Rosen rebuts Koren
David7Gable
Near the end of his new little book Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist,
Charles Rosen writes (and it is the last paragraph I am aiming at Koren):
The music of Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783), once one of the glories of the
1760's and perhaps the most famous living composer of the 1760's, rapidly
disappeard by the end of the eighteenth century, while the more obscure J.S.
Bach became more famous with each decade. The fervor inspired by Schoenberg
has already lasted longer than the ephemeral glory of Hasse. The reaction of
distaste, incomprehension, and even disgust inspired by Beethoven and Wagner
altered with time through the pressure of professional musicians and with
successive rehearings of their works into an obsessive admiration, even into an
addiction. For a smaller number [of listeners] the works of the great figures
of the twentieth century are equally addictive. As long as this addiction
continues to be found among musicians, the music will survive. Music that
[musicians] want to play is assured of a future.
[. . .] There is no question that a taste for difficult contemporary music is
more difficult to acquire than a taste for Romantic opera. It takes more
effort, more willpower, to arrive at an understanding of its language. [. . .]
When I was in college there was only one singer, the soprano Bethany Beardley,
who could negotiate the pitches of the songs of Webern. Today virtually any of
the graduates of the vocal department of Juilliard can sing them with ease if
not always with inspiration. Many musicians are disinclined to approach the
more difficult styles of the twentieth century. They are missing an intense
pleasure. In all the arts a difficulty overcome has a savor that the blandness
of the more facile experience will never provide, and it is the difficult works
of the past century that are most likely to descend to posterity.
A distaste for modernism is understandable and needs neither defense nor
apology. It is not an easy style to come to terms with [ . . .] What deserves
only dismissal, nevertheless, is the critic who maintains, aping the naive
child in the fairy tale who claimed that the emperor had no clothes, that we
who love the difficult masterpieces of our time are only pretending, lost in
admiration before something which does not in fact exist. Our society has an
absurd tolerance for obscurantists who wish to deny the relevance of the art
and science they do not understand. The most obtuse critics of modernism,
treated seriously by some journalists, are like creationists (also treated
seriously by some journalists and even by some senators) who attack
evolutionary theory because they think Darwin said that we are all descended
from monkeys. The message of both groups is a simple celebration of ignorance:
what I do not understand is not worth understanding. They may deserve our
sympathy, but in the end there is no reason to listen to them.
-Charles Rosen
Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist, pp. 225-228
The Free Press (2003)
-david gable
Thomas Muething
Thomas
--
"There's just two things in this world that I can't stand. It's people
who are intolerant of other people's culture ... and the Dutch!"
(Michael Caine, in "Austin Powers: Goldmember")
David Sternlicht
> He pretty much rebuts a whole bunch of other people on this ng as well. :-)
>
> Thomas
Which is too bad. It is unfortunate that these tired arguments that
just boil down to subjective tastes are still being hurled around by
wrongheaded posters. I certainly think everyone is entitled to like or
dislike a piece of music, but to say that a composition by Boulez or
Stockhausen is not music is insulting and ignorant. Of course these
compositions are music.
Would one go so far as to say that Gamelan or Gagaku is not music?
Sure doesn't sound like Chopin to me.
What the dead-horse beaters in this newsgroup don't realize is that if
they happen to not care for a certain type of music, it does not
qualify them, or anyone else, to dismiss it as not music.
John Gavin
NO. Rosen only rebuts Koren when Dan and Charlie face each other and
have a debate. I was going to leave this alone, but something bothers
me here. It's similar to bible thumpers quoting scripture to nullify
someone else's spiritual opinion - except in this case, Charles Rosen
is not God (for most of us, anyway).
David7Gable
>have a debate.
Something I would dearly love to see. At various points in the past, I've
quoted remarks that Rosen has made on various pianists or pieces of piano music
in private posts to Koren, asking his opinion of the remarks. He's never
responded.
In any case, if a theory posited by X is proven false by Y, it is false
regardless of whether X and Y meet face to face or not. Even in more equivocal
matters of opinion, what's wrong with publishing Y's opinion when they disagree
with X's?
Nor have I refrained from arguing with Koren on my own, in case you're
suggesting I should fight my own battles. (I've done so against the advice of
other posters who've written me privately advising me to ignore him as a
crackpot.)
-david gable
Dan Koren
Your post quoted below is clear evidence that you are
running out of answers, and that you are running for
shelter by a technique known as "resort to authority".
That is however par for the course since *ALL* of
musicology is built essentially on blind acceptance
of priciples set forth by earlier, and presumably
higher, authorities. It is a circular, completely
closed reasoning system, that leaves no room for
questioning its basic assumptions.
Without exception, every debate on this fundamental
topic -- what is music? -- on this ng, has ended at
the same point where it started: namely, a bunch of
"educated", dry as dust intellectuals, throwing the
book at anyone who disagrees with them and dares to
question their fundamental assumptions, while at
the same time completely ignoring the fact that
fundamental assumptions are being challenged, and
exposed as no more than hollow social conventions.
Every time we've been around this topic, we've
been told that disagreement can only be the
result of "lack of understanding" or "lack of
education". No one in your camp seems to be
willing to consider the possibility that one
could understand the theories you're peddling
and still reject them. This is the very essence
of Communism, and of every theory that claims to
provide *THE* *ONLY* *TRUTH* for some domain of
knowledge or endeavor.
Neither Rosen nor you or I will be around in 500
years -- but you should rest assured Schoeberg,
Boulez or Schtockhausen will neither.
dk
PS. Rosen as you probably know is an arrogant,
dry as dust intellectual prick who cannot play
a single phrase legato and whose feet cannot
tell apart the gas and brake pedals.
david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message news:<20030426024000...@mb-m26.aol.com>...
Lawrence Kart
assured of a future," which I would like to think is irrefutable. But
that should be Bethany Beardslee, not "Bethany Beardley." Her
recording of Berg's Altenberg Leider with Craft is among the many
jewels in her crown. On the other hand, while Hasse was no Bach, he
was a very fine composer.
Lawrence Kart
david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message news:<20030426024000...@mb-m26.aol.com>...
Dan Koren
That is known as "invoking higher authority" ;-)
dk
Dan Koren
> Thomas Muething <tmuethingBUGGE...@t-online.de> wrote in message news:<3EAA4DD3...@t-online.de>...
> > He pretty much rebuts a whole bunch of other people on this ng as well. :-)
> >
> > Thomas
>
> Which is too bad. It is unfortunate that these tired arguments that
> just boil down to subjective tastes are still being hurled around by
> wrongheaded posters. I certainly think everyone is entitled to like or
> dislike a piece of music, but to say that a composition by Boulez or
> Stockhausen is not music is insulting and ignorant.
very fundamental question -- what is (or not) music?
If we cannot debate such a topic on this ng, what the
*FUCK* is the raison d'etre of r.m.c.r. ?!?!?
> Of course these compositions are music.
One doesn't have to take such things for granted.
> Would one go so far as to say that Gamelan or
> Gagaku is not music?
Maybe, or maybe not. You do realize, I hope, that
how one answers the question for Gamelan need not
have anything to do with how one answers it for
Schtockhausen? It is perfectly possible that in
someone's esthetics, Gamelan is legitimate music
while Schtockhausen is not. I'm merely sing these
two as random examples, so don't bother to debate.
> Sure doesn't sound like Chopin to me.
Nor to me ;-)
> What the dead-horse beaters in this newsgroup
> don't realize is that if they happen to not
> care for a certain type of music, it does not
> qualify them, or anyone else, to dismiss it as
> not music.
That cuts in more than one direction. For instance,
why should one put up with the dead horse trainers
who claim Tchaikovsky was a lousy composer, while
praising Wagner and Beethoven to the skies? Praise
and counter-praise should have equal rights, don't
you think?
dk
David7Gable
>running out of answers,
As far as I'm concerned, the answers I carefully and calmly provided in the
Chopin thread will do just fine. I don't need any additional ones. But as
fate would have it, immediately after contributing to that thread, I went to
bed with a book, Rosen's book, and the first thing I happened to read was the
pages I quoted from. They were apropos and I couldn't resist quoting them at
rmcr.
Now that I have "resorted to authority," you can either attempt to refute what
the authority says or not. Good luck. Whatever it is, the following is not a
refutation of what I quoted:
>PS. Rosen as you probably know is an arrogant,
>dry as dust intellectual prick who cannot play
>a single phrase legato and whose feet cannot
>tell apart the gas and brake pedals.
On to the next topic:
>Without exception, every debate on this fundamental
>topic -- what is music? -- on this ng, has ended at
>the same point where it started: namely, a bunch of
>"educated", dry as dust intellectuals, throwing the
>book at anyone who disagrees with them
You disagree but you don't bring any arguments. Your entire argument is "I am
phenomenally musical myself and I know what music is, but nobody can say what
music is because any attempt to use the mind in the attempt to do so is evil
and wrong-headed." Nevertheless, most readers who read my contributions to the
Chopin thread on the nature of music will easily grasp the distinction I made
between Cage's chance "music" and other music, easily grasp the distinction I
drew between the sound patterns in time produced using Morse code and the sound
patterns that constitute music, easily grasp the distinction that I drew
between the understanding attained by study and theorizing on the one hand and
the understanding that ordinary and extraordinary listeners alike come to with
theirs ears and minds while listening. The claim that carefully drawing these
distinctions is tantamount to being a communist who believes that communism is
*THE* *ONLY* *TRUTH* leaves me speechless.
The one article of faith that my arguments do betray is the deep conviction
that music was made for human minds by human minds; that music requires more
than placing random sound within an aesthetic framework as Cage has done; that
music requires more than the production of patterns of sound in time as in the
transmission of Morse code; that music requires more than the ability to hear
sound that we share with cats and parakeets. Composers and listeners alike
normally do more than Cage and Morse code demand of us, more than cats and
parakeets do, and that more that we do involves our minds. If I stopped there
and refrained from claiming that I can hear Boulez as music just as I can hear
Chopin as music, you wouldn't be so incensed. But I would be lying if I denied
that I can hear Boulez. And since I don't consider myself to have the ears of
a Mozart, I can only imagine that other listeners are also in a position to
come to terms with Boulez's music. And the only response you have to this
claim is an attack ad hominem fueled by a deep and not entirely rational rage.
-david gable
Lena
> > He pretty much rebuts a whole bunch of other people on this ng as well. :-)
> >
> > Thomas
>
> Which is too bad. It is unfortunate that these tired arguments that
> just boil down to subjective tastes are still being hurled around by
> wrongheaded posters. I certainly think everyone is entitled to like or
> dislike a piece of music, but to say that a composition by Boulez or
> Stockhausen is not music is insulting and ignorant.
Or, possibly, just basic provocationism?
Lena
Lena
> Near the end of his new little book Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist,
> Charles Rosen writes [...]
I entirely agree with Rosen but wish we could find another divine
authority for this newsgroup. Just for the sake of variety. :)
Lena
Larry Rinkel
news:6b33de45.03042...@posting.google.com...
I'm available.
David7Gable
What are your rates?
-david gable
Simon Roberts
says...
It's not that long ago that espousal of polytheism could result in being burned
at the stake for heresy....
Simon
Marcus Maroney
> No, it is not. It is a legitimate discussion about a
> very fundamental question -- what is (or not) music?
>
> If we cannot debate such a topic on this ng, what the
> *FUCK* is the raison d'etre of r.m.c.r. ?!?!?
I thought the final "r" gave it away: recordings; however, I'm
beginning to wonder if it instead stands for recidivisms.
Cheers,
Marcus Maroney
marcus dot maroney at yale dot edu
Ryan M. Hare
"David7Gable" <david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030426152318...@mb-m07.aol.com...
> >Rosen only rebuts Koren when Dan and Charlie face each other and
> >have a debate.
>
> Something I would dearly love to see.
I wouldn't! I'd hate to see Rosen waste his time with such an intellectually
malformed dilettante.
Ryan
Nick X Sun
Tony Movshon
> Just wondering how many of you still remember a tune or two from MET
> this seasons broadcast of William Bolcom's "A View from the Bridge", or
> Francis Poulenc's "Dialogues des Carmélites"?
I saw them both, and remember them well (Carmélites vividly). They are
curious choices for your rant, since neither piece is aggressively
modern, and both are quite melodic in a fairly conventional sense.
Are they enduring masterpieces? I suspect the answer is "no" for the
Bolcom and "perhaps" for the Poulenc. But that doesn't have anything to
do with whether you or I can whistle the tunes.
Tony Movshon
mov...@nyu.edu
Lena
You can be the Rhine Maiden of rmcr, and Bob is the wood nymph. That's
plenty divine for you two. :):)
Lena
Matthew B. Tepper (posts from uswest.net are forged)
letters to be typed in
news:75e776be.03042...@posting.google.com:
> dank...@yahoo.com (Dan Koren) wrote :
>
>> No, it is not. It is a legitimate discussion about a
>> very fundamental question -- what is (or not) music?
>>
>> If we cannot debate such a topic on this ng, what the
>> *FUCK* is the raison d'etre of r.m.c.r. ?!?!?
>
> I thought the final "r" gave it away: recordings; however, I'm
> beginning to wonder if it instead stands for recidivisms.
Or ridiculous claims, such as the one that ducks can't fly!
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Mark Coy tossed off eBay? http://makeashorterlink.com/?M2B734C02
RMCR's most pointless, dumb and laughable chowderhead: Mark Coy.
Lena
>>authority for this newsgroup. Just for the sake of variety. :)
>It's not that long ago that espousal of polytheism could result in
>being burned at the stake for heresy....
Yeah, it's quite disappointing. Now we only get flamed (if we're lucky).
Lena
:)
XYZ XYZ
that matter), not being a musician, but surely people in the music establishment
have a certain vested interest in maintaining the status quo. My point is that
I don't find it surprising that Rosen would rebut Koren. But what I'm more
interested in is whether there's someone comparable with Rosen who's written
against contemporary music. There must be, no?
Don't get me wrong -- I'm not claiming that contemporary music is not worth
listening to -- in fact, I've been trying to branch out and hear more
contemporary music. But I'm certainly interested in hearing other experts'
opinions regarding why contemporary music is not worth hearing. In any case,
if Rosen thinks that it's not worth arguing with the "Emperor has no clothes"
argument, why bother devoting a paragraph to it? I think that I'm certainly
intelligent enough to see an "Emperor has no clothes" argument when I see one.
:-)
david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message news:<20030426024000...@mb-m26.aol.com>...
[Rosen quote]
One Who Knows
wrote:
>And how many of you have give a listen to the lesser known modern era romantic composer's work like the "Gate of Gold" by Joseph Curiale?
<flame>
I would have an easier time with Curiale's music (merely mediocre,
IMHO) if he hadn't called one of my best friends a "whore" for having
slept with other men before she slept with him. A violent misogynist.
</flame>
Josh Meier
> Your post quoted below is clear evidence that you are
> running out of answers, and that you are running for
> shelter by a technique known as "resort to authority".
I would rather qualify Mr Gable's post as an attempt to sum up in
well-chosen words your behaviour towards 20th century music. I do not
see here any reference to any authority. It just happens that Mr Rosen
described with more style than any of your posts contain a type of
behaviour that you demonstrated several times is close to yours. More
below...
> That is however par for the course since *ALL* of
> musicology is built essentially on blind acceptance
> of priciples set forth by earlier, and presumably
> higher, authorities. It is a circular, completely
> closed reasoning system, that leaves no room for
> questioning its basic assumptions.
Your reasoning is not completely right. The past endows us with a
legacy that we are free to assess - and to criticize if there is need
to do so. In all the different branches of science, at some time and
place in history, basic principles that were thought to have been
universally true for ever have been countered. The whole history of
human science boils down to just that : trying to get a better grasp
of the world around us by switching from an old hypothesis to a new
one. In science just as in musicology, then you have two different
kinds of persons. Those who accept the system as it is and try to make
the surrounding reality fit into it. And those who plainly cannot
accept some facts that too obviously contradict the prevailing model.
Anyhow, your comments above are just exaggerated, to say the least.
> Without exception, every debate on this fundamental
> topic -- what is music? -- on this ng, has ended at
> the same point where it started: namely, a bunch of
> "educated", dry as dust intellectuals, throwing the
> book at anyone who disagrees with them and dares to
> question their fundamental assumptions, while at
> the same time completely ignoring the fact that
> fundamental assumptions are being challenged, and
> exposed as no more than hollow social conventions.
Once again, you lack a good deal of measure and moderation in your
words, Mr Koren. Intelligence and knowledge have nothing to do here.
The real problem is your attitude towards contradiction.
If I sum up your thought, yes, there may be some people that defend
20th century music for the mere sake of defending something that
seems, well, new and stylish or also precisely because they do not
understand it at all. They do think maybe that, if they can't
understand it, then it must be quite smart, mustn't it ?
True, some people like this exist. And I can understand your
resentment against such an attitude. But is it better or worse to have
the exactly opposite attitude, that is to say : taking advantage of
the existence of such people to deny 20th century music any right to
be what it is truly, I mean music ?
And then, Mr Koren, you should never forget that each epoch in music
history had its great visionaries as well as its second-tier names.
The advantage with the past is, most often, that posterity made the
selection easier for us, Beethoven being clearly more often remembered
than, say, Artsybushev, Francoeur or Nordraak. The difficulty with
today is that we are presented with a lot of different approaches of
what contemporary music should be, and it is up to us to perceive
which approaches are the most fertile, the most renewing. Obviously,
this may be a more difficult path than just turning back to more
well-known composers.
> Every time we've been around this topic, we've
> been told that disagreement can only be the
> result of "lack of understanding" or "lack of
> education". No one in your camp seems to be
> willing to consider the possibility that one
> could understand the theories you're peddling
> and still reject them. This is the very essence
> of Communism, and of every theory that claims to
> provide *THE* *ONLY* *TRUTH* for some domain of
> knowledge or endeavor.
Personally, I do not claim to have the truth, oh sorry the TRUTH. And
certainly, I am not especially willing to share it with other people.
I am in no position to decide that THIS is good and THAT is bad.
I just know one thing. I do sincerely love Schoenberg's music as well
as some other contemporary composers for whom you just seem to have
utter scorn. Then, what should I do ? Consider your judgment as a
revelation and realize that I have indulged myself in guilty pleasures
? Decide that everyone else on Earth MUST love Schoenberg just as I do
?
No, my position is much more simple : I defend this as being music
(and good one at that) but I acknowledge that it may be more difficult
to grasp than, say, Mozart. And I also acknowledge the right to other
people not to like it, period. But Mr Koren, who are you to say, in
such a definitive and offending manner, that Schoenberg or Cage are
mere fakers ?
And, by the way, Communism has nothing to do here. We're speaking
about music, thanks to keep that in mind.
> Neither Rosen nor you or I will be around in 500
> years -- but you should rest assured Schoeberg,
> Boulez or Schtockhausen will neither.
I won't be there too. But rest assured that their names will be
remembered because they did a lot to make music progress.
> dk
Yours truly,
Josh Meier
> PS. Rosen as you probably know is an arrogant,
> dry as dust intellectual prick who cannot play
> a single phrase legato and whose feet cannot
> tell apart the gas and brake pedals.
PS : This judgment is yours, Mr Koren. And once again, moderation
seems not to be one of your foremost qualities.
Gieber Goldfarb
>
> What deserves
> only dismissal, nevertheless, is the critic who maintains, aping the naive
> child in the fairy tale who claimed that the emperor had no clothes, that we
> who love the difficult masterpieces of our time are only pretending, lost in
> admiration before something which does not in fact exist.
Cannot one admit that they are not pretending, but that they are
wrong? I.e. they sincerely believe the emperor has clothes -- but he
doesn't?
Henk van Tuijl
"Gieber Goldfarb" <gieberg...@yahoo.ca> schreef in bericht
news:701c7075.03042...@posting.google.com...
Interesting point of view ...
Do you mean to say that those who say that they love Boulez' second sonata
do indeed love it but that this sonata does not deserve their love?
How do you know?
Henk
Gieber Goldfarb
> "Gieber Goldfarb" <gieberg...@yahoo.ca> schreef in bericht
> news:701c7075.03042...@posting.google.com...
> > Cannot one admit that they are not pretending, but that they are
> > wrong? I.e. they sincerely believe the emperor has clothes -- but he
> > doesn't?
> Interesting point of view ...
> Do you mean to say that those who say that they love Boulez' second sonata
> do indeed love it but that this sonata does not deserve their love?
I would not myself say that (largely because I'm not familiar with
Boulez' second sonata), but I think it would be legitimate for someone
to say that. I know there are a lot of pieces of music that I think
are simply not good enough to deserve the love they get from their
fans -- say, Britney Spears. The fact that people sincerely love a
piece of music is not proof of its value, any more than the fact that
other people hate it is proof that it has no value.
Ray Hall
news:6d2677a4.03042...@posting.google.com...
It is worth noting, fwiw, that no less a figure than Anton Webern himself,
who said in 1932, to quote, "As we gradually gave up tonality, there came
the idea: we don't want to repeat, something new must come all the time!
It's obvious that this doesn't work, as it destroys comprehensibility". And
as Anthony Storr points out in his stimulating essay "Music and the Mind",
much avant garde (serial) music of the 50s and 60s was based upon the
foundation that literal repetition was considered and regarded as
aesthetically inexcusable. This lack of repetition is one reason - not the
only - why it is difficult to understand and make sense of serial music.
Abolishing tonality, and hence consonance to resolve dissonance, is another
factor.
This doesn't destroy David's argument about music being a language, but the
simple fact is, that some languages are enormously more difficult than
others, essentially the main factor in the incomprehensibility of much
serial music to the many. It should be noted that Einstein was taught for a
period extending over many many years the mathematics of Riemann, in order
to comprehend geometrical curvature, so that he could begin to grasp his own
vague ideas of general relativity, long after he had been awarded a Nobel
prize for discovering the *mere* photo-electic effect.
Lack of consonance, wide intervals, non-repetition, and an adherence to
arbitrary serial codes, was the order of the day for much music composed in
the mid 20th century, and was a highly specialised language known only by
the very very few. Mainly the composers themselves.
Noticeable is the greater acccessibility of music written today, as we type,
and to a certain extent we can even look back at the birth of minimalism,
and the realisation by the early minimalists, that lack of repetition was a
key factor in the incomprehensibility of much music by the many. If it is
going to take me 50 hearings to even grasp the rough structure of a piece of
music, then count me out, on the basis that my cognitive powers are
definitely not of the quality seemingly possessed by the very few.
But Webern said it himself above, and counterdicts that which Rosen claims
about Webern. Not wholly, because Webern wrote some sparkling gems, (and are
memorable if only because the extreme conciseness of his writing), but Rosen
cannot surely claim to apply his message to many composers who slavishly
followed Webern, and held to the aesthetic of the abolishment of literal
repetition. Repetition, after all, is one way we all, as toddlers, learn a
language.
Just my 5c worth.
Regards,
# http://www.users.bigpond.com/hallraylily/index.html
See You Tamara (Ozzy Osbourne)
Ray, Taree, NSW
David Sternlicht
> davidst...@hotmail.com (David Sternlicht) wrote in message news:<9562fefd.03042...@posting.google.com>...
> > Thomas Muething <tmuethingBUGGE...@t-online.de> wrote in message news:<3EAA4DD3...@t-online.de>...
> > > He pretty much rebuts a whole bunch of other people on this ng as well. :-)
> > >
> > > Thomas
> >
> > Which is too bad. It is unfortunate that these tired arguments that
> > just boil down to subjective tastes are still being hurled around by
> > wrongheaded posters. I certainly think everyone is entitled to like or
> > dislike a piece of music, but to say that a composition by Boulez or
> > Stockhausen is not music is insulting and ignorant.
>
> No, it is not. It is a legitimate discussion about a
> very fundamental question -- what is (or not) music?
If I could find any sound reasoning in your arguments I'd be inclined
to agree.
> If we cannot debate such a topic on this ng, what the
> *FUCK* is the raison d'etre of r.m.c.r. ?!?!?
I object to these old saws being put forth over and over and over. I
usually don't get involved (for the same reason I don't talk to
religious folks handing out flyers on streetcorners) because people
make up their minds if they don't like something, then there has to be
something fundamentally wrong with it and the people that like are
wrong too.
> > Of course these compositions are music.
>
> One doesn't have to take such things for granted.
Well, then what are they?! Don't be silly.
> > Would one go so far as to say that Gamelan or
> > Gagaku is not music?
>
> Maybe, or maybe not. You do realize, I hope, that
> how one answers the question for Gamelan need not
> have anything to do with how one answers it for
> Schtockhausen? It is perfectly possible that in
> someone's esthetics, Gamelan is legitimate music
> while Schtockhausen is not. I'm merely sing these
> two as random examples, so don't bother to debate.
