# Better, Worse, Equal



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2010/06/the_myth_of_classical_music_su.html

http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2010/03/astonished.html#comment-32094


So now let's talk about the person from India, possibly apocryphal, who thought all western music had only a single emotion, nostalgia. What - assuming that he's real - could we learn from him? I might think, well, wow, that's an extreme case of noncomprehension. But then how well do I understand Indian music? Can I even begin to perceive the emotions people in India hear in it? No way. I can't even sense the emotional temperature of the various ragas, which in western terms would be like saying that major and minor keys sound the same to me. And don't even get me started on the rhythms of Indian music, which I don't know how to comprehend, or even to count.

So then, AC, to return to something you raised here earlier, wouldn't it be perilous for me to decide that western art is better than nonwestern? Here we have what seems like a valid test case, western vs. Indian music. I can't hear Indian music well enough to make any judgment. I can't hear its profundities, if (as people from India think) it has them. And, equally, if some completely impartial and supremely well-informed judge should conclude that Indian music is trivial, compared to Bruckner - well, that's something else I can't hear. I can assume it, if I want to be careless. But no way can I hear it.

Does anyone believe that there is a "Beethoven of Asia"? A "Wagner of the Middle East"?

I don't know if there is. I'm not familiar with Indian Raga or Middle Eastern music. Can anyone recommend me any? Only the Best please.

People always say that it's impossible to make such a judgment because of inaccessibility, but the best one can do is not suspend judgment but to make the best possible. The greatest extant ragas must have some recordings....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Götterdämmerung_discography

Considering the monumental difficulty of recording Gotterdammerng, it seems silly to suggest that, given such a large market of Indian listeners, the best Indian ragas have not been recorded yet.

The little I've listened to sound superficial, but then I wouldn't judge Classical Music based on an Andrea Bocelli or Andrei Rieu album.

Well? What's the greatest non-Western Classical/non-Jazz/non-Rock composer/musician you know? How does it compare to your favorite composer? Are they (far) better? (far) Worse? Equal?

My first objection to this stance is that being nonjudgmental is internally contradictory and an impossibility. Return to the extreme cases: If you refuse to accept that there are any objective differences, expressible as continua from negative to positive, between the nude painted on black velvet and Titian's Venus of Urbino, between a Harlequin romance and Pride and Prejudice, between How Much Is That Doggy in the Window and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik you are not standing above the fray, refusing to be judgmental. It is a judgment on the grandest of all scales to say that How Much Is That Doggy in the Window is, in terms of its quality as a musical composition, indiscriminable from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. And if you really believe it, you have also made a sweeping judgment about the capacity of the human mind to assess information.

http://silpayamanant.wordpress.com/...-impossibility-of-being-nonjudgmental-part-1/

Murray is surprisingly humble.

To accept the position I just laid out requires one to adopt considerable humility about the arts in which one is not an expert. *While I am free to not enjoy the music of Richard Wagner, it is silly for me to try to argue that Richard Wagner does not deserve his standing as one of the greatest composers. * That's a matter of judgment and I'm not competent to judge (Mark Twain said that "Wagner's music is better than it sounds," which seems about right to me). *Surrendering that independent judgment is irksome,* and gets more so as one's knowledge approaches the fringes of expertise. I know more about literature than I know about music, and I nonetheless do not enjoy the later novels of Henry James that are most highly regarded by the experts. * But my wife is an expert on Henry James and over the years I have had to accept that I don't know what I'm talking about.*

Twain himself was exceptionally restrained in his judgment.

I am not a musical critic, and did not come here to write essays about the operas and deliver judgment upon their merits. The little children of Bayreuth could do that with a finer sympathy and a broader intelligence than I. I only care to bring four or five pilgrims to the operas, pilgrims able to appreciate them and enjoy them. What I write about the performance to put in my odd time would be offered to the public as merely* a cat's view of a king,* and _not of didactic value._

http://twainquotes.com/Travel1891/Dec1891.html


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

The classical tradition sitarist or tabla player has a very parallel training to the western concert player who begin intensive work and lessons at the instrument at an age of three to six years old: most in either culture having started no later than when four years old.

The tradition is older than that of western classical, codified earlier, and is enormously sophisticated or 'cultivated.'

