[Smt-talk] the impossibility of listening

[Daniel Roca]

El 02/11/2012, a las 22:00, Laurel Parsons escribió:

> 
> 
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 3:49 PM, Daniel Roca <drocacan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Besides, adding musical examples in a book about the history of opera is not necessarily about structural analysis.
> 
> I agree 100%. But I think it was Stephen Hawking who said that, while preparing A Brief History of Time, the publisher said that any mathematical formula on it would decrease expected sales in 50%. Finally, he only used E=mc2.
> 
> On the other hand, when a chemist friend of mine by the name of Penny LeCouteur was writing the chemistry book Napoleon's Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed the World, she held her ground against her publisher's similar arguments about putting in molecular diagrams.  She insisted that a) they were essential, and b) the general public was smart enough to figure them out as long as she explained them well enough.  She was right, and the book has sold far beyond anyone's expectations.  
> 
> So perhaps in a book designed for a general audience, it's a matter of taking care to write a clear enough explanation of a score example that even non-expert music readers can get something out of it without feeling patronized.
> 

I guess LeCouteur didn't have the level of sales expectations Hawking had ;-)

I also guess Abbate and Parker's expectation line up with LeCouteur's, so your argument should apply.

So, to summarize: Abbate and Parker obviously didn't want to include note examples, and it is their right to do so, but I find than somehow they cover themselves behing the "impossibility argument", and I don't think they expressed this argument in a sensible manner.

It like the Latin's "excusatio non petita,..." Why should they put this argument in the first place?

_________

Daniel Roca
Higher Conservatory of the Canary Islands
drocacan at gmail.com




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