Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!husc6!osgood!elkies
From: elkies@osgood.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: responsibility (second try)
Keywords: Intonation systems, octaves, pianos, computers
Message-ID: <3167@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 14 Nov 89 19:58:29 GMT
References: <3111@husc6.harvard.edu> <various> <3068@husc6.harvard.edu> <1553@esquire.UUCP> <19433@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: elkies@osgood.UUCP (Noam Elkies)
Organization: Harvard Math Department
Lines: 29

Vance Maverick (maverick@oak.berkeley.edu) <19433@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>:

:In article <3111@husc6.harvard.edu>, [I wrote:]

:> That wasn't quite what I meant...  Only that, as with text
:> typesetting programs, the surface sound of synthesizer output
:> can be seductively appealing quite independently of musical
:> content, tempting the composer to accept what in another
:> medium (s)he would further improve/revise.

:The analogy with typesetting suggests that the notes are the content and
:the sound is the realization of the notes.  Why can't the musicality of a
:piece reside in what you dismiss as its "surface"?  I would say it does
:in some Oliver Knussen orchestra pieces, to pick an example from the
:Euro-composer tradition, and in a lot of popular music -- early Rolling Stones
:for example.

I was wondering whether anyone was going to bring this up, or (back on the
typesetting side) point to the LaTeX manual itself as an example where the
polished surface is a substantial part of the content.  To be sure, there is
such a thing as musical or unmusical interpretation, and in entirely
synthesized music it's not as easy to precisely separate the notes from what in
earlier times would be their interpretation.  Still, while the idea of
music whose content resides largely in its surface sound may be interesting
to contemplate philosophically, in practice I don't buy that this is a
very fruitful notion.

--Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu)
  Dept. of Math., Harvard University