Uh, O.K. ... and?

 

Discuss.

(if you feel like it - I'm off to watch Brazil v Croatia - its like the Alamo in the Croatian penalty area at the moment!)

 

terrible challenge by Neymar

oh, sorry, you were looking for a topic on this post? :lol:

 

terrible challenge by Neymar

Red card, do you think?

 

"Seeing is believing and hearing is a b*tch."
- Lester Young

 

I thought we got over universal Marxist interpretations of everything 30 years ago..

 

54:14 on the clock.
Brazil look the likelier to score again.

 

Also, although I suppose you could argue that the Church constituted a ruling elite, we have to remember that one of early uses of notation was the standardization of plainsong -- so that the Dies Irae in Mainz sounded the same as the Dies Irae in Milan.

 

True, though the form of notation involved in standardizing chant was neumes, which were a memory aid rather than a means of eliminating the need for memory. You still needed to hear the chant being sung to know exactly what the neumes represented.

 

You have had a few really successful threads lately, haven't you MillionRainbows. (Not sarcasm)

 

Notation is visual, of the eye, not the ear, and thus enabled music to divide visually, and embody abstract ideas, subject to the geometry of the eye. This objectivized, abstract way of conveying music was suited to the industrialization taking place in civilization.

This may not be crucial to your argument, but doesn't musical notation precede industrialization by several centuries?

 

True, and mass production also preceded the industrial revolution by a good long time (contrary to what the history books say). Think Vivaldi, Telemann...

 

Notation encouraged a split between composer and performer.

This may be the crux of the matter, but I think the printing press had more to do with this.

I can't really say notation is of the eye any more than these words on the screen are. They are really abstract symbols our brains use as a kind of slow telepathy, so they convert back into words (of the mind's ear) almost without any effort on our part, so they are still of the ear or the tongue in that respect. Notation does the same thing for one who can sight read.

I think in the not too distant future the written word may become obsolete as neuron to silicon interfaces become better. I believe we'll be able to make music just by thinking at our instruments, or perhaps the conductor could think at the orchestra, etc. This technology is already here in crude form.

 

Notation is visual; that's a given. What does that mean?

1. It means music became unchanging, unlike aural communication (remember that game you played where you whisper something in somebody's ear, and it changes?). Every score becomes definitive

2. Music became property; reproducible, and could be owned and transported, as a commodity.

3. Notation encourages and necessitates a division between composer (author) and performer; thus a new kind of musician emerged, no longer improvising and varying the music, but reading the score.

3. Notation made music subject to the inherent geometric laws of the visual: horizontal was melody, and vertical was harmony. Before that, it was simply time passing. Also, this changed ways of thinking about music for composers, who would now divide things evenly, reverse things, invert things, etc. Even Mozart did things like this.

This characteristic played itself out all the way to the twentieth century, with serialism.

Recording technology is what really changed things, because it is an 'ear' technology. It is a third kind of memory. It does not remember schemes or mechanics, but actual performances.

More importantly, recording can remember - and reproduce - any sound that can be made. Thus, as John Cage was telling us, the domain of music increased to include any and all sounds, something that notation could not encompass.

 

^ I sort of agree with some of this. Notation is of the ear, just as writing is; written notes, letters are symbols that represent sounds. However, the loss of writing, notation represents a huge loss, similar to people who have lost the ability to do simple mathematics.

 

I think notation has also given is today a historical diary of theory, publication, contemporary history, even information regarding the lives of certain individuals. However, one could argue that western music is never purely notated; improvisations, embellishments, any addition by the performer would in one way or another be an addition to the already notated content of the score. Even in New Complexity if we were to view the production of sound, the notated sound AND even the brainpower to produce the sound (which in effect would be different for everybody) perhaps even a concept existing in the mind of a performer could be an addition...parts of the music that aren't quite notated. Concept art: same deal.

 

. However, one could argue that western music is never purely notated; improvisations, embellishments, any addition by the performer would in one way or another be an addition to the already notated content of the score. Concept art: same deal.

That is true as an exception, but is irrelevant in the context of the eye/ear dialectic. Can anyone here discuss this without being defensive or citing irrelevant exceptions?

Everybody seems intent on 'defending' notated music by desperately relating it to the ear.

Of course, notated music's purpose is to be transformed into sound, this is obvious.

Nobody here seems to be able to recognize the aural as a mode of experience, much less discuss it. I

I've already listed the characteristics of both modes of music-making. I'm not attacking notated music; I'm just defining how it changes our experience of music, and secondarily, how it has affected the social functions of music.

With the rise of popular music via recording, notated music with origins as a bourgeois power base has lost much of its former power. This power, however, has been replaced by the capitalist commodity system. Recording, an ear-based technology, can transform music into a commodity via reproduction. So really, we are not much better off than before.

There is hope, however, in the grass roots power of people; who demand that music be vital, sincere, and reflects the concerns of the folk, without being simply a tool for manipulation, or a mere commodity. All great art will, hopefully, rise spontaneously from the hearts and souls of real people, rather than from market research surveys and radio station conglomerates.

