# Does Beethoven's Symphony #9 exist?



## Dumbo (Sep 3, 2017)

This is a very fun question, and most of the fun is in deciding what the hell the question even means. What is Beethoven's 9th? What does it mean to say something exists? Why even ask such a question when the answer seems obviously, yes?

So let's start out be addressing what we might mean when we say Beethoven's 9th:

1. The actual written musical score, whichever version you prefer. 
2. Any performance of the symphony, for the duration of the performance.
3. Any CD or tape or wax cylinder set or whatever that contains a complete performance of the symphony.
4. Whatever was in Beethoven's head, his intent, when he composed the Ninth. Be aware, however, he took more than twenty years composing it and made many major revisions during that time.
5. Like above, but whatever was in Beethoven's head about it at the moment when he sent it to the publishers.
6. What Beethoven thought about it on his deathbed, after more time to reflect what he had done.
7. What Beethoven's musical peers thought of it in 1822, at a time in history when things like crazy 11 note chords (what Wagner called The Terror Fanfare) weren't taken in stride as another type of dissonance.
8. What you think of the music as you listen to it today.
9. What all people hold in common when thinking about it as they listen to it today, the roughest kind of consensus.
10. Whatever I'm leaving out.

I had a lot more to say, but I'll stop here for now and let people share their opinions. The editor on this site doesn't work well with my Puffin browser, so I'll have to resume later.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Interesting questions all! I'll just say that Beethoven seriously worked on the 9th Symphony for about two years between 1818 and 1824, much distracted by illness and other works, primarily the Missa Solemnis. It's true that he had Schiller's poem in his mind for many years, and prefigured the finale of the 9th in his Choral Fantasy, but I don't count these as "working" on the symphony.

The Missa made him a good bit of money, but the 9th much less so. That was a real concern because he was very worried about income, nephew Carl's economic security, and so forth. Contemporary reception was mixed, and neither of the two concerts with the 9th in Beethoven's lifetime did well economically. To quote Berlioz (in his imagination probably):
-----------------------------------------------------
One day I was walking out of the Conservatoire with three or four dilettanti after a performance of the Choral symphony.

– How do you find this work? one of them asked me.
– Immense! magnificent! overwhelming!
– That is strange, I was bored stiff. And what about you? he added, turning to an Italian…
– Well, I find this unintelligible, or rather intolerable, there is no melody… But here are some papers talking about it, and let us see what they say:
– Beethoven’s Choral symphony is the pinnacle of modern music; art has yet to produce anything comparable for the nobility of its style, the grandeur of the design and the finish of the details.
(Another paper) – Beethoven’s Choral symphony is a monstrosity.
(Another paper) – This work is not completely barren of ideas, but they are poorly presented and the sum total is incoherent and devoid of charm.
(Another paper) – Beethoven’s Choral symphony has some wonderful passages, but the composer was obviously short of inspiration. As his exhausted imagination let him down he had to devote his energies, sometimes to good effect, to making up through craftsmanship what he was lacking in inspiration. The few themes found in the work are superbly treated and set out in a perfectly clear and logical sequence. In short, it is a very interesting work by a tired genius.

Where is the truth, and where is the error? Everywhere and nowhere. Everybody is right. What to someone seems beautiful is not so for someone else, simply because one person was moved and the other remained indifferent, and the former experienced profound delight while the latter acute boredom. What can be done about this?… nothing… but it is dreadful; I would rather be mad and believe in absolute beauty.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

If a battery-powered CD player played a recording of Schoenberg in the middle of the forest and there was no one there to hear it, would it still be noise?


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

MarkW said:


> If a battery-powered CD player played a recording of Schoenberg in the middle of the forest and there was no one there to hear it, would it still be noise?


Yes, beautiful noise


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Only about 3-4 on the list are really worth considering. The others assume existence of the symphony: what Beethoven, his peers or me as listener think about it is impossible (or a non-question) without it already existing in some fashion.

If only the score is extant, it exists as a score, as _potential_ music. For anyone currently alive, who has heard a complete performance, it exists as an aural memory. It 'exists' as digital data.

