# Does it matter if composers have dumb ideas about music?



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

This question came to me when I read an excerpt, in another thread, of Babbitt's infamous essay. Bluntly, I think Babbitt's thesis is dumb. But I also like a couple of his pieces quite a bit, especially _Philomel_, so maybe his ideas about music are not relevant.

Another example that comes to mind is something Elliott Carter said. From the notes to one of his pieces: "In general, my music seeks the awareness of motion we have in flying or driving of a car and not the plodding of horses or the marching of soldiers that pervades the motion patterns of older music."

He actually said this a bunch of times, in very similar words, and while Carter may have been a smart guy, this idea is dumb. Nonetheless, lots of people love his music. I don't, so part of me wants to say that my problem with his music has something to do with the dumb idea expressed in the quote, but I'm not sure I can defend that.

Thoughts?


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

isorhythm said:


> This question came to me when I read an excerpt, in another thread, of Babbitt's infamous essay. Bluntly, I think Babbitt's thesis is dumb. But I also like a couple of his pieces quite a bit, especially _Philomel_, so maybe his ideas about music are not relevant.
> 
> *Another example that comes to mind is something Elliott Carter said. From the notes to one of his pieces: "In general, my music seeks the awareness of motion we have in flying or driving of a car and not the plodding of horses or the marching of soldiers that pervades the motion patterns of older music."*
> 
> ...


Well, my mind is already working quite hard on finding a more poetic rephrasing or interpretation of those words, because admittedly, they would tend to damage the experience of his music a bit, when one has come to know them ...


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

My reply would be that there are serious differences in how this question can be interpreted. If you mean dumb ideas (ideas that you consider to be dumb on hearing or reading them) that actually become the basis of the music, and it shows, then I would tend to say yes it matters. If you mean a composer who wrote music you liked (or appreciated) who said dumb things (again, things you considered to be dumb) about music outside of the music itself, then I would tend to say no, it does not matter, or should not. Ultimately, I think that it is the music itself and your own response to it that matter. It may be annoying to know that a composer who wrote music you admire said things that you do not admire (dare I mention Wagner), but we have to consider the work as something that stands or falls on its own terms. No bad music becomes good because a composer said something clever about it, and no good music becomes bad because he said something dumb about it. (There may be specific examples that do not quite fit into this generality, such as a composer pointing out that he stole the music from someone else, without credit, which probably hurts the sense of the composition more than the music itself.)


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## Texas Chain Saw Mazurka (Nov 1, 2009)

isorhythm said:


> "In general, my music seeks the awareness of motion we have in flying or driving of a car and not the plodding of horses or the marching of soldiers that pervades the motion patterns of older music."


I've mulled it over a bit and I'm positive I have no idea what this means. Is it something to do with moving continuously instead of taking steps? Something about machines? Am I even warm? Should I feel very bad that this stupid idea is over my head?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

"In general, my music seeks the awareness of motion we have in flying or driving of a car and not the plodding of horses or the marching of soldiers that pervades the motion patterns of older music.” —Elliott Carter

Sorry, but I have to reject the idea of a composer been dumb, at least in these instances. I wouldn’t consider Babbitt or Carter ignorant and lacking in intelligence or insight. I’m far more inclined to believe that they may have been understandably deeply biased or prejudiced on their own behalf. I think it’s quite clear what Carter meant in the pace of his music and perhaps the pace of modern music in general—that it wasn’t about the horse and buggy era but more about the speed of today's cars and speedway. I think the pace of music started changing radically around the period of WW1, with some exceptions before, such as the Rite of Spring, and then look at the pace of music after the war in the 1920s when it went frantic, manic, crazy, with the same thing happening after World War II, certainly in the frantic pace of modern jazz. But Carter uses a metaphor that could also be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Perhaps it’s that some composers can be blinded by their own light. But dumb—I don’t think so.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

They where men of their time. Elitist as it is, Babbitt's article is typical of modernist ideology. I can more readily accept what Carter is saying, he wants to bring music into age of technology and speed. This kind of thinking started off with Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto. That's much more extreme, but it comes from a time before two world wars dampened the idea that humanity would be saved by technology.

