Whether cultural libertinism be better than cultural rigidity may be discussed, but that the cultural libertinism of the 20st century amounted to less than the cultural rigidity of earlier century will be difficult to deny.
People will remember Bowie for his words longer than they will remember him for his music because his music is as hollow and unmeaning, by design. He believed the world is an unmeaning wilderness, or at least that he was the most meaningful thing in it, at least in the sense that the only meaning of it derived from himself. But a mere unmeaning wilderness is not even impressive.
In Bowie's theology, life is something much more grey, narrow, and trivial than many separate aspects of it. The parts seem greater than the whole. If his cosmos is the real cosmos, it is not much of a cosmos. The thing has shrunk.
Bowie could not make any music that was joyful because he could not understand joy. The modern philosopher has told Bowie again and again that he was in the right place, and he had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But those that came before him had heard that they were in the WRONG place, and their souls sang for joy, like a bird in spring.
- Carl Maria von Weber - Missa Sancta No.2 in G-major, Op.76, J.251 "Jubelmesse" (1819) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mlNqpl-YJI&t=239s
- Mass No. 2 (Schubert) - https://youtu.be/AUMp0OJ66s8?si=40k7LZ9pqCzMbHJy&t=256
- Mendelssohn: Elijah, Op. 70, MWV A2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w99KSSFj-aU
- Beethoven: Missa solemnis in D major, op. 123 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umXYWd25hgQ&t=2382s
I'm loathe to link because I'm on mobile and this will be hasty, but: https://youtu.be/9SE222v1eyM at least most people will have heard a movement in this.
Probably the only virtuoso of a non-standard instrument I know, readily.
> When Danse macabre was first performed on 24 January 1875, it was not well received and caused widespread feelings of anxiety. The 21st century scholar, Roger Nichols, mentions adverse reaction to "the deformed Dies irae plainsong", the "horrible screeching from solo violin", the use of a xylophone, and "the hypnotic repetitions", in which Nichols hears a pre-echo of Ravel's Boléro.
And Bowie's been covered in space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
It's impossible to forecast what future generations will and won't like.
I know nothing of his quotes, but there're a few of his songs I will remember for the rest of my life (and I'm not even a big fan).
(quoted) Once in the world’s history men did believe that the stars were dancing to the tune of their temples, and they danced as men have never danced since. With this old pagan eudaemonism the sage of the Rubaiyat has quite as little to do as he has with any Christian variety. He is no more a Bacchanal than he is a saint. Dionysus and his church was grounded on a serious joie-de-vivre like that of Walt Whitman. Dionysus made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament. Jesus Christ also made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament. But Omar Khayyam makes it, not a sacrament, but a medicine. He feasts because life is not joyful; he revels because he is not glad. “Drink,” he says, “for you know not whence you come nor why. Drink, for you know not when you go nor where. Drink, because the stars are cruel and the world as idle as a humming-top. Drink, because there is nothing worth trusting, nothing worth fighting for. Drink, because all things are lapsed in a base equality and an evil peace.” So he stands offering us the cup in his hand. And at the high altar of Christianity stands another figure, in whose hand also is the cup of the vine. “Drink” he says “for the whole world is as red as this wine, with the crimson of the love and wrath of God. Drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this my blood of the new testament that is shed for you. Drink, for I know of whence you come and why. Drink, for I know of when you go and where.”
Secondly, you overlook the glee with which he collaborated with people to jointly express their humanity, and who inspired him to do this. You can read the lyrics and parse them all you like, but what does it FEEL like when you've soaked up the whole song and are at that moment of…
"Ain't there one damn song that can make me…"
That's not even getting into my personal faves like Station to Station, Scary Monsters, where he's venting some really personal stuff and turning it into sound-as-art and also hellacious good funk, with the most gifted companions you could wish for.
Bowie liked to record vocals in one take, just fling himself into expressing and run with whatever he had in the tank that day, and it communicates like mad. He's maybe the canonical example of the opposite to AI music. In bringing that to fruition, I'm certain he understood countless joys. You gotta express many other things than just joy to have hit records, but then Beethoven excelled at that as well.
I've doubtless taken more trouble than I needed to, rebutting what could have been a GPT-extruded troll of an argument, but it was fun :)
Yet failed to address even one of my contentions, which if I had to summarise them for you again are:
- Music of the 20th century falls short of music of the 19th century, and it's not particularly close.
- Having no boundaries and standards does not make for better art.
- Bowie's music cannot convey meaning or wonder because he did not believe there is any meaningful or wonderful in the universe other than him, even if he held this view "humbly".
- Bowie could not write joyful music because his world view made it impossible for him to have joy.
