eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) (01/12/91)
;Date: Mon, 07 Jan 91 09:03:54 SET ;From: Lelio Camilleri <CONSERVA@IT.CNR.FI.IFIIDG> ;Subject: critics to the 2nd European Confernce ........ ;To: Music Digest Bulletin <MUSIC-RESEARCH@prg> ; ;The announcement was written by all the scientific committee, Come off it. You boys aren't scientists. You're a bunch of harmony teachers or something like that. I'm not in awe of the scientific community. I don't think we musicians need busy ourselves with scientific-sounding agendas, or doing our things in any way consistent with what we know or understand of the sciences. Or if we do want to go after scientific models we ought to at least have read Feyerabend, who almost could be seen to be suggesting that music ought to be a model for science, and not the other way around. The fact that the conference announcement was worded so as to sound theoretically neutral, and drew protests: that it pretended to be expressive of the intellectual ground of the music-theoretical community, but couldn't justify its assumption of that ground: the fact that Cammilieri snubbed the three or four c omplaints made about it, the fact that he was unable to address my real criticisms, and allowed himself to be defeated by my language, responding instead emotionally: the fact that his inability to a ddress these criticisms rested on his invocation of the word "scientific," -- this doesn't suggest "science," and it certainly doesn't suggest "music." SO what is it? Eh, Camillieri, just what is it you're after?