At the end of the concert

How can it be, technology is only a means... what we put into it is the fruit of our ingenuity. Then you should also remove paper, and then there would be trouble... it was precisely paper that allowed the West to have the music we know

Ilenia wrote:

When I asked my teacher the following question: "it would be nice to experiment with things using authors like Brahms, Beethoven, etc.", he replied to me in no uncertain terms... the algorithm doesn't work with tonality because it is music made of exceptions. From my point of view, paradoxically, tonality becomes more interesting music than others because even though everything is foreseen, it is always new and unpredictable (if one is capable)... whereas anyone can be Webern. I am not speaking in terms of cultural depth, but certainly with the right program one can write opus 27. There are others reconstructed works by algorithms, it seems to me something by Ligeti and Boulez.

It depends on which tonality is being referred to. Or rather... every composer uses exceptions, and the rules we derive are always a posteriori. Webern was brilliant ALSO because he managed to find and use those rules. That said, there are many "tonal" composers who pursue order as an ideal. In reality, order is one of the fundamental principles of classicism, as a style. Anyway, in the book "Le regole della musica" by Dalmonte, Baroni and company, they talk about how some compositions like those of Legrenzi can in a certain sense be analyzed and recreated according to algorithms. There are many exceptions there too, however...

anyway, the discussion has really become too confusing. I was ready to bite a few calves, but I got lost...

Tiger wrote:

How can it not be, technology is only a means... what we put into it is the fruit of our ingenuity. Then you should also remove paper, and then there would be trouble... it was precisely paper that allowed the West to have the music we know

but of course . . . how could one not agree?

thallo wrote:

anyway, the discussion has really become too confusing. I was ready to bite a few calves, but I got lost...

eeeh . . . perhaps the disorder of our discussions has little to do with classicism

LucaCavaliere wrote:

With the 'romantic idea' of creating music (which I can do without), I meant the image - an idealized one, precisely - of the composer closed off in their own inner world, creating their masterpieces without external help: without technological aids, without a piano, and perhaps (absurdly) even being a bit deaf.

Well, anyway... this actually has little or nothing romantic about it; it is precisely an 'idealization' that has little to do with reality. Not even Beethoven, whom you are not even too subtly referring to, was immune to the "craft"—including revisions, scribbles, and the piano, even while deaf—did you know? When he needed to verify what he was writing, he would put a bamboo straw between his teeth and press it against the piano soundboard while playing...

In reality, the inner world of each artist requires getting one's hands very dirty. In this regard, a recording by Bernstein is very interesting, made when he was the conductor of the NYPhil: Bernstein "recorded" with the orchestra the preparatory notes for Beethoven's Fifth—entire pages, not just sketches in reality—revealing that what we have always been led to believe are ideas emerging exactly as we know them from the mind of the Great Master are, in fact, the result of an extremely careful process of elaboration, refining, and perfecting, which led to that essential language that brought fortune and guaranteed immortality to that piece as well as his others.

"Gestation," in this regard, gives the idea of a passive process or at least one that occurs autonomously and preordained (like the gestation of a child before birth); whereas it is always an "elaboration" of an idea, of a set of ideas, through a compositional procedure that traces the path of that elaboration, which in turn is guided by an original idea (inspiration?) that, as Tiger said above, constitutes 1% of all the work (Mozart said it too, and if he said it!!!). It may be that "elaboration" has "improvisation" as its opposite term, but I continue to prefer it to emphasize exactly how in the activity of the composer (and the artist in general) there is careful and progressive work that has little to do with just waiting for things to resolve themselves...

Carlos . . . putting it in these terms, 'gestation', doesn't please me anymore either. It's true: it gives an idea of passivity. It could be better then... 'labor'!?...

in any case (I knew all those things about Beethoven. Thanks anyway)...

I reiterate that I agree with Tiger and with you: with everything you have just written. And I think that by reading my two previous messages (10:47 and 16:31) it can be understood.

Frank wrote:

The only things in the world that are truly universal are 2:

- the archetype of the condition of being a child

- facial expressions

Everything else is convention; even the most elementary thing for music (and not for acoustics) such as timbre is a cultural factor...

I read a study some time ago whose content I found in the following little article, which might perhaps be of interest:

http://www.scienceda...90319132909.htm

I don't know Bianca, what do you think?

From what I read, Western music was proposed to a mixed audience of people unfamiliar with it. In my opinion, to truly uphold the concept of the universality of music, the opposite test should have also been conducted (say, at least with Oriental music? But which one? In both directions), otherwise the title is misleading... it speaks of "the language of music" and not "the language of Western music" (always with many questions).

And in fact, the article then says: "These results could explain why Western music has had so much success in global music distribution"

This part is quite telling:

"The expression of emotions is a fundamental characteristic of Western music, and the ability of music to convey emotions is often considered a prerequisite for its appreciation in Western cultures, researchers explained. In other musical traditions, however, music is often appreciated for other qualities, such as group coordination in rituals."

