🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <16722@life.ai.mit.edu> news@ai.mit.edu (news) writes:
;Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
;From: mrsmith@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Mr. P. H. Smith)
;Path: rice-chex!mrsmith
;
;In article <11353@idunno.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
;(Eliot Handelman) writes: 
;>In article <1991Jun27.161828.17195@agate.berkeley.edu>
;maverick@mahogany.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick) writes: 
;>;In article <11273@idunno.Princeton.EDU>, eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot
;>;Handelman) writes:
;>
;>;|> And last of all "composition" is dead,
;>;|> significant music is not made that way anymore.
;>
;>;How do you know I can't make "significant" music by composing?  
;>
;>"Composing" is too limited, not general enough. That's why it
;>pays so little. 
;
;Although a few chaps manage to do quite well in this respect: Andrew Lloyd
;Weber made $240 million in one year by composing. 

I can assure you, he did not make that money by "composing." He made that 
money by "selling." Webber's music is intrinsically dime-a-dozenish,
there is absolutely nothing about it that a priori singles it out for 
the sort of success he's enjoyed. If you want to appreciate his success
you need to look at a much larger chunk of the world than what notes the
man put down on his page. 

This is not meant to sound sour, by the way. 

;>That's why in turn it does not attract "the best minds 
;>of my generation" (ginsburg). No critical base.
;
;It never has.  Mozart, Wagner, Sweelinck, Alkan, Haydn, Schoenberg --
;are these the "best minds" of their generation?  Perhaps Beethoven,
;Bach, and Bartok were?  It's hard to figure out what you mean by "best
;minds."  Musically?  Overall intellectual aptitude?  If the
;latter, then composers generally don't qualify.

Musical minds, I said "no critical base." "Composition" is one of a 
thousand different ways of making music. What's music? It's like
asking "what's a shoe"? It's more than something structural. Somehow
the shoe industry has billeted a large dedicated section of cortex 
that integrates shoes. Wear the wrong shoes and you no longer look 
human. What the shoes actually look like is irrelevant, the important
thing is that the industry observes design restrictions otherwise 
no real appropriation of integrative resources could succeed at a 
neurological level. The same is true of cars, that's why they all
look the same, though this wasn't always the case! And of course the
same is true of industry music, which fundamentally is all alike. So
there isn't any real interest in design particulars, in how you
make your piece go, or even in originality, which now serves no 
purpose. What's interesting is the bigger chunk of the world that
has succeeded in the transmission of designer consciousness. The contents
of the individual unit of perception -- the composition -- either
agrees with the tendencies impressed upon or induced in the consumer
(that's you and me) brain or causes momentary discomfort. So in effect
it's the consciousness industry that has long-term potentiality -- the
"original," "expressive," "artistic," is just a momentary shock that
wears off as soon as the next shock arrives. It's expendable. We
know that from 50 years of a subsidized "avant-garde," and genuine 
musical intelligence is able to appreciate that. The best musicians
are by now all in the music industry or on its fringes.