Professor talk about topics - from raw materials to subject? 

Atli Ingólfsson & Einar Torfi Einarsson 

In Icelandic, we like to talk about topics in various senses: raw materials, laughing stock, solvents, issues, or subjects, etc. Within music, and especially composition and music theory, this word has a certain appeal to materials used for creativity, for construction, but also how music can deal with something or deal with some subject. These topics are therefore of different natures and have different manifestations. The idea of this conversation is to sharpen only the topics that music can process and/or consider. We ask that „whatð“ and perhaps „how“ but no doubt not „why“ sometimes technically and sometimes philosophically. 

ETE: ... But Atli, just to start somewhere: is music a certain chemistry, or rather civil engineering/architecture, and what would be the basic material of music and would it be something other than raw material? 

AI: This is an awkwardly good question At least many people no doubt find it difficult to scrutinize it too much, as if they should start thinking constantly about their own gait while walkingYou know, all of this with normal expression, etc. But it just so happens that those who study composition have to think about it. 

Before proceeding further, I would like to see if we agree that discussing music in this way, that there is any idea material in history, there is a little newness in the history of music - the product of the 20th century. Until then, music was always more connected to language, with themes (words) and gestures (sentences). 

ETE: This is surely an innovative perspective and usually implicated in the beginning of modernism, right, which was forced to create its own divinity or holiness For one might say that in Nietzsche's words about the death of God, the subject gradually begins its inroads as the new foundation of reality - for it should not be forgotten that music came centuries before from the deity I recall that in Anton Webern's lectures he spoke of the tone or even the note as the subject of music („das Material“), but there are possibly other precedents.[1] It is curious to think that pre-modern music might not think of a subject because morphemes were rigid and the music so much a language that it was simply not possible to think of anything other than themes and phrases that fit into the framework of formWe, the modern people, can still look at it as a subject, that pre-modern material consisted of themes and gestures, although it contradicts the way people thought But it may not be a basic material or a raw material and therefore no doubt no chemistry? Are we then saying that we need the collapse of the tonal system, or liberation from that authority, to start thinking about basic materials and some kind of chemistry? 

AI: Yeah, it was that sense of a new beginning that brought this perspective off. Suddenly, music wasn't a song and sounds either structure...and of course, a new authority was created that made this a form of belief The phrase of faith that shaped us all and ruled the realm for a long time, although I feel we have actually come to a different place now, in the post-material„ era.  

However, it must not be forgotten that although this discourse was new, it can be transferred to many things in older music. Bach would not have understood much in any speech material, but then look at how he assembles some of his works: Behind them lies a good deal of work that is pure compositional theory It is not musical inspiration that results in the Goldberg variasions but architecture and calculations So it becomes more glorious music when he takes the forms and tables and creates from them an audible surface See also polyphony masters, Ockgeghem and all of them They had in their possession all kinds of tablets and creation reservoirs to work with the tones, or make material, as we would say today. 

ETE: Very right, but wait now slow, here we need to distinguish between materials on one hand and creation reservoirs/tablets on the other - so you mention „surface“ which no doubt needs a special passage Let's take materials and tables; these tables in question created more material related to a certain basic material that usually came in the form of a motif, right? This is perhaps different in the 20th century as the setting of the material was „all at once gone, thus seen formless, theseas“ It is not necessarily as a motif in the key (church or major/minor key). Thus, it had to design or construct and tailor the tones a new context, or environment. This is a kind of renewed (super) power that puts a new emphasis and a requirement (or crisis) on the builder who now only gets basic material in the form of the (raw) tones of the Enalones.[2] designed centuries ago, they were still useful, right? But can we compare this to chemistry (or even blame it), and talk about the musical shift from biology (plants, animals, organs, cells) to chemistry (elements, molecules, ions), it was naturally at the beginning of the 20th century that the atom as a model first appeared on the scene (although Lucretius had talked about it in the ancient times), in the same year as Stravinsky's Spring Blot? 

AI: Well, I haven't seen these tools, the creation reservoirs that some consider the polyphonic masters to have used, but suspect this built a lot on intervals, for example a list of the possibilities of theme fractions in a triad, square or even a ninth canon. At least I meant that there was a lot of construction there before the work was so „composed“, and written in its final form.  

But, yes, the 20th century brought us this new responsibility: You need to first make a language, so to compose a poem on it Actually every time Now the preliminary work began to take this awful time, but it could also be glorious But various people pointed out that this atomistic approach was based on misunderstandings Ligeti says that music is not made of neutral units because the tone itself is a form, it has the beginning of the middle and the end, and it points forward in timeIt cannot be overlooked. 

This discourse on the subject of music, however, is something we inherit and has given one a certain degree of flexibilityWe take no tonal language as a given, everything is a constitutional religion, everything can be changed and most importantly: Everything can become matter. 

ETE: Exactly - this is interesting with the misunderstanding, because of course Ligeti is right that tone is a whole world (and even before the tone is formed), but the „misunderstanding“ still no doubt played a part in that enlightenment, these first has to strip the tone to see it in a new light Ligeti is also an interesting example because his tone so often becomes a cell, an ant, or a drop in a cloud, these something bigger is constructed around the tone But can we call it also matter - is the cloud matter - or is it just matter? 

