meaning from your comments. Some people really have a
problem with you posting jazz style as you do. I like it. But, it
does often take a little more effort to get it.
>>
>>>> > I know of no way of quantifying this except by asking
>>>> > listeners' opinion and/or feeling about what they've just heard.
>>>> > More often than not, such opinions and feelings will swing so
>>>> > widely, that I'm left with the notion that music means everything,
>>>> > hence nothing.
>>>>
>>>> that's also the mistake of abstracting a notion through repetition of
>>>> the word into a neutral space. music always means something or it is
>>>> noise, but never both at once. "abstraction" isn't the truth of a
>>>> concept, but the "abstraction" of a word out of context helps us to
>>>> understand concepts. paying attention to how people respond to your
>>>> work is very important.
>>>
>>>Well that's my stand, take it or leave it; in fact, it's particularly
>>>useful to me as a reminder to focus on the _abstractions_ that are
>>>music rather than some phantom meaning. As for noise: The implication
>>>that noise does not mean something seems to me to be a fallacy. Hell,
>>>if music can have meaning to some folks, so can noise.
>>
>> Noise can have meaning, in the emotional sense: e.g. if it's sudden
>> and loud, it means: Alert! Be aware!
>
>no it doesn't! those are things which are learnt. the first response is just to
>be startled and to start crying... that for the ordinary person... but, for the
>musical kid? "fascination?"
Ok, no quibble here. A sudden loud noise contains a significant
emotional "message". The musical kid wants to learn how to take this
basic element and turn it into art.
>> Watch Out! Fight or Flight! This
>> is an easy one. I feel my heart beat faster, my senses are more
>> acute, I want to take action.
>
>extreme associationism maybe, but it doesn't explain the mind's relation to the
>sense structure enough to say that the sense structure presents a symbol for the
>mind to worry about... the object of the senses is just "impulse": push... that
>is the symbolic for "senses".
Now you're talking about a much higher level of cognition. I mean we
relate screeching tire sounds to a different type of danger than the
sound of dishes breaking in the direction of the kitchen, or to the
sound of a party balloon popping. We don't loose entirely that
emotional component even though we have associated these noises with
entirely different thoughts (which are symbols represented by brain
patterns). (We're gonna get into the cognitive processing thing
again, if we're not careful :)
>>
>> Usually, however, emotions are tremendously abstract.
>
>oh, just tremendously... like, during their experience you experience them, and
>then, afterward, when you want to understand what happened, you've suddenly got
>to pull all the parallel experiences of mind/body over their several durations
>into a "talk about it" whole. that's the "tremendous abstract"of emotion.
>"abstraction" means a mirroring, reflection, of a symbol outside its symbol set
>and into a new symbol set... that of "thinking about".
>
>> And this is one
>> of the other difficulties in proving my argument. Emotions don't
>> often don't "mean" anything specific or concrete, they just "are",
>> very real, but they are only feelings.
>
>emotions are "feelings" but they aren't specific... how do you even know they
>exist apart from your creation of them? perhaps they're specific to each
>conversation object they arise out of? including long-going conversations of
>little content like "the dog is here", and then, loss of the dog, "where's the
>dog!!"? this probably seems trivial to you, but you must have wondered, at some
>time, where the "emotions", which seem so available, reside in your "head"? have
>you not the slightest suspicion that they are created for specific uses? and
>that Art plays with this dynamic? "What am I to he, or he to Hecuba"?
Probably exactly correct - emotions were created for specific uses -
survival of the fittest - very primitive - very human (or should I say
very animal?)
Actually, I agree. But, you have to concede that things and actions
nouns and verbs carry additional, logical and concrete meanings that
music doesn't.
I feel. Therefore I am. And perhaps this it the biggest problem I
have in convincing Matt and others (I think it was Dave Cleary that
this idea was completely inpenetrable to). And that is, emotions are
axiomatic.
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>feelings.
Since 'feelings' is a rather vague word, you can't argue against this
position easily. [in other words, 'feelings' is the ideal starting
point for a long thread ;-)] However, 'feelings' is a bit tainted with
popular usage in which it relates to everyday emotions; certainly, I
think you don't write, say, a string quartet to convey your love for
girl or lad X to someone else (You don't want them to become rivals!),
or to convey your frustration over having to fill out tax forms.
However, certainly, when I write a piece of music, I have a certain
quality of experience in mind that I would like to have through
listening to the piece, and that I would think others might be
interested in too.
This quality of experience may make reference to a large variety of
things, including speech patterns, connotated emotions, or motions, or
structural ideas, commentaries on tradition, or 'concepts', and all
the philosophy that may come with that sort of thing, or it could be
just perceptual, or simply atmospheric, etc. In my case, I'm likely to
think mostly of a sense of how time passes, of motion and of
atmosphere, and acting upon that, on how the score should look; then I
develop form and material ideas, and then I write the piece.
Furthermore, the quality of experience I'd like the piece to 'convey'
changes (by becoming more precise) as the piece develops itself during
composition.
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr/home.html
May 12, 20:30, Vondelkerk Amsterdam: 'Het Zephyr Kwartet Strijkt Terug'
Zephyr plays Weisser, Meyer, Doolittle, Voorvelt, Havelaar, Royé
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > What do you do when you're not posting here?
>
> i write music! i think you even critiqued one of my pieces once.
>
I've listened to midi files of yours, yet I have no recollection of
this. What did I have to say?
David Rubenstein
>
> The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
> Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
> there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
> or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
> emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
> feelings.
Exactly. I try to communicate a mood, a feeling, not a story. If my
music sounds "programmatic", that is just a by-product, not an
intention. I often give my music titles that might make it seem
programmatic, but that's just to have fun, after the piece is completely
finished.
I try to communicate a mood or an evolution that warps through a series
of moods. Sure, I could try using words. But I'm not very good at
words, I'm better with music.
