Mark’s article last week on culture policy (also discussed on this thread) has prompted a riposte from one Professor Robert Walker.
Among the gems which fall from the Professorial pen:
It has to be said that what Bahnisch calls high art does require a certain amount of knowledge and training, and discipline in listening and hearing. The same cannot be said for much of the pop music scene he seems to espouse and that is precisely why it is popular. It demands little of the listening audience except enjoyment.
Or is he saying that there is as much emotional, intellectual, musical and aesthetic content in a three-minute pop song as in the Beethoven symphony? There are two words for this, if he is saying it: philistine and rubbish.
You can leave a comment, if you like, over at the Higher Ed’s website. I have.
I have a rather unique ‘understanding’ of the issues at hand – i’m a classically trained muso, who now plays a hand in having three minute pop songs come to life.
I’m not going to say that all the pop songs are wonders of creativity, but a) there certainly are some, and b) neither are all symphonies.
as much art can come from (ingeniously) cramming an exposition into 3min as elaborating it out over 25.
this is exactly why i never finished at the con.
omg, yawn…
“It demands little of the listening audience except enjoyment.”
Vulgar Actor Network Theory of music?
Walker needs music to be important. So-called ‘pop’ music is often listened to in situations where ‘listening’ is not the central cultural practice. Adorno figured this out more than 50 years ago, if memory serves, Adorno: “It is fine for dancing, but terrible for listening to…” Yet, Walker, like Adorno, did not realise that music therefore took on a social mediating capacity beyond the construction of the music itself, and which is expressed through taste differentials and the capacity to demonstrate an extensive knowledge of the material, cultural and technological conditions of the music’s production (and sometimes reproduction/consumption).
I think Mark is correct in his assessment of Walker’s commentary, re implicit invocation of the sublime. Aesthetic judgement devoid of interest? Doesn’t exist. If Kant wasn’t wrong then, he is now. Most people seem to forget that Bourdieu’s work was not interested in the quality or character of the music, but the distinctions made about culture (so, music and, in this case, the polemics that follow). That is, people have an interest in making distinctions, not the music; music and other cultural artefacts/commodities simply become the resource for the reproduction of (according to Bourdieu) class-inflected social gradations.
Culture wars as verb and emergent cultural practice of late capitalism. It stands subjacent to the core cultural practice encouraged by the culture industries of making ‘celebrity’ (people, objects and events). The commentariat hence hoisted into the media streams like sheets on your mum’s Hill’s serving as arbiters of taste. But not for socially conservative reasons; rather, to maintain the reified position of certain types or categories of culture (‘music’) because their jobs depend on it.
There must therefore be a habitus of the resolute culture warrior. Perhaps xkcd’s comic in the previous post expresses the internet manifestation?
As I said in response to Walker at the HES:
Btw, if you liked Mark’s article and think this is a pompous put down by a Professor, I’d encourage you to post a comment responding to his letter at the HES website.
Does anyone want to help me join a Facebook group called “People who think Beethoven is just a bit over-rated”?
It’s an odd piece, for (at least) a couple of reasons.
1. The thrust of Walker’s rant is orthogonal to Mark’s argument.
2. Walker doesn’t undermine the distinction between high/low art, he just analyses it in terms of cognitive effort.
My best guess is that certain theories about aesthetic quality are sand in his vagina, so he was itching for a fight where none was to be found.
Good on you Carl!
Mozart, Donizetti, Chopin, Liszt et al – they were all the pop musicians of their day, too. (Yes, they were for the aristocracy, but the aristocracy wasn’t a repository of intellectual clout in the main.)
Shorter Robert Walker: “now that middle class public intellectuals are enjoying popular music, my unique point-of-difference is gone.”
And what about the popular musicians – the Alison Krausses and Gillian Welches – who tap historical sources of folk popular music? Where do they fit in all this?
Heh!
Very good point, glen. We’re often annoyed if we go to a gig and seats are laid out in rows akin to a classical concert. After the rambunctious audiences up to the early 19th century, classical music was enshrined in the posture (literally, there is a bodily as well as an aural habitus to it!) of the sort of cultivated civilised actor that Walker seems to think is a universal persona. He might profitably read another sociologist, Norbert Elias, on the civilising process (which Elias thought had now gone into a partial reverse with “informalisation”).
It’s risible to suggest popular music forms don’t sound deep emotional notes, and stir up many resonances. It’s just that they do this – particularly in public – in a “disorderly” way – the precise reason why both Jazz and Elvis seemed so radical and threatening once upon a time to the custodians of civilisation who preceded Walker.
I sent the following email to Dr Walker – perhaps some of the LP crew would care to join me:
Good one, Ben!
And don’t forget Feist!
The whole tradition of bluegrass draws deeply on some very old folk music. Now transformed and mediated by pop and other forms. I suppose to the likes of Walker, though, that’s just an anthropological datum. Isn’t musicology among his many attainments?
There are few things sadder than a cultural conservative railing against modern art forms. Has he no shame?
Thanks for the link Kim. Now I’ve got wank all over me.
It’s worth noting that Teh Shakespeare so beloved by such fellows as an icon of “true” cultural value was performed to a rowdy rabble in its day.
Also that a huge volume of classical music was/is little more than repackaged folk melodies.
As some one who’s hardly into music at all because of partial deafness, even I recognise that the past 100 years or so have produced music and lyrics that can be properly termed classical. The best Jazz and Blues; Lennon and McCartney; Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen; Gershwin;Pink Floyd;the list is probaly endless and I’m sure the rest of you could come up with much more up to date stuff. I happen to enjoy opera and classical 18/19C music heaps, but that doesn’t mean this guy is not full of pompous garbage.His argument is ridiculous.
SRK –
Um please explain? How exactly does Prof Walker’s article intersect with Mark’s at right angles? Or perhaps you mean it in the sense of statistical independence. Or even having the integral of the product of each pair of functions over a specific interval equal to zero? I’m a little confused as to how a mathematical term is relevant here. Would you elucidate?
Does this mean the Professor will or won’t attend Monkey: Journey to the West? (If it ever comes to Australia; now there’s a Facebook group that needs forming.)
Check it out – Robert Walker has replied to my email …
And
Bourdieu posited the general and restricted modes of cultural production/reception. The restricted mode requires specialized cultural capital to fully appreciate. That is, as Walker says:
Even if Walker is a cultural conservative, that doesn’t invalidate his criticisms. For example Mark’s assertion that opera “didn’t exactly originate as high culture” is arguable but pretty much wrong. The first opera is commonly regarded as Daphne composed by Jacapo Peri in 1597. It was typically Renaissance humanist in attempting to revive an ancient artform and in the process create a new one. The impetus was an elite humanist circle. This is a hardly fok culture.
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Walker is right to question Mark’s aptitude to express authoritative opinions about the Opera. The most cursory research should’ve had him revising the above quoted sentence.
He didn’t say that exactly what he said was:
I like pop music and Beethover. I find it hard to find a pop song that equals a Beethoven symphony in this way. Perhaps someone would like to suggest one. It is certainly true that the capacity to play Beethoven is much more difficult to attain than the capacity to play most pop music. I personally don’t think that matters.
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Of course when Walker concludes:
He’s being the typical stodge. Given that the ‘high culture’ of the past gained much from folk music influence I think this attitude contributes to the ‘high culture’ of today being stranded and left behind. Walker’s taste might be exclusively for classical music (a member of the non-existent fabled elite perchance?) but he’s fundamentally right above. One doesn’t need much in the way of ‘cultural capital’ to groove to bubble gum. That’s the point of pop music, it’s easy.
Lol. ‘I know Mick Jagger and he agrees with me!’
Indeed…right back from so-called “early music”, through the Renaissance to modern times and including Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, Smetana, Holst, Copland, Vaughn Williams, Britten and our own Percy Grainger.
Folk songs were the pop music of their time, and still are in places like Africa.
Has he never traced the origins of Western music from its African and Middle Eastern roots via Spain?
Opera and operetta were the soapies of their time. If you read their plots there is no high culture there. Swooning damsels, ravishing of virgins, consumptive lovers, dastardly plots, seductive geishas, palace intrigues, regicide, cross-dressing, ancient civilisations with spectacles to rival Ben-Hur (including live animals, special effects and son et lumiere)
And often performed by Amazonian ladies with deep bosoms to which they clutched overweight middle-aged tenors and still managed to convince the punters they were watching two willowy star-crossed teens in love.
I suspect the Prof may be having home issues with adolescent offspring, iPods and a collection of Snoop Doggy Dog CDs. :p
Ben Eltham
My dear, consider yourself bitchslapped. Into next week.
I tend to think Prof Walker’s letter is a large crow pie not an occasion for more triumphalism. But that’s just me.
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I’m trying to ignore it but really I just can’t:
Okay leaving aside the fact that the above is not a sentence, can I just ask why people think they’re validated in making prophetic statements about history? Late capitalism? What’s it late for?
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Capitalism is a system in which the majority of economic activity is market orientated. One of the features of a capitalist economy, one of its principle indicators is the urbanization of the population. Now given that it is is only sometime this year that the human race is going to have (slightly) more people living in cities than the country I reckon this notion of ‘late capitalism’ is somewhat immature.
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When the vast majority of human beings are living in urban environments and labouring in market orientated activities, if that happens, then we can talk about The Age Of Global Capitalism. After that all transforms into something else, if that happens, we can start out retrospective about what transpired during late capitalism.
Adrien,
Apologies for not explaining the geometrical metaphor. What I meant was that Walker’s and Mark’s articles raise independent questions.
(In the same way that orthogonal vectors are linearly independent)
No need to explain, SRK. Your meaning was quite clear.
That’s it! He’s a castrato!
My dear, consider yourself bitchslapped. Into next week.
You’re early. is it sports afternoon?
Is that the sort of agonistic competitiveness you favour, John Greenfield? Or is it another one of your “foundational insight(s) into western culture”?
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/02/14/fable-of-the-cultural-elite/#comment-440021
Interestingly, the good Professor appears to be at the same university as you. And your “schtick” (as you describe it) bears quite a bit of resemblance to his letter.
Been taking some music courses, have we?
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/02/14/fable-of-the-cultural-elite/#comment-438686
Adrien:
As I said to you on the other thread, I was writing a newspaper article, not a textbook. It might also help if you read the comments on Walker’s letter.
Commenter Indi wrote:
I wrote (and please read my comment in response to Walker in its entirety):
… which is something you don’t particularly seem to agree with given the comparison you make between Beethoven and pop music.
Well, what does “the capacity to play Beethoven” mean? Well? As a virtuoso? Badly?
I used to play classical guitar. I certainly wouldn’t have asserted that this was technically more difficult than Jazz or rock guitar. Was Django Reinhart less proficient than an average violinist in a provincial symphony orchestra?
Your point lacks any real meaning.
As does this:
As glen, Kim and others have pointed out, there are different practices involved in “listening” and “grooving”. You might “do well” to read what others have contributed to the thread before giving us the benefit of your own thoughts.
Well, it’s not, as his email to Ben demonstrates. But they’re not non-existent, just “statistically insignificant”, a phrase which I suspect pushed some buttons. Again, although you obviously have a lot of opinions on these topics, they might work better in terms of conversation and debate if you were more careful to read what others say, and less prone to saying what you intend to say anyway.
