WHISTLING IN THE DARK: Schoenberg's unfinished revolution.
John Thomas
simply offering tonality of a less familiar kind. Nonetheless, what set
his music apart was its moratorium on common chords-- the major and minor
triads that underlie Western music from Monteverdi to Mahler (not to
mention almost all pop music). His melodies abandoned the steady,
stepwise pattern of the seven-note major and minor scales and instead
explored the almost limitless permutations of the twelve-note chromatic
scale (think of all the black and white keys between two C's on a
piano). For fifteen years, Schoenberg explored this unknown landscape
with no theory to guide him. In the early nineteen-twenties, however, he
devised the "twelve-tone" system, in which each work is based on a
preset arrangement of the twelve chromatic notes. This music was
intensely alienating to audiences early on, and it still has the power
to send listeners scurrying for the exits. But it added an entirely new
set of colors to the palette of sound, and everyone from Puccini to
Miles Davis felt its impact.
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?critics/020218crat_atlarge
--
-Regards,
John Thomas
jwth...@sonic.net
Raymond Hall
"John Thomas" <no-...@sonic.net> wrote in message
news:no-spam-CF5FE0...@typhoon.sonic.net...
Schoenberg, from what I have read, *really* wanted the term PAN-tonality
adopted, rather than the term atonality. Essentially he democratised the 12
notes generated by the circle of 5ths, even though the most consonant
interval after the octave (the 5th) created the 12 notes. Schoenberg could
never escape that fact. He couldn't escape the octave either, and craftily
treated octave notes as equivalent pitches in an attempt to do so.
I can't see how Puccini would have been affected though, to be perfectly
honest. As for Miles Davis, I thought his only claim to fame was that he
once stood next to the great Charlie Parker, whose musical thought processes
were so fast, they encapsulated in one second, all that Davis ever knew in a
lifetime.
<ducking for cover .... I never wrote the above ....>
Regards,
# RMCR Contributor Links/Main Page :
# http://www.users.bigpond.com/hallraylily/index.html
< there is no such thing as a bad orchestra, only a bad conductor >: HvK
Ray, Sydney
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John Thomas
"Raymond Hall" <hallr...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> I can't see how Puccini would have been affected though, to be perfectly
> honest. As for Miles Davis, I thought his only claim to fame was that he
> once stood next to the great Charlie Parker, whose musical thought processes
> were so fast, they encapsulated in one second, all that Davis ever knew in a
> lifetime.
>
> <ducking for cover .... I never wrote the above ....>
Miles was a technically poor instrumentalist, but a great musician in
the sense that he knew how to spot talent and put together fabulous
musical groups. I didn't much care for his work after the breakup of
the sextet, but for better or worse he pushed the borders of jazz-based
improvisational music into previously unexplored areas.
Will Self
wrote:
>In article <a4j42u$lnal$1...@ID-101911.news.dfncis.de>,
> "Raymond Hall" <hallr...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>> I can't see how Puccini would have been affected though, to be perfectly
>> honest. As for Miles Davis, I thought his only claim to fame was that he
>> once stood next to the great Charlie Parker, whose musical thought processes
>> were so fast, they encapsulated in one second, all that Davis ever knew in a
>> lifetime.
Amen!
>> <ducking for cover .... I never wrote the above ....>
No need to duck, the truth shall set you free.
> Miles was a technically poor instrumentalist, but a great musician in
>the sense that he knew how to spot talent and put together fabulous
>musical groups. I didn't much care for his work after the breakup of
>the sextet, but for better or worse he pushed the borders of jazz-based
>improvisational music into previously unexplored areas.
Feeling guilty about keeping this off-topic thread going, but I fully
agree with Raymond's assessment of this fraud...heartily. Miles was a
providential beneficiary of the premature demise of true greats like
Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown and Booker Little...to name just a few
infinitely superior artists...as well as the PR machine of
Columbia/CBS. The only border he pushed, IMO, was to dumb-down the
jazz environment by encapsulating the paucity of his creativity into
rock-based "happenings" that made Grateful Dead fans feel good about
listening to "jazz".
Bird may still live, but Miles' mythology thrives.
Will
John Grabowski
> On Fri, 15 Feb 2002 18:41:22 GMT, John Thomas <no-...@sonic.net>
> wrote:
>
>
>>In article <a4j42u$lnal$1...@ID-101911.news.dfncis.de>,
>>"Raymond Hall" <hallr...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I can't see how Puccini would have been affected though, to be perfectly
>>>honest. As for Miles Davis, I thought his only claim to fame was that he
>>>once stood next to the great Charlie Parker, whose musical thought processes
>>>were so fast, they encapsulated in one second, all that Davis ever knew in a
>>>lifetime.
>>>
>
> Amen!
>
>
>>><ducking for cover .... I never wrote the above ....>
>>>
>
> No need to duck, the truth shall set you free.
>
>
>> Miles was a technically poor instrumentalist, but a great musician in
>>the sense that he knew how to spot talent and put together fabulous
>>musical groups. I didn't much care for his work after the breakup of
>>the sextet, but for better or worse he pushed the borders of jazz-based
>>improvisational music into previously unexplored areas.
>>
>
> Feeling guilty about keeping this off-topic thread going, but I fully
> agree with Raymond's assessment of this fraud...heartily. Miles was a
> providential beneficiary of the premature demise of true greats like
> Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown and Booker Little...to name just a few
> infinitely superior artists...
I don't think you can compare them. They were different conceptually
from Miles, and Miles from they.
Miles helped get the world off the well-worn hardbop path, and opened other doors. That said, there's still plenty of Miles I don't much like. ;-)
John
--
All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.
Adlai Stevenson
Dan Koren
> that he was simply offering tonality of a less familiar kind.
Boy, does that have the familiar ring of double-talk!
dk
Will Self
wrote:
Therein lies the rub. While Fats, Clifford, et al were superb
improvisational artists, Miles was "conceptual"-- in the worst sense
of the term.
>
>Miles helped get the world off the well-worn hardbop path, and opened other doors. That said, there's still plenty of Miles I don't much like. ;-)
>
That's like saying Mantovani helped get the world off the well-worn
path of "hardcore" classics, thus making them more accessible to the
unwashed masses (insert appropriate emoticon).
Will
Brendan R. Wehrung
> Schoenberg always hated the word "atonality," protesting that he was
> simply offering tonality of a less familiar kind. Nonetheless, what set
> his music apart was its moratorium on common chords-- the major and minor
> triads that underlie Western music from Monteverdi to Mahler (not to
> mention almost all pop music). His melodies abandoned the steady,
> stepwise pattern of the seven-note major and minor scales and instead
> explored the almost limitless permutations of the twelve-note chromatic
> scale (think of all the black and white keys between two C's on a
> piano). For fifteen years, Schoenberg explored this unknown landscape
> with no theory to guide him. In the early nineteen-twenties, however, he
> devised the "twelve-tone" system, in which each work is based on a
> preset arrangement of the twelve chromatic notes. This music was
> intensely alienating to audiences early on, and it still has the power
> to send listeners scurrying for the exits.
Many of this group will protest that they "like" Schoenberg, but the
"why" of this last assertion might be interesting. Does the scurrying
audience not undertand, the music is annoyed by it, or even fear it as
upsetting their perception of what music is?
I'll put my personal appreciation of much rock music against this: it's
nothing to fear (except my hearing), and being often simplistic in
sturcture not hard to understand, but is annoying, probably because of
that simplicity.
What of Schoenberg? I can't ay I "like" much of his later stuff, but I
can't turn it off either.
Brendan
David7Gable
>> that he was simply offering tonality of a less familiar kind.
>
>Boy, does that have the familiar ring of double-talk!
>
No double talk about it. Schoenberg never coined the term "atonality," never
used it, never set out to produce it, never believed he produced it, belittled
the term as meaning "without tones." His preferred term, as Ray Hall has
correctly pointed out in an admirable synopsis of the stages of Schoenberg's
career, was "pantonality," which implies a tonality breaking out in every
conceivable direction. Nor did Schoenberg ever set out to destroy tonality.
In the course of a certain Austro-German tradition, music continued to get more
and more chromatic. Already in the later music of Wagner, the occurence of
plain old major and minor triads is comparatively rare. Generally, Wagner's
textures consist of various seventh chords and in particular of diminished
seventh chords and of major and minor triads over which a layer of expressive
dissonances unfolds. (In the famous opening phrase of the Tristan prelude, for
example, there is not a single major or minor chord to be found.) The
dissonances in Wagner's music are constantly being resolved but only as new
ones arise in an ever shifting web of surface chromaticism..
There are passages in Wagner that are as "atonal" as anything in Schoenberg's,
and the same is true of Salome and Elektra. The difference is that they only
last a brief time and listeners have gotten used to them. Getting used to a
straight 27 minutes of such writing such as you find in Schoenberg's Erwartung
is another story.
"Atonality" was never a conscious goal on Schoenberg's part. At a certain
point, the chromaticism on the surface of his music became so dense that it was
no longer, in the most narrow sense, "tonal." In Wagner's music, a tonal
substratum is still generally but not invariably implied by the surface
chromaticism even though it is seldom in direct evidence: you do not find the
same major and minor scale passages and major and minor chords in Wagner that
you find in Haydn. But at a certain point, when the surface chromaticism
becomes all-encompassing, it is vain to claim that it still implies any
conventionally tonal underpinnings. Which is not to deny that other elements
familiar from traditional music have risen to the surface to take over the
musical organization.
During the period when Schoenberg was writing his first "atonal" works, the
period from 1909 until about 1916, there was no "atonal" system in place to
guide him. Nor was he guided by a determination to throw out tradition and do
something entirely different. His music of this period is the inevitable
consequence of the trend toward a greater chromaticism characteristic of the
tradition that nurtured him, a direct consequence of the kind of motivic
writing and seamlessly shifting developments you find on the surface of
Wagner's music.
This period in Schoenberg's career is in a sense the living end of Romanticism.
His prose during this period is hyper-Lisztian in tone. He feels himself
guided by "an inner compulsion." He has only his ear and his intuition to
guide him. His hyper-Romantic goal during this period is that chimera, a pure
and unmediated self-expression freed of convention. He only becomes a
conservative law maker later on.
In the period after World War I Schoenberg became a much more conservative
figure (as did many writers, poets, painters, and composers of his and the next
generation). The development of serialism was a conscious and conservative
attempt to impose order on the wild shores that his inner compulsion had lead
him to. It is during this period that a kind of Brahmsian academicism enters
his work. Comparing Schoenberg's Piano Concerto to the works written just
before World War I is like comparing Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms to Rite of
Spring. The Piano Concerto is "atonal," but the phrase structures and forms
are much more Brahmsian than in the "free atonality" of the period before World
War I..
-david gable
Sonarrat Citalis
"Dan Koren" <dank...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:c1c5ead9.02021...@posting.google.com...
And it's simply not true. I'm going to reverse on what I've said in the past.
The entire reason why tonal works continue to be preferred is because in a tonal
work, any passage may be easily compared with any other. Relationships between
passages are clear-cut and usually marked by key changes. You can't do that in
a twelve-tone work! It's simply not in the vocabulary. You would need to
stretch very far to compare sections of a twelve-tone work tonally. Even then,
the comparisons that you could draw up wouldn't be apparent to any but the most
studied audience. Reliance on dynamics and touch has to be very heavy to
prevent monotony. This is why Schoenberg's piano works are all very short! He
knew that he couldn't build any elaborate structures. With an orchestra, the
problem is easier: just change the instruments you're using to mark off
sections.
--
-Sonarrat Citalis.
Email: Remove the fish, replace the net.
Signature at http://sonarrat.stormloader.com/sonarratsig.html
"Inspiration is drunken; execution is sober." -Alexander Scriabin
David7Gable
They aren't all very short! Only that one set of extremely short miniatures,
Op. 19.
-david gable
Samir Golescu
> > Boy, does that have the familiar ring of double-talk!
>
> And it's simply not true. I'm going to reverse on what I've said in the past.
> The entire reason why tonal works continue to be preferred is because in a tonal
> work, any passage may be easily compared with any other. Relationships between
> passages are clear-cut and usually marked by key changes. You can't do that in
> a twelve-tone work! It's simply not in the vocabulary. You would need to
> stretch very far to compare sections of a twelve-tone work tonally. Even then,
> the comparisons that you could draw up wouldn't be apparent to any but the most
> studied audience. Reliance on dynamics and touch has to be very heavy to
> prevent monotony. This is why Schoenberg's piano works are all very short! He
> knew that he couldn't build any elaborate structures. With an orchestra, the
> problem is easier: just change the instruments you're using to mark off
> sections.
Well, Mr Gable, with such friends, would Schoenberg really need enemies
(just asking)?
regards,
SG
Larry Rinkel
the briefest of miniatures ("I felt that after all twelve notes had been
sounded, the piece was over," wrote Webern, or words to that effect) -
that's the period of the Op. 19 piano pieces of Schoenberg and the little
violin, cello, and string quartet bagatelles of Webern.
But the development of the row principle gave Schoenberg new possibilities
for expansion, and not only in orchestral work. There are such large-scale
pieces as the 3rd and 4th string quartets, the serenade, the wind quintet,
the septet, the string trio, and more (not to mention the orchestral pieces
and operas, where you "just change the instruments," we're told, to create a
structure).
