His* exposé is giving invalid information on music theory.
If you randomly scramble the notes of Au clair de la lune, you will not get an incredibly harsh dissonance à la Wozzek, by Alban Berg. In order to get actually consistent harsh dissonance, something which hurts to hear, you have to do it deliberately, with order - just another kind of order than the good order in Au clair de la lune.
I am here thinking especially of the song Au clair de la lune, it seems from my looks into Origin by Dan Brown there may be a work by - ah, yes, there is a work by Debussy which is called so. Or called Clair de Lune, actually. Arguably, Debussy was using more of the twelve tones than the song is using.
Nevertheless, I think one twelve tone random sequence will not be consistently hars dissonance, it will vary between harsh dissonance, light dissonance, consonance and some more.
Par Alton — Travail personnel, Domaine public, Lien
Looking at these two bars, it is obvious that a scrambling will be less rhythmical, but clearly harmonic. However, this is because they are in the same harmony, only part of the key.
Even so, even four bars or eight bars, the harmonic will outweigh the disharmonic. The main problem would be the irregular rhythm. Arguably, there would also be some irregularity of sequence of harmonies. But it would not sound like Wozzek. In order to sound like Wozzek, unbearable, you need to arrange a sequence of unbearable dissonances. Like, I speak from bad experience (I was trying to make a kind of homage to Stravinsky, it came out more Wozzek, horror of horrors!) pure fourth plus augmented fourth. Very effective Wozzekiser!
So, no, the presumption that simple lack of order, simple chaos, is unbearable to the human mind, is wrong. It is wrong in the domaine of musical appreciation, and it is also wrong in the other domains. Accepting chaos (rather than seeking order) is not the utmost satisfaction of the human mind, but it is also not the horror of horrors. Indeed, it is an art which can be learned. It is a somewhat sluggish art, but it is not an excruciating horror.
This means, using logic to examine questions (including either "where do we come from, where do we go" or any part questions leading up to it) is not giving in to some kind of trauma, it is using the equipment we have for its most noble quest.
It is also simply wrong to think Edmond is not in his own right engaging in this question, since his presumption our thoughts come from our brains and its wiring, and our brains evolved, is part of the evolutionist answer to the question. I think it is the wrong answer, but as that is outside the thing about Clair de Lune, courtesy of Debussy, and its "random scrambling", I'll refer you to another blog:
Creation vs. Evolution
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/
Obviously, however, in order to make the exposé about how we have a horror of randomly scrambled notes, Edmond Kirsch had to actually NOT scramble the notes randomly, but use deliberate Wozzek harmonies.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Louise Michel
St. Matthias Apostle
25.II.2020
* See Origin (Brown novel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(Brown_novel)
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