Transcript L05-421-15-10-14

L05-421-15-10-14-15
Time at the end for group updates and scores. On emails, please don’t copy me
in on every exchange, but contact me if there is something you need from me, or
something that it appears to you I ought to know.
2.
Writing Logs: If you missed turning yours in, shift your group—i.e., turn it in this
week as a member of group 2.
3.
Preparing for the papers.
General:
*For the paper on poetry, the topics will focus on Williams’ Spring and All, and Kundera’s
The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The main point is that reading either book
once will not suffice.
*For the paper on music, you are to select either one of the two or three part inventions
by Bach, or a coherent section from either Quartet 14 or Quartet 16. In each case,
the general assignment will be to write about the selection you have made, with
reference to the score. Plan on listening to the recording on line, following it
exactly with reference to the score, at least 100 times.
In neither case (poetry or music) is the point for you to affirm that or explain why you like
it: choosing it already covers that. The point is to examine how it works. That,
moreover, does not stipulate any specific analysis of the composition: how it works
includes what it does. There is no expectation that you will bring yourself up to
speed as a musicologist: the point is to learn to read a score with functional
intelligence, and to write from what you have actually learned from doing so.
1.
Mediation . . .
The diagram from Monday focuses on a very general process of mediation: it
presupposes that there are characteristic states of a system, with particular purposes
and consequences. The topic-comment structure already implies an intent of
intelligibility. That is, it is a pathway of understanding.
In the case of natural language, the subsystems already identified—semantics, syntax,
grammar, rhetoric (and exploration)—do not stand alone, but can be discerned as
having particular mediating functions considered as terms of relation. These
comprise an open set—i.e., the closure of the system arrives as an event or
experience: intelligibility, but not as a separate product.
Thus, when I say that words do not have meaning, but rather a structure, a history, and a
range of uses, to search for a “meaning” as if it were a property of the element or
expression in which it appears is always systematically misleading. The expression
is meaningful if you actually understand and comprehend it as following from it’s
structure. In that sense finding something meaningful is always functional.
At the same time, it is also necessarily formal.
It is NOT idiosyncratic—and it is never the case that one can say that composition X
means whatever I think it means. The issue is not getting it absolutely right by
reduction to another statement of its “meaning,” but to recognize where your own
comprehension is insufficient.
Getting it ‘right’ is not scoring a point: it is being on a pathway that actually leads
somewhere.
And Music
The first obvious difference with music is that it has no manifest semantic register. The
elements all exist relationally. They cannot be seen, touched, tasted, or smelled, but they
can be made manifest.
It is, in this respect, one of the most abstract, most philosophical system of mediation we
possess. It dwarfs mathematics—which arguably could be treated as a subset of music.
As a system for mediation, therefore, it is complex—even as it is as primary as our ability to
learn language. Indeed, musical mediation, depending on hearing sense, can be treated as
foundational for learning an explicit verbal language. Music is the ground.
It follows that precision in the ground is the condition for intelligibility itself.
From the powerpoint for yesterday (which, typically, we did not get through in class time):
• Three HUGE problems:
1. ‘Self’  ‘Selfhood’NarcissismSolipsismthe trivialization of the person.
2. Opinions and Rights. If we have consensus on either, it is historical. It is not grounded in
any absolute freedom. If you think you are THE agent of history, you are dangerously
deceived.
‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinion’ Yup. But only because there is no way to prevent any
person from forming one. Does that entail that just because an opinion is yours that it is
therefore valid?
3. Agreement, assent. Do you ‘like’ what you are reading? (what grounds that?) Do you
agree with what the author says? (how would you know if you cannot read it accurately?) If
you don’t understand it, what are you agreeing (or disagreeing) with?
Pythagoras & Plato
The Timaeus –as close as Plato got to a
cosmology: How, precisely, is the
universe constructed (poesis). The
problem of agency and purpose is matter
for a longer discussion, but it is manifest in
FORM. The ‘Five Platonic
Solids’ (grnd: plane figures,
starting with triangle & circle)
Division by Proportion
• See Dechand, on the website under TEXTS. Bear in
mind that this procedure is a whole generation prior to
Euclid.
• The basic strategy used by the Demiurge is to mark out
proportional divisions of number (taking the initial range
between 1 and 2, extending to 27 (powers of 2 and 3)
• Divisions alternate between arithmetic means ((a + b)/2 )
and harmonic means (2/(1/a + 1/b).
• In the first:
• The arithmetic mean of 1 and 2 is 3/2.
• 1
3/2
2
• In the second: The harmonic mean of 1 and 2 is 4/3.
• 1
4/3
2
Combining the two kinds of means
in a single diagram
• 1
•
• Filled out:
•
•
1
9/8
(x 9/8)
(x 9/8)
4/3
81/64
4/3
(x 256/243)
3/2
2
(x 9/8)
3/2
(x 9/8)
27/16
(x 9/8)
243/128
(x 9/8)
• DIVIDES THE SPACE INTO 8 parts (Octave)
• The peculiar fraction identifies a SEMI TONE
• The result is two TETRA-CHORDS
2
(x 256/243)
TETRA CHORDS
Tonal systems
• Diatonic (Octave 8,plus semi tones)
Whole, whole, half / whole /whole, whole, half
• Pentatonic (5)
• The system: order of tones
• Major result: harmonic relations can move
up or down by pitch and remain the in the
same proportion
Scale degrees and chords
Each degree (note in a scale) designates a chord.
Scoring:
Pitch: from the first (TONIC), each step up follows
the two tetrachords. A half step can be either
sharp # or flat b
Transposition: start in a different place, and
rearrange for half steps: A KEY signature
Time: A “time signature” identifies the number of
beats and the duration of each beat