That's very well put.
On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 6:51 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Hah. By the time I got to this point in the post I had forgotten that two
> Michaels were involved. I meant Michael P. The passage quoted below merely
> illustrates the argument, which is in preceding paragraphs. If in a given
> period, music is thought to be rational, then the historical question to ask
> is not whether or not their belief made sense but simply how it operated.
>
> 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://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org>
>> http://www.cars-suck.org
>> http://fakesprogress.blogspot.**com <http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com>
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