"My first choice [for Wagner's complete Ring] would be Karl Boehm's Phillips set, from Bayreuth in 1967."
aest...@hotmail.com
vhorowitz
some cuts, which puts it out of the running for me for a possible first
choice.
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:1145081059.803445.327300
@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> I'm afraid part of the reason he gets through it in record time are
> some cuts, which puts it out of the running for me for a possible first
> choice.
Said that already: http://tinyurl.com/hcm63
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. ~ FDR (attrib.)
Richard Loeb
"vhorowitz" <vladho...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1145081059.8...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> I'm afraid part of the reason he gets through it in record time are
> some cuts, which puts it out of the running for me for a possible first
> choice.
>
There are no cuts in the Bohm Philips Ring cycle = the only commercially
released Ring cycle I can think of offhand that has cuts is the 1950
Furtwangler Ring which has two. Richard
John Harrington
> http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1753005,00.html
Tim Ashley's 3 paragraph overview of 8 recordings of this ~15-hour long
cycle is exemplative of why I loathe critics.
J
Todd Schurk
There are no cuts in the Bohm recording of the Ring. He's just swifter
than most of the others. Don't know for sure if he is the fastest of
anyone. Krauss '53 from Bayreuth is also on the quick side.
jrs...@aol.com
Why? If a newspaper editor grants a critic three short paragraphs for
the purpose of recommending a Ring cycle to the general public, what
does it say about the critic that he can succinctly fulfill the
assignment and make a good choice in the process? What makes you think
the critic couldn't also have written a whole book chapter on the
subject, if that had been the assignment?
Boehm's Ring is an excellent choice for an all-day's session,
especially for a newcomer to the cycle, or even as a first-choice
overall (which wasn't actually what the critic was providing).
--Jeff
pgaron
aest...@hotmail.com wrote:
> http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1753005,00.html
I very much enjoyed this lady's account of her marathon listening
session. I own the complete "Ring" cycle on both DVD (Boulez) and CD's
(Bohm and Furtwangler), and keep wanting to find time to go through it
all -- just not at one sitting! Really, it's probably only about 4 or
5 hours longer than watching the three "Lord of the Ring" movies, which
I did at my family's urging -- though I was much less enamored of it
than they were, since I'm not a great fan of the sci-fi/fantasy genre.
I suppose I should wait for my Wagner "Ring" marathon until we get that
treadmill that my better half is threatening to buy and force me to
use. Then at least I could have a marathon exercise/listening
experience.
pgaron
John Harrington
> John Harrington wrote:
> > aest...@hotmail.com wrote:
> > > http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1753005,00.html
> >
> > Tim Ashley's 3 paragraph overview of 8 recordings of this ~15-hour long
> > cycle is exemplative of why I loathe critics.
> >
> >
> > J
>
> Why? If a newspaper editor grants a critic three short paragraphs for
> the purpose of recommending a Ring cycle to the general public, what
> does it say about the critic that he can succinctly fulfill the
> assignment and make a good choice in the process? What makes you think
> the critic couldn't also have written a whole book chapter on the
> subject, if that had been the assignment?
The idea that 15 hours of interpreted music can be accurately or
helpfully characterized with terms like "stolid" or "intensely
metaphysical" is simply plain stupid. You couldn't do it, and be
helpful, with a book.
> Boehm's Ring is an excellent choice for an all-day's session...
You act like the critic arrived at the "right answer" in 3 paras.
That's your opinion. Good criticism, if it existed (and it doesn't and
probably can't) would be about transmitting opinions to others in a way
that would be more helpful than the reader merely seeking out the
recording himself. Critics are worthless. They are worse than
worthless, since they implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, behave as
if their opinions have some sort of authority that replaces the need to
listen for yourself. They're time-wasters and soul-killers.
J
vhorowitz
recommend the Warner Bros. cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?".
Hmm... no cuts in the Bohm.......I guess my memory is playing tricks
since his DG Tristan is definitely cut. Sorry.
Richard Loeb
No his DG Tristan is not cut Richard
>
Paul Kintzele
> I suppose I should wait for my Wagner "Ring" marathon until we get that
> treadmill that my better half is threatening to buy and force me to
> use. Then at least I could have a marathon exercise/listening
> experience.
This remark and the Guardian article have me thinking: why doesn't the
local Bally's Gym combine forces with the local opera company? Put some
red carpet on the treadmills, some Chardonnay in the water coolers, and
voila! Those bulgy singers can get in on the act too (and, as in that
Monty Python "trim jeans" bit, the production can keep a real-time tally
of "total inches lost"). Now that's what I call a Gesamtkunstwerk!
Paul
alanwa...@aol.com
aest...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1753005,00.html
If no one minds, I am going to stick with the 1953 Furtwangler Ring,
that is until one or both of the 1937/1938 London Rings are issued.
Both exist in private recordings but have not yet seen the light of day
in their entirety.
When and if they do I might possibly change my mind based on what I
have heard of the 1937 so far or at least based on Act III of Die
Walkure (London 1937) with a somewhat "young sounding" Flagstad and in
1938 with a Brunnhilde called Frida Leider.
Kind regards,
Alan M. Watkins
Paul Kintzele
> Boehm's Ring is an excellent choice for an all-day's session,
> especially for a newcomer to the cycle, or even as a first-choice
> overall (which wasn't actually what the critic was providing).
Oh, I'm not so sure. For me, Boehm rushes through some passages that
deserve more majesty and clarity, and the singing, Nilsson and
Neidlinger aside, ranges from decent to awful (Theo Adam is particularly
hard to hear). Then there's the noise from the stage, audience, and
prompter; if the performances were more compelling, of course, that
would matter less....
For a newcomer to the Ring, I would actually recommend the Ring Disc
along with Solti's. Sadly, the Ring Disc seems to have gone out of
print. A pity. The Barenboim that was played for the BBC's marathon is
quite good as well.
Paul
Richard Loeb
<alanwa...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1145137984....@t31g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Well Alan as they say "from your mouth to Gods ears" but I have really given
up hope for the issuance of either of those Rings - I have heard that they
are
"everywhere" including an eccentric collector, or Lady Beecham, or a
warehouse in Brooklyn!!!! Both Furtwanglers are must haves for the
conducting but both suffer from severe casting problems so I couldn't have
them as a first choice - happily they are both so inexpensive they are great
choices for second or third. You really must hear this music played by
Furtwangler to get its import - there is a primeval quality I dont get
aywhere else !!!!! Even the entrance of Brunnhilde and Gunther in that 1938
Act II Gotterdammerung has a primitive, almost tribal power!!!! Best
Richard
Richard Loeb
news:41e0g.46713$_26....@tornado.texas.rr.com...
I always pick Solti for a newcomer - it has an excitement that I think would
be immediately appealing to a first-timer - of course after that he can
become a maniac like me and have 50 Rings!!!! Richard
jrs...@aol.com
John Harrington wrote:
> jrs...@aol.com wrote:
> > John Harrington wrote:
> > > aest...@hotmail.com wrote:
> > > > http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1753005,00.html
> > >
> > > Tim Ashley's 3 paragraph overview of 8 recordings of this ~15-hour long
> > > cycle is exemplative of why I loathe critics.
> > >
> > >
> > > J
> >
> > Why? If a newspaper editor grants a critic three short paragraphs for
> > the purpose of recommending a Ring cycle to the general public, what
> > does it say about the critic that he can succinctly fulfill the
> > assignment and make a good choice in the process? What makes you think
> > the critic couldn't also have written a whole book chapter on the
> > subject, if that had been the assignment?
>
> The idea that 15 hours of interpreted music can be accurately or
> helpfully characterized with terms like "stolid" or "intensely
> metaphysical" is simply plain stupid. You couldn't do it, and be
> helpful, with a book.
>
> > Boehm's Ring is an excellent choice for an all-day's session...
>
> You act like the critic arrived at the "right answer" in 3 paras.
> That's your opinion.
Exactly. All I was doing was offering an opinion, and basically so was
the critic--that's all he had space for. Goodness, I wouldn't dream of
holding you to such a high standard when you offer an opinion.
I was merely pointing out that your criticism showed a lack of
appreciation for the critic's specific task. The critic did a
consummately professional job with the space provided. He probably
distilled years of listening and thinking into a few paragraphs, on
deadline, without making the mistake of implying that there's only one
way to answer the question or that his choice is the only worthy one.
That alone lifts him above so many other critics. The terms he used are
indeed stupid if one has more space to play but I find them relatively
thoughtful and meaningful under the circumstances. All I was saying was
that you should first put yourself in this critic's shoes and see if
you can do any better with the space provided.
Good criticism, if it existed (and it doesn't and
> probably can't) would be about transmitting opinions to others in a way
> that would be more helpful than the reader merely seeking out the
> recording himself. Critics are worthless. They are worse than
> worthless, since they implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, behave as
> if their opinions have some sort of authority that replaces the need to
> listen for yourself. They're time-wasters and soul-killers.
And your curt, dismissal of 200 years worth of writings by Berlioz,
Shaw, Thomson, Copland, Wagner and others is somehow more worthy than a
three-paragraph recommendation for a Ring Cycle? Talk about
"soul-killing" distillation!
Read the Guardian piece again...he speaks with implied authority
because that's what readers want, but he doesn't close the door on
disagreement...he expresses an opinion because that's all he has time
for, and he has the consideration to mention seven other choices with
considerable strengths instead of waxing enthusiastically for only one
choice. This is not the same kind of mindless trashing of alternatives
that one sees too frequently at some classical review websites these
days.
--Jeff
jrs...@aol.com
I tend to recommend Solti for various reasons, but I do like Boehm as
well, especially because I like the warmth of the Bayreuth sound and
the brisk pacing which is eminently suited to telling a good story.
Boehm's sound and style involves the listener just as readily as
Solti's magnificently engineered theatrics.
Then again, perhaps it was because Boehm was my first Ring--acquired
solely on the basis of price when I was in high school--that I failed
to become a maniac and have only acquired a dozen Rings so far. At the
sluggish rate I've been buying Rings the last five years, I won't have
50 until I'm well into my 60s.
--Jeff
Jon Alan Conrad
> Hmm... no cuts in the Bohm.......I guess my memory is playing tricks
> since his DG Tristan is definitely cut. Sorry.
Memory continues to play tricks. Boehm's DG Tristan is not cut, whether
definitely or otherwise.
Like some others who have posted, I would start with Solti for a
recommendation; he shares the best of Böhm's cast (Nilsson,
Neidlinger, arguably Windgassen as the best avalable) and adds some
stunning further casting (Ludwig, Frick, etc.). And he's brilliantly
recorded, has a superb orchestra, and paces the work in a dramatically
live manner. Having begun with Solti, a newcomer can go on to be a
fanatic and acquire 15 other cycles.
Bohm would not be terribly high on my list -- most of the time he
sounds to me as if he's rushing through it to get it over with, with no
shaping or pointing or phrasing.
As to the value of critics... I think I'll stay out of that one,
although it's always thrilling to be told that I'm worthless. (And to
discover that GB Shaw, Conrad L. Osborne, and David Hamilton are
worthless too.)
JAC
John Harrington
<snips>
> And your curt, dismissal of 200 years worth of writings by Berlioz,
> Shaw, Thomson, Copland, Wagner and others is somehow more worthy than a
> three-paragraph recommendation for a Ring Cycle? Talk about
> "soul-killing" distillation!
Music, an abstract artform, is impossible to describe adequately with
words in the first place. To pretend you've done something worthwhile
by throwing around a few adjectives and a few paragraphs about 8
massive recording projects is simply a particularly egregious example
of critical arrogance and/or grossly simplistic thinking about music.
If you think 200 years worth of critical writings is worth something, I
would suggest the burden of proof is on you. Most of those people you
cite as far as I'm concerned committed insults to music and good taste,
not to mention decency, in their writings on music. If I had bothered
to take them seriously, I would have been steered away from some of the
most gorgeous music I know. Opinions on subjective experience are
worthless, by their nature. What you have is merely an imperfect, and
not necessarily honest, transcription of someone's subjective aesthetic
experience. Often you have biases that really have nothing to do with
music at all.
John
vhorowitz
Jon Alan Conrad wrote:
> vhorowitz wrote:
>
> > Hmm... no cuts in the Bohm.......I guess my memory is playing tricks
> > since his DG Tristan is definitely cut. Sorry.
>
> Memory continues to play tricks. Boehm's DG Tristan is not cut, whether
> definitely or otherwise.
>
>
Oh well, sorry for the mis-information everyone........I don't own
either recording, and obviously my source was
incorrect..........perhaps that French Bohm Tristan video??
Sorry!
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:qsd0g.46702$_26....@tornado.texas.rr.com:
Given a choice of opera performances, one with a cast that sings well and
the other with a cast which looks like they just stepped out of "The O.C,"
I'll take the one that can sing, thank you.
I realize this is utterly contrary to the "industry" attitude these days,
but they can go to blazes. And frankly, I hope they do.
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:1145150349.911361.148360
@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com:
> vhorowitz wrote:
>
>> Hmm... no cuts in the Bohm.......I guess my memory is playing tricks
>> since his DG Tristan is definitely cut. Sorry.
>
> Memory continues to play tricks. Boehm's DG Tristan is not cut, whether
> definitely or otherwise.
As I recall now, the issue with Böhm's _Ring_ is not that it's cut (which
it isn't), but it seems to be a mixture of the 1966 and 1967 productions,
or something like that. I think this was established in High Fidelity back
in the early 1970s.
david...@aol.com
Why does somebody have to pick up a single complete Ring? Why not
recommend that somebody pick up Maestro X's Rheingold, Maestro Y's
Walkuere, Maestro Z's Siegfried, etc. That being said, while I have a
pretty good idea whose Rheingold (Boulez's) and Siegfried (Solti's) I'd
recommend to the newbie insisting on good sound, I don't know whose
Walkuere or Goetterdaemmerung I'd plug. I also have no objection to M.
Boulez's contribution to his Bayreuth Walkuere recording. There are
even things to admire in his singers, but there's even more to admire
in other singers.
If I could only keep one Ring and it had to be an integral cycle, my
choice would still be Furtwaengler/La Scala.
-david gable
jrs...@aol.com
Abstraction does not make something impossible to describe. Is abstract
painting impossible to describe? Of course not. So what makes music
more abstract than that? It is a sensory experience, and so is art. Do
we simply lack words to adequately describe auditory signals that are
invisible? Not at all. There are plenty of ways to describe music very
accurately, in technical terms. The problem is in making the discussion
non-technical. As they say, writing about music is like dancing about
architecture. However, no one ever said it is impossible. It takes
creativity and a good knowledge of the music and your reader.
The second objection you have is self-evidently flawed. "Opinions on
subjective experience are worthless, by their nature"? You seem to
forget that writing about music is not all description, of course.
Anything with the impact that music has on people is worth writing
about, even if it is difficult to describe. In fact music is like love,
war, pain and joy--it is essential to write about it. If the crux of
your problem is that criticism must be mired in description or must
only be objective then maybe you really missed the point of good music
criticism.
