Xenakis, Iannis

**MrGongGong** · 12-05-13, 13:09

Originally posted by Beef Oven View Post

Simon I think, was being provocative in tone. Allow for that, and many people would agree with him.

Many people believe all sorts of nonsense

(some even think that we aren't in Europe

)

The problem with some folk is that they seem to think that there are always only 2 choices
Bach OR Boulez
Pan Sonic OR Palestrina
when one can simple choose both some or all

Interesting that on my drive to the station just now and listening to the EMS the parallels with Xenakis and architecture leapt out !

(but I guess Xenakis isn't really "music" so what do I know ? )

**Simon** · 12-05-13, 13:21

Leaving aside the hilarious idea that a certain member who can't even understand posts on a MB would understand erudition

...

FHG, IMO you are making a category error. That musical fashions have changed is undoubted, and that music has developed over the centuries is clearly something that everyone knows.

But it isn't the fact that it has changed in this way that I'm referring to. The relativist ideas that there are no musical absolutes and that any noise, however created, is de facto a musical event, is what I'm talking about.

You can draw a line from Ockeghem right through to Philip Moore, and despite the vast range of difference between their work, there is a continuity. They are part of a continuum that includes many creative functions, and perhaps even mental attitudes to audience and motivation, without which I argue that music cannot exist honestly.

The idea that all modern compositions are on this same continuum is, to my mind, a nonsense.

To use an analogy to better explain, I hope, consider railways. From the very first ideas about them, through Rocket, Mallard, the Deltics and the Bullet trans of Japan right up to whatever is the latest in such travel, there have been fundamentals pervading all the various designs. Stephenson would gape at Branson's Pendolinos, but he would nonetheless recognise the function and the achievement - they both do what they are meant to so, albeit in an astonishingly different way, and they all have the same basic methodology - wheels running on pre-laid tracks.

But show him a nuclear submarine and tell him it's a kind of railway - no way. That it's a form of transport, is undoubted. That it's a railway - never.

And that's the difference between, as you mentioned, Palestrina, Mozart and Xenakis. If you had said Palestrina, Mozart and Shostakovitch - or even switched genre and substituted Fleetwood Mac instead of Shost - you'd have been absolutely right. But Xenakis isn't on the same continuum. He's HMS Ambush to Rocket, Mallard and Royal Scots Grey! As are people like, of course, Berio and Stockhausen.

Sculpture is the same, as are paintings: start with the unknown sculptors of the ancient world, through Michaelangelo, Rodin - and then think about so-called sculptors of today, who manage empty rooms, lights going on and off, and random piles of bricks. It's not just not the same continuum, it's a different universe entirely! And whatever you may say about the society in which they live, and its influences, cannot in my view alter that.

You may not agree, of course! Thanks for your earlier post - it was good, not to say refreshing

, to read your reasoned comments, even though as yet they haven't convinced me.

bws S-S!

**LeMartinPecheur** · 12-05-13, 16:03

Originally posted by Simon View Post

Leaving aside the hilarious idea that a certain member who can't even understand posts on a MB would understand erudition

...

FHG, IMO you are making a category error. That musical fashions have changed is undoubted, and that music has developed over the centuries is clearly something that everyone knows.

But it isn't the fact that it has changed in this way that I'm referring to. The relativist ideas that there are no musical absolutes and that any noise, however created, is de facto a musical event, is what I'm talking about.

You can draw a line from Ockeghem right through to Philip Moore, and despite the vast range of difference between their work, there is a continuity. They are part of a continuum that includes many creative functions, and perhaps even mental attitudes to audience and motivation, without which I argue that music cannot exist honestly.

The idea that all modern compositions are on this same continuum is, to my mind, a nonsense.

To use an analogy to better explain, I hope, consider railways. From the very first ideas about them, through Rocket, Mallard, the Deltics and the Bullet trans of Japan right up to whatever is the latest in such travel, there have been fundamentals pervading all the various designs. Stephenson would gape at Branson's Pendolinos, but he would nonetheless recognise the function and the achievement - they both do what they are meant to so, albeit in an astonishingly different way, and they all have the same basic methodology - wheels running on pre-laid tracks.

But show him a nuclear submarine and tell him it's a kind of railway - no way. That it's a form of transport, is undoubted. That it's a railway - never.

And that's the difference between, as you mentioned, Palestrina, Mozart and Xenakis. If you had said Palestrina, Mozart and Shostakovitch - or even switched genre and substituted Fleetwood Mac instead of Shost - you'd have been absolutely right. But Xenakis isn't on the same continuum. He's HMS Ambush to Rocket, Mallard and Royal Scots Grey! As are people like, of course, Berio and Stockhausen.

Sculpture is the same, as are paintings: start with the unknown sculptors of the ancient world, through Michaelangelo, Rodin - and then think about so-called sculptors of today, who manage empty rooms, lights going on and off, and random piles of bricks. It's not just not the same continuum, it's a different universe entirely! And whatever you may say about the society in which they live, and its influences, cannot in my view alter that.

You may not agree, of course! Thanks for your earlier post - it was good, not to say refreshing

, to read your reasoned comments, even though as yet they haven't convinced me.

bws S-S!

Simon: I'm sure that everyone on this message board agrees that there is for them 'music I like' and 'music I don't like'. The problem surely is when the latter category slips over towards 'You may call it music but if I don't like it, it isn't music.' Don't you see a problem with this?

There are, I would assume, types of auditory input that you and everyone on these boards would agree isn't music - street pneumatic drills, the noise in an office, etc. You seem to have categories for 'Auditory inputs that I don't like but do recognize as music' and 'Auditory inputs I don't like and don't recognize as music even though a lot of other people do'. But what gives you the right to set your judgments as binding on others?

If your comment "The relativist ideas that there are no musical absolutes and that any noise, however created, is de facto a musical event, is what I'm talking about" is aimed at the likes of 4'33", surely you're missing the point. Cage wasn't surely saying that all noise is music, he was seeking to open the ears of particular audiences sitting in particular halls to the fact that even when the pianist plays no notes at all there is still a lot to listen to. Close listening to acoustic events and patterns of events for a few minutes can be treated as a musical event, and is very good for the ears and brain. OK, there's a large joke element in it as well and the copyright issues are interesting, but surely it's idle to argue from the randomness of this event to the proposition that anything that sounds like noise to me shouldn't be regarded as music by anyone else.

No doubt you'll tell me which category errors I've perpetrated here...

**Simon** · 12-05-13, 16:39