pointillistic music
RON MORSILLO
I understand that there is a sub-genre/compositional style of
modern classical music called pointillism. What exactly is it? I know
what the term pointillistic means when applied to painting, but what
about when its applied to music? Also, could you suggest any composers
or compositions that are pointillistic?
Thanks in advance.
Pat M.
ro...@infonline.net
Infinity Online, Inc.
Dom Thurgood
sound, like flicks of paint. Just imagine music that is generally very
sparse, with small inputs of sound, that is usually only eminated from one
instrument, playing one note at a time.
If you want to listen to some Pointillist music, one very good example
is Wolfgang Rihm's Tutuguri II (1981-82) for Orchestra.
Please excuse this definition if I am wrong, I'm not really into Pointillist
music. I accept defeat if this is all complete bollocks.
Dom Thurgood
The Enlightened Music Department
Jeff Harrington
: or compositions that are pointillistic?
Stockhausen: Kontrapunkte
Boulez: Le Marteau
Those are the standard defining "pointillist" pieces, according to my
school-larning...
Jeff Harrington [-->>[[ Mercurealities for Flute, Viola, Cello MPEG ]]<<--]
je...@parnasse.com [->>[[ http://www.parnasse.com/mercurealities.mp2 ]]<<--]
http://www.parnasse.com/jeff.htm --------->>[[ My Music ]]<<--------------]
http://www.parnasse.com/vrml.shtml ------->>[[ My Worlds ]]<<-------------]
Calliotte/Horn
proponent in the 50s and 60s.
If you want to know what pointillism is, pick any mature piece by Webern and
you'll see.
Incidentally, I disagree with the characterization of "Le Marteau" as
pointillistic. It's much too flowing, particularly the vocal and alto flute
parts.
Kontrapunkte is certainly a good example, though.
Walter Horn
Jeff Harrington wrote in message <3656d53d$0$12...@nntp1.ba.best.com>...
Samuel Vriezen
>>Boulez: Le Marteau
>>
>>Those are the standard defining "pointillist" pieces, according to my
>>school-larning...
>The originator was Anton Webern. Morton Feldman was America's greatest
>proponent in the 50s and 60s.
>
>If you want to know what pointillism is, pick any mature piece by Webern and
>you'll see.
>
>Incidentally, I disagree with the characterization of "Le Marteau" as
>pointillistic. It's much too flowing, particularly the vocal and alto flute
>parts.
>
>Kontrapunkte is certainly a good example, though.
>
>Walter Horn
And there is 'Punkte', more especially 'Kreuzspiel' also early
Stockhausen.
The most cited early pointilist music I know is Messiaen's Mode de
Valeurs et d'Intensites; also, Structures I for two pianos by Boulez
and the Sonata by Goeyvaerts (which I never heard) have to be
mentioned.
Pointlism in music was not considered especially fruitful. Messiaen
never got further in his avantgarde-explorations, Boulez now does not
take Structures very seriously, and Stockhausen immediately went on to
'Group' and 'Moment' structures, which are of a higher order than
'Point' music.
Incidentally, though Webern's writing is very sparse, there still is
too much melody (if only three notes) going on to really speak of
point music, mostly.
Samuel
Alex Bach Andersen
dateret 22 Nov, skrev Samuel Vriezen:
> Pointlism in music was not considered especially fruitful. Messiaen
> never got further in his avantgarde-explorations,
Well, he managed to sort of incorporate it into his other techniques, and
uses it to a little extend in works like: "Coleurs de la cité celeste",
"Chronochromie" and others.
--
Alex Bach Andersen, free-lance conductor UIN: 8285066
NodeSats/MusicTypesetting - Acorn RISC PC 600 - 710ARMed
Copenhagen, Denmark http://home6.inet.tele.dk/alexbach/
.... If this were an actual tagline, it would be funny.
Ken Overton
Jeff Harrington <rus...@shell7.ba.best.com> writes:
> RON MORSILLO <ro...@infonline.net> wrote:
>: or compositions that are pointillistic?
>
> Boulez: Le Marteau
>
> Those are the standard defining "pointillist" pieces, according to my
> school-larning...
Someone's already responded about Le Marteau, so I won't. But
Kontrapunkte is an interesting case because (IIR) Schlockhausen has said
that, in this piece, he was composing a sort of argument against it.
The structure of the piece is built around systematically undermining
the pointillist texture that he starts with (thus the double-entendre
in the title: "Against Points").
In that respect, it's an interesting pedagogical example because students
can look for the boundaries of what they think "is" pointillist and what
they find "isn't".
-- kov
Jeff Harrington
: In article <3656d53d$0$12...@nntp1.ba.best.com>,
: Jeff Harrington <rus...@shell7.ba.best.com> writes:
:> RON MORSILLO <ro...@infonline.net> wrote:
:>: or compositions that are pointillistic?
:>
:> Stockhausen: Kontrapunkte
:> Boulez: Le Marteau
:>
:> Those are the standard defining "pointillist" pieces, according to my
:> school-larning...
: Someone's already responded about Le Marteau, so I won't.
FWIW, this was just what I was told in orchestration class one day a few
decades ago. I don't think adding labels to pieces like these serves any
purpose at all, especially when the word is more aptly used to describe a
kind of representational painting. Maybe electronic pieces composed using
granular synthesis, such as some of Curtis Roads' work is more
appropriately termed "pointillist."
: But
: Kontrapunkte is an interesting case because (IIR) Schlockhausen has said
: that, in this piece, he was composing a sort of argument against it.
: The structure of the piece is built around systematically undermining
: the pointillist texture that he starts with (thus the double-entendre
: in the title: "Against Points").
: In that respect, it's an interesting pedagogical example because students
: can look for the boundaries of what they think "is" pointillist and what
: they find "isn't".
If you believe anything Karlheinz has to say about anything...
Ken Overton
Jeff Harrington <rus...@shell7.ba.best.com> writes:
> [Re: Le Marteau]
> FWIW, this was just what I was told in orchestration class one day a few
> decades ago. I don't think adding labels to pieces like these serves any
> purpose at all, especially when the word is more aptly used to describe a
> kind of representational painting.
I agree with you. I was trying to not quote you out of context and thus
was explaining that I wasn't talking about Le Marteau. And look how much
it helped us to avoid misunderstanding.