AI: It depends a bit on how we define the word I am tempted to say that all the units I choose to work with are my subject They can be very small or huge I think precisely that Ligeti's cloud is an example of a subject where the composer has taken a few steps backwards and sees the work from a greater distance than before, and he shapes these large units In others, such large units were perhaps just the result of material work on an atomic scale. 

ETE: There are these old-fashioned connections between the small and the big that get a new vision, and new possibilities, after the tonal language gains this freedom But sometimes these larger entities break out without the composer's intention; becomes a result as you say It is also interesting to look at how the titles of works transform when the tonal language is shaped from scratch by composers In earlier centuries, these were usually sonatas/fugues/symphonies in the X-tone or references to stories/poems now or roles (dances, fireworks music,...), but at Ligeti (so we stick to him) we see titles like Lontano (or distance). Can we relate this to a completely different topic, subject? Which can still shape the basic material, its handling and larger units within works.   

AI: Yes, good point The title Lontano refers to the experience of the listener, that the material is blurred as heard from a distance, but also the work of the author, that he looks at the material from a distance. 

You mention a subject I often use that word for the larger intent of the work, religious, spiritual, mystical or political Here before there was only an occasional author who seemed most moved in that area of the material (Giacinto Scelsi for example). Perhaps this has become more frequent today The salvage (foundationalism) of serialism seems long past today I could easily compose a work just by sampling four baroque dances and letting the Met Office's barometric pressure measurements guide how they blend. It's no worse a method than any other, but then the very subject begins to become important: The question of why I do what I do. 

ETE: Sure, this „why“ question frames the subject clearly but I can also see the subject as technical or aesthetic in nature This is perhaps a matter of interpretation in certain cases because the composer's intention does not always resonate with the subject of the music Let's take your example where baroque samples are directed by atmospheric pressure measurements; the composer may have no further intention but this pleasant interaction, Is that to say that the music has no subject? It has method, basic material, and e.g. form and aesthetic compass, but it is then in the hands of the audience/interpreters to weigh and evaluate what this music is about? 

AI: I find the picture of the artwork that, for example, Proust paints very fascinating (according to Deleuze (see Proust et les signes)) that the artwork is a marking machine that operates largely regardless of the artist's will This, in fact, I have often experienced myself. Can't we agree that the subject is what could be called the work's interface with the world?  

Now I'll bring to you a picture you know, show up well even if you may use different words about it: In composition lessons, the teacher guides the student through three areas. I feel like I usually do it in a certain order, but it can be all the way around. First is the technology, it deals with the relationship of unity (tone, length value, strength, etc.) to other entities, so is it the aesthetics which deals with the relationship between a work and other works, the last time it is the spirit or the samples which deals with the relationship of occupation with the world, reality, spirit or what you want to call it This third could probably be called a subjectI heard a pleasant exposition of this at Massimo Santanicchia in the architecture the other day He said: We can tell a student to build a bridge over a river (technology), we can tell him to bring a person across the river, however he chooses to do it (aesthetics), or we can tell him to consider whether there is at all a reason to cross the river (ideology). 

The artist influences the result here, but only up to a certain point.  

There might be a certain final phase in our chat that no matter how raw materials, elements or materials are handled, whether it is based on salvage or absolute randomness, the artist cannot escape the subject However, I do not know how credible he is if he prophesiously decides that the river should not be crossed; and then we find that he does not know how to build bridges at all... but it's also a shame to have to cross the river just because you know how to build a bridge. Always a matter of mission.

ETE: Meaning and subject matter; both can be difficult to nail down - let alone work with purposefully - and no doubt there is a complex interaction going on here because this is precisely the point of contact of a work of art with the world (and those points are infinite).I am of the opinion that the subject can be framed and connected with basic material and materials, let it work together towards a common goal, but it is by no means certain that it will be delivered to the audience, precisely because the meaning is unpredictable (except perhaps where a clear text is worked on in the foreground). Namely, the subject is interpreted first by the composer, if it works with such material over the top of things, and it is sometimes difficult to teach, and certainly students can usually answer „what they are doing it, but sometimes have a hard time with“ it (whyachie, but sometimes it comes very much later in terms, and how it is difficult to deal with „why“ it (how it is still very interesting to the subject matter, and how it is sometimes it is difficult to see it.  

AI: True you say. And then you start thinking about responsibility Wait, no rules, just responsibility, is that really the composer's position? No, should we have to worry about that? I think I'll have coffee. 

 (T.O.N.

[1] Upon further investigation, a source was found: in Handbuch der Harmonielehre (1890) by Hugo Riemann is it called ‘das Material’in relation to acoustics.  

[2] They are undoubtedly in various forms, but a remarkable publication that could be pointed out in this context is Arca Musarithmica(1650) addressing various musical composition aids See recent article on this: Cashner, AA., (2024) “Athanasius Kircher's Arca musarithmica (1650) as a Computational System”, Journal of Creative Music Systems 8(1 doi: https://doi.org/10.5920/jcms.1325