The fallacy in Mr. Citalis's argument is assuming that key change is the
primary vehicle of "relationships" even in tonal music. Theme, motif,
rhythm, counterpoint are every bit as important, and these elements are
found in Schoenberg's 12-tone work as well.
The Menuet from Schoenberg's Suite for Piano, Op. 25, is open next to me as
I write, and though it would not be difficult at all to show how a motif
(such as the dotted 16th-32nd repeated notes) pervades and unifies the
complex structure of this entire movement, I hope those without a score can
at least turn to a recording and hear for themselves how this gracious,
gentle piece relies on musical qualities far different than "[heavy]
reliance on dynamics and touch .. . to prevent monotony."
"Samir Golescu" <gol...@uiuc.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.31.020215...@ux10.cso.uiuc.edu...
David7Gable
>> honest.
I can't either. It is the case, though, that Puccini was bowled over by
Pierrot lunaire and that Schoenberg was proud of the fact that Puccini
appreciated his music. But then Ravel and Gershwin appreciated Schoenberg,
too. Ravel was unbelievably self-deprecating and modest, disparaging his own
music but expressing gratitude that he had lived to hear what Debussy,
Stravinsky, and Schoenberg had accomplished. Like Schoenberg an extremely
accomplished amateur painter, Gershwin painted Schoenberg's portrait.
-david gable
Sonarrat Citalis
"David7Gable" <david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020215231431...@mb-ml.aol.com...
> > This is why Schoenberg's piano works are all very short!
> They aren't all very short! Only that one set of extremely short miniatures,
> Op. 19.
So the others are all merely "short" and not "very short"?
evan johnson
<sona...@postmark.cod> wrote:
>
>"Dan Koren" <dank...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:c1c5ead9.02021...@posting.google.com...
>> John Thomas <no-...@sonic.net> wrote in message
>news:<no-spam-CF5FE0...@typhoon.sonic.net>...
>> >
>> > Schoenberg always hated the word "atonality," protesting
>> > that he was simply offering tonality of a less familiar kind.
>>
>> Boy, does that have the familiar ring of double-talk!
>
>And it's simply not true. I'm going to reverse on what I've said in the past.
>The entire reason why tonal works continue to be preferred is because in a tonal
>work, any passage may be easily compared with any other.
What does this mean?
> Relationships between
>passages are clear-cut and usually marked by key changes.
Only if you preselect those passages for which this holds. It does
not hold for passages chosen at random.
> You can't do that in
>a twelve-tone work! It's simply not in the vocabulary. You would need to
>stretch very far to compare sections of a twelve-tone work tonally.
Tonally? Why would you want to compare sections of a serial work
"tonally"?
> Reliance on dynamics and touch has to be very heavy to
>prevent monotony.
Or texture, register, instrumentation, melodic material, harmonic
vocabulary, rhythmic patterning, timbre, density, tempo, phrasing,
instrumental technique, and proportion.
> This is why Schoenberg's piano works are all very short! He
>knew that he couldn't build any elaborate structures.
Even those short works, and others have pointed out that not all of
Schoenberg's piano works are short, contain _very_ elaborate
structures. You ever analyzed them?
And as a fan of Boulez's piano sonatas, you should remember that they
are not short...
> With an orchestra, the
>problem is easier: just change the instruments you're using to mark off
>sections.
Just because you don't understand composition well enough to
comprehend musical treatment of non-tonal harmonic and melodic
materials doesn't mean such a treatment doesn't exist.
evan
John Grabowski
> That's like saying Mantovani helped get the world off the well-worn
> path of "hardcore" classics, thus making them more accessible to the
> unwashed masses (insert appropriate emoticon).
Well, interpret it as you may. I personally would not want to be without his Gil Evans collaborations, Kind of Bluel, Milestones, Seven Steps To Heaven, Footprints, et many a cetra.
However, sometimes his lack of technique was inexcusable. Actually it's
interesting that on the CD reissue of Sketches of Spain (sidenote: at
the radio station where I once worked someone called up, sounding high
as a kite, and asked to hear "Sketches of Pain") the last track is a
different take than that of the original LP. It's an earlier take, and
Miles sounds better because his lip isn't tired yet, but the orchestra
sounds much worse, unsure of themselves because they were practically
sight-reading the music. I guess it was a matter of who you wanted to
come off sounding better, Miles or the orchestra.
Will Self
wrote:
>Will Self wrote:
>
>
>> That's like saying Mantovani helped get the world off the well-worn
>> path of "hardcore" classics, thus making them more accessible to the
>> unwashed masses (insert appropriate emoticon).
>
>
>Well, interpret it as you may. I personally would not want to be without his Gil Evans collaborations, Kind of Bluel, Milestones, Seven Steps To Heaven, Footprints, et many a cetra.
>
I admit I'm being overly (though not unjustifiably) critical. Kind of
Blue (a favorite sinful pleasure of mine), Milestones, 'Round Midnight
and a number of his Riverside recordings (Cookin', Workin', Steamin'
etc.) are good, straight-ahead bop with sidemen who compensated for
his lack of technique. At his best, he was a romantic with limited
imagination; at his worst...well, the less said the better. His
Bitches Brew and subsequent efforts portray a poseur who finally
acknowledged his limitations and took a safe, easy route to nowhere.
Just my take.
>
>However, sometimes his lack of technique was inexcusable. Actually it's
>interesting that on the CD reissue of Sketches of Spain (sidenote: at
>the radio station where I once worked someone called up, sounding high
>as a kite, and asked to hear "Sketches of Pain") the last track is a
>different take than that of the original LP. It's an earlier take, and
>Miles sounds better because his lip isn't tired yet, but the orchestra
>sounds much worse, unsure of themselves because they were practically
>sight-reading the music. I guess it was a matter of who you wanted to
>come off sounding better, Miles or the orchestra.
>
Great anecdote; I'll have to re-listen to that track on LP and CD.
Will (listening to Brownie right now)
Sonarrat Citalis
"Samir Golescu" <gol...@uiuc.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.31.020215...@ux10.cso.uiuc.edu...
>
(Just asking)...do you know who you should be asking that question? Hint: it
isn't Mr Gable. };)
John Grabowski
A subject I will concede you are an expert on!
Sonarrat Citalis
> The fallacy in Mr. Citalis's
That's very awkward; would you mind calling me 'Sonar' or 'Sonny'? If
all else fails 'Jeff' will do. (Sonarrat is an Internet personality
of mine and has very little to do with real life.)
> argument is assuming that key change is the
> primary vehicle of "relationships" even in tonal music.
Sure it is. Each phrase has its own harmonic makeup; differences in
this makeup between different phrases are what most easily underline
development. If there is not so great a difference in harmonic makeup
between phrases, the result is...*gasp*...monotony! (This is the main
complaint I have with variation form.)
> Theme, motif,
What theme, what motif? Aren't these the very things Schoenberg raged
against?
> rhythm,
Given.
> counterpoint
> are every bit as important, and these elements are
> found in Schoenberg's 12-tone work as well.
-Sonarrat.
David7Gable
>this makeup between different phrases are what most easily underline
>development.
Changes of chord are NOT changes of key.
.>> Theme, motif,
>
>What theme, what motif? Aren't these the very things Schoenberg raged
>against?
Never once in his life. Indeed, when Schoenberg developed the series, it
represented a conservative move on his part. For Schoenberg, the series was at
once a theme and a quarry for motives.
-david gable
evan johnson
Citalis) wrote:
>> Theme, motif,
>
>What theme, what motif? Aren't these the very things Schoenberg raged
>against?
Absolutely absolutely not - precisely the opposite.
evan
Sonarrat Citalis
"evan johnson" <evan.j...@ELIyale.edu> wrote in message
news:3c75174e...@news.yale.edu...
Then who was it who listened to Schoenberg's music and said "We have escaped the
tyranny of the theme"?
Sonarrat Citalis
> >The entire reason why tonal works continue to be preferred is because in a tonal
> >work, any passage may be easily compared with any other.
>
> What does this mean?
It means that the best tonal music has strong structural elements that
can be picked out by anyone. When I listen to Schoenberg or Boulez, I
don't hear development. I hear a train wreck from start to finish.
How can a work develop if it doesn't sound intelligible in the first
place?
> > Relationships between
> >passages are clear-cut and usually marked by key changes.
>
> Only if you preselect those passages for which this holds. It does
> not hold for passages chosen at random.
What bull.
> > You can't do that in
> >a twelve-tone work! It's simply not in the vocabulary. You would need to
> >stretch very far to compare sections of a twelve-tone work tonally.
>
> Tonally? Why would you want to compare sections of a serial work
> "tonally"?
Because this is music?!?
> > Reliance on dynamics and touch has to be very heavy to
> >prevent monotony.
>
> Or texture, register, instrumentation, melodic material, harmonic
> vocabulary, rhythmic patterning, timbre, density, tempo, phrasing,
> instrumental technique, and proportion.
And even then it isn't enough to save them.
> > This is why Schoenberg's piano works are all very short! He
> >knew that he couldn't build any elaborate structures.
>
> Even those short works, and others have pointed out that not all of
> Schoenberg's piano works are short,
The longest, I believe, [including the individual movements of the
Concerto] is Op. 11 No. 2. It's also almost disappointingly
conventional by today's standards.
> contain _very_ elaborate
> structures. You ever analyzed them?
I lost interest at 'bewegte.'
> And as a fan of Boulez's piano sonatas, you should remember that they
> are not short...
They're also not very good. If approached with any attitude other
than 'I need to listen to something different to cleanse my soul' or
'Whee, I'm special because I can understand this!' they don't hold
together.
-Sonarrat.
David7Gable
>> not hold for passages chosen at random.
>
>What bull.
This is not "bull." A passage of tonal music chosen at random may not include
a change of key.
>'Whee, I'm special because I can understand this!'
The usual argument: anybody who "pretends" to like atonal music is shamming.
No decent red-blooded American could possibly like such stuff. But this is
completely false. There are performers passionately committed to playing
Schoenberg's music, and there are even listeners passionately interested in
hearing it. If Schoenberg had worn the Emperor's New Clothes, his music would
have disappeared without a trace decades ago. His music may not have a vast
public, but it survives because some people are passionately interested in
playing it. And what drives them on is its qualities as music.
-david gable
Larry Rinkel
"Sonarrat Citalis" <sona...@postmark.net> wrote in message
news:3dde371a.02022...@posting.google.com...
> than 'I need to listen to something different to cleanse my soul' or
> 'Whee, I'm special because I can understand this!' they don't hold
> together.
Is this shamming, Mr. Jones, this passage from Allen Shawn's welcome new
book? --
"As a teacher, I often have the pleasure of presenting music of Schoenberg's
to students free of any need to take sides about the merits of his work or
of his theories. . . . I am struck by how instantly these students gravitate
to the voice speaking to them through the medium of this work, a voice that
speaks of things that they fully understand, in a language that is strong,
adventurous, imaginative, complex, honest, and also deeply traditional. . .
. I would even go so far as to say that Schoenberg *particularly* moves,
excites, and amazes young listeners, particularly those who seek, first and
foremost, contact with a great imagination."
Or is he bragging about his own "specialness" when he speaks of "the
fantasy, power, songfulness, beauty, and humor" of this music?
Your comments on Schoenberg have as much merit as your dismissal of
variation form.
> > > This is why Schoenberg's piano works are all very short! He
> > >knew that he couldn't build any elaborate structures.
> >
> > Even those short works, and others have pointed out that not all of
> > Schoenberg's piano works are short,
>
> The longest, I believe, [including the individual movements of the
> Concerto] is Op. 11 No. 2.
You're missing the point. It is not brevity by the clock that matters, but
the degree of concentration present in the music. The "little" opening piece
from the Op. 19 is one of the richest, most breathtakingly elusive,
structures I know. Nothing in it repeats, no figure seems related in any
obvious way to any other, and yet somehow as the piece goes its way one
senses a miracle of growth and unfolding. This is highly concentrated music,
and requires a high degree of concentration to hear it.
Sonarrat Citalis
> "Sonarrat Citalis" <sona...@postmark.net> wrote in message
> news:3dde371a.02022...@posting.google.com...
> > evan.j...@ELIyale.edu (evan johnson) wrote in message
> news:<3c6e91e3....@news.yale.edu>...
> >
> > If approached with any attitude other
> > than 'I need to listen to something different to cleanse my soul' or
> > 'Whee, I'm special because I can understand this!' they don't hold
> > together.
>
> Is this shamming, Mr. Jones, this passage from Allen Shawn's welcome new
> book? --
>
> "As a teacher, I often have the pleasure of presenting music of Schoenberg's
> to students free of any need to take sides about the merits of his work or
> of his theories. . . . I am struck by how instantly these students gravitate
> to the voice speaking to them through the medium of this work, a voice that
> speaks of things that they fully understand, in a language that is strong,
> adventurous, imaginative, complex, honest, and also deeply traditional. . .
> . I would even go so far as to say that Schoenberg *particularly* moves,
> excites, and amazes young listeners, particularly those who seek, first and
> foremost, contact with a great imagination."
>
> Or is he bragging about his own "specialness" when he speaks of "the
> fantasy, power, songfulness, beauty, and humor" of this music?
>
> Your comments on Schoenberg have as much merit as your dismissal of
> variation form.
