I've been sitting around thinking...
and guess what; I started thinking in analogy! Imagine that. Me? Try and make analogies for everything? Obsessive much?
Digression
So there's a kitty living in my house with me now. While according to both the Humane Society and the vet his name is "Harley", I of course cannot refrain from giving said cat as many spontaneous appellations as I possibly can whenever I address him. You might recall the list of 31 names I listed that I realized I had given the dog over time. So far, the cat is known as:
Kitty (that's what he thinks his name is)
Problem Cat
Stupid Kitty (only when he bats at and attempts to bite the water running in the sink)
Feline
Animal
Boy Cat
Tom
Kitten Face
Super-lovey Kitty 5000, purring kitten edition
Black and White Cat
The Happy Cat Show
Katze
It's that last one that is the impetus for this humble submission into the BLOGOSPHERE, as it is known these days. I realized, saying katze to refer to the kitty, that I was doubtlessly butchering the German language every time I called him that. I don't speak German at all, so my pronunciation I'm sure is nothing short of atrocious. I really only know a few basic words like hund, tag, zeitzung, etc. (excluding musical terminology) and katze just so happens to be one as well. (I think actually my favorite random German word I know is schweinefleisch for pork; literally "pig flesh" I think it means.)
At any rate, I then started think about my second famous quote: "If you're not playing in tune, you're not playing the right note," and wondered if my mispronunciation of katze might in some way be analogous to playing a note out of tune in a melody. When I say, in my Americanized German accent, "katze," could my pronunciation be so bad that the sounds coming out of my mouth might not be considered a word at all?
Well of course, despite my accent, my pronunciation of katze is of course still a word, and it is likely that native German speakers would still recognize that my vocalizations are in fact refering to the small furry animal currently lying next to me on the sofa. So perhaps the two aren't analogous after all. One mistake fails to communicate while the other succeeds.
Then I realized that if you try and make a connection between my famous quote and language, it's not so much a question of definition as it is one of aesthetics.
Let's take for example, and I do delight in the pun, two phrases: 1) Wo ist die katze? (please correct me if my German is wrong there, but for the purposes of my example grammatical accuracy is not paramount) and 2) the first seven notes of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," here in the key of C for simplicity. In the first phrase, imagine if you replaced the last word with my pronunciation of katze. The meaning is still there, but the sound is all wrong. Likewise, let's say in the second phrase we lower the C by about 35 cents alla beginner oboist with a Jones reed. Again, the tune would be recognizable, but the sound is all wrong. In both cases, we can define what is being said/played, but we might have some interesting things to say about the quality of each.
Consider though that language varies not just from country to country, but from region to region, city to city, even between two individuals of the same family. Who then is to say whose pronunciation is the most aesthetically pleasing? Could the same argument be made about my famous quote? Who is to say what pitch level is the most pleasing? Am I wrong to be so harsh?
At first, I thought no the same argument could not be made. You can't compare the two because pitch is a real, mathematical relationship between measureable phenomena; language on the other hand cannot be quantified so succinctly. For a given melody you can define frequency values for every pitch that will provide pure intervals between it and every other pitch (pure meaning no destructive interference between two different frequency values). However for a given sentence there is no such mathematical relationship between sounds; syllables and phonemes do not interact like waveforms. So perhaps this is point at which the analogy breaks down, and my famous quote still stands as true.
All of this sounded good, until I started to think about one other thing that brought my haughty sense of mathematical purity in music to a grinding halt: equal temperament. To define exact pitch values based on waveform relationships is all well in good when you're talking about simple melody like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" where each interval happens one at a time and can be adjusted individually. However try applying that same logic to a Brahms symphony. In such a situation, it's physically impossible to play a given chord tone perfectly in tune in relation to all the notes around it and the notes immediately preceding and following it. It's Western music's dirty little secret. So now let's say that I'm playing 2nd horn, and my note happens to be the 7th of whatever chord the orchestra is sounding. Given that no matter what frequency I play, I cannot form perfect intervals with every other note around me, I now have a minute gray area in which my note could lie and still theoretically sound alright (i.e. in tune enough). Suddenly my "right note" from my famous quote is now "right note(s)."
