The Fredösphere

Over at Andante, David Salvage struggles with the problem of good taste.  (Darn, I can't find a permanent link.  If you're reading this and you are from the future, look in the archive around August 2004.)  When a friend likes some music that you recognize as derivative, what do you say?

Salvage spends time beating back the beast of postmodern relativism.  He does it with assertions and the whole thing is unsatisfying.

What I would have liked to see is some kind of discussion of hierarchy based on experience and expertise.  Here's what I mean:  find some innocent rustic for whom music means a few pentatonic tunes played on a dulcimer or a mouth bow or something.  Now sit him down in front of this website and play him a midi file of the Pina Colada Song.  First he will be disoriented until his ear becomes acclimated to understanding chromatic intervals.  (This is a genuine problem for some people and is analogous to people from the western music tradition hearing microtones in music for the first time.)  Gradually he will come to understand the new musical language as he listens obsessively to repeated playings of this gorgeously sophisticated music.  From there he can begin to appreciate the complex ways in which multiple instrument sounds are combined.  He will also be dazzled by the pristine perfection of the computer's pitch and rhythm.

Is a point beginning to emerge from this thought experiment?  Nothing seems derivative to someone who is ignorant of the original material.  We must keep in mind which problems are caused by ignorance, and remember to think of ignorance mostly in terms of handicap, not vice.  (Although we should keep in mind that willful ignorance can exist, and it is a very ugly thing.)

Let's also consider twelve-tone music.  the simple fact is that there are very few people who have a natural interest in it.  All the rest of us must study music theory for years -- years! -- before we get it.  And for some of us (like me) even that is not enough.  Can we all agree that some music places too many demands on the listener?  That promoting that music will never become anything more than research without development?  Apparently, that's something that pioneers like Schoenberg and Boulez never understood.  To fans of twelve tone music:  now is the time to accept that it will never be, can never be, a commonly accepted sound.  Your efforts to make this music is not wrong, and you are not my enemy by doing it.  But please understand:  I am not yours if I ignore you.

Which is something I'm not doing right now as I compose this hysterical bit of incontinent drivel.

BTW check out this scholarly debate regarding a Neanderthal bone flute that may be evidence of a very ancient preference for the common diatonic scale.