Biit

[Zoopsia59]

Well I was partially with you until this. If you can see it on the page you can hear it, and hear it more clearly and better than pretty much anyone else who hasn't looked at the printed music. It is inconceivable that the result could be otherwise. When I look at a score it instantly opens up. I hear it - the melody, the rhythms, the harmonies, the phrases. The eyes pick up much more, and more more quickly, than the ears alone. At least until the ears have heard it many times...an educated study allows them to hear more.

Seems to me you might be a visual learner who's chosen subject is functionally auditory. So while this may all be true for you, I can't agree that it is an absolute truth for everyone. I can't get behind the idea that people who are trained to read a score hear music "more clearly or better" than anyone else. Reading a score obviously opens up the music to you much more. But I can't imagine that's always the case for everyone else. I used to be able to read music (WAAAAY back in time, and probably not at a level anywhere near yours) but my ability to hear and understand music is FAR better now than it was then.

The most I could do now is follow a score while the music is playing (which I have had to do to stage manage shows) I certainly wouldn't claim to be able to "read" a score. I definitely couldn't get an idea of what it sounds like from only looking at a score. But I also wouldn't say I heard music any clearer or better back when I learned to read music to play piano.

 

[Zoopsia59]

no one can know quite what impression any art makes on anyone else. If it takes the visual clues of a score (and one actually unrelated to the arrangement) to unlock what was there to be heard in the first place, then you don't listen long enough, or hard enough, or perhaps the performers failed in communicating their interpretation. That seems self-evident to me.

I agree.

Consider that most all composers write music to be heard, not read. If the listener had to be able to read the score to fully "hear" the music, then the composers would give out scores with the concert program. That's not to say there's no value in music appreaciation instruction, just as there's value in art appreciation. (I heart Sister Wendy!) But the score is a transcription of the artwork to another form of communication besides listening. Music appreciation instruction is more than transcription; it is explanation that expands on the actual notes just as discussion of a painting does more than describe each brushstroke in technical terms.

Maybe the musicians will slam me for this (and possibly the dancers too!) but the score is to music as labanotation is to ballet.

 

[tangomonkey]

Zoops:
Well, OK, there are no absolute truths - except death and taxes. It is normal to study music visually and there are many highly advanced ways to approach it that way. Music is auditory, yes, but there is also a beauty apparent on the page. Complicated music can best be appreciated by both an intellectual and emotional understanding. I know from my training and being around people with much better ears than mine that reading a score is not that different from hearing it played. I’m talking about trained professionals not the average person who can read music or a basic score. Orchestra conductors and composers for instance, and even some lowly Bachelor of Music grads, when the score is simple enough. In some cases – at the very highest levels reached by some composers for example – they claim to hear the individual tone colours in each instrument in an orchestral score. That is incomprehensible to me, but Stravinsky said he could do so. Of course anyone can make that claim, there is no way to disprove it. Composers of orchestral music have to hear it in their head before it gets written down and orchestrated (writing the individual parts for the instruments). So like many things in life, it is a matter of innate ability and/or hard effort.

 

[tangomonkey]

I agree.

I obviously do not. No amount of listening will surpass someone who has both studied the score AND listened. I wish there was a way to prove that, alas there is not...

The limitations of the forum present a hopelessly inadequate format to present a musical analysis. A website doesn't cut it either. What I would really like to do is present the El Choclo anaylsis "live", in a classroom or at a workshop. That would be fun...

 

[UKDancer]

True enough for music with no sheet music available. Study what is available - no detailed written score with all the parts is necessary. Obviously it ultimately comes down to listening. (Well, ultimately to dancing...).

There are no scores available for the pieces we are interested in, so, as I said (and you are agreeing with me, but you don't sound very happy about it), it all comes down to listening.

... The rest is mostly a matter of hearing instrumental changes, melodic alterations, counter melodies, rhythms used in the accompaniments, etc. Small stuff in comparison to form, melodic phrasing, rhythmic pattern in the melody, harmonic progression... (but very important).

I think we would have to disagree fundamentally about the relative importance of the particular features that you mention. For me, and I'm not claiming to speak for others, but others may comment, it is largely the small stuff that determines my response to the music as a dancer. Phrasing is important, of course, but not exclusively in relation to the melody, and its rhythmic pattern only has any significance in relation to the accompaniment. I'm interpreting the music to dance to. Someone, somewhere, someday, may compliment me on my musicality, but I have no need of, nor any interest in, musicology.

