brahms as wiseass

from our buddy jan swafford...

joe

http://www.slate.com/id/2150496/?nav=tap3

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@...>

I guess so!

Sometimes he went easy on his victims. When a lady gushed to
him, "How do you write such divine adagios?" he only shrugged, "My
publisher orders 'em that way."

-Stephen

-------------------------------------------------------------
wrote:
>
> from our buddy jan swafford...
>
> joe
>
> http://www.slate.com/id/2150496/?nav=tap3
>

"How do you write such divine adagios?"
=================================================

"It bears a sickening resemblance to the description one human
writer made of Heaven: "the regions where there is only life and
therefore all that is not music is silence."

Music and silence--how I detest them both!...We will make the whole
universe a noise in the end.

-- demon Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters (Letter XXII)

I was listening to The Screwtape Letters read by John Cleese while I
was on the treadmill today, and this passage made me pause to wonder
about the association between music and the divine...there are times
when I can "feel" that association, and there is another reason that
I think it is valid:

Music is ordered noise. It is math.

I remember writing in a journal as a teenager and fixed
atheist, "God doesn't exist, but if he did, he would be made of
math."...I do think that that thought had some truth in it. Not that
God is made of math, but that God made math, and that math is the
foundation of all God's physical creation.

At the heart of every science, at the heart of every description of
the universe, at the heart of every observed law of nature, there is
math. It is everything. To make a very crude metaphor: it is the
operating system on which the whole network of physical reality is
based.

And so then it makes sense to me, the association between music and
the divine. Music is math, and math is the closest we can come to
describing the mind of God in reference to creation without bringing
in explicit talk of the spiritual realm.

http://freemanhunt.blogspot.com/2006/04/music-math-and-god.html

-All above comments by Freeman Hunt

As for Brahms, Swafford describes young Johannes in his book as being sexually abused by sailors on a regular basis. While he may seem a "wiseass," he was also an equal opportunity curmdgeon, and an anti-anti-semite (just another reason to be in an anti-Wagner role).

Johnny

-----Original Message-----
From: stephen_szpak@...
To: metatuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sat, 7 Oct 2006 3:42 PM
Subject: [metatuning] Re: brahms as wiseass

"How do you write such divine adagios?"
=================================================

"It bears a sickening resemblance to the description one human
writer made of Heaven: "the regions where there is only life and
therefore all that is not music is silence."

Music and silence--how I detest them both!...We will make the whole
universe a noise in the end.

-- demon Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters (Letter XXII)

I was listening to The Screwtape Letters read by John Cleese while I
was on the treadmill today, and this passage made me pause to wonder
about the association between music and the divine...there are times
when I can "feel" that association, and there is another reason that
I think it is valid:

Music is ordered noise. It is math.

I remember writing in a journal as a teenager and fixed
atheist, "God doesn't exist, but if he did, he would be made of
math."...I do think that that thought had some truth in it. Not that
God is made of math, but that God made math, and that math is the
foundation of all God's physical creation.

At the heart of every science, at the heart of every description of
the universe, at the heart of every observed law of nature, there is
math. It is everything. To make a very crude metaphor: it is the
operating system on which the whole network of physical reality is
based.

And so then it makes sense to me, the association between music and
the divine. Music is math, and math is the closest we can come to
describing the mind of God in reference to creation without bringing
in explicit talk of the spiritual realm.

http://freemanhunt.blogspot.com/2006/04/music-math-and-god.html

-All above comments by Freeman Hunt

________________________________________________________________________
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Not meaning to take away anything from the gist, I have been studying math lately and come to some realizations. While not especially an Ivesian realization, while math is a way to quantify music, it cannot subsume it. Music theorist prove daily that they do not have the math to analyze the genuine complexity of "modern" music.

For a long time, I have thought of math as the international language...only I didn't really understand much of it. Having been factoring polynomials, while solving and/or graphing, math seems to be more like art than it resembles music.

Johnny

-----Original Message-----
From: stephen_szpak@...
To: metatuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sat, 7 Oct 2006 3:42 PM
Subject: [metatuning] Re: brahms as wiseass

"How do you write such divine adagios?"
=================================================

"It bears a sickening resemblance to the description one human
writer made of Heaven: "the regions where there is only life and
therefore all that is not music is silence."

