From: fields@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew Fields)
Subject: Re: Advances in composition
Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 13:16:17 GMT

In article <1iaav3INN2qa@calvin.usc.edu> alves@calvin.usc.edu (William Alves) writes:
>Now, I certainly won't argue against you if you say that education and
>sensitivity can help one hear the return of fugue subjects, but, come
>on, there's a limit, even accounting for the most fantastic of ears.
>Sure, there are places in Schoenberg where the row is clearly audible,
>but far more frequently I can hear the row about as well as I can hear
>the performer's heart beat - let alone inversion and retrogression! Maybe
>that's just me, but I can't comprehend someone saying after a Babbitt
>performance, "Well, I was disappointed how he left out a C# in what was
>otherwise a beautifully combinatorial set."

Hmmm... this description worried me that folks were listening "for" the
wrong thing... but the next sentence improved things...
>
>As far as Schoenberg, I would argue that he didn't usually intend for the
>tone row to have the same kind of audibility as a fugue subject.

Right.  The ROW is not comparable to a fugue subject but rather to a
table compactly listing the ways in which, say, 3, 4, or 5 fugue subjects
fit together as co-counterpoints.  It's not the theme, but a compact
embodiment of a BUNCH of related themes, chords, and other things the composer
likes, and THOSE things should be clearly audible at all times.

> Nothing
>wrong with that. The process just becomes a means to achieve a the certain
>sound that he wants. Instead of a process (like imitation) whose effect
>depends on clear audibility, it is a process (like common-practice voice
>leading) whose effect is a result of the process rather than the process
>itself.

?? I'm not sure, but we may be looking at the etiology of a serial piece from
opposite directions.

>But I'm arguing that the process remained the focus of many composers'
>interest long after those processes had (for human ears) ceased having
>anything to do with the sound. Thus I believe the music came to be lost.
>Some composers were merely playing games with numbers, and THAT is what
>I meant by extramusical.

Bad composers have always sought a science of composition, and better
composers have often, for better or for worse, provided something
half-baked to fill that gap.  Hundreds of years ago, innumerable
musical dice games were published.  So really there's nothing new here.
The issue has nothing particular to do with serialism.

>I won't argue with you there. Having taught music appreciation, I under-
>stand how hard it is to convince someone that making the mental effort
>to listen harder will result in a more enjoyable experience than "just
>letting the music wash over you." Anyone else encountered this problem?

Yes, but when I've taught music appreciation, part of the problem was
the large number of people who took it just to soak up what they hoped
would be effortless humanities credits. On the other hand, the students
that really did their homework and listening (there's no way to cram
for a m.a. exam, since music takes a minimum amount of time to hear!) were
a pleasure to work with.  In fact, music appreciation can be one of the
most fun classes to teach, and not just because it's a free opportunity to
market your wares to a captive audience!

While I'm on this, I might mention my opinion that it's a good idea
not to throw around technical terminology that you yourself aren't
absolutely well- versed in, or else you'll get backed into a corner by
a sly music appreciation student with a question.  One prof I worked
with defined a cadence as a V-I motion, then wanted to talk about
half-cadences and deceptive cadences.  Ah, well, he was a
historian/oboist, not a theoretician or composer.  But in individual
lab, I got a question---Please re-explain the concept of cadence---
and of course I defined cadence as a standard chord progression, of
which we have only about 5 main families in classical style.  One
could similarly botch serial music by saying that it starts with a
tone row, then leave it to one's lab T.A. to fix it by saying that a
bunch of themes are resolved against each other until no further
resolution is possible... (more on this in GEMS 5)...  But one would
do better to use the tack taken by the immortal James Hepikowski in
his Oberlin College undergraduate 20th-century history class (for
music majors, no less....) which is simply to present serial music IN
the CONTEXT of the previous 20 years of atonality and suggest that as
part of the reaction against WWI the music sounds to you like its a
bit more orderly, and in fact there is a new order called 12-tone
serialism which is outside of the scope of the course... (insert
a couple minutes of musical examples here).

In any case, I find that works with text, especially overmannered
madrigals with ascending lines on the word "ascending" etc. etc. etc.
are good introductions to concentrated listening for many people.
A lot of folks are returning to such obvious gestures--even within highly
refined and detailed musical language.  For a while, there were, as I see
it, two big schools of composition: the overly-subtle/mystical and the
insultingly-obvious/gestural (although there's always been a few folks on
the fringe who've taken the best from both schools)...but I'm glad to see
those walls being broken down.
Newsgroups: rec.music.compose