History and Impulse

Improvisation, atonality, minimalism.

These are means to creative perspectives, nothing more.  Audience and composer have perspectives of their own.  Other forces are in motion.

Conditions

Culture, character, and temperament impact artistic works.

This extends to audience expectations as well. The extent to which the artist allows these various pressures to be exerted upon the work is not always a matter of conscious choice, but it can be.

This is not to say that everything can be reduced to a matter of individuality, originality, and the ability to discern nuanced expression, but these are no less qualities of authentic significance, and as such they are not to be merely cast aside in the name of conformity to the social and cultural trends of the moment.

Duration

Immersed in cultural settings, many, including large populations, refuse to reason altogether.

The impermanent contemporary norms are neither questioned nor challenged; the sole real need of one and all so subjected is to conform.  In such a benighted state one cannot even comprehend the previous sentence, and the very idea of becoming engaged by an authentic experience of art or the critical perception of challenging music is ludicrous.

The artist who is not cognizant of these facts is doing no more than wasting time.

Only the individual is capable of realizing the gravity of the situation through objective observation, and only then is it possible to take the difficult steps necessary to remove oneself from these chains.

Craft, and Drive

Perspectives are innumerable.

Every point of view is, to some extent, flawed.  This is, regardless, the value of objectivity, and also of imperfection.

Clear

Complicate or simplify art, to any purpose whatsoever.

In either case art remains unchanged.  Perspective alone is altered.

Interest, Apathy, Darkness, and Light

This is an era of prolonged cultural void, lacking in intellectual and artistic vision.

The virtue of the empty vessel is that it may be filled.

Exercise II

Find patterns, tones, colors and dynamic forms in apparently unconnected events.

Translate these into representative artistic expressions utilizing sounds or the artist's palette.