From: utzoo!utcsrgv!elf
Newsgroups: net.music
Title: Re: Overintellectualising Music
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.947
Posted: Mon Jan 31 11:18:01 1983
Received: Mon Jan 31 11:29:58 1983
References: watmath.4435

cbostrum's illustration of how some artists are attempting to redefine
the traditional listener/performer relationship was very good.  There is
little to add to that except that the technology to which our listening
environment is linked, i.e. records, turntables, etc., impose obvious
limits wrt how much this relationship can be altered.  There's only so
much one can do.  I've noticed an unconscious change in the way I listen
to a lot of music: as sensation, form, and process--very much the Reichian
spirit of things.  Do we all listen modally? That is, I have different
listening modes for pop, blues, classical, and funny music.

On "minimalism", I don't know.  I mean, you read record reviewers who say
that your average white boy pop band has "African influence", which seems
to mean that the drummer happens to bang on a Ghanian drum every once in
a while.  I believe Reich called himself a "structuralist", not a
"minimalist".  Just listen to his new album, "Tehillim", and you'll see
the problems in labelling a composer.  Oh sure, Tehillim has repeated
phrases, etc., but the musical devices employed are right out of the
Renaissance: imitation, canon, augmentation, etc.  And there's lots of
melody to boot.  Yet the album feels like a logical progression for
Reich.  It's all a very clever synthesis of old forms using new processes.
I think I'll keep on calling this kind of music "funny music".  The
adjectives "new", "avant-garde", "contemporary", etc. just don't cut it.
"Funny music" sounds neither pretentious nor overly-intellectual, and it
illustrates the general spirit I tend to have when I approach the music.

I remember what the Penguin Cassette Guide had to say about Reich's
"Drumming": "frankly, I think some listeners may not be able to take
this work seriously".  How can a reviewer be completely misguided yet
somehow (accidentally) be vaguely correct?

Eugene Fiume
utcsrgv!elf
U of Toronto