From: mclaren
Subject: 30 years of gibberish
--
My statement of what has long been regarded
as obvious fact sparked real fury in this tuning
forum. When I pointed out in Digest 714 that,
"As has long since been demonstrated, most of
the subscribers to this forum have no interest in
music. To all but a handful of you, music is an
annoying and deeply distasteful waste product of
the really IMPORTANT aesthetic process--
namely, theorizing." -- mclaren, TD 714
..Well, when I pointed out this obvious fact, a
veritable firestorm of outrage ensued.
Yet it has been recognized for more than 30
years that my statement is simple fact.
In the Perspectives of New Music article "Some
years that my statement is simple fact.
In the Perspectives of New Music article "Some
Current Trends," vol. 5, No. 4, 1966, pp. 81-84,
Ernst Krenek points out: "...after assiduously
studying Babbitt's essay "Twelve-tone invariants..."
Musical Quarterly, XLVI (April, 1960), 246-59,
I have covered several sheets of music paper with
experiments, exercises, and examples trying to
penetrate the meaning of his discourse, and finally
approached my learned friend by letter for more
information. It was of no avail, and I gave up in
frustration since I did not wish to encroach
further on his time. I am afraid that the use of
this language in PERSPECTIVES has reached a point
of diminishing returns: *the possible increment of
scholarly prestige (not to speak of snob appeal)
is compensated by loss of communicability.*" [Krenek,
Ernst, "Some Current Terms," Perspectives of New
Music, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1966, pg. 84]
This quote is 30 years old. Yet it echoes precisely my
own.
How can any of my posts *possibly* be considered
"outrageous" when they merely repeat sentiments
*expressed and agreed upon for more than 30 years?*
In "Some Problems Raised by the Rhythmic Procedures
in Milton Babbitt's Composition for Twelve
Instruments," Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 4,
No. 2, 1965, Peter Westergaard points out that "Such
a resultant rhythm has just as little to do with ordering
the sets as the previous example, and nothing to do with
their contours. If the supposition at the beginning of
this paragraph were true, it might at best be thought
of as the unstructured results of a conflict between
two highly structured elements. But the supposition
is not true.
"I see no way for the ear to distinguish those attacks
which define durations for Po and those which define
durations for RI2. Thus, I see now way for the ear to
perceive either order or content." [Westergaard, Peter,
op cit.]
Again, this prelection on the unintelligibility and
musical meaninglessness of Milton Babbitt's "theories"
differs from my own merely in fine details. Are we
to believe that, after *more than 30 years,* anyone
is still shocked by this simple recitation of fact?
Please.
People have been pointing out that Babbitt's pitch-class
matrix jargon is musically meaningless nonsense for
30+ years. Get over it.
Krenek cuts to the heart of the matter when he mentions:
"We are reminded of Oswald Spengler's prediction forty
years ago that the true representative of our age will
be the engineer and that the artist will become obsolete.
years ago that the true representative of our age will
be the engineer and that the artist will become obsolete.
Perhaps some artists fear that he was right and attempt
to demonstrate that they really *are* engineers, in order to
be assured of a raison d'etre." [Krenek, Ernst, "A composer's
Influences," Perspectives of New Music, 3(1), 1964, pg. 41]
Again, this is a near-verbatim reiteration of points made in
my own posts.
More recently, William Thompson has summarized the
process of systematic post-1948 academic obfuscation
and pretentiousness in his book Schoenberg's Error: "The
flurry of enthusiasms of [the 1950s] centered not around
Schoenberg, whom Boulez had declared `dead,' but around
Webern. From the movement's inception in the United
States, the newly-influential academic segment of the
population became prominent, especially among themselves.
In time it demonstrated how the lives of artworks (whose
dependence on the auspices of higher education had in
times past been negligible) could be sustained by
artificial means beyond normal expentency, regardless of
their direct aesthetic vibrancy.
"The era's post-Viennese energy induced a remarkable
production of analytical dissections and speculative
tracts--more those than public performances of music.
The torrent of words and numbers and fomulae unleashed
about Schoenberg's methods, about their more thorough
exploitation by Webern, and then about subsequent
extensions (like those of Boulez and babbitt) to other
musical dimensions, produced one of the most bountiful
crops of verbiage ever harvested in the cause of art.
"The movement also habored a hidden cul de sac for
the unwary. Its participants produced a fair amount
of theoretical "how to..." composers' shoptalk, which
tended to be preoccupied with manipulations of notes
as permutable collections, rather than with interpretive
descriptions of phenomenal things. So the unassailable
as permutable collections, rather than with interpretive
descriptions of phenomenal things. So the unassailable
and unchanging concern of musicians for the art's aural
ontology became secondary to the orderings of serialized
particles. Permutations, reciprocal relativities,
combinatoriality, segmentation, source sets, derived
sets, intersections, adjacencies, partitions, germ cells,
aggregates, pitch qualia, hexachords, mathematical
models, complementation modulus-12, pitch (or note)
cells, and the like dominated the literature of Serialism.
