Klarinet Archive - Posting 000237.txt from 2005/03

From: ormo2ndtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: RE: [kl] German sound
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005 03:26:07 -0500

Dan, your hypothesis is that "This orchestra is German" is an ambiguous
statement. That is, the boundary of the set of all German orchestras
is undefined.

Therefore how can you tell anybody who responds with "This orchestra is
French" that he/she is wrong?

You posted:

> A piece will be played and the party being
> questioned indicates German, French,
> American, Italian, Russian

Would the procedure better stated this way?

> A piece will be played and the party being
> questioned indicates whether the orchestra's
> headquarters is located in Germany, France,
> America, Italy, Russia

You *can* declare that the orchestra's headquarters is (or isn't) in a
certain country, but you can't logically use an ambiguous definition to
decide that a response is correct or incorrect.

In retrospect, my proposal that respondents be asked to identify "same
orchestra" or "different orchestra" is flawed for the same reason.
Various recordings could've been performed by different musicians or
under the direction of a different conductor. Example: "Oh, the 1985
performance was when So-and-So was conductor, and he recruited German
musicians because <whatever>. That's why this particular recording
sounds German instead of French."

The orchestra identities weren't well-defined in my proposal either.

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