I may be very wrong about this, but I don’t think that Mozart and Beethoven were, per se, “academic” composers.
True, but I mention them as a baseline against which to compare Modern Academic Composers, who have the advantage of dedicated learning and studying the history and theory of music. If they are genuinely learning the structure of reality in their studies (rather than, e.g., how to best pull off an “inside joke” among their fellow acoyltes), they ought to be capable of a lot more than just impressing classmates.
Thus, I claim that a fair standard to expect MACs to meet is that they could produce music of similar success to that of top classical composers, if given the audience—but all they can produce is, in fact, stuff that only their classmates care about.
What is the relevant criteria to say that their music is not as good as Mozart’s.
I would agree that their music is at least in the ballpark with Mozart—no one has to be indoctrinated in years of schooling to like the Beatles (or Mozart) and yet they were able to gain the appreciation of huge sectors of society (also like Mozart).
But I think the appropriate question to ask is, why can’t MACs do what the Beatles did? If they truly have assimilated the insights behind what made Mozart and the Beatles pleasing to the human mind, why can’t they produce it just the same? I believe it’s because they judge themselves only against the ivory tower, not reality—and could not compete with “real world” music if they tried.
If they are genuinely learning the structure of reality in their studies (rather than, e.g., how to best pull off an “inside joke” among their fellow acoyltes), they ought to be capable of a lot more than just impressing classmates.
I agree with Paul Graham on this point, actually, which is that the first mover advantage is simply too strong to be overcome on any significant scale. Shakespeare is the playwright because he was massively prolific when plays were the hot new thing, and then inertia plus quality will propel him forward as the playwright until the end of humanity. There is some upper bound to the quality of plays, and Shakespeare is close enough that even though people who like plays will have contemporary favorites and those plays will be as good as or better than Shakespeare they will never significantly reduce his market share.
There’s a similar experiment you can consider: start off with a bag containing one of each color of M&M. Remove one of the M&Ms chosen uniformly at random, and replace it and another M&M of the same color. What happens is that after 100 iterations, the bag will be almost all one color of M&M (this simulation is pretty easy to code; try it!). Even if you put in a new color of M&M that gets 2 new M&Ms of its color whenever it’s picked, it won’t dominate the old color since the old edge is too strong.
I believe it’s because they judge themselves only against the ivory tower, not reality—and could not compete with “real world” music if they tried.
Could be related to the kind of person who studies music academically, as opposed to understanding it intuitively (as I think Mozart did, based on the very catchy little songs he wrote pre-puberty). Writing something “catchy” is a non-trivial ability, is quite important to whether music is enjoyable (which is the criteria I think music should be judged on), and is hard to learn...and maybe can be learned, but not by studying theory, only by iteratively writing music and observing its emotional effect.
I may be an example of someone whose music comes from book learning more than intuition, but I do have strong emotional reactions to music, so I can modify the things I write until they produce that reaction, without necessarily knowing the music-theory name for the techniques I use.
Could be related to the kind of person who studies music academically, as opposed to understanding it intuitively (as I think Mozart did, based on the very catchy little songs he wrote pre-puberty). Writing something “catchy” is a non-trivial ability, is quite important to whether music is enjoyable (which is the criteria I think music should be judged on), and is hard to learn...and maybe can be learned, but not by studying theory, only by iteratively writing music and observing its emotional effect.
Well, modern music education (quite rightly) does require students to compose and play music and thus give them this kind of practice.
But the difference in understanding you’re describing is exactly the kind of barrier reduction seeks to take down. A few hundred years ago, the mechanics who eked out the biggest performance for steam engines were the ones who had an “intuitive” understanding of what “just works right” and what doesn’t.
Science sought to put this art on a more rigorous, learnable grounding, where you no longer need someone with “machine empathy”, but can identify the governing rules behind nature and exploit them to get maximum performance—and explain why a certain method gives better performance.
Reductionist and scientific progress occurs when we can take the black-box understanding that the earlier masters had and demystify it. Music theory should be doing the same thing: generate theories that take away much of the need for intuition in composition. And to its credit, it has done so: it identifies which chord progressions and which keys produce which kinds of emotional effects, which key changes generally “sound right”, and which don’t—things like that.
But given the level of judgment MACs purport to be capable of passing on modern music—and the musical “inferential distance” they claim lies between them and the masses—they ought to have assimilated the kind of insight the previous masters had, such that it is trivial to write music of similar quality.
The problem, then, is that the true musical innovation just isn’t coming from the ivory tower—the very folks who should be the very be the very best at pleasing the mind of the unindoctrinated through music.
I read this comment out loud to my father, and his comment is “it sounds convincing, but in my experience the best art and music have never come from academics”.
True, but I mention them as a baseline against which to compare Modern Academic Composers, who have the advantage of dedicated learning and studying the history and theory of music. If they are genuinely learning the structure of reality in their studies (rather than, e.g., how to best pull off an “inside joke” among their fellow acoyltes), they ought to be capable of a lot more than just impressing classmates.
Thus, I claim that a fair standard to expect MACs to meet is that they could produce music of similar success to that of top classical composers, if given the audience—but all they can produce is, in fact, stuff that only their classmates care about.
I would agree that their music is at least in the ballpark with Mozart—no one has to be indoctrinated in years of schooling to like the Beatles (or Mozart) and yet they were able to gain the appreciation of huge sectors of society (also like Mozart).
But I think the appropriate question to ask is, why can’t MACs do what the Beatles did? If they truly have assimilated the insights behind what made Mozart and the Beatles pleasing to the human mind, why can’t they produce it just the same? I believe it’s because they judge themselves only against the ivory tower, not reality—and could not compete with “real world” music if they tried.
I agree with Paul Graham on this point, actually, which is that the first mover advantage is simply too strong to be overcome on any significant scale. Shakespeare is the playwright because he was massively prolific when plays were the hot new thing, and then inertia plus quality will propel him forward as the playwright until the end of humanity. There is some upper bound to the quality of plays, and Shakespeare is close enough that even though people who like plays will have contemporary favorites and those plays will be as good as or better than Shakespeare they will never significantly reduce his market share.
There’s a similar experiment you can consider: start off with a bag containing one of each color of M&M. Remove one of the M&Ms chosen uniformly at random, and replace it and another M&M of the same color. What happens is that after 100 iterations, the bag will be almost all one color of M&M (this simulation is pretty easy to code; try it!). Even if you put in a new color of M&M that gets 2 new M&Ms of its color whenever it’s picked, it won’t dominate the old color since the old edge is too strong.
People may not be able to surpass Shakespeare, but that’s no excuse for academics not outperforming other post-Shakespearean works on a regular basis.
Could be related to the kind of person who studies music academically, as opposed to understanding it intuitively (as I think Mozart did, based on the very catchy little songs he wrote pre-puberty). Writing something “catchy” is a non-trivial ability, is quite important to whether music is enjoyable (which is the criteria I think music should be judged on), and is hard to learn...and maybe can be learned, but not by studying theory, only by iteratively writing music and observing its emotional effect.
I may be an example of someone whose music comes from book learning more than intuition, but I do have strong emotional reactions to music, so I can modify the things I write until they produce that reaction, without necessarily knowing the music-theory name for the techniques I use.
Well, modern music education (quite rightly) does require students to compose and play music and thus give them this kind of practice.
But the difference in understanding you’re describing is exactly the kind of barrier reduction seeks to take down. A few hundred years ago, the mechanics who eked out the biggest performance for steam engines were the ones who had an “intuitive” understanding of what “just works right” and what doesn’t.
Science sought to put this art on a more rigorous, learnable grounding, where you no longer need someone with “machine empathy”, but can identify the governing rules behind nature and exploit them to get maximum performance—and explain why a certain method gives better performance.
Reductionist and scientific progress occurs when we can take the black-box understanding that the earlier masters had and demystify it. Music theory should be doing the same thing: generate theories that take away much of the need for intuition in composition. And to its credit, it has done so: it identifies which chord progressions and which keys produce which kinds of emotional effects, which key changes generally “sound right”, and which don’t—things like that.
But given the level of judgment MACs purport to be capable of passing on modern music—and the musical “inferential distance” they claim lies between them and the masses—they ought to have assimilated the kind of insight the previous masters had, such that it is trivial to write music of similar quality.
The problem, then, is that the true musical innovation just isn’t coming from the ivory tower—the very folks who should be the very be the very best at pleasing the mind of the unindoctrinated through music.
Hence my criticism.
I read this comment out loud to my father, and his comment is “it sounds convincing, but in my experience the best art and music have never come from academics”.
Isn’t that exactly what I’ve been arguing here?