Music and silence--how I detest them both!...We will make the whole
universe a noise in the end.

-- demon Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters (Letter XXII)

I was listening to The Screwtape Letters read by John Cleese while I
was on the treadmill today, and this passage made me pause to wonder
about the association between music and the divine...there are times
when I can "feel" that association, and there is another reason that
I think it is valid:

Music is ordered noise. It is math.

I remember writing in a journal as a teenager and fixed
atheist, "God doesn't exist, but if he did, he would be made of
math."...I do think that that thought had some truth in it. Not that
God is made of math, but that God made math, and that math is the
foundation of all God's physical creation.

At the heart of every science, at the heart of every description of
the universe, at the heart of every observed law of nature, there is
math. It is everything. To make a very crude metaphor: it is the
operating system on which the whole network of physical reality is
based.

And so then it makes sense to me, the association between music and
the divine. Music is math, and math is the closest we can come to
describing the mind of God in reference to creation without bringing
in explicit talk of the spiritual realm.

http://freemanhunt.blogspot.com/2006/04/music-math-and-god.html

-All above comments by Freeman Hunt

________________________________________________________________________
Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:

Johnny

Sorry, I didn't know anything about his beliefs and such.

-Stephen

>
> As for Brahms, Swafford describes young Johannes in his book as
being sexually abused by sailors on a regular basis. While he may
seem a "wiseass," he was also an equal opportunity curmdgeon, and an
anti-anti-semite (just another reason to be in an anti-Wagner role).
>
> Johnny
>

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:

Johnny

There is certainly math in some music and at least in
some of nature. I found this at wikipedia. I don't know
math but maybe other list members have heard of what's below:

Music

James Tenney reconceived his piece For Ann (rising), which consists
of up to twelve computer-generated upwardly glissandoing tones (see
Shepard tone), as having each tone start so it is the golden ratio
(in between an equal tempered minor and major sixth) below the
previous tone, so that the combination tones produced by all
consecutive tones are a lower or higher pitch already, or soon to
be, produced.

ErnE Lendvai (1971) analyzes Béla Bartók's works as being based on
two opposing systems, that of the golden ratio and the acoustic
scale. In Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste the
xylophone progression occurs at the intervals 1:2:3:5:8:5:3:2:1.[25]
French composer Erik Satie used the golden ratio in several of his
pieces, including Sonneries de la Rose+Croix. His use of the ratio
gave his music an otherworldly symmetry.

The golden ratio is also apparent in the organisation of the
sections in the music of Debussy's Image, Reflections in Water, in
which the sequence of keys is marked out by the intervals 34, 21, 13
and 8, and the main climax sits at the O position. [25]

Brian Transeau (aka BT) on his experimental album This Binary
Universe includes a track called '1.618' in homage to the golden
ratio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

-Stephen

>
> Not meaning to take away anything from the gist, I have been
studying math lately and come to some realizations...

Yes, of course, there is math. But this is primitive compared to advanced algebra, which is art, out of time, that needs to be interpretted.

The AFMM presented For Ann (rising) as produced electronically by Henry Lowengard almost 20 years ago. Golden ratios drawn by Sieman Terpstra are also artistically and architecturally powerful, perhaps even more so than they do in strictly musical terms. Just an opinion. Johnny

-----Original Message-----
From: stephen_szpak@...
To: metatuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sat, 7 Oct 2006 5:08 PM
Subject: [metatuning] Re: brahms as wiseass

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:

Johnny

There is certainly math in some music and at least in
some of nature. I found this at wikipedia. I don't know
math but maybe other list members have heard of what's below:

Music

James Tenney reconceived his piece For Ann (rising), which consists
of up to twelve computer-generated upwardly glissandoing tones (see
Shepard tone), as having each tone start so it is the golden ratio
(in between an equal tempered minor and major sixth) below the
previous tone, so that the combination tones produced by all
consecutive tones are a lower or higher pitch already, or soon to
be, produced.

ErnE Lendvai (1971) analyzes Béla Bartók's works as being based on
two opposing systems, that of the golden ratio and the acoustic
scale. In Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste the
xylophone progression occurs at the intervals 1:2:3:5:8:5:3:2:1.[25]
French composer Erik Satie used the golden ratio in several of his
pieces, including Sonneries de la Rose+Croix. His use of the ratio
gave his music an otherworldly symmetry.

