Robert Davidson conducting C.P.E.

Bach Sinfonia with the University of Queensland Orchestra in the

morning
17 April at 20:32

__________

Scott Buckley

Enjoy whole-heartedly grin

17 April at 21:18

__________

Ian Shanahan

Goodonya Robert! real music at last... grin

18 April at 02:18

__________

Robert Davidson

Ian, not quite as real as Massive Attack or Grizzly Bear though, as poor old Bach had only paper and pen
to convey his ideas, not audio and video, so that there is a lack of depth in comparison to contemporary
music were cut off from the performance tradition.

18 April at 11:46

__________

Ian Shanahan

Thats sort of true though youd be aware of the various historical methodologies used to establish
something close to an authentic performance practice. I wouldnt word things quite thus there is a lack of
depth in comparison to contemporary music although I do know what you mean. Anyway, ol CPEs music
has intrinsic depth: it has survived for longer than that of Massive Attack or Grizzly Bear could ever hope
to.

18 April at 13:23

__________

Steve Dillon

Known for shredding on the Clavier but surely access to an orchestra was possible. Kind of like Lamont
Dozier having the band ready to record the next hit at Motown may be a contemporary comparison.

18 April at 14:09

__________

Anthony Linden Jones

I cant believe you used shredding in the same sentence as clavier!!

~1~
18 April at 15:03

__________

Thomas Green

Shredding claviers eh? Okay, you people have asked for it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJzG7CSYg3U

18 April at 23:45

__________

Thomas Green

Now thats music.

18 April at 23:48

__________

Ian Shanahan

Annea Lockwoods Piano Burning is much better musically and aesthetically. (There are heaps of
examples on YouTube.)

19 April at 01:01

__________

Robert Davidson

Aargh! I can barely watch like watching someone being killed! A precursor to (worrying ill at the moment)
Annea Lockwoods prometheanism was what Fluxus were doing to pianos in the early 1960s its what
made Terry Riley leave the movement.

19 April at 06:47

__________

Robert Davidson

Back when Annea was still Anna

19 April at 06:47

__________

Ian Shanahan

Any idea why she changed her name?

Anyway, I want to do a piece called e-guitar e-xplosion blowing up numerous piled-up electric guitars
with plastique...

~2~
Two other ambitions:

1. Piss on Elvis Presleys grave;

2. Vaporize the Golden Guitar at Tamworth with C4 plastic explosive.

19 April at 17:27

__________

Robert Davidson

I think Annea was considered more exotic.

I have performed more than once hacksawing an electric guitars strings off with heavy amplification its
quite a sound. Nostalgia for the 1960s sort of thing (though I was but a babe in arms).

Elvis though I cried when he died (as a kid) and his music means more to me than just about anything.

19 April at 17:39

__________

Ian Shanahan

In that case, you deserve a reason: Id piss on Elviss grave as payback for what he did to jazz forced it
underground and marginalized it on account of something vastly inferior...

19 April at 22:18

__________

Robert Davidson

I think more was at work than Elvis in the perceived shift (not at all a downgrade to my mind or ears) from
jazz to rocknroll it wasnt really a revolution, just another way of singing the blues, and needed back-to-
basics move that really meant something to people, rather like Sammartini (or CPE if you will), Josquin,
Terry Riley, The Ramones, Vampire Weekend.

Leonard Meyer had it as three phases musical cultures go through: Pre-classic, Classic, and Mannerist.
Elvis was maybe pre-classic (though always a pure classic for me his singing rocks my world).

Bebop (which Im also very fond of) was headed for marginal status from its birth it was rarely about
popular appeal, though it had its hits.

19 April at 22:50

__________

Ian Shanahan

(Leonard B. Meyers 1967 book Music, The Arts and Ideas? A good book indeed!) But to characterize
1950s jazz is overly simplistic. What about Stan Kentons Innovations Orchestra; early Miles Davis with Gil
Evans, thence cool school; West Coast jazz (e.g. Gerry Mulligan); the roots of free jazz?

~3~
Anyway, Elvis was THE dominant symbol of the salient devolution from jazz to the relatively moronic
rocknroll ... and so Id piss on him for it.

20 April at 05:18

__________

Robert Davidson

You just need more yin with all that yang Ian.

21 April at 11:01

__________

Ian Shanahan

Why Robert? I could say the reverse applies to you, yes? grin

21 April at 22:04

__________

Robert Davidson

No, because Im not blocking out a huge area of music as you are. I like what you like, you have problems
with an enormous amount of music on the yin side, the Dionysian, the ancestral.

21 April at 22:17

__________

Steve Dillon

Monty Python had real finesse with orchestras: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP8Kah6vXsQ

21 April at 23:54

__________

Ian Shanahan

@Robert. Nor am I employing double standards in evaluating the various musics, as you do. I only block
out (as you put it) rubbish for which life is too short to be bothered with. That still leaves me with a vast
sonic universe of the very best musics that human beings have created enough to last anybody numerous
lifetimes...

22 April at 00:11

__________

Pam Burnard

As I see it, this is about privileging one musics [sic!] over another. Important to make explicit our taken-for-
granted assumptions.

~4~
22 April at 06:12

__________

Robert Davidson

Ian, you seem to put an inordinate amount of time into blocking it out. Pam, elegantly put as usual!

22 April at 07:29

__________

Steve Dillon

Music can be a common ground or a battle ground. BOTH are means of social control but one is socially
just.

22 April at 09:33

__________

Ian Shanahan

@Pam. Musical excellence privileges itself over mediocrity automatically. Ill come to your second sentence
in a moment, in explicating Roberts double standards...

@Steve. It is NEVER socially just to foist rubbish upon a public that lacks expertise whereby the marketing
machine presents rubbish as something excellent or worthwhile, at the same time suppressing what is truly
excellent.

@Robert. My energies are not put into the blocking, but rather into trying to educate people regarding the
Big Con deflecting people from the truth about Pop/Rocks vacuousness. Allow me now to explicate a point:
I claimed earlier that you engage in double standards; here follows the evidence.

When you aver, as you have done on several occasions, that song X by band Y is excellent, marvellous
(etc.) for instance, there is the implicit assumption because your gushing value-judgements are otherwise
totally unqualified that the ambit of consideration of value is the totality of (at least Western) music. If that
is so, then it is perfectly reasonable for me to interrogate such an assertion by comparing musics therefrom
using exactly the same criteria e.g. against the very best music from the Western art-music tradition. Yet
when I do so by comparatively analysing actual acoustic content across the various formal levels thereby
demonstrating the actual musical poverty of song X etc. you cry foul and shift the goal-posts to focussing
upon musico-social epiphenomena (the most hilarious I recall being bands haircuts!). This simply will not
do! (It also accounts for the reason the Pop/Rock edifice is studied more in universities Cultural Studies
departments than in Music departments: were the former to dare focus upon the inner musical content, its
utter banality and poverty of invention would soon be revealed in all its ghastliness; much better to remain
deluded by sticking to the rather more interesting social epiphenomena...) So please either qualify your
enthusiasm by providing some frame of reference, or fess up and accept the truth that the vast majority of
demotic music is sheer crap by comparison with the best of art-musics.

22 April at 10:42

__________

Robert Davidson

~5~
Ian, I would be very happy to defend my gushing praise, but Im not keen to do that on Facebook Id be
doing it in a scholarly forum. Others have done this well see Walter Everetts work on The Beatles for an
example. The reasons for rocknroll being out of music departments is mostly class- and history-based Id
suggest.

Facebook is for hanging out with friends, making bar-room conversation. Not really the place for peer-
reviewed sorts of things.

BTW Haircuts are really crucial to music. So are costumes.

22 April at 10:47

__________

Julian Day

yikes!

22 April at 16:44

__________

Ian Shanahan

@Robert. The reasons for rocknroll being out of music departments is mostly class- and history-based Id
suggest.

Nope. Its because the music itself is too vacuous and flimsy to deserve, let alone sustain, worthwhile study.

Anyway, who says Facebook isnt a suitable forum for intellectual discussion? Youre just evading my point
an accusation of intellectual double-standards again...

Haircuts are really crucial to music. So are costumes.

Only if the music is so piss-poor that it requires such distractions.

22 April at 20:18

__________

Robert Davidson

Contemporary music is steadily taking its place in the academy (at last), only impeded by the musical
equivalent of right wing thinking as displayed rather amply in these parts by a certain contributor. You know,
the sort of thinking that expects cultural expression to use the same priorities and values as a different one.

22 April at 20:52

__________

Robert Davidson

Also Ian, you didnt prove anything by your analyses except a seeming incompetence at understanding
priorities of popular music, hardly surprising given your innocence of experience in the field (I wouldnt
expect to be expert on, say, Peruvian nose flute music).

~6~
And music does not equal sound. What is inner musical content? The very idea betrays a myopic view.

22 April at 21:07

__________

Ian Shanahan

Robert, how precisely is my argumentation here and elsewhere the musical equivalent of right wing
thinking particularly given that my personal politics is very Left of centre and rather Green? You write: ...
the sort of thinking that expects cultural expression to use the same priorities and values as a different one.
But that seems to be exactly what YOU are doing in gushing about particular examples of popular music
without qualifying your frame of reference.

Aha! You also wrote: ... you didnt prove anything by your analyses except a seeming incompetence at
understanding priorities of popular music, hardly surprising given your innocence of experience in the field
.... Right here we see Roberts double standard at play: shifting the goal posts for popular music, while
asserting (one must presume, in the absence of qualification) its merit, excellence or equality in comparison
with art-music. You cannot have it both ways, Robert. Theres no incompetence on my part: Im fully aware
of all those priorities you mention.

Finally, you quite rightly assert that music does not equal sound. If you could be bothered to read my PhD,
which addresses the semiotics of various compositional techniques (among numerous other things) youd
immediately learn that I would be the very last person in the world to suggest that it does.

You then sign off by asking a truly astonishing question: What is inner musical content?. If you dont know
the answer to THAT question, then I have to wonder how the hell you got a doctorate, let alone a job
teaching composition. (Im honestly not meaning to insult you here, Robert, so please dont take offence; Im
just dumbstruck with amazement.) Do you really want me to spell out an answer to this pretty basic question
for you? Anyway, the very fact that I engaged the word inner as part of that question implies that there is
an outer musical content too, and Im cognizant of it hardly grounds for you to accuse me of myopia...

23 April at 00:07

__________

David T. Little

Ian, weve obviously never met, so I have little context for your opinions, but can you really find absolutely
nothing of value in ANY so-called pop music? Cant you at lease acknowledge the possibility that there
might be some artists out there who could potentially, theoretically, create good work even work worthy
of being called art in the narrowest of definitions out of materials that come from a popular (and yes,
even corporate and/or exploitative) apparatus? Its fine to like what you like, and dislike what you dislike, but
you seem to think that there is a particular teleological narrative in play, and anything outside of it is rubbish.
I have a hard time with this. Its no different than saying that there is something inherently flawed in, say,
tonality, and that nothing from the tonal system can have any value, no matter how well it is assembled.
This position feels very absolutist, which for me makes it difficult to support.

What about artists like Mick Barr, or Sunn0))) or Kayo Dot, or Maudlin of the Well, or Sigur Ros, or The
Fiery Furnaces, or Aphex Twin, or even Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails? Are you saying that these
artists are invalid? If you are, fine. Thats your opinion, and youre entitled to it, but can you at least say why?
Is it because they are part of a capitalist superstructure? (i.e. that they are somehow complicit in this
system...) Or is the problem that pop music is populist at its core and therefore ultimately aesthetically
bad? I understand the problems inherent in rock music very well, in particular in its corporate incarnation,
but there is a lot of explicitly underground music that exists outside of these structures that Id still call rock;
music that descended as much from Elvis as from Sun Ra, and which often explicitly controls its own means

~7~
of production. (For example, check out groups like the aforementioned Sunn0))) or Iskra or Lightning Bolt,
or artists like Merzbow, and (some of) Einstrzende Neubauten. This is not music for broad popular
consumption, yet it does have its roots in some element of popular music and popular culture. To dismiss
these artists wholesale is to miss out on a lot of amazing art. (And it is art, like it or not.)

As for the tone of the discourse here, I am a little shocked. I find it disheartening to find that the agonistic
tenor that wed all hoped would stay in academia seems to have followed us here to the Internet. (Though it
does prove the thesis of a very excellent paper by my partner @EileenMack on gender in the blogosphere!)
Also, Im afraid I have to agree that this is probably not the best place for said discussion there are lots of
journals, newspapers, etc. out there that would probably be better suited for that nice slow agonistic burn.
Yet, here we are. And while were here, could we at least keep things a little nicer? I dont know your
relationship with Rob, but with all due respect, attacking a colleagues credentials goes a long way to
undermining ones own argument.

Best, David

23 April at 03:22

__________

Robert Davidson

Ian, I do think youre just being a stirrer.

But briefly, right wing in longing for the good old days of modernism, resisting diversity, resisting innovation
in the truest sense (not just in a narrow modernist sense).

Double standard of course, in a good way. Different music requires different ways of thinking. Any
ethnomusicologist knows that. I wasnt comparing Radiohead with Berio you treat them both on their own
terms. Frame of reference is determined by the genre. Its the idea of using a single standard that is more
right wing thinking.

Inner musical content is a concept from one musical tradition (probably others, but certainly not universally
shared). Of course I know what it is in Bach, but you dont just plonk that over onto Little Richard.

I took you to task on sound because you seemed to be saying that to focus on the sonic content was to
focus on the music, without any reference to the all-important haircuts. How do you know Bach didnt write
complicated music to draw attention away from a bad haircut?

23 April at 06:31

__________

Robert Davidson

David, youre right good to get rid of this nasty tone and get back to chatting amongst friends. Boys on the
internet Ill have to read Eileens thingamabob.

23 April at 06:35

__________

Robert Davidson

Also David thanks for some new names to check out (Kayo Dot etc.).
23 April at 06:37

~8~
__________

Ian Shanahan

Hi David,

Its true to say that I hear very little Pop or Rock music I would guess less than 0.1% which perchance
happens to invade my acoustic domain these days that doesnt annoy the bejesus out of me within seconds
(on account of its structural, rhythmic, harmonic, melodic and timbral banality and crudity relative to
progressive jazz and the Western art-musics I know and love). I certainly do not ever seek Pop/Rock out,
since lifes too short and the musical universes I do embrace are vast. Given the incredible parametric
constraints imposed upon (mainstream, non-experimental) Pop/Rock musics, I very much doubt the
possibility of these genres giving rise to ANY good songs in the absolute sense I defined earlier: art-music
and jazz impose no such limitations; itd be like a one-legged contestant in an arse-kicking tournament.
Despite three decades of postmodernist disinformation, high- and low-art musics flow along quite separate
river-systems: they do, after all, have utterly distinct ambitions. In this sense, there is a strong degree of
absoluteness.

I have heard some music by a couple of the bands that you listed (Aphex Twins and Radiohead; the
former struck me as just more of the same old mindless crap, the latter as rather more interesting); I
wouldnt declare them invalid, but they do lack by a very long shot the sophistication and artistry of even
average contemporary Western art-music. So unworthy might be a better evaluation. Such musics
complicity with capitalism is in my view definitely to be condemned but this isnt the reasoning behind my
dismissal of it. However, given most peoples high-cultural ignorance, uninformed tastes and intellectual
laziness these days within our incredibly dumbed down 21st-century dystopia, I am automatically incredibly
suspicious of mass appeal or populism: if its truly popular, its almost certainly bound to be simplistic drivel.
You mention the likes of Sun Ra whose work is excellent! and the industrial band Einstrzende
Neubauten. Im not including such relatively experimental musics on my hit-list by any means. Im a great
fan of (some) Pink Floyd, all Frank Zappa, jazz fusion and a lot of funk (e.g. early Defunkt). Such musics
are too intelligent for most of the hoi polloi. As you say, [this] is not music for broad popular consumption,
yet it does have its roots in some element of popular music and popular culture. Id say these musics have
art-music aspirations, and the more they discard the constraints hence the simplistic nature of
mainstream Pop/Rock, the better they become ... as with Frank Zappas last(?) album, Yellow Shark
(played by the German new-music group Ensemble Moderne, if I remember rightly).

You write: I find it disheartening to find that the agonistic tenor that wed all hoped would stay in academia
seems to have followed us here to the Internet. But I would respond by asking Why shouldnt it? Robert,
for instance, by his own admission believes that Facebook is for hanging out with friends, making bar-room
conversation. Not really the place for peer-reviewed sorts of things. I retort by enquiring who erected such
artificial boundaries? Why cant deeper, more intelligent discussion take place within this particular forum
just as you and I are engaging in right now? I always thought the Internet was in fact all about free speech.
Am I mistaken? But I am inclined to agree with you that Facebook Walls are probably not the best place for
said discussion, given their formatting and orthographic limitations.

Finally, I get on OK with Robert I think we are very honest with each other, at least; and dialogue
continues. I wasnt attacking [his] credentials per se, but I do have to say that his question What is inner
musical content? was of such breath-taking stupidity (sorry Rob) for a man with his qualifications and
academic position, that my response was not at all unreasonable: it really was akin to him, say, not knowing
the pitch-ranges of common musical instruments. (@Rob: Check out Truax (1994) from the Bibliography of
my PhD on The Inner and Outer Complexity of Music; that was where I was coming from in making that
earlier remark about inner musical content. But isnt my meaning blindingly obvious anyhow?)

Anyway David, I do hope Ive adequately addressed your questions with suitably full answers for the time
being. Perhaps, if you want to continue this discussion, we might do so via e-mail? On the other hand, Im
happy to continue here, if Rob is comfortable with that (it is in a sense his Wall after all...). But in any case

~9~
Ill Friend you so that you can view my e-mail address (which Id rather not disclose so publicly here
spam, and all that shit...). Also, I do appreciate your courteousness: alas, Im renowned for my bluntness,
but I never intend offence.

Cheers,

(Dr) Ian S.

PS: feel free to Google my name if you wish to learn more about me...

23 April at 07:35

__________

Ian Shanahan

@Robert. Ive just seen your postings in between Davids extensive missive and mine. Im not trying to be a
stirrer, honestly mate more like that ratbag kid with his finger in the dyke... Now to your post:

1. But briefly, right wing in longing for the good old days of modernism, resisting diversity, resisting
innovation in the truest sense (not just in a narrow modernist sense).

Theres no connection whatsoever between Right-Wing ideology and modernism which, despite
postmodern bullshit propaganda, is actually anti-capitalist and therefore Leftist. Anyway, what has such
fictitious longing fictitious because modernism never went away; being the backbone of Western art-
music, its here to stay to do with such ideology? I dont resist diversity, just musical idiocy; nor is that
Right-Wing (given that intellectuals almost invariably sit on the Left). And innovation in the truest sense IS
modernist thats its raison dtre!

2. Double standard of course, in a good way. Different music requires different ways of thinking. Any
ethnomusicologist knows that. I wasnt comparing Radiohead with Berio you treat them both on their own
terms. Frame of reference is determined by the genre. Its the idea of using a single standard that is more
right wing thinking.

<<< OK! At last! Warfare concluded (I guess)! >>>

All this could have been avoided if your non-absolute frames of reference had been elucidated all along. But
I cant agree with your last sentence here: there are occasions when a single yardstick is valid, even
necessary e.g. when absolutist value-judgements are made (which is what you seemed to be doing).
However, none of this changes my mind about the Pop/Rock edifice: I cannot help hearing its crudeness etc.
in relation to the best of art-musics. Sorry...

3. Inner musical content is a concept from one musical tradition (probably others, but certainly not
universally shared). Of course I know what it is in Bach, but you dont just plonk that over onto Little
Richard.

I would have thought that inner musical content is inherent to ALL musics music after all being organized
sound. Its certainly within Little Richards songs (we can, after all, talk about its harmonic progressions, its
melodies and rhythms, etc.; such things are indeed [part of] its musical content). But obviously most of all
when dealing with non-Western musics the foci can be completely different, I agree (in which case
comparisons from which one then ascribes value do become increasingly meaningless to the point of zero
validity).

4. I took you to task on sound because you seemed to be saying that to focus on the sonic content was to
focus on the music, ...

~ 10 ~
Well it certainly is but not the TOTALITY of the music. My PhD puts your suspicion to rest pretty quickly.
Remember that one-liner by Sir Thomas Beecham: The English dont like music, just the sound it makes.
However, sonic organization is the cake of music; epiphenomena are just icing. If the cake itself is crook,
then the icing doesnt matter much. I still remain convinced of the truth of this principle, certainly in relation to
all Western musics.

