%unimsg 0 music/beethoven-5/v2 -- Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 — the whole work, as far as this document -- honestly reaches. -- -- Read the scope block before anything else. The four movements are described -- in full: their keys, metres, forms, tempo markings, instrumentation and -- approximate durations. The *notes* are not here, except for the opening -- twenty-one bars of the first movement, which are a hand-authored audible -- reduction and are marked as such. -- -- The distinction is the point. Encoding a description of a symphony is a -- different act from encoding a symphony, and a document that blurred the two -- would be worse than one that admits the gap: a reader has no way to tell a -- transcription from an invention by looking at it, so the document has to -- say. Every field below carries what it is derived from. -- -- The work itself is long out of copyright. What limits this file is fidelity, -- not permission. symphony @beethoven/op67 { title "Symphony No. 5 in C minor" catalogue "Op. 67" composer "Ludwig van Beethoven" completed 1808 premiered { date 1808-12-22, venue "Theater an der Wien, Vienna" } dedication "Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky" key :c-minor movements 4 -- =================================================================== -- WHAT IS AND IS NOT ENCODED -- =================================================================== scope { described "all four movements: key, metre, form, tempo marking, instrumentation, approximate duration" sounded "the first movement, bars 1-21 only, as a two-voice reduction" not-encoded "the note-level content of the work — roughly half an hour of orchestral music across four movements and some tens of thousands of note events" why-not "It is not available to whoever wrote this file. Reconstructing it from memory would produce a plausible table of numbers that was not Beethoven, and nothing in the document or the reader could tell the difference afterwards. An invented transcription is worse than an absent one, because it is indistinguishable from a real one and it travels." how-to-complete-it "Convert a real source. Public-domain encodings of this work exist as Humdrum kern, MusicXML and MIDI; each carries onset, duration and pitch, which is three of the four numbers the tones primitive needs, and level can be taken from dynamics or set flat. The conversion is mechanical and belongs in a tool, not in this file." what-that-would-cost "Around 30 000 to 60 000 tone records, or a few megabytes of text. Large for a document and unremarkable for the format — the limit here is the source, not the encoding." } -- =================================================================== -- THE MOVEMENTS -- =================================================================== -- Approximate durations: performances vary widely, particularly over whether -- the first-movement exposition repeat is taken. Stated to the nearest -- minute and marked approximate rather than given a false precision. structure [ | no marking key metre form approx-minutes | 1 "Allegro con brio" :c-minor "2/4" "sonata" 7 | 2 "Andante con moto" :a-flat "3/8" "double variations" 10 | 3 "Allegro" :c-minor "3/4" "scherzo and trio" 5 | 4 "Allegro" :c-major "4/4" "sonata" 11 ] continuity "The third movement runs into the fourth without a break, through a sustained transition over a held string chord. The scherzo's material returns inside the finale, which is why the two are often counted as one span." -- =================================================================== -- INSTRUMENTATION -- =================================================================== instrumentation { throughout [ "2 flutes", "2 oboes", "2 clarinets in B flat", "2 bassoons", "2 horns in E flat", "2 trumpets in C", "timpani in C and G", "strings" ] added-in-the-finale [ "piccolo", "contrabassoon", "3 trombones" ] note "The three trombones are the ones usually cited as the first in a symphony. They are held back until the finale, so the change of instrumentation is itself part of the work's argument rather than a fixed roster." } -- =================================================================== -- THE SOUNDED EXCERPT -- =================================================================== excerpt { covers "movement 1, bars 1-21" is "a hand-authored audible reduction, not a transcription" voices 2 derived-from "the rhythm and contour of the opening figure and its immediate sequence, written out by hand" fidelity "approximate: one voice carries the figure and its ascent, a second sustains beneath. Orchestration, dynamics, articulation and the inner parts are absent." why-it-is-here "To show that a document can be played by a reader that knows nothing about music. That is a claim about the format, not about the edition — and it is demonstrated as well by twelve seconds as by half an hour." } -- Not tagged for any particular reader any more. The columns carry their own -- units — milliseconds in the key suffixes, hertz by name — and a reader that -- knows what those units are can work out what this is without being told. -- Whether it does is the point of leaving the tag off. opening { onset :at-ms duration :for-ms pitch :Hz level :level wave :triangle notes [ | at-ms for-ms hz level note | 139 120 392.00 0.95 "G4" | 278 120 392.00 0.95 "G4" | 417 120 392.00 0.95 "G4" | 556 1500 311.13 0.90 "Eb4" | 2455 120 349.23 0.95 "F4" | 2594 120 349.23 0.95 "F4" | 2733 120 349.23 0.95 "F4" | 2872 1900 293.66 0.90 "D4" | 4600 2600 130.81 0.50 "C3" | 5092 120 392.00 0.85 "G4" | 5231 120 392.00 0.85 "G4" | 5370 120 392.00 0.85 "G4" | 5509 555 311.13 0.81 "Eb4" | 6124 120 415.30 0.85 "Ab4" | 6263 120 415.30 0.85 "Ab4" | 6402 120 415.30 0.85 "Ab4" | 6541 555 349.23 0.81 "F4" | 7156 120 466.16 0.85 "Bb4" | 7295 120 466.16 0.85 "Bb4" | 7400 2000 103.83 0.50 "Ab2" | 7434 120 466.16 0.85 "Bb4" | 7573 555 392.00 0.81 "G4" | 8188 120 523.25 0.85 "C5" | 8327 120 523.25 0.85 "C5" | 8466 120 523.25 0.85 "C5" | 8605 555 415.30 0.81 "Ab4" | 9220 120 587.33 0.85 "D5" | 9359 120 587.33 0.85 "D5" | 9498 120 587.33 0.85 "D5" | 9500 2600 98.00 0.50 "G2" | 9637 832 466.16 0.81 "Bb4" ] } -- =================================================================== -- PROVENANCE -- =================================================================== provenance { rights "The work entered the public domain long ago. This file's limits are about accuracy, not permission — a distinction worth keeping separate, because they call for different remedies." facts-from "Standard reference knowledge about the work: keys, metres, forms, instrumentation and the premiere. Durations are approximate and marked so." tones-from "Hand authoring, not a score. Stated in the excerpt block above and repeated here because a reader may arrive at either." version-note "v1 of this document described itself as the opening only. v2 describes the whole work and still sounds only the opening; the scope block is what carries that difference, and it is first in the file for that reason." } }