Originally posted by Domeyhead
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Coming back to "intent", is it ever in principle possible to extract the artist's intent from an experience of his/her work? and what use would it be to be able to do so? Many of those who stand by the concept of intent being important are also those who can't bring themselves to believe there's any serious intent behind the work of say Boulez or Birtwistle (since they won't have heard of anyone less mainstream than these), and as a result assert that these composers' "intent" is to play some kind of practical joke on a credulous public, which I hope we can agree is very unlikely to be the case... and even if it were, so what? Stravinsky tried often enough to disavow any expressive intent in his music but many listeners to it (including me) choose to disregard what he had to say on the subject.
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