tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post674560158060560703..comments2024-03-27T05:47:21.295-07:00Comments on Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature: Rand & Aesthetics 17Daniel Barneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06359277853862225286noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-68225660138220564602011-07-13T03:18:59.868-07:002011-07-13T03:18:59.868-07:00I'm not sure if he'd count as a "comp...I'm not sure if he'd count as a "composer of any notoriety", but Lou Reed caused a bit of a stir with his album <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Machine_Music" rel="nofollow">Metal Machine</a> Music</i> (1975), which was essentially sixty minutes of howling atonal sound with no discernible beat, and only the most abstract suggestions of melody or harmony.<br /><br />Many assumed it was a joke, or an attempt to get out of his record contract, though Reed has maintained in interviews that he was making the album seriously.<br /><br />To those that do take the album seriously, it's often regarded as the beginning of a number of experimental or avant-garde musical movements which are more linked to "popular" music (as opposed to, say, Cage or Stockhausen, linked to more classical and/or academic movements). Granted, none of the artists arising from these movements themselves have much notoriety in the mainstream, but Reed himself has long been an important figure in rock music.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I5OtlKjzJo" rel="nofollow">Here's a sample.</a><br /><br />It doesn't sound like Rand would have been likely to even be aware of the album, let alone comment on its status as music. But reading the original post, I thought I'd point out that there is in fact music that is intentionally made of nothing but noise.CWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-89755058906512756842011-06-24T07:06:49.478-07:002011-06-24T07:06:49.478-07:00@ECE: Glad you liked it! I just love his "lit...@ECE: Glad you liked it! I just love his "little big band" sound!Reynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-56377675165074449772011-06-23T22:02:14.678-07:002011-06-23T22:02:14.678-07:00@Rey: Thanks for the suggestions. Unlike Rand, I...@Rey: Thanks for the suggestions. Unlike Rand, I'm always open to new musical experiences. I listened to the Mingus -- well worth the time!Echo Chamber Escapeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-26564660969761883562011-06-23T15:00:39.289-07:002011-06-23T15:00:39.289-07:00ECE, oh, I'm aware of the purpose of the scene...ECE, oh, I'm aware of the purpose of the scene narratively and thematically; I admit I'm reading more into it than Rand probably intended.<br /><br />"Maybe a good composer could make the combination work..."<br /><br />Duke Ellington could have probably pulled it off (See, "Black, Brown, and Beige"). Charles Mingus as well (listen to "Piethecanthropis Erectus" some time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALr37D6y-5c&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1), a tone poem with describes mankind's rise from hominids to a downfall caused "his own failure to realize the inevitable emancipation of those he sought to enslave, and his greed in attempting to stand on a false security." Those guys were masters of arrangement.Reynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-55181526105108359152011-06-23T13:34:03.964-07:002011-06-23T13:34:03.964-07:00@Rey: Ragtime, of course, was a precursor to jazz,...@Rey: <i>Ragtime, of course, was a precursor to jazz, which Rand seems to be critical of in Atlas Shrugged when describing one of Richard Halley's compositions being rearranged as a Swing number, so I'd be curious as to know why ragtime was good but it's child jazz was not.</i><br /><br />I don't recall whether Rand ever pronounced a general aesthetic verdict on jazz or swing. In the specific example you mention where she derided the Halley piece being recast as swing, I don't think she was intending to comment on swing in general. She was trying to portray an incompetent parasitical composer stealing (and mucking up) Halley's brilliant achievement, resulting in a godawful mess. I would guess that she picked swing because Halley's original theme purportedly conveys a titanic struggle, a defiant "No," a desperate cry for deliverance -- none of which seems like a good fit for the bouncy idiom of swing. Maybe a good composer could make the combination work, but Rand's point was that the composer in question wasn't any good. So I'd be reluctant to draw any conclusions about Rand's general opinion of swing or jazz from this example.Echo Chamber Escapeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-42288762847163049772011-06-23T04:04:10.179-07:002011-06-23T04:04:10.179-07:00Greg,
Nathaniel Branden once described his speaki...Greg,<br /><br />Nathaniel Branden once described his speaking style as to "inflamminate and ominsciate." <br /><br />I think this is true of Rand's writing style. She is so sweeping and confident in her assertions that an innocent reader might think she knows everything there is about the subjects she opines on.<br /><br />-Neil ParilleNeil Parillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11074901258306769278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-38838481229072453582011-06-22T12:58:31.013-07:002011-06-22T12:58:31.013-07:00Rey: I'd be curious as to know why ragtime wa...Rey: <i>I'd be curious as to know why ragtime was good but it's child jazz was not.</i><br /><br />Because with rare exceptions our tastes in music freeze when we're in our early twenties. This is normal and fine, unless we then try to turn our tastes into absolute truth.Kennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-89491156857094163722011-06-22T11:50:34.737-07:002011-06-22T11:50:34.737-07:00Wait: is this article saying that Ayn Rand didn&#...Wait: is this article saying that Ayn Rand didn't like that new fangled rockety-roll music! What a shocker!CuriousReadernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-9773829218489148192011-06-22T08:30:01.656-07:002011-06-22T08:30:01.656-07:00"Rand's beloved ragtime would probably be..."Rand's beloved ragtime would probably be frowned upon by an earlier generation."