This statement completely overlooks all that music written consciously ignoring the emotional sphere or, rather, perhaps it wants to justify why certain music is not appreciated by the general public? Therefore, not universal...

...and ...

"By manipulating the music, researchers also discovered that listeners (Western and African) find the original music more pleasant than modified versions. This preference increases with increasing dissonance in the manipulated tracks."

mmhmm, dissonance...mmhmm

Maybe I understood little because of the translation but I don't know Bianca, there are few elements to be convinced…what do you think?

I am also very skeptical.

On one hand, skeptical towards scientists (often USA) who approach these topics with a lot of levity.

On the other hand, skeptical towards journalistic reductions. Without seeing the research itself, it is difficult to understand how serious it was.

It depends a lot on what we mean by “universal”. And above all, on what we “imply” when we refer to it.

The article reports the substance of a research study that is obviously more detailed, the main weakness of which, in my opinion, could lie in the limited number of observations made (necessarily limited, as the subjects examined are from a small community, while the control group consisted of about twenty Germans). However, I consider it a valid starting point for reflection, moreover not unique in its kind, which allows, if nothing else, for reasoning by hypothesis. Without instrumentalizing it, as too often happens to those who grasp suggestions in the fields of various theoretical or applied sciences to support their own position of thought, I believe the study simply wanted to investigate what the probability is that the human brain presents a certain response to certain musical phenomena regardless of conventions and culture. If research of this type deserves credit, and I believe it partially does, I think it is appropriate to take it into account especially when talking about experimentation (musical, I mean).

Of course, one must always deal with the definition of the concepts that we use from time to time, but one can also agree on calling base-10 numbering universal, as it is common to human beings endowed with 10 fingers, while being aware of the fact that it too is the result of a compromise and that on another planet there could exist beings with 13 fingers who use another base, or even another arithmetic. To say, however, that it is simply a convention is misleading, if by convention one means something that could be one way or its opposite with the same or even just a similar degree of probability. The adoption of base 10, in the cultural evolution of humanity, does not have the same probability as the adoption of base 7 or 45 or 1234. It has a probability closer to that of 5 (one hand) or 20 (hands and feet), but having abandoned the latter has reasons that are not simply arbitrary. I make this point because sometimes, when talking about conventions, one relieves oneself of a great weight, but these are always weights that, sooner or later, make themselves felt. And the merit of research of this type is precisely to stimulate reflection on why there is one convention rather than another. It is therefore worth posing the problem even at a purely hypothetical level, as I was saying a moment ago, that is, asking what would happen to a part of musical research in recent years if a certain thesis were confirmed and shared (with all the clarifications on what it means to confirm a scientific thesis): maybe nothing, maybe it would be reinforced, or maybe it would be diminished. This is up for debate, but it is important to reflect on it without falling, as has been done for centuries into the opposite of the universal, into the dogmatism of convention.

Bianca wrote:

It depends a lot on what we mean by “universal”. And above all, on what we “imply” when we refer to it.

To me it seems very clear: universal means that it applies to everyone. Staying with the first example proposed by Frank, we are all someone's children... there is no man in the world born in a laboratory; everyone has passed through the mother's womb. Therefore, it is a universal condition.

Musically speaking, the article does not seem clear to me regarding what aspect of music should be universal. We speak of language, so I imagine syntax. We know well that music is not one single thing and the keys of interpretation are multiple. For example, I have an Iranian friend; when he heard Beethoven's fifth for the first time, he told me: "cute, too bad it's all written in a single mode". What does this mean? That for him, richness is given by the variety of modes and melody, whereas for us, harmonic variety also matters. Ergo, despite the fact that we are talking about the fifth [symphony] and Beethoven, his music does not reach everyone universally in the same way, because fundamentally there is a stratification of cultural listening, whereby an African listens differently from an Iranian or a German.

Conversely, unequivocally, we are all someone's children...

Rotore wrote:

It seems very clear to me, universal means it applies to everyone. Staying within the first example proposed by Frank, we are all someone's child... there is no man in the world born in a laboratory, everyone has passed through the mother's womb. Therefore, it is a universal condition.

sciences should not limit themselves to such an assertion. Which is more philosophical than scientific. If you find a phenomenon, you must strive to trace its modes, its occurrences, its "causes". So, speaking of universal conditions, one should at least ask why they are universal, how this universality developed, and what its nature is.

Frank's idea that the condition of being a child is universal is an excellent logical game to evade the issue :-) saying "condition of being a child" means opening up a world of possible conditions. It is we, with our language, who give unity to this expression, "condition of being a child," and who suppose a kind of common essence that lies beneath all conditions of being a child. In reality, they are all different conditions, and even if "in a laboratory" we can strive to find similarities, we all know well that being a child in an African tribe and being a child in the center of Beijing are different conditions.