I have D'Arienzo's recordings of El Choclo from 1937, 1948, 1954, and 1962. Please tell me what the differences are. I'd really like to hear what you have to say about that.

Firstly, I seriously doubt that you would like to hear what I have to say about them, so I'll save myself the trouble; and secondly, as you have those four versions, listen to them, and draw your own conclusions. You mentioned on another thread the other day [*no: it was this one] that you have 8000 tango songs in your collection, but have only ever listened to a small fraction of them. If I may say so, that is rather odd behaviour, possibly verging on the obsessional.

The more anyone actively listens to tango music, the more they will get from it. When I first took an interest in tango, the dance, I didn't appreciate the quality of the music. I sought out modern recordings, for their sound quality, and was largely oblivious to the qualities of the music of the Golden Age. But little by little, I started to appreciate it more, to the point that I am now very nearly a complete traditionalist in terms of my music preferences. This transition has come about by active listening, on and off the dancefloor. Many, many hours have been devoted to the practical (ie non-academic) study of representative works by all the great tango orchestras, and I my knowledge of the genre has increased considerably. I occasionally take a piano transcription and bash the notes through at a keyboard, but more for the sake of keeping up my sight-reading, than in the expectation of unlocking secrets that my ears kept hidden. More usually, I just wince at my awful playing, and go back to some professional musicians doing it all rather better.

 

[bordertangoman]

Yes, that's what I meant. And even fewer have experience and training in musical analysis and analytical listening.

well I fall into the dummy side of things here. I have very little musical training, but I made an interesting observation in myself; after a workshop with Joaquin Amenabar, which I had no problem understanding; he was using notated diagrams of rhythms and feet showing where an accent fell ( and I have his book and audio cd too). It was helpful - in the class- but on the dance floor the musical dancing bit of my brain was like another person; I'm so bloody right brained and intuitive that the stuff in the class was ignored.


and a general note. this is very interesting even if it is a divergence from the topic.

 

[UKDancer]

Maybe the musicians will slam me for this (and possibly the dancers too!) but the score is to music as labanotation is to ballet.

I agree, certainly.

It begs the question as to the purpose of the score. Musical notation is a language, and it both serves to document the composers intention, and is used by performers to realise that intention - the result being the music that we hear. Arguably, there is no music until someone plays it.

But here's something on which tangomonkey and I could agree: given a functional technical ability to read the score at all, the music that is latent on the printed page can manifest itself in the viewer's inner-ear. If I were cast ashore on a desert island and had no instruments at my disposal, but scores of some favourite pieces, then a glance at the page would bring the piece alive to me with complete clarity. However, if you presented me with a score, even a simple one, of a piece that I did not know, then it would take me a long time to work out what the piece would sound like. The rhythm I would get straight away. I'd probably have to hum through the melody a couple of times, and slowly, and then look at the bass part to start to develop a sense of the harmonic shifts. I'd put the piece together, bit by bit, but by no means could I just 'play' the piece internally, and 'hear' what a polished performance would sound like. I would say that my own limited skill in this area is a developed form of musical memory, coupled with the limited reading ability, but only really to prompt my memory.

Another comparison would be the relationship between a dramatic performance of a great play and the script. Most people would agree that drama works best on the stage, but I can be King Lear, or Hamlet, or on a good day, Romeo, just by opening my battered copy of The Complete Works and without ever leaving my armchair. I could even 'do' the other parts too - a monologue, but I fear that I am not much of an actor, and no one is ever likely to pay to hear me solioquise!

Now without doubt, there are riches to be found in studying the text, and to study texts in great detail is of interest to some, and a profession to others. So it is with music: musicians and musicologists alike study scores to better their understanding of the music. However, the tools with which we can study almost any tango song or one by, say, Schubert, are different. In the latter case we have a text - a score - as well as a performing tradition, but in the case of the historical tango orchestras' work we have 'just' the performance. The same piece may have been recorded by the same orchestra several times, and sometimes using the same arrangement, and sometimes different. But no score, and largely, no performing tradition. One exception might be the work of Color Tango, whose realisations of some of Pugliese's work are incredibly faithful to the original notes, and the manner of performance. I wonder whether they notated their arrangements?

