Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 82 Editor's Choice: 1
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Hillary is a Repube
[Read the article: The Iran hawks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bill was borderline. She's a flat-out republican ... tied to corporate money, the military-industrial complex, huge pharma, et al, and fits right in with the homosexual cabal known as the modern Republican Party.
Not too far off topic, did you all see George Will on ABC tv say, in reference to Ann Coulter,"The less said about him, the better?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q16FCxphcYQ
No matter how paranoid you are, it's worse than you think.
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The most important composers of the twentieth century were black Americans
[Read the article: Their terrifying sounds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Starting with Scott Joplin, who first fused western music with African rhythms to create Ragtime. Then we had the evolution of the blues.
Beyond that, we had Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, James Brown, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix ... the list goes on and on and on. Forgive me for leaving so many giants out. These are the guys who pushed music forward and created new worlds to explore in the twentieth century.
There were some white guys too, Stravinsky, yes ... Rolf Hutter and Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk come to mind.
But when I think of the giants of twentieth century music, period, the list that pops in my head is almost all black men. And I used to always get sent to the Dean's office in junior high school, where i would inevitably get in an argument with the black kids over who was better, Beatles or James Brown.
John Cage never wrote a piece of music to which one would actually want to listen: it was all ideas, and randomness, which took Brian Eno to turn into something beautiful.
All atonal music pretty much sounds the same. It has do do with the actual physiology of our ears and how we naturally respond to certain intervals, like octaves, fifths, etc.
As far as Schoenberg, Webern, and Stockhausen, and all their ilk goes ... John Lennon summed up all of twentieth century avant garde music concrete with Revolution #9, and told a better story.
Avant garde music has not advanced in over fifty years. And there seems to be a rejection of beauty in the avant garde as being bourgeois or low-brow. It's the same old shit over and over. And why is that? Because people with actual musicality and talent went to pop/jazz/rock a long time ago ... please let's not get into the destruction of music by the djs, clubs, hip-hop, niche-radio, and producers of the moment.
People feel rhythm, remember melody. So much twentieth century so-called serious music had neither. If you have to tell me the idea behind the piece so I can "appreciate" it, I know I'm going to hate it.
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MLR: Stick to ad blocking
[Read the article: Their terrifying sounds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You wrote:
Knox: Someone with more time is going to hand you your ass for what you wrote. But as far as atonal music all sounding the same, that is just flat-out ignorant, regardless of whether you think the music is actually good.
-- MLR
No one has handed my ass because I am right. Most atonal music sounds the same simply because our ears are not designed for it. I guess you could study and train, but who wants to?
And I am a composer and I've used TONS of atonal noise in my compositions - but I know a little goes a LONG way. I've been doing modular synthesis for over twenty years.
What I know from the "avant garde" underground, is that so many people involved just want to be in the black-turtleneck-wearing cool club. They talk that shit all day, but when they go home, they listen to Mozart, who was, as we know, the Elton John of his day.
And I stand by my statement that it was black American men who created almost all the new and important music in the twentieth century.
And thanks for the lesson on adblocking. Stick to what you know.
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Since Anonymous chimed in ...
[Read the article: Their terrifying sounds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]S/he wrote:
Of course, as pertaining to what the ear was or was not designed for, you did not cite a source. You have given us no reason to assume it to be true.
I refer you to the book, "Horns, Strings & Harmony," by Dr. Arthur Benade (of the Case Institute of Technology, a center of research in musical physics), Doubleday, 1960.
I'm only going to list the subheading of the chapter five, which will give you an idea of the book's well-documented correlation between the physiology of our ears and our natural tendency toward tonal music, and the natural harmonics.
Chapter V-- Ears: Architects of HarmonySpecial Intervals between Successive Simple Tone--Two Simple Tones Played Together--Some Complex Sounds Are Pleasant--Musical Sounds Played Together--Harmony with Different Instruments
You get the idea. The key phrase, of course is: "Ears: Architects of Harmony."
I suggest you find this book and read it. I want to thank you for forcing me to search my bookshelves for this book. I'd forgotten just how delightful it is.
But on another note, here's a simple test: just play a folk tune to any regular person or child, play some atonal crap ... ask that person to memorize the melodies ... which one do they memorize first?
I have a dear friend who majored in music at a large university. She forgot that she had a midterm composition due and remembered literally minutes before the class. She just scribbled a bunch of notes on some staff paper and turned it it. Got an A. Later, she had to perform a self-penned piece in class ... she just went in and pounded on the piano for a while. Got an A.
She got into an argument with a music professor at one point and said,"You can't write a melody." He had no rejoinder.
This is symptomatic of a fundamental dishonesty at work in the world of the so-called avant garde and the academic, partly intellectual, partly spiritual ... it has not progressed anywhere in fifty years. Not because it is a dead-end street, but because it is a stop sign. No heart, no balls, no love ... it is art about the artist.
And no one cares.