If I may have 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of your time...

[Thorolf]

Originally Posted by reith

I'm surprised that Silence is the only Cage piece that has come under fire. Fontana Mix is just as contraversial.

4'33" is very useful as a concept because it is very clear that it just isn’t music, and that this is indeed the very point of it. No modernistic fad could be clearer in its denying the need for thought, imagination, technique. Hence, it is very easily used as an acid test: Those who call it music effectively distance themselves from absolutely everything but eachother, including history, tradition, technique, form, sound, semantics on the usage of the term “music”, and, maybe most important, a vast majority of sincere, knowledgable listeners.

Originally Posted by reith

I think that trying to define music is a lost cause. It seems to be a consensus, much as any of the "creative" arts. Perhaps we need new terms.

This is the sad conclusion caused by the persistence of such modernistic nihilism. People get exhausted by just repeating that not music is not music, and usually get dizzy by the mere weight of the usual mixture of “philosophy”, existesialist speaking in tongues, always unintelligently questioning everything by just negating an nauseam, refusing to conclude about anything at all, for then, all of a sudden, concluding that their modernist “ideas” deserve to be coined with the term “art”.

On the contrary, reith, I believe that there is a general consensus on what consistutes “music”, even if a strict definition seldom is provided. And the general consensus says that describing 4'33" of not playing isn’t music in any sense that doesn’t render the term empty.

Regards

[fundrazor]

You have to give Cage and Tudor their due - over fifty years later they are still generating discussion which is, when all is said and done, all 4'33" is about.

The real debate here is not "what is music?" but what is art in general, and my own take on this has always been that of W B Yeats who wrote:

"Irish poets learn your trade
"Sing whatever is well made".

When artists of any discipline confuse a clever idea with Art they diminish themselves and the cause they purport to espouse. We have now got to the stage where modern artists of any kind regard the value of their art to be the originality of their idea rather than its quality. If I write a piece where the rhythm is dictated by the footsteps recorded going over Waterloo Bridge and the notes by the frequency of the traffic going over Tower Bridge I am being unique, but neither skillful nor creative - just clever. And that cleverness often now has a huge price tag which reflects our twisted sense of values where "celebrity" is valued over journeyman skill, endeavour, talent and craft.

God knows Music has to develop - the problem is that since approximately 1945 the avant-garde has run out of musical ideas and has replaced craft with gimmick. Aleatoric music, musique concrete, abstract expressionism, minimalism etc. were and are desperate attempts to move the language of music forwards - their transitory appeal has proven that none of them have succeeded and we now have to make do with the unmade beds and elephant turds of the musical variety.

[stevel]

Originally Posted by some guy

But here is my lame response:



Yes.

As the starter of this thread, I wanted to respond to this and see what others thought.

In another discussion somewhere else, we were talking about facts. There are those who often take things that are not facts, and treat them as such. But in a sense, for those people, the same thing is happening.

I said, If a person chooses to hear it as music, then it IS music.

So does that not also mean that if a person chooses to see a non-truth as a fact, then it IS a fact?

To rectify this, it seems one must say:
I f a person chooses to hear it as music, it IS music - to that person.

So then it seems we have to look at cultural norms, or general consensus to use as a guidepost for determining what is music to an individual, versus what is music to a general population.

My problem of course is, there are many people out there who would simply dismiss Rap as not-music (this is 25 years ago or so). But by all other obvious definitions it is.

So do we have to wait for a majority to hear it as music to call it music? If so, wasn't it music before - obviously, nothing about it has changed other than people's acceptance.

What if, in the future, 4'33" is accepted as music by everyone. Nothing about the piece has changed, so that means it must still be music now, we're just too prejudiced to recognize it?

Already, I think there are more people in the world who accept it as music than when it came out. Same with Schoenberg, etc.

It seems like broader acceptance is one of the factors that detemine the codification of something as music, so, isn't that what's happening here too?

Steve

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Thorolf

Not necessarily. A mere act of listening doesn’t necessarily mean that what is listened to is music. That said, anything—doesn’t even have to be sound—might trigger a musical experience through assosiation. This doesn’t mean that a picture of a former love on that party where they played that particular song, or the smell of some perfume she wore, is music.

Regards

Well see - this is the dividing line I found amongst other argumentators.

Basically, people either said that music could be "created" by a listener.

That is, listener as "creator", "composer", or "performer" so to speak.

If you go outside in the winter, and you hear ice falling off the tree into the water is is music?

The former response would indicate that it can be, if the listener chooses it to be.

Thorolf seems to disagree (though you said not necessarily leaving yourself an out :-).

But what is music as a listner? Is it a "musical experience". If so, if you have a "musical experience" yourself, then isn't what you heard music? - at least to you?

Thoughts?
Steve

[stevel]

Originally Posted by some guy

I would never call listening "mere." Hearing, sure, but listening? There's nothing mere about it. And turning sound into music by listening is not about triggering at all. The sound of say rain against the screen window with cars honking (yeah, I'm in Manhattan this second) doesn't trigger a musical experience; it is a musical experience. If it triggered anything, it might trigger some nostalgia for some rainy day past, when the world was fresh and love was young and so forth.

This is a nice example. So for someguy, expereincing the sound of the rain and the cars IS music.

I have to ask you SG though,

Is it Music?
Or is it a "Musical Experience"?

If so, what makes a musical experience different from music?

Steve

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Thorolf

On the contrary, reith, I believe that there is a general consensus on what consistutes “music”, even if a strict definition seldom is provided. And the general consensus says that describing 4'33" of not playing isn’t music in any sense that doesn’t render the term empty.

Regards

I agree that we certainly have general consensus. The problem is, general consensus if very often blinded by many extra-musical factors. Stravinsky suffred from it. Monteverdi suffered from it.

