Monday, January 10, 2005
Abstractions
I think it’s fair to speak of a generational shift: Martin Mailman (b. 1932) and Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) -- see the David Salvage post that started this discussion -- come from a generation that was trained to believe in the concreteness of music. This is a generation, after all, that saw music put in the service of all kinds of atrocities, so it was important to argue for the purity of music as a form of artistic expression. There is a more abstract leaning these days: composers today of all ages are more comfortable with thinking metaphorically, connecting their work to things that are outside of a strict definition of music.
Ironically, even the terms have shifted: music that existed solely on its own terms used to be called abstract, whereas now it is common to think of music-for-music’s-sake as the pinnacle of concreteness -- as opposed to, say, program music, which has an abstract connection to something, extra-musical: a story, a painting, etc.
posted by Lawrence Dillon
7:54 PM
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