Perhaps I should have understood more of a distinction between 'title' and 'cover', but I just wanted to check you weren't suggesting that one forms no opinion at all of a book without having looked inside.

(Ed.: That would appear to be a triple negative, Mr Now!)

A "symphony" is, of course, a hurdy-gurdy (vielle-a-roue), and was known by that name from the C11th onwards. It's mentioned by that name in the Play Of Daniel (1222 ad, as we know from the carefully dated manuscript).  How silly, not to mention deceitful, it was of rococo composers to advertise "symphonies" in their concerts,  preying upon innocent hurdy-gurdy lovers to con them into buying concert tickets under a false premise - and then playing music without any droning or twanging in it whatsoever.  Truly a Silly Description indeed.

Symphonies.

I had a similar experience at the Hayward Gallery yesterday. I went along with a friend to see the Psycho Buildings exhibition (pics here). Bits of it I liked very much, e.g. the accompanying Jeppe Hein fountain:

http://www.brightcecilia.com/pictures/sb1.jpg

But the descriptions of the pieces were jaw-dropping, e.g.


That's a parody but, if anything, the originals are worse. A combination of pretentious, pseudo-intellectual balls, and wildly overblown claims for what, say, a room with smashed up skirting board seeks to achieve.

The best bit of the outing was gaining access to the RFH roof. A helpful Hayward attendant said we could get a bird's eye view of the 'Boats on Roof' installation ("Dave Pseud's skillful combination of water and old car tyres, seemlessly illustrating the relationship between humans, water, leaking concrete, and early twenty-first century consumer capitalism...") from RFH level five, but I penetrated, via an empty staff rest room, onto the roof itself. The views are tremendous. I didn't stay long for fear of being shot eight times as a suspected AQ terrorist about to launch a missile strike on the Shell Centre.

http://www.brightcecilia.com/pictures/sb2.jpg

A further area where stupid, pretentious, descriptions are used routinely is in bad hotels. Cheese on toast becomes 'A mouth-watering union of local cheddar cheeses, tastefully served on fresh granary bread made from hand-ground flour produced by local artisans, dribbled with a choice organic pickle." Oh, and the North London middle classes calling their children 'Oscar' and ‘Ermintrude’.

Why do modern composers, installation artists, hoteliers and young media couples use language in this way? Fear that if they don't the vacuous mediocrity of their 'product' will be exposed?

Cor blimey, you sound like Joe's mama, "TURN IT DOWN!"

I don't think I've ever made that decision about a piece of classical - although the reverse has probably been true - that I've actively sought to listen to a piece because it had an interesting title. 

We can't avoid the fact that some kind of selection process has to happen to navigate through the vast extent of music available, whether it be recommendation, hearing something on the radio or as arbitrary as not liking the name of something, however silly that is.

That said, who hasn't chosen to buy (or borrow) a book because the title sounded interesting, or a bottle of wine because the bottle or label was nice?  Just as silly I suppose. 

More often than not for me, the title grows out of the 'cloud of ideas' surrounding a piece. It can sometimes bear witness to some aspect of the project that may not even be audible anymore. I enjoy Ferneyhough's use of the term 'invisible colours' (though I can never remember who it was who coined the phrase) for titles and I think it's coloured (ahem) the way I think about titles. How much of the 'game' do you want to give away before the audience has heard a note of your music? I wouldn't say I've ever given a piece an 'abstruse or unenticing title' but that could be because I'm too close to the work and don't realise that it may appear so to others, but perhaps I would say that I've occasionally chosen a title that says very little about the actual content of the piece. In fact I'm moving more and more in that direction.


I don't think I have... There was a programme in Darmstadt where we looked at the titles and were profoundly depressed. There's nothing worse than an entire concert made up of titles trying to be clever.

And that was spoken to a child? Amazing... when I go to our local Morrisons I am almost invariably the youngest customer there by a margin of thirty years or so. (And I am no spring chicken myself.)