--David Rubenstein
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
David Olen Baird
>davb...@tfs.net (David Olen Baird) wrote in news:3cdcff2b.67633894
>@news.birch.net:
>
>> When I speak in public, I know that some people will understand and
>> appreciate what I say. Some people will ignore me. And, some people
>> will think I'm an irritating idiot and only be bored, at best.
>>
>> So, in reaching my audience with my speech, I am clearly only
>> successful part of the time.
>>
>> It's no different with music. Only some of the people are going to
>> "get it".
>>
>> So, the real queston to me is, "do the people who 'get it' have the
>> same, or similar reaction that I had when I wrote the music?" Does it
>> make them feel sad as I felt, excited as I felt, surprised, tentative,
>> angry, etc, etc.
>
>ok, yes, so let's set up a hypothetical to present as a contrast to the
>"off the top of my head" notion of "what music does". imagine, not someone
>who didn't understand your "music", but who got it in a different way:
>"listening to your fugue he heard the mechanism of several linked clocks".
>what you get by doing this is a presentation of a reaction to music which
>isn't a visual translation: he needn't have an image of "clocks" only a
>soundbite of "clock" which he extrapolates onto your music. the second
>thing you get from this is an implicitly "unemotional" response: it's up to
>you and any psychologism to determine if his response was cause by the
>music's "heating of the emotive centers".
Wow. This was heavy, man. I think I agree. And what I draw from this
is the essential fact that I can never really know what someone else
feels. I can understand the concept of "several linked clocks", but I
will never really know how "linked clocks" make the listener feel.
However, neither can I ever really know how someone sees the color
green. Is your green the same color as my green? I simply assert
that because your "mother and my mother were both mothers" (i.e. we
are both human) that we can reasonbly conclude that our experience of
"green" is similar. You may associated green with "linked clocks" (an
atypical association, for sure), while I may associate it with grass.
>wouldn't you think that this person's response was "atypical"? you'd expect
>visualizations, since you know that music releases the mind from verbal
>focus, but, here, you're getting *sonicizations in response to your music.
>you understand that this is veering back to "program music" and "birdsong"?
>it makes me ask the question of what it is that i'm actually hearing when i
>hear a symphony. it would be petty to say to me that i'm only hearing the
>horns, etc... since i don't know these things except someone has told me
>that a certain sound is associated with... etc.. i'm "blending" or
>"accepting" these bleats as "music", yes? and we've already talked of music
>as "organized sound" [and accepted, i hope, that it is the listener who
>organizes the sounds... even the composer listening to his composition as
>he writes it].
>
>now the point is, the underlying question behind "what is music" is, "what
>kind of sounds Ought i to accept as legitimate sounds?" -- you understand
>that this is the "we hear in order to flee..." question, but, also, the "i
>write music that must be heard only as music" statement? -- a statement
>which makes very little sense outside of the classroom. "legitimate", from
>"lego", "law", "rule" shouldn't throw you, because it just means "which set
>of sounds should i trust to show me knowledge?".
As a composer, you choose the set of sounds that "ring true to you",
the ones that "sound right", that please you, that you feel are
beautiful. And, just as I have a reasonable expectation that you see
green the same way that I do, I can reasonably expect that you will
feel the same way about my music as I do.
>we want to say that music has no meaning, but we only say this (i've only
>said it at least) as students defending our writing's inspiration in the
>face of someone who doesn't comprehend our music -- "professor Y says,
>well, yes, but i don't see the parts joining in a way which leads to the
>creation of new material", and we say that the parts juxtaposed are A new
>material: that we're inventing music. but, what of professor Z, the
>painting teacher, who says "oh, that's pretty... it reminds me of Paris
>street sweeping machines... and Yvonne...", and he goes off in his mind to
>revisualize those paris days? that's the joke about matt's assertion that
>there's nothing IN his music except the music... it's made up of
>conventionalized noises! that's what "music is organized sound" means, you
>know.
>
Perhaps Matt is more hung-up on intentionalization? He doesn't intend
to convey emotion in his music. But, as I said to him in another
post, you don't have to intend to send a message to have one received.
>>
>> My opinion is that there are enough cultural and human commonalities
>> that we share, that these emotions (for those who 'get it') are likely
>> to be very similar.
>
>i don't know. i think that our emotions are culturally determined,
>culturally invented for us. certainly the history of literature and culture
>shows that our notion of emotion has a history.
I agree. However, there _are_ cultural associations in music that are
hard to ignore (e.g. a fanfare). Even though these are not
necessarily completly emotional, I think I have to acknowledge them as
part of that non-verbal communication that effects how we ultimately
react to the music. Although I really think these are not the
dominate cause of our reaction to the music.
David Olen Baird
Vriezen) wrote:
>On Fri, 10 May 2002 11:44:40 GMT, davb...@tfs.net (David Olen Baird)
>wrote:
>
>>The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>>Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>>there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>>or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>>emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>>feelings.
>
>Since 'feelings' is a rather vague word, you can't argue against this
>position easily. [in other words, 'feelings' is the ideal starting
>point for a long thread ;-)] However, 'feelings' is a bit tainted with
>popular usage in which it relates to everyday emotions; certainly, I
>think you don't write, say, a string quartet to convey your love for
>girl or lad X to someone else (You don't want them to become rivals!),
>or to convey your frustration over having to fill out tax forms.
No, not quite that concrete. But, tenderness or anger, I might very
well intend to convey.
>However, certainly, when I write a piece of music, I have a certain
>quality of experience in mind that I would like to have through
>listening to the piece, and that I would think others might be
>interested in too.
I like "quality of experience" as a definition of what I mean by
emotion.
>This quality of experience may make reference to a large variety of
>things, including speech patterns, connotated emotions, or motions, or
>structural ideas, commentaries on tradition, or 'concepts', and all
>the philosophy that may come with that sort of thing, or it could be
>just perceptual, or simply atmospheric, etc. In my case, I'm likely to
>think mostly of a sense of how time passes, of motion and of
>atmosphere, and acting upon that, on how the score should look; then I
>develop form and material ideas, and then I write the piece.
