On 9 Feb 2005 at 6:33, dhbailey wrote: > Christopher Smith wrote: > > > On Feb 8, 2005, at 7:52 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > >> I just pointed > >> out that if the music is incomprehensible without reference to > >> outside information that is not musical in nature, then it's not > >> very good music. > > > > Well, I guess we will have to agree to disagree there. I don't know > > of very much art that DOESN'T require cartloads of outside > > information to understand or enjoy it. > > > > I'm glad just the same to finally understand your point, even if I > > don't agree with it. > > I agree with David Fenton here -- if a casual listener can't just hear > a piece of music and enjoy it without any exposure to anything other > than that piece of music, then it isn't very good music. . . .
Er, that's not at all what I've been arguing. That would be analogous to this situation: 1. you speak English but not German. 2. someone gives you a poem of Goethe to read. 3. you can't understand it, so you declare it a terrible poem, since you have to learn this bloody German language in order to understand it. That's crazy, and I'm sure you'd agree. Some music is written in styles that a listener is not familiar with and simply won't know how to listen to. It may take more than one listening, or, even, a *lecture* (HORRORS!!!!) before they start to understand and appreciate what the piece of music has to say. But that's not the same thing as requiring "external information" to understand the work of art. It's simply a matter of learning the "language" in which the art work is created in order to have a hope of understanding it. Now, if the person who speaks German very well and has read quite a bit of poetry reads the poem and finds it to be gibberish, or internally inconsistent, then *that's* like what I've been arguing about in regards to the consonance/dissonance argument. For a piece of music to convey meaning via consonance and dissonance, the differences between the two must be demonstrated within the piece of music itself. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
