To clarify my point, I don't disagree with you, but what I'm interested in,
in music, is just what happens if you do have only the tape and no knowledge
whatsoever of how it was made. What they used to call "absolute music" back
in the 19th century. Music that is completely without any programmatic or
performance reference, except for what you hear. Music for headphones, music
for listening to in bed just before going to sleep or for having on the car
radio, or music for listening to when you really just want to listen to
music without any distracting pictures.

I think computers have given us an instrument so powerful that we have not
even begun to comprehend it. We're like two year olds finding the piano keys
make sounds.

-----Original Message-----
From: Hosken 
To: Michael Gogins ; Csound (E-mail)

Date: Thursday, April 29, 1999 12:53 AM
Subject: Re: Recommended Xenakis?


>>...snip...
>>I'm interested in how good they sound.
>>...snip...
>>I'm curious about how music is made so I
>>want to know how it was made, but I'd almost rather not know so that my
>>hearing would be colored only by the music itself.
>
>"My God! What has sound got to do with music?" --Charles Ives
>
>This may seem flip, but I agree with Ives that defining "music" as the
>resultant "sound" can obscure the human (or other) processes that produce
>that sound. In the case of some Xenakis pieces, perhaps the "music"
>includes knowledge of the process, just as for acoustic music the "music"
>includes the visual stimulus of the performers creating the piece. Just
>to take this a little further, the dissociation of sound from the visual
>source is part of what helps offstage playing invoke notions of the
>ethereal and gives tape-only music played in the concert hall the power
>to evoke other realms---so the apparent or hidden mechanics behind the
>production of sound can directly impact the perception of the "music."
>
>Dan Hosken
>dwhosken@alum.mit.edu
>
>
>