A question might be: Does it have to be being performed to exist? That's much the same as asking if e.g. the note C has to be being played in order to exist. Theoretically C exists, always as a potential sound. When I write a bar of C crotchets they exist theoretically and as markings on paper. When played they exist theoretically, as markings on paper and as sounds. When not being played, do they cease to exist?

Considering 'versions' of the 9th, it falls into old schoolboy philosophy as in: does Westminster Palace 'exist' as _Westminster Palace_ if we have by now replaced every original stone that was originally named 'Westminster Palace' (this has not happened btw!)? The answer would be yes.

One problem I would suggest would be if only a photo of the score existed (no recordings or memory of recordings). We coldn't then say the 'score' exists'. Just like a photo of person long-since dead is not the continued 'existence' of that _person_.


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

A work of music, being abstract, exists _abstractly_, as whatever it's supposed to be and defined as being, consisting of _information_, not to be confused with scores, performances or recordings, which are physical entities and events with individual, physical identities, not abstract but concrete.



KenOC said:


> To quote Berlioz (in his imagination probably):
> -----------------------------------------------------
> One day I was walking out of the Conservatoire with three or four dilettanti after a performance of the Choral symphony.
> 
> ...


Why does this sound exactly like how people still speak of Brahms? Do you think it's but a mere coincidence?


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## MJongo (Aug 6, 2011)

I've thought about this exact question with relation to music and other works of art. I think it can mean many of those definitions depending on context. When I say "Beethoven's 9th is one of my favorite symphonies" I am referring to it a combination of the composition itself and the sensory experience I get from either specific performances/recordings or an idealized mental conception of its sound.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

eugeneonagain said:


> ...does Westminster Palace 'exist' as _Westminster Palace_ if we have by now replaced every original stone that was originally named 'Westminster Palace' (this has not happened btw!)?


"This was my father's ax and his father's before him. I've replaced the handle three times and the head twice."


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I'd be more interested to find out what he thought of the. Many and varied recorded accounts of his 9th. That is assuming he had full use of his hearing. Would he find some too slow, too fast, too subtle, too bombastic, too exaggerated, etc. No doubt he'd be amazed at the sound quality we can access today but he'd be amazed he could hear too. I'm just off to pick him up in my time machine and then take him to the ear hospital. If I'm not back for tea then I stopped off to pick Tchaikovsky up, teach him English and then ask him if he really did bump himself off.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Does anything exist or is it all just my imagination?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Clearly the score is not the music. And "Beethoven's 9th" is ambiguous about that. Let's disambiguate - 9(S) and 9(M). I guess 9(S) is relatively unproblematic, it's a piece of paper somewhere.

9 (M) is sound. It seems to work a bit like a common noun. Just as "game" can include different games, chess, football etc., 9 (M) can include different sounding performances - different tempos, articulations etc. 

I don't think there's an interesting question about existence here, or indeed identity. The interesting area is in the relation between 9(S), 9(M) and all the different performances, possible and actual. 

I wonder if the idea of a semantic model is relevant - I've never explored it. But it strikes me that the relation between 9(S) and a performance may be similar to a physical phenomenon and a set of equations (partially) modelling it. That's something I'll think about one day.

The difference between token and type too.


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## Guest (Oct 19, 2017)

deleted...............


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Haydn man said:


> Does anything exist or is it all just my imagination?


Something doing the imagining exists. Doesn't it? You, possibly.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Something doing the imagining exists. Doesn't it? You, possibly.


Cogito ergo sum.


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## Brahmsianhorn (Feb 17, 2017)

Music does not exist. Music is either in the process of being composed, being performed, or being listened to. It is not a tangible object.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Dumbo said:


> This is a very fun question, and most of the fun is in deciding what the hell the question even means. What is Beethoven's 9th? What does it mean to say something exists? Why even ask such a question when the answer seems obviously, yes?
> 
> So let's start out be addressing what we might mean when we say Beethoven's 9th:
> 
> ...


1. The written score is not the aesthetic object. It is a set of directions for producing the aesthetic object. 
2. Music is a performing art. Its aesthetic objects are performances.
3. These are mechanical means of (re)creating performances.
4. Beethoven's intent, if it were possible to ascertain it, is irrelevant unless knowing it corrects a mistake in the score or informs performance practice.
5. Quibbling and a subset of 4
6. Impossible to ascertain, irrelevant to the aesthetic object or the score.
7-9. This is the reception history of the symphony. It is not the symphony.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> 1. The written score is not the aesthetic object. It is a set of directions for producing the aesthetic object.