The golden ratio is also apparent in the organisation of the
sections in the music of Debussy's Image, Reflections in Water, in
which the sequence of keys is marked out by the intervals 34, 21, 13
and 8, and the main climax sits at the O position. [25]

Brian Transeau (aka BT) on his experimental album This Binary
Universe includes a track called '1.618' in homage to the golden
ratio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

-Stephen

>
> Not meaning to take away anything from the gist, I have been
studying math lately and come to some realizations...

________________________________________________________________________
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:

Johnny

This takes me to this. Taken from The End of Science by
John Horgan page 230. And they say math is "solid".

Chaitin's own work on algorithmic information theory suggested
that as mathematicians address increasingly complex problems,
they will have to keep adding to their base of axioms; to
know more, in other words, one must assume more. As a result,
Chaitin contended, mathematics is bound to become an increasingly
experimental science with less of a claim to absolute truth.
Chaitin had also established that just as nature seems to
harbor fundamental uncertainty and randomness, so does
mathematics. He had recently found an algebraic equation that
might have an infinite or finite number of solutions, depending
on the value of the variables in the equation.

-Stephen

>
> Yes, of course, there is math. But this is primitive compared to
advanced algebra, which is art, out of time, that needs to be
interpretted.
>
> The AFMM presented For Ann (rising) as produced electronically by
Henry Lowengard almost 20 years ago. Golden ratios drawn by Sieman
Terpstra are also artistically and architecturally powerful...

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:
> Golden ratios drawn by Sieman Terpstra are also artistically and
> architecturally powerful, perhaps even more so than they do in
> strictly musical terms. Just an opinion.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c348/mireut/guldens.jpg
Something like it. - Clark

Exactly. Brahms, from a musical piont of view, is warmth throughout, but with the intellect engaged. He is known for his passion to harmonize in descending intervals of perfect fourths, and for the natural horn.

Alas, he appears to have used equal temperament for keyboard tunings. Brahms' non-keyboard music was still in the sixth-comma extended meantone. The change from counterpoint-based music to equal temperament imagined music was palpable in the music world. Surely, Wagner "needs" equal temperament to succeed well. Brahms, based on a performance of the AFMM, was unhinged. It was lifeless and had no sure points to kick off of; it lost its foundations expected for "Brahmsian" expression, but in a different take than that of Wagner.

Johnny

-----Original Message-----
From: music.conx@...
To: metatuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 1:00 PM
Subject: [metatuning] Re: brahms as wiseass

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:
> Golden ratios drawn by Sieman Terpstra are also artistically and
> architecturally powerful, perhaps even more so than they do in
> strictly musical terms. Just an opinion.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c348/mireut/guldens.jpg
Something like it. - Clark

________________________________________________________________________
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I forgot to mention that the AFMM performance of the Brahms Clarinet Sonata #2 was in Kirnberger III tuning.

Johnny

-----Original Message-----
From: Afmmjr@...
To: metatuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 3:47 PM
Subject: Re: [metatuning] Re: brahms as wiseass

Exactly. Brahms, from a musical piont of view, is warmth throughout, but with the intellect engaged. He is known for his passion to harmonize in descending intervals of perfect fourths, and for the natural horn.

Alas, he appears to have used equal temperament for keyboard tunings. Brahms' non-keyboard music was still in the sixth-comma extended meantone. The change from counterpoint-based music to equal temperament imagined music was palpable in the music world. Surely, Wagner "needs" equal temperament to succeed well. Brahms, based on a performance of the AFMM, was unhinged. It was lifeless and had no sure points to kick off of; it lost its foundations expected for "Brahmsian" expression, but in a different take than that of Wagner.

Johnny

-----Original Message-----
From: music.conx@...
To: metatuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 1:00 PM
Subject: [metatuning] Re: brahms as wiseass

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:
> Golden ratios drawn by Sieman Terpstra are also artistically and
> architecturally powerful, perhaps even more so than they do in
> strictly musical terms. Just an opinion.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c348/mireut/guldens.jpg
Something like it. - Clark

__________________________________________________________
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

________________________________________________________________________
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]