What Psychoacoustical/Musical "Universals"?

Western music theorists sure seem to be in a big
hurry to try and justify their ridiculous
ideologically-infested concepts by attempting to
claim that they are either "scientific" or
universally apply to everybody on the planet
psychoacoustically, when they are actually
just little provincial ideological fairy tales.

And the number one culprit is theological monotheism,
which is seen in the ridiculous attempt to elevate a
single theory/model (the harmonic series and the 12-tone
"technique" being the most obvious examples) into a
one-dimenional, non-heirarchized panacea-ick strait
jacket in which to imprison music. All the time trying
to avoid the hard work and loving contemplation that is
necessary to try and understand what music actually is
or possibly might become.

Bill Flavell

Hi Bill,

While i'll be the first to admit that the harmony
of the Rolling Stones is as deserving of attention
and analysis as that of any other composers/performers,
i was a bit alarmed to see you referring to Bach,
Mozart, and Beethoven as "the 3 Viennese Stooges".

You're ranting against music-theory monotheism
-- don't get caught in the trap of deriding composers
who are considered to be geniuses by many thoughtful
listeners, in order to elevate your own personal
favorites. All i'm saying is that it's silly of you
to imply that B, M, and B were incompetant, which is
clearly the implication i got from what you wrote.

Anyway,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Flavell" <bill_flavell@e...> wrote:
>
>
> And the number one culprit is theological monotheism,
> which is seen in the ridiculous attempt to elevate a
> single theory/model (the harmonic series and the 12-tone
> "technique" being the most obvious examples) into a
> one-dimenional, non-heirarchized panacea-ick strait
> jacket in which to imprison music. All the time trying
> to avoid the hard work and loving contemplation that is
> necessary to try and understand what music actually is
> or possibly might become.

I'm hoping that you won't follow in the footsteps of
many other microtonalists and start ranting against
Schoenberg for the role he played in the establishment
of 12-edo monotheism during the 1900s.

Schoenberg's own theoretical writings clearly show that
he was interested in the *search* for the "truth", and
at the points in _Harmonielehre_ where he explains the
derivation of both the major and chromatic scales from
the overtone series, he puts in his disclaimer that
he is using "the possibly incorrect overtone theory".

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com
Tonescape microtonal music software