Atonal music will be no more

[John S Mamoun]

I predict that the experiment with serial and atonal music will
halt for the time being, as composers bring themselves to the realization
that music should articulate the sentiments of real-life experience.
Schoenberg's idea that the purpose of music is "comprehensibility" will
be replaced by a more Wagnerian philosophical belief that music should be
an anecdote of civilization. In the process, new and more ingenious
realms of intellectual tonal or quasi-tonal music will arise. I don't
believe that we can kid ourselves in thinking that anything but the lone
genius can advance progress in classical music. Perhaps we were induced
by Schoenberg to think so. This is because Schoenberg invented a system
of constructing music by following a strict logic or protocol, namely the
12-tone method. That allowed lots of new music to be created, yes, but
that music was not genius music. It was not, in other words, music that
was created above and beyond any previously known ways of thinking about
music, but rather was music derived from a previously articulated system
of construction. The 12-tone concept may be ingenious in and of itself,
but 12-tone music is not.
It is perhaps easy to think that progress in classical music has
stopped or slowed down to a trickle, and then to worry about whether or
not there will be anything more. But such fears are groundless. First
of all, ingenious music is music that by definition has not been
conceived by anyone until its creation. If so, it cannot exist in the
comprehension vocabulary of man, and therefore it cannot be perceived to
exist. Since it cannot be perceived to exist, one can not have any
reason to think that it ever will exist, even though, in actually, it
does exist. It is easy to look back in retrospect and see that progress
in classical music would come forth after 1912 since Rites of Spring and
other works were created after 1912. But in 1912, before it existed, and
at a time of some stagnation in classical music, it would be difficult to
think that there would be further progress, because the new knowledge
quanta of new developments in classical music simply did not exist in the
minds of men.
Second of all, in absolute terms, there have been very few
classical music composers in history. Years of expensive training
without any obvious pay-offs, requiring high intelligence and almost
fanatical self-discipline, as well as a great sense of sacrifice, are
necessary to create an ingenious composer. By sheer statistical numbers,
few individuals have possessed all of these attributes. Thus, there are
very few candidates for composing excellence to choose from in the first
place, and from that relatively tiny pool of candidates springs all of
classical music. It is perhaps for this reason that all of the scores
from Western music's output since the renaissance fits neatly in a medium
size room. It is possible, then, that there can be systematic progress
in classical music by merely increasing the candidate base. But it is
probably incorrect to presume that such a small pool of candidates has
made all of the discoveries about classical music, or even the tip of the
iceberg. Thank you.

--John

[Simon Roberts]

John S Mamoun (js...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:
: I predict that the experiment with serial and atonal music will

: halt for the time being, as composers bring themselves to the realization
: that music should articulate the sentiments of real-life experience.

[rest snipped]

What an odd way of putting it. Do the Art of Fugue, Well-tempered
Klavier, Beethoven's 7th symphony, Haydn's op. 20 quartets, or Bruckner's
9th symphony (say) "articulate the sentiments of real-life experience"?

Simon

[A de Muynck / Joyce Maier]

Simon Roberts <si...@dept.english.upenn.edu> wrote in article
<64oevi$k3o$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>...

I fully agree and I think we must go a step further: instrumental
music is almost unable to "articulate the sentiments of real-life
experience", UNLESS the composer himself said something about a
hidden program.

Regards,
Joyce Maier (ad...@pi.net)

[Ryan Hare]

John S Mamoun (js...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:
: I predict that the experiment with serial and atonal music will
: halt for the time being, as composers bring themselves to the realization
: that music should articulate the sentiments of real-life experience.

Funny thing, I would use this argument to come to the opposite opinion.

I still don't understand why some folks have such a beef with 12-tone
music. There's a lot of great stuff that was written under influence from
at least some of it, and elements of a serial style appear to be
continuing along very nicely in the works of many living composers, older
and younger. As far as orthodox 12-tone music goes, well sure that's part
of history now. But the lessons learned from it I am sure will persist.
There's no such thing as a tabula rasa in music, and there's no point in
trying to pretend the 20th century didn't happen.

One of the more interesting trends, from my point of view, is the
appearance of diatonic elements in an atonal context (e.g. Ligeti's music
since the 1980s).

Ryan Hare
rh...@u.washington.edu

[fiddleaway]

Isn't the proof of genius the response of those who receive his gifts? Is
there such a thing as an unappreciated genius?

I don't think it matters where the ideas come from, whether from cultural
experience or by logical rote ... they either speak to the rest of us in a
way that uplifts, or they don't. Sometimes, these ideas only speak to a
few at first, but these people, driven by their own excitement over their
new perceptions, teach, convince or cajole the rest of us into the "new
hearing". If they are able to do so, then the work is widely accepted as
genius (meaning that the work will continue to be communicated to others).
If the original "hearers" are not able to do so, then the work becomes
narrowly accepted as genius by the original few who will have the
misfortune of being viewed as snobs by the world at large. Even so, the
"snobs" might eventually be vindicated by a future generation (perhaps far
into the future) that, for whatever reason, has more people who "hear" the
creation. In this case, the "snobs" become "unfortunates who were ahead of
their time".

But, maybe they were just snobs. No way of telling really. You just have
to put the work out there and see if it flies.

Art has three phases: creation, transmission and reception. Good art
requires all three. If you only achieve the first two ... who cares?

[Roger L. Lustig]

John S Mamoun wrote:
>
> I predict that the experiment with serial and atonal music will
> halt for the time being,

Why do you call it an experiment? Composers compose music.

> as composers bring themselves to the realization
> that music should articulate the sentiments of real-life experience.

That would come as news to many of the great composers of the past.

Tell me, can you identify the 'sentiments of real-life experience'
in, say, Beethoven's 4th? How do you know?

> Schoenberg's idea that the purpose of music is "comprehensibility" will
> be replaced by a more Wagnerian philosophical belief that music should be
> an anecdote of civilization.

You're welcome to your predictions, but perhaps you could give us an
inkling of *why* this will happen.

> In the process, new and more ingenious
> realms of intellectual tonal or quasi-tonal music will arise.

They've been arising over and over again for centuries. Did they
ever *stop* arising?

> I don't
> believe that we can kid ourselves in thinking that anything but the lone
> genius can advance progress in classical music.

TRANSLATION: anything that isn't by a genius as defined by Mamoun didn't
really 'advance progress.'

Questions:
--is *progress* the yardstick of musical quality?
--wasn't Schoenberg the epitome of the lone genius?
--Most stylistic change has involved a great many lesser composers
developing the style before a great composer made it something
memorable. Explain.

> Perhaps we were induced by Schoenberg to think so.

You've obviously never read a word Schoenberg wrote. Schoenberg
explicitly spoke of the 'lone genius' in much the same way you do.

> This is because Schoenberg invented a system
> of constructing music by following a strict logic or protocol, namely the
> 12-tone method.

You obviously don't know anything about Schoenberg's 12-tone composing
either. There is no protocol in any Schoenberg work, or any 'strict
logic' that would 'construct' music. Schoenberg himself pointed this
out: after one works out a row and its implications, 'one composes
as before.' The row and its implications are not worked out according
to any rules (other than the definition of a row).

> That allowed lots of new music to be created, yes, but
> that music was not genius music.

And why should I take your word for it? Please describe one of
Schoenberg's 12-tone works and tell me what it lacks in terms of
'genius music.' Were any of his earlier works 'genius music'?
Did he abandon any of his compositional methods when changing to
12-tone music?

> It was not, in other words, music that
> was created above and beyond any previously known ways of thinking about
> music, but rather was music derived from a previously articulated system
> of construction.

Simply not so. Please show how any piece by Schoenberg was 'derived.'

> The 12-tone concept may be ingenious in and of itself,
> but 12-tone music is not.

How would you know? I bet you're not familiar with a single one
of Schoenberg's 12-tone pieces. If you were, you wouldn't write
about 'derivation' and 'construction' and 'protocol' and 'logic'.

> It is perhaps easy to think that progress in classical music has
> stopped or slowed down to a trickle, and then to worry about whether or
> not there will be anything more. But such fears are groundless. First
> of all, ingenious music is music that by definition has not been
> conceived by anyone until its creation.

True of every piece ever composed.

> If so, it cannot exist in the
> comprehension vocabulary of man, and therefore it cannot be perceived to
> exist. Since it cannot be perceived to exist, one can not have any
> reason to think that it ever will exist, even though, in actually, it
> does exist.

Utter bosh. Many sentences have never been uttered. When they are
uttered for the first time, they will be comprehended. Explain.

> It is easy to look back in retrospect and see that progress
> in classical music would come forth after 1912 since Rites of Spring and
> other works were created after 1912. But in 1912, before it existed, and
> at a time of some stagnation in classical music,

Please tell us why you consider this to be the case. Discuss
Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, Faure, Falla, Skryabin, Schoenberg, Bartok,
Sibelius, Janacek, etc.

> it would be difficult to
> think that there would be further progress, because the new knowledge
> quanta of new developments in classical music simply did not exist in the
> minds of men.

See above. You have no inkling of what was happening in music around
that time. 1912 was three years *after* Schoenberg's major breakthroughs
in works like the George songs, _Erwartung_, the five orchestral pieces,
etc. It's also the year of _Pierrot Lunaire_, which impressed and influenced
dozens of composers.

> Second of all, in absolute terms, there have been very few
> classical music composers in history.

How many would constitute 'many'?

> Years of expensive training
> without any obvious pay-offs, requiring high intelligence and almost
> fanatical self-discipline, as well as a great sense of sacrifice, are
> necessary to create an ingenious composer.

Why? Plenty of composers did quite well without all these.

> By sheer statistical numbers,
> few individuals have possessed all of these attributes.

How many? You must know.

> Thus, there are
> very few candidates for composing excellence to choose from in the first
> place, and from that relatively tiny pool of candidates springs all of
> classical music.

Except for the 99% you don't know. Tell me: does 'classical' mean
'famous 200 years later' to you?

> It is perhaps for this reason that all of the scores
> from Western music's output since the renaissance fits neatly in a medium
> size room.

You've obviously never visited a music library, either.

> It is possible, then, that there can be systematic progress
> in classical music by merely increasing the candidate base.

Look who's systematic all of a sudden!

But I stll want to know about this 'progress' stuff. What does that
mean in musical terms?

> But it is
> probably incorrect to presume that such a small pool of candidates has
> made all of the discoveries about classical music, or even the tip of the
> iceberg. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Now tell us more about 'atonal' music. You seem to have lost sight of
it up there, havbing gotten distracted by your own fantasies about what
12-tone music is. Tell us about Schoenberg's music from 1909 to 1922, say.
Is it 'genius music'? If not, why not? It certainly doesn't want for
progress.

Roger Lustig

[Roger L. Lustig]

John S Mamoun wrote:
>
> My point in saying all this is to state that people will eventually grow
> tired of atonal music and any other form of music that does not
> articulate emotional ideas for which there exist rational analogs in the
> human experience.

Yes, you said all that before. But you didn't give any reasons, nor
did you show any understanding either of the musical history you
attempted to adduce as evidence, or of the very issues you raised.

Now: if people haven't 'grown tired' of atonal music after 90 years,
why do you think they will now? *You* may not like it, but is that
any reason to wish for other people to stop liking it?

Can you show that atonal music doesn't articulate emotional ideas
in some way that other music does? Please demonstrate this for
the following examples:

Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Schoenberg: Pierrot lunaire
Berg: Foure Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5
Webern: Songs, Op. 18

Of course, to do so you must first show that *any* music articulates
emotional ideas (whatever those are), and that any particular piece
of music contains such ideas, and that those ideas have the 'rational
analogs' you claim they do.

In short, show your work. And try to address some of the serious,
particular questions that have been raised about your claims.

Or better yet, go and study a little first.

Roger Lustig

[John S Mamoun]

John S Mamoun wrote in message <64ocbg$act$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>...

> I predict that the experiment with serial and atonal music will

>halt for the time being, as composers bring themselves to the realization

>that music should articulate the sentiments of real-life experience.

Why should it halt? Why can't multiple aesthetic approaches exist
side-by-side?

>>They can exist side by side. I never said they couldn't. However, I
predict that in the long run, the only approaches that will receive broad
and lasting acceptance are those that create music that articulates the
sentiments of real life experience. Approaches which do not, such as
atonal music, will be relegated to the status of experimental approaches
that create experimental music. These experimental approaches may
be interesting, but they will not be loved. I'd accept them as experiments,
as means of discovering all that there is to discover about music, as
intellectual curiosities, but I would not be sentimental about them.

On a different note however, why should music "articulate the sentiments
of real-life experience"? And if you can prove that it should, why is
atonality the wrong method by which to achieve this aim? You've made a very
big statement, and I'm interested to see how you back it up.

>>An idea is composed of two properties: 1) the rational characteristics
of the idea and 2) the emotional characteristics, or charisma, of the idea.
Music is the articulation of the emotional characteristics of ideas. If a
musical piece contains an emotional characteristic for which there is a
respective rational analog, then absorbing that emotional characteristic
can stimulate us to realize its respective rational analog. In this manner,
the music expands our rational world-view. (Similarly, if we encounter a
rational idea, we might be stimulated to realize its emotional analog, thus
expanding our emotional world-view) However, a particular type of music
can only expand our world view if it presents to us emotional ideas for which
we can detect rational analogs. In other words, given a particular emotional
idea, there must exist an analogous rational idea that is found in the
context of the human experience. If, given how the human mind extracts
emotional meaning from experiences, there is no rational analog to a
particular emotional idea, then neither the emotional idea nor the music
which presents it can expand our world-view. In general, atonal music
does not present emotional ideas for which there exist rational analogs
in the context of the human experience. Consequently, I believe that it
should be rejected, because it does not expand the human world-view.

There is, however, one possible justification for atonal music, and that
is if there do, in fact, exist rational analogs to the emotional ideas
found in such music. That is, these rational analogs exist, but humans
are not intelligent enough to detect them yet. Then, some genius might
come along in the future and discover these rational ideas, and thus
justify the music. That is why I say that "in the time being," at least,
there will be a general reduction or halt in atonal music exploration.
It is unlikely that in the time being the respective rational analogs of
atonal emotional ideas will be discovered; in the time being, however,
atonal music will be put aside as greater emphasis is placed on the
creation of music which articulates the sentiments of real-life
experiences. The rational analogs may, however, be discovered, in which
case there will be a revival in atonal music. I do not believe, however,
that they will EVER be discovered, and thus I do not believe that atonal
music can ever be justified, except on experimental grounds. I do not
believe that atonal emotional ideas in general have rational analogs in
the human experience.

> I don't believe that we can kid ourselves in thinking that anything but

> the lone genius can advance progress in classical music.

> It is perhaps easy to think that progress in classical music has
>stopped or slowed down to a trickle, and then to worry about whether or
>not there will be anything more. But such fears are groundless.

In the space of one paragraph you stated an opinion and then its
opposite. Which do you believe: that progress in classical music is dead
(your first claim) or that progress is alive and well (your second claim)?

>>I absolutely don't understand what you mean by this. I did not, in any
way, shape or form, state that progress in classical music is dead. I said
that only lone geniuses can advance progress in classical music, but did
not imply that they didn't exist or that classical music progress was dead.
Then, of course, I explicitly stated why it is unreasonable to state that
progress in classical music is dead.

>The 12-tone concept may be ingenious in and of itself,
>but 12-tone music is not.

None of it? Not even a little? I think you have more listening to do.
So why is it that when a bad 12-tone piece is mentioned, its opponents
are quick to claim that the
problem with the piece lies in the system itself?

>>Essentially, no. Since it does not advance never-before-conceived
emotional ideas for which there are rational analogs in the context of
the human experience, this music does not expand the human world-view
and therefore is not ingenius. Yes, the system itself is flawed, in that
it does not generate musical results for which there are rational analogs
in the human experience. It does generate never-before-conceived
emotional ideas, but they are useless because they don't articulate the
human experience. I can throw darts at the piano and come up with
remarkable emotional effects, but artistically such an effect is probably
bullshit because there exists no rational analog for the effect in the
human experience and therefore it does not expand the human world
view.

>First of all, ingenious music is music that by definition has not been

>conceived by anyone until its creation. If so, it cannot exist in the

>comprehension vocabulary of man, and therefore it cannot be perceived to
>exist.

Huh?

>>Well, it has to exist in the mind of the first one to compose it, of
course. But until composed by the genius, no one can conceive that it
exists. Nietzsche defined genius as that which "begets, or gives birth,"
for which there is no previous conceptual analog.

> Second of all, in absolute terms, there have been very few
>classical music composers in history.

Huh?

>>Considering that billions upon billions of people have existed on this
earth since the time of the renaissance, yet the entire score library of
canonical and semi-canonical classical music fits in a medium sized
room, it is justified to say that in absolute terms there have existed
very few classical music composers throughout history (or, at least, good
quality classical composers). Since there have been very few composers,
it is risky to generalize that they have discovered most of what
can be discovered in classical music. That is, they have not discovered
all or even most of the emotional ideas for which there exist rational
analogs in the human experience. That is particularly true in light of
the fact that there exist rational ideas in the human experience that
have yet to be discovered and articulated in rational terms by geniuses.

My point in saying all this is to state that people will eventually grow
tired of atonal music and any other form of music that does not
articulate emotional ideas for which there exist rational analogs in the
human experience.

--John

[David Cleary]

John S Mamoun (js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:

: They can exist side by side. I never said they couldn't. However, I

: predict that in the long run, the only approaches that will receive broad
: and lasting acceptance

One badly needs a clear definition of "broad and lasting acceptance" here.
Who is doing the accepting? The audience? If so, who is in the audience,
and why do performers have no say? They're the ones who will decide to do
the work or not, aren't they?

One may also wonder when "art" became a synonym for "popularity contest."

: are those that create music that articulates the

: sentiments of real life experience.

You've said this in two posts now, and I'm not at all clear why you feel
this is a truism. It only seems to be your opinion, from what I can see,
and not necessarily a well-supported one. What reply do you have for the
person who listed the "Art of the Fugue" and similar pieces in rebuttal?

: Approaches which do not, such as

: atonal music, will be relegated to the status of experimental approaches
: that create experimental music. These experimental approaches may
: be interesting, but they will not be loved.

How do you know this is true? Beethoven's music was pretty experimental
stuff in its time, wasn't it? Is it not loved?

: I'd accept them as experiments,

: as means of discovering all that there is to discover about music, as
: intellectual curiosities, but I would not be sentimental about them.

Why is sentiment necessarily a component to excellence? Is this more than
just your personal take on things?

: An idea is composed of two properties: 1) the rational characteristics

: of the idea and 2) the emotional characteristics, or charisma, of the idea.

If you mean "idea" in the most general sense, I'd wonder where the
"emotional characteristics, or charisma," are for Einstein's Theory of
Relativity.

If you mean "idea" as in "musical idea," you're going to have to define
what you mean by this term.

: Music is the articulation of the emotional characteristics of ideas.

For one thing, do "ideas" in the general sense have "emotional
characteristics?" And why is music necessarily defined this way? I'm quite
suspicious of attempts to define the term "music" in an all-encompassing
manner.

[snip of rest of case presented]

The rest of your argument seems to be based at least in good part on these
definitions. I'm curious to see you prove these assumptions strongly
enough for them to be meaningful.

: >The 12-tone concept may be ingenious in and of itself,

: >but 12-tone music is not.

: None of it? Not even a little? I think you have more listening to do.
: So why is it that when a bad 12-tone piece is mentioned, its opponents
: are quick to claim that the
: problem with the piece lies in the system itself?

: >>Essentially, no. Since it does not advance never-before-conceived
: emotional ideas for which there are rational analogs in the context of
: the human experience, this music does not expand the human world-view
: and therefore is not ingenius.

Isn't it perhaps also possible that you (or other folks) don't understand
this music? That the fault possibly lies with you (or other folks) and not
necessarily with the music?

: Yes, the system itself is flawed, in that

: it does not generate musical results for which there are rational analogs
: in the human experience. It does generate never-before-conceived
: emotional ideas, but they are useless because they don't articulate the
: human experience.

As above on "articulating the human experience."

: I can throw darts at the piano and come up with
: remarkable emotional effects, but artistically such an effect is probably
: bullshit because there exists no rational analog for the effect in the
: human experience and therefore it does not expand the human world
: view.

Why does the compositional method used matter if your end result is
wonderful?

Besides, if you think 12-tone techniques and "throwing darts at a piano"
are analogous, I wonder what's your thinking is here.

[snip of rest of post]

Dave

[John S Mamoun]

>An idea is composed of two properties: 1) the rational characteristics
>of the idea and 2) the emotional characteristics, or charisma, of the idea.

>Music is the articulation of the emotional characteristics of ideas.

Why? Maybe you're looking for rational analogs and expanded world
views, but plenty of listeners aren't. Or at least aren't all of the time.
You've offered a definition of music which may indeed function in the
context in which you listen, but you certainly aren't suggesting that this
is a fact, right?

>>I suggest that it is a fact, if one is listening to judge whether
a piece of classical music is a work of art. In that case, in my
opinion, the music must express emotions for which there are
rational analogs in the human experience, otherwise the music
cannot cue us to the existence of these rational analogs, and
therefore cannot expand our world-views, and therefore it isn't
art. Others, of course, listen to music not so much to expand
their understandings but to express sentiments that have
analogs to those rational views that they already have. That is
why people listen to relatively non-intellectual popular music.
Other people, however, listen to music whose emotional ideas
Have no rational analogs in the human experience. Such music
Is in my view not artistic. It may have a charming emotional
Effect, but what good is a mere mood effect if it does not
expand our understanding of the human experience? If all that
we're interested in is the mood, why not just take some drugs
instead of listen to music-the former effect is much more
powerful and not less intellectually stimulating.

>However, a particular type of music
>can only expand our world view if it presents to us emotional ideas for
which>we can detect rational analogs.

Why? I have a pretty big emotional reaction to Eastern European vocal
music (for example) and yet have no idea about the rational analogs because
I don't speak the language. I have a pretty big emotional reaction to
Schoenberg's string trio op. 45, too (a 12-tone piece). I had these
reactions on a purely AURAL level, without any idea about the extra-musical
content whatsoever. Only later did I find out that Schoenberg intended this
piece to be semi-autobiographical. According to you, however, this type of
representation is impossible in an atonal context. But you still haven't
said why. . .

>>Because if the music's emotional effect does not reflect a rational
analog in the human experience, it cannot possibly cue our minds to the
existence of that rational analog or of the experience. Therefore, it
cannot stimulate us to realize any new concepts and therefore it cannot
expand our world-view. You misunderstand what I'm trying to say in citing
Eastern European music or Schoenberg. Knowledge of language has nothing
to do with whether or not the Music expands your world view. As long as
its emotional effect has some Analog to the human experience, it can
expand your rational world-view, as Long as your mind is intelligent
enough to detect and match a rational analog To the emotional
characteristic/s of the music. This is because it is physically
Possible for you to experience the same experience which that Eastern
European experienced, and which he/she translated into a musical analog.
As far as Schoenberg is concerned, it is perfectly possible to have an
intense emotional Reaction to his music or any other 12-tone music. I
never said that that wan't Possible. However, unless that emotional
reaction reflects an earthly analog, It cannot expand your rational
world-view. Also, notice how I said that I Believe that "generally"
atonal music does not possess rational analogs. I Left open a small
possibility that it does. And to a very small extent, it probably
does, but Generally it doesn't. Schoenberg said his music is "semi-autobio
graphical." The fact that it isn't fully autobiographical suggests that
even for the composer, who understands the music more than anyone else,
much of it does not have an analog in the human experience.

> In other words, given a particular emotional

>idea, there must exist an analogous rational idea that is found in the
>context of the human experience.
Why? Why does emotion have to be wedded to anything that actually
exists? This seems to rule out abstract art like Rothko and Clifford Still,
and plenty of people get emotional ideas from this stuff.

>>Actually, that sentence should be read in conjunction with the sentence
preceding it. What I meant here was that for a particular emotional
idea, an analogous rational idea must exist in order for the emotional
idea to expand our world-view. Perhaps I should have made this clearer,
but it should be obvious in context, because a central premise in my
argument is that while numerous emotional ideas may exist, not every one
has an analog in the human experience. Of course, these emotional ideas
may be interesting, but my argument is that They are artistically
pointless because they don't have analogs in the human
Experience and thus cannot expand our rational world-views.

> If, given how the human mind extracts
>emotional meaning from experiences, there is no rational analog to a
>particular emotional idea, then neither the emotional idea nor the music
>which presents it can expand our world-view.

Why not?

>>Because there is no way that the emotional idea or the music can cue
the human mind to the existence of a rational analog that exists in the
context of the human experience. Therefore, the musical or emotional
idea cannot possibly expand our rational or experience world-views.

> In general, atonal music
>does not present emotional ideas for which there exist rational analogs
>in the context of the human experience.

