Here is the first paragraph from Stephen Davies's book Themes in the philosophy of music (Oxford U. Press, 2003):
Imagine a fugue written for a synthesizer. It is typical of the genre with this exception: its lowest note is at 30,000 hertz, above the range of human hearing. Also, consider a piece of about 300 measures in common time. In most respects, the work is ordinary, but the tempo is indicated as 'crotchet [quarter note] = five years.' The opening sixteen-bar theme lasts for more than three centuries; the performance is completed after 6 millennia.* In a third case, a work specified for solo piccolo contains a single note, the C at 128 hertz [an octave below middle C]. This tone lies more than two octaves below the instrument's range. Are these pieces musical works?
*If memory serves me correctly, Davies poses a similar question in another book, Musical works and performances: Imagine taking Beethoven's fifth symphony and playing at a tempo of quarter note = one year. Is it still Beethoven's fifth? Is it still a musical work? (deepest apologies if I'm misquoting or misattributing!)
Any takers? What constitutes a piece of music?
UPDATE (12/5/06): Scott over at Musical Perceptions found an almost-example of the last question I posed above. The piece, by Leif Inge, takes a recording of Beethoven's ninth symphony and slows it down so that the whole piece takes 24 hours. You can read about it here, and (better yet!) listen to it here.
It's really quite beautiful (I didn't listen to the whole thing). You get long, sustained major and minor chords, dissonances that last for 30 seconds. Note onsets become crescendos, and so on.
Now the question is, is this still Beethoven's ninth? If so, why? If it's not, at what point did it cease to be Beethoven's ninth? To what extent is it a composition by Leif Inge and not Beethoven?
Imagine a fugue written for a synthesizer. It is typical of the genre with this exception: its lowest note is at 30,000 hertz, above the range of human hearing. Also, consider a piece of about 300 measures in common time. In most respects, the work is ordinary, but the tempo is indicated as 'crotchet [quarter note] = five years.' The opening sixteen-bar theme lasts for more than three centuries; the performance is completed after 6 millennia.* In a third case, a work specified for solo piccolo contains a single note, the C at 128 hertz [an octave below middle C]. This tone lies more than two octaves below the instrument's range. Are these pieces musical works?
*If memory serves me correctly, Davies poses a similar question in another book, Musical works and performances: Imagine taking Beethoven's fifth symphony and playing at a tempo of quarter note = one year. Is it still Beethoven's fifth? Is it still a musical work? (deepest apologies if I'm misquoting or misattributing!)
Any takers? What constitutes a piece of music?
UPDATE (12/5/06): Scott over at Musical Perceptions found an almost-example of the last question I posed above. The piece, by Leif Inge, takes a recording of Beethoven's ninth symphony and slows it down so that the whole piece takes 24 hours. You can read about it here, and (better yet!) listen to it here.
It's really quite beautiful (I didn't listen to the whole thing). You get long, sustained major and minor chords, dissonances that last for 30 seconds. Note onsets become crescendos, and so on.
Now the question is, is this still Beethoven's ninth? If so, why? If it's not, at what point did it cease to be Beethoven's ninth? To what extent is it a composition by Leif Inge and not Beethoven?