Robert Clements writes:

>Molotov cocktail-throwing mode: on.  Has Jon (or anyone else) every
>heard of an self-proclaimed experimental artist accepting that a work was
>a failure because the audience judged against it? It doesn't happen; which
>is why i think demonstration is a more honest terminology than experimental.
>Experimental implies the possibility of failure; & artistic experimentation
>(in its common usage, rather than as an Platonic ideal) rejects the
>concept, generally as a fault in the audience.

Hell, I've heard of composers who *don't* call themselves experimental
doing the same thing.  I agree that "experimental" is probably the wrong
term, but so is "demonstration," since every performance of any piece is
a demonstration.  The old term "radical" (from the Twenties and Thirties)
might be better, in the sense that the music forces us to confront our
assumptions as to what music is.  But this would apply to any unfamiliar
music, like Chinese opera or Indian raga.  On the other hand, I can't even
come up with a definition of "classical" music.  "Experimental" may well be
one of those terms - despite its dictionary and conceptual restraints -
that we "know how to apply when we hear the music," even when we can't at
the moment articulate a definition.  After all, despite your disagreement
with the term, you probably have some idea of the music Jon means, so
really the word has a definition, although unsanctioned by science and
Popper, which the listener can discover with a little work.

Steve Schwartz