Re: Mahler #6



Ian Pace wrote:

I'm proclaiming the big essential obvious difference between the
phrase "autumn leaves" and an actual sight of autumn leaves. To begin with, the latter is more precise.
Well, one can do rather better than just use 'autumn leaves' to capture the experience of seeing such leaves. And arguably convey a particular sensation and perception of those leaves more precisely than could be done visually.
I can't believe you would make so stupid a remark!

Why is that stupid? Don't you think that words can sometimes convey things in ways that visual images can't (and vice versa)? I'm fully aware that the camera expresses the subjective wishes of the person behind it as well, but I don't accept your view that an actual sight of autumn leaves is more 'precise' than some words describing them - the words bring other associations with them, associative and poetic, which give a different view of what autumn leaves imply to the artistic creator.

What I reacted to is that you seem reluctant to admit the difference between an actual rose and the word "rose." You claim to be an idealist, but you stay in the cave transfixed by the shadows, and when it comes down to it, you're not an idealist, you're a nominalist. Kant didn't say that space and time are ONLY forms of apperception, but you choose to take it that way. In fact, he was closer to my contention that our minds work as they do because that's the way reality is.



you're taking in 
the relationships that constitute them as such.  In short, a strong
case could be made that visual and aural stimuli are only the raw
material used to form the relationships constituting the artwork for
the perceiving mind.
Before the relationships can stimulate the mind, the "raw" material must first stimulate the mind. Now you know very well that a Bach fugue can be played hundreds of ways, because one can endlessly alter the relationships. With some singers, I am quite content to hear them sing one note -- (and wasn't it you who could proclaim loudly enough the virtues or Robert Mann?) -- and when they go on to the next note, that's a bonus, and eventually we get the whole song. But if I don't like it moment by moment, I'm not going to like the "story."

I find there are cases where even if I don't like the singer's voice, the total experience can still carry me along.
Of course. But that's something else. I'm saying that in the equation A + B = C ("relationships"), we can appreciate C only to the extent that we get involved with A and B. Particularly in music and movies, it's the "world" that's important (the sound NOW), if one wishes to grasp the pattern (rather than to substitute a pattern of one's own hasty devising).

I am actually trying to be a bit more subtle, to suggest that both the 'story' and the moments are connected but also each have a degree of independent life of their own. So I can sometimes like the 'story' without liking it moment by moment, actually.
Sorry, your point is obvious, not subtle, already conceded above, and doesn't relate to my point.

You said that if you don't like something moment by moment, you're not going to like the "story".

I said with "some singers" etc. When you said you can like things despite the voice, I said "Of course. But that's something else." The equation was A+B=C. Whether "A" is the voice or the sentence or the line is up to you.



I think differently, and can find music, say, where the
moment-by-moment experience does little for me, but somehow the totality of it is powerful. And that can be a result of the more abstract structural working that has its own power over and above the materials that are employed (as in some of the later Beethoven Sonatas that present a rather dialectical relationship between form and content). A starker example is provided by some of Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau, constructed out of whatever unaesthetic materials happened to be to hand.

Yes, but we were talking about drawing "relationships" from data, actually we were talking about relating one chord to another, or one note to another. My point was simply that the quality of the relationship ("C") is dependent on what we get out of "A" and "B" -- whether A and B are individual notes (as in my example) or a croaked voice's word or whatever. You keep arguing with me about things I agree with you about!
.

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