Cognitive Constraints on Compositional Systems

This link might've been pointed out before... ?

<http://music.dartmouth.edu/~kov/lerdahl/Overview.html>

--Dan Stearns

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "D.Stearns" <STEARNS@C...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/15511

> This link might've been pointed out before... ?
>
> <http://music.dartmouth.edu/~kov/lerdahl/Overview.html>
>
> --Dan Stearns

Well... Lehrdahl's a pretty nice guy, but I think his choice of LE
MARTEAU as a communicative failure is misplaced.

There are many different kinds of listening. MARTEAU has a GREAT
sound... maybe one of the few Boulez pieces (well, maybe PLI) to have
it...

We don't have to listen for the cognitive digestion of information in
quantifiable form in order to be able to appreciate a piece of music.
Much listening, I believe, is much more "global" than that...
dependent on MEMORY, both conscious and UNconscious throughout the
duration...

If I'm understanding the article, I fear the goal is misplaced...

but makes for maybe nice long music theory courses...

_________ ___ __ __
Joseph Pehrson

Joseph Pehrson wrote,

> There are many different kinds of listening. <SNIP>

Oh, I agree 110%, couldn't agree more in fact! And my own feelings,
based only on my own experiences, is that music as a cognitive
science, or music run through various cognitive models, is at best
interesting, but almost always -- no, might as well make that always
<!> -- sort of rubs me the wrong way... anyway, I referenced it as it
used some of Gerald Balzano's ideas that were recently being discussed
here, and as I suspect that there are others whom this sort of an
approach will no doubt better resonates with.

BTW, check this David Schiff article for a nice bit on Le Marteau in
exactly the light in which you mentioned!

<http://www3.theatlanticmonthly.com/issues/95sep/boulez.htm>

-- Dan Stearns

> Well... Lehrdahl's a pretty nice guy, but I think his choice of LE
> MARTEAU as a communicative failure is misplaced.

I read it differently.

The article doesn't state it quite that way; it says:

> Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maitre was widely hailed as a masterpiece
> of postwar serialism. Yet nobody could figure out, much less hear,
> how the piece was serial.

I've heard the piece several times. I agree that I can't "hear" how it's serial... (In fact, I wasn't really aware that it _was_ serial; it's been too long since I read the liner notes.) It's a powerful piece of music, but like any piece of serialism to my ears, without analyzing a score in great detail and listening repeatedly _FOR_ the serialism whilst gazing intently at the score, it sounds like a piece of music, not like a piece of serialism. For me, it does illustrate a huge gap between the compositional system and the cognized result. This isn't uncommon in the arts, but there was a period of time when "serious composers" took their compositional systems far too seriously, and seemed to forget that music is for people to listen to, and the only people who analyze it systematically are critics and students of composition.

The same goes for microtonal music. In general, I've found that people can react "normally" to microtonal music in a genre they understand already, and may or may not actually recognize that there's something "odd" about it. People don't tend to hear the complex set of workings BEHIND the music, they hear _the music_. So one question that springs to mind is, "OK, if people only hear X out of XYZ, can it be simplified, or explained more simply?" Is that related to the theory behind why audio compression (MP3) works rather well...? Only on a larger scale?

Rick

Rick McGowan wrote,

>...not like a piece of serialism. For me, it does illustrate a huge gap
between the >compositional system and the cognized result.

Hear, hear! This is exactly why I feel that serialism and much modern music
theory (including Babbitt's and Balzano's) has become an intellectual world
of its own, removed from music theory's normal intent, which is to analyse
how music is perceived and understood.

>The same goes for microtonal music. In general, I've found that people can
react >"normally" to microtonal music in a genre they understand already,
and may or may not >actually recognize that there's something "odd" about
it.

I've found this to be sometimes true even when the listeners are experienced
musicians, listening to my 22-tET music. Even when lines employing
successive 1/22-oct steps are involved -- as long as the harmonies are
clear.

That doesn't bother me -- I'm happy to make nice music that most people like
but which no one could have composed before. Of course, I like to contrast
nice stuff with more out-there, tense kinds of sounds to give the music more
expressive range. But I know that one has to master the more comprehensible
means of expression before one can expect to be able to constuct satisfying
music of a more abstract nature. I think the best serial composers knew how
to compose tonally and that is why their serial music is effective -- and
not because it's serial.

>So one question that springs to mind is, "OK, if people only hear X out of
XYZ, can it be >simplified, or explained more simply?" Is that related to
the theory behind why audio >compression (MP3) works rather well...? Only
on a larger scale?

Maybe. For example, we pretty much cannot hear phase -- the relative phases
of partials in a sound don't matter, even though changing them can make the
waveform appear completely different. Actually, the BBE enhancement system
works by altering the phases of partials to eliminate large peaks in the
waveform, which can be trouble for audio equipment. Whether MP3 compression
exploits the inaudibility of phase data, I don't know, but I wouldn't be
surprised if it does . . .

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Paul H. Erlich" <PERLICH@A...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/15519

I would propose that the following chart:

http://music.dartmouth.edu/~kov/lerdahl/grammar.html

has very little to do with "listening" at all and that, in fact, one
could only make such a chart with reference to ONE given piece of
music... not as a "generalized" method for listening...

(??)

_____ ___ __ _
JP

Paul H. Erlich wrote,

> But I know that one has to master the more comprehensible means of
expression before one can expect to be able to constuct satisfying
music of a more abstract nature. I think the best serial composers
knew how to compose tonally and that is why their serial music is
effective -- and not because it's serial.

This seems like such a strange sounding argument to me... and besides,
when it comes to music and art, aren't "comprehensible means of
expression" a pretty fickle lot, subject to all the usual
contradicting personal testimonies? How about 'the best composers knew
how to compose, and that is why their music is effective'? Tonal,
atonal, microtonal, whatever... I mean having this or that "mastered"
before one ventures here or there might help, but it just as often
might not! Oh well, as usual I'm mystified...

BTW, I just reading a bit on Olivier Messiaen that mentions his use of
scales with "a concept of limited transposability". And one of the
examples -- along with the whole-tone, the diminished, and the
Tcherepnin scale -- was the 8s2L, C Db D Eb F F# G Ab A B 10-tone
scale (a rotation of the symmetric decatonic). Had you come across
this before?

-- Dan Stearns

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "D.Stearns" <STEARNS@C...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/15525

>How about 'the best composers knew how to compose, and that is why
their music is effective'?

Now this is probably something I can agree with! :)

As a humorous aside, when I was TA to Chris Rouse at the University
of Michigan, he had all the BEGINNING composition students write
serial pieces.

So they would, like, come off the street with their guitars and the
ability to play a few chords and, suddenly, be composing dodecaphonic
music...

Well, it's not very hard... they just literally used pitch charts and
threw something together. (Not unlike many of the more, ahem,
"accomplished" in that genre, unfortunately).

The point being that it could be conceivable that these novice
composers could master serialism BEFORE mastering tonal composition.

Regrettably, few managed to master either....

_________ ___ __ __ _
Joseph Pehrson

Dan Stearns wrote,

>BTW, I just reading a bit on Olivier Messiaen that mentions his use of
>scales with "a concept of limited transposability". And one of the
>examples -- along with the whole-tone, the diminished, and the
>Tcherepnin scale -- was the 8s2L, C Db D Eb F F# G Ab A B 10-tone
>scale (a rotation of the symmetric decatonic). Had you come across
>this before?

Yeah, this has come up before. In fact I once saw a mode of this listed as
"the" Messiaen scale in a guitar book.