Stirling Newberry wrote:

>If one needs one of many exhibits as to why classical One might be tempted
>to call it a conspiracy, but it isn't - it is many thousand small
>conspiracies,

Even if classical music were dying I don't think raving about conspiracy
theories helps the situation one iota.

>Bad blood is generated.

But as much by conspiracy theorists as by anyone else.

>Our present theory of music is as true a picture of music as pre-telescopic
>astronomy was a true picture of the solar system.

It's fine saying this but I'm not convinced that Stirling has provided us
with the musical telescope for which we all long.

>However, the telescope for the mind has been invented.

What telescope are we talking about here?

>The easiest to dispose of is the theory of "music is a language".  Perhaps
>in some metaphorical sense, but not in the actual sense.  The mechanisms
>of language - grammar formation, noun selection, phoneme translation - are
>not active when listening to music.  Any notion that music has a generative
>grammar that is the same as languages is simply incorrect.

This comes up frequently on the list.  I feel strongly that it is simply
not true to say that a language must consist of words in order to be a
language.  The same thing could be said of mathematics - that it too is a
language.  The answer to the question as to what language is, is nowhere
near as cut and dry as some musicologists seem to think.  The traditional
objection to the idea of music as a language came late in the 19th century
with debates about absolute and program music.  However to say that music
is a language does not mean music tells a word-story in code form.  To
define language as something with nouns, verbs etc is just way too
simplistic.  The philosopher Martin Heidegger said, "language is the
house of Being".  Stravinsky said "musique c'est l'Etre".  If so music
is the house of Being, music is a language.

There will now be those who insist that verbal language points to solidly
existing entities "out there".  A word is a representation and thus
introduces the subject-object difference.  That, it will be said is the
very essence of language.  Music contains within it no subject-object
distinction.  Yet the necessity of the subject-object difference to
language too is a profoundly naive, if still universal assumption, which
also has been questioned at a fundamental level by Derrida most explicitly
in his book "Of Grammatology".  Take this "thing" music.  We cannot agree
what it is, where it came from, let alone where it going.  Yet we call it
the "object" of our discussion.  This "object" without object, which we can
equally agree is so very much a part of our very Being and essence that we
cannot separate it from ourselves as "subject".  All separation of subject
and object can be easily shown to be much more questionable than may first
meet the eye.  Subject and object are an accident of verbal language, as
pitch is of musical notion.

>The cultural view of musical criticism - descended from post structuralism,
>similarly falls by the way side.  Every functioning human being has
>mechanisms which mediate cultural normality.  Malfunctions of these
>regions of the brain cause people to be unable to comply with cultural
>requirements.

I am afraid that if your "telescope" is the reduction of musical philosophy
to neurobiology then you are deeply mistaken.  As someone who has neurology
as his main subject of professional interest I can tell you to forget it.
If the language centers of the dominant hemisphere of the brain are damaged
it is true that both mathematical and verbal-linguistic ability can be
lost, whereas in certain limited instances musical capabilities can still
be preserved.  Yet verbal language presumes a priori the existence of a
social milieu in which communication can exist.  Language is as much a
social phenomenon as a neurological one.  If I were the only being who
were endowed with words it would come to nothing.  I might as well not
have a language center in my brain.  Society, and with it history cannot
be separated from either language or human existence in general.  Neurons
do not exist in isolation.

>This field will, of course, be ever expanding as new But what of the true
>nature of music - does it consist of some metaphysical project to ennoble
>or enlighten? No.  It consists of the task of being musical...

After storming the heavens this is what we are left with - the doctrine of
Absolute Music? Music as an end in itself, as having no other end outside
of itself? That is nothing new but is the metaphysical view of music par
excellence.  Metaphysical, because it endows music with being something
beyond words, beyond human society, and above all something beyond man:
like God himself.

>Which returns one to the original theme - feudalism was the system of
>government where thousands of petty barons had the power over life and
>death, and were unanswerable to the outside.

Petty squabbling has always occurred in music.  There was no Golden Age
without it and those who believe in a Musical Utopia to come are merely
dreaming.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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