(..) "Words have special powers: *permutation* had an
inimitable ring of profundity, and *modulus-12* was
sheer magic. Both seemed to guarantee conceptual
precision and mathematical certainty; both hinted
at the flinty `rigor' of the hard sciences. Such
terminology prompted a comforting fantasy in the
1960s and 1970s; it allowed us metaphorically to
put on laboratory smocks and pretend to be
`genuine scientists,' the Einsteins of harmony."
put on laboratory smocks and pretend to be
`genuine scientists,' the Einsteins of harmony."
[Thompson, William, "Schoenberg's Error," 1991,
pg. 184]
Great as was the outrage that greeted my mention
of what has for 30 years been recognized as fact--
namely, that dexterity in the manipulation of
words replaced skill in the manipulation of sound
among the musical so-called "cognitive elite" from
1948 onwards--even greater was the fury that
greeted my casual acknowledgement of Boulez,
Cage, Stockhausen, et al., as incompetent
con artists.
Yet this too has been exposed as obvious fact
for more than 30 years.
In discussing the first 6 issues of Die Reihe,
touchstone of the Darmstadt School of music
and supreme model for all subsequent jargon-
laden music theory, John Backus points out:
"The baffling technical language we
encounter contains a considerable amount of what
appears to be scientific terminology--definitions,
acoustical and physical terms, etc. (..) We may therefore
examine Die Reihe with a critical eye... We wish to see
if the scientific terminology is properly used, to see if
the charts, graphs and tables have any real significance,
and to determine the technical competence of the
material from the scientific standpoint. (..)
"The first article in V. I by Herbert Eimert demonstrates
the technical style adopted by most of the
contributors. [Eimert] states (I, 3):
`The composer is required to have a certain amount
of acoustical knowledge' and proceeds to define
six categories of electronic sound... His definitions,
however, besides being difficult to understand, are
not acoustically accurate. His first one, tone, is what
however, besides being difficult to understand, are
not acoustically accurate. His first one, tone, is what
is known in acoustics as a `simple tone' (his
statement that it is unknown to traditional music is
not entirely true; flutes and clarinets played softly
produce nearly simple tones, for example, as do
tuning forks). [Eimert's] second definition, note, is
what is called in acoustics a `complex tone'...
"On the other hand, in number four, `noise,' he states
`only blank noise which fills an acoustic region
may be determined in position.' This statement
does not make sense; if by `blank noise' he means
what is now called `white noise,' which contains
equal amounts of energy in each unit frequency
band width, and if by `position' he means pitch,'
then `blank noise' has no `position.' If `white noise'
is filtered to give it the attribute of pitch,
it is no longer `white.' Finally, [Eimert's] fifth category,
chord (note complex), is hardly a definition at all.
Taken all together, the definitions are very poor
examples from the standpoint of conciseness,
clarity, or accuracy.
"Eimert himself thus appears to be somewhat
deficient in the acoustical knowledge now required
of the composer. Since he does not seem to have a
clear idea himself of the meaning of the terms he
is trying to define, it is not surprising that his
definitions are inadequate... The remainder of [Eimert's]
article is for the most part impossible to follow,
but since we now see that this is not due to our
ignorance of the supposedly necessary acoustical
background, we need not concern ourselves further
with it. (..)
"H. Pousseur adopts a technical style in his
contribution. (..) The definition is too diffuse to
quote in full; it has no perceptible beginning nor
ending. Considerable study of it has failed
so far to decipher what he is trying to say; it
remains quite incomprehensible even after
allowing for considerable distortion in the
meanings of the technical terms used. The
term 'index of rationality' has no discoverable
connection with any concept in acoustics.
"The remainder of Pousseur's article follows
the example set above. Trying to understand
it is most frustrating to one with merely a
technical training in acoustics and music.
`Further difficulties were raised in the coordination
of preselected quantities with a durational
ordering.' Here is a beautiful example of
unintelligibility. `Though they were theoretically
correct, they did not have the anticipated
effect.' Correct by what theory? And so on.
"What is being described is basically the process
of recording sounds on tape. It is quite possible to
describe this process in a manner that can be
understood by a physicist with acoustical
training. It should be possible to describe it
in simple enough terms so that even a musician
with a relatively amall amount of acoustical
knowledge could follow what is being done.
Pousseur's discussion is only bewildering, and
demonstrates his lack of understanding of the
subject.
