Where should I be sending my music?
H James Harkins
Hello, everyone... I just discovered this newsgroup via Yahoo's listing.
It's really great to see friendly, down-to-earth, and fun discussions of
creative musicianship that don't get bogged down in dogmatic silliness of
any sort, at least that I can see. It's also fortunate that I ran across
this listing when I did, as I have been plagued for the last few days by
worries about what to do with my music.
First, a little about my background. I started composing in 1986 (age
16), then went to school as a composition major (Butler University
(Indianapolis)), and continued on to graduate school at Duke. From the
beginning, I pushed myself to try out "modern" techniques, mostly under
the influence of Copland's music before and including the Piano
Variations. By the time I got to grad school, I was working almost
exclusively in a non-tonal, free-chromatic language, I suppose out of
some sense of "duty" for the "progress" of musical thought, or some such.
Anyway, it wasn't too long before I hit a brick wall. The music stopped
making sense (I realize now it was because at that time I wasn't making
the music I needed to be making). I tried incorporating tonal elements
into my language, even adopting more or less wholesale a basically tonal,
post-minimal style, but everything still seemed stale. Until... I sort of
(not completely, but mostly) jumped the fence and put together my first
techno piece. Unquestionably a good move for me: apart from the questions
this work raises about popular and "art" culture (I believe these were
precisely the questions that were stifling me before), my music has
picked up a confidence and liveliness it never had before.
The music at this point is a foregone conclusion: the change has been so
healthy for myself and for the art that I now can't even imagine
composing in any medium without addressing the possibilities for joining
an "art music" sensibility with popular styles. But, since all my
training has been for an academic career, and now finding myself making
music that very closely resembles a genre that is offensive to many
academics, and especially as I'm finishing up my second techno
experiment, I can't get the questions out of my head:
- If this music doesn't fit in the community I'm trained to be part of,
where does it fit? How do I get it there? (--especially considering that
I've never been able to produce music that satisfies me at even a
moderately fast pace, partly due to my need to think over what I'm doing,
and partly because of a long-term case of tendinitis, for which reason
the thought of trying to eke out a presence on the dancefloor is not
terribly palatable. I *don't* want to sell myself to the industry!!)
- Am I misreading the academic world? I haven't composed enough of this
music, or sent it out enough times to get a good sense of the
climate--but I do see the barely-tolerant reactions of some of the
faculty and (fewer) students here (although some students are genuinely
enthusiastic, which is good to see!). Are there places where this kind of
work is *strongly* supported? Where?
I've chewed enough bandwidth for now. Any comments would be greatly
appreciated. Thanks! J
PS I also have technical questions about placing audio samples of my
work on my fledgling website. What file formats? What software? Anyone
used RealAudio? (I'd love to put a low-grade copy of my latest piece up,
if it's possible.) I've poked through Yahoo and can't find any
suggestions, FAQs, or such anywhere. What to do?
________
\ / | "Sweetie...... sweetie. How come when she put
H. James Harkins | the phone to her ear, all I could hear was the
jhar...@acpub.duke.edu | seashore?" -- Edina Monsoon on her
\/ | ex-husband Marshall's latest girlfriend
Robert Caponi
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.96072...@carr2.acpub.duke.edu>,
H James Harkins <jhar...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
** Hello, everyone... I just discovered this newsgroup via Yahoo's listing.
** It's really great to see friendly, down-to-earth, and fun discussions of
** creative musicianship that don't get bogged down in dogmatic silliness of
** any sort, at least that I can see. It's also fortunate that I ran across
...stick around :)
** post-minimal style, but everything still seemed stale. Until... I sort of
** (not completely, but mostly) jumped the fence and put together my first
** techno piece. Unquestionably a good move for me: apart from the questions
** this work raises about popular and "art" culture (I believe these were
** precisely the questions that were stifling me before), my music has
** picked up a confidence and liveliness it never had before.
Cool. I find that my making music with my sister (hip-hop beats, techno
bleeps, electric guitar) helps my "classical" music alot; one of the
rhythms I used found its way into my coming La Musique Petite entry. I
recently heard a techno thingy in a bar recently that was completely
hypnotizing; just a repeating bass line with a chant and cool synthesizer
stuff. One of the most gorgeous things I've heard in a long time.
Good luck!
--
tagu...@nr.infinet.com
Brian Mueller
In article <tagutcow-300...@pa3dsp14.nr.infi.net>,
tagu...@nr.infi.net (Robert Caponi) wrote:
> In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.96072...@carr2.acpub.duke.edu>,
> H James Harkins <jhar...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>
> ** Hello, everyone... I just discovered this newsgroup via Yahoo's listing.
> ** It's really great to see friendly, down-to-earth, and fun discussions of
> ** creative musicianship that don't get bogged down in dogmatic silliness of
> ** any sort, at least that I can see. It's also fortunate that I ran across
>
> ...stick around :)
>
> ** post-minimal style, but everything still seemed stale. Until... I sort of
> ** (not completely, but mostly) jumped the fence and put together my first
> ** techno piece. Unquestionably a good move for me: apart from the questions
> ** this work raises about popular and "art" culture (I believe these were
> ** precisely the questions that were stifling me before), my music has
> ** picked up a confidence and liveliness it never had before.
>
I find it noble and encouraging that you are willing to expand your palate
with such eclecticism. There is absolutely NO music that I will not
listen to at least once. It's important to have a full library of the
sound spectrum in your noggin to use as reference material. Good for you!
--
Matthew H. Fields
In article <4tnvmt$h...@superb.csc.ti.com>,
Dan Lydick <lyd...@cvp.ti.com> wrote:
>Personally, I consider this "modern" atonal stuff as noise instead of
>music because if music is supposed to speak to the soul of man, then
>the only people this sort of thing speaks to are people who have no
>order or structure or purpose in their lives. People need order and
>structure. Just like a child needs boundaries of acceptable behavior
>to feel secure as a person growing up. People simply do not thrive
>on chaos. (I personally have used some elements of this kind of
>music in my own work, but VERY sparingly, and only for a specific
>reason, so don't gripe at my opinion yet.)
Hmmm, are you confusing "atonal", "12-tone", etc. with chaos?
It's my experience that folks with music performance majors are
the only folks who don't "get" atonal musics.
>Unfortunately for everyone, the idea of atonal music, 12-tone, etc. is
>popular with the academic world. It seems like the only place it seems
And so is gamelan music, and a lot of other musics that aren't in
e.g. the American Mainstream. Actually, I challenge you right here
on this point, i.e. to point out a uniform trend of musical academia,
with survey citations. Statements like this are made up and passed
along with a feel-good conformism, but that doesn't make them true.
Do you value the music of Haydn? I strongly suspect that if you
bother doing the surveys, you'll find that Haydn's name is not even
known to the public at large, and certainly that almost nobody can
identify his work on hearing it. Only in academia is it preserved.
Beethoven---I still meet folks who've heard Fur Elise and the 4-note
theme of the 5th symphony, and think the 5th symphony is 4 notes, and
they're a sizable plurality if not a majority. You want to find
Beethoven-lovers en masse outside of a Beethoven concert, 'fraid
you're going to have to go to academia.
And that damned Shakespeare, wrote plays only an academic can
understand! etc.
>to find acceptance. This is not unlike the amusing anecdote that the
>only place they still teach Marx and Lenin is in the academic world.
>The professors have not yet noticed that the Soviet Union has fallen
>apart and its philosophies have been discredited throughout almost the
>entire former communist world.
Have you noticed that Social Realist music has all but fallen
by the way-side, that ex-Soviet-block musicians have been fast to
seek atonality, minimalism, and all sorts of other "modernist" things
as ways to better express themselves?
Meanwhile, the atonal music of Bartok is more popular than ever.
>>... Until... I sort of
>>(not completely, but mostly) jumped the fence and put together my first
>>techno piece. Unquestionably a good move for me: apart from the questions
>>this work raises about popular and "art" culture (I believe these were
>>precisely the questions that were stifling me before), my music has
>>picked up a confidence and liveliness it never had before.
>Good for you!!! Music absolutely MUST take on part of the personality
>of its creator or it is nothing but regurgitation (sp?) of someone else's
>persona. Personally, I really enjoy the music of Vivaldi and Handel, and
Haendel---now you think that without the influence of Jimi Hendrix
(who happened to camp out next door to Haendel's old digs when he was
in the UK), anybody in North America would know of Haendel (other
than---shudder---academics)?
I agree that one's music must partake of who one is, but surprise,
surprise, some of us just happen to find atonal musics very natural to
who we are. Poysenally, I write stuff that varies from sounding like
Dufay to sounding like Webern and everything in between, including
baroque, classical, romantic, impressionist, expressionist, and
other influxes, plus an occasional dose of haftara trop or other ethnic
material. To suggest that somebody should necessarily shun any kind
of music would seem to be exactly contrary to your intent.
>the music I write reflects that. My education is in electrical engineering
>and computer science, but that is just my "day job", much as I enjoy the
>computer systems consulting work I do. My heart is into my music. So is
>my personality. Yes, I _do_ admit to an inspirational influence of the
>Baroque and Classical era folks, but I also write folk ballad style music
>for guitar and solo voice. I write duets for the French Horn. I arrange
>music for the harp. I write and arrange for small string orchestra with
>and without chorus, sometimes including winds, sometimes brass.
>My musical education, unfortunately, consists only of a few years of
>piano lessons as a child, then playing french horn in my high school
>band. I taught myself to play the guitar, the coronet, and the harp.
>I have learned a lot about the possibilities of the electronic synthesizer
>and associated devices.
>The point is, regardless of your education or background, if music is
>in your heart, it needs to come out. Most "modern" stuff like what
>you describe is simply ignored by everyone because they do not consider
>it to be music. If they _did_ consider it to be music, you would hear
>it on the radio and find record stores filled with such "tunes".
You do and you do and they do. Folks ignore it exactly the same way
they ignore e.g. Brahms. Who's selling more today: Brahms (with no
royalties to be paid, with his established reputation, etc.) or Madonna?
The "it doesn't sell, therefore it must be bad" thing is really
pretty lame. Remember marketing? Is a pet rock really a finer work
of sculpture than Rodin's Kiss?
>Now, just because I don't like this stuff or consider it "music", please
>nobody start sending me replies with 4-letter words. If _you_ like it,
>fine. Have at it. This is just my opinion. I also admit that I have
>been helped enormously by people I have become acquainted with from the
>local music school (I live in the Dallas area, and have studied with and
>performed with folks from the University of North Texas, formerly North
>Texas State University). They have been a very positive influence.
Folks who go to music school and stay generally have one thing in common,
and that's a love of music.
>>The music at this point is a foregone conclusion: the change has been so
>>healthy for myself and for the art that I now can't even imagine
>>composing in any medium without addressing the possibilities for joining
>>an "art music" sensibility with popular styles.
>If I were you, I would start hanging around folks who perform diffent
>styles. Jazz, country, big band, etc. Go to concerts. Borrow tapes,
>records, and CD's. Get some fake books and study them on the piano,
>guitar, etc.
Absolutely.
> There is a LOT more music out there than the academic
>world wishes to expose you to.
Sorry, you just made this up, and it's simply not true.
>Part of the reason for this is purely cultural. That is just the way
>universities are. Also, in the academic world just like the commercial
>world, people like to build their own personal kingdoms. When people
>trying to build such a kingdom don't have control of a musical genre,
>they will not teach it because they cannot control it. It develops on
>its own without their influence, and as such threatens kingdom-builders.
Have you ever thought of the fact that some people just value some
music more than others? And some folks know about some music more than
others, so rather than waste their students time talking about stuff
they don't know, they play to their strengths. Really, I suggest you
audit a music composition class at a respectable music school.
Professorial control of student artwork is the one thing least likely
to ever emerge there.
>(I saw this in my engineering education. Same song, different verse.)
>To be fair, however, the two elements sometimes feed on each other,
>along with other expectations placed on the staff of an academic setting.
>So it really isn't a simple problem. However, to quote a well-known
>professor at U.N.T., "The students we graduate not only know their music,
>they get jobs."
>So weigh your own academic experience, both that which seems positive
>and that which seems negative, and evaluate it against your priorities.
>Keep questioning yourself and your goals. Some will be attainable,
>some will not.
This excerpt is solid advice for anybody.
> For myself, I have had a complete change of musical
>priorities twice since I finished college (1981). But I keep trying.
Hmmm, sounds like you were adrift or something?
>I also believe that music is a gift of God and that He answers prayer.
>Ask God which direction you should go and let Him help you with it.
Hmmm, ok, your engineering is a gift from god, you should give freely
of it instead of expecting to be paid for it...this is tricky ground
to tread on, likely to take all concerned far afield without productive
outcome.
>>> But, since all my
>>training has been for an academic career, and now finding myself making
>>music that very closely resembles a genre that is offensive to many
>>academics, and especially as I'm finishing up my second techno
>>experiment, I can't get the questions out of my head:
>Per my previous comments, I am glad to see _someone_ rattle their stodgy
>old cages!!! "Modern", free-chromatic, non-tonal "music" indeed! They
>may have to power to pass or fail a student, but they do NOT have the
>power to destroy a person's creativity unless a person grants it to them!
Statements like this make me wonder just what music you've heard. Have
you heard any jazz, for instance? How closely do you suppose Dave
Brubeck sticks to "tonality"? And I really wonder where you get your
idea of musical academia. It seems to me if somebody feels stifled
in a musical academic setting, they're in the wrong academy and should
vote with their feet and dollars.
>>- If this music doesn't fit in the community I'm trained to be part of,
>>where does it fit? How do I get it there?
Techno fits into the dance club scene, and you get there by befriending
club djs.
>> ...
>>- Am I misreading the academic world? I haven't composed enough of this
>>music, or sent it out enough times to get a good sense of the
>>climate--but I do see the barely-tolerant reactions of some of the
>>faculty and (fewer) students here (although some students are genuinely
>>enthusiastic, which is good to see!). Are there places where this kind of
>>work is *strongly* supported? Where?
Have you looked at Berklee in Boston?
>I know I have not heard any of your work, but honestly, I don't think you
>should top trying. And do study as many styles as you can _outside_ of
>the academic walls. There is some junk out there, but there is also
>some good stuff out there.
Hmmm, what are the academic walls?
>Now you may gripe at my opinion if you wish....
You're welcome to your opinion. I suppose I'm welcome to suggest
that only your writing on arts and humanities is just about what one
could expect from an engineer, but that's just a satire of your
take on musical academia.
Disclaimer: I do not work for any academic institution of music.
My opinions are my own and have nothing to do with party lines,
conspiracies of silence, space aliens, or secret societies.
>
>
--
_ || Composer and educator
/ \ * || URL:http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields
* | * || URL:mailto:fie...@umich.edu
Dr. Matthew H. / ields || Phone 313-936-7579 days, 313-769-4836 eves.
Robert Caponi
In article <4tnvmt$h...@superb.csc.ti.com>, lyd...@cvp.ti.com wrote:
** Personally, I consider this "modern" atonal stuff as noise instead of
** music because if music is supposed to speak to the soul of man, then
** the only people this sort of thing speaks to are people who have no
** order or structure or purpose in their lives. People need order and
** structure. Just like a child needs boundaries of acceptable behavior
** to feel secure as a person growing up. People simply do not thrive
** on chaos. (I personally have used some elements of this kind of
** music in my own work, but VERY sparingly, and only for a specific
** reason, so don't gripe at my opinion yet.)
Sometimes I like chaos, sometimes I don't. Atonal and tonal music offer
both, depending on the composer. (Hmmm, how come writing like Matt has
become second nature?)
** Unfortunately for everyone, the idea of atonal music, 12-tone, etc. is
** popular with the academic world. It seems like the only place it seems
** to find acceptance. This is not unlike the amusing anecdote that the
** only place they still teach Marx and Lenin is in the academic world.
** The professors have not yet noticed that the Soviet Union has fallen
** apart and its philosophies have been discredited throughout almost the
** entire former communist world.
You're not trying to equate atonality or communism, are you? Or claim that
atonality has been discredited?
** The point is, regardless of your education or background, if music is
** in your heart, it needs to come out. Most "modern" stuff like what
** you describe is simply ignored by everyone because they do not consider
Maybe it's not ignored; maybe it's unheard. Easy with the sweeping
statements; you might end up hurting some feelings.
--
tagu...@nr.infinet.com
Dan Lydick
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.96072...@carr2.acpub.duke.edu>, H James Harkins <jhar...@acpub.duke.edu> writes:
>... as I have been plagued for the last few days by
>worries about what to do with my music.
>
>First, a little about my background. I started composing in 1986 (age
>16), then went to school as a composition major (Butler University
>(Indianapolis)), and continued on to graduate school at Duke. From the
>beginning, I pushed myself to try out "modern" techniques, mostly under
>the influence of Copland's music before and including the Piano
>Variations. By the time I got to grad school, I was working almost
>exclusively in a non-tonal, free-chromatic language, I suppose out of
>some sense of "duty" for the "progress" of musical thought, or some such.
>
>Anyway, it wasn't too long before I hit a brick wall. The music stopped
>making sense (I realize now it was because at that time I wasn't making
>the music I needed to be making). I tried incorporating tonal elements
>into my language, even adopting more or less wholesale a basically tonal,
>post-minimal style, but everything still seemed stale.
Personally, I consider this "modern" atonal stuff as noise instead of
music because if music is supposed to speak to the soul of man, then
the only people this sort of thing speaks to are people who have no
order or structure or purpose in their lives. People need order and
structure. Just like a child needs boundaries of acceptable behavior
to feel secure as a person growing up. People simply do not thrive
on chaos. (I personally have used some elements of this kind of
music in my own work, but VERY sparingly, and only for a specific
reason, so don't gripe at my opinion yet.)
Unfortunately for everyone, the idea of atonal music, 12-tone, etc. is
popular with the academic world. It seems like the only place it seems
to find acceptance. This is not unlike the amusing anecdote that the
only place they still teach Marx and Lenin is in the academic world.
The professors have not yet noticed that the Soviet Union has fallen
apart and its philosophies have been discredited throughout almost the
entire former communist world.
>... Until... I sort of
>(not completely, but mostly) jumped the fence and put together my first
>techno piece. Unquestionably a good move for me: apart from the questions
>this work raises about popular and "art" culture (I believe these were
>precisely the questions that were stifling me before), my music has
>picked up a confidence and liveliness it never had before.
>
Good for you!!! Music absolutely MUST take on part of the personality
of its creator or it is nothing but regurgitation (sp?) of someone else's
persona. Personally, I really enjoy the music of Vivaldi and Handel, and
the music I write reflects that. My education is in electrical engineering
and computer science, but that is just my "day job", much as I enjoy the
computer systems consulting work I do. My heart is into my music. So is
my personality. Yes, I _do_ admit to an inspirational influence of the
Baroque and Classical era folks, but I also write folk ballad style music
for guitar and solo voice. I write duets for the French Horn. I arrange
music for the harp. I write and arrange for small string orchestra with
and without chorus, sometimes including winds, sometimes brass.
