[r-t] FW: Krystals and connections with change ringing

[Ian Partridge]

On 10 May 2011 12:29, Philip Earis <Earisp at rsc.org> wrote:
>
> I’ve now had a reply from James [...]

Thanks for forwarding this, Philip.  Very interesting.

As a musician my principal interest was in James's discussion of his
collaboration with Stockhausen
<http://james-ingram-act-two.de/stockhausen/OnBeingInvisible/onBeingInvisible.html>
and his attempts to overcome the limitations of conventional musical
notation.

His work-in-progress opera "Retrospective" was mainly interesting as
an example of the kind of extreme narcissism so often evident in
contemporary music:

"Until now, I have always failed in my attempts complete Act Two. But
following the advent of the internet, the completion of Moritz v.1
[software he has written] and the death of Karlheinz Stockhausen, I
have now found the answer: Act Two is now this website, containing a
description of Retrospective. In that description, Act Two is a
self-referential pointer - a sign of incompleteness. Like any
autobiography, Act Two is intrinsically a work-in-progress, impossible
to pin down. A form which contains itself."

I have always felt that change-ringing style music is a compositional
dead-end only appealing to a cognoscenti, as evidenced by the lack of
crowds sitting on deckchairs outside towers every Sunday morning.

Ian