I was talking about Boulez. I like Schoenberg [despite everything],
but I hate you. Does that make it clear enough? };)
> > > > This is why Schoenberg's piano works are all very short! He
> > > >knew that he couldn't build any elaborate structures.
> > >
> > > Even those short works, and others have pointed out that not all of
> > > Schoenberg's piano works are short,
> >
> > The longest, I believe, [including the individual movements of the
> > Concerto] is Op. 11 No. 2.
>
> You're missing the point. It is not brevity by the clock that matters, but
> the degree of concentration present in the music. The "little" opening piece
> from the Op. 19 is one of the richest, most breathtakingly elusive,
> structures I know. Nothing in it repeats, no figure seems related in any
> obvious way to any other, and yet somehow as the piece goes its way one
> senses a miracle of growth and unfolding. This is highly concentrated music,
> and requires a high degree of concentration to hear it.
'Elusive' is right.
-Sonarrat.
Lena
> "evan johnson" <evan.j...@ELIyale.edu> wrote in message
> news:3c75174e...@news.yale.edu...
> > On 19 Feb 2002 19:50:16 -0800, sona...@postmark.net (Sonarrat
> > Citalis) wrote:
> >
> >
> > >> Theme, motif,
> > >
> > >What theme, what motif? Aren't these the very things Schoenberg raged
> > >against?
> >
> > Absolutely absolutely not - precisely the opposite.
>
> Then who was it who listened to Schoenberg's music and said "We have escaped the
> tyranny of the theme"?
And this is what you base your opinions on? :) The problem is
that you really largely don't seem to know what you're discussing
when it comes to this subject, as David G. gently (and obliquely) pointed
out elsewhere.
Schoenberg wrote a lot, so there's no need to resort to hearsay.
I'm listing some things you may find relevant in the postscript.
Among other things, Schoenberg was extremely conscious of and
perceptive about themes and motives in music.
One of Schoenberg's esthetic goals was to avoid repetition. It seems
OK to me to disagree with him on how important this avoidance really
is, though his principle also leads to very interesting music.
(Schoenberg seems to view repetition more as an aid to the listener's
memory (not necessarily to be scoffed at either - it depends what uses
this is put to), and not perhaps enough for its other functions
(setting up patterns and surprises involving patterns, just as one
example).)
But the point is that motives and "development" are hardly unimportant
to Schoenberg; only they're not supposed to be as obviously audible
as in some earlier music. In Schoenberg's own words:
"A stricter style of composition must do without such convenient
resources [repetition of thematic etc material - convenience refers here
to aiding a listener's memory].
It demands that nothing be repeated without promoting the development of
the music, and that can only happen by way of far-reaching variations. [...]
In my style of composition this is frequently the reason why I am
difficult to understand. I employ constant variations, hardly ever
repeat anything unaltered, jump quickly to the remoter stages of
development, and I take for granted that the educated listener is able
to discover the intervening stages for himself. I know this can only
let me in for disappointments, but [...] there appears to be no other
way of presenting my thoughts."
(From Schoenberg's discussion of his Variations for Orchestra, from
"Self-portrait.")
And: "Just as a piece of music was based on a key, so now a row of
twelve notes forms the material from which all shapes, melodies,
phrases, motifs, and simultaneous sounds are produced."
Another quote by Schoenberg: "motivic working out needs to be
concealed and yet effective, basic yet also felt on the surface."
(This one courtesy of Rosen's essay, in "Critical Entertainments.")
So: motives are not at all unimportant to Schoenberg, but they don't
necessarily appear in their most blatant form, which, as Schoenberg
states, can account for some of the difficulty listeners have.
Schoenberg did go through several compositional "phases" - and in one
thing you may be slightly closer to the truth: one (later repudiated)
pre-12-tone phase may have involved a *stated* relinquishing of the
importance of thematic material (whether that's an actual
relinquishing is another matter). Some problems with what
exactly constitutes a motif in this kind of piece (and with
Schoenberg's views on the topic) are mentioned in Rosen's essay:
"Schoenberg, the possibilities of disquiet" (in Critical Entertainments).
But I just don't think you're currently all that well set up to opine
on the subtleties of the subject.
This is not in the least a flame; you're very entertaining and write
well elsewhere. But it also I think needs to be said that right now,
you seem pretty unperceptive about this music, as well as really not too
knowledgeable, and despite producing a fair number of semi-baseless
posts on the topic, still manage to sound over-confident.
So presumably people will have to tell you you're wrong, then...
though I'd rather somebody else said so. (Also because there are lots
of people here who are more qualified to speak on this than I am.)
Lena
PS. Some sources:
- "Arnold Schoenberg: my evolution." Video, produced by UCLA
Instructional Media, published by Films for the Humanities. (A brief
exposition by Schoenberg himself on his aims in composition during
various stages in his work; contains a lecture presented at UCLA.)
The following is very easy to read since most comments are quite
brief:
- "Arnold Schoenberg self-portrait": A collection of articles, program
notes, and letters by the composer about his own works. 1988
Also:
- Arnold Schoenberg: "The musical idea and the logic, technique, and
art of its presentation"; edited, translated, and with a commentary by
Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff. (Columbia University Press,
1995)
- "Style and Idea"; selected writings of Arnold Schoenberg.
Lena
>> argument is assuming that key change is the
>> primary vehicle of "relationships" even in tonal music.
>Sure it is.
No it isn't. :)
First, see what David G said - the key is not at all the same as other
harmonic content. This is a pretty basic distinction. I suspect
you're confusing "key" with temporary harmonic changes.
(Besides, Classical era pieces would be insupportably dull if the only
thing they ever did was change key and then change it back.)
>If there is not so great a difference in harmonic makeup
>between phrases, the result is...*gasp*...monotony! (This is the main
>complaint I have with variation form.)
The basic harmonic "lineup" used can be relatively restricted in many
Classical era sonata expositions (especially within a theme group), but
this doesn't result in monotony. (Other aspects of composition are at
play (phrase structure, counterpoint, the exact way in which harmonic
changes are used...).)
Also, there's no reason at all why variation form must be uneventful,
harmonically or otherwise. It's not called "variation" for
nothing. In addition to all the *other* things that vary, the
different variations don't have to be treated harmonically the same
way. (You could for example take a look at the score of the Diabelli
Variations.)
Lena
evan johnson
Citalis) wrote:
>evan.j...@ELIyale.edu (evan johnson) wrote in message news:<3c6e91e3....@news.yale.edu>...
>
>> >The entire reason why tonal works continue to be preferred is because in a tonal
>> >work, any passage may be easily compared with any other.
>>
>> What does this mean?
>
>It means that the best tonal music has strong structural elements that
>can be picked out by anyone. When I listen to Schoenberg or Boulez, I
>don't hear development. I hear a train wreck from start to finish.
>How can a work develop if it doesn't sound intelligible in the first
>place?
There is a vast and important difference between your being unfamiliar
with a piece of music and its absolute unintelligibility. It's a
distinction you seem to fail consistently to grasp.
And Schoenberg has strong structural elements that can be picked out
by anyone, more so than much late 19th-century tonal music. It's just
a matter of listening.
>
>> > Relationships between
>> >passages are clear-cut and usually marked by key changes.
>>
>> Only if you preselect those passages for which this holds. It does
>> not hold for passages chosen at random.
>
>What bull.
Why? There is no such thing as a pair of passages in tonal music
related by anything other than "key changes?"
Oh that's right, you've already dismissed variation form as a valid
musical genre...
>> Tonally? Why would you want to compare sections of a serial work
>> "tonally"?
>
>Because this is music?!?
And we should analyze music from 1950 with the same tools we use on
music from 1750? Why should this be?
>
>> > Reliance on dynamics and touch has to be very heavy to
>> >prevent monotony.
>>
>> Or texture, register, instrumentation, melodic material, harmonic
>> vocabulary, rhythmic patterning, timbre, density, tempo, phrasing,
>> instrumental technique, and proportion.
>
>And even then it isn't enough to save them.
... a statement with which it is hardly necessary to state that many,
many better musicians than you disagree.
>> contain _very_ elaborate
>> structures. You ever analyzed them?
>
>I lost interest at 'bewegte.'
Well, if you want to wear your superficiality, ignorance and laziness
as a badge, go for it; but then don't claim authority on those
subjects on which your opinion is superficial, ignorant and lazy.
>> And as a fan of Boulez's piano sonatas, you should remember that they
>> are not short...
>
>They're also not very good. If approached with any attitude other
>than 'I need to listen to something different to cleanse my soul' or
>'Whee, I'm special because I can understand this!' they don't hold
>together.
see above.
I wish you the best as a musician, and your repertoire interests show
a certain degree of intellectual and musical curiosity that is very
important to maintain; but in order to do so you must not let your own
ignorance (of which we are all full) and hearsay substitute for
musical thought.
evan
Simon Roberts
"evan johnson" <evan.j...@ELIyale.edu> wrote in message
> On 21 Feb 2002 10:58:51 -0800, sona...@postmark.net (Sonarrat
> Citalis) wrote:
>
> >
> >It means that the best tonal music has strong structural elements
that
> >can be picked out by anyone. When I listen to Schoenberg or Boulez,
I
> >don't hear development. I hear a train wreck from start to finish.
> >How can a work develop if it doesn't sound intelligible in the first
> >place?
>
> There is a vast and important difference between your being unfamiliar
> with a piece of music and its absolute unintelligibility. It's a
> distinction you seem to fail consistently to grasp.
And consistently fails to grasp.... The first time I heard Beethoven's
missa solemnis it sounded to me like incoherent noise.
Simon
Sonarrat Citalis
> >> >The entire reason why tonal works continue to be preferred is because in a tonal
> >> >work, any passage may be easily compared with any other.
> >>
> >> What does this mean?
> >
> >It means that the best tonal music has strong structural elements that
> >can be picked out by anyone. When I listen to Schoenberg or Boulez, I
> >don't hear development. I hear a train wreck from start to finish.
> >How can a work develop if it doesn't sound intelligible in the first
> >place?
>
> There is a vast and important difference between your being unfamiliar
> with a piece of music and its absolute unintelligibility. It's a
> distinction you seem to fail consistently to grasp.
I've listened to Boulez's sonatas dozens of times. I've spent many
hours on Schoenberg's Op. 19, and I've listened to recordings of
several other works by both. Maybe it's not a vast amount of
experience, but then, at least I tried, unlike some critics! ;)
> And Schoenberg has strong structural elements that can be picked out
> by anyone, more so than much late 19th-century tonal music. It's just
> a matter of listening.
I don't buy it. The only twelve-tone music I've ever heard that had
any sense of direction was Rodion Shchedrin's Polyphonic Notebook, and
that's because he uses tone rows as a basis for a dim but perceptible
sense of tonality - No. 1 suggests A minor, No. 2 G# minor, No. 3 C
minor, etc. I like Schoenberg's Op. 19 - it is heartfelt and gentle -
but only because I like how it sounds. That's the ultimate test,
right?
> >> > Relationships between
> >> >passages are clear-cut and usually marked by key changes.
> >>
> >> Only if you preselect those passages for which this holds. It does
> >> not hold for passages chosen at random.
> >
> >What bull.
>
> Why? There is no such thing as a pair of passages in tonal music
> related by anything other than "key changes?"
>
> Oh that's right, you've already dismissed variation form as a valid
> musical genre...
I didn't "dismiss" anything, even remotely! The problem I have with
variation form is that it can be monotonous, and that's all I said.
> >> Tonally? Why would you want to compare sections of a serial work
> >> "tonally"?
> >
> >Because this is music?!?
>
> And we should analyze music from 1950 with the same tools we use on
> music from 1750? Why should this be?
We're still dealing with the same twelve tones, the same instrument,
and the same species as an audience.
> >> > Reliance on dynamics and touch has to be very heavy to
> >> >prevent monotony.
> >>
> >> Or texture, register, instrumentation, melodic material, harmonic
> >> vocabulary, rhythmic patterning, timbre, density, tempo, phrasing,
> >> instrumental technique, and proportion.
> >
> >And even then it isn't enough to save them.
>
> ... a statement with which it is hardly necessary to state that many,
> many better musicians than you disagree.
Should I care? I've heard supposedly "better musicians" turn out some
of the dumbest interpretations I could possibly have imagined.
> >> contain _very_ elaborate
> >> structures. You ever analyzed them?
> >
> >I lost interest at 'bewegte.'
>
> Well, if you want to wear your superficiality, ignorance and laziness
> as a badge, go for it; but then don't claim authority on those
> subjects on which your opinion is superficial, ignorant and lazy.
I don't. I'm also not willing to shut my mouth because you mistake me
for an authority.
> I wish you the best as a musician, and your repertoire interests show
> a certain degree of intellectual and musical curiosity that is very
> important to maintain; but in order to do so you must not let your own
> ignorance (of which we are all full) and hearsay substitute for
> musical thought.
The way it's going, the only way I'll ever understand Schoenberg is to
avoid musicologists for the rest of my life. Every time I come to ask
a serious question about music written after 1943, I'm really, really
sorry I asked. Remember when I asked rec.music.compose what
exceptions Schoenberg allowed in his twelve-tone form? I never got an
answer.
-Sonarrat.
evan johnson
Citalis) wrote:
>evan.j...@ELIyale.edu (evan johnson) wrote in message news:<3c77183b....@news.yale.edu>...
