Klarinet Archive - Posting 000026.txt from 2007/03

From: "Keith Bowen" <bowenk@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Hearing is believing, or is it?
Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2007 13:57:34 -0500

Come on out from under your blue blanket, Dan! Simply because I did not
state the source of my knowledge does not mean that I hold that it is
mystical or a mystery, though it may be complex.

Let me make a couple of contrary propositions. I "assert" the following:

1. Nobody can tell without the evidence of their eyes, or documentary
evidence, or sworn statements of a dozen witnesses, that a trumpet is
playing rather than a clarinet.

2. Nobody who knows you, however well, will be able to recognize your voice
across a room.

<pause for spluttering laughter from those who do have the pleasure of
knowing Dan and his highly characteristic voice!>

Reductio ad absurdum.

I did not assert that I could do it with anyone, just with one pianist; nor
even always with Brendel. I asserted that I could often do it with him and
that I had reasonable empirical evidence for this assertion. I actually
don't need to say how or why this happens. I suspect it is Brendel's
"touch", the way he connects notes in the phrase and the way he shapes the
phrase, but this is speculation. I may be saying nothing more than that he
is an exceptionally able musician, and indeed I have been mistaken. If this
were a scientific paper, of which I've written 150 or so, naturally this
would be backed up by double blind tests, standard deviations, t-tests and
the like sufficient to convince the most hardened positivist. The list is
not a refereed publication, so I offered a lower degree of argument. But
speculation gives rise to hypotheses which give rise to testable theories.

In addition to your list of musical attributes, I would add the ability to
apprehend harmonic content of a tone. Different players on the same
instrument undoubtedly produce different harmonic spectra, as is
acoustically reasonable given the formant of the instrument, the oral
cavities of the player (and of course the way they modify them) and the
coupling between them. I do not think it an unreasonable speculation that
_in certain cases_ one may distinguish between players on the basis of their
sound. This is not in the least to contradict your thesis that one cannot
recognize a "national" sound of (say) clarinet playing. As I recall, the
test that you conducted came out about 50:50. I may have misremembered this,
however, was there not one player whom you said was so unique that he was
easily recognizable?

Keith Bowen

-----Original Message-----
From: klarinet-return-90168-bowenk=compuserve.com@-----.org
[mailto:klarinet-return-90168-bowenk=compuserve.com@-----.org] On Behalf
Of dnleeson
Sent: 03 March 2007 18:17
To: klarinet@-----. org
Subject: [kl] Hearing is believing, or is it?

Keith Bowen's response to the matter of the note from Danyel
about the impact of gender specificity gives the impression
(impression hell; it says so outright) that Keith believes his
ears (and mind, of course) to be capable of identifying certain
specific performers; i.e., he knows when Brendel is playing
because he can identify his touch (?), his technique (?), his
interpretation (?), his ethnicity (?) whatever. Keith does not
state the source of his knowledge, so I ascribe it to a mystery.
Maybe he can do it. I can't, which does not mean much.

Every musician is, or should be, proud of their ability to hear
things, such as accuracy of pitch, precision of rhythm,
correctness of tempi, etc. By broadening that sensitivity so as
to be able to recognize the identity of the performer (or
characteristics of a specific performer's musical interpretation)
appears to me to be more ego than science.

I didn't believe it when Danyel said it, and I don't believe it
when Keith says it.

The legislation of technical truth based on a person's assertion
that they recognize that truth in some unknown but mystical
manner causes me to take out my blue blanket, like Leopold Bloom
in The Producers, and hide from reality.

Dan Leeson
DNLeeson@-----.net

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