Bill Pirkle writes ...
>I'm not sure what a meta-composition is aside from what I understand by
>the word itself. That why I asked the poster to describe it more. That
>might be a good thread. A meta-language is a language used to describe
>languages. The grammar and syntax of a meta-composition (language) would
>be of great interest to me.
As the poster, I wanted to address one of the comments on this idea: that
it was similar to an outline for a writer. I think that's directionally
right, tho of course writing is so very specific: characters, actions,
relationships, settings, etc., whereas music is more or less abstract.
Surely Beethoven set out to write a Funeral March as the second movement
of the Eroica, but that, like his Pastoral, was more of a "program" than
a meta-composition. I think what I have in mind is more the emotional
architecture< of the piece; this would include some specific ideas as to
how that architecture would be accomplished, even to the point of sketching
out certain motifs, and the way they would transform--the emotional
highpoints, perhaps. As a counter-example, if you look at the long
movement of the Hammerklavier sonata, my feeling is this was closer to his
improvisation than a pre-thought-out-form. In particular, the way the
movement tries to end, several times, but then continues on past the
ending. In my own interpretation, it was as if Beethoven were extremely
reluctant to part from whatever the theme represented to him--some highly
personal aspect of his life. If my understanding of this is close to
Beethoven's intention, it seems unlikely he BEGAN with that idea in mind--
but "discovered" this direction as he composed. If that's the case, then
obviously not everything he wrote had a meta-composition prepared in
advance--and by extension, this would be the case with other composers, as
well. But there you have the case of a creative intelligence very involved
with the process and making decisions all along the way. With the computer
program, I'd think that the ability to "shape" the composition (before the
themes and all the writing is begun) would be a very important parameter.
An interesting adjunct of this would be if your program had a database of
the "shapes" of a number of specific movements: a Brahms Adagio, a
Beethoven Scherzo, etc., to act as a guide for the novice composer, who
wouldn't necessarily be familiar enough with technique to accomplish his
artistic goals. I'd be very curious as to the kind of guidance your
program would offer, and the level of sophistication the user would need
to bring to it.
Dave Wolf
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