source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 23:08:41 -0700 Subject: Kopie von: Kopie von: McLAREN From: Daniel Wolf <106232.3266@compuserve.com> Datum: 04.09.96 09:15 So far, I have sat quietly beside my terminal and largely enjoyed the contents of the tuning digest while tolerating the interruptions by Mr McLaren´s wordprocessing. Now, as a diploma-carrying PhD and therefore, target, of the latest broadside, I feel it opportune to respond. The regurgitation of PNM articles from thirty or more years ago reflect neither an understanding of the situation then nor the situation now. To make E. Krenek an arbitrator of musical sense is rather far-fetched. Neither he, his music, nor his theories gained a significant following - with an audience or with academics - during his lifetime, and it is reasonable to assume that this will not change in the future. McLaren fails to discriminate between very different conceptual foundations of serial music, differences that his quoted source evidence clearly. The confusion of American (e.g. Babbit) and European (Nono, Stockhausen, Boulez) serialisms is simply an error: two entirely different projects were at work. In the US, Babbitt, following late (American - and at the time unknown in Europe) Schoenberg practices, attempted to make a music where a certain structure was replicated throughout a work, and used non-pitch "parameters" to attempt to "project" this structure to the material as clearly as possible. Babbitt has constantly revised his projection techniques in a reasonable search for clearer solutions to a deep perceptual problem. (Though I am by no means a "serialist", I find it very easy to follow the most basic structural details in Babbitt´s music, particularly aggregate formation - somewhat like harmonic rhythm in tonal music, and hexachord content - which strikes my ears as something like the Major-minor distinction in tonal music). If Mr McLaren had made a close reading of the Backus review, he would surely have realized that Backus had intended to write a polemic in support of PNM-style positivism and against the "mystical" tendancies of Die Reihe. On the other hand, the Europeans never had a single project identifiable as "Darmstadt" (although I have used the term myself): the later works of Stockhausen, Boulez, Nono have made the distinctions among the earlier works much clearer. Stockhausen rapidly turned to more "informal" arrangements, Boulez to performance practice, and Nono to politics, concrete sounds, and late in his life, traditional tonal materials. (It is worth noting that both Stockhausen and Nono made "microtonal" works, Stockhausen quite formally, and Nono - quartertones - as a way of breaking the musical surface). Further, the Darmstadt of 1964 that Milton Babbitt attended was dominated by such "texturalists" as Kagel and Ligeti. The European serialisms were never interested in Babbitonian details of set structure and were always more concerned with overt - traditional - musical effects. Europeans had faced the problem of a complete break in their musical history due to the war, and the use of "negation" of traditional musical sensibilities and appeal to "scientific" language were attempts to regain some of the dignity that was lost during the war. Further, to identify Cage, who visited once in the 1950´s and then was essentially banned until 1990, with Darmstadt, is to make an historical error of massive proportions. If I am able to find any point of commonality among these very different musicians, it is this, they have all demonstrated the ability to use creative self-criticism to create new works, a kind of self-criticism lacking in Mr McLaren´s writings. I hope that Mr McLaren will eventually develop a degree of tolerence for the musics and theories not of his own culture or makings at least equivalent to the degree of tolerance he expects from those paying to download his lengthly wordprocessings. This tolerence might then precede any attempt on his part to criticize things he does not yet fully understand. Please accept that this message come from a patient reader, who, in the past has tolerated a great deal of nonsense in the service of better musical intonation (and even a lengthy period of proselytizing among the non-12 community by a member of a notorious sect - there´s a real scam for you), but I do have my limits, and they have been reached: this reader will stop reading McLaren. Daniel Wolf (PhD), Frankfurt PS Allow me to add the fact that I´ve tolerated an awful lot of improvisation under the guise of "premeditated" performances, to come to understand that an essential feature of composition is erasure, something not possible in improvisation, no matter how "premediated". I have no problem with the idea of a midi file as notation, but I reserve the right to criticize the contents of said file on compositional grounds, particularly the lack of editing: life is too short to fill with such unfinished work. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 09:34 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA20545; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 09:35:40 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA20594 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id AAA02931; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 00:35:39 -0700 Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 00:35:39 -0700 Message-Id: <009A7E95B7EC8900.18B5@vbv40.ezh.nl> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu