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From: tgd@floyd.UUCP (Tom Dennehy)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Harmelodics
Message-ID: <1914@floyd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Aug-83 09:35:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: floyd.1914
Posted: Wed Aug 17 09:35:07 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Aug-83 20:09:50 EDT
References: <530@uw-june>
Organization: Bell Labs, Whippany, NJ
Lines: 29

It shouldn't surprise Ornette Coleman that MOR groups are
making megabucks while he struggles to stay in the public ear.
His musical journey is that taken by European playwrights beginning
with Beckett in the early 50's.  When an artist is radically inno-
vative, he must not only create at his own level, but must also
create the standards by which an audience can judge his work.  When
the prevailing standard is "it's got a good beat, I give it an 85",
rejection of thinkingman's music can be swift and permanent.

The recreation of the dramatic form is still struggling to be
understood.  Plays with few characters and wildly varying stagings 
proliferate today, with results ranging from the critically successful
(night, Mother) to the marginal (K2) to the floppos (Edward Albee has
struck out three times running with Lolita, The Lady from Dubuque, and
The Man with Three Arms).  However, the megabuck successes are always
the paegents (Annie, 42nd Street).  Regional theaters are molding 
audiences to new forms (it's unusual for a straight play to be produced
Broadway-bound today) but it's a slow painful process.

The recreation of the jazz ear can't be expected to be any easier.

For a look at the struggle, lend an eye to Julio Cortazar's
short story "The Pursuer", which looks at a sax player's life through
the eyes of the man making a great living writing his biography.  It's
in the Cortazar collection End of the Game.


	Tom Dennehy	BTL Whippany	{floyd!tgd}