# The importance of intent



## Ukko

I recently made a discovery, regarding my compatibility with the music of John Adams. I usually don't connect with it unless I am aware of what he had in mind while he composed it.

I'll give an example: If you know _*nothing*_ about "Gnarly Buttons", go listen to it - all 3 movements. It's on YouTube.

Then, get the background.

Then, listen again.

In my case, the difference in effectiveness was pretty damn big.

If you already know the story, never mind; go pound sand.


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## clavichorder

Maybe you are specifically referring to the John Adams here? Just wondering, or if you mean it more generally.

This might be off topic, but I can imagine that the gulf between one's impression not knowing a program or composers purpose, and knowing a program/composers purpose, can be even wider in certain 20th and 21st century music. It already helps some 19th and early 20th century music to know the program or what the composer was thinking about.


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## KenOC

I am quite familiar with Gnarly Buttons and consider it a very fine (and mostly fun) work. But the backstory makes no difference to my enjoyment. The music speaks, or it does not.


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## Guest

I'm going to claim the standard 4'33" joke on this one before someone else does.

Listen to 4'33". After you've finished checking your audio equipment for visible defects, read about it


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## science

We like to imagine that we can bracket out everything we know about something and then judge it objectively on a few points, like in a problem on the LSAT, but we usually can't. In the case of music, everything we know about a work or its composer or its performers inevitably effects the way we feel about it. Perhaps that's a bad thing; I know some people ideologically believe that we should force ourselves to ignore everything but the music itself. For me personally, however, it's a good thing: I enjoy the background knowledge, and my ideology defies all prescriptions.


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## Guest

science said:


> We like to imagine that we can bracket out everything we know about something and then judge it objectively on a few points, like in a problem on the LSAT, but we usually can't. In the case of music, everything we know about a work or its composer or its performers inevitably effects the way we feel about it. Perhaps that's a bad thing; I know some people ideologically believe that we should force ourselves to ignore everything but the music itself. For me personally, however, it's a good thing: I enjoy the background knowledge, and my ideology defies all prescriptions.


And it carries over from the composer's background to theoretical intent too. We probably all remember lengthy arguments about how knowledge of musical theory can't possibly enhance our appreciation of music, but from Bach to Babbitt, it's certainly more fascinating than simply imagining that Bach "got lucky" with "things that sound good" and Babbitt just recorded a cat walking all over his stuff.


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## brotagonist

I can relate to the OP's proposition, although it is not what I usually prefer to do. I prefer not to know anything and let the music speak for itself, but by the time I start to like the music and the composer, I will already have read a fair bit about the composer and his works, so, _unavoidably_, I end up getting to know some of the intentions.


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## Mahlerian

arcaneholocaust said:


> And it carries over from the composer's background to theoretical intent too. We probably all remember lengthy arguments about how knowledge of musical theory can't possibly enhance our appreciation of music, but from Bach to Babbitt, it's certainly more fascinating than simply imagining that Bach "got lucky" with "things that sound good" and Babbitt just recorded a cat walking all over his stuff.


Going too far the other way has led to the insidious and entirely wrong idea that music "like Babbitt's" is only for the eyes looking at a score and not for the ears of a listener, though.


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## Mandryka

You wouldn't read a novel and not take into account the author's intentions - about the meanings of the words for example.

You wouln't look at a picture and not take into account the painter's intent - that those hands touching on the ceiling are God's and Adam's, and God is creating. 

Listening to music is an act of interpretation, an act of making sense. And back story can be a useful clue.

I think that posters who "let the music speak" aren't really listening to the music, they're just letting it wash over them, like rain over cabbages.


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## Guest

Mandryka said:


> I think that posters who "let the music speak" aren't really listening to the music, they're just letting it wash over them, like rain over cabbages.


I think the idea expressed here that you know what other people are thinking or doing is way off. And further, that your interpretation of "let speak" as "wash over" is woefully and pitifully inadequate.

One way to understand a work is to consult the creator's expressed intentions. But that's only one way, and not only is it not a necessary or irreplacable way, it's not a very reliable way. For one, it assumes that the expression is reliable. For two, it discounts the dynamic relationship that any listening (as opposed to what ducks do) sets up between the listener and the sounds.

As for speaking for itself, I don't think any work is able to do that. Partly because of the input of the listener--the experiences and biasses and prejudices and tastes of each listener will affect how that listener will respond to any collection of sounds.

Context is key, and the most fruitful way to listen to music is to listen to a lot of music. Not to read a lot about music, though that can be useful, too, of course, but to listen to a lot of music, different music from different eras, different genre and styles, and probably most importantly, to listen to music you don't understand or like--at least not at first.


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## Chris

I love Penderecki's *Threnody for the Victims of Horoshima*, but it would be interesting to know how I would have judged it had I heard it without seeing its title. No way of knowing.


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## scratchgolf

arcaneholocaust said:


> I'm going to claim the standard 4'33" joke on this one before someone else does.
> 
> Listen to 4'33". After you've finished checking your audio equipment for visible defects, read about it


You took care of that one. I'll get Hitler out of the way too. And to think, Cage and Hitler out of the way on page 1 (This post will probably bump it to page 2)

I personally enjoy reading about composers lives and occasionally the background of a work, if possible. The odd thing is many of the composers and works I've enjoyed learning about are the ones I just don't like yet. I do that research to try and gain a new appreciation and perspective. Xenakis is a great example of this.


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## Nereffid

For me, any "way in" is acceptable.
Sometimes yes, knowing the composer's intentions is the way in; or perhaps a performer's comments might provide an insight that switches on the lightbulb, or a reviewer, or a poster here.
Sometimes you can create your own context, use your own unique experiences to inform this new experience you're having. You might even have a "way in" that's at odds with the composer's intent, but once the music's in your head, it's yours.


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## Ukko

KenOC said:


> I am quite familiar with Gnarly Buttons and consider it a very fine (and mostly fun) work. But the backstory makes no difference to my enjoyment. The music speaks, or it does not.


Interesting take. Before I knew the back story, my reaction to the music was 97% 'what the hell?' Knowing the back story. none of the music is 'fun'. The first two movements are more like the remembrance of good times - while knowing the end time. The last movement is reacting to the end time while it's happening; quite effective for me.

YMMV

Either you are a cold man, Ken, or I'm a patsy; probably the latter.


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## Ukko

clavichorder said:


> Maybe you are specifically referring to the John Adams here? Just wondering, or if you mean it more generally.
> 
> This might be off topic, but I can imagine that the gulf between one's impression not knowing a program or composers purpose, and knowing a program/composers purpose, can be even wider in certain 20th and 21st century music. It already helps some 19th and early 20th century music to know the program or what the composer was thinking about.


I am specifically referring to the John Adams work, But also using it as a possible clue for connecting with other modern music. Some of these folks just aren't 'talking my lingo' close enough, so if I have an English language idea of what is going on... the odds may shift to 50-50.


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## Mahlerian

Ukko said:


> Interesting take. Before I knew the back story, my reaction to the music was 97% 'what the hell?' Knowing the back story. none of the music is 'fun'. The first two movements are more like the remembrance of good times - while knowing the end time. The last movement is reacting to the end time while it's happening; quite effective for me.
> 
> YMMV
> 
> Either you are a cold man, Ken, or I'm a patsy; probably the latter.


The fact that the work had its roots in a serious genesis isn't quite the same as the work itself having a particularly serious character. It's one of those problems of confusing life and art that sometimes one seems more like an inversion than a reflection of the other.

Looking at Adams' notes for the movements alone:



John Coolidge Adams said:


> The three movements are eached based on a "forgery" or imagined musical model. The idea for this goes back to the imagined "foxtrot" of my 1986 piece, The Chairman Dances, music to which Madame and Chairman Mao dance and make love, believing my foxtrot to be the genuine article. In this spirit we may believe the genuine articles of Gnarly Buttons to be:
> 
> I. "The Perilous Shore": a trope on a Protestant shape-note hymn found in a 19th century volume, The Footsteps of Jesus, the first lines of which are:
> 
> O Lord steer me from that Perilous Shore
> 
> Ease my soul through tempest's roar.
> 
> Satan's leering help me firmly turn away
> 
> Hurl me singing into that tremulous day!
> 
> The melodic line is twisted and embellished from the start, appearing first in monody and eventually providing both micro and macro material for the ensuing musical structures.
> 
> II. "Hoedown (Mad Cow)": normally associated with horses, this version of the traditional Western hoedown addresses the fault lines of international commerce from a distinctly American perspective.
> 
> III. "Put Your Loving Arms Around Me": a simple song, quiet and tender up front, gnarled and crabbed at the end.


I don't think one gets a sense of the background that led him to compose the piece. Likewise, it was Beethoven's Second Symphony, not the Fifth, that came out of the time when he considered suicide, and Mahler's Sixth and Kindertotenlieder were the products of the happiest period of his life.


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## Ukko

Hah. That's a different back story from the one I read. I like mine no better as _story_, but yours/Adams' is useless as a connective. You musicologist types must live a drab life.



"Gnarly Buttons might seem a curious melange when heard in the abstract, but the piece becomes acutely poignant when one is aware of the psychological and sentimental factors behind the musical events. It is Adams' most personal and autobiographical work.

One could say it is his most cathartic work because it is a memorial tribute to his father, who he lost to Alzheimer's. It is a tribute to his father using his father's favourite instrument, the clarinet. Adams was taught the clarinet by his father and they played in marching bands and community orchestras together. He grew up with the music of Benny Goodman, Mozart, Weber, always playing on the family's stereo.

The underlying influences in the work are two polar extremes in Adams' life with the clarinet: on one end, the music he absorbed while growing up and on the other, the experience of watching his father's disintegrating relationship to the instrument he loved, as brought on by Alzheimer's disease. As the Alzheimer's progressed, his father became more and more obsessed that someone was trying to break into their house to steal the instrument. When his wife found the instrument disassembled and hidden on different levels in the laundry basket she realized she had to send the instrument back to John. As he wrote the third movement he was mourning his father's recent death and would take out the instrument and handle it during the movement's composition.

The first two movements are a kaleidoscopic, somewhat distorted take on the musical influences Adams grew up with, as filtered through his musical language. The third movement is the emotional centerpiece of the concerto. In fact the pain and confusion of his father's dementia is portrayed in a searing duet between the bassoon and the English horn in the middle of the third movement, before giving way to a brief, peaceful elegy. [...]"


I don't have a source for that text.

​


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## Mandryka

some guy said:


> I think the idea expressed here that you know what other people are thinking or doing is way off. And further, that your interpretation of "let speak" as "wash over" is woefully and pitifully inadequate.
> 
> One way to understand a work is to consult the creator's expressed intentions. But that's only one way, and not only is it not a necessary or irreplacable way, it's not a very reliable way. For one, it assumes that the expression is reliable. For two, it discounts the dynamic relationship that any listening (as opposed to what ducks do) sets up between the listener and the sounds.
> 
> As for speaking for itself, I don't think any work is able to do that. Partly because of the input of the listener--the experiences and biasses and prejudices and tastes of each listener will affect how that listener will respond to any collection of sounds.
> 
> Context is key, and the most fruitful way to listen to music is to listen to a lot of music. Not to read a lot about music, though that can be useful, too, of course, but to listen to a lot of music, different music from different eras, different genre and styles, and probably most importantly, to listen to music you don't understand or like--at least not at first.


The problem I have with people who say "let it speak" is that when it doesn't speak to them, instantly, they blame the music rather than try to find a new, more imaginative, way of making sense of the stream of noises. I think that composers' or performers' intentions is one way of creating a narrative which makes the music appear more than random or vacuous. Though not the only way as you say.

"Let it speak" people tend to be passive listeners, brain dead cabbages, who think that becoming acquainted with music should be easy. As such they are nearly always wedded to a sort of basic common practice idiom, an idiom which they learned at their mother's knee. In short, it is, I think, often an excuse for the most contemptable form of narrow mindedness and reactionary conservatism.


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## GGluek

I enjoy reading about music, but usually only after I have already listened to and enjoyed the music in question. Seldom does a program note get me to enjoy a piece that I haven't warmed to -- but it can get me to listen again and re-evaluate over time if the notes are by someone whose judgment I respect. Doesn't always work, however.


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## millionrainbows

I think the "back story" is important in all art, and is becoming more important in daily life. 

As someone mentioned "Threnody," the title is part of the piece...therefore, it evokes that event, and we associate it with the music.

With Adams, maybe he knows that, since there is really no privacy any more, that the story would get out, whether he referred to it or not. Maybe later, in his biography.

Knowing the "back story" on Bill Cosby affected the way we perceive his work; see how that works?

Knowing that Nietzsche went insane, almost surely due to syphillis, is good fodder for Christians to dismiss his work. I saw this argument in full blossom in a philosophy class.

Knowing that John Cage was gay probably accounts for a lot of the hate we see hurled at him & his work;

Knowing that Tchaikovsky was gay probably works in his favor nowadays;

If any "dirt" on anyone, or any institution, is revealed, it will affect everything we perceive about it, from now on.

The feminists have used history to dismantle the idea of "genius," since this is a patriarchal notion of a patriarchal view of history (herstory).


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## Mahlerian

Ukko said:


> Hah. That's a different back story from the one I read. I like mine no better as _story_, but yours/Adams' is useless as a connective. You musicologist types must live a drab life.


Oh, I know the backstory, I'm just presenting the work apart from it. The text I copied comes from Adams' own page on the work, which also goes into the details that you mentioned.

http://www.earbox.com/chamber-music/gnarly-buttons (Page plays music clip.)


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## Guest

Mandryka said:


> The problem I have with people who say "let it speak" is that when it doesn't speak to them, instantly, they blame the music rather than try to find a new, more imaginative, way of making sense of the stream of noises.


Ah. Well, yeah. I too have seen this happen. Though not everyone who says "let it speak" is like this. But I see what you were on about, and I certainly agree with you.



Mandryka said:


> ...narrow mindedness and reactionary conservatism.


Yeah, there's lots of that going around. Not a big fan, I must say.

In other news, the original title of Penderecki's piece was _8' 37"._ Or _8' 26"._ Depending.


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## binkley

I had this experience just yesterday with Ligeti's Aventures/Nouvelle Aventures. The squawks and grunts and screeches from the vocalists really made me want to just skip ahead on my playlist, but I decided to Google it to see if there was some point. And it turns out kind of interesting: the vocalists are each meant to cycle through different emotions, offset from each other. It really helped to watch a few performances of it on YouTube (there is even one where the vocalists are nude, which I found more silly and distracting than enlightening). Anyway, it didn't make me love the piece, but it made it sufficiently interesting that I won't delete it from my iTunes.


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## Ingélou

brotagonist said:


> I can relate to the OP's proposition, although it is not what I usually prefer to do. I prefer not to know anything and let the music speak for itself, but by the time I start to like the music and the composer, I will already have read a fair bit about the composer and his works, so, _unavoidably_, I end up getting to know some of the intentions.


I'm the opposite. Being a person fixated on stories and words, I prefer to know as much as I can about the background of a piece of music before I listen to it. So as soon as I read the OP, and realised that 'Gnarly Buttons' was a piece of music , I had to know the back story. Think cats, think Pandora...

Yes, the story shapes my perceptions - but at least it helps me to listen intelligently, and in some cases, it stops me from giving up. I wouldn't fancy being blindfolded and then told to eat a meal and say honestly what I thought; I like to see what I'm eating.

PS I like Gnarly Buttons, though not gnarly buttons.


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## Guest

Ingélou said:


> I wouldn't fancy being blindfolded and then told to eat a meal and say honestly what I thought; I like to see what I'm eating.


This does not seem at all apposite to me. You listen to music with your ears (and being blindfolded might actually be a good thing). Anyway, being blindfolded and then told to eat a meal might be a bit scary, and a bit messy, too. But listening to music without knowing any backstory is neither scary nor messy nor anything that would interfere with your ears hearing and your brain reacting to the sounds. Quite the contrary. The stories might be something that would interfere with actually hearing what's there in the music.

There were stories going around for quite some time that Berlioz didn't like counterpoint and didn't do it very well. This in contradistinction to the actual facts. He was actually quite good at counterpoint, and his pieces are full of fugues and even double fugues. Stories about Schoenberg's intentions and about his music have hindered people from actually hearing what's there to hear for over a century. And don't get me started on Shostakovich! Our ability to hear the actual sounds and react to them is often overlaid with all sorts of nonsense, meaning that we're not really hearing what's there in the notes, but using the notes to do other, non-musical things with them, political, moral, biographical.

Oh well.

[Btw, I tried to come up with a more apposite scenario. Couldn't do it! Sorry!!]


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## Ingélou

It isn't meant to be an allegory or a close analogy - just a metaphor to express how I feel.
Many people, including pukka music-wallahs, prefer not to know the story and to 'let the music speak for itself'.
I don't feel that way.
There's no right or wrong to it. You're welcome to listen to music any way you like, and I claim the same privilege.


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## norman bates

Chris said:


> I love Penderecki's *Threnody for the Victims of Horoshima*, but it would be interesting to know how I would have judged it had I heard it without seeing its title. No way of knowing.


If I remember correctly, the title was added only after the piece was completed.


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## Ukko

Just on the slight chance that someone missed the specificity of my 'retreat to backstory'... Adam's piece is rather an exception to my rule. My usual experience is that I enjoy the music better without external 'textualizations'. Gnarly Buttons didn't work out that way. I was hypothesizing that the Gnarly Buttons process might work for other Modern music that doesn't click for me using my Standard Practice - because I'm not picking up on some new standard thingies that these Modern dudes use(d).


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## Woodduck

Knowing something of what a composer intends a piece to be about - or, even beyond that, knowing about the composer's more general philosophy or emotional world - can definitely be a way into enjoying his music. Messiaen, for example, has a peculiar musical vocabulary, elements of which don't resonate with me nearly as much in the abstract as they do when I consider the religious conceptions which underlie the sounds. In fact, certain qualities in his music, divorced from the religious associations which were so fundamental for him, suggest to me impressions and qualities quite remote from anything I would associate with religion. So I can, if I wish, hear his music in different ways, simply by exercising some control over the ideas I bring to bear on it at different times. This can only enrich my overall conception and experience of it, as well as my understanding of the possibilities and meaning of musical expression in general. 

Even if we don't care greatly, or at all, for a work or style of music, it can have meaning for us which can make it worth our while if we know some of the extramusical intentions behind it. And if a composer gives a work a poetic or descriptive title, or appends a program to it - or, in the most explicit case, sets an actual text to music - the extramusical factors are a part of the work and are intended by the composer to be apprehended as integral to the listener's experience of it. Ideally a work will impress us as well-written and will touch us in some way without our having to know anything of the intent behind it, but it seems perverse to insist that it should reveal itself fully to us as "pure music." Of course we're free to try to hear it as that if we wish, and to avoid having our impressions "tainted" by programs and such. But, speaking from my own experience, I haven't found that knowing what a composer is trying to express interferes with my perception of the "purely musical" qualities of a piece, or that it prejudices my ultimate sense of what it says to me. On more than one occasion I've even disagreed with the composer on what his music is about - which is inevitable and perfectly fine, given our different temperaments and contexts as listeners.


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## Nereffid

As for "extramusical factors", the big one of course is the contents of the listener's brain, which means the music can't ever really "speak for itself". It's got to be filtered through the listener's previous musical knowledge and every other life experience.


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## Blake

Woodduck said:


> Even if we don't care greatly, or at all, for a work or style of music, it can have meaning for us which can make it worth our while if we know some of the extramusical intentions behind it. And if a composer gives a work a poetic or descriptive title, or appends a program to it - or, in the most explicit case, sets an actual text to music - the extramusical factors are a part of the work and are intended by the composer to be apprehended as integral to the listener's experience of it. Ideally a work will impress us as well-written and will touch us in some way without our having to know anything of the intent behind it, but it seems perverse to insist that it should reveal itself fully to us as "pure music." Of course we're free to try to hear it as that if we wish, and to avoid having our impressions "tainted" by programs and such. But, speaking from my own experience, I haven't found that knowing what a composer is trying to express interferes with my perception of the "purely musical" qualities of a piece, or that it prejudices my ultimate sense of what it says to me. On more than one occasion I've even disagreed with the composer on what his music is about - which is inevitable and perfectly fine, given our different temperaments and contexts as listeners.


It's hard to deny the textual significance in program music. The problem comes when people want to turn everything they hear into a program... and this happens quite often.


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## Woodduck

Vesuvius said:


> It's hard to deny the textual significance in program music. The problem comes when people want to turn everything they hear into a program... and this happens quite often.


I wonder how many lovers of classical music today feel that all music needs to be "translated" into verbal or pictorial imagery in order to be understood. That attitude certainly defined the Romantic period, and even Beethoven had to warn that he intended his "Pastoral" Symphony to be more an expression of feeling than actual tone-painting (though it's pretty explicitly the latter too). Berlioz? Program music off and running, and already pretty well off the charts! The "neo-classical" stance of Brahms was remarkably severe in the midst of the flood of tone poems, music dramas, song cycles, and other works which sought to portray ideas and pictures in as vividly explicit a manner as a composer's imagination would allow. The subject segues naturally into the question of what music can express and how it does it, and the question of how much of that sort of thing it ought "properly" to do; but there's no question that Romantic audiences took the keenest delight in its suggestive powers, and that Romantic composers obliged by expanding enormously the harmonic and timbral variety of music in pursuit of the most specific and intense expression of emotional states and sensory images. Speaking not at all loosely, Wagner's _Ring_ is fifteen hours of program music of the most explicit and dazzling depictiveness, and in that respect perhaps the ultimate expression of the musical aesthetic of an era.

Whatever we may think of that aesthetic, or whatever our preferences in terms of the "purity" or "absoluteness" of music, it's pretty hard to deny that music has amazing powers to suggest and evoke a wide range of experience, emotional and perceptual. It shouldn't be surprising if many people, having perhaps little understanding of the properties of music which belong more exclusively to it, should look beyond it to account for their experience of what they hear. And let's be honest: we all do it to one degree or another - and I believe we're entirely right to. After all, art is about life, and life is about everything.


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## Blake

Woodduck said:


> Whatever we may think of that aesthetic, or whatever our preferences in terms of the "purity" or "absoluteness" of music, it's pretty hard to deny that music has amazing powers to suggest and evoke a wide range of experience, emotional and perceptual. *It shouldn't be surprising if many people, having perhaps little understanding of the properties of music which belong more exclusively to it, should look beyond it to account for their experience of what they hear. And let's be honest: we all do it to one degree or another - and I believe we're entirely right to. After all, art is about life, and life is about everything.*


I think you hit the nail on the head here. Art is always of life, and in life. But again, the conflict arises when people want to objectively define art as what appeals to "their" life. This indeed happens to everyone of all colors, but when this process is not recognized as a mode of individual interpretation - and placed in an absolute definition - well, that's when so many arguments arise.

I would not deny anyone their experience. But it's hardly ever conclusive to all. What's beautiful is the technicolor of interpretation. I don't want everyone telling the same stories as me. Then life would be a homogenous blob.


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## Clairvoyance Enough

I find that every time I think I've pinned down a rule about my musical tastes or defined a method for learning how to like a work, it takes mere days for that rule or method to be shattered.


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## PetrB

Mandryka said:


> You wouldn't read a novel and not take into account the author's intentions - about the meanings of the words for example.
> 
> You wouldn't look at a picture and not take into account the painter's intent - that those hands touching on the ceiling are God's and Adam's, and God is creating.
> 
> Listening to music is an act of interpretation, an act of making sense. And back story can be a useful clue.
> 
> I think that posters who "let the music speak" aren't really listening to the music, they're just letting it wash over them, like rain over cabbages.


Fundamental flaw in the painting argument, since an absolute piece of music is antithetical to painting of the representational sort. Ditto the comment on literature, its sole medium being the written word. And the last above line, well, since it seems you listen quite differently, thinking the addition of the extra-musical pertinent to the score has your personal preference then tossed out / imposed as a "higher-plane" moral judgement on those _who may get just as much or more from the same music without the associations or stories you seem to need attached._ (This site is littered with such pronouncements in many posts in many a thread. If such judgements from such a supposedly higher / superior ground were not such a turn-off, they would be laughable. -- That said, I'm sure I've been guilty of more than a few similar.)

I'm very much in agreement with the rant on program music in the _Harvard Dictionary of Music_, which has it that regardless of _any of the circumstances under which a piece was written,_ or any vague to more specific intent in conveying / saying any thing extra-musical, _that if a piece does not hold up as music alone, no program or intent in the world is going to improve it._

That said, the title or 'story' given to a piece of music can very much color the listener's perception of that piece. After that, intent met or not, that is still an extra-musical bit of business, bringing full circle the argument if the piece does not stand on its own without any further extra-musical info, it fails to some degree or other.

I am I suppose what some would call an anti-contextualist when it comes to art. (That should be heavily qualified that I know a moderate amount of art / music history, ditto history in general.) Strong pieces might just have the listener looking up more about the composer and the circumstance, or generally eager to want to know more about the era which the music is from -- but, there is proof of my argument -- that music had something innately imbedded vs. externally applied, which impelled the listener to look for more of the history around the piece... somehow, the composer communicated enough through solely musical means, and was 'successful.'

The rest, "Oh, Beethoven was deaf when he wrote this," etc. I think a gloss with which some prefer to further exercise their sentiments, _sentiments which are not at all innately embedded in the music itself._ If the piece is self-standing, I think that is painting the lily. As a teacher of mine said, commenting on all that is often attached to Chopin vs. the music itself, *"Me, I don't care if he had a toothache when he wrote it."*

If "the meaning" is not right there in the piece and needs no props, but instead needs and has its accompanying 'minders' following it about and explaining its circumstance, history or meaning, then _the piece is dependent upon some sort of extra-musical reference or another_ -- which I consider "weak."


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## ahammel

I've definitely had my enjoyment of music lessened by a feeling that I don't know what the composer was up to. Whether that's failure to understand the context or failure to understand the music, I don't know. 

Take the Mahler 7 finale, for instance. What's going on there? Is it meant to be sarcastic, or are we going for an honestly triumphant feeling, but with Meistersinger quotations and cowbells? Talk to me, Gustav! What's it all about?


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## PetrB

Blake said:


> It's hard to deny the textual significance in program music. The problem comes when people want to turn everything they hear into a program... and this happens quite often.


You know, I think they do it because they are not fully musically literate (not any sort of real requirement to listen to, and love, music.) But I recall Mahler's letter in which he explained he had first a 'program' set in the concert programs re: 'the meaning' of one of his symphonies at its premiere (which is nowhere on / in the score), and he very pointedly said _he had thunk that program up and included it in the concert program only as a thought to help guide the non-musician listener through the piece._ When he realized how lame they were, _and how they actually limited the imagination of the listener or directed them into one emotional area only,_ he removed them, and they were not printed in the program of the second program or for any later performances.

The story, really, is often made up after the fact, just as Mahler did, to help the lay listener through the piece. I'm fairly certain the majority of Debussy's titles were made up after the fact of the piece having been begun, or after it had been completed.)

When shorter pieces are given to young students, the "story" is only an analogue, not a literal reality, to help the young student get some grasp _on form,_ as well as _something more "musically expressive"_ than a mere sequence of notes.

The romantic era was stuffed with the social phenomenon of a burgeoning crop of newly attending non musically cognizant neophyte listeners, and lo, we get a lot of 'program' music to cozy that lump of new customers along. It was a rather brief trend (thank Apollo) but now, both lay listener and some composers truly think they can 'convey all that' -- what the piece is about, what the composer was feeling at the time they wrote it (if you compose, at all, if you believe that you've bought a tissue-spun conceit, or otherwise end up in gales of laughter at the notion.)

Many people will want those stories. Truly,_ if a piece is cohesive_, in any manner, the listener could find / invent _any number of cohesive stories / meanings_ which would to them seem to fit the piece like a tailored glove, to the point where they could not imagine it could mean anything other, or that it just might not 'mean' anything at all.

