# Dancing About Architecture



## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture," said Stravinsky or Elvis Costello or somebody (I've seen various attributions). Inspired by Susan McClary's absurdly sensationalistic comments about Beethoven's Ninth quoted in another thread, I thought we might dedicate a thread to failed--overblown, willfully obscure, nebulous, or simply inept--examples of attempts to verbalize what is happening in music.

Here's something that landed in my inbox today, from an email from MDG advertising (yet!) another recording of Mendelssohn's piano trios.

*"[T]he mighty [Op. 66 trio] builds up to a finale in which quite significant questions are posed - and on this sparkling debut CD the Trio Alba offers refreshingly sophisticated answers to them."
*

Now that's some mighty fine dancing about architecture right there.


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## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

And here's the McClary quotation that inspired me to create this thread.

"The point of recapitulation in the first movement of [Beethoven's] Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes *in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release."*


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Yep, people write about *everything*.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Susan McClary's comment on Beethoven's 9th is probably the single most stupid thing I have ever seen written about music. It tries to advance a feminist agenda, but manages to insult:

1) The patriarchial establishment (intended)
2) Beethoven (known at least)
3) People who have been raped - comparing their experience to listening to Beethoven's 9th is frankly morbidly offensive (and certainly not intended by the writer)
4) The large majority of Classical listeners who just like music and think it's utterly irrelevant and in bad taste (probably intended to be shocking at any rate)

So really, it has to be a massively misjudged statement. I can't even begin to think of anything which would compare to it. There are some 19th century programmatic excesses, which arguably relate to the music less, which are however metaphorical and manage to insult nobody at all most of the time. They are just bad analyses in effect. McClary's comment is overtly ideological and should thus be subjected to the same consideration as ideological statements are bound to be. Fortunately, in the 2nd edition, McClary repented of her previous excesses.


Sorry I know the purpose of this thread wasn't to discuss this particular quote but to advance other ones, but I don't think I was digitally present when the other debate was taking place.


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## palJacky (Nov 27, 2010)

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture," said Stravinsky or Elvis Costello or somebody (I've seen various attributions).
Martin Mull '79 seems to be the earliest source anyone can find for this.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Ramako said:


> Fortunately, in the 2nd edition, McClary repented of her previous excesses.


That's good to know. That first comment of hers made her famous but for the wrong reason.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

palJacky said:


> "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture," said Stravinsky or Elvis Costello or somebody (I've seen various attributions).
> Martin Mull '79 seems to be the earliest source anyone can find for this.


That's funny; I've heard it attributed to Laurie Anderson. It seems to be a quote which spontaneously jumps into famous peoples' mouths.

If I wanted to make an art movie, it would about be me tracking down all the people who allegedly have said it and asking if it's true. Then at the end we could all dance about architecture.


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## palJacky (Nov 27, 2010)

<<<That's funny; I've heard it attributed to Laurie Anderson. It seems to be a quote which spontaneously jumps into famous peoples' mouths. >>>>
and I'm sure she has never denied it.....why let the truth get in the way when you are convincing people you are "clever"?

Hey Laurie, Biberkauf still had BOTH arms in the scene in the flowershop in "berlin alexanderplatz"...


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I don't have any quotes to contribute at this time, but I'd like to say that I wouldn't find dancing about architecture all that odd. It makes at least as much sense as dancing about Gangnam Style or Macarena's ambitions.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

I'd rather read overblown, willfully obscure, nebulous, or simply inept descriptions about music than boring or matter-of-factly ones. There's a special sort of joy in it, even if one completely disagrees about the statement.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Xaltotun said:


> I'd rather read overblown, willfully obscure, nebulous, or simply inept descriptions about music than boring or matter-of-factly ones. There's a special sort of joy in it, even if one completely disagrees about the statement.


I agree with that. I also love writing them. But short statements that seem superficial as opposed to long and personal descriptions, I much prefer the latter.

Also, one can have a very esoteric description and call your attention to the subjectivity of it too. I don't know whether that is a good thing or a bad thing to do that, since it will make you seem less crazy perhaps but it may put an unecessary wet blanket on your description as well.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

palJacky said:


> Hey Laurie, Biberkauf still had BOTH arms in the scene in the flowershop in "berlin alexanderplatz"...


Yeah. And I thought the flower was a carnation. I get so confused by these artsy people.


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## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

clavichorder said:


> Yep, people write about *everything*.


I don't understand this comment.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Not quite in response to the OP, but in the spirit of the original quote, back in the 1850s, American composer William Henry Fry gave 11 lectures on music, covering every musical subject he could think of, employing an orchestra and chorus with opera singers, to which one reviewer commented, "The people care much more for music - simple, downright _music _- than for Mr. Fry's rambling talk _about_ it."


