A Comment on Comments

"We've got to be able to discuss music without instantly confronting the earth-shaking question of whether you LIIIIIIIIKE the music or not, as though being LIIIIIIIKED was music's sole purpose for existing." That's something that can apply to all the arts. Very well put! Sometimes the point of referring to something is not that you think it is good or bad or anything else but that you think it is worth thinking about.

KG replies: That's it - *that's* the type of comment I like to see.

What a relief! I'm delighted to be exemplary whenever I can.

Honestly, "mud-slinging" does not seem very helpful here, as everyone who reads this blog is at the very least aesthetically allied, whether merely in terms of interest or in terms of creative output. Thusly, it seems counter-productive to spend an exhorbitant amount of time "breaking up the ranks," if you will, as the music discussed here is never going to be taken seriously without support amongst those of us attempting to thrive within it. I feel as though I am dancing around cliches here, however the communication taking place within this blog, and its subsequent comments section, ought to function more as a rallying point than a space to destroy "our own."

"...The music discussed here is never going to be taken seriously without support amongst those of us attempting to thrive within it."

Eh?

Essentially all the music Gann discusses here is taken very seriously indeed by huge numbers of folks, including essentially everyone I know. One of the great things about Kyle's blog is that I wind up having e-mail discussions with other composers/listeners about their favorite postminimalist or totalist or minimalist pieces. Lincoln Center plays Steve Reich. That's serious.

If you want to see music that really isn't taken seriously, try:

Microtonal music;

Orchestral music for high-end video games (the CD for the game HALO is one of the best-selling orchestral CDs of all time -- and nationwide concert tours of major orchestras playing game music invariably play to sold-out halls...betcha didn't know that, huh? Have you ever even heard the HALO orchestral CD?);

"Process music" of the kind produced by Trimpin and embodied in machines;

Music for homebrew instruments (Skip LaPlante, Kraig Grady, David Simon, Bill Wesley, et al.);

Computer music (If you've never been to an International Computer Music Conference, I highly recommend it. The music is of an incredibly high caliber and will knock your socks off, and it sounds like nothing being done anywhere else);

Algorithmic composition, often interactive, often done in real time, often with MIDI but increasingly with real-time DSP (viz., Jeffrey Harrington, Warren Burt, William Duckworth's "Cathedral" project online, etc.);

Music/video/art installations like Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon or Bill Alves's POVRAY work.

That kind of music is just off the charts. No one in the East Coast critical mafia talks about that kind of music. At least minimalism and postminimalism and totalism get occasional mentions & Lincoln Center concerts, though often not by those names. Remember BOAC?

Indeed, one of my (minor) peeves about Gann is that he's too hidebound and conservative. He doesn't talk about the really off-the-charts truly wild serious modern music.