Metamusic

WHAT THE HELL DIALECTIC WAS THAT?

The dialectical method has been satisfied only if acknowledged metamusic and old 78s have been shown to be antithetical. One of course has every right to assert that "When I'm Calling You" is "inappropriate" (without a specification of what it is inappropriate to), but in the absence of evidence of this inappropriateness the scientific community will not take this assertion seriously.

To me early musical recording is deeply metamusical. The control of traditional musical authorities over the reproduction of music was lessened, and the artists who suddenly found themselves able to obtain widespread distribution did not hesitate to record their own non-traditional syntheses fo musical genres. I'm sure none of us would disagree that Jelly Roll Morton's WTHWT-inducing records are at least proto-metamusical. If Jelly Roll Morton, why not Nelson Eddy? Especially when we consider performance aspects, a feature of metamusic which Dr. Herpes seems wont to gloss over. Singing "When I'm Calling You," an obvious product of the operetta genre, while dressed up as a Mountie and paddling a canoe is genre-challenging of the highest order.

NOS METAMUSICANDI RUPERTUM LAUDAMUS

I thank Rupert for his comments but suspect he is too gracious. His posts have added an important new technical term – WTWHT – to metamusicology and opened a vast fertile field for semiologicohermeneutic research. As I have suggested, if a true dialectical synthesis is to be achieved the WTHWT response must be unpacked in terms of its triggers or non-triggers by the semiologicohermeneutic community and the growing metasemiologicohermeneutic community. Rupert has shown how music can be delineated into two overlapping groups – authentic vs. inauthentic and WTHT-inducing vs. bland. What distinguishes the music which does not evoke WTHWT from music which does? Is music which fails to evoke WTHWT necessarily non-metamusical?

We in the metamusicological community look to Rupert for inspiration about these matters, and to other researchers' dialectical interventions on this and related subjects.

The Dialectic Lives!

I thank Dr Herpes wholeheartedly not only for his elucidation of a specific conundrum (mine, in relation to metamusic) but for his crystalline exemplification of the dialectic. Until Dr Herpes provided his clarification, I was gripped by a paradox: thesis - metamusic is that which is evoked by WTHWT; antithesis - Nelson Eddy evokes WTHWT. Hardwick provides the superordinate synthetic resolution of the paradox by focusing on a closer examination of key concepts, viz. those related to the experience of "music". Music is not a passive experience; the evocation of WTHWT depends upon the listener not the source. Out undertanding of music, metamusic, logic and life itelf is thereby enhanced by the master dialectitian. Dr Herpes, we salute you!

WTHWT

The metamusician will have the WTHWT response to non-metamusic as well as to metamusic. The typical episode of Canadian Idol will evoke this response repeatedly in any metamusical viewer, but we would hesitate to describe Canadian Idol as a purveyor of metamusic.

Rupert is confusing his own personal characteristic of metamusical acuity with the characteristics of the music which evoke this response. What his highly tuned metamusical sensitivities are reacting to is not metamusicality but the quintessential inappropriatemess of old 78s.

The non-metamusical will listen to "When I'm Calling You," and find it either a) pretty or b) funny. They do not ask "What the hell was that?" because they know what it was. The metamusician is one who risen above the categorization of music into arbitrary essentialist categories and seeks authentic musical expression. He reacts to non-metamusic with WTHWT because he immediately apprehends the inappropriateness of the composition and rendition; he reacts to metamusic with WTHWT because he recognizes the importance to Western civilization of figuring out just what metamusic is.

Which leaves the category of music which does not evoke WTHWT either way. More about that later.

Are 78s Metamusic?

A logical consequence of the WTHWT diagnostic rule is that any recording or sonic experience that causes the WTHWT response should be considered metamusic. Most 78s arguably fall into this category. For example, I recently heard Nelson Eddy-Jeanette Macdonald duet and, indeed, said, sotto voce, to myself, "what the hell is that?" Yet, intuitively, this seems to expand the world of metamusic unduly - much of Louis Armstrong would now be metamusic. Yet, what, exactly, is the discomfort here? Why should Bix Beiderbeck(sp?) not count as a metamusician (as well as a major piss-artist)? Are we hung up on mere technical standards? I say, we should face the consequences of the rule and embrace Jimmy Shand as metamusic!