Burning Question
Amanda Wilson
Here in Seattle, home of The Seattle Sound, the Grammy awards were
pre-empted by a Sonics telecast.
So, all I'm askin' is this:
Did the Presidents win their category, which was something like best
rock performance by a band, over the likes of Journey?
(Taking 10 points for the extensive discussion of "Peaches" more
than a year ago.)
-- amanda
Amanda Wilson is a...@accessone.com
Cool stuff on the web at www.ungh.com
"You couldn't be more wrong, Punk Rocker!"
-- From a Magnolia Hi-Fi ad
Amanda Wilson
On Thu, 27 Feb 1997 07:35:59 GMT, a...@accessone.com (Amanda Wilson)
wrote:
>Here in Seattle, home of The Seattle Sound, the Grammy awards were
>pre-empted by a Sonics telecast.
>
>So, all I'm askin' is this:
>
>Did the Presidents win their category, which was something like best
>rock performance by a band, over the likes of Journey?
No, they didn't. The Beatles won. The long dead Beatles and their
retread song "Free as a Bird."
Uh! That's like having _Star Wars_ win the Oscar for Best Picture.
That telecast will prolly be pre-empted by a Mariners game here in
Seattle.
Christa Heuser
In article <331643fb...@news.accessone.com>,
Amanda Wilson <a...@accessone.com> wrote:
>
>No, they didn't. The Beatles won. The long dead Beatles and their
>retread song "Free as a Bird."
Now we can all guess which generation the Grammy voters are from.
(I'll take "boomers" for 100, Alex.)
Reminds me of the year that they first introduced a heavy metal
category, and the winner (over Metallica and some others) was...
Jethro Tull. You know, that heavy metal band, Jethro Tull.
Not that I don't love 'em, but heavy metal?
Christa Heuser
chr...@io.com
David Steinberg
>
>That telecast will prolly be pre-empted by a Mariners game here in
>Seattle.
Speaking only for myself here, I'd rather watch the M's :)
(I can just see myself ranting, "How DARE they not show tonight's game
because some self-promoting assholes want to give each other awards and
the rest of us are supposed to care!?!?! I mean what are they
THINKING??!! I'm going to call KIRO RIGHT NO.... oh the game's on that
Fox Sports Northwest thingie. Nevermind.)
-David "ZZYZX" Steinberg http://www.ihoz.com TIME FOR TIMER
**************************************************************************
*"What program are you using to *"I can't believe I'm a junior and a *
* dial?" "I don't know." "Well * film major, when all I really *
* what are you clicking on?" * wanted in this life was to marry a *
* "My mouse." -tech support hell. * lobsterman and cook fish." *
*"very strange raving egomaniac" * -a letter from Christie Searing *
**************************************************************************
Elizabeth R. Upton
Christa Heuser (chr...@io.com) wrote:
: Amanda Wilson <a...@accessone.com> wrote:
: >No, they didn't. The Beatles won. The long dead Beatles and their
: >retread song "Free as a Bird."
: Now we can all guess which generation the Grammy voters are from.
: (I'll take "boomers" for 100, Alex.)
They outnumber us. Always have, always will. <sigh>
: Reminds me of the year that they first introduced a heavy metal
: category, and the winner (over Metallica and some others) was...
: Jethro Tull. You know, that heavy metal band, Jethro Tull.
: Not that I don't love 'em, but heavy metal?
Grammy voting is likewise completely ludicrous for classical music. The
winners are *always* those recordings that the record companies choose to
promote heavily, and they're always mainstream sales successes. (If
anyone's interested, the "(classical) recordings of the year" awards that
IMO generally are on target are those awarded by Gramaphone, the British
classical music magazine). A nice recent trend is that the promoted
works are now more often works by living (gasp!) composers -- after all,
how many Grammies does Beethoven really need? ;)
--Elizabeth
Crazy Uncle Joe
a...@accessone.com (Amanda Wilson) said:
>On Thu, 27 Feb 1997 07:35:59 GMT, a...@accessone.com (Amanda Wilson)
>wrote:
>>Did the Presidents win their category, which was something like best
>>rock performance by a band, over the likes of Journey?
>No, they didn't. The Beatles won. The long dead Beatles and their
>retread song "Free as a Bird."
Which Amanda are we talking to now? I'd like to talk to Sybil
please... is Sybil in there?
Joe
Crazy Uncle Joe
han...@primenet.com
elitist a-list bastard
Brian K. Yoder
I would love to see living composers DESERVE the award. Modern composers have
been producing 50-70 years and it would be nice if they dropped the whole
lame notion that music that sounds good is trite.
--Brian
P.sSS. ...then the painters, then the sculptors, then...
--
+------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+
| Brian K. Yoder | "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human |
| byo...@netcom.com| freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the |
| US Networx, Inc. | creed of slaves." -- William Pitt |
| LAN Doctor | http://www.primenet.com/~byoder/ |
+------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+
Brian Upton
byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder) wrote:
>In article <5f4d41$mto$1...@newz.oit.unc.edu> eup...@email.unc.edu (Elizabeth R. Upton) writes:
\
>>anyone's interested, the "(classical) recordings of the year" awards that
>>IMO generally are on target are those awarded by Gramaphone, the British
>>classical music magazine). A nice recent trend is that the promoted
>>works are now more often works by living (gasp!) composers -- after all,
>>how many Grammies does Beethoven really need? ;)
>I would love to see living composers DESERVE the award. Modern composers have
>been producing 50-70 years and it would be nice if they dropped the whole
>lame notion that music that sounds good is trite.
I know absolutely zero about music history, but I live with a
musicologist who loves me very much and is having my baby and will
happily validate whatever crackpot aesthetic theories I want to
advance, so I'll follow up to this anyway.
Serious contemporary composers largely suck because they have embraced
the idea of art for art's sake and rejected the idea of music as
entertainment or worship. It's hard to comprehend given the austere
sacerdotal trappings of today's classical music scene, but most
serious Western music written before the late 19th Century was
composed for public (albeit aristocratic) consumption, not as some
sort of intellectual exercise. People went to listen to Beethoven
because it was *entertaining*. And Beethoven composed with a
particular audience in mind, an audience comprised of sophisticated
non-musicians.
With the advent of the modern industrial state, the development of
mechanical recording, and the availability of significant amounts of
disposable income to the masses, the economics of composition abruptly
changed. Wheras previously the route to success for a musically
clever youngster was to work his way up through the ranks of the
aristocratic or clerical musical establishments, producing works
tailored to the tastes of the idle elite, now it was possible to make
a fortune by selling to the general public. The result was that many
of the cleverest composers of the 20th Century have writen pop music
while high art music has languished in the slough of avante-guardism,
where self-conscious second raters screw themselves further and
further up the bunghole of willful obscurity in a futile effort to
sustain an aristocratic pose in a post-aristocratic age.
The history of music in the 20th Century will be a history of jazz,
blues, show tunes, movie scores, and rock 'n roll. "Serious"
orchestral compositions will be nothing more than a footnote.
How'd I do, honey?
Dave Mooney
Amanda Wilson <a...@accessone.com> wrote:
> a...@accessone.com (Amanda Wilson) wrote:
>> Did the Presidents win their category, which was something like best
>> rock performance by a band, over the likes of Journey?
No, but coincidently, the First Lady won for "Best Testimony Given At
A Kangaroo Court By Someone Who Obviously Has Something To Hide".
> No, they didn't. The Beatles won. The long dead Beatles and their
> retread song "Free as a Bird."
That song still creeps me out. I'm not necessarily opposed to repackaging
stuff by dead guys, but all the techno-gimmickry on "Free as a Bird"
makes John's voice sound like it's actually wafting in from beyond the
grave. A half-dead song by washed-up musicians and bought by middle-aged
accountants trying to maintain a link, however tenuous, to their youths
wins a Grammy. Pretty soon people are going to start considering the
Grammies to be a farce.
Speaking of which, whatever became of Best New Artist Christopher Cross?
This is where I really miss the Love Boat -- if it were still on they'd
have Chris on as Julie's highschool sweetheart or somesuch and we'd be
able to see if he'd let himself slide. I bet he's spent the past ten
years drinking Pina Coladas like in that song of his, waiting for his
wife to walk into the bar.
> Uh! That's like having _Star Wars_ win the Oscar for Best Picture.
No, it's like having Forest Gump win for Best Picture. Electronically
insert live people into old footage of dead people, and shazam! You've
got a winner.
And that's "Oscar (R)" to you.
dave
--
Dave Mooney | d...@vnet.ibm.com | "Sliding is comfortable and easy"
Douglas Lathrop
Dave Mooney <d...@torolab.ibm.com> wrote:
: whatever became of Best New Artist Christopher Cross?
: This is where I really miss the Love Boat -- if it were still on they'd
: have Chris on as Julie's highschool sweetheart or somesuch and we'd be
: able to see if he'd let himself slide. I bet he's spent the past ten
: years drinking Pina Coladas like in that song of his, waiting for his
: wife to walk into the bar.
Discussion Topic: Compare and contrast the plotline of "Escape (The Pina
Colada Song)" with that of Kate Bush's "Babushka."
This counts double toward your grade.
: > Uh! That's like having _Star Wars_ win the Oscar for Best Picture.
: No, it's like having Forest Gump win for Best Picture.
You're both wrong. It's like having Tom Hanks accept a Best Actor award
for ZELIG.
--
D O U G L A S P. L A T H R O P
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>>>>>> Two words: Bon Vivant! <<>> NeuFreud of the USENET <<<<<<<<<<<
Visit Stately PAPER CUT MANOR! http://www.primenet.com/~lathrop/index.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
||||||||| "Honey, prepare to enter the hive of the Anti-Christ." |||||||||
Daniel R. Reitman
On 28 Feb 1997 14:46:14 GMT, d...@torolab.ibm.com (Dave Mooney) wrote:
>. . . .
>Speaking of which, whatever became of Best New Artist Christopher Cross? . . .
Come on, Dave, you know that Best New Artist is for acts we'll never
hear from again. Like, er, what was their name?
Dan, ad nauseam
chinacat sunflower
Douglas Lathrop (lat...@primenet.com) wrote:
: Dave Mooney <d...@torolab.ibm.com> wrote:
: : whatever became of Best New Artist Christopher Cross?
: : This is where I really miss the Love Boat -- if it were still on they'd
: : have Chris on as Julie's highschool sweetheart or somesuch and we'd be
: : able to see if he'd let himself slide. I bet he's spent the past ten
: : years drinking Pina Coladas like in that song of his, waiting for his
: : wife to walk into the bar.
: Discussion Topic: Compare and contrast the plotline of "Escape (The Pina
: Colada Song)" with that of Kate Bush's "Babushka."
are you guys both operating on the assumption that the pina colada song
was christopher cross? it wasn't, it was rupert somebody. chris cross
did that "sailing" song, and also "think of laura," the song about the
death of the laura character on general hospital. oh, and the theme to the
movie "arthur," too. something about getting lost between the moon and NYC.
peace,
ellen (serving your useless-musical-trivia needs, too)
@**************************************************************************@
@ "sometimes the songs that we hear ellen p. buckley @
@ are just songs of our own..." department of biochemistry @
@ wake forest u med center @
@ e...@esv.bgsm.wfu.edu winston-salem, nc @
@**************************************************************************@
John E. Castasus
In article <33186016...@news.teleport.com>, drei...@teleport.com
(Daniel R. Reitman) wrote:
> On 28 Feb 1997 14:46:14 GMT, d...@torolab.ibm.com (Dave Mooney) wrote:
>
> >. . . .
