Re: OT: Musical languistics

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Worlton" <jamesworlton@...>


> > To my ears the "experimental" music is
> > vile noise.  I prefer almost anything but that
> > Zairean
> > stuff.
I don't know what Zairean means.  How would you, Adam, react to Chick Corea,
for instance, especially his "Children's Songs"?  Or Stravinsky, or even
Philip Glass?   I find these composers structured, intense, and dark.  I
like a lot of the minimalists.  What I guess I don't care for--and this is
the 'non-musician' in me speaking--are pieces that violate expected rhythmic
patterns; I can't name any composers, James could, but those pieces where
someone pings here, then silence, then a couple of  drum rolls, then
silence, then a crash of symbols, silence, then rowing on the strings, and
another isolated ping... I find myself writhing in my seat.  Give me the
dissonant, vile noise, so long as their is a building energy in it!
Onetwothree onetwothree onetwothree onetwothree of "Einstein on the Beach."
The frenzy of Song number 9 in Corea.

James:
> Obviously, this is not the place for an extended
> discussion on musical aesthetics. But I can't avoid
> the need to comment. There seem to be two schools of
> thought about what 'decent' music is. The first (held
> by a lot of people in the world of 'contemporary
> classical music') proposes that music can be good or
> bad based on how internally consistent it is, how
> skillfully the composer treats/develops the musical
> materials, regardless of the musical language (read:
> set of notes/tonality/atonality/etc.). The other camp
> (which includes most non-musicians, i.e., those
> without 'extensive musical training') think that if
> music doesn't sound like what they think it should,
> then it is bad.
>
> I happen to belong to the former group. And yes, I
> write 'dissonant noise' because to me it is more
> interesting than listening to/writing what I term
> 'warmed-over sentimentality'.
I think I like least of all the "generic" classical music, the 'warmed over
sentimentality' as you call it, which is especially evident in our
commonplace film soundtracks.  The music that's supposed to tell us how
we're supposed to feel.  But there are notable exceptions!  Jarre's score in
"Witness."  Williams, who has composed so many fine scores for movies.
Woycech Kilar's score for "Bram Stoker's Dracula"!!!  I would also count
among my very favorite classical composers Albert Roussell, writing for Lily
Laskine (I can't remember if he is late nineteenth-century or early
twentieth), but "Impromptu," pour l'harpe, which I transposed to the piano
when I was twenty and played pretty competently once, has a fury and an
intensity that I like in much unusual classical music--full as it is of
unexpected chord combinations and melodic progressions, and constant
accidence.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teoreal2.html

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