This one is trickier than you may be implying. It's true the score is a sort of blueprint for sound, but it also represents 'the 9th symphony' in its purest, complete form. There's no real reason why it can't represent the aesthetic object; especially for those rare individuals able to read it and 'hear' it.

You may disagree with that, but let's consider a similar (but not identical) case: the novel _Middlemarch_. The book and its collection of words form the ideas the reader brings to life. If someone, or various people, memorised the novel and all known texts vanished into thin air, where is the novel? Is the 'novel' in someone's memory - which could be spoken - the same novel as the written text?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

eugeneonagain said:


> This one is trickier than you may be implying. It's true the score is a sort of blueprint for sound, but it also represents 'the 9th symphony' in its purest, complete form. There's no real reason why it can't represent the aesthetic object; especially for those rare individuals able to read it and 'hear' it.
> 
> You may disagree with that, but let's consider a similar (but not identical) case: the novel _Middlemarch_. The book and its collection of words form the ideas the reader brings to life. If someone, or various people, memorised the novel and all known texts vanished into thin air, where is the novel? Is the 'novel' in someone's memory - which could be spoken - the same novel as the written text?


I don't think it's tricky at all. Those who read and hear the score are still just using it as directions for creating a performance, one taking place in their heads. Whether such performances are full-fledged and valid ones would be impossible to establish.

Reading a novel is creating a performance of it for oneself. Hearing someone recite it is attending to someone else's performance. Would it be the same? Depends on how they read.

When one buys a novel, if one is capable of reading, one has everything necessary to create a full-fledged performance of the novel. When one owns the score of Beethoven's Ninth one generally does not have everything necessary to create a full-fledged performance. Nearly everyone (or perhaps actually everyone) requires a series of sound waves.



Brahmsianhorn said:


> Music does not exist. Music is either in the process of being composed, being performed, or being listened to. It is not a tangible object.


Lots of actual, real things are not tangible objects. Conversations, trains of thought and symphonies don't "exist," they unfold.


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> This one is trickier than you may be implying. It's true the score is a sort of blueprint for sound, but it also represents 'the 9th symphony' in its purest, complete form. There's no real reason why it can't represent the aesthetic object; especially for those rare individuals able to read it and 'hear' it.
> 
> You may disagree with that, but let's consider a similar (but not identical) case: the novel _Middlemarch_. The book and its collection of words form the ideas the reader brings to life. If someone, or various people, memorised the novel and all known texts vanished into thin air, where is the novel? Is the 'novel' in someone's memory - which could be spoken - the same novel as the written text?


Scores and renditions thereof are representations of works, not the works themselves, just like written and spoken words aren't actually the words themselves, which, being abstractions, exist independently of specific matter and movement only as ideas.


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

If it didn't exist, then who did compose it? Then it wouldn't be Beethovens 9th symphony, would be someone elses symphony.

Do love it though and have second movement as my ring tone!!


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> I don't think it's tricky at all. Those who read and hear the score are still just using it as directions for creating a performance, one taking place in their heads. Whether such performances are full-fledged and valid ones would be impossible to establish.


It certainly _is_ more opaque than you are allowing. They are mirroring a 'performance' already there on the page. Each performance and especially varying interpretations - is an image of what is on the page. If you are considering the score as just 'directions' like DNA or an architects' plans then it merely produces copies, like a mass production process. Both the score and the performance are 'the symphony' in different forms. Composer's don't write 'potential symphonies' which only become symphonies when performed.

I could have compared it to a play. These are generally only known when performed, but would you argue that a play written, but not performed, is not really a play? That it is not _the_ aesthetic artefact?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

eugeneonagain said:


> It certainly _is_ more opaque than you are allowing. They are mirroring a 'performance' already there on the page.


No, there is no performance on the page. And what is on the page isn't mirrored, it is interpreted so as to specify many things left indeterminate or less than fully determined by what is on he page.



eugeneonagain said:


> Each performance and especially varying interpretations - is an image of what is on the page. If you are considering the score as just 'directions' like DNA or an architects' plans then it merely produces copies, like a mass production process.


