Bat's weird questions

Weird question 1 - would you say that e.g. Bach's lost works are forever lost? Or if the earth explodes tomorrow, will Bach's existing works, etc. (sorry, Beethoven, etc.) be lost forever, and if, to whom?

In what form do they exist right now - are they scores, records, or memories in various music-lover's brains?

 

very interesting question, not weird at all.... i'll give it a try and answer tomorrow

well: this: "in what form do they exist right now - are they scores, records, or memories in various music-lover's brains?" is the interesting part. the earth exploding bla bla IS weird...

 

Yes rather thought provoking question.

Bachs lost works don't exist, neither in scores or in the memory of any living human beeing. They are lost.

His surviving works exist as rather simplified notations in the scores, which certainly don't express everything Bach had in mind. He relied upon performers, who knew the style, and who were able to add the missing indications of, how the music was to be performed in practical music making. But his works don't exist in this sense anymore, since the practical performing tradition has been lost. What exists to day (on CD, in the musicians and the music lovers mind) is an approximation of Bachs original intentions hopefully based upon the score, but very individual, according to how each of us happens to interprete his style, depending upon what we (each of us) have read about the subject (but no treatise can replace a living performance tradition), or how much we have philosophized over the subject. To understand how different the understanding of his style can be, you just need to compare Walcha and Leonhardt. Probably neither of them represents entirely Bachs own style, so in the strictest sense Bachs works, as he concieved them, have been lost forever.

In order not to make the answer too complicated, I have deliberately ignored the question of manuscript-variants.

 

I disagree. Bach's lost works are not lost - they are just currently inaccessible for most people.
What is the differerence between a surviving work and a lost work? Just the accessibility.

For example the AoF exists as a score but the score itself is not the AoF - the score is just ink and paper. Therefore the AoF exists independently of the score. And equivalently the lost works exist although the scores have been lost. Because they continue to exist they may reappear someday, which is great news for you Bach fans.

 

so, in great hurry.
bach's lost scores are lost until and if they are found. Simple enough.

what is the status of his surviving works? they belong to humankind, and their real meaning is not contained by the scores but by all the tradition in interpretation. this is unavailable to a practicing musician: he must strive to get his, very partial, interpretation. perhaps a genius might know all the interpretations (those that were effectively listened to and the possible but actually not performed ones) and have a true knowledge.

what I think is that no one has the full grasp of these works.

it is as for instance, kant's theories. no one knows all the implications one may derive from them.

both theories and music belong to a civilization, and not to a single person. this means that our culture 'knows' Bach's works in ways no individual can ever aspire to know them.

but then i think cultural units are organisms, and we are just their cells.

i know this is abstruse and bordering on the incomprehensible (or rather, totally incomprehensible), but I have no time to get into details...

 

exactly, unfortunately. that is why there is no point in striving for authentic performance, which ought only to be a rough guide that gives us a sort of rule of thumb.

 

I see too much common sense in your posts... This is supposed to be a WEIRD thread! According to modern quantum physics we live in a weird world, not a common-sense world.

Bach's works existed in his mind before he wrote the scores.
Therefore a composition can exist even if the score (or composer) is destroyed, do we agree on that? Therefore Bach's lost works can still exist.

Or are compositions just black spots on paper, or are they just electrochemical charges in the composer's brain? What exactly are compositions?

 

About 20 years ago (sigh) I took a course on the ontology of cultural objects - scientific theories, symphonies, works of literature etc. Popper seemed to have much to say about the subject in his famous theory of three worlds.


Regards,

L.

 

No, they are not only dots on paper, but they need a support: a mind, a recording, or a score. They must be real.

That said, how I would like Bach's last fugue fragment X (Christoff Wolf's theory) to be real!

 

Yes, music exists in world 3, but world three cannot be known by one person: it is a property of culture.

If we consider culture as an organism and to be composed of knowledge (information, if you prefer), no one individual can reach the totality of this knowledge.

 

Bach is dead. Whatever was in his mind is now gone. Finished. Non-existent.
"Lost" works may exist in manuscript form hidden in a library somewhere; these things sometimes come to light. If not, they are gone.
Never mind. Enjoy what we have.

 

His brain is gone but is his mind? No.
If the score is burned and it disappears from world 1, does it continue to exist in world 3? Yes it does.

 

You can claim so, but who defines the character and content of world 3? We may have different opinions about that. And if the score "existed" in world 3, in which state would it exist? And besides it would be useless, as it would be inaccessible forever, I suppose.

 

Only theoretically.

Where is world 3? Does it exist? I don't think so.

Why worry? Maybe the 'lost' works were rubbish anyway and we are better off without them.

 

world 3 is only the sum total of the thoughts of people; if a person is dead and left no indications of a score, and if no one remembers it, there is no score in world 3.

i think bat is saying that there is mind after death. am i wrong, bat?

 

Yes, this is how I too understand the concept of world 3.

 

No, that is world 2.
The scores in world 3 could be studied in a dream and brought back to worlds 2 and 1.

 

Going off at a slight tangent - hope that's in keeping with this free ranging discussion.

I'd like to take issue with your earlier use of the term "common sense". (I've just read this thread for the first time)

As far as I'm concerned the term is a means of saying:

This is something I think, you should know!

 

bat: do you really think that bach's mind is still around? straight question, straight answer, please.

 

or do you want a really weird answer? i can think up something...