@David. Send me Eileens thingo too please.

23 April at 08:52

__________

Robert Davidson

Im glad you agree that theres not much point in comparing apples with oranges but I dont get why then
you assess popular music as if it were art music, or somehow lower.

The universalising concept still seems to be there though in your comment. Id suggest that music is
conceived as organised sound only in certain traditions. The idea of music is fluid as its a collection of
things (often including sound, melody, pulse), but different conceptions will include or exclude different
components. For example, its almost inconceivable to separate dance from music in many traditions, or to
remove lyrics in others. Or haircuts (and not to make up for deficiencies its just an essential element of
some cultural phenomena, no joke).

Yes, Little Richards (brilliant) music has things like chord progressions etc., but theyre far from the point.
Theres often an ideal of reducing the harmonic content (the old idea that the best songs have the fewest
chords, so well embraced by the Velvet Underground, and in a different way by John Coltrane) so that the
focus can be on the engendered feeling rather than the syntactic structure. And youll be led astray if you
focus too much on the inner musical content as what you might think of as outer is actually where the
action (and substance) is.

This was already well articulated way back in 1966: Charles M. H. Keil, Motion and Feeling through Music,
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Spring, 1966), pp.337-349.

23 April at 09:23

__________

David T. Little

Ian, thank you for your clarifications. Its good to know where youre coming from... and your mention of
postmodernist disinformation gives me a good idea! I think we would disagree on a lot of things I
consider myself more in the post-modern New Historicist camp but Im cool with that if you are. I do love a
good debate with the other side every now and then! wink

As for the tone, I also should confess that there is a definite difference between American and Australian
modes of, uh, discussion. So I could of course chalk some of my reaction to the American tendency to be
(overly) polite when its not necessarily warranted! (At least this is what Eileen, from Oz, tells me!)

@Rob, definitely check out Kayo Dot. Toby Driver is the composer for the group, and hes got a really great,
spooky sound. Its sort of like Ambient Black Metal, with a horn section. Sorta. Very cool. (Hes also the
composer for the Maudlin of the Well project, who last year released a CD which you can download for free
here: http://www.maudlinofthewell.net/)

Eileens paper is still in progress, but Ill be sure to have her send it your way when its finished!

~ 11 ~
Cheers!

23 April at 09:36

__________

Ian Shanahan

1. ... but I dont get why then you assess popular music as if it were art music, or somehow lower.

Lower because the things that I consider important in ALL Western music including its popular musics
are relatively deficient therein.

2. The universalising concept still seems to be there though in your comment. Id suggest that music is
conceived as organised sound only in certain traditions.

Agreed for the Western tradition in its entirety (but not necessarily beyond that). The compelling evidence
for the truth of this paradigm is the media of radio, the LP, CDs, mp3s etc. all of which disseminate
Western musics as stand-alone SOUND devoid of any epiphenomena. It means that audients accept
implicitly this principle: the essence of the musics sense resides in its sounds and their prior
paracompositional organization (if any).

3. Yes, Little Richards (brilliant) music has things like chord progressions etc, but theyre far from the point.

Not if your comparative judgement of brilliance encompasses musics where harmonic progressions etc.
are crucial factors, however.

This may very well be the kernel of our contretemps: Id see a comparative evaluation of, say, Little
Richards and Ravels progressions etc. as legitimate since they both belong to the Western musical
tradition; you would not, I guess, since the latter is art-music and the former is not. I remain to be convinced
by this particular outgrowth of postmodernism, because to me it smacks of special pleading and implies
the reductio ad absurdum atomization of Western music to the extent that each piece (or song) can ONLY
be adjudged purely on its own terms, thereby jettisoning the very concept of merit (i.e. everything becomes
excellent by its own lights). Thin edge of the wedge in other words...

Without quoting the remainder of the paragraph, Id simply remind you that the inner musical content (of
Western musics), the syntactic structure, is always a priori to things like feeling etc. It is, ipso facto ALWAYS
more important, even though the bulk of some musics semiotic content may lie within its epiphenomena. In
short, if the syntactic structure fails, then the epiphenomena falls flat on its face (and its semiological
baggage is thereby incoherent): bad music, regardless of genre.

My philosophy of music is perhaps not so far from yours as one might think. Im still not sure whether theres
an intervening wall; if so, we can see each other across it, apparently. smile

Thanks for that reference, Robert. Ive gotta get some sleep now...

23 April at 10:06

__________

Ian Shanahan

Just saw your post David. (Man, I gotta sleep!) Yes, Aussies do debate things more robustly than you
Yankees. grin

~ 12 ~
As for the postmodernism thing, after years of studying it and thinking about it, Im convinced its a chimera:
in short, its either an excuse for (Right-Wing) neoreactionary anti- or non-modernist fascism, a totalitarian
conservatism (really pre-, not post-modern); or, more interestingly, it exhibits characteristics all of which
reside already within modernism. There is no POST to modernism because it has never gone away, and has
always been the cutting edge that expands the sonic universe wherein all music resides to some degree.
Edgard Varse: The modern[ist] composer refuses to die!.

E-mail me and I can send you some more extended writings by me on this subject (including the text of my
PhD).

23 April at 10:22

__________

Robert Davidson

Ian, I cant agree with placing all Western music in the same bucket. Probably the deciding factor in
separating popular music in the West from art music (very generally speaking) has been the influx of African
culture, already shifting the priorities and included component decidedly. Its a departure from the Western
tradition. Dance is often inseparable one reason stage, film and video have been so important in popular
music records are not the whole picture. i.e. dance etc. are not epiphenomena at all theyre at the heart
of the phenomenon. Sometimes its sound itself which is the epiphenomenon in fact it depends on the
things priorities.

I strongly disagree with the prescriptive privileging of syntactic structure (what Leonard Meyer called
embodied meaning), which in much music is emergent or de-stressed. Jimi [Hendrix] could say it all in one
pitch bend.

Its not absurd to require an understanding of framework in order to assess a cultural product and it
doesnt lead to atomisation (though it does make assessment more complex but theres no need to take it
to the extremes this has all been gone over endlessly in the social sciences for many decades).

23 April at 11:00

__________

Ian Shanahan

@ Robert. Sorry its taken me a little while to respond, but here goes:

When you affirm that I cant agree with placing all Western music in the same bucket. Probably the deciding
factor in separating popular music in the West from art music (very generally speaking) has been the influx
of African culture, already shifting the priorities and included component decidedly, I envisage at least two
objections:

1. Popular music (lets stick to that term, taking it to mean the whole Rock/Pop edifice) is itself fracturing,
potentially to the point of complete atomization! Heres an example, moving from the general to ever more
specific sub(sub[sub{sub}])genres:

[a] Popular music [b] Rock [c] Heavy Metal [d] Dark Metal.

So, if you were confronted thats probably just the right verb in this instance! by a song from one of the
many Norwegian Dark Metal bands, how would you evaluate it? In relation only to [d]? Or to [c]? Or to [b]?
Or to [a]? Or more broadly, [e] as just another example of Western music. The first choice seems logical, but
then watch Dark Metal itself fracture soon into subgenres, taking us further down the slippery slope towards

~ 13 ~
final atomization and the total futility of valueless absolute relativity. The next three choices are arbitrary;
which leaves only [e] the global stance I advocate.

2. Sticking with this example, any influx of African culture has been completely obliterated! And this or
something close to it is certainly the case for a great deal of Popular music both nowadays and throughout
the last several decades: it is no longer heard as originating from Africa (and hasnt been for a long time),
but is consumed as just another Western music. Moreover, would one engage in special pleading over
Ligetis (African influenced) music? Or Reichs concert music (even though he so blatantly stole that
Ghanaian Ewe-tribe rhythm verbatim for his Clapping Music)? Or much of Messiaens music (which draws
upon Carnatic rhythmic theory via 19th-century French musicology)? Or McPhees (Balinese) music? Of
course not!

No: it is perfectly valid to evaluate Popular musics in terms of Western (art-)music. That Popular musics
priorities have shifted (relative to art-musics) and its epiphenomena are at least as priviliged as its inner
musical content therefore matters not one jot when comparing the latter, which is always a priori anyway...
(So although you declare that Its a departure from the Western tradition, the fact of the matter is that its
merely a departure WITHIN the Western tradition!)

You then go on to state: Dance is often inseparable one reason stage, film and video have been so
important in popular music records are not the whole picture. i.e. dance etc. are not epiphenomena at all
theyre at the heart of the phenomenon. Sometimes its sound itself which is the epiphenomenon in fact it
depends on the things priorities. Well as I wrote in an earlier post if this were truly the case, then the
purely aural media (CDs, mp3s, etc.) themselves would have been deemed totally inadequate by the
Popular-music peanut-gallery. That the opposite has turned out to be the case e.g. many millions of CD
sales over the years, making billions of $$$s for the Music Industry pretty well proves my point about the
centrality and a priori nature of the inner musical content.

You continue: I strongly disagree with the prescriptive privileging of syntactic structure (what Leonard Meyer
called embodied meaning), which in much music is emergent or de-stressed. Jimi [Hendrix] could say it all
in one pitch bend.

You may disagree all you like, Robert, by all means! But doing so denies reality. (And Hendrix said only a
little in one pitch bend certainly not anything mystical or deeply abstract. [Why else would he need entire
songs?])

Finally, though I agree with you that Its not absurd to require an understanding of framework in order to
assess a cultural product, there seems to be only the two viable alternatives I discussed above, one of
which (atomization) leads to an absurdity.

55 minutes ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

@David.

Given this whole thread and the fact that Im yet to see any of your scores or hear any of your music I
gather that you somehow mix art- and popular musics. How then, do you expect it to be heard and
assessed?

You might be interested to hear some of my friend and compatriot Michael Smetanins earlier music, which
mashes the two. But in his oeuvre, popular music is merely one component a flavour. His work and
prerogatives very much remain high art. Where do you sit in this regard?

48 minutes ago

~ 14 ~
__________

Robert Davidson

So much to address here, but I dont think I can take it all on. Not exactly inviting rational discourse with
phrases like peanut gallery, but nonetheless...

