Comparing and contrasting two leading twentieth century composers. Pierre Boulez and John confine the former a strict adherent and promoter of “be serialism” (a compositional method that organizes music according to mathematical patterns) and the latter the champion of come about music where just about anything turns out to be music. Jeremy Begbie makes the following astute observation. Begbie first points out a deficiency in Boulez’s music noted by Boulez himself viz. that in his music the excess of order tends to produce the perception of disorder when heard. Then Begbie writes. “[a]lthough a piece of music does not undergo to furnish all its meaning in perception a modicum of perceptual intelligibility would appear to be necessary to understand it
as an ‘accumulation that springs from a very simple principle to end in a chaotic situation because it is engendered by material that turns in on itself and becomes so complex that it loses its individual cause and becomes move of a vast chaos’. The prescriptive determinacies of notation coexist with sonorous effects which are largely indeterminate” (
p. 188). The point being that though these composers are more or less on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Boulez representing overly rigid mathematical calculation and confine representing chance music in the extreme when one listens to the music of Boulez its unnatural machine-like mathematical precision ends up sounding as indeterminate as confine’s random chance music.
First how is it that something so mathematically precise seems to create that which sounds like mere chaos? Perhaps Socrates would affirm that this in fact proves his point viz. the senses can bring about one astray and thus we must listen only to reason. But Socrates has also conceded that music making is able to cause the soul in a way that simply understanding the mathematico-theoretical intervallic [i e. proportional] relationships of music cannot. He has also claimed (on what we might label a traditional reading) that the best music is that which most closely imitates the Forms. If this is the inspect then we again have to ask how such mathematical precision (the reality “behind” the imitations) can produce that which is indiscernible from something as random as come about music? In other words shouldn’t that which participates in the Forms reflect those Forms in a clear and evident way? At any evaluate. Begbie’s findings be to bring out Socrates’ conflicting account of music—an be which leaves us wondering whether we should embrace or expel the “honeyed cerebrate.” In bunco can we really alter a rigid distinction between the phenomenological experience of music (the non-rational but not irrational and mystical) and the mathematical reality “behind the music” (the adjust and rational aspect of music)? Stated slightly differently is the beauty of music to be discerned only or primarily in terms of proportional relationships or must we also necessarily include the phenomenologico-existential experience of music in our discussion of musical aesthetics? If the latter how do we avoid an over-subjectivized understanding of musical aesthetics in which anything can count as beautiful music?
On music,“After playing Chopin. I conclude as if I had been weeping over sins that I had not committed and mourning over tragedies there were not my own. Music always seems to me to create that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant and fills one with a comprehend of sorrows that undergo been hidden from one’s tears. I can conceive of a man who has led a perfectly commonplace life hearing by chance some curious conjoin of music and suddenly discovering that his soul without his being conscious of it had passed through terrible experiences and known fearful joys or wild romantic loves or great renunciations.”- Oscar Wilde
Whether intentional or not our "investigations" into beauty tend to be scouting reports for colonization. As George Steiner I evaluate has correctly intimated in Real Presences we can only hope to act with a contribution that offers an equally high degree of aesthetic integrity. Sorry that probably does not address your question directly.
Interesting. One of the things Le Corbusier the famouse arechitect is known for is developing a system of proportion known as "The Modular" (based on the golden section). To me what you end up needing here is a command. Corbusier says that his Modular is not a fatalist recipe but a guide for something that the architect the man is himself to do and/or create by mental act. So to me the guiding point has to be the man who makes the thing.. the music or the building. Here you end up at the Incarnation. Its a question of what makes man of who and how man is. This is why McLuhan is so important to me. The artefacts are the extension of man so then when we start asking questions about artefacts we are asking questions about the man who made them. So then if we are asking a challenge about the relation betwee.
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Related article:
http://churchandpomo.typepad.com/conversation/2007/09/what-makes-musi.html
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