# The Ear Vs. the Eye



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Music is sound, and was originally conveyed by *ear,* using biological memory. Thus, like any form of speech, it was an ever-changing, mutable, flexible form, which changed and evolved constantly. It was also collective in nature; no one individual was credited with composition. There was a tribal dimension to the aural world of the ear.

Aural music can only exist in two forms, as sound and as memory. This is based on human tradition.

This type of ear or folk music was expressive of the whole community, with no other external pressures upon it. It changed and adapted as the collective community changed.

There was no such thing as a 'finished' piece of music. At best, there were 'fields' or zones of music, distinguished by geographics and culture.

There was no separation between composer and performer as there now is; the generation of music was a seamless and single process, in which improvisation played a large part.

*Notation* evolved as a memory aid, way of 'remembering' a piece of music on paper. Notation is visual, not aural. It also was exact, and not flexible to the extent that aural forms were. It rose to prominence as an institutional form. It was unchanging, and could be circulated and stored. Every score was thus the 'definitive' version. It could also become property, or a commodity.

Notation encouraged a split between composer and performer.

Notation is visual, of the eye, not the ear, and thus enabled music to divide visually, and embody abstract ideas, subject to the geometry of the eye. This objectivized, abstract way of conveying music was suited to the industrialization taking place in civilization. This was ideal for the ruling class, whose aims were individual, not collective, like the old ear-based folk music. Thus, music became the tool of the rising Bourgoise class, and reflected the progressive nature and aims of the ruling power-class. In fact, folk music became an impediment to this elite.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Uh, O.K. ... and?


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

PetrB said:


> Uh, O.K. ... and?


Discuss.

(if you feel like it - I'm off to watch Brazil v Croatia - its like the Alamo in the Croatian penalty area at the moment!)


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Headphone Hermit said:


> Discuss.


Lol. What is the topic and are there any inherent questions there? I'm not finding any.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

terrible challenge by Neymar

oh, sorry, you were looking for a topic on *this* post? :lol:


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

"Seeing is believing and hearing is a b*tch."
- Lester Young


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## Guest (Jun 12, 2014)

Headphone Hermit said:


> terrible challenge by Neymar


Red card, do you think?


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I thought we got over universal Marxist interpretations of everything 30 years ago..


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

54:14 on the clock.
Brazil look the likelier to score again.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Also, although I suppose you could argue that the Church constituted a ruling elite, we have to remember that one of early uses of notation was the standardization of plainsong -- so that the Dies Irae in Mainz sounded the same as the Dies Irae in Milan.


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

You have had a few really successful threads lately, haven't you MillionRainbows. (Not sarcasm)


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Notation is visual, of the eye, not the ear, and thus enabled music to divide visually, and embody abstract ideas, subject to the geometry of the eye. This objectivized, abstract way of conveying music was suited to the industrialization taking place in civilization.


This may not be crucial to your argument, but doesn't musical notation precede industrialization by several centuries?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

amfortas said:


> This may not be crucial to your argument, but doesn't musical notation precede industrialization by several centuries?


True, and mass production also preceded the industrial revolution by a good long time (contrary to what the history books say). Think Vivaldi, Telemann...


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

millionrainbows said:


> Notation encouraged a split between composer and performer.


This may be the crux of the matter, but I think the printing press had more to do with this.

I can't really say notation is of the eye any more than these words on the screen are. They are really abstract symbols our brains use as a kind of slow telepathy, so they convert back into words (of the mind's ear) almost without any effort on our part, so they are still of the ear or the tongue in that respect. Notation does the same thing for one who can sight read.