Again, whether or not you like or claim to have or not have an
aethetic perception of any of the kinds of music listed above does not
disqualify any of them as not music.
> > Sure doesn't sound like Chopin to me.
>
> Nor to me ;-)
>
> > What the dead-horse beaters in this newsgroup
> > don't realize is that if they happen to not
> > care for a certain type of music, it does not
> > qualify them, or anyone else, to dismiss it as
> > not music.
>
> That cuts in more than one direction. For instance,
> why should one put up with the dead horse trainers
> who claim Tchaikovsky was a lousy composer, while
> praising Wagner and Beethoven to the skies? Praise
> and counter-praise should have equal rights, don't
> you think?
There is a fundamental difference between expressing an opinion about
one's tastes or preferances and making claims that something is or
isn't music. If I don't like peaches, that doesn't mean they are not
fruit.
Henk van Tuijl
If I understand you correctly you believe in the objective intrinsic value
of a musical composition. The existence or non-existence of value can even
be proven.
No "de gustibus", just a simple and straightforward A is more valuable than
B because ... Again, this is an interesting point. I have only one problem.
No one has ever been able to give me an adequate description of the
"because".
Perhaps you can. How would you determine objectively for example the
intrinsic musical value of each of the waltzes of Chopin?
Or if it is too difficult to determine relative values (A is more valuable
than B), on what objective grounds would you determine whether a waltz does
or does not have a value (A is of value, B is not)? For example, Chopin's
Op. 34/1 has value, "Waltzing Mathilda" has no value ... (= emperor's
clothes)
Henk
Phil Caron
news:701c7075.03042...@posting.google.com...
> Henk van Tuijl wrote:
>
> > "Gieber Goldfarb" <gieberg...@yahoo.ca> schreef in bericht
> > news:701c7075.03042...@posting.google.com...
>
> > > Cannot one admit that they are not pretending, but that they are
> > > wrong? I.e. they sincerely believe the emperor has clothes -- but he
> > > doesn't?
>
than to grasp something. Hearing and appreciating a musical work
presupposes a lot of things going right, for example, the listener's
internal and external enviromnents' not generating too much noise. Not
getting a musical work at all is pretty much the default and can happen for
zillions of reasons. Factoring that discrepancy in gives more weight to
positive aesthetic opinions than negative ones, which is why I'm still
"working" on listening to Boulez. But your point is valid.
- Phil Caron
Simon Roberts
gieberg...@yahoo.ca says...
Isn't this a context where, if it is sincerely believed that the emperor has
clothes then he does, as far as those who sincerely believe it are concerned,
and doesn't for those who disagree, and where there's no neutral standpoint to
judge who's correct? The only way you can say they're wrong is by rejecting
their criteria for what constitutes music (or a rewarding musical experience, or
whatever). But why should they adopt yours instead? And even if they do, what
difference would it make? Let's suppose someone succeeded in "proving" to David
Gable that the stuff Boulez writes isn't music. Then what? Should he stop
listening to it, enjoying it, analyzing it? Why? Or the reverse: would Dan
Koren start listening to and enjoying Boulez's stuff if someone proved to him
that it was, in fact, music? Ironically, it seems to me that whether it's
"really" music merely one of those "arid" "academic" arguments that Dan doesn't
like....
Simon
Alain Dagher
> A distaste for modernism is understandable and needs neither defense nor
> apology. It is not an easy style to come to terms with [ . . .] What deserves
> only dismissal, nevertheless, is the critic who maintains, aping the naive
> child in the fairy tale who claimed that the emperor had no clothes, that we
> who love the difficult masterpieces of our time are only pretending, lost in
> admiration before something which does not in fact exist. Our society has an
> absurd tolerance for obscurantists who wish to deny the relevance of the art
> and science they do not understand. The most obtuse critics of modernism,
> treated seriously by some journalists, are like creationists (also treated
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> seriously by some journalists and even by some senators) who attack
> evolutionary theory because they think Darwin said that we are all descended
> from monkeys. The message of both groups is a simple celebration of ignorance:
> what I do not understand is not worth understanding. They may deserve our
> sympathy, but in the end there is no reason to listen to them.
>
> -Charles Rosen
> Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist, pp. 225-228
> The Free Press (2003)
>
> -david gable
>
>
>
>
>
I believe a similar argument has previously been made by a notoriously
unserious rmcr poster:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?V25631B54
ad
David7Gable
>foundation that literal repetition was considered and regarded as
>aesthetically inexcusable.
Boulez and Stockhausen very quickly retreated from the utopian aesthetic
positions (from what Messiaen once referred to as "the charm of
impossibilities") they espoused when they were something like 20 years old. As
early as 1953 Boulez had this to say on the subject of so-called "total
serialism": "We must turn our backs on the monstrous poly-organization or
condemn ourselves to deafness."
Let's take a single one of those utopian aesthetic positions. It is an old
rule of thumb of part writing that individual parts or lines or voices
shouldn't cross. The alto line should stay sandwiched in between the soprano
and tenor part, for example. In the early 50's, Boulez and others thought that
counterpoint should be free to cross and indeed to jump about from register to
register at will, not simply to break the rules for the sake of breaking the
rules but because they wanted to write a kind of explosive and mercurial music
freed of gravity, so to speak. To a considerable extent, the counterpoint in
Boulez's 2nd Sonata, a kind of manifesto of Boulez's style circa 1948 or 49
although not yet an example of total serialism (which came circa 1951 or 52),
the counterpoint, which was largely inspired by the explosive counterpoint in
the fugue from the Hammerklavier with its wide leaps and aggressive trills,
jumps about from register to register, the voices constantly crossing one
another.
Looking back on the early 50's from the vantage of the mid-80's, Boulez
remarked: "I was always struck by the fact that when you don't pay attention
[in composition] to the overall envelope of the pitch, then you cannot follow
anything. You are lost. [. . .] For instance, in my Second Sonata, which I
still like very much as a kind of organized counterpoint, the registers were
not only a little bit, they WERE anarchic. There was some direction but not
enough control for me. Then when I began to work with total serialism and all
the parameters, it was no longer possible to control anything."
Total serialism was the result of a Romantic quest for absolute originality, an
attempt by a bunch of arrogant and idealistic kids in their early 20's to
transcend tradition and become totally responsible for their own languages.
Total serialism was supposed to grant the composer total control over his
language. But it was impossible to factor in all of the elements necessary for
a language, and when they took the motor apart it proved much more difficult to
build a new kind of motor with the pieces they had so carefully inventoried
than they had imagined. The baby had been thrown out with the bath water. You
simply cannot create a language from scratch. Music is as much the product of
traditions as of individuals, and Boulez fairly quickly came to see that total
serialism wouldn't lead to the desired goal, which was ultimately to write a
certain kind of often explosive but always poetic and fantastical music.
As the 1950's unfolded, Boulez became increasingly susceptible to the
influences of Debussy and Berg even as he increasingly moved away from the
constricting framework he had extrapolated from Webern's serialism and
Messiaen's ideas about rhythm. In the process he turned into Boulez.
>Abolishing tonality, and hence consonance to resolve dissonance, is another
>factor.
The only composer I know of who ever openly stated "we must get rid of
tonality" is Debussy. In fact--and fortunately--there's no getting away from
it. Nobody was more respectful of tonality than Schoenberg, who detested the
term atonality, preferring instead the term pantonality, which suggests a
tonality the directional forces of which dart off in many directions rather
than ultimately being harnessed to a single center.
In tonal music, the effect of the resolution of a dissonance by a consonance
involves both pitch and rhythm and creates a certain kind of gesture, most
often STRONG-weak (dissonance-consonance). In simon-pure tonal music,
dissonances and consonances are almost always sharply contrasted, like day and
night. Decisively for long stretches in the later works of Wagner,
unadulterated consonance came to be avoided. Dissonances are only resolved in
one part of the texture as other dissonances arise in other parts of the
texture, contributing to the effect of a quasi-seamless web, and resolution is
often long delayed. At the same time, the chord that increasingly came to seem
normative was the diminished seventh chord, which is a dissonant sonority,
rather than the major or minor triad. Wagner was no longer interested in sharp
contrasts but in mezzotints. Schoenberg's language evolved in the context of
such a conception. Schoenberg, like Wagner, still depended on a gestural
vocabulary descended from simon-pure tonality--both composers still depended on
the directionality inherent in the tonal materials--but where there are only
shades of grey, there is no longer a sense of absolute and definitive
stability.
Finally, the music of Schoenberg and Boulez makes use of the same intervals as
the music of Mozart and Wagner--an interval is the "distance" between two
pitches--and those intervals have specific qualities. In the music of Mozart,
the sharp contrast between the dissonance of some of the intervals and the
consonance of the others was systematically exploited. Schoenberg and Boulez
no longer exploit this distinction systematically but they are just as
sensitive to those differing qualities as any tonal composer. The music of
Schoenberg and Boulez depends on the different qualities of the different
intervals every bit as much as Mozart's does.
-david gable
David7Gable
>wrong? I.e. they sincerely believe the emperor has clothes -- but he
>doesn't?
Don't you see that this doesn't help one iota? You're suggesting that those
who claim the Emperor is wearing clothes are not lying but mad. The musicians
who have spent their lives playing say, Schoenberg or Boulez, and the listeners
who are passionately devoted to their music get pretty tired of being accused
of being either liars or madmen because of the music they love. Your argument
is this: "What I haven't learned to hear nobody else can possibly have learned
to hear. Therefore, when they claim to appreciate it they must either be lying
or mad." Trust me when I tell you that I've heard this a million times
already.
-david gable
Ed Fowler
> "really" music merely one of those "arid" "academic" arguments that Dan
doesn't
> like....
Touche.
Incidentally, I think Rosen is wrong to pick on Hasse, and merely displays
ignorance by doing so. J.S.Bach would agree, according to his son.
David7Gable
>clothes then he does, as far as those who sincerely believe it are concerned,
>and doesn't for those who disagree, and where there's no neutral standpoint to
>judge who's correct?
Simon, I wonder whether you believe that, while Swahili and Chinese are
languages for those who speak them, that I would be right in denying that they
are languages because I don't understand a word of them. (Actually, I do
understand one word of Chinese.)
>The only way you can say they're wrong is by rejecting
>their criteria for what constitutes music
There are criteria and criteria. If you start with the very simple and basic
distinctions that I started with in an attempt to define music--the distinction
between Cage's chance music and other music, the distinction between Morse code
and music--and if you accept that music involves not only hearing sounds as
cats and parakeets do but processing the patterns embodied in the sounds with
our minds in a manner not dissimilar to the manner in which we process
language--then Boulez's music is music. Period. Not everybody understands any
human language and not everybody understands Boulez's music. From the point of
view of these kinds of elementary criteria, those who appreciate Boulez's music
are no different from those who appreciate Chopin's.
Now if you start with different kinds of criteria, high-falutin' aesthetic
criteria, then it becomes possible to say of the last movement of the B flat
minor Sonata of Chopin, Op. 35, as Schumann did, that it's not music.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who have not learned to "speak"
Boulez's language who claim to dismiss it on the basis of high-falutin'
aesthetic criteria . . . which is analagous to listening to somebody read a
poem in a language with which you are completely unfamiliar and then dismissing
it as a bad poem.
-david gable
Simon Roberts
says...
>
>>Isn't this a context where, if it is sincerely believed that the emperor has
>>clothes then he does, as far as those who sincerely believe it are concerned,
>>and doesn't for those who disagree, and where there's no neutral standpoint to
>>judge who's correct?
>
>Simon, I wonder whether you believe that, while Swahili and Chinese are
>languages for those who speak them, that I would be right in denying that they
>are languages because I don't understand a word of them.
No, of course not, partly because that's not a criterion (for anyone, as far as
I know) for determining whether something is a language. More fundamentally,
though, I don't see the point in disputing whether Swahili and Chinese is a
language (not that anyone does); why would anyone bother?
I was allowing for the possibility that someone might use criteria other than
lack of understanding for deciding that something isn't music - or are you
saying that if you understand Boulez's (or whosever) output you necessarily
perceive it to be music or that if you don't perceive it to be music then you
necessarily don't understand it? If the latter, that has a whiff of circularity
about it.
I don't see why someone couldn't understand and even like someone's output but
nevertheless maintain that it's not music, whatever else it may be - though in
practice this never seems to happen; those who say "that's not music" only ever
seem to say it about sounds they dislike, in the perhaps insecure belief that
their mere dislike isn't sufficient reason to avoid it (as though calling
something music were sufficient reason to listen to it).
