CLASSICAL Archives

Moderated Classical Music List

CLASSICAL@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Forum View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
David I Stewart <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:04:32 +0100
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (29 lines)
Len Fehskens wrote:

>As I said at that time, while the idea that all sound is music may have
>an appealingly Zen flavor, it is also uselessly indiscriminate.

Thank you.  It is indeed useless.  Words MUST be useful otherwise there is
no point in their existence.

>This further qualification (I have no quarrel with requirements 1 and 2)
>seems to me to disqualify much "abstract" music, and raises the contentious
>issue of what C "meant".  Consider for example Don Satz's recent collection
>of vignettes he "experienced" while listening to the Bach Well Tempered
>Klavier.  Was this the kind of "communication" you require? ...

This issue does not crop up if taken from the point of view of purposivity.
If someone put sounds together then it is music.  Useful word.  Simply
understood word.  Better world.

>...  Are my photographs not art when *I* look at them, despite the
>powerful experiences they evoke? Am I unable or forbidden to communicate
>with myself?

Why does music itself have to be about communication.  It can be simply
about the experience - or not.  Why make that distinction?  It complicates
my definition.  I demand simplicity.

David Stewart
[log in to unmask]

ATOM RSS1 RSS2