My musical education, unfortunately, consists only of a few years of
piano lessons as a child, then playing french horn in my high school
band. I taught myself to play the guitar, the coronet, and the harp.
I have learned a lot about the possibilities of the electronic synthesizer
and associated devices.
The point is, regardless of your education or background, if music is
in your heart, it needs to come out. Most "modern" stuff like what
you describe is simply ignored by everyone because they do not consider
it to be music. If they _did_ consider it to be music, you would hear
it on the radio and find record stores filled with such "tunes".
Now, just because I don't like this stuff or consider it "music", please
nobody start sending me replies with 4-letter words. If _you_ like it,
fine. Have at it. This is just my opinion. I also admit that I have
been helped enormously by people I have become acquainted with from the
local music school (I live in the Dallas area, and have studied with and
performed with folks from the University of North Texas, formerly North
Texas State University). They have been a very positive influence.
>The music at this point is a foregone conclusion: the change has been so
>healthy for myself and for the art that I now can't even imagine
>composing in any medium without addressing the possibilities for joining
>an "art music" sensibility with popular styles.
If I were you, I would start hanging around folks who perform diffent
styles. Jazz, country, big band, etc. Go to concerts. Borrow tapes,
records, and CD's. Get some fake books and study them on the piano,
guitar, etc. There is a LOT more music out there than the academic
world wishes to expose you to.
Part of the reason for this is purely cultural. That is just the way
universities are. Also, in the academic world just like the commercial
world, people like to build their own personal kingdoms. When people
trying to build such a kingdom don't have control of a musical genre,
they will not teach it because they cannot control it. It develops on
its own without their influence, and as such threatens kingdom-builders.
(I saw this in my engineering education. Same song, different verse.)
To be fair, however, the two elements sometimes feed on each other,
along with other expectations placed on the staff of an academic setting.
So it really isn't a simple problem. However, to quote a well-known
professor at U.N.T., "The students we graduate not only know their music,
they get jobs."
So weigh your own academic experience, both that which seems positive
and that which seems negative, and evaluate it against your priorities.
Keep questioning yourself and your goals. Some will be attainable,
some will not. For myself, I have had a complete change of musical
priorities twice since I finished college (1981). But I keep trying.
I also believe that music is a gift of God and that He answers prayer.
Ask God which direction you should go and let Him help you with it.
> But, since all my
>training has been for an academic career, and now finding myself making
>music that very closely resembles a genre that is offensive to many
>academics, and especially as I'm finishing up my second techno
>experiment, I can't get the questions out of my head:
>
Per my previous comments, I am glad to see _someone_ rattle their stodgy
old cages!!! "Modern", free-chromatic, non-tonal "music" indeed! They
may have to power to pass or fail a student, but they do NOT have the
power to destroy a person's creativity unless a person grants it to them!
>- If this music doesn't fit in the community I'm trained to be part of,
>where does it fit? How do I get it there?
>
> ...
>
>- Am I misreading the academic world? I haven't composed enough of this
>music, or sent it out enough times to get a good sense of the
>climate--but I do see the barely-tolerant reactions of some of the
>faculty and (fewer) students here (although some students are genuinely
>enthusiastic, which is good to see!). Are there places where this kind of
>work is *strongly* supported? Where?
I know I have not heard any of your work, but honestly, I don't think you
should top trying. And do study as many styles as you can _outside_ of
the academic walls. There is some junk out there, but there is also
some good stuff out there.
Now you may gripe at my opinion if you wish....
Dan Lydick
Texas Instruments, Inc.
PO Box 655474, M/S 63
Dallas, Texas 75265 USA
e-mail address: lyd...@cvp.ti.com
MSGID: DL...@msg.ti.com
Phone: 214-995-6106 (fax: 214-995-0278, sec: 214-995-2829)
mail drop: M/S 63
PC drop: PCC7
Robert Caponi
In article <tagutcow-310...@pa2dsp21.nr.infi.net>,
tagu...@nr.infi.net (Robert Caponi) wrote:
** You're not trying to equate atonality or communism, are you? Or claim that
** atonality has been discredited?
Whoops, I meant "atonality with communism."
--
tagu...@nr.infinet.com
julie stenberg
The American Composer's Forum is supportive of most, if not all,
different musical styles. They do have a Web Page. I am mostly
into jazz / fusion and they have been great.
vali...@ere.umontreal.ca
>
>
> Reply to: Robert Caponi
>
> RE: WHERE SHOULD I BE SENDING MY MUSIC?
>
>
> 31 Jul 1996 20:41:13 GMT
> InfiNet
> Newsgroups:
> rec.music.compose
> Reply to newsgroup(s)
> References:
> <Pine.SOL.3.91.96072...@carr2.acpub.duke.edu>
> <4tnvmt$h...@superb.csc.ti.com>>** Personally, I consider this "modern" atonal stuff as noise instead of
>** music because if music is supposed to speak to the soul of man, then
>** the only people this sort of thing speaks to are people who have no
>** order or structure or purpose in their lives. People need order and
>** structure.
Funny! I thought 12-tone atonal music was based on order and structure,
so much that it doesn't have room for spontaneity. You say the problem
with atonal is that there's no structure, I say the problem with it is
that there's too much structure. I see atonal (or 12-tone) as a good tool
for producing a specific effect at a specific place.
JV
H James Harkins
I'm very grateful to everyone who has responded, here or privately, to my
earlier post. I'm extraordinarily busy at the moment, finishing up a piece
to send to a competition--you never know unless you try--so I can't dig
into the issues, but I'll make every effort to get to it this weekend.
Thanks again for the kind words...
One quick thought, and another quicker one:
On 1 Aug 1996 vali...@ere.umontreal.ca wrote:
> >In article <4tnvmt$h...@superb.csc.ti.com>, lyd...@cvp.ti.com wrote:
> >
> >** Personally, I consider this "modern" atonal stuff as noise instead of
> >** music because if music is supposed to speak to the soul of man, then
> >** the only people this sort of thing speaks to are people who have no
> >** order or structure or purpose in their lives.
> Funny! I thought 12-tone atonal music was based on order and structure,
> so much that it doesn't have room for spontaneity.
Dan was probably referring to the often-remarked fact that total serial
music, music completely organized mathematically, *sounds* remarkably
like aleatoric music, chance music, or chaos. This is why, if I had to
pick one musical style that best illustrates Adornian negative dialectics (a
system contains the seeds of its own destruction), serialism would be the
one. (Sorry, I've been reading Rose Subotnik lately.)
> >**People need order and
> >** structure.
I tend to agree, but people also need room for play, a little disorder
now and again. Plus, what is simply "order" or "common sense" for some is
a prison for others. How to work with this tension in music is a tricky
business... I have other thoughts on this, but not enough time now...
J
________
\ / | "Sweetie...... sweetie. How come when she put
H. James Harkins | the phone to her ear, all I could hear was the
jhar...@acpub.duke.edu | ocean?" -- Edina Monsoon on her
Mark T Vigorito
Matthew H. Fields (fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu) wrote:
: In article <4tnvmt$h...@superb.csc.ti.com>,
: Dan Lydick <lyd...@cvp.ti.com> wrote:
: >Personally, I consider this "modern" atonal stuff as noise instead of
: >music because if music is supposed to speak to the soul of man, then
: >the only people this sort of thing speaks to are people who have no
: >order or structure or purpose in their lives. People need order and
: >structure. Just like a child needs boundaries of acceptable behavior
: >to feel secure as a person growing up. People simply do not thrive
: >on chaos. (I personally have used some elements of this kind of
: >music in my own work, but VERY sparingly, and only for a specific
: >reason, so don't gripe at my opinion yet.)
: Hmmm, are you confusing "atonal", "12-tone", etc. with chaos?
: It's my experience that folks with music performance majors are
: the only folks who don't "get" atonal musics.
: >Unfortunately for everyone, the idea of atonal music, 12-tone, etc. is
: >popular with the academic world. It seems like the only place it seems
George Perle in his book _The Listening Composer_ states "An 'atonal'
folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable". I disagree with this notion,
as well as the idea that atonal music would not exist outside of academia.
Recently, I played with a Free-Improv ensemble. The members of the group
were by and large rabid anti-academics, especially concerning music. I
would argue (perhaps naively) that this music was 'folk-music'; it was
made by people with no academic training in music (including myself, at
the time) purely for the joy of making it. Yet the music was often quite
atonal. In fact, I've gone back and listened to some of the tapes and
found that many of the lines I was playing were nearly comlplete 12-tone
rows- sometimes 9 or 10 pitches before repeating. Now if you asked me at
that time what I thought about 12-tone music or Anton Webern, I would have
answered something like "That's just a bunch of over-intellectualized
garbage."
Since entering the academic world of music a year ago, I have developed a
new appreciation for 12-tone music and that of Anton Webern in particular-
not by intellectual brainwashing, but merely through listening to the
music with a better understanding of what he was trying to do
--
----------------------
Mark T Vigorito
m...@U.Arizona.EDU
http://u.arizona.edu/~mtv
Matthew H. Fields
In article <4tqenh$9...@epervier.CC.UMontreal.CA>,
<vali...@ere.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>>** Personally, I consider this "modern" atonal stuff as noise instead of
>>** music because if music is supposed to speak to the soul of man, then
>>** the only people this sort of thing speaks to are people who have no
>>** order or structure or purpose in their lives. People need order and
>>** structure.
>Funny! I thought 12-tone atonal music was based on order and structure,
>so much that it doesn't have room for spontaneity. You say the problem
>with atonal is that there's no structure, I say the problem with it is
>that there's too much structure. I see atonal (or 12-tone) as a good tool
>for producing a specific effect at a specific place.
The problem is people throwing around terms without taking time to
reflect on their meaning. 12-tone techniques are neither chaotic nor
an interference to spontaneity.
Galadriel O'Meara
--
What is seen is only temporary. What is unseen is eternal. If you want
to be loved, be lovable. -Ovid
Matthew H. Fields
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960801...@godzilla5.acpub.duke.edu>,
H James Harkins <jhar...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>Dan was probably referring to the often-remarked fact that total serial
>music, music completely organized mathematically, *sounds* remarkably
>like aleatoric music, chance music, or chaos. This is why, if I had to
And the famous text that starts out "b`reshit assah y`h`vah et
hashemayim v`et ha`aretz" *sounds* remarkably like the gurgles of
of a 16-month-old going through talking-readiness. Unless you happen
to be familiar with the tongue, and then it's incredibly obvious
that it's one of the most influential texts in Western culture.
Matthew H. Fields
In article <4tt7kn$m...@epervier.CC.UMontreal.CA>,
<vali...@ere.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>>>Funny! I thought 12-tone atonal music was based on order and structure,
>>>so much that it doesn't have room for spontaneity. You say the problem
>>>with atonal is that there's no structure, I say the problem with it is
>>>that there's too much structure. I see atonal (or 12-tone) as a good tool
>>>for producing a specific effect at a specific place.
>>
>>The problem is people throwing around terms without taking time to
>>reflect on their meaning. 12-tone techniques are neither chaotic nor
>>an interference to spontaneity
>
>the pitch* but it's true that the other parameters shouldn't be treated
>separatly, so what I said doesn't apply to 12-tone. What I said applies to
The answer to that is that if the row you're using doesn't embody
what you want at all moments, you shouldn't be using that row.
>integral serialism which uses a serie for every parameters. You can like
>how it sounds or not, but show me where's the spontaneity, in the choice
>of your series?
Spontaneity is not the same as freedom, and is in fact part of what
goes into good 12-tone music. If you don't find serial ideas a good
match for your interests and desires, don't use them.
> how long will it take to find a serie that will give you,
>for instance, accents that coincide with the right note all through your
>piece (without changing anything in your series).
>integral serialism is so
>structured that if you want spontaneity you'll have to change elements in
>your series here and there to make it sound good.
Only if you failed to make "it sounds good" the criterion on which
you chose the series in the first place.
> If you change things
>here and there, why bother serialize everything?
Uh, because you applied criteria that sound good 95% of the time,
like in the Berg violin concerto?
> I think I've taken it too far, we were only talking about atonal
>music and 12-tone. I was just surprised that some people said 12-tone lacked
>in structure and order, when to me (*concerning the pitch*) there is more
>structure in 12-tone than in tonal music.
Now, that's a different matter. I think there's *exactly the same*
amount of "structure" or "order" or "sense that you cannot change
a single note without diminishing the work" in Webern and in Mozart.
Dan Lydick
In article <tagutcow-310...@pa2dsp21.nr.infi.net>, tagu...@nr.infi.net (Robert Caponi) writes:
>In article <4tnvmt$h...@superb.csc.ti.com>, lyd...@cvp.ti.com wrote:
>
>** Personally, I consider this "modern" atonal stuff as noise instead of
>** music because if music is supposed to speak to the soul of man, then
>** the only people this sort of thing speaks to are people who have no
>** order or structure or purpose in their lives. People need order and
>** structure. Just like a child needs boundaries of acceptable behavior
>** to feel secure as a person growing up. People simply do not thrive
>** on chaos. (I personally have used some elements of this kind of
>** music in my own work, but VERY sparingly, and only for a specific
>** reason, so don't gripe at my opinion yet.)
>
>Sometimes I like chaos, sometimes I don't. Atonal and tonal music offer
>both, depending on the composer. (Hmmm, how come writing like Matt has
>become second nature?)
>
I would be interested in any recommended listening of something containing
some "chaos" that you believe has merit. Seriously. Both tonal and atonal.
I _am_ open-minded enough to continue reviewing the subject.
>** Unfortunately for everyone, the idea of atonal music, 12-tone, etc. is
>** popular with the academic world. It seems like the only place it seems
>** to find acceptance. This is not unlike the amusing anecdote that the
>** only place they still teach Marx and Lenin is in the academic world.
>** The professors have not yet noticed that the Soviet Union has fallen
>** apart and its philosophies have been discredited throughout almost the
>** entire former communist world.
>
>You're not trying to equate atonality or communism, are you? Or claim that
>atonality has been discredited?
>
Hmmm. Good point. I guess I am trying to say that maybe it never got
any "credit" in the first place. Look at those who have tried it.
In the later 1970's and into the 1980's the rock music world really
got into using forms that included heavy effects usage for the electric
guitar, such as fuzz and distortion units. Unintelligile lyrics followed.
I believe that they went off the deep end so much that many people stopped
listening to them, which gave rise to the resurrection of people like Led
Zepplin and many of the other "older" rock groups. Now maybe this is a bit
of a diversion from the subject, or widening it some, but I think the common
element is the chaos that prevails in each.
Matthew H. Fields
In article <4ttjbc$j...@panix3.panix.com>, John Brock <jbr...@panix.com> wrote:
>And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
>which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Huh? Please give an example of this sort of music.
>being totally random. Music has a biological basis, and like our other
>senses (e.g., vision, or smell) our sense of music is highly
>selective.
Umm hum, rhymed verse has a biological basis, too.
> Certain sound structures are perceived as music, while
>other structures are not perceived at all, or are perceived only as
>intellectual puzzles by people with highly trained ears.
We're back to the "sharing music requires sharing a belief system"
thing here.
> As with our
>other senses, it is somewhat arbitrary what can be perceived and what
>can't. Certain animals see things that we simply do not see, and it is
>highly possible that another intelligent species would have a sense of
>music that would be simply different from ours, or perhaps have none at
>all. This arbitrariness is the key. Traditional composers in the West
>and elsewhere, relying on their ears, have sought out the special
>structures we hear as music.
> The creators of the most highly
>mathematically organized music have taken the exact opposite approach:
>creating elaborate structures based on abstract mathematical
>operations, and then demanding that we hear these structures as music.
Please give examples of composers and works described by the preceding
sentence. What on earth are you talking about?
>This simply doesn't work and never will, and it is entirely natural
>that for most people such "music" should be indistinguishable from true
>chaos.
This is, of course, meaningful in a certain belief system, I'm sure.
Matthew H. Fields
>Excuse me, but I have never heard any foreign language that sounds even
>remotely like the babbling of a 16 month old child. You are going to
>have to find another analogy.
*But*, have you never heard somebody *claim* unselfconciously that
Chinese, or Arabic, or some other language was just unintelligible
bloobling? That's the kind of silly thing to say that I think
you're saying about unfamiliar kinds of music here. That'd
be just as silly as for me to say that Country & Western is
music that gives people headaches, unless their heads have
been protected by 4 stiff drinks.
I think you're extrapolating from your own feelings to The World, and
from folks in a certain culture to The Species.
Why don't you tell us about the music you *do* like?
Fredrik Eide Nilsen
fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew H. Fields) wrote:
---cut---
That'd
>be just as silly as for me to say that Country & Western is
>music that gives people headaches, unless their heads have
>been protected by 4 stiff drinks.
---cut---
I don`t think that`s a silly thing to say. It`s absolutely a true
statement, at least for me.
--
Fredrik Eide Nilsen
feni...@sn.no
http://www.sn.no/~fenilsen
Roger L. Lustig
> >In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960801...@godzilla5.acpub.duke.edu>,
> >H James Harkins <jhar...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
> >>Dan was probably referring to the often-remarked fact that total serial
> >>music, music completely organized mathematically, *sounds* remarkably
> >>like aleatoric music, chance music, or chaos. This is why, if I had to
>
> >And the famous text that starts out "b`reshit assah y`h`vah et
> >hashemayim v`et ha`aretz" *sounds* remarkably like the gurgles of
> >of a 16-month-old going through talking-readiness. Unless you happen
> >to be familiar with the tongue, and then it's incredibly obvious
> >that it's one of the most influential texts in Western culture.
> remotely like the babbling of a 16 month old child. You are going to
> have to find another analogy.
Yet others have made exactly that analogy wrt languages they didn't
understand.
> And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
> which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
> being totally random.
Whose 'the ear' are you referring to?
> Music has a biological basis,
Really? *Hearing* does, but I don't know of any biological basis
for music.
> and like our other
> senses (e.g., vision, or smell) our sense of music is highly
> selective. Certain sound structures are perceived as music,
No. They are perceived as musical sound, perhaps; but music
is perceived in terms of events or behaviors or practices.
> while
> other structures are not perceived at all, or are perceived only as
> intellectual puzzles by people with highly trained ears.
You left out 'culture.' Some cultures recognize some things as
highly significant in a musical sense; others hear those same
things as meaningless noise.
> As with our
> other senses, it is somewhat arbitrary what can be perceived and what
> can't.
Music isn't a sense, though.
> Certain animals see things that we simply do not see, and it is
> highly possible that another intelligent species would have a sense of
> music that would be simply different from ours,
Who's this 'we' you keep talking about? Is your 'sense of music'
like that of a Javanese, or a Senagalese?
> or perhaps have none at
> all. This arbitrariness is the key. Traditional composers in the West
> and elsewhere, relying on their ears, have sought out the special
> structures we hear as music.
Correction: that their cultures hear as music.
> The creators of the most highly
> mathematically organized music have taken the exact opposite approach:
Nonsense. What "mathematical" composers have not begun with sounds that
are well-established in their culture?
> creating elaborate structures based on abstract mathematical
> operations, and then demanding that we hear these structures as music.
Name one such composer. I don't know any like that.
> This simply doesn't work and never will, and it is entirely natural
> that for most people such "music" should be indistinguishable from true
> chaos.
It's also a terrible description of what composers of any kind do.
Roger
David Cleary
H James Harkins (jhar...@acpub.duke.edu) wrote:
: Hello, everyone... I just discovered this newsgroup via Yahoo's listing.
: It's really great to see friendly, down-to-earth, and fun discussions of
: creative musicianship that don't get bogged down in dogmatic silliness of
: any sort, at least that I can see.
Unfortunately there is some of that around here. There are many different
camps of dogma, too. They're mostly worth ignoring IMHO. Welcome!
[snip about background and training and a change of style from non-tonal,
free chromatic music to a pop techno style deleted]
: The music at this point is a foregone conclusion: the change has been so
: healthy for myself and for the art that I now can't even imagine
: composing in any medium without addressing the possibilities for joining
: an "art music" sensibility with popular styles. But, since all my
: training has been for an academic career, and now finding myself making
: music that very closely resembles a genre that is offensive to many
: academics, and especially as I'm finishing up my second techno
: experiment, I can't get the questions out of my head:
: - If this music doesn't fit in the community I'm trained to be part of,
: where does it fit? How do I get it there? (--especially considering that
: I've never been able to produce music that satisfies me at even a
: moderately fast pace, partly due to my need to think over what I'm doing,
: and partly because of a long-term case of tendinitis, for which reason
: the thought of trying to eke out a presence on the dancefloor is not
: terribly palatable. I *don't* want to sell myself to the industry!!)
I don't think it will fit in academia IMHO. From what I've observed,
academia tends not to be very interested in recent popular music. Maybe
you can try to create your own "scene?"--not unlike the mid/late '70's
British pub rockers (Nick Lowe, Graham Parker, Elvis Costello) or the
'70's New York new wave scene (Blondie, Television, Talking Heads, Patti
Smith, etc.) or the late '70's British punk scene (The Clash, Sex Pistols,
et. al.) or the various US independent scenes in such unlikely places as
Athens, GA and Minneapolis. You might study how such scenes got started
and publicized themselves--for example, you might find out how punk
created its underground culture of magazines and such.
Maybe you might consider basing yourself in a city that stands a
reasonable chance of being friendly to what you do. New York? Los Angeles?
London? Berlin? What's going on in art-pop music in these cities?
Your academic training may help you in some ways. It can give you a good
theoretical understanding of what you're writing and can instill a strong
work ethic and critical sense in you--things some pop music folks don't
appear to possess at all.
: - Am I misreading the academic world? I haven't composed enough of this
: music, or sent it out enough times to get a good sense of the
: climate--but I do see the barely-tolerant reactions of some of the
: faculty and (fewer) students here (although some students are genuinely
: enthusiastic, which is good to see!).
I think the academic music scene has other interests besides the type of
music you're writing. I wouldn't go that route, myself.
: Are there places where this kind of
: work is *strongly* supported? Where?
That's the million-dollar question. I'm not sure what the current scene is
like in pop music in various cities as I don't write in that style. That's
IMHO something you need to research.
[rest of message snipped for space]
Hope this is helpful. Good luck in your endeavors.
Dave
David Cleary
Dan Lydick (lyd...@cvpsun01.csc.ti.com) wrote:
: In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.96072...@carr2.acpub.duke.edu>, H James Harkins <jhar...@acpub.duke.edu> writes:
: Personally, I consider this "modern" atonal stuff as noise instead of
: music because if music is supposed to speak to the soul of man, then
: the only people this sort of thing speaks to are people who have no
: order or structure or purpose in their lives.
What makes you say that? I know a number of people who like "'modern'
atonal stuff" and indeed have order, structure, and purpose in their
lives.
: People need order and
: structure. Just like a child needs boundaries of acceptable behavior
: to feel secure as a person growing up. People simply do not thrive
: on chaos.
I know a fair number of people who in fact do seem to thrive on chaos and
confusion. When things are too sedate for one person I know, she stirs
things up a little just for the excitement factor. Another good friend of
mine seems to get a charge out of last-minute cramming and craziness. It's
not my cup of tea, but it is for some folks. I don't think one can safely
generalize here.
[snip]
: Unfortunately for everyone, the idea of atonal music, 12-tone, etc. is
: popular with the academic world.
Depends on who you talk to. Not every faculty member writes atonal or
12-tone music. Some, like George Rochberg, write frankly tonal
compositions. My D.M.A. teacher, Norman Dinerstein, wrote music that
sounded more like Richard Strauss than anything else. I just don't think
one can generalize here.
: It seems like the only place it seems
: to find acceptance.
But there are non-academic people here and in rec.music.classical who like
atonal music by Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Berio, Carter, Sessions, Wolpe,
Xenakis, et. al. I don't think one can generalize here, either.
: This is not unlike the amusing anecdote that the
: only place they still teach Marx and Lenin is in the academic world.
: The professors have not yet noticed that the Soviet Union has fallen
: apart and its philosophies have been discredited throughout almost the
: entire former communist world.
So this makes the study of Communism foolish? Those who do not learn from
history are destined to repeat it, as the old cliche goes.
[snip for space, no qualms about what you wrote, typos aside]
: The point is, regardless of your education or background, if music is
: in your heart, it needs to come out.
Agreed.
: Most "modern" stuff like what
: you describe is simply ignored by everyone because they do not consider
: it to be music.
So if everyone thinks tomatoes are poisonous and doesn't eat them, that
makes tomatoes poisonous? I don't think so. (BTW at one time in history,
people apparently *did* consider tomatoes to be poisonous).
: If they _did_ consider it to be music, you would hear
: it on the radio and find record stores filled with such "tunes".
Or maybe no one knows the music because it's not readily available and
played. Or maybe there are other reasons.
: Now, just because I don't like this stuff or consider it "music", please
: nobody start sending me replies with 4-letter words. If _you_ like it,
: fine. Have at it. This is just my opinion.
I feel it's rude to use obscenities against someone online. You won't get
that from me.
In fact, I do like some of this music, and indeed I will "have at" the
pieces I like, whatever style they are cast in. I like and know a lot of
music in a lot styles, though--and not all of it is "classical music,"
either.
I don't mind folks having opinions as long as they are well thought out.
What bothers me about your post is that you seem to be making a lot of
sweeping, ill-considered generalizations about people, academia, and
contemporary music.
: I also admit that I have
: been helped enormously by people I have become acquainted with from the
: local music school (I live in the Dallas area, and have studied with and
: performed with folks from the University of North Texas, formerly North
: Texas State University). They have been a very positive influence.
So academia's not all bad, eh? :)
: If I were you, I would start hanging around folks who perform diffent
: styles. Jazz, country, big band, etc. Go to concerts. Borrow tapes,
: records, and CD's. Get some fake books and study them on the piano,
: guitar, etc. There is a LOT more music out there than the academic
: world wishes to expose you to.
Listening is one of the best things one can do IMHO. The more music one
listens to, the deeper a well of experience one can draw from IMHO.
: Part of the reason for this is purely cultural. That is just the way
: universities are. Also, in the academic world just like the commercial
: world, people like to build their own personal kingdoms.
They do online, too.....
: When people
: trying to build such a kingdom don't have control of a musical genre,
: they will not teach it because they cannot control it.
Or they may not know anything about this music and thus feel unqualified
to teach it. Or they may be so wrapped up in their own world of
composition that they know little else beyond their own small style. Or
they may simply not have much interest in what little popular music they
have heard. Why must everyone be so malicious in your take on things?
: It develops on
: its own without their influence, and as such threatens kingdom-builders.
: (I saw this in my engineering education. Same song, different verse.)
Some folks indeed are malicious in life. But I don't think one can
generalize about this.
: To be fair, however, the two elements sometimes feed on each other,
: along with other expectations placed on the staff of an academic setting.
I don't understand what you're saying here.
: So it really isn't a simple problem.
Now we agree on something. :)
: However, to quote a well-known
: professor at U.N.T., "The students we graduate not only know their music,
: they get jobs."
In theory and composition? The market is stun-level bad. I'd be surprised
if their placement rate for recent graduates is any better than anyone
else's.
[snip--I have no intention of getting into a religious argument] :P
: Per my previous comments, I am glad to see _someone_ rattle their stodgy
: old cages!!! "Modern", free-chromatic, non-tonal "music" indeed! They
: may have to power to pass or fail a student, but they do NOT have the
: power to destroy a person's creativity unless a person grants it to them!
Rick St. C's experiences nonwithstanding, I don't think every composition
teacher in academia is out to stifle creativity. A few of my teachers were
indeed very destructive and I got away from them as fast as I could. But
the majority were extremely helpful, and I value the good things they
taught me and the support they gave me in my creative endeavors.
: I know I have not heard any of your work, but honestly, I don't think you
: should top trying. And do study as many styles as you can _outside_ of
: the academic walls. There is some junk out there, but there is also
: some good stuff out there.
One shouldn't let one's education stop outside a classroom regardless of
the academic situation, good or bad.
: Now you may gripe at my opinion if you wish....
Don't worry, I will.
And before you gripe at me and say that I must be a student or faculty
member with an axe to grind because of my Harvard-based address, let me
put that misconception to bed right away. I work a day job at one of the
college libraries to put food on the table.
Dave
John Ladasky
In article <4ttusm$6...@hasle.sn.no>,
Fredrik Eide Nilsen <feni...@sn.no> wrote:
>fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew H. Fields) wrote:
>
>---cut---
> That'd
>>be just as silly as for me to say that Country & Western is
>>music that gives people headaches, unless their heads have
>>been protected by 4 stiff drinks.
>---cut---
>
>I don`t think that`s a silly thing to say. It`s absolutely a true
>statement, at least for me.
Well, this is a crossposted thread... and in rec.music.compose
we welcome composers of all stripes. So there are people over here who
might find your remark rude.
--
Unique ID : Ladasky, John Joseph Jr.
Title : BA Biochemistry, U.C. Berkeley, 1989 (Ph.D. perhaps 1998???)
Location : Stanford University, Dept. of Structural Biology, Fairchild D-105
Keywords : immunology, music, running, Green
Matthew H. Fields
Yah, look, it all comes down to saying, "what do I like? How
can I make sure that every note in a piece contributes something that
I like?" If that's over-intellectualizing, maybe over-intellectualizing
is a good thing.
Breeze
In article <4to7u8$c...@news.eecs.umich.edu>, fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu
(Matthew H. Fields) wrote:
> It's my experience that folks with music performance majors are
> the only folks who don't "get" atonal musics.
Even with the qualifier "It's been my experience...", this is a fairly ignorant
gross generalization. Or, you've been hanging around the wrong players.
Or, did you mean "folks who hang around with music performance majors"?
> Do you value the music of Haydn? I strongly suspect that if you
> bother doing the surveys, you'll find that Haydn's name is not even
> known to the public at large, and certainly that almost nobody can
> identify his work on hearing it. Only in academia is it preserved.
I guess that this may be true in Michigan, but as a generalization,
it's worthless. Haydn's name doesn't pop up on MTV too often, but in
this town, at least, his works are presented with fair regularity to the
concert going
populace, and appear frequently enough on the radio.
Of all the possible names to ascribe to academic preservation, I can't
see choosing Haydn.
>You want to find
> Beethoven-lovers en masse outside of a Beethoven concert, 'fraid
> you're going to have to go to academia.
Um, where do you come up with this stuff? A Beethoven concert or academia?
Beethoven's music enjoys widespread admiration from musicians and
non-musicians alike, and I must know scores of people who have well stocked
collections of classical music, including LvB, who wouldn't be caught dead
anywhere near a classical music concert. And isn't a Beethoven concert a
logical
place for "Beethoven-lovers" to turn up? This seems to be a bit like asserting,
"outside of the Produce section, you'd be hard pressed to find lettuce in
a grocery
store".
> Meanwhile, the atonal music of Bartok is more popular than ever.
This observation based on what - Billboard chart positions?
>
> Haendel---now you think that without the influence of Jimi Hendrix
> (who happened to camp out next door to Haendel's old digs when he was
> in the UK), anybody in North America would know of Haendel (other
> than---shudder---academics)?
Yeah, kudos to Jimi for reviving the Messiah.
> Who's selling more today: Brahms (with no
> royalties to be paid, with his established reputation, etc.) or Madonna?
> The "it doesn't sell, therefore it must be bad" thing is really
> pretty lame. Remember marketing? Is a pet rock really a finer work
> of sculpture than Rodin's Kiss?
I don't think anyone who ever bought a Pet Rock ever thought that it
was great art, despite any "marketing" efforts to the contrary - what's
your point?
That Madonna only outsells Brahms because she's well marketed? Doesn't
really work that simple. "Marketing" (whatever the definition) can create a
Madonna, and therefore help her outsell a Paula Abdul, but "marketing" doesn't
create a genre-based need. It reacts to it. "Marketing" didn't dress up
a bunch
of slackers from Seattle in flannel shirts and unwashed hair and send them out
on a Lollapaloozer tour, it only helps decide *which* slackers should go, and by
extension sells the tickets.
>
> > There is a LOT more music out there than the academic
> >world wishes to expose you to.
>
> Sorry, you just made this up, and it's simply not true.
Substitute "is able" for "wishes" in the first statement and it's pretty
close to accurate.
It's also a shame.
> Statements like this make me wonder just what music you've heard. Have
> you heard any jazz, for instance? How closely do you suppose Dave
> Brubeck sticks to "tonality"?
Pretty close, actually - chordal extensions add color, and there are some
adventurous turns here and there, but Brubeck's music is, at it's core, very
tonally coherent.
>
> Have you looked at Berklee in Boston?
For techno? Hello? Yngwie Malmsteen, maybe.
> Hmmm, what are the academic walls?
They are the percieved limitations many of today's students feel when they
sense a huge gulf between themselves and thier professors concerning the
current trends in musical styles, popular and otherwise, and the percieved
apathy, real or imagined, on the part of the professor in helping those students
find the paths of musical expression they are seeking. This is not to
suggest that
universities should be offering graduate degrees in Club DJ Studies, but I see
hoards of young and hungry music students every year who are groping about
blindly trying to synthesize thier "classical" training with the popular
modes of
musical expression they grew up with, and thier professors are, more often
than not,
ill-equipped to aid the students in this direction.
Furthermore, traditionally, undergraduate studies in harmony and counterpoint
have been weighted quite heavily in learning what are presented as "rules", and
all too often the professors fail to impart to the students exactly why it
is that these
studies are important, and how those studies will benefit the student.
Time and
time again, one hears of students claiming that they were feeling restricted by
being taught that there were "rules" (read:limitations) about how they
were and were
not supposed to compose, when in reality they what they were really being taught
was simply proficiency in handling the basic grammar of how Western Music
works,
and those "rules" were simply the methods by which basic building blocks
are presented
in an organized fashion. What are sometime percieved as accepted outer
boundaries
are, in reality, simply jumping off points for further expression.
A classic case I hear all the time is, "Why the %$#$^ are we learning
Fugue? Who
the %#^$%# writes fugues anymore?", when, in fact, what the student is being
taught is how to handle basic materials contrapuntally, and fugue, with its
percieved restrictions, is the perfect venue for such an undertaking.
Unfortunately,
this simple concept is often lost on the student, and in some cases, I
think that
even the professor has lost sight of it.
JB
vali...@ere.umontreal.ca
>
>
> Reply to: Matthew H. Fields
>
> RE: WHERE SHOULD I BE SENDING MY MUSIC?
>
>
> University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
> Newsgroups:
> rec.music.compose
> Reply to newsgroup(s)
> References:
>In article <4tqenh$9...@epervier.CC.UMontreal.CA>,
> <vali...@ere.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>>Funny! I thought 12-tone atonal music was based on order and structure,
>>so much that it doesn't have room for spontaneity. You say the problem
>>with atonal is that there's no structure, I say the problem with it is
>>that there's too much structure. I see atonal (or 12-tone) as a good tool
>>for producing a specific effect at a specific place.
>
>The problem is people throwing around terms without taking time to
>reflect on their meaning. 12-tone techniques are neither chaotic nor
>an interference to spontaneity
What I meant was that there's no room for spontaneity *regarding
the pitch* but it's true that the other parameters shouldn't be treated
separatly, so what I said doesn't apply to 12-tone. What I said applies to
integral serialism which uses a serie for every parameters. You can like
how it sounds or not, but show me where's the spontaneity, in the choice
of your series? how long will it take to find a serie that will give you,
for instance, accents that coincide with the right note all through your
piece (without changing anything in your series). integral serialism is so
structured that if you want spontaneity you'll have to change elements in
your series here and there to make it sound good. If you change things
here and there, why bother serialize everything?
I think I've taken it too far, we were only talking about atonal
music and 12-tone. I was just surprised that some people said 12-tone lacked
in structure and order, when to me (*concerning the pitch*) there is more
structure in 12-tone than in tonal music.
JV
John Brock
In article <4trrff$2...@news.eecs.umich.edu>,
Matthew H. Fields <fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu> wrote:
>In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960801...@godzilla5.acpub.duke.edu>,
>H James Harkins <jhar...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>>Dan was probably referring to the often-remarked fact that total serial
>>music, music completely organized mathematically, *sounds* remarkably
>>like aleatoric music, chance music, or chaos. This is why, if I had to
>And the famous text that starts out "b`reshit assah y`h`vah et
>hashemayim v`et ha`aretz" *sounds* remarkably like the gurgles of
>of a 16-month-old going through talking-readiness. Unless you happen
>to be familiar with the tongue, and then it's incredibly obvious
>that it's one of the most influential texts in Western culture.
Excuse me, but I have never heard any foreign language that sounds even
remotely like the babbling of a 16 month old child. You are going to
have to find another analogy.
And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
being totally random. Music has a biological basis, and like our other
senses (e.g., vision, or smell) our sense of music is highly
selective. Certain sound structures are perceived as music, while
other structures are not perceived at all, or are perceived only as
intellectual puzzles by people with highly trained ears. As with our
other senses, it is somewhat arbitrary what can be perceived and what
can't. Certain animals see things that we simply do not see, and it is
highly possible that another intelligent species would have a sense of
music that would be simply different from ours, or perhaps have none at
all. This arbitrariness is the key. Traditional composers in the West
and elsewhere, relying on their ears, have sought out the special
structures we hear as music. The creators of the most highly
mathematically organized music have taken the exact opposite approach:
creating elaborate structures based on abstract mathematical
operations, and then demanding that we hear these structures as music.
This simply doesn't work and never will, and it is entirely natural
that for most people such "music" should be indistinguishable from true
chaos.
--
John Brock
jbr...@panix.com
Jeff Fried
> >which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
> Huh? Please give an example of this sort of music.
>
The works of Anton Weber and Babbit (can't recall his first
name, I think its Milton) are two composers that created music
using mathematical techniques (serialism which viewed
mathematical is a form of combinatorics and for Babbit, his own
brand of Set theory). Both made musical sense (though some of
Babbit's pieces went on too long, a criticism that can also be
leveled at more conventional composers--though nobody would
accuse Webern of that sin).
I think the jazz saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton uses
serial techniques but I'm not sure.
-- Jeff.
Anthony Cornicello
>
> ** You're not trying to equate atonality or communism, are you? Or claim that
> ** atonality has been discredited?
>
> Whoops, I meant "atonality with communism."
> --
> tagu...@nr.infinet.com
Schoenberg apparently hated a comparison like this, especially being new to
this country. He thought of twelve-tone writing as being closer to democracy:
"one note, one vote!".
Frank Brickle
John Brock (jbr...@panix.com) wrote:
: And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
: which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
: being totally random.
What music were you thinking of? Darmstadt-style serialism? Hardly cases
of "high mathematical organization." The techniques in that music
rarely rise above simple numerology.
OTOH standard rep can look pretty slick from the standpoint of
mathematical organization sometimes. Maybe the high-serial pieces
could have used a little *more* mathematical organization...
Consider: "Architecture which is highly organized mathematically
(eg the Parthenon) so often strikes the eye as being totally random."
: ...Music has a biological basis, and like our other
: senses (e.g., vision, or smell) our sense of music is highly
: selective.
Oops! Better white out all the numbers in those biochem books!
Roger L. Lustig
Jeff Fried wrote:
> > In article <4ttjbc$j...@panix3.panix.com>, John Brock <jbr...@panix.com> wrote:
> > >And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
> > >which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > Huh? Please give an example of this sort of music.
> The works of Anton Weber and Babbit (can't recall his first
> name, I think its Milton)
Webern and Babbitt. What do you have against final letters? 8-)
> are two composers that created music
> using mathematical techniques (serialism which viewed
> mathematical is a form of combinatorics and for Babbit, his own
> brand of Set theory).
What mathematical techniques did Webern use? I've studied his
music, and don't know of any particular mathematical techniques
he used.
As for Babbitt and "set theory," he's done no work at all in
that field. He uses sets of pitch-classes, but so have all
manner of other composers. Numbers are simply easy ways of
expressing certain regularities--much like chord labels.
> Both made musical sense (though some of
> Babbit's pieces went on too long, a criticism that can also be
> leveled at more conventional composers--though nobody would
> accuse Webern of that sin).
Which of Babbitt's pieces go on too long?
> I think the jazz saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton uses
> serial techniques but I'm not sure.
So do many, many other composers. This doesn't mean that they're
doing any great amount of math.
Roger
Matthew H. Fields
> That'd
>>be just as silly as for me to say that Country & Western is
>>music that gives people headaches, unless their heads have
>>been protected by 4 stiff drinks.
>---cut---
>I don`t think that`s a silly thing to say. It`s absolutely a true
>statement, at least for me.
>--
>Fredrik Eide Nilsen
OK, well, it's true for you. I hope you don't therefore conclude
that this truth is coded in all human DNA.
Matthew H. Fields
Let's see, biological bases for music: The mouth organ. All the rest
of the organs, come to think of it. Dental grooves. Eardrums! Sinus
Rhythm. Tibias, just like on organs (there seems to be a connection
here...). Oh, and of course most of us are born with about 20 digits,
so we're all set for digital music.
What else? Oh, yes, think of how many babies wouldn't have been born
had their parents not been listening to "It had to be you" at the key
moment. On the other hand, think of how many babies would have been
born had the couple *not* been busy listening to "It had to be you" at
the key moment, yup, I guess that one cuts both ways. We'll just have
to stick with the organs as our prime example of a biological basis
for music.
Matthew H. Fields
In article <32027E...@ix.netcom.com>,
Roger L. Lustig <juli...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>> creating elaborate structures based on abstract mathematical
>> operations, and then demanding that we hear these structures as music.
>
This is the point at which to bring in the obbligatory joke about the
composer who composes by calculating the amount of money to be made on
their work, optimizing that without regards to beauty, interest, or
anything to do with the sound itself. Insert your favorite
person-who-was-a-topic-of-a-crosspost here and complete the joke.
I dunno, to a lot of folks the letters M.C., K.C., and C.L. come
to mind.
Deborah Star
I'm rather puzzled why I don't appreciate "country twang" but I love
the wail of a sax playing slow blues. So similar yet worlds apart.
comments anyone?
Fredrik Eide Nilsen
lad...@leland.Stanford.EDU (John Ladasky) wrote:
>In article <4ttusm$6...@hasle.sn.no>,
>Fredrik Eide Nilsen <feni...@sn.no> wrote:
>>fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew H. Fields) wrote:
>>
>>---cut---
>> That'd
>>>be just as silly as for me to say that Country & Western is
>>>music that gives people headaches, unless their heads have
>>>been protected by 4 stiff drinks.
>>---cut---
>>
>>I don`t think that`s a silly thing to say. It`s absolutely a true
>>statement, at least for me.
> Well, this is a crossposted thread... and in rec.music.compose
>we welcome composers of all stripes. So there are people over here who
>might find your remark rude.
>--
>Unique ID : Ladasky, John Joseph Jr.
>Title : BA Biochemistry, U.C. Berkeley, 1989 (Ph.D. perhaps 1998???)
>Location : Stanford University, Dept. of Structural Biology, Fairchild D-105
>Keywords : immunology, music, running, Green
Sorry!
Matthew H. Fields
Even Mozart knew how to count the notes of a scale and cunningly
arrange to land on the note he wanted right on the beat he wanted.
Is that sort of thing "Music considered as pure mathematics?" If
not, then Webern's and Babbitt's use of patterns isn't, either.
Matthew H. Fields
In article <3202F1...@ultranet.com>,
Anthony Cornicello <a-m...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>Schoenberg apparently hated a comparison like this, especially being new to
>this country. He thought of twelve-tone writing as being closer to democracy:
>"one note, one vote!".
And even that was by way of casting about for a metaphor for the technical
side; his technique still had an aesthetic "why" and "what sounds to evoke"
that isn't explainable in such droll terms. But as the posting I borrowed
from rec.music.classical shows, you don't need any special training to
feel its effects---only a little time to get acquainted with the music.
Jeff Harrington
This thread will never die. A couple of quick thoughts.
1. Artists do new things for two reasons:
A. They're bored with the status quo.
B. It's fashionable.
2. Artists are always looking for new ways to organize things because:
(repeat A and B above)
3. If the audience doesn't get something, it will be forgotten. No amount
of institutional approval will perpetuate bad art.
(repeat A and B above for concert organizers, musicologists, theorists).
Jeff Harrington "Art does not make peace...
je...@parnasse.com That is not its business...
http://www.parnasse.com Art is peace." -- Robert Lowell
Frank Brickle
Jeff Fried (je...@dgii.com) wrote:
: The works of Anton Weber and Babbit (can't recall his first
: name, I think its Milton) are two composers that created music
: using mathematical techniques (serialism which viewed
: mathematical is a form of combinatorics and for Babbit, his own
: brand of Set theory). Both made musical sense (though some of
You might think about looking into this a little further before
making allegations about it.
Are you "mathematical" because you're 6 fit tall, and 6 is a number?
: Babbit's pieces went on too long, a criticism that can also be
^^^^
AFAIK he's still churning them out at a good clip...
Matthew H. Fields
In article <32036B...@extro.ucc.su.oz.au>,
anthony linden jones <ajo...@extro.ucc.su.oz.au> wrote:
>Hi all,
>Just catching this thread half-way in.
>Matthew H. Fields wrote:
>> >which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> Huh? Please give an example of this sort of music.
>I don't understand, Mat. There are many examples, and I know you know
>because I've downloaded your course notes on serialism. Am I missing
>something?
Are you saying that I wrote something about music that is highly
organized mathematically?
It sounds like you're referring to Gems 5,
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields/gems/5.htm which see. Please.
We're not talking about "mathematically organized" when we talk about
serialism, we're talking about the same level of arithmetic you use
when you want to know how many more beats left in your measure.
It seems *I'm* missing something, and that's the example of purely
"mathematically organized" music.
>> > The creators of the most highly
>> >mathematically organized music have taken the exact opposite
>> >approach:
>> >creating elaborate structures based on abstract mathematical
>> >operations, and then demanding that we hear these structures as
>> >music.
>> Please give examples of composers and works described by the preceding
>> sentence. What on earth are you talking about?
>Again, surely there are many examples - all of Xenakis' early works,
>2nd Viennese school, Boulez, Stockhausen, Babbit etc, etc, etc, ad
>nauseum.
Xenakis talks (and writes) a blue streak of semi-science, but really
his early works were big textural gestures that he improvised, allowing
arithmetic formulas to fill in the more-or-less irrelevant details. Now
he's gotten good at supplying those details himself by his own improvisatory
methods, so he's making the same music without computer-assistance.
I'm pretty darned familiar with the rest of the folks you've cited,
and I also have some background in math, and I must admit I'm
completely at a loss for why you think any of those folks "created
elaborate structures based on abstract mathematical operations, and
then demanded that we hear these structures as music."
>The notion of chaos theories applied to music composition is an
>intellectually appealing one. I haven't heard any great successes, but
>I'm really keen to hear some. The main problem I see is the linear
>nature of our perception of music. Visual stimuli are perceived as a
>whole - we see the whole of a picture at once, and so can quickly
>recognise patterns.
Hmmm, you might be interested in Michael McNabb's Love in the Asylum.
It starts out with the sound of a crowd being called to a concert by
tolling bells, and an LPC filter gradually closes down on the crowd
noise, turning it into the voice of a single soprano singer...and
then the music's off and dancing. But again, I can't see anybody
seriously thinking that McNabb started with a mathematical construct
like LPC, then expected to force folks to hear *that* construct as
music. He merely exploited it as a sound source for his musical gesture,
same as all the other folks we're talking about here. And it's surely
a much more mathematically sophisticated tool than anything any of the
other folks other than Xenakis ever used.
I suggest you look up words like "algebra" in the index of the late
Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective. This "sterile algebra" meme
has been floating around for quite a while---it was tossed at Wagner,
Berlioz, etc., just as much as it's tossed at 1920's composers today,
and that doesn't make it any more true.
Matt
Wes & Ann Judkins
> > Music has a biological basis,
>
> for music.
Well, why do you think we listen to and like music? Because of magic? no! If you look
down far enough you can reason in no other way that music is tuned to tickle some
biological fancy. Why else do you figure we can hear music as music? I am confused. We
are biological beings, how can music not be somewhat biologically baised?
Robert Caponi
In article <4tvv8e$j...@Oak.IC.Mankato.MN.US>, Wes & Ann Judkins
<"jud...@ic.mankato.mn.us"@ic.mankato.mn.us> wrote:
** > > Music has a biological basis,
** >
** > Really? *Hearing* does, but I don't know of any biological basis
** > for music.
**
** Well, why do you think we listen to and like music? Because of magic?
no! If you look
** down far enough you can reason in no other way that music is tuned to
tickle some
** biological fancy. Why else do you figure we can hear music as music? I
am confused. We
** are biological beings, how can music not be somewhat biologically baised?
What we have here are undefined terms. Just because something is
'biological' (uggghhh) in origin doesn't make it biological.
BTW: I find "magic" to be a perfectly plausible origin for musical
creation and appreciation. Why is it that, when faced with a subject which
is beyond the scope of science, we (and by 'we' I mean 'you' :) have to
invent "scientific-sounding" reasons for their existance that have no
basis in fact. Not only is a great deal of human dignity stripped this
way, but it is an abortion of the scientific method.
--
tagu...@nr.infinet.com
Matthew H. Fields
In article <tagutcow-030...@pa4dsp18.nr.infi.net>,
Hmmm, I find "because magic" meaningful only when all those present
accept that it means the same as "I don't know". I'd say that some sort
of science is the only way we could know the answer to this question,
but the statement "It has a biological basis" is in fact unsupported here,
and the further statement "certain musics have a biological basis
while others are contrary to biology" is clearly leading to a logical
contradiction. Let's spell it out. In what way could the
makers of music that you don't like be any less "biological" than
the makers of music that you do like?
Matthew H. Fields
In article <4tvv8e$j...@Oak.IC.Mankato.MN.US>,
Wes & Ann Judkins <"jud...@ic.mankato.mn.us"@ic.mankato.mn.us> wrote:
>> > Music has a biological basis,
>>
>
>Well, why do you think we listen to and like music? Because of magic? no! If you look
Why do we post to usenet? Must be those darned usenet genes!
Mark Starr
Not all mathematically organized music is of the Milton Babbit, Xenakis,
Boulez variety. Bela Bartok was long obsessed with Fibonacci's Series,
often nicknamed The Theory of the Golden Number. This theory explains
many phenomena in nature--including the divisions inside a spiral
seashell, and the arrangement of petals on an artichoke plant. Bartok
used this theory to organize several of his most important
works--including the first movement of his Music for Strings, Percussion
and Celesta, and all of his opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle." While not
exactly mathematics, Leonard Berstein used Cabalistic numerology as the
basis for his ballet "The Dybbyk."
Also, I would agree with Roger that serial composers (in particular
Webern) don't really use a significant amount of math. It's more like
basic arithmetic, counting from 1 to 12. In Webern's Symphony, Op 21,
for example, after the compilation of the row set, the rest of the
organization is mostly musical (canons, double canons, retrogrades and
retrograde inversions.) You can find the same techniques in Bach's Art
of Fugue.
Regards,
Mark Starr
Matthew H. Fields
In article <320308...@ix.netcom.com>,
Ummm, maybe it's that country twang is the output of a mathematical
function that's neat to think about and talk about but has nothing to
do with musical enjoyment and is being forced down the throats of students
everywhere in place of aesthetic values? ;-)
No, really, maybe it's just that you play sax and understand its aesthetic?
Matthew H. Fields
In article <32039C...@inow.com>, Mark Starr <st...@inow.com> wrote:
>Also, I would agree with Roger that serial composers (in particular
>Webern) don't really use a significant amount of math. It's more like
>basic arithmetic, counting from 1 to 12. In Webern's Symphony, Op 21,
>for example, after the compilation of the row set, the rest of the
>organization is mostly musical (canons, double canons, retrogrades and
>retrograde inversions.) You can find the same techniques in Bach's Art
>of Fugue.
>
>Regards,
>Mark Starr
Hmmm, and I'd go back and ask what aesthetic choices led to the choice
of the row, too. I suspect the most cogent account of it was its utility
in expressing comon harmonic and melodic effects under the very same
canons, double canons, inversions, etc. You can find the very same
techniques in Bach's choice of fugue subjects and countersubjects.
John Brock
In article <4ttmft$6...@news.eecs.umich.edu>,
Matthew H. Fields <fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu> wrote:
>>>In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960801...@godzilla5.acpub.duke.edu>,
>>>H James Harkins <jhar...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>>>>Dan was probably referring to the often-remarked fact that total serial
>>>>music, music completely organized mathematically, *sounds* remarkably
>>>>like aleatoric music, chance music, or chaos. This is why, if I had to
>In article <4ttjbc$j...@panix3.panix.com>, John Brock <jbr...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>>And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
>>which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
>Huh? Please give an example of this sort of music.
I have reinserted above the quote by James Harkins which you originally
responded to (I hope I've counted ">"s correctly!). Harkins speaks of
the "often-remarked fact" that "total serial music" sounds remarkably
like aleatoric music. I have heard similar statements from others on
more than one occasion over the years, so I felt I was safe in assuming
that people would know what I was talking about, but if you ask me to
name the people who wrote such music I'm not sure I can, for a reason
I'll get to in a moment.
My understanding was that in the 50s and 60s certain composers,
inspired by the *idea* of serial music, tried to extend the idea to
encompass *all* aspects of music. This would mean that, beyond
manipulating sequences of pitches you would simultaneously perform
similar manipulations on sequences of note duration, dynamics, attack,
timbre, and any other aspect of music that they could extract and
organize. The result was Totally Serial Music (which would have been a
better title for this thread than Mathematically Organized Music, since
serialization really doesn't imply much in the way of mathematics). I
will note that the Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music has an
entry for "Serialism" which concludes:
The term 'serialism' is now reserved, in some theoretical
writings, only for music that goes beyond the pitch serialism
of Schoenberg and applies serial methods to other elements.
This is the music I was referring to, and my understanding is that the
project was a complete failure, that listeners were totally unable to
distinguish totally organized music from totally random music, and that
this is the fact that is "often-remarked". The reason I hesitate to
try to name the composers involved is that, again as I understand the
story, the composers who wrote this sort of music in its most extreme
form were obscure academics who never did become widely known, while
those "serialists" who *did* become widely know (e.g., Babbitt, Nono,
Wuorinen) never quite took the technique all the way to its dead-end
extremes. However I am not a music historian and it is quite possible
that I have gotten the story and the cast of characters a bit garbled,
so if anyone wants to offer any clarifications this will be most
welcome.
BTW, in defense of my "mathematical" thread title, I will note that you
can walk into any music library and easily find music journal articles
that sure as hell do appear to be written almost entirely in terms of
some sort of demented mathematics.
>>being totally random. Music has a biological basis, and like our other
>>senses (e.g., vision, or smell) our sense of music is highly
>>selective.
>Umm hum, rhymed verse has a biological basis, too.
Of course, as does language itself!
>> Certain sound structures are perceived as music, while
>>other structures are not perceived at all, or are perceived only as
>>intellectual puzzles by people with highly trained ears.
>We're back to the "sharing music requires sharing a belief system"
>thing here.
Eh?
>> As with our
>>other senses, it is somewhat arbitrary what can be perceived and what
>>can't. Certain animals see things that we simply do not see, and it is
>>highly possible that another intelligent species would have a sense of
>>music that would be simply different from ours, or perhaps have none at
>>all. This arbitrariness is the key. Traditional composers in the West
>>and elsewhere, relying on their ears, have sought out the special
>>structures we hear as music.
