From: smoliar@argon.iss.nus.sg (Stephen Smoliar)
Subject: Re: Help Required. Dodecacophony. ;-)
Reply-To: smoliar@iss.nus.sg (Stephen Smoliar)
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 12:22:39 GMT

In article <1992Nov6.230030.17188@husc3.harvard.edu> elkies@zariski.harvard.edu
(Noam Elkies) writes:
>
>~(Brahms never had to contend with music being pumped into his elevator.)
>
>*That*'s your example of a new "resource for hearing music"!?
>
I didn't put any value judgment on those resources, Noam!  I assume you are
familiar with THE POETICS OF MUSIC (given the respect you seem to hold for
the Norton lectures).  You may recall Stravinsky's crack about organ grinders
who cannot seem to leave Gounod alone.  They were the elevator music of an
earlier generation, but they were far less ubiquitous.  When you think about
it, this is quite a time when you actually have to go to rather extraordinary
efforts to AVOID exposure to music in some form or another.

>~                            Couple that with the greater abundance of general
>~sounds which we take for granted as part of our ambient environment.  It is
>~not
>~at all absurd to say that we just do not hear things (ANY things) the way
>~they
>~did a hundred years ago.
>
>Perhaps not absurd, but quite irrelevant to my point.  Brahms' music,
>and Chopin's, and Bach's, and other music adored by our 19th-century
>forebears still offers perceptive contemporary listeners plenty of
>substance and, yes, beauty, even if they in some sense do not
>hear it ``the way they did a hundred years ago''.
>
I'll see your irrelevant and raise you one vacuous.  Basically, you can define
"perceptive" in such a way as to make your claim circular and, therefore,
meaningless.  The reason I brought the elevators in in the first place is
because our who perspective on music perception has changed radically since
the beginning of this century.  You can, if you wish, try to force your
perspective back to what it was in Mahler's day;  but that will require
denying most of your life experiences.  You become a bit like Borges' Pierre
Menard in his efforts to re-write DON QUIXOTE.  It makes for an interesting
intellectual exercise if you do not mind negating your life.

>  You seem to be suggesting that such ``contextual baggage'' as
>being subjected to a superfluity of MTV, Muzak, commercial ditties, etc.
>invalidates one's experience of the tonal classics to such an extent as
>to deserve the dismissive ``babe in wonderland'' insult.  I don't buy it.
>
I realize that it is no longer fashionable to "buy" Sartre these days;  but I
happened to be reading "What is Literature?" last weekend and found a passage
which may still be appropriate:

	If we no longer write as they did in the eighteenth century,
	it is because the language of Racine and Saint-Evremond does
	not lend itself to talking about locomotives or the proletariat.

All I am saying is that the situation is not that all different in music and
that "babes in wonderland" seems like an adequate characterization of those
who cannot own up to that situation.
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical