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Hello everyone and welcome back to Where is the music podcast with today's episode, I thought I'm going to introduce a series of episodes that I'm going to. I'm going to call music seminars.

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In each one of them, I'm going to discuss and elaborate and investigate some, particularly perhaps deep, perhaps intense musical topic.

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I just want to create some variety in the general trajectory of the podcast and after a suggestion of a a friend who fondly listens to the podcast, I realise that it's good to perhaps.

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Distinguish those episodes that are related to maybe a musical piece or a musical artist.

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Distinguish saying them from those episodes that are.

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Meant to somehow describe, explain, investigate A deeper point with in regard with regards to music. And I thought today I was going to start one of one of these. Today's episode is about.

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What music is made of?

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Music is not in the sound.

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But in the listeners ears.

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This the title of today's podcast sounds like Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder, which is obviously true for music as well as.

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For any other expression of beauty.

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But the case I'm making today is slightly different.

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We take for granted that music is made of sound, and we perhaps learn at school.

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That what distinguishes musical sounds from just noise is the fact that in music, sounds are organised in order.

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You can see already while not being wrong. How updated this perspective is. Just think about the musical progress of the last 100 years in which all sorts of acoustic experiments were conducted.

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Including noises and sounds very much not orderly, such as metal chains, vocal utterances or the merging through digital production of acoustic instruments and sounds artificially created sounds.

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I mean, they don't have a Peach sound that can be transcribed.

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Like for example scratching piano strings with all sorts of objects.

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Just to give one example.

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Or think about the presence in many modern classical neoclassical new age music of the sound of rain wind.

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Arriving at perhaps an ultimate extreme, I'm thinking about.

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The famous young cage piece.

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For 33 a piece that allows the listener to find music in whichever sound they hear from the stage or anywhere given that in.

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In John Cage's intention during this performance, no instruction at all is given. For 33 is indeed just 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, and so you will find them.

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On the city, on the album or even online.

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As you see, the distinction between music and noise is not so clear, and the idea that music is in the ears of listeners rings even more true.

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So then can literally everything be music?

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The philosopher.

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The British philosopher Roger Scruton makes distinction between sound and tone. While every acoustic phenomenon can be considered sound, not every sound raises to the level of tone.

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Tom is not just a note from a musical instrument or.

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An orderly acoustic phenomenon distinguished from a noise.

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Tone is a sound that carries intention, human intention.

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Which allows the listener to experience an interaction with music and exchange of intellectual or emotional content.

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A tone signifies more than the sound that reaches the ears.

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That extra dimension is what makes music uniquely human activity.

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Dogs, cows or elephants can very well hear and perhaps even enjoy the sounds made by musical instruments. They might even prefer this or that type of music.

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But won't grasp nor respond to the human intention behind it.

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This important distinction allows us to put the phenomenon of music in a special place, a dimension somewhere in between the real.

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Solid matter, tangible world. The one made of instruments, scores physical action, human collaboration.

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Which includes, of course, the acoustic dimension of a musical piece, the sound itself, which shares the same ontological reality as speech or colour, and the world of our ideas, emotions, imagination.

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Which is invisible and quantifiable and measurable ever changing, so difficult to bring out and communicate to others.

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Is a universal aspect of our existence an experience we share with our fellow human beings?

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Music does a great job in bringing the 2 dimensions together.

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Without imaginations, idea, emotions, music scores are just pieces of paper covered in ink.

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Without the intention to communicate something.

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Playing an instrument is just a practical sequence of actions leading to a practical result, not different in nature. From fixing the engine of a car or set your garden in order.

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Just to be clear, as much as we enjoy those activities, even the creative parts they.

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Entail they require as much as we find true pleasure in conducting them, perhaps focusing on the process rather than the result, and that we feel that by doing them we are actually expressing ourselves.

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There is no clear reason why we should think someone else will get something out of watching us while we carry them out, meaning fixing the car or gardening in the same way they would attend the performance of music.

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Every piece of music exists in that space, and it is probably the reason why we feel so fascinated by it, drawn to inhabit that space.

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Compelled to look into it.

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The piece we are going to look at today is a collaboration that extended over 200 years between Anton Webern's, Austrian composer from the 20th century.

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And Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer from the 18th century. The collaboration I'm talking about is on a piece of music originally written by Bach towards the end of his life called Ricercare a 6.

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From a larger work entitled musical offering, which dated 1747 just three years before Bach's death, and a transcription of the same piece for orchestra.

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That Webern made in early 30s. It was published in 1935.

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The reason I picked it is because through this example we can see how both Bach and Verban knew well that music is not in the sound, but in this dimension between the practical, real, tangible and the imaginative, the ephemeral.

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Here is the beginning of barracks piece.

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Bach composed the musical offering as a present to the Regent King of Prussia in the 1740s, who was a music musician himself. According to historical records back improvised on a theme that was originally wrote.

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By the king and subsequently worked out, refine and completed a larger body of pieces. All inventions on the same subject, the one that you heard at the very beginning.

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So after he completed the piece, he sent it altogether to the king weeks later with the title musical offering.

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The ricercar a six is a composition for six different parts, for which Bach, interestingly, did not specify the instruments.

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The music would work regardless the instrument chosen by the interpreter. We can play this music with six different instruments or at a single keyboard, instruments, piano, or harpsichord.

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The piece has been transcribed for a variety of ensembles throughout the years, but the version written by Webern is quite unique and interesting because he chose an ensemble of 11 different instruments plus a string.

