For decades, the emperors have had no clothes.

[sloan]

Why composers write music like this, that maybe 100 people in the US can perform (or at least perform well) is beyond me. and then they cry when it doesn't sell.....
k

Just to prop up the other side - there's a long history of composers writing concertos for the ONE player in the world who could play it (and sometimes there were laments about it being unplayable by even that one). Over the years, the best of these have become standards. Ears are opened, technique responds, expectations are raised...and met.

Of course, it's not the route to financial success - most of those composers died penniless, and live on today through those "unplayable" compositions.

[Rick Denney]

Regarding pot, the folks I know who smoke lots of it cause about as much problems for themselves as people who have an alcohol problem. As with alcohol, for some people it will be poisonous and for others not. Those for whom it is not should not extrapolate their own experience. The problem is that learning that it's poisonous often imposes serious consequences on the poisoned.

I do know that not smoking pot has created absolutely zero problems in my life. Just like not smoking tobacco and not taking more than one or two drinks in an evening. I prefer life as it is. Is reality so bleak that we have to hide from it?

Which brings me to the subject of art. It was said that 90% of everything is crap. The crap that was composed 200 years ago has lapsed into well-earned obscurity, while we are still having to experience the crap being produced today. That tends to make today's crap somewhat more visible to us than the crap of yesteryear.

Art can be evaluated as such on the basis of the response it evokes in people. Rap can be art merely as poetry, however unsophisticated some might see it, because of that effect. I doubt many comprehend or appreciate it in musical terms. Those who study it as music seem to concentrate on its cultural effects rather than it's musical structure.

While all of that is true, something happened in this century that was not previously true. We began to doubt the existence or value of meaning. We challenge the concept of meaning by producing art that cannot be evaluated in terms of the emotions it evokes. Did Cage think 4:33 would evoke any emotion save confusion? Confusion was his objective, because he seemed to believe that confusion was more real than clarity.

That wasn't the case before the 20th century. Before that time, art evoked a range of emotion and not all of it uplifting, but all of it within the context of objective meaning. People might sit around discussing what, say, Keats was trying to evoke, but they would not be confused by what the words meant. People might wonder at the emotional state of the Mona Lisa, and each form their own emotional response to it, but everyone knows it's a painting of a woman. The music of Brahms might not come with a program (as he insisted it didn't), but nobody doubted that it was music intended as such. It would still strike anyone as music even if it came out of a factory, whether they liked it or not. (Lest I be accused of ignoring the possibility that one might be trained to believe it is music, I would say that something a given person has never heard, in a completely new idiom, would still be recognized as music. For example: Philip Glass would likely be extremely distant from the experience of a country-music-loving construction worker. And if it played, he might complain bitterly about having to listen to it. But he would still recognize it as music and that recognition is part of what would define it as such. I might not be enamored with an Aboriginal performance on a didgeridoo, but I would still know it was intended to be music, even if the performer was in another room.)

But modern poetry is often so formless as to either display incompetence on the part of the poet or (more likely) demonstrate their commitment to formlessness. Modern painting lapsed so far into the abstract that in many cases it became an expression of purposely formless chance. Pollack, for example, absolutely did not want any theme at all in his paintings. He fully intended them to be formless, random splatters for the express purpose of defying form. Much modernist music is only recognizable as music because it is performed in a musical setting by people who purport to be musicians. If you heard it emanating from, say, a construction site, you would not recognize it as music at all. Obviously, not all art, even from modernists, is this extreme, but the concept of formlessness and chance is an underlying tenet.

It is the role of artists to express something important to themselves in such a way as it puts the viewer in touch with something also important to him or her. Many artists really don't care if this happens, and that is, to me, the arrogance of modernist and post-modernist art. Some modern artists purposely want to put the viewer in touch with the concept that there is no meaning, and that all of life is just noise that we may arbitrarily define as pleasing. At some point, though, they begin to have faith in meaninglessness with the same commitment as any religious zealot, and they lose touch with their viewers and listeners, who still believe in form and meaning. They have been trained to believe that their perceptions are more important than ours, which is pretty much how we have all been trained to think in the modern age. I believe we will pay for such narcissism in the long run. I suspect that future generations will look on this period as a cultural dark age. And those who promote "culture" instead of having a simple appreciation for art and music will not be least to blame.

