TUNING digest 909

Brian's bit on Cage makes pleasant reading--pleasant because I know what I
know (and think) of Cage, and his words don't sway me because, I suggest,
he misses his target. I disagree with him, but a list like this is not the
place to carry on a detailed argument.

One curiosity, however. He mentions a number of professor types who he
thinks are OK, against the vast hordes whom he excoriates. Rightly or
wrongly isn't the issue. He then goes on to say that these few are the
exceptions that prove the rule. Most people, Brian included (I believe--
but he'll have to tell us), think that exceptions prove rules in the sense
of confirming them. Now this is a peculiar logic--in which the opposite of
something confirms its truth. But how many exceptions do we need to prove
their opposite? One? A hundred? A majority?

I believe that the word "prove" here is to be used in a different sense
only, "to test." In this sense, exceptions do prove rules, and the saying
then makes sense. But popular usage has taken this one away from its
meaning into nonsense. Lots of what we say is nonsense, I'm sure Brian
would agree...

Just to make this allowable on a tuning forum, I don't think the
exceptions of a (relatively) few microtonal pieces prove (establish) the
superiority of 12-tET. But they certainly prove it, don't they? (Test it,
I mean!)

On a different topic, thanks to all the "lurkers" (terrible term: how
about "non-posting readers") for writing in recently. Lots of you
newcomers are 'way beyond me.

Paul Rapoport

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> So please, people, stop quoting authority figures.

I found that statement especially curious, since, of all the people on this
list, brian is almost certainly the biggest on quoting other peoples' research.
Presumably the issue he's raising here is not with the word "quoting", but with
the word "authority".


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