Hi All,

We are happy to announce the Winter 2011 Issue of "Csound Journal" is
now available. You can read online or download at:

http://www.csounds.com/journal/

Many thanks to the authors for submitting their wonderful articles! We
hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we did!

Jim Hearon and Steven Yi

p.s. - Happy New Year everyone and Happy Csounding!


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Wow, that was a good start at the first workday in 2011.
Thanks to the editors for the new issue and to the authors for
interesting articles.
best
Oeyvind

2011/1/3 Steven Yi :
> Hi All,
>
> We are happy to announce the Winter 2011 Issue of "Csound Journal" is
> now available. You can read online or download at:
>
> http://www.csounds.com/journal/
>
> Many thanks to the authors for submitting their wonderful articles! We
> hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we did!
>
> Jim Hearon and Steven Yi
>
> p.s. - Happy New Year everyone and Happy Csounding!
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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... wishes to Csound Journal!

e

Thanks for all your hard work on the Journal, and thanks to the authors for
contributing!

Not being a real programmer, I have only a few very hazy ideas about how one
might use Python in conjunction with Csound, so I took a look at that
article. It was way over my head, of course, but that's not surprising --
and far from being discouraging, it inspires me to want to learn more.

What I found more surprising was that the article had nothing whatever to
say about the music that one might produce with the described techniques.
Maybe I'm being old-fashioned here, but I do kind of think that producing
music is the point of the whole enterprise.

Okay, you could (possibly) write a treatise on the making of violins and
never mention the violin literature -- the concertos, the sonatas, and so
on. But if you did write such a treatise, you would be operating within a
cultural context in which your readers would clearly understand such
matters, and be able to intuit the relationships between the construction
techniques and the desired end of an appropriate violin tone.

That's not the case here. Readers of this essay on the making of a Csound
musical process (a software "violin," if you will) can have, I would hazard,
almost no idea about what sort of music the process might lead to. I can't
help wishing that M. Pinot had provided us some insight into this vital area
-- either a few links to pieces he has recorded using these techniques, or
at least some points of reference that would help us imagine the
possibilities.

He does mention one orchestra piece by Xenakis, but surely one reference to
a piece that is more than 60 years old is not all we might wish for. And to
be honest, from the description of this piece in Wikipedia, I'm quite sure
it's nothing I would ever want to listen to. So ... are these cool-sounding
Python techniques actually good for producing enjoyable music? Or is this an
as-yet unanswered question?

I'm not trying to be a curmudgeon: I really want to know.

I think this would be a fine idea for the next issue. There were other
articles in the works by authors that didn't get in time for the
latest issue that should still be published in the next issue, but I
think have a focus on composing and experience of that would be
illuminating for everyone.

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 10:53 AM, Michael Bechard  wrote:
> Seconded.
>
> ________________________________
> From: Victor Lazzarini 
> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
> Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 5:02:34 AM
> Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Csound Journal - Issue 14
>
> Why don't we ask the excellent composers on this list to write about their
> composition process for the next CS journal ('special issue')?
> Victor
> On 4 Jan 2011, at 08:16, Francois PINOT wrote:
>
> Hi Jim
>
> 2011/1/4 Jim Aikin 
>>
>> Thanks for all your hard work on the Journal, and thanks to the authors
>> for
>> contributing!
>>
>> Not being a real programmer, I have only a few very hazy ideas about how
>> one
>> might use Python in conjunction with Csound, so I took a look at that
>> article. It was way over my head, of course, but that's not surprising --
>> and far from being discouraging, it inspires me to want to learn more.
>>
> Csound is itself a programming language. Using it's API allows users to
> connect Csound with other programming languages to use existing libraries
> that can save programming tasks (e.g. in my article I show how to use
> existing software external to Csound to quickly gain real-time control on
> Csound). Using Csound can be a challenging learning process and this list is
> one of the places where people can get help.
>
>>
>> What I found more surprising was that the article had nothing whatever to
>> say about the music that one might produce with the described techniques.
>> Maybe I'm being old-fashioned here, but I do kind of think that producing
>> music is the point of the whole enterprise.
>>
>> Okay, you could (possibly) write a treatise on the making of violins and
>> never mention the violin literature -- the concertos, the sonatas, and so
>> on. But if you did write such a treatise, you would be operating within a
>> cultural context in which your readers would clearly understand such
>> matters, and be able to intuit the relationships between the construction
>> techniques and the desired end of an appropriate violin tone.
>>
>> That's not the case here. Readers of this essay on the making of a Csound
>> musical process (a software "violin," if you will) can have, I would
>> hazard,
>> almost no idea about what sort of music the process might lead to. I can't
>> help wishing that M. Pinot had provided us some insight into this vital
>> area
>> -- either a few links to pieces he has recorded using these techniques, or
>> at least some points of reference that would help us imagine the
>> possibilities.
>>
> As programming languages are generic tools, you can virtually generate any
> kind of music using such tools. My article is about programming. It's up to
> the user to choose the kind of music she wants to deal with...
>
>> He does mention one orchestra piece by Xenakis, but surely one reference
>> to
>> a piece that is more than 60 years old is not all we might wish for. And
>> to
>> be honest, from the description of this piece in Wikipedia, I'm quite sure
>> it's nothing I would ever want to listen to. So ... are these
>> cool-sounding
>> Python techniques actually good for producing enjoyable music? Or is this
>> an
>> as-yet unanswered question?
>>
> IMO, Metastasis is one of the major orchestra pieces from the second half of
> XXth century. 1) It's a beautiful piece. 2) It opened to composers of the
> fifties another road than serial music, and as such it's a milestone in
> modern music. Is it enjoyable music? For me, yes, but, of course, I'll never
> pretend this is an absolute and definitive fact.
> I took this example, because in 1953, it took a long time to Xenakis to
> achieve by hand the "computing" for his glissandi. I wanted to show that
> now, with programming languages, it's quite easy to achieve the same process
> in a few minutes.
>
>> I'm not trying to be a curmudgeon: I really want to know.
>
> I don't think your remarks are from a curmudgeon. I think you're expressing
> a view that is shared by lots of musicians about Csound: too much
> technology, not enough music!
>
> Regards
>
> Francois
>
>>
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>> http://csound.1045644.n5.nabble.com/Csound-Journal-Issue-14-tp3325320p3326630.html
>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>> csound"
>>
>
>
>
>


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> As programming languages are generic tools, you can virtually generate any
> kind of music using such tools. My article is about programming. It's up
> to
> the user to choose the kind of music she wants to deal with...

This is certainly true. But you're proposing a fairly complex use of 
technology, one that would surely require hours of setup and learning time
even for a very experienced programmer. For a less experienced programmer,
substitute "weeks" for "hours." Maybe I'm wearing my editor hat here (do you
suppose?), but if you're hoping to encourage others to try the programming
techniques you're describing, surely a little more discussion of various
possible musical results would not be amiss.

If the reader's main interest is in poking around with cool technologies,
your article will be a wonderful find. If the reader's main interest is in
creating music, you're leaving the reader almost entirely in the dark about
why it would or might be worthwhile to invest those hours or weeks of
effort.

> IMO, Metastasis is one of the major orchestra pieces from the second half
> of XXth century. 1) It's a beautiful piece. 2) It opened to composers of
> the
> fifties another road than serial music, and as such it's a milestone in
> modern
> music. Is it enjoyable music? For me, yes, but, of course, I'll never
> pretend
> this is an absolute and definitive fact.

After dashing off my response last night, I felt a little guilty, so I
searched out Metastasis on YouTube and had a listen. Based on this one
piece, I'd have to say that Xenakis was a talentless poseur. About ten years
before, Bartok had written the Concerto for Orchestra, a marvelous and
thoroughly musical work. By comparison, Metastasis is a train wreck.

There were already several roads open to composers of the Fifties other than
serial music, which was, of course, a dreadful blind alley. Xenakis studied
with Messiaen, another composer of marvelous and musical work. Yet he seems
to have learned nothing important.

> I don't think your remarks are from a curmudgeon. I think you're
> expressing
> a view that is shared by lots of musicians about Csound: too much
> technology, not enough music!

Almost, but not quite. I would instead say: The more technology the better,
but always in the service of the music! When we lose sight of the fact that
we're making music, the music we make tends to be boring, ugly, or both.

As a cello teacher, I sometimes remind my students that the people in the
audience neither know nor care that they're shifting to fourth position or
that they're playing sul tasto in the upper half of the bow. The people in
the audience want to hear beautiful, expressive music; that is their only
concern. As a cellist, you have to understand the technical details in a
thorough way, but the techniques are always in the service of a musical
goal, which is to provide listeners with an aural experience of some kind.

--JA

I definitely agree with Jim Aikin about needing a musical motivation
or context for technical articles on computer music. There needs to be
something to help the reader decide if the technology will help them
make the music they want to make -- or to inform them of some new kind
of music they might want to make.

About Xenakis, so wrong. He was a genius, a great composer, and one of
the main reasons we are involved in computer music. I go back to his
pieces not only for listening, but also to learn. I have written
"versions" of some of his pieces in order to understand how they were
made and what makes them work.I learned a great deal by doing this.

Regards,
Mike



On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>
>> As programming languages are generic tools, you can virtually generate any
>> kind of music using such tools. My article is about programming. It's up
>> to
>> the user to choose the kind of music she wants to deal with...
>
> This is certainly true. But you're proposing a fairly complex use of
> technology, one that would surely require hours of setup and learning time
> even for a very experienced programmer. For a less experienced programmer,
> substitute "weeks" for "hours." Maybe I'm wearing my editor hat here (do you
> suppose?), but if you're hoping to encourage others to try the programming
> techniques you're describing, surely a little more discussion of various
> possible musical results would not be amiss.
>
> If the reader's main interest is in poking around with cool technologies,
> your article will be a wonderful find. If the reader's main interest is in
> creating music, you're leaving the reader almost entirely in the dark about
> why it would or might be worthwhile to invest those hours or weeks of
> effort.
>
>> IMO, Metastasis is one of the major orchestra pieces from the second half
>> of XXth century. 1) It's a beautiful piece. 2) It opened to composers of
>> the
>> fifties another road than serial music, and as such it's a milestone in
>> modern
>> music. Is it enjoyable music? For me, yes, but, of course, I'll never
>> pretend
>> this is an absolute and definitive fact.
>
> After dashing off my response last night, I felt a little guilty, so I
> searched out Metastasis on YouTube and had a listen. Based on this one
> piece, I'd have to say that Xenakis was a talentless poseur. About ten years
> before, Bartok had written the Concerto for Orchestra, a marvelous and
> thoroughly musical work. By comparison, Metastasis is a train wreck.
>
> There were already several roads open to composers of the Fifties other than
> serial music, which was, of course, a dreadful blind alley. Xenakis studied
> with Messiaen, another composer of marvelous and musical work. Yet he seems
> to have learned nothing important.
>
>> I don't think your remarks are from a curmudgeon. I think you're
>> expressing
>> a view that is shared by lots of musicians about Csound: too much
>> technology, not enough music!
>
> Almost, but not quite. I would instead say: The more technology the better,
> but always in the service of the music! When we lose sight of the fact that
> we're making music, the music we make tends to be boring, ugly, or both.
>
> As a cello teacher, I sometimes remind my students that the people in the
> audience neither know nor care that they're shifting to fourth position or
> that they're playing sul tasto in the upper half of the bow. The people in
> the audience want to hear beautiful, expressive music; that is their only
> concern. As a cellist, you have to understand the technical details in a
> thorough way, but the techniques are always in the service of a musical
> goal, which is to provide listeners with an aural experience of some kind.
>
> --JA
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://csound.1045644.n5.nabble.com/Csound-Journal-Issue-14-tp3325320p3327373.html
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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Sorry, but this seems to be a case of apples and pears; I'm not sure  
it is any use comparing the Neo-classical Concerto for Orchestra with  
Xenakis'
works (any of them really). Of course, anyone is entitled to their  
opinion on Music. Myself, I just went back to listen to Metasteisis to  
admire again what a
wonderful work it is. Then back to Bartok's string quartets number  
three and number four, which are equally beautiful (and much more so  
than the Concerto).
What a wonder Music is!

Victor
On 4 Jan 2011, at 17:00, Jim Aikin wrote:

> After dashing off my response last night, I felt a little guilty, so I
> searched out Metastasis on YouTube and had a listen. Based on this one
> piece, I'd have to say that Xenakis was a talentless poseur. About  
> ten years
> before, Bartok had written the Concerto for Orchestra, a marvelous and
> thoroughly musical work. By comparison, Metastasis is a train wreck.



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Jim,

The likelihood is that the person who goes as far as reading this
article already has developed at least some ideas about his/her
approach to music and is capable of discovering the possibilities
through minimal mental exercises and empirical experiments. In either
case you clearly have an idea of what you are after. As a teacher you
must already have formed strong aesthetic/theoretical/philosophical
ideas about your approach to music.

Only last week I started teaching myself final cut pro, it is not
difficult to discover the amazing creative possibilities.

What audiences are you talking about exactly? (I don't expect an
answer) Neither Csound nor the journal are meant for the audiences! If
you read a book about acoustics you don't expect extensive discussions
about musical aesthetics and reception. That is not to say that the
writer is misrepresenting physics as music.

And finally I don't mean to be rude but your 'criticism' of Xenakis
displays a surprising lack of education regarding contemporary music
theory and practices.


P




On 4 January 2011 17:00, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>
>> As programming languages are generic tools, you can virtually generate any
>> kind of music using such tools. My article is about programming. It's up
>> to
>> the user to choose the kind of music she wants to deal with...
>
> This is certainly true. But you're proposing a fairly complex use of
> technology, one that would surely require hours of setup and learning time
> even for a very experienced programmer. For a less experienced programmer,
> substitute "weeks" for "hours." Maybe I'm wearing my editor hat here (do you
> suppose?), but if you're hoping to encourage others to try the programming
> techniques you're describing, surely a little more discussion of various
> possible musical results would not be amiss.
>
> If the reader's main interest is in poking around with cool technologies,
> your article will be a wonderful find. If the reader's main interest is in
> creating music, you're leaving the reader almost entirely in the dark about
> why it would or might be worthwhile to invest those hours or weeks of
> effort.
>
>> IMO, Metastasis is one of the major orchestra pieces from the second half
>> of XXth century. 1) It's a beautiful piece. 2) It opened to composers of
>> the
>> fifties another road than serial music, and as such it's a milestone in
>> modern
>> music. Is it enjoyable music? For me, yes, but, of course, I'll never
>> pretend
>> this is an absolute and definitive fact.
>
> After dashing off my response last night, I felt a little guilty, so I
> searched out Metastasis on YouTube and had a listen. Based on this one
> piece, I'd have to say that Xenakis was a talentless poseur. About ten years
> before, Bartok had written the Concerto for Orchestra, a marvelous and
> thoroughly musical work. By comparison, Metastasis is a train wreck.
>
> There were already several roads open to composers of the Fifties other than
> serial music, which was, of course, a dreadful blind alley. Xenakis studied
> with Messiaen, another composer of marvelous and musical work. Yet he seems
> to have learned nothing important.
>
>> I don't think your remarks are from a curmudgeon. I think you're
>> expressing
>> a view that is shared by lots of musicians about Csound: too much
>> technology, not enough music!
>
> Almost, but not quite. I would instead say: The more technology the better,
> but always in the service of the music! When we lose sight of the fact that
> we're making music, the music we make tends to be boring, ugly, or both.
>
> As a cello teacher, I sometimes remind my students that the people in the
> audience neither know nor care that they're shifting to fourth position or
> that they're playing sul tasto in the upper half of the bow. The people in
> the audience want to hear beautiful, expressive music; that is their only
> concern. As a cellist, you have to understand the technical details in a
> thorough way, but the techniques are always in the service of a musical
> goal, which is to provide listeners with an aural experience of some kind.
>
> --JA
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://csound.1045644.n5.nabble.com/Csound-Journal-Issue-14-tp3325320p3327373.html
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and  there seem 
to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in you 
any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?

The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how 
compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating for 
all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other than 
what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it. The 
great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast range 
of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see 
happening with Xenakis' music.

Thanks,
Michael


----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Gogins 
To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 11:23:01 AM
Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Csound Journal - Issue 14

I definitely agree with Jim Aikin about needing a musical motivation
or context for technical articles on computer music. There needs to be
something to help the reader decide if the technology will help them
make the music they want to make -- or to inform them of some new kind
of music they might want to make.

About Xenakis, so wrong. He was a genius, a great composer, and one of
the main reasons we are involved in computer music. I go back to his
pieces not only for listening, but also to learn. I have written
"versions" of some of his pieces in order to understand how they were
made and what makes them work.I learned a great deal by doing this.

Regards,
Mike



On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>
>> As programming languages are generic tools, you can virtually generate any
>> kind of music using such tools. My article is about programming. It's up
>> to
>> the user to choose the kind of music she wants to deal with...
>
> This is certainly true. But you're proposing a fairly complex use of
> technology, one that would surely require hours of setup and learning time
> even for a very experienced programmer. For a less experienced programmer,
> substitute "weeks" for "hours." Maybe I'm wearing my editor hat here (do you
> suppose?), but if you're hoping to encourage others to try the programming
> techniques you're describing, surely a little more discussion of various
> possible musical results would not be amiss.
>
> If the reader's main interest is in poking around with cool technologies,
> your article will be a wonderful find. If the reader's main interest is in
> creating music, you're leaving the reader almost entirely in the dark about
> why it would or might be worthwhile to invest those hours or weeks of
> effort.
>
>> IMO, Metastasis is one of the major orchestra pieces from the second half
>> of XXth century. 1) It's a beautiful piece. 2) It opened to composers of
>> the
>> fifties another road than serial music, and as such it's a milestone in
>> modern
>> music. Is it enjoyable music? For me, yes, but, of course, I'll never
>> pretend
>> this is an absolute and definitive fact.
>
> After dashing off my response last night, I felt a little guilty, so I
> searched out Metastasis on YouTube and had a listen. Based on this one
> piece, I'd have to say that Xenakis was a talentless poseur. About ten years
> before, Bartok had written the Concerto for Orchestra, a marvelous and
> thoroughly musical work. By comparison, Metastasis is a train wreck.
>
> There were already several roads open to composers of the Fifties other than
> serial music, which was, of course, a dreadful blind alley. Xenakis studied
> with Messiaen, another composer of marvelous and musical work. Yet he seems
> to have learned nothing important.
>
>> I don't think your remarks are from a curmudgeon. I think you're
>> expressing
>> a view that is shared by lots of musicians about Csound: too much
>> technology, not enough music!
>
> Almost, but not quite. I would instead say: The more technology the better,
> but always in the service of the music! When we lose sight of the fact that
> we're making music, the music we make tends to be boring, ugly, or both.
>
> As a cello teacher, I sometimes remind my students that the people in the
> audience neither know nor care that they're shifting to fourth position or
> that they're playing sul tasto in the upper half of the bow. The people in
> the audience want to hear beautiful, expressive music; that is their only
> concern. As a cellist, you have to understand the technical details in a
> thorough way, but the techniques are always in the service of a musical
> goal, which is to provide listeners with an aural experience of some kind.
>
> --JA
>
> --
> View this message in context: 
>http://csound.1045644.n5.nabble.com/Csound-Journal-Issue-14-tp3325320p3327373.html
>
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe 
>csound"
>
>

> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and
> there seem
> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in
> you
> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?

YES YES YES.  This is deeply emotional music for me.  Listening again to
Sharr, or the setting of his wife's text on freedom fighters is almost
unbarable.

>
> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating
> for
> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other
> than
> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it.
> The
> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast
> range
> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
> happening with Xenakis' music.
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
>

Keep listening!; it is there.  Xenakis was a revalation to me, hearing
music in a new way.

==John ff





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In my case, many of the 'great classical composers' do not do anything  
for my emotions. 20th-21st century music does: from Debussy and
Stravinsky to Ligeti and Wishart (and lots more in between including  
Xenakis and Jazz). Music written for Viennese audiences in 1810 does not
seem to do much for me.

Victor
On 4 Jan 2011, at 17:53, Michael Bechard wrote:

> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work  
> (and  there seem
> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music   
> inspire in you
> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>
> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand  
> how
> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and   
> fascinating for
> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something  
> other than
> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't  
> see it. The
> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a  
> vast range
> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't  
> see
> happening with Xenakis' music.
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Michael Gogins 
> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
> Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 11:23:01 AM
> Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Csound Journal - Issue 14
>
> I definitely agree with Jim Aikin about needing a musical motivation
> or context for technical articles on computer music. There needs to be
> something to help the reader decide if the technology will help them
> make the music they want to make -- or to inform them of some new kind
> of music they might want to make.
>
> About Xenakis, so wrong. He was a genius, a great composer, and one of
> the main reasons we are involved in computer music. I go back to his
> pieces not only for listening, but also to learn. I have written
> "versions" of some of his pieces in order to understand how they were
> made and what makes them work.I learned a great deal by doing this.
>
> Regards,
> Mike
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Jim Aikin  
>  wrote:
>>
>>> As programming languages are generic tools, you can virtually  
>>> generate any
>>> kind of music using such tools. My article is about programming.  
>>> It's up
>>> to
>>> the user to choose the kind of music she wants to deal with...
>>
>> This is certainly true. But you're proposing a fairly complex use of
>> technology, one that would surely require hours of setup and  
>> learning time
>> even for a very experienced programmer. For a less experienced  
>> programmer,
>> substitute "weeks" for "hours." Maybe I'm wearing my editor hat  
>> here (do you
>> suppose?), but if you're hoping to encourage others to try the  
>> programming
>> techniques you're describing, surely a little more discussion of  
>> various
>> possible musical results would not be amiss.
>>
>> If the reader's main interest is in poking around with cool  
>> technologies,
>> your article will be a wonderful find. If the reader's main  
>> interest is in
>> creating music, you're leaving the reader almost entirely in the  
>> dark about
>> why it would or might be worthwhile to invest those hours or weeks of
>> effort.
>>
>>> IMO, Metastasis is one of the major orchestra pieces from the  
>>> second half
>>> of XXth century. 1) It's a beautiful piece. 2) It opened to  
>>> composers of
>>> the
>>> fifties another road than serial music, and as such it's a  
>>> milestone in
>>> modern
>>> music. Is it enjoyable music? For me, yes, but, of course, I'll  
>>> never
>>> pretend
>>> this is an absolute and definitive fact.
>>
>> After dashing off my response last night, I felt a little guilty,  
>> so I
>> searched out Metastasis on YouTube and had a listen. Based on this  
>> one
>> piece, I'd have to say that Xenakis was a talentless poseur. About  
>> ten years
>> before, Bartok had written the Concerto for Orchestra, a marvelous  
>> and
>> thoroughly musical work. By comparison, Metastasis is a train wreck.
>>
>> There were already several roads open to composers of the Fifties  
>> other than
>> serial music, which was, of course, a dreadful blind alley. Xenakis  
>> studied
>> with Messiaen, another composer of marvelous and musical work. Yet  
>> he seems
>> to have learned nothing important.
>>
>>> I don't think your remarks are from a curmudgeon. I think you're
>>> expressing
>>> a view that is shared by lots of musicians about Csound: too much
>>> technology, not enough music!
>>
>> Almost, but not quite. I would instead say: The more technology the  
>> better,
>> but always in the service of the music! When we lose sight of the  
>> fact that
>> we're making music, the music we make tends to be boring, ugly, or  
>> both.
>>
>> As a cello teacher, I sometimes remind my students that the people  
>> in the
>> audience neither know nor care that they're shifting to fourth  
>> position or
>> that they're playing sul tasto in the upper half of the bow. The  
>> people in
>> the audience want to hear beautiful, expressive music; that is  
>> their only
>> concern. As a cellist, you have to understand the technical details  
>> in a
>> thorough way, but the techniques are always in the service of a  
>> musical
>> goal, which is to provide listeners with an aural experience of  
>> some kind.
>>
>> --JA
>>
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>> http://csound.1045644.n5.nabble.com/Csound-Journal-Issue-14-tp3325320p3327373.html
>>
>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body  
>> "unsubscribe
>> csound"
>>
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Michael Gogins
> Irreducible Productions
> http://www.michael-gogins.com
> Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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> "unsubscribe csound"
>
>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body  
> "unsubscribe csound"
>



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Agreed, agreed and agreed.

