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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