So it turns out that my choice of frequency with my instrument is in fact subjective in the same way that the choice of pronunciation of a word can be viewed as subjective. Any of the frequencies I choose within the range of acceptability conveys the same meaning in the same way that a given sentence spoken with differing accents conveys the same message. This somewhat undermines the validity of my quote, so that now the only way it can be true again is for "right note" to in fact stand for the range of frequencies that most people would consider acceptable. But without an exact frequency dictated by measurable phenomena, my famous quote can never again carry the weight it once did I'm sorry to say. "Right note" is now a matter of concensus, not of measurement.
Now the only difference between the subjectivity of language and music is one of degree, and this stems from the intentions of one versus the other. As far as the degree of subjectivity that is tolerated within each, it would appear that music, if no longer exact, at least has a far narrower range of acceptability than does language. Imagine what Brahms' symphony would sound like with people who played their instruments as badly I as I speak German! It would be at least recognizable perhaps, but would anyone really want to hear it? If however a non-native speaker of German struggles through a paragraph or two and manages to get his point across, we still consider his attempt at communication successful.
As I said, it boils down to the question of what the intention of music versus language is. Music is made to be beautiful, whereas language exists for communication, hence the reason for language's broader range for what is routinely considered "acceptable."
So yes, me saying "katze" with my horrible accent is analogous to playing a note out of tune, but as it turns out we cannot accurately define exactly how horrible either actually is.
So does this mean that the 2nd horn player who chooses to play his 7th higher than one who plays it slightly lower is playing his instrument with what might be called a different "accent"?
Or, if you start looking at language from the same aesthetic point of view as one would music, does that mean that you should consider well-spoken native speakers "virtuosos" of their language?
Seems like there would be a lot of under-appreciated artists out there if that were the case.
Digression
So there's a kitty living in my house with me now. While according to both the Humane Society and the vet his name is "Harley", I of course cannot refrain from giving said cat as many spontaneous appellations as I possibly can whenever I address him. You might recall the list of 31 names I listed that I realized I had given the dog over time. So far, the cat is known as:
Kitty (that's what he thinks his name is)
Problem Cat
Stupid Kitty (only when he bats at and attempts to bite the water running in the sink)
Feline
Animal
Boy Cat
Tom
Kitten Face
Super-lovey Kitty 5000, purring kitten edition
Black and White Cat
The Happy Cat Show
Katze
It's that last one that is the impetus for this humble submission into the BLOGOSPHERE, as it is known these days. I realized, saying katze to refer to the kitty, that I was doubtlessly butchering the German language every time I called him that. I don't speak German at all, so my pronunciation I'm sure is nothing short of atrocious. I really only know a few basic words like hund, tag, zeitzung, etc. (excluding musical terminology) and katze just so happens to be one as well. (I think actually my favorite random German word I know is schweinefleisch for pork; literally "pig flesh" I think it means.)
At any rate, I then started think about my second famous quote: "If you're not playing in tune, you're not playing the right note," and wondered if my mispronunciation of katze might in some way be analogous to playing a note out of tune in a melody. When I say, in my Americanized German accent, "katze," could my pronunciation be so bad that the sounds coming out of my mouth might not be considered a word at all?
Well of course, despite my accent, my pronunciation of katze is of course still a word, and it is likely that native German speakers would still recognize that my vocalizations are in fact refering to the small furry animal currently lying next to me on the sofa. So perhaps the two aren't analogous after all. One mistake fails to communicate while the other succeeds.
Then I realized that if you try and make a connection between my famous quote and language, it's not so much a question of definition as it is one of aesthetics.
Let's take for example, and I do delight in the pun, two phrases: 1) Wo ist die katze? (please correct me if my German is wrong there, but for the purposes of my example grammatical accuracy is not paramount) and 2) the first seven notes of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," here in the key of C for simplicity. In the first phrase, imagine if you replaced the last word with my pronunciation of katze. The meaning is still there, but the sound is all wrong. Likewise, let's say in the second phrase we lower the C by about 35 cents alla beginner oboist with a Jones reed. Again, the tune would be recognizable, but the sound is all wrong. In both cases, we can define what is being said/played, but we might have some interesting things to say about the quality of each.
Consider though that language varies not just from country to country, but from region to region, city to city, even between two individuals of the same family. Who then is to say whose pronunciation is the most aesthetically pleasing? Could the same argument be made about my famous quote? Who is to say what pitch level is the most pleasing? Am I wrong to be so harsh?
At first, I thought no the same argument could not be made. You can't compare the two because pitch is a real, mathematical relationship between measureable phenomena; language on the other hand cannot be quantified so succinctly. For a given melody you can define frequency values for every pitch that will provide pure intervals between it and every other pitch (pure meaning no destructive interference between two different frequency values). However for a given sentence there is no such mathematical relationship between sounds; syllables and phonemes do not interact like waveforms. So perhaps this is point at which the analogy breaks down, and my famous quote still stands as true.
All of this sounded good, until I started to think about one other thing that brought my haughty sense of mathematical purity in music to a grinding halt: equal temperament. To define exact pitch values based on waveform relationships is all well in good when you're talking about simple melody like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" where each interval happens one at a time and can be adjusted individually. However try applying that same logic to a Brahms symphony. In such a situation, it's physically impossible to play a given chord tone perfectly in tune in relation to all the notes around it and the notes immediately preceding and following it. It's Western music's dirty little secret. So now let's say that I'm playing 2nd horn, and my note happens to be the 7th of whatever chord the orchestra is sounding. Given that no matter what frequency I play, I cannot form perfect intervals with every other note around me, I now have a minute gray area in which my note could lie and still theoretically sound alright (i.e. in tune enough). Suddenly my "right note" from my famous quote is now "right note(s)."
So it turns out that my choice of frequency with my instrument is in fact subjective in the same way that the choice of pronunciation of a word can be viewed as subjective. Any of the frequencies I choose within the range of acceptability conveys the same meaning in the same way that a given sentence spoken with differing accents conveys the same message. This somewhat undermines the validity of my quote, so that now the only way it can be true again is for "right note" to in fact stand for the range of frequencies that most people would consider acceptable. But without an exact frequency dictated by measurable phenomena, my famous quote can never again carry the weight it once did I'm sorry to say. "Right note" is now a matter of concensus, not of measurement.
Now the only difference between the subjectivity of language and music is one of degree, and this stems from the intentions of one versus the other. As far as the degree of subjectivity that is tolerated within each, it would appear that music, if no longer exact, at least has a far narrower range of acceptability than does language. Imagine what Brahms' symphony would sound like with people who played their instruments as badly I as I speak German! It would be at least recognizable perhaps, but would anyone really want to hear it? If however a non-native speaker of German struggles through a paragraph or two and manages to get his point across, we still consider his attempt at communication successful.
As I said, it boils down to the question of what the intention of music versus language is. Music is made to be beautiful, whereas language exists for communication, hence the reason for language's broader range for what is routinely considered "acceptable."
So yes, me saying "katze" with my horrible accent is analogous to playing a note out of tune, but as it turns out we cannot accurately define exactly how horrible either actually is.
So does this mean that the 2nd horn player who chooses to play his 7th higher than one who plays it slightly lower is playing his instrument with what might be called a different "accent"?
Or, if you start looking at language from the same aesthetic point of view as one would music, does that mean that you should consider well-spoken native speakers "virtuosos" of their language?
Seems like there would be a lot of under-appreciated artists out there if that were the case.