I personally don't give a damn about his mathematics. It's the musical
experience I am interested in :-) The mathematical formulations simply
enable him to express his musical thinking.

Incidentally have you heard his percussion music?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwdCzci0OcM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWp2xIDiAZ8&feature=related

His music can sometimes seem sterile on the surface but when it comes
to rhythm he gets more primitive and down to earth than any other
composer.

P

On 4 January 2011 18:01,   wrote:
>> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and
>> there seem
>> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in
>> you
>> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>
> YES YES YES.  This is deeply emotional music for me.  Listening again to
> Sharr, or the setting of his wife's text on freedom fighters is almost
> unbarable.
>
>>
>> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
>> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating
>> for
>> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other
>> than
>> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it.
>> The
>> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast
>> range
>> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
>> happening with Xenakis' music.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Michael
>>
>
> Keep listening!; it is there.  Xenakis was a revalation to me, hearing
> music in a new way.
>
> ==John ff
>
>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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To me his music doesn't sound sterile, I'm listening to Bohor right
now, seems very dark and mysterious to me.

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 10:10 AM, peiman khosravi
 wrote:
> Agreed, agreed and agreed.
>
> I personally don't give a damn about his mathematics. It's the musical
> experience I am interested in :-) The mathematical formulations simply
> enable him to express his musical thinking.
>
> Incidentally have you heard his percussion music?
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwdCzci0OcM
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWp2xIDiAZ8&feature=related
>
> His music can sometimes seem sterile on the surface but when it comes
> to rhythm he gets more primitive and down to earth than any other
> composer.
>
> P
>
> On 4 January 2011 18:01,   wrote:
>>> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and
>>> there seem
>>> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in
>>> you
>>> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>>
>> YES YES YES.  This is deeply emotional music for me.  Listening again to
>> Sharr, or the setting of his wife's text on freedom fighters is almost
>> unbarable.
>>
>>>
>>> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
>>> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating
>>> for
>>> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other
>>> than
>>> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it.
>>> The
>>> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast
>>> range
>>> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
>>> happening with Xenakis' music.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Michael
>>>
>>
>> Keep listening!; it is there.  Xenakis was a revalation to me, hearing
>> music in a new way.
>>
>> ==John ff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>
>>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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Incidentally, Orient Occident is one of my favorite electroacoustic works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTlKINcSTBE

On 4 January 2011 18:10, peiman khosravi  wrote:
> Agreed, agreed and agreed.
>
> I personally don't give a damn about his mathematics. It's the musical
> experience I am interested in :-) The mathematical formulations simply
> enable him to express his musical thinking.
>
> Incidentally have you heard his percussion music?
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwdCzci0OcM
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWp2xIDiAZ8&feature=related
>
> His music can sometimes seem sterile on the surface but when it comes
> to rhythm he gets more primitive and down to earth than any other
> composer.
>
> P
>
> On 4 January 2011 18:01,   wrote:
>>> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and
>>> there seem
>>> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in
>>> you
>>> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>>
>> YES YES YES.  This is deeply emotional music for me.  Listening again to
>> Sharr, or the setting of his wife's text on freedom fighters is almost
>> unbarable.
>>
>>>
>>> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
>>> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating
>>> for
>>> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other
>>> than
>>> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it.
>>> The
>>> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast
>>> range
>>> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
>>> happening with Xenakis' music.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Michael
>>>
>>
>> Keep listening!; it is there.  Xenakis was a revalation to me, hearing
>> music in a new way.
>>
>> ==John ff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>
>>
>


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Yeah to me neither! But it can if you don't know how to listen to it.

On 4 January 2011 18:22, Brian Redfern  wrote:
> To me his music doesn't sound sterile, I'm listening to Bohor right
> now, seems very dark and mysterious to me.
>
> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 10:10 AM, peiman khosravi
>  wrote:
>> Agreed, agreed and agreed.
>>
>> I personally don't give a damn about his mathematics. It's the musical
>> experience I am interested in :-) The mathematical formulations simply
>> enable him to express his musical thinking.
>>
>> Incidentally have you heard his percussion music?
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwdCzci0OcM
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWp2xIDiAZ8&feature=related
>>
>> His music can sometimes seem sterile on the surface but when it comes
>> to rhythm he gets more primitive and down to earth than any other
>> composer.
>>
>> P
>>
>> On 4 January 2011 18:01,   wrote:
>>>> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and
>>>> there seem
>>>> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in
>>>> you
>>>> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>>>
>>> YES YES YES.  This is deeply emotional music for me.  Listening again to
>>> Sharr, or the setting of his wife's text on freedom fighters is almost
>>> unbarable.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
>>>> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating
>>>> for
>>>> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other
>>>> than
>>>> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it.
>>>> The
>>>> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast
>>>> range
>>>> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
>>>> happening with Xenakis' music.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>
>>> Keep listening!; it is there.  Xenakis was a revalation to me, hearing
>>> music in a new way.
>>>
>>> ==John ff
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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>>
>>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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>
>


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Jim, do you know Kottos, a piece for solo cello by Xenakis ?

I had the chance to see Rohan de Saram playing it in a small church in 
France last summer and it was amazing IMO.

Stef


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 From a contemporary review of Bartok:

"...It appears to me that the Bartok system of composition and 
performance is one of the most rigid-minded, rigid-muscled ever 
invented; that in shunning sentiment Bartok has lost beauty, that in 
shunning rhetoric he has lost reason".

Percy A Scholes, "The Observer', May 1923.

So if Bartok's music was deemed devoid of beauty and rhetoric then, but 
is not now, we can only conclude that either the music has changed, or 
the listeners have. Somehow. But it is understandable that new 
dimensions of Feeling, Character and Form (aka Rhetoric, as above)  can 
take a while to establish themselves in the collective - especially if 
we are limited by the need to be able to ~name~ them; same old same old...


Richard Dobson


On 04/01/2011 17:53, Michael Bechard wrote:
> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and  there seem
> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in you
> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>
> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating for
> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other than
> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it. The
> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast range
> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
> happening with Xenakis' music.
>



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> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and  there seem
> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in you
> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?

It depends on what you consider an emotion.

I am deeply moved by Rachmaninoff' second concerto for piano, for 
example. Comparing this with what I like in Xenakis (which is not that 
much actually) in the light of your question, I would say these pieces 
operate at very different places in the spectrum of emotional 
solicitation, from the romantic love feelings so beautifully expressed 
in the concerto to the very cold, terse and powerful harmony of Xenakis' 
Pleiades. Well in my life I have been in love, and I have also been in 
awe watching the stars from the heart of the Sahara desert; both 
emotions similarly related.

Does this make sense ?

Stef


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I like the rhythmic parts of Kottos. There's a section near the end that has
a bit of bluegrass in it, if you aren't fussy about harmony and melody. The
glissandi and scraping noises, however, are entirely devoid of musical
interest.

Even the rhythmic bits lack any obvious thematic elements. It's as if he's
deploying a series of self-contained modules that relate to one another in
arbitrary (that is, unpredictable and uninteresting) ways.

I would also suggest that Richard's point about how Bartok was perceived in
1923 is less relevant than it may seem. It is not always the case that
difficult music is eventually accepted and loved by audiences. Some music
that is difficult is also just plain bad.

Good music has syntax. It says things to us. That is, there are relations
among the parts that are knowable, given the context of an idiom that is
shared within the culture. There is an ebb and flow of energy. There are
elements that repeat, and the repeating elements sometimes vary in
surprising ways.

I don't mind ugly music. Frank Zappa's "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar" is
mostly quite ugly. It's also brilliant. What I object to is music that has
no cognizable syntax.

If you have nothing to say, or if you're saying something but in your own
private language (i.e., gibberish), why should I bother to listen?

--JA

Thanks for the links, I listened to them all. The percussion stuff is wonderful. 
I listened to a bit of Sharr (someone mentioned it); quite frightful, which is 
certainly an emotion (ha!), I liked what I heard. And Orient Occident... well, 
here is one comment someone posted on YouTube for that song:

"this made me weep, so humbling..."

I guess we live on different planets. This has been interesting, though. Thanks 
for the input everybody!

Michael




----- Original Message ----
From: peiman khosravi 
To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 12:25:09 PM
Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Re: Xenakis (was: Csound Journal - Issue 14)

Incidentally, Orient Occident is one of my favorite electroacoustic works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTlKINcSTBE

On 4 January 2011 18:10, peiman khosravi  wrote:
> Agreed, agreed and agreed.
>
> I personally don't give a damn about his mathematics. It's the musical
> experience I am interested in :-) The mathematical formulations simply
> enable him to express his musical thinking.
>
> Incidentally have you heard his percussion music?
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwdCzci0OcM
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWp2xIDiAZ8&feature=related
>
> His music can sometimes seem sterile on the surface but when it comes
> to rhythm he gets more primitive and down to earth than any other
> composer.
>
> P
>
> On 4 January 2011 18:01,   wrote:
>>> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and
>>> there seem
>>> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in
>>> you
>>> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>>
>> YES YES YES.  This is deeply emotional music for me.  Listening again to
>> Sharr, or the setting of his wife's text on freedom fighters is almost
>> unbarable.
>>
>>>
>>> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
>>> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating
>>> for
>>> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other
>>> than
>>> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it.
>>> The
>>> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast
>>> range
>>> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
>>> happening with Xenakis' music.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Michael
>>>
>>
>> Keep listening!; it is there.  Xenakis was a revalation to me, hearing
>> music in a new way.
>>
>> ==John ff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe 
>>csound"
>>
>>
>


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Gosh, I'm lost for words. Are you seriously judging a piece of music
as lacking "cognizable syntax" because you cannot grasp the
relationships among its elements?  (more likely you are not perceiving
the elements themselves.) This may be due to your lack of acquaintance
with this music or some sort of brain abnormality (either yours or
mine). But the point is that there are clearly those listeners out
there (and here) who do find this music comprehensible, so there must
be something there. You can at least acknowledge that.

I have no problem with your dislike of Xenakis, that's a matter of
taste, but with that attitude you should stop teaching and go back to
school.

I rest my case.


On 4 January 2011 19:39, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>
> I like the rhythmic parts of Kottos. There's a section near the end that has
> a bit of bluegrass in it, if you aren't fussy about harmony and melody. The
> glissandi and scraping noises, however, are entirely devoid of musical
> interest.
>
> Even the rhythmic bits lack any obvious thematic elements. It's as if he's
> deploying a series of self-contained modules that relate to one another in
> arbitrary (that is, unpredictable and uninteresting) ways.
>
> I would also suggest that Richard's point about how Bartok was perceived in
> 1923 is less relevant than it may seem. It is not always the case that
> difficult music is eventually accepted and loved by audiences. Some music
> that is difficult is also just plain bad.
>
> Good music has syntax. It says things to us. That is, there are relations
> among the parts that are knowable, given the context of an idiom that is
> shared within the culture. There is an ebb and flow of energy. There are
> elements that repeat, and the repeating elements sometimes vary in
> surprising ways.
>
> I don't mind ugly music. Frank Zappa's "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar" is
> mostly quite ugly. It's also brilliant. What I object to is music that has
> no cognizable syntax.
>
> If you have nothing to say, or if you're saying something but in your own
> private language (i.e., gibberish), why should I bother to listen?
>
> --JA
> --
> View this message in context: http://csound.1045644.n5.nabble.com/Csound-Journal-Issue-14-tp3325320p3327678.html
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I think that the interpretation of the word emotional is causing some
problems here. All music moves me, but not emotionally. Xenakis moves
me intellectually. Not emotionally. When I see people in tears after a
Beethoven symphony I really try to understand where they are coming
from, but I've never been able to. My only hypothesis is that
Beethoven must have been playing on the radio when that persons pet
was run over by an 18-wheeler. Ouch. That would make anyone emotional.
In saying all of that I am enjoying the "I can't believe you're not
moved emotionally" debate. Please keep it going!

Rory.



On 4 January 2011 19:47, Drweski nicolas  wrote:
>
> Sound strange to me to hear 21's century's person find the music of Xenakis "not moving" emotionally, having in mind that the "sound" is the main advance in post wwII music. Really it's amazing the creativy that he showed to make that the experience of music go on of a step. If one's haven't been moved by xenakis music, then it's because one's doesn't know it all.


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On 1/4/2011 11:47 AM, Drweski nicolas [via Csound] wrote:

Sound strange to me to hear 21's century's person find the music of Xenakis "not moving" emotionally, having in mind that the "sound" is the main advance in post wwII music. Really it's amazing the creativy that he showed to make that the experience of music go on of a step. If one's haven't been moved by xenakis music, then it's because one's doesn't know it all.

On 1/4/2011 11:55 AM, Drweski nicolas [via Csound] wrote:

"If you have nothing to say, or if you're saying something but in your own private language (i.e., gibberish), why should I bother to listen?" -> If you don't listen you can miss something. It's possible that you don't miss anything, but you can miss a lot too.  I would add that it's a dangerous sentence this one that you wrote. If I get it, if first you don't understand you won't try to make the effort to get it ?

Yes.  I have read this thread with some discomfort.
If caught denigrating music I don't "get" -- because
of my own inability to "get" it -- I hope I would be
embarrassed.

P.A.


peiman khosravi wrote:
> Gosh, I'm lost for words. Are you seriously judging a piece of music
> as lacking "cognizable syntax" because you cannot grasp the
> relationships among its elements?  (more likely you are not perceiving
> the elements themselves.) This may be due to your lack of acquaintance
> with this music or some sort of brain abnormality (either yours or
> mine). But the point is that there are clearly those listeners out
> there (and here) who do find this music comprehensible, so there must
> be something there. You can at least acknowledge that.
> 
> I have no problem with your dislike of Xenakis, that's a matter of
> taste, but with that attitude you should stop teaching and go back to
> school.
> 
> I rest my case.
> 
> 
> On 4 January 2011 19:39, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>> I like the rhythmic parts of Kottos. There's a section near the end that has
>> a bit of bluegrass in it, if you aren't fussy about harmony and melody. The
>> glissandi and scraping noises, however, are entirely devoid of musical
>> interest.
>>
>> Even the rhythmic bits lack any obvious thematic elements. It's as if he's
>> deploying a series of self-contained modules that relate to one another in
>> arbitrary (that is, unpredictable and uninteresting) ways.
>>
>> I would also suggest that Richard's point about how Bartok was perceived in
>> 1923 is less relevant than it may seem. It is not always the case that
>> difficult music is eventually accepted and loved by audiences. Some music
>> that is difficult is also just plain bad.
>>
>> Good music has syntax. It says things to us. That is, there are relations
>> among the parts that are knowable, given the context of an idiom that is
>> shared within the culture. There is an ebb and flow of energy. There are
>> elements that repeat, and the repeating elements sometimes vary in
>> surprising ways.
>>
>> I don't mind ugly music. Frank Zappa's "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar" is
>> mostly quite ugly. It's also brilliant. What I object to is music that has
>> no cognizable syntax.
>>
>> If you have nothing to say, or if you're saying something but in your own
>> private language (i.e., gibberish), why should I bother to listen?
>>
>> --JA
>> --
>> View this message in context: http://csound.1045644.n5.nabble.com/Csound-Journal-Issue-14-tp3325320p3327678.html
>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>>
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> 
> 
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> 
> 


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Le 04/01/2011 18:00, Jim Aikin a écrit :
>> As programming languages are generic tools, you can virtually generate any
>> kind of music using such tools. My article is about programming. It's up
>> to
>> the user to choose the kind of music she wants to deal with...
> This is certainly true. But you're proposing a fairly complex use of
> technology, one that would surely require hours of setup and learning time
> even for a very experienced programmer. For a less experienced programmer,
> substitute "weeks" for "hours." Maybe I'm wearing my editor hat here (do you
> suppose?), but if you're hoping to encourage others to try the programming
> techniques you're describing, surely a little more discussion of various
> possible musical results would not be amiss.
>

I thought that I was fair enough in writing this in my introduction: 
"The reader is expected to be comfortable with the Python programming 
language [2] and to have a basic knowledge of Csound [3]." The 
references given in [2] and [3] seemed to me a good measure of what is 
needed to fluently read my article.

> If the reader's main interest is in poking around with cool technologies,
> your article will be a wonderful find. If the reader's main interest is in
> creating music, you're leaving the reader almost entirely in the dark about
> why it would or might be worthwhile to invest those hours or weeks of
> effort.
>
I keep thinking that if people have the basic knowledge cited in my 
introduction, they'll quickly get what this technology could bring to 
them whitout spending hours or weeks to grab it.

>> IMO, Metastasis is one of the major orchestra pieces from the second half
>> of XXth century. 1) It's a beautiful piece. 2) It opened to composers of
>> the
>> fifties another road than serial music, and as such it's a milestone in
>> modern
>> music. Is it enjoyable music? For me, yes, but, of course, I'll never
>> pretend
>> this is an absolute and definitive fact.
> After dashing off my response last night, I felt a little guilty, so I
> searched out Metastasis on YouTube and had a listen. Based on this one
> piece, I'd have to say that Xenakis was a talentless poseur. About ten years
> before, Bartok had written the Concerto for Orchestra, a marvelous and
> thoroughly musical work. By comparison, Metastasis is a train wreck.
>
> There were already several roads open to composers of the Fifties other than
> serial music, which was, of course, a dreadful blind alley. Xenakis studied
> with Messiaen, another composer of marvelous and musical work. Yet he seems
> to have learned nothing important.
>
>> I don't think your remarks are from a curmudgeon. I think you're
>> expressing
>> a view that is shared by lots of musicians about Csound: too much
>> technology, not enough music!
> Almost, but not quite. I would instead say: The more technology the better,
> but always in the service of the music! When we lose sight of the fact that
> we're making music, the music we make tends to be boring, ugly, or both.
>
> As a cello teacher, I sometimes remind my students that the people in the
> audience neither know nor care that they're shifting to fourth position or
> that they're playing sul tasto in the upper half of the bow. The people in
> the audience want to hear beautiful, expressive music; that is their only
> concern. As a cellist, you have to understand the technical details in a
> thorough way, but the techniques are always in the service of a musical
> goal, which is to provide listeners with an aural experience of some kind.
>
> --JA
>

As a cello teacher what do you think of Nomos Alpha played by Siegfried 
Palm? I remember that when I heard the recording for the first time, 
about thirty five years ago, I immediatly bought the score and spent 
hours reading it.

Regards

Francois


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... for example at:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=xenakis&x=0&y=0
- [Amazon]

There is the possibility to deepen their knowledge about Xenakis.


Maybe some questions might be the key to the problem:
• "when I listen to contemporary music, which I expect to hear music?"

and when I finished listening to contemporary music, I wonder:
• "What I heard was what I expected?".

... and then:
"I will be willing to understand (better) what I hear, or I'll stop at the
stage of appreciation momentary emotion and superficial?"

in short, as all the things I think the music deserves to be understood,
known, deepened and grown beyond the time or the place where it was
conceived.

e

p.s.
In Italy there is a beautiful text written by Xenakis Various Authors:
Various Authors - "Xenakis"
http://www.edt.it/shop/dettaglio.php?isbn=8870630595
-- 
View this message in context: http://csound.1045644.n5.nabble.com/Csound-Journal-Issue-14-tp3325320p3327769.html
Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


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The emotions I get from listening to Xenakis can be quite profound.
Generally there is some sort of awe and sensation of beauty, a great
terrible stark almost frightening beauty. Something like the "sublime"
the old Romantic composers were after, I think. (Other composers from
whom I get this same feeling: late Beethoven, Schubert unfinished,
Liszt Transcendental Etudes, late John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix
"Machinegun," Sorabji).

Gendy 3 and La Legende d'Eer also convey a feeling of terrific
freedom, as of angels or demons roaming at will in the skies  of
heaven or hell.

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Michael Bechard  wrote:
> Thanks for the links, I listened to them all. The percussion stuff is wonderful.
> I listened to a bit of Sharr (someone mentioned it); quite frightful, which is
> certainly an emotion (ha!), I liked what I heard. And Orient Occident... well,
> here is one comment someone posted on YouTube for that song:
>
> "this made me weep, so humbling..."
>
> I guess we live on different planets. This has been interesting, though. Thanks
> for the input everybody!
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: peiman khosravi 
> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
> Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 12:25:09 PM
> Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Re: Xenakis (was: Csound Journal - Issue 14)
>
> Incidentally, Orient Occident is one of my favorite electroacoustic works.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTlKINcSTBE
>
> On 4 January 2011 18:10, peiman khosravi  wrote:
>> Agreed, agreed and agreed.
>>
>> I personally don't give a damn about his mathematics. It's the musical
>> experience I am interested in :-) The mathematical formulations simply
>> enable him to express his musical thinking.
>>
>> Incidentally have you heard his percussion music?
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwdCzci0OcM
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWp2xIDiAZ8&feature=related
>>
>> His music can sometimes seem sterile on the surface but when it comes
>> to rhythm he gets more primitive and down to earth than any other
>> composer.
>>
>> P
>>
>> On 4 January 2011 18:01,   wrote:
>>>> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and
>>>> there seem
>>>> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in
>>>> you
>>>> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>>>
>>> YES YES YES.  This is deeply emotional music for me.  Listening again to
>>> Sharr, or the setting of his wife's text on freedom fighters is almost
>>> unbarable.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
>>>> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating
>>>> for
>>>> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other
>>>> than
>>>> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it.
>>>> The
>>>> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast
>>>> range
>>>> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
>>>> happening with Xenakis' music.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>
>>> Keep listening!; it is there.  Xenakis was a revalation to me, hearing
>>> music in a new way.
>>>
>>> ==John ff
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>>csound"
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
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>
>
>
>
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>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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> I would tend to conclude that Xenakis was trying very deliberately to be difficult. He wanted to write ugly, incomprehensible music, and he succeeded. So I can't claim credit for the fact that I'm bored by it. Xenakis patently didn't care about writing music that wouldn't bore the typical educated concert-goer. If he had cared about that, his music would have been vastly different.

His music is ugly only to those who find it so. Are you actually
accusing one of the most acclaimed composers of the 20th century of
wanting to write ugly music? You describe his music as
incomprehensible. Surely if one can't comprehend his music one
shouldn't comment on it? I don't speak Italian, therefore I tend to
avoid critiquing anything written in Italian!

I'm glad Xenakis didn't care about the typical concert goer. And I'm
glad others before him stopped caring too. Otherwise we'd all be stuck
listening to a Sheppard tone that starts around Bach's time, gets
quite clear during the romantic era and fades out with Debussy; over
and over and over again.

Rory.




>
> --JA
>
> ________________________________
> View this message in context: Re: Re : Re: Re: Xenakis
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


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I think we should not confuse emotion with mood:

"Much confusion has resulted from failure to distinguish between
emotion felt (or affect) and mood. Few psychologists dealing with
music have been as accurate on this point as Weld, who notes that:
"The emotional experiences which our observers reported are to be
charactrerized rather as moods than as emotions in the ordinary sense
of the term.... The emotion is temporary and evanescent; the mood is
relatively permanent and stable." As a matter of fact, most of the
supposed studies of emotion in music are actually concerned with mood
and association." Leonard Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music, p.8.


On 4 January 2011 19:54, Michael Bechard  wrote:
> Thanks for the links, I listened to them all. The percussion stuff is wonderful.
> I listened to a bit of Sharr (someone mentioned it); quite frightful, which is
> certainly an emotion (ha!), I liked what I heard. And Orient Occident... well,
> here is one comment someone posted on YouTube for that song:
>
> "this made me weep, so humbling..."
>
> I guess we live on different planets. This has been interesting, though. Thanks
> for the input everybody!
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: peiman khosravi 
> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
> Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 12:25:09 PM
> Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Re: Xenakis (was: Csound Journal - Issue 14)
>
> Incidentally, Orient Occident is one of my favorite electroacoustic works.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTlKINcSTBE
>
> On 4 January 2011 18:10, peiman khosravi  wrote:
>> Agreed, agreed and agreed.
>>
>> I personally don't give a damn about his mathematics. It's the musical
>> experience I am interested in :-) The mathematical formulations simply
>> enable him to express his musical thinking.
>>
>> Incidentally have you heard his percussion music?
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwdCzci0OcM
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWp2xIDiAZ8&feature=related
>>
>> His music can sometimes seem sterile on the surface but when it comes
>> to rhythm he gets more primitive and down to earth than any other
>> composer.
>>
>> P
>>
>> On 4 January 2011 18:01,   wrote:
>>>> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and
>>>> there seem
>>>> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in
>>>> you
>>>> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>>>
>>> YES YES YES.  This is deeply emotional music for me.  Listening again to
>>> Sharr, or the setting of his wife's text on freedom fighters is almost
>>> unbarable.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
>>>> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating
>>>> for
>>>> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other
>>>> than
>>>> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it.
>>>> The
>>>> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast
>>>> range
>>>> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
>>>> happening with Xenakis' music.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>
>>> Keep listening!; it is there.  Xenakis was a revalation to me, hearing
>>> music in a new way.
>>>
>>> ==John ff
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>>csound"
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
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>
>
>
>
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> The question one is, then, compelled to ask, is this: Given that the
> human brain seems so strongly to prefer music in the idiom of Bach,
> Beethoven, Debussy, and so on, why did Xenakis feel that he ought to
> throw that idiom overboard?

Bach is very boring to me (sounds like algorithmic composition going 
nowhere). Beethoven annoys me a lot (tries to impress with very dated 
gross effects). Debussy tells stories I don't understand.

On the other hand, Xenakis do not try to convey an image, a metaphor, a 
message nor a meaning (he was an architect, remember). To me that's 
pleasant in the sense that there is no tension arising from the dictat 
of a specific representation, no need for me as a listener to match the 
composer idiom. Instead there is just form and in that form, at times, 
beauty and self-structure that are just there, as a building or a 
landscape would be there, not attempting to bring you anywhere nor tell 
you anything. So it's peaceful and contemplative, even when it's harsh. 
I don't know if that makes sense to you.

Anyway at the moment what I enjoy the most is Rated-R by Queens of the 
Stone Age. It rocks and it rolls.

Music is a mysterious thing.

Stef



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to follow that up. For me emotion is often characterless and rather
abstract. It has to do with expectation and listening behaviour that
is often impossible to speak about without a specific time-dependent
musical context. For instance an entire movement of a sonata may be
perceived to have a particular mood (e.g. sad, relaxed, tense) but
that is not the same as the actual emotional experience of the
listener during the listening experience: there is a suspension and
wait is it going to resolve, ah no it's modulated instead, where is it
going from here (there are different possibilities but not just any
possibility). Often the actual emotional reaction is happening
subconsciously as it is based on listening experience.

P



On 4 January 2011 20:38, peiman khosravi  wrote:
> I think we should not confuse emotion with mood:
>
> "Much confusion has resulted from failure to distinguish between
> emotion felt (or affect) and mood. Few psychologists dealing with
> music have been as accurate on this point as Weld, who notes that:
> "The emotional experiences which our observers reported are to be
> charactrerized rather as moods than as emotions in the ordinary sense
> of the term.... The emotion is temporary and evanescent; the mood is
> relatively permanent and stable." As a matter of fact, most of the
> supposed studies of emotion in music are actually concerned with mood
> and association." Leonard Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music, p.8.
>
>
> On 4 January 2011 19:54, Michael Bechard  wrote:
>> Thanks for the links, I listened to them all. The percussion stuff is wonderful.
>> I listened to a bit of Sharr (someone mentioned it); quite frightful, which is
>> certainly an emotion (ha!), I liked what I heard. And Orient Occident... well,
>> here is one comment someone posted on YouTube for that song:
>>
>> "this made me weep, so humbling..."
>>
>> I guess we live on different planets. This has been interesting, though. Thanks
>> for the input everybody!
>>
>> Michael
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: peiman khosravi 
>> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
>> Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 12:25:09 PM
>> Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Re: Xenakis (was: Csound Journal - Issue 14)
>>
>> Incidentally, Orient Occident is one of my favorite electroacoustic works.
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTlKINcSTBE
>>
>> On 4 January 2011 18:10, peiman khosravi  wrote:
>>> Agreed, agreed and agreed.
>>>
>>> I personally don't give a damn about his mathematics. It's the musical
>>> experience I am interested in :-) The mathematical formulations simply
>>> enable him to express his musical thinking.
>>>
>>> Incidentally have you heard his percussion music?
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwdCzci0OcM
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWp2xIDiAZ8&feature=related
>>>
>>> His music can sometimes seem sterile on the surface but when it comes
>>> to rhythm he gets more primitive and down to earth than any other
>>> composer.
>>>
>>> P
>>>
>>> On 4 January 2011 18:01,   wrote:
>>>>> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and
>>>>> there seem
>>>>> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in
>>>>> you
>>>>> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>>>>
>>>> YES YES YES.  This is deeply emotional music for me.  Listening again to
>>>> Sharr, or the setting of his wife's text on freedom fighters is almost
>>>> unbarable.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
>>>>> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating
>>>>> for
>>>>> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other
>>>>> than
>>>>> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it.
>>>>> The
>>>>> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast
>>>>> range
>>>>> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
>>>>> happening with Xenakis' music.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Michael
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Keep listening!; it is there.  Xenakis was a revalation to me, hearing
>>>> music in a new way.
>>>>
>>>> ==John ff
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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> If, with my many years of listening to and playing many types of music,
> from Clementi to Nine Inch Nails, from Miles Davis to the Residents by
> way of Judy Collins, I can't sense a potential reward in spending time
> with Xenakis, am I to blame, or is Xenakis to blame?

I don't think there is anyone to blame. People meet or don't meet.

Stef




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This is an interesting point of view to me. So, do you derive similar pleasure 
from listening to the sounds of, say, wind blowing through trees or a busy 
street intersection as you do from listening to Xenakis?




----- Original Message ----
From: Stéphane Rollandin 
To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 2:43:06 PM
Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Re : Re:  Re: Xenakis

> The question one is, then, compelled to ask, is this: Given that the
> human brain seems so strongly to prefer music in the idiom of Bach,
> Beethoven, Debussy, and so on, why did Xenakis feel that he ought to
> throw that idiom overboard?

Bach is very boring to me (sounds like algorithmic composition going nowhere). 
Beethoven annoys me a lot (tries to impress with very dated gross effects). 
Debussy tells stories I don't understand.

On the other hand, Xenakis do not try to convey an image, a metaphor, a message 
nor a meaning (he was an architect, remember). To me that's pleasant in the 
sense that there is no tension arising from the dictat of a specific 
representation, no need for me as a listener to match the composer idiom. 
Instead there is just form and in that form, at times, beauty and self-structure 
that are just there, as a building or a landscape would be there, not attempting 
to bring you anywhere nor tell you anything. So it's peaceful and contemplative, 
even when it's harsh. I don't know if that makes sense to you.

Anyway at the moment what I enjoy the most is Rated-R by Queens of the Stone 
Age. It rocks and it rolls.

Music is a mysterious thing.

Stef



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Well, ok. My point still stands though. The mood evoked in me as I listened to 
Orient Occident was simlar to what I would feel listening to a baby scream 
incessantly. Obviously not what the poster of that comment (or you) feel when 
listening to the same thing.




----- Original Message ----
From: peiman khosravi 
To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 2:38:01 PM
Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Xenakis (was: Csound Journal - Issue 14)

I think we should not confuse emotion with mood:

"Much confusion has resulted from failure to distinguish between
emotion felt (or affect) and mood. Few psychologists dealing with
music have been as accurate on this point as Weld, who notes that:
"The emotional experiences which our observers reported are to be
charactrerized rather as moods than as emotions in the ordinary sense
of the term.... The emotion is temporary and evanescent; the mood is
relatively permanent and stable." As a matter of fact, most of the
supposed studies of emotion in music are actually concerned with mood
and association." Leonard Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music, p.8.


On 4 January 2011 19:54, Michael Bechard  wrote:
> Thanks for the links, I listened to them all. The percussion stuff is 
>wonderful.
> I listened to a bit of Sharr (someone mentioned it); quite frightful, which is
> certainly an emotion (ha!), I liked what I heard. And Orient Occident... well,
> here is one comment someone posted on YouTube for that song:
>
> "this made me weep, so humbling..."
>
> I guess we live on different planets. This has been interesting, though. 
Thanks
> for the input everybody!
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: peiman khosravi 
> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
> Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 12:25:09 PM
> Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Re: Xenakis (was: Csound Journal - Issue 14)
>
> Incidentally, Orient Occident is one of my favorite electroacoustic works.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTlKINcSTBE
>
> On 4 January 2011 18:10, peiman khosravi  wrote:
>> Agreed, agreed and agreed.
>>
>> I personally don't give a damn about his mathematics. It's the musical
>> experience I am interested in :-) The mathematical formulations simply
>> enable him to express his musical thinking.
>>
>> Incidentally have you heard his percussion music?
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwdCzci0OcM
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWp2xIDiAZ8&feature=related
>>
>> His music can sometimes seem sterile on the surface but when it comes
>> to rhythm he gets more primitive and down to earth than any other
>> composer.
>>
>> P
>>
>> On 4 January 2011 18:01,   wrote:
>>>> Genuinely honest inquiry here for people who love Xenakis' work (and
>>>> there seem
>>>> to be an abundance of them here on this list): does his music  inspire in
>>>> you
>>>> any particular emotions? Or: does it move you  emotionally?
>>>
>>> YES YES YES.  This is deeply emotional music for me.  Listening again to
>>> Sharr, or the setting of his wife's text on freedom fighters is almost
>>> unbarable.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> The reason for my question is, I just don't get it. I can understand how
>>>> compositionally speaking it would be interesting to study and  fascinating
>>>> for
>>>> all the dynamics, atonally qualities, etc., but emotion?  Something other
>>>> than
>>>> what would mainly boil down to a mathematical curiosity? I  don't see it.
>>>> The
>>>> great classical composers (for the most part) were  able to elicit a vast
>>>> range
>>>> of emotions very skillfully through music,  and that's what I don't see
>>>> happening with Xenakis' music.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>
>>> Keep listening!; it is there.  Xenakis was a revalation to me, hearing
>>> music in a new way.
>>>
>>> ==John ff
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>csound"
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>>>
>>
>
>
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>csound"
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>
>
>
>
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On 4 January 2011 20:49, Jim Aikin  wrote:
> On 1/4/2011 12:22 PM, peiman [via Csound] wrote:
>> No one is to blame. Why do you want to blame somebody? It's life, you
>> don't always have someone/something to blame, just live with it.
>
> "Blame" is a loaded word, but I was accused of having a "dangerous"
> attitude and of failing to make an effort. I don't want this to
> degenerate into a flame war! So let me rephrase: I can't quite see that
> Xenakis cared whether the typical musically educated listener of his
> time had a positive experience listening to his music. We could probably
> dig up his personal correspondence or his writings or read a biography
> and learn more about what he cared about, or didn't. I could be wrong --
> I'm guessing. But based on what I know of composition during that
> period, I don't think it's a wildly improbable guess. One has the
> impression that composers of that period had almost a contempt for their
> audiences.
>

But I ask my question again, what listener are you talking about?
Every composer write for a listener. The problem is that you are
disregarding the existence of many subcultures within one culture. Is
the best form of music for you that which is understood by the
majority? Is that how you evaluate music?

>> But if you do have the urge to criticize then do it properly and
>> reasonably. Not based on fossilized concepts.
>
> I'm not sure which of my concepts you feel are fossilized. Perhaps you
> could be specific about this.

The fact that it sounds like you are arguing that only music based on
intervallic pitch, tonal relationships and metric regularity is "good
music".

>
>> You are speaking about our brains but the brain is one of the most
>> complex and least understood organs. For those remarks you need to
>> provide reference.
>
> Well, I've read a few books. Stephen Pinker is good. Oliver Sacks is
> sometimes very insightful. Recently I've been reading Daniel Levitin's
> "This Is Your Brain on Music." A great deal more is understood about the
> brain than was understood even 20 years ago. From the fact that music in
> most indigenous cultures around the world uses some form of five-note or
> seven-note scale, we can infer that the human brain is well equipped to
> process melodic patterns within pitch sets of that type -- a possibility
> that Levitin explores.
>
> Most indigenous cultures do NOT have much or any music that involves a
> solid minute of high-energy scraping and flailing, nor music that
> involves extended glissandi without reference to fixed pitches. From
> this we can very reasonably infer that Xenakis's style of composition is
> less easily processed by the human brain than, for example, the songs of
> the Beatles. I really don't see that there can be any serious argument
> on this point.
>
> Individual brains do, of course, differ. I'm talking about a statistical
> norm. But audiences comprise hundreds of individuals, so making
> statistically based statements about audiences is a valid procedure.
>

Our brain is very well trained at pitch perception but pitch
structures are not the only structures that the brain can make sense
of. Beatles would seem rather out of place, ugly and probably highly
discomforting to a tribe that has never heard western music or
electronic instruments. The meaning of music, and more so of "good"
music is not only dependent on physiological innate aspects of human
existence but also on cultural ones. You cannot separate the two. The
question of which music is more easily understood than others is
actually very much irrelevant. Sure, the language of Joyce is far from
being easy when you compare it to Dickens. Does this mean that Dickens
is more true to language and its function?

> --JA
>
>
> ________________________________
> View this message in context: Re: Re : Re: Re: Csound Journal - Issue 14
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>


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I don't see how Bach or Beethoven or Debussy's music is about specific
representations.

Nor do I see how musical thinking and experience can be devoid of
metaphor and extrinsic influences. Xenakis was very much working with
metaphors, visual and spatial ones (he was an architect remember!).
How else would you account for this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yztoaNakKok

This is indeed visual music.

Best,

Peiman

2011/1/4 Stéphane Rollandin :
>> The question one is, then, compelled to ask, is this: Given that the
>> human brain seems so strongly to prefer music in the idiom of Bach,
>> Beethoven, Debussy, and so on, why did Xenakis feel that he ought to
>> throw that idiom overboard?
>
> Bach is very boring to me (sounds like algorithmic composition going
> nowhere). Beethoven annoys me a lot (tries to impress with very dated gross
> effects). Debussy tells stories I don't understand.
>
> On the other hand, Xenakis do not try to convey an image, a metaphor, a
> message nor a meaning (he was an architect, remember). To me that's pleasant
> in the sense that there is no tension arising from the dictat of a specific
> representation, no need for me as a listener to match the composer idiom.
> Instead there is just form and in that form, at times, beauty and
> self-structure that are just there, as a building or a landscape would be
> there, not attempting to bring you anywhere nor tell you anything. So it's
> peaceful and contemplative, even when it's harsh. I don't know if that makes
> sense to you.
>
> Anyway at the moment what I enjoy the most is Rated-R by Queens of the Stone
> Age. It rocks and it rolls.
>
> Music is a mysterious thing.
>
> Stef
>
>
>
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> csound"
>
>


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Le 04/01/2011 21:58, Michael Bechard a écrit :
> This is an interesting point of view to me. So, do you derive similar pleasure
> from listening to the sounds of, say, wind blowing through trees or a busy
> street intersection as you do from listening to Xenakis?

Yes.
(I guess that's a point against Xenakis :)

John Cage has a very nice way to expose a similar relation to sound and 
music in his book "Silence". I remember he wrote that he had a hard time 
accepting the sound of its fridge, until he realized that it was the 
like of a sonic sculpture, motionless. Then he could listen to the fridge :)

(and of course it's the whole point of 4'33, his silent piece: have the 
audience listen to the actual sounds arising during the performance, 
that have nothing to do with composition)

Stef


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> But I ask my question again, what listener are you talking about?

I would like to know also _how many_ listenings you are talking about.
Enough to say fairly, "This piece *makes* me feel such-and-such", or
only enough to say, "I've imposed my music/mood presumption onto
this piece"?   Faced with a music new at its core, our _listening_ has
to evolve.


peiman khosravi wrote:
> On 4 January 2011 20:49, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>> On 1/4/2011 12:22 PM, peiman [via Csound] wrote:
>>> No one is to blame. Why do you want to blame somebody? It's life, you
>>> don't always have someone/something to blame, just live with it.
>> "Blame" is a loaded word, but I was accused of having a "dangerous"
>> attitude and of failing to make an effort. I don't want this to
>> degenerate into a flame war! So let me rephrase: I can't quite see that
>> Xenakis cared whether the typical musically educated listener of his
>> time had a positive experience listening to his music. We could probably
>> dig up his personal correspondence or his writings or read a biography
>> and learn more about what he cared about, or didn't. I could be wrong --
>> I'm guessing. But based on what I know of composition during that
>> period, I don't think it's a wildly improbable guess. One has the
>> impression that composers of that period had almost a contempt for their
>> audiences.
>>
> 
> But I ask my question again, what listener are you talking about?
> Every composer write for a listener. The problem is that you are
> disregarding the existence of many subcultures within one culture. Is
> the best form of music for you that which is understood by the
> majority? Is that how you evaluate music?
> 
>>> But if you do have the urge to criticize then do it properly and
>>> reasonably. Not based on fossilized concepts.
>> I'm not sure which of my concepts you feel are fossilized. Perhaps you
>> could be specific about this.
> 
> The fact that it sounds like you are arguing that only music based on
> intervallic pitch, tonal relationships and metric regularity is "good
> music".
> 
>>> You are speaking about our brains but the brain is one of the most
>>> complex and least understood organs. For those remarks you need to
>>> provide reference.
>> Well, I've read a few books. Stephen Pinker is good. Oliver Sacks is
>> sometimes very insightful. Recently I've been reading Daniel Levitin's
>> "This Is Your Brain on Music." A great deal more is understood about the
>> brain than was understood even 20 years ago. From the fact that music in
>> most indigenous cultures around the world uses some form of five-note or
>> seven-note scale, we can infer that the human brain is well equipped to
>> process melodic patterns within pitch sets of that type -- a possibility
>> that Levitin explores.
>>
>> Most indigenous cultures do NOT have much or any music that involves a
>> solid minute of high-energy scraping and flailing, nor music that
>> involves extended glissandi without reference to fixed pitches. From
>> this we can very reasonably infer that Xenakis's style of composition is
>> less easily processed by the human brain than, for example, the songs of
>> the Beatles. I really don't see that there can be any serious argument
>> on this point.
>>
>> Individual brains do, of course, differ. I'm talking about a statistical
>> norm. But audiences comprise hundreds of individuals, so making
>> statistically based statements about audiences is a valid procedure.
>>
> 
> Our brain is very well trained at pitch perception but pitch
> structures are not the only structures that the brain can make sense
> of. Beatles would seem rather out of place, ugly and probably highly
> discomforting to a tribe that has never heard western music or
> electronic instruments. The meaning of music, and more so of "good"
> music is not only dependent on physiological innate aspects of human
> existence but also on cultural ones. You cannot separate the two. The
> question of which music is more easily understood than others is
> actually very much irrelevant. Sure, the language of Joyce is far from
> being easy when you compare it to Dickens. Does this mean that Dickens
> is more true to language and its function?
> 
>> --JA
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> View this message in context: Re: Re : Re: Re: Csound Journal - Issue 14
>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
> 
> 
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> 
> 



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> I don't see how Bach or Beethoven or Debussy's music is about specific
> representations.

In the sense that there is a story: the music tells something or 
describe something (heroic symphony, la mer, etc.)

A story implies a language, implies a representation. If I don't get the 
representation, I can't understand the language, I miss the music.

Or, as is the case for me, if I see the language as gross I'm put off 
and can't get lost in the story. Unsubtle narrative: that's what I feel 
about Beethoven.

You get none of this in Indian classical music for example.

>
> Nor do I see how musical thinking and experience can be devoid of
> metaphor and extrinsic influences. Xenakis was very much working with
> metaphors, visual and spatial ones

But no narration nor description. Metaphors as structures only.


Stef


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> Unclear. The fact that Western pop music has been so readily and
> thoroughly adopted by the people of Africa and Asia strongly suggests
> that you're wrong about that.

Western pop music is very much coming from Africa, via the blues.


Stef


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On 4 January 2011 21:44, Jim Aikin  wrote:
> On 1/4/2011 1:16 PM, peiman [via Csound] wrote:
>
>> But I ask my question again, what listener are you talking about?
>> Every composer write for a listener. The problem is that you are
>> disregarding the existence of many subcultures within one culture. Is
>> the best form of music for you that which is understood by the
>> majority? Is that how you evaluate music?
>
> Not at all. The majority these days is listening to hip-hop, and not
> much else. What I said was "the typical musically educated listener" --
> that is, someone who has been exposed to the music of Bach, Beethoven,
> Brahms, Bartok -- the great composers of the common practice period.
> Someone who took music lessons as a child, I think we can stipulate
> that. Someone who is also aware of the popular music of their era, be it
> Ellington, the Beatles, or, indeed, hip-hop. A musically educated listener.
>
> I would argue that the typical musically educated listener, either in
> 1955 or today, would have little sympathy with Xenakis.
>

OK, the typically musically educated that you are describing is not
the kind of audience that I aim to have and I understand if it was not
Xenakis'. You basically mean the mindless middle class "classic FM"
listeners who listen to the moonlight sonata on their way to work in
their car to relax. For me a truly educated (not just typically
educated) listener has been exposed to music way beyond western music
cannon (incidentally they all happen to be Germanic, mhh I wonder
why!) and hopefully beyond popular music too.

>> > I'm not sure which of my concepts you feel are fossilized. Perhaps you
>> > could be specific about this.
>>
>> The fact that it sounds like you are arguing that only music based on
>> intervallic pitch, tonal relationships and metric regularity is "good
>> music".
>
> Good music can be written that is based entirely on other types of
> material. However, it WILL exhibit a combination of repetition and
> change that can be perceived by the typical musically educated listener.
> This is why something like Etudes Australes fails. It's all change, with
> no repetition.
>

So good music must include repetition??? Now that really is a
fossilized idea. In any case Xenakis' music is full of repetitions!

>> Our brain is very well trained at pitch perception but pitch
>> structures are not the only structures that the brain can make sense
>> of. Beatles would seem rather out of place, ugly and probably highly
>> discomforting to a tribe that has never heard western music or
>> electronic instruments.
>
> Unclear. The fact that Western pop music has been so readily and
> thoroughly adopted by the people of Africa and Asia strongly suggests
> that you're wrong about that.
>

You are referring to a phenomenon known as the "cultural gray-out".
Not that not all Africans and Asians and middle Easterns (myself being
one) live in secluded tribal communities!!

>> The meaning of music, and more so of "good"
>> music is not only dependent on physiological innate aspects of human
>> existence but also on cultural ones. You cannot separate the two. The
>> question of which music is more easily understood than others is
>> actually very much irrelevant.
>
> Surely it's not irrelevant if you're a composer who hopes to be
> understood! It's irrelevant only if you don't give a damn about your
> audience, or whether you have an audience at all.
>
Then again it depends on your audience.

>> Sure, the language of Joyce is far from
>> being easy when you compare it to Dickens. Does this mean that Dickens
>> is more true to language and its function?
>
> Yes. At least if we're speaking of Finnegans Wake. It's about as much
> fun to read as Xenakis is to listen to. Whereas Dickens, for all his
> flaws (and George Orwell wrote an interesting essay about those flaws,
> by the way), is both more true to language, in that he is
> comprehensible, and more true to the storytelling function of language.
>

I like Dickens and have no problem with the storytelling function of
language. But I do not agree with you.

> --JA
>
>
> --JA
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> View this message in context: Re: Re : Re: Re: Csound Journal - Issue 14
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>


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I beg to differ. I don't think that Beethoven, Bach or Debusy's music
are narrative.

