Re: [microsound] what's the Point?

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 01:59 PM 4/3/00 -0400, you wrote:
> Similarly unsatisfying is Glass's own retreads of Bowie/Eno material which 
> come off exactly as exercises in cross-genre education.  Listenable, 
> perhaps, but unfortunately devoid of ideas (of feeling even) and rather a 
> bummer for both pop and classical listener alike.  I'll take Thaemlitz's 
> classically cut if irreverent take on Kraftwerk over this stuff anytime...

I have to agree here, and I Really tried to like the "Low Symphony."  It 
Did succeed in demonstrating how much more interesting was the original, 
however, which remains an enduring and brilliant work of electronic 
pop.  What I consider to be the failure of the classicalization of "Low" 
brings up a rather interesting question about composition - raised as well 
by the similarly lost compilation of Spacemen 3 cover versions released in 
the last little while - in that when a "piece" or a "song" is less a 
chartable collection of melodies, harmonies, tempi, dynamics, and lyrics 
and more a set of textures, moods, treatments, and layers the very idea of 
a symphonicization (or a cover version) begins to lack any firm 
foundation.  Perhaps it is here that the "remix" - a recontextualization 
and recomposition of those very textures, moods, treatments, and layers not 
included in the sheet music - comes into play (and if I remember correctly 
Point also subjected Bryars to a rather ill-advised course of this sort), 
albeit a bit overzealously at the moment.  Now a symphony based on Eno's 
Oblique Strategies card-deck might have been more promising, but then that 
would have been a far more Cagean project...

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