I think in the not too distant future the written word may become obsolete as neuron to silicon interfaces become better. I believe we'll be able to make music just by _thinking_ at our instruments, or perhaps the conductor could think at the orchestra, etc. This technology is already here in crude form.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

^ I sort of agree with some of this. Notation is of the ear, just as writing is; written notes, letters are symbols that represent sounds. However, the loss of writing, notation represents a huge loss, similar to people who have lost the ability to do simple mathematics.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

GGluek said:


> Also, although I suppose you could argue that the Church constituted a ruling elite, we have to remember that one of early uses of notation was the standardization of plainsong -- so that the Dies Irae in Mainz sounded the same as the Dies Irae in Milan.


True, though the form of notation involved in standardizing chant was neumes, which were a memory aid rather than a means of eliminating the need for memory. You still needed to hear the chant being sung to know exactly what the neumes represented.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

amfortas said:


> This may not be crucial to your argument, but doesn't musical notation precede industrialization by several centuries?


Yes, but notation developed gradually and came into use as it became relevant. At first, notation was an imprecise, vague memory aid: things were still done pretty much by ear. As feudalism died out, and a bourgeois class began emerging, notation served its purposes well, as a progressive and individual expression (not tribal or collective), and it made music into a commodity, which could be owned.

Also, notated music represented a new kind of music which was emerging. Collective/folk music had no separation between composer and performer; it was participatory, and involved improvisation. "Art" music, which served the bourgeois' needs and aspirations, was the product of individual authorship, which was to be contemplated, not participated in. Thus, we can see the division of labor, and the change in function of music, aided greatly by notation. Thus, notation aided in the creation of a music which represented the aspirations of an elite class, in contrast to 'folk' and tribal forms which sprang from and expressed the experience of a collective nature.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Weston said:


> This may be the crux of the matter, but I think the printing press had more to do with this.
> 
> I can't really say notation is of the eye any more than these words on the screen are. They are really abstract symbols our brains use as a kind of slow telepathy, so they convert back into words (of the mind's ear) almost without any effort on our part, so they are still of the ear or the tongue in that respect. Notation does the same thing for one who can sight read.
> 
> I think in the not too distant future the written word may become obsolete as neuron to silicon interfaces become better. I believe we'll be able to make music just by _thinking_ at our instruments, or perhaps the conductor could think at the orchestra, etc. This technology is already here in crude form.


Notation is visual; that's a given. What does that mean?

1. It means music became unchanging, unlike aural communication (remember that game you played where you whisper something in somebody's ear, and it changes?). Every score becomes definitive

2. Music became property; reproducible, and could be owned and transported, as a commodity.

3. Notation encourages and necessitates a division between composer (author) and performer; thus a new kind of musician emerged, no longer improvising and varying the music, but reading the score.

3. Notation made music subject to the inherent geometric laws of the visual: horizontal was melody, and vertical was harmony. Before that, it was simply time passing. Also, this changed ways of thinking about music for composers, who would now divide things evenly, reverse things, invert things, etc. Even Mozart did things like this.

This characteristic played itself out all the way to the twentieth century, with serialism.

Recording technology is what really changed things, because it is an 'ear' technology. It is a third kind of memory. It does not remember schemes or mechanics, but actual performances.

More importantly, recording can remember - and reproduce - _any sound that can be made._ Thus, as John Cage was telling us, the domain of music increased to include any and all sounds, something that notation could not encompass.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Notation is visual; that's a given. What does that mean?
> 
> 1. It means music became unchanging, unlike aural communication (remember that game you played where you whisper something in somebody's ear, and it changes?). Every score becomes definitive


Continuo realizations, traditions of improvised ornamentation, cadenzas, and many other aspects of performance are not precisely defined in much notated music. And then there is aleatory . . .



millionrainbows said:


> 2. Music became property; reproducible, and could be owned and transported, as a commodity.


Music was reproducible, owned, and transported by troubadours and other wandering and folk musicians for a millennium - just as it was throughout modern times and as it is today in modern popular culture.



millionrainbows said:


> 3. Notation encourages and necessitates a division between composer (author) and performer; thus a new kind of musician emerged, no longer improvising and varying the music, but reading the score.


