How many seasons?

42 winters.

Feels like just a few. But my greying hair says

there won't be many.

There never are.

(Vacational) Music Composition Lesson

Think of music not in symbolic terms, nor as syntax and grammar. Think of music in physical terms, as energy and matter.

Think of form not as a succession of sound events, but rather as a fontal happening with a shape made out of texture, transparency/opacity, density, weight and movement.

Think of content not as a reflection of experience but as experience itself.

Think of change not as the actions done by time nor as transfer from some-thing to another thing. Think of change as transition, as continuation-modification. Think of time as life itself. 

Think with your heart, your senses and your mind.

Composition lesson from Hemingway

Maria Popova, through her Brain Pickings blog, shared the following advice Hemingway gave to the young aspiring writer Arnold Samuelson. If we change the word "writer" for "composer", and add "listen" to the word "read", we'll get a very good lesson for those making music.

I think it healthy to maintain interest in the music that's presently being made, but with a certain distance in terms of learning from it or, as Hemingway put it, stealing from it. Instead, one does better to learn from the recent (and perhaps not so recent) masters. That way, through some distance, we can better tell the good stuff from bullshit. Also, we don't get sucked into stupid games of jealusy and grudges.

Never compete with living writers. You don’t know whether they’re good or not. Compete with the dead ones you know are good. Then when you can pass them up you know you’re going good. You should have read all the good stuff so that you know what has been done, because if you have a story like one somebody else has written, yours isn’t any good unless you can write a better one. In any art you’re allowed to steal anything if you can make it better, but the tendency should always be upward instead of down. And don’t ever imitate anybody. All style is, is the awkwardness of a writer in stating a fact. If you have a way of your own, you are fortunate, but if you try to write like somebody else, you’ll have the awkwardness of the other writer as well as your own.

—Ernest Hemingway.

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Musical material

If we assume that our perception of the world is conditioned by primal psychological images—Jung's collective archetypes—we can infer that the perception of sound events can have a close relation with the inner world of the listener. Physical reality—exterior facts—are processed on a subjective way according to personal psychological constitution and experience, providing a conscious or unconscious reference point through which our interpretations and formulations—artistic, scientific, philosophical, or religious—are made.

The creative musical process, for instance, based on the physical realisation of the energies and impulses of the inner world through a particular arrangement of dynamic sound elements, carries a potential that can stimulate the constitutive complexes of the psyche, an area where imagination and emotions lie.

Vice versa

Content determines form, and vice versa.

Structure the Strangler

Structural rigidity prevents access into the very constituents of life and things. It is through intuition that we can encourage an openess that comes from perception, that is, from direct contact with our surroundings, ourselves and others.

Systems –like ideologies– replace the need for intuition with a sense of structure and order. The problem is that when structure begins to take over, it overpowers everything that can't be explained or understood in logical terms, thus turning us into incomplete beings. On the other hand, intuition –which is not at odds with logic– is our natural way of going-about in and understanding our world. Since it doesn't rely on fixed notions, ideas or habits, intuition opens us perceptualy and hightens our awareness of the moment we're in.

In terms of music making, structure can asphyxiate. It shouldn't be surprising to listen to so much neurosis in the music of our times, which is overwhelmed by structural thinking, from micro to macro levels. Sounds become units of interconnection whose relevance is that of building-blocks. Timbre then becomes just a (sometimes pretty) facade.

Intuition in music is conducive to a more direct relationship between psyche and sound, which can be in a constant state of flux. The thing with intuition is that it acts, if we can put it in those terms, based on who and how we are and what we are exposed to. I believe this is a crucial aspect, for in the end we are those sounds. Music then is an extension of a particular conscience, not the result of an abstract or even an implanted idea.

From "Most and least"

"Your presence is translucent, and I do not know if your soul inhabited your body, or your body was clothed in your soul and shone like a pearl in my darkness. Form and substance are confused in my mind, and I see form as substance, and substance as the perfect form."

–Mahmoud Darwish, from "Most and least".

Others and me

I don't socialize very well. I find empathy in creativity and suffering.

The importance of sound.

What's the real importance of sound in our lives?

It seems words are the most valued sounds, hence the use of grammatical structures in music. But is language really the most important source of sound? Is language the only way to communicate? Is it the only way to understand the world, to be in it? Don't we lose touch with the world, and hence with ourselves, when we go and stay too much in the realm of language?

Music can remain in the abstract world of grammar and syntax, but why should it?

We can listen to the world. Life sounds.

Poetry

Sounds are very telling of the world around us, but also of our inner world.

If ideas are to be conferred through music, then syntax will not only be the medium, but the very core of the music. To intellectualize music is basically to tie it up with language.

Poetry cannot be reduced to linguistics. It is the very essence of that which transcends language.

If music is to dwell in the realms of poetry, syntax should be dethroned.

Concert, Thursday September 2

Appearance - Reality - Appearance

Appearances can be deceiving. What is usually meant by this saying concerns the perception of something or someone by someone else. But the deception I'm referring to has to do with an individual in relation to him/herself.

