jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow) (07/24/84)
> Michael made NO claims about "the end of music". He referred to classical > [sic] music being dead. Usually, when something is dead, that's the end of it. :-) I believe I recognized that he only referred to classical music (not "conservatorially composed" music, a considerably narrower category you seem to have made up out of thin air.) > There IS just a style there. Nonsense. Think about the difference in styles of the following composers: Leonin, Machaut, Ockeghem, Des Prez, Lasso, Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Corelli, Bach (hey, I said most Baroque music bores me), Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Mahler, Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky... This is all just "a style"? Phooey. > The point Michael was apparently trying to make (! - Ed.) was that while > other music has grown and blossomed staggeringly during this century, Such as ragtime, for instance, :-) > conservatorially composed music has frozen stagnantly. Well, I was going to ask you to furnish some evidence, but now I see it would be useless. If you define "classical" narrowly enough, I'm sure you can eventually find a microstyle of it that is dying. What makes you think modern classical music is composed exclusively in a conservatory environment? Let's see, isn't that where they grow plants indoors? :-) > 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... Um, just what do you mean by 20th century music, hmmm? Oh dear, you're letting your whatever-centricity show :-) Personally, I'm proud of my "classicocentric mentality" and I make no apology for it. > Apparently serious music is rife with such doomsayers prophesying its own > demise. And, funny thing, they always look ridiculous a few generations later. By the way, what is this "serious" music? Is there "frivolous" music too? :-) Well, nomenclature is a problem, isn't it? now will you please have a little more apparent sympathy for people who try to use all these terms, classical, popular, serious, light, etc. ? And not be so willing to take offense at the way they are used? Now, I said, > 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 Rich said, > 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...) No, I would never say that. Modern instruments...you mean, piano? clarinet? :-) You can't include those? What kind of centricity were you talking about? Notice that Rich did not mention any of the new ideas that I asked Michael to enumerate. Oh well, perhaps Michael will. Or maybe there aren't any :-) at last, the end! Jeff Winslow