Download Introduction to History of Western Music

Introduction to History of
Western Music
Dan Grimley
[email protected]
IHWM Lecture 2. Defining the Musical Work
‘All along the Watchtower’ (Dylan/Hendrix)
‘There must be some way out of here’, said the joker to the thief,
‘There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.’
‘No reason to get excited’, the thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.’
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
Are they the same musical work?
Differences:
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Instrumentation/timbre
Duration
Dynamics
Recording quality
Affekt
Similarities:
• Circular harmonic structure:
i—♭VII—♭VI—♭VII—i
• Melodic design
• Lyrics and title
Music and the Work Concept
Why is the work concept so important?
Models of musical production:
Composer PerformerListener
Composer writes work [notated or recorded in some privileged way];
recreated by performer [as mediator];
musical work received [decoded] by listener
Some philosophical assumptions:
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associated with a particular author (=intentional)
Fixed
autonomous (boundaries are closed)
value (=reified)
Lydia Goehr, Imaginary Museum of Musical Works
(1992)
Musical work=philosophical problem
Goehr: ‘ontological mutants’:
Works cannot, in any straightforward sense, be
physical, mental, or ideal objects. They do not
exist as concrete, physical objects; they do not
exist as private ideas existing in the mind of a
composer, a performer, or a listener; neither do
they exist in the eternally existing world of ideal,
uncreated forms. They are not identical,
furthermore, to any one of their performances. ...
Neither are works identical to their scores.
[Goehr, Imaginary Museum, p. 2]
Roman Ingarden, The Work of Music and the
Problem of its Identity (1966/1986)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Every musical work is an object persisting in
time
Musical ‘work’ is the product of a special kind
of creative activity or labour
The musical work possesses no defined
spatial localisation
Every work is greater than the sum of its
individual performances
Every musical work is unique
Some Preliminary Conclusions
(after Goehr, Imaginary Museum, p. 7)
The musical work is:
– Open
– Has specific ideological history
(Begriffsgeschichte)
– Correlated to ideals of musical practice
(but not identical with that practice)
– Regulative (notion of authenticity)
– Projective (deterministic)
– Emergent
Case Study ♯1: Domenico Scarlatti
• Born 26 October 1685 Naples,
same year as Handel and J S
Bach
• Son of opera composer
Alessandro Scarlatti
• Sent to Rome, 1705, fights
‘musical duel’ with Handel,
1710s.
• Employed by Portuguese
Ambassador, 1714. Travels to
Portugal, 1719, maestro di
capella at Royal Chapel, 1720.
• 1729 moves permanently to
Spain. Composes 550
keyboard sonatas?
• Remains in Spain until death,
23 July 1757.
Domenico Scarlatti: Some Historical Problems
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W. Dean Sutcliffe: ‘Domenico Scarlatti does not fit’
Marginal figure (overshadowed by Bach/Handel)
Career trajectory (why leave Rome?)
Better known as performer than composer
Source materials
No autograph mss (copies of sonatas in Parma, Venice)
Chronology
Interpretation/Style
Instrumentation
Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in D, K. 96, ed. Hans von Bülow (Vienna,
1864)
Von Bülow’s Editorial ‘Re-workings’
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‘Gigue’=final movement of ‘Suite’
Tempo: Vivace, not ‘Allegrissimo’
Scoring: Piano (not harpsichord)
Articulation: combination of legato slurs and
staccato dots, tenuto, and accent marks
Added contrapuntal parts and infilling, bb. 50ff
Rhythmic notations: bb. 27ff
Realisation: mutandi i deti, bb. 34ff=written out
turns
Recomposition: parallel fifths, bb. 58ff
Case Study #2: John Cage, 4’33’’
• 3 movements:
30’’; 2’23’’; 1’40’’
• Cage: Composing’s one
thing, performing’s another,
listening’s a third. What can
they have to do with one
another?’
[‘Experimental Music: Doctrine’, Silence,
1966]
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Where is the musical work?
Notation?
Title?
Performance (Duration,
Scoring, Context)?
• Intention
Stanley Boorman, ‘The Musical Text’
• Work Concept: Fidelity
• Notation—already act of interpretation
• Descriptive notation: records (selectively) what has
happened in a performance
• Prescriptive notation: detail exactly what must be
done by the performer
• The [written] text represents an amalgam of
decisions about only the essential components of a
work. It is therefore rarely to be trusted as
documentation of the composer’s intentions (p.
419)