----- Original Message ----- From: Dennis Bathory-Kitsz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: finale list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 4:49 PM Subject: Re: [Finale] TAN Blessing or Curse in disguise?
> It seems to me that the questions you ask are largely moot because acoustic > instruments, one by one, are taking their slow walk into the museum of > sonic history. Just as whips, swords, and knight's armour are today only found in museums? Today, the people sitting at the buttons of nuclear bomb controls wear white shirts and ties and go to fitness centers. We are utilizing technology to achieve a goal. If we compose for 'perfect' MIDI to perform, we are then not composing for humans. For to compose for humans is to compose for humanity. When composers leave works, they leave them for humanity, not for the instruments on which they were performed. Then we can do with these works what we want, since they are ours to enjoy. > Is it appropriate to play Bach using electronic means? Sure. But just as appropriate as it is for a priest to issue the Sacrament of Penance via email. It may work, but the question is does it work the way we would want it to? > One composer even makes the point that any recording is already electronic > and misrepresentative of the music, so where's the objection? Anything but > live on a hand-made instrument adds a mechanical character. Not true. If this were true, the entire field and marvellous achievements of high-fidelity sound recording and playback would simply not exist. The goal here is to be as close to the original sound as possible. The greater achievements are the ones that get better at this. Those who stop trying are no longer part of the art, but have succumbed to mere business. > If you move someone, it's > because they're willing to be moved -- or at least have the acculturation > and the humanity at the ready, humanity that's able to hear through the > means of performance and even the performance itself to the artwork behind > it. If "the emotional and spiritual ensemble between one's individual > fingers and hands" helps the performer believe it's lubricating the > mechanics in some deep way, then good for it. But I certainly mistrust the > very idea, even find it a little distasteful. Well put. We are speaking of the same thing. Your "artwork behind the [means of] performance" is the very same thing as my "spiritual ensemble". It is the communication we are talking about. > Maybe I'm just a cynical old guy, but 99% of what I hear performers do is > just flat-out hubris. You need to either go to better concerts or build up a record collection. There are few human masterminds out there, but they exist, and it is beautiful what they share with us. > I *like* what Midi does because it stays out of the > way of what I create. It is the perfect extension of your mind's powers of creation. It is the physical acoustical extension of your own mind. It is a mirror of your intent and only MIDI understands your creation. Humans are eroneous. Humans get in the way. Humans make mistakes. Humans have their own vision, and this is inferior to yours. --- This MIDI seems like a good friend, but let us see where it leads: If you can count up the parameters involved in a human playing a C# on a violin and construct a mechanism to indiviually control each of these, you will wind up with nothing less than a human, with his/her own mind deciding how to play that note. This mechanism exists, by the way. It's called a musician. You can get them at your local Music Academy. If you don't trust the make of one, there are others. You can choose. Actually, when you choose a piece of MIDI gear you are also choosing the one that you think will give you more flexibility for the money. > I was, to put it mildly, > stunned by what had been done to them by "the emotional and spiritual > ensemble between one's individual fingers and hands." Yes, as composers, we > have to give up our pieces once their written down, but good grief, do we > have to give them up for the (s)laughter? Sounds like a case of the wrong musicians. I remind you that many great pieces were sitting in drawers, forgotten for decades, before they were given great performances, or any performances for that matter. It doesn't make MIDI better than a human, though, just because it can perform the piece 4 million times without any mistakes or even breaks for tea, or doesn't care about political implications or if there's a war happening. If the piece is good then, in some paraphrased words of Mahler: "It's time will come." > (I'm waiting > for the true "virtual orchestra" -- we're close, but without the visuals...) But it does indeed exist. In the words of Shostakovich: "No performance is as good as the performance which is available to the imagination." But MIDI is a watered down version of acoustical reality. Precious few parameters, compared to a real soundwave, let alone an imagined one. > The whole business of realization is so unpredictable that I have lost track of > what the performer actually *contributes* to clarity of communication, ...[] Hmmm. Next time you're at the opera, why not just read the program notes and stay outside? Probably get the same experience anyway... Liudas _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
