source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 12:52:22 -0700 Subject: Brian pouts (violins up) *and* John's "Wing on the Academy" From: gtaylor@heurikon.com (One Cointreau, on ice....) At the end of his usual contracageian ranting, Brian adds this: >In Tuning Digest 784 Greg Taylor offered >an enooooooormous post in response to my >modest proposal re: the "accepted canon" of >classical music. Without offering any >facts or data to back up his sentiments, > the thrust of Taylor's several thousand >words of verbiage seems to be: "I don't like >mclaren." It was split into two parts for easier reading, actually. I'd say we have a difference of opinion here, Brian. You blessed us all with an editorial rant on the notion of canonicity, and I simply endeavored to suggest what someone who actually had some contact with academic discourse would probably say about the issues surrounding it. I did so because I thought your jeremiad on the issue uninformed [your notion of the canon as an historically invariant entity, for example], and because I thought it might be interesting or important to suggest that there are all kinds of folks well inside the discourse who've thought long and hard about what one *does* with a "canon" in terms of attacking or amending it. I tried to sketch out the *general* forms such arguments take in the interests of suggesting that those folks who labour outside of 12TET might find all kinds of common approaches and issues with their literary as well as musical sisters and brothers. I'll sure admit that this may not be as much fun as torching some cultural straw (wo)man, but my hope was that it would help to suggest that the reality of the situation is simply more complex than your highly entertaining charicature might suggest. I think it's rather too bad that you're incapable of extracting what I thought was a rather straightforward description of things, but that's *your* problem rather than mine. As I believe I've suggested before, as long as you continue to alternate between being someone who supplies us with interesting summaries of "the literature" and a producer of intemperate rants, you can expect to be complemented on the former and razzed on the latter. My impression from the mail that came after the posting suggested that at least a couple of persons seemed to understand what I was trying to explain, so I think it served its purpose well. >This can be shortened immensely and vast >amounts of internet bandwidth saved if >Taylor simply posts "IDLM" in response to >my posts. One might waggishly suggest that you could bless us by making such pronouncements *multilateral* and simply replacing "ILBM" (I Love Brian McL.) whenever you feel the need. :-). With regards, Gregory P.S. Having been doing a little actual reading on Cage of late, I'm wondering about what you think John meant when he described microtonalism as "another wing on the academy." I hate to be a pest about this, but it's looking increasingly like this quotation is located in John's "Silence" period writings [i.e. the 50s]. Have you actually *read* this material? My best guess (actually, I'm still hunting the quote in its baad entirety and context) is that we're located in Cage's "Composition as Process" stuff, in which he's thinking in terms of entirely "scaleless" space where pitch is entirely continuous [electronic technology interests him at this point because he thinks it lets him move about in this continuous space, natch]. If, as I surmise, this is the case and context for his comments, quarter tones would be no improvement over the normal 12 notes/octave. Actually, the argument does, I think, carry some weight [aren't there some "scaleless space folks here?"] What is the difference between erecting a complex syntactic-theoretical framework on the basis of twelve tones or twenty-four tones or any other number of tones or on any other system of temperament? If I'm reading my 1950s version of John correctly, none whatsoever. You'll note also that this is, in fact, Cage being *critical* of all those 12-tone guys you so love to fulminate on. I'll let you know when I find the original citation - unless you've got it, of course.... :-) P.P.S There's quite a cogent little essay in "Silence" where Cage attempts to explain what *he* means by the use and application of the term "experimental" when applied to musical behaviour. While I've no particular faith that you'll read it, I commend it to the rest of our readers. His approach was not quite as I imagined it. _ I would go to her, lay it all out, unedited. The plot was a simple one, paraphrasable by the most ingenuous of nets. The life we lead is our only maybe. The tale we tell is the must that we make by living it. [Richard Powers, "Galatea 2.2"] Gregory Taylor/Heurikon Corporation/Madison, WI Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 12 Aug 1996 22:01 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA11289; Mon, 12 Aug 1996 22:01:28 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA11270 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id NAA01631; Mon, 12 Aug 1996 13:01:27 -0700 Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 13:01:27 -0700 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu