Inaudible music?

Margo wrote,

>> ... in tuning and in music more generally, not
>> every concept and detail need involve audible
>> distinctions.
>>
>> It is a proper role of music (including its
>> intonational aspects) to engage the intellect and
>> imagination as well as the sense of hearing.
>> Sometimes the reach of the intellect may exceed
>> the firm grasp of the senses, and this stretching
>> or striving may itself be a high form of musical
>> art and science.

Monz wrote,

>Another 'amen-a'!

>I simply must agree with you here, Margo. In addition
>to the medieval-centric examples You give, I'd like
>to point out that there are hundreds (thousands?) of
>12-tET serial composers (especially concerning the
>body of work created between c. 1925 and 1980, and on
>second thought, not necessarily restricted to serialists
>using 12-tET), who would subscribe wholeheartedly to
>this statement.

>Many present-day tuning theorists (Brian McLaren comes
>immediately to mind) are fond of pointing out that
>so much of the compositional construction in these serial
>pieces cannot be audibly perceived, but IMO, that
>doesn't necessarily negate the significance of those
>techniques. I firmly believe that there are many
>as-yet unrevealed means of perceiving data that *do*
>have an effect on the reception of any given experience,
>particularly in some kind of wholistic sense. In other
>words, just because a listener can't immediately *hear*
>that a 12-tone row is being used in inversion or
>retrograde doesn't mean categorically that s/he is
>not picking up that information in some other way.

Rue the day that I ever make music with inaudible elements. That may be OK
to you guys, but it's ^#$@!&* nonsense to me. As far as I'm concerned, if it
can't be heard, it's not a musical element. If I felt like it I could make
tens of thousands of pseudo-harmonic-entropy-to-the-pi-power-squared models
that people could turn into crab canons in retrograde inversion . . . five
billion partially stellated periodicity blocks with pickles and cole slaw
that could be regurgitated in strict serial imitative counterpoint . . . any
of this kind of "conceptual" composition is an insult to me as a musician
and music-lover.

Monz' argument might be that the listener might pick up on some of these
patterns somehow and they might somehow affect the musical experience in
some way. Then again, they might not. For each of the googolplex
mathematically defined patterns we might choose to base a composition on,
which will have a musical effect and which won't? The vast majority
wouldn't. We'd never have time to test all the possibilities, and apparantly
we (Lerdahl, McLaren, etc.) haven't had any luck in convincing the little
corner of academia which cares that serialism might not be one of the
successful ones.

Even the sets of rules that you get in music school are of questionable
utility. All great composers broke the supposed rules of their style,
because they were guided not by formulae but by a driving creative urge in
which balancing the counterposing forces of fulfilling and not fulfilling
expectations provides artistic interest (much as in great literature). This
psycho-cultural game is far beyond the grasp of any concisely formalizable
mathematical model, and the rules are changing all the time as our musical
environment changes. That's not to say a composer can't use his or her
musical intuition to arrive at a mathematical way of composing, e.g.,
microtonalists like Iannis Xenakis and Carter Scholz. But these
considerations are expressly and ultimately (a) artistic and (b) AUDIBLE,
they're never mathematical for the sake of mathematics and they're certainly
never inaudible or questionably audible.

Great music is made by great listeners with great inspiration. Knowing how
to turn inspiration into an _audible_ result is where theory, mathematics,
and technical skill in general can sometimes be useful. If you're relying on
some possibly inaudible mathematical scheme instead of inspiration, you're
not a composer, as far as I'm concerned . . . you're a tinkerer (I believe
that's Sonny Sharrock's term). And the more tinkerers we have in the
alternate-tuning movement, the more we doom that movement to cultural
irrelevancy.

Note that I think Monz and Dan Stearns certainly make good music, but that
ultimately it was their ears coupled with creative intuition that were
responsible.

[Paul E:]
>Rue the day that I ever make music with inaudible elements. That may be
>OK to you guys, but it's ^#$@!&* nonsense to me. As far as I'm
>concerned, if it can't be heard, it's not a musical element. If I felt
>like it I could make tens of thousands of pseudo-harmonic-entropy-to-
>the-pi-power-squared models that people could turn into crab canons in
>retrograde inversion . . . five billion partially stellated periodicity
>blocks with pickles and cole slaw that could be regurgitated in strict
>serial imitative counterpoint . . . any of this kind of "conceptual"
>composition is an insult to me as a musician and music-lover.

Well gee, Paul, I largely agree with the side of the fence you're on,
but why the fiery passion? Why the sense of "insult"?

>Great music is made by great listeners with great inspiration. Knowing
>how to turn inspiration into an _audible_ result is where theory,
>mathematics, and technical skill in general can sometimes be useful. If
>you're relying on some possibly inaudible mathematical scheme instead
>of inspiration, you're not a composer, as far as I'm concerned . . .
>you're a tinkerer (I believe that's Sonny Sharrock's term). And the
>more tinkerers we have in the alternate-tuning movement, the more we
>doom that movement to cultural irrelevancy

I don't think it's helpful or correct to say that anyone, following
their own vision, is contributing to any kind of "doom". And I don't
think it's helpful to use pejorative labels like "tinkerer" - that can
only lead to a shouting match.

Again I agree with your general sentiments as to what makes for great
composition, that will grab the public's attention and also stand the
test of time. But, there's room for everything, for every approach,
with or without a hidden layer of mathematics or whatever. Time will
sort it all out; we need not worry about a multiplicity of sound today.
I say, the more the merrier!

JdL

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

> http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16033

Thanks for continuing to question the statements made by
myself and Margo about inaudible compositional elements in
'musical' pieces, Paul. You forcefully expressed so many
salient points in this post that I'm ending my argument
over this topic now. I find that regardless of my
differences of opinion, I simply have to agree with all
you said here. Good post!

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
'All roads lead to n^0'

Thanks for many nicely articulated points Paul -- I especially liked
the "this psycho-cultural game is far beyond the grasp of any
concisely formalizable mathematical model, and the rules are changing
all the time as our musical environment changes" bit. But I must say
that in many regards (often uncomfortable ones) this isn't all that
different from the very old arguments over program and absolute music,
and yet very few seem to get as passionate about throwing the
"conceptual" in program music to the wolves as so many seem so willing
to do with serial music (and the like).

Why?

There can be little doubt that the program in program music on a whole
(i.e., divorced from its various specifics -- cultural contexts, the
times, et al -- and heard without any shared knowledge of its
"narrative", etc.) is even less "audible" than the hat in Schoenberg's
'a hat is a hat whether it is seen from above or below, or from the
side or the front' (a not so good analogy used by Shoenberg to help
frame the use of mirror techniques).

Much great art has been accompanied by shaky metaphors and
questionable attributions, and I'm quite sure that we're all blinded
and lead to some extent by our own individual passions, bents and
crusades. (That my own interest me above and beyond say eating is what
really interests me!)

Personally I think Schoenberg nailed it. And when I listen to Op. 23
I'm struck at how gassed Shoenberg seems... I can easily hear him
glowing in the wonder and enthusiasm of creating a workable way out of
the old (tonality) and into the new where tonality (the old) seemed to
be inexorably headed regardless of the lack of a well defined system
to accompany it. For my own tastes, I probably prefer the more easily
"songlike", pre total 12-tone systemization worlds of Op. 11, but I
really do think the 12-tone system (and serialism by extension) was a
logical and initially brilliant bit of artistic problem solving fully
within the parameters of the "psycho-cultural game" you mention at
it's particular point in history.

The fact that a better solution has yet to universally arise in the
face of such an apparent need for one only compounds the burden of
Schoenberg's solution.

--Dan Stearns

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

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16052

> Personally I think Schoenberg nailed it. And when I listen to Op. 23
> I'm struck at how gassed Shoenberg seems... I can easily hear him
> glowing in the wonder and enthusiasm of creating a workable way out
of the old (tonality) and into the new where tonality (the old)
seemed to be inexorably headed regardless of the lack of a well
defined system to accompany it. For my own tastes, I probably prefer
the more easily "songlike", pre total 12-tone systemization worlds of
Op. 11, but I really do think the 12-tone system (and serialism by
extension) was <cut>

Well, Op. 11 is, of course, very beautiful, and easier to play on the
piano, except for the last movement (!!) I remember doing that as a
teenager...(except for the last movement..!)

However, a friend of mine Charles Bornstein has now orchestrated the
entire Op. 23 for full orchestra, and has conducted it successfully
with major orchestras in Europe. It is also now published by Hansen,
the publisher of the original piano version of Op. 23.

The new orchestral version is quite a hoot.

________ ___ __ _ _
Joseph Pehrson