From: brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder)
Subject: Re: minimalism
Organization: Quake Public Access
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 04:01:31 GMT

In article <Brunpr.KBz@news.cso.uiuc.edu> erwin@helsinki.ks.uiuc.edu (Edgar Erwin) writes:
>Roger Lustig writes 
>> brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
>> >I'm glad to hear that "minimalism" is not your "favorite"  genre, 
 
>> Um, were you talking to someone?  I don't see any attribution line...

>> >but how can you justify having any desire to listen to it?  
 
>Although I can think of many reasons why I enjoy listening to Glass, Reich,  
>Riley, etc, I don't feel the need to justify my tastes to you or anyone else.   
Well, you don't HAVE TO justify these things, but you don't have to justify
decorating your living room with the decaying bodies of dead neighborhood 
cats either, but I would expect that you would have some interest in 
coming to an understanding of what makes you do that and if any particualr
kind of living room decor is better or worse than any other kind so as to be 
able to guide your future choices (say, discovering that the smell of decaying
flesh produces a bad overall effect). 

>Although I've not yet had the pleasure of reading many of your posts, I already
>have the impression that I would have about as much chance of convincing you of
>the merits of minimalism as I would of convincing Velikovsky that our moon was
>not burped out of Jupiter's great red spot.

Come on, I'm willing to accept rational arguments.  What I'm not willing to
accept is ad hominem arguments and assertions that facts are based on
inexplicable whims.

>> > Or are you another of these "Lustigians"
>> > who don't think that there is any way to evaluate musical quality aside
>> > from knee-jerk emotionalism which is beyond explanation?
>
>No.  I respond best to music which is not overly emotional.  Thus I prefer  
>Baroque, Classical and several more recent styles, but not in general Romantic.

Actually I prefer the romantics (the period, not the band ;-), but that's not
what I meant by "knee jerk emotionalism".  The Lustigians insist that there is
no particular features of music which give rise to your response to it.  In
essence, he is saying that you have have this "aesthetic response" to any sound
and that there are no particular qualities of any particular sound which in fact
make it more musical or less musical.  It sounds like you don't agree with them.
Is that true?

>I enjoy relating the struture of, say, a Mozart sonata to one by Beethoven or  
>Bartok.  But one cannot deny that there is something to music that defies  
>structural analysis.  

By that do you mean that you are unable to analyze it, or do you claim that 
there is nothing to be analyzed or that no method could possibly accomplish this
feat?

>The power of a Xenakis piece, for example, is emotional,  
>and doesn't require knowledge of the underlying mathematics.  

I am not saying that one must understand the implicit mathematics to appreciate
music any more than one must understand the implicit aerodynamics of an 
airliner in order to enjoy a flight.  I believe that, like the airliner
aerodynamics, the musical structure must be present in order to make the music
work well.

>Although most  
>music in the Romantic style bores me unless there is something interesting  
>going on in the `formal' structure besides the programme, I would never  
>consider a fan of Romantic music to have lower taste than mine.  

There is certainly some room for taste, I don't deny that.  My point is that
what makes music music is something inherent in it, not some purely
subjective interpretation.

>Writing music  
>which can evoke specific complex emotions is just as difficult and worthwhile  
>as coming up with some new structural principles.

I quite agree.  I believe the Lustigians would disagree with you.  They would
say that what matters is the ability of the listener to "make music" out of
whatever sounds the "artist" produces (if any!).

>> > Is Glass overrated?  That's like asking is smallpox is overrated. ;-)

>This is exactly what I meant when I said Glass is both overrated and  
>underrated.  Many consider him a fraud --- many even without a smiley at the  
>end.  

I am one of them.

>He's certainly no more of a fraud than Cage or Schoenberg, whom many  
>people still, unfortunately, see that way.

In deed.  He is EXACTLY as much a fraud as Cage and Schoenberg.  They are 
frauds too.


--Brian