# Questions & Answers



## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

I propose to start this topic in which we can ask and answer general questions about classical music and composers.

I come with the first question. Did Beethoven actually began to work on the 10th Symphony or it was just a hypothetical work made by the others after sketches of different works?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

As I understand it, Beethoven planned two symphonies and made sketches for both. The ideas for the 9th gradually sorted themselves out, and some sketches were never used. He never "started" the 10th so far as I know, but at one point certainly intended to.

Barry Cooper made a "realization" of the 1st movement Andante of the 10th from leftover sketches, which is short and not interesting at all (IMO!) He used about 50 sketches, not all of which can be reliably linked to a "Tenth" symphony.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._10_(Beethoven/Cooper)

Added: I see that the recording of Cooper's realization by Wynn Morris and the London SO has three movements -- Andante, Alegro, and Andante. Total about 20 minutes.


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## EricABQ (Jul 10, 2012)

When a piece of music is described as "dense" what is meant by that? I'm not sure I've ever really understood what people are talking about with regards to density.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

It can mean several different things, depending on context:

Contrapuntal density: lots of individual parts, presumably with their own rhythms. (Think Bach)
Thick orchestration: doublings galore and a generally "heavy" sound. (Think Brahms or Reger)
A fast "rate of change": Instead of moving slowly from one thing to another thing, it's one thing after another after another after another without much literal repetition (also applicable to harmony). (Think Mahler)

Music that has any or all of these qualities tends to be regarded as dense.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Why is the _Dies Irae _theme so popular with orchestral composers? Wikipedia lists, as only among the most notable, 22 composers and nearly 30 individual works, Rachmaninoff being its biggest fan. Some of these works I am very familiar with but scarcely notice the theme. (Haydn's Symphony No. 103, 'Drumroll." Really? Where? Holst's Saturn. Again, where?) I need to listen to all these pieces again.

What is the attraction? Is it symbolic or just ominous sounding?

Edit: I may also hear echoes of it in Varese's Arcana, the 11 or 12 note recurring motif, but that was not on the list.


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

Starting real simple, from one who is not classically-trained...

Could one expand on the concept of counterpoint - specifically concerning this (sometimes) claim that one composer is a more effective user of counterpoint than another?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Weston said:


> Why is the _Dies Irae _theme so popular with orchestral composers?
> What is the attraction? Is it symbolic or just ominous sounding?


If you write a requiem you need a _Dies Irae_ for example Lully wrote his _Dies Irae_ for the funeral of Louis XIV's wife, Queen Marie-Therese. Once you've done it, you realise that it is a massive piece of music.Also, since you don't have a _Gloria_ in a requiem mass, the _Dies Irae_ becomes the big centre piece.

Because it is a big meaty part of the ceremony and the funeral is a major rite of passage, it is inevitable that the theme will spill over into other works dwelling (especially) on death and judgement.

(Personal opinion throughout)


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I don't know about Haydn's use of it, but the plainsong Dies Irae was pretty much first used as an effect in the Witches Sabbath movement of the Symphonie Fantastique -- and I think it's use there was so effective, both in terms of the musical and figurative dread it portended that it inspired other composers to use it as a shorthand signature. Obviously Liszt's Totentanz (Dance of Death) took it to its logical conclusion -- but subtle quotations foreshadowing some sort of dread or death were easy things to do because the theme is so recognizeable (quotes in Mahler's Second and Das Klagende Lied come to mind).


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Avey said:


> Starting real simple, from one who is not classically-trained...
> 
> Could one expand on the concept of counterpoint - specifically concerning this (sometimes) claim that one composer is a more effective user of counterpoint than another?


Since no one else has stepped up to answer, I suppose I will.

*Counterpoint* is the use of more than one melody at a time, where the melodies interact with and against each other. This distinguishes it from:

*Monophony*, wherein there is only a single note, potentially doubled at the fifth (like a guitar power chord) or octave, as in medieval plainchant.
*Homophony*, where there is a single melody line, and everything else reacts to it, rarely or never the other way around (much popular music).
*Hetrophony*, where all of the parts played are variations on the exact same thing (found generally in folk music and Asian traditional music).

There is a continuum between entirely homonphonic melody dominated music (as much of classical music was from the classical era through the end of the Romantic) and "purely" contrapuntal music, where (theoretically) all parts would be of absolute equal importance. Usually, composers will make use of several or all of the above at various points throughout a piece. In that time, especially, composers would attempt to integrate the quite strict rules of counterpoint (detailing how parts should move, what was acceptable and what was prohibited) into the melodic/developmental structures of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Bach is often (rightly) looked at as a paradigm of counterpoint not only because he followed the rules, but how he was able to achieve an incredible balance between melody and harmony while respecting them.

It's hard to go into much more detail about what makes good and bad counterpoint without technical jargon or examples in musical notation, but I hope that answers at least part of your question.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Can someone analyse Nørgård's "Voyage into the Golden Screen" so I can understand how the infinity series in that works?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Can someone analyse Nørgård's "Voyage into the Golden Screen" so I can understand how the infinity series in that works?


There is a nice website that explains the series and gives several ways of calculating the next notes. I don't have the score of "Voyage into the Golden Screen" so I don't know if the example on the website is the same. The site seems to say it is.


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

silly one...

When a player, especially in string quartet or small ensemble, turn the score page, are they turn in right in the point that need to turn? or he memorize some of the score and turn it prior, or in opposite after the passing moment. Or.. the score had been arrange that player turn the page when he got the non playing moment. In this case, must be a heck for score published, or even for composer to 'adjust' this 'technically'.

tq


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

jurianbai said:


> silly one...


Not silly at all, in a quartet you do not usually use the score for playing, you use parts for each "voice" and if the copyist who writes the parts know his craft, he will let the Voices change page on different places in the score/music (where the player don't play). To verify, you can pick out the parts of any quartet in *IMSLP *to check!

/ptr


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead and Prelude Op. 32 No. 10 were inspired by Arnold Böcklin's paintings the Isle of the Dead and The Return. Who knows some other works that have a direct connection to a painting?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Respighi - Three Botticelli Pictures.

Oh, and a really obvious Mussorgsky work, but for the life of me I can't now recall if these were actual pictures or if he recreated the feeling of viewing an exhibition.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

DeepR said:


> Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead and Prelude Op. 32 No. 10 were inspired by Arnold Böcklin's paintings the Isle of the Dead and The Return. Who knows some other works that have a direct connection to a painting?


The Rake's Progress


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Weston said:


> Respighi - Three Botticelli Pictures.
> 
> Oh, and a really obvious Mussorgsky work, but for the life of me I can't now recall if these were actual pictures or if he recreated the feeling of viewing an exhibition.


They were actual drawings and watercolors by Viktor Hartmann. Most are now lost.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

DeepR said:


> Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead and Prelude Op. 32 No. 10 were inspired by Arnold Böcklin's paintings the Isle of the Dead and The Return. Who knows some other works that have a direct connection to a painting?


Mark-Anthony Turnage; 'Three Screaming Popes' for orchestra -- after the 'Pope' portraits by Francis Bacon.








Bohuslav Martinů - The Frescoes of Piero della Francesco,for orchestra

Debussy ~ Poissons d'or, from Images, Book II (for piano) was triggered by this Japanese Lacquer Panel:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Respighi, Church Windows (if stained glass counts).


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## jtbell (Oct 4, 2012)

Weston said:


> Oh, and a really obvious Mussorgsky work, but for the life of me I can't now recall if these were actual pictures or if he recreated the feeling of viewing an exhibition.


As KenOC noted, they were real pictures by Viktor Hartmann. You can see images of the surviving ones here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_at_an_Exhibition#Gallery_of_Hartmann.27s_pictures


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

What do the words "Naxos," a Greek island, and "Chandos," which sounds vaguely Aegean related but probably isn't, have to do with classical music? Are these names from classical antiquity?

As to that, what does "Decca" mean if anything?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

And Deutsche Grammophon for that matter?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> And Deutsche Grammophon for that matter?


It means German Gramophone ,a gramophone is a record player---are you kidding us ?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Weston said:


> What do the words "Naxos," a Greek island, and "Chandos," which sounds vaguely Aegean related but probably isn't, have to do with classical music? Are these names from classical antiquity?
> 
> As to that, what does "Decca" mean if anything?


The original name of the company was Dulcephone, the founder took the D from this and replaced the M from Mecca with the D.
The reason for this choice is that Decca in pronounced the same in most languages.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Weston said:


> What do the words "Naxos," a Greek island, and "Chandos," which sounds vaguely Aegean related but probably isn't, have to do with classical music? Are these names from classical antiquity?
> 
> As to that, what does "Decca" mean if anything?


From Naxos.com

One of the most frequently asked questions we receive is "why are you called Naxos?" The answer is simple. Naxos, the famous Greek island, has long been associated with classical Greece, a land of art and culture, an obvious link. The island also gave birth to the legend of Ariadne, which has inspired many a composer, most notably Richard Strauss, whose opera Ariadne auf Naxos helps to reinforce the musical and artistic connotations of our name.

