From: mgresham@dscatl.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: The imagining of music (Re: Bach and religious feelings)
Date: 31 Aug 92 23:34:14 GMT
Reply-To: mgresham@dscatl.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Digital Systems Co,  Atlanta, Ga

In article <1992Aug30.181012.26053@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> tomanix@sintra.xip.dec.com (Antonio Rodrigues) writes:
>
>>roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>
>> 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. :-)

I recall that David Rankin once suggested that those who refer to
Plato's "Republic" for others' enlightenment should also read
Plato's more ignored late writings where he has changed his mind
and refutes much of what he said in "Republic."

>>>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' ..... 

But Beethoven was not deaf from birth.  Each of us have both
memory and imagination; Beethoven benefitted from both.
If one is deaf, but not from birth, one has memories of sound
which can be more-or-less remembered and recalled, and we can use
creativity to reassemble bits of remembered experiences into newly
imagined, as=yet-unheard ones.
(The issue of *how* deaf Beethoven was a different parts of his
life is a wholly different matter.)

>>> 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. 

Roger's point is that a *concept* of the music is different from
the *experience* of it...that for the music to 'exist' there must
be the experience as well as the concept.

>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'. :-)

There's another example in point:  How conceptually detailed must
a *concept* of 'the music' be in order for it to *be* 'the music'
(if the *concept* WERE the total of 'the music' that is). 
Would it still be Bach work without the castrati?

My contention is that the 'concept' (roughly diagrammed in a
visual symbolic notation) is only a 'map' to producing or thinking
about (discussing or recalling the concept of) 'the music' as
experience.

> 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.

The notion that 'beauty' or 'beautiful forms' are 'aleardy in
nature and are only discovered through revelation' is an old idea.
It predates the notion of 'creativity' being a human activity.
(I think I've said more than once, quoting curis Bryant, that the
very word 'creativity' did not even appear in the Oxford English
Dictionary until 1930.  Not one on this net has yet expressed 
evidence contrary to that.)

> "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.) 

Yet none of that belies Roger's points. Mozart's imaginings
admittedly have to do greatly with 'concepts'...'imagined experiences'
(and I defer to Steve Smoliar on details and explications) do not
contradict Roger's position either.  One has to ask, "What IS the
mental activity associated with listening?"  We're not sure that
we could tell the difference between a 'virtual reality' listening
experience and an acoustic one.  Nevertheless, it is an
'experience' and not a 'concept'.  (The notion of 'object of
experience' gets quite hairy here.)  When I compose, I do
'imagine' the sounds...but I do not believe that a ready-made
'beautiful object' in the sense of Plato's 'forms' was simply 'out
there' and 'revealed' to me.

>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.

And any Mozart's product has scadzillions of influences which
helped produce it.  His 'Jupiter' symphony wasn't simply 'out
there' in the mouth of a cave from time immemorial waiting for
Mozart to be born and 'discover' it.

[WARNING: John Cage mentioned in paragraph below! :-) ]

The idea of 'revelation of natural beauty' though is quite
strong...look at Cage, for example, though Cage knew he had not much
to do with it in terms of being a 'medium of revelation' (as an 'ego
as funnel', that is).  Cage generally set up situations where one
could 'let go of ego' as a disciplined act and 'discover' what nature
had to offer.  (Ultimately, discovering oneself.) One difference was
that the 'order of nature' is not so simplistic as Plato would have
liked us to believe, and that experience (not concept exclusively)
is of greatest significance.


Cheers,

--Mark Gresham

dscatl!mgresham@gatech.edu

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