source file: mills2.txt Subject: various From: bq912@freenet.uchsc.edu (Neil G. Haverstick) Haverstick here...first of all, I've always loved the harmonica and thought it was very underated as an instrument...I've played for 26 years with a great harmonica player in Denver named Clay Kirkland (who does have a killer CD available...which just happens to include a certain microtonal guitarist playing some 12 tone blues/rock). Great to have Pat on this forum... Second, I've just been thinking of my old mentor in Kansas City, Ed Toler, and remembering how he used to refer to his concept of playing as "10,000 Monkeys chattering at 10,000 typewriters"...well, that's how I am appro- aching the tuning thing. I believe there can be an infinite number of intervals and ways to use them. Another teacher of mine, George Keith, always said to avoid becoming attached to any single concept of music; he advised studying many different ways of expressing music, and draw from them what suits you. I took that advice, so terms such as semitone, scale, intervals, and whatever can all have myriad meanings, always depending on the kind of EFFECT you are trying to create with the musical tools at hand. So, with hundreds of billions of galaxies and stars flying around out there, how many musical concepts could possibly exist? To me, this is not idle thought...maybe the sounds of these scales are floating around in the Universe, and perhaps some of these sounds can be picked up by us...and, maybe there are sounds we will never hear, but which could drive another order of beings into ecstasy. I've long called my concept the Form Of No Forms, and this certainly extends to tuning theory as well. All of the opinions I see on this forum are noted and examined, and then eventually will filter into my music somehow. I think the time is absolutely right for a new approach to music, an approach wherein tunings are no big deal, and people may actually move between tunings in a commonplace way. As the father of a 7 year old girl, I see how powerful it can be to bring up a child in the arts...to Neela, talk of music and tunings is commonplace; and, I will never teach her that there are only 12 tones in music. So, I believe that if we are persistent in trying to reach folks about the brainwashing we all were given regarding music theory, we can change it...it's really not too hard for people to understand...Hstick ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 09:15:11 -0700 (PDT) From: John Chalmers To: tuning Subject: Long post from McLaren Message-ID: From: mclaren Subject: The fracas on the tuning forum circa digest 702 -- More than one correspondent has noted the hullabuloo around tuning digest 702. John Chalmers incorrectly pointed out my "major error," in a post itself seriously in error--my factual statement that "Xenharmonikon is published and vetted outside of academia" *was* factual, *is* factual, and *will be* factual for the foreseeable future. Then Paul Rapoport chimed in, advising that "We need fewer hurricanes from the Northwest" when apprised of the gross inadequacy of his bibliographies As will be shown in a series of upcoming posts, "inadequate" does not even *begin* to describe Paul Rapoport's bibliographies. Then we heard in rapid succession from Paul Erlich, who demonstrated a lack of understanding of the difference between entropy and randomness (the two are *not* identical, especially when dealing with information). And finally Greg Taylor chimed in-- of him no more need be said. Whew! That's a Mount Everest of misinformation. So you'll pardon me if it takes a while to refute all the nonsense, half-truths, gross errors, and outright falsities. Microtonality is difficult enough for newcomers, without making it *more* difficult for them by feeding them a bunch of errors--especially when those errors are made by folks who purport to "correct" my posts. But the real issue here isn't so much errors, as attitudes. The words "crank" and "ravings" played a prominent part in the posts around digest 702. Even allowing for the natural excess of the flame warrior, such language is inappropriate to this forum. Paul Erlich has been a prime mover in using this silly kind of language, along with Gregory Taylor, and frankly it's embarrassing. This kind of flame-war rhetoric doesn't belong on this forum. I've perused 700+ posts since the start of this forum, and so far none of them can be fairly described as the work of "cranks." Moreover, not one subscriber has struck me as "raving," although various folks (again, notably Paul Erlich and Gregory Taylor) do occasionally get their facts mixed up. So the real question is: Why is such violent and bizarre language used by a handful of folks to describe my posts? What emotions can I have stirred in otherwise normal, well-adjusted, intelligent people to cause them to post such wild accusations? Well, ladies and gentlemen, here's the answer-- My