Can you provide an example of development in jazz such as Josh is describing? For example, a motive consisting of particular intervals and rhythms that are extrapolated to the sequential, sectional, and formal levels using the kinds of treaments Josh describes? I listen to a fair amount of jazz and don’t hear these kinds of architectural hierarchies occurring by and large. I find Josh’s comment to be true for the vast majority of jazz. Winsor points out that because jazz is ’spontaneous’ it is less precise than composition and therefore more prone to lapses of judgment without benefit of revision.

Another observation made by Winsor is that Western music is better than most all other musics because of the advent and development of notation in the West. Notation permits trial and error followed by revision at the same time it preserves success. In cultures where music is perpetuated by aural tradition alone, any achieved success is temporal.

Tim

A very fun article to read. Thanks for posting it. “The catastrophe of Wagner?” What’s that all about? :-)

I wonder what the author would think about some of Wagner’s very many writings about Beethoven because some of his thoughts are parallel. Similarly, I wonder what he would think of Wagner’s analysis of Beethoven’s Ninth. Don’t know if he is aware of it, but the Ninth was not exactly a hit in Europe and Wagner played a key role in getting it the notortiety that it deserved (conducting it as often as possible in public concerts).

But Wagner’s thesis was that the Ninth represented the end of a distinct line of development. It was as much of a tombstone as anything else. Whereas Brahms walked around weeping because all of the “great music” had “already been written,” Wagner saw the Ninth as the springboard to the Artwork of the Future - a term laced with obscure qualities to be sure, but, given what has happened to music post-Wagner, you have to wonder if he wasn’t on to something.

Most generally though, I agree that there are very few composers who developed as much as Beethoven. On the other hand, listen to Wagner’s Symphony in C and just about any section of Tristan and you would bet the farm that there was no way the two things came from the same mind.

I think I woud also recommend a book called “The Agony of Modern Music” (PLeasants) which also walks through this line of discussion and addresses jazz as well.

best,

A few questions:

1) Does the author believe that Western music is superior to other forms of music? That is my impression after reading the third paragraph.

2) Why would you say that jazz lacks development? Only a person who lacks an understanding of jazz would make such a statement.

3) Why is it necessary for worship music to be art music?

4) Since only the West has music that “develops”, how can other cultures properly worship God with their music that does not (your words)? Should missionaries convert the music of Africans to Western music?

Congratulations, again, Josh, and thank you!

Tim

I have a couple of questions for you, if you have time:

In your article you assume that music has meaning of its own, and you state at the same time that it exists in a close relationship to a culture. Do you see a conflict in the relationship of these two conditions in the church as they exist simultaneously?

Music of this pop/rock culture is permeated with and dominated by the immediate gratification of the back-beat. We seem addicted to lazy listening; as long as “the beat” is the loudest element of the music, we don’t care what else is going on (rhythmically, harmonically, melodically, textually, tonally, etc.) or how many times an element is repeated. Do you have a proposal for how we might navigate our way (musically/compositionally speaking) out of this slothful means of deriving our emotional satisfaction from our musical diet?

Tim