Jan Templiner wrote:

>This may sound off-topic, but I don't think it is.  Taken Don's thoughts
>only one step further, all rules are worthless, because ultimately
>man-made.  Life wold end up in anarchy.  This of course includes music.
>Do we really want music without rules? I rather live without parallel
>fifths in the few cases where they might be good than having no rules
>at all.

Dostoyevsky had someone say in the Brothers Karamazov: if there is no
god, everything is permitted.  Mr. Templiner is in good company.  But
there is another point of view.  Man-made means that humans thought it
up.  Even for those who believe that the sacred writings of one religion
or another come from God, I don't believe that any religious tradition
includes a commentary on parallel fifths.  So we need to rely on human
minds -no choice.  Which is not to say that any of us have to accept
everything that is offered in the name of art.  Personally performance
art and conceptual art drive me nuts, but I am after all, a bourgeois
fossil.

Bernard Chasan