Kevin Sutton wrote:

>Music does not surround us every day.  Ambient noise surrounds us every
>day.  Music is something that is created.  It doesn't happen by accident.
>That we use elements of ambient noise to make music is coincidental.
>In order to be music, it requires thought and structure.  It's a human
>creation.  Living in the moment is a wonderful thing for your spiritual
>well-being, as is relating ambient noise to music.  My objection is that
>alleged "composers" collect ambient noise with no structure or order and
>call it music.  Let's call things what they are shall we?

It seems to me that a lot of the improvised or chance music that bothers
you so much is indeed created with thought and structure.

>Really? Then why is Oliveros pulling down a faculty salary and able to
>maintain a certain amount of fame and recognition for being a "composer?"
>I think her objective is entirely the same as Britten and Stravinsky.  That
>she has neither the skills or the creativity to pull it off is her undoing.
>I want to see Pauline Oliveros or Paul Chihara or Morton Subotnik or Larry
>Austin sit down and write a piece of absolute music.

And if they can? What will you say? Miro could also draw a pretty picture
of a house and a tree.  Should he just have done houses and trees instead
of blotches and squiggles? So Pauline Oliveros can sit and write a lovely
SATB chorale.  Is that all she should do?

>Not some computer generated happenstance.  I want to hear a work that has
>a beginning, a middle and an end.

How silly!  I don't know much of her work, but I listened to a couple of
the tracks that someone posted.  Seems to me each has beginning, middle,
end.  Does music have to be in sonata form to please you?

>One that shows some thought beyond "please press play now." Let them use
>all the zippers and plungers they want, but let them use these things as
>instruments, not gimmicks.

On the recording I heard the instruments were instruments.  How do you play
a gimmick?

>Come now Mike.  How many times can you look at a plain blue square of
>canvas and call it art?

Just about any time, if the artist says it's art.  Maybe boring art, but
art nonetheless.

>answer this in the affirmative, then please go enjoy the "art." But does an
>uneducated listener appreciate the likes of Oliveros because some erudite
>scholar says he's a plebian if he doesn't.  I dare say this happens too
>often.

Actually what happens much, much more often is that a listener, educated or
otherwise, enjoys a piece of music simply because they find it enjoyable,
and others who don't share the same tastes deride them as fools or fakers
or worse.  I think this is morally much more indefensible, frankly.  I have
never, ever, encountered anyone who listens to something because someone
else says they're stupid if they don't.  You're making this up, and at the
same time calling into question others' perfectly reasonable taste in music
and art.

I suggest you get over your indignation at this kind of modernism. You
don't like it, fine, but the Truth is that it is Art and it is enjoyable
to a lot of people.

I would also take issue with the statement that music can't "just happen".
The Truth is that it can indeed simply occur when set into motion.  Please
listen to some of the tracks from http://mp3.com/tramuntana.  Some of it
is garbage, but there are some things that are rather musical, and they
are 100% improvised, unplanned, spontaneous and chance.

>It insults my intelligence for a "composer, " no matter how famous to
>put his or her name on a notebook page of improvization instructions.

As a composer who's done exactly that, I have two reactions, one is that
that kind of dismissal insults *my* intelligence, and the other is that
when I write a series of improvisation instructions I could care even one
whit for insulting your intelligence.  I don't write music to stroke your
ego.

This simply isn't composing music.

This statement as an opinion is uninformed and as a fact is simply
erroneous.

>Rather, it's a set of gimmicks to convince a duped audience that they have
>just witnessed something marvelous.

I find this kind of cynicism about someone's artistic endeavors to be
awfully sad.

>These so-called composers (Oliveros and her ilk being the worst offenders)
>have been collecting perfectly good grant money for years to sit around and
>dream up the kind of crap that I and my fellow kindergartners created 35
>years ago when we were given rhythm sticks and told to play some music.

That's absolute baloney.  Improvised music has been around since the
Stone Age and will always be around.  What's your problem with it? Children
get a huge bang out of improvising with rhythm sticks and the seeds are
planted there to enjoy making spontaneous music like humans always have.
Unfortunately when they grow up they have people shrieking at them
insisting that music has to be a certain way and if it's not it's crap.
If an artist can organize grant money and positions from where they can
encourage this kind of music I hail them; more power to them!

Janos agrees:

>>Bravo!  I wouldn't condemn *all* of the '60s, but this simple dismissal
>>of "Oliveros and her ilk" is right on.

Personally, I find "simple dismissals" in general to be right off.
Of course that's a simple dismissal, I know:-).  But it simply isn't
intellectually valid to simply dismiss something just because it happens
to be an ilk.

>Of course, she, her ilk and supporters will tell you that something's
>really wrong with you "not hearing" what's there.

Why, oh why, do you put words in the mouths of ilks? There's nothing
at all "wrong" with you if you don't enjoy this kind of music.  It's
perfectly normal!  That's why there are so few people that like it, and
so few composers, really, that write it.  What's wrong is insisting so
vehemently that others shouldn't like it or make it, and that it somehow
isn't art.  That's what's wrong.

Dave
http://mp3.com/davidrunnion