Xref: utzoo rec.music.classical:12357 comp.ai:6293 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!venera.isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: rec.music.classical,comp.ai Subject: Re: Langer's theory of Logical Form in Music and Emotions (LONG) Summary: still trying to deal with dynamic processes Keywords: Husserl, phenomenology, emotion Message-ID: <12434@venera.isi.edu> Date: 16 Mar 90 16:54:42 GMT References: <12143@venera.isi.edu> <14431@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <7bnM02KL92Qo01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> Sender: news@venera.isi.edu Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute Lines: 114 Like Ken, I am no longer sure just where this discussion belongs. However, in spite of the digression into music, I would like to continue to dwell on the theme (pun intended) of the perception and comprehension (whatever that may mean) of the dynamics of processes. Consequently, I would like to try to maintain this on comp.ai. I do not think the cross-posting to rec.music.classical will be of much help unless this whole debate spins off into aesthetics, music criticism, or music theory. I shall leave it on for now; but if we can hold to the line of the process question, it probably should go away. Now to the matters at hand . . . In article <7bnM02KL92Qo01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) writes: > >In article <14431@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot >Handelman) writes: >>In article kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com >>(Ken Presting) writes: >> >>;But I would suggest that the concept of time cannot be analyzed without >>;reference to the physics of time. >> >>But without a phemomenology of time no physical analysis is possible. > >I'm not sure I understand this. Certainly the physicists have produced >a very interesting analysis of time, which seems to me to be adequate for >the description of natural processes. If you mean that physics is more >dependent on phenomenology than most physicists often admit, then I would >probably agree. However, the inscribed graduations on most measuring >devices suggest to me that natural science is more dependent on *texts* >than on perceptions. > I would be prepared to argue that some of those texts may run the risk of being abstractions which were imposed in an effort to dodge critical questions of phenomenology. Where physical analysis has made its progress seems to be in the question of the perception of the passage of time. Thus, physics can bring insight to those very tricky questions about relationships between the passage of time, clocks which measure units of time, and observers of clocks. However, there is only part of the story about time; and it seems that Husserl's THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF INTERNAL TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS comes into the picture when we recognize that there is more story to tell. Where physics has not yet provided adequate analysis, to the best of my knowledge, is in the relationship that time plays in the GENERAL perception of phenomena. This is where the issues of experience which were nicely summarized by Ken being to rear their collective heads. However, while Ken wanted to relate experience simply to listening, I suspect he would agree that it is a factor in ANY form of sensory perception (including, for better or worse, our perceptions of any of the measuring devices provided us by physics). The reason I brought music in in the first place was that it seemed like a valuable metaphor. We began by debating the question of how we perceive the behavior of an array of cellular automata, such as the R-pentomino problem. I could have invoked the perception of traces in a cloud chamber for another metaphor; but music seemed particularly challenging because it involves the relationship between perception and the passage of time, it has to deal with a variety of different "levels" of the passage of time, and we all have some basic intuitions about the relationship between what we perceive and what we have previously experienced. All this began as a "modest" proposal that we may be able to approach the dynamics of complex systems on similar grounds, be they cellular automata or strange attractors. Why invoke the metaphor of music in the first place? The primary reason is that we have a base of experience when it comes to the problem of developing techniques for describing music. On the one hand, we have no end of notations: scores, figured bass notations, Roman numerals, Schenker graphs, and probably some new notation being cooked up by a desperate graduate student even as I write this. The problem is that most of these notations feed off of themselves. Roman numerals tell you how to label configurations of notes with respect to a terminology of chords, but that does not imply that they will tell you anything about what those chords actually SOUND LIKE. I think the word "like" is important here because of the experience connection: we hear in relation to what we have heard. On the other hand, if we put aside all the notational games which keep the academic types busy, we discover that there are other attempts at description which tend to dwell more on what we can express in natural language. Here we are more likely to encounters descriptions which have to do with what is HEARD. We find them in liner notes, and we read them in the better reviews by music critics. There has been recent recognition that phenomenology plays a role in that is being communicated by such means. Two music theorists who have broken considerable ground in this area are the late Thomas Clifton (who wrote a book entitled MUSIC AS HEARD) and David Lewin (in "Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception," which I believe I have already cited). All I am arguing is that such an approach to music leads us in a direction of getting a better handle on the description of dynamic processes. To sum up: I think that trying to approach music strictly in terms of its notation is a bit like Ken's suggestion that we understand cellular automata in terms of the state definitions of the automata themselves. Yes, that tells us about what is going on; but it does not tell us how we PERCEIVE what is going on. Such perceptions are the basis for abstractions we form which we then engage in our reasoning. Thus, if we have a better handle on the abstractions which facilitate our describing the experience of listening to a performance of music, those abstractions may also apply to our perception of the behavior of the R-pentomino. As a post script, I shall acknowledge that I have kept emotion out of this discussion. This is not to deny the role which emotion plays in listening to music. As I say, I am interested in finding appropriate abstractions. However, it may very well be the case that we CANNOT abstract the role of emotions out of an attempt to describe what goes on in the course of musical perception. If that is the case, then the metaphor I have been trying to construct may fall apart entirely. ========================================================================= USPS: Stephen Smoliar USC Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Suite 1001 Marina del Rey, California 90292-6695 Internet: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu "Only a schoolteacher innocent of how literature is made could have written such a line."--Gore Vidal