Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!eliot From: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: Re: responsibility Keywords: Intonation systems, octaves, pianos, computers Message-ID: <11440@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Date: 10 Nov 89 06:20:31 GMT References: <3068@husc6.harvard.edu> <1553@esquire.UUCP> <3111@husc6.harvard.edu> Reply-To: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) Organization: Princeton University, NJ Lines: 36 In article <3111@husc6.harvard.edu> elkies@zariski.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes: ;In article <1553@esquire.UUCP> rreid@esquire.UUCP ( r l reid ) writes: ;:In article <3068@husc6.harvard.edu> [I wrote:] ;:>New computer technology makes it easy to accomplish what in earlier ;:>times would have required heroic efforts. Remember the responsibility ;:>that comes with this power. ;: ;:Mercy me! Heaven forbid we should make any "bad music" as we ;:go along! ;:[...] ; ;That wasn't quite what I meant... Only that, as with text ;typesetting programs, the surface sound of synthesizer output ;can be seductively appealing quite independently of musical ;content, tempting the composer to accept what in another ;medium (s)he would further improve/revise. [The same point ;has been made in earlier times with, say, effective orchestration ;instead of synthesizers---but I'm digressing from comp.music ;issues...] Look Noam, it actually doesn't matter whether you revise or not. It doesn't matter if you make 3 million pieces a day. There is no such thing as compositional "responsibility." These are ideas that come to us (or you) from another epoch that held that art could change the world but today we are not so sure of that. You are trying to pump up a kind of composing to an importance that it simply doesn't have. "Professional" modern music today is one of the last bastions of amateurism, one does the thing simply because one wants to, and the only responsibility that one need acknowledge is to probe the depths of that one will profess. No one who has made this committment needs to be reprimanded by the wagging finger of a Noam Elkies. In short, you're out of order. -- E. Handelman -- Music Dept -- Princeton U.