Process vs. Result

[ikedian]

In modern music, highly academic and inaccessible processes ranging from stochastic and spectral methods, to variously serial methods to chance operation and indeterminate scoring techniques (such as graphic and text score) have predominated the output of composers for, now, well on its way to 100 years.  The vertigo-inspiring lack of repetition in the scores of Ferneyhough, the schizophrenic and battling stave systems of Bussotti, the inception of mathematics into music by Xenakis and total serialism in the sonatas of Boulez and Barraque are all just many of, surely, hundreds of examples of the complex and aurally indistinguishable forms that modern and contemporary music has been composed in.

My question refers to the subjectivity of qualitating music.  Are the process and the result exclusive when judging the effectiveness/value/quality of a piece of music, and if so, which is the determining factor, or are they inclusive?  Do you feel that composers sometimes fore-go result for process, and if so, would you consider this intellectual elitism?  Also, are these processes simply mechanized to voice the composer's art, or do they become the composer?

[allthumbs]

Let me hazzard a guess. You are a music major doing graduate research for your PhD thesis.

[scottmcc]

for all your wordiness, you raise a simple question:  for music to be great, should it also sound great?  or is greatness of music dependent on other factors such as how esoteric the creative process was or convoluted the organizational system is.

my answers are yes, and no.  it's gonna be a short paper.  I'd never make it as a music academician--way too many people have lost touch of the fact that music, at its heart, is supposed to sound good. 

but perhaps you haven't heard my unfinished "nails on a chalkboard suite," an epic 15 hour orchestral excursion into the depths of the mandelbrot set, as realized by autistic children torturing small animals.  it transcends atonality and reaches amusicality in a way that only a true musician can appreciate.  are you up to it?

[quasimodo]

Let’s start with the easier questions:

“Do you feel that composers sometimes fore-go result for process?”

They sometimes factually forego result for process. Some actually acknowledge that they are experimenting and have little or no control on the output.

“Would you consider this intellectual elitism?”

Not really. Intellectual elitism is not determined by a set of actions (in our case a composing process and the publication of its result) but by the personal attitude and state of mind of the person doing these actions. If a composer, independently of the process, releases a work and tells the public “If you’re not an idiot, you will like my music!” then it’s intellectual elitism.

Actually, I think experimental music composers’ attitude is the contrary: they apply a process, deliver its product and somewhat ask the public “What do you think? Can it be likeable?”

“Also, are these processes simply mechanized to voice the composer's art, or do they become the composer?”

It obviously depends on how much control and latitude to modify the composer chooses to take upon the raw output of the process.

If the process is a full algorithm generating a score by itself and that the “composer” delivers the raw output, arguably he’s not anymore a composer, more like a programmer (I don’t necessarily imply that the process is computerized, an algorithm can be executed on paper).

Semantically I wouldn’t say that a process can be a composer. “Composer” for me implies sentience. However, if computer technology evolves to a point where an AI is capable of sentience (including *simulated* emotions, maybe), which in my mind is quite possible, then that AI process could be called a cybernetic composer.

[quasimodo]

“Are the process and the result exclusive when judging the effectiveness/value/quality of a piece of music, and if so, which is the determining factor, or are they inclusive?”

I think that this question is not specific enough to allow anyone to give a definitive, unquestionable answer.

Another problem is that there must be a solid agreement on the definition of music itself (for example: are Hanon’s exercises music?).

Also, there is a nuance whether we discuss quality of a composition or quality of the piece itself. As an example, I discovered recently Handel’s Great Fugues for keyboard. I think it is really good music, “effective” as you say. However as fugal compositions they are inferior to Bach’s fugues like those of the WTC. Bach’s have more elegance, maybe. Bach’s discourse is more concise yet denser and formally more rigorous. However that does not necessarily mean that Bach’s fugues are superior pieces of music compared to Handel’s.

To go further, in order to assess the internal quality of a musical piece from the composition point of view, we need to set criteria that are specific to the genre; criteria would be largely different for baroque-era fugues on one hand and classical sonata on the other hand. And is it reasonable to think there is a qualitative hierarchy between those specific two genres?

Last, quality assessment cannot be done independently of intent: what was the composer trying to achieve? Did he have a pedagogic purpose? Was he just aiming at composing something that would be widely appreciated? Was it an experiment?

[allthumbs]

for all your wordiness, you raise a simple question:  for music to be great, should it also sound great?  or is greatness of music dependent on other factors such as how esoteric the creative process was or convoluted the organizational system is.

What makes music great is whether or not it it has an impact on us as human beings enough to be remembered through the generations.

The creative process or organizational system is irrelevant to the end result.

my answers are yes, and no.  it's gonna be a short paper.  I'd never make it as a music academician--way too many people have lost touch of the fact that music, at its heart, is supposed to sound good.

 

No, no. no! Music at its heart is supposed to be emotive and
touch the soul.  or or or

but perhaps you haven't heard my unfinished "nails on a chalkboard suite," an epic 15 hour orchestral excursion into the depths of the mandelbrot set, as realized by autistic children torturing small animals.  it transcends atonality and reaches amusicality in a way that only a true musician can appreciate.  are you up to it?

Now that was funny!!!

I think I've heard that piece already in certain genres of 'music'.

@quasimodo - Good answer.

[go12_3]

   Process is an going series of changes in which takes effort to achieve a goal(whatever it may be) and be satisfied with the end results.   

best wishes,

go12_3
             

[ahinton]

In modern music, highly academic and inaccessible processes ranging from stochastic and spectral methods, to variously serial methods to chance operation and indeterminate scoring techniques (such as graphic and text score) have predominated the output of composers for, now, well on its way to 100 years.  The vertigo-inspiring lack of repetition in the scores of Ferneyhough, the schizophrenic and battling stave systems of Bussotti, the inception of mathematics into music by Xenakis and total serialism in the sonatas of Boulez and Barraque are all just many of, surely, hundreds of examples of the complex and aurally indistinguishable forms that modern and contemporary music has been composed in.

My question refers to the subjectivity of qualitating music.  Are the process and the result exclusive when judging the effectiveness/value/quality of a piece of music, and if so, which is the determining factor, or are they inclusive?  Do you feel that composers sometimes fore-go result for process, and if so, would you consider this intellectual elitism?  Also, are these processes simply mechanized to voice the composer's art, or do they become the composer?

Fascinating as this question inevitably is, it must be far easier to pose than to answer meaningfully, not least to the extent that there is some risk that certain people may feel that process, procedures and like disciplines may have "taken over" from other more familiar compositional parameters (in terms of general motivation) in certain music, yet this may not necessarily be anything like as clear-cut as it might seem to such people. I think that one would need to address such a question to living composers who may be thought by certain people to have prioritised process over other compositional considerations in order better to understand what prompted those composers (and, by association, others) to have fel impelled to work in the way that they have on occasion done. A classic case might be Elliott Carter, who put himself voluntarily through all manner of labour-intensive hoops (for which ample evidence is provided by the thousands of pages of shetches he produced for a few 20-minute works some four decades ago) in order to try to achieve something that he sought to achieve in terms of expressive fluency and, now that he is long past that kind of thing, he somehow seems to feel as though it was all worthwile in the long run even though he no longer has to worry about such disciplines and would almost certainly not put himself through all that it cost him to compose his Third String Quartet nowadays simply because that is no longer necessary to him. Xenakis's stochastic procedures did not preoccupy him until the end of his creative life either; furthermore, the "total serialist" persuasions that touched, among others, Boulez, Barraqué and even Messiaen (albeit very briefly) were demonstrably somewhat short-lived in terms of those composers' subsequent output and the ways in which we would view each of them from a contemporary perspective.

Schönberg used to talk of this kind of thing as what should belong "to the composer's workshop" and I do think that there is a strong argument in favour of his stance on this; that's not to say that composers should necessarily always keep their experimentation and probings to themselves while they work out whatever is necessary for them to do, but there is always that factor that, in the end, audiences have to decide for themselves in each case the extent to which the iteration of personal experimentation (however necessary for the composer's development) may or may not ultimately be taken to assume precedence over any other composition consideration when listening to the end results.

I admit that that this sounds rather woolly and offer all due apology for that fact, but in my defence (if I can have any) I would have to add that it's hardly the easiest subject upon which to pronounce with definitive and straightforward answers!

Best,

Alistair

[scottmcc]

What makes music great is whether or not it it has an impact on us as human beings enough to be remembered through the generations.

The creative process or organizational system is irrelevant to the end result.


 

No, no. no! Music at its heart is supposed to be emotive and
touch the soul.  or or or


Now that was funny!!!

I think I've heard that piece already in certain genres of 'music'.

@quasimodo - Good answer.

I agree totally with your first point.

I guess I should have clarified what makes music "sound good."  I think we actually agree, I just didn't word it as well.  to me, music sounds good not just if it is light and happy, but if it, as you say, "touches the soul," ie stirs the emotions, is evocative, or makes me feel alive.  or in the words of Tool (taken very far out of context), "I don't want it, I just need it, to breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive."

I assure you the nails on a chalkboard suite is a totally unique composition unlike any you've ever encountered.  I'm currently working on the 17th movement, presto lugubriosissimo, a duet between a homeless bagpiper and the imaginary bugs he believes are eating his face.  few will be able to appreciate the depths of its Stoichiometry or the sheer number of weighted fourier transforms required to create the unique sequence of microtones.

[ahinton]

I agree totally with your first point.

I guess I should have clarified what makes music "sound good."  I think we actually agree, I just didn't word it as well.  to me, music sounds good not just if it is light and happy, but if it, as you say, "touches the soul," ie stirs the emotions, is evocative, or makes me feel alive.  or in the words of Tool (taken very far out of context), "I don't want it, I just need it, to breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive."

I assure you the nails on a chalkboard suite is a totally unique composition unlike any you've ever encountered.  I'm currently working on the 17th movement, presto lugubriosissimo, a duet between a homeless bagpiper and the imaginary bugs he believes are eating his face.  few will be able to appreciate the depths of its Stoichiometry or the sheer number of weighted fourier transforms required to create the unique sequence of microtones.

I think that you have now well and truly (over)made your point, such as once it might have been (mit humor, up to a point) and such as it is now (lacking in any credibility through its repetition having undermined suchever credibility that once it might momentarily have had)...

Best,

Alistair

[pies]

a

[lmiller2501]

I think it is completely relative to the way you look at it...  No?!