Russell on "harmonically organized music"
 

Russell, 37, in conversation: "It seems to me that harmonically organized music tends to support a view of the cosmos as being rationally ordered, and views of the cosmos as rationally ordered tend to support the musical theory of harmony and regular intervals between the notes and all the rest of it ... but at the same time harmonically ordered music tends to support 'Control' (to borrow a Burroughsian term), even to the innocuous extent that simple pop music makes people feel good about 'things as they are' rather than making people criticize 'things as they are'"

> from Bruce Russell's Left-Handed Blows: Writing on Sound 1993-2009 (2009)

> tagged with #control, #music

> created Jan 13, 2025 at 12:54:01 PM


> part of unfinished everything


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