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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Re: Byrne's blunderingly burdensome
but blindingly bountiful book, quoting Clive James in NYT:<br>
<br>
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“'How Music Works' is a roll of mental wallpaper, a textbook for a
survey course you didn’t mean to sign up for. It drifts between
music history, sonic anthropology, mild biographical asides, broad
pop theory and grandfatherly financial and artistic advice. It’s
all the things Mr. Byrne’s twitchy and alienated music with <a
title="Fan site with historical and other details about band"
href="http://www.talking-heads.nl/">Talking Heads</a> never was:
genial, well-meaning, as forgettable as a real estate agent’s
handshake.
<p itemprop="articleBody">
It ain’t no party, this book. It definitely ain’t no disco."</p>
<br>
He's not foolin' around! <br>
<br>
Dave Headlam <br>
<br>
<br>
On 2/21/13 9:39 PM, Richard Cohn wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAMx_96G-MLnNCymPE12WpcG+sK+cQ=khWV2rhM475LX9PfaWjw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
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<span class="Apple-style-span"
style="border-collapse:collapse;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">David
Byrne's best-selling book "How Music Works", on the front-table
in many book-stores, has a quasi-learned discourse, with dutiful
refs. to Pythagoras etc., on "diachronic scales."
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>My best guess: </div>
<div>^1 sounds in the 14th century; </div>
<div>^2 sounds in the 15th century</div>
<div>.....the 20th century has the leading tone</div>
<div>and here we are now on the tonic. Finally.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Which makes them maximally even, as they should be.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>--Rick Cohn</div>
<div>Yale University</div>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:richard.cohn@yale.edu">richard.cohn@yale.edu</a></div>
</span>
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</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dave Headlam
Professor of Music Theory
Eastman School of Music 585-274-1568
Joint Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering University of Rochester
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:david.headlam@rochester.edu">david.headlam@rochester.edu</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://theory.esm.rochester.edu/dave_headlam">http://theory.esm.rochester.edu/dave_headlam</a></pre>
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