So the means by which we approach the tango repertoire is aurally. If we really are so cloth-eared that we need a piano reduction of a 'generic' rendition of the piece to identify the musical elements in use, then so be it, but by and large, we do not. For those with the skill, it may be fun to create a score, faithful to the performance, and it is perhaps then easier to compare the subtle differences that exist in the repetitions of the material that we conventionally label as Section A, or whatever, rather than to rely on memory, or flitting back and forwards through the recording. But a familiarity with the music can only help us in dancing, but we must approach the music with our ears: only then can we do anything with what we hear.

 

[gyb]

Wait. tangomonkey makes the claim that being able to read scores proficiently and reading the sheets for a music can enhance the listening experience itself as well. (This claim is oft repeated by people who actually go through the training.) Then a bunch of commenters, who admittedly did not go through the training to arrive to the level tangomonkey talks about, claim that this can't be the case. Do I get the argumentation right?

 

[UKDancer]

Wait. tangomonkey makes the claim that being able to read scores proficiently and reading the sheets for a music can enhance the listening experience itself as well. (This claim is oft repeated by people who actually go through the training.) Then a bunch of commenters, who admittedly did not go through the training to arrive to the level tangomonkey talks about, claim that this can't be the case. Do I get the argumentation right?

No, I don't think you do. I can only speak for myself, but I would say that until reading the score conjurs up the sound of the music in your inner ear, you can get very little of use from a score. Until you have the ability to hear the difference between, say a perfect cadence, and a plagal cadence, or to discern the difference that putting a dominant seventh into the chord makes (particularly when it's in the bass), then the score is going to be of little help. But for someone trained to read and realise scores, they can act as a shortcut that can hasten study and the development of understanding. I would say, though that a familiarity with the sound of the music has to come before the look of the music can add anything to an understanding.

I'm not convinced that the study of printed scores really aids the listening experience. Rather, I suspect that the ability to read and understand the scores goes hand in hand with a more developed ability to hear and appreciate music, so that it wasn't the hours of studying scores that enabled me to better appreciate what I hear, its just that the hours of study were an adjunct to a much greater number of hours of listening to, performing, (dancing) and gaining exposure to musical forms. The score-reading is just one element of the skill set, it isn't actually the key that unlocks the secret knowledge.

As for your second observation (that some comments suggest that reading music can't enhance the listening experience), I'm not sure that anyone has said quite that. I have said something very similar, but with a different purpose: you can't enhance your listening experience of particular tango musical performances because the scores for them simply don't exist, and not because they would be of no use if they did.

There is an anecdote about the British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, who often conducted from memory. He was travelling by train to conduct a musical performance, and was studying his score intently. A woman in the same compartment recognised him and challenged him: "Why are you studying a score - I thought you always conducted from memory?"

"Madam", he replied, "It is because I study my scores that I can conduct from memory".

On another day, he was humming or whistling to himself and annoyed a fellow passenger: "Will you stop that infernal noise?" came the request.

"Madam", he replied (all Beecham anecdotes have him do that), "You can only hear me humming/whistling, but I can hear the whole orchestra."

But these are the words of a performing musician, not of an armchair (or concert hall) consumer of music, or of a dancer. His need to study was to realise a performance that was more than just playing the notes. The orchestra, being composed of professional musicians, could have done that perfectly well without him. Our needs, as dancers, are rather different.

 

[gyb]

Thanks.

You might of course be right about conflation of correlation with causation regarding developping a better #general sensitivity to musical understanding.

The question is how the gained proficiency of reading scores helps to understand and appreciate #new #particular music with which you are not thoroughly familiar with already. Tangomonkey made the claim that a score reading proficiency, together with reading the score, helps not just the analytical understanding but also the internal appreciation of such piece ("at least until the ears have heard it many times..", as tangomonkey readily conceded). The test of this claim is whether someone who gained the reading proficiency is able to enjoy more a newly/not frequently heard piece if he also has an access to a score.

Obviously having access to more written information would be better than having access to fewer, which is the case with tango, but the claim is that even the reductions which we have in many cases are of help.

 

[opendoor]

The number of poor tangos exceeds the number of good tangos by far!

