here's to overly-abstracted music

[Rosati, TD 97:]
> Schoenberg opened the door to the overly-abstracted
> side of 12tet which comes to anti-fruition in
> Babbit et al. I think that stuff is pretty much
> played out now and will in the future be of little
> interest except to musicologists looking for obscure
> and forgotten 20thc. music to write their dissertations
> about.

I'm looking over my shoulder for the brickbats
that will come flying at me as I say this:

I *like* a lot of this stuff. Sorry.

"Just" because I'm so much into microtonal music
doesn't mean I can't like totally abstract serial
12-Eq music too. I wish I got more of a feeling
of open-mindedness about this from others on the
List.

I'll be the first to admit that I can't *hear* a
lot of the supposed complexity and systematization
that's written into these pieces, but it's all
still there, and I, and others who actually listen
to this stuff, *must* be picking it up somehow,
otherwise the music wouldn't get thru to us either.

I am a huge fan of Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez,
Babbitt, and my friend Rand Steiger, who's a colleague
of Brian Ferneyhough at UCSD. Schoenberg and
Steiger in particular have written music that
I find very approachable and moving.

Of course, I *prefer* microtonal music, but I
can still listen to and enjoy good music from
any source.

Anyone who's willing to devote his life to
scribbling notes on music-paper obviously has
something to say that he can't say in any other
way, and believes strongly in the power of that
medium to get it across. Otherwise he would never
choose the career of composer over something more
obviously and outwardly rewarding.

If his medium happens to be abstract 12-Eq, then
I think it's worth finding out how he intended that
12-Eq scale to be used to make his music express what
he intended it to express. Granted, it may not
even have much to do with actual sound, but as
some of us pointed out here recently, neither does
a lot of what we talk about on this list.

It is possible to appreciate the aesthetic beauty
of any "composition", whether that means a performed
and heard musical piece, an unheard score, or a book of
mathematical equations and lattice diagrams. I think
this was one of the points John Cage made with his
publication of "Notations". Frank Zappa said it best:
"a composer is someone who assembles things".

At the same time, mentioning Ferneyhough in connection
with prose (and bringing Babbitt's name into it too)
reminds me how incomprehensibly some of these composers
write *about* music. I saw a book by Ferneyhough
at UCSD and laughed out loud at how convoluted
it was. Babbitt is extremely guilty of the same
charge, but at least when reading his prose, I
got a sense that he was *trying* to say something
important, or that he cared passionately about
his subject.

[Rosati:]
> I think its the combination of over abstraction
> of sound and rhythm at the same time that puts
> that music beyond the pale. One or the other works
> better, thats why Schoenberg's serial tonality set
> in late romantic rhetoric is more listenable.
> Conversely, Thelonius Monk's sometimes far out
> rhythmic abstraction is framed by tonal harmony
> and also works.

This is a very good observation. The only points I can
make contra it are that some people *do* find that
doubly-abstracted music worthwhile (as I said above),
and that Monk's harmony is not entirely what I would
call "tonal".

I suppose in the end it depends on how much time and
effort one is willing to spend in learning what it is
that's communicative in a mode of music-making that is
unfamiliar. It all really boils down to what you're
used to and how open-minded you are.

I know lots of people who are as baffled by Monk
as they are by Babbitt, and and just as uninterested
too.

And lest we forget, just as many who are baffled
by, and uninterested in, Partch.

- Monzo
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

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[Tagawa, TD 95:]
> Elliott Carter, by the way, hears all microtonal
> music as "out-of-tune."

[Alves, TD 95:]
> Personally, I hear all of Elliott Carter's music
> as "out of tune."

[Pagano, TD 97:]
> i dig Elliot Carters music and it is hard for me to
> believe such an innovator spoke in such a manner but
> maybe he was talking about Haba--hah!

I like Haba, too!

|\=/|.-"""-. Joseph L. Monzo....................monz@juno.com
/6 6\ \ http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
=\_Y_/= (_ ;\ c/o Sonic Arts, PO Box 620027, San Diego, CA, USA
_U//_/-/__/// | "The ability of the human ear |
/monz\ ((jgs; | is vastly underestimated" - Harry Partch |

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Well, I still like to pull out some Babbitt
once in a while, even though that isn't
my focus now-a-days.

As for Elliott Carter's Changes: He's lucky
because if he writes a piece like that,
there's a pretty good chance it'll get performed!
Maybe even more than once! If I wrote something
like that, midi would be the only way I'd hear it
performed, unless I performed it myself.

On complexity: I like it, but I don't write
music like that anymore. I should be getting
a cable modem soon so I'll be putting
some of my older pieces up on my web site
in a few weeks. In Real Audio even!

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