Re: [ARSCLIST] Are we at the end of the road musically??

[Mwcpc6@xxxxxxx]

The sounds that used to be made with instruments and human voices is now 
converted into auditory experiences by complex electronic transformations. Is that 
still music?

The editorial on the current issue of "Tape Op" (#55) expresses it one way: 
"Making records is lying. Recordings are false performances."

I just happened to listen to Columbia Masterworks BS 15: "Glenn Gould: 
Concert Dropout, in conversation with John McClure" in which, 40 years ago, he 
expresses the opinion that the true expression of the composer and the artist can 
only be expressed by combining many attempts at a performance in the editing 
room with scissors and tape. (Of course BS may have been the appropriate catalog 
number series for these Columbia promotions.)

If there is that much difference between a live performance, with audience 
and no "redo" option, and a studio recording of classical music, then how can 
one judge modern compositions, created from dozens of tracks of samples merged 
electronically, in a common basis with any kind of live performance. The nature 
of music changed forever in 1948 and again in 1978. 

Whatever people call music, it is entirely a creation of the mind of the 
individual, molded (programmed) by that person's lifetime listening experience, 
which may, but nowadays likely will not, include historical musical forms. This 
may be related to the time of early life when language can be easily learned. 
Certainly most of the current new music, popular and serious, is as 
unintelligible to me as a foreign language. But jazz and even the waltz were thought 
such by the older generations of their times.

Mike Csontos