I can recommend recordings of Nikhil Banerjee, master sitarist, now deceased. His was the more refined manner of the two main Indian Styles, the emphasis on musical 'elegance.' I've forgotten whether it was the Northern or Southern Indian tradition of which he is representative. There should be recordings where a Rag is begun and improvised upon for a good length of time, running 40 minutes or so (these were LP era.) In actuality, these things can run on for hours.

This music, and the playing of it, is more purely the Indian Style and taste vs. the Shankar recordings available to us. Shankar was often criticized for giving westerners more a westerner's idea of what Indian music is than actual Indian music.

That's the very little I know or know of to recommend. I heard Banerjee, lucky me, in recital in a small hall which held no more than two hundred, and he and his three colleagues played 'for us' for hours. It was truly amazing, the music and virtuosity both stunning. 

With being able to watch, it was enlightening to see four musicians going atilt in a lengthy improvisation based on all the classical premise and rhythmic devices of simultaneous working different length cycles of beats, each with its highly specific groupings of sub-accents -- one in (numbers chosen randomly) 18, another in 33, on in twenty-seven, etc. 

The Indian tradition, classical Sitar repertoire, anyway, starts its form with the introductory Alap, the initial laying down, feeling out and establishing of the Rag. The Alap is slow and often has tentative 'feeling out' quality, with gradual entries of the supporting players, including the Tabla, all of which tacitly is setting up and agreeing upon the rhythmic patterns to be used, and only then does it begin to increase its activity into a deeper flight, going to flights of amazing rapid fire virtuoso playing. (One Tabla player I heard interviewed, who works in a western ensemble, said that Indian music and musicians warm up in the beginning of the piece, while playing, where Western music 'just starts.') 

Often, once the rag and rhythmic cycles were established and the music was moving along apace, they would be playing with their eyes closed, the better to concentrate. You could see, and hear, when all those phased rhythmic cycles finally met back on their individual 'One.' The players would look to each other a few moments before in anticipation, and then nod, each showed smile which could only be in the satisfaction of arrival and its feeling 'right,' when they came together at that juncture -they were not just 'satisfied,' they were having fun! 

I do get more than frosted when Indian music is summarily dismissed under an umbrella of an academic evaluation which seems to be thought of as an acceptable beard on what amounts to mere small-minded jingoism, especially when if one took the time to realize, that is also dismissing the masters of Indian music who are completely the equivalent of a Richter, or name your other amazing true virtuoso player.

There is a rather tedious argument that Indian music, being about a single ornamented line, will never 'come up' to the high cultural achievement of Western Art music, or the structural and contrapuntal prowess of, say Brahms. I hope I've paraphrased what I remember of that criticism / argument that anyone reading can see how pompous, and irrelevant to the matter at hand, Indian music, that argument is. while I am one to agree with the perhaps politically incorrect statement all cultures are not equal, I see no reason to value the two different highly developed art musics by the same criteria in order to prove one is 'better' than the other. I know I love much western music and would not want solely a diet of the finest of Indian music, and that Indian music is a highly developed and sophisticated music which makes tremendous demands upon its performers.

I can also say, conditioned as I am first and so 'most' in western music tradition, that I would rather attend a sitar recital, be in the room, than just listen to a recording. It is so much more spontaneous and innately of a spirit of an immediate temporal existence than western music that it is best received, experienced live. I believe that is very much part of that tradition.

Nikhil Banerjee, then - for one.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

brianwalker said:


> ...
> Does anyone believe that there is a "Beethoven of Asia"? A "Wagner of the Middle East"? ...


Not in exactly those terms, eg. dominating the whole scene, or a large part of the scene, as those two guys did.

But certainly there are and have been significant composers in Asia, Takemitsu is one, he's been influential over the whole region (including down here in Australia).

As for the Middle East, my familiarity with classical composers from there is next to nothing, the only one I have on disc is some symphonies by Josef Tal (1910-2008) who was from Israel (cpo label). It comes across as definitely contemporary and maybe having some of those melodies we associate with the Middle East. I know Tal also did electroacoustic music, he was at the forefront of many types of new music.

Another one is Turkish composer A.A. Saygun, but I consider Turkey to be closer in some ways to Europe rather than the Middle East. Probably part of both, really. In any case, I like his album of solo piano music on Naxos. He incorporates elements of Turkish folk music into that.



> ...The little I've listened to sound superficial, but then I wouldn't judge Classical Music based on an Andrea Bocelli or Andrei Rieu album...


