This perfectly describes every comment that I've posted to the internet. I'm pretty much like, let's dance in circles and hope the audience gets something from it, because I'm more confused than when I started. I have immense respect for people who make a point and get my brain racing in 10-15 lines. What are you getting your masters in? I want to hear more about these sessions! It sounds like it would be so enlightening, terrifying, and exhausting.Then you come up against the roadblock: forming a grounded and informed opinion and/or argument that you can eloquently communicate is hard
I'm doing my masters in music composition. The sessions are part of a module called 'Critique of Research' and at the end we have to write an essay exploring and linking together common themes or ideas from within all the texts we have been given. Some of the papers we have been been over so far include: - Milton Babbit's "Who Cares if You Listen?" where he states that for the composer to truly advance his art and music in general, he must withdraw himself and work/showcase his work in complete isolation from the public. - Nicholas Cook's "Music as Performance" which seeks to redefine the performance of a score from a musicology perspective. He argues that the performance is essentially a work of a art in itself, separate from the original score. The score merely acts as a script, and rather than the performance being compared to the score, it should be compared to all performance that have come before and after. I laid those out just to give you an idea of the kind of thing we're dealing with. We're expected to read the papers, and make notes. We enter the session, and the professor says "What did you think?". This is usually followed by silence until someone dares to break it. But from then on it usually flow reasonably well. If the silence ever peaks then that's when the professor will throw in a new question or some relevant literature. He has points which he hopes we'll hit, which he then has further reading for us to explore on our own. You're right with your presumption, it is enlightening, terrifying, and exhausting. Trying to simultaneously figure out and form a coherent opinion is taxing to say the least. More often than not, you come out with more questions than you went in with. The points within the papers often run far deeper than you could have of ever imagined. I just discovered that the paper I have to read for Thursday is 35 pages long, so I better get started!- Glenn Gould's "Prospects of Performance", in which he posits that the advent of recording has made live performance of music obsolete. By his estimate, the intimate nature of the 'private audition' when listening at home exceeds the concert. He also discusses how the advent of recording allows for a more genuine product.
I didn't know you were M.Mus in Comp, rezzeJ! cool. I actually just posted about Glenn Gould about 5 minutes ago. edit: also, Milton Babbit is almost as bad as Boethius, imo.