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And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Saturday, August 10, 2019

Difference and Repetition


Melodic vs. Non-Melodic Narratives

10 comments:

Franco Aragosta said...

the sullen, dead-eyed, disaffected, disengaged, drug-addicted attitude of brainwashed post-Modern youth,

Depressing! Disgusting! Discouraging!

jez said...

I wonder if this is even a trend. Primative melodies / anti-melodies have been a prominent niche in popular music since people started making blues and rock 'n roll records. And it goes back a lot further than that: orthodox priests and monks have been exchanging primative, narrow-range melodies between each other for > 1000 years.

So non-melodic music has been with us forever; is there any evidence that heavily melodic songs are disappearing?

That Billie Eilish record is dope btw. The harmony voices sound so dry, just how I like 'em.

Thersites said...

Given the death of the core Western Civ curriculum, I believe this is an actual trend. Even the Left's simpler replacement narratives are falling apart now. G_d Bless the populist Left! :)

Franco Aragosta said...

Oddly enough, despite dwindling public interest, and the ever-increasing age of enthusiasts, the classical music world has probably never been in better shape than it is today.

The young pianists and violinists have reached the highest standard imaginable in the developmnt of technique, memory and dee understanding of the great significance of important music. The young artist are absolutely wonderful, and despite the tragic, dispiriting loss of the New York City Opera not long ago, there still seem to be an adequate number of fans to fill the seats wen something "Big" occurs at the major concert hall still extant.

the REALLY GOOD things in cultural development have NEVER been POPULAR.

The masses, unfortunately, tend to be asses, and have little or no appetite for what-we-used-to-call "the fine things of life." HOWEVER, I'll be the first to tell you that high intelligence, creativity and the various forms genius appear in ALL strata of society. "Wealth," "Position, "Power," have little or nothing to do with "genus." BUT, true genus is SO rare as to render it a class in itself –– separate and disctinct from the rest of humanity.

The world never has, –– and probably never will –– treat its most distinguished , innovative, and highly accomplished people very well. In too mny instances manifestations of superiority attract more derision than admiration.

And then the vast majority seem too easily attracted to the MOST dreadfully vulgar, ungodly, moronic, frankly hideous, even INDECENT things. Adoratin of the Meretricious seems a powerful component of Popular culture.

Mass Communication has only exacerbated the phenomenon –– a phenomenon "intellectuals" from the mid-nineteenth-century on have appeared to CELEBRATE and STRENGTHEN with their fractious, iconoclastic, depressingly cynical, often contemptuous and condemnatory observations.

My only hope –– and the thing that keeps me going in this the coda of my life –– is an ever deepening knowledge of and appreciation for the BEST Civilization has produced in Music, Art, Literature, Poetry, Drama, Architecture and Gastronomy –– a rarefied little world to be sure, but a place always eager to welcome new inhabitants.

Whatever I may be I am NOT snobbishly devoted to an ossified, mummified caricature of " High Culture" that refuses to recognize excellence in new developments, BUT the new developments must meet very high standards, and "ring certain bells" to be considered worthy.

The BEST in ANY field is always a tiny minority of the REST.


So be it! Celebration and Adoration of the Finest and the Hghest, however, does NOT imply CONTEMPT for everything else. Snpbbishness has NO PLACE on the upper slopes of Mount Parnassus. After all a Mountain Peak could not exist without the broad, but ever narrowing base that supports it, n'eat-ce-pas?

Franco Aragosta said...

IF a single, most powerful cause of the cultural degeneration we've been experiencing all my dult life –– that's probably before either of you were born –– could be named I have to nominate the emergence in the mid-nineteen-fifties of ROCK 'N ROLL –– a grotesque, spectacularly hideous reversion to musical and cultural primitivism amplified by modern technology. tROCK N' ROLL has pandered to humanistiy's BASEST INSTINCTS worng to "dumb us down" and "'bring us low" ever since it arrived.

I remember seeing ELVI'S first appearance in 1955 on Ed Sullivan's then-celebrated Sunday night TV Variety show –– a kind of updated electronic version of Vaudeville a the time. At any rate the moment I saw deathly pale, pointedly unwholesme, unhealthy-looking, geasy-haried ELVIS swiveling his hips and suggestively masturbating his guitar –– in OUR home on OUR TV –– I knew The Enemey had Landed, and things were never going to be as pleasant as they had been again –– and BOY! Was I ever RIGHT.

Those of you who never knew any OTHER kind of Popular Culture probably think I'm just a very "uncool," crazy old "dude" –– a fuddy duddy. If so I have been exactly that for the past SIXTY-FOUR of my SEVENTY-EIGHT years.

BELIEVE it or not –– LIKE it or not –– you can take my well-informed word that ROCK 'N ROLL, –– and all ll its increasi[ngly hideous derivatives –– has been THE SINGLE MOST POWERFUL FORCE that has brought about the Moral, Spiritual, Cultural, Intellectual DEGENERATION that has cursed Western Civilization following the all-too-brief period of Post-World-War-Two euphoria.

I used to believe it was just a "fad," that would go the way of the Hula Hoop, the Frisbee, and "Bobby-Soxers," etc., but nearly seventy years after its emergence, its MALIGNANCY has only increased in STRENGTH, METASTASIZED and virtually TAKEN OVER the remiains of WesternCiviization and reduced it to a MORIBUND status.

I know you'll not agree, because you have been INFECTED with the deadly, slow-actung toxin deployed to bring you down, and that is why I have little faith in the future –– and frankly rejoin that I won't have to be part of it much longer.

jez said...

Interesting. You'd have to explain further how the above comment, climaxing with a morbid expression of suicidal despair, "does NOT imply CONTEMPT."

We should not ignore the possibility that our "Moral, Spiritual, Cultural, Intellectual DEGENERATION" is an illusion borne of your habbit of denegrating the present while venerating the past. Nostalgia is always tempting.

Gert said...

So 'post modern Conservatism' is an oxymoron? ;-)

Perhaps the only 'true' post modern Conservative is that moron Steve Bannon (in the end too conservative even for Trump, it would appear). The European 'new' conservatives are cut from more traditional cloth.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

I'll see your Jeam Michel Jarre and raise you an Infected Mushroom

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Trigger warning: Infected Mushroom are an Israeli electronic dance music band.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

FreeThinke,

Who's your favorite death metal band?