Sometimes ideas which you call dumb, or ones which simply don't make sense, come out of a composer trying to present a pseudo-philosophy. Cage is the best example of this, and his opinions have a tendency to lack the logical rigor behind genuine philosophy.

Wagner is the best example of a composer who did the same, but with the pseudoscience of racial theory.

Sometimes composers say things which are better left unsaid. Many remember Percy Grainger for what he wrote about bondage and the Nordic race, but he also left us many interesting opinions on music - not only his own, but on others from ancient to modern - which are hardly discussed. He was the first academic to invite a jazz musician - no less than Duke Ellington - to play at an American university. He also praised Asian music for its wide variety of timbres. These facts provide a more rounded picture of him.

Its best when a musician writes about him or herself, presenting thoughts without need for agendas. One of the best autobiographies I've read was the one by Darius Milhaud. He was illuminating on his own music, and related it to that of others. There's a great anecdote in it of Milhaud conducting Pierrot Lunaire, and openly relating the challenges presented by the score and arduous process of rehearsing to Schoenberg. Although they disagreed on certain things, Milhaud felt he learnt from the challenge and Schoenberg presented him with an autographed score as a gift.

I've been avidly reading biographies and come to the realisation that the musicians who tended to be less prolific in words and wanted their music to speak for itself (eg. Strauss, Rachmaninov, Bartok) came under heavy fire from others, most often on ideological grounds. I've come go respect their sense of word economy, and limiting what they say to what is worth saying, rather it being part of some partisan agenda.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> Another example that comes to mind is something Elliott Carter said:"In general, my music seeks the awareness of motion we have in flying or driving of a car and not the plodding of horses or the marching of soldiers that pervades the motion patterns of older music."


This makes some sense if we abstract the thing that the plodding of horses and the marching of soldiers has in common which is not present in flying or driving - namely, a steady, regular beat. A constant meter providing a foundation and context for other rhythmic structures underlies nearly all Western music prior to the 20th century.

Carter might have cited any of a number of natural rhythms which exhibit regularity - the beating of the heart, the running of a gazelle, the beating wings of birds, dancing - but no doubt deliberately chose ones that sounded dull and unappealing. He wasn't being dumb; he was merely acting like a typical Modernist - like Babbitt, Boulez, at al. - belittling the past in order to make his work seem more necessary to the present.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sid James said:


> Sometimes ideas which you call dumb, or ones which simply don't make sense, come out of a composer trying to present a pseudo-philosophy. Cage is the best example of this, and his opinions have a tendency to lack the logical rigor behind genuine philosophy.
> 
> Wagner is the best example of a composer who did the same, but with the pseudoscience of racial theory.
> 
> Sometimes composers say things which are better left unsaid. Many remember Percy Grainger for what he wrote about bondage and the Nordic race, but he also left us many interesting opinions on music - not only his own, but on others from ancient to modern - which are hardly discussed. He was the first academic to invite a jazz musician - no less than Duke Ellington - to play at an American university. He also praised Asian music for its wide variety of timbres. These facts provide a more rounded picture of him.


If you want to be fair to Grainger, you might also be fair to Wagner and point out that his writings on music, including his theories of music drama, are insightful (if sometimes idiosyncratic and in the service of his own artistic needs) and are not reliant on his antisemitic sentiments. One rounded picture deserves another.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Woodduck said:


> If you want to be fair to Grainger, you might also be fair to Wagner and point out that his writings on music, including his theories of music drama, are insightful (if sometimes idiosyncratic and in the service of his own artistic needs) and are not reliant on his antisemitic sentiments. One rounded picture deserves another.


I think that Wagner's influence is obvious and his musical legacy secure without me having to pay tribute to him. Same goes with Cage for that matter. Perhaps it can be argued that their ideas - dumb or otherwise - give them notoriety which can be a plus? _Any publicity is good publicity_. They're certainly amongst the composers who attract a kind of cult following.

In contrast, Grainger beyond his famous arrangements (eg. Danny Boy) is an unknown quantity to many listeners. Although he was accepted as the finest interpreter of Grieg's piano music, many in the establishment didn't take him seriously otherwise. He did so much, even if we take into account his studies in folk music. He's underestimated in terms if both what he did and said.

In an objective sense, composers will inevitably be judged on not only the music but also the words they leave behind. Its logical to conclude that the potentiality for controversy increases if they are prolific in their opinions.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sid James said:


> I think that Wagner's influence is obvious and his musical legacy secure without me having to pay tribute to him. Same goes with Cage for that matter. Perhaps it can be argued that their dumb ideas give them notoriety which leads to people listening to their music. They're certainly amongst the composers who attract a kind of cult following.
> 
> In contrast, Grainger beyond his famous arrangements (eg. Danny Boy) is an unknown quantity to many listeners. Although he was accepted as the finest interpreter of Grieg's piano music, many in the establishment didn't take him seriously otherwise. He did so much, even if we take into account his studies in folk music. He's underestimated in terms if both what he did and said.
> 
> I didn't even mention the accusation of incest, which has no basis in fact. Grainger's mother meant so much to him as the rock in his early life. She raised him as a single mother and she died of suicide. The rumours added insult to injury, a tragedy for him but Grainger avoided comment on this.


I didn't ask you to pay tribute to Wagner. I asked if it might not be right to treat him as fairly as you treated Grainger. It's all right if you don't want to, but someone should. If Grainger is such an unknown quantity, it's probably safe to assume that his odd ideas on sex and race are even less well-known than his music, and that he's actually less in need of defense than Wagner, upon whom "pop history" has projected all sorts of half-truths and untruths that it's just irresponsible to perpetuate casually. A shocking number of people, it appears, think that his music is somehow expressive of fascism, eugenics, and war. Such impressions are hardly conducive to appreciation. It's conceivable that a few people are led to investigate composers through their extra-musical reputations, but I hardly think that's a significant phenomenon, and if a cultural meme is the only lure that brings in the curious they probably won't stick around long. I'm also unaware of the existence of any cults centered on Wagner or Cage or any other composer - but then I don't frequent dank basements and secret grottoes at the full moon. I suspect you'd agree that it's safer not to try to judge whose enthusiasm for what art is "kind of cult-like."


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Cults occur where the composer takes things beyond the realm of music to other areas like philosophy and politics. This is certainly the case with Wagner and Cage. Their prolific writings give the idea of music breaking out of its confines. They attract the most passionate followers. Online they are more polarising than other composers.

Incudentally, I edited my post above before reading your answer, Woodduck. The last paragraph is my most succinct answer to this thread topic. By extension, I think it also answers your criticisms.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sid James said:


> Cults occur where the composer takes things beyond the realm of music to other areas like philosophy and politics. This is certainly the case with Wagner and Cage. Their prolific writings give the idea of music breaking out of its confines. They attract the most passionate followers. Online they are more polarising than other composers.
> 
> Incudentally, I edited my post above before reading your answer, Woodduck. The last paragraph is my most succinct answer to this thread topic. By extension, I think it also answers your criticisms.


I do agree with your previous (edited) observation: "composers will inevitably be judged on not only the music but also the words they leave behind. Its logical to conclude that the potentiality for controversy increases if they are prolific in their opinions." Cage and Wagner, among others, certainly did an awful lot of talking and writing, and there's no avoiding it. What we do with it, though, is up to us.

Personally, I don't find it hard - and I find it important - to avoid listening to "composers" rather than to their music, and it's one of my chief irritants on the forum that many people allow ideas about an artist, be they true or false, to determine or taint their responses to his art. If we can't clear our minds of received ideologies and associations, we have no way of determining to what extent a composer's ideas are really relevant to his work, and therefore of value to us. Composers' thoughts can be very interesting, and we might want to see whether they can guide our listening in a positive way. But in the end we have the music itself, and over our response to it not even the composer should have jurisdiction.


