Morgan Owens wrote:
>Certainly, I wouldn't call Vangelis' "Chariots of Fire" --
>to pick one well-enough known example -- harsh nor dissonant,
Neither would I. I enjoy Vangelis' music as much as I enjoy
Beethoven or Mozart. Vangelis' "Heaven and Hell" served as
the theme music of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" TV series.
>and serves on its own as a counterexample to Jim Muth's claim.
I never meant to imply that all older music is consonant and
therefore good, and all modern music is dissonant and therefore
bad, my claim was that older music, which is labelled
'classical' because of its age, tends to be more harmonious and
therefore IMO more beautiful than what is known as modern
'classical' music. And even the modern 'classical' music has
many exceptions, such as the unabashedly tonal 'minimalistic'
music of Philip Glass. (One cannot intentionally compose
'classical' music simply by scoring it for the standard symphony
orchestra. The music must earn the status of 'classical' by its
own worth and staying power.)
>The insistence that I compare harsh music of today with
>harmonious music of the past is entirely spurious, and serves
>only as a vehicle for another of Jim Muth's installments of
>"What I think is wrong With Our Society". As such further
>debate is pointless.
A comment with much insight and truth. I assume Morgan sees
the social situation as far less serious than I see it, or
perhaps feels that the problems should be ignored. I find the
situation hard to ignore. Listening to the morning news, I hear
that my city, Baltimore, with a population of 550,000, has
already had three murders this year, which is but 9 hours old.
This rate will continue throughout the year.
Perhaps Morgan feels that the social situation is already
hopeless, that the carnage is natural selection in action, and
the only thing to do is stand back, observe, analyze the self-
destruction, and hope to remain uninvolved. Or perhaps Morgan
wants to avoid the topics that are lurking just beneath the
surface of the discussion.
One thing not questionable is that this thread is off topic on
the Fractint list. Let's move it to the Philofractal list
before Tim slaps our wrists.
Jim M.