Often wondered why it is necessary to divide music into genres, other than that it makes life easier for critics.
When there is just good and bad music, which in most cases comes down to personal opinion, critics lose much of their authority and illusionary expertise.
When the Professor says “But if we can’t make judgements of value and quality, then we might as well give it all up.”, he is of course being rather disengenious, since no-one seems to be arguing that we suspend judgement, just that the basis for those judgements needs to be critically examined.
Like I said to a fella once, Ya know… there’s still a lot of good music left to be written in the key of C Major.
Jazz guitar is actually harder to play than classical guitar, what’s the point? Fact: it is harder to play Beethoven than Britney Spears. What point do you make by raising whether or no it’s being played well? Is it harder to play Britney Spears well, than Beethoven badly?
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Pop music is simpler in construction than a symphony it’s a fact. It’s not necessarily indicative of ‘value’. Borges wrote some of the finest stuff of the last century it was very simple. Taste is subjective. However the more cultural capital you have the more choice you have. That is also true.
Well really? Now deaf people can apparently dance to music because they feel the vibarations. The rest of us use our ears. Sure there’s a whole environment, a ritual associated with different venues at which the music’s played. There’s a whole range of cultural products associated with a scene: clothes, lingo, design etc. So what? I fail to see this different practices thing as either being accurate or relevant to Walker’s points.
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Opera originated as an elite Renaissance humanist exercise. How does that reconcile with it not exactly having high culture origins? It doesn’t. You were wrong.
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I have read what people here have said Mark. In detail. Your only evidence that I haven’t is the ’statistically insignificant’/'non-existent’ riff which was a GLIB remark. Do I have to put a GLIB warning on things? I actually think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who exclusively consumes ‘high culture’.
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His point is that with ‘cultural capital’ you have a larger array of choices. Hardly a new point. I recall something in Educating Rita re: isn’t there a better song to sing? The other point is that, simply put, symphonies are more complex than pop music, harder to compose, harder to listen to, harder to play. Fact. If you reckon playing rock guitar is as easy as playing classical music you are either making an unfair comparison as in comparing a classical guitar student’s first lesson to a Jimi Hendrix solo or you weren’t a very good student.
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Personally I like Phil Spector, girl group stuff like “He’s a Rebel”.
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PS SRK – I know what the word means. Some of what Walker says isn’t strictly pertinent to Mark’s article some is. I’m afraid I don’t think the word is appropriate. Mathematical terms have a precision that eludes the Humanities.
The comparison of a Beethoven Symphony to a 3 minute pop song is not one that Mark makes in his article nor is it a valid one to make. A closer comparsion would be listening to commercial radio for an hour and hearing 10 pop songs mixed through ads, back-announcing, news and station promotions, going to a pub and watching a band play, watching Rage or video hits for an hour, or attending an outdoor music festival. You need more than what Prof. Walker condescendingly calls base instincts to negotiate the intellectually, emotionally, and aesthetically rochness of any of these performances of pop music. Prof. Walker would do well read up on some of the post-Adorno new musicology. Ignorance is no excuse, apparently.
“I have a rather unique ‘understanding’ of the issues at hand – i’m a classically trained muso, who now plays a hand in having three minute pop songs come to life.”
I came at music the opposite way. Self-taught, pop and rock, graduated to jazz, last few years trying to catch up to classically trained musicians like you, Carl. Wish I’d gone to the Con. Every piece of properly scored piano music I get some handle on is like a series of majestic opening doors; a whole new musical world. Thrilling. And I still love smacking blue notes as much as ever. Problem? What problem?
To be honest I’m surprised by the rush to privelege the more accessible forms of musical expression in response to Prof Walker. It’s just as silly – and chippy – as his slightly over-cooked, but I thought fair enough, point about gradations of musical depth and richness. You’re right to say that a talented muso can cram plenty into 3 minutes and 3 chords, Carl, sure. But the guy who can do that could also, if only he were so technically equipped, cram a lot more again into a forty minute concerto. Is the point. Musical talent is innate; technical ability is learned. The two overlap and feed into each other to some degree, but ultimately the same musical talent will find richer and more brilliant expression possible with the wider virtuosic vocabulary (and musical palette) to work with. How arguing that is controversial escapes me.
Mark’s original article had an illustration with Mozart, Beethoven and I think Tchaikovsy as a power trio. Fine – if they were supposed to be Cream, in which case I’m happy to accept the ‘no dichotomy’ b/w high/low art argument. Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker were all virtuosii, individually and collectively pushing the musical limits of that form. But if that cartoon was meant to suggest no potential musical/expressive difference between those three composers and The Ramones…sorry, but I’m with the Prof. Because – and this is the killer – those muppets couldn’t fucking play their instruments very well. And so what ‘musical’ power The Ramones did actually deliver – and yes, it was plenty, no argument there – was as much a matter of cultural and sociological content as it was musical.
Only the tone-deaf – and perhaps those who’ve never tried to learn to play an instrument – can argue that there is ‘democracy’ in concepts like musical virtuosity, expressiveness, technical capacity, musical inventiveness and flexibility, range, vocabulary, palette. And I can’t see how anyone but the culturally chippy and insecure should feel the need to claim there is, or howl down anyone who says ‘rubbish’. To say that Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier contains more human juice, musically expressed, than the complete works of Elton John, is not to say Elton John’s stuff contains none. And to say that, in order to ‘get’ why that statement is true – in order to agree with that subjective statement – you have to understand a piano keyboard, musical theory, especially counter-point, ‘get’ all sorts of technical musical knowledge…is not to say that if you don’t have all that knowledge, you’re a philistine. If that were true, we’d all be philistines, because no human being has been able to ‘know everything about everything’ since about, what, 1750? All of us are ‘ignorant’ – that is, less informed than others – in at least some areas.
I think that all Professor Walker is arguing is that it IS philistine to start claiming that being ‘ignorant’ – less informed than others – in those areas doesn’t preclude us from achieving the same qualitative levels as they do. And whether or not Mark B was saying that, I agree with the Prof on that. It IS rubbish. I would much rather be able to play the piano as well as if I’d trained at the Con.
Because isn’t that the point of the Enlightenment? That there is such a thing as ‘good, better, best’, and that it’s within our individual power to aspire to climbing that ladder? Isn’t that why you sociologists read all those sociology books, Mark B? So that you are a ‘better’ understander of sociological phenemona than me, the untrained ‘three chord’ dilettante? More ‘virtuosic’ in your explications and deconstructions of human interaction? An ‘elite/high culture’ sociologist against my ‘pop/low culture’ one?
Dare I say…better?
And the Lord said:
A-Wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop-bam-boo
I’d like to see Bob give us a rendition of, oh, I dunno, anything by Aphex Twin or Squarepusher. Or some Merzbow. Now there’s a musical genre that requires an education to understand.
One way of distinguishing between musical forms brings pop/rock music out on top, IMHO, if we do want to persist in being all heirarchical. That is explicitly because virtuosity isn’t a key feature, allowing the nuances of individual performance – personality – to become far more important.
In classical music, if you ain’t a virtuoso you just play the chart and try not to call attention to yourself. And that’s on instruments – if you’re singing opera you’d better not deviate much from the script if you want a gig at all, and no amount of practice will make a Pavarotti out of Jagger.
Which has contributed more to the arts? Well, whatever Mick says (and he talks a lot of shit it must be said) Pavarotti just did what was expected of Teh Superstar Opera Singer. Jagger, in many ways, wrote his own job description.
“I’m afraid I don’t think the word is appropriate. Mathematical terms have a precision that eludes the Humanities.”
It was a metaphor. Also, given that what SRK meant was quite straightforward, why pick at the strict definition of the word when used in mathematics? Why not just disagree?
Mark
Not at ‘my university.’ This year, I shall be studying under the gods!
Shorter me: It’s the democracy, stupid!
“And whether or not Mark B was saying that, I agree with the Prof on that. It IS rubbish.”
This is the key point for me. Mark wasn’t arguing what the good Professor seems to think he was. The Professor may have developed musical knowledge, but his reading and comprehension leaves a little to be desired: he has been disarmed by Mark’s casual way of chatting about opera. It’s the blind sense of superiority that really grates, because it’s clear that he’s missed the point. Some of those who have weighed in in support of Mark’s statements have also been waylaid by this misreading, I think, and ended up arguing something else entirely.
I don’t think so Klaus, a metaphor is a comparison. This was a straight-up description that doesn’t fit. Walker’s argument is not “linearly independent” of Mark’s, it intersects and digresses. The tendency to use scientific and mathematical terms incorrectly in contexts such as these is a source of great irritation to many. As orthogonal means quite a few things none of which fit when comparing Walker’s argument to Mark’s, SRK’s meaning is not clear. I asked for clarification. And then I said I disagree.
No. He has correctly pointed out that Mark was wrong about the origins of Opera. I don’t think the defense that it’s ‘just a newspaper article’ suffices btw. Walker has also pointed out that Mark’s argument re the sociological study of ‘cultural elites’ has another interpretation entirely.
Whenever I think opera I think Maskerade.
Very true. But then Jagger’s job description became the template for everyone after him. Thing is, the guy doesn’t seem to take himself very seriously. Shame that trait wasn’t written into the job description.
I’m not 100% certain how the bourgeoisie used to stoush in the pre-blogging era, but I have to ask: wasn’t duelling quicker and less messy?
Too right Mercurious – I think it should be rapiers at dawn for Dr Walker and I. I’m sure JG will second for Prof Walker …
LP readers need to see this spiffing comment from JG (could he be Prof. Walker’s alter ego? Now there’s a scary thought…) on the Higher Ed thread. More scintillating analysis and biting repartee from our in house Classical agoniste. Just imagine him a naked Mercury rushing to deliver this message:
It’s all the teachers’ unions’ fault! Whatever would Alcibiades have thought?
Kim, I can’t stand seeing you mock JG like this. Don’t you understand that the whole weight of Classical & Western (now there’s an untapped genre) Civilisation demands he be a condescending twit on message boards?
Well, I insist he wear a toga in future when doing so, Leinad.
(and yes, Greenfield, I know a toga was a Roman garment).
Or he could do the Judaeo-Christian thing with emphasis on the former and wear the complete sayings of Professor Walker in a phylactery on his head.
What is this an argument about again?
Maybe it’s all just ‘critique’-ing something or other. (Hey, there’s a question — if ‘critique’ is now a transitive verb, how do you spell the gerund?) Well, however it shakes out, I firmly believe that all of us Would Do Well to Meet With Bono in order to Defend A Woman’s Right to Teh Crusades.
KlausK at 35: “It’s the blind sense of superiority that really grates, because it’s clear that he’s (Walker) missed the point.”
Did he ever. His writing is dissonant beyond redemption. So much so that it hurts, in the way Hayden hurt when Farinelli gave him his come uppance.
Walker’s the Shill Shanahan of musical interpretation. A total waste of bloody time.
This discussion has a rather snide tone. I think Dr Bahnisch’s arguments about the shallowness of the politicization of culture are well made, although he gives Bourdieu a bit of a short shrift, but Prof Walker’s response about the limits of the sociological approach to culture is also something with which I can agree.
j_p_z, no one meets with Bono anymore. They have Scarlett Johansson sing their words on YouTube.
MH
Dude the point is that Bourdieu has fuck all to do with Australia.
