Thanks t-i-n. I suppose my point, such as it was,was that looking for 'commodifiability' in the music itself (as both Downie and his opponents seem to be doing) was a bit of a snark hunt in the same way that carrying out a forensic internal examination of a loaf of bread under laboratory conditions to see whether it showed signs of capitalism or socialism would be a pretty pointless exercise too.
Yes, but the whole tenet of Adorno's aesthetic theory is that art carries traces of society, albeit traces which are non-identical to society (its capacity for a form of aesthetic autonomy or resistance resides in this non-identity). You might disagree, but I don't think you can take it as going without saying that the artistic loaf of bread, as it were, shows no signs of the effects of capital. I suppose one thing I might take issue with is your suggestion that anyone's looking in 'the music itself': yes, they are, except they probably wouldn't like the implication in that phrase that there is an outside as well as an inside and that the two are easily separable.
Happy to take on my share of the 'Be that as it may...' like a man
.
I was having trouble too working out who that was directed at!
(Hence my possibly slightly defensive reply.)
I'm surprised people aren't talking about this a bit more sensitively. Is the issue of commodification truly passé?
Who's not talking about it sensitively? I tried to give a sensitive exposition of some of the basic considerations, since at least one intelligent member was obviously unfamiliar with the jargon. I may be stupid or inept, and if my exposition was faulty I really wouldn't mind being told, but I don't think I was being insensitive to the importance of the issue.
Downie, as a member rightly put it "is no fool."
No, but my first reaction on reading his latest WW contribution (and this wasn't my reaction to his earlier ones at all, I might add) was that he's behaving like one. He seems to have got touchy at the idea that Wieland might actually have any valid arguments to raise against him. I think, in the context of this discussion, GD's foolishness or lack thereof has to be judged by what he writes, and as far as I can see no one's yet explained what they think is not foolish about his response to WH.
we might like to examine what presumably is a more profound application of Downie's aesthetic than are his words on the subject. It is a little strange that so much time and effort has been spent on this thread talking about a composer's theories and practically none about that composer's music.
I take your point, but that would be to presume that one is a composer first and a theorist second, or at least that the latter activity is predicated on the former. Admittedly I might have more reasons to find that problematic than either you, CD or Gordon Downie does, but these discussions have an important precursor in Adorno (you may not entirely endorse his contributions, but would we even be applying Marxist ideas about commodification to the discussion of music without his example?), and I've never heard anyone suggest that Adorno ought to have illustrated his points more often with reference to his own music.
I could certainly accept you saying that more examples from
other music should be being cited, and when Downie appears to be making claims for his own creative practice then yes, some examples would be relevant, but I think we should at least in principle allow him to act as a theorist without constantly referring him back to his own creative work.
