If it wasn’t for the seriousness and the authority of the music academy, laypeople might be recognized as the better free musicians?

Maybe Beethoven could no longer hear. But I assume he could still listen. In the way that I can visualize things with my eyes closed. So he still had the choice between listening to what he wrote, and writing to what he listened to. I am not clear what you are referring to when you write “certainly true” in reference to things that are experienced.

Writing “In Free Music the modification of rules can happen while the music is being performed” is like writing “You are free in prison where you can move the walls”. But in child-like approaches to music there are not too many walls to begin with.

Historical and geographical differences in the association of notes with frequencies are a good example of the cultural drift between symbols and practice.

I do not think that I decode music on a symbolic level and I still think your idea of abstraction is upside down.

In classical music, rule changes certainly happen over time with regard to performance and also the way we perceive music is changed, but this has no effect on the original score. Of course, a new composition my build on the performance of previous one and it may use rules that were modified as a response to an acoustic performance of an earlier composition.

In Free Music, of course the modification of rules can happen while the music is being performed. I agree with you that Free Music does not exist on a symbolic level. It exists as an acoustic event. However, I believe — and one could disagree with this view — that every human performer or machine listening system decodes music on a symbolic level to be able to understand it. For example, I could hear out a C-major scale, even though the actual frequencies of the tone sequence slightly mismatch the frequencies of this scale. Another musician with a non-western music background might hear out a scale that he or she learned within his/her music tradition. In this sense, Free Music is more abstract on the symbolic level than most forms of composed music, because a well-defined rule-set of how to en- and decode music on a symbolic level does not exist, and more important it is not defined on a symbolic level. If I’d asked musicians to transcribe a Free Music performance, I am sure I would receive considerably different results depending on the personal observations and focal points of each individual musician.

Your distinction between composing and performing seems quite intention-focused, linearly causal; as in planning preceding action or code preceding execution. You seem to argue that a composition necessarily exists as a score before it exists as an acoustic event. These seem to be rather special cases to me.

What you call “rules” can be applied in two ways:

- analysis of existing compositions or past acoustic events
- production of not-yet existing compositions or future acoustic events

Listening to previously unheard, possibly strange acoustic events, and learning to appreciate them, we can make new rules to accommodate what was learned into the body of rules. Then, these rules can intentionally be applied in making new music. The first (production and appreciation of the strange) can be very spontaneous but many may respond with rejection. The second (generative application of a codified extract of what was appreciated) may be met with public applause, but it can hardly be as spontaneous.

My point here is that rules produce what we listen to while what we listen to also produces rules. You pick a convenient time window (in which a composition is first coded, then performed) to allow suggesting a linear relationship where there are usually circles or spirals.

I still have difficulty seeing how free music could exist at a symbolic level and why it should be more abstract – unless it itself becomes a symbol. Here is a clip from a great Japanese movie named Swing Girls (start at 4:00min, the full movie is on Youtube) that I have to think of here. The teacher is a jazz connoisseur. He can pose with his saxophone, but he cannot play it. Trying to convince the admired teacher to teach their new jazz band, they find his jazz 101 book, believing he prepared it for them (while it’s his own). Then the students insist he performs for them and he saves himself “going with free improv”.

At the same time, classical music is concrete in the sense that it relies on axiomatic strict rules upon which the work can be judged against. Of course following all rules does not necessarily produce a world-class composition. On this symbolic level, Free Music is more abstract. At least this is how I understand this right now but I might change my point of view, after sorting out the terminology.

I don’t know if evaluating comes at the price of appreciation. I think I am looking for an evaluation in the sense to understand what is going on, and for a machine to learn what to do in a given situation. I am less interested in categorizing Free Music into good and bad work, which indeed might lead to less enjoying the music.

I have a new draft which is about 3,000 words long. I plan to upload it over the week end, after including the references. I hope this clarifies some of the issues, but I am sure it will also lead to new suggestions and comments.

It seems to me that learning to evaluate always comes at the price of becoming unable to appreciate. And vice versa.

the tree layers of abstraction you describe – they must be choices, accepted choices in the field you are in, but nonetheless choices. each such choice must be either arbitrary or aim towards a purpose – which purposes do these three layers follow? or do you see these layers of abstraction as fixed/given, independent of the choice-making observer? this may be interesting to ponder when reflecting on how to move between these ‘layers’.

the other interesting question your paper raised for me is abstraction in art – abstract art is the kind of art that is the most self-referential of arts, and thus tends to establish lots of rules which however are independent of the rules of representation. abstract thus for me does not mean ‘rule-less’. this relates also to your view of aesthetics: what is the difference between aesthetic and rule-based choices? i see aesthetics as rule-based too, but the rules are probably more tacit.