>
> >Speaking of which, whatever became of Best New Artist Christopher
Cross? . . .
>
> Come on, Dave, you know that Best New Artist is for acts we'll never
> hear from again. Like, er, what was their name?
Milli Vanilli. Which speaks volumes about the Grammys (tm).
----------------
Cordially,
John E. Castasus
DNRC Lord High Minister of Intoxicating Juice-Based Beverages O-
maxwell.the.cat.cabal
Brian K. Yoder
In article <5f7ftt$l...@news.interpath.net> brian...@redstorm.com writes:
[Snip!]
>The history of music in the 20th Century will be a history of jazz,
>blues, show tunes, movie scores, and rock 'n roll. "Serious"
>orchestral compositions will be nothing more than a footnote.
>How'd I do, honey?
You did fine dear. ;-)
--Brian
Bradley E. Wohlenberg
Dave Mooney (d...@torolab.ibm.com) wrote:
: Speaking of which, whatever became of Best New Artist Christopher Cross?
: This is where I really miss the Love Boat -- if it were still on they'd
: have Chris on as Julie's highschool sweetheart or somesuch and we'd be
: able to see if he'd let himself slide. I bet he's spent the past ten
: years drinking Pina Coladas like in that song of his, waiting for his
: wife to walk into the bar.
He was on Howard Stern's radio show last year. Stern basically got Cross
to admit that he is not an attractive man, and that when his mostly
female fans saw him pick up his Grammy, it shattered their romantic
illusions of him, and the next albums didn't sell so well.
Brad
Dave Mooney
chinacat sunflower <eb@esv> wrote:
> are you guys both operating on the assumption that the pina colada song
> was christopher cross? it wasn't, it was rupert somebody.
You're right -- it was Rupert Holmes. I don't know what I was thinking
the first time. But I think you're wrong about Christopher Cross. Chris
Cross was that guy who wore all his clothes backwards and sang "Pass
the Dutchie".
> chris cross
> did that "sailing" song, and also "think of laura," the song about the
> death of the laura character on general hospital. oh, and the theme to the
> movie "arthur," too. something about getting lost between the moon and NYC.
No, it doesn't ring a bell. But I have been lost between Croton on
Hudson and NYC. It's like they don't mark any of the roads.
kerry lutz
Dave Mooney stated:
: chinacat sunflower <eb@esv> wrote:
: > are you guys both operating on the assumption that the pina colada song
: > was christopher cross? it wasn't, it was rupert somebody.
: You're right -- it was Rupert Holmes. I don't know what I was thinking
: the first time. But I think you're wrong about Christopher Cross. Chris
: Cross was that guy who wore all his clothes backwards and sang "Pass
: the Dutchie".
Which begs the questions
What's a Dutchie?
Do you have a Dutchie?
How big's your Dutchie?
Can I touch your Dutchie?
kerry
--
**** "I've been attacked by the Man Kitty" ****
tanya lutz 2/97
chinacat sunflower
: Dave Mooney stated:
: : the first time. But I think you're wrong about Christopher Cross. Chris
: : Cross was that guy who wore all his clothes backwards and sang "Pass
: : the Dutchie".
you realize, of course, that i'm not going to sleep now until i remember
the name of the group that did actually sing "pass the dutchie." it was
something youth or, oh... how could you do this to me??
peace,
ellen (just for that i'm going to come on IRC and sing "it's a small world
after all" at the top of my lungs)
Bev
In article <5fg6eh$o7$1...@news.structured.net>,
Warren Eckels <wec...@jorsm.com> wrote:
>Liturgical music (which accounts for much of Bach's output and
>plenty of almost everybody else's) is the most obvious example
>of music for the masses --
BAD pun. NO donut.
--
"Did you really expect that you could wedn...@tezcat.com.
call up the devil and ask him beverley r. white.
to behave?" -- Fox Mulder bev.
Christa Heuser
In article <5fff1j$m...@f1n1.spenet.wfu.edu>, chinacat sunflower <eb@esv> wrote:
>
>you realize, of course, that i'm not going to sleep now until i remember
>the name of the group that did actually sing "pass the dutchie." it was
>something youth or, oh... how could you do this to me??
Musical Youth. Sleep well.
Christa Heuser
chr...@io.com
Tom Salyers
chinacat sunflower (eb@esv) wrote:
> you realize, of course, that i'm not going to sleep now until i remember
> the name of the group that did actually sing "pass the dutchie." it was
> something youth or, oh... how could you do this to me??
Musical Youth, the spiritual predecessors to Sonic Youth. HTH.
--
Tom Salyers "Now is the Windows of our disk contents
IRCnick: Aqualung Made glorious SimEarth by this Sun of Zork."
Denver, CO --from _Richard v3.0_
http://www.dimensional.com/~tsalyers
Warren Eckels
In article <byoderE6...@netcom.com>, byo...@netcom.com says...
>
>In article <5f7ftt$l...@news.interpath.net> brian...@redstorm.com
writes:
>
>[Snip!]
>>The history of music in the 20th Century will be a history of jazz,
>>blues, show tunes, movie scores, and rock 'n roll. "Serious"
>>orchestral compositions will be nothing more than a footnote.
>
>>How'd I do, honey?
Not bad, except for the sole emphasis on pleasing the elites.
Liturgical music (which accounts for much of Bach's output and
plenty of almost everybody else's) is the most obvious example
of music for the masses -- after religious wars went out of vogue,
Catholics and Protestants vied for each others' congregants
by trying to produce the best music. Music for a strictly elite
taste would not do (although Bach did recycle secular music
for at least one cantata).
Another example would be orchestral music in Mozart's day, which
was often written for the "middle classes."
Still another is opera, which was played to audiences of varying
means. The poorest were excluded (as they are when CDs go for $17),
but a night at the opera was not beyond the purse of many families
of "middling" wealth. Rioting at operas was not unknown.
These days, modern composers apparently seek to please nobody
but other modern composers and their initiates -- that much is
true.
Warren Eckels
Brian K. Yoder
In article <5fg6eh$o7$1...@news.structured.net> wec...@jorsm.com (Warren Eckels) writes:
>In article <byoderE6...@netcom.com>, byo...@netcom.com says...
> These days, modern composers apparently seek to please nobody
>but other modern composers and their initiates -- that much is
>true.
I quite agree. The curious thing though is why those who have made music their
career would prefer such awful stuff (and the same goes for the other arts).
Do you think it is as simple as snobbery of the "Any idiot can tell a good
steak from a bad one, but it is the rare expert who can distinguish between
varieties of amazonian aligator dung." kind? I think that's part of it, but
I think there's a lot more to it than that.
Tim Meehan
On Mon, 3 Mar 1997 20:31:01 GMT, mrk...@netcom.com (kerry lutz) was
inspired to say:
>
>Which begs the questions
>
>What's a Dutchie?
It's a big three-paper from what I was told.
-Tim
-=Tim Meehan * Toronto, ON * tim.m...@utoronto.ca=-
"You wanna surf? Move to Maui." -- Denis Leary
Todd Arnold
david broudy <frantic@snip_me.primenet.com> wrote in article
<frantic-0403...@ip205.lax.primenet.com>...
> In article <byoderE6...@netcom.com>, byo...@netcom.com (Brian K.
> Yoder) wrote:
>
> > I quite agree. The curious thing though is why those who have made
music their
> > career would prefer such awful stuff (and the same goes for the other
arts).
> > Do you think it is as simple as snobbery of the "Any idiot can tell a
good
> > steak from a bad one, but it is the rare expert who can distinguish
between
> > varieties of amazonian aligator dung." kind? I think that's part of
it, but
> > I think there's a lot more to it than that.
>
> endeavours, of which the one I'm most familiar with is wine. Wine snobs
> tsk-tsk and tut-tut when they find out I think a $10 bottle of Beringer
> Knight's Valley Cabernet is really delish, but go all jizzy if you have
> bottles of 1982 Bordeaux (some of which are going for a few grand a
> bottle, like Chateaux Petrus and Le Pin) in yer cellar. The language they
> use is really hilarious: "timid, yet with undercurrents of verve and
> unctuosity that will emerge with twenty years of cellaring. I detect the
> tell-tale signature of the terroir; it must be a Gevrey-Chambertin from
> the 1993 vintage." *snort*. If it's bad wine now, it ain't gonna get
> better in 20 years. The wine industry is probably the worst source of the
> common assumption that wine is a luxury good only appreciated by the
> elite, affluent and sophisticated few. Bah.
>
> Elitism is quite alive and well in wine, music, food, etc.
>
Hmmm.
For some reason, my industry is full of wine fanatics. I have worked
closely with 2 in the past, and my current business partner is one as well.
In all 3 cases I was surprised to discover how affordable most of the
wines they really like are. usually between $15 - $45 a bottle.
David's comments make me wonder if they all aren't putting on their
'non-snob' wine face for me.
Todd Arnold
To...@toddarnold.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process
anything as a career.
I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or
buy anything sold or processed, or process anything
sold, bought, or processed........"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
tp...@aol.com
In article <somethingorother>, somebody writes:
>The language they use is really hilarious: "timid, yet with undercurrents of verve
>and unctuosity that will emerge with twenty years of cellaring. I detect the tell-tale
>signature of the terroir
That's odd. I saw this very same phrase used to describe this newsgroup. It's what
brought me here in the first place.
Todd M.
Sara Hively
: In article <byoderE6...@netcom.com>, byo...@netcom.com (Brian K.
: Yoder) wrote:
:I quite agree. The curious thing though is why those who have made music
:their career would prefer such awful stuff (and the same goes for the
:other arts).
Haven't actually gotten the original of this, so I took it off David B.s
post...
As far as music goes, the problem is that the musicians got away from
expression, and more into abstract intellectual experiments. So, if
you're well educated in the intellectual abstractions, great. Very very
elite, since even the cultural elite rich-bitches mostly would rather
listen to something with some harmony and melody and emotional expression.
Painting - well, american painting got into this all with Abstract
Expressionism. The A.E.s were a bunch of American artists who were
painting in the United States at a time when it was still assumed that
only paintings produced in Europe were of any merit. They developed an
antagonistic bitter private world (since no-one was interested anyway).
They drank a lot. They were almost all classically trained (could draw,
mix color, etc), and a lot of them produced pretty amazing stuff - problem
is, they then transferred their bitter anti-communication ethic to the
next generation of art students, without the classical art training that
they themselves originally had. And it went from there.
Another thing - the evolution of visual arts is an evolution of visual
language, which also involves context (in the culture, in relation to
current and past art). People had to learn to see perspective, to see
impressionist painting, to see abstract painting. If you learn the
language (usually by looking at a lot of paintings or whatever the medium
is, and talking with people who know a lot), you can 'read' the art. True
for literature - old lit. or lit. from another culture doesn't make so
much sense until you learn something about the cultural context and
language used.
Also true for music - pop example - Jimi Hendrix gets played on Classic
Rock stations now - my mother says that back when she first bought his
records, everyone she knew found him almost unlistenable though
fascinating - now a lot of what he did is assimilated into ordinary pop
music.
