>
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> > On Aug 27, 2009, at 12:34 AM, Joanna wrote:
> >
> > > From where I sit, music begins with dance (Bach's gigues, gavottes,
> > > etc., Mozart's minuets, etc.) and dies a slow but sure death the
> > > greater its distance from dance.
> >
> > Beethoven is very un-dancey - Balanchine said you couldn't choreograph
> > to his music because it was so complete in itself. And it just doesn't
> > get any better than Beethoven. And Schoenberg? Even Bach's "dance"
> > music is a long way from what people can cavort to. So I can't say I
> > agree with this.
>
> I couldn't agree with it either -- but I would suggest that a really
> good music historian with a sufficiently comprehensive grasp of music
> history _might_ be able to reformulate and expand Joann's claim in a way
> that made some sense of it.
>
I just don't see why we need to dichotomize the options: either (a) music originated in people cavorting about, or (b) music originated in people thinking. And then, why does the "origin" have to determine what music is for any of us now, or what music has become and might become in the future. Whether or not music (in some Platonic form) originated (Platonically, not historically/chronologically) in dance is simply not determinative. So I suppose I think there's a certain nostalgic tilt to Joann's perspective that's what I would object to. It's the sort of thing that you can understand driving a given person's appreciation of music, but to universalize it is another thing altogether.
j