RT list: Grice performs "Pavane"

 
In his amusing, till now unpublished "Guru" paper, Sperber quotes at length
 from Grice:

"In fact, departing from plain and easy formulation is often a way of
signalling that something other than plain meaning is intended. I cannot resist
using a famous if somewhat exaggerated examples [sic] of Paul Grice." The
text he refers to is the one D. S. M. W. typed:

Compare the remarks:
(a) Miss X sang “Home Sweet Home.”
(b) Miss X produced a series of sounds that corresponded closely with the
score of “Home Sweet Home.”
Suppose that a reviewer has chosen to utter (b) rather than (a). (Gloss:
Why has he selected that rigmarole in place of the concise and nearly
synonymous sang? Presumably to indicate some striking difference between Miss X’s
performance and those to which the word singing is usually applied. The
most obvious supposition is that Miss X’s performance suffered from some
hideous defect. The reviewer knows that this supposition is what is likely to
spring to mind, so that that is what he is implicating).
Grice 1989: 37
Sperber comments: "This example illustrates how a deliberately opaque
formulation directs one towards a richer interpretation."
I always found Grice's example (exaggerated or not, for one who reads the
Daily Telegraph!) indigestible in parts. Surely he is having in mind a
'reviewer' he writes (I can think of a reviewer as the one that S. R. Chapman,
reviewing Grice's own performance of Ravel, 'Bolero' at Clifton).
Well, it was more boringly, the Pavane. (Recall that Grice senior was a
concertist). The review Grice got in the Cliftonian went (*"stately". "Its
stateliness provided an effective contrast to the exuberance of [Master
Cooper's] Rachm[a]ninoff." Christmas concert, 1930.
Suppose it went (and this was Cooper of Face the Music fame): (Quotation
courtesy, S. R. Chapman writes, of Tom Glover of the Old Cliftonian Society
-- only the Brits need to be courteous at _that_!)
Suppose it went:
"We enjoyed Grice's playing of Ravels's "Pavane". On the other hand, Master
 Cooper's produced a series of sounds off his pianola that corresponded
closely with the score of Rachmininoff (sic), worned out concerto."
"Suppose that" the reviewer of the school report has chosen to 'utter'
that. (Gloss: Why has he, Christian and magnanimous as we are supposed to be
at Clifton, especially when parents will be atttended, selected that wicked,
 infantile rigmarole in place of the concise and nearly synonymous
"played"? (Not tennis, the pianola -- no semantic enrichment worth deriving).
Presumably to indicate some striking difference between Master Cooper's
performance and those to which the word 'playing' is usually applied. And he MEANT
to be flamboyant, the exuberant 'kid'. The most obvious supposition is that
 Master Coooper's performance (unlike ever correct Master Grice's) suffered
 from some hideous defect. The reviewer knows that this supposition is what
is likely to spring to mind, so that that is what he is implicating)
But can it be as simple as all that? Surely not. Anyone familiar with
Ravel's Pavane knows that in fact it is impossible to 'perform' it. One can at
most claim to produce 'sounds that may at most' "correspond CLOSELY" with
the score of "Pavane".
The issue is ONTOLOGICAL. Ravel's Pavane does NOT exist. Only Master
Grice's attempting to produce a series of sounds that correspond CLOSELY to the
score of the Spanish piece (all pieces by Ravel have a flamenco spirit to
them, for some reason).
Grice loved a guru. He recalls how Wilson (not Deirdre, but John Cook
Wilson) would gather his tuttees in the college garden to utter, ostensively
irrelevant,
"What we know, we know"
(commas not necessary). "Why he should care to inform us of such a
tautological stupidity is, 50 years on, beyond me" (Grice).
Etc.
J. L. Speranza, The Swimming Pool Library, Villa Speranza, Bordighera
Received on Wed Oct 7 02:48:00 2009