Anyway, one of the problems of this century is that the artists all got on
a rush of 'originality'. So, the languages of the arts started
multiplying like fruit flies - got to the point where you'd practically
have to learn a new language for every artist, and most of them were
blatently uninterested in communicating with you anyway, so why bother.
My nickel for the morning...
Sara
Should I mention that I like Philip Glass? I know he gives a lot of
people headaches. But I really do like a lot of his music that he's
written for theater.
Anne-Marie MacDonald
Ellen wrote:
> you realize, of course, that i'm not going to sleep now until i remember
> the name of the group that did actually sing "pass the dutchie." it was
> something youth or, oh... how could you do this to me??
Musical Youth.
And a "dutchie pan" was a panhandling pan, not a big doobie.
-Anne-Marie
Arend Abel
In article <01bc2925$43fcc8e0$37c495ce@todd>, "Todd Arnold"
<To...@toddarnold.com> wrote:
> david broudy <frantic@snip_me.primenet.com> wrote in article
> > Elitism is quite alive and well in wine, music, food, etc.
> >
>
> Hmmm.
>
> For some reason, my industry is full of wine fanatics. I have worked
> closely with 2 in the past, and my current business partner is one as well.
> In all 3 cases I was surprised to discover how affordable most of the
> wines they really like are. usually between $15 - $45 a bottle.
>
Except if you *really* like wine, e.g., you like to have a bottle or so a
day, this isn't very affordable. I make a fairly good income, and I
almost never feel like I can or should be buying $45 bottles of wine.
Arend
--
Those who don't like what is going on but lurk or leave are
like voters who don't vote and then complain about government.
-- Deck Deckert on misc.writing
Chris Moorehead
"Todd Arnold" <To...@toddarnold.com> wrote:
>david broudy <frantic@snip_me.primenet.com> wrote in article
><frantic-0403...@ip205.lax.primenet.com>...
>> In article <byoderE6...@netcom.com>, byo...@netcom.com (Brian K.
>> Yoder) wrote:
>>
>> > I quite agree. The curious thing though is why those who have made
>music their
>> > career would prefer such awful stuff (and the same goes for the other
>arts).
>> > Do you think it is as simple as snobbery of the "Any idiot can tell a
>good
>> > steak from a bad one, but it is the rare expert who can distinguish
>between
>> > varieties of amazonian aligator dung." kind? I think that's part of
>it, but
>> > I think there's a lot more to it than that.
>>
>> Well, it's the same thing in regards to lots of allegedly "upscale"
>> endeavours, of which the one I'm most familiar with is wine. Wine snobs
>> tsk-tsk and tut-tut when they find out I think a $10 bottle of Beringer
>> Knight's Valley Cabernet is really delish, but go all jizzy if you have
>> bottles of 1982 Bordeaux (some of which are going for a few grand a
>> bottle, like Chateaux Petrus and Le Pin) in yer cellar. The language they
>> use is really hilarious: "timid, yet with undercurrents of verve and
>> unctuosity that will emerge with twenty years of cellaring. I detect the
>> tell-tale signature of the terroir; it must be a Gevrey-Chambertin from
>> the 1993 vintage." *snort*. If it's bad wine now, it ain't gonna get
>> better in 20 years. The wine industry is probably the worst source of the
>> common assumption that wine is a luxury good only appreciated by the
>> elite, affluent and sophisticated few. Bah.
>>
>> Elitism is quite alive and well in wine, music, food, etc.
>>
>
>Hmmm.
>
>For some reason, my industry is full of wine fanatics. I have worked
>closely with 2 in the past, and my current business partner is one as well.
> In all 3 cases I was surprised to discover how affordable most of the
>wines they really like are. usually between $15 - $45 a bottle.
>
>David's comments make me wonder if they all aren't putting on their
>'non-snob' wine face for me.
Anyone can buy a good bottle of expensive wine. It takes a real wine
expert to buy a good bottle of inexpensive wine.
chris
----
CHRISTOPHER J. MOOREHEAD, P. Eng.
Moorehead Associates Ltd
Professional Engineers - Environmental & Manufacturing Specialists
Toronto, Canada
--
Tel 416.485.8232 / Fax 416.485.8049
moor...@interlog.com
PGP Public Key available on request
...For those anxious for an indoctrination in politics, following the Great Geek
is not without its rewards, especially for those who prefer not to do too much
cerebral heavy lifting...
- Dalton Camp, on Preston Manning & his followers
coates
Brian K. Yoder (byo...@netcom.com) wrote:
: > These days, modern composers apparently seek to please nobody
: >true.
: The curious thing though is why those who have made music their
: career would prefer such awful stuff (and the same goes for the other arts).
Perhaps Mozart (Bach, etc.) bores them after the 95th listen.
--
john coates "Modernity is measured not by the onward march
of industry but by the capacity for criticism
and self-criticism." -- O. Paz
madcycle
Damn the wine snobs. I've taken a shinning to Vendange Zinfandel 13.5%
alcohol (around $14 1.5L) which has the most taste for the buck in my
neck of the woods. My favorite wines are the Hungarian royal rot
wines, very complex and sweet. These wines are also not that expensive
so I can treat myself about once a month.
chris
david broudy wrote:
Well, there's a big difference between a wine fanatic and a wine
snob. A
fanatic goes bugshit (er, sorry, Leah) over discovering a great wine
for
$15, even if it's made by Gallo (not that that's happened yet, but
Gallo
does make some very good high-end wines which are priced a bit too
high
for me to try), while the snob won't drink anything that didn't cost
less
than $100 a bottle, has not lain dormant in a moldy cellar for at
least 30
years, didn't receive a Parker score of at least 98 (out of 100), or
was
made in quantities greater than 50 cases.
One recent thing in the wine biz is the huge upswing in the Asian
market,
where millionaire businesspeople seem to be trying to corner the
market on
the world's great wines, thus pushing prices into the stratosphere
for
some of them (like $45,000 for a case of 1982 Ch. Le Pin, a good
wine made
laughably exotic because there just isn't much made) because it's
prestigious to serve these wines at business dinners, and they're
*very*
label- and price-conscious. Lots of them, according to articles I've
read,
know nothing about wine except the names and vintages of the top 30
or so
wines in the world, and then they go and place outrageous bids on
them at
auction in order to impress their friends and associates.
*that's* a wine snob, and plenty exist outside of Asia.
David, not a fanatic, not a snob, nearly mature with notes of cassis
and
pain grille, yet still truculent and unctuous. Give him another
decade of
age before consuming.
* http://www.primenet.com/~frantic/ *
"Every drop of fresh apple juice, carefully pressed from the reddest
apples, shining in colors of the cheeks of a snow-country child, is
yours to enjoy in each soft and juicy Kasugai Apple Gummy"
madcycle
Todd Sandrock
In article <frantic-0403...@ip205.lax.primenet.com>,
frantic@snip_me.primenet.com says...
:The language they
:use is really hilarious: "timid, yet with undercurrents of verve and
:unctuosity that will emerge with twenty years of cellaring. I detect the
:tell-tale signature of the terroir; it must be a Gevrey-Chambertin from
:the 1993 vintage."
obwinesnobbery:
Shar and I, ma belle-soeur and son mari sat under a rose tree in the
ruined Chateau Gevrey-Chambertin last July with Madame, who told us the
story of her family, the bandits, the roses, the crime that is Vatican
II, the lie that was the French Revolution, and how the Franks were
barbarians compared to *her* ancestors, the Celts.
We walked through vines and towers, and looked at the terroirs. "All this
is mine..." Madame is about 90 years old, a hoot, and will tour her
castle en anglais, si vous desirez.
Her leather-skinned daughter runs the place these days, and happy
Gauloise-puffing chocolate-brown angels work for *her*. Sadly, Madame
declined my offer of my serfdom in exchange for a lifetime of gentle,
backbreaking labour on the vines and a p'tit canon of wine every
lunchtime...Cum 'Larry' in the _Razor's Edge_, I would downwardly
mobilize myself in a *second* to stay forever in her Burgundian Paradise.
We descended into the cave, deguste'd and picked up...indeed...a '93
Grand Cru, and a 93 Premier Cru for FF200 (about fifty canuck bucks) and
FF55 ($14) respectively.
We'll crack the GC when the girls, Hither and Thither, are old enough to
appreciate it and the story of their quasi-conception in hazy perfumed
perfect Provence...
:*snort*. If it's bad wine now, it ain't gonna get
:better in 20 years. The wine industry is probably the worst source of the
:common assumption that wine is a luxury good only appreciated by the
:elite, affluent and sophisticated few. Bah.
You guys are missing out on the FTA we've signed with Chile. Imagine the
better Chileans, except *even* *cheaper*!
Todd
--
Todd Sandrock | NEW EMAIL==>sand...@nortel.com | Manotick, Ontario
"The Cheese stands alone." --_The Farmer in the Dell_
These are my opinions and not those of Nortel Technology
Brian K. Yoder
In article <5fmn6p$7eb$1...@news.nyu.edu> coa...@is.nyu.edu (coates) writes:
>Brian K. Yoder (byo...@netcom.com) wrote:
>: > These days, modern composers apparently seek to please nobody
>: >but other modern composers and their initiates -- that much is
>: >true.
>: The curious thing though is why those who have made music their
>: career would prefer such awful stuff (and the same goes for the other arts).
>Perhaps Mozart (Bach, etc.) bores them after the 95th listen.
That's fine! If they are bored by it then write DIFFERENT good music! That's
what Beethoven (and Mozart, and Brahms, and Tchaikovsky, and Mahler, and
Rachmaninoff, and Dvorak, and...) did. What they are doing this century
is saying in effect "I have listened to good music 95 times and I'm bored,
I think it's time to write some garbage instead. That's not boring."
Christa Heuser
In article <331ef392...@news.interlog.com>,
Chris Moorehead <moor...@interlog.com> wrote:
>
>Anyone can buy a good bottle of expensive wine. It takes a real wine
>expert to buy a good bottle of inexpensive wine.
What takes a *real* expert is to buy a bad bottle of expensive wine,
and then brag about it. At least, that's what they say in the
"Wine Spectator".
Of course, if you're just *looking* at the wine, who cares what it
tastes like.
Christa Heuser
chr...@io.com
madcycle
david broudy wrote:
Well, hey, whatever works for you. I tried Vendange wines before and
they're OK for the price (about $7/1.5L here). Not good, but not bad
either. The Hungarian ones are delish (Tokaji Aszu); I had one a few
months ago at a dinner party, but the prices are going up.
* http://www.primenet.com/~frantic/ *
"Every drop of fresh apple juice, carefully pressed from the reddest
apples, shining in colors of the cheeks of a snow-country child, is
yours to enjoy in each soft and juicy Kasugai Apple Gummy"
Bummer, the same thing is happenning to the zinfandel (not the Vendange
though)
Here's a tip, try the 1991 Tokaji Aszu Birsalmas or Nyula'szo
Holly Sommer
Brian K. Yoder <byo...@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <5fmn6p$7eb$1...@news.nyu.edu> coa...@is.nyu.edu (coates) writes:
>>Brian K. Yoder (byo...@netcom.com) wrote:
>>: > These days, modern composers apparently seek to please nobody
>>: >but other modern composers and their initiates -- that much is
>>: >true.