Chandos is British (cribbed from you know where). The name "Chandos" refers to James Brydges, the first Duke of Chandos (1674-1744), at whose Palladian-style house, Cannons, Handel was engaged as a composer-in-residence for approximately a year (1717-1718). In addition to the eleven "Chandos" anthems, Handel also wrote other works, including Acis and Galatea, at Cannons. The company originally had its office in Chandos House, Chandos Place, London SW1, the street name derived from the Duke.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

The Bocklin painting "Isle of the Dead" was also in Strindberg's mind when he wrote the play "The Ghost Sonata" -- and a stage direction directs the painting to be shown on an empty stage at the end.


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## maestro267 (Jul 25, 2009)

No question or answer yet, but I just want to say this is a great idea for a thread. Often, I have questions that don't really warrant their own separate thread, so a thread like this (for general questions that can be answered quickly, in just one or two posts) is really quite handy.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Re: paintings that inspired music. Granados's piano suite 'Goyescas'. A few years later the composer transcribed material from that work for his opera about Goya himself.


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## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

Why Tchaikovsky was never included as part of "The Five"?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

TudorMihai said:


> Why Tchaikovsky was never included as part of "The Five"?


I think it was because he was not considered by the others as a "musical nationalist," far too Europe-leaning. Maybe somebody can check me on this...


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I think it was because he was not considered by the others as a "musical nationalist," far too Europe-leaning. Maybe somebody can check me on this...


That's how I've understood it. The Five were particularly at odds with Anton Rubinstein (Tchaikovsky's teacher).

Plus, we already have The Six.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

That is exactly the opinion I heard on a recent BBC podcast about the top 50 defining moments in music history. Though he was considered a national hero, Tchaikovsky's music was not intrinsically Russian. I don't remember the name of the podcast or the musicologist now.


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## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

When Mahler wrote the 10th Symphony, the sad, even terrifying character of the work is given by the fact that he was depressed after he discovered his wife's infidelity or because he somehow knew that he was nearing the end of his days? Or the two combined?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

TudorMihai said:


> When Mahler wrote the 10th Symphony, the sad, even terrifying character of the work is given by the fact that he was depressed after he discovered his wife's infidelity or because he somehow knew that he was nearing the end of his days? Or even both?


Not the latter. Mahler was not aware that he would die soon when he wrote Das Lied von der Erde, the 9th, or the 10th symphonies, despite what some have said and repeated on multiple occasions.

As far as we know, the first two movements were written before he discovered his wife's affair, and the last three after it (with the dissonant 9-note chord in the first movement inserted after the fact, so to speak). Anyway, Mahler's state of mind at the time was troubled as much as depressed. He became slavishly devoted to Alma (so much that it bothered her as much as flattered her vanity).

That said, he recovered well enough to finish the symphony in draft score, conduct the premiere of the 8th, and go back to his normal job at the New York Philharmonic, so while it certainly didn't help his health, his not dying for another 10 months or so seems to indicate it wasn't quite the finishing blow it's been made out to be.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Counterpoint in music is the interaction between different melodic lines going on simultaneously .
It comes from the Latin phrease "punct contra punctum", or point against point . Bach is considered the greatest master of coutnerpoint in music, although many other composers are admired for their skill in it .
The most famous example of counterpoint is the fugue, which comes from the term "to flee" .
A typical fugue, which may be an independent composition or a passage within one, consists of a basic melodic line introduced by one voice , with a response by another voice (melodic loine, not an actual voice 
coming in a litle later starting on a different pitch . There can be other melodic lines ,too, and it's sort of a melodic relay race with one basic melodic idea . 
Harmony is the study of how one chord progresses to another ; it's the vertical aspect of music. Counterpoint is the study of how different melodic lines interact with each other , or the horizontal aspect of music . Music students typically take courses in both, usually starting with harmony, and then a course on counterpoint . I did this myself . 
There are strict rules in counterpoint as to how the melodic lines are to procede . There are different "species" of counterpoint, starting with one line against another, and then adding more and more different melodic lines. You start out with a "cantus firmus", or fixed song" in Latin, and then you come up with another melodic line to add to it , and them more and more different lines .
It's far from being an easy subject, but it's very important training for aspiring musicians , composers or performers .


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Max Reger also wrote an orchestral work based on this famous painting. I recnetly borrowed a Reger CD on the BIS label conducted by Leif Segerstam with it from my library .


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## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

I know quite a few American composers (not to mention how many European composers I know) but the only Asian composer I know is Akira Ifukube which is not nearly enough and I want to discover some more. Can someone recommend me some good Asian composers?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

TudorMihai said:


> I know quite a few American composers (not to mention how many European composers I know) but the only Asian composer I know is Akira Ifukube which is not nearly enough and I want to discover some more. Can someone recommend me some good Asian composers?


Toru Takemitsu is among my top 10 composers of any era. I also enjoy Unsuk Chin and some of Tan Dun's less crossover-ish works (his concert music rather than his soundtracks).


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

Why did most composers stop using opus numbers in the 20th century?


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Garlic said:


> Why did most composers stop using opus numbers in the 20th century?


Good one. I never understood why Berg and Hindemith stopped using opus numbers well into their careers - especially Berg seeing he wrote relatively few works anyway.


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## Schubussy (Nov 2, 2012)

TudorMihai said:


> I know quite a few American composers (not to mention how many European composers I know) but the only Asian composer I know is Akira Ifukube which is not nearly enough and I want to discover some more. Can someone recommend me some good Asian composers?





Mahlerian said:


> Toru Takemitsu is among my top 10 composers of any era. I also enjoy Unsuk Chin and some of Tan Dun's less crossover-ish works (his concert music rather than his soundtracks).


Toshio Hosokawa is worth a listen too, if you don't mind your music a bit avant-garde.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> The Rake's Progress


The idea of a tale told in that era was triggered when Stravinsky saw an exhibition of the prints of William Hogarth (1697 - 1764) in the Art Institute of Chicago.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

superhorn said:


> Harmony is the study of how one chord progresses to another ; it's the vertical aspect of music. Counterpoint is the study of how different melodic lines interact with each other , or the horizontal aspect of music . Music students typically take courses in both, usually starting with harmony, and then a course on counterpoint . I did this myself .


Something I never quite understood about music theory: presumably a good musician can read a score and hear the music in his mind, and, conversely, can clearly hear music in his mind and then write down what he imagines.

This being the case, what does he need music theory for? Is the study of music theory perhaps precisely the process by which a musician develops his inner ear, or does it have some other purpose? How many students of music learn to write perfectly respectable harmony or counterpoint without being able to hear in their mind what they just wrote?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

brianvds said:


> Is the study of music theory perhaps precisely the process by which a musician develops his inner ear, or does it have some other purpose?


We are talking about standard tonality here. It's a bit like learning grammar. You need to know the rules to know when to break them and what the effect will be.It also helps you construct a decent sentence. The point about learning music theory is that it teaches you the (standard) possibilities so that you can speed up the process - maybe the standard three chord trick with all the voice leading tricks. If it sounds too "mechanical" or not "lively" enough or quite what you want, you have another range of possibilities - sevenths and sus chords. If that doesn't work, you can break the rules - open fifths and octaves, sixths and tritones. As you do this,you will also develop your ear and be able to "hear" (internally) what will sound good. Think poetry for an analogy, you have all the rules about rhyme and scansion and most people can write greeting card doggerel based on these simple rules but to get better you develop an inner ear for language.



brianvds said:


> How many students of music learn to write perfectly respectable harmony or counterpoint without being able to hear in their mind what they just wrote?


Just as you can write a basic greeting card message without much "spirit" you could probably write a reasonable hymn harmonisation or voluntary "by the book". It would be "respectable" (just) but it may not feel properly "musical". It's a bit like vamping along to a tune. If you know the tricks you can do it mechanically - just like a lead sheet but if you have the feel for it, it will sound a lot better - the difference between an average jazz pianist and a good one.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

brianvds said:


> presumably a good musician can read a score and hear the music in his mind, and, conversely, can clearly hear music in his mind and then write down what he imagines.


To add to what Taggart wrote, the ability to write down what one imagines is greatly improved by a study of music theory. The analogy to grammar is appropriate here too: most people can speak in complete sentences and with correct subject-verb agreement, but for lots (and lots and lots... sorry, I'm a former teacher) of people, something gets lost in translation when it comes time to write it down. People who know instinctively where to insert pauses and cadences when speaking can be utterly clueless when it comes to using commas and periods in writing.

Here's an example: when I was in college I had a friend who wrote a harmonization of "Silent Night" for our composition class. In terms of the actual pitches he wanted, his notation was spot on. But he wrote the whole thing in 4/4 time, more or less out of reflex, and didn't realize anything was amiss until it came time to perform it and he found that the downbeats of the melody didn't align with the downbeats of his arrangement.


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## Guest (Aug 4, 2013)

Ok - I've got a question. What does music sound like when it's played exactly according to the score? I imagine these days computers and synthesizers can be used to produce music exactly in tune, perfectly timed, perfectly synchronized across instruments, etc. 

Are there any recordings (or midi files?) of famous classical works so constructed? Which composers sound better and which worse when so transcribed? What does such an exercise in mechanical transcription tell us about the vagaries of musical notation and/or human preferences for imperfections?


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

^^^^
Seems like I remember someone posting a link for some sampling computer performed orchestral works. Sounded pretty good. Frank Zappa's Civilization Phase III sounds incredible, but the music is very dark. I like some of the pieces, but never warmed to the album as a whole.

He also produced an early synclavier generated performance of works by an obscure Italian composer bearing his namesake. Francesco Zappa who lived from 1717-1803.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

BPS said:


> What does music sound like when it's played exactly according to the score? I imagine these days computers and synthesizers can be used to produce music exactly in tune, perfectly timed, perfectly synchronized across instruments, etc.


For the vast majority of cases the question is not answerable because many musical parameters are not "exact-ifiable." If a score indicates that the tempo should be "allegro," for example, all you really know is that it should be somewhat fast. Exactly how fast (120 beats per minute? 130?) is usually not specified. Even when it is specified via metronome markings, in relatively few cases is the metronome marking expected to stay constant. The same is true for volume. The marking "pianissimo" simply means "very soft," but what one musician considers very soft may not be the same as what another musician considers very soft. And how do you tell a computer or synthesizer what "expressivo" means? You could arbitrarily pick an exact speed, dynamic level, etc. to represent "expressivo," but someone else could program wholly different values of speed and volume and claim with equal validity to be playing the score "exactly."


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Eschbeg and Taggart: Not sure I quite follow what you are saying, but it seems to me that my guess, namely that studying theory helps to develop the inner ear, was at least partially correct. But I still cannot quite make sense. A composer like Schubert presumably had a more or less perfect ear. I would presume that he could pick up a Bach fugue and read through it, hearing what he read in his mind's ear. But late in life, he took counterpoint lessons, and I cannot quite work out why. Couldn't he hear a fugue in his mind and simply write down what he heard? 

The analogy with grammar seems to me somewhat imperfect, because just about all classical composers that I am aware of made a very formal study of music theory, whereas plenty of very skilled and fluent writers never did a degree in English (or whatever language they write in). It occurs to me that most of them did study language at least to high school level, mind you. 

But in my native language at least, I am at a loss to explain the grammar to anyone. I never studied it like that, and the reason why I can write reasonably fluently in both my native tongue and English is because I read a lot, rather than having gone to any lengths to learn the rules of the grammar. Now I would guess that someone with a good enough inner ear to be able to read through scores might well benefit from it in the same way (I once read that when Benjamin Britten was in his early teens, he would lie on his bed in the boarding school and read through thick musical scores rather than adventure novels, to the astonishment of his school mates.) 

I would guess that most musicians and composers do the same. In the process they probably develop their musical intuition to a very high level. A person who spends a lot of time reading books (or poetry) will achieve the same, even if he never makes any sort of formal study of grammar or story construction or the rules of rhyme. That, at least, is my guess. 

And I cannot quite work out whether it is at this point where the analogy with music theory breaks down. There are lots and lots of professional writers who never formally studied language beyond high school level. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of a single classical composer, famous or otherwise, who did not study formal music theory.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

BPS said:


> Ok - I've got a question. What does music sound like when it's played exactly according to the score? I imagine these days computers and synthesizers can be used to produce music exactly in tune, perfectly timed, perfectly synchronized across instruments, etc.
> 
> Are there any recordings (or midi files?) of famous classical works so constructed? Which composers sound better and which worse when so transcribed? What does such an exercise in mechanical transcription tell us about the vagaries of musical notation and/or human preferences for imperfections?


Well, here you can go see for yourself whether you can distinguish between a human musician and a MIDI file:

http://reverent.org/midi_or_virtuosi.html

I would guess it depends on the music, with Bach, Mozart and Haydn probably sounding better in MIDI format than Beethoven or Chopin.


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

Well, most of amateur classical composer did not (or rarely need) to learn how to use MIDI to its real power, in regards to create 'human'-like expressive performance. But profesional in sound engineer or those who used to play in synthesizer can do that.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

brianvds said:


> Something I never quite understood about music theory: presumably a good musician can read a score and hear the music in his mind, and, conversely, can clearly hear music in his mind and then write down what he imagines.
> 
> This being the case, what does he need music theory for? Is the study of music theory perhaps precisely the process by which a musician develops his inner ear, or does it have some other purpose? How many students of music learn to write perfectly respectable harmony or counterpoint without being able to hear in their mind what they just wrote?


Solfege, or ear-training, can be purely intervallic, i.e. you hear one interval after the next, and adding them up can then know what the pitches are in a line of length. It is also very much about harmony, intervals, chords, chord parts as altogether and moving in line as well. // My final exam included sight-singing an atonal single line, taking a dictation on the same, as well as a more common practice harmony dictation, a four-part chorale, played sort of slowly, twice... from that you write it down. I passed it with a pretty high mark, but all my classmates also passed the course. (To outsiders -- who also may think the ability to read a score is phenomenal -- what the skills required for any undergraduate to pass that course do seem near miraculous.)

What this does: you are inner-ear stronger, but more than just note for note, your ear for harmony is made pretty solid.

When you get to polyphony / counterpoint, no matter how perfect a composer's ear is, some have a much more innate disposition to counterpoint than others. Modal counterpoint and 18th century counterpoint, no matter how minimal the requirement may be, are also must have to pass courses every undergraduate music major takes. [[ To return to ear-training; that last requirement of taking a four-part dictation meets one standard expected of classical musicians, whether they play a single-line instrument, keyboard, or compose. A trained classical musician is to be expected to be able to completely track four individual voices, whether in homophonous or polyphonic textures. ]]

Also, one does not really hear the whole of a canon or fugue in ones head at the conception or in the execution of same; you do hear the _beginning of it_ and with your musical sense, and all the training, recognize it as one, or know what you can do with it.

As far as why people with the native gift of a fine ear still need theory, well, you could make the analogy that persons with innate knowledge of wood, the various sorts, a sense of their density and grain, would automatically and spontaneously become fine woodworkers, either fine art carving or furniture making, cabinetry, etc. The implied conclusion after seeing why that is not enough is training, training, and more training, each with lots of practice thrown in.

Theory shows, technically, how music _works_ -- and if well taught what is learned can be somehow applied to include any kind of music and how it works. _It is no more a bible of rules than a craftsman's tools are a collection of rules on how to build a fine table._ _The tools, how they work, behave, what problems they are best utilized for in solving the problem, are all part of what a thinking student who was well-taught theory has in their arsenal of tricks and tools._


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

brianvds said:


> A composer like Schubert presumably had a more or less perfect ear. I would presume that he could pick up a Bach fugue and read through it, hearing what he read in his mind's ear. But late in life, he took counterpoint lessons, and I cannot quite work out why. Couldn't he hear a fugue in his mind and simply write down what he heard?


I think you are underestimating what the act of composing involves. Every composer is different, of course, but in very few cases is a piece of music born fully-formed in a composer's head and all he or she has to do is put it on paper. In this regard, Mozart is the exception rather than the rule. A quick glance at the sketchbooks of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bruckner, Wagner, Verdi, Beethoven (lord have mercy... Beethoven sketchbooks...), and so on shows how laborious the composing process can be. For them, and for most composers, writing music involves endless editing, correcting, excising, and revising. It's very hard to do that in your head. It's not impossible, but without pen and paper it's very hard to realize, for example, that the global modulation from C major to A-flat major in the middle of the development section of the last movement of your hour-long symphony is better accomplished by using an augmented sixth chord rather than a secondary dominant. That kind of revision isn't simply a matter of making a quick mental adjustment with your inner ear. You have to rethink basically every parameter of music: voicing, phrasing, orchestration, melody, accompaniment, etc.

I think you are also underestimating what "writing it down" means. It isn't just transcription, as if the paper were a kind of tape recorder for the music sounding in your head. The analogy to grammar is not meant to apply to _every_ aspect of music (no analogy does that; otherwise it wouldn't be analogy but identity), but it does apply here: writing down a sentence isn't simply a matter of putting to paper what would come out of your mouth naturally. If it were, then adults wouldn't ever misuse commas and periods or use incomplete and run-on sentences. The ability to write something down, both in language and in music, presupposes some baseline knowledge of structure and syntax, and that's where learning grammar or music theory helps.