If the opinions of your fellow humans are worthless, one wonders how
you could ever read a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or a newsgroup.
Practically all reading except the most munane technical literature is
apparently a waste of your time. Apparently, so are your own opinions.
You can suggest all you want, but the burden of proof is on you to show
why real human thought, feeling, and experience, based on real physical
and sensory stimulus, is somehow not worth sharing. You can start by
proving that your opinons are worthwhile despite what you've written.
--Jeff
Stephen Worth
John Harrington <bear...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Critics are worthless. They are worse than
> worthless, since they implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, behave as
> if their opinions have some sort of authority that replaces the need to
> listen for yourself. They're time-wasters and soul-killers.
Why do you read them and post on the internet about them? Shouldn't you
be doing better things with your time?
See ya
Steve
--
Rare 78 rpm recordings on CD! http://www.vintageip.com/records/
Building a museum and archive of animation! http://www.animationarchive.org/
The Quest for the BEST HOTDOG in Los Angeles! http://www.hotdogspot.com/
Rediscovering great stuff from the past! http://www.vintagetips.com/
Stephen Worth
Harrington <bear...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Music, an abstract artform, is impossible to describe adequately with
> words in the first place. To pretend you've done something worthwhile
> by throwing around a few adjectives and a few paragraphs about 8
> massive recording projects is simply a particularly egregious example
> of critical arrogance and/or grossly simplistic thinking about music.
> If you think 200 years worth of critical writings is worth something, I
> would suggest the burden of proof is on you. Most of those people you
> cite as far as I'm concerned committed insults to music and good taste,
> not to mention decency, in their writings on music. If I had bothered
> to take them seriously, I would have been steered away from some of the
> most gorgeous music I know. Opinions on subjective experience are
> worthless, by their nature. What you have is merely an imperfect, and
> not necessarily honest, transcription of someone's subjective aesthetic
> experience. Often you have biases that really have nothing to do with
> music at all.
People who pontificate on newsgrous "are worthless. They are worse than
worthless, since they implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, behave as
if their opinions have some sort of authority that replaces the need to
listen (think) for yourself. They're time-wasters and soul-killers."
Stephen Worth
<"david...@aol.com"> wrote:
> Why does somebody have to pick up a single complete Ring? Why not
> recommend that somebody pick up Maestro X's Rheingold, Maestro Y's
> Walkuere, Maestro Z's Siegfried, etc.
All right...
Rhinegold Karajan
Walkure Act 1 Walter the rest Leinsdorf
Siegfried Goodall
Gotterdammerung either Solti or Bohm
And I can recommend a complete Ring cycle for a newbie in
less than three paragraphs...
Mike Richter's El Anillo Ring $10
http://www.mrichter.com/ae/anillo.htm
William Sommerwerck
Including the ones you find you usually agree with?
Larry Rinkel
"John Harrington" <bear...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1145124706.9...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> You act like the critic arrived at the "right answer" in 3 paras.
> That's your opinion. Good criticism, if it existed (and it doesn't and
> probably can't) would be about transmitting opinions to others in a way
> that would be more helpful than the reader merely seeking out the
> recording himself. Critics are worthless. They are worse than
> worthless, since they implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, behave as
> if their opinions have some sort of authority that replaces the need to
> listen for yourself. They're time-wasters and soul-killers.
Not at all. I strongly doubt most of us even at rmcr have the time, means,
or inclination to listen to every recording of every work available, and
critics are an invaluable means of sifting out things that one might or
might not want to pursue for one's self. That doesn't mean one accepts any
critic's opinions unskeptically. It can be especially valuable to read
multiple reviews, on opposite sides of the fence, of a particular recording.
And with experience, one learns more and more one's own inclinations, both
for or against various recordings and for or against various critics. But
none of us is a tabula rasa who arrives at their own views unaided by
external influences such as critics. They (and by "they" I include a number
of especially valuable contributors to this newsgroup) are an immensely
valuable means towards focusing one's attention on the things one wishes to
acquire for one's own collection.
Larry Rinkel
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1145162112.6...@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> Why does somebody have to pick up a single complete Ring? Why not
> recommend that somebody pick up Maestro X's Rheingold, Maestro Y's
> Walkuere, Maestro Z's Siegfried, etc.
The obvious reason is that the Ring is not four separate operas, but a cycle
of interrelated operas that forms a single meta-work. And the need for a
consistent viewpoint applies no less to casting than to conducting. I would
no more want to hear Maestro X's Rheingold, Maestro Y's Walkuere, or Maestro
Z's Siegfried than I would want to hear Maestro X's Act One of Walkuere,
Maestro Y's Act Two, or Maestro Z's Act Three - all with different casts,
orchestras, and recording technologies.
> If I could only keep one Ring and it had to be an integral cycle, my
> choice would still be Furtwaengler/La Scala.
Definitely one of the great ones, but marred by two large cuts and some
troublesome singing (such as poor Svanholm in the last act of Siegfried). If
I could keep only one modern cycle, it would be Solti's; if only one
historical cycle, it would be the 1953 Krauss as re-issued on Opera d'Oro.
Richard Loeb
"Larry Rinkel" <L...@optunderline.net> wrote in message
news:LSr0g.1185$%Z4....@fe12.lga...
I learned an incredible amount about vocal music by reading Conrad L.
Osborne and David Hamilton; great critics or reviewers are hardly
worthless - of course there are very few worth reading now at all. Richard
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:t6s0g.1604$%Z4....@fe12.lga:
Interestingly, the Krauss and Solti's _Rheingold_ are separated by only
five years.
I was at Tower Sunset yesterday and saw the slim Od'O Krauss box. The
clerk and I noted that the 1955 Keilberth _Siegfried_ on Testament cost
more than the entire Krauss _Ring_.
wkas...@comcast.net
Matthew B. Tepper wrote:
> I was at Tower Sunset yesterday and saw the slim Od'O Krauss box. The
> clerk and I noted that the 1955 Keilberth _Siegfried_ on Testament cost
> more than the entire Krauss _Ring_.
And both are worth every penny.
Bill
Stephen Worth
<L...@optunderline.net> wrote:
> I would
> no more want to hear Maestro X's Rheingold, Maestro Y's Walkuere, or Maestro
> Z's Siegfried than I would want to hear Maestro X's Act One of Walkuere,
> Maestro Y's Act Two, or Maestro Z's Act Three
If that's true, you don't know what you're missing! I can't imagine not
wanting to hear Walter's act 1 of Walkure, simply because he didn't
record the whole opera!
wkas...@comcast.net
Larry Rinkel wrote:
> If I could keep only one modern cycle, it would be Solti's; if only one
> historical cycle, it would be the 1953 Krauss as re-issued on Opera d'Oro.
Once Testament finishes issuing the 1955 cycle, it may serve both
purposes.
Bill
William Sommerwerck
>> or Maestro Z's Siegfried than I would want to hear Maestro X's Act
> If that's true, you don't know what you're missing! I can't imagine not
> wanting to hear Walter's act 1 of Walkure, simply because he didn't
> record the whole opera!
Years ago, when I had a record changer, I'd play the first two movements of
the Bernstein NYPO Eroica, followed by the last two movements of the Szell.
It was a much more satisfying performance.
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:160420060911491244%ne...@vintageip.com:
> In article <t6s0g.1604$%Z4....@fe12.lga>, Larry Rinkel
><L...@optunderline.net> wrote:
>
>> I would no more want to hear Maestro X's Rheingold, Maestro Y's
>> Walkuere, or Maestro Z's Siegfried than I would want to hear Maestro X's
>> Act One of Walkuere, Maestro Y's Act Two, or Maestro Z's Act Three
>
> If that's true, you don't know what you're missing! I can't imagine not
> wanting to hear Walter's act 1 of Walkure, simply because he didn't
> record the whole opera!
I often listen to recordings of excerpts because they are remarkable
because that's what there are, excerpts. It's an entirely different
experience from listening to complete works as a whole entity.
As for _Walküre_, I used to enjoy duplicating the experience suggested by
an early published miniature score, by playing the Walter Act I, the mixed
Walter and Seidler-Winkler Act II, and the Rodzinski Act III. Or sometimes
I would listen to Furtwängler's studio recording of the entire opera.
Jon Alan Conrad
> As I recall now, the issue with Böhm's _Ring_ is not that it's cut (which
> it isn't), but it seems to be a mixture of the 1966 and 1967 productions,
> or something like that. I think this was established in High Fidelity back
> in the early 1970s.
There is, in fact, something fishy about Böhm's RING being uncut.
Because this production marked one of the rare occasions on which the
"no cuts at Bayreuth in any of the post-Lohengrin operas"* law was
broken. With no precedent at all, Wieland Wagner decided to omit
Gutrune's 4-minute solo scene that begins the last scene of
Götterdämmerung. He cited dramatic grounds, though I've never
understood what he meant.
In any case, the scene is present on the recording. I've never heard
for certain exactly how this was managed (David Hamilton, in his High
Fidelity review that Matthew refers to, could only speculate that a
patch was recorded in a later season, when Dvorakova was on hand for
other roles), nor do I know whether it was restored for later seasons
of this same production. But clearly this is not an unadulterated
transcript of a single season's performances.
(*I have heard of one or two cases in which ad hoc "mercy cuts" were
made to help out a senior or substitute artist with endurance problems
-- a verse of the Forging Song, for instance. And there remains some
question whether Melchior's Bayreuth Tristans were uncut [which would
make them, almost certainly, his only complete performances of the
role]. He apparently requested the cuts he was accustomed to, but we
don't know that he was accommodated, and one would think that such a
breach of protocol would have received some publicity at the time.)
JAC
alanwa...@aol.com
Richard Loeb wrote:
> <alanwa...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:1145137984....@t31g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > aest...@hotmail.com wrote:
> >>
> >
> > http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1753005,00.html
> >
> > If no one minds, I am going to stick with the 1953 Furtwangler Ring,
> > that is until one or both of the 1937/1938 London Rings are issued.
> > Both exist in private recordings but have not yet seen the light of day
> > in their entirety.
> >
> > When and if they do I might possibly change my mind based on what I
> > have heard of the 1937 so far or at least based on Act III of Die
> > Walkure (London 1937) with a somewhat "young sounding" Flagstad and in
> > 1938 with a Brunnhilde called Frida Leider.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > Alan M. Watkins
> >
>
> Well Alan as they say "from your mouth to Gods ears" but I have really given
> up hope for the issuance of either of those Rings - I have heard that they
> are
> "everywhere" including an eccentric collector, or Lady Beecham, or a
> warehouse in Brooklyn!!!! Both Furtwanglers are must haves for the
> conducting but both suffer from severe casting problems so I couldn't have
> them as a first choice - happily they are both so inexpensive they are great
> choices for second or third. You really must hear this music played by
> Furtwangler to get its import - there is a primeval quality I dont get
> aywhere else !!!!! Even the entrance of Brunnhilde and Gunther in that 1938
> Act II Gotterdammerung has a primitive, almost tribal power!!!! Best
> Richard
I keep hoping and, after all, the Russian wartime tapes eventually came
back after a very long time!
John Hunt of the UK Society told me decades ago that he knows that both
exist and I think in one of his wonderful discographies he says they
are "in private hands".
I find that with the Furtwangler I can put up with the casting
difficulties. You are possibly right in saying that they are not a
"first choice" for someone coming to the Ring first time but if they
develop a fondness for the pieces I think that then they do have to
hear them.
Kind regards,
Alan M. Watkins
Kind regards,
Alan M. Watkins
david...@aol.com
Larry, you make the argument from the point of view of the ideal. But
this is not a perfect world. I've been known to listen to the first
movement of Beethoven's 9th with Dohnanyi, skip the scherzo, and then
listen to the last two movements with Erich Kleiber. Why should I have
to sit through Dohnanyi's inert and completely bland slow movement or
do without the glorious sound of his first movement? Did Wagner
himself manage to sustain a unity of viewpoint throughout the
composition of the entire Ring? Was the composer of Goetterdaemmerung
the same guy who composed Rheingold? Is every declamatory passage in
Rheingold on the same level or in the same style as the Hagen/Alberich
scene in Goetterdaemmerung? (Are the earlier and later cantos of
Childe Harold the product of the same poet?) I argue for cherry
picking because none of the Ring's in modern sound I know sustains the
same level throughout. Well, the Boehm--recorded more or less in one
go in the theatre--does, but I'm not wild about it.
I wouldn't recommend the Solti Ring as a totality because I don't think
all of it's on the same level. Indeed, the one installment in the
Solti Ring I'm most enthusiastic about, the Siegfried, seems to me to
be rather the exception in that Solti does manage to sustain his
involvement over broader spans of time there than in Goetterdaemmerung,
which is more like a loose collection of improvised episodes in his
imperfect hands, not any of them anything like as interestingly shaped
as so much of the Siegfried is. (I've rarely heard Solti shape as
imaginatively as he does in much of the Siegfried or manage to exert
the same kind of long range control.) Then there's the surprisingly
ineffective prelude to the Solti Walkuere which prejudices me against
his recording from the get-go--almost anybody else's prelude is better
than his--Hotter's serious vocal problems there, etc. etc. etc. And
once I heard Boulez descend into Nibelheim, I never needed to hear
Solti's Rheingold again.
But I wouldn't recommend the Boulez Ring because I can't imagine
anybody putting up with Jones and Jung in Siegfried and
Goetterdaemmerung. (Jones is less of a problem in Walkuere precisely
because Wagner was not consistent in writing the same kind of music for
Bruennhilde in the last two operas that he wrote for her there.) For
that matter, while Boulez is really on in the first two installments of
his cycle, he's not quite so "on" in the last two operas. I can
imagine a supremely interesting Goetterdaemmerung from Boulez, but the
one available, I'm afraid, isn't quite it.
Given the enthusiasm you and Mr. Kasimir are again expressing for
Clemens Krauss, I'll have to dip into the Krauss Ring again. I heard
most of it when it first came out with considerable enthusiasm.
P.S. What's your favorite Goetterdaemmerung?
-david gable
david...@aol.com
"The idea of one singer for Loge and Mime (Siegfried) or Loge and
Siegfried or Siegmund and Siegfried is quite absurd."
Unless, of course, you're the general manager of an opera house trying
to cast the Ring. If you've got one really terrific tenor on the
planet who is both an ideal Siegmund and an ideal Siegfried--which is
already an optimistic estimate--you wouldn't cast him in both roles?
And why shouldn't a Siegfried resemble his father?
We do have one great Siegmund among us today: Placido Domingo.
-david gable
Richard Loeb
is the first CD mastering on Foyer - beware the Archipel issue with a
defective Rheingold Richard
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1145208524.6...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Richard Loeb
"Jon Alan Conrad" <con...@udel.edu> wrote in message
news:1145207940.2...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
Matthew B. Tepper wrote:
JAC
Yes the notorious Wieland cut only occured on the 1965 season - so obviously
they had Dvorakova come in and do the scene when she was there the next
year. I do believe it is actually a composite of two seasons or perhaps some
make up sessions. Even the recently released 1955 Siegfried isn't "pure" -
there were the usual problems during the forging scene "live" and Windgassen
and the orchestra came in for a nighttime session to get it right. I have no
problem with this - for me its the best of both worlds - composites of live
and rehearsals or make up sessions. Richard
Larry Rinkel
"Stephen Worth" <ne...@vintageip.com> wrote in message
news:160420060911491244%ne...@vintageip.com...
> In article <t6s0g.1604$%Z4....@fe12.lga>, Larry Rinkel
> <L...@optunderline.net> wrote:
>
>> I would
>> no more want to hear Maestro X's Rheingold, Maestro Y's Walkuere, or
>> Maestro
>> Z's Siegfried than I would want to hear Maestro X's Act One of Walkuere,
>> Maestro Y's Act Two, or Maestro Z's Act Three
>
> If that's true, you don't know what you're missing! I can't imagine not
> wanting to hear Walter's act 1 of Walkure, simply because he didn't
> record the whole opera!
>
> See ya
> Steve
>
I know the recording well, and I purchased a copy of your transfer. But the
context of the message was to name your first choice for a recording of the
Ring as a totality. I would most definitely want to own (and do own) such
treasures as Walter's Act One, the Frieda Leider excerpts, the Potted Ring,
and more as a supplementary discs to my several complete Rings.
jrs...@aol.com
I'm sure Szell's horns were that much crisper simply because they had
gotten plenty of rest in the first two movements.
--Jeff
Michael Schaffer
"What music is about isn't too unclear, but much too clear to describe
in words."
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Michael Schaffer
Any thoughts anyone about the recent "Götterdämmerung" conducted by
Harnoncourt in the opera house in Zürich?
Larry Rinkel
news:1145208524.6...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
David, to start with your last question first, I suppose my favorite G-D
would have to be Solti's, if only because it's the one I was weaned on and
the one I know far better than any other. (Actually it was not the first one
I ever heard. That was a Norwegian production with Flagstad, conducted by
someone named Fjelstad, who cut the interlude between the two scenes of Act
I. It was in the local library and I borrowed it repeatedly. Word has it
that it is a poor performance, but at age 15 what did I know.)
I'm not sure I grasp all your objections to Solti, but I do concur that he
can get stolid and plodding at times in his G-D. The rising sequences in the
Redemption by Love theme, as the Immolation concludes, are not as
passionately intense as they could be; and where Wagner explicitly calls for
a steady acceleration in the last third of the duet in the Prologue, Solti
stolidly refuses to budge from his original tempo. Those are two possible
objections; on the other hand, I have always found Solti's Act Two full of
drive and power.
As for other G-D's, my problem here is that no work ever written quite
proves the old adage "Ars longa, vita brevis" as the Ring. I have several
other cycles, but I've been able over the years only to dip into them - an
hour or two here, an act there - and haven't given them the full
concentration they deserve. I'd like to give you a better answer than that,
and perhaps I'll rouse myself to listen to at least extended portions of
each copy of the opera I have, so I can say something more to the purpose.
Most recently I've been dipping into the Krauss, which seems generally
excellent (and very reasonably priced), with the major reservation being
that the voices are recorded far too closely in relation to the orchestra.
Of the Boulez cycle, I have only a DVD of his Rheingold (do I contradict
myself? very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain
multitudes). It is beautifully colored in a way I have not heard in other
Ring performances I know. I can understand what you mean about Jones, but
heard live at the Met some 15 years ago she was a galvanizing presence that
quite overcame her vocal struggles. The current inhabitant of the role
there, Jane Eaglen, is neither galvanizing nor able to conceal either her
vocal stuggles or James Levine's impossible conducting.
I don't know what to say about listening to various parts of a work under
multiple hands. It's just not something I tend to do, as I prefer to immerse
myself in a single performer's overall conception. Or maybe I'm just too
lazy to get up between Maestro X's first movement of a Beethoven symphony
and put on Maestro Y's second movement.
But now I can remember the single greatest G-D I have ever heard. It was
conducted by Rafael Kubelik on April 6, 1974, at the Met, with Rita Hunter,
Jess Thomas, Thomas Stewart, and Bengt Rundgren. As I am positive I went to
this opera on a Saturday night, I can use the excellent database on the
Met's website to verify this was in fact the last performance Kubelik ever
conducted there. I can still remember the funeral march - blazing, and at a
much faster tempo than usual. Unfortunately, none of us will be able to hear
it again.
John Harrington
<snips>
> Abstraction does not make something impossible to describe. Is abstract
> painting impossible to describe? Of course not.
Really. Describe Pollock's Lavender Mist, please. Any description you
could offer with words would be massively inferior to my simply
googling up a good jpeg of the work.
> So what makes music more abstract than that?
Music is the ultimate abstract art. There are conventions in music
(minor for sad, e.g.), affekten, attempts at musical depiction, but
these in general require special knowledge on the part of the listener
or a "program" and are trivial compared with the aesthetic experience
of listening to the whole work. I've argued before, too, that all
visual art, not just art that is called "abstract" is abstract. The
subjects of painting, e.g., are generally trivial compared with the
impact of the shapes, colors, and brushstrokes. The same subject in,
say, Rembrandt's Night Watch could be rendered by an inferior artist,
even an amateur, but no one but a great artist could create the work we
know (NB: create: I don't mean copyists). Commission a hundred
different artists. Show them nothing, but merely tell them to paint
two men standing consulting, a company of rowdy soldiers behind them,
one powdering his musket, a girl bathed in light, etc. A hundred
artists would return a hundred different works, all of them
aesthetically distinct and undoubtedly inferior to the one created by
Rembrandt. What makes the original a work of art, therefore, is not
its subject but its rendering. The rendering is the colors, the
shades, the brushstrokes, the draftsmanship, etc. that an artist uses
to render a subject, all of these things having no particular reference
to reality except to the extent they're put in service of the subject.
The aesthetic experience of abstract things is impossible to describe.
You can easily describe the concrete things in the Rembrandt cited
above. And, if you wanted to get pedantic, you could probably with
many thousands, if not millions, of words, write an instruction that
would allow an artist to faithfully position every character and object
in that scene just as Rembrandt had, but what would be the point of
that? You'd still be missing something ineffable, but let's say for
the sake of argument you could write an instruction that allowed an
artist to create a painting that was indistinguishable from the
original, could you say that you described the aesthetic experience of
seeing it? Could a reader get from your description the emotions you
felt as you saw it, and would they be necessarily the same as the
reader's had he seen the painting? Similarly, if you could not only
write down the notes but all of the gestures, phrasing, subtle dynamic
shadings, rubati, etc. of an exquisite performance, maybe a machine
could reproduce it (actually, isn't that what a CD is?). But you'd be
no closer to describing the aesthetic experience of simply listening to
the performance. Because what makes the performance something more
than, say, a midi file that faithfully reproduces the sequence of
notes, is something that can't be described with words, most
particularly because the emotional meaning of those notes changes with
each listener, but also because a given listener could never hope to
communicate in anything but the most superficial and trivial way the
experience of listening. That's something the listener must do for
himself. Critics, and especially music critics, are sent on a fools
errand.
The issue of literature is orthogonal to this subject. The point of
literature is not to recommend experience, or claim to be faithfully
describing what the experience *would be for you*. It is itself a work
of art. It's not attempting to describe a work of art. A novel or a
poem seeks to create an aesthetic experience with words. It is
billions of times more concrete than music, but the problems of
describing your subjective aesthetic impression of literature are
similar. And, in fact, I might argue if I wanted to keep on typing,
that literature's effect is also largely due to abstract things, such
as the beauty of metaphor or the musicality of words and that the story
is a mere framework on which to hang these things (think, e.g., how
trivial the *plot* is in Shakespeare).
J
John Harrington
Larry Rinkel wrote:
> "John Harrington" <bear...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1145124706.9...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > You act like the critic arrived at the "right answer" in 3 paras.
> > That's your opinion. Good criticism, if it existed (and it doesn't and
> > probably can't) would be about transmitting opinions to others in a way
> > that would be more helpful than the reader merely seeking out the
> > recording himself. Critics are worthless. They are worse than
> > worthless, since they implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, behave as
> > if their opinions have some sort of authority that replaces the need to
> > listen for yourself. They're time-wasters and soul-killers.
>
> Not at all. I strongly doubt most of us even at rmcr have the time, means,
> or inclination to listen to every recording of every work available, and
> critics are an invaluable means of sifting out things that one might or
> might not want to pursue for one's self.
If they are "sifting out things one might or might not want to pursue
for one's self" what good are they? I knew that about the stuff
already.
> That doesn't mean one accepts any
> critic's opinions unskeptically. It can be especially valuable to read
> multiple reviews, on opposite sides of the fence, of a particular recording.
Don't you find that reviews are very bad predictors of your own
reaction to a recording? If they are not good for that, what good are
they?
> And with experience, one learns more and more one's own inclinations, both
> for or against various recordings and for or against various critics. But
> none of us is a tabula rasa who arrives at their own views unaided by
> external influences such as critics. They (and by "they" I include a number
> of especially valuable contributors to this newsgroup) are an immensely
> valuable means towards focusing one's attention on the things one wishes to
> acquire for one's own collection.
Not in my experience. Paying attention to critics (for 15 years or
more) was the hugest mistake, the biggest waste of money and time.
That their help was an illusion only gradually dawned on me. I learn
more from the radio, the library, listening in stores and even to those
1 minute snippets on Amazon than I do from any review. I value
learning about recordings that I didn't know about here and from other
sources, but I do not waste my time inquiring into what someone else's
impressions are of the recordings. They are no better predictors of my
own reactions than chance. And, I think, if we honestly did a double
blind experiment testing this, you would find the same.
J
AMH
david...@aol.com wrote:
> Why does somebody have to pick up a single complete Ring? Why not
> recommend that somebody pick up Maestro X's Rheingold, Maestro Y's
> pretty good idea whose Rheingold (Boulez's) and Siegfried (Solti's) I'd
> recommend to the newbie insisting on good sound, I don't know whose
> Walkuere or Goetterdaemmerung I'd plug. I also have no objection to M.
> Boulez's contribution to his Bayreuth Walkuere recording. There are
> even things to admire in his singers, but there's even more to admire
> in other singers.
>
> If I could only keep one Ring and it had to be an integral cycle, my
> choice would still be Furtwaengler/La Scala.
>
Most of them are sold only as complete cycles. Solti's is the only one
that I have seen sold as individual operas.
Matthew B. Tepper
be typed in news:1145301399....@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com:
> david...@aol.com wrote:
>> Why does somebody have to pick up a single complete Ring? Why not
>> recommend that somebody pick up Maestro X's Rheingold, Maestro Y's
>> Walkuere, Maestro Z's Siegfried, etc. That being said, while I have a
>> pretty good idea whose Rheingold (Boulez's) and Siegfried (Solti's) I'd
>> recommend to the newbie insisting on good sound, I don't know whose
>> Walkuere or Goetterdaemmerung I'd plug. I also have no objection to M.
>> Boulez's contribution to his Bayreuth Walkuere recording. There are
>> even things to admire in his singers, but there's even more to admire
>> in other singers.
>>
>> If I could only keep one Ring and it had to be an integral cycle, my
>> choice would still be Furtwaengler/La Scala.
>
> Most of them are sold only as complete cycles. Solti's is the only one
> that I have seen sold as individual operas.
I've seen many sold that way, including several in the CD era.
wkas...@comcast.net
Matthew B. Tepper wrote:
> > Most of them are sold only as complete cycles. Solti's is the only one
> > that I have seen sold as individual operas.
>
> I've seen many sold that way, including several in the CD era.
Nearly all commercial recordings begin their existence sold as
individual operas (with historic live and/or broadcast cycles, it
depends upon the label doing the issuing). When they're reissued, they
are more likely to be bundled as a cycle.
For example, in the CD era, the Solti, Karajan, Janowski, Levine,
Haitink, Barenboim were all sold as individual operas, then bundled for
reissue (except the Haitink - once was enough). I still see all of
them on the shelves of used CD stores as individual operas. The only
commercial cycle that was never available individually was the
Sawallisch.
Bill
krause...@epa.gov
jrs...@aol.com
I've seen Janowski, Bodanzky and Leinsdorf, Levine, Barenboim, Goodall,
and Haitink sold singly, among others.
--Jeff
alanwa...@aol.com
aest...@hotmail.com wrote:
> http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1753005,00.html
A Confession, as it is Easter.
My personal favourite Ring Cycle is the one I played on as a member of
the hapless Grosses Symphonieorchestra conducted by one Hans Swarowsky
no doubt mercifully removed from the remainder or dump bins.
It's the sort of performance where the cognoscenti on here would say:
"It sounds as if the orchestra were sight reading". And the
cognoscenti would be right, particularly in Gotterdammerung.
At the time I thought Ms Kniplova gave a reasonable shot at Brunnhilde.
With very little rehearsal, anyway.
I was young. 2nd timpani and bell plates in the Forging Scene with no
rehearsal for the orchestra whatsoever for the latter.
It is, of course, mostly a hopeless mess. But not everywhere. And
against all the odds I sometimes love it just because it was against
all the odds.
david...@aol.com
"Don't you find that reviews are very bad predictors of your own
reaction to a recording? If they are not good for that, what good are
they?"
That very much depends on the reviewer. There are several people
posting here whose recommendations would carry some weight with me, and
a few close friend's whose recommendations would carry even more. Of
course, their recommendations don't exist in a vacuum. Not only do
they have a track record with me, but I generally already have some
idea what a performance within a certain repertory might be like from
personal experience.
The critic's job, as opposed to the reviewer's, is not to recommend but
to say something interesting.
-david gable
Bob Harper
the kiss of death for me. Long experience tells me that what they like,
I won't. That's pretty useful, IMO.
Bob Harper
AMH
Based on an Amazon search, Solti is the only complete cycle with each
opera available individually. 3 of Levine's were available, but not
Walkure. If you don't mind used, you can find others. But Solti
appears to be the only one currently in print, in the US, at least.
jrs...@aol.com
If you don't mind used, you can find Krauss, Boulez, Knappertsbusch,
Karajan, and others every so often as "separates", not just those I
mentioned earlier.
--Jeff
jrs...@aol.com
Larry Rinkel wrote:
> But now I can remember the single greatest G-D I have ever heard. It was
> conducted by Rafael Kubelik on April 6, 1974, at the Met, with Rita Hunter,
> Jess Thomas, Thomas Stewart, and Bengt Rundgren. As I am positive I went to
> this opera on a Saturday night, I can use the excellent database on the
> Met's website to verify this was in fact the last performance Kubelik ever
> conducted there. I can still remember the funeral march - blazing, and at a
> much faster tempo than usual. Unfortunately, none of us will be able to hear
> it again.
Certain pirates were offering a March 8, 1974 Kubelik G-D from the Met
at one time, and wasn't the Bensar label offering the same or a
different performance from thatyear, with Kubelik, before it was shut
down? Perhaps a better label has the Kubelik of your dreams somewhere,
Larry.
--Jeff
jrs...@aol.com
John Harrington wrote:
> jrs...@aol.com wrote:
> <snips>
> > Abstraction does not make something impossible to describe. Is abstract
> > painting impossible to describe? Of course not.
