What is music?

[William]

Just a question...

However, I thought of it recently while listening to Mahler's 8th, the 70s Solti/Chicago Symphony performance recently re-released on CD. This particular work of both performance and composition has been called "the single greatest performance and recording of the greatest music ever composed." While I'm not sure that is absoluely true, it is surely one of the best. But what I was pondering had to do with listening, related to composing.

One may listen to this work of great mastery and genius complete, in one sitting, via an ordinary little CD player. But what is one really hearing? While I am tremendously impressed by all the work that went into this particular performance, all the world-class soloists, the great conductor, the (arguably) greatest orchestra in the world, the excellent recording etc. - what I really hear, with headphones clamped upon my head - is Mahler's ideas. In other words, the ideas that were in his head are transfered directly into mine. That is in my opinion, the whole point.

We live in a time when performers are everything. The composer has become a servant of the performer. And so many snobs will say, "well this recording is all well and good, but nowhere near as fine as hearing it in person." Why? So you cannot be within the concert hall with all those performers? But there are many distractions there. Like some joker talking in the seat right next to you. Or the fact you have indigestion that night. Or any number of other distractions. But with a composer's ideas that have been encoded into a perfect artwork like this CD, you have no distractions whatever - just those ideas that were in Mahler's brain being transfered directly into your own.

All this has a great deal to do with why I am so attracted to samples, which intensify the purely compositional aspect of musical sound. But it also raises the question of what people are ultimately after when they listen to music. And what, exactly, is music? An idea, or a performance? Being a composer I am biased and think it is an idea (or huge set of ideas as in Mahler or Beethoven). And performers are really the servants. Though they always strive to reverse the situation.

[metrobot]

this implies the distinction between music and entertainment. Most fans confuse the two, but especially nowadays, they are two very different things.

I go along with your definition that music is the conveying of ideas. Most popular music intermingles some to no ideas with lots of personality. Personality, whether it's an opera diva or Bono can be fun, but then that is entertainment.

[dackl]

Have you ever been to a concert and the guy next to you starts humming along to the orchestra?!? It's happened to me twice recently (once in L.A., once at the New York Phil.). Another anoying trend in concert-going is people who leave as soon as the last note starts its ring out. What are they -- at a football game? They want to be the first in their cars? They think the performers can't see them? I love it when the performer does an encore and all the early risers miss it. Serves them right.

Seems I've drifted off topic. However, even if going to live music can be annoying, I think it's essential. I'd rather hear an orchestra play live with all the mistakes and imbalances that might happen than hear a 16bit 44.1k sampled version of the same. Perfection in classical music is a false ideal -- vibrancy, emotion, ideas are the real reason for listening. As to whether the composer is more important than the performer -- I don't know. Is air more important than water? My favorite is hearing new compositions with a large orchestra. That to me is the ideal.

JD

[dpcon]

I purchased the score to Mahler's 8th yesterday, it being the only large work of his I didn't possess. I only heard the opening strains of the Solti version (William recomended) and decided I wasn't in the proper frame of mind. What I did hear was so lovely.

No question that recordings are a great advent in the history of music. We have the great Zell, Walter, Bernstein and countless other's performances captured forever. It seems that the best conductors and performers have always been in service to the composer while bringing they're own elan to the mix (unintentional pun.)

As composers ourselves, it is the musical germ and ideas that we listen for with (at least for me) the spirit of the work it's ultimate content.

Dave Connor

[hermitage59]

Dave, I'm in agreement with you.

As composers we play our part in bringing ideas to life and presenting a format for others to play. we have little or no control over who plays our stuff, and although our notes are written, the interpretation is in the hands of conductors and musicians alike. I think this is ok, because amongst poor interpretations of our work, there are good ones too.
There are no doubt many instances of composers being completely involved in the performance of their work who have interfered in the interpretation process, to the detriment of their own work. The composers knows what he wants to say, and if the musicians have a slightly different viewpoint, that in itself presents a different perspective, sometimes to the better.
Without the poor interepretations, how would we know the good ones are good? [[:|]]

Now there is a change on the horizon.

With the advent of giant, truly professional sample bases (VSL to the fore here), there is an opportunity for the composer to be both creator and performer at the same time. As we develop our skills in programming to match our creative output, our end product 'should' improve, and be entirely as we imagined it. We can't blame the samples, because as all you lucky VSL owners know, they are recorded and presented as purely as modern technology will allow.
And blaming the equipment won't help either, because it won't take too long before software and hardware will be built to accomodate these large sample libraries specifically, the only factor being cost, and that's up to us as well.
So, we can be entirely responsible for everything, and can't be tempted to blame the musicians when something isn't right, or isn't performed properly.
No, it will be entirely up to us, and the end work will reflect our skill, or lack of it, more now than at any time in musical history.

And the general public will decide if we are to congratulated, or derided.

We will be completely and solely responsible for our own success or failure.

Regards to you all!


Alex.

[cmpsr2000]

go watch "I <3 Huckabees." All your questions will be answered. [:D]

[mathis]

Bill, if it is the idea, why do you even need samples?

[William]

Mathis, that brings up the question of what the performance is doing, in this case, basically communicating the idea in someone's mind to another mind. So you do need performance in that sense. But the perspective by which music is viewed is involved also. When people sit there applauding like maniacs some arrogant baton waver (i.e., conductor) and his musicians after they've played the 19,456,371st performance of Beethoven's 5th, then you have an overvaluation of performance in my opinion. Though someone listening to Beethoven's ideas themselves, that is another matter. So I guess it is your perspective I am talking about. Obviously you need more than pure ideas, since art is about communication of ideas, not simply the formulation of them. Maybe also I am ultimately making a statement that recording and technology bring one closer to, not farther from, the essence of music. Which is not what you usually hear from the classical music establishment.

[lgrohn]

Let me put down some provocative theses:

1) There is nothing that could called "music theory". What is called "music theory" is just a set of conventions and rules. So Music theory" in not a THEORY. It is just a useful set of rules. And there are hundreds of sets of rules in different cultures. The word has historical background. The was "practice" and "theory" (rules). The word "theory" is used in the sense that a man on the street used that word. In sciences that word has another meaning.

2) There is nothing that could called "music analysis". What is called "music analysis" is just analysis of the score but not analysis of experience. The latter chould be called as "music analysis". If one can detect the tonal mode or find Schenker level based on the score etc. that doesn't not have much to do with listeners's experience.

3) There is not much that could be called science in music research. The worst example I know is a recent (eximia) PhD thesis:

An Object-Oriented Analysis of the Common Western Music Notation System
http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut/hum/taite/vk/lassfolk/">http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut/hum/taite/vk/lassfolk/

I wouldn't validate it even as a Master's thesis. When humanist start to play with tehcnology that's what you get...

Lauri Gröhn
metacomposer
http://www.synestesia.com

[mathis]

@William said:

Obviously you need more than pure ideas, since art is about communication of ideas, not simply the formulation of them.

Exactly, and that´s why I think you need a composer AND a performer, they depend on each other. A composer without a performer is nothing. If you do that yourself, fine, but you´re simply taking over this other job.

Performers overpowering the composer is simply bad taste and a disgusting egoistical attitude, but I don´t feel that question brings us closer to an answer, what music is.
And, besides that, there are also performing composers out there which, as performers, overpower their composing part. But that´s because the composer part is so weak... [:D]

[Dietz]

@lgrohn said:

Let me put down some provocative theses:
[...]

Lauri Gröhn
metacomposer
http://www.synestesia.com">http://www.synestesia.com

Interesting input, Lauri - thanks a lot. Personally, I concur a lot with these approaches (... can't talk about the PhD-thesis, of course).

/Dietz

[William]

mathis, perhaps you would enlighten me:

what is performance, and what is composition?

I do both - apparently - but unlike you I don't know the difference.

