----- Original Message ----- From: Dennis W. Manasco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Here we totally agree; the complexity of a language/symbolism that > describes a page of musical notation is much more complicated than > that which describes a page of text. I see irony in this. I mean, even if you take the most simple music, say, a page of melody line alone, it still has more "language/symbolism" complexity than a page of text. Let's compare: The building blocks of English are letters. 26 of them. The building blocks of Western music are tones: 12(!) of them + rhythm. So where the declamation of poetry involves interpreting rhythm from the context of the poem's words, it is the music page's job to provide this rhythm information to the performer, with less room for interpretation. Which brings me to a point which has been lingering in my head for some time now: Western music (and notation) evolved from little points on the page. Then came counterpoint, adding a vertical dimension (or a parallel dimension, if you wish to speak in terms of time). Then add a bunch of clefs, then keys. Then transposing instruments, stops, harmonics, up-bow, down-bow, col legno, all sorts of other ways to emit different sounds. As the desire to achieve more and more musical effects progressed, so did the necessity of the amount of different markings. There is a clear tendency happening: we go from the historical and simple "points on the page" to an ever-increasing amount of composer-required explanations of HOW to realise the sound which was imagined. Bach drew up charts to explain the ornaments, even though the best players were expected to improvise them according to situation. Just count the number of fz and sfz markings in your favorite Beethoven piano concerto. Take a 20th century piece, and sometimes you'll find more words on it than "those little points" it all started from. So the question is, is it all advancing towards something that only language is capable of? Is it evolving into something more like a script for a play in which the musicians are the actors? The best composers give the most cues, to make for a successful production??!? Liudas _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