Rick "thinking there is as much orthodoxy in art and music as there ever was" Denney

[circusboy]

Thanks, Rick, for yet another thoughtful response. I did feel compelled to respond to two of your points:

I do know that not smoking pot has created absolutely zero problems in my life. Just like not smoking tobacco and not taking more than one or two drinks in an evening. I prefer life as it is. Is reality so bleak that we have to hide from it?

. . .

While all of that is true, something happened in this century that was not previously true. We began to doubt the existence or value of meaning. We challenge the concept of meaning by producing art that cannot be evaluated in terms of the emotions it evokes. Did Cage think 4:33 would evoke any emotion save confusion? Confusion was his objective, because he seemed to believe that confusion was more real than clarity.

As to the first point, your premise that people smoke pot to escape reality is faulty. Most regular users, I dare say, would argue that the psychoactive effects of this plant create a different, deeper and/or enhanced perspective of reality that promotes an awareness and understanding similar to other forms of purposeful introspection.

As to the second point, my understanding of Cage's 4:33 is not that it was intended simply to shock or cause confusion, but rather to demonstrate that there is music to be found in the sound that surrounds us here at all times. I believe that his impulse to create and promote such a piece came from his Buddhist, rather than anarchist, tendencies and beliefs. This doesn't mean that I'd care to pay money to experience a "performance" of this piece, but I do respect it as an important, seminal and inspiring work of conceptual art.

[tubafatness]

From the aforementioned medical study:
"There were no side effects in the study participants one, three and six months after the study."

God forbid they would have any side effects later on. At least the same can be said of increased consumption of alcohol and tobacco....whoops...

Yes, there will be burnouts who smoke weed constantly. The same is true of those two bastions of good times, tobacco and alcohol. But by the argument that accuses weed of causing widespread moral and societal decay, this means that these other things should also be outlawed, (alcohol, tobacco, video games, caffeine, etc, etc....)

And, to argue against the prevalent belief in this thread that all pot-smokers are burnouts, here's a list to the contrary.
http://www.theagitator.com/2008/11/07/s ... ke-a-list/

And, circusboy, thanks for the input on Cage. I completely agree with your take on Cage's work, especially about the overall aim of his music. Yes, that's right, his music.

The main thing I have to disagree with in Mr. Denney's post is the idea that "It is the role of artists to express something important to themselves in such a way as it puts the viewer in touch with something also important to him or her." While this is a nice idea, I think this is putting too much extra baggage onto such a thing as music. The 5th grade band at any music program in the country will usually have a hard time "expressing something important," other than the handful of notes they have successfully learned. Does this mean they aren't playing music? As I've come to see it, music is, at its core, all about the sound. Now, there are different thoughts and ideas that can be attached to these sounds, (like the ideas that are plastered onto Beethoven's music.) But, it's all sound. Now, I may feel good listening to a group of 5th graders trying their damnedest to get through "Mary Had a Little Lamb," but that doesn't mean that this music has "expressed" this feeling. It just means that I like listening to the sounds they are making, (and plus, it's always fun to listening to a group where anything can go wrong at any point-it just adds something that a professional group doesn't always possess.)

Then again, take what you will from my argument. They're just my own, so feel free to think what you want.

Aaron H.

[pittbassdaddy]

Combining

When it comes to the "classical" genre of the past approx. 50 years, I haven't been too impressed with much of it.

with

Further, the supplied "suspiciousness, unusual thoughts, paranoia, thought disorder, blunted affect, reduced spontaneity, reduced interaction with the interviewer, and problems with memory and attention" all tend to contribute the the quality of my posts and private messages.

One can come to the conclusion that while it would be convenient to blame such an occurrence on controlled substences and the timeframe considered; however, the real cause is likely due to potential composers lacking the motivation/desire/inspiration, or willingness to pay the opportunity costs of creating something that wouldnt be considered vacant.

In the same timeframe, you could say that the widespread availability of television is to blame. Just imagine the amount of time that motivation/desire/inspiration has been suppressed by television and video games (or even mindless undesirable jobs), and its easy to follow the course that has lead to the current state of pop culture music.

[Donn]

Back in the good old days, we had a hereditary aristocracy with the resources to see that some good works would get written, and the education to recognize the difference.

[Rick Denney]

As to the first point, your premise that people smoke pot to escape reality is faulty. Most regular users, I dare say, would argue that the psychoactive effects of this plant create a different, deeper and/or enhanced perspective of reality that promotes an awareness and understanding similar to other forms of purposeful introspection.

As to the second point, my understanding of Cage's 4:33 is not that it was intended simply to shock or cause confusion, but rather to demonstrate that there is music to be found in the sound that surrounds us here at all times. I believe that his impulse to create and promote such a piece came from his Buddhist, rather than anarchist, tendencies and beliefs. This doesn't mean that I'd care to pay money to experience a "performance" of this piece, but I do respect it as an important, seminal and inspiring work of conceptual art.

Your response makes my point. If reality needs enhanced perception, then the real perception of reality is apparently unacceptable and therefore requires escape. What if the enhancement turns out to produce false detail, like oversharpening a photograph in Photoshop? Then, it becomes an alternative simulation of reality. I prefer the real one.

I also dispute your conclusion on empirical grounds. I am of an age such that many of my friends are regular pot smokers, and always have been. I have not noticed that their perception of reality is any more profound than my own. In fact, when they are smoking pot, it seems to me that their perception of reality differs from my own in negative ways. So, different? Sure. But deep or enhanced? I don't see any evidence of it.

It must also be said that marijuana is a depressant, which is why it has medicinal value in some cases. Those I know who use it don't do so to achieve a deeper or more enhanced perception of reality, but rather to suppress their feelings, which they don't like because of whatever is going on in their lives.

And, personally, I think one needs that enhanced perception of reality to feel anything but confusion at a performance of 4:33, if they didn't know what the work was beforehand. Those who go to a performance knowing it already bring with them their expectations of what they will feel at the time. That doesn't mean the art evoked those feelings. By my observation, it usually means that they want to look profound and hip to their music-school or culture-club buddies.

I do know a number of avant-garde musicians, and I have come to appreciate some of the work they do. I'm quite happy with the notion that some art is difficult. William F. Buckley told the story of people complaining to him that his vocabulary was out of reach. His response was to point them to a performance he had attended. The musician was Thelonius Monk. As he told it, Mr. Monk played some chords that were simply beyond his understanding and downright bizarre. But he did not feel compelled to suggest to Mr. Monk that he simplify his chords so that they could be understood. But being hard to understand and being utterly opposed to form and value of understanding are two different things.

I do not find it compelling or inspiring, except that it compels me to complain about it. I suspect his first audience responded with nervous laughter (because they didn't want to appear to be uncool), or with pot-enhanced profundities such as "Oh, wow, man."

Rick "who has lived through the same times you guys have, and more of it in many cases" Denney

[Rick Denney]

The 5th grade band at any music program in the country will usually have a hard time "expressing something important," other than the handful of notes they have successfully learned. Does this mean they aren't playing music? As I've come to see it, music is, at its core, all about the sound.

Yes, it is about the sound. There is just something about that sound that causes positive feelings in those who listen to it.

But that is exactly what I'm talking about. That positive feeling is something important. It was important to the composer, the performer, and the listener. It does not have to be expressed in words to be important, and if it could, music might not be the preferred medium of the art.

So, thanks to you also for making my point.

The 5th-grade band's performance is not really for anyone's benefit except the participants, and everyone from the conductor to the janitor knows it and is a willing facilitator in helping those young performers receive that benefit. But the musicians are not the artist when receiving that benefit, they are the performer of the art created by the composer. They are the recipient of the composer's work just as much as we in the audience. Their performance will likely mask whatever there is in the music worth conveying, and in any case the music that is suitable for a 5th-grade band is likely to evoke those positive feelings in a very direct way that some audiences might think unsubtle. But the process is the same.