[lgrohn]

Just to confuse matters more:

My Java applet generates music (a midi file) from any picture in a few seconds. Just drop this midi file on the sequencer and the instrumentalist can mute his own part and play it from the screen and the sequencer will play the other parts. The instrumentalist can works as a composer and as a conductor and asa a soloist...

Lauri Gröhn
metacomposer
http://www.synestesia.com">http://www.synestesia.com

[mathis]

@William said:

mathis, perhaps you would enlighten me:

what is performance, and what is composition?

I do both - apparently - but unlike you I don't know the difference.

[*-)]: [*-)]: [*-)]: [*-)]: [*-)]:
It was you who started the differenciation, right? Composing is formulating an idea while performance is the transmitting of an idea, right?
Obviously borders might be very blurry, especially when thinking of improvised music, but even there you can distinguish the two. And in your case there´s no doubt about it at all, I would say.

But I´d like to add some more to the communication model. No communication without perception. So it´s not only the formulation of an idea and the transfer of it, it´s also and especially the cognition of the idea. And in my experience it´s there where most 'mistakes' occur.
Even if your performance is as pure as possible (realized by the composer, for example) you have no control over what your listener makes out of it.

There´s a certain magic of performers on stage, something you don´t have on a recording and even less on a sample realization.

[William]

That's what I was thinking but you put it better. I was trying to suggest that ultimately performance is composition, like Jimi Hendrix doing The Star Spangled Banner. Also, what are people hearing when they like a performer? - what that performer creates, not necessarily the composer's ideas.

I don't agree though that a recording does not have any "magic" - it is not just a mechanical thing devoid of life, if it is a good recording. Though obviously it is not the same "magic" as live. Which is why live theater will always continue to exist, even though movies also do.

Another thing - the worst recording or performance of Rite of Spring I ever heard was conducted by Stravinsky.

[Fernando]

A performance is always a performance of something. that "something" can be performed as many times as you want and is what you call "an idea" isnt it? That idea is what all the performances of the same work are sharing and comunicating. So yes, there is something that you reach when hearing music that is beyond the performance elements.
But there is a good reason to avoid the understanding of music as something which is all about ideas in that sense: the fact that there is no idea without performance. What you hear is always a performance of an idea, not an idea in itself (How could be that? you cannot hear ideas in the same way that you cannot smell colours) The only way to "reach the idea" is through the perfomance, which obviously involves the (re)production of sounds.
Imo, thinking in music in such idealistic way is reducing its essence to the aspects of harmmony, leit motiv and structure. But the richness of the music is also in relation with the beauty of certain sounds in themselves, and also with that mix of musical inteligence and technical excelence that is always present in every good performance and cannot be written in the score.

[William]

In a way I agree with you, but also disagree. You say that there is an "idea" and also a separate entity a "performance" - but ultimately, if analyzed, that idea will disappear into the performance, and is merely an assumption on the part of the audience. At least potentially this can happen, especially in my example of Jimi Hendrix. What is the idea there? It is formed by the performance, instantaneously. Of course jamming is often based on preconceived riffs and phrases, but to me it is overly "idealistic" (i.e. simplistic) to say "Right here we have an idea" and "Over here is the performance."

[mathis]

@William said:

that idea will disappear into the performance,

I think that´s the ultimate goal, right.

I didn´t say, there is NO magic in a recording, only that there´s a certain magic in a live performance which is missing in a recording. We totally agree here.

[dpcon]

William,

Here's my question: What is your take on the opening 4 notes of Beethoven's fifth? Here we have the quintessential "idea." I have never heard this disappear in any performance but of course heard myriad different performances of it. Through the many variables (such as tempo) it has been presented in countless ways. How do you apply what you're saying to this work?

Honest question my friend.

Dave

[William]

Well, those 4 notes are a performance - an imagined one. The performance was originally in Beethoven's mind. That is what I meant by the idea disappearing into a performance. There is no "idea" divorced from a performance, since Beethoven had to imagine the performance of those notes - their pitch and duration - prior to them being actually played.

Though I apologize for going deconstructionist here. I won't let it happen again.