wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Comments

• [1] Carlo Maley from Philadelphia November 05, 2007 - 05:26PM

  I think that the people who get so upset upon hearing and learning about EMI (e.g. the colleague who poked Cope in the nose), are fundamentally misunderstanding what he has done. Cope has basically developed a way of riffing on other composers. Much like a scratch rap artist resamples old music to make a new work, Cope's program recombines bits and patterns of a composer to make a new work. If we like it, if it sounds good, it is because the music of the original composer sounds good and Cope has done a good job of figuring out a way to recombine the pieces in a pleasing format.

  Contrast what Cope has done to an automated text generator. They are very different things. When a text generator analyzes a large set of texts and then generates a new text, the result is almost impossible to read because there is no intent to communicate behind the words. There is no point in reading it.

  When EMI produces a derivative work of Mozart, it probably lacks the patterns within patterns within patterns of the maestro's intellect, but it may still sound nice and be interesting because it is the fruit of the maestro's seed. It may also be surprising because it does not take some expected turns. We should rejoice that there is more music in the world in styles that we appreciate because of EMI.

  
  
• [2] Konstantin Pogorelov from San Francisco, CA July 19, 2009 - 08:42AM

  When you say "we" is that a royal "we" or do you presume to speak for more than just yourself?

  I believe that a defining quality of a work of art is that it is structurally whole and this whole is "more than the sum of it's parts": it embodies the thought of the creator.

  It is generally agreed that musical composition relies on musical theory, and no one "owns" the elements outlined therein. SImilarly, no one "owns" any particular existing word or poetic meter. However, creating a "Finnegan's Run" out of a Keats poem by rearranging the words or phrases only succeeds in muddling the effect of the poem. Similarly, I believe a replication of a Bach praeludium approaches perfection in direct proportion to it's fidelity to the original composition, the most perfect solution being the original one.

  Thus, ethical considerations aside, such efforts can not be considered artistic or creative from a logical standpoint. It is this that in my opinion the man who flicked Prof. Cope on the nose understood: rather than being disturbed by the success of "his" music, I feel it was brought on by contempt for someone who did not understand this principal, without which art is no longer.