>: Kontrapunkte is an interesting case because (IIR) Schlockhausen has said
>: that, in this piece, he was composing a sort of argument against it.
>: The structure of the piece is built around systematically undermining
>: the pointillist texture that he starts with (thus the double-entendre
>: in the title: "Against Points").
>
> If you believe anything Karlheinz has to say about anything...
I certainly don't and should say right now that I've definitely no
interest in defending the Schlockemeister. But have you listened to
Kontrapunkte (not that I'd advocate it ... )? He starts with all secco,
non-melodic and sparsely orchestrated material, and then systematically
begins replacing it with linear material; Fred Rzewski would be proud.
The description of the piece is, (*gasp*) accurate.
Of course, he's probobly said a bunch of other, loonier, stuff about it,
maybe he just got lucky that moment.
-- kov
Jeff Harrington
: In article <3659cc07$0$12...@nntp1.ba.best.com>,
: Jeff Harrington <rus...@shell7.ba.best.com> writes:
:> [Re: Le Marteau]
:> FWIW, this was just what I was told in orchestration class one day a few
:> decades ago. I don't think adding labels to pieces like these serves any
:> purpose at all, especially when the word is more aptly used to describe a
:> kind of representational painting.
: I agree with you. I was trying to not quote you out of context and thus
: was explaining that I wasn't talking about Le Marteau. And look how much
: it helped us to avoid misunderstanding.
But that's the fun of UseNet! Flame wars produced from basic
ascii-misinterpretation.
;-)
:>: Kontrapunkte is an interesting case because (IIR) Schlockhausen has said
:>: that, in this piece, he was composing a sort of argument against it.
:>: The structure of the piece is built around systematically undermining
:>: the pointillist texture that he starts with (thus the double-entendre
:>: in the title: "Against Points").
:>
:> If you believe anything Karlheinz has to say about anything...
: I certainly don't and should say right now that I've definitely no
: interest in defending the Schlockemeister. But have you listened to
: Kontrapunkte (not that I'd advocate it ... )?
Sure, many times. It's actually one of my favorite acoustic KS pieces in
a weird kind of way.
: He starts with all secco,
: non-melodic and sparsely orchestrated material, and then systematically
: begins replacing it with linear material; Fred Rzewski would be proud.
: The description of the piece is, (*gasp*) accurate.
: Of course, he's probobly said a bunch of other, loonier, stuff about it,
: maybe he just got lucky that moment.
No doubt, but then, he's probably embarassed to be associated with the
Darmstadt movement now and that's why there's not been that much more said
about it. According to the Kurtz biography, the piece was a continuation
of the tradition of Webern, thus if one can consider Webern's late music
pointillistic, etc...
I'm fascinated by KS, for extra-musical reasons. Just got through reading
the Kurtz bio. Understanding his Catholicism definitely puts a new light
on the guy. (Was introduced to him at the premiere of Sirius in Houston
in 1976. I remember his eyes being blazing.) Hated the piece, except for
the electronic parts...
pi...@interport.net
wrote:
>Dear readers,
> I understand that there is a sub-genre/compositional style of
>modern classical music called pointillism. What exactly is it? I know
>what the term pointillistic means when applied to painting, but what
>about when its applied to music? Also, could you suggest any composers
>or compositions that are pointillistic?
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>Pat M.
>ro...@infonline.net
>Infinity Online, Inc.
All right.
I've read the whole thread to date, and what everyone has ignored is
that if you want to make an analogy between pointillism in art and in
music, it makes little sense to define pointillism as "little specks
of music" and make the time for it the 1980s. The most famous
pointillist in painting is George Seurat, he has been dead for many
decades, and his work was Post-Impressionist. Nor is his use of
pointillism the main point of his paintings; rather, it is a technique
that he uses in order to make very richly coloristic compositions with
very clear structure. I submit to you that the closest comparison one
could make to pointillism in music would be the work of Maurice Ravel.
I repeat: The point of pointillism is not the dots of paint, it's how
they are connected and form a rich, colorful composition. Ravel used
splashes of orchestral (pianistic, etc.) color to produce richly
coloristic and very clearly-structured musical compositions. And the
lives of Ravel and Seurat even overlapped. :-)
And, no, the Expressionist Webern - or, worse, his ostensible
followers - cannot be logically called a "pointillist," because his
music has to be compared first of all to the works of Expressionist
artists. Influenced by Debussy? Yes, he was. Analogous to Seurat?
What?
Regards to all,
Michael
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz
>
> The point of pointillism is not the dots of paint, it's how
> they are connected and form a rich, colorful composition.
And what part can't you hear in Webern?
Dennis
http://maltedmedia.com/
Calliotte/Horn
point A and point B, Seurat and company painted lots of little dots there
(with spaces in between) which, from certain vantages appeared like a single
line or wash.
Similarly, instead of having one instrument play the fifteen notes of a
"melody," Webern and other Klangfahrbenmelodists (sp) had a bunch of
different instrumentalists each play one or two of the notes only -- leaving
spaces in between.
Ravel did not do this: that's why (in spite of his impressionism) he's not
generally classified as a pointillist (and Webern is).
The analogy you've drawn between Seurat's and Ravel's use of "color," even
if apt, just makes them both....colorful.
Walter Horn
-------------------------------------------------
Samuel Vriezen
[snip]
Come on, that's nitpicking. Pointilism is a perfectly accepted term in
the theory of avantgarde music, even if Stockhausen doesn't sound like
Seurat, whatever that could mean. That's what you get with metaphors,
they're very easy to misapply.
Incidentally, Debussy thought his music would be better described by
the term, pointilistic, than by the term impressionistic. No, I don't
know why either.
Samuel
pi...@interport.net
<bat...@maltedmedia.com> wrote:
>pi...@interport.net wrote:
>>
>> The point of pointillism is not the dots of paint, it's how
>> they are connected and form a rich, colorful composition.
>
>And what part can't you hear in Webern?
>
>Dennis
>http://maltedmedia.com/
How are you comparing Webern to Seurat? I _love_ Webern, but I don't
think it's highly meaningful to call his music "pointillistic". I
would sooner call Richard Strauss a "pointillist" than Webern (though
note that I gave Maurice Ravel as my answer), and would compare Webern
to someone who makes very spare paintings. Pointillism in painting is
NOT a pithy, spare technique. As I mentioned before, it is a highly
coloristic form of painting, lush, and with full forms. A painting
that corresponds to Webern should indeed be coloristic (not
monochrome), but it should have highly simplified abstract forms with
subtle and other-than-immediately-obvious metaphoric content.