>
>> There is a vast and important difference between your being unfamiliar
>> with a piece of music and its absolute unintelligibility. It's a
>> distinction you seem to fail consistently to grasp.
>
>I've listened to Boulez's sonatas dozens of times. I've spent many
>hours on Schoenberg's Op. 19, and I've listened to recordings of
>several other works by both. Maybe it's not a vast amount of
>experience, but then, at least I tried, unlike some critics! ;)
So do you think that anyone who claims to get musical enjoyment out of
these works is lying?
>> And Schoenberg has strong structural elements that can be picked out
>> by anyone, more so than much late 19th-century tonal music. It's just
>> a matter of listening.
>
>I don't buy it. The only twelve-tone music I've ever heard that had
>any sense of direction was Rodion Shchedrin's Polyphonic Notebook, and
>that's because he uses tone rows as a basis for a dim but perceptible
>sense of tonality - No. 1 suggests A minor, No. 2 G# minor, No. 3 C
>minor, etc.
Well, that's very odd, because little music is as relentlessly
goal-oriented as Schoenberg's. Try the piano piece op. 23 #2, for
example.
>> And we should analyze music from 1950 with the same tools we use on
>> music from 1750? Why should this be?
>
>We're still dealing with the same twelve tones, the same instrument,
>and the same species as an audience.
None of those similarities have anything to do with the applicability
of various theoretical tools. You can't find a Schenkerian Urlinie in
Boulez; you can't find serial treatment of phonemes in Brahms lieder.
They're both music.
>> ... a statement with which it is hardly necessary to state that many,
>> many better musicians than you disagree.
>
>Should I care? I've heard supposedly "better musicians" turn out some
>of the dumbest interpretations I could possibly have imagined.
Yes, you should care, because you should admit that it's possible for
someone to know more about this subject than you.
>The way it's going, the only way I'll ever understand Schoenberg is to
>avoid musicologists for the rest of my life. Every time I come to ask
>a serious question about music written after 1943, I'm really, really
>sorry I asked.
That's because of the way you phrase your questions - to wit, as if
you already know the answer.
evan
Samir Golescu
On Sat, 23 Feb 2002, Simon Roberts wrote:
> "evan johnson" <evan.j...@ELIyale.edu> wrote in message
> > There is a vast and important difference between your being unfamiliar
> > with a piece of music and its absolute unintelligibility. It's a
> > distinction you seem to fail consistently to grasp.
>
> And consistently fails to grasp....
Forgive him..... we Romanians at Yale have troubles with the bloody
syntax....( :
> The first time I heard Beethoven's missa solemnis it sounded to me
> like incoherent noise.
Since then you have apparently convinced DK of that..... ( _;
regards,
SG
____________
<<Tradition without modernity is a dead-end, modernity without tradition
is an irremediable and total madness>> -- G. E. B. Saintsbury
Sonarrat Citalis
> >> There is a vast and important difference between your being unfamiliar
> >> with a piece of music and its absolute unintelligibility. It's a
> >> distinction you seem to fail consistently to grasp.
> >I've listened to Boulez's sonatas dozens of times. I've spent many
> >hours on Schoenberg's Op. 19, and I've listened to recordings of
> >several other works by both. Maybe it's not a vast amount of
> >experience, but then, at least I tried, unlike some critics! ;)
> So do you think that anyone who claims to get musical enjoyment out of
> these works is lying?
No. I enjoy Schoenberg and, while I can't imagine how, there are
people that enjoy Boulez sonatas for what they are. There may even be
very sonically able people who can hear the canons in the Boulez
Second Sonata, and more power to them.
> >> And Schoenberg has strong structural elements that can be picked out
> >> by anyone, more so than much late 19th-century tonal music. It's just
> >> a matter of listening.
> >I don't buy it. The only twelve-tone music I've ever heard that had
> >any sense of direction was Rodion Shchedrin's Polyphonic Notebook, and
> >that's because he uses tone rows as a basis for a dim but perceptible
> >sense of tonality - No. 1 suggests A minor, No. 2 G# minor, No. 3 C
> >minor, etc.
> Well, that's very odd, because little music is as relentlessly
> goal-oriented as Schoenberg's. Try the piano piece op. 23 #2, for
> example.
Would Peter Hill's recording on Naxos do if I were to buy it?
> >> And we should analyze music from 1950 with the same tools we use on
> >> music from 1750? Why should this be?
> >We're still dealing with the same twelve tones, the same instrument,
> >and the same species as an audience.
> None of those similarities have anything to do with the applicability
> of various theoretical tools. You can't find a Schenkerian Urlinie in
> Boulez; you can't find serial treatment of phonemes in Brahms lieder.
> They're both music.
Fads come and go, but harmony and melody are indispensable.
> >> ... a statement with which it is hardly necessary to state that many,
> >> many better musicians than you disagree.
> >Should I care? I've heard supposedly "better musicians" turn out some
> >of the dumbest interpretations I could possibly have imagined.
> Yes, you should care, because you should admit that it's possible for
> someone to know more about this subject than you.
There are people who know more about -any- individual subject than I
do. You, too.
> >The way it's going, the only way I'll ever understand Schoenberg is to
> >avoid musicologists for the rest of my life. Every time I come to ask
> >a serious question about music written after 1943, I'm really, really
> >sorry I asked.
> That's because of the way you phrase your questions - to wit, as if
> you already know the answer.
Then I'll ask again. What deviations from strict, no new notes until
all have been heard technique does Schoenberg allow?
-Sonarrat.
Sonarrat Citalis
"Lena" <len...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:6b33de45.02022...@posting.google.com...
> sona...@postmark.net (Sonarrat Citalis) wrote in message
news:<3dde371a.02021...@posting.google.com>...
> >> argument is assuming that key change is the
> >> primary vehicle of "relationships" even in tonal music.
>
> >Sure it is.
>
> No it isn't. :)
It isn't the only one, but a brain-dead monkey could recognize a change in key,
and to even receptive listeners it's often important to make the structure
clear. As an example I'll cite the Schubert B flat major sonata, D. 960, first
movement. When dealing with what is potentially 25 minutes+ of music moving at
the same pace, the key relationships, and the way they change in the
recapitulation, make all the difference.
> First, see what David G said - the key is not at all the same as other
> harmonic content. This is a pretty basic distinction. I suspect
> you're confusing "key" with temporary harmonic changes.
I'm not confusing them: I understand the difference. What I've been saying
throughout is that any passage has its own harmonic makeup, and when it returns
it can serve as a reminder even without the presence of the theme itself.
> (Besides, Classical era pieces would be insupportably dull if the only
> thing they ever did was change key and then change it back.)
Some do. They are. };)
> >If there is not so great a difference in harmonic makeup
> >between phrases, the result is...*gasp*...monotony! (This is the main
> >complaint I have with variation form.)
>
> The basic harmonic "lineup" used can be relatively restricted in many
> Classical era sonata expositions (especially within a theme group), but
> this doesn't result in monotony. (Other aspects of composition are at
> play (phrase structure, counterpoint, the exact way in which harmonic
> changes are used...).)
Some overcome this hurdle, like the wonderful variations of Op. 111. The C
minor Variations, WoO 80, fall into the trap.
IMCA
Bravo, Evan. Bravo. Now here's a man who knows his business, enfin...
JOHN BELL YOUNG
David7Gable
Yes, Schoenberg did and Boulez still does find melody and harmony
indispensable. You're right about fads, too. They come and go. Among the
fads that have come and gone are the High Renaissance style of painting
practiced by MIchelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo, impressionist painting, the
Viennese Classical style of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, etc. etc. etc. Why
even the intense expressionist style characteristic of Schoenberg, Webern, and
Berg in the period right before World War I has long since come and gone. And
nobody today could write a neoclassicizing serial work like Schoenberg's
Variations for Orchestra even if he wanted to.
>What deviations from strict, no new notes until
>all have been heard technique does Schoenberg allow?
There are constant deviations from the strictest realization of this principle;
which you don't really grasp. It's not an arbitrary principle to be taken
literally. It's a principle inherent in the potential omnidirectionality of
tonality once all the chromatic elements come into play. Hence Schoenberg's
preference for the (more accurate) term pantonality over atonality: his music
depends on the directionality inherent in the chromatic tonal materials he
inherited from Liszt, Wagner, and Brahms.
The omnidirectionality that results from exploitation of all the chromatic
elments paradoxically results in the twelve chromatic notes existing in a state
of equipoise relative to one another. This in a nutshell is the principle
behind the series conceived as an organization of the twelve tones "related
only to each other."
But the idea of "chromatic completion" is not new. It stems from tonal music.
Introducing the second of the three distinct diminished seventh chords into the
context of the first, for example, will virtually always induce the appearance
of the third, the one that will exhaust the chromatic collection . . . as in
the opening of Beethoven's last piano sonata, which fundamentally depends on
the introduction of the three distinct diminished seventh chords, which
saturate the textures of the introduction with chromatic motion. (The
omnidirectionality characteristic of chromaticism could find no better
illustration that the diminished seventh chord. Any of its four elements can
be resolved as a leading tone, resulting in four equivalent resolutions for a
single diminished seventh chord. Then there's the resolution of the diminished
seventh chord in which one of the elements is maintained as a common tone and
one of the other elements is resolved as sharp two, resulting in four more
possible resolutions for the same diminished seventh chord. Add any other
"irregular" resolution of a diminished seventh chord and multiply it times four
. . .)
Now for just one example of Schoenberg's deviations from your arbitrary
conception of the principle of non-repetition. Schoenberg sometimes takes two
of the elements of the chromatic scale and rocks back and forth between them in
ostinato fashion. But the idea that "breaking the rules" is the measure of
great art depends on a very limited conception of what such "rules" consist in.
It makes more sense to turn this inside out and say that the work imposes its
own rule: this hyper-Romantic principle is what Boulez and Stockhausen wanted
to make of the series in the early 50's. But the fact is, while it is
generally true that the work imposes its own rule, that rule is culture-bound
and whole classes of works within a single idiom or style will have many
fundamental features in common. Because the rule arises within a tradition.
Even Schoenberg's.
-david gable
IMCA
You know, it occurs to me that the old saying is true: there is no
accounting for taste. While you and I know well that music concerns a
great deal more than teritary harmony and diatonically constructed
melodies (is there anything quite as beautiful as the plaintive
opening of the Berg Violin Concerto or the diaphonous unfolding of
Boulez's "Reponse"? ); while it is plain to any informed, disciplined
musician that dodecaphony was hardly a fad, but a logical
consequence in the evolution of a compositional vocabulary that had
developed for more than three centuries; that without Beethoven,
Wagner and especially Brahms, to whom Schoenberg owed perhaps the
greatest debt for his contribution to developing variation, etc.
--well, while we know all that, there is at the same time no guarantee
that *knowing* it will give any one pause to *like* the music itself.
While knowledge will make it impossible to dismiss the efficacy, logic
and pristine structural organization of form and content in twelve
tone music, and render impotent, in technical categories at least, any
rejection of its aesthetic legacy or raison d'etre, it will not, of
its own, insure that the experience will be a pleasant one. Of course,
"being pleasant" is not what this music was meant to be, or was all
about -- any more than the Grosse Fugue or the Hammerklavier (or any
art music worth its salt for that matter) were, in spite of their
tertiatry vocabulary, mere entertainments. Great music may very well
please, as it can and should, but it should also indict, challenge,
disturb, illuminate, enlighten, reflect and so on. The distaste for
Schoenberg and twelve tone music (presuming it is expertly
constructed, at the very least,and great music at best) proceeds from
the conventional expectations set up by tertiary harmony for so many
centuries, the psychological import of which cannot be underestimated.
The ineluctable pull of the dominant for the tonic, to name one of the
simpler devices, exerts a powerful influence on the listening
apparatus of anyone accustomed to such musical conventions, which is
to say, just about everybody.
Thus, while there are those of us who recognize the beauty of form,
motivic and rhythmic organization, shape, contrapuntal complexity and
the like in Schoneberg, and can find the Urlinie easily enough, and
can avail ourselves of other, non-Schenkerian analytical methods to
come to grips with the complexities of Boulez or Nono, for example,
others who have not and don't care to spend the time getting to know
the music from the inside may well be inclined to attribute to it a
lack of intelligibility. That is a pity, of course, insofar as this is
a very rich body or art indeed, which, when understood and listened to
with care offers abundant pleasures -- in spite of itself.
Which is to say that, no matter how sophisticated one's listening
habits and knowledge, there still remains no guarantee that even a
musician, so trained, will enjoy or *like* what he is hearing. I know,
as I am sure you do, any number of expertly trained, experienced
musicians, especially of a much older generation, who are just as
capable of pinpointing what makes late Schoenberg tick as you or I,
but simply cannot stand the music. By their own admission this is
because they were not trained in the context of appreciating it on its
own terms, and because the power of conventional tertiary harmony was
the preferrred milieu in which they grew up and in which their skills
were initially cultivated. Even so, and in spite of that admission
(Arthur Rubinstein was among such naysayers), they never dismissed the
music as unintelligible, but quite the contrary: they embraced it with
respect for its legitimacy, intelligance and artistically wrought
merits, and even taught the music to students. They left its
evaluation and heartfelt appreciation to future generations, where the
ultimate worth of such music, while not seeking popularity, would be
determined in part by what Mikahil Bakhtin once coined "great time "
--that is, the cumulative effect of history and reception (public,
private, professional etc) on a work of art. We no longer hear with
the same ears as our ancestors 200 years ago; and 200 years from now,
our descendants may react very differently to the experience of the
Boulez 2nd sonata. So, while seasoned musicians such as Rubinstein
didn't like dodecophony, they did at least make an attempt to
understand it. Oddly enough, in a forthcoming interview in Clavier
magazine, the pianist Walter Hautzig, who belongs to that late
octogenarian genearation, says more or less the same thing.
