Dave Lampson <[log in to unmask]>:

>Pablo Massa replies to me:
>
>>"Quality" is not the point here.  You are confusing the immanent quality
>>of a music work with its historical importance.  This is quite a different
>>matter and If I don't remember bad, this is what Edson was talking about.
>>By "historical importance" I mean how influential, inspiring, symbolic etc.
>>has been this work for the subsequent composers and audiences through
>>times, or how decissive was it for the ulterior technical development of
>>music.
>
>Well, by your own criteria then, Debussy is an extremely minor composer.
>He may have had significant influence on the composers you admire, but
>as to the bulk of music written since Debussy, little of it has been
>influenced directly.

I would like you to read carefully what I wrote, Dave.  I didn't talk
here about "major" or "minor" (which are terms of value).  I just talked
about "historical importance", which is not an axiological term at all.
Besides, it doesn't matter if the influence of a composer is direct or not:
Debussy has strongly influenced directly or indirectly not only "classical"
composers, but film music composers, orchestral arrangers, jazzmen, New Age
composers, etc.  That doesn't means (read what I wrote) that he is "the
most influential..." or that "the Western Music would not exist without
him, etc".  It's neccesary to clear this?.  In fact, Edson's original
statement about Debussy ("His music is significative in the History of
Western Music") was so general, foggy and harmless that I find funny your
effort to deny it.

>Music by Gershwin, Copland, Ellington, Basie, Coltrane, the Beatles,
>Madonna and thousands of others have had far more impact on the whole
>of the musical scene than Debussy.

That's a matter of long discussion.  Of *what* musical scene are you
talking about?.  But supposing that this is true, we are not comparing here
the degree of influence of anybody, we were just saying that "Debussy was
influential in the History of Western Music".  I don't think it's healthy
to deny this only because we don't like the snobbism of some college
musicologists or music critics.

>This is the primary danger of the delusion that our opinions in these
>matters are objective.  We lose perspective as we become more and more
>self-referential.  This tends to turn into snobbism quite quickly.

Have you noticed that nobody used the word "objective" in this thread,
except you?.

>>>All proof needs objective evidence to back it up.
>>
>>The evidence lies at our own agreement (at least Edson's and mine and many
>>other people's) on "how important the music of Debussy is"...or in the fact
>>that here we are talking about this.
>
>That's not evidence of anything except that you have similar tastes
>and philosophies.  The only thing it says about the music is that it was
>able to invoke similar reactions between you.  This is important, it is
>significant, but it is not objective in any sense.

That's precisely the point...  The fact that the citizen X is more or less
impressed by the "enormous" historical importance of Debussy is based in
the mere fact that citizen X was raised in a social environment in which
there's such an agreement about Debussy.  That agreement is composed of
millions of coincident subjective opinions, and the mine one is just one
among those millions.  When this happens, we have a dominant trend of
opinion.  The content of this trend may be perfectly "subjective", but its
existence and dominancy are both "objective", as soon as it becomes a
social force or constraint.

>>>>However, the written testimony of the subsequent composers
>>>>is there to proof it.
>>>
>>>Prove what, exactly?  The quality of the music?...
>>
>>No. To prove that the work X has been useful, inspiring, etc.  to the
>>composers Z, Y and W.  That's all.
>
>But what does that tell you?  How does it help?

That tells me something very interesting to me:  that Strawinsky didn't get
his stuff from nothing, which is not a bad lesson for a young composition
student.  That may have nothing to do with "the music in itself", but there
are many people (me among them) for whom "the music in itself" is not the
only subject worth of interest.

>>>All that's proved is that some writers have agreed.  You could easily
>>>assemble a group of writers that dissent.
>>
>>Not in the case of Debussy, I would bet.  In the case of other composers,
>>it's probable...
>
>You'd be wrong I'm afraid.  In the years I've been doing this I've seen
>well-reasoned arguments against the quality of the music of composers such
>as Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, etc.  ...

Will I have to insist that nobody was talking here about quality? You may
write a large essay on Beethoven and you can chop his entire music in it
if you want, and with very clever points (the title could be "I Hate That
Deaf", for example), but you will be in serious troubles if you want to
convince us that the model proposed by Beethoven's 9th was absolutely
uninfluential on works like Mahler's 2nd, for example.  Where would you
find a solid argument to support that?.  However, let's suppose that you
find an argument, a very good one.  Well, probably your book will become
more and more popular, and after 20 or 30 years, it's probable that the
circles of musicologists, critics and listeners (among which we are in)
will agree more or less on the fact that Beethoven's importance was
overrated in the past century.  In the case of Debussy, if someone has
proposed yet such a view of his work, I'm afraid that his opinions are
sitll not widespread or popular, or successful enough to make a significant
number of people to change their minds.  Perhaps that successful book on
Debussy will come some day and then we will (almost) all get convinced that
the influence of Debussy was inflated by critics and historians in the
past.

Pablo Massa
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