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Romy the Cat
Boston, MA
Posts 10,479
Joined on 05-28-2004
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1
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29763
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29763
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Composers do not own music
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A few days ago was an absolutely amazing experience, but I need to give a context, because it, at least in my view, nails down many different concepts that I have been trying to proliferate in it this site letely..
I am currently working on my second book, autobiographical by nature, which solely focuses on the Adagio of Bruckner's Eighth. The book covers the last twenty years of my experience and how the meaning of the Adagio of Bruckner 8 was interpreted by me in completely different ways during different periods of my life. My intention is to provide both artistic and mathematical precision and map those interpretations to the life experiences that existed at that particular moment.
I very deliberately, among hundreds of interpretations of this magnificent work, stick to only one performance, one conductor, and one orchestra. I did this in order to eliminate the interpretation of the piece by different conductors and different performing circumstances. The bricklaying technique remains the same. We are all building the same wall. To use my four-brick-layer example, what changes is not the wall. What changes is my definition of the castle.
Robin, I would like to hear your perspective if you feel that music is in the head of the composer. Take a look.
I visited Bill, and I kind of need to confess a sin. Periodically I ask him to play the Adagio from Bruckner 8. I am not necessarily observing how his playback is working, how his sound is working, or how his cable elevators are tuned up. I am observing how I interpret this piece at that particular moment of my life.
I have been doing this hundreds of times during the last 20 years and being fucking empath with slightly different brain I remember each of those feelings This is not a conversation about Bill's playback. It is a conversation about me, as almost anything else that I do, eventually it becomes a conversation about us.
I know where it is coming from. I am a damn good Jungian analyst. It is clearly coming from certain events that are unfolding in my life and from what may very soon become a battle against ultimate evil. But this is all my BS, and it is absolutely irrelevant.
What is relevant is something else.When I listen to this work, I know not only every single note and every single pause. I know every single reaction of mine to those notes and pauses over the last twenty years. I remember sensations attached to particular dynamic inflections. I remember emotional reactions to specific passages. I remember how this work felt to me when I was twenty years younger, ten years younger, five years younger. I remember entire psychological landscapes associated with particular moments in this music.
And then suddenly the palette of my sensations was absolutely enriched by a completely new perspective.I was listening to my Adagio, and I was feeling that I am a Napoleon, nonetheless, riding before my troops before a final battle. I was literally slapping my face and closing my ears with my hands. I was trying to step into it and out of it. I was trying to interrupt it. I was trying to verify it. Yet any minor, completely unimportant musical detail immediately dialed me back into exactly the same state: the pride in my troops. A desired to encourage them. I desired to tell them that tomorrow, during the battle, they need to trust me because I will not allow them to be defeated.
Now, understanding perfectly well that this has to do entirely with my internal world, my internal structure, and certain events that I about to engage...but to hear all of it in the Bruckner's Adagio!!! There were no single note of humility, no single note of kindness, no single note of compassion, not even the anger anger toward the enemy. It was just a volcanic eruption of pride for a troops and some kind super confidence that battle is coming and that my troops and I are ready.
I did not anticipate this from this work. I came home and spent the entire night listening to this Adagio on my playback. I was literally hitting myself in the face, taking cold showers, eating super spicy food, and inflicting upon myself every stimulus I could think of that I know I should move my perception in a completely different direction. Yet as soon as I turned on this music, my psyche instantaneously returned to exactly the same state: I am a general who is riding my troops.
It is certainly not what Anton Bruckner meant when he composed this music. It is certainly not what Günter Wand meant when he performed it. This interpretation does not exist in the notes and I'm absolutely convinced that no single musicologist can discover it even under heavy influence.
No matter what I did, I kept returning.
The signal remained exactly the same. The recording remained exactly the same. The conductor remained exactly the same. The orchestra remained exactly the same. Yet something entirely new emerged.
And this is precisely what fascinates me.
Because after twenty years with this piece, after knowing not merely every note but every reaction I have ever had to every note, I suddenly discovered a psychological territory that, for me, simply did not exist in this music a day before.
So, Robin you advocate that composer owns the music that he invents it and it is not how I feel in this example clearly demonstrated. Yes, music is kind of important and Dugo did famously proclaim that all human consciousness can be expressed by letter, number and note. However, human consciousness cannot be expressed by them. It's my big Express. Only our understanding of consciousness. Consciousness pre-exist before composer realization how to render it in music. Ironically, universe does not talk to us neither by music or by consciousness. It talk to us by at our attention. We is a human cannot consume consciousness as is the consumers by demonstrating attention and based upon our attention, consciousness got interpreted within our perception his letter number or a note. I never in my life experience the best proof of the concert than my experience. Riding my troops reflected through the Bruckner 8 adagio. Convince me otherwise
"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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