At 11:55 PM +0000 6/12/03, Christopher Walker wrote:
>Yes. A point I made about LaMonte Young's attitude to pitch. And surely the
>'ideology' of musical structures was one of the motivations behind MEV,
>Cardew's Scratch Orchestra, AMM et al.
My question of whether it's possible for an ideology to inhere in
music was a genuine question, not a rhetorical exercise. I actually
don't know; people disagree hotly on the whole question. And if
music can be said to mean, which of course it can, then it must be
able to convey ideology (by ideology I am looking for a word with the
grossest possible general application). But I'd think that the
meanings of music are not very easy to define, and would depend,
surely, quite a lot on contextualising devices of various kinds;
meaning being, as you say, "assigned", or the recognition of certain
kinds of musics being argued for or against and the associations that
they call up. Those same notes or pitches or tones could perhaps be,
in other circumstances, assigned totally opposite ideologies with
little discomfort; and in any case composers who work with some
ideational material in mind beyond the actual music very often frame
their work dramatically, in relation say to things that are not
music, or they import words.
Of course this question of context happens in poetry as well: forms
that in one culture are considered "conservative" are in other
cultures considered "radical" (thinking here of different attitudes
to formal verse in Russia and English speaking cultures). I have
always thought the idea that any poetic form is automatically
freighted with ideology or meaning is nonsense; it depends on the
individual work, surely, and on its context. But there is the
question in poetry of words that mean and say, which gives another
dimension to the whole question.
But now I have this very strong feeling I'm talking through my hat.
Given the kind of poetry I often write, it would be extremely odd of
me to push the idea that "public" meaning is primary in poetry. Or
that writers are in charge of language. I never feel very in charge
of anything I write. But it also seems difficult to deny that no
matter what kind of poetry one writes, those public or commonly
accepted meanings are going to enter into it.
Best
A
--
Alison Croggon
Blog
http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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