Analysis on "Youth Culture"
Tom Sacold
What an absolute waste of broadcasting time. A load of sociologists going
on and on about the so called importance of pop music!!!!
What a bunch of moronic wankers.
Phil Wilson
Would you say that classical music was more 'important'? Why?
One of the enduring myths of modern life is the relevance of qualities
read into music (from moral uprightness to socio-political
commitment), none of which is actually present in music at all. The
reaction to this (which, I'll guess, you are on the verge of giving
us) is that the 'qualities' supposedly found in classical music (or
Jazz, or any other minority form) are the counterweight to the 'bad'
qualities found in 'pop'.
Yet this argument (clearly a variation on the 'mass-taste is by nature
of low quality' arguments beloved of bourgeois since 1832 (1)) is
false.
The reason classical music has the overtone of superiority is purely
that taste is almost without exception learned and class-based, and
that certain tastes thus come to be associated with certain 'in' or
out' groups with shared moral and social outlooks. Guilt (or
innocence) by association in fact. Nothing to do with the actual
music.
Take the waltz - initially scandalous, then legitimised by association
with 'classical' composers and OK. Yet the character of the music
remained
stubbornly exactly the same (so Ravel could write 'La Valse' in
attempt
to restore some of the scandal. He failed, because the
'Impressionists'
had themselves by now been legitimised etc etc). Most of these
scandals
were tempests in a (perfumed) china cup.
(1)The death of Haydn, the last real 'peasant' composer, outside
Russia
perhaps.
Cheers,
Phil
John of Aix
> Tom Sacold wrote:
>> What an absolute waste of broadcasting time. A load of sociologists
>> going on and on about the so called importance of pop music!!!!
>>
>> What a bunch of moronic wankers.
>
> Would you say that classical music was more 'important'? Why?
>
> One of the enduring myths of modern life is the relevance of qualities
> read into music (from moral uprightness to socio-political
> commitment), none of which is actually present in music at all. The
> reaction to this (which, I'll guess, you are on the verge of giving
> us) is that the 'qualities' supposedly found in classical music (or
> Jazz, or any other minority form) are the counterweight to the 'bad'
> qualities found in 'pop'.
> Yet this argument (clearly a variation on the 'mass-taste is by nature
> of low quality' arguments beloved of bourgeois since 1832 (1)) is
> false.
Personally I've always preferred 'classical music' but as a youth I
played, as did most other young people at the time, in various groups
and listened to the latest records. Classical and pop are both music, in
the west the thirteen half tones of the scale rearranged as one wishes.
I find Mozart as boring as hell most of the time and think that Gerry
Marsden's "You'll never walk alone is sublime", as is 'Im Abendrot from
R. Strauss' 4 Letzte Lieder, Ligeti's Requiem and Gigliola Cinquetti's
1964 Eurovision winner "non ho l'eta", not to mention Om Khalthoum's "Al
Atlal" and sundry others. Good music always finds the ear to hear it. No
section is intrinsically good or bad IMO, they are just appealing to
different emotions as you say, creating different scenarios and dreams.
>
> The reason classical music has the overtone of superiority is purely
> that taste is almost without exception learned and class-based, and
> that certain tastes thus come to be associated with certain 'in' or
> out' groups with shared moral and social outlooks. Guilt (or
> innocence) by association in fact. Nothing to do with the actual
> music.
I am the product of a working class family whose only real contact with
music was a mother who
would occasionally pause while working when a voice on the radio sung an
operatic aria (though sometimes she would comment that they had a
'bellyache'), often 'Un bel di'...' from Madama Butterfly by Puccini,
sung by Victoria de los Angeles I seem to remember, her version being
popular at the time. I discovered Sibelius 1st symphony at the age of 14
which changed my life and gave me enormous succour during the trials of
puberty. I went on from there.
Having entered the classical world I have come to realise that is is
full of snobs and wafflers. They are to be pitied in my opinion, for as
far as I can see such attitudes are inimical to a real feeling for
music, a transcendant thing and the greatest of arts I think, for what
other can set a mood with just three or four signs, three or four notes?
> Take the waltz - initially scandalous, then legitimised by association
> with 'classical' composers and OK. Yet the character of the music
> remained
> stubbornly exactly the same (so Ravel could write 'La Valse' in
> attempt
> to restore some of the scandal. He failed, because the
> 'Impressionists'
> had themselves by now been legitimised etc etc). Most of these
> scandals
> were tempests in a (perfumed) china cup.
I can't say I know the story about Ravel trying to createa scandal witrh
"La Valse" (I'll look it up) but while we're on the subject of Maurice
R. (unique), I once had occasion to hear his "Bolero" played as he
apparently intended it, that is not only with the repetition and gradual
build up but a repetition of each bar as tyhe previous ne ended, four
times! I've got a pretty good ear but it was completely unintelligible
and he very wisely dropped the idea.
> (1)The death of Haydn, the last real 'peasant' composer, outside
> Russia
> perhaps.
Haydn, a peasant composer? That's a new one on me. Why so?
ROBBIE
"Phil Wilson" <philip...@talk21.com> wrote in message
news:aLWdnUPm6Og...@bt.com...
>
> The reason classical music has the overtone of superiority is purely
> that taste is almost without exception learned and class-based, and
> that certain tastes thus come to be associated with certain 'in' or
> out' groups with shared moral and social outlooks. Guilt (or
> innocence) by association in fact. Nothing to do with the actual
> music.
What crap. Your still in reaction to certain fusty outlooks you witnessed
forty years ago aren't you? I love meeting old hippies/marxists/nihilists -
the spite they show to reason and to the human spirit itself never fails to
provoke appalled laughter. Taste being 'learned and class-based' - fucking
hell, Philly, did you cherry pick that one from some old foxed paperback by
a pipe-smoking communist of 1953? How utterly moronic of you to try and
bring the class notion of your sour youth into the art form known as music.
You've outdone yourself you really have.
Looking back at the history of pop music I see that it had quite a rep among
serious composers until the forces of technology and low capitalism
destroyed it. I say serious composers because to use music to expressive
something beyond the moronic takes a serious and imaginative mind. There is
of course a world of difference between Stock Aitken and Waterman and Ludwig
Van Beethoven. By the way, I consider writers of good quality popular music
serious composers, but there aren't many of them around anymore.
ROBBIE
Phil Wilson
> Haydn, a peasant composer? That's a new one on me. Why so?
Nearly all composers born before 1800 would have been peasants (in the
Continental sense - 'paysan' 'Bauer') or lower-class people. J.S Bach
was certainly of village peasant stock (which does not imply poor or
unrefined - many were neither), as was Haydn (I've seen his birthplace
in Eisenstadt - very, very modest), and at best Mozart was our
equivalent of lower-middle-class. The reason for that was the aversion
imbued in the aristocracy by Greek-based classical education for
'techne' and working with the hands - this was considered (like all
actual physical work) vulgar. The fact that musicians had to share the
table (in Germany 'Tisch' - the aristos had their exclusive 'Tafel')
of the servants (for that is basically what they were) caused, and
still causes, some pain amongst those who share the past-it 19C idea
that 'art' is a form of the sacred, and the artist a 'genius'.
The practice and appreciation of classical music was never associated
with the poorest people (and still today instruments have to be
provided by schools for the less well-off). That is the *only* reason
*classical* music is associated with 'quality' and 'higher-class'. All
the other technical features that supposedly distinguish it ('form'
etc, 'correct' pitching and intervals and lack of 'puerile' melodies -
heard any Liszt or Meyerbeer lately?) have exact parallels in pop and
Jazz, though the latter do not share its cachet, for social reasons.
Me? I like Jazz the most, because as old Hubert P. Osgood said (1922?)
'Jazz puts the 'sin' in syncopation!'.
I can't think of any other reason for listening to music, thank
whatever. However, like pop it is not short of adherents who wish to
prove it's really a kind of 'classical' music in disguise. This is
because (*wild but true generalisation alert*) most white people don't
understand Jazz (e.g. they think 1920s 'novelty music' is 'funny'
when in reality it is based on age-old ritual conceptions of bodily
abandon (including the frankly erotic) - frowned on in genteel circles
(1) - and deeply serious - the nearest though imperfect European
parallel is the circus-clown - Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk
come to mind as being in that tradition) and secretly feel inferior to
classical. Hence the desire, rampant in America, to sacralise it by
including it on the 'curriculum'. Check out "rec.music.bluenote".
'Educationalism' rules with a vengeance there.
And anyway not all pop is 'youth' culture, as perusing a photo of any
'rock' gig will show. The audiences are full of people who, like me,
can't get it up as often as they used to.
(1) Shows in the smallest details e.g. Prince Charles' (and Kenneth
'Civilisation' Clark's) pocketed free hand - a typical gesture of the
upper classes. You can't be embarrassed by your hand taking on a life
of its own if you sheath it.
Cheers,
Phil
Phil Wilson
What do you mean by 'serious'?
I see no difference between Stock, Aitken and Waterman and Beethoven
(I dislke both) that you haven't put there. Perhaps you could explain
the exact 'differences' for me so I can demolish them one by one?
And as for taste being class-based, I find this incontrovertible. The
people who are liable to dispute it being lower-middle-class journos
with a gnawing inferiority complex. As the lower-classes discover
'classical' (in simulacrum middlebrow form e.g. Russell Watson) the
middle- and upper classes of course will desert it, or re-interpret it
as an outwitting strategy (hence the constant appeal of 'the
avant-garde').
PS I was never, and still am not, a 'hippy', 'Marxist' or 'nihilist'
(old Nietzsche pops his head up again) as any of my school ex-friends
will attest. I have never worn jeans or beads or indeed any jewellery
at all in my life, though I did once take up the pipe in order to cut
down on cigarettes. Having failed, I ditched the pipe.
You sound just like Rousseau. He had no sense of humour either.
Cheers,
Phil
ROBBIE
> What do you mean by 'serious'?
>
A desire to express a range of serious things. Beauty, Love, Death.
> I see no difference between Stock, Aitken and Waterman and Beethoven
> (I dislke both) that you haven't put there. Perhaps you could explain
> the exact 'differences' for me so I can demolish them one by one?
Your argument is a nihilist argument whether you like it or not: you say
that there is no difference between Stock Aitken and Waterman and Beethoven.
The only truth in that is if you played them both a field of cows. You see
humanity as a field of cows, devoid of any real meaning, therefore all
cultural manifestations of human activity are meaningless to you. You remind
me of art students I knew when I studied painting; they would get a bit
stoned and read a little critical theory and then announce: paintings are
just marks on a canvas. Which of course they are; they are a great deal more
than that. Aesthetics must run to rules and it is the application of these
rules that really niggles you. So much so you have thrown yourself into the
full mire of pseudo-intellectuality. You are simply another wearisome
post-modernist among thousands of others. Are you a failed
musician/composer?
The post-modernist always talks of demolishing meaning without realising
that his creed is negated, as it were, by itself: your meaninglessness is a
creed in itself and a feeble one at that.
> And as for taste being class-based, I find this incontrovertible.
Only because like all looney lefties (and looney righties) you have no time
or respect for the individual: we're all in the cattle field according to
you. I have tons of emprical evidence of class-based taste being very
controvertible.
The
> people who are liable to dispute it being lower-middle-class journos
> with a gnawing inferiority complex. As the lower-classes discover
> 'classical'
You made me think of a book I have about Gilbert and Sullivan (one of your
favourites, I know: if only you *understood* them); at the front is a letter
of appreciation from a Kent miner written in 1950 to the author to tell him
how much he enjoyed the author's programmes on the beeb and to ask him where
he could find busts of the G and S. Your argument about music is based on a
sneering approach to the movement of capital in the recording industry. That
is a bit like forming your view of humanity through studying nothing but
Hollywood product.
(in simulacrum middlebrow form e.g. Russell Watson) the
> middle- and upper classes of course will desert it, or re-interpret it
> as an outwitting strategy (hence the constant appeal of 'the
> avant-garde').
>
Science fiction!
> PS I was never, and still am not, a 'hippy', 'Marxist' or 'nihilist'
> (old Nietzsche pops his head up again) as any of my school ex-friends
> will attest. I have never worn jeans or beads or indeed any jewellery
> at all in my life, though I did once take up the pipe in order to cut
> down on cigarettes. Having failed, I ditched the pipe.
>
> You sound just like Rousseau. He had no sense of humour either.
Sorry; but are you saying that your opinions are jokes - that would make
sense.
ROBBIE
Phil Wilson
> What crap. Your still in reaction to certain fusty outlooks you
> witnessed forty years ago aren't you? I love meeting old
> hippies/marxists/nihilists - the spite they show to reason and to
> the
> human spirit itself never fails to provoke appalled laughter. Taste
> being 'learned and class-based' - fucking hell, Philly, did you
> cherry pick that one from some old foxed paperback by a pipe-smoking
> communist of 1953? How utterly moronic of you to try and bring the
> class notion of your sour youth into the art form known as music.
> You've outdone yourself you really have.
It suddenly struck me that you think I *dislike* 'classical' music
because I regard it purely as a weapon of 'class'. YOU DOLT!!!!!
I am an amateur musician. I love (for musical reasons only) Brahms,
Schubert, Mozart, Liszt, Ravel, some Schumann, Bach, Wagner and Bizet
among others.
I dislike (for musical reasons only) Beethoven, Debussy, Rachmaninov
(except as a piano player) Aaron Copland, Martinu, Jacques Ibert,
Elgar, Sullivan, Vaughan Willams and many others - because their music
leaves me cold, and doesn't do to me what all music should. Excite the
sexual urge. Music is the pre-lingual expression of sexual desire in
nature. What other bloody reason would there be for it? The young (and
the birds) know this (1). I have no interest in composer's biographies
or
philosophies of music as art per se. Nor am I interested in the social
function of the practice of music.
The jazzmen I love, who are the equal in their field of Mozart and so
on, are Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker - the only two towering
giants for me in the music of the 20th Century. In Blues, Elmore
James, Otis Rush and Howlin' Wolf are my favourites.
Most 'pop' music leaves me cold, because despite all the yammering
about 'the beat' most of it never leaves the ground as far as I am
concerned. There are odd tracks that I like but I haven't got the time
to set to the huge task of discovering the few great tracks amongst
the dross.
(1) Coleman Hawkins knew it too. For him playing was a kind of
seduction. And it often worked.
Cheers,
Phil
Phil Wilson
> "Phil Wilson" <philip...@talk21.com> wrote in message
> news:SPSdnXTkHYl...@bt.com...
>
>> What do you mean by 'serious'?
>>
>
> A desire to express a range of serious things. Beauty, Love, Death.
This is a huge mistake. Music can express none of these things, simply
because it can't 'express' anything. It is not a language. You are
obviously finding what you want to find in it. No skin off my nose.
