Subject: Re: Analysis References?
From: Chris Koenigsberg ckk@ckk.com (ckk@ckk.com)
Date: Tue Jan 02 2001 - 10:24:05 EST
the Q. from Alan was:
>> I'm currently doing some work on the analysis of 'mixed'
electroacoustic
>> music (instruments/orchestra plus tape), more particularly looking
at Kaija
>> Saariaho's "Verblendungen". Does anybody have any references to
papers or
>> books which might be relevant (possible approaches, problems,
examples
>> etc.) ?
the A. from Martin was:
> in the publication "Finnish Music Quarterly" from the Finnish Music
> Information Centre, you will find some excellent articles and
interviews
> to Kaija Saariaho, in which several of her pieces are treated.....
my comment is:
I think the question "really" being asked was not just about Kaija
Saariaho's music in particular, but rather, about the "possible
approaches, problems, examples" of "musical analysis", when the subject
is a work of "mixed" nature ("instruments/orchestra plus tape"). I think
this means, what do we do, what does it mean, to "analyze" a work that
includes tape? (where "analysis" must therefore mean something quite
different than tonal harmonic analysis of diatonic pitched Western music
a la Schenker etc.)
I don't mean to criticize Martin for offering those pertinent references
to the composer's music. Perhaps there are examples, sufficient for
Alan's purpose, in the cited references, of approaches & techniques for
analyzing mixed works, but perhaps not.
This is interesting to me, about how we think & decide what's "really"
being asked, in a vague statement of a question, subject to linguistic &
semantic & human interpretation..... this may be more related to the
recent "phonon/phoneme" topical thread than to any specific musical
thread, pardon me.
I am finding particularly difficulty in my own "day job" work, for
example, trying to more precisely formulate the specifications and
requirements of an ill-specified software system, before I can "program"
it. Doing the "programming" is much more straightforward, once the
analysis is done, the requirements are specified, the structure design
is done, and the "implementation" is left. But without these
prerequisites, the programming task devolves into just "hacking",
building a mountain by piling up lots of dirt :-)
This reminds me of something relevant in a book I'm reading now. The
book, about skepticism & paranormal claims, is "The Hundredth Monkey"
edited by Kendrick Frazier (<URN:ISBN://0-87975-655-1>). (I just made up
that format of URN for ISBN's, I'm sure there must be something similar
already in some W3C standards document)
The relevant thing is in a chapter from the Hundredth Monkey book,
titled "Assessing Arguments and Evidence" by Ray Hyman. Basically Hyman
says that our big problem (in learning and teaching how to think
critically) is not "what to do after the argument has been carefully
specified" [for us, substitute "the question" for "the argument"].
Psychological research has been discovering that the major problem most
of us face is how to recognize and specify the premises and the type of
argument that must be dealt with. Knowing how to deal with argument of
type X is not of much help if we do not recognize that the argument
before us is of type X."
"The current psychological research on the importance of the ability to
adequately recognize what sort of argument one is dealing with is
consistent with the earlier research on problem-solving, creativity, and
reasoning. The early investigators of critical thinking focused on the
thought processes that occurred after the thinker was presented with a
carefully specified problem. Again and again the results were
disappointing in that individual differences in such thinking processes
did not seem to be critical in succeeding or failing to solve the
problem. More important was how the thinker represented of formulated
the problem in the first place. Once the problem was formulated
properly, most thinkers could arrive at an adequate solution."
"Properly formulating the problem is a skill that is difficult to reduce
to specific rules of the sort used to teach logical and scientific
procedures for testing claims........"
Chris Koenigsberg
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