# The composer is not the final authority on his or her own compositions



## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Lately I have been contemplating the nature of the composer's role and realized that composers have no authority over the nature of their compositions. In fact, considering that every composer is at best a social construction by the general public, the observer can liberate the act of composition from a total authoritarian standpoint. For example, "Beethoven" and "Symphony No. 5" are historical derivations from how people have created the concepts as such.

Barthes says in his essay "Death of the Author," "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing [...] [However] by refusing to assign a 'secret,' an ultimate meaning, to the text (and the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases--reason, science, law."

This means that every composition ever produced is completely open-minded which suggests that the listener (or the customer of a recording of the work) participates equally in the composition of the work at hand. For example, by listening and interpreting Kleiber's recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the conductor and orchestra and I all help to compose the work as much as the original "author" does. This produces a rather complex admixture of how authorship ought to be accorded for the final artifact.

In fact, there cannot be any final interpretation of any work whatsoever. Thus monikers of heroic nature for pieces like Beethoven's Third Symphony are potentially artificial and socially designated and one of many possible interpretations for that particular work in question. In fact, with collective authorship writing Beethoven's Third Symphony, it becomes possible to have contradictory readings of the work as being both heroic and anti-heroic in the same boat.

The shifting meanings of any single reading means that a single listening experience can change again and again as the listener hears the work again and again over time. Since there isn't any fixed source for interpretation, then it is possible that the pleasure of hearing a recording comes from the aural seduction deriving from the mythologies of the composer, the performer, the label, etc. For example, the spell of Karajan's conducting can overshadow Mahler's intent whereas the listener is drawn more into Karajan's impositions and re-writing of Mahler rather than what Mahler placed in the score.

That means that any recording/performance can provide a multiplicity of infinite possibilities in the end and the lack of resolve contributes to a constant flow of notes/notations into combinations. For example, one valid reading of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony could be listening to the third movement first, second movement second, last movement third, and so on and result in a fascinating possibility of listening.

Therefore, the musical work has no certain outcome. In my personal experience, that allows me to enjoy pretty much any work in its own terms without much worry...

Further musings for later...


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## Guest (May 2, 2015)

Albert7 said:


> Barthes says in his essay "Death of the Author," "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing [...] [However] by refusing to assign a 'secret,' an ultimate meaning, to the text (and the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases--reason, science, law."


I would say to Barthes -- if you have something to say, you should find a way to say it simply and clearly. If you're just spouting out a stream of unconventional juxtapositions of "big" words, don't expect to impress me. Barthes' writing style strikes me as borderline charlatanism.

My experience of listening to Beethoven's Ninth reflects not only the composer's intentions, but also my impressions of the composer, the work, the conductor, classical music in general, etc; as well as the circumstances surrounding the specific listening experience.

Fair enough. Why make it sound complicated?


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## TradeMark (Mar 12, 2015)

I've read about this stuff before. It didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know, but it was interesting. This type of stuff is pretty much common sense.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Albert7 said:


> That means that any recording/performance can provide a multiplicity of infinite possibilities in the end and the lack of resolve contributes to a constant flow of notes/notations into combinations. For example, one valid reading of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony could be listening to the third movement first, second movement second, last movement third, and so on and result in a fascinating possibility of listening.


Do you even know Beethoven's Fifth? The reason I ask is because what you are proposing is not just absurd, it's metaphysically impossible. The third movement goes attacca into the finale. They don't split. It is continuous sound. That is not a fascinating possibility of listening and it would not be a "valid reading." It's an ill-considered imposition completely devoid of musical sense. In any case, this same argument with Beethoven's Fifth was posted on the discussion list of the American Musicological Society by some earnest but misguided product of a western U.S. state's university system a few years back. He received the same critique. The fact that you are repeating this argument makes me worry that this has, against all odds, found its way into print or some other permanent medium.