Cheers,
Phil
ROBBIE
> ROBBIE wrote:
> > What crap. Your still in reaction to certain fusty outlooks you
> > witnessed forty years ago aren't you? I love meeting old
> > hippies/marxists/nihilists - the spite they show to reason and to
> > the
> > human spirit itself never fails to provoke appalled laughter. Taste
> > being 'learned and class-based' - fucking hell, Philly, did you
> > cherry pick that one from some old foxed paperback by a pipe-smoking
> > communist of 1953? How utterly moronic of you to try and bring the
> > class notion of your sour youth into the art form known as music.
> > You've outdone yourself you really have.
>
> It suddenly struck me that you think I *dislike* 'classical' music
> because I regard it purely as a weapon of 'class'. YOU DOLT!!!!!
But you clearly, but not purely, see it as a weapon cof class.
>
> I am an amateur musician. I love (for musical reasons only) Brahms,
> Schubert, Mozart, Liszt, Ravel, some Schumann, Bach, Wagner and Bizet
> among others.
> I dislike (for musical reasons only) Beethoven, Debussy, Rachmaninov
> (except as a piano player) Aaron Copland, Martinu, Jacques Ibert,
> Elgar, Sullivan, Vaughan Willams and many others - because their music
> leaves me cold, and doesn't do to me what all music should. Excite the
> sexual urge. Music is the pre-lingual expression of sexual desire in
> nature. What other bloody reason would there be for it?
LOL: The sexual urge is the only feeling you have? Poor you.
ROBBIE
ROBBIE
> ROBBIE wrote:
> > "Phil Wilson" <philip...@talk21.com> wrote in message
> > news:SPSdnXTkHYl...@bt.com...
> >
> >> What do you mean by 'serious'?
> >>
> >
> > A desire to express a range of serious things. Beauty, Love, Death.
>
> This is a huge mistake. Music can express none of these things, simply
> because it can't 'express' anything. It is not a language.
But in order to describe music and its special qualities metaphorical
transfer must occur. In other words you must use terms that are not in
reality connected to that which is described. This is one of the things
you're struggling with. At your age it is rather shameful to be so
boastfully pygmified; but heck, that's the way western civilisation has
gone.
Since you snipped all my other points, I'll take it as read that you canot
refute them. Fair enough.
ROBBIE
Alan Hope
>John of Aix wrote:
>> Haydn, a peasant composer? That's a new one on me. Why so?
>Nearly all composers born before 1800 would have been peasants (in the
>Continental sense - 'paysan' 'Bauer') or lower-class people.
That's rubbish, of course. Mozart's father was a court and church
musician, which is nothing like a peasant. Haydn's father, though a
wheelwright, had been his town's mayor. Beethoven's father was a court
musician, although his grandfather had been a Belgian baker.
>J.S Bach
>was certainly of village peasant stock (which does not imply poor or
>unrefined - many were neither), as was Haydn (I've seen his birthplace
>in Eisenstadt - very, very modest), and at best Mozart was our
>equivalent of lower-middle-class.
Which is not the same as peasant, you idiot.
>The reason for that was the aversion
>imbued in the aristocracy by Greek-based classical education for
>'techne' and working with the hands - this was considered (like all
>actual physical work) vulgar. The fact that musicians had to share the
>table (in Germany 'Tisch' - the aristos had their exclusive 'Tafel')
>of the servants (for that is basically what they were) caused, and
>still causes, some pain amongst those who share the past-it 19C idea
>that 'art' is a form of the sacred, and the artist a 'genius'.
What drivel.
>The practice and appreciation of classical music was never associated
>with the poorest people (and still today instruments have to be
>provided by schools for the less well-off).
Not true. Opera, for example, was as popular as soaps are now. Hence
many of the plots.
>That is the *only* reason
>*classical* music is associated with 'quality' and 'higher-class'.
No. The main reasons are the quality and high class of the music.
>All
>the other technical features that supposedly distinguish it ('form'
>etc, 'correct' pitching and intervals and lack of 'puerile' melodies -
>heard any Liszt or Meyerbeer lately?) have exact parallels in pop and
>Jazz, though the latter do not share its cachet, for social reasons.
Poor fucker has obviously never heard any classical music, and looked
this up somewhere.
When did you ever hear anyone praise Meyerbeer? That's the clue that
you stole this screed from someone's website.
>Me? I like Jazz the most, because as old Hubert P. Osgood said (1922?)
>'Jazz puts the 'sin' in syncopation!'.
>I can't think of any other reason for listening to music, thank
>whatever. However, like pop it is not short of adherents who wish to
>prove it's really a kind of 'classical' music in disguise. This is
>because (*wild but true generalisation alert*) most white people don't
>understand Jazz
Oh, they don't but you do.
>(e.g. they think 1920s 'novelty music' is 'funny'
>when in reality it is based on age-old ritual conceptions of bodily
>abandon (including the frankly erotic) - frowned on in genteel circles
>(1) - and deeply serious - the nearest though imperfect European
>parallel is the circus-clown - Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk
>come to mind as being in that tradition) and secretly feel inferior to
>classical. Hence the desire, rampant in America, to sacralise it by
>including it on the 'curriculum'. Check out "rec.music.bluenote".
>'Educationalism' rules with a vengeance there.
>And anyway not all pop is 'youth' culture, as perusing a photo of any
>'rock' gig will show. The audiences are full of people who, like me,
>can't get it up as often as they used to.
>(1) Shows in the smallest details e.g. Prince Charles' (and Kenneth
>'Civilisation' Clark's) pocketed free hand - a typical gesture of the
>upper classes. You can't be embarrassed by your hand taking on a life
>of its own if you sheath it.
Barking fucking mad.
--
AH
http://sour-grapes.blogsource.com
Alan Hope
>You sound just like Rousseau. He had no sense of humour either.
Bloke knows fuck-all about classical music.
Also fuck-all about Rousseau.
--
AH
http://sour-grapes.blogsource.com
Phil Wilson
> "Phil Wilson" <philip...@talk21.com> wrote in message
> news:RtudncqdT-V...@bt.com...
>> ROBBIE wrote:
>>> "Phil Wilson" <philip...@talk21.com> wrote in message
>>> news:SPSdnXTkHYl...@bt.com...
>>>
>>>> What do you mean by 'serious'?
>>>>
>>>
>>> A desire to express a range of serious things. Beauty, Love,
>>> Death.
>>
>> This is a huge mistake. Music can express none of these things,
>> simply because it can't 'express' anything. It is not a language.
>
> But in order to describe music and its special qualities
> metaphorical
> transfer must occur. In other words you must use terms that are not
> in
> reality connected to that which is described. This is one of the
> things you're struggling with. At your age it is rather shameful to
> be so boastfully pygmified; but heck, that's the way western
> civilisation has gone.
Name me a 'special quality' of music that cannot be described without
'metaphor' and I'll probably reckon it isn't there. You're turning
metaphysical, Robbo. Too much Scruton old boy. The only function of
music is to affect the muscles (and cartilege of course). Everything
else is chatter.
If you want to 'describe' anything why use music? How to 'transfer'
any semantic meaning into vibrations? How is it done? And if by chance
it were, how are we to decode it? Isn't that what words are for O
Wordchemist? If you want to discuss Beauty, Love and Death, hasn't
poetry already done that?
The rest of your points are tainted by your initial mistake, and thus
fall.
Cheers,
Phil
lizzie drippin
"ROBBIE" <word_c...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:M_-dnZ7sBfu...@bt.com...
paintings are
> just marks on a canvas. Which of course they are; they are a great deal
> more
> than that.
Prove it, - ya borin bastard
ROBBIE
>
> Name me a 'special quality' of music that cannot be described without
> 'metaphor' and I'll probably reckon it isn't there.
Yes, I would expect that and so won't waste any time on it; as I said
before: you are a postmodernist; you cling to your creed of meaninglessness
and the reason postmodernism and its attendant pygmification has raged
across the west is because it has two major features that are essential to
success in this modern world: it is childish and easy. It is a self-imposed
labotomy. You seem happy with your labotomy: OK.
You're turning
> metaphysical, Robbo. Too much Scruton old boy.
Oh I've always been metaphysical. Various intellectual niggards and dullards
on here have formulated a fictional biograpghy of me. You seem to be falling
into the same trap. I haven't read much Scroot on music, though he is good,
if not always quite right, on modern rock music.
The only function of
> music is to affect the muscles (and cartilege of course). Everything
> else is chatter.
I simply don't agree.
>
> If you want to 'describe' anything why use music?
Ask composers. Things demand description; the world's like that; in order to
speak and think we need language. I understand that you see only the
Dionysian over the Apollonian; to me life and all that's contained within it
is a mixture of them. Music, being art, affects people. You may well be the
weirdo who refuses to speak about music 'because it's impossible, man' and
in doing so deny language it's power and thereby launch an attack on reason.
OK, you're a post-modernist. You think you represent a sort of
super-enlightenment; to me though it just looks like a return to the dark
ages.
How to 'transfer'
> any semantic meaning into vibrations? How is it done?
Read some music criticism. You can't though, because your creed of
meaninglessness has you painted into a corner.
And if by chance
> it were, how are we to decode it? Isn't that what words are for O
> Wordchemist?
But you deny words by denying that have any meaning. 'Ode to Joy' is not an
ode to joy to you. You've locked yourself into a cul de sac of dullness best
summed up by the tedious Magritte and his not a pipe painting.
If you want to discuss Beauty, Love and Death, hasn't
> poetry already done that?
>
I don't follow your argument about 'already done that'. Furthermore, to
create something aesthetically beautiful is a serious end in itself. You
canot see this because your postmodern labotomy has rendered you senseless.
> The rest of your points are tainted by your initial mistake, and thus
> fall.
Ah; the 'poisoning the well' tactic.
ROBBIE
JNugent
> Tom Sacold wrote:
>> What an absolute waste of broadcasting time. A load of sociologists
>> going on and on about the so called importance of pop music!!!!
>> What a bunch of moronic wankers.
I thought the programme was about "pop culture" or "youth culture" rather than
just about popular music.
> Would you say that classical music was more 'important'? Why?
If you mean "high culture" (not just music), the answer (AFAIAC) is "yes".
The world would be poorer without the preserved works of Shakespeare, Beethoven
and Schiller in a way that it would not without the preserved works of Take
That, Mark Lamarr or the scriptwriters of "A Pint Of Lager...".
> One of the enduring myths of modern life is the relevance of qualities
> read into music (from moral uprightness to socio-political
> commitment), none of which is actually present in music at all.
Quite right.
Whatever did happen to Robin Carmody?
> The
> reaction to this (which, I'll guess, you are on the verge of giving
> us) is that the 'qualities' supposedly found in classical music (or
> Jazz, or any other minority form) are the counterweight to the 'bad'
> qualities found in 'pop'.
You won't get that one from me.
> Yet this argument (clearly a variation on the 'mass-taste is by nature
> of low quality' arguments beloved of bourgeois since 1832 (1)) is
> false.
I agree, for one. There is absolutely no need whatsoever to accept poor
music/art/literature as some sort of counterweight. One is free to read only the
best and forget the rest (if that is what one chooses).
> The reason classical music has the overtone of superiority is purely
> that taste is almost without exception learned and class-based, and
> that certain tastes thus come to be associated with certain 'in' or
> out' groups with shared moral and social outlooks. Guilt (or
> innocence) by association in fact. Nothing to do with the actual music.
I don't agree with that. No amount of conditioning (which I, for one, have never
had) would make you appreciate Miles Davis, Saté or Debussy unless the music
spoke to you in some way.
Phil Wilson
> Phil Wilson wrote:
>> The reason classical music has the overtone of superiority is
>> purely
>> that taste is almost without exception learned and class-based, and
>> that certain tastes thus come to be associated with certain 'in' or
>> out' groups with shared moral and social outlooks. Guilt (or
>> innocence) by association in fact. Nothing to do with the actual
>> music.
>
> I don't agree with that. No amount of conditioning (which I, for
> one,
> have never had) would make you appreciate Miles Davis, Saté or
> Debussy unless the music spoke to you in some way.
Funnily enough, I thnk that mere fashion dictates the absurdly high
opinion held of all three, all of whom I regard as mediocrities
(advertising and film have played their part - marketing men can
seemingly raise and lower reputations merely by 'placing' music -
Miles Davis in particular is made for love-lorn adolescents, all that
'coolness' , the way he dressed, shades, and that plaintive 'yearning'
downbeat quality of his tone, stabbing pain etc etc - notice that not
all of this is exclusively 'musical' although the latter may be).
Robbie can't believe that social fashion alone can decree valuation,
and Alan Hope (from what I can gather from his Tourettisme) seems to
have donned his armour and mounted his steed to defend the
intellectual content of music, which I can't see exists at all. Music
just cannot embody ideas of any kind. When it seems to it always
depends on a prior *verbal* conceit or social idea which is being
played with (the 'Surprise' symphony is only a surprise the first time
round and depends for it's effect on a social event - ladies falling
asleep - along with the real function - startling the animal with a
loud noise - with the social concept that this is 'funny' - ask an
animal if it agrees). See 'programme music' generally. And most of the
history written about music is, it seems to me, self-deluding fantasy,
though perhaps interesting to a sociologist in examining social
attitudes.
Take the so-called 'fate' motif at the beginning of Beethoven's 5th.
Screeds and screeds have been written, I know, I used to plough
through them in my youth, about the significance of this 'fate'
motif - Beethoven's struggle against deafness, his religious doubts,
his stoicism blah blah. Yet the motif isn't, as subsequent research
proved, a 'fate' motif at all. It's pinched from an earlier
'revolutionary' anthem by some lesser-known hack composer and has,
apparently, some supposed French revolutionary and social significance
. And there was me seeing it only as a typically dour blasting
Beethovenian version of the major third whistle that husbands use to
announce to the wife that they're in the front door. 'Tee-oo, I'm
here'!!! However to read in all of this one doesn't ever need to
*hear* the music at all. And removing it all leaves the music as it
is. Just music.
Thanks for the considered response, and I'm sorry but I don't believe
in 'high' culture (now there's a metaphor). Why isn't music low? Or
horizontal, or square?
Cheers,
Phil
Alan Hope
>Name me a 'special quality' of music that cannot be described without
>'metaphor' and I'll probably reckon it isn't there.
Whatever the difficulty of describing it, the idea that music has
transcendent qualities, or is able to express profound human
experiences, seems to be universal in all human cultures.
Within our own, while the music to which these powers are attached
will vary enormously, just about everyone but you and Jeremy Hardy
(ObR4) agrees that music is able to make *something* happen.
So how do you explain that?
