Being, Listening, Hearing

Matters of taste reflect cultural conditions as well as individual discrimination.

The content of culture changes, as do the perceptions and processes by which culture is understood and engaged.  Simplistic and materialistic attitudes and philosophical and conceptual perspectives are always in opposition.  The contention between historical forces such as these is reflected in current events, concrete artifacts, artistic representations, music, and in the written transmission of culture.

The transient material world rises and falls, while the poetic forms remain universal.

Sound Perceptivity

Perceptual sensitivity to sound may be enhanced or degraded according to various internal and external conditions.

Granted the individual has particular expectations regarding sights and sounds, and these influence attention and focus, certain perceptions may go unnoticed if not for peculiarly receptive states of mind, that is to say, of the neurological system, and the processes of thought and emotion.

Such heightened awareness and lucidity may be stimulated by sounds, especially those designed to defy anticipation, emerge and expand without reference to temporal events, or otherwise engage one's consciousness in extramundane experience.

Aural Prescience

There are myriad shared musical environments, and among them are found widely diverse cultural variations.

As listeners, we may become conscious of being thoroughly conditioned to our familiar atmospheres, and, rejecting facile conformity to general values and expectations relative to sound and art, we may find our inner ear is more attuned to the sounds of futurity.

This attitude is shared with the composer, and is a matter of natural curiosity. To engage in predictive analysis about the ways sounds and sonic structures may evolve creates conditions for speculative music to engage the imagination, potentially to be realized in concrete forms.

Movement and Expansion

There is no "stasis" in aural imagery.

Vibratory waves extend and develop in perpetual transformation as they encounter others, to defy illusions and anticipations of linear, temporal movement.

Imprint Time Past

Early memory informs present impressions.

What begins as direct perception informs, in the moment now, as meaning.  In sound apprehension, this is hearing, and listening, as passive and active attention, respectively.

Of the Far Margins

Listen for sounds heard at the edges of consciousness.

At the extreme limits of perception sounds defy identification, suggesting possibilities.  Hear and reach for them; make these undefined aural images emerge in the compositions, and allow their evocation of the uncanny.

Stillness, Knowledge

At the core of sacred places is the sense of universal being.

Within and without may be heard the sounds of the soul.

Sound Works

The existential phenomena of nature and human character are originative and controlling forces.

The process of structuring dynamic combinations of sounds, tones, patterns and clusters designed, as are works of art, as reflective and representative of the influence of these universal and personal phenomena upon perception and temperament, is a continuing and challenging purpose.

As a composer, I consider auditory images as the peculiar elements through which meaning emerges and expands, in creating contemplative contexts through which meaning may evolve.

Rippling

Listen to the world and hear its music.

Observe the pervasive nature of sound, and its constant influence.

Whether carried by wind in rushes and reeds, human voices or machines in action, its course is through nerve and bone, dream and being.

Turn, Turn Again

Lose originality, and there is only repetition.

Lose innovation, and there remains only genre.

Exclude individuality and idiosyncrasy, and the artist is invisible.

But neither art, nor artist, will cease.

As Waves Intersect

In terms of sound imagery, a definition of music is unnecessary.  It is beside the point.

Vibrations set in motion produce others, and interactions continue as other effects are produced.

Sound, Being, and Becoming

Sonic imagery alters perception and broadens perspective.

Where reality and the imagination intersect in sound, in the performance of a musical composition, tone poem, or other form of aural art, the listener may observe a sense of a continuum of temporal events, as opposed to a perpetual movement of linear time.

For this effect to manifest itself, the composer must not work according to expectations, nor against them, but outside possibilities of anticipation altogether.

Part and Whole

Every sound perceived within an environment produces effects.

Some will communicate significant, profound, or extraordinary impressions; some will suggest the uncanny, or the presence of something ineffable; many will not be noticed at all.  Listeners discern, and, as poets and composers, they manipulate.

Listen, and all things rise and descend.  Hear, and all things emerge and pass away.

Shapes of Aural Events

Physical reality is immersed in sounds.

Heightened perceptions of listening and hearing sense ideas of distances, placements in space, external forms, and such concepts as the aural imagery of shadows and colors.

As painting and drawing may render objective and imaginative events visible, put forth such forms in sounds.

Periphery of Music II

Set an emotional and intellectual paradigm for the understanding of music as an experience.

Turn from that understanding of music, toward an idea of no music, in contrast to something that can be called non-music; then consider sounds outside those common models or frameworks of music, with environmental aural imagery, tones and patterns serving as the the fundamentals for such sonic designs as they may be heard in diverse contexts.

Sever the significance of time, then place all these perspectives into simultaneous flux.

Sonic Archetypes

Sound motifs represent, through tonal quality and pattern, symbolic realities.

Ethereal heights, storms and floods, places hidden and abandoned, mystic waters, deserts and hills all have their representative sounds, and with them suggestions of stasis and movement.

Atmospheres embrace listening and surround perception, opening the mind's eye and the inner ear.

Universal Patterns

Where rhythm is not apparent, it will be found through expansion of understanding.

The moon turns the tides and its force is perceptible.

There are vast rhythms pulsing in the cosmos.  Draw these into awareness through representative musical sounds.

Connection, Control

Atmosphere, environment, perception, thought.  These are interrelated.

Some things are within the scope of a composer's or listener's will. Others can be imagined.

What sound may express may then be understood, and thus more possibilities, real and concrete or imagined and abstract, may be brought to light.

Drama and Ease

To perceive and to reflect embrace intensity and intimacy.

Things happen and are apprehended; as understood, perhaps reconsidered, perspectives emerge. The composer brings aural imagery to such perspectives, manipulates, juxtaposes, stylizes.

Feeling yields designs, tones, dances and dreams.  What is otherwise is merely music.

Reach, Again

To explore memory in its depths is to find perceptual impressions, thoughts, and feelings.

Sudden cold October wind, waving shadows against lights of home; cheer, misunderstandings, disillusionment; exiting a film into blinding daylight; view through strange windows; long gaze at distant boats, stars, mountains;  photographs, then direct experience of art, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, say, or an exhibition of works by Modigliani, Seurat, Warhol-- or unknowns.  Hospital sheets, flickering fluorescent lights, sidewalk bright with dusty chalk drawings, restaurant in early morning rain.

Sounds, smells, all the sensory impressions of street, school, job site, field, highway.  There. Within, find the notes and tones and aural imagery, the sonic impressions that sing life to the inner ear.