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

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.

I've often wondered whether the ideas that come to a composer in an auralization can really be considered "music". Sometimes it strikes me that they're not really music at all, but only metaphors for music. Metaphors of metaphors -- an entirely abstract form a thought. I sometimes have these "visitations" and feel incredibly frustrated by their lack of concrete presence... actually, I should rephrase that. I'm not frustrated by the ideas, since they often seem to be what I'm truly interested in creating, but rather in the slipperiness they exhibit when trying to bring them to life. It's almost as though they are just phantoms -- shells of ideas without any genuine existence, beyond the mental realm... That sounds flakey, I guess. But that's how I experience them. The whole challenge, to me, is in finding a way of capturing them in sound -- REAL sound. Maybe this is just a shortcoming in my training... not being able to pinpoint the notes, chords, colours, and so on. I honestly don't know. But I can't really say this is "music" until it's realized, either in performance, or at the very least, in score.

Don't know if that adds anything to the discussion...

J.

I guess what Dave is after that the compositional idea of Beethoven is so strong that hardly any performance can destroy or cover it

An idea disappearing into the performance is not something negative, it´s perfect amalgamation. If the listeners mind also disappears into the performance the situation of magic might be given.

William,

Okay I now understand what you are saying more thoroughly and don't disagree in an ultimate sense. You would agree as well that Beethoven may have heard his brilliant idea performed rather badly (even though he may have concieved it in the manner you suggest: as a performance.)

My point is that there doesn't seem to be any harm or error in making a distinction between the two even if in a higher sense your point is more essentially true.


Dave

Dave, I agree with what you said anyway, and was originally only referring to something like jazz that in a way has no idea until it is performed (at least jamming type jazz as opposed to charts). Though something made me think about how a so-called "musical idea" is actually a mental projection of a performance.

Though I have the same experience as jbm - I wonder about that, isn't it a function of time in the composition process? In other words, when you first have an "idea" - what is it? Actual notes or sounds? Sometimes not - it is more a feeling that there is something that can be developed.

Yeah, that's the idea I'm getting at, William. Sometimes it seems there's something fairly concrete there, at least concrete enough that I THINK it can become a piece... but the problem is that there isn't necessarily any temporal element. Or rather, it doesn't take place in real time. It's like there's an IDEA of time, without the idea actually occupying musical time. This is getting pretty abstract. I probably need to sleep!
That said, however, I've decided to go back and do some heavy ear training. Maybe that will drag these ideas out of the mental ether -- kicking and screaming!

J.

Witold Lutoslawski once said (though he was speaking in polish and I was never positive that i fully understood him) that every piece of music has a "key idea". And he claimed that it COULD be but NEED NOT be a fragment of musical material, a melody or set of chords or rhythm. But that (presumably for good, successful works only) the whole composition had to conform to this idea for it to be successful. I think he felt both his Livres and his 'Cello concerto succeeded in this way.

(sorry Polish speakers, I can't do the funny L that his name requires.)

That's an interesting conversational tidbit, but unfortunately - having heard Lutoslawski - I'm not sure he had any ideas that anyone in this dimension can understand. (Does anyone know how to transfer fingernails being scraped across a blackboard into MIDI? A fingernail controller probably. Get one to do Lutoslawski properly with VSL, please.) Though I'm sure on a higher dimensional plane that I will never ever get to, being an ordinary human, Lutoslawski's ideas are absolutely FASCINATING (probably to the advanced Krell civilization which vaporized in one night after a million years of shining sanity).

William -- not sure if you've heard Lutoslawski, not the composer whose music I'd describe as you did -- but anyway, if it's not in your frame of reference, maybe you'd not find it provocative or even interesting. He was a good thinker about music, more than most, so came to mind with regard to this discussion. Forgive the quote, then!

getting further off-topic, it occurs to me to wonder how far we are away from some of the composers of the past ... how many 'degrees of relationship', knowing someone who knew someone? I knew Lutoslawski, when he was a famous composer and I a student; wonder if he knew anyone who knew Wagner? Can anybody claim two or three degrees away from Debussy? Brahms? Surely Richard Strauss can't be too far away from us. Beethoven?

Well I wasn't serious about that anyway. But another example of what you're talking about is Schoenberg being a friend of Mahler, which is quite a huge range of music history in two people. Or the people who knew Richard Strauss late in his very long life.

The man I studied conducting with Fritz Zweig was a close personal of almost anyone of importance you can think of: Shoenberg, Stravinsky, Strauss, Hindimith, Puccini, Korngold, Walter, Furtwangler, Klemperer, Zell and on and on. Can you imagine hearing personal references to Stravinsky or Hindimith? (Which I did.)

Dave Connor

Is this OT OK? or should this thread keep going here?

@William said:

Well I wasn't serious about that anyway. But another example of what you're talking about is Schoenberg being a friend of Mahler, which is quite a huge range of music history in two people.

I wouldn´t say so. Schönberg, and especially the later Schönberg, is a deeply romantic composer. Though not a monstrous one...

Mathis,

What do you mean by "not a monstrous one?

Just curious.

Dave

Ask Bill... [[;)]]

Just one of Mathis's colorful descriptions.

I would say Schoenberg started out MONSTROUSLY Romantic (i.e. the Gurrelieder), however he became far more of a modernist later on. Of course you can say that about Mahler, whose 9th and 10th symphonies are beyond just about any other modernism in every aspect you can discuss. Mahler was quite similar to Beethoven - he was a giant who stood astride two eras, and helped to usher in the new.

I agree entirely. Particularly about Mahler striding two eras as Beethoven did. I also agree that Schoenberg had a Romantic quality (supercharged emotionalism) in all his music, beginning or end.

DC

Well, pianistically I'm two frames of reference away from Leschetizky, then Liszt, then Czerny/Beethoven etc.
It is actually something I find remarkable how the musical 'schools' thrive and propagate, and that the teachings/styles/methods acrue in this way.

As to the question, what is music? It is the human essence in sound.
You can quote me on that. [[;)]]

I'm one frame away from Leschetizky apparently as Fritz Zweig studied with him. Zweig studied composition with Schoenberg and conducting with Walter and Furtwangler. In his later years he became the last surviving student of Schoenberg's who had studied with him in Europe. If your German is good you can read his correspondance with Schoenberg. Just do a search on Fritz Zweig.

Dave Connor

My command of German is limited, but I can piece things together when reading it.
Did a brief search - quite a remarkable career that Zweig had. With all that first hand experience, studying with him must have been infinitely illuminating. I'll certainly look up that correspondence when time allows. I'd been wanting to practice my German, and here's a good excuse. [[;)]]

Getting back to the topic a bit, I'd say that performance is the rendering of the musical idea. The musical idea has an existence as a score (a detailed set of instructions), but is only concretized in a way intelligible to the audience when those instructions are put into action - performance.
Interpretation ultimately can only go so far - no matter how distorted, it is still a rendering of the musical idea as predicated by the score.

In terms of creation, the musical idea may not necessarily begin with something musical at all (as in notes or sounds) but rather a need to express 'something', that something frequently being inexpressible in any other way besides the music resulting from it. Hence composer frustration when the musical material has not come out as desired, leaving that initial 'idea' either not expressed, partially expressed, or incorrectly expressed and thus making its rendering through performance (the act of making the musical idea 'physical' - or physically perceptible) impossible. The Babblefish effect? [:D]