>
>Furthermore, the quality of experience I'd like the piece to 'convey'
>changes (by becoming more precise) as the piece develops itself during
>composition.
>
Righto. And in fact, I may not actually acheive the quality I intended
to convey. In which case I might just start over. Or, I may discover
another quality that appeals to me, and decide to use that as an
element in the composition.
>--
>Samuel
>http://concerten.free.fr/home.html
>
>May 12, 20:30, Vondelkerk Amsterdam: 'Het Zephyr Kwartet Strijkt Terug'
>Zephyr plays Weisser, Meyer, Doolittle, Voorvelt, Havelaar, Royé
---
Al Rainey Research
soul.
--
Al Rainey Research Service
PO Box 1168
Littlerock, Ca 93543
(661)265-8710
http://www.qnet.com/~alrainey/index.html
David Olen Baird wrote in message <3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net>...
>The meaning in music is not some kind of journalistic communication.
>Why is it that everytime someone speaks of communication in music,
>there is this immediate assumption that they mean there is some story
>or idea or that is communicated? The communication in music is an
>emotional one - it's feelings, not words, not thoughts, not ideas -
>feelings.
>
David Olen Baird
<alra...@qnet.com> wrote:
>The meaning in music has to do with the soul. Music is the language of the
>soul.
>
Do you care to elaborate?
mike
> On Sat, 11 May 2002 19:59:23 GMT, mike <orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>davb...@tfs.net (David Olen Baird) wrote in
>>news:3cdd03ad...@news.birch.net:
>>
>>>
>>> In that class of people who like LVB do you think that the feelings
>>> provided by, e.g., the 5th symphony are virtually infinite? I feel
>>> giddy, you feel pissed, Matt feels romantic, mike feels confused,
>>> etc.?
>>
>>don't get cute.
>
> Sorry, couldn't help it. Actually, I think you've confused Richard.
> But I digress.
>
>>why would there only be one emotion available in the music?
>
> No no, I didn't intend to suggest that. Manfred Clynes suggest that
> the patterns of music are composed of a number of basic elements, each
> suggesting a different emotion, and that a composition mixes these to
> paint a complex emotional picture.
ok, here's where it get's difficult, because i haven't fully worked this
out. i think that the "emotions" are language acts, and i think that the
same "gripping" which we use to "find the meaning of a sentence", to parse
the things which have "complex meaning", as you suggest, is the same
"gripping" we use to parse a music.
i hear a piece and i hear a sound and a way of using the sound. i
immediatley ask what the composer is "trying to do here"... i listen to the
beautiful parts and the ugly parts as emotion, of course, but i'm wanting
to find out "what was going through the composer's mind". you might say
that the "emotion" generated is "excitement", and i think that would be a
good 19th Century, post-kantian analysis of what i'm doing. but i'm not a
Kantian. as i understand it, the "emotion" is a report i make to myself or
to you: my eyes gleam, i say "wow". during the actual music activity i'm
weaving in and out of reflection, absorbtion, and invention as i hear,
react, and construct upon what i'm hearing.
>
> I guess what I was trying to challenge Richard on was "do you think
> everyone reacts differently to the same music and if so, why?".
isn't this no more odd than different people reading the same book? a
technically educated composer might read Stephen Hawking in a way that a
technically educated physisist might not: matt cannot hear his music in the
same way that others hear it. the burden is to either make a music which
everyone might understand, or to make a music in which it isn't necessary
that others understand it at all. my personal myth is that there are a few
people who will "get" my stuff, and there will be a fewer more at some
future time when my stuff gets played alot. another myth might be that i
"write the perfect music" or "write in the proper way" (two different
activities, yes?).
no, i think "culture" includes anything of our understanding, including
politics and technology. just think "cargo cult" and you'll have an idea of
how i thinking that we only know what we've learnt to know, and that
knowledge is a social act.
this is because i want to say that we are presenting the same kind of truth
that any other art activity presents, including the writing of "scientific
reports" (the "truth" of such a report is, philosophically, an aesthetic
act: "that's sounds right"... there's no truer truth available to us).
"logic" and "language" are formalizations into a technique of "logo" (way)
and "lingo" (tongue work). these specific techniques are as limited and as
self-defining as the concept "compression" is to a garage mechanic. the
creative acts of speaking and making music are the highest level of
cognition, i think, because i think that all cognition is dynamically
created for the moment. even the concept "memory" can be thought of as an
object which is only created when forced by a language act or an electrode
or something... there needn't be an object called "memory", only a process.
dittowsky with "music".
> I mean we
> relate screeching tire sounds to a different type of danger than the
> sound of dishes breaking in the direction of the kitchen, or to the
> sound of a party balloon popping. We don't loose entirely that
> emotional component even though we have associated these noises with
> entirely different thoughts (which are symbols represented by brain
> patterns). (We're gonna get into the cognitive processing thing
> again, if we're not careful :)
i think these "brain patterns" are still just "word object" type things
invented by the researcher, with his instruments... not so different from a
"chord change".
>
>>>
>>> Usually, however, emotions are tremendously abstract.
>>
>>oh, just tremendously... like, during their experience you experience
>>them, and then, afterward, when you want to understand what happened,
>>you've suddenly got to pull all the parallel experiences of mind/body
>>over their several durations into a "talk about it" whole. that's the
>>"tremendous abstract"of emotion. "abstraction" means a mirroring,
>>reflection, of a symbol outside its symbol set and into a new symbol
>>set... that of "thinking about".
>>
>>> And this is one
>>> of the other difficulties in proving my argument. Emotions don't
>>> often don't "mean" anything specific or concrete, they just "are",
>>> very real, but they are only feelings.
>>
>>emotions are "feelings" but they aren't specific... how do you even
>>know they exist apart from your creation of them? perhaps they're
>>specific to each conversation object they arise out of? including
>>long-going conversations of little content like "the dog is here", and
>>then, loss of the dog, "where's the dog!!"? this probably seems trivial
>>to you, but you must have wondered, at some time, where the "emotions",
>>which seem so available, reside in your "head"? have you not the
>>slightest suspicion that they are created for specific uses? and that
>>Art plays with this dynamic? "What am I to he, or he to Hecuba"?
