Why i like contemporary classical music and contemporary sociological theory: Three ironies of Michael Bell's "strange music"

I had never heard of classical music's fi rst principle until I read Michael Bell's paper (that principle is "Do what you are told"). In fact, as a violinist, what immediately popped into my head as a "fi rst principle" was "Play in tune!" This is exactly what I was told the fi rst time I ever played for the pedagogue Dorothy DeLay (to be more accurate, I was told, "Sugarplum, you need to work on your intonation"). So I started to ask musicians I know-some known, some working on becoming so, and some just working-"What is the fi rst principle of music?" I rarely got the same answer. And the most common answer was a variant of my own impulse: It was, simply, "Practice!".