So, while I agree with you that Sonnarat's arguments want for
substance in the absence of his having done the real work, and his
dismissals of an entire body of art as jejeune and shrill, something
tells me that, even were he to acquire the requisite sophistication,
that it would not change his taste, though it would necessarily affect
the manner in which he evaluated the music, within a thoroughly
informed context and with due respect for its highly structured
organization on so many compositional levels.
JOHN BELL YOUNG
IMCA
> news:3dde371a.02022...@posting.google.com...
> > evan.j...@ELIyale.edu (evan johnson) wrote in message
> news:<3c6e91e3....@news.yale.edu>...
> >
> > If approached with any attitude other
> > than 'I need to listen to something different to cleanse my soul' or
> > 'Whee, I'm special because I can understand this!' they don't hold
> > together.
>
> Is this shamming, Mr. Jones, this passage from Allen Shawn's welcome new
> book? --
>
> "As a teacher, I often have the pleasure of presenting music of Schoenberg's
> to students free of any need to take sides about the merits of his work or
> of his theories. . . . I am struck by how instantly these students gravitate
> to the voice speaking to them through the medium of this work, a voice that
> speaks of things that they fully understand, in a language that is strong,
> adventurous, imaginative, complex, honest, and also deeply traditional. . .
> . I would even go so far as to say that Schoenberg *particularly* moves,
> excites, and amazes young listeners, particularly those who seek, first and
> foremost, contact with a great imagination."
>
> Or is he bragging about his own "specialness" when he speaks of "the
> fantasy, power, songfulness, beauty, and humor" of this music?
>
>
Great quote. Can you please tell me the name of this book, as I have
not read it, but would like to? Off topic a bit, Allen Shawn, for
those who don't know him, is a marvelous composer, a professor at
Bennington College, and an absolutely superb pianist. He is also the
brother of the film actor and playwright, Wallace Shawn. I knew Allen
and Wally years ago, in the 1960s, as we attended the same prep
school in Vermont.
JOHN BELL YOUNG
IMCA
> "Sonarrat Citalis" <sona...@postmark.cod> wrote in message news:<Xdad8.12$7a2...@inet-nntp1.oracle.com>...
> > "evan johnson" <evan.j...@ELIyale.edu> wrote in message
> > news:3c75174e...@news.yale.edu...
> > > On 19 Feb 2002 19:50:16 -0800, sona...@postmark.net (Sonarrat
> > > Citalis) wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > >> Theme, motif,
> > > >
> > > >What theme, what motif? Aren't these the very things Schoenberg raged
> > > >against?
> > >
> > > Absolutely absolutely not - precisely the opposite.
> >
> > Then who was it who listened to Schoenberg's music and said "We have escaped the
> > tyranny of the theme"?
>
> And this is what you base your opinions on? :) The problem is
> that you really largely don't seem to know what you're discussing
> when it comes to this subject, as David G. gently (and obliquely) pointed
> out elsewhere.
>
> Schoenberg wrote a lot, so there's no need to resort to hearsay.
> I'm listing some things you may find relevant in the postscript.
>
> Among other things, Schoenberg was extremely conscious of and
> perceptive about themes and motives in music.
>
> you seem pretty unperceptive about this music, as well as really not too
> knowledgeable, and despite producing a fair number of semi-baseless
> posts on the topic, still manage to sound over-confident.
> So presumably people will have to tell you you're wrong, then...
> though I'd rather somebody else said so. (Also because there are lots
> of people here who are more qualified to speak on this than I am.)
>
> Lena
>
> PS. Some sources:
>
> brief:
>
> - "Arnold Schoenberg self-portrait": A collection of articles, program
> notes, and letters by the composer about his own works. 1988
>
> Also:
>
> - Arnold Schoenberg: "The musical idea and the logic, technique, and
> art of its presentation"; edited, translated, and with a commentary by
> Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff. (Columbia University Press,
> 1995)
>
> - "Style and Idea"; selected writings of Arnold Schoenberg.
Also, T.W. Adorno's monograph (1941) on Schoenberg. And I believe
Patricia Carpenter is now at work on a book about Scriabin (is she the
asme one who teaches in Arizona? I sent her some materials for it...)
JOHN BELL YOUNG
IMCA
> >Fads come and go, but harmony and melody are indispensable.
>
>
> Th
> But the idea of "chromatic completion" is not new. It stems from tonal music.
> Introducing the second of the three distinct diminished seventh chords into the
> context of the first, for example, will virtually always induce the appearance
> of the third, the one that will exhaust the chromatic collection . . . as in
> the opening of Beethoven's last piano sonata, which fundamentally depends on
> the introduction of the three distinct diminished seventh chords, which
> saturate the textures of the introduction with chromatic motion. (The
> omnidirectionality characteristic of chromaticism could find no better
> illustration that the diminished seventh chord. Any of its four elements can
> be resolved as a leading tone, resulting in four equivalent resolutions for a
> single diminished seventh chord. Then there's the resolution of the diminished
> seventh chord in which one of the elements is maintained as a common tone and
> one of the other elements is resolved as sharp two, resulting in four more
> possible resolutions for the same diminished seventh chord. Add any other
> "irregular" resolution of a diminished seventh chord and multiply it times four
> . . .)
>
And there are still other possibilities which stem from the immanent
inclusion, in a dominant seventh chord, or a tritone, which Scriabin,
among others, exploited for its rich potential; the diminished
seventh, containing two tritones, offers even more intriguing
possibilities, giving way as it does to issues of symmetry (the
property inherent in a tritone to divide a scale symetrically in two )
and what it offers for implied ambiguity of resolution --outwards to a
major sixth or inwards to a major third.
JOHN BELL YOUNG
>
IMCA
I am mistaken. It is not Patricia Carpenter who is writing a book on
Scriabin, but Ellon Carpenter.
JOHN BELL YOUNG
Sonarrat Citalis
> This is not in the least a flame; you're very entertaining and write
> well elsewhere. But it also I think needs to be said that right now,
> you seem pretty unperceptive about this music, as well as really not too
> knowledgeable, and despite producing a fair number of semi-baseless
> posts on the topic, still manage to sound over-confident.
I sound over-confident irregardless of whether I actually am, perhaps
as a kind of defense mechanism. I simply don't have the immense
resources of regular posters here: I have two small libraries, one big
one, and two Tower Records within 60 miles, as well as the Internet.
None of those sources is adequate on the subject of music written
after 1950; only a conservatory would have the necessary resources to
introduce me to the basics (rather than give me a college-level,
nearly unreadable document, like David did). Remember that I've had
no training of any kind in composition, musicology, music history, or
anything else except straight -performance.-
Nevertheless I don't think I'm out of place in making my comments.
They represent that of an outsider, one raised on extreme cantabile
playing, and that has only recently discovered the raw pleasures of
Bartok. Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez and Shchedrin are even newer, and
my reactions have been constantly mixed. What you say above about
Schoenberg's lack of repetition - this is new to me, but I could sense
it before. It sounded like an ADD compositional style, one that kept
bailing out of phrases prematurely and starting a whole different song
right there, and every couple seconds after that. Perhaps repetitions
have more uses than he thought. (Solid ground to stand on before
taking another step?)
I've read a quote from Schoenberg about how he wanted to write
melodies people would hum in the streets. This is a difficult task
for even the best tonal composers, what hope did Schoenberg ever have
using an unproven, and perhaps fatally flawed compositional style?
Not that it's impossible: there are a few Shchedrin preludes that I
catch myself whistling sometimes. But then what Shchedrin did was
different: he didn't mind repeating himself or even resorting to
tonality.
-Sonarrat.
Raymond Hall
news:Pine.GSO.4.31.020224...@ux5.cso.uiuc.edu...
|
| David Gable wrote:
|
| > >Fads come and go, but harmony and melody are indispensable.
| >
| > Yes, Schoenberg did and Boulez still does find melody and harmony
| > indispensable. You're right about fads, too. They come and go. Among
| > the fads that have come and gone are the High Renaissance style of
| > painting practiced by MIchelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo, impressionist
| > painting, the Viennese Classical style of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven,
|
|
|
| Still, cher M. Gable, not to nitpick on your point, when you talk about
| "fads" here you surely refer to the presence of certain compositional
[sniperoozy ....]
Yourself, IMCA and David Gable, among many others, when exercising your full
capacities, are what makes this NG a great one, and a highly informative
read.
Regards,
# RMCR Contributor Links/Main Page :
# http://www.users.bigpond.com/hallraylily/index.html
< there is no such thing as a bad orchestra, only a bad conductor >: HvK
Ray, Sydney
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David7Gable
Art is indistinguishable from the techniques it embodies. They are one and the
same thing.
> It only suggests that Bach's cultural weight,
>even today overwhelming, comes from his technique being always subsumed
>to a greater goal.
The greater goal of art I hope you mean. But I suspect you don't. Art is just
a high-falutin' word for technique.
-david gable
David7Gable
>"fads" here you surely refer to the presence of certain compositional
>(broader or narrower) generation
Actually, Samir, I was being supercilious in responding to someone else who had
used the term. Fad is, of course, a slang contraction of the word, fashion,
which is synonymous with manner or style. And I was talking about styles in
the arts.
-david gable
Larry Rinkel
> Great quote. Can you please tell me the name of this book, as I have
> not read it, but would like to?
Certainly. The book is "Arnold Schoenberg's Journey," just published by
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and it was alluded to in the opening post on this
thread. I am about 2/3 through it, and the book, while it has some
biographical elements, is mainly a study of Schoenberg's musical evolution,
written in a genial, personalized style. Unlike Charles Rosen's monograph,
which concentrates on the musical technique and eschews virtually any
personal reaction, Shawn wants above all to convey his great love for this
music and to avoid falling into the trap of explaining "the method" while
forgetting the compositions the method produced. "It is not entirely in a
spirit of facetiousness that I . . . feel that perhaps Schoenberg's work
deserves a more superficial treatment than it has hitherto received."
Nonetheless, the book seems to be written for an audience with some
knowledge of music theory, though I think the lay reader will find much of
interest as well. Shawn *humanizes* Schoenberg and his work in a way that
seems very original and totally opposite from, say, René Leibowitz's
"Schoenberg and His School." Robert Craft writes in his blurb that this "is
exactly the book so long needed by the general music-loving public. . . .
The tone is remote from anything I have found in the literature. . . . The
complex personality of the great composer begins to emerge."
Simon Roberts
"Sonarrat Citalis" <sona...@postmark.net> wrote in message
news:3dde371a.02022...@posting.google.com...
>
Ahem.
Simon
Samir Golescu
On 25 Feb 2002, David Gable wrote:
> > Fortunately, art is not reducible to technique.
>
> Art is indistinguishable from the techniques it embodies.
> They are one and the same thing.
If by that you mean to say that in art form and content are
indistinguishable, that the "crevices" of the form do legitimately project
and represent, in concreteness, the "depths" of the content, *not
ornament* on them, then I will of course agree. If you mean, though, that
the composer's techniques (with the meaning of compositional devices
dominated through knowledge and will) are ALL there is to art, then
we'll have to agree to disagree.
> > It only suggests that Bach's cultural weight,
> >even today overwhelming, comes from his technique being always subsumed
> >to a greater goal.
>
> The greater goal of art I hope you mean. But I suspect you don't.
Of art, of course. Don't be suspicious, per cortesia.
> Art is just a high-falutin' word for technique.
Really? A bit of subtlety there, por favor! Again, if by that little
charming piece of Americana you mean to say that there exists no a priori
content of art to precede, be projected and realized with technique, then
we agree. If you mean though to say that the deeper source of art is
*only* the composer's learning and experimenting with a perfectly
delineable (ensemble of) technique(s), I'll have to bid you a gracious
ideational farewell. (-:
Claiming that art is "just" technique, in the latter sense, is as
"motivated" (and simplistic) as claiming that ethics represented *only* a
moral algorithm, as opposed to (as I think) an eternally fluid and
creative challenge addressing the living conscience.
Consider two assertions:
a) Art is not separable from technique.
b) Art is reducible to technique.
While I heartily agree with a), there's no way I could agree with b).
My conjecture (and please pardon me if I am being inadvertently
presumptuous) is that many adepts of a), to "overkill" their point, slide
into b).
*My* conceptual biarchy, if only "bi" were allowed, would sound quite
simple:
a) Art is not separable from technique.
b) Art is not reducible to technique.
Everything which is profound is not-separable. Everything which is "high"
is separable. Art is both high and profound so any aesthetics is bound to
compromise around this paradox inherent to the very nature of art.
One could say, paraphrasing Bergson on the category of "comical", that art
is "la technique plaquee sur de vivant". Not a "vivant" lacking
corporality (expressible through technique). Nor a technique detached from
its subject, as it is not detached from its object.