The process of artistic creation starts deep within the artist's inner world. But soon after the psyche is impregnated by the creative seed (a seed that can be all-encompassing and atmospheric, resembling sometimes a state of madness), imagination must be confronted with reality. And often, in an instant, reality prevents imagination from pouring into the physical world. Only a few strands of the imaginary make it, just like insemination.

The appearance that is formed by the creative impulse meets reality by way of materialization. Sound is a difficult raw material, for it has no physical weight. In this respect, sound may give the impression of being closely bound to the imaginary, of never leaving it, for it doesn't seem to materialize completely. So what do composers tend to do? Organize sound grammatically, as a form of language. The result, the final appearance, then sounds like someone trying to describe something. Description is a symbolic way of understanding and getting a sense of something (an object or a phenomenon), but it's not the thing itself. Of course, no physical reality can be the thing imagined itself, but it can recreate it. The difference between recreating and describing is a central issue in art. In music composition, description is closer to musicology, and thus a deception. To recreate details of the inner world is closer to art.

Thus we have: Appearance (inner world) - Reality (sound) - Appearance (recreation).

The quasi-impossibility of artistic music

Music has mainly been about ideas. Ideas translated into an ordering of sounds (pitches for the most part). Unless there is a common pseudo-language through which people can eventually grow meanings, like tonality was, ordered sounds cannot convey ideas. Although it's sometimes floating around like a dream (nightmares mostly), tonality ceased to be an artistic possibility a long time ago. Unfortunately most composers still believe ideas can be perfectly channeled through sound, a belief that has secretly transformed itself into making order in music the main idea. And so, countless "personal" systems of music-making have flourished over the last century.

It seems that composition has been involved in a blind (or rather, deaf) search for meaning: looking for order (even if trying to convey chaos) as if meanings and ideas were to spring from the nonsense. When disillusioned, the next logical step appears to be backwards to the past or to a postmodern limbo, being cynical about the impossibility of artistic creation.

Stubbornness in maintaining semantic order above all else has prevented a great deal of composers from opening their ears and listening. Of course, many have impeccable hearing, but the problem lies in what they're listening to. It might be that most want to dissect what they hear into combinable parts.

More than having the power to convey ideas, sound itself (with its movement and transformations) has the potential of establishing equivalencies. To what? To reality and to the individual psyche. This is of course nothing new, great artists have known this all along. But it's easier to infuse some logic to composition, as opposed to dealing with the diffuse and ephemeral raw matter that is sound. That's why true art (not art that's correct) is a rare thing, always has been.

The essence of things

Anything can be painted. It's more difficult to see whether what one is doing is any good or not. But that's the only thing that counts. As Duchamp showed, it has nothing to do with craftsmanship. What counts isn't being able to do a thing, it's seeing what it is. Seeing is the decisive act, and ultimately it places the maker and the viewer on the same level.

-- Gerhard Richter.

Dream

Sometimes I imagine the existence of a music authority. Not one whose moral grounds come from aesthetics, idealism and/or extra-musical beliefs, but one of a moral respect for the art itself. I would love, for instance, that a bad singer be denied the possibility of singing lieder by Schubert and Schumann; that a mediocre orchestra or conductor be forbidden of meddling with Mozart or Beethoven; or that a pianist who only sees the keys of the instrument but can't hear them be remitted to wedding bands and have the scores of true art music withheld.

But of course, this can't be. In reality I'd be against it myself. To do so would imply the enforcement of policies, and as is now very clear, politics are an ideal channel through which human beings can degrade themselves. But even-though a music authority can't and shouldn't exist, it's nice to dream every once in a while.

Lost time

No one seems to have time anymore. It appears it's about to become extinguished.

With my music I hope to return some of the world's lost time.

Musical baggage

I found this video at NetNewMusic, where Jeff Harrington uses it to point out musical expectations. It's outstanding to realize (as the present video shows, but not only because of it) how certain musical notions and criteria are embeded in us. No wonder a great deal of the 20th century sounds like a lost puppy.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Tha dark side of the moon (if anyone cares)

In my creative work I seek to simplify certain structural processes in order to vent others that occur more naturally. A simple structure -and with certain width regarding time and space- allows for the unfolding of more complex (and interesting) acoustical phenomena. A more intimate approach to the substance of sound is needed for this to take place. In this way, sound can be a self-worthy entity instead of a syntactic element. It requires space and time to move, to transform itself, to breathe. Sound is not interested in ideas, and when it's pushed around with them it hides its nature, its essence, it becomes indifferent, almost as if giving the other cheek.

Like with the Alexander Technique [see previous post], it is not necessary to do much with sound, only establish the conditions for it to do what it must. The more one interferes with these processes, the less freedom. Artistic work deals with the establishing of these conditions. It's an enormous -seems almost impossible- labor which is the sum of skills, perception, intelligence, intuition, and sensitivity.

Music knows very little about this. Or better said, we know almost nothing about this other music. It's like the dark side of the moon, and there aren't many who'd like to step in. Most would rather have certainty (with an intervalic syntax, for instance) and it's understandable, it's a safe place. There's a popular saying: "No one said life was easy." No one said art is.

