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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mfs
From: mfs@mhuxr.UUCP (SIMON)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Many thanks for your kind responses
Message-ID: <342@mhuxr.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Jun-85 22:13:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxr.342
Posted: Mon Jun 10 22:13:51 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Jun-85 05:20:22 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 36

Thank you all for your responses. They have been most helpful, educational,
informative. And polite, too. It is a pleasure to argue with such fine
gentlemen. Since you collectively have covered the topic in its entirety,
let us then consider the matter resolved. I am the richer for the experience.
If you will allow me, however, to make these miserably insignificant points:

To Tom Duff: My dictionary and standard music theory text (MATERIALS AND
STRUCTURE OF MUSIC, Vol 1: Christ, Delone, Kliewer, Rowell & Thomson;
Prentice Hall 1972) define rhythm as "the pattern produced by emphasis and
duration of notes." No mention of time signature. Generalizing a bit, we can say
that rhythm is that quality of music that differentiates the note I play
today from the same note you played yesterday. In that sense is rhythm
intrinsic to music. You cite some examples. Well, Cecil Taylor has not played
in any measurable meter in some 20 years, yet is surely one of the most
rhythmic pianists around.

To Chris Yoder: That irresistibly rhythmic music you find so intellectually
flat, does it get from here to there? And do you want to go there with it?

To Doug Alan: Your posting surely passes the Rich Rosen relevancy test.
I don't, however, understand how my interest in grammar relates to my
interest in rhythm. Maybe you can explain it to me, and to the rest of us.
On second thought, don't. It might prove taxing to your numerous, brilliant
brain cells.

To Rich Rosen: Sorry I disappointed you so. I promise to do better next time.
I realize now that listening to the opinions of the top practitioners
of a craft is not useful in defining it. I was also mistaken in believing
the saying that goes "Anyone in the band can swing, but it's the drummer
who swings the band." And I now understand that you know better than I what may
be inferred from my postings.

Well, let me not clog your CRTs any longer. This discussion has been
wonderful. I look forward to some more in the very distant future.

Marcel Simon