Technique is the vehicle through which the natural process of division
between professional work in art ends with the return of the created
object to the field of always enriching culture, hence not as a
manifestation of technique, but as a work of art. The conceptual
difference between technique and art might consist in the
improbability of the technique per se to have meaning (even if the meaning
of art is obviously expressed, in immediateness, through technique, in
technique, and within technique!) and in the evident propensity of
technique of dealing with the instrumental, the semiotic more than with
the semantic, what is ultimately "culturally important".
Of course, all this "distinguishing work" (in which I am very far from
being original, by the way) wouldn't be needed at all if you meant, in
both your paragraphs, the first possible interpretation given by me.
regards,
SG
Samir Golescu
On Sun, 24 Feb 2002, Simon Roberts wrote:
> > I sound over-confident irregardless of whether I actually am
> ^^^^^^^^^
>
> Ahem.
Why didn't you underline the unexistent "irregardless" as well, Herr
Professor Roberts? (-:
regards,
SG
(not really wishing to pick further himself on a refreshingly modest and
nice posting of Jeune Sonny.....(-:)
Samir Golescu
Point taken. I hope I didn't sound arrogant. I prefer to sound so when I
want it. <-:
regards,
SG
____________
<<Since one cannot be universal by knowing everything that can be known
about everything, one should know a little of everything. It is much
better to know something about everything than to know everything about
something.>> -- Blaise Pascal
Samir Golescu
On Sun, 24 Feb 2002, Samir Golescu wrote:
> Technique is the vehicle through which the natural process of division
> between professional work ***** in art ends with the return of the
> created object to the field of an always enriching culture, hence not as
> a manifestation of technique, but as a work of art.
*****please intercalate [after 'between professional work']
*and cultural destiny*
Samir Golescu
> Why didn't you underline the unexistent "irregardless" as well, Herr
> Professor Roberts? (-:
A trip to the dictionary shows the word is not "unexistent" (mea culpa).
It's more of a half-accepted one (Webster says "non-standard" and advises
"use regardless instead", Oxford E. D. finds some "humorous" connotations
to the word).
I simply reacted from the basic foundation of the premise that it's
futilely useless to add an "irr" to "regardless", when the latter second
word expresses the very same identical thing.... (-:
Paul Kintzele
"Irregardless" (which, as a callow youth, I once used to my great
shame--I think it arises from a conflation of "irrespective" and
"regardless") reminds me of "unthaw," a delightful malapropism that was
common in Wisconsin, where I grew up. To wit: "Hey, ya better unthaw
dat dere steak if ya wan' it ta go on the grill with dese brats."
Paul
David7Gable
>*only* the composer's learning and experimenting with a perfectly
>delineable (ensemble of) technique(s),
If you can notice it in a piece of music, you can figure out how to explain it
technically. Or if you can't, somebody else will eventually be able to. In
other words, I do believe that in the end everything is "delineable." If only
by the critic/theorist after the fact. (And not that this is easy to do.)
The exercise of technique on the part of the artist, though, is largely . . .
I'm not sure unconscious is the right word . . . like our use of language.
We're so used to talking and writing that we just do it without giving it a
thought. Which doesn't mean the composer doesn't now and then consciously work
out a little contrapuntal puzzle or whatever in sketching a piece. You find
that sort of thing in Beethoven's sketch books all the time. And Bach was
certainly fully aware of the combinatorial possibilities of any theme he ever
used. The artist is constantly slipping in and out of consciousness of the use
of technique and just using it, but mostly it's not conscious.
>Consider two assertions:
>a) Art is not separable from technique.
>
>b) Art is reducible to technique.
But you don't offer the third possibility: that art is not reducible to
techniqe, which suggests a reduction or loss, but synonymous with it. Not that
I'll convince you with this (non-) ruse.
>Of course, all this "distinguishing work"
> wouldn't be needed at all if you meant, in
>both your paragraphs, the first possible interpretation given by me.
I don't, but I also don't see the distinction. That is, you are unable to
define for me technically the difference between art and technique, a
distinction that you take to be self-evident and I do not.
-david gable
Sonarrat Citalis
> Samir Golescu wrote:
> >
> > > Why didn't you underline the unexistent "irregardless" as well, Herr
> > > Professor Roberts? (-:
> >
> > A trip to the dictionary shows the word is not "unexistent" (mea culpa).
> > It's more of a half-accepted one (Webster says "non-standard" and advises
> > "use regardless instead", Oxford E. D. finds some "humorous" connotations
> > to the word).
> >
> > I simply reacted from the basic foundation of the premise that it's
> > futilely useless to add an "irr" to "regardless", when the latter second
> > word expresses the very same identical thing.... (-:
>
> "Irregardless" (which, as a callow youth, I once used to my great
> shame--I think it arises from a conflation of "irrespective" and
> "regardless")
You're right. Strangely, it's not the first time I've heard the word.
I think I heard some newscaster use it once, or maybe Dave Barry in
one of his Mister Language Person articles.
I caught this while I was away from the 'puter, hours later. Isn't
delayed reaction great?
-Sonarrat.
Sonarrat Citalis
<snip of a good read>
> Fortunately, art is not reducible to technique.
I've had it suggested to me that the difference between art and
scribbling (or music and yodeling, if you prefer) is a very high level
of technical proficiency, itself able to impress, to which a message
is then added. According to this man a message without a good
technical execution is not art. I don't know what to say to that
idea...
-Sonarrat.
ulvi
> Art is just a high-falutin' word for technique.
A statement in the same class as "a human being is just
a complicated organization of molecules." In other words,
true in a rather tautological sense, but not useful for understanding
either art or technique (and either human beings or molecules).
--
Ulvi
ulvi.yu...@jpl.nasa.gov
ulvi
> >If you mean though to say that the deeper source of art is
> >*only* the composer's learning and experimenting with a perfectly
> >delineable (ensemble of) technique(s),
>
> If you can notice it in a piece of music, you can figure out how to explain it
> technically. Or if you can't, somebody else will eventually be able to. In
> other words, I do believe that in the end everything is "delineable." If only
> by the critic/theorist after the fact. (And not that this is easy to do.)
Do you really believe that the intense subjective experience of music
(which is by far the most significant aspect of music to many of us)
can be explained by theorists (and by music theorists, of all people)?
--
Ulvi
ulvi.yu...@jpl.nasa.gov
David Wake
Couldn't a great work of art employ poor technique (Mussorgsky??) or
vice versa?
David
Sonarrat Citalis
I'm still trying to pick this message apart to get information I can
use out of it. If you're still willing to bear with me, correct my
interpretations.
> >Fads come and go, but harmony and melody are indispensable.
>
> Yes, Schoenberg did and Boulez still does find melody and harmony
> indispensable. You're right about fads, too. They come and go. Among the
> fads that have come and gone are the High Renaissance style of painting
> practiced by MIchelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo, impressionist painting, the
> Viennese Classical style of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, etc. etc. etc. Why
> even the intense expressionist style characteristic of Schoenberg, Webern, and
> Berg in the period right before World War I has long since come and gone. And
> nobody today could write a neoclassicizing serial work like Schoenberg's
> Variations for Orchestra even if he wanted to.
What's the style of today, then? I can only guess, since I've only
heard a couple active composers, and then only a small percentage of
their works: Shchedrin, Liebermann, Crumb, Ichiyanagi, Jeff Harrington
(if he belongs in that elite group).
> >What deviations from strict, no new notes until
> >all have been heard technique does Schoenberg allow?
>
> There are constant deviations from the strictest realization of this principle;
> which you don't really grasp. It's not an arbitrary principle to be taken
> literally.
But some did, right? Was this ever Schoenberg's intention? Or am I
just reading it completely wrong?
> It's a principle inherent in the potential omnidirectionality of
> tonality once all the chromatic elements come into play. Hence Schoenberg's
> preference for the (more accurate) term pantonality over atonality: his music
> depends on the directionality inherent in the chromatic tonal materials he
> inherited from Liszt, Wagner, and Brahms.
You seem to be clashing here: omnidirectional, yet dependent on
direction? Or by 'depends,' do you mean that the direction of the
chromatic scale branches out with this technique and makes it into
omnidirectionality?
> The omnidirectionality that results from exploitation of all the chromatic
> elments paradoxically results in the twelve chromatic notes existing in a state
> of equipoise relative to one another. This in a nutshell is the principle
> behind the series conceived as an organization of the twelve tones "related
> only to each other."
Now I think I'm starting to get this: the concept of each being
equally poised around the others makes sense to me. But I have
questions about this, too. How is this not true of tonal music? How
could I even tell?
> But the idea of "chromatic completion" is not new. It stems from tonal music.
> Introducing the second of the three distinct diminished seventh chords into the
> context of the first, for example, will virtually always induce the appearance
> of the third, the one that will exhaust the chromatic collection . . . as in
> the opening of Beethoven's last piano sonata, which fundamentally depends on
> the introduction of the three distinct diminished seventh chords,
F#m, Bm, Em. Okay.
> which
> saturate the textures of the introduction with chromatic motion.
'Chromatic motion'? It doesn't seem to me like a chromatic sequence,
but rather backwards through the circle of fifths.
> (The
> omnidirectionality characteristic of chromaticism could find no better
> illustration that the diminished seventh chord. Any of its four elements can
> be resolved as a leading tone, resulting in four equivalent resolutions for a
> single diminished seventh chord. Then there's the resolution of the diminished
> seventh chord in which one of the elements is maintained as a common tone and
> one of the other elements is resolved as sharp two, resulting in four more
> possible resolutions for the same diminished seventh chord. Add any other
> "irregular" resolution of a diminished seventh chord and multiply it times four
> . . .)
I can see that, but I've also seen Classical composers surprise me by
using chords other than sevenths to change keys in ways I didn't think
were possible.
> Now for just one example of Schoenberg's deviations from your arbitrary
> conception of the principle of non-repetition. Schoenberg sometimes takes two
> of the elements of the chromatic scale and rocks back and forth between them in
> ostinato fashion. But the idea that "breaking the rules" is the measure of
> great art depends on a very limited conception of what such "rules" consist in.
> It makes more sense to turn this inside out and say that the work imposes its
> own rule: this hyper-Romantic principle is what Boulez and Stockhausen wanted
> to make of the series in the early 50's. But the fact is, while it is
> generally true that the work imposes its own rule, that rule is culture-bound
> and whole classes of works within a single idiom or style will have many
> fundamental features in common. Because the rule arises within a tradition.
> Even Schoenberg's.
I was only asking because I heard a reference to this sort of thing -
straight out of some book, that Schoenberg after WWI laid down the
theory of twelve-tone composition within which all twelve tones were
to be used before one could be repeated. Was it just bogus
information?
-Sonarrat.
Wayne Reimer
sona...@postmark.net says...
w reimer
John Thomas
sona...@postmark.net (Sonarrat Citalis) wrote:
This reminds me of Mary McCarthy's anecdote about the writing teacher
advising her student to get his story together technically "and then
we'll put in the symbols." What in written music is the "message" other
than "these notes can be organized in this way using these rhythms?"
Why is any other "message" necessary? What is the "message" of
Beethoven's Op.110?
--
-Regards,
John Thomas
jwth...@sonic.net
Sonarrat Citalis
news:MPG.16e3832c2...@news.sf.sbcglobal.net...
> Song? You're only listening to vocal works?
Did you intend to quote 4K of text for a one-liner?
--
-Sonarrat Citalis.
Email: Remove the fish, replace the net.
Signature at http://sonarrat.stormloader.com/sonarratsig.html
"Inspiration is drunken; execution is sober." -Alexander Scriabin
Simon Roberts
Futilely useless indeed.... Except that if we took it literally, it
wouldn't be so much useless as unfortunate: a double negative, it makes
the word mean the opposite of what's meant. The mistake is presumably the
result of confusion encouraged by "irrespective."
Simon
Bob Lombard
(Sonarrat Citalis) wrote:
>I was only asking because I heard a reference to this sort of thing -
>straight out of some book, that Schoenberg after WWI laid down the
>theory of twelve-tone composition within which all twelve tones were
>to be used before one could be repeated. Was it just bogus
>information?
>
Sonarrat, you aren't going to get the whole answer,
*presented in a way that you can grasp solidly*, from a
newsgroup. Some members may have the knowledge, but getting
understanding across via what is essentially a series of
monologs? More than one person typing at you,?
Ask David or Lena how they arrived at comprehension. Maybe
pointing you at the means is better than throwing the ends
at you.
bl
"There are more 'Dutch Uncles' than there are Dutchmen."
- from "Pompous Pronouncements" by Bob Lombard
Jan Winter
<kint...@english.upenn.edu> wrote:
>"Irregardless" (which, as a callow youth, I once used to my great
>shame--I think it arises from a conflation of "irrespective" and
>"regardless") reminds me of "unthaw," a delightful malapropism that was
>common in Wisconsin, where I grew up. To wit: "Hey, ya better unthaw
>dat dere steak if ya wan' it ta go on the grill with dese brats."
Maybe they took it from the Dutch. In Dutch "ontdooien" (to unthaw) is
perfectly regular when you are talking about a piece of meat instead
of the weather.
--
Jan Winter, Amsterdam
(j.wi...@xs4all.nl)
"Real jazz is classical music now" (Kenny Clarke)
Paul Kintzele
Jan Winter wrote:
>
[re: "unthaw"]
> Maybe they took it from the Dutch. In Dutch "ontdooien" (to unthaw) is
> perfectly regular when you are talking about a piece of meat instead
> of the weather.