One of the striking things about living in “Europe” is how one can see so sharply the conservative and post-imperial social relations that inform much of the contemporary social and cultural theory which is deployed in the humanities around the world. But that doesn’t mean that the work of Bourdieu or other social theorists only applies in France. Anyway, that wasn’t my point, or Dr Bahnisch’s.
Mr Bahnisch. He’s still working on the Dr bit! After this semester’s done and dusted.
It’s just ignorance to say that Bourdieu is irrelevant to Australia. Much of his substantive work informed the Frow et al analysis of cultural consumption in Oz in 99.
Concepts from Bourdieu’s social theory – like habitus – can be applied anywhere.
MH, I didn’t think the article was dismissive of Bourdieu. Maybe Goldthorpe and Chan are, but that’s a different thing.
Kim: if and when JG is elected(?) philosopher-king, rest assured that strong border police will guard our sealanes, airports and borders against the waves of ragged po-mo muliti-culti professors in leaky boats.
I said “short shrift” certainly not dismissive, and it’s a newspaper article, so there are great limits. My point was that I could see the merits of Prof Walker’s response.
Well, I sincerely with him the best in pushing to the summit of that personal Everest.
Anna – Did Scarlett Johansson actually sing anything in that song or, you know, just stand around looking hot in front of a microphone? Oh, and if we need to meet her for any reason I’d just like to personally volunteer…
Distinction is about French culture which is very different to ours. (Or at least was). There’s a steeper cultural hierarchy that has roots in late antiquity. But many of his ideas and basic approaches can be applied if you realize this. Camille Paglia once said that the French have no popular culture. Maybe that’s the diffence.
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I once interviewed the French actor Pascal Greggory and cracked that France had had civilization for 900 years and we’d only had it for ten. He just said ‘oui’. Sans irony.
“The tendency to use scientific and mathematical terms incorrectly in contexts such as these is a source of great irritation to many.”
Well, ‘many’ people seem to find metaphor, metonymy, irony and a whole raft of other concepts totally beyond them, and that’s a shame, but their irritation is not my problem. Were SRK drawing some ill-gotten authority through his mathematical metaphorics, I might take issue, but given he is simply giving us a way of visualising the differences between the two arguments, I do not.
Metaphor, from the OED:
“A figure of speech in which a name or descriptive word or phrase is transferred to an object or action different from, but analogous to, that to which it is literally applicable”
Thanks, MH.
Klaus, I’m liking that use of orthogonal so much that I’ve appropriated it in a comment on FB.
Kim, why did I initially read Greenweed’s name, then read the next bit as “Country and Western”? Without the “o”… (runs away)
@ Jack Roberston,
I do think you’re arguing my point for me. I’ve certainly no problem with any form of music. Even that weird experimental sound stuff I just don’t understand…!
“Classical & Western (now there’s an untapped genre)”
Nope, sorry, already been tapped. We think of everything. Check out the tasty “Appalachia Waltz” by the trio of Edgar Meyer, Mark O’Connor and Yo-yo Ma (and they did a great little sequel, too.) Also check out Edgar Meyer’s collaboration with the awesome Bela Fleck, and Bela’s classical/banjo syncretics. Yeee-haw! …in E minor, ma non troppo, that is. (Actually, this sort of thing goes at least all the way back to the early American composer Gottschalk, and his piece “Le Banjo”, mid 1800s).
Oh no, I wonder where it all fits in the all-important high/low dichotomy?!
Oh boy, I thought my choice of words was rather innocuous. First, philosophers often say that mutually independent questions are orthogonal. I assure you, Adrien, that none of them are apt to confuse such an utterance for one which is true if and only if the inner product of the two questions is zero! Second, I’ve also heard mathematicians use “orthogonal” in a similar way. So I guess they aren’t too peeved about this supposed ‘misuse’. :p
oh, and I meant to say;
teehee! name dropping!
http://eventmechanics.net.au/?p=1058
“Camille Paglia once said that the French have no popular culture.”
Yes, they have. He’s called Johnny Hallyday.
Didn’t think I was arguing against it, especially, Carl! Certainly not arguing that you have a problem with any kind of music. Bet it’s nice to be in a position to be able to appreciate all kinds, fully, in all their complexities and simplicities (as you can). To do that, you’ve had to have put some work in, in at least some areas/types of music. To have been willing to do that, you’ve had to have believed it was worthwhile to do so. And to have believed that, you’ve had to have been at least exposed to some more ‘accomplished’ musical minds – especially your teachers, when you were younger – who were still prepared to argue that case, unapologetically. Lucky you, for the Professor Walkers in your pre-Con and Con days, I say. That you outgrew, or diverged from, or rejected (or whatever) them doesn’t distract I am sure from what you did get from them. Music is not a zero sum game. Professor Walker’s letter to Mark, his musical views, hurt no-one, certainly not musically.
If you go and read Professor Walker’s website, your approach – choice – is certainly his philosophy to music education. Now it may not be the intention of anyone who defends the legitimacy of more ‘accessible’ music to discourage (or excuse) people from broadening their musical horizons, but it can in some cases have that unintended effect. There’d be dozens of us reading this website who wished they’d kept going at piano grades when young, but gave it away because we managed to slake our music-making thirst on easier forms of expression. We have less options now. Walker cited Mick Jagger. I used to work for David Gilmour, self-taught Pink Floyd guitarist and, by his own admission, possessor of lousy technique. He encouraged all of his kids to train classically on an instrument, and is currently I think studying saxaphone that way with one of his youngest sons. The full music board/exams thing. You will see this pattern repeated quite often with that 60’s/70’s generation of self-taught ‘popular’ professional musicians – as they get older and their maturing creative aspirations bang up against the maxed-out capacity of their techniques, many of them turn back towards classical training and techniques to fill in gaps, give themselves more musical firepower. They also generally encourage their kids to grow up with more musical depth than they did. The only ‘high’ ‘low’ distinction that means anything is probably the ‘good-better-best’ one within styles/genres/types of music. Not because competition matters in JG’s agonistic sense (b/w artists), but because aspiration to be better within the artist is what drives his art, and technical capacity is an important (and easily mappable, benchmark) component of that inner [Oprah accent] journey [/Oprah accent].
I don’t think there is any argument here, as many have said. Me, I quite liked Mark’s article, disagreed in parts. I took quite a bit from Walker’s response, thought it was overcooked in parts. But I was only moved to defend him because I was dismayed – and bored – by the predictable responses that then bagged him – piled on, really – as another Blimpy old fart defending some DWM Canon. This has been a very straw-infested thread. I suggest there’s far more straw been flung Walker’s way than Mark’s, on balance.
I grant you that classical technique training is extremely useful, and I couldn’t live without it.
However, I’d caution you against relying on the Professors website for an accurate reference of his attitudes. While I can’t speak for Walker specifically, I’ve been disappointed a thousand times by academic ideologues / subject descriptions etc. Bigger classes seems to be the main aim – Mark? (But that’s probably for another time…!)
Most importantly re: this debate, is that his website doesn’t add up to his article.
Thanks Jack Robertson for your comments which say what I wanted to say.
I’m having trouble processing the content of this discussion (as opposed to the tone of it, which I agree with Jack is boringly pile-on oriented) because I really don’t know a lot about opera or any other forms of classical music (despite having lived for sixteen years with a man who is a university-trained composer and a skilled jazz musician, and an enthusiast for a very broad range of types of music.) Pop music, though, I feel is my birthright, and I get a lot of it. Nevertheless I regret not having the educational grounding in classical music which would authorise me to appreciate it the same way I appreciate great achievements in popular music. None of us need to be formally taught how to listen to pop music because we’ve been doing it all our lives. But we don’t know how to appreciate minority art forms without some assistance. And this is more or less what I took Robert Walker to be pointing out and I think he’s absolutely right.
I don’t agree with your last sentence Laura.
Nor do I want to continue a pile-on, but he’s making quite clear value judgements about the shallowness and emptiness of pop/rock music that are not grounded in our easy exposure to them. He’s saying that these forms are intrinsically basic and easy to get, and that this is a Bad Thing.
PS – people who try to argue for equality / equivalence between pop and art music by listing crossovers (Bach in Procol Harum, the Beatles’ harmonic clusters — or Bartok’s and Prokofiev’s adaptations of folk tunes) are completely missing the point.
Laura is 100% spot on. And the ‘Bach in Procul Harrum’ is an example of the agonism – and the attendant intertextuality – found even among pop musicians
I don’t think he is saying that at all, FDB. I think he is saying that if Mark’s article is claiming that all forms of music are created equal, then it’s making a nonsense claim which is also, well, philistine, in the sense of crassly levelling or trampling over all the nuances and shades which make art interesting. BIG difference from saying that art / classical music is the only thing worth caring about and pop music is bad because it’s easy to get. [Not that this IS what Mark was claiming, mind.**]
Laura, agreed that Walker’s message about how you can’t just approach classical music without instruction is part of his letter to the Australian. But this point is framed in a polemic about pop music being music for dumb dumb animals who are ignorant of the sophistications of Beethoven symphonies and condemned to consume product that appeals to base instincts. As FDB said . . .
Ag, no it isn’t. You’re putting words into his mouth.
Walker says: “This is the point. It’s not high culture v low culture; it is ignorance v knowledge. The high-low distinction is an old shibboleth that should be buried.”
Ignorance does not make a person base, dumb, or stupid but by definition it does mean a person’s pleasures and appreciations will be confined to the same single narrow space. That is what he means by saying popular music appeals to the base instincts. Familiarity breeds contempt.
‘base instincts’ is the loaded phrase here. But if enjoying Chic’s ‘Goodtimes’ and its re-sampled repetitions in ‘Rapper’s Delight’ is appealing to Bass instincts then I’d much rather dance in Bernard Edward’s then Prof Walker’s culture.
Well, maybe it’s just me being defensive, but I thought I detected a bit of dog-whistling between the lines.
Anyway, my arguments on music come from a very different standpoint, and one perhaps not suited to this debate. Music affects the emotion and cognition of the listener in a direct and base way. No matter how much inellectual merit a piece can be argued to have, if it can’t walk that basic walk then it’s shit.
Oh AG!!! Bernie’s just the man, non?
That bit at the very end of the bass break in Le Freak, where he does this slide up the fretboard then a little 4-note lick to lead back into the verse is my all time favourite bit of effortless bass mastery.
There might be a dog-whistle, true. It’s very hard to know because words like taste, education, culture are so slippery. To be fair Mark’s piece was not above suspicion on this matter either.
I think you’re right that “emotion and cognition of the listener in a direct and base way”, but the mind has to hear and recognise it as music before anything like that can happen. Supposedly the Ballet Russes dancers could not hear danceable rhythm in the Rite of Spring, nevertheless they counted and the listeners and the music became acculturated to one another. Others were perfectly fine and comfortable with calling it “shit”.
It’s not beyond me Klaus, it’s not beyond the supremely irritated Alan Sokal or Richard Dawkins either. I simply don’t agree that it fits. But let’s just agree to disagree okay.
Bass instinct:
Franz/Weymouth
“Genius of Love”
Tom Tom Club
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He still is the Godfather of Soul y’all so check it out.
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On the other hand if I want to get into an intellectual mode of a morning I’ll listen to Mozart’s 41st. Some gigs you shake to and for some you stand still.
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Or maybe a little Bird on Verve.
Well I dunno about that example.