Composition and the Alexander Technique

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes

but in having new eyes.

-Marcel Proust

The Alexander Technique is well known in the performing arts. Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955), a theatre actor who specialized in Shakespearian monologues, developed the technique in the course of his life due to some performing problems which stemmed from the wrong use of the self. In Alexander's particular case, his voice used to go out in performance due to unnecessary physical stress of the back and neck. So, after medical doctors couldn't find the real cause, and much less a solution to his condition, he began searching, not for answers, but for the problems. After pinpointing them, he realized that doing something about it would not help, on the contrary, it would sometimes make matters worse. So what did he do? Nothing.

Yes, nothing. If he was tensing his neck, he didn't do anything to attempt to relax it, he just thought to himself that he wanted his neck to be free. In this way he didn't do something that would trigger more unnecessary tension in other muscles so that his neck would be better, he just stopped interfering with the natural way we balance ourselves. The difference might seem meaningless, even just a semantic one, but it is huge.

So the Alexander Technique helps us achieve a better use of ourselves. A way in which body and mind blend into a whole. The difficult part is getting rid of old habits (We first make our habits, and then they make us. -John Dryden). We tend to believe that what we do is right (Everyone wants to be right, but no one stops to consider if their idea of right is right. -F. M. Alexander). Sometimes we think we're doing something we're not. We might feel we're standing straight, not realizing that our spine is bent a little to the side and our shoulders are just hanging to the front, collapsed.

Performing artists have benefited a great deal from Alexander's technique. The relation is of course obvious. The way an actor moves and speaks, and how a musician handles her instrument and produces sounds with it are a few examples. But how about in the way an artist creates an artistic piece/object? Can the Alexander Technique teach us something, about how not to interfere with ourselves for instance?

I'm not talking about the way someone sits at a desk or stands in front of a canvas. I'm talking about the creative process, about the means that bring about a result. Thought has plagued the way we conduct our lives since I-don't-know-when, and it has deprived us of an equally important part: physicality and the senses. Art has not escaped this privation. We tend to see much less of this problem in the plastic arts, since theirs is a very tangible and physical nature. Music, on the other hand, lends itself effortlessly to take the shape of thought. We don't just hear Beethoven, we sort of understand the philosophy within his works. We tend to think that Cage's indeterminate works set sounds free, allowing a more direct apprehension of them, but in reality the process of producing sounds was given the freedoms, not so much the sounds themselves. Thought has controlled a great deal of western music in recent centuries: counterpoint, sonata form, Beethoven, Wagner, (almost all Germans?), serialism, all the neo-musics, etc.

Of course we have some very fortunate exceptions: Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, Stravinsky, Varèse, Scelsi, Xenakis, Ligeti, Feldman, Estrada... just to name some of the most remarkable ones. Mozart's physicality has had to suffer Beethoven's existential phylosophy. But of course, not everything in thought-propelled composers is just that. For instance, the way the aforementioned Beethoven goes to the depths of the piano and brings about an incredible resonance that blurs harmony and rhythm is just astounding.

But I shall not digress. Physicality, sound, movement. Three basics of music that are surprisingly not very acknowledged. I won't say that music is intangible, but since its tangibility lies in another field of apprehension it is somewhat more difficult to experience in those terms, hence its propensity to imitate linguistic and thought structures. But you won't be able to get near Mozart or Scelsi if you only look for harmonic progressions and eastern philosophies respectively. Here, sound and its movement go far beyond a symbolic arrangement.

Taking as a basis the union of mind and body in ourselves, we can consider the union of sound and movement in music. So, in these terms, what can the Alexander Technique bring to music? Or better: how can music be transformed by the Alexander Technique? By metaphor. Matthias Alexander developed his technique for purposes other than music creation. But he teaches us that the means are more important than the end itself (It is the means that determine the end. -H. E. Fosdick). Now of course we begin to think about our means of music-making. What habits do we have? Are they necessarily right or are they there because, well, they've always been there? Are we trying to reach something, just as Beethoven in his ninth symphony, just as most chord progressions? Are we trying to say something, therefore arranging sound in a way that its relations, not its qualities, finally give some meaning?

Now, besides addressing our means of music-making, we shall explore further into the means of the music itself. Is the music trying to get somewhere? Is it just a way to go from point A to point B? Is our music literally constipated from all the tension and frustration of not having a compelling musical equivalent to language anymore?

What is there between points A and B? Sound. And what is that? Air pressure, yes, but how do I perceive it? As matter in motion, or better, as evolving matter (read matter here as physical substance). Am I listening to the sounds themselves or to the intervals between them? The questionnaire can go on, and the further it goes, the more the music will change.

Am I advocating for a purely physical music? No. Thought is very important, and art has always shown that. But when its physical counterpart is forced to submit to it, the results rarely achieve artistic status. Do we have here then, with the Alexander Technique, the origins of a new style, or even better, as some scholars would like to say, a new compositional technique? No, no, no. It's just the attitude. And attitude is what we finally listen to in music.

(All quotes taken from How you stand, how you move, how you live: Learning the Alexander Technique by Missy Vineyard. Very good book with very good quotes in it.)