At 16:53 03.04.2006, I wrote:
Invalid comparison. Literature and painting are creative arts.
Once completed, they are what they are. Music (and dance and
theater) are both creative and recreative arts. It is in the
recreation that each such work of art is different, by a little or
by a lot, every time it is recreated. Notation is not performance.
At 6:32 PM +0200 4/3/06, Kurt Gnos wrote:
I think we must discern between notation, interpretation and recorded music.
Of course. I thought that was my point, although recordings have not
been introduced into the discussion until this moment.
While interpretation may be comparable with painting a painting,
No, my point was that composition is the creative art comparable to
painting a painting; recreation (my term) or performance has no
analog in painting.
interpretation would be following close directions and adding some
personal touch, recorded music may be compared to a painting, as
long as we still agree the painter is following directions as "now
paint, just at the top left, a small red (blood-red, shade 30%)
line, 3 mm (or inches, whatever), slightly whiggly (trill), and then
switch to blue (aquamarin) and ...)
Some people paint smaller dots, or take a different (wrong?) red
shade, or paint "to thick"... See what I mean?
Sure, except painters don't paint that way (excluding the
paint-by-numbers crowd, of course!). I have come to realize that
recording is a separate and distinct art form, similar in some ways
to live performance but not at all identical to it, in the same way
that painting and photography are different art forms. And a
recording is a freezing in time of a particular interpretation which
may have existed at only that one moment in time, so yes, in that it
is like a painting freezing in time a scene that may never again
exist.
There is a wonderful passage in "Stranger in a Strange Land," where
they are discussing, I think, Rodin. (I paraphrase from memory.)
"Any decent artist can show you an old woman. A really good artist
can show you the old woman and the young girl she once was. Only a
genius can show you the old woman and the young girl she still is,
inside."
A live recording of an improvisation may be the best musical analog
to a painting.
Sure. A freezing in time. And the artist may later come to hate
that recording when her ideas have matured and changed, or simply
because everybody wants to hear it "just like the recording."
And when you say now: Hey, but the painter knows (to a certain
degree) what to paint before he starts .... - Hey, so does the
("good") improviser...
Of course!!
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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