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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Arthur Pewtey)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.music.synth
Subject: Re: Drum Machines - A Flame
Message-ID: <1057@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Jun-85 22:57:30 EDT
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Posted: Wed Jun  5 22:57:30 1985
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> Rhythm, on the other hand [as opposed to harmony], pervades all music.
> There can be aharmonic
> and amelodic music, but there is no such thing as arrhythmic music.
> ...
> These are *not* value judgements. I listen to a pretty wide range
> of music, and these are the conclusions I reach. You disagree. Fine;
> state your assumptions, observations and conclusions. Let us talk.
> Save the value judgments on my assumptions, OK?  [MARCEL SIMON]

| Since the first two sentences are demonstrably untrue, so must be the third.
| As an example that most people might have heard,
| consider the Ligeti space-music used as sound-track in 2001.  This stuff
| is strictly arrhythmic, consisting almost entirely of sliding clusters of
| held notes.  It has no discernable meter or rhythm.  Most middle-period
| Stockhausen has similar temporal structure (e.g. Mixtur, Gruppen, Kontakte.)
| (In fact, Stockhausen claims that Ligeti's and Penderecki's entire catalogs
| are ripped-off bits of Mixtur.  But, I digress.)  Since there is demonstrably
| arrhythmic music, it must be the case that any statement to the contrary
| is either a falsehood or a value judgement of the form ``That stuff's not
| music, because it hasn't got any rhythm.''  This calls into question the
| fourth and following sentences in the above quote.  Apparently, mfs doesn't
| listen to a particularly wide range of music, or he thinks that Mozart,
| Johnny Cash, The Rolling Stones and Oscar Peterson circumscribe the range
| of `real' music.  [TOM DUFF]

The examples I was thinking of included Vangelis' "Creation du Monde" from
"L'Apocalypse des Animaux", but the point is taken.  Rhythm is just ONE
of many elements in music, and anyone who claims it or any other element
is THE *main* element is simply expressing a personal taste and preference.

| mfs's statements on the role of harmony in music and the function of
|*performers also seem pretty narrow.  As a composer, I think of performers
|*as a necessary evil.  Performers stand between the composer and his
|*audience, and necessarily dilute the composer's ideas when they introduce
|*their own.  Performers call this `interpretation' and elevate it to a
|*virtue.  Fortunately, as technology matures composers can more and
|*more afford to view performers as an optional component of the music,
|*and need not delegate to them any aesthetic decisions they wish to
|*arrogate to themselves.  [TOM DUFF]

I know a statement like this is bound to raise the great performer/composer
dichotomy debate to its lowest point ever by starting a usenet argument about
it, but all I can say is "Hear! Hear!" to Tom Duff.  I couldn't agree more.
Although I've enjoyed performing and recognize the way a performance can
result in musical growth and "aliveness" (as Simon calls it), the conception
of the work in the mind of the composer is in fact a dilution if not a
bastardization of his/her original intent.  If performers want to express
something other than the ideas of the original composer in a piece of music,
let them write their own music, or write their own unique arrangement of
the composer's piece and label it as such.
-- 
"Now, go away or I shall taunt you a second time!"
				Rich Rosen  ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr