Today's Sermonette...

Kyle Gann wrote:

"Cage had unleashed the force of nature into music, and everyone was
obsessed with sonority and process, trying to get their own personality
out of the music and let nature speak for itself. The objectivity of
12-tone music had given way to a perhaps even greater objectivity of
process-oriented logic. But over years of experimentation, I found that
nature didn't speak through me. The natural processes I came up with
were more tedious than compelling.....Whatever joy I took in composing
had to do with the personal and subjective: the quirky melodic
decoration, the unexpected key change, the rhythmic figure that seems
bizarre at first, but finally becomes familiar through repetition."

Yea, brother.

"....I was hungry for art to reintegrate the human element, the personal
element, the whimsical and idiosyncratic. Nature is a paradigm that an
artist can hardly help worshipping, but ultimately I felt that we also
need an art that is about being human, with all the attendant neuroses,
embarrassments, longings, and humor. I love(d) abstract expressionism,
but I wanted to know how, once we had made our way through it, we were
going to come back to dealing with the uncomfortableness and absurdity
of human consciousness."

Verily.

"....new music was now about sound waves and not
personality.....Distinctions like natural versus psychological, literal
versus metaphorical, are not trivial: they are the axes in reference to
which we position ourselves to stake out aesthetic territory and explore
what music means and what it can accomplish, because, thankfully, we'll
never know everything music can achieve. But just as it was
fundamentally stupid to think, as so many did in the '50s, "OK, the age
of tonal music is over, from now on music can only be atonal and anyone
who lapses back into tonality is not with the times," it would be
equally stupid to think that "history now demands" that music now be
always literal in its depiction, or that psychological metaphor must be
abandoned as old-fashioned. George Rochberg was right: the problem with
12-tone music was not what it added to our vocabulary but what it tried
to subtract, that it attempted to outlaw anything associated with the
past. The history of creative music never goes backward, but neither
does it ever decide that one side of a creative duality is now useless,
and only the opposite side can be gainfully explored."

Yea, verily, halleleujah and amen!

The music that holds the greatest interest for most humans, that always
has throughout all history, is that which parallels human discourse:
mono- and dialogues, turns of phrase, juxtaposition, argument, poetry
and vulgarity, metaphor and simile, point and counterpoint.

"New" explorations in the arts will always attract immediate notice --
novelty has that effect on intelligent humans. But after the novelty
wears off, and people find little resembling "humanity" in such art --
nothing intimate and personal they can relate to -- they will fall away
from it. Such art endures only by way of its temporary novety. (At this
point, the artist becomes an ideologue who bitterly disparages the
public's lack of "understanding".)

JS Bach is the composer whose music makes me think most of Nature -- not
by tedious processes, or blunt imitation, but by inducing a state of
consciousness in me similar to that which Nature Herself induces. Yet
his music is also quite human in its joy and contemplation and devotion.
This is the main reason his works, and the works of so many other
composers, continue to attract admirers.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

"The history of creative music never goes backward, but neither
does it ever decide that one side of a creative duality is now useless,
and only the opposite side can be gainfully explored."

Yet this is exactly what you do when you imply that all process-oriented,
"natural" music is by definition tedious, shallow, and short-lived. You
took his exploration of two (valid) artistic paths and turned it into a
diatribe against music which KG specifically praises. Why??

Nevermind that none of this relates to MMM.

Not trying to flame, but I was slightly irritated. Still, no offense taken.

Chris Bryan

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Chris Bryan" <chris@...> wrote:
>
> "The history of creative music never goes backward, but neither
> does it ever decide that one side of a creative duality is now
useless,
> and only the opposite side can be gainfully explored."
>
>
> Yet this is exactly what you do when you imply that all
process-oriented,
> "natural" music is by definition tedious, shallow, and short-lived.
You
> took his exploration of two (valid) artistic paths and turned it into
a
> diatribe against music which KG specifically praises. Why??

Diatribe? I think I'm flattered, Chris. Actually, my secondary
contention was that artistic *novelty* as such is short-lived (not more
than a few decades) and very often contrived. Witness the 12-tone
school, its intended goals and the actual results obtained. I might
mention here that "tedious" and "shallow" is found anywhere you care to
look. "Valid" borders dangerously on subjective opinion, for both of us.

My primary contention was agreement with Kyle regarding the very human
need for human music, for the involvement of humans in music. For me
specifically, this opposes "process" music, "natural" music, or "chance
music", or anything that removes the composer from the primary
decision-making act of creation.

I'm not really interested in minimalism, or sound-sculpture, or waves of
pure, overtone-laden tone anymore. Not because I doubt its "validity" as
far as the artists and their efforts are concerned (each to his/her own
path), but because of the more than five years I spent composing works
in that style. It was interesting and rewarding, but also showed me
where I really needed to be. So, give me a freaking break if I take a
good-natured poke at something I myself composed -- and try not to be so
thin-skinned!

> Nevermind that none of this relates to MMM.

It might, if the musical novelty in question involves banging on
eco-friendly "microtonal" flower pots, or humming pitches from the
overtone series for an hour. But that's just an opinion (I had my own
set of "tuned" wok pan covers, really nice sounding).

> Not trying to flame, but I was slightly irritated. Still, no offense
taken.
>
> Chris Bryan

I'm glad you aren't offended Chris, because it wasn't my intention. I
may have some pointed opinions about what constitutes music, but I have
no absolute dislike of the type of music here spoken of (how could I --
please re-read the above paragraph), and some of it is intriguing -- but
to me, only as novelty. Perhaps what we're really discussing here is a
new fork in the artistic road: music as traditionally perceived and
composed on the one hand, and something we can call "sound sculpture" or
"sonic art" or what have you on the other.

> I'm glad you aren't offended Chris, because it wasn't my intention. I
> may have some pointed opinions about what constitutes music, but I have
> no absolute dislike of the type of music here spoken of (how could I --
> please re-read the above paragraph), and some of it is intriguing -- but
> to me, only as novelty. Perhaps what we're really discussing here is a
> new fork in the artistic road: music as traditionally perceived and
> composed on the one hand, and something we can call "sound sculpture" or
> "sonic art" or what have you on the other.

Fair enough, but I think it's unfair to condemn the entire genre of
"sound art" to the fate of 12-tone modernism, as you did when you said
"But after the novelty
wears off, and people find little resembling 'humanity' in such art
... they will fall away from it. Such art endures only by way of its
temporary novety.[sic]" You're not dismissing novelty itself here,
but the music you think has no value beyond it.

I still feel torn between these two paths, and different pieces come
out on different sides. But in the end, the perceived 'humanity' or
lack of it is only an illusion: whether a melody or soundscape, *I*
am still the one who creates something and then says "Yes! I'd like to
share that with others!" THAT's the real humanity of music, whether
it's Beethoven or Niblock :)

-Chris