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## palJacky (Nov 27, 2010)

"Yeah. And I thought the flower was a carnation. I get so confused by these artsy people.

it was, and nina hesse's birth name was "auslander'... 
kind of makes one wonder about every thing else she yaps off about.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

That's funny because I'm now reading a book about the death of public language, and it ties into this. It includes of course marketing jargon (yuck) and also politician speak (doubletalk etc) and also commentators on sports and yes the arts. Universities are not immune from it either, eg. look at the semiotics theories that originated in postwar Europe, esp. France. Everything has to be related to things like philosophy (Existentialism) or some political ideology (eg. Marxism, Feminism, etc.). I mean EVERYTHING.

I remember I had an old LP of Bartok's music and it argued that the voices being separate at the beginning of his _Music for Strings, Percussion and Celest_a but then coming together at the end symbolise Bartok's leftist politics. Eg. him being for collectivism and basically Communism. I mean it may be true that like many intellectuals in the interwar period, he was on that side of the political spectrum, but I mean can you really read that sort of political narrative into that work? Esp. given the fact that he shied away from calling things like that and the _Concerto for Orchestra_ as a 'symphony' - which they could have been easily called/labelled. He did this to get away from tradition and imposing any type of the old 'grand narratives' view of Beethoven, Brahms etc (the Germanic tradition) on his music. The listener is invited to listen to it as music, the music is the focus (albeit 'extramusical' allusions like the sly reference to Shosty's Leningrad symphony in the Concerto for Orch.).

But ironically, had he lived, its unlikely Bartok would have returned to Hungary (which became Iron Curtain). Same as with guys like Martinu, who never returned to Czechoslovakia following the Communist coup there in 1948. So Bartok was not for that type of politics, which is what that sleevenote (an East European recording, if my memory is correct) strongly suggested. Of course these regimes coopted guys like Bartok and Martinu, even though the composers in question would not have been fans of things that happened there (esp. Stalinism).

But the wider picture is that language has been deteriorating for a long time. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address lasted a few minutes, yet on the same ocassion, a professional orator delivered another address that was like an hour long and has since faded into obscurity.

I am by no means an eloquent user of the English language. But I hate jargon that obscures meanings, or worse, has manipulative intent and hides agendas behind all manner of gobbledigook. Look at the quote by Stalin in my signature below. Compare it with the simplicity and eloquence of Gandhi's quote. That's what I'm saying, NOTHING can obscure a semblance of reality or truth, not weasal words, not the most pretentious intellectualisations and rationalisations put to prose.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Sid James said:


> That's funny because I'm now reading a book about the death of public language, and it ties into this. It includes of course marketing jargon (yuck) and also politician speak (doubletalk etc) and also commentators on sports and yes the arts. Universities are not immune from it either, eg. look at the semiotics theories that originated in postwar Europe, esp. France. Everything has to be related to things like philosophy (Existentialism) or some political ideology (eg. Marxism, Feminism, etc.). I mean EVERYTHING.


You have probably been spared from having to read much contemporary academic writing. I won't regale you with any of it, but by all means, read this spot-on parody, which was so convincing that it was accepted by a journal.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html



Sid James said:


> But the wider picture is that language has been deteriorating for a long time. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address lasted a few minutes, yet on the same ocassion, a professional orator delivered another address that was like an hour long and has since faded into obscurity.


The US president who gave the longest inaugural speech in the country's history caught cold and died a few months later. There might be a lesson in that, but probably not.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Eduard hanslick, Wagner's nemesis , was so terribly annoyed by the last movement of the then new 
Tchaikovsky violin concerto that he described it as "music which stinks in the ear ". Whew !
He thought the first two movements were okay .


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> You have probably been spared from having to read much contemporary academic writing. I won't regale you with any of it, but by all means, read this spot-on parody, which was so convincing that it was accepted by a journal.
> 
> http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html...


YUCK.



> ...
> The US president who gave the longest inaugural speech in the country's history caught cold and died a few months later. There might be a lesson in that, but probably not.


Well at least he gave a speech. Seriously. Its been going on for years, but politicians today go for the quick 'sound grab' and especially if there's some natural disaster (we get plenty here) they don't even say anything, they're just shown on the nightly news hugging and comforting the survivors/victims.

A picture speaks a thousand words as they say but that doesn't mean say NOTHING. So you get the two extremes. Gobbledigook or nothing.

The great speeches of the past actually had verbs (action words basically) which is what the writer I'm reading argues. Churchill's "we will fight them on the beaches" speech, Martin Luther Kings "I have a dream" speech, or Nehru's speech on India's independence, which is amazing. Look at this quote:

_At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance._

Whole speech here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/may/01/greatspeeches

Again I don't want to derail this thread but to people like politicians, corporate leaders, commentators on sports and the arts, I'd say they have lost this kind of basic ability to communicate effectively.

