Re: Pablo Massa's and my disagreement.

I don't know if this will clarify things, but let me try.  We are, to
a great extent, the product of our pasts.  One of the most significant
events of my intellectual life happened (against all odds) in college.
Some friends of mine were in an advanced music theory class to learn the
advanced techniques of Schenkerian analysis and beyond.  Toward the end,
the professor, John Clough, brought in a piece of absolutely new music
nobody had ever heard and invited the class to take a whack at it.  Nobody
said a word.  All of them essentially waited for the prof to give them the
lowdown on the piece.  A great teacher can wait out a silent class, and
this Clough did.  But he did explain to them that the reason for learning
the techniques of analysis in the first place was so that they would have
a tool kit for examining something they had never seen before.

It seems to me that waiting for the word or reliance on a very small
toolkit or a very small sample is exactly what's wrong with most artistic
education - literature and painting, as well as music.  A really good
analyzer looks at what's in front of him, tries the techniques he has,
compares to the art he knows, and often that's enough.  The problem comes
when he encounters a piece that doesn't fit any of this.  The strong
temptation is always to dismiss with "The emperor has no clothes." In a
good many cases, the emperor is indeed nekkid.  However, in an increasing
number of cases, particularly the unfamiliar, "hard" music from mid-century
on, the music might actually be genuinely interesting and concern with
the emperor's haberdashery really doesn't get you any forwarder to
understanding how this music works - not just technically, but emotionally.
Dismissal closes off not only discussion, but growth.  What's at stake is
a whole new repertoire you might enjoy.

I keep using the example of my Brahms epiphany.  I was at one
time convinced, aside from certain exceptional works (NOT any of the
symphonies), Brahms was a fraud.  Incidentally, both George Bernard Shaw
and Benjamin Britten shared that opinion.  Nevertheless, I kept listening.
There's this huge repertoire, previously a closed book, that I now can
enjoy.  So it paid off.  There's no guarantee, however.

Steve Schwartz