Environs

Musical selections programmed for public places presume, with some accuracy, various attitudes and emotional perspectives, and adhere generally to the rhythm and pace of social activity.

In short, such music reflects and promotes movement, manipulates and entertains.

Consider, in contrast, musical environments conducive to reflection and contemplative, creative activity, designed in such a way as to illuminate consciousness while contributing to clarity of thought.  

Changes in the Nature of Listening

Conceptual compositions designed to reflect the manner in which the observer encounters sounds in the real world also draw the receptive listener into altered perspectives and perceptions of sounds and surroundings.

As a result of becoming oriented to ways of listening and hearing beyond one's accustomed norms, sensitivity to aesthetically beautiful aural impressions-- what might be called the fair sounds of the everyday-- grows to be constant and immersive.

Intimacy and Transcendence

Moving freely to diverse perspectives, the authentic and the artificial become less well-defined and the imaginative, suggestive, and perceptually striking seize the attention.

The tedium of constant familiarity loses its grip, giving way to the impulse toward fuller cognition and deeper awareness of setting and scene, implication and intention, the visionary and the uncanny.

Listen, hear, experience; move beyond general expectation and the excessive and the absurd as well, on toward clarity, balance, and, one may dare say, the beautiful.

Open Air

The casual observer will see clearly that perception of music is the result of cultural conditioning,

Yet the contemporary stage is set for the listener to explore far beyond narrowly defined cultural expectations for musical realities, and there no longer exist viable sub-cultural social contexts defined primarily by music styles (and adherence to associated fashions) for good reasons.

The common and the outré, being easily accessible, are on equal footing, and as a result the insular mentality engendered by sub-cultural identification has grown untenable and ridiculous, particularly over the last decade.

 The listener is free to follow any sounds in any direction, and so is the composer and creative artist.

Possibilities

Lack of meaning is merely that.  Nothing more.

Art is endless connection and implication.

Diffusion

Styles spread throughout culture, gradually losing impact as saturation takes place, then languish and dissipate, as the history of music and the arts demonstrates.

The individual artist must act according to personal vision and fundamental facts.  Medium, method, and message stagnate without the will to investigate the unexplored and the discipline to risk failure.

Neither failure nor success are ends in themselves.  

Movement, Distance, Direction

Culture provides, exploration reveals, and art offers perspectives.

In the world of auditory arts there is the given, everywhere in evidence, and the unusual, being out of the ordinary.  But there exists also the unexpected or uncanny, and with it a change in perception.

Paint with Words, Sculpt with Sounds

That the idea of "art" as a kind of effortless free expression reserved for the brilliant and gifted remains in common currency, given centuries of evidence to the contrary, is absurd.

All that becomes art does so through a prolonged process of arduous focus and uncompromising personal vision, upending the facile and the mundane while transforming the fabric of existence into the tapestry of the future, and always against the tyranny of the status quo.

Sound, Imagery, Metaphor

Sound suggests and becomes atmosphere.

Settings and the objects within them may be symbolic and archetypal, and sound, as well, may impress these shapes and shades of meaning upon the listener.  These may be sweeping and expansive or intimate, with a variety of aural motifs evocative of emotional and spiritual  impressions.

From an artist's or composer's perspective, such are the musical designs, textures, combinations, and juxtapositions of aural imagery that immerse the listener in a contemplative listening environment.

Impulse, Direction, Detail

Images, emotions, and ideas appear to the creative artist or composer, fraught with complications. Some would call certain insights impossible to convey.

Any limits placed upon the creative impulse must be intentional on the artist's part, and never in subjection to cultural conformity.  To do otherwise is a failure of vision.

Technology and Impression

Villiers de L'isle Adam might write today, "As for living, our machines will do that for us".

Instead, direct perception through the medium of technology, rather than merely towards it.  From the composer's perspective, the work must do more than fill the ears, the heart and the mind.

 It must open them.

Self, Scene, Sound

Environments shape human action and interaction.

We respond to settings and the people we find in them in a variety of ways, with diverse behaviors that are reflections of personal character.  It may or may not be within our control to be in certain places or circumstances, but our choices within them are indicators of whether or not we conform our wills to the reality of those scenarios.  As Epictetus puts it, it is within our power to refrain or sustain.

Clearly, then, it is apparent that certain atmospheres are themselves possessed of degrees of character, as impressed upon them by humanity, and that others, though perceived through the filter of human consciousness. reveal a different order of existence.

It is the composer's sense of reality as well as self that inspires and shapes musical works.

Culture and Consciousness

As speech patterns vary according to geography and background, so do perceptions of the arts.  This is particularly the case with music, as it is universally constant.

As a result listening habits become fixed and ingrained, with little variation over time, as is only natural.

This is not to say that the adventurous listener will not discover the extraordinary, but to note the distance from the commonplace that must be crossed to connect with such works.

Sound in Time and Mind

Music in its varied forms or genres appeals to diverse interests and levels of attention.

Beyond existing in these forms as diversion or entertainment, combinations of sounds are, in and of themselves, of aesthetic and artistic moment, and contribute to heightened states of consciousness.

Atmospheres in Motion

Sounds and imagery combine and coalesce in the imagination.

Compose to convey this dynamic that enlivens each listening experience differently.

Sensibility

Bring to light the things that go unnoticed.

Bring forward into the listener's consciousness those sounds that define existence, that reflect the sounds of the earth turning on its axis.

Idea, Emotion, Perception

Music, to some minds, is a narrow concept.

For others, it expresses and heightens awareness.

Explorations

Seek any direction for inspiration.

Ultimately, it comes from within.
 

Sensory Clarity

Seek the beauty and the subtlety.

Catch an impression of rain approaching in distant trees, and paint this feeling into the musical canvas.

Ancient Modern

Allow no attachment of sound to "the times".  By this I mean, restrain the impulse to reflect and respond to the transient and impermanent.

Through auditory imagery and aural metaphor, merge time past and time future.

Hidden Prague (mp3 format)