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## Guest (Oct 11, 2018)

At least Babbitt put his money where his mouth is: he actually composed music. What I think is "dumb" is the constant quoting of what Einstein had to say on the subject.

Best of all is to listen to the music - which is what the composer is good at: their primary talent. Leave chuntering about music to the musicologists, the music historians, the fans...


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

I haven't listened to Carter's music, but the quote sounds far from dumb. It is quite obvious he wanted his music to reflect the new type of world and era people lived in, and he tried to articulate how those changes informed his musical ideas. I am not terribly eloquent myself, but I get what he tried to convey.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Woodduck said:


> I do agree with your previous (edited) observation: "composers will inevitably be judged on not only the music but also the words they leave behind. Its logical to conclude that the potentiality for controversy increases if they are prolific in their opinions." Cage and Wagner, among others, certainly did an awful lot of talking and writing, and there's no avoiding it. What we do with it, though, is up to us.
> 
> Personally, I don't find it hard - and I find it important - to avoid listening to "composers" rather than to their music, and it's one of my chief irritants on the forum that many people allow ideas about an artist, be they true or false, to determine or taint their responses to his art. If we can't clear our minds of received ideologies and associations, we have no way of determining to what extent a composer's ideas are really relevant to his work, and therefore of value to us. Composers' thoughts can be very interesting, and we might want to see whether they can guide our listening in a positive way. But in the end we have the music itself, and over our response to it not even the composer should have jurisdiction.


Theres truth in that, I think that listener responses are also affected by intent. We can include critics and musicologists here, who of course can also be composers. Whatever a person's level of knowledge or experience, they're likely to have opinions on music.

In the case of Wagner and Cage, its about people having polarising opinions about polarising composers. In other cases we have the opposite problem, where the composer is seen to have no charisma due to their opinions not being recorded. I recently read about Durufle, and not much is left of his opinions on music, he was very private. Those studying his life have to work harder to locate the man behind the music.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Marinera said:


> I haven't listened to Carter's music, but the quote sounds far from dumb. It is quite obvious he wanted his music to reflect the new type of world and era people lived in, and he tried to articulate how those changes informed his musical ideas. I am not terribly eloquent myself, but I get what he tried to convey.


Carter's innovation of metric modulation - music moving simultaneously at different speeds - probably relates go this. I know others like Ives - who Carter personally knew - Nielsen and Grainger used similar techniques.


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## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

Texas Chain Saw Mazurka said:


> I've mulled it over a bit and I'm positive I have no idea what this means. Is it something to do with moving continuously instead of taking steps? Something about machines? Am I even warm? Should I feel very bad that this stupid idea is over my head?


If you've ever broken the speed limit in a high-powered automobile this makes perfect sense.

Lots of past music invokes military movements (marches, galopping etc etc) or other forms of motion.

Carter here is clearly alluding to the modern form of motion. The adrenaline-inducing kind. We have much more exciting forms of motion nowadays than 100 years ago.

There are lots of tunes that make me want to plant my right foot on the gas.

Having said all that, I don't believe I've ever heard one of his pieces


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Just because you composed the music doesn't mean you're able to talk about it. Just because you listened to the music doesn't mean you're able to talk about it. Just because you write about music doesn't mean you're able to talk about it. I'm sure we've all at some point come across the "dancing about architecture" quote and in very many senses it is true, music is extremely difficult to talk about sensibly and without resorting to dry technical jargon, and in all likelihood you will look very silly trying to translate musical ideas into words. Most composers do their best thinking with sounds, not with words, and that is generally why they are composers in the first place.