 

[UKDancer]

The number of poor tangos exceeds the number of good tangos by far!

Certainly. A good deal of late D'Arienzo and Canaro, for example, is of very limited value, but no end of study of piano reductions is going to help you to sort the wheat from the chaff. Which sort-of brings me back to an earlier point in this discussion, that some DJs play the unfamiliar, which is less good for dancing.

I think I'm still convinced that the repertoire of good music is much closer to the 1000+ songs mentioned by tangomonkey than my suggested 100 Greatest Hits parody. The best known songs are overexposed, and there are lots of really good songs that are rarely played at all. Unfortunately, quite a lot of poor songs are played, and some DJs are worse than others. Such is life.

I think I've hogged this discussion for long enough, so unless anyone has anything else specifically for my comment, I'll bow out.

 

[tangomonkey]

@UKDancer:
I agree with some things you have posted. I am not going to go through the many things I do not agree with. You make some valid points. You also spout a great deal of rubbish. IMO you are the perfect example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. You made a personal disparaging comment first, I have no problem returning the favour. I mean really, do you truly believe you know more than a person with a musicology degree and 30 or so years of experience using the skills aquired?

We have had a similiar discussion before. I would not have replied this time were it not for two references to our prior discussion you made in this thread: the "dos por cuatro" comment and the dissmissive remarks towards analysis, specifically mentioning El Choclo. The phrase "don't poke the bear" comes to mind.

It is time to put up or shut up. I'm calling you on your claim that D'Arienzo's 1937 and 1954 recordings of El Choclo are "very, very different". Prove it.

I have studied El Choclo in (excrutiating) detail and three interpretations of it. (Well, actually versions by 14 different bands, in various levels of detail. Only three have been posted in this forum. One would think it is my favourite tango - is is not! - it just happens to be popular and played by everyone.) I've put my thougths on-line for anyone with an internet connection and a good understanding of English. I know from postings in the thread and PMs the effort has been welcomed and appreciated by many. I've received a standing invitation to visit BsAs and meet some musicians in some well-known tango bands based there, and some old timers who played in the big name orquestas. The thread's views are approaching 8000. Roughly 5-10 times the views most other threads have had the past 2-3 months. (A "view" is only counted once in a 24 hour period, by IP address). Whenever I post in the thread the views go up by about 300 in a 2-5 day span, so there is no lack of interest. I don't expect everyone to care, appreciate, or read what I am posting there. In fact I am surprised at the interest that has been shown. I don't expect repeated dissmissive remarks either, and I won't let them slip by. So I'm calling you on it.

I have posted my thoughts and observations. I may have missed things and made others appear more important than they actualy are. I have zero problem with someone having different opinions or interpretations, provided they can be backed up in the music and/or the performances. You made a statement, which can be substantiated or not. Having stated, twice, there are significant differences - they are "very, very different" in your words - between two versions of El Choclo recorded by D'Arienzo, it is time to step up and post what they are. In depth and in detail. You specificaly mentioned the 1937 (then later wrote 1934, mistakenly, yes?) and 1954 versions. I have them, so please tell everyone where the differences are. And please do so in the El Choclo thread. And by the way, I do not hear any significant differences in the four recordings I have (1937, 1948, 1954, 1963, not 1962 as I miss-typed earlier). There are some differences between them, but nothing I consider significant or anything at all that would make be believe they are "very,very different" versions. In fact the simililarites are so striking and unform it is impossible not to recognize each one as D'Arienzo. For anyone who's seriously read the thread and listened to the recordings that is.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the burden of proof lies with you - you made the claim, not me. I will make the two versions available to whoever needs them.

I'll repeat: it's time to put up or shut up. Sorry to be so rude. I am way beyond the limits of my patience.

 

[Joe]

more Garage Tango

La Cumparsita by a budding young electric guitarist
[yt]lSaBtlvRWfU[/yt]

How very Dick Dale!

 

[dchester]

I obviously do not. No amount of listening will surpass someone who has both studied the score AND listened. I wish there was a way to prove that, alas there is not...

Yikes!!! Why make the claim, when you admit it can not be proved??? How do you know how much information someone else can obtain from listening? Do you really think there's no one in the world capable of getting more information just from listening, than you can from listening and studying the score? How many scores do you think that Stevie Wonder has seen?