Mason.Henr@XEROX.ARPA (02/20/85)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Is there 'progress' in the arts? Of course not. Arts are made by people, and people never change. 5) Is current music theory/scholarship helpful? Or has it become a jargon-filled competition for university positions? The journals are written by professors; education is intrinsically retrospective; professors live in the past; I live in the present; they have nothing to say to me. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Are you for real? I haven't heard that type of simple-minded generalized BS since I quit watching those late 60's teeny-bobber TV movies. People change quite drastically from generation to generation, sometimes following a cycle. To say that there has been no progress in the arts as a general statement says something about the author's artistic knowledge. For example, can you say that current harmonic jazz progressions would be anything but noise to listeners back in "ancient Greece"? The human mind *learns* music. To an undeveloped listener complex (or just plain new) sounds are not much more than noise. The best jazz improvisors are those who can make the audience "guess right" 50% of the time. As applied to music, education is always "intrinsically retrospective" because the minute a harmonic progression stye exists, it's history. Formal education is just a means of compiling information that you could get from experience into an organized manner. Education does not only deal with history as you assume, but deals with the concepts of originality in style. You have obviously not had any *good* formal music training. Ray