Musical questions and answers thread

[MrGongGong]

A useful thought about the nature of a musical score might be to compare it with another method of prescribing how music should be played, that is the player piano (aka pianola) roll. The latter allows almost nothing in the sense of interpretation. Interesting that Nancarrow used paper rolls directly as his 'score'.

That is ONE way of scoring music
there are,of course, many others

[Pulcinella]

That is ONE way of scoring music
there are,of course, many others

And The Rest is Noise?
(With apologies to Alex Ross)

[doversoul1]

Of course - as the Forum demonstrates vividly every day! That is, I think, part of our social condition - to survive as a species, we needed communities made up of individuals with separate talents: those with excellent eyesight, those with more acute hearing, those who could run faster, throw further, etc etc. There have been experiments (a couple were shown on David Eagleman's series on The Brain a few years back) which suggests that different groups of people literally see the same things in different ways - it would not be surprising if we literally heard differently, too.

Which is why one critic can say of the same performance of a Beethoven Quartet movement that it is "soaked in grief", another that it displays the composer's "sardonic stoism" - the responses are subjective. But to comment that the movement begins in the Tonic minor and moves to the flattened submediant major is objective - either this is a accurate account of what happens, or it's not. Similarly, we can dislike a performance, but cannot fairly claim that it is a "bad" one if nothing is done that isn't justified by the text. Nor can we justifiably claim that a performance that alters details in the score - cuts sections out, changes instrumentation, adds (or omits) expressive details - is a "true" representation of the composer's work, no matter how much we enjoy the results.

Perhaps it doesn't matter - perhaps the important thing is that we reach that point of self-realization/self-discovery, not fidelity to a writer's text. But that seems to me to be the stance of the Nazis who renewed their "spiritual" batteries by listening to Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, etc etc

At which point I reach the frontiers of my understanding ... if I hadn't already done so some sentences ago!

Thank you. This is very reassuring. I like the point about ‘fact’ and ‘subjective’.

ardcarp
Where are the listeners?

[cloughie]

Thank you. This is very reassuring. I like the point about ‘fact’ and ‘subjective’.

ardcarp
Where are the listeners?

It is a bit of subjectivity that makes these threads and life generally more interesting, but maybe excesses of it are trouble!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It is a bit of subjectivity that makes these threads and life generally more interesting, but maybe excesses of it are trouble!

- I should have added the point that "subjective" does not (necessarily) imply "inferior" or "inauthentic". Most reactions to stimuli are "subjective"/"emotional" (anyone reading this and thinking "bollocks!" is proving the point! ) - I think the problems arise when we attempt to impose an "objectivity" on our responses and make efforts to persuade others (and ourselves) that this is the only way that a work should be heard. If a work can only be responded to in one way, it's a pretty thin effort.

Sharing responses & reactions - even arguing about them - is a vital (in both senses of the word) activity: there'd be little point in this Forum if not.

[Richard Barrett]

Perhaps it doesn't matter - perhaps the important thing is that we reach that point of self-realization/self-discovery, not fidelity to a writer's text. But that seems to me to be the stance of the Nazis who renewed their "spiritual" batteries by listening to Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, etc etc

I'm not sure about that. The response of a 21st century listener, no matter which direction it might take, to the St Matthew Passion, is going to be quite different from that of the congregation (individually or collectively) in 1729 in Leipzig that it was written for. And if music really were so "spiritually uplifting" that it couldn't be misused by Nazis (to name only them), it would be more like an anaesthetic than like something that (potentially) interacts with and activates human intelligence, and catalyses people's own sensory/intellectual liberation (or not). Straying a bit here, sorry.

How precise a set of instructions is a score? There are a few things to unpack here in my opinion. Firstly, to what extent is it interesting to view a score as a "set of instructions" at all? I prefer something more like thinking of a score as consisting of proposals for a certain music to be made, which can be extremely precise, or not precise at all, or can be very precise in some ways and not at all in others, and so on. No two scores are alike in this regard, either because in different periods and different places different assumptions have been made about what and how much needs to be notated, or (particularly in the last 60 years or so) because the composer has made this feature a compositional determinant in itself rather than a set of assumptions. Notation originally evolved, it seems, in order to codify a preexistent practice (as it still does in most non-Western classical music cultures that use notation in some shape or form), and then took on a life of its own once it was seen that it made various things possible which previously hadn't been and which, crucially, had already been developing informally within the musical tradition in question (ie. church music in France). Given that it's a medium of communication between composers and performers, it embodies all the potential (including the potential for misunderstanding) of any other such medium. I feel this is a more fruitful way to imagine the question of interpretation than to think of it as a "barrier", where the score represents an ideal performance which any given rendition might be closer to or further from. A musical performance can transcend by far the notated elements which occasioned it - this is the kind of situation that for example jazz composers are always aiming at.

As for musicology, I'm reminded that Robert Schumann set up the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in order to create a bridge of understanding between composers and audiences. In the meantime most musicological writing is primarily intended for an audience of other musicologists, which is a great shame and a waste of intellectual energy in my opinion, although there are still plenty of writers on music who fulfil Schumann's original vision; I mentioned Paul Griffiths in this context on another thread the other day.

[ardcarp]

A musical performance can transcend by far the notated elements which occasioned it

Of course it can. The danger is, I suppose, when performers and conductors feel the need to do something 'different' from anything that's been done before. The urge for originality can wreck a composer's original intentions....insofar as we know them. Some harpsichordists muck about with rhythms to an extent which (in my guts I feel) a Baroque composer would find inexplicable. And how far was the recent Mozart Requiem (discussed on the Prom thread) away from any established norm in terms of its tempi and tempo fluctuations?

