At 08:19 AM 11/10/02 -0500, David H. Bailey wrote: >But then if Mingus sang the person's part to him/her with the intention >of them NOT playing it exactly as sung, how far away from what was >originally sung were they allowed to get? And as soon as that person >played something different, even slightly, from what Mingus wrote, who >really was the composer?
Jazz in that sense has always had a special and dramatically important place in the annals of the last century's Western music because it poses those questions of 'who is the composer' and, of course, the title of the famous book, 'Where's the Melody?". Jazz is one of the music artforms that helped re-establish the wider definition of composition that existed before the tyranny of notation as a means of transmission, and which challenges the Eurocentric concept of the Beethovenian 'great hunk of a man' single composer. Yet there are those who could persuasively argue that (particularly) Chopin's and Bach's improvisations could have been 'frozen' (I'm beginning to like that word) into 'compositions' and their 'compositions' could be deconstructed into the improvisations that they were -- thereby revealing that the difference between on-the-feet composition (exemplified last century by jazz) and dot-music has always been minimal, and, more cynically, only covered up by a profession of publishers and editors with jobs to protect (as, of course, reinforced by the growing body of orchestras who could not be taught by more traditional one-on-one methods). But I do think that composer/jazz/songwriter discussions tend to circumscribe the definitions a little too much, especially considering that 50-plus years of nonpop composition worked itself away from the 19th century notation that seems to be at the heart of the disagreement about who is a composer. Here's what I mean: I could, as a composer who in the past worked in what was then proudly called the 'avant-garde' :), say that most of the notators working with Finale are actually in the same realm as those they decry (compositional amateurs), because who among those complaining about the sorry state of the 'non-composer noodlers' is adept at using the body of working notation collected by Karkoschka already 30 years ago? (Jef Chippewa, for example, *is* highly skilled at developed notation.) Who is as comfortable reading a chromatic piano roll notation (more akin to Klaverscribo) found in software composition tools? Who can read a composition in Csound or JSML or Max or AudioMulch, certainly as valid and detailed a way of composing a piece as dot-music? But those are all notational methods (so fall under the original question of who-is-a-composer), without even addressing the less theoretical and more significant area under constant discussion on the CECDiscuss list. Since electroacoustics (EA, or 'electroacoustic music', EAM, to those who don't mind the extra verbal associative baggage) does not deal with melody/harmony/rhythm as central to function but rather more significantly with the development and juxtaposition of timbral elements, then the method of transmission, method of notation (if any), and listening parameters for these compositions are very different from dot-music. (Four years ago, I did have an interesting exchange with the very reactionary Churchill Society about this: http://maltedmedia.com/books/papers/sb-chrch.html) How do I, as an EA composer, create a method of transmitting my work? I can finish the piece and say 'this is it', or I can -- and here is where it gets very dicey for the EA composer -- provide a detailed notation by means of software and processes to run of certain hardware to achieve the re-creation of that music. Every step away from the detail of the notation will be a different performance (as even the room affects reproduction of a work committed to playback form). These issues are *hardly present* in dot-music notation, but every bit as thorough a grounding in them is required to be an EA composer. But if I create this detailed specification of software and hardware and processes (its complete notation, in terms of EA composition), then my fully 'orchestrated' (to use a kind of analogous term) work is *lost* when the hardware and software are lost (see my article "Preserving the Future's Past: EA Artists Must Take Care of Their Own Archives" at http://maltedmedia.com/books/papers/sl-archv.html), so also is my work lost. This is substantially different in scale from losing harpsichords for 150 years because EA (and its kin) are bound up in the ideas of sonic transformation; that is, while a Bach fugue intended for harpsichord might live on in some distorted form in a piano with thumbtacks or a 1950s-era Landowska-pounded piano-body Pleyel 'harpsichord', it is not destroyed to the amateur ear because it deals with melody, harmony, and rhythm ... but *is* distorted to the point that an original-instrument/performance movement grew up to recover the sounds as it was believed they were originally heard. The practitioners of EA (and other studio composition, including scratching and techno, for example) depend on the transformations (read: 'variations') of timbre and timbral structure that have no established *generalized* notation (or readers of that notation), and are subject to the vagaries of technological development far more severe than a French Revolution that used harpsichords for firewood. These composers also want their sounds as originally heard, and there has already begun to grow an original-instrument/performance movement in electronic music (hence the re-issue of early EA, computer, and other non-traditional-Eurocentric-notated music, and the restoration and -- more importantly -- software *emulation* of earlier electronic equipment, from tube amplifiers through Moog/Arp/Mellotron instruments). There's a scary part here: As instruments developed for dot-music, the sound could be refined through later performances. I'm sure even an original-instrument/performance version of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would be incredibly accomplished and far beyond the sonic limitations of the 18-teens. By comparison, because EA exists by defining itself against existing processes, the further development of those processes or technological eptness or even listening skills may *or may not* help those works grow. For example, I grew up with Stockhausen's "Gesang der Jünglinge" and it remains for me one of my 'top 10' compositions of all time. And I have the privilege of having a copy drawn right off the master tape, and have seen his original notes for composing it. This glorious work, though, suffers from the technology that was used to compose it. While Stockhausen still lives, a new version of "Gesang" will not be created. But at some point, a determined original-instrument/performance guru for EA will create it anew from Stockhausen's final piece and from his pages of sketches and notes. As we have moved from analog to digital, from 16-bit/44KHz to 24-bit/96KHz, and onward to other levels of accuracy *and* composer/listener expectation, the works created with older technologies will either gather dust in their original form, or be restored and recreated from the composers' body of description, software, and hardware -- together, unlike dot-music, the 'score'. As some of you know, I am equally at home in dot-music and EA, and came through an era of aleatoric contribution to the compositional pantheon of techniques. So for me, the idea of drawing a line around dot-music people and calling them composers (and, logically, their works 'compositions') and casting other composers and their work into some gray area of incompetence is both senseless and does not recognize the reality of music composition as it has been practiced in various parallel tracks, including jazz, electroacoustics, and studio composition. I must go; no time to proofread above, so please forgive the stupid typos and failed grammar! I'm heading off to Amsterdam first thing tomorrow (and visit with at least one of you on this list!), so won't see much further discussion until I return on the 27th. I hope to check up on occasional posts, and will be missing this discussion just as it starts to get interesting! Best to all, Dennis * * * * * To friends & correspondents: I will be away from November 10-27. I will try to check email on the road. In the meantime, if you are writing with questions about Kalvos & Damian, the Bathory opera, or other web projects, please see the signature below for URLs. ======================================================== Malted/Media http://maltedmedia.com/ Equestrian Music http://equestrianmusic.com/ ======================================================== Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar http://kalvos.org/ NonPop International Network http://nonpopradio.com/ Ought-One Festival http://ought-one.com/ ZipThree Festival http://zipthree.com/ Erzsebet The Vampire Opera http://bathory.org/ ======================================================== Accessibility Reports http://orbitaccess.com/ The Transitive Empire http://maltedmedia.com/empire/ ======================================================== My Resume http://maltedmedia.com/bathory/bathres.html My Music on MP3.com http://www.mp3.com/bathory/ My Downloadable Scores http://maltedmedia.com/scores/ Buy "Detritus of Mating" http://www.cdbaby.com/bathory/ ======================================================== The Middle-Aged Hiker http://maltedmedia.com/books/mah/ ======================================================== _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