>
> Probably exactly correct - emotions were created for specific uses -
> survival of the fittest - very primitive - very human (or should I say
> very animal?)
how about when we "surpress an emotion"? in the "emotion model" that would
mean that we were inventing an "emotion". =)
>
[clipped rest just to focus on this "emotion" thing]
/www.tfs.net/~davbaird/tgs.htm
mike
news:3CDDBD37...@erols.com:
why isn't the "mood" containing the same "essence" as the "story", but
without the furniture?
"essentialism" is a weird thing, but maybe i'm thinking that the true
"plot" of any art is on the level of the "gestural"? and that all these
"tenderness" and "anger" can't exist except that they are superimposed on
a personal topology, and that the superimposition is contrasted against
other personal topologies?
a "topology", here, is meant as "map of experience": feelings had during
our learning of "space").
"mood" would be a product of our creativity. isolate one note of a
piece... would it hold the "mood" of the piece? (even if the entire work
were this one note? wouldn't you need the conceptualization of "music"
before the one note piece would be understood as "complete"? and, even if
the note were held for hours? -- well, not as a "special note" of "hours-
note") :)
mike
news:3cdd...@news.qnet.com:
> The meaning in music has to do with the soul. Music is the language of
> the soul.
>
> --
> Al Rainey Research Service
> PO Box 1168
> Littlerock, Ca 93543
> (661)265-8710
> http://www.qnet.com/~alrainey/index.html
music invented "soul". there was "spirit" and "life", but "soul" became
known to us as an "emotive spirit" only through art... including the
performance art act of "looking into my self and into the symbol of ...".
mike
whi...@flash.net:
> In article <Xns920B6704EACAD...@66.75.162.198>, mike
><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> >
>> > What do you do when you're not posting here?
>>
>> i write music! i think you even critiqued one of my pieces once.
>>
> I've listened to midi files of yours, yet I have no recollection of
> this. What did I have to say?
>
> Richard White
>
http://members.aol.com/orangiemike/
the makopolo link is broken, but i've been to lazy to clean up the page.
"zaapatekas" was written responding to some slavish hogwash written about
him in this newsgroup. i don't think it's funny either... but, zappa is
only funny in the way that a juggling act is funny in Cleveland. go figgur.
Richard Brooks
> "Richard Brooks" <richar...@kdbanglia.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
> news:abk5rl$cj0$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk:
>
> >
> > "mike" <orang...@aol.com> wrote in message
> > news:Xns920B5EEF7C9A1...@66.75.162.198...
> >> "Richard Brooks" <richar...@kdbanglia.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
> >> news:abieor$mtc$1...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk:
> >>
> >> >
> >> > "mike" <orang...@aol.com> wrote in message
> >> > news:Xns920A93ACF6ECD...@66.75.162.196...
> >> >> "Richard Brooks" <richar...@kdbanglia.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
> >> >> news:abhlve$oe1$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk:
> >> >>
> >
> > And back to the music, if you have the single entitled "four minutes of
> > silence" or LPs of Musique Concrete then great. I'm not going to tell
> > you not to play it. I wonder if anyone has a copy of that single?
>
> great! yah, there was a single of 4 minutes of silence in disco's during
> the late 60's. people'd play it just to have a break.
>
> does all this love-fest mean that i can take or leave your opinion too?
> that seems so sad.
It would be standard practice. In fact I'd be honoured if you did.
We do that for most part anyway but usually when we ask for advice and
reject all sensible answers whilst looking incredibly interested and waiting
for those pieces of information near to exactly in line to what we want to
hear so that we can screw our life up with that gorgeous babe who just loves
to strut around in slinky underwear.
> > Well, in the books they do seem to talk about architecture or "going
> > from room to room" when explaining the fundamentals of symphonic
> > structure. Maybe now they'll explain it in terms of a softcore porn
> > site? More might say "oh, I see now! Why didn't you say in the first
> > place?" and more might say "what a load of wank" of the music of
> > course. ;-)
>
> not a problem for me, since i think that all creative acts access the same
> limited set of sense experience.
Try getting the architecture system mixed up with the Roman room system for
memorising things.
I'm still locked in the grandfather clock in the hall with my piece of
cheese. It's about to chime .....bong "feck!" bong "drink!" bong "arse!".
Thank God for roman catholic clerics.
> > That's why we have pubs.
>
> i really hated the pub experience. about as fun as sitting in a room
> picking apart a blanket and chewing on it.
At college the three of us preferred the Fenwick of Bond Street branch in
St. Ebbes. The London branch coffee bar that a student friend worked in had
about 180 women seated and three men. Bliss! Now they've modernised it and
so have men so it's boring now.
>
> > Most men get all knowledge from the pub as in
> > "look darling it's true! A bloke down the pub told me." At least you
> > can kick the shit out of him if it all turns wrong. Philosophers,
> > scientists and politicians all have that excellent understanding of
> > being totally blameless even if it kills us all.
>
> i think you have "TV philosophers" in mind... "opinionists".
Television is pig shit to anyone who thinks they are academic. After all,
we wouldn't have had "How" without that boffin and many more who try to
popularise their area of academia.
I forgot to add management types to that list. A great example of the "no
blame" clause are the rail accidents we've had. How many of those
responsible for our system have been up in court ? Don't hold up too many
fingers!
> >
> > Sorry, I've had a long day running around the butt hole that is London
> > Underground and spent the end of it trying to understand a wailing
> > twenty one year old Peruvian lady on the phone who got lost after
> > changing meeting times after I left.
>
> ah, you are KGB. that's nice. =) that's why your post is so
> "disinformation"?
I didn't know that by just sleeping one of their ex-members' sofa one
joined?