But I still think this is an unimportant, rather uninteresting verbal dispute
(though the psychological reasons behind it may be interesting). If I were
listening to a disc of Boulez's music and someone walked in and said "that's not
music" I wouldn't bother to argue with him but would instead ask "so what?"
What response would I get? Anyone care to provide one?
Simon
Samir Golescu
On 27 Apr 2003, Simon Roberts wrote:
> >> What deserves
> >> only dismissal, nevertheless, is the critic who maintains, aping the naive
> >> child in the fairy tale who claimed that the emperor had no clothes, that we
> >> who love the difficult masterpieces of our time are only pretending, lost in
> >> admiration before something which does not in fact exist.
> >
> > Cannot one admit that they are not pretending, but that they are
> >wrong? I.e. they sincerely believe the emperor has clothes -- but he
> >doesn't?
>
> Isn't this a context where, if it is sincerely believed that the emperor has
> clothes then he does, as far as those who sincerely believe it are concerned,
> and doesn't for those who disagree, and where there's no neutral standpoint to
> judge who's correct?
You are absolutely right, if one keeps the discussion in a completely
abstract realm. After all, if I choose to draw a circle in the sand and to
pretend it is a masterpiece of art and I even find a little sect which
agrees with me and has similar feelings regarding my masterful circle,
there's no way I and my followers could be "proven" wrong. At least not in
that "cold", legalistic and judgmental -- rather than communitary and
"intuitive" -- way, of course.
I do have troubles though with a certain "elitist" stance (in the worst
sense, this time) according to which rejection of a language or
"language" entails ignorance, while being reasonably aware of the
rudimentary workings of a "language" would not other than bring
"understanding" of an artwork.
E.g: take a fugue written by Czerny (he wrote lots of them and I know
some). I understand perfectly, I nourish the illusion, both the "language"
and the compositional workings involved. That doesn't make me less ready
to assert that that particular fugue is, in my perception, worthless.
I am smart enough not to dismiss a half of century of music entirely, as
it happens that, to the extent of my inherently limited experience with it,
I did listen to, I did read, and even I was able to participate in
performances of pieces of music I found, for the little my opinion was
worth, to communicate something of value or original or both. However, I
do strongly reject the implication that one only needs to "learn the
'language'" in order to somehow, miraculously, "understand" any work or
even to be a receiving party at its supposed greatness. On the contrary, I
do find the reaction of an educated (even uneducated in that *specific*
language or 'language') audience, while not infallible (audiences
can certainly err, even Brahms' Fourth Symphony was a half-failed
premiere!) something not to be dismissed lightly. In fact I find the
capacity to "impress" (upon) a reasonably large and "mainstream" audience
-- even, say, at the second or third audition -- of much greater interest
than the explanatory musings of a capable musicologist, which musings I do
certainly not dismiss, but I do not consider to be a "primary source"
either.
A worded explanation or a thorough personal analysis of a score are
possible and potential sources of enhancement of one's "understanding" of
music. It is verily fascinating to see, in a Stravinsky score, how the
composer created a certain "global aural effect", perceived in its aural
immediateness by the professional and by the educated amateur alike,
through hundreds of corroborating, mostly rationalizable, tiny and clever
compositional decisions. However, by no means are words or analyses meant
to substitute or to be preeminent to the act itself of listening. Nor are
they meant to act as preemptive weapon against the "dilettante" who has
all the rights to dislike a certain piece of music even if he doesn't
understand how a clever use of the flute piccolo enhances the
shrill harmonics of a clarinet in high register unto the creation of an
unprecedented effect of orchestral color. From this point of view, not
only does Charles Rosen not rebut Dan Koren, but he rebuts no one at
all!
"Well, perhaps, but what if you don't discern the grammatical consistency
of the music through the audition alone?" one may ask. "Too bad" is my
answer. If repeated and honest effort shows that to be the case, perhaps
there is a naked king out there who serves his arid salad without that
unctuous Freedom dressing. . . ( :
Not to mention that this "language" analogy often has its own limits
(politeness stops me from calling them huge and thinly adorned flaws). It
more often amounts to an attempt to preempt criticism -- "you are stupid,
you don't speak the language so trust us, the specialists who do". Don't
think so. In order to create original art, in my opinion it is axiomatic
that it is not enough to reorganize a given material in *whatever* way, to
call it "new language", and to claim that your audiences learn your
language. Nor is comprehending the rationale of that "new language" a
guarantee of liking the work of art itself, or even of the fact that
there is anything to be liked.
In some cases, the pretenses at "understanding" a "language" the vulgar
crowd doesn't have the "superior brains" or the "erudition" to "get" could
be better rendered in the following analogy:
Take a poem which this reader should be pardoned for calling bad,
*b*a*d*, BAD (yeah, of course, he can't prove it):
*Fish*
I wish I was a fish
a fish
a fish
then I would meet other fish
other fish
other fish
and I would say I have a dish
a dish
a dish
and in the sea I would pish
I'd pish
I'd pish
if only I was a fish
a fish
a fish
___________________________
The specialist can come afterwards and claim that there are hidden senses
in there, that the number of verses bears a secret correspondence with the
sectio aurea of the distance between Mecca and Jerusalem expressed in
marine miles, that the incantatory repetitiousness encapsulated in the
poem represents an allusion to the fertility rites of the ancient Greeks
or that "fish" doesn't actually mean fish, but FISH -- which is the
retrograde of HSIF (i.e., High School Imberb Fallaciousness), symbol of
the rebellion of the Vegetarian Space Age against the cruel infantilism of
the meat-eating Old World, which revelation should send the informed
reader at a different semantic layer altogether. . .
That might be impressive on certain innominable levels, and a rewarding
exercise of the specialist in reveling in its own superiority, but the
"uncultivated dilettante" will not "understand" the masterpiece any
better, nor should he feel guilty because of his *supposed* ignorance.
regards,
SG
Henk van Tuijl
"David7Gable" <david...@aol.com> schreef in bericht
news:20030427145233...@mb-m29.aol.com...
>
> Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who have not learned to "speak"
> Boulez's language who claim to dismiss it on the basis of high-falutin'
> aesthetic criteria . . . which is analagous to listening to somebody read
a
> poem in a language with which you are completely unfamiliar and then
dismissing
> it as a bad poem.
Hmm, this would make Boulez the victim of a regrettable misunderstanding ...
Boulez is not dismissed on the basis of high-falutin' aesthetic criteria. On
the contrary, he is dismissed on the basis of a Western pre-understanding of
what music is.
The high-falutin' aesthetic criteria were produced in the last century by
Boulez - cum suis. It is above all the use of these aesthetic criteria as a
means to an extra musical end (the politics of art) that makes the
aesthetics
of Boulez suspect - and rightly so.
However, the fact that the aesthetics of Boulez is suspect does not imply
that the music itself necessarily is. IMHO some of the music of Boulez is -
far - better than the man and his criteria, as a work of art usually is.
Henk
David7Gable
>lack of understanding for deciding that something isn't music - or are you
>saying that if you understand Boulez's (or whosever) output you necessarily
>perceive it to be music
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying and nothing more remarkable or
high-falutin' than that. Music just happens to be the noun that is
conventionally used as a label for the kind of thing that Boulez's music is.
Of course if you understand Boulez' music or Chopin's music or anybody else's
music you understand it as music. What on earth else would it be that you
understand it as? If I understand what you write at rmcr it's because I
understand English.
And, actually, I have said more than "if you understand Boulez you understand
it as music" with its, as you say, whiff of circularity. I have enumerated
what I think are some of the basic criteria sound has to meet in order to
become music. I don't think Cage's chance "music" meets these criteria and I
don't consider it to be music. It may constitute music for you, but only if
your definition of music is less strict than mine and entails no more than that
sound be placed within an aesthetic context in order for it to become music.
Other music meets more stringent criteria at a basic constitutive level. By
these criteria music is more than random sound. And it is not just any
patterns of sound such as those that result from the transmission of Morse Code
but sounds destined for human ears and minds in a very specific sense. By this
definition, music involves more than the ability to hear sounds, a capacity we
share with most other animals. It involves hearing patterns in sound and
"processing" those patterns in real time while listening in a way analagous to
the manner in which we process language when we listen to others speak a
language that we understand. To say these things is not merely to engage in a
verbal dispute. It is an attempt to define what music is or at least to
uncover some of the things that define music as such. You are free to argue
against them, to deny that they have anything to do with music or to qualify
them, but they are so obvious and common sensical I doubt you will. In any
case, I am reduced to repeating myself and there is no point in my continuing
to do so.
Of course it is possible to move on to a more interesting topic than whether or
not Boulez's music is music, but the debate tends to get stuck there.
-david gable
John Harrington
> >Isn't this a context where, if it is sincerely believed that the emperor has
> >clothes then he does, as far as those who sincerely believe it are concerned,
> >and doesn't for those who disagree, and where there's no neutral standpoint to
> >judge who's correct?
>
> Simon, I wonder whether you believe that, while Swahili and Chinese are
> languages for those who speak them, that I would be right in denying that they
> are languages because I don't understand a word of them. (Actually, I do
> understand one word of Chinese.)
The word "language" can't, except in odd or metaphorical
circumstances, be interpreted as an aesthetic valuation. Not so the
word "music". Some people may consider street noises to be "music".
I'm at peace with such people, and I hope they are at peace with me if
I say that is *not* "music".
On the other hand, all reasonable people agree that Chinese is a
language.
John
David7Gable
>sense, this time) according to which rejection of a language or
>"language" entails ignorance,
We are all ignorant of most of the world's spoken languages. There is no shame
in that. There are plenty of people who are totally ignorant of Boulez's
language in an equally innocent sense. There is no shame in that. But if all
that you hear when you listen to somebody performing a piece of Boulez's music
is an opaque wall of noise, then you are not yet in a position to judge its
aesthetic qualities. Any more than you are in a position to judge the
aesthetic qualities of a poem in Swahili when you don't understand a word of
the language. And it is not elitism to point this out. It is common sense.
> while being reasonably aware of the
>rudimentary workings of a "language" would not other than bring
>"understanding" of an artwork.
>
The understanding of music in the only sense relevant to this discussion can
only result from listening.
>It
>more often amounts to an attempt to preempt criticism -- "you are stupid,
>you don't speak the language so trust us, the specialists who do".
Does this meant that you are entitled to judge Swahili poetry without speaking
the language, then? In order to judge a poem in Swahili, you must be a
"specialist" at least to this extent: you must speak the language. To talk to
you on this forum it is necessary for me to speak English. At least to that
extent we are both specialists in English. To form an opinion of a piece by
Chopin, I have to understand it. If I had been born deaf, I would not be
entitled to an opinion of his music. I didn't come out of the womb conversant
in the English language or with Chopin's style. These are special abilities
I've acquired along the way. Another special ability I've acquired along the
way is the ability to understand Boulez's idiom. That is something I
absolutely could not do the first time I heard Le marteau sans maītre. At that
point I was not entitled to an opinion on the subject. Now I am.
What I would like to see you do is to debate the points I have made and not
come at them from evasive tangents. Do you grasp the distinction I made
between Cage and other music? Do you grasp the distinction I made between
Morse code and music? Do you grasp the distinction I made between hearing
music as no more than sound like a parakeet or a cat and processing the
patterns embodied in the music in real time while listening just as one
processes spoken language in real time while listening to it spoken? Do you
grasp the distinction between the basic understanding of music that can only be
acquired by listening and the very different kind of knowledge that results
from studying music and theorizing about it? I am reasonably certain that the
answer to all of these questions is Yes. I am also reasonably certain that you
understand my analogy to Swahili poetry. But you have to remove the debate
away from this simple common sensical level of debate in order to make your
attack. But even if there are people guilty of the elitism, etc., that you
choose to attack in place of the arguments I've actually made, it makes no
difference to the validity or lack thereof of my arguments.
-david gable
David7Gable
>circumstances, be interpreted as an aesthetic valuation. Not so the
>word "music". Some people may consider street noises to be "music".
>I'm at peace with such people, and I hope they are at peace with me if
>I say that is *not* "music".
Not so. When somebody listens to the breeze wafting through the trees and
describes the sounds as "music," he or she is speaking metaphorically. It is
obvious that you are aware of this yourself, since you place the word music in
parentheses. It is also possible to draw a distinction between the attempt to
define what music is and making aesthetic judgements of the music you listen
to. Most of the time when somebody dismisses a piece of music by saying,
"That's not even music," he or she knows perfectly well that what he or she
really means is "That's horrible music" or "That's not music worthy of the
name."