I think that if you want to find a counterpart to Webern in art, and
you don't want to look at Expressionists, you might consider some of
Mondriaen's sparer paintings. Modriaen satisfies the criteria of
painting in simplified, subtle abstract forms with often-overlooked
metaphoric content.
But of course that brings up the problem that Mondriaen's model was
boogie woogie.
You see, analogies between the arts are often rather complex and don't
always easily fit into superficial categories.
I consider the idea that "bleep, blip" music, however good, is
"pointillistic" to be a complete distortion of the nature of
pointillism in painting and, therefore, counterproductive to the
insightful understanding of 20th-century history of the arts.
Regards,
Michael
pi...@interport.net
<cal...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>What matters here is that rather than paint a single line or wash between
>point A and point B, Seurat and company painted lots of little dots there
>(with spaces in between) which, from certain vantages appeared like a single
>line or wash.
And if you're looking at the painting close enough to see the
individual dots, you can no longer perceive the form, and the painting
no longer makes sense.
>Similarly, instead of having one instrument play the fifteen notes of a
>"melody," Webern and other Klangfahrbenmelodists (sp) had a bunch of
>different instrumentalists each play one or two of the notes only -- leaving
>spaces in between.
>
>Ravel did not do this: that's why (in spite of his impressionism) he's not
>generally classified as a pointillist (and Webern is).
Beethoven DID do this is his symphonies; in fact, this is a
fundamental characteristic of his woodwind writing. Where does THAT
leave you?
If Webern is "generally" characterized as as "pointillist," Mr./Ms.
General, whoever that is, is wrong.
>The analogy you've drawn between Seurat's and Ravel's use of "color," even
>if apt, just makes them both....colorful.
You've made a good attempt to make an analogy between Seurat and
Webern, and I consider it ahistorical and reject it.
What's most important about Seurat is not the technique of dots, but
what he DID with the dots. And what he did with the dots does not
resemble what Webern did, while it does resemble what Ravel did.
Regards,
Michael
pi...@interport.net
wrote:
>pi...@interport.net:
>
>[snip]
>
>Come on, that's nitpicking. Pointilism is a perfectly accepted term in
>the theory of avantgarde music, even if Stockhausen doesn't sound like
>Seurat, whatever that could mean.
Then I regret that avant garde composers - or is it music critics? -
have had so little understanding of painting that they misapplied this
term. By the way, what period of the avant garde are you referring to?
Satie and Debussy were the first avant garde composers (oh, no, now
we'll get into THIS debate again, with some people saying that all
music or the best music from all periods is avant garde or
something...)
>That's what you get with metaphors,
>they're very easy to misapply.
Quite.
>Incidentally, Debussy thought his music would be better described by
>the term, pointilistic, than by the term impressionistic. No, I don't
>know why either.
Is it so hard to understand? Splashes of color? That describes
Debussy's music well.
Regards,
Michael
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz
I'm not. I think analogies between visual and aural usually fail. In
this case, however, "pointillistic" works pretty well for both ... the
eye/brain connects the brushed points, the ear/brain connects the
temporal points. They just can't be explained in terms of each other.
> would compare Webern
> to someone who makes very spare paintings. Pointillism in painting is
> NOT a pithy, spare technique. As I mentioned before, it is a highly
> coloristic form of painting, lush, and with full forms.
In part it depends of what your brain/ear does with the connections.
Apparently "my" Webern is not "your" Webern, and much as I think the
pointillist painters are attractive (m'gawd, I have a Seurat
necktie...), I always felt the point (n.p.i.) wasn't *what* results they
created with the dots, but that they *did* create results with the dots.
> A painting
> that corresponds to Webern should indeed be coloristic (not
> monochrome), but it should have highly simplified abstract forms with
> subtle and other-than-immediately-obvious metaphoric content.
Uh, music in general is abstract too abstract for this. Pointillism has
different definitions in time vs. space.
> I consider the idea that "bleep, blip" music
Biases heard...
> however good,
... equivocation also heard.
> is
> "pointillistic" to be a complete distortion of the nature of
> pointillism in painting
Which is, I think, the point others have made. The artforms are
different enough that you can't shoehorn one artform's concepts into
another. Same goes for expressionism, miminalism, etc.. Verbal language
has limited tools to explain the non-verbal, so any choice is arbitrary
(and subsequent). Pointillism describes both pretty usefully, but not in
terms of each other. It doesn't dismiss the term's use for one artform
because it isn't explained in terms of the other -- or (the reason I
jumped in) because you don't or won't sense the connections' synergistic
effects.
Dennis
http://maltedmedia.com/
Calliotte/Horn
pi...@interport.net wrote in message
<365fa58b...@news.interport.net>...
>On Fri, 27 Nov 1998 21:30:54 -0500, "Calliotte/Horn"
><cal...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>
>>What matters here is that rather than paint a single line or wash between
>>point A and point B, Seurat and company painted lots of little dots there
>>(with spaces in between) which, from certain vantages appeared like a
single
>>line or wash.
>
>And if you're looking at the painting close enough to see the
>individual dots, you can no longer perceive the form, and the painting
>no longer makes sense.
True, but, of course, nothing at all follows from it.
>>Similarly, instead of having one instrument play the fifteen notes of a
>>"melody," Webern and other Klangfahrbenmelodists (sp) had a bunch of
>>different instrumentalists each play one or two of the notes only --
leaving
>>spaces in between.
>>
>>Ravel did not do this: that's why (in spite of his impressionism) he's not
>>generally classified as a pointillist (and Webern is).
>Beethoven DID do this is his symphonies; in fact, this is a
>fundamental characteristic of his woodwind writing. Where does THAT
>leave you?
Doubtful about the description, but unmoved about the theoretical point in
any case. Why shouldn't Beethoven have pointillistic aspects to his
compostion? After all, Biber was "Ivesian."
>If Webern is "generally" characterized as as "pointillist," Mr./Ms.
>General, whoever that is, is wrong.
Yep, everyone who's ever written about this matter has been completely wrong
and Ravel is the king of the pointillists, since he and Seurat are both
"colorful" and you really like both of them.
