It's no coincidence that the Classical form developed alongside the amazing scientific advancements during that same time period as music is a reflection of the current culture and psyche of a society. Reason and logic began to dominate thinking and Western music reflected this with its emphasis on structure, tonal centers, cadences, time constraints...
Music is never static, however, and even Mozart began to stretch the Classical structure a little, becoming bored with the accepted forms which he felt were becoming cliched. And by the time we get to Wagner, a cadence could go unresolved for hours, structure was stretched to its outer limits! Our reaction to these changes is learned-it's not a universal good-bad instinctive response to the form itself and any inherent rightness in it. Our great musicians progressively stretched the limits of structure, and were often ridiculed for their efforts until the common man's ear became acclimated to the changes. THe famous story about Bach's children playing a joke on him after he went to bed by executing only half of a cadence until he rushed to the harpsichord to complete it needs to be balanced by the knowledge that in nonwestern cultures there is no such reaction, they having never learned to perceive this as "correct" or "incomplete". Our Western ears are incapable of hearing the subtle tone variations of Indian classical musicians who have 22 pitches in an octave to our 12. Most music outside our culture is not performance oriented but is a "group effort", and complicated notation is a western development. Many of the aspects we consider natural to music are not at all.
It is pointless and silly to label man's artistic efforts as good or bad according to a limited culturally biased opinion which is what it seems to me Terrence is doing, not by refusing to acknowledge any man's ability to produce art, but in evaluating man's efforts by applying some definition of good-bad reality arbitrarily set by him. |