La mer is not telling a story, it as you say "a structural metaphor".
For what I care The Heroic symphony may be renamed anything. There is
nothing descriptive about it other than the title. You could say the
same thing about Berlioz, but in fact what makes his music interesting
is that the dramatic aspect behind his music actually gives him an
excuse to produce a music that would otherwise have been unacceptable.
In other words the drama gives rise to an exciting (not always of
course) new sound world.

Best,

Peiman

2011/1/4 Stéphane Rollandin :
>> I don't see how Bach or Beethoven or Debussy's music is about specific
>> representations.
>
> In the sense that there is a story: the music tells something or describe
> something (heroic symphony, la mer, etc.)
>
> A story implies a language, implies a representation. If I don't get the
> representation, I can't understand the language, I miss the music.
>
> Or, as is the case for me, if I see the language as gross I'm put off and
> can't get lost in the story. Unsubtle narrative: that's what I feel about
> Beethoven.
>
> You get none of this in Indian classical music for example.
>
>>
>> Nor do I see how musical thinking and experience can be devoid of
>> metaphor and extrinsic influences. Xenakis was very much working with
>> metaphors, visual and spatial ones
>
> But no narration nor description. Metaphors as structures only.
>
>
> Stef
>
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I have to get back to work so I'll shut up after this. Ignoring that
Xenakis was a very different composer from Cage and that we should not
confuse Cage as composer with Cage the philosopher (some of his music
really does have something to say) my response to your comments is
this:

If you are truly interested in music as a cultural phenomenon then you
are prepared to risk wasting your time if it means that there may be a
small chance that you will get something out of it. I so badly want to
hear the music that has nothing to say! My mind is bombarded with
questions such as "is it even possible?". If someone is not stimulated
by this notion then I would question their level of interest in music.
To criticize something one must first understand it. Denouncing
anything without first understanding it is nothing but ignorance.

Best,

Peiman

On 4 January 2011 22:16, Jim Aikin  wrote:
> On 1/4/2011 1:47 PM, Stéphane Rollandin [via Csound] wrote:
>>
>> John Cage has a very nice way to expose a similar relation to sound and
>> music in his book "Silence". I remember he wrote that he had a hard time
>> accepting the sound of its fridge, until he realized that it was the
>> like of a sonic sculpture, motionless. Then he could listen to the
>> fridge :)
>>
>> (and of course it's the whole point of 4'33, his silent piece: have the
>> audience listen to the actual sounds arising during the performance,
>> that have nothing to do with composition)
> Cage famously said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that
> is music." Which is very Zen, of course, but not, in the end, a very
> useful credo for a composer.
>
> My response to Cage is this: "You have nothing to say, and therefore I
> am going to spend my time listening to someone who does have something
> to say, and is saying it."
>
> The point of my aphoristic response is quite precise: The composer who
> abandons any attempt to communicate with an audience has also, of
> necessity, abandoned any interest in whether the audience is going to
> bother to listen. You can't simultaneously fail to communicate and
> expect that you'll be listened to!
>
> If you're satisfied never to be listened to, then Cage's Zen-based
> philosophy is just dandy. If, however, you aspire to be listened to,
> then you had better start out by deciding that you have something to
> say, and then go about saying it with all the passion and precision you
> can muster.
>
> --JA
>
>
> ________________________________
> View this message in context: Re: Xenakis
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>


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I'd actually challenge the notion that one must listen to a piece of music 
multiple times before they can really enjoy it. Some music just speaks to you 
right form the start, and in fact that might, by some, be the definition of 
"good music" (if there can be such a thing). Other music grows on you after a 
while, sure, but if you listen to something and immediately pretty much hate it, 
then that's a done deal and there's no point to keep listening. It's not going 
to convince you that it's actually a good song. It's a very subjective thing, 
which makes this branch of the conversation kind of ridiculous, no?


Michael



----- Original Message ----
From: PMA 
To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 3:55:53 PM
Subject: [Csnd] Re: ... Csound Journal - Issue 14

> But I ask my question again, what listener are you talking about?

I would like to know also _how many_ listenings you are talking about.
Enough to say fairly, "This piece *makes* me feel such-and-such", or
only enough to say, "I've imposed my music/mood presumption onto
this piece"?   Faced with a music new at its core, our _listening_ has
to evolve.


peiman khosravi wrote:
> On 4 January 2011 20:49, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>> On 1/4/2011 12:22 PM, peiman [via Csound] wrote:
>>> No one is to blame. Why do you want to blame somebody? It's life, you
>>> don't always have someone/something to blame, just live with it.
>> "Blame" is a loaded word, but I was accused of having a "dangerous"
>> attitude and of failing to make an effort. I don't want this to
>> degenerate into a flame war! So let me rephrase: I can't quite see that
>> Xenakis cared whether the typical musically educated listener of his
>> time had a positive experience listening to his music. We could probably
>> dig up his personal correspondence or his writings or read a biography
>> and learn more about what he cared about, or didn't. I could be wrong --
>> I'm guessing. But based on what I know of composition during that
>> period, I don't think it's a wildly improbable guess. One has the
>> impression that composers of that period had almost a contempt for their
>> audiences.
>>
> 
> But I ask my question again, what listener are you talking about?
> Every composer write for a listener. The problem is that you are
> disregarding the existence of many subcultures within one culture. Is
> the best form of music for you that which is understood by the
> majority? Is that how you evaluate music?
> 
>>> But if you do have the urge to criticize then do it properly and
>>> reasonably. Not based on fossilized concepts.
>> I'm not sure which of my concepts you feel are fossilized. Perhaps you
>> could be specific about this.
> 
> The fact that it sounds like you are arguing that only music based on
> intervallic pitch, tonal relationships and metric regularity is "good
> music".
> 
>>> You are speaking about our brains but the brain is one of the most
>>> complex and least understood organs. For those remarks you need to
>>> provide reference.
>> Well, I've read a few books. Stephen Pinker is good. Oliver Sacks is
>> sometimes very insightful. Recently I've been reading Daniel Levitin's
>> "This Is Your Brain on Music." A great deal more is understood about the
>> brain than was understood even 20 years ago. From the fact that music in
>> most indigenous cultures around the world uses some form of five-note or
>> seven-note scale, we can infer that the human brain is well equipped to
>> process melodic patterns within pitch sets of that type -- a possibility
>> that Levitin explores.
>>
>> Most indigenous cultures do NOT have much or any music that involves a
>> solid minute of high-energy scraping and flailing, nor music that
>> involves extended glissandi without reference to fixed pitches. From
>> this we can very reasonably infer that Xenakis's style of composition is
>> less easily processed by the human brain than, for example, the songs of
>> the Beatles. I really don't see that there can be any serious argument
>> on this point.
>>
>> Individual brains do, of course, differ. I'm talking about a statistical
>> norm. But audiences comprise hundreds of individuals, so making
>> statistically based statements about audiences is a valid procedure.
>>
> 
> Our brain is very well trained at pitch perception but pitch
> structures are not the only structures that the brain can make sense
> of. Beatles would seem rather out of place, ugly and probably highly
> discomforting to a tribe that has never heard western music or
> electronic instruments. The meaning of music, and more so of "good"
> music is not only dependent on physiological innate aspects of human
> existence but also on cultural ones. You cannot separate the two. The
> question of which music is more easily understood than others is
> actually very much irrelevant. Sure, the language of Joyce is far from
> being easy when you compare it to Dickens. Does this mean that Dickens
> is more true to language and its function?
> 
>> --JA
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> View this message in context: Re: Re : Re: Re: Csound Journal - Issue 14
>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
> 
> 
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>csound"
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> 



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hi

a lively discussion

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
> The fact that music composed of notes (organized into melodies with fairly regular rhythms) is more enjoyable to most listeners than sound collage a la Xenakis quite likely tells us something of fundamental importance about how the human brain perceives music.

you have shown no supporting evidence for these statements.

i have often said, "i went to music school for many years, and at the
end, i found out that if you like it, it's good."

so, while you don't like xenakis, there are many that do. one size
does not fit all.

i wonder how much of xenakis's music you have heard.

> The question one is, then, compelled to ask, is this: Given that the human brain seems so strongly to prefer music in the idiom of Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, and so on, why did Xenakis feel that he ought to throw that idiom overboard?

again, there is no proof of these preferences. is there?

the big audiences are for pop music, right? dwarfing the teutonic
giants [and (surprisingly) one french one].

> What was he hoping to accomplish?

are you serious?

> I would tend to conclude that Xenakis was trying very deliberately to be difficult.

based on what? your own little world of what you think music should be?

grow up. people like to listen to music that you don't like. the world
extends outside your ears. it seems unlikely that you can open your
mind this far, but maybe you should read something about xenakis, or
one of the articles he wrote about music.

but maybe you are just trying to get a reaction.

--
\js : "verbing weirds language." -calvin  [http://or8.net/~johns/]


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Granted, "how many?" was not a best-focused question.
"Open minded?" would have been more to the point.

I was trying to focus on our _quality_ of listening, which
tends to suffer when our presumptions in listening let us
down (as in a first exposure to Xenakis's music, where
for starters a zillion hearings might help clue one in).


Michael Bechard wrote:
> I'd actually challenge the notion that one must listen to a piece of music 
> multiple times before they can really enjoy it. Some music just speaks to you 
> right form the start, and in fact that might, by some, be the definition of 
> "good music" (if there can be such a thing). Other music grows on you after a 
> while, sure, but if you listen to something and immediately pretty much hate it, 
> then that's a done deal and there's no point to keep listening. It's not going 
> to convince you that it's actually a good song. It's a very subjective thing, 
> which makes this branch of the conversation kind of ridiculous, no?
> 
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: PMA 
> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
> Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 3:55:53 PM
> Subject: [Csnd] Re: ... Csound Journal - Issue 14
> 
>> But I ask my question again, what listener are you talking about?
> 
> I would like to know also _how many_ listenings you are talking about.
> Enough to say fairly, "This piece *makes* me feel such-and-such", or
> only enough to say, "I've imposed my music/mood presumption onto
> this piece"?   Faced with a music new at its core, our _listening_ has
> to evolve.
> 
> 
> peiman khosravi wrote:
>> On 4 January 2011 20:49, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>>> On 1/4/2011 12:22 PM, peiman [via Csound] wrote:
>>>> No one is to blame. Why do you want to blame somebody? It's life, you
>>>> don't always have someone/something to blame, just live with it.
>>> "Blame" is a loaded word, but I was accused of having a "dangerous"
>>> attitude and of failing to make an effort. I don't want this to
>>> degenerate into a flame war! So let me rephrase: I can't quite see that
>>> Xenakis cared whether the typical musically educated listener of his
>>> time had a positive experience listening to his music. We could probably
>>> dig up his personal correspondence or his writings or read a biography
>>> and learn more about what he cared about, or didn't. I could be wrong --
>>> I'm guessing. But based on what I know of composition during that
>>> period, I don't think it's a wildly improbable guess. One has the
>>> impression that composers of that period had almost a contempt for their
>>> audiences.
>>>
>> But I ask my question again, what listener are you talking about?
>> Every composer write for a listener. The problem is that you are
>> disregarding the existence of many subcultures within one culture. Is
>> the best form of music for you that which is understood by the
>> majority? Is that how you evaluate music?
>>
>>>> But if you do have the urge to criticize then do it properly and
>>>> reasonably. Not based on fossilized concepts.
>>> I'm not sure which of my concepts you feel are fossilized. Perhaps you
>>> could be specific about this.
>> The fact that it sounds like you are arguing that only music based on
>> intervallic pitch, tonal relationships and metric regularity is "good
>> music".
>>
>>>> You are speaking about our brains but the brain is one of the most
>>>> complex and least understood organs. For those remarks you need to
>>>> provide reference.
>>> Well, I've read a few books. Stephen Pinker is good. Oliver Sacks is
>>> sometimes very insightful. Recently I've been reading Daniel Levitin's
>>> "This Is Your Brain on Music." A great deal more is understood about the
>>> brain than was understood even 20 years ago. From the fact that music in
>>> most indigenous cultures around the world uses some form of five-note or
>>> seven-note scale, we can infer that the human brain is well equipped to
>>> process melodic patterns within pitch sets of that type -- a possibility
>>> that Levitin explores.
>>>
>>> Most indigenous cultures do NOT have much or any music that involves a
>>> solid minute of high-energy scraping and flailing, nor music that
>>> involves extended glissandi without reference to fixed pitches. From
>>> this we can very reasonably infer that Xenakis's style of composition is
>>> less easily processed by the human brain than, for example, the songs of
>>> the Beatles. I really don't see that there can be any serious argument
>>> on this point.
>>>
>>> Individual brains do, of course, differ. I'm talking about a statistical
>>> norm. But audiences comprise hundreds of individuals, so making
>>> statistically based statements about audiences is a valid procedure.
>>>
>> Our brain is very well trained at pitch perception but pitch
>> structures are not the only structures that the brain can make sense
>> of. Beatles would seem rather out of place, ugly and probably highly
>> discomforting to a tribe that has never heard western music or
>> electronic instruments. The meaning of music, and more so of "good"
>> music is not only dependent on physiological innate aspects of human
>> existence but also on cultural ones. You cannot separate the two. The
>> question of which music is more easily understood than others is
>> actually very much irrelevant. Sure, the language of Joyce is far from
>> being easy when you compare it to Dickens. Does this mean that Dickens
>> is more true to language and its function?
>>
>>> --JA
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> View this message in context: Re: Re : Re: Re: Csound Journal - Issue 14
>>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe 
>> csound"
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
>       
> 
> 
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> 


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On 04/01/2011 20:49, Jim Aikin wrote:
..
> Well, I've read a few books. Stephen Pinker is good.


On his comments on music, I strongly disagree - as far as I am concerned 
he has badly (and unscientifically, by taking as axiomatic what is at 
best a questionable hypothesis or false assumption) got it very wrong:

"As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless". 
Elsewhere he describes [all?] music as "auditory cheesecake" (I wonder 
if Xenakis would enjoy that comparison) and clearly subscribes to the 
notion (as first proposed by Darwin) that music has no survival value 
and is not, in terms of brain function, "adaptive".

The key point is that (as research had shown) the brain ~does~ adapt 
and, um, evolves - things do get easier, make more sense, and ~mean~ 
more, with practice. This not only includes but is most fully 
demonstrated by music.

The book you would need to read to put all the other brain books into 
proper perspective is "The Master and His Emissary" by Iain McGilcrist. 
He integrates all that is known both about brain plasticity (practising 
music literally changes the brain) and crucially about the importance of 
the right hemisphere - the seat of what I would call "symbolical 
thinking" as distinct from "literalist" thinking - we need both, and 
music, possibly uniquely, exercises both together) but have tended to 
undervalue or denigrate the former. Dawkins wrote once in a letter to 
New Scientist that he would like everyone to "think like a scientist". 
Well, it depends. Einstein famously gave a violin recital rather than 
make a speech. That is True Wisdom. When is such a thing ever likely to 
happen again? His scientific credentials are hardly in dispute, but he 
was, and understood, so much more. If we must "think like a scientist" 
we need to be very careful in choosing our our model - and IMO neither 
Pinker nor Dawkins meets the spec.

Above all, anyone who brings the brain into the discussion needs to 
avoid any suggestion or presumption that the only music to be considered 
is Western Art Music - whether ancient or modern. It has to be able to 
deal with (among many other things) Indian Raga, Mongolian throat 
singing (I duetted with a practitioner of this just the other night at a 
party - I can't do the throat bit but I can do snappy overtoning, that 
fits fairly well), Balinese and Javanese Gamelan, Tibetan Buddhist 
musical rites with cymbals and horns, and the many varieties of African 
Drumming (taking care not to make the mistake of thinking of it either 
as simple or primitive). They point towards the whole panoply of what is 
(in the classic expression of Western musical colonialism) called "World 
Music" - but the brains are ostensibly the same the world over. Far too 
many writers have made the elementary hubristic mistake of discussing 
the brain as if it was specially wired a priori to understand Western 
Art Music, somehow.

These issues are actually important to us on this list, at least those 
of us in the UK, as "authorities" such as Pinker and Dawkins have the 
ear of government, who have found it proper to "protect the science 
budget" while savaging arts funding (again). It would appear the 
government's goal is zero funding for humanities teaching.  If that is a 
cultural and political policy, so be it - we will do our best to kick 
them out next time around; but if it takes bad or mis-applied science 
for its justification we all have cause to be alarmed (again).

So - anyone who wishes to cite the brain as justification for rejecting 
or denouncing any aspect or example of music needs to think Very 
Carefully Indeed! Opinions and tastes are the life-blood of music-making 
- the more the merrier, but  dogma of the form "music should be x+y+z" 
has just never worked for very long, in any epoch.


Richard Dobson





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Thanks for the suggested book Richard and the detailed post.

That must have been one cool party!

Best,

Peiman

On 4 January 2011 23:09, Richard Dobson  wrote:
> On 04/01/2011 20:49, Jim Aikin wrote:
> ..
>>
>> Well, I've read a few books. Stephen Pinker is good.
>
>
> On his comments on music, I strongly disagree - as far as I am concerned he
> has badly (and unscientifically, by taking as axiomatic what is at best a
> questionable hypothesis or false assumption) got it very wrong:
>
> "As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless".
> Elsewhere he describes [all?] music as "auditory cheesecake" (I wonder if
> Xenakis would enjoy that comparison) and clearly subscribes to the notion
> (as first proposed by Darwin) that music has no survival value and is not,
> in terms of brain function, "adaptive".
>
> The key point is that (as research had shown) the brain ~does~ adapt and,
> um, evolves - things do get easier, make more sense, and ~mean~ more, with
> practice. This not only includes but is most fully demonstrated by music.
>
> The book you would need to read to put all the other brain books into proper
> perspective is "The Master and His Emissary" by Iain McGilcrist. He
> integrates all that is known both about brain plasticity (practising music
> literally changes the brain) and crucially about the importance of the right
> hemisphere - the seat of what I would call "symbolical thinking" as distinct
> from "literalist" thinking - we need both, and music, possibly uniquely,
> exercises both together) but have tended to undervalue or denigrate the
> former. Dawkins wrote once in a letter to New Scientist that he would like
> everyone to "think like a scientist". Well, it depends. Einstein famously
> gave a violin recital rather than make a speech. That is True Wisdom. When
> is such a thing ever likely to happen again? His scientific credentials are
> hardly in dispute, but he was, and understood, so much more. If we must
> "think like a scientist" we need to be very careful in choosing our our
> model - and IMO neither Pinker nor Dawkins meets the spec.
>
> Above all, anyone who brings the brain into the discussion needs to avoid
> any suggestion or presumption that the only music to be considered is
> Western Art Music - whether ancient or modern. It has to be able to deal
> with (among many other things) Indian Raga, Mongolian throat singing (I
> duetted with a practitioner of this just the other night at a party - I
> can't do the throat bit but I can do snappy overtoning, that fits fairly
> well), Balinese and Javanese Gamelan, Tibetan Buddhist musical rites with
> cymbals and horns, and the many varieties of African Drumming (taking care
> not to make the mistake of thinking of it either as simple or primitive).
> They point towards the whole panoply of what is (in the classic expression
> of Western musical colonialism) called "World Music" - but the brains are
> ostensibly the same the world over. Far too many writers have made the
> elementary hubristic mistake of discussing the brain as if it was specially
> wired a priori to understand Western Art Music, somehow.
>
> These issues are actually important to us on this list, at least those of us
> in the UK, as "authorities" such as Pinker and Dawkins have the ear of
> government, who have found it proper to "protect the science budget" while
> savaging arts funding (again). It would appear the government's goal is zero
> funding for humanities teaching.  If that is a cultural and political
> policy, so be it - we will do our best to kick them out next time around;
> but if it takes bad or mis-applied science for its justification we all have
> cause to be alarmed (again).
>
> So - anyone who wishes to cite the brain as justification for rejecting or
> denouncing any aspect or example of music needs to think Very Carefully
> Indeed! Opinions and tastes are the life-blood of music-making - the more
> the merrier, but  dogma of the form "music should be x+y+z" has just never
> worked for very long, in any epoch.
>
>
> Richard Dobson
>
>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
>
>


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> La mer is not telling a story, it as you say "a structural metaphor".
> For what I care The Heroic symphony may be renamed anything. There is
> nothing descriptive about it other than the title. You could say the
> same thing about Berlioz, but in fact what makes his music interesting
> is that the dramatic aspect behind his music actually gives him an
> excuse to produce a music that would otherwise have been unacceptable.
> In other words the drama gives rise to an exciting (not always of
> course) new sound world.

Well yes of course things are not so clear-cut. Remember that the post I 
responded to was about idioms, and how Xenakis threw those idioms away. 
That was my point: music can also be good without being idiomatic. It 
can be just a thing, as opposed to a discourse.

Now the new "thing" of today has some structure, that structure being 
recognized, analysed and reproduced (with variation) by others may 
become an idiom of tomorrow. Expectations and habits form. Things change.

Overall, my point at this stage would be that music is somehow linked 
simultaneously to many dimensions of our beings: cultural / intellectual 
/ emotional (which give it some meaning), sociological (when we state 
where we belong via the music we promote), and also purely sensorial, 
which is the realm where we meet new music or music we do not have the 
cultural keys to grasp.

As far as I am concerned, today, Xenakis' music is mostly a sensorial 
experience, while Beethoven or Bach are more (boring) cultural stuff. 
But that's just me.

Now for excellent new music of 2010, check out Jean-Louis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRiL01ix_gw
... cause I don't listen to Xenakis much, but I do listen to Jean-Louis :)


Best,

Stef




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Maybe this is being quoted out of context. I admire Dawkins' stance in  
trying to get critical thinking a bit more widespread. That allows us  
to, for instance, judge for ourselves the problematic issues with  
statements such as Pinker's. I see no problem in Dawkins' suggestion.

On 4 Jan 2011, at 23:09, Richard Dobson wrote:

> Dawkins wrote once in a letter to New Scientist that he would like  
> everyone to "think like a scientist".



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On 04/01/2011 23:21, peiman khosravi wrote:
> Thanks for the suggested book Richard and the detailed post.
>
> That must have been one cool party!
>

Indeed it was; actually only half a dozen or so as a very last-minute 
plan, but one was Sheila Chandra.

The throat singer had a small shruti box.
After R.D. doodle on bansuri, high on raw home-made chocolate:

S.C: "what raga was that?"
R.D: "Oh, er, um, er, Dorian mode...".

Richard Dobson






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On 04/01/2011 23:48, Victor Lazzarini wrote:
> Maybe this is being quoted out of context. I admire Dawkins' stance in
> trying to get critical thinking a bit more widespread. That allows us
> to, for instance, judge for ourselves the problematic issues with
> statements such as Pinker's. I see no problem in Dawkins' suggestion.
>


I don't either, ~in principle~; but not all scientists are the same. He 
comes across as terribly dualist, obsessional and two-dimensional - 
everything is a "battle" or "opposition" with him. There are plenty of 
other ways of approaching his core issues that he seems never to have 
considered. That's certainly human, but not really scientific. To many 
scientists he is more of a liability than an asset.  I just wish he 
could get off his "enemies of reason" hobby-horse a bit more and 
practice critical thinking a bit more (not least - to his own ideas!). 
It has distorted his whole outlook and left him looking anything but 
objectively scientific, too much of the time. In McGilchrist terms, he 
seems almost entirely left-hemisphere dominant, with the right 
hemisphere largely unconscious and ensnaring him in a dualist world of 
enemies. In any case, very polarised. I would love to see those two in a 
debate. His public words on music are disappointing (if unsurprising), 
to say the least (I suspect he would agree with Pinker):

"
Doug: If you could invite any five people from history to dinner, who 
would they be?

Dawkins: Oh god, I hate those sort of questions. [Thinks for a while 
between each name] Darwin. Shakespeare. Probably not a musician, because 
although I love music, I'm not sure that talking to them at dinner is 
likely to be that revealing.
"

(from http://www.powells.com/authors/dawkins.html)

But then, maybe he is right - musicians do not think like scientists, do 
they?

Richard Dobson





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I imagine God covers heaven's refrigerator with our "great" works,
like a proud parent displaying a child's finger-paintings.

