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Article 5220 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Intelligence, awareness, and esthetics
Message-ID: <205340@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 23 Apr 92 18:27:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: unix.205340
References: <1992Apr22.153550.19640@javelin.sim.es.com> <1992Apr23.121553.6713@nuscc.nus.sg> <1992Apr23.153550.2375@javelin.sim.es.com>
Organization: University of Pittsburgh
Lines: 44

In article <1992Apr23.153550.2375@javelin.sim.es.com> biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel) writes:
>
>We all know the effect of an in-joke:
>a single word or phrase can provoke a complex response when it alludes
>to a known and shared situation. Does the effect occur in art?

Of course.  This is why any sort of information-theoretic measure of the
content of the signal is _primae_facie_ absurd as a basis for aesthetic
conclusions.

Just to pick one of 10 gazillion possible examples, consider Vaughan Williams's
"Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis".  The extra-musical information that a
listener might add to the signal information includes

	1. The original tune by Tallis
	2. The original harmonization by Tallis (cf. recent comment on the
		net about the relationship between VW and T in this regard)
	3. The original *text* Tallis was setting, and its liturgical function.
		(It was a hymn, and thus of deliberately simple structure and
		harmony and phrasing...)
	4. What other Vaughan Williams music sounds like: is VW treating this
		piece differently because it was by Tallis originally?
	5. Everything else that's been written since Tallis.  The sparseness
		of the harmonies is an example of information conveyance by
		*absence* of signal.
	6. (...you get the idea.)

"Allusion" is one of the most complicated ways of conveying information in
a literary work, and no less so in a musical composition.  Everything from
"sounding vaguely classical" to quoting a bit of Mozart note-for-note brings
along tons of baggage that isn't explicitly in the signal.

Consider an information-theoretic explication of the "Musical Joke".  Right,
I thought so.

DT



-- 
          David M. Tate            |"Is this the baseball I see before me
     dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu       | Come spinning toward the plate?  Come,
  A poem should be dumb, / As old  | let me smite thee. [...]  Or art thou but
 medallions to the thumb.--MacLeish| a slider of the mind?  (MacRuth, act V)