Throughout this thread you suggest that music with folk origins doesn't have composers. Unless you are proposing that it grows on trees or springs from the ground, I would suggest that this is probably wrong. Musical invention by folk singers and players had to have been just as prevalent as it is today. The lack of notation only makes attribution difficult or impossible.



millionrainbows said:


> 3. Notation made music subject to the inherent geometric laws of the visual: horizontal was melody, and vertical was harmony. Before that, it was simply time passing. Also, this changed ways of thinking about music for composers, who would now divide things evenly, reverse things, invert things, etc. Even Mozart did things like this.


Spatial conceptions of music seem to predate notation. High and low notes were acknowledged by the ancient Greeks. The horizontal, linear conception of time has probably been around since people began to think about time. In fact, it is more likely that the layout of scores mirrors spatial conceptions of music already in place before notation was invented.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> Red card, do you think?


yes, certainly. The Croatians were hard done to, IMHO


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## Guest (Jun 14, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> 3. Notation encourages and *necessitates *a division between composer (author) and performer; thus a new kind of musician emerged, no longer improvising and varying the music, but reading the score.


It _may_ (and indeed _does) _cause a division between composer and performer, but it doesn't necessitate it. It just means that anyone (including the composer), anywhere - who can crack the visual code - can perform it. That enables the widespread democratisation of music, taking it away from local ownership.



millionrainbows said:


> More importantly, recording can remember - and reproduce - _any sound that can be made._ Thus, as John Cage was telling us, the domain of music increased to include any and all sounds, something that notation could not encompass.


Only if you accept what John Cage was telling us. There's no obligation. You could still just regard any recorded sound as no more than recorded sound.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> True, and mass production also preceded the industrial revolution by a good long time (contrary to what the history books say). Think Vivaldi, Telemann...


Manufacture: 
from Latin _manus_ ~ hand..&.._facere_ ~ To make, do.

The earlier version of what Henry Ford, because of his ignorance of history, thunk up, again.... 
_the production line._ :tiphat:

If Henry had known his history, he would have known that's been old hat since B.C.E.


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## mashoo (Jun 14, 2014)

I think notation has also given is today a historical diary of theory, publication, contemporary history, even information regarding the lives of certain individuals. However, one could argue that western music is never purely notated; improvisations, embellishments, any addition by the performer would in one way or another be an addition to the already notated content of the score. Even in New Complexity if we were to view the production of sound, the notated sound AND even the brainpower to produce the sound (which in effect would be different for everybody) perhaps even a concept existing in the mind of a performer could be an addition...parts of the music that aren't quite notated. Concept art: same deal.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> Continuo realizations, traditions of improvised ornamentation, cadenzas, and many other aspects of performance are not precisely defined in much notated music. And then there is aleatory . . .


I'm comparing the newer visual score to the old way music was done, aurally. For 'visual' to make any sense in the context of notaed music, it must be compared to aural, collective 'folk' music, which was transmitted by ear. Notation developed as a tool of the rising bourgeois class.



EdwardBast said:


> Music was reproducible, owned, and transported by troubadours and other wandering and folk musicians for a millennium - just as it was throughout modern times and as it is today in modern popular culture..


No, folk forms were transmitted by ear, as all folk music was. What do you mean that aural folk forms were "reproducible, owned, and transported"? Mystery to me.



EdwardBast said:


> Throughout this thread you suggest that music with folk origins doesn't have composers. Unless you are proposing that it grows on trees or springs from the ground, I would suggest that this is probably wrong. Musical invention by folk singers and players had to have been just as prevalent as it is today. T*he lack of notation only makes attribution difficult or impossible. .[*/QUOTE]
> 
> Exactly, there was no authorship, ownership, or publishing rights. What do you think I meant, that it grew on trees? :lol:
> 
> ...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

_*Originally Posted by millionrainbows 
3. Notation encourages and necessitates a division between composer (author) and performer; thus a new kind of musician emerged, no longer improvising and varying the music, but reading the score.

