Kyle Major wrote:

>Bob D. wrote in response to Chris' criteria:
>
>>>5. Is every note necessary and sufficient?
>>
>>Agree very much again.  Take Bach or Brahms every bit is an essential
>>part of the whole.  But take certain other composers and we find their
>>works awash with superfluous elements.
>
>I would be extremely careful in what is deemed superfluous in music.
>Often, especially in more modern works, texture becomes more important
>than individual notes and traditional melodic lines.  Some of the chamber
>works by Xenakis come to mind, perhaps Stockhausen is a good example too.
>I believe that if I removed a single note from one of these works none of
>us, including myself would notice.  But these notes are not necessarily
>performing a "melodic" or "harmonic" function in the traditional sense.
>However, the notes are not superfluous but are vital for the rhythmic
>density and ultimately the feel of the piece.

Of course you're correct here, and in speaking of things like
"clouds of pizzicati" it becomes a question of the process by which
the discrete events are generated.  Two outcomes of the same random or
controlled-randomness process may differ in the placement and (to a slight
extent) the number of the discrete events (which are like ants--a single
ant is expendable when the object of interest is the whole colony), but
will be recognized as "the same" in terms of density, attrition rate (if
used), etc.  In this case one might ask, are the generating events
essential or superfluous?

Many of Ives's textures become arbitrarily dense, and it's an open question
there as to whether every note is absolutely necessary.

Babbitt avoids the issue by making sure that every note can be explained
in terms of pitch, duration, attack level, instrument, etc.  as being part
of the precompositional (hate the word!  Are the Beethoven sketchbooks
"precompositional?") plan.  There truly is not a single superfluous note in
Babbitt--but does he fulfil the other criteria? Depends to whom you talk.

I might amend my own criterion therefore to cases where there is obvious
use of uninspired filler material.

>I also somehow doubt that anyone would rule out a Haydn piano sonata
>because of octave doubling in the melodic line.  In a way, this doubling
>seems superfluous.  But it exists for a certain textural effect and perhaps
>for balance.

Then it isn't superfluous, because the effect is necessary.

Chris Bonds