Convergence II

To trace the progress of music through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is to observe developments in artistic vision and technology and the rise and decline of familiar musical genres.

Common elements of these developments are the movement from the simple to the complex (and back again), the merging of styles, the standardization of commercial products and, in contrast to the latter, experimentation and risk in the pursuit of change.

Question, reflect, challenge, envision, and bring into being.

Perception, Reason, Nuance

The past lies in the future, the present in both; nothing appears out of thin air.

Life in a frenetic atmosphere is often represented as a cultural ideal, as a life of excitement or a state of affairs in which one is continually engaged in a series of passionate extremes in work and at play.  One sees particular historical periods as well as virtually all contemporary life portrayed in this manner, that is to say, in a romanticized and absurd way. 

Consider, only briefly, the kinds of music associated with such situations.  It is predictable, unchanging, propelled by the same instruments according to the same formulas, and geared to dominate, if not to overwhelm, the attention of the listener.  In other words, enjoyable as it may be from time to time, as a constant in the course of everyday activities, it becomes nothing special, bland and finally boring.

Other ways of listening and composing have developed separately over time, not as reactions against the time-worn flavors of popular music, but according to different points of view about art, and life.

Simplicity, Complexity, Reality and the Imagination

Sensory experience is a means of making connections.

The fundamental nature of seeing and hearing directs the observer, consciously or intuitively, toward an intellectual and emotional grasp of the nature of things and their innumerable relationships.  The creative or artistic impulse engages and orders these relationships into a statement, in one form or another, about what these relationships might possibly mean.

Light strikes the eye and the vision of an artist confronts perception; vibrations strike the ear and we share and respond to the sounds of a composer, or the words of a speaker.  As an artist brings a statement within our awareness, we bring experiences of our own to art.  If moved to do so, we reflect upon what these connections we have made say about the world and ourselves. 

Free Expression

There are no longer stark divisions between the fine arts and the popular arts.  Such distinctions are matters of individual discrimination and taste. 

Individuals who are less likely to be bound by cultural limits are by nature more receptive to imaginative works of art that appeal to their intellectual and emotional dispositions. Their tastes in films, music, and literary works reflect their own interests, rather than those of a narrow range of common experience that was once much more prevalent than it is now.
 
This is not to say that an age demographic is in play, but, in point of fact, to state the opposite. Works of aesthetic virtue are more accessible to a more diverse audience than ever.

Fashions and styles that once dominated cultural conditions (and cultural conditioning) no longer have a lock on the collective consciousness. 

This affords freedom of expression in ways as yet not fully realized.

Delineations

Imagery communicates sensory impressions, especially in their absence, in an appeal to one's fund of experience.

The imagined sounds of times and spaces, shapes and colors, physical gestures, textures, shadows and lights-- and so on in myriad diversity-- when combined in speculative sketches, bring to an environment an artistic portrayal of shifting perceptions.

A room takes on aspects of an aural action painting, an open field of impressions; the imagination of the listener contributes unique perspectives of meaning and detail.

Words free of predictable limits rise in the directions of poetry, and sounds released from mundane musical structures flow out into poems born of tones and permutations.

Imagined Musics

Forms suggest their elements in other forms.  Environments propose visual and auditory imagery.

Given creative consideration, a synthesis of elements comes into being-- sounds, instruments, voices, scenarios for performance or composition-- tones, moods, atmospheres-- impressions, spatial designs, proportions and textures, dynamics-- and a concept develops of musical forms evolving over a course of time. 

Spaces created, filled, emptied, reconfigured, all illuminated with sounds, challenge ideas of what music is and what it may become. 

Mosaic, Collage

Sound to reflect impression; tone to express emotion; pattern to engage perceptions, all interconnected and interchangable.

Each sound contributing to the following sound and to the whole; pattern combining with phrase and complementary pattern; tone and phrase echoed and reflecting each other; metaphoric color, light, temperature, distance, depth, implying meaning, apparently effortless and impossible.

All react and relate in part and in fullness to sketch out a sense of the sublime, a breath of balsam forest daybreak, a cafe filled with voices in unknown languages, a journey shared over a course of seasons.