Why do you think this? You haven't yet explained how the your theories
about rational analogs have anything to do with the language of atonal
music.

>>From my own personal experience, I have listened to a good amount atonal
music, from Berg's songs to Schoenberg's Verklart Nacht, Piano Concerto, some
songs, to Berg's Violin concerto to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. At times,
I have even found the music to be enjoyable. And I feel that I understand
fully Their emotional messages. I have played piano for 13+ years and
have a couple Hundred classical music CDs, and I've taken three courses
on music here in College, including a "music of the 20th century class,"
which went through much Atonal music including Bartok's String Quartet
#4. And every time I listen to atonal music I think to myself, this is
all very charming and interesting, but what Does it have to do with my
terra firma reality? The answer: not much. I don't Feel in any way that
this music reflects any earthly analog either to my experience
Or to those of most human beings. I've listened to lots of material by
Beethoven, And see in absolutely concrete terms how this music has
rational analogs to the Human experience, or Rachmaninoff, or Chopin, or
Mozart, or even Stravinsky, for example. This music I respect because it
has these analogs. Atonal music I respect as a curiosity, but not as
something that provides intuition about the Human experience.

This is the part that you haven't yet explained. You've gone to great
lengths to explain your theory of emotional ideas and rational analogs, but
from there you jump to this conclusion about atonal music. WHY doesn't
atonal music articulate emotional ideas for which there there exist rational
analogs in the human experience. What music does this? And even if atonal
music doesn't do what you claim, why does that make it inherently bad?
Because you don't like it? You still haven't made the connection.

>>The answer is that our minds have evolved in such a manner that not every
emotion that we can feel has some anchoring in reality. I'm not sure why
that is; perhaps this kind Of emotional system gives the human mind the
flexibility to evolve into a far More emotionally complex form. In other
words, perhaps some day we will Become intelligent enough to realize new
and more complex rational concepts And attach them psychologically to the
unusual emotions that we can presently Feel, but for which we have no
use. These emotions are "extra" emotions, to Be incorporated into our
psyches when we have evolved the complexity that Is necessary to
incorporate them. Until that day, they are useless, in that they
Cannot cue us to realize new rational ideas. Atonal music generally
stimulates These useless emotions, and therefore does not expand our
world-views. This Inability of atonal music to expand our world-views is
what makes it "inherently Bad" and is why it is not artistic. It makes
no difference to me whether I like The music or not for me to consider it
as art. However, it must cue the listener In a manner that expands
his/her world view, or in my view it isn't art. Otherwise, tt is merely
a sensation.

--John

[Roger L. Lustig]

John S Mamoun wrote:
>
> John S Mamoun wrote in message <64ocbg$act$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>...
> > I predict that the experiment with serial and atonal music will
> >halt for the time being, as composers bring themselves to the realization
> >that music should articulate the sentiments of real-life experience.

>> Why should it halt? Why can't multiple aesthetic approaches exist
>> side-by-side?

> They can exist side by side. I never said they couldn't. However, I
> predict that in the long run, the only approaches that will receive broad
> and lasting acceptance are those that create music that articulates the
> sentiments of real life experience.

On what do you base this prediction?

And why do you say that the music you don't like doesn't 'articulate
the sentiments, etc.' in the way that the music you like does?

For that matter, listening to music IS a real-life experience. On
its own. For itself. Fully articulated.

Why does music have to refer to something outside itself for it
to be legitimate in your view? And why can't anyone say for sure
what those outside things *are*?

> Approaches which do not, such as
> atonal music, will be relegated to the status of experimental approaches
> that create experimental music.

By whom? Is this wishing, or what? Why do orchestras and chamber
groups and soloists regularly perform 'experiments' that are 85
years old?

> These experimental approaches may
> be interesting, but they will not be loved.

Passive-voice alert! Loved by whom? By you? I love a great deal
of atonal music.

> I'd accept them as experiments,
> as means of discovering all that there is to discover about music, as
> intellectual curiosities, but I would not be sentimental about them.

That's your problem. Mind you, you've already shown that you're
substantially unfamiliar with the music you're pontificating about,
so what you *would* do about music you haven't yet come to terms
with is of less than pressing interest, don't you think?

>> On a different note however, why should music "articulate the sentiments
>> of real-life experience"? And if you can prove that it should, why is
>> atonality the wrong method by which to achieve this aim? You've made a very
>> big statement, and I'm interested to see how you back it up.

> An idea is composed of two properties: 1) the rational characteristics
> of the idea and 2) the emotional characteristics, or charisma, of the idea.

Sez who?

For one thing, we're talking about music, not ideas. Where is the idea
in a piece of music? How can you tell which idea is in a piece of music?
What if you think there's an idea in there, but there isn't really?

Perhaps the idea is in the *listener's* mind. Perhaps you and I are
drastically different listeners.

> Music is the articulation of the emotional characteristics of ideas.

Bullshit.

Music is the play of sound.

Can you tell me that something is music just because it articulates
the emotional characteristics of ideas?

Can you identify either the ideas or the emotional characteristics?
If not, how can you be sure that you're not talking through your
hat?

Now: let's see you analyze even one piece according to your definition.

> If a
> musical piece contains an emotional characteristic for which there is a
> respective rational analog, then absorbing that emotional characteristic
> can stimulate us to realize its respective rational analog.

Example, please. Name a piece, its emotional characteristic, and
the rational analogue.

For that matter, do emotional characteristics necessarily *have*
rational analogues? I'd like a definition of 'emotional characteristic'
first.

(Start with the sticky issue of what emotions are, and where they
reside. Do they live within the human psyche, or within a work of
art???? I rather suspect it's the former.)

> In this manner, the music expands our rational world-view.

How do you know? Can you show an instance of this ever having
happened?

> (Similarly, if we encounter a
> rational idea, we might be stimulated to realize its emotional analog, thus
> expanding our emotional world-view)

Realize? Or imagine? They're not the same thing. What if two people
encounter an idea (however that might happen), and 'realize' two different
analogues?

We don't encounter ideas. We *have* ideas. We tell others of those
ideas. Ideas don't float around autonomously.

> However, a particular type of music
> can only expand our world view if it presents to us emotional ideas for which
> we can detect rational analogs.

Who's this 'we' you're talking about? And what's an 'emotional idea'? A
moment ago, ideas had two components--emotional and rational.

> In other words, given a particular emotional
> idea, there must exist an analogous rational idea that is found in the
> context of the human experience.

Why? Where do you get these things? Some evidence--or at least some
reasons for your premises--would be nice.

> If, given how the human mind extracts emotional meaning from experiences,

And how is that? What do you know about the human mind?

> there is no rational analog to a
> particular emotional idea, then neither the emotional idea nor the music
> which presents it can expand our world-view.

Round and round and round. You haven't shown that a single piece of
music has ever presented a single emotional idea, or how you would know
if such a thing came to pass.

> In general, atonal music
> does not present emotional ideas for which there exist rational analogs
> in the context of the human experience.

In general, you haven't the first clue about atonal music. You've
already demonstrated that pretty clearly with your historiography;
why should we take your word about music you don't even know?

> Consequently, I believe that it
> should be rejected, because it does not expand the human world-view.

There's that passive voice again. You think *other* people should
reject music that *you* don't think you'd like if you heard it, which
you haven't, because it has a characteristic that you haven't successfully
defined, and that you claim--without any evidence--renders it incapable
of doing what, according to you (and naturally, with no supporting
argument), music is supposed to do.

> There is, however, one possible justification for atonal music,

Correct. Is is: people like to listen to it.

Where the hell did you ever get the idea that music needed justification?

> and that
> is if there do, in fact, exist rational analogs to the emotional ideas
> found in such music. That is, these rational analogs exist, but humans
> are not intelligent enough to detect them yet.

Speak for yourself.

Is there another human being who conceives of music in the terms that
you do? If so, a name would be nice. If not, what the heck are you
talking about?

> Then, some genius might
> come along in the future and discover these rational ideas, and thus
> justify the music.

Could you point out the rational ideas in some music that *is*
'justified', according to you? Again, I offer you Beethoven's 4th, or
any other piece you'd like to discuss. (Let's stick to instrumental
music for now, to keep it interesting.) Rational *or* emotional ideas,
please.

> That is why I say that "in the time being," at least,
> there will be a general reduction or halt in atonal music exploration.

88 years and counting. People were talking like this in the 1920's, too.

> It is unlikely that in the time being the respective rational analogs of
> atonal emotional ideas will be discovered;

Do you really think that this is the way music works--that people
'discover' rational analogues and therefore 'justify' the music?

When did this happen with Beethoven's Op. 131? (Hint: there's an answer.)

> in the time being, however,
> atonal music will be put aside as greater emphasis is placed on the
> creation of music which articulates the sentiments of real-life
> experiences.

You keep saying this. Why hasn't it happened long ago?

And why do you keep saying that atonal music doesn't do what, say,
tonal music does?

And why don't you give us an example of how a piece of tonal music
does this?

> The rational analogs may, however, be discovered, in which
> case there will be a revival in atonal music.

There have been several already. Read some music history.

> I do not believe, however, that they will EVER be discovered,

Since you haven't demonstrated that *any* music works as you
claim, this belief of yours begs all manner of questions.

> and thus I do not believe that atonal
> music can ever be justified, except on experimental grounds.

Since when can *any* music be 'justified'?

People make music. People listen to music. Who the heck
needs 'justification'?

If someone derives emotional or rational gratification
from a piece of music, can your philosophizing conceivably
bring anything contrary to bear?

> I do not
> believe that atonal emotional ideas in general have rational analogs in
> the human experience.

I do not believe that you've given a shred of evidence for this
view, or for the existence of emotional ideas with rational
analogues in music or anywhere else.

Nor have you demonstrated that there is such a thing as
'the human experience.' What might that consist of?
How many humans need to experience something before it counts?

> > I don't believe that we can kid ourselves in thinking that anything but
> > the lone genius can advance progress in classical music.
> > It is perhaps easy to think that progress in classical music has
> >stopped or slowed down to a trickle, and then to worry about whether or
> >not there will be anything more. But such fears are groundless.

>> In the space of one paragraph you stated an opinion and then its
>> opposite. Which do you believe: that progress in classical music is dead
>> (your first claim) or that progress is alive and well (your second claim)?

> I absolutely don't understand what you mean by this. I did not, in any
> way, shape or form, state that progress in classical music is dead.

Of course, you didn't give a definition of progress, or of classical music,
or a reason to consider progress salient to this discussion.

> I said
> that only lone geniuses can advance progress in classical music,

....again without definition or justification...

> but did
> not imply that they didn't exist or that classical music progress was dead.

Good! Practice that move.

> Then, of course, I explicitly stated why it is unreasonable to state that
> progress in classical music is dead.

....which would be much more interesting if you'd bothered to tell us what
progress has to do with anything.

> >The 12-tone concept may be ingenious in and of itself,
> >but 12-tone music is not.

>> None of it? Not even a little? I think you have more listening to do.
>> So why is it that when a bad 12-tone piece is mentioned, its opponents
>> are quick to claim that the problem with the piece lies in the system itself?

> Essentially, no.

He asks you 'why' and you answer 'no.'

> Since it does not advance never-before-conceived
> emotional ideas for which there are rational analogs in the context of
> the human experience,

Wrong. It does.

There. You've made a statement, and I've made a statement. I've
justified mine as much as you've justified yours.

> this music does not expand the human world-view
> and therefore is not ingenius.

You speak as though you were the only human on earth.

> Yes, the system itself is flawed,

What system? You've demonstrated your ignorance of the 12-tone
method.

> in that
> it does not generate musical results for which there are rational analogs
> in the human experience.

Neither does any other music.

Or can you show me a counterexample? Tell me how you know.

> It does generate never-before-conceived
> emotional ideas, but they are useless because they don't articulate the
> human experience.

Wrong. They do.

There. Once again, I've made a statement that contradicts yours,
and I've given as much justification as you have.

And I haven't made up any fanciful history or imagined what
pieces I don't know are like, either.

Once again, show me how *any* piece articulates 'the human
experience'. But not before you let us know what 'the human
experience' is, and how we can tell.

> I can throw darts at the piano and come up with
> remarkable emotional effects,

I sincerely doubt that.

(Unless you mean something by 'emotional effect' that I'm
not catching.)

> but artistically such an effect is probably
> bullshit because there exists no rational analog for the effect in the
> human experience

How the fucking hell do you know? You haven't even determined
what the emotional effects in question *are*!

Nor have you shown us how you can know what the analogue of
an emotional effect (it was an idea a few minutes ago, no?)
might be.

Nor have you told us why you consider rational analogues and
emotional ideas and effects and so on to be immanent in works
of art, instead of residing within human psyches.

> and therefore it does not expand the human world view.

Please give an example of *anything* that has expanded the
'human world view'. Show what that world view was before
and after, and how that thing did what it did.

> >First of all, ingenious music is music that by definition has not been
> >conceived by anyone until its creation. If so, it cannot exist in the
> >comprehension vocabulary of man, and therefore it cannot be perceived to
> >exist.

>> Huh?

> Well, it has to exist in the mind of the first one to compose it, of
> course.

That's a good start.

> But until composed by the genius, no one can conceive that it
> exists.

So? That's true of anything made by anyone.

> Nietzsche defined genius as that which "begets, or gives birth,"
> for which there is no previous conceptual analog.

A definition that's utterly useless to me, when considering a work
of art. Why should I care who made it? It's the art I'm interested
in, and (according to you) the emotional ideas and rational
analogues. Why do you care how it got there?

> > Second of all, in absolute terms, there have been very few
> >classical music composers in history.

>> Huh?

> Considering that billions upon billions of people have existed on this
> earth since the time of the renaissance,

....most of whom were geographically, and economically, and socially
utterly outside the group that even knew what 'classical music'
might be (not that the term even existed for most of the time
you're discussing).

> yet the entire score library of
> canonical and semi-canonical classical music fits in a medium sized
> room,

You keep saying that. It's still nonsense. Even when you add
'semi-canonical' it's nonsense. We keep changing the canon, after
all.

> it is justified to say that in absolute terms there have existed
> very few classical music composers throughout history (or, at least, good
> quality classical composers).

You mean: in relative terms. All your arguments above are relative
ones.

> Since there have been very few composers,
> it is risky to generalize that they have discovered most of what
> can be discovered in classical music.

I repeat: how many would constitute 'many'?

> That is, they have not discovered
> all or even most of the emotional ideas for which there exist rational
> analogs in the human experience.

Blah, blah, blah. What *is* the human experience? How do you know
whether something is an emotional idea? How do you know whether it
has a rational analogue?

> That is particularly true

....or false; you've given no reason to decide either way...

> in light of
> the fact that there exist rational ideas in the human experience that
> have yet to be discovered and articulated in rational terms by geniuses.

Prove it.

And what if a non-genius discovers one? What then?

John, you can repeat yourself until you're blue in the face,
and you still won't have gone beyond 'I don't know what atonal
music is about, and therefore I don't like it, and since I'm
pretty smart, I should be able to figure it out if it were
any good, and therefore it isn't, and therefore it will go
away, because smart people like me don't get it and will go
on to music that we do understand.'

That's all you've said here. It's rather solipsistic, and
given the embarrassing stuff you said about 20thC music in
your original posting, none of which you've corrected, I
would suggest that you do some serious studying and listening
before telling the rest of the world where to get off.

Roger Lustig

[John S Mamoun]

John S Mamoun (js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:

: They can exist side by side. I never said they couldn't. However, I

: predict that in the long run, the only approaches that will receive broad
: and lasting acceptance

One badly needs a clear definition of "broad and lasting acceptance" here.

Who is doing the accepting? The audience? If so, who is in the audience,
and why do performers have no say? They're the ones who will decide to do
the work or not, aren't they?

>>I believe that in the long run, classical music lovers in general will
reject
music whose emotional charisma does not have an analog in the real-life
human experience. Such music will find acceptance essentially only among
an elite group of musical professionals, professors and experimentalists who
find unusual musical moods to be worthy of exploration, despite their
intrinsic
lack of terra firma meaning.

: are those that create music that articulates the

: sentiments of real life experience.

You've said this in two posts now, and I'm not at all clear why you feel

this is a truism. It only seems to be your opinion, from what I can see,
and not necessarily a well-supported one. What reply do you have for the
person who listed the "Art of the Fugue" and similar pieces in rebuttal?

>>I'm defining a philosophical standard of what classical music is classified
as artistic. Risque as that may sound, this standard is "objective" in
that it has absolutely nothing to do with the type of mood (per se) that
the music represents. That is, the central requirement for the classical
music to be considered art is that it must expand our world views. If it
can do this, then the implication is that its mood consists of emotional
ideas for which there are analogs in the real-life human experience. I
am not saying, however, that music must consist of specific types of
moods, per se, only that it stimulates in us an expansion of our
world-views. If it doesn't then it is not art according to this standard.
As far as Art of the Fugue is concerned, I've never heard the music.
I have heard other Bach pieces, such as his preludes, sinfonias, well
tempered clavier, etc., and my assessment is that they quite firmly
(even archetypically) have analogs in the human experience.

: Approaches which do not, such as

: atonal music, will be relegated to the status of experimental approaches

: that create experimental music. These experimental approaches may

: be interesting, but they will not be loved.

How do you know this is true? Beethoven's music was pretty experimental

stuff in its time, wasn't it? Is it not loved?

>>By "experimental" I mean music that does not possess an analog in the
human experience. My personal belief is that the typical classical music
listener would accept the idea that music should reflect the human
experience, and generally reject music that fails to do this reflection.
Such music cannot be loved because in order to be loved, it must enable the
listener to express feelings that have been induced in him by real-life
experience. Beethoven's music is not experimental as I define it. It
quintessentially reflects the human experience. If it was not loved when
it was introduced, it is because audiences were not sophisticated enough
to either understand the mood of the music, or to connect the mood to their
everyday experiences.

: I'd accept them as experiments,

: as means of discovering all that there is to discover about music, as
: intellectual curiosities, but I would not be sentimental about them.

Why is sentiment necessarily a component to excellence? Is this more than

just your personal take on things?

>>I don't understand what you mean by that. I never said that sentimentality
was a component to excellence. I'm implying that if music is not merely
an intellectual curiosity, if it reflects the human experience, then it
is art and therefore deserves my sentimentality. But sentimentality has
nothing to do with whether or not it is art. I've listened to much music
that I didn't like, but that I considered art nonetheless because its
emotional characteristics reflect terra firma human experiences.

: An idea is composed of two properties: 1) the rational characteristics

: of the idea and 2) the emotional characteristics, or charisma, of the idea.

If you mean "idea" in the most general sense, I'd wonder where the

"emotional characteristics, or charisma," are for Einstein's Theory of
Relativity.

>>There are people who "like" to think about Einstein's Relativity theory;
ergo, they do experience emotions from the idea, maybe not as intense
as they would having sex or winning the lottery, but the emotion is there,
faint as it might be. In any case, I am concerned with the fact that humans
can experience emotions for which there is no rational analog, and I am
not so much concerned (as far as my music argument goes) with discussing
the idea that there are emotional characteristics to every rational idea.

For one thing, do "ideas" in the general sense have "emotional
characteristics?" And why is music necessarily defined this way? I'm quite
suspicious of attempts to define the term "music" in an all-encompassing
manner.

>>Yes, they generally should, or else we would not be motivated to think
about them. Of course, some emotional characteristics for some ideas
are much fainter than others for others. I suppose music can be defined
as information that induces mood in the human mind; the mood may or
may not have a rational analog in the human experience. This definition
is not as threatening as it may seem, since it theoretically allows for any
sound combination conceivable to be considered music.

: >>Essentially, no. Since it does not advance never-before-conceived

: emotional ideas for which there are rational analogs in the context of

: the human experience, this music does not expand the human world-view

: and therefore is not ingenius.

Isn't it perhaps also possible that you (or other folks) don't understand

this music? That the fault possibly lies with you (or other folks) and not
necessarily with the music?

>>I addressed both of these points in previous posts.

: I can throw darts at the piano and come up with
: remarkable emotional effects, but artistically such an effect is probably

: bullshit because there exists no rational analog for the effect in the

: human experience and therefore it does not expand the human world
: view.

Why does the compositional method used matter if your end result is
wonderful?

>>If the result achieved does not possess an analog in the human
experience, then it is not art. It may sound "wonderful," but there
is no meaning in it, and it does not expand our world view. The
method doesn't matter, as long as the result reflects the human
experience. I is not that likely that throwing darts at a piano will
achieve such a result.

Besides, if you think 12-tone techniques and "throwing darts at a piano"
are analogous, I wonder what's your thinking is here.

>>I don't know what you mean by this. I never stated or implied that
throwing darts at a piano is analogous to 12-tone techniques.

--John

[Eric Schissel]

All the scores since the Renaissance fit neatly in a medium size room?????

Is this person .serious.?

Get out a Grove's, sir or madam, and look up (for starters) Milhaud,
Bentzon, the Strausses, then look up as many 19th century composers as you
can find (that'll keep you busy for more than a week). Assuming they all
wrote at least one work (and Milhaud and Bentzon of course have written at
least 500, as has David Busch and several others), and that there are
many, many composers too obscure to have made it into Grove's 6, or just
ignored by them for some reason (Kiel), I think you may see my meaning.

Much of my life's work, such as it is at this point, and all published
only on the web, concerns rather prolific composers of the very obscure
sort (in fact, only one or two rungs away from non-obscurity as it
happens, but still obscure all the same), such as Miaskovskii, Vainberg,
Gernsheim, Rubbra, Ropartz, Legley, and Robert Fuchs. Many of them,
rather popular in their day, too. (I would add Pettersson, Holmboe and
Frankel, not to mention Alkan, Sorabji, and Valen among yet others, but as
with Gernsheim and Draeseke I have as yet written too little on them.) The
only reason I can think of for your claim that these scores would fit in a
medium-sized room is either that you are thinking of stadia, or that you
are imagining some of the scores as rather smaller physically than they
are...

-Eric Schissel

[Roger L. Lustig]

John, *please* give some attributions for other people's words. I
know you have a habit of equating yourself with humanity at large,
but it's simply rude to delete everyone else's name from their words.
Also, set your editor to mark other people's contributions more clearly.

John S Mamoun wrote:

> John S Mamoun (js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:

> : They can exist side by side. I never said they couldn't. However, I
> : predict that in the long run, the only approaches that will receive broad
> : and lasting acceptance

>> One badly needs a clear definition of "broad and lasting acceptance" here.
>> Who is doing the accepting? The audience? If so, who is in the audience,
>> and why do performers have no say? They're the ones who will decide to do
>> the work or not, aren't they?

> >>I believe that in the long run, classical music lovers in general will
> reject
> music whose emotional charisma does not have an analog in the real-life
> human experience.

You have yet to demonstrate that there exists such music--or that there
exists music that *does* have such an analogue.

> Such music will find acceptance essentially only among
> an elite group of musical professionals, professors and experimentalists who
> find unusual musical moods to be worthy of exploration, despite their
> intrinsic lack of terra firma meaning.

Intrinsic? Big word. Show that the 'meaning' whose absence or presence
you perceive is in any way intrinsic. Use any piece as an example.

> : are those that create music that articulates the
> : sentiments of real life experience.

>> You've said this in two posts now, and I'm not at all clear why you feel
>> this is a truism. It only seems to be your opinion, from what I can see,
>> and not necessarily a well-supported one. What reply do you have for the
>> person who listed the "Art of the Fugue" and similar pieces in rebuttal?

> I'm defining a philosophical standard of what classical music is classified
> as artistic.

No, you're not. You haven't defined anything, because you haven't shown
how one can discriminate one from the other.

After all, can you tap into The Human Experience at large? Can you
determine what emotions and thoughts other people have? Can you even
show that the emotions *you* have when listening to a piece are in
any way related to those that the composer or performer had?

> Risque as that may sound, this standard is "objective" in
> that it has absolutely nothing to do with the type of mood (per se) that
> the music represents.

It also has nothing to do with anything else except your own tastes,
which kind of kicks the 'objective' thing in the balls. The rest is
simply your fantasies about what other people feel and think.

> That is, the central requirement for the classical
> music to be considered art is that it must expand our world views.

Who's this 'we'? Have you consulted anyone besides yourself?

> If it
> can do this, then the implication is that its mood consists of emotional
> ideas for which there are analogs in the real-life human experience.

Round and round and round. Perfectly airtight. No room for evidence.

>I am not saying, however, that music must consist of specific types of
> moods, per se, only that it stimulates in us an expansion of our
> world-views. If it doesn't then it is not art according to this standard.

And never mind that you can't possibly evaluate *any* piece of music
according to this standard.

Or can you? Let's see you do it. Just once.

> As far as Art of the Fugue is concerned, I've never heard the music.

Do. Soon. It's important.

> I have heard other Bach pieces, such as his preludes, sinfonias, well
> tempered clavier, etc., and my assessment is that they quite firmly
> (even archetypically) have analogs in the human experience.

