I think that the discussion that we had on Wednesday was the best we’ve had in a while. We were just into it, and some interesting points were thrown out there. I was think about it after, and just wanted to add a thought of my own. I agree with what Jackson was saying – how many (a majority of) people only want to hear what’s familiar, only want to hear the things that they already know, sampled over and over again. The more widely circulated and more often heard the song, the bigger the cheer it gets in concert. And yeah, I agree that being closed-minded and hostile to new music isn’t a good thing… But I was thinking about that very point while I was running, listening to a favorite song from years ago, and I found that there is another spin off of this point. Although there may not that much debate about what I’m about to say, I just wanted to put it out there. As I was running, I just had a playlist going, because who wants to be searching for songs to listen to while exercising, and it was on shuffle, so I didn’t know what song was coming up next… And as it switched, I knew right away what it was. Despite the freezing cold I started to smile, and to run faster. It was Shed a Little Light, by James Taylor, an uplifting tune that I’ve been hearing probably since before I was born. It’s one of my Mom’s favorites. As the song progressed, I fell completely into step with it, and it allowed me to run faster for longer, and by the way enjoy it. So after the song ended, I was thinking about what caused my burst of energy, and here’s the conclusion that I came to: It’s about a relationship with the song. To me, music is not just a sonic experience. It can be, but generally I’m looking for some sort of emotional response, or some sort of story as well. Because of the versatility and wide scope of music, I don’t think that we can just write people off for never wanting to listen to new things – maybe they are hearing new things, in each story, and in each circumstance that they first hear a song. And if all they want to hear is familiar music and familiar themes (which seems to be the case), it is perhaps not because they don’t want to hear new things, but just because they have already built a relationship with the songs that they already know and so things outside of strictly the sonic experience give them a greater experience on the whole – emotions, memories, vivid stories, etc. I’m not saying that I don’t love hearing new things, but when an old favorite comes on, it carries a lot of baggage (usually not a bad thing), and it can get a bigger emotional response, regardless of the complexity of the music. Yeah.
Feldman’s music is beautiful… At first I wasn’t so sure about him, when we were told that “it is understood that his music is to be played very quietly..” I was afraid that however beautiful, it would put me to sleep. Of course, it turned out that I was very wrong. In some music, a composer will add a soft dynamic in order to compel the listener to lean forward and be drawn in to the music. Although soft, the energy of the piece remains. In Feldman’s music, this phenomenon is present throughout, creating a beautiful mixture of sound and silence. I most love the choral components of his work, with strange soaring intervals that sound both haunting and pure. Feldman’s work is refreshing, and his style of notation is intriguing – although it frustrates me to some extent when a piece may be unrecognizable from one performance to the next. At any rate, Feldman’s music is gorgeous, and very easily enjoyed.
Reading the articles about Feldman, especially “The Anxiety of Art”, I was struck by a strange association. I’ve recently been re-reading The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, and I just wanted to take a minute to point out what I see as connections between the philosophy of Feldman, and the philosophy of Rand. Towards the beginning of the book, Rand presents the problem with relying on the past – in this case, in a reference to architecture. I think the quote that best embodies this is the one I will paste below – it’s from Chapter 1:
“But I don’t understand. Why do you want me to think that this is great
architecture?” He pointed to the picture of the Parthenon.
“That,” said the Dean, “is the Parthenon.”
“So it is.”
“I haven’t the time to waste on silly questions.”
“All right, then.” Roark got up, he took a long ruler from the desk, he walked
to the picture. “Shall I tell you what’s rotten about it?”
“It’s the Parthenon!” said the Dean.
“Yes, God damn it, the Parthenon!”
The ruler struck the glass over the picture.
“Look,” said Roark. “The famous flutings on the famous columns–what are they
there for? To hide the joints in wood–when columns were made of wood, only
these aren’t, they’re marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams,
the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your
Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it,
because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came
along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here
we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in
marble of copies in wood. Why?”
Feldman seems to have the same aversion to simply copying the ideas of the past, and a cynical view of the artist, who gives in to “the tempting knowledge that nothing succeeds in art—like someone else’s success”. I believe that Feldman’s philosophy is embodied in another quote from the article: “For ten years of my life I worked in an environment committed to neither the past nor the future. We worked, that is to say, not knowing where what we did belonged, or whether it belonged anywhere at all. What we did was not in protest against the past. To rebel against history is still to be part of it. We were simply not concerned with historical processes. We were concerned with sound itself. And sound does not know its history.”
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