Re: flame about "substantiality" of Kate's music

[Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu>]

> Since "academic" music is so much more intricate and symbolic, it is
> immensely more difficult to "enjoy", or even to understand.

Oh, phooey.  This just isn't true.  Sure most academic music is more
intricate than your average pop song, but Kate's most intricate music
is just as intricate and symbolic as *any* music.  Furthermore, much
"academic" music is not difficult to enjoy or understand at all.

> In fact, I doubt this stuff was ever meant to bring joy to any
> listener; it could well be written to only satisfy the whims of
> certain composition professors.

I'm sure that there is plenty of bad academic music, just as there is
plenty of bad music of any given sort.  Music that no one can enjoy is
just plain bad.  Certainly not all academic music is like this.

> Well, a composition student has had to STUDY a lot of different
> genres of music, including most stuff written after WW2.

Hah!  Plenty of composition students *never* study rock or jazz.
Plenty of composition students are only trained in Baroque, Classical,
etc.

> So their feeling of superiority may well be the strongest. If they
> can honestly claim that they have seriously listened to ALL kinds of
> music written after WW2, then perhaps you have to give them some
> credit for claiming that Kate's music is not as big a deal as you
> make it out to be.

They can claim anything they want to -- that doesn't make it true.
I've known many people highly trained in music who were quite
impressed with the complexity of Kate's composition.  Are you trying
to say that *everyone* who has ever studied lots of genres of music
will say that Kate's music is simplistic?  That's patently false.

> I encourage you to attend "new music" concerts given by faculty and
> students of a music school near by. Only then will you understand
> what I mean. Composers in academia are going in a completely
> different direction from what most pop artists are going (not that
> pop artists are going in any sense of a similar direction, I would
> readily admit).

I've listened to plenty of "avant-garde" music.  Some of it is
wonderful.  Some of it is atrocious.  I've yet to find any, however,
that is any more "substantial" than Kate Bush's music or that of
several other composers who compose in the pop/rock genre.

|>oug

"W is for WINNIE embedded in ice"