Have fun putting musicians other people like down the toilet! At least I know Wagner's music to a certain extent, to be able to judge what I don't like. Or more accurately, listen to irregularly, which is my case with Wagner. I just listened to some Wagner on the weekend past, it's on my blog on this forum. I would be very surprised if you have listened to an album or two of the musicians you like to hate (like the two above), but let's forget it, let's not go there.



> ...
> Well? What's the greatest non-Western Classical/non-Jazz/non-Rock composer/musician you know? How does it compare to your favorite composer? Are they (far) better? (far) Worse? Equal?


I think some of these below were/are great musicians in their field off the top of my head, but I'm not into playing ranking games, so this list is what I'll offer:

- Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anoushka, on the sitar
- Riley Lee, player of shakuhachi, Japanese flute (he's a shakuhachi player that lives in Australia, but there are others)
- The amazing singer Oum Kalthoum and Mohamed Abdel Wahab who wrote songs for her
- Miriam Makeba
- Sister Marie Keyrouz

Of course, a lot of these non-Western traditions are about tradition rather than big names. So the musicians are anonymous. Eg. Balinese gamelan, West AFrican drumming and in this country the music of Australian Aboriginies has had profound impact on classical and other types of music. Some composers now care less about say the three B's or Wagner or Mozart or whoever and are more interested in these non-Western things. Things outside Europe or the USA have reinvigorated and enriched the wider musical landscape...


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

PetrB said:


> I do get more than frosted when Indian music is summarily dismissed under an umbrella of an academic evaluation which seems to be thought of as an acceptable beard on what amounts to mere small-minded jingoism, especially when if one took the time to realize, that is also dismissing the masters of Indian music who are completely the equivalent of a Richter, or name your other amazing true virtuoso player.
> 
> There is a rather tedious argument that Indian music, being about a single ornamented line, will never 'come up' to the high cultural achievement of Western Art music, or the structural and contrapuntal prowess of, say Brahms. I hope I've paraphrased what I remember of that criticism / argument that anyone reading can see how pompous, and irrelevant to the matter at hand, Indian music, that argument is. while I am one to agree with the perhaps politically incorrect statement all cultures are not equal, I see no reason to value the two different highly developed art musics by the same criteria in order to prove one is 'better' than the other. I know I love much western music and would not want solely a diet of the finest of Indian music, and that Indian music is a highly developed and sophisticated music which makes tremendous demands upon its performers.


The fact is that western classical music is as non-existent in India as Indian music is non-existent in the west. If you want to point fingers at pompously small-minded jingoists, start with the Indians.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Couchie said:


> The fact is that western classical music is as non-existent in India as Indian music is non-existent in the west. If you want to point fingers at pompously small-minded jingoists, start with the Indians.


Hmm. Not sure who has the choice of weapons here. I suggest single-barrel flintlock pistols at twenty paces, one reload in place if necessary.

It's interesting that Shankar's frequently stated intent to make Indian sitar music more accessible to westerners is objected to in India. Whazatabout?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Couchie said:


> The fact is that western classical music is as non-existent in India as Indian music is non-existent in the west. If you want to point fingers at pompously small-minded jingoists, start with the Indians.


I won't comment on your usual invective, but despite not having roots in that tradition (obviously) India has produced at least some Western classical musicians who've made a fair impact on the international scene. Two I can think of are* Zubin Mehta *and *Daniel Nazareth*. Of course, in a less developed country with countless problems like in terms of barriers to education, health, overpopulation and all that, even a producing handful of musicians like that at a high level is no small achievement, I think. I'd guess it's a similar situation in Africa.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Sid James said:


> I won't comment on your usual invective, but despite not having roots in that tradition (obviously) India has produced at least some Western classical musicians who've made a fair impact on the international scene. Two I can think of are* Zubin Mehta *and *Daniel Nazareth*. Of course, in a less developed country with countless problems like in terms of barriers to education, health, overpopulation and all that, even a producing handful of musicians like that at a high level is no small achievement, I think. I'd guess it's a similar situation in Africa.


I'm not sure we have the same understanding of what goes on in the upper levels of a highly stratified society. It's been awhile since our countries have had one of those, and at no time was it as sharply delineated as India's - except at the 'color boundary', and that is a different thing - sort of.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^Well class, or what used to be the caste system in India or the sub continent, is an issue. What I was getting at was also other issues, esp. economic. It's all tied together of course. 

