Monday, June 20, 2005
style? we don't need no stinkin' style...
After revisiting a lot of Bartok, Stravinsky and Ives that I hadn't listened to in some time, I got to thinking perhaps too much about what we mean by style. I went ahead and posted an overly long blog piece about it, and came to the conclusion that style is a bit hard to pin down, and is probably not that useful in describing one's music. In the end, I think that if one is honest with oneself and writes with integrity, you'll sound like yourself regardless of what technique you use (including no established technique). In other words, one might have one's own style all to his or her own, and that's okay. There is no "minimalist" style or "neo-romantic" style since that is just not adequate to convey differences between composers who are, for better or worse, classified together. Does John Adams really sound like Steve Reich? Does Terry Riley sound just like LaMonte Young? I don't think so, and probably neither would they. Personally, I don't like classifications and categorizations anyway, although sometimes they may be a necessary evil.
So is the general notion of musical style overblown? Does it matter? How does/should one define one's own music when asked the dreaded question "so, what style do you write in?"
posted by David Toub
11:49 PM
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