Here's another analogy, this time a musical-to-musical one: if you're a newcomer to the piano and you memorize with perfect accuracy what pitch every key on the keyboard produces, and you're also able to read music, it doesn't then follow that you are now capable of playing a Liszt etude. Just because you know exactly which keys on the instrument correspond to which notes on the paper doesn't mean you have everything you need in order to play it. The one thing that's missing is your hands' "knowledge" of the keyboard. Your hands have not yet internalized the feeling of arpeggiated chords, scalar sequences, etc. In short, the "structure" of piano technique does not yet come intuitively to your hands. In order to develop that, you need to do things that seem secondary to music like practicing generic scales and chord progressions. That's what music theory does for your inner ear. It provides a structure to something that you might be able to conceptualize but can't necessarily _execute_ on your own. When you internalize the theory behind augmented sixth modulations, then not only are you better able to write down that great chord progression you've been hearing in your head, but you are also better prepared to produce ideas in that _other_ piece of music whose last movement's global modulation your inner ear hasn't quite yet decided how to execute.



brianvds said:


> The analogy with grammar seems to me somewhat imperfect, because just about all classical composers that I am aware of made a very formal study of music theory, whereas plenty of very skilled and fluent writers never did a degree in English (or whatever language they write in). It occurs to me that most of them did study language at least to high school level, mind you.


The last sentence is the key. Very skilled and fluent writers _did_ study language. You're right that they did not complete an advanced degree in English, but neither did classical composers of the past complete advanced degrees in music. Innate talent of course plays a role: some students pick up on language and grammar more easily than others, just as some musicians pick up on theory more easily than others. And it is possible to make a career in writing without more than a rudimentary training in grammar. But given two different schools, one that teaches grammar and one that does not, all else being equal, the first school is more likely to produce career writers, even if the occasional literary Mozart is found in the second school. Neither grammar nor theory is absolutely _necessary_ in their respective fields; they just make things way _easier_.

Finally, it should be noted that the value of learning grammar or music theory is not only utilitarian, i.e. giving you tools to do things. They also help in developing a love of the art. If you're the kind of student who is genuinely interested in how sentences are put together, chances are you're more likely to want to start putting them together in your spare time, maybe even as a career. The same is true of music theory.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

^^^^ Superb!...........................


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Solfege, or ear-training, can be purely intervallic, i.e. you hear one interval after the next, and adding them up can then know what the pitches are in a line of length. It is also very much about harmony, intervals, chords, chord parts as altogether and moving in line as well. // My final exam included sight-singing an atonal single line, taking a dictation on the same, as well as a more common practice harmony dictation, a four-part chorale, played sort of slowly, twice... from that you write it down. I passed it with a pretty high mark, but all my classmates also passed the course. (To outsiders -- who also may think the ability to read a score is phenomenal -- what the skills required for any undergraduate to pass that course do seem near miraculous.)


It does indeed seem rather miraculous to me, when I think of all that is involved in reading a score: recognizing hundreds, even thousands of different chord forms on sight, instantly correcting for the confusion of transposing instruments and various clefs, then hearing them in the mind, with the correct orchestral sound. And how on Earth can the eye possibly take in a page from a large orchestral score at a glance, I wonder.

Seeing as all music students manage the trick, it is obviously not miraculous, but I remain rather astonished by it, because I never managed the trick of reading even a single line - I simply cannot get to the point where I can instantly recognize an interval on a score. With every interval, I first have to visualize a keyboard and count notes. :lol:

I suppose one really does need a certain amount of talent: I find it just as miraculous that anyone can manage to complete a degree in mathematics or computer programming.



> What this does: you are inner-ear stronger, but more than just note for note, your ear for harmony is made pretty solid.


Well, looks like my initial guess, namely that the study of theory is precisely how a musician develops an inner ear that might otherwise not develop in any other way, was correct, though I get the impression there is more to it that I can't put my finger on.



Eschbeg said:


> I think you are underestimating what the act of composing involves. Every composer is different, of course, but in very few cases is a piece of music born fully-formed in a composer's head and all he or she has to do is put it on paper. In this regard, Mozart is the exception rather than the rule. A quick glance at the sketchbooks of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bruckner, Wagner, Verdi, Beethoven (lord have mercy... Beethoven sketchbooks...), and so on shows how laborious the composing process can be. For them, and for most composers, writing music involves endless editing, correcting, excising, and revising. It's very hard to do that in your head.


Yes indeed, but presumably, if you can write down what you hear in your head, you need not do all the composing and editing in your head. You write down your ideas, and as you read over them, you can clearly hear them in your head.

Now there is an analogy with writing here that does occur to me. When we first learn to read and write, we rather laboriously read and write words letter by letter. However, as we get more fluent, we begin to instantly recognize entire words on the page. Perhaps this is more or less analogous to recognizing chords: initially you have to laboriously sound the chord in your mind note by note; in due course you learn to recognize it on sight.



> But given two different schools districts, one that teaches grammar and one that does not, all else being equal, the first district is more likely to produce career writers, even if the occasional literary Mozart is found in the second district. Neither grammar nor theory is absolutely _necessary_ in their respective fields; they just make things way _easier_.


I don't know - people have been telling stories for long ages before anyone even knew that there is such a thing as grammar. Of course, such stories were perhaps rather more simple than _War and Peace_. It seems to me that one similarity between classical music and literature is that they are both written down, so both require fluent reading and writing skills.

Now I don't know if this is true, but it certainly SEEMS to me that acquiring reading skills in music is almost infinitely more difficult than acquiring them in language. I simply cannot imagine how one can learn to instantly recognize and audiate even simple root position chords in various keys, let alone all their inversions and other variations. In music theory books, they conveniently write down absolutely everything in C major! :lol:

In other words, from my position of ignorance, it looks like it would in fact be easier to just have a good ear for intervals, and just learn to audiate chords one note at a time (presumably you'll eventually be able to do it virtually instantaneously, just as you learn to recognize written words instantaneously), rather than to spend years learning to recognize various chords at sight and associate them with a particular sound. Learning chords seems to me like the equivalent of learning Chinese ideograms, whereas learning intervals is like learning an alphabet.

But perhaps you never achieve fluency unless you learn the ideograms?



> Finally, it should be noted that the value of learning grammar or music theory is not only utilitarian, i.e. giving you tools to do things. It also helps to develop a love of the craft. If you're the kind of student who is genuinely interested in how sentences are put together, chances are you're more likely to want to start putting them together in your spare time, maybe even as a career. The same is true of music theory.


I don't know. I absolutely love reading and writing, but I can hardly imagine anything quite as mind-numbingly boring as in-depth analyses of sentences and books. Perhaps I'm just lazy. But when I was at school I detested my language studies precisely because of the above-mentioned boredom, despite the fact that I was an enthusiastic reader - indeed, I probably read more than any of my language teachers. I never could see the point of analyzing pieces of prose, and in fact, I could never quite understand what is even meant by it, because much of it seemed to me quite arbitrary.

But I guess I am now running off topic.

Thanks for all the interesting inputs thus far!


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

brianvds said:


> In other words, from my position of ignorance, it looks like it would in fact be easier to just have a good ear for intervals, and just learn to audiate chords one note at a time (presumably you'll eventually be able to do it virtually instantaneously, just as you learn to recognize written words instantaneously), rather than to spend years learning to recognize various chords at sight and associate them with a particular sound. Learning chords seems to me like the equivalent of learning Chinese ideograms, whereas learning intervals is like learning an alphabet.
> 
> But perhaps you never achieve fluency unless you learn the ideograms?


It's not exactly ideograms, neither is it (exactly) learning how chords sound. You learn a simple basic pattern - a chord is the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes. So when you read a score, if you see G B D, the odds are you've got a G major chord. You get to the stage where if you see a group of notes, you fit them to a 1 3 5 pattern and (automatically) work out the inversion. Next bit, you look at the key sig and any extra bits to work out the key you are in, if you've got two sharps and the thing ends on D then the odds are you are in D major. G is the fourth note of a D major scale so a G B D chord is a IV for that piece. Then you look for the next chord to see the progression and look for any cadence. If you get an A C# E, then a D F# A, then you've got a IV V I cadence. if you were in G major, you wouldn't expect an A C# E and a D F# A would give you a I V false cadence. So it's not (exactly) how chords sound, it's how they function given the initial key of the piece (not always the same as the key sig, because of modulation and accidentals).

Next step up is to recognise the weirdies - sevenths, sixths, sus chords. But again it's the same idea - looking at the gaps between the notes, identifying the chord and it's inversion, finding the key and then placing the chord as a I7 or IV7 or whatever in order to identify its function in the harmonic progression.

You don't learn every chord, you learn how to identify a chord and then how to identify the key so as to identify the function of a chord.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

brianvds said:


> Perhaps this is more or less analogous to recognizing chords: initially you have to laboriously sound the chord in your mind note by note; in due course you learn to recognize it on sight.


That is exactly right. As I mentioned above, learning the theory is not always a matter of necessity but also a matter of ease. There is, after all, a pragmatic aspect of composition in addition to the aesthetic aspect. Composers before the twentieth century had to earn a living through their music. If, say, Haydn had to construct his Alberti basses note-by-note, he wouldn't have been nearly as productive and prolific as he was. With rudimentary knowledge of triads, however, even a child can produce Alberti basses in literally seconds.



brianvds said:


> I don't know - people have been telling stories for long ages before anyone even knew that there is such a thing as grammar.