Likewise in German: "auftauen." Wisconsin was very heavily settled by
Germans....
Paul
evan johnson
Citalis) wrote:
>david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message news:<20020224102837...@mb-cj.aol.com>...
>> The omnidirectionality that results from exploitation of all the chromatic
>> elments paradoxically results in the twelve chromatic notes existing in a state
>> of equipoise relative to one another. This in a nutshell is the principle
>> behind the series conceived as an organization of the twelve tones "related
>> only to each other."
>
>Now I think I'm starting to get this: the concept of each being
>equally poised around the others makes sense to me. But I have
>questions about this, too. How is this not true of tonal music? How
>could I even tell?
That's the whole point of tonal music - the tonal system creates a
hierarchy of pitches. that's why the tonic is structurally important.
Every work of atonal music has to restructure the available pitch set
to create either a similar hierarchy or a means of working without one
to create music that is structurally sound in the pitch domain.
>I was only asking because I heard a reference to this sort of thing -
>straight out of some book, that Schoenberg after WWI laid down the
>theory of twelve-tone composition within which all twelve tones were
>to be used before one could be repeated. Was it just bogus
>information?
Not bogus, necessarily, just misleadingly oversimplified. He didn't
"lay down" anything, for starters; he continued to teach only tonal
composition and theory, for example, and he himself tinkered with this
method and used it inconsistently. And everything was always - ALWAYS
- subject to compositional intuition with Schoenberg. (That's one way
of putting one of the reasons that Boulez found him hopelessly passe
in 1952.)
Webern was much stricter about applying "textbook" twelve-tone
procedures in his music, but this was not an arbitrary decision - it
evolved out of his whole matrix of musical considerations. It was not
a starting point but a conclusion.
evan
Samir Golescu
On 25 Feb 2002, David Gable wrote:
> >If you mean though to say that the deeper source of art is
> >*only* the composer's learning and experimenting with a perfectly
> >delineable (ensemble of) technique(s),
>
> If you can notice it in a piece of music, you can figure out how to explain
> it technically. Or if you can't, somebody else will eventually be able
> to.
Taken at face value, this proposition implies that when "completely
explaining, technically," a work of art:
-- a perfect analysis could substitute itself to the living "object";
-- technical descriptions would become not only descriptive of an artistic
reality already created but also prescriptive and self-sufficient in
delineating the techniques necessary in creating *new* works of art of
"similar" value/content, which obviously cannot happen;
-- eventually the technical description is incapable both to give
account of the "holistic" (emotional/spiritual level included),
anagogical reverberation a music has (or not) as well as separate
between the ways similar techniques are employed by different composers
(ever studied the fugues written by Carl Czerny? please trust me they
are very competent....)
> In other words, I do believe that in the end everything is "delineable."
> If only by the critic/theorist after the fact. (And not that this is
> easy to do.)
I am definitely not discarding the importance and the legitimacy of
musical analysis as one of the instruments of musical knowledge. I am
only trying to restrict it, conceptually, to its real place, important but
not fundamental. In the end, though, the beauty of the human face is not
"perfectly delineable" through the analysis of the chemical atoms that
compose the skin, the bones etc., nor through an analysis of God's (or the
Great Anonymous', or Nature's) "techniques" used in granting a certain
proportion to the physiognomic "lines", EVEN while obviously great
painters *have* studied these and other "techniques" thoroughly.
> The exercise of technique on the part of the artist, though, is largely . . .
> I'm not sure unconscious is the right word . . . like our use of language.
> We're so used to talking and writing that we just do it without giving it a
> thought. Which doesn't mean the composer doesn't now and then consciously work
> out a little contrapuntal puzzle or whatever in sketching a piece. You find
> that sort of thing in Beethoven's sketch books all the time. And Bach was
> certainly fully aware of the combinatorial possibilities of any theme he ever
> used. The artist is constantly slipping in and out of consciousness of the use
> of technique and just using it, but mostly it's not conscious.
Agreed. Please do not think that I discard the extraordinary place
technique has in the concretization of art.
> >Consider two assertions:
>
> >a) Art is not separable from technique.
> >
> >b) Art is reducible to technique.
>
> But you don't offer the third possibility: that art is not reducible to
> techniqe, which suggests a reduction or loss, but synonymous with it.
But, cher M Gable, I DID offer the "third possibility" (art is not
reducible to technique), right after you cut the quotation, but, it's
true, without the qualification "art is synonymous with technique". In my
opinion it is not synonymous.
> >Of course, all this "distinguishing work"
> > wouldn't be needed at all if you meant, in
> >both your paragraphs, the first possible interpretation given by me.
>
> I don't, but I also don't see the distinction. That is, you are unable to
> define for me technically the difference between art and technique, a
> distinction that you take to be self-evident and I do not.
Why SHOULD one define TECHNICALLY and not philosophically the difference
between art and technique, one wonders? One is entitled *not* to accept
working on the presupposition that only what is *technically definable*
exists -- otherwise the greater chunk of the spirituality of a good couple
of millennia should be thrown to the garbage can. Modern scholarship
often works under the presupposition that the *horizontal and quantitative
consistency* of its propositions is inherently superior to *the submission
of the constitutive elements in the unity of a vision*. Furtwangler's
texts on the subject might have their hidden origin in Schopenhauer's
dichotomy between "machinery" and "living organism", between
"agglomeration of concepts" and "intuitive vision".
In other words, an argument is not rendered valid only by the mechanical
consequence of one part logically following the other (atomist
perspective), but also, and perhaps in a superior sense, by the conformity
of a series of arguments with a dominating vision that grants them
consistency, infusing, DNA-like, the *uncontrollable* strata of
"technique". Especially when discussing art, one should not make out of
the principle of logical non-contradiction the only or the major criterion
of philosophical adequacy.
Thanks for chatting, though.
Samir Golescu
On 24 Feb 2002, Sonarrat Citalis wrote:
> Samir Golescu <gol...@uiuc.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.31.020224...@ux5.cso.uiuc.edu>...
>
> <snip of a good read>
>
> > Fortunately, art is not reducible to technique.
>
> I've had it suggested to me that the difference between art and
> scribbling (or music and yodeling, if you prefer) is a very high level
> of technical proficiency, itself able to impress, to which a message
> is then added.
If you think this is what I said, I fear I have to say you misunderstood
my words profoundly. The idea that art would be technique ornamented with
a message is a very simplistic one, which I abhor deeply.
> According to this man a message without a good technical execution is
> not art.
As far as the "message" is incorporated in an artistic object, it is not
separable from technique in the first place. Artistic message is
definitely not an abstract ghost, or a skeleton floating in the search of
a technical corporality that is not consubstantial to the message itself.
Samir Golescu
On 24 Feb 2002, David Wake wrote:
> Couldn't a great work of art employ poor technique (Mussorgsky??) or
> vice versa?
To a certain extent, yes, but not in(de)finitely so. I am not so sure
about Moussorsky. If "poor", his technique was the most excelling poor
technique I can think of. (-:
regards,
SG
Samir Golescu
On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, John Thomas wrote:
> This reminds me of Mary McCarthy's anecdote about the writing teacher
> advising her student to get his story together technically "and then
> we'll put in the symbols."
Right. The principle of non-separability in (great) art is stronger than
its opponent. It is the solidification into a unique formal law what
grants a masterpiece to "communicate" with people long after the
intellectual, religious, moral, social context in which the work has been
created has disappeared or was drastically changed, at least.
> What in written music is the "message" other
> than "these notes can be organized in this way using these rhythms?"
> Why is any other "message" necessary? What is the "message" of
> Beethoven's Op.110?
The "message" of Beethoven's Op. 110 is not to be found outside
Beethoven's op. 110. The "message" of Beethoven's Op. 110 cannot be
expressed identically in any other medium than music. That does not mean
though that the message *necessarily* is *only* "these notes can be
organized in this way etc.". From the legitimate warning: "do not presume
to think that you can translate music in words or in anything else", one
should not draw the false corollary "music is about nothing else but
notes, rhythms, etc.". Music can also be about "something else", which
"something else" cannot be separated from music, though, as well as it
cannot be equated outside music. That the experience of datura flowers
emanating their particular, blissful fragrance can be had only "in magical
conditions", i.e., in certain days and at a specific time of night, does
not render that experience illusory because it is fragile, not shared
(agreed upon) by everybody and, dream-like, is nocturnal only. In longing
for the tangible, one should not overlook the precious "reality of the
ineffables", rendered more precious perhaps by not being the object of a
consensus.
regards,
SG
Bob Lombard
Probably common in archaic English too, as it's common now
in Appalachia.
bl
David7Gable
>Do you really believe that the intense subjective experience of music
Yes. Music is not a Rorschach blot that you read into what you want. You are
putty in the composer's hands. If a chill runs down your spine when the statue
in Don Giovanni nods his acceptance to the dinner invitation, it is because of
an effect Mozart created. We all experience the orgasmic peak of the Liebestod
where Wagner put it. We don't all experience the peak in different places and
some of us not at all. We experience it where Wagner put it. When Beethoven
excites us with wild syncopations of dominant seventh chords in the final quick
section of the Fidelio finale, it excites us all at the same time in the same
place. The radical subjectivity you would have us believe in does not exist.
-david gable
Bob Lombard
classic sophistry - nicely logical in its parts, sitting on
a flawed fundament. Samir's counter argument circles and
loops like the flight of a ladybug, touching on that flaw
lightly several times in the process.
You eddicated folks can spin 'em.
bl
David7Gable
>just reading it completely wrong?
I can't get you to see that this question misses the point. But yes, other
people used the series or multiple series very strictly.
>You seem to be clashing here: omnidirectional, yet dependent on
>direction?
There is nothing contradictory about the use of these terms. In the least
chromatic, most simon-pure tonal music, there is a strong sense of forward
motion induced by voice leading patterns that are inherently part of the key,
such as the pattern with which a dominant seventh chord is resolved by a tonic
triad. Chromaticism is strongly directional, too, and when it remains just
that--local coloration--it doesn't obscure the underlying chordal structures.
Given its head, though, the fact that it can shoot off in all different
directions comes to the fore, and the strongly uni-directional underlying basic
patterns of tonal/chordal music are obscured. Replaced by a situation in which
you can shoot off in all different directions.
> the concept of each being
>equally poised around the others makes sense to me. But I have
>questions about this, too. How is this not true of tonal music? How
>could I even tell?
If everything is chromatic, everything is relatively unstable--or relatively
stable. The clear-cut hierarchies that tonal music depends on are lost or
obscured. In tonal music, the dominant seventh chord is dissonant, unstable.
The tonic triad is consonant, stable. (These chords would be g-b-d-f and c-e-g
in C major.) In totally chromatic contexts there are no tonic triads. It's
black and white (tonality) versus shades of grey (total chromaticism), tension
and release patterns (tonality) versus states of equilibrium (total
chromaticism).
>fundamentally depends on
>> the introduction of the three distinct diminished seventh chords,
>
>F#m, Bm, Em. Okay.
This is not the normal way to indicate diminished seventh chords. You have
indicated three minor triads: F sharp minor, B minor, and E minor. The three
distinct diminished seventh chords, each made up of four notes, are:
a-c-e flat-g flat
a sharp-c sharp-e-g
b-d-f-a flat
You can respell these many different ways. The last one that I have listed
could be spelled g sharp-b-d-f, for example.
>I was only asking because I heard a reference to this sort of thing -
>straight out of some book, that Schoenberg after WWI laid down the
>theory of twelve-tone composition within which all twelve tones were
>to be used before one could be repeated. Was it just bogus
>information?
No. An oversimplification. A routinely circulated one, too. Explanations
tend to focus on the rules, making them seem arbitrary, rather than the
underlying musical situation that the series was intended to contend with.
-david gable
David7Gable
>a complicated organization of molecules." I
Not at all. Molecules are too far removed from the totality of man,, too
general. Saying technique is art is like saying consciousness and various
cognitive capacities are man. Technique is not atomistic.
-david gable
Samir Golescu
The Immanuel from the Hills uttered authoritatively:
> Samir's counter argument circles and
> loops like the flight of a ladybug, touching on that flaw
> lightly several times in the process.
Why "LADYbug", pray?
regards,
S"misogynist"G
ulvi
The correct analogy here is algorithmic, not atomistic. Molecules
are algorithmic (their behavior is described by simple computable laws)
human behaviour is not, similarly, technique is algorithmic (if you
want to make any meaningful distinction between technique and art that is),
while art is not.
--
Ulvi
ulvi.yu...@jpl.nasa.gov
ulvi
This sounds manifestly wrong just on the evidence from this newsgroup:
Not only all listeners do not agree on what is moving music and what is not,
even when they agree that they are moved by the same passage
in the same piece, what evidence could you possibly have that their
subjective psychological responses are the same, or even similar?
You seem to be arguing that music is nothing but a collection of
clever techniques for psychological manipulation, with something
like a police interrogation manual to go with it.
--
Ulvi
ulvi.yu...@jpl.nasa.gov
Raymond Hall
Would GENTLEMANbug have been more appropriate?