>
>>The analogy you've drawn between Seurat's and Ravel's use of "color," even
>>if apt, just makes them both....colorful.
>
>You've made a good attempt to make an analogy between Seurat and
>Webern, and I consider it ahistorical and reject it.
I've done nothing more than relay a hidebound, widely accepted
categorization. You have suggested a radical paradigm shift in its place,
based on these:
(a) If you look at a Seurat up close it won't make any sense [Similarly, I
suppose, if you play Ravel at really slow speeds, it won't make sense
either.]
(b) Seurat and Ravel both utilize "splashes of color."
(c) Webern (whom I sense you don't like too much) reminds you more of
Mondrian than he does of Seurat (whom I sense you like alot) than he does of
Ravel (whom I sense you also like alot). QED
(d) Anyone who disagrees with you doesn't know anything about art history,
or is "ahistorical." [Incidentally, I plead guilty to the first charge here
and ignorance with respect to the second volley: I don't see why your
categorization is "historical" and the accepted view is "ahistorical" unless
you are suggesting that this must be true since Seurat and Ravel were
contemporaries.]
I don't believe these theses will get musical history community writ large
to change their view that Webern was a pointillist and Ravel was not (though
perhaps you don't care a whit about what this conglomeration of ignorant
ahistoricists think, anyway).
>What's most important about Seurat is not the technique of dots, but
>what he DID with the dots. And what he did with the dots does not
>resemble what Webern did, while it does resemble what Ravel did.
Sez you.
Cheers,
Walter Horn
Calliotte/Horn
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote in message:
> ....Verbal language
>has limited tools to explain the non-verbal, >so any choice is arbitrary...
I heartily agree with nearly everything in your post, but I think the above
is a bit strong (or could I equally accurately say "mildewy", "froggy",
"entrancing", "apeshit", "brown", and "pointillistic"?).
Cheers,
Walter Horn
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz
Sorry, I was being too terse. I didn't mean a random choice -- I meant
any choice that's been made based on some sort of attempt to translate
from non-verbal to verbal in a descriptive way. I didn't mean to suggest
any choice was equal to another, merely that no matter how suggestive
the term may be, it's still an arbitrary choice because it's "stuck"
onto another medium.
Dennis
http://maltedmedia.com/
Jeff Harrington
: All right.
Kind of late to the party, dude.
: I've read the whole thread to date, and what everyone has ignored is
: that if you want to make an analogy between pointillism in art and in
: music, it makes little sense to define pointillism as "little specks
: of music" and make the time for it the 1980s.
I'll take that as an attack against my tongue in cheek equation that
granular synthesized pieces might more appropriately be called
"pointillistic." Uh... That was a joke.
: The most famous
: pointillist in painting is George Seurat, he has been dead for many
: decades, and his work was Post-Impressionist. Nor is his use of
: pointillism the main point of his paintings; rather, it is a technique
: that he uses in order to make very richly coloristic compositions with
: very clear structure. I submit to you that the closest comparison one
: could make to pointillism in music would be the work of Maurice Ravel.
Nah... that's dumb. His lines are too well-defined. How about Jeux or
Jeux de vagues by Debussy? Here's a real reduction of music to particles.
That passing on of the glints of wave light in the beginning to Jeux de
vagues between instruments could be looked at as multiple brush strokes
sharing the "representation" of the wave sparkles. And as the one who
began this ridiculous comparision ad absurdem, I would like to point out
that pointillism can even be seen in that Schubert Piano Sonata Adagio in
Bb or Delacroix's experiments with brush stroke sketches into color
extravaganza. It's in the freakin' water, like flouride, because we're
all dealing with particles at some point and when we let them coalesce
or where we don't let them coalesce into larger gestalts is
where it gets interesting.
: I repeat: The point of pointillism is not the dots of paint, it's how
: they are connected and form a rich, colorful composition. Ravel used
: splashes of orchestral (pianistic, etc.) color to produce richly
: coloristic and very clearly-structured musical compositions. And the
: lives of Ravel and Seurat even overlapped. :-)
Overlapping time lines don't have anything to do with the inherently
useless act of naming movements. How many "classical" movements have
there been in painting history? Slapping on a "neo" at this point in time
is just a waste of time! :)
How many "neo-neo-"'s for KS's pointillist do you want for Kontra-Punkte?
Huh? That many???? :)
ANd who's to say that Stockhausen ain't creating rich, colorful
and clearly-structured compositions with his punkts?
: And, no, the Expressionist Webern - or, worse, his ostensible
: followers - cannot be logically called a "pointillist," because his
: music has to be compared first of all to the works of Expressionist
: artists. Influenced by Debussy? Yes, he was. Analogous to Seurat?
: What?
Nobody suggested Webern was influenced or even connected to Seurat or to
any of the other post-impressionists and I doubt that anyone read any of
the texts so far in this thread in that manner, but you...
Next time, come to the freakin' party on time! You're like that guy who
sticks his head into a group at a party talking about Clinton only to find
out that we're all talking about George Clinton.
Now go ahead and attack me for suggesting Schubert was a pointillist.
That one's easy! Go for it, dude.
Jeff Harrington [--->>[[ New Zion Pastorale for Orchestra MPEG ]]<<-----]
je...@parnasse.com [----->>[[ http://www.parnasse.com/zion.mp2 ]]<<--------]
Samuel Vriezen
>>Come on, that's nitpicking. Pointilism is a perfectly accepted term in
>>the theory of avantgarde music, even if Stockhausen doesn't sound like
>>Seurat, whatever that could mean.
>
>Then I regret that avant garde composers - or is it music critics? -
>have had so little understanding of painting that they misapplied this
>term.
I'm not sure who first applied the term pointilist to post-war
avantgarde music. But the term, 'Punktuelle Musik' appears in
Stockhausen's early writings already; so perhaps it was a slightly
unhappy translation and the term should be, 'pointy music' or
something like that.
Samuel
pi...@interport.net
<cal...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>
>pi...@interport.net wrote in message
><365fa58b...@news.interport.net>...
>>On Fri, 27 Nov 1998 21:30:54 -0500, "Calliotte/Horn"
>><cal...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>>
>>>What matters here is that rather than paint a single line or wash between
>>>point A and point B, Seurat and company painted lots of little dots there
>>>(with spaces in between) which, from certain vantages appeared like a
>single
>>>line or wash.
