Hi Keith, I enjoy our conversations.
Still you have a couple of mistakes.
You said:
> I was, of course, tongue in cheek when
describing Bach as an entrepreneur
> because this role was simply not available in his day. But, in selecting
> and promulgating one particular technical standard (in the choice of
> 12-pitch scale), which has continued ever since, he carried out one of the
> important functions of the entrepreneur.
> because this role was simply not available in his day. But, in selecting
> and promulgating one particular technical standard (in the choice of
> 12-pitch scale), which has continued ever since, he carried out one of the
> important functions of the entrepreneur.
Bach had nothing to do with establishing the
12 pitch scale. He was an organist who grew up playing 12 pitch
organs although not in tempered tunings. Twelve
pitches are the way that music has been in the West from the earliest musics to
the present. This is not an opinion but historical
technological fact. I even gave the sources. You should
have run that article I wrote off and studied it since it has to do with your
business. What kind of furniture salesman wouldn't know about
joints?
As I said, the 12 pitches are based on the circle
of fifths and that gets 12 with a wierd single "wolf fifth" no matter how
you do them.
In fact the difference between the singing of the
Middle East and Native America and Europe is not in the twelve tones but in the
tuning. Tempered tuning is not anymore appropriate to them then it
is to music before the late baroque. That is why sacbuts always
sound out of tune to our ears that are used to tempered tunings. But
the frets on Elizabethan lutes are tuned to twelve notes. Only the
later instruments had tempered frets. So this is about
science. And you are not being scientific historically .
As for technology, only in the arrogance of the
present do people believe that art comes from technology rather than technology
being one of the ways that artists solve artistic problems. We
invented many things in painting, the theater, opera, voice etc. The
system of acoustics for the Florentine Camarata that brought great advances in
the science of acoustics was developed through the experiments with the human
voice that became the bel canto that carries down to the
present. Technology grew from solving artistic problems,
not the reverse. Of course once something is invented the virtuosity
and mastery kicks in and history becomes an advertising problem and the arts
tend to suppress the history to sell the "uniqueness" of the
contemporary. But such an attitude is very sophomoric in the
arts, indeed it was my theater professor as a freshman in college who made that
same point to his freshman class who believed themselves the "creme de la
creme." I have had many a disappointed "hip-hop" artist
when I have pointed out the roots of "hip-hop" rap music is in the Greek chorus
of ancient Greek theater.
Unfortunately technologists have constructed a
theory of part of the phenomenon of technology and have mistakenly believed
their theory to apply to the phenomenon as a whole. Yet one mental
model cannot possibly serve as complete basis for understanding any explicit
construct, certainly not as complex as the human necessity for creating art
since those models are of necessity limited to the implicit experience of the
technologist engineer. I would venture that the graphic artist comes
a lot closer to understanding the world of the engineer than the reverse.
You said:
> I am not trying to disparage the arts. Far from it -- as you knwo, I am
> spending my few remaining active years to help the great choral music of
> the past remain accessible in these days when conventional publishing is
> increasingly failing to satisfy the needs of choirs all round the world.
> I am not trying to disparage the arts. Far from it -- as you knwo, I am
> spending my few remaining active years to help the great choral music of
> the past remain accessible in these days when conventional publishing is
> increasingly failing to satisfy the needs of choirs all round the world.
And I applaud you. My only issue above
was with the knowledge of the purpose of the "joints" in your
wares. In the past, the great scientists, theologians, philosophers
etc. were versed in the arts since the arts are the pursuit of the values
inherent in perception and expression between human cultures and those within
the culture. Today unfortunately they do not have time to study the
great formulas behind the works they admire. They just treat it like
a bridge and use it to travel from place to place in their
psyches. Rousseau, Beumarchais (who invented the pocket
watch), Nietsche, Galileo, you name it, they were all practitioners of the
psycho-physical pursuit of values in sound. Even today, the
study of human anatomy in otto-laryngology has made great leaps forward due not
to the Doctors but the voice teachers who challenged their theories and made
them spend money on tests to determine whether the voice was actualized by air
or my nerves. That knowledge which the medical schools taught
incorrectly until forty years ago but which was correctly taught by bel canto
teachers in the 17th century, was finally tested with the fastax camera and
other acoustical analyzers, the bel canto won the day. But the
only reason they looked was because of the conflict which ruined several great
voices before it was resolved. The same thing happened with the
theories of muscular contraction taught by medicine to dancers and
atheletes. As long as it was the labor glut of poorly paid dancers,
pedantry won the day but the moment the MDs ruined a multi-million dollar
athelete with their incorrect theories they changed and used the extension
models for therapy that are embodied in the bar excercises of
ballet. But the discoverers weren't scientists, doctors or
technologists but artists who had to solve artistic problems and
survive. The same thing is happening today in NYCity with computers
and voice analyzers with voice teachers in the NYSinging Teachers
Association. It is the teachers that come up with the reasons for
the machines. And sometimes they build the machines themselves.