posts have struck terror into the hearts of the musical 12-ton-equal-tempered cognitive elite (and their toadies) because the 12-TET establishment is ready to collapse. And guess what? People with power (and their toadies) know something that the rest of us tend to forget-- They know that small ideas have a way of becoming large ones. People in power go berserk when they encounter even 1 dissenting voice... --Because they know that order which is imposed by oppression and by the crushing of dissent is a very fragile kind of order indeed. And this describes perfectly the state of America's concert halls and conservatories. One or two otherwise sensible forum subscribers have tried to paint me as a "crank" for saying this. They have described my statements in this regard as "ravings." Aside from the question of whether or not my statements make sense (which you would not expect from the "ravings" of a "crank"), let's ask whether my opinions are in the minority... Am I all alone in describing the way that the 12-TET Alice Tully Hall Lincoln Center Juilliard Converatory establishment oppresses people who try to step out the sacred 12 tones...? Here is what microtonalist Pauline Oliveros has to say on the subject: "An important issue is the marginalization of our music. As far as the establishment is concerned, we don't exist. We can do anything we want, in the margins. But as soon as we want to bring it before a larger audience, we don't exist. And that, to me, is censorship." [Oliveros, Pauline, "Discussion One," Ear Magazine, 1991, pg. 22] If my statements constitute the "ravings" of a "crank," then Pauline Oliveros must be raving as well. Pauline Oliveros must also be a crank. In Tuning Digest 686, I pointed out that the exhaustion of 12-TET theory had led to a situation in which "As readers of [Perspectives of New Music] well know, the once-respected magazine has in the last few years descended into a frenzied downward spiral of gibberish which staggers the imagination and inspires both terror and pity. Terror, for the reputations of the people who contributed to the infamous 1993 'Complexity' issue of PNM; and pity for anyone who misguidedly paid money to read this swill. Now, 'swill' might seem like a harsh word. "Perhaps. "Perhaps not. "You can judge for yourself." - mclaren These, allegedly, were the "ravings" of a "crank." Purportedly, this was an example of my "invective." How about a second opinion? How about seeing what microtonalist Trevor Wishart has to say on the subject? "In its constant search for new modes of expression, the Western classical music tradition was...constrained by its very concentration upon relationships of a limited set of thus notatable `pitches,' to extend the notatable field of harmonic relationships to the limit. The final step into a 12-tone and thence 'integral' serial technique, rather than being a 'liberation' from this restricted set tonality, must be seen in historical perspective as the final total capitulation to the finitistic permut- ational dictates of a rationalized analytic notation system, and the gateway to much sterile rational formalism..." [Wishart, Trevor, "Musical Writing, Musical Speaking," in "Whose Music? A Sociology Of Musical Language," Ed. J. Shepherd, P. Virden, G. Vulliamy and T. Wishart, Latimer, London, 1977] Sounds like Trevor Wishart is saying the same thing I'm saying. So now when Trevor Wishart speaks, *he* must be "raving" too. He must also be a "crank." And what else have I said to cause such fear and loathing? Let's see... In a number of tuning digests, I've pointed out the obvious fact that John Cage's "music" is a con job produced by an untalented con artist--stunts devoid of musical value, obsessed with theory, exuding the bitter taste of mud dragged up from the bottom of an intonationally dry well. When they heard these statements, a remarkable number of otherwise sensible folks raised their voices in a shrill chorus, decrying my statement of the obvious as the "ravings" of a "crank." Thus, when Edward Fox writes in The Wire Magazine: "..."There are a lot of good reasons for listening to [Morton Feldman's] music. For one, Feldman was not a musical ideologue or a conceptualist. In this he was very different from Cage, whose music was almost entirely theoretical and based on a cult of the personality of Cage. Much of Cage is unlistenable now as a result. You can *listen* to Feldman." [Fox, Edward, "Annihilated Angel," The Wire, Issue 134, April 1995, pg. 38] ..Well, when Edward Fox speaks, he must be spouting the "ravings" of a "crank." And when TIME magazine writes in its obituary of John Cage that "Finally there is the not at all negligible matter of how the music sounds. A common philistine criticism of avant-garde art used to be that small children banging on pots and pans or flinging paint at a canvas could have produced exactly the same effect. In Cage's case, at least, this is