Warning: this post is tl;dr.
Thank you to those people who said that my research topic sounds interesting.
Congrats. What's the proposal about?
Thanks.
It's on the topic of authenticity in music; specifically, whether a complete unambiguous notation system would be possible, if so, would it be desirable?
I'd be very interested in further details once you have some.
Well, if you're still interested by the end of May when it's due I can post a link to the entire essay; for now I'll just give a rundown.
The introduction will be the usual stating of topic, rationale, "in this essay I will blah blah blah" and will mention the fact that music notation began as an aide memoire for aurally trained performers and was highly ambiguous, and that it has become progressively less so, but that it still presumes a fair deal of knowledge of expressive conventions.
Next step will be to define “unambiguous”; complete unambiguity seems impossible to me as you'd need to express an infinite number of possibilities, and you'd run out of particles in the universe. Damn limited universe. >__<
So I'll define “unambiguous” within the limits of human perception, which I'll have to look up again with regards to pitch, duration and loudness discrimination.
By this point I've established that it would be possible, so now it's time to move on to the issue of desirability. The complexity of such a system will be a major point against it, and I'll give a few examples of the fact that humans' perceptual abilities tend to far exceed their productive abilities: recognition vs recall, receptive vs expressive vocabulary, active vs passive perfect pitch etc. etc. and so forth. Thus, even if a composer could write using it, that's no guarantee that a performer could realise it. This part would also raise the issue of the huge complexity meaning that pieces would take far longer to learn than they do now.
Some time will be spent on peoples' attitudes toward authenticity, particularly contrasting Romantic with modern attitudes. This will lead to questions of whether there is one “correct” interpretation of a work, and whether a composer always has one fixed ideal of a work in their mind (which generally I don't believe they do; humans are not photocopiers).
Leading on from the too-much-complexity argument, I will argue that, as I said before, humans are not photocopiers, they have they ability to evaluate and interpret, and that thus spoon-feeding performers every. tiny. little. detail. of a piece is wasting the capabilities of the human brain, overtaxing it for the sake of being able to get performances that could be achieved by collaborations between composers and competent performers, and that if you want something that will do exactly as you say, go talk to a computer.
Possibly there will be other points, but I've not yet decided.
The conclusion will draw all the threads together; “in this essay I have blah blah blah” and use the excess-complexity, waste-of-human-abilities, and-besides-composers-don't-always-have-a-fixed-idea-of-their-work/s arguments to argue that an unambiguous notational system would be more trouble than it's worth.
A quote of the synopsis that I sent to my professor:
Throughout its development, the Western system of music notation has become far less ambiguous. However, modern notation still requires many assumptions to be made regarding factors such as phrasing, exact tempo, bowings and other interpretive details; it also requires knowledge of expressive conventions to produce non-mechanical performances. Is an unambiguous notational system possible; if so, is it desirable? My paper will address the questions of whether authenticity is desirable, whether there can be one “correct” interpretation of a work, and whether a composer’s intentions are always clear: do composers always envision their works in the same way? The main focus of my paper will be to evaluate the desirability of complete unambiguity in music, it will also focus on comparing and contrasting attitudes toward authenticity expressed in the Romantic period to those of today, and on evaluating said attitudes.
Things that happened today that were good: got 77 pages of photocopying done for free, and my composition teacher is going to speak with one of the research staff to find ways for me to get a Ph.D. candidature without having to pay ridiculous amounts of money, which I don't have, for a bridging course.
was it something I said?