[NewMusic] Essential texts?

[Jacob Lindsay]

I have not tried to read Formalized Music, but I
highly recommend:

Conversations With Iannis Xenakis 
by Balint Andras Varga 

It is one of the few texts (along with Forces in
Motion and a couple others) that I have bothered to
read more than once.



--- Tom Duff <td at pixar.com> wrote:

> 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!
> _______________________________________________
> Bay Area New Music Discussion Group
> NewMusic at music.mills.edu
> http://music.mills.edu/mailman/listinfo/newmusic
> 


Jacob Lindsay
http://www.bayimproviser.com/artistdetail.asp?artist_id=44
http://www.myspace.com/mryellowcake

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