Klarinet Archive - Posting 000241.txt from 2004/09

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Organic change
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 13:21:36 -0400

On 13 Sep, joseph.wakeling@-----.net wrote:

> Tony Pay wrote:
>
> > But one way of looking at the problem involves the notion of 'organic
> > change'. Something is said to undergo organic change when some aspects of
> > that something change, whilst other aspects stay the same.
>
> I'm not sure I agree about this. The thing is, I don't think there's any
> change that *isn't* organic, by this definition. The only way you can
> effectively have an "inorganic" change is to define a context so that some
> things are outside your system. Is this really what you mean by organic
> change?

Yeah, the old thing about necessary and sufficient conditions. I should
perhaps have written, much more loosely,

> to become sensitive to organic change, it's worth while asking yourself,
> "what things change, and what things stay the same?"

I wasn't really trying for a definition of organic change, but rather
pointing out that, however you characterise it, organic change is a rather
common character of good music.

Because of that, it's natural to make the analogy between what happens in the
music, which is wanting to 'be alive', and how other things behave that
actually are alive.

If you do that, then one of the first things you notice is that perception of
an organism is very often perception of 'an entity' that 'moves'. Then, it's
an entity because of what *doesn't* change, and it moves because of what
does.

For example, an arpeggio of C major can be part of an entity because 'being
an overtone of C' is what doesn't change. A bad performance of such an
arpeggio can have a note 'sticking out' in it, and that can obscure our
perception of the arpeggio as a single entity, and so our perception of a
higher level 'organic' movement present in the music -- if it exists.

And so on. Notice the abstraction (being an overtone of C) involved.

> > Finally, I think that the notion of organic change can also help to
> > explain why it is a particular departure from an established style (such
> > as Klezmer, perhaps) may be justifiably criticisable. It could happen
> > that the departure is too radical, and that buying it 'blots out'
> > important nuances used by other practitioners. If the departure is
> > 'organic', and made by a great artist, that may be acceptable, and
> > buildable upon -- then, it counts as an extension of the language. But if
> > it is done superficially, without understanding, it may be worth killing
> > off.
>
> I was going to disagree about this point---the idea that there could be a
> "too radical" change---but then I realised you had already made the caveat
> I wanted. But it seems to me to suggest that the issue is surely not
> whether the change is major or minor, but the question of whether what
> comes out is "self-justifying". That is, if the resulting work has an
> internal "sense" to it.

Yes, I entirely agree.

> And it seems to me that the question one should ask about a change is not
> whether it's "organic" in the sense you described above, but whether it
> creates or destroys internal sense. I wonder if this might be a better way
> of conceiving change as organic or inorganic.

Yes.

[snip]

> The thing is surely to be sensitive to the dialogue that occurs between
> artistic elements, to whether this dialogue is "working" or not. That
> applies just as much to music that is written "within" a style as to music
> that mixes stylistic elements, I'd say.

I agree. I think probably my most common remark here is to say that our
sense of something 'working' musically -- what Mike McIntyre calls, 'our
inner musician' -- is our most precious touchstone.

But because I find that I often use metaphor to try to capture what it is
that does, or doesn't work, and that the metaphor is often an 'organic'
one, it seems to me that it's useful to be on the lookout for structures like
my 'crescendo of chairs':

|
| |
| |
| | |
| | | |________
| | | / /|
| | |____ | / / |
|| | / /| |/________/ |
||___ |/____/ | | | | |
|/__/| | | | | | | | |
|| || | | | | | | | |
| | | | | |

louder, LOUDER, !!*LOUDER*!!

....which is an organic change in the sense of my first remark: it's
something both staying the same (it's chair-shaped) and changing (it gets
bigger).

The 'staying the same' and the 'changing' happen on different levels, quite
like what happens in music.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd tony.p@-----.org
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

... I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org