Re: Digest Number 13

>One of the tuning-list folks and I have been (briefly) discussing what I
>think is an interesting music-philosophy question: To what degree is
>communication a goal in music? To what degree should a musician
>concentrate not only upon *expressing* a musical feeling or idea, but upon
>*conveying* it to an audience? To what degree have you failed if you've
>expressed something with music, but a sufficiently sensitive audience has
>no idea what you're "talking about", so to speak?

I have posted to the list a few times about my feelings on this. The
bottom line is composers are going to do what they are going to do. I
personally feel that music is first and foremost a means of communication
(via the sound, not the stage act or advertising), and that so long as you
believe your message is worth the while, you have no responsibility to lead
your audience to it by the nose.

>All of La Monte's music is unfortunately out of print. If
>JIN doesn't have it in stock anymore, keep an eye on
>the 2nd hand CD shops.

The JIN store has been out of stock for over a year.

>I usually get between 200bytes/sec and 400bytes/sec with Mozilla, but
>that ignores stalls which make the actual rate very much less.

At school I often got 400 Kilobytes/sec, but those were the golden days.

Carl

> Music-Philosophy Question
>
>One of the tuning-list folks and I have been (briefly) discussing what I
>think is an interesting music-philosophy question: To what degree is
>communication a goal in music? To what degree should a musician
>concentrate not only upon *expressing* a musical feeling or idea, but upon
>*conveying* it to an audience? To what degree have you failed if you've
>expressed something with music, but a sufficiently sensitive audience has
>no idea what you're "talking about", so to speak?
>

Great question,
I tend to think of it like this. I make stuff, other people do what they
want with it.

If it used, or in this case listened to, as I intended, great. Also I
can take some pride in accomplishing my chosen form of commincation.
However there is nothing more refreshing than some one seeing and makeing
some new out of the work I've done. It is the type of thing that brings
out new points of veiw I might not see in my work. Also sometimes it is
just a plain old hoot.
I can't really how one can "fail". The best we can do is try and listen
a learn from the audience as much as we try to tell them our story or
idea clearly thru music. Ideally I think it is best to try and achive
both goals. To clearly exspres an idea and still leave room for a listen
to also go with where thay choose.
A friend of mine who is a poet once said, " poets are musicians with no
talent for music."

At 11:53 AM 1/9/99 -0000, Leigh Smith <leigh@cs.uwa.edu.au> wrote (TD 13 Msg 7):
>Subject: Tuning back digests
>
>As well as the sad loss of academic support, with the demise of the
>Mills list we seem to have lost access to the tuning list back digests. I
>think this is a real loss as there has been some great dialog over the
>years. The ftp site starts from 238 and I have all digests except:
>
>...
>

>>1099
>1517
>
>Does anyone have sources to these? I think we have some great stuff
>here, accessible with the help of search utilities. I can hang the whole
>collection off my web page for now and I dare say it could be a
>semi-permanent fixture at my Uni.
>
>I don't suppose there is a way of renumbering the onelist digest to
>continue the numbering scheme which has been in place since 93?

>Microsoft - What do you want to re-install today?

Apparently, the old archives!

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| Mark Nowitzky |
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>Don't you first have to ask yourself what you want to communicate to an
>audience? Are you trying to communicate with an audience that doesn't
>"get" what you're expressing? Whose fault would that be? If you want to
>communicate with others, then communicate with them, music and all. If you
>want to make and hear sounds for yourself, have fun, and don't worry if an
>audience doesn't know what you're "talking about."

Sometimes one has music to express that simply cannot be communicated to
an unprepared audience. Iannis Xenakis for the Masses? Na ga da. Like
mathematics, some things are appropriate for a mass audience
(recreational math), some are incomprehensible to all but a few
specialists (braided geometries), and most cover all gradations in
between. Also, a rap audience may understand but not "get" C&W, and etc.
This is a great topic.

John Starrett
http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jstarret