Re: creative isolation

[Dave Stagner <dstagner@icarus.net>]

On Mon, 20 Jan 1997 jspeer@haverford.edu wrote:

> Actually if you think about it, influences provide a necessary context by
> which you music will be heard.  Even if you do the impossible and 
>generate
> an entirely influence-less composition (perhaps you could simulate one
> randomly on a computer) your audience *is* likely to have heard other
> peices before, and will assign your piece a context you did not intend. 
> This is very important.

That's a very interesting point.  The human mind, exposed to totally
new information, will try to impose old patterns of recognition.
Moreover, it's much easier to comprehend new information if it fits a
known pattern.  

I don't find Frippertronics difficult to listen to or follow, because
I've listened to it for years.  Wagner, on the other hand, is very
difficult for me to understand, but very easy for someone well versed
in opera.  

-dave

By "beauty," I mean that which seems complete.
Obversely, that the incomplete, or the mutilated, is the ugly. 
Venus De Milo.
To a child she is ugly.       /* dstagner@icarus.net */
   -Charles Fort