>
>> The creators of the most highly
>>mathematically organized music have taken the exact opposite approach:
>>creating elaborate structures based on abstract mathematical
>>operations, and then demanding that we hear these structures as music.
>Please give examples of composers and works described by the preceding
>sentence. What on earth are you talking about?
See above.
>>This simply doesn't work and never will, and it is entirely natural
>>that for most people such "music" should be indistinguishable from true
>>chaos.
>This is, of course, meaningful in a certain belief system, I'm sure.
Eh?
--
John Brock
jbr...@panix.com
Robert Caponi
** Also, I would agree with Roger that serial composers (in particular
** Webern) don't really use a significant amount of math. It's more like
** basic arithmetic, counting from 1 to 12. In Webern's Symphony, Op 21,
** for example, after the compilation of the row set, the rest of the
** organization is mostly musical (canons, double canons, retrogrades and
** retrograde inversions.) You can find the same techniques in Bach's Art
** of Fugue.
**
** Regards,
** Mark Starr
Well, if it was counting from 1-12, the sum of a row of a magic square
would be 13*6, two very evil numbers. That's why people use 0-11 :)
Really, it seems silly to me- though I am far from an expert in the
field- to say that serialism was the result of some sort of historical
determinacy. Whether or not you believe Schoenberg was trikjfdyrutrophobic
it seems to me only a person as interested in numberology as he could
invent it; the 'magic square' in itself is just really a novelty and it
takes an uncommon mind to see anything of aesthetic worth in it.
Hmmm, that post actually dealt tangentially with the issue at hand! I'm
getting better!
--
tagu...@nr.infinet.com
Wes & Ann Judkins
Robert Caponi wrote:
>
> In article <4tvv8e$j...@Oak.IC.Mankato.MN.US>, Wes & Ann Judkins
> <"jud...@ic.mankato.mn.us"@ic.mankato.mn.us> wrote:
>
> ** >
> ** > Really? *Hearing* does, but I don't know of any biological basis
> ** > for music.
> **
> no! If you look
> ** down far enough you can reason in no other way that music is tuned to
> tickle some
> ** biological fancy. Why else do you figure we can hear music as music? I
> am confused. We
> ** are biological beings, how can music not be somewhat biologically baised?
>
> What we have here are undefined terms. Just because something is
> 'biological' (uggghhh) in origin doesn't make it biological.
>
> BTW: I find "magic" to be a perfectly plausible origin for musical
> creation and appreciation. Why is it that, when faced with a subject which
> is beyond the scope of science, we (and by 'we' I mean 'you' :) have to
> invent "scientific-sounding" reasons for their existance that have no
> basis in fact. Not only is a great deal of human dignity stripped this
> way, but it is an abortion of the scientific method.
> tagu...@nr.infinet.com
Ok, so music is magic and we are above all creatures and not members of the biological
comunity. Hmmmm And you think my reasoning is an insult to science?! Give me a break!
lets play a game! deny the following with good reason.
1. we are boilogical creatures with biological origins and biological bodies and minds.
2. Music has a perfectly human origin! made by humans for humans.
3.there is nothing "made up" sounding about saying music is made by humans (biological
beings) for there compleatly biological minds.
Wes & Ann Judkins
> >In article <4tvv8e$j...@Oak.IC.Mankato.MN.US>, Wes & Ann Judkins
> ><"jud...@ic.mankato.mn.us"@ic.mankato.mn.us> wrote:
> >
> >** > > Music has a biological basis,
> >** >
> >** > Really? *Hearing* does, but I don't know of any biological basis
> >** > for music.
> >**
> >** Well, why do you think we listen to and like music? Because of magic?
> >no! If you look
> >** down far enough you can reason in no other way that music is tuned to
> >tickle some
> >** biological fancy. Why else do you figure we can hear music as music? I
> >am confused. We
> >** are biological beings, how can music not be somewhat biologically baised?
> >
> >What we have here are undefined terms. Just because something is
> >'biological' (uggghhh) in origin doesn't make it biological.
> >
> >BTW: I find "magic" to be a perfectly plausible origin for musical
> >creation and appreciation. Why is it that, when faced with a subject which
> >is beyond the scope of science, we (and by 'we' I mean 'you' :) have to
> >invent "scientific-sounding" reasons for their existance that have no
> >basis in fact. Not only is a great deal of human dignity stripped this
> >way, but it is an abortion of the scientific method.
>
> accept that it means the same as "I don't know".
That is obviously to most people sarcasim, if they look at the rest of my post. If a
person comes along and dose not understand that to be sarcasim I would be kind of leary
of there posting, just because of a lowish level there of understanding. It would be
difficult to comunicate with that I think....
I'd say that some sort
> of science is the only way we could know the answer to this question,
> but the statement "It has a biological basis" is in fact unsupported here,
> and the further statement "certain musics have a biological basis
> while others are contrary to biology" is clearly leading to a logical
> contradiction. Let's spell it out. In what way could the
> makers of music that you don't like be any less "biological" than
> the makers of music that you do like?
Ok, what do you (anyone) consider non-biological? That might help.
Wes & Ann Judkins
Matthew H. Fields
In article <4u0g3m$h...@panix3.panix.com>, John Brock <jbr...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <4ttmft$6...@news.eecs.umich.edu>,
>Matthew H. Fields <fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu> wrote:
>
>>>>In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960801...@godzilla5.acpub.duke.edu>,
>>>>H James Harkins <jhar...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>>>>>Dan was probably referring to the often-remarked fact that total serial
>>>>>music, music completely organized mathematically, *sounds* remarkably
>>>>>like aleatoric music, chance music, or chaos. This is why, if I had to
>
>>In article <4ttjbc$j...@panix3.panix.com>, John Brock <jbr...@panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>>And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
>>>which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
>
>>Huh? Please give an example of this sort of music.
>
>I have reinserted above the quote by James Harkins which you originally
>responded to (I hope I've counted ">"s correctly!). Harkins speaks of
>the "often-remarked fact" that "total serial music" sounds remarkably
>like aleatoric music. I have heard similar statements from others on
I must say, country-western sounds like aleatoric music to me. So?
I'm responding to both your and his "serial=mathematical" statement.
>more than one occasion over the years, so I felt I was safe in assuming
>that people would know what I was talking about, but if you ask me to
>name the people who wrote such music I'm not sure I can, for a reason
>I'll get to in a moment.
>My understanding was that in the 50s and 60s certain composers,
>inspired by the *idea* of serial music, tried to extend the idea to
>encompass *all* aspects of music. This would mean that, beyond
Well, yup, some folks did, but that was nothing new. It was a fad
for a while in the 1200s, too.
>manipulating sequences of pitches you would simultaneously perform
>similar manipulations on sequences of note duration, dynamics, attack,
>timbre, and any other aspect of music that they could extract and
>organize. The result was Totally Serial Music (which would have been a
>better title for this thread than Mathematically Organized Music, since
>serialization really doesn't imply much in the way of mathematics). I
precisely. Nor does it imply 12-tone rows or use of the whole chromatic.
>will note that the Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music has an
>entry for "Serialism" which concludes:
> The term 'serialism' is now reserved, in some theoretical
> writings, only for music that goes beyond the pitch serialism
> of Schoenberg and applies serial methods to other elements.
Yup, there have been a few theoreticians who said that.
>This is the music I was referring to, and my understanding is that the
>project was a complete failure, that listeners were totally unable to
>distinguish totally organized music from totally random music, and that
>this is the fact that is "often-remarked". The reason I hesitate to
The project had variable levels of success. It was a fad, and like
any fad, had its highlights and a lot of hangers on. Today, when
listeners hear The Hammer Without Master, the fact that it's not
random but highly consistent in isorhythm and harmony---cool blue
all the way---as well as much more sensual than all the technoverbiage
suggests---comes through to lots of listeners without hesitation.
>try to name the composers involved is that, again as I understand the
>story, the composers who wrote this sort of music in its most extreme
>form were obscure academics who never did become widely known, while
>those "serialists" who *did* become widely know (e.g., Babbitt, Nono,
>Wuorinen) never quite took the technique all the way to its dead-end
>extremes. However I am not a music historian and it is quite possible
Hmmm, Babbitt's only comment on it 10 years ago was "there's no
equivalent to *interval* for other parameters, so what's the point?"
But his rhythm remains very carefully composed, nonetheless.
Boulez and Stockhausen both took part in the fad, and stood out
head and shoulders above the crowd in much the same way Monteverdi
stood out above Peri and the rest of the 1590's-1600s musical-drama
crowd.
>that I have gotten the story and the cast of characters a bit garbled,
>so if anyone wants to offer any clarifications this will be most
>welcome.
>BTW, in defense of my "mathematical" thread title, I will note that you
>can walk into any music library and easily find music journal articles
>that sure as hell do appear to be written almost entirely in terms of
>some sort of demented mathematics.
Yeah, there are theoreticians putting with a sledgehammer, but most of
the terms you see there are just numbering the notes and identifying
levels of transposition, inversion, and similar permutations chosen
for musical reasons (i.e. they produce recognizable variations of
the original, etc.)
>>>being totally random. Music has a biological basis, and like our other
>>>senses (e.g., vision, or smell) our sense of music is highly
>>>selective.
>
>>Umm hum, rhymed verse has a biological basis, too.
>
>Of course, as does language itself!
Not just any language, the English language has a biological basis.
Certain structures are perceived as language, while other structures
(like B`reshit assah elohim et ha shemayim etc.) are not---or
are intellectual puzzles for people with highly trained ears.
>>> Certain sound structures are perceived as music, while
>>>other structures are not perceived at all, or are perceived only as
>>>intellectual puzzles by people with highly trained ears.
>
>>We're back to the "sharing music requires sharing a belief system"
>>thing here.
>
>Eh?
>
"Therefore it's not music!" and therefore the bible is not written in language
but in random babbling, etc. See, what's perceived as music is
purely culturally relative.
Revellie on bugle. Music? NO! a signal call, just like the person
honking the car horn behind you at rush hour is noise. Or, if you're
more relaxed, both are music. Revellie has an ancient cousin, horn
blasts blown on real animal horns---which were considered distinct
from music (the latter involved harps or lutes (kitara), bells or
percussion (kinnorot), and singing), but which now would be considered
musical.
>>> As with our
>>>other senses, it is somewhat arbitrary what can be perceived and what
>>>can't. Certain animals see things that we simply do not see, and it is
>>>highly possible that another intelligent species would have a sense of
>>>music that would be simply different from ours, or perhaps have none at
>>>all. This arbitrariness is the key. Traditional composers in the West
>>>and elsewhere, relying on their ears, have sought out the special
>>>structures we hear as music.
>>
>>> The creators of the most highly
>>>mathematically organized music have taken the exact opposite approach:
>>>creating elaborate structures based on abstract mathematical
>>>operations, and then demanding that we hear these structures as music.
>
>>Please give examples of composers and works described by the preceding
>>sentence. What on earth are you talking about?
>
>See above.
>
>>>This simply doesn't work and never will, and it is entirely natural
>>>that for most people such "music" should be indistinguishable from true
>>>chaos.
>
>>This is, of course, meaningful in a certain belief system, I'm sure.
>
>Eh?
>--
>John Brock
>jbr...@panix.com
Uh huh, and Metallica is indistinguishable from true chaos for some people--
what they do doesn't work and never will. Same goes for...etc...
<insert here a list of kinds of music---I challenge you to present
a piece of music that is considered good by 51% of people living today...>
Look, it comes down to this: there's music that you like and music
that you don't care for, and if you can use kinds and categories to
find what you like more quickly, fine. I prefer to leave myself the
lattitude to enjoy certain country-and-western pieces even if all the
others on a station are rotten unfeeling uses of hackneyed formulas
that never work...because the people using them don't understand how
to make them work. Look, there's a lot of cubist trash art out there,
but Klee's still Klee. Similarly, there's a lot of trash music out
there of all various kinds, often paired with longwinded explanations
of how the Archangel Gabriel commanded the composer to translate the
vowels in pp.332-336 of Petersen's Guide to the Birds into notes to
create a great work of art, etc., etc., but Messaien's still Messaien.
Or in short, "It's the music, dummy!" ;-)
Matthew H. Fields
In article <tagutcow-030...@pa4dsp17.nr.infi.net>,
Robert Caponi <tagu...@nr.infi.net> wrote:
> Really, it seems silly to me- though I am far from an expert in the
>field- to say that serialism was the result of some sort of historical
>determinacy. Whether or not you believe Schoenberg was trikjfdyrutrophobic
>it seems to me only a person as interested in numberology as he could
>invent it; the 'magic square' in itself is just really a novelty and it
>takes an uncommon mind to see anything of aesthetic worth in it.
Hmmm, well, as I've noted elsewhere, if you track Schoenberg's actual
works preceding his serial works, all the components that make up his
serialism are already in place--and the "magic square" has naught to
do with it. How about some of the other folks who were headed towards
dodecaphony and serialism at the same time, like JM Hauer, etc.? Any
of them have numerology in their biographies?
Anthony Cornicello
Matthew H. Fields wrote:
>
> In article <3202F1...@ultranet.com>,
> Anthony Cornicello <a-m...@ultranet.com> wrote:
> >Schoenberg apparently hated a comparison like this, especially being new to
> >this country. He thought of twelve-tone writing as being closer to democracy:
> >"one note, one vote!".
>
> And even that was by way of casting about for a metaphor for the technical
> side; his technique still had an aesthetic "why" and "what sounds to evoke"
> that isn't explainable in such droll terms. But as the posting I borrowed
> from rec.music.classical shows, you don't need any special training to
> feel its effects---only a little time to get acquainted with the music.
Anthony Cornicello
Matthew H. Fields wrote:
>
> In article <4tt7kn$m...@epervier.CC.UMontreal.CA>,
> <vali...@ere.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> >>>Funny! I thought 12-tone atonal music was based on order and structure,
> >>>so much that it doesn't have room for spontaneity. You say the problem
> >>>with atonal is that there's no structure, I say the problem with it is
> >>>that there's too much structure. I see atonal (or 12-tone) as a good tool
> >>>for producing a specific effect at a specific place.
> >>
> >>The problem is people throwing around terms without taking time to
> >>reflect on their meaning. 12-tone techniques are neither chaotic nor
> >>an interference to spontaneity
> >
> > What I meant was that there's no room for spontaneity *regarding
> >the pitch* but it's true that the other parameters shouldn't be treated
> >separatly, so what I said doesn't apply to 12-tone. What I said applies to
>
> The answer to that is that if the row you're using doesn't embody
> what you want at all moments, you shouldn't be using that row.
>
> >integral serialism which uses a serie for every parameters. You can like
> >how it sounds or not, but show me where's the spontaneity, in the choice
> >of your series?
>
> Spontaneity is not the same as freedom, and is in fact part of what
> goes into good 12-tone music. If you don't find serial ideas a good
> match for your interests and desires, don't use them.
>
> > how long will it take to find a serie that will give you,
> >for instance, accents that coincide with the right note all through your
> >piece (without changing anything in your series).
>
> >integral serialism is so
> >structured that if you want spontaneity you'll have to change elements in
> >your series here and there to make it sound good.
>
> Only if you failed to make "it sounds good" the criterion on which
> you chose the series in the first place.
>
> > If you change things
> >here and there, why bother serialize everything?
>
With regards to changing rows mid-piece:
Check out Martino's influential article: "The Source Set and its Aggregate
Formations". I just have a photocopy of it, and I don't know where it comes
from off the top of my head. It is referenced quite often, and I don't think
it's been reprinted.
What is so interesting about this article is that he discusses ways to
modulate between rows! By taking a referential subset from a row (an 014, for
instance), you can construct a new row based upon that. Then, you can take
the same subset and combine it with other subsets to create a more varied
row. The new row (row #3) can be subjected to similar variations.
To me, this is what makes the twelve-tone system so valuable: it can be
expanded. Just like tonality, it is simply the basis for a larger system.
Has anyone else read the Martino?
Anthony Cornicello
Brian Raiter
>>And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
>>which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
>Huh? Please give an example of this sort of music.
>
>>senses (e.g., vision, or smell) our sense of music is highly
>>selective.
There is only one composer I am familiar with that has actually
composed "highly organized mathematical music," and that is Tom
Johnson. He has two CDs (that I know of) - "Rational Melodies" and
"Music for 88" - that consist of music created by a strict isomorphism
from mathematical ideas.
As you might guess, it does not sound at all random, but extremely
straightforward, and, more often than not, mechanical and predictable.
(I do like some of it quite a bit, though.)
b
anthony linden jones
Hi all,
Just catching this thread half-way in.
Matthew H. Fields wrote:
> >which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Huh? Please give an example of this sort of music.
I don't understand, Mat. There are many examples, and I know you know
because I've downloaded your course notes on serialism. Am I missing
something?
>
> > The creators of the most highly
> >mathematically organized music have taken the exact opposite
> >approach:
> >creating elaborate structures based on abstract mathematical
> >operations, and then demanding that we hear these structures as
> >music.
>
> Please give examples of composers and works described by the preceding
> sentence. What on earth are you talking about?
>
Again, surely there are many examples - all of Xenakis' early works,
2nd Viennese school, Boulez, Stockhausen, Babbit etc, etc, etc, ad
nauseum.
The notion of chaos theories applied to music composition is an
intellectually appealing one. I haven't heard any great successes, but
I'm really keen to hear some. The main problem I see is the linear
nature of our perception of music. Visual stimuli are perceived as a
whole - we see the whole of a picture at once, and so can quickly
recognise patterns.
cheers
anthony jones
Sydney, Australia
Jose Oscar Marques
On 3 Aug 1996 17:25:10 -0400 jbr...@panix.com (John Brock) wrote:
>(...) The result was Totally Serial Music (which would have been a
>better title for this thread than Mathematically Organized Music, since
>serialization really doesn't imply much in the way of mathematics).
I've also heard it called "Integral Serialism". You are right: a title
for the thread that didn't have any implication about mathematics would
have spared much misunderstanding.
>This is the music I was referring to, and my understanding is that the
>project was a complete failure, that listeners were totally unable to
>distinguish totally organized music from totally random music, and that
>this is the fact that is "often-remarked".
I think you have a good point here. Now that the mathematics is out of
the discussion, perhaps we could dedicate some attention to this
interesting fact. It is remarkable that Boulez, for instance, explored
both ends of this spectrum.
>BTW, in defense of my "mathematical" thread title, I will note that you
>can walk into any music library and easily find music journal articles
>that sure as hell do appear to be written almost entirely in terms of
>some sort of demented mathematics.
Most of it is trompe-l'oeil. Gives the text some appearance of
seriousness. Demented mathematics isn't really mathematics.
