[Fwd: Re: [MMM] Re: Holocene...]

Sorry, folks. The message went out too soon. It should have read:-

> It's not just you. All human beings have responsibilities towards
> their fellow human beings. This is what we call politics. This is
> something we should all take seriously in our trade unions, as
> activists and campaigners etc.But I don't think that a composer as
> composer has any particular extra social responsibility in the
> immediate sense, more than anyone else. However he does have a
> responsibility towards his art: its further development and
> enhancement so that it can measure up to the most advanced, dynamic
> patterns of thought and expression in other arts and sciences. This is
> a social responsibility too. to try to mix up musical creation with
> politics or marketing is treachery. It doesn't help anybody.

>> . in his capacity
>>
>>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

i agree fully.
i would add the idea of accessibility is impossible to determine.
Nothing is more inaccessible to many than music of whole cultures on the globe, many which have existed and withstood generations of these people . This throws a wrench into any concept of music as a universal language that has principles that people are going to get more than others. One can only deal with cultural preferences, which are always those elements that people already know and hence redundant if not a meaningless activity. The idea that anyone would not create music that wasn't what they enjoyed the most within their own ability seems to me to be the utmost absurdity.Or at least explore some area of beauty they find lacking in what they find around them.

Julian Silverman wrote:
>
>
>
> Sorry, folks. The message went out too soon. It should have read:-
>
> > It's not just you. All human beings have responsibilities towards
> > their fellow human beings. This is what we call politics. This is
> > something we should all take seriously in our trade unions, as
> > activists and campaigners etc.But I don't think that a composer as
> > composer has any particular extra social responsibility in the
> > immediate sense, more than anyone else. However he does have a
> > responsibility towards his art: its further development and
> > enhancement so that it can measure up to the most advanced, dynamic
> > patterns of thought and expression in other arts and sciences. This is
> > a social responsibility too. to try to mix up musical creation with
> > politics or marketing is treachery. It doesn't help anybody.
>
> >> . in his capacity
> >>
> >>
> >
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
> -- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

I hope I haven't been misinterpreted. I didn't mean to suggest that
accessibility is a more important goal than self-expression. By all
means, honesty of expression is the utmost priority in the creation of
music. However, one must also be honest with one's self regarding
whether it should be expected that other people enjoy one's music.

What I was referring to (with the whole "Vin Diesel--Prom Dress"
thing) is what I've seen as people trying to make tunings do things
they aren't really well-suited to. Tunings have strengths and
weaknesses, and not all tunings lend themselves to the same sort of
compositional approaches used in a lot of classical training. The
"pop song" is a format, typically based on simple vertical structures
and repetitive horizontal patterns and often with an emphasis on a
driving rhythm, not something that is necessarily "accessible". The
pop song format relies on different devices to engage interest than
most classical formats, and frankly I just don't find a lot of tunings
compatible with the sorts of devices that engage my interest in
classical compositions. A lot of tunings lend themselves much more
readily to simple progressions and minimal melodies than they do to
intricate ornamentation and lots of modulation, at least in my limited
human experience. This is one of the reasons I find about 80% of,
say, Easley Blackwood's compositions rather unpleasant: they ignore
the strengths of the tunings for the purpose of exemplifying all the
"interesting" theoretical possibilities they hold. Since pop songs
are by nature much much simpler, it's easier to orient them toward
exploiting the scant strengths of some of the more unusual tunings. I
didn't mean to disparage the efforts of any of y'all that are more
classically-oriented; with rare exception, the composers on this list
are fantastic about playing to the strengths of the tunings they explore.

It's really just that a lot of people disparage tunings like 11, 15,
and 16, and I think the reason for this is because a lot of music
written for these tunings is written in formats for which the tunings
are not well-suited. It's my belief that the pop song format, because
of its simplicity, allows greater tuning flexibility; and in fact,
that's what I'm hoping to prove with my music: it's possible to write
a decent pop song in almost *any* tuning. On the other hand, a
symphony in 11-EDO or 16-EDO would probably sound god-awful to just
about anybody, unless it was REALLY carefully composed.

Hope this clarifies a few things.

-Igs

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...> wrote:
>
> i agree fully.
> i would add the idea of accessibility is impossible to determine.
> Nothing is more inaccessible to many than music of whole cultures on
> the globe, many which have existed and withstood generations of these
> people . This throws a wrench into any concept of music as a universal
> language that has principles that people are going to get more than
> others. One can only deal with cultural preferences, which are always
> those elements that people already know and hence redundant if not a
> meaningless activity. The idea that anyone would not create music that
> wasn't what they enjoyed the most within their own ability seems to me
> to be the utmost absurdity.Or at least explore some area of beauty they
> find lacking in what they find around them.
>
> Julian Silverman wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > Sorry, folks. The message went out too soon. It should have read:-
> >
> > > It's not just you. All human beings have responsibilities towards
> > > their fellow human beings. This is what we call politics. This is
> > > something we should all take seriously in our trade unions, as
> > > activists and campaigners etc.But I don't think that a composer as
> > > composer has any particular extra social responsibility in the
> > > immediate sense, more than anyone else. However he does have a
> > > responsibility towards his art: its further development and
> > > enhancement so that it can measure up to the most advanced, dynamic
> > > patterns of thought and expression in other arts and sciences.
This is
> > > a social responsibility too. to try to mix up musical creation with
> > > politics or marketing is treachery. It doesn't help anybody.
> >
> > >> . in his capacity
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
>
> --
> Kraig Grady
> North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
<http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
> The Wandering Medicine Show
> KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles
>