>
> Really. Describe Pollock's Lavender Mist, please. Any description you
> could offer with words would be massively inferior to my simply
> googling up a good jpeg of the work.
Any description I offer would be a thousand times better than your
simply googling a good jpeg of the work if my description were, as any
good art criticism, loaded with interpretation, personal insights, and
flair and read by an intelligent person looking for ideas. Art
stimulates original ideas; so does music; hence writing about these
forms is an essential pursuit unto itself.
>
> > So what makes music more abstract than that?
>
> Music is the ultimate abstract art. There are conventions in music
> (minor for sad, e.g.), affekten, attempts at musical depiction, but
> these in general require special knowledge on the part of the listener
> or a "program" and are trivial compared with the aesthetic experience
> of listening to the whole work. I've argued before, too, that all
> visual art, not just art that is called "abstract" is abstract. The
> subjects of painting, e.g., are generally trivial compared with the
> impact of the shapes, colors, and brushstrokes. The same subject in,
> say, Rembrandt's Night Watch could be rendered by an inferior artist,
> even an amateur, but no one but a great artist could create the work we
> know (NB: create: I don't mean copyists). Commission a hundred
> different artists. Show them nothing, but merely tell them to paint
> two men standing consulting, a company of rowdy soldiers behind them,
> one powdering his musket, a girl bathed in light, etc. A hundred
> artists would return a hundred different works, all of them
> aesthetically distinct and undoubtedly inferior to the one created by
> Rembrandt. What makes the original a work of art, therefore, is not
> its subject but its rendering. The rendering is the colors, the
> shades, the brushstrokes, the draftsmanship, etc. that an artist uses
> to render a subject, all of these things having no particular reference
> to reality except to the extent they're put in service of the subject.
That's nice. So what does that have to do with the value of criticism?
Good criticism reveals many things about the rendering, not just the
subject. You seem to be agreeing that criticism has a fundamental role
in illuminating what Rembrandt did--for instance, by pointing out to us
what he did not do.
>
>
> The aesthetic experience of abstract things is impossible to describe.
You keep saying that, but you haven't offered any evidence of this.
As before, you seem to be confusing "description" with "criticism".
Your example of an instruction allowing an artist or composer to
reproduce is not an example of criticism. You've moved the subje
>
> The issue of literature is orthogonal to this subject. The point of
> literature is not to recommend experience, or claim to be faithfully
> describing what the experience *would be for you*. It is itself a work
> of art. It's not attempting to describe a work of art. A novel or a
> poem seeks to create an aesthetic experience with words. It is
> billions of times more concrete than music, but the problems of
> describing your subjective aesthetic impression of literature are
> similar. And, in fact, I might argue if I wanted to keep on typing,
> that literature's effect is also largely due to abstract things, such
> as the beauty of metaphor or the musicality of words and that the story
> is a mere framework on which to hang these things (think, e.g., how
> trivial the *plot* is in Shakespeare).
You could argue that, without affecting the discussion we were going to
have or contributing to a discussion of why criticism has merit.
However, finally, something worth clarifying is buried in your post:
yes, sometimes critics recommend experiences and suggest what they will
be like. But that is really only a gambit, not the actual criticism. In
the case of our Ring review, indeed the gambit crowded out any room for
thorough criticism. But then, that was the purpose of those few
paragraphs.
--Jeff
Larry Rinkel
news:1145343521.2...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
If you know a specific source, Jeff, please let me know! Thanks.
Jon Alan Conrad
> My personal favourite Ring Cycle is the one I played on as a member of
> the hapless Grosses Symphonieorchestra conducted by one Hans Swarowsky
> no doubt mercifully removed from the remainder or dump bins.
Ah, the never-to-be-forgotten "Westminster Ring"! You participated in a
piece of history, sir. Volkswagen breastplates, cookies crumbling, and
all.
> It's the sort of performance where the cognoscenti on here would say:
> "It sounds as if the orchestra were sight reading". And the
> cognoscenti would be right, particularly in Gotterdammerung.
It does have that certain... searching quality.
> At the time I thought Ms Kniplova gave a reasonable shot at Brunnhilde.
> With very little rehearsal, anyway.
She had a suitable size and impact of voice for the part. It's just
that once you hear her for 3 seconds, that's what she has to offer. No
modulation, no variety, no subtlety. (The same is even more true of the
tenor.)
> It is, of course, mostly a hopeless mess. But not everywhere. And
> against all the odds I sometimes love it just because it was against
> all the odds.
I can understand that, even if I can't share it. As I listened to the
whole thing to write it up in a comparative RING discussion, I found
that the only moments of pleasure I could get from it came from the two
Rolfs, Polke and Kuehne -- very competitive Licht- und
Schwarz-Alberich.
JAC
pdu...@hotmail.com
Michael Schaffer wrote:
>
> Any thoughts anyone about the recent "Götterdämmerung" conducted by
> Harnoncourt in the opera house in Zürich?
When did that happen ? I could not find any reference to it anywhere.
Thanks
PD
Matthew B. Tepper
in news:1145374921....@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Did that performance star Ch*r*l St*d*r? ;--)
jrs...@aol.com
Matthew B. Tepper wrote:
> pdu...@hotmail.com appears to have caused the following letters to be typed
> in news:1145374921....@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>
> >
> > Michael Schaffer wrote:
> >>
> >> Any thoughts anyone about the recent "Götterdämmerung" conducted by
> >> Harnoncourt in the opera house in Zürich?
> >
> > When did that happen ? I could not find any reference to it anywhere.
> > Thanks
>
> Did that performance star Ch*r*l St*d*r? ;--)
Not P**l Essw**d?
--J*ff
alanwa...@aol.com
Fair enough. It's a *special circumstances* thing for me and something
that is never going to happen again, a once in a lifetime experience.
Someone told me this got a good (or reasonable) review in Fanfare but
I've never been able to find it. Apparently a London newspaper also
liked it but I suspect these are urban myths:):)
Richard Loeb
<alanwa...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1145398018.8...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
Hi that was me - it was written in the back section of a Fanfare where they
put recordings of "merit" or "Hall of Fame" or some such thing. Its funny
because I think Kniplova sounds much better on the RAI Ring from 1968 that
Mike has on one of his CD Roms and is now very expensive on MYTO.
Alan - I love reading your posts - you have a wealth of history and
performance in your personal history that I find really fascinating - and
now it appears you were involved with the "Westminster Ring" -
brilliant!!!!! Richard
Michael Schaffer
It didn't. I made that up. I wondered if anybody would say he had heard
it and it sucked. But nobody took the bait...:-(
John Harrington
> John Harrington wrote:
> > jrs...@aol.com wrote:
> > <snips>
> > > Abstraction does not make something impossible to describe. Is abstract
> > > painting impossible to describe? Of course not.
> >
> > Really. Describe Pollock's Lavender Mist, please. Any description you
> > could offer with words would be massively inferior to my simply
> > googling up a good jpeg of the work.
>
> Any description I offer would be a thousand times better than your
> simply googling a good jpeg of the work if my description were, as any
> good art criticism, loaded with interpretation, personal insights, and
> flair and read by an intelligent person looking for ideas.
Intelligent people, one would think, develop their own ideas.
> Art
> stimulates original ideas; so does music;
Then why do we need critics to feed us their ideas?
> hence writing about these
> forms is an essential pursuit unto itself.
Non sequitur.
> > > So what makes music more abstract than that?
> >
> > Music is the ultimate abstract art. There are conventions in music
> > (minor for sad, e.g.), affekten, attempts at musical depiction, but
> > these in general require special knowledge on the part of the listener
> > or a "program" and are trivial compared with the aesthetic experience
> > of listening to the whole work. I've argued before, too, that all
> > visual art, not just art that is called "abstract" is abstract. The
> > subjects of painting, e.g., are generally trivial compared with the
> > impact of the shapes, colors, and brushstrokes. The same subject in,
> > say, Rembrandt's Night Watch could be rendered by an inferior artist,
> > even an amateur, but no one but a great artist could create the work we
> > know (NB: create: I don't mean copyists). Commission a hundred
> > different artists. Show them nothing, but merely tell them to paint
> > two men standing consulting, a company of rowdy soldiers behind them,
> > one powdering his musket, a girl bathed in light, etc. A hundred
> > artists would return a hundred different works, all of them
> > aesthetically distinct and undoubtedly inferior to the one created by
> > Rembrandt. What makes the original a work of art, therefore, is not
> > its subject but its rendering. The rendering is the colors, the
> > shades, the brushstrokes, the draftsmanship, etc. that an artist uses
> > to render a subject, all of these things having no particular reference
> > to reality except to the extent they're put in service of the subject.
>
> That's nice. So what does that have to do with the value of criticism?
As I made clear in my post, abstractions, by definition, can't be
described. The subtleties of the aesthetic experience of abstractions
definitely can't be described. So, what is "art criticism" but an
illusion or a con game?
> Good criticism reveals many things about the rendering, not just the
> subject. You seem to be agreeing that criticism has a fundamental role
> in illuminating what Rembrandt did--for instance, by pointing out to us
> what he did not do.
Simply looking at the painting "illuminates" what Rembrandt did.
> > The aesthetic experience of abstract things is impossible to describe.
>
> You keep saying that, but you haven't offered any evidence of this.
If I said turning lead into gold was impossible, would you ask me to
prove it?
[You seem to have left a sentence unfinished here]
Re-read what I wrote. I didn't say it was an example of criticism. I
hypothesized how one might describe music and how, even with ideal
success, he would fall far short of saying anything meaningful about
the aesthetic experience of it. This is relevant because critics don't
even attempt such rigorous descriptions, therefore how can they hope to
come close to saying anything meaningful or helpful in reproducing the
experience of these things? Personal experiences are...personal
experiences. Like religion or love, there is no "scientific method" or
concept of repeatability. You either have the "epiphany" or feel the
way you do or you don't. Reading others' inarticulate attempts to
describe their own experiences, experiences you will be as likely to
share as to not, is a waste of time, when the music is sitting right
there waiting for you to simply listen to it yourself. If it's a
matter of time or money in acquiring the music, well then fine, but I
would caution you against fooling yourself into thinking someone else's
reportage of his subjective reaction is going to be relevant to yours.
> > The issue of literature is orthogonal to this subject. The point of
> > literature is not to recommend experience, or claim to be faithfully
> > describing what the experience *would be for you*. It is itself a work
> > of art. It's not attempting to describe a work of art. A novel or a
> > poem seeks to create an aesthetic experience with words. It is
> > billions of times more concrete than music, but the problems of
> > describing your subjective aesthetic impression of literature are
> > similar. And, in fact, I might argue if I wanted to keep on typing,
> > that literature's effect is also largely due to abstract things, such
> > as the beauty of metaphor or the musicality of words and that the story
> > is a mere framework on which to hang these things (think, e.g., how
> > trivial the *plot* is in Shakespeare).
>
> You could argue that, without affecting the discussion we were going to
> have or contributing to a discussion of why criticism has merit.
You seem to be peevishly determined to misunderstand me. The point of
arguing that would be to show that the aesthetic experience of art
depends on abstract things. Abstract things, by their very nature,
can't be described with words. Criticism is about describing art with
words. If you can't describe the *most important thing about art* with
words (and scarcely even the most trivial), then what is the point?
> However, finally, something worth clarifying is buried in your post:
> yes, sometimes critics recommend experiences and suggest what they will
> be like. But that is really only a gambit, not the actual criticism. In
> the case of our Ring review, indeed the gambit crowded out any room for
> thorough criticism. But then, that was the purpose of those few
> paragraphs.
Okay, back-pedal if you must. But my comments assumed critics were
serious about recommending and not merely playing some sort of mind
game to get to whatever their real point is. And if they are doing
this, ho hum.
J
alanwa...@aol.com
Thank you for your kind remarks. I'm afraid that, on these occasions, I
feel my age but despite the deficiencies (of which I am well aware)
this cycle does have it's moments:):)
It's a daft personal thing to me because for much of the time the
orchestra were sight reading (and no one in the orchestra had done a
complete Ring) so I regard some of it from time to time as a triumph of
hope over adversity, or something like that. For Lord's sake the
orchestra did the Forging Scene with NO rehearsal. Of course that
scene was not unknown but it was still pretty much tightrope stuff
which I enjoy (afterwards).
There are also moments which make me smile which is probably not that
common in the Ring cycle - there are several occasions when the wind
entries give keen listeners a delightful lurch into *Dvorak*, a
collision which may not feature on other attempts at these wonderful
scores!
It's not a serious competitor, of course, but it has a special place
for me. It's just a bit of musical history, so bizarre that the like
of which I cannot imagine occurring again.
david...@aol.com
John Harringon writes:
"The point of arguing that would be to show that the aesthetic
experience of art depends on abstract things. Abstract things, by
their very nature, can't be described with words."
John,
I don't agree that art "depends on abstract things." It depends on
concrete things: relationships existing in various media. A painting
is made up of discernible relationships of shape and color created
using such physical media as oil paint. Music is made up of
discernible relationships in sound. Once artworks in these media
attain a certain level of complexity, they tend to be made up of
networks of relationships of various kinds. Some people who have
acquired the requisite vocabulary are perfectly capable of saying
interesting things about those artworks.
-david gable
jrs...@aol.com
> jrs...@aol.com wrote:
> > John Harrington wrote:
> > > jrs...@aol.com wrote:
> > > <snips>
> > > > Abstraction does not make something impossible to describe. Is abstract
> > > > painting impossible to describe? Of course not.
> > >
> > > Really. Describe Pollock's Lavender Mist, please. Any description you
> > > could offer with words would be massively inferior to my simply
> > > googling up a good jpeg of the work.
> >
> > Any description I offer would be a thousand times better than your
> > simply googling a good jpeg of the work if my description were, as any
> > good art criticism, loaded with interpretation, personal insights, and
> > flair and read by an intelligent person looking for ideas.
>
> Intelligent people, one would think, develop their own ideas.
Exactly. Intelligent people generally like to share ideas. Your
statement is an eloquent support for the relevance of criticism. If
you, as an intelligent person, develop your ideas in your head by
looking at the painting on your own, you are practicing the germ of
criticism already. So there's little difference between that and
penning your thoughts and sharing them with others, no matter how
difficult that may be.
>
> > Art
> > stimulates original ideas; so does music;
>
> Then why do we need critics to feed us their ideas?
See above. We don't need them to feed us with their ideas if we don't
like to share ideas and broaden our understanding of the human race.
Your question is typical of unintelligent people, but that's why it is
so surprising coming from someone who I presume to be intelligent.
>
> > hence writing about these
> > forms is an essential pursuit unto itself.
>
> Non sequitur.
Not at all. If you don't see writing as an art, then it is
understandable that you would see the sharing of ideas a non sequitur
in the discussion of criticism.
Again, you've confused "description" with "the sharing of ideas."
>
> > Good criticism reveals many things about the rendering, not just the
> > subject. You seem to be agreeing that criticism has a fundamental role
> > in illuminating what Rembrandt did--for instance, by pointing out to us
> > what he did not do.