The objection to atomisation is best addressed, I would suggest, by avoiding all-or-nothing thinking and
seeing it in terms of a continuum. Theres no need to rush to either end of that continuum. The world is
complex one doesnt study Christmas beetles and koalas in the same terms. Evaluating Dark Metal bands
(if you get past all that Norwegian cheesiness!) is a fluid thing that will depend on the purpose of ones
evaluation. What I object to is context-less evaluation, which I would place on one extreme end of that
continuum (your global stance which I find as fictional as Zeus). If youre trying decide somethings value,
you need to ask value for what?. Abstract value doesnt make sense to me.

So its not special pleading but contextualisation. Ligetis piano pieces would come up as poor indeed if
chosen as music for a dance party. Context.

And its the stance and context, not the content so much, that is being changed with the influx of African
culture in the traditions of popular music since about 1820. Ligeti and Reich have barely been touched by
that, rather bringing structural elements from African music into their practice but remaining solidly European
in stance. BTW Reich never tried to pretend he wasnt using Ewe rhythms he used them in totally new
ways though, by changing context. Messiaen appears to have no real experience of Indian music from what
I can hear he copied out the rhythms from (as you say) the French representation (in the 1913
Encyclopdie de la Musique) of rgadevas Sangita Ratnakara, a highly theoretical treatise from 700
years ago with little relation to actual contemporary Indian music. It was all used very abstractly, in a very
different manner from, say, Coltranes reaction to Indian music (which was to imbibe what he perceived as
the attitude). It could have been the result of mathematical games.

Hendrix didnt say abstract things with his pitch bends thats sort of the whole point. Abstraction is
precisely what he was moving away from, and thats the glory of it, and the new perspective that popular
music contributes, and continues to contribute, thanks to new thinking from Africa (and elsewhere).
Abstraction has its own glories, but there is more to life than the Athenian perspective.

One Jimi pitch bend says sex, freedom, social connection, fun, excitement, exploration, looking outside
convention etc theres a reason this music was so powerful in catalysing social change in the 1950s-1970s
(and before and after). Its direct, not abstract. The songs are important too, but theyre not needed to get
across that very potent mix of meaning they extend it and give it a vehicle and add many other layers of
meaning, but it only took that opening chord of Hard Days Night to make the point (as another example).
Check out that 1960s paper on engendered feeling (mostly in relation to jazz).

22 minutes ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Oh, that thing about sound only as the main thing only trouble with the argument about selling mp3s, CDs
etc. is that it leaves out how people actually use those products. Christopher Small looked at this in an
entertaining way in Musicking. Its rare for people to just listen to the sounds without some other activity
working out, chatting someone up, driving, catching the bus, having a party, dancing, calming down i.e. its
may not be just the sound.

19 minutes ago

~ 15 ~
__________

Robert Davidson

i.e. you and I are weird (Im assuming that you, like me, like to listen, alone, to recordings with intent focus
on the sound).

17 minutes ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

1. ... Not exactly inviting rational discourse with phrases like peanut gallery.

Cmon Robert, dont be precious: its just Aussie slang a not necessarily pejorative equivalent of the
(unqualified) hoi polloi.

2. What I object to is context-less evaluation, which I would place on one extreme end of that continuum
(your global stance which I find as fictional as Zeus).

Evaluating inner musical context common to ALL music ipso facto requires NO context: it just IS. This
Zeusian global stance is absolutely real, and is central to and underpins all Western music (regardless
of epiphenomena). It is a yardstick applicable to ALL Western music be it Dark Metal, Miles Davis, Grizzly
Bear or Messiaen.

3. So its not special pleading but contextualisation. Ligetis piano pieces would come up as poor indeed if
chosen as music for a dance party. Context.

Yes, agreed: context. The context Im primarily interested in is music qua music = music minus its
(peripheral) epiphenomena, if any (peripheral because [the] music can stand alone without it) the very
context you admitted elsewhere to finding incomprehensible! And in THIS context, if one compares and
evaluates the inner musical contents of Western art-musics and Popular musics, one quickly discovers that
the latter is almost always vastly inferior. Thats why I dont seek it out.

4. And its the stance and context, not the content so much, that is being changed with the influx of African
culture in the traditions of popular music since about 1820. ...

I think you overestimate this change. The African connexion is now very slender indeed; and popular-music
contexts like YouTube etc. are increasingly being adopted by art-music practitioners (as confirmed by my
Facebook Wall!). But you simply cannot get past music qua music its forever a priori to epiphenomena,
hence the fundamental phenomenon, always.

5. ... One Jimi pitch bend says sex, freedom, social connection, fun, excitement, exploration, looking
outside convention etc. ...

Sure, but thats not the same thing as declaring Jimi could say it all in one pitch bend. Those things you list
by no means constitute the all, and indeed seem to omit some of the facets of life that I consider important
(transcendent reality, mysticism, spirituality, stoicism, honour, righteousness, abstraction the most potent
thing of all!).

Robert, I ask the same question of you that I asked of David in my previous post: How do you expect your
music to be heard and assessed?

2 seconds ago

~ 16 ~
__________

Ian Shanahan

I just read your intervening posts Robert.

Regarding CDs etc. You and Christopher Small I read his excellent book Music * Society * Education
years ago have a point. But do those uses map on to those actually intended by the artists? Quite
probably not: for example, listening to a song on an iPod while jogging (a socio-medical epiphenomenon)
bears little relation to that song being the backing sound to a video clip as initially promulgated (a visual
epiphenomenon). The salient point I perceive here is the ever-growing public inability to LISTEN to music
devoid of other distractions or amusements!

Oh, and I do agree were both weird particularly me. (Do you know anybody else on the planet who is
writing a book on New-Testament alphanumerics [gematria], is into cosmology, [meta]mathematics,
theology, chess problem composition and sacred geometry etc. ... on top of highly complex new music?!)

2 seconds ago

__________

Robert Davidson

I think my main problem with your viewpoint is that I dont accept the idea of music qua music, because
music is not a defined thing its not a natural kind. As Ive said elsewhere, its a collection of things, the
boundaries of which are defined in very diverse ways. How can you rip the music out from, say, a
computer game, away from the sound effects, gameplay etc?

What about evaluating Ligetis piano etudes? They fail right? Because music requires danceability.
According to one conception of music. See how generalisations dont work? Epiphenomena shift too as
Ive repeatedly said what is essential to some (e.g. danceability try telling a Hausa musician in Nigeria
that its epiphenomenal) is not always essential.

How do I expect my music to be heard and assessed? Its not really that relevant people will use it in ways
they see fit (i.e. the composers intentions are sort of interesting, but not really what I care about much), but I
guess I like it to be heard and assessed by how simple it is, how catchy and easily apprehended, how well
does it fit with whats happening right here right now, how communicative can it be enjoyed by six year
olds as well as Harvard professors of music, does it represent emotions accurately, is it surprising in its
context, is it funny in its context, is it sometimes a bit sexy, does it give people a slightly new perspective on,
say, unexpected musical qualities of speech. If my daughter (11 years old) doesnt like it, I get worried.

3 minutes ago.

__________

Robert Davidson

While its interesting to think about music as something to listen to as a bunch of sounds and structures, its
a pretty weird way to treat music in the grand scheme of things. Mostly, music is part of bigger human
behaviours, and I for one think that is pretty neat (and what the originators intended is not that important
always). What youre calling distractions may be what the real point is while youre focused on the sounds,
you might be missing the key thing. Its fun to listen to the sound of a microwave as its cooking, but you
probably should pay attention to the taste of the food that comes out too.

But thats OK by the way, regarding Sacred Geometry, you might like a conversation I had with John
Rodgers on this: http://www.topologymusic.com/articles/rodgers.htm

~ 17 ~
29 minutes ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

Music qua music is of course never the totality of music Ive repeatedly said otherwise! but it is the core
phenomenon of all music.

Ligetis piano etudes: They certainly do not fail! You yourself correctly identified Ligetis context: Western
(art-)music. But Im only talking here about WESTERN musics, Robert so your Hausa example (good
though it is) is irrelevant to this discussion.

Thanks for your answer to my question, which is very revealing indeed. Simple (theres no such thing in my
book: only simplistic; simple = complex in disguise!), easy apprehension (of the music in toto? on a
single hearing? Ye Gods, I hope you dont mean that!), enjoyment by six year olds (!!!!!) arent anywhere
on my own compositional radar though some of your other things are, perhaps, sometimes. And if a
regular pre-teen kid liked (every aspect of) my music, without further clarification, Id be bloody worried!

2 seconds ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

1. While its interesting to think about music as something to listen to as a bunch of sounds and structures,
its a pretty weird way to treat music in the grand scheme of things.

But not at all within the Western tradition including its popular musics.

2. Mostly, music is part of bigger human behaviours, and I for one think that is pretty neat (and what the
originators intended is not that important always). What youre calling distractions may be what the real point
is while youre focused on the sounds, you might be missing the key thing.

Sure. But the point i.e. the motivation behind the musics (the sound-phenomenon aspect of it) existence
in whatever context by no means precludes the legitimacy of evaluating the musics sonic dimension.

3. Its fun to listen to the sound of a microwave as its cooking, but you probably should pay attention to the
taste of the food that comes out too.

Of course! But in that context, its highly unlikely that I or anybody else would be listening to the
microwaves (and cooking foods) sounds as music. But deposit the thing onto a concert-hall stage ( la
John Cage) or record it and use that in an acousmatic composition, for example, and thats another kettle of
fish entirely!

Thanks very much for the link, which Ill read with interest.

2 seconds ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Therefore youre in rather a different game than me, which is fine. You still didnt apparently get the
comment about music not actually being definable, as youre clinging to the totalising (totalitarian?) idea.

~ 18 ~
Yesterday at 11:40

__________

Robert Davidson

The microwave thing my point is that the sound of music is sometimes as peripheral in the whole scheme
of its cultural setting as the microwave hum is to the food. And its not somehow magically changed in
Western music surely thats an arbitrary division.

What about the computer game music thing? And are you seriously saying that if you put on Desordre at a
dance party (except maybe in San Francsico) that you wont be failing as a DJ? The music utterly fails in
that context the point is, its mad to evaluate music out of context.

Why are you so into evaluating music anyway? Are you thinking of becoming a music critic?

Yesterday at 12:13

__________

Ian Shanahan

1. Therefore youre in rather a different game than me, which is fine. ...

So it would seem: youre really some sort of pop musician (I guess); my aspirations are quite different
nowadays I exclusively compose art-music. Yet we both belong to within the Western tradition of music-
making.