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> This makes some sense if we abstract the thing that the plodding of horses and the marching of soldiers has in common which is not present in flying or driving - namely, a steady, regular beat. A constant meter providing a foundation and context for other rhythmic structures underlies nearly all Western music prior to the 20th century.
> 
> Carter might have cited any of a number of natural rhythms which exhibit regularity - the beating of the heart, the running of a gazelle, the beating wings of birds, dancing - but no doubt deliberately chose ones that sounded dull and unappealing. He wasn't being dumb; he was merely acting like a typical Modernist - like Babbitt, Boulez, at al. - belittling the past in order to make his work seem more necessary to the present.


Hm.. I am not sure I agree with this. Carter's chosen examples relate specifically to human industry and activities in relation to the world. I doubt he meant his examples to be belittling. The fastest means of transport people had were horses, the biggest obvious might and power they could gather were army, marching. Cars and airplanes relate both to civil and military, where earlier armies marched, now they fly, don't lets forget the nuclear weapons same airplanes carried to another continent during ww2- the marching is basically a show-off fetish that's left from bygone era some countries do in their spare time once a year on some holiday. .


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

Sid James said:


> Carter's innovation of metric modulation - music moving simultaneously at different speeds - probably relates go this. I know others like Ives - who Carter personally knew - Nielsen and Grainger used similar techniques.


Alright, now I want to hear it.


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## Texas Chain Saw Mazurka (Nov 1, 2009)

adrien said:


> If you've ever broken the speed limit in a high-powered automobile this makes perfect sense.
> 
> Lots of past music invokes military movements (marches, galopping etc etc) or other forms of motion.
> 
> ...


Riding a horse would certainly be more adrenaline-inducing than my average drive to work. I don't think he only had speed in mind. I'm not too familiar with Carter's music, but if memory serves, it mainly invoked a feeling of the guy stopped behind me at a traffic light having his car stereo on so loud that it plays over whatever I'm listening to.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Texas Chain Saw Mazurka said:


> I've mulled it over a bit and I'm positive I have no idea what this means. Is it something to do with moving continuously instead of taking steps? Something about machines? Am I even warm? Should I feel very bad that this stupid idea is over my head?


Not having done any research about the specific work for which Carter's comment was a program note, I'm guessing the remark had little to do with rhythm, meter, or tempo per se and more to do with broader philosophical notions of time, which was a lifelong fascination for Carter. There are two general ways in which people experience time: in terms of duration (how long an interval of time lasts), and in terms of change (how many things happen within an interval of time). I think Carter's remark was intended to show that the time spent in an airplane or car has the interesting feature of being experience-able in either manner: you can focus on the duration during which you're simply sitting still in the vehicle (even when the vehicle itself is moving), or you can focus on the change you observe if you look out the window. The time spent plodding on a horse or marching with soliders, by contrast, seems more amenable to the change model, since you are generally moving at the same rate at which things around you are changing. Philosophers (I'd have to check but I think Carter has cited Henri Bergson in some writings) have claimed that the duration model is a more "modern" phenomenon, and so the preference Carter expresses for airplanes and car over horses and soliders has less to do with modern music vs. old music or modern times vs. old times, but modern philosophies of time vs. old philosophies of time.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

It was a little bit trollish of me to use the word "dumb." To be clear, I don't think these were dumb guys, but I do think the particular sentiments they were expressing here were wrongheaded.

In Carter's case, I'm pretty sure that he didn't just mean he wanted his music to be fast or exciting - he wanted it to be about time, and the way he went about that was to have multiple tempos going at once that don't "fit together," that eradicate a sense of underlying pulse, and shift the focus to longer time durations.

That of course is all fine, but I'm baffled about why he would say that the sense of pulse in earlier music has something to do with soldiers. He said this multiple times - there is an interview on YouTube where he says it not long before he died - so I think he really did believe it. What does it mean that you can have a major composer who hears a musical pulse and thinks of soldiers rather than dance? And whose idea of the connection between music and life is so superficial and literal?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Only if they write dumb music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Thank you for affirming the obvious, which some here seem to be missing. How much pre-Carterian music suggests plodding horses or soldiers to any of us here? Would we evoke those particular phenomena to explain the kinetic qualities of Perotin, Bach, Chopin or Stravinsky? Why did Carter choose those uninspiring images in particular, one of them evoking wearisome labor (what kinds of horses "plod"?) and the other, regimentation and war? 