Oh? That must mean that you can name them. Do so. Then tell us
how you know that the experience you're referring to is The Human
Experience (tm), as opposed to your own experience, taste, etc.

> : Approaches which do not, such as
> : atonal music, will be relegated to the status of experimental approaches
> : that create experimental music. These experimental approaches may
> : be interesting, but they will not be loved.

>> How do you know this is true? Beethoven's music was pretty experimental
>> stuff in its time, wasn't it? Is it not loved?

> By "experimental" I mean music that does not possess an analog in the
> human experience.

No! What a radical new idea! I hadn't heard you say that before.
Now everything is clear. (ahem)

Once more: how the fucking hell do you come to presume that what
*you* can't hear, or feel, or think, nobody else can? Might your
observations not have more to do with John Mamoun than with something
intrinsic in music you've barely encountered?

> My personal belief is that the typical classical music
> listener would accept the idea that music should reflect the human
> experience, and generally reject music that fails to do this reflection.

And what, dear boy, is your personal belief *based* on? That's what
we're trying to get at.

Not to mention your truly bizarre belief that your own experience
is somehow 'the human experience'.

> Such music cannot be loved

I love Pierrot lunaire. Now what?

> because in order to be loved, it must enable the
> listener to express feelings that have been induced in him by real-life
> experience.

Pierrot lunaire does. Now what?

> Beethoven's music is not experimental as I define it.

How do you know?

> It quintessentially reflects the human experience.

How do you know? Which parts does it reflect?

> If it was not loved when
> it was introduced, it is because audiences were not sophisticated enough
> to either understand the mood of the music, or to connect the mood to their
> everyday experiences.

You mean, it was experimental, by your own definition.

Now: which 'everyday experiences' do people connect to this music? Give
examples. Use people other than John Mamoun.

> : I'd accept them as experiments,
> : as means of discovering all that there is to discover about music, as
> : intellectual curiosities, but I would not be sentimental about them.

>> Why is sentiment necessarily a component to excellence? Is this more than
>> just your personal take on things?

> >>I don't understand what you mean by that. I never said that sentimentality
> was a component to excellence. I'm implying that if music is not merely
> an intellectual curiosity, if it reflects the human experience, then it
> is art and therefore deserves my sentimentality.

But how do you know whether a piece reflects the human experience?

> But sentimentality has
> nothing to do with whether or not it is art. I've listened to much music
> that I didn't like, but that I considered art nonetheless because its
> emotional characteristics reflect terra firma human experiences.

How did you know that? I submit that you didn't.

> : An idea is composed of two properties: 1) the rational characteristics
> : of the idea and 2) the emotional characteristics, or charisma, of the idea.

>> If you mean "idea" in the most general sense, I'd wonder where the
>> "emotional characteristics, or charisma," are for Einstein's Theory of
>> Relativity.

> There are people who "like" to think about Einstein's Relativity theory;
> ergo, they do experience emotions from the idea, maybe not as intense
> as they would having sex or winning the lottery, but the emotion is there,
> faint as it might be.

There are people who like to think about Pierrot lunaire. They experience
intense emotions, and deep thoughts. They are human. There are quite a
few of them.

Care to contradict any of that?

> In any case, I am concerned with the fact that humans
> can experience emotions for which there is no rational analog, and I am
> not so much concerned (as far as my music argument goes) with discussing
> the idea that there are emotional characteristics to every rational idea.

Are you interested in *anything* other than your solipsistic self?

>> For one thing, do "ideas" in the general sense have "emotional
>> characteristics?" And why is music necessarily defined this way? I'm quite
>> suspicious of attempts to define the term "music" in an all-encompassing
>> manner.

> Yes, they generally should, or else we would not be motivated to think
> about them.

Care to prove that? (Hint: it's a negative. You've cut yourself a long
piece of cloth.)

> Of course, some emotional characteristics for some ideas
> are much fainter than others for others. I suppose music can be defined
> as information that induces mood in the human mind; the mood may or
> may not have a rational analog in the human experience. This definition
> is not as threatening as it may seem, since it theoretically allows for any
> sound combination conceivable to be considered music.

It's not threatening at all, but then again, it's not a definition either.
For one thing, it leaves out the sonorous component of music; for another,
it introduces the concept of 'information' without justification.

> : >>Essentially, no. Since it does not advance never-before-conceived
> : emotional ideas for which there are rational analogs in the context of
> : the human experience, this music does not expand the human world-view
> : and therefore is not ingenius.

>> Isn't it perhaps also possible that you (or other folks) don't understand
>> this music? That the fault possibly lies with you (or other folks) and not
>> necessarily with the music?

> I addressed both of these points in previous posts.

No, you didn't. You simply reasserted your solipsistic theses.

> : I can throw darts at the piano and come up with
> : remarkable emotional effects, but artistically such an effect is probably
> : bullshit because there exists no rational analog for the effect in the
> : human experience and therefore it does not expand the human world
> : view.

>> Why does the compositional method used matter if your end result is
>> wonderful?

> If the result achieved does not possess an analog in the human
> experience, then it is not art.

What if it *does*, though, and it's just John Mamoun who missed it?

> It may sound "wonderful," but there
> is no meaning in it, and it does not expand our world view.

How do you know? And since when do things contain meaning other
than that which we endow them with?

Are you *really* claiming that meaning is intrinsic and *independent*
of human experience?

> The
> method doesn't matter, as long as the result reflects the human
> experience. I is not that likely that throwing darts at a piano will
> achieve such a result.

Likely? You brought us all this way for *likely*? WHAT IF IT *DOES*
DO THAT??????

>> Besides, if you think 12-tone techniques and "throwing darts at a piano"
>> are analogous, I wonder what's your thinking is here.

> I don't know what you mean by this. I never stated or implied that
> throwing darts at a piano is analogous to 12-tone techniques.

Then why did you bring up that example? And why did you make the same
claims (no rational analogue, etc.) about both kinds of music? Yes,
John, you very clearly implied just that.

Now, perhaps you could actually do some work here. Repetition is
not philosophy, and John Mamoun's Experience To Date is not The
Human Experience, and 'I believe' isn't proof or evidence or argument.

And _Verklaerte Nacht_ isn't atonal music.

Roger Lustig

[Roger L. Lustig]

John S Mamoun wrote:

> >An idea is composed of two properties: 1) the rational characteristics
> >of the idea and 2) the emotional characteristics, or charisma, of the idea.
> >Music is the articulation of the emotional characteristics of ideas.

>> Why? Maybe you're looking for rational analogs and expanded world
>> views, but plenty of listeners aren't. Or at least aren't all of the time.
>> You've offered a definition of music which may indeed function in the
>> context in which you listen, but you certainly aren't suggesting that this
>> is a fact, right?
>
> I suggest that it is a fact, if one is listening to judge whether
> a piece of classical music is a work of art. In that case, in my
> opinion, the music must express emotions for which there are
> rational analogs in the human experience, otherwise the music
> cannot cue us to the existence of these rational analogs, and
> therefore cannot expand our world-views, and therefore it isn't
> art.

Whoa! So art is that which can expand our world-views?

OK--so how do you tell what can expand someone else's
world-view? If it's only John Mamoun's world-view that
matters, then you're not saying anything of interest to
anyone else.

> Others, of course, listen to music not so much to expand
> their understandings but to express sentiments that have
> analogs to those rational views that they already have. That is
> why people listen to relatively non-intellectual popular music.

That is one of many, many reasons why people listen to such
music.

Now, are you telling us that people listen to 'classical'
music primarily to 'expand their understandings'? If so,
what's your reason for saying so?

> Other people, however, listen to music whose emotional ideas
> Have no rational analogs in the human experience.

I know of no such music. Please name one piece that fits
this description. Tell us how you know.

> Such music
> Is in my view not artistic. It may have a charming emotional
> Effect, but what good is a mere mood effect if it does not
> expand our understanding of the human experience?

Again, please show that such music not only *can* exist,
but does exist. A single piece will suffice.

Oh, and don't confuse 'the human experience' with 'stuff
Mamoun likes.'

> If all that
> we're interested in is the mood, why not just take some drugs
> instead of listen to music-the former effect is much more
> powerful and not less intellectually stimulating.

Useless question. If what we want is emotion and reason, why
not read a book, play some soccer, dig a garden, or any of
a million other things? Music is one of many things that
can deliver those items.

Unlike the others, you *listen* to it. It's sensual in a
way and manner that the others are not.

> >However, a particular type of music
> >can only expand our world view if it presents to us emotional ideas for
> which>we can detect rational analogs.

>> Why? I have a pretty big emotional reaction to Eastern European vocal
>> music (for example) and yet have no idea about the rational analogs because
>> I don't speak the language. I have a pretty big emotional reaction to
>> Schoenberg's string trio op. 45, too (a 12-tone piece). I had these
>> reactions on a purely AURAL level, without any idea about the extra-musical
>> content whatsoever. Only later did I find out that Schoenberg intended this
>> piece to be semi-autobiographical. According to you, however, this type of
>> representation is impossible in an atonal context. But you still haven't
>> said why. . .

> Because if the music's emotional effect does not reflect a rational
> analog in the human experience, it cannot possibly cue our minds to the
> existence of that rational analog or of the experience. Therefore, it
> cannot stimulate us to realize any new concepts and therefore it cannot
> expand our world-view.

Skip the 20th repetition, John, and cut to the chase: WHY is Op. 45
incapable of those things in a way that some other pieces are? Show
your work. Tell us what's missing in that piece. Tell us why it
cannot stimulate us to realize new concepts (hint, if any music can,
it's a piece like this); and tell us which pieces can, and how they
do it, and which concepts.

> You misunderstand what I'm trying to say in citing
> Eastern European music or Schoenberg. Knowledge of language has nothing
> to do with whether or not the Music expands your world view.

Knowledge of the *music*, however, does wonders for your argument.
Try listening to the piece instead of being so sure that it can't
do things; then ask yourself whether its inability to do so for
you necessarily indicates its inability to do so for others.

> As long as
> its emotional effect has some Analog to the human experience, it can
> expand your rational world-view, as Long as your mind is intelligent
> enough to detect and match a rational analog To the emotional
> characteristic/s of the music.

Please show us NOW how you can differentiate music that can do
this, from music that cannot. Give some examples. Tell us how
you have access to 'the human experience', as opposed to the
John Mamoun experience.

> This is because it is physically
> Possible for you to experience the same experience which that Eastern
> European experienced, and which he/she translated into a musical analog.

How do you know

a) that someone translated life-experience into a musical analogue

b) that a piece represents the analogue you perceive it to represent

c) that what you experience via the song is in any way related to
what the other person supposedly experienced?

> As far as Schoenberg is concerned, it is perfectly possible to have an
> intense emotional Reaction to his music or any other 12-tone music. I
> never said that that wan't Possible. However, unless that emotional
> reaction reflects an earthly analog, It cannot expand your rational
> world-view.

Enough already with the if-then chopping. You must have repeated that
20 times.

And repetition isn't proof. You haven't demonstrated that

a) emotional reactions *have* identifiable rational (or 'earthly')
analogues (wait a minute, aren't emotions earthly???)

b) there exists something called a rational world-view (as opposed to
a general world-view)

c) that art must be able to expand that world-view

d) that only certain art can do so

e) that you can tell which art can and cannot do so

f) that this has anything to do with atonal or 12-tone music, which
you seem to know little about.

> Also, notice how I said that I Believe that "generally"
> atonal music does not possess rational analogs.

Also note that your belief isn't based on any facts or actual
experiences, as far as you've shown us.

> I Left open a small possibility that it does.

How generous of you.

Unfortunately, you've also shown that it's almost certain that
you aren't equipped to make such judgments, being fairly
uninformed about the history, procedures, purposes, and
effects of the music.

> And to a very small extent, it probably does, but Generally it doesn't.

What do you know about what's general? Where do you reach
such judgments?

> Schoenberg said his music is "semi-autobio
> graphical." The fact that it isn't fully autobiographical suggests that
> even for the composer, who understands the music more than anyone else,
> much of it does not have an analog in the human experience.

That's pathetic, John. Has any composer ever claimed that their
music was fully autobiographical?

You're grasping at straws.

Tell me: who said the following:

The relaxation which a satisfied listener experiences
when he can follow an idea, its development, and the reasons for such
development is closely related, psychologically speaking, to a feeling of
beauty. Thus, artistic value demands comprehensibility, not only for
intellectual, but also for emotional satisfaction. However, the creator's
idea has to be presented, whatever the mood he is impelled to evoke.

> > In other words, given a particular emotional
> >idea, there must exist an analogous rational idea that is found in the
> >context of the human experience.

>> Why? Why does emotion have to be wedded to anything that actually
>> exists? This seems to rule out abstract art like Rothko and Clifford Still,
>> and plenty of people get emotional ideas from this stuff.

> Actually, that sentence should be read in conjunction with the sentence
> preceding it. What I meant here was that for a particular emotional
> idea, an analogous rational idea must exist in order for the emotional
> idea to expand our world-view.

John, you didn't explain a damn thing. You just repeated it. Tell us
*why* it must do so. Tell us *why* the expansion of the world-view is
the key.

> Perhaps I should have made this clearer,

No, not at all. Perhaps you should have justified it.

> but it should be obvious in context, because a central premise in my
> argument is that while numerous emotional ideas may exist, not every one
> has an analog in the human experience.

Do you have macros for typing that? Tell us

a) why you say that,

b) why it matters.

Yes, it's painfully obvious that it's a central premise for you.

> Of course, these emotional ideas
> may be interesting, but my argument is that They are artistically
> pointless because they don't have analogs in the human
> Experience and thus cannot expand our rational world-views.

That's not an argument. It's just repetition. HOW DO YOU KNOW
that they don't have analogues in 'the human experience'? What
access do you have to The Human Experience (tm)?

> > If, given how the human mind extracts
> >emotional meaning from experiences, there is no rational analog to a
> >particular emotional idea, then neither the emotional idea nor the music
> >which presents it can expand our world-view.

>> Why not?

> Because there is no way that the emotional idea or the music can cue
> the human mind to the existence of a rational analog that exists in the
> context of the human experience.

Prove it. Show why atonal music is uniquely incapable of doing this.
Show why tonal music *is* capable of doing this.

Just rattling on about your beliefs is something that couldn't
possibly interest anyone else--unless you could come up with a
rational analogue, say, something in the way of evidence.

> Therefore, the musical or emotional
> idea cannot possibly expand our rational or experience world-views.

Big deal. You haven't shown that the musical/emotional ideas

a) exist

b) fail to satisfy this criterion

c) don't expand world-views.

Time to do your homework.

> > In general, atonal music
> >does not present emotional ideas for which there exist rational analogs
> >in the context of the human experience.

>> Why do you think this? You haven't yet explained how the your theories
>> about rational analogs have anything to do with the language of atonal
>> music.

> From my own personal experience, I have listened to a good amount atonal
> music, from Berg's songs to Schoenberg's Verklart Nacht,

OK, you can quit now. That's a tonal piece. And if you can't hear
that, you have no business commenting on *any* music, because you obviously
don't even know what 'tonal' and 'atonal' mean.

If you think that's an atonal piece, you've got an awful lot of nerve
lecturing others on the effects of atonal music, etc., etc.

> Piano Concerto, some
> songs, to Berg's Violin concerto to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire.

Gee, two composers. Two 12-tone pieces. That only leaves a few
thousand other composers.

> At times,
> I have even found the music to be enjoyable.

How generous! What *wasn't* enjoyable about it?

> And I feel that I understand fully Their emotional messages.

Really? What are those messages? (As someone who's done a lot of scholarly
work on Pierrot, I'd really like to know.)

> I have played piano for 13+ years and
> have a couple Hundred classical music CDs, and I've taken three courses
> on music here in College, including a "music of the 20th century class,"
> which went through much Atonal music including Bartok's String Quartet
> #4.

OK, that's three composers. Now, where's Webern? Roslavets? Stravinsky?
Ligeti? Babbitt? Carter? Boulez? Ferneyhough? Crumb? Shapey? Searle?
Gerhard? Perle? Lansky?

In other words, you've barely scratched the surface, but you know all
about all instances of the music, and all about all human experience
of the music.

I don't think so.

> And every time I listen to atonal music I think to myself, this is
> all very charming and interesting, but what Does it have to do with my
> terra firma reality? The answer: not much.

And who, may I ask, are *you*? Why do you presume that *your* experience
is not only representative of, but equivalent to, *human* experience?
How does your passive listening to a few pieces in any way equate to
the serious, lifelong listening adventure that many people have
undertaken? Where do you come up with the idea that *your* inability
to relate to the music means that *nobody* can do so?

> I don't Feel in any way that
> this music reflects any earthly analog either to my experience
> Or to those of most human beings.

How nice. Of course, you've never encountered 'most human beings',
or even a representative sample of same. Stop putting on airs.

> I've listened to lots of material by
> Beethoven, And see in absolutely concrete terms how this music has
> rational analogs to the Human experience, or Rachmaninoff, or Chopin, or
> Mozart, or even Stravinsky, for example.

If it's so concrete, you can tell us. Do so.

Beethoven: 4th Symphony.
Rachmaninoff: Paganini Rhapsody
Chopin: 3rd Ballade
Mozart: Divertimento for String Trio

Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments

What are the rational analogues? How can you tell?

> This music I respect because it has these analogs.

You mean: because you can imagine certain things when listening
to it. You have absolutely no clue whether the thoughts that
YOU relate to YOUR emotions are in any way related to anything
that's in the music itself.

> Atonal music I respect as a curiosity, but not as
> something that provides intuition about the Human experience.

Again, that's a meaningful statement only if you're the only Human.

>> This is the part that you haven't yet explained. You've gone to great
>> lengths to explain your theory of emotional ideas and rational analogs, but
>> from there you jump to this conclusion about atonal music. WHY doesn't
>> atonal music articulate emotional ideas for which there there exist rational
>> analogs in the human experience. What music does this? And even if atonal
>> music doesn't do what you claim, why does that make it inherently bad?
>> Because you don't like it? You still haven't made the connection.

> The answer is that our minds have evolved in such a manner that not every
> emotion that we can feel has some anchoring in reality.

And which emotions are those? How can you tell? How do you know what
emotions a piece awakens in *me*?

Or don't you consider me human?

> I'm not sure why
> that is; perhaps this kind Of emotional system gives the human mind the
> flexibility to evolve into a far More emotionally complex form. In other
> words, perhaps some day we will Become intelligent enough to realize new
> and more complex rational concepts And attach them psychologically to the
> unusual emotions that we can presently Feel, but for which we have no
> use. These emotions are "extra" emotions, to Be incorporated into our
> psyches when we have evolved the complexity that Is necessary to
> incorporate them. Until that day, they are useless, in that they
> Cannot cue us to realize new rational ideas.

Please give an instance of one of these emotions.

> Atonal music generally
> stimulates These useless emotions, and therefore does not expand our
> world-views.

How do you know that? You're just repeating the same blather again.

> This Inability of atonal music to expand our world-views is
> what makes it "inherently Bad" and is why it is not artistic.

Your inability to tell your own reactions from generalizations
about humanity is what makes you a fool, sir.

> It makes
> no difference to me whether I like The music or not for me to consider it
> as art.

Does it make a difference if you've actually heard it? Or even know
what 'atonal' means? Your example of 'Verklaerte Nacht' would suggest
that you don't.

> However, it must cue the listener In a manner that expands
> his/her world view, or in my view it isn't art. Otherwise, tt is merely
> a sensation.

Well, it *does* expand people's world views. Get used to that fact.
Get used to the fact that John Mamoun's Ears aren't the standard
by which all music is to be judged.

And give some examples, will you?

Roger Lustig

[Dennis DeSantis]

John S Mamoun wrote in message <64rcrj$a77$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>...

>John S Mamoun (js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:
>

[snip]

>As far as Art of the Fugue is concerned, I've never heard the music.
>I have heard other Bach pieces, such as his preludes, sinfonias, well
>tempered clavier, etc., and my assessment is that they quite firmly
>(even archetypically) have analogs in the human experience.

Why do you think this? As I hear it, this music was conceived in a
didactic manner, and its only analog in the human experience (for Bach) is
it's educational value. But it happens to be great music anyway. So what's
the problem?

>I'm implying that if music is not merely
>an intellectual curiosity, if it reflects the human experience, then it
>is art and therefore deserves my sentimentality.

If you're simply sharing your opinion, then this claim is not
contentious (although I don't happen to agree with it). If you're stating
this as some kind of fact, then it is unbelievably arrogant. Don't try to
define art.

>>>If the result achieved does not possess an analog in the human
>experience, then it is not art. It may sound "wonderful," but there
>is no meaning in it, and it does not expand our world view. The
>method doesn't matter, as long as the result reflects the human
>experience

See above. You're heading into potentially offensive territory here.

Here's my opinion (notice that I'm classifying it as "opinion" so no one
gets the idea that I'm attempting to preach truths, as you seem to be
doing): You're not qualified to define great art. I'm not either. But I
know that I have an emotional response to _Wozzeck_, which is (I believe) 1)
reflective of the human experience and 2) atonal. I also have an emotional
response to Art of the Fugue which is (I believe) 2) not at all reflective
of any human experience and 2) not atonal. How do you explain this?

Dennis DeSantis
Composer, Student, Percussionist (not necessarily in that order)
desa...@geocities.com
http://www.geocities.com/vienna/1770
"Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belabored by time, certain
twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said
something we should not have missed, or are about to say something; this
imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic
phenomenon."
- Jorge Luis Borges

[po...@hotmail.com]

In article <64r06d$e21$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu>,

dcl...@fas.harvard.edu (David Cleary) wrote:
>
> John S Mamoun (js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:
>

> : They can exist side by side. I never said they couldn't. However, I

> : predict that in the long run, the only approaches that will receive broad
> : and lasting acceptance
>

> One badly needs a clear definition of "broad and lasting acceptance" here.
> Who is doing the accepting? The audience? If so, who is in the audience,
> and why do performers have no say? They're the ones who will decide to do
> the work or not, aren't they?
>

> One may also wonder when "art" became a synonym for "popularity contest."
>

> : are those that create music that articulates the

> : sentiments of real life experience.

What "sentiments of real life experience" are expressed by, say, the C
minor fugue of the WTC, which has had "broad and lasting acceptance" now
for over 250 years.

I'm dying to know, I must say.

<massive snip>
> : >The 12-tone concept may be ingenious in and of itself,

> : >but 12-tone music is not.

Actually, the 12-tone concept is trivial. The music is not, except to
people who, for whatever reason, usually ignorance, are blind to
its merits.

ciao,
John

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet

[David Cleary]

I've done my best to try and reattribute things as well as I can. John,
please don't strip out attributions in future posts, OK? It makes things
potantially very confusing. Many thanks.

Most of this has been excellently answered by Roger Lustig. Just a couple
other points:

John S Mamoun (js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:

: > : David Cleary wrote:

: > : > John S Mamoun (js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:

: > : They can exist side by side. I never said they couldn't. However,
: > : I predict that in the long run, the only approaches that will
: > : receive broad and lasting acceptance

: > One badly needs a clear definition of "broad and lasting acceptance"
: > here. Who is doing the accepting? The audience? If so, who is in the
: > audience, and why do performers have no say? They're the ones who will
: > decide to do the work or not, aren't they?

: I believe that in the long run, classical music lovers in general will
: reject
: music whose emotional charisma does not have an analog in the real-life
: human experience. Such music will find acceptance essentially only among
: an elite group of musical professionals, professors and experimentalists who
: find unusual musical moods to be worthy of exploration, despite their
: intrinsic
: lack of terra firma meaning.

Let me get this straight. Are you saying that the only meaningful
decisions about the worthiness of music are made by layman listeners? Do
performers, for one, have no meaningful say in this matter? A good number
of the best (as well as not-so-best) freelance performers in the Boston
area readily play and enjoy this music, sometimes for short money or none
at all. For that matter, does any music get done without performers,
either live or recorded (with the exception of strictly
electronic/concrete music)? If players have no compelling reason to play a
piece, it doesn't get out there in the first place, does it? But they in
fact are playing this music, and not just in universities or in Boston.

And one might wonder from your reply whether your definition of "audience"
only includes you and those layman listeners who agree with you. In fact,
I am just as much an audience member as you. Why does your opinion count
and mine mean nothing?

Plus, Roger's question to you about "intrinsic lack of terra firma
meaning" is a very big and important one. I'd like to see you address it
in a meaningful way.

Dave

[Frank Eggleston]

Simon Roberts wrote:

> John S Mamoun (js...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu) wrote:

> : I predict that the experiment with serial and atonal music

> will
> : halt for the time being, as composers bring themselves to the
> realization
> : that music should articulate the sentiments of real-life experience.
>

> [rest snipped]
>
> What an odd way of putting it. Do the Art of Fugue, Well-tempered
> Klavier, Beethoven's 7th symphony, Haydn's op. 20 quartets, or
> Bruckner's

> 9th symphony (say) "articulate the sentiments of real-life
> experience"?
>
> Simon

Wasn't this ("real-life experience") the tack that the socialist
realism commisars took in condemning Shostakovich, who by the way was
NOT an atonalist?

Frank Eggleston

[Joseph Rizzo]

On 18 Nov 1997 05:35:59 GMT, js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (John S Mamoun)
wrote:

>>>I suggest that it is a fact, if one is listening to judge whether
>a piece of classical music is a work of art. In that case, in my
>opinion, the music must express emotions for which there are
>rational analogs in the human experience, otherwise the music
>cannot cue us to the existence of these rational analogs, and
>therefore cannot expand our world-views, and therefore it isn't
>art.

Well, you have been bashing Schoenberg (poor fellow), what would you
say to Schoenberg's "A Survivor from Warsaw." If this an atonal work,
that clearly can tie into real experience.

>Others, of course, listen to music not so much to expand
>their understandings but to express sentiments that have
>analogs to those rational views that they already have.

No they don't. Get out of the ivory tower boy. What person would say
that they listen to music because it lines up with their personal
analogs of their rational views.

> That is
>why people listen to relatively non-intellectual popular music.
>Other people, however, listen to music whose emotional ideas
>Have no rational analogs in the human experience. Such music
>Is in my view not artistic.

Well la-ti-da.

>It may have a charming emotional
>Effect, but what good is a mere mood effect if it does not
>expand our understanding of the human experience?

No offense, but this is sounds exactly like the view of the church on
sex. (What good is sex if it does not bring about procreation.)
Well, I think I could direct you to another news group who would more
than glad to list them. Just like sex, music serves other purposes.
Movie music is meant to enhance the mood. Is it art? Yes. It takes
creativity, and effort to do good movie music. Bad movie music can
ruin a film. Watch Ladyhawke to see what I mean. Good movie music
can make the difference.

>If all that
>we're interested in is the mood, why not just take some drugs
>instead of listen to music-the former effect is much more
>powerful and not less intellectually stimulating.

Because sometimes that is all we are interested in. And frankly,
music doesn't screw with the brain chemicals permanent ways.

>>>Because if the music's emotional effect does not reflect a rational
>analog in the human experience, it cannot possibly cue our minds to the
>existence of that rational analog or of the experience.

1.) Human beings are not rational. We try to be, and we should strive
to be. But, everyone out there is not 100% rational. We can't be.
The world is to large and uncaring for us to be like that. Just read
about the soldiers in World War I to see what I meant. Hell, just
look at WWI to see that humans, and society are not rational.

2.) A friend of mine told a story of someone playing Shostakovich's
7th symphony to two other people. The person who played it thought it
was devastingly sad. My friend thought is sounded angry. The third
thought it sounded happy. Music is complex. It can evoke many
emotions. I doubt that Shostakovich would have thought that this
movement sounded happy, but it DID evoke this response.

3.) Beethoven's 4th and 8th symphonies are true masterpieces. Yet
they do not have any mapping to a "rational analog" (mind you this is
BS, but it is your term so I will use it). You can claim that they
are not masterpieces then, but you will be wrong.

>Also, notice how I said that I Believe that "generally"
>atonal music does not possess rational analogs. I Left open a small
>possibility that it does. And to a very small extent, it probably
>does, but Generally it doesn't.

Wuss, you don't even have the guts to stand to your own guns.

>>>Actually, that sentence should be read in conjunction with the sentence
>preceding it. What I meant here was that for a particular emotional
>idea, an analogous rational idea must exist in order for the emotional
>idea to expand our world-view. Perhaps I should have made this clearer,
>but it should be obvious in context, because a central premise in my
>argument is that while numerous emotional ideas may exist, not every one
>has an analog in the human experience. Of course, these emotional ideas
>may be interesting, but my argument is that They are artistically
>pointless because they don't have analogs in the human
>Experience and thus cannot expand our rational world-views.

God this is stupid what you just said. How could there be an emotion
that has not experienced by a human and be recognizable?

>>>Because there is no way that the emotional idea or the music can cue
>the human mind to the existence of a rational analog that exists in the
>context of the human experience. Therefore, the musical or emotional
>idea cannot possibly expand our rational or experience world-views.

You know, it is ONLY music. No matter how many times you listen to
Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy, you will not have your world view expanded
and understand an orgasm 'til you've had one.

>>>From my own personal experience, I have listened to a good amount atonal
>music, from Berg's songs to Schoenberg's Verklart Nacht, Piano Concerto, some
>songs, to Berg's Violin concerto to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. At times,
>I have even found the music to be enjoyable.

Yeah, they have succeeded in their compositions. It was something that
THEY wanted to write, and that someone enjoyed.

> And I feel that I understand
>fully Their emotional messages. I have played piano for 13+ years and
>have a couple Hundred classical music CDs, and I've taken three courses
>on music here in College, including a "music of the 20th century class,"
>which went through much Atonal music including Bartok's String Quartet
>#4. And every time I listen to atonal music I think to myself, this is
>all very charming and interesting, but what Does it have to do with my
>terra firma reality? The answer: not much.

Sure, but I don't think that Palestrina has much to do with my life.
I would not deny it being a masterpiece because of that.

> I don't Feel in any way that
>this music reflects any earthly analog either to my experience

Face it, YOUR YOUNG! You may go off on the belief that you have
reached the pinnacle of your experience and wisdom, but you haven't.
I am not much older, but I know I am much more wiser than I was just 2
years ago.

>Or to those of most human beings.

I'd like to see your statistics to demonstrate this. If you haven't
done a valid statistical survey, than this just saying, "I don't get
it. Therefore others must not." Arrogance, to say the least.

>
>>>The answer is that our minds have evolved in such a manner that not every
>emotion that we can feel has some anchoring in reality. I'm not sure why
>that is;

Why not, liberal arts boy? We are a biological system. Biological
system react to reality. Is it such a shock! that our emotional
reactions are tied to events?

>perhaps this kind Of emotional system gives the human mind the
>flexibility to evolve into a far More emotionally complex form. In other
>words, perhaps some day we will Become intelligent enough to realize new
>and more complex rational concepts And attach them psychologically to the
>unusual emotions that we can presently Feel, but for which we have no
>use. These emotions are "extra" emotions, to Be incorporated into our
>psyches when we have evolved the complexity that Is necessary to
>incorporate them. Until that day, they are useless, in that they
>Cannot cue us to realize new rational ideas.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Oh my god, I cannot believe that
you are writing this! Boy, I've got to save your work to pass around.
All the people I know are going to have a great laugh at this.

>--John

=> Joseph Rizzo
-----------------------------------------------------
"The meek shall inherit the earth- they are too weak
to refuse."

[Joseph Rizzo]

On 18 Nov 1997 06:33:23 GMT, js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (John S Mamoun)
wrote:

>>>I believe that in the long run, classical music lovers in general will

>reject
>music whose emotional charisma does not have an analog in the real-life
>human experience. Such music will find acceptance essentially only among
>an elite group of musical professionals, professors and experimentalists who
>find unusual musical moods to be worthy of exploration, despite their
>intrinsic
>lack of terra firma meaning.

Beethoven: Waldenstein Sonata, 4th symphony, 8th Symphony I do not
find any analog with my real life.

Mozart: Symphonies, Piano Concerti, Serenades, Violin Concerti, Horn
Concerti, String Quartets, Piano Sonatas I do not find any analog with
my real life.

Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Symphonies, String Quartets, I do not find any
analog with my real life.

Schubert: Piano Sonatas, Symphonies. I do not find any analog with my
real life.

I could go on, but must I? These pieces I greatly enjoy. The
Beethoven 4th and 8th are brilliant masterpieces. They will out last
me, and they certainly will out last your ideas.

>>>I'm defining a philosophical standard of what classical music is classified
>as artistic. Risque as that may sound, this standard is "objective" in
>that it has absolutely nothing to do with the type of mood (per se) that
>the music represents.

Ever see the movie, The Dead Poet's Society, the beginning that
"measures" the quality of piece of poetry. This is exactly what you
are trying to do. It makes about as much sense, and is about as
useful.

>That is, the central requirement for the classical
>music to be considered art is that it must expand our world views.

How does Beethoven's 4th or 8th expand our world views? Or is it not
art?

> If it
>can do this, then the implication is that its mood consists of emotional
>ideas for which there are analogs in the real-life human experience. I
>am not saying, however, that music must consist of specific types of
>moods, per se, only that it stimulates in us an expansion of our
>world-views. If it doesn't then it is not art according to this standard.
>As far as Art of the Fugue is concerned, I've never heard the music.

Yet you claim the insight to be able to measure the quality of all
classical music, when you are lacking the basic knowledge of such an
important document in Western Music? Arrogance, arrogance in the
extreme.

>>>By "experimental" I mean music that does not possess an analog in the
>human experience.

Bach's Well Tempered Klavier was far from experimental. He meant it
to be a document of the Baroque style, as he saw the world moving away
from it. Yet, according to your definition, it must be experimental
because it has no analog in the human experience. It is PURE music.
Furthermore, it was HIGHLY influential to the style of Mozart, Haydn
and Beethoven (it helped create the "classical" style).

Really, you sound just like the French school, during the
Brahms/Wagner debate. Your argument is over a hundred years old.
Don't you think we should "progress" (this is BS because there is no
progress in music, but you think so...) beyond this questions?

>Such music cannot be loved because in order to be loved, it must enable the
>listener to express feelings that have been induced in him by real-life
>experience.

I love Bach's Art of the Fugue (listening to it right now), but it
does not induce into me any emotions. It is a great piece of music
nonetheless. There is your counter to your assertion, ergo your
assertion is false. I am sure if we asked, we can find others who
have a piece that contradicts your assertion as well. Unless of
course, you have the gall to suggest that I really don't love the Art
of the Fugue?

>In any case, I am concerned with the fact that humans
>can experience emotions for which there is no rational analog, and I am
>not so much concerned (as far as my music argument goes) with discussing
>the idea that there are emotional characteristics to every rational idea.

Describe an experience that you felt an emotion that you could not
describe. Or even a piece.

>>>Yes, they generally should, or else we would not be motivated to think
>about them.

What is the emotion tagged to "is". Or the emotion tagged to "was".
Or the emotion tagged to "white board". There are many others, not
all words have emotion to them. That is why there are strong words in
language. The highest charged words are usually reserved for cursing.
The lowest are everywhere (Like, "like", "the", "a", "is", for, when,
...)

[fiddleaway]

John,

I have been following your discussion with Roger L. with interest and I
must say that from my point of view, he is pretty effectively debunking
your key premise; that music may only be considered to be art if it evokes
emotional (or other?) messages which are analogous to actual human
experience. (If I have misstated or otherwise misconstrued the basis of
your argument, please correct me).

First of all, am right in assuming that you accept the above (which I will
subsequently call "The Premise") as a premise? If not, what are the
underlying philosophical principles upon which The Premise rests?

Second of all, you seem to be dismissing the enjoyment of pure emotionality
as an important part of the human experience. I can only repeat what Roger
has already said. Why? My personal experience and my reading of history
has lead me to believe that emotion is a major driver behind human behavior
and therefore a major factor in human experience. Why would you limit art
to only those creations that have analogs to other human experiences rather
than being direct human experiences in and of themselves? Your
discriminator for art/non-art seems too narrow.

I can respect The Premise as a base principle upon which YOU personally
judge music, but if you do, I think the following statements apply.

(a) I predict that most people, both scholarly thinkers and amateurs like
me, would disagree with you. In fact, I'll bet that you can find very few
noted writers on art philosophy who agree with you.

(b) Judging by the resume you have provided in a recent post (playing
Piano for 13+ years...etc), you are fairly young. As you evolve, you are
of course free to use any personal criteria to discriminate which music you
listen to and which music you do not. But if you're criteria for
acceptance never grows, then I predict (1) you will miss the boat and more
sadly, (2) anyone who you influence will miss it also.

(c) As Roger has repeatedly complained, the tone of your posts (falsely)
projects too much of your personal experience into the general human
experience. Projecting your own world view in this way is a good first
step at understanding, but only because it will step on so many toes that
you will be seriously questioned. You have been, by Mr. Lustig, and your
answers have not been very satisfying. But rather than reacting
defensively to this statement, I would rather you consider broadening your
concept of what artful music is. How do you react to my personal premise
about art and music, namely...

A piece of music is good Art to anyone who thinks it is, for any reason.

(I'll let this stand even though I just realized I myself may not get much
support from noted authors on the subject. And frankly, I'm too lazy to
research the issue. However, as a justification for my personal attitude,
I will say that it is a philosophical element that keeps me open to new
experiences: if someone else thinks a piece of music is good Art, it
forces me to ask the question why?...and thereby possibly increase my
understanding of myself and others.)

(Also, a clerical request...you and John's posts are so long that it's
starting to get very hard to tell who said what. John, your posts actually
seem to work the opposite with ">" on your new lines and no starting
punctuation on lines you quote from Roger. Would you mind doing a little
editing to show authorship for others like me who are interested in this
thread? TIA)

[Joseph Rizzo]

On 17 Nov 1997 03:06:24 GMT, js...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (John S Mamoun)
wrote:

> I predict that the experiment with serial and atonal music will

>halt for the time being, as composers bring themselves to the realization
>that music should articulate the sentiments of real-life experience.

Wake up boy. There is more music out there than Schoenberg and the
2nd Viennese school. Get out and listen to some MacMillan, Monk,
Gorecki, Part, Taverner, Kanchelli, and Corigliano.

>I don't believe that we can kid ourselves in thinking that anything but the lone
>genius can advance progress in classical music.

I don't believe we can kid ourselves and believe that there is such a
thing as "progress" in classical music. We are not going from a
lesser place, to a better place. Things change. Aesthetics alter.
Society shifts. Art is created by individuals of a society, and
reflects that society.

It is ludicrous to believe that Handel's aesthetic would hold any
interest, or relevance in today's society. It is also ludicrous to
suggest that Spohr is more advanced that JSBach because he wrote in a
later style.

> It is perhaps easy to think that progress in classical music has
>stopped or slowed down to a trickle, and then to worry about whether or
>not there will be anything more.

There is still no such thing as progress in music. So, worrying about
it slowing down or stopping is groundless.

>But such fears are groundless. First

>of all, ingenious music is music that by definition has not been
>conceived by anyone until its creation. If so, it cannot exist in the
>comprehension vocabulary of man, and therefore it cannot be perceived to

>exist. Since it cannot be perceived to exist, one can not have any
>reason to think that it ever will exist, even though, in actually, it
>does exist.

Boy, this is awful academic writing. You said absolutely nothing but
gibberish. Try again.

>It is easy to look back in retrospect and see that progress
>in classical music would come forth after 1912 since Rites of Spring and
>other works were created after 1912. But in 1912, before it existed, and

>at a time of some stagnation in classical music, it would be difficult to

>think that there would be further progress, because the new knowledge
>quanta of new developments in classical music simply did not exist in the
>minds of men.

Quanta? Do you even know what the hell quanta stands for? Or are you
just trying to show that you are knowledgeable by pulling physics
phrases where they CLEARLY do not belong. I cannot begin to tell you
how stupid you sound using big words in the wrong place to try to show
your intelligence.

> Second of all, in absolute terms, there have been very few

>classical music composers in history. Years of expensive training

>without any obvious pay-offs, requiring high intelligence and almost
>fanatical self-discipline, as well as a great sense of sacrifice, are
>necessary to create an ingenious composer.

Nice. Historically inaccurate, but a nice sentiment. This is the
Romantic ideal of the suffering artist/genius.

>By sheer statistical numbers,
>few individuals have possessed all of these attributes. Thus, there are

>very few candidates for composing excellence to choose from in the first
>place, and from that relatively tiny pool of candidates springs all of

>classical music. It is perhaps for this reason that all of the scores
>from Western music's output since the renaissance fits neatly in a medium
>size room.

Nope, sorry. To begin with, we do not have all Western music's output
from the Renaissance period. Paper is delicate, and does not survive
very well. Furthermore, I think your basic statistic is wrong as
well. Cite your source.

>It is possible, then, that there can be systematic progress
>in classical music by merely increasing the candidate base.

No, because progress is an artificial notion.

>
>--John

[Paul R. Goodman]

On 18 Nov 1997 05:35:59 GMT, js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (John S Mamoun)
wrote:

{HUGE SNIP}

>>>From my own personal experience, I have listened to a good amount atonal
>music, from Berg's songs to Schoenberg's Verklart Nacht, Piano Concerto, some
>songs, to Berg's Violin concerto to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. At times,

Schoneberg's Verklarte Nact is atonal??? You have to be kidding.
What is your definition of atonal music? Do you have a clue?

- Paul Goodman
prg...@ibm.net

[Dave Dalle]

Joseph Rizzo (jl...@mcs.net) writes:
>
> I love Bach's Art of the Fugue (listening to it right now), but it
> does not induce into me any emotions. It is a great piece of music
> nonetheless. There is your counter to your assertion, ergo your
> assertion is false. I am sure if we asked, we can find others who
> have a piece that contradicts your assertion as well. Unless of
> course, you have the gall to suggest that I really don't love the Art
> of the Fugue?
>

I would have the gall to say that the above is impossible. You love the
Art of the Fugue (as everyone should), that indicates a very positive
emotional response. The appreciation (and dislike) of music necessarily
involves an emotional response to the music. Maybe you love the Art of
Fugue for its formal wonders and intricacies. That still involves an
emotional reponse. "I love" is not an emotional response?

> Describe an experience that you felt an emotion that you could not
> describe. Or even a piece.

One of the most difficult pieces to describe emotionally for me is
Beethoven's Op. 110. A wonderful, incredible, stunning piece with a very
positive ending, yet not one I can describe easily.

Dave

--
"Taste is a negative thing. Genius affirms and always affirms." -Franz Liszt

[Taste is defined by what it excludes. Genius is defined by what it includes.]

[Dennis DeSantis]

John S Mamoun wrote in message <64r9fv$o57$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>...

>>An idea is composed of two properties: 1) the rational characteristics
>>of the idea and 2) the emotional characteristics, or charisma, of the
idea.
>>Music is the articulation of the emotional characteristics of ideas.
>
> Why? Maybe you're looking for rational analogs and expanded world
>views, but plenty of listeners aren't. Or at least aren't all of the time.
>You've offered a definition of music which may indeed function in the
>context in which you listen, but you certainly aren't suggesting that this
>is a fact, right?
>
>>>I suggest that it is a fact, if one is listening to judge whether
>a piece of classical music is a work of art

This is unbelievably pompous. You lack the credentials to make this
kind of claim. In fact, we all do.

[more unsupported assertions snipped]

>> If, given how the human mind extracts
>>emotional meaning from experiences, there is no rational analog to a
>>particular emotional idea, then neither the emotional idea nor the music
>>which presents it can expand our world-view.
>
> Why not?
>
>>>Because there is no way that the emotional idea or the music can cue
>the human mind to the existence of a rational analog that exists in the
>context of the human experience. Therefore, the musical or emotional
>idea cannot possibly expand our rational or experience world-views.

Your answer is plagued with circular reasoning. WHY!? Why is there a
causal connection between "rational analog" and "expanded world view"? I
don't know you from Adam, so I have no reason to accept that this is true
just because you say so. Stop repeating your assertions and start
justifying them.

>> In general, atonal music
>>does not present emotional ideas for which there exist rational analogs
>>in the context of the human experience.
>
> Why do you think this? You haven't yet explained how the your theories
>about rational analogs have anything to do with the language of atonal
>music.
>
>>>From my own personal experience, I have listened to a good amount atonal

>music, from Berg's songs to Schoenberg's Verklart Nacht [snip]

Verklaerte Nacht isn't atonal. You're sinking fast.

>I have played piano for 13+ years and
>have a couple Hundred classical music CDs, and I've taken three courses
>on music here in College, including a "music of the 20th century class,"
>which went through much Atonal music including Bartok's String Quartet
>#4.

[snip]

Please don't cite your credentials as an attempt to justify your claims.
This makes you look silly, since your credentials are outmatched by the
people who are criticizing you.

[rest snipped]

I'm trying to remain civil; too often usenet arguments degenerate into
wars. But seriously; it is becoming difficult to discuss this potentially
interesting issue with you because you keep repeating yourself and evading
the responses. It is very clear what your position is about "rational
analogs". But what you haven't yet explained WHY this related to atonal
music or "expanded world views" or art or anything else. All we know about
your views is that you don't like atonal music.

[A440A]

fiddleaway asks:

>Is there such a thing as an unappreciated genius?

Yes, but you don't hear about them..................

Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tenn.

[Eric Schissel]

Er, by the way, Bartok's string quartet #4, though it has some rather
atonal sections, is in C. (Not major or minor, but still C.)

Even the violin sonatas have tonal relations, however attenuated, to make
their final cadences (in c# and C resp.) make sense. (I'm ignoring here
the solo sonata, which is very definitely tonal and in g, and the early
sonata #0.)

And yes, Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht is tonal- very much so- which fact
above all leads me to believe this is a posting initiated by a troll. My
AD&D character hates trolls...
-Eric Schissel

[po...@hotmail.com]

In article <8799017...@dejanews.com>,

po...@hotmail.com wrote:
> What "sentiments of real life experience" are expressed by, say, the C
> minor fugue of the WTC, which has had "broad and lasting acceptance" now
> for over 250 years.
>
> I'm dying to know, I must say.

Sorry, I meant to say WTC I, but c minor fugue of the 2nd book will do,
too.

Not that I'm expecting an answer to the question, mind.

[po...@hotmail.com]

js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (John S Mamoun) writes:

>As far as Art of the Fugue is concerned, I've never heard the music.

Gasp; good lord. Well, now we know the origin of your antipathy toward
atonal music -- you simply must have very little experience with music
in general.

Perhaps you should be as skeptical, therefore, of your own opinions on the
present subject as others are. Experience may give you a greater
understanding.

[Fred Goldrich]

In article <6500jm$834$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
John S Mamoun <js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>...
> That said, I'm going to use this post to give a discussion and
>specific examples of how a musical piece can contain an emotional
>characteristic for which there is a respective rational analog, and how
>the absorption of that emotional characteristic can cue the listener to
>realize that analog, and thus expand the listeners' rational world-view.

But in fact you have done no such thing, you have just
supplied a chain of suppositions and _non sequiturs_:

>...
> Consider these two pieces: Chopin's piano Etude Opus 10 #3, and
>Rachmaninoff's Variation 18 from the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
>Both of these have a melodramatic quality about them. Let's say, for the
>sake of argument, that both express the emotions of empathy...
>...
> The two pieces do not express the emotion
>of empathy in identical ways. However, they cue the listener to the
>existence of experiences that could induce that listener to need to
>express these two different forms of empathy.

Hold on just a minute. You started by assuming "for
the sake of argument" that the pieces express an emotion; you
you have yet to show that the assumption is valid or even
meaningful, yet you are proceeding as if the assumption were
factual.

>In what way would an atonal piece of music such as Webern's Op. 21, for
>all its enormous complexity and subtlety, invoke emotions (such as
>empathy, for example) that one might need to express in response to an
>experience in the context of the broader human experience?

Well, in what way would the two tonal pieces you men-
tioned invoke emotions? You never showed that they did, or ex-
plained how, remember? -- it was just as assumption "for the
sake of argument." You can make any assumption you want about
anything, but it doesn't carry any weight until you justify it.

So, tell us, how would Chopin's Op. 10 No. 3 express
empathy and why would Webern's Op. 21 be unable to do so?

> My opinion is that if a musical piece cannot express sentiments felt in
>response to everyday life experiences, then it cannot expand the
>world-view of the listener. Since it cannot do that, it is not by my
>definition a work of art. I would generally place atonal music in that
>"not-art" category, though not disparagingly.

You start out by assuming without supporting evidence
that tonal music expresses emotion; then you state your opinion
that atonal music does not.

Don't you see that everything you have said simply boils
down to your unsupported opinion?

I for one would never quarrel with your opinion -- if
that's the way you see it, that's the way you see it. But I
think you are kidding yourself if you believe that you have
given logical arguments that support that opinion -- despite
all the verbiage, the logic doesn't hold up.

And one thing that you certainly have not done is what
you said at the beginning you would do -- that is, to give "spe-
cific examples of how a musical piece can contain an emotional
characteristic for which there is a respective rational analog."

-- Fred Goldrich

--
Fred Goldrich
gold...@panix.com

[Roger L. Lustig]

John S Mamoun wrote:
>
> Oops. I accidentally listed Verklart Nacht as an atonal piece. In point
> of fact, it isn't one, and I've never considered it as one or felt it to
> be one. In my rush to list a variety of atonal songs that Schoenberg and
> others wrote, I listed it, too. My mistake, as I've previously indicated.

Well, one of them. It's not a song, either.