Appearances

Things passed by unnoticed in the grip of routine may reveal insights into the nature of things, given but a degree of conscious observation.

Simplicity or complexity, whether in processes of design, with regard to human emotions, or in consideration of ideas, often depends upon subtlety of perception.

Stream

A profusion of thoughts, emotions, and sensory perceptions is characteristic of works such as Ulysses by James Joyce, in which expressions of direct experience are conveyed through descriptive literary imagery.  While such works were considered originally to be breaks from traditional forms, they have ultimately become traditional in their own ways.

As T.S. Eliot conveyed a poetic vision via fragmented imagery and the objective correlative, Charles Olson proposed that poetry render direct experience through direct expression, patterned after speech and delineating a flow of perceptions, unlimited by formal structure.  The vigorous nature of his ideas gained momentum outside the environs of academia, developed into forms carried forward by the Beat writers, and remains influential in numerous fields, including contemporary popular music.

In William S. Burroughs's novel The Ticket That Exploded the author expanded upon the idea of capturing elements of subjective psychic states by suggesting the use of cutting and splicing recorded sounds on tape and recombining them, as he had done with words using the aptly-named "cut up" technique.  Here is another instance of the stream of consciousness literary form being further modified in the attempt to communicate myriad levels of meaning simultaneously. 

Reflections of these concepts are found throughout the arts of the twentieth century and those of contemporary times, and are by nature intimately connected with diverse aspects of the music under consideration in these observations. 

Ideas, even recondite ones, do not simply cease to exist, but carry live sparks.

Balance and Emphasis II

There is always a collective consciousness of ideas manifested in cultural and social settings.

Shadows of ideas perceived vaguely or half-formed, some unconscious and others clearly ill-conceived, motivate expression and communication over a wide range of activities. The arts and sciences are no more or less subject to such errors than other fields of human endeavor, but these errors permeate works of weak foundation and, as history demonstrates, they fail the test of time.

All ideas are interwoven, and their value comes from their conceptual integrity.  When the world of ideas and the cultural arts demonstrates impulses that are critical as well as creative, a renewal of human awareness is one necessary outcome.

Abstract Atmospheres

Rimbaud spoke of intentional derangement of the senses, and, metaphorically, these long-term experiments in tone and technology (1996 to present) have brought about works that subtly evoke a similar aesthetic of auditory perception.

In general terms, ambient music as made by musicians adheres to the standard musical paradigms, and listening makes that clear-- its design and execution is admirable for these qualities. From much listening, it appears the popular "new age" stylings are mostly of the elegant and "mellow" sort, while the "dark ambient" takes the opposite tack, and other approaches are akin to jazz or novelty music, some pieces interesting and experimental, others a bit trite. This is oversimplification of a rich and dynamic genre, to be sure, but the point is self-reflection, not academic or pop cultural analysis.

In contrast, to listen to Black Mountain School is to hear Cubism, Impressionism, and Abstract Expression engaged through generative manipulation. It tends to be a bit on its own, somewhat anomalous, and, perhaps, remote.

Hills Beneath the Mountains

Every setting has its unique sounds and sound characteristics.  To become aware of them is to hear music, formless and flowing.

In a remote rural area an hour before sunrise a crescent moon revealed by a scattering of dark, heavy rainclouds provokes the sound of roosters crowing a mile or more away.  Traffic sounds rise and fall on a distant highway; the shrill hissing of night insects reaches a crescendo and goes silent. 

Hushed winds stir and wildlife moves among the shadowy trees with cracklings of leaves and branches.

Frames of Mind

Constraints on twenty-first century composition are few.  Structures may be expanded, sounds explored and modified, and methods and strategies given flexibility in the design of expressive works.

Artistic vision is shaped by sensibility, receptivity, and perception.  One chooses one's cultural tools-- ideas and technologies-- from those accessible, and develops according to proficiency gained through their use. 

A Black Mountain School recording is designed in such a way that, with each completed piece, listeners may engage their individual emotions, experiences, and visions through the context of the work, as though they were finding shapes, patterns, and pictures in clouds in the sky.

