Talk:Punctualism

message: I notice that User:Hyacinth has added a musical example from Webern's String Trio, op. 20, with a linked sound file. Whereas the article does say that punctualism was "retrospectively attributed to the music of Anton Webern", I do wonder whether op. 20 is actually the kind of thing "they" had in mind. Certainly this particular example lacks most or all of the attributes in the quotation from Karlheinz Essl near the beginning of the article: "whose structures are predominantly effected from tone to tone, without superordinate formal conceptions coming to bear". Dynamics, for example, are applied to a minimum of two consecutive notes, which is a characteristic of "group forming", rather than punctualism. Articulations also collect notes mainly into pairs, and occasionally somewhat larger groups, and there are clear thematic elements in the recurring two-repeated-note pickup figures, which is contrary to the Boulez quotation, "What had brought this 'punctual' style about? The justified rejection of thematicism". I hesitate to simply remove this example, since the article really does badly need one, but I would like to know how this is meant to help, rather than confuse the reader.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:39, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Seriously? Assuming that it was added to confuse readers is bizarre. Hyacinth (talk) 23:07, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed it would be bizarre, had anyone expressed that assumption. I certainly did not do so. What I asked was what this example was intended to help the reader to understand, since it appears to me to create confusion. (I'm sure this was not the intention.) Its placement without further comment suggests that the extract from Webern's op. 20 is an illustration of punctual music, which it is not, in multiple ways, as explained above. I have expanded the caption a bit, on the assumption that it illustrates what Boulez describes as the opposite of "punctual dynamics". However, it also illustrates the short (some of them two notes, others longer) motivic units characteristic of Webern's music, which Stockhausen believed had inspired Messiaen to reduce textures further: to single notes with no motivic implications whatever. If an illustration of punctual textures is desirable (and I think it is), an excerpt from Messiaen's "Mode de valeurs et d'intensités", from Goeyvaerts's Sonata for Two Pianos, or from the first book of Boulez's Structures for Two Pianos would be more apt. Selections from Stockhausen's earliest published scores would be more problematic (though the unpublished preliminary version of Kontra-Punkte would be ideal) since, as Hermann Sabbe says, ""Stockhausen never strictly speaking composed punctually", at least not in works that he allowed to be published. I suspect there might be copyright issues involved with reproducing excerpts from any of these compositions, but I would be happy to be proved wrong.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:46, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I see that you have replaced the Webern example with the upper mode from Messiaen's "Mode de valeurs". That is much better, thanks. An example showing the texture in an actual composition would be better still but, as I already said, this might be prevented by copyright issues.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:08, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I would go with . Hyacinth (talk) 05:33, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. I shall have to look into this. I have no experience with that particular rationale.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:30, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Webern