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Isn't anyone making creative choices in a musical context (composing or improvising) a music theorist of sorts? Can arbitrary choices be truly artistic? Surely there can be a more informed musician, but more informed of what? Words and definitions? If theory makes you artistically free then fine. It's a tool not the house.

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In a sense the classic composer was arbitrary compared to today's standards.
And in the day of figured bass and improvisation this was very much true.
Apparently the composer didn't care enough to write out the full part.

"Can arbitrary choices be truly artistic"

Some degree of choice exists in performance - like other things I think
aleatoric technique is a continuum. The extreme of control is using a
program like csound where every aspect - not matter how tiny can be under
your control and the other end is say... calling Times Square from 4:30 to
5:30 pm on a July 11th Tuesday afternoon your composition. In between exists
everything else.

For example

Beethoven didn't specify "exactly" how a viola section should sound - his
ideal wasn't necessarily the ideal of the conductor or of the performer or
of the particular instrument used. So... random (small) changes in the
timbre and possible intonation were / are accepted.

Chris

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 4:02 PM, David Young <anklesjuggle07@...>wrote:

>
>
> Isn't anyone making creative choices in a musical context (composing or
> improvising) a music theorist of sorts? Can arbitrary choices be truly
> artistic? Surely there can be a more informed musician, but more informed of
> what? Words and definitions? If theory makes you artistically free then
> fine. It's a tool not the house.
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>

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