rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (07/22/84)
> Congratulation, michael. You may now take your place in that long line > of savants who at one time or other have said, "this is it for music, > folks". Yeah, I know you were talking about classical only, but there's > more than just a style there, and it's not so easily passed off. Michael made NO claims about "the end of music". He referred to classical [sic] music being dead. There IS just a style there. The point Michael was apparently trying to make was that while other music has grown and blossomed staggeringly during this century, conservatorially composed music has frozen stagnantly. Look at the number of people in this very newsgroup (paragon of openmindedness that it is :-) who detest or at best ignore 20th century music. Your belief that when Michael said that classical music was dead he had implied that all music was dead reveals a classicocentric mentality... > You can now be one with the guy who said in 1770 (the year of Beethoven's > birth), "Music is over. All modulations which are possible have been done, > and all themes worth writing have been written." or words to that effect. ...or Camille Saint-Saens, who said something similar at the premiere of Debussy's "Afternoon of a Faun", who walked out on the premiere of "Le Sacre" because the bassoon was playing a note that he considered too high for a bassoon to play. Apparently serious music is rife with such doomsayers prophesying its own demise. Perhaps if composers (and listeners) were to expand their horizons... Naaah! > While you're at it, you might inform us as to just exactly what wonderful > innovations and new schools of thought exist in the music *you* like. > And if you tell me "well, now they use a thingamajig instead of the dead > instruments classical musicians use" I'll crack up with laughter. And if *you* tell *me* "well, *now* serious composers use a tone row as a means of organizing a process of composition instead of the dead tonal styles that they used to use...", then I'll get to laugh, too :-) (You mean you don't know the proper names for modern instruments, Jeff? How uncultured... ) -- "Now, Benson, I'm going to have to turn you into a dog for a while." "Ohhhh, thank you, Master!!" Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr