Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!eliot From: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: Re: ICMC reaction Message-ID: <2645@idunno.Princeton.EDU> Date: 20 Sep 90 00:23:30 GMT References: <27974@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> Sender: news@idunno.Princeton.EDU Distribution: comp Organization: Shitson University, New Crapsey Lines: 70 In article <27974@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> maverick@fir.berkeley.edu (Vance Maverick) writes: ;> Apparantly such trivialities as rhythmic pulse, phrasing, ;> and tonality have become unfashionable, as they were not present in ;> the majority of the pieces presented. It was if I had entered a ;> demonstration of gated noise generation machines and sound effects ;> systems, neither of which I consider to be musical in and of ;> themselves. ; ;Not that rhythmic pulse, phrasing, and tonality are musical in ("and ;of") themselves either! You touch on two classic music riddles: (1) ;Can there be music without phrasing? [Perhaps a piece consisting of a ;single event.] (2) What's the difference between sound effects and ;music? [As far as I can see, only context a.k.a. use, not audible ;properties. /Music for String Instruments, Percussion and Celesta/ ;becomes sound effects in /The Shining/.] ; ;Sounds like the incomprehension was mutual. Not that I think you're ;wrong in your general detection of clannish trendiness in the ;computer-music community! But why should anybody's music "resemble ;music as [you have] come to know it"? Eric Iverson didn't like the music. He doesn't consider noise generation machines "musical." He suggests that r&b (rhythm and bonality), on the other hand, are (and be) musical. Vance Maverick suggests that r&b are not nearly so well defined, since they are, in the end, properties of the listener. Eliot Handelman didn't really want to get involved with that discussion, so he changed the subject (suggested a new subject, really) by picking a fight with Vance Maverick. Vance Maverick replied: ;Oh, come on, Eliot, show a sense of humor. I hoped my use of the word ;"riddle" would hint that I too was aware of the silliness of these (noun ;of your choice)s. Eliot apologizes. I also read rec.music.classic, so missed out on the implied silliness. ;The one about music vs. sound effects is certainly a ;question in the sense that people disagree about the answer; It's more an answer in search of a question, that is, a piece of opinion or an emotional response trying to discover in what way it might pass itself off as a piece of authority. ;the one ;about phrasing is a transformation of the (equally pointless) conundrum ;"Are the first two chords of the /Eroica/ the same?", asked in my ;composition class by no less earnest a theoretician than David Lewin. That's not exactly a "phrasing" issue so much as a Stanley Fish-like "is there a text in this class" piece of rhetoric (the answer to both questions must be "no," since to answer "yes" is to revert to a world poorer in conundrums and self-doubt, where that question could not have been posed, yet it was). The experience of the second chord is flavored by the experience of the first. I forget if that's what Lewin was aiming at. Terry Eagleton has an interesting dig at the buried authoritarianism of reader-response analysis in his book "Literary Theory." The reader (or listener) who can be transmuted by this experience is by nature transmutable, therefore nothing of consequence has been effected. Everything's back the way it was in the first place. In short, are the two chords the same? Yes they are, because only that listener experiences difference -- the sort of difference worthy of this discussion, at any rate -- who experiences difference in the first place, who comes prepared to experience that difference, who therefore is not different from what he formerly was.