-david gable
elm
>
> And, actually, I have said more than "if you understand Boulez you
> understand it as music" with its, as you say, whiff of circularity. I
> have enumerated what I think are some of the basic criteria sound has to
> meet in order to become music. I don't think Cage's chance "music" meets
> these criteria and I don't consider it to be music. It may constitute
> music for you, but only if your definition of music is less strict than
> mine and entails no more than that sound be placed within an aesthetic
> context in order for it to become music.
How is "your" definition and enumerations of what seperates " noise"
and music more than an "aesthetic context"? The interesting paraodox
about Cages chance works is that the chance element is controlled. What
of composers who use probability such as Xenakis?
> Other music meets more stringent criteria at a basic constitutive level.
> By these criteria music is more than random sound.
The Music of changes for example is more than random noise, and it
expresses a very clear thought and insight regarding certain aspects of
life to me. There are many precompositional processes Cage strictly
followed in this work, thus limiting and defining the rchance element.
By the time the exact notation in this work is realised in performance,
on an instrument rich in aesthetic history and associations (ie a non
neutral sound) with Cage's free improvisational use of non pitched
sounds added it is very far from "random sound". Further more other
chance piano works such as Cheap imitation,Winter Music are totally
unalike each other and each have a distinct soundworld and individual
character. These differences would be undiscernable if the works were
incomprehensible.
> It involves hearing patterns in sound and > "processing"
those patterns in real time while listening in a way analagous to > the
manner in which we process language when we listen to others speak a >
language that we understand.
The language analogy is imperfect. There are many ways to absorb
information, experiences, wisdom and insights other than through
language. Symbolism, Icons, Meditation
>To say these things is not merely to engage in a > verbal dispute. It
Samir Golescu
On 27 Apr 2003, David7Gable wrote:
> Does this meant that you are entitled to judge Swahili poetry without
> speaking the language, then? In order to judge a poem in Swahili, you
> must be a "specialist" at least to this extent: you must speak the
> language.
I understood you the first (or second, or third. . .) time around. While
it is true that any composer of remarkable originality will bring
something new to the musical language his education was based upon, I
simply reject the idea that a composer -- even geniuses such as Bach,
Beethoven, Chopin, or Bartok -- created a new, different, self-sufficient
language one needs to learn as a goal preceding listening to the works
themselves. OF COURSE that I agree with you that any compositional style
of worth needs a certain effort of adaptation and comprehension and some
of the so-called "easy", tonal composers have required that from me as
well. I cannot take though your Swahili analogy into account, insofar it
simply doesn't work, for reasons I have already hinted at and have no time
to repeat. Mainly because I do not believe that one composer, one
individual, however genial, could create an organic and meaningful "new
language" with the extent of "foreignness" relative to other musical
languages that the Swahili language has as related to the English one.
> To talk to you on this forum it is necessary for me to speak English.
Not speaking English has never stopped *me*. . . (-;
> What I would like to see you do is to debate the points I have made
I bet. I would have liked that too. You are a musically cultivated
man and one can learn from you. Having a dialogue in which both parties
are actually listening to each other, now, what the heck?, one can't have
it all. . .
regards,
SG
David7Gable
>Boulez - cum suis.
Be that as it may, Boulez didn't introduce those criteria into this discussion
himself and nobody else introduced them on his behalf. It was not Boulez's
high-falutin' aesthetic criteria that were being discussed but the
high-falutin' aesthetic criteria of others. (I would be happy to change the
topic to a discussion of his high-falutin's aesthetic views if you'd like.)
I attempted, apparently unsuccessfully, to draw a distinction between defining
some of the basic criteria that constitute music as music on the one hand and
making aesthetic judgements of the music one listens to on the other.
-david gable
XYZ XYZ
explore contemporary music, but sometimes I find these sorts of
discussions on contemporary music a bit tiresome. When one looks at
French intellectual thought, for example, one moves from structuralists
like Levi-Strauss to post-structuralists like Derrida -- and in fact,
there was a recent article in the Times about a meeting in the University
of Chicago titled "The Latest Theory is that Theory doesn't Matter." In
Economics, one debates the merits of Keynesian economics vs. classical
economics. In Philosophy, Wittgenstein and Popper had a big fight in
Cambridge in 1946. Pick your favorite field, and if it's vibrant, I'm
sure that there're interesting debates about trends and approaches.
What I'm trying to say is that there should a natural progression of
thought and approaches in music as well, with trends and countertrends.
To me, it's much more interesting to look a field from this point of
view. I wouldn't be as silly to argue that contemporary music is not
worth listening to because I don't understand it -- but I wouldn't
necessarily like being reminded constantly that there's a (difficult)
musical language associated with contemporary music, so that's why I
find it hard to grasp. Perhaps there's something quite wrong with
contemporary music if the language is so pecialized :-), which, I
suppose, is, in effect, what Webern is saying.
So I'm much more interested in alternative trends and approaches --
and, while not a musician or trained in music, I've a hard time
believing that (academic) musicians adopt Rosen or Boulez as gospel,
and that no one else has taken a more critical look at the current
state of contemporary music.
"Ray Hall" <hallr...@bigpond.com> wrote in message news:<gnRqa.23615$1s1.3...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com>...
[Webern quote]
pallex
> >Abolishing tonality, and hence consonance to resolve dissonance, is another
> >factor.
>
> The only composer I know of who ever openly stated "we must get rid of
> tonality" is Debussy. In fact--and fortunately--there's no getting away from
> it. Nobody was more respectful of tonality than Schoenberg, who detested the
> term atonality, preferring instead the term pantonality, which suggests a
> tonality the directional forces of which dart off in many directions rather
> than ultimately being harnessed to a single center.
Schoenberg, in "My Evolution" wrote [about, and 40 years after
writing, "3 piano pieces (op. 11)"] "Intoxicated by the enthusiasm of
having freed music from the shackles of tonality, I had thought to
find further liberty of expression.".
This quote is from "The atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg 1908-1923"
by Bryan R. Simms. (It also quotes him as preferring "polytonal" to
atonal.)
ulvi
news:20030427172647...@mb-m17.aol.com:
> Of course it is possible to move on to a more interesting topic than
> whether or not Boulez's music is music, but the debate tends to get
> stuck there.
Yes; it's hard for me to understand the impulse to label as "non-music"
the music that we don't like. The vast majority of all music
out there being garbage (at least IMO, and likely in the opinion of
most here), why is "being music" deemed such a high status that
saying X is not music becomes a favorite insult for X's detractors
that never fails to infuriate X's admirers? I could say "rap
is not music," but it would be neither accurate nor sufficiently
damning to say it; I'd rather say rap is bad music. One can easily
program computers to churn out music (that everyone would
agree is music), or presumably even a lab rat can be trained with
standard reward-punishment techniques to "write" non-controversial
music. So what's the big deal with a composition being or not being
music? Isn't what's really important whether Boulez is or is not
good music?
Ulvi
Samir Golescu
On Mon, 28 Apr 2003, ulvi wrote:
> it's hard for me to understand the impulse to label as "non-music"
> the music that we don't like. The vast majority of all music
> out there being garbage (at least IMO, and likely in the opinion of
> most here), why is "being music" deemed such a high status that
> saying X is not music becomes a favorite insult for X's detractors
> that never fails to infuriate X's admirers? I could say "rap
> is not music," but it would be neither accurate nor sufficiently
> damning to say it; I'd rather say rap is bad music. One can easily
> program computers to churn out music (that everyone would
> agree is music), or presumably even a lab rat can be trained with
> standard reward-punishment techniques to "write" non-controversial
> music. So what's the big deal with a composition being or not being
> music? Isn't what's really important whether Boulez is or is not
> good music?
I see your point, but perhaps the issue put in your last sentence is
simply not controversial in the least?. . . ( :
regards,
SG
David7Gable
>and music more than an "aesthetic context"?
4' 33" does not demand of the listener the same cognitive capacities that even
"Row, row, row your boat" demands of the listener.
>The interesting paraodox
>about Cages chance works is that the chance element is controlled.
Not nearly enough for me. And the more it is controlled, the less it is
chance. In any case, my conscious intention was to set aside such limit cases
as these because it is not possible to discuss absolutely everything at once.
I also openly and repeatedly conceded the possibility of a less exigent and
more generous definition of music than mine that would admit even 4' 33".
>What
>of composers who use probability such as Xenakis?
He used statistical methods but not all the time and only where they were
sufficient to arrive at the gross textures he wants under certain
circumstances. Another problematic case that requires separate treatment.
>The language analogy is imperfect. There are many ways to absorb
>information, experiences, wisdom and insights other than through
>language. Symbolism, Icons, Meditation
The fact that language is not the only way to absorb information--where on
earth did I say or imply any such thing?--doesn't refute what I have said. In
any case, the only time an analogy is absolutely "perfect" is when the two
objects being compared are absolutely identical, and such analogies are hardly
revealing, which is why they're never drawn.
From the point of view of human cognition, there are profound similarities
between all spoken languages and all of the music that fits my narrow
definition (although not such limit cases as Cage). Spoken languages and music
from "Row, row, row your boat" to Chopin to Boulez to gamelan music require
that the listener process certain kinds of elements as they are presented
sequentially in real time and relate them one to the next at more than one
level, elements that make sense only in so far that they are part of a
syntactic network. (This is not to deny important distinctions between musics
and languages.)
-david gable
David7Gable
>believing that (academic) musicians adopt Rosen or Boulez as gospel,
>and that no one else has taken a more critical look at the current
>state of contemporary music.
And just what would be "more critical"? Something that agreed with arguments
you won't make yourself? If you want to be all chic and trendy and
post-structuralist, why don't you go track down what Foucault thought about
Boulez? Or Roland Bathes. Or Deleuze and Guattari.
>I wouldn't be as silly to argue that contemporary music is not
>worth listening to because I don't understand it -- but I wouldn't
>necessarily like being reminded constantly that there's a (difficult)
>musical language associated with contemporary music, so that's why I
>find it hard to grasp.
Why don't you want to be reminded? Is your sense of self-esteem that weak?
That doesn't make sense. Surely it doesn't bother you that you can't speak any
number of spoken languages. The advantage of being reminded is that then you
know the solution to the problem: listening some more.
-david gable
David7Gable
>simply reject the idea that a composer -- even geniuses such as Bach,
>Beethoven, Chopin, or Bartok -- created a new, different, self-sufficient
>language one needs to learn as a goal preceding listening to the works
>themselves.
The language of a work CANNOT be learned prior to listening to the work. It
can only be learned by listening to the work. There is absolutely no other
way. Why do you persist in believing that I think otherwise? Of course, when
you've heard dozens of pieces by Bach, the strong similarities between those
pieces and the next Bach piece you hear will be excellent preparation for that
next piece. And listening to any of the music in the tonal tradition is going
to be preparation for other music in that tradition.
There was a day when I could not grasp Elliott Carter's music. The first
Carter piece I heard was very near to being 100% unintelligible to me the first
time I heard it, although it seemed more like music to me than the first Boulez
piece I ever heard. But I am very familiar with Carter now, and, when I hear a
new Carter piece now, it poses no more and no less difficulties for me as a
listener than hearing a Beethoven piece I've never heard for the first time.
I am arrogant enough to suspect that my ears are somewhat better than average;
and I think the same is probably true of most really fanatic devotees of
classical music (people like Simon Roberts or Tony Movshon, for example). Our
innate musicality has no doubt contributed to our being drawn to music. At the
same time, I've known too many people with truly extraordinary ears to think
I'm anything special in that regard. No member of the New York Philharmonic
would ever say of me what one once said of Pierre Boulez, that when a pin
dropped he could tell what key it was in. But this comparative non-specialness
of my own musicality suggests to me that I am not alone in having the capacity
for assimilating the languages of composers like Boulez and Carter.
>Mainly because I do not believe that one composer, one
>individual, however genial, could create an organic and meaningful "new
>language" with the extent of "foreignness" relative to other musical
>language
I guess you didn't read the post ("Boulez, Total Serialism, etc.") either in
this or the Chopin's Development thread in which I described how Boulez came to
a very similar conclusion himself something like 50 years ago. (It's badly in
need of editing but some sins cannot be undone.) The proof of the pudding is
in Boulez's music, not in the half dozen most extreme or incendiary remarks he
made at the age of 21.
