Steven Schwartz replies to my musings about contemporary music:

>I don't reject John's "eschews everything inherently 'human'" as sarcastic,
>but as inaccurate.  It's a stereotype based on a tiny sliver of modern and
>contemporary music.  It paints with way too broad a brush.

Although that "tiny sliver" has now taken it's place beside other once
lesser 20th Century composers, they are still the farthest ahead in
the race for a new aesthetic.  (Carter, Boulez, Babbitt, Gaburo, some
Stockhausen and Berio to name a few).  Of course there are approachable
moderns whose music is easily associative: Crumb, Ligeti, Schnittke,
Adams--I love 'em, but we all know they don't carry the keys to the new
kindom.  It's the tiny sliver I'm concerned about, but hold that thought
until the end!

Donald Satz writes:

>John has brought up the interesting issue of associations.  Do we need to
>make them in order to enjoy music?

No. What I was saying is that Romantic and Post-Romantic/Early
Contemporary music can include a psychological dimension that, for the
most part, previous eras of music can't and present eras won't.  Let me
use the old hackneyed example of Tchaikovsky's mixed meter waltz in the 6th
Symphony.  Of course there is a well documented extra-musical statement
here--but the potency and irony would be lost if former composers hadn't
already created an extra musical association between notes in 3/4 and the
social dating ritual called a waltz.

I like marches, and I could daydream while listening to them, but a
Schubert march, though substantial in quality, can't really support
extra-musical associations I personally find gratifying, such as irony.  I
get much more out of what Shostakovich did with the march.  But there could
be no irony unless his audience knew what a march was and understood its
usual social context--same with Tchaikovsky's distortion of the waltz.

If you are more a daydreamer and vicarious enjoyer-kinda listener who is
looking for kindred spirits to share bruises of the soul with, you can
certainly find friends among composers from the above-mentioned era; while
those listeners that enjoy the music "just as it is" will find friends of
their own.

Steve Schwartz wrote:

>We continue to congratulate ourselves on our own taste and denigrate
>others whose taste differs from ours.

My posting on personality types and responses to music is the first I've
seen on MCML to take the focus *away* from any ideas regarding one type
of music or listener being superior to another!  There were no value
judgements.

My question was, do we have any new forms of music that have acquired
extra-musical baggage in the minds of the collective CM audience over
the last Century that modern composers can now manipulate to add a depth
that speaks to listeners like me? (I can think of Copland's "Hoedown"
where the orchestra imitates a record player suddenly unplugged and slowing
down--those like me delight in the fact that it sounds like a record player
slowing down)

Finally, how I decided to label listener types as dominant and submissive
greatly upset some people.

Stirling Newberry wrote:

>Neither type is "dominant" or "submissive" - and such terms imply a value
>judgment not present in the idea which I outlined.

My 100% cultural/biological definition of dominant and submissive types
should not offend--both exist and one could not exist without the other.
Use leader and follower if you would like.  Let me explain once more my
listener types, and have some fun comparing the astounding similarity of
my earlier post to Stirling's recent one:

Excerpts from my post on listener types, (11/5/98), and Stirling's,
(5/5/99).

(J) "...type B hijacks sound, as it occurs in music to  articulate their
own emotions."
(S) "...the more intently they read or listened, the more they experienced
that word called "I."  "For them art is self."

(J) "...Type A must experience art first hand."
(S) "Another type of person lives their artworks."

(J) "(Type A) listeners are dominant types--they like to forge ahead--get
there first."
(S) The second group is always the future of art because they are not
looking for a sense of self, but wish to explore.

As I said, this is all in good fun, but you just described a characteristic
of a dominant personality.  These two listening types, (ideas that I'm
sure we both stumbled upon independently), fit in very well with the
socio/biological definitions of Dominant and Submissive as defined in
Carl Sagan's "Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors." (Random House)

Now, if you are still reading, let me bring this all together by returning
to the "tiny sliver." I am only concerned about the tiny sliver because it
is those composers who seem to be the ones, if history repeats itself, that
are bestowed with the intellectual tools and artistic halmarks to be great
and lasting.  I am worried that there will be no more lasting music to
fulfill *my* needs.  "What's wrong with your Adams and Ligeti," one might
ask? Stirling sums it up best in his post from 5/5/99:

>For them, (listeners like me), mediocre art in which they can feel
>themselves is far more important than great art..."

Beautifully said, Stirling.

John Smyth