Week 22 6/3/18

It is a curious thing to create something markedly different from previous forms, if similar in nature.

Research tone poems, Erik Satie, Debussy, Cage, Eno, yet move continuously away from both "music" and "noise". The aural aesthetic remains, while musical paradigms diminish.

Those who are said to have heard music in paranormal or "enchanted" settings describe a kind of enigmatic impression of beautiful sounds that cannot be recollected or re-created in musical terms.

Such impressions may lend themselves to altered perceptual awareness, changes in attention, emotional perspective, and cognitive acuity, or even elevated states of consciousness.

Ambimusica.com

Week 20 5/20/18

Have you heard the term "avant-garde" lately?

Such is the unfortunate nature of a complacent culture, lacking in foresight and vision.  Nonetheless, one moves, and moves forward.

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Expansion, Diminishment

Some define the role of the composer as an author or creator of "art" as "serious music".

While this may be useful to certain people, and particularly those who adhere to general cultural norms related to music, it is a view that is inimical to wide-ranging perspectives on art and sound.  

These latter viewpoints cannot be conveniently restricted or labeled, but they are in many ways notable as modern, dynamic, individualistic, and avant-garde, though these terms simply suggest starting points for an aesthetic understanding those bound to the former are unlikely to pursue.  

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Exercise III

Compare original work with works of the masters in the field.

Similarities imply fundamentals; contrasting elements represent individual perspective. The former demonstrates competence, cultural literacy, and temperament, while the latter reflects expressive intent, personal experience, critical acumen, and stylistic gesture as influence yields to originality.

Balance, Rise, Decline

Find the mysteries of reality. Perceive within them.

What is viewed as an unknowable future inevitably becomes ancient history.

Media Fog

Artists of integrity are never less than honest brokers of cultural information.

Artistic communication is often shadow-play, nevertheless, yet artists direct the attention to the places where they dwell, either toward light or darkness.

This understanding is the responsibility of the audience-- but it is not always present.

Simulacrum, or State Otherwise

Popular innovations are few.

For commercial purposes, and particularly in terms of musical forms, the rule is imitation, and thus works and performances are relegated to genre.  In the arts, this is indefensible.

There is no breathing room in such narrow confines. Survival is one thing, and commercial viability is another. But to create, really innovate on an individualistic, heightened level of awareness, one must break away altogether, even if no form exists in which to function.

Such forms, which are as yet unimagined, must be made real.

Wild Cry, Left at Great Distance

It is misleading to suggest culture is in a state of decline.

Popular culture is perpetually in a state of decline, based, as it is, upon the notion of "living only for the moment".  Forward-thinking is anathema in such conditions, which are always characterized by absurd emotionalism, squandered passion, insipid vainglory, and the stale idea that some ill-defined, nebulous "we" are "all in this together".

I am interested in art produced by individuals, for individuals.  In composition, it is always my goal to expand, not limit, and elevate consciousness.

This, at all times, defines my perspective on the modern world.

Order of Progress

The way of the artist is that of the individualistic gesture.

Of course this is existential rebellion, in opposition to the common, the mundane, and the self- righteously complacent everywhere manifest in contemporary culture at all times.

Who will think, rather than be told, will reach beyond the surface of appearances.  For the artist as composer, this is the critical choice between music that now exists and sounds that must instead be brought into being.

Equanimity and Tone

Light, space, and atmosphere are conducive to evolved thinking.

Sound in the aesthetic environment enhances, but does not dominate. This is the nature of refined, or, if you prefer, critical thought, in that it is self-sufficient, highly informed, tempered by experience, and internally motivated. Thus the composer rejects bombast and predictability, holding to a vision defined by intellectual curiosity and perceptual stimulation.

Atmospheres for Imaginary Settings

Cultural conditioning sets limits that define music.

Certainly in free societies this does not have to be the case, and with knowledge and percipience come broader, more critical perspectives than those associated with predictable musical content.

In point of fact, very few listeners, songwriters, and composers take an interest in expansion beyond the generalized commercial and academic horizons, not because audiences would have no interest in such endeavors-- a lack of interest in musical genres and fashions, even the so called "refined" ones, declines precipitously as the listener moves further beyond adolescence-- but because the knowledge of advanced aural compositions, their aesthetics, and their purposes have yet to articulated properly to the public at large.  Ambient music, as defined by Brian Eno and others, has indeed been established as such, and with intellectual clarity according to its character.

But it is what I would call the sonic setting composition that is different in nature than ambient music, engaged, as it is, with the perceptions and consciousness of the listener, and created according to an entirely different paradigm. This requires analysis accordingly, and ultimately, a kind of introduction, via informed artists and individuals, into the broader cultural setting.  Otherwise one need expect no more than the perpetuation of the state of things in the musical arts.

Enigmatic Pursuit

New and unformed roots inevitably take hold.

When music and audience are altered irrevocably, pivotal changes transform expression of sound.