>
> Simply looking at the painting "illuminates" what Rembrandt did.
Does it illuminate what he did not do? What he could not do? What
others did with similar circumstances? Does it illuminate what others
think of what he did? You persistently miss the point of criticism.
>
> > > The aesthetic experience of abstract things is impossible to describe.
> >
> > You keep saying that, but you haven't offered any evidence of this.
>
> If I said turning lead into gold was impossible, would you ask me to
> prove it?
Of course...and it took a lot of science before such a thing was
"proven" beyond reasonable doubt. :-)
It will take more on your part to prove that others' experience is
invalid. And of course any proof you attempt is going to have to be
relevant to music criticism, not merely to the ultimate accuracy of
music description for the masses, which serves many a positive function
regardless of its accuracy.
unfini
>
> Re-read what I wrote. I didn't say it was an example of criticism. I
> hypothesized how one might describe music and how, even with ideal
> success, he would fall far short of saying anything meaningful about
> the aesthetic experience of it.
Re-read what I wrote. Your hypothesis doesn't lead to that conclusion,
it only suggests how difficult it is to be precise about description in
anything other than very technical terms. Experience shows that the
imprecision is no barrier to meaningful connections between writer and
reader--especially when we're talking about the aesthetic experience.
This is relevant because critics don't
> even attempt such rigorous descriptions, therefore how can they hope to
> come close to saying anything meaningful or helpful in reproducing the
> experience of these things? Personal experiences are...personal
> experiences. Like religion or love, there is no "scientific method" or
> concept of repeatability. You either have the "epiphany" or feel the
> way you do or you don't.
A grim view of human nature and the ability to learn from others. Your
assumption that personal experiences cannot be shared with value to the
sharee flies in the face of a lot of experience.
Reading others' inarticulate attempts to
> describe their own experiences, experiences you will be as likely to
> share as to not, is a waste of time, when the music is sitting right
> there waiting for you to simply listen to it yourself. If it's a
> matter of time or money in acquiring the music, well then fine, but I
> would caution you against fooling yourself into thinking someone else's
> reportage of his subjective reaction is going to be relevant to yours.
>
>
We and practically everyone I know agrees: it's more fun to listen and
play than to read about it. It is also more fun to listen and then read
about it than to listen and not read about it...but time is limited. I
do enjoy what I read. There are many instances of this: people devour
the sports page even after they've seen the game themselves; people
love to discuss concert reviews the day after. People like to read the
best movie critics before, but more significantly--AFTER--they've seen
the movie.
I have used reviews to narrow my choices of purchases, but like you
ultimately I do not trust reviewers to make choices for me, even the
reviewers who I "trust". I end up buying whatever interests me--often
recordings I passed up initially due to reviews. As a result I've heard
more than most reviewers seem to have heard. When reviewers had heard
more than I, I would say their opinions were more important to me, but
still not decisive.
> > > The issue of literature is orthogonal to this subject. The point of
> > > literature is not to recommend experience, or claim to be faithfully
> > > describing what the experience *would be for you*. It is itself a work
> > > of art. It's not attempting to describe a work of art. A novel or a
> > > poem seeks to create an aesthetic experience with words. It is
> > > billions of times more concrete than music, but the problems of
> > > describing your subjective aesthetic impression of literature are
> > > similar. And, in fact, I might argue if I wanted to keep on typing,
> > > that literature's effect is also largely due to abstract things, such
> > > as the beauty of metaphor or the musicality of words and that the story
> > > is a mere framework on which to hang these things (think, e.g., how
> > > trivial the *plot* is in Shakespeare).
> >
> > You could argue that, without affecting the discussion we were going to
> > have or contributing to a discussion of why criticism has merit.
>
> You seem to be peevishly determined to misunderstand me. The point of
> arguing that would be to show that the aesthetic experience of art
> depends on abstract things. Abstract things, by their very nature,
> can't be described with words. Criticism is about describing art with
> words. If you can't describe the *most important thing about art* with
> words (and scarcely even the most trivial), then what is the point?
If "abstract things...can't be described by words" then music isn't as
abstract as you say. Music can be described in basic technical terms
with words because music is not a foreign experience. You can't
describe a color to a color blind person. But you can describe a new
color to a person who has seen other colors. Music criticism is
admittedly a silly pursuit if you are writing for deaf Martians, and
only somewhat silly if you are writing for deaf humans. Music is a
human phenomenon, not just a physical entity. There is value in writing
about human phenomena to human beings. The description problem is
hardly a reason to stop writing about music.
Remember that quote from Mendelssohn..that was about the meaning of
music, not about the sounds themselves. The meaning of music is very
precise and therefore impossible to describe perfectly, but it is much
easier and more relevant to write about the effect of music on people,
how each person reacts. Countless times I have read reviews and
thought, "I heard that too!" or "I see why she reacted that way, even
if I reacted differently." Often I see what the reviewer meant;
sometimes I see what the reviewer meant but disagree with how they
expressed it or even disagree fundamentally with what they concluded.
But only occasionally do I disagree with "what they heard". More
importantly to this discussion, it is interesting and pleasurable to do
that reading, even with superficial reviews--because a sharing of ideas
and feelings is possible through criticism. The criticism is already
occuring in my head. The value of criticism has been amply demonstrated
well beyond your objection to one tiny aspect of it.
So, for the millionth time...criticism is not "about describing art
with words" in the narrow sense of "description" that you are
employing.
>
> > However, finally, something worth clarifying is buried in your post:
> > yes, sometimes critics recommend experiences and suggest what they will
> > be like. But that is really only a gambit, not the actual criticism. In
> > the case of our Ring review, indeed the gambit crowded out any room for
> > thorough criticism. But then, that was the purpose of those few
> > paragraphs.
>
> Okay, back-pedal if you must. But my comments assumed critics were
> serious about recommending and not merely playing some sort of mind
> game to get to whatever their real point is. And if they are doing
> this, ho hum.
Not at all "back-pedal." Every piece of writing is a "mind-game" by
your definition. Rhetoric is "mind game". Therefore "mind-game" does
not connote a lack of seriousness. The limited review reflects a limit
of space, that's all, not a limit of seriousness or an absence of
value.
Go back to what I wrote initially. The review was an assignment
fulfilled quite admirably. It is not perfect, but within the strictures
of a newspaper assignment it is valuable. My initial point was
particularly about your ungenerous assessment of the reviewer, not
about whether it was "thorough" criticism. The critic was obviously
serious and experienced and he conveyed very well some arguable but
reasonable points he wanted to make.
--Jeff
Richard Loeb
was made under such awful circumstances (even though apparently some of them
mentioned in the article were wrong) bets Richard
Matthew B. Tepper
following letters to be typed in
> There are also moments which make me smile which is probably not that
> common in the Ring cycle - there are several occasions when the wind
> entries give keen listeners a delightful lurch into *Dvorak*, a
> collision which may not feature on other attempts at these wonderful
> scores!
Isn't there a near-quote of the Magic Fire music in the overture "In
Nature's Realm"?
John Harrington
>
> Exactly. Intelligent people generally like to share ideas. Your
> statement is an eloquent support for the relevance of criticism. If
> you, as an intelligent person, develop your ideas in your head by
> looking at the painting on your own, you are practicing the germ of
> criticism already.
No, that's a special, weird definition of "criticism", even if you want
to qualify it as a mere "germ", which no one would recognize outside of
your special application of it in this debate.
> So there's little difference between that and
> penning your thoughts and sharing them with others, no matter how
> difficult that may be.
There's a huge gulf between that and "penning your thoughts". If you
have any feeling for art at all you will realize that most of the
reception of it takes place on an emotional level. That is the essence
of the aesthetic experience--the effect of art on one's emotions.
<snip>
> See above. We don't need them to feed us with their ideas if we don't
> like to share ideas and broaden our understanding of the human race.
> Your question is typical of unintelligent people, but that's why it is
> so surprising coming from someone who I presume to be intelligent.
Unintelligent people probably have a more honest reaction to art, since
they don't hang around with people who have picked up the bad habit of
intellectualizing it. There's a huge scum of pretense that has been
heaped on art, particularly in the last 2 centuries. It honestly has
very little to do with the experience of art and more to do with the
society that has developed around art.
> > > hence writing about these
> > > forms is an essential pursuit unto itself.
> >
> > Non sequitur.
>
> Not at all. If you don't see writing as an art, then it is
> understandable that you would see the sharing of ideas a non sequitur
> in the discussion of criticism.
For one thing, I see the "ideas" "stimulated" by art, particularly
music, as being a trivial portion of the experience of art. For
another, even though art does engender ideas, it doesn't follow from
that fact that it is "essential pursuit unto itself" to write about
them.
<snip>
> > > That's nice. So what does that have to do with the value of criticism?
> >
> > As I made clear in my post, abstractions, by definition, can't be
> > described. The subtleties of the aesthetic experience of abstractions
> > definitely can't be described. So, what is "art criticism" but an
> > illusion or a con game?
>
> Again, you've confused "description" with "the sharing of ideas."
If you're going to communicate your ideas you have to describe them.
Communicating the experience of art can't be done without
"description", not that it can be done at all.
<snip>
> > Simply looking at the painting "illuminates" what Rembrandt did.
>
> Does it illuminate what he did not do? What he could not do? What
> others did with similar circumstances? Does it illuminate what others
> think of what he did? You persistently miss the point of criticism.
This is another layer of the "scum" I mention above--the cult of
individuality in art. I like reading about artists, because I like
them, and it comforts me to know that people like that exist. But I
don't think about them when I'm experiencing their art (except perhaps
in gratitude), and I don't see art as a sport where the point is to
"admire human achievement". Everything that makes art "an extension of
a personality" gets in the way of the direct contact with the
experience of the art itself. I don't need a biography to go along
with Mahler's 6th--what I know about it can just get in the way, not
heighten the experience. The best composers came to realize this, even
if for a time they were caught up in the zeitgeist of musical
depiction. One by one they regretted their "programs" and disavowed
them.
> > If I said turning lead into gold was impossible, would you ask me to
> > prove it?
>
> Of course...and it took a lot of science before such a thing was
> "proven" beyond reasonable doubt. :-)
Okay, so you seem to know by putting "proven" in quotation marks that
it doesn't make any logical sense to speak of "proving" a negative.
The burden of proof is entirely on those claiming the positive, as it
should be, else there'd be no end to the negatives we'd have to
"prove".
> It will take more on your part to prove that others' experience is
> invalid.
I didn't say it was "invalid". I said it was incommunicable. Why is
this so hard?
<snip>
> > Re-read what I wrote. I didn't say it was an example of criticism. I
> > hypothesized how one might describe music and how, even with ideal
> > success, he would fall far short of saying anything meaningful about
> > the aesthetic experience of it.
>
> Re-read what I wrote. Your hypothesis doesn't lead to that conclusion,
> it only suggests how difficult it is to be precise about description in
> anything other than very technical terms. Experience shows that the
> imprecision is no barrier to meaningful connections between writer and
> reader--especially when we're talking about the aesthetic experience.
Actually, my experience suggests there is no meaningful connection
between writer and reader and what one critic may experience or try to
experience may be completely different from what his reader
experiences. I strongly suspect, in fact, that critical consensus,
since so little of it makes any sense at all (as far as I can tell),
has more to do with socialization than it has to do with actual
experience. A critic who reviews a recording without knowing who the
performer(s) are might be closer to an honest critic. But even then
his reactions would as likely jibe with yours (or mine) as not.
> This is relevant because critics don't
> > even attempt such rigorous descriptions, therefore how can they hope to
> > come close to saying anything meaningful or helpful in reproducing the
> > experience of these things? Personal experiences are...personal
> > experiences. Like religion or love, there is no "scientific method" or
> > concept of repeatability. You either have the "epiphany" or feel the
> > way you do or you don't.
>
> A grim view of human nature and the ability to learn from others. Your
> assumption that personal experiences cannot be shared with value to the
> sharee flies in the face of a lot of experience.
Ecstatic and aesthetic experiences can't be reliably shared, no.
Otherwise we could do strange things like "prove" that one religion is
better than another or "prove" that strawberries taste better than
blueberries.
<snip>
> If "abstract things...can't be described by words" then music isn't as
> abstract as you say. Music can be described in basic technical terms
> with words because music is not a foreign experience.
Actually, music can't. You could write volumes of words about, say,
the Grosse Fuge and never equal the experience of listening to it.
<snip>
> So, for the millionth time...criticism is not "about describing art
> with words" in the narrow sense of "description" that you are
> employing.
It's about describing the experience of art. I didn't narrow the term.
I merely showed that it would be impossible, even in the narrowest
sense, to describe music. Given that, it is certainly impossible to
reliably communicate the subjective experience of it.
<snip>
J
david...@aol.com
"Unintelligent people probably have a more honest reaction to art"
Intelligence corrupts. Good old heart, bad old brains. Mr. Harrington
advances the naive theory that Rousseau's natural man, primitive man in
his natural state before he was corrupted by civilization, was innocent
of the horrible disease of exercising his critical faculty. It ain't
true. Have you never heard two people arguing about the comparative
merits of two different football or basketball players? Criticism is
the very definition of the human because criticism is nothing more and
nothing less than the act of discriminating, of drawing distinctions
with the mind.
-david gable
david...@aol.com
"You could write volumes of words about, say, the Grosse Fuge and never
equal the experience of listening to it."
The job of criticism is not "to equal the experience of listening to"
anything. The job of criticism is explanation. The concept
"syncopation" explains a specific effect that occurs in music: it
explains effects created by displacing the accent from the strong beat.
Syncopation is the term for that displacement. No single such term
explains every aspect of any interesting piece of music. So what?
Physics hasn't succeeded in explaining the whole universe yet, either.
The project of criticism is open ended.
Reviewers (rightly) indulge in characterization: another form of
explanation.
-david gable
david...@aol.com
"A critic who reviews a recording without knowing who the performer(s)
are might be closer to an honest critic. But even then his reactions
would as likely jibe with yours (or mine) as not."
There is some truth to your claim that the reviewer's reactions won't
necessarily gibe with mine: that's in part because the hypothetical
reviewer you have in mind is reviewing a performance and not an
artwork. The totality of the artwork itself is a broader phenomenon
than the subtle details that distinguish one performance from another.
Of course, some aspects of performance differ more than others: the
range of tempi chosen for most pieces varies considerably, for example.
Nevertheless, the proportions remain the same at every tempo. At the
level of more subtle details, at the level of the continuous ongoing
phrasing of a violin section, for example, the differences are more
microscopic, which isn't to say unimportant or insignificant.
In any case, all performances of Beethoven's 5th have more in common
than not. They all sound like Beethoven's 5th and not like Josquin's
Missa de Beata Vergine. If you feel the same way about the composer's
or painter's art that you do about the performer's artistry, it seems
to me you're espousing a radical subjectivity that simply doesn't
exist. Either you hear the climax at the end of the Liebestod exactly
where Wagner put it or you cannot be said to have experienced the
Liebestod at all. The artwork is not a Rorschach blot in which you see
what you will. Unless the artwork exerts more control over your
response than a Rorschach blot, you cannot be said to have experienced
the artwork at all. Which means that important fundamental aspects of
the experience of the artwork are necessarily shared by all who
experience the artwork. And surprisingly much of how Wagner achieved
the effects created with the Liebestod most certainly can be explained.
