Composers Forum is a daily web log that allows invited contemporary composers to share their thoughts and ideas on any topic that interests them--from the ethereal, like how new music gets created, music history, theory, performance, other composers, alive or dead, to the mundane, like getting works played and recorded and the joys of teaching. If you're a professional composer and would like to participate, send us an e-mail.
Composer Blogs@
Sequenza21.com
Lawrence Dillon
Elodie Lauten
Judith Lang Zaimont
Everette Minchew
Tom Myron
|
Latest Posts
thoughts on influence
Rodney Lister
influence
Lawrence Dillon
The (Non-)Anxiety of Influence
Tom Myron
The Ethics of an (Autocratic?) Education
Corey Dargel
Well, since you asked...
Rodney Lister
Words, Music, and Performance
Corey Dargel
what works have most influenced my music
Beth Anderson
Name That Tune
Jerry Bowles
Posted by [Dysfunctional]
Corey Dargel
Start Reading This Blog
Galen H. Brown
|
|
Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for review. Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, New York, NY 10019
|
Archives
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Monday, January 03, 2005
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Friday, January 07, 2005
Monday, January 10, 2005
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Friday, January 14, 2005
Monday, January 17, 2005
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Friday, January 21, 2005
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Monday, January 24, 2005
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Friday, January 28, 2005
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Friday, February 04, 2005
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Monday, February 14, 2005
Friday, February 18, 2005
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Monday, February 21, 2005
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Friday, February 25, 2005
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Monday, February 28, 2005
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Friday, March 04, 2005
Monday, March 07, 2005
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Friday, March 11, 2005
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Friday, March 18, 2005
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Monday, March 21, 2005
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Friday, March 25, 2005
Monday, March 28, 2005
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Monday, April 04, 2005
|
|
Friday, March 04, 2005
What Is It?
Perhaps the question of what music actually is has no clear answer. Certainly music is many things to many people. Stylistically, chronologically, aesthetically, music forms a remarkably complex tapestry of human creative effort.
We can name the parameters of music. Sound. (But not necessarily always.) Silence. (But not necessarily always.) Rhythm. (But not necessarily always.) Dynamics, pulse, meter, color, the dimensions go on in kaleidoscopic array, but may be present or not, so music cannot be strictly said to be these things. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe it's easier to say what it does rather than what it is.
But I think that it has a single common element: the delineation of time. Through an aural medium, we frame a segment of time with a beginning and an end, though some may claim to write eternal pieces. (And some just seem that way.) But if we frame a bit of time in this fashion, within a specified space, then sound, or the lack of it, becomes the medium through which a composer and musicians provide a common emotional, intellectual, or artistic experience--along with all of the cultural context (also framed by time, geography, and perhaps philosophy) that go along with it.
Music exists on a more evanescent plane than any other, and dependent on time as it’s real medium. An experience on that plane can be good or bad, depending on any great number of factors.
posted by Cary Boyce
8:38 AM
Weighing in on terminology
Most of the terms used in art history to define the various style periods and isms seem to have their origins in the negative. Baroque (deformed), Neo-Classical (pastiche), Impressionist (vague), Atonal (incomprehensible) are terms that are borrowed by musicology with mixed results. One of my teachers, Roger Sessions, used to call these terms "filing cabinets." He was not opposed to having filing cabinets, but he did think that one should empty or rearrange your files every few years.
For more information on Sessions please visit the new website < www.AndreaOlmstead.com>. Her three books on Sessions--"Roger Sessions and His Music," "Conversations with Roger Sessions," and "The Correspondence of Roger Sessions"-- are available to be read (or downloaded) here for free. There is much of value here, especially in the "Conversations," on the subject of terminology. In addition, Sessions's Norton Lectures, "Questions About Music," has much to say about the objective evaluation of music and the criteria used for that evaluation.
In my experience, most interested listeners ask composers what kind of music they write simply because they want to know where to buy it (or literally what filing cabinet it's in). So, in the interests of selling music we do fall back on the term "classical" because of its usefulness. It is nevertheless symptomatic of earnest composers to think far too much about this subject. For those of you who wish to think even more deeply about terminology and definitions I would recommend Suzanne Langer's work in esthetics, especially "Feeling and Form." This is a most serious source for anyone looking for clarity on the "big" questions.
posted by Larry Thomas Bell
8:22 AM
|
|