> That said, I'm going to use this post to give a discussion and
> specific examples of how a musical piece can contain an emotional
> characteristic for which there is a respective rational analog, and how
> the absorption of that emotional characteristic can cue the listener to
> realize that analog, and thus expand the listeners' rational world-view.

Non-sequitur. Why does 'realizing an analog' (sp) expand a rational
world-view?

> An individual can go through an experience that leaves him or her
> wanting to express certain emotions. That experience can be
> characterized in strictly rational terms.

Really? How does one characterize an experience in rational terms?
Give an example.

> Individuals can go through
> many different experiences, each of which has its own set of rational
> characteristics,

Give an example. Describe an experience, and enumerate its rational
characteristics.

> and each of which can induce in the individual the need
> to express a different emotion.

You have no way of knowing this.

> An individual, for example, might be
> fired from work, and in response to the experience might need to express
> feelings of power and strength.

How would *you*, however, know what the person felt, or needed
to express?

> Another might be rejected by a love
> object, and need to express feelings of empathy, for example.

Or not. But that's beside the point. The 'feelings' you
describe are hopelessly vague, and could have any number of
analogues in music.

> Partly
> because no two experiences are the same, experiences can induce in an
> individual the need to express not only different feelings, but also
> different shades of the same feeling. One may go through two experiences
> that induce him to want to express two different types or degrees of
> empathy, for example.

Trivially true, assuming we consider 'empathy' to be a defined category
of feelings. (Also, why empathy in this case? Doesn't someone who's
been rejected want to be empathized *with*?)

> That different experiences can induce the need to express a
> different respective emotion, as well as different respective shades or
> degrees of the same emotion, suggests that each specific experience can,
> in the mind of an individual, be connected to its own specific emotion.

It suggests no such thing, because you haven't defined 'specific emotion.'

> For example, an individual might be fired from his job and thus need to
> express a specific type and degree of the emotion of power (1). That
> same individual, however, might also run a business and go bankrupt, and
> in response to that experience need to express a specific type and degree
> of another emotion of power (2) that is quite different from that which
> he needed to express when he was fired. There is a connection in the
> mind of that specific individual between power (1) and the specific
> experience of being fired,

Why?

> and one between power (2) and the specific experience of going bankrupt.

Fine. Now show why you categorize those things as emotions of the same
type but different degrees. How can you tell?

> Now, suppose that the individual has not gone through these
> experiences. If he listens to music that allows him to express the power (1)
> emotion,

Is there such music? Show how you know.

> then his mind can be cued to the existence of the rational
> characteristics of the experience of being fired.

Please tell us how you know that music can cause such an effect,
along with the connection to some as-yet-unexperienced event.

> Thus, he can
> understand at least subconsciously what it might feel like to be fired.

How? This makes no sense. How does he even know that the music is
about being fired, instead of about being rejected or a hundred other
possible events?

> Similarly, if he listens to music that allows him to express the power
> (2) emotion, he can understand subconsciously ahead of time what it feels
> like to go bankrupt.

Could you show that this has ever happened to a single human being?

> In this manner, the music expands his intuition
> about the human experience.

Bullshit. That implies that there's a *human* experience of being
fired (as opposed to specific, individual experiences of being
fired from a particular job by a particular person).

Me, I was fired a few weeks ago. What was it like, emotionally?
Terrific! After an initial shock, it was liberating, and I
realized how unhappy I'd been in the job.

Now tell me how you could possibly know that a piece of music
could make someone feel the way I did (especially since you
really don't know how I felt, after such a vague and possibly
disingenuous description); or that *I* could feel that way
again after hearing such a piece of music; or that yet another
person would have a similar *experience* of the same piece of music!

What is 'the human experience' of being fired? I submit
that there is no such thing.

> Of course, while different experiences can
> each induce the need to express a respective specific type and degree of
> emotion in the individual, it is possible for multiple experiences to
> match with the same specific emotional need.

So what? Specific emotional needs are characteristics of the
individual, not humanity at large.

> In this case, absorbing a
> specific emotion can cue one's mind subconsciously to the existence of
> multiple experiences in the context of the human experience.

A context that you have not shown to exist.

> Consider these two pieces: Chopin's piano Etude Opus 10 #3, and
> Rachmaninoff's Variation 18 from the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
> Both of these have a melodramatic quality about them.

To you. What makes them melodramatic? Do all humans know what
'melodrama' means? Do all those who know what it means, associate
the same things with it?

> Let's say, for the
> sake of argument, that both express the emotions of empathy.

Uh-uh. First show that *any* piece objectively expresses
*any* emotion. Show *how* it does so, and why you know
that it does.

> This is an emotion found in the human experience,

Wrong. Some humans experience things that some humans
(not necessarily the same ones) label 'empathy'.

> in that people often do find
> themselves needing to express it in response to particular experiences in
> interacting with other humans.

So the things labelled 'empathy' constitute a set of individual
emotions. (Oh, and what's this 'express' business? Is that what
we do with emotions?)

> The two pieces do not express the emotion
> of empathy in identical ways.

Of course not. How could they? There's no one thing that's
'the emotion of empathy.'

> However, they cue the listener

Which one? All listeners? Some? John Haroun?

> to the
> existence of experiences that could induce that listener to need to
> express these two different forms of empathy.

....or any of a hundred other things. So what?

> In what way would an atonal piece of music such as Webern's Op. 21, for
> all its enormous complexity and subtlety, invoke emotions (such as
> empathy, for example) that one might need to express in response to an
> experience in the context of the broader human experience?

The same way the other pieces do. Or can you show that there's
some substantive difference?

(Also, what happened to that 'for the sake of argument' stuff?
You're not fooling anyone here.)

> If it does
> not, then can anyone explain how it can improve a listener's intuition
> about everyday human experience?

How can you explain how the other pieces can do so? You haven't.

> My opinion is that if a musical piece cannot express sentiments felt in
> response to everyday life experiences, then it cannot expand the
> world-view of the listener.

Your opinion has been stated too often, and defended too little.
It also has nothing to do with the tonal/atonal distinction,
certainly not as you've stated it.

> Since it cannot do that, it is not by my definition a work of art.

Of course it can do that. Certainly as well as any other piece--
or can you show otherwise? (Hint: 'I say so' is not a demonstration.)

> I would generally place atonal music in that
> "not-art" category, though not disparagingly.

Big deal. You've already shown that you have no reason to do so.

> I do not hate such music,
> but consider it perfectly acceptable material for study in places of
> musical learning.

You should visit one sometime. But first wipe the snot off your
nose. Your condescension is not earned.

> In my eyes, however, it is relegated to the status of
> experimental music, music interesting in that it creates unusual moods,
> but not particularly redeeming besides that regard.

Your eyes are of no interest, because you cannot give justifications
for your claims.

WHY does the Webern symphony fail to express sentiments of the
type you demand? How do you know that it fails to do so in
people other than John S. Haroun?

> I remember looking
> at a painting entitled Number One, by Jackson Pollack, as well as another
> one called Lucifer. To be honest, I understood these paintings, and felt
> seized by a gush of euphoric and somewhat dizzying feelings. That was an
> interesting mood to feel, but the rational part of me asked, "what is it
> good for?"

It's good for experiencing. Why does art have to be about anything
but the experience of art? Is the experience of art not part of the
human experience?

> Pollack himself averred that his paintings were not really
> reflections of real life.

So?

> That is why his advice to those who viewed his
> paintings was to not approach the painting with any pre-conceived notion
> of what it is, but rather to look at it passively and let their minds
> react spontaneously to the painting. He therefore implied that there is
> no rational meaning to the painting, just an extraordinary effect.

Nonsense. He implied no such thing. He *stated* that the experience of
art is in and of itself a form of experience.

Do you disagree?

Roger Lustig

[John S Mamoun]

Oops. I accidentally listed Verklart Nacht as an atonal piece. In point
of fact, it isn't one, and I've never considered it as one or felt it to
be one. In my rush to list a variety of atonal songs that Schoenberg and
others wrote, I listed it, too. My mistake, as I've previously indicated.

That said, I'm going to use this post to give a discussion and
specific examples of how a musical piece can contain an emotional
characteristic for which there is a respective rational analog, and how
the absorption of that emotional characteristic can cue the listener to
realize that analog, and thus expand the listeners' rational world-view.

An individual can go through an experience that leaves him or her
wanting to express certain emotions. That experience can be

characterized in strictly rational terms. Individuals can go through

many different experiences, each of which has its own set of rational

characteristics, and each of which can induce in the individual the need
to express a different emotion. An individual, for example, might be

fired from work, and in response to the experience might need to express

feelings of power and strength. Another might be rejected by a love
object, and need to express feelings of empathy, for example. Partly

because no two experiences are the same, experiences can induce in an
individual the need to express not only different feelings, but also
different shades of the same feeling. One may go through two experiences
that induce him to want to express two different types or degrees of
empathy, for example.

That different experiences can induce the need to express a
different respective emotion, as well as different respective shades or
degrees of the same emotion, suggests that each specific experience can,
in the mind of an individual, be connected to its own specific emotion.

For example, an individual might be fired from his job and thus need to
express a specific type and degree of the emotion of power (1). That
same individual, however, might also run a business and go bankrupt, and
in response to that experience need to express a specific type and degree
of another emotion of power (2) that is quite different from that which
he needed to express when he was fired. There is a connection in the
mind of that specific individual between power (1) and the specific

experience of being fired, and one between power (2) and the specific
experience of going bankrupt.

Now, suppose that the individual has not gone through these
experiences. If he listens to music that allows him to express the power (1)

emotion, then his mind can be cued to the existence of the rational
characteristics of the experience of being fired. Thus, he can

understand at least subconsciously what it might feel like to be fired.

Similarly, if he listens to music that allows him to express the power
(2) emotion, he can understand subconsciously ahead of time what it feels

like to go bankrupt. In this manner, the music expands his intuition
about the human experience. Of course, while different experiences can

each induce the need to express a respective specific type and degree of
emotion in the individual, it is possible for multiple experiences to

match with the same specific emotional need. In this case, absorbing a

specific emotion can cue one's mind subconsciously to the existence of
multiple experiences in the context of the human experience.

Consider these two pieces: Chopin's piano Etude Opus 10 #3, and
Rachmaninoff's Variation 18 from the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Both of these have a melodramatic quality about them. Let's say, for the
sake of argument, that both express the emotions of empathy. This is an
emotion found in the human experience, in that people often do find

themselves needing to express it in response to particular experiences in

interacting with other humans. The two pieces do not express the emotion
of empathy in identical ways. However, they cue the listener to the

existence of experiences that could induce that listener to need to
express these two different forms of empathy.

In what way would an atonal piece of music such as Webern's Op. 21, for
all its enormous complexity and subtlety, invoke emotions (such as
empathy, for example) that one might need to express in response to an

experience in the context of the broader human experience? If it does

not, then can anyone explain how it can improve a listener's intuition
about everyday human experience?

My opinion is that if a musical piece cannot express sentiments felt in
response to everyday life experiences, then it cannot expand the

world-view of the listener. Since it cannot do that, it is not by my
definition a work of art. I would generally place atonal music in that
"not-art" category, though not disparagingly. I do not hate such music,

but consider it perfectly acceptable material for study in places of

musical learning. In my eyes, however, it is relegated to the status of

experimental music, music interesting in that it creates unusual moods,

but not particularly redeeming besides that regard. I remember looking

at a painting entitled Number One, by Jackson Pollack, as well as another
one called Lucifer. To be honest, I understood these paintings, and felt
seized by a gush of euphoric and somewhat dizzying feelings. That was an
interesting mood to feel, but the rational part of me asked, "what is it

good for?" Pollack himself averred that his paintings were not really
reflections of real life. That is why his advice to those who viewed his

[Dennis DeSantis]

John S Mamoun wrote in message <6500jm$834$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>...

[snip]

>In what way would an atonal piece of music such as Webern's Op. 21, for
>all its enormous complexity and subtlety, invoke emotions (such as
>empathy, for example) that one might need to express in response to an
>experience in the context of the broader human experience? If it does
>not, then can anyone explain how it can improve a listener's intuition
>about everyday human experience?

Webern's Op. 21 (and any other piece) can invoke any number of emotions
in any number of listeners. All that you're saying is that YOU don't have
these emotions evoked. But plenty of us do.

> My opinion is that if a musical piece cannot express sentiments felt in
>response to everyday life experiences, then it cannot expand the
>world-view of the listener. Since it cannot do that, it is not by my
>definition a work of art.

Well, at least you're not claiming that this is fact any more. I happen
to disagree with everything you're saying. For me, art has no obligation to
represent anything whatsoever, nor does it have any obligation to expand my
world view. Furthermore, I believe that art can expand one's world view
without having any relation to everyday life experiences. That seems to be
the nature of abstraction. But again, this is only my opinion. I
appreciate the fact that you have shared your views as an opinion in this
post. Your previous posts were a bit more unpleasant.

[Samuel Vriezen]

On Wed, 19 Nov 1997 16:02:14 -0600, po...@hotmail.com wrote:

>>As far as Art of the Fugue is concerned, I've never heard the music.
>

>Gasp; good lord. Well, now we know the origin of your antipathy toward
>atonal music -- you simply must have very little experience with music
>in general.
>
>Perhaps you should be as skeptical, therefore, of your own opinions on the
>present subject as others are. Experience may give you a greater
>understanding.

Now now, there are so many masterpieces in the world, it is not such a
shame not to know one of them. I would start to worry if the '>>'
person also never heard the WTK or the Goldberg Variations. Myself, I
never heard the Hohe Messe, the St John Passion, the Piano Sonatas of
Schubert, Lieder by Wolf and many more worrysome articles and still I
feel rather confident when talking about music.

But I think - why all this fruitless theorizing in order to attack
atonality, when it can perfectly stand up for itself with the
uncomplicatedly (though perhaps complicated) great music by Berg
Webern Ligeti Xenakis etc. They say a lot more than all encyclopedias
about 18th century music piled on top of each other.

What I am curious about - why do all opponents of atonality always
have to come up with convoluted and semiplausible theories? I don't
mean to offend anyone, it's just a tendency thing I find noticable, we
saw it before with Shulgasser for instance. Though it gives us less
Usenet fun, I do prefer the less pretentious 'I don't like it that's
all' approach to opposing atonality. Well never mind.

Samuel

[Ryan Hare]

Dennis DeSantis (desa...@geocities.com) wrote:
: John S Mamoun wrote in message <6500jm$834$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>...

: [snip]

: >In what way would an atonal piece of music such as Webern's Op. 21, for

: >all its enormous complexity and subtlety, invoke emotions (such as
: >empathy, for example) that one might need to express in response to an
: >experience in the context of the broader human experience? If it does
: >not, then can anyone explain how it can improve a listener's intuition
: >about everyday human experience?

: Webern's Op. 21 (and any other piece) can invoke any number of emotions

: in any number of listeners. All that you're saying is that YOU don't have
: these emotions evoked. But plenty of us do.

I absolutely agree with Dennis. Besides which Webern's Op. 21 is actually
a very *simple* piece. It's appalling the way some people assume that
because something doesn't fit in their world-view, it can't possibly fit
into anyone else's. A emotional response to Webern's Op. 21 certainly fits
into mine, and it fits in those of many other people as well. Why else
would this music still get performances and recordings, and why would we
still be arguing over it?

Ryan Hare
rh...@u.washington.edu

[Michael Subotin]

John S Mamoun wrote:
>
> Oops. I accidentally listed Verklart Nacht as an atonal piece. In point
> of fact, it isn't one, and I've never considered it as one or felt it to
> be one. In my rush to list a variety of atonal songs that Schoenberg and
> others wrote, I listed it, too. My mistake, as I've previously indicated.

_Verklarte Nacht_ is, of course, not a "song" either. And your assertion
that you've "never felt it" to be atonal makes me wonder if you're
using the term in a way that is fundamentally different from standard
usage, as in your statement it seems to be an emotive predicate of some
sort ("music that John S Mamoun doesn't like"? -- wild guess). Nor
have you stated anywhere in this thread what is it about atonality
that makes atonal music as such fail your criteria for being "Art".
In fact, thinking back to your earlier posts, I can't really think of
a reason to assume that you know what "atonality" means, despite it being
ostensibly the subject matter of your arguments (no offence, but, based
on your own accounts, I gather you're not terribly familiar with
classical music). At this point your definition of "atonality" would be
very welcome.

> That said, I'm going to use this post to give a discussion and
> specific examples of how a musical piece can contain an emotional
> characteristic for which there is a respective rational analog, and how
> the absorption of that emotional characteristic can cue the listener to
> realize that analog, and thus expand the listeners' rational world-view.

Yet, nowhere in this post have you offered evidence that there exists
a "ratioinal analog" in non-musical experience to *any* piece of music,
let alone all music worthy of being called "Art", having yourself
disqualified your Chopin and Rachmaninov examples. Me, I could
pontificate profusely about Epistemiological Implications of Lunar
Fermentation Cycles, but I wouldn't expect anyone to take my theories
seriously, unless I provided some evidence that the moon is, in fact,
made of green cheese.

As an aside, your main criterion for "art" is normally associated
with programmatic classical music (not to mention movie soundtracks).
It's not uncommon for people who are not accustomed to listening to
formally elaborate extended compositions to develop their own
"programs" to non-programmatic music, to help them maintain their
interest throughout the duration of the piece. However, as they
become more familiar with such music, they usually tend to move
away from making extra-musical associations and come to delight
in music's own structure. I don't really want to sound condescending,
but I would recommend familiarizing yourself better with the variety
of music at large and with the views of musicians and listeners,
past and present, before extrapolating your own perceptions to
the Human Experience, tempting as it may be to formulate a Theory
of All Music in a couple of sentences.

<rest of post snipped>

Michael
--
E-mail: idv+@pitt(DOT)edu Replace (DOT) with a dot

[po...@hotmail.com]

In article <34736ee6...@news.xs4all.nl>,

s...@xs4all.nl (Samuel Vriezen) wrote:
> What I am curious about - why do all opponents of atonality always
> have to come up with convoluted and semiplausible theories? I don't
> mean to offend anyone, it's just a tendency thing I find noticable, we
> saw it before with Shulgasser for instance. Though it gives us less
> Usenet fun, I do prefer the less pretentious 'I don't like it that's
> all' approach to opposing atonality. Well never mind.

It's a survival of the fittest question. Mere expressions of honest
antipathy don't engender much debate, as you point out, which is why
you notice the theorizers more. They get more airtime.

I actually myself have no problem with the statement "I don't like it;
that's all". The problem comes from turning a statement of mere opinion
into a generalized *should*, like the law of gravity. Aesthetics don't
follow such rules, and those who attempt to suggest they do come off
sounding, frankly, arrogant and obtuse. This tends to annoy...and then
we get usenet carreerists like Shulgasser or...anyone remember Dan
Koren? ;-)

ciao,
J

[Jeff Bernhard]

Ryan Hare (rh...@saul7.u.washington.edu) wrote:
: Dennis DeSantis (desa...@geocities.com) wrote:
: : Webern's Op. 21 (and any other piece) can invoke any number of emotions

: : in any number of listeners. All that you're saying is that YOU don't have
: : these emotions evoked. But plenty of us do.
:
: I absolutely agree with Dennis. Besides which Webern's Op. 21 is actually
: a very *simple* piece. It's appalling the way some people assume that
: because something doesn't fit in their world-view, it can't possibly fit
: into anyone else's. A emotional response to Webern's Op. 21 certainly fits
: into mine, and it fits in those of many other people as well. Why else
: would this music still get performances and recordings, and why would we
: still be arguing over it?

It is still a bit surprising to me at how my listening tastes/experiences
evolved. I never thought I would like music that was structured so differently
from that of the 19th and earlier centuries -- the music to which I was
first introduced. What amazed me was that when listening to more 'modern'
music, *after* I first relinquished the need for music to be 'tonal', that
I found myself sometimes moved, sometimes entranced, often absorbed because
there was a continuity to the experience as the music unfolded. I couldn't
even explain why when I tried to explain the joy of my discovery to others.
But we are so much more than mere lovers of melody and harmony, and I'm
very glad that many composers/performers have explored these boundaries
of being. I'm still amazed. And I guess that's part of the joy, too.

If this all sounds like BS, I couldn't agree more. But if you've had this
sort of experience yourself, you probably just don't care. There is an
amazing world to be discovered in the variety of music.
--
Jeffrey Bernhard at Concurrent Computer Corp. (expressing his opinion only!)
Jeff.B...@mail.ccur.com Voice: (954) 973-5496 Fax: (954) 977-5580

[Bradford Kellogg]

In article 251...@news.xs4all.nl, s...@xs4all.nl (Samuel Vriezen) writes:

[snip]

>What I am curious about - why do all opponents of atonality always
>have to come up with convoluted and semiplausible theories? I don't
>mean to offend anyone, it's just a tendency thing I find noticable, we
>saw it before with Shulgasser for instance. Though it gives us less
>Usenet fun, I do prefer the less pretentious 'I don't like it that's
>all' approach to opposing atonality. Well never mind.

If all I say is "I don't like it", then there is no argument. But some
people feel compelled to make condemnations of what they see as an affront,
perhaps, to reason and/or morality. And a condemnation must be backed up
with a logical or moral platform, otherwise it rings empty.

Atonality, serialism, 12 tone rows, etc. are like cubism. A technique/
structure/style is employed that is obviously different from traditional
convention, and it becomes fundamentally unfamiliar. Even though atonality
and cubism have both been around for years, they are still very new. They
brought about a dramatic change in a very short time, affecting traditions
that have changed slowly over a thousand years.

What's funny is that in spite of the relative newness of atonality, it has
become almost passe. Some current composers who dabbled in it years ago have
left it behind. Just the other day I heard Andrew Imbrie say he wrote 12 tone
music at one time, and after trying it out and finding it a fun and interesting approach, he felt that he wanted to move on to something else. George Rochberg,
who wrote some very atonal music, decided he had taken it as far as he could,
and felt a need to return, to some extent, to earlier influences.

I think the speed at which the arts have moved in the 20th century have left
some people breathless, disoriented, or uneasy. But while atonality was
pushed to its logical extremes some years ago, I see it still as very fertile
ground for the musical imagination. Many subtleties, I think, were left out
in the rush to the avant garde. I still think early Stockhausen is marvelous
stuff, but he never came even close to exploring all the possibilities with
non-tonal music. Much has been done since then, and there is undoubtedly
more to do, and some wonderful music, I'm sure, will result.

---

Have an ice day... BK

Change .org to .com to reply.

[Samuel Vriezen]

On 21 Nov 1997 18:17:38 GMT, kel...@atb.teradyne.org (Bradford
Kellogg) wrote:

>Atonality, serialism, 12 tone rows, etc. are like cubism. A technique/
>structure/style is employed that is obviously different from traditional
>convention, and it becomes fundamentally unfamiliar. Even though atonality
>and cubism have both been around for years, they are still very new. They
>brought about a dramatic change in a very short time, affecting traditions
>that have changed slowly over a thousand years.
>
>What's funny is that in spite of the relative newness of atonality, it has
>become almost passe. Some current composers who dabbled in it years ago have
>left it behind. Just the other day I heard Andrew Imbrie say he wrote 12 tone
>music at one time, and after trying it out and finding it a fun and interesting approach, he felt that he wanted to move on to something else. George Rochberg,
>who wrote some very atonal music, decided he had taken it as far as he could,
>and felt a need to return, to some extent, to earlier influences.
>
>I think the speed at which the arts have moved in the 20th century have left
>some people breathless, disoriented, or uneasy. But while atonality was
>pushed to its logical extremes some years ago, I see it still as very fertile
>ground for the musical imagination. Many subtleties, I think, were left out
>in the rush to the avant garde. I still think early Stockhausen is marvelous
>stuff, but he never came even close to exploring all the possibilities with
>non-tonal music. Much has been done since then, and there is undoubtedly
>more to do, and some wonderful music, I'm sure, will result.

Thank you for your reply. I have two points to make: I think atonality
was less of a dramatic change with the past as it was thought of at
the time, but that may simply be the unifying effect of history. Be it
as it may, I hear Gruppen as being a lot closer to Beethoven's 5th
than your average Josquin motet, of course not because of the tonal
language but because of the way form, orchestral colour and gesture
have been conceived.

Also, I think atonality has not really become passe, many people are
still producing interesting stuff that is definitely not tonal, like
the old warhorses Boulez and Berio, but also people like Brian
Ferneyhough, Birtwistle etc.

Then most of the interesting composers I know use tonal languages of
their own, mostly neither 'tonal' or 'atonal', possibly this category
includes even Boulez, Berio and Birtwistle but certainly there is
Louis Andriessen and Mauricio Kagel (the latter especially being an
interesting case: many of his pieces use only 'tonal' chords, but in
an utterly 'atonal' fashion for a very bizarre effect, such as in his
'Chorbuch' in which the piano plays Bach-chorals but each chord was
transposed along a different interval. So you hear cadenses and
dissonance resolutions and all, but every chord appears in the wrong
key, it's very beautiful music).

