roachboy

interesting thread.
when i saw the title, i immediately thought it was about "art songs" or leider, the type of vocal music composed for bourgeois parlors during the ninetheenth century that tended to be technically too difficult for most parlor players to either play or sing. but maybe not, as it turns out.

i listen to alot of "classical" music--mostly contemporary stuff, which strangely starts with schoenberg more or less and moves forward in time from there. schoenberg, webern, stockhausen, cage, morton feldman, james tenney, la monte young etc...
i listen to some earlier stuff as well. my preferences include palestrina, bach, some earlier orchestral music---not a fan of most 19th century orchestral music, particulay not of wagner, mostly because i do not think he knew how to write for horns but insisted on using them anyway.

i also listen to alot of "out" or "experimental" jazz--which really functions to make the category "classical" problematic--there is little difference between, say, what roscoe mitchell is doing and classical music except that mitchell is african american....it is interesting--classical performance royalties are paid at a higher rate then those of jazz composers. it kinda makes you wonder about these categories.

i read music but in the main find traditional notation useless for the type of music i am involved with. i am interested in graphic compositions, particularly in cornelius cardew's "treatise"--verbal scores as well. most of what i am involved with uses extended techniques that are not describable in conventional notation terms, and processes that run counter to euro-ideology of "legitimate" music, so there we are.

i am not a particular fan of opera. i dont like european classical vocal conventions in general.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite