{"id":994,"date":"2005-07-21T05:56:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-21T04:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/21\/crit-music-theory\/"},"modified":"2015-06-19T00:25:22","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T23:25:22","slug":"crit-music-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/21\/crit-music-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Crit Music Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kyle Gann just blogged about art\/crit theory and how it does(n’t) apply to music.<\/a> “The painters, performance artists, et al, assume that every piece is political in intent, and critique . . . every work in terms of its positioning along a social spectrum. In so doing they indulge an elaborate word game virtually unknown in the music world.” He writes. Hasn’t he read McClary’s Book Feminine Endings<\/a>? All music (not just wordy stuff like mine) is totally analyzable from this perspective and indeed should be analyzed in this way. The idea of “pure music” as an apolitical expression of pure beauty came from the 19th century and should be left back there where it belongs. Chord structures, triumphal bits etc all evoke certain ideas. They have political meaning. A traditional piece where everything keeps returning to a I, a dominant key and a set chord progression also says something about a social order and a forward or backwards thinking idea. Conversely, Lou Harrison’s use of 12 tone structures was also political, although for him, tonality equaled harmony and peace, but the 12 tone stuff represented war, capitalism and domination. Tuning systems play a huge political role for him and others too.<\/p>\n

I can’t imagine thinking about music solely in terms of sounds without deeper meanings, but I can’t imagine approaching anything in an uncomplicated way.
\nTag: Celesteh<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kyle Gann just blogged about art\/crit theory and how it does(n’t) apply to music. “The painters, performance artists, et al, assume that every piece is political in intent, and critique . . . every work in terms of its positioning along a social spectrum. In so doing they indulge an elaborate word game virtually unknown … Continue reading Crit Music Theory<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3242,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions\/3242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}