Certainly, just as there was music before there was music theory. Again, no one is saying grammar and theory are _requirements_; they just make things easier. If you're a Mozart, you don't need it. If you're not a Mozart--and, by and large, few of us are--you're going to need some help.

To go with your storytelling analogy: literary scholars used to be unable to explain how the genre of epic poetry, in which a single work consists of tens of thousands of lines of rhyming verse, could be passed down from generation to generation and proliferate in cultures that had no written language. The currently accepted theory, first formulated by Milman Parry in the 1920s, is that epic poets did not memorize all those lines word for word. That would have taken a lifetime. Rather, they internalized certain metrical patterns and rhyme schemes, and then learned to fit the details of whatever story they were telling into that scheme. They trained themselves to think in hexametrical rhythm (for example) and to have a reliable fund of stock rhyming phrases so that whatever scene they needed to depict was guaranteed to conform to the conventions of their poetic tradition.

In other words, epic poetry (not just its composition but also its transmission) was made possible by conceiving of the story in structural terms. It wasn't just a matter of intuitively stringing together whatever words sounded beautiful together. Whether Homer actually _theorized_ about syntax and structure is unlikely, but all that really means is that he had internalized them. That's what theory is for: helping you internalize artificial shapes and categories in order to make things easier and faster, in exactly the manner you described above.



brianvds said:


> it looks like it would in fact be easier to just have a good ear for intervals, and just learn to audiate chords one note at a time


I think it helps to think of this in concrete rather than abstract terms. You propose it would be easier simply to "have a good ear for intervals." How would you go about carrying this out? What would you do to acquire a good ear for intervals? The same goes for "learning to audiate chords one at a time." What concrete steps would you take to accomplish this task? Just about any method you devise is going to involve theory one way or another.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

The very practical reason the course is called, in American English, "Ear training and_sight singing_" is that a lot of singing is done. Most instrumentalists are not singers of any especial quality. The singing of a chord, its inversions, is very much a way to get the sound of each into your memory, and to confirm what the ear hears.

Of course you cannot sing a chord but one note at a time, and that is what is done. Exercises go quite like this:
Pick a pitch as a start point, then: 
sing 1, 3, 5. Keeping that pitch, make it the 3 of a major chord, and sing 3,1,5, and 3,5,1.
Do the same with a first inversion chord, 3,5,1 -- then a second inversion chord, 5,1,3.
Ditto minor and diminished (the augmented are indistinguishable by ear).

After a while, and during, you begin to recognize the quality of one to another, not just by characteristic intervals, but as you would recognize one person to another, i.e. their is an individual character and _feel_ to the inversions.

We are talking, in the U.S. anyway, of a formal planned progressive study over four years of undergrad, or damned near four year's worth. Elsewhere, some schoolchildren learn solfege in grammar school as part of music class, and it is studied, at least scales and how to sing from sight a single tonal line, by all.

In one keyboard harmony class I took -- after conservatory (for myself) -- which is another course required of all undergraduate music majors, we had a book of exercises from which we sight-read at the keyboard. The scores were three staves, one usually treble, the other two lines sometimes alto, then bass, or alto, then tenor clef. This was more than a little challenging. [ 'Cellists, by the way, routinely learn to read Treble, Tenor and Bass Clefs, because of the instruments range, those clefs are standard notation in much of the literature. ]

I do think you need to ponder the year-long courses, the several years long program, and tons of repetitive drill and exercises, as plodding, methodical, progressive toward the goal, and ultimately, something people can achieve, and far outside the bailiwick of miracles 

The glamor fades, to reveal repetitious exercises, concentration and a cumulative study over years of time.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Eschbeg said:


> brianvds said:
> 
> 
> > people have been telling stories for long ages before anyone even knew that there is such a thing as grammar.
> ...


I just realized there's a much easier way to say what I was trying to say.

There was definitely storytelling and music long before there was grammar and music theory. But there was a lot _more_ storytelling and music _after_ there was grammar and music theory.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Eschbeg said:


> That is exactly right. As I mentioned above, learning the theory is not always a matter of necessity but also a matter of ease. There is, after all, a pragmatic aspect of composition in addition to the aesthetic aspect. Composers before the twentieth century had to earn a living through their music. If, say, Haydn had to construct his Alberti basses note-by-note, he wouldn't have been nearly as productive and prolific as he was. With rudimentary knowledge of triads, however, even a child can produce Alberti basses in literally seconds.


Thanks to everyone participating in this thread--very interesting!

Just an extra little wrinkle:

Composers (of literature and music) learning rules of meter and counterpoint allows them to put euphonious sounds together easily, but it also gives them rules that can be broken for expressive purposes. A poet could deviate from ideal metrical form to indicate emotional intensity, or too closely follow a metrical pattern for too long to indicate monotony; understanding meter would enable a reader to be amused rather than offended or bored. Similarly, it is hard to imagine someone getting Mozart's "Musical Joke" without a knowledge of contemporary musical theory (or Wikipedia).


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## Guest (Aug 6, 2013)

brianvds said:


> Well, here you can go see for yourself whether you can distinguish between a human musician and a MIDI file:
> 
> http://reverent.org/midi_or_virtuosi.html
> 
> I would guess it depends on the music, with Bach, Mozart and Haydn probably sounding better in MIDI format than Beethoven or Chopin.


Thanks for this - very interesting. Some of those other quizzes on the site were very humbling and/or disturbing.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

PetrB said:


> We are talking, in the U.S. anyway, of a formal planned progressive study over four years of undergrad, or damned near four year's worth. Elsewhere, some schoolchildren learn solfege in grammar school as part of music class, and it is studied, at least scales and how to sing from sight a single tonal line, by all.


When I think of what is involved, I am astonished that one can do it in only four years, even if you worked full time on it, which music students can't because they also have much else to do, such as learning two instruments and so on.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

BPS said:


> Thanks for this - very interesting. Some of those other quizzes on the site were very humbling and/or disturbing.


Hehe, the guy's site and quizzes are highly controversial and frequently spark off furious web debates.


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Question: In serialism, is it possible to write all serialist music in the world in a few years? That is, by probability, all serialist music would be derivative of each other (probably the next 100 years or so).

PS: (or serialism would be infinite)


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

peeyaj said:


> Question: In serialism, is it possible to write all serialist music in the world in a few years? That is, by probability, all serialist music would be derivative of each other (probably the next 100 years or so).
> 
> PS: (or serialism would be infinite)


It is impossible. Even though there are 479,001,600 possible arrangements of the chromatic scale, there would be an even larger number of possible series if you were to include integral serialism (total serialism, everything including dynamics, articulation, note lengths etc. having a "row"), and serialism based on rows of less or more than the twelve notes of the chromatic scale. Factor in also that this is only within the restrictions of 12 pitches per octave, in the 20th century microtonal music became more common (Harry Partch came up with a 43 note scale for example) and with the electronic music making machines we have today we can create microtones a human could not accurately produce on an acoustic instrument. So with that, there would be a mindbogglingly huge number of rows you could create for any serialist composition.

But then that's only talking about the _basis_ of a serialist composition: the _row_ or _series._ In serialism the composer's job is to assign these notes for instruments, put them in different octaves, develop them, transpose them, create chords from them....there would be an infinite amount of serialist music possible, a lot of it which would not sound derivative of other serialist music at all!


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> It is impossible. Even though there are 479,001,600 possible arrangements of the chromatic scale, there would be an even larger number of possible series if you were to include integral serialism (total serialism, everything including dynamics, articulation, note lengths etc. having a "row"), and serialism based on rows of less or more than the twelve notes of the chromatic scale. Factor in also that this is only within the restrictions of 12 pitches per octave, in the 20th century microtonal music became more common (Harry Partch came up with a 43 note scale for example) and with the electronic music making machines we have today we can create microtones a human could not accurately produce on an acoustic instrument. So with that, there would be a mindbogglingly huge number of rows you could create for any serialist composition.
> 
> But then that's only talking about the _basis_ of a serialist composition: the _row_ or _series._ In serialism the composer's job is to assign these notes for instruments, put them in different octaves, develop them, transpose them, create chords from them....there would be an infinite amount of serialist music possible, a lot of it which would not sound derivative of other serialist music at all!


Wow. What a comprehensive answer, CoAG. Thank you!!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

peeyaj said:


> Wow. What a comprehensive answer, CoAG. Thank you!!


So many ask something similar about serial music while they never ask the same question about diatonic music, which also uses a set of pitches from which to derive -- ALL.

If that question were put to the diatonic music test and contemplated for even a moment, I bet the question as asked about serialism would not even have come up 

Besides, with the variables of placement over nearly eight octaves, metrics, tempi, and rhythm, there is no real end in sight.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

PetrB said:


> So many ask something similar about serial music while they never ask the same question about diatonic music, which also uses a set of pitches from which to derive -- ALL.
> 
> If that question were put to the diatonic music test and contemplated for even a moment, I bet the question as asked about serialism would not even have come up
> 
> Besides, with the variables of placement over nearly eight octaves, metrics, tempi, and rhythm, there is no real end in sight.


