Actual acoustic listening may not provide the ultimate in musical criteria, but it is certainly superior to the far-fetched and idiotic commentaries with which scores (and press kits and interviews and recordings) are often provided nowadays--the more fulsomely, the less they contain that stands in need of commentary.

In the best modern works there is a unity of theory and practice. Listening to actual performances is likely to be the best way of determining whether a musician whose own assumptions lie some way behind the latest developments will thereby be debarred from an adequate appreciation. The recognition of frontiers implies the possibility of crossing them. It is just as urgent for musical theory to reflect on its own procedures as it is for music itself. It is the bitter fate of any theory worthy of the name that it is able to think beyond its own limitations, to reach further than the end of its nose. To do this is almost the distinguishing mark of any authentic thinking. It is in this spirit that these pages, which are not the product of the most recent ideas, venture to speak of one of the most advanced concepts--namely, that of an informal or, to use Metzger's term, an a-serial music.

Musique informelle resists definition in the botanical terms of the positivists. If there is a tendency, an actual trend, which the word serves to bring into focus, it is one which mocks all efforts at definition, just as Nietzsche, no bad authority on musical matters, once remarked that every historical phenomenon eluded semiotic attempts at definition.

Adorno, Vers une musique informelle, p. 272

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"far fetched commentaries" and "botanical terms of the positivists."

Priceless. Who cares who Adorno is talking about?

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Please note that Adorno is calling this 'informal' music one of the most advanced concepts.

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Musique informelle (pardon me, This Music)mocks efforts at definition...

copyright,  © 2007 Stanley Zappa

for information on Stanley Jason Zappa's collaboration with Wyatt Doyle, STOP REQUESTED, click here. 

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