I guess we construed Michael P's claim differently. He will have to let us know whether he meant (a) in a given age they _thought_ of their music as rational or (b) rational music exists, and was valued in a certain age. If the latter is the claim, I have nothing to say on it; I simply don't know enough about music.
Carol
On 9/17/2011 5:22 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:48:55 -0500
> Carrol Cox<cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>> Somewhere in the Cantos Pound quotes a
>> German officer saying, "Here, none of that mathematical music." It was a
>> comment on Mozart. So that officer (a) rejected "rational" music, (b)
>> thought the rational was the mathematical, and thought Mozart's music
>> was mathematical.It is thus irrelevant to Michael's argument whether or
>> not there is such a thing as rational music.
>
> I'm not sure which Michael Carrol is referring to here, or what
> the argument is, exactly. The other Michael seemed to be saying
> that some kinds of music were more rational than others, a claim
> which piqued my curiosity.
>
> For what it's worth, nearly all music seems pretty 'rational'
> to me. Every style of composition I know has its own
> logic -- or maybe 'grammar' is a better term.
>
> Oddly enough I was just ruminating on a closely-related
> topic on an Early Music mailing list I haunt. Excerpt, for
> those interested in pursuing this rather recondite
> conversation:
>
>> It's fascinating how we use notions referring to
>> *discourse* to talk about music. I do it myself, so this
>> is not a cavil; I'm constantly referring
>> to the logic or argument of a piece of music. But why do
>> we do that? In what way does music resemble discourse?
>> Discourse is usually about something (except in the
>> case of Presidential debates and other manifestations
>> of mass or individual psychosis)....
>>
>> But what is music talking about? When a composer is
>> 'saying something', what *kind of thing* is he saying? ...
>>
>> If we're going to compare music to discourse, it seems
>> to me that the resemblance lies more in the syntactic
>> and morphological elements of language than in the semantic
>> ones. Perhaps part of the pleasure of music lies in the
>> fact that it allows us to exercise our syntax bump without
>> having any semantics involved. As a horse might occasionally
>> enjoy taking a gallop without a rider.
>
> --
>
> Michael J. Smith
> mjs at smithbowen.net
>
> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org
> http://www.cars-suck.org
> http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com
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