[teamsaint]

Going back to Doversoul’s question about Post Colonial Critial Theory, Malcolm Arnold’s Symphony # 4 might make an interesting study.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MJdS_K1C4aw

I guess some of this would intersect with the sort of issues and discussions around cultural appropriation that ( I think) are quite prevalent in World Music circles, but I would think many of those discussions tend to focus on commercial aspects.

[Richard Barrett]

The urge for originality can wreck a composer's original intentions....insofar as we know them.

I'm sure I've said this before, but "the composer's intentions" is maybe not something that ought to be overemphasised. I was listening the other day to Messiaen's own recording of his Méditations sur le Mystère de la Saint Trinité and finding somewhat remarkable (as others have done before me) how he seems to play very fast and loose with his own "intentions" as regards the rhythmical/durational aspect of the music, something which elsewhere he was at pains to point out was very precisely and systematically organised (and notated, of course). So what are we to think of his intentions and how important they are? (I don't think his capabilities as an organist should be questioned!) I do agree with you where earlier music is concerned, that an "urge for originality" can distort what we might think of at any particular moment in history as how the music ought to sound, which may or may not be directly connected to the composer's intentions. But it's often not as simple as it may seem. Take OVPP performance of JS Bach's music for vocal ensemble, for example. I think the evidence that this is how the music was performed in its original setting is hard to refute. Nevertheless many people find it hard to believe that this is how the composer "intended" the music to sound, claiming instead that he "would have preferred" more voices if he had had them at his disposal, and that's the beginning of a very slippery slope if you ask me.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Of course it can.

I'd use the same words, but with a different emphasis: It can, of course, and most of the works in the repertory certainly benefit from performers' insightful distortions of a text. (R-K's Scheherazade benefits tremendously from a conductor's alterations to the score - such as replacing it with a different work.) Many works require details to be "filled in", either because the composer was involved in performance, and didn't need to supply such details (all those Baroque Trio Sonatas for where there's just the melodic material and a figured Bass) or because the composer's concept is that the work emerges from a performer's creative involvement in deciding the details). These are, if I've understood Richard's #1086, the varying degrees of precison in the "proposals" that a score offers anyone interested in performing - or "listening" to - them. (Again there are parallels with theatre works: Shakespeare's texts have fewer stage directions than Strindberg's - and many scripts depend on improvisation; on the actors' own creative responses to the situations that emerge in performance.)

But there are some works I believe, that are so rich in details and possibilities that these cannot all be presented in any single performance; some features of the score/text have to be missed out ("left for next time"). I don't believe that I have ever heard a performance of, for example, any of the Beethoven Quartets from the Op 59 set onwards that "transcends" the possibilities latent in the scores. My attitude is that, in these instances, the role of the performers is to eek out during rehearsals (another form of analysis) those features that they wish to give precedence to when presenting the works to an audience - whilst as fully aware as they can be of those features that they are having to sacrifice. (And, of course, seeking performance "clues" in what Musicology & Music History can tell them of the performance habits of the composers' times that were so ingrained, they didn't dream they needed to include in scores.) For me, this is enables me to take a more "charitable" attitude towards a performance of such works - precisely, if you like, acknowledging the "ideal" in the score that can be aspired towards, if never fully realized (the "bold lovers" on Keats' Grecian Urn). There are scores/texts that can transcend by far the performances they occasion.

[Pulcinella]

Going back to Doversoul’s question about Post Colonial Critial Theory, Malcolm Arnold’s Symphony # 4 might make an interesting study.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MJdS_K1C4aw

I guess some of this would intersect with the sort of issues and discussions around cultural appropriation that ( I think) are quite prevalent in World Music circles, but I would think many of those discussions tend to focus on commercial aspects.

Arnold's own recording (with the LPO on Lyrita) takes 54'11"; Penny (National SO of Ireland on Naxos) 37'47"; and Handley (RLPO on Sony, originally Conifer) 37'26".
What, if anything, does that tell us?
(I don't think there are any repeats that the composer follows that others don't!)

[Serial_Apologist]

Arnold's own recording (with the LPO on Lyrita) takes 54'11"; Penny (National SO of Ireland on Naxos) 37'47"; and Handley (RLPO on Sony, originally Conifer) 37'26".
What, if anything, does that tell us?
(I don't think there are any repeats that the composer follows that others don't!)

What it tells me is that Arnold was autistic, maybe Aspergers - which his music, in general beyond the issue of performance duration, tells me, having now found out more about autism.

I've long felt Arnold to have been autistic, as opposed to schizophrenic, as he was medically ascribed, though I suppose it might be possible to be autistic and schizophrenic at the same time? One trait often found in Aspergers - my father typified this, and I have deliberately sought to counteract it in myself (though some on here might find that hard to believe!) - is an inability to gauge a recipient's taking on board what one is telling them - both in terms of the amount of detail, qualification on qualification, and the time taken in saying it. Dad would detain people in the room long after they'd tried their best and politest to signal to him that they had to leave. How nice not having to gauge the audience's reaction to being kept personal prisoner for longer than would be the case were someone else to be telling them exactly the same thing! Nuff said!!!

[Richard Barrett]

(R-K's Scheherazade benefits tremendously from a conductor's alterations to the score - such as replacing it with a different work.)

You just can't stop yourself can you?

[Richard Barrett]

What it tells me is that Arnold was autistic

Whoa. Really? Surely you'd have to have more evidence than that before coming to such a sweeping conclusion.

[Bryn]

Whoa. Really? Surely you'd have to have more evidence than that before coming to such a sweeping conclusion.

Indeed. My understanding was that his main maladies were alcoholism and bipolar episodes, both of which were ameliorated in the lead-up to his composing his 9th Symphony.