The rest of your post toggles between the trite ("there cannot be any final interpretation of any work whatsoever") and the aggressively incoherent and logic-bereft ("Beethoven" and "Symphony No. 5" are historical derivations from how people have created the concepts as such.)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The universal understanding that there is no single definitive interpretation of a piece of music - say, Beethoven's Fifth - didn't need Barthes arguing it (pretentiously) two centuries ago and doesn't need Barthes now. Even "the author," whom Barthes is so eager to render irrelevant, or turn into a "social construction," knew that. So why bother to kill him?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Step 1: the composer composes the work and is the final authority of the notes on the page, i.e. the composition
Step 2: the composition is interpreted by the musicians, the musicians/conductor is the final authority on whatever interpretation they come up with
Step 3: audiences, critics and the like come to experience the composition as interpreted by the musicians

The whole concept of interpretation happens after the notes have been written. Different people get different ideas about the music and this is it's subjective nature. The composition itself as completed by the composer, or even arranger, is complete in itself which in order to be experienced in _sound_ requires an interpretation.

Once a listener comes along the interpretation is complete, just as the composition was complete before it was translated to sound. The listener can tamper with this new completion in whatever way they like but I honestly don't think it will change the composition or the interpretation. Listening to a piece of music in an unintended order or through different sound systems woudo give different experiences, but I don't think 'different experiences of the same interpretation' equates to 'a new interpretation.'


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

In my experience, half the time the Big Boys either didn't know what they were doing or else showed very poor judgment. Take Schubert, and his totally excessive expo repeats in the first movements of some of his late works. I mean, c'mon Franz! I heard it already, gonna hear it again in the recap (count on it), so why inflict it on me an extra time?

Fortunately we have tools on our computers to edit things like these out, to switch the order of movements, or to correct errors of tempo by oh-so-fallible conductors. We can even mix and match movements, change their keys, and create symphonies and concertos that are more to our liking.

You can bet if Beethoven had a computer he would have cleaned up Papa Haydn's symphonies fast enough, and who can even imagine what GB Shaw would have done to his Brahms CD collection? The mind boggles just thinking about it.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

^ :lol:........


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Albert7 said:


> For example, by listening and interpreting Kleiber's recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the conductor and orchestra and I all help to compose the work as much as the original "author" does.


Hey, I listened to that!
Does this mean that I am now a composer of stunning originality and genius? (well, maybe not so original in the 21st century, but genius nonetheless)


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

KenOC said:


> In my experience, half the time the Big Boys either didn't know what they were doing or else showed very poor judgment. *Take Schubert, and his totally excessive expo repeats in the first movements of some of his late works. I mean, c'mon Franz! I heard it already, gonna hear it again in the recap (count on it), so why inflict it on me an extra time?*
> 
> Fortunately we have tools on our computers to edit things like these out, to switch the order of movements, or to correct errors of tempo by oh-so-fallible conductors. We can even mix and match movements, change their keys, and create symphonies and concertos that are more to our liking.
> 
> You can bet if Beethoven had a computer he would have cleaned up Papa Haydn's symphonies fast enough, and who can even imagine what GB Shaw would have done to his Brahms CD collection? The mind boggles just thinking about it.


You weren't being _entirely_ facetious in this post, were you? I thought you did sometimes edit out the repeated sections of certain compositions, unless I'm thinking of someone else.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Little-known fact that GB Shaw, despite his devastating critiques of Brahms's music, had an extensive collection of Brahms CDs that he kept hidden behind his complete collection of Playboy magazines. Friends who happened on him unawares stated that he could often be found listening to these CDs, absorbed.


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## Guest (May 2, 2015)

Albert7 said:


> Barthes says in his essay "Death of the Author," "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing [...] [However] by refusing to assign a 'secret,' an ultimate meaning, to the text (and the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since *to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God* and his hypostases--reason, science, law."


It is? If you say so, mate!


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Little-known fact that GB Shaw, despite his devastating critiques of Brahms's music, had an extensive collection of Brahms CDs that he kept hidden behind his complete collection of Playboy magazines. Friends who happened on him unawares stated that he could often be found listening to these CDs, absorbed.


Shaw... Playboy? CDs? A metaphor? Facetious after all? Anyone get it?  At least he had good taste, on both counts


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

trazom said:


> You weren't being _entirely_ facetious in this post, were you? I thought you did sometimes edit out the repeated sections of certain compositions, unless I'm thinking of someone else.


Heck, I edit out the parts I don't like even if they're _not _repeated.


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## Cesare Impalatore (Apr 16, 2015)

No, the composer is the final authority on his or her composition. If we officially abandon this absolute principle, we fall into musical anarchy. The space for individual interpretation of a composer's work is another thing of course, just stay away with your post-structuralism :lol:


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Albert7 said:


> Therefore, the musical work has no certain outcome. In my personal experience, that allows me to enjoy pretty much any work in its own terms without much worry...
> ...


Absolutely agreeable. The work *must* stand on its own to listeners here and now, tomorrow, and if is an older piece, listeners from the past. Otherwise, it will fade with time. Pure and simple.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

It's a huge leap to go from "refusing to assign an ultimate meaning to the text" and "a single listening experience can change again and again as the listener hears the work again and again over time", to claiming that by listening to a recording I'm "composing the work as much as the original author does". You haven't, uh, shown your work on how that leap got made.

Sure, there can't really be a single absolutely authoritative realisation of the score, but the margin of error is relatively small. There will always be grey areas as to what's a reasonable interpretation - _how_ heroic should the Eroica be? maybe my heroism sounds different to your heroism - but mostly it's black and white. It's easy enough to imagine Bach hearing one of his keyboard works played on a modern grand piano and him saying "that's not how I imagined it to sound when I wrote it, but OK, that's essentially what I wrote". Whereas if you performed Beethoven's 5th with the movements in the wrong order it's not unreasonable to imagine Beethoven saying "what the hell's wrong with you?"

Yes, you _can_ play Beethoven's 5th with the movements in the wrong order, and yes it _might_ be an interesting or even profound piece of music, but what you don't get to do is call the result "Beethoven's 5th Symphony".
It's like our old friend the Mona Lisa With A Moustache. It's not Leonardo's Mona Lisa, end of story.

For that matter, couldn't any of us read the OP and refuse to assign it an ultimate meaning, participate equally in the creation of the OP, and come up with a totally different meaning?
Like, for instance, the OP says "every composer is at best a social construction by the general public". I am now going to participate equally in the creation of this statement by choosing to interpret it as you saying that composers are not actually living beings and can, therefore, be killed with no legal consequences.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

KenOC said:


> In my experience, half the time the Big Boys either didn't know what they were doing or else showed very poor judgment. Take Schubert, and his totally excessive expo repeats in the first movements of some of his late works. I mean, c'mon Franz! I heard it already, gonna hear it again in the recap (count on it), so why inflict it on me an extra time?
> 
> Fortunately we have tools on our computers to edit things like these out, to switch the order of movements, or to correct errors of tempo by oh-so-fallible conductors. We can even mix and match movements, change their keys, and create symphonies and concertos that are more to our liking.
> 
> You can bet if Beethoven had a computer he would have cleaned up Papa Haydn's symphonies fast enough, and *who can even imagine what GB Shaw would have done to his Brahms CD collection*? The mind boggles just thinking about it.


:lol: And Shaw could also have rewritten Shakespeare (whom he loathed) substituting his own unpoetic wordy dialectic. 
Wonderful idea (not)!


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## AnotherSpin (Apr 9, 2015)

Composer deciphers and marks on the paper in a much reduced way something which would be authorized (funny, I know) by those who send it.


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## Guest (May 2, 2015)

Won't we all be surprised and embarrassed when we discover that major compositions were telepathic transmissions from the future, and in fact the composer played no role other than that of a receiver.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Icarus said:


> Won't we all be surprised and embarrassed when we discover that major compositions were telepathic transmissions from the future, and in fact the composer played no role other than that of a receiver.


This would make the true Platonists right, in some sense.


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## Guest (May 2, 2015)

Icarus said:


> Won't we all be surprised and embarrassed when we discover *that major compositions were telepathic transmissions from the future*, and in fact the composer played no role other than that of a receiver.


Mr Spock has this covered concerning a waltz by Brahms:


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## michaels (Oct 3, 2014)

Albert7 said:


> I ... realized that composers have no authority over the nature of their compositions.


There is both intrinsic authority and given authority. That the composer has written it down is the act of authority. That you choose to call it by name and source is another source and form of authority. That you engage in the very musing is yet another granting of authority. That you try to deny it is again, another granting of authority that you wish to fight against.



Albert7 said:


> Therefore, the musical work has no certain outcome. In my personal experience, that allows me to enjoy pretty much any work in its own terms without much worry...


If your purpose in this inquiry is to allay your worry, I'm afraid you are to return to this same query every time you listen to any work with attribution if the source of your worry is authority.

