05-17-2015, 09:11 AM
Based on Ray's response, here's my revision of my five song types. The original post said the five types are:
1. Identity formation and assertion
2. Finding balance
3. Aggressive idiosyncratic pursuit
4. Strength becoming a weakness/Faustian bargain
5. Merely atmospheric
Ray's response boiled down to these five points (as I understood them):
1. If "merely atmospheric" is a catch-all, then of course the rubric's exhaustive--any list + "merely atmospheric" would be equally exhaustive
2. There are parallelism problems, specifically that the entries *aren't parallel*
3. The categories are so elastic that they can be forced to fit an example without the person whose doing the forcing necessarily even realizing
4. To the extent that the fifth entry isn't a catch-all, there are examples that the list fails to accommodate, and
5. When a case seems equally fit for more than one category, trying to make a final determination feels goofy.
In response, I'm revising the original post to read as follows, and apologies for it being so dryly written:
[Note that through-composed music never repeats, whereas strophic music does.]
Song lyrics are tonal unless they contemplate the identity of some object. Through-composed lyrics follow the same literary principles as other written works, but strophic lyrics differ.
Because of the recursive nature of strophic musical settings, strophic lyrics are constrained such that they may contemplate the identity of one and only one object. Said somewhat differently to clarify, the repeated musical settings of strophic music (verses and choruses, essentially) force lyrical sections to interact such that their shared aspects emerge as the principle focus. Efforts to frustrate this inherency will ironical demonstrate it.
Once established, the identity of an object may be examined in one and only one of four ways. Specifically, the identity of an object may be examined in relation to
1. Itself, alone,
2. External forces,
3. Inferior hazards, or
4. Superior hazards.
To explicate, strophic lyrics may:
1. Contemplate an object's identity without more,
2. Assert its identity and describe it by placing it in opposition to other objects,
3. Showcase the strength of its identity by subjecting it to hazards it will succeed against, or
4. Show the weakness of its identity by having it fail against those hazards.
A song about a basketball would be of type 1. If the basketball encountered a soccer ball, the song would be of type 2. If the soccer ball attacked the basketball and lost out, it would be a type 3 song. And if the basketball were defeated by the soccer ball, the song would be of type 4.
1. Identity formation and assertion
2. Finding balance
3. Aggressive idiosyncratic pursuit
4. Strength becoming a weakness/Faustian bargain
5. Merely atmospheric
Ray's response boiled down to these five points (as I understood them):
1. If "merely atmospheric" is a catch-all, then of course the rubric's exhaustive--any list + "merely atmospheric" would be equally exhaustive
2. There are parallelism problems, specifically that the entries *aren't parallel*
3. The categories are so elastic that they can be forced to fit an example without the person whose doing the forcing necessarily even realizing
4. To the extent that the fifth entry isn't a catch-all, there are examples that the list fails to accommodate, and
5. When a case seems equally fit for more than one category, trying to make a final determination feels goofy.
In response, I'm revising the original post to read as follows, and apologies for it being so dryly written:
[Note that through-composed music never repeats, whereas strophic music does.]
Song lyrics are tonal unless they contemplate the identity of some object. Through-composed lyrics follow the same literary principles as other written works, but strophic lyrics differ.
Because of the recursive nature of strophic musical settings, strophic lyrics are constrained such that they may contemplate the identity of one and only one object. Said somewhat differently to clarify, the repeated musical settings of strophic music (verses and choruses, essentially) force lyrical sections to interact such that their shared aspects emerge as the principle focus. Efforts to frustrate this inherency will ironical demonstrate it.
Once established, the identity of an object may be examined in one and only one of four ways. Specifically, the identity of an object may be examined in relation to
1. Itself, alone,
2. External forces,
3. Inferior hazards, or
4. Superior hazards.
To explicate, strophic lyrics may:
1. Contemplate an object's identity without more,
2. Assert its identity and describe it by placing it in opposition to other objects,
3. Showcase the strength of its identity by subjecting it to hazards it will succeed against, or
4. Show the weakness of its identity by having it fail against those hazards.
A song about a basketball would be of type 1. If the basketball encountered a soccer ball, the song would be of type 2. If the soccer ball attacked the basketball and lost out, it would be a type 3 song. And if the basketball were defeated by the soccer ball, the song would be of type 4.
A yak is normal.