Re: A Book

On Jun 16, 9:23 am, "Bob Lombard" <thorsteinnos...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Well, I have been absolutely deluged (as TD might say with equal accuracy)
with requests for my critique of the subject matter in the original post by
"alexios". So here is the link to the .rtf file.

http://www.yousendit.com/download/WFJVbGtEMGNVbTgwTVE9PQ

The following quotes may suffer from being taken out of the
context of Cohen's book. If so, my criticisms are unjust. [...]

According to Bob, the quotes from Joel Cohen's book represent "quite a
collection of bull***". Let's compare this to Bob's detailed
analysis.

Bob found 11 quotes, which he numbered 1 to 9 [sic] (perhaps his
calculator's battery had died). Bob's comments run the gamut, from
clearly negative to clearly positive. If we put together those which
are negative, ambiguous, or attribute to Cohen truisms, straw men, and
exaggeration, we get 8 points for bull***. The rest are 1 point for
whipped cream, 1 on which Bob doesn't feel qualified to comment, and 1
which, according to Bob, was carelessly extracted by me.

IOW, the collection was only 73% bull***; the rest was some other
kind of ***.


[#1]

"Our own peculiarly schizoid age has [...]}

This sets up as simple hyperbole. (The problem with hyperbole is
that, by its nature, it must stretch the truth.)

Looks like Bob has something against hyperboles. I don't; AFAIC,
they're perfectly legitimate figures of speech, and Cohen's is
particularly apt. Just look at rmcr, where one often sees discussion
of using the latest software to restore 60-year-old recordings of 100-
year-old music.

After the semicolon, Cohen's language does not convey the
meaning he probably wanted it to. He spent many years
"backword-looking" while not considering himself "conservative".

I'm probably particularly dull this morning, because I have no clue
what this is supposed to mean.


[#2]

"The Romantic-Modern idea of artist-as-priest [...]

This leads off with the "artist-as-priest" sophistry

If that's sophistry, at least it's as old as Goethe and Kant; in 1941,
Fritz Kaufmann was even attributing to it an ancestry going back to
Longinus and Saadiya Gaon. Perhaps Bob should take his quarrel to the
German masters -- Saadiya may be stretching it a bit..

and continues with a series of exagerations and half-truths [...]

Which are the half-truths, exactly?


[#4]

"We strive, of course, for fidelity to the past. [...]

Cohen places "authenticity" in quotes here, so its relationship
to "fashionable now" and to "currently out of style" is vague.

Not at all. "Now" is when the book was published (clearly indicated);
"currently out of style" is also clear for us -- we are all CM fans
here, aren't we, and we all know what was unfashionable, HIP-wise, in
the late 1980s, don't we?


[#5]

"Despite the ritual nods [...]"

All of this seems plausible at first glance, but Vivaldi is
exagerated in one direction and Rameau in the other. [...]

Of course. In order to make a point. Which Cohen, who knows very well
whereof he speaks (he was at one point producer on France Musique, and
still lives half of the year in France), amply does.


[#6]

"Then along came Leonhardt [...]

This appears to have been carelessly extracted by Alexios. As it
is, the argument comes from nothing and finally returns there.

At least, it's my fault, not Cohen's. And I plead guilty of assuming
we all know what Cohen is talking about, and how styles evolved from
Landowska to Leonhardt.


[#7]

"'The performance of a piece of music [...]

This may be the insertion of a "light moment" (to break the tension?). [...]

Or it may not. The point of these two quotes was Cohen's formulations
(I find Bach, the operator of the cosmic sewing machine; and Leonhardt
holding twice-daily phone conversations with him, particularly funny).
Of course, I can see that, for those not familiar with the history of
HIP, the meaning of "authenticity" in the HIP context, the role played
by Leonhardt, and his stature within HIP, the quotes may be rather
abstruse.


[#8]

"There are dimensions of any artistic activity [...]

This appears to be saying that art is not science and defies
scientific analysis to some important degree. Does anyone out
there disagree with that proposition?

Plenty. And especially with respect to music, which has such a close
relation to mathematics. And, again, Cohen was referring in particular
to a current of thought popular in his time, but less fashionable
these days.


[#8]

"[...] German Musikwissenschaft [...]

Perhaps because I am not a musicologist, this musicology =
theology thing seems to be greatly exagerated.

Because Cohen does not equate theology and Musikwissenschaft, he makes
an analogy.


[#9]

"As in politics, religion, and marriage, there is [...]"

As Henk commented in rmcr, 'authentic' is not a synonym for
'exact'.

Did anyone say it was?

Cohen argues against a phantom.

Hardly -- he is arguing against as certain understanding of the notion
of "authenticity", an understanding which was fairly popular at that
time among HIPsters, though much less so nowadays.


--Alex (the historically-informed philistine)

.

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