~ andy.f



On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 8:10 PM, thorin kerr  wrote:
> Oh, why not join in the rant...
> I'm surprised people still defensively rush to proclaim Xenakis' (et al)
> genius in the face of a bit of criticism. I mean... come on, be real... some
> of his works are great, but lets face it, some of them are just horrible.
> And this shouldn't be surprising for a composer working so far 'out there'
> with so many innovations for his time. Innovation is important, he should
> still be admired, but it should still be OK to say... his repertoire is a
> bit 'hit or miss', some of his pieces just didn't work.
> I don't think whether our brain is a blank slate or not has much influence
> on the discussion, after all... we all make choices about our taste in
> music, just as some of us choose to be vegetarian. In my experience,
> audience appreciation doesn't admire defiance, but nor is it sympathetic to
> pandering. An audience will pick up on something 'authentic' about what
> you're expressing. There's a really authentic brutality to Xenakis'
> percussion music and some people like it, just as there's an 'authentic'
> drama to Andrew Lloyd Webber... I don't care much for it, but some people
> seem to like that too.
> TK
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Rory Walsh  wrote:
>>
>> > I would tend to conclude that Xenakis was trying very deliberately to be
>> > difficult. He wanted to write ugly, incomprehensible music, and he
>> > succeeded. So I can't claim credit for the fact that I'm bored by it.
>> > Xenakis patently didn't care about writing music that wouldn't bore the
>> > typical educated concert-goer. If he had cared about that, his music would
>> > have been vastly different.
>>
>> His music is ugly only to those who find it so. Are you actually
>> accusing one of the most acclaimed composers of the 20th century of
>> wanting to write ugly music? You describe his music as
>> incomprehensible. Surely if one can't comprehend his music one
>> shouldn't comment on it? I don't speak Italian, therefore I tend to
>> avoid critiquing anything written in Italian!
>>
>> I'm glad Xenakis didn't care about the typical concert goer. And I'm
>> glad others before him stopped caring too. Otherwise we'd all be stuck
>> listening to a Sheppard tone that starts around Bach's time, gets
>> quite clear during the romantic era and fades out with Debussy; over
>> and over and over again.
>>
>> Rory.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> >
>> > --JA
>> >
>> > ________________________________
>> > View this message in context: Re: Re : Re: Re: Xenakis
>> > Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>>
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>> csound"
>>
>
>


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I don't think that "trying to say something" works very well when  
writing music. Here's an anecdote that taught me a lot about "trying  
to say something."

Shortly after I completed "Homage to Sibelius" I played the electronic  
piece for an audience of about 20 people. I didn't expect anyone to  
comment afterwards but to my surprise each person in the room  
described what the piece meant to her or him. One person heard  
"dragons", another imagined "exploring a dark cave", another heard  
"fairies dancing in the air" and so forth. No two people had the same  
image.

They then asked me what my intention was. From the title you might  
imagine it had nothing to do with dragons or fairies. In fact, I was  
responding to musical elements that I admired in Sibelius' music, in  
particular to his ingenious transitions from one section to the next.

(You can hear "Homage to Sibelius" at my website: www.jolc.net. Click  
on "music", then on "compositions.")

The lesson for me was that regardless of a composer's intentions, each  
audience member brings his own experience and expectations to the  
music and comes away with something highly personal.

I read recently that one reason Cage began to use chance methods in  
his compositions is because he realized much the same thing. He had  
been trying to communicate the deep emotions that he was feeling at  
the time, due to personal changes he was going through, but the  
audience wasn't getting them. His piece "The Perilous Night" was, I  
the piece that made him realize he wasn't getting through. I love that  
piece, by the way, and performed it recently with great pleasure.

-Lou

On Jan 4, 2011, at 6:24 PM, Stéphane Rollandin wrote:

>> La mer is not telling a story, it as you say "a structural metaphor".
>> For what I care The Heroic symphony may be renamed anything. There is
>> nothing descriptive about it other than the title. You could say the
>> same thing about Berlioz, but in fact what makes his music  
>> interesting
>> is that the dramatic aspect behind his music actually gives him an
>> excuse to produce a music that would otherwise have been  
>> unacceptable.
>> In other words the drama gives rise to an exciting (not always of
>> course) new sound world.
>
> Well yes of course things are not so clear-cut. Remember that the  
> post I responded to was about idioms, and how Xenakis threw those  
> idioms away. That was my point: music can also be good without being  
> idiomatic. It can be just a thing, as opposed to a discourse.
>
> Now the new "thing" of today has some structure, that structure  
> being recognized, analysed and reproduced (with variation) by others  
> may become an idiom of tomorrow. Expectations and habits form.  
> Things change.
>
> Overall, my point at this stage would be that music is somehow  
> linked simultaneously to many dimensions of our beings: cultural /  
> intellectual / emotional (which give it some meaning), sociological  
> (when we state where we belong via the music we promote), and also  
> purely sensorial, which is the realm where we meet new music or  
> music we do not have the cultural keys to grasp.
>
> As far as I am concerned, today, Xenakis' music is mostly a  
> sensorial experience, while Beethoven or Bach are more (boring)  
> cultural stuff. But that's just me.
>
> Now for excellent new music of 2010, check out Jean-Louis:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRiL01ix_gw
> ... cause I don't listen to Xenakis much, but I do listen to Jean- 
> Louis :)
>
>
> Best,
>
> Stef
>
>
>
>
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> "unsubscribe csound"
>



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A propos this key observation, this is from the final chapter of Roy 
Harris's small but brilliant book "Mindboggling", where his key theme is 
"the language myth" , only £10 or so (read it multiple times ad lib):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0954978021


"
So what do I suppose I have been doing in writing this book and inviting 
you to read it? First and foremost, I think I have been exercising my 
own mind. I do ~not~ think I have been putting ideas into words for 
conveyance from my mind to yours: that is a mythical enterprise that 
neither I nor anyone else could engage in. What I am inviting you to do, 
then, is ~not~ retrieve and assess the ideas I have carefully encoded.
     I hope that, if you have a mind that works like mine, what you will 
do is read the text and pay attention to the way my discussion is 
conducted. That will not give you magical access to ~my~ mind, but it 
may prompt you to exercise ~your~ mind in ways I cannot guarantee and 
cannot even foresee, given that your relevant linguistic experience is 
bound to be different from mine.
"

My view is that his argument can be directly translated to refer to 
music making and listening, and be the same message. Thus the "music 
myth" is both an analogue of the language myth, and something that can 
illuminate it further. Roy Harrris's domain of study is what he calls 
"integrational linguistics" (a term that might especially delight 
McGilchrist). It is my hope that he, and his colleagues in related areas 
of study, will some day address music-making in a similar way. It may 
render some of the papers in "Organised Sound" redundant, and improve 
others considerably (at the very least it will evaporate a lot of the 
waffle some composers feel it necessary to write about their and other 
people's music!). Either way we will all benefit, and the symbolical 
"language without words" that is the foundation of human music (of all 
kinds) may be recognised as something even more central to the study of 
the mind/brain (+ body and spirit for that matter)  and even more more 
important not only to society but to the conduct of science itself, than 
has so far been acknowledged -  and should therefore be funded and 
supported accordingly!



  Richard Dobson

On 05/01/2011 12:13, Louis Cohen wrote:
> I don't think that "trying to say something" works very well when
> writing music. Here's an anecdote that taught me a lot about "trying to
> say something."
>
> Shortly after I completed "Homage to Sibelius" I played the electronic
> piece for an audience of about 20 people. I didn't expect anyone to
> comment afterwards but to my surprise each person in the room described
> what the piece meant to her or him. One person heard "dragons", another
> imagined "exploring a dark cave", another heard "fairies dancing in the
> air" and so forth. No two people had the same image.
>
> They then asked me what my intention was. From the title you might
> imagine it had nothing to do with dragons or fairies. In fact, I was
> responding to musical elements that I admired in Sibelius' music, in
> particular to his ingenious transitions from one section to the next.
>
> (You can hear "Homage to Sibelius" at my website: www.jolc.net. Click on
> "music", then on "compositions.")
>
> The lesson for me was that regardless of a composer's intentions, each
> audience member brings his own experience and expectations to the music
> and comes away with something highly personal.
>



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On 05/01/2011 17:03, Jim Aikin wrote:
> On 1/5/2011 6:45 AM, Richard Dobson [via Csound] wrote:
>  >
>  > So what do I suppose I have been doing in writing this book and inviting
>  > you to read it? First and foremost, I think I have been exercising my
>  > own mind. I do ~not~ think I have been putting ideas into words for
>  > conveyance from my mind to yours: that is a mythical enterprise that
>  > neither I nor anyone else could engage in."
>
> Postmodern mumbo-jumbo. Entirely wrong, and in a transparently stupid
> way. As Samuel Johnson said, kicking a stone, "I refute it thus!"
>

I respectfully suggest you read the book first (it is all about language 
and communication, all of central interest to most musicians, and only 
160 small pages excluding references and index - you can read it all in 
an evening), and ~then~ pass comment on his conclusion!

Richard Dobson




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On 05/01/2011 17:41, Jim Aikin wrote:
..
> I'll see if I can find a copy at the local public library. I've just
> ordered half a dozen gamelan CDs, so my discretionary spending budget is
> tapped out.
>
> That said, I don't think it's necessary to read an entire book in order
> to recognize post-modern mumbo-jumbo. He is asserting that the
> conveyance of ideas from one mind to another via the medium of words is
> "a mythical enterprise that neither I nor anyone else could engage in."

It is probably why mathematicians prefer their own language to that of 
words. Even there, I suspect that alternative understandings can arise.

> And that's patently bullshit, because in writing that sentence, he
> conveyed an idea from his mind to mine!

Or perhaps he didn't. He can hope to achieve "telementation", but 
clearly cannot be sure.  As he suggests, that conveyance is contingent 
(among other things) on there being some degree of (paraphrasing here) 
'likeness of mind' between you and him (over which he has no control 
because he does not know of your, or my, existence);  the liking of the 
music of Xenakis (say) by two minds in closely similar ways would appear 
to depend on much the same similarity. The music may also be liked or 
disliked by minds that are different, in different ways. That sort of 
thing happens all the time - indeed we rely on it to get an audience of 
more than one. Whole personal relationships are predicated on such 
things; they can fail if the minds later diverge.  Not all minds are 
alike - indeed the chance of any two minds being identical is 
vanishingly small. Therefore ~something~ will always and inevitably get 
changed, if not lost, in translation. Nor do words, and ideas, exist in 
isolation. Behind his idea lies a whole life; and your response arises 
from your life, which is different. So your reconstruction of his idea 
is almost guaranteed to be different, to some degree, from the original.

Clearly, "cheesecake" has a resonance for Pinker that many other minds 
may not match. Were I to propose to you that "music is auditory 
Marmite", your response would depend totally on what "Marmite" means for 
you; and even if we both like it, that does not set the bounds to the 
idea, for either of us.

Hello? This is not an echo
> chamber. The idea was in his mind, and now it's in mine.
How can you be sure? Because of the words? It is the heart of his 
presentation of the language myth, that such a statement is an 
assumption based on what he calls "vernacular mindspeak". It is, I 
agree, a subtle argument that is, at least to start with, and 
deliberately, somewhat counter-intuitive, as we rely (um, so to speak 
without thinking) on vernacular mindspeak all the time. The conveyance 
of ideas from one mind to another is at best an act of faith; as any 
teacher (and artist) can confirm!

Here is my favourite example of the conveyance (or otherwise) of an 
idea, showing that even an inaccurate conveyance can be beautiful and 
influential:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCrer%27s_Rhinoceros

  Richard Dobson






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On 05/01/2011 19:46, Jim Aikin wrote:
> On 1/5/2011 11:29 AM, Richard Dobson [via Csound] wrote:
>  >
>  > Not all minds are
>  > alike - indeed the chance of any two minds being identical is
>  > vanishingly small. Therefore ~something~ will always and inevitably get
>  > changed, if not lost, in translation.
>
> Granted. But predicating a theory of communication on that fact is
> granting an unwarranted primacy to the noise, while minimizing the
> reality of the signal. If communication using words were less than
> highly successful on average, the capacity for spoken language would
> never have evolved.
>


But it is not a question of signal v noise - this is not a DSP issue, 
but one of (to take Pinker's book title) "how the mind works" - or  (to 
use your words re Xenakis) of " how the human brain perceives music", 
the very point your raised; something nobody really understands yet and 
may never (but we like to try). From your point of view the noise was 
not in the communications channel but in the "message" itself - it had 
no "semantic content" for you. It is not a problem peculiar to music, of 
course.

If anything it relates more to the famous subtitles sequence in "Annie 
Hall". The difference with music is that the subtitles may be similar 
but different for each listener, and for the composer that is arguably a 
success. The same listener can "get" different things from the music at 
differnt times. It is even a measure of the importance of the music, how 
often that happens. That is not an issue of noise, but just the nature 
of what for want of a better word we call "communication".

And we seem unable to escape the parallels between spoken/written 
language and music, however hard we try; and since so much more, good, 
bad and indifferenmt, has been written about verbal language by 
scientists, we have little choice but to take that as our starting point 
too, especially as we imagine we understand the nature of verbal 
language so well! But if someone such as Pinker can get things so wrong 
with regard to music (which makes me suspect he gets a lot of the other 
stuff wrong as well), it suggests that nothing can be taken for granted, 
and if Roy Harris can give us some tools with which to answer Pinker, 
that he might just take seriously, I think we need to give them every 
possible chance.



Richard Dobson



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I've just been catching up on this discussion today, so I apologize if
it's a bit temporally out of whack.

Almost no one would object to the right to simply not care for a piece
of music or for it's composer, but the sentiment Jim expressed seems
to be closer to the idea that no one SHOULD like Xenakis' work and
even that he composed it specifically to be be unlikeable or
'difficult'.
The contrast between the recognizable harmony and structure of more
popular music and the seemingly syntax-less structure of Xenakis was
also mentioned as a fault. I think this really ignores the driving
theme of almost all modern art and music of the last 100 years. Most
of the things you cite as being staples of a positive musical
listening experience could also be viewed as clichés that a 'serious
artist' would try to avoid, virtually at all costs. I'm not saying
that this is the only avenue that serious composing can pursue, but it
should be acknowledged as a common and respectable path. I would draw
a direct parallel between music that rejects traditional form and
meter with visual art that rejects traditional form, like cubism;
music that has no narrative with abstract expressionism; and music
that ignores traditional harmonic structure with multimedia art that
rejects traditional visual media. It's easy to disregard a lot of
those visual art forms as being ugly or pointless, or even to say that
they require no talent, but I really find it hard to believe one would
not be willing to accept that it could be beautiful and meaningful to
others.
I see that a lot of people have responded that they find the 'radio
friendly' classical music to be boring at times, and I think that has
a lot to do with the audience that Xenakis was composing for, and the
audience that many of us on this mailing list make up. With greater
musical exposure and knowledge some people find a need to be surprised
and to be challenged. Not that we'd need something to be ugly, but
we'd strongly desire it to be different. When the rules and structure
of music are readily apparent on the surface that may not be enough to
engage a listener who has heard it all before, especially a listener
(like I imagine most csounders to be) who is regularly experimenting
with a wider sonic palate.

For the brain side of things, I agree that it is hard to deny that the
human brain is wired to respond to rhythmic patters and harmonic
signals. However, I think that being genetically wired to respond to
something and developing a qualitative appreciation for something as
beautiful are two very, very different things. I think our genetic
predisposition to reproduce compared to the huge variety of sexual
preference we have as a species is a good example of that difference.

Anyway, I appreciate the discussion, it's been a great read!

-Aidan


On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 2:46 PM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
> On 1/5/2011 11:29 AM, Richard Dobson [via Csound] wrote:
>>
>> Not all minds are
>> alike - indeed the chance of any two minds being identical is
>> vanishingly small. Therefore ~something~ will always and inevitably get
>> changed, if not lost, in translation.
>
> Granted. But predicating a theory of communication on that fact is
> granting an unwarranted primacy to the noise, while minimizing the
> reality of the signal. If communication using words were less than
> highly successful on average, the capacity for spoken language would
> never have evolved.
>
> ________________________________
> View this message in context: Re: Xenakis
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>


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I also wanted to quickly pipe in and defend the "auditory cheesecake"
description.
I do think that this idea wasn't intended to be as offensive as it
sounds to us musicians. I think that comment should be considered in
the context of hard-science, evolutionary-biology-style research. I
think that it should translate to something more like, "We can't
definitively prove a specific example where adaptations towards
musicality can be proven to have benefited a species reproductively
and caused a further separation from similar species without that
adaptation."  I don't think the author's intent was to belittle music
as a worthwhile pursuit, but that it's difficult to build a testable
hypothesis around.

-A

On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 3:20 PM, Richard Dobson
 wrote:
> On 05/01/2011 19:46, Jim Aikin wrote:
>>
>> On 1/5/2011 11:29 AM, Richard Dobson [via Csound] wrote:
>>  >
>>  > Not all minds are
>>  > alike - indeed the chance of any two minds being identical is
>>  > vanishingly small. Therefore ~something~ will always and inevitably get
>>  > changed, if not lost, in translation.
>>
>> Granted. But predicating a theory of communication on that fact is
>> granting an unwarranted primacy to the noise, while minimizing the
>> reality of the signal. If communication using words were less than
>> highly successful on average, the capacity for spoken language would
>> never have evolved.
>>
>
>
> But it is not a question of signal v noise - this is not a DSP issue, but
> one of (to take Pinker's book title) "how the mind works" - or  (to use your
> words re Xenakis) of " how the human brain perceives music", the very point
> your raised; something nobody really understands yet and may never (but we
> like to try). From your point of view the noise was not in the
> communications channel but in the "message" itself - it had no "semantic
> content" for you. It is not a problem peculiar to music, of course.
>
> If anything it relates more to the famous subtitles sequence in "Annie
> Hall". The difference with music is that the subtitles may be similar but
> different for each listener, and for the composer that is arguably a
> success. The same listener can "get" different things from the music at
> differnt times. It is even a measure of the importance of the music, how
> often that happens. That is not an issue of noise, but just the nature of
> what for want of a better word we call "communication".
>
> And we seem unable to escape the parallels between spoken/written language
> and music, however hard we try; and since so much more, good, bad and
> indifferenmt, has been written about verbal language by scientists, we have
> little choice but to take that as our starting point too, especially as we
> imagine we understand the nature of verbal language so well! But if someone
> such as Pinker can get things so wrong with regard to music (which makes me
> suspect he gets a lot of the other stuff wrong as well), it suggests that
> nothing can be taken for granted, and if Roy Harris can give us some tools
> with which to answer Pinker, that he might just take seriously, I think we
> need to give them every possible chance.
>
>
>
> Richard Dobson
>
>
>
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> csound"
>
>


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It may not be a mistake to say "this or that is what music is about":
metaphor may help us better understand something without reducing the
thing to the metaphor itself.

In tonal music for instance we can speculate the kinds of expectations
that arise as a result of tonal functionality. To "understand" such
music one must experience such expectations, which may of course vary
from listener to listener or not be clear at all but nevertheless are
far from being arbitrary in relation to the intrinsic structure of the
music. It is through verbal communication that we know these
expectations do exist: there is a resolution! The problem with
contemporary music is that we do not have a common ground such as
tonality and the community of listeners/composers is very much
fragmented, which is not necessarily a bad thing but for me personally
it is important to accept that today's music cannot have been produced
in a vacuum so there must be cultural links with the past. I find the
most difficult thing is to get newcomers (to, say, EA music) to listen
for the 'right' things instead of searching for elements that just
aren't there (what I think Jim is doing with Xenakis). And this is
where language and metaphor can be useful.

I remember Birtwistle saying that listening to music is like watching
a game that you don't understand, you know something meaningful is
taking place but you can't quite point your finger at it.

Just reading Risset:

"According to François-Bernard Mâche, nature and mythical thinking
both reveal fundamental archetypes of form, which music should attempt
to revive (Cf.  Mâche, Grabocz, 1993)." Contemporary Music Review
(London) 15, 1/2, pp. 29-47, 1996

P

On 5 January 2011 20:20, Richard Dobson  wrote:
> On 05/01/2011 19:46, Jim Aikin wrote:
>>
>> On 1/5/2011 11:29 AM, Richard Dobson [via Csound] wrote:
>>  >
>>  > Not all minds are
>>  > alike - indeed the chance of any two minds being identical is
>>  > vanishingly small. Therefore ~something~ will always and inevitably get
>>  > changed, if not lost, in translation.
>>
>> Granted. But predicating a theory of communication on that fact is
>> granting an unwarranted primacy to the noise, while minimizing the
>> reality of the signal. If communication using words were less than
>> highly successful on average, the capacity for spoken language would
>> never have evolved.
>>
>
>
> But it is not a question of signal v noise - this is not a DSP issue, but
> one of (to take Pinker's book title) "how the mind works" - or  (to use your
> words re Xenakis) of " how the human brain perceives music", the very point
> your raised; something nobody really understands yet and may never (but we
> like to try). From your point of view the noise was not in the
> communications channel but in the "message" itself - it had no "semantic
> content" for you. It is not a problem peculiar to music, of course.
>
> If anything it relates more to the famous subtitles sequence in "Annie
> Hall". The difference with music is that the subtitles may be similar but
> different for each listener, and for the composer that is arguably a
> success. The same listener can "get" different things from the music at
> differnt times. It is even a measure of the importance of the music, how
> often that happens. That is not an issue of noise, but just the nature of
> what for want of a better word we call "communication".
>
> And we seem unable to escape the parallels between spoken/written language
> and music, however hard we try; and since so much more, good, bad and
> indifferenmt, has been written about verbal language by scientists, we have
> little choice but to take that as our starting point too, especially as we
> imagine we understand the nature of verbal language so well! But if someone
> such as Pinker can get things so wrong with regard to music (which makes me
> suspect he gets a lot of the other stuff wrong as well), it suggests that
> nothing can be taken for granted, and if Roy Harris can give us some tools
> with which to answer Pinker, that he might just take seriously, I think we
> need to give them every possible chance.
>
>
>
> Richard Dobson
>
>
>
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> csound"
>
>


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"Therefore," hyperbole can be lost on an eight-year-old.


Jim Aikin wrote:
> ... 
> That said, I don't think it's necessary to read an entire book in order 
> to recognize post-modern mumbo-jumbo. He is asserting that the 
> conveyance of ideas from one mind to another via the medium of words is 
> "a mythical enterprise that neither I nor anyone else could engage in." 
> And that's patently bullshit, because in writing that sentence, he 
> conveyed an idea from his mind to mine! Hello? This is not an echo 
> chamber. The idea was in his mind, and now it's in mine. Therefore, he's 
> wrong. An eight-year-old could spot the logical fallacy.
> 
> --JA


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Jim Aikin wrote:

> The question one is, then, compelled to ask, is this: Given that the 
> human brain seems so strongly to prefer music in the idiom of Bach, 
> Beethoven, Debussy, and so on, why did Xenakis feel that he ought to 
> throw that idiom overboard? What was he hoping to accomplish? He surely 

I am so fucking glad I don't have a human brain.


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On 4 Jan 2011, at 20:28, Rory Walsh wrote:

> I'm glad Xenakis didn't care about the typical concert goer. And I'm
> glad others before him stopped caring too. Otherwise we'd all be stuck
> listening to a Sheppard tone that starts around Bach's time, gets
> quite clear during the romantic era and fades out with Debussy; over
> and over and over again.

It's called Classic (or, for us, Lyric) FM


Joe

email:	info@joeofarrell.com
web:	www.joeofarrell.com

phone:	+353 85 788 8854

skype:	joeofarrell







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I have to admit Joe, I laughed hard when I read that. Of course you're
dead right!