-david gable
David7Gable
>writing, "3 piano pieces (op. 11)"] "Intoxicated by the enthusiasm of
>having freed music from the shackles of tonality, I had thought to
>find further liberty of expression.".
Fair enough. He did, however, detest the usage "atonality" and he referred to
the expanded chromatic tonality of his pre-war style as "pantonality." The
date of the remark you quote is also significant. Schoenberg became a much
more conservative composer after World War I. It is also significant that in
1909, the period of Erwartung, Schoenberg also wrote a large and conservative
harmony book. You cannot accuse Schoenberg of any lack of respect for the
tonal tradition or for such composers as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert,
Wagner, Brahms, and Mahler. Debussy on the other hand really did want to get
away from every convention and especially from the traditions of late German
Romanticism.
-david gable
Larry Rinkel
news:Xns936AB9AF55D05...@209.204.42.170...
> So what's the big deal with a composition being or not being
> music? Isn't what's really important whether Boulez is or is not
> good music?
I would think so, and a possible approach to answering that question would
be to ask (assuming one has actually heard Boulez's music, and not just
formed opinions about it) whether some Boulez pieces succeed better than
others. I attended the two all-Boulez programs at Carnegie Hall in late
March, and of the non-electronic pieces played on the second program, I
thought the recent Dérives II was a distinct falling-off from the other
works offered that afternoon - including Dérives I, Eclat, and Domaines.
Everyone else I talked to had a similar opinion. But why? for me at least,
primarily because Dérives II seemed to go on too long with the same kind of
musical texture and insufficient contrast, whereas Domaines, a lengthier
piece, maintained interest by continually varying the textures and rhythms
employed. (In this piece the clarinet soloist has brief unaccompanied
passages intermixed with "encounters" between the soloist and various small
instrumental groups of different sizes. If there was something lacking in
the piece, I felt it might be stronger if there were some interaction among
the instrumental groups themselves.)
My reaction to Dérives II really is no different from the reaction I might
have to more traditional music with the same shortcomings. Listening some
time ago to a slow movement from one of Dittersdorf's Six Symphonies after
Ovid's Metamorphoses, I also felt a numbing sameness in a texture where the
accompaniment pattern, once set at the beginning of an 8-minute piece, never
varied, and where the rhythms were all predictably regular. You don't get
this in Mozart, who constantly varies his textures and keeps you off-balance
by his rhythmic irregularities. These can be so subtle that you may not
recognize them as such (e.g., if you open the score to the Marriage of
Figaro Overture, you'll find the piece begins with a 7-bar phrase, followed
by 2 2-bar phrases and then a 6-bar phrase), but they're there, and they
help keep the mind alert and interested.
So what's the problem with Boulez? Lack of familiarity for one, and a
tendency to judge the work by the theories it supposedly embodies (total
serialism and the like) for another. Allen Shawn's comment about
Schoenberg - "it is not entirely in a spirit of facetiousness that I have
said to friends that I feel perhaps Schoenberg's work deserves a more
superficial treatment than it has hitherto received" - applies equally to
Boulez, whose music needs to be listened to without preconceptions and with
an open mind. ("Oh, my mind is always perfectly open," says a friend of
mine. But when he asks of a modern piece I recommend "Is it tonal?", I know
the barrier to acceptance has already been put up.) But the preconceptions
already appear in this thread whenever it is assumed that the music is
difficult, a hard nut to crack, and the like. Boulez is not all that
difficult, so long as one accepts that this is a music in which traditional
types of melody and harmony are absent, and in which other elements -
texture, timbre, density, register, dynamics, spatial organization - have
come to play at least as important a role. When Répons was played in
Carnegie to a wildly cheering audience, I strongly doubt they were all
saying to themselves "How difficult this music is!!" Instead they were
dazzled by the splendid sonorities and the rhythmic energy. I had some
reservations about the piece myself - maybe it would be better if 10 minutes
shorter - but I have no doubt the case could be made that this is "good
music."
ulvi
news:oc1ra.154843$MB4.54...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:
> When Répons was played in Carnegie to a
> wildly cheering audience, I strongly doubt they were all saying to
> themselves "How difficult this music is!!" Instead they were dazzled
> by the splendid sonorities and the rhythmic energy. I had some
> reservations about the piece myself - maybe it would be better if 10
> minutes shorter - but I have no doubt the case could be made that
> this is "good music."
After listening to Pli selon Pli (Sony)
and the piano sonatas several times, I remain
indifferent to Boulez's music. But it never occurs
to me that it's not music, nor have I any problem
with calling it good music; my indifference to it
is no different than my reaction to Vivaldi, Saint-Saens,
much of Wagner and Debussy.
Ulvi
Wayne Reimer
says...
> >The word "language" can't, except in odd or metaphorical
> >circumstances, be interpreted as an aesthetic valuation. Not so the
> >word "music". Some people may consider street noises to be "music".
> >I'm at peace with such people, and I hope they are at peace with me if
> >I say that is *not* "music".
>
>
> Not so. When somebody listens to the breeze wafting through the trees and
> describes the sounds as "music," he or she is speaking metaphorically.
<...>
When I hear a sound in the environment that strikes me as music, there's
nothing metaphorical about it at all. As far as I'm concerned, it's music as
much as anything else is. Maybe I understand Cage's "language" better than you
do...
wr
Henk van Tuijl
I tend to disagree with you about the nature of the criticism of Boulez'
music. It is not high-falutin but down to earth and common-sensical.
The basic criteria are clear. No one doubts that Chopin's 34/1 is music, no
one even doubts that Waltzing Mathilda is music.
However, it is not clear why Boulez' second sonata also should be called
music.
As in modern art, only a text explaining why the basic criteria of our
natural understanding of music have to be replaced by the high-falutin'
aesthetic criteria of modern music will do the job.
Not unlike you, Karsten Harries once tried to explain why Kazimir Malevic'
white square was art by referring to a basic criterion, i.c. the fact that
it was a white square on a white field -
implying that this was an instance of image and ground as in traditional
art.
In doing so Harries forgot - among many other things - that he placed
Malevic back into a position the artist had tried all his life to escape
from: the suffocating rules of traditional art.
Malevic' art does not match the basic criteria of traditional art. He wanted
to make a clean break with tradition - and still make "art".
IMHO it is the same with Boulez' music - but please correct me if I am
wrong.
Henk
elm
> >
>
> 4' 33" does not demand of the listener the same cognitive capacities that even
> "Row, row, row your boat" demands of the listener.
>
> >The interesting paraodox
> >about Cages chance works is that the chance element is controlled.
>
> Not nearly enough for me. And the more it is controlled, the less it is
> chance.
Isn't that a problem, that you can have more or less chance? It is
either random or it isn't if it is to be excluded from your definition
of music. My point was that Cage's chance pieces are never totally
random in all their qualities.What is your cutoff point?
For example rolling a dice to choose the various paths chosen through
Boulez third piano sonata would introduce chance at a fundamental level.
It would be pointless to argue that this renders it "non music". This is
an amplification of how Cage uses chance, the elements to be subjected
are expressed through many 'non chance' structures and choices the
composer makes in the precomposition and strcuctural levels. This is why
the works do have an immediatly appreciable character meaning and form.
As an aside chance and chaos theory has revolutionised mathematics in
some areas in the 20c, I would expect modern composers to be sympathetic
to this.
> From the point of view of human cognition, there are profound similarities
> between all spoken languages and all of the music that fits my narrow
> definition (although not such limit cases as Cage).
I would love to hear an example of a contrapuntal or serial organised
spoken language. Have you heard Glen Goulds "idea of north?
> and relate them one to the next at more than one
> level, elements that make sense only in so far that they are part of a
> syntactic network.
I do not agree with using semantic models in music categorisation but
there are enough repeating element present in a chance work of cage for
a syntax to be immediately discernable. This is not what makes them
great music though.
XYZ XYZ
appreciate is a certain sort of implied intellectual superiority --
hardly a way to win converts to contemporary music. Oh, yes, this
thing is just *really* difficult.
What did Foucault say about Boulez anyway? Oh, I forget -- remember
the latest is that "theory doesn't matter," according to the U of C
conference? So who cares? :-)
And it's Barthes, isn't it? :-)
Jokes aside, perhaps "more critical" isn't the right word. Perhaps
I should have written "more open"? But I forget that academics love
to defend their turfs. :-)
david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message news:<20030427222821...@mb-m17.aol.com>...
pallex
> Well, I already know that I need to listen some more. What I don't
> appreciate is a certain sort of implied intellectual superiority --
> hardly a way to win converts to contemporary music. Oh, yes, this
> thing is just *really* difficult.
This is one of those arguments which people who don't like/know
certain types of classical music mention. Thing is, i`ve never heard
anyone who was knowledgable about contemporary music use it in an
attempt to convert people.
I enjoy listening to music which is hard to perform (boulez sonatas,
ligeti etudes), or which has unusual/complex theories behind it
(Schoenbergs 12-tone music, Messiaens total serial works) - not for
those reasons, but because they "sounds good".
> Jokes aside, perhaps "more critical" isn't the right word. Perhaps
> I should have written "more open"? But I forget that academics love
> to defend their turfs. :-)
Never mind them - just listen to the music. Or not. It's your choice.
Raymond Hall
| news:20030427172647...@mb-m17.aol.com:
|
| > Of course it is possible to move on to a more interesting topic than
| > whether or not Boulez's music is music, but the debate tends to get
| > stuck there.
|
| Yes; it's hard for me to understand the impulse to label as "non-music"
| the music that we don't like. The vast majority of all music
| out there being garbage (at least IMO, and likely in the opinion of
| most here), why is "being music" deemed such a high status that
| saying X is not music becomes a favorite insult for X's detractors
| that never fails to infuriate X's admirers? I could say "rap
| is not music," but it would be neither accurate nor sufficiently
| damning to say it; I'd rather say rap is bad music.
Even the above is not perfectly correct imo. It would perhaps be far more
truthful, (whether accuracy is an issue here is moot), to say you "dislike,
maybe even intensely, rap music". To say rap is "bad music" is to make a
qualitative statement, which is even more ludicrous given that one is
questioning whether Boulez or rap *is* even music. But of course they both
are.
Of course, I maintain quite firmly, that any attempt to organise sounds for
the possible consumption of a listening public, is an attempt which quite
clearly produces music. Hence Boulez, and rap, and Charlotte Church, quite
clearly represent music. It would be much better if we personalised our
feelings about certain music, because (1) there seems to be several who are
prepared to call certain forms of organised sounds, a kind of non-music,
without so much as even being prepared to define what the term music really
means, and (2) it requires a huge amount of musical skill, philosophical
knowledge, and knowledge of social environments and personal circumstances,
to qualify as to whether one type of music is better than another.
Of course, I have myself been guilty of calling certain music crap, so this
is not quite the case of the kettle calling the frying pan black <g> I
listened, partly out of interest to a favourite "bete-noire" of mine today
(a symphony which has a number greater than eight), and which further proved
to me what utter garbage it appeared to MY ears. The nearest word I can
remotely fumble for is the word "banal".
| One can easily
| program computers to churn out music (that everyone would
| agree is music), or presumably even a lab rat can be trained with
| standard reward-punishment techniques to "write" non-controversial
| music. So what's the big deal with a composition being or not being
| music?
All compositions are music. Even Cage's 4'33", Bo Diddley, and especially
Ketelby <g>
| Isn't what's really important whether Boulez is or is not
| good music?
BINGO. Exactly right, and there lies the $10 million question. An important
one, the answer of which only time will unfold.
Regards,
# http://www.users.bigpond.com/hallraylily/index.html
See You Tamara (Ozzy Osbourne)
Ray, Taree, NSW
David7Gable
You apparently, since I was responding to your request for a
"post-structuralist" take on contemporary music.
>And it's Barthes, isn't it? :-)
Thanks for correcting my typographical error.
-dg
David7Gable
>> to defend their turfs. :-)
Only academics? Check out any newsgroup on any topic whatsoever. It's amazing
when people discover academics behaving like everyone else.
-david gable
David7Gable
>My point was that Cage's chance pieces are never totally
>random in all their qualities >What is your cutoff point?
I feel quite certain that no chance piece by Cage, no matter how controlled the
chance, would be inside my cutoff point. Because there is still too much left
to chance at the point where you're listening. The melodic, harmonic, and
rhythmic shapes are still not the product of one human consciousness destined
for others. Cage is quite explicit about this himself.
Now the pieces for prepared piano from the 40's before he discoverd chance are
a different story. Those are music. And very charming besides.
>only in so far that they are part of a
>> syntactic network.
>
> I do not agree with using semantic models in music categorisation
Neither do I. I guess you don't know the difference between syntax and
semantics. The fact is, the "music" resulting from Cage's controlled chance
does not depend on a syntactic component, unlike children's rounds such as
"Row, row, row your boat," Renaissance polyphony, Baroque music, Mozart,
Chopin, Wagner, Schoenberg,`Stravinsky, gamelan music, country and western
songs, and all other music EXCEPT for such exceptional limit cases as Cage's
chance "music." As far as I'm concerned, Cage's chance "music" is not music.
You are, of course, entitled to your broader definition that admits Cage's
chance music and controlled chance music. Nevertheless, I'm sure that even you
grasp the distinction between Cage's chance music and other music. It may even
be that distinction that makes you so enthusiastic about Cage.
>there are enough repeating element present in a chance work of cage for
>a syntax to be immediately discernable.
Takes more than that for a syntax to be discernible. Syntax is not a product
of chance and cannot be a product of chance. Cage would be upset to hear you
say that his music is syntactic since it is the tyrrany of the syntactic he
wanted to free us from.
-david gable
David Sternlicht
> appreciate is a certain sort of implied intellectual superiority --
> hardly a way to win converts to contemporary music. Oh, yes, this
> thing is just *really* difficult.
Speaking as someone who likes contemporary music, I'm bothered by
this, too. I don't think it's "difficult" to like new music, I just
think you have to accept it on its own terms and be willing to adapt
new strategies for finding your way through a new piece. The
alternative would sort of be like staring at a Rothko and being
frustrated by not being able to locate the virgin and child.
David7Gable
>music. It is not high-falutin but down to earth and common-sensical.
I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about here. I know that I try to
make my own discussions down to earth and common-sensical. Whether I succeed
is not for me to say. On the other hand, I don't make any pretense of being
dispassionate. If I write about somebody's music it's because I love it.
>However, it is not clear why Boulez' second sonata also should be called
>music.
If you say that it is not clear to you, I'm inclined to take your word for it.
But none of the many pianists who have played it, who would necessarily be more
familiar with the work than you are, would disagree. I do think it's a hard
nut to crack. Some of Boulez's pieces are denser than others. See Boulez's
own remarks on the subject in my post "Boulez, total serialism, etc." in this
thread.
>As in modern art, only a text explaining why the basic criteria of our
>natural understanding of music have to be replaced by the high-falutin'
>aesthetic criteria of modern music will do the job.
I am in total disagreement. No amount about verbal discussion will turn
something into a painting or a piece of music. If it can't be understood by
listening, it isn't music. If it can't be apprehended by looking, it's not
painting. At least by my narrow definitions of music and painting.
>He [Malevic] wanted
>to make a clean break with tradition - and still make "art".
>
>IMHO it is the same with Boulez' music - but please correct me if I am
>wrong.
Yes, there was a "utopian" moment when the temptation of attempting to
transcend tradition in the interests of a purely personal language appealed to
Boulez. It didn't last long for the very simple reason that it couldn't be
done. I wrote about this at some length in the post within this thread
entitled "Boulez, total serialism, etc."
My own personal take on Malevic's white square--or Boulez's totally serial
First Book of Structures, for that matter--is that it is better explained
psychologically than aesthetically. Both felt the need to wipe the slate
clean, to make tabula rasa of tradition. But as soon as Boulez moved beyond
the 1st Book of Structures, he rejoined tradition. Where else did he have to
go? It should be added that he later composed a 2nd Book of Structures as a
kind of antidote to the first book. And which of the two books do you think
the Kontarsky brothers used to play all the time? Which book do you think the
young pianists associated with the Ensemble InterContemporain have bothered to
learn? Which book do you think Pollini and Rosen once considered learning
together? Why, the 2nd, of course. Nobody is much interested in the 1st.
>IMHO it is the same with Boulez' music - but please correct me if I am
>wrong.
I think you are wrong because I've been listening to Boulez's music with great
enthusiasm since I was seventeen years old and I'm now in my 40's. But rather
than "correcting" you, I would rather recommend that you listen to Boulez's
Dérive, an exquisite, quiet, colorful, and meditative little chamber piece.
(Dérive means adrift.) If Dérive repulses you, I recommend that you move on to
some other composer. If it doesn't, you might want to move on from Dérive to
some of the larger-scale works Boulez has written in the last quarter century,
Répons, ...explosante/fixe..., Sur incises, and Dérive II. Later you might
want to try Pli selon pli, certainly his most ambitious and arguably his
greatest piece. If you want to move on from Dérive to another shorter work, I
would recommend Notation VII, which is a rather different kind of work from
Dérive. Dérive is comparatively static with very slowly shifting harmonies.
Notation VII is Boulez's version of the kind of developmental writing you find
in Mahler and Berg.
-david gable
LaVirtuosa
> very fundamental question -- what is (or not) music?
What is (or is not) and ear? :)
>
> If we cannot debate such a topic on this ng, what the
> *FUCK* is the raison d'etre of r.m.c.r. ?!?!?
Dan, let it be known that when you talk, there will always be some
people who will listen. As for new music, there's always been a good
amount of slop to wade through in order to get to the good stuff since
music was first invented (by God or the Devil or Man or whomever).
**************Val
Alain Dagher
Lena
Thanks for the many interesting comments on Boulez. I won't address
your larger point, just a correction and a comment.
> Let's take a single one of those utopian aesthetic positions. It is an old
> rule of thumb of part writing that individual parts or lines or voices
> shouldn't cross. The alto line should stay sandwiched in between the soprano
> and tenor part, for example. In the early 50's, Boulez and others thought that
> counterpoint should be free to cross and indeed to jump about from register to
> register at will, not simply to break the rules for the sake of breaking the
> rules but because they wanted to write a kind of explosive and mercurial music
> freed of gravity, so to speak. To a considerable extent, the counterpoint in
> Boulez's 2nd Sonata, a kind of manifesto of Boulez's style circa 1948 or 49
> although not yet an example of total serialism (which came circa 1951 or 52),
> the counterpoint, which was largely inspired by the explosive counterpoint in
> the fugue from the Hammerklavier with its wide leaps and aggressive trills,
> jumps about from register to register,
so far so good
> the voices constantly crossing one another.
I don't think you quite mean this.
The voices never cross in the Hammerklavier fugue except in extremely
selected spots, which number on the order of 3, and the esthetic
reasons are pretty clear in those spots. (One seriously climactic
part is fairly obviously referred to by Boulez in the 2nd sonata.)
(For constant voice crossing one might want to look instead into
canons in the unison (and other very small intervals), where you can
only avoid voice crossing by writing a theme that goes (essentially)
in one direction... Two interesting cases of how you can make sense
out of this are in the Goldberg variations (the first two canons).)
Sorry to nitpick... (Will attempt to keep my mouth shut on the HK for
a long while now, regardless of what comes up... :) )
About one "medium-level" point in your post - well, maybe composers
might benefit from reading some research. :) It's interesting that
certain classical rules, in particular voice leading rules, can
actually be motivated from more fundamental perceptual principles
(which gives their use quite a lot of justification). But what
doesn't often seem to be given any weight is that the rules can also
be selectively broken on the same (or similar) grounds. (This even if
you don't want to toss voice-independence out the window for other
esthetic effects - which would of course be entirely "legitimate" as
such.) So it's not a matter of following rules blindly but of having
an idea of how the rules accomplish their goal. (What's more,
classical voice leading rules are not complete; composers seem to have
intuitively understood this for generations and amended them, as well
as broken them selectively, without codification by music theorists.)
(Research by David Huron, if anyone is interested.)
Lena
Henk van Tuijl
> I am in total disagreement. No amount about verbal discussion will turn
> something into a painting or a piece of music. If it can't be understood
by
> listening, it isn't music. If it can't be apprehended by looking, it's
not
> painting. At least by my narrow definitions of music and painting.
Indeed, from here one we go different ways. If there is no pre-theoretical
understanding, the only other way is theoretical understanding - and that
has to be based on a "text".
> >He [Malevic] wanted
> >to make a clean break with tradition - and still make "art".
> >
> >IMHO it is the same with Boulez' music - but please correct me if I am
> >wrong.
>
> Yes, there was a "utopian" moment when the temptation of attempting to
> transcend tradition in the interests of a purely personal language
appealed to
> Boulez.
Malevic wrote in his days an influential essay to explain his form of
artless "art", called suprematism. Boulez' essays do have a different
function. Nevertheless, they seem to indicate that even he cannot say
everything he wants to say with music or "music".
> It didn't last long for the very simple reason that it couldn't be
> done. I wrote about this at some length in the post within this thread
> entitled "Boulez, total serialism, etc."
Thanks for mailing me your interesting essay!
What strikes me is that Boulez himself came to the conclusion that he did no
longer want to make his form of musicless "music".
IIRC he once called himself someone who loved to break his own rules.
> My own personal take on Malevic's white square--or Boulez's totally serial
> First Book of Structures, for that matter--is that it is better explained
> psychologically than aesthetically. Both felt the need to wipe the slate
> clean, to make tabula rasa of tradition. But as soon as Boulez moved
beyond
> the 1st Book of Structures, he rejoined tradition. Where else did he have
to
> go? It should be added that he later composed a 2nd Book of Structures
as a
> kind of antidote to the first book. And which of the two books do you
think
> the Kontarsky brothers used to play all the time? Which book do you think
the
> young pianists associated with the Ensemble InterContemporain have
bothered to
> learn? Which book do you think Pollini and Rosen once considered learning
> together? Why, the 2nd, of course. Nobody is much interested in the 1st.
It is rather disconcerting to learn from you that the only way forward for
music is the way back, i.e. to tradition - not even in a deconstructive but
only in a reconstructive way.
The consequences for music as a form of art ... ? Is music tautological in
essence - in spite of all the protestations of music theorists?
You are a great pedagogue! Many thanks for the advice!
Also, you have given me an excellent expose of your standpoint. I now know
why you think I am wrong when I draw a parallel between Malevic and Boulez.
It gives me much to think about.
Henk
XYZ XYZ
matters, and that you should never have started the thread.
Get it? :-)
david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message news:<20030428111536...@mb-m28.aol.com>...
Lena
> david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message
>
> Thanks for the many interesting comments on Boulez. I won't address
I meant to add that I thought your overall description of some aspects of
Boulez's development really very interesting.
(So what *did* Foucault say about Boulez? :) )
Lena
XYZ XYZ
to the realization, undoubtedly neither profound nor insightful, that
much of contemporary music has something to do with creating types of
sound -- or not creating it, as in silence. A similar phenomenon occurs
in modern art -- one can think of a color as a building block, a la
Rothko, say, or geometric shapes, a la Cubism, say.
On some level, this makes sense, when one takes into account what was
happening in Physics at the turn of the century, with the advent of
quantum theory, etc., for example. It was then possible (and
fashionable?) to look at things from the micro level.
I still think that ideas and theories, regardless of their complexity,
should have rough approximations that are easy to understand and
intuitive -- if this is not possible, these ideas and theories are not
great. And one should be able to "intuit" what's great music and art --
how else could these traditions survive otherwise? Of course, one's
appreciation grows as one's knowledge grows, but if one is unable to
grasp something on an intuitive level as well, something has gone
wrong, in my view.
Aside: I remember how surprised I was to find out how much Rothkos,
Rauschenbergs, and Jasper Johns's fetched in auctions. I still think
it's a little unfair, despite what one may think about the merits of
their art. :-)
davidst...@hotmail.com (David Sternlicht) wrote in message news:<9562fefd.03042...@posting.google.com>...
XYZ XYZ
that joke about how politics in academia is ugly because the stakes are
so low? :-)
david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message news:<20030428111713...@mb-m28.aol.com>...
Lena
> david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message
> My own personal take on Malevic's white square--or Boulez's totally serial
> First Book of Structures, for that matter--is that it is better explained
> psychologically than aesthetically. Both felt the need to wipe the slate
> clean, to make tabula rasa of tradition. But as soon as Boulez moved beyond
> the 1st Book of Structures, he rejoined tradition. Where else did he have to
> go? It should be added that he later composed a 2nd Book of Structures as a
> kind of antidote to the first book. And which of the two books do you think
> the Kontarsky brothers used to play all the time? [...]
>It is rather disconcerting to learn from you that the only way
forward for
>music is the way back, i.e. to tradition - not even in a
deconstructive but
>only in a reconstructive way.