*_


MacLeod said:


> It _may_ (and indeed _does)_(? - ed.) cause a division between composer and performer, but it doesn't necessitate it. It just means that anyone (including the composer), anywhere - who can crack the visual code - can perform it. That enables the widespread democratisation of music, taking it away from local ownership.


It eliminates improvisation, makes the composition definitive and fixed, so it takes away 'democratic rights' to modify or elaborate.

_*Originally Posted by millionrainbows 
More importantly, recording can remember - and reproduce - any sound that can be made. Thus, as John Cage was telling us, the domain of music increased to include any and all sounds, something that notation could not encompass.
*_


MacLeod said:


> Only if you accept what John Cage was telling us. There's no obligation. You could still just regard any recorded sound as no more than recorded sound.


Yes, but you can't notate any sound. There are limits, and prescribed hierarchy of instruments and ranges. I'm sure that if there is any exception, you will find it.

Once again, nobody is comparing notation (eye) to recording (ear), and all these exceptions being cited are meaningless unless the comparison is made.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Really, the realm of popular music has been empowered more than ever due to recording (an ear-memory), so Western Classical notated music seems to be searching to find a way to accommodate and regain its once singular power. Witness Yo Yo Ma's recent projects...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

mashoo said:


> .* However, one could argue that western music is never purely notated; improvisations, embellishments, any addition by the performer would in one way or another be an addition to the already notated content of the score. *Concept art: same deal.


That is true as an exception, but is irrelevant in the context of the eye/ear dialectic. Can anyone here discuss this without being defensive or citing irrelevant exceptions?

Everybody seems intent on 'defending' notated music by desperately relating it to the ear.

Of course, notated music's purpose is to be transformed into sound, this is obvious.

Nobody here seems to be able to recognize the aural as a mode of experience, much less discuss it. I

I've already listed the characteristics of both modes of music-making. I'm not attacking notated music; I'm just defining how it changes our experience of music, and secondarily, how it has affected the social functions of music.

With the rise of popular music via recording, notated music with origins as a bourgeois power base has lost much of its former power. This power, however, has been replaced by the capitalist commodity system. Recording, an ear-based technology, can transform music into a commodity via reproduction. So really, we are not much better off than before.

There is hope, however, in the grass roots power of people; who demand that music be vital, sincere, and reflects the concerns of the folk, without being simply a tool for manipulation, or a mere commodity. All great art will, hopefully, rise spontaneously from the hearts and souls of real people, rather than from market research surveys and radio station conglomerates.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

There have been forms of musical notation since ancient times in varied cultures worldwide. Notation becomes necessary when music reaches a certain level of complexity, involves multiple participants, or needs to be reproduced precisely for ritual or other purposes. What do the tastes, needs, values and ambitions of a ruling class have to do with it? The need for composed and notated music in some contexts did not make folk music or its aural transmission disappear, or deprive us of the pleasure of making such "traditional" music for ourselves. And by making possible the creation of kinds of music that "the folk" could never have conceived, notation bestowed on all of us an immense and precious cultural heritage. I can sit at the piano and improvise to my heart's content - embodying the principle of "no division between composer and performer" - or I can put on a recording of an opera or symphony and be grateful for exactly that "division" between little me and immense Wagner or Beethoven. Each way of enjoying music is valuable in its way, and I feel no "bourgeois power base" using music as a "tool" to dictate to me what sort of musical experience I shall have.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> I'm comparing the newer visual score to the old way music was done, aurally. For 'visual' to make any sense in the context of notaed music, it must be compared to aural, collective 'folk' music, which was transmitted by ear. Notation developed as a tool of the rising bourgeois class.


Notation, both instrumental music and vocal, developed long before there was a bourgeois class. Your chronology is way off.



