If music is "organised sound," is the car alarm going off outside music? It is organised into easily predictable patterns and it involves sound.
I prefer the definition of music being "organised sound intended to convey emotion." Not elicit an emotional reaction, but to convey emotion. Ben ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, July 12, 2010 12:56:00 PM Subject: Re: [Hornlist] About those brass playing robots... There's a big danger to that idea though. When you put too much into music, you put a big old box around it. You limit it. One of the smartest people I've ever met asked us once in an orchestration class what music was. The correct definition is 'organized sound'. That's it. Your interpretation, your emotion, your 'feelings' or 'gut' or whatever is not part of that definition. A lot of music was composed programatically. Some was composed out of form only. Why should we be forced to attach emotions to music at all when some music was not composed to trigger a response from the audience at all. You can have an emotional response. You may not have one. That's your call. However, when you start bridging into the realm of 'spiritualism' in music then you're getting into a realm that, again, is indistinguishable from make-believe. In other words (and I've said this how many times now?) you can have that feeling all you want, but it does no good to teach it because you can't teach it, and it does no good to really progress playing and progress music because you might as well be talking about magic purple monkeys or the ether theory or something. If you are able to analyze and figure out what Perlman or Domingo or even Ravi Shankar was doing then you are able to learn it yourself, you become able to teach it, and more people can figure out how to be just as great. They are human, too. What they are doing is nothing magical. They aren't invoking Thor and Loki and an army of Frost Giants. They aren't using a magic ring. They don't have a spear and magic helmet. I advocate figuring it out. Some advocate a blank stare. -William -----Original Message----- From: Steven Mumford <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, Jul 12, 2010 1:45 pm Subject: Re: [Hornlist] About those brass playing robots... Of course you can study all the things that can be defined about music and that's a good start. When I was in school, other students would complain "I don't know why I have to study all this theory, I'm a performance major". HaHa! Can musicality be taught? Of course. You can teach all the mechanics of phrasing, which notes get emphasis and why and that's a good start, but I'm sure we've all heard playing that was embarassingly "over musical" so that doesn't always work. So can you specifically define exactly what perfectly sublime music would be? Well, I suppose so. You could take a performance by Heifetz and put an exact value on the loudness, duration, timbre etc. of each note and there you'd have it. But what if Perlman comes along and plays it, also sublimely, but differently? Oh dear, now we have to start over. Could Heifetz give you the exact parameters of each note played? I think he would have given you a quizzical look if you had asked. Anybody trying to analyze while playing would not be giving a very interesting performance. You analyze before playing. You could try to teach a student by putting specific values to every parameter... or you could just play. It's a VERY interesting experience to teach a lesson without saying a single word. Shut the hell up and play! You define music by playing it, not by measuring it or talking about it. - Steve Mumford _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/corno42%40yahoo.com _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
