Variable Interpretation – Cooking, Music, Divinity, and Idols
When an old friend of mine asked me for my gnocchi recipe, I sent him what amounted to an essay on
gnocchi. I was unable to live up to the classical recipe format, because it would not have captured how I
make gnocchi. It’s not only that I don’t use exact measurements of ingredients, although in at least one
case, I do: one five-pound bag of potatoes (unless I decide to make squash gnocchi or sweet potato
gnocchi). It has more to do with the process: it is not entirely scripted, but is varied. In short, it is a
process with key decisions to be made at various junctures, with each decision depending in part on
how the previous decision was made. And I can’t really say how many decisions there are to be made; it
depends on how finely grained I set the information threshold. The more I think about it, the more
information I could give. Of course, too much information will ruin a recipe, just as will too little. But
even how much information is optimal varies according to many factors, including the person sending
the recipe as well as the person receiving it.
This is not a problem unique to gnocchi, but potentially to all things. Think of having to teach any skill
that is typically done as second nature to someone who lacks that skill; such as getting in and out of a
car, or swinging a golf club, or pitching a baseball. The instructions involved are potentially infinite, yet
we never have an infinite amount of time to instruct. Moreover, an excess of information overburdens
the instruction process.
In most such cases, therefore, we prefer to instruct by direct demonstration, or by apprenticeship.
Somehow, seeing how something is done oneself, having it modelled, gives so more comprehensible
input than by instruction through language or symbols. But direct demonstration is not always plausible.
Sometimes, the need is to convey a skill or the ability to perform an operation to an audience
inaccessible to direct demonstration. In such cases, we are forced to face the above-described
information paradox.
This paradox regards not so much the avoidance of the opposite pitfalls of both too little and too much
information; this alone would not be a paradox, but a delicate balancing act. The real paradox is how to
convey an infinite amount of detail in a finite amount of time, and in a finite number of words or
symbols. Reality as we perceive it is continuously detailed; continuity of detail implies infinity of detail.
We can grasp such infinity all at once, synthetically, but we can only describe or analyze it finitely.
That’s why I have trouble writing gnocchi recipes.
This paradox applies even more to cases in which one must instruct others to perform an operation that
one cannot do oneself, or at least wants to be done by others. At least the gnocchi cook gets to
experiment in his own kitchen, cooking gnocchi over and over until he gets it right. But imagine having
to conceive and send out a gnocchi recipe without ever getting to experiment in the kitchen? This is the
lot of composers of ensemble music. In most cases, these composers do not play all the instruments for
they are writing, and even if they do, it is unlikely that they play them with the proficiency they would
hope for in the performance of their compositions. But even if there were such a composer, still, he or
she would not be able to play all the parts simultaneously. And yet, the composer must conceive the
piece, and give adequately descriptive instructions for its performance, as an ensemble piece.
Variable Interpretation – Cooking, Music, Divinity, and Idols
To be sure, we now have the ability to record parts separately and then mix them together in the studio,
with often pleasing results. Sometimes, a piece may even be conceived to be performed that way. Some
of Stevie Wonder’s compositions were done that way, with him playing all or most of the parts. Most
often, however, this is a concession to the lack of opportunity to prepare and assemble the required
musicians at the same time and in the same place to perform the work.
Moreover, assuming that no one person can be best at everything, composers of assemble pieces
employing a wider variety of voices or instruments will be hoping to get the best performers for each
part, those who specialize in singing at just that vocal range, or playing just that instrument. This
presumably will maximize the probability that the compositions will be performed closest to the
composer’s intentions.
But here comes another snag: assuming that the best musicians would be brought together for the
performance of a certain composition, how is the composer to prepare each of them to play his or her
part? What is typically done is that the composer instructs each musician individually with written
symbols and technical terminology, then gives an additional set of written instructions to the conductor.
All of these sets of instructions are intended to jibe in a Leibnizean fashion, with each performer,
including the conductor, being conceived as a separate “monad”, while the composer alone has the
divine task of making sure the results of everyone executing his own instructions are the experience of
an ensemble performance.
