[Cúdae]

Aiwendil:
You are correct about something to be said for the use of imbalance as well. But the imbalance is not exactly an imbalance if it was intentional. The imbalance is balanced by the reaction of the listener, the reader, etc. to the imbalance or the imbalance balances itself out with a beginning and an end to or in the imbalance. (I truly hope that made sense...I am confusing myself.)

To answer what x and y stand for, I merely meant that they were different from each other, as in something like 12 is not equal to 15.

Kalessin:
You are correct that the process of breaking down music to mathematics is almost exclusively applied to western classical music. But, you used the word almost. Western classical music is most often the music broken down because it is the music that the balance can most easily be seen in. But, I firmly believe that it is possible to find a balance in any music from any time period. Now, I know you are going to argue with me about what I am about to say: Everything and anything can be broken down into balanced mathematics and everything and this goes for all art forms. Whether I, or anyone else, has the mathematical knowledge to do this is an entirely different story. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Music is personal, physical AND cerebral - it is communal and individual.

Alright, I won't argue with that, but if my theory of math being the basis for everything works then that means that the deepest emotional feeling has some mathematical root. This root may prompt the person to compose some music that is based on the math that they subconsciously know. Don't ask me how, it merely seems to fit. I'm not that great of a math student to figure it all out. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

It predates logic and western mathematical systems by thousands of years.

Maybe. Maybe not. Did ancient peoples refer to adding something to another thing as addition? Even though they did not, it does not mean that it did not exist. Also, one of the earliest forms of counting was the beat of a drum- music. Also, I don't think I understand you in one aspect: Western mathematical systems would be what? Is subtraction any different in Europe than in China? Am I going to find that in Saudi Arabia, 5-3 does not equal 2, but 4?

I can easily agree with you on the fact that music is universal to humanity- it is one of the few. But, then I can go right ahead and add: Mathematics is universal to humanity. As I said before: Subtraction in Asia isn't going to be any different than subtraction in Europe. It may have a different name, a different number system, whatever. But when you take 2 sticks away from a pile of five sticks, you are going to have 3 left.

I recognize the need to make something very clear very quickly. Balance is <u>not</u> sound in music. It can be, and very often it is, but is not always. What sounds balanced to one person may not for another.

...the question is how a writer can succeed in his footsteps without either being derivative or imitating, or on the other hand self-consciously avoiding anything that could be seen as Tolkeinesque influence or resonance.

Perhaps the secret to a writer succeeding in Tolkien's footsteps is the idea that to avoid anything Tolkienesque the writer must stop trying to avoid being Tolkienesque. In other words: Maybe for a writer to succeed and to be seen as original he needs to leave the idea of self-consciously avoiding Tolkien influences. He needs to stop thinking of Tolkien and think of his own knowledge and draw conclusions from that rather than another writer. If you tell yourself not to think of Tolkien's works, you are thinking of Tolkien's works in the process.

Is it absolutely essential for a worthy successor to Tolkien to refer to mythic archetypes? Of course not, that is a sure way to get this author rstuck in the mud of Tolkien-influence. A better way to go about the idea might be to appeal to the reader's sense of judgement, of fairness, of unfairness, and of heroism. To take the reader's mind and appeal to the judgement of good vs. evil or of fair vs. unfair is to use mythical motifs in a way that is not clearly mythical. To create a mythology for the 20th and/or 21st centuries would be a feat indeed since what is usually thought of in mythology has virtually disappeared. But it would not be impossible to take modern events and make them mythical. To exalt heroes of wars and to condemn enemies who are thought of in a certain world culture to be "evil" is not as hard as it seems.