<snip>
Sorry: I misunderstood. [MW]
<snip>
Understandable since I put it very badly. (And in similar vein, the
musicians playing for 'Moroccan soldiers' were also Moroccan, which I didn't
exactly make clear. But they had lost all *instinct* and were playing as
though from a score. Hence the comparison.)
Back, though, to Indian music if I may...
One of the things linking Satie, Indian music, minimalism and one part of
60s aesthetics is how length interacts with attention. Whilst an Indian
audience knows its tuning up from its alap by and large, unlike the
Woodstock audience, people don't all sit in an Indian concert hall
identifying the sam, enacting tali and khali with their hands and shouting
'vah!' at appropriate points, though some do. Others turn up very, very
late, discuss the price of dhal and leave in the middle. And concerts may,
of course, go on for very, very many hours. As to following the thought
process, a Kathakali performance I attended in a Kerala temple some years
ago, though not admittedly a concert, sets the tone: the invocatory dance
behind the curtain (thirasseela), which you cannot actually see, usually
lasts a few minutes whenever kathakali is presented in the West; here it
lasted for rather more than two hours. A mass in the days of Latin witnessed
by peasants, as it were.
So what am I saying? Only (again) that 12 hours or so of *Vexations*, an all
night concert by Terry Riley and an all night Khyal or Dhrupad concert have
something in common in how they are attended to which they will _never_ have
in common with Beethoven. Ditto late Feldman, of course.
<snip>
I'll report back when I've had a chance to get up to Beacon or out
to Marfa, both of which are planned. [MW]
<snip>
Yes indeed. Please do.
CW
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I am always doing what I cannot do yet in order to learn how to do it
(van Gogh)
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