I think there has been, in philosophy as in psychology or anthropology, a desire for universals that has led us to analyze many human events according to the paradigm of the "normal" and the "abnormal," or the common and the uncommon. These studies can be done in an interesting way or in a harmful way. Bianca's discussion on the convention of base-ten arithmetic is an extremely interesting way, in my opinion, to understand what convention means and what universal, or physiological basis, means. More than once I have happened to use the expression "physiological basis" when talking about harmony. The rules of harmony are conventional BUT they follow physiological bases. I imagine that the vast majority of base-ten calculation models in cultures also follow physiological bases (I am not certain, I am not an expert). This does not mean that base ten is in nature or that harmony is a function of nature, and indeed there are many examples demonstrating how culture can deviate from physiological bases and arrive at unexpected models, outside the norm.

As I was saying before, I tend to be distrustful of "made in USA" music psychology research, because I find a trivialization of musical concepts. To get interesting answers, one must ask interesting questions, and one should not limit oneself to the first answer, but split hairs, continuously problematize.

It seems that an unspecified number of people not belonging to Western culture have identified certain feelings in Western music they have listened to. Fine. Which pieces? Were they able to say which parts communicated what? That would be useful. Ethnomusicologists have more or less demonstrated that non-Western musical cultures place a very great weight on rhythm, more than on harmony. What did they make these poor souls listen to, Chopin's funeral march? Then what. What is meant by "fear"? It is spoken of as fear as if it were a fundamental feeling, or something like that. As a WESTERN LISTENER, I would have great difficulty identifying fear among the feelings evoked by a musical piece. What is meant by fear? In which pieces did they find it? Was it the only verbalization present, or was it the result of reasoning by those who analyzed the listeners' reactions?

Some of these questions have partial answers. That is, it is already known that certain musical universals exist; ethnomusicologists have been dealing with them for decades. Their universality is not quite universal, perhaps, but on things like the octave interval, rhythmic regularity, the poetic connotation of musical texts, and the connections between rhythm and dance, we are at an almost universal level. The next steps are the problem: understanding why something is universal, when it ceases to be so, since when it became so in human evolution, and things like that.

I wanted to propose two additions to Frank's universals.

1, the octave interval.

2, the fifth interval (or the fourth... if looking down)

what do you think?

anyway: Thallo already mentioned the octave interval

thallo wrote:

sciences should not limit themselves to a
such 'statement'. Which is more philosophical than scientific.

Not even that philosophical, to tell the truth

Of course, if we want to criticize the article, it's quite simple. I certainly don't think that Western music is a universal language, not even in an "abstract" sense. Rather, I think that the aesthetic reception of musical objects is strongly conditioned by culture. But that's not the point. It's not what I find banal or wrong about a publication that interests me, but what I find stimulating for reflection within it. I find it interesting to wonder, for example, why a certain mode produces a certain emotional response with a higher probability than another mode, and this not only in me but, according to these studies, in most human beings regardless of culture. The content of that research is simply this. Unfortunately, I cannot retrieve the original, which is from a German institute anyway, not an American one. However, I remember that the listening samples proposed were extracts from various musical genres and the responses consisted of matching the various pieces with photographs of faces with different emotional expressions, or something like that. What stood out was the function of the major and minor modes and rhythm. The fact that certain expressive forms are recognizable in Western music even by those who have never had anything to do with Western music does not imply a priori any superiority over other musics. Moreover, the research does not investigate whether there are other reciprocal cases, as Frank noted. It could certainly, however, show how it is fallacious to believe that it is all based on conventions and thus pose a problem for musical theories that are based, explicitly or not, on such a premise.

Bianca wrote:

The fact that certain expressive forms in Western music are recognizable even by those who have never dealt with Western music does not a priori imply any superiority over other musics

A priori, certainly no.

But, in fact, yes.

LucaCavaliere wrote:

A priori certainly no.

But, in fact, yes.

Superiority? What are we talking about?

Because, in this music, one does not recognize an "expressive form"? (Whatever the meaning of this phrase may be...)

PS I have more than one doubt regarding the universality of the decimal system... the duodecimal system had widespread use, at least until the French Revolution.

Open content (youtube)

Think of who used to count up to 60..

micamahler wrote:

Think of who used to count up to 60..

up to sixty!?... and who on earth counted up to sixty?

instead regarding the duodecimal system... I read something five years ago that I found interesting and funny. It seems it also derives, like the decimal one, from the use of fingers for counting.

But . . . . . . using the thumb to count the phalanges of the other four fingers!!! Nice, right?

And here I was thinking it derived from the use of cutting cakes (or round things) first into four and then each quarter into three parts

It seems to me they were the Sumerians, but I wouldn't want to be mistaken. One hypothesis, moreover, contemplated the possibility that the base 60 was born from the mixing of two populations, one with base 12 and one with base 5 and therefore: 12 * 5 = 60.