Aural Encounters

Percipience of sounds in the course of moving through various environments is not the same as listening to music.  

This is a simple fact, and as such, it is not given any attention.  One might assume that listening to the sounds of most environments would not be as interesting as listening to music, and that will often be the case.  Yet it is not the particular sounds that we are concerned with here, but the differences in the ways in which the one is produced by events within the atmosphere and the other according to intent and instrumentation, because the effects of each are entirely different.  The act of listening to any piece of music, whether a pop song. a classical piece, or a performance by a jazz combo, combines both expectation and attention on the part of the listener.  We create entirely different scenarios.

The musical works of Black Mountain School are designed to be a part of the listening environment by reflection and representation of the ways in which sounds come into being in the organic sense, as part of the reality of a setting, to be experienced in the same ways as the surroundings are perceived in the course of the day, but with the additional element of aesthetic design that enlivens the sonic environs.  The resulting experience is totally unlike that of "listening to music", as it is based upon divergent principles, theories and techniques, developed to sustain beauty and interest and to intensify total effect.  In point of fact, no other ensemble composes and produces works revealing the art of sound in ways utilizing these ideas and methods in the same manner as does Black Mountain School, as their unique recordings amply demonstrate.

Past, Hot and Cold

Generic music styles run their course, are lauded in retrospect, and decline.

While virtuoso performers are always welcome, the music with which they are associated, having exhausted its original excitement, tends toward falsity, hollow meaning, and repetition in various guises, from the ironic to the improbably dramatic.

Then, listener and composer must gain the ground of integrity, or give way to the mediocre and mundane.  Thus, find the essential nature of the creative will.

Calm and Clear

Consider what is and what might be.

Look back with understanding, look forward with curiosity.  Listen, and hear.

Crossing Through

The nature of sound art encompasses percipient hearing and variable depths of experience.

On balance, objective auditory vibrations and designs commingle with subjective knowledge, feeling, and memory. Within these fields composer and listener communicate, heedless of the course of time, unfettered by limits of space.

Unreal Distances

One cannot be both here and there.

Contemporary subjection to immediacy demands engaging in continuous direct involvement with all forms of technological representations, and imposes vicarious participation in cultural events at the expense of direct perception.  Attention is divided, communication loses purpose.

Technologies are tools of expression; viewed wrongly, they become its shackles.

Reason in Light

Contemplative states of consciousness lead to insights and intuitive, creative problem-solving.

This is an undisputed fact, but one given little regard in the course of commonplace events.  One has not other course than to move forward, and that is to say, against the current of contemporary ideas and values.  For artist and composer, this demands integrity, and, for the most part, silence.

Missing Impressions

One sees action, another sees color, and still another percipient sees art, or notes its absence.

Clearly, one may listen in the same manner, hearing and recognizing according to perspective, knowledge, experience and temperament.

The senses cannot reveal what viewpoint, attitude, and feeling do not encompass.

Range

Unfettered access to culture can foster the delusion that all expression possible exists now.

It is only among the utterly benighted that such abominable beliefs obtain. Renewal is as constant as the rise and fall of all things, and that which is thoroughly new falls late within the scope of the cultural "maven".

Work

Art will not be reduced to monetary value. This is merely price, high or low.

Greater values are life and human freedom; neither can they be so reduced.

With Reason

The Wise One wrote down his wisdom, and rode away from the city gates.

Meet every human need, and still it is not enough. It will never be enough.

Paradox

It cannot be experienced until it is comprehended.

It cannot be comprehended until it is experienced.

Art Remains

Atmospheres are as subtle and interesting as the percipient is capable of understanding them.

The culture may indeed experience a failure of moral reason on a vast scale, and ultimately reach a nadir of emotional and intellectual vapidity of expression.

Nonetheless, the artist is tasked with a profound indifference, one equal to a singular vision.

Ornament and Illumination

Cast aside all ideas of music.

Consider sounds as elements of an art form that may be taken as purely decorative, yet possessing qualities of exceptional emotional, intellectual, and spiritual value, that, given their impressions upon the listener, might be considered instructive.

Expanding Moment

As events unfold, some are imposed upon the attention and others are arbitrarily ignored.

Intrinsic to these events are sounds in myriad proportions, rhythms other than the commonplace, and a broad spectrum of perceptions that are, for the greatest part, dismissed as having no relevance to the generally accepted narratives of life.

This does not render such events any less real, or any less valuable as an artist's creative resources.

Go By, Strange and Commonplace

Contemporary expectations are predictable, as they reliably call for more of the present sameness.

This is but one reason among many why, in cultural terms, the modern remains at cross-purposes with the contemporary. The modern perspective proceeds apace, speculatively seeking developments that bring the future to bear on the present.  The contemporary viewpoint is in the moment, which is to say, as unenlightened and grasping as history records and reveals in any epoch, with the so-called post-modern as its function of nugatory semantic posturing.  That which is clever is interesting for what it is, but what it is not is meaningful and consequential.

This has everything to do with music and the art of sound.  It is the composer's responsibility to be informed as to whether the work reaches those who listen, and hear, or simply falls upon deaf ears.

Inception

Every composition begins with apparent perception of movement.

Begin in medias res. Allow the movement to reveal time present and time future simultaneously.

Explore Existence, Seek Being

Find the sounds that go unnoticed.

Turn from the given, and toward the unknown.  Listen, and hear.

Night is Black and Sounds Like These

One accustomed to the absurd fails to observe the depth of simplicity.

If a simple visual metaphor representing an idea as plain and unadorned as an uphill climb or a reflection suggesting balance makes no impression, one need not expect a musical or auditory metaphor to be grasped.  Such is the extent to which the artist will continually be challenged.

But if such things were of any moment to any artist, nothing at all would be created.

Sound Like Water

There is an essential balance in art, and especially in the art of sound.

Obviously this is not true of music, per se, in which this balance is continually and intentionally undone, often in violent ways through dynamics, volume, poorly rendered themes, and emotional bombast.

The art of sound, from our perspective, is that of aural imagery, its tones, colors, shading, and phases, its flow and variations, and all those elements that lead to equilibrium of force and feeling.

Cold Eye

Take a critical view, distant from collective thought, emotion, and impulse.

But this places one at a distance from sensationalism and so-called controversy, that is to say, in the realms of reason, restraint, and equanimity, at a far remove from the public imagination and interest, such as it is.

Nonetheless, such things as clarity, integrity, cultural continuity and essential artistic expression demand it.  No small things, these.