Re: [LAU] re Subconscious Affecting Music

Am 30.08.2010 19:36, schrieb Rustom Mody:
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 8:43 PM,<fons@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 06:04:53AM -0700, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, I agree the basic formula for mindless drivel has not changed much
>>> over the years. Perhaps that is why we have been dominated by a
>> hereditary
>>> elite for so long now?
>>
>> Unfortunately, much of this thread is mindless drivel as well:
>>
>> * Reducing a complex social process to a simplistic conspiration theory.
>>
>> * Abusing ill-defined but suggestive terminology from Freudian psychology,
>> ('subconscious', 'mind', etc.) ignoring everything this science as
>> produced over the last 30 or so years.
>>
>> And what is this 'hereditary elite' ? The last few kings and kaisers
>> that remain here and there ?
>>
>>> If we are accepting of this as the status quo then we get what we
>> deserve.
>>
>> Those who accept it get what they deserve. It's up to you to decide
>> if you are included or not.
>>
>> Ciao,
>>
>> --
>> FA
>>
>
> I would just like to point out some (perhaps irrelevant) points:
> 1. The great western classical tradition which started around Bach (or a few
> hundred years earlier depending on how you look at/hear it) suddenly died
> around 1900.
> Classical music degenerated into varieties of insanities like serialism etc

It is easy to say serialism is a "degeneration". The people that created
concepts like serial music or minimalism were confronted with a
completely new availability of informations about artistic concepts and
they came from a tradition that forbid them to simply ignore knowledge.
If you combine the knowledge that is in Gustav Mahlers "Lied der Erde"
with Ragas from India and classical Gamelan-Music and japanese Music
from the No-Tradition what is left to to add in addition?

John Cage or Alvin Lucier are in no way "degenerated", they took the
intellectual challenge to add something original and substantial to all
the things that became available in the second half of the 20ths century.

> and pop/rock etc emerged over the next 50 years out of what was earlier
> simple folk music.

Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Miles Davis, the Ramones, the Beatles,
Patti Smith, P.J.Harvey, Kraftwerk, the Stooges, Suicide, Brian Wilson,
Neurosis and even Bob Dylan or Neil Young:

call anyone of the above a Folk-Singer or a descendant of folk-tradition
and you make yourself a laughing-stock.

I do not mean any offence but think about: none of the relevant pop/rock
artists since Elvis Presley was something like a genuine folk-singer.
They were all individual artists in a post renaissance-manner: all
"nobody breaks my law!"- people not "I sing my songs on behalf of you,
my kindred!". That makes artists like Johnny Cash or Skip James so
fascinating: these are precious gems that carry on traditions long gone
in 99% of the music recorded since World War 2. And they only survived
because they found ways to mix their genuinity with the qualities, that
make art capable to be relevant in the 20thst century: individuality
that transports the secret only a single person can generate. Even in
forms that perpetuate genuine folk-traditions.

>
> 2. Western music has always used and experimented with varieties of
> well-tempering.
> Equal tempering only took hold in the 20th century ie after 1900 see for
> example:
> http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mrubinst/tuning/tuning.html

Tuning is irrelevant.
You can make a mindless composition with mass-appeal based on untuned
noise and you can put a very personal an abstract thought genuinely 21st
century in a simple melody played by instrumets that were available in
Mozarts times and that were tuned as usual in Mozarts times. Or you can
use a preset from a Korg Workstation distorted by a accidentaly set
chain of LADSPA-Effects to make a standard top-10 Hit and/or a
glistering jewel of deep thoughts put into a never-before-seen
space-cathedral of sounds.

It is all about attitude.

>
> 3. The 'greatest' wars that humans have ever fought happened in the 20th
> century

I doubt even that. Never before there were so many humans packed on this
planet and never before we were so able to pass informations about
things like wars.
Some say: as Columbus reached Hispaniola there were 160 Million people
living in the Americas. 200 years later there were only about 60
Millions left.

Atrocities and genocide are no inventions of the modern times: in
reverse! In modern times most cultures have learned to name things
atrocities, that were known as "perfectly normal" or even "heroic deeds"
in ancient times.

>
>
>
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Received on Wed Sep 1 12:15:04 2010