Comments on: Alex Takes Some Lumps

By: Kame

Kame — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:41:12 +0000

Does anybody know if there exist a transcript of the interview? I’m asking because the BBC wouldn’t let me listen to it (“it seems you’re outside the UK”) and I’m really interested in it, particularly because I just purchased the book and a second point of view would be nice before I start digging it. Thank you.

By: Phil Fried

Phil Fried — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:47:10 +0000

If there is any criticism about Mr. Ross’s book or his reviews its simply this; that his writings reflect the “current” spirit of our “American” times.

By: edward lawes

edward lawes — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:33:21 +0000

I note that my comments have been taken out of context here, bizarre, a total nobody like me gets quoted when commenting on a blog, slow news day? (why not challenge me here so I can defend my views?).

http://www.overgrownpath.com/2008/03/indeterminacy-in-music-blogging.html

By: Rodney Lister

Rodney Lister — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:12:30 +0000

I just ran across this in The House That George Built by Wilfred Sheed (which, incidentally, I recommend to anybody anytime, but particularly anybody who likes what he calls “jazz songs.”) Anyway:

If any one person ever really owned history, it would immediately stop moving at whatever phase the owner liked best.

By: Philipp Blume

Philipp Blume — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:08:29 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkq9uaG8aDw

Lachenmann quoted in context, rather than out of context.

If that’s too hyperbolic for you, then I’ll just say, “An interesting clip.”

By: Tim R-J

Tim R-J — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:54:32 +0000

Thanks for the clarification upthread Kyle, although I’m not sure I recognise in the current state of British newspaper criticism much of an active discourse, or too many reviewers who are “clever, brilliantly articulate, possessed of enormous vocabularies, musicologically inclined”! Classical music criticism (and new music even more so within that) has been almost wiped off the pages in the last decade, and even that handful of critics who are any good are given practically no space to say anything (let alone expand on their particular sympathies).

The promotion of assorted prodigies is just symptomatic of the strength PR companies have in directing the press: you’ve got 80 words left in your review, do you attempt a critical engagement with the aesthetic values of the work, or do you regurgitate the marketing blurb? If there’s excessive promotion of such musicians, it’s precisely because the discourse on new music here has been forced into stagnation by disinterested editors.

By: paul bailey

paul bailey — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:01:40 +0000

i know its an unpopular but pragmatic view (to many of my colleagues), but the essence of music theory is describe what composers do. i think steve makes a good point and the argument really lies with some musicologists and theorists who choose to make the simple needlessly complex.

By: Steve Layton

Steve Layton — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:57:10 +0000

Ooo, haven’t had a composer brawl in these parts for a while, cool!…

Maybe “minimalist” was a bad choice, Jeff. But that groove makes you a Riffimalist, one of the main stems of the Minimal bush.

I certainly never saw any minimal-process-mafia in academia (and processes are really about the mind, Jeff, not the machine!), but Jeff’s on to the more general problem when he talks about losing some of our “musico-intuitive” license: the rise of “pure” musicology and theory in academic study, decade after decade has created a whole culture that feels compelled to demand or provide analytical *justification* for every composition, both the whole and its innards. It’s led a few to realize some pretty amazing visions, but by and large has deadend more than it’s inspired.

By: Kyle Gann

Kyle Gann — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:07:57 +0000

nobody listens or cares about what critics say anymore.

Jeff, did I say anyone did? You are really full of baloney sometimes, trying to make yourself look brilliant at everyone else’s expense. And that goes for everything you’ve said to Paul and David, too. Grow up.

By: jeff harrington

jeff harrington — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:09:02 +0000

paul, I think in general that any process-based composition model is very dangerous. The fact that processes are being taught as a viable system is infinitely more so.

It’s my feeling that there is a reliance and an expectation that there will be some type of extra-musical mathematical mapping to almost all composition these days. That is telling… We claim we are free of the constrictions of serialism because we use white notes, but is our imagination truly free?

And David mocks me, like a lot of my friends do, for bashing minimalism… Layton is always saying I’m a minimalist. As I’ve written a zillion times, my music is based on the repetitions of the groove, not of a model. Jerry Lee Lewis and The Meters are the model. Not a number or a pattern or a program.

To get back to the thread… the maintenance of the current academic historical paradigm is the goal of criticism these days. Not the truth.