Re: Paul Lansky pulls the plug

James Harkins-2 wrote:

On Aug 4, 2008, at 8:29 PM, kernel wrote:

I think some of this is a function of not thinking through the social  
aspects of performance or audition spaces. Academia doesn't encourage  
this kind of thinking because of the fetishization of the musical  
product. I think the "concert hall" model, where the "composer" has  
something "important" to say, and the audience goes to this  
preordained, sacred space in order to listen very carefully to that  
important thing, is a dying model (if it isn't dead already).

Writing for acoustic instruments adds a social dimension to  
musicmaking that isn't present in the usual computer music solipsism,  
but if the music is meant to be heard only on the concert stage (or  
primarily), then it doesn't really deal with concert hall-itis.

hjh

I agree with this idea.  More, one need only spend 9 or so years in the conservatory to realize that the compositional paradigm is still based on the mythos of the composer imparting something otherworldly to us via some 19th century German-Romantic concept of nature and reality (in the Platonic sense.)  In other words, it is to a large degree complete nonsense.  

One more thing, and apologies to those offended (please contact your publisher and lodge complaints with Mr. Skippy) -- if one cannot see beyond the mystique of "wood and metal", to see beyond "notes" (whatever those are...) to what Music is, one might as well get out of the game -- the world really does not need more Pendereckis (in the latest sense of him.)  SuperCollider, Metal tubes, a violin, a subway tunnel; these are all "instruments."  A painter once painted with colors, now he paints with bits, with projectors, with Processing, with dancers... why do "composers" cling to a limiting ideology of a so-called acoustic "purity" with such veracity?  Perhaps what we need are not more violins, but better speakers.  Perhaps what we need are not more vibraphones, but better physical modeling synthesis... perhaps what we need are not more notes, but more imagination.  Perhaps we should be less concerned with the number of "albums" we put out per year and more with the quality of the art we produce.

che sera!

The old guard has retired -- vive le Nuove Musiche!!!

- Senior Grumpy Pants

P.S.  They never made music like they used to.