>
>>: The curious thing though is why those who have made music their
>>: career would prefer such awful stuff (and the same goes for the other arts).
>
>>Perhaps Mozart (Bach, etc.) bores them after the 95th listen.
>
>That's fine! If they are bored by it then write DIFFERENT good music! That's
>what Beethoven (and Mozart, and Brahms, and Tchaikovsky, and Mahler, and
>Rachmaninoff, and Dvorak, and...) did. What they are doing this century
>is saying in effect "I have listened to good music 95 times and I'm bored,
>I think it's time to write some garbage instead. That's not boring."
I seriously doubt that the "modern" composers of today are much
different, as a lot, than the "modern" composers of other eras. Think of
how many differnet musical styles have been introduced to the general
populace in the last 100 years! Jazz, dixieland, big band, punk, rock,
c&w, disco, etc.
I think modern composers have crafted their share of expressive, moving
music as well. Bernstein, (Aaron) Copeland (Copland? I forget the spelling),
Williams, etc. There are also countless un-knowns who pour their heart
into music, and produce an audial representation of their emotions,
thoughts and experiences.
Calling their work "garbage" is merely stating an opinion. Please don't
try to pass your opinion off as fact. Fact has very little place in the
performing arts (IMO, that is ;)
I'm curious, Brian... do you play any instruments, or have you performed
in any kind of instrumental ensemble?
Btw, I agree with John's hypothesis, to some extent. Boredom is often the
mother of invention :)
-Holly, likes music of any era, and thinks it all has some value
--
Holly +---- It has even been said that human beings were created ----+ hsommer
J. +----- by water as a means of transporting itself ----+ @
Sommer +----- from one place to another. -----+ nyx.cs.du.edu
Amber
Holly Sommer <hso...@nyx.cs.du.edu> wrote:
>Btw, I agree with John's hypothesis, to some extent. Boredom is often the
>mother of invention :)
I can think of no other explanation for, say, jugglers.
How incredibly bored do you have to be during your formative years to
learn how to juggle well?
--
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Amber
"Some things we plan. We sit, and we invent, and we plot, - - - - - - -
and cook up. Others are works of inspiration, of poetry." - - - - - - -
- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - - - - - - http://www.mysterydate.com/amber
coates
Yoder:
: >>: The curious thing though is why those who have made music their
: >>: career would prefer such awful stuff ...
Coates:
: >>Perhaps Mozart (Bach, etc.) bores them after the 95th listen.
Yoder:
: >That's fine! If they are bored by it then write DIFFERENT good music!
: >What they are doing this century is ... garbage
Sommer:
: I think modern composers have crafted their share of expressive, moving
: music as well. Bernstein, Aaron Copland..., Williams, etc.
: Calling their work "garbage" is merely stating an opinion.
Yup.
Brian's belief that 20th century music is "garbage" is so utterly wrong
that I really don't think it worth critiquing. The list of brilliant and
beautiful music composed in the 20th century is long, perhaps longer than
that for the 19th century, if for no other reason than there are more
composers these days. Of course, one actually has to *listen* to the
music before one can love it.
So for the sake of popularizing composers I love, I would add Adams,
Glass, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Cage...
And to add composers in the jazz tradition: Ellington, Basie, Gil Evans,
Miles Davis, Coltrane, McLaughlin, Threadgill, Metheny, Towner, the
Marsalis clan, etc.
K Hubbard
david broudy wrote:
>Lotsa good zins are suddenly quite a bit over $15, which is really my
>limit. I love zin, but...
I like Rosenblum Cellars zin, but I don't know how much it goes for these
days. Last time I got any quantity of it, it was in exchange for working
the catering at one of their tastings. :)
>Wine tip o' the day: Estancia Los Altos Cabernet Sauvignon 1994. $8US.
Oh cool! I'm about to go to an Estancia tasting in a few weeks. Glad to
hear that.
--Kathleen
Stephen Perelgut
On 9 Mar 1997 20:18:11 -0800, am...@speakeasy.org (Amber) wrote:
>Holly Sommer <hso...@nyx.cs.du.edu> wrote:
>>Btw, I agree with John's hypothesis, to some extent. Boredom is often the
>>mother of invention :)
>
>I can think of no other explanation for, say, jugglers.
>
>How incredibly bored do you have to be during your formative years to
>learn how to juggle well?
I learned when I was around 25yo. "Juggling for Klutzes" or something
like that. The book that has the string-bag with three juggling
cubes. It's even pretty easy to do the simple 2-ball and 3-ball
stuff. It is also rather therapeutic.
Stephen
Dave Mooney
K Hubbard <doc...@crl.com> wrote:
> Oh cool! I'm about to go to an Estancia tasting in a few weeks. Glad to
> hear that.
Man, you California chyx totally lead the glamour lifestyle.
dave
--
Dave Mooney | d...@vnet.ibm.com | "Sliding is comfortable and easy"
Micky DuPree
In article <5fk3u7$o...@newstand.syr.edu>, shi...@newstand.syr.edu (Sara
Hively) writes:
: Anyway, one of the problems of this century is that the artists all
: got on a rush of 'originality'. So, the languages of the arts started
: multiplying like fruit flies - got to the point where you'd
: practically have to learn a new language for every artist, and most of
: them were blatently uninterested in communicating with you anyway, so
: why bother.
I wanted to underscore this. The degree to which 'originality' is now
prized in the high arts is, I believe, unique to this century. If we
were to judge Shakespeare by those standards, he'd be reviled as a
plagiarist (as well as a popular panderer). There was already a well-
known revenge play called _Hamlet_ (perhaps more than one) when he sat
down to write his version. (Credit for this particular example should
probably go to Prof. David Thorburn, as I think I stole it from
him. :) )
I'm no musicologist, but the same sort of thing seemed to happen in
music, only more frantically. It is kind of hard for European-based
harmonic music not to sound like itself after a while, but it's still
hard to see all its possibilities as having been exhausted when most of
the 'serious' composers of the 20th century developed an allergy to it.
Or if someone were to paint a contemporary ghetto child in the style of
Rembrandt, could that not be thought of as adding something new to
humanity's repertoire?
-Micky
Micky DuPree
In article <5fphg3$l...@knot.queensu.ca>, 3m...@qlink.queensu.ca (Marco
Anglesio) writes:
: I actually quite enjoy music written this century, but I think that
: what you call "garbage" is actually a matter of the music's
: accessibility to you. It isn't garbage, for the most part; most modern
: composers are well trained, well schooled, well practised, and
: talented. What they may not be doing (and many of them are, but let's
: assume that you're right and they're not) is making their music
: accessible to people who are not similarly well trained and schooled
: in music.
:
: Einstein didn't write his mathematics for someone in kindergarten to
: be able to understand them; why should a composer write for the same
: audience?
I'm given to understand that modern nonharmonic (Is the word I'm looking
for 'achromatic'? My brain has rusted.) Euro-music is indeed very
mathematically precise, and that those schooled in it can pick up on how
clever a composer has been.
But surely the analogy between mathematics and art breaks down
eventually. Don't they serve different purposes? Commonly accessible
math mostly serves instrumental purposes. Commonly accessible art tells
stories and expresses feelings about being human. And while the most
sophisticated mathematics may well be what drives humanity's technical
advances, I maintain that it is at least partially accessible art that
partly prepares and partly mirrors humanity's social advances.
This means that the most enduring and ultimately influential art isn't
pitched at either the kindergarten level nor at the most elite level,
but can appeal to a broad spectrum of people from many walks. It's
likely to contain a mixture of both high comedy and low, of profundity
and melodrama, of pathos and bathos. It's rooted in its time and its
society, but it also contains something as close to universally human as
you can get given the confines of the conventions and the language used.
I'm not saying that you can't sometimes make a case that more
sophisticated, less accessible art is better, but I am saying that it
tends to be less influential until and unless a broader audience becomes
schooled in its conventions. (I'm told that audiences booed some works
of Stravinsky when they debuted. Now he's comfortably ensconced in the
canon.) A certain minimum degree of accessibility in art gives us a
common basis of reference in a culture, a basis for communicating, and a
basis for communing.
<pomp mode off>
-Micky
coates
Micky DuPree (mdu...@tiac.net) wrote:
: But surely the analogy between mathematics and art breaks down
: eventually. Don't they serve different purposes? Commonly accessible
: math mostly serves instrumental purposes. Commonly accessible art tells
: stories and expresses feelings about being human.
I'm not sure it's so easy to decide what purpose art serves; I'm not sure
it serves one and only one purpose, or even a set of compatible purposes;
I suspect that different people expect art to serve entirely opposed
purposes. (Some think that's a problem; others don't.)
I also don't know how any *music* "tells stories" or "expresses feelings
about being human." (As opposed to narrative set to music.) What is the
story told by Bach's Cello Suite #1? What is the feeling expressed in
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? Will more than three people unaided agree in
answering those questions? Is art not serving its purpose of they don't?
--
john coates "Sleep is perhaps the only among life's great
pleasures which need not be of short duration."
-- R. Zelazny
Sara Hively
coates (coa...@is.nyu.edu) wrote:
: Micky DuPree (mdu...@tiac.net) wrote:
: : But surely the analogy between mathematics and art breaks down
: : eventually. Don't they serve different purposes? Commonly accessible
: : math mostly serves instrumental purposes. Commonly accessible art tells
: : stories and expresses feelings about being human.
: I'm not sure it's so easy to decide what purpose art serves; I'm not sure
: it serves one and only one purpose, or even a set of compatible purposes;
: I suspect that different people expect art to serve entirely opposed
: purposes. (Some think that's a problem; others don't.)
: I also don't know how any *music* "tells stories" or "expresses feelings
: about being human." (As opposed to narrative set to music.) What is the
: story told by Bach's Cello Suite #1? What is the feeling expressed in
: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? Will more than three people unaided agree in
: answering those questions? Is art not serving its purpose of they don't?
I would also say that Beethoven and Bach are not 'commonly accessible' in
that you do need to learn how to listen to them - just as you need to
learn how to see a Jackson Pollack painting. And no, even once you learn
to see them, you won't see them the same as the next person. Human souls
and minds have much in common but perspectives are never quite the same.
Math tends to be taught from a very limited and applied perspective -
perhaps if it was taught more as an art, more people would have a taste
for that kind of math as they have a taste for Bach. Math also is not
about human emotions or stories - but it does seem to deal with beauty,
purity of form and the nature of reality and can be very metaphysical.
This is my impression from knowing someone who loves pure mathematics and
is good at them. He is also obsessed with jazz music - and plenty
of people have talked about the connections between jazz and math and
philosophy.
Sara
Marco Anglesio
coates (coa...@is.nyu.edu) wrote:
: Micky DuPree (mdu...@tiac.net) wrote:
:
: : But surely the analogy between mathematics and art breaks down
: : eventually. Don't they serve different purposes? Commonly accessible
: : math mostly serves instrumental purposes. Commonly accessible art tells
: : stories and expresses feelings about being human.
:
: I'm not sure it's so easy to decide what purpose art serves; I'm not sure
: it serves one and only one purpose, or even a set of compatible purposes;
: I suspect that different people expect art to serve entirely opposed
: purposes. (Some think that's a problem; others don't.)
Hmph. Commonly accessible math can solve problems of no useful purpose,
but great aesthetic value. (like, neat problems).
HTH.
m.
marco anglesio i know someday you'll have a beautiful life i know
angl...@cspo.queensu.ca you'll be a star in someone else's sky
http://cspo.queensu.ca/~anglesio but why, why can't it be mine
Micky DuPree
In article <5grp9m$9...@newstand.syr.edu>, shi...@newstand.syr.edu (Sara
Hively) writes:
: coates (coa...@is.nyu.edu) wrote:
:: What is the story told by Bach's Cello Suite #1? What is the feeling
:: expressed in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? Will more than three people
:: unaided agree in answering those questions? Is art not serving its
:: purpose of they don't?
:
: I would also say that Beethoven and Bach are not 'commonly accessible'
: in that you do need to learn how to listen to them - just as you need
: to learn how to see a Jackson Pollack painting.
I would say that Beethoven and Bach are "commonly accessible," in the
sense that those composers at least are widely disseminated even among
nonspecialist audiences in our society. They observe certain
traditional Western musical conventions of tonality, structure,
expectation, and surprise that every hearing Western child has a
rudimentary grasp of by the time he or she starts school. I'm not
saying that every hearing Western child is going to master Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony on the first listen, but it's not going to be completely
and utterly nonsensical to him either, and by the time he's reached
adulthood, he will likely have heard significant chunks of it without
even seeking it out. (Parts of the fourth movement have been turned
into religious hymns and are often played at weddings. The second
movement used to be the signature theme for NBC's _Huntley-Brinkley
Report_ when I was growing up. Bach and Beethoven are constantly being
raided for movie scores.)
In any form or genre, it's necessary to be literate in the language and
the conventions in order for the communicative experience to be
successful. If the signs fall down, the signifieds won't be identified.
Even "Mary had a little lamb" isn't commonly accessible in a place where
they don't speak English. When I say "commonly accessible," I mean what
the average person is likely to be conversant in without specialized
training or education.
: And no, even once you learn to see them, you won't see them the same
: as the next person. Human souls and minds have much in common but
: perspectives are never quite the same.
Agreed. I'm just trying to insist on a certain minimum commonality.
: Math tends to be taught from a very limited and applied perspective -
: perhaps if it was taught more as an art, more people would have a
: taste for that kind of math as they have a taste for Bach. Math also
: is not about human emotions or stories - but it does seem to deal with
: beauty, purity of form and the nature of reality and can be very
: metaphysical.
Yah, but is it art? :) I see where math can be beautiful, but so can a
sunset. Is either art? I can see where math is distinguished from the
sunset by the will of Man, but is it art? I can also see where math can
be instrumental to developing philosophy, but is that art? I can see
where math can be *applied* in the making of art, but does that make
math into art? My sense is, no, at least not where math put to
instrumental purposes is concerned, not without endangering the utility
of the different disciplines' terms. On the other hand, I'm not a
mathematician, and probably the greater part of abstract math is quite
beyond me. But then, I did originally restrict my reply to commonly
accessible art and commonly accessible math.
-Micky
--
I've tended to find that programmers go for Bach while physicists prefer
Mozart. I haven't surveyed mathematicians yet.
Micky DuPree
In article <5gr9gh$ttk$3...@news.nyu.edu>, coa...@is.nyu.edu (coates)
writes:
: Micky DuPree (mdu...@tiac.net) wrote:
:
:: But surely the analogy between mathematics and art breaks down
:: eventually. Don't they serve different purposes? Commonly
:: accessible math mostly serves instrumental purposes. Commonly
:: accessible art tells stories and expresses feelings about being
:: human.
:
: I'm not sure it's so easy to decide what purpose art serves; I'm not
: sure it serves one and only one purpose, or even a set of compatible
: purposes;
Only one purpose, no. That much is easy to determine. One person might
use art to chase away the blues. Another might use it to diversify his
financial investments.
: I suspect that different people expect art to serve entirely opposed
: purposes. (Some think that's a problem; others don't.)
I'm primarily interested in what the experiences or purposes of art have
in common, not what they don't, which necessarily brings us to
demarcating the definitional boundaries. Presumably 'art' isn't just
'stuff people like.' Otherwise, a beautiful scene in nature would be
art. (I'm sticking to nonmystical creators here.) Presumably art isn't
just 'stuff people do that other people like' either. That definition
is too open; it loses any utility. While categories of knowledge and
the boundaries between them are all artificial, reflecting our need for
conceptual structure more than they reflect genuine hard boundaries,
nevertheless, using the terminology of those conceptual boundaries
denotes those boundaries.
Art can have endless uses and endless interpretations, but as near as I
can work it out, it all seems to have at least one communicative aspect
in common, and it all seems to have at least one noninstrumental
purpose. No two people are likely to agree 100% on the experience or
interpretation of a work of art, but without the intention to
communicate *something* on the part of the artist, then the artist and
the audience are reduced to a Rorschach aesthetic, whereby a work of art
has no more meaning or significance than an inkblot.
Is there a difference between accident and art? Is there a difference
between a beautiful object in nature and a beautiful _objet d'art_? Is
there a difference between my paint-splattered canvas that I exhibit and
my paint-splattered canvas that I used to catch the drips? Well, there
you go.
: I also don't know how any *music* "tells stories" or "expresses
: feelings about being human." (As opposed to narrative set to music.)
: What is the story told by Bach's Cello Suite #1?
Sorry, I should have used 'and/or' instead of just 'and.'
: What is the feeling expressed in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? Will
: more than three people unaided agree in answering those questions? Is
: art not serving its purpose of they don't?
That we're not going to have all our experiences of art in common is
obvious. But my music theory teacher once told me that studies have
been done in cultures that were not raised on Western music, and yet
those surveyed would still tell the researchers that minor chords "sound
sadder" than major chords.
I've noted recurring intervals and chords in my favorite music, across
genres and forms. I suspect that many such elemental sensory
preferences, like one's favorite colors and one's likes and dislikes in
certain foods, are hard-wired or at least strongly influenced by
genetics. It's pretty obvious, of course, that we go on to form
complex, differentiated reactions and aesthetics after that based on
many other factors of environment and personality. But I reiterate my
semiotic theory that there is some sort of communicative overlap between
artist and audience, that this overlap is no accident, that it depends
on the will of the artist to communicate -- whether in the sense of
transmitting or in the sense of communing or both -- and on a certain
minimum common human language.
That's *my* idea of order in Key West, at any rate. ;)
-Micky
Micky DuPree
In article <5gt0ol$j...@knot.queensu.ca>, 3m...@qlink.queensu.ca (Marco
Anglesio) writes:
: Hmph. Commonly accessible math can solve problems of no useful
: purpose, but great aesthetic value. (like, neat problems).
Well, it's certainly *beautiful*. But is that the same thing as art?
I don't have a systematic theory to offer about trickle-up or trickle-
down effects just yet, but it seems to me that highly sophisticated math
has a far greater influence on the direction humanity takes, by virtue
of its technological instrumentality, than does highly sophisticated
art. Sophisticated math has a lasting trickle-down impact even on
people who do not know its language and conventions, and who never will.
By contrast, I think the trickle-down effect of the elite in art in the
latter part of the 20th century is overrated. If anything, it seems
more that a trickle-up effect from the popular arts and popular art
technologies has been going on, or it's possibly an ongoing mutual
pillaging of ideas. But, unlike the case with math, art cannot have a
lasting impact unless it retains some communicative relationship with an
audience broader than a small priesthood of initiates who alone
understand its language. Sophisticated art doesn't really come into its
own until the broader audience is finally schooled in its conventions.
Now, there are huge piles of nonutilitarian abstract math in which I'm
not conversant and probably never will be, so I cannot productively
comment on how much or how little they resemble art. But waaaayy back
when, I think this thread got started based on the idea of what the
*influence* of so-called serious music of the 20th century would be, and
I have to agree with those who said that from that standpoint, most
"serious" music got a little too rarified for its own good. The same
isn't *necessarily* true of math.
$.02, suitable for framing, after which I'll sell it at Sotheby's for
$10,000. Ain't math beautiful? :)
-Micky
Sara Hively
Micky DuPree (mdu...@tiac.net[snip-to-reply]) wrote:
: In article <5grp9m$9...@newstand.syr.edu>, shi...@newstand.syr.edu (Sara
: Hively) writes:
: : I would also say that Beethoven and Bach are not 'commonly accessible'
: : in that you do need to learn how to listen to them - just as you need
: : to learn how to see a Jackson Pollack painting.
: I would say that Beethoven and Bach are "commonly accessible," in the
: sense that those composers at least are widely disseminated even among
: nonspecialist audiences in our society. They observe certain
: traditional Western musical conventions of tonality, structure,
: expectation, and surprise that every hearing Western child has a
: rudimentary grasp of by the time he or she starts school. I'm not
: saying that every hearing Western child is going to master Beethoven's
: Ninth Symphony on the first listen, but it's not going to be completely
: and utterly nonsensical to him either,
Incomprehensible and boring, however, it is very likely to be. Seen that
to be quite common. And I think that carries over to the math as well -
there are certainly higher math concepts that can be described simply,
incorporated into popular works, etc. Being familiar with a melody of
Bach doesn't mean you can hear Bach's music let alone really understand
it. I don't, god knows.
I will grant you, that higher math has not made significant contributions
to weddings and TV themes.
And what about Jackson Pollack, anyway? He's definitely communicating -
but most people look at his paintings for the first time and can't 'read'
them at all - looks like a bunch of squiggles. It's possible to show
an interested someone the language within a half hour though.
: In any form or genre, it's necessary to be literate in the language and
: the conventions in order for the communicative experience to be
: successful. If the signs fall down, the signifieds won't be identified.
: Even "Mary had a little lamb" isn't commonly accessible in a place where
: they don't speak English. When I say "commonly accessible," I mean what
: the average person is likely to be conversant in without specialized
: training or education.
TV themes and wedding tunes mean someone is 'conversant' in Beethoven?!
: : Math tends to be taught from a very limited and applied perspective -
: : perhaps if it was taught more as an art, more people would have a
: : taste for that kind of math as they have a taste for Bach. Math also
: : is not about human emotions or stories - but it does seem to deal with
: : beauty, purity of form and the nature of reality and can be very
: : metaphysical.
: Yah, but is it art? :) I see where math can be beautiful, but so can a
: sunset. Is either art? I can see where math is distinguished from the
: sunset by the will of Man, but is it art? I can also see where math can
: be instrumental to developing philosophy, but is that art? I can see
: where math can be *applied* in the making of art, but does that make
: math into art?
I think it can be, yes. Mind you, I'm not a mathematician.
My sense is, no, at least not where math put to
: instrumental purposes is concerned, not without endangering the utility
: of the different disciplines' terms.
Ah - but I wasn't talking about applied math, that can be put to
instrumental purposes. I was talking about the "pure" stuff that only very
rarely and accidentally finds applications.
Consider that music can be put to instrumental purposes. There is music
that communicates emotion. There is music that communicates intellectual
ideas and stories. There is music that is exploration of pure form on
very rarified levels that few people other than musicians care to listen
to (but still is communicating - just in a very isolated and intellectual
dialect). Music is used to influence people psychologically, to manipulate
them or treat their illnesses. I would say that music is more art than
science, and that math is more science than art. There is a distinct
overlap.
