Re: [microsound] being 'political' in non-verbal music

[Kassen <kassen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Exegene;

<snip clarification of terms>

> "Something like literary theory..." might be most simply expressed as
> talking about talking. Assuming this, is there really any culture that
> does not have "something like literary theory...?"

Well, being capable of selfreferentialness will do as a rough indiction for
me now.

I would think that this would, according to this definition, make a lot of
music apear to be language. We can quote, for example, and exagerate while
quoting which would to me strike me as comparable to talking about talking.
The equivalent of a exhaustive book on linguistics would be quite hard but I
think you could certainly compose a piece that would say something about
similarities between minimalist piano pieces and loop-based techno,
including citations from important sources in those fields. Such a piece may
well be more convincing then a written article on the same topic....


> It is hoped that the proposal or one(many?) to shoulder its burden will
> facilitate the creation and use of language in nonverbal communication
> forms, ideally allowing, for example, for nonverbal music to be both
> political and as expressive and meaningful as the communist manifesto, or
> UN declaration of human rights, or what have you.

Yes, well, here we have a little problem in that I think music can be
selfreferential or refering to other musical expressions in meaningfull ways
but it´s not so well suited for writing manifests (exept perhaps for
manifests on music itself), declaring rights or reporting on court cases. If
we realy wonder wether or not music counts as a language (or what it´d need
to become one) we have to wonder wether it needs to be able to talk about
arbitrary subjects; many real-life languages won´t have the vocabulary to
talk about such matters as nuclear missile design which we clearly can´t
hold against them because not all cultures build nuclear missiles. Music,
currently, seems to have a vocabulary that´s badly suited for any technical
or factually precise discussion but well suited for expressing feelings,
moods and so on.

One element that strikes me as important is that in music the composer will
probably have the feeling he has expressed something and the listener will
ideally have the feeling he got some amount of meaning from it. These things
may well be very different but the same -if we are honest- holds true for
English. However, in the case of music both may well get a sense of a
satisfactory comunication out of a complete missmatch between those two,
probably more so then with English.

To illustrate; a while ago I composed a instrumental piece for a compilation
on the subject of the battle for Stalingrad during WOII. Without mentioning
the topic I played this to a friend and afterwards asked her what meaning
she got from it. She replied that she beleived it to be about the
transportation of the jews during the same war (this war wasn´t mentioned
previously that afternoon). We now have to wonder wether my piece
successfully comunicated something. I would say I was about as successfull
as the average person shouting over heavy machinery or music is; some
indication of the subject got across but not all of what was said about it.
As far as purely political expressions go (and if we are flatering to me as
a composer and disregard luck) you could say it was a success since the
rejection of nazi practices got across.

Personally I suspect that this inherent uncertainity and vagueness may well
be a large part of what makes music so enjoyable. Law and contracts may be
very exact and non-ambiguous (as far as comunication goes) but they are not
realy enjoyable which I´m inclined to look at as a advantage for music in
it´s comunicative ablity; if you want to be heard then there´s a lot to be
said for making your expressions apealing to your audience.


.....Which I suppose comes down more to a set of side-notes on the subject
then a real discussion of all of your points.

Yours,
Kas.



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