Now lets zoom back in to the more microscopic level of detail
characteristic of the artistry of the performer. The subtle
inflections characteristic of phrasing, variations of touch, et al . .
. these do not function like a Rorschach blot either. They are simply
much harder to perceive and much harder to characterize accurately than
the effects that Wagner created in the Liebestod. Despite the fact
that music only exists through performance, sensitivity to them is
necessarily longer in coming than the experience of music itself. We
get interested in music through hearing music, through the
relationships created by composers, not through hearing microscopic
details of performance. The more we listen the more sensitized we
become to such details. I can hear much more much better now than when
I was 12, but that wouldn't be true if I hadn't been interested in
listening to music in the first place. (Needless to say, I can hear
more in the relationships created by composers today, too. I'm not
suggesting that anybody comes out of the womb fully prepared for the
Grosse Fuge while sensitivity to performance requires knowledge and
experience.)
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1145473220.3...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
are abstract? The problem is really with the original statement that
abstract things 'can't be described with words'.
Music can be described with words; on the other hand, I'd say that a lot of
the best music is that which exceeds anyone's capacity to capture it in
words.This is why composition is not simply 'analysis/criticism in reverse'.
Ian
John Harrington
<snip>
> I agree with the above, but wouldn't you say relationships between things
> are abstract? The problem is really with the original statement that
> abstract things 'can't be described with words'.
Why is that a problem? It seems to me true by definition. Words can
barely reliably communicate concrete things. How can they attempt to
describe abstract things...except perhaps poetically. But then you are
simply back to square one, with a poem that evokes different feelings
and emotions in each reader.
> Music can be described with words;
People /attempt/ to describe music with words all the time. That
doesn't mean they are successful in describing anything but its most
superficial qualities.
> on the other hand, I'd say that a lot of
> the best music is that which exceeds anyone's capacity to capture it in
> words. This is why composition is not simply 'analysis/criticism in reverse'.
Exactly.
J
Stephen Worth
Harrington <bear...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Words can
> barely reliably communicate concrete things.
And still you've used enough in this thread to build a freeway overpass!
See ya
Steve
--
Rare 78 rpm recordings on CD! http://www.vintageip.com/records/
Building a museum and archive of animation! http://www.animationarchive.org/
The Quest for the BEST HOTDOG in Los Angeles! http://www.hotdogspot.com/
Rediscovering great stuff from the past! http://www.vintagetips.com/
Ian Pace
"John Harrington" <bear...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1145544350....@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Ian Pace wrote:
> <snip>
>> I agree with the above, but wouldn't you say relationships between things
>> are abstract? The problem is really with the original statement that
>> abstract things 'can't be described with words'.
>
> Why is that a problem? It seems to me true by definition. Words can
> barely reliably communicate concrete things. How can they attempt to
> describe abstract things...except perhaps poetically. But then you are
> simply back to square one, with a poem that evokes different feelings
> and emotions in each reader.
See below.
>
>> Music can be described with words;
>
> People /attempt/ to describe music with words all the time. That
> doesn't mean they are successful in describing anything but its most
> superficial qualities.
>
I think that's an extreme statement. Words certainly can't capture music
totally (or else it wouldn't be very good music), but sometimes they can
successfully elucidate more than simply the most superficial levels (which
is not to say that this necessarily happens in the majority of cases). But
as I'm a musicologist and writer on music apart from being a performer, I
would say that, I suppose.
Ian
david...@aol.com
"Words can barely reliably communicate concrete things. How can they
attempt to describe abstract things...except perhaps poetically. "
First, you should cease attempting to communicate your ideas through
the hopelessly unreliable medium of language lest we consider you a
hypocrite or madman.
Second, there are contexts in which words are formally defined and the
possibility of total and accurate communication exists.
Third, the process of resorting to "poetic" language is the normal one
in the history of the acquisition of knowledge. Somebody notices
something that he or she has never noticed before OR that nobody has
ever noticed before. He or she captures that observation by resorting
to a metaphor, by what you refer to as "poetic language." This
recourse to metaphor enables the speaker to apply relationships already
understood in the context of a new observation. That's a big first
step.
The recourse to metaphor is never arbitrary. When Carmen says that
Love is a bird, the choice of metaphor is not arbitrary: birds soar
free and die when they're caged. Or so Carmen claims, and everybody
understands the nature of her claim and its application to the wholly
unrelated concept of Love, which is an "abstract" concept.
There are no lines in music, yet musicians refer to lines all the time.
In referring to lines, they resort to a figurative or metaphorical use
of the term. We should observe two things about this metaphor:
(1) The metaphor makes sense: so-called "lines" in music do resemble
actual lines on paper in a very important respect: they're unbroken
and they keep going in some dimension, whether time and/or through the
steps of a scale. (That's why somebody in the distant past first came
up with this metaphor which is now so thoroughly entrenched.)
(2) What is meant by a "line" in music can be strictly and
unambiguously defined.
Knowledge routinely if not invariably starts with an observation
captured by metaphor. If the situation to which the metaphor has been
applied can be strictly defined, it is. Final step.
-david gable
Ian Pace
Errrrrrrr - what are we all doing here on r.m.c.r., then? Romanticising the
'unintelligent' leads to Forest Gump and the rest of the mythology of the
'holy innocent'.
> There's a huge scum of pretense that has been
> heaped on art, particularly in the last 2 centuries.
Sure, but there's been some good stuff as well. Try Baudelaire on Wagner,
for example (and I'm well aware it tells as much about Baudelaire as it does
about Wagner). Or, for that matter, try Walter Benjamin on Baudelaire.
> It honestly has
> very little to do with the experience of art and more to do with the
> society that has developed around art.
Do you think the experience of art is entirely separate from the society
that has developed around it (and, no, I'm not arguing a reductive view of
art as nothing more than an articulation of social processes).
>
>> > > hence writing about these
>> > > forms is an essential pursuit unto itself.
>> >
>> > Non sequitur.
>>
>> Not at all. If you don't see writing as an art, then it is
>> understandable that you would see the sharing of ideas a non sequitur
>> in the discussion of criticism.
>
> For one thing, I see the "ideas" "stimulated" by art, particularly
> music, as being a trivial portion of the experience of art.
I don't. Have you read Proust? If so, don't you think his work stimulates
all sorts of ideas about memory, about the relationship between the senses
and the intellect, about friendship, about jealousy, about sexuality, about
love, and so on? Now music, or rather 'abstract music' (meaning nothing than
simply music that isn't conjoined with text, theatre or dance) tends not to
work on such a concrete level (though other 'representative' or 'figurative'
arts can be profoundly ambiguous as well, working as they do on abstract or
poetic levels as well as simply semantic ones), but personally I find it can
still stimulate ideas, just not necessarily those that it's easy to
communicate in verbal form (which is not to say that an endeavour to do so
is without value, as words remain a primary communicative tool). A work of
Brahms chamber music, say (to pick something suitably 'abstract') does to me
evoke all sorts of chains of emotions, associations, psychological
trajectories, etc., which are generally quite extra-verbal (and of course my
own responses are subjective). But I would put those things into the realm
of 'ideas'. As I would the purely 'musical' elements of the writing of
Flaubert, or Baudelaire or Proust, say (in French, or for that matter those
elements of a translation, though of course they are in various ways
distinct from such elements in the original language).
> For
> another, even though art does engender ideas, it doesn't follow from
> that fact that it is "essential pursuit unto itself" to write about
> them.
As said elsewhere, many like to share and compare their responses to things
with others. Isn't that part of what human interaction is about? And I do
believe words about art can themselves be art, also (not really accepting
the notion that as such they are 'secondary').
>
> <snip>
>> > > That's nice. So what does that have to do with the value of
>> > > criticism?
>> >
>> > As I made clear in my post, abstractions, by definition, can't be
>> > described. The subtleties of the aesthetic experience of abstractions
>> > definitely can't be described. So, what is "art criticism" but an
>> > illusion or a con game?
>>
>> Again, you've confused "description" with "the sharing of ideas."
>
> If you're going to communicate your ideas you have to describe them.
> Communicating the experience of art can't be done without
> "description", not that it can be done at all.
We're onto the question of 'dancing about architecture' now. An artist
friend of mine often paints her reponses to pieces of music she has heard.
But that's also some form of communication.
>
> <snip>
>> > Simply looking at the painting "illuminates" what Rembrandt did.
>>
>> Does it illuminate what he did not do? What he could not do? What
>> others did with similar circumstances? Does it illuminate what others
>> think of what he did? You persistently miss the point of criticism.
>
> This is another layer of the "scum" I mention above--the cult of
> individuality in art.
A distinction has to be made here between the individuality of the *art* and
the individuality of the *artist*, I think. The former is a very important
quality.
> I like reading about artists, because I like
> them, and it comforts me to know that people like that exist. But I
> don't think about them when I'm experiencing their art (except perhaps
> in gratitude), and I don't see art as a sport where the point is to
> "admire human achievement".
I agree with the latter point, but as regards the former, I do think about
artists when experiencing their art. But it is more a case of the art
communicating information about the person (making allowance for the fact
that the persona expressed through the art could be very different to that
otherwise communicated) rather than reading the art 'through' knowledge of
the artist (through biographies, etc.). The contemporary obsession with
biography is hardly very inspiring (not least because of the fact that the
styles of biographical writing often are little more than one step up from
newspaper stuff about celebrities, melodramatic, childishly salacious and
prurient at the same time), and the notion of art being valuable
independently of artists is a strong one. However, I find it hard to totally
separate art from the notion that behind it lies human endeavour, ideas,
desires, etc. Otherwise one gets into overly 'objectivist' views of art
itself.
> Everything that makes art "an extension of
> a personality" gets in the way of the direct contact with the
> experience of the art itself.
But couldn't personality be an extension of artistic creation, at least to
some extent, as well?
I have plenty of sympathies with your arguments, I'm just trying to nuance
them a little.
> I don't need a biography to go along
> with Mahler's 6th--what I know about it can just get in the way, not
> heighten the experience. The best composers came to realize this, even
> if for a time they were caught up in the zeitgeist of musical
> depiction. One by one they regretted their "programs" and disavowed
> them.
That's a bit of an over-generalisation. Composers have continued to develop
their own cults of personality, often very self-consciously, which can be
part of their 'programs'.
>
>> > If I said turning lead into gold was impossible, would you ask me to
>> > prove it?
>>
>> Of course...and it took a lot of science before such a thing was
>> "proven" beyond reasonable doubt. :-)
>
> Okay, so you seem to know by putting "proven" in quotation marks that
> it doesn't make any logical sense to speak of "proving" a negative.
> The burden of proof is entirely on those claiming the positive, as it
> should be, else there'd be no end to the negatives we'd have to
> "prove".
>
>> It will take more on your part to prove that others' experience is
>> invalid.
>
> I didn't say it was "invalid". I said it was incommunicable. Why is
> this so hard?
This polarised opposition doesn't get us very far. There are degrees of
communicability.
>
> <snip>
>> > Re-read what I wrote. I didn't say it was an example of criticism. I
>> > hypothesized how one might describe music and how, even with ideal
>> > success, he would fall far short of saying anything meaningful about
>> > the aesthetic experience of it.
>>
>> Re-read what I wrote. Your hypothesis doesn't lead to that conclusion,
>> it only suggests how difficult it is to be precise about description in
>> anything other than very technical terms. Experience shows that the
>> imprecision is no barrier to meaningful connections between writer and
>> reader--especially when we're talking about the aesthetic experience.
>
> Actually, my experience suggests there is no meaningful connection
> between writer and reader and what one critic may experience or try to
> experience may be completely different from what his reader
> experiences.
You really think there is no meaningful connection at all, ever? Of course
some critics' experiences may be very different from those of some readers
(or from other critics, for that matter), but that isn't always the case.
> I strongly suspect, in fact, that critical consensus,
> since so little of it makes any sense at all (as far as I can tell),
> has more to do with socialization than it has to do with actual
> experience.
Certainly that can often be true.
> A critic who reviews a recording without knowing who the
> performer(s) are might be closer to an honest critic. But even then
> his reactions would as likely jibe with yours (or mine) as not.
Sometimes - but that could possibly be less about the phenomenon experienced
as the valorisation applied to it. Some critical discourse tries to pin down
aspects that have a reasonably objective quality, and then offer a
subjective response. I'm interested to read that sort of thing.
>
>> This is relevant because critics don't
>> > even attempt such rigorous descriptions, therefore how can they hope to
>> > come close to saying anything meaningful or helpful in reproducing the
>> > experience of these things? Personal experiences are...personal
>> > experiences. Like religion or love, there is no "scientific method" or
>> > concept of repeatability. You either have the "epiphany" or feel the
>> > way you do or you don't.
>>
>> A grim view of human nature and the ability to learn from others. Your
>> assumption that personal experiences cannot be shared with value to the
>> sharee flies in the face of a lot of experience.
>
> Ecstatic and aesthetic experiences can't be reliably shared, no.
> Otherwise we could do strange things like "prove" that one religion is
> better than another or "prove" that strawberries taste better than
> blueberries.
Have you never had a powerful experience and wanted to share it with someone
else?
>
> <snip>
>> If "abstract things...can't be described by words" then music isn't as
>> abstract as you say. Music can be described in basic technical terms
>> with words because music is not a foreign experience.
>
> Actually, music can't. You could write volumes of words about, say,
> the Grosse Fuge and never equal the experience of listening to it.
>
No disagreement on that. You could also write reams of notes about, say, the
novels of Jean Paul (as Schumann did), and never equal the experience of
reading them. But you would create a different type of experience, arguably
equally valuable in its own right.
> <snip>
>> So, for the millionth time...criticism is not "about describing art
>> with words" in the narrow sense of "description" that you are
>> employing.
>
> It's about describing the experience of art. I didn't narrow the term.
It can be about describing the aspects that are reasonably unambiguous (for
example, if a passage in a piece of music is very loud or very soft) as well
as one's personal responses, as I said above.
> I merely showed that it would be impossible, even in the narrowest
> sense, to describe music. Given that, it is certainly impossible to
> reliably communicate the subjective experience of it.
>
Subjective experiences can overlap and then the areas outside of the overlap
can be illuminating. It doesn't have to be either wholly atomised or wholly
conditioned by external factors.
Ian
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1145562908.0...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> John Harrington continues his assault on the mind's resort to language:
>
> "Words can barely reliably communicate concrete things. How can they
> attempt to describe abstract things...except perhaps poetically. "
>
> First, you should cease attempting to communicate your ideas through
> the hopelessly unreliable medium of language lest we consider you a
> hypocrite or madman.
>
> Second, there are contexts in which words are formally defined and the
> possibility of total and accurate communication exists.
I think both of you are arguing highly polarised views of language, both of
which have some validity but which I find hard to accept in such absolutist
forms. Words can be formally defined, and a high degree of relatively
accurate communication can be ascertained, but I'd be reluctant to describe
it as 'total'.
>
> Third, the process of resorting to "poetic" language is the normal one
> in the history of the acquisition of knowledge. Somebody notices
> something that he or she has never noticed before OR that nobody has
> ever noticed before. He or she captures that observation by resorting
> to a metaphor, by what you refer to as "poetic language." This
> recourse to metaphor enables the speaker to apply relationships already
> understood in the context of a new observation. That's a big first
> step.
The distinction between 'poetic' language and other forms of language is not
so clear-cut, really, as all language has a metaphorical quality to an
extent.
One can capture the sort of observation you mention metonymically as well,
by describing a range of its attributes, and the person (or people) on the
receiving end of the language can form their own broader metaphor from such
attributes. I can describe a lot of details of what goes on in the course of
a piece of music (which of course themselves will be subjective, linguistic,
and in part metaphorical) without feeling the need to sum the whole thing up
in a few adjectives and metaphors.
>
> The recourse to metaphor is never arbitrary. When Carmen says that
> Love is a bird, the choice of metaphor is not arbitrary: birds soar
> free and die when they're caged. Or so Carmen claims, and everybody
> understands the nature of her claim and its application to the wholly
> unrelated concept of Love, which is an "abstract" concept.
You do leave out the qualifying adjective - 'L'amour est un oiseau rebelle'.
But you're absolutely right, the bird isn't an arbitrary metaphor.
A little sideline:
Can anyone who knows about these things tell me if the performance
convention for a Habanera is to place the stress on the downbeat or the
upbeat? Bizet's Frenchified Habanera (or at least, sung in French) is
generally sung without strong stresses on either beat, in keeping with such
a quality in standard French pronunciation (which I imagine to be derived
from urban middle-class dialect - whether or not this is most appropriate
for a character like Carmen is a big question). But this affects whether
what McClary, in her very silly book on Carmen (she becomes dizzy in
auto-erotic delight at the first perception of an augmented interval, a
chromatic scale, or anything else she thinks has the quality of
'otherness'), has to say about what is going on in the first phrase:
'For instance, her descent by half-steps through the tetrachord d2-to-a1 is
arranged so taht we grasp the outline she implies (and thus are invited to
desire the suggested outcome); as she moves through that descent, she
alternately coaxes and frustrates. What is set up as normative rhythmic
motion from d2 to c#2 is halted on c2, where she plays with our expectations
not only by lingering, but also by reciting in irregular triplets that
strain against the beat. The b1 that follows is quick, suggesting that she
will descend immediately to the expected goal; but the bb1, which ought to
have been a mere passing-note on a weak pulse, is given an insinuating nudge
by the declamation of "*re*-belle." While there is never any question of
tonal or melodic orientation in this phrase, her erratic means of descending
through the tetrachord (and, subsequently, the remainder of the scale)
reveals her as an expert in seductive rhetoric.' (Susan McClary - 'Georges
Bizet: Carmen' (Cambridge; CUP, 1992), p. 76)
(what do they say about those people who have to talk about sex all the
time? :) )
Anyhow, the lingering on the c2 comes across somewhat differently if the
stress is on the b1 on the second beat. And, if there is a mild stress in
the diction, I tend to imagine it (and hear it) as 'L'AM-our est un oi-SEAU
re-belle', rather than 'L'amout EST un oiseau re-BELLE'. If anything really
draws attention to itself, it's surely the turn on 'peut apprivoiser'?
Whatever, the description of the triplet c2's seems wildly over-the-top.
>
> There are no lines in music, yet musicians refer to lines all the time.
> In referring to lines, they resort to a figurative or metaphorical use
> of the term. We should observe two things about this metaphor:
>
> (1) The metaphor makes sense: so-called "lines" in music do resemble
> actual lines on paper in a very important respect: they're unbroken
What exactly do you mean by 'unbroken' here, though? Is a highly angular
line (like, say, at the beginning of Stravinsky's Symphony in C) 'unbroken'?
And can that line only be 'broken' when there is a greater degree of
disjunction in various parameters?
> and they keep going in some dimension, whether time and/or through the
> steps of a scale. (That's why somebody in the distant past first came
> up with this metaphor which is now so thoroughly entrenched.)
It's an interesting metaphor, because there are so many possible parameters.
Even when there are disjunctions of pitch, rhythm, dynamics, there can still
be continuity of timbre, or other relationships that aren't continuous but
are meaningful between the former parameters. I'm just mentioning this after
playing a piece to a composer earlier today which is radically formalised in
terms of pitch/rhythm/dynamics, but still forms lines, or I would prefer to
call them gestures. The very fact of the juxtapositions gives the music a
gestural quality, rather than just being isolated notes.
>
> (2) What is meant by a "line" in music can be strictly and
> unambiguously defined.
Can it? Would you give such a definition?
>
> Knowledge routinely if not invariably starts with an observation
> captured by metaphor. If the situation to which the metaphor has been
> applied can be strictly defined, it is. Final step.
>
But very rarely is that exactly the case.
Ian
david...@aol.com
Ian, as usual, not one thing you've said actually touches on anything
I've said. I will say that your word spinning and the constant
shifting in what you mean by virtually any concept is evidence for John
Harrington's skeptical view of language and verbal communication.
Suffice it to say that (a) the metaphor "line" is used to mean several
different things in music (as well as countless things in the world:
we "stand in a line" often enough), (b) which of these meanings is
intended is normally evident from the context, and (c) when it isn't
evident, it's trivially easy to explain which meaning is intended.
In speaking of music:
(1) "line" is used to refer to the fundamental underlying unbroken
continuity of a piece, or, alternatively, to the continuous conscious
projection of such a thing characteristic of some performances;
[Since I'm talking to you, it's necessary add that "broken lines" and
other so-called ruptures within the continuity of a piece don't break
the "line" in this sense of the word: the breaks and ruptures in the
continuity of a piece are a part of the continuity of the piece. Any
other kind of rupture would be like the random sound of a tire
backfiring outside your window while you're playing the piano.
Syncopation, for example, disrupts metric regularity, but it depends on
the thing it disrupts in order to appear as the kind of disruption it
is, and syncopation isn't an actual break in the piece.]
(2) line is used synonymously with "melody" or part (e.g., the soprano
line, part, or melody); and
(3) line is used very narrowly and specifically in discussions of tonal
harmony to refer to patterns unfolding through time created entirely
through motion by step.
Your introduction of the concept of "broken line," which is also a
metaphor, depends entirely on the underlying metaphor, "line." In
other words, the existence of "broken lines" in Stravinsky's music is
not evidence of the inadequacy of the metaphor "line": it's proof of
the metaphor's utility. There are lines in the world and "lines" in
music, broken lines in the real world and "broken lines" in music,
angular lines in the real world and "angular lines" in music, etc.
The "final step" that you consider comparatively rare is not rare but
ubiquitous: speech and communication couldn't function otherwise.
I could say more about this and your other objections, but it would be
a waste of time.
-david gable
Starobin
Manuel De Falla, in his Homenaje (pour le tombeau de Debussy), notates
the Habanera rhythm with accents and and a request to hold back
slightly on the 2 eighth note upbeats.
ds
tomdeacon
Richard Loeb wrote:
> "vhorowitz" <vladho...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1145134134.6...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > If that critic just wanted to save time, I'm surprised he didn't
> > recommend the Warner Bros. cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?".
> >
> > Hmm... no cuts in the Bohm.......I guess my memory is playing tricks
> > since his DG Tristan is definitely cut. Sorry.
>
> No his DG Tristan is not cut Richard
Clearly it isn't his memory which is playing tricks, it's his judgment.
TD
tomdeacon
marce...@cpu-net.net
John Harrington wrote:
> <snips>
> jrs...@aol.com wrote:
> > John Harrington wrote:
> > > jrs...@aol.com wrote:
> <snip>
> > > Intelligent people, one would think, develop their own ideas.
> >
> > Exactly. Intelligent people generally like to share ideas. Your
> > statement is an eloquent support for the relevance of criticism. If
> > you, as an intelligent person, develop your ideas in your head by
> > looking at the painting on your own, you are practicing the germ of
> > criticism already.
>
> No, that's a special, weird definition of "criticism", even if you want
> to qualify it as a mere "germ", which no one would recognize outside of
> your special application of it in this debate.
>
> > So there's little difference between that and
> > penning your thoughts and sharing them with others, no matter how
> > difficult that may be.
>
> There's a huge gulf between that and "penning your thoughts". If you
> have any feeling for art at all you will realize that most of the
> reception of it takes place on an emotional level. That is the essence
> of the aesthetic experience--the effect of art on one's emotions.
I would disagree. The essence of the aesthetic experience involves both
emotions and ideas even to the point of being spiritual. If art were
only about emotions, there would be no real reason to distinguish high
art from melodramatic crap. Yet the quality of craft is a crucial part
of art. "Contemplating" an art work, I believe, invariably involves
ideas about the craft and/or meaning of the work as much as its
visceral impact on our emotions.
Music in this sense is no different. 'Base' music is one that appeals
to the basest of emotions, where as classical music also involves
articulation, orchestration, rule following and rule breaking,
expectation and surprise, etc., all of which revolve around craft and
can be analyzed in detail, compared with other items and intellectually
appreciated in their own right as aspects of a work's design.
Such items of craft will come through while contemplating the work,
even if one knows little to nothing about that work's actual craft. I
know nothing about pottery or sculpture, yet it's still possible to see
the King Tut exhibit and marvel at the workmanship and level of detail
of the decoration on a 'mere wooden box' that would hold the organ
vases.
The nice thing about music particularly is that it CAN be appreciated
on a superficially visceral level, with no thought as to how a composer
designed work. But it is not the only way, and I would argue, not the
best way to fully appreciate a given work's aesthetic value.
As far as communicating one's appreciation/experiences of a work to
others, as we discussed a few years ago, I believe it is possible to
get significant and substantial elements of one's experiences across to
others, without requiring a reliability standard of the communcation
itself. Though yes, the description could not match the actual
experience. But the description by someone of a given work can be a
good guide for someone else to decide whether they want to experience
it for themselves.
Marcello
Ian Pace
<marce...@cpu-net.net> wrote in message
news:1145638644.2...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
I make a distinction between emotionality (which is something deeper,
lasting, and of substance) and sentimentality (which consists of highly
transient, even kneejerk, emotional reactions which rarely have much longer
impact). So I would distinguish 'art' from melodrama in that sense. Of
course there is art which doesn't just induce instant fulfillment through
melodramatic techniques, but actually puts the conventions of melodrama into
some perspective (I would say some of Liszt's music is like that).
>
> Music in this sense is no different. 'Base' music is one that appeals
> to the basest of emotions,
Do you think Stravinsky's Le Sacre does that?
> where as classical music also involves
> articulation, orchestration, rule following and rule breaking,
> expectation and surprise, etc., all of which revolve around craft and
> can be analyzed in detail, compared with other items and intellectually
> appreciated in their own right as aspects of a work's design.
But as means to ends, rather than ends in themselves. Those are what make
more than simple melodramatic emotionality possible.
> Such items of craft will come through while contemplating the work,
> even if one knows little to nothing about that work's actual craft. I
> know nothing about pottery or sculpture, yet it's still possible to see
> the King Tut exhibit and marvel at the workmanship and level of detail
> of the decoration on a 'mere wooden box' that would hold the organ
> vases.
>
> The nice thing about music particularly is that it CAN be appreciated
> on a superficially visceral level, with no thought as to how a composer
> designed work. But it is not the only way, and I would argue, not the
> best way to fully appreciate a given work's aesthetic value.
I blow hot and cold on this question somewhat. I'm a bit sceptical of both
the disinterested aestheticism position and the maximum short-term immediacy
one. But then I do believe in some notion of art being 'true', as well.
>
> As far as communicating one's appreciation/experiences of a work to
> others, as we discussed a few years ago, I believe it is possible to
> get significant and substantial elements of one's experiences across to
> others, without requiring a reliability standard of the communcation
> itself. Though yes, the description could not match the actual
> experience. But the description by someone of a given work can be a
> good guide for someone else to decide whether they want to experience
> it for themselves.
>
Sure.
Ian
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1145606263.4...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
>
> Ian, as usual, not one thing you've said actually touches on anything
> I've said. I will say that your word spinning and the constant
> shifting in what you mean by virtually any concept is evidence for John
> Harrington's skeptical view of language and verbal communication.
As I said your views seem starkly polarised. You would seem to think
language can communicate near-everything, he thinks it can communicate very
little - at least with respect to art.
>
> Suffice it to say that (a) the metaphor "line" is used to mean several
> different things in music (as well as countless things in the world:
> we "stand in a line" often enough), (b) which of these meanings is
> intended is normally evident from the context, and (c) when it isn't
> evident, it's trivially easy to explain which meaning is intended.
>
> In speaking of music:
>
> (1) "line" is used to refer to the fundamental underlying unbroken
> continuity of a piece, or, alternatively, to the continuous conscious
> projection of such a thing characteristic of some performances;
Which could mean a myriad range of different things, and be perceived
differently by different listeners. This is not idle pedantry, this is a
very real issue for me when both playing and listening to contemporary
music.
>
> [Since I'm talking to you, it's necessary add that "broken lines" and
> other so-called ruptures within the continuity of a piece don't break
> the "line" in this sense of the word: the breaks and ruptures in the
> continuity of a piece are a part of the continuity of the piece. Any
> other kind of rupture would be like the random sound of a tire
> backfiring outside your window while you're playing the piano.
> Syncopation, for example, disrupts metric regularity, but it depends on
> the thing it disrupts in order to appear as the kind of disruption it
> is, and syncopation isn't an actual break in the piece.]
If, then, only extraneous noise can 'break' a line, isn't 'line' thus
defined in a manner so broad as to be meaningless? Or rather, taken in
conjunction with your definition (1), doesn't it suggest that almost every
piece therefore contain a 'fundamental underlying unbroken continuity' at
all times?
>
> (2) line is used synonymously with "melody" or part (e.g., the soprano
> line, part, or melody); and
That seems a better definition, though "melody" itself is an ambiguous term.
>
> (3) line is used very narrowly and specifically in discussions of tonal
> harmony to refer to patterns unfolding through time created entirely
> through motion by step.
Sure. Though as discussed a few months ago, there are questions to be asked
about how much this exists innately within the music or constitutes a
particular construction upon it by the listener. But let's not go there
again.
>
> Your introduction of the concept of "broken line," which is also a
> metaphor, depends entirely on the underlying metaphor, "line."
You introduced that metaphor, I was exploring its meaning and implications.
> In
> other words, the existence of "broken lines" in Stravinsky's music is
> not evidence of the inadequacy of the metaphor "line": it's proof of
> the metaphor's utility. There are lines in the world and "lines" in
> music, broken lines in the real world and "broken lines" in music,
> angular lines in the real world and "angular lines" in music, etc.
So where do you draw the line (so to speak)?
>
> The "final step" that you consider comparatively rare is not rare but
> ubiquitous: speech and communication couldn't function otherwise.
