Integrated ideology in music

[Richard Barrett]

Apologies if this has been dealt with here before, but speaking of Eddie's writings in terms of "wading through nonsense" strikes me as a bit overweening, especially at the same time as admitting to not having read the books in full... I mean, I find myself disagreeing with much of what he says, and the way he goes about saying it, but I would say his intention is to encourage people to think about music and its context rather than to get people to agree with him.

[Dan Warburton]

Dan, why do you think "extra-musical conceptual underpinning" is a form of "compositional dogma"? Or isn't that what you're saying?

Let me give you an example of a jam I found myself in: in 1995 I wrote a piece for piano, 2 clarinets, viola, cello and bass which, for some reason - probably simply because I thought it was cute - was based in terms of its overall duration and the duration of its constituent sections on the Mayan Tzolk'in calendar, a kind of 13x20 polyrhythm. I defined all kinds of rules, even down to metronome markings - I thought it'd be neat for the piece to last exactly 13 minutes, but when it went into rehearsal it was clear that the tempo I'd chosen (or rather that the system had chosen for me) was far too slow. Throughout the compositional process I had to bend or break my own rules, my extra-musical conceptual underpinning, in order to end up with something that made musical sense, i.e. that sounded good to my ears.

where do you draw the line between "musical" and "extra-musical"?

Now, there's a question boy bach.. (enough potential threads in this one to knit a pullover). It might be clearer to define a difference between intra-musical and extra-musical, in which case the former could refer to a work that set out to explore purely musical problems (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier?) while the latter could describe one based on something outside music - Dufay's Nuper rosarum flores, for example, based on the proportions of the cathedral in Florence. Of course, this rather quickly gets us into pretty dangerous territory (back to the "pure music" debate, the horror the horror), as, presumably, any piece of music that sets a text or which is written to accompany dance or as incidental music for theatre would probably be extra-musical. You end up chucking so much of your furniture out of the window you might as well go and live in the street.
Dunno, it's a bitch of a question. Maybe there's no need even to ask it anymore, since (especially thanks to technology) so many of our sensory experiences today are simultaneous and interpenetrable.

[faster]

Apologies if this has been dealt with here before, but speaking of Eddie's writings in terms of "wading through nonsense" strikes me as a bit overweening, especially at the same time as admitting to not having read the books in full... I mean, I find myself disagreeing with much of what he says, and the way he goes about saying it, but I would say his intention is to encourage people to think about music and its context rather than to get people to agree with him.

I've read them. I came away thinking he's probably a really good guy and suspecting that some of his core beliefs are at least adjacent to some of what pass for mine, but that I couldn't quite be sure about any of that because he needed an editor and he got carried away into some sweeping generalizations that, while perhaps extensions of stuff I agree with, too often terminate dogma. That said, his contribution--through his own music and his workshops--has been tremendous, with or without the books.

In defense of this derail: maybe this is my worry about those who strive for "ideological integrity"...even when it's emergent, it can tend toward dogma; when it's sought, that tendency seems even harder to evade.

(insanely busy, thinking on the fly, sorry about whatever is lumpy or half-baked here, and yeah, I probably need an editor more urgently than does Prevost)

[jamess]

Apologies if this has been dealt with here before, but speaking of Eddie's writings in terms of "wading through nonsense" strikes me as a bit overweening, especially at the same time as admitting to not having read the books in full... I mean, I find myself disagreeing with much of what he says, and the way he goes about saying it, but I would say his intention is to encourage people to think about music and its context rather than to get people to agree with him.

I am currently trying to give The First Concert a proper read (why own books if not to read them?) but I find some of his very concrete statements about how the more you preplan in music the less musical it becomes very annoying and counter-productive, especially when he later starts talking about wether his brand of improv is music or not and if that sort of definition really matters. As far as I'm concerned that's a major contradiction. Also, his spiel about the origins of music in homo sapien man is very sweet, but I get the impression that he is trying to compare his field of music to the world of early human experiments in manipulating sound which comes across very egotistical... At times it reads as if he is saying "My music is the best because it is the closest to that of our caveman ancestors".

[Seth]

"My music is the best because it is the closest to that of our caveman ancestors".

If you extended that logic to body types I'd be teh HOTTest.

[Richard Barrett]

Throughout the compositional process I had to bend or break my own rules, my extra-musical conceptual underpinning, in order to end up with something that made musical sense, i.e. that sounded good to my ears.

I see what you mean now - I thought you were referring to the kind of dogma which might drive a musician to say "if you don't understand what I'm doing the way I mean you to (ie. as reflecting my "extra-musical concerns") then you don't understand it at all," rather than an argument between Mayan Calendar Dan and Practical Listener Dan. As for that kind of situation though, I would say that it's a question of choosing the "right" mapping between concept and composition so that you never have to be torn between holding onto the system and loosening it for pragmatic reasons. ("Ask the right questions and you'll get the right answers.") Actually, for me one reason to be involved in systematic compositional procedures is to expand my idea of what sounds "good to my ears". But that's another discussion.

a work that set out to explore purely musical problems

... whatever they are! - my inclination is to think of music as a way of hearing/listening, normally but not necessarily brought about by auditory stimuli which have in some sense been composed (which includes being improvised), rather than being an "inherent" quality of those stimuli, so that the "musical"/"extra-musical" question ceases to have meaning - in your terms, the Mayan calendar is part of what the listener experiences because without it the music would have been very different or wouldn't exist at all. But that's yet another discussion.

As for Eddie, I haven't yet read his latest book. The one I know best is Minute Particulars, which I find very valuable, even though I don't agree with his philosophy of improvisation or with his views about electronics. It makes me think to myself "OK, write something better yourself." Also, his views tend to be somewhat more generous outside the books than inside them (as you can see from the brief email conversation about Minute Particulars between Eddie and Paul Obermayer here: http://furtlogic.com/node/133).

James, your comments on The First Concert make me feel more urgent about reading it than I had been! because I'm quite interested in what speculations about a prehistoric "Ur-music" might yield, for example, in terms of ideas about music and language. I wouldn't want to use such speculations to justify my own aesthetic decisions though.

[max]

I remember first reading about how Stockhausen might have been a secret fascist.

I thought at the time that was kind of obvious with the way his music is. I'd much rather have a musical fascist than a physical one.

meh