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Re: Agreement and disagreement

Posted by David Aiken (A) on March 4, 2006 at 00:51:09

In Reply to: Re: Agreement and disagreement posted by Duke on March 3, 2006 at 17:40:00:

Duke,

We may well not be as far apart as you think.

>"Conceding that perfect waveform replication isn't presently possible, why would recreation (as closely as possible) of the auditory perception that the performers and/or engineers intended be an unworthy goal? "<

I don't think it's an unworthy goal and I think getting as close as possible is important. I just don't think it's enough to satisfy me as a listener (I might find I'm wrong about that if we ever get perfect reproduction in my life time but I won't hold my breath waiting or I really would guarantee that I won't hear it in my lifetime) but if I was an equipment designer I think it would be enough of a goal, even more than enough of a goal, for me as a designer. Some people are both listener and designer and I don't see any problem with them having separate goals for each role. In the absence of the perfect component, I think there's room for both goals to co-exist quite happily if we pay attention to what we hear.

>"When I paint, I am an artist. When I listen to music on a sound system, I am a passive listener, one who is not involved in the production of the art. Therefore, I want to hear what the "artists" intended for me to hear - good or bad. I am free to judge this art, but to reinterpret it is not my role."<

I have vague memories of a poster many years ago which said something like:

"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said but I am not sure you realise that what you heard was not what I meant." I'm perverse enough to think there's a lot of truth in that.

I actually agree with your quote to a big degree, but we normally don't have the artists tell us what they intended us to hear and I think one of the wonderful things about great art is that not only can it tell each of us many things, but it tells different people different things as well. I think artists are often surprised by what people find in their work, and I think great art often says more to people than the artist consciously had in mind. People can and do create things that surprise them, and often do better than they thought they could. I thinkthe really great artists do it much more often than they know. I'm not sure that the artist is always capable of telling us everything that they achieved in a performance, and what they intended need not be all of what they actually achieved. Sometimes, their intentions are sadly a fair bit more than what they achieved. Ultimately the performance, or the recording, stands on it's own and each of us in the audience finds what we find in it.

I think the prescription against reinterpretation is good but the artist's intent is tricky, especially when they achieve something special which exceeds their intention in some way. Sometimes the artist's intentions would sell the performance short.

What I would like to do is to hear things as accurately as possible because I think that is essential, but not every aspect of what we hear is equally essential to each of us and some aspects are more important to us than others. We can't help editorialising, choosing our systems in ways that favour what is most important to us, but I think we should avoid things that do amount to reinterpretation, which often seem to amount to making things prettier than they actually are/were. There is a fine line there and we don't always get it right, but we can continue listening and trying to get it better.

I enjoy our exchanges on this sort of thing too. I think you're very open minded and clear about what your preferences are and what you think is essential, and that makes our discussions very enjoyable for me. Perhaps that's why some of my responses to your posts are too long :-)

David Aiken

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