Reason and Vision

Ideas imply responsibilities.

The gifts of knowledge and and understanding bring with them an awareness of the necessity of sharing them, and of expressing them with integrity and honesty.  To be realistic, one must be cognizant of the negative aspects of cultural phenomena as well, and be prepared to counter them with reason and example.  It is a challenge to see beyond the superficial and the absurd, and to creatively engage in communicating ways to look beyond the trivial and mundane.

But it was ever thus, and thus the value of the arts and sciences.

Stillness

The sounds of quiet moments possess enchantments, if one but listens.

Transformation Listening

Each piece recorded by Black Mountain School is oriented in such a way as to sustain mood over a length of time through a slowly evolving dynamic series of independent combinations of sounds.

 

These are sounds to be perceived as they are; it is not necessary to "follow" them, especially by the typical means of melody, rhythm, and beat, those being elements that commonly dominate the listener's attention.  While serving as enhancements to the environment, these recordings also exert a subtle influence on one's state of mind, providing atmospheric space in which to think outside the often frenetic pace of things generally given to be "normal". 

What these works are and what they do is unconventional, though accessible to everyone receptive to diverse musical styles and to different ways of listening to music. 

Subtext

Observe the ways in which the attention is directed to certain aspects of cultural reality, and away from others.

Through artifice, glamour and attitude are generated to fulfill needs and expectations of a consumer audience for atmosphere and a sense of connectivity and community.  Some would argue that this is an incomplete and unfulfilling arrangement, but that is not of moment here.  What is notable is that the context itself is often more interesting than the activity designed to engage the attention, for what it says about cultural conditions and the vision of those involved in producing or opposing them.

Postulate music that appeals to sound emotional temperament and invites reflection and creative reasoning.

Technology and Technique

The studio process, and the studio considered conceptually as an instrument, have undergone change over time that rivals that of the evolution of other twentieth century technologies.

Beyond the elimination of financially prohibitive recording scenarios and esoteric equipment, the means of manipulating sound forms and reproducing aural textures has led to conditions through which the imaginative artist or producer can envision entire sonic territories that may be brought into being. 

With due emphasis on patience and meticulous precision, it is possible to develop a repertoire of strategies and methods to create works that have never before been possible.

The Wright brothers first flight took place in 1903.  In 1969 Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the lunar surface, on the Sea of Tranquility. 

People of vision are even now touching the future.

Form and the Formless

Visual and musical arts, like those of a poetic or tactile nature, may direct perception in unexpected ways.

Before we take notice of weather reports we are fascinated by the way raindrops dance on hard surfaces, the ways they form wide patterns while disappearing in a sudden flash of liquid silver; only later do we first think of carrying an umbrella.  With the acquisition of information and familiarity with the commonplace, it is easy to rely on the routine ways of seeing and being, hearing and thinking.  

Easier still is to become distracted by the pressures of responsibility or the popular diversions, losing, along the way, the sense of the unexpected or unknown.  But the beautiful and the marvelous are always to be found, sometimes in simple things and sometimes in complexity.

This is to explain nothing, but to take note, as always, of artistic ideas and intentions. 

Art, Music, Poetry, Mysticism

Much of what is considered ineffable with regard to the arts has more to do with coming to terms with reality itself than with the mysterious or the paranormal.

"Who we are" is more than a function of society and culture, and more than self-image, persona, and intellect.  Measurements of character and integrity, and of the genuine or spurious nature of the appearances of things, convenient and useful as they are in navigating day-to-day experience, do not confer more than a deeper regard for the problems of human nature.

The arts challenge all of these, and the complacency that accompanies dependency upon any of them as sources of smug self-absorption.  That these values and ideas have their place is not in question; that it is possible to rise above attachments to the mundane and the narrowly limited, in culture, ideology, and world-view, is of equal importance to the expansion of consciousness.

To see beyond the present and to strive for the fulfillment of higher ideals is a transcendence of the "given" in our lives and a more powerful understanding of what it is to be human.

The arts offer perspectives from which to consider these possibilities.