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Quintet it's 16 instruments at all.

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You can already see the perspective taken by these two composers with regard to this piece of music on one side, back is almost indifferent to which sound exactly should be used to voice his composition.

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On the other vibrant takes apart the original score rewrites it, deciding to disregard the only instrument instruction given by Bach, which is to be performed by 6 parts or voices or instruments, and fragmented into 16.

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Separate parts.

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We're going to listen to Bach's version for harpsichord.

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If we look at the intentions, then perhaps we can deduce the box intention is to make music speak through its inner construction.

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The architecture.

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Bach seems to be interested in looking at music as a way to represent an outside order.

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A harmony of elements that is intrinsic to the world represented in this composition through the orderly harmonic relationships of its elements.

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Bach is confident then whichever instrument or sound is picked to perform this composition.

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The architecture of the music would always be clear to the listener.

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On the other side, vapour is not satisfied with this somehow detached representation. The notes written on the score perhaps were to him a bit lifeless.

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Perhaps he felt that there was more expression to bring out, and that a wider range of acoustic colours would help the original architecture to come out.

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Not only he allocates each melody, each motive, sometimes even single notes, to a different instrument. But he adds articulation and dynamic to the music. He makes a point of exploiting the full potential of the instrument to be at the service.

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Of expression.

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The ensemble includes a flute, oboe, horn, English horn, a clarinet, a bass clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, harp, tympany.

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And a string quintet.

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The musical result is superb and fascinating.

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The contrast between the two versions is huge.

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As I was saying, the contrast between the two version is huge.

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Listening to the Ricercare played by a keyboard, by the harpsichord you might have the feeling that this music, while beautiful, exists almost under a glass, perfect for aesthetic admiration. In the same way we could look at an object in a museum.

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Perhaps that was the intention by bar.

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But with the orchestra version, this incredible rich and colourful texture allow us to explore the deeper connection between the notes and their emotional depth.

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The operation carried out by Webern is just an interpretation he effectively interpreted and ray image.

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And those notes wondering what could be the most expressive way to sound them?

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Most of the time, then a melody is played by more than one instrument, sometimes taking turns. Other times playing together, showing that an individual musical elements such as a melody can effectively be separated into its components to be reconstructed again.

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In our imagination of listeners.

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While he practically carries out a fragmenting operation, splitting melodies and motives into small chunks.

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Involving 16 instrumentalists to perform a piece that could be done by 6.

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All the while requiring them a greater attention in care.

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To be put into merge such variety into some kind of unity.

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The musical result ends up being of outstanding coherence and integration.

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We're going to continue the listening now. I will encourage you to follow the music without trying to identify the distinct instruments, whether a brass or woodwind, whether it's a clarinet or a noble.

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Just let yourself be carried by the pure expression, the dynamic nuances, the rush and slow down of this orchestral interpretation.

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Water's magnificent.

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Interpretation. What a beautiful piece and.

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Masterful orchestration.

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If we compare what we just heard with Bucky's original score, we can say a few things. Perhaps Bach wasn't interested in this musical details, or perhaps the style of this time did not allow him to explore all these expressive nuances.

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Or perhaps.

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Writing music with such level of detail will have not been as significant as it came to be in the 20th century.

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We can think and argue about all of this, but we also can at least pause it, that for both composers.

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This music exists in both dimensions. Bach focuses on creating an architecture that represents the harmony of reality, allowing the listener to imagine all the expressive nuances he wishes and to freely respond to them in the same way we would appreciate and respond.

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To a piece of art in a museum.

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While Webern instead focuses on the story of expression.

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Carried by the piece invites the listeners to a journey of lush colours and nuanced emotions.

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Allowing them to perceive almost in the back of the head the underlying grandiose architecture, originally designed by Bach.

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To conclude.

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Music is not in the sound, but in the listeners ears. What does this tell us about music?

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We have seen that both composers had a different intention in relation with the musical offering.

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And that such intention depends on what they consider more relevant in it, namely their personal interpretation of it.

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As an artist, I believe that there is nothing more important than Intel.

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And in order to transform intension into sound, we constantly have to make judgments and choices with regard to what sound means to us. Effectively, we are constantly elaborating interpretations.

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As a teacher, I find it necessary to promote interpretation as the starting point of every musical activity.

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Interpretation is that rather free activity where one can decide what a sign on the paper means and by doing so it is possible to identify intentionality behind it.

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In other words, we are doing what the philosopher Roger Scruton was suggesting at the beginning of this episode, which is we are turning sound into tones by adding intentionality to them.

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OK. Thank you everyone for.

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Listening to this episode, I'm going to.

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Post links of the music we heard this was by Seiji Ozawa and I think the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

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But also if you want to know more about the musical offering the the entire composition, entire work that Bach composed in 1747, there is so much more to it.

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But it's one of those late works by Bach in which all his masterful musical wisdom comes out full force, his ability to.

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To use the subject given to him by the by the king and play with it in incredible ways. I have studied this piece a while ago and I've written a short thesis about it explaining.

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The construction on the whole piece and the perhaps aesthetic and philosophical correlations, and this is available on my website, I'm going to put a link to it.

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I'm going to also post the link with more traditional orchestration for apps record than the small chamber ensemble.

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Hopefully this will be the first of a series of music seminars that are going to.

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Be part of the where is the music podcast I I'm planning to perhaps do one every perhaps four or five episodes and we'll see how this goes. Thank you for listening.

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And I will see you in one week time.