very probably true... A concert of Cage's noises is, by and large, as much of a room emptier as it was when the work was new; Cage may be the first important artist whose work one wants neither to hear nor see." [Walsh, Michael, "Sounds of Silence,' Time, November 1 1993, pg. 88] ..Well, clearly, when TIME magazine writes such things we must realize that *these* also are the "ravings" of a "crank." What is wrong with this picture, ladies and gentlemen? Do you get a sour taste in your mouth whenever anyone who dares to disagree is labelled a "crank" and described as "raving"? I sure do. That kind of logic smells bad--especially on discussion thread which consistently maintains the high standards of this one. No, that kind of logic just doesn't parse. For one thing, isn't it peculiar how many "cranks" are "raving" exactly in the same manner? And isn't it odd how much the so-called musical cognitive elite (whose cognitive faculties are in doubt) have to lose if they admit the obvious, and agree that con artists like Cage have in fact driven audiences away from concerts of This is a most curious epidemic of madness-- huge numbers of people seem to have gone insane, all at once. And we're *all* making the same cogent argument--the emperor's got no clothes. Modernism is dead. Contemporary 12-TET academic music has become obsessed with theory to the exclusion of all else, elevating words above mere sounds... But then, I forget--these are the "ravings" of a "crank." In that case, when Ingram Marshall writes "Modernism is an obsession with theory; it is an obsession with both the object and idea of art as self-referential. Modernism begins probably with Schoenberg and ends with, say, Boulez and Cage." [Marshall, Ingram, "MODERNISM-- Forget it!" Soundings 11, 1981, pg. 74] ..Then Ingram Marshall must be "raving"--he must also be a "crank." And when Derek B. Scott writes in The Musical Quarterly that "Schoenberg went so far as to say: 'Nearly all the works nowadays generally acclaimed...met, when still new, with a cold or even hostile reception.' (..) Time and again we are told of the existence of modern masterpieces that lovers of music have perversely refused to take to their hearts, but that the day will surely come when these works receive their just recognition. However, the question being asked now is, when indeed will that day come? One reads calmly Wilfrid Mellers' assurance in 1968 that "Pli Selon Pli" 'will establish itself as a crucial masterpiece of our time.' Yet, Slonimsky's law of the forty-year gap between the arrival of a masterpiece and its general acceptance already has had to be doubled in the case of Erwartung, the work Robert Craft thought Schoenberg's masterpiece. This creates a paradox for those who see longevity as a valuer of 'great art,' for while The Mikado manages to survive despite high-minded scorn, Erwartung survives largely as a result of special pleading." [Scott, Derek B. "Music and Sociology for the 1990s: A Changing Critical Perspective," Musical Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 3, 1990, pg. 389] ..Then, clearly, these are *also* the "ravings" of a "crank." And when in the same article Scott points out "It has taken a long time for a theory of musical relativism to gain ground. A major reason for the delay has been the amount of time consumed in the futile search for an underlying coherent theory by which modernism could be rationally explained and understood when there should have been a recognition that modernism had distingrated into irrationality, failure, and irrelevance." [Scott, Derek B. "Music and Sociology for the 1990s: A Changing Critical Perspective," Musical Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 3, 1990, pg. 389] ..Then we must ask an uncomfortable question-- Can *all* these people be "cranks"? Can so many cogent voices pointing out that modernism is dead, 12-TET is exhausted, and it's time to move on to something else... can *all* these people be This is not a trivial issue. It doesn't have to do with me or with the lynch mob that tried to string me up around digest 702 so much as with the future of music. The issue is important, ladies and gentlemen, and I shall continue to bring it up again and *again* and AGAIN on this tuning forum, because it is by no means certain that microtonality represents the future of music. We know modernism is dead... We know that composers like Cage and Boulez killed 12-TET with a tidal wave of narcissism, nihilism, and self-indulgence (to use the exact words of the New York Times--presumably the "ravings" of yet more "cranks")... But there are *many* paths away from modernism. One path leads to microtonal expansion of melodic and harmonic resources...others lead to a contraction--even a reactionary impoverishment of melodic and harmonic resources. Thus, when Scott states "Throughout the 1980s criticism was mounting from the political right and left, from