--
AH
http://sour-grapes.blogsource.com
Phil Wilson
Physiology. Music is vibration. We have sensors that react to it.
That's all it is (vibration and time - the combination of which can be
decoded by the brain at the base as 'fight, indifference, or flight').
It can have immediate physical effects, of which as I have bored
people with before, involuntary foot-tapping is but a pale reflection
of the original, which can be seen in the behaviour of animals and
birds where it can drive to conflict or mating. Music is basically
sexual advertisement. It's a huge aural sign saying 'I'm in breeding
condtion. and I'm looking for a mate or a fight'. It's no accident
that the overwhelming majority of musicians are most active and
prolific in youth, and that music is well-known as an aphrodisiac (ask
any clubber).
99.9 per cent of the middle-class cultural talk about music is seeing
things (pictures, intellectual ideas) that quite simply are not there.
Music is also unusual in the arts in that it demands no specialist
knowledge for its appreciation (though it may for its performance -
yet that is often overstated - overly-complex music often bores
people). Even musically-theoretically-untrained illiterates can
respond to it enthusiastically, or get bored by it, without any
reference to any theory.
This is not really true about language. every statement is a
proposition as well as an observation. Propositions can be refuted and
denied. Every sentence is a judgment that can be questioned (even this
one). Every 'category' is literally an accusation, which can be proved
false. The two realms are incommensurable. I agree about profundity,
though the word is essentially vague in psychological terms. It's
maybe a metaphor for a physical sensation of helplessly being trapped,
possibly (some fear of the sea perhaps - that sinking feeling) and
thus 'driven unwillingly to a conclusion'.
All emotive psychological metaphors are spatial or physiological (not
abstract), because our heritage is mammalian. High, low, deep,
shallow, light, heavy, rough, smooth, bright, thick, dark, bitter,
sweet. To a moving eating animal these need to be taken account of,
because of our need for safety, and our perceptions have to be
accurate for us to survive. How these primitive connections work, I
have no idea. We all can recognise a cry, but we have to work out
whether it's a cry of pain or delight by examining the physical facts.
In the case of some Tory MPs it may be both. As in the case of music,
the actual sound may be the same - hence Kafka's seemingly pessimistic
observation that the singing of the heavenly chorus, and the cries of
the damned in hell, sound identical.
Cheers,
Phil
Phil Wilson
> "Phil Wilson" <philip...@talk21.com> wrote in message
> news:jsKdnV3rFpr...@bt.com...
>
>>
>> Name me a 'special quality' of music that cannot be described
>> without
>> 'metaphor' and I'll probably reckon it isn't there.
>
> Yes, I would expect that and so won't waste any time on it; as I
> said
> before: you are a postmodernist; you cling to your creed of
> meaninglessness
Look this is turning silly on your part. I have said that music
(merely vibrations in the air) cannot express meaning as it is not a
language. The corollary of this is, surprise,surprise, that language
can express meaning. Part of our being able to discuss anything at all
depends on this simple fact. I have no doubt that you are simplifying
the post-modern message, though I have never read anything but other
people's explications in passing of what post-modernism says, as yet.
I avoid any fashionable writers in order to read them later when the
fuss has died down, to come to them 'naked' and 'unprejudiced' by
temporary chatter, as it were.
>> If you want to 'describe' anything why use music?
>
> Ask composers. Things demand description; the world's like that; in
> order to speak and think we need language. I understand that you see
> only the Dionysian over the Apollonian; to me life and all that's
> contained within it is a mixture of them. Music, being art, affects
> people. You may well be the weirdo who refuses to speak about music
> 'because it's impossible, man' and in doing so deny language it's
> power and thereby launch an attack on reason. OK, you're a
> post-modernist. You think you represent a sort of
> super-enlightenment; to me though it just looks like a return to the
> dark ages.
Your comprehension is skewed. I am not denying the meaning in
language. I am saying that music has none, and that all forms of
'interpretation' of the meaning or significance of pure music are
fantasy. And I have just spent several posts speaking about music. One
cannot attribute qualities to (semantic) 'meaning' when there is none.
Thus I am not denying language its due homage. I know (though I think
sometimes you forget) that words can lead to murder and torture.
Perhaps you are eliding the two senses of the word 'meaning'. (e.g.
'That means something' and 'That means something to me'). To be
affected by something does not mean to see it correctly. We can fall
in love with our abilty to have emotions, regardless of how rational
they are.
> How to 'transfer'
>> any semantic meaning into vibrations? How is it done?
>
> Read some music criticism. You can't though, because your creed of
> meaninglessness has you painted into a corner.
I have spent a great deal of my life reading music criticism. Most of
it has very little to do with the actual music and what does is merely
a form of pointing out the obvious. I like Charles Rosen, who keeps
his head. Brendel also. I do not necessarily share their 'valuations'
of the music involved. A lot of early Beethoven seems to me to be
trite rubbish that I can live without.
> And if by chance
>> it were, how are we to decode it? Isn't that what words are for O
>> Wordchemist?
>
> But you deny words by denying that have any meaning. 'Ode to Joy' is
> not an ode to joy to you. You've locked yourself into a cul de sac
> of
> dullness best summed up by the tedious Magritte and his not a pipe
> painting.
Now you're raving. The finale of the 9th is one of the few bits of
Beethoven I like (it's 'disco music' innit). The sentiments behind the
words are somewhat optimistic (Schiller was a typical Romantic) but
essentially good-hearted, but only tangential to the music. I am,
though, certainly in difficulty when I am asked to turn Utopian.
> If you want to discuss Beauty, Love and Death, hasn't
>> poetry already done that?
>>
>
> I don't follow your argument about 'already done that'. Furthermore,
> to create something aesthetically beautiful is a serious end in
> itself. You canot see this because your postmodern labotomy has
> rendered you senseless.
Death is aesthetically beautiful? It wasn't what I mainly thought when
I saw both my parents die. Remind me of that when you gasp your last,
and I'll ask you again then. By the way, I notice when you wanted to
uphold the need for aesthetic 'rules', you abandoned the example of
music, and switched to painting, which is a visual and
representational art form, and completely different from music. I do
not subscribe to Schopenhauer's view, later Wagner's, that all the
arts have a single source and character, and should be merged. I have
little interest in painting anyway, but notice that the switch from
popular representational art to abstract happened reasonably
concurrently with the development of photography. This suggests that
representation was only useful, culturally, when painting was the only
way of rendering a picture of 'reality' (I realise that medieval
painting was not purely 'representational' so much as 'didactic' in
terms of Christian belief and that portraiture was often 'unreal' in
the direction of flattery or wish-fulfilment). Having lost that edge,
it had to be re-interpreted. as 'more real' and therefore beyond the
reach of mundane criticism on the ground of 'competence'. Watch an art
expert 'explain' a painting. In order to invest it with significance,
quite trivial factors may be highlighted, and frankly the art market
seems to move according to nostalgia over subject matter as much as
'faithfulness in representation', as well as fashion and gossip.
Cheers,
Phil
S.
"Alan Hope" <not.al...@mail.com> wrote in message
news:svrc52d9p7mejfeg7...@4ax.com...
> Phil Wilson goes:
>
>>You sound just like Rousseau. He had no sense of humour either.
>
> Bloke knows fuck-all about classical music.
>
> Also fuck-all about Rousseau.
>
Witty, balanced, insightful, correct, erudite.................Nope, none of
these ! Keep goin' Hopey.
ROBBIE
> ROBBIE wrote:
> > "Phil Wilson" <philip...@talk21.com> wrote in message
> > news:jsKdnV3rFpr...@bt.com...
> >
> >>
> >> Name me a 'special quality' of music that cannot be described
> >> without
> >> 'metaphor' and I'll probably reckon it isn't there.
> >
> > Yes, I would expect that and so won't waste any time on it; as I
> > said
> > before: you are a postmodernist; you cling to your creed of
> > meaninglessness
>
> Look this is turning silly on your part. I have said that music
> (merely vibrations in the air) cannot express meaning as it is not a
> language
Yes dear, I know this; this is your great point, the one you must keep
repeating because you're so struck by it. I was never arguing that but I was
arguing your secondary point, that meanings and metaphors attributed by
composer and listener alike are meaningless; this is where you're a
post-modernist. Everything you've posted about here reveals you as a
post-modernist and, whethere you like it or not, a Marxist - post-mod. being
a satellite of Marxist thought. Your objections to culture are based on a
laughable class-antagonism and the usual 'intellectual's' disregard for the
individual.
. The corollary of this is, surprise,surprise, that language
> can express meaning. Part of our being able to discuss anything at all
> depends on this simple fact. I have no doubt that you are simplifying
> the post-modern message though I have never read anything but other
> people's explications in passing of what post-modernism says, as yet.
> I avoid any fashionable writers in order to read them later when the
> fuss has died down, to come to them 'naked' and 'unprejudiced' by
> temporary chatter, as it were.
>
> >> If you want to 'describe' anything why use music?
> >
> > Ask composers. Things demand description; the world's like that; in
> > order to speak and think we need language. I understand that you see
> > only the Dionysian over the Apollonian; to me life and all that's
> > contained within it is a mixture of them. Music, being art, affects
> > people. You may well be the weirdo who refuses to speak about music
> > 'because it's impossible, man' and in doing so deny language it's
> > power and thereby launch an attack on reason. OK, you're a
> > post-modernist. You think you represent a sort of
> > super-enlightenment; to me though it just looks like a return to the
> > dark ages.
>
> Your comprehension is skewed. I am not denying the meaning in
> language. I am saying that music has none, and that all forms of
> 'interpretation' of the meaning or significance of pure music are
> fantasy.
This is where we dont agree. Your view is the ne plus ultra of
postmodernism.
And I have just spent several posts speaking about music. One
> cannot attribute qualities to (semantic) 'meaning' when there is none.
> Thus I am not denying language its due homage.
And one *must* employ language in the field of music.
I know (though I think
> sometimes you forget) that words can lead to murder and torture.
> Perhaps you are eliding the two senses of the word 'meaning'. (e.g.
> 'That means something' and 'That means something to me'). To be
> affected by something does not mean to see it correctly.
Yes but when someone with intelligence and imagination describes a peice of
music as, say, 'succulent', and other people of intelligence and imagination
feel and think the same thing, then that is language doing its work. That is
what I mean about you clinging to Magritte's tiny little idea: 'This is Not
A Pipe'. You keep saying that music is sonic vibration alone, which of
course it is: it is, like Magritte's little idea, obvious; but then you
don't follow your own argument into other aesthetic fields: film is
meangingless because it is just light, celluloid and noise; painting is
meaningless because it marks on a canvas; poetry is marks on a page etc.
What you're really suffering from is contrariness on a cosmic scale. You
remind me of people who say: 'I think Shakespeare's shit - meaningless to
me' and then think it the most advanced and indestructible piece of
criticism. Have your say by all means, but the finest minds in history
disgree.
We can fall
> in love with our abilty to have emotions, regardless of how rational
> they are.
Christ. Did you spend the sixties being injected with LSD by RD Laing?
>
> > How to 'transfer'
> >> any semantic meaning into vibrations? How is it done?
> >
> > Read some music criticism. You can't though, because your creed of
> > meaninglessness has you painted into a corner.
>
> I have spent a great deal of my life reading music criticism. Most of
> it has very little to do with the actual music and what does is merely
> a form of pointing out the obvious. I like Charles Rosen, who keeps
> his head. Brendel also. I do not necessarily share their 'valuations'
> of the music involved. A lot of early Beethoven seems to me to be
> trite rubbish that I can live without.
>
> > And if by chance
> >> it were, how are we to decode it? Isn't that what words are for O
> >> Wordchemist?
> >
> > But you deny words by denying that have any meaning. 'Ode to Joy' is
> > not an ode to joy to you. You've locked yourself into a cul de sac
> > of
> > dullness best summed up by the tedious Magritte and his not a pipe
> > painting.
>
> Now you're raving.
People often say that on the ng when I've hit the nerve.
The finale of the 9th is one of the few bits of
> Beethoven I like (it's 'disco music' innit)
To me it's music, that which we call organised sound. I'm not one for
calling classical music classical music, though you;re forced to really. the
9th is a very superior form of music to me. 'Disco' very inferior. If you
choose to call it disco so be it; we live in an age where you can make a
career out of dyslexia.
. The sentiments behind the
> words are somewhat optimistic (Schiller was a typical Romantic) but
> essentially good-hearted, but only tangential to the music. I am,
> though, certainly in difficulty when I am asked to turn Utopian.
>
> > If you want to discuss Beauty, Love and Death, hasn't
> >> poetry already done that?
> >>
> >
> > I don't follow your argument about 'already done that'. Furthermore,
> > to create something aesthetically beautiful is a serious end in
> > itself. You canot see this because your postmodern labotomy has
> > rendered you senseless.
>
> Death is aesthetically beautiful? It wasn't what I mainly thought when
> I saw both my parents die. Remind me of that when you gasp your last,
> and I'll ask you again then.
How obtuse or ignorant. Your choice.. Art is not the event that inspires the
art. Art is the aesthetically important thing that is inspired by the
event(s). You probably don't like Mozart's Requiem, but it's art and about
death and generally regarded as being aesthetically wonderful.
By the way, I notice when you wanted to
> uphold the need for aesthetic 'rules', you abandoned the example of
> music
No I gave a different example which, like music, can be reduced to physics.
, and switched to painting, which is a visual and
> representational art form, and completely different from music. I do
> not subscribe to Schopenhauer's view, later Wagner's, that all the
> arts have a single source and character, and should be merged. I have
> little interest in painting anyway
Then we shouldn't discuss it: but I would say that Magritte's minute idea in
'pipe' is simply your 'big' idea in music.
ROBBIE
Alan Hope
>Alan Hope wrote:
>> Phil Wilson goes:
>>> Name me a 'special quality' of music that cannot be described
>>> without
>>> 'metaphor' and I'll probably reckon it isn't there.
>> Whatever the difficulty of describing it, the idea that music has
>> transcendent qualities, or is able to express profound human
>> experiences, seems to be universal in all human cultures.
>> Within our own, while the music to which these powers are attached
>> will vary enormously, just about everyone but you and Jeremy Hardy
>> (ObR4) agrees that music is able to make *something* happen.
>> So how do you explain that?
>Physiology. Music is vibration. We have sensors that react to it.
>That's all it is (vibration and time - the combination of which can be
>decoded by the brain at the base as 'fight, indifference, or flight').
Well I don't agree, and at the same time I disagree that music has no
language or semantic content. It does, of course, as even the most
ham-fisted songwriter strumming in his bedroom can tell you. The
language of music allows us to assign emotions to particular
progressions, whether they be in the Mozart Requiem mentioned or in a
Barry Manilow song. And we're all pretty conversant with the language
of music, which is both why pop songs work, and why the majority of
people react with a spasm to dissonance and atonality.