Image? it is a _performance_ of what is indicated on the page. Less than fully determinate directions allow for wide variation, and are therefore quite different than plans for a mass produced product.



eugeneonagain said:


> Both the score and the performance are 'the symphony' in different forms. Composer's don't write 'potential symphonies' which only become symphonies when performed.
> 
> I could have compared it to a play. These are generally only known when performed, but would you argue that a play written, but not performed, is not really a play? That it is not _the_ aesthetic artefact?


Colloquially one can hold a score and say "This is Beethoven's 9th," and one can call attention to sound coming out of ones speakers and say "This is Beethoven's 9th." This is why people trying to speak more precisely, like aestheticians, call the performance the aesthetic object, as I did in my initial post. It is helpful to make the same distinction between text and aesthetic object in drama. The aesthetic object in drama is the stage performance, just as it is in music. The script and stage directions are what is used to create a performance, which is where the aesthetic object unfolds. Writing the former is called writing a play, just as writing a musical score can be called composing a symphony.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Does 4'33" exist?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Does existence exist?


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> No, there is no performance on the page. And what is on the page isn't mirrored, it is interpreted so as to specify many things left indeterminate or less than fully determined by what is on he page.


Hmm...that's probably why I was arguing for both score and performance being two forms of the same thing, but the score being the original artefact.



EdwardBast said:


> Image? it is a _performance_ of what is indicated on the page. Less than fully determinate directions allow for wide variation, and are therefore quite different than plans for a mass produced product.


You don't seem to understand that argument at all. I was referring to the idea of the score being the 'source' for what are essentially the same product (your argument initially). Even the results of mass production has small variations.



EdwardBast said:


> Colloquially one can hold a score and say "This is Beethoven's 9th," and one can call attention to sound coming out of ones speakers and say "This is Beethoven's 9th." This is why people trying to speak more precisely, *like aestheticians*, call the performance the aesthetic object, as I did in my initial post. It is helpful to make the same distinction between text and aesthetic object in drama. The aesthetic object in drama is the stage performance, just as it is in music. The script and stage directions are what is used to create a performance, which is where the aesthetic object unfolds. Writing the former is called writing a play, just as writing a musical score can be called composing a symphony.


A written drama is no less a drama than the performance of it.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Improbus said:


> Scores and renditions thereof are representations of works, not the works themselves, just like written and spoken words aren't actually the words themselves, which, being abstractions, exist independently of specific matter and movement only as ideas.


Really? So I suppose the written forms of dead ancient languages mean the language no longer exists? That's quite different from it no longer being a currency for communication.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

eugeneonagain said:


> Really? So I suppose the written forms of dead ancient languages mean the language no longer exists? That's quite different from it no longer being a currency for communication.


Another example is classical literary Chinese, primarily a written language and only loosely linked to the language as spoken. It was horrendously concise and its meaning could often be inferred only by inspection of the actual characters used; recited, it communicated very poorly because Chinese is a language of homophones with only about 400 different syllables (Mandarin) as opposed to over 12,000 in English. But most consider it a language nonetheless.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

eugeneonagain said:


> You don't seem to understand that argument at all. I was referring to the idea of the score being the 'source' for what are essentially the same product (your argument initially). Even the results of mass production has small variations.


Yes, the source, as in the directions by which one creates performances - which is what I've said from the beginning. We are not talking about small variations. We are talking about the difference between thoroughly execrable performances and magnificent ones, ones that fail and ones that succeed - yet all valid instances of the work. Mass produced items that don't succeed are not valid instances of the product - they are liability suits.



eugeneonagain said:


> A written drama is no less a drama than the performance of it.


What do you mean "no less"? When one writes a play, the aesthetic object one anticipates is a stage performance. That's why one includes stage directions and descriptions of the sets. A reading of the text is, obviously, less than the full aesthetic experience.


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> Really? So I suppose the written forms of dead ancient languages mean the language no longer exists? That's quite different from it no longer being a currency for communication.


Whether or not dead languages exist depends on what is referred to by 'exist': if we by exist mean to be in common use or to be known as a first language by a group of people then dead languages don't exist; if we mean to have have been in use or to potentially some time come into use, i.e. to exist as a _potentiality_, then they do.

