Comments on: Music of the Spheres. Or, You Know… http://blog.janehaddam.com/2010/02/04/music-of-the-spheres-or-you-know/ Jane Haddam’s WordPress weblog Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:27:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.4 By: robert_piepenbrink http://blog.janehaddam.com/2010/02/04/music-of-the-spheres-or-you-know/comment-page-1/#comment-1900 robert_piepenbrink Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:57:57 +0000 http://blog.janehaddam.com/?p=1312#comment-1900 Might check Micklos Rozsa. He's the only man I know to have seriously attempted to rediscover Roman music. As I recall his conclusion was that it was more thoroughly gone than, say, Greek or Jewish music of the same era, but that echoes could be found if you knew where to look--or what to listen to and for. He attempted to work this into some of his film scores, adapted to modern instruments and sensibilities. (Of course, his successors just imitate Rozsa, the way Heyer's successors don't research Regency colloquial speech, but imitate Heyer.) Anyway his memoirs or any surviving notes might be helpful. But there's always the trouble of our own perspective. We can do a pretty good job of reconstructing any music since the start of modern musical notation--reconstruct the instruments, measure beat in terms of heartbeats and such, and I suspect probably come pretty close to the actual sound--certainly from about 1850 on. When we began record music, and we had survivors who remembered that far back to critique the recordings. Yet I doubt the reconstructed music sounds to me the way it did to its contemporaries, precisely because I'm used to different instruments and a different beat. A "modernized" version of "British Grenadiers" may get the intended emotional response from me more easily than authentic Marlburian. ("Modern" in that sense dating to WWII or thereabouts, and the line of instrumental music which continues from that. I don't want to know what Beyonce would do with the piece.) Best to admit our limits. We can, sometimes, get pretty close to the material life of various times and places. As for the emotional life, some events and institutions have changed less than others and permit better-informed guesses, but guessing is what we'll be doing throughout. Might check Micklos Rozsa. He’s the only man I know to have seriously attempted to rediscover Roman music. As I recall his conclusion was that it was more thoroughly gone than, say, Greek or Jewish music of the same era, but that echoes could be found if you knew where to look–or what to listen to and for. He attempted to work this into some of his film scores, adapted to modern instruments and sensibilities. (Of course, his successors just imitate Rozsa, the way Heyer’s successors don’t research Regency colloquial speech, but imitate Heyer.) Anyway his memoirs or any surviving notes might be helpful.

But there’s always the trouble of our own perspective. We can do a pretty good job of reconstructing any music since the start of modern musical notation–reconstruct the instruments, measure beat in terms of heartbeats and such, and I suspect probably come pretty close to the actual sound–certainly from about 1850 on. When we began record music, and we had survivors who remembered that far back to critique the recordings.

Yet I doubt the reconstructed music sounds to me the way it did to its contemporaries, precisely because I’m used to different instruments and a different beat. A “modernized” version of “British Grenadiers” may get the intended emotional response from me more easily than authentic Marlburian. (“Modern” in that sense dating to WWII or thereabouts, and the line of instrumental music which continues from that. I don’t want to know what Beyonce would do with the piece.)

Best to admit our limits. We can, sometimes, get pretty close to the material life of various times and places. As for the emotional life, some events and institutions have changed less than others and permit better-informed guesses, but guessing is what we’ll be doing throughout.

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