>
> The only two points I am trying to make are that:
>
> 1. The arts are essentially no different from any other product of human
> skills. I can find no sharp dividing line between the arts and the
> production of other economic goods and services. The arts may be among the
> most profound of these, and certain aspects of some of the arts may attract
> only the more intelligent and thoughtful among the population, but they are
> subject to the same facts of life as other products -- needing capital,
> innovation, skill, marketing and so on, in order to be accepted;
You are mistaking the selling and marketing of the
product with the intent and reason for the creation in the first
place. Creation is not profitable. The problem is
recognized by Henry George in his discussion on collectibles. It is
only after the product is severed from the cost of research and production that
it becomes profitable and in the case of paintings the "one of a kind" value of
collectibles. The question is whether one can stimulate
creativity better through the capitalist market system or through guaranteeing
an income for the creator before the creation is manifest. It
becomes an issue of implicit or explicit motivation. My point on
this list is that the old Soviet System and the American Military have dollar
for dollar created more exceptional complex art than the system of commissioning
works that has given the context. Even the military is using
engineers from the music computer sector because of their creative uses of
technology.
When you consider the potential, America's
output is meagre and mediocre except in the areas of performance virtuosity
where the combination of excellent schools and extreme competition has created a
high level amongst a very small group. The Super Ensemble in the
entire opera world is 300 singers. Considering that we
graduate almost 6,000 every year, that represents a massacre of
talent. They could do better in Los Vegas if the point is
profit, and they do. Even Bush's foreign advisor and head of the
Federal Reserve are failed musicians. But that says nothing
about your theory because you are assuming that the only motivation for creation
of a product is explicit. But it is rarely so in the
Arts. The point is this: Is it humane to take a segment
of the population so highly trained and valuable and subject them to extreme
poverty and working at two to three jobs to make money when they have spent the
money to train themselves and will work full time as artists making the world
more humane, beautiful, insightful and conscious if you just give them a stipend
that allows them to eat, have the tools to do their work and maybe even have a
child or two with the woman of their life?
>
> 2. Like other economic goods and services, the arts have a certain
> maturation and development timescale. For widespread, popular usage and
> patronage, both the 'standard' bicycle and the 'standard' symphony
> orchestra (and symphony music) have probably reached the end of their
> development time even though they'll probably be appreciated for centuries
> to come.
> 2. Like other economic goods and services, the arts have a certain
> maturation and development timescale. For widespread, popular usage and
> patronage, both the 'standard' bicycle and the 'standard' symphony
> orchestra (and symphony music) have probably reached the end of their
> development time even though they'll probably be appreciated for centuries
> to come.
Actually you are wrong on this as well.
There has been no appreciable advance in artistic complexity in 100
years. The music of the masses is basically the same cakewalk
formulas that Debussey made fun of with American music in the late 19th
century. What is amazing is how little it has changed and how much
addicted to the same formulas they are. Your knowledge of the
orchestral situation is pedantic. Orchestras are and always
have been more expensive than small ensembles. With the advent
of the microphone and video the small ensembles became able to overwhelm an
audience with raw volume. Something that erased the need for novelty
in complexity that gives orchestral timbre and texture such mind enhancing
benefits. You may not like minimal music but it is the logical
extension of such repetitive harmonies and melodies as fills 99.9% of the radio
and tv stations here in America in commercial music.
But you can't hold the spirit down. The
poetry is inane and formulas are banal but the engineers in sound studios (the
domain of the modern composers) are creating some new ideas in timbre and
texture that will, I believe, lead us back to the orchestra just as the small CD
companies gave us a rebirth of Renaissance and Baroque music once the technology
was cheap enough for the average artist to work with it. The old
"piano in every home" syndrome of the 19th century. You have
some points in the purely economic vein but it is truly barbaric in its humanity
to the creative geniuses of the West. I would prefir high
heels, black leather, a whip and body jewelry in point of fact I see a lot of
that on the British television we see over here these days.
> I have always tried to shy away from basing my views about music on my own
> personal prejudices.
No you don't!
All I am trying to say is that the arts depend
upon
> voluntary decisions by consumers in exactly the same way as all other
> economic goods and services.
> voluntary decisions by consumers in exactly the same way as all other
> economic goods and services.
Only if you mean kitsch. Got to go back
to work.
REH
