Klarinet Archive - Posting 000179.txt from 1996/09

From: Neil Leupold <nleupold@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Dan Leeson's position
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 23:35:39 -0400

> Neal asks sound questions.

Well, "Neal" doesn't, but Neil does. ;)

I wrote:

> > I'm not asking about science, I'm asking about
> > rationale.

Dan wrote:

> You say "other than the absence of objective scientific evidence"
> why do I assume the contradictory position. This is not some kind
> of a devil's advocate attitude.

That's what I'm looking at, and it appears very much to be a case of
devil's advocacy. There's nothing wrong with this, but I just want to be
sure I understand Dan's position correctly. It's all good and well to
poke holes in others' arguments and say that the basis of their
assertions is shaky. It stimulates discussion and prompts one to
question their own thinking. In all fairness, it is equally valid to
question the devil himself. If you find fault with the logic while
concurrently withholding a substantive rationale of your own, then the
advocate's purpose is only to stand by, not really to engage. I think
everyone agrees that there is at least a grain of likelihood in Dan's
notion of fickle subjectivity when discussing whether or not one clarinet
sounds different from another. This is not a counter-offer in
explanation of why there are, or are not, differences. It is merely
a statement of possible weakness in somebody else's - the majority of the
respondents' thus far - assertions to the contrary.

Dan wrote further:

> The absence of objective
> scientific data leaves one with nothing but opinion. And that
> is a notoriously unreliable way to decide on anything musical.

Now you're mixing apples and oranges. Discussing scientific data versus
making decisions on issues of musicality does not seem like a reasonable
exchange. The focus of Dan's assertion has been to the effect that human
beings cannot objectively discern the qualitative or quantitative
differences in sound quality between two clarinets when the germane
variables are under control. This is a scientific argument. When the
absence of objective scientific data renders nothing but opinion - by
definition variable - then in this case, one must reasonably consider
Dan's position a viable possibility. We can't know with certainty
because, as has already been pointed out, there exist no scientific
studies to prove either theory right or wrong. A grad student might do
well to address this subject in a thesis.

Musicality, on the other hand...hmmm. Is it subject to scientific
evaluation? Anybody would be standing on very firm ground to address
the issue in terms of sound waves and oscilloscopes and such, rendering
quantitative evidence of what goes on in the generation of *sound*,
coming from the San Francisco Symphony...or just as well coming from
the rear end of a '57 Studebaker. But "music" and "musicality" - these
terms are of an aesthetic nature, fraught with the ambiguity and
ambivalence of every emotion which characterizes human experience.

Again, I'm interested here in understanding the scope and balance of the
issues under examination. If we're talking about quantifying the difference
or lack of difference between the *sound* produced by two clarinets under a
controlled laboratory setting, then Dan's assertion of probability
about human beings' natural predilection for incorporating subjective
experience into their perception of sound deserves respect and
consideration...from a scientific point of view. If we're talking about
*music* and the subjective aesthetic nature upon which it is based, where
individual human feeling and response is the basis for its evaluation,
then science as such has no place in the discussion. Dan might consider
a discussion on heavily subjective grounds to be unworthy of bandwidth
expense, but cries of "horse hockey" then assail deaf ears, because we
don't typically submerge ourselves in the realm of music in order to
discover the wonders of its quantitative scientific properties.

Neil