EdwardBast said:


> Throughout this thread you suggest that music with folk origins doesn't have composers. Unless you are proposing that it grows on trees or springs from the ground, I would suggest that this is probably wrong. Musical invention by folk singers and players had to have been just as prevalent as it is today. T*he lack of notation only makes attribution difficult or impossible. .[*/QUOTE]
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> I've already listed the characteristics of both modes of music-making. I'm not attacking notated music; I'm just defining how it changes our experience of music, and secondarily, how it has affected the social functions of music.


You have not shown anything about how notation has affected the social functions of music. From the beginning you have had the causality backwards. Notation was invented (and reinvented and modified) to facilitate social functions that already existed.

You are not attacking notated music. You are obliquely attacking the people, social institutions, and societal structures you believe to be responsible for its existence. You are couching a tired argument about class relations as an argument about sensory modalities. If you made your argument in the politics forum, the need for obfuscation would disappear.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> There have been forms of musical notation since ancient times in varied cultures worldwide. Notation becomes necessary when music reaches a certain level of complexity, involves multiple participants, or needs to be reproduced precisely for ritual or other purposes. What do the tastes, needs, values and ambitions of a ruling class have to do with it? The need for composed and notated music in some contexts did not make folk music or its aural transmission disappear, or deprive us of the pleasure of making such "traditional" music for ourselves. And by making possible the creation of kinds of music that "the folk" could never have conceived, notation bestowed on all of us an immense and precious cultural heritage. I can sit at the piano and improvise to my heart's content - embodying the principle of "no division between composer and performer" - or I can put on a recording of an opera or symphony and be grateful for exactly that "division" between little me and immense Wagner or Beethoven. Each way of enjoying music is valuable in its way, and I feel no "bourgeois power base" using music as a "tool" to dictate to me what sort of musical experience I shall have.


Abstraction isn't a tool of oppression; doctrinaire nonsense is. Abstraction identifies and conceptually integrates the evidence of the senses. . . I know. I know: thank you Miss Alyssa Rosenbaum.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> ...Notation becomes necessary when music reaches a certain level of *complexity*, involves multiple participants, or *needs to be reproduced precisely *for ritual or other purposes.


Notation is a form of visual memory. It does not take the place of aural, biological memory, and is not inherently superior to it, as you say it is.



Woodduck said:


> ... What do the tastes, needs, values and ambitions of a ruling class have to do with it?


Writing, notation, and later, typography creates a visual bias, and turns aural phenomena (speech, music) into a form which is a metaphor, or exemplifies the visual mode of thinking which gave rise to, and reflects industrialization. Things become linear, sequenced, separated, and organized visually.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> ...The need for composed and notated music in some contexts did not make folk music or its aural transmission disappear, or deprive us of the pleasure of making such "traditional" music for ourselves...


No, but it created an elite class of musicians who must read music, and not create it; so it took away creation, and gave it to the composer. It turned musicians into employees, at the bottom of an hierarchical pyramid, the same hierarchical pyramid that all business is based on.



Woodduck said:


> ... And by making possible the creation of kinds of music that "the folk" could never have conceived, notation bestowed on all of us an immense and precious cultural heritage.


Yes, via recordings and history, it is now available to us as a commodity, like all other music, even ethnic and folk. But at the time this music was not for 'the folk;' it was for the upper-class elite. Schoenberg used to have to stand outside the opera house to hear music.



Woodduck said:


> ...I can sit at the piano and improvise to my heart's content - embodying the principle of "no division between composer and performer"...


But as a cultural form, jazz exemplifies this better than you sitting in a room. We're talking cultural forms here, not you in a room. Good luck with getting a jazz gig, or making a living at it.



Woodduck said:


> ...- or I can put on a recording of an opera or symphony and be grateful for exactly that "division" between little me and immense Wagner or Beethoven. Each way of enjoying music is valuable in its way, and I feel no "bourgeois power base" using music as a "tool" to dictate to me what sort of musical experience I shall have.