All information is disinformation unless it reflects what we feel to be the
right information to satisfy our ego. We hate being wrong and Dale Carnegie
even states to the effect that to tell someone they are wrong does nothing
to gain respect.
>
> >
> > I think I might build myself a hampster xylophone and write something
> > woeful.
>
> "xylo" means "wood", you know, so it would be a "hamstaphone" and have a
> nice fluffy sound. maybe you mean a bank of "hamstabones", wailing through
> grandfather night?
No, they've been biltong for a long while now so they're close to wood. All
you need to do is to chew bits off them to tune them. When alive they did
make little squeeks but not of any constancy.
[time shift]
>
> is Horizon still publishing? with your KGB contacts you ought to get
> printed in a CIA rag! well, you should, anyway. there's hope.
CIA rag, no, I just smile at a fellow Brit who upon being forgiven by the US
for not being found to be a communist after all and being exiled for it and
later got some lifetime achievement award (IIRC) muttered under his breath
"fuck you! fuck you! fuck you!" as he held the award aloft. Sir Charles
Chaplain wasn't a bad bloke after all.
Poka!
Richard Brooks
"David Olen Baird" <davb...@tfs.net> wrote in message
news:3cdcfbef...@news.birch.net...
> On Fri, 10 May 2002 18:08:16 +0100, "Richard Brooks"
> <richar...@kdbanglia.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >
> >"David Olen Baird" <davb...@tfs.net> wrote in message
> >news:3cdbb00b...@news.birch.net...
> >A feeling is a thought (as is an idea) all coming from the brain unless
you
> >go for that organ pumping to the left just off centre as having yearnings
of
> >love?
>
> Well, maybe "thought" was a bad choice of words.
Just interpretation.
I love the extract from the booklet entitled "How to be a Foreigner" (which
I'd love to find a copy of again) in which one paragraph tells of an Italian
and an Englishman sitting on a hill in summer looking over the picturesque
land. The Italian man might go to great lengths to explain his awe at the
sight before him by quoting extracts from poetry and song. The Englishman
after looking around for a while might say "It's nice here, isn't it?" Both
are right.
I'd rather go for "I give you my heart" rather than "insane in the
membrane"!
> >Elitism is reserved for those (British usually) who take dead composers'
> >works in vain and try to expound at great length what they think the
> >composer meant.
>
> Fate knocking at the door again? That's a programmatic connection.
Oooh scary! I'll sit and watch the next few rounds.
>
> >For once I'd like a composer to grab one of these people by the throat
and
> >say "listen, you puffed up academic, I was so rat-arsed on all kinds of
> >drink that I just knocked out a damn fine tune."
>
> I'd pay to see that. :)
Armed with a dead animal of their choice in a mud bath.
It works the other way around too in that some jumped up modern artist who
had also decided what's art and what wasn't had lost her favourite cat and
set about drawing a picture of her pet, signing it below. She couldn't
understand the lack of response as it turned out that the posters were being
removed as the quick-witted public thought that the posters might become
collectors items. It made the news and she'd said that it was pointless in
collecting the posters as they were not works of art! Hmm, who decides what
is the meaning?
Also I loved the academic who was studying the Agincourt battle and
expounded that rather than some lengthy speech, the band of brothers one we
know so well, the King was more likely to have said "let's go!" Now,
that's a Shakespeare play I'd love to see and hear, a sound bite no less.
;-)
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
Thanks for the link. You still haven't told me if I _did_ critque your
music what I had to _say_ about it. I think you're mistaken because I
will do such things only by personal invitation and under the condition
of privacy if I feel my words would be of value to another.
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
...hummana, hummana, hummana...
"In the beginning was the NOTE - then it was interpreted."
Don Groves
says...
> In article <Xns920C5104C1784...@66.75.162.198>, mike
> <orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > "Al Rainey Research" <alra...@qnet.com> wrote in
> > news:3cdd...@news.qnet.com:
> >
> > > The meaning in music has to do with the soul. Music is the language of
> > > the soul.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Al Rainey Research Service
> > > PO Box 1168
> > > Littlerock, Ca 93543
> > > (661)265-8710
> > > http://www.qnet.com/~alrainey/index.html
> >
> > music invented "soul". there was "spirit" and "life", but "soul" became
> > known to us as an "emotive spirit" only through art... including the
> > performance art act of "looking into my self and into the symbol of ...".
>
> ...hummana, hummana, hummana...
>
> "In the beginning was the NOTE - then it was interpreted."
more likely in the beginning was the BEAT - then it was subdivided.
--
dg
mike
news:MPG.1748b374a...@news.web-ster.com:
in the beginning was the word... but, what we transate as word is maybe
better translated as "process". "logos", "rego". that is what he means by
"interpretation". but, hearing the sound as a note is the first
interpretation. he doesn't understand that in an intuitive way yet.
mike
> In article <Xns920C65450D5CE...@66.75.162.198>, mike
><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in news:110520021756417932%
>> whi...@flash.net:
>>
>> > In article <Xns920B6704EACAD...@66.75.162.198>, mike
>> ><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> >
>> >> > What do you do when you're not posting here?
>> >>
>> >> i write music! i think you even critiqued one of my pieces once.
>> >>
>> > I've listened to midi files of yours, yet I have no recollection of
>> > this. What did I have to say?
>> >
>> > Richard White
>> >
>>
>> http://members.aol.com/orangiemike/
>>
>> the makopolo link is broken, but i've been to lazy to clean up the
>> page. "zaapatekas" was written responding to some slavish hogwash
>> written about him in this newsgroup. i don't think it's funny
>> either... but, zappa is only funny in the way that a juggling act is
>> funny in Cleveland. go figgur.
>
> Thanks for the link. You still haven't told me if I _did_ critque your
> music what I had to _say_ about it.
> I think you're mistaken because I
> will do such things only by personal invitation and under the condition
> of privacy if I feel my words would be of value to another.
