Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

Re: First Excursions into Frippertronics



At 9:27 AM -0800 11/23/02, Mark Hamburg wrote:

>My problem with the various academic progenitors

Other than his teaching stint at Mills College 1971-81 Terry Riley 
has been pretty much free of the academic stigma. In fact, the early 
work I've cited was done almost entirely outside the academic world 
and was often in fact anti-academic in its stance.

>the academic music community has a tendency toward introversion -- 
>i.e., the music is mostly heard by other people in the community.

It's important to differentiate between the music that comes out of 
academia and that which arises outside of academia but becomes a 
topic of academic study years after the fact. In particular, if you 
look at the electronic and electroacoustic music of the the 1960s 
you'll find a clear division between the academic (or at least 
institutional) artists such as the Columbia/Princeton group, the 
independents such as the San Francisco Tape Center, and a few 
commercial independent artists such as Walter (now Wendy) Carlos.

The Tape Center crowd and their "fellow travellers" on the downtown 
New York scene and elsewhere is interesting as a a study in how one 
can survive as an artist without either "going commercial" or 
becoming locked up in an ivory tower. Many of these composers 
(Pauline Oliveros, Mort Subotnick, Jim Tenney, Phil Corner, Bob 
Ashley, David Behrman, et al.) had academic careers, some still 
ongoing, but were able to parley their standing as "young Turks" into 
positions of influence within their departments. In many cases they 
were on the founding faculties of new programs (Pauline at Mills and 
UCSD, Mort at CalArts) and helped set the tone.

While the music of these artists may receive the widespread exposure 
of former colleagues such as Burt Bacharach or Phil Glass, or 
later-generation crossover artists such as Fripp or Eno, it's hardly 
what I'd call "introverted." Some of them are on tour throughout the 
year and reach large audiences.

>This doesn't affect their claim to being first, but it does leave 
>open the question of who brought the techniques to a wider audience. 
>Each is valuable in its own right.

I think "the question of who brought the techniques to a wider 
audience" is moot. Fripp, Carlos, Tangerine Dream, and other such 
essential commercial brought musical ideas and technologies into the 
mainstream, but in many cases watered it down. I don't think of this 
as intentional pandering, but rather as these artists having personal 
tastes more in touch with a potentially larger audience.

The real question might be "how large an audience can an artist have 
without adapting to mass expectations?" And then, "how large an 
audience does one really want?"
-- 

______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD
(818) 788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com