Steve Schwarz responds:

>>Stokie has been involved in almost every major musical fraud committed
>>since the second half of XX century: integral serialism, aleatory music,
>>electroacoustic music.
>
>I fail to see why these are frauds.  That is, that what they purport to
>be is not what they are.  I don't know what they purport to be.

Well well, we have an interesting subject here.  You've just said why
these are frauds: precisely because "that they purport to be is not what
they are".  They purport to be artistic panaceas or points of arrive.
In order to be historically correct, we should simply turn this sentence
into perfect past.  Aleatory music was intended as a reaction, a sort of
"dialectic consequence" of Integral serialism, which was intended to be
the logical and unavoidable consequence of Schoenberg's aesthetics.  The
"right of existence" of aleatory music was deduced and postulated by some
of its authors from the streams of History, in which nothing happens by
chance.....  Cage was, at least, more original.  However, all this is not
necessarily a fraud, it's just a dubious aesthetical framework: the fraud
consists of thousands and thousands of pages written in order to justify
and glorify both integral serialism and aleatory music.  Even nowadays,
many people consider it as an important step in the development of Western
culture.  OK, Steve, I know that you appreciate them only from a strictly
musical point of view....but many people don't.

>Again, I find some works in these styles to be very beautiful.  I'd hate
>to think I'm a gullible victim, particularly when I enjoy them so much.

Musical beauty is, fortunately, much less rare and predictable than one
could believe.  As the Holy Spirit, she blows where she wants.  Personally,
I think that this is not the case of Stockhausen, but many works builded up
deliberately from inconsistent, stupid, absurd or waste "normatives" are
often beauty, despite their own authors.  (Please, don't say that "this is
the only important in music", because if it's so, this very discussion list
has no sense).

>So far, all you've really said is that you don't like them.  Why raise
>your personal tastes to a universal aesthetic principle?

Perhaps because I'm a sort of megalomaniac monster.  My granny uses to
complain about it often.

Pablo Massa
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