Might I suggest instead that you accept the authority of the composer, and instead enjoy, instead of worry about, the creativity in interpretation by the musicians, the authoring/authority-creating they do, which add (or subtract) to the work as is for you to decide completely separate of their authoring: you have your own authority to listen and interpret as you please! Care not for the authority of others trying to to you yours or others creative acts are not your own, it is their own authoring that is not of value or use to anyone else but themselves.

Be free from the bonds of anti-structuralism! Enjoy all of the authors and their author-ity, and feel free to decide/author what you dislike as well


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Icarus said:


> I would say to Barthes -- if you have something to say, you should find a way to say it simply and clearly. If you're just spouting out a stream of unconventional juxtapositions of "big" words, don't expect to impress me. Barthes' writing style strikes me as borderline charlatanism.
> 
> My experience of listening to Beethoven's Ninth reflects not only the composer's intentions, but also my impressions of the composer, the work, the conductor, classical music in general, etc; as well as the circumstances surrounding the specific listening experience.
> 
> Fair enough. Why make it sound complicated?


But that's what I've always said about written scores and the composer, pre-recording era: they are viewed as "sacred texts."'

Sound recording has changed all that.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> Do you even know Beethoven's Fifth? The reason I ask is because what you are proposing is not just absurd, it's metaphysically impossible. The third movement goes attacca into the finale. They don't split. It is continuous sound. That is not a fascinating possibility of listening and it would not be a "valid reading." It's an ill-considered imposition completely devoid of musical sense. In any case, this same argument with Beethoven's Fifth was posted on the discussion list of the American Musicological Society by some earnest but misguided product of a western U.S. state's university system a few years back. He received the same critique. The fact that you are repeating this argument makes me worry that this has, against all odds, found its way into print or some other permanent medium.
> 
> The rest of your post toggles between the trite ("there cannot be any final interpretation of any work whatsoever") and the aggressively incoherent and logic-bereft ("Beethoven" and "Symphony No. 5" are historical derivations from how people have created the concepts as such.)


Albert7 is simply exploding the myth, using back-up sources, of the composer as "God" and the score as sacred text. Where is your source material? Are we to believe you simply because you say so?

Although I admit he is somewhat over-ther-top when he says "I'm composing the work as much as the original author does". It's simply that the performance, and the sound recording of it, has gained as much, if not more, importance as the written score.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> The composition itself as completed by the composer, or even arranger, is complete in itself... which in order to be experienced in _sound_ requires an interpretation.
> 
> Once a listener comes along the interpretation is complete, just as the composition was complete before it was translated to sound. The listener can tamper with this new completion in whatever way they like but I honestly don't think it will change the composition or the interpretation. Listening to a piece of music in an unintended order or through different sound systems would give different experiences, but I don't think 'different experiences of the same interpretation' equates to 'a new interpretation.'


I think COAG is making too strong a distinction between 'the composition' as written score, and the 'interpretation' of it.

Yes, before recording technology had evolved, the written score was the only way that "the ear", aural and oral, with all its imprecision of biological memory could be transmitted in precise form, with no changes. But now that we have sound recording, we see the score as it truly is: simply a set of instructions to the players.

A written score does not exist as complete by itself; it is intended as a set of precise instructions. True, the musical ideas therein exist as "Platonic potentialities," but sound is music, and music is sound, in the end.

The elevation of the written score is a perpetuation of the 'sacred text' mythology, derived from Biblical/scriptural ideas.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Albert7 is simply exploding the myth, using back-up sources, of the composer as "God" and the score as sacred text. Where is your source material? Are we to believe you simply because you say so?


No, you are to believe me because, let us hope, you have the stylistic competency to understand that stopping seventy odd musicians in mid-breath and mid-bow between dominant and tonic and shunting them off to another movement is not a valid reading of a classical work. I'm not sure what anyone's Daddy issues have to do with it.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Icarus said:


> Won't we all be surprised and embarrassed when we discover that major compositions were telepathic transmissions from the future, and in fact the composer played no role other than that of a receiver.


And won't we be even more surprised when we find that they received the music exactly backwards!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

KenOC said:


> And won't we be even more surprised when we find that they received the music exactly backwards!


Fortunately, this didn't matter in the case of the Act II interlude from Berg's Lulu.


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## EDaddy (Nov 16, 2013)

Icarus said:


> I would say to Barthes -- if you have something to say, you should find a way to say it simply and clearly. If you're just spouting out a stream of unconventional juxtapositions of "big" words, don't expect to impress me. Barthes' writing style strikes me as borderline charlatanism.
> 
> My experience of listening to Beethoven's Ninth reflects not only the composer's intentions, but also my impressions of the composer, the work, the conductor, classical music in general, etc; as well as the circumstances surrounding the specific listening experience.
> 
> Fair enough. Why make it sound complicated?