--
Jose Oscar Marques
jmar...@super.zippo.com
Jose Oscar Marques
On Sat, 03 Aug 1996 11:38:19 -0700 Mark Starr <st...@inow.com> wrote:
>Not all mathematically organized music is of the Milton Babbit, Xenakis,
>Boulez variety. Bela Bartok was long obsessed with Fibonacci's Series,
>often nicknamed The Theory of the Golden Number.
You'd better check this out. Fibonacci's series are a completely
different thing from the Golden Section proportion. Bartok, indeed, used
both.
Jose Oscar Marques
I wrote:
>You'd better check this out. Fibonacci's series are a completely
>different thing from the Golden Section proportion. Bartok, indeed, used
>both.
I shouldn't have said *completely* different because there is after all
a connection between them, in that when the Fibonacci series is extended
the quotient between two successive terms approaches the golden section.
But we have here two conceptually independent mathematical entities,
each with its own definition, and not just two names for the same thing.
Breeze
In article <32043D...@ultranet.com>, Anthony Cornicello
<a-m...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>
> With regards to changing rows mid-piece:
> Check out Martino's influential article: "The Source Set and its Aggregate
> Formations". I just have a photocopy of it, and I don't know where it comes
> from off the top of my head. It is referenced quite often, and I don't think
> it's been reprinted.
>
> What is so interesting about this article is that he discusses ways to
> modulate between rows! By taking a referential subset from a row (an 014, for
> instance), you can construct a new row based upon that. Then, you can take
> the same subset and combine it with other subsets to create a more varied
> row. The new row (row #3) can be subjected to similar variations.
>
> To me, this is what makes the twelve-tone system so valuable: it can be
> expanded. Just like tonality, it is simply the basis for a larger system.
>
> Has anyone else read the Martino?
If by "row" you mean a 12-tone row in the Schoenbergian sense, that's not
quite what Martino is poking at. He's working at defining an organized syntax
concerning the partitioning of P space (in 12 tones, of course, & very
aggregate-
conscious), but there's quite a bit more to it than just changing rows.
The article appeared in JMT in something like '65 or '66, and was reprinted once
or twice around that time, if memory serves. I have it around here
somewhere, but
seeing as how I can't even find my checkbook in this mess, I doubt I can
find the
article.
Of all of his music I've looked at, I think the White Island is the best
place to get
a good look at the full fruition of how Martino works in "worlds", each world a
subset of P-space. In this work in particular (and it's blueprint,
Paradiso Choruses)
Martino divides P-space into various levels of "chromaticism" (via
strategic deployment
of many of the source hexachords laid out in the article mentioned above), from
highly chromatic to nearly tonal, and then works them out. In multiple levels,
Martino is using some of the concepts put forth in that article to move from one
"world" to another. "World" is a particlarly accurate word for the
various approaches
to partitioning of P space in these two works, as there are extra-musical
implications
in both pieces concerning Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, each of those being
conceptually
"partitioned" as well, Paradiso based on Dante, and the White Island based on
Dante via Herrick.
The White Island is one of my favorite works.
JB
Sorry for the big topic drift....
Roger L. Lustig
Wes & Ann Judkins wrote:
>
> > > Music has a biological basis,
> >
>
> Well, why do you think we listen to and like music? Because of magic? no! If you look
At that trivial level, sure. But that means that baseball is also
biologically
based, because lots of us play and watch it, and it gives us a feeling
like no
other.
Now, let's go back to the context: the claim that *some* music is
"biologically
based" in a way that other music is not.
Oh, and we hear music as music because we have a cultural construct
called
"music." Some music, we don't hear as music, because we don't
understand it.
Some people don't hear our music as music.
Roger
Robert Caponi
In article <3203eea7...@snews.zippo.com>, jmar...@super.zippo.com
(Jose Oscar Marques) wrote:
** On Sat, 03 Aug 1996 11:38:19 -0700 Mark Starr <st...@inow.com> wrote:
**
** >Not all mathematically organized music is of the Milton Babbit, Xenakis,
** >Boulez variety. Bela Bartok was long obsessed with Fibonacci's Series,
** >often nicknamed The Theory of the Golden Number.
**
** You'd better check this out. Fibonacci's series are a completely
** different thing from the Golden Section proportion. Bartok, indeed, used
** both.
As the series progresses, the proportions between consecutive fibbonacci
numbers approaches the golden mean.
--
tagu...@nr.infinet.com
Robert Caponi
In article <4u0iob$3...@Oak.IC.Mankato.MN.US>, Wes & Ann Judkins
<"jud...@ic.mankato.mn.us"@ic.mankato.mn.us> wrote:
** Ok, what do you (anyone) consider non-biological? That might help.
Music, for one. Then there's the moon, a bowl of mush, and a 2-volume
edition of Hegel's "Science of Logic."
I'm sleepy.
--
tagu...@nr.infinet.com
philo von mtein
In article <3203eea7...@snews.zippo.com>,
Jose Oscar Marques <jmar...@super.zippo.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 03 Aug 1996 11:38:19 -0700 Mark Starr <st...@inow.com> wrote:
[...]
>You'd better check this out. Fibonacci's series are a completely
^^^^^^
you mean Fibonacci's sequence, not series.
>different thing from the Golden Section proportion. Bartok, indeed, used
>both.
Actually, the Fibonacci sequence is related to the "golden mean",
somehow... I forgot exactly how to get that number from the sequence,
but that number (something like 1-sqrt(5)/2 or some odd irrational
number) crops up in many mathematical oddities, like the F.S.
I would be curious to know _how_ Bartok used the Fibonacci sequence!
>Jose Oscar Marques
>jmar...@super.zippo.com
-philo.
--
L'Autre: Je donne ma folie. (il la drape d'une etole rouge). Oui son
eclat te va. Regarde bien Victoire, tu me ressembles un peu... non, ne
t'en vas pas. (nadia tueni, piece en plusieurs poemes et plusieurs titres)
Robert Caponi
In article <4u0jev$m...@news.eecs.umich.edu>, fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu
(Matthew H. Fields) wrote:
** Uh huh, and Metallica is indistinguishable from true chaos for some people--
** what they do doesn't work and never will. Same goes for...etc...
** <insert here a list of kinds of music---I challenge you to present
** a piece of music that is considered good by 51% of people living today...>
Ummmm, Macarena :)
--
tagu...@nr.infinet.com
Frank Brickle
Anthony Cornicello (a-m...@ultranet.com) wrote:
: ...Martino's influential article: "The Source Set and its Aggregate
: Formations". I just have a photocopy of it, and I don't know where it comes
: from...
_Journal of Music Theory_, I think. Long ago.
: What is so interesting about this article is that he discusses ways to
: modulate between rows! ...
: To me, this is what makes the twelve-tone system so valuable: it can be
: expanded. Just like tonality, it is simply the basis for a larger system.
Or: this is merely another corner of what the twelve-tone system *is*.
: Has anyone else read the Martino?
Would that more had.
Frank Brickle
Jose Oscar Marques (jmar...@super.zippo.com) wrote:
: I think you have a good point here. Now that the mathematics is out of
: the discussion, perhaps we could dedicate some attention to this
: interesting fact. It is remarkable that Boulez, for instance, explored
: both ends of this spectrum.
I'd argue that the "randomness" is a consequence, not of "total"
serialism, but of trivial or meaningless interpretations of the serial
relations in inappropriate domains.
Matthew H. Fields
F*-ing A*, just get a recording of Paradiso Choruses and one of
White Island, and F-ing Listen to them. Then come back and see if you
are interested in how they got to sound like that. I find the sound
intriguing---and intriguingly like some of what I like to do with music.
So far, the reviews by non-technical folks of them that I've heard have
all emphasized how goshdarned pretty they are!
Frank Brickle
Breeze (bre...@acs.bu.edu) wrote:
: In article <32043D...@ultranet.com>, Anthony Cornicello
: <a-m...@ultranet.com> wrote:
: > What is so interesting about this article is that he discusses ways to
: > modulate between rows! By taking a referential subset from a row (an 014, for
: > instance), you can construct a new row based upon that. Then, you can take
: > the same subset and combine it with other subsets to create a more varied
: > row. The new row (row #3) can be subjected to similar variations.
: >
: > To me, this is what makes the twelve-tone system so valuable: it can be
: > expanded. Just like tonality, it is simply the basis for a larger system.
: If by "row" you mean a 12-tone row in the Schoenbergian sense, that's not
: quite what Martino is poking at. He's working at defining an organized syntax
: concerning the partitioning of P space (in 12 tones, of course, & very
: aggregate-
: conscious), but there's quite a bit more to it than just changing rows.
It's what used to be called a "derived set". See for example nearly every
piece Babbitt wrote between '52 and '66 or so. The Second String Quartet
in particular is a real lesson in using this kind of derivation as a
foundation for large-scale structure.
Danielle Lieber
John Brock wrote:
>
> In article <4trrff$2...@news.eecs.umich.edu>,
> Matthew H. Fields <fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu> wrote:
> >In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960801...@godzilla5.acpub.duke.edu>,
> >H James Harkins <jhar...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
> >>Dan was probably referring to the often-remarked fact that total serial
> >>music, music completely organized mathematically, *sounds* remarkably
> >>like aleatoric music, chance music, or chaos.
>
> >hashemayim v`et ha`aretz" *sounds* remarkably like the gurgles of
> >of a 16-month-old going through talking-readiness.
(...)
> --
> John Brock
> jbr...@panix.com
John,
The accurate citation is "bereshit bara elohim et hashamaim veet
haaretz"
(Genesis, I,1)
Danielle Lieber
Mark Starr
> I would be curious to know _how_ Bartok used the Fibonacci sequence!
>
>
> Jose Oscar Marques
You might read "Bartok: Sa vie et son oeuvre" a collection of essays
edited by Bence Szabolsi. It is published by Boosey & Hawkes; 4, rue
Drouot, Paris.
Regards,
Mark Starr
Jose Oscar Marques
On 4 Aug 1996 01:26:19 -0500 ph...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (philo von mtein)
wrote:
>I would be curious to know _how_ Bartok used the Fibonacci sequence!
I used to have a photocopy of an article with many examples of this in
Bartok's music. Couldn't find it anymore. But I remember one of his uses
of the golden section - to determine the exact position of the climax in
the first movement of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.
Matthew H. Fields
In article <320589...@netvision.net.il>,
Danielle Lieber <das...@netvision.net.il> wrote:
>The accurate citation is "bereshit bara elohim et hashamaim veet
>haaretz"
>(Genesis, I,1)
Whatever, it still ain't English, and to some folks it's "chaos".
Courtney Evans
Wes & Ann Judkins wrote:
>
> > > Music has a biological basis,
> >
> > Really? *Hearing* does, but I don't know of any biological basis
> > for music.
>
> Well, why do you think we listen to and like music? Because of magic? no! If you look
> down far enough you can reason in no other way that music is tuned to tickle some
> biological fancy. Why else do you figure we can hear music as music? I am confused. We
> are biological beings, how can music not be somewhat biologically baised?
I've actually been batting this theory around in my head for some
time, and this seems like a good moment to go public. Maybe music has
evolved, in our species, out of the way we used our hearing as much
more primitive hunter-gatherers tens of thousands of years ago.
All of the information present in music would have been equally
important to a primitive human animal evaluating his/her environment.
Pitch=Is that a small predator chasing me, or a big predator?
Timbre=That ungulate sounds sick, perhaps it would be easier to go
after it.
Dynamics=That bear is MAD!
Sound location=Where did I leave the baby?
Rhythm, in particular, is very easy to label as 'biological' in
origin. Maybe the difference between musics that people label as
'biological' versus 'mechanical' or 'sterile' is the lack of an easily
recognizable rhythmic structure. If you took serial techniques and
applied them in every way except rhythm (using something, I dunno,
early Stravinskian for that) you'd have music that might be easier to
consider biological.
For example, I dislike every part of Moses und Aaron except for the
golden cow dance, or whatever that part is called.
Cme
Matthew H. Fields
Actually, Strings-perc-celeste uses Fibonacci numbers, so there's
key events at bars 21 and 34, climax at 89, and the movement ends
at 144. But the measures are all different lengths, so I'm not sure
of the implications here. But both Fibonacci numbers and the
Golden Section have been used for their insidious motivic quality---
i.e. the way they self-embed.
Simon Gray
In article <4u1fqb$9...@piglet.cc.utexas.edu>
ph...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu "philo von mtein" writes:
~ Actually, the Fibonacci sequence is related to the "golden mean",
~ somehow... I forgot exactly how to get that number from the sequence,
~ but that number (something like 1-sqrt(5)/2 or some odd irrational
~ number) crops up in many mathematical oddities, like the F.S.
~
~ I would be curious to know _how_ Bartok used the Fibonacci sequence!
In that case check out Erno Lendvai's book about him - a fascinating
read !
Is Silverman still hereabouts ?
--
[]=- Simon Gray, in Scum^H^H^Houthport, EU. <*>
// _-=__-=
_/|] ) ___ \ Is it in the news ? Try uk.current-events.general
(_) \___/_(___)_| Available now from a news server near you !
@ @
Brian Raiter
>> BTW, in defense of my "mathematical" thread title, I will note that
>> you can walk into any music library and easily find music journal
>> articles that sure as hell do appear to be written almost entirely
>> in terms of some sort of demented mathematics.
>
> Most of it is trompe-l'oeil. Gives the text some appearance of
> seriousness. Demented mathematics isn't really mathematics.
As many have pointed out in the past, one reason for the popularity of
twelve-tone and serial music in the academic world is that is a
quantifiable theory that is easily graded. You will find a lot more
questions about these schools on the music GRE than neoromanticism or
minimalism, say.
b
Roger L. Lustig
Brian Raiter wrote:
> >> BTW, in defense of my "mathematical" thread title, I will note that
> >> you can walk into any music library and easily find music journal
> >> articles that sure as hell do appear to be written almost entirely
> >> in terms of some sort of demented mathematics.
> > Most of it is trompe-l'oeil. Gives the text some appearance of
> > seriousness. Demented mathematics isn't really mathematics.
> As many have pointed out in the past, one reason for the popularity of
> twelve-tone and serial music in the academic world is that is a
> quantifiable theory that is easily graded.
That this is nonsense has also been pointed out. It's in no way a
"quantifiable theory" such that species counterpoint is not.
> You will find a lot more
> questions about these schools on the music GRE than neoromanticism or
> minimalism, say.
Not surprising, because it's been around much longer and has had
much more written about it.
Roger Lustig
Marc Couroux
In article <4tvmla$4...@nntp1.best.com>, rus...@nntp.best.com (Jeff
Harrington) wrote:
This thread will never die. A couple of quick thoughts.
> 3. If the audience doesn't get something, it will be forgotten. No amount
> of institutional approval will perpetuate bad art.
> (repeat A and B above for concert organizers, musicologists, theorists).
This last argument needs a little qualification. As a performer with a lot of
experience behind me playing this "chaotic stuff that nobody gets", I have found
that all it takes for this "kind" of music to find its way into the listener's
nervous system, is a little passion and dedication and energy on the part of
the performer. And we all know that there are a LOT, and i mean A LOT of really
unprofessional renderings of contemporary music out there. I am amazed in fact.
Quite recently, I have had three incidents with Brian Ferneyhough, Roger
Reynolds and Milton Babbitt in which I handed each of them a list of on average
40 mistakes in their piano pieces which had gone UNNOTICED (and some of these
pieces have been around for a while (15 years for Ferneyhough) by performers,
who manage somehow to "make" it in contemporary music (mainly because they CAN
get away with faking) by skimming off the surface of some of the greatest works
around. So there's that, for starters. Bad performance is equated with "bad
piece" in the audience's mind, because they have absolutely no standard with
which to measure the excellence of this work in relationship to the performance
they witnessed. The bad performer is the ultimate culprit here. So if the
audience does not get something, it may not be "bad art" necessarily. However,
a committed performer can do the opposite, by playing music of average quality
with amazing virtuosity and panache, they can transcend the work's limitations,
even though you and I would not qualify the music per se as "great art" (pace
the resurgence of interest in Alkan, Medtner, Sorabji et al.). The performer as
mediator is of paramount importance here. And the greatest performances are
those which transcend the "getting it" stage (which is really beside the
point---you shouldn't have to "get it" to appreciate it, or maybe these
things
are synonymous I don't know) and go over the audience's intellect and smack on
to their nervous systems. I have the gut feeling (and I have the experience to
back it up too) that the audience is waiting for something new and all it takes
are committed performers...I mean, we've been on the brink of the entrance of
new music into the general cultural sphere for, how long?, 70 years? Where are
the performers who will do that? It's high time we stop putting all the
pressure on the audience to "get" something, as if music was made to be
"got".
But that's another disscussion, perhaps for
rec.music.classical.contemporary.philosophy.hermeneutics or something....
Marc
--
Marc Couroux
Pianist, 20-th century music promoter
Marc Couroux
JE Snodgrass
I'd like to point out, "mathematical" music is pretty jokey. Any
"mathematical" approach to art is limited. Clearly mathematics as a
sequence of equations meant to relate one measurement to another is
incapable of representing anything very complex. Computation, however,
is another matter. Algorithmic models as representative of processes
can become indefinately complex. Remember chaos, fractals, and so on
may have had their origins in mathematics (spurned of course by
mathematicians, considered quirky and of no practical interest) but
they had their real birth in computation. In fact, mathematics as a
whole (as we think of blackboard equations) is really a subset of
algorithmic computation. Algorithmic computation, though dealing
ultimately with numbers, can also deal with symbols, and that means it
can model anything. Any method of composing that a person can conceive
can be programmed.
"Roger L. Lustig" <juli...@ix.netcom.com> said:
>
>> And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
>> which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
>> being totally random.
Don't say "organized mathematically", because that's misleading
IMO. How are you defining mathematics? When was a mathematical
description ever formulated to describe even a recorder solo? Maybe
you mean some people have suggested that there seems to be
mathematical relationships at the lowest level, e.g. between
fundamental and harmonics. It doesn't go much further than that as far
as I know.
>
>Whose 'the ear' are you referring to?
>
>> Music has a biological basis,
>
>Really? *Hearing* does, but I don't know of any biological basis
>for music.
>
Well, geez, at what point does the ear disconnect from the
brain. Of course music has a biological basis, because every aspect of
what a human being is has a biological basis. The ability to perceive
and enjoy music results from the mental capacity to remember sounds
and to perceive organization amoung them, as well as the sense of what
is beautiful and what is ugly, which arises from our understanding of
how things grow and how they die. We can see in music a metaphor for
life as opposed to death, and we appreciate this because we are alive
and wish to stay alive. (Music is wish fulfillment just like other
forms of art.) Hence there is such a thing as sounds which are not
music, and music which has obvious errors in it -- errors being where
harmony is not the end result, where conflict and imbalance prevails.
