Knowing the history - does it help listening?

[Despina41]

Here's a question for the ages: Do you find it useful for your listening to know about a composer, their "life and times," and/or the historical circumstances for a particular piece of music?


I picked the vague phrase "useful for your listening" on purpose. Interpret that as you will.

[Florestan]

Heh. This is going to be good.

Very briefly and simplistically for now, as I must sleep...

This debate has been raging for a long time - certainly since I took an art history degree in the eighties. This made me somewhat schizoid in that while I am forever complaining about postmodernism, the po-mo education I had has stuck fast when it comes to this question.

It is political anathema to me to pretend that art (of whatever sort) can be divorced from culture, class, gender, economics.... and the only people who hold fast to that pretence are the ruling classes and their adherents, for the obvious reason that it has historically been very much in their interests to do so.

Philidor is more of a Kantian on this, as I am sure he will divulge at great length.

[Philidor]

Much as it pains me...



* no meaning can be determined out of context *

[marquis66]

I think that what it breaks down to is whether or not the concept of absolute music even exists. I argued (moderatly successfully) in my youth that all music is programmatic (and not even in the explicit/implicit sense, but that environment is the absolute program). The professor I was debating had example after example of absolute pieces, and his argument was a conclusion that I would reach eventually in my own life.

But then, as a composer, I started writing music with an implicit or explicit program (an oboe sonata in g minor comes to mind immediately). I think that there is a thing called absolute music, where the only point of it is to be heard and experienced, but that there is no meaning beyond that. That Oboe sonata had nothing to do with my life at the time.

The line that I found was actually on the composer. Let's take Mahler for example. Symphonies? I firmly beleive that they are programmatic, absolutely, without doubt in my mind. But, in contrast take the piano quartet written as his entry for the Brahms prize. Programmatic? I don't know. It sounds like late 1880's Germna Romantic music, not necessarily Mahler, so take that for what you will. I think I have a midi file of it around here somewhere that I could post if you wanted.

[Florestan]

Interesting. I shall give this some thought.

What you are suggesting seems (correct me if I've got this wrong) to invite parallels with the visual arts - ie, that abstract art (in whatever idiom) is a kind of aesthetic absolute, referential only to itself, while figurative work is contextual. Am I misunderstanding you?

One difficulty of course is (pardon the pun) where you draw the line?

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by marquis66

I think I have a midi file of it around here somewhere that I could post if you wanted.

Yes please. I'm just listening to jazz pianist Matthew Shipp on BBC Radio 3. He simplifies this discussion (from his website):

I have no influences-I existed together with god and the piano before time began- and my piano playing is the direct result of the fact that my mind and the cosmic mind that sustains the universe are in harmony-so when I play I intercept electro magnetic frequencies directly from the mind of god and can convert them into lyrical phrases on the piano. If at any time it sounds like another pianist its because the universe is one organism and there is one underlining language field so what I articulate on piano can resemble what another part of the one cosmic brain would articulate on the piano.

http://matthewshipp.com

So his music is 100% programmatic because each phrase describes God's mind. Note he's a pantheist also, so in describing God's mind he's also describing the world because God is the world.

[maureen]

are we talking listening man (absolute, implicit action)
or are we talking translating (my mind being the sound environment and perhaps suppling extra context)
or are we talking experiencing
or are we talking i had my husbands friends for my first grown up dinner party and burnt the entree so ran into the bedroom crying? (context)

semi-seriously
there seems to be two discussions here

the original question is the post-modern deconstructionist pose (word choice is purposeful, i.e. pose because ultimately humans are irreducibly contextual)
the discussion however is verging into something quite different
inspiration and compostition, absolute music
eeeeee absolutely not
and absolutely except can a human channel the mind of god?
and do lesser humans channel using environmental filters?

good god
wrestling's on and i've had root beer and pizza
and i need to go to target tomorrow and purchase some discs for the video camera
so i can record my granddaughter's kindergarten graduation
perhaps the volunteer music teacher who is quite a good musician and at nearly 80 years old is dedicated to the children at the school
bringing them chorus once several times a week without pay will play a little chopin for the occaision

i think she funnels the mind of god within the context of her neighborhood and her love of children and music

I don't so much like context, unless it's context I like -some adds, some detracts and it's so subjective
to really remove context is nearly impossible imnsho

[haydnguy]

I think it helps with some pieces and not with others.

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by marquis66

I think that what it breaks down to is whether or not the concept of absolute music even exists.

Programme music = the violas in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons imitating barking dogs (they always sound more like mooses coughing in the mist to me...)

Non-programme music = Bach’s C major prelude (WTC Book I)

How can the latter ever be ‘absolute music’? How could I directly know it? I switch it on and data flows though my ears into my brain and, via a chemical process (determined by human brain architecture and still deeply mysterious) I experience something, a de-coding of Bach’s manuscript occurs. But that de-coding is hopelessly polluted by the hoops the original data - Bach manuscript - have had to jump through, e.g.

- the cultural setting when he composed it - I’m hopelessly alienated from that. God knows what was in the head of a Lutheran petty bourgeois who heard Bach play it though an open window as he walking down a street like an open sewer in 1720
- pitch
- instrument
- performance style
- editor (OK there’s urtext now but many performers ignore it)
- my cultural setting, e.g. eight years of Bush, exposure to Posh Spice, etc
- changes in human brain architecture caused by better diet, medicine, hormones in beefburgers, Chernobyl fall-out, etc

So there’s veil after veil of perception between Bach’s manuscript and my experience of it. Where, beneath that, is the absolute music? How do I put my thumb on it? Or is it all just mooses coughing in the mist....?



I agree the ‘concept’ of absolute music exists - we couldn’t talk about it if it didn’t - in the same way the ‘concept’ of Kant’s noumena exists - or truth or objectivity or the immortal soul or Plato’s forms or infinity or space-time. But how can they ever be ‘got at’? Except by taking a s*it load of drugs or wandering into the desert and meeting God in pillar of fire...

Originally Posted by maureen

there seems to be two discussions here

the original question is the post-modern deconstructionist pose (word choice is purposeful, i.e. pose because ultimately humans are irreducibly contextual)
the discussion however is verging into something quite different
inspiration and compostition, absolute music
eeeeee absolutely not
and absolutely except can a human channel the mind of god?
and do lesser humans channel using environmental filters?

I think it’s possible to draw a line between brain architecture and culture. The latter’s notoriously slippery and changes day by day. The links between sign and meaning shift about constantly, lubricated by culture. But human brain architecture is more constant. To use a Wittgenstein analogy, culture is like water flowing in a river, brain architecture is the rock of the river bed. Sure, it gets ground away but the movement’s less. Or, to mix metaphors, culture is a flighty young girl, brain architecture a constant wife who brings you a nice up of tea in the morning.

[marquis66]

Found the MIDI file, how should I put it up?

And boy, doesn't this seem to mirror the "Head Music/Heart music" argument. Interesting thoughts all around