Amen to that, Icarus! What a bunch of self-indulgent, intellectual mumbo jumbo.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> Fortunately, this didn't matter in the case of the Act II interlude from Berg's Lulu.


I would not be so unkind as to suggest that the same might equally apply to many of the works of the 2nd Viennese school...


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## EDaddy (Nov 16, 2013)

Albert7 said:


> For example, by listening and interpreting Kleiber's recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the conductor and orchestra and I all help to compose the work as much as the original "author" does. This produces a rather complex admixture of how authorship ought to be accorded for the final artifact.


Really? So you think that simply because your role as a listener to a work is a "co-active" experience (together with the conductor, orchestra, CD player, whatever the case), that that constitutes or justifies _co-authorship_ of the original work?

I believe the fallacy of this concept lies in that one simple word: co-authorship. While I agree that the experience of music, by performer(s) and listener(s) alike, is a mult-faceted and complex process - a co-creative experience, if you will - it is only co-creative in so much as it pertains to the actual moment in time when the original composition is actually being presented, i.e. performed or _co-experienced_ by conductor, orchestra, CD player/turntable, listener, what have you. Each participant does indeed have a profound role in the subjective experience of that work, but that certainly does not account for any kind of _co-authorship_ of the original work, that was likely conceived in its original form in somewhat if a vacuum, that is to say in a private space or room, away from prying eyes and ears (for the most part anyway)... that is, without an audience, orchestra or conductor.

If this were true, we would have a serious conundrum on our hands regarding copyright law, infringement, and other issues surrounding the concept of "intellectual property". Lol!


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Albert7 said:


> This means that every composition ever produced is completely open-minded which suggests that the listener (or the customer of a recording of the work) participates equally in the composition of the work at hand. For example, by listening and interpreting Kleiber's recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the conductor and orchestra and I all help to compose the work as much as the original "author" does. This produces a rather complex admixture of how authorship ought to be accorded for the final artifact.


Nonsense. Instead of deluding yourself into thinking that you have co-authored anything, it would be best for you to keep in mind that you're no Beethoven.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

EDaddy said:


> Really? So you think that simply because your role as a listener to a work is a "co-active" experience (together with the conductor, orchestra, CD player, whatever the case), that that constitutes or justifies _co-authorship_ of the original work?
> 
> I believe the fallacy of this concept lies in that one simple word: co-authorship. While I agree that the experience of music, by performer(s) and listener(s) alike, is a mult-faceted and complex process - a co-creative experience, if you will - it is only co-creative in so much as it pertains to the actual moment in time when the original composition is actually being presented, i.e. performed or _co-experienced_ by conductor, orchestra, CD player/turntable, listener, what have you. Each participant does indeed have a profound role in the subjective experience of that work, but that certainly does not account for any kind of _co-authorship_ of the original work, that was likely conceived in its original form in somewhat if a vacuum, that is to say in a private space or room, away from prying eyes and ears (for the most part anyway)... that is, without an audience, orchestra or conductor.
> 
> If this were true, we would have a serious conundrum on our hands regarding copyright law, infringement, and other issues surrounding the concept of "intellectual property". Lol!


"..writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing."

--Roland Barthes

First of all, we need to distinguish between two Beethovens... There is Beethoven the human being or the physical person versus Beethoven as composer in a social construct. It is his compositions that eradicate the human existence that leaves open the possibilities of any meaning where anyone can take up the helm to write where Beethoven left off.

Beuys said that everyone is an artist and that's making more sense now. Now that we have everyone doing art and being an active listener in any classical music piece which is fabulous. Things become more immersive.

Traditional Descartian approaches to listening are dissolved now. At some point there is no way to distinguish between the composer/author and the listener at the result.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Albert7 said:


> "..writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing."
> 
> --Roland Barthes


I wasn't aware that Barthes is a member of this forum so until he does join, I'd just as soon not be constantly bombarded by his rather dubious views - views that seem to have little basis in the real world that I am familiar with.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Albert7 said:


> "..writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing."
> 
> --Roland Barthes
> 
> ...


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Becca said:


> I wasn't aware that Barthes is a member of this forum so until he does join, I'd just as soon not be constantly bombarded by his rather dubious views - views that seem to have little basis in the real world that I am familiar with.


Whether its the French semiotician Roland '_Barthes'_ or the Swiss Protestant liberal theologian Karl '_Barth_'- its still pronounced 'barf' to me either way.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Marschallin Blair said:


> Whether its the French semiotician Roland '_Barthes'_ or the Swiss Protestant liberal theologian Karl '_Barth_'- its still pronounced 'barf' to me either way.


The views expressed in this document, and elsewhere on the TC web pages, and by Albert7 are not necessarily those of the TC forum as a whole.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I would not be so unkind as to suggest that the same might equally apply to many of the works of the 2nd Viennese school...


That's not unkindness, that's just being unable to hear music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

It took you so long to come up with that reply...but not bad withal.


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Albert7 said:


> The views expressed in this document, and elsewhere on the TC web pages, and by Albert7 are not necessarily those of the TC forum as a whole.


That would seem to be the case.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EDaddy said:


> Amen to that, Icarus! What a bunch of self-indulgent, intellectual mumbo jumbo.


I suppose none of you have ever bothered to read anything on this subject.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Nereffid said:


> It's a huge leap to go from "refusing to assign an ultimate meaning to the text" and "a single listening experience can change again and again as the listener hears the work again and again over time", to claiming that by listening to a recording I'm "composing the work as much as the original author does".


In the case of many John Cage works, it holds up. :lol:


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## EDaddy (Nov 16, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> I suppose none of you have ever bothered to read anything on this subject.


In my case you are correct, sir, as that would require precious minutes to hours of my life I could never get back.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

By listening to older recordings, with less 'given' sonic information, the mind will be forced into more involved listening, similar to a book vs. a movie, and one will be better able to penetrate to the "Platonic essense" of the musical ideas, rather than being overwhelmed into passivity by a high-fidelity recording (like the HDTV experience).


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EDaddy said:


> In my case you are correct, sir, as that would require precious minutes to hours of my life I could never get back.


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## EDaddy (Nov 16, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> By listening to older recordings, with less 'given' sonic information, the mind will be forced into more involved listening, similar to a book vs. a movie, and one will be better able to penetrate to the "Platonic essense" of the musical ideas, rather than being overwhelmed into passivity by a high-fidelity recording (like the HDTV experience).


I do somewhat agree with you on this, millionrainbows (like the name btw). Sometimes I can fall into that trap, to be sure. Other times, however, the high fidelity experience can help draw me in to the music entirely, opening up a new world of detail and perspective. I find it often depends on my overall mood, state of mind, and energy level at the time. Some days my attention span can rival that of a gnat; other times I'm all ears and attention.


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## Guest (May 3, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> By listening to older recordings, with less 'given' sonic information, the mind will be forced into more involved listening, similar to a book vs. a movie, and one will be better able to penetrate to the "Platonic essense" of the musical ideas, rather than being overwhelmed into passivity by a high-fidelity recording (like the HDTV experience).


Just a few months back you posted a thread with a little blurb about how people not listening to high quality files weren't even "listening" to music.

Get back to the harmonic ratios, man. They're my favorite thing from you


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> By listening to older recordings, with less 'given' sonic information, the mind will be forced into more involved listening, similar to a book vs. a movie, and one will be better able to penetrate to the "Platonic essense" of the musical ideas, rather than being overwhelmed into passivity by a high-fidelity recording (like the HDTV experience).


So, on your view, hi-fidelity=passive hearing, poor fidelity=active engagement. Following this to its logical conclusion, live performance, with its perfect fidelity, would be the worst of all possible media, inviting the most passive, unengaged listening. You can see the problem with this view I trust? The composer wrote the work, in almost every case, to be heard in live performance.


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## EDaddy (Nov 16, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


>


Been in the music business for over 30 years now, took a couple of courses in copyright law back in the day, have absorbed similar books with similar titles (and please don't get me started on the intellectual property debate!)... I'm sure there are some compelling ideas and perspectives in these books you present... but I think I'm good. At the tender age of 47, I prefer to let the music do the talking. Peace. 

Addendum: That is, however, not to say that I don't appreciate sharing music, thoughts, perspectives, discourse, dialogues, reactions, and the like with all you kind folks on this board. If that were the case I wouldn't be here!


