music only on scores? school of thought?

Guys,

Sorry for the continuous questions. I'm finally working on my thesis, and I'm trying to get as much in as possible, and get bibliography, references, etc... Any help will be most appreciated.

I seem to recall some kind of school of thought, which said that music exists without the need of a performance, or a recording. That a score doesn't need to be performed to be called music, and so on... Any ideas on which school of thought is that, or something similar to that (who said such things, etc)?

Thank you all and thanks for hanging on my ramblings...

Nikolas

Schoenberg uttered something along the lines of:

'The performer, for all of his intolerable arrogance, is completely unnecessary, except as his interpretations make the music understandable to those unfortunate enough not to be able to read it in print.'

Hope that helps.

It was something from the performance-art end of things in the 60s maybe? I've heard it too. Kind of agree.

aaah.... that's something indeed...

I'll have to research further on that though... :-/ any idea on where the quote is from?

It also seems linked (in the opposite kind of way) with the idea of free improvisation... At least from my highly personal point of angle... (<-just rambling here, keep on offering ideas, please)

Interesting question Nikolas... I will think further on it.

BUT surely, music, like any language exists in both written and oral/aural forms?

Does a poem become "poetry" only when read aloud?

Does a carving become "sculpture" only when gazed upon?

I'm not sure how deeply I believe what I just said, but...we'll see.

...

You're getting into "if a tree falls in the forest" philosophical territory. And, if we can keep buffoons/jesus/tonaloty out of this thread, we could have a good discussion.

You're getting into "if a tree falls in the forest" philosophical territory. And, if we can keep buffoons/jesus/tonaloty out of this thread, we could have a good discussion.

No, I'm kidding.

Discuss, discuss. I need it! Desperately! :)

Schoenberg uttered something along the lines of:

'The performer, for all of his intolerable arrogance, is completely unnecessary, except as his interpretations make the music understandable to those unfortunate enough not to be able to read it in print.'

Hope that helps.

Wow that's an incredible quote...I like it.

im the totally opposite, i need the recording to fully understand how a score works, i just can't see the lines of notations going through my brain and processing them as sound. Many would disagree, but i need something audible, im that kind of guy. (but also at the same time i'm trying not to over-rely on just listening)

for example, i compose a piece for a violin, i can imagine what it will really sound like when the performer plays it, so i will ask my violin sessionist to play it according to the way i want it to be (with minimal scoring). i use really good sounding samples from east west to first create a mock-up which usually sounds 30% of what i really want, then i make use of the performer to create my vision, record it down, and wala- totally awesome (totally what i would expect) . so for me, the performer brings out my vision, and i can't see myself just having that vision in my head, music is meant to be shared anyway!

just my 1 cents worth! i know many would disagree, but i can't really read scores and imagine them in my head.

and to illustrate my point even further, take for example the following "quintet" done by a fellow YC forumer:

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/quintet-flute-clarinet-violin-viola-cello-18000.html

first I looked at the score, and i tried to imagine how it would sound like ( I did, but gave up after awhile)

I downloaded the midi.

Listened to it with references to the score

*** Thought it sounded really awful, because the midi played back with only a piano sound with weird modulations.

*** Composition wise, i thought it was quite abrupt, the flow of the piece was kind of weird IMHO

*** DON"T understand the great critics received by the piece

*** Might have a totally different stand if it was rendered with better samples in an audio format

Don't start flaming me, i've looked at the score, and it doesnt mean if it REALLY LOOKS LIKE A SCORE somewhat, it would sound nice, infact, i think the midi gave me a clearer picture that i thought that piece sucked to a certain extent, the counterpoints sound strange, and some of the lines don't go well together (again, just a damn stupid opinion of mine)

So there you have it, my personal take on your topic "Music only on scores"

likewise, i know any music guru here could just take a listen to my tracks and go (this guy's got no musical sh*t in him, just a melody with very basic harmony lines or smth, he only knows how to cover it with production) ( and also the reason why I'm trying to focus a lot more on traditional harmony and theories in my music studies now)

btw, just so maybe i can get more constructive criticism at the same time, check out my latest piece which is for a clarinet ensemble (3 clar 1 bass clar) : http://www.sympheramusic.com/TheWorldsEndClarVer.mp3

this clarinet ensem version is a version i derived from an original piece made earlier on ( was just experimenting with my new stormdrum 2 library i got from east west, and sort of made this piece):

http://www.sympheramusic.com/281208WorldsEnd.mp3

flame away :)

Interesting question Nikolas... I will think further on it.