Sound waves, the revolution of the planets, the cycles of the day and year, the songs of birds, the chirping of crickets, the vibrations of dragonflies' wings, the beating of hearts, the inspiration and expiration of breath, the hammering of nails, virtually every form of locomotion... Rhythms exhibiting regular pulsation inform natural phenomena, our physical beings, and our sense of time; they are, in fact, the means by which time is ordered and made comprehensible and usable. The regularity of meter in music and poetry expresses a primal perception of how life functions. 

There are perfectly good artistic reasons for composing music in which the sense of meter is attenuated or eliminated altogether, and 20th-century composers were not the first to do it. Baroque composers loosened their normally tight metrical constraints in free fantasias and recitatives; the Romantic urge to make music a direct seismograph of emotion sometimes subordinated pulse to gesture until it effectively vanished. 20th-century music approached rhythm in a variety of ways; Carter's complex layers, not bound by an underlying pulse, are one approach. But I have to say that his music doesn't suggest, to me, flying in a plane or driving a car, any more than earlier music suggests farm labor or military drills.

People say all sorts of odd things to justify their choices. What I would say in contrast to Carter's odd remark is that his music largely abandons the two primary impulses that determined the structure of earlier music: song and dance. That's just fine, but he ought at least to acknowledge that Beethoven's pastoral folk are not plowing the fields or marching off to war. What they seem to be doing is kicking up their heels and giving thanks for the return of the sun.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I've plodded around many a time on a horse, and I admit that on occasion I've whistled or hummed music, admittedly old music, Beethoven or Brahms. Certainly never Elliott Carter. Perhaps there _is_ something to his comment!

Still, I've flown and driven in fast cars and have never had urges to whistle or hum Elliott Carter in those venues either. So what does that suggest?

I suspect that if I ever ride in a spaceship I will have the urge to hum some Ligeti, but I have yet to ride in a space ship and have no immediate plans to do so. So I can't say for certain I'll have a Ligeti urge in such transportation.

Maybe next time I hop onto Virgil I'll hum a little Elliott Carter. Hmm ... I wonder if I even _can_ hum Elliott Carter! Let alone whistle his music! On horseback or anywhere else!


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## Pantonal (Oct 11, 2018)

Crudblud said:


> Just because you composed the music doesn't mean you're able to talk about it. Just because you listened to the music doesn't mean you're able to talk about it. Just because you write about music doesn't mean you're able to talk about it. I'm sure we've all at some point come across the "dancing about architecture" quote and in very many senses it is true, music is extremely difficult to talk about sensibly and without resorting to dry technical jargon, and in all likelihood you will look very silly trying to translate musical ideas into words. Most composers do their best thinking with sounds, not with words, and that is generally why they are composers in the first place.


I like a lot of what you've said. I had the "dancing about architecture..." quote in mind after reading through some of this thread. However, as a composer I also think I'm pretty good at turning a phrase. While I can discuss the technicalities of my compositions, I find that people (audience) are more interested in the story behind the music, the "why" it was composed. Many composers believe their music should stand on its own and not require explanation. In my experience it just doesn't seem to work that way. People get music they already know, but when we're talking about a piece where the ink is still wet they're less likely to "get it." So I try to explain my quirkier pieces or give them titles that will give a listener a starting point. Creative titles are also more inviting than titles like "sonata" that mean nothing to most people.

As for Elliott Carter, I'm more inclined to think his point was less about the pace of his music and more about rhythmic complexity. It's unfortunate that there isn't more to the quote.

Steve


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

For Carter and Babbit the only thing I can think is: So what?

I like Carter not so much Babbit.


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## Guest (Oct 11, 2018)

Words composers write about music may be of some interest if you are curious about their process or how they expected their music to be performed. But I almost always find they contain nothing useful, particularly when they address the music of others.


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