Dancers in the Ballets Russes would likely have been inculcated in certain modes of “appropriate” music for the form, as would many other Printemps detractors. Or they just didn’t like Stravinsky. As far as danceability goes, I’ve got to say I’m with them. It’s a whole lot easier to count when you can feel the beat!
Well Laura, Professor Walker is happy to call popular music ‘crap’. IMHO these labels are virtually meaningless anyway, given the range of music available and the continual crossover between these arbitarily determined genres.
Adrian, he says Ben’s list of music is ‘crap’. Note, Ben offered him a Joanna Newsom CD.
By virtually meaningless labels, if you mean ‘best music’ and ‘worst music’, I agree. If you mean that any difference between (say) mashups, oldies and twelve-tone music is arbitrarily determined, then you know even less about music than I do.
“I am not against pop music, any more than I am against Hollywood crap
movies – they help pass the time.”
It’s not a big deal but I’d say the above quotation has a strong implication…
And I dare say I know less about music than you do, but I know what I like
I don’t want to be trite (it just comes naturally!) but there’s good and bad in every form.
Except drum and bass.
And I’d rather listen to fingernails on blackboard than Joanna Newsom.
I like all kinds of music. Country AND western.
I don’t think that’s what Walker was claiming either tho’. Was it?
There are arbitrary genres especially in electronic music, whose promoters seem determined to be obscure, but most musical genres are appropriate and self-evident. Twelve bar blues is clearly distinguishable from swing etc. Of course there’s no clear demarcation point. It’s quite possible to make twelve bar blues swing. But that doesn’t render the genres arbitrary.
FDB, you should definitely read this
Carl!, you can count on it.
In fact, I might just spend a wee bit of my academic resources budget and buy one for the library. Looks fascinating.
Laura: “I think you’re right that “emotion and cognition of the listener in a direct and base wayâ€?, but the mind has to hear and recognise it as music before anything like that can happen.”
Ohhhh, well i’d have to disagree. The mind? Is he the little bloke in your brain? Perhaps at the base of you skull?
The functional conception of ‘recognition’ is something that Bourdieu retains from Kant and puts into service for his conception of the habitus. However, affect precedes conscious cognition, the brain is not something in the head but extends throughout the nervous systems, etc. Sensation develops in the body as emotion, but that sensation occurs as a process of felt connection before you can think it, let alone think about it. Hence, Deleuze’s conception of the habitus, as habituated contraction of affect, is useful because it occurs before recognition, but so far as habit relies on repetition and repetition normally involves some social basis, then the contracted affect of the habitus is socially patterned.
If FDB was making the general point, that all music *affects* human bodies the same physiological way, then I think he is correct. However, the ear is habituated to hear in certain ways, thus the general physiological affects produced by the materiality of the sound accelerate in the body in different ways depending on the habituated affects (excitement, disgust, etc). By introducing the process of ‘recognition’ listening becomes a cultural act, a correspondence of identity and relations of difference etc.
Arbitrary genres:
Reminds me of Ravey Davey Gravy. For the unitiated. He’s Viz character who spends his time inventing ridiculous sub-genres of rave music and dancing to any repetative noise: police sirens, fire alarms, drills.
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How does he fit into the high art/pop cult spectrum?
We’re perhaps distinguishing here between music-as-sensation and music-as-language. It’s an interesting distinction (though one doomed to irrelevance if misframed as a dichotomy), and I think it matters most to those who’ve spent a lot of time and effort on the professional pursuit of the latter.
Me, I just like the sounds. Pretty much all of ‘em.
Jack R
You would probably appreciate Gore Vidal’s quip: ‘whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.’
Adrien – Tom Tom Club? Now you’re talking my language.
I found their first and eponymous on a big thick old LP in the West Village on my hols, and it’s hardly come off the turntable since.
(though one doomed to irrelevance if misframed as a dichotomy)
well put, and I think the same principle extends to most judgements about art.
Glen – the distinction between noise and music is learned. So yes, recognising music is something one does with one’s mind. Spare me the potted lecture about habitus and the precognitive embodiment of affect. As you well know, the differece between what I said and what you said boils down to terminology.
Aha!
We come to another wee crux I see.
“distinction between noise and music is learned”
This distinction is almost entirely in the music-as-language domain. It really only hinges on what we’re prepared to use the designator “music” to refer to, not what we experience as music.
A child experiences music as distinct from other sound well before the age where they can make a considered call on the definition of music. Animals also.
I bought a Joanna Newsom cd yesterday – will report back.
And I may as well reply to JG here as the moderation process at the Higher Ed blog is too annoying:
(1) I note you cut and pasted most of your comment from the earlier thread here without acknowledgement that I’d replied to those points;
(2) You can’t test for multicollinearity between two variables (status and class) because that would be a bivariate rather than a multivariate analysis;
(3) Your choice of the term “Simian culture” for the tastes of the “hoi polloi” is charming and says it all about you, really.
glen
I shall keep in ‘mind’ your observations on Kant, Bourdieu, and neurophysiology next weekend while busting a move under the mirror ball at Mardi Gras. I shall be sure to share with my fellow habitues as well.
Yep they were very cool. Probably the most referenced/sampled white people in hip-hop.
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High culture/pop culture:
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I myself think these terms are outdated but we haven’t really come up with new ones yet. Probably because the new mass-media based global culture is still developing and it’s pretty much impossible to generate working categories to your own chaotic environment.
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But I found a couple of things:
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http://www.lowculture.co.uk/
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Personal criticisms of trash culture. Very British that. And this article re the globalization of high culture:
Cultural conservative? Alert! Maybe but it’s worth a read because it does say something about certain currents in contemporary culture.
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It’s also worth remembering that sometimes cultural conservatives speak sense when everyone else is batshit. Think George Orwell. Ireckon it was his British 19th century sensibility that helped him see past the revolutionary kitsch that propelled so many of the British idealists of the mid-century to support Soviet iniquity. His rejection of Communism in Barcelona may or may not be linked to his repugnance at Gaudi’s unfinished Cathedral but I wonder if a case couldn’t be made.
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That said, I like Gaudi.
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I myself am not a cultural conservative. But I’ve got electic tastes and I don’t see why digging Federation Square means I can’t like the Cathedral on Notre Dame. or why Sticky Fingers and the glorious 9th by Lovely lovely Ludwig Van don’t belong on the same iPod.
That’s the whole point, surely, Adrien?
FDB – I’m lost. A great deal depends on what we’re prepared to call ‘music’. Yes. And there are all kinds of interesting limit cases where part of the excitement is the way the boundary between what we’re used to thinking of as music and noise (or music and speech or other vocalisations) is unclear, either because
the ‘music’ is avant-garde or because it’s new to our personal experience. But then, children and animals experience music as distinct from other sound? If the music in question is 4′ 33″, or something else heavily dependent on environment, how exactly do they do it?
FDB — is that actually true, you’re only just starting to dig the Tom Tom Club now? That seems unusual. (Surely you’ve seen the Stop Making Sense DVD?) Next you’ll be saying you’ve never heard of Bow Wow Wow.
If the argument here is that yes, there are many different types of music, then I want to know what the counter-argument is. But it seems to me that the crux of the biscuit is (not the apostrophe, but) this:
adrian: “given the range of music available…”
Aha! So, we have assumed as a given that the “range” will always be “available”! But do we have a right to assume this? Well, put it another way: heard any actual Dionysic dithyrambs lately? Cultural forms go extinct unless they are actively practiced and supported with a certain degree of depth. At present, pop music has a very deep bench, as it were; but classical music, which once could count on a very deep bench indeed, sees it getting thinner and thinner each generation. And therein lies a policy question.
I think Walker’s main point is to do with the economic and cultural-consensus support-systems which can ensure that the “range of music” will continue to be “available” into future generations. We can’t count on that for the full range (meaning, hard-to-support classical institutions, hint hint) unless we set our policy directives and cultural-norm preference systems accordingly.
Classical music is expensive to maintain: the training takes longer, results must be capable of being continuously reproduced, it requires expensive equipment and specialized performance venues, and we must lavish social prestige on the practitioners to make it attractive to them for their dedication. (Successful pop musicians will command money and prestige without our intervention.) Walker’s point as I understand it is that under past class- and cultural- regimes, haut-bourgeois and aristocratic resources and cultural preferences were amply channeled towards the ‘higher’ arts as a matter of course, and so, both fine art and folk culture took care of themselves.
But changes in 20th century cultural norms have altered this balance: things like mass production, electronic recording and reproduction, and the mass-democratization of taste have weakened the platform upon which high culture once confidently stood. The various broad societal sources of support for it have dwindled, and it now relies on government budgetary intervention and ‘cultural policy’ to survive. If these are not provided in sufficient depth, it will continue to wither, until the treasures of the Western cultural heritage become strange to our children (assuming we bother to have any). And as those complex skills and tastes fade, the danger is that the class of people who create works on that level of complexity will not be replenished, limiting your choices and limiting your notions of a possible future.
In other words, if you want to have a culture in which more and more people only know and understand relatively simple forms of cultural practice, all you have to do is nothing: that world will come to you on its own, as you sit on the couch playing Grand Theft Auto and listening to Green Day. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But then you will have to live in that world, which may prove incapable of continuing to make “available” all sorts of complex systems which you currently take for granted — including highly complex art.
Well one would hope so. But there’s a funny feeling I’ve got that there’s a war (between the left and right a war between the black and white a war between the odd and the even) between the pop culture tribe and the high culture tribe. Maybe we just need a new way of concieving this stuff.
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Can we at least agree that playing punk rock is easier than playing a Schubert concerto? I play music but I’ve learned within the Afro-Carribean tradition that is by ear. This is pretty much ’cause I’m mathematically mediocre, reading music and maths require similar heads apparently. I’m also lazy. I play well (so I’m told). But I wouldn’t dream of equating my technique with friends who’ve put in long hours and hard years mastering the cello. I don’t share the pop music is crap sensibility (most of it is tho’ especially in this poxy decade) but I don’t share the notion that Hamlet isn’t any better than Gomer Pyle either. There is in my humble opinion something such as Great Art. A Kubrick movie is Great Art, Dumb and Dumber ain’t.
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There’s also the the theory that listening to Mozart makes you smarter. I don’t know if it does. But I know I get a lot more intellectual work done if Mozart’s on than Run DMC. No disrespect to the latter and RIP Jam Master Jay. Some stuff is more worthy than other stuff. The Clash is better than Generation X, Blackalicious is better than 50 Cent and David Bowie is better than T Rex.
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Course that’s just my opinion. It could never be anything else. You can’t prove that Shakespeare’s a better writer than Stephen King no matter how hard you try. You can distinguish between what you like and the ‘worth’ of art. it’s worth noting that taste and the hierarchy of worth aren’t the same. I personally like Botticelli more than Raphael but the latter’s a better painter.
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We probably need a new model that salvages the best of the high art discourse whilst doing away with the prejudice against ‘popular entertainment’. The process of ‘legitimization’ by which the intelligentsia recognize an artform as such (say the French film criticism of the 1950s) usually requires that artform to possess a history in which it can be shown to to have developed into something more sophisticated than it was. The presence of an authorial voice is usually also required altho’ that is not so fashionable these days. De facto, however, it’s still there.
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Speaking of legitimacy:
I reckon GTA makes computer games an artform. After all it’s the first game I ever played that’s a satire in the ironic mode with a deft take on modern morality.
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But again that’s just me.
j_p_z – your instincts are correct re: Tom Tom Club. Long time listener, first time original-pressing-in-perfect-nick-possessor.
Laura – I thought that might be a can of worms, and very probably *ahem* orthogonal to the thrust of this thread. What I’m saying is that studies have shown young bairns and some beasties responding to certain of music’s “traditional” building blocks – rhythm, melody, harmony – in measurable ways. This is of course from the music-as-sensation side of the equation entirely, whereas 4′33″ and such depend almost entirely on the context of music-as-language to be appreciated (or even apprehended) as music.
As I say, a point at precise right angles to the thread’s proper direction. I’m quite sure Bobby W wasn’t implying that a visceral appreciation of music is a bad thing, because it’s one of the things that makes a lot of complex music rewarding. You just need the vocabulary to dig a little deeper for the aesthetic reward.
Now I’ve really stopped making sense. Back to the Cooper’s Sparkling.
Is that actually true? I vaguely recall a study that demonstrated that classical music maintained a small but steady stream of enthusiasm despite the variations in taste over several decades.
And I play classical music when it rains,
I play country when I am in pain.
But I won’t play Beethoven, the mood’s just not right –
Oh, I feel like Hank Williams tonight.
Hey, I play jazz when I am confused,
I play country whenever I lose.
Bird’s saxaphone, it just don’t seem right
Now, I feel like Hank Williams tonight.
Lately I’ve been thinkin’, I just might quit drinkin’.
Now I don’t know all-in-all.
I just might stay home, get drunk all alone,
And punch a few holes in the wall.
linky! : http://flopearedmule.net/08%20I%20Feel%20Like%20Hank%20Williams%20Tonight.m4a
Have a good weekend all.
Ta Amanda – who was that?
I was drunk
the day
my Momma
got out of prison…
And I drove out
To meet her,
In the raaaiiin…
Ag: Alice Stuart, former guitarist with the Mothers of Invention amongst other things, inspiration to Bonnie Raitt in the blues/rock guitarist chick stakes. I saw her live a few years back at some short-lived Cajun joint in Penrith. Chris Wall wrote the song.
But Tchaikovsky had the news, he said “Let there be sound”…
Walker: “Or is he saying that there is as much emotional, intellectual, musical and aesthetic content in a three-minute pop song as in the Beethoven symphony? There are two words for this, if he is saying it: philistine and rubbish.”
This is the crux of what I find ridiculous and objectionable about Walker’s argument. Let’s deconstruct (demolish) it.
He means one of the following things:
1. The symphony is superior to the pop song on grounds of form alone, the form being superior on some unspecified criteria,
2. The symphony is superior to the pop song because it has more content (ie. it’s longer and allows for more variations),
3 The symphony is superior to the pop song because its practitioners are superior artists,
4. All of the above.
(2) is ludicrous. It’s like saying that chocolate cake is superior to chocolate icecream because a serving weighs more, and also has nuts and raisons.
This is not an aesthetic standpoint, it’s just personal preference for the characteristics of a particular form.
(1) is ludicrous because it leads to a silly conclusion. The form cannot and does not make the artist (talent is what makes the artist). All an artist needs is their own humanity, a form to express it with and an audience.
If taken seriously this argument would mean that:
a.) Beethovens pop songs (hypothetical) are inferior his symphonies,
b.) John Coltranes jazz is inferior to his symphonies (hypothetical)
a.) is almost certainly true because Beethoven would not be familiar with the form or the audience.
b.) is almost certainly untrue. Coltranes jazz would definitely be superior to his symphonies because he would be less familiar with the form and completely unfamiliar with the audience from an earlier time.
[But it is interesting that Wynton Marsalis has said "I can do what classical guys do, but they can't do what I do". Now that is a true statement, one proved in reality - but it refers more to the training and skill sets of the musicians involved than the merit of the music itself]
However, in both cases I’m sure the artists emotional, intellectual, musical and aesthetic merit would remain in the unfamiliar form, it would just be less effectively expressed due to their lack of experience with audience and form.
(3) is simply obnoxious. Humans of the 21st Century are not less human than those of Mozarts time. Nor do people become more capable simply because they adopt a new of expression, or less capable if they adopt primitive forms. cf. Picasso.
(4) won’t work because the combination of false arguments isn’t going to create a true one.
But Walkers argument *does* allow him to claim that as we lose the symphonic form (which we are, fewer are composed, performance is increasingly uneconomic and fewer musicians have the appropriate training and background) that we are becoming lesser human beings and our artists are of lesser merit.
That statement is highly convenient to cultural conservatives but it is a dystepic political statement not an aesthetic one.
Walker (quoted here by Ben Eltham at #15). “Mick Jagger would not agree with you at all [etc]”
Walker might get a warm fuzzy feeling when being charmed by a famously charming man whose sincerity in social life is often questioned – even by his own daughter (“Dad please, don’t bring home anyone younger than me” when Jagger was going out cruising for the ladies), but I don’t think anybody else would take this conversation with Walker seriously. In any case, the sentiments are belied by Jagger’s early career where he, Richards and Jones literally starved for their art after he left the LSE. He put his money and his life where Walkers mouth isn’t. His contributions to musical training also prove nothing more than his personal taste or sense of social responsibility – Jimmy Page, a far better and more successful musician than Jagger, funds a school
for rock guitarists. No conclusion re. artistic merit can be drawn from either mans decision.
Additionally, Jagger’s solo music is widely regarded as rubbish within the popular sphere, and he famously returned to the Stones and renewed success after a stoush with Richards, the real musical force behind the Stones.
While Walker claims to have heard a lot of popular music, he knows SFA about it. I doubt he’s ever performed it in a serious manner. I refer him to “Thinking in Jazz” by Paul Berliner and the difficulties experienced by the classically trained author when he sat in with a jazz band during his research.
In fact, Walker should read the whole book. It’s pitched at his claimed level of skill and he would benefit greatly from it in his musical endeavours.
Lastly, musicians themselves don’t believe this nonsense (and study popular music in the conservatories). why do idiot critics persist in repeating it?
Sitting here listening to Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris in a subtle & complex duet on `Hearts on Fire’.
Reality is that music is many things to many people. If you want angst and tragedy, try Shostakovich symphonies 8 & 10 (for Soviet authenticity, preferably performed by the Leningrad Philarmonic Orchestra conducted by the testicle-crushing Evgeny Mravinsky). On the other hand, if you desire teen/early-adult angst Iggy is your man.
Personally I think Andrew Ford’s small-c catholic approach to music is more than commendable. AF is someone active in the big-C classical tradition (arguably in the 20th C egghead tradition at that) while maintaining a palpable enthusiasm for a multitude of other musics. IMO The Music Show is one of the aspects of the everyday/week Australian experience that Makes Life Worth Living.
No doubt Beethoven is your musical genius par excellence. One of my most treasured possessions is the Piano Sonatas performed by the twenty-something Daniel Barenboim on vinyl. Instant nostalgia. But for all the rich and complex rewards involved in listening to Beethoven’s compositions I would never deny myself the pleasures of listening to, say, Joan Baez’s first album.
“You can’t test for multicollinearity between two variables (status and class) because that would be a bivariate rather than a multivariate analysis;”
Mark: nitpick, but why ever not? Isn’t bi-collinearity simply a less complex case of multi-collinearity?
Well, yep, I guess, but if you’re comparing two variables, surely it’s bi- rather than multi-… but maybe I’m being pedantic!
Mark: OK, pendantry reigns supreme when it comes to the do’s and don’ts of data analysis, at least outside the world-view of full-time applied statisticians. My point being that those who have far more training in such things than the likes of you and me often have surprisingly more liberal views on how such problems should be approached. Sorry – personal & professional soapbox.
Meanwhile, music has moved on to early Sixties jazz. Ah, Paul Desmond…! Dusty S looks like being next.
Laura: 11:33 am “claiming that all forms of music are created equal … [is] nonsense”
All forms are equal. Form does not determine quality or value. The form is simply the window the artist chooses for expression. Quality is in the art, not the form.
Laura: 11:49 am “Ignorance does not make a person base, dumb … ”
I agree, but Walker is changing terminology from high/low to knowledgeable/ignorant, while leaving the high/low goalposts in place.
The original audiences and practitioners of jazz, gospel and especially blues – the foundation of modern popular music – were possibly the most ill-educated and therefore ignorant westerners of the modern era.
But those individuals created a musical tradition of such richness that the deluded proponents of the DWM acadamy (such as Prof. Walker) can scarcely see it.
Ignorance – admitted, defined, objectively measurable ignorance – was no barrier to the greatest musical artform of the 20th century. Prof. Walker’s objection is simply complaining about form with a bankrupt justification.
Some people here have referred to the benefits of “classical” (they mean formal) training in music. Those benefits are real, but that is a pedagological argument about ensuring the student does not develop technical flaws which hinder them later. “Classical” training does not ensure artistic value, nor does its lack prevent artistry.
Charlie Parker was an ill-educated oik when he first arrived in New York who could barely play (and not a particularly nice human being according to Miles and others), who was embarrassing in his first performance. He went away and came back after a year of woodshedding as a virtuoso. He was self taught and removed his own technical flaws (if he had any). Miles was very well educated, “classically” trained and a fine human being apart from a rational hatred of white people (at least until they proved themselves sane). He also was a fine musician.
Both loved popular music *and* the DWM canon and both regarded themselves as the equals of their 17th, 18th and 19th century counterparts. Both were genius’s much appreciated by their audiences. Ignorant and educated – you couldn’t see daylight between their talent or their success.
What is left of Prof. Walker’s a priori argument that education determines artistry now? Nothing.
Dusty S didn’t quite get there – supplanted by Steve Reich’s `Music for 18 Musicians’. In either case, beautiful and emotionally rewarding listening.
Mark – while we are in mutually pedantic moods, could you explain why you think that bi-variate relationships are qualitatively different from, say, tri-variate relationships (JG et al aside)?
“All forms are equal. Form does not determine quality or value. The form is simply the window the artist chooses for expression.”
JM – I’d happily write your third sentence, and guardedly transcribe the second. But the first? Can you ensure that all forms are indeed equal? If so, how?
TFA, I suspect if we started on a discussion of statistical techniques, it might be a bit far from the topic!
Mark – so true! On the other hand, rumour has it that Hummel made major advances in martingale theory – totally unsubstantiated of course.
Closer to the topic, it’s interesting to consider how ownership of the various strands of music changes through time.
Think Bulgarian folk music, and how singing from the diaphragm is exhilarating/illegitimate, depending on where and when the listener hears it.
Think Janacek. Thirty years ago only weirdos and con. students were aware of his oeuvre – now (nearly 100 years on) his music is suddenly the flavour of the epoch.
Think Frank Zappa. Forty years late he’s considered to be a significant influence on contemporary classical music, perhaps second/third only to John Cage and Morton Feldman.
If only Zero Mostel were still alive to play the lead in the film version of Feldman’s life…
Ah, Zero Mostel. Loved him in The Front… that’s on topic, yeah?
JM – I’d happily write your third sentence, and guardedly transcribe the second. But the first? Can you ensure that all forms are indeed equal? If so, how?
——————————————————————————————————–
Read the three phrases backwards (as you’ve listed your kind comment). The last justifies the first.
In the model there is the human artist, the abstraction of the form and the human audience. The artist attempts to communicate to the audience and transmit a reproduction of the emotional and aesthetic effect felt by him or her to the listener. This is a lot like a language where I replay your words through the language centers in my brain and they rerun the electrochemical reactions that I would feel if I originated those words myself.
The form is simply a jointly understood framework for communication – a “transport” if you like of shared aesthetic values, modes of expression and sources of pleasure. Changing the transport – say from email to http, or to music – does not alter the message. All “transports” are equal, so are all forms. If the message is the same as processed in the being of the artist and the being of the audience member, transmission method (form) cannot matter other than as personal preference for the audience or technical skills available to, and chosen by, the artist. The better artist is able to better transmit louder and clearer, form be damned. It is not the form that leads to bad art, it is the artists lack of skill.
The key thing is both endpoints in the communication – artist and audience – share an understanding of the form (transport). Choice of form is simply personal preference and so an artist using a particular form will not reach an audience preferring another. If there is no common willingness to communicate and language to conduct it in, there is no art (at least in the realm of the performance arts like music)
Now the artist can (and often does) attempt to extend the form and change the common understanding, some sections of the audience often gain pleasure from being intellectually streched, and so the interaction continues. Such artists if successful in those attempts and particularly if possessed of technical skill, become regarded as ’seminal’.
Apropos of the current discussion, I’d say the cultural conservative group are simply objecting to upgrades in the communication abstraction that have occurred over the last 100 years – they wanna stick with DOS and not worry about this fancy Windows stuff (and as for OSX or Linux, they’re having a real attack of the vapours).
There you have it – the (shortly to be patented, trademarked and already copyrighted) “JM Aesthetic Theory” presented by metaphor with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Linus Thorvalds playing starring roles. (Sorry, couldn’t resist an attempt at comedy)
Ok, serious now. It is argued that particular forms are inferior, as in “The Red Shoes” where dance is described as “an inferior art”, but those views cannot be sustained.
For example, can anyone ever definitely prove that dance can never, and under no circumstances, represent all of MacBeth? No. Noone can ever state with any certainty that some choreographer somewhere, somehow will not achieve that. (I had this exact discussion with a very beautiful young choreographer about 5 years ago, never underestimate the ability of an unfit middle aged man to be besotted by the earnestness of a young blonde dancer)
Dance is a good example here because it lacks notation – my young blonde disagreed – of the same accuracy as music; but that is not a problem for my argument as the lack does not diminish dance as an artform – it simply says its technical paraphenalia have not developed to the level where the acadamy could regard it as on the same level as music. Technical characteristics which assist teaching are not measures of artistic merit.
The blues has no technical ephemera, jazz has it coming out of its ears, hip-hop couldn’t give a stuff but rock now has commercial schools similar to conservatories. What difference does all that make? Nothing.
So this is where we get to the good professors complaint. What if I don’t understand the form? It means he can’t communicate his thoughts and feelings to me. So his response is to blame me for non-comprehension and ‘ignorance’ when the simple fact is I have set my antenna to a different station and we don’t share a common language. My language is not inferior to his, it is simply driven by different choices. But we are both equally human. If I chose to listen in his language or he chose to speak in mine, all would be fine.
The first thing we could do is debate relative merits free of the false relativism that uses current junk in one genre to denigrate that genre in favor of an historical relic from which the junk has been purged over time. An unfiltered contemporary bucket containing mostly cr*p should not be compared to the thimble of gold filtered from equal amounts of 200 year old dross.
The second thing we could do is eliminate cultural pograms where cultural conservatives seek to silence all the people who aren’t listening or who don’t understand them.
The real problem for Walker is that we do understand his language, but it has no new messages, and we’re not listening. Hello culture war.
Questions JM, not loaded, I’m just interested and don’t want to go off half-cocked: do you understand musical theory? Do you play an instrument? Have you played in a band? Have you tried to make any music with other musicians – jams, recordings, performed live? Have you ever made mash-ups, mixed music, written it…? They’re not loaded questions, by the way. It’s just that many of your cocksure statements above – in the JM Aesthetic Theory – grate a bit. And your offensive dismissal of Professor Walker is silly (and repetitive).
OK, someone’s got to do this, so I’ll be the tosser (as usual)…here’s an example of what ‘extra bits’ I (a noddy ’serious’ piano player) can get out of even Bach’s simplest piano piece, and how much is added to the power of the artistic message, because (a la Walker) I’ve put in some work – equiped myself, with the direct/indirect help of people like him, with enough ‘
high culturemusical education (erk!) to have a grasp of serious musical theory, know what Bach’s technically doing (mostly!), know-by-doing how tricky it is, etc. (Carl!, you can have a laugh at my lumpenplaying!) I’m not trying to be a wanker here, but to be honest, it’s meaningless having a dicussion like this without examples, and your theoretical claims to ‘know’ what musicians ‘do’ and ‘don’t’ think on this stuff gave me the shits, JM!.) Sure, I could do a similar analysis in/with the different ‘carriage’ of a Creedence song my blues/rock band does…but the range and nuance and inflections and subtleties of the ‘message’ we can send would be less broad (cf a more complex Bach piece than No 1, especially). It’s the difference between writing a novel with a vocabulary of 5,000 words, or 50,000 words. Bach’s not ‘better’ (’superior’ is your word, btw, not Walker’s) than Creedence, just exactly what Walker said: containing more ‘emotional, intellectual, musical and aesthetic content’.Laura @ 67, hi, and ta. (And congrats on the Austen conference – a triumph!)
JG @ #94, Vidal’s a posturing dandy blowhard, but that line does have a certain…mm, consoling utilitarianism from time to time, here in my freezing garret. (Say – you’re not filthy rich, are you, Jage? Want to be my patron, old bean? I run on the smell of an oily rag*…)
(*no, not the Weekly Standard, JG…)
The argument being made by Robert Walker is not that one form of music is objectively or subjectively better than another. Instead is rejecting the entire terms of such a debate, because it is a stupid, empty debate.
STUPID DEBATE: let me show you it
A: Art music is better than pop music! (or, vice versa – doesn’t matter)
B: No it isn’t, they’re exactly just as good as each other!
Rinse and repeat until either A or B dies of boredom.
Walker is arguing, in part, the more interesting and meaty idea that artworks which breach the individual’s comfort zone have the potential to offer an especially intense experience. Effort put in compares to value gotten out. It’s a modernist idea: the shock of the new.
We have to make an effort with art music because its vocabulary, context, construction, internal relationships are unfamiliar to us. NOT because it’s intrinsically ‘better’ than pop. It is, however, different, which is why I can listen to a Schumman piano piece and have the unsatisfying thought “this is pretty but I don’t know why”, but I can’t hear what a recent critic is talking about when he describes “one of many magical passages in Schumann when music really does seem to be breaking into speech, and meanings tremble on the edge of the specific.” If pop was the neglected and obscure minority form then it would also be the challenging one.
The scene in I’m Not There which annoyed me most was the snide and condescending treatment of the Dylan fans disappointed by his electrified performance at Newport. I thought it could only be the work of somebody who’s never experienced genuine aesthetic shock and disorientation. That sort of smug narrowness is the trap waiting for people who are satisfied with only knowing what they know already.
Last comment: What baffles me most about this whole discussion here is that so many voices are arguing against the simple idea that education is a good thing.
Heh!
The subtext of some of that kind of talk ‘If I don’t know about it then it isn’t worth knowing about.’
Indeed, and in a case like that no amount of education would help one much, but with a bit of basic training one could certainly think, or understand, something like ‘This is pretty because of those key changes / arpeggios / whatever’. But there’s a whole school of thought that says having some knowledge of what you’re listening to or looking at spoils aesthetic appreciation, as with the many students who have complained to me over the years about ‘ripping poems apart’ as though a poem were some tender young baby rabbit being dismembered by an evil bastard fox.
This thread is demonstrating something I hadn’t really noticed before, which is that the best blog discussions are those that begin with a post that isn’t putting any kind of controversial position but is interesting enough for a long, thoughtful thread to be spun that teases out all sorts of subtle variations and additions. But when there’s a ‘taking sides’ effect happening (especially, as here, when there’s also an online/MSM crossover), nuance is always the first casualty, partly because everyone stops reading carefully in their eagerness to pile on and/or re-state their pet positions. Both Mark and Robert Walker are putting far more complex cases than anyone would realise just from reading this thread, and the argument (at least as framed by Walker) is really one about intellectual turf.
“It’s not beyond me Klaus, it’s not beyond the supremely irritated Alan Sokal or Richard Dawkins either. I simply don’t agree that it fits. But let’s just agree to disagree okay.”
I don’t think it’s beyond you, Adrien, and I’m certainly prepared to accept your reading as legitimate. Sokal and Dawkins are another story though. I’ve been chastised by literal-minded scientists on a few occasions, and frankly I wonder whether any of them have ever read (and understood) a novel or a poem, but given my Le Doeuffian commitment to the scientific method it never really bothered me, because whichever ‘postmodernist’ they thought they were talking to, it clearly wasn’t me.
Laura, to the extent that Walker is asking for education, for disciplined attention to music, for meaningful engagement with it, I totally agree with him. On the same front, I think some basic literacy training would do wonders and allow him to, you know, actually read what he’s arguing against. I stick by the ‘orthogonal’ tag.
“But there’s a whole school of thought that says having some knowledge of what you’re listening to or looking at spoils aesthetic appreciation”
Damn straight Dr Meow. I won’t lay claim to an especially good knowledge of music theory/history, but I do suffer from man-who-knew-too-much sydrome as regards production. It’s sometimes a big effort for me to just listen rather than analyse arrangements, guess at the mics used, imagine the singer’s mic technique, picture the gain reduction meters on a squashed-out compressor, blah blah blah. It’s important I guess professionally to be able to do it, but it doesn’t aid my aesthetic appreciation or general enjoyment one bit.
PC: “and the argument (at least as framed by Walker) is really one about intellectual turf.”
Dr. Cat, ’tis a pity that Walker’s home track is slow to heavy. Many cerebral throughbreds perform best when it’d fast.
Frisky and free, others less classically trained prefer to frolic like yearlings unbroken; they know instantly and viscerally what music they like despite an inabilty to precisely articulate why they respond so.
Andalusian prancers are magnificent, however musical quarter-horses can sure get down and boogie. Even Clever Hans could tap out a tune too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
Stephen Foster, Chuck Berry, Wolfie Mozart and Ludwig(Van The Man)Beethoven have all written three minute zingers that will be appreciated and loved for as long as the beat, and I dare say the baton goes on.
“philistine and rubbish”, says Walker; poppycock and bullshit sez I.
[digression]
Oooh, geez, FDB, you can’t give me some tips on reducing line interference hum when home recording in Pro-tools, can you? I have a couple of keyboards (unbalanced lines) and not much room in my garret, so everything, including computer, is squished in together. I’m going nuts, I can’t eliminate hum in the recording stage, not sure how to deal with it best post-recording – can you compress/gate hum out?…should I be using balanced lines? It seems to reduce the signal horribly with keyboards…
Sorry, everyone, but producers are hard to come by. (Is that your f/t gig, FDB?) In fact – to echo the point of my earlier (wasn’t-meant-to-be) ego-link – in our modern age, where most of us get access to music through highly-modified recordings, understanding production is among the most powerful ‘contextualising’ and enriching kinds of education you can have.