sociologists, ethnomusicologists and anthropologists. The feeling that Western 'art music' was in crisis pervaded many of the decade's articles: the title, for example, of Michael Kowalski's article "The Exhaustion of Western Art Mustic" speaks for itself... (..) It became pointless to debate whether Boulez, Cage or Tippett represented the way ahead for high culture since, to echo a well-known song, those taking the high road had been overtaken by those taking the low raod. Even among the middle classes and the 'educated'--and among 'serious' musicians--attention has been drifting away from contemporary high culture to popular culture. The attention which a television arts program would have given to a major new work by Tippett in the 1970s was more likely to be directed toward a new album by Elvis Costello in the 1980s." [Scott, Derek B. "Music and Sociology for the 1990s: A Changing Critical Perspective," Musical Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 3, 1990, pg. 390] ...When he writes these words, there it is. It's right on the table. Here's the crux of the dilemma, ladies and gentlemen. Charlatans like Cage and Boulez have so throroughly alienated audiences by miring 12-TET music in a tarpit of masturbatory theory, that to many people nowadays "serious" music means "meaningless idiocy and endless theoretical claptrap." There is *still* a chance to reclaim the dwindling audience for modern music, but we're *not* going to do it by remarking on the glamour of the naked emperor's new clothes. There's a good chance to revive modern music even after the hatchet job performed on it by Cage and Boulez and Babbitt and Ferneyhough-- the surge in popularity of Partch's music *proves* that. The popularity of the "Bang On A Can" concerts (which include a substantial share of non-12 music, from Arnold Dreyblatt's just intonation "orchestra of excited strings" to Julia Wolfe's "Steam" for Harry Partch's instruments and amplified flute, to Annie Gosfield's 24-TET "The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory") demonstrate that in spades. People *will* come to listen to serious modern music--unless we drive them away. People *will* still listen to serious modern music, as long as we don't insult their intelligence... as the otherwise sensible Paul Erlich has insulted *your* intelligence by trying to get you to believe that I'm a "crank." Music is going through a tectonic upheaval right now-- modernism is dead and in the process of collapsing... but nothing has yet arrived to take its place. If we don't insult our audience's intelligence, microtonality might well be what comes out of this tectonic upheaval. But there's no guarantee. And so when people like the otherwise credible Paul Erlich try to paint me as a "crank," or as mentally ill, or as an amusing but fundamentally ignorant know-nothing, it's simply foolish--what I'm saying makes too much sense. You know it. I know it. We all know it. This, ladies and gentlemen, is not a horse with legs, as they say at Belmont Park. This pony won't run. The average person on the street knows that what I'm saying is *exactly* true--modern music ran into a rut, fell into a ditch, and lost touch with both audiences *and* real passion, real emotion, real fist-in-the-gut impact. And that's why this issue is so terribly important to this tuning forum. We have a window of opportunity here--a limited one. It won't last long. And if we microtonalists make the same mistake the modernists made, and if we spiral down into a dizzy abyss of sterile theory and obfuscatory gibberish as James Boros has done, then microtonality won't cut it. People will turn away. They'll listen to pop rock, or rap, or some other kind of music... They'll listen to music which lacks the complexity and sophistication of "serious" music, but which *doesn't* insult their intelligence the way the productions of Babbitt and Cage and Boulez did--they will listen, instead, to music which *DOES* have some real emotional impact. So when a handful of otherwise reasonable folks try to paint me as a "raving" "crank," they are setting a very specific course for the musical future. "Theory ueber alles!" is their watchword. "To hell with what the music sounds like, let's have some more diagrams!" That's their message. I contend that it's time to admit modernism is dead. I say it's time to admit that theory and diagrams and equations have driven out consideration of what a piece of music actually *sounds* like. I say it's time to start over again. Throw out modernism, throw out the 12-TET Forte/Rahn/ Babbitt pitch class matrix cliches, get back to the acoustics and psychoacoustics of music and sound--and renew "serious" Western music by expanding its melodic and harmonic resources xenharmonically. Decide for yourself--are these the "ravings" of a "crank"? Think carefully. On your decision may rest the future of serious contemporary Western music. --mclaren