>
I'm trying to look at where we locate the distinction between continuity and
discontinuity.
Ian
marce...@cpu-net.net
While it's true there are a range of emotions, from base emotions to
more sophisticated feelings (for lack of better term), I believe that
in the case of experiencing art, music, sculpture, architecture, etc.,
to say that this experience is essentially an emotional one doesn't do
justice to the experience. We don't experience emotions separately from
ideas (in these sense of our experiences being an either/or type of
phenomena). Most of the time it's really a state of mind, of attitude
of 'spirit'.
My contention above is that craft is a critical part in being able to
distinguish art from melodrama, and that the 'intellectual'
appreciation of craft can and does have emotional value in its own
right. But it is not just that which causes us to go back to a work of
art. The sense of pleasure we derive from experiencing art is both an
emotional and intellectual pleasure, and the intellectual pleasure is
heightened the more you know about the craft.
> >
> > Music in this sense is no different. 'Base' music is one that appeals
> > to the basest of emotions,
>
> Do you think Stravinsky's Le Sacre does that?
To a certain extent absolutely. Is that the only thing Le Sacre appeals
too? No. Unlike rap (which was what I had in mind by 'base music') Le
Sacre also has undeniable good craft and can be intellectually
appreciated and analyzed as well.
>
> > where as classical music also involves
> > articulation, orchestration, rule following and rule breaking,
> > expectation and surprise, etc., all of which revolve around craft and
> > can be analyzed in detail, compared with other items and intellectually
> > appreciated in their own right as aspects of a work's design.
>
> But as means to ends, rather than ends in themselves. Those are what make
> more than simple melodramatic emotionality possible.
I'm not sure if by 'those' you mean the craft or analysis. Sometimes an
artwork can demonstrate the importance of a particular aspect of craft
(pointillism, for instance) which can be valid end, and an enjoyable
one as well.
>
> > Such items of craft will come through while contemplating the work,
> > even if one knows little to nothing about that work's actual craft. I
> > know nothing about pottery or sculpture, yet it's still possible to see
> > the King Tut exhibit and marvel at the workmanship and level of detail
> > of the decoration on a 'mere wooden box' that would hold the organ
> > vases.
> >
> > The nice thing about music particularly is that it CAN be appreciated
> > on a superficially visceral level, with no thought as to how a composer
> > designed work. But it is not the only way, and I would argue, not the
> > best way to fully appreciate a given work's aesthetic value.
>
> I blow hot and cold on this question somewhat. I'm a bit sceptical of both
> the disinterested aestheticism position and the maximum short-term immediacy
> one. But then I do believe in some notion of art being 'true', as well.
I don't argue for one or the other. My contention is that the aesthetic
experience can and often does span the entire gamut. But John's
contention that the aesthetic experience is essentially one of
emotional impact would imply that any intellectual appreciation of the
craft is not an important or essential part of that experience. I
believe that it is, if only that such appreciation is what allows us to
be able to distinguish the art from the sentimental crap, via the
quality of the craft. (Sentimental crap can be fun as well, but that's
a different argument.) The intellectual appreciation can also have an
emotional value, though the emotional value may not be the overriding
reason why one would want to return to experience a given piece. One
can return to a given work of art to study and to learn from it, which
is an equally valid and important part of the art experience.
In the case of architecture, for instance, the emotional value of an
architectural masterpiece is often trivial in the sense that one
experiences a limited range of emotions. If you go to Borromini's San
Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, a small church in Rome, you may be
awestruck at the detail, marvel at it, and perhaps feel some intimacy,
depending on your personal sense of space. But the intellectual
appreciate of Borromini's design, the craft involved in both the design
and execution, etc. the choices Borromini made and the possibilities he
discarded, are what form the bulk of that experience (admittedly more
so for architects).
Marcello
Ian Pace
<marce...@cpu-net.net> wrote in message
news:1145710707.7...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
OK - I agree with you on how emotions are inseparable from ideas. The
distinction between emotions and ideas is problematic in itself, requiring a
particular construction of the mind-body dualism, so that the 'mind' has an
existence autonomous of the physical aspects of the brain that are
determinants. Now, I still hold to that Aristotlean model to some extent,
whilst wishing to view it symbiotically and dialectically. Ideas can be
affected by chemical reactions in the brain; conversely they can stimulate
them. I suppose the distinction that's usually thought of is between
emotions affecting the body and ideas affecting the mind - but the mind is
not independent of the body. And one can have an emotional reaction to
abstract ideas.
>
> My contention above is that craft is a critical part in being able to
> distinguish art from melodrama, and that the 'intellectual'
> appreciation of craft can and does have emotional value in its own
> right.
OK, I can accept that.
> But it is not just that which causes us to go back to a work of
> art. The sense of pleasure we derive from experiencing art is both an
> emotional and intellectual pleasure, and the intellectual pleasure is
> heightened the more you know about the craft.
>
Do you not think it's possible that the intellectual apprehension of a work
can also diminish the emotional pleasure - specifically when the mechanisms
of the work become all-too transparent (which is how Dahlhaus defines
kitsch)?
But also, how do we gauge the value of craft independently of the results it
produces, in terms of generating or expressing both ideas and emotions?
>> >
>> > Music in this sense is no different. 'Base' music is one that appeals
>> > to the basest of emotions,
>>
>> Do you think Stravinsky's Le Sacre does that?
>
> To a certain extent absolutely. Is that the only thing Le Sacre appeals
> too? No. Unlike rap (which was what I had in mind by 'base music') Le
> Sacre also has undeniable good craft and can be intellectually
> appreciated and analyzed as well.
There is craft in rap and lots of popular music as well, involving other
parameters. In terms of vocal style, timbre (also of course a big factor in
Stravinsky), editing, etc., etc. (not to mention all the other extra-musical
aspects).
>>
>> > where as classical music also involves
>> > articulation, orchestration, rule following and rule breaking,
>> > expectation and surprise, etc., all of which revolve around craft and
>> > can be analyzed in detail, compared with other items and intellectually
>> > appreciated in their own right as aspects of a work's design.
>>
>> But as means to ends, rather than ends in themselves. Those are what make
>> more than simple melodramatic emotionality possible.
>
> I'm not sure if by 'those' you mean the craft or analysis. Sometimes an
> artwork can demonstrate the importance of a particular aspect of craft
> (pointillism, for instance) which can be valid end, and an enjoyable
> one as well.
I mean the craft. Your second sentence is another way of saying that the
importance of the craft is as a means to an end.
>>
>> > Such items of craft will come through while contemplating the work,
>> > even if one knows little to nothing about that work's actual craft. I
>> > know nothing about pottery or sculpture, yet it's still possible to see
>> > the King Tut exhibit and marvel at the workmanship and level of detail
>> > of the decoration on a 'mere wooden box' that would hold the organ
>> > vases.
>> >
>> > The nice thing about music particularly is that it CAN be appreciated
>> > on a superficially visceral level, with no thought as to how a composer
>> > designed work. But it is not the only way, and I would argue, not the
>> > best way to fully appreciate a given work's aesthetic value.
>>
>> I blow hot and cold on this question somewhat. I'm a bit sceptical of
>> both
>> the disinterested aestheticism position and the maximum short-term
>> immediacy
>> one. But then I do believe in some notion of art being 'true', as well.
>
> I don't argue for one or the other. My contention is that the aesthetic
> experience can and often does span the entire gamut. But John's
> contention that the aesthetic experience is essentially one of
> emotional impact would imply that any intellectual appreciation of the
> craft is not an important or essential part of that experience.
Sure, and that's certainly not my position. Just as we have emotional
reactions to ideas, we can also have intellectual reactions to emotions.
> I
> believe that it is, if only that such appreciation is what allows us to
> be able to distinguish the art from the sentimental crap, via the
> quality of the craft. (Sentimental crap can be fun as well, but that's
> a different argument.) The intellectual appreciation can also have an
> emotional value, though the emotional value may not be the overriding
> reason why one would want to return to experience a given piece. One
> can return to a given work of art to study and to learn from it, which
> is an equally valid and important part of the art experience.
Sure.
>
> In the case of architecture, for instance, the emotional value of an
> architectural masterpiece is often trivial in the sense that one
> experiences a limited range of emotions. If you go to Borromini's San
> Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, a small church in Rome, you may be
> awestruck at the detail, marvel at it, and perhaps feel some intimacy,
> depending on your personal sense of space.
All powerful emotions, I would say.
> But the intellectual
> appreciate of Borromini's design, the craft involved in both the design
> and execution, etc. the choices Borromini made and the possibilities he
> discarded, are what form the bulk of that experience (admittedly more
> so for architects).
>
Those can be a way of appreciating more fully just how Borromini's church
creates such a striking impact upon the viewer.
Ian
John Harrington
<snips throughout>
Please note I said "most of the reception of it takes place on an
emotional level". I don't deny ideas are part of it.
> there would be no real reason to distinguish high
> art from melodramatic crap.
I would argue there's a difference in the emotions of "high art" and
crap.
> Yet the quality of craft is a crucial part
> of art. "Contemplating" an art work, I believe, invariably involves
> ideas about the craft and/or meaning of the work as much as its
> visceral impact on our emotions.
Meaning in music is elusive, highly subjective, and a very small part
of the experience, even if there.
> The nice thing about music particularly is that it CAN be appreciated
> on a superficially visceral level, with no thought as to how a composer
> designed work. But it is not the only way, and I would argue, not the
> best way to fully appreciate a given work's aesthetic value.
It's the difference between 99 cents and a dollar.
John
John Harrington
> "John Harrington" <bear...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1145482732.0...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > <snips>
> > jrs...@aol.com wrote:
> >> John Harrington wrote:
> > Unintelligent people probably have a more honest reaction to art, since
> > they don't hang around with people who have picked up the bad habit of
> > intellectualizing it.
>
> Errrrrrrr - what are we all doing here on r.m.c.r., then? Romanticising the
> 'unintelligent' leads to Forest Gump and the rest of the mythology of the
> 'holy innocent'.
Oh give me a break, Ian. I am not "romanticizing" anything. I'm
merely pointing out that with high culture comes a lot of pretense and
that unintelligent people, generally not part of that culture, would at
least be free of the influence of it.
> > It honestly has
> > very little to do with the experience of art and more to do with the
> > society that has developed around art.
>
> Do you think the experience of art is entirely separate from the society
> that has developed around it (and, no, I'm not arguing a reductive view of
> art as nothing more than an articulation of social processes).
Yes, I do think the experience of art need not rely in any way on the
society that has developed around it, though obviously I'm saying that
it often does, and to the detriment of that experience.
> > For one thing, I see the "ideas" "stimulated" by art, particularly
> > music, as being a trivial portion of the experience of art.
>
> I don't. Have you read Proust? If so, don't you think his work stimulates
> all sorts of ideas about memory, about the relationship between the senses
> and the intellect, about friendship, about jealousy, about sexuality, about
> love, and so on?
Yes, but that's not what makes it "art". You can jot all those ideas
on a couple of pages on a legal pad, fax it to me, and I would receive
them and understand them, without much particular enjoyment or
inspiration. That wouldn't make it art. Please keep in mind I didn't
deny that art has ideas in it. I said that these are the "trivial
portion of the experience of art".
> Now music, or rather 'abstract music' (meaning nothing than
> simply music that isn't conjoined with text, theatre or dance) tends not to
> work on such a concrete level (though other 'representative' or 'figurative'
> arts can be profoundly ambiguous as well, working as they do on abstract or
> poetic levels as well as simply semantic ones), but personally I find it can
> still stimulate ideas, just not necessarily those that it's easy to
> communicate in verbal form (which is not to say that an endeavour to do so
> is without value, as words remain a primary communicative tool). A work of
> Brahms chamber music, say (to pick something suitably 'abstract') does to me
> evoke all sorts of chains of emotions, associations, psychological
> trajectories, etc., which are generally quite extra-verbal (and of course my
> own responses are subjective). But I would put those things into the realm
> of 'ideas'. As I would the purely 'musical' elements of the writing of
> Flaubert, or Baudelaire or Proust, say (in French, or for that matter those
> elements of a translation, though of course they are in various ways
> distinct from such elements in the original language).
If you want to call them "ideas", fine. This paragraph doesn't differ
distinctly enough from my thesis for me to disagree. I'd argue those
experiences you're having listening to Brahms and that you admit are
"generally quite extra-verbal" is what I'm talking about. I wouldn't
call them "ideas" though.
> > For
> > another, even though art does engender ideas, it doesn't follow from
> > that fact that it is "essential pursuit unto itself" to write about
> > them.
>
> As said elsewhere, many like to share and compare their responses to things
> with others. Isn't that part of what human interaction is about? And I do
> believe words about art can themselves be art, also (not really accepting
> the notion that as such they are 'secondary').
I take pleasure in seeing others enjoy art I like. But our
conversations about it are always bumbling and frustratingly imprecise.
And I don't just mean *us*, but all such conversations.
> > If you're going to communicate your ideas you have to describe them.
> > Communicating the experience of art can't be done without
> > "description", not that it can be done at all.
>
> We're onto the question of 'dancing about architecture' now. An artist
> friend of mine often paints her reponses to pieces of music she has heard.
> But that's also some form of communication.
Some form, but inadequate and ultimately ineffective. It's still a
personal reaction, one that someone viewing the painting without
explanation wouldn't necessarily associate with any give piece of
music.
> > This is another layer of the "scum" I mention above--the cult of
> > individuality in art.
>
> A distinction has to be made here between the individuality of the *art* and
> the individuality of the *artist*, I think. The former is a very important
> quality.
I was talking about the artist.
> > I don't need a biography to go along
> > with Mahler's 6th--what I know about it can just get in the way, not
> > heighten the experience. The best composers came to realize this, even
> > if for a time they were caught up in the zeitgeist of musical
> > depiction. One by one they regretted their "programs" and disavowed
> > them.
>
> That's a bit of an over-generalisation.
I said the "best" composers. My opinion only, of course.
> > I didn't say it was "invalid". I said it was incommunicable. Why is
> > this so hard?
>
> This polarised opposition doesn't get us very far. There are degrees of
> communicability.
The degree is, like, half a degree, and it is communcability about
trivial things.
> > Actually, my experience suggests there is no meaningful connection
> > between writer and reader and what one critic may experience or try to
> > experience may be completely different from what his reader
> > experiences.
>
> You really think there is no meaningful connection at all, ever?
Yes. I think there's coincidents that seem like connections, but
they're just coincidences. It's like superstition.
Reviewers can describe the trivial things of music, but getting at the
aesthetic experience is impossible, yet they pretend that it is doable
in (often) just a few paragraphs.
> Of course
> some critics' experiences may be very different from those of some readers
> (or from other critics, for that matter), but that isn't always the case.
Coincidence, I'd argue.
> > Ecstatic and aesthetic experiences can't be reliably shared, no.
> > Otherwise we could do strange things like "prove" that one religion is
> > better than another or "prove" that strawberries taste better than
> > blueberries.
>
> Have you never had a powerful experience and wanted to share it with someone
> else?
Yes, desperately.
J