You still just don't seem to be getting what I am trying to say, and after this post I am just not going to bother trying anymore.
If I am the one guilty of this, how come you have ignored my numerous statements of support for flexibility and evolution?
It's obvious that you still have a lot to learn about language and meaning as you still seem to be under the mistaken impression that words and definitions are somehow fixed. Have you ever actually tried reading the definitions of words in a dictionary, several dictionarys, even different editions of the same dictionary? You'll be amazed at the differences.
Vonnegut even has an extremely amusing short story about doing this.
Please stop with the ad hominem attacks, they aren't useful and merely make it look like you have run out of ideas. I have constantly said that I support the natural and constant evolution of language, I've stated that there is never an extremely specific definition of the 'symphony', I have never stated or suggested that language is fixed. I challenge you to fine anywhere in my posts that I say it.
A bit of a stretch from Ms. Ustvolskaya's piece don't ya think?
It wasn't an analogy, it was taking the same idea further. Yours was an analogy because it used a chair vs. rock. Mine still was the original comparison but stretched. Yours was a bad analogy because it compared a rock with a chair, but of which (may) contain similar functional characteristic, a Symphony and a Piece for Trumpet, Tam-tam, Contralto and Piano have none of the equivalent characteristics that a Rock and a Chair have in common, the only musical similarities between the two is that they both are music, much like a rock and a chair are both objects.
I just don't see how it is useful to you to dismiss entire classes of works simply by the coincidence of their title and their instrumentation.
Please post where I said I dismissed the music. Please don't put words in my mouth (posts?) that I have never, and never would say.
I'm tired of arguing with someone who refuses to refine their thinking. When you have done some reading on the philosophy of language maybe we can continue this conversation in a more civilized manner off forum, but for now I'm tired of being accused of destroying language simply because I want you to try to examine why these pieces (if you ever really had any specific pieces in mind) would call them symphonies, and to use that inquiry to inform your own writing or performing. There is a learning opportunity here that you are simply choosing to ignore to your own detriment.
Don't be arrogant and talk down to people, it isn't polite. Refine my thinking? 'Change' my thinking is the word you are looking for, and you are just as guilty. I have read lots on this subject, and never does it say that have a definition of a word being 'anything' is evolution.
Let me re-enforce what I have said many times before, the definition of a symphony has changed and will change, but to define 'symphony' as
any musical piece, is destroying any meaning it could have. To redefine it as, for example, a piece for 'an ensemble, often with a piano part' would be changing it's meaning. This is obviously
still a loose and flexible definition, but it isn't encumbered with the chaos of defining it as 'anything'. If all words could meant anything, how would we communicate? You seem to be forgetting the purpose of language and that is to communicate, calling a piece for clarinet, voice and piano a symphony communicates nothing and confuses the situation.
There is a learning opportunity here that you are simply choosing to ignore to your own detriment.
Calling something that has no historical, or musical elements of a symphony a symphony defeats any reasoning that composer could have for calling it such.
You also seem confused as how evolution works, evolution is a very slow and gradual transition, not a sudden change in shape or form.
