The Original Proto Electronic Prog

That has been an argument since we were clubbing mammoths when we left our caves. That is that intellectual music cannot be "emotional." Personally i find it very emotional in a different way. IQ and EQ both have different levels of intelligence. Just because advanced calculus is foreign to some doesn't mean it's not valid. Same goes with music concrete or any other highly advanced form of sound relationships. By calling such music non-emotional is quite judgmental. Is an obscure language in remote Siberia not a language simply because someone doesn't understand it in North Dakota? I think not

All sounds have the ability to affect us emotionally given the appropriate context. We can go through life being totally unmoved by the sound pattern of a door with hinges that are badly in need of some oil being opened, yet even the most rational of us can be spooked by it under the right circumstances if our senses are suitably heightened. Conversely there are accepted forms and genres of music that affect some of us and not others. If we are receptive to a pattern of sound then we can be emotionally moved by it whether is defined as music or not.

The problem therein is without a frame of reference how can you tell good from bad? From a technical stand-point that's generally easy to gauge but that craftsmanship of production, while being a technical art that we can assign merit to, is not a metre of artistic quality. This is evident if you have ever seen any visual avant garde art - pieces that are deemed to be important and good often display pretty shoddy workmanship in construction and execution. Decrying abstract art as no better than that of a three year old in kindergarten is given further weight of argument when it actually looks like it was made by a three year old in kindergarten - from an artistic perspective the manual dexterity of the artist is overridden by the creativity of the artist. This leaves then an intellectual assessment (what has the artist achieved?), an emotional assessment (does this affect me?), and a historical assessment (did this affect/impact/influence others?). Both the intellectual and the emotional are valid but can either of them separate good from bad? Similarly, does an historical assessment say anything about the quality of a piece as Art?

However, all of that is immaterial.

In the realm of Progressive Rock music that is abstract, avant garde or electronic has to have a reference point that makes it recognisable as Avant Progressive and/or Progressive Electronic, and that common base-line is Progressive Rock, which is a musical subgenre that is defined by the full dictionary definition of music in that it contains melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre. Music that is too far abstracted from that "musical" definition, while being valid as examples of Avant Garde and/or Electronic/Eclectroacoustic music, lack that direct reference so cannot be contained within the subgenre. Therefore David's initial post:

...is 100% factually correct in this context regardless of how important the piece is or how many Prog musicians Varèse has influenced. It is not part of the Progressive Electronic canon in our definition of that particular subgenre because its Musique concrète nature is devoid of the elements that define it as Progressive Rock (regardless of they are in specific terms, that it is "rock" has to be the starting point).

This of course is a completely different argument to the one that prevents Progressive Trance and Progressive House from being included in the Progressive Electronic subgenre, yet they are related in the sense that the are excluded because none of them have a musical reference back to Progressive Rock.

 

I contend that this piece is music as based on Varese's intention to present it as such. How much of it is actually electronic music, as I have come understand it technically, is my concern much more than if the piece is proto electronic prog.

Happy holidays David to you and your family, and have a great New Year!