On 4 Mar 2003 at 21:56, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > At 12:47 AM 3/5/03 +0100, Mr. Liudas Motekaitis wrote: > >I assert that Midi in its perfection is in effect an AD/DA processor with a > >sampling rate of infinity. Anything less than that is watered down > >compositional intent. So if you tell a midi note to have velocity 68 or if > >you write "mf" in your score, in the acoustic event, the "mf" will have more > >chance of inspiring the musician/public than the 68 will. For the 'mf' is > >interpreted in an historical context whereas the 68 is defined by the volume > >control parameter as well as the instrument it is patched to, and other > >strictly electronic criteria. All controllable by the composer but none > >controllable at the time of performance. > > That, I would suggest, is "old Midi" -- we now have "compassionate Midi". :)
But do the new controllers allow changes of balance? That is, aren't they still limited to the proportions of the relationships set up in the original MIDI data, even if they can be modulated and controlled by an individual at performance time? In a practical sense, this means that the ratios between the key velocities of MF and PP will remain the same, even if somebody fiddles with the "volume knob" to overlay a long crescendo, for instance. My basic objection is that a composer controlling a MIDI performance with the latest controllers, and using the finest envelopes for the instrumental sounds, is still only a single performer controlling what might be distributed between multiple individuals. When one person imposes her ideas of interpretation on a piece of music, it limits the possibilities. When multiple people collaborate, all sorts of things can be *instantly* suggested, at performance time, just but a slight change of shading, a touch of an accent, a slight lift, and that can be picked up and run with by the other players. To me, a MIDI performance controlled by a composer is kind of like the piano reductions of Beethoven symphonies. It's all there, and a sentient, sensitive musician is carefully shaping the ebb and flow of the music, but there's no Errors are simply a red herring. Composers have been making that complaint about performers since composers came into existence. Dennis, you should be grateful that you're in the first generation of composers who actually has a decent choice in the matter (Noncarrow notwithstanding, of course). [] > And for me, the point of being an artist, I think, is to avoid the > entrapment. Sometimes you can't. There ain't no castrati handy these days, > for example, nor a host of serpents. Likewise, Stockhausen's "Gesang der > Jünglinge" will always haunt us with the voice of a boy-child now 60 years > old if he's alive at all. And Horowitz, Toscanini, Furtwängler? All dead. > Fixed performances. Immutable, unchanged. > > And somehow they're still listened to. I don't see any fundamental contradiction in these observations and in Liudas's position. Recordings are recordings of performances of a piece of music, and *not* the piece of music itself. A MIDI realization is a performance, too. A composer-controlled MIDI performance is one instance of the piece, of how it can be performed. All of these things are obvious. But no single performance, except in the case of electronic music (such as the Sthockhausen), is the whole piece of music. The piece of music that requires performer intervention is a big hazy complex of all the possible performances (ignoring errors and misinterpretations/misreadings), a range of possibilities, with the choices that are made by prepared and sensitive performers adding variety to our repeated experience of the piece of music in various performances. One can certainly prefer some performances over others, but that doesn't mean that any one performance is the definitive one. I far prefer this imperfect state, where each performance represents the perspective of a certain group of performers on what the music means, and where spontaneous enhancements to the music happen on the spot, motivated by communication between the performers. This is, I think, one of the reasons I've never really fell in love with any solo pianist, even though it's my own instrument and the repertory I know first-hand, as it were. It's because soloists seem to me to be to ready to always play the music the same way, and to think they've found The One True Way of performing a particular piece, or they swing in the other direction and make a virtue of inconsistency, which usually leads to performances that have aberrations well outside the realm of appropriate choices by the performers. In short, I find most modern solo piano performances dull and unlistenable. But put those same pianists in a chamber group, and suddenly, those egotistical soloists aren't in complete control any more -- they have to react to the other musicians, they have to adjust to the moves of the ensemble -- they have to do more than just regurgitate their canned, planned view of the music. And then, I haven't any problems. And therein lies the distinction that I think is the danger for the composer-controlled MIDI performance. It's too easy to become insular, to lose your perspective, to become too attached to one way of seeing your music so that you end up limiting the possibilities inherent in what you've written. Dangerously, I've been composing again, and I don't know if my efforts are any good or not, but what I continually find is that my ear hears more than my mind knows it's putting into the music, and the result is that things that I put down on paper that seem unrelated turn out to have underlying structures in common and resonances that give the music unity I could not possibly have imposed on the music after the fact. Maybe I'm the only one who hears these things, but the point is that at any particular time in the compositional process, I had only a limited view of what was in the pieces that came from my own creative process. I go back to completed pieces and experience the same thing, finding things that I didn't know were there. How much more wonderful to give the pieces to gifted performers who would have there own reactions and find their own nuggets of interest in what I've created. That said, I see absolutely nothing wrong with writing only for MIDI. Given a particular piece of music with particular requirements, it may be the only possible performance medium, or it may unquestionably be the best. I simply don't think that this enhancement to the instrumental arsenal at the disposal of the composer also implies the oncoming death of live performance, or ensemble performance. I see no reason why the two could coexist quite happily, each contributing what it does best to the musical world. -- David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