On 7 January 2011 22:11, Joe O'Farrell  wrote:
> On 4 Jan 2011, at 20:28, Rory Walsh wrote:
>
>> I'm glad Xenakis didn't care about the typical concert goer. And I'm
>> glad others before him stopped caring too. Otherwise we'd all be stuck
>> listening to a Sheppard tone that starts around Bach's time, gets
>> quite clear during the romantic era and fades out with Debussy; over
>> and over and over again.
>
> It's called Classic (or, for us, Lyric) FM
>
>
> Joe
>
> email:  info@joeofarrell.com
> web:    www.joeofarrell.com
>
> phone:  +353 85 788 8854
>
> skype:  joeofarrell
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
>
>


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I think the "auditory cheesecake" refers to the superstimuli in the 
theory of evolution. In ancient times, sugar and fat were scarce, but 
beneficial, therefore we evolved to like these, so we would try to get 
as much of it as possible; it was about impossible to get too much of 
it. Today fat and sugar are in abundance, and we have invented new 
recipes to make them taste better, like cheesecake.

Some noises in nature were also signs of good things (maybe singing 
birds, meaning that if the birds can thrive in a certain place, humans 
could too). Music may be exploiting the same brain circuits, but in such 
a way they are activated more. Those circuits would have evolved to 
assign a value of, say, -1 to +1 to things that are commonly heard in 
nature, but other sounds might score better because evolution did not 
shape our brains for those sounds. That we would call music.

So to me the term "auditory cheesecake" is not offensive.

Mark

Aidan Collins wrote:
> I also wanted to quickly pipe in and defend the "auditory cheesecake"
> description.
> I do think that this idea wasn't intended to be as offensive as it
> sounds to us musicians. I think that comment should be considered in
> the context of hard-science, evolutionary-biology-style research. I
> think that it should translate to something more like, "We can't
> definitively prove a specific example where adaptations towards
> musicality can be proven to have benefited a species reproductively
> and caused a further separation from similar species without that
> adaptation."  I don't think the author's intent was to belittle music
> as a worthwhile pursuit, but that it's difficult to build a testable
> hypothesis around.
>
> -A
>   



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On 08/01/2011 20:19, Mark Van Peteghem wrote:
> I think the "auditory cheesecake" refers to the superstimuli in the
> theory of evolution. ...

That is not what Pinker is writing about.

> So to me the term "auditory cheesecake" is not offensive.
>

Pinker sees music (as indeed all the arts) as not biologically 
"adaptive" - i.e. while they give pleasure, they are insignificant in 
terms of our evolution: "[the arts] are not adaptive in the biologist's 
sense of the word".

And specifically on music:

"As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is 
useless"... "Music appears to be a pure pleasure technology".

And in between these:

"Cheesecake packs a sensual wallop unlike anything in the natural world 
because it is a brew of megadoses of agreeable stimuli which we 
concocted for the express purpose of pressing our pleasure button. 
Pornography is another pleasure technology. in this chapter I will 
suggest that the arts are a third.
"

Which of course ignores so much contrary (and very obvious) evidence 
from all over the place, that his argument is "so bad it is not even 
wrong". He gets away wiuth it becasue, I fear, many musicians themselves 
often do not realise just how important music is!  This is why I 
recommend everyone to buy and read the McGilchrist book for a very 
necessary and overdue redressing of the balance - and then write to 
educators, politicians, journals; generally kick up a fuss.

I leave it to others to decide what, if anything, in the above 
quotations,  is at all offensive!



Richard Dobson



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[long post!]

That all helps, but I an certain that it is much more fundamental. 
Without going into the whole thing as I should ( I need to write this up 
in some extended formally argued way) I have long held that humans have 
two at least equally important modes of thinking - "literalist" and 
"symbolical"; corresponding ~roughly~ to the modes of the left and right 
hemispheres as discussed so comprehensively by McGilchrist. The 
symbolical side is vital for (among other things) dealing with the new, 
the unexpected, the whole business of how we relate to the world and the 
environment. It is the measn by which we find ~meaning~ in things that 
are not in any obvious "literalist" way causally connected.

This faculty is essential in evolutionary terms in enabling us to cope 
with the perennial problem of not having complete information about 
anything. We have to rely on instinct, intuition, imagination, a manner 
of creative thinking that integrates all experiences, to survive and 
prosper. It also gives us a critical emotional foundation as we pursue 
and cultivate those meanings. This is more than a simple quetion of 
metaphor, important as that is. We have evolved to develop more and more 
complex languages or structures of meanings. It is my fundamental thesis 
that music presents the best possible training for that symbolical side, 
by being the most elaborate collection of symbols we have. each 
sound/note is a symbol; but each chord, phrase, sequence, is a symbol 
too. Musical tones have no literal causal connection - yet we cannot 
avoid, really, finding the combinations meaningful, even if (to begin 
with at least) we cannot consciously explain why. We often have to act 
before all the reasons for doing so are apparent.

The evidence is increasing all the time that our "musical" powers of 
cognition preceded language development and laid the essential 
foundation for its development. The development of a commonality of 
symbolical meanings greatly enhances the sense of the group, and the 
expressivity of the individual in that group. Of all the arts, I hold 
that music is supremely powerful in developing this capacity of the 
brain and mind. In short - scientists need it at least as much as the 
rest of us; and perhaps they actually need it ~more~. Einstein knew this 
- once when asked to give a speech, he decided to give a violin recital 
(Mozart) instead.  And any time a mathematician (e.g. Paul Dirac) 
asserts that this or that formula is "beautiful", they are invoking 
their symbolical mode of thinking - that formula has ~meaning~ beyond 
its mere function. Dirac went as far as to assert that a formula could 
only be trusted, was only likely to be correct, if it had beauty. 
Through that logic, he predicted the existence of the positron.


We can still use music for all those secondary activities such as 
impressing prospective mates etc; but it is by far the best system we 
have for developing (with discipline and collaborative left-brained 
organisation) the full and uniquely human scope and capacity of the 
mind. As such it is arguably more primary in evolutionary terms than 
language itself, and remains by far the best "brain training" to this 
day. If we had not developed this symbolical capacity we may well not 
have evolved and survived at all as species. The symbolical side of the 
human brain, as epitomised by the right cerebral hemisphere, was/is 
essential for our evolution - we have in effect an internal "symbolical 
imperative" without which we cannot thrive. Music (and the other arts) 
cultivates this capacity for symbolical understanding and mental 
entrainment, and may well be essential to it.

This is of course not dependent on some romantic idea of "music as an 
universal language' - the symbolical patterns we develop are almost of 
necessity culturally specific; it is nevertheless clear that the ease 
with which musicians from different cultures and backgrounds can share 
and communicate together demonstrates in some way the universality of 
our symbolical mode of thinking. Yes, clearly distinguishable fixed 
pitch classes are important, and are the easiest to exchange and 
replicate, but we can and need to be able to extend our symbolical 
capacity beyond those to more and more elaborate patterns; each 
perceived musical gesture adds a new idiom to our symbolical thinking.

This is where contemporary art and music (including Xenakis!) becomes so 
important - we need to keep feeding that symbolical aspect with new 
material (and old material presented or perceived in new ways) - 
literally to build new patterns of thinking that by definition can help 
us deal with new situations, relationships, and so on. It challenges our 
literalist left-brained mode of thinking by presenting new, surprising, 
perhaps even shocking information. In turn that analysis reciprocates 
into new symbolical mental patterns (almost like a sort of data 
compression - each "bit" of left-brained memory stands for an extensive 
multi-dimensional symbolical pattern), so that the next encounter 
becomes just that bit less bewildering; and we are primed and ready to 
discover and assimilate new patterns of meaning.

In conclusion, I think we musicians need to be much more ambitious in 
how we 'explain" and justify support for music. Sure, it can help 
attract material resources, potential mates, enhance our sense of 
well-being, cultivate and strengthen group and community cohesion and 
connectedness, etc; but we needed it in order to survive over all the 
millennia through which we evolved, and we need it now for our full and 
ongoing mental, emotional and physical health. It will help scientists 
be (even) better at what they do. It is the best tool we ever devised 
for maintaining and developing our symbolical modes of thinking, and 
gives vast scope to our literalist side too - it unites and integrates 
the two as no other single practice does. Practising music ~literally~ 
changes the brain - giving benefits in countless other seemingly 
unrelated areas of life.


Richard Dobson








On 08/01/2011 21:57, Jim Aikin wrote:
> I like Pinker's work in general, but he's clearly wrong about music.
>
> Music and dance evolved, in all probability, as fitness displays. The
> ability to memorize complex patterns and reproduce them, either verbally
> or with the limbs, would have demonstrated that the male (and it would
> usually have been a male) had good genes.
>
> Anyone who doubts this theory is invited to ask a rock star how much
> groupie action he gets.
>
> The same consideration would apply to athletic contests of all sorts, of
> course. I'm not up on the sports scene, but I'm pretty sure pro ball
> players have (if they want them) their own bevies of willing females.
>
> It's all about the cues that indicate good genes, said cues being
> recognized instinctively, with very little mediation on the part of the
> conscious mind. This may seem to be a cynical view, but really it's not.
> It's just a recognition that patterns of human behavior evolved because
> they were adaptive.
>



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Bravo!

Richard Dobson wrote:
> [long post!]
> 
> That all helps, but I an certain that it is much more fundamental. 
> Without going into the whole thing as I should ( I need to write this up 
> in some extended formally argued way) I have long held that humans have 
> two at least equally important modes of thinking - "literalist" and 
> "symbolical"; corresponding ~roughly~ to the modes of the left and right 
> hemispheres as discussed so comprehensively by McGilchrist. The 
> symbolical side is vital for (among other things) dealing with the new, 
> the unexpected, the whole business of how we relate to the world and the 
> environment. It is the measn by which we find ~meaning~ in things that 
> are not in any obvious "literalist" way causally connected.
> 
> This faculty is essential in evolutionary terms in enabling us to cope 
> with the perennial problem of not having complete information about 
> anything. We have to rely on instinct, intuition, imagination, a manner 
> of creative thinking that integrates all experiences, to survive and 
> prosper. It also gives us a critical emotional foundation as we pursue 
> and cultivate those meanings. This is more than a simple quetion of 
> metaphor, important as that is. We have evolved to develop more and more 
> complex languages or structures of meanings. It is my fundamental thesis 
> that music presents the best possible training for that symbolical side, 
> by being the most elaborate collection of symbols we have. each 
> sound/note is a symbol; but each chord, phrase, sequence, is a symbol 
> too. Musical tones have no literal causal connection - yet we cannot 
> avoid, really, finding the combinations meaningful, even if (to begin 
> with at least) we cannot consciously explain why. We often have to act 
> before all the reasons for doing so are apparent.
> 
> The evidence is increasing all the time that our "musical" powers of 
> cognition preceded language development and laid the essential 
> foundation for its development. The development of a commonality of 
> symbolical meanings greatly enhances the sense of the group, and the 
> expressivity of the individual in that group. Of all the arts, I hold 
> that music is supremely powerful in developing this capacity of the 
> brain and mind. In short - scientists need it at least as much as the 
> rest of us; and perhaps they actually need it ~more~. Einstein knew this 
> - once when asked to give a speech, he decided to give a violin recital 
> (Mozart) instead.  And any time a mathematician (e.g. Paul Dirac) 
> asserts that this or that formula is "beautiful", they are invoking 
> their symbolical mode of thinking - that formula has ~meaning~ beyond 
> its mere function. Dirac went as far as to assert that a formula could 
> only be trusted, was only likely to be correct, if it had beauty. 
> Through that logic, he predicted the existence of the positron.
> 
> 
> We can still use music for all those secondary activities such as 
> impressing prospective mates etc; but it is by far the best system we 
> have for developing (with discipline and collaborative left-brained 
> organisation) the full and uniquely human scope and capacity of the 
> mind. As such it is arguably more primary in evolutionary terms than 
> language itself, and remains by far the best "brain training" to this 
> day. If we had not developed this symbolical capacity we may well not 
> have evolved and survived at all as species. The symbolical side of the 
> human brain, as epitomised by the right cerebral hemisphere, was/is 
> essential for our evolution - we have in effect an internal "symbolical 
> imperative" without which we cannot thrive. Music (and the other arts) 
> cultivates this capacity for symbolical understanding and mental 
> entrainment, and may well be essential to it.
> 
> This is of course not dependent on some romantic idea of "music as an 
> universal language' - the symbolical patterns we develop are almost of 
> necessity culturally specific; it is nevertheless clear that the ease 
> with which musicians from different cultures and backgrounds can share 
> and communicate together demonstrates in some way the universality of 
> our symbolical mode of thinking. Yes, clearly distinguishable fixed 
> pitch classes are important, and are the easiest to exchange and 
> replicate, but we can and need to be able to extend our symbolical 
> capacity beyond those to more and more elaborate patterns; each 
> perceived musical gesture adds a new idiom to our symbolical thinking.
> 
> This is where contemporary art and music (including Xenakis!) becomes so 
> important - we need to keep feeding that symbolical aspect with new 
> material (and old material presented or perceived in new ways) - 
> literally to build new patterns of thinking that by definition can help 
> us deal with new situations, relationships, and so on. It challenges our 
> literalist left-brained mode of thinking by presenting new, surprising, 
> perhaps even shocking information. In turn that analysis reciprocates 
> into new symbolical mental patterns (almost like a sort of data 
> compression - each "bit" of left-brained memory stands for an extensive 
> multi-dimensional symbolical pattern), so that the next encounter 
> becomes just that bit less bewildering; and we are primed and ready to 
> discover and assimilate new patterns of meaning.
> 
> In conclusion, I think we musicians need to be much more ambitious in 
> how we 'explain" and justify support for music. Sure, it can help 
> attract material resources, potential mates, enhance our sense of 
> well-being, cultivate and strengthen group and community cohesion and 
> connectedness, etc; but we needed it in order to survive over all the 
> millennia through which we evolved, and we need it now for our full and 
> ongoing mental, emotional and physical health. It will help scientists 
> be (even) better at what they do. It is the best tool we ever devised 
> for maintaining and developing our symbolical modes of thinking, and 
> gives vast scope to our literalist side too - it unites and integrates 
> the two as no other single practice does. Practising music ~literally~ 
> changes the brain - giving benefits in countless other seemingly 
> unrelated areas of life.
> 
> 
> Richard Dobson
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 08/01/2011 21:57, Jim Aikin wrote:
>> I like Pinker's work in general, but he's clearly wrong about music.
>>
>> Music and dance evolved, in all probability, as fitness displays. The
>> ability to memorize complex patterns and reproduce them, either verbally
>> or with the limbs, would have demonstrated that the male (and it would
>> usually have been a male) had good genes.
>>
>> Anyone who doubts this theory is invited to ask a rock star how much
>> groupie action he gets.
>>
>> The same consideration would apply to athletic contests of all sorts, of
>> course. I'm not up on the sports scene, but I'm pretty sure pro ball
>> players have (if they want them) their own bevies of willing females.
>>
>> It's all about the cues that indicate good genes, said cues being
>> recognized instinctively, with very little mediation on the part of the
>> conscious mind. This may seem to be a cynical view, but really it's not.
>> It's just a recognition that patterns of human behavior evolved because
>> they were adaptive.
>>
> 
> 
> 
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe 
> csound"
> 
> 


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And yet, I find Cage's music to be very compelling. Does it matter the
intent of WHY he composed the music? I mean, there are a number of
composers who aspired to be "listened to", and yet, wrote very
UNLISTENABLE music...

Sorry, but I don't think Kenny G is worth listening to, even though I
am sure he wants people to listen.

I guess we all get out what we put into it, and I enjoy Cage's music
for the very simple, yet powerful, sonic landscapes he creates with
his music.

Mike

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 5:16 PM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
> On 1/4/2011 1:47 PM, Stéphane Rollandin [via Csound] wrote:
>>
>> John Cage has a very nice way to expose a similar relation to sound and
>> music in his book "Silence". I remember he wrote that he had a hard time
>> accepting the sound of its fridge, until he realized that it was the
>> like of a sonic sculpture, motionless. Then he could listen to the
>> fridge :)
>>
>> (and of course it's the whole point of 4'33, his silent piece: have the
>> audience listen to the actual sounds arising during the performance,
>> that have nothing to do with composition)
> Cage famously said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that
> is music." Which is very Zen, of course, but not, in the end, a very
> useful credo for a composer.
>
> My response to Cage is this: "You have nothing to say, and therefore I
> am going to spend my time listening to someone who does have something
> to say, and is saying it."
>
> The point of my aphoristic response is quite precise: The composer who
> abandons any attempt to communicate with an audience has also, of
> necessity, abandoned any interest in whether the audience is going to
> bother to listen. You can't simultaneously fail to communicate and
> expect that you'll be listened to!
>
> If you're satisfied never to be listened to, then Cage's Zen-based
> philosophy is just dandy. If, however, you aspire to be listened to,
> then you had better start out by deciding that you have something to
> say, and then go about saying it with all the passion and precision you
> can muster.
>
> --JA
>
>
> ________________________________
> View this message in context: Re: Xenakis
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>


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On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:16 AM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
> On 1/4/2011 1:47 PM, Stéphane Rollandin [via Csound] wrote:
>>
>> John Cage has a very nice way to expose a similar relation to sound and
>> music in his book "Silence". I remember he wrote that he had a hard time
>> accepting the sound of its fridge, until he realized that it was the
>> like of a sonic sculpture, motionless. Then he could listen to the
>> fridge :)
>>
>> (and of course it's the whole point of 4'33, his silent piece: have the
>> audience listen to the actual sounds arising during the performance,
>> that have nothing to do with composition)
> Cage famously said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that
> is music." Which is very Zen, of course, but not, in the end, a very
> useful credo for a composer.
>
> My response to Cage is this: "You have nothing to say, and therefore I
> am going to spend my time listening to someone who does have something
> to say, and is saying it."
>
> The point of my aphoristic response is quite precise: The composer who
> abandons any attempt to communicate with an audience has also, of
> necessity, abandoned any interest in whether the audience is going to
> bother to listen. You can't simultaneously fail to communicate and
> expect that you'll be listened to!

Very interesting points, Jim. I take the same approach, especially
with Cage. I'm really genuinely glad other people find value in his
works, but I don't get much from them. Several professors told me he
was great because he forced people to ask themselves what is music,
what is art, etc. I say great, but I've never stopped asking myself
those things, and if I'll never manage to listen to everything, then
I'd rather listen to music that inspires me by engaging my senses, by
seducing me, by showing me what music is rather than asking me a
question I'm already asking myself.
But I am certain there are enough artists who worked mostly for their
own fulfillment and yet reached huge audiences with the beauty of
their work. Franz Kafka? Charles Ives, another one whose music I don't
get into so much, but whose ideas and works have had a great
influence, and who, from what I know, had relatively little to do with
a career in music. Emily Dickinson. Poe was definitely trying to
communicate, but he was also writing compulsively, for his own inner
reasons. I'm sure there are lots of examples I can't think of right
now. Very shy, isolated people who are simply fascinated by their
materials, and create things that fascinate others as well. I don't
know if I'd put Cage in this category. He's always struck me as
someone who really liked attention.

-Chuckk


>
> If you're satisfied never to be listened to, then Cage's Zen-based
> philosophy is just dandy. If, however, you aspire to be listened to,
> then you had better start out by deciding that you have something to
> say, and then go about saying it with all the passion and precision you
> can muster.
>
> --JA
>
>
> ________________________________
> View this message in context: Re: Xenakis
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>



-- 
http://www.badmuthahubbard.com


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I had the same problem with Cage that I had with Mozart and Brahms: I
listened, but I couldn't hear the music. I played, but I couldn't get
or play (well) the music. After trying to play Mozart over a few years
I started to get the phrasing, and then I could hear Mozart. After
decades (!) of trying to hear Brahms, one day I just could, and it was
great.

With Cage, I always found his ideas interesting, but I just could not
hear or enjoy the pieces. They seemed at best mildly interesting. Then
I heard a chamber group who specializes in Cage play some of his
pieces. A revelation -- intense, involving, couldn't not listen,
beautiful. Some of the best music I ever heard. I still don't care for
all of his work, but some other performances I've heard really stand
out musically, e.g. Joan La Barbara in "Singing Through," or Paul
Hillier in "Litany for the Whale." Also, a performance of Atlas
Eclipticalis conducted by Cage himself.

I think Cage demands far more of performers even than Mozart, and
that's part of the problem. Music that is played by people who don't
get it is no fun.

I find Cage has plenty to say, and I think he was somewhat rhetorical
and puckish in his writings and statements. I also think, after
composing some pieces of my own using some of Cage's methods, that he
exercised a great deal of care, selection, and good taste in pieces
that might seem to be totally random. I think he used randomness and
natural processes as sources of materials that he imposed his own
organization on, and this organization is critical to the success of
the pieces. But so are the randomness and the natural processes, and
that was his originality -- to show how these things could be used to
make real music.

Regards,
Mike

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Chuckk Hubbard
 wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:16 AM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>> On 1/4/2011 1:47 PM, Stéphane Rollandin [via Csound] wrote:
>>>
>>> John Cage has a very nice way to expose a similar relation to sound and
>>> music in his book "Silence". I remember he wrote that he had a hard time
>>> accepting the sound of its fridge, until he realized that it was the
>>> like of a sonic sculpture, motionless. Then he could listen to the
>>> fridge :)
>>>
>>> (and of course it's the whole point of 4'33, his silent piece: have the
>>> audience listen to the actual sounds arising during the performance,
>>> that have nothing to do with composition)
>> Cage famously said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that
>> is music." Which is very Zen, of course, but not, in the end, a very
>> useful credo for a composer.
>>
>> My response to Cage is this: "You have nothing to say, and therefore I
>> am going to spend my time listening to someone who does have something
>> to say, and is saying it."
>>
>> The point of my aphoristic response is quite precise: The composer who
>> abandons any attempt to communicate with an audience has also, of
>> necessity, abandoned any interest in whether the audience is going to
>> bother to listen. You can't simultaneously fail to communicate and
>> expect that you'll be listened to!
>
> Very interesting points, Jim. I take the same approach, especially
> with Cage. I'm really genuinely glad other people find value in his
> works, but I don't get much from them. Several professors told me he
> was great because he forced people to ask themselves what is music,
> what is art, etc. I say great, but I've never stopped asking myself
> those things, and if I'll never manage to listen to everything, then
> I'd rather listen to music that inspires me by engaging my senses, by
> seducing me, by showing me what music is rather than asking me a
> question I'm already asking myself.
> But I am certain there are enough artists who worked mostly for their
> own fulfillment and yet reached huge audiences with the beauty of
> their work. Franz Kafka? Charles Ives, another one whose music I don't
> get into so much, but whose ideas and works have had a great
> influence, and who, from what I know, had relatively little to do with
> a career in music. Emily Dickinson. Poe was definitely trying to
> communicate, but he was also writing compulsively, for his own inner
> reasons. I'm sure there are lots of examples I can't think of right
> now. Very shy, isolated people who are simply fascinated by their
> materials, and create things that fascinate others as well. I don't
> know if I'd put Cage in this category. He's always struck me as
> someone who really liked attention.
>
> -Chuckk
>
>
>>
>> If you're satisfied never to be listened to, then Cage's Zen-based
>> philosophy is just dandy. If, however, you aspire to be listened to,
>> then you had better start out by deciding that you have something to
>> say, and then go about saying it with all the passion and precision you
>> can muster.
>>
>> --JA
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> View this message in context: Re: Xenakis
>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.badmuthahubbard.com
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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I'm the same way.

I understand it, but my view on it is that those questions were
already answered long ago at the beginning of the development of music
as an art form. I guess it's valid to question all those years of
development, but putting yourself out there like that in a narcissist
fashion only to rip everything apart and force new ideas no matter how
good they really were does not impress me at all.

My opinion as to what really happened is contemporary art started to
hit a brick wall while trying to push the envelope too hard especially
nearing the mid 20th century. There were a few blips on the radar that
have carried it on such as the electric guitar, synthesizers, and
computer music but the serious academic world has really never
recovered.

I think the visual/technical/sound scape/music "new media" projects
are probably the last great achievement in modern art and it's
basically all downhill from here. The popular music scene seems to be
in the same boat. To me, many of the things that have a large
historical background (not only music) have been simply developed to
death. I guess the question is, how far CAN you go into the great
beyond before your output loses meaning, and at what point does it
become a lie?

Personally, I think lots of the key people from this era/genre of art
are really bat crazy, yoko ono included.

Here's an off subject but related laugh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYqCpvzXGTE

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 2:05 PM, Chuckk Hubbard
 wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:16 AM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>> On 1/4/2011 1:47 PM, Stéphane Rollandin [via Csound] wrote:
>>>
>>> John Cage has a very nice way to expose a similar relation to sound and
>>> music in his book "Silence". I remember he wrote that he had a hard time
>>> accepting the sound of its fridge, until he realized that it was the
>>> like of a sonic sculpture, motionless. Then he could listen to the
>>> fridge :)
>>>
>>> (and of course it's the whole point of 4'33, his silent piece: have the
>>> audience listen to the actual sounds arising during the performance,
>>> that have nothing to do with composition)
>> Cage famously said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that
>> is music." Which is very Zen, of course, but not, in the end, a very
>> useful credo for a composer.
>>
>> My response to Cage is this: "You have nothing to say, and therefore I
>> am going to spend my time listening to someone who does have something
>> to say, and is saying it."
>>
>> The point of my aphoristic response is quite precise: The composer who
>> abandons any attempt to communicate with an audience has also, of
>> necessity, abandoned any interest in whether the audience is going to
>> bother to listen. You can't simultaneously fail to communicate and
>> expect that you'll be listened to!
>
> Very interesting points, Jim. I take the same approach, especially
> with Cage. I'm really genuinely glad other people find value in his
> works, but I don't get much from them. Several professors told me he
> was great because he forced people to ask themselves what is music,
> what is art, etc. I say great, but I've never stopped asking myself
> those things, and if I'll never manage to listen to everything, then
> I'd rather listen to music that inspires me by engaging my senses, by
> seducing me, by showing me what music is rather than asking me a
> question I'm already asking myself.
> But I am certain there are enough artists who worked mostly for their
> own fulfillment and yet reached huge audiences with the beauty of
> their work. Franz Kafka? Charles Ives, another one whose music I don't
> get into so much, but whose ideas and works have had a great
> influence, and who, from what I know, had relatively little to do with
> a career in music. Emily Dickinson. Poe was definitely trying to
> communicate, but he was also writing compulsively, for his own inner
> reasons. I'm sure there are lots of examples I can't think of right
> now. Very shy, isolated people who are simply fascinated by their
> materials, and create things that fascinate others as well. I don't
> know if I'd put Cage in this category. He's always struck me as
> someone who really liked attention.
>
> -Chuckk
>
>
>>
>> If you're satisfied never to be listened to, then Cage's Zen-based
>> philosophy is just dandy. If, however, you aspire to be listened to,
>> then you had better start out by deciding that you have something to
>> say, and then go about saying it with all the passion and precision you
>> can muster.
>>
>> --JA
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> View this message in context: Re: Xenakis
>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.badmuthahubbard.com
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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Its going downhill because we haven't integrated with the rest of
world music. When I pull from Maqam music I have a whole new unique
pallete for music and sounds that I couldn't get even from my jazz and
new music training. American music is too trapped in copying its own
history, whether its the White Stripes being heralded as ground
breaking when they play a re-hash of blues and indie rock that is
nothing unique at all. The music of countries like France is enriched
by the influence of North African music and culture.

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Josh Moore  wrote:
> I'm the same way.
>
> I understand it, but my view on it is that those questions were
> already answered long ago at the beginning of the development of music
> as an art form. I guess it's valid to question all those years of
> development, but putting yourself out there like that in a narcissist
> fashion only to rip everything apart and force new ideas no matter how
> good they really were does not impress me at all.
>
> My opinion as to what really happened is contemporary art started to
> hit a brick wall while trying to push the envelope too hard especially
> nearing the mid 20th century. There were a few blips on the radar that
> have carried it on such as the electric guitar, synthesizers, and
> computer music but the serious academic world has really never
> recovered.
>
> I think the visual/technical/sound scape/music "new media" projects
> are probably the last great achievement in modern art and it's
> basically all downhill from here. The popular music scene seems to be
> in the same boat. To me, many of the things that have a large
> historical background (not only music) have been simply developed to
> death. I guess the question is, how far CAN you go into the great
> beyond before your output loses meaning, and at what point does it
> become a lie?
>
> Personally, I think lots of the key people from this era/genre of art
> are really bat crazy, yoko ono included.
>
> Here's an off subject but related laugh:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYqCpvzXGTE
>
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 2:05 PM, Chuckk Hubbard
>  wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:16 AM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>>> On 1/4/2011 1:47 PM, Stéphane Rollandin [via Csound] wrote:
>>>>
>>>> John Cage has a very nice way to expose a similar relation to sound and
>>>> music in his book "Silence". I remember he wrote that he had a hard time
>>>> accepting the sound of its fridge, until he realized that it was the
>>>> like of a sonic sculpture, motionless. Then he could listen to the
>>>> fridge :)
>>>>
>>>> (and of course it's the whole point of 4'33, his silent piece: have the
>>>> audience listen to the actual sounds arising during the performance,
>>>> that have nothing to do with composition)
>>> Cage famously said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that
>>> is music." Which is very Zen, of course, but not, in the end, a very
>>> useful credo for a composer.
>>>
>>> My response to Cage is this: "You have nothing to say, and therefore I
>>> am going to spend my time listening to someone who does have something
>>> to say, and is saying it."
>>>
>>> The point of my aphoristic response is quite precise: The composer who
>>> abandons any attempt to communicate with an audience has also, of
>>> necessity, abandoned any interest in whether the audience is going to
>>> bother to listen. You can't simultaneously fail to communicate and
>>> expect that you'll be listened to!
>>
>> Very interesting points, Jim. I take the same approach, especially
>> with Cage. I'm really genuinely glad other people find value in his
>> works, but I don't get much from them. Several professors told me he
>> was great because he forced people to ask themselves what is music,
>> what is art, etc. I say great, but I've never stopped asking myself
>> those things, and if I'll never manage to listen to everything, then
>> I'd rather listen to music that inspires me by engaging my senses, by
>> seducing me, by showing me what music is rather than asking me a
>> question I'm already asking myself.
>> But I am certain there are enough artists who worked mostly for their
>> own fulfillment and yet reached huge audiences with the beauty of
>> their work. Franz Kafka? Charles Ives, another one whose music I don't
>> get into so much, but whose ideas and works have had a great
>> influence, and who, from what I know, had relatively little to do with
>> a career in music. Emily Dickinson. Poe was definitely trying to
>> communicate, but he was also writing compulsively, for his own inner
>> reasons. I'm sure there are lots of examples I can't think of right
>> now. Very shy, isolated people who are simply fascinated by their
>> materials, and create things that fascinate others as well. I don't
>> know if I'd put Cage in this category. He's always struck me as
>> someone who really liked attention.
>>
>> -Chuckk
>>
>>
>>>
>>> If you're satisfied never to be listened to, then Cage's Zen-based
>>> philosophy is just dandy. If, however, you aspire to be listened to,
>>> then you had better start out by deciding that you have something to
>>> say, and then go about saying it with all the passion and precision you
>>> can muster.
>>>
>>> --JA
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> View this message in context: Re: Xenakis
>>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://www.badmuthahubbard.com
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>
>>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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Well yeah, but that's why synthesizers are great too. You can get
sounds that nothing else on this planet reproduces. When I said that
statement I was focused more on the transition from standard classical
music score into 12 tone stuff and the madness that followed.

Basically composers were trying to get out of a rut sonic wise so they
chose obscurity to push the envelope. There are a few that took these
beginning ideas and made something of it though, such as Sonic Youth
and contemporary electronic music.

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 3:11 PM, Brian Redfern  wrote:
> Its going downhill because we haven't integrated with the rest of
> world music. When I pull from Maqam music I have a whole new unique
> pallete for music and sounds that I couldn't get even from my jazz and
> new music training. American music is too trapped in copying its own
> history, whether its the White Stripes being heralded as ground
> breaking when they play a re-hash of blues and indie rock that is
> nothing unique at all. The music of countries like France is enriched
> by the influence of North African music and culture.
>
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Josh Moore  wrote:
>> I'm the same way.
>>
>> I understand it, but my view on it is that those questions were
>> already answered long ago at the beginning of the development of music
>> as an art form. I guess it's valid to question all those years of
>> development, but putting yourself out there like that in a narcissist
>> fashion only to rip everything apart and force new ideas no matter how
>> good they really were does not impress me at all.
>>
>> My opinion as to what really happened is contemporary art started to
>> hit a brick wall while trying to push the envelope too hard especially
>> nearing the mid 20th century. There were a few blips on the radar that
>> have carried it on such as the electric guitar, synthesizers, and
>> computer music but the serious academic world has really never
>> recovered.
>>
>> I think the visual/technical/sound scape/music "new media" projects
>> are probably the last great achievement in modern art and it's
>> basically all downhill from here. The popular music scene seems to be
>> in the same boat. To me, many of the things that have a large
>> historical background (not only music) have been simply developed to
>> death. I guess the question is, how far CAN you go into the great
>> beyond before your output loses meaning, and at what point does it
>> become a lie?
>>
>> Personally, I think lots of the key people from this era/genre of art
>> are really bat crazy, yoko ono included.
>>
>> Here's an off subject but related laugh:
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYqCpvzXGTE
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 2:05 PM, Chuckk Hubbard
>>  wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:16 AM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>>>> On 1/4/2011 1:47 PM, Stéphane Rollandin [via Csound] wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> John Cage has a very nice way to expose a similar relation to sound and
>>>>> music in his book "Silence". I remember he wrote that he had a hard time
>>>>> accepting the sound of its fridge, until he realized that it was the
>>>>> like of a sonic sculpture, motionless. Then he could listen to the
>>>>> fridge :)
>>>>>
>>>>> (and of course it's the whole point of 4'33, his silent piece: have the
>>>>> audience listen to the actual sounds arising during the performance,
>>>>> that have nothing to do with composition)
>>>> Cage famously said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that
>>>> is music." Which is very Zen, of course, but not, in the end, a very
>>>> useful credo for a composer.
>>>>
>>>> My response to Cage is this: "You have nothing to say, and therefore I
>>>> am going to spend my time listening to someone who does have something
>>>> to say, and is saying it."
>>>>
>>>> The point of my aphoristic response is quite precise: The composer who
>>>> abandons any attempt to communicate with an audience has also, of
>>>> necessity, abandoned any interest in whether the audience is going to
>>>> bother to listen. You can't simultaneously fail to communicate and
>>>> expect that you'll be listened to!
>>>
>>> Very interesting points, Jim. I take the same approach, especially
>>> with Cage. I'm really genuinely glad other people find value in his
>>> works, but I don't get much from them. Several professors told me he
>>> was great because he forced people to ask themselves what is music,
>>> what is art, etc. I say great, but I've never stopped asking myself
>>> those things, and if I'll never manage to listen to everything, then
>>> I'd rather listen to music that inspires me by engaging my senses, by
>>> seducing me, by showing me what music is rather than asking me a
>>> question I'm already asking myself.
>>> But I am certain there are enough artists who worked mostly for their
>>> own fulfillment and yet reached huge audiences with the beauty of
>>> their work. Franz Kafka? Charles Ives, another one whose music I don't
>>> get into so much, but whose ideas and works have had a great
>>> influence, and who, from what I know, had relatively little to do with
>>> a career in music. Emily Dickinson. Poe was definitely trying to
>>> communicate, but he was also writing compulsively, for his own inner
>>> reasons. I'm sure there are lots of examples I can't think of right
>>> now. Very shy, isolated people who are simply fascinated by their
>>> materials, and create things that fascinate others as well. I don't
>>> know if I'd put Cage in this category. He's always struck me as
>>> someone who really liked attention.
>>>
>>> -Chuckk
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> If you're satisfied never to be listened to, then Cage's Zen-based
>>>> philosophy is just dandy. If, however, you aspire to be listened to,
>>>> then you had better start out by deciding that you have something to
>>>> say, and then go about saying it with all the passion and precision you
>>>> can muster.
>>>>
>>>> --JA
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________
>>>> View this message in context: Re: Xenakis
>>>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://www.badmuthahubbard.com
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>
>>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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On 01/02/2011 07:12, Jim Aikin wrote:
..
>
> I'm not sure it's desirable that one let go of all of one's ideas about
> what music should be. If one truly does that, one has no basis on which
> to compose anything. Any act of music composition involves, of
> necessity, innumerable choices about what should and should not be
> included.
>

So much hangs on the choice of words, and a ready (almost invisible) 
conflation of the personal with the universal. Replace "should" with 
"could" and I think you have a better picture of things world-wide. ~Of 
Course~, all composers are in general selective; they decide perhaps on 
a piece by piece basis what idioms and styles they wish to 
include/exclude. So we can say they are perhaps declaring what "music 
should be" for them, at that moment. It is a very big step however to go 
beyond and assert that that is what must "should" be in general. I don't 
think anyone can ever say that. To that degree, I think that the less we 
attach ourselves to "should" the better. Why arbitrarily exclude 
anything that may one day be useful?
..
>
> I seem to recall reading about an encounter between John Cage and Brian
> Eno, near the end of Cage's life. After listening to one of Eno's
> ambient pieces, Cage said he didn't care so much for the notes, but he
> liked the spaces between the notes a great deal. I would say that remark
> shows that Cage had very clear ideas about what music should and should
> not sound like.


Well, as you quote it, he made no moral imperative argument ( no use of 
"should"); he merely, and directly, said what he did and didn't like. 
That is in the end is all anyone can honestly say, unless they have "an 
agenda". It would be wrong on that basis to impute to him any moral 
assertion as to what was in some universal sense good or bad. So rather 
than saying he had "very clear ideas about what music should and should 
not sound like", the example shows that he had very clear ideas about 
what he did and didn't like. A Very different statement!


Richard Dobson



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Information is merely what can be measured in some phenomenon that
enables the discrimination of "yes" from "no" questions. Meaning is
what the questions are about. Without the information, you don't know
what meaning to affirm, you don't know what the meaning is. Without
meaning, the information is meaningless.

Regards,
Mike

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Justin Glenn Smith  wrote:
> My mentor, Herbert Brün, had some interesting things to say about Shannon's theory of communication - he actually used it as a *basis* for the need to experiment.
>
> My sloppy late night email version is that meanings are not fixed and there is an entropy in meaning - as messages are repeated, the very repetition changes, and eventually diminishes, meaning. Think of the significance of a hard backbeat today (people take for granted it should be there, and sometimes even forget whether a particular song even has a hard backbeat or not) vs. the 1950s (it was a surprise, a new aggression and violent impulse in pop music, it carried connotations of debauchery). I am sure we have all at some point as a child said a word enough times in a row that it lost all meaning. The role of the composer is to refresh our wells of meaning and retard the decay of music as the inevitable repetition and quotation from one generation to the next diminishes the significance of established forms, and increases the entropy (thus decreasing the bandwidth) of music as a medium for communication of feelings and ideas.
>
> Herbert always told me to use shorter sentences, but I do hope my tired attempt conveyed something regardless.
>
> DavidW wrote:
>> Thanks for your sensible contribution to the topic, Richard. It was
>> starting to sound like the professions of the faithful to the One True
>> Church of Musical Communication. If we examine the historical record, we
>> can see that it would be more accurate to further qualify your
>> individual "should" to mostly "could"s, i.e most composers have heard,
>> and often provided multiple "solutions" to musical "problems" - some
>> times in the same work, sometime in multiple reworkings.
>>
>> As for the whole communication thing, I'm afraid I just don't get it. I
>> see the intention to communicate, the need to reach out to one's fellow
>> human beings, and unfortunately not often enough IMO to other creatures,
>> but the idea that communication is about the sending and receiving of
>> messages containing specific meanings is wacky, and completely
>> misinformed about the nature of art, and even the concept of
>> communication. Unfortunately many computer-savy people confuse
>> communication as per Shannon's theory, with human communication, which
>> it is not.
>>
>> drw
>>
>> On 01/02/2011, at 8:24 PM, Richard Dobson wrote:
>>> On 01/02/2011 07:12, Jim Aikin wrote:
>>> ..
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure it's desirable that one let go of all of one's ideas about
>>>> what music should be. If one truly does that, one has no basis on which
>>>> to compose anything. Any act of music composition involves, of
>>>> necessity, innumerable choices about what should and should not be
>>>> included.
>>>>
>>>
>>> So much hangs on the choice of words, and a ready (almost invisible)
>>> conflation of the personal with the universal. Replace "should" with
>>> "could" and I think you have a better picture of things world-wide.
>>> ~Of Course~, all composers are in general selective; they decide
>>> perhaps on a piece by piece basis what idioms and styles they wish to
>>> include/exclude. So we can say they are perhaps declaring what "music
>>> should be" for them, at that moment. It is a very big step however to
>>> go beyond and assert that that is what must "should" be in general. I
>>> don't think anyone can ever say that. To that degree, I think that the
>>> less we attach ourselves to "should" the better. Why arbitrarily
>>> exclude anything that may one day be useful?
>>>
>>
>> ________________________________________________
>> Dr David Worrall.
>> - Experimental Polymedia:      worrall.avatar.com.au
>> - Sonification: www.sonification.com.au
>> - Education for Financial Independence: www.mindthemarkets.com.au
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>> csound"
>>
>>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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I think this is the longest thread I've ever encountered.

Anyone seen this? There is a discussion about Brahms half way through.
(Not a big fan of Babbit myself).

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2011/01/31/133372983/npr-exclusive-new-documentary-on-the-late-composer-milton-babbitt

P

On 2 February 2011 13:25, Michael Gogins  wrote:
> Information is merely what can be measured in some phenomenon that
> enables the discrimination of "yes" from "no" questions. Meaning is
> what the questions are about. Without the information, you don't know
> what meaning to affirm, you don't know what the meaning is. Without
> meaning, the information is meaningless.
>
> Regards,
> Mike
>
> On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Justin Glenn Smith  wrote:
>> My mentor, Herbert Brün, had some interesting things to say about Shannon's theory of communication - he actually used it as a *basis* for the need to experiment.
>>
>> My sloppy late night email version is that meanings are not fixed and there is an entropy in meaning - as messages are repeated, the very repetition changes, and eventually diminishes, meaning. Think of the significance of a hard backbeat today (people take for granted it should be there, and sometimes even forget whether a particular song even has a hard backbeat or not) vs. the 1950s (it was a surprise, a new aggression and violent impulse in pop music, it carried connotations of debauchery). I am sure we have all at some point as a child said a word enough times in a row that it lost all meaning. The role of the composer is to refresh our wells of meaning and retard the decay of music as the inevitable repetition and quotation from one generation to the next diminishes the significance of established forms, and increases the entropy (thus decreasing the bandwidth) of music as a medium for communication of feelings and ideas.
>>
>> Herbert always told me to use shorter sentences, but I do hope my tired attempt conveyed something regardless.
>>
>> DavidW wrote:
>>> Thanks for your sensible contribution to the topic, Richard. It was
>>> starting to sound like the professions of the faithful to the One True
>>> Church of Musical Communication. If we examine the historical record, we
>>> can see that it would be more accurate to further qualify your
>>> individual "should" to mostly "could"s, i.e most composers have heard,
>>> and often provided multiple "solutions" to musical "problems" - some
>>> times in the same work, sometime in multiple reworkings.
>>>
>>> As for the whole communication thing, I'm afraid I just don't get it. I
>>> see the intention to communicate, the need to reach out to one's fellow
>>> human beings, and unfortunately not often enough IMO to other creatures,
>>> but the idea that communication is about the sending and receiving of
>>> messages containing specific meanings is wacky, and completely
>>> misinformed about the nature of art, and even the concept of
>>> communication. Unfortunately many computer-savy people confuse
>>> communication as per Shannon's theory, with human communication, which
>>> it is not.
>>>
>>> drw
>>>
>>> On 01/02/2011, at 8:24 PM, Richard Dobson wrote:
>>>> On 01/02/2011 07:12, Jim Aikin wrote:
>>>> ..
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not sure it's desirable that one let go of all of one's ideas about
>>>>> what music should be. If one truly does that, one has no basis on which
>>>>> to compose anything. Any act of music composition involves, of
>>>>> necessity, innumerable choices about what should and should not be
>>>>> included.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So much hangs on the choice of words, and a ready (almost invisible)
>>>> conflation of the personal with the universal. Replace "should" with
>>>> "could" and I think you have a better picture of things world-wide.
>>>> ~Of Course~, all composers are in general selective; they decide
>>>> perhaps on a piece by piece basis what idioms and styles they wish to
>>>> include/exclude. So we can say they are perhaps declaring what "music
>>>> should be" for them, at that moment. It is a very big step however to
>>>> go beyond and assert that that is what must "should" be in general. I
>>>> don't think anyone can ever say that. To that degree, I think that the
>>>> less we attach ourselves to "should" the better. Why arbitrarily
>>>> exclude anything that may one day be useful?
>>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________________________
>>> Dr David Worrall.
>>> - Experimental Polymedia:      worrall.avatar.com.au
>>> - Sonification: www.sonification.com.au
>>> - Education for Financial Independence: www.mindthemarkets.com.au
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>> csound"
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> Michael Gogins
> Irreducible Productions
> http://www.michael-gogins.com
> Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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>
>


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hi

i'm back in this thread again.

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Justin Glenn Smith  wrote:
> The role of the composer is to refresh our wells of meaning and retard the decay of music as the inevitable repetition and quotation from one generation to the next diminishes the significance of established forms, and increases the entropy (thus decreasing the bandwidth) of music as a medium for communication of feelings and ideas.

there is no agreed upon 'role of composer.'  i'd say the best
statement of the role of the composer is to 'write music.' anything
else is more about the writer of a statement concerning the role of
the composer than it is about the role of the composer itself.

and i don't even know what the phrase 'decay of music' means. the only
thing i can pull out of it is that the writer has some notion of what
he thinks music should be, and anything that doesn't measure up is a
force for decay. i'm not at all sure this is what the writer means.

also, your comment about 'diminishing the significance of established
forms' is puzzling to me. what would you say about the shostakovich
preludes and fugues? do they diminish bach? some artists have
something to say by doing the same thing their predecessors did. they
may even have something significant to say about the past and our
relationship to it.

am i completely misunderstanding what you are saying?

music can be crap of any period or style. conversely, it can be
enthralling. i went to music school for many years and finally learned
that if you like it, it's good.

-- 
\js : "verbing weirds language." -calvin  [http://or8.net/~johns/]


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Harking back to some earlier discussion, I see Cage mainly as
the great invalidator of "Music [should|shouldn't]..." assertions.