2. ... You still didnt apparently get the comment about music not actually being definable, as youre clinging
to the totalising (totalitarian?) idea.

NOT SO! I get your comments all right, Robert, loud and clear: its just that I dont agree with all of them.
My position is by no means totalising (let alone totalitarian!), since Ive never advocated using the same
yardstick for all musics. What I am saying, however, is that it is perfectly reasonable and legitimate to
engage the same set of criteria in evaluating any music from within the Western tradition be it popular
music, electroacoustic, art-music, or whatever ... Indeed, people do this all the time, even while
acknowledging the various musics different contexts, aims, and epiphenomena etc.

3. The microwave thing my point is that the sound of music is sometimes as peripheral in the whole
scheme of its cultural setting as the microwave hum is to the food. ...

The sound of music is NEVER that peripheral (in Western musics).

4. ... And its not somehow magically changed in Western music surely thats an arbitrary division.

In the grandest scheme of things (i.e. considering all musics across the planet), yes, the Western division is
both arbitrary and in places quite fuzzy. But the musics were talking about here popular musics and
(Western) art-music both sit firmly WITHIN the Western tradition. Thats a fact. Its the application of
multiple standards that is at least potentially arbitrary, in deciding which level of sub-genre one chooses to
restrict ones evaluations to.

As for computer games and dance parties, I avoid those things like the plague. They project no interest to
me whatsoever: I see them both, in fact, as symptoms of the degradation of Western society. Nevertheless,
the (mis)use of some music within a given context is entirely independent of that musics levels of

~ 19 ~
intelligence, richness and value.

5. Why are you so into evaluating music anyway?

Because as a creative artist, I CARE ABOUT STANDARDS. I want them to be as high as possible for
everybody. And yet I see the standards of music-making in this country (and elsewhere) falling dumbing
down by the minute. A primary cause of this is the baleful, cancerous hegemony of piss-poor popular
musics (i.e. grossly inferior as sound phenomena relative to fine art-music) which are increasingly infecting
the art-music scene, and spreading, among other things, musical illiteracy.

2 seconds ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

Hi Robert. Two more thoughts:

1. I believe your philosophy of (popular) music that everything, including epiphenomena like band
members haircuts etc., inextricably constitutes the music is thoroughly mistaken: here, you are confusing
the music with those other things that give it most of its semiotic content ... rather like confusing a word with
its meaning(s). Just as any word = its vocable plus its agreed meaning(s), so a composition (piece, song,
etc.) = the music plus words (if any) plus other epiphenomena plus historical context. In both cases, without
the vocable or the music, everything else evaporates; in this sense theyre a priori. Similarly, these things
may very well be independent of one another and in any case are separately analyzable.

In the case of almost all instances of Western popular musics, the music alone is, relatively speaking,
grossly inferior a poverty whence little semiotic content can be drawn: almost all of its meanings come
from those other three things (which is why theyre considered so crucial by its devotees). In the case of
certain art-music, however Im thinking of purely instrumental absolute music there is usually negligible
epiphenomena (apart from compositions titles and programme annotations), so its semiotics comes almost
entirely from within the richness of the music itself and from its historical context its disposition on the tree
of Western art-music relative to other items in the relevant repertoire. Consider my alto flute solo
Dimensiones Paradisi (which you heard over 10 years ago): its complex multilevel architecture stems from
a network of proportionalities derived from the geometries of the New Jerusalems groundplan, which is
really the pieces entelechy, hence is its primary source of meaning. It also fits squarely onto the chain of the
solo flute repertorial canon linking together Debussys Syrinx, Varses Density 21.5, the Japanese flute
repertory and those of Brian Ferneyhough and Chris Dench.

2. In considering the Apollonian/Hermetic-Dionysian duality (which you raised), humankind has relied pretty
much entirely upon the former to bring itself out of the Stone Age: science, technology, the fine arts,
philosophy, religion, ethics, morality, law, etc. are certainly not Dionysian! Our Dionysian selves have
evolved not one jot over the last 10,000 years; if anything, were worse off, because human barbarism is
nowadays barely disguised by a thin faade of civility... Why I bring this up again is to note that Western art-
music sits firmly within the Apollonian/Hermetic realm (and so is part of the solution), whereas popular music
is openly Dionysiac, hence part of the problem.

A few seconds ago

__________

Robert Davidson

What you dont get is that music doesnt actually exist as a natural kind.

~ 20 ~
9 hours ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Heres an example of where the sound doesnt matter so much, if at all the drumming of a Scottish tenor
drummer, mostly focused on the twiddling of the drumsticks in a choreographed way the actual hits are not
that important, but its still music, but its totally bound up with the movement. The movements not
epiphenomena, and the music is still important.

9 hours ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Ferneyhough and Dench may be all very well but theyre not going to make it with anyone normal, sorry
great stuff, but destined for marginal curiosity mostly. I care about music that means something to people
and to society.

8 hours ago

__________

Robert Davidson

BTW Ian, Im very proud of my uncompromising aspirations, not caving into the temptation to take the easy
path of ignoring the audience (do you see what silly statements dismissing your intentions feel like?)

8 hours ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

1. What you dont get is that music doesnt actually exist as a natural kind.

Thats true, certainly, in many non-Western cultures: e.g. for traditional Australian aboriginal rituals and for
the sonic practices of Japanese Zen Buddhists (i.e. the shakuhachi is a religious implement not a musical
instrument the sounds of which aid meditation). However, within Western culture, this makes no sense
whatsoever! We Westerners all speak of human acoustical activity as music. Anyway, what exactly do you
mean by natural kind? Non-human musics?

2. Heres an example of where the sound doesnt matter so much, if at all the drumming of a Scottish
tenor drummer, mostly focused on the twiddling of the drumsticks in a choreographed way the actual hits
are not that important, but its still music, but its totally bound up with the movement. The movements not
epiphenomena, and the music is still important.

Not so at all! I know a few drummers from pipe bands, and both the drumming AND the (epiphenomenal)
choreography are about equally important! But they ARE separate and separable behaviours,
sometimes being rehearsed separately from one another. If EITHER aspect is neglected, then they can
expect a boot up the arse from the drum major! The stylised movement dimension is, nevertheless, an
epiphenomenon relative to the music of the drumming; this fact, however, is independent of its importance
relative to the music (the actual hits).

~ 21 ~
3. Ferneyhough and Dench may be all very well but theyre not going to make it with anyone normal, sorry
great stuff, but destined for marginal curiosity mostly. I care about music that means something to people
and to society.

Do you think its really that clear-cut? Over the years, Ive been pleasantly surprised by the extent to which
quite a few seemingly normal people have embraced certain examples of advanced modern(ist) Western
art-music. A good example is my mate Dave Collison, now in his mid-20s, a primary-school teacher and
lover of heavy metal (he was my information source about dark metal, incidentally): Dave has also grown to
love my own music, as well as that of Messiaen, Varse, and Stravinskys serial repertoire, among other
things. I havent laid any Ferneyhough or Dench on him yet, but I will! You say I care about music that
means something to people and to society. Well, the intelligentsia and people with arcane tastes are people
who are part of society too. Appealing only to the lowest common denominator guarantees stagnation at
best, but more likely a slippage of standards a dumbing down, which is indeed occurring in this country...

4a. BTW Ian, Im very proud of my uncompromising aspirations, ...

As am I of mine... (But in 3, Robert, youve already admitted to compromising: i.e. bowing deferentially to
some sort of perceived notion of societal normalcy [which itself may well be fictitious]...)

4b. ... not caving into the temptation to take the easy path of ignoring the audience ...

What makes you think I do this? But your language the audience implies simplistic thinking: that a
collection of audients is some kind of uniform, monolithic other, and that us musicians are somehow
separate entities from it. The truth is that any audiental group is inherently heterogeneous, each member
bringing their own cultural baggage with it. Moreover, most music is consumed nowadays NOT in live
circumstances (where the musicians on stage and any composers present in the flesh can gauge audients
responses): for the normal situation of music reception now, one is utterly unaware of who is hitting the OFF
button on their radio, CD player, computer etc. in response to what musics. In this digital age, musicians
often dont know who their audients are, let alone possess the luxury of ignoring them!

4c. ... (do you see what silly statements dismissing your intentions feel like?)

No, sorry. I dont normally make silly statements. Anyway, I dont believe Ive necessaril dismissed your
intentions either, but, rather, merely tried to locate and understand them. However, once thats
accomplished, I might very well dismiss them! Ill let you know!

3 minutes ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Ian, I mean natural kind in its philosophical usage i.e. music is an artificial, culturally bound grouping of
phenomena. It is made up of components that are natural kinds.

These components may be things like pulse, pitch categories (things like scales), timbres definable
cognitive perceptions.

What is decided to be epiphenomena is shifting sand and depends on who you talk to. If you are calling
movement epiphenomenal, fine, but I can turn around and say timbre is epiphenomenal and dismiss
Ferneyhough as too focused on the fluff and distraction because his music relies on a specific instrument,
whereas really proper music should be able to be played by any instrument, or better, sung (i.e. the attitude
of some Renaissance composers) and not to depend on the crutch of an instrument.

~ 22 ~
Thats one of the many reasons I find your arguments so unpersuasive. Unfortunately, serious popular
musicians have had to put up with this misunderstanding for decades (at least since Adorno poured forth his
ignorance).

Yesterday at 09:26

__________

Robert Davidson

BTW my comment about ignoring the audience was meant to be sarcastic a parallel to the dismissal of
popular music for equally invalid reasons.

Yesterday at 09:28

__________

Ian Shanahan

1. What is decided to be epiphenomena is shifting sand and depends on who you talk to. If you are calling
movement epiphenomenal, fine, but I can turn around and say timbre is epiphenomenal ...

Maybe, Robert, within certain uncrossable boundaries. But movement as with any non-sounding
phenomenon will always be epiphenomenal relative to the music (as defined earlier); timbre never its
part of musics sound. (Within the music, however, (quasi)parametric priorities may indeed vary: details of
timbre are probably more important to Ferneyhough than to many Renaissance composers, true. But how is
this relevant?)

2. Unfortunately, serious popular musicians have had to put up with this misunderstanding for decades (at
least since Adorno poured forth his ignorance).