Samuel

[jerry and judy]

In article <19971120234...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
ilaws...@aol.com (ILawson104) wrote:

> In article <01bcf47d$e48768a0$LocalHost@micron>, "fiddleaway"

> <wha...@spam.com> writes:
>
> >A piece of music is good Art to anyone who thinks it is, for any reason.
>

> This is a bit like my own definition:
>
> A work of art is an entity that has artistic value - this is the special value
> that lies in the relationship between the entity itself and the observer.
>
> Any other definitions?
>
>
> regards, Ian Lawson

Both definitions assume that the *observer* is adequately experienced
and adequately educated in the specific field of art. I know something
about music, but I would have to study for many years to reasonably
*think* one Chinese vase had more (artistic) value than another piece.
Despite what seems intuitively obvious to the ignorant masses, works
of art cannot be evaluated without pertinent objective information. As
you learn more and experience more within a field of art, you are able to
accumulate some of the helpful information, but art is more than the sum
of its parts, there's always more to uncover. It takes effort, and every
generation, sadly, needs to learn this lesson anew.
It's reasonable to say "Well, I don't like Beethoven, he doesn't move
me like Paul McCartney does!" That's not the same as saying McCartney
surpasses Beethoven, artistically.
If art appreciation is truly ever merely relegated to the relativism
of the times, Art will no longer retain its inscrutable Value.

[Matthew H. Fields]

In article <jerbidoc-221...@lc148.zianet.com>,

jerry and judy <jerb...@zianet.com> wrote:
> Both definitions assume that the *observer* is adequately experienced
>and adequately educated in the specific field of art.

What else is art for than for the *observer*?

> I know something
>about music, but I would have to study for many years to reasonably
>*think* one Chinese vase had more (artistic) value than another piece.

That's funny, I can get varying amounts of enjoyment out of Chinese
vases right now with no study at all, and if I'm sufficiently intrigued,
I might be drawn into further study and might then get even *more*
enjoyment out of the same materials. Whether or not my opinions on
these matters match any sort of "expert opinion" does not interest
me. In art, expert opinion sheds light on objective facts, but
artistic value is not an objective fact.

> Despite what seems intuitively obvious to the ignorant masses, works
>of art cannot be evaluated without pertinent objective information.

Baloney. People do it all the time. Their opinions may be the same
as yours or different from yours. Lots of people lose all interest in
art forms the minute they have the chance to study it seriously (hence
the "theory classes turned me off to music" tales you can find all
over DejaNews). Different observers relate to art in different ways, and
art has, ultimately, no measurable value outside of its reception by
observers.

> As
>you learn more and experience more within a field of art, you are able to
>accumulate some of the helpful information, but art is more than the sum
>of its parts, there's always more to uncover. It takes effort, and every
>generation, sadly, needs to learn this lesson anew.

> It's reasonable to say "Well, I don't like Beethoven, he doesn't move
>me like Paul McCartney does!" That's not the same as saying McCartney
>surpasses Beethoven, artistically.

As deeply educated and experienced a person as Ned Rorem might yet say
McCartney does indeed surpass Beethoven artistically.

> If art appreciation is truly ever merely relegated to the relativism
>of the times, Art will no longer retain its inscrutable Value.

So are you in favor of legislating a scale of artistic value?
How do you plan to kindle interest in "high art" and a return to
a golden age of true appreciation? And at what cost?

--
Matt Fields, A.Mus.D. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields
My Java toy, JARS Top 1%: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields/TTTB

[Constantin Marcou]

Roger L. Lustig wrote:

> John S Mamoun wrote:
>

[huge snip]

> > An idea is composed of two properties: 1) the rational characteristics
> > of the idea and 2) the emotional characteristics, or charisma, of the idea.
>

> Sez who?
>
> For one thing, we're talking about music, not ideas. Where is the idea
> in a piece of music? How can you tell which idea is in a piece of music?
> What if you think there's an idea in there, but there isn't really?
>
> Perhaps the idea is in the *listener's* mind. Perhaps you and I are
> drastically different listeners.

>
> > Music is the articulation of the emotional characteristics of ideas.
>

> Bullshit.
>
> Music is the play of sound.
>
> Can you tell me that something is music just because it articulates
> the emotional characteristics of ideas?
>
> Can you identify either the ideas or the emotional characteristics?
> If not, how can you be sure that you're not talking through your
> hat?
>
> Now: let's see you analyze even one piece according to your definition.
>
> > If a
> > musical piece contains an emotional characteristic for which there is a
> > respective rational analog, then absorbing that emotional characteristic
> > can stimulate us to realize its respective rational analog.
>
> Example, please. Name a piece, its emotional characteristic, and
> the rational analogue.
>
> For that matter, do emotional characteristics necessarily *have*
> rational analogues? I'd like a definition of 'emotional characteristic'
> first.
>

You know, all this reminds me of the story about the conductor who was trying to
convey his vision of a passage to his principal cellist. The conductor rhapsodized:

--"This passage should express the longing of the individual soul to rise above the
greatest heighths and unite with the infinite, to be at one with the universe."

The cellist responded:

--"Oh. You mean `mezzoforte'."

The anecdote is more than just funny. It also articulates the dangers of attempting
to read meanings into music and to communicate emotional responses that may be
completely personal -- and completely unrelated to the experience of the next guy.

--
Best regards,
Con

*****************************************************************
"Mozart is too easy for beginners and too difficult for artists."

- Artur Schnabel
*****************************************************************

Please remove * from address to reply.

[Constantin Marcou]

Samuel Vriezen wrote:

> On Wed, 19 Nov 1997 16:02:14 -0600, po...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> >>As far as Art of the Fugue is concerned, I've never heard the music.
> >
> >Gasp; good lord. Well, now we know the origin of your antipathy toward
> >atonal music -- you simply must have very little experience with music
> >in general.
> >
> >Perhaps you should be as skeptical, therefore, of your own opinions on the
> >present subject as others are. Experience may give you a greater
> >understanding.
>
> Now now, there are so many masterpieces in the world, it is not such a
> shame not to know one of them. I would start to worry if the '>>'
> person also never heard the WTK or the Goldberg Variations. Myself, I
> never heard the Hohe Messe, the St John Passion, the Piano Sonatas of
> Schubert, Lieder by Wolf and many more worrysome articles and still I
> feel rather confident when talking about music.

I disagree, Samuel. The Art of the Fugue is pretty fundamental. I would place
it in the same category as your WTK and Goldberg Variations. It's not like
Wolf Lieder or Viotti concertos: nice but not necessarily central. If this
person purports to discuss art music and is unfamiliar with the Art of the
Fugue AND calls "Verklärte Nacht" atonal, then he is unqualified to make the
pronouncements that he does.

[Constantin Marcou]

Paul R. Goodman wrote:

> On 18 Nov 1997 05:35:59 GMT, js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (John S Mamoun)
> wrote:
>
> {HUGE SNIP}
>

> >>>From my own personal experience, I have listened to a good amount atonal

> >music, from Berg's songs to Schoenberg's Verklart Nacht, Piano Concerto, some
> >songs, to Berg's Violin concerto to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. At times,
>
> Schoneberg's Verklarte Nact is atonal??? You have to be kidding.
> What is your definition of atonal music? Do you have a clue?

Here, here! (Or is it "hear, hear"?) If "Verklärte Nacht" is "atonal", then so
is "La ci darem la mano" or "Für Elise" or [insert your own favorite hummable
tune]

[Risto Karttunen]

ILawson104 <ilaws...@aol.com> writes:
<19971120234...@ladder01.news.aol.com>...

> In article <01bcf47d$e48768a0$LocalHost@micron>, "fiddleaway"
> <wha...@spam.com> writes:
>
> >A piece of music is good Art to anyone who thinks it is, for any reason.

>
> This is a bit like my own definition:
>
> A work of art is an entity that has artistic value - this is the special
value
> that lies in the relationship between the entity itself and the observer.
>
> Any other definitions?
>
>
> regards, Ian Lawson

Yes, but what distinguishes artistic value from entertaining, informative
etc. values?
--
Risto

[Samuel Vriezen]

[Gary Goldberg]

> > Schoneberg's Verklarte Nact is atonal??? You have to be kidding.
> > What is your definition of atonal music? Do you have a clue?
>

> Here, here! (Or is it "hear, hear"?) If "VerklŠrte Nacht" is "atonal",
then so
> is "La ci darem la mano" or "Fźr Elise" or [insert your own favorite hummable
> tune]

Which suggests an interesting bit of research: is there any folk music
which is atonal? OK, more than 1%? If not, doesn't that suggest that
the natural human impulse is towards tonality?

-Gary

--
Illiterate? Write for free help!
(Remove "X" from address to reply)

[Matthew H. Fields]

In article <XGaryG-ya02408000...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
Gary Goldberg <XGa...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>Which suggests an interesting bit of research: is there any folk music
>which is atonal? OK, more than 1%? If not, doesn't that suggest that
>the natural human impulse is towards tonality?

The folk musics I'm familiar with include musics of definite rhythm
but indefinite pitch, musics of definite pitchs no one of which
predominates as a "tonal center", music with only one or two pitches
(usually a step apart, not a fourth or a fifth), and a large number of
folk musics that exhibit the influence of one of these four:

Sophisticated classical musics of India
Sophisticated classical musics of Arabic origin, spread by the Ottman Empire
Sophisticated musics of Polynesia
Sophisticated classical music of 17th-18th-century Western Europe

Assuming sophisticated music is counted as "not the natural human
impulse", that leaves us with drones, percussive music, music in
scales without a tonal center, etc. Serious scholars of
ethnomusicology tell me that the more they learn, the less willing
they are to make any universal pronouncements about human musical
tendencies. Perhaps the closest we can come to a natural human
tendency is one to make interesting sounds.

--
Matt Fields, A.Mus.D. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields
My Java toy, JARS Top 1%: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields/TTTB

Today's featured email address ab...@netcom.com

[ILawson104]

In article <jerbidoc-221...@lc148.zianet.com>, jerb...@zianet.com
(jerry and judy) writes:

(I wrote)

>> A work of art is an entity that has artistic value - this is the special
>> value that lies in the relationship between the entity itself and the
observer.
>>
>> Any other definitions?

> Both definitions assume that the *observer* is adequately experienced

>and adequately educated in the specific field of art.

There is no such assumption. My * observer * could be a five year old with
severe learning difficulties or the chairman of the (UK) Arts Council. They
might find artistic value in different things, but as long as that value *lies
in the relationship* ( see quoted definition) then it's *artistic* value.

> I know something
>about music, but I would have to study for many years to reasonably
>*think* one Chinese vase had more (artistic) value than another piece.

> Despite what seems intuitively obvious to the ignorant masses, works
>of art cannot be evaluated without pertinent objective information.

Not true for everyone. I find, more or less, artistic value in things I know
nothing about.

> As
>you learn more and experience more within a field of art, you are able to
>accumulate some of the helpful information, but art is more than the sum
>of its parts, there's always more to uncover. It takes effort, and every
>generation, sadly, needs to learn this lesson anew.

I can't see the relevance of this. Knowing things doesn't change the nature of
what art is, although it might change what you find artistic value in.

> It's reasonable to say "Well, I don't like Beethoven, he doesn't move
>me like Paul McCartney does!" That's not the same as saying McCartney
>surpasses Beethoven, artistically.

So it's not reasonable to say " I find more artistic value in x than y"
What is unreasonable: the saying or the finding?

> If art appreciation is truly ever merely relegated to the relativism
>of the times, Art will no longer retain its inscrutable Value.

It's likely that the *times* the *observer* lives in will influence his
perception of artistic value, but it won't change the actual (intrinsic) nature
of artistic value.

regards, Ian Lawson

[Simon Roberts]

Gary Goldberg (XGa...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:

: Which suggests an interesting bit of research: is there any folk music
: which is atonal? OK, more than 1%? If not, doesn't that suggest that
: the natural human impulse is towards tonality?

I'm not sure quite what the question means or what an answer to it is
supposed to suggest: why wasn't it a "natural human impulse" for
Schoenberg et al. to write atonally? And if it's "unnatural" to write
atonally, why is it any more "natural" to write the B Minor Mass?

Simon

[Steve Forrest]

In article <3477ad5...@news.xs4all.nl>,

Samuel Vriezen <s...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>Thank you for your reply. I have two points to make: I think atonality
>was less of a dramatic change with the past as it was thought of at
>the time,

[snip]

Indeed, Schoenberg considered his 12-tone technique as a way to
maintain continuity with the past, not as a break with tradition.
The increasing chromaticism and modulations of late Romantic music
tended to de-emphasize the tonal center. Schoenberg carried that
tendency to its limit by avoiding tonality altogether.

-Steve

[fiddleaway]

> > "fiddleaway" wrote

> >
> > >A piece of music is good Art to anyone who thinks it is, for any
reason.
> >

> Ian Lawson wrote

> > A work of art is an entity that has artistic value - this is the
special value
> > that lies in the relationship between the entity itself and the
observer.

jerry and judy wrote:
> Both definitions assume that the *observer* is adequately experienced

> and adequately educated in the specific field of art. I know something

> about music, but I would have to study for many years to reasonably
> *think* one Chinese vase had more (artistic) value than another piece.
> Despite what seems intuitively obvious to the ignorant masses, works

> of art cannot be evaluated without pertinent objective information. As

> you learn more and experience more within a field of art, you are able to
> accumulate some of the helpful information, but art is more than the sum
> of its parts, there's always more to uncover. It takes effort, and every
> generation, sadly, needs to learn this lesson anew.

> It's reasonable to say "Well, I don't like Beethoven, he doesn't move
> me like Paul McCartney does!" That's not the same as saying McCartney
> surpasses Beethoven, artistically.

> If art appreciation is truly ever merely relegated to the relativism
> of the times, Art will no longer retain its inscrutable Value.
>

I don't entirely disagree with what you have said. Although I do believe
that the spontaneous reaction of an inexperienced observer to an artwork is
one valid criterion for judging it. I agree that it would be sad if
*nobody* ever looked beyond immediate gratification to appreciate other
aspects of an artwork. Sad because there is even greater reward for those
who do.

Here's a little contrivance to show you what I mean.

I see myself holding the two Chinese vases as I offer to let my cute little
old Grandmother choose the one she would like to have. She points at the
one which (after several years of intense research and study) I have
determined to be of far less artistic value and says, "Ohhhhhhhh. That
one's soooo pretty! I'll take that one". The joy that's in her smile as
she accepts the "pretty" one validates it as great art in her world. (And
raises its value in mine!). The rest of the world is still willing to pay
me $5000 for the other one.

This little story is not that far fetched. It could happen. And to me it
illustrates that relativism is an important aspect of Art's inscrutable
Value.

[fiddleaway]

Constantin Marcou

> I disagree, Samuel. The Art of the Fugue is pretty fundamental. I would
place
> it in the same category as your WTK and Goldberg Variations. It's not
like
> Wolf Lieder or Viotti concertos: nice but not necessarily central. If
this
> person purports to discuss art music and is unfamiliar with the Art of
the
> Fugue AND calls "Verklärte Nacht" atonal, then he is unqualified to make
the
> pronouncements that he does.

Referring back to the original "pronouncements" that started this thread,
is their anyone, musical knowledge notwithstanding, qualified to make same?

If I correctly interpret the responses I've read so far, I'd have to say
that the consensus answer is a resounding "NO".

[fiddleaway]

Risto Karttunen writes
> ILawson104 writes:

> "fiddleaway" writes:
> >
> > >A piece of music is good Art to anyone who thinks it is, for any
reason.
>
> >

> > This is a bit like my own definition:
> >

> > A work of art is an entity that has artistic value - this is the
special
> value
> > that lies in the relationship between the entity itself and the
observer.
> >

> > Any other definitions?

> Yes, but what distinguishes artistic value from entertaining, informative
> etc. values?
> --
> Risto
>

I cannot speak for Ian. But for me, entertainment and information are
elements of artistic value.

[Risto Karttunen]

ILawson104 <ilaws...@aol.com>
writes:<19971120234...@ladder01.news.aol.com>...
> In article <01bcf47d$e48768a0$LocalHost@micron>, "fiddleaway"

<wha...@spam.com> writes:
>
> >A piece of music is good Art to anyone who thinks it is, for any
reason.
>
>
> This is a bit like my own definition:
>
> A work of art is an entity that has artistic value - this is the special
> value
> that lies in the relationship between the entity itself and the
observer.
>
> Any other definitions?
>
>

> regards, Ian Lawson

[valon...@cyberport.com]

In article <01bcf862$f2eaf860$2642a7cf@micron>,

"fiddleaway" <wha...@spam.com> wrote:
>
>
> Risto Karttunen writes
> > ILawson104 writes:

> > > "fiddleaway" writes:
> > >
> > > >A piece of music is good Art to anyone who thinks it is,
> > > > for any reason.
> >
> > >
> > > This is a bit like my own definition:
> > >
> > > A work of art is an entity that has artistic value - this is the
> > > special value that lies in the relationship between the entity
> > > itself and the observer.
> > >
> > > Any other definitions?
>

> > Yes, but what distinguishes artistic value from entertaining,
> >informative etc. values?
> > --
> > Risto
> >

> I cannot speak for Ian. But for me, entertainment and information
> are elements of artistic value.

There might still be a distinction, though. I agree that where there is
artistic value, there might also be entertainment and information. But
entertainment and information do not always lead us to artistic value.
In other words, if art _can_ be entertaining or informative, does it
_need_ to be these things in order to have artistic value?

[ILawson104]

In article <01bcf75d$6736e000$2cc6eec3@karttri>, "Risto Karttunen"
<kar...@nettilinja.fi> writes:

>
>ILawson104 <ilaws...@aol.com> writes:

>>
>> A work of art is an entity that has artistic value - this is the special
>value
>> that lies in the relationship between the entity itself and the observer.
>>
>> Any other definitions?

>Yes, but what distinguishes artistic value from entertaining, informative
>etc. values?
>--
>Risto

I don't see that there is a substantive difference between entertainment value
and artistic value. 'To entertain' essentially means ' to hold (maintain) the
attention'.
If a musical performance holds the attention of an audience (i.e. entertains)
surely that is because of the artistic value that occurs. ( unless the music
has some other non aesthetic purpose)

BTW a good example of music having more than *only* aesthetic value is found
in the relationship between music and professional musicians. For them music
has the added ( only ? ) value that it can be used to earn a living - it's of
practical use.

All Information has value because everything has value and everything is
information.
Are you referring to the value of useful information - say directions to some
place you want to go? I would say that is the value of usefulness, although it
is not a logical impossibility that an observer might also find artistic value
in them. And it certainly might be the case that a direction giver might be
entertaining in his delivery, or a map might have ( for some observers )

[Samuel Vriezen]

jerb...@zianet.com (jerry and judy):

> If art appreciation is truly ever merely relegated to the relativism
>of the times, Art will no longer retain its inscrutable Value.

I do not really much care for relativism, if it's an 'ism' there is
probably something problematic about it. But I do wonder: why are you
so fiercely crusading against it? What is it that you fear in
'relativism'? You can pretty much decide for yourself, perhaps with
'Art and Value' in hand, what art you want to be confronted with, us
living in democratic societies and all, why should you care about what
the relativists think?

Samuel

[Jose Oscar Marques]

On 17 Nov 1997 03:06:24 GMT js...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (John S Mamoun)
wrote:

>Schoenberg invented a system
>of constructing music by following a strict logic or protocol, namely the
>12-tone method. That allowed lots of new music to be created, yes, but
>that music was not genius music. It was not, in other words, music that
>was created above and beyond any previously known ways of thinking about
>music, but rather was music derived from a previously articulated system
>of construction. The 12-tone concept may be ingenious in and of itself,
>but 12-tone music is not.

This is the silliest thing I've read in a long time about Schoenberg's
twelve-tone method of composition. Any beginner knows that it isn't an
"articulated *system* of construction", and that there is no "logic"
(whatever that means) or "protocol" behind it. I expected people in this
forum would know better by now.

As to denying the importance, power and originality of Schoenberg's
music, well, this only shows that you shouldn't write about things you
obviously don't understand.

--
Jose Oscar Marques
(to reply remove the X from my address)

[Jose Oscar Marques]

On 19 Nov 97 15:43:40 GMT schi...@light.lightlink.com (Eric Schissel)
wrote:

>And yes, Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht is tonal- very much so- which fact
>above all leads me to believe this is a posting initiated by a troll. My
>AD&D character hates trolls...

I took (or rather, wasted) the time to read his messages - I think they
lack the finesse and plausibility a good troll tries to convey in his
postings. It seems the guy *actually* believes all that BS, and has some
sort of philosophical or, even worse, religious framework from which he
tries to derive his (mis)-conceptions about what music should or
shouldn't be.

Anyway, there's always a good side in these threads because we can read
some really good reflections about the subject coming from those who
took the time to reply to the original poster.

[Michael Solonenko]

This thread touches a deep divide between two different (if not opposite)
attitudes towards peception of music (in particular) and the art in general.

According to the first concept, the art (and music) perception is mainly
intellectual. Hence, the value of art is assosiated first of all with the
information it contains (entails), hence with education/experience of the
observer. This concept always (explicitly or implicitly) allows an existence
of some "art (music) value standard" against which this or that work can
be measured. The emotions associated with the perception of the work of art
are considered secondary, derivative of the intellectual "knowledge of the
subject". As one could have easily expected, most of the proponents of these
views come from the well-educated circles of art(music) critics.

According to the second concept, perception of art (music) is by its essence
emotional, and intellect plays very secondary and subordinate role in the
process. Rational knowledge may influence the perception, but on the very
sublime level; the information does not create joy, but it may sometimes
facilitate it somewhat. Hence, there can be no any "objective" standard of
the "value" of art since that value is itself subjective. The education is
considered to teach a language of the art. And, as knowledge of the language
does not necessarily imply enjoying poetry, knowledge of the art language does
not imply ability to enjoy the artwork.

In my opinion, a rational knowledge *about* the arts/music is very often used
to mask somebody's inability to really percept and emotionally react to an
artwork.

What explains the legions of bigot critics out there.

MS.

[Samuel Vriezen]

XGa...@ix.netcom.com (Gary Goldberg):

>
>> > Schoneberg's Verklarte Nact is atonal??? You have to be kidding.
>> > What is your definition of atonal music? Do you have a clue?
>>
>> Here, here! (Or is it "hear, hear"?) If "VerklŠrte Nacht" is "atonal",
>then so

>> is "La ci darem la mano" or "FŸr Elise" or [insert your own favorite hummable
>> tune]
>

>Which suggests an interesting bit of research: is there any folk music
>which is atonal? OK, more than 1%? If not, doesn't that suggest that
>the natural human impulse is towards tonality?

The big problem is that atonality, like tonality, is something that we
only consider from the point of view of European art music, and that
is not even well-defined within this context. Once we start this
discussion it may turn out that either 1%, or 99% of folk musics is
tonal, or atonal. You just pick the position you'd like to defend, for
any reason (possibly strategic reasons) and go and defend it, only
real thing it yields is hours of Usenet Fun. I even have occasionally
been able to point out that some definitions of tonality make most of
Boulez' oeuvre tonal!

Samuel

[Matthew H. Fields]

Somebody asked me about the mind-brain interface (see old Dr.Who
episodes) in serial music, I whipped up a little essay that is
quite a bit more revealing than the usual gobbletygook and which
shows some of the thinking behind a specific piece of mine for
which a MIDI file is at my web site.

If there's interest, let me know.

--
Matt Fields, A.Mus.D. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields

Today's featured addresses: build...@pearlhealthbuilder.com
sbre...@DREAMSCAPE.COM ab...@netcom.com msn...@MICROSOFT.COM

[Matthew H. Fields]

In article <3476bf3c...@news.xs4all.nl>,

Samuel Vriezen <s...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>Then most of the interesting composers I know use tonal languages of
>their own, mostly neither 'tonal' or 'atonal', possibly this category
>includes even Boulez,

yes, there's no doubt that ..Explosant-Fixe.. is *on* Eb, though it is
not *in a key of* Eb.

[Jeff Bernhard]

Michael Solonenko (mi...@vm.temple.edu) wrote:
: This thread touches a deep divide between two different (if not opposite)

: attitudes towards peception of music (in particular) and the art in general.

Deep, according to whom?
:
: According to the first concept, the art (and music) perception is mainly

: intellectual. Hence, the value of art is assosiated first of all with the
: information it contains (entails), hence with education/experience of the

: observer. [...]
:
: According to the second concept, perception of art (music) is by its essence

: emotional, and intellect plays very secondary and subordinate role in the
: process. Rational knowledge may influence the perception, but on the very
: sublime level; the information does not create joy, but it may sometimes

: facilitate it somewhat. [...]
:
: In my opinion, a rational knowledge *about* the arts/music is very often used

: to mask somebody's inability to really percept and emotionally react to an
: artwork.
:
: What explains the legions of bigot critics out there.
:
: MS.

I think you meant, BS.

A 'classification' such as you describe is utterly arbitrary, and any
requirement to accept it a priori absurd.

My own experience allows enjoyment on both levels, but appreciation
of 'atonal' music dawned without requiring any 'education' on the subject.
(It still doesn't!) The composer composed the music for human listerers,
you see, and as a human listener ... well, I'm sure you get the idea.

I suppose this argument raged whenever innovation or change has occurred
in music, from the 15th century (or before) onward. Changes nonetheless
occurred, and now don't seem strange at all. I wonder if you had listened
to more of this 'atonal' stuff, perhaps from the womb, if you'd be forced
to entertain absurd notions to explain why others enjoy what you plainly
do not.
--
Jeffrey Bernhard at Concurrent Computer Corp. (expressing his opinion only!)
Jeff.B...@mail.ccur.com Voice: (954) 973-5496 Fax: (954) 977-5580

[Samuel Vriezen]

fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew H. Fields):

>In article <3476bf3c...@news.xs4all.nl>,
>Samuel Vriezen <s...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>
>>Then most of the interesting composers I know use tonal languages of
>>their own, mostly neither 'tonal' or 'atonal', possibly this category
>>includes even Boulez,
>
>yes, there's no doubt that ..Explosant-Fixe.. is *on* Eb, though it is
>not *in a key of* Eb.

I wouldn't agree to you more, but surely you remember the difficulties
the Usenet is experiencing over and over again in defining tonality,
and the solution that some people come up with - 'containing a central
tone'?

Samuel

[Michael Solonenko]

In article <65cl0i$t...@hawk-hcsc.hcsc.com>

jeffb@amber (Jeff Bernhard) writes:

>Michael Solonenko (mi...@vm.temple.edu) wrote:
>: This thread touches a deep divide between two different (if not opposite)
>: attitudes towards peception of music (in particular) and the art in general.
>Deep, according to whom?

To the common sense. Ratio and feelings are different things, you know.

>:

>: According to the first concept, the art (and music) perception is mainly
>: intellectual. Hence, the value of art is assosiated first of all with the
>: information it contains (entails), hence with education/experience of the
>: observer. [...]
>:
>: According to the second concept, perception of art (music) is by its essence
>: emotional, and intellect plays very secondary and subordinate role in the
>: process. Rational knowledge may influence the perception, but on the very
>: sublime level; the information does not create joy, but it may sometimes
>: facilitate it somewhat. [...]
>:
>: In my opinion, a rational knowledge *about* the arts/music is very often used
>: to mask somebody's inability to really percept and emotionally react to an
>: artwork.
>:
>: What explains the legions of bigot critics out there.
>:
>: MS.
>I think you meant, BS.
>

Is _that_ your argument? You could use some schooling, then.

>A 'classification' such as you describe is utterly arbitrary, and any
>requirement to accept it a priori absurd.

Oh boy. You did attribute yourself to the first group, didn't you? Why are
you so nervous? Don't you like yourself?

>
>My own experience allows enjoyment on both levels,

Like, sitting between chairs can be called sitting on both chairs at a time.

>but appreciation
>of 'atonal' music dawned without requiring any 'education' on the subject.

Who told you that? And if no one - how do you know?

>... The composer composed the music for human listerers,

>you see, and as a human listener ... well, I'm sure you get the idea.

What idea? Do you have an idea? So far I did not notice. I assumed we are
not talking of non-human listeners to music, are we? What is the problem?

>I suppose this argument raged whenever innovation or change has occurred
>in music, from the 15th century (or before) onward.

What argument? My classification and innovations in music are completely
unrelated. I intentionally did not put any labels, and your presumptions
of my musical tastes are completely groundless (see below). In fact, they
made me laugh ;)

>I wonder if you had listened

>to more of this 'atonal' stuff... you'd be forced

>to entertain absurd notions to explain why others enjoy what you plainly
>do not.
>--
>Jeffrey Bernhard at Concurrent Computer Corp. (expressing his opinion only!)

Michael

[Bradford Kellogg]

In article ya02408000R23...@nntp.ix.netcom.com, XGa...@ix.netcom.com (Gary Goldberg) writes:
>
>Which suggests an interesting bit of research: is there any folk music
>which is atonal? OK, more than 1%? If not, doesn't that suggest that
>the natural human impulse is towards tonality?

I'm missing your point. It seems you are saying that atonality is far less
popular with most people than tonality. No one is arguing that point. You
may be also saying the reason for this unpopularity of atonal music is that
it has a fundamental quality that runs counter to human essence. If so,
why do I listen to it? Why do I like it? Why was it composed? Why are
atonal pieces that were written over 50 years ago still performed, listened
to by large audiences, and applauded? How could the Arditti Quartet fill
up a theater with a program of mostly atonal music? I went to this concert,
by the way, and sat in the front row. Damn, it was good. The rest of the
packed house seemed to think so too, they sure applauded strenuously.

Yes, this is esoterica. Yes, most people don't listen to it. But some of
us really like it, and we like to talk about it. Why attempt to invalidate
our tastes?

---

Have an ice day... BK

Change .org to .com to reply.

[jerry and judy]

In article <65d6gf$698$1...@news.eecs.umich.edu>, fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu
(Matthew H. Fields) wrote:

> In article <34795d45...@news.xs4all.nl>,

> Samuel Vriezen <s...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> >jerb...@zianet.com (jerry and judy):
> >
> >> If art appreciation is truly ever merely relegated to the relativism
> >>of the times, Art will no longer retain its inscrutable Value.
> >
> >I do not really much care for relativism, if it's an 'ism' there is
> >probably something problematic about it. But I do wonder: why are you
> >so fiercely crusading against it? What is it that you fear in
> >'relativism'? You can pretty much decide for yourself, perhaps with

> ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^

> >'Art and Value' in hand, what art you want to be confronted with, us
> >living in democratic societies and all, why should you care about what
> >the relativists think?
> >
> >Samuel
>

> Ah, but Samuel, he wants us educated artists to *tell* him and
> the rest of society what to listen to and what to look at, so he
> won't have to decide for himself (after all, deciding for yourself
> is giving in to relativism).

>
> --
> Matt Fields, A.Mus.D. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields

Matt, do you honestly still have the same opinions of pieces that you
had 20 or 30 years ago? Are you old enough to have that perspective?

My point is that your opinions are only relative, true, but the
*consensus* eventually becomes objective under the weight of decades and
centuries. How else could it persist?
And no one has to agree with the consensus, they should do they're own
inquiring, but it's helpful for the interested neophyte and it saves him
precious time.

[jerry and judy]

In article <65d8ae$1l$1...@darla.visi.com>, aba...@mixer.visi.com (Alan
Baker) wrote:

> In article <01bcf855$b2f15400$57c1eec3@karttri>

> "Risto Karttunen" <kar...@nettilinja.fi> writes:
>
> > Yes, but what distinguishes artistic value from entertaining, informative
> > etc. values?
> > --
> > Risto

> It's not "what" but rather who distiguishes artistic value. And the
> answer is simply, and only, you. I may be interested in others opinions
> and I may agree with those people that have shown good judgement in the
> past, but as far as how valuable you find some thing, only you can set
> that.
> Others can help you appreciate something or point out its shortcomings
> but you are the person who sets a value on something. And rarely is it
> a monetary value that matters.
> There are different levels of entertainment, education, informative
> relavance, etc. and they all tie together to give this thing, material
> or other, value. But it is only true for you.
>
> Alan Baker

I submit it is not simply the who, but which who! since we are continually
very different *observers* as the decades pass. And therefore, it has to
be the objective "what" that leads to a lasting consensus, which will
effectively encourage the next generations to continue our search for
beauty (a search that has the integrity of history behind it).

[Matthew H. Fields]

's funny, when I encounter art, it lends palpability to the notion
that the brain is the main organ of sensuousness. What's this either-or
about emotionality/sensuality and intellect? And why must a person
place themselves in one or another camp?
Now the act of *writing* music, that's a different matter. It's
at least as dominated by intellect as mathematical research is---which
is to say, not really (remember, in Math there's still the problematics--
the judging of what line of research is interesting or fun to pursue
in the first place--where emotion may well be dominant).

--
Matt Fields, A.Mus.D. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields

[Matthew H. Fields]

In article <34795d45...@news.xs4all.nl>,
Samuel Vriezen <s...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>jerb...@zianet.com (jerry and judy):
>
>> If art appreciation is truly ever merely relegated to the relativism
>>of the times, Art will no longer retain its inscrutable Value.
>
>I do not really much care for relativism, if it's an 'ism' there is
>probably something problematic about it. But I do wonder: why are you
>so fiercely crusading against it? What is it that you fear in
>'relativism'? You can pretty much decide for yourself, perhaps with
^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^
>'Art and Value' in hand, what art you want to be confronted with, us
>living in democratic societies and all, why should you care about what
>the relativists think?
>
>Samuel

Ah, but Samuel, he wants us educated artists to *tell* him and
the rest of society what to listen to and what to look at, so he
won't have to decide for himself (after all, deciding for yourself
is giving in to relativism).

--

[Matthew H. Fields]

How about a process? The artistic process is the attempt to
deliberately experience and share something special, which, for
lack of a better name, can be lumped together under the heading of
"beauty" (NB this is an abstract platonic form "beauty" that might
be associated with The Devils of Loudon just as much as with
The Well-tempered Clavier etc.).
Then art is the particular configurations of the media through
which "beauty" is shared, treated as a fixed object, as if it could
embody this beauty in a fixed state, independent of creators
and receivers.
I'm suggesting that "art" is a linguistic convenience whereby which
we measure and subdivide and display the efforts of artists to share
beauty with observers.
Even the division between artists and observers is a convenience
because that's the we subdivide the process in our society.

[Alan Baker]

In article <01bcf855$b2f15400$57c1eec3@karttri>
"Risto Karttunen" <kar...@nettilinja.fi> writes:

> Yes, but what distinguishes artistic value from entertaining, informative
> etc. values?
> --
> Risto
It's not "what" but rather who distiguishes artistic value. And the
answer is simply, and only, you. I may be interested in others opinions
and I may agree with those people that have shown good judgement in the
past, but as far as how valuable you find some thing, only you can set
that.
Others can help you appreciate something or point out its shortcomings
but you are the person who sets a value on something. And rarely is it
a monetary value that matters.
There are different levels of entertainment, education, informative
relavance, etc. and they all tie together to give this thing, material
or other, value. But it is only true for you.

Alan Baker
aba...@visi.com

-------------------
remove 1 to reply

[Joseph Rizzo]

On 20 Nov 1997 00:35:02 GMT, js...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (John S Mamoun)
wrote:

> That said, I'm going to use this post to give a discussion and
>specific examples of how a musical piece can contain an emotional
>characteristic for which there is a respective rational analog, and how
>the absorption of that emotional characteristic can cue the listener to
>realize that analog, and thus expand the listeners' rational world-view.

Boy, your academic lingo is just horrible.

> An individual can go through an experience that leaves him or her
>wanting to express certain emotions.

Not really. You are placing way to much higher brain control to the
emotional response. When running into an old friend by happenstance,
you do not go "There is Sally. I have not seen her in 5 years. I
should respond emotionally. I think I will be surprised and
delighted." The emotion and thought occur at the same time.

>That experience can be characterized in strictly rational terms.

Nope, not at all. You are way too hung up on rationality for your own
good. These ideas were fine, during the Age of Enlightenment, but you
are totally out date with modern thought.

Lets take a very simple and real case of the flaws of "rational
thought." A mathematician wanted to prove the Euclidean geometry
assertion that two parallel lines never intersect. So, he set about
to prove that the assertion two parallel lines intersect at one point.
If he could prove that this assertion brought about a contradiction,
then the assertion would be invalid thus proving that two parallel
lines never intersect. Surprisingly, this assertion brings about no
contradictions at all. It is a true, non-Euclidean geometry.

Furthermore, you have Goedel, who has shown that rational systems of
thought are dependent upon the assertions, and limited in their
expressive power. In other words, in any rational system of thought,
you can create a self-referential contradiction. A basic example is,
"This sentence is false." So, any complex system you try to model
with a rational system will be by this principle, in complete.

>Individuals can go through
>many different experiences, each of which has its own set of rational
>characteristics, and each of which can induce in the individual the need
>to express a different emotion. An individual, for example, might be
>fired from work, and in response to the experience might need to express
>feelings of power and strength. Another might be rejected by a love
>object, and need to express feelings of empathy, for example. Partly
>because no two experiences are the same, experiences can induce in an
>individual the need to express not only different feelings, but also
>different shades of the same feeling. One may go through two experiences
>that induce him to want to express two different types or degrees of
>empathy, for example.

This is a terribly sophomoric model of the brain. Our brains do not
function this way. I am sorry, but you are basing your grand
definition of art based upon ideas of the brain that JUST DO NOT
EXIST.

Your assumptions are flawed, and any rational system that you build
off of them are corrupt.

> That different experiences can induce the need to express a
>different respective emotion, as well as different respective shades or
>degrees of the same emotion, suggests that each specific experience can,
>in the mind of an individual, be connected to its own specific emotion.

NO, NO, NO, NO! There is not a one to one correspondence between
emotions and events. An event can trigger multiple emotions, an
emotion can trigger multiple events. Furthermore, your memory is not
a static object. You can go back, evaluate, re-evaluate and alter
your opinion of an emotion or event. Once when I was dumped by a
girlfriend, I felt worse than I should have felt. I knew the break up
was coming, and in some sense wanted it. But, I just felt awful,
absolutely awful and I could not figure it out. The logical
assumption was to associate my feeling with the break up. But, it was
not so, because I lacked a bit of information. Mainly, I just started
showing the signs of mono, and was sick as a dog. In re-evaluating
the event, I can see that the emotional response was not triggered by
the obvious one, but by the hidden one below.

>For example, an individual might be fired from his job and thus need to
>express a specific type and degree of the emotion of power (1). That
>same individual, however, might also run a business and go bankrupt, and
>in response to that experience need to express a specific type and degree
>of another emotion of power (2) that is quite different from that which
>he needed to express when he was fired. There is a connection in the
>mind of that specific individual between power (1) and the specific
>experience of being fired, and one between power (2) and the specific
>experience of going bankrupt.

See above.

> Now, suppose that the individual has not gone through these
>experiences. If he listens to music that allows him to express the power (1)
>emotion, then his mind can be cued to the existence of the rational
>characteristics of the experience of being fired.

NO! Your brain does not work this way. Why don't you start learning
about how the human brain functions instead of spewing forth academic
clap trap based upon your own ignorance.

> Thus, he can
>understand at least subconsciously what it might feel like to be fired.

What arrogance in the extreme. You don't know what it is like to be
fired until you experience it yourself. You may be able to empathized
with them, but empathy is not the same as experienced.

>In this manner, the music expands his intuition
>about the human experience.

Wrong, bucko. The mind does not work that way.

> My opinion is that if a musical piece cannot express sentiments felt in
>response to everyday life experiences, then it cannot expand the
>world-view of the listener. Since it cannot do that, it is not by my
>definition a work of art.

Your opinion is nice and fine, but it shows a fundamental lack of
education. You do not have a clear grasp of logic, brain function, or
of music. You lack the first and foremost precept of wisdom, knowing
when you don't know something. You create this complex definition of
art based upon empty assumptions and assertions. Do yourself a favor
and stop trying to pretend that you are the answer to the question of
"What is art." Far greater minds than yours have wrestled with this
question, and far greater minds than yours will wrestle with it in the
future. Why don't you spend more time becoming wise, than showing
your ignorance.

=> Joseph Rizzo
-----------------------------------------------------
"The meek shall inherit the earth- they are too weak
to refuse."

[Joseph Rizzo]

On 20 Nov 1997 23:49:49 GMT, ilaws...@aol.com (ILawson104) wrote:

>In article <01bcf47d$e48768a0$LocalHost@micron>, "fiddleaway"

><wha...@spam.com> writes:
>
>>A piece of music is good Art to anyone who thinks it is, for any reason.
>
>This is a bit like my own definition:
>

>A work of art is an entity that has artistic value - this is the special value
>that lies in the relationship between the entity itself and the observer.
>
>Any other definitions?
>
>

>regards, Ian Lawson
>
>
>

This is my own opinion, and others may disagree with me.

Any piece that someone claims to be art, I judge it to be art based on
the fact that I could not do it without a lot of training. So, if I
see something that I could go out, purchase the materials and
reproduce that day (without prior training), it is not art.

[John S Mamoun]

Joseph Rizzo (jl...@mcs.net) wrote:
: > An individual can go through an experience that leaves him or her

: >wanting to express certain emotions.

: Not really. You are placing way to much higher brain control to the
: emotional response. When running into an old friend by happenstance,
: you do not go "There is Sally. I have not seen her in 5 years. I
: should respond emotionally. I think I will be surprised and
: delighted." The emotion and thought occur at the same time.

I don't understand what you mean here. I never said implied that
there was any conscious process involved in emotional expression.
There may be, but I didn't imply it. Also, by saying "not really,"
you imply that an individual cannot go through an experience that
leaves him wanting to express certain emotion/s. That is manifestly
not true.

: >That experience can be characterized in strictly rational terms.

: Nope, not at all. You are way too hung up on rationality for your own
: good. These ideas were fine, during the Age of Enlightenment, but you
: are totally out date with modern thought.

: Lets take a very simple and real case of the flaws of "rational
: thought." A mathematician wanted to prove the Euclidean geometry
: assertion that two parallel lines never intersect. So, he set about
: to prove that the assertion two parallel lines intersect at one point.
: If he could prove that this assertion brought about a contradiction,
: then the assertion would be invalid thus proving that two parallel
: lines never intersect. Surprisingly, this assertion brings about no
: contradictions at all. It is a true, non-Euclidean geometry.

What exactly are you saying here?

: Furthermore, you have Goedel, who has shown that rational systems of

: thought are dependent upon the assertions, and limited in their
: expressive power. In other words, in any rational system of thought,
: you can create a self-referential contradiction. A basic example is,
: "This sentence is false." So, any complex system you try to model
: with a rational system will be by this principle, in complete.

Obviously, no human being is capable of perfectly understanding
the objective charcteristics of his/her reality. The forces of
evolution have not selected humans to possess such perfection in
rational thought, but rather to select for ways of thinking
among humans that are merely evolutionarily stable. All art
is created by these fundamentally imperfect ways of thinking, as
are all human ways of interpreting art, and interpreting experiences.

In saying that "experiences can be characterized in rational terms,"
I am implying that humans do the actual characterization, and that
such characterization is subject to the fundamental limitations of
the rational part of the human mind. This includes the possibility
that we think incorrectly.

It is irrelevent, however, to say that anything that we humans
come up with conceptually is incorrect just because we happen to
think incorrectly. We cannot, after all, conceive otherwise, so
we would not be able to understand absolutely correct concepts
even if they were pointedly presented to us.

: >Individuals can go through

: >many different experiences, each of which has its own set of rational
: >characteristics, and each of which can induce in the individual the need
: >to express a different emotion. An individual, for example, might be
: >fired from work, and in response to the experience might need to express

: This is a terribly sophomoric model of the brain. Our brains do not

: function this way. I am sorry, but you are basing your grand
: definition of art based upon ideas of the brain that JUST DO NOT
: EXIST.

I don't know what you mean here. I did not present a complete model
of the human brain, but merely presented one aspect of its behavior.

: > That different experiences can induce the need to express a

: >different respective emotion, as well as different respective shades or
: >degrees of the same emotion, suggests that each specific experience can,
: >in the mind of an individual, be connected to its own specific emotion.

: NO, NO, NO, NO! There is not a one to one correspondence between
: emotions and events. An event can trigger multiple emotions, an
: emotion can trigger multiple events.

True enough. But I was discussing specific examples, and did not
imply in an over-arching manner that a specific experience only
connected to a single emotion, or that an experience can't trigger
multiple emotions.

: Furthermore, your memory is not

: a static object. You can go back, evaluate, re-evaluate and alter
: your opinion of an emotion or event.

But you still wind up in the end with an emotion or emotions
connected to the event, including the possible need to express
an emotion or emotions in response to the event. In any case,
this is true and i didn't exclude the possibility, but merely
discussed specific examples to help elucidate my points.

: > Now, suppose that the individual has not gone through these

: >experiences. If he listens to music that allows him to express the power (1)
: >emotion, then his mind can be cued to the existence of the rational
: >characteristics of the experience of being fired.

: NO! Your brain does not work this way. Why don't you start learning
: about how the human brain functions instead of spewing forth academic
: clap trap based upon your own ignorance.

If that particular individual was to go through that particular
experience of being fired, he would find himself needing to express
the power (1) emotion. Since he has already expressed it before
hand, however, there is in his mind a sense of familiarity with
the exprerience, a sense that it is not as shocking or surprising
or unique to him, as it would have been had he not heard the music
beforehand. Show me why the human brain cannot go through this
kind of phenomenon.

: Your opinion is nice and fine, but it shows a fundamental lack of

: education. You do not have a clear grasp of logic, brain function, or
: of music. You lack the first and foremost precept of wisdom, knowing
: when you don't know something. You create this complex definition of
: art based upon empty assumptions and assertions. Do yourself a favor
: and stop trying to pretend that you are the answer to the question of
: "What is art." Far greater minds than yours have wrestled with this
: question, and far greater minds than yours will wrestle with it in the
: future. Why don't you spend more time becoming wise, than showing
: your ignorance.

I'm sorry your girlfriend dumped you, but please don't dump your
frustrations and anger on me, thank you. I'm fully aware, having
read The Apology, of this Socratic concept of not knowing when one
does not know something. I decided, however, not knowing exactly
how the brain or music works, to put forth a theory. I took a
great and, I would like to think, noble risk in doing so, for
without people like me putting forth theories, possibly to be
proven wrong before the whole world, there will be no intellectual
advancement or advancement of knowledge. Might I point out that
there are no difinitive answers to be found for the questions that
I raise in any university course? The presentation might not be
perfect, to be sure, but that is mainly due to the intrinsic
subjectivity of the subject matter.

And also--sorry to make you feel like an idiot--but I did not one
iota put forth an opinion or definition of what art _is_, but
rather what it isn't.

--John

[Samuel Vriezen]

jl...@mcs.net (Joseph Rizzo):

>This is my own opinion, and others may disagree with me.
>
>Any piece that someone claims to be art, I judge it to be art based on
>the fact that I could not do it without a lot of training. So, if I
>see something that I could go out, purchase the materials and
>reproduce that day (without prior training), it is not art.

I think if you can do it yourself with a lot of training it is not
interesting. For me, really interesting art can be that which I
wouldn't have been able to come up with myself if not given the
example to be imitated, even if I was thoroughly trained. Then, the
products of pure craftsmanship or pure tradition and nought more can
have their merits as well though perhaps of a somewhat different
order. Let me put it this way: I don't think we should value Mahler
for the fact that he could write symphonies but for the symphonies
that he wrote. And this also applies to the more pernicious case of
Cage, whose work may seem very easy to DIY, though I keep being amazed
at the generally poor quality of his imitators, whereas I did not hear
many Cage works that I found boring.

Samuel

[Samuel Vriezen]

jerb...@zianet.com (jerry and judy):

> My point is that your opinions are only relative, true, but the
>*consensus* eventually becomes objective under the weight of decades and
>centuries. How else could it persist?

I'm not so sure... ars subtilior has been ignored for six whole
centuries and I think there will always be a lack of consensus about,
say, Cage. It may also depend on your idea of consensus: is it just
that everyone knows 'X is generally regarded as a great composer'?
Then there is more consensus about Mozart than about, say, Philipoctus
da Caserta and this is at least in part due to Mozart's having had
better PR being born into the more advantageous times and all. Or is
it of the form 'What is so good about Mahler's 7th is the oboe part in
bar X'?

Also let's not forget Byron:

Then farewell, Horace - whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine: it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse.

In a case like this, what use for consensus?

> And no one has to agree with the consensus, they should do they're own
>inquiring, but it's helpful for the interested neophyte and it saves him
>precious time.

I absolutely agree that 'histories of music' can be useful to
neophytes, but it's not helpful to tell him or her, 'Go thou and
listen to Beethoven for verily he is Great' because they'll feel
reeeaaal stupid when they don't get it, which is not unthinkable.
They'll still have to find out for themselves, which involves careful
listening, and this is a process that will take lots of time anyway.

Samuel

[Samuel Vriezen]

jl...@mcs.net (Joseph Rizzo):

>Furthermore, you have Goedel, who has shown that rational systems of
>thought are dependent upon the assertions, and limited in their
>expressive power. In other words, in any rational system of thought,
>you can create a self-referential contradiction. A basic example is,
>"This sentence is false." So, any complex system you try to model
>with a rational system will be by this principle, in complete.