???!!! Where do you read that?!! "Rejoining tradition" doesn't
necessarily mean repeating something, it can also refer to building on
parts of tradition to do your own thing (or, the way I at least prefer
to think about it, taking into account basic principles (acoustic or
otherwise) and figuring out how to make the most interesting use of
them).
There's a lot you can do in music that hasn't been done before, and it
doesn't even have to rest that much on the kind of tradition David is
talking about.
Lena
David7Gable
>music is the way back, i.e. to tradition - not even in a deconstructive but
>only in a reconstructive way.
But tradition is a living breathing thing, "a virgin forest," as Boulez once
described it. And what's wrong with being constructive? The problem is,
"total serialism" wasn't a move forward but a blind alley. Moving away from it
wasn't a move backward. It is was like backing out of a dead end after making
a wrong turn.
>Thanks for mailing me your interesting essay!
You're welcome. I sent it to you because the original unedited version
published here was unreadable! Or at least badly in need of revision.
-david gable
David7Gable
David7Gable
>nothing metaphorical about it at all. As far as I'm concerned, it's music as
>
>much as anything else is. Maybe I understand Cage's "language" better than
>you
>do...
Obviously so, since I don't understand it at all. I admitted the possibility
of a definition of music so capacious it would include any and all sounds.
-david gable
David7Gable
>to the realization, undoubtedly neither profound nor insightful, that
>much of contemporary music has something to do with creating types of
>sound -- or not creating it, as in silence.
All music has something to do with creating types of sound--or not creating it,
as in silence. The question for me (although not necessarily for you) is, are
there perceptible and interesting relationships in the sounds as the unfold
through time?
-david gable
Bloom
He said that Boulez' music symbolizes a resistance to centralized
power, and attempts to move composition away from the atomism of
Tonality and towards the organicism of serialist methods. The
panopticon (the Tonal Center) is undermined by Boulez' use of a
hetero-tonal perspective which refuses to confront Tonality via its
preestablished pathways. By decentering composition in this way,
Boulez allows for the "free play" of musical components rather than
the frozen (by ideology) stasis which is the unstated goal of
Tonality. Like a rhizome, Boulez' chords achieve multiplicity and
undermine the Tonal Center through their very nature of being
decentralized. Boulez's music is the music of Heterotopia.
Or something like that. ;-)
-Bloom
David7Gable
>
>I don't think you quite mean this.
>
I do mean it, but I was talking about Boulez's 2nd sonata, not the
Hammerklavier. (I told you this monstrosity needed editing.)
>It's interesting that
>certain classical rules, in particular voice leading rules, can
>actually be motivated from more fundamental perceptual principles
>(which gives their use quite a lot of justification).
Yes, absolutely. And it's quite interesting to see Boulez now endorsing these
centuries-old rules of thumb in lectures at the Collège de France, no less,
rules that he blasted at age 20.
>But what
>doesn't often seem to be given any weight is that the rules can also
>be selectively broken on the same (or similar) grounds.
Actually, they aren't even broken. Very often a line will move out of its
former registral space and into a new one, crossing another line in the
process, but that's very different from everybody constantly darting around
through multiple octaves at the same time with nothing to distinguish them,
constantly crossing each other. In earlier music the line stays put for a
while both in the old space and in the new space. There isn't constant jumping
back and forth. And the crossing is always done in such a way that the
continuity of the crossing line is very perceptible. In the case of orchestral
music, instrumentation alone is a big help in distinguishing moving parts.
-david gable
David7Gable
>(So what *did* Foucault say about Boulez? :) )
Not much. There are a couple of short notes by Foucault on Boulez and one
fairly non-consequential dialogue between them that was published in French and
later translated into English in Perspectives of New Music. In a nutshell,
Foucault likes Boulez's music. In one note he expresses admiration for
Boulez's inquiring spirit, blah blah blah, admiring the range of his interests
in painting and poety. He manages to heat this up with some French rhetoric.
(Foucault and Jean Barraqué were romantically involved for a time in the early
50's, and Foucault followed what went on with the Domaine musical.)
-david gable
David7Gable
Mr. Bloom, if you made that up, it's extremely clever. If you're paraphrasing
Foucault, I'd love a reference.
-david gable
ulvi
news:20030428180955...@mb-m10.aol.com:
>>
>>If amazon.com sells it under 'music", it's music.
>
> Well, that's one solution.
Here is another: An organized set of sounds X is music if
one or both of the following hold:
- The creator of X is an identifiable person (as opposed to
anonymous, unknown etc) who asserts X is music.
- There is a "critical mass" (sufficiently large number) of
listeners who listen to X as music and agree that it is music.
Ulvi
ulvi
news:20030428184301...@mb-m10.aol.com:
>>Or something like that. ;-)
>
> Mr. Bloom, if you made that up, it's extremely clever. If you're
> paraphrasing Foucault, I'd love a reference.
The Postmodernism Generator: Communications From Elsewhere:
http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/
Ulvi
David7Gable
Ulvi, are you familiar with the writings of the great Mensonge?
-david gable
David7Gable
>that joke about how politics in academia is ugly because the stakes are
>so low? :-)
Kissinger said something like that. (That's because he thinks politics are
more important than, say, string theory or the poetry of Keats, and the only
stakes he can think of are material stakes.)
-david gable
elm
>
> Now the pieces for prepared piano from the 40's before he discoverd chance
> are a different story. Those are music. And very charming besides.
the charm that is apparent in gems such as "a room" is there in the
later works.....
>
> >only in so far that they are part of a
> >> syntactic network.
> >
> > I do not agree with using semantic models in music categorisation
>
> Neither do I. I guess you don't know the difference between syntax and
> semantics.
Perhaps.I understood semantics is a branch of semiotics, semantics
deals with the overall meaning function of language and signs and
syntax is it's grammer and structure. Do we have to go back to St
Augustine? I favour wittgenstein.
I think that you are still missing the point that even if you are
correct and the works have no understandable sense by the time they have
been through a performer and inflected with his or her predispositions,
temperament, tone, relationship to the instrument the works are no
longer chance at all but imbibed with expression and meaning. In fact
perfectly neutral ungraspable inhuman musical texture is a perfect
medium for reflecting and amplifing the performers inner moods and
emotions.
Are you anti chance for chances sake? or are you also anti other
techniques in composition that utilise devices that make choices in
place of the human operator? For example Xenakis's piece Herma that
presents intersections of various sets of pitch classes through their
permutations untill they reach full intersection.
How about the use of symbolic logic or statistics and probability? I
find the interaction of maths and music fascinating, chance is just
another device open to the composer to use if he/ she wishes.
> As far as I'm concerned, Cage's chance "music" is not music. You are, of
> course, entitled to your broader definition that admits Cage's chance
> music and controlled chance music. Nevertheless, I'm sure that even you
> grasp the distinction between Cage's chance music and other music.
Sure, like I can hear the difference between 'ol dirty Bastard and Edgar
Varese ( I like them equally btw). I see no distinction in Cages music
that makes it a "special" case. If the aim of Cage was to write random
music, why did he spend so long sketching and preparing his works? He
really would only need to write one work, why repeat himself for 40
years? Take the violinist Zukofskys involvement in the freeman etudes
which took Cage 3 years to compose. Cage would reject (like xenaks)
chance results he found "unbeautifull". This was an intuitive decision
made during compositions, not based on throwing a dice.
The Williams mix piece has a set rhythmic structure and the sounds are
predefined. I have seen this piece performed in clubs at electronic
music festivals and people have loved it.
>It may even
> be that distinction that makes you so enthusiastic about Cage.
I suppose that ultimately my main reason for knowing Cages pieces are
music is that i have performed them, had good responses from audiences
and been to exciting Cage concerts. Something is being communicated,
perceivable syntax or not!
>
> >there are enough repeating element present in a chance work of cage for
> >a syntax to be immediately discernable.
>
> Takes more than that for a syntax to be discernible. Syntax is not a
> product of chance and cannot be a product of chance.
see my point about the performers interpretation.
>Cage would be upset to hear you say that his music is syntactic since
>it is the tyrrany of the syntactic he
> wanted to free us from.
You see it as a tyrrany? if that is the case would you not be happy to
be liberated?
elm
ulvi
news:20030428191546...@mb-m10.aol.com:
>>The Postmodernism Generator: Communications From Elsewhere:
>
> Ulvi, are you familiar with the writings of the great Mensonge?
I'm afraid not.
Ulvi
Bloom
Well, I did make it up, and I thank you for thinking it clever! ;-)
Anyway, I'm by no means a Foucault expert (or a Boulez expert, for
that matter), but I imagine that his response (I assume Foucault was
familiar with Boulez but I don't know that he ever wrote about him) to
Boulez might have been something like that. And it seems like a
reasonable response (to me, at least) to what Boulez tries to do.
After all, Boulez explicitly stated his rather radical intentions
right from the outset, didn't he? Furthermore, I can imagine Foucault
being very sympathetic to that radicalism.
Hmm, that is a rather atrociously worded paragraph, isn't it? Oh
well. ;-)
I do kind of like the idea of Boulez' music being the "music of
Heterotopia." ;-)
-Bloom
David7Gable
>familiar with Boulez but I don't know that he ever wrote about him
He didn't really. Just a couple of friendly tributes contributed as book
prefaces, that sort of thing. And one disappointingly insubstantial "dialogue"
between the two of them.
-david gable
David7Gable
>deals with the overall meaning function of language and signs and
>syntax is it's grammer and structure.
I know. And I was not talking about semantics but syntax.
>Are you anti chance for chances sake? or are you also anti other
>techniques in composition that utilise devices that make choices in
>place of the human operator?
I'm afraid I am hopelessly square. I am pro music conceived by the
syntax-processing part of one human mind for the syntax processing part of
other human minds. I would have to see the specific cases you have in mind
before I could comment, but you shouldn't be optimistic that I'll approve of
them, assuming they need my approval. I do understand that there are often
interesting global textures in the music of Xenakis where if any player at any
point played a different pitch than the one he did play, it wouldn't matter,
because you aren't really supposed to hear specific pitches but only the global
effect. That strikes me as perfectly legitimate. On the other hand, an entire
piece consisting of nothing but such textures would probably not do much for
me, although it might be fun to listen to once.
-david gable
-david gable
XYZ XYZ
from a Beethovenian one. I think that there's been a move towards looking at
sounds as "building blocks" -- this is why I bring up a quantum physics
connection. Would Beethoven have conceived of tapping a piano or strumming
piano strings? Well, maybe I'm not being clear here -- sounds are building
blocks in a Beethoven piece as well, but I don't think that they're being
studied as intently as objects of inherent interest.
As I mentioned, in art, one sees similar abstractions in terms of colors and
figures and shapes.
david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message news:<20030428181826...@mb-m10.aol.com>...
David7Gable
>from a Beethovenian one. I think that there's been a move towards looking at
>
>sounds as "building blocks" -- this is why I bring up a quantum physics
>connection. Would Beethoven have conceived of tapping a piano or strumming
>piano strings? Well, maybe I'm not being clear here -- sounds are building
>blocks in a Beethoven piece as well, but I don't think that they're being
>studied as intently as objects of inherent interest.
Now I see what you're getting at. Actually, the treatment of contrasting
blocks of sonority really does start to take off with Beethoven, with activity
by one sonority and texture in one register contrasted to activity by another
sonority and texture in another register. In short, there are "blocks."
Still, the importance of sonority qua sonority is rarely as fundamental a
compositional element for Beethoven as it suddenly becomes around 1830 for
Chopin, Berlioz, et al.
BTW, the exploitation of contrasting textures and sonorities is an important
element in the composition of music that involves human perception but not
invariably the human capacity for processing grammar. There are all kinds of
sound relationships--timbral and textural--that do not depend on processing
grammar, although there are relationships embedded in the sounds that do.
-david gable
-david gable
David7Gable
>
>I'm afraid not.
Think for a moment what the translation of "mensonge" is. In any case,
somebody published an elaborate post-structuralist commentary on Mensonge's
(non-existent) works. Wish I could remember where I saw it.
-david gable
ulvi
news:20030429003029...@mb-m12.aol.com:
Oh, I see.
Alan Sokal, a theoretical physicist, wrote a completely nonsensical
essay generated by similar algorithms as in that website (I think he
titled it "Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"), and managed to publish
it in a prestigious lit-crit journal (Social Text?) The editors were
not amused when Sokal revealed his hoax.
Ulvi
pallex
"Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of
Quantum Gravity" !
It's at http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/ and its well worth
checking out!