The culprits IMO are things like jargon and not saying things straight (which is for many reasons, one is basically covering the hidden agendas and all that). To say things straight puts your backside on the line, a thing that many commentators shy away from. & this hurts the public "discourse" to coin another one of those fancy po-mo words.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

clavichorder said:


> Yep, people write about *everything*.


And sometimes seemingly senseless. If you're dancing around architecture, does it matter that it's even architecture? That's one for HC to contemplate, if he's reading this.


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## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> You have probably been spared from having to read much contemporary academic writing. I won't regale you with any of it, but by all means, read this spot-on parody, which was so convincing that it was accepted by a journal.
> 
> http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html


Mahlerian, I agree that the Sokal hoax essay is wonderful. The title itself is such a daring joke. Did it never occur to any editor or reviewer to pause when they reached those final two words? The only way the joke could have been more obvious is if the title had literally been "The Social Constructedness of Gravity." But of course the whole point is that even the most flagrant scholarly overreach can be concealed behind jargon delivered with a poker face.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Hausmusik said:


> Mahlerian, I agree that the Sokal hoax essay is wonderful. The title itself is such a daring joke. Did it never occur to any editor or reviewer to pause when they reached those final two words? The only way the joke could have been more obvious is if the title had literally been "The Social Constructedness of Gravity." But of course the whole point is that even the most flagrant scholarly overreach can be concealed behind jargon delivered with a poker face.


I love that it hits every single hot button buzzword, constantly namedropping, all veiled in a deluge of references and insinuations that mean absolutely nothing. The weirdest part is that nothing he says would be out of place in one of these articles.



Sid James said:


> The great speeches of the past actually had verbs (action words basically) which is what the writer I'm reading argues. Churchill's "we will fight them on the beaches" speech, Martin Luther Kings "I have a dream" speech, or Nehru's speech on India's independence, which is amazing. Look at this quote:
> 
> _At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance._


That is a great quote. It really is a shame that there's no eloquence in today's rhetoric, which is either very dry or otherwise fluff. The best rhetoric is, and has always been, the effect of words used in the service of argument.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

& to speak more to the topic, this being a 'hobby horse' of mine, I did this thread on a strongly related issue:
http://www.talkclassical.com/17316-musical-jargon.html

My opening post above quotes some very abstruse sleeve notes to a Boulez cd I've got. This I found a 'common sense' critique of and its in THIS post from that thread.

Even Wagner's rather florid description of Beethoven's Op. 131 quartet has a sense of meaning and reality to it. So too does a simple description I like by Peter Sculthorpe of one of his own works.

The ironic thing is that in the ivory towers of academe, they're like a kind of clique of (far?) left leaning people. But with this sort of language that is even hard for educated people to decipher - I mean its like a code - they are mystifying music & the other arts. George Bernard Shaw was a critic of this sort of intellectual ghetto mentality, so too where Ben Jonson and Gustave Flaubert earlier. Basically I see it as a way of keeping art behind some sort of fence, and make it only for certain audiences and not others. Its a bit like Orwell's quote about all people being equal but some being more equal than others. & that, folks, is the basis of an authoritarian view of freedom (yep, that's an oxymoron!)...


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Hausmusik said:


> And here's the McClary quotation that inspired me to create this thread.
> 
> "The point of recapitulation in the first movement of [Beethoven's] Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes *in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release."*


These people are great fools tryng to make a splash,they probably stay up late thinking up great sayings then finding what to fit them into.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

moody said:


> These people are great fools tryng to make a splash,they probably stay up late thinking up great sayings then finding what to fit them into.


Yeah and ol' Beethoven himself would probably think that this kind of gobledigook about his music is rubbish. If he could understand what they guy's talking about in the first place that is...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

...its also ironic that the generation who worshipped post-structuralists and post-modernists like Derrida and Baudrillard don't understand basic grammar. In our schools, and commonly across the Western world, explicit teaching of grammar was thrown out by educators in the 1960's. Here its only been recently reinstated to some degree (the last 10-15 years, as a response to kids coming out of school not knowing the basic structures of the English language). Ironic aint it? Certain intellectual elites can discuss all this abstruse philosophy and intellectual wankery but a sizable amount of kids coming out of school can barely put together a sentence properly, let alone one that has actual meaning and isn't laden with jargon and gobbledigook (or verbal pollution like Americanisms).

So you got true believers of Marxism who said grammar was old hat and oppressive. Its attaching ideology to knowledge, which has become a kind of theme of our times. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater yet again.

Is this progress?...


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

I just looked back down at the book I was reading (new paragraph) and read:



> What we now call sonata form was developed as a response to aspects of the world view of the Enlightenment and the concomitantly emerging modernism


And suddenly felt a general loss to my will to live (metaphorically speaking).