>>
>>And if you're looking at the painting close enough to see the
>>individual dots, you can no longer perceive the form, and the painting
>>no longer makes sense.
>
>
>True, but, of course, nothing at all follows from it.
What I suggest follows from it is that characterizing music which has
no resemblance to the way that pointillism is used in painting as
pointillistic is highly misleading.
>>>Similarly, instead of having one instrument play the fifteen notes of a
>>>"melody," Webern and other Klangfahrbenmelodists (sp) had a bunch of
>>>different instrumentalists each play one or two of the notes only --
>leaving
>>>spaces in between.
>>>
>>>Ravel did not do this: that's why (in spite of his impressionism) he's not
>>>generally classified as a pointillist (and Webern is).
>
>
>
>>Beethoven DID do this is his symphonies; in fact, this is a
>>fundamental characteristic of his woodwind writing. Where does THAT
>>leave you?
>
>
>
>Doubtful about the description,
Well, it's true of Mozart, too, perhaps more so.
> but unmoved about the theoretical point in
>any case. Why shouldn't Beethoven have pointillistic aspects to his
>compostion?
Because his work predates pointillism by decades and has nothing much
to do with it at all. And I don't believe the pointillists were
influenced in their choices of technique by listening to Beethoven's
or Mozart's orchestrations, though of course that wouldn't
retroactively make Beethoven or Mozart "pointillists," anyway.
> After all, Biber was "Ivesian."
I find that such characterizations turn everything upside down. You
see, I believe that things have to make historical sense and that
history isn't a stream of things that anachronistically relate to one
another because of God's hand. Ives could have been influenced by
Biber, perhaps, but Biber certainly could not have been influenced by
Ives, and therefore, it makes no historical sense to call him
"Ivesian".
>>If Webern is "generally" characterized as as "pointillist," Mr./Ms.
>>General, whoever that is, is wrong.
>
>
>Yep, everyone who's ever written about this matter has been completely wrong
Do you expect me to take back my points based on such "logic"?
>and Ravel is the king of the pointillists, since he and Seurat are both
>"colorful" and you really like both of them.
Like has nothing to do with it, as you'll see below.
>>>The analogy you've drawn between Seurat's and Ravel's use of "color," even
>>>if apt, just makes them both....colorful.
>>
>
>>You've made a good attempt to make an analogy between Seurat and
>>Webern, and I consider it ahistorical and reject it.
>
>
>I've done nothing more than relay a hidebound, widely accepted
>categorization.
Why is it that I was never taught this in all my years in school up
through a D.M.A. (on a Federal fellowship, if you really want to
know)? The first time I saw Webern's music referred to as
"pointillistic" was in a textbook which I am required to use in
teaching Music Appreciation. And that textbook gives Seurat's "Grande
Jatte" in supposed illustration of how pointillistic paintings are
ostenbibly similar to Webern's music.
> You have suggested a radical paradigm shift in its place,
A paradigm shift? Yes. Radical? No. Radical would be to deny that
Webern is Modernist. My suggestion of a paradigm shift is marginal, in
my opinion.
>based on these:
>
>(a) If you look at a Seurat up close it won't make any sense [Similarly, I
>suppose, if you play Ravel at really slow speeds, it won't make sense
>either.]
But, you see, Seurat's dots do not simplify the forms or reduce them
to the smallest meaningful elements required the way that Webern's
works do. Webern's works are incredibly pithy. An artist similar to
Webern, if figurative, would choose to make incredibly coloristic
paintings of figures with a few lines (think of stick figures, but of
course on an extremely subtle level) rather than many dots creating
volumetric spaces. I brought up Mondrian before. How about the
Expressionist Swiss artist, Paul Klee? I think he's a much closer
comparison to Webern than Seurat is.
>(b) Seurat and Ravel both utilize "splashes of color."
>(c) Webern (whom I sense you don't like too much) reminds you more of
>Mondrian than he does of Seurat (whom I sense you like alot) than he does of
>Ravel (whom I sense you also like alot). QED
You're a total schmuck to (1) disregard what I've already posted and
(2) jump to conclusions about my views. As I've already mentioned, I
_love_ Webern! If I had to make a list of the greatest 20th-century
composers, I would list Webern before Ravel, partly because I believe
Webern was a more original composer. Similarly, I love both Mondrian
and Seurat (not to mention Klee).
>(d) Anyone who disagrees with you doesn't know anything about art history,
>or is "ahistorical." [Incidentally, I plead guilty to the first charge here
>and ignorance with respect to the second volley: I don't see why your
>categorization is "historical" and the accepted view is "ahistorical" unless
>you are suggesting that this must be true since Seurat and Ravel were
>contemporaries.]
I'm suggesting that what Seurat was trying to do has little to do with
what Webern was trying to do. Thus, the idea that they are somehow
both "pointillists," though perhaps conventional wisdom in some
circles, makes little historical sense. But as far as my charges that
your views are ahistorical, it would seem that you proved it earlier
by calling Biber "Ivesian". Next you'll be saying that Hildegard von
Bingen was Expressionist.
>I don't believe these theses will get musical history community writ large
>to change their view that Webern was a pointillist and Ravel was not
I'm really not sure how many musicologists have such views.
Nevertheless, though I don't expect to change the views of people who
I am not in contact with, I figure that perhaps some of my remarks
might stimulate people less defensive and rigid than you to think
about them.
> (though
>perhaps you don't care a whit about what this conglomeration of ignorant
>ahistoricists think, anyway).
[snip]
Only negatively. That's correct. I do not respect received opinions
and think for myself. Try it some time. You might profit from it.
Michael
pi...@interport.net
wrote:
>I'm not sure who first applied the term pointilist to post-war
>avantgarde music. But the term, 'Punktuelle Musik' appears in
>Stockhausen's early writings already; so perhaps it was a slightly
>unhappy translation and the term should be, 'pointy music' or
>something like that.
>
>Samuel
Yeah. That makes sense.
By the way, lest people should jump to conclusions again, though I
haven't investigated Stockhausen's music to a great degree, I have
enjoyed everything of his I've played and listened to.
Regards,
Michael
Calliotte/Horn
pi...@interport.net wrote in message
>...You're a total schmuck to (1) disregard what I've already posted and
>(2) jump to conclusions about my views....I do not respect received
opinions
>and think for myself. Try it some time. You might profit from it.