Many a practicing musician knows this, that just about _any_ story _is analogue only._ Mahler, who, as often as he set texts as often did not, knew this, or he would not have said that if he had meant to 'say' anything more specific, he would have used words instead of composing music 

A lot of program music is, then, actually not literally a program, and too often, when it is, we get the likes of, well, _Till Eulinspiegels lustige streiche._


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## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> Fundamental flaw in the painting argument, since an absolute piece of music is antithetical to painting of the representational sort. And the last, well, since it seems you listen quite differently, thinking the addition of the extra-musical pertinent to the score, is your personal preference then tossed out / imposed as a "higher-plane" moral judgement on those _who may get just as much or more from the same music without the associations or stories you seem to need attached._ (This site is littered with such pronouncements in many posts in many a thread. If such judgements from such a supposedly higher / superior ground were not such a turn-off, they would be laughable. -- That said, I'm sure I've been guilty of more than a few similar.)
> 
> I'm very much in agreement with the rant on program music in the _Harvard Dictionary of Music_, which has it that regardless of _any of the circumstances under which a piece was written,_ or any vague to more specific intent in conveying / saying any thing extra-musical, _that* if a piece does not hold up as music alone, no program or intent in the world is going to improve it.*_
> 
> That said,* the title or 'story' given to a piece of music can very much color the listener's perception of that piece. After that, intent met or not, that is still an extra-musical bit of business, bringing full circle the argument if the piece does not stand on its own without any further extra-musical info, it fails to some degree or other.*
> 
> I am I suppose what some would call an anti-contextualist when it comes to art. Strong pieces might just have the listener looking up more about the composer and the circumstance, or generally eager to want to know more about the era which the music is from -- but, there is proof of my argument -- that music had something innately imbedded vs. externally applied, which impelled the listener to look for more of the history around the piece... somehow, the composer communicated enough through solely musical means, and was 'successful.'
> 
> The rest, "Oh, Beethoven was deaf when he wrote this," etc. I think a gloss which some prefer to further exercise their sentiments _not inherent in the music itself._ If the piece is self-standing, I think that is painting the lily.
> 
> *If "the meaning" is not right there in the piece, and needs no props, minders following it about and explaining its circumstance, history or meaning, then the piece is dependent upon some sort of external reference or another -- which I consider "weak."*




What you seem to be doing here, PetrB, is assuming what you're arguing for: assuming that a piece of music, meaning simply the sounds of which it consists, must, in order to be considered successful, convey all of its intended meaning without the collaboration of any explanation, program, or title.

My question is: Why must it?

It's possible that I misunderstand you here. If all you're saying is that a piece should seem coherent and satisfying _as a structure_ regardless of any meanings it might be said to express, then I think I can agree, at least in most instances. But your last paragraph seems to go further than this and say that all _meaning_ must somehow reside, and be discernible, in the sounds themselves, and that any meaning which might be suggested by a program or title is extraneous or suspect.

I've always accepted the idea that program music, in the broadest sense of any music accompanied by words or images meant to be taken in as part of the listener's total experience, is a distinct and legitimate genre, no less than song or musical theater, where words don't just accompany the music but are literally grafted into it. No one would suggest that a song of Schumann, or an opera of Debussy, should convey its full significance without the words. Opera and song are, in essence, multi-media art forms. Why shouldn't progam music be so considered as well? I see no reason why a tone poem of Strauss or Sibelius should be listened to, and expected to yield up the full power of its sounds, as if it were as abstract as _The Art of Fugue_. _Tapiola_ would no doubt be an interesting and suggestive work if we didn't know Sibelius's intent, but the title and quatrain he attached to it have an evocative power of their own which it seems to me absurd to try to segregate from the music (and which in fact draw even greater power from the music, the amplification of meaning going both ways, making the whole "greater than the sum of its parts"):

_Widespread they stand, the Northland's dusky forests,
Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams;
Within them dwells the Forest's mighty God,
And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets._

We can certainly have a preference for non-programmatic music, and take no pleasure in the interaction of music, words, and images. But to call music which is specifically crafted with such interaction in mind "weak" is to define the art of music in an arbitrarily narrow way and to limit its possibilities severely.


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## KenOC

I can think of plenty of great music that has programs. Beethoven's Pastoral, certainly. He claimed it wasn't tone-paintings, but of course it was. All of it. Scheherazade, Symphonie Fantastique, and many others including Stauss's Don Quixote and (yes) Till Eulenspiegel. Doesn't give me any heartburn and, in fact, I find the programs interesting.


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## Blake

Woodduck said:


> [/B]
> We can certainly have a preference for non-programmatic music, and take no pleasure in the interaction of music, words, and images. But to call music which is specifically crafted with such interaction in mind "weak" is to define the art of music in an arbitrarily narrow way and to limit its possibilities severely.


I think we should also acknowledge the fact that even many artists have admitted to the folly of their own interpretations of their work. That's why a good portion feel uncomfortable in such a programatic format. One day you relate to this ~ the next it's something different... but the music is still the same. It's us that throw it about.

And our "meanings" are virtually always incomplete and unsteady.


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## ArtMusic

some guy said:


> As for speaking for itself, I don't think any work is able to do that. Partly because of the input of the listener--the experiences and biasses and prejudices and tastes of each listener will affect how that listener will respond to any collection of sounds.
> 
> ...


I doubt that. Great pieces connects with the listener most naturally more often than not. Bach has many examples of this. So it's very possible that without knowing the context, it's still able to enjoy a piece.

But going back to the OP, yes I agree for some works, knowing the context does help along the way especially for more complicated pieces that are less immediately accessible.


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## Giordano

I think all music is programmatic. We just don't know all about it, are not able to know, yet as we are. Music that is intended to be specifically programmatic (about some human experience or story) can hold my attention or not; when it does, I am not thinking about the proposed program at all but listening to the music and being moved by it. I believe the factor that moves me is the program in the music that stands on its own with no need for explanations, and for which I have no words to describe -- or at least it is not reducible to any one or several forms of human expression. Verbalizing or visualizing the program and thinking that it is all there is to the music is an understandable tendency of human beings to keep believing that the "universe revolves around them and what they can see."

Addendum:
I am fine with "specifically programmatic about some human experience or story," as intent and music, but that is never what grabs my attention.


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## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> [/B]
> 
> What you seem to be doing here, PetrB, is assuming what you're arguing for: assuming that a piece of music, meaning simply the sounds of which it consists, must, in order to be considered successful, convey all of its intended meaning without the collaboration of any explanation, program, or title.
> 
> My question is: Why must it?


I will have to admit I read no further than what I isolated (above) from your post, because right there, _if it does not carry an author-given title, has no sung or other verbal context, no image or scenario provided,_ then please, tell me _by what means music has _other than 'a bunch of notes,' -- the sound, the nature and shape of that sound -- _to actually say anything more extra-musically specific?_

Music _is_ music exactly because it is (all of the following are _purely_ analogies) a "dialogue" which conveys "something with meaning" ... all entirely outside the bailiwick of either the written word or images.

If the piece in question is that sort of "absolute" piece, isn't then _just music,_ and neither word or image, all that remains?


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## Woodduck

Blake said:


> I think we should also acknowledge the fact that even many artists have admitted to the folly of their own interpretations of their work. That's why a good portion feel uncomfortable in such a programatic format. One day you relate to this ~ the next it's something different... but the music is still the same. It's us that throw it about.
> 
> And our "meanings" are virtually always incomplete and unsteady.


Which artists have felt that their own ideas about what their works meant were "folly"? That a composer might come to see his work in a larger perspective at a later date is reasonable, but would he be apt to think his previous perspective foolish?

Given that meanings in art are "incomplete and unsteady," I'd suppose that most artists who indicate their intentions or meanings for their works expect their audiences to bring their own perspectives to bear. Being an artist myself, I'm aware that titles and programs can be inadequate, misleading, and limiting, and when I was painting in past years I was disinclined to give a picture a title that gave much more than a general indication of what I had in mind. I think most composers of progammatic music have felt this way: most titles are pretty general, often referring to no more than a broad concept or to something that inspired the piece (a painting or poem or geographical locale). Works do differ as to how specific they're trying to be, but any degree of specificity, from invoking a general feeling or mood to outright pictorialism (Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" runs the full gamut), is acceptable if the final result keeps the listener's attention and gives pleasure.


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## Blake

Woodduck said:


> Which artists have felt that their own ideas about what their works meant were "folly"? That a composer might come to see his work in a larger perspective at a later date is reasonable, but would he be apt to think his previous perspective foolish?
> 
> Given that meanings in art are "incomplete and unsteady," I'd suppose that most artists who indicate their intentions or meanings for their works expect their audiences to bring their own perspectives to bear. Being an artist myself, I'm aware that titles and programs can be inadequate, misleading, and limiting, and when I was painting in past years I was disinclined to give a picture a title that gave much more than a general indication of what I had in mind. I think most composers of progammatic music have felt this way: most titles are pretty general, often referring to no more than a broad concept or to something that inspired the piece (a painting or poem or geographical locale). Works do differ as to how specific they're trying to be, but any degree of specificity, from invoking a general feeling or mood to outright pictorialism (Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" runs the full gamut), is acceptable if the final result keeps the listener's attention and gives pleasure.


So, in a round-about way... you agree with me?


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## MoonlightSonata

I used to find Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique rather mediocre. Then, after reading a book of music appreciation in it, it became one of my favourite symphonies. I understood the structure much better.


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## PetrB

Giordano said:


> I think all music is programmatic. We just don't know all about it, are not able to know, yet as we are. Music that is intended to be specifically programmatic (about some human experience or story) can hold my attention or not; when it does, I am not thinking about the proposed program at all but listening to the music and being moved by it. I believe the factor that moves me is the program in the music that stands on its own with no need for explanations, and for which I have no words to describe -- or at least it is not reducible to any one or several forms of human expression. Verbalizing or visualizing the program and thinking that it is all there is to the music is an understandable tendency of human beings to keep believing that the "universe revolves around them and what they can see."
> 
> Addendum:
> I am fine with "specifically programmatic about some human experience or story," as intent and music, but that is never what grabs my attention.


This completely parallels that Harvard Dictionary of Music comment under Program Music:

"Good" program music does not rely, in any way, upon the listener knowing the program, "Lesser" or "bad" program music does


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## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> Which artists have felt that their own ideas about what their works meant were "folly"?


Mahler, for one.

Then there is Liszt's _Les préludes._ The pith here is not about folly, but the assigning of a program 'which seemed to fit' after the fact of the composition being fully completed, with no such original intent when written. At least on this piece, so much for its "programmatic meaning."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_pr%C3%A9ludes

Berlioz' _Symphonie Fantastique_ was premiered _with no program given the audience at all_. It was resoundingly not at all well received. Berlioz then revised it -- and here, what revising was done and how that influenced its later great reception is unknown to me -- but _when that revised score was performed_, to great acclaim, _that performance had the program printed in the audience's program notes._ Here too, more research is needed, but it is as likely Berlioz may not have had such a specific program in mind when he first composed the piece, and later provided one to the lay audience so they could better handle both the wildly unusual music and the eccentric form of the piece.

Benjamin Britten said he thought artists should not talk about their work (i.e. the meaning, intent) at all


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## Blake

All I'm saying is that a "program" is a fickle point. Take it out and the music is just what it is... leaving everyone up to their own interpretations. That doesn't mean all of it is futile, because there can be a certain appropriateness to some pieces, as it's been so forcefully glued together ~ Although... that may be the inheritance of social conditioning. I'm not convinced otherwise.

But still, take the program out, and you would have as many interpretations as there are listeners. The music never absolutely expresses the ideas we put on it. It's pretty much a forced application. 

There have been many programmatic pieces that I've heard - without initially referring to the program - and my ideas had hardly ever aligned with the "artist's intent."

As I've said, it's hard to deny the textual significance... because that is precisely what makes it programmatic. But I can't help feeling that it's mostly just a limitation.


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## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> Mahler, for one.
> 
> Then there is Liszt's _Les Preludes._ Not about folly, but the assigning of a program 'which seemed to fit' after the fact of the composition being fully completed, with no such original intent when written. At least on this piece, so much for its "programmatic meaning."
> 
> Berlioz' _Symphonie Fantastique_ was premiered _with no program given the audience at all_. It was resoundingly not at all well received. Berlioz then revised it -- and here, what revising was done and how that influenced its later great reception is unknown to me -- but _when that revised score was performed_, to great acclaim, _that performance had the program printed in the audience's program notes._ Here too, more research is needed, but it is as likely Berlioz may not have had such a specific program in mind when he first composed the piece, and later provided one to the lay audience so they could better handle both the wildly unusual music and the eccentric form of the piece.
> 
> Benjamin Britten said he thought artists should not talk about their work (i.e. the meaning, intent) at all


Now hold on there just one minute! None of these examples illustrate the statement that composers came to feel that what they initially thought their works meant was "folly."

Didn't Mahler contemplate including some progam notes for a performance and then change his mind? That doesn't show any change in his own ideas about his work, only about the wisdom of specifying them for an audience.

_Les Preludes_ apparently changed shape musically a few times and the programs Liszt attached to it varied too. He was probably just responding to the fashion for programs. It doesn't tell us what he thought the music "meant," if anything specific at all, much less whether he changed his view of it.

The case of the Berlioz may be somewhat similar, although the _Fantastique_ has all the earmarks of a fairly specific scenario. It really does scream "program," and unlike the Liszt could hardly be heard without making a listener wonder what on earth is going on. The eventual program fits its apparent narrative perfectly. Whether Berlioz had the whole story worked out in advance really doesn't matter.

I agree with Britten in general. But I don't think he's talking about programs and titles.


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## Blake

Woodduck said:


> Now hold on there just one minute! None of these examples illustrate the statement that composers came to feel that what they initially thought their works meant was "folly."


What I meant by "folly" was that many great artists understand the transiency of their own interpretations.


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## Blake

Even referring to Mahler's great symphonic masterpieces. Although I think his descriptions are lovely... I never once listened to a movement of his and thought, "oh yes, this must be what the flowers in the meadow told him." 

I'm just hearing beautiful music.


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## Woodduck

Blake said:


> All I'm saying is that a "program" is a fickle point. *Take it out and the music is just what it is*... leaving everyone up to their own interpretations. That doesn't mean all of it is futile, because there can be a certain appropriateness to some pieces, as it's been so forcefully glued together ~ Although... that may be the inheritance of social conditioning. I'm not convinced otherwise.
> 
> But still, take the program out, and you would have as many interpretations as there are listeners. The music never absolutely expresses the ideas we put on it. It's pretty much a forced application.
> 
> *There have been many programmatic pieces that I've heard - without initially referring to the program - and my ideas had hardly ever aligned with the "artist's intent."*
> 
> As I've said, it's hard to deny the textual significance... because that is precisely what makes it programmatic. But I can't help feeling that it's mostly just a limitation.


Sure, we're free to differ with the composer's ideas about his own work. And no one is forced to have his eyes glued to a program while listening to a piece of music. I know that once I have read the title and whatever other words may come with a work, I hear the piece as music which evokes whatever it will in me, not as a "translation" of those words. In fact I tend to forget programs entirely after a while. After years of familiarity I've pretty much forgotten what _Also Sprach Zarathustra_ is about (and don't even _want_ to know what _Sinfonia Domestica_ is about - or listen to the thing, for that matter!), but I have no problem with the fact that Strauss was inspired by a subject and wanted to say something pertinent to it in music.

I think you and I basically agree about the way "meaning" works in music. Yes, a program _is_ a limitation. But everything has limitations. Nothing in the universe functions without them. A musical form is itself a limitation on our ability to hear sounds: dear old John Cage tried to get around that, to "free" sound (whether what he ended up with was music is a matter of opinion)! But I contend that if a composer does intend a program,_ that program is part of the artwork he has created._ So I would _not_ agree that if you take the program out, the music is "just what it is." "What it _is_," to that composer, is an attempt to express something through music, and if he feels that certain concepts and images are needed to convey that, it is a perfectly integral act for him to make those concepts and images known, and a respectful act for us to at least note what he says. Once we do, of course, we're free to make up our own minds about it - which any intelligent artist expects of his audience.

I wouldn't consider PetrB's example of Liszt's after-the-fact appending of a program to _Les Preludes_ any reason at all for regarding program music with suspicion. Most titles and programs, I think it's safe to say, are meant to be there and to say something. The example I gave in a previous post of Sibelius's _Tapiola_ is a more normal case, and to me a really fine example of words and music enhancing each other.


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## PetrB

Blake said:


> There have been many programmatic pieces that I've heard - without initially referring to the program - and my ideas had hardly ever aligned with the "artist's intent."





Woodduck said:


> Sure, we're free to differ with the composer's ideas about his own work. to be there and to say something.


Apart from those titles later given a piece by a publisher, journalist, etc. (all but one of the named Beethoven piano sonatas, all of the Chopin Études and Préludes - which I hope just about everyone knows are false, i.e. nowhere in the composer's intent), many another composer given title had something more to do with being analogous to, but not concretely about, the piece. This is rather like Monet, when asked "Why water lilies?" and his response, "I chose water lilies, but it could have been anything."

The tone-poem arose in an age when most had expectations of something more in a form, like a symphony, so to have some analogy as premise for a more free-wheeling and episodic work, to give it some title to both proclaim it 'not a symphony,' and give the listener some general guide to its shape and form, was helpful. It was probably helpful to the composer, too, to have some analogy help them shape these less formalist and more episodic and free-form kinds of pieces.

Certainly more than a few were writing something they directly thought 'did what was on the tin,' while others, like Liszt's _Les Préludes_, its title and meaning, are named clearly as an afterthought, and other pieces were named for that _analogous idea_ which was the trigger for the composer. But to assume that just because a composer titled a piece and gave it a program, _and that that is a straight forward truth_ is I think hoping for a little more straightforward truth than many an artist actually delivers  Tone-poems from a major abstract symphonist (Sibelius) may be tone poems, or titled from some thought he had as mere analogy to guide him along in a piece which was not in the more formal structure of a symphony, which was the predominant mode of his musical thinking, ideas coming simultaneously as part of a large formal structure.

Since many a cohesive story or premise seems to 'perfectly fit' many an otherwise abstract piece of music, I am far less certain than you that some of those tone-poem's titles are telling us anything near to the truth of the meaning of 'what is in the tin.' This leads me to wonder if the composer intent was as described, and maybe 'what is on the tin,' was chosen more arbitrarily than many would care to think. Ergo, "free to differ with the composer's ideas about his own work" sounds to me as if you think there is one at least 'far more correct' interpretation of the work than others, i.e. that as titled by the composer -- which I think a bit limited in scope, or at least far too trusting of the composer, because composers, like anyone else, _can believe what they say at one given time,_ without that holding much further than that moment.

Some current trends in titling pieces have given us other 'literate' titles, many of which are colorful, yet more patently a bit tongue-in-cheek -- some are complete non sequiturs, and maybe that is in reaction to the more formal musical establishment and formalism. "Adjustable Wrench" is just one such sort of tongue in cheek / red herring title.

If not a red herring title, this is still only a semi-genuine one: 
Debussy's _La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre,_ is _a formal symphony_, and hardly anything but three mere quick sketches, musical or pictorial. The fact Debussy and other younger generation composers, especially non-Germanic composers, were more than eager to distance and distinguish themselves as not carrying on in the post-Wagnerian Germanic tradition, is cause enough and explanation enough for Debussy's title there. Some, hog-tied and literally bound to 'what it says on the tin,' can not accept it is a symphony (and without all the tools of musical analysis in their pocket, will not be able to conclude on their own that _La Mer_ is a symphony, so are quite ready to believe the music of that piece is 'as described on the tin' -- i.e. three 'impressionist orchestral sketches depicting the sea.'



Woodduck said:


> The example I gave in a previous post of Sibelius's _Tapiola_ is a more normal case, and to me a really fine example of words and music enhancing each other.


Wild divergence in taste yet again, the poem you quoted, I assume suffering greatly from its translation as well as being, to me, one of those third-rate sentimental evocations, is more than enough on its own to turn me off, or off and away, from ever wanting to listen to _Tapiola._ Making this combo rar and away imho, anything but _'a fine example of words and music enhancing each other._ Then again, I was spared that intro as a piece "enhanced by words." by hearing the music first via radio, without the poem read, and not having any idea what the word _Tapiola_, even, signifies, assuming only that it was a non-English word, and not at all curious about it, but instead only curious about the music I was about to hear. The piece is leagues ahead in quality of interest vs. the poem, thank goodness.

But I'll admit, for me, these extra-musical titles, many of which seem to so influence the sentiments perceived by many a listener, interest me not a jot, they certainly do not influence me a jot, or worse, seem so inappropriate or 'not attached' to what I do hear that I have to forget about / ignore them, and I'm left with 'what the music expresses.'

I've never been left feeling music needed further "explanation" in words. That state of perception has me not only 'not getting' why people seem to crave and love these extra-musical bits stitched on to the music, and sometimes feeling more than a little sadness that it seems many people really do want and need that sort of literalism along with their music. I think the music is rich enough on its own, doesn't need anything else if it is really good, and moreover, it is probably better without the extra-musical attachments / associations.


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## Guest

PetrB said:


> I've never been left feeling music needed further "explanation" in words. That state of perception has me not only 'not getting' why people seem to crave and love these extra-musical bits stitched on to the music, and sometimes feeling more than a little sadness that it seems many people really do want and need that sort of literalism along with their music. I think the music is rich enough on its own, doesn't need anything else if it is really good, and moreover, it is probably better without the extra-musical attachments / associations.


Even poetry and other literature, even paintings, representational or not, mean quite a lot more than what their titles convey. And the relationships between titles and works can be quite complex.

I think it bears repeating that "music is rich enough on its own." It is clear that for many people, even for some who have been listening to music all their lives, music is simply not rich enough on its own. It needs to be propped up with words for them. The music, to make sense, has to be perceived as telling the same story as the words tell. Seems a trifle redundant, hein?

If you feel your enjoyment of a piece of music is enhanced by knowing things about it that are not musical things, then fine. But know this, that what you "know" might not really be knowledge. The story to Symphonie fantastique was indeed written after the symphony was complete. And it was written in order to help people hear music that was so new as to be incomprehensible to them, as music. I can only say that by the time I came along, I was able to hear and enjoy that music without knowing anything about the story. And have found the story distracting ever since I did hear it. My enjoyment of Symphonie fantastique has certainly been much diminished by me knowing that story.

One further thing about Berlioz' symphony. It is opus 14, right? Well, not quite. It is opus 14a. And Berlioz explicitly requested that the program to the symphony _not be printed_ whenever the symphony was performed without opus 14b. It is quite rare that the entire opus 14 is performed. So that program should be, if Berlioz' intentions were honored, practically unknown.

As for his further intentions, he never ever wrote out a program for any other of his subsequent pieces. That one program, subsequently abandoned and even forbidden, has so dazzled listeners over the years that Berlioz is routinely described as the programmatic composer par excellence, in spite of his repeated insistence on the supremacy of music, on the power of music itself. His intent was, following what he understood as Beethoven's intent, was to create a thing he described as "le genre instrumentale expressif." That is, he believed that music did not need words to explain it, that it transcended language and was able to express things that language was not able to.

This was, just by the way, one of the chief sources of the friction between the French composer and his younger colleague from Germany. Berlioz thought that his ideas about the _gesamptkunstwerk_ diminished the power intrinsic to music itself, unfettered by words.


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## Guest

arcaneholocaust said:


> I'm going to claim the standard 4'33" joke on this one before someone else does.
> 
> Listen to 4'33". After you've finished checking your audio equipment for visible defects, read about it


There _must_ be a Law about referencing 4'33" on an internet music forum, in the same way as there is Godwin's Law regarding Nazis/Hitler.

If by some oversight there isn't then I hereby declare it to be *Gog's Law*.


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## ptr

gog said:


> There _must_ be a Law about referencing 4'33" on an internet music forum, in the same way as there is Godwin's Law regarding Nazis/Hitler.
> 
> If by some oversight there isn't then I hereby declare it to be *Gog's Law*.


I agree, the same rules that apply for name changes on TC, should apply to mentioning 4'33''!

/ptr


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## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> Now hold on there just one minute! None of these examples illustrate the statement that composers came to feel that what they initially thought their works meant was "folly."
> 
> Didn't Mahler contemplate including some progam notes for a performance and then change his mind? That doesn't show any change in his own ideas about his work, only about the wisdom of specifying them for an audience.


Elsewhere I detailed the Mahler, he _wrote a program to be included in the concert program after the symphony (forgotten which one) was composed, for the premiere performance, thinking the program as analogy might help the lay listeners better understand the piece, and the relationships of one movement to the next._ After the premiere, he thought the whole idea a fail, not helpful to the audience, and lord knows what else. No where in there was a personal statement that he was "divulging the meaning of the work."

Of course, because it is so far outside of my area of interest, I know of almost no material where composers' go on about "the meaning of their works," the few I can think of come 'from Beethoven,' most of those related second hand and well after the date of freshness, and they are dubious at best. I actually avoid texts which say this composer said his work means this....

The lack of interest is in part because I know first hand and from much interaction with other artists that even those who think there is a specific meaning to their work, or some intellectual or philosophical idea expressed therein, often believe it in the moment they are saying it, only to later think they 'were wrong,' or then later realize whatever they thought was -- again -- actually a mere analogous premise to help them come up with and form the work to begin with.

If you present a list of documented "artist's statements" of the composers stating exactly the extra-musical meaning, intent and content of the works, I would'nt bother to read ay of them since the majority of artists arrive at these things via the mode of analogy, often later change their minds, and many of those statements stimulated by "The interview" where many an artist begins to hold forth and spin something out because they think it might help the reception it gets, as in, "Oh, the interviewer and people want a story and or the meaning of the piece" get exactly what that sort of question deserves, i.e. a spontaneous, "Okay, here's something." LOL.

Basically, even if they think they are telling the truth and believe it is the truth, when it comes to explaining the meaning of their works, most artists (in the media of the more absolute music and visual arts, anyway) are de facto bloviating liars


----------



## PetrB

some guy said:


> Even poetry and other literature, even paintings, representational or not, mean quite a lot more than what their titles convey. And the relationships between titles and works can be quite complex.
> 
> I think it bears repeating that "music is rich enough on its own." It is clear that for many people, even for some who have been listening to music all their lives, music is simply not rich enough on its own. It needs to be propped up with words for them. The music, to make sense, has to be perceived as telling the same story as the words tell. Seems a trifle redundant, hein?
> 
> If you feel your enjoyment of a piece of music is enhanced by knowing things about it that are not musical things, then fine. But know this, that what you "know" might not really be knowledge. The story to Symphonie fantastique was indeed written after the symphony was complete. And it was written in order to help people hear music that was so new as to be incomprehensible to them, as music. I can only say that by the time I came along, I was able to hear and enjoy that music without knowing anything about the story. And have found the story distracting ever since I did hear it. My enjoyment of Symphonie fantastique has certainly been much diminished by me knowing that story.
> 
> One further thing about Berlioz' symphony. It is opus 14, right? Well, not quite. It is opus 14a. And Berlioz explicitly requested that the program to the symphony _not be printed_ whenever the symphony was performed without opus 14b. It is quite rare that the entire opus 14 is performed. So that program should be, if Berlioz' intentions were honored, practically unknown.
> 
> As for his further intentions, he never ever wrote out a program for any other of his subsequent pieces. That one program, subsequently abandoned and even forbidden, has so dazzled listeners over the years that Berlioz is routinely described as the programmatic composer par excellence, in spite of his repeated insistence on the supremacy of music, on the power of music itself. His intent was, following what he understood as Beethoven's intent, was to create a thing he described as "le genre instrumentale expressif." That is, he believed that music did not need words to explain it, that it transcended language and was able to express things that language was not able to.
> 
> This was, just by the way, one of the chief sources of the friction between the French composer and his younger colleague from Germany. Berlioz thought that his ideas about the _gesamptkunstwerk_ diminished the power intrinsic to music itself, unfettered by words.


Thank you, thank you, and... thank you.


----------



## PetrB

gog said:


> There _must_ be a Law about referencing 4'33" on an internet music forum, in the same way as there is Godwin's Law regarding Nazis/Hitler.
> 
> If by some oversight there isn't then I hereby declare it to be *Gog's Law*.


At least, on TC, it should be a policy that _any joke or reference which so misses the real point of 4'33''_ is punishable by a temporary ban of 4.33 months!

_Next: discussion of appropriately suitable penalties for saying serial music has no melody, harmony, and or is crap or noise._


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## Crudblud

A composer once wrote a piece about a man picking sweat-drenched sock fluff from the spaces between his toes. I will not tell you the name of the composer or the piece, but when you figure it out please do let me know.


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## DeepR

I like to go in "blank" as much as possible, to see if I'm able to "get" and enjoy the music and give it a place in my mind. Sometimes I've attached my own specific meaning to a work before I read about the composer's intent (if there is any). That is always interesting and sometimes quite funny! 
Me and the music comes first and that dertermines the outcome (whether I like it or not). Knowing about a composer's intent is interesting, but I think it shouldn't be essential. And when it is, I'm not interested.  
What such background information can do is enhance my knowledge and opinion on the music and composer, but it never really changes what I get from the music at the moment of listening. That can only change by listening more. So yes, I think music should "speak for itself", "work on its own" etc. Had I never read any background information on all the classical pieces I've ever listened to, then I still think my taste and preferences in music would have developed in the same direction.


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## hpowders

I'm already calculating how many days the .33 represents.


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## ahammel

hpowders said:


> I'm already calculating how many days the .33 represents.


Ten

........................


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## PetrB

Ukko said:


> I recently made a discovery, regarding my compatibility with the music of John Adams. I usually don't connect with it unless I am aware of what he had in mind while he composed it.
> 
> I'll give an example: If you know _*nothing*_ about "Gnarly Buttons", go listen to it - all 3 movements. It's on YouTube.
> 
> Then, get the background.
> 
> Then, listen again.
> 
> In my case, the difference in effectiveness was pretty damn big.


