Re: Digest Number 1475

Hi all,

On Sun, 05 Feb 2006, Carl Lumma wrote:
>
> At 12:16 AM 2/5/2006, you wrote:
> >(if you're the only person that thinks your
> > song is beautiful, then it's not).
> >
> >I very strongly dissagree.
>
> Me too. 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.'
>
> -Carl

Don't make me laugh, Stephen!

Beauty is what anyone finds beautiful.

Besides, who ever dictated that only
beautiful music was meaningful or valid?
At times I enjoy writing scary or disturbing
music, and how dull a horror movie or
psychological thriller would be without that!

One of the regular attendees at our Music SIG
(Special Interest Group) meetings often enjoyed,
and even praised, most of the music that I
performed there. But once I played something
in an awkward metre with strident cries and
jangly discords in the upper part, and she was
offended by it. When I asked why, she said
"It's not beautiful!" I told her it wasn't
meant to be. Haven't seen her since!

Regards,
Yahya

PS My regular computer is out of action;
I hope to catch up on mail next weekend. YA

On Wed, 01 Mar 2006, Stephen Szpak wrote:

[snip]
> I have no idea where or when I heard this but it goes
> something like this:
>
> It was noticed that old (very old) couples when they were
> in a dance hall, ( or just a place they had some room to
> dance ) and there was the music playing that they danced
> to when they were teenagers, perked up. The music took them
> back to the time when they were young.
>
> There is no way whatsoever that I know of that can duplicate
> this. It doesn't depend on the quality of the music, it depends
> solely on 'shared experience'. That is, a particular time in
> one's life WITH the experience of a particular music at the
> same time.

He was replying to Chris M Bryan, who wrote earlier:

> > > It may be a minimal audience, but the assumption might be that
> > > all human beings can't possibly be all *that* different...
> >
> > In theory, maybe... but in practice, the *vast* majority of
> > listeners, even "educated" ones, are guided by a rigid
> > fundamentalist framework about what is good and what is not,
> > which keeps them from appreciating everything that they
> > otherwise might. For instance, appreciaters of
> > pop music insist that good music must have a groove, whereas a
> > theorist like Adorno damns the groove as a function of the
> > mind-anaesthizing capitalist machine. More to the point, lots of
> > people (mostly musicians!) would dismiss microtonal music as
> > "out-of-tune" rather than let their perception of "in-tuneness" be
> > questioned or altered.
> >
> > So, even if a certain music has qualities that should make it
> > valuable and appreciable by others, it may not be if it falls
> > outside of others' fundamentalist frameworks. My opinion, then,
> > is that if nobody likes your music, and you do, you're just going
> > to have to spend the rest of your life convincing a few people
> > that their perceptual framework needs some adjusting. :)
> >
> > (All that is predicated on the assumption that good music has
> > intrinsic value, even if no one appreciates it. The other
> > alternative, that value is imposed by the observer, is not
> > something that I'm confortable with. I think the above is
> > relevant to the list, but I'll stop here...)

Hi Chris and Stephen,

Remember the Beatles' "When I'm 64"? There's music that
was written well after its "time", or the time it seems to be
from. I have a few pieces of my own that "belong" comfortably
in the ragtime and early jazz eras. I don't think it's that hard
to create music that respects the styles and conventions of
another time and place, yet is fresh and original too.

Regards,
Yahya

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Yahya

That generation is almost there.

Beatles Lyrics - When Im Sixty-Four Lyrics

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a Valentine.
Birthday greetings bottle of wine.

Stephen

>
> Hi Chris and Stephen,
>
> Remember the Beatles' "When I'm 64"? There's music that
> was written well after its "time", or the time it seems to be
> from. I have a few pieces of my own that "belong" comfortably
> in the ragtime and early jazz eras. I don't think it's that hard
> to create music that respects the styles and conventions of
> another time and place, yet is fresh and original too.
>
> Regards,
> Yahya
>
> .