Musicians are willing participants in the expression of the composer's art. Ansel Adams called a photographic negative a symphony score, and the print was the performance of that score. My art teacher taught me that a good painter had to be able to draw well, because the drawing was the story and the painting the expression of that story. (Again, the story need not and probably should not be in words.) Receiving the art requires both the creation and the expression, but during the performance, the musicians are receiving the art from the composer deeply, and the skill of their performance will determine whether those responses will be shared by the audience.

Again, if those responses could be expressed in words, it would not need music to express it. But that doesn't relieve the artist the responsibility of expressing it.

Rick "who has napped through many performances of those who had no story to tell" Denney

[The Big Ben]

As to the first point, your premise that people smoke pot to escape reality is faulty. Most regular users, I dare say, would argue that the psychoactive effects of this plant create a different, deeper and/or enhanced perspective of reality that promotes an awareness and understanding similar to other forms of purposeful introspection.

While no longer a regular user, I used to think pot was just the bee's knees. What really caused me to stop almost completely (maybe once or twice a year now) is that, when stoned, I'd have everything all figured out. Damn, I was ready to rule the world. Sometimes, I even wrote down these grandiose plans so I wouldn't forget them when I got straight again.

Problem was, when I got straight, the problems were still there, my perceptions while stoned were faulty and what I wrote down was pure drivel.

I'm also prone to depression and self doubt and the extreme introspection foisted upon me by a strong cannabis stone certainly didn't help my state of mind.

I've played music while high but am not really tempted to do so again. I'm much too afraid that, to my audience, my playing might be analogous to a fat man on the beach wearing a Speedo: he may perceive himself as lovely while the rest of humanity only sees him as hideous...

[Todd S. Malicoate]

Arguing the "legalize pot" issue reminds me of arguing with a teenager.

To that end, I propose we let bygones be bygones, since neither side has a chance in Hades of changing the other side's opinion.

Good thing none of us are in charge of making the laws.

[Donn]

Wow yourself, as if this thread was going to turn out any different than it has.

Same crap, same opining, different title.

Politics.

Hey, let's talk about music for a change, but just to make it fun, rather than try to get something of value out of it, let's see if we can just pick out a group of compositions that we hate, and in case that's not divisive enough, also a class or two of people we hate, who will presumably be a minority among tuba players. Yay, 8 pages! about music, sort of, well, not really. If it's any consolation, it could have been much worse.

[Easty621]

Arguing about pot is about like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNSlpftizbE" target="_blank
Neither side is going to convince the other.

[TubaRay]

In the same timeframe, you could say that the widespread availability of television is to blame. Just imagine the amount of time that motivation/desire/inspiration has been suppressed by television and video games (or even mindless undesirable jobs), and its easy to follow the course that has lead to the current state of pop culture music.

I cannot disagree with this, however one should also remember that TV has also brought about the performance of more music, and delivered it to a sizable audience, as well.

[Tuba Guy]

[Donn]

Mr. Malicoate, I understand that you are against

The way I read it, he was against continuing that particular line of argument here, and you would have done well to follow him on that.

[MaryAnn]

Arguing the "legalize pot" issue reminds me of arguing with a teenager.

I have one and only one argument for legalizing now-illegal drugs. As it is now, we as a country and as tax-payers pay upmty-ump quadrazillion dollars for the War on Drugs. If you make it more hazardous to try to bring drugs illegally into the US, what happens is the badness quotient of the persons doing said importing goes up. My own neighborhood gets more and more dangerous, as do the neighborhoods of a lot of us. If we legalized these nasty substances and put all that money into prevention and treatment, we would put a whole lot of bad dudes right out of business. I'd much, MUCH rather see the bad dudes put out of business and the money we use to "fight" them (i.e., make the drug trade ever more dangerous) used to actually help people who need it.