[/diversion]
“… meanings tremble on the edge of the specific.”
Wish I’d written that line. Who was the critic, Laura, can you recall?
Just to reassure myself, that’s exactly what I meant when I was on about it.
And,
Don’t worry Jack. There’s a reason I didn’t mention my instrument major was Tuba.
FDB:
Seriously? I’ll grant you that it can ruin it when it’s done badly, but conversely, at least personally, it makes it ever more brilliant when it’s done well.
That ‘well’ is highly contradictory between subjects (NT2 vs C414 vs M149, Neve vs SSL vs Behringer blah blah blah n3rd speak) is basically the crux of mark’s argument, but on the production side rather than compositionally.
Jack, I trust you’ve tried a D.I box pre ‘tools input? And no, you can’t compress it /gate it out, but if it’s a ground hum it should have relatively few harmonics so you should be able to E.Q it out (Typically ~50hz). If it’s much higher or more complex than that, there’s something wrong with your ‘tools box – the first round of Mbox 1’s had shielding problems, so let’s hope you don’t have one of them… Or alternatively, it’s your keyboard copping interference pre its output stage. That, too, could get yucky…
Study at the the University of Leicester on musical tastes, lifestyles education etc:
Well d’uh. So hip-hop fans are all libertarians. You gotta make the money first, then when you get the money you the power…
Mmmmm I wonder how Don Giovanni would go down on ’shrooms? Bad trip?
So y’all latte lefties are barking up the wrong iPod. Get rid of those Kylie remixes and get some Bach up ya. Otherwise you might be railing against socialized medicine.
Infact, on second thoughts you could side-chain an E.Q -> gate on the hum. But that gets tricky!
This article shows that dementia can alter musical taste:
Klaus-
Well I’ve never read literary criticism from either gentleman so I cannot comment on their capacity in this area. Dawkins, however, writes beautifully. I also think it’s going too far to call them ‘literal-minded’. You didn’t I know. But Sokal’s Social Text adventure is not something that can dismissed as literal mindedness.
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You may espouse a committment to the scientific method (what does Michèle Le Doeuff have to do with it?) but I’m afraid I’ve run into too many Art post grads who believe that science is merely conventional; a belief system indistinguishable from, say, Astrology. They have the utter lack of deductive reasoning powers to back it up.
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But this is of course off topic.
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I agree that Prof Walker is not entirely addressing what Mark is saying. He, and many here, are participating in the wider popular culture v high culture legitimacy debate that was kicked off by the Frankfurt School and then given real focus by Hall and Williams. Fundamentally I agree with this. I’ve always thought that the notion that one form of music is a (stamp) artform and another trash is ridiculous. However to steal from Ophelia Benson I reckon that equating Hamlet with the Yellow Pages is likewise silly.
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Not that I’ve seen anyone do that here. I wish someone would. That’d be fun.
Equalizer..d’oh.
*smacks forehead*
That’s the trap in forgetting that all noise is music of a sort…I’m sure that lack-of-education-in-the-doing example will support one or other side of this non debate! Ta, Carl! I’ve got the mini2 so I hope the shielding prob is moot…
Tuba! Mate, all bass players are automatically cool, you know that. S’long as you play it strapped low and dirty and on drugs and with hip thrusts. I’m also reliably informed by some female friends that the tuba player’s embouchure and lung capacity can be particularly….mmm…pleasing in some non-musical contexts.
Ahem. I shall now disqualify myself from this thread for that unforgivable GregM-up.
Article on study that observes musical tastes change with the onset of dementia:
Um I just resubmitted a comment pretty much the same as #136 because I thought the commentray I’d submitted today had gone down the memory hole. Sorry about that.
No, Laura, people are arguing that the claim that education is required to appreciate classical music is a wrong thing.
Adrien, your comment ended up in the spaminator. If that occurs, don’t repost it but email us as the algorithm will take multiple postings as confirmation that you are in fact a spammer.
It’s some server thing at this end I had the same probs elsewhere. Cheers.
Okay, off topic, but brief: Adrien, indeed, there are Arts postgrads who seem to think that way, and they frustrate me no end. The Sokal hoax requires a longer discussion than we have space for here, but I agree with you with some qualifications.
The reason I cite Le Doeuff is because she remains committed to the projects of science and philosophy, but is also critical of the favoured metaphors etc in the history of both. Le Doeuff is also critical of feminist epistemology where it veers into the kinds of outright dismissals of science you (and I) object to: her critical embrace of rationality is a profound and intelligent exercise in philosophical rigour, which maintains that which I think is most valid and important in feminism.
“No, Laura, people are arguing that the claim that education is required to appreciate classical music is a wrong thing.”
Yea and the same goes for paintings and sculptures – one of my mates did the Louvre in under 25 minutes and even then reckoned he was delayed by a tour group cluster in front of the Mona Lisa.
The next 2 hours was comfortably idled away sipping those tiny beers the french insist on drinking and planning a visit to the Musee Rodin which he though would be a 10 minute encounter.
Yeah, and the same goes for science and medicine and aeronautical engineering and economic management and feminist theory and panel-beating and marine mechanics and physiotherapy and sociology and spaeeilling and emthie kjw
Dr Cat @126: “But there’s a whole school of thought that says having some knowledge of what you’re listening to or looking at spoils aesthetic appreciation,”
Subjectively, I find that any knowledge which enables multi-layered appreciation and understanding of a human work (or a natural phenomenon) just enhances my enjoyment of it. The techniques, the story behind the work and its creator, connections to other people, things, places – it’s all potentially part of the package. Focussing on just the immediate aesthetics of the sound is one way of reacting to it, but not the only way. If ignorance is bliss, ’tis ecstatic to be wiser!
And I have to wonder about the motivation of people advocating the narrow approach to aesthetic appreciation. Back in the 1700’s, Goethe objected massively to Newton’s theory of refraction of white light into colours, and wrote poems lamenting this spoilage, such as Zahme Xenien (‘Gentle Ironies’ – in a letter to Schiller). Goethe tended to spin his anti-Newtonian work as romanticisation of ignorance, which I find appalling, particularly coming from someone so highly capable. There is a far-from-gentle irony in that Goethe’s motivation was not actually so much that of the artist railing against the demystification of art by scientists, but of a self-taught, eccentric physicist objecting to outcompetition of his own pet theory that colours arose from the mingling of light and dark.
What I meant Klaus is that I’m puzzled that you’ve tagged a philosopher’s name to your endorsement of the scientific method. I’d a thought ‘it works’ would suffice. I haven’t read her, if I get the chance I’ll pay attention. I’m not entirely unsympathetic with the (Kuhnian influenced?) critique of science. So far as it doesn’t veer into the ridiculous (ie the ‘privileged’ speed of light) it’s cool. Speaking of which she must be frustrated to be bracketed with Luce Iriguay as I see happening sometimes
Sorry Klaus I used an ie when I meant to use an eg.
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Yes I’ll third that. After I became a degree’d Art (film) Wanker I chucked all the Roland Barthes and Terry Eagleton etc stuff away. It took me a couple of years before I could just sit down and read a novel or watch a film without analyzing it to bits. It’s not that it takes away your ability to just engage in it for simple pleasure’s sake it just takes away that child-like innocent appreciation. You can also find yourself over intellectualizing everything in dopey ways – the intense stupidity of intellectuals. For that reason I’ve been hesitant to get too scholarly about certain things. It also leaves stuff to discover. Like two years ago – Sonny Rollins. Class.
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That said there’s entirely deeper pleasure that comes of wide knowledge of an artform.
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I don’t think you need an ‘education’ to enjoy classical music just an open mind and the willingness to persevere. A symphony is not a simple tune,. It does help if you’re exposed to it at an early age. Not immersed just exposed, trains the year. Same goes for jazz. It’s also worth saying that not all ‘classical’ music is good. I went to the last Sydney Myer Summer Concert last night and it was shite.
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Well played, but shite. IMHO that is.
Andyc at #146 — ‘ … any knowledge which enables multi-layered appreciation and understanding of a human work (or a natural phenomenon) just enhances my enjoyment of it.’
Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. I probably should have made it clearer that the ‘knowledge spoils it’ school of thought is not one I belong to myself — au contraire — though I do take FDB’s point at #128.
And not only knowledge but also memory and experience and association. I’ve written a bit about this in the context of opera — I’ll only link to Part 3, but parts 1 and 2 are only a few days back in that month’s archives for anyone who’s interested. (Look, Mark, opera — am I on topic or what?!)
Comment crossed with Adrien at #148 there, but it although it was originally me who described that ’school of thought’, way up-thread, I should (she said again) have made it clearer that I don’t belong to it and my own experience has been the exact opposite. Maybe it just varies from person to person. I’ll take richness and complexity over childlike innocence any day.
You can have both PC. Just be sauvant in some stuff and an ignoramus in others.
Klaus
The reason I cite Le Doeuff is because she remains committed to the projects of science and philosophy, but is also critical of the favoured metaphors etc in the history of both. Le Doeuff is also critical of feminist epistemology where it veers into the kinds of outright dismissals of science you (and I) object to: her critical embrace of rationality is a profound and intelligent exercise in philosophical rigour, which maintains that which I think is most valid and important in feminism.
You have relied on the word critical three times here. However, there contexts do not support an equivalent meaning among the three. How on earth does one ‘embrace rationality’, critically? This is one of my bug-bears with the postit Left. The weasel use of the word “critical.”
Dr Cat @126: “But there’s a whole school of thought that says having some knowledge of what you’re listening to or looking at spoils aesthetic appreciation,�
That school is known as philistinism. The essence of great art is its onion-like affect. We can all enjoy/be moved by/provoked a performance of a Greek tragedy, but the experience becomes deeper the more we know about Homer, Hesiod, archaic art, Persian architecture, Egyptian jewellery and so on.
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion may affect us deeply merely by the intensity of choral and arias. However, if we are familiar with the New Testament and even better the Book of Matthew, and thus the Ressurection, our appreciation increases greatly. We become even more stimulated and moved, when we can identify Bach’s innovations from earlier baroque styles.
An education in the theological conflicts of the Reformation opens another layer. If we have been educated to understand the role of the chorus and stichomythia in Greek tragedy, our appreciation of Bach’s contrapuntal innovations becomes even more vivid. And so on and so forth.
Ditto for great paintings and so on.
Carl!:
“Seriously? I’ll grant you that it can ruin it when it’s done badly, but conversely, at least personally, it makes it ever more brilliant when it’s done well.”
Oh noes!!! I didn’t mean that good production doesn’t aid enjoyment, just that my constant analysis of production doesn’t help me to enjoy music all that much.
[BTW, C-414 and Neve are the correct responses
]
Jack – it could just be that your unbalanced lines are running too close to power/monitor cables from your DAW setup. If so, Carl’s DI box suggestion would work fine, as would a “poor man’s DI” [pseudo-balanced cable I can explain how to make if you like], or you might want to try just making sure the Mbox is as far as it can get from your computer and the leads likewise.
The other possiblity is that your keyboard is making the noise due to bad shielding/earthing. That one’s more tricky.
Oh, and music is good. Just finished working on a cover of Hickory Wind where I get to be Emmylou. So sweet, so sad… no need to analyse nothin.