Its the so-called serious popular musicians who are guilty of misunderstanding and deliberately so, for
musico-political reasons (i.e. an illegitmate grab for power and craving for respectability, particularly in
academe). You may disagree with Adorno, of course, but he was anything but ignorant... And the ethos of
his writings on popular music that I have read I concur with fully: the Wikipedia entry on him puts it well
Adorno believed the [popular] culture industry was a system by which society was controlled through a top-
down creation of standardized culture that intensified the commodification of artistic expression. Spot on,
particularly nowadays!

3. BTW my comment about ignoring the audience was meant to be sarcastic a parallel to the dismissal of
popular music for equally invalid reasons.

I dismiss the music of popular music hence the whole edifice associated with it (lyrics, epiphenomena,
etc.) because 99%+ of popular musics musics are incredibly crude and degenerate relative to those of
serious art-music. I am by no means alone in reaching this position, which IS perfectly valid. And Im not
being sarcastic...

2 minutes ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Ian, your limiting of music to sound, construed in certain ways, is strongly culturally bound. e.g. the exclusion
of physical gesture is very arbitrary it is often (very often) at the heart of what people call music. The

~ 23 ~
boundaries you say are uncrossable are socially constructed around items that are natural kinds. Who
decides those boundaries?

Heres a question give a working definition of music that is fully inclusive and exclusive (i.e. it defines only
music and includes all music).

If you doubt Adornos extensive and widely demonstrated ignorance of popular music (and quite total
misunderstanding of its generation and distribution), I suggest you read the evidence and analysis compiled
by writers like Georgina Born, Richard Middleton and Simon Frith. For a useful look at how to extract some
benefit from Adornos unfortunate and misleading vent (after all, he was a major philosopher), read Max
Paddisons The critique criticised: Adorno and popular music.

If you are keen to criticise popular music (or at least to have the beginnings of being persuasive), may I
humbly suggest that you avoid Adornos embarrassing indulgence and actually get the most basic
information about the field (it will soon disabuse you of the notion that popular culture is top-down or
standardised) before going further. Who knows, maybe youll actually find that popular music is a gloriously
rich field of human expression with endless artistic delights.

about an hour ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Ian, when I visited Alappuzha in India, I played a tape of Mozarts Don Giovanni to a brilliantly
accomplished but very village-bound Carnatic (South Indian classical) singer. He dismissed Mozarts work
as rubbish, infantile music, totally naive (he particularly hated the use of the same gamaka all the time the
vibrato in the voice).

To me, your reaction to popular music is a very similar situation.

about an hour ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Subotnik, R. R. 1988. Toward a deconstruction of structural listening: a critique of Schoenberg, Adorno and
Stravinsky, in Explorations in Music, The Arts and Ideas. Essays in Honor of Leonard B. Meyer, ed. E.
Narmour and R. A. Solie (Stuyvesant, Philadelphia)

54 minutes ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

1a. Ian, your limiting of music to sound, construed in certain ways, is strongly culturally bound. ...

No Robert, Im saying the music = sound, plus precursors to it such as a score (if any), plus perhaps
paracompositional thinking (if any!). This is not quite what you think Im saying. And of course you and I are
both to some extent culturally bound (who isnt?) by Western culture though one can nonetheless
imagine alternative culturescapes.

~ 24 ~
1b. ... e.g. the exclusion of physical gesture is very arbitrary it is often (very often) at the heart of what
people call music. The boundaries you say are uncrossable are socially constructed around items that are
natural kinds. Who decides those boundaries?

I dont exclude physical gesture at all! What Im saying, again, is that its an epiphenomenon relative to the
music: i.e. sound and its precursors. Indeed, did I not say earlier that popular musics semiotic content lies
more within its epiphenomena than its sounds? The uncrossable boundary Im talking about is sound / non-
sound. This is not a question of social construction, but instead one of physics...

2. Heres a question give a working definition of music that is fully inclusive and exclusive (ie it defines
only music and includes all music).

A big ask! I kinda did this before, above perhaps imperfectly. Here goes, again.

Music = {a} [what I have elsewhere labelled the music and the inner musical content]: an intentional
organization of sounds and silences (including its representation [the score], if any, and the
paracompositional thought that led to it) plus {b} lyrics (if any) plus {c} epiphenomena (including context of
presentation, haircuts, etc. etc.) plus {d} historical context. Note that these are all separable, analyzable, and
assessable. I think this definition ever subject to further refinement fulfils your criteria, even to the extent
of including non-human musics like birdsong!

3. ... I suggest you read the evidence and analysis compiled by writers like Georgina Born, Richard
Middleton and Simon Frith.

These jokers all have their own axes to grind, power to grab (in academe and musicological circles), and
agendas to push. Frith in particular has been roundly condemned on a pretty wide front, as I recall. (One
article I could direct you to on this point is in a pale-blue book [ed. Klumpenhouwer] I own that is buried
under a gazillion others. Ill pass on the details when I can exhume it!) Plenty of scholars rightly dismiss
these people as intellectually lightweight postmodern dogmatists. Why do you keep relying upon them?

4. If you are keen to criticise popular music ... may I humbly suggest that you avoid Adornos embarrassing
indulgence and actually get the most basic information about the field (it will soon disabuse you of the notion
that popular culture is top-down or standardised) before going further. ...

I didnt bring up Adorno: you did. Anyway, all I need are my own ears, my broad and deep knowledge of the
Western art-music repertory, and my intelligence to guide me. My own ears and mind ongoingly confirm that,
as I wrote above, 99%+ of [Western] popular musics musics are incredibly crude and degenerate relative to
those of serious [Western] art-music. THAT ALONE is sufficient grounds for me to dismiss almost the entire
popular music edifice as comprising inferior compositional garbage regardless of whatever philosophers
like Adorno or pseudo-intellectuals like those you name have to opine.

5. Ian, when I visited Alappuzha in India, I played a tape of Mozarts Don Giovanni to a brilliantly
accomplished but very village-bound Carnatic (South Indian classical) singer. He dismissed Mozarts work
as rubbish, infantile music, totally naive (he particularly hated the use of the same gamaka all the time the
vibrato in the voice). To me, your reaction to popular music is a very similar situation.

Its an invalid analogy Robert: you were crossing between Western and non-Western cultures; I am not.

Thanks for the Subotnik reference, by the way. Do you know of any critical reviews of it (to be fair)? I
imagine that its not gospel, hewn in stone, and that some other scholars have come along afterwards and
argued against it as invariably occurs among musicologists and cultural theorists.

2 minutes ago

__________

~ 25 ~
Robert Davidson

@Ian, by your definition, Morse code, fire alarms, speech, animal calls, and as you say, birdsong are music.
Many people would exclude these from music, which shows that an agreed-upon definition is extraordinarily
elusive (I would argue impossible) because its not a natural kind. I dont believe youve defined music in an
exclusive way youve included a huge number of other phenomena.

Pitch is essential to some definitions of music you hear people saying rap isnt music because its not
sung (I guess they mean with sustained pitches). Dance is essential to others tap dancing for example
is it music, or is it dance?

One needs to look at the components when trying to understand some cultural phenomenon. Take melody
part of both language (also not a natural kind) and music its components of contour, pitch categories,
pulse, beat and rhythm (plus others) are defineable. They cross domains all over the place, and the
emphasis/mix of the components is very flexible.

The boundary between Western/non-Western is just as arbitrary (youre crossing borders between different
subcultures). I havent seen anything to suggest youre not behaving very similarly to the Indian (brilliant)
musician misunderstanding music as bad because youre looking at the wrong parts of it. You need to
learn the language before you say its gobbledygook. Imagine condemning all of Schoenberg and the
composers following him because their music fails to maintain the discipline of diatonic harmony. Youre
doing that.

Re the scholars (youre calling them jokers) the reason I rely on them is because they are some of the
best. They are widely cited, highly influential, to me, very persuasive and evidence-based (not dogmatic),
and to be taken seriously. Dunno about Subotnik responses try Google scholar.

30 minutes ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

1. Ian, by your definition, Morse code, fire alarms, speech, animal calls, and as you say, birdsong are
music.

Yes at least potentially so. Here, the specific epiphenomenon of context of presentation would be
determinative of whether or not Morse code, fire alarms, speech, or animal calls constitute music (birdsong
always is!). Indeed, Ive always maintained that language is a type of music, and not the other way round!
Tap dancing is consciously-rhythmicized dance; its resultant sounds are, arguably, music (albeit not very
interesting music to this particular audient).

2a. The boundary between Western/non-Western is just as arbitrary (youre crossing borders between
different subcultures). ...

Maybe so. But heritages musical lineages are far more clear-cut.

2b. ... I havent seen anything to suggest youre not behaving very similarly to the Indian (brilliant) musician
...

The difference between us is that he was assessing musics comparatively from two very distinct cultural
traditions; I am not the art-musics and popular musics Im comparing all come from within the Western
musical tradition.

2c. ... misunderstanding music as bad because youre looking at the wrong parts of it. You need to learn the
language before you say its gobbledygook.

~ 26 ~
Im looking at the a priori part of popular musics: the music. That is, ipso facto, the crucial part to examine!
And I know can hear its language well enough to conclude that its fucked on account of extreme crudity
and degeneracy relative to even mediocre art-music.

2d. ...Imagine condemning all of Schoenberg and the composers following him because their music fails to
maintain the discipline of diatonic harmony. Youre doing that.

Not at all! I understand extremely well the music of Schoenberg (et al.) I taught it at the University of
Sydney functional and other diatonic harmonies, and the musical grammars, such as they are, of popular
musics. Popular musics relative (lack of) artistry leads me ineluctably to my conclusions.

3. Re the scholars (youre calling them jokers) the reason I rely on them is because they are some of the
best. They are widely cited, highly influential, to me, very persuasive and evidence-based (not dogmatic),
and to be taken seriously.

Scholars by default only! (Jokers: you dont like Aussie slang? How odd...) And they are some of the best,
widely cited etc. only to or by their acolytes. They are persuasive and to be taken seriously only by
those who have fallen into the trap of agreeing with them and having parallel (bad) tastes.

about a minute ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Have fun staying in the dark then Ian. I think Im over this conversation you dont want to listen it seems to
me its all been wilful misunderstanding and prejudice.

4 hours ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

1. Have fun staying in the dark then Ian.

Im enlightened, mate happily basking in the glories of the Western art-music tradition and jazz, these
being among the greatest musics ever created by human beings. Youre the one in the dark (and its named
postmodernism), wallowing in the brainless turgidity of popular music.

2. ... you dont want to listen it seems to me its all been wilful misunderstanding and prejudice.

I HAVE listened, fully understood and rejected your case (along with the popular music that you think is so
wonderful), Robert. I see wilful misunderstanding and prejudice coming only from your direction. Your
quaint argumentation has been akin to the following analogy from the literary world:

Ian has read, say, Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness and then some (semi-pornographic) MillsnBoon
romance novella, both hailing from the same tradition. After comparing their respective texts relative
richnesses, he concludes that the former is marvellous literature Conrad is, after all, one of the greatest
stylists of the English language (and it wasnt even his native tongue!) whereas the latter is trashy, crude
and degenerate pulp fiction of near-zero worth. But along comes Robert, who exclaims,You cant do that,
Ian! Theres no such thing as a text which can be viewed independently of other factors! In any case, the
latter has a different, low-brow, audience. The MillsnBoon novellas font-style, the quality of the paper upon
which it is printed, the ratio of the novellas width to its height, its cover, the locale where you read it ... these

~ 27 ~
are all just as important nay, more important than that dubious thing youre calling the text. The cover
arts where its at, baby. Oh, and by the way, some widely cited, highly influential, very persuasive,
evidence-based, non-dogmatic, and serious scholars disagree with you, declaring that MillsnBoon is really
good literature.

Which case is more worthy? Roberts special pleading, together with its artificial postmodern criteria and
appeal to external authorities? Or Ians appeal to Reason? Ill leave it to well-informed readers and auditors
to decide for themselves.

Over and out.

about a minute ago

__________

Robert Davidson

The way I see it is more like a theatre critic goes to a movie and says hey, this is crap! Why are the actors
talking so softly? They cant project! The lighting is not right where are the lamps? etc. etc. the movie
critic says youre paying attention to the wrong thing look at the editing, the camera angles, the use of
close-ups, the whispered acting, the soundtrack (etc. etc.). The theatre person says but those are all
epiphenomena what about the actual play? We didnt do things like this in the good old days.

Thats how youre coming across the opposite of reasonable just stuck in a mid-century time warp with
blinkers on.

Mills and Boon (I assume, having never read any) is a reasonable analogy for some pop music, as it is for
some art music. Youre confusing bad pop music with all popular music. Why do you think artists,
intellectuals, musicologists, most decent classical composers take it so seriously?

Oh, and the scholars Im impressed with their arguments and their evidence and data Im not going to
get into an argument by authority.

5 hours ago

__________

Robert Davidson

BTW you most certainly have not understood even the beginnings of what Ive said that is so clear from
your responses.

about an hour ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

1. Thats how youre coming across the opposite of reasonable just stuck in a mid-century time warp
with blinkers on.

The only groove Im stuck in, Robert, is the pursuit of excellence and thats timeless. The thing that
matters most, that has always mattered most, and will only ever matter most in Western musics be it
popular or otherwise is THE MUSIC! All else is secondary.

2a. Youre confusing bad pop music with all popular music. ...

~ 28 ~
99%+ of popular music that I have ever had the misfortune to encounter is bad. What is good is vanishingly
negligible.

2b. ... Why do you think artists, intellectuals, musicologists, most decent classical composers take it so
seriously?

Some do. But the great majority of intellectuals and decent classical composers that I know and/or know
about dismiss it for the detritus that it is ... Stockhausen, Boulez and Messiaen for starters (unless you think
they arent decent).

3. BTW you most certainly have not understood even the beginnings of what Ive said that is so clear from
your responses.

Brilliant, Robert. Now youre a mind-reader... Actually, Ive seen all your arguments a thousand times before,
understood and discarded them as wrong-headed ab initio.

about a minute ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Sorry mate, its blindingly obvious its been whizzing past you because the interpretations of what Ive said
(in your responses) are so far off. Youre somehow confusing me for a postmodernist (to me pretty much
dead along with Derrida but you appear to be stuck in an even earlier phase of thought), not getting the
argument about musics being an arbitrary boundary, and missing so many other points. Boring old farts
have fretted about falling standards and the failing morality of the new since time immemorial. With respect,
if you want to join their ranks, thats your prerogative.

Stockhausen and Boulez (well leave Messiaen out of it for now) are good in my books, but fundamentally
mistaken about popular music, and they both also failed in meeting musics most important task that of
communicating (except to marginal segments of the population). Both majorly stuffed up by buying into a
blank slate view of human nature (cf. Stephen Pinker) and not getting the constraints on aesthetics
bestowed by evolution. Its a problem that has beset quite a lot of Western intellectual life for some time.

Wheres your evidence for the great majority of intellectuals dismissing popular music? All indications
would seem to point in the opposite direction, if you see what music filmmakers choose, what music
novelists write about, what music leading artists choose for their openings and parties (etc. etc.).

Musicology at Cambridge, Yale, Princeton, Harvard are embracing popular music (about bloody time). The
stuck-in-the-muds are getting very old and tired.

8 hours ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

1a. Youre somehow confusing me for a postmodernist ...

OK then: how about post-postmodernist then? (Alas, thats even worse, since it represents a total
capitulation to cultural ochlocracy.) Yes, maybe ochlocracist is more accurate. sigh

1b. ... but you appear to be stuck in an even earlier phase of thought), ...

~ 29 ~
Even if that were true (its not), SO WHAT? The music I compose is usually cutting-edge, often incorporating
details and/or structures that have never been employed before (at least within Western musics). Not many
composers can claim that, particularly nowadays...

1c. ... not getting the argument about musics being an arbitrary boundary, and missing so many other
points.

Ive missed none of your points whatsoever, Robert! I just disagree with most of them. The boundary of a
piece of music in its totality may very well be arbitrary, but the aspect that most concerns me, its core, its
inner musical content the music (as I previously defined it) is bounded by the laws of physics
([psycho]acoustics): i.e. sonic vs. nonsonic phenomena. Cant you grasp this basic fact?

1d. Boring old farts have fretted about falling standards and the failing morality of the new since time
immemorial. With respect, if you want to join their ranks, thats your prerogative.

True. But sometimes theyre right on the money. And I do see the standards including those within popular
musics slipping alarmingly. Even elementary facets of compositional craft, such as facility with music
notation, seem to be in decline currently: music knowledge that used to be taught in high-school is now
being introduced at tertiary level. Such dumbing down is REAL.

2a. Stockhausen and Boulez ... are good in my books, but fundamentally mistaken about popular music,
and they both also failed in meeting musics most important task that of communicating (except to
marginal segments of the population).

Those two are absolutely correct in their damnation of popular music! And they have by no means failed in
meeting musics most important task (even were we to agree on what that might be): if theres any failure,
its not by them, but by the corrupt and avaricious POPULAR MUSIC INDUSTRY which has been
brainwashing the hoi pollois tastes and attitudes for decades from early childhood (a blank-slate stage)
onwards. Now if a Lithuanian is speaking to you in their own language and you dont understand them,
whose fault is that? Not the speakers, arguably not yours either, but the culture that failed to teach you that
language. Or would you fascistically insist that the Lithuanian learn English? Precisely the same reasoning
applies with musics.

2b. Both [Stockhausen and Boulez] majorly stuffed up by buying into a blank slate view of human nature (cf.
Stephen Pinker) and not getting the constraints on aesthetics bestowed by evolution.

Pinker isnt necessarily correct. Educatively, young children pretty much are a blank slate. Certainly, in terms
of neurophysiology, from the age of 0 to about 7, cerebral formation is an about equal mix of nature and
nurture. And any psychologist will inform you that childhood experiences tend to be imprinted for life.

3. Wheres your evidence for the great majority of intellectuals dismissing popular music? All indications
would seem to point in the opposite direction, if you see what music filmmakers choose, what music
novelists write about, what music leading artists choose for their openings and parties (etc. etc.).

Since when did arguing by popularity constitute evidence for truth? By that false logic, wed all still believe
that the Earth was flat and our solar system geocentric! ... But lets persist for the moment. Putting aside
intellectuals they are not central to music-making in general how about we just focus upon the opinions
of those closer to home: decent classical composers? Now Ive already mentioned three. Here are some
more (in no particular order): Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Witold Lutoslawski, Gyorgy Ligeti, Gilbert Amy,
Horatio Radulescu (and the other French spectralists), Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Hubler, Klaus-Stefan
Mahnkopf, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Brian Ferneyhough, James Dillon, Michael Finnissy, (and now some
Australians) Nigel Butterley, David Lumsdaine, Larry Sitsky, Roger Smalley, Liza Lim, Eliott Gyger, Adam
Yee, David Chisholm, Graham Hair, Damian Ricketson, Claudio Pompili, Katia Tiutiunnik, ... Those from the
other disciplines you mention just havent bothered to look beyond the omnipresent, stifling blanket of
popular culture. Yuk!

~ 30 ~
4. Musicology at Cambridge, Yale, Princeton, Harvard are embracing popular music (about bloody time).
The stuck-in-the-muds are getting very old and tired.

What musicologists do is their own business theyre mainly about, it appears to me, entrenching
themselves and their ideologies (usually whatever happens to be fashionable at the time: and popular music
is the flavour of the month) in academe and has no effect whatsoever on those composers who march to
the drum-pattern of their own muse. And these are the composers that really matter...

(Incidentally, your example from a recent post movie critic, theatre critic etc. is vacuous, since it was
about crossing art-forms altogether. Art-music and popular music belong to the same art-form: music. Would
you dare to insinuate otherwise?)

about a minute ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Sorry, you still havent grasped the point about music boundaries. If you want it explained, read Jean
Molinos Toward an evolutionary theory of music and language in The Origins of Music (2000).

The best music in a film scene might be a very simple drone rip it from the context and it would be poor.
You seem to want to do that the hierarchy of priorities is not hard-and-fast though. Thats the last time Ill
repeat this, except to say Brian Eno wrote about it very well in his essay On Being an Artist in A year with
swollen appendices (1996).

Post-postmodernism well, actually, its the influence of the cognitive revolution (and neo-Darwinism) that is
key in the new move beyond postmodernism (which has tended to be negligent of Darwinian
understandings). You seem rather innocent of that Im sorry to say. And to maintain children are blank slates
betrays a very deep ignorance/misunderstanding indeed.

