Rather than Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé? Well, it takes all sorts, I guess (although this was merely a single illustrative example). Personally, I'd not want to be without either the Ravel or the real stream...

Best,

Alistair

Thanks for the link, Ian. I have a pretty good idea how Wieland is going to respond, if he feels bothered to do so.

The best response, I think, would be to restate (rephrase, at best) his original letter, since the critique he assembles is left unaddressed by Downie's response, which all falls apart in this passage:


Wieland's music at least sees fit to address the very real problem of what exactly the 'parameters' of music are. They might be pitch, duration, timbre, spatial position, and dynamic -- the traditional tools of the serialist trade -- or they may be air pressure, bow speed, length of one's fingernails, etc. The action- and the result-oriented parameters are always present side-by-side, except in electronic music, to an extent... and they sometimes contradict each other. This is a problem that music can address, rather than make positivist claims that the result-parameters are the "atomic building blocks" of music.

Downie is essentially denying that affect and physical effort and gesture/shape tend to hinder our perception of some pure result-oriented music.

To speak of 'atomic building blocks' of sound could also be used to make the case for spectral music. What is the elementary atom of music? The soundwave, or even a single pressure-wave front? The 'note'? The 'pitch'? The movement of a tongue/finger/bow in space? This question cannot be answered in any positive way.

The counter-critique (a la Lachenmann 1968 or so?) is that the reduction of music to its classic serial parameters obfuscates the role of the performer as worker. What does Downie say to that?

Anyway, I don't think Wieland fails to mention any of this in his original letter, though it may have to be re-phrased to get through. Considering Wieland a shill for the "bourgeois" is pretty amusing, particularly by stating it this way:
The day Wieland's analyses of anything are insufficiently elaborate is a day I'd like to see. Also, I'd like to meet his "ilk" -- they seem charming.

I would not make any sort of statements myself resembling this "over the edge" business -- Downie should be applauded for bringing up these issues in the way that he has. His points are not all completely off-base by any means. I think particularly the idea that contemporary music should consciously attempt to resist commodification is a noble notion, and a problem that remains unsolved. Yet I don't see it in the bleak terms suggested by Downie's brand of radicality. Many very different aesthetic philosophies have the potential to serve this same purpose and aren't so easily comparable with one another on equal terms. More like

and

It's when these methods and aesthetics clash with one another that an interesting debate can emerge. Name-calling of the Downie variety (in this last effort) doesn't help the matter at all.

As a footnote -- we should talk about what it means for music to really, successfully resist commodification. How is that different from just "sucking" ?

Maybe that's not a serious point -- but imagine this conversation:

Wieland Hoban: "Hey Chafers, your piece was really rather dull and poorly orchestrated!"
Chafing Dish: "But..."
Gordon Downie: "Not to mention much too long and monotonous!"
Chafing Dish: "Well, er... at least it resists commodification!"

Surely a conversation stopper extraordinaire.

That one depends, though. If for example you had gone to see me play at the BKA theatre in Berlin a couple of days ago then yes, that was pretty direct: my pay consisted of the door takings. If you were to come to see the ensemble in the series we do here in Köln, my efforts are there most directly purchased by the NRW taxpayer via the ensemble's core funding and the NRW arts foundation; our funds are barely influenced by what we take at the door. Most orchestral concerts would function on the latter basis.

Be that as it may,

while Downie's original contribution was at least coherent in his setting-out of a political/aesthetic position, sterile though I might think it is, he seems now to have fallen back on mudslinging. His latest article firstly says nothing new and secondly doesn't really engage with the issues brought up by Hoban's reply. Unless I'm missing something important, which is always quite possible. I would like to see Downie respond to CD's apposite remark about "sucking", which leads me on to suggest that Downie's own music should be incorporated somehow into the present discussion, being presumably a more eloquent defence of his ideas than are his verbal statements. Here's a representative page:



Now I would say that there is a vast chasm here between the "verifiability" (and indeed the "complexity") of what has gone into this notation, and that of its sonic realisation by a performer. That's not necessarily a criticism of the music as such (I've heard a couple of Downie's pieces and found them rather interesting) but whether it does what the composer claims it does I am inclined to doubt.

This is the crux of the biscuit, isn't it? Downie rails against "mischief posed to fracture left solidarity" while at the same time indulging in sectarian squabbling (which I note the cover story of that issue of WW also does).

I'm surprised people aren't talking about this a bit more sensitively. Is the issue of commodification truly passé? 

The issue of commodification is quite apropos in a different way when one takes two systems from a piece of music in question and posts them without the context and without any instructions as to how they are intended to be executed. What are we to derive from this but a reassurance that we are dealing with an offbeat sort of fellow whose aesthetic theories need not be taken seriously? Commodification is all about objectification and fetishization of such things as images.

I mean, not me personally, but I'm imagining the matter from the perspective of someone who's following the discussion silently. Downie, as a member rightly put it "is no fool."