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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Sunday, April 30, 2006
Photography as Music

Ed note: Owen C. Grant passed along the following thoughts for your consideration.

I’ve been debating for a number of years over the merits of popular music with a friend of mine. I’ve always argued along the lines of Stockhausen’s Advice to Clever Children...:
I wish those musicians would not allow themselves any repetitions, and would go faster in developing their ideas or their findings, because I don't appreciate at all this permanent repetitive language. It is like someone who is stuttering all the time, and can't get words out of his mouth. I think musicians should have very concise figures and not rely on this fashionable psychology. I don't like psychology whatsoever: using music like a drug is stupid. One shouldn't do that: music is the product of the highest human intelligence, and of the best senses, the listening senses and of imagination and intuition.

Since then I have started to see similarities between photography, and popular music. I feel that like much photography, popular music is about capturing a moment of beauty, honesty, and truth. I think that popular music is about trying to find interesting sounds – whether it’s a riff, a groove, a texture, an arrangement, and so on – and displaying it clearly with little or no development. When one starts to consider popular music through the eyes of a photographer, I think it allows one to understand and appreciate the music much more easily on an artistic level.

The penny has dropped, and I am having a renaissance of popular music (albeit leftfield). I hope that this insight may allow others to as well.

 



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