I think you are using the term "think" rather widely here. Writing at some
length, yes. Repeating yourself, certainly. Making insulting comments, no
question. But thinking?
However, as it's your view that those who disagree with your view that Ravel
is the greatest exponent of musical pointillism are unthinking schmucks, I
suppose here, too, you must be the judge.
(To be fair you've only said that *I'm* an unthinking schmuck, so - in my
righteous indignation - I've exagerrated a smidgen above. But, you know,
posters' license.)
Walter Horn
Calliotte/Horn
pi...@interport.net wrote in message
<36608693...@news.interport.net>...
>...Ives could have been influenced by
>Biber, perhaps, but Biber certainly could not have been influenced by
No kidding! Man, you really have thought about this stuff.
Walter Horn
pi...@interport.net
<bat...@maltedmedia.com> wrote:
[snip]
>In part it depends of what your brain/ear does with the connections.
>Apparently "my" Webern is not "your" Webern, and much as I think the
>pointillist painters are attractive (m'gawd, I have a Seurat
>necktie...), I always felt the point (n.p.i.) wasn't *what* results they
>created with the dots, but that they *did* create results with the dots.
Let's bring this discussion to a more general level, shall we? I think
it's problematic to classify art based exclusively on the techniques
used by the artists, while disregarding the content of their works.
Let's take a musical example: How meaningful is it to group a bunch of
composers as "12-tone composers"? How similar is Babbitt to Berg or
Webern, really? Your opinions, please.
>> A painting
>> that corresponds to Webern should indeed be coloristic (not
>> monochrome), but it should have highly simplified abstract forms with
>> subtle and other-than-immediately-obvious metaphoric content.
>
>Uh, music in general is abstract too abstract for this. Pointillism has
>different definitions in time vs. space.
I kind of disagree. You bring up Expressionism later. Schoenberg was
both an Expressionist painter and a composer. Is there any difficulty
in calling the music that he was writing at the same time he was
painting Expressionist paintings Expressionist? If not, can't this be
generalized to encompass similar music, using similar vocabularies to
similar ends? Sure, there's no hard science here, but...
>> I consider the idea that "bleep, blip" music
>
>Biases heard...
Where? What music do you think I like? I thought I was making a clear
written description of the sounds in music that you all are calling
"pointillistic". I did a decent job, no?
Do you think that "bleep, blip" would be a highly inaccurate
description of the Berio Sequenza per flauto solo? Do you think,
therefore, that I like or dislike it?
>> however good,
>
>... equivocation also heard.
Hmm...am I really misleading you as to my opinions, or are there too
many people here who are ready to misinterpret remarks as criticisms
of their favorite composers? I make my point below. As I said, it has
nothing to do with a determination of good or bad.
>> is
>> "pointillistic" to be a complete distortion of the nature of
>> pointillism in painting
>
>Which is, I think, the point others have made. The artforms are
>different enough that you can't shoehorn one artform's concepts into
>another.
Fair though debatable point.
> Same goes for expressionism,
disagree.
> miminalism,
How so? Would you like to expand on that?
> etc.. Verbal language
>has limited tools to explain the non-verbal,
True. Still, some analogies are more apt than others, no?
> so any choice is arbitrary
disagree. Not completely arbitrary.
>(and subsequent). Pointillism describes both pretty usefully, but not in
>terms of each other. It doesn't dismiss the term's use for one artform
>because it isn't explained in terms of the other
But if the same term is used for types of music that arise from a
highly different movement than the context in which it was used in
painting, isn't that misleading? Pointillism in art is used by
post-Impressionists, and, taking the comments I've read here, in
music, it is used by post-Expressionists (some will object to the
word). As I asked before, isn't it a problem to define art according
to superficial questions of technique rather than content, or even
deeper questions of technique (i.e. pithy versus verbose - Webern vs.
Mahler, Strauss or Berg)?
> -- or (the reason I
>jumped in) because you don't or won't sense the connections' synergistic
>effects.
I'm not fully understanding you. What do you mean by "synergistic
effects"?
Regards,
Michael
pi...@interport.net
<bat...@maltedmedia.com> wrote:
>Sorry, I was being too terse. I didn't mean a random choice -- I meant
>any choice that's been made based on some sort of attempt to translate
>from non-verbal to verbal in a descriptive way. I didn't mean to suggest
>any choice was equal to another, merely that no matter how suggestive
>the term may be, it's still an arbitrary choice because it's "stuck"
>onto another medium.
OK, Dennis. We agree here. And then?
Michael
pi...@interport.net
<rus...@shell7.ba.best.com> wrote:
>pi...@interport.net wrote:
>
>: All right.
>
>Kind of late to the party, dude.
I was offline because of both time pressure and computer trouble, but
I think I read the whole thread.
>: I've read the whole thread to date, and what everyone has ignored is
>: that if you want to make an analogy between pointillism in art and in
>: music, it makes little sense to define pointillism as "little specks
>: of music" and make the time for it the 1980s.
>
>I'll take that as an attack against my tongue in cheek equation that
>granular synthesized pieces might more appropriately be called
>"pointillistic." Uh... That was a joke.
OK, Jeff, but not everyone was joking. :-)
>: The most famous
>: pointillist in painting is George Seurat, he has been dead for many
>: decades, and his work was Post-Impressionist. Nor is his use of
>: pointillism the main point of his paintings; rather, it is a technique
>: that he uses in order to make very richly coloristic compositions with
>: very clear structure. I submit to you that the closest comparison one
>: could make to pointillism in music would be the work of Maurice Ravel.
>
>Nah... that's dumb. His lines are too well-defined. How about Jeux or
>Jeux de vagues by Debussy? Here's a real reduction of music to particles.
>That passing on of the glints of wave light in the beginning to Jeux de
>vagues between instruments could be looked at as multiple brush strokes
>sharing the "representation" of the wave sparkles.
OK, I accept that.
> And as the one who
>began this ridiculous comparision ad absurdem, I would like to point out
>that pointillism can even be seen in that Schubert Piano Sonata Adagio in
>Bb or Delacroix's experiments with brush stroke sketches into color
>extravaganza. It's in the freakin' water, like flouride, because we're
>all dealing with particles at some point and when we let them coalesce
>or where we don't let them coalesce into larger gestalts is
>where it gets interesting.