However, in Australia, classical music didn't really get going big time until after 1945. The Conservatorium of Music in Sydney was founded in about 1916, so there were earlier developments. However, with post-war economic development, and expansion of the middle income earners or middle class - yes, less stratification in those post-war decades - there was a large niche for classical music audience/market here. So even though we had a tradition coming from UK/Europe, classical music got going much later than the country got settled in 1788. There were more important things to do - eg. develop crops, infrastructure, the economy, democracy, all that. Once that was going, classical music was not as impeded as before here.

That's what I'm saying. CLassical music in countries like the sub continent or AFrica is the least priority, understandably. But in places whose economy has taken off, classical music has made headway. Eg. Japan & Israel after 1945 also. I'd guess Singapore as well. More recently, with the open door policy, China. In Latin AMerica, classical music has been established to a certain extent for ages, judging the composers who've come out of there. So that's what I'm saying. I can guess the variety of reasons why places like India don't have strong Western classical tradition, for reasons other than it's alien to them, just as the subtleties ragas or Peking opera will be harder to understand for a Westerner...


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> If you refuse to accept that there are any objective differences, expressible as continua from negative to positive, between the nude painted on black velvet and Titian's Venus of Urbino, between a Harlequin romance and Pride and Prejudice, between How Much Is That Doggy in the Window and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik you are not standing above the fray, refusing to be judgmental. It is a judgment on the grandest of all scales to say that How Much Is That Doggy in the Window is, in terms of its quality as a musical composition, indiscriminable from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. And if you really believe it, you have also made a sweeping judgment about the capacity of the human mind to assess information.


You're treading on perilous philosophical ground here. Proclaiming the existence of genuinely _objective_ values of any kind (whether aesthetic, moral, whatever) is asking for trouble, and pretty indefensible as far as I can tell (what sorts of things are they? How can we know them?). Intersubjectivity is still aiming too high. I'd like just as much as you for there to be fairly sound reasons that Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is _better_ than HMITDITW for no reasons other than that I happen to strongly _feel_ that way and I like to be able to justify my feelings; maybe something along the lines of 'a reasonable set of values which roughly reflect what humans desire from and value in music and could be broadly agreed upon by intelligent listeners, but which are ultimately subjective', but I find even that unlikely.

As much as I sympathise with your motivation for positing objective values (and to me it does sound ridiculous that one should accept the two as of the same value), ultimately it is at most a motivation and not a sound argument itself; it's a logical fallacy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^Forget it jalex, we've gone down the fruitless, pointless road of the so-called objective vs. subjective "debate" here on this forum countless times. It just sets up the usual false dichotomies. It's a can of worms, and an endless and tedious one. Much more tedious than John Cage's _4'33"_ pruportedly is - it's under 5 minutes, but this rubbish drags on and on.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

jalex said:


> [...]
> As much as I sympathise with your motivation for positing objective values (and to me it does sound ridiculous that one should accept the two as of the same value), ultimately it is at most a motivation and not a sound argument itself; it's a logical fallacy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule.


It's useless to say 'it's a logical fallacy', and probably useless to point to wikipedia. I suppose it's also useless to point to any one of several of Terry Pratchet's stories, e.g. 'Small Gods'; but there's good reading even if nothing registers. Everything is relative' doesn't mean that nothing matters. It's closer to meaning that everything matters, and you have get used to figuring out how much - before the rhino knocks you down.


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## chee_zee (Aug 16, 2010)

If anyone wants I have about 100 spotify playlists of indian music I could share. also, sangeethapriya/sangeethamshare.org. shivkumar.org

as far as composers, tansen, thyagaraja, diksitar, and purandara dasa (all carnatic).


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Sid James said:


> I won't comment on your usual invective, but despite not having roots in that tradition (obviously) India has produced at least some Western classical musicians who've made a fair impact on the international scene. Two I can think of are* Zubin Mehta *and *Daniel Nazareth*. Of course, in a less developed country with countless problems like in terms of barriers to education, health, overpopulation and all that, even a producing handful of musicians like that at a high level is no small achievement, I think. I'd guess it's a similar situation in Africa.


I think it has more to do with the British Raj.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

chee_zee said:


> If anyone wants I have about 100 spotify playlists of indian music I could share. also, sangeethapriya/sangeethamshare.org. shivkumar.org
> 
> as far as composers, tansen, thyagaraja, diksitar, and purandara dasa (all carnatic).


