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> (REH)
> >I don't get that. In an age of virtual knowledge imitating art you are > >going to only tax property? Do you plan to tax patents and copywrites? > (KH) > I'm not planning to tax anything. All I'm suggesting is that I can foresee > the day coming when financial transactions are going to have so many > complex and invisible elements that governments will have to resort to > taxing visible things only. The you was rhetorical as I'm sure you know but how can I complain. You're on a roll today. All I am saying is that this is the age of information and that physical capital, although a part of it, is the least growth producing of the kinds of property. So if they are going to make money they will probably have to come up with something like a tax on intellectual property transactions, which they already do with the movies and games but applied to the general business sector. Many companies only exist in that realm and will have less and less property to tax. But you know this. Are you doing this just for fun? (KH) > I don't quite know how you switched into music -- but here we go . . . Intellectual Property Rights. But I said it below well enough below. > (REH) > >The dealing with this was such a bust in the last century that the > >Intellectual Property Rights collapsed as viable businesses. Today such a > >collapse would destroy the internet and all information research, like it > >did composers. > >Indeed musical ignorance reached such a point as a result that even the > >future of music has been cast in doubt as you have pointed out in the past. (KH) > No, I haven't at all doubted the future of music. I'm sure it will continue > for as long as man exists. All I am suggesting is that a great deal of > so-called "art" or "serious" music is either totally unappealing to most > people (and even to "serious" connoisseurs -- though they wouldn't admit > it) or, quite simply it isn't music as able to be defined in any sensible > language. For example John Cage's piece of silent piano music cannot be > called music. That would be making nonsense of language as well as music. Actually I enjoyed it the last time I "heard it." I've spent hours fascinated by alliatory scores and choreography. These are Sounds our of Silent Spaces. (KH) > I would define music quite simply as a sequence of rhythmic sounds that is > memorable by a majority of the population. I define it as a Psycho-Physical Pursuit of Values in Sound. However, I liked Kraehenbeuhl's teacher's definition as well. In the elements of sound Music is the Art of Changing well. All music has to do is be expressive of the time and place in the most exceptional manner possible. Memorable is a good term. It grounds it in symbols and communication. Communication is learned. Here in the US we have very little real European culture. A person can pick up an operatic manner just by growing up in Italy. America doesn't have it. So Americans have developed a very powerful art of vocal teaching to break down the elements of operatic instruction so that those who have a shallow operatic culture can learn how or what it is about. Once you conquer Verdi's waltzes and complex musical dramatic characters it is not so far to Shoenberg's constant change. What is a problem however is "information". Constant change becomes no change especially if one can't hear or is unfamiliar with the small changes. One has the same problem with Wagner's tonality. It never stops for several hours and so you had better be comfortable with being constantly interrupted before you finally achieve climax at the end of the Liebestod. But the leap from Wagner to Berg to Webern, Schoenberg and Boulez is easy. Children do find it easy. I know for the same reason the late David Kraehenbeuhl knew. He taught thousands of them and wrote the Keyboard Theory and Jazz and Blues books for the Francis Clark Piano Library. The FCP is the most throughly tested musical system on the market to date and it is over forty years old. Maybe the issue is American culture versus UK. Before you take umbrage may I remind you that European, including English voice teachers have constantly said the same thing about us. They said we had great voices but little culture. I would agree if you insert two words. Great voices but little natural European culture. A Jazz personality comfortable with improvisation is a long way from the control exercised by the late Romantic composers. In fact American Psycho-Therapists have labeled such control in print as "Anal" or "obsessive compulsive" and consider it to be un-American. I don't agree but that is a whole other post. The big exception to this has been proof. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who is a genius at analysis and reduces complexity to zilch when he sings a Berg song. It is clear that he is hearing a different drummer from all of the incompetants who sang these songs as if they were more strange than music. We have the same issues with Charles Ives who doesn't make much sense if you don't know the roots of his tunes. There is a definite extra-musical element that is necessary for the work to succeed. The same is true of Berlioz and Beethoven's 6th Symphony. (KH) > There is, of course, such a multitude of different musical styles that > there isn't enough time in the day for someone to get to familiarise > himself with more than one or two (unless one is a professional) for > subsequent recognition, recall and enjoyment. Just depends on what you value. Growing up in the reservation horror that I have, and have sent to this list, I would point out that it was and still is music that "saves" our souls. All music. I listened constantly and knew more styles then the city folks when I got to college. You learn to "feel" it. > > In the piece you quote below, David Kraehenbuehl ends by deploring the fact > that most people find it hard to enjoy modern serious music. His get-out is > that children enjoy it and therefore there's something defective about us > adults. Well, I don't at all believe that children enjoy modern serious > music and, if he asserts that, I would like to see the colour of his > evidence. He may know a million times more about music than I do, but I > think he's fooling himself. Actually the question was not how much more music he knew than you but how many more children he had tested. The answer is thousands and he had to analyze the child's physical, emotional and attention development to be successful with the pieces that he wrote for them. I was one of those researchers in the early sixties who tested those pieces with the students I was responsible for. The problem we had was the parents who couldn't understand a child learning three hundred pieces of music in two school semesters. That including understanding the theory and being able to transpose at sight anything they could play. In Washington in the late sixties I had a parent remove his daughters from my studio because they were learning so much music and had such an enthusiasm for, yes contemporary music, that they were neglecting their regular studies. (KH) > Hope I've not offended you. I really don't want to, Ray. > > Keith H > How could you be offensive? Anyway if I'm right it means you can make more money. There is a catch to all of this. Those books are hard as hell to teach. The kids are enthusiastic but theoretical music education in America, and in Europe, is so mediocre that they barely get past understanding the concepts. That is not nearly enough to teach knowledge. Knowledge? An instantaineous response to a musical sign, symbol or situation at least as easily as eating, walking or talking. There aren't many around who have such "habit raised to natural intuition." Come to think of it the problem is not just musical. REH |