I had listened to the entire work several times before you mentioned it in this thread (imho, a mighty fine piece, and one just about any clarinettist active in the performing circuit is going to have enormous gratitude re: its very existence

We know each other, so for others I will spell out that I have a lot of training and experience as an active performing instrumental musician, including a good dose of theory and composition training. There.

I listened to _Gnarly Buttons_ again prior saying anything in this thread, and then looked at the squib re: the circumstance and _allegedly,_ what Adams intended (which I had not paid any notice of until this third listen), or what he intended the piece to be about, and honestly, knowing that did nothing to either enhance or alter in any way what I heard.

Throughout this thread, I am near monotonal that even the most 'programmatic' of pieces is more than likely to have its program as spawned by the composer's imagination, but that program was near to exclusively a mere analogous premise from which they could better shape the piece, 'name' its (ready for a contemporary buzz phrase?) "emotional arc." I think ever since the first non-formal pieces of music became more and more of interest to the composers and the public, that the program is an analogy, helpful to the composers (especially when these more episodic and non-formal 'structures' were new territory for both composer and audience), and a mere _device_ to aid and abet the listener to more readily follow the ebb, flow, and structure of those new non-formalist pieces. I.e. _even if the composer 'say's the piece is about _____,_ it probably most actually is not, really

I am quite familiar with John Adams, from his earlier works to present. I don't know if you had any 'problem' accessing the piece, but I can tell you that the odd lengths of numerous overlapped phrases, their at times apparent fragmented quality, and a similar effect via rhythm (a halting, hesitant, push-pull effect, pulsed but keeping the listener very off-balance), have become some of the hallmarks which make his music recognizably distinct, and they are long-term preoccupations of interest to this composer.

Certainly, I hope, anyway, I am old enough to realize and 'feel' the pathos (and heartbreak) if thinking about the main element of 'the back story,' but honestly, my listening or understanding of the structure, and 'what he was doing,' or whatever emotional import the work gives me, were not in any way altered by knowing that back story.

The piece is, to me, arresting in its lyric quality, beginning to end, and also 'unsettling' in the presence of those multiple and overlapped fragmented sounding lines, the brief punctuations from the ensemble, and I suppose some could find a direct connection and 'reason' for their being there due to the back story.

I must return, though, to the fact a lot of the working elements in this piece have been deployed in previous works by this composer, and have been of great interest to him for many years, so I can not think the back story induced them, helped him come up with them in the first place. As I have harped all throughout this thread, the analogy of the back story more than likely helped Adams come up with the overall form, and pitch and yaw of the piece, while I don't "hear" the back story in it, at all.

My personal belief about artist intent when it comes to music: without a sung text, the medium is music, and we also have the composer's title of the work. Ergo: whatever the piece itself and its title convey _is what is conveyed._

Such a work needing a supplemental text to add something not conveyed by the piece and its title _means the composer did not fully succeed in conveying their intent_ -- Ergo, the listener should not be expected to extract anything more from a work other than via the piece itself and its title.


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## PetrB

Crudblud said:


> A composer once wrote a piece about a man picking sweat-drenched sock fluff from the spaces between his toes. I will not tell you the name of the composer or the piece, but when you figure it out please do let me know.


Ah-ha! Thought you'd found something really obscure that no one would know, dincha?

-----_____--_*Richard Wagner ~ Tristan und Insole*_


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## Mahlerian

PetrB said:


> Elsewhere I detailed the Mahler, he _wrote a program to be included in the concert program after the symphony (forgotten which one) was composed, for the premiere performance, thinking the program as analogy might help the lay listeners better understand the piece, and the relationships of one movement to the next._ After the premiere, he thought the whole idea a fail, not helpful to the audience, and lord knows what else. No where in there was a personal statement that he was "divulging the meaning of the work."


The first symphony, the program for which went through a number of revisions before being scrapped along with the second movement and the original title "Titan". Predictably, critics lambasted Mahler for writing music that was impossible to understand without some kind of program, but he stuck to it, and never provided programs or even many hints at programmatic associations to anyone after the Fourth Symphony.


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## millionrainbows

Shostakovich recordings are always full of stories (in the liner notes) about when the piece was composed, and under what circumstances. After all, if Shostakovich was writing under duress or fear of Stalin, or holding back, or being "ironic" or "sarcastic," then of course knowing this will affect our hearing of it. I think all Western listeners are fascinated by the circumstances under which Shostakovich wrote.

I think that knowing the "back story" of any music increases our reaction to it, because we can empathize and relate to the human aspects of it.

Knowing that the post WWII Stalin era was when Shosty's 4th Quartet was composed puts it into pespective for us. Knowing it was composed during "Zhdanovism" (Stalin's ruthless cultural minister) gives us a reason that it is sardonic, and introverted music, different from his first three.


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## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> My personal belief about artist intent when it comes to music: without a sung text, the medium is music, and we also have the composer's title of the work. _If_ whatever the piece itself, and its title, convey, _is what is conveyed._
> 
> *Such a work needing a supplemental text to add something not conveyed by the piece and its title means the composer did not fully succeed in conveying their intent* -- Ergo, the listener should not be expected to extract anything more from a work other than via the piece itself and its title.


The sentence I've bolded in your statement is simply fallacious.

If a composer intends his music to be accompanied by a program - of any kind, length, or magnitude, explicit or implicit, from a simple title to a detailed narrative to a reference to a famous poem which the listener is requested to read or a painting he is requested to view - then *the composer does not intend for his music to be fully understood without that program.* This is a valid artistic choice. It does not mean that the music "fails" to convey its own entire meaning. It means that the music is _not intended_ to do more than it can in conveying the meaning which the composer has invested in the entire work as he conceives it, which means: in the music and program taken together.

Your position simply denies the artistic legitimacy of the concept of program music, and actually of a great deal of music not ordinarily defined as programmatic but still invested by composers with meanings beyond the capacity of notes alone to convey. It is not an objection to programmatic music to say that musical sounds cannot convey certain things. _The fact that they cannot is the very reason for program music's existence. _

We may not care for programmatic music. Or we may prefer to listen to it without reference to any extramusical meanings the composer attaches to it, and to derive from it whatever the notes alone will convey to us. But we cannot then accuse the composer of failing to convey his intent. The truth is simply that we have chosen to ignore his intent and the manner in which he has chosen to convey it.

It's one thing to say that we don't like to listen to music in a certain way. It's another to say that music intended to be listened to in a way we dislike is somehow flawed.


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## Giordano

I guess I consider Beethoven's 6th & 9th as successful programmatic music that I can understand and describe reasonably confidently. They succeed in doing the broadly general uplifting as intended as well as evoking feelings of peace & joy. Unless, of course, you don't like the finale of the 9th... which for me is also a wake-up call to hurry up and march towards the future in the direction of brotherhood and joy. Generally specific programs, not detailed specific ones.


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## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> The sentence I've bolded in your statement is simply fallacious.
> 
> If a composer intends his music to be accompanied by a program - of any kind, length, or magnitude, explicit or implicit, from a simple title to a detailed narrative to a reference to a famous poem which the listener is requested to read or a painting he is requested to view - then *the composer does not intend for his music to be fully understood without that program.* This is a valid artistic choice.
> 
> It's one thing to say that we don't like to listen to music in a certain way. It's another to say that music intended to be listened to in a way we dislike is somehow flawed.


Okay then, I think a composer who needs to rely upon those outside devices is lacking the chops that other composers _who have succeeded in conveying at least as much without the extra-musical props_ apparently do not lack.

But your argument is a bit of a straw man one at that, and I rather wonder if you think that _Madame Bovary_ is perfectly complete without either accompanying CD of music to further make the point and 'paint an aural atmosphere,' and also without any illustrations being at all necessary for that author to make their point, and if that is of 'equal value,' to some book which relies much more on the extra-verbal, and if you would not also think a bit of that, "did that author not have enough skills as a writer to use only the primary medium?"

Granted, I do not like program music, not, it seems, for the reasons you or others would think, but for the fact I really hear much of it, including those extra-musical attachments even 'working all together,' as a fair bulk of rep which got / gets low grades to downright failures on the musical plane.

If you do a quick survey in your mind, literature with lots of illustrations and now sometimes accompanying CDs of music -- is for children 

To repeat near _ad nauseum_, the most successful of these musical/literal illustrative endeavors with music have music which does not at all rely upon the program for a fully complete listener understanding and enjoyment.

At that point, why do they need a program? _To help those listeners who just can not fully access or understand the music on its own._

No composer wishing to keep their audience vs. alienating that audience is going to announce that the program they provided with their score is essentially an _aide a la_ "Music for dummies," but from that, you tell me where that lack or weakness then lies.


----------



## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> Okay then, *I think a composer who needs to rely upon those outside devices [/B]is lacking the chops that other composers who have succeeded in conveying at least as much without the extra-musical props apparently do not lack.
> 
> But your argument is a bit of a straw man one at that, and I rather wonder if you think that Madame Bovary is perfectly complete without either accompanying CD of music to further make the point and 'paint an aural atmosphere,' and also without any illustrations being at all necessary for that author to make their point, and if that is of 'equal value,' to some book which relies much more on the extra-verbal, and if you would not also think a bit of that, "did that author not have enough skills as a writer to use only the primary medium?"
> 
> Granted, I do not like program music, not, it seems, for the reasons you or may would think, but for the fact I really hear much of it, including those extra-musical attachments even 'working all together,' as a fair bulk of rep which got / gets low grades to downright failures on the musical plane.
> 
> If you do a quick survey in your mind, literature with lots of illustrations and now sometimes accompanying CDs of music -- is for children
> 
> To repeat near ad nauseum, the most successful of these musical/literal illustrative endeavors with music have music which does not at all rely upon the program for a fully complete listener understanding and enjoyment.
> 
> At that point, why do they need a program? To help those listeners who just can not fully access or understand the music on its own.
> 
> No composer wishing to keep their audience vs. alienating that audience is going to announce that the program they provided with their score is essentially an aide a la "Music for dummies," but from that, you tell me where that lack or weakness then lies.*


*

If Madame Bovary had been written with music to accompany it, then it would be wrong to judge it as literature in the absence of that music. That doesn't mean that it couldn't be a good read anyway. In fact, we might read it, find it satisfying, and not suspect that anything was missing - just as we might listen to Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet in ignorance of its Shakespearean inspiration and simply enjoy the music. But a novelist - or let's be more realistic and say a film maker - would make different artistic choices if he planned to include music in his work. And a composer might likewise make different choices if he were motivated by by the desire to express an extramusical meaning which he would then impart to his listeners by means of a title or program.

I certainly believe that any really fine musical work should sound coherent and be formally and expressively substantial, with or without a program or title, and that a programmatic piece that achieves this is, all else being equal, a finer work than one that doesn't. A program shouldn't be an excuse for sloppy construction or simple-minded effects. A lot of program music by lesser composers (and some by great composers too) is indeed weak. So is a lot of non-programmatic music - and the latter probably has less excuse. The best program music sounds great with or without program. Beethoven's 6th didn't need to be called "Pastoral" to be one beautiful symphony. But some of us enjoy knowing what he had in mind.

I can see either a liking or a dislike for program music (however tightly or loosely you define it) as perfectly legitimate and normal. Some people experience a lot of "cross-domain cognition," making strong connections between sensory and cognitive modes, such as sight and sound, or sensation and conceptualization, or sensation and affect. Such people might find that music in general strikes them as less abstract than it strikes others; music might naturally suggest a lot of things to them, and if they are composers they may be greatly inspired by ideas or visual sensations. Schumann seems to have been one of these composers; Sibelius clearly was; Wagner may have been the epitome of the type. Brahms was clearly not! I don't think that any of these composers "lacked chops." They merely experienced, and wrote, different music based on their own ways of relating sound to cognitive and affective experience. And different listeners appreciate and enjoy in different degrees their ways of making music and presenting it.

To compare, in any way, such musically fine works as the piano cycles of Schumann or the tone poems of Sibelius with children's picture books is a bit insulting, don't you think? Maybe you'd exempt those guys from the generalization - or maybe not?

The problem I have with this discussion is what I perceive as a denigration or a delegitimation of an artistic approach which I think has a real foundation in human cognition (varying, of course, with the individual), and which is quite capable of generating works of integrity and excellence. As I think everyone agrees, we'll ultimately hear those works in our individual ways regardless of what the composers have to say about them. But I do think that whatever they choose to say and however they choose to say it is artistically valid, and that their choice to say it is not necessarily a mark of artistic weakness.*


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> ...we might listen to Tchaikovsky's _Romeo and Juliet_ in ignorance of its Shakespearean inspiration and simply enjoy the music.


Well, one can hardly miss the title, which references a play that everyone knows, but I don't hear anything in the music that reminds me of the play. And I don't need to think of any parts of the play to enjoy the music. So it's for me no question of "might" at all, or of "ignorance" either one, but of being immersed in the music while it plays and hearing only the notes without any words or any stories being triggered by them.

It would be an interesting experiment, though probably inconclusive, to swap around all the titles of Tchaikovsky's literary pieces and then play them for different people. See if there are any patterns that emerge. But I'm not sure that there are any patterns now. But if you played someone _Romeo and Juliet_ who had never heard it before but you called it _Tempest,_ would that experience be noticably or measurably different from that of someone who knew the piece as _Romeo and Juliet?_

_Till Eulenspiegel_ has come up in this conversation before. My experience with that piece came quite early in my musical listening. And I was very frustrated at my inability to hear the story in the music. Coupla things from time to time, but nothing consistent or coherent. From the liner notes, I got the impression that this pieces depicts various events in the career of Till. But when I listened to it, what I heard was music. And it was my inability to make it tell the story that decided me to eschew reading liner notes.

Which is how I was able at first to listen to (and enjoy) Berlioz' supposed program symphony without any knowledge of the story at all. And how the story, once it had intruded itself on me, was one giant distraction from the music I had already become familiar with. It helped immensely to read Jacques Barzun's essay about this symphony, in which he explains how programs were de rigeur at the time, how Berlioz felt that a program would help unsuspecting audiences follow the music, how he backed off of that to the extent of requesting that the program not be published at a performance unless the whole opus 14 were played, and how he never supplied a program to any other piece. He says in that essay that it's not that the symphony tells that story (it doesn't) but that realistically, it's the story that "tells" the symphony.

And once you've "got it," that is, once you understand the musical logic, then you no longer need the story and can jettison it. It's a prop and thus dispensible.

As for "a composer... motivated by the desire to express an extramusical meaning which he would then impart to his listeners by means of a title or program," well, sure. Composers are motivated by extramusical stuff all the time, poems, novels, plays, paintings, events, whatever. But a desire to express an extramusical meaning? Doesn't that strike you as redundant? The meaning is already there. It's already been expressed, in its original medium. What would be the point of expressing it again in another medium, particularly one (like music) which is so vastly different in its expressivity from language or pigment?

I'm one listener who doesn't really divide music up into programmatic and non-programmatic. Music is itself. And itself is quite remarkably different from any other self out there. Which leads me to



Woodduck said:


> The problem I have with this discussion is what I perceive as a denigration or a delegitimation of an artistic approach which I think has a real foundation in human cognition (varying, of course, with the individual), and which is quite capable of generating works of integrity and excellence.


The problem I have with this problem is that what I and some others have been perceiving is a denigration or a delegitimization of the power of music qua music, of music being sufficient, needing no props to stand. At the end of the day, the job of a composer, whether writing a string quartet or an electroacoustic piece or making an installation or an opera, is to put sounds together. Whatever else is true about sources of inspiration or intentions to express this or that, it all comes down to putting sounds together. That's the job. It's a good job, I think, and needs no excuses for existing.


----------



## Wood

gog said:


> There _must_ be a Law about referencing 4'33" on an internet music forum, in the same way as there is Godwin's Law regarding Nazis/Hitler.
> 
> If by some oversight there isn't then I hereby declare it to be *Gog's Law*.


Sorry Gog, but I have already patented Wood's Law:

http://www.talkclassical.com/32478-there-standards-music-appreciation-3.html#post670900

Feel free to highlight examples of it when it arises.


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## hpowders

What about Beethoven's intent in composing his symphony No. 3? 

One of the greatest conductors of this symphony, Arturo Toscanini, considered any programmatic intent, nonsense.

Speaking of the first movement:

"To some it is Napoleon; to some it is a philosophical struggle, to me it is allegro con brio."


----------



## Guest

hpowders said:


> What about Beethoven's intent in composing his symphony No. 3?
> 
> One of the greatest conductors of this symphony, Arturo Toscanini, considered any programmatic intent, nonsense.
> 
> Speaking of the first movement:
> 
> "To some it is Napoleon; to some it is a philosophical struggle, to me it is allegro con brio."


Ha! Good man, I'm on the brio bench.


----------



## Guest

Wood said:


> Sorry Gog, but I have already patented Wood's Law:
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/32478-there-standards-music-appreciation-3.html#post670900
> 
> Feel free to highlight examples of it when it arises.


Dang, I thought I'd had an original, er, thought. I defer to your prior insight.


----------



## hpowders

gog said:


> Ha! Good man, I'm on the brio bench.


Whatever Beethoven's intent, one of the Eroica's greatest conductors simply conducted the music.
Toscanini couldn't care less about any program or "intent" Beethoven might have had.


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## PetrB

hpowders said:


> What about Beethoven's intent in composing his symphony No. 3?
> 
> One of the greatest conductors of this symphony, Arturo Toscanini, considered any programmatic intent, nonsense.
> 
> Speaking of the first movement:
> 
> "To some it is Napoleon; to some it is a philosophical struggle, to me it is allegro con brio."


I'm with Arturo 1000% there, and to boot, I don't care if he had a toothache when he wrote it, either.


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## hpowders

PetrB said:


> I'm with Arturo 1000% there, and to boot, I don't care if he had a toothache when he wrote it, either.


One of the greatest Beethoven conductors ever. He simply conducted the music.

Imagine his great cycle from the 1930's in modern sound.


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## PetrB

hpowders said:


> One of the greatest Beethoven conductors ever. He simply conducted the music.
> 
> Imagine his great cycle from the 1930's in modern sound.


I think a lot of what many music lovers in our present time would like to believe about the 'content' of a piece of music is from notions which sprung up in the mid-to late romantic era. Of course, the moment one learns even a bit about composing, then whether the endeavor is but a simple piano piece or a large symphonic work for about eighty instrument (or more, or less) within a very formal structure, and thinking that while the composer sustains a particular emotional frame, or dwells continually upon some philosophical struggle or a story, that any of that could possibly be sustained throughout the working out and ultimate execution of the task of composing -- well, _*anyone who thinks or believes that can happen, or that somehow the piece written can somehow contain and convey that content -- really needs an intensive refresher course in Plausibility!*_


----------



## Ukko

PetrB said:


> I think a lot of what many music lovers in our present time would like to believe about the 'content' of a piece of music is from notions which sprung up in the mid-to late romantic era. Of course, the moment one learns even a bit about composing, then whether the endeavor is but a simple piano piece or a large symphonic work for about eighty instrument (or more, or less) within a very formal structure, and thinking that while the composer sustains a particular emotional frame, or dwells continually upon some philosophical struggle or a story, that any of that could possibly be sustained throughout the working out and ultimate execution of the task of composing -- well, _*anyone who thinks or believes that can happen, or that somehow the piece written can somehow contain and convey that content -- really needs an intensive refresher course in Plausibility!*_


Well, yeah. On top of (or maybe underneath) that, if one follows my recipe for 1st listen - which is _don't think about it_ - the possibility of any specific information transfer is severely diminished. I'm guessing that even musicologists can muffle the analytical process if they want to. Poor ******** if they can't.


----------



## PetrB

Ukko said:


> Well, yeah. On top of (or maybe underneath) that, if one follows my recipe for 1st listen - which is _don't think about it_ - the possibility of any specific information transfer is severely diminished. I'm guessing that even musicologists can muffle the analytical process if they want to. Poor ******** if they can't.


I'm quick to agree that in discussing a piece, even for those directly "in music" who are learning to play an instrument or are directly involved with learning music theory and analysis, that the technical jargon on phrasing, nuances of interpretation and performance, harmonic analysis and all the rest are not enough, on their own, to discuss _what the music is, and how it really works, etc._ This is where any multitude of analogies come into use, and they can be hugely beneficial in further understanding of the craft and / or a piece.

There is / was a trend in musicology, "The narrative" approach, which extols the analogous means and it seems urges that should be a formal part of music education and musicology. Thing is, to me, formalizing that aspect seems completely unnecessary.

Every teacher, piano or theory and comp, with whom I ever worked with had -- from their own imagination and as part of their teaching equipment -- several ready analogies to help any student along, at any level. I suppose what each of those did falls under the tag of _individuated teaching / learning,_ i.e. they assessed which analogy would be best grasped by the individual student, and if one didn't work, they had another, either prepared or 'on the fly,' that would 

That trend of "the narrative approach" in musicology (ca. 1980 - 1990, which as far as I know is just that, a fashion which has never taken off much beyond its vogue years), seemed to me some rather extreme reaction by one or more who had had some very lacking teachers in the first place, as if rather late in their training someone presented them with an analogous explanation for the first time in their life, and they then felt so p.o.'d they'd been deprived (or had never thought of that avenue themselves) that they were hot to lobby for that approach to be formalized. To be blunt, when I first heard of it, my first thought was "what was so wrong with the collective imaginations of the teachers / or the the imagination of the former student who then came up with narrative theory?"

The trouble with formalizing such an approach, indeed even naming it "narrative theory" is when, old school M.O., you are given those analogies by a teacher in a lesson or a theory and analysis classroom, with one or more coming at the student in a more off-the-cuff manner _it needs no explaining to be clear they are but analogies._ Formalized, called, even, the "Narrative theory" I believe is going to mislead that many more to misunderstand, and think that any and all music literally "tells a story," especially in our current time when literalism seems to be taking over even the more intelligent and imaginative of souls. LOL.


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## Woodduck

some guy said:


> Well, one can hardly miss the title, which references a play that everyone knows, but *I don't hear anything in the music that reminds me of the play. And I don't need to think of any parts of the play to enjoy the music.* So it's for me no question of "might" at all, or of "ignorance" either one, but of being immersed in the music while it plays and hearing only the notes without any words or any stories being triggered by them.
> 
> It would be an interesting experiment, though probably inconclusive, to swap around all the titles of Tchaikovsky's literary pieces and then play them for different people. See if there are any patterns that emerge. But I'm not sure that there are any patterns now. But if you played someone _Romeo and Juliet_ who had never heard it before but you called it _Tempest,_ would that experience be noticably or measurably different from that of someone who knew the piece as _Romeo and Juliet?_
> 
> _Till Eulenspiegel_ has come up in this conversation before. My experience with that piece came quite early in my musical listening. And I was very frustrated at my inability to hear the story in the music. Coupla things from time to time, but nothing consistent or coherent. From the liner notes, I got the impression that this pieces depicts various events in the career of Till. But when I listened to it, what I heard was music. And it was my inability to make it tell the story that decided me to eschew reading liner notes.
> 
> Which is how I was able at first to listen to (and enjoy) Berlioz' supposed program symphony without any knowledge of the story at all. And how *the story, once it had intruded itself on me, was one giant distraction from the music I had already become familiar with.* It helped immensely to read Jacques Barzun's essay about this symphony, in which he explains how programs were de rigeur at the time, how Berlioz felt that a program would help unsuspecting audiences follow the music, how he backed off of that to the extent of requesting that the program not be published at a performance unless the whole opus 14 were played, and how he never supplied a program to any other piece. He says in that essay that it's not that the symphony tells that story (it doesn't) but that realistically, it's the story that "tells" the symphony.
> 
> And once you've "got it," that is, once you understand the musical logic, then you no longer need the story and can jettison it. It's a prop and thus dispensible.
> 
> As for "a composer... motivated by the desire to express an extramusical meaning which he would then impart to his listeners by means of a title or program," well, sure. *Composers are motivated by extramusical stuff all the time, poems, novels, plays, paintings, events, whatever.** But a desire to express an extramusical meaning? Doesn't that strike you as redundant? **The meaning is already there. It's already been expressed, in its original medium.* What would be the point of expressing it again in another medium, particularly one (like music) which is so vastly different in its expressivity from language or pigment?
> 
> I'm one listener who doesn't really divide music up into programmatic and non-programmatic. Music is itself. And itself is quite remarkably different from any other self out there. Which leads me to
> 
> *The problem I have with this problem is that what I and some others have been perceiving is a denigration or a delegitimization of the power of music qua music, of music being sufficient, needing no props to stand.* At the end of the day, the job of a composer, whether writing a string quartet or an electroacoustic piece or making an installation or an opera, is to put sounds together. Whatever else is true about sources of inspiration or intentions to express this or that, it all comes down to putting sounds together. That's the job. It's a good job, I think, and needs no excuses for existing.


The existence of programmatic music, and the argument for its validity as an artistic form, _does not in any way denigrate or delegitimize absolute music. It is merely a different artistic approach._ I've said that the best program music is that which is most effective even without knowledge of any extramusical associations a composer attaches to it. I think this is generally acknowledged. What more do we need? A government decree abolishing titles?

What does it matter that you, personally, hear nothing in Tchaikovsky's _Romeo and Juliet_ to remind you of the play? Clearly Tchaikovsky was inspired by the play and wanted us to know it. Many people do hear affinities with the play; I actually hear them very strongly. Do I need to be thinking about them as I listen? Not really. I can if I want to, and as much or as little as I want to. Tchaikovsky leaves that choice to me; he has no choice but to leave it to me! But whatever my inclination of the moment as a listener, Tchaikovsky as a composer gave us a work which he no doubt felt to be an expression, in musical terms, of what the play meant to him, and he gave us the opportunity to glimpse his feelings and perceptions. Whether we're willing or able to do do that is irrelevant.

It's also irrelevant that the piece might be called "The Tempest." That might work: it has tempestuous elements. But so what? Music isn't, as Beethoven made clear in his remark about the "Pastoral" symphony, a literal transcription of anything else. Tchaikovsky's _Romeo_ doesn't purport to be a "translation" of Shakespeare. It's an expression of his feelings about Shakespeare. His title tells us that and no more. Whether we find that title or some other title more persuasive, is our business. What we as individual listeners get out of the music neither supports nor invalidates Tchaikovsky's choice to write a piece inspired by a play or his choice to give it the title of the play.

Your two crucial assertions here, as I read you, are that 1.) a program or descriptive title which indicates an extra-musical meaning is redundant because the meaning is already in the music; and 2.) a composer's job "all comes down to putting sounds together." I would say to these the following:

1.) The indication of an extramusical significance is _not_ "redundant," precisely because an extra-musical meaning is, by definition, _extra_ - i.e., it is _not_ in the music. That's the whole point of a program or title: the composer has something in mind, which he wants to convey to us, that cannot be conveyed by sounds alone, but which he hopes to convey by associating the sounds with certain ideas. The program or title is there to give us an additional context in which to hear and comprehend the composer's musical choices, which may well be guided, in part, by extramusical ideas (i.e, ideas not derived from the nature of sounds as such). Which brings us to the second point:

2.) The expression "it all comes down to putting sounds together" is highly question-begging. The question it begs is: What _reasons_ are there for putting particular sounds together in a particular way? Why choose certain sounds as opposed to others? Why does a melody want to assume a certain shape? Why should it be harmonized in one way at the beginning of a work, but a different way at the end? Why use a certain orchestral color here, but a different one there? Are an artist's choices based on whatever strikes his fancy in the moment? On an abstract sense or concept of form - balance, cohesion, unity, variety, etc.? On the need to find elements and arrangements that seem to embody certain feelings or ideas (which are extra-musical, because sounds as such do not contain feelings and ideas but must be made to convey them through being selected and arranged in certain ways)?

All of the above, certainly. The "all" which "comes down to" putting notes on paper is very complex. To ask why the notes are as they are is to ask about a lot of things. The notes can communicate some of those things to a listener. They may not be able, as notes, to communicate everything a composer wants to say, and so sometimes he may want to communicate some things by means other than notes. His doing so doesn't mean that the notes are devalued by either the composer or any possible listener. The notes are still there, saying whatever they will say to whomever they will say it. We can still give the ideas offered in conjunction with the notes whatever degree of attention we wish, and we remain free to attach whatever significance or value we wish to the music as we hear it.

No program or title has ever, to my knowledge, distracted me from appreciating a piece of music's values. I can see where a program may be for some musically unsophisticated listeners a limiting factor on what a work might mean to them. On the other hand, it might provide a point of entry into a work which their musical experience or level of musical comprehension makes otherwise inaccesible to them. Considerations such as these are not germane to the artistic legitimacy of a composer's choice to associate ideas with music. Music, the powers of music, and the ability of listeners to understand and enjoy music, are not threatened when a symphony with viola obbligato is given the title _Harold in Italy_. I'm sure Berlioz is happy to let us think of dear Harold anything we like; our Byronic hero could be in Saskatchewan, and the music would still be terrific. (BTW, which works of Berlioz has he _not_ provided with extramusical associations, in one way or another?)


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> The existence of programmatic music, and the argument for its validity as an artistic form, does not in any way denigrate or delegitimize absolute music.


No, it doesn't. But that was not my point. To get my point, just flip things around: The existence of absolute music, and the argument for its validity, does not in any way denigrate or delegitimize program music.

See? Neither "the existence of" nor "the argument for" are what either of us are reacting to.



Woodduck said:


> What does it matter that you, personally, hear nothing in Tchaikovsky's _Romeo and Juliet_ to remind you of the play? Clearly Tchaikovsky was inspired by the play and wanted us to know it. Many people do hear affinities with the play; I actually hear them very strongly.


Do another flip, here, to understand. What does it matter that you, personally, hear affinities very strongly? What's really at issue here is which experience is valid.



Woodduck said:


> Do I need to be thinking about them as I listen? Not really. I can if I want to, and as much or as little as I want to. Tchaikovsky leaves that choice to me; he has no choice but to leave it to me! But whatever my inclination of the moment as a listener, Tchaikovsky as a composer gave us a work which he no doubt felt to be an expression, in musical terms, of what the play meant to him, and he gave us the opportunity to glimpse his feelings and perceptions. Whether we're willing or able to do do that is irrelevant.


Not sure I'm following this line of thought at all. It seems contradictory or at least inconclusive. So Tchaikovsky has an intent which is unmistakably revealed in his choice of title and that intent is important to recognize and acknowledge but we can ignore it if we want with no consequences. So why argue for the validity of Tchaikovsky's intent? Apply the earlier comment about me to Tchaikovsky: What does it matter that Tchaikovsky, personally, felt a certain way about Shakespeare's play?

Otherwise, for your assertion about hearing the affinities very strongly? Do you think that if you had heard this work without knowing anything about its title or any speculations about Tchaikovsky's intentions you would have still been able to hear affinities between these notes in this order and Shakespeare's play? I think certainly not. I could play you hundreds of pieces you'd never heard before, and I'm pretty sure you would be able neither to identify which ones were "program" music and which "absolute" nor what the programs were for the former.



Woodduck said:


> It's also irrelevant that the piece might be called "The Tempest." That might work: it has tempestuous elements.


_The Tempest_ is also a play by Shakespeare. And Tchaikovsky's fantasy overture with the same name references that play.



Woodduck said:


> Tchaikovsky's _Romeo_ doesn't purport to be a "translation" of Shakespeare. It's an expression of his feelings about Shakespeare. His title tells us that and no more. Whether we find that title or some other title more persuasive, is our business. What we as individual listeners get out of the music neither supports nor invalidates Tchaikovsky's choice to write a piece inspired by a play or his choice to give it the title of the play.


So now I really don't know what it is that you are arguing. Fortunately, you now shift topic. And there I am again able to follow your argument.



Woodduck said:


> Your two crucial assertions here, as I read you, are that 1.) a program or descriptive title which indicates an extra-musical meaning is redundant because the meaning is already in the music; and 2.) a composer's job "all comes down to putting sounds together."


Read them again. You got the first one completely wrong. I said that the meaning is already in existence before the music. Making the music redundant if all it does is convey the already existent meaning. I would never in a million years say that an extra-musical meaning is in the music. Have you really read my posts and missed that fundamental fact?



Woodduck said:


> [T]he whole point of a program or title: the composer has something in mind, which he wants to convey to us, that cannot be conveyed by sounds alone, but which he hopes to convey by associating the sounds with certain ideas.


Yes. I know.

As for the rest of it, please look up "question begging." It's not what you think. Or at least it's not what you conveyed by how you just used it. And the business about what the composer's job comes down to does not exclude any of the other things you mention. But when all has been said and done, when all the influences and inspirations have been thoroughly accounted for, what is it that composers do? Put sounds together.

Fundamentals is all. Composers put sounds together. Poets put words together. Architects put steel and wood and concrete together. Painters put pigments together.

That's not the whole of it for anyone. But it's the fundamental about each that is often completely ignored in conversations of this sort.


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## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> The existence of programmatic music, and the argument for its validity as an artistic form, _does not in any way denigrate or delegitimize absolute music. It is merely a different artistic approach._ I've said that the best program music is that which is most effective even without knowledge of any extramusical associations a composer attaches to it. I think this is generally acknowledged. What more do we need? A government decree abolishing titles?


If the best program music does not in any way need the program, does not at all depend upon the program to convey what it conveys, "What more do we need?" is not a government decree abolishing titles so much as what is then needed is a clear and incontestable proof that those pieces are, _actually program music in the first place!_

Indeed, then "What more do we need?" goes to "What more does the piece need?" and by the 'best program music' criterion, it no longer needs the program.

I mean if the music has full life and occupies the space, so to speak, on its own, then aren't the programs attached to the music more like barnacles slowing down the ship's progress?


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## Woodduck

some guy said:


> No, it doesn't. But that was not my point. To get my point, just flip things around: The existence of absolute music, and the argument for its validity, does not in any way denigrate or delegitimize program music.
> 
> See? Neither "the existence of" nor "the argument for" are what either of us are reacting to.
> 
> Do another flip, here, to understand. What does it matter that you, personally, hear affinities very strongly? What's really at issue here is which experience is valid.
> 
> Not sure I'm following this line of thought at all. It seems contradictory or at least inconclusive. So Tchaikovsky has an intent which is unmistakably revealed in his choice of title and that intent is important to recognize and acknowledge but we can ignore it if we want with no consequences. So why argue for the validity of Tchaikovsky's intent? Apply the earlier comment about me to Tchaikovsky: What does it matter that Tchaikovsky, personally, felt a certain way about Shakespeare's play?
> 
> Otherwise, for your assertion about hearing the affinities very strongly? Do you think that if you had heard this work without knowing anything about its title or any speculations about Tchaikovsky's intentions you would have still been able to hear affinities between these notes in this order and Shakespeare's play? I think certainly not. I could play you hundreds of pieces you'd never heard before, and I'm pretty sure you would be able neither to identify which ones were "program" music and which "absolute" nor what the programs were for the former.
> 
> _The Tempest_ is also a play by Shakespeare. And Tchaikovsky's fantasy overture with the same name references that play.
> 
> So now I really don't know what it is that you are arguing. Fortunately, you now shift topic. And there I am again able to follow your argument.
> 
> Read them again. You got the first one completely wrong. I said that the meaning is already in existence before the music. Making the music redundant if all it does is convey the already existent meaning. I would never in a million years say that an extra-musical meaning is in the music. Have you really read my posts and missed that fundamental fact?
> 
> Yes. I know.
> 
> As for the rest of it, please look up "question begging." It's not what you think. Or at least it's not what you conveyed by how you just used it. And the business about what the composer's job comes down to does not exclude any of the other things you mention. But when all has been said and done, when all the influences and inspirations have been thoroughly accounted for, what is it that composers do? Put sounds together.
> 
> *Fundamentals is all. Composers put sounds together. Poets put words together. Architects put steel and wood and concrete together. Painters put pigments together.
> *
> That's not the whole of it for anyone. But *it's the fundamental about each that is often completely ignored in conversations of this sort.*


I've stated my view on program music and a composer's extramusical intent very concisely several times in this thread. This post of yours sidesteps my points and culminates in a blast of hot air.

"Fundamentals is all. Composers put sounds together. Poets put words together. Architects put steel and wood and concrete together. Painters put pigments together." Really? Horsepuckey. What artists "put together," _fundamentally_, is _ideas_ - sensory/perceptual/conceptual (in varying proportions) ideas - _mental_ phenomena - which they embody in physical form. _Art_ - as opposed to tubes of paint, blocks of concrete, or scrapings of a bow on strings - begins in the mind of the artist, and ends in the mind of his audience. _That_ is what's fundamental.

Program music is a valid artistic form. It is a way in which an artist chooses to convey, through sounds and some added verbal indication, something from his mind to the mind of a listener. Why in God's name are you people making an issue of it? Is program music some sort of danger to the public? Most of the music most of us here listen to is not programmatic, or at least has no extramusical ideas attached to it by its composer beyond perhaps a title. The existence and enjoyment of music which_ is _and _does_, has no relevance to the existence and enjoyment of music which _isn't_ and _doesn't_. All this pretentious chatter about the arbitrariness and non-necessity of programs and titles and whatever is peripheral. If a composer affixes a title or a poem to his work, it's part of the work, whether you think it's needed or not. He can't make you take it into account and you aren't required to. If someone else wants to take it into account and it gives them an extra pleasure in listening, or tells them something they didn't know before, God bless them. The composer gave them an opportunity, and they took it.

If you or anyone would rather ignore Berlioz's Harold and just listen to musical shapes and feel whatever you feel, that's your prerogative. If someone else wants to imagine the landscapes of Italy and the pilgrims chanting and the peasants doing a tarantella, that's their prerogative. The title of this thread is "The importance of intent." That title certainly has implications beyond program music as such. But program music is a form in which composers can convey intent. If that intent is unimportant to you, fine. Harold is unimportant to you. To another listener, Harold is important. Evidently he was important enough to Berlioz to get his name attached to what you would evidently prefer to hear as an abstract symphony or concerto. However you choose to listen to the piece, I respect your choice. But I also respect Berlioz's choice to make Harold a part of his conception, and the choice of any listener to take Berlioz's choice into account.

We can all hear music the way we want to, can't we? And music will survive, won't it? Now is there really anything else to be said? I sincerely hope not.


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## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> If the best program music does not in any way need the program, does not at all depend upon the program to convey what it conveys, "What more do we need?" is not a government decree abolishing titles so much as *what is then needed is a clear and incontestable proof that those pieces are, actually program music in the first place! *
> 
> Indeed, then "What more do we need?" goes to "What more does the piece need?" and by the 'best program music' criterion, it no longer needs the program.
> 
> *I mean if the music has full life and occupies the space, so to speak, on its own, then aren't the programs attached to the music more like barnacles slowing down the ship's progress?*


This is so silly. Have you felt the need to ask Sibelius for "clear and incontestible proof" that _The Swan of Tuonela_ is really meant to be about the swan of Tuonela? And do you suppose that the swan, gliding majestically along the black river of death, feels its progress slowed by barnacles encrusting its breast?

I would prefer to leave such concerns to sophists who are vexed by them and simply enter the grave, enchanted realm of fantasy that Sibelius has opened up to me. Thank God I discovered that realm before I learned that it was irrelevant.


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## aajj

I have long loved Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique, Mendelssohn's 4th 'Italian' Symphony and Beethoven's 6th 'Pastoral' Symphony. The programs and/or scenarios that may have come with this music have never mattered to me and i do not believe my enjoyment has suffered one iota. I don't feel a need to fantasize about water to enjoy Debussy's La Mer. (Besides which, i get seasick easily.) Brahms was a famous exponent of "pure" music and that works for me.


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## Ukko

Woodduck said:


> This is so silly. Have you felt the need to ask Sibelius for "clear and incontestible proof" that _The Swan of Tuonela_ is really meant to be about the swan of Tuonela? And do you suppose that the swan, gliding majestically along the black river of death, feels its progress slowed by barnacles encrusting its breast?
> 
> I would prefer to leave such concerns to sophists who are vexed by them and simply enter the grave, enchanted realm of fantasy that Sibelius has opened up to me. Thank God I discovered that realm before I learned that it was irrelevant.


Woodduck, you are not easy to follow. Near as I can tell, you have switched positions in the argument at least twice. So, some of the time you are probably right, eh?

[Vermont's Governor Shumlin tends to do that pole-switching thing, but then he is a politician.]


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## Woodduck

Ukko said:


> Woodduck, you are not easy to follow. Near as I can tell, you have switched positions in the argument at least twice. So, some of the time you are probably right, eh?
> 
> [Vermont's Governor Shumlin tends to do that pole-switching thing, but then he is a politician.]


I have not switched any position. The fact that I've had to paraphrase myself a few times to try to penetrate a cranium or two may have confused you.

_Exactly_ what "two" positions are you referring to? If there's genuine confusion about my position on anything, I'm happy to clarify.


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## Marschallin Blair

Ukko said:


> Woodduck, you are not easy to follow. Near as I can tell, you have switched positions in the argument at least twice. So, some of the time you are probably right, eh?
> 
> [Vermont's Governor Shumlin tends to do that pole-switching thing, but then he is a politician.]


The floor. . . and the 'pole'. . . are yours, councelor. Dazzle me with some evidentiary bite--- and then I might do a pole dance for _you._


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## Ukko

Woodduck said:


> I have not switched any position. The fact that I've had to paraphrase myself a few times to try to penetrate a cranium or two may have confused you.
> 
> _Exactly_ what "two" positions are you referring to? If there's genuine confusion about my position on anything, I'm happy to clarify.


You seem to be of two minds as to whether - in general - the program adds to the appreciation of the music, either at first hearing, subsequently or both.

Having firm opinions on the subject, I may be injecting them into your argument(s) - and thus confusing my own self.

[MB, the subject being subjective, hard evidence must be harder to find than caviar in a South Central market.]


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## Woodduck

Ukko said:


> You seem to be of two minds as to whether - in general - the program adds to the appreciation of the music, either at first hearing, subsequently or both.
> 
> Having firm opinions on the subject, I may be injecting them into your argument(s) - and thus confusing my own self.
> 
> [MB, the subject being subjective, hard evidence must be harder to find than caviar in a South Central market.]


Ah, I see what you're asking.

What a program may or may not add to anyone's appreciation of a given piece of music is for every listener to decide, and really isn't part of my argument at all. After all, regardless of what a composer intends, he is not in control of how his work is received, and he can't reasonably expect to be. He can, however, have an _intention_ to communicate something and hope that the listener will pay attention and get his point.

I'm only concerned to refute the idea that a program or title or verbal description attached _by a composer_ to a piece of music is inherently irrelevant to the work, and that listeners who take it as relevant are somehow listening to music the wrong way - that they ought to be considering only the notes and ignoring anything else the composer chooses to include in his presentation. It isn't wrong for a given listener to ignore a title or a program in hearing such a work - we can take in any work of art in whatever way is meaningful to us - but it is certainly wrong to contend that the title or program is not a part of the work or is irrelevant to the composer's intention. How much importance a given composer attaches to his program in any specific case isn't something we can always determine, and in some cases - Liszt's _Les Preludes_ has been brought up - the program may even have been appended after the work was completed. We can investigate that if we care to. But such cases don't affect the general principle that program music has a valid claim to be taken seriously as exactly what it appears to be: music for which a composer wishes to provide information about something he has tried to express or represent, something which requires words to be understood.

I'm very much aware that the whole question of what music can or should express and represent is a point of contention for some. I'm also aware that the Romantic period's fondness for attaching verbal explanations and interpretation to music of all sorts has fallen - deservedly - into disrepute. Music is not fundamentally a medium for communicating conceptual ideas. But to go further and to say that it's somehow better to dissociate music from specific ideation altogether is, I believe, an equally narrow perspective, and merely an attempt to elevate a personal preference or bias to the status of a general principle. Music in combination with words and concepts - and with the other arts - can be a very potent means of artistic expression. Song is not "inferior" to instrumental music. Music has been a part of theater presumably since prehistory. There is no essential difference, with respect to this principle, between embedding words in music and offering them parallel to it. In both cases the composer is seeking a meaningful relationship between the two mediums of expression. We can listen to songs in a foreign language and enjoy them purely as music. That doesn't mean that we are grasping the composer's full intention, or that we ought to ignore the words on some spurious argument that the "sounds" should be self-sufficient. They may very well be satisfying in themselves, and in the best music they are - but the composer obviously had something more in mind.

If a composer has a "program" in mind - or any sort of extramusical ideas, whether he discloses them or not - it can affect his musical choices in a myriad of ways. Knowing his ideas may give us some insight into those choices; it may illuminate them in fascinating ways. For me, it's absurd to ignore that. But this in no way prevents me from appreciating the way composers have structured sound. If it does prevent that for others, and they want to listen to a tone poem as a piece of "pure" music (I can, and sometimes do, do that myself), I have no quarrel with them.


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## PetrB

Ukko said:


> Woodduck, you are not easy to follow. Near as I can tell, you have switched positions in the argument at least twice. So, some of the time you are probably right, eh?
> 
> [Vermont's Governor Shumlin tends to do that pole-switching thing, but then he is a politician.]


Well then, let's be kind and not post that youtube link to the segment of the BBC 's "The Genius of Tchaikovsky," wherein conductor / musicologist Charles Hazelwood tells of a young Tchaikovsky teaching at the Moscow conservatory, where as part of his duties he was accompanist for some of the voice students and where he met the young male student with whom he had a deeply passionate and consummated love affair.

Best not to say that student, not long in to that affair, committed suicide at age 19, Tchaikovsky's heartbreak about that loss, and that his then writing that overture and choosing _Romeo and Juliet_ was because that Shakespeare play is a near universally understood archetype, an iconic which stands for a young couple's passionate affair (and an illicit affair hidden from public view at that.) Ergo, that brilliant overture is about Tchaikovsky, the affair with that singing student, and other than as archetype representing a pair of young illicit lovers, nothing to do, at all, with Romeo & Juliet.

Because hey, that might spoil it for some.


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## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> Well then, let's be kind and not post that youtube link to the segment of the BBC 's "The Genius of Tchaikovsky," wherein conductor / musicologist Charles Hazelwood tells of a young Tchaikovsky teaching at the Moscow conservatory, where as part of his duties he was accompanist for some of the voice students and where he met the young male student with whom he had a deeply passionate and consummated love affair.
> 
> Best not to say that student, not long in to that affair, committed suicide at age 19, Tchaikovsky's heartbreak about that loss, and that his then writing that overture and choosing _Romeo and Juliet_ was because that Shakespeare play is a near universally understood archetype, iconic as standing and representing a young couple's passionate affair, and an illicit affair hidden from public view at that.* Ergo, that brilliant overture is about Tchaikovsky, the affair with that singing student, and other than as archetype representing a pair of young illicit lovers, nothing to do, at all, with Romeo & Juliet.*
> 
> Because hey, that might spoil it for some.


I may regret this breach of decorum, but:

:lol:

Do you actually think that your concluding sentence is a valid inference from the the story you've related? A personal love affair possibly motivates Tchaikovsky to pick up his pen - and "ergo," _that_ must be the "real" subject of a work he produces and names after a classic love story? He's just too shy to call it _Piotr and Andrei_, so he calls it _Romeo and Juliet_?

Does Piotr Ilyich speak to you in English at your seances?


----------



## Ukko

Ah, you guys. You can't discuss the subject 'face-to-face' anymore because when you do you en-castle your positions.

:scold::trp:


----------



## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> How much importance a given composer attaches to his program in any specific case isn't something we can always determine, and in some cases - Liszt's _Les Preludes_ has been brought up - the program may even have been appended after the work was completed. We can investigate that if we care to. But such cases don't affect the general principle that program music has a valid claim to be taken seriously as exactly what it appears to be: *music for which a composer wishes to provide information about something he has tried to express or represent, something which requires words to be understood.*


It is the "tried to express" business, then requiring additional extra-musical info, where the notion of program music falls apart for me, since the best of it works best without needing the program as, it seems to be, a generally accepted criterion. Ergo, 'Tried to Express but needed words to further clarify or explain," not to play some silly buggers sophomoric game, to me rings of something already sounding like a correction / patch on something which was not fully working as could be hoped -- a repaired flaw.

That is, of course, my personal take / stance when it comes to program music, so when the subject arises, I will say what I think. Too, I've known too many composers who have 'admitted' to titling something via the most tangential free-associations flittering about in their mind, feeling / knowing "If I do not give it a title, _someone else might / will."_ Others, even, dare I say it, thinking a lay audience needs the non-musical crutch or aid to more readily negotiate the piece, _then provide one where they had not had any in mind at all._

It does not necessarily please me to hear your actually upset tone re: Sibelius' _Swan of...._ (You went on about how you would feel deprived if you did not have the "picture" in your mind while listening to that, also implying the depth of your multi-media scope of sensitivity, perhaps even compared to others 'who do not go there.') It seems that even the suggestion Sibelius's title may not be 'the truth' about the intent /content of that piece was an affront which genuinely upset you, almost as if someone had wrongly assessed the moment when a child is ready to hear there is no Santa Claus! By all means, keep that associative set of images which seem to please you, and which you find so perfectly in accord with the music you hear. So, you have a more than slight and fond attachment to that image / narrative. By contrast, I find any such attachment to something so specific and extra-musical mind-numbingly limiting.

I do think that when you went on about the pleasures of 'seeing the swan move through the water' was rather implicitly saying that is the more correct way of taking in that Sibelius piece, and that is at least consistent with your strong-held belief that extra-musical business + music is a legitimate art form. I happen to think it is an innately weak premise, and if you think upon all those art forms which do incorporate several media (Song, Ballet, Opera, and yea, even "tone poems,") that the moment there is more than one medium involved the likelihood of the work being a success on all fronts drops exponentially, because now there are two, at least, disciplines involved, each of which must be as perfect within its own right as well as working perfectly in conjunction with the other.

Between your belief that extra-musical intent which cannot be expressed through music makes the tone poem a legitimate art form, and my thinking that a huge and failed mistaken premise, there can not be any real agreement. I believe that music just fails to support anything remotely that specific, and the means where that can quite successfully be accomplished are sung texts, in any of the various forms, and even ballet theater, with a mimed libretto and music.

I have yet to have any tone poem work on me they way it seems to work on you, and to me, the very premise of proving an associated text, poem, story-line, etc. is one which extremely limits and severely reduces the possibility of import as had by the listener. I also think it more than discourages the recipient from developing the wherewithal to make of a piece what they can on their own, so liken it to that more 'hold-your-hand while we walk through this and explain what is going on; that I likened to an aide a la 'music for dummies.' At their very best, I find the provided programs of program music innately condescending toward the audience.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Ukko said:


> You seem to be of two minds as to whether - in general - the program adds to the appreciation of the music, either at first hearing, subsequently or both.
> 
> Having firm opinions on the subject, I may be injecting them into your argument(s) - and thus confusing my own self.
> 
> [MB, the subject being subjective, hard evidence must be harder to find than caviar in a South Central market.]


So maximum allegation with minimum credibility, huh? Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

-- You're no fun.


----------



## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> I may regret this breach of decorum, but:
> 
> :lol:
> 
> Do you actually think that your concluding sentence is a valid inference from the the story you've related? A personal love affair possibly motivates Tchaikovsky to pick up his pen - and "ergo," _that_ must be the "real" subject of a work he produces and names after a classic love story? He's just too shy to call it _Piotr and Andrei_, so he calls it _Romeo and Juliet_?
> 
> Does Piotr Ilyich speak to you in English at your seances?


Hey, check out that BBC program, "The Genius of Tchaikovsky." Then talk to Charles Hazelwood. It is not like I'm making this stuff up, ya know.


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> So maximum allegation with minimum credibility, huh? Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
> 
> -- You're no fun.


LOL. I mean, you _are all kinds of varieties of fun_, not by everyone's definition(s) at any rate, but for some of us, anyway


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> Ah, I see what you're asking.
> 
> What a program may or may not add to anyone's appreciation of a given piece of music is for every listener to decide, and really isn't part of my argument at all. After all, regardless of what a composer intends, he is not in control of how his work is received, and he can't reasonably expect to be. He can, however, have an _intention_ to communicate something and hope that the listener will pay attention and get his point.
> 
> I'm only concerned to refute the idea that a program or title or verbal description attached _by a composer_ to a piece of music is inherently irrelevant to the work, and that listeners who take it as relevant are somehow listening to music the wrong way - that they ought to be considering only the notes and ignoring anything else the composer chooses to include in his presentation. It isn't wrong for a given listener to ignore a title or a program in hearing such a work - we can take in any work of art in whatever way is meaningful to us - but it is certainly wrong to contend that the title or program is not a part of the work or is irrelevant to the composer's intention. How much importance a given composer attaches to his program in any specific case isn't something we can always determine, and in some cases - Liszt's _Les Preludes_ has been brought up - the program may even have been appended after the work was completed. We can investigate that if we care to. But such cases don't affect the general principle that program music has a valid claim to be taken seriously as exactly what it appears to be: music for which a composer wishes to provide information about something he has tried to express or represent, something which requires words to be understood.
> 
> I'm very much aware that the whole question of what music can or should express and represent is a point of contention for some. I'm also aware that the Romantic period's fondness for attaching verbal explanations and interpretation to music of all sorts has fallen - deservedly - into disrepute. Music is not fundamentally a medium for communicating conceptual ideas. But to go further and to say that it's somehow better to dissociate music from specific ideation altogether is, I believe, an equally narrow perspective, and merely an attempt to elevate a personal preference or bias to the status of a general principle. Music in combination with words and concepts - and with the other arts - can be a very potent means of artistic expression. Song is not "inferior" to instrumental music. Music has been a part of theater presumably since prehistory. There is no essential difference, with respect to this principle, between embedding words in music and offering them parallel to it. In both cases the composer is seeking a meaningful relationship between the two mediums of expression. We can listen to songs in a foreign language and enjoy them purely as music. That doesn't mean that we are grasping the composer's full intention, or that we ought to ignore the words on some spurious argument that the "sounds" should be self-sufficient. They may very well be satisfying in themselves, and in the best music they are - but the composer obviously had something more in mind.
> 
> If a composer has a "program" in mind - or any sort of extramusical ideas, whether he discloses them or not - it can affect his musical choices in a myriad of ways. Knowing his ideas may give us some insight into those choices; it may illuminate them in fascinating ways. For me, it's absurd to ignore that. But this in no way prevents me from appreciating the way composers have structured sound. If it does prevent that for others, and they want to listen to a tone poem as a piece of "pure" music (I can, and sometimes do, do that myself), I have no quarrel with them.





















I couldn't agree more.

Verdi's _Traviata_ in its highest form used to suggest to me the early sixties Sutherland interpretation: pure, gorgeous singing and music.

Then I was exposed to the 'text-deep' character-readings of Callas' Visconti, Covent Garden, and Lisbon _Traviatas._

Is this the same 'music' as the Sutherland?--- hardly different universes can be imagined; yet both are wonderfully and inescapably 'Verdi.' (Though I must admit for the record that for my tastes and sensibilities, _La Callas __is_ Verdi.)

And switching gears, moving further along the artistic-interpretativist continuum onto the medium of film: Kubrick brings out an entirely novel synaesthesia with his tracking of Strauss' _Zarathustra_ and Ligeti's_ Atmosphères_ to the idea of human evolution and space exploration.

So in conclusion, I can envision the composer's original intentions for his work of art, as well as imagine new vistas for the music to portray as well.

But one thing I will say is that I rarely if ever hear music just for the kaleidoscopic and shifting constellation of sounds-- as if the structure and tone colorings were ends in themselves.

Music to me, fundamentally, is about human expresivity.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> Well then, let's be kind and not post that youtube link to the segment of the BBC 's "The Genius of Tchaikovsky," wherein conductor / musicologist Charles Hazelwood tells of a young Tchaikovsky teaching at the Moscow conservatory, where as part of his duties he was accompanist for some of the voice students and where he met the young male student with whom he had a deeply passionate and consummated love affair.
> 
> Best not to say that student, not long in to that affair, committed suicide at age 19, Tchaikovsky's heartbreak about that loss, and that his then writing that overture and choosing _Romeo and Juliet_ was because that Shakespeare play is a near universally understood archetype, an iconic which stands for a young couple's passionate affair (and an illicit affair hidden from public view at that.) Ergo, that brilliant overture is about Tchaikovsky, the affair with that singing student, and other than as archetype representing a pair of young illicit lovers, nothing to do, at all, with Romeo & Juliet.
> 
> Because hey, that might spoil it for some.


Why?

I presume you never had a love affair your mother didn't approve of or something?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> LOL. I mean, you _are all kinds of varieties of fun_, not by everyone's definition(s) at any rate, but for some of us, anyway


Well, cheers to _that_ _;D_-- but I was rouge-ing Ukko over the entirely different matter of Woodduck's alleged switching of stances; which of course he never did.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> It is the "tried to express" business, then requiring additional extra-musical info, where the notion of program music falls apart for me, since the best of it works best without needing the program as, it seems to be, a generally accepted criterion. Ergo, 'Tried to Express but needed words to further clarify or explain," not to play some silly buggers sophomoric game, to me rings of something already sounding like a correction / patch on something which was not fully working as could be hoped -- a repaired flaw.
> 
> That is, of course, my personal take / stance when it comes to program music, so when the subject arises, I will say what I think. Too, I've known too many composers who have 'admitted' to titling something via the most tangential free-associations flittering about in their mind, feeling / knowing "If I do not give it a title, _someone else might / will."_ Others, even, dare I say it, thinking a lay audience needs the non-musical crutch or aid to more readily negotiate the piece, _then provide one where they had not had any in mind at all._
> 
> It does not necessarily please me to hear your actually upset tone re: Sibelius' _Swan of...._ (You went on about how you would feel deprived if you did not have the "picture" in your mind while listening to that, also implying the depth of your multi-media scope of sensitivity, perhaps even compared to others 'who do not go there.') It seems that even the suggestion Sibelius's title may not be 'the truth' about the intent /content of that piece was an affront which genuinely upset you, almost as if someone had wrongly assessed the moment when a child is ready to hear there is no Santa Claus! By all means, keep that associative set of images which seem to please you, and which you find so perfectly in accord with the music you hear. So, you have a more than slight and fond attachment to that image / narrative. By contrast, I find any such attachment to something so specific and extra-musical mind-numbingly limiting.
> 
> I do think that when you went on about the pleasures of 'seeing the swan move through the water' was rather implicitly saying that is the more correct way of taking in that Sibelius piece, and that is at least consistent with your strong-held belief that extra-musical business + music is a legitimate art form. I happen to think it is an innately weak premise, and if you think upon all those art forms which do incorporate several media (Song, Ballet, Opera, and yea, even "tone poems,") that the moment there is more than one medium involved the likelihood of the work being a success on all fronts drops exponentially, because now there are two, at least, disciplines involved, each of which must be as perfect within its own right as well as working perfectly in conjunction with the other.
> 
> Between your belief that extra-musical intent which cannot be expressed through music makes the tone poem a legitimate art form, and my thinking that a huge and failed mistaken premise, there can not be any real agreement. I believe that music just fails to support anything remotely that specific, and the means where that can quite successfully be accomplished are sung texts, in any of the various forms, and even ballet theater, with a mimed libretto an music.
> 
> I have yet to have any tone poem work on me they way it seems to work on you, and to me, the very premise of proving an associated text, poem, story-line, etc. is one which extremely limits and severely reduces the possibility of import as had by the listener. I also think it more than discourages the recipient from developing the wherewithal to make of a piece what they can on their own, so liken it to that more 'hold-your-hand while we walk through this and explain what is going on; that I likened to an aide a la 'music for dummies.' At their very best, I find the provided programs of program music innately condescending toward the audience.


You're arguing uphill both ways on that one. Sibelius Himself based _The Swan of Tuonela_ on the _Kalevala_-- that is to say, if we are to take Him at his word, and not Santa Claus.


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> Why?
> 
> I presume you never had a love affair your mother didn't approve of or something?


Both, actually -- affairs _and_ "somethings." Everyone involved always "got over it," though


----------



## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> *It is the "tried to express" business, then requiring additional extra-musical info, where the notion of program music falls apart for me,* since the best of it works best without needing the program as, it seems to be, a generally accepted criterion. Ergo, 'Tried to Express but needed words to further clarify or explain," not to play some silly buggers sophomoric game, to me *rings of something already sounding like a correction / patch on something which was not fully working as could be hoped -- a repaired flaw.*
> 
> That is, of course, my personal take / stance when it comes to program music, so when the subject arises, I will say what I think. Too, I've known too many composers who have 'admitted' to titling something via the most tangential free-associations flittering about in their mind, feeling / knowing "If I do not give it a title, _someone else might / will."_ Others, even, dare I say it, thinking a lay audience needs the non-musical crutch or aid to more readily negotiate the piece, _then provide one where they had not had any in mind at all._
> 
> It does not necessarily please me to hear *your actually upset tone* re: Sibelius' _Swan of...._ (You went on about how *you would feel deprived if you did not have the "picture" in your mind *while listening to that, also *implying the depth of your multi-media scope of sensitivity,* perhaps even compared to others 'who do not go there.') *It seems that even the suggestion Sibelius's title may not be 'the truth' about the intent /content of that piece was an affront which genuinely upset you, almost as if someone had wrongly assessed the moment when a child is ready to hear there is no Santa Claus!* By all means, keep that associative set of images which seem to please you, and which you find so perfectly in accord with the music you hear. So, you have a more than slight and fond attachment to that image / narrative. By contrast, *I find any such attachment to something so specific and extra-musical mind-numbingly limiting.*
> 
> I do think that when you went on about the pleasures of 'seeing the swan move through the water' was rather implicitly saying that is the more correct way of taking in that Sibelius piece, and that is at least consistent with your strong-held belief that extra-musical business + music is a legitimate art form. I happen to think it is an innately weak premise, and if you think upon all those art forms which do incorporate several media (Song, Ballet, Opera, and yea, even "tone poems,") that the moment there is more than one medium involved the likelihood of the work being a success on all fronts drops exponentially, because now there are two, at least, disciplines involved, each of which must be as perfect within its own right as well as working perfectly in conjunction with the other.
> 
> *Between your belief that extra-musical intent which cannot be expressed through music makes the tone poem a legitimate art form, and my thinking that a huge and failed mistaken premise, there can not be any real agreement.* I believe that music just fails to support anything remotely that specific, and the means where that can quite successfully be accomplished are sung texts, in any of the various forms, and even ballet theater, with a mimed libretto an music.
> 
> *I have yet to have any tone poem work on me they way it seems to work on you*, and to me, the very premise of proving an associated text, poem, story-line, etc. is one which extremely limits and severely reduces the possibility of import as had by the listener. *I also think it more than discourages the recipient from developing the wherewithal to make of a piece what they can on their own,* so liken it to that more 'hold-your-hand while we walk through this and explain what is going on; that I likened to an aide a la 'music for dummies.' *At their very best, I find the provided programs of program music innately condescending toward the audience.*


Good post. The clearest statement of your view that you've made, I think.

I hope I've highlighted the bits most relevant to our disagreement. I'll try to make my responses clear and terse.

1.)_"It is the 'tried to express' business, then requiring additional extra-musical info, where the notion of program music falls apart for me...[it] rings of something already sounding like a correction / patch on something which was not fully working as could be hoped -- a repaired flaw._

I disagree that a program is a patch on something innately flawed. There are numerous programmatic works that work splendidly as musical constructions. The program is not there to "correct" musical awkwardness. Neither is it there to express something the music has "tried and failed" to express. Its function is complementary, not duplicative.

2.) Your portrait of how upset I would be if the _Swan of Tuonela_ should lack its swan is _hilarious_. Thanks!

3.) I totally get that _you_ don't want to hear about the swan and that the image is _for you_ _"mind-numbingly limiting." _ That's just fine _for you_, and I wouldn't make fun of you for it the way you make fun of my "multi-media sensitivity." It's all right that we differ in our style of perception. I do have to point out, though, that Sibelius had an intense sense of sound as evocation - an enormous "multi-media sensitivity" - which people who identify deeply with his music love and often remark upon. I don't believe for an instant that this was a "patch" on compositional incompetence. On the contrary, it was a well-spring of inspiration for him. And for us dyed-in-the-snow Sibelians, a love of this aspect of his work is in no way a "crutch" to help get us through music we would otherwise fail to appreciate, or a "discouragement" from "developing the wherewithal" to appreciate musical values on our own. It is certainly none of those things for anyone I know.

4.) "_At their very best, I find the provided programs of program music innately condescending toward the audience._"

All who feel "condescended" to by Sibelius's picturesque titles, mythological and nationalistic references, and vivid tone-painting, please raise your hands.

Are we clear on our differences? I suppose you'll go on thinking of me as a music-listener of feeble capacites who needs to have composers hold my hand and feed me colored pictures like baby food. But don't worry. I'll struggle through the _Musical Offering_ or Beethoven's Opus 131 somehow.


----------



## Ukko

Marschallin Blair said:


> Well, cheers to _that_ _;D_-- but I was rouge-ing Ukko over the entirely different matter of Woodduck's alleged switching of stances; which of course he never did.


Could be he didn't change his mind, but he did change his angle of attack, doing so from a different stance _of course_. As for you, why are you slopping opera into an argument about the 'programming' of absolute music? C'mon now.


----------



## KenOC

I appreciate the revised program for Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. I'll be able to listen to it far more meaningfully now. And I hope we will continue to benefit from ever more complete and accurate programs for *all* the great music we love.


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> You're arguing uphill both ways on that one. Sibelius Himself based _The Swan of Tuonela_ on the _Kalevala_-- that is to say, if we are to take Him at his word, and not Santa Claus.


Neither of us were Sibelius. Proving he used the literature as a slight tangential premise or whether he went about literally and successfully making a musical narrative is impossible.

Given that his greatest fort, and I think 'thinking habit' imo is as an entirely abstract formalist symphonic composer has me doubting he was as literal as some who listen to the piece seem to think it is. That is just my stance, an opinion, at the end of the day, but it is one which still has me at the least doubting the literal accuracy of tone poems _which many find to be just that specific._

I guess I'm a bit naively surprised at how, with a seeming granite-like assurance we have in this thread some essay length comments about 'the legitimacy of the form,' etc. It could have been my personal reaction too, where I found in those more than a little implication that those who doubt or do not wholly or literally believe the composer's intent and who do not 'accept and attach the extra-musical,' are somehow less perceptive or sensitive than those who do.

The only thing that can be determined, if one does not rely on whatever a composer has said about their own work, is the listener's perception as the truth for that listener.

I think between the two camps, there will forever be an at odds about a verdict as to whether a composer had taken a premise as a highly abstract premise or whether indeed, every note of the score is laden with the communicated literal intent.

Nothing, really, can shake my idea that more than a few tone-poems, and what triggered them, let alone actual intent communicated, are more in that arena of Claude Monet's answer to "Why did you choose water lilies?" "I chose water lilies, but it could have been anything."


----------



## science

I can easily see that music can be abstracted out of other human activities and stand on its own; I don't see that it must be, even within the limits of "the classical tradition." In case my vote counts, I grant program music the validity of its existence.


----------



## PetrB

KenOC said:


> I appreciate the revised program for Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. I'll be able to listen to it far more meaningfully now. And I hope we will continue to benefit from ever more complete and accurate programs for *all* the great music we love.


All the better then to completely dispense with 'the program,' composer given or other, and just listen to the damn piece and, gasp, with all the self-determination you can muster, see what you think of it _all on your own!_

_"Allegro con brio,"_ -- and all that


----------



## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> Neither of us were Sibelius. Proving he used the literature as a slight tangential premise or whether he went about literally and successfully making a musical narrative is impossible.
> 
> Given that his greatest fort, and I think 'thinking habit' imo is as an entirely abstract formalist symphonic composer has me doubting he was as literal as some who listen to the piece seem to think it is. That is just my stance, an opinion, at the end of the day, but it is one which still has me at the least doubting the literal accuracy of tone poems _which many find to be just that specific._
> 
> I guess I'm a bit naively surprised at how, with a seeming granite-like assurance we have in this thread some essay length comments about 'the legitimacy of the form,' etc. It could have been my personal reaction too, where I found in those more than a little implication that those who doubt or do not wholly or literally believe the composer's intent and who do not 'accept and attach the extra-musical,' are somehow less perceptive or sensitive than those who do.
> 
> The only thing that can be determined, if one does not rely on whatever a composer has said about their own work, is the listener's perception as the truth for that listener.
> 
> I think between the two camps, there will forever be an at odds about a verdict as to whether a composer had taken a premise as a highly abstract premise or whether indeed, every note of the score is laden with the communicated literal intent.
> 
> Nothing, really, can shake my idea that more than a few tone-poems, and what triggered them, let alone actual intent communicated, are more in that arena of Claude Monet's answer to "Why did you choose water lilies?" "I chose water lilies, but it could have been anything."


I'll give the artist the benefit of the doubt as to what his intents and purposes are, and not Gadamer or Boulez.

But I'm open-minded that way.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Ukko said:


> Could be he didn't change his mind, but he did change his angle of attack, doing so from a different stance _of course_. As for you, why are you slopping opera into an argument about the 'programming' of absolute music? C'mon now.


I disagree.

He merely expounded and amplified on what he previously said.

He didn't change the context, or even the argument completely--- as so many seem to do nowadays--- in order to muddy the puddle to make it look deep.


----------



## Blake

KenOC said:


> I appreciate the revised program for Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. I'll be able to listen to it far more meaningfully now. *And I hope we will continue to benefit from ever more complete and accurate programs for *all* the great music we love.*


This strong desire to find meaning in everything seems to be a funny compulsion of the mind. It's hardly ever anything but a superficial satisfaction, as the majority of these meanings are completely personal, forced, and transient.

I'm certainly not against program music... it can be entertaining, but let's keep it in the proper perspective. "Hear this music... I want you to think this way about it." Quite an absurd limitation for many things, but it can be a light, playful costume if seen without so much gravitas.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> Both, actually -- affairs _and_ "somethings." Everyone involved always "got over it," though


Sardonic and invincible as always--- I know the feeling._ ;D_


----------



## KenOC

PetrB said:


> All the better then to completely dispense with 'the program,' composer given or other, and just listen to the damn piece and, gasp, with all the self-determination you can muster, see what you think of it _all on your own!_


[Post withdrawn. Argumentative and irrelevant. Question asked and answered. Etc. But, in fact, quite telling. Too bad it's gone!]


----------



## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> Good post. The clearest statement of your view that you've made, I think.
> 
> I hope I've highlighted the bits most relevant to our disagreement. I'll try to make my responses clear and terse.
> 
> 1.)_"It is the 'tried to express' business, then requiring additional extra-musical info, where the notion of program music falls apart for me...[it] rings of something already sounding like a correction / patch on something which was not fully working as could be hoped -- a repaired flaw._
> 
> I disagree that a program is a patch on something innately flawed. There are numerous programmatic works that work splendidly as musical constructions. The program is not there to "correct" musical awkwardness. Neither is it there to express something the music has "tried and failed" to express. Its function is complementary, not duplicative.
> 
> 2.) Your portrait of how upset I would be if the _Swan of Tuonela_ should lack its swan is _hilarious_. Thanks!
> 
> 3.) I totally get that _you_ don't want to hear about the swan and that the image is _for you_ _"mind-numbingly limiting." _ That's just fine _for you_, and I wouldn't make fun of you for it the way you make fun of my "multi-media sensitivity." It's all right that we differ in our style of perception. I do have to point out, though, that Sibelius had an intense sense of sound as evocation - an enormous "multi-media sensitivity" - which people who identify deeply with his music love and often remark upon. I don't believe for an instant that this was a "patch" on compositional incompetence. On the contrary, it was a well-spring of inspiration for him. And for us dyed-in-the-snow Sibelians, a love of this aspect of his work is in no way a "crutch" to help get us through music we would otherwise fail to appreciate, or a "discouragement" from "developing the wherewithal" to appreciate musical values on our own. It is certainly none of those things for anyone I know.
> 
> 4.) "_At their very best, I find the provided programs of program music innately condescending toward the audience._"
> 
> All who feel "condescended" to by Sibelius's picturesque titles, mythological and nationalistic references, and vivid tone-painting, please raise your hands.
> 
> Are we clear on our differences? I suppose you'll go on thinking of me as a music-listener of feeble capacites who needs to have composers hold my hand and feed me colored pictures like baby food. But don't worry. I'll struggle through the _Musical Offering_ or Beethoven's Opus 131 somehow.


The pith of _all of this_ is really _chacun à son goût._

I cannot help there was at least hinted tone of implied sympathy as to what those who do not 'get' all the extra depth of import via the extra-musical were missing, but for those who do, it would be less than natural to (possibly) think those who don't are truly missing something

In no way meant to further the comedy, I would point out your "There are numerous programmatic works that work splendidly as musical constructions." is just as good an argument that those works need nothing extra-musical, and please let us leave it at that before continuing this worm ouroboros-style 'argument.'

I would still argue, too, that a composer given title _may_ not be anywhere near the actuality or truth of the matter, and that many a soul says 'something' they firmly believe at the moment of their saying, and without getting to volumes of documented letters where a composer has been quite specific about their intent, even before picking up the pen, that proposal that we are not necessarily given the truth or real intent with a given title or program is as much a possibility -- as it is not 

I could credit-blame my first piano teacher, and being first assigned at age six, Bartok and Bach, where there were no such extra-musical attachments in sight or in the air at all, and that 'formative' experience shaping my later attitude toward such music, but I would rather (and best) take full responsibility for my position.

I can say tone-poems and all that are 'a legitimate form' while thinking very little of them as 'a legitimate form,' -- that is an aesthetic preference which is another point of endless and inconclusive debate. When I compose, I have no idea of 'what the music may import' to the listener; the best I can do is after some distance in to working out the initial idea, is determine an emotional quality or character which can only most generally be named, and that is only helpful to me in determining _what does not belong in the piece_ and does not help at all more readily find what does belong in that piece: I'm sure other composers are confident they can and do start with such a programmatic premise and successfully meet the criteria for that work to be a success.

Since I do have, de facto and quite genuinely, that other manner of going at music -- since earliest childhood, any and all of the provided extra-musical info accompanying tone poems has always seemed to me superfluous, and that does and will feel to me exactly that kind of 'hold your hand /walk you through the building' I mentioned. Whether one manner of going at it as a listener or another gets more to the 'genuine content' of a piece can never be proven, as you say because it is so completely within the individual' perception.

P.s. I must refute any notions anyone may hold that the more abstract 'music only' approach somehow denies or devalues music being 'expressive,' though -- from either the composer or the listener. I don't think anyone, regardless of their musical angle of perception, would say that. (Even Stravinsky never said 'music was not expressive,' but that music can only express itself


----------



## KenOC

At this point I'm unsure what all the argumentation is about, since I'm SURE we can all agree that people should listen to music however they like without being criticized. That IS correct, isn't it?


----------



## Blake

KenOC said:


> At this point I'm unsure what all the argumentation is about, since I'm SURE we can all agree that people should listen to music however they like without being criticized. That IS correct, isn't it?


Of course, but one is offering it up to criticism when they post about it. Unless personal validation is the only objective, but that's just too much to ask from people.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Ukko said:


> Could be he didn't change his mind, but he did change his angle of attack, doing so from a different stance _of course_. As for you, why are you slopping opera into an argument about the 'programming' of absolute music? C'mon now.


Because the_ nouvelle cuisine _ of the dining room trumps the warmed-over buffet any day.

-- At least at Chez Blair. _ ;D_

And no less seriously: I bring up opera because the title of the thread is "The Importance of Intent" and not, as you already know, "The Importance of 'Programming' Absolute Music."


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> I'll give the artist the benefit of the doubt as to what his intents and purposes are, and not Gadamer or Boulez.


Queer, that: I don't give any of'em the benefit of doubt. I trust the piece itself, not the title, artists' extra-musical intent, explanations, etc. If the piece stays in circulation long enough anyway, a good deal of all the ancillary business falls far to the wayside, or gets buried in the dust of time, or actually becomes forever lost, leaving -- just the music, explaining itself, if it can.


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> Because the_ nouvelle cuisine _ of the dining room trumps the warmed-over buffet any day.
> 
> -- At least at Chez Blair. _ ;D_
> 
> And no less seriously: I bring up opera because the title of the thread is "The Importance of Intent" and not, as you already know, "The Importance of 'Programming' Absolute Music."


Quite right... the thread became a de facto all about program music for a while. Must say, the OP [remember the OP, anyone? :- ] cites a concert piece with a pretty vague / obscure Title, _but without any attached / announced program,_ yet there is a back story given as a side comment by the composer -- which led to....

Conversely, I don't think what there is to discuss about intent when there is a musical theater piece which is text-laden, a song, cantata, oratorio, or Ballet with a clearly given libretto (musical theater in mime) is in the same arena of arguable points as is program music.

In these, it is easier to debate if the listener thinks the work was successful, and why, and the intent is much more plainly both _up front as more clearly welded / embedded within the score itself._ Program music vs. the rest is apples vs. oranges, really.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> Queer, that: I don't give any of'em the benefit of doubt. I trust the piece itself, not the title, artists' extra-musical intent, explanations, etc. If the piece stays in circulation long enough anyway, a good deal of all the ancillary business falls far to the wayside, or gets buried in the dust of time, or actually becomes forever lost, leaving -- just the music, explaining itself, if it can.


You won't extrospect and give the creator of the work of art the benefit of the doubt, but you'll introspect and give your subjective imaginings all hegemony?

Is this good faith understanding or shamanism?


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> You won't extrospect and give the creator of the work of art the benefit of the doubt, but you'll introspect and give your subjective imaginings all hegemony?
> 
> Is this good faith understanding or shamanism?


^^^ the latter, because, well, back then and now, in my experience, a lot of artists whose primary media are not words tend to say either outrageous things they believe -- in the moment only -- about their work, or they lie about 'what the work is about', often with some relish in having the interviewer on, i.e. confronted with that dreadful question _which one should never really ask an artist,_ "What is your / this work about?" many will come up with something on the fly, for the moment, and nothing close to the truth.

Truth be told, many an artist working in non verbal media has no idea at all 'what the work is about.'

What they made, non-verbal, is far less prone to distortion or corruption than the creators when they talk.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> ^^^ the latter, because, well, back then and now, in my experience, a lot of artists whose primary media are not words tend to say either outrageous things they believe -- in the moment only -- about their work, or they lie about 'what the work is about, often with some relish in 'having' the interviewer on, i.e. confronted with that dreadful question _which one should never really ask an artist,_ "What is your / this work about?" many will come up with something on the fly, for the moment, and nothing close to the truth. Truth be told, many an artist working in non verbal media has no idea at all 'what the work is about.'
> 
> What they made, non-verbal, is far less prone to distortion or corruption than the creators when they talk.


Fair enough.

But then, I wouldn't exactly equate the hallucinogenic gibberings of a Jackson Pollack "explanation" or the stilted nonsense of a Jasper Johns' disquisition with what Berlioz, Strauss, or Liszt had to say about their programmatic intent _either_.

There _is_ charlatanry, but not everyone's a charlatan.


----------



## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> ^^^ the latter, because, well, back then and now, in my experience, a lot of artists whose primary media are not words tend to say either outrageous things they believe -- in the moment only -- about their work, or they lie about 'what the work is about, often with some relish in 'having' the interviewer on, i.e. confronted with that dreadful question _which one should never really ask an artist,_ "What is your / this work about?" many will come up with something on the fly, for the moment, and nothing close to the truth. Truth be told, many an artist working in non verbal media has no idea at all 'what the work is about.'
> 
> What they made, non-verbal, is far less prone to distortion or corruption than the creators when they talk.


Having, I hope, made a statement of principle clearly enough to be understood by everyone (which doesn't ensure that it actually _is_ understood by everyone :lol, I want to say that reality tends to illustrate principles inconsistently and even vaguely. It's true enough that we can't always put great stock in what artists say about their work, and that in many cases it would be better if artists said nothing at all and just stayed in the studio where their expertise has earned them the most credibility. These things have to be judged on a case by case basis, and no case proves anything one way or another about the value of artists statements in general. We may have good reason to find a particular artist's words valuable and revealing, and equally good reason to think another artist's words to be mere self-aggrandizement or pretentious nonsense or whimsicality or expediency. I do think we should distinguish between kinds of statements; an intentional, unsolicited statement of a work's general theme or underlying concept by an artist of known excellence and seriousness is surely not in the same category as the sort of off-the-cuff remark that every small-town artist is asked to come up with by the interviewer sent from the local paper to "cover" the concert or exhibit. We need to know just who and what we're talking about before we generalize about "artist's statements." Some artists are quite verbally skilled, thoughtful, and sincere, and know exactly what they're talking about and why. After a little observation we're probably going to figure out who they are.

I think you make a necessary point here, but it's not the whole picture.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> Having, I hope, made a statement of principle clearly enough to be understood by everyone (which doesn't ensure that it actually _is_ understood by everyone :lol, I want to say that reality tends to illustrate principles inconsistently and even vaguely. It's true enough that we can't always put great stock in what artists say about their work, and that in many cases it would be better if artists said nothing at all and just stayed in the studio where their expertise has earned them the most credibility. These things have to be judged on a case by case basis, and no case proves anything one way or another about the value of artists statements in general. We may have good reason to find a particular artist's words valuable and revealing, and equally good reason to think another artist's words to be mere self-aggrandizement or pretentious nonsense or whimsicality or expediency. I do think we should distinguish between kinds of statements; an intentional, unsolicited statement of a work's general theme or underlying concept by an artist of known excellence and seriousness is surely not in the same category as the sort of off-the-cuff remark that every small-town artist is asked to come up with by the interviewer sent from the local paper to "cover" the concert or exhibit. We need to know just who and what we're talking about before we generalize about "artist's statements." Some artists are quite verbally skilled, thoughtful, and sincere, and know exactly what they're talking about and why. After a little observation we're probably going to figure out who they are.
> 
> I think you make a necessary point here, but it's not the whole picture.


All bachelors are men, but not all men are bachelors-- or real artists for that matter.


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> Fair enough.
> 
> But then, I wouldn't exactly equate the hallucinogenic gibberings of a Jackson Pollack "explanation" or the stilted nonsense of a Jasper Johns' disquisition with what Berlioz, Strauss, or Liszt had to say about their programmatic intent _either_.
> 
> There _is_ charlatanry, but not everyone's a charlatan.


You might want to back up through this thread before you bring Berlioz into such an equation in the future


----------



## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> You might want to back up through this thread before you bring Berlioz into such an equation in the future


Will I be spanked if I don't?

So how's Berlioz a charlatan?


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> Will I be spanked if I don't?
> _No! Sorry _
> So how's Berlioz a charlatan?


Not charlatan, really, just slightly, uh, disingenuous in providing a program for the audiences of "Symphonie Fantastique," and the fact it was premiered _without a program at all_ and after a very bad reception, and post a few revisions, he slapped that program on for the subsequent performance to help a lay audience better 'follow' what was, after all, at the time an extraordinarily wild and crazy 'avant-garde' piece.


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## violadude

PetrB said:


> Not charlatan, really, just slightly, uh, disingenuous in providing a program for the audiences of "Symphonie Fantastique," and the fact it was premiered _without a program at all_ and after a very bad reception, and post a few revisions, he slapped that program on for the subsequent performance to help a lay audience better 'follow' what was, after all, at the time an extraordinarily wild and crazy 'avant-garde' piece.


Unfortunately, artists have to be marketeers as well in order to survive.


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## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> Fair enough.
> 
> But then, I wouldn't exactly equate the hallucinogenic gibberings of a Jackson Pollack "explanation" or the stilted nonsense of a Jasper Johns' disquisition with what Berlioz, Strauss, or Liszt had to say about their programmatic intent _either_.


Sorry, I got so distracted by that adjectival coloring chosen in contrasting truth and intent of the above named artists that it had me wondering if the above could also loosely qualify as a PSA to all, announcing the parameters of your personal taste?

I mean, LOL, _Do Ya Think?_

_How_ does he do that, you ask? ~ _SHAMANISM._


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## PetrB

violadude said:


> Unfortunately, artists have to be marketeers as well in order to survive.


But Violadude, dontcha know, the older the old garde, the more revered the old garde. Anything as low as you are suggesting was completely far and beyond and outside the bounds of the integrity of those artists.

I mean how can you even think to imply that a composer with a lifetime subsidy to compose from his government would write a tone poem based on a national folk tale or about the landscape of his homeland _other than for the purist of artistic intentions_, or that Berlioz might just have wanted his highly eccentric symphony received well enough that it get play, and he some revenue from all the effort, that he would _LIE_ about what that symphony meant?

Hey, the old garde were all the noblest garde, as upright and morally straight as the knights of the round table. Those durn modernist who came later, they be the pandering, corrupt and vile liars.

_Ha Haaaa Haaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa_


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## PetrB

Blake said:


> This strong desire to find meaning in everything seems to be a funny compulsion of the mind. It's hardly ever anything but a superficial satisfaction, as the majority of these meanings are completely personal, forced, and transient.
> 
> I'm certainly not against program music... it can be entertaining, but let's keep it in the proper perspective. "Hear this music... I want you to think this way about it." Quite an absurd limitation for many things, but it can be a light, playful costume if seen without so much gravitas.


"Yes, Virginia, there _is_ a Swan of Tuonela."


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## science

Mussorgsky was also a charlatan, no doubt, as have been all the listeners who enjoyed Pictures. 

There is only one right way to listen to music, and now I know what it is.


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## PetrB

science said:


> Mussorgsky was also a charlatan, no doubt, as have been all the listeners who enjoyed Pictures.
> 
> There is only one right way to listen to music, and now I know what it is.


Let's just spell it out so there are no mistaken notions about this: 
The only way to listen to music is the way each individual listens to music.


----------



## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> But Violadude, dontcha know, the older the old garde, the more revered the old garde. Anything as low as you are suggesting was completely far and beyond and outside the bounds of the integrity of those artists.
> 
> I mean how can you even think to imply that a composer with a lifetime subsidy to compose from his government would write a tone poem based on a national folk tale or about the landscape of his homeland _other than for the purist of artistic intentions_, or that *Berlioz might just have wanted his highly eccentric symphony received well enough that it get play, and he some revenue from all the effort, that he would LIE about what that symphony meant?*
> 
> Hey, the old garde were all the noblest garde, as upright and morally straight as the knights of the round table. Those durn modernist who came later, they be the pandering, corrupt and vile liars.
> 
> _Ha Haaaa Haaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa_


I would just like to point out that we do not know how closely Berlioz's program for the _Fantastique_ corresponds to his thoughts during its composition. Neither do we know his reason for not issuing any statement pertaining to them in the first place. What we do know is that the symphony is filled with strange and very picturesque ideas and effects and shocking discontinuities which must raise, in the minds of a perceptive listener - especially a listener in 1830 who is completely unaccustomed to such effects in a piece of supposedly "absolute" music - questions as to what in the bloody hell this bizarre monstrosity could possibly be about. You cannot honestly assert the likelihood that Berlioz had _no_ "extramusical" ideas motivating his musical decisions at any number of junctures in this work, even if they were less defined and less narrativized than the eventual program he issued. You were triumphantly eager to tell us that Tchaikovsky's _Romeo and Juliet_ was "really" about his own disastrous romance with a student in order to "disprove" its connection with Shakespeare's play (which obviously proves nothing one way or another). You might want to recall that the _Fantastique_ was written when Berlioz was desperately in love with the actress Harriet Smithson, right after she left Paris and he thought he might have lost her forever, and that his subsequent behavior in order to get her to marry him was pretty "fantastique." His eventual program for the symphony was quite consistent with what we know of his state of mind at the time of composition, and quite possibly reflects rather closely the musical content of the work itself.

I bring this up not to "prove" anything other than the fact that the matter of "extramusical" meaning is easily oversimplified and dogmatized, and that I believe the rigidity of your opposition to acknowledging the existence, validity, and value of such meaning, in particular cases or in general, suggests an unnecessarily dogmatic mindset. The truth I think we can both acknwledge is that in most cases we cannot know what cognitive processes and images inspire and motivate composers in their quest to find the right note to follow the previous one. Their statements about it - whether formal or off-the-cuff - must be taken advisedly. But we are not justified in dismissing them out of hand. Our personal inclination or disinclination to enjoy associations between music and other modes of cognition and expression, whether through explicitly programmatic music or simply our own imaginations, is not a basis for generalization about anyone's competence or "correctness" as a listener and is not up for judgment by others.


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## Ukko

science said:


> Mussorgsky was also a charlatan, no doubt, as have been all the listeners who enjoyed Pictures.
> 
> There is only one right way to listen to music, and now I know what it is.


Far out. [afterthought >] Although Richter managed on at least two occasions to perform it very effectively as absolute music, at least the way I listened to it. So it can work either way.

Beethoven's Op. 120 is 100% absolute music, but pianists have managed to provide several different interpretations, so varied that their cumulative effects on a listener also differ pretty drastically. It's almost as if the pianists changed the program.


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## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> Not charlatan, really, just slightly, uh, disingenuous in providing a program for the audiences of "Symphonie Fantastique," and the fact it was premiered _without a program at all_ and after a very bad reception, and post a few revisions, he slapped that program on for the subsequent performance to help a lay audience better 'follow' what was, after all, at the time an extraordinarily wild and crazy 'avant-garde' piece.


I find it hard to believe that a narcissist like Berlioz would write the _Symphonie Fantastique_ without his monumental ego somehow being involved in the musical narrative.


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## PetrB

I would be _genuinely interested_ if you addressed the OP [remember the OP, anyone?] i.e. listened to John Adams' _Gnarly Buttons,_ without clicking under the link "show more" (where the ancillary bit of info sits), see what you make of the piece, then read that ancillary bit of info, listen again to _Gnarly Buttons_, and give your take on whether that affected 'what you hear in the piece.'


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> I find it hard to believe that a narcissist like Berlioz would write the _Symphonie Fantastique_ without his monumental ego somehow being involved in the musical narrative.


What! Are we speaking about the same person? His intimates used to call him Hector the Humble


----------



## Blake

PetrB said:


> ADD: I would be _genuinely interested_ if you addressed the OP [remember the OP, anyone?] i.e. listened to John Adams' _Gnarly Buttons,_ without clicking under the link "show more" (where the ancillary bit of info sits), see what you make of the piece, then read that ancillary bit of info, listen again to _Gnarly Buttons_, and give your take on whether that affected 'what you hear in the piece.'


Yea, I've heard the piece. It certainly doesn't change the music itself, but it will manipulate your thoughts throughout the intake.

Just as if I tell you to think about pink elephants while listening to the piece. It won't do a damn thing for the actual quality of the music, but it will make you think of pink elephants while listening...

Some give this ability more value than others.


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## PetrB

Blake said:


> Yea, I've heard the piece. It certainly doesn't change the music itself, but it will manipulate your thoughts throughout the intake.
> 
> Just as if I tell you to think about pink elephants while listening to the piece. It won't do a damn thing for the actual quality of the music, but it will make you think of pink elephants while listening...
> 
> Some give this ability more value than others.


Not at all invulnerable to the sympathetic pathos of the 'back story' (any more would be a spoiler alert) and having listened to the work several times before it appeared in the context of the OP, I looked at the squib on 'the back story' and listened again, that time looking into the back story. Knowing that back story did not at all alter my musical perceptions or emotional reaction to the piece -- which I think, btw, is a mighty fine piece I would recommend to any who have heard it, any and all ponderings on intent aside.


----------



## science

PetrB said:


> Let's just spell it out so there are no mistaken notions about this:
> The only way to listen to music is the way each individual listens to music.


I must be missing the point of most of the posts then.

You're saying that listening to a work of music with a program in mind is precisely as legitimate (correct, valid, admirable, insightful, worthwhile, whatever) as listening without one in mind? And that listening to a work of music with its history in mind is precisely as legitimate as listening without that in mind?


----------



## PetrB

science said:


> I must be missing the point of most of the posts then.
> 
> You're saying that listening to a work of music with a program in mind is precisely as legitimate (correct, valid, admirable, insightful, worthwhile, whatever) as listening without one in mind? And that listening to a work of music with its history in mind is precisely as legitimate as listening without that in mind?


Short of crime, whatever one wants or thinks they need to get through the piece, which is rather like people negotiate life itself.

You will just have to forgive me re: the arena of history as connected to at least music of any particular era, by happenstance, that is so long ago for me a part of learning the difference in general period style (which does account for at least some the exterior aspects and many of the stylistic traits that have Beethoven sounding like Beethoven and Berio sounding like Berio.) By happenstance, then, this was learned by me very early on and through the course of so many years that it is no longer anything I need to 'dwell upon' or give any conscious attention to while listening or learning to play a piece, now learned and 'reflexive'. I'm sure others who, also circumstantially, did not start music training in early childhood and then continue nonstop through adulthood and into life in the profession might want and need more time with that aspect of music. (I still advocate listening first, repeatedly, without any of that and asking the questions and looking into it after the fact of the music.)

A preoccupation with what is legitimate I think pretty much a waste of time, though.

Somethings I think can be 'legitimate' while not necessarily "correct, valid, admirable, insightful, worthwhile," at least for everyone as if that is a matter of one size fits all. I suppose all those things enter the argument when folk want approval of the way they are going about it, but for me those are nothing I can relate to in the way of 'whether you are listening to just the music,' or going about it some other way.

I would think it plain I ardently believe in "just the music," so I think all the other well-ancillary sorts of info as some type of strapped-on accessories, after the fact.

A piece of music works, works on you, or does not, leading me back to my _personal opinion_ that initially at least, and without its having any lack or deficit, 'just the music' is quite enough on its own -- if it so happens I think anyone busy with all which is not 'just the music,' and that is then hardly 'just listening to the music,' and therein with 'all that' they may be even looking for meaning which is not in the music, I hope to goodness I have the right to say it!

ADD: to me, a lot of the literal and associative, yea, even a dose of historical context, is such a preoccupation for some listeners I believe they are carrying a ton of baggage to a piece of music, and literally cluttering what they hear, ergo, not really hearing the piece. _If they don't feel at all cluttered, then that for them is 'the legitimate way'_ for them to listen. I still think their thinking it is necessary to 'know all that about a piece of music' is from crazy insecurity, a kind of intimidation where they think if they do not 'get all that' (this usually comes from what I consider dreadful music education), that they are not understanding the piece, so then they think in order to 'get it,' that they need all that extra-musical business.

Composers certainly don't expect a general audience to 'know all that' when they write for that same audience! A composer's advice to the general audience might very well be, "Just listen, and don't think too much while you do."


----------



## science

PetrB said:


> Short of crime, whatever one wants or thinks they need to get through the piece, which is rather like people negotiate life itself.
> 
> You will just have to forgive me re: the arena of history as connected to at least music of any particular era, something so long ago for me a part of learning the difference in general period style, and which of course accounts for at least the exterior aspect and many of the stylistic traits have have Beethoven sounding like Beethoven and Berio sounding like Berio. By happenstance this was learned by me very early and through the course of so many years that it is no longer anything I need to 'dwell upon' or give any conscious attention to while listening or learning to play a piece. I'm sure others who, also circumstantially, did not start music training in early childhood and continue nonstop might want and need more time with that aspect of music. (I still advocate listening first, repeatedly, without any of that and asking the questions and looking into it after the fact of the music.)
> 
> Legitimate is one thing -- if it so happens I think anyone busy with all that is hardly 'just listening to the music,' and maybe even looking for meaning which is not in the music, I hope to goodness I have the right to say it!


So, strictly speaking, that's a "yes."

I really think the thread is done then.

Edit: Actually, I begin to suspect that you tricked me. I wasn't asking about what one needs to get through the piece, but whether your way of listening is objectively better in any sense than ways that take into account extra-musical factors like the circumstances of the composition or a program. Are you saying that it is _better_ to listen the way you do, or that it is your preference?


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

This thread had some potential, now wasted, it is just utterly ridiculous.
;
Is Thea Musgrave a charlatan?


----------



## PetrB

Richannes Wrahms said:


> This thread had some potential, now wasted, it is just utterly ridiculous.
> ;
> Is Thea Musgrave a charlatan?


A little trade secret (God, if I ever go public with any of my comps it will absolutely have to be under a pseudonym, or TC members and musicians alike might just take out a contract on me)... All artists are very akin to magicians, they manipulate both their materials and audiences, in sum total of a tremendous amount of misdirections, shams, trickeries and deceits.

Those who do it successfully make works we don't ever realize are that filled with manipulative trickery.


----------



## science

some guy said:


> What's really at issue here is which experience is valid.


_There_ it is.

As I read this thread, here are the basic positions:

a) Listening to music with something other than the music (including a program) in mind can be helpful - at least sometimes, for some people.

b) Listening to music with something other than the music (including a program) in mind might not be helpful - at least sometimes, for some people.

c) Listening to music with something other than the music (including a program) in mind is wrong. 
c1) Composing music with something other than the music in mind is wrong.

Looks to me like (a) and (b) are pretty obviously compatible. _Both_ experiences are valid. No one is on higher ground vis-a-vis anyone else.

That seems self-evident to me, and if I read the thread right, people on both sides are reluctant to seem to stray from that principle.

However, defenses of (a) have been read as attacks on (b), and defenses of (b) have been read - and, I believe, _implicitly intended_ - as (c), an attack on (a).

As long as we agree that (a) and (b) are right, and that (c) and (c1) are wrong - and manage to avoid language that implies (c) or (c1) - then we should be fine. PetrB is free to enjoy the music without paying attention to the program, and Woodduck is free to enjoy the music in light of the program, and we are none of us in need of defense or capable of offense.


----------



## Crudblud

Speaking as a composer, my own feeling is that once a piece is finished, my intent, whatever it was, no longer matters. I become audience, my interpretation no more or less subjective or important than anyone else's.


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## science

I'm gonna take agreement with my last post for granted and expand on the ideas there.

We can see three sorts of ideologies at work in this thread - romantic ideologies[SUP]*[/SUP] about what music can "mean," modernist ideologies (formulated in opposition to romanticism) about what music is not allowed (or able) to "mean," and postmodernist ideologies that transcend both.

From the postmodern POV, the romantic and the modernist are mirror images of each other, equally wrong regardless of who musters the greater eloquence. The romantic and the modernist often object to the postmodernist, "But are you saying that there aren't any objective standards at all? Are you really saying that anything goes?"

Well, yes. There are standards, lots of them and contradictory, and we can recognize them *all* (it is easy enough, if we choose to acknowledge it) as socio-political strategies. ("I listen to music better than you do.") Once we see all the strategies as strategies rather than objective truths, it is apparent that none of us are the boss. My standards become preferences. No amount of eloquence can get back that romantico-modernist cultural authority. Even the composer, paraphrasing Crudblud, is dead.

Postmodernism hasn't had a lot to offer the philosophy of science; it's done more harm than good, I'd say. But for aesthetics, it is probably something very like the last word.

So how can we play the social jostling game now? We have to be more postmodern than the next guy. Admittedly, once we all learn the game, we'll all be equal (at least with respect to the validity of our experience), and that's perhaps tragic.

And yet, a strategy remains and I can't see around it: _knowledge_. Perhaps knowledge of classical music isn't the very most important thing in the world (~its value isn't an objective truth the way that romantics and modernists would like), but within our community (there is a selection effect at work) it will be inevitably and unceasingly valued.

That's a game I'm bound to lose, but I'd like to see others play it more because I'm here to learn. I can understand that people who don't have enough knowledge to play that game would choose to play socio-political games that lost their value fifty years ago, but why would people with such extensive knowledge choose to do so?

*I'm not sure anyone actually advocated these, but they were definitely attributed to "other" listeners.


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## tdc

I don't see it as an issue of 'right' or 'wrong' for the listener, just that a programmatic element can potentially be problematic as it can lock a listener into a specific interpretation as opposed to leaving them free to experience a multitude of interpretations based on how that music effects that specific, unique individual. 

I think certainly programmatic elements can at times enhance some listeners experiences - unfortunately I think they can also at times detract from an experience. 

I think it is more of a compositional issue rather than a listener issue.

At this time I lean towards being more interested in wanting to create absolute music that speaks for itself, but I definitely don't think there is any one correct way of creating music, or of listening to it.


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## PetrB

science said:


> _There_ it is.
> 
> As I read this thread, here are the basic positions:
> 
> a) Listening to music with something other than the music (including a program) in mind can be helpful - at least sometimes, for some people.
> 
> b) Listening to music with something other than the music (including a program) in mind might not be helpful - at least sometimes, for some people.
> 
> c) Listening to music with something other than the music (including a program) in mind is wrong.
> c1) Composing music with something other than the music in mind is wrong.


I cannot imagine why anyone would give a fig, really, whether party A says, "A," party B says "B," and party C says "C."

I happen to think your points A and B points are both completely 'right,' (one for some, the other for others, to keep it polarized and simple). As far as C goes, well who is to _tell_ anyone that how they listen is _actually_ "incorrect?" Dump that one in the trash, where it belongs, if someone has stated just that straight out, no misinterpretation possible, they have a right to their opinion, which you are also free to dump in the trash

Some seem near to forever preoccupied with that ^^^ last, and I really x 3 wonder "what the hey?"

Until the advent of recording, and ready availability of recordings and playback equipment in the home, the _only_ way -- ergo "proper" way -- to listen was to a live performance, the orchestral ones, in a hall, and not while driving down the road, taking your jog, or whisking about your place doing chores.

Most of us, therefore, "are no longer listening to music properly," LOL.

I think too, some mistake nearly every thread of discussion as something other than a lively debate, i.e. on TC, a debate no one will ever win, but an alternating display of views and arguments about those points of view.

How anyone, regardless of any poster's particular "tone," could somehow mistake it as any one participant "Telling all others what is correct," is outside my understanding, or at least believing that post for one moment if they had actually taken it that far!

_People will, I will, others will,_ strongly advocate that their point of view is the better, more correct -- but hey, that is debate, If anyone is laying down laws, they need to look for their 'stinkin badge,' and make sure they have jurisdiction in an international arena, while anyone is free to _talk_ like a sheriff or deputy, yet another part of the debate game-- that is called 'bluffing,' if my memory serves


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## PetrB

science said:


> I'm gonna take agreement with my last post for granted and expand on the ideas there.
> 
> We can see three sorts of ideologies at work in this thread - romantic ideologies[SUP]*[/SUP] about what music can "mean," modernist ideologies (formulated in opposition to romanticism) about what music is not allowed (or able) to "mean," and postmodernist ideologies that transcend both.
> 
> From the postmodern POV, the romantic and the modernist are mirror images of each other, equally wrong regardless of who musters the greater eloquence. The romantic and the modernist often object to the postmodernist, "But are you saying that there aren't any objective standards at all? Are you really saying that anything goes?"
> 
> Well, yes. There are standards, lots of them and contradictory, and we can recognize them *all* (it is easy enough, if we choose to acknowledge it) as socio-political strategies. ("I listen to music better than you do.") Once we see all the strategies as strategies rather than objective truths, it is apparent that none of us are the boss. My standards become preferences. No amount of eloquence can get back that romantico-modernist cultural authority. Even the composer, paraphrasing Crudblud, is dead.
> 
> Postmodernism hasn't had a lot to offer the philosophy of science; it's done more harm than good, I'd say. But for aesthetics, it is probably something very like the last word.
> 
> So how can we play the social jostling game now? We have to be more postmodern than the next guy. Admittedly, once we all learn the game, we'll all be equal (at least with respect to the validity of our experience), and that's perhaps tragic.
> 
> And yet, a strategy remains and I can't see around it: _knowledge_. Perhaps knowledge of classical music isn't the very most important thing in the world (~its value isn't an objective truth the way that romantics and modernists would like), but within our community (there is a selection effect at work) it will be inevitably and unceasingly valued.
> 
> That's a game I'm bound to lose, but I'd like to see others play it more because I'm here to learn. I can understand that people who don't have enough knowledge to play that game would choose to play socio-political games that lost their value fifty years ago, but why would people with such extensive knowledge choose to do so?
> 
> *I'm not sure anyone actually advocated these, but they were definitely attributed to "other" listeners.


You surprise me with all of the above not one bit. The entire topic / angle as above is one of your signal interests / preoccupations. As a signal preoccupation it is no surprise either that it never crossed your mind how completely 'other' and not about either the OP or music it all is.

Others have a very similar preoccupation with the same and I am just as puzzled as to 'where it comes from,' why all the constant preoccupation with the arts as connected to games of social politics, rank of social esteem as seen by others, etc. To some, all this comes like a sandstorm out of a very ancient desert, sweeping in over a plain ole right here and now discussion about music.

It makes me wonder, far more than a mere narrative or pictorial association as connected to program music, how much of 'THE ABOVE PROGRAM" is in your consciousness when you walk into a concert hall, read the program, and what goes on when you at last listen to the music when it starts. Does all that 'disappear' when the first note begins, or are you -- from my perspective -- so burdened with all the dynamics around all the above and is all the above so tied in with all of the event that it becomes part of, or affects, "how you hear and what you hear?"

I am so completely not seeing or feeling any and all of the above, throughout my entire life of constant and direct experiences -- in and out of concert halls, concerts attended or concerts given, music lessons taken or given, art museums, artist's studios, galleries - the owners and artists whose works are displayed there, university arts departments, in social situations with people of 'different socio-economic status' and in different states and non-American cultures -- that I am amazed that all of this seems to be real and active on your screen, and all, it seems, somehow synthetically attached to a bit of music and triggered by a little discussion thereon.

I'm impelled to ask, though I feel any answer would be so actually not on or about music that any response would belong in another thread under another topical heading...
_In what countries on this planet, or on what planet, are those Issues at all real, and for how many of the population there?_

P.s. I think you _completely_ misread Crudblud if you can conclude from what he said that 'the composer is dead.' People who compose, whether it is an in-studio midi recording then released, or a finished score which then goes to the executants and the audience, know full well at the moment those are released, that intent, interpretation and all the rest, past what you've recorded or put into that detailed score, simply and quite directly are passed on to others (audience included) and are then "completely out of your hands."

P.p.s. I recognize a lot of 'the game' you mention, as more than severely threadbare and even more dated. In contemporary _western_ societies, anyway, that game was nearly dead and gasping its last breaths right after WWII. It is completely irrelevant in contemporary western societies, and I heartily suggest you burn your copy or copies of Adorno, I imagine the pages are real paper, very brown and febrile, and the mere spark from a lighter with no more butane in it would be enough to flame that volume and release it back to the carbon molecular state it belongs in.


----------



## Crudblud

PetrB said:


> P.s. I think you _completely_ misread Crudblud if you can conclude from what he said that 'the composer is dead.' People who compose, whether it is an in-studio midi recording then released, or a finished score which then goes to the executants and the audience, know full well at the moment those are released, that intent, interpretation and all the rest, past what you've recorded or put into that detailed score, simple go to others (audience included) and are then "completely out of your hands."


This is near enough what I was going to say. The composer reaches a point at which they can do no more but to release the work and relinquish control of it, after which it takes on a life of its own in the mind of everyone that hears it. The composer remains quite alive after this, in fact you might say they refuse to die.


----------



## science

PetrB said:


> You surprise me with all of the above not one bit. The entire topic / angle as above is one of your signal interests / preoccupations. As a signal preoccupation it is no surprise either that it never crossed your mind how completely 'other' and not about either the OP or music it all is.
> 
> Others have a very similar preoccupation with the same and I am just as puzzled as to 'where it comes from,' why all the constant preoccupation with the arts as connected to games of social politics, rank of social esteem as seen by others, etc. To some, all this comes like a sandstorm out of a very ancient desert, sweeping in over a plain ole right here and now discussion about music.
> 
> It makes me wonder, far more than a mere narrative or pictorial association as connected to program music, how much of 'THE ABOVE PROGRAM" is in your consciousness when you walk into a concert hall, read the program, and what goes on when you at last listen to the music when it starts. Does all that 'disappear' when the first note begins, or are you -- from my perspective -- so burdened with all the dynamics around all the above and is all the above so tied in with all of the event that it becomes part of, or affects, "how you hear and what you hear?"
> 
> I am so completely not seeing or feeling any and all of the above, throughout my entire life of constant and direct experiences -- in and out of concert halls, concerts attended or concerts given, music lessons taken or given, art museums, artist's studios, galleries - the owners and artists whose works are displayed there, university arts departments, in social situations with people of 'different socio-economic status' and in different states and non-American cultures -- that I am amazed that all of this seems to be real and active on your screen, and all, it seems, to music and a little discussion thereon.
> 
> I'm impelled to ask, though I feel any answer would be so actually not on or about music that any response would belong in another thread under another topical heading...
> _In what countries on this planet, or on what planet, are those Issues at all real, and for how many of the population there?_
> 
> P.s. I think you _completely_ misread Crudblud if you can conclude from what he said that 'the composer is dead.' People who compose, whether it is an in-studio midi recording then released, or a finished score which then goes to the executants and the audience, know full well at the moment those are released, that intent, interpretation and all the rest, past what you've recorded or put into that detailed score, simple go to others (audience included) and are then "completely out of your hands."
> 
> P.p.s. I recognize a lot of 'the game' you mention, as more than severely threadbare and even more dated. In contemporary _western_ societies, anyway, that game was nearly dead and gasping its last breaths right after WWII. It is completely irrelevant in contemporary western societies, and I heartily suggest you burn your copy or copies of Adorno, I imagine the pages are real paper, very brown and febrile, and the mere spark from a lighter with no more butane in it would be enough to flame that volume and release it back to the carbon molecular state it belongs in.


As for the p.s.: My statement "the composer is dead" was a variation of "every author is a dead author." Given its context and allusion to Crudblud's post, I didn't know it would be misunderstood, but I probably should've actually written out, "Every composer is a dead composer." I'd be surprised if that isn't exactly what Crudblud meant. (Edit: As I wrote this, he confirmed it.) The idea ought to be a friendly one to you, at least with respect to the idea of interpreting a work in light of a composer's or composition's history.

Otherwise, well, we've been over this ground before, so you already know that I think things like this are going on in your mind as in mine without either of us being entirely conscious of them. Your general point in the last two posts was that people are free to disagree with you, so you're free to express your opinions. That's true of course. We all can see that you command powerful words, and you use them with force and precision, so whenever your opinions imply scorn for people who disagree with you, you must be playing such games whether you realize it or not. I know you're a little defensive, but you're one of the most knowledgeable people here (and you know it, and you know that we all know it); you get mad props all around; not one single active poster disrespects you in the slightest. So there's no need to spend your time putting down (even with the most delightful sarcasm or whatever) people who have naively romantic ideas (even when no one like that is actually participating in the discussion), or who fail to appreciate contemporary high art, or absolutely anything else. So relax. Even if you actually didn't mean to win, you've won. Be a good winner.

I think I can out-snob (in the old way or the new way) almost anyone, especially in real life, but the thing is, that whole game itself has become passé, and to play it would be to "class" myself. Most of the people here who are even nearly as knowledgeable about music as you are don't play it either. Perhaps that's why I find it so odd to see (what really appears to me to be) you playing it so fervently.

Anyway, you are free to do your thing of course. Just as you are free to look down on - and to express it - someone for enjoying (or composing) a work with some program in mind, they are free to look down on you for not doing so (though if that happened in this thread I missed it); and I'm free to... "form my own opinion about" (we can all do this kind of innuendo just as well as each other, and as we're all intelligent adults here there's no point in pretending we're unaware of what each other is doing)... anyone who plays games like that.

On a different tack, just for playful joy, let's go meta. Perhaps it doesn't matter what the intention is behind someone's post! Perhaps, in fact, awareness of an intention detracts from our enjoyment of the post. But of course, it must be fine (every author is a dead author) to interpret a post in ways not only unexpected by the author but even contrary to the author's purpose, so long as we are faithful to the text as we do so. For which of us, surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, can ever truly say we are aware of each other's intentions?

I honestly could not well refute someone who took that approach. Hence I declare ex cathedra post factum ad nauseam, let us all enjoy Sibelius and even Adams as we do, or do not, or at least as we manage to, or not to, or as we fail to, or even as we fail not to, or (in the worst case) as we find ourselves unable to plausibly deny.


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> I would just like to point out that we do not know how closely Berlioz's program for the _Fantastique_ corresponds to his thoughts during its composition.


We may indeed not know how closely Berlioz' program corresponds to his thoughts (an observation that seems to be making one of Petr's points, just by the way), but we do know what he wrote about composition and music and extra-musical inspirations.

He wrote quite a lot, and he was quite a good writer. We may not know, literally, what he thought. But we do know what he wrote--or we could know that if we read any of it.

Of course, we also have to factor in the assumptions of Berlioz' time, too, to fully appreciate his words. To adequately understand them, anyway. But that is, with a bit of effort, entirely possible. It is certainly desirable to do so, with any writer.

And roughly, and reduced to essentials, Berlioz argued his whole life for the primacy of music, for the sufficiency of music qua music. It was, as I've mentioned before, an important element in the contentious relationship with the young German whom Berlioz saw as diminishing the intrinsic power of music by the idea of the gesamtkunstwerk.

And all this from a guy who was inspired his whole career by literary works.

It's not such a contradiction as it may seem, either. He was inspired by literature to compose music. He was not inspired by literature to make musical pieces which somehow retell or even illustrate the stories that had already been told. Or even that are supposed to be listened to with those stories in mind.


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## Guest

science said:


> I think things like this are going on in your mind as in mine without either of us being entirely conscious of them.


This is exactly where you make the bulk of your mistakes. You are way too sure that you know what's going on in other people's heads. You do not.

We would all be much much better off sticking with what is said and leaving the sayers entirely off-limits.


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## Ukko

Looks like I just ought to say this: The subject expressed in my first (thread-starter) post has been covered - and buried. As with _Crudblud_ and his music, my control over the thread ended when I clicked the button to send that 1st post. Have at it folks, I ain't here anymore.

:tiphat:


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## PetrB

Crudblud said:


> This is near enough what I was going to say. The composer reaches a point at which they can do no more but to release the work and relinquish control of it, after which it takes on a life of its own in the mind of everyone that hears it. The composer remains quite alive after this, in fact you might say they refuse to die.


The analogy is the child grown, out in the world, and met on its own at face value, no parent nearby to compare it with, explain its actions, or in any other way 'color' peoples perception of the individual entity. "The Kid," is very much on their own


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## EdwardBast

PetrB said:


> Not charlatan, really, just slightly, uh, disingenuous in providing a program for the audiences of "Symphonie Fantastique," and the fact it was premiered _without a program at all_ and after a very bad reception, and post a few revisions, he slapped that program on for the subsequent performance to help a lay audience better 'follow' what was, after all, at the time an extraordinarily wild and crazy 'avant-garde' piece.


This completely misrepresents the historical record. In fact, Berlioz disclosed the program of the work in private correspondence well before the premiere, and even, apparently, before the order of the movements was decided once and for all. In a letter (16 April 1830) to his friend, the poet Humbert Ferrand, Berlioz presents the detailed program with which we are all familiar, demonstrating unequivocally that he had the program in mind during the composition of the symphony.


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## science

Ukko said:


> Looks like I just ought to say this: The subject expressed in my first (thread-starter) post has been covered - and buried. As with _Crudblud_ and his music, my control over the thread ended when I clicked the button to send that 1st post. Have at it folks, I ain't here anymore.


