From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Bach and religious feelings
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 03:04:27 GMT

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.

Did the Greeks apply the idea of "absolute" to music?  I think not.

Moreover, the idea of absolute music, i.e., that music unrelated to
texts or descriptive titles is in fact the highest form of music, and
the only type capable of allowing the listener commune with the sublime,
is indeed an early 19th-century idea, one traceable to Wackenroder, 
Tieck, Hoffmann, Wagner (negatively) and Hanslick.

>> 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 ? 

See Dahlhaus, p. 8, etc.

>You can start by the Plato's 'The Republic'.

Yes, by all means!  Plato argues *against* any idea of absolute music.
He defines music as having three essential components: rhythmos, 
harmonia (which we would call melody), and logos, i.e., words.  He is
clear in stating that music without words is deficient.  If anyone,
Aristotle makes something of a case for instrumental music per se, but
what we know of music in his time suggests that our notions of 
absolute music" would not obtain there.

> Oh, I don't get royalties either and it's also in paperback. :-)

Great.  Buy one and read it.  Section 399 is very interesting.

>>>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' ..... 

Ah, the standard trivializing example.  This one ought to be in the FAQ;
it certainly shows up often enough.  

Now, are you prepared to argue that Beethoven's *memory* of music,
developed over 50 years as a musician of genius, couldn't imagine
sounds and do something very similar to listening?  And that most 
people who analyze just the notes on paper are doing something quite
different?

>>> 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. 

Yet he chose what to play...

>>> 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".

I'm not a fan of calling this or that "Essential"; but, yes, one can
make wonderful music by playing Bach on an instrument he didn't know.

>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'. :-)

Another one for the FAQ.  

>>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 :-).

Along with everyone else all over Europe.  That's like discovering
Michael Jackson; Vivaldi was incredibly popular at the time.

> 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 very kind.  (I hope you'll still feel this way after you
read it!  8-) )

> 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.  

I do.  Including liner notes.  Guilty as charged.

>>>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'.

Did I disagree?

>>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.

Well, what is that much much more?  Without listening, there can be
scads of composing and no music.  The urge to listen is the first one 
in music, and it is never absent.  

>>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.

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

Why would you want to do this?  Did I say something like that?

> 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.

Now, what do you mean by "it comes as a revelation"?  How does that go?
Can you give an example?

> "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.) 

Ah, there we go.  This letter was debunked as a forgery as early as 1852.
The real author is Baron Rochlitz, ca. 1817.  See Maynard Solomon, 
_Beethoven Studies_, ch. 8.  This did not stop the letter from being 
a prime document of Romantic theories of genius; alas, real letters of
Mozart state quite the opposite.  (Latest sighting: two places in _The
Emperor's New Mind_ by Penrose, which somehow figures...)
>
>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.

Unless it's forged, and bullshit to boot.  Just what does it mean for 
a piece to be heard not successively, but "in its entirety"?  

> 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. 

I think that people listen in different ways.  There can be a hundred
different hearings of it.

>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'.

Indeed.  And 100 people will feel 100 different "Somethings."  What about it?

>But yes, it's important to do that study, and I' m grateful to the people who
>do that work. 

And who discover more than the trivial facts of structure, and note how
Bach's music communicated to his audience in many different ways.

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

Go right ahead; but you still owe me the *connection.*

> "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.

I just *knew* this was coming.  See pp. 423 and 445 for the Rochlitz
Letter references.  PS: What's it like being human?

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

And I'd strongly advise you to read some other philosophy AND some other
computer science as well.  

>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.

In my opinion, your cultural background also influences whether the music
will be played or composed, i.e., the object.  But what *is* the object?
Isn't the object the construct you form in your mind when hearing some
bunch of sounds?  THAT is what you react to.

> 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'. 

What  did they communicate?  How can you tell that something WAS communicated,
when we're talking about music?  What if the musician meant one thing
and the listener picked up something quite different and still liked it?
Why use a communiccation model?

> 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. 

Would he want that?  Would he even want you to listen?  Would he 
want you to be moved?  Were his listeners moved to tears?  Were they
supposed to be? What if your reaction is inappropriate wrt Bach's
ideas about the music?  What was communicated?

>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.

Where were you?  Who took you there?  What did they tell you about the 
music? What other music had you heard?

>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.

Wishing doesn't make it so.  Why do you say this?  Again, what other 
music had you heard?  Had your parents heard?

Roger