Discuss
I prefer to say that I consider myself a writer of music more than a composer. I just try to tell stories through the music narrative. I do this in the simplest, almost naive way possible. However, if there is something that leads me when I start writing a piece, it is to avoid communicating something tiring and boring. I want people to find my music sentimental and moving and also, as far as possible, to fancy listening to it again. I am talking about being accessible to the listener and the performers. In other words, I do not write for composers. – Jorge Grundman (1961- )
Maybe it’s because I am hopelessly retro or maybe it’s where I am in my life right now but I was blown away by a new CD that drifted in the other day called God’s Sketches by the Brodsky Quartet featuring the work of the Spanish “music writer” Jorge Grundman. Putting aside the possibility that denying you’re a composer when you write music is probably more pretentious than admitting that you are, what do we think of this guy? Is he for real or have I fallen victim to to a New Age claptrap guilty pleasure?
” I just try to tell stories through the music narrative.”
hmm … the concept of “musical narrative”, as many reading here may know from their undergraduate study of music and aesthetics, is philosophically problematic.
Beethoven’s Pastorale (or Moonlight), Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony, and the third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony (or Mahler’s Second and Third Symphonies), are not “musical narratives”. (Vivaldi’s Four Seasons apes its suppressed literary text.)
I suggest those wanting to discuss this topic seriously review philosopher of music Jerrold Levinson’s “Music as Narrative and Music as Drama” (and his “Film Music and Narrative Agency”) in his collection Contemplating Art (Oxford U. Press, 2006).
Hi Jerry. I think the video may give people the wrong impression: that this is treacly music. On the contrary, it’s got a number of affecting passages. The central section, with mallets haloed by string chords, is somewhat reminiscent of Gavin Bryars’s orchestrations. I can see why you like it and hope to hear more of this piece