Jack R
I used to think Gore Vidal was just a “posturing dandy blowhard” until I realised I was just jealous.
After I read Myra Breckinridge, a little something in ME died when I realised I would never be able to write something like that. 
However, I do find the “more liberal/leftier than thou” sermonising nauseating.
As for patronage. My good man, I have no spare beans – old or otherwise – to minister among the freezing garrets of Louisa Road.
“…as would a “poor man’s DIâ€? [pseudo-balanced cable I can explain how to make if you like]…”
Dude, yes please…I’m going nuts. To save annoying everyone here too much you’d be warmly welcome to drop by my latest post at my place, where I’ve done a recording/post relevant to this thread (and you can what I mean hum-wise in quieter bits)..feel free to ignore my (rather wanky, sigh) blog rules and post as ‘FDB’. I’m working through Carl’s suggestion with EQ, which is helping a bit, but I don’t have a D/I. (And I swear, guys, the more I try to home-record, the more respect – thumps chest – I have for producers…sound recording is so damned…finicky.)
BTW, as an experiment-cum-blogwhore-bark, here’s my recorded contribution to this thread. Delete it if it’s too bandwidth-hungry or just doesn’t work, moderators:
[audio http://butterfliesandguns.wordpress.com/files/2008/02/bluemonkr.mp3
‘Blue Monk’ by Thelonius Monk…(dedicated by Jack ‘teacher’s pet’ R to Professor Walker…chortle…)
Adrien – I attach myself to Le Doeuff because I am committed to a reflective philosophy of science, not to an untheorised position that treats the method as a black box. Of course science will do its work with or without Le Doeuff, but I think that an uncritical attachment to science is also taking a position on the philosophy of science without admitting that one is taking a position. And yes, Le Doeuff is highly critical of Irigaray. The bracketing together comes from the interest of early adopters like Liz Grosz, who did a bit of compare and contrast in ‘Sexual Subversions’ (a great intro text, even after twenty years).
*Cheers wildly*
All types of music have their place. However, it is difficult to argue that pop music in general bares the same level of complexity as classical music. That is not to say that pop music is not a valuable form of music.
Le Doeuff is great… Just sayin…
Sorry for OT, but Jack –
[audio nerd]
At the soundcard end, use a male XLR or balanced TRS jack.
At the instrument end, use a normal unbalanced (TS) jack.
Using balanced-style cable (2 cores plus shield) wire the lead as follows:
Balanced end (XLR): core 1 – pin 2; core 2 – pin 3; shield – pin 1
Balanced end (TRS): core 1 – tip; core 2 – ring; shield – sleeve.
Unbalanced end: core 1 – tip; core 2 – sleeve; shield – unconnected (cut it off a way back from any conductive parts of the plug)
Alternatively (and preferably IMHO), at the unbalanced end: core 1 – tip; core 2 – connected directly to sleeve; shield – connected to sleeve via a 100ohm resistor
And there you have it – the poor man’s DI!!!
[/audio nerd]
Awesome, FDB, thanks very much…I shall henceforth away and have at blowing up myself and my garret.
Jage, I’ll make a deal with you – if I ever manage to occupy an address on Louisa Road, then the Head Butler’s job shall be yours. On an AWA, of course. Globalisation wages. And you can bring all your illegitimate offies and sundry Occy Street hangers-on, I’ll give ‘em jobs in the gardens and kitchens…Myra I haven’t tried yet. Could never find a copy with the dirty bits marked clearly enough. I guess I did dismiss him on the strength of little more than cursory familiarity…ie I’ve read his hacks on modern America (natch). Losing the love of his life in WW2 must have greatly informed the ‘vale America, you were once great but now The Republic is lost forever’ flavour of so much of (what little I have read of) his stuff. It gets a bit wearying even for us bleeding hearts, JG, when a writer has nothing to say about the States but ‘It was great when Kennedy was around…’
Oops, meandering OT. Ta again, FDB.
Jack R
On behalf of myself and all my offies/hangers on, I accept your offer of Head Butler. While Gore Vidal would not restrain himself on the double entendre in your offer, I shall.
Your views on Vidal are very spookily like mine. When all my mates were raving about him I was firmly in my Jack R stage.
As you know I am none too patient with such luvvies broadcasting their moral narcissism from on high (high above the Amalfi coast in Vidal’s case, though we do have our pretenders high above Louisa Road
). It’s such an easy pose to mince around the globe saying America was lost after FDR and squeezing that shtick within the framework of an undergrad essay “Why did the Roman Republic collapse?”
But real people step up and have to make real decisions about the realities of the here and now. Sure, Nixon/Carter/Reagan/Bush/Clinto/Bush might not have been FDR, but then FDR did not face the same type of world. Vidal’s views on politics reflect those of a class disconnected toff who thinks powerful individual men in modern democracies can change the world by acting like Ceasar, which of course is piffle. Our own two-bit bunyip pretenders to being Australia’s Vidal are of course even more odious
As I said, he redeemed himself – in my book anyway – with Myra Breckinridge, You really must read it. It is one of the best treatments of “gender” I have ever read, and fucking hysterical to boot. If only the spiritually and aesthetically-starved Gender Studies crowd were producing such work. But alas….
Jack R
I have not been under an award since I worked at Woolies on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings years ago. I also have no interest in AWAs. Fuck all that nanny state bollocks. We shall negotiate our own arrangements like civilised aesthetes and drunks!
Indeed. There is a limit to one’s capacity to be critical of science as it’s disciplines tend to demand a level of knowledge that is beyond most of us even scientists. What concerns me is not a questioning of scientific epistemology or the criticism of the ‘prejudices of science’ for want of a better phrase but the politicization of scientific discourse for various reasons.
>
Iriguay’s relegation of light speed to the techniques of patriarchy are to me just as silly as the extremely ideological views of the AGW debate (on both sides) and of course the likes of Intelligent Design. Science is in the business of producing reliable knowledge. It cuts thru the bullshit.
Greenfield: there is no weaseling going on in my comment. My uses of ‘critical’ are unambiguous and precise, and more to the point the word is used in its everyday definition. Repetition is a feature of a lack of editing in this case. Perhaps you should keep your delicate antennae away from my comments if I use too many words you don’t like.
Sorry to switch genres of art here, but this sort of lodged itself in my head, and like most good mania, it just won’t go away until I scribble it somewhere…
Thimble Theater Hall-of-Famers proudly presents…
Winsor McCay in the 1900s and the ‘teens.
The one and only George Herriman in the 1920s.
The heavyweight champeen, Elzie Segar in the 1930s.
Ernie Bushmiller in the 1940s. (Who needs LSD when you’ve got Nancy?)
Kelly, Capp, and Kurtzman in the fershlugginer 50s.
Schulz, Kirby, Bode and Crumb in the 1960s.
Garry Trudeau (yes, he was once funny) in the 1970s.
The marvelous Jaime Hernandez in the 1980s.
The mysterious Chris Ware in the 1990s.
Oh, and don’t forget Chester Gould. Chester My-head-is-exploding Gould.
Love, language, art, Angst, politics, crime, surrealism, sociology, symbolism and the kitchen sink: a magnificent record of humanity’s dreamtime in the unimaginable twentieth century. Where is it?! In the Louvre? The Hermitage? The Met?
It was all in the fucking comics.
“I wanna be loved like the lumberjacks love!”
– Olive Oyl
“Curse you!! Curse EVERYBODY ON EARTH!”
– The Sea Hag
“I do not choose to eat cheese.”
– J. Wellington Wimpy
Jack Robertson #123:
“Questions JM, not loaded ….”
* do you understand musical theory? Yes
* Do you play an instrument? 1 very well, 1 ok, 2 trivially
* Have you played in a band? Yes
* Have you tried to make any music with other musicians
– jams, Often
recordings, Yes, but a long time ago
performed live? Yes, and still do occasionaly
* Have you ever made
mash-ups, No (just not interested in that form, sorry)
mixed music, Yes (although I don’t know why you think mixing is important to this discussion?)
written it…? Yes
“the JM Aesthetic Theory” It’s a joke Joyce.
“here’s an example of what ‘extra bits’ I (a noddy ’serious’ piano player) can get out of even Bach’s simplest piano piece, and how
much is added to the power of the artistic message, because (a la Walker) I’ve put in some work – equiped myself, with the direct/indirect help of people like him, with enough ‘high culture musical education (erk!) to have a grasp of serious musical theory,”
Yeah I like Bach too. Jack I’m not actually arguing against education, and I’ve said elsewhere that it is “enourmously valuable” to the practioner who has it.
My problem with Walker is as follows:
1. He argues quality is present in the form, not the art. I think that is rubbish
2. He mistakes academy education for real musical education (ie. your ear, and I’m not being philistine here, I mean the real work you seem to have put in. I applaud you.)
3. He believes that formal education is necessary for appreciation. I think he really jumps the shark at that point.
He uses this line of thinking to promote obnoxious and false conclusions.
My comments re. ‘knowing what musicians do and don’t think’ are based on my personal knowledge of what professional working musicians actually do think – from rockabilly musos in London who regularly tour the US in pick bands, to two neighbours who play in the MSO.
I’ve never actually met an active musician who believes that form determines quality, or that formal education determines quality in
any way. Walker’s comments are more like what I would expect from a conservative philistine at the local church tea and bickies night.
I’m somewhat surprised that you bit on my comments. And your ‘extra bits’ are a key part of my point of view. Good on ya.
“but the range and nuance and inflections and subtleties of the ‘message’ we can send would be less broad (cf a more complex Bach piece than No 1, especially)”
Well yes and no. What you’re saying here is that the Bach piece offers more opportunity for invention than your average pop song.
And as far as the form (structure) of the piece, and the components present in the written form are concerned you might be right.
But I think Jazz has comprehensively demolished that argument. Many, many apparently trivial, “worthless” songs of the mid 20thC form the basis of absolutely shattering performances. For a more modern example, take Cyndi Lauper (a minor Maddonna wannabe) and “Time after Time”. Miles noticed its possibilities and turned it into a popular standard that is probably being played somewhere in the world right now as you read this and used as the basis for just the complex message extension you mention.
Lastly, you argue against yourself. Bach’s “simplest piano piece” is simple. Many, many pop songs are more complex. Stick the modifications in as most accompaniasts in pop are wont to do and you’ve got exactly the same thing as you have on your web site.
Add in reharmonization and we’re completely out of here. What’s your criteria again?
The stuff on your referenced web page is called analysis. It’s a way to understand what’s going on after the fact of creation. But there are many ways to analyse a piece. Jazz had a bit of a fist fight back in the ’50s as to whether the tritone was really a diminished 5th or was better understood as an augmented fourth, and also a bit of a bun fight over the notation of enharmonics – is it Bf or Cff?. And to this day, a performer will ask another “What’s that?” and get the reply “It’s Lydian”, “Ok, got cha”.
However analysis is not the way art is actually produced. It’s helpful in the education of performers and especially composers. It has nothing to do with appreciation, which is the false equivalence Walker tries to promote.
BTW – you can hear heavy metal bands doing more complex stuff in any city, any night. Those guys love mixolydian. And they generally know what it means too.
Hmm, mixolydian is more rock than metal. I hear more minor modes especially when they can flat a 5 and the the odd 2. Throw in a love for odd time signatures and then yes, you have a modern metal recipe.