Re: [microsound] State of Music

[pprice@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Julian Knowles [mailto:julianknowles@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 12:58 AM
> To: 'microsound'
> Subject: Re: [microsound] State of Music
>
>
> On Thursday, November 25, 2004, at 05:20  AM, Peter Price wrote:
>
> > listen to a pop song from a thousand years ago
>
> Via what means? A time tunnel? All we have are modern interpretations
> of incomplete sources.... most of the notated material is sacred music 
> (as the church had the means to production), very few 'hard facts'
> exist of the secular repertoire to which I assume you are alluding
> (jongleurs, troubadors etc...). There is enough disagreement about what
> actually went on in this music to feed an entire academic community... 
> For a start, durational notation didn't come in until much later... so 
> how are you proposing we interpret the rhythmic aspects of the work?
> Are you a 'rhythmic modes' subscriber? What metrical structure do you
> propose? The recordings you hear are interpretations which a fair
> amount of guesswork. Educated guessing is part and parcel of the early 
> music scholar's work...
>
> >  and what do you hear...a melody using a seven note scale organized
> > around a central pitch unfolding rhythmically in a regular pulse (from
> > the tempo of a slow walk to that of a fast heartbeat) in a duble or
> > triple meter...likely moving through on average 3 harmonic areas (i.e
> > chords)
>
> this is conjecture (see above), but I think you are a rhythmic modes
> person!!!


Your points are very well taken. And so I will change my conjecture to the following...

"listen to a pop song from"   and at this point fill in the year at which you think it is possible to say something substantive. If my "1000 years" becomes 500 years I think I would still be making my point.




>
> > listen today...same thing
>
> to what? Again, this is so loose I can't get a hold of what you are
> saying....
>
> Mainstream chart music? Prog rock, microsound? breakcore? minimal
> techno?

leaving "microsound" out of it for the moment...my one time point exactly was that viewed from the point of view of trying to imagine all the possible ways that sound could be structured,  Prog rock, breakcore, minimal techno, are really not very different are they. Is this really even debatable?


>
> > Consider the biggest chart topper of the middle ages "L'omme
> > arme"...no one would bat an eye if Bjork sang that song.
>
> At least this example has a manuscript!
>
> 'bjork-ised', or according to the best knowledge of the performance
> practice of the renaissance - not middle ages -  (in a church service)?
> Or are you suggesting that production and performance practice are
> 'superficial' stylistic details and the production process and
> performance would have no bearing on how it was received?


Viewed from an interest into actual structural, material change, yes "production and performance practice are 'superficial' stylistic details'"

Maybe I am just ignorant, but a pop song is identifiable by its melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic (actually rhyth-melodic) content. This truth is what makes "fake books" and standards possible isn't it? We can make an arrangement of any Beatles song in a raggae style or a minimal techno style...the "song" remains the same. In fact the song is exactly whatever remains identifiably the same across any stylistic rearrangement. It is this element that stays the same (a kind of iso-morphic resonance?) that has not changed much in (fill in the year value you are comfortable)


>
> > Have we lost the ability to think past superficial style?
>
> this makes no sense to me.... It might be the brevity of your posts,
> but your argument feels like a serious of unqualified sweeping
> statements which pass over a lot of the critical detail.. I think its a
> lot more complicated than you are trying to suggest.



You critique is well taken. I agree that I have been overly sweeping. But that was exactly my point...to try and see a bigger picture. You can't see the bigger picture without losing some detail. Sometimes we have to step back from the detail to re-orient ourselves.

Our technology allows us to reexamine our assumptions on the nature of "music." A fundamental change HAS occured...but we continue functioning as if nothing has happened. We can organize sound into any patterns we can imagine and it is from that reality that the difference between "breakcore" and minimal techno, or between Britney Spears and Frank Sinatra are NIL.

peter



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