Deryk Barker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Robert Peters ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
>
>>Deryk Barker wrote:
>>
>>>My question, then is simply this: if this had been indistinguishable from
>>>random noise, how could I have recognised it?
>>
>>You are right, you wouldn't have been able to recognise it.  But this
>>logically only proves that the Stockhausen piece was distinguishable.  The
>>musicologist attacking serialism still could say: It is noise but a kind
>>of noise you can distinguish.  Or is this an absurd statement?
>
>No - a chainsaw is noise, but I can recognise it.
>
>My point was simply to propose a coutnerexample to what was being
>presented as a rule:  that all totally-serial music is indistinguishable
>from random noise.

I'm not sure that it was a particularly good counterexample, though...
nor do i agree with your basic position that a musical construction which
was indistinguishable from random sounds is inherently nonmemorable.  But
then:  i read the criticism as only saying that you can't hear the internal
compositional structures within (total) serialist construction; & because
these structures are inaudible, the effects are indistinguishable from
random notemating, a position which is subtly different from yours.

(My position grants than these nondiscernable structures may generate
effects which can be remembered even if the process which creates them
is invisible; while you're claiming that the quoted position is that the
effects are inherently nonmemorable because they are the same as random
effects...  if i've misread the intent of the original quote, then much
of what follows is irrelevant to the argument, of course)

The late music of the equally late Morton Feldman (to pointedly use a
nonserial eg) is pretty much indistinguishable from randomised notemaking;
but the results of this nonprocess still creates a sound texture makes
these scores rather memorable.  Modifying the case slightly, musicologists
assure me that the Threnody for 54 String Instruments (To the Victims of
Hiroshima) by Penderecki has a canon structure embedded in it; but even as
a great lover of that piece, i'd be lying if i could claim to hear anything
more than a gloriously memorable, almost randomised shout of string noises.

A similar statement can be made of the score you describe:  it's certainly
memorable (although i personally find it memorably dull); but unlike, say,
a traditional rondo structure, the compositional processes behind the piece
are gloriously inaudible to anyone not cursed with absolute pitch...  which
does rather suport the jaundiced point of the original quoted text, again
assuming i've read the translated quote correctly.

Live in peace
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