Anyone see Letterman last night?

[greg]

I think "blinkered" would refer only to those who damn the music without listening to it or at best having heard only a little bit, to those who (whatever their experience) conflate "I don't like it" with "It is crap." Kinda like little kids who refuse to try new foods, knowing somehow that the cooked carrots they've never tried are yucky.

Although comparing Schoenberg to broccoli would be totally unfair. Schoenberg = steak!

[some guy]

It's true.

The analogy was made to present the first pairing: blinkered anti-modernist = spoiled little kid.

(Come to think of it though.... Veggies are good AND good for you. Eat up, kids!!)

[Josquin des Prez]

I think "blinkered" would refer only to those who damn the music without listening to it or at best having heard only a little bit, to those who (whatever their experience) conflate "I don't like it" with "It is crap." Kinda like little kids who refuse to try new foods, knowing somehow that the cooked carrots they've never tried are yucky.

Sounds to me that, no matter how you approach the matter, there's no way contemporary music is ever going to come up unclean. Think it's crap? Then listen to it. Don't like it? Well, who are you to say it's crap? Seems like you are trying to silence criticism.

[some guy]

Sounds to me that, no matter how you approach the matter, there's no way contemporary music is ever going to come up unclean. Think it's crap? Then listen to it. Don't like it? Well, who are you to say it's crap? Seems like you are trying to silence criticism.

Interesting you should have put it like this. If a person has not listened to it, but has concluded that it's crap, I don't think it's a big stretch to conclude that that person's opinion is worthless.

As for liking or disliking, that's an entirely personal thing. Disliking something doesn't make it bad. So sure, saying something is crap because you don't like it is also worthless. I would add that it is not quite so worthless to say that because you like something, therefore it's good. Logically, those would seem equivalent. The difference is that liking is a positive thing; it presupposes some level of engagement, of sympathy, of understanding. Disliking presupposes nothing.

So what, you may be asking, would make a criticism of contemporary music worthwhile? Well, it would have first of all to come from someone who understands contemporary music on the whole, who listens to it actively and intelligently. Who is not simply dismissive. And the criticism would have to be fairly well focussed. "Contemporary music" includes a lot of different things. Even a single composer's work will be more or less various. So saying contemporary music is crap, or even John Cage's music is crap, is too impossibly broad. Indeed, simply using words like crap means that one has already stepped outside the bounds of reasonable discourse.

Trying to silence criticism? My dear Josquin, I'd first like to see any criticism at all, anything that rises about mere ranting. In any event, you wouldn't have perhaps yourself just now illustrated that old saying about the pot calling the kettle black, would you?

[head-case]

Interesting you should have put it like this. If a person has not listened to it, but has concluded that it's crap, I don't think it's a big stretch to conclude that that person's opinion is worthless.

Well, I've listened to a lot of it, and I think it is mostly crap.   0:)

[greg]

contemporary music is kool, i don't care what anyone says.


provided it's classical..... 

[eyeresist]

Continuing the food analogies, I see Modernist music as corresponding to "molecular gastronomy". An interesting theory, but if you take it seriously you might end up at the Fat Duck paying a fortune to eat snail porridge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_gastronomy

http://www.fatduck.co.uk/

[Joe Barron]

From the New York Times (by Anthony Tomassini) review of the Ode to Napoleon

In this performance the text was spoken, with occasional half-sung phrases, by the American baritone Dale Duesing, dressed in drag like a 1920s Berlin cabaret singer, with the band nearby. During the course of his recitation, which broke into bouts of hectoring, Mr. Duesing gradually changed costumes, slowly putting on the striped uniform of a concentration-camp prisoner.

So he wasn't doing a strip tease and changing into a pair of stiped pajamas, as Letterman said he was doing. He was changing costumes from the 20s to the 30s. So Dave missed the point. As a friend of mine here at the office suggested, sometimes he can be a real hillbilly.

[karlhenning]

In this performance the text was spoken, with occasional half-sung phrases, by the American baritone Dale Duesing, dressed in drag like a 1920s Berlin cabaret singer, with the band nearby.

Do I see Terry Gilliam as Ginger, saying, "Hello, sailor!" . . . ?

[Joe Barron]

Do I see Terry Gilliam as Ginger, saying, "Hello, sailor!" . . . ?

If you do, I question our friendship.