I wrote:

>>To "elevate the performer to the status of co-composer, blah, blah" was
>>just an elegant theoretical cap built up in the mid 50's to cover a big
>>hole at the musical inventive of Mr. KH Stockhausen, one of the major
>>artistic impostors of the XX century.

Edward Moore asks:

>How did this "big hole" open up, then?

Ask Herr Stockhausen (and some others perhaps, but unfortunately they're
dead today).  But don't worry, I understood your question:  are you saying
that this hole was open by History, and that aleatory music was as
inevitable as the French Revolution?.  Your next paragraph suggests it:

>Art develops, just like history, through and by the guiding force of its
>own internal 'spirit,' if you will (to speak in Hegelian language, which
>seems fitting here).

Yes, perhaps it was so.  However, all we have are facts, and we can see
them from the side of Robespierre or from the side of Louis Capet.  Guess
in which side am I.

>And on what grounds are you accusing Stockhausen of being an "artistic
>impostor"? Those are heavy words.

They are indeed, and I didn't write them by chance.  But, you see,
Stokie has been involved in almost every major musical fraud committed
since the second half of XX century:  integral serialism, aleatory music,
electroacoustic music.  He drove himself as fast as he could between those
currents --he always wanted to be "a la page"-- and in all of them he left
his mark ("Stokie was here") under the shape of awful--or in the best case,
boring-- works.  On the other hand, he wrote hundreds of pages in which he
explains us convincingly why does his works are so charmless.  I remember
even that in an interview from the 60's (reproduced in a supposedly serious
small history of contemporary music) he said something like this:  "often
I feel that I'm a sort of messenger of alien creatures from other worlds,
who are in connection with me and ordered me to give new kinds of music to
mankind".  Enough?.

>I am of the opinion that aleatory music was developed by composers who
>maintained a guiding principle similar to that of Heidegger in philosophy
>-- i.e., to return to that primal moment at which the chaotic universe of
>sounds first begins to resemble something like the inspired 'order' of/that
>is MUSIC.

In fact, I have a strong suspect that one could try (more or less
successfully) a parallel between aleatory music and the philosophies of
Kierkegaard, Bergson, Sartre or even Wittgenstein.  Cage made a shortcut
and derived it from Zen.  All of those parallels would work (as aesthetical
speeches) if one handles those philosophies properly and with a minimum
level of inventive.  However, I have serious doubts that any theory of
aleatory music can work truly as a "poietike".  You can make an aesthetic
from nothing, but hardly a poetic.

>Again, just as beings cannot, according to Heidegger, come to know Being
>except in the capacity of _Dasein_, so musical souls cannot come to know
>the origin of music except in a creative capacity -- and such a capacity is
>already musically involved, if you will.  And so aleatory music presents
>itself as somewhat tragic, just like Heidegger's neo-Grecian philosophy.

I'm no expert on Hedegger's philosophy, but I find this parallel a
bit artificial.  Music in itself exists as "Dasein", since it's purely
being-in-time, unconceivable without it (remember Schopenhauer).  What is
tragic in music is it's own ontological determination, "order" or "chaos"
aside.  These are only suggestions, of course.

Pablo Massa
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