I suspect that you be referring to one I saw at Tower just yesterday on the
Naxos label, which by the way is on special at Tower (at least here in the
Los Angeles area) at 3 for $15. I did have to eagle eye the youth of many
piercings so that he charged the right price.
Gretchen
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Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 14:03:22 -0700
From: Dave Lampson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Ustvolskaya's Strange Symphonies
Status: O
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----------------- Message requiring your approval (80 lines) ------------------
Robert Peters wrote:
>Dave Lampson wrote:
>
>>Robert Peters wrote:
>>>I think music does not have to be beautiful.
>>
>>I think music must contain an essential core of beauty, or it's not music.
>
>Well, that leads us again to the question what music is (unanswerable).
I disagree that we are lead to the question. I also disagree that music
can't be defined. I've provided a good definition before. You may not
like it, but until I read a better definition, there it is. I perhaps
should have been more clear in my response, as I believe definitions of
music are, of necessity, completely personal. I can't consider sound that
does not have an essential core of beauty as music. I wasn't saying no one
else could. My definition of music is completely listener-centric: music
is what you listen to as music. Many dislike this definition, but so far
it's the only one I've found that's universally applicable. I may not
think the music that someone listens to is music, but I can't deny that it
is music for them.
>And it leads us to the question what beauty is (unanswerable).
Actually, I don't think it does this either. We weren't (or at least I
wasn't) addressing degrees or definitions of beauty. I entered into the
discussion because of this idea:
>I think music must NOT contain an essential core of beauty to be music.
I don't believe we need a definition of beauty for this. All we have to do
is agree on what is beautiful and what is ugly. I thought we had done
that. You seemed to be claiming Ustvolskaya's music was good precisely
because it was ugly. I was agreeing at least implicitly that I too found
it ugly, and that's why I didn't consider it good music. I thought there
might be an interesting exchange on that basis.
>Yes, a movie like Schindler's List has to be ugly, too, because it deals
>with an ugly subject.
I suspect Spielberg might disagree there.
>- The problem is that our mind tends to consider artistically satisfying
>things as not ugly even then they are.
Perhaps now were getting to the core disconnect in this discussion. Maybe
we have different definitions of ugliness. To me Schindler's List was a
powerful movie only because of it's beautiful elements: the triumph of
human will even in the face of complete hopelessness. But that's getting
off-topic...
>For me art is totally free. For me art is satisfying when it reaches its
>own aim. When the aim is to show total terror and show it through the
>utmost dissonant it is satisfying for me.
I have to wonder how anyone would find terror satisfying in any context.
>I do not glorify ugliness. I just think that for the modern composer and
>the modern artist in general it is no longer possible (and not desirable)
>to compose like Mozart.
This is a typical non sequitur (I intentionally skipped a bunch of
others). Who said anything about composing like Mozart? How about
composing like Vaughan Williams? Or how about composing like a
20th-century person not completely overwhelmed by ugliness, suffering, and
terror?
>I HATE ugly things, you know. But art has the right to show ugly things
>by ugly means.
And you say you enjoy that same art, even though you hate ugly things, so I
think I'm even more confused about what you look for in music than
before. This is one o the things that makes many of us so incredulous when
claims are made for enjoying a certain type of music.
Dave
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