There is a whole lot going on out there, and I welcome any visitor to spend a few minutes perusing the links to the right. I am in the midst of politics fatigue, however, and would much rather write about this. I did find an an interesting article at Alternet that is a response to Richard Dawkins. The article itself, by historical theologian Alistair McGrath, is an echo of much of what I have written, and that is why I have little to add to it; the comments, though, are kind of fun because they prove the very point McGrath and others are maing, viz., that there is an almost incoherent rage among atheists at "religion", and it drives them to irrational distraction. I fail to understand the reasons why this is so, but it is almost comical.
Music does not exist in and of itself. It is not a "thing" to which one can point. It is totally dependent upon human activity and agency to exist at all, and as such is part and parcel of human life, not something independent of it. A musical score, a lead sheet, charts, and a musical recording are not "music" but records of various kinds that point to music; a musical recording comes closest to being "music", but only as long as we do not abstract it from the men and women performing. Once we do, we are off into Plato's world again, and much of the discussion becomes mindless drivel. Musicology that focuses on such things as the structure of a piece - its tone pallet and chordal structure; the relationship between various musical modes and the theme(s) of the piece; possible questions concerning the relationship between the musical elements and lyrics - are meaningless if we do not consider that these are a product of human beings acting in certain ways. Meaning in music comes both from those who perform it and the audience - it is a human thing, not a musical thing.
Musicians do a strange thing. They give life to something that would not exist without them. No matter how "durable" a particular piece of music may be (how often it is played, how long recordings of it exist, how long scores of it are republished), the music itself only lives through their action in performance. We forget that music is a fragile thing, dependent upon individuals who are, very often, fragile themselves. Consider Mozart, Charlie Parker, and Jimi Hendrix as just three examples of people who, though geniuses of incomparable depth and power, were too haunted by various demons to escape them. We so often focus on their weaknesses and forget the strengths they each had. We also forget that, as music is a human product of unique, discreet individuals, the weaknesses were as much a part of the creative process as the strengths. We need to hold this firmly in our minds when we listen to a Mozart symphony, "Salt Peanuts", and "Foxey Lady". Dividing up a human life to find some "msucial area" that is immune to all other areas does violence to the human reality that is music and musical creativity.
A couple years ago I heard a discussion on NPR about Miles Davis and the creation of the album Kind of Blue. A caller to the show was outraged that no one mentioned the fact that Davis was, to put it mildly, a difficult person with which to get along, and harbored much hostility toward whites. The discussion that followed, including former Davis colleague Wayne Shorter, missed the point entirely because it tried to create a distinction that cannot exist between Miles Davis the individual who had a nasty temper and did not suffer musical fools and Miles Davis the brilliant and thoughtful musician. First, just because Davis was difficult to get along with shouldn't exclude him from consideration as an important personage; Beethoven was hardly one with whom others could sit and enjoy a pint. Davis' vocal hostility to whites did not preclude him from working with many, many gifted white musicians. His anger was the honest result of frustration over the exploitation of black musicians by an industry that took advantage of and stole from them time and time again. What is to argue with here?
Musicians are a strange lot, to be sure. Yet they are the sole link between us and this strange, wonderful thing that brings us, by turns laughter, tears, rage, love, lust, and the inescapable desire to get up and dance. We rely upon them for so much, and they fail as often as they succeed; how many times have we heard or read of them being frustrated that they could not reproduce the sounds they heard in their heads? Yet, they keep trying because to surrender, to give up trying to make those sounds would be worse than death. That we live in a society that takes advantage of this desire, rewards and punishes these men and women for their failures and successes, makes them heroes and villains, relevant and irrelevant is a sad commentary upon us (of course, as the saying goes, 'twas ever thus). We need to hold on to them, nurture them, not concern ourselves with the famous but with those who give us as much as they can and ask nothing else but to be given another chance to give it to us again.