(quoted) The last Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people who did believe in the Inner Light. Their dignity, their weariness, their sad external care for others, their incurable internal care for themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination. Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make a moral revolution. He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games of the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types. He is an unselfish egoist. An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of passion. Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.
> [Marcus Aurelius, Christianity, Inner Light stuff]
Been a while since I've seen someone suggest an outwardly healthy adult might be incapable of one of the standard human emotions.
Anhedonia is a thing, but it's rare and associated with clinical depression.
Given your choice of quote, would it be fair to suggest that you believe that only Christians can truly experience joy?
If we are to be truly joyful, we must believe that there is some eternal joy in the nature of things. Bowie did not believe this.
"The man who destroys himself creates the universe. To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea. When he looks at all the faces in the street, he does not only realize that men are alive, he realizes with a dramatic pleasure that they are not dead."
Yet, Bowie could not ever quite make a convincing case that he believed other people are not dead, or at least that their existence was anything more significant than their non-existence because for him, all significance came from him and him alone.
I think music AI in live music would actually be interesting - theoretically it can react to crowds better than any human could. A group music editing session with the AI weaving it to music - sounds like a fun art project.
That's one area I'd expect AI to do poorly. Performance is a two-way dialog between performers and the crowd, with facial expressions and body movements from both the stage and the audience in communication. I'd expect any AI that's not attached to a humanoid robot to be less exciting to a crowd.
However, I am very excited about AI in some of the other contexts you mentioned, like as a music-writing or editing partner.
Talks of "nobody will need musicians anymore" were overblown, while having a modicum of truth
Because artists are preyed upon early in their career into signing contracts that encompass the most profitable years of their lives and often the output of those years forever for small loans and promises of success.
The way these label deals are structured, if VCs in the tech world did the same it would be like having the investor of your very first failed company idea still taking money from you for startup attempt four that actually was successful and owning a chunk of that by default.
Of course I don't think musicians are blameless, they signed the deals and often regret it or go to huge expense of time and money (e.g Taylor Swift) to pull their work back into their own ownership.
> why have they not become obsolete? Nowadays artists can self-publish with minimal cost
You cannot self publish to Spotify without giving money to the major labels via arms of the majors like DistroKid. Spotify has no "Upload" button.
> so why haven't we been seeing independent artists that are massively popular?
There are: Frank Ocean, Tyler The Creator, Macklemore, Chance the Rapper, etc.
But if you're independent you're swimming against the tide because major labels own and scoop cream at all levels, from LiveNation to DistroKid to being signed on the label itself.
Instead we got aesthetically original avant-garde art to replace the thousands of low-quality slop portraits that were common in the mid-19th century.
The human race, according to religion, fell once, and in falling gained knowledge of good and of bad. Now we have fallen a second time, and not even that remains to us.
One of the core contentions of the Christian faith, is that there is something more abhorrent than doing something bad, and that is the denial that it is possible to do something bad. Yet, this is about the only article of faith for our modern insanity.
Until someone makes an AI guitar pedal that corrects sloppy playing.
The result's pretty boring and interchangeable, and that's largely what AI music is trained on. Accuracy is not novel here. Ever since the 80s it's been increasingly possible to augment musical skill or lack of, with technology.
I don't think we're very close to correcting for sloppy intentionality. Only to correcting 'mistakes', or alternately adding them in the belief that doing stuff wrong is where the magic is.
Not sure that would have helped Jimmy "sloppy" Page getting famous though.
That was already the case with Spotify & Co. where music has become an anonymous commodity. People order by mood or playlist and rarely care about who composed, produced or played the music, even if the meta data are available. From the user's perspective, AI makes mostly the selection process more precise. I don't think people will care much whether the music itself was a human-made recording or just AI generated.
But making music is still fun (I speak from experience, see e.g. http://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1317); people just won't care, unless you have a big name; all this was already the case before AI generated music became good enough. So by the end of the day, AI is just another act in a rationalization and anonymization process which started a long time ago.
Like the performance of "Hania Rani live at Invalides in Paris, France for Cercle" [0]
This is what makes a musician.
(I listened for ≈7 min from the reference point.) (I am talking about the music, not the live performance itself.)
AI will be the nail to the coffin where it'll almost completely becomes a hobby.
I wish it were true but I'm also very aware of how many people I see in audiences today are scrolling instagram while the band plays.
> There are hundreds of thousands of full time touring musical groups world wide, and millions of music festivals every year.
Those figures seem very high, do you have a source for these? Or even how you worked it out as a guesstimate?
“Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So take advantage of these last few years, because this will never happen again. Get ready for a lot of touring, because that's the only unique experience left.”
While Bowie had different reasoning for making that statement, it's interesting to think that with AI-generated music, his idea of "music like water or electricity" might finally come true.