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From: ISSSSM@NUSVM.BITNET (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: RE: WHY NO ONE CARES WHAT S. PAGE DOES
Message-ID: <9106190528.AA17412@lilac.berkeley.edu>
Date: 19 Jun 91 05:28:20 GMT
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X-Unparsable-Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 08:53:05 SST

In article <10856@idunno.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot
Handelman) writes:
>
>Musical thinking tends therefore not to be thinking, but rather
>a sort of nostalgizing.
>
>You see: I'm trying to come up with an answer to what seems to me the
>most basic of all music-theoretical questions: "Why are all music
>theorists so dumb?" I mean Laske, Balaban, the rest of them ---
>can this be a coincidence? I assert that it cannot.
>
I am glad to see you get to the heart of the matter so quickly (and, at the
same time, challenging Page as to whether or not such subject matter is the
sort of thing he really wanted to see)!  Of course, I tend to be skeptical
about sweeping generalizations, even when they are formulated as questions.
I do not think that ALL music theorists are so dumb.  Rather, I would argue
that music theory is as susceptible to Sturgeon's Law as is any other domain,
meaning that I tend to dismiss about 90% of what I read in music theory to have
been a waste of my time.  FINDING that other 10% is often a neat trick, but a
little bit of persistence helps.

This is not to say that I am about to defend either Laske or Balaban.  However,
there may be another problem with your question, which is the assumption that
there is some kind of common answer to it.  To play a bit free with Tolstoy,
I would argue that all good music theorists are basically alike, while each
dumb one is dumb in his (or her) own way.  You seem to be arguing that
nostalgia is serving as some sort of underlying explanation for all
manifestations of dumb music theory.  Well, given that nostalgia is
basically a matter of bringing the past into the present, I would argue
that I can find it in the good stuff I read, too.  (Just to lay my own
cards on the table, I would offer up Lewin's phenomenology paper as an
example of "good stuff."  There is plenty of nostalgia there, even in
its best parts;  and I find that no cause for shame.)

Therefore, I would urge you to be more specific.  Take Balaban for example.  My
personal sense of accusation for this paper boils down to the fact that it is
devoid of any intuition for its subject matter.  As a matter of fact, given
that it lays claim to TWO subjects--music theory and computer science--I think
it lacks an adequate infrastructure of intuition for BOTH of them.  Ultimately,
it is little more than an exercise in putting together words and formulas "in
the right way"--it has no story to tell.  I call it a waste of time;  you call
it dumb.  Nevertheless, we are looking at the same blackbird.

Laske, on the other hand, is a different case for me.  I think that Laske has a
genuine intuition in the arena of philosophy, and he has been struggling for
much of his career to harness that intuition to music.  I think he has made
a great mistake in trying to invoke the computer as an intellectual tool when
his intuition for computers continues to fall short of his skills in
philosophy.  I also fear that he, too, lacks the necessary intuition
in music;  but I would prefer to hold off on making such a call until
I have had more exposure to his work as a composer.

As someone who continues to seek out that 10% of music theory which I do NOT
regard as a waste of time, I think it is important to recognize this
distinction.  The Balaban paper we discussed discouraged me to the point
that I would be very unlikely to seek out any of her subsequent publications
unless I had some strong evidence that she had crossed some major intellectual
barrier.  On the other hand I view Laske as a man who just keeps trying to find
the right way to express himself.  (Look at the degree of variation among his
papers in contrast with other writers who basically tell the same story with
each new paper they write.  Laske has not yet found his story, but he is
putting so much effort into his attempts that I shall probably continue
to return to his publications in the hope that he may some day get it right.)

Clearly, I do not expect you to agree with my answer to the question you
raised.  Since I took the trouble to write this much, however, I hope it
is clear that I agree that the question was worth posing.  Nevertheless,
I would prefer to refine it a bit before pursuing it further.

===============================================================================

Stephen W. Smoliar
Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore
Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Kent Ridge
SINGAPORE 0511

BITNET:  ISSSSM@NUSVM

"He was of Lord Essex's opinion, 'rather to go an hundred miles to speak with
one wise man, than five miles to see a fair town.'"--Boswell on Johnson