Michael Gogins wrote:
> I had the same problem with Cage that I had with Mozart and Brahms: I
> listened, but I couldn't hear the music. I played, but I couldn't get
> or play (well) the music. After trying to play Mozart over a few years
> I started to get the phrasing, and then I could hear Mozart. After
> decades (!) of trying to hear Brahms, one day I just could, and it was
> great.
> 
> With Cage, I always found his ideas interesting, but I just could not
> hear or enjoy the pieces. They seemed at best mildly interesting. Then
> I heard a chamber group who specializes in Cage play some of his
> pieces. A revelation -- intense, involving, couldn't not listen,
> beautiful. Some of the best music I ever heard. I still don't care for
> all of his work, but some other performances I've heard really stand
> out musically, e.g. Joan La Barbara in "Singing Through," or Paul
> Hillier in "Litany for the Whale." Also, a performance of Atlas
> Eclipticalis conducted by Cage himself.
> 
> I think Cage demands far more of performers even than Mozart, and
> that's part of the problem. Music that is played by people who don't
> get it is no fun.
> 
> I find Cage has plenty to say, and I think he was somewhat rhetorical
> and puckish in his writings and statements. I also think, after
> composing some pieces of my own using some of Cage's methods, that he
> exercised a great deal of care, selection, and good taste in pieces
> that might seem to be totally random. I think he used randomness and
> natural processes as sources of materials that he imposed his own
> organization on, and this organization is critical to the success of
> the pieces. But so are the randomness and the natural processes, and
> that was his originality -- to show how these things could be used to
> make real music.
> 
> Regards,
> Mike
> 
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Chuckk Hubbard
>  wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:16 AM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>>> On 1/4/2011 1:47 PM, Stéphane Rollandin [via Csound] wrote:
>>>> John Cage has a very nice way to expose a similar relation to sound and
>>>> music in his book "Silence". I remember he wrote that he had a hard time
>>>> accepting the sound of its fridge, until he realized that it was the
>>>> like of a sonic sculpture, motionless. Then he could listen to the
>>>> fridge :)
>>>>
>>>> (and of course it's the whole point of 4'33, his silent piece: have the
>>>> audience listen to the actual sounds arising during the performance,
>>>> that have nothing to do with composition)
>>> Cage famously said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that
>>> is music." Which is very Zen, of course, but not, in the end, a very
>>> useful credo for a composer.
>>>
>>> My response to Cage is this: "You have nothing to say, and therefore I
>>> am going to spend my time listening to someone who does have something
>>> to say, and is saying it."
>>>
>>> The point of my aphoristic response is quite precise: The composer who
>>> abandons any attempt to communicate with an audience has also, of
>>> necessity, abandoned any interest in whether the audience is going to
>>> bother to listen. You can't simultaneously fail to communicate and
>>> expect that you'll be listened to!
>> Very interesting points, Jim. I take the same approach, especially
>> with Cage. I'm really genuinely glad other people find value in his
>> works, but I don't get much from them. Several professors told me he
>> was great because he forced people to ask themselves what is music,
>> what is art, etc. I say great, but I've never stopped asking myself
>> those things, and if I'll never manage to listen to everything, then
>> I'd rather listen to music that inspires me by engaging my senses, by
>> seducing me, by showing me what music is rather than asking me a
>> question I'm already asking myself.
>> But I am certain there are enough artists who worked mostly for their
>> own fulfillment and yet reached huge audiences with the beauty of
>> their work. Franz Kafka? Charles Ives, another one whose music I don't
>> get into so much, but whose ideas and works have had a great
>> influence, and who, from what I know, had relatively little to do with
>> a career in music. Emily Dickinson. Poe was definitely trying to
>> communicate, but he was also writing compulsively, for his own inner
>> reasons. I'm sure there are lots of examples I can't think of right
>> now. Very shy, isolated people who are simply fascinated by their
>> materials, and create things that fascinate others as well. I don't
>> know if I'd put Cage in this category. He's always struck me as
>> someone who really liked attention.
>>
>> -Chuckk
>>
>>
>>> If you're satisfied never to be listened to, then Cage's Zen-based
>>> philosophy is just dandy. If, however, you aspire to be listened to,
>>> then you had better start out by deciding that you have something to
>>> say, and then go about saying it with all the passion and precision you
>>> can muster.
>>>
>>> --JA
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> View this message in context: Re: Xenakis
>>> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://www.badmuthahubbard.com
>>
>>
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>>
>>
> 
> 
> 


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Hah -- I'm recalling "42" from A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Michael Gogins wrote:
> Information is merely what can be measured in some phenomenon that
> enables the discrimination of "yes" from "no" questions. Meaning is
> what the questions are about. Without the information, you don't know
> what meaning to affirm, you don't know what the meaning is. Without
> meaning, the information is meaningless.
> 
> Regards,
> Mike
> 
> On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Justin Glenn Smith  wrote:
>> My mentor, Herbert Brün, had some interesting things to say about Shannon's theory of communication - he actually used it as a *basis* for the need to experiment.
>>
>> My sloppy late night email version is that meanings are not fixed and there is an entropy in meaning - as messages are repeated, the very repetition changes, and eventually diminishes, meaning. Think of the significance of a hard backbeat today (people take for granted it should be there, and sometimes even forget whether a particular song even has a hard backbeat or not) vs. the 1950s (it was a surprise, a new aggression and violent impulse in pop music, it carried connotations of debauchery). I am sure we have all at some point as a child said a word enough times in a row that it lost all meaning. The role of the composer is to refresh our wells of meaning and retard the decay of music as the inevitable repetition and quotation from one generation to the next diminishes the significan
 ce of established forms, and increases the entropy (thus decreasing the bandwidth) of music as a medium for communication of feelings and ideas.
>>
>> Herbert always told me to use shorter sentences, but I do hope my tired attempt conveyed something regardless.
>>
>> DavidW wrote:
>>> Thanks for your sensible contribution to the topic, Richard. It was
>>> starting to sound like the professions of the faithful to the One True
>>> Church of Musical Communication. If we examine the historical record, we
>>> can see that it would be more accurate to further qualify your
>>> individual "should" to mostly "could"s, i.e most composers have heard,
>>> and often provided multiple "solutions" to musical "problems" - some
>>> times in the same work, sometime in multiple reworkings.
>>>
>>> As for the whole communication thing, I'm afraid I just don't get it. I
>>> see the intention to communicate, the need to reach out to one's fellow
>>> human beings, and unfortunately not often enough IMO to other creatures,
>>> but the idea that communication is about the sending and receiving of
>>> messages containing specific meanings is wacky, and completely
>>> misinformed about the nature of art, and even the concept of
>>> communication. Unfortunately many computer-savy people confuse
>>> communication as per Shannon's theory, with human communication, which
>>> it is not.
>>>
>>> drw
>>>
>>> On 01/02/2011, at 8:24 PM, Richard Dobson wrote:
>>>> On 01/02/2011 07:12, Jim Aikin wrote:
>>>> ..
>>>>> I'm not sure it's desirable that one let go of all of one's ideas about
>>>>> what music should be. If one truly does that, one has no basis on which
>>>>> to compose anything. Any act of music composition involves, of
>>>>> necessity, innumerable choices about what should and should not be
>>>>> included.
>>>>>
>>>> So much hangs on the choice of words, and a ready (almost invisible)
>>>> conflation of the personal with the universal. Replace "should" with
>>>> "could" and I think you have a better picture of things world-wide.
>>>> ~Of Course~, all composers are in general selective; they decide
>>>> perhaps on a piece by piece basis what idioms and styles they wish to
>>>> include/exclude. So we can say they are perhaps declaring what "music
>>>> should be" for them, at that moment. It is a very big step however to
>>>> go beyond and assert that that is what must "should" be in general. I
>>>> don't think anyone can ever say that. To that degree, I think that the
>>>> less we attach ourselves to "should" the better. Why arbitrarily
>>>> exclude anything that may one day be useful?
>>>>
>>> ________________________________________________
>>> Dr David Worrall.
>>> - Experimental Polymedia:      worrall.avatar.com.au
>>> - Sonification: www.sonification.com.au
>>> - Education for Financial Independence: www.mindthemarkets.com.au
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>> csound"
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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>>
>>
> 
> 
> 


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My mentor, Herbert Brün, had some interesting things to say about Shannon's theory of communication - he actually used it as a *basis* for the need to experiment.

My sloppy late night email version is that meanings are not fixed and there is an entropy in meaning - as messages are repeated, the very repetition changes, and eventually diminishes, meaning. Think of the significance of a hard backbeat today (people take for granted it should be there, and sometimes even forget whether a particular song even has a hard backbeat or not) vs. the 1950s (it was a surprise, a new aggression and violent impulse in pop music, it carried connotations of debauchery). I am sure we have all at some point as a child said a word enough times in a row that it lost all meaning. The role of the composer is to refresh our wells of meaning and retard the decay of music as the inevitable repetition and quotation from one generation to the next diminishes the significance 
 of established forms, and increases the entropy (thus decreasing the bandwidth) of music as a medium for communication of feelings and ideas.

Herbert always told me to use shorter sentences, but I do hope my tired attempt conveyed something regardless.

DavidW wrote:
> Thanks for your sensible contribution to the topic, Richard. It was
> starting to sound like the professions of the faithful to the One True
> Church of Musical Communication. If we examine the historical record, we
> can see that it would be more accurate to further qualify your
> individual "should" to mostly "could"s, i.e most composers have heard,
> and often provided multiple "solutions" to musical "problems" - some
> times in the same work, sometime in multiple reworkings.
> 
> As for the whole communication thing, I'm afraid I just don't get it. I
> see the intention to communicate, the need to reach out to one's fellow
> human beings, and unfortunately not often enough IMO to other creatures,
> but the idea that communication is about the sending and receiving of
> messages containing specific meanings is wacky, and completely
> misinformed about the nature of art, and even the concept of
> communication. Unfortunately many computer-savy people confuse
> communication as per Shannon's theory, with human communication, which
> it is not.
> 
> drw
> 
> On 01/02/2011, at 8:24 PM, Richard Dobson wrote:
>> On 01/02/2011 07:12, Jim Aikin wrote:
>> ..
>>>
>>> I'm not sure it's desirable that one let go of all of one's ideas about
>>> what music should be. If one truly does that, one has no basis on which
>>> to compose anything. Any act of music composition involves, of
>>> necessity, innumerable choices about what should and should not be
>>> included.
>>>
>>
>> So much hangs on the choice of words, and a ready (almost invisible)
>> conflation of the personal with the universal. Replace "should" with
>> "could" and I think you have a better picture of things world-wide.
>> ~Of Course~, all composers are in general selective; they decide
>> perhaps on a piece by piece basis what idioms and styles they wish to
>> include/exclude. So we can say they are perhaps declaring what "music
>> should be" for them, at that moment. It is a very big step however to
>> go beyond and assert that that is what must "should" be in general. I
>> don't think anyone can ever say that. To that degree, I think that the
>> less we attach ourselves to "should" the better. Why arbitrarily
>> exclude anything that may one day be useful?
>>
> 
> ________________________________________________
> Dr David Worrall.
> - Experimental Polymedia:      worrall.avatar.com.au
> - Sonification: www.sonification.com.au
> - Education for Financial Independence: www.mindthemarkets.com.au
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
> 
> 



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I do think you misunderstand.

It is not later music which diminishes meaning, but repetition. Shostakovich does not diminish Bach, but rather refresh something that is lost through the repetition of Bach.


Regarding that definition of composer: some people who make music are arrangers or musicians, he was defining in particular what distinguishes an composer from an arranger. And of course there is no universal agreed role of a composer, by declaring what the role was, he meant to start that very argument that may lead to an agreement. Or even better a few new ideas.

john saylor wrote:
> hi
> 
> i'm back in this thread again.
> 
> On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Justin Glenn Smith  wrote:
>> The role of the composer is to refresh our wells of meaning and retard the decay of music as the inevitable repetition and quotation from one generation to the next diminishes the significance of established forms, and increases the entropy (thus decreasing the bandwidth) of music as a medium for communication of feelings and ideas.
> 
> there is no agreed upon 'role of composer.'  i'd say the best
> statement of the role of the composer is to 'write music.' anything
> else is more about the writer of a statement concerning the role of
> the composer than it is about the role of the composer itself.
> 
> and i don't even know what the phrase 'decay of music' means. the only
> thing i can pull out of it is that the writer has some notion of what
> he thinks music should be, and anything that doesn't measure up is a
> force for decay. i'm not at all sure this is what the writer means.
> 
> also, your comment about 'diminishing the significance of established
> forms' is puzzling to me. what would you say about the shostakovich
> preludes and fugues? do they diminish bach? some artists have
> something to say by doing the same thing their predecessors did. they
> may even have something significant to say about the past and our
> relationship to it.
> 
> am i completely misunderstanding what you are saying?
> 
> music can be crap of any period or style. conversely, it can be
> enthralling. i went to music school for many years and finally learned
> that if you like it, it's good.
> 



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I have a theory that all music reflects people's approaches towards
sex. And yes, it's a theory.

Rednecks do it fast and comically, standing up in the field, fully
clothed, and it's over in 2 minutes.
Urban youths repeat short snippets from old records over and over and
talk about how great they are.
Old people like music made by people wearing suits and smiling while
they sing. And Lawrence Welk.
Nirvana fans like it to permanently damage their throats.
Csound users will work at one piece for months, sometimes having to
deal with unexplained segmentation faults. It's also free as in beer.
For Cage, well, everything was music.

-Chuckk


On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Aaron Krister Johnson
 wrote:
>
> Cage's writings almost get more attention than his music. I must say,
> there's some good stuff in his output if you can do some cherry picking. I
> rather like his prepared piano pieces. They are very much like "miniature
> homespun gamelan" in flavor.
>
> I really do get a kick out of this video below. What ever you think of it,
> you have to admit that this man was _way_ ahead of his time in understanding
> the concept of listening deeply to things. I find the piece really engaging.
> It requires one to let go of a lot of left brain chatter about what
> music/sound "should be", though, which is a huge part of what Cage's
> contribution was, and I think in that regard, he certainly deserves his
> place in music history.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSulycqZH-U
>
> AKJ
>
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 4:05 PM, Chuckk Hubbard 
> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:16 AM, Jim Aikin 
>> wrote:
>> > On 1/4/2011 1:47 PM, Stéphane Rollandin [via Csound] wrote:
>> >>
>> >> John Cage has a very nice way to expose a similar relation to sound and
>> >> music in his book "Silence". I remember he wrote that he had a hard
>> >> time
>> >> accepting the sound of its fridge, until he realized that it was the
>> >> like of a sonic sculpture, motionless. Then he could listen to the
>> >> fridge :)
>> >>
>> >> (and of course it's the whole point of 4'33, his silent piece: have the
>> >> audience listen to the actual sounds arising during the performance,
>> >> that have nothing to do with composition)
>> > Cage famously said, "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that
>> > is music." Which is very Zen, of course, but not, in the end, a very
>> > useful credo for a composer.
>> >
>> > My response to Cage is this: "You have nothing to say, and therefore I
>> > am going to spend my time listening to someone who does have something
>> > to say, and is saying it."
>> >
>> > The point of my aphoristic response is quite precise: The composer who
>> > abandons any attempt to communicate with an audience has also, of
>> > necessity, abandoned any interest in whether the audience is going to
>> > bother to listen. You can't simultaneously fail to communicate and
>> > expect that you'll be listened to!
>>
>> Very interesting points, Jim. I take the same approach, especially
>> with Cage. I'm really genuinely glad other people find value in his
>> works, but I don't get much from them. Several professors told me he
>> was great because he forced people to ask themselves what is music,
>> what is art, etc. I say great, but I've never stopped asking myself
>> those things, and if I'll never manage to listen to everything, then
>> I'd rather listen to music that inspires me by engaging my senses, by
>> seducing me, by showing me what music is rather than asking me a
>> question I'm already asking myself.
>> But I am certain there are enough artists who worked mostly for their
>> own fulfillment and yet reached huge audiences with the beauty of
>> their work. Franz Kafka? Charles Ives, another one whose music I don't
>> get into so much, but whose ideas and works have had a great
>> influence, and who, from what I know, had relatively little to do with
>> a career in music. Emily Dickinson. Poe was definitely trying to
>> communicate, but he was also writing compulsively, for his own inner
>> reasons. I'm sure there are lots of examples I can't think of right
>> now. Very shy, isolated people who are simply fascinated by their
>> materials, and create things that fascinate others as well. I don't
>> know if I'd put Cage in this category. He's always struck me as
>> someone who really liked attention.
>>
>> -Chuckk
>>
>>
>> >
>> > If you're satisfied never to be listened to, then Cage's Zen-based
>> > philosophy is just dandy. If, however, you aspire to be listened to,
>> > then you had better start out by deciding that you have something to
>> > say, and then go about saying it with all the passion and precision you
>> > can muster.
>> >
>> > --JA
>> >
>> >
>> > ________________________________
>> > View this message in context: Re: Xenakis
>> > Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://www.badmuthahubbard.com
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>> csound"
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Aaron Krister Johnson
> http://www.akjmusic.com
> http://www.untwelve.org
>
>



-- 
http://www.badmuthahubbard.com


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  Hi Everyone

Is it true that Cecilia 2.05 for linux cannot load soundfiles for 
modules warper, stretcher etc?
I cannot get a "valid" file to load. whether .wav of .aiff

this is frustrating

Any help?
bueller....



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Hi,

Cecilia 2.05 is obsolete, you should use Cecilia4: http://code.google.com/p/cecilia4/

Regards,

Marc

 

> Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 19:23:58 -0500
> From: bigswift@ufl.edu
> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
> Subject: [Csnd] Cecilia2.05 cannot load soundfiles?
>
> Hi Everyone
>
> Is it true that Cecilia 2.05 for linux cannot load soundfiles for
> modules warper, stretcher etc?
> I cannot get a "valid" file to load. whether .wav of .aiff
>
> this is frustrating
>
> Any help?
> bueller....
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
> https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>

2011/2/4 Patrick :
> Cecilia4 does not currently work on linux or windows7 yet.
> thanks

Why not? What features do not work? It's cross-platform (python2 and wxpython).


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The sound feature.

I have it working on OSX only currently.

I have tried on ubuntu 10.4 three different machines, with Jack, Alsa etc..
I have tried on a windows7 machine

It builds and installs and yes it is cross platform.

> Why not? What features do not work? It's cross-platform (python2 and wxpython).
>
>
>



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Well, sound is not cecilia, but Csound. Are you saying Csound is not  
working on Linux and Windows? That is the
first time I hear it. If so, developers maintaining csound for those  
platforms should know.

Victor
On 4 Feb 2011, at 03:47, Patrick wrote:

>
> The sound feature.
>
> I have it working on OSX only currently.
>
> I have tried on ubuntu 10.4 three different machines, with Jack,  
> Alsa etc..
> I have tried on a windows7 machine
>
> It builds and installs and yes it is cross platform.
>
>> Why not? What features do not work? It's cross-platform (python2  
>> and wxpython).
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body  
> "unsubscribe csound"
>



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It could be that the api is not working correctly with Cecilia?

On 4 February 2011 11:00, Victor Lazzarini  wrote:
> Well, sound is not cecilia, but Csound. Are you saying Csound is not working
> on Linux and Windows? That is the
> first time I hear it. If so, developers maintaining csound for those
> platforms should know.
>
> Victor
> On 4 Feb 2011, at 03:47, Patrick wrote:
>
>>
>> The sound feature.
>>
>> I have it working on OSX only currently.
>>
>> I have tried on ubuntu 10.4 three different machines, with Jack, Alsa
>> etc..
>> I have tried on a windows7 machine
>>
>> It builds and installs and yes it is cross platform.
>>
>>> Why not? What features do not work? It's cross-platform (python2 and
>>> wxpython).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>          https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>> csound"
>>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
>
>


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  Cecilia builds fine but does not play any sound with linux ubuntu, i 
am yet to hear from anyone with it working. On Windows7 csound does not 
load the csound plugins that are in pluigns64 when i run cecilia.
I am not really interested in running csound without Cecilia honestly, 
so for my teaching Cecilia is in fact the front end to Csound, so i am 
sorry if i was unclear earlier.

Everything seems to work fine on OSX, but i teach kids who now run 
ubuntu and windows7.
I am just reporting back on feedback from about 15 Digital Media 
graduate students and myself.

-- i followed the wiki instructions to build Cecilia for windows7 and 
everything opens etc.. but Csound does not load the plugins and i get no 
sound, i tweaked the environment variables, noted it was odd that they 
built in plugins64, but could not spend more than an hour working on it.

same pretty much with ubuntu, cecilia builds fine but when it gets to 
producing sound, i could not set a command line otion in ,csoundrc, 
hardcoded into cecilia etc.. that would produce anything but a click 
with jack or alsa.

So after trying faithfully with students and alone i turned to 'at 
least' Cecilia2.05 to demo Stochastic Grains at least and when i got to 
any modules that required a sound input noting would load and i tried 
EVERYTHING sample format wise, converted sounds with snd,loaded in aifs, 
.wav 8-48 you name it and nothing. And when i reported this i am told
that is obsolete use Cecilia4. heh.

I am not really a Csound newbie and i have always felt that a fun front 
end like Cecilia or Improsculpt brings more students and musicians to 
Csound. Dave Phillips and I actually convinced Jean years ago to go open 
source [really dave i just begged]

But in my opinion this is WAY to difficult again. And it could be i just 
popped in at a wierd time, but i am 4 weeks into a semester and wanted 
to demo Csound in a sound design course, so forgive my rant.

hope this helps

Pat Pagano
UF|Digital Worlds Institute



On 02/04/2011 06:33 AM, peiman khosravi wrote:
> It could be that the api is not working correctly with Cecilia?
>
> On 4 February 2011 11:00, Victor Lazzarini  wrote:
>> Well, sound is not cecilia, but Csound. Are you saying Csound is not working
>> on Linux and Windows? That is the
>> first time I hear it. If so, developers maintaining csound for those
>> platforms should know.
>>
>> Victor
>> On 4 Feb 2011, at 03:47, Patrick wrote:
>>
>>> The sound feature.
>>>
>>> I have it working on OSX only currently.
>>>
>>> I have tried on ubuntu 10.4 three different machines, with Jack, Alsa
>>> etc..
>>> I have tried on a windows7 machine
>>>
>>> It builds and installs and yes it is cross platform.
>>>
>>>> Why not? What features do not work? It's cross-platform (python2 and
>>>> wxpython).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>> csound"
>>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>> csound"
>>
>>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>              https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>



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huh?

Cecilia4.1b works fine on Windows 7,  as witnessed hundreds of users.. Linux, alas, has not been tested very much but it dies work quite well on the system we have here (Ubuntu)

Re: sound file headers: AIFF is becoming a nightmare of metadata and there are some audio files produced by Logic for instance that are difficult to use with Cecilia. I tend to use wav files now they seem more reliable.

Be that as it may, A new release is on the way that addresses many of these sound file issues. Stay yuned.

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 10:06 PM, Patrick <bigswift@ufl.edu> wrote:

Cecilia4 does not currently work on linux or windows7 yet.
thanks

pp

On 02/03/2011 10:03 PM, Marc D. Demers wrote:

Hi,

Cecilia 2.05 is obsolete, you should use Cecilia4: http://code.google.com/p/cecilia4/

Regards,

Marc

 

> Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 19:23:58 -0500
> From: bigswift@ufl.edu
> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
> Subject: [Csnd] Cecilia2.05 cannot load soundfiles?
>
> Hi Everyone
>
> Is it true that Cecilia 2.05 for linux cannot load soundfiles for
> modules warper, stretcher etc?
> I cannot get a "valid" file to load. whether .wav of .aiff
>
> this is frustrating
>
> Any help?
> bueller....
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
> https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>

--
_____________________________
http://jeanpiche.com

Pat,

For win7 you HAVE to use  CSound 5.11.1-f  (float)

j

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 9:46 AM, Patrick <bigswift@ufl.edu> wrote:

Jean

I will try again to run it on Windows7 today if i can, that would solve alot of my problems

On 02/04/2011 09:41 AM, Jean Piché wrote:

huh?

Cecilia4.1b works fine on Windows 7,  as witnessed hundreds of users.. Linux, alas, has not been tested very much but it dies work quite well on the system we have here (Ubuntu)

Re: sound file headers: AIFF is becoming a nightmare of metadata and there are some audio files produced by Logic for instance that are difficult to use with Cecilia. I tend to use wav files now they seem more reliable.

Be that as it may, A new release is on the way that addresses many of these sound file issues. Stay yuned.

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 10:06 PM, Patrick <bigswift@ufl.edu> wrote:

Cecilia4 does not currently work on linux or windows7 yet.
thanks

pp

On 02/03/2011 10:03 PM, Marc D. Demers wrote:

Hi,

Cecilia 2.05 is obsolete, you should use Cecilia4: http://code.google.com/p/cecilia4/

Regards,

Marc

 

> Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 19:23:58 -0500
> From: bigswift@ufl.edu
> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
> Subject: [Csnd] Cecilia2.05 cannot load soundfiles?
>
> Hi Everyone
>
> Is it true that Cecilia 2.05 for linux cannot load soundfiles for
> modules warper, stretcher etc?
> I cannot get a "valid" file to load. whether .wav of .aiff
>
> this is frustrating
>
> Any help?
> bueller....
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
> https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>

--
_____________________________
http://jeanpiche.com

--
_____________________________
http://jeanpiche.com