Actually, what he proves was that any logical system strong enough to
encode the natural numbers must either be inconsistent, ie you can
derive a contradiction, or be incomplete, ie it is possible to find an
undecidable proposition in the language described. The sentences that
the proof uses that have the latter property are convoluted to say the
least; the result as a whole says something about the limitations of
mathematical formalisms but does not directly have implications for
everyday rationality.

Samuel

[Samuel Vriezen]

jeffb@amber (Jeff Bernhard):

>: In my opinion, a rational knowledge *about* the arts/music is very often used
>: to mask somebody's inability to really percept and emotionally react to an
>: artwork.

Yes of course, but one comes across the reverse equally often, and
there are even stranger logics around, such as liking certain art for
political reasons etc. The problem with the appeal to emotion is, it's
very easy to say 'hey, those guys are talking difficult but they ain't
got no feelings like I do', such a statement is impossible to
disprove. It's the most basic trick in the book to use if some form of
art doesn't interest you. Another problem is, that the learned
discourse at times _does_ convey important observations on art, but
the very emotive person happens not to 'dig it' & but still this
person wants to appreciate the art and therefore can only resort to
responding emotionally which is OK so long as it doesn't lead to the
tactic described above.

Samuel

[Fred Goldrich]

In article <jerbidoc-241...@lc208.zianet.com>,

jerry and judy <jerb...@zianet.com> wrote:
>
> My point is that your opinions are only relative, true, but the
>*consensus* eventually becomes objective under the weight of decades and
>centuries. How else could it persist?

I'm having trouble following the logic here.

Sometimes a consensus will persist in time; sometimes it
will change. But how does an opinion, however widely held, change
from subjective to objective?

-- Fred Goldrich

--
Fred Goldrich
gold...@panix.com

[ILawson104]

In article <17C309D77...@VM.TEMPLE.EDU>, mi...@vm.temple.edu (Michael
Solonenko) writes:

>This thread touches a deep divide between two different (if not opposite)
>attitudes towards peception of music (in particular) and the art in general.

>According to the first concept, the art (and music) perception is mainly

>intellectual. Hence, the value of art is assosiated first of all with the
>information it contains (entails), hence with education/experience of the
>observer.

According to my definition of art artist value 'lies in the *relationship* with
the observer'.
That relationship could be intellectual, emotional, physical or a combination
of anything that *is* for a particular *observer*.

This concept always (explicitly or implicitly) allows an existence
>of some "art (music) value standard" against which this or that work can
>be measured.

I am aware of the many established 'standards of excellence' ; But that hasn't
got anything to do with the artistic value I , or others, may, or may not,
find there.

>According to the second concept, perception of art (music) is by its essence
>emotional, and intellect plays very secondary and subordinate role in the
>process.

see first comment.

>In my opinion, a rational knowledge *about* the arts/music is very often used
>to mask somebody's inability to really percept and emotionally react to an
>artwork.

Sometimes I suspect this is true, but I wouldn't put it down to inability. As a
crude generalisation I think men are less in touch with their feelings than
Women. Intellectual interest in music is almost exclusively male. Women seem
more interested in music for how it makes them feel. I think men can react
emotionally but our competitive natures demands something different - something
we can be measured against ( objective standards).

regards, Ian Lawson

[Michael Solonenko]

In article <65d67n$64i$1...@news.eecs.umich.edu>
fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew H. Fields) writes:

>
>
>
>...What's this either-or
>about emotionality/sensuality and intellect?

It is about the fact that ratio (intellect) and emotions are, evidently,
different things. The classification I suggested is based on what is primary
for the individual while percepting the art(music): rational knowledge (and,
maybe, emotions as derivative) or the emotions first, with information playing
very secondary role.

>And why must a person
>place themselves in one or another camp?

;-) You musn't. But, if the classification, as I believe, is correct, you
do fall under one of cathegories.

> Now the act of *writing* music, that's a different matter. It's
>at least as dominated by intellect as mathematical research is

Though I don't write music, I would assume there is no more ratio involved
in writing it than in writing a rhymed poem: there are certain rules to
be obeyed, but the _esssense of writing is very much "emotional" indeed.

[Michael Solonenko]

In article <347a86d4...@news.xs4all.nl>
s...@xs4all.nl (Samuel Vriezen) writes:

>jeffb@amber (Jeff Bernhard):
>
>>: In my opinion, a rational knowledge *about* the arts/music is very often used

>>: to mask somebody's inability to really percept and emotionally react to an
>>: artwork.
>

>...The problem with the appeal to emotion is, it's

>very easy to say 'hey, those guys are talking difficult but they ain't
>got no feelings like I do', such a statement is impossible to
>disprove.

..And it is not necessary to. Why in the world _should we prove anyone
anything about our/others deepness of perception?! The ability to
understand arts does not come from the art/music education, it comes from
education in general, and from the development of a personality.

>It's the most basic trick in the book to use if some form of
>art doesn't interest you.

What possibly could be a purpose of such trick?

>Another problem is, that the learned
>discourse at times _does_ convey important observations on art, but
>the very emotive person happens not to 'dig it' & but still this
>person wants to appreciate the art and therefore can only resort to
>responding emotionally which is OK so long as it doesn't lead to the
>tactic described above.
>

Important observations on art and the art are two different subjects.If someone
fails in one of them, it does not necessarily mean the person failed in the
other one as well. Don't see any problems here.

>Samuel

Michael

[ILawson104]

In article <34795d45...@news.xs4all.nl>, s...@xs4all.nl (Samuel Vriezen)
writes:

>I do not really much care for relativism, if it's an 'ism' there is
>probably something problematic about it. But I do wonder: why are you
>so fiercely crusading against it? What is it that you fear in
>'relativism'? You can pretty much decide for yourself, perhaps with

>'Art and Value' in hand, what art you want to be confronted with, us
>living in democratic societies and all, why should you care about what
>the relativists think?

What *is* the problem with relativism - apart from ending in 'ism' ( of coarse
)?

Actually, I'm not sure I know what is meant by the word. It's not a term that
would occur to me to use in this debate ( or to describe my outlook )

regards, Ian Lawson

[fiddleaway]

ILawson104 wrote:
>
> Sometimes I suspect this is true, but I wouldn't put it down to
inability. As a
> crude generalisation I think men are less in touch with their feelings
than
> Women. Intellectual interest in music is almost exclusively male. Women
seem
> more interested in music for how it makes them feel. I think men can
react
> emotionally but our competitive natures demands something different -
something
> we can be measured against ( objective standards).

Ian,

I was having a good time agreeing with you in most of your past posts.
However, I suspect you'll find the only value of "crude generalizations"
like the above is that they serve as perfect whipping boys.

[jerry and judy]

Widely held and long held opinions clearly appear to be objective. We
might not know the exact criteria by which the consensus builds, but
research in evolutionary psychology is presently pursuing the credible
leads.

You're right, a consensus about composers changes somewhat over 20-50 year
spans, but recently, in the last 30 years, there has been less and less
drift. There will be, hopefully, new additions which necessarily effect
the rankings.

[Fred Goldrich]

In article <jerbidoc-251...@lc162.zianet.com>,

jerry and judy <jerb...@zianet.com> wrote:

> In article <65eeq8$9...@panix.com>, gold...@panix.com (Fred Goldrich) wrote:
>
> > In article <jerbidoc-241...@lc208.zianet.com>,
> > jerry and judy <jerb...@zianet.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > My point is that your opinions are only relative, true, but the
> > >*consensus* eventually becomes objective under the weight of decades and
> > >centuries. How else could it persist?
> >
> > I'm having trouble following the logic here.
> >
> > Sometimes a consensus will persist in time; sometimes it
> > will change. But how does an opinion, however widely held, change
> > from subjective to objective?
>
>

> Widely held and long held opinions clearly appear to be objective. We
> might not know the exact criteria by which the consensus builds, but
> research in evolutionary psychology is presently pursuing the credible
> leads.

There is still a logical problem here that you have not
addressed. The fact that "widely held and long held opinions"
may *appear* to some to be objective doesn't mean that they *are*
objective; it seems to me that opinions are opinions, no matter
how long and how widely held. I don't see how broad concurrence
in an opinion changes its subjective nature to an objective one.

The question I raised was not how a consensus is formed
-- that, as you point out, is a matter of psychology -- but rather
the logical question of how the formation of a consensus changes
an opinion to a fact. And what happens if the consensus itself
changes? Does the "fact" then revert to being an opinion?

-- Fred Goldrich

--
Fred Goldrich
gold...@panix.com

--
Fred Goldrich
gold...@panix.com

[fiddleaway]

Michael Solonenko wrote

> It is about the fact that ratio (intellect) and emotions are, evidently,
> different things. The classification I suggested is based on what is
primary
> for the individual while percepting the art(music): rational knowledge
(and,
> maybe, emotions as derivative) or the emotions first, with information
playing
> very secondary role.

And what do you have to say about the person who really *feels* excited
about the "intellectual content" of an artwork?

Prototypes for your musical appreciation categories do exist, but as usual,
people, in general, are much more complex than that. Thank God. My
experience is that artistic appreciation runs a continuous spectral gamut
from intellectual to emotional, within individuals (me) and across society.
What value does your dualistic view have but to isolate people into
non-communicating camps of mutually condescending snobs?

> Though I don't write music, I would assume there is no more ratio
involved
> in writing it than in writing a rhymed poem: there are certain rules to
> be obeyed, but the _esssense of writing is very much "emotional" indeed.

I think you've just managed to insult composers and poets with one swipe -
your comment might be more appropriately placed in the "Greatest Musical
Insults" thread currently running in this newsgroup!

[Jose Oscar Marques]

On Tue, 25 Nov 1997 05:51:04 GMT jl...@mcs.net (Joseph Rizzo) wrote:

>Nope, not at all. You are way too hung up on rationality for your own
>good. These ideas were fine, during the Age of Enlightenment, but you
>are totally out date with modern thought.

(...)

>Furthermore, you have Goedel, who has shown that rational systems of
>thought are dependent upon the assertions, and limited in their
>expressive power. In other words, in any rational system of thought,
>you can create a self-referential contradiction. A basic example is,
>"This sentence is false." So, any complex system you try to model
>with a rational system will be by this principle, in complete.

I am not the least bit sympathetic with the original poster's ideas but
I also find that your naive assertions about Goedel's incompleteness
theorem and "modern thought" aren't much better.

--
Jose Oscar Marques
(to reply remove the X from my address)

[ILawson104]

In article <3479a0b0...@news.mcs.net>, jl...@mcs.net (Joseph Rizzo) writes:

>
>Any piece that someone claims to be art, I judge it to be art based on
>the fact that I could not do it without a lot of training. So, if I
>see something that I could go out, purchase the materials and
>reproduce that day (without prior training), it is not art.

>=> Joseph Rizzo

Even if it has got artistic value ?

Ian Lawson

[Roger L. Lustig]

John S Mamoun wrote:
>
> Joseph Rizzo (jl...@mcs.net) wrote:
> : > An individual can go through an experience that leaves him or her
> : >wanting to express certain emotions.

> : Not really. You are placing way to much higher brain control to the
> : emotional response. When running into an old friend by happenstance,
> : you do not go "There is Sally. I have not seen her in 5 years. I
> : should respond emotionally. I think I will be surprised and
> : delighted." The emotion and thought occur at the same time.

> I don't understand what you mean here. I never said implied that
> there was any conscious process involved in emotional expression.
> There may be, but I didn't imply it. Also, by saying "not really,"
> you imply that an individual cannot go through an experience that
> leaves him wanting to express certain emotion/s. That is manifestly
> not true.

Fine, but it has nothing to do with your claims about emotional
response. It *also* ducks the question of why *expressing*
emotions is the key (after all, most of us experience emotions
all the time, but express very few of them), and the relationship
between experiences and emotions. Oh, and there's the matter
of the individuality of experience.

> : >That experience can be characterized in strictly rational terms.

> : Nope, not at all. You are way too hung up on rationality for your own
> : good. These ideas were fine, during the Age of Enlightenment, but you
> : are totally out date with modern thought.

> : Lets take a very simple and real case of the flaws of "rational
> : thought." A mathematician wanted to prove the Euclidean geometry
> : assertion that two parallel lines never intersect. So, he set about
> : to prove that the assertion two parallel lines intersect at one point.
> : If he could prove that this assertion brought about a contradiction,
> : then the assertion would be invalid thus proving that two parallel
> : lines never intersect. Surprisingly, this assertion brings about no
> : contradictions at all. It is a true, non-Euclidean geometry.

> What exactly are you saying here?

He's saying this: characterizing emotions in strictly rational terms
depends on there *being* strictly rational terms. His discussion of
Goedel is beside the point, if you ask me, but he's still got a
point: discussing our response to music in 'strictly rational
terms' misses the essence of our response to music!

> : Furthermore, you have Goedel, who has shown that rational systems of
> : thought are dependent upon the assertions, and limited in their
> : expressive power. In other words, in any rational system of thought,
> : you can create a self-referential contradiction. A basic example is,
> : "This sentence is false." So, any complex system you try to model
> : with a rational system will be by this principle, in complete.

> Obviously, no human being is capable of perfectly understanding
> the objective charcteristics of his/her reality. The forces of
> evolution have not selected humans to possess such perfection in
> rational thought, but rather to select for ways of thinking
> among humans that are merely evolutionarily stable.

Some evidence of this sociobiological stuff would be nice. The
sociobiologists have little enough of it.

> All art
> is created by these fundamentally imperfect ways of thinking, as
> are all human ways of interpreting art, and interpreting experiences.

Not only imperfect, but not constituted the way you've claimed,
with 'emotional' and 'rational' analogues.

> In saying that "experiences can be characterized in rational terms,"
> I am implying that humans do the actual characterization, and that
> such characterization is subject to the fundamental limitations of
> the rational part of the human mind. This includes the possibility
> that we think incorrectly.

Does it include the possibility that the characterization of
emotions doesn't get us very far?

> It is irrelevent, however, to say that anything that we humans
> come up with conceptually is incorrect just because we happen to
> think incorrectly. We cannot, after all, conceive otherwise, so
> we would not be able to understand absolutely correct concepts
> even if they were pointedly presented to us.

Entirely beside the point. You need to show that the stuff you've
been repeating endlessly constitutes concepts in the first place.

> : >Individuals can go through
> : >many different experiences, each of which has its own set of rational
> : >characteristics, and each of which can induce in the individual the need
> : >to express a different emotion. An individual, for example, might be
> : >fired from work, and in response to the experience might need to express

> : This is a terribly sophomoric model of the brain. Our brains do not
> : function this way. I am sorry, but you are basing your grand
> : definition of art based upon ideas of the brain that JUST DO NOT
> : EXIST.

> I don't know what you mean here. I did not present a complete model
> of the human brain, but merely presented one aspect of its behavior.

And got it wrong. You assumed all manner of things that just ain't so.

> : > That different experiences can induce the need to express a
> : >different respective emotion, as well as different respective shades or
> : >degrees of the same emotion, suggests that each specific experience can,
> : >in the mind of an individual, be connected to its own specific emotion.

> : NO, NO, NO, NO! There is not a one to one correspondence between
> : emotions and events. An event can trigger multiple emotions, an
> : emotion can trigger multiple events.

> True enough. But I was discussing specific examples, and did not
> imply in an over-arching manner that a specific experience only
> connected to a single emotion, or that an experience can't trigger
> multiple emotions.

However, your discussion of those examples made clear that you
hadn't thought through the terms you were using: 'emotion',
'the emotion of X', etc.

> : Furthermore, your memory is not
> : a static object. You can go back, evaluate, re-evaluate and alter
> : your opinion of an emotion or event.

> But you still wind up in the end with an emotion or emotions
> connected to the event, including the possible need to express
> an emotion or emotions in response to the event. In any case,
> this is true and i didn't exclude the possibility, but merely
> discussed specific examples to help elucidate my points.

But it's *how* you discussed them that matters. Your claims
about what people would feel or sense or think in response to
someone else's expression of something, and the relationship
between the audience's feelings and those of the expressor
were completely out of whack.

> : > Now, suppose that the individual has not gone through these
> : >experiences. If he listens to music that allows him to express the power (1)
> : >emotion, then his mind can be cued to the existence of the rational
> : >characteristics of the experience of being fired.

> : NO! Your brain does not work this way. Why don't you start learning
> : about how the human brain functions instead of spewing forth academic
> : clap trap based upon your own ignorance.

> If that particular individual was to go through that particular
> experience of being fired, he would find himself needing to express
> the power (1) emotion.

You're still stuck on 'express'. Is that what we do with emotions?
Is that what we express when we react to something?

> Since he has already expressed it before
> hand, however, there is in his mind a sense of familiarity with
> the exprerience, a sense that it is not as shocking or surprising
> or unique to him, as it would have been had he not heard the music
> beforehand.

How so? He's experienced music, so he's experienced something
like being fired?

> Show me why the human brain cannot go through this
> kind of phenomenon.

Uh-uh. Show how the two experiences (being fired and hearing
music) are at all analogous. It's your claim. Don't demand
that other people prove negatives for you.

> : Your opinion is nice and fine, but it shows a fundamental lack of
> : education. You do not have a clear grasp of logic, brain function, or
> : of music. You lack the first and foremost precept of wisdom, knowing
> : when you don't know something. You create this complex definition of
> : art based upon empty assumptions and assertions. Do yourself a favor
> : and stop trying to pretend that you are the answer to the question of
> : "What is art." Far greater minds than yours have wrestled with this
> : question, and far greater minds than yours will wrestle with it in the
> : future. Why don't you spend more time becoming wise, than showing
> : your ignorance.

> I'm sorry your girlfriend dumped you, but please don't dump your
> frustrations and anger on me, thank you.

You know, after you've repeated the same stuff a dozen times,
and 'explained' it by repeating it some more, and given 'examples'
that turn out to be 'let's assume for the sake of argument that
I'm right', don't you think he has a case for being frustrated
and angry with you?

> I'm fully aware, having
> read The Apology, of this Socratic concept of not knowing when one
> does not know something. I decided, however, not knowing exactly
> how the brain or music works, to put forth a theory.

That's not a theory. Theories come from a great deal more evidence
than you offered.

> I took a
> great and, I would like to think, noble risk in doing so, for
> without people like me putting forth theories, possibly to be
> proven wrong before the whole world, there will be no intellectual
> advancement or advancement of knowledge.

And how will intellectual advancement occur when you argue the
way you do, simply repeating your claims and refusing to respond
to specific questions?

> Might I point out that
> there are no difinitive answers to be found for the questions that
> I raise in any university course?

There are definitive refutations for many of your claims and
premises.

> The presentation might not be
> perfect, to be sure, but that is mainly due to the intrinsic
> subjectivity of the subject matter.

Gee, what happened to 'completely rational'?

> And also--sorry to make you feel like an idiot--but I did not one
> iota put forth an opinion or definition of what art _is_, but
> rather what it isn't.

That's embarrassingly cheap, John. Not only because your
definition of what it isn't boils down to what you don't
like, but because saying what it isn't implies that some or
all of the rest *is*.

Roger

[Samuel Vriezen]

mi...@vm.temple.edu (Michael Solonenko):

>>It's the most basic trick in the book to use if some form of
>>art doesn't interest you.
>
>What possibly could be a purpose of such trick?

I often wonder myself whenever I encounter it...

Samuel

[Matt Kennel (Remove 'NOSPAM' to reply)]

On Tue, 25 Nov 1997 05:51:04 GMT, Joseph Rizzo <jl...@mcs.net> wrote:
:Furthermore, you have Goedel, who has shown that rational systems of

:thought are dependent upon the assertions, and limited in their
:expressive power. In other words, in any rational system of thought,
:you can create a self-referential contradiction.
:A basic example is,
:"This sentence is false." So, any complex system you try to model
:with a rational system will be by this principle, in complete.

Goedel showed something about a specific and peculiar kind of formal
reasoning, not "any rational system" conceivable by human intellect, as is
commonly misinterpreted.

--
* Matthew B. Kennel/Institute for Nonlinear Science, UCSD
*
* According to California Assembly Bill 3320, it is now a criminal offense
* to solicit any goods or services by email to a CA resident without
* providing the business's legal name and complete street address.
*

[Matthew H. Fields]

In article <347f1ba3...@snews.zippo.com>,

Jose Oscar Marques <mar...@Xsuper.zippo.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 25 Nov 1997 05:51:04 GMT jl...@mcs.net (Joseph Rizzo) wrote:
>

>>Nope, not at all. You are way too hung up on rationality for your own
>>good. These ideas were fine, during the Age of Enlightenment, but you
>>are totally out date with modern thought.
>

>(...)

>
>>Furthermore, you have Goedel, who has shown that rational systems of
>>thought are dependent upon the assertions, and limited in their
>>expressive power. In other words, in any rational system of thought,
>>you can create a self-referential contradiction. A basic example is,
>>"This sentence is false." So, any complex system you try to model
>>with a rational system will be by this principle, in complete.
>

>I am not the least bit sympathetic with the original poster's ideas but
>I also find that your naive assertions about Goedel's incompleteness
>theorem and "modern thought" aren't much better.

Let's try again here.
Human minds do not proceed from observing facts through a series of
deductions about the facts to deciding that it's time to experience an
emotion in response to these facts. Emotions are part of our limbic
system, a system which seems to allow us to do the most effective
thing for survival in relatively simple situations. Intellect is a
more elaborate version of the same thing, with flexibility and memory
and abstraction, allowing us to make long-term plans in complicated
situations and thus survive changing environments, cold winters, and
other complex challenges.
The fad to think of the human brain as producing passions from the
intellect, and thus to suppose that less intellectual animals are
incapable of passions---this fad has passed. It passed with a whole
mileau in which intellectual optimism abounded, in which those who
weren't too keen supposed that all facts about the universe were on
the verge of being deduced rationally from first principles.
Goedel's theorems arrived essentially after that culture had passed,
after the cultural pendulum had already swung the opposite direction,
favoring Freud and Jung and a cult of the "implacable beast within"
which supposed that people are intrinsically evil and violent but use
their intellects to suppress their inner natures. Popular thinking
distorted both Freud's and Goedel's contributions, and often supposed
that they had much to do with each other. Thus early this century,
Goedel's theorems were seen by some as proof positive that there was
something "wrong" about rationalism or "necessary" about mysticism,
when in fact they say no such thing. I ocassionally hear similar
distortions these days by folks who suppose that Heisenberg's
contributions to physics make ghosts and spirits seem more plausible.
People suppose that they can explain the difference between art
that they do and don't like by appealing to a distinction between
intellectual response and emotional response. Mythologies about the
rational conciousness involuntarily moved by the irrational
subterranean beast are still popular in our culture, and the
likelyhood that we can best describe ourselves as tightly-knit
combinations of both is taking a long time to sink in. Thus I still
get weird looks when I say "I get a lot of fun listening to and
following the melodic games as well as the dramatic curve in
Hammerklavier Sonata". People suppose I'll either just sit back and
let sound "wash over" me or "analyze to death and thus be incapable of
understanding a simple folk tune". Life just doesn't work that way
for many people.

--

Matt Fields, A.Mus.D. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields

Today's featured addresses: t...@bizzy.net st...@adnc.com
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[ILawson104]

In article <jerbidoc-241...@lc208.zianet.com>, jerb...@zianet.com
(jerry and judy) writes:

>
> My point is that your opinions are only relative, true, but the
>*consensus* eventually becomes objective under the weight of decades and
>centuries. How else could it persist?

> And no one has to agree with the consensus, they should do they're own
>inquiring, but it's helpful for the interested neophyte and it saves him
>precious time.

Relative add relative ( add relative etc. ) doesn't make objective. A
measurement can only be objective ( in a practical sense ) when a universally
agreed standard is applied. What consensus ( regarding the value of art) do you
know of that comes even close to universal agreement?

Objectively, everything in the universe is of (equal) value.

The members of my family are of greater relative value to me than strangers;
but objectively my children are no more (or less) valuable than anyone else.
The music I love is of greater value to me than music I can't stand; but
objectively my favourite music is of no greater ( or less ) value than any
other piece of music.

If twenty trillion people love a piece of music, then an objective fact about
that piece is that twenty trillion people love it. If a work is loved only by
two people then that is again an objective fact. Objectively each of these
'facts' are of equal value ( as are the actual pieces) But subjectively --- --
-- ?

regards, Ian Lawson

PS Oddly enough I know what I mean.

[ILawson104]

In article <01bcf9c9$e32c3840$2e42a7cf@micron>, "fiddleaway" <wha...@spam.com>
writes:

Yes, you could be right. Perhaps I ought to keep my head down.
Actually I didn't mean to post this message. I wrote it on the hoof as an
instant reaction to its previous link. I went to save it for further
consideration but, not realising I was on line, posted it. ( I probably would
have ditched it on grounds of irrelevance.)
But, as it happens, I haven't been waking up in the middle of the night in a
cold sweat. - and would defend the idea on the grounds of having *some* truth -
should anyone take issue.

Ian