Hi Ray, I've cut quite a lot to keep this manageable.
At 20:42 21/10/01 -0400, you wrote: (REH) <<<< Hi Keith, I enjoy our conversations. Still you have a couple of mistakes. You said: (KH) 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. (REH) 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. >>>> No, that is not my understanding. The 12 pitch was predominating by about Bach's time, but there had been many other 5, 6, 7 and 8 pitch (white key only) systems around in Europe. But, true, Bach inherited, rather than invented, the 12-pitch scale. The point is, though, that the keyboard instruments and/or the instruments had to be re-tuned every time music was played in different keys. Bach's great contribution was to show that it was possible to establish a 12-pitch scale (in which every pitch was a close, but 'unnatural', compromise) which was acceptable enough for it to play in all the different keys without re-tuning -- and thus be able to accompany all the different fixed-scale instruments. (REH) <<<< 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? >>>> You may be interested in the sources informing what I wrote: "Essays on Music Theory: Pitch Tuning, and the Physics of Musical Tone", Gilbert Hock van Dijke, Rotterdam 1997 "Pythagorean Tuning and Medieval Polyphony" by Margo Schulter, June 1998 (maschulter @value.net) ----> cut to (REH) >>>> 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. >>>> I am uneasy about trying to counterpoise the arts and technology. I see them developing hand-in-hand. For example, you mention opera above. In Purcell's time, the development of opera was as much to do with the extraordinary mechanical effects that engineers could produce on the stage as the music. Indeed, we can go right back to Pythagoras -- and even before, if the truth were known -- when the greatest minds were as interested in the sciences (and, often business) as well as the arts. Ah! and I see (below) that you are saying exactly the same thing! (REH) <<<< 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. >>>> And yet, below, you demur when I wrote: (KH) > 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; (REH) >>>> 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. >>>> But artists and musicians have not always starved in garrets! This is a myth that's been promulgated only in the course of the last century. Of course, there were artists and musicians who starved, but there have been very many who have become rich. Just to choose one example out of many, when Handel wrote "Ode for the birthday of Queen Anne" he was given a pension of �200 a year for life. This 25-minute piece of music netted him the equivalent of about US$50,000 a year today! (REH) <<<< 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? >>>> I would suggest that it is only comparitively recently (the last few decades) that musicians are badly paid compared with other professions. I think it's just the sheer pressure of so many competing for the declining opportunities. Thus we get the 'Hollywood' effect of some musicians (e.g. Pavarotti) being absurdly highly paid, while others, only a shade less gifted, are paid peanuts. I've cut the rest because we disagree and there's no point in flogging the differences again. You and I are agreed that most of the popular culture is "kitsch" (to use your term) but disagree as to the causes of this. I say that the causes of this are complex (mainly mis-education in early years) and it really needs a book to discuss this adequately. But I don't think the cause of 'good' music is served by demeaning the culture of the masses. I'm not suggesting that you're doing this consciously. Best wishes, Keith ___________________________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