OK, now you're getting ahistorical. Aspects of what was later called
pointillism could be found in earlier work.
>
>: I repeat: The point of pointillism is not the dots of paint, it's how
>: they are connected and form a rich, colorful composition. Ravel used
>: splashes of orchestral (pianistic, etc.) color to produce richly
>: coloristic and very clearly-structured musical compositions. And the
>: lives of Ravel and Seurat even overlapped. :-)
>
>Overlapping time lines don't have anything to do with the inherently
>useless act of naming movements. How many "classical" movements have
>there been in painting history? Slapping on a "neo" at this point in time
>is just a waste of time! :)
Yeah, but I just don't see what "pointillist" music has to do with
pointillist post-Impressionist art.
>How many "neo-neo-"'s for KS's pointillist do you want for Kontra-Punkte?
>Huh? That many???? :)
What does Stockhausen say about the way in which his work is
pointillistic? Does he compare his work to the pointillists in art,
and if so, how?
>ANd who's to say that Stockhausen ain't creating rich, colorful
>and clearly-structured compositions with his punkts?
Not me. I just say that they have little to do with pointillism in
art.
>: And, no, the Expressionist Webern - or, worse, his ostensible
>: followers - cannot be logically called a "pointillist," because his
>: music has to be compared first of all to the works of Expressionist
>: artists. Influenced by Debussy? Yes, he was. Analogous to Seurat?
>: What?
>
>Nobody suggested Webern was influenced or even connected to Seurat or to
>any of the other post-impressionists and I doubt that anyone read any of
>the texts so far in this thread in that manner, but you...
I read everything that was posted before, I thought. There were 12
posts I read before posting this, and the first was the question about
what music was pointillistic.
>Next time, come to the freakin' party on time!
:-)
After my recital's over and my computer's fixed (I'm not at home right
now).
[snip]
>Now go ahead and attack me for suggesting Schubert was a pointillist.
>That one's easy! Go for it, dude.
I already did, but I see no reason to go on about it at length.
My view of arts history is like Gombrich's: What makes sense is to
compare art to what the artist knows about, i.e. some portion of what
is contemporaneous and what came before. Schubert could not have been
a pointillist - a "proto-pointillist," if you must.
Michael
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz
>
> I think you are using the term "think" rather widely here. Writing at some
> length, yes. Repeating yourself, certainly. Making insulting comments, no
> question. But thinking?
Apparently he enjoys this. You know the drill. Last person to get bored
wins the argument. He wore this out after a few posts, so I bagged
responding. (Hey Michael, you win.)
Dennis
http://maltedmedia.com/
Jeff Harrington
: On 28 Nov 1998 15:02:52 GMT, Jeff Harrington
: <rus...@shell7.ba.best.com> wrote:
: OK, now you're getting ahistorical. Aspects of what was later called
: pointillism could be found in earlier work.
This is probably just different perspectives. I've got no interest in
labels or labelling but I am very interested in processes. What is the
process behind the use of less coalesced musical particles? How does this
equate to the visual phenomenon of retinal imageing, etc... History for
me, and for others it seems on this thread, is a smorgasbord, not a book
written by an expert.
:>Overlapping time lines don't have anything to do with the inherently
:>useless act of naming movements. How many "classical" movements have
:>there been in painting history? Slapping on a "neo" at this point in time
:>is just a waste of time! :)
: Yeah, but I just don't see what "pointillist" music has to do with
: pointillist post-Impressionist art.
Both are the products of artists attempting to find an edge when particles
show themselves as particles, and as forming gestalts. Artistic paradoxes
with the means of production exposed. (My wife and I wrote a pointillist
book once where the PostScript to produce the book was the background and
the book itself. If anyone's curious http://www.parnasse.com/book.pdf).
: My view of arts history is like Gombrich's: What makes sense is to
: compare art to what the artist knows about, i.e. some portion of what
: is contemporaneous and what came before. Schubert could not have been
: a pointillist - a "proto-pointillist," if you must.
That's apparent in your discussion. I find it more interesting to look at
arts history as being a bunch of people doing the same thing over and over
but in different ways. Sooner or later, as Leonard Meyer has suggested
it'll probably end up like that. (If it isn't already in today's art).
When we reduce art history to an understandable process, I feel we
trivialize the interconnectedness. Stockhausen built off of Webern who
built off of Schoenberg who built off of Mahler who built off of Wagner
who built off of Berlioz. That's simplistic and says nothing about the
complexity of having thousands of pieces of work from thousands of years
of artists from hundreds of cultures to inspire you.
I'm hungry for some more smorgasbord. How exactly is Mozart Beethovenian
anyway? This kind of thinking is rife and I think it's interesting.
pi...@interport.net
wrote:
>I'm not sure who first applied the term pointilist to post-war
>avantgarde music. But the term, 'Punktuelle Musik' appears in
>Stockhausen's early writings already; so perhaps it was a slightly
>unhappy translation and the term should be, 'pointy music' or
>something like that.
>
>Samuel
I've already posted one response to this, but I found it the most
helpful post so far, because it provides a useful historical and
etymological perspective. Would "Punktuelle" really mean something
like "Notey," since "Punkt"=Latin "punctus," as in punctus contra
punctum (=point counterpoint or counterpoint for short)?
My other deduction, which I'd like a confirmation or refutation of, is
that some time after Stockhausen used this term which was translated
into French/English as "pointillism," it was retroactively applied to
Webern. I'm guessing that neither Webern nor anyone else during his
lifetime called his music "pointillist," and, stretching a little
further, that nobody at the time (i.e. before 1945) made an analogy
between Webern and the pointillists. Am I right?
Michael
(P.S. If I'm wrong, note that I said it was a "deduction" and a
"guess." Did I need to mention that?)
pi...@interport.net
<cal...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>
>pi...@interport.net wrote in message
>
>>...You're a total schmuck to (1) disregard what I've already posted and
>>(2) jump to conclusions about my views....I do not respect received
>opinions
>>and think for myself. Try it some time. You might profit from it.
[snip]
>However, as it's your view that those who disagree with your view that Ravel
>is the greatest exponent of musical pointillism are unthinking schmucks, I
>suppose here, too, you must be the judge.
[snip]
Perhaps I was wrong to call you a schmuck, because it could be that
you simply lack reading comprehension skills. I had said you were a
schmuck for jumping to the conclusion that I dislike Webern, after I
had already mentioned that I love him. So I won't accuse you of
intentionally distorting my remarks, because you may be incapable of
understanding them. Of course, I suppose this might make it useless to
have any discussions with you.
For the benefit of anyone who cares, here was the context:
You:
>(b) Seurat and Ravel both utilize "splashes of color."
>(c) Webern (whom I sense you don't like too much) reminds you more of
>Mondrian than he does of Seurat (whom I sense you like alot) than he does of
>Ravel (whom I sense you also like alot). QED
Me:
pi...@interport.net
Dennis, I don't enjoy insulting people. I had accused Calliotte/Horn
of having ahistorical views. That wasn't an insult, it was a
description, and an accurate one, unless you think it's insulting to
refer to the belief in anachronistic designations (such as "Biber is
Ivesian") as ahistorical. If someone jumped to invidious conclusions
about your views, perhaps you wouldn't call him a schmuck for so
doing, and perhaps I should have been more gentle, but I thought he
deserved it. My view as to the appropriateness of a particular
designation for a style of composition has nothing to do with my taste
in music, and I wonder why some of you thought - despite my statement
that I loved Webern - that I was making some kind of negative comment
about him.
My observation is that some people, when faced with views that
conflict with what they consider conventional wisdom, treat the person
expressing that viewpoint as if s/he were an ignoramus. That's a
problem when the purveyor of the non-establishment views has formal
qualifications.
Michael
pi...@interport.net
<cal...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>
>pi...@interport.net wrote in message
><36608693...@news.interport.net>...
>>...Ives could have been influenced by
>>Biber, perhaps, but Biber certainly could not have been influenced by
>Ives....
>
>
>No kidding! Man, you really have thought about this stuff.
>
>Walter Horn
Then in what sense can he be "Ivesian," unless you're making him a
prophet (i.e., he somehow "predicted" what Ives would be like)? We
just have completely different views of history. Maybe we should leave
it at that.
Michael
pi...@interport.net
<rus...@shell7.ba.best.com> wrote:
>pi...@interport.net wrote:
>: On 28 Nov 1998 15:02:52 GMT, Jeff Harrington
>: <rus...@shell7.ba.best.com> wrote:
>: OK, now you're getting ahistorical. Aspects of what was later called
>: pointillism could be found in earlier work.
>
>This is probably just different perspectives. I've got no interest in
>labels or labelling but I am very interested in processes. What is the
>process behind the use of less coalesced musical particles? How does this
>equate to the visual phenomenon of retinal imageing, etc... History for
>me, and for others it seems on this thread, is a smorgasbord, not a book
>written by an expert.
[snip - all good points]
I respect what you've written in this post, even though I disagree to
a considerable extent with the view that you and Leonard Meyer share
to the effect that "arts history [is] a bunch of people doing the same
thing over and over but in different ways."
However, I do see the germ of truth in this, and I think that the
people in this thread who have been so exasperated (is that the right
word?) with me share your views, but are not nearly as articulate as
you.
Thanks for posting this and providing a high-level perspective.
Michael
P. S. I still think that the content is more important that the
procedures, in terms of defining the substance of a style. Mahler's
6th Symphony is written in an expanded but clearly audible and
analysable (?) series of traditional forms from the 18th century
(Sonata-Allegro form, Rondo, ABA song form, Sonata-Allegro form). Does
that make this symphony "less Romantic" than other Mahler symphonies
which use less traditional forms? I think not! The forms exist as
rhetorical devices, but the CONTENT of the rhetoric is what
determines the style.
Yes, I think the issue is what's most important about music, technique
or content. That the two are not completely separable I acknowlege, of
course. This is a much bigger issue than the meaning of "pointillism"
and to which composers, if any, it should be applied.
Calliotte/Horn
certain respects. That is, I take the view that there's a certain package
of characteristics that are common to many Ives pieces, such that that we
may come to call composers who exemplify many or all of those properties
"Ivesian" -- whenever they happened to do their composing. There is thus no
suggestion (especially when one puts the term in quotes, as I did) that the
"Ivesian" composer must have somehow been influenced by Ives.
Precisely the same is true for "pointillistic": in using the term, one need
not make any implication that the composer was in any way influenced by the
visual artists, (or vice versa). Such uses are "ahistorical" only in the
quite harmless sense that they recognize that the term has grown to the
point where no imputation of causal connections are necessary. Obviously,
"connotative" growth of this kind is tougher with words like "Ivesian,"
which is why I put it in quotes. (Still, it does happen. For example, we
now speak of "Copernican Revolutions" occurring long before Copernicus.
In any case, I think our difference here (other than respects your views of
my character and abilities -- and I'm not sure we're *that* far apart here
either -- involves your view that it is inappropriate to use the term
"pointillism" to describe music that is sparse and....well...klangfahrben.
I think all I've done is point out that the word is commonly so used, and
that this use seems to me perfectly reasonable.
Since you have suggested what you have agreed is a paradigm shift, the
burden must be on you to prove that the accepted usage really is
inappropriate. I don't think you've met that burden. If you think there
should be TWO accepted uses, the standard of proof is, perhaps, not so
difficult to meet, but even here I have my doubts. Your use of "colorful,"
on which your analysis depends, seems too subjective to me. I might be
convinced on this point, but it doesn't seem worth the trouble. After all,
I'm not with the word police: you can use pointillism any way you want to.
I've just tried to show both that your use is novel and that there's nothing
wrong with the accepted use. I warn, that is, that if you go your own way,
it's likely that no one will know what you're talking about. I don't think
giving such warnings is really so so schmucky.
On the other hand, I admit that I did miss your earlier remark that you love
Webern, and that (based on that oversight), I attributed what could be
considered immature motives to your theorizing. I apologize for that.
But don't you think it's a little crazy to fight about this stuff?
Happy Holidays,
Walter Horn
pi...@interport.net wrote in message
<36617c83...@news.interport.net>...
>On Sat, 28 Nov 1998 20:53:55 -0500, "Calliotte/Horn"
><cal...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>pi...@interport.net wrote in message
>><36608693...@news.interport.net>...
>>>...Ives could have been influenced by
>>>Biber, perhaps, but Biber certainly could not have been influenced by