[microsound] 1 bit symphony

[David Powers]

On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Massimiliano Viel <mail at maxviel.it> wrote:
>
> Il giorno 07/set/2010, alle ore 23.41, David Powers ha scritto:
>
>> If you were really immersed in your work, there is no need for
>> language to explain your thought.
>
> This would happen if music were a universal language, but it's not.

What does "universal" mean? If you mean, everyone speaks it, then, no,
there is no language that everyone speaks.

But there are languages we can reasonably expect an intelligent human
being to be able to learn if they work at it. For instance, I don't
know sign language, but it's still universal in the fact that I COULD
learn sign language. Humans are relatively similar physically and
genetically, so that only makes sense.

Music is universal in that sense. I didn't understand Beethoven's late
sonatas when I was 18; you could say the music was a foreign
language... BUT later in my life I learned the language and now they
communicate a great deal to me. And if you have studied those late
works in particular, you will understand, that music need not rely on
words to express concepts; and that there can never be a 1-for-1
correspondence between a verbal commentary and what music say.

Any verbal statement could at most be a kind of rough translation of
what music is about, like the translation of a poem where the rhyme
scheme and sound of the original have been discarded.

If you need to PRIMARILY rely on words to explain art, you are more of
an art critic than an artist.

Actually, Boulez and especially Stockhausen already had this problem
where the discourse surrounding their compositions began to overshadow
the music. As if every new piece now has to announce some grand HUGE
IDEA about the nature of sound and music.

Very Hegelian view of art really, I can imagine the "Phenomology of
Conceptual-Art:"

"The absolute identity of the Artwork with itself is essentially not
an immediate, but is achieved through the canceling of sensuous
immediateness, and its exhibition as free and independent from the
Sensuous. Thus it shows itself in conformity with its Concept, which
gives reality to the Artwork."

~David