BUT surely, music, like any language exists in both written and oral/aural forms?

Does a poem become "poetry" only when read aloud?

Does a carving become "sculpture" only when gazed upon?

I'm not sure how deeply I believe what I just said, but...we'll see.

...

You're getting into "if a tree falls in the forest" philosophical territory. And, if we can keep buffoons/jesus/tonaloty out of this thread, we could have a good discussion.

I don't think the comparison to poetry completely fits. Poetry, as an art of language, has an important root in the implied meaning of words and not really in the medium it is conveyed through. It is maybe the most abstract form of art we know, because it is bound to an intellectual concept (language) rather than a physical entity like colours or sounds.

Of course, the distinction never was quite so clear, considering the early ties between poetry and song, speech rhythm/melody, etc. And the visual arts also defined themselves by conveying a specific happening for a long time, even if the visual medium always used to be the strongest common factor. And in the 20th century it has been dissolved even more with poetry that doesn't even necessarily have to convey any meaning but can consist of mere words/letters that are chosen either for optical or aural reasons.

Likewise, music and the visual arts have lost some of their distinct bindings to certain physical mediums (with concept art, multimedia, etc.) and it's today perfectly possible that a visual artist creates an artwork that consists merely of sounds coming from speakers, a composer creating a score with the mere purpose of being looked at, etc.

But it should also be clear that the dissolution of these distinctions means that the different forms of art begin to become the same thing. If music cannot be defined as an acoustical thing anymore, it can no longer be separated from visual arts. If poetry consists of words that are chosen merely for how they sound without consideration of linguistic meaning it can no longer be separated from music. And so on.

Of course, one could say that a musical score that has been intended as nothing else but just that can still be a musical entity rather than a painting in the sense that it incites the reader to imagine sounds. But we're on a very hard to define border there, since this experience depends merely on the approach of said reader, and on whether she or he knows how to read this particular score as music, or not.

This is why I'd say for something to be "distinctly musical", the intention of an actual acoustical performance is essential, since this is the only clear border I can draw that makes any sense to me.

I do however not think it is important that something is distinctly musical. No art form has ever been totally pure (i.e. there are always some visual elements in a musical performance etc.), and the less "pure" forms have given us a range of extremely different artworks that enrich our culture in interesting ways. (Think of Kagel's or Globokar's musical performances, of the baroque op

I don't the score itself has any meaning, except in conjunction with the mind of one looking at it (in which case, it still may not have any meaning...). Unless some reader, somewhere, can understand or somehow learn to interpret the score, it's really just dots on paper, in my opinion.

However, I think music can exist outside performance - it can exist in the mind of the composer! (Which, one might argue, is really just an internal performance.) Ok, I really don't know much about this topic, but I try...

some einar englund was of completely opposite view and said something along these lines: music on paper is not music, or not yet music.

on topic - weren't they called conceptualists? and mainly because of reasons different than schoenberg - music that cannot be written because concrete soundworld is not enough to express the concepts.

well, for that one could reply - go and engage in mathematics, which is the purest symbolical system expressing thought.

i don't think many imaginative wankers can call themselves kings of porn :D

Music is sound.

When you look at a score, it's just representations of those sounds. When you read it, you're playing the music to yourself, in your head. Same thing with writing, though since words have literal meanings it is possible to read without ever knowing what the words sound like (like for deaf people, obviously).

So no, a score isn't music. I don't think so, at least.

Well, a score is an abstract representation of music. But the symbols may not (and clearly do not) translate into actual music for all people. Schoenberg's remark was essentially that performances are only really necessary for those who can't understand the "language" of traditional musical notation. (Music itself is kind of symbolic, though, too, isn't it? Symbolic in the same sense words or notation are symbolic. While alone, it doesn't mean anything, interpretation by the human mind can cause it to evoke emotion...or something else.)

Well, a score is an abstract representation of music. But the symbols may not (and clearly do not) translate into actual music for all people. Schoenberg's remark was essentially that performances are only really necessary for those who can't understand the "language" of traditional musical notation.