But Petr, the diatonic scale is connected with the cosmos!, why someone would ever ask something like that for the diatonic case?. Evidently you don't know nothing about the quadrivium...


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## Warp Zone (May 7, 2013)

Liszt and Chopin were supposedly good friends, so I'd like to ask if this story is true:

At some point, possibly different points, in their lives, Liszt heard one of his pieces performed by Chopin, and Chopin heard one of his works performed by Liszt. Liszt commented to a man nearby him that he wished he could play his pieces as artistically as Chopin could, and likewise, Chopin commented to a nearby listener that he wished he could play his pieces as technically and virtuosic as Liszt could. 

This seems much more like a folk-tale thought up to further establish Liszt and Chopin as being on "opposite sides of the spectrum" and having mutual respect for the other, but I guess there's the chance of this having some basis in fact.


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

DeepR said:


> Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead and Prelude Op. 32 No. 10 were inspired by Arnold Böcklin's paintings the Isle of the Dead and The Return. Who knows some other works that have a direct connection to a painting?


Franz Liszt was inspired by many art forms, the first part of the second book of his Years of Pilgrimage for solo piano was inspired by a painting by Raphael - the whole second book is inspired by Italian arts.

Liszt, Franz - Les années de pèlerinage - Deuxième année: Italie - I. Sposalizio (Marriage of the Virgin, a painting by Raphael)


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

Mitchell said:


> Franz Liszt was inspired by many art forms, the first part of the second book of his Years of Pilgrimage for solo piano was inspired by a painting by Raphael - the whole second book is inspired by Italian arts.
> 
> Liszt, Franz - Les années de pèlerinage - Deuxième année: Italie - I. Sposalizio (Marriage of the Virgin, a painting by Raphael)


In case anyone was interested, here is the painting:


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I remember reading somewhere that Haydn, Schumann, Wagner and Stravinsky did not have perfect pitch, whereas Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms did. I wonder whether this is true, and how we could know it anyway.

So here's the question then: which of the great composers did and did not have perfect pitch?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

brianvds said:


> So here's the question then: which of the great composers did and did not have perfect pitch?


Well, surely not Schoenberg. The poor guy perceived all the 12 notes as equal!. _ba dum tsh_


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

brianvds said:


> I remember reading somewhere that Haydn, Schumann, Wagner and Stravinsky did not have perfect pitch, whereas Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms did. I wonder whether this is true, and how we could know it anyway.
> 
> So here's the question then: which of the great composers did and did not have perfect pitch?


_Among composers of the Baroque and Classical eras, evidence is available only for Mozart, who is documented to have demonstrated the ability at age 3.[74] Experts have only surmised that Beethoven had it, as indicated from some excerpts from his letters. By the 19th century, it became more common for the presence of absolute pitch to be recorded, identifying the ability to be present in musicians such as Camille Saint-Saëns and John Philip Sousa.
_


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

BPS said:


> Ok - I've got a question. What does music sound like when it's played exactly according to the score? I imagine these days computers and synthesizers can be used to produce music exactly in tune, perfectly timed, perfectly synchronized across instruments, etc.
> 
> Are there any recordings (or midi files?) of famous classical works so constructed? Which composers sound better and which worse when so transcribed? What does such an exercise in mechanical transcription tell us about the vagaries of musical notation and/or human preferences for imperfections?


In a word, UNMUSICAL: in another word, DREADFUL.
There are and can be very fine midi renderings, those done with superb acoustic instrument samples, a high-end editing software which includes the ability to (virtually) spatially place the sound sources throughout the depth of a virtual room (the oboe can be heard as right of center, several rows back from the violas... the harp is to the left, rear, etc.) -- that spatial depth of source and placement, ultimately more like the actual acoustic setting of live performance) helps convince your ear all those players are sitting on a stage in a three-dimensional hall, not in a line against a wall or independent sound booths, pre-mixing 

To achieve that is not just the after the fact engineering, but a very musician-like way of getting the data to behave _as if it were being performed by live individual players._ *There is the short answer and the irony: the best midi performances imitate the less than perfectly mechanical metronome accurate tempos and the smaller idiosyncrasies of live performances.*

You can input into midi via software, score or graph, or play directly via a touch sensitive midi keyboard, _with the additional requirement it has after-touch_. (After touch allows further depressing a key to make a note dynamically swell, or diminuendo, something pianos do not do, including a direct piano-like signal which also will not accommodate. Those keyboards with all that is needed are specifically called Midi Controllers, not digital pianos.) _One more rub, if you are a pianist, the Midi Controller with its after touch is not what you want as a keyboard to do piano practice or performance upon_

If drawn in directly or played back from a written software score, then each and every note is given inordinate attention, especially if it is written into the midi file -- to phrasing, articulation, dynamic contouring: this means you can touch each note several times to attach each of those factors to it, and this, in a multiple parts score of any length, is hugely labor intensive. The much briefer way to get it in, with much less editing, is to play it via that midi keyboard, that is if you are a decent player.

Timing ~ this can be and most often is one of the biggest and most telling factor between live performances and midi "performances."

A true tale. Some great conductor(s) the Toscanini / Stokowski era were given the challenge to conduct along with a running metronome. Repertoire for the challenge of that more even tempo and regular pulse from the Baroque and Classical eras was chosen. ~ In each case, both Maestro and ensemble of world class musicians were no longer in sync with the metronome within no more than two or three measures after beginning the piece.

Midi has a function called quantize.... the timing will be near atomic clock perfect, those sixteenth note runs will have notes of exactly the same length in an exact tempo. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven (staying Baroque / Classical, where rubato was nearly non-existent) would not have dreamt, ever, of performing their works that way.

There is always a hair of time-flux, the agogic accent -- a slight dynamic stress, but also one of timing and placement -- often a note held a nano second longer, or played a nano second early or late, without it ever skewing the overall note groupings, which make music as it sounds to us) often applied near intuitively, and in degrees so small no one would notice -- until those same articulations are absent.

The worst of midi renderings is none of those things. A drawn in series of notes in a computer program which renders score will all be the same volume level, the timing far too mechanically perfect. You can let some software read and render written dynamics, dynamic markings like the karat crescendo symbol, but those sound too synthetic. [In a life-monitor, a sine wave, not too regular, is a good sign of vital life: the closer that gets to severely regular, and the flatter and less varied it is, is illness, the flat line indicating death: so it is with midi.]

Unless the person inputting the data into the score program or midi controller plays well -- or takes the infinite care and labor to draw in as carefully (and in a musically intelligent way) all the other parameters mentioned above / and does not use quantize / and does use really fine orchestral samples and engineer it well -- then you will have a very believable midi "performance." [[ But those who can and do are rare. I believe many who can and do are the more full-time sound engineers / arrangers who do most of that type of work for the non-classical commercial music pool. ]]

Most midi score programs, in any number of formats, allow for the input of music without paying any regard to the metronome, i.e. played in time, and flex time and rubato, but not at all related to wherever the computer's metronome is set: afterwards, the programs allow for a playback while you play, say, the lowest note of the keyboard, where you 'tell' the software where the pulse is so the notation program will then fit to appropriate bar-lines and be in sync, make sense on paper. This takes relatively little time, and allows the composer / arranger to go at the whole enterprise more readily as freely playing music as musical. (Further, programs offer, from reading one file, either the "score" (quantized) playback or the actual midi file as made more musically.

That option for the more natural sounding performance available along with the 'quantized' for purposes of accurate score, and from one file, was anticipated and thought of for a reason. The people who make score software know that a quantized performance, without even getting to other musical factors, is dead in the water. _Those software developers recognized the need for both!_


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## Guest (Aug 7, 2013)

Thanks PetrB! Wonderful answer!


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Warp Zone said:


> Liszt and Chopin were supposedly good friends, so I'd like to ask if this story is true:
> 
> At some point, possibly different points, in their lives, Liszt heard one of his pieces performed by Chopin, and Chopin heard one of his works performed by Liszt. Liszt commented to a man nearby him that he wished he could play his pieces as artistically as Chopin could, and likewise, Chopin commented to a nearby listener that he wished he could play his pieces as technically and virtuosic as Liszt could.
> 
> This seems much more like a folk-tale thought up to further establish Liszt and Chopin as being on "opposite sides of the spectrum" and having mutual respect for the other, but I guess there's the chance of this having some basis in fact.