You must know this, I suggest, or do you really not recognise a
difference in the affective powers of The Long and Winding Road, say,
and Martha My Dear?
>It can have immediate physical effects, of which as I have bored
>people with before, involuntary foot-tapping is but a pale reflection
>of the original, which can be seen in the behaviour of animals and
>birds where it can drive to conflict or mating. Music is basically
>sexual advertisement.
Laughably reductive. Of course there is "music" in lower animals,
birdsong being the most obvious example, but that by no means suggests
that that level is as far as it goes. Humans have transcended nature
in many areas -- the plumage of a Norwegian Blue is only vaguely
analogous to the catwalk show of Alexander McQueen -- and music is one
of them.
>It's a huge aural sign saying 'I'm in breeding
>condtion. and I'm looking for a mate or a fight'.
Then how on earth do you explain the appeal of Beethoven to an
audience full of men?
>It's no accident
>that the overwhelming majority of musicians are most active and
>prolific in youth, and that music is well-known as an aphrodisiac (ask
>any clubber).
Again, you discover one aspect and stick to it. Music can be
aphrodisiac (pace your denials of "meaning") but it can also be the
opposite. I challenge anyone to get a stiffy listening to the
Kindertotenlied.
>99.9 per cent of the middle-class cultural talk about music is seeing
>things (pictures, intellectual ideas) that quite simply are not there.
You might as well say that the French are hallucinating the meanings
assigned to their throat sounds. The fact of the matter is that there
is a language that people understand, and the fact that you're only
hearing noises doesn't change that.
>Music is also unusual in the arts in that it demands no specialist
>knowledge for its appreciation (though it may for its performance -
>yet that is often overstated - overly-complex music often bores
>people). Even musically-theoretically-untrained illiterates can
>respond to it enthusiastically, or get bored by it, without any
>reference to any theory.
Yet a little learning is enough to enrich the experience.
>This is not really true about language.
In my experience, language is very quickly mastered to a very high
degree by the most unsophisticated people, some of them only two or
three years old. They perform with a high degree of skill, despite a
complete lack of any formal training whatsoever.
>every statement is a
>proposition as well as an observation. Propositions can be refuted and
>denied. Every sentence is a judgment that can be questioned (even this
>one). Every 'category' is literally an accusation, which can be proved
>false. The two realms are incommensurable. I agree about profundity,
>though the word is essentially vague in psychological terms. It's
>maybe a metaphor for a physical sensation of helplessly being trapped,
>possibly (some fear of the sea perhaps - that sinking feeling) and
>thus 'driven unwillingly to a conclusion'.
>All emotive psychological metaphors are spatial or physiological (not
>abstract), because our heritage is mammalian. High, low, deep,
>shallow, light, heavy, rough, smooth, bright, thick, dark, bitter,
>sweet.
But a metaphor only refers to a thing; the whole point is that it is
not limited to the character of the thing. It's blindingly bleeding
obvious, and not at all instructive, that an abstract quality should
be explained by reference to something concrete -- i.e. spatial or
physiological (by which I suppose you also mean anatomical).
But the power of metaphor, and the power of the human imagination,
allows the metaphor to escape the bounds of the reference and become
something in itself.
What a strangulated, barren world you seem to be describing. I imagine
you reading "The Lord is my shepherd" and imagining a bloke in
homespun with a crook.
>To a moving eating animal these need to be taken account of,
>because of our need for safety, and our perceptions have to be
>accurate for us to survive. How these primitive connections work, I
>have no idea. We all can recognise a cry, but we have to work out
>whether it's a cry of pain or delight by examining the physical facts.
>In the case of some Tory MPs it may be both. As in the case of music,
>the actual sound may be the same - hence Kafka's seemingly pessimistic
>observation that the singing of the heavenly chorus, and the cries of
>the damned in hell, sound identical.
Kafka was just as guilty of turning out a bon mot as Oscar Wilde was.
--
AH
http://sour-grapes.blogsource.com
JNugent
> Phil Wilson goes:
[ ... ]
>>>>Name me a 'special quality' of music that cannot be described
>>>>without metaphor' and I'll probably reckon it isn't there.
and...
>>Physiology. Music is vibration. We have sensors that react to it.
>>That's all it is (vibration and time - the combination of which can be
>>decoded by the brain at the base as 'fight, indifference, or flight').
> Well I don't agree, and at the same time I disagree that music has no
> language or semantic content. It does, of course, as even the most
> ham-fisted songwriter strumming in his bedroom can tell you.
I'm sure that the OP was NOT talking about lyrics.
John of Aix
> JNugent wrote:
>> I don't agree with that. No amount of conditioning (which I, for
>> one,
>> have never had) would make you appreciate Miles Davis, Saté or
>> Debussy unless the music spoke to you in some way.
>
> Funnily enough, I thnk that mere fashion dictates the absurdly high
> opinion held of all three
Miles Davis bores me silly and your description of his situation and his
fan base was spot on. I think Satie never took himself very seriously so
I'll accept the couple of tunes that we all know and enjoy his fun but
could never really consider his a 'great' anyway. Debussy however is
another kettle of fish. While there is not much of his that I really
like, I appreciate what he brought to music through the use of the
chromatic scale, albeit rather played to death on his part, his
'signature tune' which he was obligerd to stick with if you like. I
think it probably did western ears some good and opened them to stranger
harmonies and sounds that they had been used to until then.
John of Aix
> John of Aix wrote:
>
>> Haydn, a peasant composer? That's a new one on me. Why so?
>
> Nearly all composers born before 1800 would have been peasants (in the
> Continental sense - 'paysan' 'Bauer')
Ah yes, OK, I didn't take peasant in that sense, though I would have
done if you had used 'paysan' as here in France 'paysan' still holds a
lot of its original meaning, from the pays/countryside which can mean
all sorts of things from the dumb peasant as in the usual English sense
these days, to a wily old landowner who is worth a fortune but still
cuts his bread with his Opinel pocket-knife at dinner.
>
> The practice and appreciation of classical music was never associated
> with the poorest people (and still today instruments have to be
> provided by schools for the less well-off). That is the *only* reason
> *classical* music is associated with 'quality' and 'higher-class'.
Up to a point I agree but surely there are more musical listeners than
practitioners and so a instreument is not required (though someone
playing one in the vicinity is)
> All
> the other technical features that supposedly distinguish it ('form'
> etc, 'correct' pitching and intervals and lack of 'puerile' melodies -
> heard any Liszt or Meyerbeer lately?) have exact parallels in pop and
> Jazz, though the latter do not share its cachet, for social reasons.
>
> Me? I like Jazz the most, because as old Hubert P. Osgood said (1922?)
> 'Jazz puts the 'sin' in syncopation!'.
> I can't think of any other reason for listening to music, thank
> whatever. However, like pop it is not short of adherents who wish to
> prove it's really a kind of 'classical' music in disguise. This is
> because (*wild but true generalisation alert*) most white people don't
> understand Jazz (e.g. they think 1920s 'novelty music' is 'funny'
> when in reality it is based on age-old ritual conceptions of bodily
> abandon (including the frankly erotic) - frowned on in genteel circles
> (1) - and deeply serious - the nearest though imperfect European
> parallel is the circus-clown - Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk
> come to mind as being in that tradition) and secretly feel inferior to
> classical. Hence the desire, rampant in America, to sacralise it by
> including it on the 'curriculum'. Check out "rec.music.bluenote".