Your carrying on about the ochlocracy just indicates (to me) a lack of respect for people and for democracy.
If the mob were ruling, you wouldnt have the incredible freedom and riches you do have (remember there
are more avant-garde composers than ever).

Im sorry to hear some of the composers whose music I like are dismissive of popular music (I guess being
good at composing doesnt give you good taste). I was never arguing from authority, just showing that to
compare pop music to Mills and Boon is off the mark, as the people who read Heart of Darkness (i.e. not
covered in the blanket you fret about) tend to listen to Grizzly Bear, Leonard Cohen and Bjrk, not
Stockhausen and Lachenmann. Why? Because their music is sophisticated and actually means something
to large parts of the population, so its useful in creating communicative art. When avant-garde music is used
in, say, mainstream films, it tends to be for a very limited range of emotions.

So someones failing to communicate and they blame everyone around them yeah, right. Good strategy
there. Youre welcome to go around talking an invented Esperanto, but dont expect people to kowtow to
your ego. So much avant-garde music, including Boulez and Stockhausen, feels emotionally stunted.

The composers who matter in my book are not the ones stuck up their own self-absorbed arses, but the
ones who are actually communicating, and not just to specialists. Music has to mean something to people
outside the experts realm.

Film and theatre are both the same thing from one perspective a form of drama just as rocknroll records
and orchestral concerts are both music (again, remembering thats a very undefined term), but use different
media. So my analogy was pretty close to the mark I think you are judging a record as if it were a score.

~ 31 ~
Maybe a better rebuttal to your analogy of pulp literature vs high class literature would be to say its more
like youre criticising a storyteller for not having perfectly formed sentences etc. (when their words are
transcribed), totally missing the intonation, body language, costuming etc. that are so crucial to the art.

Anyway, you said you like jazz, which is just old popular music continued. The way youre carrying on about
contemporary music is just how conservatives whinged about jazz in the 1920s.

about an hour ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Oh, and by the way, many of the worlds best musicians never learnt music notation, so to fret about its
decline is rather out of place. There are other literacies. Kids are much better informed musically than they
were 25 years ago, thanks to iPods, YouTube etc.

about an hour ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

1. Sorry, you still havent grasped the point about music boundaries.

Sorry, Robert, but you havent grasped that I definitely grasp it... (What do you think I was learning at the
University of Sydney doing my Bachelor of Music under Professor Peter Platt, if not this?)

2. The best music in a film scene might be a very simple drone rip it from the context and it would be
poor. You seem to want to do that the hierarchy of priorities is not hard-and-fast though. Thats the last
time Ill repeat this, except to say Brian Eno wrote about it very well in his essay On Being an Artist in A
year with swollen appendices (1996).

The best film music by people like Alex North and Jerry Goldsmith is capable of standing on its own,
completely devoid of visual images. And you can keep Brian Eno: the man is an intellectual lightweight.

3. ... its the influence of the cognitive revolution (and neo-Darwinism) that is key in the new move beyond
postmodernism (which has tended to be negligent of Darwinian understandings). You seem rather innocent
of that Im sorry to say. And to maintain children are blank slates betrays a very deep
ignorance/misunderstanding indeed.

Im reasonably aware from sources like New Scientist of recent cognitive theories, as well as of the
deeply problematic, reductionist neo-Darwinism. And I DIDNT say children in general, rather young
children for which my contention is largely true. YOU underestimate kids abilities to grow in whatever
directions theyre led.

4. Your carrying on about the ochlocracy just indicates (to me) a lack of respect for people and for
democracy. If the mob were ruling, you wouldnt have the incredible freedom and riches you do have
(remember there are more avant-garde composers than ever).

I respect people who earn my respect. The majority mentally lazy and pig-ignorant dont. Its tiny
minorities and individual geniuses (e.g. Schoenberg) who generate changes of paradigm; never the masses.
Democracy is a (nice) fiction. And what makes you think we have incredible freedom and riches? Cultural
ochlocracy fuelled by anti-intellectualism rules in Australia. Its all about money, baby...

~ 32 ~
5a. Im sorry to hear some of the composers whose music I like are dismissive of popular music (I guess
being good at composing doesnt give you good taste). ...

They DO have good taste! Its the dupes like yourself who have fallen in love with the shit of popular music
who exhibit bad taste.

5b. ... I was never arguing from authority, just showing that to compare pop music to Mills and Boon is off
the mark, ...

Nope. Theyre both utter crap.

5c. ... as the people who read Heart of Darkness (i.e. not covered in the blanket you fret about) tend to
listen to Grizzly Bear, Leonard Cohen and Bjrk, not Stockhausen and Lachenmann. ...

Evidence? (Nil.)

5d. ... Why? Because their music is sophisticated and actually means something to large parts of the
population, ...

Grizzly Bear, Leonard Cohen and Bjrk sophisticated?! Like hell... And certainly not in comparison to
Stockhausen or Lachenmann. Your hearing, listening and/or cognition is obviously defective, Robert, for you
to make such a silly assertion. Remember that Bjrk interviewed and looks up to Stockhausen; definitely
not the other way round.

5e. ... When avant-garde music is used in, say, mainstream films, it tends to be for a very limited range of
emotions.

Blame the film-directors for that, not the music (rarely presented in toto). Anyway, for one to insinuate that
emotion is the be-all and end-all of music betrays a certain degree of animalism. Truly HUMAN music has
loftier goals than mere emotionality...

6. So someones failing to communicate and they blame everyone around them yeah, right. ... So much
avant-garde music, including Boulez and Stockhausen, feels emotionally stunted.

Well if youre happy to immerse yourself in the musical equivalent of monosyllabic idiocy, then be my guest
Robert. Just dont try imposing it on me or anybody else possessing above-average intelligence. (Ill treat
your pathetic jibe about ego with the contempt it deserves.) And you obviously fail totally to recognize that
the music industry bears much responsibility for the current poor standards. I will also hold you personally
responsible as a so-called educator in academe for contributing to this countrys ongoing intellectual
decline. Youre part of the problem, mate and I am part of the cure.

7a. The composers who matter in my book are not the ones stuck up their own self-absorbed arses, ...

Oh, I agree: because those who are worthless are the modernity-hating blinkered dogmatic populists
(together with their cheer-squad, musicological wankers like Born and Frith) that are trying to digest
themselves through cranial-rectal penetration.

7b. ... but the ones who are actually communicating, and not just to specialists. Music has to mean
something to people outside the experts realm.

Communicating what? Puerile inanity? NB: by your own admission, you yourself wish your music to appeal
to 6-year-olds making it ipso facto puerile. (So dont whinge and gripe if somebody labels it that.) Anyway,
composers with real gravitas have always reached way beyond specialists; if you think otherwise, then you
really do have your head up your arse. Messiaen, for example, always plays to full houses here in Sydney
(though that might not be the case where you live: Brisbane is, after all, the capital of Australias bastion
state of rednecks).

~ 33 ~
8. Film and theatre are both the same thing from one perspective a form of drama ...

Thoroughly simplistic.

9. Maybe a better rebuttal to your analogy of pulp literature vs high class literature would be to say its
more like youre criticising a storyteller for not having perfectly formed sentences etc (when their words are
transcribed), totally missing the intonation, body language, costuming etc that are so crucial to the art.

Another fatuous analogy. Anyway, the best storytellers I gather you mean ones in the flesh? do (or at
least did) have perfectly formed sentences, underpinning those other things you mention. A perfect
example of this was Abraham Lincoln: just read the transcriptions of his impromptu speeches (in Neil
Postmans Amusing Ourselves to Death, for example a book you really should read) and youll see what
I mean.

10. Anyway, you said you like jazz, which is just old popular music continued. The way youre carrying on
about contemporary music is just how conservatives whinged about jazz in the 1920s.

Its modern jazz post-1940 that I love. And the jazzes I love most of all were never truly popular in the
sense you mean. But much (not all) of the jazz being complained about during the 1920s by the musical lite
was pretty trashy.

**********

Robert, its pretty obvious we have utterly divergent and irreconcilable musico-cultural views and agendas
yours being populist, fashion-prone and carnal; mine being about fine discernment, the richness of high-art,
and spirituality (an aristocracy of sentiments, where mere fashion can kiss my sainted arse). Let this be the
end of this thread, please...

2 minutes ago

__________

Robert Davidson

Still havent got it. Your mind is so darn closed. Your summary is the opposite of true. So toddle off, its OK,
Ill leave you to wallow.

4 minutes ago

__________

Ian Shanahan

Footnote in response to your last post

1a. Oh, and by the way, many of the worlds best musicians never learnt music notation, so to fret about its
decline is rather out of place. ...

In the West, the best musicians are thoroughly conversant with music notation. To be comfortable with
spreading ignorance of it shows you to be the very antithesis of an educator.

1b. There are other literacies.

Maybe. But thats no excuse for neglecting literacy (i.e. music notation) something which EVERY musician
in the West ought to acquire. How else will they be able to appreciate the inner workings of and theories

~ 34 ~
behind the glorious Western art-music canon, if they cannot read a score? But then, its to certain peoples
advantage starting with the money-hungry popular music industry to see that canon fall into oblivion...

2. Kids are much better informed musically than they were 25 years ago, thanks to iPods, YouTube etc.

THAT IS COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT!!! In the years I was at the University of Western Sydney, I
saw nothing but an ever-growing dearth of knowledge in kids. They certainly know fuck-all about what really
matters Western art-music thats for sure. And high-school musical curricula are partly to blame...

4 minutes ago

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Robert Davidson

Oh, and learn some respect for six year olds. Actually, learn some respect for humans.

3 minutes ago

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Ian Shanahan

Still havent got it. Your mind is so darn closed. Your summary is the opposite of true. So toddle off, its OK,
Ill leave you to wallow.

A perfect description of your own smug, arrogant position of cultural benightedness.

4 minutes ago

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Ian Shanahan

Oh, and learn some respect for six year olds. Actually, learn some respect for humans.

I only respect the smart ones and they earn it. As for the rest, at least I dont condescend to them (as you
do).

3 minutes ago

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Ian Shanahan

Oh, and as for closed-mindedness: my mind is closed only to bullshit such as what youve been dishing
out here and elsewhere all along.

Be happy in your populist pigsty.

2 seconds ago

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