I admit to getting away from your definition of commonly accesible - I
guess I'm more interested in what can be made accessible on that level,
rather than what currently is (which is more obvious).
: I've tended to find that programmers go for Bach while physicists prefer
: Mozart. I haven't surveyed mathematicians yet.
Jazz and Bach in my experience. And the Grateful Dead.
Sara
Daniel R. Reitman
On Mon, 24 Mar 1997 12:43:05 GMT, Fan...@netdepot.com (le Fantome de
l'Opera) wrote:
>. . . .
>I also think that many Americans have more knowledge of classical
>music than we think we do because of Disney and Warner Brothers -- how
>many people would recognize the opening notes to "Peter and the Wolf"
>and see the animation in their head?
Probably about as many as could hear the William Tell Overture and
imagine the Lone Ranger.
Dan, ad nauseam
Sara Hively
coates (coa...@is.nyu.edu) wrote:
: Brian's belief that 20th century music is "garbage" is so utterly wrong
: that I really don't think it worth critiquing. The list of brilliant and
: beautiful music composed in the 20th century is long, perhaps longer than
: that for the 19th century, if for no other reason than there are more
: composers these days. Of course, one actually has to *listen* to the
: music before one can love it.
: So for the sake of popularizing composers I love, I would add Adams,
: Glass, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Cage...
: And to add composers in the jazz tradition: Ellington, Basie, Gil Evans,
: Miles Davis, Coltrane, McLaughlin, Threadgill, Metheny, Towner, the
: Marsalis clan, etc.
Alas for my newsfeed - only just got this and wanted to say yes, yes, yes.
And add Benjamin Britten and Carl Orff.
I actually really do not like a lot of 19th C. classical music very much -
a lot of the Romantic stuff that gets played on the radio. I mostly
listen to the 18th C. and before, and the 20th C.
For some reason the Star Wars theme just started playing in my head again.
Sara
Chris Lyons
le Fantome de l'Opera (Fan...@netdepot.com) wrote:
:
: "Hark! I hear a white horse coming!"
Isn't acid great? I just love the way you can *hear* the colors!!
--
_______________________________________________________________
cly...@cris.com http://www.cris.com/~clyons
"And when you lose control,
You'll reap the harvest you have sown."--Pink Floyd, "Dogs"
Kat3033
Music can be approached and analyzed in many different ways, but I'd hate
to forget its incredible value as a social force.
Great music and/or art doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's "technical"
aspects I think, are subsumed to its cultural context on most occasions.
Studies have shown that "musicians" are wired to process music
differently, and on many more levels than the average listener. So what
is the average listener processing? And how important is the technical
processing of music *really* compared to all the other factors that go
into anyone's enjoyment of it?
On some level, music-listening (and making) is an expression and
celebration of *sociability.* Music is about making meaning -- and
"liking" genres of music can't really be separated from its social
meaning. For example, what if (shudder) a listener had liked Alanis
Morrissette's music before she was famous, before anyone had heard of her?
Subsequently, the listener had been convinced that her lyrics, her
persona (as presented through the press) and all the rest just aren't
"cool" and that she's a poser. Perhaps her simplest musical abilities had
been undermined and questioned. Why gosh, the listener had originally
thought that Alanis's pop/angst had been fine, but his or her enjoyment
has been diminished. Now they've stopped listening and processing her
music the same way. [God knows, *I* can't hear "it's like raaaaain"
without having had a whole set of meanings attached, courtesy of asg-x].
;)]
Yet, what if I was a 13-year-old girl who *didn't* like Alanis the first
time out, but found through repeated listenings, her peers' value of
Alanis, and her own admiration of her as a strong woman, that she really
*dug* her. What's wrong with that? Nothing. Choosing to "like" music is
subjective, but it is also about choosing identity and sharing its
context.
Heck, I know a music aficionado who believed he had such a sophisticated
ear that he would only listen to hugely esoteric jazz. Now, I've played a
few instruments in my day, taken music theory, the whole shebang -- this
stuff was largely unlistenable to *anyone* else. The problem was, he
claimed he couldn't *stand* to listen to anything else. It was just too
simple for him to process. Blech.
I realized that this was a pathetic thing -- and hugely unsociable. He
probably had trained himself to only like esoteric jazz, but he was
missing out on a billion other emotional and cultural uses of music as a
result. And lots of discussions on asg-x, come to think about it. Which
is why the "Music Shelf of Shame" etc. threads have been such fun -- hey,
let's summon up the bravery to discuss our "bad" cultural choices, and why
we may have enjoy(ed) them.
Culture does define art, as much if not more than the artist. And we all
make culture, and as its constituents, manufacture its meaning.
Kat/NYC
"Life is a simile" -- Terry Carr
coates
Micky DuPree (mdu...@tiac.net[snip-to-reply]) wrote:
: In any form or genre, it's necessary to be literate in the language and
: the conventions in order for the communicative experience to be
: successful. If the signs fall down, the signifieds won't be identified.
This I accept. It's also why Brian's view -- that he can plausibly assert
that certain types of music *are* garbage (as opposed to his view that
certain types of music sound like garbage *to him*) -- is not one I
accept. Consider:
"A Dutch documentary on New Guinea appeared on television. The film
relates the adventures of a group of ethnologists, the first to cross the
mountain range that divides the immense island. One episode shows the
arrival ... at a little settlement of pygmies... who, fearing magic
contamination, ask them to keep their distance. But since curiosity
proves more powerful than ritual prohibitions, a few moments later the
savages are gathered around a radio set. The Dutch expedition coincided
with the first Soviet journeys to outer space, so that the television
viewer is offered a most surprising image: in a remote jungle ravine, a
group of Stone Age pygmies hears a news report from the Age of Technology.
The savages did not understand the words...but if an interpreter had
translated ... they would have immediately translated the scientific
language into mythical and magical terms. ... Even if the language of the
aborigines had been able to express the ideas and concepts implicit in the
notion of *space travel*, the translation would have transformed this fact
into a myth, a miracle, or an act of magic. ...
"At another point in the film the viewer sees the pygmies gathered round a
phonograph. Suddenly all of them take to their heels. What had made them
flee? The intolerable, unbearable voice of Edith Piaf! The explorers
listen, enthralled, to the song; the pygmies cover their ears and run off
in terror. Piaf's song was of love and violent jealousy, a theme that in
the West goes back to the 12th century and Provencal poetry. If someone
had translated the lyrics for the pygmies, their fear would most probably
have turned into revulsion. Their reaction might well have been no
different from that of the Spaniards confronted with the human sacrifices
of the Aztecs. ...
"The understanding of others is a contradictory ideal: it asks that we
change without changing, that we be other without ceasing to be
ourselves."
Octavio Paz, Convergences
coates
Micky DuPree (mdu...@tiac.net[snip-to-reply]) wrote:
: :: But surely the analogy between mathematics and art breaks down
: :: eventually. Don't they serve different purposes?
: ...'art' isn't just 'stuff people like.' Otherwise, a beautiful scene
: in nature would be art.
I'll buy that.
: ... art isn't
: just 'stuff people do that other people like' either. That definition
: is too open; it loses any utility.
Well, how about:
art is stuff people do that people like for its
own sake (i.e., not as a means to something else)
This could encompass both math (of a certain sort), and painting, while
narrowing things down a bit. (Some math, and some painting, serves as a
means -- helping accountants keep track of beans, helping someone
diversify their investments.) To narrow a bit more, I suspect
"imagination" or "creativity" would need to figure in, although I don't
think that excludes math.
Ah, but I see you are already there:
: Art can have endless uses and endless interpretations, but as near as I
: can work it out, it all seems to have at least one communicative aspect
: in common, and it all seems to have at least one noninstrumental
: purpose.
Yes, communication also ought to figure in. But I'll note that your
proposed definitional boundaries don't exclude math. (Which is fine with
me.)
Arend Abel
I'll propose a definition:
Art is material created by one mind for communication to other minds
through one of the five senses with a primary purpose of appealing to the
emotional centers in those other minds rather than their reason.
As a lawyer, for example, I write a lot of prose. I don't consider most of
it art. My really best stuff is artistic, though, in that it contains well
designed sentences and paragraphs, including rhythms and alliteration that
convey an impression beyond what the mere words, deconstructed, would.
I don't know enough about abstract math to offer an opinion on whether it
falls within the definition.
Arend
--
Those who don't like what is going on but lurk or leave are
like voters who don't vote and then complain about government.
-- Deck Deckert on misc.writing
chie...@uoknor.edu
coates wrote:
> Consider:
>
> "A Dutch documentary on New Guinea appeared on tele-
> vision... One episode shows the arrival ... at a
> little settlement of pygmies...
Nice observations, but, uhhh, aren't the Pygmies from AFRICA?
coates
I agree with much of what Dr. Funkenstein (a/k/a Kat) wrote here, but
there's some tension between this --
: What's wrong with that? Nothing. Choosing to "like" music is
: subjective, but it is also about choosing identity and sharing its
: context.
-- and this --
: I realized that this was a pathetic thing -- and hugely unsociable. He
: probably had trained himself to only like esoteric jazz, but he was
: missing out on a billion other emotional and cultural uses of music as a
: result.
-- or so it seems to me.
Choosing to like esoteric jazz[1] is as you say a self-definition (like
the young girl and Morisette). Such a choice[2] is unsociable only in the
sense that *most* people don't define themselves in the same way, or that
the audience for that sort of music is smaller than for others. We define
ourselves, frequently, as much by who we choose to exclude as by who we
choose to include. Only if a choice excludes all others (or perhaps if it
excludes some without including others that could not otherwise be
included, making the exclusion unnecessary), it can't fairly be called
unsocial.
Presumably part of the appeal of esoteric music lies in its very
difficulty -- it's a challenge. (Many) pop tunes float in and out of our
heads with such ease that they do not *demand* our attention and effort.
As a result, they (often) affect us less than music that cannot be
appreciated at all unless one is paying full attention (and maybe not even
then). All that is communicated, then, is the sharing (sociability) for
its own sake.
Now sociability is a good thing, but it's not the only endpoint of music's
capacities. Difficult music pulls us along into new social worlds -- even
if they (often) remain (largely) imaginary or inferred. That is: when I
listen to "difficult" music, I inevitably imagine an audience of
like-minded individuals, willing to suspend conventional understandings of
what is listenable and what is not. I infer that this imagined audience
is real from the fact that the CD is mass-marketed, took some effort to
make, is being reviewed etc., or by talking to others about the
experience, or participating on a jazz listserv, etc.
I open my ears, so to speak, by suppressing the immediate and inevitable
impulse to stop listening once I've figured out what I'm listening to. I
relax into listening with my imaginary audience. There then follows a
series of moments of pure acceptance -- the sounds are seemingly
unrelated, or related in ways that are unfamiliar -- punctuated from time
to time by the inevitable impulse to construct a logic or map of what I've
heard -- I ask myself, how would I describe this? what is going on? what
is this like? (Sometimes, where my training is adequate to the task, I
think in musical terms; other times, in metaphoric terms; other times, in
analogical terms: "this is in 5/8," or "this is a calm ocean," or "this
is like 'Aqua Boogie' by Parliament".)
