Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 13:56:43 -0500
From: Reg Lilly <rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: A Music Theory


George Trail wrote:
> >Reg
> 
> Thank you.
> 
>  So how do you deal, from within those perameters, with charge that this is
> Eurocentric? I don't mean this in any hostile way, but does it make sense
> to talk about "Western" music, and when one does, is one generally aware
> that there is a great deal of "music" unaccounted for from these
> parameters? 

 Like many other 'ethno's', ethnomusicology is a wildly successful discipline
within music theory.  In large part it has been under the guise of
ethnomusicology that music theorist have broken out of the vocabulary of Western
music, and let it be said that music theory is a vocabulary that has been
actively, if sometimes randomly, consituted.  Parenthetically, Jacques Attali,
who somehow became the head of the bank of the European Union, wrote a very
interesting, small little book called NOISE; THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MUSIC
(foreward by Frederic Jameson) that emphasizes the cultural-economic
determinations in what we recognize as music.  Two other favorites of mine --
TONALITY IN WESTERN CULTURE: A CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE  and
DISCIPLINING MUSIC: MUSICOLOGY AND ITS CANONS (EDS.) Katherine Bergeron & Philip
V. Bohlman are painfully aware of the Eurocentric nature of 'our music.'  That
being said, and realizing that all I've said is said from the point of Western
music, I don't see that there being Raga, etc., in any way changes the relation
between music theory that is technically informed and that that isn't.  Indeed,
I think Westerners find it hard to dabble in Indian music theory, or Indian
music philosophy because that don't have the Ersatz theories to call upon as do
Westerners who treat music theory as nothing but an instantiation of a general
theory of aesthetics.



> And, can you provide me with an example of how a lack of knowledge of music
> theory has embarrassed thinkers who write about music? The more weisnichtvo
> (Carlyle?) and "things in general" the writer the better.

This is a great question; I can't site anyone off-hand, but it's worth looking
into.  Hegel, who I happen to like, says some really empty, even stupid things
about music.  So does Heidegger.  And its clear the Boulez understood much
better what Foucault was up to that the reverse.

Ciao,
Reg


     --- from list phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---