On 15 Feb 2006 at 15:53, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > At 02:15 PM 2/15/06 -0500, David W. Fenton wrote: > >There's an infinite number of dynamic gradations. But > >there's no way to actually notate them all, so proliferating the > >dynamic markings at the extremes really doesn't accomplish anything > >useful, in my opinion, except of the "voodoo" variety > > Saying 'no way' doesn't alter the fact that gradations are getting > finer without any voodoo whatsoever. We're increasingly clarifying the > interpretation on the page itself, and in our recordings. An infinite > number is still a few years away... > > Seriously, there are documentated ways of notating fine gradations of > dynamics. They include the fully relative groups (such as the standard > dozen through the +/- systems and the 20-level decimals and notehead > sizes) and the absolute-relative groups (such as SPL, Midi volume, and > NRPN codes) and the absolute groups (such as dB, RMS pressure, and > dynes/sq.cm.).
You could be as specific in your notation as you like and still not get a predictable or reliable result from performers. > The desire to notate or otherwise fix more subtle gradations increases > as music moves out of its past into its future. That's how it's been, > and there's no reason that it will stop as we continue to educate our > senses and develop tools to identify what we have learned. Ah, yes, the concept of "musical progress." That's been a great success in the last century, eh? > And there are documented performances, real and virtual, successful > and not. Failure exists only so long as something can't be done. Once > success is achieved, then there is yet another ladder of > professionalism added, just as multiphonics are now commonplace in the > instrumental vocabulary. > > Anybody who's ever sat at a mixing board for hours knows how subtle > these levels can be, and how they can be achieved with a combination > of attentive performers, acoustic balance and mixing skill. Well, I think we're talking past each other here. I said that there were other ways to notate dynamics, but the extension of the traditional dynamic markings was not a very clear way to do it. The problem is in the notation, not in the capability of performers nor in our ability to perceive the differences. But if you're writing for a mixing board, then it's entirely a different ballgame. I was only speaking about live performance, which I consider to be the main point of composing. That's a prejudice of my own, but I thought I'd made that pretty clear by saying that the making of recordings allows the adjustments of balances that may not have been satisfactory in a particular performance. > Whether dynamic gradations are more relative than absolute are > notational and performance choices, and whether these interact with > coloristic tendencies or group dynamics just makes them part of the > whole. I think you and Lee and others and I all agree on that. All music is about relationships, and thus there is almost not component of music notation that does not change its meaning depending on context. > Nevertheless, fine gradations are present and accounted for, and > moreover, have meaning and usefulness and musicality. I think there are practical limits to how far one can go with specifying fine gradations and specific dynamic levels and there is no getting around this limit when writing for live musicians. > You know, there was a lot of music written in the 20th century that > couldn't be played well, if at all. Younger performers are coming > along in this century laying waste to that idea. Music that once > sounded awkward and crude and full of errors is now tight and elegant > and nearly flawless. Hearing it is a joy. Yes, but the problems were mostly technical or due to new notational conventions. The question of dynamics is not like either of those issues, in my opinion. That is, increased exposure to highly- specified dynamic markings is not going to magically make them suddently clear and transparent to interpreters. And I strongly doubt that there is ever going to be any change in the ability of instrumentalists to manage minute gradations of dynamics. I don't see any lack in that regard among present-day performers -- they can manage anything within the dynamic capabilities of the instruments they are playing. The problem is entirely notational, in my opinion. Well, not entirely. It's more complicated than that. Because of the fact that music is composed of a web of complexly interacting relationships, I don't think that a more precise notation of the desired dynamic output is ever going to work terribly well. Something like the decimal-based numbers that were cited here earlier is over-specific, and, I think, entirely too strictly linear in its implications (dynamics are not strictly linear, as anyone who has every implemented a MIDI crescendo or dimenuend should recognize). Perhaps one could train musicians to be comfortable with that system so that an ensemble of players would come up with consistent results when reading from a score using them. But I'm not certain that there's any value there, as you're just replacing one system that depends entirely on training in an oral tradition to have meaning with a different system that requires the same kind of training in an oral tradition. I don't see it as much of an improvement. > Tell me that there's a class of performers who can't play refined > dynamics. . . I have repeatedly insisted that there is no lack of capability among performers in playing refined dynamics, in infinite gradations. > . . . and tell me that there's a class of composers who aren't > interested in them and tell me there's a class of directors who > couldn't distinguish an mf from a 6.0 from a 64, and I'll heartily > agree with you. But refinement exists and continues. 'Tain't voodoo. Not all of it. But the Verdi and Tchaikovsky examples are quite clearly voodoo, seems to me, as they use tricks to get something that could be notated without resoring to a trick. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
