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From: mfs@mhuxr.UUCP (SIMON)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Whoaaa...Doug.  Bach vs. Bush vs. Madonna
Message-ID: <373@mhuxr.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Jul-85 12:21:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxr.373
Posted: Mon Jul  8 12:21:06 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Jul-85 06:13:02 EDT
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> Doug Alan
>                                                      My complaint with
> Bach is not that his music is too complex (it isn't -- I think it's
> simpler than the music on "The Dreaming"), but that the emphasis in his
> music seems to be in filling it with "inside jokes" rather than making
> it interesting to listen to by the intelligent layperson.
> ....
> In any case, both Kate Bush and Bach have produced original and creative
> works and both deserve a lot of credit.
> 
>  .... If
> you're a musician, and can get all of Bach's inside jokes, and for that
> reason you love him, that's fine with me.
> 
> .... I don't find [Bach's] music emotionally powerful.  If
> I were a musician, maybe I'd catch all his little jokes, and go "tee hee
> hee" and therefore find his music very emotionally powerful -- but
> again, this has nothing to do with complexity.
> 
> ....   But in any case, if Bach wasn't limitting himself so much by
> playing cute games with the notes on a piece of paper, he would
> certainly have had a lot more freedom to explore the possibilities of
> the different ways music can sound and how those differences affect
> listeners.

You seem to hear Bach as a set of musical games and inside jokes. You
might want to reflect on the fact that Bach invented the Western system
of musical notation, something that EVERY other musician that came later
owes to him, including Kate Bush. She has done nothing (yet) that remotely
resembles something this colossal, which puts her at a severe disadvantage
in any comparison to old Joe Bach.

> Doing what Kate Bush does is a lot more time consuming that what Bach
> did.  There are a lot more variables to worry about.  There are
> unlimited studio effect, synthesizer timbres, envelope settings, etc.
> that all have to be explored.  Kate Bush produces her own albums which
> means she has that much more work to do -- operating lots and lots of
> complicated equipment.  Then when she finishes recording an album, she
> designs the record cover, designs the covers for the singles, designs,
> choreographs, and designs the costumes for her videos.  Then she has to
> spend a year going around the world promoting the album, so that it will
> sell enough so that she can afford to do the next one.  Also, you should
> realize that she only puts a small fraction of the music she writes on
> her albums.  She's written hundreds and hundreds of songs that have
> never been committed to vinyl.  Why not?  Because she's a perfectionist
> and because of that her recording process is very time consuming, and
> because of that she can only record a small amount of the music she
> writes.

Little of this paragraph has to do with musical quality. Bach perfected
the tehnology of the clavinet, lost his eyesight transcribing music.
He depended on the good graces of the nobleman in whose court he lived to
feed his numerous children, which is at least as pressure packed as standing
up to a recording company. As to designing record covers and video costumes,
I fail to see what that has to do with music.

In general, this particular discussion is a bit silly, wouldn't you
say? Besides  comparing apples and oranges, the fact is that Bach's
contributions to the body of world music TODAY dwarf anything that
Kate Bush has done. Now in 50 or 100 years we'll be able, perhaps,
to evaluate Bush's place in history a bit better (compariing her to Bach
will still be apples to oranges, however). Until then, al this
talk is a waste of computer cycles.

Marcel Simon