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Ramako said:


> I just looked back down at the book I was reading (new paragraph) and read:
> 
> And suddenly felt a general loss to my will to live (metaphorically speaking).


Do you absolutely have to read this book or is it something you have a choice about?


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## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

> What we now call sonata form was developed as a response to aspects of the world view of the Enlightenment and the concomitantly emerging modernism


Ramako, I don't see anything wrong with that statement...isn't this the conventional view?


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Do you absolutely have to read this book or is it something you have a choice about?


I do have to read it, and I also want to read it for what it contains. It actually has some very good and interesting points and insights, as well as ones I think are flawed.



Hausmusik said:


> Ramako, I don't see anything wrong with that statement...isn't this the conventional view?


The statement puts the social and cultural elements _first_, and then claims sonata form was developed _in response_ to these non-musical factors. It is putting musical form as slave to more general intellectual development. This is a view which is gaining ground these days, and has some merit, but significant flaws if taken too far. Perhaps the most obvious of these is how exactly the enlightenment inspires the concepts of tonal dissonance etc. central to sonata form. The other issue is that this is a book on a specific kind of analysis which has nothing to do with the worldview of the time, so as a reader I'd hoped to avoid this kind of thing.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I'm particularly irked by critics (even musicologists) who insist on seeing a composer's life reflected in his works. If Beethoven's 2nd Symphony had beeen sturm und drang in a minor key, they'd write, "His thoughts of suicide are clearly reflected in..." But it's not, so instead they write, "In a vigorous rejection of these suicidal thoughts, he wrote the cheerful and powerful second symphony..."


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I'm particularly irked by critics (even musicologists) who insist on seeing a composer's life reflected in his works. If Beethoven's 2nd Symphony had beeen sturm und drang in a minor key, they'd write, "His thoughts of suicide are clearly reflected in..." But it's not, so instead they write, "In a vigorous rejection of these suicidal thoughts, he wrote the cheerful and powerful second symphony..."


In that case I recommend to you Dahlhaus' _Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to his Music_. In the first chapter he argues much the same in longer words and more obfuscating sentence structures


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

Sid James said:


> ...The great speeches of the past actually had verbs (action words basically) which is what the writer I'm reading argues. Churchill's "we will fight them on the beaches" speech, Martin Luther Kings "I have a dream" speech, or Nehru's speech on India's independence, which is amazing. ...


Don Watson's little book (_Death Sentence_) became a kind of bible for me. I attempt to eradicate weasel words from all my communication. I haven't written "in terms of" for years, if ever.
There was a piece along the same lines (Australians no longer speaking bluntly and candidly) published in the Fin Review over the Oz day weekend. Recommended.
GG


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

KenOC said:


> I'm particularly irked by critics (even musicologists) who insist on seeing a composer's life reflected in his works. If Beethoven's 2nd Symphony had beeen sturm und drang in a minor key, they'd write, "His thoughts of suicide are clearly reflected in..." But it's not, so instead they write, "In a vigorous rejection of these suicidal thoughts, he wrote the cheerful and powerful second symphony..."


Well there is good reason to guard against 'psychobiography' - eg. sexing up the psychological aspects behind a composer's music. However, in terms of my own way of seeing things, I tend to connect with composer who do put more rather than less of themselves in their music. It doesn't mean there has to be a literal narrative.

Eg. Messiaen's _Quartet for the End of Time _is hard for me to separate from the circumstances which produced it. So too many of my favourite works by the likes of Janacek, Berg, Shostakovich, even Brahms, and so on. But its the way I see it, not necessarily the way you have to see it.

In any case, I have not connected much with composers like R. Strauss, who all his life put little of himself in his music, he is the most impersonal of all the late Romantics. Its ironic that Mahler did not like program music, whereas Strauss was the master of the tone poem. Yet Mahler's music often started with a program in his mind, and knowing the circumstances from which his symphonies where written in can shed some light on them to some extent. But I would not go without one Strauss work, _Metamorphosen_, which if you look at it was produced in unique circumstances. He was an exile, basically a refugee, in Switzerland at the time, after the 2nd world war. It is by many accounts his most autobiographical work - although again with no set 'program' like his tone poems - and a number of people on this forum have echoed my opinion. They can get into this work emotionally whereas with his other things they can't.

So autobiographical music is not necessarily that in a literal way. In any case, a good writer on music imo puts on the table the inspirations behind the work, its gestation (eg. versions? editions?), the historical context at the time, the composer's circle of friends and artistic circle (incl. eg. patrons), the subsequent impact/s of this work and so on.

But a listener can unpack it or not. Its up to the individual listener. I have always argued against a one size fits all approach on this forum, but some people will always draw dichotomies from what I say. Good for them.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

I think that looking at the biography of a composer sheds light on the work and the composer however you look at it, and whether or not that affects your appreciation of their music.


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