"The article by Paul Gredinger states (I, 42) 'the
basis of our work remains within the domain of
physics...' while remaining unintelligible to
the physicist. The word `proportion,' for
example, is one which has a specific meaning in
physics; it is used a score of times in the article,
but never in its accustomed scientific meaning.
(..) "Karlheinz Stockhausen contributes a article
of forbiddingly technical appearance. (..) What
he means by `statistic' variation is not known;
his later discussion of the term (I, 48) only
confuses matters further.
"His subsequent discussion becomes more and more
inspired; mention is made of `harmonic, sub-harmonic,
and chromatic ptich-scales,' `spectral composition,'
`line- and band-spectra,' and so forth. The climax is
reached in a paragraph which must be quoted in full
to be appreciated (I, 47):
`Differentiation of the intended permutation of timbres
is obtained from the complexity resulting from the
simultaneous combination of the six formant regions
within one sound process, from the varying of the
elements or groups of elements, in all their components,
according to the series and of coordinating a special
intervallic scale of partials or of medium frequency
width ratios in each formant octave.' - Stockhausen
"This is formidable language. What are the six
formant regions? What is an intervallic scale of
partials? or a medium frequency width ratio? What
is a formant octave? None of these phrases has
been used or defined previously. The individual words
have perfectly well-defined scientific meanings, but
are combined in ways that make no sense as acoustical
language. The paragraph quoted is an excellent example
of technical jargon without technical meaning. (..)
"We conclude that Stockhausen's technical language is
his own invention, using terms stolen from acoustics
but without their proper acoustical meanings, and that
the technical jargon he has developed is designed mostly
to impress the reader and to hide the fact that he has
only the most meager knowledge of acoustics."
[Backus, John, "Die Reihe--A Scientific Evaluation,"
Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1962, pp.
160-171]
Ladies and gentlemen, there *is* a term which describes
the use of "technical jargon..designed mostly to impress
the reader and hide the fact that [the user] has only the
most meager knowledge of acoustics."
The term is "scam."
Such scams were used to sell snake oil in the 1890s,
Florida swamp-land in the 1920s, junk bonds in the 1980s,
and derivative stock options in the 1990s. The use of
technical-sounding gibberish to baffle and nonplus the
unwary dupe is a staple of astrologers, spiritualists,
fortune-tellers, ufologists, perpetual motion machinists,
orgone therapists, bogus swamis, crystal-power healers,
aura readers, and dowsers from time immemorial.
As John Backus points out, "In fact, the articles in Die
Reihe conform to all the best traditions of pseudo-
scientific writing in their disregard of accepted
meanings of scientific terms, their unintelligibility,
and their complete lack of any reference to the results
of other workers as support for their statements."
[Backus, J., "Die Reihe - A Scientific Evaluation,"
Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1962, pg. 171]
And thus the primary distinction claimed by Boulez, Cage,
Stockhausen, et al., is that for the first time they
applied the techniques of ufo cultism and palmistry
to music.
Thus it's clear why Cage developed such a close
relationship with the composers at Darmstadt:
Stockhausen and Cage were attracted to one another
as irresistably as two psychic surgeons at an AMA
convention. One whiff of the meaningless jargon
spouted by Cage, and Darmstadt knew he was one
of their own.
As we have now seen, wayyyy back in 1962 the musical con
job was revealed and the scam exposed. Yet the exact same
musical confidence game continues, today--*right now.*
Robert Morris' music theory article "Compositional Spaces
and Other Territories," from Perspectives of New Music,
Vol. 39, 1995, pp. 329-358, perpetuates the *exact same*
1950s jargon and the *exact same* technical-sounding yet
meaningless pseudo-mathematical gibberish...the same
tired old musical con job. It's merely been brushed off,
polished up and trotted out to dupe yet another generation
of gullible composers and naive music students.
Morris writes:
"A closer look at the realization reveals a functional
distinction between notes of long and short duration.
Long notes, sustained by at least one of the
participating instruments, are circled in the underlying
design to show that each aggregate projects its
own ordered hexachord. The inside aggregates (numbers
2 and 3) project transformations of the first hexachord of
the generating row; the long notes in the outside aggregates
project hexachords related to one another by T sub 1 1 but
not to the hexachords of the P row. If this were an
excerpt from an actual piece, these Q hexachords might be a
reference to some other hexachord in the word or even
some other piece of music." [Morris, Robert, op cit, 1995]
This is formidable language.
What is an "aggregate"? How does it "project" its own
"underlying hexachord"? How can one "project" a transformation?
In analytic and projective geometry, the term "projection"
has a specific meaning, but it is not used in its accustomed
mathematical sense in Morris' article. Instead, Morris'
use of the term "projection" has no discoverable connection
with mathematics, physics or geometry.