Ok, thanks for proving my point further :P. If you know how to, a score can become music. If you don't know how, it's just ink on a page. Obviously for most people music really is just sound to them.

And yes, once those sounds are made, we each have our own personal and cultural perceptions of those sounds. Completely different topic, though

Ok, thanks for proving my point further.

Anytime!

I wasn't responding to you in particular, I just felt like responding again. :P

...consider this thought experiment...it's a rip from jackson's 'mary' experiment...

take a man who is deprived of any hearing from childbirth. consider him being taught all about music in a formal way - the scales, the methods to put them, vary them, the signatures, meter, all that has been done in musical theory since it arrived.

will a man have a sense of rhythm? a sense of tonic?

i think no. but he will still be able to write (in a theoretical form) them down. he could look at the score and know what meter, what scale is used and so on. he himself would be able to create scores. does it make him a man, who knows what music is? if by some miracle, he was to gain access to the world of sound after he knew everything about music in a theoretical way, would he be surprised? would he know something more and something new by becoming open to empirical datum of sound?

i think yes. but i don't think that he would become a better composer in a formal way.

so, it begs the question - is the fact of hearing (sound waves) essential to music? does a fact of hearing make a music out of something else (score,algorithm, thought process)? if the whole population of men were deaf, would they create music? is music rather a general proccess of thought expressed in a particular symbolic system, that has (accidently) wired itself down to sound? or is it the other way arround - the system is derived from a contingent empirical fact of hearing a sound?

would there be a meaningful reason to create music if there was no one hearing it?

i wish it was so simple and we could go to pre-saussurian understanding of linguistics. but we have to be more cautious and not confuse language as a communicative tool and language as concept creating mechanism. in a very narrow world, language is just communicative tool, but it gets it's meaning rather independendly of seperate facts as existence of a dog, pig or cat. there are three seminal works that question language as a simple domain dealing with sign vs. signifier. from late wittgenstein through derrida and to chomskian linguistics the power of language has been shown to consist in rather more unusual and contradictory functions - for example chomsky would probably argue that music as a reasonable structure is dependent on language structures that lay deeper than the language as a tool of communication. that is - he would ascend toward more general and universal concept of language informing the domains of aural, visual, sensomotorical representations and the way they start to have meaning for us, human beings, independently of strict empirical evidence (wittgenstein's 'language games' could be the example of vague and very loose empiricism).

what stroke me as a thing i wanted to clear out in your post, was statement that "You do not need to physically HEAR the music performed in order to hear it in your head and understand what it would sound like if it were potentially performed." well, i don't know to what degree one could call ''hearing it in your head'' adequate/musical experience that equals experiencing soundwaves. i certainly would doubt that (average) human mind can hold an undisrupted series of let's say 3-4 voice sequence in his head. i would doubt that one can hear distinct and bright representation of large orchestra polyphony in his head. so the question still remains - do we call music it's bare structure (that you can possibly imagine without having any audible representation (notes, pictures, colours, schemes) or do we need something like outer being of musical body to fully understand and think music (more generally, does experience give us something new and irreplacable)?

Music exists on the score on an intellectual level. It exists as a crystallised thought or idea. On a physical level, a score is nothing more than a two dimensional compilation of lines and dots...

Alexandros

Music exists on the score on an intellectual level. It exists as a crystallised thought or idea. On a physical level, a score is nothing more than a two dimensional compilation of lines and dots...

Alexandros

hm, i'd say music exists on the score on a physical level, where i would leave intellectual (level) somewhere in between the ears, but of course it would beg the question about the nature of physical/intellectual distinction and difference ;)

hm, i'd say music exists on the score on a physical level, where i would leave intellectual (level) somewhere in between the ears, but of course it would beg the question about the nature of physical/intellectual distinction and difference

Well, I am of the belief that a tree does make a sound if it falls and nobody is around, so similarly the score does not need the ears or the mind of an individual to consitute an intellectual representation of the music that is ''recorded'' on it.

Alexandros

Well, I am of the belief that a tree does make a sound if it falls and nobody is around, so similarly the score does not need the ears or the mind of an individual to consitute an intellectual representation of the music that is ''recorded'' on it.