Extending the analogy, if the composer is a “good god”, then the only way the experience can be a
failure is if one or more of the performers fails to execute the instructions given. If all musicians
perform impeccably and the ensemble experience still fails, then the composer would be a “bad god”.
Now a performer can fail in two ways: first, by failing to execute well-understood instructions, and
secondly, by failing to understand the composer’s instructions. The first kind of failure is minor in the
case of competent musicians, who, though they do make mistakes, are adept at minimizing the
deleterious effect of these on the performance as a whole. But the second type of failure brings us back
to the paradox described above, since the odds of misunderstanding between composer and performer
are multiplied by the number of performers involved. To be sure, the conductor is the one who is
charged with the task of mediating such gaps in understanding, or interpretation. But it is really a
monumental task, since the overall sound of an ensemble piece can be considered not merely as the
sum of the individual parts performed, but also of all the interactions between the parts played: twoway, three-way, etc.
To make this point more clear, imagine a photographer at a gathering of 20 who wants to take a picture
of every possible combination of his guests, including solo shots. The result would be more than a
million photographs.
Now, this might all be seen as making a mountain out of a mole hill. After all, ensemble compositions
are written and performed all the time. Audiences dress up, sit in theaters, listen, clap, and go home;
composers take their bows, musicians take their bows; critics write their reviews – some bad, some
good. So what’s missing from this picture?
Variable Interpretation – Cooking, Music, Divinity, and Idols
What’s missing for all we know and for all even the composer himself knows is the extent to which the
piece performed was actually the piece conceived by the composer. Let’s ignore the fact of errors made
in the execution of a piece and focus solely on the communication between composer and performer.
One could argue that the odds of successful conveyance of an ensemble composer’s intentions to its
performers, especially according to the Leibnizean model, are negligible, on the grounds that the
composer’s envisioned conception of the piece is essentially something infinite, but can only be
conveyed by finite means. As a result, what inevitably gets performed is not actually the composer’s
conception, but merely a surrogate of it, comprised of a finite facsimile of the composer’s intentions
filled in and made whole by the musical intentions of the performers, each one of whom “microcomposes” his performance to fill in for the deficit between the infinity of the composer’s intentions and
the inevitably finite description of it that the composer is able to give.
It’s much the same as when we read a novel. The author imagines a continuous scenario but can only
convey it finitely. It is left to the reader to fill in the gaps and thus derive for himself – and for himself
only – a continuous vision of the story told. Each reader of a novel is therefore a “micro-author” of it.
Those authors or composers who out of an obsessive desire to more perfectly inform their audience or
their performers of their vision may attempt to convey their instructions and descriptions in a more and
more fine-grained manner, but the gap between infinite and finite can never be bridged that way; just
as an infinite quantity is not increased by adding finitely to it, so, too, a finite quantity cannot become
infinite by adding finitely to it. Furthermore, the more information one gives, the greater the odds of
that information being misunderstood; it is therefore dubitable whether composers would
communicate more effectively with a more fine-grained system of notations than they have now.
If we cannot solve or avoid this paradox, the next question is how best to cope with it. Composer James
Nicholson has what I consider to be an enlightened response to this question: let composers embrace
performers as co-composers, and conceive and write their compositions accordingly. In this way of
composing, which he calls “Variable Interpretation”, the music that is eventually performed is not
stultified by the inevitable communication gaps that result when performers conceive themselves as
mere executors of someone else’s intentions. Since performers inevitably must micro-compose, why not
acknowledge and embrace that fact, and compose in such a manner that encourages such cocomposing? One might argue that this is preferable to asking performers to do the impossible.
Humans have always struggled to bridge the gap between the finite and the infinite. We sense the
presence of the infinite, the sacred, the divine, then in response we sculpt finite “idols” as surrogates of
them. To be sure, some may take these idols to be mere symbols of an infinite reality beyond them;
nonetheless the idol per se tends to become more of an obstacle to our encounter with the infinite than
a conduit to it. Now, idols may be hewn out of things other than stone. We have idols of thought as well;
and of sound. If our ultimate fulfillment is in the appreciation of the infinite, then we have got to find a
way to get past the idols blocking our way. Variable Interpretation is a way of attempting to do that in
music.