What are "inside aggregrates" as opposed to "outside
aggregates"? What are they inside of? What are they
outside of? None of these terms has been used or defined
previously. In particular, the phrase "the long notes of the
outside aggregates project hexachords related to one another
by T sub 1 1 but not to the hexachords of the P row" stands
out as an apotheosis of unintelligibility.
Is there any point in trying to decipher mathematical
terms which are not used mathematically? Is there any
sense in trying to unravel pseudo-scientific jargon whose
sole purpose is to render the meaning (if any) opaque?
How much of an egg do you have to eat before you realize it's
rotten?
--
Now that we have surveyed the 30-year history of jabberwocky,
jargon, gibberish and pseudo-science in so-called serious modern
music theory (most of which cannot be taken seriously),
it should be clear that nothing I've said about modern music
theory and academia in *any* of my posts is startling,
unprecedented, or even new.
Backus, Krenek and many others have made the same point--for
more than 30 years. I've simply reiterated these obvious and
long-recognized facts because of the astounding persistence
of gullibility and naivete in successive generations of
theorists and music students. Just as urban legends like
"alligators in the sewers" have long since been disproven
and recognized as fantasies, yet continue to circulate among
young and old in the form of stories "everyone knows are true,"
in the same way the gibberish and jargon of the 1950s music
theorists, long recognized as meaningless jabberwocky,
*continues* to circulate like a turd that won't flush. It's a kind
of musical Gresham's Law: gibberish drives out sensible
rational discussion in modern music theory.
My statements in this regard have been recognized as fact for
more more thirty years, and the frenzied reaction to my
posts which accurately describe Cage, Boulez, et al. as
inept con artists...well, the reaction can only be described
as the reflexive twitch of a patient with brain death.
And what does ANY of this have to do with microtonality?
Well might you ask, kiddies.
The sad fact is that all too many members of this tuning
forum have grown up spouting the kind of musical
glossolalia decried by Backus, by Krenek,
by Thompson, et alia. Alas, all too many members of this
tuning forum have learned music not as music but as
a gallimaufry of pseudo-scientific gardyloo...
indistinguishable from astrology or ufology except
in the details of the pseudo-science employed.
And thus all too many of the members of this tuning
forum reflexively approach microtonality as a brand-
And thus all too many of the members of this tuning
forum reflexively approach microtonality as a brand-
new wide-open opportunity for jargon and gibberish.
This is a poor idea, and we should discourage it.
Microtonality is about *music.*
To the extent that the posts on this tuning forum
depart from the discussion of actual sounds, actual
performances, actual notes and chords, actual
fist-in-the-gut emotional impact of *music*,
to that extent they are wasting the bandwidth
of this tuning forum.
As Randy Winchester has noted, there is now no
longer any rationale for the existence of IRCAM
or a Darmstadt School or a Babbitt-style Princeton
clique or any of the other purportedly "elite"
centers for "modern" music. With Intel's
announcement of the P7 clock rate of 1400 Mhz,
it's clear that within two years computers
capable of running circa 3 billion (with a B)
instructions per second will be on sale at Wal
Mart, K Mart and Sears.
This destroys the raison d'etre for an "elite" center
for technologically advanced music just as the world
wide web has destroyed the rationale for "elite"
venues of music theory publication. Anyone can now
disseminate valuable ideas about music theory to
a wide public--costly paper is no longer required,
expensive subsidy-press music magazines need no
longer be run through costly binderies. Thus it is now
no longer possible to shut out uncredentialed but
insightful music theorists by refusing publication
on the basis of their supposed lack of academic
qualifications; they can publish their insights on
forums like this one. It is now no longer possible
to silence critics of the 12-TET status quo by denying
them print space in prestigious music journals; they
can post incisive critiques on forums like this one. It
is now no longer possible to crush unknown composers
who are not members of the proper elite clique of
academia by refusing them access to sophisticated
hardware and software, because *everyone* has
access to awesomely sophisticated hardware and
software nowadays.
As a result, the only criterion for judging musical
value is increasingly: *musical talent.*
This explains the fury and hatred which has greeted
my posts... For all too few modern music theorists have
even the slightest jot of musical talent. Indeed, given
the continued prevalance of gibberish and jargon in
so called "serious" music theory & the continued
promulgation of the same old pseudo-scientific
language used as an academic con job to intimidate
the uninitiated & boost the reputations of the inept,
it becomes clear that more than two acronyms are
pertinent to remedial education.
The first classic cateogry is EMR: Educable
Mentally Retarded. The individual suffers cognitive
deficit, but is capable of learning complex tasks.
The second classic category is TMR: Trainable
Mentally Retarded. The individual in incapable
of complex tasks but can be trained to perform
simple repetitive motions. The third category
is PhD. The individual suffers severe cognitive
deficit, cannot learn musical tasks, and is
incapable of recognizing behaviour which is
unproductive and meaningless.
--mclaren
