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

[chckn8r]

[Ron Ofir]

Nothing about the piece has changed, so that means it must still be music now, we're just too prejudiced to recognize it?

The same is said in Physics: It took a generation until Einstien's relativity and photons were accepted, and that happened only because the scientist were replaced with new ones, which were educated based on those ideas (sort of).

[ttw]

Originally Posted by Ron Ofir

The same is said in Physics: It took a generation until Einstien's relativity and photons were accepted, and that happened only because the scientist were replaced with new ones, which were educated based on those ideas (sort of).

Not really. Relativity (1905) was accepted rather quickly. It explained various experiments. General relativity (1916) got quick experimental tests with the precession of Mercury. His other big papers of 1905 (photoelectric effect, heat capacity, Brownian motion) were quickly accepted (or expanded on in the case of heat capacity.)

Quantum theory (Heisenberg and Schroedinger) took less than one year to be generally accepted in the chemisty and physics fields.

If a theory works well, it gets accepted rather quickly. Of course, theories without any experimetal backing just get argued about. Experiment either refutes the theory (in which case it is changed or discarded) or supports it (causes small modifications.)

[Thorolf]

Originally Posted by ttw

Not really. Relativity (1905) was accepted rather quickly. It explained various experiments. General relativity (1916) got quick experimental tests with the precession of Mercury. His other big papers of 1905 (photoelectric effect, heat capacity, Brownian motion) were quickly accepted (or expanded on in the case of heat capacity.)

Quantum theory (Heisenberg and Schroedinger) took less than one year to be generally accepted in the chemisty and physics fields.

If a theory works well, it gets accepted rather quickly. Of course, theories without any experimetal backing just get argued about. Experiment either refutes the theory (in which case it is changed or discarded) or supports it (causes small modifications.)

And all of this seems a little beside the point to me. As physical theories are about facts, “does the theory actually work” and it’s experiments that ultimately answers (yes) or no, whereas with music, it will ultimately be the general public and the lexicographers that eventually changes a word’s definition.

So where predjudice cannot change physical reality, and all new correct testable theories will be accepted rather quickly, predjudice actually can preserve traditional meaning of the word. The humans decide, not physical reality.



Regards

[Ron Ofir]

Not really. Relativity (1905) was accepted rather quickly. It explained various experiments. General relativity (1916) got quick experimental tests with the precession of Mercury. His other big papers of 1905 (photoelectric effect, heat capacity, Brownian motion) were quickly accepted (or expanded on in the case of heat capacity.)

Hmm, I remember that Bohr or someone said that. Anyway, I don't think the photoelectric effect was part of "mainstream" physics as long as the important scientists are followers of Young.

As physical theories are about facts, “does the theory actually work” and it’s experiments that ultimately answers (yes) or no,

Not always. Photons don't explain Thomas Young two-slit experiment, for one.

So where predjudice cannot change physical reality, and all new correct testable theories will be accepted rather quickly, predjudice actually can preserve traditional meaning of the word. The humans decide, not physical reality.

Physics theories don't change the reality, however we precieve the light doesn't make it behave otherwise (with the exception of quantum mechanics), they only change the way we think. Isn't it the same with philosophy?

[some guy]

Sorry I've been offline for so long. I'll try to catch up quickly, before I have to dash off to the next concert (part two of Fifty Years of Electroacoustic Music in Poland, which is part of the Musica Electronica Nova festival in Wroclaw. If you're in the area, you should really give this festival a look. Or a hear. Anyway, back to our regular threading.

First there was this, from Fundrazor:

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.

I can't begin to explain how utterly silly this is. So I won't. But it has a list of items that Stevel asked about:

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.

Well, in the arts, nothing is natural. It's all made up. That's what distinguishes art from nature. So I'm not too worried about "forced evolution." And I don't think that there's such a thing as "logical evolutionary extensions," not in the arts, anyway. Looking back on things does, I know, seem to change the things. What appeared illogical and threatening to contemporaries often seems logical and natural ("natural") to people looking back. One thing about posts to this thread--this forum--is that many people are able to look back and still see illogic and threat. And those people are I think very much in the position of looking in on something they just don't get, and just don't want to get.

I don't think any of that's going to change anything, though. That is, I'm not as worried about the future of music. People are always going to want to create. So they will. Will anyone ever agree about the results? Probably not. But from where I'm sitting, the various scenes that so incense Fundrazor, for instance, are all alive and happy, and if attendance at new music concerts is not in the thousands, it is at least in the dozens, and those dozens are more active and involved and knowledgeable than the thousands who go to symphony concerts. (Though the symphony concert coming up in Wroclaw this Saturday is part of the Musica Electronica Nova festival, and has electroacoustic and orchestra pieces by Kaaijo Saariaho and others. That should be fun.)

