I said: > >So it would seem that, in the order of perfection of informational transfer, > >we would have to say that the least perfect is notation, then memory, and > >then recording.
And Christopher replied: > Assuming, it would seem, that perfection is the goal, rather than an > interesting and distinctive rendition. I think there you lost my > support, at least in general terms for all music. Instead of memory, I should have said "live performance", since all folk music only ever existed during a live performance. And in general it has been argued that all music only exists to be played/listened to. The notes on the page are only a carrier, a time machine of sorts. The goal, according to my understanding, is putting the music into a form in which it is transported. In written notes, it is transported silently, a sort of cacoon which can be interpreted and brought to many forms of life. In a live performance it is transported in the way it just happens to come out that evening. In a recording, the carrier is precise: there are no other factors other than the waveform of the composition. This waveform can be transported losslessly to x numbers of players, radio stations, etc. Question is, do we not, as humans, enjoy this very "fuzziness" of music notation? Its very inability to give us 100% of the content is what we praise when we say that Beethoven was a genius. Beethoven gave us things to interpret, meat to digest. What if he only left us with a bunch of his own home-ripped audio-CD's? So yes, perfection is definitely the goal, but we don't like people, even geniuses, defining it for us. Except, of course, when that "genius" is our idol pop-star... > Summed up in the > musician's mind, it's a comparison between "what does the creator of > this work want to happen?", "what do I as a performer want to > happen?", and "what does the audience want to happen?" Now this is one of the most beautiful all-encompassing statements I have heard about music genres in a long time! Beautiful! And summed up in the audience's mind:"What did the composer mean when he had this guy do this?" , "What is this guy doing?", and "Don't ask questions, just keep moving your head!" Liudas _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