Eventually, even extremely difficult music can become "easy listening,"
and which point I look back at the implied trail of sounds -- moving away
from the simple, highly sociable music (whatever hits the top 10, say),
farther and farther into the "out". That look back over my shoulder feels
so fucking satisfying -- like the feeling after a hard bout of exercise,
post-orgasmic. And while I diminish the social circle who are capable or
interested in sharing with me by pursuing such difficult music, I capture
a social circle that would otherwise be unattainable were I to listen
(solely) to pop music.
This feeling was renewed recently. We were in Boston looking around and
there happened to be a concert at Berklee: Chick Corea, Roy Haynes,
Wallace Roney, Christian McBride and Kenny Garrett. They are out
promoting a CD, a tribute to Bud Powell, and most of the concert was
Powell's music, which when Powell was alive was considered wild -- as
"out" as had ever been. Powell composed in the '40s and '50s, when bop
was sweeping the field, and Charlie Parker and the young Miles Davis and
Th. Monk were revolutionizing the sound of jazz (for the worse, many
lovers of the older sounds of Swing and New Orleans and Big Band thought,
and still think). Powell was farther out than even them -- was a young,
promising composer and pianist. (He was physically beaten when he was
inducted into the Army, however, and suffered brain damage, apparently,
and while he returned to music, his career never returned to its early
promise.) In any event, his music *today* sounds mild, traditional,
"easy" -- by comparison to much of what came after, from free jazz to
Braxton and like-minded classically influenced composers. So much so that
in order to transform the Berklee event into something that people would
love and remember, Corea and Co. had to move beyond the tradition -- had
to take the audience slowly, imperceptibly, farther and farther out as the
evening moved on.
In the last song, they started with a farely faithful version of the
well-known (within the jazz world) head of "Perdito," and then each
soloist took greater and greater liberties: first with melody, then with
harmony, then with rhythm, then with structure, then with the fuzzy lines
between "music" and "noise." Kenny Garrett started by mimicking Roney's
simple, melancholically voiced notes held for long, long moments (while
the rhythm section played the verse and chorus beneath). He then began to
work on a few simple phrases that were only distant echoes of the original
melody, playing them over and over, insistently, like a child banging his
head against the wall.
After a few minutes of taking these phrases up and down the register, up
and down the dynamic range, Garrett began to blow with increasingly
insistent emotion, mostly (to me) sounding like anger and fear, but in any
event, something much more wild and urgent than the calm, cool voice in
which he had started. Meanwhile, the rhythm section began to experiment:
Corea began banging on his piano's strings with mallets as if he were
playing a xylophone; McBride began bowing his upright. With each phrase
variation, Garrett got wilder and wilder, freer and freer, more and more
like a screaming animal and less and less like a highly intellectual
musician.
And (most of) the audience was right there with him, each step of the way.
They began to whoop and call out, like a sports' audience, or a
congregation in a revivalist church. In part it was because there was a
heavy sprinkling of Berklee kids and their musically inclined parents, and
in part it was because the $26.50 ticket screened out most people who
aren't already jazz fans, but in part it was also because the band had
slowly taken the audience from a recognizable, conventional, melodic song,
by degrees, to this crazed and almost frightening moment. (I know our cat
would have been frightened by the sounds.) But because of the social
experience -- here, an actual, non-imaginary audience of several hundred
like-minded people -- the terror and rage blasting out of Garrett's alto
was not frightening but a glorious Dionysian high.
In the last solo, Haynes, the drummer, and his playing was as unstructured
and unconventional as I've ever heard, and it didn't matter one bit -- it
was music, pure and delightful -- and delightful precisely (in part)
because it *was* "nothing more" than "unlistenable" "noise," a seemingly
unrelated series of bangs and silences. When, finally, the entire band
kicked back in with the now bizarrely familiar chorus of "Perdito," the
entire audience erupted with applause, soon followed by a standing
ovation.
Music *is* social -- but it can be social and (excludingly) difficult at
the same time.
--
john coates "Sleep is perhaps the only among life's great
pleasures which need not be of short duration."
-- R. Zelazny
[1] I note the obvious -- that *all* robust genres of music contain
examples of "difficult" or "esoteric" music -- not just classical and jazz
but rock as well. What function does "harsh" pop like punk rock or
neo-punk like NIN serve but to render difficult (and somewhat exclusive,
as a necessary result) the listening experience?
[2] I don't defend your friend's belief that learning to listen to
difficult music ruins one's ability to listen to simple music, for the
simple reason that difficult music can be broken down into a thousand
different kinds of simple music, which can be appreciated in series.
Anyone who pretends to be able to exhaust the appreciative capacities of
simple music in general lacks imagination, I suspect.
Brian K. Yoder
Where do you think New Guinea is?
--Brian
--
+------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+
| Brian K. Yoder | "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human |
| byo...@netcom.com| freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the |
| US Networx, Inc. | creed of slaves." -- William Pitt |
| LAN Doctor | http://www.primenet.com/~byoder/ |
+------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+
Sara Hively
Arend Abel (aa...@inetdirect.net) wrote:
coates wrote:
: > Well, how about:
: >
: > art is stuff people do that people like for its
: > own sake (i.e., not as a means to something else)
: >
: > This could encompass both math (of a certain sort), and painting, while
: > narrowing things down a bit. (Some math, and some painting, serves as a
: > means -- helping accountants keep track of beans, helping someone
: > diversify their investments.) To narrow a bit more, I suspect
: > "imagination" or "creativity" would need to figure in, although I don't
: > think that excludes math.
: >
: > Ah, but I see you are already there:
: >
: > : Art can have endless uses and endless interpretations, but as near as I
: > : can work it out, it all seems to have at least one communicative aspect
: > : in common, and it all seems to have at least one noninstrumental
: > : purpose.
: >
: > Yes, communication also ought to figure in. But I'll note that your
: > proposed definitional boundaries don't exclude math. (Which is fine with
: > me.)
: I'll propose a definition:
: Art is material created by one mind for communication to other minds
: through one of the five senses with a primary purpose of appealing to the
: emotional centers in those other minds rather than their reason.
That pretty much rules out a hell of a lot of the contents of many art
museums - not just the 20th Century stuff either. Lots of art was
actually meant to appeal not to the emotions, but directly to the senses,
and to communicate primarily the wealth and status of whoever commissioned
it. A nude portrait of a mistress, an inlaid chair - much the same intent
and use. Sometimes more was in there, sometimes not.
And then there's Nabokov (at least as some readers perceive him). And...
: As a lawyer, for example, I write a lot of prose. I don't consider most of
: it art. My really best stuff is artistic, though, in that it contains well
: designed sentences and paragraphs, including rhythms and alliteration that
: convey an impression beyond what the mere words, deconstructed, would.
Time to distinguish between artistry and craftmanship here, I'd say.
Good luck.
(Hint - there wasn't much distinction between 'art' and 'craft' until
about a couple of hundred years ago. The original meaning of the English
word 'art' made it almost a synonym with 'skill'.)
Then, hey - objectively describe the distinction between art and interior
decoration.
Sara
Ed Poe
kat...@aol.com (Kat3033) wrote:
>On some level, music-listening (and making) is an expression and
>celebration of *sociability.* Music is about making meaning
... <snip>
I just have to throw in a great line from Rilke here:
"True singing is a different breath, about nothing."
>Culture does define art, as much if not more than the artist. And we all
>make culture, and as its constituents, manufacture its meaning.
I'm not sure I agree with your post, but then I don't think I disagree
either. But then I'm a musician. :-)
I guess I do agree with what I think your point is (the last lines I left
there). It is very difficult to consider music that is outside of your
own culture, without some grounding in the fundamentals of that new
music. Otherwise, what you hear is just odd assembled sounds.
That said, there aren't necessarily skills needed to hear Beethoven and
understand, but exposure and an understanding of at least part of what
you're hearing. If that exposure and understanding come from
socialization, that's one thing. If they come from education, it's
another thing entirely.
I won't deny that you need some sort of grounding to "get" a lot of
musics, but I'm not sure that the grounding is cultural. I think it has
as much to do with exposure to media and "popular" culture (which is
determined by marketing more than cultural values anyway), as it has to do
with actual interaction with peers. Culture has much more to do with
community than it has to do with what's on TV that night.
It's not harder to "get" Beethoven or Miles Davis, than it is to "get"
Alanis or Nirvana. It's just harder to get exposed to them.
- e
For the purposes of the Berne Convention, the copyright in this message is owned by Edward Adrian Poe. All rights reserved. No warranties, express or implied. Not responsible for loss resulting from misuse, abuse, neglect, theft, acts of God, or anything else. No unauthorized duplication, except that covered by generally accepted "Fair Use" practices. Unsolicited commercial email read for $500 per message. Consider yourself disclaimed.
Marco Anglesio
Brian K. Yoder (byo...@netcom.com) wrote:
: In article <333DAE...@uoknor.edu> chie...@uoknor.edu writes:
: >coates wrote:
: > > Consider:
: > >
: > > "A Dutch documentary on New Guinea appeared on tele-
: > > vision... One episode shows the arrival ... at a
: > > little settlement of pygmies...
:
: >Nice observations, but, uhhh, aren't the Pygmies from AFRICA?
:
: Where do you think New Guinea is?
Immediately north of Australia. Where do you think it is, Brian?
Objectively, I mean.
Kat3033
Arend wrote:
In article <5hhmqk$qkf$2...@news.nyu.edu>, coa...@is.nyu.edu (coates) wrote:
> Micky DuPree (mdu...@tiac.net[snip-to-reply]) wrote:
>
> : :: But surely the analogy between mathematics and art breaks down
> : :: eventually. Don't they serve different purposes?
>
> : ...'art' isn't just 'stuff people like.' Otherwise, a beautiful scene
> : in nature would be art.
>
> I'll buy that.
>
> : ... art isn't
> : just 'stuff people do that other people like' either. That definition
> : is too open; it loses any utility.
>
>
> art is stuff people do that people like for its
> own sake (i.e., not as a means to something else)
>
> This could encompass both math (of a certain sort), and painting, while
> narrowing things down a bit. (Some math, and some painting, serves as a
> means -- helping accountants keep track of beans, helping someone
> diversify their investments.) To narrow a bit more, I suspect
> "imagination" or "creativity" would need to figure in, although I don't
> think that excludes math.
>
> Ah, but I see you are already there:
>
> : Art can have endless uses and endless interpretations, but as near as
I
> : can work it out, it all seems to have at least one communicative
aspect
> : in common, and it all seems to have at least one noninstrumental
> : purpose.
>
> Yes, communication also ought to figure in. But I'll note that your
> proposed definitional boundaries don't exclude math. (Which is fine
with
> me.)
>
:I'll propose a definition:
:Art is material created by one mind for communication to other minds
:through one of the five senses with a primary purpose of appealing to the
:emotional centers in those other minds rather than their reason.
The only problem with this definition is that it doesn't recognize art
forms whose primary purpose might be utilitarian -- i.e. folk art such as
quilt-making; ceramics, and perhaps even the "Shaker" tradition of decor
and furniture-making, which was "design for utility" -- but has become
all the rage in recent years as a form of interior design.
Additionally, some art is purely about intellectual concepts. For example
(now who is that artist?) the famous painting of "White on White."
Nothing much there as an aesthetic, but it is about an abstract concept.
Jenny Holzer's work also provokes the intellect I think, as much or more
than her word juxtapositions evoke emotion.