To address the issue at hand more directly: neither a performance, a recording nor a score is necessarily a more true or valid representation of a work, and all of these things are at the same time fundamentally different and separate things. Seeing that nothing can be several, fundamentally different and separate things at once a work of music must be neither of these things.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes, the source, as in the directions by which one creates performances - which is what I've said from the beginning. We are not talking about small variations. We are talking about the difference between thoroughly execrable performances and magnificent ones, ones that fail and ones that succeed - yet all valid instances of the work. Mass produced items that don't succeed are not valid instances of the product - they are liability suits.


Even faulty mass-produced examples are valid examples. Examples of a blueprint and prototype.



EdwardBast said:


> What do you mean "no less"? When one writes a play, the aesthetic object one anticipates is a stage performance. That's why one includes stage directions and descriptions of the sets. A reading of the text is, obviously, less than the full aesthetic experience.


One can anticipate the performance of a play, but the written play is the core art object, which will be interpreted and made into an additional art object through performance.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Improbus said:


> Whether or not dead languages exist depends on what is referred to by 'exist': if we by exist mean to be in common use or to be known as a first language by a group of people then dead languages don't exist; if we mean to have have been in use or to potentially some time come into use, i.e. to exist as a _potentiality_, then they do.


And clearly the word _exist_ encapsulates both those possibilities and more, which is why there's no sense in imagining a friction of meaning when there is none.



Improbus said:


> To address the issue at hand more directly: neither a performance, a recording nor a score is necessarily a more true or valid representation of a work, and all of these things are at the same time fundamentally different and separate things. Seeing that nothing can be several, fundamentally different and separate things at once a work of music must be neither of these things.


This is more fruitful, though I wouldn't call them '_fundamentally_ different' things at all. If this were true writing a score would be quite useless if one hopes to have it properly interpreted. Singing C and writing C have obvious technical and sensory differences, but they _represent_ the same thing. There is nothing else they could possibly mean and the failure of singing any other note than C when C is written demonstrates their fundamentally shared identity. Even when it is written as D double flat or B sharp it still refers to C, or at least to the same note.

Since Beethoven obviously couldn't write down an audible orchestral performance at his desk, he wrote the score and that score is his 9th symphony in written form. When it is performed it is the same 9th symphony rendered audible. When performed without the score (from memory) it is essentially the same 9th symphony as the one on that score. It is not a different 9th symphony.
The fact that me clapping my hands is likely different from the way you clap your hands does not mean that one of us isn't clapping our hands, or that we are performing 'fundamentally different' activities.


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## Ras (Oct 6, 2017)

If Beethoven's Ninth Symphony really exists it would imply that the other 8 symphonies also exist! This may prove to be a good day for the Cartesians!


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> the written play is the core art object


Is there some authority other than yourself who provides an argument in support of this opinion?

Shakespeare didn't labour over his plays for them to remain as 'written plays', and the Lord Chamberlain would have considered himself well cheated if they were never performed. The core product he was expecting was the performance, not the script.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

"Whatever was in Beethoven's head, his intent, when he composed the Ninth."

Were his intentions and meaning that mysterious? One has to guess? Anything but refer to the words of Schiller that Beethoven used? It looks to me that he spelled out the 9th's meaning quite literally and yet some listeners are still not convinced that he was deeply inspired by his ideal of the Brotherhood of Man:

O friends, not these sounds!
Let us strike up something more
pleasant, full of gladness.
Joy, beautiful divine spark,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
O heavenly one, your holy shrine.
Your magic once again bonds together
What custom strictly divided,
All Mankind become brothers
Where your gentle wings hold sway.

He who has the great good fortune
To be friend to a friend,
He who has won a dear wife,
Let him mix his rejoicing with ours!
Yes--and whoever has but one soul
Somewhere in the world to call his own!
And he who cannot, let him steal away,
Weeping, out of this company.

Joy is drunk by every creature
From Nature's breast;
Every good one, every bad one
Follows her rosy pathway.
She gave us kisses, and wine,
And one friend, tried unto death;
Even to the worm ecstasy is given,
and the cherub stands before God.

Gladly, as his Suns fly through
The magnificent plan of the heavens,
Run, my brothers, your own course
Joyfully, like a hero off to conquest.

Joy, beautiful divine spark, etc.

Let me embrace you, O millions!
This kiss is for the whole world!
Brothers, above the starry firmament
A loving Father must surely dwell.
Do you fall down, O millions?
Are you aware of your Creator, world?
Seek Him above the starry firmament!
For above the stars He must dwell.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

MacLeod said:


> Is there some authority other than yourself who provides an argument in support of this opinion?


Just reason. Explain to me why my, fairly comprehensive, argument is less acceptable than if I rope-in some name you might recognise?



MacLeod said:


> Shakespeare didn't labour over his plays for them to remain as 'written plays', and the Lord Chamberlain would have considered himself well cheated if they were never performed. The core product he was expecting was the performance, not the script.


Is there some authority other than yourself to corroborate this speculation? Especially a person about which we know very little.

Obviously a playwright doesn't write with the intention that the work remains unperformed. I already addressed this.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> Just reason. Explain to me why my, *fairly comprehensive, argument *is less acceptable than if I rope-in some name you might recognise?


Sorry, I must have missed your fairly comprehensive argument that explains why the script, not the performed play is the core art object. I did spot your simple assertion, which was why I asked for something more - doesn't have to be a 'name.'

As for my 'speculation' about Shakespeare, I think it entirely reasonable to assume - but of course we don't know what he actually thought, so he _might _have held to your assertion. Then again, we know enough about the workings of the company and the very limited publication in his lifetime for it to be a reasonable assumption that what the Lord Chamberlain and other patrons wanted was a performance from which they could earn money, not a script from which they might gain royalties.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I never even assumed that Shakespeare nor any other writer or composer would hold to my assertion (complete argument actually). Whether or not a work is performed makes absolutely no difference to the point.

At the risk of being extremely blunt, I ask that you first actually read what I wrote before accosting me with such questions.


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> I never even assumed that Shakespeare nor any other writer or composer would hold to my assertion (complete argument actually). Whether or not a work is performed makes absolutely no difference to the point.
> 
> At the risk of being extremely blunt, I ask that you first actually read what I wrote before accosting me with such questions.


I read what you wrote about play scripts. Asking you a question to explain what your wrote is hardly "accosting". How else am I to understand if we don't engage in some exchange.

At the risk of being irritating, if I misunderstood what you meant by your post #36 (that is, your challenge about my speculation as I clearly didn't understand what it was you say I was speculating about) you might like to clarify that too. How about just discussing the matter in hand instead of being blunt about my posts?


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2017)

Dumbo said:


> This is a very fun question, and most of the fun is in deciding what the hell the question even means. What is Beethoven's 9th? What does it mean to say something exists? [etc etc etc]


In searching for someone else's thoughts on this, I came across a summary of "Beardsley's Aesthetics" on the Stanford Uni website

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beardsley-aesthetics/#3



> Beardsley presses on to distinguish (a) the artifact-the play itself, say, as written down-from (b) a particular production of it-the Old Vic's production, as opposed to the Marquette University theater department's production-from (c) a particular performance of it-last night's performance in the Haelfer Theater-from (d) a particular presentation of it-the play as it shows up in Peter Alelyunas's experience of it, upon attending last night's performance. The same distinctions hold across the arts, though differently in different arts, and somewhat more naturally in some than others. There is Beethoven's _D Minor Symphony_ (the artifact), a production of it (The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra's recording of it), a particular performance of it (my playing the recording last night, in my house), and particular presentations of it (mine and other people's experiences of it last night, in my house). At least in many arts, a single artifact can have many productions; a single production can have many performances; and a single performance can give rise to many presentations.


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> This is more fruitful, though I wouldn't call them '_fundamentally_ different' things at all. If this were true writing a score would be quite useless if one hopes to have it properly interpreted. Singing C and writing C have obvious technical and sensory differences, but they _represent_ the same thing. There is nothing else they could possibly mean and the failure of singing any other note than C when C is written demonstrates their fundamentally shared identity. Even when it is written as D double flat or B sharp it still refers to C, or at least to the same note.


But how are they connected except in the mind through the idea which is the work itself? A written note is associated with a heard one only by convention. Likewise a range of different frequencies are identified a note, much like in language a range of different phones are identified with a phoneme. It seems that once again language is powerful analogy for music.


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