> 'Educationalism' rules with a vengeance there.
I think one of the reasons for the sense of inferiority (if it does
indeed exist) among jazz and pop musicians is there lack of knowledge of
musicla theory, and especially, their capacity to read and write music.
Some can of course, especially in the modern Jazz world, but it is in no
way an obligation and, in a certain sense, its absence is a good thing
because one is thus freed from traditional musical strictures and
structures.
The 'clown' remark made me think of Nino Rota. Where should we place him
in the record shelves? It is more than just background film music, it
isn't pop, but it isn't really 'classical' either but it is undoubtedly
brilliant and well crafted
>
> And anyway not all pop is 'youth' culture, as perusing a photo of any
> 'rock' gig will show. The audiences are full of people who, like me,
> can't get it up as often as they used to.
Indeed, there are even old rockers dropping out of trees ;-)
> (1) Shows in the smallest details e.g. Prince Charles' (and Kenneth
> 'Civilisation' Clark's) pocketed free hand - a typical gesture of the
> upper classes. You can't be embarrassed by your hand taking on a life
> of its own if you sheath it.
Very English all that. I've lived in France for more than half my life,
31 years to be precise. Now if I had my hands in my pockets I'd hardly
be able to say a word.
John of Aix
> You sound just like Rousseau. He had no sense of humour either.
Not 'le douanier' surely?. He was a laugh a minute apparently, you can
tell that with his tigers.
Oh you mean that Jean-Jacques fellow, hmm...sad case that one. Something
to do with a badly placed broomstick I believe
Alan Hope
>Alan Hope wrote:
>> Phil Wilson goes:
>[ ... ]
>and...
Nor was I.
--
AH
http://sour-grapes.blogsource.com
lizzie drippin
> labotomy labotomy
Get yerself to dictionary corner, ya borin bastard
JNugent
How did I come to render Satie as "Saté"? :-)
Careful with Miles... his work falls into several distinct periods, and whilst
there are some who will swear that every note of his recorded output is perfect
and sacrosanct (just as with Coltrane, his sometime acolyte), there are many
more who find only certain parts of his work even bearable, let alone
attractive. I write as one who found the "Kind Of Blue" album in my teens during
the late sixties, quite by chance, and loved it, as I did his subsequent quintet
LPs. The stuff he was actually doing just then (this some nine or ten years
after KOB) - the "Bitches Brew" material - was definitely not for me and time
has not allowed me to warm to it, any more than it has for "emperor's clothes"
late-period Coltrane.
When I mentioned those three names, BTW, I was not arguing that any of them are
"greats", just that they are all acquired tastes.
JNugent
OK, but "songwriter" implies lyrics.
Alan Hope
Spotty yoofs strumming guitars in their rooms do tend to be writing
songs, yes, with lyrics. But that wasn't the point. The point was the
ability to make the music communicate the feeling desired.
You claim it's not a language, but it seems to be one everyone
understands.
--
AH
http://sour-grapes.blogsource.com
Phil Wilson
> Careful with Miles... his work falls into several distinct periods,
> and whilst there are some who will swear that every note of his
> recorded output is perfect and sacrosanct (just as with Coltrane,
> his
> sometime acolyte), there are many more who find only certain parts
> of
> his work even bearable, let alone attractive. I write as one who
> found the "Kind Of Blue" album in my teens during the late sixties,
> quite by chance, and loved it, as I did his subsequent quintet LPs.
> The stuff he was actually doing just then (this some nine or ten
> years after KOB) - the "Bitches Brew" material - was definitely not
> for me and time has not allowed me to warm to it, any more than it
> has for "emperor's clothes" late-period Coltrane.
> When I mentioned those three names, BTW, I was not arguing that any
> of them are "greats", just that they are all acquired tastes.
Fair enough J. I have merely remarked over time that MD attracts that
kind of juvenile hero-worship (as well as the typically legitimating
'He attended Juillard, you know' - so what? Louis Armstrong didn't,
and I'll take his glorious life-affirming music over Davis's sour
maundering any day (1)) that rarely stays the course. In my tour of
the record shops, as well as noting the absence of Louis Armstrong's
early output, and the classic Charlie Parker masterpieces, from the
shelves, I have seen the almost perfect balance between the shelves
groaning with new Davis and Coltrane (a recent advert for Scottish
radio characterises 'Jazz' as 'laidback' with some background muted
dronings from a Davisian trumpet - so much for the scandalously
physical nature of the early forms of Jazz, which are actually what
got the bloody music its sexually-derived name then, eh?) and the
equally large groaning shelves of second-hand D & C. I suspect that
marketing can flog the image, but it can't really flog a lasting
interest in the music. You either like the image of Jazz ('hunched
shoulders, cool dudes)' or you like the music itself, it seems.
I like some early Davis, but I think Dorham the greater trumpeter. By
May 1949 he was by far the more exciting and beautiful player and the
quintet of which he was a part with Haig etc. the greatest Parker
group IMNSHO.
'Kind of Blue' is one of the dullest albums I know (indeed the word
'album' in a Jazz context is almost a guarantee of dullness), but
chacun etc.
PS No-one has to defend their musical tastes. I don't give a flying
hoohah about anybody else's. My opinions are all frankly prejudiced
and overblown and curiously satisfying.
Cheers,
Phil
Phil Wilson
> Miles Davis bores me silly and your description of his situation and
> his fan base was spot on. I think Satie never took himself very
> seriously so I'll accept the couple of tunes that we all know and
> enjoy his fun but could never really consider his a 'great' anyway.
> Debussy however is another kettle of fish. While there is not much
> of
> his that I really like, I appreciate what he brought to music
> through
> the use of the chromatic scale, albeit rather played to death on his
> part, his 'signature tune' which he was obligerd to stick with if
> you
> like. I think it probably did western ears some good and opened them
> to stranger harmonies and sounds that they had been used to until
> then.
Maybe, but then mere exoticism leaves me cold. My objection to Debussy
is one of a wider cultural nature. He was obsessed with the whole tone
scale (Vaughan Williams was also a bit over-fond of it). It conduces
to a rather static conception of music. The Western scale, with its
leading tones that drive a motoric conception of music, is anathema to
some people. Characteristically, Debussy's 'Poissons' were not living
fish, but those seen on the side of an Oriental vase. This desire to
freeze experience was a feature of the 'aesthetic' and 'Orientalist'
movement, with its fascination with the images of time arrested,
gestures held in mid-air, as it were. A similar movement afflicted
Jazz in the sixties, with lots of busy music that never managed to
move anywhere, because of the adoption of non-standard scales that
arrested harmonic movement. A friend of mine preferred this type of
music (that is open to 'religious' or 'spiritual' interpretation of an
'Eastern' nature and has a rather 'ritualistic' feel). He explained it
thus. 'Western music gets off the turntable and runs round the room',
with the implied corolllary that the kind of 'eastern'- influenced
music he liked (the quotes are because I'm not sure whether this type
of music is echt-eastern in character or a kind of Western ersatz),
did not. Drugs, and the liberation from the experience of passing time
that they can offer, helped in the production of this stasis.
I'm not saying that this type of 'non-moving' music is inferior. I'm
just saying that, to me, boredom isn't long in setting in. Therefore
Debussy is a minor diversion in my musical life. Some of his music
seems to me, though, entirely pointless.
Cheers,
Phil