Kat3033
John Coates wrote:
>I agree with much of what Dr. Funkenstein (a/k/a Kat) wrote here, but
>there's some tension between this --
>: What's wrong with that? Nothing. Choosing to "like" music is
>: subjective, but it is also about choosing identity and sharing its
>: context.
>-- and this --
>: I realized that this was a pathetic thing -- and hugely unsociable. He
>: probably had trained himself to only like esoteric jazz, but he was
>: missing out on a billion other emotional and cultural uses of music as
a
>: result.
>-- or so it seems to me.
I disagree about there being tension between these two statements --
making choices musically means choosing an identity. I chose to make a
judgement about that identity.
>Choosing to like esoteric jazz[1] is as you say a self-definition (like
>the young girl and Morisette). Such a choice[2] is unsociable only in
the
>sense that *most* people don't define themselves in the same way, or that
>the audience for that sort of music is smaller than for others. We
define
>ourselves, frequently, as much by who we choose to exclude as by who we
>choose to include. Only if a choice excludes all others (or perhaps if
it
>excludes some without including others that could not otherwise be
>included, making the exclusion unnecessary), it can't fairly be called
>unsocial.
Point taken. Yet he was an incredible music snob, which I tend to dislike
if not backed up well enough (which it wasn't). And in his world, there
were *no others* that enjoyed his musical choices. He enjoyed his music in
isolation. Therefore, he could fairly be called unsocial. My issue
(perhaps not clearly articulated) is that he had narrowed his musical life
down to the point that he stated that *all other music was unpleasant.*
Which meant that he may have consciously or unconsciously trapped himself
socially through his own music, and created a scenario where everybody
else's musical choices were to be somewhat disparaged. Choosing what
music you like *best* has all sorts of inherent meanings, but I pity the
soul that can't listen to anything else. Though an extremely popular
dope-smoking center, his room was often vacated or suffered through over
through the music he chose to play.
>Presumably part of the appeal of esoteric music lies in its very
>difficulty -- it's a challenge...
Which actually doesn't contradict my initial argument, necessarily. My
point was that: "'technical" aspects are subsumed to cultural context on
most occasions. Studies have shown that "musicians" are wired to process
music differently, and on many more levels than the average listener. So
what is the average listener processing? And how important is the
technical processing of music *really* compared to all the other factors
that go into anyone's enjoyment of it?"
John Coates is not remotely an average listener, fortunately. You process
music technically on a level not even close to the "average" listener.
Your choice of listening material, and your subsequent enjoyment is
largely based on "technical" criteria -- the actual processing of theme,
beat, etc. wired through a musician's brain. That doesn't mean that you
aren't processing it viscerally, but that your enjoyment stems more the
actual music itself. And the cultural connotations may or may not be a
major concern to you. Yet...you also have wide-ranging tastes, and an
openness to music that I appreciate. Therefore, your esoteric musical
choices can be tolerated. :)
>Now sociability is a good thing, but it's not the only endpoint of
music's
>capacities. Difficult music pulls us along into new social worlds --
even
>if they (often) remain (largely) imaginary or inferred..
Well, duh. Music has tremendous capabilities, but is also a social force.
And that is something that is often ignored in discussions, and in fact,
discussions about music can also be more about identity, although the
arguers don't often realize it.
Kat "Likes to dance around the apartment listening to Janet Jackson" Stein
coates
: Well, duh.
Don't you be duhing me, Miss Regina. Just because I stood you up for
brunch...
Heard the new _Morphine_ cd? I particularly like "French Fries with
Pepper" and "Empty Box". Want a tape? <grovel grovel>
--
john coates "It is certain man must become perfect."
-- Herbert Spencer
Micky DuPree
Continuing with March '97, I had to choose one from a number of fine
articles in this thread to hang some ruminations on.
In article <5h644v$2...@newstand.syr.edu>, shi...@newstand.syr.edu (Sara
Hively) writes:
: Micky DuPree (mdu...@tiac.net[snip-to-reply]) wrote:
:: In article <5grp9m$9...@newstand.syr.edu>, shi...@newstand.syr.edu
:: (Sara Hively) writes:
::
::: I would also say that Beethoven and Bach are not 'commonly
::: accessible' in that you do need to learn how to listen to them -
::: just as you need to learn how to see a Jackson Pollack painting.
::
:: I would say that Beethoven and Bach are "commonly accessible," in the
:: sense that those composers at least are widely disseminated even
:: among nonspecialist audiences in our society. They observe certain
:: traditional Western musical conventions of tonality, structure,
:: expectation, and surprise that every hearing Western child has a
:: rudimentary grasp of by the time he or she starts school. I'm not
:: saying that every hearing Western child is going to master
:: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on the first listen, but it's not going to
:: be completely and utterly nonsensical to him either,
:
: Incomprehensible and boring, however, it is very likely to be. Seen
: that to be quite common. And I think that carries over to the math as
: well - there are certainly higher math concepts that can be described
: simply, incorporated into popular works, etc. Being familiar with a
: melody of Bach doesn't mean you can hear Bach's music let alone really
: understand it. I don't, god knows.
:
: I will grant you, that higher math has not made significant
: contributions to weddings and TV themes.
I'm going to ramble a bit in order to fit the specific answer into a
larger framework. There is a kind of Oneness-of-it-all level at which
it's possible to consider all communication a form of art. Simply from
a semantic, utilitarian point of view, however, I don't find this to be
a particularly useful application of the word 'art' since it doesn't
allow one to mentally or emotionally organize the different experiences
of communication.
It is possible to admix aesthetic judgment with ethical, metaphysical,
and utilitarian criteria, for example, and one can still find the result
aesthetically pleasing, but despite the fact that in my own personal
aesthetic, form follows substance, I still find it more intellectually
precise to recognize a philosophical division of labor between the
criteria. E.g., just because a work of art may promote ethics I find
laudable doesn't mean it's a *good* work of art, unless the style does a
skillful job of communicating the substance. (The more-heart-than-art
genre can be particularly annoying, in fact.) Some religious sects
judge art on the basis of conformity to doctrine. The Soviets judged
art on its political utility. But there's still something left over
when you've stripped out the instrumental substance.
Within those confines, I can see a case for both a broad definition of
'art' as that which encompasses all technique for communication, and a
narrow definition of 'art' as a more socially, economically, and even
politically constrained category of activity. The first definition
would include most things that fall under the heading of 'style,' and
would include such categories as 'decoration,' 'design,' 'fashion,' and
many kinds of 'artifice.' It would also apply to mathematics,
especially to mathematics that has the capacity to be elegantly
expressed. That definition is a bit too broad for everyday purposes,
but it is useful for mentally organizing certain aspects of human
activity that aren't in themselves instrumentally substantive.
More commonly, though, we use 'art' to mean a role for both people and
their activity that has particular social delineations (art as
deliberately created beauty for the purpose of giving pleasure to others
in defined times and spaces), economic delineations (art as an industry,
art as a profession or as a consuming and respected avocation, art as a
recognized charitable institution, art as a capital commodity and
financial investment), and political delineations (my art is art but
yours is mere entertainment; publicly subsidized art as a subject for
democratic controversy). In common currency, any and all of the above
can be controversial, but usually only as to exactly where the
demarcations should be drawn, not as to whether they should be drawn at
all. Therefore you can find people arguing about whether this type of
painting or that type of painting should receive an NEA grant, but you
simply don't hear arguments about whether a mathematician should get an
NEA grant to produce a proof, even though, e.g., an elegantly accessible
book on introductory differential calculus arguably ought to get such a
grant, and an elegant argument in favor of such might well deserve a
grant all by itself. (<Eliza bait> Or an elegant argument in favor of
socialized art. </Eliza bait>)
Accessibility is one of those criteria that spark a lot of debate about
where exactly to draw the line around art, and it can go both pro and
con. Some would say that the more inaccessible a work is, the more
refined it is and therefore the more worthy it is to be called art.
Others would hold that it's not much of an art if it doesn't touch the
general human condition enough to be apprehended by general humanity.
And what exactly is accessibility? Does it describe a situation where
someone has the ability to like a work? Or is a work not accessible
until someone has the ability to articulate the techniques and
conventions that go into it? If, through cultural familiarity, I am
able to detect adherence to a 12-note scale and the back-to-home
conventions of Western music in a piece, but due to lack of formal
education, I am completely unable to verbalize this or even
conceptualize this in those terms, is Western music therefore
inaccessible to me? And yet, without being able to tell you why, even
children will still often be able to tell you when a musician has hit a
wrong note in a piece they've never heard before. The inarticulate
intuitively know the language of montage, camera movement, and _mis en
scene_ if they've been raised in a cinematic culture, even if they
cannot themselves make a movie or describe the effects of the editing.
They can tell you that one jump cut makes sense while another "is a
mistake," even if they can't tell you why. The human brain soaks up
techniques of communication like a sponge. Art, even sophisticated art,
can gain access to us without us ever even trying.
As my boss likes to say (and it's probably a very old observation), most
of our aesthetic experiences are only partially successful. If the only
thing that someone gets out of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" is that it's got
a catchy hook but it's not much for dancing, he has arguably not gotten
everything there is to get out of the piece. I get more out of it than
that, but I'm not a musician, and I'm undoubtedly not getting everything
out of it either. But are even trained musicians getting everything out
of it that Beethoven put into it? Does one has to be Beethoven himself
(deafness apart) before the aesthetic experience of listening to
Beethoven can therefore be deemed a success? If the first fellow enjoys
his experience of Beethoven, are you going to tell him it's inaccessible
to him? Is it inaccessible to me? How much does one have to be
formally educated in before one may be officially certified as finally
understanding a work of art? What's the cutoff?
For form's sake, I'll make the unoriginal observation that aesthetic
valuation is incurably subjective. Whether one "knows" art or not, you
still can't get past the finality of, "But I know what I like." This
doesn't preclude discussion of art, but I want to make clear that I
realize it's important to stick to the things we can productively
evaluate rather than everyone simply reciting a list of what they like
and don't like, and then falling silent. It is possible to talk about
what a work of art tries to do, what it actually does, and whether it's
therefore possible to think of it as a success (self-fulfilling rather
than personally fulfilling). But would we have to ask Beethoven himself
whether getting someone to play the "Ode to Joy" at their wedding proves
"accessibility" before we could consider the question answered?
Now, having gone to all that trouble to put a line of rubber traffic
cones between 'art' and 'not-art,' I'll happily zig and zag around them.
(Stunt philosopher depicted in photo, but feel free to try this at
home.) All categories of knowledge and activity are artificial. They
conceptually exist for our convenience, but the boundaries between them
reflect our minds somewhat better than they reflect the knowledge or the
activities themselves. (Is art the proper subject of aesthetics, a
branch of philosophy, or is philosophy, as a subset of the literature of
the written essay, the proper subject of art?) It is possible to see
the giving of aesthetic pleasure as a moral good, and the creation of
art as an expression of the Divine. Teasing apart form from function,
style from substance, aesthetics from ethics, and beauty from God is
itself as much art as science. If reason and analysis were enough to
apprehend art, art and therefore the question would never arise.
I have no idea if that question has been answered.
-Micky,
for whom the various paragraphs above fell into place while she was
listening to Kajagoogoo.
--
"You don't need education to tell you what's art. You need
education to tell you what's crap."
-- Nishan Bichajian, my life-drawing instructor