Interesting, how did you find them? Spotify? I have had trouble finding recorded Indian classical music. Share away your playlist, I'm interested.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Couchie said:


> I think it has more to do with the British Raj.


Colonialism & the legacy of it is a factor, yes, but of course there are other factors.


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## xuantu (Jul 23, 2009)

PetrB said:


> The tradition is older than that of western classical, codified earlier, and is enormously sophisticated or 'cultivated.'
> 
> ... There should be recordings where a Rag is begun and improvised upon for a good length of time, running 40 minutes or so (these were LP era.) In actuality, these things can run on for hours.
> 
> ...


What you said about Indian Classical music is fascinating! And I think you are right about the theme matter of this thread.


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## chee_zee (Aug 16, 2010)

anyone seriously interested in indian music needs to read 'time and rhythm in north indian rag music' by martin clayton. he goes over the forms and everything, the most enlightening look at any culture's music I've ever seen.

I'll be posting the spotify in the next coming days I'd imagine, there are still tons more to post but here's a starter:

nusrat fateh
rahat fateh
bade ghulam
abida parveen
benji wertheimer
ravi shankar
gs sachdev
ranu majamdar
ali akbar khan
hari prasad chaurasia
ashwin bhide deshpande
amjad ali khan
kaushiki
Sultan Khan
random sarangi
more random sarangi
ram narayan
oum kalthoum
shivkumar sharma
jasraj
bismillah khan
bhimsen joshi
lata mangeshkar
sabri khan
manilal nag
manilal nag
amir khan
dagar brothers


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

As a westerner I've never had an issue getting into any other culture's music. Hindustani and Carnatic are both great and I enjoy listening to them quite frequently. I feel I should explore the Indian folk music more, but I haven't gotten the opportunity and I don't feel like there are enough resources for it. I'm definitely going to check out that book you mentioned Chee_Zee. Sounds like it would be of great interest to me.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

Hilltroll72 said:


> It's useless to say 'it's a logical fallacy', and probably useless to point to wikipedia. I suppose it's also useless to point to any one of several of Terry Pratchet's stories, e.g. 'Small Gods'; but there's good reading even if nothing registers. Everything is relative' doesn't mean that nothing matters. It's closer to meaning that everything matters, and you have get used to figuring out how much - before the rhino knocks you down.


In all honesty, I cannot make much sense of this post.

I don't think the lack of objective value means that nothing matters; it just means that the 'mattering' only occurs inside 'institutions' - agreed (possibly implicitly) frameworks we work in when discussing. Certainly, within the implicit framework of what constitutes good music among serious Western classical music listeners (which I obviously subscribe to) it is trivially easy to explain why Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is better than HMITDITW, and why Beethoven #9 is better than Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and so on. The standards we choose to judge music are certainly not arbitrary, as they clearly bear some relation to what listeners want from music. But this is far from saying that they are _objective_.

Claiming that there must be objective values on the grounds that if there were not nursery rhymes would be of equal value to symphonies _is_ a logical fallacy whether you like it or not.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

jalex said:


> You're treading on perilous philosophical ground here. Proclaiming the existence of genuinely _objective_ values of any kind (whether aesthetic, moral, whatever) is asking for trouble, and pretty indefensible as far as I can tell (what sorts of things are they? How can we know them?). Intersubjectivity is still aiming too high. I'd like just as much as you for there to be fairly sound reasons that Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is _better_ than HMITDITW for no reasons other than that I happen to strongly _feel_ that way and I like to be able to justify my feelings; maybe something along the lines of 'a reasonable set of values which roughly reflect what humans desire from and value in music and could be broadly agreed upon by intelligent listeners, but which are ultimately subjective', but I find even that unlikely.
> 
> As much as I sympathise with your motivation for positing objective values (and to me it does sound ridiculous that one should accept the two as of the same value), ultimately it is at most a motivation and not a sound argument itself; it's a logical fallacy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule.


That was Charles Murray, not me.

I've just "ordered" a large batch of Nikhil Banerjee CDs. Will get back to y'all ASAP.


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## chee_zee (Aug 16, 2010)

TC is a horrible forum, can never edit any of my posts after about a day. So I'll just finish the list here:

http://www.4shared.com/office/npmioFSH/icm_spotify_list.html?

it's a 4 page pdf of names with direct hyperlinks that will open up your spotify. enjoy, and sangeethapriya.org for thousands of hours of free ICM.

spotify has about 20 hours of nikhil banerjee.


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