>
> Richard White
>
i think you tossed off some words about the piece not having much harmonic
structure. this would have been the string quartet from a couple of years
back. i don't have any e-mail from you, so i think you may have just tossed
your remarks off in response to someone else's critique.
mike
yah, comic books can fill a lonely night.
>
>> > Well, in the books they do seem to talk about architecture or "going
>> > from room to room" when explaining the fundamentals of symphonic
>> > structure. Maybe now they'll explain it in terms of a softcore porn
>> > site? More might say "oh, I see now! Why didn't you say in the
>> > first place?" and more might say "what a load of wank" of the music
>> > of course. ;-)
>>
>> not a problem for me, since i think that all creative acts access the
>> same limited set of sense experience.
>
> Try getting the architecture system mixed up with the Roman room system
> for memorising things.
waat!? you mean the roman spa hooked up to the toilet by mistake!! not that
again.
>
> I'm still locked in the grandfather clock in the hall with my piece of
> cheese. It's about to chime .....bong "feck!" bong "drink!" bong
> "arse!". Thank God for roman catholic clerics.
>
>
>> > That's why we have pubs.
>>
>> i really hated the pub experience. about as fun as sitting in a room
>> picking apart a blanket and chewing on it.
>
> At college the three of us preferred the Fenwick of Bond Street branch
> in St. Ebbes. The London branch coffee bar that a student friend
> worked in had about 180 women seated and three men. Bliss! Now
> they've modernised it and so have men so it's boring now.
that's sounds more limited than it even sounds sexist. but, if other two
were doing a strip show, and you got to stand around and watch, then i
guess it must have been enlightening.
>
>>
>> > Most men get all knowledge from the pub as in
>> > "look darling it's true! A bloke down the pub told me." At least
>> > you can kick the shit out of him if it all turns wrong.
>> > Philosophers, scientists and politicians all have that excellent
>> > understanding of being totally blameless even if it kills us all.
>>
>> i think you have "TV philosophers" in mind... "opinionists".
>
> Television is pig shit to anyone who thinks they are academic. After
> all, we wouldn't have had "How" without that boffin and many more who
> try to popularise their area of academia.
>
> I forgot to add management types to that list. A great example of the
> "no blame" clause are the rail accidents we've had. How many of those
> responsible for our system have been up in court ? Don't hold up too
> many fingers!
>
>
>> >
>> > Sorry, I've had a long day running around the butt hole that is
>> > London Underground and spent the end of it trying to understand a
>> > wailing twenty one year old Peruvian lady on the phone who got lost
>> > after changing meeting times after I left.
>>
>> ah, you are KGB. that's nice. =) that's why your post is so
>> "disinformation"?
>
> I didn't know that by just sleeping one of their ex-members' sofa one
> joined?
well, a sofa needs self-esteem too. you can't just think of them as an easy
lay.
>
> All information is disinformation unless it reflects what we feel to be
> the right information to satisfy our ego. We hate being wrong and Dale
> Carnegie even states to the effect that to tell someone they are wrong
> does nothing to gain respect.
Carnegie Hall is making mistakes this very minute!
>
>>
>> >
>> > I think I might build myself a hampster xylophone and write
>> > something woeful.
>>
>> "xylo" means "wood", you know, so it would be a "hamstaphone" and have
>> a nice fluffy sound. maybe you mean a bank of "hamstabones", wailing
>> through grandfather night?
>
> No, they've been biltong for a long while now so they're close to wood.
> All you need to do is to chew bits off them to tune them. When alive
> they did make little squeeks but not of any constancy.
practice and training!
>
> [time shift]
>
>>
>> is Horizon still publishing? with your KGB contacts you ought to get
>> printed in a CIA rag! well, you should, anyway. there's hope.
>
> CIA rag, no, I just smile at a fellow Brit who upon being forgiven by
> the US for not being found to be a communist after all and being exiled
> for it and later got some lifetime achievement award (IIRC) muttered
> under his breath "fuck you! fuck you! fuck you!" as he held the award
> aloft. Sir Charles Chaplain wasn't a bad bloke after all.
yeah, that happened to him too.
=)
Richard White
<s...@my.sig> wrote:
Variations on a Theme! Very nice. :-)
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
It's called a joke. You've missed it entirely. Do you need an
explanation?
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
You're mistaken. None of this holds any water. I hadn't even heard of
you "a couple of years back." Nice try.
mike
it was one of those things, like Diabelli's noodlings, which cause more to
be considered than it attempts to surpress. my own "in the beginning..."
was oblique too. i'm not at all religious.
thanks for sharing.
mike
well, i've certainly been posting as long as i've heard of you. and, as i
suggested, it might just have been a superficial aside you posted to one of
Matt's critiques of my work. i remember your involvement though, because i
always consider everyone more intelligent than i am until they show
themselves otherwise. so i was watching for your response.
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>"In the beginning was the NOTE - then it was interpreted."
I think: in the beginning was the beginning - then it got under way.
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>> > "In the beginning was the NOTE - then it was interpreted."
>>
>> more likely in the beginning was the BEAT - then it was subdivided.
>> --
>Variations on a Theme! Very nice. :-)
In the Beginning was the Theme - then it was Varied?
mike
@news.xs4all.nl:
you guys think you're soooo smart. what "beginning"?
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
Of course questions are more empowering than answers. Even eagles come
in for a landing to refresh themselves. You spend too much time in
flight. (Pun intended.)
Joseph Reuter
>
> "In the beginning was the NOTE - then it was interpreted."
>
In the beginning was silence: Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
begins with a rest!
Joe
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
Youąve said this already. Apparently youąre still watching for my
response because you havenąt provided any evidence there ever was any.
I will say this, however: I can recall an interchange in which I asked
you where we could hear your _music._ At the time you said no midi
files were available online. Soon after that you posted some. I went
and I listened. But I have never made any comments either publicly or
privately, directly or indirectly, about your midi files to you or to
anyone else; nor will I. Glean from that what you will.
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
Gee, I hope there's no quiz on Friday. The only honest answer _I_ can
give is ³I Don¹t Know.²
Now go ahead and dance on the head of a pin and enlighten us.
