Composers Forum is a daily web log that allows invited contemporary composers to share their thoughts and ideas on any topic that interests them--from the ethereal, like how new music gets created, music history, theory, performance, other composers, alive or dead, to the mundane, like getting works played and recorded and the joys of teaching. If you're a professional composer and would like to participate, send us an e-mail.


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Monday, January 10, 2005
Abstractions

I think it’s fair to speak of a generational shift: Martin Mailman (b. 1932) and Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) -- see the David Salvage post that started this discussion -- come from a generation that was trained to believe in the concreteness of music. This is a generation, after all, that saw music put in the service of all kinds of atrocities, so it was important to argue for the purity of music as a form of artistic expression. There is a more abstract leaning these days: composers today of all ages are more comfortable with thinking metaphorically, connecting their work to things that are outside of a strict definition of music.

Ironically, even the terms have shifted: music that existed solely on its own terms used to be called abstract, whereas now it is common to think of music-for-music’s-sake as the pinnacle of concreteness -- as opposed to, say, program music, which has an abstract connection to something, extra-musical: a story, a painting, etc.

 



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