Seems to be accepted true but can't find an exact source. Nearest is this:

Liszt once asked Frederic Chopin to play in complete darkness as he did before on the previous occasion. But after putting out all the lights and drawing curtains, just as Chopin was going to the piano, Liszt whispered something in his ear and sat down in his stead. He then played the same composition which Chopin had played, and the audience was once again captivated. After the performance, Liszt lighted candles on the piano revealing himself to the stupefied audience. 
"What do you say to it?" said Liszt to his rival. 
"I say what everyone says; I too believed it was Chopin."
"You see," said the virtuoso rising, "that Liszt can be Chopin when he likes; but could Chopin be Liszt?"
(F. Niecks, Frederick Chopin as Man and Musician, 1888-90)

Also came across this set of cartoons for all Chopin and \ or Liszt lovers.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

brianvds said:


> Now I don't know if this is true, but it certainly SEEMS to me that acquiring reading skills in music is almost infinitely more difficult than acquiring them in language. I simply cannot imagine how one can learn to instantly recognize and audiate even simple root position chords in various keys, let alone all their inversions and other variations. In music theory books, they conveniently write down absolutely everything in C major! :lol:
> 
> In other words, from my position of ignorance, it looks like it would in fact be easier to just have a good ear for intervals, and just learn to audiate chords one note at a time (presumably you'll eventually be able to do it virtually instantaneously, just as you learn to recognize written words instantaneously), rather than to spend years learning to recognize various chords at sight and associate them with a particular sound. Learning chords seems to me like the equivalent of learning Chinese ideograms, whereas learning intervals is like learning an alphabet.


I think you are making it sound way more complicated than it really is. There aren't that many chords, you have minor, major, diminished, sus2 and sus4 and augmented triads and you have major seventh, minor seventh, minor sixth, major sixth, dominant seventh, sus4 dominant seventh, half diminished, diminished and minor-major seventh chords four note chords. That's about 15 chords. The thing you need to realize is, is that a minor triad, minor sixth, minor seventh and minor-major seventh are closely related. They all sound minor but with a slight difference. It's like multiple shades of a single colour.

Just think about how long it took to learn how to read. The amount of words you learn are infinitely greater than the amount of chords you can possibly learn. If you would have spend about half an hour a day learning how to inner hear music from the age of 6, you would probably be fluent by the age of 10-12. It's just a matter of immersion and you not used to that as an adult but kids are completely immersed in learning how to read. If you want to learn this you can just start score reading and I don't think it will take you more than about 4 years to get fluent when you do it on a daily basis.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Piwikiwi said:


> I think you are making it sound way more complicated than it really is. There aren't that many chords, you have minor, major, diminished, sus2 and sus4 and augmented triads and you have major seventh, minor seventh, minor sixth, major sixth, dominant seventh, sus4 dominant seventh, half diminished, diminished and minor-major seventh chords four note chords. That's about 15 chords.


Yes, but them in different keys, and in various inversions, or with some notes left out, or a note added here or there, and they seem utterly bewildering to me.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Eschbeg said:


> That is exactly right. As I mentioned above, learning the theory is not always a matter of necessity but also a matter of ease. There is, after all, a pragmatic aspect of composition in addition to the aesthetic aspect. Composers before the twentieth century had to earn a living through their music. If, say, Haydn had to construct his Alberti basses note-by-note, he wouldn't have been nearly as productive and prolific as he was. With rudimentary knowledge of triads, however, even a child can produce Alberti basses in literally seconds.


Sort of on the topic, I just ran into this bit from a book titled _Music made simple_, by one Peter Dimond, in a section about Mussorgsky:

_"He was a fine pianist but not versed in Western harmony. He therefore worked out his chord sequences painfully at the piano."_

This seems to confirm your above statement that while one could compose without knowledge of theory, the theoretical knowledge makes it easier and results in greater fluency, and presumably makes it easier for a composer to work without having to try out everything at a piano or other instrument.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

brianvds said:


> Yes, but them in different keys, and in various inversions, or with some notes left out, or a note added here or there, and they seem utterly bewildering to me.


You have 12 tones within an octave. What is important is *not* the actual tones but their position within a scale - that's why people go for solfege because that is key independent. If you look at the wiki article you will see the notes laid out in terms of their twelve tone position with a scale.

Now get to know the chords in solfege - no keys - no nothing - just the basic do-re-mi. Now once you know all the chords in all the inversions in solfege then you know them in any key because you can transpose them across. Simples.

Then you can start worrying about why 7ths tend to drop the third and all that sort of stuff which is getting you into voice leading and full on harmonisation.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

brianvds said:


> I remember reading somewhere that Haydn, Schumann, Wagner and Stravinsky did not have perfect pitch, whereas Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms did. I wonder whether this is true, and how we could know it anyway.
> 
> So here's the question then: which of the great composers did and did not have perfect pitch?


I know that Stravinsky always worked at the piano, whereas Schoenberg and Shostakovich did not. Mahler occasionally worked at the piano, but found that the ideas in his head never sounded as good when rendered through the small sound of that instrument (true story) and so preferred not to use it as he matured. Whether this implies perfect pitch or not I don't know. I don't have perfect pitch, and I can work out simple exercises on paper without hearing exactly what they will sound like.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Taggart said:


> You have 12 tones within an octave. What is important is *not* the actual tones but their position within a scale - that's why people go for solfege because that is key independent. If you look at the wiki article you will see the notes laid out in terms of their twelve tone position with a scale.
> 
> Now get to know the chords in solfege - no keys - no nothing - just the basic do-re-mi. Now once you know all the chords in all the inversions in solfege then you know them in any key because you can transpose them across. Simples.


Well, yes, I understand the principle, but somehow still cannot recognize the chords when I see them. At least not at a glance. Of course, this improves with practice, but it just brings me back to square one: I find it astonishing that one can master all of this with just a few years of practice.

I also have to wonder (and trying to follow some of the debates here on theoretical issues makes me wonder even more) how many chords are out there that are ambiguous, and may be one type or another, depending on how you look at it.

Another thing that occurs to me is this: suppose you spread out the tones of, say, a C chord, so that they fall in different octaves. Such a chord will sound different from one in which you don't space out the tones. One can come up with a large number of variations of this type on a C chord, and more variations on its inversions, and they will all sound different. They will probably all have a "C chord sound" to them, but will not be identical. So I wonder how musicians learn to audiate this sort of thing. Do they ever have a really clear idea in their head of how a piece of music that they are reading will sound, or are there always slight surprises when they hear the music played (at least in the case of music with somewhat unusual spacings or orchestrations)? Do even composers ever know exactly what a piece is going to sound before they hear it played? Is it unusual for them to make changes to a composition after hearing it performed (presumably because something did not sound quite the way they imagined)? Or are their inner ears perfect?


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

brianvds said:


> Well, yes, I understand the principle, but somehow still cannot recognize the chords when I see them. At least not at a glance. Of course, this improves with practice, but it just brings me back to square one: I find it astonishing that one can master all of this with just a few years of practice.
> 
> I also have to wonder (and trying to follow some of the debates here on theoretical issues makes me wonder even more) how many chords are out there that are ambiguous, and may be one type or another, depending on how you look at it.
> 
> Another thing that occurs to me is this: suppose you spread out the tones of, say, a C chord, so that they fall in different octaves. Such a chord will sound different from one in which you don't space out the tones. One can come up with a large number of variations of this type on a C chord, and more variations on its inversions, and they will all sound different. They will probably all have a "C chord sound" to them, but will not be identical. So I wonder how musicians learn to audiate this sort of thing. Do they ever have a really clear idea in their head of how a piece of music that they are reading will sound, or are there always slight surprises when they hear the music played (at least in the case of music with somewhat unusual spacings or orchestrations)? Do even composers ever know exactly what a piece is going to sound before they hear it played? Is it unusual for them to make changes to a composition after hearing it performed (presumably because something did not sound quite the way they imagined)? Or are their inner ears perfect?


Well they will all sound like a C chord first. As long as you have the C as a bass note the inversion will not matter that much for the sound.

You also need to understand that for example a triad has a very specific shape when you read it. I can recognize it almost instantly if it's an inversion of a triad or a seventh chord(in closed voicing) and I'm not very good at score reading.

Don't forget that our brains are very very good at pattern recognition and the patterns of music aren't that hard. You also need to realize that keys like D and Db flat and F and F # are largely similar when reading them. You see the same note on the staff but with different meanings. This make recognizing chord much easier. I'm not saying it's easy but it's just not magical.

Beethoven never heard the last pieces he composed but I'm pretty sure he knew what they were going to sound like.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

aleazk said:


> But Petr, the diatonic scale is connected with the cosmos!, why someone would ever ask something like that for the diatonic case?. Evidently you don't know nothing about the quadrivium...


_Frankly, my dear, I don't give a flying quark about the quadrivium_.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Frankly, my dear, I don't give a flying quark about the quadrivium.


_Three quarks for Muster Mark! 
Sure he hasn't got much of a bark 
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark. 
But O, Wreneagle Almighty, wouldn't un be a sky of a lark 
To see that old buzzard whooping about for uns shirt in the dark 
And he hunting round for uns speckled trousers around by Palmerstown Park? 
_
FINNEGANS WAKE Book II Chapter 4
James Joyce


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> _Three quarks for Muster Mark!
> Sure he hasn't got much of a bark
> And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.
> But O, Wreneagle Almighty, wouldn't un be a sky of a lark
> ...


_

Thank you! Now I know at least some physicists had read Finnegans Wake _


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Piwikiwi said:


> Well they will all sound like a C chord first. As long as you have the C as a bass note the inversion will not matter that much for the sound.


Is it still an inversion if there is a C in the bass though?