...²and then it got underway,² indeed!
Richard White
--
http://home.flash.net/~whitco (Now with Photos) whi...@flash.net
Hear Linda Ronstadt sing Richard White on ŒA Merry Little Christmas¹ - Elektra
#62572-2/4
CDs: ŒMusic for Guitar¹ and ŒMusic for Woodwinds and Piano' available at:
http://www.mp3.com/richardwhite
mike
>> it was one of those things, like Diabelli's noodlings, which cause
>> more to be considered than it attempts to surpress. my own "in the
>> beginning..." was oblique too. i'm not at all religious.
>>
>> thanks for sharing.
>
> Of course questions are more empowering than answers. Even eagles come
> in for a landing to refresh themselves. You spend too much time in
> flight. (Pun intended.)
>
> Richard White
>
"flight of the bumblebee" i think. =)
but, i'm real enough in my way. i've come out of a skum childhood where
classical wasn't safe, and then gone into a safe early adulthood where
classical was more or less wall-paper for my good friends. i've tried to
form a conceptual understanding of how i came to know music and how my
friends understood music. what i've been working on is the notion that
music comes from the same expression which allows physics formulas and
legal opinions: that the basic organization of the consciousness is
aesthetic rather than rational, and the the necessary rational, the
structuring, is done as an aesthetic act, rather than as a relational
modelling of some "true universe of number". naturally, i'm gonna have a
few questions for you. my answers are always right up front, by the way,
but the method involves... well, you know, finding out what your own notion
of the relationship between thought and music is.
mike
> In article <Xns920CC886DDEF8...@66.75.162.198>, mike
><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> >
>>
>> well, i've certainly been posting as long as i've heard of you. and,
>> as i suggested, it might just have been a superficial aside you posted
>> to one of Matt's critiques of my work. i remember your involvement
>> though, because i always consider everyone more intelligent than i am
>> until they show themselves otherwise. so i was watching for your
>> response.
>
> Youšve said this already. Apparently youšre still watching for my
> response because you havenšt provided any evidence there ever was any.
oh, come on. don't do a tholen on us. why don't you just listen to the link
i gave you and give me an opinion? it's not like the music in the link is
fresh for me anymore, anyway... so i'd be very open to critique. you've
called me a "liar", and that's you own private act, but i'm still saying
that i'm a musician and that i have some music if you want to hear it.
>
> I will say this, however: I can recall an interchange in which I asked
> you where we could hear your _music._ At the time you said no midi
> files were available online. Soon after that you posted some. I went
> and I listened. But I have never made any comments either publicly or
> privately, directly or indirectly, about your midi files to you or to
> anyone else; nor will I. Glean from that what you will.
it doesn't seem to glean much, that's for sure... and, if you remember that
much, then you probably remember the whole thing better than i, and i must
be confusing you with someone else. happily, we don't need sense certainty
here, because our exchange and opinion aren't going to be encoded as flight
data for a rocket to mars... did i mention that "talking about stuff"
wasn't rocket science, yet? but, talking about stuff does provide us each
with maps of the other's soul. that's all i really want from you.
>
> Richard White
>
mike
> In article <Xns920D4587C3E22...@66.75.162.196>, mike
><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> sqv.remo...@xs4all.nl (Samuel Vriezen) wrote in
>> news:3cdfade5.859264 @news.xs4all.nl:
>>
>> > On Sun, 12 May 2002 22:24:02 GMT, Richard White <whi...@flash.net>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> >>"In the beginning was the NOTE - then it was interpreted."
>> >
>> > I think: in the beginning was the beginning - then it got under way.
>> >
>> > --
>> > Samuel
>> > http://concerten.free.fr/home.html
>> >
>> > May 12, 20:30, Vondelkerk Amsterdam: 'Het Zephyr Kwartet Strijkt
>> > Terug' Zephyr plays Weisser, Meyer, Doolittle, Voorvelt, Havelaar,
>> > Royé
>> >
>>
>> you guys think you're soooo smart. what "beginning"?
>
> Gee, I hope there's no quiz on Friday. The only honest answer _I_ can
> give is ³I Don¹t Know.²
>
> Now go ahead and dance on the head of a pin and enlighten us.
>
> ...²and then it got underway,² indeed!
>
> Richard White
>
you think that your "observations" and "opinion" are given to you by god,
or formed out of "mind stuff"? you don't seem very interested in the
creative process, so it can't be that you feel you are saying anything
important in these posts... saying more than dogma, that is, as though you
were the local priest.
Samuel Vriezen
>>>"In the beginning was the NOTE - then it was interpreted."
>>
>> I think: in the beginning was the beginning - then it got under way.
>>
>
>you guys think you're soooo smart. what "beginning"?
Yes, that's the one, or so I like to think.
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
<big snip>
> >> it was one of those things, like Diabelli's noodlings, which cause
> >> more to be considered than it attempts to surpress. my own "in the
> >> beginning..." was oblique too. i'm not at all religious.
> >>
> >> thanks for sharing.
> >
> > Of course questions are more empowering than answers. Even eagles come
> > in for a landing to refresh themselves. You spend too much time in
> > flight. (Pun intended.)
> >
> > Richard White
> >
> "flight of the bumblebee" i think. =)
That's at least something to go on. Definitely not me.
> but, i'm real enough in my way. i've come out of a skum childhood where
> classical wasn't safe, and then gone into a safe early adulthood where
> classical was more or less wall-paper for my good friends.
We all have our crosses to bear. Yeah, my father's favorite tune
vacillated between "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White" (Perez (sp?)
