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On 14/02/13 13:50, Paul Davis wrote:

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>

> On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 7:39 AM, Rustom Mody  > wrote:

>

>

>     Personally, Ive for years belonged to the class of people who

>     consider that music starts with Bach and ends with Beethoven. Bach

>     because he is God and Beethoven because He is a man.

>

>

> as much of a lover of Bach's non-vocal works as I am, I'd like to

> point out that most definitions of music involve at least 3 components:

>

>          rhythm

>          melody

>          harmony

>

> one might also timbre if you were in the right mood. Bach, like more

> or less everyone who is a part of the "western tradition", did some

> incredible things with harmony,

such as settling it to what virtually *everyone* writing tonal music

after him would have done up to current mainstream pop/rock/____ :) [1]
> and had some modest accomplishments in the melodic area (*), but did

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> essentially nothing with rhythm.

I think it depends on what you mean by 'doing something': personally I

have always been fascinated by the 'beat' in Bach's music. If for

example one looks at the opening of the Magnificat in D major (BWV 243)

[2], although the rhythm may not be as complex and intertwined as

certain polyrhythms in 'non-western' music, it's hard to see it as

'doing essentially nothing' (demonstrated by the fact that most

performances you can search for on the web are lacking in some aspect of

the rhythmic interpretation, at least in my humble opinion).

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>

> It is entirely possible to fully respect the incredible work of

> western composers while also acknowledging that "music" begins and

> ends in places far outside anywhere that they (or any other single

> musical culture) have ever explored.

I fully agree.

And I also think that those "other places" are not necessarily physical

places: it is probably time to think of 'music' in a broader, more open

manner (I am open to changing terminology if 'music' has a too strong

historical valence).

Lorenzo.

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>

>

> (*) contrast western notions of melody with that found in carnatic

> music, for example. one could argue that this is a matter of listener

> interpretation rather than compositional form, but since in practice

> these two are tightly bound together, it doesn't make a lot of

> difference when it comes to actual music.

[1] I say 'settle', because certain prominent harmonic traits in western

tonal music we still use today, date much earler than Bach. Nonetheless

it was him who perfected and unified lots of them.

[2] See e.g.

http://petrucci.mus.auth.gr/imglnks/usimg/2/2e/IMSLP102028-PMLP06399-Bac...

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