Subject: Re: On the Grammar of Music From: "O.T.Furnes" <oddtf(at)imt.uio.no> Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 21:04:42 +0200----- Original Message -----=20 From: John Croft <mfmxhjcc(at)STUD.MAN.AC.UK> To: <AUDITORY(at)LISTS.MCGILL.CA> Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2001 7:11 PM Subject: Re: On the Grammar of Music > on 28/4/01 13:34, O.T.Furnes at oddtf(at)IMT.UIO.NO wrote: >=20 > > If I present myself saying: "hello, I'm Odd" - I'm afraid many would = agree to > > that - not in the Norwegian meaning of the word though. If English = were > > "techno" and Norwegian were "bebop" - a C7#5b9 would in techno sound = odd in > > the english use of the word and would in jazz sound "odd" in the = norwegian > > denotation. John Croft replied: =20 > I think one has to be careful with analogies like this -- it would be = easy > enough to make an immediately acceptable piece of music with elements = of > techno and bebop -- this kind of this is done all the time, and it is > usually fairly easy to accept as music, in a way that a spontaneous = hybrid > of Norwegian and English would not. In other words, stylistic = variation in > music is (potentially) continuous -- it seems to me that this is a > significant disanalogy with linguistic grammatical correctness. >=20 Stylistic variation is continuous. However, musical styles are not so = unstable and fluctuating that one cannot register extraneous elements. = Some "techno"-styles like drum'n'bass or BigBeat could very well contain = this chord without anyone lifting an eyebrow. This would not be the case = with Rave (also a techno or rather electronica genre) or euro-dance = which is far more single-tracked when it comes to chords. My assertion = is still that this chord would in this context be "odd" in the English = denotation - up until now. And you would be surprised to know how many = English words there are in Norwegian - and we get more of them every = year.... Odd Torleiv Furnes ______________________ Odd Torleiv Furnes Department of Musicology University of Oslo Norway oddtf(at)imt.uio.no