From: "Michael Pollak" <mpollak at panix.com>
But I think what mostly matters here is the "sound of regularity" for Joanna, who has grown up in that system, and who seems attracted to music that sounds less regular by its criteria -- which unites middle eastern music with Renaissance motets.
Another ways to think of it are parts that seem (to the modern listener, socialized as we are) more independent and less subordinated to, and contrained by, the pattern of the whole. ----------------------------
I apologize before hand: I have had no musical traning and do not know the right words to use.
My parents brought me up on Romantic music,and I remember, as a child, liking classical music as expressed in Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. Then in my teens I started gravitating toward Bach, and in my twenties, a lover taught me to appreciate Mozart and Haydn. Still in my twenties, I remember listening to renaissance music and not liking it much because it broke everything I thought of as rules & also because it seemed dangerously open and open ended. Impressionistic (ok) but like bagpipes (not ok).
In my middle thirties, I started studying middle eastern dance (belly dance), which I have continued to the present. I was completely intoxicated by the richness and complexity of this music and, of course, it was wonderful (and very hard) to dance to. Following this, all rock started sounding two-dimensional & much of classical music started to sound over-determined, closed, and asphyxiated. NOT Bach and Mozart. Bach manages a kind of relative absolutism; and Mozart is overflowing with melodies, so neither sounds closed to me.
Anyway, in the last few years, I have been working on a ballet and looking for music for it. Most of the music I found that sounded timeless, landless, and danceable was Renaissance music, which I had learned to listen to in a different way after the long exposure to middle eastern music. So I started wondering where the branching had happened.
I thank everyone for trying to answer my question.
Joanna