[fundrazor]

Originally Posted by some guy

I can't begin to explain how utterly silly this is. So I won't.

Oh, well I am completely persuaded by that piece of lucid argument!

I do sympathise with some guy, for I was myself him in years gone by and perhaps there is a little truth in my own regard in terms of Robert Frost's wonderful line: "I never dared be radical when young for fear I'd be conservative when old."

However, lest it be thought that I am some tired dyed-in-the-wool tonality buff who has a fit every time he hears anything more contemporary than Sibelius, I should point out that I studied composition with Nigel Osborne, Ed Cowie, Peter Maxwell Davies, Richard Rodney Bennett, Brian Ferneyhough and Michael Finnissy. I won prizes, had professional performances, got commissions etc etc. I even attended Music Nova and worked with Boguslaw Schaffer BUT, one day, I looked out at the audience and realised that the only people in the stalls (the circle naturally not having been sold at all) were other composers and music critics.

Here's another definition of Art - "something that communicates". For me, the intellectual and artistic rigour of writing music that no-one other than a small circle would hear, never mind feel that it had communicated something, became a self-indulgent love-in in which I was no longer willing to participate.

And the point I made, and which some guy has chosen to ignore, is that the gimmicky and silly is drowning out the voices of those who still regard the human condition as being an integral part of musical composition and any message it should purport to transmit. If Musique Concrete and Abstract Expressionism are really "alive and well" at Wroclaw this year, it must be like attending a tribute band concert.

PS - I wasn't incensed by anything - debate should never descend to ire.

[Thorolf]

^ Great post, fundrazor! And thanks for not descending to some guy’s inappropriate level.

Originally Posted by Ron Ofir

Not always. Photons don't explain Thomas Young two-slit experiment, for one.

This is only right in an errant, one-sided interpretation of the photon as particle only. The long-standing usual way of putting it, is to talk about the particle/wave duality of the photon, where it can exhibit wave properties under certain circumstances, and particle properties under other.

And once you take the wave function of the photon into the equations, the two-slit experiment makes perfect sense.

Originally Posted by Ron Ofir

Physics theories don't change the reality, however we precieve the light doesn't make it behave otherwise (with the exception of quantum mechanics), they only change the way we think. Isn't it the same with philosophy?

With philosophical a priori possible entities, yes, with general terms like ‘music’, no. General terms are defined by humans to make relevant categories for actual instances, and are often subject to change over time.

A lot of definitions are arbitrary, like lawful: Something lawful today may be unlawful tomorrow, if the state passes a new bill. Different entities may or may not be coined art, depending on definition. So if humans want to have a meaningful concept for ‘music’ as opposed to ‘random sounds’, I’m rather sure that they will invoke some conservativism to avoid emptying the term of meaning.



Regards

[reith]

Hmm, just listening to Cage speak during a documentary, he says something like "Silence is not silence, not the absence of sound but it's all what we call non-musical sound. I actually prefer non-musical sound to music......" etc (near enough).

[some guy]

My dear Thorolf, surely

If Musique Concrete and Abstract Expressionism are really "alive and well" at Wroclaw this year, it must be like attending a tribute band concert

descended to my inappropriate level, eh? Fair's fair. (And what about the elephant turds in the bit I'd quoted. Surely I'm allowed to opine that that's just a bit on the silly side, no?)

Otherwise, I don't think Fundrazor was ever where I am. For one, I got there simply by listening. Listening and listening and listening. I'm not a composer, and if I can be called a music critic, it's only because quite recently I quit my day job, sold my big old house, and started a music magazine in which new music can simply be itself, no hesitations, no apologies, no advocacy. (Well, maybe a little!)

I can't think Fundrazor has been to many concerts recently, either, not of the new stuff. The audiences are packed with non-composer, non-critic types. And why not? It's fun. It's very rewarding to listen to--it's certainly "communicating" something valuable to us. (I'm puzzled that music critics and composers are somehow tainted audiences. They like this stuff, Fundrazor, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it all the time. Can't Bokanowski go to a concert of Radigue without being damned as just another composer? I don't quite get the logic of that one.)

I just came out of two concerts, one with Arditti playing Lachenmann and Harvey. Wow. If you don't think that that's craft of the highest order, I'm afraid we have no common ground for discussion. The other was some live electronics--also beautifully and carefully played. The bits for daxophone were particularly compelling, as the player obviously loved what he was playing.

Your list of desparate attempts contains items that continue, in spite of you, to flourish. That is, there's nothing transitory about any of them. And as I watch audiences for them grow over the years, I can't help thinking your wish for their failure is only that, a wish. May it never come true, lad!