You can put on a recording of African drumming ensembles, too. Recording turned music into a commodity. By being a consumer, you are part of the bourgeois commodification of music, called capitalism. That's the new power-base.

You need to distinguish the past from the present, and how recording changed music.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Marschallin Blair said:


> Abstraction isn't a tool of oppression; doctrinaire nonsense is. Abstraction identifies and conceptually integrates the evidence of the senses. . . I know. I know: thank you Miss Alyssa Rosenbaum.


I'm glad we agree on this, Marschalin Blair.

It is well known that totalitarian governments hate and suppress serialism and 'modern' abstract art. That's because abstraction (Schoenberg was an Expressionist) reflects the inner experience of the artist, and thus does not reflect the outward reality of whatever social, political, and ideological environment it springs from.

Thus, *abstraction *itself is in inherent opposition to outward powers which might try to control it. It is the expression of the individual, in the absence of any ideological purpose. It is inherently apolitical, in that it celebrates the individual.

Serialism (an abstracted form) arose in contrast to tonality, which had been the official language of music for centuries, representing through its notation and scores the aspirations and concerns of an elite ruling class, evolving out of Church power, then kings, royalty and an emerging bourgeois class. Haydn and Mozart wrote their _divertissiments_ for the amusement of royal families who funded them. The music embodies the progressive and elitist aims of this ruling class, and tonality was the sensual, resonant language which was used to convey this.

Thus, Schoenberg and the serial composers who followed acted out of artistic concerns and their retreat into the inner realm of abstraction, free of tradition, and because of the inherent inner, individualistic nature of abstraction, became opposed to any nationalistic aims.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> Notation is a form of visual memory. It does not take the place of aural, biological memory, and is not inherently superior to it, as you say it is.
> 
> Writing, notation, and later, typography creates a visual bias, and turns aural phenomena (speech, music) into a form which is a metaphor, or exemplifies the visual mode of thinking which gave rise to, and reflects industrialization. Things become linear, sequenced, separated, and organized visually.


I didn't say notation, or any form of writing, was "superior" to memory. It merely serves necessary practical purposes. As long as humans lived in insular villages and music consisted of songs and dances, music (and other information) could be shared directly and easily, and memory was sufficient to preserve the cohesion and continuity of culture. That world is gone.

Music happens in time. It's already linear. It doesn't get more linear if I write it down. As a matter of fact, music, an aural art, is more inherently linear (sequential) than painting, a visual art, in which all parts exist together simultaneously. I am a painter as well as a musician, and I must say that neither mode of thinking has ever threatened to industrialize me.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

> millionrainbows: It is well known that totalitarian governments hate and suppress serialism and 'modern' abstract art.


-- Then the repressive _ancien régime_ of Castro's Cuba sure has a lot of 'splaining to do Lucy with regards to its acceptance of Henze as a pedagogue.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> No, but it created an elite class of musicians who must read music, and not create it; so it took away creation, and gave it to the composer. It turned musicians into employees, at the bottom of an hierarchical pyramid, the same hierarchical pyramid that all business is based on.
> 
> Yes, via recordings and history, it is now available to us as a commodity, like all other music, even ethnic and folk. But at the time this music was not for 'the folk;' it was for the upper-class elite. Schoenberg used to have to stand outside the opera house to hear music.
> 
> ...