MA

[bisontuba]

Hi-
I find it interesting that the government recently signed into law that Native Americans can't use the mail system (or UPS or FedEx for that matter) to send cigarettes in the mail to customers because they-smokes- are bad for your health. Now if the government really was all that concerned and didn't care about lobbyist money or Mitch McConnell, minority leader in the Senate from
Kentucky and the tobacco companies number #1 boy, they would make all cigarette sales in the USA illegal because they are bad for your health and cause cancer. But money talks....
mark

[kontrabass]

I know a lot of musicians, some very successful, some not. I've known some very good ones, successful, professional ones that are regular users. And I've known a lot who are regular users who are not really going anywhere in their careers. I've also known some people with incurable chronic pain who couldn't live without medicinal marijuana.

I suspect that pot is an easy enabler if you wish to avoid getting your life in order. But there seem to be some people that can use it as a recreational drug, for real, without suffering terrible consequences.

By the way, bloke, I missed this thread the first time around so I wasn't able to defend the art form of hip hop after your first post. Let me just say that your critique of "low rhyme" and lack of harmonic complexity might be a valid complaint for the mainstream commercial garbage on top 40 radio, but those examples don't speak for the entire genre; in the hands of a real artist, it's real music, and like it or not, the most influential music of modern time - as important to this generation as rock and roll was to boomers.

[SRanney]

Bach? Lame. Beethoven? Crap. Brahms? Pure tripe.*

As a former addict of several illicit illegal (and some legal) substances, I have first hand experience with the maelstrom that can be a life cannabanoids, LSD, cocaine, and copious amounts of alcohol. Others in my (previous) close circle of friends have not had the same issues I've had. (Admittedly, they also did not consume LSD and cocaine at the same levels I had done.) Bloke's characterization of "all" pot users is not accurate. In particular, many of my previously close circle of friends (e.g., potheads) are well-off financially, have (and have had) good, well paying, respected jobs in the IT and real estate industries for many, many years, and many are quite happily married. Indeed, they have been consumers of marijuana for at least 10+ years. To suggest that use of pot leads directly to financial problems may be the end result in some, but is not the end result in all.

I'm not sure how legalizing marijuana would impact me. Would I use it again? No, because to me, it's poison, a revelation I had long before I had ever heard of TubeNet. However, the legalization of marijuana would likely NOT affect any of my personal rights and freedoms guaranteed me by the constitution. How would it affect your rights and freedoms, bloke? In what field of medicine do you specialize that you're knowledge of the medicinal uses of marijuana surpasses those of many degreed physicians?

Just because I really like this comic:


_____________
*Because someone will certainly think this is my actual opinion rather than a facetious remark, I've chosen to asterisk the opening statement of this post with this: This is facetiousness.

[Rick Denney]

The tricky bit for someone considering marijuana is knowing whether they are the type of person who will be able to take or leave it, or the type who will be captured by it. Problem is, the test required to make that determination is destructive. And, too often, the decision to conduct such tests are being made by young'uns without the maturity to assess the risks and consequences, or even the ability to evaluate the results of the test. And the substance being tested further diminishes the ability to evaluate those results. The same is true for alcohol, of course, which is why alcohol use for minors is just about as illegal as pot use.

If marijuana has medical uses, then let a drug company refine it, run it through FDA testing, and offer it as a prescription drug. I'm quite sure there are far more dangerous prescription drugs than marijuana. For example, my wife's mother was prescribed morphine (an opiate) for cancer pain, but under a doctor's care. The fact that proponents of medical marijuana refuse to consider such an approach suggests to me that claiming the medicinal value is a tactic for access by those who don't have a medical need. Stated another way, those who can really demonstrate a medical need must be vastly outnumbered by those who just want legal access.

And I'm always amazed to find that pot users are so concerned about individual liberty when it comes to pot use, but lose that conviction when it comes to the myriad of other programs where governments take away liberty in the interest of presumed safety, security, or public health. Hypocrisy knows no doctrinal boundaries.

I know people who use dangerous substances without too many consequences, but I also believe they would live better without them. The significant majority of people I know who use them, however, do so destructively. Those who suffer negative consequences of pot use are a higher percentage in my experience than those who suffer negative consequences from alcohol use, but that may just be my sample.

I don't have a prescription as to whether it should or should not be legal. But I would really like to see those who debate it to be a little more honest about the risks and consequences.

Rick "knowing that any subject, once politicized, becomes immune to truth" Denney