<g>
Regards,
# RMCR Contributor Links/Main Page :
# http://www.users.bigpond.com/hallraylily/index.html
< there is no such thing as a bad orchestra, only a bad conductor >: HvK
Ray, Sydney
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Ramon Khalona
> On Sun, 24 Feb 2002 21:12:01 -0600, Samir Golescu <gol...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Why didn't you underline the unexistent "irregardless" as well, Herr
> >> Professor Roberts? (-:
>
> wouldn't be so much useless as unfortunate: a double negative, it makes
> the word mean the opposite of what's meant. The mistake is presumably the
> result of confusion encouraged by "irrespective."
There are plenty of examples where the application of an *apparent*
negative does nothing of the sort. Witness
"inflammable" and "flammable", which mean exactly the same thing.
The negative of either is "non-inflammable".
RK
Raymond Hall
news:3C7AC28F...@jpl.nasa.gov...
It could be said that technique is akin to an enormous AIC (Algorithmic
Information Content), and is virtually non compressible, indicating a high
degree of randomness.
A work by Shakespeare is much more highly compressible, and almost totally
unrandom. Hence the difference between art and technique. Art wins, because
there exists by implication of the above, inherent design in it's creation.
If one wants to express the debate in these terms of course <g>
David Wake
But "inflammable" comes from the verb "inflame". Is there a noun
"irregard"?
David
Samir Golescu
On 25 Feb 2002, Ramon Khalona wrote:
> > Futilely useless indeed.... Except that if we took it literally, it
> > wouldn't be so much useless as unfortunate: a double negative, it makes
> > the word mean the opposite of what's meant. The mistake is presumably the
> > result of confusion encouraged by "irrespective."
>
> There are plenty of examples where the application of an *apparent*
> negative does nothing of the sort. Witness
> "inflammable" and "flammable", which mean exactly the same thing.
> The negative of either is "non-inflammable".
This kinda reminds me of the Communist mayor (as "literate" as most
apparatchiki) who "denounced" a "nonaligned" professor: "Comrade, I
hoped you were a tellectual, but now I can see plain and clear that
you're nothing but an INtellectual!"
Samir Golescu
On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Samir Golescu wrote:
> This kinda reminds me of the Communist mayor (as "literate" as most
> apparatchiki) who "denounced" a "nonaligned" professor: "Comrade, I
> hoped you were a tellectual, but now I can see plain and clear that
> you're nothing but an INtellectual!"
P. S. JUST IN CASE this could have been misunderstood, the discussion
around the negative "in" reminded me of that story, in no way did Mr
Khalona remind me of the protagonist of the story!!!
ulvi
> "ulvi" <ulvi.yu...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote in message
> news:3C7AC28F...@jpl.nasa.gov...
> | David7Gable wrote:
> |
> | > >A statement in the same class as "a human being is just
> | > >a complicated organization of molecules." I
> | >
> | > Not at all. Molecules are too far removed from the totality of man,,
> too
> | > general. Saying technique is art is like saying consciousness and
> various
> | > cognitive capacities are man. Technique is not atomistic.
> |
> | The correct analogy here is algorithmic, not atomistic. Molecules
> | are algorithmic (their behavior is described by simple computable laws)
> | human behaviour is not, similarly, technique is algorithmic (if you
> | want to make any meaningful distinction between technique and art that
> is),
> | while art is not.
>
> It could be said that technique is akin to an enormous AIC (Algorithmic
> Information Content), and is virtually non compressible, indicating a high
> degree of randomness.
>
> A work by Shakespeare is much more highly compressible, and almost totally
> unrandom. Hence the difference between art and technique. Art wins, because
> there exists by implication of the above, inherent design in it's creation.
You raise an interesting issue I thought about before. My conclusion was
more-or-less the following: Take for example the Sarabande from Bach's
C minor cello suite. This is an exceedingly "simple" piece whose AIC is
extemely small (it can be compressed into data probably less than 1kB
in size). Why does it sound and feel so much "deeper" than that?
I think the reason is that this piece (like all great music) stimulates
connections in the listener's mind with a far larger reservoir of data
(including but not limited to all other music we ever heard, and
presumably our entire life-experience as stored in mental states
and images), resulting in a stimulated psychological experience
of immense complexity and depth. That experience has a huge
AIC, incomparably greater than the intrinsic 1kB which
represents the handfull of notes on paper in the Sarabande. This is
why to someone who has never heard music before the Sarabande
conveys no more information than the simple 1kB of tone sequences
(and hence makes no sense). And a person with less
experience (a child?) similarly cannot get out of it as much
as one with more experience, and so on. The same phenomenon
of "stimulated information transfer" is likely essential
to all artistic expression, making it not only non-algorithmic
but also entirely subjective.
--
Ulvi
ulvi.yu...@jpl.nasa.gov
Samir Golescu
On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, ulvi wrote:
> > It could be said that technique is akin to an enormous AIC (Algorithmic
> > Information Content), and is virtually non compressible, indicating a high
> > degree of randomness.
> >
> > A work by Shakespeare is much more highly compressible, and almost totally
> > unrandom. Hence the difference between art and technique. Art wins, because
> > there exists by implication of the above, inherent design in it's creation.
>
> You raise an interesting issue I thought about before. My conclusion was
> more-or-less the following: Take for example the Sarabande from Bach's
> C minor cello suite. This is an exceedingly "simple" piece whose AIC is
> extemely small (it can be compressed into data probably less than 1kB
> in size). Why does it sound and feel so much "deeper" than that?
> I think the reason is that this piece (like all great music) stimulates
> connections in the listener's mind with a far larger reservoir of data
> (including but not limited to all other music we ever heard, and
> presumably our entire life-experience as stored in mental states
> and images), resulting in a stimulated psychological experience
> of immense complexity and depth.
There is doubtlessly truth in that. However, such conclusion would not
answer the question of why is that *this* "small-AIC" piece and not a,
say, Diabelli Sonatina, stimulates the a priori reservoir of the musical
receptor etc.
There is another answer as well. The patent insufficiency of the
complexity/rational cognoscibleness criterion in understanding the
profoundly anagogic effect great music ideally has on its receptor.
Aristotle told us that "knowledge is power" but perhaps the ancients
already knew what Francis Bacon formulated later as a law of the nature:
nature can be dominated only when one submits to nature. In other words,
the "power" Ancients might have referred to was the vital power of
the wisdom of integration, not the mere thirst of domination. At times,
with Bach, and with Bach perhaps more than with any other composer, one
feels that Music itself talks through his pen. Bach didn't so much
invented things through technique as, having incorporated more technical
knowledge than humanly possible, allowed music ("Nature") "inhabit" him
and emanate from him in full splendor.
Not only the Sarabande you rightly mention, but even the shortest piece
for children written by Bach seems to commune out of -- and to share in
posterity -- the secrets, always the same and always different, of an
unforced grandeur, raising from some trans-generational foundations of
the Tonal musical language, which were not invented by man, but rather
organically discovered and used to greater or smaller, but organic always,
ends. That a simple piece from the Album of A. M. Bach can transmit
"contents", if not identical, not largely dissimilar with those encrypted
in the Canonic Variations or in the Art of Fugue, bespeaks of the fact
that, while Bach's technicity was perfect or above perfection, his art was
more than his technique.
David7Gable
>Not only all listeners do not agree on what is moving music and what is not,
>even when they agree that they are moved by the same passage
>in the same piece, what evidence could you possibly have that their
>subjective psychological responses are the same, or even similar?
>
So you don't believe that every listener to Wagner's Liebestod can tell
precisely when the shattering orgasmic climax occurs? Music is like language.
We can read posts at newsgroups because we share the language of English.
Music consists of effects created by (mostly grammatical) relationships
unfolding in time. Music depends on the shared "linguistic" competence of
listener and composer. When you move from the tonic to the dominant, it makes
a certain kind of effect. When you resolve the dominant unexpectedly with the
flatted submediant, it has a certain kind of effect. Composers are well aware
of the affects that the grammar of their music is capable of and exploit it
accordingly. Most listeners are not aware of the technical labels for these
relationships, which doesn't mean that they are not susceptible to their
affect. When Bach writes a poignant dissonance in a slow movement, he knows
exactly what affect it is going to have. He counts on the fact that the
language he is writing in will be shared by the listener. Nobody comes away
from the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth and says, "Wow! That was a rousing
performance!" as if he had just heard a Sousa March.
Music is the art of time, and its relationships are temporal relationshps. In
writing music, the composer seizes control of time. What he controls is the
unfolding of the effects he creates in time. If we don't grasp them in the
real time they exist in, we don't grasp them at all.
-david gable
David7Gable
>want to make any meaningful distinction between technique and art that is),
>while art is not.
I'm not sure this is true. I've also never seen a convincing distinction drawn
between the terms "technique" and "art." (Etymologically I do see a
distinction: art means manner or style, implicitly a manner or style of doing
or making. Technique is doing or making, implicitly how the doing or making is
done.)
-david gable
David7Gable
Why on earth would the exercise of technique be random--or the results of the
exercise of technique?
-david gable
David7Gable
>That does not mean
>though that the message *necessarily* is *only* "these notes can be
>organized in this way etc.".
I disagree. But music has an extraordinarily powerful although necessarily
vague metaphorical capacity. Music unfolds in time. Life and the experience
of feelings unfold in time. That's the hook right there: the fundamental
basis for the metaphorical capacity of music. The unfolding of music produces
various sensations in the listener that depend on the properties of its
grammar, which is always employed in time. These sensations are metaphors for
experience and specifically for experience in time. (The average listener,
free of a techical vocabulary to discuss the effects he experiences, has no
idea to what extent the "expressivity" of music is bound up with its grammar.)
-david gable
David7Gable
>with Bach, and with Bach perhaps more than with any other composer, one
>feels that Music itself talks through his pen. Bach didn't so much
>invented things through technique as, having incorporated more technical
>knowledge than humanly possible, allowed music ("Nature") "inhabit" him
>and emanate from him in full splendor.
>
I'm not sure Music is "Nature"--it certainly depends on human nature and
specific cognitive capacities of human beings--but otherwise I agree. This is
like Stravinsky's modest remark, "I am the vessle through which Le sacre
passed.": he is disclaiming credit for the work. I read a terrific remark
about Degas last night. In a marvelous book on Degas by Gordon and Forge they
discuss the obsession with techniques (and here they mean specific techniques,
as in, say, "gouache technique") characteristic of Degas in the later decades
of his life, and they remark on how various techniques he experimented with
lead him to make new discoveries. They sum it up by saying that, not only did
Degas lead art into new territories, but that he followed art into new
territories.
-david gable
Bob Lombard
Hah. Somehow I knew you would question that. The ladybug is
a small, round. (about 3/16" dia.) beetle, orange with black
spots, whose larvae are an efficient aphid control in home
gardens. A few years ago a European species was imported to
the US to 'assist' the natives. Unlike the natives, the
import tends to move indoors when cold weather comes. I am
host to a few of them every winter, all winter. Their flight
is as I described. Unlike myself, they are only occasionally
annoying.
That European species' range must include Romania.
bl (I particularly enjoy your late Brahms)
Gerrie Collins
> This sounds manifestly wrong just on the evidence from this newsgroup:
> Not only all listeners do not agree on what is moving music and what is not,
> even when they agree that they are moved by the same passage
> in the same piece, what evidence could you possibly have that their
> subjective psychological responses are the same, or even similar?
Point well taken (and expressed). To expand, even 'musically
educated' musicians, though presumably able to perceive and appreciate
(most if not all) the technical, structurally-exposed, and emotive
elements of a piece or passage, would be challenged to express the
appeal beyond these, or even admit to or trace the reactive feelings
to other emotional origins met in the path of their life. Why else,
for example, would – say - three people listening to three
acknowledged equally competent recordings of Albeniz’
“Triana” lead each to ‘select’ a different
pianist as rendering this piece the ‘best’? What one
listener hears in the turn of a phrase or a particularly endemic
rubato that moves him/her to affective pleasure surely must depend on
a complex agglomeration of ‘life experiences’, mostly
pertaining to those outside of artistic ones. And I guess that is
one reason why we have hundreds of pianists, singers, violinists,
conductors, etc.
Gerrie C
Simon Roberts
"David7Gable" <david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020225215348...@mb-cn.aol.com...
> So you don't believe that every listener to Wagner's Liebestod can
tell
> precisely when the shattering orgasmic climax occurs?
Perhaps we can. But it doesn't follow that it has any particular
emotional effect on all listeners. Someone who dislikes Wagner's music
will likely be quite unmoved by it yet quite capable of pointing out
accurately when it happens. It's "shattering" and "orgasmic" to you
because you're on his wavelength. To someone else it may just be a
cheap, vulgar effect.
>Nobody comes away
> from the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth and says, "Wow! That was a
rousing
> performance!" as if he had just heard a Sousa March.
Indeed not. But I bet that if someone heard Scherchen's Vienna
performance on Harmonia Mundi his reaction would be radically different
from what it would have been if he had heard, say, Wyn Morris's. I
don't know whether Mahler intended either effect or both or something
different....
>
> Music is the art of time, and its relationships are temporal
relationshps. In
> writing music, the composer seizes control of time. What he controls
is the
> unfolding of the effects he creates in time.
Not as strictly as you seem to imply.
Simon (whose comments don't, as far as he can tell, have much bearing on
the fundamental Gable - Golescu divide)