 

Really, the realm of popular music has been empowered more than ever due to recording (an ear-memory), so Western Classical notated music seems to be searching to find a way to accommodate and regain its once singular power. Witness Yo Yo Ma's recent projects...

 

There have been forms of musical notation since ancient times in varied cultures worldwide. Notation becomes necessary when music reaches a certain level of complexity, involves multiple participants, or needs to be reproduced precisely for ritual or other purposes. What do the tastes, needs, values and ambitions of a ruling class have to do with it? The need for composed and notated music in some contexts did not make folk music or its aural transmission disappear, or deprive us of the pleasure of making such "traditional" music for ourselves. And by making possible the creation of kinds of music that "the folk" could never have conceived, notation bestowed on all of us an immense and precious cultural heritage. I can sit at the piano and improvise to my heart's content - embodying the principle of "no division between composer and performer" - or I can put on a recording of an opera or symphony and be grateful for exactly that "division" between little me and immense Wagner or Beethoven. Each way of enjoying music is valuable in its way, and I feel no "bourgeois power base" using music as a "tool" to dictate to me what sort of musical experience I shall have.

 

Abstraction isn't a tool of oppression; doctrinaire nonsense is. Abstraction identifies and conceptually integrates the evidence of the senses. . . I know. I know: thank you Miss Alyssa Rosenbaum.

 

millionrainbows: It is well known that totalitarian governments hate and suppress serialism and 'modern' abstract art.

-- Then the repressive ancien régime of Castro's Cuba sure has a lot of 'splaining to do Lucy with regards to its acceptance of Henze as a pedagogue.

 

Woodduck: I agree that art can be a commodity, i.e. something which can be bought and sold. That didn't come into being with capitalism. Nobody has ever worked for free. Musicians always had to make a living; whether a song sung at a wedding or a funeral was paid for in dollars or in eggs and blankets, talented people who make music in all cultures have been recognized and supported through payment for services rendered. Yes, music in written form can be bought and sold conveniently in that form, and the buying and selling of music, as well as the employment of musicians, can be a complex industry. As with any other industry, the products of this one may not be equally available to everyone. I cannot go to the opera very often on my income. As a performing musician, I may not find employment when and where I want it. That's life, isn't it? Why should anyone guarantee me a living as a musician? I can still enjoy making music, alone or with friends (and Schoenberg was perfectly free to do the same). But just as importantly, I have access, thanks to the recording industry, to the music of the whole world. If the written notation of music made possible the creation of Der Ring des Nibelungen, and if the industries which print music, employ orchestras, build and run opera houses, and record the performances that happen there, can bring that great artistic creation to me in my own home for the cost of a few dinners at my hometown buffet, I say hurrah for "visual" music and hurrah for the bourgeoisie.

---
Its the often-maligned and more frequently misunderstood 'bourgeois' civilization of capitalism which brought the world the readily-available novel, the cd player, and Amazon.com-- where you can buy Britney Spears or Schoenberg; and a state apparatchik isn't going to be there to tell you what you can and can't listen to or buy. [/QUOTE]

 

My two cents worth:

Reading musical notation often means you don't have to memorize the music. Performers who can't read music have their music memorized. They're consequently different kinds of performers. I am not judging who is better, both have advantages, both disadvantages.

We go to concerts to see people perform to get both the visual and aural experience. If we only want to hear the music, we might as well sit at home and listen to a CD. Therefore, a concert is a different musical experience because you use more of your senses. Sitting at home listening to a CD is a nice aural experience.

(sorry, this post is not following the general conversation)

 

My two cents worth:

Reading musical notation often means you don't have to memorize the music. Performers who can't read music have their music memorized. They're consequently different kinds of performers. I am not judging who is better, both have advantages, both disadvantages.

We go to concerts to see people perform to get both the visual and aural experience. If we only want to hear the music, we might as well sit at home and listen to a CD. Therefore, a concert is a different musical experience because you use more of your senses. Sitting at home listening to a CD is a nice aural experience.

(sorry, this post is not following the general conversation)

Reading notated music enabled the precise control of groups of musicians. An "ear" player who is a solo individual does not have to worry about synchronizing with other musicians in any significant way, except maybe a singer and a few other players.

So, notation represents a large social force of players, under the precise control of a conductor. It represents a larger society, not an individual. In this way, notation is "institutionalized," while a single "EAR" or folk player represents the poetic, subjective aspects of humanity, and/or focuses on the individual, rather than the collective idea.

Concert pianists, like Horowitz, are celebrating the performance of the individual, and wish us to focus on their performance rather than simply promulgating "the idea of a composer" or "the idea of a composition." That's why concert pianists have their repertoire memorized.

 

Boulez says that 'écriture', a concept*that involves notation and composition, is essential to modern classical music because it signifies the autonomy of musical symbols and the primacy of thought over substance. Thus oral traditions and musique concrète are essentially primitive form of music.

*which like all concepts of humanities is over-inflated and over-written because of reasons I won't talk about here but every learned individual and perhaps specially 'science/math people' quickly realises.

 

OP: Okay, so what's the point?