> You also need to understand that for example a triad has a very specific shape when you read it. I can recognize it almost instantly


Perhaps even I could do this, but then, I cannot remember when last I have seen a triad in an actual piece of of printed music! 



> Don't forget that our brains are very very good at pattern recognition and the patterns of music aren't that hard. You also need to realize that keys like D and Db flat and F and F # are largely similar when reading them. You see the same note on the staff but with different meanings. This make recognizing chord much easier. I'm not saying it's easy but it's just not magical.


Well no, I guess it isn't magical, and I have very little experience of it so I shouldn't make sweeping statements. I don't really have enough time in my day to make much of a study of it, so I suppose it is inevitable that I will find it more mysterious and magical than those who do make a more intensive study.

Anyway, once again, thanks for all the answers in this thread! It has given me much to think about.



> Beethoven never heard the last pieces he composed but I'm pretty sure he knew what they were going to sound like.


Well, we'll never know! (Now there's an interesting philosophical question that one could start a whole thread on... 

Come to think of it, as far as I know, the great composers seldom made much in the way of revisions to their work, though some did so more than others. Bruckner comes to mind, but as far as I know he revised mostly because other people advised it. And Mahler often revised his symphonies after performances, I think? But of course that does not mean that they sounded different from what he imagined when he wrote them. As conductor, I'm pretty sure he had a hugely developed ear and a very good notion of what almost any orchestral combination would sound like.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

brianvds said:


> Come to think of it, as far as I know, the great composers seldom made much in the way of revisions to their work, though some did so more than others. Bruckner comes to mind, but as far as I know he revised mostly because other people advised it. And Mahler often revised his symphonies after performances, I think? But of course that does not mean that they sounded different from what he imagined when he wrote them. As conductor, I'm pretty sure he had a hugely developed ear and a very good notion of what almost any orchestral combination would sound like.


Bruckner would regularly revise the substance (form, content) as well as orchestration of his works. Mahler only ever revised the orchestration (a few very, very early examples aside). You're right that he knew how something would sound _in the abstract_, but put into the context of a hall with acoustics, placed in front of a 100-man orchestra playing many individual scores, there were always things he didn't think of, and he refined the balances from that point.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

brianvds said:


> Perhaps even I could do this, but then, I cannot remember when last I have seen a triad in an actual piece of of printed music!


Chopin preludes e.g. Op 28 9 in E major or 13 in F# major are full of the beasts both straight and in inversions. 28 17 in A flat major starts with 2 bars of A flat major in 2nd inversion spread across both hands. IMSLP has a range of versions.

Possibly because you are playing the guitar from tablature?


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Taggart said:


> Chopin preludes e.g. Op 28 9 in E major or 13 in F# major are full of the beasts both straight and in inversions. 28 17 in A flat major starts with 2 bars of A flat major in 2nd inversion spread across both hands. IMSLP has a range of versions.
> 
> Possibly because you are playing the guitar from tablature?


Hehe, I think it actually IS because I play guitar, though not from tablature. But I cannot play anything beyond lower intermediate pieces, and in those you very often don't play more than two notes at the same time. Of course there is often a sort of implied harmony, but I don't know enough to make much sense of it. In chords of three or more notes, they are also often spread out across the stave in such a manner that they don't look like simple triads, though I suppose many of them are. That's the problem: you can spread a triad around in such a way that at least at first glance, to the uninitiated eye, it doesn't look much like a triad at all.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Question(s): What was the first widely-available classical album recorded in stereo? And what year and label?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Mitchell said:


> In case anyone was interested, here is the painting:
> 
> View attachment 22375


Now I just need that surgery where they implant _the synesthete chip_ so I can really get the full import of just how the painting impressed Liszt


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

elgars ghost said:


> Question(s): What was the first widely-available classical album recorded in stereo? And what year and label?


Seems to be a complicated matter, since there are various stereo-procedures and various levels of commercial distribution. From a bit of research, I´ve found the following info at least:

Stokowski made a stereo recording on 78s of Scriabin´s "Prometheus" in 1932, organized by the Bell label http://www.stomping.nl/vinyl/stereo.html , http://benbeck.co.uk/firsts/sound2.htm, http://benbeck.co.uk/firsts/media/stokowski1.mp3 , but apparently they decided not to issue it commercially.

EMI also did test discs from 1933. And there are early German stereo recordings as well (Bruckner 8th finale, Karajan 1944 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_Records, "Emperor" concerto with Gieseking/Rother 1944 



).

The inventor Emory Cook apparently produced the first commercially distributed stereos starting in 1952 (or maybe-maybe 1950), including some with classical bits and pieces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Records.

In 1954 RCA released stereo tapes, for instance including Reiner´s Strauss "Also Sprach Zarathustra", later issued on LP as their "Living Stereo Series" (from 1959?). The Berlioz "Damnation de Faust" conducted by Munch was maybe the first one http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/RCALivingStereo.jsp, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_Records, but some claim that a complete stereo version of that doesn´t really exist (??) http://rec.music.classical.recordin...munch-s-damnation-in-stereo-is-it-or-isn-t-it. The year before, RCA had begun experimenting stereo sessions with Stokowski, and Toscanini and Cantelli also recorded early stereo for them.

Other sources mention the Audio Fidelity label (US) which made a series of 13 orchestral LPs in 1958 by Alfred Wallenstein and the Virtuoso symphony Orchestra of London. The Discogs-site lists some of them. FS 50.003 of Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique seems to have the earliest catalogue number among the classical LPs from that company (http://www.discogs.com/Hector-Berli...n-Symphonie-Fantastique-Op-14/release/3826332 ; http://www.discogs.com/label/Audio+Fidelity).
http://vinylfanatics.com/analoglovers/page3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Fidelity_Records

Maybe other posters know more/have corrections, or details ...


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## chrisco97 (May 22, 2013)

I am confused by something. Some people say *Schubert's* "Unfinished" is his eighth symphony, some say it is his seventh...which is it? :lol:


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

chrisco97 said:


> I am confused by something. Some people say *Schubert's* "Unfinished" is his eighth symphony, some say it is his seventh...which is it? :lol:


These days the standard numbering of Schubert's symphonies list the "Unfinished" as 8. Because no. 7 only really exists as sketches older editions used to skip it.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Joen-cph. Thanks - very interesting post. I was curious because I was thinking about the oldest stereo recording I know of or have - I think it would be Karajan's Rosenkavallier from 1956 on EMI but I wonder if initially only a mono version would have been released until the time when stereo players were more available/affordable.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

elgars ghost said:


> Joen-cph. Thanks - very interesting post. I was curious because I was thinking about the oldest stereo recording I know of or have - I think it would be Karajan's Rosenkavallier from 1956 on EMI but I wonder if initially only a mono version would have been released until the time when stereo players were more available/affordable.


They used to issue in both formats,I would doubt that it was issued in stereo in 1956 probably the stereo came later.
This was issued on British Columbia on four discs and the stereo appears to have come out in the following year.


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## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

I've been listening to works from the Baroque and Classical periods and there's something I don't understand. During the Baroque period there was approximately a 1:1 ratio between works written in major and minor keys. Yet, during the classical period, there are very few works written in a minor key. Why the classical composers wrote so little in minor?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

TudorMihai said:


> I've been listening to works from the Baroque and Classical periods and there's something I don't understand. During the Baroque period there was approximately a 1:1 ratio between works written in major and minor keys. Yet, during the classical period, there are very few works written in a minor key. Why the classical composers wrote so little in minor?


The primary ideals of the Classical style were beauty, transparency, and elegance, and I'd imagine the inherent dissonance and chromaticism of minor keys (with the attendant use of alterations for the harmonic and melodic minor scales, etc.) were not amenable to composers who wanted to adhere to those aesthetic criteria. For the Baroque period, the heightened emotion produced by those same things was a primary goal, as it became once again in the Romantic period.


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## TudorMihai (Feb 20, 2013)

Without shadow of a doubt, Bach is considered one of the greatest composer who ever lived. But what makes him so influential? Almost all composers in the next centuries after Bach were influenced by him and even artists in pop, rock and other musical genres. What made him so important? I mean, more than any other composer?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

TudorMihai said:


> Without shadow of a doubt, Bach is considered one of the greatest composer who ever lived. But what makes him so influential? Almost all composers in the next centuries after Bach were influenced by him and even artists in pop, rock and other musical genres. What made him so important? I mean, more than any other composer?


All sorts of things.

I'm starting to work seriously at the keyboard and notice that Bach essentially wrote a keyboard course - Inventions and Sinfonias, English and French Suites and WTC 1. Although it's a keyboard course, it's also a composition course. When you think of people who used Bach as part of their practice routine, you can see how his ideas permeate down.

Then again, he wrote some glorious melodies and hymn tunes. The fact that much of his work is church based means that a lot of people have been exposed to it, even if they have subsequently abandoned religion.

Also, many people have studied Bach as part of the study of counterpoint.

That's by no means the whole story, I'm doubtless being (more than a little) simplistic and others more learned will correct my errors.


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