This is the wrong image. Of course, some people like the ugly, like
pictures of death, and then there's other people (how ironic they are
so often academics) inclined to call black white because that's the
extent of their originality -- contrariness -- however the garbage
they pretend to like never has wide appeal. Any theory of music has to
be based on what is considered beautiful, and that has to relate to
self-affirmation, to life affirmation. Even the sickest punk rock or
metal that's popular has a good substructure and musical power. Even
Iggy Pop has a lust for life, which is his saving grace. ;-)
When you look at other cultures, you have to take into account
that different cultures have spent differing amounts of time
developing musically, just like they have philosophically or
technologically. Because they're different and used to different music
doesn't imply anything about cultural "determination" of musical
perception. IQ would probably be more indicative, given you sit people
down and give them a chance to widen their musical horizons.
>> and like our other
>> senses (e.g., vision, or smell) our sense of music is highly
>> selective. Certain sound structures are perceived as music,
>
>No. They are perceived as musical sound, perhaps; but music
>is perceived in terms of events or behaviors or practices.
>
This doesn't mean anything. Music is sound where you can recognize
the meaning of the sound, even though it isn't language. Perceiving
the meaning of sound is like perceiving the meaning of a painting. If
two men from different cultures see a picture of a rotting corpse or a
naked nubile female, they'll understand that one image is ugly and the
other isn't. Musical perception is the same thing. You may not believe
it. You may have an image of human beings as culturally determined
automatons, but really they each have a brain and a tremendous
capacity for metaphorical thought.
>> while
>> other structures are not perceived at all, or are perceived only as
>> intellectual puzzles by people with highly trained ears.
>
>You left out 'culture.' Some cultures recognize some things as
>highly significant in a musical sense; others hear those same
>things as meaningless noise.
>
Some cultures attach _cultural_ significance to certain musical
structures, like religious or whatever, because of the traditional
association. Anyone can understand music no matter how it is created.
(Maybe this cannot be proved, but what of significance can?) Having
created alot of sound with computer programs, I can see something of
the relationship between theoretical structure and musicality -- and
it is not cultural. For example, I can create a melody which is too
long to be remembered, so it may sound musical in a vague sense, but
it is not "catchy". Using the same algorithm, if I reduce the length
of the melody (or melody class if you will) then it generates a melody
which is more catchy. That shows memory dependence as primary in
melody perception, which is going to be the same across cultures. Look
at the structure of most pop music: you have levels of repetitiousness
that support higher, less repetitious levels. This is to aid the mind
in ordering and understanding higher level melody. (A short,
oft-repeated melody is easy to apprehend, a long single melody
difficult, but one can support the other, bringing it within reach of
the mind -- it's true ... if you listen to the long melody by itself,
it is incomprehsible, but with the supporting melodies much more
easily understood.). I.e. the structure is determined by the
requirements of the mind (any mind) not by cultural peculiarities.
Also, note the worldwide popularity of rock. Does China have its own
rock music? Yes, but it's derived from western music -- because they
recognize the superiority to their traditional musical forms. Just as
there are better shoes or better cars, there is better music. It's no
different -- the foot is merely more visible -- that doesn't make the
mind magic. I bet people 1000 years from now will have really
excellent shoes!
>> As with our
>> other senses, it is somewhat arbitrary what can be perceived and what
>> can't.
>
>Music isn't a sense, though.
>
Who knows what is and what isn't a "sense"? Is hunger a sense?
Why do we talk about an "aesthetic sense"? Whenever I see this kind of
nitpicking I become suspicious of the person's motives.
>> Certain animals see things that we simply do not see, and it is
>> highly possible that another intelligent species would have a sense of
>> music that would be simply different from ours,
Right on. A more intelligent species would be able to appreciate
more complex music. It is certainly true that animals -- even say
chimpanzees, as far as I know -- show no appreciation of music or even
rhythm. Certainly our own sense is limited by our memory capacity. In
order to feel the beat, so to speak, one must have a powerful ability
to store sound over time and to recognize regularity in the pattern.
Regularity makes possible a memory structure which can be filled. More
memory, more structure possible.
>> or perhaps have none at
>> all. This arbitrariness is the key. Traditional composers in the West
>> and elsewhere, relying on their ears, have sought out the special
>> structures we hear as music.
>
>Correction: that their cultures hear as music.
No need to beat on this culture point. How does musical
innovation occur, and why should it be different from any other form
of innovation? Advances in painting, for example the addition of
perspective, are hardly cultural (and many cultures never did achieve
them independently) yet you cannot deny they are advances. Really all
such advances are doing is taking better cognizance of how the
eye-mind processes real visual images. Same thing with sound and
music.
...
>Nonsense. What "mathematical" composers have not begun with sounds that
>are well-established in their culture?
>
Yeah, which started with the ultrasonic? ;-)
If I count as a "mathematical" composer, I can tell you I
started with audible square wave tones between about 20 and 20000 Hz.
Gee, I guess that's cultural, though, because I read in a book written
in English that that was the audible range.
Do you think you have to create sounds like those created by
traditional instruments, e.g. electric guitar and keyboard (or do our
_real_ cultural sounds have to be mechano-acoustic? I forget ...;-))
I create sounds based on what I can hear together. It really doesn't
matter. I do notice that the more complex the individual sounds are,
the more sounds you can hear at once -- the ear is truly amazing this
way. I think that's beautiful.
John
Justin Pearson
>
> You'd better check this out. Fibonacci's series are a completely
> different thing from the Golden Section proportion. Bartok, indeed, used
> both.
Oh but they are, pairs of successive Fibonacci numbers can be seen are
approximations to the Golden Section, which gets better and better the
higher you go.
Also the closed term formula for the Fibonacci numbers has the goldnen
ratio in. But I'm too hungover to work it out.
Justin Pearson
Computer Science
Royal Holloway
University of London
Egham
Surrey
TW20 0EX
U.K.
Tel: +44(0)1784 443912
Email: jus...@dcs.rhbnc.ac.uk
Matthew H. Fields
In article <4u3n1c$r...@eve.speakeasy.org>,
Brian Raiter <bri...@speakeasy.org> wrote:
>quantifiable theory that is easily graded. You will find a lot more
>questions about these schools on the music GRE than neoromanticism or
>minimalism, say.
Hmmm, when I took the GRE in the '80's, there was *one* question on
serialism. It showed a passage of Babbitt and asked for the
relationship of the right hand to the left hand, with options I, T,
RI, and None (I believe RI was correct). The question on romanticism
showed two passages in a piece (I forget what) that start on
enharmonic spellings of similar chords and then progress in different
directions (they were looking for the word "enharmonic"). They also
presented the first 4 bars of Afternoon of a Faun and asked what
instrument was playing (flute). And they asked what Sara Caldwell was
famous as (conductor). Etc. I dunno, not a big trend.
Matthew H. Fields
In article <320526...@columbia.edu>,
Courtney Evans <cm...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>I've actually been batting this theory around in my head for some
>time, and this seems like a good moment to go public. Maybe music has
>evolved, in our species, out of the way we used our hearing as much
>more primitive hunter-gatherers tens of thousands of years ago.
[cogent theory deleted...]
>For example, I dislike every part of Moses und Aaron except for the
>golden cow dance, or whatever that part is called.
Two notes.
1. We heard here from somebody else who likes all of Moses and Aaron
but is totally untutored as a musician;
2. Your theory presents a lot of good reasons for humans to be
innately aware of aspects of sound, not for them make sounds that
sound like CPE Bach, James Brown, or Anton von Webern---and your
theory doesn't present any particular reason for them not to. It's
kinda like visual arts: why do some people like the impressionists,
surrealists, abstract impressionists, etc.? Surely visual arts play
upon our use of light, form, etc. to evaluate our environment, i.e.
they play upon basic human skills of seeing as a medium, but there's
more to them than that. Why paint, when there's things to see every
day? Similarly, why make music of any sort when there's pitches,
timbres, and rhythms to hear every waking moment? There's got to be
more to it than that.
Jeff Harrington
Marc Couroux (cou...@music.mcgill.ca) wrote:
: In article <4tvmla$4...@nntp1.best.com>, rus...@nntp.best.com (Jeff
: Harrington) wrote:
: This thread will never die. A couple of quick thoughts.
: > 3. If the audience doesn't get something, it will be forgotten. No amount
: > of institutional approval will perpetuate bad art.
: > (repeat A and B above for concert organizers, musicologists, theorists).
:
: new music into the general cultural sphere for, how long?, 70 years? Where are
: the performers who will do that? It's high time we stop putting all the
: pressure on the audience to "get" something, as if music was made to be
: "got".
Uh... don't you say up top that it's the performers responsibility to put
the music over the top? My point was primarily that people often believe
that institutions, record companies, control what music will be preserved
and encouraged. I believe that this isn't true over the long run; that
sooner or later a performance or recording of a particular piece will
*expose* its worth or not.
We're all audience
members; I detect, in fact, a little anti-audience bias in your response
(typical of a new music promoter/performer?) as if they might never *get*
it. If no audience ever gets it than the piece is probably worthless.
Probably. But I trust audiences more than I trust affiliations of
composers, etc...
As far as general cultural sphere goes, good grief. If we look at the
stats we're all minor subcultures (even Maria Carey fans) of the great
Chinese popular culture. We should work hard to insure that we all are
integrated into the great world Chinese musical culture and have the great
Xenakis' music enjoyed daily out of Shanghai!
;-)
Jeff Harrington "Art does not make peace...
je...@parnasse.com That is not its business...
http://www.parnasse.com Art is peace." -- Robert Lowell
sluttman
Matthew H. Fields (fie...@zip.eecs.umich.edu) wrote:
> Actually, Strings-perc-celeste uses Fibonacci numbers, so there's
> key events at bars 21 and 34, climax at 89, and the movement ends
> at 144. But the measures are all different lengths, so I'm not sure
> of the implications here.
The implication, of course, is that measure-counts won't get you
anywhere--unless one can posit that all measures are somehow perceived as
temporally equal. (This would seem, mildly put, a dubious
proposition.) Maybe we should count the number of eighth-note beats
and see what happens?
I note that Lendvai's analysis of the first movement of the Sonata
for Two Pianos and Percussion uses a least common denominator measure
(3/8) in his calculation--logical enough, since the movement is basically
9/8 with occasional 6/8. But counting bars in the first movement of
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta--which Lendvai does--doesn't
make sense to me at all.
Matthew H. Fields
Hmmm, but the bars in strings-perc-cel are distributed around an
average length, no?
Terence Collins
> > The creators of the most highly
> >mathematically organized music have taken the exact opposite
> >approach:
> >creating elaborate structures based on abstract mathematical
> >operations, and then demanding that we hear these structures as
> >music.
>
> Please give examples of composers and works described by the preceding
> sentence. What on earth are you talking about?
>
Again, surely there are many examples - all of Xenakis' early works,
2nd Viennese school, Boulez, Stockhausen, Babbit etc, etc, etc, ad
nauseum.
I recall an Indian Mathematician/Composer cited if D. Hofstadter's book
"Godel, Escher, Bach" (a good, if involved, read which I highly
recommend to people, some parts of which are particularly suited to this
thread) whos melodies where based on formulae of infinite series.
The notion of chaos theories applied to music composition is an
intellectually appealing one. I haven't heard any great successes, but
I'm really keen to hear some. The main problem I see is the linear
nature of our perception of music. Visual stimuli are perceived as a
whole - we see the whole of a picture at once, and so can quickly
recognise patterns.
I'd be interested in finding out more about htose people writing, using
chaos or complexity as a foundation for their musical structure...anyone
know of any names offhand?
> >What we have here are undefined terms. Just because something is
> >'biological' (uggghhh) in origin doesn't make it biological.
I think it's pointless to pursue an argument using the term
'biological'. It really has no relevance to music as, (and i think most
people will agree with me here) it has no physical, organic structure.
The proposition that it might is indeed interesting, however, i think
that the "biology" of music would have more to do with the study of
vibration in sound.
I'm not sure what we are defining to be "biological", though it seems to
me we want to be saying "intuitive". Obviously, intuition is
subjective: What is intuitive to one person is not necessarily so to
another. The only other argument I can see behind "biological" music
would be that music which initiates a definite biolgical response. I
don't know if the structure of a piece would be able to evoke such,
however, a sonority might--something resembling an animal's growl may
trigger an instinctual response. However, I see a hard case to be made
for responses other than fear (though not a competely impossible task). The
nasal singing in balinese and other asian cultures (eg. peking opera) I
personally find quite grating, yet I fully acknowledge that others find
beauty in these sounds. I don't know of any unified theory of sonority.
-Terence
--
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
Terence Collins
The Hearst New Media Center
http://hearstnewmedia.com
tcol...@hearstnewmedia.com
212.649.2676
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
Matthew H. Fields
Hmmm, it seems to me that phrases like "any method of composing can
be programmed" are a bit glib---they hinge on equivocation on "method".
My method usually starts with a strong cup of coffee... No, really,
some very sophisticated attempts at describing whole categories of music
that are obviously based all on one "method" have hit tricky complications.
Lerdahl & Jackendoff, for instance, do an end run around some of these
by statements like "the listener prefers to group music into groupings
that are musically parallel", which begs the precise meaning of "parallel
passages"---you might make a careful preliminary consideration of the
matter, as I suspect the answer to that one question is more complex than
the whole of "A Generative Theory...".
Fred Goldrich
In article <320590e1...@news.connectnet.com>,
JE Snodgrass <snod...@connectnet.com> wrote:
>
>... Algorithmic computation, though dealing
>ultimately with numbers, can also deal with symbols, and that means it
>can model anything. Any method of composing that a person can conceive
>can be programmed.
How about "Write down whatever pops into your head"?
> The ability to perceive
>and enjoy music results from the mental capacity to remember sounds
>and to perceive organization amoung them, as well as the sense of what
>is beautiful and what is ugly, which arises from our understanding of
>how things grow and how they die. We can see in music a metaphor for
>life as opposed to death, and we appreciate this because we are alive
>and wish to stay alive. (Music is wish fulfillment just like other
>forms of art.) Hence there is such a thing as sounds which are not
>music, and music which has obvious errors in it -- errors being where
>harmony is not the end result, where conflict and imbalance prevails.
You state this as if it were a universal truth. Of
the many, often conflicting definitions of 'harmony' that have
been used in various times and places, which one do you have in
mind here, and why is it to be preferred over the others? In
the same vein, are there definitions of 'conflict' and 'imbalance'
in music that have some sort of widespread acceptance?
>This is the wrong image. Of course, some people like the ugly, like
>pictures of death...
Does this mean that your taste is better than their taste,
and that what you like is better than what they like?
> When you look at other cultures, you have to take into account
>that different cultures have spent differing amounts of time
>developing musically, just like they have philosophically or
>technologically.
Are you saying that, given enough time, all cultures would
arrive at the same musical values? Whose, I wonder?
> Perceiving
>the meaning of sound is like perceiving the meaning of a painting. If
>two men from different cultures see a picture of a rotting corpse or a
>naked nubile female, they'll understand that one image is ugly and the
>other isn't. Musical perception is the same thing.
There are a couple of logical leaps here. One is that
the beauty of a painting is determined by what real-world objects
the painting represents; why do you think this is true? And what
about paintings that don't represent real-world objects? What
real-world objects does music represent?
>Also, note the worldwide popularity of rock. Does China have its own
>rock music? Yes, but it's derived from western music -- because they
>recognize the superiority to their traditional musical forms.
Does the 'worldwide popularity' argument then also demon-
strate the 'superiority' of rock to Western classical music?
> Just as
>there are better shoes or better cars, there is better music.
I wonder, does the 'better music' happen to be the
music that you like?
-- Fred Goldrich
--
Fred Goldrich
gold...@panix.com
Roger L. Lustig
JE Snodgrass wrote:
> I'd like to point out, "mathematical" music is pretty jokey. Any
> "mathematical" approach to art is limited. Clearly mathematics as a
> sequence of equations meant to relate one measurement to another is
> incapable of representing anything very complex. Computation, however,
> is another matter. Algorithmic models as representative of processes
> can become indefinately complex. Remember chaos, fractals, and so on
> may have had their origins in mathematics (spurned of course by
> mathematicians, considered quirky and of no practical interest) but
> they had their real birth in computation. In fact, mathematics as a
> whole (as we think of blackboard equations) is really a subset of
> algorithmic computation.
Do we think of "blackboard equations as a whole" as being the same
as mathematics? I don't think so.
> Algorithmic computation, though dealing
> ultimately with numbers, can also deal with symbols, and that means it
> can model anything. Any method of composing that a person can conceive
> can be programmed.
Theoretically, yes. By humans who program nowadays, probably not.
> "Roger L. Lustig" <juli...@ix.netcom.com> said:
No, I didn't. Please watch your attributions.
> >> And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
> >> which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
> >> being totally random.
> Don't say "organized mathematically", because that's misleading
Not so. "Mathematically" has plenty of meanings other than your chosen
one.
> IMO. How are you defining mathematics? When was a mathematical
> description ever formulated to describe even a recorder solo? Maybe
> you mean some people have suggested that there seems to be
> mathematical relationships at the lowest level, e.g. between
> fundamental and harmonics.
No, that's not what they meant.
> It doesn't go much further than that as far as I know.
It does, with some composers.
> >Whose 'the ear' are you referring to?
*That* is something I wrote.
> >> Music has a biological basis,
> >Really? *Hearing* does, but I don't know of any biological basis
> >for music.
> Well, geez, at what point does the ear disconnect from the
> brain. Of course music has a biological basis, because every aspect of
> what a human being is has a biological basis.
I already responded to that argument; you've reduced "biological
basis" to utter triviality, because it would be just as sensible
to say that baseball has a biological basis.
> The ability to perceive
> and enjoy music results from the mental capacity to remember sounds
> and to perceive organization amoung them, as well as the sense of what
> is beautiful and what is ugly, which arises from our understanding of
> how things grow and how they die.
Really, now! How did you determine that? And why do so many different
ideas of beauty exist, not least with regard to music?
> We can see in music a metaphor for
> life as opposed to death, and we appreciate this because we are alive
> and wish to stay alive.
We can, but we need not; besides, lots of people who don't particularly
wish to continue living like music nonetheless.
Besides, you seem to have come to the level of claiming that metaphors
have biological basis.
> (Music is wish fulfillment just like other forms of art.)
(And you know this because....?)
> Hence there is such a thing as sounds which are not
> music, and music which has obvious errors in it -- errors being where
> harmony is not the end result, where conflict and imbalance prevails.
a) What is "conflict" in music? That's a metaphorical term.
b) ditto for "imbalance".
c) If sounda are not being used for wish-fulfilment, then they're not
music? I guess a non-wishing performance of Beethoven's 5th is not
music; wishing makes it otherwise.
d) For that matter, how can we tell whether "harmony" is the end
result in a piece of music? Do we have an objective standard of
harmony?
> This is the wrong image.
No; it's *your* wrongheaded set of metaphors and untested assumptions.
> Of course, some people like the ugly, like
> pictures of death, and then there's other people (how ironic they are
> so often academics) inclined to call black white because that's the
> extent of their originality -- contrariness -- however the garbage
> they pretend to like never has wide appeal.
Ah. So "wish fulfilment" is no longer the standard; "wide appeal"
is the thing now.
Also, a few examples of these academics would be nice, along with
some evidence that you know what they're saying.
> Any theory of music has to
> be based on what is considered beautiful,
By whom? Do all people consider the same things to be beautiful?
Do the standards never change? Do cultures not redefine beauty
over time?
> and that has to relate to self-affirmation, to life affirmation.
How can one tell whether a piece does that? Consider music of
cultures other than yours.
> Even the sickest punk rock or
> metal that's popular has a good substructure and musical power.
How do you know?
> Even Iggy Pop has a lust for life, which is his saving grace. ;-)
Again, how can one tell that?
> When you look at other cultures, you have to take into account
> that different cultures have spent differing amounts of time
> developing musically,
Some have taken much longer than we have. Your point?
> just like they have philosophically or
> technologically. Because they're different and used to different music
> doesn't imply anything about cultural "determination" of musical
> perception.
Perception? I think you mean "cognition", especially in light
of everything you said above.
And when *that* is taken into account, cultural influence is
patently obvious.
> IQ would probably be more indicative, given you sit people
> down and give them a chance to widen their musical horizons.
Do you do that? Do you give yourself that chance? How do you
go about it?
> >> and like our other
> >> senses (e.g., vision, or smell) our sense of music is highly
> >> selective. Certain sound structures are perceived as music,
> >No. They are perceived as musical sound, perhaps; but music
> >is perceived in terms of events or behaviors or practices.
> This doesn't mean anything.
No, it means a great deal if you spend a moment thinking about it.
> Music is sound where you can recognize
> the meaning of the sound, even though it isn't language.
So a thunderclap is music? Sure has a lot of meaning!
> Perceiving
> the meaning of sound is like perceiving the meaning of a painting.
Neither one of those is perception, though. Why do you insist
on perception when describing cognitive processes?
> If
> two men from different cultures see a picture of a rotting corpse or a
> naked nubile female, they'll understand that one image is ugly and the
> other isn't.
a) Depends on the female, don't you think? Do all cultures
prize the same things in terms of beauty?
b) Do all cultures even have a definition of ugliness that
calls corpses ugly?
c) Proof by convenient example won't get you very far. What of
two pieces of music, each considered ugly in one culture,
beautiful in the other?
> Musical perception is the same thing.
Except for one small matter: it doesn't exist. Music is
a *cognitive* process, not a perceptual one.
Also, to say that "it's the same thing" when all you've offered
is a cheap analogy that doesn't have any real-world value to
begin with isn't much of an argument.
> You may not believe it.
This isn't a matter for believing.
> You may have an image of human beings as culturally determined
> automatons, but really they each have a brain and a tremendous
> capacity for metaphorical thought.
You might want to develop that in yourself, then. So far you've
missed the point entirely. After all, you're the one confusing
cognition with perception.
> >> while
> >> other structures are not perceived at all, or are perceived only as
> >> intellectual puzzles by people with highly trained ears.
> >You left out 'culture.' Some cultures recognize some things as
> >highly significant in a musical sense; others hear those same
> >things as meaningless noise.
> Some cultures attach _cultural_ significance to certain musical
> structures, like religious or whatever,
....or "vocal" or "concert" or "folk"...
> because of the traditional association.
In what way is that different from "understanding" music?
> Anyone can understand music no matter how it is created.
Yeah? Tell me what you "understand" about wayang or gagaku or
shash maqam. Listen to some without knowing anything about its
culture. Tell me what you understand. Tell me why you know that
you've understood it.
> (Maybe this cannot be proved, but what of significance can?)
Uh, fallacy can be demonstrated.
> Having
> created alot of sound with computer programs, I can see something of
> the relationship between theoretical structure and musicality --
You mean: you've found ways of creating sounds that *you* like.
Seems like a culture of one here.
> and it is not cultural.
And you know this because...?
> For example, I can create a melody which is too
> long to be remembered, so it may sound musical in a vague sense, but
> it is not "catchy".
To you, perhaps. Others might find it very catchy.
> Using the same algorithm, if I reduce the length
> of the melody (or melody class if you will) then it generates a melody
> which is more catchy.
What's your standard of "catchiness"?
> That shows memory dependence as primary in
> melody perception, which is going to be the same across cultures.
Sure! After all, you're working with a sample of one. There are
five billion of those cultures out there.
> Look
> at the structure of most pop music: you have levels of repetitiousness
> that support higher, less repetitious levels. This is to aid the mind
> in ordering and understanding higher level melody.
It's also based on a small set of culturally determined and conditioned
melodic and structural types. Some other types, equally simple,
are not used in pop music, and would cause most listeners more
than a few problems when listening in a pop context.
Oh, by the way, would you care to define "pop" in a non-cultural way?
> (A short,
> oft-repeated melody is easy to apprehend, a long single melody
> difficult, but one can support the other, bringing it within reach of
> the mind -- it's true ... if you listen to the long melody by itself,
> it is incomprehsible, but with the supporting melodies much more
> easily understood.).
I don't even know what you mean by "melody" here--or "apprehend"
or "comprehend" or "understand". Are they the same thing? What's
the "reach of the mind"? Whose mind?
> I.e. the structure is determined by the
> requirements of the mind (any mind) not by cultural peculiarities.
Do tell. Which minds have you tested this on?
> Also, note the worldwide popularity of rock. Does China have its own
> rock music? Yes, but it's derived from western music -- because they
> recognize the superiority to their traditional musical forms.
Horseshit. Most of Chinese listeners of rock don't even *know*
traditional Chinese musical forms.
For that matter, I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that
you don't either.
Now, note also the hegemony of Western culture in general. Even
so, in some parts of the world, rock isn't very popular at all,
because one of the primary cognitive/perceptual elements of it--
the backbeat--doesn't jibe with the indigenous musical culture.
Lots of pop music around the world uses a downbeat-oriented
four or eight to the bar beat, instead of the rock beat. The
rock beat is *rejected* there.
For that matter, it caused a good deal of cultural consternation
in this country too.
> Just as
> there are better shoes or better cars, there is better music.
Except for one thing: shoes and cars have direct utility. Art
is entirely voluntary; there are no direct consequences of
artistic choice (except when art is a commodity).
> It's no different -- the foot is merely more visible --
It's entirely different. We need transportation and clothing.
Art is *not* necessary in that sense. Art is entirely a
matter of choice.
Also, why is there such disagreement about which art is
"better"?
> that doesn't make the mind magic.
Then stop advocating your magic logic that turns your own
perception and cognition into universals.
> I bet people 1000 years from now will have really
> excellent shoes!
So how come the "best" music, according to so many people,
was composed 200 years ago?
> >> As with our
> >> other senses, it is somewhat arbitrary what can be perceived and what
> >> can't.
> >Music isn't a sense, though.
> Who knows what is and what isn't a "sense"? Is hunger a sense?
Hearing is a sense. Music is not.
> Why do we talk about an "aesthetic sense"?
It's a metaphor. Remember metaphors?
> Whenever I see this kind of
> nitpicking I become suspicious of the person's motives.
Whenever I see someone who can't tell cognition from perception,
and then complains about someone else insisting on precision when
using the term "sense", I sense--that's right!--hypocrisy.
Whenever I see someone who uses wild analogies and metaphors
and then ignores the limits of same, I sense someone who doesn't
have a clear idea of what he's talking about.
Whenever I encounter someone who insists on concluding that his
cognitive processes are like everybody else's, I can only
assume that he hasn't done his homework.
> >> Certain animals see things that we simply do not see, and it is
> >> highly possible that another intelligent species would have a sense of
> >> music that would be simply different from ours,
> Right on. A more intelligent species would be able to appreciate
> more complex music.
How do you know that? Perhaps its intelligence would be developed
in different directions. Keep in mind that many highly intelligent
humans, whose auditory apparatus is in fine shape, don't appreciate
music very much.
> It is certainly true that animals -- even say
> chimpanzees, as far as I know -- show no appreciation of music or even
> rhythm. Certainly our own sense is limited by our memory capacity.
Why are there people with excellent memory, but no taste for music?
> In
> order to feel the beat, so to speak, one must have a powerful ability
> to store sound over time and to recognize regularity in the pattern.
And yet people of very low intelligence can feel the beat just fine.
EXCEPT when--it's the beat of the music of some other culture. And
that seems to be true of more intelligent people, too.
> Regularity makes possible a memory structure which can be filled. More
> memory, more structure possible.
Now go and study cognitive development for a while. Could it be
that one *learns* the musical structures of one's culture at an
early age?
> >> or perhaps have none at
> >> all. This arbitrariness is the key. Traditional composers in the West
> >> and elsewhere, relying on their ears, have sought out the special
> >> structures we hear as music.
> >Correction: that their cultures hear as music.
> No need to beat on this culture point.
....unless we want to think about it, instead of ignoring it as hard
as we can.
> How does musical
> innovation occur, and why should it be different from any other form
> of innovation?
It generally occurs within a strong musical culture, and is always
conditioned by that culture. Got any counterexamples?
> Advances in painting, for example the addition of
> perspective, are hardly cultural
They are *entirely* cultural. Think about when, where, and
how they occurred. What scientific advances were being made
at the time? What changes in the intellectual climate? What
else did those innovators do, and for whom? Who paid for
the innovative work, and why was it accepted?
> (and many cultures never did achieve them independently)
Funny thing. Now, could that mean that there *is* a
cultural factor? After all, your hypothesis would deny
such a possibility.
> yet you cannot deny they are advances.
Why not? Was Mannerism an advance over the Renaissance?
Was Roman sculpture an advance over Greek?
Are *technical* advances the same as artistic advances?
> Really all
> such advances are doing is taking better cognizance of how the
> eye-mind processes real visual images.
That's fine; now, does that lead to better art in all cases?
> Same thing with sound and music.
Another silly proof by analogy.
Except that...you still need to show us what the analogous
advances in music *are*.
> >Nonsense. What "mathematical" composers have not begun with sounds that
> >are well-established in their culture?
> Yeah, which started with the ultrasonic? ;-)
Yeah, which ones didn't start with the musical language of
their culture, the instruments, the harmonies, the techniques?
> If I count as a "mathematical" composer, I can tell you I
> started with audible square wave tones between about 20 and 20000 Hz.
Lots of mathematical composers don't start with that approach.
Also, is there any musical reason for using square waves? Do
they have a particular sound?
> Gee, I guess that's cultural, though, because I read in a book written
> in English that that was the audible range.
Gee, you can't even get your *own* arguments straight. What's
special about square waves? What do they sound like?
> Do you think you have to create sounds like those created by
> traditional instruments, e.g. electric guitar and keyboard (or do our
> _real_ cultural sounds have to be mechano-acoustic? I forget ...;-))
You don't have to, but if you want popularity, and interest, and
"better" music that conquers the world, you're going to have to
have some musical context for your listeners to start with.
> I create sounds based on what I can hear together. It really doesn't
> matter.
Do tell. What's this "together" stuff? Could it be Western
harmony or something?
> I do notice that the more complex the individual sounds are,
> the more sounds you can hear at once -- the ear is truly amazing this
> way. I think that's beautiful.
Others don't. Why is this?
Also, has your music conquered the world? Is it "Better" in that
it's innovative in some necessary way?
Perhaps you should
a) figure out who's typing what
b) figure out what they're saying before ridiculing them
c) study some world music
d) remmeber that your cognitive processes may not be those
of other people
e) come up with a definition of art that makes sense
f) remember that the greatest artistic technique is not
the same as the greatest art
g) read up on logical fallacies
h) stop saying "it's the same with music" instead of
making a real argument.
Roger Lustig
Matthew H. Fields
>JE Snodgrass wrote:
>> Just as
>> there are better shoes or better cars, there is better music.
>> I bet people 1000 years from now will have really
>> excellent shoes!
Relax and enjoy your shoes. Share and enjoy. Don't panic.
Jose Oscar Marques
On Mon, 05 Aug 1996 07:46:35 GMT snod...@connectnet.com (JE Snodgrass)
wrote:
>"mathematical" approach to art is limited. Clearly mathematics as a
>sequence of equations meant to relate one measurement to another is
>incapable of representing anything very complex.
Mathematics isn't a "sequence of equations meant to relate one
measurement to another".
>In fact, mathematics as a
>whole (as we think of blackboard equations) is really a subset of
>algorithmic computation.
No, it isn't. It is the other way round. Mathematics deals with all
kinds of abstract structures, of which Turing machines are just one
example.
If you think of mathematics as "blackboard equations", then you haven't
a clue about what mathematics IS.
>"Roger L. Lustig" <juli...@ix.netcom.com> said:
>>> And for the record, I suspect that it is quite significant that music
>>> which is highly organized mathematically so often strikes the ear as
>>> being totally random.
This is the last straw. Roger Lustig didn't say that. As you can't even
keep your quote attributions straight, I don't feel like going on
reading the rest of your posting.
Robert Caponi
In article <320590e1...@news.connectnet.com>, snod...@connectnet.com
(JE Snodgrass) wrote:
** is beautiful and what is ugly, which arises from our understanding of
** how things grow and how they die. We can see in music a metaphor for
** life as opposed to death, and we appreciate this because we are alive
** and wish to stay alive. (Music is wish fulfillment just like other
** forms of art.) Hence there is such a thing as sounds which are not
** music, and music which has obvious errors in it -- errors being where
** harmony is not the end result, where conflict and imbalance prevails.
** This is the wrong image. Of course, some people like the ugly, like
** pictures of death, and then there's other people (how ironic they are
** so often academics) inclined to call black white because that's the
Uh oh; this is beginning to sound like those Chernyshevsky tomes from the
1860s which attempted to quantify all beauty in terms of biological need;
that which reminds us most of life is beauty and that which reminds us of
death is ugliness. Of course, he also spent pages debunking the idea that
dogs can talk. I don't find this indicative of what I consider beauty.
** Also, note the worldwide popularity of rock. Does China have its own
** rock music? Yes, but it's derived from western music -- because they
** recognize the superiority to their traditional musical forms. Just as
** there are better shoes or better cars, there is better music. It's no
** different -- the foot is merely more visible -- that doesn't make the
** mind magic. I bet people 1000 years from now will have really
** excellent shoes!
You're on your own, here.
--
tagu...@nr.infinet.com
Marc Couroux
In article <4u4ncs$p...@nntp1.best.com>, rus...@nntp.best.com (Jeff
Harrington) wrote:
> Uh... don't you say up top that it's the performers responsibility to put
> the music over the top? My point was primarily that people often believe
> that institutions, record companies, control what music will be preserved
> and encouraged. I believe that this isn't true over the long run; that
> sooner or later a performance or recording of a particular piece will
> *expose* its worth or not.
Well, one would hope of course that all the good music will be lucky enough to
be recorded. This is unfortunately not true, and the fact remains that the
record companies are, in most cases, the final arbiter of what is to see the
light of day and what is not. Case in point: Maxwell Davies. Everything he
does now, or practically, goes immediately to CD. Ferneyhough? Not at all. He
has two CDs available on the market now representing about 1/4th of his output.
I spoke to him recently about this situation and he told me that there exist
amazing recordings of some of the pieces you and I have not heard and the only
thing stopping them from being engraved on a CD is the record companies' final
decision. Disques Montaigne, who has a very fine roster of composers
(Lachenmann, Dillon, Estrada, Harvey, Xenakis...) would rather put out 8
Kagel "editions" than a 2nd Ferneyhough. Same thing with Michael Finnissy.
In this day and age one needs CD recordings to be remembered....
> We're all audience
> members; I detect, in fact, a little anti-audience bias in your response
> (typical of a new music promoter/performer?) as if they might never *get*
> it. If no audience ever gets it than the piece is probably worthless.
> Probably. But I trust audiences more than I trust affiliations of
> composers, etc...
Thou misunderstoodest me Herr Harrington. If anything, my attitude is
pro-audience. What I want to do is to liberate audiences from this notion that
they must "get" the music in order to appreciate it. I'm not into "getting it"
(know what I mean, know what I mean nudge nudge wink wink?). This "getting it"
thing has been one of the reasons audiences have reacted with so much
hostility to new music, rightly so, as there is not much else one can do
when faced with
the arrogance of a composer chanting the "historical necessity" of his/her
music. The right way to approach such a situation is to give the audience an
energetic performance, of whatever music you choose, Babbitt, Xenakis.... I
swear to you (again, from experience), that they will not be hostile to what you
are offering because they can immediately identify with the "energy" present in
the rendering. They don't have to "understand" or "know" the style, the
marginalia of a particular aesthetic, in order to have a very powerful
experience. Now I'm being utopian: there is a part of any work of music
which
is meaningful and if the performer can seize this, identify with it (the
performer MUST identify with it) and project it, than the artistic
experience
is a valid one, regardless of whether you or I think that it is intrinsically
good or bad art.
I trust audiences too. I wouldn't be a performer if I didn't, and I
CERTAINLY would not spend all my time promoting and playing new music if I
didn't believe that the audiences were already open and willing to receive
it. They are, and
I am the living proof that when the medium is efficient and convincing, the
recipient is enthusiastic.
Cheers!
sluttman
> average length, no?
Guess it depends on how much trouble one would care to go through to
find this "average length". Granted, the initial fugal entries occur in
four-bar patterns of 8/8 - 12/8 - 8/8 - 7/8, but after these (four)
entries it's (almost) anything goes, the only constant being the
eighth-note pulse.
Dearmad
Robert Caponi wrote:
>
> In article <4u0iob$3...@Oak.IC.Mankato.MN.US>, Wes & Ann Judkins
> <"jud...@ic.mankato.mn.us"@ic.mankato.mn.us> wrote:
>
> ** Ok, what do you (anyone) consider non-biological? That might help.
>
> Music, for one. Then there's the moon, a bowl of mush, and a 2-volume
> edition of Hegel's "Science of Logic."
>
> I'm sleepy.
> --
> tagu...@nr.infinet.com
Now I take issue with you here, Mr. Caponi.. mush, if edible, is distinctly
biological, I mean doesn't it come from plants? And if I EAT that 2 volume
Hegel edition, does it not become biological? And if I read it, are the
thoughts expressed in it biologically -uh....- well, created for biological
consumption BY a biological entity and expressed in a bio-logical (hehe)
way...?
Ok, I'll post something serious here someday... ok?
-Peter