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Article 5572 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: eliot@ocf.berkeley.edu (Eliot Handelman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: A bas les esperances! (Re: Intelligence, awareness, and esthetics)
Date: 12 May 1992 07:58:07 GMT
Organization: U. C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
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References: <1992Apr22.122656.1303@nuscc.nus.sg> <tob8kINN4cq@agate.berkeley.edu> <1992Apr30.235510.22749@nuscc.nus.sg>
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In article <1992Apr30.235510.22749@nuscc.nus.sg> smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:
>In article <tob8kINN4cq@agate.berkeley.edu> eliot@ocf.berkeley.edu (Eliot
>Handelman) writes:
>>In article <1992Apr22.122656.1303@nuscc.nus.sg> smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen
>>smoliar) writes:
>>
>>
>>>            We tend to approach our aesthetic experiences with expectations
>>>(just like everything else in the world 
>>
>>           "Anstendig Institute" 
>>                                          They recommend listening
>>to music in a deeply relaxed state a la the "let it flow" of pscyhedelia
>>-- and guess what -- as far as this latter goes, THEY'VE GOT A POINT.
>>It's well worthwhile trying out music in this way, just to discover
>>the "raw" aesthtetic -- the bodily sensation involved. 
>>

>                                                               However, the
>present discussion emerged out of an attempt to try to discern what Abraham
>Moles was trying to get at and then point out where the holes were.  Still,
>I tend to feel, along with Schank, that if you write off ALL expectations,
>you probably also write off a good chunk of cognition.

It would be too easy to cede the point by allowing a middle ground. 
Instead, it's unclear what the gain is of bringing in the word "cognition"
if it's going to be used in his way, since as far as I can tell it doesn't
introduce new qualities into consciousness. If cognizing means
having expectations, then of course you're right. Otherwise I don't
see why it should matter. 

>Look, these guys probably DO have a point when you are dealing with your
>"psychedelia."  They probably also have a point for all your Windham Hill
>discs, and I would even grant that they have a point for 4' 33".  On the
>other hand, do they have a point for "They Are There" or "The Circus Band"
>by Charles Ives?  Do you REALLY think that these works would benefit from
>a "let it flow" listening, divorced from all those experiences of Americana
>which are so integral to the fabric of Ives?  Would you separate "A Survivor
>from Warsaw" from the context of the Holocaust?

When West German TV did a show on the end of the war commemorating its
40th anniversary the Holocaust images were accompanied by silence, 
and that I think is the best approach. The Germans, at any rate, had nothing 
to say, there was no way of updating the images of corpses and teeth. 
Schoenberg tried to turn it into a drama involving redemption as a 
way of avoiding the repellant and totally Kultur-propagandistic idea of 
allowing dramatic music to serve and even disseminate historical
memory -- hence the opening "Was it all a dream", pointing it to the 
mythical dimesion of jewish suffering. In short: would I separate 
"Survivor" from Holocaust? Already that's implicit in Sch's approach. 
But the fact that people, especially jewish people otherwise uninterested 
in Schoenberg, will listen to this piece and will be moved by it too -- 
shows that it's all about "holocaust" in the context of Schoenberg's 
music, not the other way around.

In any case, I don't claim that all music necessarily doesn't involve
context -- though, as above, I'd rather argue about  how music provides
context, emotional or attentional, to all of the other media. In america
hardly anything does without music. You are arguing, "music hardly does
without anything." So which is it?


>Brendan Gill recently published a memoir about Joseph Campbell in THE NEW YORK
>REVIEW.  His basic argument is that you can go only so far with "follow your
>bliss."  After that, it does not take long for self-indulgence and hypocrisy
>to take over.  However, if the hot tub fits, I would be the last to deprive
>you of your right to wear it.

Are you suggesting that only hot-tubbing Californians are self-indulgent and
hypocritical?


