Thank you for what you have written below, I found this most interesting and engaging
On 16/4/08 11:33, "Brian Jenkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I do not recall arguing any point about the obvious variability of the > technical proficiency of all performers of all sorts of music, what I was > most interested in was highlighting an issue I have encountered innumerable > times: musicians that are not musicians. We are in agreement on this I believe. I perhaps took too on overly strong lead from your concurrence with DA (District Attorney?). > Whether playing jazz, rock, > minimalist, serialist, Romantic, Classical, Baroque, etc. music, it cannot > be disputed that each is based in a set of techniques, conventions, forms > and objective limitations of both performing and composing. All of these > forms focus on effects of tension/resolution and expansion/compression > through harmonic and melodic modifications (in that order) and all still > using the 12-tone even-tempered tuning. By and large 12-tone even tempered tuning remains crucial or many musicians, but for some, e.g., Barry Guy, Joelle Lleandre, Mark Feldman, Matt Maneri, Rajesh Mehta, and many others, microtonalism is more important in their playing. > An understanding of the elements of > a musical form is essential to developing it or surpassing it. If all I > learn is how to move my fingers in such a way as to produce what has > previously been defined as a minor pentatonic scale then I am most likely > not playing with an idea of the harmonies it structures. Without a doubt > one learns by hearing them, but with limited exposure to harmonic > possibility the result of private intuitional teaching is severely limited. > This idea I draw from both my own experience and what I have read over the > years from popular forms and the musicians involved with them. It is the > exposure that leads one to think only vertically and endlessly play naked > I-IV-V progressions with a conceit of brilliance. Then solo technique is > learned; scalar theory over those vertical structures all absorbed through > tablature. And as stated before, jazz musicians intuit greater degrees of > possibilities as many performers over its life so far have gone far beyond > such simple models. If I was brought up on Chick Corea, I would more likely > hear distant relations intuitively instead of strictly diatonic relations. > Still, learning the instrument and learning the technique is the bare > minimum. As I have also said before, once developing past what I consider > the rudimentary knowledge of playing something like jazz on guitar (such as > being able to hear anything and play coherent lines contributing to the > base's material, elaborating it, and exploring its consequences, any key, > but not styles--learning style is a good point of entry but the first habit > to get away from), and I could not quite play past it, though I have not > actually given it up altogether. (Understand though my standard of > technical playing is along the lines of Al DiMeola). > > I emphasize the improvisation for jazz's artistic ground because it is an > art of performance, again noting that the compositional art using the same > material is in a different place. To speak to my interest in Bartok, I hear > in his work, more so than Berg whom is closest to achieving so of the > 12-tone composers contemporary with Bartok, a convincing answer to the > problem of musical objectivity initiated by Beethoven, dissected by > Schumann, Wagner, Bruckner, Strauss, then Mahler, and consummated with > Schoenberg's cutting of the Gordian Knot. The previous lineage is obviously > not remotely comprehensive but it captures the essential narrative. I > cannot stress enough that the music of this tradition is known for its > composers for a specific reason, that it is the development of musical > composition as an art. Of course, the music guided the compositional > problems raised and resolved, but nevertheless the structural, formal and > harmonic material of these composers directly stemmed from other works and > compositional technique until it came to such that the tonic became > logically indiscernible, any chord could "resolve" or lead to any other and > the tonal system appeared exhausted *compositionally*. The gaps here and > the consequences of these brief remarks are the topics of myriad volumes, > but I wanted to rehearse this here because I agree with its premises. > Bartok's String Quartet No. 5, for instance, is an intensely dissonant > piece, but even before I ever sat down with the score I found I could follow > it, or rather, it lead me and moved me (in distinction from most serial > music). The first movement of Bartok's 5th SQ is based on an inherited > tonal relation, but instead of scalar relations, it is built around cells of > pitches with tonic/dominant-like axes of Bb-B and Eb-E (where in the > diatonic system Eb is the dominant of Bb). Pitch areas function here. This > creates the sort of tension we're conditioned to hear and experience from > diatonic music, but its construction, its gesture, grotesque at times, > beautiful at others though never rich, as open as Beethoven's late quartets. > It is both gripping and comprehensible, for me it rended the veil. Beyond > these impressions, its compositional structure is established throughout > Bartok's works yet always inchoate in form. Compositional art requires > something to compose, his music carries on after the passing of chromaticism > without retreating in defeat to the hordes of rampant musical nominalists > and engineers dressed up as composers. (Did I mention I agree with Adorno > regarding total serialism and aleatoric music?) > In the above paragraph I can see parallels with the arguments of Adorno, as I did in your earlier email. This is not meaning to say that you are agreeing with Adorno, simply drawing comparison. Thank you, Toodle-pip Allan.
