(but the question still remains, why go through with all of this weird notation?) WHAT'S THE POINT? (or, an in-depth discussion about the themes of the show).
HUH WHAT? (thematically) is about challenging language, the way we view it, the way we interpret it, and inviting the idea of looking at language different, or “wrong”, as a positive; to find new life in something so mundane and every-day. This is communicated through the lyrics, whether that be via the insane, absurdist words, phrases and sentences I say that have no real meaning or weight, or even just speaking in nonsense, but I don’t think that theme should live and die strictly in the lyrics.
Before we move on in this conversation, let’s be clear: western music notation is a specialised constructed language. It is not a universal language, as some argue, nor is it phonetic[1], but it is a written language. It has symbols that communicate to the reader how to “say” whatever the music intends. Composers are just authors, really. And like the Dadaist poets and Modernist novelists, composers began to change how they write in the 20th century, in a tradition that has extended to the present, to change the way the general music-literate public read and think about music.
Thinking about what’s on the page, and not just taking it at face value, is the main incentive to writing like this. Most musicians are happy to leave it at “what’s on the page is what’s on the page, and if it sounds nice then that’s a bonus”, which is very common for both musicians and composers. When I’m writing in a more classical style, I tend to just default to the general theory, follow the rules, whatever sounds pretty. However, that shouldn’t be all it is. There should be intention behind each chord or phrase, an understanding behind what works where, even though that’s a lot of work for both composer and performer. And even further than that, what does each note mean abstractly? Two decades into the 21st century, in a world more aware of politics and political movements than ever before, how can my music mean nothing in terms of meaning? Why did I put that there? What is the context behind what I write? What is the context behind what everyone else writes? If there is a sheet of music in front of you, you should, through careful inspection, be able to tell what the composer is trying to say. The use of strange notation and breaking the rules of the English used in western music is saying something. The intended meaning of each piece will be explored thoroughly in this section.
Before we move on in this conversation, let’s be clear: western music notation is a specialised constructed language. It is not a universal language, as some argue, nor is it phonetic[1], but it is a written language. It has symbols that communicate to the reader how to “say” whatever the music intends. Composers are just authors, really. And like the Dadaist poets and Modernist novelists, composers began to change how they write in the 20th century, in a tradition that has extended to the present, to change the way the general music-literate public read and think about music.
Thinking about what’s on the page, and not just taking it at face value, is the main incentive to writing like this. Most musicians are happy to leave it at “what’s on the page is what’s on the page, and if it sounds nice then that’s a bonus”, which is very common for both musicians and composers. When I’m writing in a more classical style, I tend to just default to the general theory, follow the rules, whatever sounds pretty. However, that shouldn’t be all it is. There should be intention behind each chord or phrase, an understanding behind what works where, even though that’s a lot of work for both composer and performer. And even further than that, what does each note mean abstractly? Two decades into the 21st century, in a world more aware of politics and political movements than ever before, how can my music mean nothing in terms of meaning? Why did I put that there? What is the context behind what I write? What is the context behind what everyone else writes? If there is a sheet of music in front of you, you should, through careful inspection, be able to tell what the composer is trying to say. The use of strange notation and breaking the rules of the English used in western music is saying something. The intended meaning of each piece will be explored thoroughly in this section.
[1] Or at least it’s a bad phonetic language, for whatever music means to people vary differently person to person, and trying to “speak” and “communicate” and “define” in purely western music is going to be hard, especially if you’re asking what the price of apples is and all you have is a viola and the key of A.