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

"The composition" is a composition of music; an interpretation is a composition of actions based on "the composition;" an experience of an interpretation is a composition of responses to actions based on "the composition." Theoretically, I suppose, this hierarchy of things about things can go on indefinitely, since the person experiencing the interpretation is also interpreting their experience and is also experiencing that interpretation — but let's stop it where it is before it becomes entirely too preposterous, if that point is not yet passed. In other words, the interpretation is not "the composition," and the experience is neither the interpretation nor "the composition," "the composition" is "the composition," and unless you composed it, you didn't compose it.


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## EDaddy (Nov 16, 2013)

Crudblud said:


> "The composition" is a composition of music; an interpretation is a composition of actions based on "the composition;" an experience of an interpretation is a composition of responses to actions based on "the composition." Theoretically, I suppose, this hierarchy of things about things can go on indefinitely, since the person experiencing the interpretation is also interpreting their experience and is also experiencing that interpretation - but let's stop it where it is before it becomes entirely too preposterous, if that point is not yet passed. In other words, the interpretation is not "the composition," and the experience is neither the interpretation nor "the composition," "the composition" is "the composition," and unless you composed it, you didn't compose it.


Couldn't have said it better if held at knife point and my life depended on it! Thx, Frank!!


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## Guest (May 4, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> By listening to older recordings, with less 'given' sonic information, the mind will be forced into more involved listening


Can you explain how? The logic of this is that recordings with the least given sonic information - silence - will force the most involved listening - but then one can't really engage with any of the Platonic essence of what Beethoven wrote.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> By listening to older recordings, with less 'given' sonic information, the mind will be forced into more involved listening, similar to a book vs. a movie, and one will be better able to penetrate to the "Platonic essense" of the musical ideas, rather than being overwhelmed into passivity by a high-fidelity recording (like the HDTV experience).


The only "more involved listening" my mind is forced into by a poor-quality recording is trying to filter out the distortions or imagine what Nellie Melba really sounded like. This doesn't get me closer to the substance of the music. On the contrary.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> By listening to older recordings, with less 'given' sonic information, the mind will be forced into more involved listening, similar to a book vs. a movie, and one will be better able to penetrate to the "Platonic essense" of the musical ideas, rather than being overwhelmed into passivity by a high-fidelity recording (like the HDTV experience).


How does one extrapolate 'more' from 'less'?- as a Platonic Form presumably has neither form, nor shape, nor extension- not to mention 'timbre'- of any kind?- as a Platonic Form is a reification and a floating abstraction.

I'll take a lush, vibrant, and 'earthbound' Wagner any day over an ethereal and null-setted 4'33".


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I've always liked the spooky and ethereal quality of Richter's Well Tempered Clavier, which sounds like it was produced in an echo chamber. And now that you mention it the highly-imperfect-acoustical-approximation-of-the-ideal-form character of the disk is probably appropriate to Bach. 

Wish he'd recorded it a second time in better sound, but still.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> I've always liked the spooky and ethereal quality of Richter's Well Tempered Clavier, which sounds like it was produced in an echo chamber. And now that you mention it the highly-imperfect-acoustical-approximation-of-the-ideal-form character of the disk is probably appropriate to Bach.
> 
> Wish he'd recorded it a second time in better sound, but still.


This has been remastered to take away the echo chamber quality. And he did record the whole thing again, with better sound, in a live recording from Insbuck.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

One of the things I think we're seeing in this thread is that postmodern theory, to the degree that it was ever alive, is now about as dead as "the author" ever was. Sorry, Al. The army has moved on; the old postmodern vanguard is now the rearguard, facing the wrong way, soon to be forgotten.

But postmodern theory wasn't entirely without merit: at the very least, hopefully it made us more cynical about power dynamics implicit in texts. The absence of that cynicism, I'd say, is not only naive, but immoral. So that was good. I hope this part of its legacy lives and grows. We could use more of it.

Anyway, I suspect that the theory that called itself "postmodern" was in reality ultramodern. Its texts aspired to power, especially to social power, more aggressively than almost any of their predecessors, not excluding the likes of Joyce or Eliot. Their most characteristic trait, the intentional obscurity of their diction and syntax, is _nothing but_ social strategy.

Seeing through the "seeing through," the world (intellectual, high-cultural, and mass-cultural) has moved on; we have murdered the scholar-fathers who taught us to murder scholar-fathers, but we have done it passively, just by "moving on," rather than actively with pretentious ideological denunciations. There's no "there" there anymore, so we move on. We again dream of progress and truth - holding on, however, as I hope, to a little more cynicism about our own motivations.

So that was fun.

But even if postmodern theory is dead, postmodernism is alive: it's really just a synonym for postindustrial: postmodernism is the culture of postindustrial society. We are creating new and better theories all the time: theories that in the old modernist way aspire to power through successful explanation of the world rather than through sheer (ambiguity intended) assertion.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> This has been remastered to take away the echo chamber quality. And he did record the whole thing again, with better sound, in a live recording from Insbuck.


I haven't looked for that live recording, but I'll do so now. Thanks for the tip.


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## Antiquarian (Apr 29, 2014)

This discussion smacks of musical deconstructionism. In this case it's not so much "There is nothing outside the text" - Jacques Derrida , as "There is nothing outside the musical text (Composition)". We are, as listeners, participants in the process of musical appreciation, but I think that implying that we are co-authors of the music is going a little too far. I believe our role is far from passive, but I must submit that Composers have the last word in what they write. End of rant.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> So, on your view, hi-fidelity=passive hearing, poor fidelity=active engagement. Following this to its logical conclusion, live performance, with its perfect fidelity, would be the worst of all possible media, inviting the most passive, unengaged listening. You can see the problem with this view I trust? The composer wrote the work, in almost every case, to be heard in live performance.


It's what McLuhan called "hot" and "cold" mediums. "Hot" mediums, like old recordings, books, and grainy, black & white TV, demand more involvement and imagination to 'fill in' the missing information.

A live concert would simply 'blow you away' with its sheer sonic quality, and nothing would be demanded of you, except to say "Gaaaahhh...", then, mental orgasm. In this case the music is "doing" you, and you simply have to lay back and relax all of your muscles, and allow the music to enter. I wouldn't necessarily call this "uninvolving," but it is a less pro-active way of listening, compared to that which requires conscious effort.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Crudblud said:


> "The composition" is a composition of music; an interpretation is a composition of actions based on "the composition;" an experience of an interpretation is a composition of responses to actions based on "the composition." Theoretically, I suppose, this hierarchy of things about things can go on indefinitely, since the person experiencing the interpretation is also interpreting their experience and is also experiencing that interpretation - but let's stop it where it is before it becomes entirely too preposterous, if that point is not yet passed. In other words, the interpretation is not "the composition," and the experience is neither the interpretation nor "the composition," "the composition" is "the composition," and unless you composed it, you didn't compose it.


Sure, the composition is the composition, but it only _represents_ an actual performance. It 'records' the musical idea so it will proceed through time consistently with minimal changes. But other than that, a composition is simply a set of instructions. It is a musical idea, but is incomplete, and is a set of potentialities, and is "Platonic" until it is transformed into actual sound.

I must emphasize that written music's function* mainly* served the purpose of _recording_ a musical idea; in its time, it was never seen as an *end* in itself.

To fully understand _the idea of 'recording' of a musical idea,_ you _must compare it_ to the only other alternative at the time, which was oral or aural transmission, stored in 'biological memory" (brains) of musician/performers. This was imprecise, and led to unintended changes and variations, which is fine for folk and ethnic music, but bad for long, precise ideas for 100 musicians.

So, GENERALLY SPEAKING, writing down a musical idea in score form allows for several distinct *advantages, disadvantages, and differences,* besides its utilitarian purpose of conveying instructions in a precise, unchanging manner: It allows 'feedback' to the writer in graphic form, which affects his ideas; it also represents musical thought in an abstract manner, rather than being sensually oriented; it separates the composer from the performer (once again, you must compare with the aural tradition, in which the performers were the conveyors of the ideas with* no separation*); it makes music which can be 'cerebral' rather than being the result of an instrumental playing performance; it has problems being as spontaneous and fluid as an improvised performance (like jazz).
Thus, we can see how 'aural' or 'ear' music, like jazz, is best-suited for performance, and is best-suited for capturing that performance being sound-recorded;
And how written music is better for 'cerebral' ideas which are more precise and perhaps more complicated in nature than a performance would be.

We can also see how the writtwen score has been 'robbed' of much of its former exclusive power by the advent of sound-recording.
Of course, these are just generalizations.


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