Brian pouts (violins up) *and* John's "Wing on the Academy"

At the end of his usual contracageian ranting,
Brian adds this:

>In Tuning Digest 784 Greg Taylor offered
>an enooooooormous post in response to my
>modest proposal re: the "accepted canon" of
>classical music. Without offering any
>facts or data to back up his sentiments,
> the thrust of Taylor's several thousand
>words of verbiage seems to be: "I don't like
>mclaren."

It was split into two parts for easier
reading, actually.

I'd say we have a difference of opinion here,
Brian. You blessed us all with an editorial
rant on the notion of canonicity, and I simply
endeavored to suggest what someone who actually
had some contact with academic discourse would
probably say about the issues surrounding it. I
did so because I thought your jeremiad on the issue
uninformed [your notion of the canon as an historically
invariant entity, for example], and because I
thought it might be interesting or important to
suggest that there are all kinds of folks well inside
the discourse who've thought long and hard about
what one *does* with a "canon" in terms of attacking
or amending it. I tried to sketch out the *general*
forms such arguments take in the interests of
suggesting that those folks who labour outside of
12TET might find all kinds of common approaches
and issues with their literary as well as musical
sisters and brothers. I'll sure admit that this may
not be as much fun as torching some cultural straw
(wo)man, but my hope was that it would help to
suggest that the reality of the situation is simply more
complex than your highly entertaining charicature
might suggest.

I think it's rather too bad that you're incapable of
extracting what I thought was a rather straightforward
description of things, but that's *your* problem
rather than mine. As I believe I've suggested before,
as long as you continue to alternate between being
someone who supplies us with interesting summaries
of "the literature" and a producer of intemperate rants,
you can expect to be complemented on the former and
razzed on the latter. My impression from the mail that
came after the posting suggested that at least a couple
of persons seemed to understand what I was trying to
explain, so I think it served its purpose well.

>This can be shortened immensely and vast
>amounts of internet bandwidth saved if
>Taylor simply posts "IDLM" in response to
>my posts.

One might waggishly suggest that you could bless
us by making such pronouncements *multilateral*
and simply replacing "ILBM" (I Love Brian McL.)
whenever you feel the need. :-).

With regards,
Gregory

P.S. Having been doing a little actual reading
on Cage of late, I'm wondering about what you
think John meant when he described microtonalism
as "another wing on the academy." I hate to be a
pest about this, but it's looking increasingly like
this quotation is located in John's "Silence" period
writings [i.e. the 50s]. Have you actually *read*
this material?

My best guess (actually, I'm still hunting the quote in its
baad entirety and context) is that we're located in Cage's
"Composition as Process" stuff, in which he's thinking in
terms of entirely "scaleless" space where pitch is entirely
continuous [electronic technology interests him at this point
because he thinks it lets him move about in this continuous
space, natch]. If, as I surmise, this is the case and context for
his comments, quarter tones would be no improvement over the
normal 12 notes/octave. Actually, the argument does, I think,
carry some weight [aren't there some "scaleless space folks
here?"] What is the difference between erecting a complex
syntactic-theoretical framework on the basis of twelve tones
or twenty-four tones or any other number of tones or on any
other system of temperament? If I'm reading my 1950s version
of John correctly, none whatsoever. You'll note also that this is,
in fact, Cage being *critical* of all those 12-tone guys you so
love to fulminate on.

I'll let you know when I find the original citation - unless you've
got it, of course.... :-)

P.P.S There's quite a cogent little essay in "Silence" where
Cage attempts to explain what *he* means by the use and
application of the term "experimental" when applied to
musical behaviour. While I've no particular faith that you'll
read it, I commend it to the rest of our readers. His approach
was not quite as I imagined it.

_
I would go to her, lay it all out, unedited. The plot was a simple one,
paraphrasable by the most ingenuous of nets. The life we lead is our only
maybe. The tale we tell is the must that we make by living it. [Richard
Powers, "Galatea 2.2"] Gregory Taylor/Heurikon Corporation/Madison, WI



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