Meaning is enhanced by stylization and degraded by exaggeration.
Generic music runs its course and becomes devalued, the perceived similarity of all of it rendering it meaningless to the casual listener more interested in nodding to rhythm than contemplating the poetic lyric or the well-executed improvisation. The accessibility of recordings, in terms of sheer numbers, is absurd; it would be impossible to listen to more than a fraction of them in a lifetime.
Thus the composer, by virtue of imagination as well as existential necessity, must create works that are sui generis.
Generic music runs its course and becomes devalued, the perceived similarity of all of it rendering it meaningless to the casual listener more interested in nodding to rhythm than contemplating the poetic lyric or the well-executed improvisation. The accessibility of recordings, in terms of sheer numbers, is absurd; it would be impossible to listen to more than a fraction of them in a lifetime.
Thus the composer, by virtue of imagination as well as existential necessity, must create works that are sui generis.
