Re: [microsound] Re: 4/4's for neanderthals

[soren-microsound@xxxxxxxxxx]

Of course classical music in it's time was predictable to the audience.
Mozart, bach, early beethoven...the audience loved it because they knew
all of the forms, the key changes, etc...today we need to take a "music
appreciation" class to understand music as it was in the day...in the
future I suspect very few will have any concept of what is going on in
pop music.  Schubert was pop music in his day...

s 


On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 07:27:25PM +1000, scissors for sparrow wrote:
> 
> i can't remember if it was adorno who said that pop music's aim was to be 
> predictable and only different enough from other instances to be a 
> marketable commodity.  i believe this was in 'the culture industries', 
> actually -- he and horkheimer go on to suggest that pop music is so 
> edifying to the listener because they feel they can relate, comprehend and 
> therefore participate in the music due to their ability to pre-empt it 
> (phrasing, tune, even words).  this is precisely why lots of people hate 
> it, but it's nonetheless a pertinent point which you'll have to forgive my 
> poor articulation of.
> 
> i think you could apply the same idea to most kinds of music which involve 
> repetition or any kind of fixed syntax, and this in turn reduces your taste 
> to an issue of (sub)cultural capital.  this is probably only exempt in 
> terms of things which are discontinuous or particularly unpredictable, 
> alien to any concept of 'groove' at all.  i think it's probably also quite 
> difficult to listen to music that is constantly and radically changing 
> sounds/volumes/tonalities for the same reason - difficulty in attaching the 
> music to one's thoughts.
> 
> of course, there surely will be plenty of you who are capable of enjoying 
> such things, and so on and so forth, but i thought i'd try to comment on 
> the 'rule' perhaps rather than the exceptions.
> 
> 
> too many mails at once,
> jon.
> 
> 
> 
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~transmit
> 
> 
> 
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