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Re: [microsound] music is the ultimate incorruptible



Cage once asked (paraphrased)... "what's more musical, a truck driving by a
warehouse, or a truck driving by a music school?"

On 3/14/06 3:33 PM, "David Powers" <cyborgk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> scribed:

> If you as a listener, listen to something as 'music," it is music within
> that context. The question of communication is irrelevant. Actually,
> "communication" is more properly the realm of car horns and ambulance
> sirens, and not of music. Music is interesting precisely because it
> refuses to communicate. It's ambiguous.
> 
> Consider the case of a field recording:
> 
> Scenario 1: A train is screeching along over my head. I'm late for work
> and in a hurry. I don't hear any music. Nothing is being communicated.
> It's just random noise that happens to be occurring.
> 
> Scenario 2: Someone walks by with their mini-disc player, records the
> very same train, and releases it on a CD-R entitled "the Sublime Sounds
> of Chicago". I buy the CD and listen to it at home. I hear the very same
> train as in Scenario 1, but now I hear it as music. I think to myself,
> "the sounds of Chicago really are sublime."
> 
> The sounds in 1 and 2 are the same (ignoring the limitations of
> recording technology for the moment). Only my perception as listener has
> changed. However, at no point did the actual creator of the sound, the
> TRAIN, intend to communicate.
> 
> ~David
> 
> Damian Stewart wrote:
> 
>> 
>> but there is a tacit assumption that the noises being listened to are
>> communicating something, surely? listening to a foreign tongue being
>> spoken i don't understand the content but i understand that
>> communication is happening.
> 
> 
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