The serialists thought they were composing the music of the future. Bach knew he was composing the music of his present which is what I believe we need to be doing.
Postmodern art and literature leans decidedly toward an ugliness which I would not want to replicate in music. Its based on a false assumption that in rightfully reacting to the suffocating constraints of traditional forms etc that we should swing toward complete formlessness.
The cut up technique in literature, more often than not, leads to gobbledygook. Nailing a toilet on the wall and calling it art is also nonsense. The postmodern dilemma is how to publish the denial of publishing and mean the absence of meaning. John Cage summed it up well, "I have nothing to say and I'm saying it." The performance of his piece for piano in which the pianist never plays is the height of this wrongheaded philosophy.
My idea is that we don't want ugly formlessness. We want a flexible form. We want enough flexibility for artistic freedom and enough form to have a place to exist.
There is room in the music for a place where, like in abstract art, the motif only has meaning to the composer and whatever meaning the audience derives from it is O.K. and not wrong also, but it can't be the whole thing because art really isn't self expression in a vacuum. Its a dialogue with an audience and other musicians.
Also, when art doesn't have a frame, this can lead to non-art but it can also lead to an art that is not complete without audience participation which can be a good thing. This is one direction which I think music can profitably go now and in the future.
Another idea is using non-traditional media. The expanded definition of what constitutes a musical instrument or music lets a cool breeze into a stuffy room but we still need the room. We shouldn't say that anything is music.
We can use techniques like cut up to suggest new directions without being a robotic slave to the technique, allowing it to make every artistic decision for us. If so, then we are not musicians, artists or writers but dispensable automatons.
The movement away from traditional tonality can free up the strangle hold tonality has had on melody. Utilizing harmony in service of the melody is the challenge of the day. Indian and middle eastern melody far outpaces western melodic practice by leaps and bounds precisely because its making up for the lack of harmony. Modal jazz and free jazz artists were going there but took a left turn at the last minute and free jazz was having too much of the undesirable open ended formlessness. It would be nice to hear more inclusion of Indian embellishments in western music.
Also, when art doesn't have a frame, this can lead to non-art but it can also lead to an art that is not complete without audience participation which can be a good thing. This is one direction which I think music can profitably go now and in the future.
Another idea is using non-traditional media. The expanded definition of what constitutes a musical instrument or music lets a cool breeze into a stuffy room but we still need the room. We shouldn't say that anything is music.
We can use techniques like cut up to suggest new directions without being a robotic slave to the technique, allowing it to make every artistic decision for us. If so, then we are not musicians, artists or writers but dispensable automatons.
The movement away from traditional tonality can free up the strangle hold tonality has had on melody. Utilizing harmony in service of the melody is the challenge of the day. Indian and middle eastern melody far outpaces western melodic practice by leaps and bounds precisely because its making up for the lack of harmony. Modal jazz and free jazz artists were going there but took a left turn at the last minute and free jazz was having too much of the undesirable open ended formlessness. It would be nice to hear more inclusion of Indian embellishments in western music.
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