Kim Patrick Clow <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>Karl Haas has rightfully said that those are the only real distinctions
>that need to be made in any discussion of music.  Good Music and Bad Music.
>I kinda agree.

Can't agree.  Good means "good for what?".  If you want to make music
that will sell millions of copies and get you dozens of groupies, Debussy
probably isn't good for very much.  If you want to have a funeral march,
Mendelssohn's Octet probably isn't good at that moment.

Most music is made for some use, and the question is whether it is good for
that use or not.  When its use is exhausted, it dies or becomes far less
visible.  Some people have a use for musical works in themselves, and they
have a use for musical works of structure which they can explore.  These
works, since their use is not expended by the statement they make, last.
But this property of music does not make a piece of music "good" per se.
Nor does its absence make a piece of music "bad".

Many people say "good" when they mean "lasting".  Many people say "bad"
when they mean "derrivative".  Derrivative music is a piece of music
which is simply a an attempt at reproduction of some other work of music
which contains less than what it copied.  Derrivative music is *enjoyed*
by many people who would be bored by another playing of the original,
or any previous copy they know, but want the original and nothing else.
Derrivative music drives people who have an audial memory crazy, because
for them it is not only a repetition of the original, minus some of the
good parts, but of all of the other derrivative versions as well.  For
the first person, it is comfortable as coming home, even if to a run down
shack.  For the second person, it is being forced to spend the night in a
run down shack that is someone elses home.

The qualities that make a work lating or derrivative can be examined,
and understood.  There are two kinds of lasting music.  One kind which is
so basic and simple, and yet so flexible, that even an verage person can
perform it and own the work, their rendition is pleasing, and still their
own.  The second kind is the kind with so much potential that even a fine
musical mind cannot exhaust the shapes that it can be brought to, and even
a fine performer cannot render them all at once.  A very tiny amount of
music is both at once.  The general words for these two types are "folk"
and "art".  The reason art music often comes from folk music is because
they are deeply inter-related in what makes them work -- the ability to
bend and yet remain themselves.

The original quote was that "all music is good music, except the *boring*
kind." A much better view, because once temporary music starts to bore its
audience, it will go away, and not one minute before.  And once a piece of
lasting music is played by boring people, and listned to by people who talk
about it in a boring way, then it too will die.

Things to think on readers.

Stirling Newberry <[log in to unmask]>