Prado) and "Love Letters in the Sand", as sung by Pat Boone. My
mother's was "September Song." She knew the words to every song she
ever heard. My late brother had a habit of wanting something and
hounding the hell out of my parents until he got whatever it was. His
interest would quickly wane and I would inherit his stuff. Lucky me, I
never had to ask for anything as a result. Who knew why, but he
developed a sudden in classical music and came home one day with a load
of 78's, including Beethoven's Op. 132, (Budapest Quartet) and Von
Suppe's "Poet and the Peasant" Overture, on which the music was going
great guns when the record had to be turned over. Those few seconds it
took to do so were always very funny moments. My father came upon me
once listening to a Bartok String Quartet and asked, "What the hell is
that?". I said, "chamber music." He said, "Sounds like horror-chamber
music to me." Not that it was an uphill battle for me at home - I was
supported in my musical needs, instruments, books, etc. - but music
lessons kept my sanity and pointed a way to a world so foreign to the
one in which I lived that nothing bothered me. Haven't looked back for
a second since. I'm talking about the streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn, in
the 50's. Mozart to the accompaniment of zip-guns and overturned metal
garbage cans is a unique experience.
>i've tried to
> form a conceptual understanding of how i came to know music and how my
> friends understood music. what i've been working on is the notion that
> music comes from the same expression which allows physics formulas and
> legal opinions: that the basic organization of the consciousness is
> aesthetic rather than rational, and the the necessary rational, the
> structuring, is done as an aesthetic act, rather than as a relational
> modelling of some "true universe of number". naturally, i'm gonna have a
> few questions for you. my answers are always right up front, by the way,
> but the method involves... well, you know, finding out what your own notion
> of the relationship between thought and music is.
Is that what this is about? Sounds too convoluted and unnecessary to
me. But far be it from me to dissuade you. What else can I say except
that I'm not interested or willing enough to sort through these issues
as they come up here. That's where we part company. Life is too short.
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
> Richard White <whi...@flash.net> wrote in
> news:130520021322145609%whi...@flash.net:
>
> > In article <Xns920CC886DDEF8...@66.75.162.198>, mike
> ><orang...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >> >
> >>
> >> well, i've certainly been posting as long as i've heard of you. and,
> >> as i suggested, it might just have been a superficial aside you posted
> >> to one of Matt's critiques of my work. i remember your involvement
> >> though, because i always consider everyone more intelligent than i am
> >> until they show themselves otherwise. so i was watching for your
> >> response.
> >
> > Youąve said this already. Apparently youąre still watching for my
> > response because you havenąt provided any evidence there ever was any.
>
> oh, come on. don't do a tholen on us. why don't you just listen to the link
> i gave you and give me an opinion? it's not like the music in the link is
> fresh for me anymore, anyway... so i'd be very open to critique. you've
> called me a "liar", and that's you own private act, but i'm still saying
> that i'm a musician and that i have some music if you want to hear it.
I've already told you that I have heard some of your midi files as well
as stating I don't critique people's work publicly. I simply can't
offer you the approval you seem to be asking me for without - in my
view - something substantial and/or compelling being present. And why
do you use quotes to signify something someone else said and not
provide us with something demonstrable in support? Where and when did I
call you a "liar?"
> > I will say this, however: I can recall an interchange in which I asked
> > you where we could hear your _music._ At the time you said no midi
> > files were available online. Soon after that you posted some. I went
> > and I listened. But I have never made any comments either publicly or
> > privately, directly or indirectly, about your midi files to you or to
> > anyone else; nor will I. Glean from that what you will.
>
> it doesn't seem to glean much, that's for sure... and, if you remember that
> much, then you probably remember the whole thing better than i, and i must
> be confusing you with someone else.
You're onto something with this. But alas, this is what I've been
trying to tell you all along.
>happily, we don't need sense certainty
> here, because our exchange and opinion aren't going to be encoded as flight
> data for a rocket to mars... did i mention that "talking about stuff"
> wasn't rocket science, yet? but, talking about stuff does provide us each
> with maps of the other's soul. that's all i really want from you.
Fat chance. Sounds romantic though. (blush)
Richard White
<orang...@aol.com> wrote:
What an odd statement. But you did ask a very specific question and
I've answered it very specifically. Are you going to give us _your_
answer or do you reveal it after the quizz on Friday? Now how about
telling us "what beginning?"
My observations and opinions come from the same place I _suspect_ yours
do (mind you, I said "suspect") - from experience(s) - as in things
that I've done and things that I've observed, not as in a list of
credentials. I'm _so_ interested in the creative process that not a day
has gone by since 1961 that I haven't indulged in that process. It's a
thing I _do_ from the minute I wake up, such is my life structured. I'm
a very fortunate man in this regard. Talking about it as though it were
something mystical only gets in the way. It's okay by me that you
don't agree with what I've said in this thread or that you toss off
little veiled accusations about my not getting or understanding
whatever the hell it is you're trying to say - that's your business and
you're entitled. But to say I "don't seem very interested in the
creative process" is a figment of your imagination. Everything I say is
interesting - to me. If you want to come along for the ride, swell. If
not... well. Is being the "local priest" something you'd _like_ me to
be since you've brought up the issue? Do you need to have one to play
off? I think there are others here much more suited to the job than I,
not the least of whom is yourself. How ironic you should frame it this
way. :-)
Don Groves
says...
> > >
> > > "In the beginning was the NOTE - then it was interpreted."
> >
> > more likely in the beginning was the BEAT - then it was subdivided.
> > --
> Variations on a Theme! Very nice. :-)
>
> Richard White
Thanks, Richard. Actually, I was being semi-serious in that rhythm
undoubtedly preceded melody in the development of mankind's music. As
in: In the beginning was Rhythm which begat Melody which begat Counter
Melody which begat Harmony, etc. Then the 20th century came along...
--
Don Groves
Richard White
<s...@my.sig> wrote:
You're welcome, Don! If you recall I used the phrase "...hummana,
hummana, hummana..." - a word of three syllables, each in triplet time.
So you saw something I hadn't considered since I was hearing a sort of
chant with those words. But do we really want to get into the Twentieth
Century? More _begatting_ went on then than did in biblical times. ;-)
mike
@news.xs4all.nl:
oh, you mean "what's what?" ok. i thought you meant "here and there".