Chris Bonds wrote:
>I didn't say it was "merely" that. I said it STARTS with that. A
>"requirement for harmony to exist" is what I wrote. Anyone can see that
>most melodies in Western culture during the so-called common practice
>period are triadic in nature. I have no beef against calling them
>harmonically based. But that's only part of the world. Show me a
>successful Schenkerian analysis of a polyphonic Baku Pygmy chant.
Earlier on I've compared Schnerker's system to the equivelant of an
"Indo-European" grammar. It is very good at describing a family of
musical styles which all grow out of similar musical decisions, much as
Indo-European grammars are very good at describing the various languages
which have, as their root, similar lingustic ones. But just as it is a
mistake to think that general language is Indo-European language, it is a
mistake to think that Schenkeran analysis is all of music. Mr. Bond's
challenge makes no sense in this context - to say that Indo European
grammar does not apply to Altic languages is not proof in any way that
Altic and Indo-European languages share, at base, a common set of
mechanisms - that there is a set of perceptual and cognitive forms
that both must arise from.
Mr. Bond's continues to run into the problem that a music theory for a
particular style must join together both hearing and performance.
In otherwords it must break down effects into pieces which can be enacted.
Since the features of the two are not the same - one does not perceive with
what one engages ones motor nerves with - any cultures music theory must,
at its root, either make the decision to be a purely perceptual theory -
and then show how perception and performance interact - or it must accept
inaccuracies in its description of perception as a means of breaking down
perception into components that can be played. The trained musician is
trained to do this as he listens, to break down the pieces of what he hears
into those units which he can then perform. The composer has a strong
encouragement to build works out of units that musicians can see on the
page and perform - to build effects out of the basic shapes of performance.
Western musical theory has done this moderately well, though with the
problem that people keep wanting the hybrid theory to have some separate
substantial existance - that it be something akin to a physical theory that
one can argue towards the nature of its subcomponents. This one cannot do.
On one hand he declares that a universal definition of harmony is "so
vague as to be of no use". But this is like saying that an Indo-European
grammar describes no specific language. A general definition must, by its
nature, contain all of the possibilities within it. It must point to where
specific choices are made and their effects - that is it must be able to
reduce to a particular performance style - but it will not, in its raw
form, be biased towards any particular set of decisions made. Similarly a
general declaration of human rights makes a poor legal system - because it
must be neutral on purely local arrangements. But here is the catch - in
order for a particular instance of a system to work, its participants must
- to one degree or another - accept the restrictions made at its basic
assumptions, and only alter them by means available within that framework.
In otherwords - while a culture's music theory may be fiction, it must be
a fiction that people treat as very real. This may sound contradictory,
but it is, in fact, true. Call it the principle of conceptual reality - we
must take our concepts as real so that we may make them work.
- - -
A general theory of music could in fact analyse any style in terms of how
it organises the various mechanisms which make up cognition of music -
perception, memory, association - and performance of music. It would have
to present an exclusion principle showing how particular decisions force
other decisions. I have for a long time worked on such ideas, and found
that, generally, people aren't interested in hearing them, in part because
it requires unfamiliar kinds of thinking - but in larger measure because
the stark conclusion one gets from it is that it serves no partisan
interest. It neither supports any particular style, nor yet does it
support the dogma that all styles are in all respects equal. It does not
point to any linear extension of some existing technique, nor yet does it
support pastiche and unbounded eclecticism. It does not point to any music
as better than all others, but it does point to differing musical styles
having different virtues and different ends. In short - it is of no use
to the people who dominate most artistic discussions - indeed it is openly
hostile to what they want out of art. Mr. Bond's continues to throw down
the challenge to outline such a system; I know from experience that there
is monumental hostility towards the idea, and towards the various
components that make up the idea, and that a repetition of it is not to
be desired in this forum, or indeed most casual forums.
On the one hand some demand such a system before they will be satisfied,
on the other hand I know that they would instantly attack the outlining of
such a system as being "too long", "too complicated", "too unfamiliar" -
too this, too that - in short, requiring an explanation, and then cutting
it off. One can't have it both ways - either a forum must remain inside
particular bounds of knowledge, and people must accept that at a certain
point discussions must be dropped because the verge on reopening old wounds
- or they must accept where ever the discussion leads, and whatever means
and materials are necessary. Since this is a moderated forum - it is a
decision I must leave in the hands of its moderator. If he decides against
going down this road - and it is entire reasonable to decide against it,
since it is a long and treacherous road - then I will have to consider
discussion at an end, since it will be impossible to argue within the box
presented.
Stirling Newberry
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