But we love your thread, and that's what matters.


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## aleazk

In my book, the composer can make whatever he wants, be inspired by whatever he wants, and the listener can make whatever he wants of that.

Certainly, I have my preferences. I don't care too much about 'evocative' or peculiar titles or things like that. I think that if the composer was inspired by something in particular and wants to use that as the title of the piece, then that's fine and has certain logic into it. Of course, the listener is free to make whatever he wants about that. 

What I don't like are the textual descriptions of what the music should do, describe, evoke, etc. Like others said, that sounds like those overprotective parents that want to 'control' every aspect of their children's life, without realizing that they are now separate entities from them, thrown into the world and expected to survive by their own means and to build their own life.


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## Woodduck

EdwardBast said:


> This completely misrepresents the historical record. In fact, Berlioz disclosed the program of the work in private correspondence well before the premiere, and even, apparently, before the order of the movements was decided once and for all. In a letter (16 April 1830) to his friend, the poet Humbert Ferrand, Berlioz presents the detailed program with which we are all familiar, demonstrating unequivocally that he had the program in mind during the composition of the symphony.


Where, I wonder, are all the "likes" for this post? Are certain people too busy removing the rouge from their cheeks?

Thank you, EdwardBast, for a bit of historical information, delivered with delightful dispassion, that confirms the Romantic imagination we all believed essential to Berlioz's nature and discredits the attempts here - subtle and gross, conscious and unconscious - to misrepresent, devalue, or ignore it.

It is the signal achievement of Romanticism to make music, and the impulse behind its creation, intensely personal and specific, and to bring its expressive goals into intimate relationship with the word. Beethoven was a pioneer in this: it is the Romantic element in him, the need to make music "about" something that could also be, and often needed to be, expressed, in some sense and some part, verbally or by some means beyond music itself. After Beethoven, composers like Weber, Schubert, Berlioz, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt found strikingly individual styles forging their individual, personal expressive paths, and the forms in which they worked - forms which came to prominence or acquired new significance out of need - were intimately allied with literature and words: song, opera, character piece, incidental music, "dramatic symphony," symphonic poem. Wagner, having this new aesthetic in his very bones, went the whole distance and created a new musical-dramatic form characterized by a conception of musical time in which the terse development of abstract forms yielded to a deliberate unfolding of expressive ideas, permitting such intense, moment-by-moment exploitation of the evocative potential of individual musical elements - thematic, harmonic, timbral, etc. - that music became barely recognizable as the art practiced by Bach, Haydn, and Mozart. This is the basis on which he was condemned by the defenders of "absolute" music, and one of the things (perhaps the principal one) for which some have never forgiven him.

Those who believe that music is always best, and perhaps only properly, taken in as "just sound," are rejecting the most characteristic music of an entire era and the assumptions of both its creators and listeners. They are free to disdain this essential premise of Romantic music, or the music itself, as they choose. But they are wrong to rationalize their taste as a defense of a "superior" aesthetic approach, or to belittle the musical competence or comprehension of listeners for whom the alliance of the musical with the poetic imagination constitutes a rewarding artistic experience. I doubt very much that the enjoyment of the tone poems of Tchaikovsky and Strauss, and the pleasure of observing the imagination with which these composers have dramatized the poetic ideas which inspired them, have led many listeners to feel helpless incomprehension when confronted with the non-programmatic violin concerto of the former or the oboe concerto of the latter - or the harpsichord concertos of Bach.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> Where, I wonder, are all the "likes" for this post? Are certain people too busy removing the rouge from their cheeks?
> 
> Thank you, EdwardBast, for a bit of historical information, delivered with delightful dispassion, that confirms the Romantic imagination we all believed essential to Berlioz's nature and discredits the attempts here - subtle and gross, conscious and unconscious - to misrepresent, devalue, or ignore it.
> 
> It is the signal achievement of Romanticism to make music, and the impulse behind its creation, intensely personal and specific, and to bring its expressive goals into intimate relationship with the word. Beethoven was a pioneer in this: it is the Romantic element in him, the need to make music "about" something that could also be, and often needed to be, expressed, in some sense and some part, verbally or by some means beyond music itself. After Beethoven, composers like Weber, Schubert, Berlioz, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt found strikingly individual styles forging their individual, personal expressive paths, and the forms in which they worked - forms which came to prominence or acquired new significance out of need - were intimately allied with literature and words: song, opera, character piece, incidental music, "dramatic symphony," symphonic poem. Wagner, having this new aesthetic in his very bones, went the whole distance and created a new musical-dramatic form characterized by a conception of musical time in which the terse development of abstract forms yielded to a deliberate unfolding of expressive ideas, permitting such intense, moment-by-moment exploitation of the evocative potential of individual musical elements - thematic, harmonic, timbral, etc. - that music became barely recognizable as the art practiced by Bach, Haydn, and Mozart. This is the basis on which he was condemned by the defenders of "absolute" music, and one of the things (perhaps the principal one) for which some have never forgiven him.
> 
> Those who believe that music is always best, and perhaps only properly, taken in as "just sound," are rejecting the most characteristic music of an entire era and the assumptions of both its creators and listeners. They are free to disdain this essential premise of Romantic music, or the music itself, as they choose. But they are wrong to rationalize their taste as a defense of a "superior" aesthetic approach, or to belittle the musical competence or comprehension of listeners for whom the alliance of the musical with the poetic imagination constitutes a rewarding artistic experience. I doubt very much that the enjoyment of the tone poems of Tchaikovsky and Strauss, and the pleasure of observing the imagination with which these composers have dramatized the poetic ideas which inspired them, have led many listeners to feel helpless incomprehension when confronted with the non-programmatic violin concerto of the former or the oboe concerto of the latter - or the harpsichord concertos of Bach.












"Darling, your makeup is _terrible_. 'Berlioz Fable Number Five' isn't your shade."

"Here, I have some Woodduck brand 'polish remover' for your flight in make-believe."

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. . . .

Yeah: one's certainly entitled to one's own opinion but not to one's own facts.

-- Great archaeological legwork on Berlioz, EdwardBast.

-- Great expounding on the nature and relevance of Romanticism in music, Woodduck.


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Thank you, EdwardBast, for a bit of historical information, delivered with delightful dispassion, that confirms the Romantic imagination we all believed essential to Berlioz's nature and discredits the attempts here - subtle and gross, conscious and unconscious - to misrepresent, devalue, or ignore it.


Yes. A bit. A very small bit, which, while true as far as it goes, does not go far enough and so misrepresents and devalues Berlioz' lifelong commitment to the primacy, to the sufficiency of music qua music.

Here's something to consider: _genre instrumental expressif._ Understand that, and you really will understand the "Romantic imagination" that was "essential to Berlioz' nature," though I have to say, I doubt that anyone in 2015 could really know what was essential to Berlioz' nature.

Anyway, here is another "bit," in Berlioz' own words,* about this same matter: "The following programme should be distributed to the audience every time the Symphonie fantastique is performed dramatically and thus followed by the monodrame of Lélio which concludes and completes the episode in the life of an artist. In this case the invisible orchestra is placed on the stage of a theatre behind the lowered curtain.
If the symphony is performed on its own as a concert piece this arrangement is no longer necessary: one may even dispense with distributing the programme and keep only the title of the five movements. The author hopes that the symphony provides on its own sufficient musical interest independently of any dramatic intention."



Woodduck said:


> Those who believe that music is always best, and perhaps only properly, taken in as "just sound," are rejecting the most characteristic music of an entire era and the assumptions of both its creators and listeners.


While I cannot definitively speak for everyone else, I can with some assurance say that no one who argues for the sufficiency of music would ever modify the word "sound" with the word "just." This is a characteristic, and ubiquitous, distortion of our position on the matter. And if that is not acceptable, just substitute "my" for "our," then.

In any event, arguing for the primacy of music, for the sufficiency of music, without any props, is not at all equivalent to rejecting the most characteristic music of an entire era.

Here are a few of my favorite composers: Schubert, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Berwald, Schumann, Bizet, Grieg, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss (Richard). Looking at that list, which only presents a few of my favorites from the era in question, one would not get the impression that I had rejected the most characteristic music of an entire era, would one?



Woodduck said:


> I doubt very much that the enjoyment of the tone poems of Tchaikovsky and Strauss, and the pleasure of observing the imagination with which these composers have dramatized the poetic ideas which inspired them, have led many listeners to feel helpless incomprehension when confronted with the non-programmatic violin concerto of the former or the oboe concerto of the latter - or the harpsichord concertos of Bach.


Well, no. But no one has argued that any lover of program music would feel helpless incomprehension when confronted with non-programmatic music. And no one would. That is something that anyone could doubt, because it's absurd.

It is however true that quite a number of people do habitually provide every piece they listen to with a program of some sort. But I would blame the movies for that, not the Romantics. In fact, everyone I know who does this, particularly with pieces they have not heard before (thus suggesting that the program is an aid to comprehension), does it with references to cinematography.

*That is, an English translation of his words


----------



## EdwardBast

some guy said:


> Yes. A bit. A very small bit, which, while true as far as it goes, does not go far enough and so misrepresents and devalues Berlioz' lifelong commitment to the primacy, to the sufficiency of music qua music.


Demonstrating the obvious historical fact that the _Symphonie fantastique_ is among the most blatant and intentional examples of program music ever created, from its inception to its completion, does not misrepresent or devalue any thoughts Berlioz might have had about the sufficiency of music qua music. Nor does your quotation of Berlioz support this notion of "sufficiency qua music:"



some guy said:


> "If the symphony is performed on its own as a concert piece this arrangement is no longer necessary: one may even dispense with distributing the programme and keep only the title of the five movements. The author hopes that the symphony provides on its own sufficient musical interest independently of any dramatic intention."


Berlioz's hope in this case is just boilerplate, the obligatory disclaimer and sop to belligerent formalists that many who wrote blatant program music in this era felt obliged to deliver. Moreover, since this statement specifically enjoins future performers to preserve at least the programmatic titles, it seems clear that, whatever his convictions in the abstract, as a practical matter, Berlioz intended the work always and forever to be heard as program music. After all, the titles alone are more than sufficient in themselves to guide the listener toward a dramatic programmatic reading, albeit one less specific than the published program. With the clue about a scene in the country, for example, the shepherds' pipes, thunder and so on in the third movement are perfectly obvious, conventional elements of pastoral topics and characteristic symphonies that an average listener could be expected to grasp. Likewise the programmatic title alone is enough to link the bells, the Dies Irae, the warped transformations of the Ideé fixe, and the gigue in the finale to conventional scenes of witch's sabbaths from literature and poetry. The March to the Scaffold likewise has a perfectly clear programmatic thrust (even though most of the music was composed for an unrelated opera) - the public execution as a joyous public spectacle has a venerable history in France and the guillotine stroke and falling head at the end are far from subtle.



some guy said:


> In any event, arguing for the primacy of music, for the sufficiency of music, without any props, is not at all equivalent to rejecting the most characteristic music of an entire era.


Well said and I agree. I think the way meaning and humanistic content is integrated into musical structure in this era is far more subtle and abstract than your opponents in this thread seem to be suggesting, as I hope to argue in another post …


----------



## KenOC

EdwardBast said:


> Demonstrating the obvious historical fact that the _Symphonie fantastique_ is among the most blatant and intentional examples of program music ever created, from its inception to its completion, does not misrepresent or devalue any thoughts Berlioz might have had about the sufficiency of music qua music.


I suspect that representational music was held in somewhat low esteem in the early 19th century. Thus Beethoven's apology for his Pastoral symphony: "More an expression of feeling than a painting." Right. Thus the perfectly identifiable species of birds by the stream, the peasants dancing and stomping away, Breugel-like, the patter of rain followed by the storm, and so forth.

He really didn't need to apologize for it!


----------



## Ukko

KenOC said:


> I suspect that representational music was held in somewhat low esteem in the early 19th century. Thus Beethoven's apology for his Pastoral symphony: "More an expression of feeling than a painting." Right. Thus the perfectly identifiable species of birds by the stream, the peasants dancing and stomping away, Breugel-like, the patter of rain followed by the storm, and so forth.
> 
> He really didn't need to apologize for it!


And yet... and yet, when I listen to the music I don't 'hear' all that stuff. Probably a severe lack of imagination, eh.


----------



## Woodduck

some guy said:


> Yes. A bit. A very small bit, which, while true as far as it goes, does not go far enough and so misrepresents and devalues Berlioz' lifelong commitment to the primacy, to the sufficiency of music qua music.
> 
> Here's something to consider: _genre instrumental expressif._ Understand that, and you really will understand the "Romantic imagination" that was "essential to Berlioz' nature," though I have to say, I doubt that anyone in 2015 could really know what was essential to Berlioz' nature.
> 
> Anyway, here is another "bit," in Berlioz' own words,* about this same matter: "The following programme should be distributed to the audience every time the Symphonie fantastique is performed dramatically and thus followed by the monodrame of Lélio which concludes and completes the episode in the life of an artist. In this case the invisible orchestra is placed on the stage of a theatre behind the lowered curtain.
> If the symphony is performed on its own as a concert piece this arrangement is no longer necessary: one may even dispense with distributing the programme and keep only the title of the five movements. The author hopes that the symphony provides on its own sufficient musical interest independently of any dramatic intention."
> 
> While I cannot definitively speak for everyone else, I can with some assurance say that no one who argues for the sufficiency of music would ever modify the word "sound" with the word "just." This is a characteristic, and ubiquitous, distortion of our position on the matter. And if that is not acceptable, just substitute "my" for "our," then.
> 
> In any event, *arguing for the primacy of music, for the sufficiency of music, without any props,* is not at all equivalent to rejecting the most characteristic music of an entire era.
> 
> Here are a few of my favorite composers: Schubert, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Berwald, Schumann, Bizet, Grieg, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss (Richard). Looking at that list, which only presents a few of my favorites from the era in question, one would not get the impression that I had rejected the most characteristic music of an entire era, would one?
> 
> Well, no. But *no one has argued that any lover of program music would feel helpless incomprehension when confronted with non-programmatic music. And no one would. That is something that anyone could doubt, because it's absurd. *
> 
> It is however true that *quite a number of people do habitually provide every piece they listen to with a program of some sort.* But I would blame the movies for that, not the Romantics. In fact, everyone I know who does this, particularly with pieces they have not heard before (thus suggesting that the program is an aid to comprehension), does it with references to cinematography.
> 
> *That is, an English translation of his words


The implication that people who value the conjunction of music and words which occurs in program music are deficient in their ability to appreciate the values of absolute music has definitely been suggested on this thread. Here is a statement by PetrB:

"_...a lot of the literal and associative, yea, even a dose of historical context, is such a preoccupation for some listeners I believe they are carrying a ton of baggage to a piece of music, and literally cluttering what they hear, ergo, not really hearing the piece...I still think their thinking it is necessary to 'know all that about a piece of music' is from crazy insecurity, a kind of intimidation where they think if they do not 'get all that' (this usually comes from what I consider dreadful music education), that they are not understanding the piece, so then they think in order to 'get it,' that they need all that extra-musical business." _

If you think this is absurd, I'm the wrong person to take it up with. No doubt some such "crazily insecure" listeners exist, but how important is that? How does their putative existence (I've never known any of them) speak to any general principles here? This is just chatter around the periphery of a genuine aesthetic issue, as is questioning the motives and intentions of composers (of which questioning there's been plenty on this thread) who express their artistic intentions verbally, in or outside of an explicit program.

I don't doubt that Berlioz argued that even in progammatic music, the music is more important than the program and should be aesthetically satisfying on its own. His commitment to that principle has not been "devalued" by anyone here. What composer would think otherwise? Even Wagner believed this, saying that dramatic music and symphonic music were different genres with different requirements and complaining that his innovations in opera were being inappropriately imported into orchestral music. I have certainly never argued against the primacy of music or the importance of musical coherence and effectiveness, regardless of the extent of any literary or pictorial associations a composer may attach to his work. I have in fact stated my agreement with Berlioz on this point.

But I'm not so sure about it being a "very small bit" that you and PetrB should be so ready to assume that Berlioz did not intend programmatic significance for the _Fantastique_ but rather made all that up after the fact. How is it possible for anyone to listen to this music and not feel certain that there is a great deal going on besides "putting sounds together," as you like to characterize a composer's job? The piece postively screams "program" and, in many parts, actual narrative. Music in which literary and pictorial inspiration plays a significant part has means of revealing its nature, and this astonishing work is not exactly subtle about employing them. In fact, given its date, the _Fantastique_ is a virtual fanfare announcing the age of full-blown Romanticism in music. And it most certainly does tell us something "essential to Berlioz's nature" - as does a great deal else he wrote, musically and verbally (the man having been, as you say, an excellent writer, and one who told us a great deal about himself).

I have neither made nor seen any arguments against "the sufficiency of music without any props." But the terms of that phrase are loaded to say the least. My argument has been very specific, and it is with those who suggest that any extramusical association or explanation offered by a composer is, or should be conceived of as, a "prop" - or, as PetrB has put it, a "patch" to conceal a musical failure - and that such must be, to a musically sophisticated listener, an irrelevancy or an impurity constituting a positive hindrance to "true" musical appreciation. It is that asumption which strikes me as an injustice to an immense amount of fine music, indeed as a denigration of an entire musical aesthetic (characteristic of the Romantic era), and as a put-down of people who derive great pleasure from the imaginative act of listening to music with a composer's literary and pictorial associations in mind.

The music of the Berlioz's _Symphonie Fantastique_, or Tchaikovsky's _Romeo and Juliet_, or Sibelius's _Tapiola_, may indeed be perfectly satisfying without "props" - i.e. title or program - but the music of any of these works is not the whole artistic entity as conceived or offered by the composer. And those who care to know as much as possible about that whole entity are not thereby revealing an inability to understand or appreciate music as such. Not in the slightest degree.


----------



## Guest

Dear Woodduck,

I'm tired of addressing your persistent distortions.

So, natch, I won't.

But I will answer this question of yours, even though I have already answered it in this thread. Since you missed that, I'll give it to you again. But only once. I have my limits, you know. (See above.)



Woodduck said:


> How is it possible for anyone to listen to this music and not feel certain that there is a great deal going on besides "putting sounds together," as you like to characterize a composer's job? The piece postively screams "program" and, in many parts, actual narrative..


In reverse order:

No, actually it doesn't.

"Putting sounds together" is what a composer's job boils down to. The key words here are "boils down to." We have left the context in which those words made sense, and now there's just repetition of the point that I think that that's all a composer does.

And the answer that I gave before is that it is possible to listen to this piece and not et cetera, and I know that because I did it. When I was working through the standard repertoire, I did so reading all the words on the backs of LP sleeves. Until I hit Strauss' _Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche._ I read the program notes. I listened to the music. But it was frustrating. My experience of the music was quite different from what the words were telling me I was supposed to be hearing. Sure, there were bits and pieces where the story and the notes would line up, very briefly. But even with those coincidences, the overall experience of the music was quite different from the story. I had been similarly frustrated with other program notes on LP sleeves, whether the notes were about program music or not.

With _Till Eulenspiegel,_ I simply stopped reading program notes.

Years later, I bought an LP of Berlioz' _Symphonie fantastique,_ Colin Davis' first recording of it, and still my favorite. It was delightful. I loved this piece, especially the first movement. (Years later, I read in a book by Jacques Barzun that the true connoisseur of this piece would prefer the first movement, which made me grin.) I knew it thoroughly as a symphony before I ever ran across the story, which I read by mistake one dark day.

My only point on this thread has been that music all on its own is already "a great deal going on." There is, for me anyway, no "beyond." Music is already the "beyond" part. If you read what Berlioz wrote about the reason the _Scène d'amour_ in _Romeo et Juliette_ has no words to it, you will understand what he thought about music's power, and especially that "beyond" idea.


----------



## science

some guy said:


> Dear Woodduck,
> 
> I'm tired of addressing your persistent distortions.
> 
> So, natch, I won't.
> 
> But I will answer this question of yours, even though I have already answered it in this thread. Since you missed that, I'll give it to you again. But only once. I have my limits, you know. (See above.)
> 
> In reverse order:
> 
> No, actually it doesn't.
> 
> "Putting sounds together" is what a composer's job boils down to. The key words here are "boils down to." We have left the context in which those words made sense, and now there's just repetition of the point that I think that that's all a composer does.
> 
> And the answer that I gave before is that it is possible to listen to this piece and not et cetera, and I know that because I did it. When I was working through the standard repertoire, I did so reading all the words on the backs of LP sleeves. Until I hit Strauss' _Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche._ I read the program notes. I listened to the music. But it was frustrating. My experience of the music was quite different from what the words were telling me I was supposed to be hearing. Sure, there were bits and pieces where the story and the notes would line up, very briefly. But even with those coincidences, the overall experience of the music was quite different from the story. I had been similarly frustrated with other program notes on LP sleeves, whether the notes were about program music or not.
> 
> With _Till Eulenspiegel,_ I simply stopped reading program notes.
> 
> Years later, I bought an LP of Berlioz' _Symphonie fantastique,_ Colin Davis' first recording of it, and still my favorite. It was delightful. I loved this piece, especially the first movement. (Years later, I read in a book by Jacques Barzun that the true connoisseur of this piece would prefer the first movement, which made me grin.) I knew it thoroughly as a symphony before I ever ran across the story, which I read by mistake one dark day.
> 
> My only point on this thread has been that music all on its own is already "a great deal going on." There is, for me anyway, no "beyond." Music is already the "beyond" part. If you read what Berlioz wrote about the reason the _Scène d'amour_ in _Romeo et Juliette_ has no words to it, you will understand what he thought about music's power, and especially that "beyond" idea.


You seem to be offering your own experience as normative. But what if someone has a different experience than you?


----------



## Guest

You can't be serious.

There's not a normative word in the entire post.

And plenty of people have different experiences from mine. So there's no "what if" about it.

In any event, I'm me, and I only have my experiences. I don't have yours or anyone else's except insofar as you share them with me. I have had experiences, and I offer them as (partial) evidence for my conclusions, just like everyone else does, that is, everyone who supports their conclusions. Not everyone does, as we know....


----------



## science

some guy said:


> You can't be serious.
> 
> There's not a normative word in the entire post.
> 
> And plenty of people have different experiences from mine. So there's no "what if" about it.
> 
> In any event, I'm me, and I only have my experiences. I don't have yours or anyone else's except insofar as you share them with me. I have had experiences, and I offer them as (partial) evidence for my conclusions, just like everyone else does, that is, everyone who supports their conclusions. Not everyone does, as we know....


Of course I'm serious. The important point is that you're free to listen to music the way you do without being judged, I the way I do without being judged, others the way they do without being judged.

That is far from obvious in your post, which appears to be an attack on the way Woodduck and others listen to music. If he's free to appreciate programs and you're free not to, what is the conversation about?


----------



## Blake

science said:


> Of course I'm serious. The important point is that you're free to listen to music the way you do without being judged, I the way I do without being judged, others the way they do without being judged.
> 
> That is far from obvious in your post, which appears to be an attack on the way Woodduck and others listen to music. If he's free to appreciate programs and you're free not to, what is the conversation about?


I admire your intent, science. But, what boggles my mind is this premise of "absolutely no judging" - we're on a discussion forum here... judging is a prerequisite. This isn't a site where one post what they do and everyone messages their ego.

Of course we can be friendly and considerate, but come on, by signing up one should acknowledge that their ideas will be questioned and challenged. That's what forums are...


----------



## science

Blake said:


> I admire your intent, science. But, what boggles my mind is this premise of "absolutely no judging" - we're on a discussion forum here... judging is a prerequisite. This isn't a site where one post what they do and everyone messages their ego.
> 
> Of course we can be friendly and considerate, but come on, by signing up one should acknowledge that their ideas will be questioned and challenged. That's what forums are...


Do you intend to be representing "some guy?"

I think you're right, unfortunately. I suspect "some guy" wasn't completely self-aware when he denied that his post was meant to be normative.

But I think it is important - not just some ridiculous pie-in-the-sky ideal but an actual thing we need to pursue - that people can listen the way they want to, the way that fulfills them, however we want to put it. The forum doesn't need to be a mean-spirited competition to see who listens to music best. It could just be a discussion, sharing different POVs.

The differences are ok. It should be safe to be different.

That safety should exist both in real life and online, but it has to be guarded.


----------



## Blake

science said:


> Do you intend to be representing "some guy?"
> 
> I think you're right, unfortunately. I suspect "some guy" wasn't completely self-aware when he denied that his post was meant to be normative.
> 
> But I think it is important - not just some ridiculous pie-in-the-sky ideal but an actual thing we need to pursue - that people can listen the way they want to, the way that fulfills them, however we want to put it. The forum doesn't need to be a mean-spirited competition to see who listens to music best. It could just be a discussion, sharing different POVs.
> 
> The differences are ok. It should be safe to be different.
> 
> That safety should exist both in real life and online, but it has to be guarded.


I only intend to represent a state of reasoning. I agree that a mean-spirited competition is quite distasteful, but I would never join a forum and expect any of my ideas to be automatically accepted.

My posted methods are fair game, as well... as they simply become ideas on someone else's screen. Which is why I find it silly to take these things so personally. If one strongly identifies with the thoughts in their head then they shouldn't be posting them on a public forum. There will always be someone who disagrees.


----------



## science

Blake said:


> I only intend to represent a state of reasoning. I agree that a mean-spirited competition is quite distasteful, but I would never join a forum and expect any of my ideas to be automatically accepted.
> 
> My posted methods are fair game, as well... as they simply become ideas on someone else's screen. Which is why I find it silly to take these things so personally. If one strongly identifies with the thoughts in their head then they shouldn't be posting them on a public forum. There will always be someone who disagrees.


I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I don't care if X disagrees with Y, and I'd love them to talk about it endlessly, as long as they do so with clarity and kindness.

But that wasn't what I was talking about in this case.

In this case, if "someguy" agrees that enjoying programs (and any other "extra-musical" information) is precisely as valid as ignoring them, and (as it seems to me) Woodduck agrees that ignoring them as is precisely as valid as enjoying them, then what else is at stake?


----------



## Blake

science said:


> In this case, if "someguy" agrees that enjoying programs (and any other "extra-musical" information) is precisely as valid as ignoring them, and (as it seems to me) Woodduck agrees that ignoring them as is precisely as valid as enjoying them, then what else is at stake?


None. Although, some do seem to be quicker on the offensive than others. But hey, it's a debate - one which will most likely be forgotten in a weeks time. That's how important this stuff that we get all ruffled about is...


----------



## science

Blake said:


> None. Although, some do seem to be quicker on the offensive than others. But hey, it's a debate - one which will most likely be forgotten in a weeks time. That's how important this stuff that we get all ruffled about is...


What will not be forgotten is the offense.


----------



## EdwardBast

Ukko said:


> And yet... and yet, when I listen to the music I don't 'hear' all that stuff. Probably a severe lack of imagination, eh.


The philosopher Kendall Walton, in his book _Mimesis as Make-Believe_, made a general argument that artworks are props in games of make-believe. In Walton's terms, imagining "all that stuff" is certainly a game Beethoven is inviting or intending the listener to play when listening to the symphony. That is what it meant to write a characteristic symphony like the Pastoral. But Beethoven would probably be perfectly delighted that you enjoy the work from a more abstract perspective.

I agree with Ken that Beethoven needn't have been embarrassed or have apologized for the explicitly programmatic elements. But I think most composers who did this sort of thing in the Romantic Era were self-conscious about it, as in the case of Berlioz and the Symphonie fantastique (see some guy's post above).

I think we should all remember, however, that this sort of explicit programmaticism was exceptional for Beethoven and shouldn't be taken as a license for literalistic interpretations like the numerous Shakespeare based interpretations of his piano sonatas.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

some guy said:


> Dear Woodduck,
> 
> I'm tired of addressing your persistent distortions.
> 
> So, natch, I won't.
> 
> But I will answer this question of yours, even though I have already answered it in this thread. Since you missed that, I'll give it to you again. But only once. I have my limits, you know. (See above.)
> 
> In reverse order:
> 
> No, actually it doesn't.
> 
> "Putting sounds together" is what a composer's job boils down to. The key words here are "boils down to." We have left the context in which those words made sense, and now there's just repetition of the point that I think that that's all a composer does.
> 
> And the answer that I gave before is that it is possible to listen to this piece and not et cetera, and I know that because I did it. When I was working through the standard repertoire, I did so reading all the words on the backs of LP sleeves. Until I hit Strauss' _Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche._ I read the program notes. I listened to the music. But it was frustrating. My experience of the music was quite different from what the words were telling me I was supposed to be hearing. Sure, there were bits and pieces where the story and the notes would line up, very briefly. But even with those coincidences, the overall experience of the music was quite different from the story. I had been similarly frustrated with other program notes on LP sleeves, whether the notes were about program music or not.
> 
> With _Till Eulenspiegel,_ I simply stopped reading program notes.
> 
> Years later, I bought an LP of Berlioz' _Symphonie fantastique,_ Colin Davis' first recording of it, and still my favorite. It was delightful. I loved this piece, especially the first movement. (Years later, I read in a book by Jacques Barzun that the true connoisseur of this piece would prefer the first movement, which made me grin.) I knew it thoroughly as a symphony before I ever ran across the story, which I read by mistake one dark day.
> 
> My only point on this thread has been that music all on its own is already "a great deal going on." There is, for me anyway, no "beyond." Music is already the "beyond" part. If you read what Berlioz wrote about the reason the _Scène d'amour_ in _Romeo et Juliette_ has no words to it, you will understand what he thought about music's power, and especially that "beyond" idea.