I agree that 4'33" isn't ONLY about sound, but we also have to consider that when people go to see a live performance of a Mozart String Quartet, it also is not only about sound either - it's about being in the performance space, the acoustical situation, the visual information and so on. All of which are also contained in a performance of 4'33".

Steve

[stevel]

God knows Music has to develop - the problem is that since approximately 1945 the avant-garde has run out of musical ideas and has replaced craft with gimmick.

But is this not also true in basically every other genre?

It seems the Avant-Garde is far more likely to come under attack but it seems to me Vivaldi ran out of ideas pretty quickly, as did J-Lo.

We are fortunate in a way that history works as a nice filter, weeding out the more gimmicky work and leaving those things of substance. I think we're still too close to the 20th century to have had the weak stuff weeded out (unfortunately the filter might weed out good stuff too sometimes though).

Aleatoric music, musique concrete, abstract expressionism, minimalism etc. were and are desperate attempts to move the language of music forwards

I wonder SG - do you feel that these are "unnatural" attempts - i.e. - "forced evolution". I've always felt in a way, even though these musicians were following trends in the other arts as well, many of these ideas were not necessarily logical evolutionary extensions of exisiting traditions, and instead were "made up" in a sense. I don't think that that invlaidates them but it does put them on the outside looking in.

I think a perfect example is the Saxophone. When it was invented, it didn't find life in the orchestra as Adolphe probably figured. It became a voice of jazz. So interestingly, this new invention found a home in a new style. But Adolphe didn't just invent the sax and then invent a new style of music to go with it.

So this invention sort of naturally influenced or became included in a new genre od music. Inventions that try to force change seem to be doomed to failure though.

- their transitory appeal has proven that none of them have succeeded and we now have to make do with the unmade beds and elephant turds of the musical variety.

So do you think Rock and Roll didn't succeed? It was really transitory.

What about Jazz? Thirty years. Abstract Expressionism lasted that long. What about Sturm und Drang. Rococo?

I think all musical styles are transitory by nature - it is an evolutionary process. I'm just not sure these aren't genetic mutations caused by human mucking with things they shouldn't be :-)

Steve

[fundrazor]

So do you think Rock and Roll didn't succeed? It was really transitory. What about Jazz? Thirty years. Abstract Expressionism lasted that long. What about Sturm und Drang. Rococo? I think all musical styles are transitory by nature - it is an evolutionary process.

Strange that you should misunderstand me quite so completely. The transitory nature of a musical style or genre is totally unimportant insofar as there is no vibrant style which has ever outlasted its time. The difference between one style and another is whether it has any lasting benefits. Whereas someone else has pointed out that we may be a bit too close to the post-War avant-garde to make a valued judgement on its influence as yet, the same was being said to me when I first heard and studied it 30 years ago. Rock and Roll is still with us and is listened to by many millions of people. Jazz never went away (where did the idea come from that it lasted 30 years and then died?).

It is of course correct that music is an evolutionary process, but by the same token one must apply the laws of evolution - a myriad of mutations are triggered in every species, but only those of lasting value become a part of the future development of that species.

It may be that in 150 years someone will "rediscover" Dallapiccolo or Stockhausen, Boulez or Ferneyhough, but I doubt it. The corridor they walked was unfortunately a dead-end. The real tragedy is that those who have, in my opinion, done the most to marry up a new musical language with human emotion and experience (Berio, Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Osborne, Ligeti and Carter) will be culled with the rest of the dead-enders.

[stevel]

Whereas someone else has pointed out that we may be a bit too close to the post-War avant-garde to make a valued judgement on its influence as yet,

Me.

Rock and Roll is still with us and is listened to by many millions of people.

By Rock and Roll, I meant that of the 1950s - i.e. Elvis. BY 1964 something different was happening.

Jazz never went away (where did the idea come from that it lasted 30 years and then died?).

Same thing. Jazz is not popular today. Ok, don't fly off the handle yet - Jazz is probably more popular than it ever has been in terms of more people having access to it than ever before.

But current "rock" music is far more popular - look at the number of stations and their formats. For instance here we have one full-time jazz station - and I use the term loosely - it's "new age" or "smooth" Jazz. THen we have two stations that play real Jazz part-time (a couple of hours a day). Then we've got 10 full time rock stations. I've got XM and there are far more latin channels then there are jazz. There's MTV, MTV2, VH1, VH1 Classics, and Fuse. All play (well, MTV doesn't play much) pop/rock music. BET plays a little bit of Jazz. There are more Country stations than Jazz (of course that may differ in Europe obviously).

So my point is, and a better example - Disco - 1970s and that's about it. Now people joke on Disco a lot so I didn't pick that, but my point was that there are some fairly short periods that have great impact.

It is of course correct that music is an evolutionary process, but by the same token one must apply the laws of evolution - a myriad of mutations are triggered in every species, but only those of lasting value become a part of the future development of that species.

Agreed.

It may be that in 150 years someone will "rediscover" Dallapiccolo or Stockhausen, Boulez or Ferneyhough, but I doubt it. The corridor they walked was unfortunately a dead-end. The real tragedy is that those who have, in my opinion, done the most to marry up a new musical language with human emotion and experience (Berio, Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Osborne, Ligeti and Carter) will be culled with the rest of the dead-enders.

I think you're right - I mentioned this before. I'm afraid some of the "good stuff" will get lost in the shuffle.

But on the other hand, while I think too that Schoenberg may be lost at some point and rediscovered (Bach was) I think that his contribution will mainly be in what he caused, rather than his actual music. So I don't know if that's good or bad, but he still gets to go down in history :-)

Steve

[ttw]

Nobody really appreciated 4'33"; he would, of couse.