"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture", or so it's been said...

I obviously disagree, or else, I wouldn't have wrote that. But...This is another entry of mine that long predates, yet anticipates, my reading of Jane Jacobs' Systems of Survival, a reading that has given me a new dimension of understanding to what I've already wrote...(I was already on that track, thanks to such books about marketing and technology like The Deviant's Advantage and The Myth of Innovation) And while I don't have a problem talking about music, I've grown to understand the problems about talking about "the future" (or, at least, THE future, much like Frediano has a problem with talking about THE economy...).  Same with THE future of music. I'd have to reread this article, but I'd just clarify, now, that when I think of "future" music, I refer to the possible, rather than "the inevitable".

(And because I don't believe that music is statically recieved, and not even music until it's heard as such by the mind, I'll add that I reject the notion of "platonic" notions of music that unite all humanity, or something akin to an "ur song", or "music of the spheres", etc...might seem odd to have to say that on an Objectivist forum, except that James Kilburn once published a an alternate history of Mario Lanza here, promoting such an idea, in the service of "Perigonian" ideas of the superiority of certain types of music...the idea of music being percieved as a static event every time, versus a dynamic reaction dependent on context and experience has a parallel in Jacobs' ideas on static "guardians" and dynamic "traders" [and these "alternative histories" of the superiority of classic artists point to the conservative, "guardian" tendencies of a Kilbourne or Perigo], as well as the static/dynamic approach to the future in the ideas of Virgina Postrel in The Future and its Enemies...)

(Edited by Joe Maurone on 9/21, 5:08pm)

I understand the problem, of course.  The limitation to "dancing about architecture" is the paucity of our dance vocabulary.  On the other hand +gesture+ we speak and write well about complicated subjects.  I like world music, Afro-Celtic, that sort of expression, even as my favorites are all in the Western Classical tradition.  That is a worldwide performance, bringining to it musicians from Asia, even though (as far as I know) few westerners have excelled - or bothered to excel - at Chinese music, for instance.  African music seems a little easier to absorb and to be assimilated into. I have two recordings of ancient Greek music.  It is horrible stuff, very crude, not sonorous, and lacking even ABBA sonata form, just linear.  During the European Middle Ages, a time denigrated by Objectivists, not only were new forms invented, but also new instruments on which to play them.  

I agree that music has no future "the".  We need the archaic plural: "these futures of musics."  

Here is a bad example of Western music gone global.  Jung Lin plays every note perfectly, as written.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9-2jM5RNSs

But her dragon mother beat the sponteneity out of her and she never danced for feeling, so she cannot play Liszt with feeling because it was based on dance.  

This performance of the Monti Csardas is a modern re-creation of the traditional form, something done standing, but intended to be done laying down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMOHAcjlIWs

So, in this Liszt H Rh 2 Valetina Lisitsa interprets more than a little... but I Liszt did also. Showmanship is also part of musicianship or no one would ever leave the recording studio.  (Although, that, too might have been a blessing to Chopin, who hated big audiences.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdH1hSWGFGU

I also agree that Jacobs hit the nail on the head with the guardians who preserve traditions.  Necessary as they are to traditional guardianship when we apply the wrong syndrome, we get bad results.  I mean I like Lanza, too; I grew up with his Student Prince and Vagabond King, but I don't sacrifice goats to his image.  Lots of people have pipes.  

Jan Peerce sings "Granada"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrx4qDZR_RY

Here's a duet, Sting and Cheb Mami, "Desert Rose"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3lWwBslWqg

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 10/12, 12:53pm)