Alexandros

so, what you saying is that deaf mankind would still be musically rich and produce music?

that is - the score (theoretical connections) is ultimate source and aim of music and that some twin earth inhabitant would be able to understand human music even if he/she had different senses?

because if there's no nead for mind-ear to understand music it must exist in some absolute sense and we could actually think human input in history of developing music to be just contingent side effect of Thought itself.

it's like borges' books reading themselves.

I think you misunderstood me. I am talking about the score itself and what it constitutes in regards to music and not whether there is a need of a mind or sensory organs to understand music or not. That's something else.

Ok, basically what I'm saying is that the music on score can exist on an intellectual level without the need of someone reading the score, simply because the score itself is a recording of the composer's intellectuality behind the music.

As far as the "music only on scores" school of thought, personally I can't really understand it. It's the same as not developing photos from their negatives or for a sculptor not realising the sculpture from his drawings or leaving a choreography on paper et cetera. I mean, come on, we are material beings. Our minds can do so much. Yes, we can read a score and "think" how it would sound, we can look at a choreography and again imagine the movements or look at the drawings of a sculptor and understand how it would look like in 3d etc. , but is that really the point?

In my opinion music is so much more than mere notes on a score or our imagining of how these notes should sound...

Alexandros

1.Ok, basically what I'm saying is that the music on score can exist on an intellectual level without the need of someone reading the score, simply because the score itself is a recording of the composer's intellectuality behind the music.

2.In my opinion music is so much more than mere notes on a score or our imagining of how these notes should sound...

Alexandros

in 1. you say that score is a recording of composers thoughts. but my point was - would there be musical thoughts if there were no sounds in the first place? in this sense - if reading a score is translating notes into sound representations AND sound representation is somehow dependent on your experiencing sensory input - 1. statement is a bit confusing because score then as such has developed only because we have sensory inputs in the first place, historically speaking. on the other hand, what you seem to imply is that thoughts may exist in various forms - such as scores, cds, books and they do so objectively (without a need to be experienced), which is interesting concept and sometimes very tempting (douglas hofstadter seems to be implying this together with functionalists in his works), but if it is right then physicall substrata of any thought (be it neurons, paper and ink, colour and so on) seem to be non essential and we are left with someway abstract concept of thought as something that happens wherever and whenever certain patches occur.

so, i asked you to understand what do you mean, because, i don't know, somehow i fail to see how you can think both views at the same time.

i tend to agree with your 2. statement, because i too believe that music is always something else than definitions and various forms of (representating) it. but then, i think, i'm in one or another way in a schism with the views i mentioned - both historical evolutionist and more abstract functionalism.

so, well, just that.

in 1. you say that score is a recording of composers thoughts. but my point was - would there be musical thoughts if there were no sounds in the first place?

I don't know. Only a person born deaf could give you an answer on that.

in this sense - if reading a score is translating notes into sound representations AND sound representation is somehow dependent on your sensory input - your statement is a bit confusing because score then as such has developed only because we have sensory inputs in the first place, historically speaking

True. The arts seem to have evolved because of our senses. I don't understand however what that has to do with the discussion. Perhaps, this is where the misunderstanding occurs.

on the other hand, what you seem to imply is that thoughts may exist in various forms - such as scores, cds, books and they do so objectively, which is interesting concept and sometimes very tempting (douglas hofstadter seems to be implying this together with functionalists in his works), but if it is right then physicall substrata of any thought (be it neurons, paper and ink, colour and so on) seem to be non essential.

so, i asked you to understand what do you mean, because, i don't know, somehow i fail to see how you can think both views at the same time

Not per se, but I do believe that every object is a crystallisation of the thought behind it. Physical substrata of thought (I don't understand why you included neurons), as you call them, would not be essential if we would be able to think of something and materialise it. And this is why I can't understand the "music only on scores" notion. It's totally metaphysical, but at the same time so attached to the existence of the score, that is the physical. A contradiction in itself.

Alexandros

"Music" is a construct that exists without notation - this is my personal philosophy.

The deaf man will have his music. Inanimate objects as they sympathetically vibrate to specific frequencies would engender them a music. Atoms a distant from each other in a void will have a music ...the only question to ask does the void have a music? Yes, it is the "not" music - a music NOT reliant on a vibrating objects. Nothing is just another something.

PS. Music exists for humans without the score - the cognitive act of silent composition is an active musical process (to vary Descartes- I imagine, therefore I am - in this particular case)