(idm) music/math/architecture/autechre/classical

From Matthew Korfhage
Sent Sat, Feb 6th 1999, 21:27

        Late reply to a couple long threads (as someone who enjoys the
fractal geometry of Ae5):

        First (description aside)-- mathematics is just one way to
describe something-- the fact that there are mappable mathematical
relations that ca be found in music does not mean that math has *anything*
to do with the music-- otherwise *everything* is math including you,
whoever you may be (whomever you may be=bad grammar joke:) ).  Finding a
mathematical system that makes good music is generally fleeting and still
requires personal recognition, which is a matter of feeling, not
relations... even if feeling is determined by a system of relations, that
system is not mathematics, I can promise.  I don't need to add "just my
views" here, but apparently I am.  Read Hofstadter only as a library
loan-- that bastard does't need aother ego boost from book sales-- and 
with a grain of salt-- he's trying to open a nut with a jackhammer, or
really, come to think of it, with a Rube Goldberg contraption that
terminates by kicking its own ass.


        Oh, and when did IDM become the classical of the future instead of
the jazz of the future, or just plain "THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE (insert
variable ! or ?)" ?  Blurred high/low distinctions aside, deciding
classifications of the future is a sort of doomed proposition from the
start.  If everyone(har de har)'s calling it IDM now, there's no reason
why everyone will suddenly stop calling it IDM later and start calling it
classical---same reason why drum 'n bass got the "new jazz" moniker but
never got called "jazz"-- technology is an instrument, not a style
necessarily-- if this music is getting differentiated by the
instrumentation and its obsession with itself, it'll be its own category
(or dated movement), not classical or jazz or "new rock" (er, sory,
already taken....) or whatever. Stuff blends, stuff gets named so we can
talk about it, yadda yadda.


I'm gonna get my pompous ass some food.  I apologize to all who read that.

M.

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's up.