Link: Just one possible combination of words

Even in other types of music every piece is just one possible combination of notes, just as every book is just one possible combination of words. Which makes me think about the author’s role in creating a work, and question how much their intention matters when they’re just using a possibility that could have been chosen at random.

I imagine an author going on a treasure hunt through the books in [Jorge Luis] Borges‘ Library of Babel: An author who can instantly call-up any other 31 488 000 factorial books – one for each possible combination of the characters in a book 410 pages long. The author holds the first blank draft, a book of all blank spaces, and then throws it away andf grabs one that contains just the first word. On and on like this, eventually re-reading the book and revising it by throwing it away and grabbing the one that fixes the spelling error. Or holding two books that are the same except for one word and trying to decide between them. Finally after sorting through mere million […] books of the library the author is done, holding a dusty old volume that has always existed but that no one else has paid any attention to and says: Hey everyone, I found a good one!

Auf Youtube veröffentlich Victoria Hart des (in der Wikipedia) sogenannten mathematischen Bildhauers George W. Hart spricht auf YouTube über Mathematik und Musik, ihre Kombination und vieles mehr. In ihrem Video zur Zwölftonmusik von Strawinsky vertont sie Kinderreime und spricht dabei über die Arbeit des Künstlers und die Art und Bedeutung seiner künstlerischen Entscheidungen. Der oben zitierte Abschnitt beginnt bei 13:30, ich kann aber auch das gesamte Video nur empfehlen.

YouTube: Twelve Tones