From: tomanix@sintra.xip.dec.com (Antonio Rodrigues)
Subject: Re: Bach and religious feelings
Reply-To: tomanix@sintra.xip.dec.com (Antonio Rodrigues)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Distribution: usa
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 18:10:12 GMT


>roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:

>Keep trying.  I'm not an academic, either.  

>Or, better yet, *stop* trying.  Stereotyping is not the path to
>enlightenment.

  You 're absolutely right it's not important who you are, and I totally agree 
with the last sentence. 

> I might also point out that this idea is a fairly recent one in the
> context of music history, and comes from the beginning of the Romantic
> period.  Before that, nobody spoke of music in this way. 

 I'm sorry but I must disagree with you, the ideia of *absolute* comes from
 the ancient Classic Greek period, as you know for sure.
   
> You can read
>about the sources ofthe idea in Carl Dahlhaus, _The Idea of Absolute
>Music_, tr. Yours Truly.  Chicago: U of C Press, 1989.  No, I don't get
>royalties.  Yes, it's in paperback.

 Have you heard of Plato ? You can start by the Plato's 'The Republic'.
 Oh, I don't get royalties either and it's also in paperback. :-)

>>Let me ask you something, do you think a deaf person cannot 'feel' music ? 

>Depends on the deaf person.  Depends on what you'd call "feeling music."
>What does this prove, in any case?  Many people with functioning ears
>don't "feel" music, and many, many more don't feel the same music you
>do, and more still don't feel it in the *way* you do.

Yes, but if you say that:

>c) In a way, the thing-itself in music is the LISTENING.  Without that,
>the music is just dots on paper or pits in aluminum or something.
>Listening makes it music.

See how lucky Beethoven was because after became deaf he continues
to put 'dots on paper', randomly, for sure since he cannot 'LISTEN' ..... 

>> The player and the instrument are as necessary to music as the air to your 
>>ideas.

>Huh?  Does that mean they're important or not? Besides, who cares if
>they're important to the music?  They're important to *me,* who needs to
>*hear* the music.  Who needs to MAKE the sounds into music by listening
>to them.  Until I listen, they're just noise.

Well, Davitt Moroney said that his role when he was playing was to try so 
suppress himself as much as possible. 

>> It seems that you think that the 'musicologists' are the true responsible for 
>>example the  Bach's music. 

>Not all of it, but we'll take credit for getting the notes right and
>finding out what his instruments sounded like.  This information was
>lost for a long time; we're only working it out now.

To know 'what his instruments sounded like' is of great
importance for sure, but in my opinion, it's not the "essential".

When I hear saying "That was a great performance, it was played on
"original instruments" ", I woder if that means the voices including the
'castratti'. :-)
 
>Now, if you want to talk Vivaldi, yes, indeed.  Thank a musicologist for
>having brought Vivaldi's music back to the listening public.  (Or curse
>one, depending on your taste...)

>As for older composers, e.g., Monteverdi, Josquin, etc., I assure you
>that musicologists worked their fingers to the bone to get that music to
>you.                 

>In affecting which music you will hear?  I do a fair amount of that,
>by studying music, by bringing it to the attention of performers, by
>writing critiques for the general public to read (which gets people
>interested in hearing), and by assisting in the production of the things
>that people actually listen to much of the time.  Without me and people
>like me, you'd hear only a very few pieces, over and over.

 Oh, but I agree with you on this. The example of Vivaldi is a good one, thought 
the first 'musicologist' that discover Vivaldi was JSBach :-).

 I think I can imagine the pleasure of rediscovery, specially of Vivaldi and
Bach's works. And I admire your work, believe me. 

 That's not my point as I 'll try to explain.

>And now you want me to accept that I play an "infinitely small role" in
>something, even though yu *still* don't know what it is that I do, and
>why I do it.

Oh, honestly I'm sorry, but you said:

>>Found it?  I *wrote* it!  8-)

So I had assumed that you wrote about music.  
 
>>The text you wrote for the CD cannot be compared with it's contents, 
>>whatever you say in it.

>Did I claim otherwise?  I sometimes put "hack writer" down under
>"profession."  

>Any fool knows that, and nobody better than me.  In fact, my editor has
>told me in no uncertain terms that the only reason those texts go in the
>CD at all is that other companies still do it too.

That's exactly what I mean saying that 'you play a small role'.

>I assure you: very few musicologists go
>into the profession for any reason other than a deep love of music and a
>wish to study it.  

And what do you think that moved me to this discussion?! Nothing less than
a 'deep love of music'. That's why I don't agree with your idea that music 
'is LISTENING', I belive it's more, much more.

>However, some of us *do* get ticked off at people who insist that their
>inchoate notions of "what music is" are so holy that anything based on
>fact would destroy the "experience" they have of music, and, without any
>evidence or any consideration of what they might actually mean, say
>things like "music is the universal language" or "it transports you to
>another reality."  

>If nothing else, it's nice to know what those words actually mean, why
>people say them, and where they come from.  Try reading that book I
>translated.

>Roger

 I'll try to explain why I believe music is a lot more that a simple exercise
that someone wrote and someone listen.

 First I believe that the process of composition as more to do with discovery 
that with invention, the music comes like a revelation to the composer. See 
this description.

 "Once I have my theme, another melody comes, linking itself with first one,
in accordance with the needs of the composition as a whole: the counterpoint,
the part of each instrument and all the melodic fragments at last produce the
complete work. Then my soul is on fire with inspiration. The work grows; I keep
expanding it, conceiving it more and more clearly until *I have the entire 
composition finished in my head though it may be long*. Then my mind seizes it
as a glance of my eye a beautiful picture or a handsome youth. It does not come
to me successively, with various parts worked out in detail, as they will later
on, *but in its entirety that my imagination lets me hear it.*"

Mozart, (in "The psychology of invention in the mathematical field.",Hadamard,
J. Princeton University Press.) 

The *...* are mine. The music exists independently of someone listen or no. You 
can argue that whatever comes into Mozart's head is influenced by 'his cultural
background', I rather say that, after the 'revelation', what he put on paper
is a Mozart's product.

 But not only to the composer also to the listener. I believe that for some 
people listen it's far beyond the mere 'listening the sounds'. You agree with me
that is not everybody that can compose a Bach 'partita',specially the (I 'm
listening it now) 'Partita No. 2 in D Minor for solo violin'. Also is not
everybody that can 'listen' a piece like that. You can try to help explaining,
for example, that the Chaconne is built on the variation principle and are
predominantly in 3/4 time, that there are 29 variations and 257 bars...
But when you listen that music, you feel that there is something there that 
cannot be explained by the analysis of the work, or the study of the Bach's
'cultural background'.
 
But yes, it's important to do that study, and I' m grateful to the people who
do that work. 

 If you allow me I'll use again the mathematics and the mathematicians.

 "A common experience, when some colleague would try to explain some piece of 
mathematics to me, would be that I should listen attentively, but almost totally
uncomprehending of the logical connections between one set of words and the next.
However, some guessed image would form in my mind as to the ideas that he was
trying to convey - *formed entirely on my own terms and seemingly with very 
little connection with the mental images that had been the basis of my
colleague's own understanding* - and I would reply"

In "The Emperor's New Mind", by Roger Penrose. Oxford University Press 1989.

(If I may, I strongly advise you to read this book, if you hadn't do it yet) 

In my opinion your 'cultural background' influences the way you 'see' the
mathematical object ('formed entirely on my own terms') or the music, not
the object.
 But, the amazing thing, you can still communicate something that you can't but 
partially describe, nevertheless it is necessary that the two interlocutors,
the composer and the listener, shared something and that is not necessarily
the same 'cultural background'. 

 I can hardly admit that I have the same 'cultural background' that Bach, 
you know Bach claim that he compose only for 'glorifying God', you can be 
atheist and be moved to tears by Bach's music. 

I remember when I first listen Bach, I was very young about 7-8, it was I think,
the BWV 594 (I now know it is based on a Vivaldi's concerto), I didn't know 
anything about the Baroque or the 'late 20th Century Western culture's
fascination with baroque music', I believe what I felt cannot be explained by
that.
You can argue that the 'late 20th Century Western culture's fascination with
baroque music', was the responsible for my first listening of the Bach's music.
Yes, but that plays an infinitely small role in all this.

tomanix
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical