Do you worry about players being bored

About music as communication:

I also didn't understand that Mendelssohn quotation until I went to the a museum of art and I was particularly taken by a certain painting. I was really moved, as I am often moved by music but rarely by paintings. Then for some reason the Mendelssohn quote came to my mind and I understood it. Music is a lot more abstract than other arts. To the listener, there is not a physical tangible component, so it really depends on every single listener's interpretation more than a painting or a written poem or something.

It's like saying music is the "universal language". That's a cliched term but as others have said here, the same music can mean different things to different people.

The paradoxical explanation I gave explains it on a different level from "happy music makes anyone feel happy"

So, to get back to my comparison, music would still be like the smell of a city, because that's also intangible, but not like the sight of a mountain, because you can actually touch the mountain? Does that also mean any kind of noise is the "universal language"?

I also don't quite understand how a painting consisting of red and grey dots on a canvas or a dadaistic poem doesn't depend as much on your personal interpretation as a piece of music. I -do- to some degree understand where you're coming from it when you are speaking of representational paintings and poetry, where it makes use of a widely known symbolism that really -does- stand for another thing, which is "communicated" through it (but of course even that is usually only a small part of such paintings and poems) - and of course it is true that the tradition of direct representation is much stronger in visual art and literature (especially literature) than in music. But all that tells me is that music is traditionally less communicative.

So I still fail to see how music is a form of universal communication. (Unless you call any stone on a road a form of universal communication, since anyone is free to attach any kind of meaning to it.)

A stone on the road was not created by a person, and is not likely to elicit strong emotions. What a weird analogy!

A painting: once it's painted, it's pretty much done.

Music: can change with every performance, more open to wide interpretations.

If you want to take the universal language idea further to mountains and smells, you could. And you could extended to any art form yes. But music lends itself especially well to it.

re: the Babbitt essay (Composer As Specialist aka Who Cares If You Listen), I have read it and I think it's a destructive path for music to take. Especially his last recommendation of a petulant retreat from audiences altogether into the refuge of "universities" where composers can live a private life of "scholarship."

Also this:

It often has been remarked that only in politics and the "arts" does the layman regard himself as an expert, with the right to have his opinion heard.

Well, because science is about a universal, objective, external reality. If a layman doesn't grasp a law of physics that doesn't nix it. The scientist can comfortably trust the evidence, not the layman.

Art (much like politics in fact) is about the internal and subjective. However at the deepest level this subjectivity is also universal (humans from all cultures laugh and cry).

The idea of "democratic rights" touches on this underlying universality. There is a similar concept in art. Of necessity both art and politics must maintain a pretty strong good faith that people are equally endowed with what Descartes called "good sense and reason," and that a mass of people will average out to have decent judgment.

Now of course anything new (in politics and music) will have mixed reviews. But we have to have faith that the wheat is sorted from the chaff over time. For example eugenics and votes-for-women are two political ideas of roughly equal vintage. A century later one has been accepted as self-evident and the other rejected as ridiculous and evil.

For people like Milton Babbitt however the "nobody can understand my work! It's like high math!" argument is their last refuge now that the "people will eventually recognize my genius, just like Beethoven" argument has thoroughly worn out ;)

The wheat HAS been sorted out... Serialism is as old as jazz... Milton's "total" serialism is as old as Elvis... At the temporal distance we stand from Schoenberg, people weren't waiting for Beethoven to finally catch on fire with the public, they were listening to Elgar!

I think Babbitt's had his chance don't you? :whistling: Instead of good faith towards the audience I read condescension and a good bit of sour grapes. That's the attitude of someone whose art has been rejected (while other art the same age as him, such as polytonality and atonality, is now deemed to have keen expressive power & is widely used in pop music, soundtracks, etc).

Milton's "music for experts" (a stalking horse for serialism) is dead.

Before you say anything concerning actual text in music being clear enough to actually transmit ideas and so on' date=' I'd like to say that that's not really the music doing the communication, it's an actual language doing it. Music by itself does not function on the same level and the only time it got close to that was when there were [b']established norms and conventions [/b](Minor is sad, dissonances are ugly, chromatic means pain, etc), which now are all obsolete. Without that context to make clear messages out of abstract musical material, forget about transmitting any concrete meaning through music.

They are not obsolete (they have evolved, certainly).

Whether sadness is a minor third or a major third as in the Renaissance madrigal, doesn't matter, as long as it's understood.

The dramatic/emotional function of melody and harmony will never, ever be rendered obsolete otherwise we would be, simply, a society without music. There would not be much point in listening to a record or singing a song or watching a movie with a soundtrack.

There is a dramatic function of instrumentation too. I wonder if you think this is obsolete? A horn is still a horn, with all that's associated with. An oboe is still a reed instrument. etc. If there was ever a point where listeners stopped relating to the horn AS a horn, there would be little point in continuing to write for it.

The wheat HAS been sorted out...

Indeed, it's very easy to tell people who have an education from people who don't thanks to opinions such as these:

If there was ever a point where listeners stopped relating to the horn AS a horn, there would be little point in continuing to write for it.

Do you know ANYTHING about modern art history? Anything, at all? That's the most hilariously ignorant statement I have seen in a very long time (and you got some HARD competition on that category on this forum, congrats!)

No seriously, I don't mean to be insulting but oh my god. I'm not even going to try to explain why because if it isn't BLUNTLY OBVIOUS to you, it's not worth even trying. No seriously, you can keep living in the 19th century. I'll just pretend you're posting from a time machine of some sorts and it'll make sense again.

Well, I would appreciate if you DID post why you disagree, instead of just posting that you disagree and that I'm too stupid to understand why your ideas are superior.

Debating a 40 year old Babbitt article that's pretty transparent? Don't you have anything better to do, Beeri?

Another sound position to have...given what he says (which is similar to what Norby and I've said so far.)

I wrote my view on boring players without reading more than the prompt. That was not a wise choice.

I realize now that you, SSC, and Norby have both more correctly defined your view points, which are more similar to mine than I can express.

Great insight in your posts.

I enjoyed the read.

"Maestro"

I'll get us all back on track (or at least try) :D

I don't worry about players being bored. One element of music is texture and how many players are playing at one time. Altering this to give everyone an 'interesting part' compromises the composition because it can severely affect the texture. Also, if the piece is interesting to listen to, then there won't be any problems with people being bored because they will be busy enjoying the music. [The first time the orchestra I play viola in was rehearsing the Waltz of the Flowers from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, the entire viola and cello sections forgot to come in after the harp solo because they were so busy listening to our talented harpist play.]

Seriously, why would you care about players being bored if it is necessary to create good music?

occasionally I'll take a look at my score so far and realize I haven't used the (for example) bass clarinets in awhile. I think, "oh, there's a timbre/playing range/whatever I haven't utilized yet, I should probably include that in the next passage." So it's not about players getting bored so much as it is having a sound resource go to waste.

As for repetative parts, if the music is still interesting as a whole then no problem

Brass parts in Mozart symphonies usually aren't the most exciting. Obviously he must have been a bad composer.

Brass parts in Mozart symphonies usually aren't the most exciting. Obviously he must have been a bad composer.

I don't appreciate sarcasm normally, but you bring up a good point, as well as the posts before you.

Sometimes boredom needs to be overlooked for the sake of the piece.