I agree that art can be a commodity, i.e. something which can be bought and sold. That didn't come into being with capitalism. Nobody has ever worked for free. Musicians always had to make a living; whether a song sung at a wedding or a funeral was paid for in dollars or in eggs and blankets, talented people who make music in all cultures have been recognized and supported through payment for services rendered. Yes, music in written form can be bought and sold conveniently in that form, and the buying and selling of music, as well as the employment of musicians, can be a complex industry. As with any other industry, the products of this one may not be equally available to everyone. I cannot go to the opera very often on my income. As a performing musician, I may not find employment when and where I want it. That's life, isn't it? Why should anyone guarantee me a living as a musician? I can still enjoy making music, alone or with friends (and Schoenberg was perfectly free to do the same). But just as importantly, I have access, thanks to the recording industry, to the music of the whole world. If the written notation of music made possible the creation of _Der Ring des Nibelungen_, and if the industries which print music, employ orchestras, build and run opera houses, and record the performances that happen there, can bring that great artistic creation to me in my own home for the cost of a few dinners at my hometown buffet, I say hurrah for "visual" music and hurrah for the bourgeoisie.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

> Woodduck: I agree that art can be a commodity, i.e. something which can be bought and sold. That didn't come into being with capitalism. Nobody has ever worked for free. Musicians always had to make a living; whether a song sung at a wedding or a funeral was paid for in dollars or in eggs and blankets, talented people who make music in all cultures have been recognized and supported through payment for services rendered. Yes, music in written form can be bought and sold conveniently in that form, and the buying and selling of music, as well as the employment of musicians, can be a complex industry. As with any other industry, the products of this one may not be equally available to everyone. I cannot go to the opera very often on my income. As a performing musician, I may not find employment when and where I want it. That's life, isn't it? Why should anyone guarantee me a living as a musician? I can still enjoy making music, alone or with friends (and Schoenberg was perfectly free to do the same). But just as importantly, I have access, thanks to the recording industry, to the music of the whole world. If the written notation of music made possible the creation of Der Ring des Nibelungen, and if the industries which print music, employ orchestras, build and run opera houses, and record the performances that happen there, can bring that great artistic creation to me in my own home for the cost of a few dinners at my hometown buffet, I say hurrah for "visual" music and hurrah for the bourgeoisie.


---
Its the often-maligned and more frequently misunderstood 'bourgeois' civilization of capitalism which brought the world the readily-available novel, the cd player, and Amazon.com-- where you can buy Britney Spears _or _Schoenberg; and a state apparatchik isn't going to be there to tell you what you can and can't listen to or buy. [/QUOTE]


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

My two cents worth:

Reading musical notation often means you don't have to memorize the music. Performers who can't read music have their music memorized. They're consequently different kinds of performers. I am not judging who is better, both have advantages, both disadvantages. 

We go to concerts to see people perform to get both the visual and aural experience. If we only want to hear the music, we might as well sit at home and listen to a CD. Therefore, a concert is a different musical experience because you use more of your senses. Sitting at home listening to a CD is a nice aural experience. 

(sorry, this post is not following the general conversation)


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

senza sordino said:


> My two cents worth:
> 
> Reading musical notation often means you don't have to memorize the music. Performers who can't read music have their music memorized. They're consequently different kinds of performers. I am not judging who is better, both have advantages, both disadvantages.
> 
> ...


Reading notated music enabled the precise control of groups of musicians. An "ear" player who is a solo individual does not have to worry about synchronizing with other musicians in any significant way, except maybe a singer and a few other players.

So, notation represents a large social force of players, under the precise control of a conductor. It represents a larger society, not an individual. In this way, notation is "institutionalized," while a single "EAR" or folk player represents the poetic, subjective aspects of humanity, and/or focuses on the individual, rather than the collective idea.

Concert pianists, like Horowitz, are celebrating the performance of the individual, and wish us to focus on their performance rather than simply promulgating "the idea of a composer" or "the idea of a composition." That's why concert pianists have their repertoire memorized.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Boulez says that 'écriture', a concept*that involves notation and composition, is essential to modern classical music because it signifies the autonomy of musical symbols and the primacy of thought over substance. Thus oral traditions and _musique concrète _ are essentially primitive form of music.

*which like all concepts of humanities is over-inflated and over-written because of reasons I won't talk about here but every learned individual and perhaps specially 'science/math people' quickly realises.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

OP: Okay, so what's the point?


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