[NewMusic] Essential texts?

[Tom Duff]

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006, weasel walter wrote:

> this is a highly subjective matter. a sampling of my music related
> bookshelf:

Yeah.  Good list.  About 30% overlap with my collection, which
is amazing, given that I think our core interests are way different.

But:

> formalized music - iannis xenakis

Yeah.  I have this, have read it, have even typed in the FORTRAN program 
and run it.  I know a fair bit of math (undergrad degree), a moderate 
amount of music (several misc diplomas) and a big pile of computer junk 
(graduate degree), and as far as I can tell, IX is talking through his hat 
for this entire book.  This is not to belittle the prodigious musical 
results he gets, but his theoretical excursa appear to be all nonsense.

For example, the PROGRAM FREE STOCHASTIC MUSIC (FORTRAN IV) literally 
simulates throwing darts at a musical staff.  But X's description is so 
buried in irrelevancies and obfuscations that I don't think you could 
extract that fact from the book without having taken a year of calculus 
and a year of statistics.

I think that means you have to view X's book as a mystic text.  Not so 
much a source of information as an extended mantra -- you don't really 
learn anything from it, you just sleep with it under your pillow and 
eventually enlightenment comes.

--
Tom Duff.  Lo! the raptured arithmetician!