If_ you're _tired of addressing Woodduck's_ imaginary _persistent distortions, imagine how _he must feel _addressing your very_ real _ones.


----------



## Blake

science said:


> What will not be forgotten is the offense.


That would be a personal problem. Not everyone is so ridiculous. Let's remember where we are.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> The implication that people who value the conjunction of music and words which occurs in program music are deficient in their ability to appreciate the values of absolute music has definitely been suggested on this thread. Here is a statement by PetrB:
> 
> "_...a lot of the literal and associative, yea, even a dose of historical context, is such a preoccupation for some listeners I believe they are carrying a ton of baggage to a piece of music, and literally cluttering what they hear, ergo, not really hearing the piece...I still think their thinking it is necessary to 'know all that about a piece of music' is from crazy insecurity, a kind of intimidation where they think if they do not 'get all that' (this usually comes from what I consider dreadful music education), that they are not understanding the piece, so then they think in order to 'get it,' that they need all that extra-musical business." _
> 
> If you think this is absurd, I'm the wrong person to take it up with. No doubt some such "crazily insecure" listeners exist, but how important is that? How does their putative existence (I've never known any of them) speak to any general principles here? This is just chatter around the periphery of a genuine aesthetic issue, as is questioning the motives and intentions of composers (of which questioning there's been plenty on this thread) who express their artistic intentions verbally, in or outside of an explicit program.
> 
> I don't doubt that Berlioz argued that even in progammatic music, the music is more important than the program and should be aesthetically satisfying on its own. His commitment to that principle has not been "devalued" by anyone here. What composer would think otherwise? Even Wagner believed this, saying that dramatic music and symphonic music were different genres with different requirements and complaining that his innovations in opera were being inappropriately imported into orchestral music. I have certainly never argued against the primacy of music or the importance of musical coherence and effectiveness, regardless of the extent of any literary or pictorial associations a composer may attach to his work. I have in fact stated my agreement with Berlioz on this point.
> 
> But I'm not so sure that about it being a "very small bit" that you and PetrB should be so ready to assume that Berlioz did not intend programmatic significance for the _Fantastique_ but rather made all that up after the fact. How is it possible for anyone to listen to this music and not feel certain that there is a great deal going on besides "putting sounds together," as you like to characterize a composer's job? *The piece postively screams "program" and, in many parts, actual narrative. Music in which literary and pictorial inspiration plays a significant part has means of revealing its nature, and this astonishing work is not exactly subtle about employing them. In fact, given its date, the Fantastique is a virtual fanfare announcing the age of full-blown Romanticism in music.* And it most certainly does tell us something "essential to Berlioz's nature" - as does a great deal else he wrote, musically and verbally (the man having been, as you say, an excellent writer, and one who told us a great deal about himself).
> 
> I have neither made nor seen any arguments against "the sufficiency of music without any props." But the terms of that phrase are loaded to say the least. My argument has been very specific, and it is with those who suggest that any extramusical association or explanation offered by a composer is, or should be conceived of as, a "prop" - or, as PetrB has put it, a "patch" to conceal a musical failure - and that such must be, to a musically sophisticated listener, an irrelevancy or an impurity constituting a positive hindrance to "true" musical appreciation. It is that asumption which strikes me as an injustice to an immense amount of fine music, indeed as a denigration of an entire musical aesthetic (characteristic of the Romantic era), and as a put-down of people who derive great pleasure from the imaginative act of listening to music with a composer's literary and pictorial associations in mind.
> 
> The music of the Berlioz's _Symphonie Fantastique_, or Tchaikovsky's _Romeo and Juliet_, or Sibelius's _Tapiola_, may indeed be perfectly satisfying without "props" - i.e. title or program - but the music of any of these works is not the whole artistic entity as conceived or offered by the composer. And those who care to know as much as possible about that whole entity are not thereby revealing an inability to understand or appreciate music as such. Not in the slightest degree.


Berlioz's genius in orchestration is _ so_ effective in its literary and narrative synaesthesia, that no less an eminence than the great film score composer Bernard Herrmann called Berlioz's book on orchestration "my Bible."


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> What will not be forgotten is the offense.


What about the right of those not to be offended by those who persistently_ say_ that they are offended? _;D_

If the "right not to be offended" (which is not and cannot be a right; since we own our own thoughts and musings) was taken to its _reductio ad absurdam_, then all intelligent criticism would eventually evaporate into the thinnest of ether.

-- Or is this what the politically correct crowd surreptitiously wants all along?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

EdwardBast said:


> The philosopher Kendall Walton, in his book _Mimesis as Make-Believe_, made a general argument that artworks are props in games of make-believe. In Walton's terms, imagining "all that stuff" is certainly a game Beethoven is inviting or intending the listener to play when listening to the symphony. That is what it meant to write a characteristic symphony like the Pastoral. But Beethoven would probably be perfectly delighted that you enjoy the work from a more abstract perspective.
> 
> I agree with Ken that Beethoven needn't have been embarrassed or have apologized for the explicitly programmatic elements. But I think most composers who did this sort of thing in the Romantic Era were self-conscious about it, as in the case of Berlioz and the Symphonie fantastique (see some guy's post above).
> 
> I think we should all remember, however, that this sort of explicit programmaticism was exceptional for Beethoven and shouldn't be taken as a license for literalistic interpretations like the numerous Shakespeare based interpretations of his piano sonatas.


Genius, like beauty, is its own excuse.

Why would a man of Beethoven's or Berlioz's stamp feel impelled to justify themselves to anyone?


----------



## EdwardBast

Marschallin Blair said:


> Genius, like beauty, is its own excuse.
> 
> Why would a man of Beethoven's or Berlioz's stamp feel impelled to justify themselves to anyone?


Probably because of a widely held belief among musical connoisseurs in the nineteenth century to the effect that explicitly programmatic music was somehow dodgy and cheap. It would not be surprising if Beethoven held this view himself. In Berlioz's case, the composer was not established as a musical genius at the time of the relevant remarks on the Symphonie fantastique.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> What about the right of those not to be offended by those who persistently_ say_ that they are offended? _;D_
> 
> If the "right not to be offended" (which is not and cannot be a right; since we own our own thoughts and musings) was taken to its _reductio ad absurdam_, then all intelligent criticism would eventually evaporate into the thinnest of ether.
> 
> -- Or is this what the politically correct crowd surreptitiously wants all along?


Well, I hope that's a straw man. The most intelligent conversations I've ever been a part of were free of offense.

At any rate, offense is a tool. Sometimes we give it accidentally, but in general it is something we choose to do for a reason. In a thread like this (and most others here), it is clearly given purposefully, and for a reason. If we can't honestly discuss the underlying reason, the strategy of which the offense was part, that interests me a great deal, and if necessary I'm very willing to give offense discussing that!

I'm not sure why the subject has turned toward offense though. I'm more interested in figuring out what is at stake in this discussion.


----------



## KenOC

EdwardBast said:


> Probably because of a widely held belief among musical connoisseurs in the nineteenth century to the effect that explicitly programmatic music was somehow dodgy and cheap. It would not be surprising if Beethoven held this view himself.


Said he, "In instrumental music, tone-painting taken too far loses its force." Outside of his stage works and the like, he wrote very little of it.


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## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Well, I hope that's a straw man. The most intelligent conversations I've ever been a part of were free of offense.
> 
> At any rate, offense is a tool. Sometimes we give it accidentally, but in general it is something we choose to do for a reason. In a thread like this (and most others here), it is clearly given purposefully, and for a reason. If we can't honestly discuss the underlying reason, the strategy of which the offense was part, that interests me a great deal, and if necessary I'm very willing to give offense discussing that!
> 
> I'm not sure why the subject has turned toward offense though. I'm more interested in figuring out what is at stake in this discussion.


Perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes here. I believe in manners, certainly; without cavil or qualification. Especially when discussing something as sacred as classical music and opera. _;D_

But manners are one thing and merely _disagreeing_ with what someone likes is quite another.

No one has the right to legislate what others should like or what they can say.

This PC 'Clothes-With-No-Emperor' nonsense about the right not to be offended in a public forum is balderdash.

Believing so is just wind in the chimes.


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## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> This PC 'Clothes-With-No-Emperor' nonsense about the right not to be offended in a public forum is balderdash.


I can't imagine anyone has said or implied anything along those lines. We've had this discussion before.

Now, back to "the importance of intent," I hope.

What was at stake in the discussion, if not the listener's right to use/appreciate/ignore a program?


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## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> I can't imagine anyone has said or implied anything along those lines. We've had this discussion before.
> 
> Now, back to "the importance of intent," I hope.
> 
> What was at stake in the discussion, if not the listener's right to use/appreciate/ignore a program?


I was only responding to the topic of what you in fact wrote, to wit: your post #181 on this thread where you say: "What will not be forgotten was the offense."

Period. End of sentence. End of paragraph.

<seraphic smile, waxing large>


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## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> I was only responding to the topic of what you in fact wrote, to wit: your post #181 on this thread where you say: "What will not be forgotten was the offense."
> 
> Period. End of sentence. End of paragraph.
> 
> <seraphic smile, waxing large>


That was in response to Blake's claim that this would all be forgotten. I doubt it will be. People remember being insulted and having their words willfully misconstrued. Things that are outside the bounds of "polite conversation" and, far from being necessary for "intelligent criticism," are actually very counter-productive, and so they must be intended.

Anyway!

Back to the more important and more interesting question (which I'd asked when Blake took the discussion this way):

What else is at stake in the conversation? Anything?


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## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> That was in response to Blake's claim that this would all be forgotten. I doubt it will be. People remember being insulted and having their words willfully misconstrued. Things that are outside the bounds of "polite conversation" and, far from being necessary for "intelligent criticism," are actually very counter-productive, and so they must be intended.
> 
> Anyway!
> 
> Back to the more important and more interesting question (which I'd asked when Blake took the discussion this way):
> 
> What else is at stake in the conversation? Anything?


Yeah, it happens to Woodduck I notice more than anyone-- and it seems I'm one of the few who's pointing it out.

Well, anyway, _adieu_, and back to posts of substance in orchestral music, like his.


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## Guest

science said:


> I suspect "some guy" wasn't completely self-aware when he denied that his post was meant to be normative.


I am completely aware that that post is not normative in the least.

I am also self-aware that I did not intend it to be normative in the least.

Really, science, it is simply not possible for you to see inside anyone else's head but your own. I know you don't believe this, but it's true, nonetheless.


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## Guest

Now, on to what is at stake.

Whether or not music is capable of standing on its own without any props.

The answer is "yes."

That's pretty much it. But there has been a good deal of window dressing.

That's the beauty of a conversation, that there can be a good deal of window dressing. All good clean fun.

The other thing at stake may be this: Can posters say anything they want without anyone reacting to it?

The answer there is "no."

That and the window dressing associated with that.

Oh. Wait. Five things. ("Three, sir.") Does the express intent of the composer matter?

There there's no simple answer. Here it seems to be, "If the express intent of the composer aligns with what I already believe, then 'yes'. Otherwise, 'no.'" And also "My guess as to what the composer _really_ intended is better than anyone else's."

And so, as often happens, the discussion is about ourselves and which of us gets to win--and not about music at all.


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## Stavrogin

It seems to me that the most important thing at stake, in this and other threads, is: "Is it ok to belittle posters because of their opinions/tastes?".


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## PetrB

Stavrogin said:


> It seems to me that the most important thing at stake, in this and other threads, is: "Is it ok to belittle posters because of their opinions/tastes?".


"Is it ok to belittle posters because of their opinions/tastes?"
NO!

"Is it ok to assume that because a poster has belittled _a premise or point given by another_ that is then directly belittling the opinions/tastes of the person who made that post?"
Also NO!


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## Stavrogin

PetrB said:


> "Is it ok to belittle posters because of their opinions/tastes?"
> NO!
> 
> "Is it ok to assume that because a poster has belittled _a premise or point given by another_ that is then directly belittling the opinions/tastes of the person who made that post?"
> Also NO!


Well, I disagree here. I'd say it depends. Sometimes it is.

- I like X
- You're an idiot

- I like X
- I think that the appreciation of X stems from idiocy

Is there really any difference between the two reactions?


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## violadude

Sorry, but "opinions" like "my 4 year old kid could write this atonal crap" or "X composer was a charlatan cause I don't like his music" or "Mozart is superficial and too lightweight" just deserve to be belittled.

Bring on the accusations of snobbery!


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## PetrB

Stavrogin said:


> Well, I disagree here. I'd say it depends. Sometimes it is.
> 
> - I like X; You're an idiot
> - I like X; I think that the appreciation of X stems from idiocy
> 
> Is there really any difference between the two reactions?


of course not 

But, to my point again, there was just a recent post (now removed) which was loudly claiming that by having posted a controverting argument to some points made, the poster who had made the controverting post had _invalidated the person ("ME")_, and not the content as counter-argument to that complainant's post. There is _far too much of this, and not just on TC._

Generations now have been brought up -- and taught in schools -- that 'what they feel' about a subject is as good or better than 'what they know.'

Naturally, if 'what you feel' is mistaken for what you know (and vice versa), any opinion of yours contested can be taken as a direct criticism of your person or intellect... and we see more of that than was around a generation or so earlier, making discussion of ideas, opinions, aesthetic platforms and all the rest _highly personal,_ any differences perceived as something personally critical. Where the hell does that get anyone I'd like to know but in a stew of misconstrued notions about what the comments are really upon.

If a comment is so snide or mean as to specifically say to - "I like X" either, "You're an idiot." or, "I think that the appreciation of X stems from idiocy." -- it is time to call 1-800-TcModerator. Simples.


----------



## PetrB

violadude said:


> Sorry, but "opinions" like "my 4 year old kid could write this atonal crap" or "X composer was a charlatan cause I don't like his music" or "Mozart is superficial and too lightweight" just deserve to be belittled.
> 
> Bring on the accusations of snobbery!


I wouldn't have even begun that post with its initial "Sorry." But you weren't born in a barn. I was.


----------



## violadude

PetrB said:


> Generations now have been brought up -- and taught in schools -- that 'what they feel' about a subject is as good or better than 'what they know.'
> 
> Naturally, if 'what you feel' is mistaken for what you know (and vice versa), any opinion of yours contested can be taken as a direct criticism of your person or intellect... and we see more of that than was around a generation or so earlier, making discussion of ideas, opinions, aesthetic platforms and all the rest _highly personal,_ any differences perceived as something personally critical. Where the hell does that get anyone I'd like to know but in a stew of misconstrued notions about what the comments are really upon.


Blind intuition is the foolish man's knowledge. We evolved intuitive senses as a useful tool for things like hunting in the wild, where you need to quickly determine whether or not an animal is dangerous enough to kill you (Hey, that lion's teeth look sharp, sharp seems bad for my organs, proceed with caution). However, with regards to most of the questions that we ask ourselves today pure intuition has far outlived its usefulness. In my experience, most of the time when a person's only defense of their claim is "it's just common sense" or "It just seems right", they tend to be pretty wrong.


----------



## Stavrogin

I am sure that both my example and violadude's ones are a way to oversimplify things 
But we're obviously talking of more informed opinions and less mean reactions.

I sort of agree with your "what I feel" vs "what I know" argument, but I think it does not really reach its target.

In the end, the more you listen and - to a lesser but still remarkable extent - read about music (i.e. the bigger the "what I know" part), the more your taste (the "what I feel" part) will be, let's say, "well-grounded"? "defendable"?
And it seems to me that none of the posters which accuse you or others of "arrogant ideology" has a knowledge of classical music which can be described as anything lower than "very deep".


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## science

violadude said:


> Sorry, but "opinions" like "my 4 year old kid could write this atonal crap" or "X composer was a charlatan cause I don't like his music" or "Mozart is superficial and too lightweight" just deserve to be belittled.
> 
> Bring on the accusations of snobbery!


In a case like that, I advocate being a better snob. The person who says such a thing is _so far below you_ on the cultural hierarchy that belittling him is just mean.

Anyway, even if it was someone within striking distance of you, kindness is better.


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## Nereffid

Stavrogin said:


> In the end, the more you listen and - to a lesser but still remarkable extent - read about music (i.e. the bigger the "what I know" part), the more your taste (the "what I feel" part) will be, let's say, "well-grounded"? "defendable"?


I would say that the more you know, the easier it is to articulate intellectual arguments validating what you feel.


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## science

Nereffid said:


> I would say that the more you know, the easier it is to articulate intellectual arguments validating what you feel.


Definitely improves the ability to put labels or names on things. I don't think the mystery has a bottom - in the end, I think we don't really know why we feel what we feel about anything - but with better descriptions we can communicate more clearly to people who feel differently.


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## Nereffid

science said:


> Definitely improves the ability to put labels or names on things. I don't think the mystery has a bottom - in the end, I think we don't really know why we feel what we feel about anything - but with better descriptions we can communicate more clearly to people who feel differently.


And also for some of us, that strong veneer of rationality helps convince us that our feelings are the correct ones and those who feel differently are wrong.


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## science

Nereffid said:


> And also for some of us, that strong veneer of rationality helps convince us that our feelings are the correct ones and those who feel differently are wrong.


That's a good point. Maybe I have a problem with that too....... Hmmmmm......

So I'm gonna pretend I didn't read that post.


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## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> of course not
> 
> But, to my point again, there was just a recent post (now removed) which was loudly claiming that by having posted a controverting argument to some points made, the poster who had made the controverting post had _invalidated the person ("ME")_, and not the content as counter-argument to that complainant's post. There is _far too much of this, and not just on TC._
> 
> Generations now have been brought up -- and taught in schools -- that 'what they feel' about a subject is as good or better than 'what they know.'
> 
> Naturally, if 'what you feel' is mistaken for what you know (and vice versa), any opinion of yours contested can be taken as a direct criticism of your person or intellect... and we see more of that than was around a generation or so earlier, making discussion of ideas, opinions, aesthetic platforms and all the rest _highly personal,_ any differences perceived as something personally critical. Where the hell does that get anyone I'd like to know but in a stew of misconstrued notions about what the comments are really upon.
> 
> If a comment is so snide or mean as to specifically say to - "I like X" either, "You're an idiot." or, "I think that the appreciation of X stems from idiocy." -- it is time to call 1-800-TcModerator. Simples.


Facts not feelings-- how hateful.

_;D_


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## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> In a case like that, I advocate being a better snob. The person who says such a thing is _so far below you_ on the cultural hierarchy that belittling him is just mean.
> 
> Anyway, even if it was someone within striking distance of you, kindness is better.


Which of course is an elitist remark.

-- I salute you.


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## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Which of course is an elitist remark.
> 
> -- I salute you.


As I've said often and without much irony, I can out-snob almost anyone.


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## PetrB

Stavrogin said:


> I am sure that both my example and violadude's ones are a way to oversimplify things
> But we're obviously talking of more informed opinions and less mean reactions.
> 
> I sort of agree with your "what I feel" vs "what I know" argument, but I think it does not really reach its target.
> 
> In the end, the more you listen and - to a lesser but still remarkable extent - read about music (i.e. the bigger the "what I know" part), the more your taste (the "what I feel" part) will be, let's say, "well-grounded"? "defendable"?
> And it seems to me that none of the posters which accuse you or others of "arrogant ideology" has a knowledge of classical music which can be described as anything lower than "very deep".


From a TC pal, recent, very much on this very point you make,
"...some arguments are better--more informed, better defended, have more intellectual heft--than others." 
I'll paraphrase the rest:
'there can come a lot of resentment from those who have made weak and weakly constructed arguments.'

So there ya go. Again this notion I saw mentioned very recently about 'winning,' (I was 'accused' of really liking to win... something new to me which I might, since I am a retiree, put on my resume if I apply for the job of being a Wal-Mart greeter.)

I can not see any "winning" even as a remote possibility in what is not a formal debate with adjudicators, and certainly not in an arena on a forum where there is such a variety of people of 'different musical weights and skills.' (Where would be the sport in that?)

These tête-à-tête discussions where several people butt heads back and forth over opposed points of view over a good number of running posts _are to simply keep the ball in the air and in volley as long as possible_... because after all, how many times, ever, through good argument, even, have any of us completely changed the mind of another? Hmmm?

I think fora will always have some who think for some reason, that in getting lots of agreement and likes that somehow turns them into some sort of highly respected maven, and that then somehow makes them feel I don't know what, important, recognized, respected? -- when if you think of that for but a moment, most everyone is anonymous, using a pseudonym, etc. Virtual reality at its best, in the context of which I do not get the importance, I guess, of that game at all.

Some acquaintances know me well enough to know I have a naiveté in spades about some human dynamics. One of them told me a bit gleefully that some people on Facebook take that as a serious competition, and are elated to be able to tell others, "I have 10,945 FB friends!" Well, she was right in anticipating my reaction. I was truly surprised: I'd've never thunk up that one.

Anyone who approaches this music forum similarly I think are the same ones who complain of 'they who dominate,' etc. and often those competitive 'race for place of rank' thoughts get to those who, like the FB zealous, _want to be the one with 10.945 'likes.'_ As that aforementioned colleague put it, their real complaint, which is in essence _"You think you're better than me?"_ is better and more accurately rephrased: _"I think you're better than me, and I resent you for it!"_ ... and I have no creative solution to changing one whit of that dynamic.


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## Nereffid

science said:


> That's a good point. Maybe I have a problem with that too....... Hmmmmm......
> 
> So I'm gonna pretend I didn't read that post.


Heh. What I wrote certainly seems right to _me_... :lol:

As you said, *kindness is better*.


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## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> As I've said often and without much irony, I can out-snob almost anyone.


Well, that's debatable. _;D_


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## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Well, that's debatable. _;D_


For some people.

j/k!!!!!


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## Ukko

PetrB said:


> [...]
> ...which is in essence _"You think you're better than me?"_ is better and more accurately rephrased: _"I think you're better than me, and I resent you for it!"_ ... and I have no creative solution to changing one whit of that dynamic.


Hah. Fortunately, I am adept at 'weight' adjustment. You may be better than me in a multitude of societal measurements and at any number of tasks, but if I remain confident in my superior ability at fishing boogers out of my nose... hey, got you there, bub. The secret (and the challenge) is to _believe_ the weighting, not just say it.

[You folks may have noticed that, contrary to my declaration of abandonment, I still post to this thread. It's because you people keep losing focus is why.]


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## science

Ukko said:


> [You folks may have noticed that, contrary to my declaration of abandonment, I still post to this thread. It's because you people keep losing focus is why.]


Sure, blame the victim.

This also is just kidding!


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## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> For some people.
> 
> j/k!!!!!


. . . of the First Order.


----------



## PetrB

Stavrogin said:


> I am sure that both my example and violadude's ones are a way to oversimplify things
> But we're obviously talking of more informed opinions and less mean reactions.
> 
> I sort of agree with your "what I feel" vs "what I know" argument, but I think it does not really reach its target.
> 
> In the end, the more you listen and - to a lesser but still remarkable extent - read about music (i.e. the bigger the "what I know" part), the more your taste (the "what I feel" part) will be, let's say, "well-grounded"? "defendable"?
> And it seems to me that none of the posters which accuse you or others of "arrogant ideology" has a knowledge of classical music which can be described as anything lower than "very deep".


One thing only about the above. I have, I know, formed some fairly clear sense of what my personal tastes, star-maps, ocean maps, and rudders are in what is a sea of a near endless array of classical music.

to pillage and revise a phrase coined by painter Barnett Newman: 
*Ideology is for music as Ornithology is for the Birds.*

I'm really that clueless in that arena. It is those who think those mean something, and believe in them, who see much around them and what others say in terms of ideologies. _(Buy a red car, notice all the other red cars; even see things not cars and not red you think are red cars.)_

I think, no matter how few good points can be realized via examining ideology, that they are about as blindingly restrictive and constrictive as crawling through a two foot diameter sewer, i.e. whatever is to be had from them, they should be a mere passing through point where you check a few thoughts and then move on out as quickly as possible and into the out of doors and open air. (To be blunt, I think they are attractive to the intellectually lazy (there, I've done it again.)

Whatever I think of'em, or those who adhere to or are guided by them, "I don't got one."


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## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> . . . of the First Order.


I suspect this is the conversation you've always wanted to have.


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## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> I suspect this is the conversation you've always wanted to have.


Well the 'epistemological problems of economics' was my clear first choice, but unhinged narcissism is always a close second.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Well the 'epistemological problems of economics' was my clear first choice, but unhinged narcissism is always a close second.


Econometrics vs. what I like to call Scientology, and you prefer econometrics?

That hurts.


----------



## PetrB

Ukko said:


> Hah. Fortunately, I am adept at 'weight' adjustment. You may be better than me in a multitude of societal measurements and at any number of tasks, but if I remain confident in my superior ability at fishing boogers out of my nose... hey, got you there, bub. The secret (and the challenge) is to _believe_ the weighting, not just say it.
> 
> [You folks may have noticed that, contrary to my declaration of abandonment, I still post to this thread. It's because you people keep losing focus is why.]


I know, man. It's that 'train wreck reflex,' you know you really don't want to look and see the carnage but something compels you to anyway.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Econometrics vs. what I like to call Scientology, and you prefer econometrics?
> 
> That hurts.


I actually prefer talking about myself-- so its win-win for the both of us. _;D_

-- Or Maria Callas, of course.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> I actually prefer talking about myself-- so its win-win for the both of us. _;D_
> 
> -- Or Maria Callas, of course.


Our silliness has saved the thread. The mods can't lock it now because they don't want to admit having read it.


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## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Our silliness has saved the thread. The mods can't lock it now because they don't want to admit having read it.


Bu. . . But. . . . . . I was in _earnest_. Am I missing something?


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Bu. . . But. . . . . . I was in _earnest_. Am I missing something?



View attachment 60637


PtrB, I won this thread.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> View attachment 60637
> 
> 
> PtrB, I won this thread.


You did today. . . . my separated-at-birth twin.


----------



## Bulldog

science said:


> I'm more interested in figuring out what is at stake in this discussion.


Nothing is at stake here. It's just a music discussion site, hopefully only a diversion from one's real life.


----------



## violadude

Bulldog said:


> Nothing is at stake here. It's just a music discussion site, hopefully only a diversion from one's real life.


Actually, I wagered my life savings on a bet on the outcome of one of Artmusic's polls. So a lot is at stake.


----------



## Guest

Wait a minute!

Stake?

Oh man. I've been thinking of steak all this time.


----------



## Lord Lance

Disagree completely. I hardly read the "background" of the work. Most important examples include Shostakovich's Leningrad symphony. Reading only colors the opinion and the listener makes colored inferences on the movement. Unless the work is explicitly programmatic [Eine Faust-Symphonie], I like to hear music for _what it is._


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> Facts not feelings-- how hateful.
> 
> _;D_


Imagine, having both facts and feelings, being aware of both, having thought about both enough to be articulate on each, and that all integrated while you also had "the wisdom to know the difference."

Hmmm. veddy inneresting. (;D back atcha.)


----------



## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> Imagine, having both facts and feelings, being aware of both, having thought about both enough to be articulate on each, and that all integrated while you also had "the wisdom to know the difference."
> 
> Hmmm. veddy inneresting. (;D back atcha.)


-- Provided that the feelings are based on the facts and not vice versa.


----------



## PetrB

violadude said:


> Actually, I wagered my life savings on a bet on the outcome of one of Artmusic's polls. So a lot is at stake.


Oh! Violadude ~ The _entire_ $2.79? I'm prayin for ya.


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> -- Provided that the feelings are based on the facts and not vice versa.


That seems like the right order to me. After all, we're not talking pairs of socks here.


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## Ukko

PetrB said:


> That seems like the right order to me. After all, we're not talking pairs of socks here.


Order is important, but often not chiseled in marble: Socks > longjohns or longjohns > socks, it really doesn't matter.


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## brotagonist

Ukko said:


> Order is important, but often not chiseled in marble: Socks > longjohns or longjohns > socks, it really doesn't matter.


Actually, it does matter  When layering for warmth, you want to alternate the over-under order to prevent snow from getting in


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## Ukko

brotagonist said:


> Actually, it does matter  When layering for warmth, you want to alternate the over-under order to prevent snow from getting in


The scientific term is 'interleave'. When starting at the skin, you can always finish with the coat (and boots) outside the pants... just add a layer where necessary. All _*native*_* Vermonters know this before the age of 10.

*The term "native Vermonter" is known to be an irritant among 'summer folks'. That may be why it is most often voiced in their presence.


----------