<br /><br />I was unaware that Rand likes ragtime music, but you're right to suppose that ragtime music was frowned upon in certain circles since since it was originally mass market pop music for the vulgar herd.<br /><br />On the other hand, when I was learning Jazz piano, my teacher had me learn on rag a week from the complete works of Scott Joplin because nothing's better for improving your sightreading (so many notes played so, so very fast)!<br /><br />Ragtime, of course, was a precursor to jazz, which Rand seems to be critical of in <i>Atlas Shrugged</i> when describing one of Richard Halley's compositions being rearranged as a Swing number, so I'd be curious as to know why ragtime was good but it's child jazz was not.<br /><br />"It's more complicated than that."<br /><br />This might as well be the slogan for this blog!Reynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-8225021948264956782011-06-22T05:43:23.719-07:002011-06-22T05:43:23.719-07:00Respighi's Pines of Rome is a great counterexa...Respighi's Pines of Rome is a great counterexample to this theory. It's normal souding music; it's not atonal or discordant or anything like that. But! The third movement, The Pines of the Janiculum, ends with a recording of a nightingale. Respighi even specified the record to use.<br /><br />This shocked people at the time. There was a lot of criticism for "the introduction of nonperiodic variations ... into an allegedly musical composition" which according to both Rand and popular opinion in the 1920s "eliminates it automatically from the realm of art and of consideration." If I remember correctly, the awesome 4th movement made up for the shock of the nightingale and the audience ended up giving a standing ovation.<br /><br />So often, new music isn't horrible non-music, it's just different. Stodgy, conservative old people have always had a problem with syncopation or ethnic themes or recorded sounds or samples or whatever new thing came along. Rand's beloved ragtime would probably be frowned upon by an earlier generation.<br /><br />I don't disagree that a lot of music today is terrible. Beyond technical, musical issues, there is a lot of uninspired work that just aims to be commercially successful. But I don't think you can argue that any musical aspect of bad music, like atonalism or discordance or a heavy beat or real-life sounds, is necessarily bad.<br /><br />It's more complicated than that.Todhttp://www.newsclocks.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-51999385994021447992011-06-21T18:06:39.823-07:002011-06-21T18:06:39.823-07:00Nice post. As I said in an earlier comment, Rand t...Nice post. As I said in an earlier comment, Rand tries to use her rationalistic verbiage to evade the obvious fact that her cultural tastes are conventional, unadventurous and narrow.<br /><br />A glance at music history belies what she says in the Romantic Manifesto: the line between music and noise has been shifting almost every generation, according to what evidence we see in the west. Monteverdi's madrigals were jarring to conservative Italians; bad reviews of Beethoven's Fifth or Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, at the time of their premieres, read like condemnations of modernism.<br /><br />Here quote here is just armchair speculation: "you can condition a human ear to different types of music...you cannot condition it to hear noise as if it were music; it is not personal training or social conventions that make it impossible, but physiological nature, the identity, of the human ear and brain." No, the ear and brain are not hardwired to accept only certain sounds as music. Certain sounds become understood as music because of culture, learning, and experience. Why else are musical conventions different the world over? And why do they keep changing?<br /><br />Reading this stuff really makes me wonder why she felt it necessary to comment on matters she knew so little about. (She'd probably respond the same way she did Branden when he asked how she could pass judgment on psychology, w/o any background in it: "Because I know how to think!!")<br /><br />- ChrisAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-62298704239414728092011-06-21T12:30:26.123-07:002011-06-21T12:30:26.123-07:00With Rand's requirement of objective intelligi...With Rand's requirement of objective intelligibility in art -- her assertion that art must present representations of identifiable entities, and that if it ceases to do so, then it ceases to be art -- you'd think that she would have been very supportive of composers who re-created objectively identifiable sounds of things (street traffic, machine gears, coughs and sneezes, etc.). By her criteria, and her attempts to make everything in art "objective," the modern noise music that she flipped out over is actually probably the best solution to her wish for the discovery an objective "conceptual language" of music, where the traditional music that she preferred is (and always has been and always will be) subjective and essentially the aural equivalent of abstract visual art.<br /><br />JJonathan Smithnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29196034.post-1855019212313592832011-06-21T09:44:47.687-07:002011-06-21T09:44:47.687-07:00Rand's persistent lack of examples is simply m...Rand's persistent lack of examples is simply maddening and makes me wonder if the bug is not the feature. Such vagueness allows an uncritical reader to swap in their own examples of whatever music they consider to be "non-music," fooling them into thinking they agree with Rand.<br /><br />Furthermore, when I've talked music with Objectivists, they've hand-waved any counter-examples (of "non-music" simply being music they don't understand) I might provide because Rand didn't specifically condemn this or that composer or musician, so if I point out, say, the influence of Bach or Debussy on Bebop and post-Bebop jazz (by way of demonstrating that it isn't mere pop music, nor is it noise), the response isn't, "Gee, that music still doesn't appeal to me, but I see your point," it's, "Well, you might be right, but Rand never said that Ornette Coleman was non-music."<br /><br />Besides, where are all the Objectivist composers? Does ARI sponsor and showcase Objectivist musical talent to help usher in a Renaissance of rational music?Reynoreply@blogger.com